More Attempts at Sneaking Man's Autonomy into Scripture

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. We are on the road once again. Actually, we haven't moved since yesterday.

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Since tomorrow evening, I will be doing a presentation for Grace Bible Theological Seminary on 1

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Corinthians chapter 1. And if you're in the area, certainly you would be welcome to attend that.

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I'm sure the information is on the GBTS website if you want to go there.

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Did have the opportunity today of speaking at a local addiction recovery center.

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Very enjoyable. The guys there had great questions and the hour went by very, very quickly.

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Want to very much thank our friendly mechanic. We have a brother here in Conway that really knew our last truck really, really well and the engine that it had.

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And so we really trusted him to look at stuff and let us know how the truck was doing.

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And he was the one who told us last year, hey, it's in great shape, but it won't be in 30 ,000 miles.

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He knows those engines really well and knew what we were doing to it. And it was partly on, well, very much on his recommendation that we move to the diesel truck that we have now.

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And today he got his hands on that. And so I'm very thankful for fresh oil and oil filter and fuel filter and rotated tires and brakes checked and all that fun stuff to make sure we're still safe as we roll down the road and head for Nashville, just north of Nashville this coming

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Sunday. I mentioned all that yesterday on the program if you want that information.

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Then the week after that we'll be in Pryor, Pastor Derek Melton, and we'll be speaking on the sovereignty of God, which is what we'll be talking about.

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And he asked me to do that before G3. So I don't know, can you preach on the sovereignty of God more than once in a year?

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Ask Arthur W. Pink. Or people who have entire cases of Arthur W.

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Pink's books in their trunk, just waiting to get to pass it on to somebody. Yeah, you probably can do that.

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So anyway, so we are still in beautiful Conway, Arkansas. It's pretty stormy here today, really.

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There's a lot of storms running around, a very interesting weather pattern. It literally looks like the remnants of a hurricane coming north on the radar.

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It's strange. But we have gotten some rain. And oh, okay.

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Have you been doing anything, Rich? Are you? I have not.

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Did you? Camera one is gone. You turned the power strip on, right? On camera one?

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Hold that thought. And here's the problem, is now it will have lost all of its settings.

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And Rich will be very, very upset because... Actually, it's... I don't know.

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We'll see. Yes, actually, we did. We lost the audio settings,

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I think. Oh, no. Are you getting two bars? I've still got two bars. So yeah.

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Okay. Yeah, well, there you go. It was running on battery, I guess it ran out of battery.

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So got to make sure to have that power strip on. And that's probably exactly what happened. But that was a little bit weird.

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Hey, we could have survived with one camera, right? I could just be looking up here or looking over here or whatever. Hey, maybe

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I could use the camera on my laptop. That's been good enough for people for 10 years now. Anyway, little interruption there.

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And the only person in this RV that can fix it is the only person in the

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RV. That would be me. So there you go.

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Anyhow, I wanted to... I found something after the last program that I just completely forgot to cover last time around.

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And I apologize. So I want to cover that quickly, briefly. Don't want to really go that direction today, the same topic.

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And then we're going to... I almost even suggested firing up the

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Radio Free Geneva theme. I really did. But we want to give folks some time on that because...

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Well, there's just some weird people. It's just really, really, really like the

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Radio Free Geneva theme. And we don't want to just pop it on you and then you're left going, what happened?

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So we didn't do that. But anyway, on the last program, you'll recall that I was complaining that once again,

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I had done some screenshots. And this is clear evidence.

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I don't have... Rich takes care of everything else in ministry. I don't have people who do screenshots and my research and come walking in, and there's a pile of papers, and I just read them and stuff like that.

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I do all this on my own while traveling. And so sometimes the orders of the screenshots get messed up and things like that.

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So I missed, I thought, a fairly important section of Stephen Wolff commentary from the last program that I just wanted to touch on briefly here.

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I'm not going to do the whole program on that, even a major portion of the program on that, and go from there.

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But this is the section that I missed. Quote, all political conclusions are resolved by these three principles, reason dictates, experience confirms, and scripture convinces.

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Since that's in quotes, I would like to know what came before it, but I don't know what its source is.

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But obviously, I would say, what? All political conclusions are resolved by these three principles, reason dictates, experience confirms, and scripture convinces.

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I have some major serious problems with that. But it goes on to say, by the way, this isn't

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Thomist. It's what most people in your tradition said until your favorite 20th century theologian came around.

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It, what was said elsewhere is Thomistic.

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It is based upon a natural law concept. And to say that, and we're starting to get used to hearing the, well, your favorite 20th century theologian, 20th century is just so bad.

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Everybody there was so stupid. And I just would strongly disagree, though I would not disagree that much of what is called today the great tradition was significantly limited in its biblical nature and origin.

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So in other words, over a year ago now, when we first started addressing the simplicity issues and Thomism and Thomistic metaphysics and all the stuff that went along with that,

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I wrote up on the big board and I sort of drew a timeline and indicated the decline up until the

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Reformation of the centrality of biblical authority and biblical interpretation.

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And that really does reach a low point during the medieval period.

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Now there are, that's not to say there are not individual exceptions, but even what they would write would not really be available in any sense to the vast majority of Christians.

