April 7, 2005

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from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded
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Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the
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United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. And good afternoon. Welcome to The Dividing Line on Thursday afternoon, the 7th of April already.
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My goodness, how time is flying and how I'm not getting anything done that I thought I'd be getting done at this particular point in time.
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The phone lines are open for, well, for all calls, but especially
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I would like to invite those that, well, I've invited before to be with us today, specifically for those individuals that I have invited to back up their brave words that they have posted in various and sundry places.
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We won't, or probably won't be hearing from Doug C. tonight, maybe we'll be hearing from Doug C.
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on Tuesday. If you've been following the blog, you know that I invited him to call, but there have been many others.
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There have been dozens and dozens of emails that have been sent to us. And of course, as we've gone on the various Roman Catholic web forums at Catholic Answers, Envoy, Steve Ray's Catholic Convert, all of these wonderful folks who are more than happy to believe every possible negative thing you could ever come up with.
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I mean, I am responsible for 9 -11, I'm responsible for various and sundry diseases, definitely accountable for the various viruses in Africa.
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The price of gas is my fault. The Exxon Valdez oil spill
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I had something to do with. And so anyway, as long as it sounds like you get somebody to not listen to a word that I'm saying, these folks have the ability of coming up with whatever.
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And so we have invited folks to call today if they would like to attempt to substantiate the things they've said, a
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Catholic dude and a Doug C. And I even contacted a fellow, he said he was going to call, who writes the
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Nick Maximus. And this is a completely different subject now for something new, a completely different subject.
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That is, he had written, he's an Armenian writing against Calvinists, and he had made the assertion that I had sort of led a jihad, an inquisition against Dave Hunt and had misrepresented
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Dave Hunt and all the rest of this stuff. And I said, hey, you know what? I'd be more than happy if you would like to call in because you know what?
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I've documented every single thing I have said regarding Dave Hunt. And I would like,
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I'd really like to have somebody call in and attempt to explain statements about the
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Dead Sea Scrolls, for example, talking about the authorship of Acts. I would find that somewhat entertaining after the past few days, past few weeks, to hear someone attempt and deal with that.
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And but I don't know if that's going to happen. But the number is 877 -753 -3341.
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And we're getting a few calls. Of course, I'm looking at my screen. My screen says line four.
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And I look at my thing. There is no line four. So I'm a little confused. But that's that's oh, there is going to call attention to certain people, let them know that there's a difference between a four and a six, especially when there's only six lines.
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Well, we actually could have 12, but we don't have 12. It wouldn't work that way. Twelve would be a bit of an overkill, you know what
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I mean? So anyway, we I see three lines right now blinking, so we'll see what happens with that.
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But I would like to especially give priority and I will give priority to those who have made statements on various and sundry web boards in various and sundry contexts concerning myself and the position that we've taken on Roman Catholicism.
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I have managed to offend the the the thudding sound that you have heard for the past number of days have been churches doors that I will never walk through again.
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Well, I probably never have walked through anyways, but due to the fact that there are just.
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So many in our world today who just don't understand it, and you know, when you think about it,
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I was thinking about this last night. All it means, and I'm sort of thankful,
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I really am thankful that this has now come up, you know. Yeah, it's it's it's a sad thing to see all these people fawning over the bishop of Rome and just sending him off into heaven as if the gospel is a completely irrelevant thing and and Marian devotions are relevant.
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And hey, as long as you're a nice guy, you say Jesus three times, you're on your way to heaven. Let's not worry about atonement.
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Let's not worry about Galatians. Let's just get rid of all that stuff. You know, it's difficult to see all that stuff.
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But honestly, I think what is happening for a number of folks is that they are recognizing that the gospel is a radical message.
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You know, we talk about it that way, but this is really illustrating it in a way that I don't think a lot of folks have seen it quite this clearly, because if you really, really, really do believe.
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In justification, if you really do believe in justification by faith, if you believe in substitutionary atonement, if you you believe these things that we take for granted, there are results to believing these things.
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There you can't just you know, if you say you believe it. It'll have some impact elsewhere, see.
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And we're seeing that, you know, I've actually given presentations, Colin Smith had me give a presentation at his church years ago.
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On being more than reformed, in other words, what are the, you know, as the booklet from Banner of Truth, the
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Al Martin booklet, the Practical Implications of Calvinism, what does it mean to be reformed and can doesn't that have a impact upon the rest of your life, upon how you worship, upon all the rest of these things?
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And it does. There's no there's no question about that. And so here we're seeing to believe the gospel, to believe in substitution, to believe in these things is is truly to make certain statements.
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And and a lot of folks don't want to make those statements. They want on one hand, they see what the
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Bible says and they see the Bible teaches these things. But now when you see it and what it means.
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To die fully embracing a false gospel. Oh, well, I'm going to back away from that, that's that's more than that, you know, that's that's more than I I could really
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I could really do see. And in fact, I was I was talking with Steve Camp yesterday.
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And he was telling me about this person who was talking to him and he said, well, how do you know,
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Steve, that in the last five minutes of his life that the pope didn't, you know, embrace the true gospel?
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And I couldn't help but thinking how incredibly offensive that would be to Roman Catholics if the
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Roman Catholics were actually thinking in a rational way rather than just an emotional way, which seems to be what's going on.
