A Twitter Convo, David Bernard Podcast on the Trinity, Open Phones

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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and greetings welcome to the dividing line on a cool and well it's actually very nice outside as far as temperature goes but it's uh it's raining we're not used to that here in phoenix but we're thankful to see it happening we do need it once in a while we don't get it very often so um we're getting a nice gentle rain that's actually continuing for periods of time right now so we uh we need it so yes it's a coogee day um there won't be too many of those left uh to the to the grave uh sadness of rich who secretly really um in his in his dreams wishes that he could uh he could pull it off but he just knows he it's it's not for him so anyway i'm going to be looking at a uh webcast that uh oh and i was gonna grab that book sorry about that i was gonna pick up david bernard's oneness of god from my office and i forgot to grab run in there and grab it it's my my copy is very very old david bernard's pretty much the chief theologian for the united pentecostal church international which is the used to be almost the only uh oneness jesus only trinity denying um organization and then late 80s there were a lot of split offs especially because of how extremely narrow and legalistic the upci was as far as dress and everything um and i think they've lightened up a little bit uh over the over the decades but now there are other groups out there anyways david bernard is still the the leading theologian i did two radio debates i don't think i list them uh in my debates but radio programs with him um many many years ago on uh the trinity issue and i believe speaking in tongues or something um i forget what it was but um we have extended the opportunity of doing debates with for a very long time for the simple reason that every december for 17 years well at least 16 of the 17 i have been traveling to saint charles missouri which is within a stone's throw of the headquarters of the upci and so you know we've done at least two three times we've done the we've had oneness people show up we'd love to we'd love to see it happen um extend the invitation again the challenge again to dr bernard because this is this is this is one of the reasons i don't walk away from twitter um as frustrating and nasty as twitter tends to be uh somebody yesterday tweeted me this link and i do not always have time to be looking at uh what is sent to me and i don't see everything i mean if i've been gone for a while i don't i don't sit there you know scrolling through oh no i just don't have time to but i saw this and i clicked on it and uh downloaded it and found that the primary person and this is a this is just recently this is the past couple weeks the primary person that is behind both their discussion of the and theology was me and they're still referring to a to radio debates that were done what 15 20 years ago i'm like wow what what are you what yeah i'm serving audio you know um oh okay so sort of like wow um why go back to something like that let's uh let's let's let's do the full -on debate i mean radio debates are they're better than nothing um but they're almost always extremely short and uh lacking in depth and especially lacking in meaningful interaction between the two sides so uh there you go um so we'll be looking at that in a second but before jumping into that and then some at some point while i'm responding to bernard i'll open up the phones and we'll take your phone calls is it but not yet i'm not even given the number yet what i wanted to do uh was to look at um i um i wrote a tweet yesterday morning and um uh this is this is old news this is nothing new if you listened to my sermon at the g3 pre -conference if you've listened to this program if you listened to it last year during the mlk 50 thing and then the t4g if you've listened to when i've gone over colossians 3 i've gone over ephesians 4 and 2 and 4 and um you've heard all this before but it's amazing uh how many illustrations we are given of people who will on the one hand uh tip the hat toward the bible and toward christianity but when it comes to especially the issue of race and justice and ethnicities uh the bible just needs to conform to what i say it needs to conform to and it is plainly evident that for these folks they're not deriving their key worldview uh foundations from the text they they're driving them from sociology and politics and and uh history and things like that and then shifting that into uh the reading of the new testament and so uh just before the program i started getting this conversation with someone on twitter called black conservative well it's at black republican but then it says black conservative there's a website and stuff and here's what i tweeted yesterday uh i said let's make this clear please you have died with christ colossians 3 3 you have been raised with him colossians 2 12 there is only one defining identity for a true believer and it's jesus this unifies the body all identity politics ethnocentricity intersectionality denies the faith because it does away with that fundamental reality that the defining identity that a person who has died with christ that that's it for the past relationships i'm sorry what happened to your great great great grandpa but you died to christ and so have i so even if you could prove that my great great great great great grandpa did something to your great great great great great grandpa there is no longer any reason for you and i to not be reconciled if we understand the gospel if we understand unity with christ if we understand the imputed righteousness of jesus christ and if we don't understand those things then we're going to be keeping looking back there going hey hey look what happened that was terrible and i think i think