Discussed the False Teaching of Harold Camping then Calls

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.
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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us. Yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602.
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Or toll free across the United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341.
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And now with today's topic, here is James White. That's how we planned it, that I come in right at that great drum riff there, you know.
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Actually, we didn't plan it that way. In fact, when was Run to the Battle done? That was done a long, long, long, long time ago.
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So we couldn't have planned it that way, but I still like that song. Welcome to The Dividing Line, it's a Monday. And if you're here, it's because you know why we're here.
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So I don't really need to explain it to you anyways, but we're here because tomorrow I won't be. Heading to St.
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Louis to speak at the Founders Conference there. And looking forward to meeting folks.
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We've got folks, and this part is the weird, this is really odd. We have folks from a church here in the
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Valley who left today to drive to St. Louis to hear me speak, but they've never come to my church here where I speak.
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Yeah, think about that one for a second. You know, you look out across the vast expanse of the worship center of the
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Phoenix Foreign Baptist Church. A week ago this Lord's Day when I was preaching both services, and if we had one or two visitors, you know, that was good.
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And yet, I know folks that will drive for seven hours to go hear me speak when
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I travel. What is it about Phoenix? I don't get it.
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It's odd, but hey, you know what? Always have a good time talking about the sufficiency of Scripture.
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How do you just cram it all into three sessions is the question
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I have. But we will be doing that. And then a week from this
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Thursday, heading for the United Kingdom. And we will.
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We're going to do our best. We're going to be on, I think, a week later, right as I'm getting ready to leave.
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And that means I should have the best accent I could possibly have that Thursday. I mean,
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I will have heard. I will have been in England for a full week, and we should be ready to go.
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And I'll bring that back with me, and all the complaints can stop and end, and it will be great and genuine and authentic and all that stuff.
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And everybody's going, yeah, right. Sure. Hey, I mentioned on the blog, and by the way, I have not forgotten.
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There are a couple of series on the blog. Some, like the current one
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I'm doing on Islam, you can do very easily in pieces. You can do with, you know, you've got half an hour.
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You go ahead, and you put together an entry. You know, right now, going through the
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Bentley stuff cited by Saiful and Azmi. And I can do a textual variant fairly quickly.
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Thank you, Carla. Dr. O, your accent is horrible. Thank you very much. But, you know, this isn't
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Star Search or what's that thing, American Idol or whatever. I can do those very quickly.
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Some of these series, you just can't do that. You can't just take half an hour out and write one little section.
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You have to write an entire portion that would be multiple blog entries.
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And that frequently takes a pretty big chunk of time. And so it's, you know, some of them have fallen by the wayside.
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But I've got a stack of books next to me and a stack of printouts. I've got stuff on particular redemption.
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And I also have been informed by multiple ways. You know, when someone makes sure that you get informed a number of different times that they have responded to you in some fashion on the
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Internet, they probably are the folks that are really trying to, you know, get some blog entries for themselves type of situation.
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And it's starting to get to the point where I have to look at them and I really have to ask the question, where is the cost benefit here?
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Where is the line? The benefit to the people of God to see error refuted and truth exonerated over against false accusations against it.
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That's one thing. And then that's the benefit part, the cost being giving any type of publicity to certain people, you know.
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Where do you draw the line? And so, you know,
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I've been informed that an associate of Robert's and Jenna's has responded to a section on justification.
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Well, congratulations. I mean, it's not like some Jenna's doesn't have a book on justification out.
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And I don't have a book on justification out. And you can compare the two and, you know, examine the argumentation there.
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But there's a – I think it's about six, seven pages. And I just happened to be looking at it. I printed it out.
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I was going to take it with me, see if there's anything new. And it's sort of like the
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JP Holdings stuff. The older I get, the less – and I won't even use the term enjoyable.
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It's never been enjoyable. But the less, I guess the phraseology, the less stomach I have for dealing with people that are just simply – they like being nasty.
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They just like spitting, you know. They just – they like to roll in the mud and they like to try to poke you in the eye.
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And, A, I just don't think that that is how the issue of the gospel should be handled.
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In fact, I was listening to somebody else. I won't mention any names here. But I was listening to somebody that would be considered primarily, quote -unquote, on my side talking about a controversial subject recently.
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And I just – I flinched numerous times at the terminology that this individual would use.
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It wasn't necessary. You could have said – you could have communicated the exact same stuff in the exact same way with,
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I think, an even greater level of clarity without the nasty part, in essence.
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And so, I don't know. Maybe I'm – as you get older, aren't you supposed to get, you know, like that more than the other way around?
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That's not working for me. Anyway, you look at some of this stuff, and I was reading this thing from one of St.
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Janice's – and they don't have many of them left these days. I mean, they're a pretty small little group and they're off on their own.
