April 22, 2004

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World, from the 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. And good afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is indeed
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James White. We are coming to you live today from, as we say, call it the desert southwest, where it hasn't really gotten hot yet, thankfully, but I know that it is coming our direction.
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877 -753 -3341 is the phone number. We will be taking calls probably the last half hour of the program.
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We've got a couple things, sort of like we did last time, we sort of mixed things up. First half hour we did some discussion of some important topics, and then the last half hour we took phone calls.
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That is not to be construed as meaning that the phone calls are not important. I want to make sure that I cut off anyone right at the beginning who would call in and argue that that's what
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I was saying, because that's not what I was saying at all. Anyway, some of you will recall that about a year ago, a little bit more than a year ago now, as I discussed various and sundry things on the program, one of the things
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I mentioned was that, of course, we were moving into Iraq at that time, and I mentioned, and I hope that this was,
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I mentioned this, I didn't get any strong reactions out of them when I mentioned it, but I mentioned my two marine majors, which sounds sort of funny,
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I realize that, but there were two gentlemen that I had met via the Internet prior to the outbreak of hostilities over there, and lo and behold, they both ended up enjoying a wonderful time in the desert, and so they somehow had access to the
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Internet, which I found to be just so very odd. There were a couple times that I would send an email over there, and man,
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I got a response back faster than the folks who lived around here, and that just sort of made me go, you know, the world has become a very, very, very odd place, but I got an email a couple weeks ago, and lo and behold, one of those marine majors was going to be joining with me today, and was going to be coming out here to Phoenix, coming to church this coming
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Sunday, and I said, hey, you know what, why don't you, if you can get away, if you've got an opportunity, why don't you come over, observe the dividing line, and so I am very happy that that has worked out, that I guess the instructions
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I gave for driving were of acceptable quality. Then again, Major, were you, did you have to, which one of the two majors that I was talking to had to go with a lot of the convoys?
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Was that you? I went on several. You went on several convoys? Yeah, Rich spent most of the time down in Kuwait, so I always give him a hard time about that.
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That's right, so you're the one that got to go up into Iraq a lot, and so did
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I give better instructions than you got over there, or what? Well, I didn't end up in Fallujah.
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That was the important part, I guess. Now, if I ask anything that you're not supposed to talk about, just say whatever you want to say, and start singing the
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Marine hymn or whatever you want to do at that particular point in time. But now, how did you find out about this little teeny tiny webcast, and this little teeny tiny ministry out here in Phoenix, Arizona, anyway?
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You know, I think there's a, I should probably back up a little bit, there's a group of about four majors, actually, several, probably about two, three years ago, and I don't even remember how it got started, but we met each other over the
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Internet. Two of us know each other, Rich, Lino, and myself, but all of us have a reformed background, and we started debating topics over the
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Internet. Two of the guys I actually have never met in person. Well, this is the first time we've met, too, so that's sort of how that works.
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And somehow, actually, one of them was not reformed at the time, but he was a great fan of Dave Hunt, of all people, and actually,
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I was very new to the reformed faith. I came from a very mixed background, but lately, of Calvary Chapel, and so fairly new in a lot of the reformed doctrine, but so we got into this huge discussion about Dave Hunt, and one of your debates came up, and so we ended up finding your website.
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Was it the one that he and I had on the radio? I believe so. It's one of them that's on your website now.
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Yeah, that's straightgate .com. That's, okay, Stephen Luker's website. Yeah, all right. So that, and I think, actually,
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I think Rich was the first one to email you, and we were, I can't even remember what we were debating about. I don't know if it was, boy,
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I don't remember, but one thing led to another, and then you answered back, and it just kind of tumbled from there, and of course, when we were in Iraq, we were starved for talking to anybody.
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Oh, yeah. There you go. So, hey, I was, it's, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch. No, but actually, your website's been, it's been great.
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I mean, it's spurred a lot of really healthy debates, and one of the guys, in fact, really came to, he's now, he's going to Reform Church and has really turned his life around, and a lot of, his
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Christian life was very, he was a very young Christian, had a lot of questions, so it's been very, very good.