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But. I mean, what an offensive thing to say that in the last five minutes of his life, he committed from the
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Roman Catholic perspective, the ultimate act of apostasy, overthrew everything he had ever taught and did and stood for.
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I said, did you point out this person that they better not say that to a believing
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Roman Catholic because they're going to they're going to have their glasses turned into contact lenses as a result? And he just he just chuckled at that.
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But that's what people are running around doing. That's the other way of doing it is that, well, you know, OK, I I see that there's just no way to fit this this teaching.
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And, you know, the pope's will came out today and, you know, in it you have all the discussions about.
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You know, told us to us and how that's been his lifelong thing, totally yours, directed to Mary and all that kind of thing.
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And people look at that and they go, all right, you know, I know enough about the Bible that that doesn't really fit.
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That doesn't really plug in there. So. I want to find some other way, and so I can
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I'll say that maybe just maybe someone snuck a jack chick track into the pope or something as if and, you know, if I were
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Roman Catholic, I'd find that to be extremely offensive without any question. And there's no basis for believing that there just isn't.
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It just there's so many people just I just don't want to look mean. Have you read
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Galatians recently? Have you read Matthew 23 recently? Where do we take our lead from?
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What's our example supposed to be? I think our example should be friends on on the
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WB or something, a Fox, you know, they're just so nice. I'd like to live next to them and.
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Hey, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's what's going on and, you know, an unbelievable that what's what's been going on in that area.
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But hey, I I said just a few moments ago. That's I had let me get something into the channel here, please, quickly and what in the world, you know, when you hit control buttons and you and it does something you wish you could do again, but you have no idea what control button you just hit and you search the help file and you look all over the place and you never, ever, ever, ever find it all again.
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It is so. So very, I don't know, disappointing and you can't find that stuff.
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I mentioned a few moments ago that I had run across a I was directed to a blog article.
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By one of our channel regulars, Red Goatee there, and I had run across the following paragraph.
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This was in an article from let's see what's the date here.
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This is the eight forty a .m. Sometime doesn't for some odd reason give the date, but and it's under the title of what's worse than being arrogant.
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And it says it's even more amusing to see him. And this is referring to Red Goatee, Alan Hampton, whose name is used here.
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So it's even more amusing to see him mentioned James White, who is one of the most celebrated polemicist in the
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Calvinistic community today celebrated. I was trying to be a funny term celebrated and not so celebrated.
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Anyways, White had in recent times been, in my personal opinion, obsessed in leading a
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McCarthyism style witch hunt to destroy Dave Hunt, an author who wrote a book questioning the tenets of Calvinism.
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The fallout after that book had been released has done much to show the awful bigotry and arrogance typical of Calvinists who, in following White's lead, have harassed, censured and spread outright lies about Dave Hunt and a spirit of hate befitting radical followers of Islam.
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And so when I saw that, I added a little note.
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I made a added a comment at the at the bottom. And I also discovered that I could get hold of this individual.
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And I had just put on the post. I said, sir, I would like to challenge you to have the courage of your convictions. Call the
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Divine Line tomorrow between 11 a .m. and noon Pacific Daylight Time or Thursday between 4 p .m. and 5 p .m.
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to defend the slanderous and false assertions you have made here regarding my interactions with Dave Hunt. Please have your facts in line.
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I'll have mine. And I gave the phone number. And he responded and said, I may actually call this
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Thursday, though I'm still debating with myself whether I should bother. My impressions are mostly based on what you've written about Hunt on your blog.
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So I have them bookmarked in case I do call. And then somebody else wrote, don't bother throwing pearls.
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Speak to the sick, the dying, the afflicted, the broken hearted, the meek, and so on and so forth. But I sort of think that issues of truth are important.
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So anyways, that is the background. And that is exactly what Maximus has done.
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And so we're going to go to line two here. And I don't know if you want me to use the term
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Maximus for you or not. Would you prefer a different name? Hi, Dr.
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White. Hi. How are you, sir? Hey. How are you doing? How am I coming in? Am I coming in clear? Yeah. Sound pretty good.
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Should I call you Maximus? You can call me Max. That's fine.
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I'll call you Max. Okay. All right. Well, Maximus was one of my favorite characters in Gladiator. So... Yeah.
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That's kind of the way I got the name from. It was either that or Bush Cassidy. Oh. Okay. All right.
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I wouldn't exactly see them as a real close parallel. But anyway. Yeah. But first,
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I just want to apologize for the tone in which I wrote the post. I still, in my personal view,
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I feel that the way your interactions with Dave Hunt has been...
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It's been, in my view, really, really nasty. And I should have been more...
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I'm the last person on the Earth to tell you this, but I should have been more tactful in the way
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I expressed that on my blog. Well, Max, let me ask you.
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Have you read Debating Calvinism? I haven't read Debating Calvinism. I've read What Love Is This, and I've read your letters to Dave Hunt and his response to it.
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Okay. Max, are you aware of what Debating Calvinism is? Yeah. I understand it's like half the book explains your point of view, and half the book is from his point of view.
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It's a debate. We go back and forth between myself and Dave Hunt. And I can assure you, the vast majority of folks who have read
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Debating Calvinism would say that one side was very focused and one side was very nasty.
