Debate Report from London, Open Phones, Twitter Questions

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:35

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White coming to you once again live from downtown

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London, England. There's a fair amount of water on my window. We finally are getting some of those famous London showers.

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I have been all over the place on my feet today. That's how you get most places here.

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I could have, I guess, used the tube to shorten things up, but why do that?

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It was pretty nice outside. I ran through Piccadilly and through Trafalgar Square, all over the place, visiting various shops that I needed to get to.

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The wife let me know that it wouldn't hurt if I brought something home for her.

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Unfortunately, she left that up to me. I would rather debate in a room full of Muslims than try to figure out what my wife's actually like.

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She's not watching right now, so I'm safe. I did find something that I'm hoping, after 37 years, that she'll like what

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I got. If I find Clementine wearing what I got in six months,

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I'll know that I really didn't do a very good job. Anyway, I went and visited

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Tortilla again, the little Mexican restaurant that I like there.

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At least, I'm still getting some of my Mexican food and stuff like that, even while in London. I'll get done with this quickly.

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All over London, you have these places where you can buy London shirts, hats, refrigerator magnets, and all the touristy stuff.

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What I wanted was a light, long -sleeved shirt, but no one seems to have those.

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I found a really nice, mind -the -gap, embroidered, zipper hoodie.

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Since I've already Anybody who's got the Tube app on their phone or ever rides the

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Tube knows what I'm talking about. Man, I was close. Now, I'm not sure where it was.

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I'm going to try to find it again tomorrow. That's one of those situations where you walk a mile farther and then go,

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I should have done that. Where was it? I don't know. Anyways, we'll try to figure that out maybe tomorrow.

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I have a little thing tomorrow morning. We're going to have a little breakfast thing with not just one church, but a few churches here.

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Then, I'm speaking tomorrow evening as well on a touchy, tough subject.

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I'm getting asked to address... I'll just be straight up. I detest talking about the social justice stuff.

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You go, well, couldn't tell from the last Dividing Line. Hey, I'm not saying

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I'm not going to do it because it needs to be addressed when it starts creating unnecessary and theologically dangerous division in the church.

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It's the only reason I've ever addressed it. I have zero desire to pursue all of that stuff.

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It is, in my opinion, 100 % drain, no positive.

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There's just no positive. We had the debate last night. I was dealing with Islam and I was providing answers to those types of things.

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Yeah, that's a lot of energy to put out, but there's just such a wonderfully positive backside to it that you're getting to proclaim truth and you're getting to present the gospel to people.

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I've met with former Muslims here in London. They're former Muslims because of the fact that once the spirit begins to work with someone, who are they going to turn to?

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You know, I thought about this after the Aser Qadhi affair. Muslims in Memphis, Tennessee, if the spirit of God begins to work and if you believe that salvation is the work of the spirit of God, the time comes in life of one of God's elect or conviction of sin is brought and that supernatural process begins, where's someone going to turn?

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They're not going to go to the Christians in Memphis who are constantly expressing fear and hatred, dread, misrepresentation, you stay over there, we don't want you here, blah, blah, blah, blah.

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And here's the other part, they're not going to go to the liberals because the Muslims know who the real believers are.

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And they know when they see liberals who don't really believe

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Jesus rose from the dead and don't really believe that the word of God has continuing validity today, they're not going to go to those folks.

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They don't have answers. Who are they going to go to? Well, at least in Memphis, they know that there are

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Christians there who, a little over a year ago, reached out to them in, or was that two years ago, whatever,

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I think it was over a little over a year ago, reached out to them and showed true

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Christian concern and care for them. Same thing here in London.

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One thing that we have now done over the course of, what was the first one in 2007 or 2008?

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I think it may have been 2008. Anyway, it's been over a decade.

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We have been establishing the reality in this place and in this country, especially in London, but I've been up to Birmingham as well, that there are

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Christians who will not compromise, who firmly believe that Jesus is the

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Christ, the son of the living God, died upon Calvary's cross, was buried, rose again the third day,

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King of Kings, Lord of Lords, don't compromise on any of it, and still insist upon accurately representing the

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Muslim people, showing respect for them, caring for them, loving them. That's a combination that is vitally needed anywhere, wherever you live, but here as well.

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Anyway, that's a really important thing, and that's really what the background of last night's debate was all about, too.

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Let me first of all thank the folks at Selhurst Evangelical Church, and these poor guys, they're going to a conference.

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I think it's more than one church, but it's a good distance from here, and they pretty much all left today, so the timing of this whole trip couldn't have been worse along those lines.

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And what happened was the initial Muslim individual with whom

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I was going to have dialogue and debate, something came up, and he wasn't able to do it, and Adnan Rashid, I contacted him and said, hey, would you happen to be in London right now?

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Because he does a lot of traveling, and he said, yeah, and so I told him what was going on, and he stepped up with,

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I think, barely a week. Let's see, that was Tuesday I found out about it, so nine days, and so I'm very thankful that Adnan was willing to do this.

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He's very busy, but then the problem was the fairly small venue that we had wouldn't allow advertisements, at least from his side, on social media.

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I don't know why, and so we were going to, for a few days, it looked like we were just going to be meeting in a small room and videotaping this with about 10 people from each side sitting in the background, but then

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Selhurst came through, and especially the fellow at Selhurst, Ashley, who, even though he was traveling and the timing for him was all wrong, he's the one that has arranged everything else, pretty much, that I've done.