somebody was related to you did that and therefore d vision as we see all over the place right now as you see right now that would have destroyed the early church there would have been no koinonia john could not have written in first john chapter two i was just um i have two students who survived a online greek class that we started last year i started for my family but my family didn't make it but uh these two did and uh so we're we're reading in first john right now and in first john two if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light we have fellowship koinonia one with another and the blood of jesus christ his son cleanses us from all from all sin huh nothing about looking backwards holding grudges from the past ethnocentricity racial reconciliation it seems like the reconciliation has already taken place oh yeah that does seem to be the biblical teaching and how else could it be how could there have been a single table of the lord in the church in corinth or ephesus or colossi or rome given the current theological mandates of so many in the church today that make as their their ultimate priority ethnocentricity how could there have been you would have had to have had multiple tables because there would be people all over the place saying hey that guy is from that tribe and 150 years ago they did that to us and then others say yeah but that's from that nation and 300 years ago they did that to us and everybody in the roman empire had some enemy like that and yet in the early church they all sat down one table why because their identity in christ destroyed all that it wipes it out it's gone quit trying to bring it up why do you bring it up why do you want to do this what is the accomplishment it's just astonishing to me every time i say something just basic the speed at which it is twisted and turned into something i can't even recognize is amazing because as soon as i say this people say well the bible recognizes that people aren't all the same as if i'm saying people are all the same i'm not saying people are all the same i'm saying in the fellowship of the body the unity that puts us together is the foundational bedrock recognition that i've been saved by the work of another you've been saved by the work of another it's the same other we're involved by the same spirit we have the exact same standing before god and all that other stuff has been forgiven in jesus christ that's how we can have unity and if we don't have this there will be no unity there will be black churches and there will be vietnamese churches and there will be brazilian churches and there will be russian churches and there'll be all sorts of division the very thing the apostle paul was saying no no no no no there can't be there can't be and that's exactly what we're seeing we are seeing black christians in america saying hey black church man that's good and we're gonna keep it you all just y 'all just go away just all you gotta do is look at history to know why we did this i just it's the church you look at the bible not history you look at what christ did not what happened in one particular nation because this doesn't transfer over to someplace else this doesn't make any sense in other countries so you end up with all sorts of different churches and divisions and everything else because there is a fundamental lack of recognition of what god has done in christ well that means you don't believe that there are any males and females left i got that this morning well if we're all one in christ then then uh there can't be any males and females i i truly i just truly believe that critical thought logic and simple rationality it's it's being sucked out of the earth somehow there i think there's i think there's a big old alien probe up there and it's just sucking and people can't think anymore you you how can saying that we all have one standing before god as redeemed sinners have anything whatsoever to do with the fact that the bible plainly teaches that there is a created divine role for men and a created divine role for women are you telling me that the bible says there's a created divine role for black versus white there isn't that's a lie there's nothing in the bible that tells you that a black man has these responsibilities and a white man has these responsibilities and an asian man has these responsibilities no no no that's a lie that's not christian as a christian you do not have the right to believe that it's a lie it's untrue but the bible speaks plainly of the goodness of manhood and that men are held accountable for being men and acting like men that's even a phrase it's found the bible isn't it yeah it is and the same thing for women and we may have the exact same access to god the father through the work of jesus christ and dwelt by the spirit of god men and women together that doesn't change that in the other creation category and then in the ecclesiological category where you have direct revelation from god as to how the church is to function that god makes distinctions between men and women but he does not make distinctions between ethnicities he does not don't even go to the june gentile thing even well -read people on your side recognize that does not map over besides that that dividing wall has been destroyed so so i post this yesterday and most people are like right on yep that's that's important that's that's really important about an hour ago black republican black conservative again it's at black republican but it says black conservative mr white it's always mr white all the way through have you really forgotten who thrust all this racial identity onto all these so -called black africans now i'm concerned because there was something else um i i why does twitter do this facebook is worse let's just be honest i mean i don't even try to follow a comment thread on facebook it's a what's what's there's no