Incarnational Thoughts, Callers

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

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

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

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

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

James White. And so from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding.

So as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.

May you be strengthened with all power according to his glorious might for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the

Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved

Son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible

God, the firstborn of all creation, for by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through him and for him.

And he is before all things and in him all things hold together.

Thus says the Apostle Paul to the Colossians, the church at Colossae, a church that he himself had not been to and a church that he himself did not found.

Its founding was through the wisdom granted to him by the Holy Spirit, however. That is, in the ministry that was his in the city of Ephesus, the major city of the

Lycus River Valley, Colossae, upriver from there. And as a natural result of a sound, mature church being founded in Ephesus over time, the church in Colossae is founded as well because the message spread.

And this is what you might call an incarnational devotion this morning as we start the dividing line and line up your phone calls at 877 -753 -3341.

I got that nice ring in the ear again, 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number.

Didn't hear anything about the incarnation in that text. You had the prayer of the Apostle Paul that he had prayed for the

Colossians. It does certainly give us an insight into how we should be praying for others. And if I might, just on a personal note, ask for your prayers for an event tomorrow.

I can't go into details right now. I hope that I can in the future, but there's something going on tomorrow and I know my heart is certainly set upon a certain result, but I want the

Lord's will to be done. So please pray that that will be done tomorrow. If it is, you'll be informed.

And many of you, I think, will be excited about it. But we are told about the content of the

Apostle's prayers by this particular study. He was asking the

Father that the Colossians be filled with the knowledge of his will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding.

He did not pray that they would be physically blessed with large houses and pretty straight teeth and pretty hair and one limb the same length as the other limb.

Instead, the prayer of the Apostle for the Church of Colossae was that they be filled with the knowledge of his will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding.

And once they would have this knowledge of his will, once they would be filled with it, it wasn't just an external thing.

It wasn't, oh, I attended a Bible study, I got some good ideas, and so whenever I think about that, then

I will think back to what I learned there. No, this knowledge of his will is all -encompassing. It's about all of life.

It's about seeing how God's will for the Christian is a life -encompassing will.

That's what it means to be filled with the knowledge of his will, to have spiritual wisdom and understanding.

He was praying that the Church of Colossae be mature, to not remain in the baby stage, not remain infants in Christ, but that they were to be filled with the knowledge of his will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to have the ability to walk in a manner worthy of the

Lord. Now, of course, no one would know that you need to walk in a manner worthy of the

Lord if there wasn't something different about your life, if you weren't marked by the name of the Lord.

But clearly, to walk in a manner worthy means that you're walking in a manner both toward God as his disciple, toward Christ as his learner, as his follower, and to the outside world as one bearing the name of Christ.

So as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing him, fully pleasing him, pleasing him in all respects, in all ways, not just in part of our life, but in all of our life, in the way that we think, the way that we act, the way that we speak, the way that we dress, the way that we respond to adversity and difficulty.

Now, notice, this is not some kind of step -by -step, dress like this, wash like this, live according to this specific rule type of a situation that is then enforced on every culture.

These are words for every culture, for all time, and yet the point is that by the application of the

Word of God and through the ministry of the Spirit of God, every generation of believers should know what it is to walk in a manner worthy of the

Lord, being fully pleasing him, pleasing him in all respects, in all things, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.

Now, that bearing of fruit, we can't allow the world to define for us what that is, especially as we come to the end of a year and we look back over the preceding 12 months, one thing that every mature person learns is that the past 12 months went faster than the preceding 12 months.

Now, I realize, of course, it didn't go by any faster. Time has been going at the exact same speed.

I live in Arizona. At least we really believe that. We don't play with our clocks. We don't speed it up, slow it down once or twice a week or a year.

I fully know that this past year has been just as long or just as short as the preceding one, but if you're busy in the things of the

Lord, it just seems like time passes ever more swiftly. As we look back over this year,

I think it's good to ask yourself a question. Did I bear fruit in every good work?

Again, don't let the world define that. What does that mean? Was I pleasing to God?

Have I grown in my knowledge of what is pleasing to God, bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing the knowledge of God?

Do I know more about Christian truth today than I did at the beginning of 2010?

Or have I slid? Have I forgotten? Have I been so taken up by the things of the world and the pressures of the world that I have not pursued this?

It has to be an object of pursuit. It has to be something that you are seeking, or you will not grow in that knowledge.

Increasing in the knowledge of God, is that a goal?

It has to be for the believer. This is not Gnosticism. There are people who throw the term

Gnosticism out at everything without even knowing what the Gnostics were actually about. Increasing the knowledge of God, that is a worthy goal.

Most of you know I did not have this goal at the beginning of 2010, but most of you know I don't look like I did this time a year ago.

I'm glad for that. I'm very glad for that. Health has now become something important to me, and I work hard toward it.

But you know, bodily exercise is of little profit in comparison to godliness.

Sometimes that's abused. I know that I feel much better.

I know that I live life with more energy when

I am taking care of the body that God has given me. I don't worship this body. It's falling apart. It's, you know, we're closing in on the big 5 -0 here.

Some people have already gotten there. I'll interrupt your hearing aid.

I said some of you, yeah, some of you have already gotten there, but I'm not there yet, but I'm working on it.

And yeah, you didn't even get a chance to open your microphone when I took you out. That was a pretty good, that was a preemptive strike, that was pretty good.

But it's amazing how we can be disciplined in that area. And right now, I really am disciplined in that area.

I'm doing a week here. My birthday is coming up on Friday, and I'm doing a week here. Right now my goal is, and I'm on track, my goal is to climb 16 ,000 feet this week on my bike, 16 ,000 feet.

That is about 3 ,000 more than I've ever done before. And that's how I'm going to celebrate my birthday.

