Radio Free Geneva Discussion with John Samson

And welcome to Radio Free Geneva on a Tuesday morning here on The Dividing Line, a mega edition of The Dividing Line today. Two solid hours, I'm not sure how solid they'll be, but two hours anyways of, I'm not going to say the best in podcasting because that would be arrogant.

Guest Introduction and the New Book on Sovereignty and Election

And I'm not really trying to follow after certain people like Rush Limbaugh. But anyways, hopefully you'll enjoy it anyhow. Today, a banner day on Radio Free Geneva because we have reviewed many people on Radio Free Geneva before.

This is the first time we've actually had one of them brave enough to show up. Yes, show up to the studio for Radio Free Geneva. And not only that, but what really makes it amazing is that the person with such bravery, such chutzpah, is British.

Which is amazing. Sitting right next to me in the studio within arm's reach. Yep, yep, definitely arm's reach. Both of us can hit the other one at any point in time. Is the infamous Silly Brit 2, John Sampson.

Hello, John.

Hello, sir. Good to be with you.

Here in this underground bunker.

Which no one can find.

No, it was a long ways down in that elevator, wasn't it? And the special code word we had to give you. It was very difficult because you're British.

I can hold some things, you know. I know some things others don't.

How to find you.

That's good, that's good. Can Brits actually pronounce that word? No, I don't think they can. It's sort of a shibboleth for them. Brits can't say it. Besides that, it doesn't have a U in it. An extra U because they keep trying to stick that in there.

That's why they can't get through the secret doors. Because it keeps misspelling color. But an honor and savior and everything else. But anyways, John Sampson. Why in the world would we have you here?

I'm happy to find out.

You just told me to show up.

I just told you to show up. You do have a blog called Effectual Grace, right?

Yes.

Effectual Grace. And believe it or not, despite the fact that you keep sending me emails with links to your blog. I keep telling you, I already subscribed.

I've been a good boy. It's two months since my last...

Hey, did you see...

Yes, I did. It's the first thing I do in the morning. I listen. I look at my RSS feeds. It's there. I see it. It doesn't mean I read it, but I see it.

It's there.

That's the problem with RSS feeds. There's too much to catch up on. But a little while back, you mentioned... You actually didn't tell me about this until you were getting toward the end of the book. How long had you been working on this book?

Probably three or four months.

Three or four months.

That's not too long. Not too long.

It only took me four months to do the King James Only Converse. That was back when I didn't have anything else to do. Now I can't get anything written for love nor money. I mean, I got eight pages written in the new Muslim book last night.

And that was only one half of the first third of the chapter. So it's just sort of like...

The problem was I thought I'd finished and six weeks later I was still working on it.

Oh, I know.

Life just keeps getting in the way. But we're talking about a book called Twelve Whatabouts? Answering Common Objections Concerning God's Sovereignty in Election. It is an e-book available at Monergism Books if you go to Monergism.

If you can spell Monergism, that means you're already Reformed, which is a good thing. That's sort of how they hide themselves from everybody else. No one else knows what Monergism means. And it's an e-book available from Monergism, which means it's in either Kindle or EPUB.

Now, that Kindle is a MOBI format. Do you know much about that stuff?

I know nothing.

You know nothing at all. Do you even have a Kindle?

No.

I can't even read my own book. That's good. That's good.

All right.

Boy, that's marketing for you.

But people tell me it's okay.

Well, that's what we're here to talk about. You're not really certain about this yet. But anyway...

We'll find out.

So, anyhow, 12 Whatabouts. I counted more than 12 chapters, though.

Yeah.

I deal with a number of concepts I think we should have in place before we get to those. And I spent some chapters, for instance, on the love of God. I spent two chapters on that.

So, really, the 12 is more of a...

There are 12 Whatabouts.

Yeah, but there's sort of more than that, aren't there?

I want to give you value for money. The whopping four books that people...

Well, they use the T and the T and the T. I guess if you had some other number in there, then it wouldn't really work out.

Yeah.

It's a sovereign thing.

It is. Okay.

All right. So, why a book answering questions? Didn't I answer all of them in The Potter Street?

Yes.

I found that there's really a unique purpose in my mind, at least, as to why I would go about it. I think there's nothing out there that I could put in people's hands with a quick overview.

At least not to have a Kindle to put in their hands right now.

Yeah, that is true. I'd pick up the Kindle.

So many people would not read a book as lengthy as The Potter's Freedom, I found. So I wanted to write something that was...

Especially British people?

Yes.