reason to uh it can go every which direction and you can't find things and within 24 hours it's all just such a mess it's like i don't even bother but twitter is almost as bad um and there was something else um that was said before this but i've just got to go with what's here um it was hundreds and hundreds of years of demonic white supremacy sir you don't have the right to set fire to reality and then quoted from a throckmorton article on racial reconciliation uh is colorblind theology blind this is from may of last year where throckmorton tried to get involved with all the silliness about calling for a ecumenical council to have me identify as a heretic for uh daring to teach what paul taught in colossians and ephesians um and then quotes from it my response was brief because i was leaving the house right there and i said you're right i don't that is i don't have the right to set fire to reality i said i cited scripture god has the right because everyone who has attempted to respond to my original tweet i just hasn't even tried don't even pretend to make a biblical argument don't even pretend that the verses i cited weren't relevant don't even pretend to try to engage it exegetically not not not just not worry about that you just need to you know you're just too focused on all that bible stuff uh you need to be thinking about this other stuff that's so much more important um said mr white you're too much these sad arguments are not on the same level as your arguments for the trinity they are weak and wobbly but you must remember this and you remember it well the black church is a living institutional rejection of your claim um you know i this this mythology that there is a unified black church is just that it's mythology um there are wonderful black christians there are wonderful churches that are majority black but i'm very very concerned about any church that wants to that wants to be that way that wants to be any majority i'm concerned about whether it's white or black or asian yeah and i know there are korean baptist churches and chinese baptist churches and but there has to be an openness to all of the saints and it's interesting that it's primarily in minority groups that you have a self -segregation taking place it's it's odd but the point is there's no monolithic church there's no monolithic black church or asian church or anything else there's no monolithic white church all that is is just a is just mythology and there are good black churches and then there are not so good black churches there are good white churches and they're not so good white churches uh and i'm speaking simply theologically and biblically um but i will say this in the united states uh there are massive examples of quote -unquote black churches that it's difficult to determine which is more predominant in that church religion or politics now there are a couple of big churches in texas exact same thing except in reverse and i think both are reprehensible absolutely reprehensible um so i don't know how the black church is a living institutional rejection of the claim that i made based upon colossians 3 i guess we didn't all die with him i guess we didn't all rise with him i guess we don't have unity in and normally what i what i get from these types are well yeah sure that's all true and then it's like run off to sociology run off to politics run off to history it's like whoa i ain't going with you i ain't going with you because you see what i believe has to be true in united states united kingdom germany the netherlands russia ukraine south africa australia what i believe has to be true all around the world i don't have the luxury of having an americanized view of things what i believe has to be true everywhere so i ain't going with you there sorry bye -bye hasta la vista but please recognize you're the one separating from the guy who's doing the scripture thing so when i said i've decided to respond to you on the dividing line uh you didn't seem to know what that was and then says webcast it all seems a bit dramatic don't you think not really how long we've been doing this since the 1980s and the archives go back to 1998 so no it's not you know we we really are we've got what 21 years now of archives for 98 got something 80s okay yeah well anyway uh it goes it goes back um yeah uh no it's not dramatic at all uh it's just simply the reality of what we do here uh so anyway so i'm sure that there will be plenty more uh tweets sent my direction uh that won't have anything to do and will not even begin to make a meaningful biblical argument that's not their thing that's not their thing uh no i didn't uh because i mentioned uh south africa as well to someone in channel just refuting what they were just saying all right uh i did i did just get confirmation on my phone uh that i will be joining uh well first of all i'm going to be doing the bar podcast pretty soon finally got that past rich because evidently rich doesn't want me to do the bar podcast i don't know because from what they told me they've been sending stuff in and he's just like just doesn't pass it through to me and so i made him a g3 and it's like well hey dude yeah no problem and so you know finally we've got that worked out so but uh you know i think it maybe it's because rich wants to be on it i don't know uh because he keeps saying he doesn't want the the rich cam but i i just really get the feeling he's just waiting to wait to install it and and uh you know maybe you know start off on his own you know i don't know i don't know what's going to happen but but anyway um but uh so i noticed that another fellow member of apology at church was on um uh cross politic and uh you know i've i've said a lot of nice things about these guys uh on the program and and and stuff but you know it's just it's just crickets you know so i i finally just mentioned i wonder if they're