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And of course, same time is when you have the exaltation of tradition is when the scripture is the least available to the average person, not as it was during the early church, where you had persecution and you had the readers and the deacons and manuscript copies were just extremely expensive and difficult to come by during periods of persecution.

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But now scriptures are actually viewed as dangerous. And in fact, having the scriptures in the language of the people is considered very dangerous.

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So it's a completely different context that we're talking about there. So he goes on.

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Anyways, by the way, this isn't Thomist. It's what most people in your tradition said until your favorite 20th century theologian came around.

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I'm not saying that Post Mill itself is a serious problem.

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I'm just pointing out the Christian discussion of politics in the evangelical reformed world is strange.

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And we talk past each other because of conflicting methodological principles. Well, that really strikes me.

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So Wolf is saying, we know he's Thomist. We know he's a Presbyterian of some type anyways, but he's not

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Post Mill. And basically what he's getting at here is he's concerned about the people who are addressing issues concerning church and state who are

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Post Mill because clearly a Post Millennial approach is very, very different from a

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Thomistic approach because of the emphasis upon the creed of God, the outpouring of the

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Holy Spirit, all these types of things, which you would not have in Thomism. So not there.

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And so discussion of politics in the evangelical reformed world is strange. Well, I'd say most discussion of politics right now is incredibly strange.

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I mean, just today, the discussion, I didn't have a chance to listen to only,

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I only listened to a short portion of what's being said concerning the

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Biden crime family and the millions and millions and millions of dollars that have been transferred from overseas interests, the very same overseas interests that are now profiting from the collapse of the

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United States due to the policies of the, oh, the Biden regime. I'll just be honest with you.

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Let me just put this straight out here. I've never seen a clear example of treason in the history of America than what we're experiencing right now.

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Nothing will happen. We don't have a Department of Justice any longer, but this nation has been betrayed by its president and the vast majority of people at the top.

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I'll just, I think that's pretty plain. And when they sit there and go, we don't know where the millions of dollars went.

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It wouldn't impact us. You just go, I give up.

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But anyways, the discussion of politics in the evangelical foreign world is strange. And we talk past each other because of conflicting methodological principles.

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I'm glad that he recognizes there is a conflict of methodological principles between anyone discussing the relationship of church and state from a post -millennial perspective versus a

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Thomistic perspective. But that would also be true of from a non -millennial perspective and a pre -millennial perspective.

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There's gonna be differences all along there. But I think most fundamentally in regards to Thomism, as we saw last time,

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I said, this is a good point. We should deal with current realities. But at the very least, the elite should recognize and support those who are working from older methods, even if we still make mass appeal with biblicism.

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Now, that scares me. The elite should recognize and support those who are working from older methods.

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And I would assume that older methods would be in reference to, again, a natural law

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Thomism. And even if we still make mass appeal with biblicism, that almost sounds like biblicism is some kind of a throwaway thing.

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And the only meaningful understanding I have of biblicism is the recognition that it has ultimate authority because it is the very speech of God.

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So there's a lot that could be teased out of all of that that we didn't get to.

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And I think it would be better if I had a better set of screenshots to be able to follow all that because I think there was some stuff going back and forth.

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That is one of the problems with Twitter. I really do wonder, honestly, what's going to happen with Tucker Carlson moving to Twitter.

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I mean, could you literally have a higher audience ranking, will they even bother to monitor it, for a program on Twitter?

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Is that going to cause Twitter to really start pushing its own video presentation abilities?

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Is Twitter going to become competition to YouTube? Well, right now that sounds like a pretty neat thing because I certainly would feel more confident to be able to say things on Twitter than Google.

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Clearly, Google is still completely run by the same pimple -faced 24 -year -old radical leftists that were running

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Twitter. So yeah, maybe. But hey, who knows?

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Maybe Elon Musk says, you know what, I'm going to Mars, so I'm going to sell this, and we're going to do whatever, and then we're all left going, oh, okay, what happens there?

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I don't have any idea. We will see how that goes.

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All right, with that said, I didn't, I just realized

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I didn't do this. Well, you know what, it's live, nobody cares. Just didn't get my pen out.

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Why is my pen holding on to batteries? I don't know. There you go.

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It does have a magnetic thing going on with it. Okay, anyway, we're going to look at a passage we've looked at before, but I want to respond to some arguments that I'm seeing being presented and I think it'd be useful to look at them.

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And a lot of people like getting into the scriptures on the program, and I think that's a pretty cool thing to do as well.

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So unfortunately, got a little frog going on there. Unfortunately, I forgot to test things because I just want to make sure all the technical stuff is working.

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Well, now I have two different kinds of technical stuff. I've got the studio technical stuff, and then

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I have my technical stuff, videos and stuff like that.

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And I didn't test everything. Thank you,

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Derek, for that note. And so let's see how this is going to work.

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This will be a first, and it'll be a first for testing the audio as well.

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I think it's probably going to work just fine. But if it doesn't, Rich, you can just tell me that all is not well, and I will put everything to screeching halt.

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Now, this video has David Allen, Sean Wilson, Steve Lemke, and Leighton Flowers, but as normal, the rest of them just sit there staring at the screen and Leighton Flowers is talking.

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Now, that wasn't the case for the whole video, but for this clip, it's just Leighton Flowers talking.

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But what this particular section is, is

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Leighton Flowers' assertion that the only thing that predestination is, is

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God predestining believers. And he doesn't predestine who's going to believe, who's not going to believe.