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And that's another reason. I mean, if these people represent this really odd view that all the
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Roman Catholic apologists are saying, hey, they don't – they're not with us anymore. They're off on their own and all the rest of that stuff. If you respond to them, the mainline
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Roman Catholic apologists say, well, that's irrelevant because those people are off in the woods on these issues.
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And so, you just go, well – you go, could I say enough that is positive here?
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Could I do something here that's going to help people to see a certain aspect of the truth and maybe communicate it to their loved ones, their neighbors, their friends that they're seeking to share with?
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If so, then go ahead and take your lumps and do what you need to do. And if not, then you just go on from there, knowing inevitably that if you choose – if you say that someone's response is not worthy of a response itself, if you just simply – and this is something
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I've had to learn a lot recently – you have to trust that good people are going to be able to do good reading.
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You just – you can't force everybody to hear the truth. You just can't do it. Life is too short, and you just – you can't do it.
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If you make that decision, that person is going to crow. They're going to – they're going to, oh,
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I got you. I refuted you. And, you know, we've had a guy – he's banned now, but we had a guy that came to the channel.
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He didn't last in Professor Paul Gann very long. We kicked him over to apologetics, and he was there, I don't know, maybe for a week.
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And eventually I just got sick and tired, and everybody else did, of the same old, same old, never hear a word you said.
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Hey, Pete's in the channel. Hi, Pete. Never hear a word you said, just absolutely bloodying your forehead on the wall, just no communication here, just the same repeated blah, blah, blah, blah stuff.
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And so I've banned him, and, in fact, he keeps sneaking in. He snuck in again last night, and I've set it up now to I will see him when he comes in, and he's going to go bye -bye real fast.
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But, you know, eventually you just go, enough, enough already. There's just no reason to go back over the same ground over and over and over and over again if you're not going to listen.
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And you just have to trust that eventually – and he was one of those folks. He goes, ah, see, you know, if you all aren't coming over here to talk to me, it means
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I've refuted you. Just give it up. So, anyway,
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I'm going to be getting a lot of time over the next three months to have nothing to do but stare at a book or a piece of paper at 33 ,000 or 37 ,000 feet or whatever it is.
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I've got, let's see, 24 plus 50, 60 hours easily.
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Oh, more than 60, now I think about it, in an aircraft. So, you know, we'll get plenty of time to decide which sections to look at and all the rest of that stuff.
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I did, however, on the blog mention I made a mistake. What was
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I doing? It was raining. That's not too unusual these days in Phoenix. And I was driving – why was
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I driving the direction I was – I don't remember now. But, oh, that's right, I was going down to a certain gas station.
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I don't know why I did it, but I hit family radio. I haven't listened to –
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I guess the reason I had been listening to family radio a little bit over the summer was on the way down to church on Wednesday nights, it was on while I was driving, and now that the time has changed, it's not on while I'm driving, down to church on Wednesday nights.
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So, I haven't heard it in a long time. And there's Harold camping.
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Every time you turn the guy on these days, it's the same thing. Every time he's talking about the same thing, it's the church is dead, no one gets saved in the church, the
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Holy Spirit's banned the church, you've got to leave the church, da -da -da -da -da. I mean, talk about cult leader.
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I mean, this guy's got – well, at least Joseph Smith, as I understand, was at least a passionate speaker, if not the most intelligent speaker on the planet.
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Harold camping does not have the passion thing going at all. And so, you listen to these calls, and some of them are trying to argue with him, and you can't argue with Harold on his own program.
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He just turns you down. He'll just – as soon as you get however much he feels comfortable with, he's going to turn you down, and he's going to drone on and then say, but thank you for calling and sharing.
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Can we take our next caller, please? And that's it. You can't – that's not a debate. You can't do hardly anything there at all.
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But worse than the people calling in trying to argue with him are the people calling in who have become sadly mind -numbed robots.
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I mean, these folks, there's no discernment here at all. It's just so sad.
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Anything he says, even if it's just so – and we're going to hear that. It's just outrageously ridiculous.
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It's like, well, Harold said it, so it must be true. Man, that is just so sad, especially when you realize these people used to be in the churches of many of the people who are listening right now to this program.
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You wonder where some of those folks have gone. Think back over the past five years, and all of a sudden you realize, hmm,
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I wonder where that guy went. In fact, as I was – for some reason,
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I don't know if it was the server, what it was, when I was trying to get this clip, I had to listen to the entire hour before it came on.
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And there was a guy – actually, now that I think about it, I was listening to this after this call, but there was a guy who talked about how after this teaching came out and he came to see that the
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Bible taught that the church ages ended, he would go into churches with tracts specifically seeking to warn people to get out of that church.
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I mean, folks, these folks have made themselves enemies. They're enemies of the church. They're enemies of the gospel.
