September 28, 2004

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Desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is
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The Dividing Line. 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. You know, I hope Steve Camp never sees that comment from Kevin Channel just now, because Kev said he can't believe this song was ever meant for anything but bumper music.
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In fact, I have funny stories about Run to the Battle, but I really, it would be improper to share them on the air.
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Yes, it is The Dividing Line, we're back, and yes, we did do a program last week.
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I kept getting all these people saying, where's the program from Tuesday? And I was, I don't know, talk to the guy who puts it up, the guy on the other side of the road.
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Yeah, a wall there, I don't have anything to do with that. But we were not here on Thursday because we were down in sort of another land, you know?
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Texas is just sort of a nation unto itself, and it's good to know
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Texas is still around, because when you have to drive around in San Francisco and see what you see in San Francisco, and when you have to go to New York and just know who the senators from there are and Massachusetts and things like that, we really need to pray for our brethren who live in those places.
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And then you get down to Texas and, you know, people have plain old common sense and they wear boots and they carry guns, and I almost shipped mine down.
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I should have, and I didn't. Man, I wish I had. We would have had so much fun down there in Texas.
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But anyway, we won't get into that right now for the sensitivities of those of you who live in places where you don't have a lot of freedoms.
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In fact, we have friends over in England, and we're heading over there in March of next year. Over in England, I even had some folks who had
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British accents there at the conference, the Founders Conference. It was very good, and they sounded just like me, and they thought
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I had a good accent. They did, you know? So anyway, I'm telling you,
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I'm going to do the program from over there. It'd be like, you know, one o 'clock in the morning, but we need to do a program from over in England where I just do the whole thing just for the
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English folks. I think that would... Anybody for that? Just put your hands up.
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I'm seeing hands. Yes, I see a hand in the back. Yes. Bless you, sir. Bless you. And there in the back. Yes. I still remember how to do that.
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So... Why does it sound like my microphone's disappearing? I'm not sure what's going on here.
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Anyhow, we are back. And boy, do we have a lot of stuff going on. I just updated the...
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Well, I... Just yesterday. I mean, it used to be the calendar page on our website was actually the historical page because it was telling you what we did two years ago.
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And it's now... I'm afraid people don't look there. I mean, even folks in channel say, so what are you doing now?
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Where are you going now? And I've had this stuff on the calendar page forever. And I'm afraid people didn't, you know, they just gave up looking at it.
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And so, you all need to look at the calendar page because I updated it.
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And while I was in Texas, I got a call about doing something in like two weeks.
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I mean, we're talking really short notice here. I normally don't do that. But given the church and who it was,
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I said, yeah, okay, we can work that out. And so, we're going to be going three different places...
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Four. No, three. Three different places during October. Little Rock, Edmond, Oklahoma, and Peoria, Illinois.
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And then, of course, first thing in November is Los Angeles. And then I've also added on the website, the first weekend in December, we're going to be in St.
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Louis with the folks at Covenant of Grace Church again. And I think this will be the third, maybe the fourth time
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I've been there. These poor folks, they just keep having me back. They're sort of like the folks in normal Illinois. Those are just a couple of the churches that just, you know, there are only a few places that have me back.
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It's amazing. I've really tried to learn what that might mean. And anyway, we're going to be heading back there in early
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December, the first weekend in December, which, did we do that last year or the year before? I can't remember which one it was.
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But we've done that first weekend in December there before. And I enjoy getting that shot of cold air in St.
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Louis. It sort of puts me in the holiday spirit at that point in time. And anyway, we're going to be talking about the
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Debating Calvinism book. I would love to have Dave Hunt show up, you know. We still want to have that Dave Hunt debate.
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It would be great. It would be wonderful. We're still open to doing it. But you know, it's been really, really quiet on that front for a long time.
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I suppose if we had boundless energy, we could be following his schedule around and getting tapes from churches and we'd probably find all sorts of interesting stuff to play like we did that one time.
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The only reason we did that one time was someone contacted us and said, oh, hey, did you hear what such and such a person said?
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And so we just don't have time to. I mean, a lot of folks don't realize this ministry has two employees, yes, two, and you're talking to one of them and the other one every once in a while pops in and mutters stuff at us.
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And so that's it. And we have some great volunteers, but don't have the time to be chasing
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Dave Hunt around. I mean, I suppose we could assign someone the job of chasing
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Dave Hunt around. But you know, that's not really something I'd ever want to ask somebody to do. So anyway, we're going to be talking about debating
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Calvinism there. Oh, and by the way, in my hand, I have a little book here. Reach over here and actually pull it off the shelf.
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Scripture Alone, Exploring the Bible's Accuracy, Authority and Authenticity. Here it is.
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Here's your introduction to Sola Scriptura. That's exactly what it's meant to be. This is the kind of of book that you can get.
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I mean, I think it really lends itself to Bible studies, Sunday school lessons, use in classrooms as an introductory text, that kind of stuff.
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And ours haven't arrived. We haven't we can't fulfill the preorders quite yet, so you can keep preordering.
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And but my author copies arrived and we're really hoping for even today to get these things.
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And then I will begin doing the the long process. And it is a long process of signing the ones that have been preordered and shipping them out to you folks who have already requested them.
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And obviously it's that time of the year. This is a type of book that I would get for elders.
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If you are not an elder in the church, that's a good book to to give to elders, especially to encourage them in standing firm on the scriptures as the sole infallible rule of faith of the church.
