Steven Anderson, Strange Fire, David Allen, and More

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:37

And welcome to the Divine Line, my name's James White and we have a lot to talk about today and we're also taking your phone calls at 877 -753 -3341.

00:46

I keep forgetting to talk about this so I'm going to get to it first so that I won't keep forgetting to talk about it.

00:55

After I got back from South Africa, well I think, was it before I left? Before I left, Rich contacted me and he said, got a real interesting contact,

01:07

Steven Anderson from over in Tempe, who is a fairly well -known

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King James -only preacher. You've probably seen some of his videos online. He's famous for a few things.

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He's famous for getting tased by the cops at the Arizona -California border.

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And he's famous for not liking Calvinism, for kicking his pulpit, and a few other things like that.

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Recently, he's gotten into quite the tussle with Sam Gipp online, which is interesting.

01:45

I did not know that he was also famous for taking what's called a, what is it, post -wrath?

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Is that what it is? I can't follow all the pre -millennial viewpoints, but there's no rapture type thing.

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And he's put out a movie on that and I didn't know any of that. So anyways, he had contacted us and they're doing a movie on the

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King James version and wanted to, well let's just be honest, they wanted to interview the devil about this.

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It's how they put it, but they wanted to get the other side of the story. And I surprised

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Rich a good bit by saying, okay. And he's like, what do you mean, right after you get back from South Africa?

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And I said, sure, yeah, sounds good. And so I'm like, all right, let's do it.

02:43

So we set it up and I sort of expected, I don't know what

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I expected. I expected a brief, relatively brief, it was, it went for three hours, went for three hours.

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They showed up with, he showed up with two other folks from his church and they set up cameras and lights and stuff in my office and we sat down on the two couches

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I have in there and started chatting away and, you know,

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I tried to be, I tried to keep it somewhat light. The only thing

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I wish I had known prior to that starting,

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I wish I had known what his view on what they call lordship salvation is.

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He's really, really strongly opposed to what is so obviously to me, the biblical message of the gospel, repent and believe, you know, it's what

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Jesus actually taught. And that came out toward the end when we started getting into, well, he had brought up John 3 .36,

03:59

we brought up, there was a million things that came up. We eventually got around to some important stuff, there was other things we didn't get to.

04:09

He was pretty straightforward in saying, look, I think the King James Version of the Bible is the inspired version of the

04:15

Bible. It's the final authority and it's not to be questioned and he tried to liken that to anyone's belief in the

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Bible as a whole being the Word of God. And I'm like, no, you're talking about an

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English translation and you're only talking about one English translation, but that's his final authority.

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So for example, we went to John 3 .36 and the translation of the term apithon, as it is found in the

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Greek text there, and in the

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New American Standard it says, he who believes in the Son has eternal life, he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides upon him,

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ESV likewise uses the same thing. But the King James Version actually has, he that believeth in the

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Son hath everlasting life, but he that believeth not the Son shall not see life. Now what's interesting is hapistuon is the first word and then ha -apithon is the second word, but the

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King James translates them identical. And for him, since that's final authority, then anything other than that, doesn't matter what the underlying

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Greek text says, is suggestive of some kind of work salvation system.

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And so I started getting the hint at that point and so we eventually ended up talking about Hades, Gehenna, and Sheol.

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Now Sheol, Old Testament term, Hebrew term, Hades and Gehenna, New Testament terms,

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Greek terms, and he was completely aware of the fact that the

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King James translates both Hades and Gehenna as hell, by just one word.

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And so he was fully aware of that fact. But because it's his final authority, that really becomes a new revelation.

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And he actually started making the argument that Jesus went to hell and was a burnt offering on the basis of the fact that the

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King James translators did not properly differentiate between the underlying terms. And he knows they didn't differentiate, but because it's his final authority, then it's almost like that becomes revelational for him.

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And he got quite animated at that point. He had been fairly calm and collected up until then, but he became quite animated.

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And once it just became obvious that even though he knew that he was dealing with an inaccurate translation of the original language, since that's his final authority,

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I mean, there's no reasoning with someone like that. You can't argue with someone like that. And I said my piece and said, look, it's enough.

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And of course, he had to get the last word. I don't know why you want to talk about this. I already did.

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I explained it to you. The whole thing. It's clear. I'll leave that to anybody who's watching, though I doubt out of three hours, if more than four minutes ends up in the film,

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I'll be surprised and it'll be interesting what ends up in it. We did record it, by the way, so we'll see what comes out.

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But we had cameras running and mp3 recorders running and stuff like that, because we knew that we would need to have a recording of everything in the original context.

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So that just makes obvious sense. But anyway, it was interesting, and I'll be interested in seeing what the final result of this is.

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A lot of people have discovered that you can do entire movies now pretty cheaply. You've got

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HD cameras and stuff like that, and you just go and set your cameras up and do your thing.

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So I guess that's what's going on. So it was an interesting experience.

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There's no two ways about it, and we'll see what comes out of it. It was not what

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I expected it to be, as far as the discussion was concerned, but it was still rather troubling in many ways.