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It's so sad to see this stuff. And so I was listening to this one, and – well,
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I'm going to play this clip, and we're going to respond to it. And – just listen to this caller.
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It is just – it's sad, first of all. But then listen to the responses offered by Camping.
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They are absolutely, positively incredible. Listen to this. Good evening.
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Welcome to Open Forum. Yes, Brother Camping, I have a question for you. Yes. I can't really hear you, but – okay.
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You say that sending out the gospel is that a fast thing?
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Yes. That correct? We deny ourselves and make ourselves available to share the love of God with others.
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That is – and God defines this in Isaiah 58. Now, let me just pause it there because I – it took me a while to catch this because I had no idea this was his position.
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I had never heard him address the issue before. But fasting isn't fasting. Fasting is not denying yourself food.
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Fasting, for Harold Camping, is witnessing. Don't ask me.
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You know, I – at first, I was like, what is he babbling about?
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Did I miss something while passing that last car or something? What is this? And then he goes to – well, listen.
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Right. I guess my question is that I totally understand that. I guess I'm trying to understand that in the light of Matthew 16, verses 16 through 18.
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Matthew 16, verses 16 to 18. Which isn't the right reference. And Simon Peter answered,
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Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. Is that the verse? No, I'm sorry.
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Matthew 6. Oh, Matthew 6? Yeah. Verse 16 to 18. Okay. Moreover, when ye fast, be not as the hypocrites of a sad countenance, for they disfigure their faces that they may appear unto men to fast.
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Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. In other words, now it's –
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Christ so far is talking about physical fasting, where people are bragging to each other about how they went through the pain of not having food and look how bad
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I look and so on as a result of that. In other words, poor me, look how
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I suffer on behalf of Christ. It's kind of that kind of an idea. But he says,
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When thou fastest, anoint thy head and wash thy face. Now why does he say that?
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To be anointed and to have our face washed is a language of salvation.
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Make sure that you are anointed with the Holy Spirit, that your sins have been washed away.
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That's the first requirement for fasting. And what is the fasting?
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That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father, which is in secret.
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In other words, it is God who sees us as we – He is the one who has saved us and prepared us to send forth the gospel.
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Let me stop right there. I just finished going through this section in Sunday School.
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And the context is so clear. The whole point is not that you don't fast.
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There's nothing in the text that transitions from the one meaning to the next meaning.
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What he's talking about is not doing your religious deeds, fasting or prayers or giving or any of that, for the purpose of receiving man's approbation.
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You are to do it with only one – it's a little bit like Steve Camp's ministry name,
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Audience One, an audience of one. You do what you do for an audience of one, and that's
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God. That's your first and foremost concern. The rest of this stuff isn't the issue.
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And it's just so clear. And I guess, I suppose, if I suffered through listening to this frequently enough, maybe there are people who regularly call in and say, that's not what it's saying.
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But again, you can't do that with Harold. Most of these people are just like, oh, okay. I never thought of it that way.
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There's a reason you never thought of it that way. It's like when you listen to Joseph Smith talking about what the
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Bible allegedly said. There was a reason nobody came up with that before. There's a reason when
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LeGrand Richards, one of the apostles of the Mormon Church, quotes Isaiah 29 .4. It talks about his one speaking law of the dust with a familiar spirit.
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And he says, that's the Book of Mormon. No, it's not. That's a demonic spirit. Look it up, man. That's the reason why nobody thought of these things.
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It's because it's wrong. As a matter of fact, you remember that other passage where they said to him, well, why don't your disciples fast?
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And then Jesus said, how can they fast when the bridegroom is still with them? But when the bridegroom has left them, then they will fast.
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And what was he talking about? Well, the fact is that the time to send the gospel out into the world by the local congregations, that gospel explosion that would begin with Pentecost in A .D.
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33, had not arrived yet until Christ, the bridegroom, had gone back to heaven.
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And then, then they began to fast. That is, then they began to send out the gospel in earnest.
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All right, so there you get this utterly explanation as to fasting.
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No connection to the text, but hey, if you've never heard of Harold Camping before,
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I wrote a little book called Dangerous Airwaves, and the one thing you will never find with Harold Camping is sound exegesis because he doesn't know how to do it.
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He's into numerology and all this weird, wacky stuff, and it's way out in left field.
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So you get this weird thing. Now, I don't know if the guy who's called up is friend or foe, but I discover in the next few seconds, in the next minute, he's friend.
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He's a follower. Next 45 seconds, he's going to explain something to Camping that shows,
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A, he has accepted without even the slightest bit of discernment what Camping has said about fasting.
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But then what he says here, and listen, and this is the main thing, listen to what
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Camping says about Christ's church. And I know he's saying, oh, this isn't really
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Christ's church anymore, and the Holy Spirit's left the church, and all the rest of the stuff. He's talking about your church.