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And so there there should be here soon. I mean, the author's copies normally arrive very, very close the same time as the rest of them that you have ordered.
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And so that is now available. And I'm hoping to see folks ordering multiple copies so that they can give them away, give them away, especially to people who are in a position to really need them.
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And this is a good way to inoculate folks against your standard attacks against the canon of scripture launched by people such as the
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Roman Catholic apologist on solo scriptura and also Mormon apologists, issues like that.
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It deals with numerous topics. Looking at the table of contents here, arguments, the nature of God's holy word, inerrancy and exegesis, the canon of scripture.
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Did Thomas write a gospel? Allegations of corruption, allegations of contradiction, tradition, the church and the development of doctrine.
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The Lord spoke to me saying scriptural sufficiency, nothing new and conclusion forever settled in heaven.
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And it's a fairly easy read, only two hundred and twenty some odd pages.
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So it's right around the same size as the Forgotten Trinity. And it should be shipping fairly soon.
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So you can hit the AOMin .org page. And if you've been putting it off, then you need to try to track that down.
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So anyway, 877 -753 -3341. As I said, we were in Dallas, Southwest Founders Conference.
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Bob Self was there. Unfortunately, a couple of other gentlemen that were supposed to be there weren't able to be there due to various sundry things, mainly the fact they're all pastors and there were things going on in their churches that required their presence, but got to know the folks down there at Heritage Baptist Church.
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And like I said, very enjoyable being down in Texas, fit in there quite well in more than one way and was very appreciative of the fact that they were appreciative of my ministry.
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I don't consider myself much of a preacher. So when they have you preaching all the time, that sort of worries me a little bit.
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But I was able to give some presentations, PowerPoint presentations, had to rush to the Mormon presentation on Sunday afternoon and didn't get to say everything
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I wanted to say there. But I had a great time with the folks down there and they made rumblings about my going back.
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Mansfield, Texas, they're having the same thing happen there that we have here in Phoenix. Everything's growing. They're just building stuff right, left, upside down.
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It's just everywhere. Unbelievable. And quick update on something else
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I posted right before I left. And we already have two folks online. We'll go to our calls here in a second at 877 -753 -3341.
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But I want to give you a little bit of a update on my daughter,
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Summer, and the odd happenings there. I posted right before I went to Texas, a blog article where I provided the text of a letter.
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It was just an assignment. The students were assigned to write a letter on something that they felt passionate about and they were to research their subject.
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They could look up statistics and things like that to substantiate their point. And see there, that's where she got into trouble.
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My daughter knows what substantiating a point means. My daughter has grown up going to things that her father is involved with.
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And she was there at the Barry Lynn debate.
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She was at the Staples debate, I think maybe both Staples debate in Los Angeles.
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She's been to debates on Long Island, a couple of those, at least two of those.
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And so she has seen what happens to my opponents when they present unsubstantiated personal opinions and cross -examination.
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Unsubstantiated personal opinions tend to make you really look badly when you are cross -examined on those issues.
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And so she knows what substantiating opinion is about. And this is supposed to be a letter that was going to be sent to the president. So when, you know, when
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I was her age, if somebody was going to told me I was going to be this letter is going to be sent to the president,
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I would really put some effort into it. And she did. She spent three hours on it. And she researched it and put together and she couldn't she could have gone much longer than she did.
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You had a limitation. In fact, I posted the directions exactly what she had to do.
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And you'll see she did exactly what she was told to do. The directions are right there, right above her letter. If you follow through, she did everything she was supposed to do in the way she was supposed to do it.
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But of course, she failed and she was the only person to fail. It wasn't that she just had half the points taken off.
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It wasn't she had five points taken off. No, she was given no credit at all for the assignment.
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And I think it's very obvious why that is. I think anyone who reads the letter considers our postmodern
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NEA style context in which that letter is presented, knows why she was the only one in the class who was failed, why she was the only one subjected to the standards that she was subjected to.
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And so to make a long story short, of course, in God's providence, that letter now has been read by thousands of more people than read any of the other students' letters.
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And in fact, thanks be, there are certain people who listen to this broadcast and who read the blog who are a part of the
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Bush administration. And we were contacted by someone with connections there who has promised us that I sent
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I sent the letter along with the cover letter out to them and that it will be hand delivered to the president of the
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United States, which the probabilities of the other letters, if the teacher had not suppressed this because she wouldn't send the letter, she refused to send the letter to the president.
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And so the the those other letters probably will never be seen by the president.
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How many thousands of letters do you think are sent to the president each day? But this one will.
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And so, you know, in God's providence, but but even though they offered to to Summer that she could redo her letter, in essence, dumb it down, the teacher originally said,
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I need to find out these are your words. That's a charge of plagiarism, obviously. And and when it was when I demonstrated that this was not plagiarism,
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I wrote a letter to the teacher when she kept sort of not getting around to answering the question as to whether someone was get credit or not.
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She changed it from that to, well, this does not express her voice. And Summer has eloquently expressed to the teacher and to the principal in my presence that this does express her voice.
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And in essence, what she's being told is a sophomore's voice should not be this well founded and a sophomore's voice should not be rooted in fact and should not be rooted in research.
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And and in essence, she did too much work and she just she refuses.
