April 26, 2005

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Around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.
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The Apostle Peter commanded 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 welcome to The Dividing Line on the 26th of April.
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I'm not sure where April went. I have an entire book review due tomorrow to a well -known journal and I'm not done with the book yet.
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I had to proofread an article for that journal by yesterday. I got done about 11 o 'clock at night.
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And as I look at the calendar here, I see that I leave for Italy in exactly two weeks from today.
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And when I come back, I only have, let me, I have exactly one week back before I head back east and that'll give me exactly two weeks and a day prior to the hope for debate on Long Island.
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I say hope for because, well, I'll just be straight up front here. My Roman Catholic opponent is asking for more time to make a presentation in the debate than has ever been given to any
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Roman Catholic opponent in any debate I've ever done, with the possible exception of the two -part debate, seven and a half hours to Gerry Madetik's, but that was two parts, that was two nights.
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As far as a single debate, I think he's asking for more time than anyone has ever been given on a subject that doesn't take that long to explain anyways and has basically said, if we don't agree, he's not going to do it.
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And this is what, how many weeks before the debate? The flyers have already been printed and just very disappointing that anyone would do this.
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And so I haven't heard back from him since I wrote back. What they don't want is the cross -examination period.
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They want to cut back the cross -examination period. And most people realize that's where the debate takes place.
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And I think, to be perfectly honest with you, I think the Roman Catholics, especially
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Roman Catholic apologists out there, know that's where the debate takes place. They know that that is the heart and soul, and that it's fairly easy to, in essence, you know, give speeches, competing speeches.
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It's something very, very different to engage in cross -examination and answering questions because that's where the consistency or inconsistency of the position can be analyzed and demonstrated.
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And it's not that they're saying there shouldn't be any. They just don't think there should be as much as there is and that that should all be turned into just presentation time.
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In fact, at one point, the request was for a 20 -minute closing statement.
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And if any of you have listened to debates, can you imagine a 20 -minute closing statement?
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I've never heard of any such thing, personally. That's just, if you haven't made your point,
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I mean, a closing statement in a debate is just simply to summarize what you've already presented, right?
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Why would you need 20 minutes when you had a 25 -minute opening statement? That's 45 minutes just in and of itself of presentation.
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No one's coming to a debate for that. I just, it just leaves me absolutely boggled that this is going on and that it's happening this close to the debate where, and I'm just throwing it out on the table here.
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My opponent hasn't invested a dime in this debate. The people who support the debates back on Long Island have invested thousands of dollars in this debate already.
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So to say, I'm going to pick up my barbells and go home, this is an individual who six times wrote to the people back on Long Island asking to be involved.
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That means they've got to have known what the format of the debate was. This is the format we used last year.
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This is the format that we used with Mitchell Pacwa, Father Mitchell Pacwa didn't need to have a 20 -minute closing statement, didn't need to cut back the cross -examination, etc.,
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etc., did he? And so to know what the format was very clearly, you don't send six emails asking to be a part of such and such a debate series if you don't know what the debate series is about.
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And then to wait until like six weeks before the debate and say, well, you know what, if you don't change the format to fit what
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I want it to be, I'm not going to show up. Knowing that it's next to impossible to try to arrange any meaningful opponent in that period of time, obviously.
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And so it's very disappointing that that's going on. I am hoping that the compromise,
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I don't think we were under any moral obligation to compromise, but at the same time,
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I don't want to see people out literally thousands of dollars for something to where nothing's going to happen or we just have a have a presentation.
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And, you know, what do you do? We've already put money down on the room and printing and so on and so forth.
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It's really just I just can't imagine behaving this way. But that's that's, you know, oh, yeah, no question.
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Someone just said, yeah, that's going to reflect on any future participation of this fellow. Yeah, there's no question about it.
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Definitely not on Long Island. No, no two ways about it. So but then again, it's getting next to impossible.
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The Roman Catholics are starting to become like the Mormons of BYU. You can't find folks to debate anymore.
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You know, they'll debate other folks. You know, Jerry Matatixel. Either they've become so way out in Nona land that it's not worth debating them because they don't represent
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Orthodox Roman Catholicism anymore. There are certain people out there. Or if they still are a part of the center group, it's almost like they've, you know, rallied the rag to the wagons and have decided to get all together and make these types of demands and, you know, all that kind of stuff.
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So anyway, we'll see what happens. I I don't know what what's going to happen because I'm not
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I have offered to cut the cross examination down by a third, a complete third.
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And that's it. I'm not going to do anymore. And if if my opponent,
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Bill Rutland, says, Nope, not going to do that, then we're going to say, Nice talking to you and see what see what we can work out.
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You know, that's the best that we can do. And but that's the situation. Of course, we can document all that.
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So anyway, it's sad. I guess we're going to have to start doing, you know, we didn't have to do this in the past.
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It was sort of a gentleman's thing. But we're going to start doing is not only do we have to do contracts now, as far as videotaping, we've had to do that ever since the
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Barry Lynn situation. But we're going to have to start contracts for these debates, too, if people are going to be investing money in putting these debates together.
