November 13, 2003

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. ...to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

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

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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

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

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James White. And good morning. Welcome to The Dividing Line.

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11 a .m. Mountain Standard Time on a Thursday morning. Just making sure to keep you all confused as to what time it's supposed to be on.

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Hey, that's just the way it is. It is now one of the greatest things the Reformed people do across the great land of the United States, try to figure out when

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The Dividing Line is on. That is a very important thing to be able to do. It gives you something to do in this wild and wacky world where the news just hit, of course, that our brave judge down in Alabama has been removed from his post by the ever so wise but utterly incapable of providing a meaningful defense for their actions judicial panel down there.

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What is going to happen next? I suppose we will have to, the next thing is we will have to put

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Muslim judges in and start compulsory prayers to Allah or something.

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Who knows? I tell you, Western civilization does seem completely and totally intent upon self -destruction and self -denigration in some way, shape or form.

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Some of you will remember, I have another topic to talk about this morning. We will be taking calls, whoever it is, 877 -753 -3341.

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Let me shake some paper. There we go. Some of you will remember, when was it,

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July, June, July, somewhere around there. We had, thanks to friends in Great Britain, we had a man who called in and his name was

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Peter. Well, actually, Peter, that's how they did it in Hook, remember, Peter. Peter wasn't his real name, of course.

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He is a Christian convert from Islam, born on the border of Pakistan, Afghanistan, remember the whole program?

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Didn't we go like 90 minutes or something like that that day? I think we did. Anyway, we received a fax,

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I think it was Monday, and just to let everyone know, you need to pray for Peter.

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I won't go into details, actually, as I think about it here, but just pray for Peter.

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He is in a dangerous situation, and if you heard that program and his testimony of faith in Christ, just pray for he and his wife, specifically, that the

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Lord would watch over them and deliver them, and I just thought that's probably the best way to put that.

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I was going to read the whole thing, but I thought, you know, it might not be a good idea. Let's just, the

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Lord knows their situation, so just pray for Peter and for his wife, who

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I understand is expecting as well, and that would probably be the best way to handle that.

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Let's get to the topic this morning. The phones are open at 877 -753 -3341, but I wanted,

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I didn't want to spend a few minutes, I put together some material here I wanted to discuss with you.

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I didn't make it to church last night, I wasn't feeling real well, thankfully,

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I don't think it's a long -term thing, or maybe it's just the black helicopter that's been circling my house, spraying that stuff down, maybe that has something to do with it,

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I don't know, but I wasn't feeling real well last night, and so I stayed home, and I'm almost never home on a

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Wednesday night at all, and it just so happened I was trying to put a little something together to eat, and so I turned on the, we have this little teeny tiny, man, the thing has got to be like a three -inch screen, black and white, maybe four -inch black and white screen in the kitchen, and so I turned that on just to see what it was on, it was right around 7 o 'clock, and I'll take that back, it was around 6 .30,

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maybe 6, anyway, actually it was right around 7 now that I think about it, and so anyway,

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I'm tuning through the channels a little bit, and it's so old it doesn't have a remote or anything like that, it's a clock radio

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TV thing, black and white, some of you don't even know what black and white is, but anyway, and I realized immediately that there's not going to be anything

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I'm going to be slightly interested in watching on regular television, we don't have cable, and so I tuned over to TBN, yes, the

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Trinity Broadcasting Network, and I had never seen, as I tuned in, there was a black fellow preaching to a huge gathering of what looked to me to be only other black men, maybe this was their version of promise keepers or something,

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I don't know, I didn't catch the beginning of it, turned out that this was Bishop Eddie Long, newbirth .org

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is the website, and it's a program called Taking Authority, the church has like 25 ,000 members now, and he was preaching at this gathering of, like I said, as far as I could tell, all black men, and I was, what was

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I doing? Oh yeah, I was browning some hamburger, I was going to make some Mexican meat, you know, some taco meat basically, and put them on some

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Mexican chips with cheese and make basically nacho chips, and that's something you do here in Phoenix, it's just sort of comes to the territory, anyway, and so I, you know,

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I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention, I mean, I was hearing some things, oh and right afterwards, Ruxella and Jack Van Impey came on, oh man,

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I can tell you, those folks are weird, wow, that was just almost an esoteric experience to listen to that one, but anyway, that was afterwards, so I was just listening to this thing that was going on, and I'm not hearing any scripture, you know,

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I'm hearing just all sorts of stuff that's, you know, taking authority and doing this, but I'm not hearing any scripture, and all of a sudden

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I heard a Bible verse, and so I tuned in, and he made reference to 1

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John 3 .2, 1 John 3 .2, now he seemingly was reading from the

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King James, because he mentioned the word shall, and so reading from the

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King James, it says, Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is, and he started saying that if you'd look up everything in Strong's exhaustive concordance, and that was where I sort of stopped and grabbed a piece of paper, because I, as you will see in a moment, that was on my mind anyway, because it's something that Dave Hunt said, which

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I'm going to read to you in a moment from his website, but he said if you take Strong's exhaustive concordance, and you look up this verse, you discover the word shall is not in the original, now, you know, as soon as you start hearing that, you gotta be careful, the word shall is not in the original, and then in fact we were informed, everybody was informed, that the word shall was inserted into the text to keep us in bondage, so I'm going, okay, so the