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And hence, saving faith is not a gift. It is in the capacity of any individual.

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Everyone has the ability to do it. It doesn't matter that Romans 8 says that the spiritually dead person cannot do what's pleasing to God.

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They can. Just forget about what Paul was saying there. Um, you can repent and believe.

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There are certain people who have humility of heart and they're better than other people. They're the choice meets and the choice meets will be the choice meets.

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And all predestination is, is that if your choice meets, then God will save you.

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You will be predestined to adoption and being to form the image of Christ and all the rest of that stuff.

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Um, but none of that really matters. It's just simply that all the predestination is from this perspective is that as long as you believe, then this is what's going to happen.

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So the object of predestination is a plan. It's not persons.

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It's a plan. It's a, it's a, it's planned results, not persons.

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Predestination is in person. So when you find the term predestined, it's direct object should not be a person.

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It should be actions because that's all that's predestined. Individuals are not.

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Now we know that's not the case, but anyway, that's, that's the issue. So let's, let's see if this will, this will work.

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Um, it's our first shot at video. Maybe it's first shot video. I don't know.

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We'll find out here soon enough. Let's uh, let's see how it works. Yeah. One of my biggest pet peeves is hearing a non -Calvinist say, well, we just don't believe in that predestination stuff.

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And no, we do. We predestination is a biblical word and we believe in it. In fact, that's where our security is.

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I know that I'm going to heaven because God has predestined for believers to go to heaven. And so you have to ask the question who has been predestined to what?

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You don't just assume that certain people arbitrarily were picked before the foundation of the world and predestined to become believers, which is the entailment of Calvinism.

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What we would say, no, all believers, whoever they may be, whether male or female, slave or free, whether Jew or Gentile, all believers, regardless of your nationality, regardless of your morality, all believers in Christ have been destined beforehand for glory.

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They've been predestined to be made into the image of Christ. They have been predestined to be made holy and blameless, which is the two major uses by Paul are in Ephesians 1 and where Dr.

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Lemke was just referencing out of Romans chapter 8. And in Romans 8, it's predestined to become conformed to the image of his son.

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Well, who's predestined to become conformed to the image of his son? Believers are. And in Ephesians, what are they predestined to?

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To become holy and blameless. Well, holy and blameless, that's Jesus, right? He's the only holy and blameless. So it's the same thing.

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So who is being predestined to what? Believers are being predestined to become holy and blameless like Christ. That's all

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Paul says. He never says certain people were unilaterally picked before the foundation of the world to become believers so as to become like Jesus.

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It's just a, that's being read into the text called eisegesis is when you read your doctrine into a word instead of looking at the context of the word and how it's used elsewhere and understanding it from, it's not now.

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I was a Calvinist for 10 years. So I understand that way of looking at those verses. I used to read them that way. I used to see

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Ephesians one and think to myself, how in the world do Arminians not see this? This is just so obvious. The guy that's predestined certain people to heaven and certain people to hell, he's predestined certain people to be believers and other people not to be.

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It's just plain and simple. Because when you have that mindset going into the scripture and you have confirmation biases, what they call it.

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And so once you have that doctrine set, then all those verses you see, they stand off the page at you and they go, ooh, it confirms what

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I already know is true and that is God has predestined certain people to become believers. But the Bible never says God's predestined certain people to become believers.

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It says God has predestined believers, the faithful in Christ Jesus, to become holy and blameless. Now this has been his plan from the very beginning.

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And so another analogy I've used before is if God were to say, a storm is coming and whoever gets under the shelter will be safe from the storm.

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But whoever does not get under the shelter will surely perish. Well, the storm comes, the people who are outside the shelter perish and people who are inside the shelter don't.

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Could you say that everyone who was in the shelter was predestined not to perish? Well, of course you could. Just like you could say everyone who was outside the shelter was predestined to be destroyed.

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But it doesn't speak to who predestined which people would come under the shelter and which ones wouldn't.

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Well, that's exactly what Paul is saying when he uses the term in Christ over and over and over again in Ephesians 1.

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If you're in Christ under the shelter, God is predestined for you to be safe from the storm. He will pass over that judgment.

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You will be safe and God is destined for anyone who is in Christ to be saved. Just like he's also predestined that whosoever remains outside of Christ will be condemned.

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And so predestination is a very biblical term, but if you don't understand it rightly, you'll walk away with really false conclusion.

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Okay, so there you go. There's the presentation from Layton Flowers and the assertion being made, as you can tell, is saving faith is the autonomous capacity of all people.

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It is not a gift. It is not specifically the work of the Holy Spirit. Anyone can do it.

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No one's dead in sin. No one is an inveterate enemy of God.

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Anybody can believe. And as long as you believe, then God will do these certain things.

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So predestination is of things God does in response to mankind. That's what is, you literally just heard someone saying, predestination is what

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God does in response to the free actions of men.

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So you can see why for years and years and years, I have kept pointing out that when

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Layton actually puts himself in a position of being challenged on this, many times people have said to him, well, wait a minute, what is your view of the knowledge of God and future events?

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And he's tiptoed around the tulips with the open theists and with mullimism and all this kind of stuff, but he doesn't have a real consistent doctrine there because provisionism, as he's and these other gentlemen are presenting it, starts with man and moves upward and results in certain theological beliefs about God, but they're dependent upon what man does.