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He's the one that got me into Grace Life to preach on Easter Sunday morning, which is pretty amazing, and the things we're doing tomorrow and the next day and then this debate all got worked out, and so I very much appreciate

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Ashley's doing all of that and buying me a Five Guys burger for dinner last night.

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Basically, it's the Grubhub, whatever type delivery food thing is what we did once I got out to Selhurst on the train, and the food arrives buried in french fries.

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It's just a bag, literally, an oily bag, because the french fries are seeping out, and the cheeseburger is buried in this massive pile of fries.

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It was funny. It was good. It was a very good burger. Anyway, so I appreciate that and meeting

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Ashley's three cats. He was really worried when I first went, you're not allergic to cats. Kitties?

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You have kitties? I'm missing my kitties, and it's like, chase the kitties around. They're like, who is this guy? So anyway, but I appreciated all the extra work that went into that, and it couldn't have been easy for the folks at Selhurst, but here they are showing up, and they're bringing stuff to eat and stuff like that for people, and then

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Adnan was, we didn't get started until seven. We had initially announced six because of traffic jams, because they're up in the northwest part of the city, and Selhurst is in south

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London, far south London, but that's the way it is.

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The traffic in London is traffic in London. That's just how it is.

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There's almost always road work going on someplace. So Adnan got there, and his guys set up a couple cameras, and we got to it, and the subject was different.

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The subject that he had suggested was who resembles Jesus, Christians or Muslims.

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I pretty much knew where that was going to go. I knew pretty much that was going to open a lot of doors, and it was going to be a fairly short debate.

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We were planning on going from six to nine. We went from seven to nine, but we still got everything we intended to do in, so that was good, and we didn't take any breaks.

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It wasn't long enough to bother to take any breaks. We had room because, obviously, one guy had complained this should have been advertised months ago.

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I was like, well, we couldn't put it together months ago. There's nothing that would have been impossible, so we did what we could, and because of the location, there weren't as many

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Muslims there as we would have liked, but it's possible. I don't have the feed up to where I would see it, actually, but it's possible, even while we're doing the program, that the video might get posted.

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Earlier, I saw a comment from Adnan saying the video would be up tonight, which would be great because I felt that it was a really excellent encounter, excellent in the sense of the range of subjects that were addressed and the spirit of the engagement.

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There was sharp disagreement, and I want to continue to ask my fellow believers to pray for Adnan Rashid.

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There were a couple times during the debate where I just felt like saying,

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Adnan, are you listening to me? I'm not hearing what I'm saying, but I have to wait upon the

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Lord for that, and that is our confidence and our strength. Doug McMasters and his boys made the trip out.

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Doug was used to pastor here in London. Now, he's at New Hyde Park Baptist Church on Long Island, but he happens to be here in London, and so Doug and I used to bum around London frequently when

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I was out here. If you've seen any of the debates at Trinity Road in Wandsworth, like with Sami Zaatari, Bassam Zawadi, those debates were there, and that's when

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Doug was pastoring at that particular church. I'm sorry, let me see here.

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I'm in channel here, and there we go. Okay, I had to kick an anti -cat person out of the channel because that was just inappropriate.

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Anyway, so I don't do that.

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That's not nice. Anyways, so we had a group from Grace Life London that came out.

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I just hope the believers were and that Muslims heard the other side that they don't regularly hear, and in a way that was clear for them, and in a way that clearly is coming from an individual who cares deeply for them.

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I think that's the best way to do that. That was debate number 166, and the way things are coming together this year, we're going to blow by the 170 mark real fast because we're putting together a number of, let's see, minimally, one, two, three.

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Yeah, there's minimally four more before the end of it.

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Minimally four, possibly as many as six before the end of the year, and so we could be in the 170s.

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Yeah, this year is going to anyway, it's going to go by very, very quickly.

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Let's do this. We're going to try something on the program today, even though I'm remote since I am traveling so much this year.

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Oh, and by the way, I don't want to forget this. Adnan was very kind. See, when

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I left home, I didn't know Adnan and I were going to be debating or I would have done something, and the fellow that I was going to debate and I really haven't done the gift exchange thing, so I was left at a bit of a disadvantage, but Adnan did get me something, and this is a very early coin from the

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Islamic empire, and I'm going to try to hold it up here so you can see it that he gave to me, and I know there's some discussion of these types of coins and dating and relationship to the

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Quran and stuff like that. Having that chance to really look at it, I mean I would have to, I can just barely see it here, but I can read it, and so I very much appreciate that very kind gift from him, and sorry

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I didn't have anything, but it does give me an idea what to do next time, but like I said, this debate was just, oh hey, let's try this in less than a week or a little over a week, and we pulled it off, so that's very useful.

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Now, what we're going to try to do is we're going to try to open up the phones, because as I'm going to be doing a lot of traveling, we may need to be doing this type of dividing line a little bit more often in the future, and so 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number that I have memorized, but I still keep it posted in the dividing line studio, and I typed it on the screen over here, 877 -753 -3341, you'd think that it would be memorized by now, but also

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I have Twitter up, and so if my,

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I am logged in in my Dr. Oakley 1689 account, unlike the actor

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Woods, who has been banned from Twitter, and the ongoing banning of people from social media that will eventually take us all out as the totalitarians are totalitarians, and that's how they function, and will continue to function.