I am disciplined. And my diet is disciplined, and I'm disciplined in these things because I can see the benefits.

As Christians, as Christians, do we even know what our goals are supposed to be?

I mean, physically, you want heart health, and you don't want to be encased in 300 pounds of fat, and you don't want your heart working that hard, and you don't want to be playing with cancer and all the rest of that type of stuff.

We know what health is. Do we even know what health is in the Christian life? Do we consider pleasing

God and increasing the knowledge of God as a sign of spiritual health? And if we do, what are we doing to pursue it?

Or is it just sort of, you know, hey, you know, I showed up Sunday morning at church all year. Well, that's good.

But did you show up at church expecting something from God? Did you prepare yourself?

Prepare your heart? Prepare your spirit? Did you follow up on what you learned? There are parallels between the experience that is ours physically and spiritually.

Paul continues on, may you be strengthened with all power according to his glorious might for all endurance and patience with joy.

All endurance, steadfastness, with joy giving thanks to the

Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. Now, I don't know that anyone in this life could ever fully plumb the depths of what it means to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

But I can tell you one thing, that sounds awful glorious to me. You know,

I think we try to sometimes, you know, picture what heaven is going to be like and what glory is going to be like and mind has, it has not entered into the heart of man.

Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man. Those things which God has prepared for us and this inheritance of the saints in light,

I don't know what that is. I don't know what it's going to look like. I'm almost afraid to even try to describe it because I don't think our language really is up to it personally.

But note that those who will share in the inheritance of the saints in light, they are thankful first and foremost, not to themselves, not to an organization, to no earthly powers.

Giving thanks to the Father who did not simply make it possible for you to qualify yourself.

That's not what it says. It says giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

It's all of God. That's why we give thanks, just as in 1 Corinthians.

It is by God that you are in Christ Jesus, by His work that you are in Christ Jesus. And we give thanks to the

Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. We didn't qualify ourselves.

He didn't look down the corridors of time and say, Ah, there's someone who qualified themselves, I will now select them. No. The sovereignty of God, divine monergism is the foundation of the saints giving thanks to the

Father. We give thanks to the Father because He has delivered us.

Not we deliver ourselves, not He made it possible for us to deliver ourselves. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness.

See, the saints in light, the domain of darkness. And notice

His deliverance was twofold. He took us out of the domain of darkness. Now, those who are in the domain of darkness love darkness.

They love, they flee from the light. They scurry away from it. I think one of the more modern examples of this, for those of you who watch such things, but I saw

I Am Legend. And if you've seen I Am Legend, because of some stupidity that man did, there was a virus that mutated and destroyed the vast majority of mankind, except for a very small number.

But it didn't destroy them, it didn't kill them, it altered them horribly and made them so that they could not stand sunlight.

And one of the scariest parts of the movie was where he goes into this dark building to find his dog.

Because you know they're in there. But they can't stand light. They have to stay out of the sunlight.

It drives, it just, you know, it's the old vampire in light type idea. And it seems to go way back in human history that those who are evil do their deeds in the darkness.

And that's a biblical theme as well. The natural man loves the darkness because he thinks it hides his sin, because there's that conscience thing going on.

Those who are saints have the share and the inheritance of the saints in light, come to the light.

But see, that's not natural. That is not natural. And anybody who thinks it's natural, well, you know,

I'm just a morally neutral person and I'll just sort of, I'm going to just naturally come to light.

No, that's not the nature of the unbeliever. So he has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us.

It wouldn't be enough just to deliver us from the domain of darkness, just put us back in a morally neutral spot.

That's what some people think prevenient grace is. There is no such thing. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us.

So he delivered and transferred us. It wouldn't be a complete salvation if he didn't do both things.

It'd only be a half of a work. But you see, he took us out of the domain of darkness.

And he transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son. Wow, something just struck me.

No, it's not Revelation. Let's not get confused here. You know, I'm not on TV.

I'm not going to pull the, oh, the Lord just spoke to me thing that you see on TV all the time and blah, blah, blah.

Well, I actually meant, I'm sorry, the channel between 20 and 22. We need to be politically correct. At least here in Phoenix it is.

He transferred us to the kingdom. You cannot be in a kingdom if you do not have a what?

A king. And he is king of kings and Lord of lords.

Is there not a very popular heresy in so many evangelical churches today that you can be a follower of Jesus but not submitted to his lordship?

The anti -lordship movement, the cheap grace movement, the Bob Wilkins heresy movement.

But you see, if you have been delivered from the domain of darkness, then you have been transferred to the kingdom of his beloved son.

You are in a kingdom. You have a king. You are under his authority. The idea that you can just tip your hat toward Jesus Christ and say, oh,

I believe you died and rose again. That's it. No repentance. No lordship.

No, you see, as long as you realize the work of salvation is divine work, God delivers from the domain of darkness and he transfers to the kingdom of his beloved son.

And that's all. There is no other way. There is no other purpose.

If you are going to be pleasing to God, that's the way it is. The kingdom of his beloved son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

In whom. See, to be in his kingdom has to be personal. Because it's in him.

In Christ we have the redemption. The forgiveness of sins.

Now, the parallel passage in Ephesians 1 -7 says, through his blood, but all of the early manuscripts, all the way through,

I believe, to the 9th century, at Colossians 1 -14 say, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

It's only later that a parallel corruption takes place and through his blood is inserted. Even the majority text agrees with that.

Just for those of you who might be looking at that. If you are in the kingdom of his beloved son, you have redemption, you have the forgiveness of sins.

I remember a conference, a little talk that we gave in our old offices long, long ago.

And a current Roman Catholic apologist, I believe his father -in -law was with him in attendance and had the strange belief that redemption and forgiveness of sins were two different things.

And he just kept mocking that. He called it Mickey Mouse. And I remember taking him back to this text in Colossians 1 -14.