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And they are expensive. I mean, you've got to rent rooms. And if you're going to be doing printing and radio advertising, it takes a lot of money.
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And we're going to have to before someone says I'm going to be involved or we before we put somebody's name out there on that on that flyer, they're going to sign something.
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It says this is the format. I agree to the format. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, and I guess you just have to do it that way.
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You can't do it any other way. It's sad, but that's that's how it's how it's done.
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Eight, seven, seven, seven, five, three, three, three, four, one. The blogosphere remains an odd, odd place.
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I was I was noticing over there's this one blog site, a couple blog sites that are related to one another where I guess my name is not allowed.
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So I am the name deleted person. And so on this unnamed area of of the
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Internet, you have somebody who if you say that they're they they they're not they're not
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Calvinistic and they they they don't think like Calvinist and they're they're compromising Calvinistic beliefs and they don't apply
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Calvinism consistently. They just get all emotional and, oh, you're attacking me.
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And they shut their blogs down, stuff like that. And then like a week later, they post stuff about how they're not a
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Calvinist. It's I I I look at this stuff and I just I just.
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I read it and I just go, man, what that basically on this this particular.
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Somebody in channel just said, love that picture of your last debate reminds me of the pictures of Jimmy Carter when
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Billy Carter was around. Yep, that's that's sort of that's what
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I was thinking, too. That's good. Very good. I like that. Anyway, what was I saying? I don't remember what
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I was saying. That's funny. Oh, goodness. That's good.
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Anyhow, I guess. These folks are operating the idea that they can say anything they want.
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And if you respond, then then you're hateful and they're going to it's almost like if you talk about me,
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I'm going to stab myself and I'm going to blame you. And we got it to believe me that this guy's followers sent us some of the nastiest emails
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I've ever seen. It's just unbelievable. So you just you just wonder what to do. You just I guess
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I should just take that stuff off of my RSS feed so that I just don't don't even see it because it's just too weird all the way around.
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And then I got an email. I got an email from my brother in my my
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English brother in London, and he's gonna be calling me today. He said called eleven thirty my time right after my wife did, which is, of course, in the middle of the program here.
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This is like reference to the fact that that my dear wife does not keep the schedule of the dividing line, first and foremost, in her thoughts on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which
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I think is just is wonderful and lovely and so on and so forth. Anyway, it's seven, seven, seven, five, three, three, four.
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I was saying the blogosphere is just as odd as can be. Did you see the Salazar thing and the molar thing and this
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Justice Sunday thing? I didn't see it because I go to church on Sundays.
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I'm not sure why anyone did this on the Lord's Day. You know, that that sort of made me go, eh, maybe that's the only time that they can get anybody to go to church or something.
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I don't know. But couldn't it have been done on a Monday? Oh, well, 24 is on a Monday, so you can't do it then. Couldn't have been done on a
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Tuesday. Something I don't know. That was sort of, I don't know, odd and strange. And and I'm not sure that I I like that.
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But anyway, the Salazar thing was amazing. Did you see that? Did you read the Democratic senator from from Colorado first term?
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And he was writing to James Dobson. And of course, Dobson, you know. He's out there, you know, once you start using the terms brothers and sisters of people who hold to a different gospel than you do, your your position is compromised.
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What can you say? It's it's pretty much over with. And and looking for consistency after that's sort of silly.
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And so someone went back to 2000. I had 2002 on the brain last night when
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I wrote something. I've fixed that. But they went back to 2000. They found some statements on Larry King from Al Mohler saying what
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Protestants have said since the Reformation. I mean, wow. He said something like Martin Luther.
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He said something like John Calvin. Wow. What an amazing thing. And what he said was that Rome is a false church, the false gospel, and the pope possesses an unbiblical office.
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Well, hello. There's a completely shocking thing for a Protestant to say.
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Isn't it amazing that Fox News and all, you know, for the past who knows how long all we've heard is is is pope news, you know, and when
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John Paul's dying and John Paul has died, you know, everything's about two thousand year old traditions when there aren't a two thousand year old traditions about the papacy.
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I'm sorry. That's just not true. You can't you know, let's we've debated this issue more than once.
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Go listen to the debate with Mitch Packer. Go listen to the seven and a half hour debate with Jerry Madetix. Listen to these debates we've done.
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Find out for yourself. I mean, we put them out there. Listen to listen to the facts.
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It's just this this constant repetition. That's fine. You can claim that that he sits in the chair of Peter and all the rest of stuff.
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But if you dare say, um, no, it's not two thousand years old.
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Rome is not the true church, wrong gospel. And the pope is not the vicar of Christ on earth.
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That's the Holy Spirit of God, by the way, and not the Holy Father. That's the father, by the way, is not all these things is not the bishop of bishops is not the
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Pontifex Maximus. That was the the chief pagan priest of the Roman religions was used as an insult by Tertullian.