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King James translators wanted to keep somebody in bondage, now I was getting real interested, and so we were informed that when it says, but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, it actually is just simply, when he appear, we be like him, that's what the original actually says, according to Bishop Eddie Long, and I went to the

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TBN website, I wanted to see if there maybe was some way, if it was going to be repeated,

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I was going to download, I was going to play the clip, so you could hear the whole thing, but I am not making fun of anything, that's exactly what he said, he said the word shall is not there, and so the way he rendered it was, when he appear, we be like him, and it's not shall, the whole point that he was trying to say is, this is now, this is now, you need to be like Jesus, he later on said, if you've been told by the doctor that you have cancer, then you need to go,

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I am like Jesus, and Jesus does not have cancer, that's what he was saying, he was making the whole point that we are already the sons of God, and it's all taken care of, and therefore you can't have cancer, because you be

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Jesus, and there is no shall, the word shall is not there, and it was all based on the

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Strong's Exhaustive Concordance, well I wandered over to the bookshelf, and next to the computer, and I pulled the

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Nestle Greek text out, and I flipped it open to 1st John 3 2, and I looked at it, and I said, well look at that, that is the

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Greek verb esamatha, and esamatha, for those of you who have studied

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Greek, is the future indicative of I me, which is the verb of being, and therefore it is in the future, and when you translate a future into the

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English, we use shall or will, and that's why you find it in all of the translations, and it has nothing to do with trying to bring people into bondage, or steal from people their right as the sons of God, to be filled with healing, and all the rest of this wonderful fun stuff, and so just a little while ago,

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I had to go looking for Strong's, I don't use Strong's, I mean, when you got Bible works on your system, you don't need

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Strong's, all right, you know, trying to do meaningful in -depth

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Bible study with Strong's is like trying to study Shakespeare, by using the exhaustive concordance of his works written in German, think about that one for just a moment, how difficult would it be to follow

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Shakespeare's use of a particular term or phrase, through an exhaustive concordance of his works, it's actually written based upon a

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German translation, if you know anything about linguistics at all, anything about language, you realize how difficult that is, and so I went and got

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Strong's, and I looked up shall, well, shall is one of those words that ends up in an appendix in the back, and so unlike, if you look up other terms where it gives you a number, shall doesn't do that, and so you go back to the appendix, it just tells you four times, in 1

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John 3, the word shall appears, it doesn't tell you what it's translating or anything else, and many words like shall, will, almost any helping verb, when that is used in a biblical translation, it could be translating, it could be translating in Hebrew something relevant to a prefix preposition, in Greek it could be due solely to the form of the verb, or the context in which it's found, or whether you've got direct discourse or indirect discourse, and all these other things that can come into play to produce a translation, so I don't even know how you could have gone to Strong's and come up with what he said, he obviously heard that from somebody else, he didn't come up with that on his own, because you can't look it up that way and find that, unless he looked up all the other words and couldn't find shall,

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I don't know how he came up with it, but it was a completely and totally irrelevant comment, it was untrue, and yet despite it being untrue, oh you should have heard the amens, and the hallelujahs, and the praise the lords, and the music goes up, how these guys preach with music in the background, and man, it's talented, very talented, the music will go low when the person starts talking low, and then when they make a big point, and then the pace picks up, everybody gets all excited, and it's so obviously meant to appeal solely to the emotion, it's not going to help you think straight, it's not going to help you go, hmm,

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I wonder if he's right about that, no, it has nothing to do with being right about that, it's just let's all get excited about it, and so on and so forth, well the reason that I mention that, other than it's just an incredible example, again, of what you see on TBN, and like I said, it's followed immediately by Jack and Roxelle, I'm sorry, it's just, man,

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I'm listening to these two, and she's talking about him, oh Jack just knows the Bible so well, he's such a scholar,

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I'm just sitting here going, please, oh I'm getting ill over here, I'm trying to eat, please knock it off, it was bad, and I put way too much season salt in that meat too, man,

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I'd say that was, I had thousands of milligrams of sodium flowing through me after that one, but anyway, the reason all this caught my attention, caught my thinking, was when

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I was in St. Louis this past weekend, someone showed me a Q &A, in fact they took the time to photocopy it for me, out of the

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Berean Call, and I lost it, I cannot find it anywhere, and I'm very thankful to Dr.

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Wally Bolt, Paul Price, for finding it on the Berean website, I should have, you know,

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I knew to do what he did, I just didn't think about it, just put in a different date, and whoop, up it came, they just hadn't updated their links yet, and this is the

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Q &A, I believe it's from the September 2003 Berean Call, and here is what

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I read, question, you seem to discount the value of studying

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Greek and Hebrew in order to be able to understand the Bible better, a friend of mine is trying to persuade me to go to seminary in order to learn the original biblical languages, why shouldn't

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I? That's the question that is asked of Dave Hunt, or it's the question that's the Berean Call, I suppose we should say, answer, if the

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Lord leads you to seminary, by all means go, but let's be practical, how many years of study and experience do you think the translators of the

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King James Bible had in order to qualify them for that job? How long would it take a beginner to learn

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Greek and Hebrew well enough to discover where these men made a poor translation, if they did, and to improve it?

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Does your friend, or do you intend to reach that level of expertise, is that remote possibility worth the time and effort?