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This morning, before we go to our calls, there was one fellow who called in or tweeted me and said, hey,

08:36

I want to call in, and I'm not sure, is that who we have lined up there? I don't think so.

08:44

Wanted to ask a question about limited atonement and some comments made on the subject by someone who comments very frequently on the subject, and that is

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Dr. Alan from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. So we'll see what he had to say.

09:02

But this morning, I started catching up with where a lot of other people already were, and that is

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I downloaded a number of the presentations, not all of them yet, but a number of the presentations from the

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Strangefire Conference so I could start listening to them myself. Most of them have been posted. I guess maybe all of them have been posted now.

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I don't know. I assume so. And I have the book as well, and so I'm going to start working on it.

09:33

I got through Bill Johnson's presentation this morning. It was very informative. There are a lot of things

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I didn't know before. I don't consider the charismatic issue to be my forte or anything like that.

09:49

It's not my primary thing to be involved with. And so I was really taken aback, primarily, by the things that Phil mentioned in regards to John Piper, having prayed to receive the gift of tongues and a few things like that.

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And Phil basically taking him on and saying, you know, it certainly would have helped if you had told the world your views or warned the world about Todd Bentley before the meltdown of Todd Bentley.

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Though, to be honest with you, I can't, I cannot, it's difficult for me to conceive of any true believer being ever influenced by someone like Todd Bentley.

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I mean, honestly, we've often said in the church, well,

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Satan doesn't show up wearing pink and purple polka dots, he tries to look like us. Well, maybe not.

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I mean, Todd Bentley is so far out there, so cartoonish, so obviously not even a

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Christian, let alone a teacher in the body of Christ, that it just doesn't even cross my mind that anybody with the

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Holy Spirit and even the slightest knowledge of the gospel would be going, huh, I wonder if maybe the

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Holy Spirit's causing people to punch people in the belly now and kneel to heal them and stuff like that.

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Really? Okay. So, you know, I mean,

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I understand the criticism of Piper at that point, but at the same time,

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I didn't even hear about him until I think, you know, I don't even know if I heard about him.

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I think I heard about him just before the meltdown, like within a month or two. And it was just, again, it was just someone mentions it in channel or something like that.

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And you go, seriously, there's actually people who attend stuff like that?

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You know, honestly, wow. I didn't know that. Sometimes it's hard to take some of that stuff seriously to even invest time in it.

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But anyway, I did learn a lot there, especially about the, well, there were some pretty straightforward naming of names, primarily

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John Piper and Wayne Grudem in Phil's presentation. Even though he started off responding to Michael Brown, he eventually really sort of left that whole realm and was focused upon the

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Reformed continuationists, whom he described as being on the fringe and not really representative of any, you know, and Sam Storms.

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He did mention Sam Storms as well in his discussions. So it was very, very interesting.

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Then I heard the first Q &A with Todd Friel, and I learned that you should just never give a microphone to Todd Friel.

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That is the main lesson that we all should learn from listening to Todd Friel, is that, well, as Phil said, the first time he ever heard him on the radio up in Minneapolis, he said, someone needs to chill this guy out, calm this guy down or whatever.

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And then when Todd asked for permission to use random clips from John MacArthur, his initial response was, no,

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I don't think so. I know that's dangerous. Probably not wise. That's what

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I was going to say. Don't let him have a microphone and don't let him have video clips. No, no, no, that's true.

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Yeah, it's actually, I would go with Phil's first response on that, but he eventually did relent and allowed him to do that, which

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I'm really not sure is really that wise, honestly, because that guy is really weird.

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And you could hear MacArthur cracking up a good bit whenever Friel would speak.

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But anyway, so I listened to the Q &A and that was interesting. And there were a couple of times, there were contexts, you know,

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Friel would play some incredible thing. I thought about trying to track some of them down. And I couldn't remember the name of the guy.

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There was a guy that they mentioned and I asked the channel and nobody knew who it was.

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But there is a guy mentioned who gets drunk with the Holy Spirit, man, and tokes the spirit and stuff like that.

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And I don't even know who it was to even track down the clip. But the stuff they played was really pretty amazing.

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And I guess part of the big argument is, is that representative or is that mainstream?

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And it seems that it's mainstream, but a lot of people want to say, well, no, it's not really representative. Those are extremes. But, you know, some of the strongest things that were said without stressing the context were said at that point in time.

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They were after watching some kind of an amazing John Crowder. Thank you,

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John Crowder is the name. I had never heard of John Crowder until that particular point in time.

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But I mean, you know, they basically straight forward said that's demonic.

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You know, there's just straight straight forward. That's just that's just demonic. That's not another view.

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That's just demonic. And when I see that kind of stuff, when I see Benny Hinn throwing the Holy Spirit around, when I see this

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John Crowder guy or what's where was it? Reading. There was a church up in Reading, California that they talked a lot about.

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And I guess that's where this Jesus Culture group is based out of this church in Reading, California.

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Don't know anything more about it. But they played some stuff from there, too.

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And I guess the glory of God comes out of the air vents at some point in time. I didn't get to see that.

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But that was weird. Yeah. Well, I bet it's really plays havoc with the air conditioning system, too.

