Radio Free Geneva! Robert Jeffress, Roman Catholicism, the Reformation, & Kevin Thompson on John 6

Our mighty fortress is our God. The bold one cannot fail.

I don't like Calvinists because they've chosen to follow John Calvin instead of Jesus Christ. I have a problem with them.

They're following men instead of the Word of God. I'll never be a misfortune stripper.

And I'm gonna be the one standing on top of my hands, standing on top of my feet, standing on a stump and crying out,

He died for all. Those who elected were selected. For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe.

His cross hath not our grave, and not with cruel age.

Well, first of all, James, I'm very ignorant of the reformers. On earth is not as it was.

I think I probably know more about Calvinism than most of the people who call themselves Calvinists.

Did we apply? To love the world, that He gave

His only begotten Son, that whosoever. Ladies and gentlemen,

James White is a hyper -Calvinist. Now, whatever we do in Baptist life, we don't need to be teaming up with hyper -Calvinists.

I've said the other day in class that I don't understand the difference between hyper -Calvinism and Calvinism. It seems to me that Calvin was a hyper -Calvinist.

Right, I don't think there is typically any difference between Calvinism and hyper -Calvinism.

Read my blood. And now, from our underground bunker, deep beneath Bruton -Parker

College, where no one would think to look, safe from all those moderate Calvinists, Dave Hunt fans, and those who have read and re -read

George Bryson's book, we are Radio Free Geneva, broadcasting the truth about God's freedom to save for His own eternal glory.

Now, the question I have these days is, does Bruton -Parker still exist? I was actually asking someone, because I don't even know.

It wasn't doing too well there, and certain people didn't help it out by their presence there either, so I don't even know.

We might need to get out of the bunker and sort of look around and go, Hey, where did everybody go?

There's weeds everywhere. I don't know what happened. It is out in the middle of the boonies there in Georgia.

I've been close to it, but not quite there. Anyways, welcome to Radio Free Geneva.

We were going to do a program last week. We were providentially hindered from being able to do so, so here we are.

We're planning on doing another program tomorrow, not Radio Free Geneva, but another program tomorrow, so we'll sort of catch up, because this weekend, again,

I'm gone. I'm going to be back down in Dallas and then from, well, Fort Worth, and then from there on to Washington.

The details on the Washington stuff are on the website, if you want to be involved.

We talked about it last week with Michael Fallon and so on and so forth, so that's what's coming up.

We're going to try to sneak some stuff in here this week to keep up with events, because so much stuff is flying by and going past us, and we're not able to keep up with everything, because, well, things are very busy these days, and trying to keep up with everything is difficult.

Radio Free Geneva is generally a program where we defend the Reformed faith against normally fairly obscure or bad or poor misrepresentations.

There are sometimes better stuff. We've taken on some of the better individuals on the program as well, but that's what we're focused upon.

Starting off today, we will be getting to a specific anti -Calvinist here in a little while from New Orleans, but before we go to that,

I think it would be good to, in light of the anniversary of the traditional beginning of the

Reformation coming up, really, I'm going to spend the rest of my life in the 500 -year window of the

Reformation, because you've got stuff going on, I mean, all the way to well past when

I'm going to be around, because you've got from 1517 to Calvin dies in 1564, so that's a fairly lengthy window there that you could be looking at.

There's going to be lots of times over the next number of decades where we're going to be able to say, hey, it was 500 years ago that such and such happened, and this happened, and so on and so forth, so it's sort of really a season of Reformational celebration, you might say.

But, obviously, the Reformation is relevant to the subject of the end of the unity of what was called

Christendom in Europe. Now, there had already been a split between the East and the West in 1054.

There were many reasons for that split, some theological, most were cultural, to be perfectly honest with you.

Eastern Orthodoxy had to deal with Islam, the iconoclastic controversy, view of the priesthood, things like that had led to a rather, let's be honest, less than thought out split in 1054, and so you'd already had that major schism.

And, of course, the Roman Church, there was reason why the Inquisition preexisted 1517.

You had various groups that had serious issues with the hierarchy of the

Roman Catholic Church. There were, you know, you had the period of Pornocracy in the 10th century, 9th, 10th century, and you had the

Babylonian Schism of the Church, where you had the Avignon Papacy and the Roman Papacy, and just all sorts of problems that had led to smaller schisms, small groups that were frequently out in the mountains, stuff like that, and Rome often acted in incredibly militaristic fashion against these particular groups.

But, obviously, the Protestant Reformation was much more of an open, and it had political, theological, cultural elements to it.

Very few people today, sadly, have read much on the subject of the Reformation. That's why we've been going through the subject on the program.

We'll be continuing looking at some of the background issues before we even can get to Luther, but it's obviously a very, very, very important subject, very, very important issue.

Many people today don't see its relevance in the modern Church, and I've said many times the vast majority of Protestants, and if you don't even know where that term came from,

I didn't. Did I save that? Let me see real quick if I saved that.

I may have not. Yeah, I forgot to move it over to Dropbox, unfortunately.

And we're not set up for me to be able to. Well, let me see.

I might be able to get over to my other system.

I'm not even sure if I'm connected to the right computer here, to be honest with you. No, I'm not, because that must be this computer.

Someday I'll have a network where I'll actually be able to get to my other computer. It's just never—there's too many

Windows machines around here. The Macs don't like them. But on my other computer, my main computer, which happens to be in the other room right now,

I have a video of Kenneth Copeland, and I just forgot to move it over to Dropbox so it would be available to me, unfortunately.

And Copeland and the word faithers truly compromised.

I mean, we obviously know they're compromised theologically. But when it comes to church history and Roman Catholicism, I mean, these guys are all over Francis.

They think he's the best thing to slice bread. And Copeland was talking about this upcoming conference they're doing.

I know I was doing a conference someplace. He's got to make his millions somehow. And he used the term

Protestant. And we're still protesting, he said. I don't know how old that guy is, but man, he hasn't changed a bit since I was in high school.

So he's got to be way up there. But anyway, clearly had no idea where the term

Protestant came from. I wonder what percentage of modern

Protestants would have any earthly idea what the historical background of that term is.

And I wonder how many would inaccurately argue that it was related to Luther's protest.

And the posting of 95 Theses has nothing to do with it. It was a legal mechanism whereby the minority of the

Diet of Spire in 1529 could protest against the actions of the Roman Catholic majority in the

Holy Roman Empire. It was electors at the Diet of Spire, Spire II, in 1529.

That's where it comes from. It had some minor theological element to it because it was the

Lutheran electors versus the Roman Catholic electors. But it's pretty amazing.

Anyways, so many people have no earthly idea what the Reformation was about. Many Baptists, many

Southern Baptists, just feel rather disconnected from those events and from Luther as an individual.

And that's understandable. Luther was a high church liturgical

Lutheran. And so even if they read him, which the vast majority do not, it just doesn't seem to click, doesn't really seem to connect.

And so Sunday, well sometime last week,

I started seeing these notifications that First Baptist Church Dallas, the big,

Robert Jeffress, the man that you have seen in the White House. And I remember back, was it

July? Maybe it was July. They had the big patriotic service there and passed out flags and everybody's waving their

American flags. The special music from the choir is

Make America Great Again. And a lot of us at the time were saying to ourselves, well, this certainly illustrates a fundamentally different perspective on the intention and purpose of a worship service.

Between ourselves and this particular strand of Southern Baptist life, which probably is the majority strand of Southern Baptist life.

Well, notifications started coming out that this past Sunday, there was going to be an interview in both morning services.

So this is part of the service, an interview between the pastor and Sean Hannity.

Now, if you've listened and I'm not going to play it, I'm sorry, we have more important things to do.

I'm not going to go back over it, but it's been linked to a thousand times in social media.

You know, I want to pray that Sean Hannity would be saved.

You don't want to see anyone lost in that sense.

I don't like that person's politics, so I don't want him to get saved. If you've got that perspective, you've got a problem.

And I am very concerned, given his

Roman Catholic background, that there's a huge danger when you've been raised in the Roman Catholic Church that you are going to continue to read biblical texts in a way that is skewed by the tradition of the

Roman Catholic Church. Now, Sean Hannity was very squishy, very squishy on the subject of Roman Catholicism.

And he even criticized the dogmatic interpretation of the

Petrine text as they view it in Matthew chapter 16. But when it came to the issue of the gospel,

I don't know about you, but I heard nothing that would give me any confidence that Sean Hannity has truly come to understand what is wrong with the

Roman Catholic gospel. There's a huge difference between going, you know, I just sort of like less formal stuff, or I just sort of, you know,

I'm not so big on the liturgy and the smells and bells.

And, you know, I just I love the music and the big choir and orchestra that you can have in a big

Southern Baptist church. I'll admit I missed some of that.

I was in a big Southern Baptist church. Man, those Christmas and Easter programs were pretty impressive.

I mean, yeah, we even got to the point a couple of times, though it really bugged me that we had live animals.

That never did quite settle right with me, but we did. And, you know, when when a really talented vocalist sings, he's alive with a 250, 300 voice choir and a full orchestra.

Well, that'll that'll give you goosebumps. It really will. Great stuff.