Yes, sadly. But I wanted to put in pastors' hands, in anyone who's teaching on the subject, something that would say, I know you might have issues with this. If they've been a long-established Christian, normally folk who are off the street, who are newly converted, you can just tell them what the Bible says.

But for those with traditions, they do have to work through some things. And in my own process of working through them, I thought, you know, it could be helpful to people if we put all of them together, the main ones, and say, hey, this is what this book is about.

Is your question about the love of God, or the will of man, or certain texts of Scripture? And just put it in one place as really something that would inform them.

Right, right. Now, I actually listened to the book. You were kind enough to send it to me, and then I did my magical thing where I convert that into an mp3.

You're technically advanced. I don't know how you do it.

And then listened to it while riding South Mountain, which is...

And I was praying for me, for you. You told me you were going to be listening, and I was hoping you wouldn't end up in a ditch.

Well, there aren't too many ditches on South Mountain. There are lots of cliffs. So being in a ditch would be fine. Over the cliff, this is the end of that. So there were some times where I was going 34 miles per hour down a technical hill, and that sort of impacts how you listen to things, I guess, probably.

But I did hear the word tradition a lot.

Yes.

You had to challenge that. That's one of the biggest things you have to get around, isn't it?

Very much so, and it was painful for myself because I haven't always embraced the doctrines of grace at all. And I thought I had a fairly sound understanding of Scripture as pastoring. And as I describe in the book, the flyer came in the mail from Ligonier Ministries, this was in the year 2000, to say...

2000? That was like yesterday.

Yes, I know.

I remember yesterday.

All my troubles seem so far away. Beatles.

They were Brits too, weren't they?

They were back on the right thing.

But I really had a deep respect for Dr. Sproul, but my heart sank when I saw what he was going to be talking about.

How can you listen to R .C. Sproul and not have heard all that stuff?

Because I'd heard enough to be impressed about the subject of the holiness of God, and I hadn't gone further. I hadn't really heard much more. And so he was going to be talking on this, and my heart sank.

I thought, well, why would someone of that caliber, because I did respect him as a theologian, why would he be coming all the way from Florida.

To Scottsdale.

To talk about something that is well past its sell-by date? People got over this in the last millennium. Why is he bringing it into the new one? And I was in two minds whether to go. In fact, another brother in the church was going to go.

He liked Dr. Sproul, and he chickened out on the last day as well. And so it was doubly hard to get there. And eventually I was going back and forth.

Shall I go?

And I thought I would go, but I'd sat on the back row so I could leave early because I just didn't want to hear this screwball argument about what certain historical figures had embraced. And I had no desire for that.

But I was in shock and awe when after the first session there was nothing I could dispute because he was going to the text of Scripture and looking at it in context. And I had a... It was really an alarming session because I realized I was in trouble because he was quoting Scriptures that I would have quoted and explaining them and then saying we're going to have a question and answer time where we go further.

And I thought, well, I'll stay for that. And they were dealing with certain texts like 2 Peter 3 and 9. They did the whole thing, John 3, 6, all of those things. And he was even laughing as to which question would come up first.

And I thought, you mean he's going to deal with that? That's a big argument against him, isn't it? Why would he even bring... And when he went to the text of Scripture and in 3 or 4 minutes dealt with it in a way that showed me I'd only had a shallow understanding.

I was in shock. I was stunned. And I... If anyone could have put a camera on me it would not have been good on Facebook, YouTube, anywhere. I was in trouble. I knew it.

Was that in Scottsdale Bible?

Yes, it was.

That's where he normally ended up. So he hits you up.

Where were you before that?

Were you just sort of...

Do you want the truth?

Well, no. But I mean, when you say you had... You said in the book that you were familiar with these texts and you just sort of feel like well, those guys over there just don't read these. They don't pay attention to these.

You had never really heard a meaningful response.

It's strange. I was at a Bible college in England and though the lecturers embraced Reformed Theology they didn't teach it. We knew where they stood. It came out on occasion. But in the sense of they never had a 2 or 3 hour session on Let's Explain the Doctrines of Grace.

And I would listen to them and think, why do they put that bias on things? And because they never did that I was left in ignorance and thought I knew what Reformed Theology was. I had enough respect which some people don't.

To say, well,.

There's obviously reasons why they believe this but I just never pursued it and I was kind of blissful in my ignorance just thinking, well, just get out with the Gospel. In this whole process what really stunned me, which I didn't share in the book was my father.

I had a phone conversation with him and he was an out-and-out evangelist and he used to go to the center of the city and preach and was louder than the town crier. They actually had one in the city of Chester.