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But, you know, this kind of this kind of stuff. I look at that and look for years,

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I've just gone. That ain't my faith and that ain't my religion. And there ain't really no connection between here other than some of the words we use.

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But that's I've just always seen that is just so far out there that, you know, don't hold me accountable for that.

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But I realize Bethel. Thank you. I just have to watch this. Bill Johnson. At one point, when

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Phil mentioned Bill Johnson, he said, please make sure it's Bill Johnson, not Phil Johnson.

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But at one point, MacArthur missed that and put

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Jones, not Bill Jones, who was the Jim Jones called him Jim Jones instead of Bill Johnson.

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He was talking about Bill Johnson, but he came up with Jim Jones or Bill Jones or something like that. Anyway, Bethel is the name of the church in California.

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And someone just posted a YouTube link. Do I do I even dare? Do I even dare?

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I'm actually clicking. Let's let's see what it. Yeah, OK. Yeah, it's it's it's

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Crowder. It is Crowder here. John Crowder, Ben Dunn and those following. OK, so there it's a two minute and twenty five minute to twenty five or something like that.

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Yeah, except I don't have that particular computer plugged in, unfortunately, that's

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I could do me any good. John Crowder. Oh, yeah. All right. Wow.

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Oh, I have it. Oh, smoking the cross. OK, this is pretty wild.

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OK, this is pretty insane. OK, again, I see that stuff and I just go. Different religion, different different religion.

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That's just how I've always felt about it. I just I can't even see where the connection is. I really can't.

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But, you know, I what I would really like to ask Michael Brown is about some of those things that would be that would be helpful anyways.

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And then I heard Conran Mbawi's discussion right up to the last about four minutes in my headphone battery died.

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I've been using this Bluetooth headphone. I can only get about 50 miles out of the headset before the battery dies.

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And I did 52 and a half. So right at the end shuts down. Ride faster.

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Yeah, OK, I do try. And if you'd like to come along, you're welcome to anyway.

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And what was interesting about that is I just got back from South Africa. And so I'm comparing what he's saying with what

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I heard in South Africa. And I'm not going to since I haven't asked if I could do this,

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I'm not going to tell you what my source was. My source is someone who is on the inside of what's going on in the

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African church. And the vast majority of the churches are charismatic. They are deeply influenced by that.

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In the non charismatic churches, I was I ministered in a master's seminary related church there.

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And you could just tell part of part of their whole work is basically taking refugees in who have been damaged by the quote unquote church.

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And one thing that struck me is my friend in South Africa was telling me he's never, ever, ever heard a sermon on the doctrine of the

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Trinity in South Africa. Never. Now, then again, a lot of American Christians could probably say the same thing.

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But it just strikes me. It just strikes me that charismatics should be the people with the most balanced and best understanding of the doctrine of Trinity.

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I mean, if they are so full of the Spirit, then they should know all about the Spirit's relationship with the

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Father and the Son. They should know the Bible inside and out in the subject. They should have discernment like you would not believe and have such a balance in their view of the

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Spirit. Just the exact opposite is what you see in charismatic churches.

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You do not see the New Testament balance. You do not see the Spirit testifying of the things of Jesus and not of himself.

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You get this. You get this imbalance and you don't get an understanding. You end up with a lot of modalism.

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You end up with a lot of heresies. And certainly, it is perfectly correct, as was said more than once at the

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Strangefire Conference, that the charismatic movement has been the doorway through which so much heresy and falsehood has entered into the church in our day.

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Because there is zero discernment. And I'm telling you, if you've got zero discernment, that means you've got zero

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Spirit. So it's something else that you're talking about there. It's not the Spirit of God.

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It's not the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God brings discernment. And the charismatic movement doesn't bring discernment.

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And there you go. So that's as far as I've gotten so far. So I have Phil's other presentation.

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I've got Pennington's presentation. I've got the second Q &A to do. And like I said, I've got the book to get through.

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Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of notes on that one, too. So I'm catching up. I feel like I need to do so.

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I think it's fair to do so. And Doug Wilson, actually, yesterday, did you see

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Doug Wilson's little blog article? His blog articles are always little. He never waxes.

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Almost every time you click on a Doug Wilson blog article, you're actually going to have time to read it. He's smart along those lines.

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There are times I post stuff that you ain't going to have time to read that. You're going to have to dump that into Tech Speech Pro and listen to it on the drive to work or something, if it's even worth doing that.

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But normally, pithy. Pithy and to the point. Always a wordsmith. And I liked a lot of the things he had to say yesterday.

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If you take a look at what he said about the woohoo something. I forget what the name of it was, but it was good.

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So anyhow, we pressed forward. Just one other comment, and it's been made by a number of people, and I think

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Wilson even made the comment. If the charismatic movement was actually where the truth is, then there would never have been a need for the

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Strange Fire Conference because it would be the charismatic movement itself that would be sponsoring all sorts of Strange Fire Conferences.

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The majority of sound, discerning, charismatic leaders, whoever they're supposed to be, would be doing this all the time because they would be so jealous for the glory of God and for the truth of the gospel and for the truth of the gifts of the

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Holy Spirit that they would be very quick to bring attention to and correction to the

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Todd Bentley's and the Benny Hinn's and all the rest of that stuff. What you see is a tremendous amount of compromise, and I think there's a simple reason for it.