But that's not enough. It's not enough to go, I just really like that. We didn't get that in the Catholic church. And so, you know,

I'm sort of feeling a little a little more at home here. He was there to be interviewed about a movie,

Let There Be Light, I think is what it's called. Now, I don't know anything about the movie. Probably won't see it.

Not for any other reason than I don't watch many movies, don't have much time for that kind of thing. But this was a worship service.

At least it was supposed to be. This is a Sunday morning service. And somewhere in the midst of all that, prior to the sermon, you set up two chairs and you have

Sean Haney to come out to talk about his faith. And what

I heard has been accurately described as moralistic, therapeutic deism.

You know, I, I felt the Lord saying that the life I was living wasn't the right life.

Well, you know, a lot of people feel that and become Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses or Buddhists or join the

Marines. You know, the Marines will help you with that. But that's not conversion and that's not the gospel.

And I think Robert Jefferson knows that. But, and I did raise the question, isn't this interfaith dialogue?

But it's not really, because the faith, there was no representation of another faith unless you're going to talk about therapeutic, moralistic deism.

Because that's where Hannity was. There was no clear understanding of justification, atonement, the finished nature of the work of Christ.

Issues like this, it just wasn't there. And by the way, this was a, on a

Sunday, in the church, in a worship service. It was all the stuff that everyone who has criticized the lack of those things in my dialogue with Yasser Qadi should be all over.

If they're consistent, they would have to say, wow, this, check off every single box.

This was in the church, in front of the people, gathered to worship, with the worship leader, all the way down.

Everything that my dialogue wasn't. But what was different was there was no dialogue.

This is an advertisement. It was an advertisement with a guy who's being called a

Christian. And yet, this raises the issue of Roman Catholics and Protestants today.

And I've been telling people for decades that this time was coming.

As our society contracts the area in which we have freedom to express ourselves, we are going to become more and more in contact with Roman Catholicism.

And people have already posted videos where the pastor of that church was giving the standard,

I would not say accurate, I would find it to be indefensible, but almost

Alexander Hyslop style viewpoint of Roman Catholicism with Dagon the fish god and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

So in the past, he's ripped and snorted on Roman Catholicism, not from the most fair, educated, defensible position.

But he has. And now all of a sudden, that doesn't seem as important. And everybody's going, ah, it's just all politics.

And I saw one guy and you know who you are, and you know, I love you. But as much as what

Robert Jeffress did, I find dangerous, irresponsible, demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of the

Reformation and the issues surrounding it and how it's relevant today.

I do not have the right to kick him out of the kingdom.

And I'm really concerned about so many people that I see who have just decided today that Robert Jeffress isn't a

Christian. He's an unbeliever. You've made your anti -political gospel just as much part of the gospel as they've made politics part of the gospel.

You've got to be careful. You have to remain balanced just because one side, it's very obvious, is seeking political ground and seeking political alliances that I would agree are inappropriate and outside the realm of what we should be doing.

At the same time, you can't go to the other extreme and say, and that means that person's not a

Christian and just, false teacher, throw him out, not a believer. Okay, we can focus on the issues.

But don't you see that by going beyond that to judging the heart of another individual, you are now diminishing the importance of the issues?

This is a lesson that I've learned only over the past decade or so. And there probably would have been a time in my life when

I would have, rah, rah, you bet, throw him out. I apologize if I ever did that, because I don't have the right to do that.

And if we can't figure out how to focus upon teaching without going beyond that to pretending that we can see people's hearts, we're going to have a hard time having any meaningful conversations at all in the future.

So, I was very deeply troubled by what happened at First Baptist Dallas.

I think it shines a light. Folks, this administration is not going to last forever.

At the very least, it can only last seven more years.

I mean, however else you put it. And the fact of the matter is, there are going to be wild -eyed socialist communists in the

White House in the future, unless God does something amazing in waking this nation up to its own self -destruction.

They're going to be there. And all of our groveling at the feet of Caesar is going to come back to haunt us.

And so, don't get me wrong. I think that what Robert Jefferson did was extremely foolish and extremely unwise.

But guess what? Christians do extremely foolish and unwise things. And I know

I'm not going to make friends with a bunch of people by saying, Stop pretending you're

God and judging the hearts of others. You can say, that was foolish, that was wrong, and here's why.

But is it possible that maybe sometimes the here's why part, you haven't thought through well enough, so it's easier just to simply shoot the person?

And that sort of makes up, emotionally, for the lack of really thinking things through? So, it was, you know, to just sit there watching it just went, well.

And a lot of, you know, there are people who are saying, what a betrayal of the Reformation. Well, I don't think

Robert Jefferson really feels all that connected to the Reformation in the first place. And beyond that, you've got to understand that none of the

Reformers would have had anything to do with the Baptists in the first place. Not a single one of them.

And like I said, I walked over the bridge in Zurich where they would give us our third baptism.

So, you've got to be able to hold that together with the reality that, yes, we actually came from the

Reformers, not the Anabaptists. I know, I know, I know, I know. Everybody at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary just fell off their chairs.

But the reality is that our theology, the stream that gave rise to us, is through the

Reformers, not through the Anabaptists. The Anabaptists and us shared a particular focus, but the stream we come from was through the

Reformation. And then when the opportunity arose to be able to promote those things, such as the proper understanding of baptism, and the freedom of conscience to worship as one chooses, then those things were brought into a

Reformation context rather than coming in from outside. Long story there, there's lots of stuff written by responsible, balanced scholars that would address that subject for you.

So, one of my concerns is, what about Sean Hannity?

I'm just concerned, if someone ever really was able to sit down with him and really, really address the gospel, is the way that he is treated by, like he was treated in that church, you know, the standing ovation and all the stuff that went with that, would that help or hinder his coming to understand the gospel?

Well, you know, God could save anyone, I'm a Calvinist. But we also recognize that, for example, we dishonor the gospel when we present an easy believism and tell people when they walk down an aisle and shake a hand that they have eternal life, and they should never question that.

You are dishonoring the biblical presentation and confirming people in their own self -righteousness when you do things like that.

And so we warn people against that. So we don't want to act against God's purposes in that way.

So, I was troubled by what I saw there, and we do live in a day of massive nominalism.

I don't get to identify who that is, but I do get to go, and the reason we have so much nominalism, the reason we have so many people in our churches that do not give any evidence of a desire for holiness, they don't look at what

God's Word says about their lives or about how they're supposed to live their lives, the reason is because of the way in which we present the gospel, the way that we model it in the church itself.

And obviously, I have a completely different understanding of how the worship service is supposed to be viewed, so that the focus is upon the glory of God, and the focus is upon the truth of God, and the saints are called to worship

God and bring an obedient heart, and not stand there and give standing ovations to a political figure without regards to whether that political figure has a truly sound understanding of what the gospel is.

It's very troubling. Very, very troubling. No question about it. At the same time, we can go too far with that, and in our zeal, end up creating unnecessary division by going beyond the issues and pretending we actually know the hearts and minds of people.

When it comes to the issue of Roman Catholicism, I was noticing that last year, the

Pope gave a homily to the

Lutheran World Federation, and by the way, that was one of the things that Kenneth Copeland doesn't seem to understand.

He talked about the 1999 statement. He thinks that's official from Rome's perspective.

It's not. He didn't seem to understand this was wild -eyed liberal Lutherans that we're dealing with, but this current

Pope is way, way out of line with historic

Roman Catholic teaching, and everybody knows it. I'm not going to get into it today. I might try to pull something up about it for the next program, what we'll see, but he, over this past weekend, was this past weekend or the weekend before?

I think it was the weekend before, came as close as a Pope has come in a long time to using the charism of infallibility.

He used terms like define. We define and pronounce is what

I've always been told by Roman Catholic apologists is what must be there for a dogmatic statement to be considered infallible in the position of a

Pope, and that's the terminology he used. And what did he use it about? To change the

Universal Catholic Catechism on its 25th anniversary. And why did he change? This Pope believes that there is never, ever, ever a place for the death penalty on the part of any nation in any context.

The taking of human life by a political entity is always sinful. It's always wrong. The Universal Catholic Catechism had left open the possibility of instances where capital punishment would be appropriate.

He said, nope. Now, there is no question whatsoever that Popes in the past believed opposite of that, taught opposite of that, practiced opposite of that in their role as Bishop of Rome.

So he had to invoke the idea of the development of doctrine. This is not the development of doctrine.

This is the change of doctrine. This is the evolution of doctrine. This is evolution to its opposite. This is a fundamental rejection of the idea of an unchanging, infallible tradition.

As I said, it's a rough day to be a Roman Catholic apologist. It truly is a rough day.

Good luck defending Frankie, because there's no way to do it. There's no way to do it.

Francis is an interesting guy. A lot of people go, wow, this really opens up some possibilities.

Well, I'm not sure that it does. I don't know that the Pope could actually just come straight out and say, well, you know what?

We now embrace everything that Luther taught. He's come somewhat close to that, but not all the way.

And the issue that then comes up is, you know, someone on Twitter was coming after me because I posted that statement from Robert Jeffress about my evangelical and Catholic brothers and sisters.