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She did what she was told to do. She's follow the directions and she refuses to do it for partial credit. And then they said,
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OK, we'll let you do it for full credit. Just know I already did it for full credit. And if you give me full credit, then, you know,
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I guess that that's that's your responsibility. I did the assignment. And so we're going to have to trust the
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Lord with issues like scholarships down the road, because if she keeps going like this, her grade point average is going to suffer as a result.
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And but I think the Lord will reward her in other ways. And we'll just have to trust the
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Lord to find find ways of letting her go where she wants to go. But I tell you, a
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Christian student faces the challenges today that I didn't face in that day. I was I was public school.
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And I know all you homeschoolers, you wouldn't have that problem. She was homeschooled. Well, you know, we're really not in a position to do that. And she was in a
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Christian school and she didn't like it. She liked her teachers and stuff. But the fact the matter is, a lot of Christian schools.
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A lot of Christian schools are filled with young people who couldn't make it in the public school system, and mom and dad have enough money to ship them off someplace else.
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And she didn't like that. She likes the school she's in. She really, really does. She she likes the school.
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She likes the kids. They they she says they're not stuck up, which is important for her. And she likes it there.
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And in fact, there's sort of some pressure. You know, there's a suggestion has been that maybe it'd be good if Summer went to another school and Summer doesn't want to go to another school.
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So I don't think it'd be fair to kick Summer out of school for having done too much work. But that's what we face in the educational system today.
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So it's a it's an odd thing. Anyhow, that's the situation as it stands. And Summer is going to I asked her to write up a some thoughts.
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On her part concerning what she's learned from all of this, and she's going to be doing that and began work on that recently.
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And so I will be posting that as as time goes by and keeping you abreast of any new developments, though I don't know there could really be any new developments at this point.
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Summer has said, no, I'm not redoing it. And the letter's gone to the president. And, you know, I certainly hope to hear back from the president.
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And I think if it was almost any other time other than the middle of debate preparation and debate performance in the election, that would almost be a lock.
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But I recognize, you know, the guy's got a little bit on his plate at the moment. And so who knows? We'll see.
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We'll see what happens. But that is the situation there. So anyhow, that's linked on the website and you can take a look at it there.
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If you had not noticed that on the blog, you can take a look at that. And so anyway, eight, seven, seven, seven, five, three, three, three, four, one.
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Remember last program? We did this. We did this big thing on Phillips, Craig and Dean.
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And then I was supposed to be on for an hour right afterwards. And we never got a call.
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We've we've heard nothing. It's just like that. That entire radio station was, I was going to say, raptured off the planet.
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But that would be an improper terminology. It just disappeared, poof, gone.
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And if I recall correctly, we left messages. And did we ever I never heard anything back. If we did hear something back,
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I was I was not informed of it. Never did. Yeah. So I don't know what happened. Maybe Phillips, Craig and Dean called up and said, you ain't talking about us.
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No, no, no. Not let's get your lawyers present or something. I don't know. Who knows? I I'm completely lost.
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But that was all we did. We didn't we didn't get a chance to talk about it up there in the. In the great northwest or north central or whatever
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Minneapolis is, it's up there. It's up there near Canada, let's put it that way, the great cold, the white north or whatever, so we didn't get a chance to talk about it.
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So that's life. Just I'd let you know about that. Eight, seven, seven, seven, five, three, three, three, four, one. We have two folks online.
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So let's go ahead and take our first call. Let's talk with Chuck up in Michigan.
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Hi, Chuck. Hey, how are you doing? How are you doing, Dr. White? All right. Hey, thanks so much for taking my call.
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I was calling. Well, actually, if I could take a quick second here, just given my situation, I am a campus staffer with a church based college ministry up here at Michigan State University.
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And of late, we have been encountering just a number of folks asking some questions about our style of church government.
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And we're like you guys, we we have a plurality of elders and and we believe that the biblical teaching concerning elders is that that is a position in the church reserved for men who meet the character qualities listed in First Timothy three and Titus one.
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We've been encountering a number of folks who would be more egalitarian in their perspective on that.
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And what's come up is not so much the egalitarian position, because I'm somewhat familiar with that.
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But there has been two hermeneutic approaches that I'd never heard before until like the last month or two.
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One's called a postmodern hermeneutic, and the other is called a redemptive movement hermeneutic that apparently has been made somewhat famous by a fellow named
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William Webb, who came out with a book, I think, in 2001 called Slaves, Women and Homosexuals.
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I don't know if you've heard of that at all or become familiar with that. Well, that's odd, because that would have been right around the time that we were working on the homosexual book.
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And so I'm a little surprised that that that didn't come up. It's a
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William J. Webb four by Daryl Bach. That's interesting for published by the IP. And retail price, 25 bucks.
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Yeah, yeah, you can always tell it's mass marketed when they're 25 bucks right off the top.
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So, yeah, lovely. Mm hmm. Yeah. Redemptive hermeneutic. Yeah, they're there. Your his goal is not to discuss how these groups are to be seen in light of scripture, but to make a case for a specific hermeneutical approach to reading these texts.
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This book not only advances a discussion of the topics. Why are they? Why is everything?
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I'm sorry. I'm trying to fix the grammar of this as I'm reading. I'm serious now.
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Now the verbs and the and the and the nouns are matching a number here. This book not only advances a discussion of the topics.
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There we go. But it also takes a markedly new direction toward establishing common ground where possible, potentially breaking down certain walls of hostility within the evangelical community.
