Open Phones and Announcement of New Topic on the LDS Theology

work in making that particular service available to us. We are very, very thankful for the fact that he hosts so many things.

We have a number of debates there, not nearly as many as we probably should have. We need to send Stephen some more debates,

I think, so that he can have them there, maybe some of the more recent ones that we have done so people can listen, but very thankful for that and thankful for those of you who are listening in today on the internet as well.

We invite your participation at 866 -854 -6763.

That is, and I know those of you who listen regularly, that you already know this, but that is a toll free number 866 -854 -6763.

It will not cost you anything to pick up the phone and to join in with us on The Dividing Line today.

We would be happy to have you join in with your questions and your comments on the program today.

Now let me try to remember to repeat this a number of times over the course of the program, but I have set up an auto -respond function at my email address.

And what we're going to do next week, it'll probably be the first time in the history of The Dividing Line that outside of the series that we've done in the past, like responding to the

King James Only folks, or responding to Norman Geisler on his book Chosen But Free, and so on and so forth, it'll probably be one of the first times that people will actually know what we're going to be doing in the program before we do it.

I know, in fact, we had someone just today saying that we should have topics posted way ahead of time.

And I suppose if I had a big old staff and it was different people that were doing it and things, that would be something we could do.

Problem is, when you say exactly what you're going to be talking about a month ahead of time, then you're pretty much stuck talking about that.

And you can't talk about news as it comes up, you can't talk about developments that take place during the course of a week of ministry, and so on and so forth.

So, you know, we tend to sort of fly by the seat of our pants here at The Dividing Line just a little bit, and I think that's okay, too.

I mean, I happen to listen to a major talk show host who is very, very, very, very well known, who never announces a topic, and yet people tune in anyways.

And if I had some paper around here I'd crumble it and talk about my formerly nicotine -stained fingers, but I've never touched one of those filthy cancer sticks myself, so I can't do that.

Anyways, so next week we are going to be talking about the eternal law of progression and Mormonism.

Now, really the only way to do that meaningfully, as far as really following what

I'm saying and understanding what I'm saying, why I'm saying what I'm saying, so on and so forth, the only way really to do that meaningfully is if we have some sort of material in your hands, or in this case on your computer screen, that will allow you to follow along with what

I'm saying. And so what we're going to do is I have set up at my personal email address, one of my many personal email addresses, na27aomin .org.

If you send an email to that address, and in the subject line you put the following, and only the following, this won't work if you don't do this right, in the subject line you put request1A, capital

R request, just the first letter is a capital, 1 then capital

A. So capital R then small e -q -u -e -s -t space 1 capital

A. Request1A automatically, without me having to do it, my system will send to you a

PowerPoint presentation on the subject of the eternal law of progression.

Now immediately someone's going to say, PowerPoint? That's Microsoft! That's satanic! No, it's not.

Everything can use that. Anyways, what you can do is also in the body of the text that is sent back to you, the email that will be sent back to you, the

PowerPoint will be attached to an email. In the email will be a URL. The URL will take you to the

Microsoft web page and will take you to a free, please note, just like the toll -free number, a free

PowerPoint viewer. So in other words, you don't have to own

PowerPoint. You have to go out and buy Microsoft Office. I know it's not inexpensive, but if you will follow that URL, you can download a

Microsoft viewer and you can watch, watch, utilize, display the

PowerPoint presentation on your computer. And that way, as you are listening to the program next week live, or if you listen by archive at your leisure, a nice thing about archiving the program is maybe you can only get something like, you know, 15 to 20 minutes at a time.

Well, you can do that. That's the nice thing about webcasting is you don't have to necessarily be listening in right now.

You can listen in later. You can do it over the course of a week. You can re -listen to sections that maybe go by too quickly, whatever it might be.

That is the tremendous advantage of this particular forum. And what we'll do then next week is we will start working on the subject of the

Eternal Law of Progression. I cannot guarantee that it will necessarily only take one week to do it.

I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna hold myself to that, especially because we've got basically four or five weeks in there, maybe a little bit more before we are headed out to the

Mesa Easter pageant, and certainly at least three or four weeks before we head up to Salt Lake City and do our work up there.

So whichever direction we go on it, we've got enough time. We can, in fact, maybe limit the presentation to the first hour and then take your calls.

Let's say, you know, when I present this material, for example, I presented this material in a very, very quick format at my son's school this past week and to the freshman and sophomore

Bible classes at my son's Christian school where he plays basketball and where they did very well this year, and I was very proud of them.

And I had very little time for questions at the end, and because there's just so much.

And so in most of the situations where I present this in a church or in the training seminars we've done in the past, we will have time for a lot of questions toward the end.

And so what I would like to do is invite you all to call in if there's material in what we cover in the first, say, hour of the program.

Then we'll ask folks, in essence, to get online to get in line with their questions, and you can do so at 866 -854 -6763, of course, or you could also do it through our worldwide chat room.

And in fact, I should let folks know that if you have Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, you can send me questions, brief questions, please, especially since I am trying to do this, watch the chat room, and everything else that comes up.

Sometimes when you hear me slow down, it's because I'm reading something that someone has written in the chat room or something like that.

And you could send me a Yahoo Messenger message at NA27UBS4.

NA27UBS4 is my Yahoo Messenger ID, and I am online right now.

You can get hold of me via Yahoo Messenger. And frequently, I have Yahoo up a lot.

I use Yahoo very frequently. I've found it to be extremely friendly service with lots of neat things, weather forecasts, and so on and so forth.

I use it a lot. So NA27UBS4 is my ID number, screen name, whatever in the world it is you want to call it.

And you can send me the questions that way as well. And then that last half hour of the program, then we can answer questions and concerns about the presentation we've done so far.

So let me recap very briefly. I don't want to repeat this with quite so much full information in the future.

If you would like to have the PowerPoint presentation, by the way, at least one of you has already downloaded that,

I have already added a section to that. So if you have, there's only one or two people that already have an older version of the presentation,

I added something to it within the past 15 minutes. I was just testing it earlier on.

I added a section to that particular presentation.

It's basically the section where I go over how to witness to Mormons, so on and so forth, to try to do that kind of thing.

Just to give you a little bit of to cover the fact that some folks just don't type as well as they should, we have one fellow in the chat channel all the time who is extremely wonky, as we call him, who could not type his name correctly to save his life, actually.

And we feel very sorry for him, and we hope someday that in his glorified state he'll be able to do that.

But anyways, other people hopefully will get that right. Request 1A, and my system will then automatically fire back at you the

PowerPoint presentation so that when we go over it, and you may ask, well, why should I want to go over this?

Well, the law of eternal progression is the central aspect of LDS belief.

And I know that when I first started studying Mormonism, I was extremely, extremely...

what word am I searching for here? I was intimidated. I was intimidated by the breadth of information that I felt like I was going to have to memorize, or I was going to have to try to keep track of, and all the rest of that stuff.

And I didn't really have anybody I could turn to. I didn't have anybody who was mentoring me. I didn't have anyone that was guiding me through this.

It was a completely just me -myself -and -I type of effort on my part.

And as I read the LDS Scriptures, as I read the Book of Mormon, Doctrine, Covenants, Prophets, I'd keep running across this stuff, and I would take notes on it, and I was making note cards and notebooks, and there were just days when

I went, there's no way I could ever remember all this stuff. It doesn't seem to be really connected.