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It's because the foundation of your experience does not give you enough foundation to question somebody else's experience.

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Since it's experiential rather than revelational and objective and unchanging over time, then you don't really have a basis for saying, oh, that guy over there?

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Way out of bounds. Punching folks in the stomach and all the rest of this kind of stuff.

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Todd Bentley? Beware of that man. Stay away. False teacher.

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How many during the heyday of that alleged revival were saying that within the charismatic movement?

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Stand up and be counted. Now, am I saying there were none? See, this is where you got to be careful. If you say nobody was saying anything, you set yourself up to be refuted.

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But if they were, on what basis were they doing so? On what basis were they doing so?

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That's really the question. But like I said, it shouldn't be up to the cessationists to be doing this.

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It shouldn't be up to the cessationists to be pointing out that 17 minute long songs by a band repeating the same phrase over and over again is a method of brainwashing and mind control, not worship.

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That's not worship. It should not be for the cessationists to have to point this out.

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It should not be for the cessationists to have to point out that if you're walking along, bopping people in the forehead going, fire!

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And they fall over and shake on the ground. That's not Sophronismos.

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That's not sound mind and discipline and self -control and all the stuff we looked at last time in regards to what the

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New Testament says. That shouldn't be us having to do this. This should be something that we're seeing regularly amongst the charismatics.

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And maybe, maybe the fact that Strange Fire has happened will actually force those who are saying, well, yeah, that's just all the extreme stuff.

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Okay, maybe they're finally going to be forced to do something and get together and say, you know what? We've been shamed into it.

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Let's get together as sound biblical charismatics and criticize this stuff.

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Well, that would be interesting. I'd love to see that. How do they make the differentiation?

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Can they come up with a consistent epistemology that will allow them to criticize these things and to actually be able to say, this is how you could have known that Todd Bentley was a fraud before Todd Bentley was found out to be cheating on his wife and doing all the rest of that kind of stuff?

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That's what I'd like to see. We'll see if it happens. We'll see if it happens. 877 -753 -3341.

27:02

Let's talk with Andrew. Hi, Andrew. Hi, Dr. White. How are you doing? Doing good. I have a question for you.

27:09

I am a Lutheran. I didn't call to fight with you. I'm just, I'm curious about something.

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I watched your debate with Pastor Shisco. Shisco, a few months ago.

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And I've been looking, I heard you say something about consistent exegesis of texts like Colossians 2 and Romans 6 and so forth, and how a consistent exegeting of those texts would not lead to a sacramental understanding of baptism.

27:39

And what I'm looking for is resources to explain the Baptist view of baptism, because I don't understand it.

27:48

So I'm wondering if you can just point me to a couple of books, and then maybe if you know of any, a couple of articles

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I could go to until my book budget isn't zero dollars.

28:01

Well, you know, Seek Ye First, the Kingdom of God, all these books shall be added to you. We all know how that works.

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I'm looking for one of those references right now.

28:17

There is, the first thing off the top of my head, in regards specifically to the text that you mentioned,

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I just went to rbap .net,

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Reformed Baptist Academic Press, and you'll see there, if you open that up, the only picture on the front is a funny looking dude named

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Richard Brassellus, and if you would drop him a note,

28:47

I'm sure he would be more than happy to send you maybe some back copies of the

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Reformed Baptist Theological Journal, where, I mean, I have some articles in there.

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I know there's a book being written on the subject right now that included some of my articles on Hebrews 8, but I know that Dr.

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Brassellus specifically has a fairly lengthy article specifically on Colossians chapter 2, exactly in response to what you're saying there.

29:16

Okay. And probably he and Sam Waldron, and of course...

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What's Brassellus' name again? Richard Brassellus. Richard... Yeah, just go to rbap .net.

29:29

Okay. You should be able to contact, there's a contact link there, he'd be the one that...

29:37

He probably would know more about the current published and online resources on that particular subject than anybody else.

29:45

Okay. Than anybody else. So, because he's been doing a lot of this publishing, and like I said, that article is specifically on what you need.

29:53

The other names to write down, and these are all guys that I know would be happy to correspond with you, send you articles, things like that.

30:00

Sam Waldron, Dr. Sam Waldron, and Dr. Jim Renahan at the

30:05

Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies at Westminster Seminary in Escondido. So Sam Waldron and Jim Renahan would be the other ones that would probably be able to give you the broadest spectrum of scholarly works on that particular subject.

30:22

Okay. Well, I think that answers my question. Hey, you have that Covenantal Baptism book in your bookstore.

30:30

That may be helpful, too. Yes, yes, yes. Dr. Nichols' work is rather full, and there's been at least two that have been published since then that are maybe a little bit less technical, but things like that.

30:45

So yeah, they're out there. They're just not the types of things that get a whole lot of big press, shall we say.

30:51

All right. As an aside, I've been to a John Crowder meeting. It's creepier than you can imagine. What brought you?

30:59

It was across the street from my house. Well, okay. And I knew a little bit about who he was, and I went.