Everything had to stop when he started preaching. I never saw anyone come to the house without him sharing the Gospel. Very passionately evangelistic. It was about a month after I went and saw Dr. Sproul and began this investigation.

It took about a year, sad to say, to unveil my traditions. He asked me in the course of a conversation, John, are you a Calvinist? He'd never asked me that. I'd been in ministry 20 years or whatever it was, or almost.

Well, 15 or so.

I said,.

No, not that I know of.

He said,.

You'll love this, James,.

You believe the Bible, don't you? I said, Dad, you're Reformed? He said, I'm passionately Reformed. I'm a strong Calvinist. I said, you've never mentioned it. He said, I don't think I need to. The Bible speaks for itself.

It stunned me.

It's funny, after I'd come to understand some of these things, I had another conversation. We had conversations about how many points are you embracing now? It was one, then one and a half, then two.

I said,.

You can't just believe one,.

It's either all or nothing. He said, good, you believe the Bible now. Now forget it and go out and evangelize. It's interesting. That was his reaction. You embrace that? Good. Now get out and preach.

Interesting. You put all this together. I know that you've been answering questions and stuff on your blog. Is that where you were drawing a lot of the look at what people are asking?

Since 2005, John Hendricks, who wrote the forward, asked me to join him writing on the reformationtheology .com blog. It's been interesting.

As a process.

To field some of the questions that you do get from people. You write something and then you're immediately challenged. You need to know why you believe what you're spouting out on the internet. That's been a process.

In fact, it was John Hendricks, who I've never met in real life, who I consider a friend, who encouraged me. He said, look, you've put some of these things together.

Over the years.

Why don't you write something that really.

Addresses this?

He was instrumental and encouraged me to go about it.

Interesting. What kind of response have you gotten so far?

It's been about a week. Very favorable. People are saying... In fact, one man said it's the book he wished was placed in his hands as a young Christian. It answered so many questions for him. I'm hoping that that will be the case for people the world over.

They'll say, there's a little book out there. It's not a huge thing. It's not something that's going to take monumental amounts of time to work through, but there's something out there that addresses the concerns and the objections that are naturally raised that come from really the traditions of men.

As you mentioned in the former question, tradition is such a strong thing that for people it might as well be the Bible, because they think when you're challenging their tradition, it is the Bible you're challenging.

There's no two ways about it. Unfortunately, my experience is most folks who have those traditions don't realize they have traditions in the first place. I did get a few quotes in the book. Sproul got the lion's share.

I did get quoted a few times in the book, and I think that was one of them, as I recall. Something about he who denies he has any traditions is a slave to them or something along those lines.

That's the end of the story. I only shared the initial process of the Sproul conference, but it was really, as I investigated more, you came into the scene in my mind and my study that I began to really see the exegesis of Scripture on a level I could not find in the other camp as an Arminian.

Not even knowing I was an Arminian, I wouldn't even consider myself or class myself as that, but as you understand, if you're not monogistic in your idea of regeneration, you are synergistic.

One way or the other. Either a complicated synergist or a simple synergist. It doesn't really matter. You're still a synergist.

So it was your work, and then also the helpful blog site the main site of monogism .com, some of the articles there. And again, because you.

Realize.

These big gun reformers, the magisterial reformers, the Luthers, the Calvins, and later on the Edwards, and all of these Spurgeon and all of these wonderful figures who've changed nations under the power and anointing of the Holy Spirit in history, they may not have agreed on every theological point, but they all agreed on this.

And they understood God's sovereignty in election, and I thought it would be foolish to at least not attempt to understand why they would actually say that. What grounds? Were they just people of their age who just took that tradition from Augustine, or was there some merit to it?

And I think every Christian knows at least the respect to say, why would they believe that?

Tradition, the Doctrines of Grace, and the First Encounter with Sproul

Well, hey, you do, by the way, have some English people listening. Chat channel London. Truth is listening. How come you can get away with that and I can't? I sound exactly the same.

Good evening. This is the news from the BBC. Today in Parliament,.

The Queen tripped on her robe, much to the astonishment of the members. Fortunately, she was.

Unscathed.

This is what it sounds like. Man, it is so boring over there. It's just terrible. But anyways, you actually got an argument started in channel between some Man United fans and somebody else, so I just thought.

You might want to... Well, the Liverpool supporters are.

The elect. They are the elect? Is that how you know?

Manchester United are red devils.

What did that tell you? Oh, well, okay.

And they're playing each other on Saturday.

London. Truth is an Arsenal fan, so is that a good thing or a bad thing?

It's better than being a Man United fan.

I'll keep that in mind. Now, by the way, you should... Is there anything you would like to say to your.