Now, I have a problem with that. I do not believe the Roman Catholic gospel saves. Now, when

I say that, there's two things that have to be considered when

I say that. A, does that mean I believe every

Roman Catholic is lost? No, because I don't believe every Roman Catholic is believing what Rome teaches. In fact, it's pretty obvious to me that not only is

Rome's teaching muddled today in many ways, but there are many people who call themselves

Roman Catholics that completely reject elements of Roman Catholic teaching. And so even from Rome's perspective, they would not be considered faithful Orthodox Roman Catholics.

And so I hold open not only the possibility, but the actual hope that there would be many people within the

Roman Catholic community that have a simple faith in Christ and will be saved. I call them out of that community.

I call them into the fullness of the gospel. I call them into fellowship with God's people around the clear presentation of gospel truth.

But I want to see God's grace glorified in the salvation of a whole host.

And it shouldn't be our desire to restrict that. We should want to see as much grace as possible demonstrated in that way, but only through the gospel.

And Rome's gospel is a false gospel. There can't be any question about that. But I had people attacking me going, well, that's all you ever do.

All you ever do is attack other Christians. And I'm like, you know,

I asked for an example. Of course, I didn't get one from that particular individual. Well, every time I listened to that, you're attacking other

Christians. What do you mean by that? Give me an example. So I'm sure people go, oh, you attacked

Robert Jefferson. Well, I disagreed and explained why I believe it is inappropriate to have a

Roman Catholic. Well, he doesn't really identify.

Look, that's what he was raised as. And as far as I can tell,

I didn't hear him say anything that says, I recognize the gospel that was given to me in Rome was a false gospel.

I trust solely in the finished work of Jesus Christ. I don't believe in masses. I don't believe in purgatory. I believe solely in what is found in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I didn't hear any of that. And so here you had an individual in a worship service, and I've given the reason why

I believe that's inappropriate. Now, if you're going to say, well, you attacked Robert Jefferson. Well, that means

I disagreed with him. That means I get attacked by Christians every single day, hundreds of times.

If you're going to use that kind of language. I don't think I attacked anyone.

I'm addressing an important issue. It's an issue I've addressed since the 80s.

I've done more debates with Roman Catholic apologists than anybody else that I know of that I know of. There might be somebody else, but I don't know of who they are.

So I've written books on the subject. I've engaged the best that they have. This year,

I engaged Roman Catholic apologists at the G3 conference. It's what I do. And I reject the utter lack of clarity and carefulness in using terms like attack when we're talking about disagreement.

I also said, don't throw Robert Jefferson out of the kingdom because you can't. There are a lot of Christians that do things that we just have to go, well, that wasn't really smart.

And you know what? You and I have done the same thing. Rich, try not to amen so loudly in the other room.

People sometimes can here. I'm not sure who he was referring to, whether it was me or him.

He's pointing to himself now, but that might be self -preservation. Anyway, so this idea of you're just always attacking.

No, today we have to deal with difficult issues. We have to think them through. I've thought through the issue of the subject of Roman Catholicism.

And let me add something here. Let me add something very important here. I'm seeing a lot of, you know, it's time of the

Reformation, and this issue has come up, and it's so easy to go, Ah, Sean Hannity, he's just a political, blah, blah, blah,

Roman Catholic, blah, blah, blah. You might try praying for him, first of all. It might help your attitude.

Secondly, I think a lot of my strong Reformed brethren need to have a heart check when it comes to your view of Roman Catholics.

There has to be a balance, a very important balance, between standing for the truth, doing what

Paul did. Remember Paul in Galatians chapter 2, these words, But it was because,

Galatians 2, 4, But it was because of the false brethren seekly brought in, who had sneaked in to spy out our liberty, which we have in Christ Jesus, in order to bring us into bondage.

But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you. Wow, there's, you know,

I've preached on this so many times, and it's so true.

We have to recognize there are false brethren. We recognize them by their teaching, and they're trying to bring us into bondage.

And so if you have somebody who comes into the church and starts denying the finished work of Christ, and they start adding to faith these other things, you bet.

You know, don't yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you. But we take that, and we forget the fact that Paul very clearly makes it clear that he wrote this letter with tears.

He wrote this letter with tears. And I don't see a lot of tears on the part of people who deal with Roman Catholicism today.

I see a lot of bravado. I see a lot of sloganeering. But I don't know very many people that are truly heartbroken over the division that exists, especially because it has to do with the gospel.

And if you can sloganeer about the Pope as the Antichrist, if you can sloganeer about Rome as Babylon mystery religion, and yet not shed a tear for the believing

Roman Catholic that does not have peace with God, shame on you.

I am not a part of your clan. You may think I am. I'm not. You know, as a younger person, it was so easy to stay in the us versus them mentality.

And we'd always pay lip service to the, yeah, but for the grace of God, there go I. But do you really, you know what that really means if you say, but by the grace of God, there go

I. That means you're no better than that person. And that means you very much should have a broken heart over their deception, their lack of peace, the fact they've been given a message that does not have the eternal value of the truth that you possess.

And the only reason you possess is not because you're smarter, not because you're better, but solely by grace. And so someone just assumed because of what

I said, the tweet said, our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters.

Oh, why are you just going to rip on that? And I asked the person who sort of objected to that, have you ever seen, for example, my interactions with Peter D.

Williams recently? Ever listened to the unbelievable radio broadcast we did on the Reformation? Watched the debate we just did on Mary?

How about my debates with Mitch Pacman? I think we've demonstrated that you can engage these conversations and you can do so in such a fashion that you not only show respect, but that you can honestly pray for the person and have a broken heart.

That there is someone who has so much truth and yet at the key issue has been led astray.

That's where the Judaizers were. They had so much truth, but the key issue there led away.

And I don't think the old Jack Chick, Alexander Hislop approach to Roman Catholicism really leads you to understand that very clearly.

But it should be how we think and how we approach. So I guess

I'll go ahead and throw this in here before I go to the video we're going to look at. I'm going to be very brief about this because I've had many, many people just begging me, please, please, please.

There is a brouhaha going on yet once again amongst

Reformed folks regarding the statements of John Piper on the subject of final justification.

And from what I've seen, I haven't had a whole lot of time to be looking at it. But from what I've seen, there are some

Presbyterian ministers who have actually volunteered to fly down to Escondido and have it out with some other

Presbyterian ministers. Or maybe even with Doug Wilson or something.

I'm not sure exactly who's on what side of everything. But there's some strong, strong feelings being expressed.

On the one side, the direct assertion that Piper's position fundamentally violates not only

Orthodox confessional Reformed statements, whether it be

Westminster or whatever else, and the catechisms and things. But that it is a fundamental abandonment of Reformed theology and Toto and of the gospel.

And I think I've seen a few people throwing him under the bus, too. And then on the other side, we have people saying, look, you people just haven't read enough of the

Reformers at all. And they're quoting all sorts of folks that talk about the absolute importance of good works in the

Christian life. And that it's not something that adds to the righteousness of Christ, but it's something that is absolutely necessary to demonstrate.

You have both sides going at it fork and tongue. And it seems to me that sort of like, hmm, only last year in the

Trinitarian controversy that we're just really, really, really, really good at taking sides.

And once you've taken sides, there's just, I don't know, maybe it's the warring children of Calvin, but the idea of going, well,

OK, I see what you're saying there. I wouldn't put it that way myself, but OK, I can see what you're saying there.

That's almost like not a possibility. Like you're a compromising liberal if you say that.

It's just like, OK, how many angels can sit on the head of a pen? We evidently just can answer every question to the nth degree and there's never going to be a disagreement.

Here's my take. I don't know John Piper. We've never spoken, never met, never spoken. I think he probably wants to stay as far away from me as possible.

I think there's a lot of people that want to stay as far away from me as possible. And if that's my lot in life, so be it.

Rich said I'm stuck with him and I'm not sure if I'm even going to respond to that. And then there are some people that you're stuck with and you can't get away from.

I don't know John Piper, so I can't just go calling John Piper up and go, hey, am

I reading you right here? And back in the 90s, there was a book, Future Grace, that I think, and I haven't checked this out, but I think went through some revision because there were some statements that Piper was convinced to sort of modify.

I could be wrong about that, but that's my recollection. My reading of all this without being able to ask

Piper, my reading of all this would seem to indicate this. It sounds like what

Piper is saying is he's focusing upon the justification of God in the final day.

And that's where the confusion is coming in. How is God justified in having taken the course that he did in bringing about his own self -glorification?

And specifically in the salvation of a utterly undeserving people, a people that deserved wrath for justice to be done, and yet it's not done to them, and why?

And it seems to me that what he's saying is that the good works that are produced in the life of the believer through the work of the

Spirit, which everyone confesses, is a biblical concept.

We are saved by faith alone, but not a faith that is alone. Well, okay, when I say everybody, leave the cheap free gracers off to the side.

They're not a part of this group. They're not part of this conversation. That's out there. Leave them off to the side.

Amongst Orthodox Reformed people, we've always emphasized and recognized that it is

God's intention to justify his elect and to sanctify his elect.

His elect are always sanctified by the work of Christ. But then we have those statements like God's will for you is your sanctification, your growth in holiness.

And that therefore those good works which are performed by grace are justifying of God's actions, not of man's standing.