31:06

And as soon as a guy started trying to pull my shoes off so he could kiss my feet, I decided it was time to leave. Really?

31:13

Yeah, it was just weird. I've never seen anybody act this weird on drugs or anything, and I used to be into a lot of that stuff.

31:22

It was just bizarre. Wow. Just weird. How long ago was that? I'm gonna say it was probably three years ago.

31:30

So he's been around a while. He has been around a while, and he's one of these people that it's just so obvious when you listen to him preach.

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I mean, you hear a guy, if you could call it preaching, he was mocking the idea that the gospel is just that we're saved by grace through faith because of what

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Jesus did. That's silly after all, but... Well, what was his replacement for that? Getting drunk on the

31:57

Spirit, really. Oh, okay. All right. Dr. White, you have a lot to learn. No, yeah, look,

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I just heard about him this morning, what can I say? And I'll be honest with you, I'm not really sure

32:07

I want to learn that. You don't. Don't waste your time. Continue dealing with Islam and Catholicism.

32:13

All right. All right, thank you, Andrew, I appreciate it. Thank you. Have a good day. Taking his shoes off.

32:22

I don't even know that I want to know anything more about that at all. I don't... Wow, okay.

32:28

Okay, let's talk with Rory. Hi, Rory. Hey, Dr. White, how you doing? Doing good. Good, thanks for taking my call.

32:36

I am a former student at Liberty University, and I actually made it out alive and somehow became a five -pointer, so...

32:46

Oh, well, you wouldn't be the first one. Yeah, God works miracles. That's definitely true. I was actually there during the whole

32:54

Canner debacle. I graduated in 2008. Oh. And yeah, or I'm sorry, 2012, goodness.

33:01

I graduated in high school in 2008, but I graduated in 2012, and I was there during the whole cover -up,

33:10

I guess you could say, when he was... demoted and everything, and it was definitely very hush -hush as far as the administration goes.

33:21

So anyways, I've definitely become a lot more informed on that than I was at the time. But anyways,

33:27

I have a question concerning a presentation that David Allen, Dr. David Allen made at Liberty, I think it was about a month ago, at the beginning of October, and the whole presentation was arguing against limited atonement, and it was in two parts.

33:47

He did a morning sermon and an evening, just hour -long presentation against limited atonement.

33:54

So my question is kind of twofold concerning two different portions of his presentation, which is yet to be posted on Liberty's website.

34:03

I talked with a professor that heads it up, his name is Dr. Furr, and he mentioned to me that it's going through some higher -ups for the

34:11

Marketing Department at Liberty, and it'll be up as soon as possible. It's all ready to be posted, it's just going through the loopholes of bureaucracy,

34:22

I suppose you could say. Well, if you keep an eye on that and then drop us a note when it is, that's obviously something

34:28

I would be interested in listening to. Yeah, I'm sure it'd be a great review. Definitely. But one of...

34:34

So I'm going to try and quote him the best I can, because I haven't listened to it since then, but I think I have a gist of what he was saying.

34:41

I wasn't in attendance, but I was able to view it via live stream. So the one thing that he did mention that I thought was interesting was, he went on an argument about how those who had hold to particular redemption cannot preach the

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Gospel, call them in and say that Christ died for them. Which, obviously, in my opinion, that wasn't even a portion of the

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Apostle's message. They spoke repent and believe, they presented

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Christ as Savior, there was no portion that we have in Acts of them saying, Jesus died for you, so now believe.

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What he brought up, though, was from 1 Corinthians 15, verses 1 -4, where Paul says in verse 3,

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I delivered to you, that is, the Corinthians, and he places the context in, this is

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Paul speaking to the Corinthians when they were unbelievers, when he was first preaching the Gospel to them.

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When he says, I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the

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Scriptures, that he was buried and raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. What he does is take that phrase,

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Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, to mean, well, Paul is presenting to them unlimited atonement.

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He is telling the unbelieving Corinthians that Christ died for your sins, he died for my sins, he died for the sins of the world.

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So I was just wondering, how exactly do you think that passage is to be executed properly in light of that whole understanding of whether the

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Apostles did preach unlimited atonement as far as that goes? Well, you know, it's interesting, when you look at what's actually being said there, when it says,

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I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, he's talking about the

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Apostolic Kerygma here, and people have pointed out that the term for I delivered to you is a technical term.

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And it is a technical term, it's from paradidomi, and paradidomi was the mechanism by which tradition was passed on from one person to another.

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And in any of the discussions, any scholarly discussions of 1 Corinthians chapter 15, and specifically this section, it will start with a recognition of paradidomi, and then when it says what

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I also received is, again, paralambano, which, again, in any discussion of tradition, anything like that, these are the terminologies that are used.

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And so what Paul is identifying here is the kerygma, the essence of the proclamation that existed even before Paul.

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Paul is saying, I didn't make this up. This is what has been preached from the beginning, here is the essence of the

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Christian faith, etc., etc. So this is one of the few places in the New Testament, along with 1

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Corinthians chapter 8, verses 6 and 7, possibly the

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Carmen Christi in Philippians 2, 5 through 11, where you have pre -Pauline tradition, frequently in a set form.