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Oh, goody. That was those were not words used to describe my my book on homosexuality.
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I just want to mention that in passing. Well, I think I think if I from and again,
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I'm just starting to get exposed to this stuff. I haven't had opportunity yet to in fairness to read the book and see what he says.
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My understanding from other folks who have read it is that he would see the prohibitions against homosexuality in the
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Bible as being transcultural and therefore would not take a pro homosexual position as as some other folks do.
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But again, concerning the egalitarian position, he would see using his redemptive movement hermeneutic as giving or seeing the differentiation between men and women in their responsibilities and roles within the family and the church to be diminished more and more to where he would argue that today in the 21st century, in the church, that those that differentiation of roles should be gotten rid of in that.
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So I was just curious because I've read a number of your books had been a tremendous help to me personally, as well as being able to help other folks in our ministry and our church up here in in Michigan.
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And as far as as I said, I didn't know if you had in your travels or conversations or interacting with folks who had come across these two particular types of approaches.
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Well, Bible interpretation. Yeah. You got to realize that the terminology used, especially when it's a terminology developed by a particular author, can be, you know, unless you've actually encountered that particular author, that particular author's ideas may or may not be overly descriptive of what they're trying to say.
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For example, in in the scripture alone book, I I present a view of the canon based upon Canon one and Canon two.
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I've never seen anybody else do that. A lot of the the substance of of my view,
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I've discovered, was expressed in certain fashions by B .B. Warfield's. It's not like I'm alone on it, but the working out of it does seem to be rather unique as far as that goes.
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So, you know, someone could look at that and they may not know what in the world I'm referring to at that particular point without looking at it.
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Do the miracle of the Internet. The book you mentioned is now on on order, but I can't guarantee, especially between now and the debate that I'm going to have any opportunity to look at it.
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There's a few other things need to be doing. But a postmodern hermeneutic, I immediately, you know, would assume that this is
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I've seen some. This is probably associated with a denial of what they call foundationalism and probably is attempting to say, look, since we live in a postmodern context and we need to apply a hermeneutic to the scriptures, that is going to communicate the meaning of the scriptures within our within our cultural context.
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The problem being, of course, that we're talking about a fundamental denial of the worldview of the original authors and hence the definition of their words, the use of their grammar, the meaning that would be derived from examining their context would be thrown out the window.
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And hence you can't logically or rationally be saying that you are representing what those original writers intended.
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But in postmodernism, that's not the point. In fact, it's funny, I won't get overly specific here, but my daughter did mention a certain teacher who said in class recently, your opinion is your truth.
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And, you know, so I immediately said, yes. But does that teacher grade on the basis of accepting that?
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Good question. I don't think she does, nor could she. But anyway, that's not neither here nor there.
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But it is the postmodernism. And so I don't know the specifics of how that how anyone could logically create a postmodern system of hermeneutics in regards to the scriptures.
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In other words, in regards to reading ancient texts, it's one thing for a postmodernist to write in such a way that you need to use a postmodern hermeneutic to understand that postmodernism.
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Right. But, you know, that makes sense to me. But as far as this other perspective goes, when you have to create a hermeneutic for particular particularly troubling and challenging topics in our modern situation that you either do not or probably in most situations could not apply to the rest of scripture, that immediately sends up should send up big red flags.
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I mean, the the the thing that I try to explain to folks is when you see a denomination or a person or whatever, and they use one consistent methodology, one consistent hermeneutic every place else but one place, all of a sudden one place.
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They just they just jump the track and they start using this completely different methodology. That is the that is the tradition detector.
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That's where you find where someone is not consistently holding the sola scriptura. They're holding to a tradition.
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The scriptures don't support that tradition. So they have to use a different hermeneutic method to drive that tradition. And so that sounds like the situation here.
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Certainly, as I look at the scriptures, the issue regarding the relationship of men and women is creation based, as is the issue of homosexuality, not culture based.
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And that's the big thing in the egalitarian movement and things like that. So that's what you got to look for.
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And it's interesting. Solid ground Christian books. And I we ought to get we just get hold of this.
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This is what we need to do. We need to need to get hold of Mike Gados at Solid Ground Christian Books.
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And we need to carry this. He's put back in print, and I think it's from the 1880s, a work on hermeneutics.
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And the reason that's important, the reason I would like to have that available. Is that this is prior to a number of what
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I would call clearly foreign insertions of of non -biblical ideas that have even deeply influenced conservatives in their hermeneutics and their exegesis of scripture.
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And can you give an example of that? Like, well, yeah, I mean, I mean, look at look at the entire thing about new perspectivism.
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When you when you when you look at new perspectivism, one of the things that feeds into that the most conservatives aren't even aware of is the fact that especially in European and British exegesis and theology today, ever since World War Two, there is a tremendous fear of being seen as being anti -Semitic.
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If you want to use a word that will make sure that some other guy doesn't ever get his tenure or ever get published again, say that something he said was anti -Semitic.
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And as a result, someone like E .P. Sanders can write an entire book on the view of of a
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New Testament Judaism, Tania Judaism, Second Temple Judaism and stuff like Matthew 23 is not even allowed to speak to one element of of what was historically the case.
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And so there are there are entire passages in Paul and in the Gospels that just basically are ignored because of a fear of that.