So that it's the righteousness of Christ alone that brings about one's salvation and eternal standing before God.

But then in the concept of the judgment, the end, and we always think of judgment only of mankind.

But remember, I don't have it in here, but am I remembering correctly that Piper's dissertation on Romans 9, wasn't it called

The Justification of God? It's off the top of my head. I should have looked it up.

I'm sorry. Maybe someone can verify that in channel.

But the idea is that at the final judgment, there's not just the justification of mankind in the sense of they're right before me, but there's also justification of God.

The demonstration that the triune God has acted justly and righteously and bring about his own glorification through the gospel and the salvation of an elect people.

And in that context, the good that has been done by grace in the life of the redeemed is a part of the justification of God's actions, not an increasing or a changing or a modification of the grounds upon which those people have the right relationship to God.

That's my best reading. Yeah, it is called

The Justification of God. Thank you very much, those people in channel. That's my reading. I'm not trying to...

Like I said, I don't know John Piper. I'm never going to be invited to a

John Piper event. I'm not trying to schmooze anybody.

But in reading Piper, I think that's where the emphasis needs to be placed in his understanding is this idea of theodicy.

That is the justification of God. And so he's looking beyond the issue of man's justification to the idea of God's justification in the means by which he brought these things about.

Now, if you want to argue about that, great, fine, wonderful. If Dr. Piper would like to give me a call and explain where I misunderstood him, then

I'll be happy to withdraw what I said. But it seems like a charitable and accurate reading that probably will not be accepted by anyone because it just seems like most of us just simply want to get behind barricades and lob bombs these days rather than go,

Oh, well, I hadn't thought about that way. I'm not sure that I put it that way. I don't know, folks.

I'm just really tired of Christians shooting their own wounded at times.

Believe it or not, I know a lot of people don't think this is true of me, but I very often try to listen to people in such a way that I don't have to take offense at them.

Just between you and me, just don't let this out anywhere. I've actually written to Doug Wilson and said that he's one of the finest writers

I've ever read. Now, I debated Doug Wilson, and Doug Wilson and I disagree on a bunch of things.

But I don't think there's something wrong with my enjoying Doug Wilson when he's right.

And evidently, that's a bad thing in the minds of some people. You can't do that. I think it's that fundamentalist separation idea.

Nope, nope, you can't. No, no, no, no. Okay, all right, well, there you go.

So I suppose there are some people who look at Galatians 2 and they go, well, that's Piper.

Throw Piper in there. Do I agree with everything John Piper's done? No. Do you have to agree with everything I've ever done?

No. Does that mean you can't learn anything from either one of us? No. It's just, it's maturity, man.

We gotta have some level of maturity. Well, anyways, we've already gone nearly an hour, and we haven't even gotten to the specific

Radio Free Geneva part. Well, we sort of have, in a sense. But I was directed to, and it's only, how long is this?

8 minutes and 25 seconds. So, unfortunately, I do have a track record of sometimes doing well over an hour and 8 minutes worth of video.

But I'm going to try to be concise in my responses.

Look, the reason I decided to do this is, well, more and more people were dropping me tweets and stuff and going, hey, have you seen this, is it

Kevin Thompson? Is that the name? I think it's Kevin Thompson. Have you seen this Kevin Thompson guy's church down in New Orleans?

It's a New Orleans Bible Church or something like that, I think is what it is. I only have the video. I don't have the YouTube thing up.

I posted it yesterday, I think, on Facebook or something, and said, hey, watch this for yourself.

Be prepared for the program tomorrow. And I said, very specifically, I said, hey, see how many logical and exegetical errors you can find.

Because I really do believe there are a number of them, and I'll document that here as we're looking at it.

But the reason I chose it, I'm sorry. Oh, I got it right?

Okay. The reason I chose it is because it's

John 6 again. And we've just sort of over the decades been doing this,

I wonder if anyone can come up with a meaningful reading of John 6 type thing. Because the fact of the matter is, we have walked through John 6 many times, verse by verse.

We can start back in John 4 if you want, but we can walk straight through the

Gospel of John, verse by verse, word by word, in the original language. And it's really clear what it's saying.

It's such a well -crafted passage. It just flows. And it's forceful.

And so when you have a passage like that, it's sort of a little bit, Kevin Thompson, thank you. It's sort of a little bit, wait a minute.

Wait a minute. Is that? I just saw something. Wait, seriously?

I know this is probably playing in your ears. Sorry about that. But I didn't see the 1611 part.

It says Kevin Thompson, 1611. Now, I don't know anybody. No, that's the right guy.

Yeah, it's the same guy. And how could I have missed? Because I don't know anyone who puts 1611 in their

ID that isn't King James only. I don't know anybody. I mean, okay, I have 1689. That's a little different.

And by the way, did I tell you that I mentioned, I think I mentioned here, but it just went through the vacuous brain up there.

But now there's another reason to remember 1689. Because while we were standing at Worms, where Luther says, there's no building there.

All the other places we went to were in buildings and we're looking at rooms and stuff like that. And here we're staying in a park.

And the reason, as we were told, was that that meeting, the Diet of Worms, took place in the

Bishop's Palace next to the cathedral. And there's a beautiful cathedral there. And so it's right next door. So yeah, okay.

And so while Josh Bice is speaking, I decide to go,

I wonder when it burned down. So I do the Google thing. Guess when the Bishop's Palace burned down?

Where Luther said, here I stand, I can do another. 1689.

Boy, I tell you, I can come up with some theories. Some people could come up with some conspiracy theories about that.

But it helps you to remember the date. And it was not

Reformed Baptist that burned it down. I want you to understand. It was warfare. There was an invasion.

And it was made of wood. It's amazing how many places we went to. Well, this is like the fourth structure since that date because fire, man.

Fire. We live in a wonderful day. Because when you built everything out of wood, and then all your heating was burning wood, it's not overly shocking that there were entire parts of cities that would just go up in smoke.

It was a sad thing. Kevin Thompson, 1611. So can someone tell me, is he

King James only? Because everything that I'm looking at here is why regeneration cannot precede faith.

And it's all anti -Calvinism. Well, now he's holding a gun. That's interesting. To say that the gentleman is slightly on the acerbic side would be somewhat of an understatement.

But every single thing I'm seeing here says something about Calvinism.

But I don't see anything about King James only -ism. So I don't know. But this is

New Orleans Bible Church. So if someone can come up with something that says specifically whether he is or isn't, it would sort of impact it.

Because what I do know is he's a hyper dispensationalist. And many of the King James, not all

King James only folks, but I have encountered King James only -ism amongst hyper dispensationalists before.

So there you go. Well, maybe somebody will find out for me or maybe not.

Anyway. So, thank you for pulling that up. So I wanted to respond to his top 10 things that Calvinists never tell you.

Was there something you wanted to say? Oh, okay. That Calvinists never tell you about John chapter 6. Then in the process, on Sunday morning, a young guy on Twitter.

And I haven't gotten my 280 characters on Twitter yet. I'm not sure if you have to apply for it. I don't know how that works.

You have to be a politician? Oh. Well, so it's still really hard.

Well, 280 would still be tough, but it'd be somewhat easier to answer long questions, even if you had the time to do it.

But this guy sent me to this website. And he was saying,

Hey, I'm reformed. But man, this looks like a good argument. This might change my mind.

And I go over and look at it. And it's quoting me as always.

But it's the old argument. It's an argument we've dealt with many times. And the guy's asking me, Well, where? I'm like, I don't know.

I've been dealing with this for years. I don't carry Algo around with me.

Maybe Algo will remember where we went over the John 6 material, where basically the argument was that the people that are being talked about here, verse 37, all that the

Father gives me, that these are believing Jews only.

These are believing Jews. Now, that's not the first time someone's come up with that argument.

It doesn't explain verse 36. And what it's doing is, again, turning the text on its head, because it's the giving of the

Father that results in the coming to Christ. And it was a lady.

It was a lady anti -Calvinist who was pushing the idea that these are like the

Simeons and the Annas. The faithful, believing

Jews who believed in Yahweh would be the ones that would be given to Jesus because of their having believed in Yahweh.

This is not an unusual thing. This is pretty much what the better arguments normally are, but it's still a precondition that the text never gives us, doesn't even hint at, that overthrows the order of assertion made in verse 37, that it's the giving the

Father that results in the coming to the Son, because unless you want to divide Yahweh up and say, well, yeah, but you can believe in the

Father, but not believe in the Son, unless you want to cut stuff up, then you're still not explaining that in verse 36, he's explaining the unbelief of the

Jews. It still ends up as a very man -centered passage that all Jesus is doing is commenting here, well, you know, you've never really believed in Yahweh, and that's why the

Father hasn't given you to me. If you had been good enough, and it's also based upon a misreading of verse 45 that we'll get to hear a little bit later on, but I basically said to the young guy,

I said, I'm sorry if you can't see what the fundamental error is here, but what they're doing is they're inserting, you know, what they fear in the text is when you remove any human determination of salvation, because then only

God's left. Then only God's left. Therefore, there has to be some backdoor mechanism of putting man back in control, because if John 6 means what

John 6 means, God's in control of salvation, not man, and every synergistic system has to find a way around that.

