The Driving Line 12/6/2022

Alpha & Omega Ministries iconAlpha & Omega Ministries

8 views

Comments are disabled.

00:01
Welcome to the driving line. My name is James White. I am headed to Emory, Texas today, and I left from Jonesboro.
00:10
Let me just say, I had a wonderful time in Jonesboro last night. It was really interesting.
00:17
I didn't know how things were going to go. I had a great Mexican dinner. Maybe that's what did it.
00:23
I don't know, but I was surprisingly energetic last evening.
00:30
It was a good subject. We talked about justification and synergism and monergism. There's a lot of Church of Christ type stuff down in that area, and I was just really surprised.
00:44
I had spent five hours on the road, and then we did the presentation, and then
00:53
Q &A, and then talking with people and signing books and taking pictures and doing all that kind of stuff. The battery didn't go flat until right toward the end of the evening.
01:02
I had a great time, had a real good group of people show up, especially on a Monday night.
01:08
I even feel badly contacting a church and saying, Hey, I'm coming by on Monday. I mean,
01:13
I know that's about the worst night of the week you could possibly do anything, but it worked out great.
01:19
So I was at 12 -5 Church, and look them up, and if you're in the area, check them out.
01:27
So I had a great time there. So what I decided to do today as I started off from in the thick fog, man,
01:34
Arizonans are not used to driving in fog. It's still very gray today. I haven't seen the sun yet.
01:42
But I decided to listen to the oral arguments from the
01:49
Supreme Court yesterday on the 303 case, and I'm just going to tell you honestly, when
02:05
Obergefell came down, I read the decision, but it's the first time I've ever listened to the oral arguments in toto.
02:14
It was, what, two and a half hours, something like that. Two and a half, almost three hours worth of stuff.
02:24
And it was very interesting. I think you really can pick up a lot of information about how the justices are thinking from how they behave during the cross -examination.
02:40
I think I really do believe you can. I won't get into that right now. I'm hopeful for at least a 5 -4, maybe a 6 -3.
02:50
But the reality is that my heart is broken,
02:56
I'm just going to tell you. I saw something or heard something,
03:04
I guess, in listening to this three and a half hours worth of back and forth and hypotheticals and everything else.
03:17
And even though conservative Christianity was mentioned, even though the scriptures were mentioned, they were pretty much irrelevant.
03:31
Because what was painfully clear is the idea that there has been a clear and objective revelation of what is good and right and necessary for a nation to experience
03:51
God's blessing and to live in light of His truth wasn't anywhere near that room for anybody.
03:59
For anybody. And instead, what you keep hearing is the people that are trying to do the right thing and protect us from compelled speech, from having to do, from having to say what the government tells us to say, are dancing around the huge elephant in the room.
04:31
And the elephant in the room is a burgophile. And now, it hasn't been signed yet, so it's not relevant to their deliberations, but the profaning of marriage act that the
04:45
Senate passed, and that I imagine, if they can get the president functional long enough to sign his signature and not put
04:55
Barack Obama or some other name there, will be signed this week. In any case, what you see is what happens when something just horrifically bad has already been made precedent, has been put into place, and now you're trying to, all you can do after that is try to keep things from getting worse.
05:24
But the foundations have already been cracked by this kind of absurd precedent.
05:33
And now it becomes part of tradition. I couldn't help but thinking more than once about the relationship between this and church history and the creation of tradition out of erroneous exegesis, imbalanced conclusions based upon the influence of people who were given way too much weight, origin comes to mind, and the destruction that he brought to biblical exegesis and how that influenced the development of tradition over time.
06:17
And so here you have it legally, in this legal decision. So I spent two and a half, almost three hours of my time, so you don't have to, though, you know, it would be a pretty amazing homeschooling experience,
06:38
I guess, to listen to that whole thing and analyze it, and certainly just to help you identify the worldview and the thinking, especially of Sotomayor and Kagan and Jackson.
07:00
Wow. That was very, very enlightening. Really, really was. Just, that's definitely something that in future important cases
07:09
I will do more often. And I wonder, I'll have to look, I'm not sure,
07:15
I really wonder if the Obergefell audio is still available, because given the mess that came out of that,
07:26
Kennedy's opinion, like I said, I still would place at about a fifth grade level as far as the cogency of its argumentation.
07:38
But it truly did illustrate once again the importance of having an objective standard by which to correct when things go wrong, when errors take place, when tradition becomes established, whether it's legal or interpretational.