Look, right here. In whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. And I explained the construction and how the forgiveness of sins is renaming redemption.

How this is... Oh, no, just wouldn't have it. Would not have it. Not a person under the authority of the word of God.

That is for certain. Well, all of that I really wasn't planning on talking much about because the incarnational thought is found in the description of Christ.

Having been told that we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins, in Him. We are in the kingdom of His beloved

Son. He is described as the icon. The icon of the invisible

God. The prototikos passeis tisseos. The firstborn of all creation.

Not the first created. The firstborn. The one who has preeminence over all of creation.

He is the image of the invisible God. He is the one who reveals to us. Hebrews 1 says that He is the exact representation of His being.

The charakter. The imprint. The stamp that is left by the ring. And it's a perfect stamp.

It's a perfect representation. No mere creature could say that. For by Him all things were created in heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities.

All things were created through Him and for Him and He is before all things and in Him all things hold together. I have often commented on the fact that this is such an incredible section describing

Jesus Christ as the creator of all things. Paul exhausts the Greek language. He exhausts the prepositions that you can use.

We have en auto, by Him were all things created. And then we have di auto, through Him.

Eis auton, for Him. Pra ponton, before all things.

And then en auto. It like wraps it up. He uses all of the prepositions that would be relevant here to explain to us that this one is not part of the creation.

He is the origin of the creation. He is the purpose of the creation. He is the means by which the creation came into existence.

This is the creator. And when we take all the New Testament together, we see that the creation is the work of the

Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But I said that this was an incarnational devotion.

As I was thinking about this this morning, how I wanted to start the program today, everyone's thinking about the holiday season.

I suppose there's one or two crusty Puritans doing everything they can to not think about the holiday season right now.

But the reality is that for the vast majority of us, and even for the crusty

Puritans, it is always appropriate, even when you recognize the violation of divine truth that is so much a part of our society, abuses of celebrations and things like that, that it is always appropriate to think about the incredible miracle of the

Incarnation. I think, in some ways, there is some truth to the assertion that Western Christianity, whatever that is, but Western Christianity is not as centrally aware of this divine truth as it should be.

And given that we live in a land where naturalistic materialism and secularism is now the religion of our fellow citizens, and it is, it's the religion of our fellow citizens, we need to realize this belief in Incarnation is grossly offensive to them.

It's grossly offensive because what are we saying? When we talk about the

Incarnation, what are we saying? We are actually making the assertion that the

Creator Himself, and that's unpopular enough as it is, but they know the Creator is there, they're investing a lot of effort in suppressing the knowledge of the

Creator, the Creator Himself has invaded His own creation.

And if He has invaded His own creation, then they know there is absolutely, positively no way they can get around dealing with this

Creator. He's personal. The Incarnation is in -your -face

Christianity. It's in -your -face. Because He's in your world.

He took on flesh. He didn't stay safely, He didn't stay at a safe distance.

You know how you're following those emergency vehicles down the road and it tells you how many feet you're supposed to stay behind.

You're supposed to stay at a safe distance. God didn't stay at a safe distance. He invaded.

And the reality is that the message that we proclaim is a radical, radical message.

It's a message the world mocks. The world thinks we are absolutely, completely disconnected from reality if we are honestly telling people that our

God entered into His own creation. The Muslims find it impossible to believe.

The Jews reject it. The secularists reject it. The cults reject it.

See, this is what makes Christianity radical. This is what makes it different. This is what makes it unique. This is its heart.

That's why Nicaea was so important. Not because something was revealed there, but because something had already been revealed was defended there.

Its necessary implications and conclusions were seen there.

They'd always been there. They'd always been understood. But against the greatest attack upon them, it withstood.

Not necessarily in 325, but over the next number of decades. When that affirmation that it was

God in human flesh, not a god, not a god -like one, not a secondary deity, but truly

God, Emmanuel with us. Not Emmanuel with us, but Emmanuel with us.

It had always been what the Scriptures had taught, but that is the very essence of the faith. And we cannot be ashamed of that.

We cannot draw back and become comfortable with a Jesus in a manger. See, it's one thing to say that God's far away and we'll leave

Him out there. It's another thing, well, you know, little babies. That little baby grew up and drove the money changers out of the temple.

He said a lot of very uncomfortable things, certainly about religious hypocrites. But he also talked about being the soon -and -coming king and a kingdom of heaven.

And the only way into that kingdom of heaven is through Him and no one else. And the world doesn't like that and the world wants to reject that and the world is embarrassed.

And they will try to make you embarrassed to believe it. But you can't be embarrassed to believe it.

That is the very essence of the Christian faith. Beautiful text. Not normally an incarnational text.

But you see, this one who made all things in heaven and earth, this creator of all things, this is said in the very next chapter to dwell in bodily form.

Bodily form. Colossians 2 .9 For in Him all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form.

The incarnation was real. And that's a thought

I thought I would be able to get into 10 minutes and it took 30. I started preaching again.

Sorry about that. 877 -753 -3341 We already have

Justin and Elijah online. Got room for you during the break. We'll be right back.

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.org Dr.

Oakley, 1689, via Twitter. And so let's start getting to the calls here, and let's talk with Justin.

Hi, Justin. Hi. Hi. I have a question on some

Mormon doctrines, some Mormon issues. I'm an undergrad student, and I've been given permission by my professor to write a paper on Acts 4 .13,

where the apostles are described as uneducated or unlearned. In my dealings with Mormon friends,

I grew up in Reno, and that's right down the street from Salt Lake, so I had quite a few

Mormon friends. And in my dealings with them, it's always come up, they relate

Joseph Smith as being unlearned, as if to relate him to the apostles.

In my research, I'm finding that very much to be true, and I just wanted to get your perspective on that.