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If you say that Greek is a richer language than English, and that knowing it would give you a deeper understanding,

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I won't argue, but wouldn't the time you'd have to spend learning Greek to any beneficial level be better spent in studying the

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Bible itself on your knees, seeking understanding from the Holy Spirit and getting to know Him and His Word? Comparing Scripture with Scripture, and using a good concordance, you can see how the same

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Greek or Hebrew words and expressions are used in different passages, the Bible interprets itself.

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I have been told lately, by several Calvinists, that I can't understand the Bible, not even John 3 .16,

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because I don't know the original languages. If so, then neither does the average Christian, but must look to experts to interpret it for him, experts who therefore stand between him and God.

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Far from biblical, this is elitism, similar to Roman Catholicism, which discourages ordinary members from studying the

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Bible, because only the Magisterium, bishops in concert with the Pope, can interpret it. Saying this doesn't make me popular, and offends some of my dearest friends, but a knowledge of Greek and Hebrew has been elevated so highly that one must conclude that the

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Wycliffe Bible translators have wasted their time all these years. Why translate the Bible into native languages if these people still couldn't understand it because they don't know

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Greek and Hebrew? Wouldn't it be more efficient and less time -consuming to teach Greek and Hebrew to native peoples, so they could read the

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Bible in those languages instead of translating into their native tongues? May the Lord give you wisdom in coming to your own conclusions.

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Well, I read that, and now you know why the Bishop Eddie Long comment caught my attention, because Bishop Eddie Long obviously decided to follow the

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David perspective on how to do a biblical exegesis. So I read this, and I go, oh my goodness, let's think about just a couple things here.

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First of all, that sounded like the King James was the standard, didn't it? It says, you know, how long would it take a beginner to learn

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Greek and Hebrew well enough to discover that these men, King James translators, made a poor translation, if they did, and to improve it?

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Let me just stop just a moment. It seems to me that in some ways Dave Hunt tends to be somewhat schizophrenic on this issue.

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There is no question, and you'll notice he had to go back, you know, almost every question he addresses now, he throws in a zing at the

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Calvinists just for the fun of it, and we'll get to that in a moment, but it is fascinating that he takes two perspectives on this.

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He uses the term elitism, and we've discussed this on the program before when I responded to his open letter.

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He talked about how I am an elitist, because I would dare to raise the errors that he made in regards to Greek and Hebrew in his book, and he's mentioned this on his website, but interestingly enough, in our forthcoming book, in our forthcoming debate book, and I hate to call it our book, because we didn't work on it together in that sense.

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This isn't a joint effort. I didn't co -author this thing with Dave Hunt. In the book that contains my debate against Dave Hunt on the doctrines of grace, how's that?

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He never raises the elitism issue. In fact, he attempts as often as possible to use the languages.

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Now, he misuses them. For example, he goes after me on the subject of the subjunctive.

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You'll see this, and that's the one thing about this book. I told the folks in charge at the beginning,

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I said, look, Dave Hunt isn't capable of doing meaningful exegesis of this subject. He's going to make mistakes, and since it's a debate,

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I'm going to have to point them out, and that's going to be embarrassing to him, and you're going to take heat for publishing it. They said, that's fine.

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I said, okay, I told you up front, and if I have to call you as witness that I told you up front, then

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I will. I told you from the start. That's fine. You did tell us. That's fine.

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By the way, that was not Multnomah, which is finally publishing it. As some of you know, Multnomah bought

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Loyal, which published What Love Is This, and that's how this book ended up over there. Anyway, in letters to me, he's called me an elitist.

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I'm holding a letter that he wrote in June of this year to a good friend of mine, who has also criticized

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Mr. Hunt's work, and I'll just read from exactly what he says here. You need to repent of your pride and elitism, and learn that qualification for understanding and teaching

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God's word doesn't come from formal theological training, but from the call, guidance, and empowerment of the

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Holy Spirit. Now that sounds so tremendously spiritually wonderful, and no one who's ever listened to this program for any period of time would ever question the fact that I recognize the difference between a regenerate scholar and a non -regenerate scholar.

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In fact, Reformed Theology has, through history, very clearly affirmed the need for both elements.

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That is, for example, for true faith in the word of God, belief in the word of God, there has to be a change of the heart.

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It is both the heart and the mind that the testimony of the Holy Spirit of God is necessary in having a true spirit -born faith and belief in the word of God.

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There's no question about that. But the way that he places it, for example, in this letter, is to contrast the two.

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That is, that the training in these fields, in Greek and Hebrew, in knowing how to do meaningful historical research, to be fair in your reading of history, all of these things, that formal theological training, is placed in opposition to the call, guidance, and empowerment of the

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Holy Spirit. Now the problem that that then raises, of course, is when

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Dave Hunt makes mistakes in those areas, does he blame the Holy Spirit? When he messes up on the subjunctive, does he blame the

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Holy Spirit for that? When he tries to insult me by saying that I'm trying to twist the word of God by hiding the true meaning of the subjunctive when he doesn't even know what it is, is that the

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Holy Spirit prompting him to do that? Is it the Holy Spirit who leads Dave Hunt to count the appearance of the word whosoever in Strong's Exhaustive Concordance, ignore what they're translating in the

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Old and New Testament, and say this is what the meaning of the word. Was it the Holy Spirit that led Dave Hunt to come up with the same translation of Acts 13 .48

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as the New World Translation? And was it the Holy Spirit that led

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Bishop Eddie Long to say that the word shall shouldn't be in 1 John 3 .2 using the same sources that Dave Hunt is forced to use?