Former.

Fellow citizens of the United Kingdom? Because you are an American citizen. Now, in light of the fact that you committed an almost unpardonable sin in the book, if you feel like you need to get something off your chest, John, now is the time to make a confession.

I did get an email from someone saying that I have renounced all things of my heritage by using the word soccer.

I did explain it.

And I explained to them, look, it's a foreign missions project. You go to certain nations, you got to learn the language to be able to communicate. You go to China. What's the point in speaking in English if you go to China?

So I'm accommodating.

The depravity.

Of the Americans by speaking in their language.

But how could anyone who, like you, was in love with football now call it soccer? I mean, because, I mean, football is actually played with the foot. Unlike our game, which we call football, which is only rarely played with the foot.

The good news was I didn't actually have to mouth the word, I could just write it.

That's true. See, if I had been you, what I would have said was, I wrote football in the original. In my heart. And then the editor changed it to translate it. That's what I would have done, but you didn't do that.

I didn't do it.

So, there you go. The explanation, a two. Ten would be the best, but two would have been...

I gotta work on it.

Alright, so folks can get it by going to Monarchism Books and I guess you can just search for the products or...

They can also go to my blog, which is Effectual Grace, as you mentioned, effectualgrace .com and on the right-hand side of the page.

It just says,.

If you want to buy the book, you click on here and it goes straight to that. Monarchism Books does certainly carry it.

That's the best place to get it.

Well, they're sort of the publisher.

Yes.

And you can even select the format between Moby and EPUB and I wonder if they would make it available in PDF or something. I mean, that would be another way that people could get it and stuff like that.

I hear there's things you can download that allows you to do that.

Yeah, probably so. I probably have...

Tradition, Exegesis, and the Sovereignty of God in Election

Just quickly. On the area of tradition, I also did an initial chapter.

About.

The concepts we have and what I would call theological genetics in the sense of we've got such a respect for the people who've led us to Christ, maybe it's a pastor or a teacher, and they've told us that Calvinism is wrong.

By the way, I don't use the word Calvinism in the book or even mention John Calvin not because I'm against.

That, but I just... You never mentioned John Calvin?

Didn't mention him. Really?

Didn't even quote him once? Not once.

Wow. Because Christians might have an aversion to Calvinism because there's so many straw men as you know and they've heard certain things about Calvin and so you quote him and it's not in any way useful.

I just wanted to quote Jesus because every Christian loves.

Him.

Luke and Mark and John. I wanted them to see Jesus saying it. You know, when Jesus had no problem with evangelism but before he ever said, come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden he said, I praise you father, you've hidden these things.

So, you know seeing it in Jesus' words seeing it from the scriptures, I wanted to really concentrate there and then talk about those big, big hot issues of what free will actually is. The man does have a will but it's in bondage to his nature and just as a man can't fly unaided to the moon, he has no desire for God or the things of God until God changes the disposition of his heart and talk about the love of God and say there are differentiations there.

So those three things are big ones in the minds of people. Love of God, the will of man and what I would call theological genetics. Someone called it love lines and I think they've got such a desire to honor the one who's led them to the Lord, who's told them don't ever get into this stuff.

That it's a real barrier for.

Them. It is. I've encountered that many times. You wonder what the prejudice is at times when you're just teaching the word of God. And it's funny. I don't know if I told you the last time I was in London.

I went from London to.

Dublin.

And this is my first time in Ireland.

Yeah, they've got a good economy because their capital is always Dublin.

Oh...

Anyways, very quickly we need to do that. Actually, they don't.

Have a good economy right now. It's an old joke.

It's a very old joke.

But not a real reformed area, Dublin as you can imagine. I was speaking at a reformed Baptist church there and someone else over in, somewhere in England had arranged for me to speak at a brethren church in Dublin and I'm like, okay alright, I spoke at brethren churches in Italy and had some interesting experiences as a result as you can imagine.

Brethren churches are not known for being overly friendly toward reformed theology and I had been told to speak on Romans 9 so I'm like, okay I get there and the first night that I'm in Dublin speaking with a reformed Baptist pastor he goes, now, you know what's going on.

At this church, right?

And I'm like, no.

I don't know.

He says, well, the guy that set this up sort of, you know let's just put it this way, the elders don't know what you're speaking of so he's, in other words, sending me in as the nuclear bomb you know, type thing and so, you know, I I said, well, if you could please contact them and make sure they know what I've been asked to speak about and if that's a problem with them I'll be happy to speak on the Islamic Jesus and whatever I have no interest in being used as a Calvinistic bat upside somebody's head if they don't know that it's coming.