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And that's one of the major differences between reformed theology and provisionism is we start with revelation of God and move downward to the creature, whereas all synergistic systems fundamentally start with the creature and then project upwards on God.

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So that's a bit of an issue. So there's another perspective in Ephesians when

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I wanna get to, but we'll get to that in just a moment.

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So let's take a look at what we have here in Ephesians chapter one.

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Let's see if we can bring it up. Ben here done that, but let's listen in light of and read in light of what was just being said.

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Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.

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So immediately God the Father is described right here and okay, presentify isn't presentifying.

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If I use, oh, there we go. Well, I'm wondering why the pen won't do that.

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The one who blessed who? Us, direct object is us.

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And I, the pen just has decided I'm not going to pen you. All right, fine.

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We'll put you over there and not worry about you. Who has blessed us, direct object is us.

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Now, like I said, I'm going to look at a argument that was presented recently in a video using me as its foil.

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That's gonna try to argue that this is, this us has nothing to do with us today, that it only had to do.

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It's interestingly similar to N .T.

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Wright's argument in 2 Corinthians when he says that he who knew no sin became sin for us that we might be made the righteous

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God in him. He limits that to the apostles. Literally, he limits that to the apostles.

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Go listen to the conversation. We had a number of years ago. That's probably over 10 years ago now on the now defunct, unbelievable radio broadcast.

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Justin Brierley's moved on to other things. But I would assume the archives are still there.

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You could look at them. But so this argument is, this other argument, it's not presented by Layton Flowers.

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Well, I don't know what Layton thinks of it, but presented by this young anti -Calvinist guy who says, of course, that no

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Calvinist can respond to it as if we've never heard these things before. But the argument is that this us is not anyone today.

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It's irrelevant to us, which I guess would mean that all the rest of Ephesians is irrelevant to us too.

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But anyway, and that since it has to do with the apostles, all this stuff about being adopted as sons,

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Jesus Christ himself, pleasure and praise, just about the apostles, just about the apostles.

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We will say that's not the case. The one who blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, and I didn't put this back up, in Christ, all of these blessings are found only in Christ.

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This is an utterly exclusivistic passage. There is no way to read pluralism here or anything else.

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But you will notice who blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, when, when has this happened?

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Well, just as he chose, so this is the action of the father, direct object again,

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Hamas, he chose us, in him would be in Christ, pra katabolos kosmos, before the foundation of the world.

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Now, now notice if, if the, if, if Layton's position were accurate, what this would say is, just as he chose before the foundation of the world to make holy and blameless believers, that would be, that would be what it would need to say.

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Because what is being asserted but unproved is that the presupposition in both

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Romans 8 and in Ephesians 1 is human autonomy, free will, and the ability of any individual to have saving faith.

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So you throw out the entire Pauline anthropology, throw out Romans 1,

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Romans 2, Romans 3, throw it all out, Romans 8, and presuppose human capacity of saving faith.

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Make that the prior fulfilled condition, even if it's not there, because human faith is going to be discussed in Ephesians chapter 1.

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It's after everything God does, but it will be mentioned. It will be mentioned.

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We'll get to it. Just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, and then we have our, our first attendant, we have, we have a infinitival phrase, so that we, same group, might be holy and blameless before him.

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We'll go ahead and put in love down with predestination, verse 5, if you don't mind. So he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we might be holy and blameless before him.

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Now the only way to be holy and blameless is through the finished sacrificial work of Jesus Christ.

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This is Titus chapter 2. The work of the Father and the

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Son is presenting a particular people to be holy and blameless before him.

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This is through his self -sacrifice. And so there is a selection.

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It's a personal selection. Chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world.

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So this is, you, you would have to somehow either say, well, let's just not translate it chose us.

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Let's say he chose a plan to make us holy and blameless before the foundation of the world.

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You have to get rid of the direct object. Because that's not what he's saying.

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Paul is saying he chose us in Christ. It's personal because the choice is personal.

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Being holy is personal. Being blameless is personal. There's no such thing as a holy and blameless plan.

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Holy and blameless results. For the Apostle Paul, holy, that's the saints.

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That's the whole point of Ephesians 1. Right? He's already called them saints.

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So that you might be holy and blameless. That's what the church is about. As the result of the personal selection on God's part of us, the body of Christ in Christ before the foundation of the world.

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So you'd also, this is also where you have to, no matter what you do, you have to have some discussion of the basis of God's knowledge.

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How does God know? Has God no future events? I don't believe that Layton Flowers has a coherent response to that subject.

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I just, I just don't. He allows for way, way, way too much leeway on that.

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So we continue on. I'm going to, there we go.

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I have to stop annotating and then re -annotate to be able to scroll things.

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And you got to be able to scroll stuff. All right. In love.

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Oh, look at that. The pen started working. All right.

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Even though I was actually looking at that, well, I didn't expect it to work. That's why. But I was drawing fairly straight lines with the mouse.

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Then I grabbed the pen and said, let's try it. Let's just see if, since we fired it up again. In love, he predestined us.

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There's us again. So the direct object is personal.

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And of course, doing it in love is personal. It's not in love.

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He predestined a plan. It's not in love. He predestined a nameless faceless group. He predestined us.