And so what the eternal law of progression presentation allows me to do is to get you past those feelings that I had.

And that is, there is a central core of LDS theology that gives form and shape and helps you to understand the connection of all the rest of it.

You don't necessarily have to be an expert upon such issues as the

Book of Abraham and Egyptology or false prophecies of Joseph Smith and the

Book of Mormon and all the rest this type of stuff. You don't necessarily have to be an expert on all those things to be able to witness to Mormons in an effective manner.

If you focus in upon the central core of the theology, that's where we always want to go. The only reason

I ever talk about Joseph Smith or the Book of Mormon or the Book of Abraham is to get to the central core, and that is presenting, in order of importance, who the true

God is, who the true Christ is, and what the true gospel is. That is what you want to communicate to a

Mormon. Those other issues may either be roadblocks or they can be turned into ways of getting to those core issues, depending upon your level of preparation.

And so the eternal law of progression, to which we will be referring next week, gives you that central core.

If you understand that, then you can translate Mormonese.

The language of the Mormons is very different than the language we speak.

It sounds the same. It sounds exactly the same. It uses the same words, but it's like having a language that uses all the same vocabulary words but uses a completely different lexicon, uses a completely different dictionary.

And that is what normally causes Christians to walk away from the witnessing situation utterly frustrated, because the translation hasn't taken place.

If you listen in the next few weeks and you download the material from my system and so on and so forth,

I honestly think you will have a really good start in being able to interpret the words of the

Mormon and share with them in a way that will be very, very useful to you. So one last time,

NA27 at AOMIN .org. Now, in essence, my system polls for mail.

I believe it's set for every five minutes. I'm not certain. So it could be as much as 10 minutes before I even get your request, and then my system turns it around and ships it back to you.

So when I used my Yahoo email address, it really was a fairly fast turnaround time of about 10 to 15 minutes, and I had the material at my other address.

Someone else did the same thing. So give it just a few moments and it will get to you. Please feel free.

In fact, I'm getting some requests right now. Thank you very much. Please feel free to utilize this.

If you, for example, teach Bible study classes, if I had someone, one of the parents from my son's class, call me after I spoke to his class, and lo and behold, he teaches an apologetics class in his church and has been using my materials, you'd be more than welcome to utilize this, edit it, use it for whatever, to be able to share with folks what the

Mormons truly teach. By the way, the presentation that I put together, it was sort of funny.

I got to the the school, and what I've done in the past is I've simply used a

Word document that had this, as you'll see, it's primarily a graphic that shows the eternal law of progression.

I just had problems with it. I had problems with my remote mouse, and I didn't like the way it was working, and so I did the first hour and the third hour.

I had the second hour open, which is really not even a full hour, it's about 45 minutes, and in that time I created the presentation that you're going to have.

And what I did is I inserted at the beginning an entire section of a quotation from an

LDS church manual that is probably the single clearest presentation on the part of Mormonism of its doctrine outside the

King Follett funeral discourse I've ever encountered. And one of the amazing statements found in this that you'll find in this

PowerPoint presentation is a statement on the part of the

Mormon leader who's talking to the Mormon individual. They're discussing why is celestial marriage so important, and basically if you don't engage in celestial marriage and Mormonism, you can never become a

God. And one of the things that the Mormon leader approvingly says to the

Mormon man who is preparing for eternal marriage is that you were never created and you can never be destroyed.

I cannot help but find that phrase as the essence of the denial of the

Christian faith. That is the very essence of what makes

Mormonism as bad as the worst paganism that is condemned in the pages of Scripture.

Even the pagans recognized that they were created, and even the pagans recognized that they could be destroyed.

And yet here you have in the words of a document that is published under the auspices of the presidency of the

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints for distribution to its own people.

This is their own teaching for their own people, explaining their own theology. This isn't some anti -Mormon book. And in that documentation you have the specific assertion that you were not created and you cannot be destroyed.

Of course Joseph Smith said that, said God the Father never had the power to create the spirit of man at all. God the

Father in Mormonism does not have the powerability to create ex nihilo. He cannot say, let there be light, and there is light.

Instead he has to organize pre -existing matter, and pre -existing matter is more eternal than God himself is, for that matter.

And so that is very, very, very important.

For those of you who have been waiting for my system to send it back to you, I just had to hit a button to do that for some strange reason.

It had not sent them out, but it just did. So those of you who are waiting for the file, it is on its way at NA27 at AOMN .org.

Request 1A is the email address that is there. So someone is requesting those files.

We will be using them next week. Obviously if you want to get them this week, that's fine. You know, my system will be up and available pretty much throughout the whole week, so feel free to request that.

If you'd like to look over the material first, it's not heavy text in the sense that most of its graphic and therefore doesn't really necessarily mean a whole lot unless you have me talking along with it.

It's not like slide with text after text, that's not really what it is. But you may wish to look through it, be familiar with it before we get started on it, that probably would help you out.

And by the way, in the text of the note that will come with it is a reference to our hundred verse memorization system, which is on our website.

And so I would highly recommend that you get hold of that as well. If any of you are listening in the

Phoenix area, or if any of you maybe have been wanting to contact us because you're interested in going to the general conference of the

LDS Church in Salt Lake, March 31st, April 1st is when the conference is. We will be up there

March 31st, Saturday March 31st, passing out tracts and witnessing to folks up there.

Please, by the way, you need to get hold of us. Don't just don't just show up. One of the things we like to do is like make sure that the people who pass out tracts with us, like, have read them.

It's really not a really not a good idea when, you know, to pass out literature and, you know, not really know what it says.

So we want to make sure that people have an opportunity to obtain the material and to take a look at it.

And I'll let me just mention this straight up front. We don't have folks working with us, either in Salt Lake or in Mesa, who are not members in good standing of a local, solid,

Bible -based church. We don't have any Lone Ranger Christians who cannot answer the simple question based on Hebrews 13, 17, who are those who have the rule over you?

If you can look at that passage of Scripture, and you cannot identify who has the rule over you, then let me just read it to you.

Hebrews 13, 17, If you cannot answer the question who your leaders are, and if you are not in submission to them, then you don't need to be a part of what we're doing.

We honestly believe that this is spiritual warfare, and that if a person is in disobedience to one section of Scripture, they don't need to be out there talking to others.

Call me a hard -nose, if you will, but I think that I have a solid biblical ground for making that kind of assertion.

And we've had folks come up to us outside in Mesa and things like that, and they want to, you know, let's witness the

Mormons. And I will ask them, well, are you a member of a church? Well, you know, I go here and I go there, and I said, well, you know, if you're in disobedience this passage of Scripture, why should you be worried about the fact these folks are in disobedience to another?

And they look at me with a very, very blank look, and they're very unhappy about that particular position that we take, but it is the position we take, and that's all there is to it.

I was just asked, what if you are a leader? Well, okay, Mr. Smith, if you are one of the elders in the church, then obviously your response would be,

I am accountable to my fellow elders within the church. Oh, brother. Anyways, of course,

I know he knows that. He's actually a fairly decent guy, you know, even though he's from England, it's okay. God has his elect in the far -flung corners of the world.