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Those are the questions, of course, that come up. But as I said, Dave is schizophrenic here, because he'll write like this and say, you elitist, you elitist.

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The very next question in the September 2003,

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Bree and Call had to do with dispensational premillennialism, and the very first part of the response is, well, the

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Hebrew word rush is not even in Ezekiel 38, and he immediately goes into the original language. Now, you can't have your cake and eat it too.

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And in our Debating Calvinism book, we never have this elitism thing. Instead, we have numerous and failed attempts on Dave Hunt's part to work with the biblical language.

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And so, which one is it? It seems like there's two different Dave Hunts. The one says, you know, you just say these things, just stick with Strong's Disaster Concordance, it's elitism, you're trying to create a new papacy, and all the rest of that stuff.

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The King James is good enough for me. Okay, if the King James is good enough for Dave Hunt, then why did he come up with a different translation of Acts 13 .48

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than even the King James has? These are questions that don't seem to have much in the way of answers.

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Then we have this contrast. But wouldn't the time you'd have to spend learning Greek to any beneficial level be better spent in studying the

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Bible itself on your knees? And that phrase, on your knees, is another way in which

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Mr. Hunt tries to contrast his approach with the approach that he thinks, quote unquote, scholars use.

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That is, if you're studying Greek, you don't do it on your knees. Believe me, I've known many a student who spent a lot of time on their knees right before a

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Greek test. And the whole reason for the self -discipline required in learning that language is so that you can be a better student of the

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Word of God and not make the kinds of mistakes that Eddie Long made, not make the kinds of mistakes that Dave Hunt makes and then puts into print, and especially in apologetics issues, then that leading to the enemies of faith pouncing upon those things and demonstrating the errors.

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That self -discipline is very frequently a spirit -borne issue. It's a spirit -borne thing.

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And so when it says, on your knees, seeking understanding from the

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Holy Spirit and getting to know Him and His Word, again, making a contrast between that and learning Greek. Well, again,

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Mr. Hunt, was it the Holy Spirit who gave you the understanding of those errant things that you keep saying?

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Is it the Holy Spirit who gives you these errant understandings, the Greek verb didomi, in John 6, for example?

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Things that I've documented, either in my open letter or in the upcoming book. Was it the

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Holy Spirit? I can guarantee you it was the Holy Spirit. Bishop Eddie Long would claim it was the Holy Spirit that told him 1

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John 3, 2 doesn't have the word shall in it. Well, how do you test? Well, Dave knows this.

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You test it by the Word of God. But you see, Dave has decided that the

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Word of God is his tradition. He only hears the Word of God in the sense of his tradition. And so when the actual text of the

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Word of God contradicts his tradition, now all of a sudden, that's elitism, and the

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Pope, and all the rest of that stuff. When he says that the comparing

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Scripture to Scripture and using a good concordance, you can see how the same Greek or Hebrew words and expressions are used in different passages. That's not true.

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I'm sorry, you can gain some element of that. I'm not saying that there is absolutely no use for Strong's Exhaustive Concordance.

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But the fact is, anyone who knows the original languages knows that when you look at how an

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English translation renders a particular word or phrase, that doesn't necessarily give you all the information that you need.

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And then we have this cheap shot. I've been told by several Calvinists that I can't understand the Bible, not even

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John 3, 16, because I don't know the original languages. Dave, that's not true. You could understand

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John 3, 16 if you would not force your own tradition into it. All I and others have tried to point out to you is that you are smuggling human tradition into that precious passage, and that the passage in its original languages will not substantiate your insertion of human tradition.

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That's all we've said. You see, he refuses to recognize the fact that he, as an individual, reads the

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Bible within a particular tradition, and that his tradition must be tested.

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In essence, Dave Hunt does not practice Sola Scriptura. That's all there is to it. And I've been saying that for a long time now.

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Anyone who's listened to this program knows that I've said for a long, long time that Dave Hunt, when he said on that radio program with me years ago now,

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James, I have no traditions, that by making that statement, he was demonstrating his own enslavement to his traditions.

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So it's very, very clear. So when he goes on to say, you know, far from biblical, this is elitism, similar to Roman Catholicism, which discourages ordinary members from studying the

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Bible because only the magisterium can interpret it, that's baloney. It's calling believers to a serious study of the text.

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It's not doing what Rome says, which says you can't interpret it. Why? Because they have a special tradition, which we don't have.

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Not a language of the original text. Rome opposed the idea of making that original language available to everybody.

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There are many Roman Catholic prophets who feared that. Why worry about Greek anyways? It's not the official language of the church.

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Latin is. God's used Latin for 1 ,100 years. Why are you worrying about the language of heretics in the first place?

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And now we have Dave Hunt saying, oh, you do that kind of thing and, you know, you're creating a, you know, and then it's funny, the

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Wycliffe Bible translators, excuse me, but what's the first thing Wycliffe Bible translators have to do? Learn the

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King James? No. The Wycliffe Bible translators translate from the original languages.

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Yes. Well, my goodness. Well, that was a fascinating Q &A. And it just, it just seemed to strike me as, as ironic in the extreme that you put these two together.

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And here you have on TBN the result, you know, Dave would disagree with Bishop Eddie Long.