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And and it was would have been considered a grossly terrible thing to call somebody that for the first number of hundreds years, the
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Christian Christian church, all that stuff. Then you are you need to be repudiated, according to a member of the
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United States Senate. And you need to distance yourself from such a person who would hold those viewpoints.
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How utterly amazing, but shouldn't really shock us too much, because Salazar then went on to point out that one of his senator friends is a
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Mormon who is also a member of the body of Christ, which I don't think. I don't think the
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Roman Catholics believe that, so I don't either. And I'm not sure, you know, just amazing as long as as long as somebody says
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Jesus, they're part of the body of Christ. These are the folks who make our laws. Remember, the founding fathers of this this nation, the religious ones, the
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Christian ones would have held the same viewpoints that Al Mohler does. And I can guarantee you that can be documented quite easily.
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There were a number of strong Presbyterians involved in the drafting the Constitution. And if you haven't read the
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Westminster Confession of Faith lately, it's not exactly friendly toward the politically correct position.
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So these are the folks who make laws. And I've said many times before, Earth to Christian church, once you start, once we we abandoned the rule of law with the idea of hate crimes, that somehow you can discern the intention.
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It's it's not just breaking the law. The law is no longer breaking. That's no longer worthy of punishment. Now it's the attitude that you had when doing it.
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And once we went over that that hill and that hill is already past us, that's that's over with.
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There's people sitting in jail this day who have been convicted of and their convictions are based upon these hate crimes laws.
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Once we went there, this door was was kicked wide open. What door?
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The application of hate crimes. We see this in the European Union. We're seeing this in England.
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We're seeing this in Australia, in Canada. Once you have a judiciary that is made up of fundamentalist secularists, and that's what they are, they are as as as close minded in their secularism, in their humanism as the worst, quote unquote, fundamentalist you can think of.
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And I'm using that in the negative term, not the historical way, but the negative way it's understood today of a fundamentalist Christian, the guy that, you know, wouldn't know where to find
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Jeremiah in his Bible if his life depended on it. But he's quick to condemn everybody else. The worst fundamentalist
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Christian you can find, these secularists are just as much that kind of fundamentalist, except in humanism.
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They now are on the judiciary benches. They now are ensconced there. And if you dare question them, you're getting ready to overthrow the government or something.
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And they now get to talk about hate crimes and they get to identify things as hate crimes.
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And what might they identify as a hate crime? Maybe the very thing that Senator Salazar says we should repudiate, which is historic
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Protestant theology. Hmm, amazing thing to consider, isn't it? Yep, sure is.
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Eight seven seven seven five three three three four one is the phone number that a number of people called.
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I guess I'm not going to have to be searching for any sound files today after the program or maybe even during the break.
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So it depends. I might not want to do it during the well, I could do it during the break if I could take up much of our bandwidth. I've got something to post on my blog.
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You've got to see. It's funny. It's funny. OK, I'm trying to keep everything on my screen here open.
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Oh. Well, I hate when things.
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Oh, OK, there it is. But I got it. We've got so many folks online. I've got to make my screen much larger here just to keep up with everybody.
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So. All righty. So let's get started on the phone, because let's talk with Alan in Norman, Oklahoma.
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Hi, Alan. Hey, Dr. What are you doing? Doing good. A longtime caller, first time listener. But I was
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I was at the debate with Dr. Wilkin on on Friday night in Oklahoma City. Can you prove that?
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What color shirt was I wearing? It was some godawful yellow. That is all right.
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Oh, I'm sorry, Alan. We seem to have lost you. Thank you.
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You were stunning in it, really. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. Out of the abundance of the heart.
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It looked almost as good as that shack that was at the end of the presentation. OK, all right.
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I'm trying to regain composure here. OK, so you were certainly there. Yes, you were there.
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And who was taking pictures of the crowd, by the way? Your opponent. Yes. I was I was right in his line of fire.
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Did he ask you to sign a release to use your face in his in his promotional? He didn't do that.
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But OK. Anyway, I want to talk to him very much. Oh, OK. All right. Actually, I want to talk to you about what he said.
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Interestingly, the thing that I was noticing towards the end of his presentation, he used he used the phrase something like he wasn't sure if he was saved under your system and he called you a veritable apostate.
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Yeah. And then at the end of at the end of that, my friend Kyle and I went up there to talk to him.
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And my question was to him, you know, what do you consider
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Christian enough to to not go around calling people apostates? I thought we were all working more or less together.
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I understand that you have differences and a lot of them kind of hinge around the gospel. But still, I would consider both of you more or less
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Christian ministers. So I guess I wanted your comments on that and also kind of what constitutes unity within the body of Christ, within the true body of Christ, according to the true gospel.
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Does that make sense? When we're we have all this, we have all these conflicts with Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox and Mormons for the purity of the faith.
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What do we do between each other who call each other evangelicals? Yeah, well, I've been using a particular term recently.