Anyways, I'm gonna hear about that in just a second. So anyway, that's what we're gonna be doing next week, and I'm looking at the clock, and we have a caller, and I'm not sure, let me see if I can get

Rich to tell me, is this call about a subject amongst Protestants, or is this in regards to that subject, in regards to, like,

Roman Catholicism, and so on and so forth? Is that, you don't know, huh?

Well, we have a caller online with a question that will undoubtedly get a lot of conversation going, certainly, but I'm not certain which direction the call is going to be taking us, and I don't want to put the person online with only a few moments before we take a break.

So we'll pick up our first caller at 866 -854 -6763 after the break, and that way that we won't have any interruptions, and won't have to sort of put people back on hold, and do things like that.

But we do have one caller, and it's gonna be interesting at 866 -854 -6763 if you have some questions, maybe even something that I've already raised in regards to the subject of Mormonism and the need to share with them, please feel free to join with us at 866 -854 -6763.

I also believe I can tell by looking at the chat room that Brother Escobedo has joined us.

Simon's out there somewhere, and we've rigged up a microphone so that Simon can join with us and talk with us.

So maybe after the chat, after the, I'm sorry, the break, we can have...

Look at this, I'm getting all sorts of oopses already. I've got one, two, three,

I've got four oopses on the requests so far. Folks, request space one capital

A. This could be very, very interesting.

I need to broaden my filter by a lot.

Oh gracious sakes, this could be interesting. I'm not really sure how to handle these, but we will work on it.

And those of you, there's at least three of you who have made requests. The reason you haven't gotten it back yet is because it's request capital

R, the rest is small, space one, and then capital A. I have one that has request one

A, everything's run together. I have one that has all capital request one A, and this is gonna be fun.

Let's see if I can make my filters work, and we'll do that during the break, and we'll come back with your phone calls 866 -854 -6763.

We'll be right back. Answering those who claim that only the King James Version is the Word of God. James White, in his book,

The King James Only Controversy, examines allegations that modern translators conspired to corrupt

Scripture and lead believers away from true Christian faith. In a readable and responsible style, author

James White traces the development of Bible translations, old and new, and investigates the differences between new versions and the authorized version of 1611.

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

.org. The Apostle Paul spoke of the importance of solemnly testifying of the gospel of the grace of God.

The proclamation of God's truth is the most important element of his worship in his church. The elders and people of the

Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church invite you to worship with us this coming Lord's Day. Our morning

Bible study begins at 930 a .m. and our worship service is at 1045. Evening services are at 630 p .m.

on Sunday, and Wednesday prayer meeting is at 7. We are located at 3805

North 12th Street in Phoenix. You can call for further information at 26Grace, or look us up on the web at www .prbc

.org. And welcome back to The Dividing Line, my name is

James White, and I am fixing my filter right now.

I think, you know, if I work hard enough at it, I should be able to, in essence, guess every possible permutation of the phrase request 1a.

Maybe I should have just put the word, the letter 1. What do you think? Maybe that is my is my mistake.

I don't know. Anyways, hi Simon. Hello. Hi, how you doing?

How are you doing? Yes. You know, this is a little weird. I can't look back at you, because if I look back at you, it sounds like I'm all the way across the room or something like that.

No, but I can see you fine. Yeah, you can. That's not a very pleasant sight, I don't think, either.

But, you can hear me? Yes, I can hear you fine, absolutely. All right, excellent, super. All right, well, and you know what the subject of this call is, don't you?

Absolutely not. You don't know the subject? I have no idea. I was rushed in here. For what reasons,

I have no idea. Okay, all right, well, I just made the mistake of clearing out the name of our caller off of my screen, which

I apologize for. But, why don't we go ahead and bring the caller, Kevin. Kevin is online.

And, Kevin, as I understand, you're calling from like outside the United States. Yep. Ontario, in fact.

Brantford. Wow, cool. So, I'm in like southern Ontario. Okanook, eh?

It's cold up here, so. Yeah, it's not cold here. But, anyways, Kevin, you have an interesting question,

I believe. Yeah, it was about infant baptism versus believer's baptism.

Now, let's define what you mean by that. Well, I'm not talking about Roman Catholicism. Okay. I'm talking about, well, let me just say

I was reading Michael Horton's book, Putting the Amazing Back Into Grace. All righty.

You are familiar with Michael Horton? Yes, I am. And, well, I was just curious as to why, well,

I attend a Baptist church, so I probably take the position of believer's baptism, but I was wondering why you took it, and why do you think baptism is in view in passages like Romans 6 or something like that?

All right, well, in essence, that's sort of what I expected the question was on, and let me back the truck up just a little bit and, for everyone's benefit, talk about some of the issues that are relevant here.

And, in essence, amongst Protestants, there are two understandings of infant baptism, and we need to differentiate between the two.

There are Protestants who would hold to a view of infant baptism that results in regeneration.

Even Martin Luther can be construed in many of his writings to be presenting an understanding of infant baptism that results in regeneration.

And that's one issue, but that's not the position that Michael Horton would be presenting necessarily.

He would be presenting a Reformed view generally associated with Presbyterians in regards to the subject of infant baptism, and that is they view infant baptism as the sign of the covenant, and hence the sign of the new covenant, baptism, becomes parallel to the sign of the old covenant, which is circumcision, and since circumcision was given to all the infant children of the people of Israel, infant males anyways, then baptism is to be given to the children of new covenant believers as well.

Therefore, those individuals would not necessarily, and certainly not officially, believe that infant baptism causes regeneration.

So obviously we need to differentiate between those two, and my assumption would be that Michael Horton would present the

Reformed view of that, and that is that infant baptism does not cause regeneration, but is a sign of a covenant promise to the covenant children, etc.,

etc. Now I would say that truly

I think you can make a very strong argument from Scripture that the sign of the new covenant is circumcision.

Now let me explain what I mean by that. It's circumcision of the heart. Paul speaks of the circumcision of the heart, and the new covenant as it is explained in Hebrews chapter 8 is a covenant that knows of no one who does not know the

Lord. Everyone in the new covenant in Hebrews chapter 8 knows the Lord. It specifically says that they will not say one to another, know the

Lord, for they shall all know him from the least to the greatest of them. And so one of the differences between the old covenants and the new covenant is that in the new covenant everyone who is in it knows the

Lord, and I think that's where we need to see the difference, that I as a

Credo Baptist, a person who believes that you must confess faith in Christ to experience baptism,

I would say, that is something that is very, very important to understand. That the nature of the new covenant is such that since it is in the blood of Jesus Christ, therefore it is a covenant wherein he is our mediator and he loses none of those who are in his covenant.

And so keeping that particular issue in mind I think is the most important thing in responding, in focusing, let me change that, in focusing your response to those who would present the

Paedo -Baptistic understanding. Did any of that make any sense to you at all?

Yeah, I think it made sense. Yeah, well I was reading his book in regards to baptismal regeneration of the young.

Yeah, I don't think it would hold Luther's view, but he seems to think that if you have kids, like if you're a

Christian, your kids will become Christians. Well, I don't know.

Yeah, many, I know that, I'm trying to remember the name of the author right now, his book,

Infant Baptism, French, starts with a P, there's a citation that is often repeated that utilizes the assertion that the normative realm out of which

God calls his elect is out of the covenant family.