This synergistic system does so by positing a non -divinely ordained group of people, non -elect, who naturally in and of themselves as members of the

Jewish community believe in Yahweh, and that then merits their being given to the

Son by the Father. Nowhere in the text, but hey, it's allowed us to rescue a man -centered salvation.

That's what you do with it. So that was the first thing that came out.

So let's listen to Brother Thompson here and what he has to say about us crazy

Calvinists and John 6, and then we'll—I'm not gonna play the whole eight and then go back through.

I'm gonna stop and start. We sort of need to do that. Okay. I've got someone in channel.

Hold on a second here. Hold on a second. Okay. Tyler. Thank you,

Tyler. Tyler's Twitter picture gives me vertigo. I'm not sure if you see that, but it's of someone—is that a—is he skiing?

Oh! He's surfing upside down, and then you go to his thing, and someone's riding dirt bikes.

So something tells me that this guy will kill himself eventually. That's one of those gliders?

Oh, well, okay. Anyway, I don't know. But Tyler says,

Kevin is no longer at New Orleans based on KJVO. Go to his site beyondthefundamentals .com

and watch his video Bible Versions. So I went to Beyond the Fundamentals. It does say every word of God is pure.

Calvinism defeated. Creation and science. There's Bible Versions. This is a great 19—well, early 2000s web design here.

Sort of looks like ours did. Wait, wait, wait. Yep, yep.

He's King James only. He links to Sam Gipp! Ah! Okay.

Yeah, he's got the answer book. Sam Gipp. And, yeah, okay. Yeah, one book. All right.

Well, there you go. That answers that question. Thank you very much, Tyler. What can

I say? If you want to factor that in and you're listening to what he has to say, feel free.

Feel free. Let's go to it anyways. Here we go. Welcome to Beyond the

Fundamentals. In this video, we're going to look at the top 10 things overlooked by Calvinists in John 6 .37.

Let's get started. Okay, now, immediately, let's remember something. John 6 .37

is not where we start. Well, it shouldn't be where we start. Every time we've worked through John 6, we've gone much earlier than that.

It's vitally important to recognize the context of the conversation.

The fact that these are men who have followed Jesus over to Capernaum after the feeding of the 5 ,000. They're still looking for the bread.

Jesus has talked about himself as the bread of life. He's talked about satisfying spiritual hunger and spiritual thirst.

He has used the idea of eating and drinking first in the spiritual context. Very important, because very often people do not recognize, if you can deal with John 6 .37

and following, that's the key to dealing with the text later on when Jesus talks about eating his flesh, drinking his blood, and dealing with Roman Catholicism.

But extremely important is verse 36. But I said to you that you have seen me and, verse 36, kai u pistuita, and you are not believing.

You're unbelievers. You've seen me. You're unbelievers. He's explaining, and as far as we can tell, these are

Jewish individuals. He's explaining the unbelief of these

Jewish individuals. Why are they not believing? Why are they not coming to him? They're not coming to him for spiritual sustenance.

They want physical sustenance, but that's not what he's come to do. They don't understand he's the true bread of life, not the bread that will keep you satisfied until dinner tonight.

Vast difference. And so, if you jump right into verse 37, you aren't really dealing, whether you're the

Reformed person or the non -Reformed person, you're not really dealing with a contextual reading.

The power of the Reformed understanding here is the flow of the text and the argument, and how all these attempts to get around that end up disrupting that flow.

So that's important. Now, that's really weird.

Are you seeing that? I think there's a little back -masking going on, a little subtle message going on in this video here.

Because I just hit stop, and across his forehead, backwards, is in small letters, beyond the fundamentals.

No, it's backwards and upside down. If you bring that all the way up, is it still there?

Yeah, it is. Bring it full screen. Yeah, it's right there. Yeah, it's right there.

So, is John Lennon tall? I was about to ask, should we play some Beatles music?

I'm very tall. I'm very tall. Wow, that's really weird. Okay, let's...

Oh, there it is. We just froze it right from the start.

What is that? I'm looking at this going, what in the world? Now I get it. Okay. Again, they're sort of into the early 2000s spinning stuff, and it was just starting.

The lights and the Christmas look. So, beyond the fundamentals, top 10 things. I almost wish we had the late night band over in the corner, we can do the top 10 list here.

Top 10 things Calvinists overlook in John 637, and it is quoted from the King James Version.

So, there you go. Have you ever been discussing soteriology with a

Calvinist and they employ John 637 as if it's some sort of magical weapon that's going to overthrow the rest of the

Bible and prove that Jesus was a Gnostic? Yeah? Jesus was a

Gnostic. I'm sure in some other video, there is just a tremendously balanced attempt to explain how ancient

Gnosticism has anything really to do with Reformed theology. Now, having spent a lot of time dealing with the

Gnostic Gospels and Gnosticism as a whole, I can assure you that every other time

I have had someone accuse Reformed theology of being Gnostic, I discovered that the person making the accusation didn't have a very sound understanding of either

Gnosticism or Reformed theology, either one. But, there you go.

Well, I have too, and if you've seen them do it once, you've probably seen them do it dozens of times. Here's what the verse says.

All that the Father giveth me shall come to me, and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.

Well, here are the top 10 things Calvinists are overlooking when they use this verse. Number 10.

Now, I'm pretty certain that that was intentional. Number 10.

You know, Halloween is near, too. Well, I'm sure this was posted before then, but someone found all the really cool effects thing in the program.

I'm not sure which program it was. Number 10. Yes, the echo effect or whatever it might be.

It doesn't really mean all, does it? At least it doesn't in any verse a Bible believer cites for them.

It's all without distinction, not all without exception, right? So, why not here?

So, all kinds of things that the Father giveth him. Okay, now let's stop right there. There are obviously many places where the word all is modified by the context in which it is used.

When we look at 1 Timothy 2, since the context that is immediately before that is praying for kinds of men, then when you apply meaningful exegetical methodology, you're not going to overthrow

Paul's use of categories of men and change all from all categories to all individuals.

That would be a misrepresentation of the intention of the original author who provides us with the contextual clue.

So, what you have Mr. Thompson doing here is, if you ever follow that elsewhere, well, then we can ridiculously insert it here.

The guiding principle in John 6 is the preceding words, and that is, you are not believing.

So, in contradistinction to these unbelievers who are not coming to Christ, you have all that the

Father gives me are coming to me. And so, there's nothing in the context about classes of individuals or anything that provides that contextual clue that Reformed individuals are consistent in utilizing in other texts.

So, what we have on the screen here, all the elect things, the Father gives me all kinds of things, all sorts of things, all kindred tongues and tribes of things, is just extremely inappropriate and false argumentation that raises questions concerning the consistency of Brother Thompson's interpretation and his utilization of proper exegetical methodology.

But not all that are given without exception. So, it should be all elect things that the Father giveth me, or all kinds of things that the

Father giveth me, or all sorts of things that the Father giveth me, or all kindred tongues and tribes of things that the

Father giveth me, right? Why don't they do that here? That's what they do with the word all in a completely arbitrary fashion when it suits their theology.

It's not a completely arbitrary fashion. It has to specifically be drawn from contextual considerations.

Those would have to be argued. That's why we challenge people to debate these issues and are able to demonstrate these things.

Give us the text. Which text are we talking about where we're talking about the word all? When it says all of Jerusalem, isn't that very obvious, the turn of phrase that is being used there?

It does not mean that if you had walked through Jerusalem that day, you would have found it completely abandoned. Of course, if you had walked through Jerusalem, then you would have violated all anyways.

No. There are contexts that determine the extent of paspas upon.

And in this context, it's in contradistinction to those who are not coming. Those that are given by the

Father, they are the ones coming to the Son. No predictable hermeneutical principle employed for doing so.

They do it here, but not here. Whoa, let's stop. I don't want to mess this up.

Keep it down there for a second. So that the toolbar doesn't pop up,

I'm going to move this, and I'm not sure if it's going to mess you up. Oh, good. It didn't.

Okay, that will allow me to stop and start it without messing everything up in the process.

Let's take a look at what he's got there. This is Romans 5 .18. Well, again, why would you differentiate between the two alls?

Well, because Paul is talking about two humanities, one in Adam and one in Christ. The only people who conflate these two alls and ignore the flow of thought in Romans 5 are universalists.

I really doubt that Kevin Thompson is a universalist, but this is one of their key texts.

So if he believes these are coextensive, and he doesn't recognize the in -Adam, in -Christ distinction, then

I guess he has to believe that all men have been justified unto life. Maybe he does.

I don't know. Maybe if he's a hyper -dispensationalist, he could have some other weird beliefs too.

Here, but not here. Okay, this is 2 Corinthians 5 .14 -15.

Once again, Mr. Thompson is seemingly giving—if we didn't have other things to look at, it would almost make me wonder if the man's not a universalist, because he's going down that line.

But again, who is the all that is being discussed here?

Are those under judgment, or let's put it this way, use the clarifying example of the

Amorite high priest that lived 400 years before Christ. The Amorite high priest.

Christ died for the Amorite high priest, therefore the Amorite high priest died, and he died for the

Amorite high priest that they should live not henceforth unto themselves.