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If you want to try to put a question or comment in Twitter, go ahead, and we'll see if we can see if we can respond to some of that.

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For example, right now in Twitter, someone made a comment about the fact that Jeffrey, at Post -Tenebrous

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Lux Bible Rebinding, posted the pictures of my newest

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PTL work, and that is, I sent Jeffrey my 1977

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NASB giant print. It's a really, it's not a big Bible, it's fairly thick, but it's just always been super readable, it fits in your hand real nicely, but you know, it's the 77, not the 95, and I pulled it off a shelf recently, and I thought to myself, you know, this would be really nice to use again, and it'd be really great if I could get it done by Jeffrey.

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So the pictures are on his Facebook feed, and maybe on this website too, and it is gorgeous, has a beautiful high row with Alpha and Omega on it, on the front.

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Some of you know why that's particularly special to me, and it's the same artwork that was used for that other thing, and so it's really neat to have that, and the, you know, it just looks like it's going to be a beautiful, beautiful, looks like a little bit more of a blue turquoise than my

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Nestle All -in -28, which I spoke from last night during the debate.

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I hope Jeffrey will see that the only Bible I had during the debate last night was the

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Nestle All -in -28, because I sort of finished,

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Adnan called it preaching, he said he's a very good preacher, but I closed out my comments on the subject of Jesus's own words, if anyone would follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, follow me, and from my perspective, that was really the thesis of the debate.

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I mean, who resembles Jesus? Well, someone who would follow him. Who's going to be his disciple? How do you be his disciple?

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Take up the cross. Islam denies the cross took place. Isn't that the end of the debate?

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I thought it was, and I don't think a response to that is really forthcoming, but I'll let you judge that from the video when it comes out, hopefully, sometime today, for those of you back in the

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U .S. As soon as I find out about it, of course, I will post it. But anyway, it looks like the one that hopefully will be waiting for me when

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I get home will be a little bit more blue than that one, even though my

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Nestle All -in -28 sort of changes color. It's sort of interesting how that worked. So anyways, with that,

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I don't see anything in Twitter right now, but I think we do have a call.

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So hopefully, I'll be able to hear, be able to interact. We'll find that this is, if we have problems, folks, please forgive us.

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We haven't done it this way before. We've got to practice, got to experiment, got to find out how it's going to work.

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So we have one phone call right now at 877 -753 -3341, and if you want to get online, you can do so.

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I realize this is an unusual time of day for us, but 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number, and our first caller, our first experimental caller, is

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Michael in Colorado wanting to know how best to find a church.

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So Michael, are you with us? Yes, sir. Wow, sounds like you're in the room next door.

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That's cool, man, right on. Isn't that amazing? I'm sitting here staring at a computer, and it sounds like you're in the room with me, and I'm in London.

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That's pretty weird. That's fantastic. Yes, sir.

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What can I do for you? Yes, sir. So I'm about to move to a small county, by the way.

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It's what they call a dark sky county, which means that it's one of the best areas anywhere on earth for viewing the sky.

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So I know you're a big stargazer anytime you're in Colorado. Well, Colorado is pretty good, even though I was really surprised when

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I was in Evergreen to look at the light pollution map that you can put into Google Earth, and it was really bad.

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The light from Denver even goes up into the mountains. So yeah, there would be darker places, definitely.

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Yeah, yes, sir. So it's a county about, gosh, there's,

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I think, like 3 ,000 or 4 ,000 people total in the county. But yes, I think you're talking more northern

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Colorado, and Norco and SoCo is a little bit of a rivalry. But either way, yeah,

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I was curious if... The church availability is very slim.

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There's a lot of your sort of cookie cutter Armenian sort of thing, or a

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Baptist church that seems quite conservative but has, for example, only one elder and several deacons.

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I'm curious, what am I looking for when I'm trying to find a church home? What are the minimum go or no -go qualifications?

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Yeah, a lot of people find themselves in that situation. And generally, what you end up with is, obviously, you have to sort of put together a list of what you'd like to have down to what's absolutely minimal.

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And what's absolutely minimal is going to be a church that attempts to practice

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Sola Scriptura that's obviously orthodox in its doctrine of God and in having the

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Lord's Supper and baptism, things like that. But that may not be what you want, soteriologically speaking, or ecclesiastically speaking, as far as the issue of sorority of elders, things like that.

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And so, I want to find a Reformed Baptist style church.

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Then I want to find, if that's not available, I want to find someone, a church that's going to still have an emphasis upon the sovereignty of God and the preaching and the teaching of the church.

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At some point, you have to make the decision. It depends on, again, availability. There's a tipping point where for someone like myself, and I'm assuming,

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I'm not sure, you didn't say, but if you are a Credo Baptist and not a Pedo Baptist.

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Doctrinally, I'm Credo Baptist. I was baptized as an infant. I think I was like four days old.

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So, you know, in a Presbyterian church in Virginia, but doctrinally,

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I'm Credo. Well, once Presbyterian, always Presbyterian, as they say. But at some point, there's, for example, there's someone in our chat channel right now who shall remain nameless, though he would get along here where I am fairly well.

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So, he couldn't find his way around anywhere. He'd get lost in London, but he'd get lost in the block of where I am.