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And so you have that kind of stuff. Yeah. The name of the book, you know, I knew you're going to ask something like that.
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I'm going to have to maybe during the break I can I can track it down in my in my stuff here.
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But I'll try to I'll try to find it. And when I do, I'll let everybody know and we'll see if we can't track it down.
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But it would be something I'd suggest to you, because even though its style would not be as accessible in the senses, you know, it's typesetting would be an older style and things like that.
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As far as the practice of exegesis and things like that, it would be really useful. Awesome.
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Can I ask you one quick practical question? Or do you have to. Yeah, I need to take a break. If you'd like, I can hold you real quick because we've got
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Tim in South Carolina, too, but I don't see any others. So hold on just a second. I'll have Rich put you on hold and we'll go ahead and take our break.
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And I will look for the name of this book and maybe somebody channel. We've got the email from solid ground, too.
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And you can tell me about it. We'll be right back. It's all words, righteousness, you know.
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And I'm at the heart of the controversy between Roman Catholic and Reformation theology is the nature of justification itself.
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It is a debate not merely about how or when or by what means a person is justified, but about the very meaning of justification and the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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What's a debate reserved for Roman Catholics and the reformers? The doctrine of justification is now being challenged from within the walls of reformed evangelicalism itself.
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Join Alpha and Omega Ministries as we embark on our first national conference and confront this very issue, justification, the heart of the gospel with pastor and co -author of Holy Scripture, the ground and pillar of our faith,
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David King, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Founders Conference, Tom Askell, New Testament Research Ministries founder and author of Evangelical Answers, Eric Svensson, the founder of the
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Spurgeon Archive and executive director of Grace to You, Philip Johnson, nationally renowned reformed
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Christian artist, Steve Camp, and the founder of Alpha and Omega Ministries and author, Dr. James White.
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Join us at the Los Angeles, California LAX Sheraton Ballroom on November 6, 2004, beginning at 845 a .m.
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Seating is limited, so order your tickets now at AOMIN .org. That's www .AOMIN .org.
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Answering those who claim that only the King James Version is the Word of God, James White, in his book,
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The King James Only Controversy, examines allegations that modern translators conspired to corrupt
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Scripture and lead believers away from true Christian faith. In a readable and responsible style, author
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James White traces the development of Bible translations old and new and investigates the differences between new versions and the authorized version of 1611.
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You can order your copy of James White's book, The King James Only Controversy, by going to our website at www .AOMIN
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.org. Convictions once held and died for among Bible -believing Protestants are now being reconsidered with the advent of the recent
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Auburn Avenue Movement. Is there currently a common basis for dialogue between Roman Catholics and Protestants?
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Were the signers of ECT correct in their ecumenical efforts and all of the Reformed scholars who opposed them in error?
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Does Trinitarian Baptism make one a member of the New Covenant? Are Roman Catholics our brothers and sisters in Christ?
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Join us in Los Angeles, California on November 5, 2004, for a full three hours of moderated debate between Dr.
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James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries and Douglas Wilson of the Auburn Avenue Movement and New St.
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Andrews College, as these topics are debated between two of the most respected representatives of the opposing viewpoints.
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Additional information and tickets can be ordered at AOMIN .org. That's www .AOMIN .org.
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We are a stand of the ones who wrote the
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Bible. ...of the Internet. Opening Scripture, a hermeneutical manual introducing the exegetical study of the
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New Testament by Patrick Fairbairn. Is it Fair -Bain?
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Is the R silent there, or is it Fair -Bairn? I don't know, but he's dead so I can't ask.
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500 -page hardback and paperback are available.
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Roger Nicole contends it is high time in the midst of controversies in which all kinds of accusations are leveled against the youth of the
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Old Testament by New Testament authors the painstaking work of Patrick Fairbairn and his monumental scholarship be once again taken into consideration.
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Sinclair Ferguson, I have a copy of Fairbairn and often wondered why it hasn't been reprinted. I suspect the title has put off publishers, hermeneutical plus manual being a bit much for today's readers.
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I think Fairbairn was really an extraordinarily able man and a great servant of the church, so I'm enthusiastic about this reprint.
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I likewise sent a little note on it as well. That is what
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I was referring to there, and that is something that I think we need to contact
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Solid Ground Christian Books and see if we can't help to get that out as well and make it available so we will try to do that.
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Let's get back and find out about this practical question from Chuck before we talk to Tim.
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Let's go back to Chuck. Hi Chuck. Hey. Yes sir. The practical question has to do with the different hermeneutic approaches and usually
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I don't have a problem if we're coming from a literal historical grammatical perspective trying to work through the text, work through the grammar and the context and the purpose of the book and all that stuff.
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In your experience, how do you approach interacting and trying to persuade someone of your view when you don't have that common ground, when they're approaching it with a completely different hermeneutic where you don't have that common ground between each other?
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Well, a real practical response that would be to start, especially if you're communicating with them in writing, would be to start treating their writings the way they're suggesting you treat the text of scripture.
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Quite simply, I mean, that's what I did with Harold Camping. A lot of folks haven't picked up my book on Harold Camping for a couple reasons.
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Part of it being, well, you know, Harold Camping obviously and that's what I was going to do. I had a Harold Camping thing.
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Oh man, not that. I remembered anyway so we'll maybe remember it for Thursday but this little book,
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Dangerous Airwaves, contains a whole thing on hermeneutical methodology. You had to have that simply to, you know, to deal with what in the world he is attempting to say in his utterly inane means of dealing with the subject of hermeneutics.