And therefore some statements by some people go so far as to say that there is a promise of God to save covenant children.

And that is one of the issues that causes me so much difficulty, is because I don't see the biblical basis for presenting the idea of covenant children in the way that many

Paedo -Baptists do, almost to the point where they, in essence, say that the covenant child is somehow freed or made less bound to their sinful nature than the non -covenant child is.

Certainly there's a benefit of being raised in a Christian family, but we all know of individuals raised in Christian families who do not become

Christians, in fact become very opposed to the Christian faith. Pierre Marcel, thank you very much, someone, wrong name that started with a

P, it's actually Marcel, Pierre Marcel was the quote that I was referring to there. So there are

Paedo -Baptists who will, in essence, hold to a promise of redemption of the covenant child.

And then there are others who will say, no, we cannot presume upon God's grace in that way. We understand that we're to give this sign in hope and trust, but it is not going to result necessarily in the redemption of this child.

We need to pray that God will draw this child to themselves, we need to train them, we need to exhort them, we need to call them to repentance, etc.,

etc., etc., which is of course the position that we take, that we need to pray that God, who is the only one who can open our children's hearts, will do so.

And that is the responsibility of a parent.

And in fact, I recall someone just this past Wednesday evening, in a prayer meeting that we had at our church, saying that we as Christian parents should have calloused knees and moist pillows for the prayers that we offer up in regards to our children, that God would be pleased to draw them to himself.

Okay? Well, this whole issue got started while I'm only 17. I've been a

Christian for five years, and I haven't been baptized. And it's a big story, because I attended a church, my parents wouldn't allow me to be baptized there, then they wouldn't allow me to attend the church, and now

I'm at a Baptist church now, and I was just considering the whole issue. Interesting. Well now, so you're going to be turning 18 then soon?

Are you going to be moving out? Why wouldn't your parents allow you to be baptized? Well, originally

I attended a Pentecostal church. They didn't like it, and I've since changed a whole lot of my views since then.

You know, I'm no longer Pentecostal. So they didn't like the church, they wouldn't allow me to be baptized there, and the people at the church said, well if your parents won't let you be baptized there, then don't be baptized.

And so then for about a couple years, I was without a church. It was a difficult time, because I didn't know what to do, because I'm firmly committed to scriptures, and any of the churches that I believe were firmly committed to scriptures, they were not interested in me attending.

I see, I see. So now I found a good church, and I just started looking into the whole issue.

So I will be turning 18 in a couple months. Okay, alrighty. Alright, well I'm always interested, how are you familiar with our webcast?

With your webcast? Right. Well, I believe I picked up your book, The Forgotten Trinity, a while ago, and I've since read a whole lot of your other books, like The Potter's Freedom.

Interesting. And I just heard about you, I guess I just found your website from the back of your book.

Great, super. Well, I appreciate it, and I appreciate the question. I hope some of those insights were helpful to you, and it'll be interesting to see what happens when you're in a good, solid church right now, then?

Yeah, I think so. Good, excellent, excellent. Alrighty, sir, thank you very much, Kevin. Yep. Alright, God bless, thanks for calling.

866 -854 -6763, the requests keep coming.

The ones that don't get answered. Oh, I'll manually handle the other ones.

Hey, Kevin, I asked for this, and that's, you know, what can I say? 866 -854 -6763.

We have another caller online. This is Evans from up in Iowa.

Hello, Evans. Hello, sir. How are you, sir? I'm fine. Good. There's a foot of snow on the ground, and it's raining, slowly turning to ice, but otherwise

I'm okay. Oh, well, I'm really, what is it supposed to be today?

Something like 68, or something like that here? Something along those lines. Hey, I was talking,

I was in a Bible study on Wednesday night, and I was waxing eloquent on the subject of election, and one of the people in the room brought me up short with Romans 11 -14, and I thought, well, who better to ask?

Well, Romans 11 -14, let's actually back up so we can get the context because that's only half of a sentence.

Romans 11 -13 says, But I am speaking to you who are Gentiles inasmuch then as I am an apostle of Gentiles, I magnify my ministry, if somehow

I might move to jealousy my fellow countrymen, and save some of them. And this, of course, is in the context of discussion of the

Gospel of Grace going to the Gentiles, and the movement to jealousy of some of them is in regards to the benefits of the

Gospel, the benefits of the true worship of God going outside of the national people of Israel.

And hence my assumption would be that the use of the passage goes along these lines, and that is that the idea is, if I somehow might move to jealousy my fellow countrymen and save some of them, as if Paul was the agent of salvation, possibly, or that their salvation is uncertain and based upon being moved to jealousy by something

Paul does. What was the application that was being made? Well, what he said was, he started talking about the tension between, he started talking about the responsibility of man and the sovereignty of God, and he started talking about tension.

And I tend to think that people who use that concept of tension are basically saying, I don't know how to fit sovereignty with free will, so I'll just throw this word tension in there to resolve the conflict.

Trust me, that is a word that I heard constantly in seminary at Fuller Seminary, the tension in the text, which in that case was not so much in the context of the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man.

Generally at Fuller, that was a nice way of saying, I believe this is a contradiction in the

Bible. And so they would talk about tension in the text, which I normally say, well,

I found ibuprofen and Excedrin migraine to work for tension really, really well myself, or real good stuff, real good tough workout helps a lot with tension.

Wouldn't you say, Simon? Yeah. Simon, would you agree with that? I would agree with that. You would agree with that? I'm glad you would. And yet even though they say that, isn't it interesting that the side they fall on is not on the side of divine sovereignty?

They usually have a claimed position in this. Oh yeah, oh yeah. It's not like it's unresolved and they just leave it to the wind. So what he was basically asking is, you know, if election is true, how do you, because envy makes it appear like they desire, but how can they desire if they're not brought to desire?

Right. And I'd never thought about it before, and I didn't really have an answer.

So I thought I'd ask since I was listening to your webcast. Well, now you've thought about it, so let me see if you're familiar with the webcast, have you seen

The Potter's Freedom? Oh, I've read it. Okay, so I always like to find out if I've done at least a semi -decent job in communicating something more than just my understanding of certain passages, but more of an overarching concept.

If you've had a chance to think about it now, what kind of response do you think you would offer?

I'm not trying to put you on the spot here, but I am. What kind of response would you think

I would offer? Let's put it that way, I can take you off the spot there, to a passage like that. Well, you see,

I'm really kind of at a loss. I really don't know, and I figured that there was a contextual issue here.

You go back a little ways, and he's talking about 5 ,000 that I reserved for myself, but I really, that word envy implies to me cognitive desire, and I don't see cognitive desire in the unsaved.

So that was the issue. That's why I couldn't answer. Okay, all righty. Well, actually, the phrase that is used there, to make them jealous,

God uses many manifold means to bring his elect people unto himself.

I mean, think about what happened with, and if any of you think that a 747 is about to land on my office here, actually, the microphone is freezing to death out there.

I want you to know that the air conditioning just turned on, and that's why you can hear that in the background.

I'm afraid, Simon, they just turned you down so they can't hear that. Anyways, God uses all sorts of means to bring his elect unto himself.

Look at the life of Paul himself. I mean, God used extraordinary means to bring about Paul's conversion.