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But anyways, he is a Baptist, but he is in the Presbyterian church right now.

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Because as far as the availability in his area, there comes a point where that becomes an option, where, you know, if the

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Presbyterians will have you, and they're not going to be chasing you around with a squirt gun, that you will be getting enough of, you know, getting solid

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Reformed teaching rather than being in a situation where there is actually enmity toward Reformed theology or something like that.

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And so, that becomes an option as well. But sometimes not even that's available, or the

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Presbyterian church in the area is extremely liberal. Eventually, it gets down to, well, does this church still believe the

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Bible's the Word of God? And there's a lot of things you can try to put up with, because it's important for us to be in a fellowship and to be seeking to minister and to be involved in ministry.

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But some people find themselves in a situation, quite honestly, where there's just there is not a church that is visitable for them.

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And I've known people who've had to move, so quite simply because they were put in a position where there just simply wasn't anything available.

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And it's going to be up to each individual as to where you're going to end up drawing that line. Some are more comfortable with more things.

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Some need to have a higher level. It really depends. All right.

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All right. Well, thank you. I feel like this helps. Yeah, it's really hard.

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There's hard, you know, hard and heavy stuff that's happening, and a church that is big on God's sovereignty in all things, including, you know, suffering and medical stuff, that's maximum important for me.

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So, well, thank you, Dr. White. Okay. Hey, thanks for your phone call today, Michael. I appreciate it.

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Yes, sir. God bless. All right. God bless. All right. So I've got Twitter questions, and we've got three callers.

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That's good. This is working well. Real quick before I go back to the calls, any advice, resources, et cetera, for someone wanting to get into evangelism, the practical side of the task?

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Well, the guys at A Million Tracks would be one to talk to. I'm not sure what you mean by evangelism.

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Are you talking street evangelism, personal evangelism? I'm not exactly sure what that is.

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Practical side of the task, having good tracks, do you mean, or training like you get from Living Waters or something like that, or, you know, watching

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Emilio Ramos talking with people, or, you know, people doing stuff like that.

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There's lots of stuff available today along those lines. Jay Roberts, theonomist,

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Rashiduni, and the kinesth, can you discuss? Not really, because theonomy is a very wide topic.

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It simply means God's law. There would be a lot of people, well, modern evangelicals in the

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United States is so antinomian that they would identify almost any of the reformers as theonomists because of their emphasis upon the continuing validity of God's law.

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A lot of people who listened to my 35 -message series on the

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Holiness Code would have to go, well, that's almost theonomic, and that's why

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I go, well, what do you mean by that? Do you mean, do I think God's law continues to be valid today? Yes, I do.

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Every generation has to struggle with what that means, penology, all the rest of that stuff, and unfortunately the term theonomist has just become a term you just throw out for someone who has a higher view of the

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Mosaic law than you do, which obviously makes it a worthless term, so I'm not sure what you mean by theonomists.

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I know there's some discussion of Rashiduni and kinism. I don't know anything about it. I haven't read enough for Rashiduni to know anything about any of that stuff, so no,

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I couldn't discuss. Just got your book, 50 Things About the Quran. Well, I think what you mean is what every

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Christian needs to know about the Quran. Where did you, or how did you study for publishing that book? Well, that's an awfully long story.

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Basically, look at all the debates I did up until the point of writing it, and you'll get a pretty good idea, and you can sort of, if you go back to the dividing lines, which is still available in the

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Sermon Audio archives, back around, well, up through 2010, probably, you'll see that I did more programs back then.

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I should probably get back to doing some, but I did more programs back then on Islam. We did, for example, an entire dividing line just on, we looked at every single reference to Isa bin

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Maryam in the Quran to Jesus. We did entire programs like that, and that would give you a good idea of some of the sources that we were looking at and other debates of the people that we were playing and responding to and doing stuff like that.

33:31

Let's see. I know you've covered the Troubles for Catholic Apologists by Francis several times, but any thoughts on the recent call from within Roman Catholicism to denounce

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Francis as a heretic? Yeah, there was a letter that was published.

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It does not represent a large number of people, but it represents at least one person who has a fairly strong standing within the

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Roman Catholic Church, and so a little bit higher up, but I looked at it.

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I looked at it, and I didn't really jump on it simply due to the fact that it was primarily focused upon a fairly narrow spectrum of things in regards to a particular apostolic letter that Francis put out on the issue of marriage and the

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Church and stuff like that. So if someone would come along and be bold enough to say, dude, you're a universalist.

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We're not. When the Pope says, who am I to judge about homosexuality? You're being heretical.

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That would be different, but a lot of the stuff that's being focused upon is sort of minutiae within Roman Catholicism and isn't quite as important to those of us outside.

34:57

Let's see. Last one before we go back to calls. What is the response to objection to presuppositionalism, which is basically the laws of logic are just descriptions, not just actual things themselves?

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Well, the point is that the mechanism by which we have been designed to think is a consistent mechanism that requires explanation.

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It's not something that can just be descriptive. It's true that logic doesn't exist as an entity.

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It is a created element of the creation, but that doesn't mean, given its universality and its necessity for human life, that doesn't change the reality that its origin must be accounted for.

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So that's how I would respond to that. So in response to a previous one, this is my previous response.

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Just saw a footnote in Joe Carter's article and he lumped all theonomists in with kinists. That's where it came from. Well, that wouldn't surprise me all that much.