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He would disagree with him. But my question is, how can he do it consistently? How can he do it consistently?

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That's the question. 877 -753 -3341. There's my, uh, my thought for the day.

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And, uh, as I, as we mentioned last time, uh, unless, uh, y 'all, you know, get involved, uh, you know, we will eventually start, uh, playing

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Christmas music again. And I, I do have it queued up. I've got it sitting here on my system right now. All I've got to do is click the little button and, uh, and our friend

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John Denver will start singing. So 877 -753 -3341.

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We'll be right back after this break. Your best and nothing less to be blessed.

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Try to save your soul from death. It's all worth righteousness, you know.

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Under the guise of tolerance, modern culture grants alternative lifestyle status to homosexuality.

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Even more disturbing, some within the church attempt to revise and distort Christian teaching on this behavior.

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In their book, The Same Sex Controversy, James White and Jeff Neal write for all who want to better understand the

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Bible's teaching on the subject, explaining and defending the foundational Bible passages that deal with homosexuality, including

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Genesis, Leviticus, and Romans. Expanding on these scriptures, they refute the revisionist arguments, including the claim that Christians today need not adhere to the law.

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In a straightforward and loving manner, they appeal to those caught up in a homosexual lifestyle to repent and to return to God's plan for his people.

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The Same Sex Controversy, Defending and Clarifying the Bible's Message about Homosexuality. Get your copy in the bookstore at AOMN .org.

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Answering those who claim that only the King James Version is the Word of God, James White in his book,

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The King James Only Controversy, examines allegations that modern translators conspired to corrupt scripture and lead believers away from true

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Christian faith. In a readable and responsible style, author James White traces the development of Bible translations, old and new, and investigates the differences between new versions and the authorized version of 1611.

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You can order your copy of James White's book, The King James Only Controversy, by going to our website at www .AOMN

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.org. What is Dr. Norman Geisler warning the Christian community about in his book, Chosen But Free?

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A New Cult? Secularism? False Prophecy Scenarios? No, Dr. Geisler is sounding the alarm about a system of beliefs commonly called

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Calvinism. He insists that this belief system is theologically inconsistent, philosophically insufficient, and morally repugnant.

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In his book, The Potter's Freedom, James White replies to Dr. Geisler, but The Potter's Freedom is much more than just a reply.

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It is a defense of the very principles upon which the Protestant Reformation was founded. Indeed, it is a defense of the very gospel itself.

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In a style that both scholars and laymen alike can appreciate, James White masterfully counters the evidence against so -called extreme

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Calvinism, defines what the Reformed faith actually is, and concludes that the gospel preached by the

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Reformers is the very one taught in the pages of Scripture. The Potter's Freedom, a defense of the

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Reformation and a rebuttal to Norman Geisler's Chosen But Free. You'll find it in the Reformed Theology section of our bookstore at www .AOMN

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.org. On the

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Word, it's also above His Holy Name.

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Here I stand, never changing one command.

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On the pure, sufficient Word of God. Here I stand.

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And welcome back to Dividing Line. My name is James White. We have been discussing how not to use

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Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. And that has not caused anyone to my knowledge, oh great, almost anyone to my knowledge to call in.

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So, I want you to know that I went into my library and I pulled out one of my favorite

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John Denver Christmas songs. I have it ready to go. However, someone has stepped up to the plate to attempt to forestall this national disaster.

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So, we're going to go ahead and give it a try here, but this might not be a long call. So, those of you who are just sitting around and you're going, you know,

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I do have a comment on that, but I just don't know. You need to get on the line, 877 -753 -3341, because we just don't know how long this one call is going to take.

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So, let's go ahead and talk to John in, wait a minute, excuse me.

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Hello John, how you be today? I'm very good, thanks, how are you? Oh, not bad. Hey, you know,

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I put the BBC on my palm tungsten T3 today, and when I did so, I thought of you.

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And then I started reading it, and I went, by this people are, they're, they're really liberal. Oh, absolutely, absolutely.

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I mean, how do you, how do you do it, being a transplanted Briton? You're a true American, I know, you've got, you've got a passport and everything.

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So, yeah, I've got the passport now. It's, it's hard being schizophrenic, and myself, and I, I have arguments over it daily.

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Oh, which one wins? The, the American during the day, the

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Britisher at night. And during tea time, of course. Oh, absolutely, that's when the

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English win. Beats coffee any day. Yes. And what can we do for you today?

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I'd just like to comment on some of the things you're saying, because the, the tendency in our age is to be so anti -intellectual, and to think, well,

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I'm just getting inside myself, just me, and the Bible, and Jesus. And I'm, I'm not someone who's a

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Greek scholar as a pastor. I'm, I'm someone who can just about get by in Greek, but I hesitate to make pronouncements until I can check with scholarship regarding preaching and teaching, for the simple reason that when the

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Holy Spirit inspired the scripture, he did so, not in English, not with a

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Texan accent, or anything that man can come up with that, you know, is related to our culture.