I mean, knocking people off of their horses and blinding them is certainly a tremendous violation of free will of anything else, but he uses all sorts of different means.

Sometimes, for example, he uses death to cause us to begin to think about our mortality, or he uses tragedies in the life of others, or he uses deep personal disappointment.

In this case, Paul is saying that just in this particular situation, the magnification of his own ministry in the proclamation of the gospel to the

Gentiles, and their flocking to the gospel, their love of the gospel, is something that he desires.

He says, if somehow I might move to jealousy, that is, if God would even use my ministry amongst the

Gentiles and the fact that the Gentiles are receiving the blessings of God and the promises of God and they're truly worshiping

God, if God would even use that to bring my fellow countrymen.

Notice what he said in Romans chapter 9. What did he start this section with? He said, I could wish that I myself would be accursed, separated from Christ, if it would result in the salvation of my fellow

Jews. So what all he's saying is that he truly desires, deeply desires, the salvation of the

Jewish people. And he doesn't have, any more than we have, the ability to look at someone and say, you know what, that person is one of the elect and that person is not one of the elect.

He doesn't have that ability. I suppose God could have given him that ability as one of the apostles, but he does not generally have that type of supernatural knowledge.

And so it is his desire that every aspect of his life be used by God to his glory and that every aspect of his ministry be used to draw the

Jewish people to himself. And so he himself had seen how

God had used the proclamation of the gospel to the Gentiles to bring

Jewish people. There are examples in the book of Acts where his proclamation caused individuals who were high up in the synagogue, for example, to come and to come to know

Christ. God used all of those things. But it's interesting to me that we would have to use, well, it seems like maybe if we interpret this verse this way that it might indicate that possibly this means that man has this capacity.

Why do we have to do that when we have Romans 8, 7, and 8 that specifically says that the person, the natural man is not able to do what is pleasing to God.

When we have the specific assertion of the inabilities of man, so on and so forth. Why do we have to go to a passage like this where Paul is clearly talking about his ministry and so on and so forth and somehow read something out of this into the doctrine of salvation and ignore the plain, clear passages.

That is the same thing in 2 Peter 2, 2 and 2, 1 and 2 and things like that.

So I would say that Romans 11, 14 is simply Paul's statement that he desires that God would use every aspect of his walk in his life to bring honor and glory to himself by bringing about salvation.

It is not addressing some innate capacity of man outside of God's grace to be able to desire what is good or desire what is righteous.

OK, so I could summarize by saying that you believe provoking to jealousy, in a sense, is a specific instance of the father drawing.

Well of course, I mean the father uses all sorts of things in that way, yes. OK. Now that's a lot shorter way than I said it, which is probably better because I have been told that I am extremely wordy and that I should probably just give answers that are 4 or 5 words long rather than just go on and on and on, which is what

I am doing right now in fact. Well thank you very much. OK, thanks a lot Evans, thanks for listening, God bless.

Goodbye. Alright, 866 -854 -6763.

You probably could have said that a whole lot faster than I did, huh Simon? Yeah, but we like it when you get on a soapbox. Have you ever seen anybody preach on a soapbox,

Simon? Yes I have as a matter of fact. I have too. Did you see it at Bob Jones? Yes. Street preaching.

Yep, yep. I saw that at Grand Canyon College when I was a student there and the ministerial association had to go out into the center of the campus and they set up a,

I don't think it was a soapbox, but it was some sort of a crate type thing and they'd have to stand on it and they'd have to do street preaching.

Yes indeed. In fact I recently saw that a couple years ago over at ASU. It's on Mill Avenue. They have some street preachers out there.

Yep, yep. Did you ever do it? No. Didn't have quite the backbone for that I don't think. Well you know we've seen people up in Salt Lake doing that and we've seen people out in Mesa except there it was irrigation ditch valve cover preaching.

I see. Because they would, in fact one year early on we had the door show up and I'll never forget these guys.

They'd stand up on this, you know Mesa used to be very rural and so there are still in essence not canals but irrigation canal type things underneath the roads and there's this thing right on the corner of Main and Hobson and Mesa and you can sit on it or you can stand on it and stuff like that and so they would, this guy came out and he would stand there and he would wait until the

Mormons were leaving because you've seen what it's like when the Mormons leave at Main and Hobson during the

Easter pageant. It's a zoo. Moo. Moo, yeah moo. And you can speak loud enough and you're going to have a couple hundred people that are going to be able to hear what you're saying.

So he'd stand up there and he would preach and he would go, you need to repent. And of course since he knew nothing about Mormonism the crowd would go, we have.

We have, yeah. You need to believe in Jesus. We do. I mean he was not getting anywhere at all because unlike the apostle

Paul had not prepared himself so as to be able to communicate. In fact the very same passage,

Paul says I've become all things to all men. Well they didn't decide they wanted to become all things to all men and that's one of the problems there.

Well anyways, let's go ahead and try to sneak one more call in here before the break and talk to, is it, now help me out here because I've seen your name many times.

We have corresponded but I think this is the first time we've talked and the way it's spelled here, would it be

Roland? Yeah, that is me. Hey, very good. How are you doing?

I'm doing well. I think you are Tefidur in the chat room, are you not? That is me. Hey, which is

Rudefit backwards. Did you know that? No, I didn't. Well, you know, if you look at it you'll see that.

I just sort of, believe it or not, I actually do when people join, I didn't recognize your host mask when you joined,

I actually look at their names backwards because that's one of the things that lamers like to do.

People like to come to the chat room and they'll have like Satan spelled backwards or some stupid thing like that.

So I actually look at, well, it's one of the things you have to do when you're an op and you've got lamers out there in the

IRC world. So I actually saw Tefidur and I went, what is that backwards? It's Rudefit.

Well, that doesn't mean anything either. That's Gale Ripplingeritis. Hey, watch it.

I can't control your mic, but I know who can. What can we do for you? Well, I had a question about the

Christian Reformed Church and I just wanted to find out what you thought of it and would you consider it to be a good Christian church to attend?

Well, CRC, there are some really solid, good CRC folks out there.

But I would say that in my experience, I have encountered a large amount of what might be called traditionalism -itis in a lot of CRC churches where the people who are a member of the church are because that's just what they are.

There's a lot of traditionalism there. And I have to admit, I live somewhat a sheltered life.

I believe right now that there are a lot of discussions concerning some rather fundamental issues, including women in eldership, interpretation of Scripture, all sorts of things like that that are coming up in the

CRC. And as one wise man once said to me, once a denomination even gets to the point where there are enough people to want to discuss undercutting fundamental issues of biblical authority, that means there's already been a real slide in the denomination.

Well, I know as far as women in ministry, that's been a hot topic for the last decade or more.

And the way they have it set up now is that, as far as I understand, is that basically classies, that's the districts,

I guess they call them, classies. Each classie gets to decide whether they want to have ordained women ministers or not.

And if that particular classie does not want to have female ministers, then they will not work there.

They will have to go to another classie that will allow that. Well, that would cause me, obviously, a fair amount of problems simply because I think you can make a historical case.

And I'm not making the assertion that automatically because of X, Y is going to follow.

But historically, as I look at what has happened over the past, say, 150 years in Protestant churches in America, generally, once you start engaging in this type of social redefinition of terms and start allowing this kind of thing, it generally indicates a trend in the denomination.