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Let me look here just really, really quickly. Here it is.
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This is on pages 47 and 48. I went through this and I said, would
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Mr. Camping desire to allow you to use allegorical interpretation on his own writings and teachings? For example,
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Mr. Camping asserted, we read in verse 4, Jesus stood on the shore but the disciples knew not that it was
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Jesus. Now that's a very negative statement because this is a picture of the church and somehow they're not recognizing
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Jesus. There's a major defect in their understanding of what Jesus is doing, what Jesus' program is.
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I said, let us first apply sound principles interpretation this passage. Mr. Camping is talking about the end of the church age as he interprets it.
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He is drawing from John chapter 21, verse 4, which then determines the context in which to read his comments. He is speaking of Jesus and his post -resurrection appearance to his disciples that is recorded in John 21.
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Mr. Camping understands the statement that the apostles did not know it was Jesus standing on the shore is a negative thing for he believes the apostles as a group are acting as a picture of the church in this passage.
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He believes this means that in this particular picture the church is not recognizing Jesus as it should. He believes that this picture presents to us a major defect in understanding the church as to what
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Jesus is doing at this point in history. They did not understand what Jesus' program is. So there's where I am listening to Camping and I'm saying, okay, this is what
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Camping is actually saying in his own context, but that's using grammatical historical interpretation.
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But now let's ignore the basic elements of interpretation and see if we can find the same passage from Mr.
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Camping. What is really being said here? Well, based upon my study and my spiritual insights, I understand
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Mr. Camping to be addressing family radio. When he says that Jesus is staying on the seashore, we know the seashore is made of sand and often the world's population is represented as the sand of the sea.
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So this is referring to a time when Jesus stands over the entire population of the earth reigning as king. This refers to the time when the gospel of the kingdom is being preached across the world, of course, and the gospel is preached in the church
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Christ's body where he reigns as king. So the time frame the word is referring to is the time when God grants success to his church.
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The disciples represent the leadership of family radio for, of course, they're in a boat fishing. Family radio has always thought to be fishers of men, so obviously the
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Word of God is telling us that here the apostles are a picture of the board of family radio who continue to attempt to win souls the fish.
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But there's a problem. They do not recognize Jesus standing as king in his church over the population of the world.
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They're ignorant of the close connection between Jesus and his church and as such they remain separated from him trying in vain to gather souls outside the
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God -ordained means that we see so clearly here in the Bible. So that is just as valid an interpretation as Harold Camping always presents of anything.
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He can just pull stuff out of the air. So when someone, in your situation, says, well, you know,
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I want to use these other forms of hermeneutics and things like that, the fact of the matter is here's really where I think we can sort of use some insights that Van Til gave us and that is
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God created us in his image. Man continues even though it has been twisted and covered over in a face in some ways.
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The common ground of apologetics is, in point of fact, the image of God.
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And so we recognize when someone is misusing our words.
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We recognize that when we spoke words, we spoke them in a particular context and we expect it to be understood within that particular context.
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That lays the foundation of historical grammatical interpretation. And if someone reads my emails or reads my letters and ignores all of that,
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I'm going to become very, very much annoyed in the process. And we all will. There's no one, not even the wildest postmodernist, is going to accept someone so completely twisting their words.
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Right. I've encountered that with deconstructionists who don't like it when you, in turn, deconstruct their writing.
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Exactly. Just on a practical level, I've found that to at least give you a basis for saying you are being grossly inconsistent.
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Now their worldview may be that they find that to be a good thing. Right. They may go, well, yes
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I am and isn't that wonderful and that's my truth. And at that point, it's sort of like when
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I was much younger and I was looking a little bit into Christian science as far as studying it and how
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I'd respond to them. I just came to the conclusion that anyone who thinks I'm not really there and that this whole world is a phantom, the only way
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I know to deal with them is to punch them in the nose and say, hey, did that hurt? Okay, good. We now got a place to start. So that's the best you can do there.
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You can have some fun, too. Okay. All right. Thank you, sir. Thanks a lot. Thanks for calling. God bless. 877 -753 -3341.
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Let's now go down to some place that's probably a tad bit on the moist side today and that is
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Tim in South Carolina. Hi, Tim. Hi, Dr. White. How are you? Pretty good. Is it things a little bit on the moist side down there?
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Yeah, I'm out on a job site right now and we've got tons of mud everywhere. But we're seeing blue skies.
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I can see the sky now. There you go. At least you're not in Florida. That's, you know, goodness gracious.
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Thanks a lot. Anyways, yes, sir. What can we do for you? Well, first of all, I just I want to tell you that me and my kids,
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I have children at home, homeschooled, and we have used your daughter's letter as a springboard to speak about issues stem cell research.
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And so your daughter has been, I thank the Lord for using the situation to open up the door for us to discuss those things in light of what the
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Bible says. Well, I'll make sure that she's aware of that. Yeah, let her know that we remember her now in our family time together.
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Okay. Little kids praying for her. But I had a question because in our family time, we're kind of doing some things in church history.
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Yes. And we're, I kind of wanted like a, I guess, a shallow approach of a broad, a broad range covering a long, a long time where you have names, you'd have things that went on, but it wasn't so much in depth.