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In the in the blog referring to pseudo evangelicals, anyone who is willing to throw the gospel under the bus for the sake of ecumenical unity,
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I would call a pseudo evangelical. And unfortunately, I think these situations are highlighting the fact that when you when you start compromising on particular elements of the gospel and and, you know, the it's always trying to find the balance, the balance between being so, so particular that you demand agreement on every single element all the way down to the particulars of your eschatology.
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You've seen people like that. You know, I mean, I've seen, you know, people that, you know, debates between mid tribbers and and pre tribbers where they were anathematizing each other and saying that they were denying the gospel and stuff like that.
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And you just sit there going, whoa, that's pretty weird. All that all the way to the other side where today you have vast panoramas of allegedly evangelical people who haven't any longer any confidence that we actually can know what the gospel says regarding anything at all.
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So there's got to be a middle ground someplace. And trying to find it and be biblical in it is is is the trick.
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I was very interested in what he had to say because. I hadn't raised the issue myself.
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I had expected it to come up at some point and and actually it was only a few days for the debate that I actually looked at the outline enough to realize there was no cross examination.
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So I wasn't sure if it would be audience questions or exactly what it would be. But I could hardly believe that I was at a James White debate without cross examination.
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I was I'll I'll accept the I'll accept the blame for that one, because I I had been sent the the outline, but I've just been so busy.
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I just simply did not have time to to look at it until it was too late doing anything about it. So we had a lot of problems getting
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Dr. Wilkin on board as far as any type of arrangement at all. So I just sort of put aside and let the people who are arranging it worry about it.
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And I figure I'll just go with what they get. But it never crossed my mind that it wouldn't include cross examination. So I I found that very, very disappointing.
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But anyway, he brought it up and my recollection of his statements and the tapes will get here
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Thursday, I believe my recollection of his statement was, in essence, if I'm right, if James White is right, then
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Bob Wilkin is preaching a false gospel. And if he's right, at least
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I have a chance that I think the terminology he used was in my pendulum swing into this works righteousness.
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He accuses me of teaching that I may have at one point believe the truth.
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I may have believed what he believes and therefore I would have eternal life even though I'm now preaching a false gospel.
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Yeah. So preachers of false gospels can be saved. I mean, Mormons can be saved.
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Buddhists can be all these people can be saved by Christ without ever actually really knowing him or speaking the truth about him or anything like that, except for just one moments in their in their in their existence.
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And, you know, yeah, wonderful. You know, and all the stuff that he was saying about me, you know, not not, you know, compromising imputation and all the rest of the stuff he really missed that.
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Oh, man. Talk about falling flat on your face. But the fact of the matter is, did he ever cite I've been asking the people that were there since I don't have the tapes yet.
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You were there. You saw his presentation. Did he ever cite one of my published books?
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No, I never heard it either. All I heard were citations from the free debates.
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I don't even think they bothered to buy the spend of three bucks on an MP3. I think they're only the free debates on straight gate.
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I honestly I think that's all that was cited was either a statement of faith on on our website or snippets from free debates on straight gain.
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And that's just absolutely amazing to me. At least I bought his book, which was not easy to find because it's self -published in essence.
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And I read the thing and I accurately cited he never said that I misrepresented about that. And so anyway, obviously, there are different levels within this group of people.
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There's Charles Ririe is not as out there as either
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Zane Hodges or Robert Wilken. I would say Wilken and Hodges are pretty much on the exact same page.
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I would be really surprised to see Wilken disagreeing with Hodges on on too many issues at all.
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Hodges has gotten so far of late as to say that you that saving faith in Christ does not even have to include knowledge of what the cross is about, why it took place, anything like that at all.
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And up until this debate, my assertion would have been that this is a sub biblical presentation.
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But I have to admit, listening to what was said and then the the attack upon my position as being work salvation, stuff like that.
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You know, John said, let no one deceive you. By this, we know the children of God and the children of the devil.
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And that entire concept is just completely overthrown by Robert Wilken.
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And so when you get to the point of telling someone that the cross and the purpose of the cross, sin, repentance, all of that is irrelevant.
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When you when you take when you when you not only leave that out of your presentation, but you say it's not a part of the presentation.
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That's where I think you go from being sub biblical to being anti biblical. And I was
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I would you know, I really honestly, I do try to think the best of folks until they just absolutely beat me over the head with a stick until I until I see otherwise.
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And I really honestly, I apologized to to my hosts because I'm the one that suggested
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Dr. Wilken. There was someone on our channel who was pushing to put a debate together with with this gentleman and and a friend of mine.
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I mentioned him twice in the debate. C. Ryan Jenkins had done his master's thesis at Masters Seminary on his theology.
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And I was talking with him about this stuff. And and I really expected more.
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I expected a presentation that wasn't just designed for his own people, because honestly, he wasn't trying to impress the people who are not already his followers because he didn't even try to lay out a coherent presentation of his own position.
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He just assumed that it went after mine and that would work for your fans. But it's not going to work for someone who
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I mean, there's a bunch of folks sitting there that if I hadn't read those few quotes from his book would have had no earthly idea what on earth he was arguing for for the at least the first half of that debate.