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He's talking about your elders, your pastors, your deacons, your fellowship.
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He's talking about you here. Keep this in mind when you listen to what this man has to say.
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Okay, thank you. I actually have another question for you. In my walk with the
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Lord, I've learned that I should be removing myself from the church as a worshiper.
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Now, up until this point, I have worked in the church. I have both worked in the church as a sound engineer, and I have worshipped in the church.
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And now that I know that I'm commanded to come out of the church, I wonder where my position lies as far as having a job at the church.
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I know that you said that it's a dangerous place to be in, but I guess I was looking for a little bit of your...
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Why would you want to be a contributor to a situation that is ruled over by Satan and where God is not working to save anyone?
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Why would you want to be making an assist there? That doesn't follow at all.
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You know that you have to come out, and you can't give any assistance there anymore.
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I don't know why you would want to do that, to help perpetuate something that you have learned yourself.
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I, for some reason, cut off there. Learned yourself is false. Ruled over by Satan.
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The Holy Spirit said that no salvation in the church. And I've heard all this before. I put together an entire presentation on this, presented it a number of years ago at Grace Foreign Baptist Church in Merrick, Long Island.
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He's been saying this for a number of years now, and as most of you probably know, and if you're not up to speed on this, let me just make sure you catch up.
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I even predicted this. Everybody predicts this. I'm not special at this, but I predicted, many others predicted, that what
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Camping would do is once he came out, and maybe he had already decided to do this before, who knows, but it's the way false prophets and false teachers work.
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When he came out with this church age has ended stuff, I said, what he's going to do is he's going to go back, and he's going to rescue his 1994 stuff, and he's going to rework it, and he's going to fit it in to this new teaching.
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And that's what he's done. What he's done is he's gone back and said, oh, see, I wasn't wrong about 1994.
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We just didn't have enough light yet to understand that what was going on in 1994 was the end of the church age, see, and the entrance into the tribulation, and we didn't see the connection here, and now he's come up with a new date for the end of the tribulation, which is 2011.
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Now, don't ask me how you get 18 years between 1994 and 2011.
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That's 17, 17, 18 years, depending on how you count it, but I haven't bothered to even invest the brain cells it takes.
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Yeah, six plus six plus six. That makes sense. That's good. You're starting to think like, oh, you're starting to think like Harold.
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That's a bad thing. Get some sleep immediately and seek medical attention.
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But now it's 2011, and, of course, he's hedged this bet big time. You've been through this before.
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You've done the false profit thing before, and you eventually learn, and maybe 2011 is far enough out that Harold ain't going to be around to have to answer for it one way or the other, but that's what you've got going on there.
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So he's putting all the dates together, and, you know, I'm sure he's going to have – if he hangs around until 2011, then in 2012 he's going to be making the same excuses he was making in 1995, but you're still going to have people who in 2010 and 2011 are selling their houses and they're going to be showing up at your churches and with their little tracts and – right in front of us, there it is, folks.
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You know, we sometimes read books about how the Jehovah's Witnesses acted in 1913 or in 1925 or especially the most recent one in the early 70s, and it's sort of history for most people, even though I remember the 70s one.
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And here it's happening right in front of us. And this guy runs sound at a church somewhere, and most of Harold Camping's people are not coming out of what we would call
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Arminian evangelical churches. When I did that pastor's conference on Harold Camping's new teaching back in January of whatever that was, at least three or four years ago now,
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I think almost every single pastor in the audience was from a Reformed church of some sort.
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And so these people, as we get closer to 2011, are only going to become more emboldened by this whacked out teaching.
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And so when you see someone passing out anything from family radio,
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I don't care if they're ignorant of it, maybe they have a bunch of old stuff from back before 1994 or something.
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Doesn't matter. If you see someone putting out any family radio stuff, any kind of camping stuff, do not hesitate.
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Do not sit there and be a postmodernist and go, well, you know,
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I don't want to offend anyone here. If you're not offended by these statements, you want to be a contributor to a situation that is ruled over by Satan and where God is not working to save anyone.
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That's what he's saying about your church. Your children aren't getting saved.
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Your friends aren't getting saved. The Holy Spirit's gone. Your worship is empty.
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It's dead. It's not pleasing to God. The truth of God is no longer there. Remember, if you're not offended by that, then you're dead.
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You have no love for the church. Hello, earth to everybody. This man should offend you.
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He offends me. And so who should you be more concerned about? Offending this person walking in with the family radio stuff?
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Or the offense to God and to the church of Christ that he represents? So when you see somebody coming in, you see them in a
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Bible study. A lot of them, they're sneaky. They don't just come blowing through the back door, you're old, you need to flee the church.
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You know, there are a few of them like that. These folks are sneaky. They go to the Bible studies. And they get to know people.
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And then they start, they can tell who the disaffected people are. They can see the people who are maybe just on the edge, you know.