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It's been a real blessing. Just briefly, what is it like, you're in, you're on war footing.
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We know that there were a couple incidents of, I know one, we all heard about the one incident where a grenade was thrown into a tent of sleeping people and stuff like that.
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I mean, so you can never really completely relax. I mean, I seem to remember you guys mentioning that you had to have the, you were all excited the day that you could take off the flak vest, because it was like 130 stinking degrees out there and things like that.
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And so, you can never really completely relax, but obviously being a Christian in the
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Marine Corps in general and armed services in general, but especially being a
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Christian who has a theological, a concern for theology, a recognition that, you know, truth is important, and yet you're in this situation where, you know, pluralism is almost expected of you.
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And now you're in a Muslim country. I mean, were there any situations that arose over there that you can talk about that really challenged you in that realm of being consistent and where do you draw the line and stuff like that?
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Well, you know, it's, I talk about a weighted question. You know, we had, war is something
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I guess you never really plan on being a part of. I mean, you train for it. I've been in the
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Marine Corps for just about 15 years. And so, you plan for it, but when you actually get there and do it, everything becomes a little more crystal clear.
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And I'll tell you, being in that situation without knowing
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Christ, I can't imagine. Because you're faced with, you see so many things that, you know, whether it's dead bodies or violence or whatever that you don't see on a regular, on a day -to -day basis.
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Plus, you're thousands of miles from home. You've got, as an officer, you're in charge of, in my case, you know, hundreds of Marines.
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And they're all, you know, you're in a nasty country. You're eating nasty food, and it's hot, and it's, you've now been, you know, when the war actually started, we'd actually been over there for a couple months.
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So, you're already, you know, you want to get it started. You know, it's kind of a macabre thing to think, but you wanted the war to start just so we could get it done with.
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Right. You know, for me personally, I think the biggest strength, kind of the motivation to be strong in my faith was that I had so many people looking up to me.
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And whether I was, you know, I wasn't really witnessing to them per se on a daily basis, but I really saw my witnesses being strong in character and being, you know, a man of integrity.
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And being strong in the face of all that, you know, not losing my nerve and being uplifting for my troops.
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It was, it's tough. You know, I remember a couple of experiences. We had the first week of the war.
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We had, we started getting some casualties. We had a lot of, we had a lot of Iraqi, actually, bodies, if you will.
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I had never personally had to deal with, you know, a dead person before. And it's hot.
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We had no refrigeration. So, you know, the question is how do you, what do you do with this? Right. And it's not every day you have to deal with, you know, a rotting corpse.
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Right. And I remember I grabbed an officer of mine and we just went, we just went and buried him.
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And there was this big concern over, well, you know, because they're Muslim, it's like, you know, how you face their body.
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Right, yeah. And I remember at the time I had such a cold, I wasn't looking at these as human beings.
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It was just bodies, you know, and it was, and I remember stepping back for a second and going, yeah, this is really sad.
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These guys, these guys died and, you know, they were Muslim. They had no, they're in hell right now.
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And so it was, it was pretty. Sober. Yeah, it was, there were periods like that that were very sobering.
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Yeah, I imagine. But the, you know, it was, I'll tell you, the biggest strength was the hundreds of, literally hundreds if not thousands of people praying for us over there.
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I got emails and letters from people I never met. You know, whole classrooms of kids, kids sending me all these drawings.
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I felt bad after a while because I felt like I had to reply to everybody. But, you know, it was overwhelming. I would get so many cards of encouragement.
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Well, I'm awful glad that it was a very different situation for a lot of the men that came back from Vietnam.
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And I'm awful glad that that wasn't the situation there. But was there, were there any restrictions on, did you see anything to where basically
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Muslim sensibilities were having to be balanced against your freedom to be a
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Christian? Not so much in Iraq. In fact, I was a little bit surprised because we had chaplains, of course, with us.
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And I know during the first Gulf War, there was a lot of concern about wearing crosses or having a
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Bible around. But you didn't see that in Iraq. Now, in Kuwait, there was a little more of a sensitivity toward keeping, you know, keeping worship services in certain places within a base, of course.