08:03
If you don't have something you can go back to that will straighten things back out after someone has taken a wrong turn, then all you can do is continue down that line.
08:18
And for the Supreme Court, they can overturn a previous decision. That's what happened with Roe.
08:24
And it was at least encouraging at that point to see the admission of the fact that Roe had been absurd from the start.
08:38
But it took 49 years, my goodness, to get that done.
08:47
The big ship moves slow, I guess, but it's not moving slow anymore. And so you're sitting here and you're listening to this back and forth, and these picky you little hypotheticals, what about this and what about that?
09:00
And the big thing in the room was this is a destructive redefinition of marriage that the state of Colorado is trying to force people to celebrate and promote, for crying out loud.
09:18
That's what it is. That's the issue. And that cannot even be brought up.
09:27
That cannot be presented. That cannot be made a part of the argumentation at all.
09:35
When Olson, the Solicitor General of Colorado, and look, by the way, don't you dare try to look me in the eye and tell me that the fact that Colorado has an openly homosexual governor who makes a pretense of marriage to another man.
10:00
Now, my saying that would keep this from major portions of social media, and you know, you know in your heart that in a very short period of time the people in charge right now, the regime in charge right now will want to shut down any possibility of saying, of providing the description
10:28
I just provided. They would call it hate speech, and they would shut down any, even though, even though that represents the perspective of every senator and representative and president of the
10:43
United States for the first 200 years of its history. They would want that shut down.
10:51
They will try to shut that down. There's no question about it. It is the only trajectory this thing has, unless there is a major recognition of the fact that the continuation down this path is utterly self -destructive.
11:09
Utterly self -destructive. So you know that the corruption of the governorship in Colorado has a great deal to do with what is going on right now in that state, and that state, that state's obvious and repetitive dogging of whatever victims they can come up with to try to chill free speech, silent speech, and coerce simple capitulation to the sexual revolution.
11:55
No matter how utterly new it is, destructive it is, it doesn't matter.
12:01
This is what Colorado is all about, and you can see it in the governor's office. Don't even pretend.
12:09
And so, here you have the blind leading the blind.
12:17
The light that once gave direction. If anything related to this had come up in the early 1800s, the decisions of the court would have quoted liberally from the
12:34
Bible in their decision, and nobody would have batted an eye. Can't happen now.
12:41
Oh, I know, there are briefs that were filed with the court, and there are
12:48
Christians who have sought to address these things, and that's all fine and wonderful, but that's not going to come out in the oral arguments.
12:58
The court's not going to cite that type of stuff and make decisions based upon the clarity of the biblical revelation concerning the nature of marriage and man or anything like that.
13:13
And that is the only, only, only, only way out of this chaos.
13:20
But they're not going to do it. They just, they're not going to do it. So, that's why my heart is broken after spending two and a half hours, three hours, whatever it was,
13:34
I didn't say. Anyway, it's a long period of time, listening to the back and forth.
13:42
It's just the blind leading the blind. There's no light. There's no light to be brought in because it can't be brought in.
13:52
And the sad thing is to see that the system that is being utilized here was a system that did recognize those foundational truths.
14:06
There is a long tradition of recognizing the law of God as defining what the founders meant when they said this, that, or the other thing.
14:18
There is nobody, nobody who would argue that any of the founding fathers, not even a
14:26
Jefferson, would, if you brought them back today and had them listen to that, they would stare at you with wide open mouths, uncomprehending anything that they were hearing and asking, what has happened?
14:48
What is going on? There would be no way for them to even begin to comprehend it.
14:54
And it's not just, well, that's just natural development. No! This is a fundamental change in worldview that leaves the system, wonderful and flawed as it was, with no way of self -correction.
15:15
The people that are driving Western culture into utter bankruptcy are doing so purposefully because they have recognized exactly the means and mechanism to do so.
15:31
And they are succeeding. And they will be successful. Unless, the only way to change any of this is a complete change of the heart.
15:47
God must bring revival. Because this is an amazing thing to do.
15:57
So, we now have to wait for more than six months.
16:04
Well, maybe not. If it is politically expedient to the regime, to start riots, to intimidate justices, maybe to get one of them killed or something, before the final decision is released, then we can have this decision leaked as well.
16:33
And we'll never know who did it. Because there's no Justice Department left to find out. Right?
16:38
I mean, you cannot tell me that there are not people in Washington, D .C.,
16:45
who know exactly who it was that leaked the decision over Turning Row.