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Ice. We are. Oops. Come on. Draw through. There you go. Unto adoption through Jesus Christ to himself.

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According to the good pleasure of his will. So there we go.

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Wow. Okay. That's really nice. See the Zoom thing? The Zoom thing is right next to the

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Presentify color thing. So if you hit the

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Zoom thing, it will mute your audio and shut you down. Great. Little things that we're learning as we learn these things.

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Okay. We'll make sure not to do that again. Hey, I knew exactly what I had done. And I knew exactly what

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I had to do to fix it too. But wow. Great. Fine. Wonderful.

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All right. Back to 1 -5. In love, he predestined us unto adoption.

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Now, adoption is as personal as you can get. You don't adopt nameless faceless groups.

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You don't adopt null sets. Adoption is the very basis of our sonship with Christ.

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It is our entrance into the family. You can't get more personal than that. So to change that to he predestined that those who would allow him to do so would be adopted into his family.

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So you have the capacity in and of yourself to force God to do that because he's predestined that that would be the case.

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Okay. Again, it's through Jesus Christ, to himself, to the

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Father. And all of this is according to the kind intention of whose will?

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The lematos autu. May I suggest that in a synergistic system, it's the lematos hemo, our will.

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Our collective will. That's the difference. The kind intention of our will is the one that allows him to adopt us into the family of God.

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Not the kind intention of his will. I would assume from the synergist perspective, the kind intention of his will save everybody.

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But this says, in love, he predestined us unto adoption to Jesus Christ unto himself according to the kind intention of his will.

40:14

So the two different perspectives are, if you are in Christ, it is because before the foundation of the world, the

40:25

Father set his love upon you, the Son died to provide you that salvation, the Spirit at a specific time.

40:31

And that's why, by the way, there's going to be a split down here, and it's going to go from us to you.

40:39

Is because right now we're talking big issue, eternal things, right?

40:47

And then when he shifts to, and in the fairly recent past, the word of God came to you and the gospels proclaimed to you and you believed, this is the outworking in time of this eternal stuff we're talking about now.

41:07

That's why there's a difference later on. But the kind intention, does

41:13

God have a kind intention of his will? Does he accomplish it? And is the kind intention of his will impersonal?

41:23

It just, it makes me need to take more heart medicine when

41:33

I hear Layton Flowers talking about eisegesis, okay? Because you've got someone who is just really skilled at it,

41:44

I'm accusing other people of doing it. That just makes you go, no, ouch. Let's not do that again.

41:53

So this predestination is personal. It is to full salvation because it involves adoption through Jesus Christ unto

42:05

God the Father. So it is the restoration of relationship. You're now in the very family of God.

42:13

It is according to the kind intention of his will and it is unto the praise.

42:24

Now we could translate this very literally as the glory of his grace or his glorious grace.

42:34

Unto the praise of his glorious grace. Now, I see how that makes sense when it's

42:42

God the Father predestining and it's his kind intention and he's the one adopting us unto sonship.

42:51

Yeah, that's to the praise of his glorious grace. But if all of this, including predestination, is actually dependent upon our actions, it should be to the praise of our great humility.

43:07

Or our being trace meets. But it's not.

43:12

It's the praise of his glorious grace and which he graced.

43:23

Notice, caritas et caritasem. So they have the same root.

43:30

Which he graced who? Which he graced us.

43:37

Oops, too big of a circle there. Sorry about that. Graced us in the beloved one.

43:44

That's singular. That is in Jesus Christ. So all of this is to the praise of his glorious grace.

43:54

Which he granted to us. Okay, that's true. But which he graciously graced us with in Jesus Christ.

44:06

So once again, is this a personal thing? Or is it an impersonal thing?

44:14

Is this just simply a plan? God has graciously put together a plan.

44:21

And if you're humble enough and you're good enough, what was the guy that wore the sweaters?

44:28

I'm good enough and I'm loved. That's similar thinking. Um, then you'll get the benefits of this plan.

44:37

And other people won't because they're not as humble as you. And they're not as wise as you spiritually. And they're not choice meats.

44:44

They're grade B. And it's only grade A makes the cut. That's how it works.

44:50

The praise of his glorious grace which he graced us in the beloved one.

44:59

Now, again, to demonstrate where this is coming from, keeping that in mind, go back to annotate screen again.

45:18

In whom, in whom. So that's referring, again,

45:26

I know not, I know the vast majority of us don't read Greek. But for those who do, just always remember, check your endings here.

45:35

You can, got that little Yoda subscript there. It's pointing back. In whom we have, what?

45:46

Redemption through his blood. Who has redemption through his blood?

45:52

Those who have received this grace and predestined unto adoption.

45:59

Hmm. Sounds like particular redemption to me. In whom we have redemption through his blood.

46:08

And then in a positive phraseology right here, this phrase here, a little bit too big.

46:19

The forgiveness of our sins. So redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our sins, same thing.

46:29

Just restated. And it is according to the riches of his caritas.

46:36

So you've got caritas here. You've got a caritas here. You've got caritas here.

46:43

Grace, grace, grace, grace. All of this is by his grace. And notice it is the active action of salvation itself.

46:53

We've got redemption through his blood. We have the forgiveness of our trespasses and sins.

46:58

And all on the basis of his grace. These are all personal things.