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And I wasn't the nasty side. I would direct you to that. But what is it in what
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I have written about Dave Hunt that could be identified as nasty? What specific terminology, what specific issues led you to believe that there is this witch hunt in regards to Dave Hunt?
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What are the specifics? Because I'd like to know. I try to be very careful in what I raise. All the issues
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I've raised with Dave have been issues of translation. For example, where he said that the best translation of Acts 13 .48,
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actually the only English translation that presents that is the New World Translation of Jehovah's Witnesses.
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Yeah, I was just about to, in that sense, I actually agree with what you're saying. I don't think he's correct there in terms of,
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I mean, if the only translation that you can find that supports your point of view is from a Jehovah's Witness Bible, that's not going to be very, you know, it's not going to be very compelling evidence.
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Okay, Max, do you know what happened after I pointed that out to him? I mean, the time frame here is, just in case you're not aware of this time frame, is he and I did a radio program on the subject of Calvinism back in,
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I think it was 2000, when I was hosting a radio program here in Phoenix. I was filling in for somebody.
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We did a radio program during drive time on KPXQ here in Phoenix, and at the beginning of that particular program,
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I asked him, I said, now Dave, you and I, because we speak at conferences very frequently, we're both speakers at a conference.
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And I said, you know, Dave, you and I have debated together more Roman Catholics than any other two people combined in the world today, and that's true.
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And I said, but the odd thing is, on the issue of God's grace, and the issue of the will of man, you would agree with Rome against the
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Reformers, because you take their viewpoint on that, you actually take the Roman Catholic viewpoint on that, over against the
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Reform view. Do you find that to be inconsistent? And Dave's response was, and I put this in the debating
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Calvinism book, his response was, well, James, I've never read any of the Reformers. I imagine they wrote many books, but I've never read any of them, and I just want to go with the
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Bible. Three months later, the first draft of What Love Is This began to circulate.
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Three months. Now, I don't know about you, but you'd have to be a really brilliant reader to get to the point where you've said,
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A, I've never read any of the Reformers, and three months later you're writing a book representing their beliefs.
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Okay, that's the first thing. And I wrote to Dave, and I said, Dave, you know, I hear you're doing this book.
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I'd like to really encourage you not to do so. I don't believe you're in a position to do this in a meaningful fashion, and I was not the only one.
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I happen to know many ministers like myself who kindly contacted Dave, because we've had good relationships with him in the past, and said,
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Dave, don't do this. But he didn't listen to any of us. He puts out What Love Is This. If you've read
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What Love Is This, you know that I, R .C. Sproul, and John Piper are the three main living people that he harpoons.
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He says, he accuses me of twisting the scriptures, misrepresenting the scriptures, giving false teachings.
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I mean, he went after me in no uncertain terms. And so when I responded to him, he accused me of elitism and everything else.
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When I responded to him, I didn't respond to him with anger. I responded to him with facts. I responded to him with exegesis, and when
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I did so, he responds by saying, oh, you're an elitist because you think you have to know Greek and Hebrew and all the rest of this stuff.
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And so, interestingly, what happened is when I exposed his misrepresentation of Acts 13 -48, when we wrote
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Debating Calvinism, he never mentioned what he had said in What Love Is This. He didn't explain it.
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It just disappeared. Then when he wrote the second edition of What Love Is This, he still didn't explain why he had said what he had said.
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But what he did was he came up with a whole new thing about the
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Dead Sea Scrolls and the early church fathers telling us the first 15 chapters of Acts were actually written in Hebrew, and no one's ever seen this
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Hebrew, but a group of scholars that he doesn't name would tell you that if you translated the
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Hebrew, Acts 13 -48 wouldn't teach Calvinism. Now what he's saying is we don't even have the original of the first 15 chapters of Acts, which means we don't have an inerrant
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Bible. We don't even have the original writings as far as the language of the Bible. I mean, this was one of the most absurd assertions
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I've ever heard in a theological context in my entire life. I think
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I know what he meant from it. I'm reading the paragraph now, and I think he just made a mistake in the way he worded the paragraph.
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When he was referring to the Dead Sea Scrolls, he wasn't referring that they demonstrated that the first 15 chapters of Acts were probably written first in Hebrew.
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I think he was demonstrating that it showed that Hebrew was the principal language at the time of Jesus, and it was just to demonstrate that Hebrew was very much alive, even though previously it was thought that it was a dead language or rarely spoken or rarely written at all.
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And from there, and including to certain quotes from church fathers, early church writers or early church fathers,
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I think he might have meant the early church father, and they refer to the
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Gospels, not Acts, not the first 15 chapters of Acts, but the
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Gospels that may have first been written in Hebrew, and then it was kind of like carried over into Greek so it could be spread through a wider audience.
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Hold on a second, Max. First of all, it wasn't all the Gospels. It was primarily Matthew. That's the only real case you can make there.
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Secondly, let me read this so that folks can hear it.
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This is the specific quote from page 264. It says, The Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as comments from early church writers, indicate that the first 15 chapters of Acts were probably written first in Hebrew.