Well, this created a huge brouhaha and eventually, like the day before they contacted me and they said we want you to speak on Romans 9. Ok, so the Reformed Baptist Church cancels their Sunday night service and so two churches come together in this one brethren meeting hall.

And.

You know, that's not a real comfortable situation to be in, I don't care who you are, but you're walking into a place and you know that there's a possibility of controversy and it's not like you just feel you know, a great deal of freedom.

In opening the word at that point.

But they asked me to do so. So what I did is I just I just took the original language text because I didn't want to have to deal with the King James issue and I just stopped there. And I just opened Romans 9.

And I didn't have to mention Calvinism I didn't have to mention Reformed Theology. I just opened Romans 9 and I just worked through it and they loved it. They thought it was wonderful. And you'll have situations where I'll speak someplace and I'll speak on a Reformed topic but since I'm preaching it from the word I'll have people come up to me afterwards and they're just sort of getting the idea that I may be saying something about that.

But you're preaching straight out of the Bible so that really couldn't be that. Do you really. And then they'll start raising the big issues. And they're shocked when you go well yeah of course I believe that.

And then you have to try to find some way of getting them to open their Bible.

And that's where they want to go straight away.

Pretty much you don't believe that stuff about Jesus not dying for that type of stuff and it can be a bit of a difficulty but anyway it was an interesting experience and I'd love to get back there again with the lovely folks.

I mean the Irish are wonderful people.

I think from my own experience I look back and I feel a sadness, first of all gladness that I didn't write when I had my form of you but a sadness that you think oh the wasted years what I could have given and shared with folk.

I think.

The one thing I would want to kind of make a remark about is I'm sure you can say the same in not having first embraced this I've lost friendships over this and ministerial lengths and associations and it's been heartbreaking.

People that I've known for years just don't want anything to do with anyone who would embrace reform theology and it's heartbreaking and in that sense the book is kind of born out of.

The.

Sadness of that and yet hopefully as you've experienced yourself there's been people. I remember a lady who's 60 years as a Christian, a lady in her 80's who came up to me after about 6 or 7 sessions, I think that's wise if you're going to teach on this, allow people to have time to work through these things rather than just ram it down someone's throat and expect them to turn on a dime in 10 minutes which is often not as easy.

I saw what I did to Rich. Actually he still has a twitch.

But the lady came in tears and says I'm so thankful my relationship with God is sought to new heights. I've got a closeness with him and an appreciation of his grace that wasn't there before because a lot of people say even if it's true, what's the point?

Why would you want to go there and unsettle people? And yet when you look at scripture, Jesus didn't apologize for this. If you want to see Jesus get excited, he says I praise you Father that you've hidden these things and you've revealed it to others.

And I thought to myself, why is it Jesus is excited by this and I'm not?

Yeah, oh yeah.

He's excited by something that I find offensive and that really set me thinking. Also I began to look at certain texts John 10 being one of them and he says to a group of people looking them in the face you do not believe because you are not my sheep.

And I had to admit that for many years even though the words were staring at me just right in front of me I'd always interpreted them through the grid of my tradition turn it upside down, change Jesus' words from back to front and said look if they choose to believe they can be sheep.

That's right.

Why do you not hear what I'm saying to you? Because you do not belong to God. Yeah. Wait a minute.

But they could just choose.

Yeah and I realized who am I, what right have I got to change Jesus' words around. And the answer is obviously no right at all. And you see Jesus saying it so clearly I remember one person saying look even if it's true you'd never share this in an evangelistic sermon and again you see Jesus doing that in John 6.

You're the master to me at bringing out what's in the text of John 6 but the whole premise is there's a group of people and Jesus.

Tells them why.

It is they don't believe. The explanation is no one comes to the father unless the father draws and the one draws. I'll raise him up on the last day and the whole crowd leaves, he gets into other things too but that's a big one, God's election and Jesus didn't run after them and say look I'll talk on something else next time.

He takes his own disciples and he says are you going to go too? And they said well you're the only show in town.

You're the one with the words of eternal life.

And he didn't run after them he didn't apologize. And if you think about it if it's so dear to the heart of Jesus that he would allow thousands of people to walk away because they would not tolerate election it must mean something to God.

This doctrine means something to God.

Election, Evangelism, and the Charge of Hyper-Calvinism

Well you know that issue there is a balance because you know what you said what you were saying there's a lot of people who don't have anything to do with it anymore, I mean believe me I know that and not just for being reformed but that's one of the reasons we have some fun with the Radio Free Geneva theme.