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He just he they wouldn't have had any way of knowing. And so I wanted to believe better. But listening to what was said and and the way in which it was said and the substance of it,
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I would have to identify it not as a sub biblical, but as anti -biblical. And just as people go, this would this would be this would be libertinism.
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This would be, I think, one of the greatest examples of antinomianism and not just cheap grace.
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This isn't just cheap grace. This is this is empty grace. I would call it a grace that does absolutely positively nothing whatsoever.
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Even in Titus 2, the grace by which we're saved, which I didn't hear much of response to, by the way. I'm not sure if you did, but likewise is turned into something that just has no substance at all.
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So it's it's sad. But the fact of the matter is, if I don't know if you heard the program
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I did in the 1996 Bible Answer Man broadcast with Tim Staples, but I asked
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Tim on that program, I said, if you and I were standing outside an abortion clinic together and someone walked up to us and said, what must
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I do to be saved? Would you not agree with me that you and I would answer in a different way?
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Did you hear that program? I'm not sure if I did. Yeah. And he admitted we would answer in a different way.
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Well, the fact of the matter is, so would Bob Volkin and I. We would answer in a in a in a in a substantively different way.
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Yours would be longer. Mine would be a little bit longer, but I think significantly more biblical.
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And so it definitely has caused me to consider that particular aspect of of the issue.
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And that is, is this is this just a slight aberration, a slight imbalance, or does it go beyond that?
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And what we heard Friday night, I thought, went well beyond merely a slight imbalance because it identified the apostolic message as a heresy.
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And it is, I think, indicative of of our ministry that on the one end we're dealing with Roman Catholic apologists and their aberrations in regards to adding to the gospel.
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But at the same time, if you're going to be balanced, you can't just close your eyes to the existence of this kind of thing within the allegedly evangelical camp.
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And one last thing before we take a break and we've got a bunch of other phone callers. He himself, in his response regarding what
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Sola Fide was and the fact that Sola Fide has never been defined by Protestant believers in the way that he defines it,
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I think illustrated something very, very important. You know, his response was, well, I don't care.
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I believe in Sola Scriptura. That wasn't my point. My point was that's not what the reformers were teaching. It was not his gospel that broke the back of Rome in Europe.
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It was not his presentation that did that. In fact, he would have to say that the gospel preached by Calvin and by the
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Westminster Divines and by Spurgeon and by Warfield, since that was the
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Warfield lectures, was in fact a heretical gospel, just as he identified mine as.
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So I was glad those two things came up. And in essence, he's the one who raised them and made those assertions himself.
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It wasn't me just trying to sort of read that in. So I appreciate you being there, despite the fact that, honestly, you did not like my shirt, but it's
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OK. I am confident in myself enough not to worry about, you know, people's tastes and colors.
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But I'll just buy I'll just buy the MP3s rather than DVDs from now on. You go ahead and do that.
32:00
We'll live. All right. God bless. Thanks. All right. We're going to take our break and then come back with your phone calls and Steve and Scott and Todd and so on and so forth.
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We'll be right back. Try to save your soul from death.
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35:15
I just just threw that thing up on the blog for those of you who are interested.
35:36
Let's go ahead and get back to our phone callers and talk with Steve in New Jersey. Hi, Steve. How you doing,
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James? Doing good. Got a question about the Billy Graham crusade. OK, coming up in June to New York.
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Oh, really? Yeah. And a lot of a lot of evangelical churches here are really pushing, really supporting it big time and heavy advertising and stuff like that.
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I was wondering your opinion on that as far as I don't know how familiar you are with Billy Graham's position on Catholicism and the things he said as far as.
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Yeah, well, it's there's nothing new about the fact that the Graham organization has cooperated with and stood alongside
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Roman Catholic churches for quite some time now that that the individuals who do the counseling on people who, quote unquote, come forward, that they are not told they're told not to direct people away from their the
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Catholic churches that they're a part of, but they're to go back to those churches. And so, you know, obviously the the idea that there is in essence what we have illustrated here is what we've been seeing ever since the issue with John Paul II and whether he went to heaven or not, and that is the vast majority of people who call themselves evangelicals today.
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And this includes, sadly, a large portion of of my tradition, and I use that term broadly there in regards to Baptists as a whole.
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This certainly would not be true of Reformed Baptists, but of Baptists as a whole, many of the non -denominational churches, the
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Calvary chapels, those type of churches, many of these organizations believe that while there are certain elements of the gospel that need to be there, that adding to those things that are requirements for salvation does not destroy the gospel, it's just something that we can, quote unquote, disagree on.
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It is interesting to note that, and this is why I want folks to note, and in fact
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I linked on the important articles section of my blog, my mentioning the article by Paul Owen that was hosted on Timothy Enloe's site, where he in essence is saying that the reading of the vast majority of Protestant scholarship since time of the
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Reformation regarding the book of Galatians is, he has been able to correct this and understand it better than anyone else ever has, and that the error of the
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Judaizers in Galatia is not at all relevant to the errors that Rome makes in regards to the gospel, and that Rome's gospel is a true and saving gospel.