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Yeah, I think that was a mistake. I don't think he either, it might have been written in haste, but I agree,
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I believe what he said when he said that it was a casual statement, and if he had just been a little bit more, a little bit more careful, then
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I'm sure, I'm absolutely convinced he would have said, not that it was written in Hebrew, but that certain portions of the
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Gospels, including Acts, may have been drawn from Semitic sources. But Max, that would have nothing to do with Acts 13 -48, would it?
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13 -48? No, I haven't even gotten to that point yet. Yeah, but it had nothing to do with it.
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I think, I understand his point, though. He's saying that if you kind of, if you consider that the first 15 chapters of Acts may have been drawn from Hebrew sources, then it might be read slightly differently than it would be if it was completely, you know, if it was completely
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Greek in origin. Well would you admit, first of all, that there is no Hebrew original of Acts 13 -48, and that if you're going to...
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There's no surviving original Hebrew of Acts that we know of, but the evidence, from what
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I've read, though, the evidence does seem to suggest that there may have been a Hebrew version that...
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Really? What source do you have for that? Basically, I've gotten it from several sources.
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One is called JerusalemPerspective .com, and what they do is they do a study of the
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Synoptic Gospels and the theory that portions of it may have first been written in Hebrew.
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What does that have to do with Acts? Acts is written by Luke, not... From that, they also indicate that, because Luke was...the
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Gospel of Luke, and the first 15 chapters of Acts, from what I read, was actually like one uninterrupted writing, and that when
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Luke wrote that, or whoever the author was, portions of it were at least drawn from Hebrew sources, because of the way the
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Greek was stylized, it seemed to suggest that the original way it was drawn from was actually in Hebrew.
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Okay, there are a number of scholarly sources that talk about Aramaic or original resources for the sermons in the first 12 chapters of Acts, not for the writing.
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Oh, okay, because I thought it was the first 15 chapters. There's a number of sources that say that, not for Luke to have written it, but that Luke had access to Aramaic sources for the sermons that would have been in Aramaic, because, when you're preaching in Jerusalem, you're going to be using the language there.
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There's no question about that, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with actually presenting a translation from unnamed scholars, quote -unquote, based upon a text that no one, to my knowledge, has ever seen, and you're doing this after having already been refuted in saying that the best translation is found in the
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New World Translation. You've never admitted that you made that mistake. You just made it disappear without even a footnote. Now you're coming up with this, and when
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I bring this out and force Dave to deal with it, is that nasty on my part?
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Is that wrong on my part, or is that being consistent? No, no, I'm not saying that you are wrong, and basically, the only thing
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I'm drawing from is the way you worded it on your blog and how you responded to what he wrote in his newsletter.
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Regarding what? This last thing? Yeah, I'm actually looking at it. Yeah, I mean, come on,
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Max, after doing everything that I have done, after writing those open letters to him that got no meaningful response exegetically whatsoever, after discovering, after myself finding these errors in what love is this, and finding that they've been removed without even the honesty of an admission of error in a footnote from the second edition, without removing the attacks on me personally, without removing all that stuff, after all that time, and we write to the
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Berean Call, and they come back with a quotation from a cultic website trying to defend the stuff that had nothing to do with it, and then finally, he's forced to admit,
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I mean, after all of this... But wait a minute, when you say cultic website, is this a
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Messianic Jewish site? It was the Yahweh site, the anti -Trinitarian site, yeah.
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Right, right, yeah, because I was just reading an article about, and I think, because it sounded similar, but I think it may have gotten its sources from a rabbi named
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Julio No, no, no, no, no, the word, every single word was identical, including spacing and punctuation.
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That's not similarity. It was ad verbatim. Verbatim without change.
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It came directly from an anti -Trinitarian website, without even giving, without even giving the source.
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So, you know, if it's the same website I'm thinking of, I'm not so sure that that completely anti -Trinitarian.
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I think they're just, you know, they're kind of like trying to figure it out, and, you know, they consider
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God a three -person, but... No, Max, Max, Max, I'm sorry, Max, I'm sorry,
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I looked up the sources on the site, and they are part of the
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Messianic movement that does not accept the doctrine of the Trinity, they view Jesus as the servant of Yahweh.
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The point is, after, Dave has made excuse, okay,
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I shouldn't say Dave, the Berean call has made excuse after excuse after excuse for all these things, and how in the world can you possibly say that they can, that that's not a demonstration of the fact that he has not dealt honestly with these things?
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So, if you look at the final word that I have to say, after going through all that stuff, and to say, well, you were nasty then.
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Yeah, you know what? After someone has, in essence, completely sacrificed truth upon the altar of their own ego, yeah,
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I'm going to say that, and that might just sound nasty to somebody, but, you know, I didn't start that way, and if the man had simply had the integrity to deal with these issues in a proper way, nobody would be saying the things they're saying about him now.
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But the fact of the matter is, his book is horrible. This isn't the only error. There's all sorts of these kinds of things that I've documented, and...
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Yeah, I mean, I have to concede that. He did make some, he definitely did make some mistakes in his first book.
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I mean, he had some good points, but there was certainly times when he was,
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I kind of think that he went off on a tangent, and he just made clear, I guess, you get the impression that it was rushed to print, and it was just...
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Well, remember something, Max. Two things. A, the first edition was done by a small new publisher, and I happen...