Well, first, I think you mean 4 .13, where they're described as agrammatoi. I think, just in passing, this has nothing to do with that, but just in regards to your paper, you might want to include in your discussion what the actual meaning of agrammatoi means.

Agrammatoi does not necessarily mean illiterate, as Bart Ehrman insists it means in Acts 4.

There's really good resources on that, as far as the utilization of the term at that particular point in history.

And I think it would be good to take old Bart out on that one, because it's pretty easy to do, but just in passing.

But as far as Joseph Smith is concerned, he certainly wasn't illiterate, but he wasn't overly literate either.

I think the interesting thing to deal with with Joseph Smith, I mean, I don't think there's any benefit in arguing, well,

Joseph Smith was unlearned like the apostles were. Well, anybody can make that claim on some level.

I'm unlearned about all sorts of things. That's hardly an issue. The point is,

I think, to utilize that claim to help to examine his prophetic claims.

Because a prophet may focus upon his unlearned nature to say, well, these things are not coming from my own self.

But the problem with Joseph Smith is he gave us all sorts of things by which we can examine his claim to prophethood, where he claimed to be able to go beyond, by supernatural means, what men of his day could do by natural means.

In other words, he claimed to be able to read Egyptian while the

Rosetta Stone was still being translated. And there was almost nobody in the United States that can make heads or tails out of Egyptian hieroglyphics.

And yet he claimed to translate the papyrus into the book of Abraham.

And 500 pages of the Book of Mormon from Reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics via supernatural means from golden plates were then taken back to heaven.

Well, we can't look at golden plates because of that, but we still have the papyri. And Charles Larson's book,

By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus, remains one of the best books documenting the fact that when we can actually test his claims to do via supernatural ability what he could not do by natural ability, he fails miserably.

And that would be the direction that I would go, as far as that goes, because I don't think there's anything really to be benefited by arguing about whether, well, he's a parallel with the apostles.

The point is, if the apostles were agrammetoi, which means they were not trained in the rabbinic schools, yet, of course, that's referring only to people like Peter, it would not actually make application to Paul.

Paul would not be described as agrammetoi, as agrammatos, because he was trained at the feet of Gamaliel, and he was trained in the rabbinic schools.

And I think that's what agrammetoi means in that particular context. But there's just not much to be argued for there.

The point is that they, as regular men, were called by God, empowered by the Holy Spirit, and then their understanding of the

Old Testament Scriptures, their proclamation, their steadfastness, their patience and endurance, so on and so forth, very different than what you see in the behavior and life of Joseph Smith, who was not patient and did not endure and frequently was very angry and engaged in all sorts of ridiculous behavior, treasure -seeking and all the rest of these things.

So that would be the direction that I would go. I'm not sure how much room you have in your paper, but any one of those areas would be well worth developing.

Well, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I only have five to eight pages in my paper, so it's a bit of a challenge to get that in.

And is that double -spaced, 12 -point font? Absolutely, yeah.

Oh, well, then that's an introduction for me. That's the first few paragraphs.

Yeah, I understand. You know, you could do what I did in seminary. There was more than once I asked my professor for a waiver on length, and some of that stuff is still posted on the

Web. Interesting. I never thought about going that direction. Yeah, you know, most professors, you know, we look at the length of the paper and go, yeah,

I can see they really fluffed that one out to try to make it as far as it was supposed to go. I'd rather read a longer paper that is well -argued and shows some research than something that someone has just fluffed out to make it barely reach the minimum distance.

So at least that's me. But, you know, he might have a grad assistant who doesn't want to read anything extra.

You can ask. It doesn't hurt. All right, Justin. All right, thank you. Hey, stay warm up there in northern

New York. I bet it's pretty cool up there right now. Yeah, we woke up. It was about six degrees this morning.

Yeah, it's about 70 here. Thank you very much for calling, Justin. Thank you,

Dr. Wise. Bye -bye. 877 -7533. Yeah, it is about 70 degrees outside right now.

Going for a high of 76 today. Set a new record on Sunday of 79. Beat the old record of 78.

Yeah. And most of my friends up in north, good old, you know,

Milo Hotzenbuehler, the poor guy up in North Dakota. Milo's having a tough time.

It's so cold up there, he can't get moving enough to sing Winter in North Dakota. I mean,

Winter in North Dakota is this great song that makes you really have to work hard to sing it.

And it's too cold for him to even sing it. So that's how cold it is in North Dakota right now. Anyways, 877 -7533341, dividing .line

on Skype, DrOakley1689 on Twitter.

Hey, Milo's actually listening right now. Maybe I'll fire up a Milo song here in a little while.

First, let's talk with Elijah. Hi, Elijah. How are you doing, Dr. Wise? Thank you for having me on, brother.

I really appreciate it. Yes, sir. Your ministry has been a blessing to me, and your labor in the field has definitely brought me through in understanding

Reformed faith much better. The other day I came out of the Calvary Chapel. You are not alone in that.

I'm getting lots of contact from people going, Hey, that's what happened to me, too. Yeah, yeah, it's common.

You're definitely not wrong when you speak of, you know, as long as Calvary Chapel keeps pointing their followers to the

Bible, you know, they're going to come to Reformed theology. So, you know, it turned out that way in a weird sense for me.

But my question concerns New Perspectivism. I have a close friend who is a brother in the

Lord, and lately he's been quite a fond influence of such men as E .P.

Sanders and N .T. Wright in respect to their view of Paul and New Perspectivism.

And I've done a little research in regards to what it is, and I've listened to your debate with Fr. Mitch Pacwa on justification, because it's relevant.