brave enough to have you know another member uh from apology at church on on their program uh because believe me i'm not i'm not nearly as controversial as marcus is that's who they just had on who was busily talking about how taxation is theft and uh so uh we have a bail fund going on for marcus uh just so we can get him back out every once in a while anyways um so so i start i start getting these messages uh these text messages on my phone well we'd love to have you on let's uh you know let's talk about it you know and so how about this date uh nope i'm in texas how is it this date i'm flying to london but you gotta let me know about them you can't just i hang on to them because you're never here and i put them in a bucket for the day you and i will actually be able to sit down and actually talk about these things which never seems to happen but that's not my fault because you're you're doing world traveler thing man you know i'm here holding down the fort is what it is everybody in the audience knows that you can just watch the program see how many times i can't fake this background okay you you could not i could not reproduce this anyplace else so that means i am here uh doing the programs so there would be an opportunity you know just put a list together it says these are the people you know and you know so yeah yeah he swung the microphone then he swung it back so he's just decided yeah yeah and people in channel are saying we need the rich camp so um and people at g3 were saying we need the rich camp so there you go uh i i think that anyhow um yes dave bernard that's right uh i'm gonna cover a couple things i may come back to this because there's a lot of uh there's a whole section here uh where dave bernard well let me back up shifting shifting gears too quickly here uh cannot assume that everybody in the audience is overly familiar with uh what oneness pentecostalism is um basically one is pentecostalism is the modern embodiment of the ancient heresy known as modalism um sebalianism uh patrapassionism there's all sorts of different words it is a it is a group that denies the trinity and does so not by denying specifically the deity of christ but by affirming the deity of christ in a unitarian fashion it's one of the earliest heresies of the church it was actually dealt with by the church before subordinationism so in the second century you have a condemnation of numerous condemnations of modalism sebalianism patrapassionism and that's before arias comes along and denies the deity of christ so this is a an old heresy in its current incarnation it's rather new uh it has well we we there are a couple debates if refresh my memory here that the debate that i did with sabin in 1999 on long island if i recall correctly the video recording of that is not complete well it was terrible i know that but is there an audio see i'm not the and how long is that because the there's a video up too but it's not the whole debate and that's my concern um 215 minutes that sounds correct um but anyway we i hope it's all available i i generally don't go back and listen to my own stuff we could ask algo i suppose because he does anyway um so we did the debate with sabin he was probably one of the best known um oneness advocates back in the 90s who had done a debate didn't he do a debate with walter martin with somebody uh maybe on the ankerberg show i i don't remember specifically anyway um and then of course we have the debate from uh brisbane from about wow is it five six years ago now been about five or six years ago uh we had the debate in brisbane with uh roger perkins i believe is his name uh which was interesting um and so then we we do have the radio radio the radio interaction with dave bernard david bernard is basically the chief theologian of the upci and his book the oneness of god is quite old now i think it was early 80s maybe so i was gonna grab and see what the copyright might have been late 70s for i don't for that matter i don't know um and yeah so here's yeah someone just posted in channel uh yeah walter martin and e calvin bisner versus nathaniel irshan and robert savin yeah yeah and if and if i recall correctly savin left the upci and in fact my recollection is that at some point savin embraced justification by faith alone and rejected uh the upci is very works oriented salvation system but i didn't hear that he became an orthodox trinitarian i don't know i just going off of stuff from a long time ago here so anyway uh if you want to have a a scholarly presentation of oneness theology then dave bernard's gonna be your guy um and that's why we have pursued having a debate with him and and again are are open to it this december i'll i'll be in saint charles he doesn't have to travel doesn't have to leave his home um we can we can come up with a location uh we'll do all the work and uh whether that'll happen or not you know there you go um so like i said i was informed on twitter yesterday i think it was yesterday or today um no yes it was yesterday about this uh webcast and the person on twitter just simply wanted to know how i would respond to the stuff that was said about me having a problem in my gospel once i started listening to it i was brought up numerous times and i'm like oh and no my ears were not burning i i asked somebody that recently and they didn't understand what i was asking so i guess that's yet another one of those dated things that you yeah anyway so um here we go let's uh take a listen and interact with a couple things here and then we'll open the phones and uh stuff like that so let's just start with this he was in the beginning with god the logos has given the personal pronoun he is this the correct translation because nowhere in greek philosophy was a logos ever considered to be a person or a being it seemed to be an it or a this and that and unitarians would argue that the word