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And those are the people they're going after. Those are the people that they're going to slip this information to. Those are the people they're going to try to help them in their discontent.
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And so when you see these people, you go to the elders immediately. And if your elders don't understand it, get them some of Camping's information.
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Play some of this stuff for them. You only have to listen about one night to get plenty of stuff. His stuff's on the web.
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You can grab it and play it for them. So that they have some idea what on earth this man is saying.
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And shut it down. Let me tell you something. A campingite walks into the
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Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. We're going to, A, talk to him. And, B, as soon as they start arguing about it, the statement will be, the door's over there.
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Don't let it hit you on the way out. You protect the sheep. You say, wow.
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You take that rather seriously. Yeah, I do. I talked to those pastors at that conference, and it was heartbreaking.
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This guy's on a staff someplace. This guy's, they're going to show up one morning, and the pastor's going to be sitting in the back trying to put the sound system together, because he's not there anymore.
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We saw churches deeply impacted and damaged by this stuff. You know, we'll get passionate about all sorts of stuff.
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You know, we'll get passionate about the Phoenix Suns being 45 and 14.
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And we'll get passionate. When I was back in North Carolina, my daughter and I had to drive to a certain place about three or four times in one day.
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We kept passing the Seventh -day Adventist Church. And it was a Saturday, so it was their day. And they were having a prophecy conference.
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The people were there for, like, 12 stinking hours. And my daughter kept going, oh, man.
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Every time we drive by, she's just like, oh, that must be torture. 12 hours at a prophecy conference.
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Yee! People get passionate about all sorts of stuff. Why not get passionate about the church that Christ gave his life for?
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How about being passionate about that? You know, I mean, if someone walked up to you and insulted your wife the way that herald camping insults the church, you'd punch them in the nose.
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And rightfully so. But because it's a theological issue, somehow we can't be passionate about that.
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Give me a break. Speaking of breaks, we need to take one. 877 -753 -3341.
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Hey, if you're a campingite, I don't care if we are listening to a clip. I'll break in.
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If you think you can defend this absurdity, call in. But I'm going to tell you something right up front.
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I'm going to hold you to the word of God. We'll be right back right after this. Alaska, the unspoiled land of nature and immensity.
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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 .aomen
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.org. The history of the Christian Church pivots on the doctrine of justification by faith.
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Once the core of the Reformation, the Church today often ignores or misunderstands this foundational doctrine.
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In his book, The God Who Justifies, theologian James White calls believers to a fresh appreciation of, understanding of, and dedication to the great doctrine of justification, and then provides an exegesis of the key
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Scripture texts on this theme. Justification is the heart of the Gospel. In today's culture where tolerance is the new absolute,
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James White proclaims with passion the truth and centrality of the doctrine of justification by faith.
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Dr. J. Adams says, I lost sleep over this book. I simply couldn't put it down. James White writes the way an exegetically and theologically oriented pastor appreciates.
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This is no book for casual reading. There is solid meat throughout. An outstanding contribution in every sense of the words.
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The God Who Justifies by Dr. James White. Get your copy today at AOMN .org.
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Man, every time
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I make some noise. What was that? What was that sound up there you just made there on the web,
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Chaos? Alright, so I have window blinds, okay?
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And it's a really neat program, especially when your Windows installation is like fresh. And they've come up with some awesome skins for Windows.
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Now, if you're stuck with Windows XP and that same old, same old look, I don't know how you do it.
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I could not stare at the same thing all the time, every day.
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It just, it wouldn't work. So I have this program called window blinds. And they've come up with some awesome skins recently.
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A skin is a, all my windows, everything, you know, look completely different.
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See? And they have sounds. And so, for example, when I minimize a window, that's what it sounds like.
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And so I forgot about that. And so I minimized a window. And that's what you all heard was a window going bye -bye.
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And the volume was still up. And that's what that was. And so I'm using, if anyone cares,
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I'm using the GT3 skin. It is really, really sharp. I mean, this stuff is really cool.
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And see, I've got a double monitor setup here. And so what's really nice about it is it's a dark, it's a very dark skin.
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And the backgrounds are dark and stuff. Much easier on the eyes. If you have a bunch of white, you know, bright white windows open on a two monitor setup, this is about blind you.
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And so it's really cool. Do it again. Why in the world would you want to hear that again?
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That doesn't make any sense. It's close, but not quite.
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It's more of a, the Star Trek sound was more of a, you know, thing with the doors. We can come up with that too,
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I assume. We could do that. It doesn't make any sound when you open a window. But anyway, it doesn't look like we have any campingites calling in because Scott from Canada, one of our regulars in channel, who's a little bit like E.
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Nielsen. I don't know if he wears plaid or not, but he's a little bit like E. Nielsen. So he frequently just sort of zooms in with a cool statement, then zooms back out again and hides in a corner someplace.