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He, he actually inspired the word in, in, in the, certainly in the New Testament, in the Koine Greek, and so it's important that at least that is checked with, and before I make pronouncements over what is and isn't in the scripture, in the original language, then

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I need to check with scholarship, and I just don't understand how, how quick and free people are to just say, this means this, because I've got a strong concordance, and will not actually check things out, because it's

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Greek that is the inspired text, not, not a strong concordance. Well, you know, and it goes back again to the same conflicts that took place at the time of the

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Reformation, the fact that, to even do what he did, Erasmus was risking his life, because at the time, the traditional text was

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Latin, and that was more than sufficient, and one of the reasons that many Roman Catholic theologians were concerned about examination of the biblical text in Greek was, for the obvious reason, that their pet doctrines were primarily based upon misinterpretations of the text that were more plausible within the

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Latin than they were upon an examination of the Greek, and so the most famous example being the concept of penance, poinetentium agitate, if you actually looked at metanoia, it doesn't have the same connotation, and so, you know, if that's your tradition, if that's what you believe is true, then you're going to go with the text that substantiates that most strongly, and that's exactly what is going on with Dave Hunt and his followers, is they have a tradition, and they, they just become incensed when you dare to, to point that out and say you're not examining your tradition on the basis of scripture.

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Basically, Dave's response, as you know, when I talk about tradition is, well, you have your tradition.

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Okay, I, the difference between us is, I fully and completely confess that, and I then take the effort and go through the necessary steps to examine my tradition on the basis of scripture, and to found my, the conclusions of that tradition upon the sound, consistent exegesis of the text of scripture.

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That's the difference between us, but you can't... And that's the point, and the point is that we all have our traditions.

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Everyone has a bias. The question is not, who has a bias here? The question is, which bias is the best bias to be biased with?

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In the sense of, I might have my supposed insight on what a scripture is saying, but if I find that scholarship tells me what

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I'm believing is not in the text, I need to shut my mouth and go back to God, and go back to my knees.

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Right. And, and the point you made is so valid, and you know, what was strange in the Reformation was that Erasmus was not a friend of the

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Reformation by any means, but what he was able to do in providing the Bible from its original language into the language of the people, caused the

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Reformation to take off. It was vitally important. I mean, Luther utilized his, his

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Greek text, and his Latin text, both, and you know, we need to emphasize it was also the fact that he provided a fresh translation of the

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Latin, was likewise a tremendously controversial thing to do. Why do that? The Vulgate's been good enough for the church, etc, etc, etc.

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So yeah, I mean, those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, and, and we, we have a situation here where, where people who, and that's the, that's the ironic thing that, that again, started this whole mess back in, in, in 2000, when in the realm of soteriology and the issue of salvation,

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I asked Dave Hunt, look, Dave, you and I together have debated more Roman Catholics than any of the two people combined have, as far as formal, moderated debates, and yet you agree with Rome on the issue of, of the nature of, of God's grace, and the nature of the will of man.

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How, how can this be? And, you know, that, that's what started it all back then, and even though the, some of the other issues that have come up since then, like Greek and Hebrew, they all do go back to the same fundamental foundational issues that we've talked about before.

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So, you know, no one, if anyone has a ground upon which to say to Dave Hunt, now that, you know,

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Dave's complaining tremendously about people who are, who are attacking him, and, and trying to ruin his reputation,

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I told Dave before What Love Is This ever saw the light of day,

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Dave, if you, if you continue to ignore the, the godly advice of people around you, and I was not the only one,

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I've talked to others, I've seen letters written by people, I can't hardly travel anywhere, where I don't have one of the pastors of the church say, you know, when he first started this stuff in the

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Berean Call, I wrote to him, here's the letter I wrote to him, and they're all saying the same things, and he simply closes his ears, and despite being corrected over and over and over and over again, refuses to hear what is being said.

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What is amazing, too, is that this is exactly what folk that are wrapped up in the cults often do, when you explain a verse of scripture, say on the deity of Christ, they just try and go to their other scriptures, and that seems to be what

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Dave Hunt does, you expose the myth of his interpretation, and he says, well, it can't mean that, because of this verse in Mark, and this one in John, and you end up never actually doing any thorough exegesis with Dave, where he stands still and lets you say what it says.

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Yeah, I'm always dealing with a moving target, there's no question about that, and what you hear over and over again is that, and I guess there's nothing wrong with mentioning one of the reasons why you know this so well,

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I have the manuscript to the Debating Calvinism book, and you have been so kind to read it for me, and you've already caught a number of good typos, way to get them on,

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I'm sorry, however, Multnomah has not said that we're changing all appearances of color and honor to O .U

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.R., I'm sorry. You know how I feel about that, what else is there for a country that can't spell honor?

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It's been a privilege to do that. Aside from all of the, and I didn't ask you to call in, you just happened to listen to this thing, you crazy

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British fellow. I've got nothing to do, I'm just a lonely pastor, things to do with my time.

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There you go, but you've seen in the book, and I think the listeners would find interesting to hear somebody else who's actually read

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Debating Calvinism, over and over again, and in fact,

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I was sitting here reading this letter, which was not written to me, it was written to a friend of mine, and I don't know, at least four or five times in this particular letter,

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I see the phrase, but I provided hundreds of pages of documentation,

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I provided hundreds of verses, there are dozens of verses over here, dozens of verses over there, and this happened over and over again in the book.

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When you get down to a point, for example, in 1 John 5 .1, where I demonstrated that he had completely missed the syntax, that he had in essence misinterpreted it, in what love is this, he had even miscited it in the sense of, well, not miscited it, but he inserted in brackets his own interpretation, his interpretation goes against the grammar and context, not only of 1

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John 5 .1, but of two other verses in 1 John, so against the entirety of 1 John as a whole, and when

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I point this out to him, his response is, well, we don't need 1 John 5 .1 anyways, there are hundreds of other verses that say the same thing.