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That's the one I read. I happen to know that Mr. Hunt is not overly open to editing, is not overly open to input from editorial sources, uh, so therefore, editing is not easily done.
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The second edition, he put out himself, and his editor was into the
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Messianic Jewish stuff. So if you want my opinion, I don't think Dave ever saw this before it hit print.
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I think he's probably really mad that it ended up there, but since it's under his own name, he's just basically having to throw his hands up in the air and go, thanks guys, appreciate your having stuck that thing in there, which to me goes to the issue of integrity as well.
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So, you know, what can you say? But Max, my point was, the reason I had left that message was,
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I didn't lead any type of jihad or McCarthyistic inquiry into Dave Hunt.
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In fact, I can... I've documented on my website the fact that when I first contacted him, you know what?
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I tried very much to get the fella to listen to the fact that some of us have been studying these issues a lot longer than he has.
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He refused. I wasn't the only one. So... I have the impression, because when
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I read your first letter to him, and then I started reading all these things about it, and then I went to the message board, and then it was just one thing after another, and it just deteriorated.
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I mean, I'm not saying it was you, but I'm just saying, whoever read the book, they went from everything to calling him a mouth -foaming buffoon, to...
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And they were constantly, you know, quote your... Well, believe me, Max, I can show you where Dave Hunt's followers have said everything under the sun about me.
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Oh, yeah, I'm sure there's good stuff still to go on. But my point was, when I read your blog, when you responded to his response, where he got the idea of the
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Dead Sea Scrolls proving acts as written in his book, you thought that...
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You called his ministry desperate, that... No, I was referring to the fact that the
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Berean Call, in the attempt to defend that, took a list. They plagiarized the list.
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They didn't bother to change a single letter or a single space. They plagiarized a list from a heterodox website that had nothing to do with Acts 13 and sent that out.
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And yes, I would call that desperation, because as it reads, as you have admitted, there's nothing in the
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Dead Sea Scrolls about Acts 13 -40. There's nothing in the early church fathers about acts being written in that way.
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And so to ask... In my head, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, because I think I know what he meant, and he just wrote it wrong.
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But Max, why give him the benefit of the doubt when he has quoted the
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NWT out of ignorance, he then pulls it, does not admit the error, goes another direction, and now this is try number three on the same passage, okay?
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Try number three. No admission so far of error. Nothing saying, oops, sorry, got that one wrong.
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None of that. Those things just go bye -bye, they're just edited out without any references.
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I would like to know, why does he get the benefit of the doubt and I don't? Because, no,
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I'm not saying... I think in his mind, when he made those statements, he was just speculating.
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It wasn't crystal clear evidence or solid proof or anything. It was just, as he said, it was a casual remark regarding the possibility that some questions of Acts were written in...
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Excuse me, Max, come on. In his mind, he doesn't consider it... Max, come on.
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What in the text says that? What in what he printed would give any unbiased observer the idea that what he's saying about that is just a casual observation while what he says about John 644 is not a casual...
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There's nothing in the text that indicates that. He doesn't say, well, you know, I've heard the theory.
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Or, you know, it's interesting to speculate. The word speculation doesn't appear there. What you're saying is, well, this is the excuse he came...
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This is excuse number three for error number three on the same verse and I'm going to buy it.
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How many times does he have to go through this before you go, you know what, I don't think Dave Hunt has a clue what he's talking about in Acts 13, 48.
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He has no idea what he's talking about. I haven't even mentioned the error he made about the
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Liddell and Scott Greek lexicon where he said it didn't give ordained as a meaning of Acts 13, 48. It does.
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He can't read enough Greek to know that. How many errors do you have to compound before you finally say, you know what,
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Dave should have stuck to the health wealth gospel stuff. He's out of his element here.
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How many does it take? If we're dealing with a matter of pride, I guess no matter how many times you talk to him or try to convince him that he was wrong or get to publicly acknowledge it, that's probably just going to push him further and further away.
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No question. No question. You're exactly right. I don't really have a problem so much with what you're saying because I do,
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I mean, I'm not a Calvinist, but I do agree with some of your points. I do agree that Acts 13, 48 was correctly rendered.
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I mean, there's certain overt verses in the Bible that clearly talk about, you know, predestination and the
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Calvinist. And I think that also happens to be true for the Arminian point of view.
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I mean, you have two basically on the surface opposing doctrines here, but it's really not.
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The only thing I had a problem with is that you seem to be, I just got the impression that you were deriding him, that you were ridiculing him.
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You know what, Max? Like the Dave Hunt decode, like some of his channel regulars. It's that you poke fun at his mistake.
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Max, Max, Max, Max. Hello, yo, yo, Max, yo. When I say yo, that means yo. Yeah, after three times, yes.
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That's, you know, Elijah mocked the prophets of Baal, okay? After three times of being shown and documented without question that you don't know what you're talking about.
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If you're going to keep misrepresenting the word of God, then at that point, yep, you're exactly right. Max, I appreciate your calling.
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I appreciate you having the integrity to do so. I appreciate your apology for that particular phraseology.
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I've got a number of other callers. Thank you for calling today. God bless you very much. Let's go ahead and move on as some people in the channel are encouraging me to do so.
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Let's talk with Ben real quick. Hi, Ben. How are you? Good. How are you? Doing all right. I have a comment and a question.