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And while most people have not gone to the lengths that Paul Owen has to attempt to provide a foundation for that, still in light of the postmodernism of our current age, they have imbibed that, and the result is that you can have a
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Billy Graham -style evangelism that presents a very straightforward message, not a whole lot on the repentance stuff, it's got a little bit of the cheap grace elements to it at times, but still, you've got that, but it is then presented in the context, and if you want to go beyond that, and if you want to, say, add some other things, you know what, as long as we've got the basics, you know, as long as we've got the
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Trinity, and as long as you've got the resurrection, then we really are just simply picking at nits if we're really overly concerned about the issue of the fact that Rome adds all this other stuff into the gospel picture, and so what you've got going on here is people are willing to look past that, and I am absolutely convinced that Paul Owen is wrong about Galatians, I'm absolutely convinced that what
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Rome has done is to go far beyond anything the Judaizers ever thought about doing, and because of that, then to have someone standing in front of you, and you're talking to them about the gospel, and they say,
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I go to, you know, St. Paul's Roman Catholic Church down the street, and go, well, you know what, go back and talk to your priest about that, is absolutely, positively outrageous.
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You can't do that. First of all, there are no priests, he is not a priest between you and God, he has no sacerdotal authority, it is blasphemous to even give serious consideration, which few people ever do, to what that man does on a regular basis in the quote -unquote offering of the
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Mass, and the representation of the sacrifice of Christ, and the issues of indulgences, and purgatory, and baptismal regeneration, and sacramental forgiveness, and penance, and da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -
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The highest authority for many pseudo -evangelicals is the concept of being nice.
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You know, the gospel doesn't seem nice to a lot of people. I was reading, a friend of mine on the channel shared a quote about a 19th century theologian.
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No, no, no, no, no. Who was it? Who was it? Who was it? Oh, what was the... Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh!
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I was talking to somebody else. I'm not going to go into details on this. But I was talking to somebody else about someone who was involved in Christian music at one point in the past who had commented that he had read
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Calvin's Institutes and had made the statement, if that's Christianity, I don't want to be a
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Christian. So here's somebody, you know, I've heard people say the exact same thing when reading
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Jeremiah, when reading Isaiah, when reading Judges. They don't want a
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Christianity that's defined by God. They want a Christianity that, quote -unquote, meets their needs and their vision of what
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God should be. And so they are offended by the truth.
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Anyone who's offended by the truth, anyone who's offended by what Paul said in Galatians and the strength of the words that he used doesn't understand what the real issue here is.
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And the real issue is there's only one gospel. There's only one means of salvation. And if you're not passionate about that, what in the world are you doing here anyways, is the question
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I want to ask. So my opinion would be that if you're in one of these churches where this is going on, you need to raise the question.
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What is our goal here? What is our purpose for being involved with this? And what is the message that we want to see delivered to people?
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Does it include everything that's found in the New Testament? Or are we going to allow for compromise to where we're going to shave off those rough edges?
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We're going to edit the gospel down to something that's going to give us the numbers. But two decades from now, no one will even know this ever happened because in essence there is absolutely no results from it that are abiding and that have any long -term impact.
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That's the question that has to be asked. When's this taking place, by the way? It's June. I'm not sure.
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I think it's the 17th. Wow, so I'm going to be hopefully doing a debate one week earlier. Yes, I will be there.
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You're not going to wear that yellow shirt, are you? Wow, you know what? Since you all have been saying this,
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I may just do that. Just simply, this may be, you know what? This could become my debating uniform.
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And every debate from now on could do that. And when people ask, they'll say, well,
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Steve in New Jersey asked that I do that. And we'll find out who you are and give your home number out.
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How's that? That sounds good. No, I was not planning on wearing the yellow shirt for that.
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But anyway, I probably will be wearing, however, one of my plaid ties, which is a
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Scottish tartan. And you just need to get used to those because I like them. So anyway, I hope the debate takes place.
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If you're listening at the beginning of the program, I hope the debate takes place. I really, really do. I don't know what we're going to do.
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Could you role -play a Roman Catholic if we needed you to? Yes, I could. A former
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Roman Catholic. Okay, well, we may be calling on you to role -play the other side because, you know, we don't know what's going to happen there.
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Anyways, hey, thanks for your call. Thanks, James. All right, God bless. Bye -bye. All righty, 877 -753 -3341.
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What is wrong with the yellow shirt? The tie went well with the shirt, folks.
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What's the problem here? I don't understand this stuff. Anyway, checking my thing here.
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Let's talk with Scott from South Dakota. Hi, Scott. Hi, Dr. White. How are you doing?
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Pretty good. Hey, how's the three or four people in South Dakota today? Oh, we're pretty good.
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A little chilly out there. Chilly? Chilly? Yeah. What's the temperature out in South Dakota today? Huh? What's the temperature in South Dakota today?
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Oh, let me check. It's windy.