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Anyway, he asked a sort of rhetorical question. If I was seriously thinking that we had any campingite listeners, how could they survive the excitement?
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It's true. I mean, I modulate my voice significantly more often than Harold does and speak at about 14 times the rate of speed that he does.
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So it would be very difficult for a campingite to listen. I'm sorry. I think we need to get some
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Eeyore clips. Some Eeyore clips, yes. And then play them for campingites and see if they can tell the difference of who's speaking.
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Thanks, Rich. You're going to get the e -mails on this. That's okay. Don't send them to me.
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Don't send them to me. Send those to Chris. Send those to Chris. Because Chris did a song once about campingites.
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I saw it, and it was absolutely hilarious. And I'm going to have to ask him to record that one again because it's only gotten worse since he did it.
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Anyway, it doesn't look like anyone took us up on the offer. I can understand why.
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There, I just did that for Bar -saloo because he was noting I don't clear my throat eight times per minute either, but I just did.
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I can understand why. I mean, yeah, I'm passionate about the subject. You would be we'd be let's just put it this way.
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We'd be up to speed very quickly in this debate. And so I understand why you might not want to call.
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But please hear me say one thing here. All right, the humorous side.
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Watch the sheep. Protect the sheep. Go read
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Acts chapter 20. Listen to Paul's heart as he speaks to the Ephesian elders.
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And when he says men will arise from your own ranks, they're going to ravage the sheep.
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They're going to devour them. That man we listened to in that cut has been devoured. He's a sheep who has been devoured.
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And we're not talking sheep in the John 10 context. We're talking about the flock here. And he's been devoured.
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And camping is the wolf in sheep's clothing who wears the outer garments of the shepherd.
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He wears the garments of the teacher. He uses the language. But he's a false teacher.
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He's a cult leader. He's a heretic. And he is feeding off of the church by literally pulling disciples away and feeding upon them and leaving them as used up, bereft people.
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One of the things we talked about with the pastors is what happens when this movement ends.
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And it will. And when Harold Camping dies, or in 2012, one of the two, this movement ends.
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There is no second generation leadership. There have been a few people who teach for family radio.
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I've listened to them. Responded to one of them once who was doing all this goofy stuff about Galatians and was just completely clueless as to what he was saying.
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But these people don't have the mesmerizing monotone of Harold Camping.
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And Harold Camping's system of exegesis cannot be repeated. No one else can do what
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Harold Camping does. Well, let's put it this way. Anybody else can do what
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Harold Camping does in the sense that you just sit there and you look at a text and you just, whatever odd thing floats into your mind, you connect it to this thing over there and connect that thing over there.
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No connection to the text, no connection to the original context, no connection to the original thoughts of the writer.
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You just throw it all together, and Harold can do that on the fly and do it in a monotone without ever getting excited.
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And so that's what happens, and no one can take his place.
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I assume somebody will be sitting there the day after he dies or the week after he dies, but the movement's going to end.
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Unless, God forbid, somebody comes along and plugs himself in, but that just can't work when you only have one cult leader.
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The second guy up has always got a real problem. So anyway, when this ends, what happens to these people?
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What happens to this guy who was on staff? Does he go back to that staff? How does the staff handle that?
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This is not a new subject, by the way. A little church history here. This was one of the greatest controversies of the early church.
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Not Harold Camping. He's not quite that old. Close, but not quite that old. But what do you do with apostates who come back?
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In that particular context, the issue was due to persecution, and there are all sorts of elements related to different kinds of, quote -unquote, apostasy or compromise under persecution, whether you gave up the scriptures, or whether you gave up something that wasn't the scriptures, but the
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Romans thought was the scriptures, and there was all these fine distinctions. There were schisms, all sorts of tremendously difficult problems in the early church due to the issue of apostasy, and especially, what do you do with people who have, quote -unquote, apostasized?
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And, well, that's what we're dealing with here. What if this guy comes back to his church?
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What does the staff do? How do you handle someone like this? Many of these people have been teachers in the church.
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Do they ever get to teach again? How long are they on probation? What is repentance?
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How do you go through the biblical doctrine of the church and make sure that they have repented of their error and their sin?
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And given that, let's face it, the vast majority of evangelicals don't have an ecclesiology.
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I mean, go with me for a moment. You are the cameraman, and I am the guy with the microphone, and we somehow are able to appear outside a thousand evangelical churches, however you want to define that term, this coming
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Sunday, okay? And we are going to randomly stop folks as they're walking out of church on Sunday morning, and we're going to ask them, what is your ecclesiology?
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What on earth are they going to say? What percentage will even know what the word means?
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I don't know. I really don't know. I'm thinking about it here. You think about it too. Would 20 % know what ecclesiology is?