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Okay. I'm from Southern California. I'm a theology apologetics major. I'm sorry.
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Southern California, huh? There are Christians there. Yeah. Wow. Okay. All right. I'm in Riverside. Oh my goodness.
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I am. I work with Kurt Van Gordon in Jude 3 Missions. I'm involved in evangelizing the cult.
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All right. My first comment is I bought your book, Scripture Alone. Yes. Oh, thank you.
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Excellent. Especially Exegesis, Letting God Speak. Yes. Great. I love it.
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Great. And Kurt likes you, too. We've talked about you before. Well, we've...
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I've witnessed with him in Utah before. That was, yes. Been a while, thanks to all the King James Only guys up there.
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But anyways. Uh -oh. Anyways, I'm an ex -Roman
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Catholic. Okay. Before I converted to evangelical Christianity. After the born -again experience.
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I'm aware of the Journey Home movement. Yes. Which is quite bothersome. And I am a believer in sola scriptura, sola fide, and a lot of the other evangelical theology.
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But I want to know who taught this type of theology between the
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Church Fathers? And I'm not even sure about their theology. It seems like I can find a lot of Roman Catholic theology actually in the writings of the
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Church Fathers sometimes. Like, who taught this type of theology before Luther and other
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Reformers? Right. Well, a couple things. First of all, be very careful when you are reading any type of church, not even church document, any type of church history or early
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Church Fathers. It is amazing how often I find people, especially not only
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Roman Catholics, but because people are conditioned by the debates of Roman Catholicism, they read into the writings of early
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Church writers concepts that those writers would have had no idea of. But we read them backwards.
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We read looking through the lens of history, and we read into the various sundry terms they use concepts that would have had no meaning to them whatsoever.
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It's very, very, very common for Roman Catholic apologists to do this. It is a constant reading.
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Secondly, realize that there are all sorts of the writings of the early Church that are absolutely positively horrible.
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And we should expect that they would be because the Apostle Paul warned us that untaught and unstable men distort
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God's truth. I'm sorry, that's Peter that warned us about that. And Paul said that there would be those who would arise from the ranks of the elders who would speak false and perverse things.
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Well, we should expect that these people are going to pick up a pen, and they're going to write. And so you have to exercise discernment in whoever you read.
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Now, there's certainly Church Fathers that I like far better than others, simply because, for me, fidelity to Scripture is the important thing.
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But I also try to be somewhat generous in reading, especially the earlier ones, because many of them, for example, didn't even have all of Paul, or maybe any of Paul.
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Yeah, because to my understanding, even Flavius Justini, is it Justin Martyr? Justin Martyr, right.
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He never quoted Paul, I believe. I believe I got that from Paul Shostakovich. Almost no familiarity with Pauline teaching whatsoever.
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Yeah, I noticed that Pauline theology is almost absent from early Church writers. Well, again, when you say early
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Church writers, you have to be really, really specific. Because, for example, there is a fragment of a letter written by, he just calls himself a disciple.
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So sometimes he's called mathetes from the Greek word for disciple. But there's a tremendous presentation of the doctrine of justification by grace through faith.
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Okay, so here you've got somebody. He's steeped in Pauline theology, and he reflects that in his writing.
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Now, you can find a concurrent writer someplace else that's never even heard of Paul, and is far more influenced by Greek philosophers than he is by anything in Scripture.
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Oh, especially in the East. Well, yeah, that's true. So the problem is, if you invest those individuals with some kind of spiritual authority, you're going to create pure havoc.
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There's going to be no, and I would say, the only thing, and you could maybe even question this a few times, the only thing that the early
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Church fathers had in common was monotheism. On any other point, you can find multiple viewpoints and multiple beliefs, because it's sort of like if you blew up a
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Christian bookstore today, and then you went through the remains of that bookstore, picking up pieces of paper from a book over here by Benny Hinn, and a book over here from The Purpose Driven Life, and a book over here from Schaaf's History of the
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Church, and a page over here from Robert Shuler, and you try to stick all that together into something coherent.
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It's not going to work. And it was the same thing back then, even more so. I mean, we have more availability of the
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Scriptures today than you had during that period of time. So what's amazing to me is actually that people like Athanasius or people like Augustine so often came up with the truth, despite the fact that they had a number of, many of them had fundamental misconceptions concerning certain things.
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For example, Augustine had fundamental misconceptions concerning the canon of Scripture in regards to the
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Apocrypha. He thought the Jews accepted that. They didn't. He was wrong about that. That impacted his theology, et cetera, et cetera.
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He didn't understand, he didn't read Greek overly well, and certainly didn't read Hebrew almost at all.
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And so he brought in certain baggage from Latin that shouldn't have been there in regards to dikaio and the meaning of righteousness.
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You have to, you know, I think you should be as generous as you possibly can be.
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I mean, I would like to be judged generously by later generations, but you also have to keep those things in mind. And so what happens is when people invest some kind of spiritual authority in these writings, they pick and choose which of those writings they're going to focus upon.
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So if you pick up, for example, the three -volume set by William Webster and David King, Holy Scripture, and you look through all of the tremendous amount of historical discussion there in citations, you'll be able to find the stuff that you're not going to find in Disrock Magazine in regards to sola scriptura, in regards to the efficiency of Scripture, in regards to all these things.