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They actually have restrictions against worshiping out in town and that kind of thing. But, you know, really in Iraq, especially, you didn't see that.
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But if anything, I thought there was pretty much a real good freedom for the chaplains to get around it.
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It was a very good witnessing opportunity for the chaplains. I met some chaplains there who were just, you know, they worked their tail off 24 hours a day, seven days a week, doing whatever they could to comfort the troops.
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So it was a good ministry as well. Well, great. Excellent. Now, there are still a bunch of guys over there.
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And do you have, I would assume there's a number of folks you know that are over there at the moment?
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Yeah. Yeah. Actually, the unit I was with, I came back, let's see, June last year.
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The unit I was with has gone back over there. So a good chunk of the same
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Marines who worked for me are back over there. And it's a little bit better now. Actually, it's a lot better. They're on, for the most part, they're on built -up bases.
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They're in buildings. They have air conditioning. They eat real food. They can watch cable TV. It's not like it was when we were over there.
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I always give them a hard time when they get back. We had it rough, and I'm thinking, yeah. But, yeah,
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I've got quite a few friends over there, actually. Yeah, I bet. Well, you know, I was mentioning to you just before we got started that I've just come in contact, certainly the way
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I got in contact with you guys, there's a gentleman over there,
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I'll just give his last name is Decker, he's a SEAL. And I'm praying for him.
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I'm hoping to hear from him pretty soon. I told him to drop me an e -mail as soon as he got in the theater once he could do so,
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I would imagine. And you were involved in communications, so you were around computers and things like that.
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Is it a little bit harder for a guy who's out there and he's in a combat unit that's specifically sort of front line, is it a little bit harder for that kind of person to communicate than it was for some others?
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Well, like I said, right now they've actually done a lot of things to make it a little bit easier on the troops over there.
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So they've set up, I guess you'd call it like an Internet cafe at different places where you can actually sit and get online.
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Cool. There's a lot more phones. I believe they actually have phone kiosks now over there so you can call home.
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It's a little bit, like I said, it's not as much of a war footing as it is. They're operating from bases, so there's a little more, some of the comforts of home.
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Of course, it's hard for people to understand just how awful a country it is over there.
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The heat and the sand and it really is, it truly is a third world country too. I don't think a lot of people realize that either.
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Now, you were talking about some kind of special bug. Boy, I'll tell you, they have lots of special bugs over there.
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I think that the most ferocious looking thing they have over there is called a camel spider. It's actually related to a scorpion, but it's just a wicked looking thing.
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It's got, I think, four huge fangs. It's not poisonous, but they're really fast.
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In fact, they run to the shade, so it looks like they're chasing you. We saw a few of those, a lot of scorpions.
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It seems like everything over there is nasty. There's nothing cute. It's a really nasty, big, stinging, either snakes, bugs, or something.
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I think you sent out a picture of one of those things, and it was like, that does not look like something I want to find in my bunk with.
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Not at all. Well, hey, I really appreciate the fact that you guys kept in touch.
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It obviously made it more of something that, you know, war has changed.
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I mean, I'm sort of a World War II aficionado, and I think of what took place at Midway and the
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Marines working their way up through the Solomon Islands and all that took place in the
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South Pacific. And you didn't have what we have today. You didn't have that kind of instant communication.
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You only heard about these things days or even weeks after they took place. Now, you know, you've got satellite phones and things like that right there on top.
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It's really changed the character of things. But even with that, it's still something on a screen, and if you don't know someone who's specifically there, it sort of changes it.
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So it was, you know, it was, for me anyway, we had the picture of you and Jay up on the refrigerator.
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What am I thinking of? I'm thinking, duh. We had the picture of Rich, you and Rich, up on the refrigerator.
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And so every day, well, in fact, during the summer, every few minutes, as you get in the refrigerator looking for cold water, there's these two guys, and you all stand.
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I think it was when you were still in Kuwait, but the two of you were in the picture there together. And so we kept you in our prayers, and it was nice to hear.
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I started hearing in your e -mails, well, we're hearing that we might get to go home soon.
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And it's just like both from you and Rich, it was just like really obvious that you could see that it's like, we're going to get out of here.