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I don't know. I don't know. And even if they knew what the word was, would they know what it represented in the sense of being able to answer intelligently?
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And so should anybody care? Should we just say, hey, come on back. Yeah, for a while you said that we were ruled over by Satan, and no one's getting saved here, but hey, it was just a different view, and now you've changed your view, so all's well.
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What do you do? The counseling, the pain in the fellowship that this has caused is simply untold.
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You may be sitting there going, I've never even heard of this stuff before. Let me tell you something.
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In the churches where they have, they know what I'm talking about. They really, really do know what
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I'm talking about, and it's a sad thing indeed. So yeah, I am very passionate about it, and I think
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I have reason to be passionate about it, because, man, you listen to this stuff and you just go,
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I can't believe anyone would be pulled in by this kind of absurd teaching.
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Any person with discernment should be able to sit there and go, wow, where did he get that? That's not what the text says.
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He didn't even bother to attempt to substantiate the connection he just made. Now, some of you are sitting there going, man, that ruins a lot of good preaching, you know.
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Well, it ain't good preaching, is it? We need to change our definition of what good preaching is.
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Good preaching, you should be able to anticipate the next point if you're looking at the same text.
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If the next point is completely unanticipated by the text, then you might have a problem. I don't care how well that point is delivered.
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We need to change our ideas of what good preaching is all about.
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Really do. And good teaching. Hold people to a different standard, a biblical standard, not a utilitarian standard, which unfortunately is what we've got out there.
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877 -753 -3341 is the phone number I have officially ended my rant for today, and I appreciate your allowing me to express those things.
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But please, just keep an eye out, folks. Keep an eye out for people who are going to be promoting this stuff.
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Please, just do so. 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number, and we switch gears here.
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Remember, I can speak. Can you imagine if I tried to do the dividing line as soon as I got to London after flying for 12 hours?
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It would be a pretty sad thing. Coming back is going to be interesting. By the way, I saw the scroll by in Chandler real quick before we take our phone call here.
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Someone was saying we should go two hours today because there's not going to be one Thursday. There is one Thursday. I get home 10, 11, noon, something on Thursday, so my intention is to be here at our regular time on Thursday afternoon.
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I didn't say anything on the blog about not doing that, so that's my hope.
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Obviously, flight schedules permitting, and that's Lord willing, we will be doing our dividing line at the regular time on Thursday, so no reason to tune that one out.
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Let's talk with Debbie in Washington. Hi, Debbie. Hello. How are you?
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Good. Your message is really timely for us today in our neighborhood. We had someone start a
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Christian Bible study when we first moved here, and after listening for several weeks, we realized that they believe something completely different from us, and it keeps coming back to John 3, 5, unless a man is born of water and the
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Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. I guess my question, I have two. One about that, what did
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Jesus really mean by water and the Spirit? They claim that unless you're baptized by water and receive the
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Spirit and speak in tongues, that you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Debbie, let me ask you a question. Do they also attach to that being baptized in the name of Jesus?
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Yes, they do. Okay, so you're talking, the folks are Oneness Pentecostals, right? United Pentecostal Church International, probably, or a related group.
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Right. So you know that they're anti -Trinitarians? Right. All right. We're out of the Bible study now.
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Yeah, but how about everybody else? That becomes the question. It pretty well fell apart when we started using some of the things that you've taught online and listening to some old dividing lines and saying, well, what about this and what about this?
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And Jesus said be baptized in the name when he gave the Great Commission in the Father, Son, and the
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Holy Spirit. What did they say to that, by the way? They just ignore it. They do exactly what you were just saying this other fellow at Campy does.
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They just read one verse here, there, and everywhere to defend their position, and they don't study the text.
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Some of the better UPC folks will actually attempt to attack Matthew 28, 19 through 20 and say that it's a later edition.
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Interestingly enough, they don't have any textual basis for that, but that is one of the directions they will attempt to go.
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But yeah, John 3, 5 is used by all sorts of folks. Interestingly enough, not just by Roman Catholics or by United Pentecostal Church folks or all the rest of the baptismal regenerationists, but by some on the at least
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Protestant side of the block in various and sundry ways will utilize
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John 3, 5 as well. Whenever you look at John 3, 5, you need to once again remember the concept of looking into the backgrounds of passages.
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I think a large portion of scholarly commentaries do recognize that the language that is being utilized by the
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Lord Jesus in talking to Nicodemus, and remember, Nicodemus is the one he's talking to. We tend to think that in John 3,
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Jesus is talking to Americans in English. He was talking to a leader of Israel in probably
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Aramaic or Hebrew. Hence, when Nicodemus heard being born of water and the
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Spirit and entering into the kingdom of God, his mind immediately would have been informed by the most important things that he read, what his context would be.
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What would that be? Well, I would suggest it would be Ezekiel 36, beginning of verse 25, Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean.