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I can't understand that, when I was reading his material there, I was just, the word

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I would use would be flabbergasted, doesn't it make you sit and ponder when a scholar is telling you, you can't do that with the original text, you're actually misinterpreting it, doesn't it make you say, well, can

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I try and find a scholar to refute that? Doesn't it make you say, let's stay with this issue until we have this result?

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This is a debate, after all. You would think so. You would think so, but anyone who's listened to the debate between Dave Hunt and Dr.

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Piper, that's P -I -P -A, everybody hears that and thinks that I'm saying Piper, it's

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Dr. Joseph Piper, Greenville Presbyterian Seminary, knows that when that debate took place, the very same thing took place in a live setting as takes place in the written setting of Debating Calvinism.

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By the way, this is what I love about doing this stuff live, someone, Sola Fide and Channel, just popped into the screen the

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Amazon .com URL for Debating Calvinism, and it's there.

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It's already available for pre -order from Amazon, and you can see the cover, and I'm very thankful to Discover, they did fix the main thing on the cover.

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I'm glad to know this, I'd actually written to Multnomah this week and hadn't gotten back yet from them whether this one thing on the cover had been fixed, and they did.

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This wasn't what you had mentioned, that's too late unfortunately, but it is there, it's

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Amazon .com, so maybe ye of the other side of the wall, this may be something we need to take a clue from and possibly consider making available as well, need to get set up getting it and stuff like that because it's already on Amazon.

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If I can just jump in and say that, I would very, very highly recommend this book that is coming out,

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Debating Calvinism, or Calvinism Debated, which one is it? Debating Calvinism. Debating Calvinism.

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Simply because as a pastor, it's only been in the last three years that I've come from the other side myself, and so I'm looking at this with very fresh eyes, knowing the paradigm

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I had of my position was that I was somewhere in the middle between Calvinism and Arminianism, and I never really got into the field of battle, thinking that I was high above it, and really what

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I believe this book will do is for the vast amount of people that are in the middle that say this is a debate we don't really have to get into,

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Scripture talks about both, and people have their feet firmly planted in midair as I did on the issue, not realizing that if you're not embracing the

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Calvinist position, you are embracing the Arminian. There isn't a biblical or even a intellectually sound middle position, and what

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I really believe will take place is that many who are sitting on the fence, what I said to you in an email,

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James, was what you've done here is electrified the fence. Electrified the fence. People have to jump one way or the other.

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Well, you know, and I recognize that there are going to be some who jump the other direction, and I've had people who have actually said that George Bryson won the debate last year on the subject of who is in control of salvation, and I appreciate that.

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I then ask folks what their background on the subject is, and I've heard of some people, oh yeah,

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James White lost that, he couldn't answer free will, and then people say, have you, do you know anything about what's called compatibilism?

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Nope, never heard of it. Have you read anything about Calvin? Nope, never read anything. And it's like, oh, okay, well, I guess

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I can understand, you know, where you're coming from now, but I recognize that's going to happen. As long as a person comes away, and my biggest concern from the beginning with that book has been,

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I want to make sure it doesn't confuse people because of the format. I mean, when it's a debate, you have to go back and forth, and we try to do it in subjects, but still, as you saw, there are times when a subject will come up in an earlier section that is much more thoroughly addressed in a later section, and there just wasn't anything you could do about it because though I did everything

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I could to stay right on one subject, I will be very honest, Mr.

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Hunt doesn't do a good job staying on one subject, and anybody who, even his fans who have ever listened to him speak at a conference, no,

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I am not in any way, shape, or form maligning him or being unkind to say that Dave Hunt has never finished a discussion on the same subject that he started it on.

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Never. I've never heard it, and that's one of the things that sort of makes him endearing in a public setting is that he'll be going along, and all of a sudden, he'll start chasing a rabbit, and then he chases another rabbit, and pretty soon, he's in another county.

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Well, that's fine, you know, that's not a big deal, but in a debate, it's extremely difficult, and my concern has been from the beginning that someone who has no idea what the subject's about, that there's so much jumping around that it'd be difficult for them, so I'm hoping that's not the case, and I'm sure that there'll be lots of folks who really appreciate the effort anyways.

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At least we're not modeling a God dishonoring ecumenism.

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Absolutely. I share that concern, but that's true in any debate. People that have no idea about the issues can be confused because people are saying opposite things, but like in any debate,

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I think it's important when they will actually get to the book that one side is providing exegesis and sticking with that, and the other is using a scattergun approach and not actually dealing with the text to any great degree at all.

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Well, that has been my hope from the beginning, is that people will see at least the difference in the method of presentation, and that will speak for itself.

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So, sir, I thank you very, very much for your comments on that, and are you done with the book now?

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Yeah, just finished it a few minutes ago. All right, excellent. It's a slam dunk, James, and I really believe God's going to hear this.

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Well, excellent. Thank you for the issues that you came up with that I've already, you know, the publisher thinks

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I'm a great reader already because we caught all that stuff. So, no, that's the way to do it is to have other folks help you.

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Thank you very much, sir, for calling in today. No problem, James. All right, God bless. Bye -bye. All right, let's real quick grab

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Frank down in Arkansas before we run out of time here on the dividing line today. Hi, Frank. Hi, Dr.