Didn't even send a prophet to the Amorite high priest. Who is he talking about? Who has had revelation to them of how they should live, as having died and being raised again?

Have all people died and been raised to new life? That's a universalist perspective, but I can't see how someone who is not a universalist—and maybe he is.

Maybe somebody on—maybe

Tyler, who tweeted to me. Is he a universalist? Does he believe everyone's going to be saved?

I don't know. I don't know. They do it here, but not here. Okay, 1

Timothy 2, we just discussed that. That's an excellent example of where categories of men have been specifically introduced.

Then he throws in John 12, 32. I will draw all men unto myself.

Again, what's the context? Greeks have come seeking Jesus, so you have Gentiles. You have specific groups of people introduced right there in John 12.

Just ignoring that. I'm not ignoring that. We don't ignore that, but evidently

Mr. Thompson is ignoring that. Romans 11, 32, again, classic universalist passage, so I'm not sure what he's referring to there.

All men, to bear witness to the light that all men through him might believe. Again, in the context of a

Jew writing these issues, that would be Jews and Gentiles. That's the natural way of reading these contexts.

It's such an individualistic way, which he is guilty of reading. So death passed upon all men, for all have sinned.

Again, that's backing up in Romans 5 to establish all men in Adam before you establish the second humanity in Christ.

It's just letting each text speak for itself. One side does, one side doesn't.

That's really where the power of the Reformed positions comes from. When you do that, every time you see an awl that doesn't fit your

Gnosticism, yes, that is how ridiculous you sound. Remember that? Now, you'll notice that the ridiculousness there evaporated when you just can take the time to, without utilizing graphics or speaking really quickly, just look at each context and demonstrate where it's being mishandled by the other side.

That's one of the main reasons we don't get a lot of debates from these folks. You get monologues, not a lot of dialogues. Nobody saved after Acts 2 is in mind here in John 6, 37, in the first half of this verse.

Okay, so here we have hyper -dispensationalism.

Not just dispensationalism, but... And there was a guy that we dealt with...

Leighton Flowers has jumped on the Calvinism as Gnosticism and bang wagon too? Well, that isn't overly surprising. But again, no serious scholar would ever say that.

I'm sorry, I can say that very straightforwardly. I know Gnosticism. And you can twist things, you can ignore context, but to describe

Calvinism as Gnosticism is to demonstrate you have no meaningful desire to handle history and the very word

Gnosticism accurately. Come up with another argument, but...

Anyway, that's quite the interesting chart there.

So you basically have a sort of form of hyper -dispensationalism here.

And so we had dealt with a guy who took this perspective. What was that guy's name?

I remember the look of his website, but this was probably a decade ago. At least, it was a long time ago.

So we've dealt with folks who say, This has nothing to do with us today anyways, because nothing until Acts 2 is the

Church Age, and that's why we only have to look at Paul, we don't have to look at the Gospels and things like that. The main problem with hyper -dispensationalism is, of course, not only the fact that no one ever heard of it until just recently, but the fact that the

Apostle Paul would have gone, Eh? At any suggestion that his message was somehow not the very same message of the

Gospels or whatever else it might be. It's just utterly unbiblical. And so if you have to go here to get around John chapter 6, okay.

I guess you need to get around John 3, 16 as well. So God's love of the world, that doesn't have anything to do with until Acts 2 as well.

I never have figured it out. It's a completely arbitrary thing. Thankfully, only a very, very small number of people fall into that trap anyways.

In fact, very little in John 6 has to do with how salvation and conversion is implemented during the

Church Age. That is, from Pentecost to the Harpazo. There isn't even an attempt to address this in this verse.

Number 8. The wording of the given is a theme in the book of John and it actually has a very direct reference to an extremely limited number of people.

That would be the 12 disciples that Jesus was with while he was here on earth. Cross references take us to chapter 17 where Jesus prays only for the given that he was with while he was in this world.

You and I don't get prayed for until verses 19 through 21. So there are... Whoa, whoa, whoa. This is where we come in?

John. I guess that hyper -dispensationalism thing only works so far.

There is no question that there are a number of times where the specific giving of the

Father in light of where these words are being written in redemption history have to do with the disciples.

It's also true that everyone down through church history and clearly the

Apostle Paul and clearly the Apostle John in his own letters written, yeah, after Acts.

Wait a minute, this was written well after Acts too and for some reason John thought these things were relevant.

Why would John have written this gospel long after Pentecost when nothing it was saying was overly relevant anymore?

I don't know. But be that as it may, it has been recognized by the

Christian church and recognized by cross -reference to Paul's own teaching. That the preeminence that the

Apostles had in being the first to experience the blessings of salvation did not make them a group unto themselves in the sense that we somehow experience a lesser salvation.

The promises, for example, can you imagine if the promises of John chapter 14, I go and prepare a place for you?

That's just the Apostles. That's not all the rest of us.

That's just the Apostles. This makes mincemeat out of all of the promises that are found.

Yes, in John chapter 17, you have a strong emphasis on the sovereignty of God and giving a particular people.

And through their witness, Jesus functions as their high priest. And so we would have to ask

Mr. Thompson, so in light of that, in light of the connection between Hebrews and John and high priesthood, does

Christ function as a high priest for every single individual? For the Amorite high priest who died 400 years before Jesus, does he intercede for that individual?

These would be the questions we'd want to ask, but we can't ask of a video anyways.

The post apostolic elect people that Jesus is ever talking about when he uses this lingo about those who are given, that's not you.

Even if you're saved, that's not you. That's the 12 disciples. Number seven, they commit the negative inference fallacy.

That is just because the given come to Christ does not mean that no one else does.

Calvinists are really bad about relying. Except that John 6, 44 says, no one is able to come to me unless the

Father sent me to draw us in. So you have, see again, if you read verse 36 and then read verse 44, it sounds really great.

And look, he's not the only one to, they're using the negative inference fallacy. There's some folks in Southwestern do the same thing.

Guess what guys? Even we Calvinists read books on logic. We do too. Yeah. Yeah.

It sounds so great. The problem is if you were actually interacting with our exegesis, you would have to realize that no, we weren't doing that at all.

At all. On this fallacy, if Christ died for the church or his sheep in the Calvinist mind, that's an exclusive statement.

It means that he didn't die for anybody else. Inclusive statement. And of course, for example, one of those died for their sheep.

And then he says, and you're not my sheep. Hmm. Is that a fallacy?

To go, well, if Christ dies for his sheep and he says other people are not of his sheep, in the same context, the same chapter, same audiences, you can't put them together without committing the negative inference.

Oh, okay. All right. Well, I think we can all see where the problem is there. Do not equal exclusive statements.

If you apply their same logic and hermeneutics to Galatians 2. Now you can't fault him here because certain professors at Southwestern Theological Seminary say this exact same thing over and over again.

They use this exact same text. And other professors, even presidents at Southwestern say this is unanswerable.

And it's been answered over and over again for a long, long time. I am crucified to Christ. Nevertheless, I live yet not

I, but Christ liveth in me. In life, which I love in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

And they say, see, that means Christ died only for Paul.

Now, I've never found, I've read Calvin's comments on this.

He didn't say that. I've never found anybody who's ever said that. So to assume that we should say that is to demonstrate you're not really wanting to play on a fair level here because that's not what we're saying.

What we are saying is that those words cannot be said by the person who will spend eternity under the wrath of God.

You say they can be. I want the world to understand. This gentleman,

Leighton Flowers, David Allen, all of those who so vociferously attack the specificity of the work of Jesus Christ and salvation.

And who want to, their biggest goal, we must find a place where Jesus failed to save someone for whom he died.

That's their biggest goal. Because without that, then salvation is all of the Lord. And there you go.

So we have to find some place where Jesus failed. That's what we want. Can you imagine? We want Jesus to have failed somewhere so that we can exalt the almighty will of man.

And so what they are saying is that the sinner can stand on the parapet of hell in eternity and say,

Christ died for me, but I destroyed his work. He failed in regards to me.

That's what they want. They have to have it for their system. I don't want that. And what

Paul was saying is that not as a rebel sinner, but as a redeemed saint who bows the knee to the

Lord Jesus Christ, he gave himself for me. And in giving himself for me, the

Father had elected me. The Son gives himself for me. The Spirit has come and raised me to spiritual life and given me the gifts of faith and repentance.

And the Spirit is working within me to conform me to the image of Jesus Christ. And that is how

I know that he has given himself for me. What we are saying is that this is substitutionary atonement.

He gave himself for me. Paul is not defining the extent of the elect outside of the fact that it's only relevant to people who live life in the flesh by faith of the

Son of God. Not anyone else. So, it's not the negative inference fallacy.

It sounds really good because who goes around talking about that anyways? Paul would be the only person saved.

Number six. Judas was given to him, that is given to Jesus, and was then lost.

John 17, 12. Jesus loses someone who is given to him. So, if you're one of the given, you have a 1 in 12 chance of being damned anyway.

Wow, that one. Oh, I know, I know. That was really bad. And I'm trying my best to not respond in the flesh to such cavalier mishandling of something as blessed as the promise that Jesus himself makes in John 6.