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As I said in the last dividing line, I think there's a lot of problematic in Joe Carter's article on that and many other things as well.

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Okay. With that, I think I'm caught up on the Twitter questions. So let's go in order as I see it on the screen here.

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Anyways, let's go to Brett in Florida. Hi, Brett. How you doing,

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James? Pretty good here. Coming up on almost eight o 'clock at night in Florida. Nice.

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Well, it's like one o 'clock here in Florida, something like that. It's nice here. I actually just got back from Tennessee.

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Nice trip. My first vacation with my wife, so really good. But I'm calling in reference to repentance.

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I guess it's a lot less doctrinal than it is more applicable as in my own life.

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And I got born again out of heavy, heavy drug addiction.

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I was falling heavily into drug addiction before I even really was in high school.

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I'm now 14 years old already, fully, fully, fully in it. And I got born again in a halfway house out here.

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And I mean, I walked into that room. I gave Jesus my life and I came out totally different.

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My whole life changed. I'm completely born again. But I'm four years now and I have a real desire to live wholly before God.

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I have a desire to be fully cleansed. And I'm not, I'm really struggling in my own heart with sins that I'm not feeling like I'm fully cleansed from.

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And I guess my question I have is more of a younger brother to an older brother about, have you ever dealt with in your life where you don't feel like your heart is where it's supposed to be as a child, knowing that you're a child, and the inability really to conquer it?

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Like, as in, like, I feel like I really am seeking God, but I don't feel like I'm obtaining it.

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And I have just two book references that I had that really helped for me, so you can see where I'm coming from.

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There's a name from John Owen called Indwelling Sin and Believers. And then another one,

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The Doctrine of Repentance by Thomas Watson, like both Puritan writers back 1600s.

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And they both blessed me, but I'm really struggling in my walk as a younger brother. So I'll take it off on the other end, more of just seeing if you have any advice or any thoughts on that, so.

38:42

All right. Okay, thank you. Yeah, obviously a topic that there are numerous studies on and excellent sermons available from a number of people today.

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I've heard many of them, but it does point to the constant struggle that does exist in regards to the two sides, libertinism and legalism.

39:18

So on the one side, there are many people who don't even understand what the caller is talking about, because there are those who would say that there is no need for us to be considering these issues.

39:33

You're simply accepted in Christ. You don't have to worry about these things. You don't have to test yourself. You don't have to be examining yourself.

39:43

And then on the other side, you can always get those. And there is a certain kind of person

39:50

I have found over the years that experiences this.

39:57

There is a certain kind of person who struggles in finding the balance that is inherently necessary in the

40:09

Christian life between recognizing one's acceptedness, one's righteousness in Christ, what union with Christ means, resting in Him, and the necessary self -examination, avoidance of presumption, embracing of an attitude of deadness spiritually, that apathy that can be so dangerous to anyone.

40:43

There are people who tend to be very self -focused. And if we examine ourselves, well, you're going to have to focus upon yourself.

40:53

But we cannot remain in that state constantly, because we will always find in this life blemish.

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We will find reason to see that we continue to love ourselves more than we love

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Christ. Every act of sin is a demonstration that we love ourselves more than we love

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Christ when you think about it. And there is a balance that has to be maintained between the abject hatred of sin that should be ours and the recognition of the fact that in this life, we will continue to experience the presence of that sin.

41:45

A life of repentance is one that grabs hold of the promise of Scripture, and it's interesting.

41:52

Just this morning, I was going to mention on Facebook, I never did, but I had the debate last night.

41:58

And so this morning, I did a 7K run along the Thames. And I took the time before I left to load onto my phone all of the

42:09

Integrity Musics, this is back in the 80s and 90s, Scripture memorization albums that I had purchased from Amazon before.

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I'd never downloaded them onto my phone. And it really ministered to me.

42:25

I needed to be listening to that music while I was running this morning, because a debate takes spiritual energy, it takes work.

42:35

And I needed to be built up in that way. And one of the songs, I remember where I was, it was just past the eye.

42:43

If you know the eye in London, the Ferris wheel there, on the one side of the

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Thames, I just passed the eye on the outward leg when one of the songs was specifically talking about the biblical phrase, biblical text, sin shall not reign over you.

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We want to be able to break, and we need to recognize that in Christ, the power of sin has been broken, but not the presence of sin.

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That's why repentance is a constant experience in the life of the believer.

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If sin could reign as in have kingship, then there wouldn't be a reason to repent because there wouldn't be any ultimate victory over it.

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But sin shall not reign over you. That gives the lie to Jesse Morrell and perfectionists like him, because it's obviously meant in the context that we still experience sin, but we are not in a situation where it will reign over us as king.

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And so that life of repentance is perfectly in line with a life of joy, focused upon grace, everything else.

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The two have to go together, and finding that balance is very important. And in our day, the balance has often gone the wrong direction toward a libertinism that keeps us from examining ourselves.

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But for the person who ends up stuck on the other side, constant self -examination, no victory, my pastoral advice has always been to look to Christ and to consider

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His power and His saviorhood as being able to overcome even the worst of our sins.

44:55

So there's a lot of good stuff there. Okay, before, well, let's go to because I do see one here.