47:04

This is all absolutely personal. You don't forgive the sins of nameless, faceless groups.

47:15

This is adoption. We go to Romans 8. It's being conformed to his image.

47:20

It's justification. It's effectual calling. It's glorification. These are all the actions of the divine actor in salvation.

47:34

The synergist wants to make all these the actions of the one who has been enabled to do these things by our faith.

47:45

He wants to do it for everybody. But he can't. And so we allow him, we empower him to do these things by our act of humility and our act of faith.

48:00

That's their perspective. However, the point is this grace, his grace, is something which he caused to abound unto us.

48:17

He caused it to abound unto us in all wisdom and insight.

48:27

Well, is that his wisdom and insight or our wisdom and insight? He's made known to us the mystery of his will.

48:40

Who knows the mystery of God's will? Is that every person on the planet?

48:48

Is that everyone who just wants to know? Who has the knowledge of the mystery of God's will?

48:53

Whom has that been given? Again, he then talks about the oikonomion, the economy of the fullness of the times, the wrapping up of all things in Christ Jesus.

49:11

Now, that's a section we should probably, in light of current conversations in other areas, maybe do a discussion of.

49:27

Because look here, this big long word right here, anakephalaiosestai, to sum up, and you've got kephalaid, head, the summing up of all things, the bringing everything to a head in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth.

50:05

Might that be relevant to certain conversations taking place right now? Yeah, I think it might definitely be.

50:15

But we have another topic to be focusing upon here. And so, in him, in Christ, also, we have been made an inheritance, having been predestined, this

50:33

Prohorizo, taking us back to verse 5, according to the purpose, tu ta ponta energuntas kata tein bulein tu thelemitas autu.

50:50

Now, that's a long phrase. But it's the, here is, kata is telling you, okay, what's the basis of the predestination?

51:07

Well, it is the purpose of the all things working according to his, the counsel of his will, one.

51:24

So, this is a description of God the Father as the one working, energuntas, ta ponta, all things, according to the purpose of his will.

51:45

So that, given that God has been this, is this sovereign and active, as he's the one energuntas, working all things, aista ainai, infinitival phrase of purpose, so that, to the end that, we, then down here, who have first hoped in Christ, might be to the praise of his glory.

52:23

So, early church, there's still much to go, still much time to be had in the building of the church, but already, he is being glorified in the drawing of his people, even now, even now, in this early period,

52:44

God is being glorified in the church, in Christ Jesus.

52:50

Okay, so, the other argument that I mentioned,

52:56

I actually downloaded the film, I'm not going to spend the time to do it, but this young fellow,

53:04

I'm not sure why he uses the term apologetics in his name, because it just seems like he's opposed to Reformed Theology, but his argument basically goes like this, he says that I'm right, and a lot of the things

53:20

I say about Ephesians chapter 1, but where I'm wrong, is that those first 12 verses were about something back then, about a certain group back then, and then beginning of verse 13, you now have the switch over from all this eternal choice, and predestination, and all that stuff, into how things are handled now.

53:54

So, you look at the text here, and you have, so that we were the first to hope in praise of his glory in Christ, in whom also, you also, after listening to the word of truth, you know what

54:27

I'm going to have to do, folks? Sorry, this is live stuff. I'm going to go to a blank screen for a second, and I will be right back, and we'll maybe cut this out later, but hold on just a moment, please.

55:29

Back. Okay, sorry about that, folks, but this particular RV park is not a

55:36

KOA or anything like that. It's run by personal, just regular old folks that have other jobs, and so you can't pay for it ahead of time and stuff, and so the poor young lady, who

55:49

I think sort of inherited it from her parents, I saw her mowing earlier today.

55:56

She's a dental hygienist, and the thought crossed my mind, man,

56:02

I should try to get that final payment in while I can see her right now, and I thought to myself, she'll come by during the program, but she was mowing the lawn, and she actually just said that she had dropped her phone.

56:18

It was broken anyway, so she knocked on the door, and I need to get the thing paid for, and tomorrow,

56:25

I've got stuff at seminary. I'm speaking tomorrow evening, so I was sort of like, well, we sort of got to take a little break here for a second and pay for the

56:34

RV park, so we aren't sitting in some place trying to make this all up.

56:47

It's real live, on the road webcast. I'm thinking of a few folks a few big names that would not do this, and probably wouldn't even be able to get back into what we were talking about, but I will, hopefully, so here's the point.

57:11

We're almost out of time, but we'll go a couple minutes over because we lost a couple minutes there. Notice it says, in him you also, after listening to the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed, you were sealed in him with the holy spirit of promise, who was given as a pledge of our inheritance under the redemption of God's own possession, the praise of his glory.

57:33

So, once again, we have praise of his glory, but the argument being made is, see, this changes, and so it's a different group.

57:44

So, the first, well, verses 3 through 12, that was back then.

57:49

That's the apostles. That doesn't have anything to do with us today. What actually is going on here is that all that of verses 3 through 12, which is before the foundation of the world, it's the action of God the father in Christ Jesus.

58:11

Man, I mean, here you've got the certainty of the success of Christ and the ministry of Christ and everything that goes along with that.

58:19

All of that now has to come into time. So, this is the height of revelation taking us into time immemorial, and then in him you also, after listening to the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation.