Notice what we're doing here. We're ignoring the verses before John 6, 37 and the verses after.

That's the nature of synergism. Again, the power of John 6 is the flow of the text.

They can never deal with the flow of the text. So, Jesus in John 6, 39 says, This is the will of him who sent me, that of all he has given me,

I lose nothing but raise up on the last day. Is this a contradiction or do you just simply need to recognize that Judas was the son of perdition?

That he was given to Jesus only as an apostle to fulfill the role of the one who betrayed him?

And that Jesus said this was prophesied in the Old Testament? That he demonstrated his deity in John 13, 19 by saying he prophesied it would happen?

Did you just skip all that, sir? Sorry, I gave in there. But I gave in there because this is manhandling the word of God in a cavalier, foolish fashion.

And I say to the gentleman, shame on you for doing that. Those who know the word of God know what you did and you were just caught at it.

And so I would fix that if I were you. You might want to ask Jesus if he died for you while you're praying.

Because he could just be messing around with you and building you up for the huge betrayal scheme at your church. So you better check on that.

What that means is that Judas is a specific exception to the statement in this verse.

So despite our levity about the word all a few minutes ago in number 10, it really is not all without exception.

Because the exception is named for us. Except, of course, that you're assuming that the giving to the

Son in John 6, 37 is the same thing as giving an apostle to Jesus to function as he's specifically laid out and prophesied to be the son of perdition.

Okay, so if you want to so foolishly conflate those passages to create that alleged contradiction and therefore overthrow the fact that the son says,

I will lose none, but raise it up on the last day. You're free to do that. The rest of us will not follow you in that manhandling, twisting of scripture on the level of Jehovah's Witnesses and others.

Number five. A Calvinist couldn't prove they were among the given if their life depended on it.

You know why? Because they're not. Nobody in 2017 is. Every time they quote a verse like this out of context, they do so under the assumption that they are one of the given.

So next time they try this, instead of seriously trying to set them straight with sound hermeneutics, just give them the old

Proverbs 26 .5 treatment and ask them if they can prove from scripture that they are one of the given.

They won't be able to do so without referencing an action they've taken or a feeling they've had.

You know, their own works and experience. So much for sola scriptura and sola gratia.

So evidently, you have to have infallible knowledge of the identity of the elect to be able to read and understand

Jesus's promises. Now, what's very interesting is

Jesus's teaching in John chapter six is to describe these individuals.

And so when he tells us, for example, that he's come down to do the will of him who sent him, the

Father gives me, I'm sorry, this is the will of him who sent me that of all these give me, I lose nothing but raise up on the last day.

For this is the will of my Father that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in him will have eternal life, and I myself will raise up on the last day.

So here, the description of the result of the drawing of the

Father in the lives of the elect is that they are beholding the Son and believing in him.

This is the result of the work of the God within them. And so if someone says, well, how do you know you're one of the elect?

You say, well, for many, many years now, I have been looking to Christ as my sole source of spiritual nourishment.

I am believing in him. I didn't just tip my hat to him, but he has granted to me a faith that has endured.

And then when the description of the drawing of the Father in verse 44 is given, verse 45 says, it is written, the prophets and they should all be taught of God.

Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. And so I have been taught by God. He has revealed to me who his

Son is. I find his Son to be beautiful. I find his Son to be the one in whom I delight and find all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

And so I have heard from the Father and I've learned from the Father as to who

Christ is and what my need of him is. This is not the infallible stamp of the elect on my forehead, but it is consistent with John's own words in 1

John chapter 5, when he says, I've written these things to you that you might know that you have eternal life.

What are these things? The entirety of 1 John, loving your brother as yourself, walking in the light, not walking in sin, not delighting in sin, finding sin abhorrent.

And when you do sin, you look to the one advocate that we have with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

And so our assurance is something that we grow in because of the work of the Holy Spirit within our life. But that's the same author.

And so I find this type of argumentation, evidently, it would be valid against any kind of concept of assurance,

I guess. I get the feeling there's some other theological novelty or oddity in this man's teaching that lies behind some of this particular argument.

But I don't know what it is. And I'll be honest with you, I'm not overly interested in trying to find out. It's not relevant to this.

Number four, timing. The Holy Ghost is not even given yet.

Look at John 7 39. And Jesus hasn't even died yet. The gospel is not even yet history when

Jesus is speaking this. The disciples don't understand the gospel and they don't believe it. And regeneration is not occurring.

Yeah. And at the end of John chapter six, the disciples are definitely confused.

And Jesus says, will you also go away? And Peter's response is, you have the words of eternal life. So what?

They were confused about a lot of things. That doesn't change the fundamental meaning of Jesus's teaching.

If Jesus's teaching is limited to the understanding of the apostles. Well, yeah, there was big change once the

Holy Spirit was sent at Pentecost. But until then, they had another comforter of the same kind.

That was Jesus. So to make their level of understanding. Let's show how, again, trying to be somewhat respectful about how foolish this argumentation is.

I just finished preaching on Jesus's words to the woman at the well.

Just yesterday in the Lord's Day services. And do you think that the

Samaritan woman understood the full depth of everything Jesus said to her? When he said, God is spirit, those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.

Do you think she had a full understanding of that? So you're saying that we can only read into that.

We can only make application as to what it means to worship God in spirit and truth. As to how much a

Samaritan woman of questionable moral character would have understood standing there at the well in Sychar.

Okay, there you go. Be occurring for a good while. So we are still actually in the

Old Testament if you look at Hebrews 9. Still don't have the Holy Spirit. The church has not started yet.

So there's absolutely nothing in John 6 that doctrinally addresses how salvation works as per Acts 15, 9 through 11.

Even though this has been, this is written long after the giving of the spirit and the founding of the church and all the rest, even on his own principles.

I mean, I'm not a dispensationalist. So God has had his people. Romans teaches

Abraham was justified in the same basis we are with faith, so on and so forth. But even on his own principles, this type of argumentation is utterly fallacious.

Number three, they overlook. Wait a minute. What happened? He didn't.

Number three. Is he going to just wait and use the echo chamber for two and one? I'm not sure. See, you and I both caught that.

It was getting sort of cool to have that. Completely ignore the verses in the chapter that actually talk about eternal life.

Look at John 6, 27. It says, labor not for the meat which perishes, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the

Son of Man shall give unto you. For him hath God the Father sealed. You see that word labor? That just makes this funny.

John 6, 40. I don't know. I looked up and I'm getting the exact same look through the window.

I don't know. I have no earthly idea.

Sorry. This is the will of him that sent me, that everyone which seeth the Son and believeth on him may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last day.

Did you ever hear a Calvinist quote this one? Okay, this is getting comical.

This is getting cartoonish. Wow. Got this book going on that you wrote years and years ago.

Here, here. Over to me, please. Sometime today. There we go.

Mr. Thompson, I'd like to introduce you to a little book called Drawn by the Father. It's a little book, so it wouldn't take too long to read.

I go all the way through John. Yes, not only do

I quote verse 40, but I actually tie it in with the flow of the argument and the thought in this little book called

Drawn by the Father. I did the same thing in God's Sovereign Grace. I did the same thing in the Potter's Freedom.

In fact, every Reformed person I've ever met who's ever offered any kind of meaningful exegesis text has done the exact same thing.

I'm stunned. Stunned. By it. But again, what you have,

Jesus says in verse 39, I'm sort of wondering why you don't quote this one. This is the will of Him who sent me, that of all that He has given me,

I lose nothing, raised up on the last day. Have you dealt, for example, with the fact that of all He's given me,

I lose none of it? He switches to the neuter to talk about the group as a whole.

And that's why all your time stuff is wrong. Because if you limit this just to the apostles, then

Jesus only came down out of heaven to save the twelve. Actually, the eleven. From your perspective as well.

Again, utter refutation of your position. Your position is exegetically shot full of holes.

Shot full of holes. Just by that one consideration that if you had read the other side, you would have known about.

So, I lose nothing, but raised up on the last day. And Anastasio auta ente escate hemera is always used in regards to everlasting life.

For this is the will of my Father. So now, following that, the result of the drawing of the

Father, the work of the Son, the result of that is that in the elect, they are, and that's why without knowing

He was going to go here, I only listened to the first three or four and said, yeah, let's go ahead and do this.

So this is, I'm actually, that's why I reacted with the laughter I did, because it's so absurd to say,

I never quoted John 640. I had quoted John 640 earlier. As a fulfillment of, well, what does an elect person look like?

Well, they are the ones, pascha thearon tan huyan. The ones looking upon.

It's a present active person. The one looking upon the Son. The one gazing upon the

Son. Not just once, but gazing upon the Son. The one looking to the Son and believing in Him.

That's the one that has eternal life. That's descriptive of what it means. So it flows as the result, but it's the result of what

God does. That's the vast difference. When you actually read the text where it says it's what God does resulting in what man does, since you have a man -centered viewpoint, you don't see the relationship between these words.

That's why I love going through the failed efforts of people to try to get around John 6. Because the more you look at the failed efforts, the text itself becomes so clear.

Overwhelmingly clear. Will they stop making videos like this? No, no, no, they won't. But there you go.