16:53
The Dobbs decision. You know they know. Just like everybody knows that client list of the man who did not hang himself.
17:04
But, you know, the sad thing is that the
17:10
Chinese government knows more about our alleged military secrets, because Democratic representatives sleep with their spies, than anyone will ever know about Maxwell's client list and who the leaker was.
17:32
Because the regime is in charge. And the regime is not going to let go of its power.
17:39
Once it was given that power, it's not going to let go of it. And so they've got all the mules they need, they've got all the judges they need, they've got the
17:50
FBI and Homeland Security and everybody else, and they're just going to keep doing what they want to do.
17:58
And security and everything else. So, you know, we might find out a little bit earlier.
18:07
It can't be too early, obviously, because they have to have the draft being circulated like last time, and all that kind of stuff.
18:16
But we'll see. So there's some of my thoughts, just some of my thoughts. I mean, obviously, as I was listening to the argumentation,
18:22
I'm like, boy, we can focus in on this, focus on that. But it was all just minutia.
18:32
The big, key worldview issues, the things that God's word speaks to, the things that led to us founding our nation in such a way that we have these concepts, just not even a part of it.
18:47
So it was truly heartbreaking. Even if it's a, you know,
18:54
I think the best it could be would be a 6 -3 in not forcing, you know, not doing coerced speech, it's just for now.
19:05
It's just for now. Because unless there's a huge change in the next generation, they're going to keep voting for their own enslavement, and we're going to get more
19:15
Kagans and Sotomayors and Jackson Browns until they are the entire court.
19:26
And at that point, it's all over with. The Constitution's just a historical document that everyone laughs at what people actually believed back then.
19:40
So anyway, I don't want to wrap this up on such a negative note.
19:46
So I will mention, last night when
19:51
I was asked to speak on the Doctrine of Justification, you know, there's a lot of different ways you can go, and the place was well -decorated for the holidays.
20:01
And so I thought, well, let's start off with making a connection to a
20:08
Messianic prophecy. And so I went to Isaiah 9, and I talked about the phrase,
20:15
Prince of Peace. And then I made connection between that phraseology, of course,
20:22
Shalom, Sar Shalom, and the background of Irenae in Romans 5 .1,
20:31
And therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And all of my presentations, for years and years and years, have focused on the nature of the
20:42
Gospel and peace, and the fact the true
20:47
Gospel brings peace between God and man because of the perfection of the imputed righteousness of Christ, whereas man's false
20:57
Gospels always place a burden upon man, and hence cannot provide peace.
21:08
And, like I said earlier, I was just, I really started preaching.
21:15
And the questions that I was asked during the Q &A were really good questions, and they repeatedly allowed me to tie so many, well, like somebody asked about anti -lordship salvation.
21:29
And so I was able to tie in the nature of saving faith in Reformed theology.
21:36
And another question in relation, I was able to tie in the fact that the purpose of God in electing anyone is to conform them to the image of Christ.
21:47
And just really be able to provide a very broad discussion of soteriology as a whole.
22:01
And I know at this time of year I really do enjoy having the opportunity of bringing together the whole broad spectrum of Christian theology and tying it to the
22:15
Incarnation. And it can be done without being, you know, surface level and cheesy and stuff like that, because who
22:26
Christ is is determinative to what he does and what he accomplishes. So it was, the people seemed to enjoy it, and it was really, really encouraging.
22:38
So last thing real quick, don't forget Wednesday night, Emory, Texas, where I'm heading right now.
22:44
I'm 153 miles away right now. Emory, Texas, on Reliability Scripture.
22:51
I believe, again, that's the subject in Lubbock on Friday. And so if you're in either of those places,
22:59
I look forward to seeing you there. I keep saying that because there were a bunch of folks last night that said,
23:05
Hey, yeah, I found out about listening to the dividing line, and so here we are.
23:11
We drove, some people drove long, long ways to be there. And so that's always very encouraging for that as well.
23:20
So I have no idea what's going on in the world today other than having listened to the oral arguments in the
23:30
Supreme Court case. So maybe I'll have to catch up on all of that. There might be something really important going on.
23:36
I don't know. All I know right now is it's still very, very, very, very cloudy, at least the fog lifted, but it's still just gray, gray, gray.
23:44
Us Arizona folks, if we don't get a certain amount of sun, we start getting a little weird, and it's really, really gray here.
23:53
So anyways, thanks for listening to the driving line today, a mobile version of the dividing line.
24:00
You already knew all of that. And thanks for putting up with the background noises and stuff like that.