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But you're not going to find that when, you know, you can pick and choose what you're going to emphasize and what someone says.
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And so it's really a matter of, I would recommend a number of books to you. One that's pretty exciting to me,
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I just found out it's going to be coming back into print, Lord willing, later this year, Disputation on Holy Scripture by Whitaker will be published by Sola Deo Gloria again.
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That's one of the older works, and it's one of the excellent works. We were very unhappy when that went out of print because we were selling them, and that's going to be coming back into print from Sola Deo Gloria.
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That's coming out. The Infallibility Church by Salmon, S -A -L -M -O -N, he wrote that concurrently at the same time period as Newman in England, and excellent historical stuff.
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The three -volume set Holy Scripture is available at aomin .org, you want to track that down.
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And good, G -O -O -D -E's work on scriptural sufficiency, those are the big ones.
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And if you'll notice, I think in the introduction to scripture alone,
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I list those books. Oh, okay. That's in the introduction, and if you're like me, you skip introductions.
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But it's in the introductory section, and you should be able to get the bibliographical information from that.
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And that's going to give you just a huge amount of material there to get started with as far as looking into the early church and things like that.
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That's great, because the early church to me seems a very complex subject, because it seems like within Protestantism, we have no problem quoting the anti -Nicene fathers, or a little bit beyond that,
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Augustine and stuff like that, or from Luther on. I can't think of any great theologians from the 7th or 8th century.
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Well, actually, there's not a whole lot of writing in that particular period of time to begin with as far as that's overly relevant.
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I mean, for example, around 600, you have Pope Gregory the Great writing his allegorical interpretation of Job.
46:49
Well, I'm sorry, but if you've ever looked at it, it's a joke. I mean, life is too short to be wasting your brain cells on something.
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It's just bad, okay? Now, there is someone, Gottschalk, in the 9th century that was imprisoned and beaten for holding
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Augustine's views. You've got that, and then you have Wycliffe, you have
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Hus, you have those people in England and those areas, and there was somebody that the
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Inquisition was running around and killing in the 12th century. There's got to be somebody out there that they were very concerned about these people because they believe in scripture and they believe in certain forms of baptism and so on and so forth.
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So, another book you might want to look at, which might throw some difficulties your way, but it's worth looking at, is a book by Leonard Verdine called
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The Reformers and Their Stepchildren. He spends a lot of time talking about the medieval period and the heretics of the medieval period because the reformers used the names of those medieval heretics to apply to the
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Anabaptists after the Reformation, and it's a very interesting study. So, if you can track down, they are available, a copy of Leonard Verdine's Reformers and Their Stepchildren.
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I had an opportunity of meeting with Leonard Verdine before his death. I think he lived like 101 or something, but he was like 96 or 98 when
48:18
I met with him. Spryus fellow, I mean, I met him out in Apache Junction and we went walking around his little yard out there, and in his middle to late 90s, he's leaning over and picking flowers and naming their genus and species and telling me about their natural history.
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I mean, if I'm going to live that long, I want to live that way. You know, just really neat stuff.
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But anyways, that should be available too. V -E -R -D -U -I -N is the spelling of the last name.
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You can Google that. I was just told in Channel Sound of Grace has it, so it's in print. And if you read all those things, you're going to be on your way.
48:58
Excellent. Okay, man. Thank you. All right. Thanks for calling. Okay. Thank you. All right. God bless. Well, we only have one other caller, and he's been waiting for a long, long time, and it's not on the subject of Roman Catholicism.
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It's on another subject. Basic. Well, it could be. We could stretch it over there. But that basically means that all these folks who are more than happy to take shots behind their keyboards for some reason aren't calling in.
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I didn't get a chance to respond to this one, and I'm not trying to avoid talking with Brett there.
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I will see if I can get there in just a moment, but Brett's question is really taking us far away from where we've been.
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And so hold on just a second there, Brett. I'll see if we can't. I'm just looking at the time, and I even mentioned to Rich before the program started when
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I saw what the topic was. I said, I know exactly what the question is. I addressed some of it in The God Who Justifies, and it's a half -hour topic, minimally, to do it right.
50:14
And we have seven and a half minutes. So I don't know. It might be something that we might want to handle on another program, because handling things real briefly without really getting into it doesn't do a whole lot of good.
50:33
So I did want to read this. I did want to read an email from Bob Lopez.
50:51
Bob Lopez writes to me, and he says, Dr. White, how do you feel after putting in so many hard and painstaking years of trying to combat the errors of Catholicism by participating in one debate after another, writing one book after another, writing articles upon articles, blog entries upon blog entries, all in an effort to prove to yourself and others that Rome preached the false gospel and that your version and interpretation of the gospel is the correct one, only to encounter time after time world events that continually arise that draws world attention and awareness of the beauty and truth of the
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Catholic Church? And I've written and started writing a response, and even as I was writing that, other things came to my mind.
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And my response started like this. Well, Mr. Lopez, I feel like the Apostle Paul, who likewise labored long and yet even at the end of his life continued to battle against those who had perverted the gospel of grace.
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I am thankful the Lord has allowed me the privilege of speaking his truth. I have seen many kept out of the clutches of the Roman system and have had the precious privilege of seeing others delivered from it.