And it's helped me a lot in understanding justification from the Roman Catholic perspective and from the

Protestant. But I'm still a little foggy on the essential issues, really, of New Perspectivism and the implications of their view of justification, and exactly how would you recommend me approach in defense of the

Protestant view of it. Well, let me see if I can get somebody in channel, or maybe

Sir Brass can do this. But I think that on Sermon Audio someplace, some presentations that I made at a church in Texas, I think it was

San Antonio, I don't remember, but I did a weekend on New Perspectivism.

I know that at Grace Covenant Church in St. Louis, I did a weekend on New Perspectivism as well, though I don't know if those are online.

I think somewhere my lectures, specifically on N .T.

Wright's book on Paul, what the Apostle Paul believed in justification, are available online. Yeah, I did actually get one of your lectures.

I forgot where it was. I think it was Grace Church that you just spoke of. Dayspring Fellowship, right.

Yeah, you did. You were going through N .T. Wright's book a lot, and I learned quotations of him a lot, which it was helpful as to what he believed.

I was just wondering if there was a direction that you would have me go. I mean, because when I was interacting with my friend, it kind of makes sense why he's been into the whole—

I'm over in Philadelphia, so he's attended Philadelphia Biblical University, so he did last year take their whole courses on Israel, like a one -year course on Israel, and he converted to Israel after that.

But I know they have more of an emphasis on first -century Judaism and whatnot. Second -Temple

Judaism. Taniyedic or Second -Temple Judaism, yeah. Yeah, so it kind of makes sense now why he went that direction, because I guess looking back, and Heinz has been reading up on that, but how exactly would you have me approach understanding the issues better and the issue of justification?

I mean, is there a difference between Old Testament justification and how one— if he sees a difference, it seems, between the

Old Testament and the New Testament, where the apostles interpret the Old Testament and whatnot. Yeah, well, see, to really be into New Perspectivism, especially if you're talking the

E .P. Sanders perspectives of it— see, there's a lot of conservative, or at least formerly conservative people, that have bought into the

N .T. Wright stuff, because they are so impressed with N .T. Wright and his scholarship and things like that, but they still try to remain in conservative churches.

E .P. Sanders is no conservative. He's as far to the left about as you can get.

And the foundation—I think what really needs to be understood is the foundations of New Perspectivism.

Many people want to be on the cutting edge of theology. They want to be in with the cool guys. I mean, right now it's cool to be this.

Ten years from now it won't be, but right now it's cool to study this stuff and to say you read

N .T. Wright and blah, blah, blah, blah. Ten, fifteen years from now that won't be the case.

That's just the way fads go. But the problem is so many of the people that buy into that and they go, oh, this is really neat, they don't recognize the foundations upon which the seminal writers in this field are working.

I think if you look at D .A. Carson's lectures on New Perspectivism, Sinclair Ferguson's stuff on New Perspectivism, Guy Waters' materials highly recommended by J.

Ligon Duncan on New Perspectivism. If you'll get hold of that material, you'll start seeing a constant theme because these folks recognize where this is really coming from, the origin and source of this stuff.

And the origin and source of this stuff comes from a much more liberal view of Scripture. I mean, for example, fundamental to at least the original forms of New Perspectivism is an extremely limited

Pauline corpus. If you allow the extended Pauline corpus, the traditional

Pauline corpus, what the New Testament claims is actually Pauline, there's no way you could make the assertions that Paul believed the things that Sanders and others conclude that he believed.

You have to understand they're not looking at what they consider to be non -Pauline material.

They're not looking at the pastoral epistles. I mean, if the pastoral epistles are factored in, then Paul taught something different than what they conclude.

But they don't think he taught the pastoral epistles. So how does that fit in a conservative church, where everybody in the pews believes

Paul wrote 1 Timothy and Titus, but the pastor's functioning on the idea that, no, he didn't write any of those things, and so I don't need to worry about what he said about justification there, because that's a later development, that's a later stage, it's an evolutionary stage, blah, blah, blah.

If you have to take seriously what Philippians 3 .9 says, that sort of throws a monkey wrench into the ideas of the righteousness of God being solely a description of who

God is and what his dealings are, and has nothing to do with something that can be transferred from God in the sense of a righteous status.

It messes everything up, and I don't know how people live with that. I don't know how they live in these two very contradictory worlds, but they do.

And I'm sort of looking at some of the stuff that's coming up on my screen right now.

There's some people posting a few things that I've done on the subject on New Perspectivism. James White, mp3s at theopedia .com

slash newperspectivism. So I guess you can track that down. It's available there.

But anyway, so from my perspective, sort of looking at it presuppositionally, the battle is not in going toe -to -toe with a

New Perspectivist in the text, because that's not going to expose the presuppositions of their position.

You've got to back up and ask some basic fundamental questions about what Scripture is to these folks.

Is it consistent with itself? Is it inspired? And you will almost always end up discovering that along with this, maybe not even in a really conscious way, but along with this comes a degradation of their view of Scripture.

And I know one thing's for certain. The Federal Vision folks who come to many of the same conclusions as New Perspectivism, but from a very different approach.

They come from a confessional approach, but end up at many of the same conclusions about justification.

I have yet to see anyone embracing that perspective where it has increased their confidence in the consistency and inspiration of Scripture.

I just haven't seen it. And so those are some of the things that I think have to be looked at from a presuppositional perspective.

You have to deal with them first. You have to be able to say, no, wait a minute, okay, all issues of Second Temple Judaism aside, is there a consistent message to be found in the

New Testament concerning how a person is made right before God? And in the vast majority of theological seminaries today, that is not the case.

That is not the conclusion. That's not the belief. Most people don't know that, but it sounds like you do know that.

And so honestly, if you've already come to the conclusion that there is no answer to this question, then you get to pick, well, these are the books

I think Paul wrote, and I take them to mean this, and you can take those books if you want, and we can put that in opposition to Peter, and James has a completely different perspective, and blah, blah, blah, blah, and you just cut the

New Testament apart. And honestly, you have nothing left to say once you've gotten to that point.