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We're going to eat real food. It's going to be so wonderful. And it was a lot of fun. So I really appreciate the fact that we knew about stuff that was going on over there.
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And I hope, I hope, I hope you don't have to go back over there. But if you do,
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I hope it's to a nice space, and it's during the winter. How's that? Because out here, the winter is nice.
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And I would imagine that maybe, is there any time of year that's a little nicer than others?
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Well, you know, they say it's a dry heat over there. Well, that's what they say here, too. Actually, you know, it wasn't too bad when we got there in February.
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It was like 80s. And it was actually pretty cold at night. You'd have to sleep in your sleeping bags and stuff. Oh, yeah. Yeah, but I think by the time
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I left, it was pretty much 130 every day. It's hard to describe. I felt 122.
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I felt 122. And I cannot imagine being in a tank at 130. I just,
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I don't understand that. Well, mix in that with the dust.
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I'll tell you, I've never been so happy to get on a plane in my life when we got out of there.
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It was the happiest flight I've ever been on. It was great to come home. Well, thank you, sir. I should mention that in the channel, especially when we first brought you on, there were all sorts of comments.
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I'm scrolling back here to look at some of them, but all sorts of comments. Thank you,
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Major. Thank you. Thank you for your service. I know you're not wearing your uniform right now, but when you are in uniform, do you get a lot of sense that folks back here appreciate what you all did?
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Yeah. It was, when we got back especially, I was almost overwhelmed.
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I remember coming back, and at the time we were living, I was stationed at Camp Pendleton, and just about any store we went into,
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I mean, we had people who would say, oh, no, you don't even have to pay for that. Just thank you. It was really kind of neat.
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I guess you talked a little bit about the people coming back from Vietnam, and it certainly was 180 degrees out from that.
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It made you feel proud to be in uniform, and it was neat. I really enjoyed it.
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I remember the first week, I was over at the Metro Center, and I saw some of the guys from the recruiting station sitting over there, and they were in uniform.
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And when I got done eating, I went over, and I just stuck my hand out, and I just said, thank you for your service.
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And you would think I had just handed them a $500 bill or something. And they were almost embarrassed.
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It was almost like, wow, thank you, sir. It was really neat, and I was hoping that my going over there, other people would do it, and I did see people stopping them.
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And so it at least is different than it was then, and I hope it remains that way in the future too.
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So, Major Jay Storms, thank you very much for stealing Rich's microphone over there and for all you did while you were over there.
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I hope you don't have to go back, but if you do, I hope you get to go during the nice time of the year.
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Hey, I appreciate it. It was a pleasure to be able to come out and see you. And I hope, you know, drag
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Rich out here sometime so that we can get a picture of the three of us and I can prove that I'm almost the same size as Marines.
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It's fairly close. You guys would just run me more. I'd probably be a little lighter than I am now.
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Thanks for joining us on the Dividing Line today. I really appreciate it. All right, thank you, Jay. God bless. God bless you. All righty. 877 -753 -3341.
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At one point there, I'd get two different e -mails back at times.
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It is sometimes hard to keep track of who was where and who was doing what, and maybe that was purposeful. I don't know. But it's great to get a chance to meet folks that you've corresponded with for a long, long time.
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And let's face it, some of us have some interesting relationships with folks. You know, we've never met a lot of folks, even in the channel right now.
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I'm looking at people who are talking. And we never even had a chance to meet some of these folks.
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So anyway, 877 -753 -3341. I need to do a review here before we get too far into the program because the fact that I've heard we get e -mails.
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Where do we get e -mails? And I knew this book was coming out. I had heard about it while it was in preparation.
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There's actually two books, Why I'm Not an Arminian and Why I'm Not a Calvinist. IVP has put these out.
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I guess that's sort of their version of the Dave Hunt debate that we did with Multnomah.
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And this is 230 pages, so it's not overly long. It's not massive. And I got it.
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This is Jerry Walls and Joseph, I think it's Dongel, or is it Dongel? I'm not sure where to put the emphasis on the right syllable there.
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Both of them are professors at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky.
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And this is, of course, Why I'm Not a Calvinist. On the back it says, What's Wrong with Calvinism?