And that trend is normally away from a solid biblical foundation toward things that are not so solid at all.

So, obviously, I know of people who are in solid CRC churches, but they are grieved over what is going on.

And I know some have actually left and formed their own denomination as well. Right, right. And sadly, that's what happens in a land that's,

I believe, to be under the wrath of God, is that we must constantly be very vigilant for the purity of the gospel.

It is not a matter of just being a closed -minded, unloving person. We must recognize the penchant of man for undercutting the authority of the

Word of God. Once it starts there, it goes to all sorts of other issues beyond that.

And so, I don't claim to be an expert on the current situations there. Those are just the things that I've heard.

Now, what would you consider to be one of the best resources, either on the web or in print, that would deal with women in ministry,

I guess the pros and cons? I take it that you probably would be against that. Oh, yeah. I don't see any way of dealing with the biblical text that does not in any way, shape, or form leave us that type of an option.

I honestly have not gone searching for resources. I know that there is an entire organization that Dan Wallace and Wayne Grudem are a part of.

Simon, is that ringing any bells for you? Wayne Grudem was the name that came to my mind.

Right, right, yeah. I have a systematic theology book here. Right, and someone in the chat room may know the specific name of the organization they're a part of, and they are specifically—some of it has to do with biblical roles of man and woman, something along those lines, and they are specifically opposed to egalitarianism.

Well, I mean, I've heard some arguments in favor that sounded— I mean, they were trying to be faithful to the biblical text as they understand it.

As they understand it. There's where you come across the problem, is that— I think that's why it's such a debatable issue, it seems, at least in some corners, and that's why they've been struggling with this issue for the last number of years in this church.

Well, I think really, once you get to the point of saying, well, we are going to, quote -unquote, socially contextualize this particular subject, anything is subject to social contextualization, and I really believe that Paul's teaching in Timothy is not based upon social mores, but upon something more fundamental than that.

And I think that's why it is an important issue. But you might want to look for the group that Grudem is associated with.

No one in the chat room is telling me what it might be, but I think it has something to do with association for biblical manhood and womanhood, or something along those lines.

I'm sure in a systematic theology, he might mention it. It's possible. I mean, in the course of that book. It's possible.

Another issue, too, I don't want to hold you up too long, but some have also said that homosexuality is being more and more condoned in the church.

I haven't seen that yet, but on the other hand, I don't know.

Well, again, it does seem to be council on biblical manhood and womanhood.

Thank you very much, folks. The folks in the chat room, come through again. All right. Look up the council on www .cbmw

.org. Ron Deldon came up with that. Monaghan, Padawan, everyone hit it all at once.

Thank you very much. You know, this is a really neat way of doing things, because it's not just me alone.

There's a whole group of folks. We have folks like Monaghan, and E. Nielsen isn't in channel right now, but E.

Nielsen is a net monster in his ability to track stuff down, too. Yeah, I hear the website now.

Yeah, there it is. So it is interesting to me that there does seem to be a trend that those organizations that start with this issue and eventually just say, oh, there's nothing wrong with having women ministers, are the very ones in the forefront of promoting the concept of homosexuality.

Look at ELCA Lutheran. Yeah, I think there's a trend, too. Yep, yep, it is. It is. Yeah, but I guess so far that I've seen, the only denomination that has not really done that is the

Assemblies of God. Well, I can guarantee you us Reformed Baptists don't have women ministers or homosexual ministers.

We've held it pretty strong there, and don't even bother to discuss it, because it's very, very clear and very, very straightforward, and we need to go that direction.

So anyways, I'm being told we need to take a break. So thank you very much for calling in, sir. Appreciate your time and for answering my questions.

Alrighty, God bless you. Alright, you too. Alright, 866 -854 -6763 is the phone number, and we'll be right back right after this break.

...to question the age -old disagreements that have divided Protestants and Catholics. Aren't we all saying the same thing in a different language?

James White's book, The Roman Catholic Controversy, is an absorbing look at current views of tradition in Scripture, the papacy, the

Mass, purgatorian indulgences, and Marian doctrine. James White points out the crucial differences that remain regarding the

Christian life and the heart of the Gospel itself that cannot be ignored. Order your copy of The Roman Catholic Controversy by going to our website at aomin .org.

The Conference on Rome, over 13 hours examining major doctrines and issues that separate Roman Catholicism from Biblical Christianity, featuring the leading

Protestant apologists on Rome and America today. Listen to Dr. Eric Svensson's presentation, Rome Has Spoken, The Matter Is Debatable.

When the Roman Catholic apologists insist that the principle of sola scriptura has resulted in over 25 ,000 denominations, we should in turn insist that the principle of Scripture plus an infallible interpreter has resulted in an even greater number of religious cults.

Pastor Rob Zins addresses the evangelical romance with Rome. There was not a Roman Catholic Church in the first five centuries.

There was, to be sure, a Catholic Church, but this is the universal designation of the body of Christ. It is not

Romanism. Pastor David King, the impact of Romans 117 on Martin Luther. How is one himself to have that righteousness which

God requires, yea, demands, and which is utterly indispensable to salvation?

It is by faith, and by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and we lay hold of the

Lord Jesus by faith alone. And Dr. James White examines the veneration of saints and images.

Do you think if such a person were brought before Moses having just been caught bowing down before a statue and lighting candles and rocking back and forth in prayer, do you think

Moses would have accepted the excuse, I wasn't giving Latria, Moses, I was only giving

Julia. Other topics addressed in this tape series. Is there something about Mary? Scripture sufficiency, the Roman versus Protestant view, canonizing the

Apocrypha, an assault on Scripture, Rome's sacraments, an assault on Christ's gospel, and purgatory, an assault on Christ's perfect atonement.

Look for this tape series and many others at AOMIN .org. That's A -O -M -I -N dot

O -R -G. The Conference on Rome. And welcome back to Dividing Line.

My name is James White, and the phones are on fire. Well, not literally, of course.

But the phones are busy, busy, busy, busy today, and we've got all sorts of excellent questions that are being asked, and we appreciate the participation here on the webcast.

866 -854 -6763 is the number that John up in Salt Lake City called, and he has a question concerning Cornelius' justification in Acts chapter 10.

Hello, John. Hello, how are you doing? I was actually listening to the debate with Pastor Barker and yourself on the subject of Arminianism.

Oh! And that's where actually he, I mean, I thought the only good point he actually made in the whole tape was bringing up the subject of Cornelius getting saved after what he would argue.

I'm a Calvinist, but I wouldn't want to argue this, but I was thinking, I thought it was creative on his part.

I mean, the only creative part in the whole tape was when he asked, basically

I thought he preached through the whole debate. It wasn't a really good debate.

Well, remind me, give the presentation as he did, because it was a little while ago that we did it.

I think he was arguing Cornelius was a righteous and devout person, and so he wasn't so dead in sin that he couldn't make a decision for Christ because he wasn't saved before Peter preached to him.

I see. I want your reaction to, see, I mean, you didn't have a chance to, because he went through so much.

Right, right. Well, that's one of the problems of that type of debate. You can't get to everything. Right.