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It's 56 right now. Oh, well, 56. That's not bad. That's not bad, is it? No. That's not too bad, though.
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We'll be getting to the 30s tonight, I guess. Oh, well, that's not too bad. For some reason, my desktop weather thing, it's 75 degrees here right now.
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Oh, that sounds very nice. Well, believe me, it's going to be 175 before long, so it gets pretty bad.
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Anyway, somebody in the channel's question is whether they should take up a collection to buy me a
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Scottish claymore to wear to the debate. Now, I'll tell you what. If you all buy me a
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Scottish claymore, I'll wear a kilt to the debate. How's that? I'll wear the whole formal kilt thing because, see, what
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I would really like to do, I would love to debate in Edinburgh, and if my opponent would wear a kilt, a formal kilt to the debate in Edinburgh, I would, too.
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I mean, that's just all there is to it. It would be fun. It would be great. Anyways, what can we do for you today?
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Speaking of a sword, I've seen a couple of them here in South Dakota. In the Sioux Falls Mall, I saw one.
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Oh, the Wallace sword? Yeah, it's called Bubbles Blade here in South Dakota.
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Oh, yeah. I see them online and stuff, and yeah, I would love to have the
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Wallace sword. I'd hang that baby on my wall in a second because, you know, they shipped it over to New York for a celebration recently.
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It does exist, and I would love to do that. So, somebody in the channel is saying, you shouldn't have said that.
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Somebody's going to hold me to it. You know what? Like I said, if it was in Scotland, they would love it.
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There's no two ways. I mean, I was in Scotland just recently. There were plenty of folks running around in kilts.
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They were there. That's not considered outrageous at all. But anyways, what's up?
47:48
Recently, I've been talking with my friends about Jeremiah chapter 3, verse 7, and I am by no means an open theist.
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I'm a pretty ardent Calvinist. I've been called a baby -eating Calvinist a few times.
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And the verse that my friend brought up to me was verse 7 and then verse 19.
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This is out of the NASD. I thought after she had done all these things, she will return to me, but she did not return, and her treacherous sister
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Judah saw it. Right. And it almost sounds, and this is what's been going back and forth between me and him, it almost sounds like God doesn't know what's going on.
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Yeah. Well, you know, that also is part and parcel of the dialogues between God and Moses in regards to the people of Israel.
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And as far as when Moses is up on the mountain and God says,
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I'm going to wipe these people out, and Moses is like, no, if you do that, then the
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Egyptians will see. And it sounds like God goes, oh, yeah, man, yeah, the
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Egyptians would see, and all those miracles I worked on and stuff, and that could mess up all the miracle stuff that I did.
49:13
So, all right, well, I'll do this. Well, you know, maybe, and it sounds, if you want to take that perspective and read these in isolation as if Moses is not only considerably morally better than God on some levels, but much wiser, has a whole lot more insight into things, and same thing with the dialogue between Abraham and God in regards to Sodom and Gomorrah.
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Well, what if I find 50? All right, 50. Don't get mad, but 40?
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All right, you know, it gets them all the way down to 10. All right, 10's it. You know, after that, man, they're toast, okay?
49:55
And each one of these, I think, are all going along the exact same line as to what their purposes are and to how they're functioning.
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There is no question of the assertion that Scripture makes concerning God's exhaustive knowledge of future events.
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You have this in Isaiah. You have this, in fact, as one of the strongest arguments of God being
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God. He challenges the false gods to demonstrate what's going to happen tomorrow and what the purposes were and so on and so forth.
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There's no question about that, and if you've listened to my debate with Dr. Sanders on this, in essence, all he could say to that was, well, that's true about major events like earthquakes and tsunamis and stuff like that, but you
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Calvinists have had a lot longer to work on your theology than we have, and so we're really not sure. I don't think that's much of a response.
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That is an element of the biblical revelation. So you either have to say that the biblical revelation is incoherent and contradictory, which sadly is where a lot of theology is today, or you have to ask, is there a purpose in regards to these passages and in regards to the form in which they take?
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Each one of these is in the form of a dialogue. Each one of these is in the form of a give and take, a discussion concerning normally in each one of these, either
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God's people in the sense of Moses onwards or with Abraham, still the idea of one of God's people and a coming judgment, similar even to Jonah for that matter.
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Each one of these falls into that very same category, and so what does that tell us?
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Does that tell us that God brought judgment on Israel, and therefore what follows from that is that he thought that judgment was going to be enough.
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He didn't. In fact, even an open theist couldn't use this argument. Is your friend an open theist? Oh, no, no.
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We agree more than we disagree. Oh, okay. But does he take a different position than yours?
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I'm just trying to figure out what the usage of the thing is. He's not even sure either.
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He told me the other night, he said, I would be in complete agreeance with you about what you think about God's sovereignty if it weren't for these two verses.
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Okay. They're almost like stumbling blocks. Okay, all right. Do you have Frames' work and Ware's work on these passages?