45:09

Let's go to Caleb in Hawaii. Hi, Caleb. Hey there,

45:15

Dr. White. Yeah, I guess this question, I kind of have to tell the story with it, because I'm with YWAM in Honolulu, and Steve Gregg was here yesterday for this

45:28

Q &A, so I asked him this question too, because it's really touching to me. I know you guys have had debate, and I've been watching that the past few days.

45:37

Okay, I'm sorry, you're actually so loud that it's cutting in and out. Who are you talking about?

45:46

Sorry, I was talking about how this question kind of involves a situation

45:52

I'm in right now, and I asked this question to Steve Gregg yesterday. Oh, Steve Gregg, okay, all right, okay.

46:01

And it's funny, because I've watched you guys' five different little debates over the radio, and it was really interesting, and I liked it a lot.

46:13

And I asked Steve Gregg this, because I have a friend here who's one of the people who works with YWAM, and they're not sure if Jesus is

46:22

God or not. They're not sure if Jesus was deity or if He's just the

46:28

Messiah, as in He's just like a created being, kind of like how

46:34

Jehovah Witnesses see it. And so I've been talking to this person, and I've been trying to show them in the

46:41

Bible all of these verses, not only showing that Christ is God, but also showing that you have to believe that Christ is

46:49

God in order for Him to be safe, and that deity is super important, and all the warnings about different Gospels and different Christs.

47:00

So I asked Steve Gregg last night if, first of all, what are the arguments that Jehovah Witnesses would bring up, and also how important is it to get the deity of Christ right?

47:13

And the answer I got was, first of all, he affirmed the deity of Christ, but then also continued on to say that it's not necessarily important to believe in the deity of Christ to be safe, and that somebody can be calling

47:28

Jesus and looking at Him as their Master, and just not get His deity right, and it's not for Him to say if they're saved or not.

47:35

And so I guess the question for me is, how important is it to know that Christ really is who

47:43

He says He was, that He's God? How important is that to be able to be safe?

47:51

Okay, that's a good question, and I didn't hear what

47:58

Steve Gregg's response was personally, so I'm not going to really interpret that, but I've addressed it a number of times before, and this is a good example of where to draw the dividing line.

48:17

Almost no one, when they are first saved, has a perfect Trinitarian knowledge.

48:24

Vast majority of Christians wouldn't know what terms like parakaresis means, that's the interpenetration of divine persons in their relationship with one another, but so there will always be in this life some level of ignorance.

48:41

The issue is the difference between ignorance and rejection, knowing rejection.

48:48

So if you're talking about a situation where the gospel presented to someone is based upon a specific perversion of elements of that gospel, which would include elements related to the gospel itself,

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Galatians chapter 1, or to the person of Christ, 1 Corinthians, other texts that make reference to this, that's where the issue comes in, because if the

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Jesus that you have been directed to is the spirit brother of Lucifer, as in Mormonism, or is

49:24

Michael the archangel, as in the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, these are

49:29

Jesus's that don't actually exist, and those messages that have been delivered to you have been delivered to you by false prophets, who as Paul describes, are deceiving and being deceived.

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So the issue would first be, are you trusting in a message that was complete and whole to begin with?

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Not do you have a perfect knowledge of it, not are there areas of ignorance that you have, but was it actually the gospel message, the proper view of Christ, the proper view of the gospel, was it the complete package that was delivered to you?

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And then the question is, are you obedient to it? Now that leaves open the possibility that a person might not understand.

50:23

I know for a shadow of a doubt that there are believers in the body of Christ who, if you were to ask them specific questions related to the doctrine of the

50:41

Trinity, would test out heretically, specifically on modalism. There are many believers who default to modalism out of ignorance.

50:52

They have not been taught with clarity what the doctrine of the Trinity is.

50:58

Now, if they were taught with clarity, they would accept that and abandon their false beliefs and would be thankful for it.

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It's the person who's been taught modalism and then holds to it in rejection of the truth that is the person that is in trouble.

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And so I think there needs to be a nuanced biblical response to the question, and that is to make the distinction between knowing rejection and simple ignorance.

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A person can be saved in their ignorance, though that should not be something that they want to continue in.

51:42

But a person who purposely rejects the biblical position would be a person who would be outside of the realm of salvation.

51:54

So that seems to be the apostolic response to that particular issue.

52:00

Okay, we've got two more calls, one in Georgia and one in Maryland, and let me just run through some

52:12

Twitter stuff here real fast. Any thoughts on the Passion Translation? Yes, it's pure garbage.

52:19

It is not a translation. It's done by one guy who's claiming revelation who's completely whacked.

52:25

So I realize that selling like hotcakes that only tells you the lack of discernment of most people.

52:33

Let's see, as a self -professing, slowly calming, caged -age Calvinist, are there any sermon series, book studies that focus on wisdom and discernment you could recommend?

52:42

Yes, The Practical Implications of Calvinism by A. N. Martin. It's a small pamphlet from, actually it's available online, but it's also a small published pamphlet from Banner of Truth that would be good for anyone in that particular context.

53:03

Something about pedophilia, I have no idea what it's asking, sorry. Okay, more on the

53:13

Passion Translation, again it's not a translation. What advice would you give a 1689

53:20

Reformed Baptist pastor currently ministering and preaching in an Armenian church? Body armor?

53:30

What would you do with the opportunity? I would call Tom Askell immediately and spend four hours on the phone with him first of all.