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And so the Lord is good, I suppose, to those who look upon the outward, the pomp and circumstance of these days as beauty.
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But to one whose eyes are accustomed to the scriptures, I see nothing but empty pageantry that has nothing at all to do with my
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Savior. I would then add to that that the work that I do is not an effort to prove to myself anything.
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There is this repeated element in these emails that have been sent. It's almost like it's part of the talking points that somehow
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I'm trying to prove this to myself. I'm quite convinced there is nothing about the pageantry of Rome that in any way, shape or form,
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I find attractive. I know that those sacraments are not going to give me peace.
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I know that praying to the mother of the Lord is not going to change my life.
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It's not going to change my family. It's not going to change my circumstances. There is absolutely, positively nothing at all that is attractive about any of that.
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And so I'm not seeking to prove this to myself. And by the way, also to Mr.
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Lopez here, when it says participating in one debate after another, yes, Roman Catholicism has been the majority of our debates, but in no means is it the only topic that we engage.
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I mean, look at the topics. There are three debates that are scheduled this year. You have the next debate, which is coming up against Bob Wilkin.
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He is an evangelical. I would assume he's a Baptist. I'm assuming he's a very conservative
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Baptist. And I am going to be debating against him because, and it was interesting as I was listening to those clips we played on Tuesday for the
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Dividing Line, I said in the debate in December of 1990 that Protestants believe in persevering in holiness.
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Well, that's why I need to debate Bob Wilkin is because from Bob Wilkin's perspective, you can have a single act of faith.
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And as long as it has the right object, you are saved. You can become a pagan. You can become a Buddhist.
54:20
You can become a Muslim. You can become a Hindu. You can become a Roman Catholic. It doesn't matter. He takes
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John 3 .16. John 3 .16 becomes, in my reading of his writings, the interpretive lens through which everything else is read and a certain interpretation becomes the lens with everything else.
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There's no such thing as false faith at all, in all of Scripture. As long as you believed in Jesus, boom, you've got your ticket punched.
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That's it. You're going to heaven, holiness, everything else irrelevant. So I'm debating a Baptist. I think he's a Baptist on that subject.
54:54
And then at the end of the year, who am I debating? Well, not end of the year, end of August, early September, but the last debate,
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John Dominic Crossan, interesting enough, Roman Catholic background on what?
55:08
On the resurrection and the reliability of the Scriptures. So the middle one is against the
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Roman Catholic, interestingly enough, on whether non -Christians can go to heaven. But that's not the sum and substance of everything that we do.
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And so my ministry is much more than Roman Catholicism. And in fact, my addressing
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Roman Catholicism is simply the extension of the core values of this ministry.
55:36
That's why we haven't joined the ecumenical love fest.
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And there's a lot of folks that aren't happy about that. They're not happy about that because, well, you're being mean.
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No, we're just not following the definition of love common in our society. Any Christian who ever does is going to be in trouble.
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We are much more concerned about loving God and his truth and loving the people who are delivered by that truth than we are about what people think about us.
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It is an extension of, see, we have the same message for the Mormons as we do for the
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Jehovah's Witnesses, as we do for the Roman Catholics, as we do for the Muslims, as we do for the Pagans. We have the same message.
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And it's the focus upon that message. That's why we do things that most apologists simply don't.
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Most apologetic organizations, you're not going to find them addressing issues like the textual issues raised by Islam.
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And I know I've sort of fallen off that truck on the blog, too, but I know it's still there. Just been a little busy recently.
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But you're not going to find most people addressing that. Dealing with the King James Only issue. You're not going to find that happen.
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You're not going to have a whole lot of discussion of church history like we just had in regards to Justin Martyr or the
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Epistle to Diognetus. You're not going to find that kind of thing because our focus is upon the core.
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Our focus is upon the positive, the gospel, the scriptures, and then that's what forces us then to address these other issues.
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Forces us to take a stand when people simply pass John Paul II into heaven without a single discussion of the gospel that he held to and whether it was the gospel that saves.
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That's why we do these things. It's not politically correct. It's not particularly, you know, something that people are going to be overly excited about, but we have to be consistent.
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You cannot, you know, I remember taking a logic class and a good friend of mine was teaching it. Mr. Callahan said you cannot define the word truth without using the word consistency.
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And it's true. And so if we're going to honor God's truth, if we're going to honor him who was the truth, it isn't amazing to listen to all these postmodernist quote unquote
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Christians today who love to mock. What's a timeless truth anyways? How about Jesus is
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Lord? Is that good enough? Amazing. You can't, if you're going to honor him who was the truth, then you have to be consistent.
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That's just all there is to it. Well, thanks for listening today. Maybe who knows, maybe Tuesday morning, um, uh,
58:28
Doug C from Houston can call in and, and all those other Roman Catholic folks who just are now getting the message that,
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Hey, the phone phone lines open. We can discuss these things. Then again, maybe not. Maybe we'll spend half an hour talking with Brett about, um, uh,
58:42
Hebrews chapter 11. We'll find out. Thanks for listening. God bless. Been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.
59:42
If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.
59:47
Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the worldwide web at AOMIN .org,
59:55
that's A -O -M -I -N .org, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.