58:42

So, every believer in Ephesus was blessed in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, but they did not experience that and come to know that until a point in time when the gospel came to Ephesus.

59:02

For some of them, it might have been, you know, that initial preaching, but then others coming at a later point in time, things like that, but the point is that everything, you know, it's almost like there's some people who will not allow for God to reveal great eternal truths, but will force everything into the context of humanity and time and flatten everything out.

59:34

And so, here you have notice that up until this point, what was, um, what were the actions?

59:50

So, it's at verse 12 that you have the first human activity.

01:00:00

Up until this point, oh, stop presenting the file please, thank you. Up until this point, um, the action of predestination, working all things, verse 11, summing up all things in Christ, verse 10, he makes known to us the mystery of his will, which he purposed in him.

01:00:24

He caused to abound to all of us, wisdom and insight, verse 8. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our transgressions, according to the riches of grace.

01:00:33

That's all things that God did. That's not something that we brought about. He graciously bestows things upon us, the beloved, in verse 6.

01:00:41

Um, predestination, verse 5, his pleasure and his pleasure and goodwill.

01:00:47

He chose us. It's all God, just as it is in the golden chain of redemption. God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God.

01:00:55

He does all these things, and the result in time is this. You believe. You believe.

01:01:03

So, when we heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed.

01:01:15

There, oh, there's belief. And you see the synergist has to take that, transfer it to the top, so that everything

01:01:24

God does is ordered in light of that act. Rather than all this stuff takes place in eternity, it's why it's the praise of his glorious grace.

01:01:37

It has nothing to do with us. And then, in time, the gospel comes.

01:01:43

We hear the gospel of our salvation, which, by the way, other people rejected. Having also believed, you were sealed in him with the

01:01:54

Holy Spirit of promise. Yes, belief is vitally important, but where does that belief come from?

01:02:01

How is it that we are able to have saving faith and other people reject?

01:02:09

It's not because we're choice needs. It's not because we're more humble. There's only one five -letter word that will separate those who bow in humble adoration around the throne and those who scream their hatred from hell, and it's the five -letter word grace, which, thankfully, is five letters in Greek as well.

01:02:33

That's all it is. And the synergist does not say that. The synergist is not saying that.

01:02:40

The synergist is saying, when it comes to who avails themselves, it's not grace.

01:02:47

It's me. I did it. I was the choice needs. And, oh,

01:02:54

I couldn't have done it myself. No, no, no. No one's saying it's 100 % me, but it was me.

01:03:03

That's how it works. And we could do the same thing in Romans chapter 8. We could go through Romans chapter 8 and see the exact same reality that God's the one that is acting,

01:03:17

God's the one that's acting, God's the one that's acting. That's what the eternal aspect is, and then the result is found in time.

01:03:27

And as we've pointed out many times in the past, especially when we did the very full and as yet completely unrefuted refutation of David Allen on that subject.

01:03:41

And, by the way, his new book doesn't even try, does not even try to rehabilitate the utter refutation of his attempt to deal with Romans chapter 8.

01:03:56

I just think he's given up on it and decided it's not worth it. Because he wrote that article, he tried to bring in the commentaries and all the rest of that stuff, and we demonstrated that he was not using the commentaries correctly, he was not understanding them, and he was not dealing with the text at all.

01:04:15

So, you'll find that in both of those instances. So, there you go.

01:04:21

And other than a few whoopses, and, of course, the fact that we are,

01:04:26

I am sitting in the nose of a Jayco travel trip.

01:04:33

And that means you got to pay for your slot, okay? Most of the time,

01:04:39

I've done that months ahead of time. But when you're dealing with a lot of the smaller, and this is very small, small park, as far as I can tell, it's the closest one to the seminary.

01:04:54

It's the one I've stayed in every time I've been here. So, I have a couple of things.

01:05:02

I don't know if you can see the Zoom feed on your end. Look at that. There's a...

01:05:09

Okay, so, obviously, everyone, Rich is feeling a little left out, okay?

01:05:17

He's not... Oh, look at that. Rich is feeling a little left out, so he's now doing picture -in -picture, which

01:05:24

I can't do, which I can do, but he's not taught me how to do. I taught you. Oh, no.

01:05:31

Okay, that's right, but I did do it. You did do it. You did. But the number, when it was so small, no one could see what was in it.

01:05:38

Yes. So, there you go. So, what do you have there, Rich? I have the

01:05:43

Jeffrey Rice Rebind that... Rich, where did you find that?

01:05:49

It was in a safe place. Okay. Should we tell everybody?

01:05:56

Oh, sure. Go ahead. Tell them. Yesterday, folks,

01:06:03

Rich was fairly convinced that he had thrown that Bible out. He was going, okay, there wasn't anything in that mailbox.

01:06:12

I didn't know. I said, yeah, I know. I took it out, but I can't find it anywhere.

01:06:18

He was pretty panicked out. He was getting ready to buy one and everything else. So, your blood pressure is down about 35 points,

01:06:26

I would say. Oh, yeah. It's much better now. So, I've decided how we're going to do this because, with a very generous donation that we received over the weekend, we have exceeded our goal or our need for the mobile studio.

01:06:47

We've pretty much purchased everything that needs purchasing and we've exceeded that. So, we've turned that off, but we still have this.