53:37

No, seriously, I probably would. If that's where the

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Lord has put you and the Lord places a love in your heart for those people, then preach the word.

53:49

Just preach the word. You don't have to preach five points of Calvinism. Those truths come out when you preach, and you don't have to go to Romans 9 immediately, you don't have to go to Ephesians 1 immediately.

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Just preach the word. Preach through John. Preach through James.

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Get the people established in hearing, consistent, handling the word of God next to Jesus.

54:15

Over time, that'll take care of everything. It's going to be time. It may not be as fast as you want it to be, but that's the best advice

54:25

I can possibly give you. Uh, yeah, more stuff on the passion thing.

54:34

Uh, don't know what guarding my wallet has doing anything.

54:40

Uh, okay. I don't see anything there.

54:48

Okay. All right. Let's get to the last two calls here. Let's talk to, uh, while we're getting

54:55

Kim and Georgia on, I'm going to grab some more water. Kim and Georgia. Hi, Kim. Hi, Dr. White.

55:01

How are you? I'm doing good. I love your necklace, but unfortunately the logo is in the way and I can't see it.

55:10

What is it? Well, it's a cross. The logo is in the way. I can't see what's going on, going on.

55:17

So, oh, you mean at the bottom of the screen. Oh, okay. It's just a, it's just a real nice American Indian sort of like, um, turquoise coral, uh, cross.

55:28

Well, what I can see is real pretty. I like it.

55:34

I like it. So what can we do for you? Um, I witnessed to a lady who lives here in my building.

55:44

She is very hostile to the gospel. I told her that I prayed for her.

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Oh, you pray for me? I says, yes, I do. And then I told her that she needed to repent and trust

55:59

Christ because she is a sinner. I'm not a sinner. I'm a good person.

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I said to her, uh, you're a good person and based on what? And she slammed the door.

56:12

So my question is when we pray for unbelievers, what is

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God doing that we cannot see or know? How is he, what is he doing in their heart or what will he be doing in their heart?

56:32

I prayed for her. I said, God, please do whatever is needed to bring her to yourself.

56:39

What would he be doing that we're not aware of? Thank you and have a blessed day.

56:47

Okay. Well, thank you very much for your call, Kim. Um, this, this raises the issue once again of the fact that we have given to us in scripture overarching principles in regards to election and predestination and the work of the spirit of God and drawing the elect into himself and all sorts of things like that.

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But we can't see those things. You and I, we live in this life and we've been called to pray for people and to love people and to witness to people.

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And so, uh, it's, it's part of the now and the not yet. We, we have the situation we live in now.

57:28

We know that there are divine truths. Like we have been seated in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, and we have been, but we don't see the fullness of that yet.

57:39

And so the thing to remember is you're not trying to convince

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God to be better than he is. You're not better than God.

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I'm not better than God. I'm not trying to make God be nicer or more gracious or anything else like that.

57:58

Um, instead the one who is primarily changed when

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I pray for an unbeliever is me, not God. I'm not making him more loving.

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I'm not making him more patient. I'm not making him more merciful, but he's making me more sensitive.

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He's making me more like Christ. He's making me more of an instrument that can be used in maybe that person's life, or maybe it's not that person's life.

58:28

Maybe it's God's will that it's someone else's life that I'm going to be used in as a result of praying for this person.

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But the point is prayer doesn't change God. Prayer changes us.

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God uses prayer to change us. That's where that fellowship of the

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Holy Spirit ministers to us and changes us. And so on the one hand,

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I want to make sure we're not seeing the idea that prayer in some way is changing

59:00

God. But part of your question sounded like you were saying, well, if God does in his mercy and grace draw this person to himself, what does that process look like?

59:17

Well, let's say that it's God's intention, which we can't know, to draw this person to themselves at this particular point in time.

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Well, the testimonies of the saints down through the years has been that God utilizes the witness of a person that may at first anger us, but then they start to realize and recognize the truthfulness of what has been said.

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There is a conviction of sin. There is a recognition of a person's need, a desire to move toward the truth in those issues.

01:00:01

And, you know, that can happen in a short period of time. That can happen in a long period of time.

01:00:08

You might be the person who ends up getting to see the glorious opportunity of bringing the message to this person.

01:00:17

You might not be. You might be the first of many who plant a seed here, plant a seed there. There's no way of knowing.

01:00:25

But you're simply called to be a faithful witness, to not become weary in well -doing, to be a constant witness of in your life.

01:00:37

You cannot change their heart. You cannot change their attitude. But you can, even sometimes by enduring their disagreeable attitude, their rejection, maybe even their hatred, how you bear that mercifully and graciously can be a part of the mechanism that God uses to draw that person to themselves.

01:01:05

So there's two ways to look at it. Always the revealed truth, the overarching truth needs to be kept in mind.

01:01:13

And then we have the experience in life on the other side, where since we don't know the identity of God's chosen people, who's who, we proclaim the gospel to all people and pray to be used by God in that way.

01:01:35

Okay, last call for the program today. Some of these, especially if they go over multiple tweets,

01:01:50

I'm sorry, I can't necessarily connect them together, so I don't even know what the reference is. And if I have to scroll back to try to find where the first one was, that's not going to work for me.

01:02:03

So I've got one right now, but it's only half of a question. I have no idea what it's asking, so I apologize for that. Anyways, let's talk with Johnny in Maryland.