Well, so did he actually cite Acts 10, 22? They said, Cornelius, a centurion, a righteous and God -fearing man, well spoken of by the entire nation of the

Jews, was divinely directed by a holy angel to send for you to come to his house and hear a message from you. Is that?

Yeah. Okay, all right, all right. Well, as soon as I saw the question, that's what I assumed was probably the idea, and that is if he's asserting that the phrase righteous and God -fearing means that he was already saved,

I think it would actually undercut his position. Right. Because Cornelius had not yet heard the gospel, and in point of fact,

I would say that the term dikaios, dikaios as it is used there to describe him, in tandem with the, and it really is a phrase that has extra -biblical uses.

Faboumanastan theon, the God -fearers, were actually a class of people in the

Jewish synagogue who, while not being able to participate in the divine worship because they had not been circumcised and were not actual converts, they were

God -fearers, they were hearers of the word, they were attracted and would attend the synagogue to hear the reading of the word, so on and so forth.

Right, but do you believe necessarily that Cornelius was justified before he heard Peter? No, no, no, no, no.

I'm saying that if that is what he was saying, that it actually undercuts his assertion, because I do seem to recall that one of his points was that a person is saved by the preaching of the word.

Well, this man had not heard the preaching of the word. And so if he's citing Acts 10 .22, and honestly, I just don't remember,

I don't remember this particular presentation, this part of the debate, it was probably 15 debates ago, at least, for me or more, so I'm just going on the basis of what you said.

If someone were to use Acts 10 .22 to argue that Cornelius was righteous, that is, justified, before Peter came,

I think they're missing the use of that term as it is found there. The fact of the matter is that God went through supernatural means both in Acts 8 and Acts 10 to bring someone to proclaim the word to an individual who was the special object of God's favor.

Obviously, God could have, if he wanted to, used, for example, Philip in Acts 8 and beamed him in and out of any number of situations, to use a

Star Trek metaphor there. There was something miraculous that took place with Philip when he joined himself with the Ethiopian eunuch.

But he didn't. In fact, as far as we can tell, that's the only time that Philip experienced a supernatural event of being sent to proclaim the gospel to someone.

The same thing here with Peter, and going to Cornelius in the presentation of the gospel to him is both a sign of God's electing grace toward Cornelius, for certainly there would be others who likewise would need to hear such a message, and it ends up forming the foundation of what

Peter says in Acts 15 in the fact that he has seen the Gentiles come to know the gift of the

Holy Spirit on the very same basis of faith that the Jews had. And so, I don't remember what he was saying, but one thing is for certain.

Cornelius, to be what he was, had to be the object of God's grace. And if Cornelius was a righteous and God -fearing man, then he was so solely on the basis of God's common grace toward him that resulted in the specific work of God in sending a special messenger to him and drawing him to himself.

I suppose what Pastor Barger would have to say is that Peter could have come,

Peter could have presented the gospel here, and Cornelius not accept the gospel, and in essence make this entire work of the

Father, Son, and Spirit in his behalf something that failed. I'm not sure I didn't get a chance to ask him that.

Yeah. Well, I think he was trying to argue that Cornelius was not so dead in sin as to have the possibility of making a decision for Christ.

Oh, is that where he used the not -so -dead -in -sin line? Yeah. I think what he was trying to present, if I'm not mistaken, since we did that broadcast change, was that he was trying to present the idea that here was

Cornelius who was seeking the Lord apart from having heard the gospel. He was already seeking

Christ and so forth, and then all of a sudden, because of this, perhaps the Lord sent Peter to him.

Oh, okay. Yeah, well, again, that assumes, of course, that this seeking of Cornelius is something that takes place separate from the grace of God.

And when we ask the simple, direct question, do we have didactic, direct teaching of the

New Testament on whether a person can do that, the teaching says, no, we cannot. So again, we have a situation where the

Arminian is attempting to draw from a passage that is not specifically about a subject, a principle that is then used to blunt the direct teaching of passages like Romans 8, 7 -8, or John 6, 44, or whatever else it might be.

And that is simply a bad example of eisegesis, not exegesis.

Okay? All right, thank you. All right, thanks for calling. God bless. Okay, bye. 866 -854 -6763.

Now, I have been informed that one of our callers, and this is not in order,

Mr. Super -Duper -Technical -Control -Man, this is not in the order that you've given them to me, but since it's already a quarter after, we have a caller named

Phil from Florida. Now, the reason I would like to go that direction, if we can, are we able to do that?

On it. Okay, that means done. Good. The reason I'd like to go to Phil in Florida is there's a possibility that this might be a

Phil that I first heard on our answering machines long, long ago. It may not be.

I'm sure there's more than one Phil in Florida. No, this is not the Phil on your answering machine. Oh, it's not the

Phil on our answering machine. But do you know who I'm talking about? No, but if it got me on the air, then so be it.

Hey, all right, I like that. Well, Phil, let me just tell you, there's a Roman Catholic apologist in Florida by the name of Phil Porvosnik.

Okay. And Phil used to call when we had an answering machine. In fact, we still do somewhat, I think.

But we had a phone number for Roman Catholics to call. And Phil used to call.

I don't know what kind of phone bill he racked up, but he would actually call when it was, like, after midnight in Florida, because half the year is a two -hour difference, half the year is a three -hour difference.

And he would leave these long, rambling messages about how we don't know what we're talking about, and so on and so forth.

So once, after listening to all this, I picked up the phone and I called him. He had even left his number. And he just about fainted when

I called him and answered his questions. And he's actually a really funny guy. He has sent me videos of Carl Keating debating

Dave Hunt interspersed with Gale Ripplinger and Monty Python. Wow. So you put those three together, and it's an amazing combination.

But anyway, so you have benefited by the use of the name Phil in Florida.

And so you are next up. What can we do for you, Phil? Well, I know you've spent a tremendous amount of time researching the

Roman Catholic beliefs and so forth. My question is, your opinion, where did the

Marian errors creep into the church, in the early church? And it occurred to me, why was there not a knock -down, drag -out council about the topic somewhere along the line like there was about other things that cropped up in early church history?

Yeah, well, there were some disputes, but they were not on the level of councils.

And that's an excellent question. Basically, I'd want to make a few definitions here, make a few distinctions before going to the fundamental answer.

And that is when we talk about the Marian doctrines, when we talk about the teachings in Roman Catholicism concerning Mary, we need to differentiate between the doctrines that have been defined only in the past, say, 200 years and can only be traced back for 500 years in regards to actually having any type of meaningful following or belief, specifically the dogmatic definition of the

Immaculate Conception in 1854 and the bodily assumption in 1950. And the other doctrines, such as the concept of Mary being called

Theotokos, the God -bearer or Mother of God, the perpetual virginity of Mary, those concepts which are much earlier in their appearance within the record of the early church.

When we look not at the later ones, which clearly develop out of a very...

they're just simply unknown to the early church. I mean, the early Christians simply knew nothing about either the

Immaculate Conception or the Bodily Assumption. They never heard of these things. It was never preached, wasn't believed. And it's sad to watch

Catholic apologists try to find a single reference over here where a word immaculate might be used of Mary as if that then carries with it this entire doctrine of Immaculate Conception when even

Catholic scholars themselves admit that the concept that has been dogmatically defined originated with a monk by the name of Edenmer in the 12th century.