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White. How are you today? Doing good. How are you? Good. You know, the topic really started off today talking about Strong's Concordance, and, you know,

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I don't think the problem with Eddie Wong is using Strong's Concordance. He's using it the wrong way.

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Well, of course, yeah. You know, I mean, because Strong's really isn't about the English words. It's really about the

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Greek, you know. Well, it's supposed to be. The problem is the only way you can find the Greek words is on the basis of an

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English translation. It is, no matter what you do, the situation you are facing is similar to the example that I gave, and that is you're trying to study

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Shakespeare, but you're doing so on the basis of an exhaustive concordance of Shakespeare as translated into German.

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And the problem is not all German phraseology and terminology is going to accurately represent

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English idioms and things like that. And so no matter what, you've got a second layer of interpretation and translation in there that limits how far you can go.

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That's just all there is to it. It's not that, you know, I'm not trying to tell someone if you have Strong's Exhaustive Concordance, start using it to line your birdcage, because, man, with that thing, you'd have, you'd have to, you'd go through a couple birds before you'd get rid of that.

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It's big enough. It also makes a great weapon if you ever need it. Sure, we use it often at Post -Apology.

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Prosopologion, I'm sorry. Excuse me? I'm not a Greek scholar. There you go. So, prosopologion, and it's not cheris, it's caris, and the one thing that'll ever get you kicked out of channel is if I hear anybody say logos.

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It is logos, or what's worse than logos is logos.

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I mean, that is as bad as it can get. So, anyways, just a few pronunciation errors to avoid while in channel, which is lucky, because you, you know, as long as you can type prosopologion, it looks like you know what you're talking about.

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But anyways, no, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it. We, you know, you can hit somebody upside the head with it and go to jail for that, but the point is that don't try to make it do what it's, even its author has never intended it to do.

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And then, of course, with Dave Hunt, then to turn it into the, you know, a sufficient tool as long as you're on your knees.

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Well, you know, when you're on your knees, I really think that the Holy Spirit of God is going to cause you to want to test your traditions personally.

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So, anyway, thank you very much, Frank. Thank you, Doc. All right, God bless. Bye -bye. All right.

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Well, we had another call there from the, from prosopologion, which is the name of our worldwide chat channel.

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And, you know, sometimes I get folks that complain because I mentioned that. Quick and plain and get in channel.

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That's the easiest way to get around it. It's, it provides a, prosopologion is the equivalent for our webcast of a studio audience.

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Okay. We don't have a laugh track, you know, a fake canned laugh track back there. We have, oops,

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I turned that off. We have, thank you very much. We have a live studio audience.

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And sometimes, like I said, they popped up the, the Amazon URL and I did not know it was there.

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That is a neat thing to be able to have available is the folks in channel. And I use these folks all the time, hopefully in a good way.

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In the sense I'll, I'll come in and say, man, I need to find such and so. And we have some real sharp folks in prosopologion that know how to use

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Google a lot better than I do. And they'll track stuff down like, like you just would not believe. So it's a, it's a neat source, a neat little community, our worldwide chat channel.

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And so right now they're all playing sounds, which thankfully I, I have turned off the moment, or you'd be hearing a wave of clapping, a wave of rolling on the floor, laughing, and one of me laughing all at the same time.

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So thankfully I turned those sounds off because that would, that would really sound very strange. You all have heard that.

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However, when I've forgotten that in the past, and there've been some embarrassing situations, even when I was interviewing people, when people would start maybe the

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Braveheart thing where, where William Wallace is screaming freedom right before his execution or something like that, that's, that happens too.

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But anyway, that's what prosopologion is all about. And you can learn about that on our web page.

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By the way, a little bit of an update on AOMN .org. We're sort of following the blog idea.

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I haven't had a lot of time to work on it this week. I did, however, just mention in passing a little something about the incarnation and about John 5 on the, the main page article of the blog, as we put it.

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And you'll notice I've now put a archive section down at the bottom. You click on that and the stuff that basically needs to sort of fall off the bottom goes into the archives.

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And so if you, if you're listening by archive to the dividing line, you hear me talking about something on the blog, on the front page, a link or something like that.

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For example, I put the link to the Our Mormons Trinitarian article that I mentioned Tuesday.

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I put it on the website, I think yesterday. So you can follow that up if you wanted to. If you can't find it, go down and check the, check the archive section, depending on how long it's been, how many things will show up on the blog, how long we're letting it run or things like that.

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One last thing, don't forget, next Tuesday night, five o 'clock

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Mountain Standard Time, Eric Svensson and myself, Jerry Matitix, the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, all those questions, odes, the odes of Solomon section 19.

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Are you sure, Jerry, that this is a Jewish Christian here? Jerry, where did

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Josephus say that James was in his late eighties when the

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Jews killed him and that you have used as historical evidence? And Jerry, was that a part of your conversion? Was that, was that one of the non -facts that was a part of your conversion from Presbyterianism to Roman Catholicism?

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And how about all these other issues that we've, that we've dealt with? Let's talk about Adolph Foss and let's talk about all this stuff.

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Next Tuesday evening, the 18th of November, here on The Dividing Line, we'll go at least 80 minutes on that program to get as much in as we can.

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So do not forget that. Tell your friends, it's announced on the website, believe it or not.