word is used 300 times in the new testament and it is always referred to as an it or this and that now so there's a question being asked of dr bernard i'll play his answer here in a second but um just in in passing uh this question is based upon a inadequate understanding of what's called lexical semantics the term logos has a very wide semantic domain um it can have reference to a large number of things um and so it's very contextually derived and in john 1 1 the logos is specifically said to be eternal to be in the present prostantion with the father and as to his nature the logos is identified as being the us god and that all things are made through him and apart from him is nothing made which is made and that life is itself is made in him and that the logos becomes flesh in john 1 14 and so christians down through the ages have recognized that this logos is not some impersonal thing it's amazing to me i know i understand fully why so many commentaries will be focused upon looking at the philosophical use of logos in greek philosophy as if that's the primary background of the gospel of john i think that is a major mistake if you want to start with a truly biblical understanding of what the logos would be to a first century jew like john uh you're gonna start with the memra you're gonna start with the the word in jewish theology primarily in the tanakh but that was certainly developed in some very interesting fashions in the intertestamental period i think that's a significantly more accurate background uh to to draw from rather than just simply some greek philosophical concept being imported in toto straight into the story of jesus by one of the apostles seems very strange but you'll certainly find that in a lot of commentaries here is uh dr bernard's response well i really don't have a problem with the translation i do recognize that uh greek nouns the greek noun logos all nouns in greek are masculine feminine so you have to use logos as masculine so it's going to have a masculine pronoun regardless of how you would interpret it in english now i don't really have a problem with the masculine pronoun in english in in looking towards the later manifestation jesus christ but i do recognize that logos is not intended to be a separate person now that's just an assertion why how do you recognize that how do you recognize that in light of the assertions concerning the logos and the distinction of the logos from the os um even especially in light of the parallel in john 118 uh where clearly you're you're you have the monogamous theos being distinguished from yet perfectly unified with the father it's the logos incarnate who exegetes explains the person of the father these see again for those who aren't overly familiar with oneness theology and sadly that's a large portion of folks these days um it's not the most popular or growing group but they are there um there's been a lot of controversy over the years concerning the fact that there are a number of well -known christian singing groups uh that come out of oneness pentecostalism have a history in oneness pentecostalism and that this raises all sorts of issues as to those groups participation in christian uh gatherings and and so on and so forth but uh in oneness theology god is one person so it's it's unitarian monotheism just like uh islam it's unitarian monotheism but they affirm the deity of christ well how they do that they turn jesus into multiple persons though they don't use term person in the same way so jesus is a human man indwelt by god the father so jesus's prayer life and again this is when you read bernard's book he just well any anyone this person is just going to struggle horribly and in this podcast they're asking the tough questions and a lot of had to do this will struggle horribly to try to explain the prayer life of jesus because if jesus if there's only one person of god then who is jesus praying to and i don't believe dr bernard has an answer for that it's certainly he certainly didn't in the podcast well that's just that's just a mystery because jesus is unique well well wait a minute jesus uses personal pronouns and given the constant differentiation made between the father and the son they are never confused even john 10 30 i and the father we are one s men not the singular the plural we are one um given that uh the answer to jesus's prayer life is very clear and this is this is the great achilles heel i just don't believe that there is any defense for the one that's positioned at this point um because the clarity of biblical revelation but from their perspective jesus is two persons the father the deity and the son is the human being so in their theology then the son is a created being came into existence in bethlehem not eternally god um that's just the that's just the human aspect the divine aspect the father and he indwells jesus and so jesus is god because he's the father um so the prayer issue becomes extremely difficult to understand from their perspective because is that the human side praying to the divine side then how can the human side say glorify me with the father glory father i had with you before the world was because the human side was created for his birth in bethlehem so none of it makes any sense they have to try to get into very very difficult explanations based upon well the logos and god's looking to the four of the future and so he's acting as if the future is already reality in this sense and it gets extremely complex and convoluted and complicated and things like that but you just had the assertion here well the logos isn't a person the natural reading of john would say yes he is i think you know the king james says the saying was in the beginning of god so it kind is neutral there you know it doesn't commit itself one way or the other well who does there would be in reference to the logos and if you