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And then as interestless people, what went on here? And this and the other, we could go to some other resources. In doing that, we picked up Bruce Shelley's Church History in Plain Language.
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I'm not sure if you're familiar with that. Oh, yes, I am. Okay. He gets to the thing of the
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Baharian controversy. Right. And he brings up the issue of the Trinity.
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And he seemed to indicate that the word person, we would determine that as something different than what they did.
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And in fact, he seemed to indicate that it meant that God put on masks to reveal himself.
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Well, there were those who believed that prior to the Council of Nicaea. He wouldn't be saying that that's what
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Nicaea believed, but that that was one of the illustrations that was used prior to the
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Council of Nicaea by Sibelius and by those who held to what's called modalistic monarchianism, or what would be today the
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Jesus -only movement. Right. And I thought that sounds very much like that. But I guess maybe the way
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I read it, I kept reading back over it, and I thought, well, it sounds like he's saying this is what they came to. And this is what,
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I mean, if I'm not mistaken, he actually says this was Trinitarian thought in the church. And I was just struck by that.
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I mean, he didn't go into great detail. It's only about like three sentences or so. Well, I'd have to, and I think
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I could actually, let's see here. Yeah, I actually could reach it here if you had a page number or something.
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But my gut feeling is, especially in a history book, is that what he's referring to is that that was the conclusion of certain groups, and certain writers.
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And that's true. I mean, you will find a wide variety of opinions expressed within what's called the writings of the early church fathers.
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And some of them are less than orthodox. There's no question about it. You can see that both on the doctrine of God, as well as on the doctrine of Scripture, the doctrine of salvation, especially.
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Is that the case? I mean, I've often likened it to, and it actually was sort of worse in this situation, but I've often likened it.
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In fact, this weekend, I used the illustration. It'd be like going through, having a tornado hit a
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Christian bookstore, and just blows everything apart. And then you just go through randomly, picking up pages from the wreckage, and putting that together and saying, here, here is what
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Christians believe in 2004. And you end up with a page from T .D. Jakes and from Benny Hinn, and next to John Calvin and B .B.
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Warfield. And you're not even going to be able to make heads or tails, but there's going to be some good stuff, but probably in the minority, and you're going to have a lot of really bad stuff in the process.
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So my gut feeling is probably what you're referring to is the fact that there were people who concluded, and there were groups who concluded their viewpoint in a
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Sabellian or modalistic fashion, but that certainly was not what the Council of Nicaea said.
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And that had already been identified as a heresy in the 3rd century, even before the 4th century, where the
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Council of Nicaea takes place. Right. Well, I thank you for clearing that up. Could I ask one more question?
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Sure. It'll probably be a short one. In some of your debates that I've listened to, especially on the issue of God's sovereignty,
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I hear the people, they put the thing together that because the gospel is preached, and their thinking is the whosoever will, that that implies ability.
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And I've heard them say, why would you preach something if people weren't able to respond, or they weren't able to do it?
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I thought what a good thing maybe to help them see where you're coming from is to bring up the law.
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I mean, because I'm sure they would say that those are commands as well, and they would readily agree we can't keep the law.
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And then tie that with like an issue out of Thessalonians, where Paul says that Jesus is coming to judge those who don't obey the gospel.
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Not just an issue of, I mean, obviously believing, but belief leads to obedience. What about that?
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Yeah, I think as part of the argument is that they do assume that to preach the gospel implies this universal capacity or ability, and there are a number of...
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Man in sin is enslaved to sin.
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That's really where their problem is. Their problem is twofold. They've got too low a doctrine of God's sovereignty, and they've got too high a view of man's abilities and sin.
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And so the two together result in this idea that, well, why should you preach?
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Well, my response there is, of course, it's the use of means. God has chosen to utilize us in the proclamation, the message by which he draws his elect into himself.
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He did not have to do that, but he chooses to do that as part of the means by which he brings about our sanctification and his own self -glorification.
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And in none of that do we become the indispensable element that determines whether God's purposes and plans are going to come to fruition.
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But it becomes a means of blessing to us. But yes, I point out the exact same thing, that just simply when people say, well, why would you preach then?
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Well, you know what? Even if I couldn't answer that question, if God tells me to do it, I'm going to do it. That idea of just obedience without necessarily seeing the end result of that seems to be very odd to many evangelicals today, which is a sort of sad thing to really think about.
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But yeah, I think that's a valid point to bring up, is that if they're going to be consistent at that point, and as someone just pointed out in the channel, there are certain individuals, hardcore
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Church of Christ groups, that would say, yes, you can keep the law. But you're talking about more of your standard evangelical who would recognize the inability of man to so do so in sin, but they're actually somewhat inconsistent at that point.
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At least the Church of Christ person is, the old -time Church of Christ person is fairly consistent in his pure Pelagianism and would say, yes, you could, and so on and so forth.
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Well, I appreciate you answering that. I was kind of hoping to hear your Southern accent since I'm from down South. Well, I couldn't tell.
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I don't know. I used it all up when I was down in Texas, but I did start saying y 'all and just...
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Texas is just a whole different ballgame. It's a different ballgame than down here in rebel country.
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Well, let's put it this way. I walked outside the church and there was a pickup truck sitting outside and the pickup truck had a number of stickers on it, but because the pickup truck was so big, it didn't look gaudy.
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It didn't look really bad. One of them was a Second Amendment protecting the other nine and some stuff like...