01:02:11

Hi, Johnny. Hello, thank you for allowing me to ask my question.

01:02:17

To give a little background, I'm a undergraduate at a very small university,

01:02:28

Frostburg State, very secular and liberal school course. I'm a philosophy major, and because of how small my school is, they can't always have, like, capstone courses.

01:02:40

So for next spring semester, I have to write a paper for an independent research study, and my paper that I've gotten approved by my very atheistic secular professor, my advisor, is a defense of Christian exclusivism.

01:02:58

But as I'm studying it and all that, it's honestly getting kind of terrifying.

01:03:06

One of my major points that I want to push for is showing the divine inspiration of scriptures, and how that's a major point to this argument.

01:03:19

And I was wondering if you knew any full -length books on this topic, or any books on Christian exclusivism in general?

01:03:27

I found like Alvin Plantinga and Ronald Nash, but I haven't found too much for exclusivism.

01:03:35

Well, you've lost me a little bit, because those are two different topics. When you first started saying any resources,

01:03:43

I thought you're going to talk about the authority and inspiration of scripture, and then you switched back to exclusivism, because I recognize foundationally the central role of scripture.

01:03:57

There's no reason to argue for exclusivism without there being a coherent gospel presentation that would demand it, so you need to have the scriptures.

01:04:07

But they are two very, very different topics, and if you're going to try to tackle both of them, that's going to be extremely challenging in one paper, depending on what the length of it is.

01:04:20

But because I was going to say in regards to what

01:04:27

I thought you were going to say about the inspiration of scripture, I've always found B .B.

01:04:33

Warfield's book on that subject, even though it did not include his full paper on the meaning of Theanustos.

01:04:39

You need to find that, it's available on the web. But Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield is a solid 100 years old, but I've not seen anyone who has gotten much beyond the depth that he brought to that particular issue, and so I would highly recommend

01:05:00

Warfield. And you might find in the full

01:05:05

Warfield set some, I think you would find some essays on the other topic, that of the topic being the exclusive nature of the gospel.

01:05:20

I'm pretty certain he did write on that, and so I highly recommend that to you.

01:05:26

As to other more modern works on the exclusive claims, dealing with pluralism and universalism isn't one of my primary focuses, so off the top of my head,

01:05:41

I wouldn't be able to give you a bibliography. That's also something I'm just not good at anyways.

01:05:51

But I know that there are, and I would assume as you probably know, that the bibliography and footnotes in Nash's book, though that's probably still looking at 20 -30 years minimally, would still probably be a goldmine of initial research starting at that point, and probably be able to help you out from there.

01:06:21

Okay, well, other than, and Rich tells me that the breaking up was probably due to the fact that Caleb was in Hawaii.

01:06:33

I'm not sure how he was coming through, so that probably was all that was. I was impressed with how well that worked, and that's encouraging to me because the opportunities for debate and travel are increasing.

01:06:54

We're using a program called Zoom instead of Skype. We learned to do that from Justin Brierley on Unbelievable, and that's what he's been using, and it's working well for us as well.

01:07:08

So that opens up more opportunities when I'm away to be able to do stuff like this, and so I think that's really useful.

01:07:19

So I would appreciate it if you all, I get home on Monday, could y 'all just keep the insanity down a little bit back there?

01:07:29

Because from over here it just, it looks a little weird at times.

01:07:36

Because of the time lag, you know, it's sort of the midday here, a little afternoon, you all start waking up, and it's just sort of like, here comes the craziness, and you're going to bed with the things just really percolating along in the

01:07:51

U .S. with all the craziness happening all at once, and it does seem strange.

01:07:57

It really, really, really does. But anyway, so I'm excited about this opportunity to be able to do this, and so prayers for,

01:08:07

I would love to get, I would so love to get home. I've stayed healthy. I haven't injured myself. I had the best run today that I've had since end of February when

01:08:18

I injured my hip. That felt great. Man, it'd be great to get home, because I've got something right after I get home, less than six days after I get home, that I really need to be healthy for.

01:08:29

So I normally don't ask for stuff like this, but if you just pray that I get home in one piece, and you say, well, why would you even ask anybody to pray about something like that?

01:08:42

Well, how can that help you? Well, part of it is just simply the

01:08:47

Lord keeping me focused enough to do the simple things, really simple things, like when you're going down an escalator and you do have to put your hand over there on that petri dish called the handrail, don't stick it in your nose or in your eye or in your mouth until you get a chance to wash your hands.

01:09:09

It's just a matter of staying focused, and sometimes at the end of a long trip, you start losing that focus, and that's when you end up getting sick.

01:09:18

So that would be a great benefit if you would pray toward that end, because I've got a lot of stuff hit the ground running as soon as we get back, and so I appreciate that.

01:09:30

All right, folks, thanks for watching The Dividing Line today. Thanks to Rich for putting it together back there.

01:09:37

So sometime next week, maybe not Tuesday, we'll see how

01:09:42

I'm feeling when I get back. That day after, see, Monday is going to be 32 hours long for me because I gain all that time back going back, and that makes a really long day, and in my experience, it's the next day.

01:09:55

You're just sort of like, so I'm not sure that it would be overly useful for me to do that, but we'll figure out when we'll do the programs next week and move on from there.