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I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you.
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And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you will be careful to observe my ordinances.
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Here we have in Ezekiel, in the same context in which you have the vision of the valley of the dry bones, the vision of regeneration, which of course is what
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Jesus is talking about in John 3. He is talking about regeneration. And there is a long history of this.
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This is the bent of man. Man, when you see the freedom of God and regeneration that is found in John 3, it's funny how people will look at John 3, 5, but they won't look at John 3, 8.
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The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going. So is everyone who is born of the
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Spirit. Here you have the very definition of what Jesus is talking about, but it's placed in the context of freedom.
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It is God who is the one who causes regeneration. I'll be very honest with you.
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Our Arminian friends who limit regeneration to being the result of something
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I do miss the point of the passage. The point of the passage is the freedom of God. It's God who takes out the heart of stone.
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It's God who gives the heart of flesh. A heart of stone doesn't believe first and repent first and then as a result.
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It's amazing to me that people actually believe hearts of stone want to be removed. So they are going to do the things they need to do to become a heart of flesh.
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I sit here at times and just shake my head. That's the whole emphasis that Jesus has here.
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So while there is a long tradition in the history of the church of people who, as Paul predicted, there is this constant,
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I want to insert myself, I want to insert myself, I want to find a place in the flesh to have a part in salvation here.
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So I'll give God 99 % of the glory, but I get 1 % of it for myself.
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Because of that, there is a long history of people reading this passage and seeing the water and going, ah, that's baptism.
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That's what you've got going on here. And how on earth would
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Nicodemus have understood that? That wouldn't have been a part of his experience. That wouldn't have been a part of his understanding of either the background.
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That's not what the language would have suggested to Nicodemus at all. It would have suggested to him this promise in Ezekiel that Jehovah is the one who is going to undertake this complete change in the hearts of men, parallel to Jeremiah 31, the new covenant.
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The prophetic promise of this God -centered, free, sovereign act of redemption of his people.
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And that's what Nicodemus would have heard. That's what we need to hear, not an
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Americanized version of non -Trinitarians who don't even believe that the person who is speaking here was a truly divine person, was actually divine and human together.
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They believe it's the Father indwelling the Son, who is a physical body that was born in Bethlehem. So it's a completely different context there.
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That's where they missed it. Right. Okay. That's great. Thanks. Oh, you're most welcome. I'm glad that you all had some discernment because this kind of thing starts.
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And I don't know if any of the folks that were in that Bible study have been influenced by it as far as the doctrine of the
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Trinity and stuff like that goes. But I hope if there are, that you can be of some assistance to them. Well, some of them are coming to our house now just to say, well, when you argued that, why did you think that?
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Good. We're working on it. There you go. Well, time to step up and get used to it.
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That's a good thing to do. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. All right. God bless. Bye. All right. Well, we get such good callers around here.
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Gary and Channel, who did call last week, but he's the monosyllabic Minnesotan.
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The monosyllabic Minnesotan. I like that. We love Gary and we pick on Gary. Gary was mentioning that that was a good program last
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Thursday. I said, no, we just had good callers with excellent questions that get you on to good stuff.
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It really is incredible what we've done here over the past number of years.
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What we've done with so little. It's just a real blessing. It's exciting to me when you think about it,
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Gary. It's okay, Gary. I'm sorry. I know you use multiple syllabic words.
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I was thinking about this a few weeks ago. Obviously, you were from Minnesota, too. I'm just laughing too much.
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Get yourself in a big grin and try saying multiple syllabic, multi -syllabic words. I was thinking,
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I don't know why this thought hit me, but some of you might think that when I keep talking about the channel, that this is something that's sort of like Rush Limbaugh 24 -7.
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You have to buy it or something. You don't. It's free. Everybody in there, believe me, we let anybody.
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We've got some folks in there. We let anybody in there.
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I'm just looking down the thing here, realizing how many people I could offend in such a fast manner.
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We have Americans living in Canada. Why they are, I don't know. We've got
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New Jerseyans. We've got two New Jerseyans in the channel. Talk about us being really open to things.
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We have two New Jerseyans. Anybody can get in. Just hit the website. It's easy to do, and it is fun during the program.
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Sometimes I see what's going by. Sometimes I don't. Whatever. No, it is not a subscription -only service or anything like that.
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Plan is Thursday afternoon, regular time, Lord willing, after we're there in St.
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Louis. If you're in the St. Louis area, the information is on our website. Come on out and say hello. We'll be talking about the sufficiency of Scripture.
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Thanks for listening today. God bless. Oh, wait.
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We must contend for the baby father's rock wall. We need a new Reformation day.
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Brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries. If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.
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Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the
59:54
World Wide Web at aomin .org. That's A -O -M -I -N dot O -R -G. Where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.