I really think that, once again, it is grossly inconsistent for people to talk about being

Christians and yet view Scripture in a way that Jesus could never have viewed Scripture. I mean, it's inconsistent with itself.

Oh yeah, I mean, I trusted Jesus for my salvation, but his view of Scripture sure was wacky. I mean, what is that?

Well, one of the things that I actually kind of haggled with him with was I said to him,

I don't know how it came into topic, but I said, you know, when the Apostle quotes an

Old Testament passage and he gives a completed or more fulfilled understanding of that passage, that you wouldn't, in reading the

Old Testament passage where it's cited, by reading that, you wouldn't even get that kind of application or interpretation.

When he does that, you know, I see that as being the true and fulfilled meaning of the text, of that Old Testament passage.

I mean, he said, well, you know, I wouldn't... See, there's a difference between, I mean, you know, and that, so I take that as him, you know, seeing them as two different interpretations.

There's no fulfillment, there's no consistency there, and I don't see where you would get that. I mean, I haven't gone in depth with him.

I asked him, I mean, because I know there's a wide range of beliefs when it comes to New Perspectivism, where you can believe there's, like, no one agrees with anybody.

I mean, E .T. Sanders, you know, throws everybody else out, and they all do it. So I told him, email me, you know, please email me kind of more of a summary of what exactly you believe concerning justification and what

Paul believed. You know, your understanding of what Paul means by, you know, those texts.

And I'm still waiting for that, and, you know, I hope to better interact with it and whatnot. But how exactly would you reconcile their interpretation of an

Ephesians 2 in 9 of Pistis, when he says, if I'm saying that correctly, when he says...

Because they interpret it as being faithful, because they say that, well, you know, new research shows that that term means faithfulness rather than faith.

How exactly is that true? No, I mean, obviously, the general place where that has come in is talking about faith in Christ as faith, the faithfulness of Christ.

And that's generally in context where you have, in Romans 3, for example, through faith in Christ, that is through the faithfulness of Christ, it's a genitive construction that can be taken either as a subjective or objective.

That's not the case here. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves is a gift of God.

The idea of, for by grace you have been saved through faithfulness, I've never heard anyone even present that.

And the idea of new research, oh yeah, right, okay. Yeah, it's really anthropocentric, so I mean...

It's not only that, but there is, let's be honest, there is a level of gratuitous arrogance on Bishop Wright's part, that he really does seem to think that the entire

Reformation was a big mistake, nobody on either side knew what in the world they were doing. If everybody would just listen to him, then we'd have peace.

I mean, he really does seem to think that. And to think that you're the first one to have ever figured this stuff out, you're the first one to have ever seen this,

I get really worried about people who actually really believe that. That scares me a little bit.

But yeah, I've never heard anyone attempting to establish that diapistos in Ephesians 2 .8

should be taken as faithfulness, as if that means somehow faithfulness at the end of life, or something along those lines.

Because this doesn't make any sense in context either. All right, Elijah? No, it doesn't. If I can say one last thing.

Real quick, yeah. I'm looking to go to seminary at some point in the near future. I mean,

I have a family, I'm married, I have two children, and I don't have an undergraduate degree. I'm still hanging in the balance whether I should pursue one of those, but I do know that there are several

Reformed seminaries that will offer you an MDiv or like a Bachelor's of Divinity of some sort without having an undergraduate degree.

I've been looking at Greensville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Whitfield Theological Seminary, Reformed Baptist Seminary, a couple of them that have distance learning and whatnot.

What would you recommend? I think Greensville, actually. I saw them have a wonderful apologetics course and whatnot.

They go through rhetoric and logic. A lot of the other seminaries don't really cover a lot of that in their curriculum, but what would you recommend?

Well, that's a hard question to answer because it is dependent upon what you want to do.

There's going to be a difference between going to Greensville and going to Whitfield as to where you want to go in the future, if you want to teach someplace.

I would like to actually pursue pastoral ministry as being an elder. Okay. Well, I think in most places, any of the places you mentioned would do well along those lines.

I know people from all of those places. I taught at the

Bible Conference at Greenville, I think it was in March of this year. I know some of the students there, obviously teaching the polemics class this

January for Reform Baptist Seminary and for IRBS and the

Midwest and so on and so forth. So, yeah, all of those would—you get out of it what you put into it.

If someone wants to skate by, they can skate. But if you really want to learn, you can learn in any one of those places.

Yeah, I'm looking for something that's going to be intensive. I'm going to really get something out of it. I was looking at Reform Baptist Seminary because,

I mean, I'm actually pursuing membership at a Reform Baptist church now. That would probably be the direction to go, then.

Yeah, I know they're strictly online, which is great. I just didn't know how far—

I don't think it's just online, unless we're talking about a different institution. I'm teaching a polemics class for credit there, too.

Midwest Center? Yeah, in January. Yeah, there's a Midwest—I know Midwest Center in Owensboro.

I spoke to Pastor Waldron and a couple of the guys down there. But I just found out that there's a

Reform Baptist Seminary, which is— I spoke to them. That's strictly distance learning. And that's where, like, Barcellos, Richard Barcellos and whatnot, they teach there.

And I'm just curious as to the scholarship there and whatnot. Well, but IRBS, Midwest, and the

Reform Baptist, all three are cooperating together in the class that I'm teaching in Owensboro in January. Yeah. So you can get credit for all of them.

Hey, Elijah, can I get to Ryan before we get— Okay. Okay, thanks. Okay, thank you. All right, bye -bye. Bye -bye. All right, let's run to Ryan real quick.

Hi, Ryan. Hey, how are you, Dr. White? Doing pretty good. But we're going to have to go a little long, I think.