translate the logos as person and i can guarantee you every one of the king james translators believe the logos was a person uh then that wouldn't make any sense uh which i think is probably accurate in the context so it's not really until you get to jesus christ that you definitely are attributing the the human personal identity of jesus christ who is a man well the logos became flesh but the logos hasn't changed it's the same logos that he turned existed eternally becomes flesh in the person of jesus christ and would be held as glory the glory is of the unique one from the father full of grace and truth did that just start to be true of the logos of the incarnation of course not now there's more that was said there but then they bring up an objection and guess where the objection came from respond to someone like james white who i remember it i can't the last i mean did did you say did you say that the radio programs are on sermon audio too is there a date on them 2001 wow because see my recollection was we did both of those the same day but you're saying they were two years apart see what happens when the years go rolling by um it's been nearly 20 years yeah it's been nearly 20 years uh since a radio encounter and the the first objection they bring up is is from is from our is from that that's okay all right respond to someone like james white who who when he looks at that passage he says this is an acute accusative case and he says that the word prose in greek would uh it literally means face to face and that it indicates intimacy well first of all i would say well first of all that's not just me um as i have noted many times in fact in my debate with robert sabin i specifically quoted dr at robertson on this issue so it's not like i'm claiming some standing as defining the the greek language there are greek grammarians who have made the same observation and i have simply repeated it and that is that you have to recognize what is being asserted in each one of the three clauses of john 1 -1 in the beginning was the word the word is without without beginning does not have a point in origin by the use of the imperfect form of ime there rather than the use of the aristogenita uh no reference to beginning point origin creation as far back as you want to push the beginning the word is and the word was prostate on there was a personal relationship between the logos and god now who is being referred to by god is going to be defined for us all the way down verse 18 it's the book ending thing it's going to be repeated down there and defined for us more clarity specifically the father but what's first being stated is that there is an eternal relationship between the logos and the father and then the logos is as to his nature and this is an eternity past the the one thing the one is position collapses here because the sun is not truly god until the incarnation well the sun doesn't even exist until until the incarnation uh the sun's a created being uh so the sun's not eternal well the logos is eternal and the logos is as to his nature god not the they have to actually have to twist it so far as to say well you know god's looking at it from an eternal perspective and from the eternal perspective you can sort of see that that the logos is being treated as as if the incarnations of present reality even though it happens in time and it's it's it's exactly what happens when you you've created an external belief and then you try to force on text rather than driving it from the text the text tells us that just as eternal as the logos is and just as the eternally the relationship between logos and the father has existed the logos is as to his nature deity uh that's what that's what we're being told that's what john 1 1 is is saying you know the greek can only take you so far you cannot build your entire doctrine out of a greek word and of course nobody is you didn't hear me doing that did you what you heard me doing was taking all of john 1 1 actually the prologue of john verses 1 through 18 and harmonizing all of it and deriving my belief from it i'm i did not base a theology on one one word um this is why a debate is useful because if that allegation was made especially in cross -examination it's going up in flames immediately that's what is so valuable about that because i can sit here and respond to them they can then respond to me i can respond to them and go back and forth and back and forth and back and forth but when y 'all get together in the same room the dynamic changes it changes everything that's what debate is for and we're up for it because you you can translate the same arguments back into english you don't have to know greek greek can help you but certain translations or certain grammatical points uh certain word definitions can open up possibilities but they're not going to be definitive on a major theological issue just one word standing alone and of course you we see where this is going that's that's not what i did um and that then opens the opportunity to saying okay you tell me what prostantheon means how is the logos prostantheon using the imperfect form of i mean and then i'll explain my side and then you can let the people you know judge who are who are listening uh so there's there's a lot more on that and it and it's fascinating but i it took me a while to get to the part where the issue about my theology came up and this is interesting because i do i don't i honestly cannot remember ever having listened to the um the debates that we did on the radio maybe i did at some point immediately thereafter but i i don't go back and listen to a lot of that stuff and but i do have a vague recollection of the radio host asking us both whether what we believed on this determined whether a person is a christian or not and so uh that's where this issue came up so i'm going to pick up the the pace on it to 1 .2