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And there are some interesting comments on the back. You might ask, okay, how do you evaluate a book?
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Well, there's a number of books. I've got some huge books sitting around here. I've got a number of books against Calvinism.
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And so when I get these tomes, and some of them are 600 -700 pages long, what do
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I look at? The first thing I look at is the Scripture Index. And I look at key passages.
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And it's real simple. Maybe I'm just not all that bright. Maybe I just do things in a very simplistic way.
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But the fact of the matter is, I look at the key texts.
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I look at the key passages. And I find out pretty quickly whether this is a philosophical work, or whether it is a work that has exegetical content to it.
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And so I opened up the back, and lo and behold, there is a Scripture Index. Yay, that's a step in the right direction.
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And guess where I went first? Well, where else would I go first? I went to John Chapter 6. And I found
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John 6, 37 through 40, page 120. And so I turned to page 120.
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And I looked all around page 120, and there's nothing about John 6 there.
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And so I looked at 119, 118, 117.
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Maybe it's typo. Maybe 102. I don't know, nothing there.
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I went the other direction, 122. Actually, there's nothing about John 6 anywhere near page 120.
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That's not a good way to start a review of a book, is that the Scripture Index isn't right. All right, well, let's see.
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John 6, 37, 75 and 77. Page 75 and then 639 is pages 75 and 77.
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644, page 75. 645, page 77. Sounds like that's where it's going to be. So I went to pages 75 and 77, and nothing there.
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But I went ahead, and I finally, on page 73, I found the discussion of John 6, 37, 39, and 44.
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So point one, Scripture Index, not too good, not working too well.
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But I found it, and I started looking at it. I'm just going to read it to you.
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And I don't know, what can I? I need to read it to you so you won't think that I'm just misrepresenting these things.
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There's a little quotation of 6, 37, 39, and 44. So you just cut the main, just a couple of phrases out, put them together.
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Calvinists detect in these words support for the belief that God has already selected those particular individuals he wishes to save.
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It will be these and these only whom God will draw to Jesus for salvation. All others will not be drawn and will therefore have no ability to see who
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Jesus really is or to believe in him. Many contemporary Arminians may puzzle a bit over these verses since their view of fallen humanity doesn't necessitate
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God's gracious work to make faith possible. So obviously before this, the authors have drawn some distinction between their view and what sounds like sort of a hard -line
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Pelagian view. And so they want to make sure that they are emphasizing the need for some kind of work of grace for salvation to take place.
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Classical Arminians strenuously affirm the necessity of God's drawing grace but insist that such grace is universally and dynamically active in the
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Spirit's work among all peoples. We have already explained why we find the contemporary
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Arminian view unacceptable since it underestimates the binding and blinding power of sin.
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But neither of the other explanations accounts to the larger context of these verses. Against the classical
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Arminian explanation, it must be noted that Jesus was addressing hostile Jewish leaders who were in fact rejecting the teaching of Jesus.
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We must conclude then that Jesus' claim that the Father must draw any who would come to Jesus stands as the precise explanation for why these very hearers had rejected
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Jesus. The Father had not drawn them. It will not do, therefore, to imagine that the drawing
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Jesus has in mind here is a universal drawing of all persons toward salvation. Now, what's significant about that?
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Well, what is the first response that everyone gives to John 6? Well, it says over in John 12, 32, that if I be lifted up,
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I will draw all men unto myself. And so this drawing is universal and therefore this passage isn't particular about election or predestination.
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Well, they're saying that won't do, but don't get too excited yet. But the
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Calvinist reading likewise fails to account fully for the context. Now, I'm hearing this more and more.
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This was offered as a response. It follows a little bit what you have in Lenski.
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It follows what you have in other classical Arminian works. So if you want to hear, we're going to go ahead and skip the break because I took...
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If that's all right, okay, thanks. We're going to go ahead and skip the break and move on. The Calvinist reading likewise fails to account fully for the context.
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Jesus is locked in strenuous debate with religious leaders who claim special knowledge of and standing with God.
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Now, follow this along because this is, like I said, this is probably the quote -unquote best response.