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I think the Carmen Christi was in a set form, this is in a set form. That's why even liberal scholars will go so far as to say that here we have a fragment of tradition that goes back to within literally months of the time of the crucifixion itself.

38:15

Interesting. So it's important to keep that in mind. I think of the debate that I did in, when did

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I debate James, not James, Robert Price. Robert Price.

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Was that 2010? In 2010, when

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I debated Robert Price, who calls himself a Christian atheist, which is very confusing, he believes that this whole section has to be pushed back all the way into the 2nd century, around 120

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AD, which is why I had a time -aid that has this section from Codex Sinaiticus, and that's the tie

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I'm wearing in the debate, and then I gave him that tie. I didn't take mine off,

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I had one made for him. I gave him that tie, and he actually took his tie off and put that tie on before the end of the debate, that had this particular section.

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I don't know why I'm telling you that, it just is sort of interesting. Well, it's a little relevant. Yeah, just a little bit.

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You would say, then, that the content of verses 3 -4 and even afterwards is not exactly a quote, word -for -word, of what

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Paul has been saying to the Corinthians. It was just, this is the kerygma of what I was teaching you the moment that I preached the gospel to you.

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I actually haven't even gotten the response yet, because Rich is jumping up and down the other room and wants to say something. What is it you wanted to say, sir?

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I was just saying, providentially, there was a reason why you mentioned that debate, because directly after this show is over,

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I'm going to be uploading that debate to YouTube. Well, all right, how about that? And you can actually see you give him that tie and him putting it on.

39:59

Okay, very good. Yes, Robert Price actually enjoyed that debate. I'll be sure to check it out. Yeah.

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Anyway, so my response would be that this is illustrative of the desperation of the person who, instead of going to the key texts that can answer this issue directly, the didactic texts that specifically address the intention and result of the atonement, which is the book of Hebrews, Ephesians, Romans, going to these texts where that is specifically in line and seeing holistically the fact that the

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New Testament presents the sacrifice of Christ as intimately connected with his role as high priest.

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They know they can't go there, because if they go there, everything collapses for them. All of the Old Testament antecedents and fulfillment language and everything else is just going to completely run them over.

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So they can't go there. Instead of doing that, now you've got, well, what this is here is what

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Paul actually first preached to the Corinthians when they were unbelievers. I've never even heard that before.

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I don't think that's a part of the scholarly literature. I'll have to check, because it's like, well, all of my study of this text has been relevant to other issues and not to anyone trying to abuse it to somehow say, ah, see,

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Christ died for our sins, and if that was said to unbelievers, then therefore this is an annunciation of unlimited atonement.

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I've never heard anyone using that before, but I've never encountered anyone who has viewed this as anything more than the pre -Pauline kerygma, because he himself says, ha kai pareilaban, which

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I also received. So it's pre -Pauline. This is the very essence of the gospel message.

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But again, even if you're to take that perspective, the only result you can then have is to turn this into something that is not only contradictory to Paul, but contradictory to Hebrews as well, because you still have to answer the question.

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Well, I do understand why Dr. Allen doesn't go here, because it's impossible for them to defend this, but if you go to the question, all right, what does it mean for Christ to die for our sins?

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Notice what it says. It uses the term hupere there. Now, is that substitutionary?

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And how does Christ die for sin and not for sinners?

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Is this substitutionary atonement? Is he going to affirm substitutionary atonement for every single individual person?

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I think that he would. Well, then what are the results of that? And the results are, you know, I still haven't heard a meaningful response from those who promote a universal atonement about the question, all right, if that's true, then what does it say concerning the nature of the atonement?

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They are forced eventually, if they're going to be honest, to come out and say, yes, Christ's death does not save anyone, it makes all men savable.

43:12

Right. And I think that that's a good thing you brought up, because the majority of his presentation and again, it's not posted online yet, so I'm doing my best to just recall from memory what it was that he actually said, but I'm pretty sure

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I would be doing him justice if he may be listening eventually, who knows. But when he was presenting the whole discussion, it was, there was nothing to do, you know, there was no exegesis of Hebrews, there was no exegesis of Romans 8, the latter portion or anything like that.

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It was all driven around, what is the meaning of all or many or any of these kind of numerical identifiers?

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There was a lot of discussion about logical fallacies that they were falling into, and this portion on 1

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Corinthians 15, in fact, this actually took up a good majority of the hour discussion, I think maybe close to a third of it was about this one text right here.

44:11

So that's a very good point you bring up, but that also kind of leads me into my second question, if I'm not taking up too much of your time.

44:16

No, that's fine. Okay, I was able to ask Dr. Allen a question via Twitter whenever he was presenting, they had a

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Q &A at the end of about 30 minutes long, people got to ask him questions, and my question to him was, if Jesus Christ did pay for the sins of all men when he died, then what sins are men paying for right now in hell?

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Basically a question of, you know, the double jeopardy issue. And now, again, I'm doing my best to try and remember what he said, but he went back to a portion of his lecture where he discussed how the

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Atonement is construed in terms of commercial language with words like debt and ransom, and he made a distinction in his lecture between the commercial debt of sin, or the economic debt of sin that we are under, and a moral debt of sin that we are under.