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No. Because I'm rushing, and I hate to give people quick answers that aren't fulfilling answers on a program.
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Let me just recommend to you Bruce Ware and John Frames, and in fact
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I think I'd have to leave the microphone here a second to reach back and grab it, but I think the anthology from Canon, I think it was
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Canon Press, on open theism, just off the top of my head, seemed to recall a discussion of these passages there too.
52:57
So there you get three, and you'd probably have bibliographical information there to go beyond there.
53:03
Because I'll tell you, some of the folks on the channel think I'm getting to be a little bit of a curmudgeon because of the fact that people will come and channel, they'll ask a question, and I can just tell by the way they're asking it,
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A, they haven't looked themselves, and B, what I tell them they're probably just going to accept, and I don't like that.
53:23
I think that even if I give you what I think is a decent answer, I should also, if I can, give you some resources to go farther than that in looking at it.
53:32
So I give you those names so you can go there, and then they should have, especially Ware's book has good bibliographical information to go beyond that.
53:39
But what I'm just getting back to that really quickly, having given you those references to go farther than that, I think what you have in each one of these passages is
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God utilizing language that brings the starkness of sin and rebellion into the strongest contrast.
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It's irony, it even borders in some places upon the sarcasm that is actually a very major portion of, especially the prophets,
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I mean, read Isaiah 41, and the mockery of those who would trust in false gods who don't know the future, who would create their own god out of a piece of wood, bow down before it, and then they will sit down with the rest of the wood and cook their meal.
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I mean, that is sarcasm, that is heavy, heavy sarcasm and mockery of idolatry.
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And I see not necessarily sarcasm, but the utilization of irony in saying,
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I brought these judgments, I thought that would be enough, but not only did Israel remain rebellion, but Judah looked at it and decided that she'd play the whore too.
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It is meant to illustrate the fact that no matter how much judgment God brings, these people still love their sins more than they love
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God, more than they love the truth. And so it's not an issue of God being ignorant of what the result of his judgment is going to be, because how many times in Jeremiah and Isaiah does he say exactly what the result of his judgment is going to be?
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He knows that, but in his dialogues, like with Moses, what's he doing with Moses? He's preparing
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Moses to be the leader of Israel. He is preparing him. He's going to have to stand in the gap for these people.
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They are a stiff -necked people, they are a troublesome people, and he is preparing him.
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That's what he's doing up there on the mountain. Moses is not a more moral person than God is, and Moses does not have better insights into the future than God is.
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God is accommodating himself to where we are, and I'm awful glad he does, because if he didn't, we wouldn't have a clue what in the world he was revealing to us at all.
55:47
And so that, I think, is the only way that you can accept everything that Scripture says, including its strong assertions of God's knowledge of future events and the fact that he interacts with people, and he does so in such a way as to seek to cause them to really understand, just the way we do with our children.
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I mean, there are times, you know, if I tell my kids to do X, Y, and Z, and they don't, and they're teenagers, so that happens these days, and I can choose a number of different ways of interacting with them as a result.
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One of the ways is I will use a little bit of irony or sarcasm. For example, sometimes, for some reason, people forget to lock doors the way they should, and so I will utilize something that will communicate to them what it's going to be like someday when they come home and all of their precious possessions are gone, because they sort of invited somebody in.
56:41
Well, they didn't invite anybody in, but they get the point, and I think we get the point in these passages as well.
56:47
Okay? Yeah. All right, so you got Ware, W -A -R -E, and Frame, and I know both will have bibliographical stuff in the back.
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Okay. All right, you got them? Yep, I got them. Okay, I hope they have those types of things up, you know, where you live.
57:04
You know, books. Yeah, we're kind of out in the boonies, you know, South Dakota.
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Okay, does the mail get there, or do they ride a horse, or what? Yeah, a horse comes in.
57:17
Stagecoach comes in every couple of weeks. Well, I'm just glad you have a phone. That's the important part.
57:23
That works well. So, anyways, stay warm up there. Yep. All right, God bless. Thanks for calling.
57:29
All right, bye -bye. I'm seeing all sorts of folks on the channel going, so, seriously, if someone buys you a
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Scottish Claymore, you will wear a kilt. That's almost sounding like someone's seriously going to do that.
57:47
Yes, I may need some money to get the kilt, too, because they ain't cheap, if you looked at them. But, yes, there's no two ways about it.
57:55
That would be well worth it to me, and you bet. Anyways, hey, sorry about that,
58:04
Pat. We'll get to you. We'll be back on the program on Thursday. If you'd like to call in on John657, we'll get to you on that.
58:12
And thanks to everybody who called today. You are the best callers around. There's no two ways about it.
58:18
And we have a lot of fun in answering the questions and hopefully bless you in the process. We'll be back again
58:24
Thursday afternoon, 4 p .m. Pacific Daylight Time, 7 p .m.
58:29
Eastern Daylight Time. See you then. God bless. You can also find us on the
59:46
World Wide Web at aomin .org. That's A -O -M -I -N dot O -R -G. Where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.