Did any Calvinist ever see the Son of God, by the way? Christ ascended in 32 AD, and Calvinism wasn't around until Augustine brought his

Gnosticism into professing Christianity in the 4th century. So it's safe to assume, no, they have not seen the

Son of God. I mean, did you, did you, did you not, can you not see that this is a

Hinnah clause? Hinnah paschat thearon tan huyon kai pistuon. Do you believe in Jesus, sir?

You're not looking to the Son? Wow. What a degradation of Christianity.

If you're not, if you're not looking to the Son, if you're not gazing upon him and believing in him, present participle,

I really hope you come to understand what that means, because that's what

Christians do. I'm looking to the Son of God all the time. I'm sorry, you're not. I'm sorry that your traditions keep you from doing that.

But wow, that's, that's amazing. And by the way, the Augustine thing, again, that sounds so good, except for everybody who's read church history, actually read some, you know,

I'm, I'm lecturing on it. And, and it's so, you know, all I got to do is I go to Clement and I go to, you know, mathetes to Diognetius and, and you've, you've got all this stuff about the elect and, and it's, it's right there.

And that was long before Augustine. So you might want to actually read in the early church fathers a little bit rather than just reading about them.

It would help you a lot because you obviously don't have any idea what you're talking about. Well, look at John 6 47.

Jesus said, verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me has everlasting life. Do you see how clear and unmistakable these verses are?

Now, what would possess a person to? Yeah, we do. What does any of that have to do with our understanding of it?

It's obvious you don't understand our understanding of it. Why are you making videos about a perspective you haven't even taken the time to seriously study?

I don't get it. How does that have, how is that different than what we're saying?

I believe. And the only reason I believe is because I have been drawn.

I have been taught. I have learned. You know, 6 45.

That's the description, the prophetic description of what the drawing of the father to the son is going to result in those that are drawn.

Don't you understand that? Evidently not. Anti Calvinism can, can produce some amazing stuff.

Or a verse like John 6 47 when proof texting and go for John 6 37 instead, which is just talking about the 12 disciples, which is just time.

So, so if John 6 37 is only talking about 12 disciples, then Jesus only comes down out of heaven just for the 12 disciples.

I mean, you've got to follow the context. Why? Why are you not dealing with verse 39? Why do you not begin with what we begin with?

And that is a positive, contextual, sound, hermeneutic interpretation of all of John chapter 6.

Just follow the flow in the original language all the way through. The reason is you can't.

I've never seen a sinner just do it. Never. What is the consistent element to all of the responses that anyone's ever linked me to?

This one, the other one I was talking about, that the other hyper dispensationalist guy, whoever it might be,

Layton Flowers. What is Norm Geisler? What's the one thing that ties them all together?

They're all jumping over. Oh, and then you grab that, grab that. None of them go through this flow.

None of them go through the text. They can't. Because that's where the text proves its point.

It's, I didn't write it. I'm just, I'm just reporting the facts, just reporting the facts.

I'm still looking for number one and two here because we haven't found anything of any value so far.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, it's doctrines of devils. Make no mistake.

Number two, the twist and spin that Calvinists put on this verse and all the proof texts that they cherry pick from the book of John are overlooking one major thing.

That is the whole reason the book was written in the first place. With some books in the Bible, the purpose for writing can take a lot.

Okay, let me, let me leave it. Go ahead, because nobody can read it that small. John 20, 31, but these are written that you might believe that Jesus is the

Christ, Son of God, and that believing ye may have life through his name. Calvinism, John 20, 31, 666.

His head would explode if I explained the textual variant there, so I won't. But these are written for no particular reason because if you're not one of the elect, you'll go to hell anyway.

You'll have life. So having life, you might believe through his name. So again, folks, here's, this is an excellent example of Calvinist derangement syndrome.

It's untruthful. It is misrepresentational. It's false. It's dishonest.

Who's the father of lies again? He just said that we're demonic. I believe this man is just simply wildly ignorant and deeply entrenched in tradition.

Now, the reality is that God's elect people will not be misled by this, and so I would hope that at some point in this young man's life that God would bring some understanding to him, and he would lay aside his evident emotional detestation and actually learn what he's talking about.

Because to put something like that on a screen is just a lie. We don't believe that.

Don't believe that for a second. So why lie about something? If you're speaking God's truth, you don't need to lie about somebody else.

I could make lots of applications there, but that was good enough. Close study.

But John puts the cookies on the lower shelf and just comes out and tells the reader why he's writing. In chapter 20, verse 31,

John says, But these are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye might have life through his name.

The spin the Calvinist puts on all their proof texts completely negates this given purpose.

If Calvinism were true, this verse would say, But these are written for no particular reason, because if you're not one of the elect, you'll go to hell anyway.

Of course, just in case you've just never heard of Calvinism, you have no knowledge whatsoever.

We believe God ordains the ends and the means. He ordains what's going to happen, as well as the mechanism by which he's going to bring that about.

And so he gives us his law. He gives us his word. He uses us in evangelism.

These are God's purposes. This is how he conforms us to the image of Christ. He uses scripture, and the

Spirit of God makes that scripture come alive in our hearts. And so no Reformed person would ever recognize this. It's a grossly false, completely misrepresentational, totally outside the realm of what a true

Christian should be doing, because Christians should not misrepresent others. And a true

Christian should not misrepresent even those that they disagree with. That's why we have for years called for consistency in the representation of Roman Catholicism, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Islam, whatever it is.

We are followers of the truth, therefore we cannot be untruthful. This is untruthful, and therefore this is not something that Christians should be doing.

I would call upon Mr. Thompson to withdraw this video and to apologize for the misrepresentation that he has foisted upon others.

You'll have life, so that having life you might believe through his name. But that's not what it says.

You want to take a wild guess in the dark why it doesn't say that? Because Calvinism isn't true. That's why.

Number one. The number one thing Calvinists overlook in John 6 .37 is the second half of the verse.

Just sitting right there. Now, you know, it's funny, because down through the years, probably before he was born,

I've often pointed out that Christians love the second half of the verse.

But they don't love the theology of the first half of the verse that provides the foundation of the second. Because when

Jesus does give us this beautiful promise, the one coming to me

I will certainly not cast out, he explains why that is in verses 38 and 39.

He explains it in regards to his own perfect salvific ability.

That the Father has tasked him with the salvation of every single one of the elect, and he will not fail to bring that about, and that's why we are not cast out.

Because the Father has the sovereign right to give a people unto the Son, and to entrust them into his care.

It's all of God. It's none of us. That's the power of it.

And that's why these man -centered synergistic attempts to overthrow these divine truths always fall flat on their face, as this one has.

Once you start examining it, it's just like, oh my goodness, how can someone like this ever defend the deity of Christ?

Against a sharp person. Because they don't know hermeneutics. They cannot follow a text if their life depended on it.

It's astounding. But the funny thing is, many of them will do that with those subjects.

It's only when you start dealing with that great idol of the will of man, that all of a sudden their hermeneutical system goes all wonky.

And that's certainly what we've seen here. And so, the one coming to me, I will certainly not cast out.

Why? Because he is a perfect Savior who has been entrusted with the salvation of God's elect people.

The Father has the right to sovereignly give. The Son gives himself on their behalf. The Spirit seals them.

This is the beautiful teaching of God's absolute sovereignty in salvation. Staring them in the face.

The rest of the verse says, And him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out. There are two classes of people in this one verse, just like we find in John 17.

We have the given, the twelve disciples, and then them which believe through their word. It couldn't be any clearer if you stayed up all night with a clearing machine.

Calvinism histo - What? I have no earthly idea what that means.

None whatsoever. So, evidently, just as in other texts, there has to be this.

Just as in John 644, some synergists have to insert a huge chasm.

Here's a huge chasm. So, the one coming to me, that's just the disciples.

But then the - Wait a minute. Alright. So, Everyone the

Father gives me, will come to me. That's just the disciples.

And, the one coming to me, I will never cast out. That's anyone who believes in Jesus. And then you can sit there and say, it's as clear as a - and I have no idea what he meant by the rest of it.

What's really clear is that this man fails hermeneutics 101 in any language.

Whether the original or translation. Wow. If you have to cut

John 637 in half, you can't deal with John 637, can you? So, the number one reason illustrates plainly the amazing incapacity of this position to answer the text.

...exploits phrases devoid of context in order to propagate the Gnostic agenda of Augustine.

So, there you have it. Ten things they are overlooking when they reference this passage in support of their view. Don't drink the

Kool -Aid. Stick with the Word of God in its proper context. May the Lord bless you and good day.

Well, there you go, folks. Yet another grossly failed attempt to get around the meaning of John 6.

We ought to get a volunteer someday to go back through all of our, not only

Radio Free Geneva's, but everything. And put together a listing of every place we've dealt with John 6.

Because over and over again, we'll see the same things. But it would be an interesting playlist. Really would be.

Because we have been trying for years to collect every failed attempt at getting around the beauty of John 6.

Hey, it's been a mega as of right now. Two hours. Alright, that worked.

So, there you go, folks. Radio Free Geneva. But we will be back tomorrow.

Same time, same station. Or whatever we used to say. It doesn't really matter anymore. But thanks for listening to Radio Free Geneva on the