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What was it? Something about guns and stuff like that. The one I loved was a picture of the
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U .S. flag and the stars and bars and it said,
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Yanks 1, Rebels 0, halftime. Yeah, I sat down at a table with Dr.
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Renahan one day, introduced myself and he said, where are you from? I said, well, I'm from the state where we fly two flags. And he kind of looked at me,
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I kind of feel like he is on the side of the Northern Aggressors. I don't know. The Northern Aggressors.
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That's right. Well, I appreciate it, Nigel. Thank you. Thank you very much. God bless. It was really funny to walk outside.
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And I'll just mention we did a little... The elders and some of the pastors, we took a little journey during the conference one of the afternoons after the things were all taken care of.
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We went to Cheap Ridden Dirt, which is a huge gun store.
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And I had shown them pictures of a certain firearm
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I own and what it does to heretical watermelons and its usefulness in church discipline in a
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PowerPoint presentation before discussing New Perspectivism. I can guarantee you that was the first time that New Perspectivism has ever been discussed following the demonstration of what a 50 caliber
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Magnum handgun does to a watermelon. And so we went to Cheap Ridden Dirt.
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What's that? Cheap Ridden Dirt. And they had the Smith &
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Wesson M500 there. And so all the pastors who had seen me with mine, they had the opportunity of holding it and I think
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I probably engendered a tad bit of firearm lust at that particular point in time that probably wasn't really the best thing to do.
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But we have a fellow... Look, Phibbey, I said heretical watermelon.
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I would never execute an orthodox watermelon. But this was a heretical watermelon.
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And as such, I was just using it as a... Look, it's a sermon illustration. And could a watermelon be used for anything greater than a sermon illustration?
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Okay, that's not really flying too well. But hey, it went over well in Texas. And so that's what we did.
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And we had a lot of fun with it. But I just loved... And I can't remember the other bumper sticker.
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But it was one I had seen before and I really, really liked. Oh good, Phibbey now understands it was a heretical watermelon.
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And that we should, in fact, execute or in this case, vaporize heretical watermelons.
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Oh, and then what I did is we had these little videos. These little cameras.
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I've got the little PowerShot S200 Digital Elf. I mean, this is a couple years old now. But the AVI files it takes are just amazing.
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And we had taken some videos where we shot a two liter bottle filled with water.
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With an AK -47. Which for those of you in parts of the country where you don't have all of the 10, the
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Bill of Rights left. Anyways, the amendments. Has been legal for quite some time.
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And so I videotaped or... That's not even videotaping, that's not even taping.
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It's an AVI file. I recorded shooting this thing with an AK -47.
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I shot it with my .50 caliber Magnum. And I likened it to the difference between Armenian apologetics and reformed apologetics.
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See? And so here you've got heresy. And the AK -47 is like Armenian apologetics.
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And the bottle just sort of jumped up in the air and fell down.
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And all the water came out of it. That's what happened when you shot it with an AK -47. Then I shot another one with the .50
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caliber Magnum. And it just simply vaporized. Just huge explosion. And that's the difference between Arminianism, which just doesn't quite do it.
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And then being consistent with the whole of truth. OK, I'm hearing a lot of clicks out there.
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All the folks back in Massachusetts and Connecticut are going, OK, so much for him.
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He's weird. But I was just demonstrating, you know, relativizing, you know, making your message relevant to your culture.
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See? So when you're in Texas, that's what you do. I would not show those pictures in Massachusetts.
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Or if I did, it would be because the elders wanted to see them. And we'd be hiding over in a corner, making sure that the majority of people didn't see it because they would be so scandalized by them.
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In fact, I'm not even sure. Can you can you carry the video of something like that across state lines into the
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People's Republic of Massachusetts? I'm not really sure. Kennedy and Kerry have probably come up with a way of even trying to ban that,
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I'd imagine. It's odd. But anyhow, we have fun on this program as well.
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Anyhow, I'll try to remember if I can. I've got so much stuff going on. I'll try to remember to pull down the quote from Harold Camping.
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Did we do the Harold Camping thing? Did I play that? I thought I did. Man, you can tell
57:08
I did play some of it. Okay. You can tell you're really traveling too much when you can't remember whether you did.
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I remember downloading it. I remember saving. I remember cutting it up. I just don't remember whether we did it on the program. Last Wednesday night, in fact,
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I'll go ahead and open a browser window here. Hopefully, I'll... Yeah, that's what
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I thought. Familyradio .com. I'll remember now to pull down last
57:33
Wednesday night because there was a statement he made right around 6 .30. I've been listening to him as I've been going into church on Wednesday nights.
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That was just amazing. It truly, truly was. And I wanted to try to play that one for you.
57:46
So I'm going into the open forum section. Even as we speak, the 2004 archives for September.
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This is a fairly navigable website, and that would have been the 22nd.
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I do not want to download that quite yet. And so we'll do that. And hopefully, then Thursday afternoon,
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I'll be able to play that because the 2011 stuff is just... Man, does he ever learn?
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Does anyone ever learn, I guess? I don't know. The 2011 stuff is at full bore and just ridiculous.
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But we'll take a look at that and take your phone calls. And we will see you this Thursday evening, 4 p .m.
58:30
Pacific Daylight Time, 7 p .m. Eastern Daylight Time, whatever it is. Hey, we don't play with our clocks out here.