Okay. Well, I'll try to make this short. It's probably elementary for you, but I've just recently come into the

Reformed understanding of the Word through the grace of God. And your book, The Potter's Freedom, has been instrumental in that.

So I'd like to thank you for that as well. So coming from more of a semi -Arminian background, so I have a lot of people who are

Arminian or semi -Arminian in their understanding of the Word, so I have a lot of opportunities for discussion. And I always start with, you know, of course, the idea of the depravity of man.

And one of the problems that I run into, because I'm so new to the idea of apologetic and giving a defense for something that, for me, is fairly new myself, whenever I go to Romans chapter 3 and verse 10 through 18, when there is none righteous, though not one, there's none who understands, and so forth,

I have people who, they'll shoot me back to Genesis 7, where Noah is said to be righteous, or Lot is said to be righteous, or Job, and even before Christ, Elizabeth and Zacharias, the parents of John the

Baptist, are said to be righteous, and they use that. And I was wondering, how do we combat that idea of righteousness in the

Old Testament? I was thinking Romans chapter 4, where Abraham is used at the righteousness of faith, the law of faith, as how he obtained his righteousness.

So do we apply that, then, to pretty much the Old Testament saints and those who were depicted as righteous before the coming of Christ?

Well, the first question I would ask of anyone who argues like that, and Dave Hunt argues that way, is, okay then, was

Paul wrong? Tell me what he means. Because if what you're saying is there were people who, in and of themselves, naturally, had a right standing before God by their actions, then you don't need to believe anything this apostle

Paul believed. You need to throw it out. And they can't, they don't get, well, what he meant was, no one, well,

I'm not even sure what the answer, to be pretty honest with you, how they get around it. I mean, what was Paul's point?

Paul's point in Romans 3 .10 and following is to close every single mouth to make all the world account before God.

He doesn't leave any exceptions. He doesn't say that there were people who were made right before God by some other mechanism. He just doesn't do it.

So the first question is, okay, if you don't agree with Paul, that's where it tells me something. Because I bet you wouldn't agree with Paul in Romans 9 either.

So if you're against the apostle Paul in Romans 3, you're against the apostle Paul in Romans 8 and Romans 9, that tells me

I'm on the apostolic side, you're on the non -apostolic side, you might want to think about that. But going on beyond that, to give an answer then, after you ask the question, okay, what does it mean, is first you establish what it does mean, that Paul is closing all doors here.

And therefore you say, okay, then why do you assume? In light of the fact that these are Old Testament passages.

This is an entire catena of Old Testament passages that the

Old Testament is contradicting itself. Or is it not obvious then that we are talking about a gradation here, in the sense of a comparison of Noah to the horrifically evil people of his day, or of anybody else within a context of evil.

There were people who sought to do what was right before God. Now, none of those texts address, well, did they seek to do what was right before God solely by grace.

The Old Testament isn't addressing issues like that in light of New Testament revelation. Yeah, it's obvious. Well, I'll take that back.

Even the Old Testament says, when God talks to Elijah, and Elijah says, I'm the only one left,

Lord. And God says there are yet 7 ,000 who have not bowed the knee to Baal.

What did he say? I have reserved for myself 7 ,000 who have not bowed the knee to Baal. Not they've reserved themselves.

I have reserved for myself 7 ,000 who have not bowed the knee to Baal. He was the one that was involved with that. The Old Testament saints recognize their dependence upon God, just as we see it more clearly in the

New Testament. So, when Noah's described as righteous, Job's described as righteous, then why is he offering sacrifices, if what we mean by that is the perfect righteousness that is needed to avail before God?

Instead, it is in comparison to those that were around him. He was one who strove to obey what

God had revealed to him, and that's why he's called righteous. The idea that that is the same kind of perfect righteousness that is imputed to the believer by faith in Jesus Christ, it just simply doesn't follow.

It's just not allowing the text to speak for itself at that point. All right, well, that definitely helps a lot, and certainly makes sense.

So, thank you very much. All right, stay warm up there in New York. It's been tough, but we're trying to manage.

All right, thanks a lot. God bless. Bye -bye. Take care. Yes, sir. Okay, well, I made a promise to a gentleman, so we're going to go a little bit longer than usual.

Oh, yeah. There was one email, at least one email, I did promise the gentleman we would... Okay, well, hold the other ones off until Thursday, and we'll do this one.

And then, instead of our closing music, instead of our closing music, I have queued up for all of our freezing frozen friends in the frozen tundra of, well, the rest of the

United States. How about we do our normal closer, and then you can run that? Why? I don't know. Everybody, even the closer talks about cassettes and tapes, which we don't even offer anymore.

Okay, the question is from Alex, and Alex and I actually corresponded a bit on this, and so I'm just going to read you his first portion.

This is going to jump into the Wayback Machine, because this is in reference. He's bouncing off from the vintage section.

Your correspondence with Peter Ruckman. Oh, good old Pete Ruckman. What a guy. Alex says,

I'm a recent escapee. You know, I'd like to spend Christmas with Pete Ruckman. That would be fun. I'll bet that would be fun.

Oh, man, that would be great. He says, I'm a recent escapee of the King James Only movement and a student of the

Greek language. So when I read this comment, my interest was piqued. And he quotes you in the correspondence.

If you have the textus receptus published by the Trinitarian Bible Society, the phrases included therein, this is due to the fact that the

TR is in fact not a Greek text at all, but a text based upon the

King James English New Testament, the textual choices being drawn from the KJV.

In other words, that particular TR did not exist at the time of the translation of the

King James. There are, in fact, at least 100 different TRs in existence. So his question to that is,

I own a copy of the TBS New Testament, and I remember chuckling that the 1611 text was compiled in 1902.

However, this comment is quite interesting to me. Is it something that you address in your book?

