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.

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.

The 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 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, NA27 at AOMEN .org. NA27 at AOMEN .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 letters of 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 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 going to 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 hadn't, 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. So you'll still need to request it. Send it to NA27 at AOMIN .org.

NA27 at AOMIN .org. And put in the subject line, don't have to put anything in the body of the message at all. But in the subject line, request 1A. That's capital R-E-Q-U-E-S-T 1A. I suppose I should expand my filter for uncapitalized versions and so forth to try to do that kind of thing.

Just 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, 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 of 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 .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, ships it back to you. So depending on your ISP, 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 you... 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 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 power or ability 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. 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 it's graphic and therefore doesn't really necessarily mean a whole lot unless you have me talking along with it.

So it's not like slide with text after 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'll come with it is a reference to our 100-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 show up. One of the things we like to do is make sure that the people who pass out tracts with us have read them.

It's really not a good idea to pass out literature and 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 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, obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account.

Let them do this with joy and not with grief, for this would be unprofitable to you. 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, were 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 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 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 Roman Catholicism, and so on and so forth? 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 going to 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... Ah, 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.

If this is going to work. Oh, gracious sakes. This could be interesting. 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 going to 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. Welcome back to The Dividing Line. My name is James White, and I am fixing my filter right now.

I think 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 letter 1. What do you think? Maybe that is my mistake.

I don't know. I'll work on it. Anyways, hi, Simon.

Hello.

Hi. How are you doing back there?

How are you doing? Yes.

This is a little weird. I can't look back at you, because if I look back at you, then it sounds like I'm all the way across the room or something like that.

No, but I can see you fine.

Yeah, 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. What is the subject?

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 outside the United States.

Yep. Ontario, in fact.

Brantford.

Wow, cool.

So I'm in Southern Ontario.

Okanook, eh? Yeah. 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, let me say, I was reading Michael Horton's book.

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 was wondering why you took it. And what 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 that is something that is very, very important to understand.

That the nature of the new covenant is such is 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 pedo-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. He seemed to think that if you have kids, like if you're a Christian, your kids will become Christians.

Yeah, well, I don't know. Yeah, many, 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's 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 pedo-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, wrong name that started with a P, it's actually Marcel, Pierre Marcel was the quote that I was referring to there. There are pedo-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 when 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, or 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.

Okay.

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, because I didn't know what to do, because I'm firmly committed to Scripture, I'm firmly committed to attending.

I see, I see.

So now I found a good church, and I just started looking into the whole issue. I will be turning 18 in a couple months.

Okay, all righty. All right, 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, 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. All righty, sir, thank you very much, Kevin.

Yep.

All right, 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, 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.

And I was waxing, and it brought me up short, 114. And I thought...

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.