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And what he did was, he went back to that point, and he said, when Christ died, and again,

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I'm doing my best to remember what he said, but he said when Christ died, he put away the commercial debt of sin, the payment that we had to make for sin to God, that was put away for the whole world.

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But what he has left is the moral debt, which is satisfied by faith, by the act of faith that we do in order to make the

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Atonement applicable to us. That is what is left to be satisfied that was not satisfied by Christ's death.

45:46

I was wondering, if you want to comment on that, that might be fine, but if you want to leave it alone, because I'm not exactly sure if I did.

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I have heard the attempt on the part of Dr. Allen and others to make that kind of argument.

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I think most people in the audience are sitting there going, wait a minute, these are the ones who are saying the

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Calvinists are adding to Scripture? Because you're sitting there going, yeah, I remember the writer of Hebrews talking about the commercial debt and the moral debt and making those distinctions right.

46:18

Yeah, I remember that. I mean, again, it does strike me, honestly, as pretty desperate to be introducing categories like this.

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And again, obviously, I'd like to see where this is fleshed out biblically, where you come up with this distinction, where the biblical writers come up with these distinctions.

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I mean, when I talk about the role of Jesus as a high priest, I can go directly to the text.

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Let's go to Hebrews 7, let's go to Hebrews 9, and we can go right there. That's one of the reasons, by the way,

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Dr. Allen has and knows he has a standing challenge from me to debate these issues. And let me just mention it again, because I know there's some people from Southwestern listening.

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I will travel to Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and I will debate Dr. Allen on the subject of the

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Atonement in front of the entire student body. And we can do a second debate on what hyper -Calvinism is, too, so that he can retract his false accusations against me on that subject once he loses the debate on that subject as well.

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But I'll be happy to do that. But it's not going to happen, and you and I both know it's not going to happen.

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There are certain people in positions of great authority that will make sure that even if Dr.

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Allen wanted to do that, it would never happen. I would love to debate Dr. Yarnell and things like that, but unfortunately, when you have certain people have certain political positions of authority, when it comes to debating this particular subject, they simply will not allow meaningful dialogue to take place.

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So we're left playing their presentations and responding to them, which obviously puts them in a bad spot, but hey, it's their leaders that are saying, no, we can't let that happen, because I really think if we had equal amount of time in a debate, that theological students would find that to be a very, very interesting encounter.

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It would be great for them. I know I would. But it's not going to happen. But again, I'm just going to let everybody know, if you're talking with Dr.

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Allen, James White, be happy to come there to Texas and to engage in both of those debates publicly in front of the, on their turf, their context, as long as we have a signed legally binding agreement, not only to the live streaming of such event, but also to the provision of the unedited footage and no changing of the timeframes 10 days before the debate, like certain people attempted to do back in 2006.

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So anyways, yeah, I'm looking forward to hearing the presentation, and we'll definitely make a great

49:03

Radio Free Geneva. The problem is, now it may never appear. It wouldn't be the first time that something that was supposed to be posted all of a sudden wouldn't be posted, simply because I said, yeah, we'll play the whole thing and respond to it.

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I probably shouldn't have called in then. Well, let's hope that doesn't happen. So we'll see. But I appreciate the question and the opportunity of discussion.

49:24

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Dr. White. Thanks, Peter. Have a good day. Bye -bye. It's Rory. Sorry. We'll see.

49:30

Sorry, Rory. Peter is the next one up. I looked at the wrong name. Hi, Peter. How are you doing? Hi, Dr.

49:36

White. Great to talk to you. Yes, sir. Hey, I was listening to Dr. Brown's podcast today,

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Michael Brown. He was talking about the Strange Park Conference, talking about how to define heresy.

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He defined a heresy as an error that would send someone to hell if they believed it.

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Would you agree with that? That's a damnable heresy. There are damnable heresies and non -damnable heresies.

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At least in the history of the Church, that has been the case. And so a damnable heresy is a heresy that would result in, would demonstrate that the person promoting it is not in Christ.

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That would involve a denial of Christ or a promotion of a false gospel, etc., etc.,

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indicative of a person who is not a follower of Jesus Christ. There are people who would hold to a heresy, but that are not damned as a result.

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So, for example, there are Christians who, out of ignorance, are modalists.

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If the only people going to heaven have a perfect knowledge of the Trinity, well, heaven's going to have a lot of space left over.

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The difference being between a person who knows the truth of what the Trinity is and then denies it, and a person who doesn't know what the truth is and, out of ignorance, is unaware of those types of things.

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So there's all sorts of different levels of heresy, and some are minor things.

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I mean, you could obviously make the definition, heresy is anything that involves false teaching.

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Well, all of us, since none of us have a perfect understanding of all things in this life, then we're all heretics on some level.

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I mean, I've got blind spots someplace, and I'm going to find out what they are after this life is over.

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And if you make the standard perfection, this is where hyper -Calvinists and hyper -Arminians and just hyper -people in general fall off the boat, is they end up drawing the circles so tightly that they have to stand on one foot to remain in it.

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And so, on that level, everybody would be a heretic. So I think there needs to be some thought put into how you would exactly define these things.