I believe my brother has a copy, and I can get my hands on it over the Christmas break if it is.

Otherwise, is this something that you can prove either through linking me in another article you've done or by pointing me in the right direction to study this myself?

It seems like this would be a back -breaking issue for the King James movement. It proves that they require dishonest scholarship to maintain their position, and dishonesty has become a pet peeve of mine as I listen to fundamentalist preachers like the pastor of the church my family attends.

So obviously he's going to be with the family over the Christmas break. Actually, I believe that I do address that in chapter 3 or 4.

I think it's chapter 4, because that's where I address the issue of the Texas Receptus and the

King James -only controversy. But it's well known, I don't think that TBS would deny it, that the blue case -bound

Hekinah Adiatheke, TR New Testament, which is what everybody carries around,

I've got my hand right here, was actually the work of Scrivener.

And that Scrivener, what he did, because there were, and this is discussed in King James -only materials as well, so it's not something that's just, oh, those terrible unbelieving scholars, blah, blah, blah.

The text from which the King James translators worked, there were seven of them. In fact, King James -only guys will see seven, the perfection, the number of perfection, the five editions of Erasmus and Stephanus 1550 and Beza 1598.

Actually, they probably had a few more of those, because they were very, I mean, there was a 1515, 1551, and la, la, la, la.

But anyway, they had printed texts that they were utilizing, and they had to make decisions between those printed texts as to which one, which reading they were going to utilize, because they were not the same.

And so when you take the different decisions made by the different committees, remember the New Testament, especially of, we're only talking about the

New Testament, of the King James was translated by different committees. And their work was not always overly consistent with itself.

That's why, for example, you shall not murder and you shall not kill appears in Matthew and Romans of the

King James, even though it's the exact same Greek phrase, it's translated two different ways, because it was two different committees that translated them, and the final editing didn't really smooth all that stuff out.

So to come up with the final readings, each of these organizations, each of these committees had to make textual choices based upon the printed texts that they were utilizing.

As a result, whether they were seeking to do so or not, they created a new

New Testament that had the exact readings that they themselves had chosen.

And no Greek manuscript up until that time contained all of those readings. So years later,

Scrivener goes back and he compares those Greek New Testaments, he looks at the

King James choices, and he creates a New Testament text based upon the textual choices of the

King James translators themselves. And that becomes what is today known as the Texas Receptus TR, and that's what the

Trinitarian Bible Society publishes. And you can get that information from Scrivener, and it's found in numerous sources, but I think

Chapter 4 is probably where I included that information in mine. So we'll get to the other questions on Thursday, because I did forget that.

Now, for all of our wonderful friends, some of whom, during the summer, say some,

I don't know, sometimes unkind things about those of us here. Rich, have you sometimes sort of felt just a little hurt in August, when we're talking about 116 degrees and humid?

Yeah, it can be rough. It can be rough, it can be hard, yes. But in August, when we are suffering, we always say, yeah, but winter's coming.

And it seems like winter has come rather early this year. In fact, it's not even winter yet, is it? You know, if you think about it, 116, one thing it doesn't do is make your bones hurt.

That's true, it doesn't. Yeah, that's true. And it doesn't make your lips stick together and things like that.

It just makes you sweat a lot. Yeah, you don't have problems like when you kiss a flagpole and you're stuck to it.

Not that I really do that very often, but I'm just saying. But we don't have kids in Arizona that would even think of doing something like that.

That's true, that's true. You're exactly right. But the point is this. Right now, it's really cold elsewhere in the

United States. And it's going to be 76 degrees here in Phoenix today. And it's sunny outside with a light breeze.

Yeah, but it's a dry heat. It is a dry heat. It's very dry. It's just gorgeous outside. It really, really is.

So for all of our friends who today are bundled up and you have to go put an electric warmer on your car just to get it started and stuff like that.

We have this wonderful song by our friend Milo Hotzenbuehler called Winter in North Dakota.

This is for you. Thanks for listening to Dividing Line. We'll see you on Thursday. Good. That's what you need to do.

We've got all four seasons, summer, winter, spring, and fall. Oh, winter is the coldest and the longest of them all.

Get your long johns, put your hood up, and pull your cap down low. Have your skin all cuffed up.

When in the snow you go, you'll freeze your little toe. The snow is on the way.

Winter in North Dakota. It won't melt till May. Winter in North Dakota.

Oh, please don't get me wrong. There's no place I'd rather go to. But winter's eight months long.

Living in North Dakota. Come on. My engine won't turn no far. When it's winter in North Dakota.

Wassup! I'm stuck in Watford City.

Waiting for a storm to clear. We get a real big blister. Three or four times every year.

When this flowing snow is drifting, please take my advice. The visibility is poor, and the roads are not so nice.

When they're covered with black ice. Come on! I'm stuck still with snow.

Winter in North Dakota. It's twenty -six below. Winter in North Dakota.

And the windchill makes it worse. My thermometer is broken. Let's sing a different verse.

It's winter in North Dakota. Come on! Winter in North Dakota. It won't melt. It's winter in North Dakota.

Boom! Yeah! You might think it's desolate and stormy every day.

If you do, that's fine with us. Cause then you'll stay away. And we don't want you anyway.

The bitter cold we flout. Living in North Dakota. It keeps the riffraff out.

Winter in North Dakota. So stay home, make your jokes. By the place you never go to.

Cause we don't want you folks. Living in North Dakota. Come on!

Frostbite comes real soon. Winter in North Dakota. It stays dark till noon.

Winter in North Dakota. So keep your mittens on.

Here in North Dakota. Or your thumbs are gone.

Winter in North Dakota. Come on! Winter in North Dakota. Come on! Winter in North Dakota.

Boom! Polkas keep you warm.

I need a, need a, need a neutral shuffle. I gotta, gotta, gotta build a snowman.