I mean, it's a sad thing to follow. But if we leave those things aside and just look at the idea of the exaltation of Mary to the position of Mother of God, that she was perpetually a virgin, for example, where does that come from?

Well, I think it comes from a couple of areas. First of all, the idea of the perpetual virginity of Mary and the idea that she did not even have pain in childbirth, she did not have a natural childbirth, things like that.

The first sources, historically, that we find those in are non -Christian. That is, they are in Gnostic gospels, such as the

Ascension of Isaiah from the 2nd century. There's about three Gnostic gospels that first present the idea of Mary as perpetually virgin, and hence they come from a dualistic idea, dualism being the idea that that which is spirit is good and that which is physical is bad.

And so they first appear there, and they are rejected. They're not accepted by Orthodox Christianity, however you want to define that in that particular time period.

It doesn't immediately make a transition. Instead, what happens is something has to become accepted within confessing

Christianity that will then pave the road for this exaltation of Mary.

And what happens is the rise of the monastic movement, and specifically the idea of a non -biblical, unbiblical view of marriage and sexuality that resulted, sadly, in the utter degradation of women who have children during the

Middle Ages, during the medieval period. I mean, there were theologians during the medieval period that argued whether a woman had a soul or not.

That was the sad result of the unbiblical traditional developments that took place during that period of time.

But the rise of monasticism and its emphasis upon non -sexuality, upon celibacy, upon not being married, made the

Virgin Mary, then, a tremendous icon or someone to look to who likewise went through what the monk himself or the nun herself was going through.

And so as a result, you have a foundation laid where Mary can now start taking a position that is simply and thoroughly unbiblical.

You also have to have the rise of an idea that Scripture in and of itself does not define for us the full spectrum of what we are to believe.

Once you have those things happening, and of course after the Council of Nicaea, the Constantinian change, when

Christianity becomes acceptable, you have a flood of individuals coming into the church who have never had an encounter with Jesus Christ in the sense of regeneration.

They do not have any real repentance from sin, so on and so forth. Once all of that happens, then these unbiblical, extra -biblical ideas can begin to come in at a much greater speed.

And in point of fact, historically, that's when you see the tremendous upswing in devotion to Mary is during the 4th century.

That's when you start seeing more and more exalted language. Now the phrase Mother of God, Theotokos, originally was very

Orthodox. In fact, originally it had nothing to do with Mary. That may sound strange, but the reason for that is that originally the term was a

Christological term. It was a term that was meant to communicate that the child that was born of Mary, the child that Mary bore in her womb was not just a human being who then was joined to a divine person after birth, for example, in adoptionism or something like that, but that the child in Mary's womb was truly the

God -man and that it was not an issue where you have a human and then some kind of almost foreign linking of a divine person.

It was meant to defend what's called the hypostatic union, the joining of those two natures, not a mixture of the two natures, but the joining of those two natures together.

Two natures, one person. So originally the term was meant to defend and to protect something that was true about Christ.

Now, of course, with the Roman Catholics today, 99 .9

% of Roman Catholics who use the terminology of Mother of God do not have the historical idea in mind.

It has now become a Marian title and a title of exaltation of Mary, but it does not communicate really the truth of that issue any longer.

So that's a problematic thing, and obviously that usage of the phrase Mother of God would not be orthodox or would not be biblical.

So it really is, it's a complicated process that brought about in the 4th century this upswing, but even then, and this is the thing people need to keep in mind, even then, even when you have tremendously exalted and unbiblical things being said about Mary, even those people did not dream about what has been dogmatically defined as a part of the gospel since then and about what is being promoted as the 5th

Marian dogma today and the idea of Mary as co -redemptrix, co -mediatrix, and advocate for the people of God.

So that I think says a lot concerning the alleged authority of the Roman Catholic Church.

Very interesting. I haven't heard some of what you said before about the monastics and so forth.

But that answers my question. Oh great. And I appreciate you taking the time to go ahead with me.

Okay, thanks Phil. Okay, I'm Phil number 2. Phil number 2. I get a moniker. Alrighty, Phil.

Thanks a lot. God bless. Bye bye. Alrighty, we're going to sneak one more phone call in here real quick.

We're going to talk with Michael in Salt Lake City as well. We must be doing well in Salt Lake City these days.

Michael has a question concerning justification and what the Mormons believe. How are you doing, Michael? Actually, I'm over and on to New York.

Oh! See, I wondered about that. I sort of figured I knew who you were, but when it said

Salt Lake City, I'm sort of like, hmm, well, this must be somebody else. Well, my question is pertaining to Mormonism, so it's understandable,

I guess. But you're going to have to reprobate and deal with the gentleman who messed that one up. Yeah, I'm not sure that anyone's actually going to admit as to who it really was.

Yeah, well, we'll have to slay them with the eternal anathema. Well, do you know who it was? Whoever answered the phone,

Well, were you talking with Warren or with Rich? I don't think it was Rich.

Ah! Okay, anyways. My question is, what do

Mormons teach as necessary for salvation? Of course, they do not believe that God predestinates.

But what do they teach as necessary for salvation, and how do Mormons know they are saved? Well, that very term, saved amongst the

Mormons, is actually Rich Pierce is now taking full and complete responsibility for the mess -up.

So I just wanted to make sure that everyone knew that. Salvation in Mormonism is two -fold.

There is a universal or general salvation, which is merely resurrection. And then there is individual salvation, which they utilize the terminology there of exaltation.

And so the very word saved to them generally would mean that they're going to be resurrected.

And since Hitler's going to be resurrected, that really doesn't mean a whole lot. That's one of the reasons that we have difficulty in communicating with them is because of that very issue.

They utilize terms in a way that is somewhat confusing. So keep that particular thing in mind.

Secondly, what must they do? Well, they don't really view salvation as a divine act.

And so it's more of a lifestyle. Justification, for example, is a very beneficial area to go into with Mormons because they don't have a meaningful doctrine of justification.

Most Mormons have never even concerned themselves to think about what justification actually means in a biblical sense.

It doesn't really appear in the Book of Mormon with any type of regularity. It's very confused to them.

So it's a good thing to go that direction. I'm hearing your IRC thing in the background. It's sort of funny.

But it doesn't matter. I've got the same thing going on right in front of me, too. So it doesn't really matter. It just makes us feel like we're all together.

But that's a really good direction to go and to remember that for them salvation is more of what they're doing and what they hope is going to happen in the future, not a divine act that has been accomplished by God based upon what

Jesus Christ does in their place. Really, that's a very excellent direction to go in speaking with them.

I can't give you an official definition of justification. I can give you some quotes that I have.

I may even have them in the chat channel. I'm not sure. I'll have to add that to my pop -up list.

Yeah, I actually am looking right here in regards to justification. I don't have it right in front of me.

I do have somewhere some materials I've passed out to people in the past on what

Bruce R. McConkie said about justification and things like that. But many Mormons will just simply dismiss that as being irrelevant.

And so it's very difficult to give an official perspective on what justification is from the

LDS viewpoint. That's something that's in somewhat of a flux. All right, thank you very much.

Thank you very much for calling. God bless. If you want the information regarding the eternal law of progression for next week when

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Subject line Request 1A I'll send it to you automatically and we'll see you next week here on The Dividing Line.

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