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I would consider Todd Bentley a heretic. I would consider Benny Hinn a heretic.

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Their teachings are false, and their lives are false. They're obviously doing this for money, fame, power.

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They're robbing the sheep blind, and that's the kind of heresy that, unfortunately, today, in the charismatic movement, evidently, you're not allowed to call that heresy.

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And you're not allowed to call these individuals heretics or false teachers or false prophets or anything else, because, well, look at all their fruit, quote -unquote,

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I guess is what some people say. But anyways, does that help? Is Arminianism...oh

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yeah, that helps. So Arminianism, would that be heresy, technically? Well, from a biblical perspective, yes, but not necessarily damnable heresy.

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Now, I've said many, many times that if you were to be a consistent Arminian, that I think it would be a damnable heresy.

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Because the consistent Arminian is going to end up having to be an open theist, deny...I think open theism is a heresy.

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And you're going to end up having to deny...you're going to have to end up denying grace itself to be a consistent

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Arminian. But that's the point. I've never met one. Well, okay, I'll take that back. I've met a couple. They end up becoming

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Pelagians. But the vast majority of my Arminian brothers are not consistent

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Arminians, because they will affirm justification by faith, even though their system does not provide a consistent foundation for defining or defending justification by faith through grace alone in Christ alone.

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So again, people unfortunately not wanting to think that through will end up going, oh well, you're an

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Arminian, you're going to hell. You know, that becomes very surface level. It becomes almost, you know, you have to be an absolute copy of me if you're going to get to heaven type of situation.

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And that's not what I'm saying at all. What I am saying is that there are all sorts of levels of consistency.

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And there can be people who are consistently heretical, and then there can be people who are inconsistently heretical.

54:08

And thank God for the inconsistencies caused by grace, shall we say. One more thing, since we're defining terms and this is really helpful, how would you differentiate blasphemy from these things?

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From what? How would you distinguish blasphemy? How would you define a blasphemy?

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Is that just an error, or is that...? Well, no, I mean, the specific term means to speak against.

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So, when, for example, Jesus speaks of the blasphemy against the

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Holy Spirit, not being forgiven in this age or in the age to come, the person is guilty of an eternal sin, he says that in the context of all sorts of manner of things spoken against the

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Son of Man will be forgiven him, but blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.

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Now, there's a reason for that, because the Holy Spirit is the means by which repentance comes. You cut yourself off from the Holy Spirit, identify the

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Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Satan, and that's demonstrative of the condition that you are in, and that's why it's unforgivable, because the very means by which you could repent of it has been denied to you because you've blasphemed the

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Holy Spirit. But the point is, you're speaking against something. And so, we need to be careful what we identify as blasphemy.

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It's pretty easy to rile up your base by pulling out the blasphemy term, but fundamentally, from a biblical perspective, a blasphemous teaching would be a teaching that is so obviously false that it speaks directly against the character and purposes and truth of God.

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So, thinking of this morning, listening to the Strange Fire Conference, I would agree with the majority of the uses of the term blasphemy that I heard this morning, but not every single one.

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There were a couple of times where it was, oh, that's blasphemous, okay. For example, the guy, you know, toking the

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Holy Spirit and being drunk on the Holy Spirit, that's blasphemous. It is clearly an attribution to the

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Holy Spirit of God of activities and things that are directly contrary to his character and purposes.

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And so, someone who would do what that John Crowder is doing is blaspheming the

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Holy Spirit. Their teaching is blasphemous, their activities are blasphemous. We need to be careful that we don't then take that to mean that every time

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I see someone doing something other than what I think is appropriate in worship, that that necessarily is blasphemous.

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We need to be, I think, very careful because it's a very strong term, and it's certainly been used against me many times.

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I've had many a person saying, your teaching is blasphemous, and what they mean by that is, I disagree with your teaching.

57:09

You know, a consistent Arminian would find my teaching blasphemous in the same way that I find their consistent teaching heretical.

57:18

So, there needs to be some specifically speaking against the character and attributes of God for that really to be an appropriate use of the term.

57:30

But we need to be careful how we use it because it's just so easy to slip into. When you start preaching, you get all riled up, and you're really convinced that what you're saying is true.

57:43

It's easy to slip into using it a little bit more freely than maybe we should.

57:49

Thank you so much, Dr. White. That helps a lot. All right. Thanks, Peter. All right. God bless. Have a good day. Bye -bye. All right.

57:56

Timing on that could not have been any better because that pretty much takes us to the end of the program today.

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So, we appreciate your listening, and hopefully some of the things we talked about today will be of assistance to you.

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We take very seriously the honor, literally, that you do us in tuning in this broadcast or putting it on your iPod, however it is you listen in, wherever you are listening.

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Obviously, it is always our desire that it be edifying to you and that the hour you spend, or longer if we go longer, the hour that you spend is one that would draw you closer to Christ to give you a better understanding of the truth of God.

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We will be back on Thursday. Who knows when? Normally, Thursday afternoon, we're pretty close to being on time.

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Should be actually at our regular time on Thursday. Honestly, it should. We hope. Anyways, I won't try to mistweet the time next time around.