01:06:58

And so, it's been decided that... And we should still have a nice from Derek Melton coming. Yes. So, the one fund that really suffered accordingly was the travel fund.

01:07:10

A lot of this fund instead.

01:07:17

So, we're going to auction this off for the travel fund. And how we're going to do it is going to be interesting.

01:07:25

And first of all, we're going to use Alpha and Omega Ministries' Facebook page to do this.

01:07:32

And I will post this with pictures later this evening and start what will be the auction.

01:07:40

The auction is what's called a 24 -hour auction. So, what will happen is the highest bid that is given to it or made for it will be posted and timestamped.

01:07:57

The next bidder will have 24 hours to exceed that amount. And you keep resetting that clock until you get to the point to where there are no more bids.

01:08:11

The 24 -hour auction happens all the time. So, that's how we're going to do this.

01:08:18

I'll put it up there. It gives everybody plenty of time to do bids. And then after the last bid comes through and 24 hours goes by, that will be the winner of the auction.

01:08:31

And then I will reach out to that person in private message and we'll settle up. So, that's how that's going to work.

01:08:38

Do you have any questions, James? We'll ship him the Bible in a bulletproof box that can't be lost.

01:08:51

Or put in a safe place. We were seriously wondering who could have broken into our office.

01:09:01

Yeah, I know better than that. That's the only one thing I can think of. Because that shipping box

01:09:06

I threw away when I cleaned after you left because this place was a disaster. Are you blaming me for that?

01:09:15

No, no. You know better than that. I turned this place upside down. It sure sounded that way. I think a lot of people...

01:09:20

See, folks? See? I keep telling you. I keep telling you. It's like this all the time.

01:09:27

But I'm going to give it back over to you. I just wanted to put that in there. Okay. So, watch the

01:09:35

Alphanumeric Ministries Facebook page. Rich has done this with other stuff in his private world.

01:09:42

And so, I'll let him handle all the details on that. I think

01:09:48

I got the idea sort of how it works. But he will be posting pictures so you know what you're bidding on.

01:09:56

And we'll go from there. And like I said, next week, I'll be with Derek Melton in Pryor.

01:10:05

So I don't know if he'll have that knife then. That would be a neat way to do it.

01:10:10

Because I'm going to try to rearrange things in here a little bit and have another person in the studio and do sort of an interview type thing.

01:10:21

And it should be fairly easy to do. I just use this camera up here.

01:10:27

I have it on him. I can go back and forth. I'll miss the cut a few times. But hey, that's how it works.

01:10:35

But we'll make it work. I think we'll make it work. All right. So once again, as Rich just mentioned, we've paid everything off.

01:10:50

And of course, the travel fund still is important because tomorrow, after I speak at the seminary, as I'm driving back out here to the

01:11:02

RV park, I will be stopping. And see, I opened the door to pay the bill.

01:11:09

And little creatures get in. Um, you know, what's sad about getting old is

01:11:16

I'm pretty sure that was a little gnat. But the floaters in your eyes look like gnats, too. You get old and you're like, was that a mosquito?

01:11:25

Or is that just a floater? I'm glad I can laugh about it.

01:11:31

Some people just get all upset. And it's like, hey,

01:11:36

God's giving you clear, clear messages. You only have so much time.

01:11:44

Live right. You know, make sure you're getting everything done you need to get done, because everything else just falling apart.

01:11:52

So anyways, tomorrow night, as I'm coming back in the seminary, I got to pull into a gas station.

01:12:01

And boy, I'll tell you one thing. People wonder, you know, you've traveled pretty much just in the south.

01:12:06

Well, there are a number of reasons for that. And one of the reasons is I've paid less at one stop.

01:12:13

I paid less than three dollars for diesel fuel per gallon. And I was paying what is it in Phoenix?

01:12:21

Is it still about four forty nine back there? Probably is.

01:12:26

And I don't know because I have to pay for gas. Yeah, well, you know what's weird?

01:12:33

Guess what? It costs here in the south. Diesel is more than unleaded. So I don't know why that is.

01:12:43

But in Arizona, unleaded has become much more expensive than diesel. So all of this to say, the travel fund pays for those fill ups.

01:12:54

And when you have a thirty six gallon fuel tank. Yeah, that's that's a long time standing there with your head on a swivel watching what's going on around you.

01:13:06

And it's it can get pricey. No two ways about it. I mean, our truck does a great job.

01:13:11

She's been averaging right around 10 miles to the gallon while pulling. And that's she's about eight thousand pounds.

01:13:20

She and the unit is probably closer to nine. So we're doing about seventeen thousand pounds and she's getting a good 10 miles to the gallon.

01:13:30

That's not bad at all. That's that's really good. Very impressed.

01:13:36

So anyhow. So that's that'll be the travel fund if you want to help get us from place to place to place.

01:13:45

Thank you very much for watching the program today. Thank you, Rich, for making it available. And I'm not sure exactly when we will get back together again.

01:13:58

If Friday is possible, we'll see. With this, we can do it pretty much wherever we are.

01:14:05

It's great. By the way, we used the modem that we were concerned was fried sitting right there.

01:14:14

Worked just fine. I did a factory reset thing, set it all back up again.

01:14:21

It is now sitting on a fan so that it is nice and cool. And now it seems to be very happy.

01:14:27

I don't know. It's just you do what you got to do. All right. Thanks for watching the program today.