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And once you got the best down, well, there's not going to be much else that's going to be offered. From this privileged position, they seek to discredit
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Jesus completely. Their implied charge essentially involves an attempt to sever Jesus from God, affirming the latter while rejecting the former.
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That's put in italics, by the way. In doing this, they wish to establish the right to claim, We know God intimately, but you are utterly alien to us.
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We stand in right relationship to God, but we completely reject you. Now, one thing that's interesting to note is that John 6 does not say
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Pharisees, Sadducees, Scribes. These are the people who heard the message the day before.
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And so, a certain assumption is being brought into the text at this point. Jesus' countercharge strikes directly at the root of their authority, the presumption that they knew
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God in the first place. You have never heard his voice, nor seen his form, nor does his word dwell in you. John 5, 37 -38.
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What I'm discovering is that this one argument that comes from Schenck, and it's also sort of a little bit mentioned or relied upon or noted in Lenski's commentary, just a tad.
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This is the idea, is that the context of 6 is 5. Well, of course, 5 comes before 6.
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But in the narrative, there is a clear distinction between the two chapters.
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In fact, the context of John 6, beginning in the 30s, around that section in Capernaum, is the previous day's ministry, the feeding of the 5 ,000, and Jesus' rejection of their wanting to come and make him king.
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Well, instead of seeing that as the primary context, chapter 5 becomes the primary context, and the
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Jewish leaders and the whole nine yards is there. I would question that immediately from the start. But anyway, far from knowing
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Jesus then, Jesus' opponents had already rejected not only the testimony of John the Baptist, but also of Moses. If you believe
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Moses, you would have believed me, for he wrote about me, but since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say? John 5, 46.
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Well, this was said to the Jewish leaders, but the Jewish leaders aren't the ones in John 6.
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In this question posed by Jesus, we discover the key principle.
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Rejecting God's first offerings of truth will utterly block further illumination. There's the argument.
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Catch this, let me repeat it. In this question posed by Jesus, we discover the key principle.
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Here is how you get around John 6 in an Arminian mindset. Rejecting God's first offerings of truth will utterly block further illumination.
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God will not offer more truth or manifest his full glory, the eternal Son, while light at hand is being spurned.
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In other words, we can't actively reject the Father and at the same time have any chance of accepting the Son. Since the
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Father and Son are one in nature, character, and mission, the rejection of one necessarily involves rejection of the other.
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The fundamental issue of this passage is not that of predestination, but of Christology and the unity of the
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Father and the Son. About chapter 5, that's right, but that's not what's going on in chapter 6.
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That's the problem. These men had not only heard
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Jesus the day before, and liked what he said, and wanted to make him king, but the ones
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Jesus is addressing in John 6 have now taken the effort. They are called seekers, the very same
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Greek term that Paul used in Romans 3. They are seeking after Jesus. They've taken the time to get into boats, cross the lake, and find
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Jesus in the synagogue Capernaum. So this is a complete rewriting of the context.
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And it sounds good. I mean, you can't reject the Father and expect to have the Son, or vice versa. That's perfectly fine.
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John 5, perfectly fine. But that's not the context of John 6. There's a different audience being brought into it.
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I continue on reading. There's only one paragraph left. This is everything the book says about John 6, the entirety.
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You're going to hear the whole thing. You say, but I didn't get any exegesis of John 6 yet.
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I really wouldn't expect that you would. Every book I've ever read doesn't bother to do so.
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The Jewish opponent's inability to come to Jesus did not lie then in the hidden eternal plan of God, but in their own track record of trampling prior light, of having already denied
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God Himself and spurned God's corrective punishment. Had they received
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Moses fully, thereby coming to know the Father to the degree possible at the time, they would already have belonged to the
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Father's flock, and the Father would have drawn them to the Son. But in rejecting
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Jesus, they demonstrate that they had never surrendered to God in the first place, that they had set their faces like flint against all
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His continued overtures. Since they did not belong to the Father's own flock, they wouldn't be part of the transfer of sheep already trusting the
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Father into the fold of the Son, John 6, 37 -39. There's how you get around the elective decree, is that the implied assertion here is, well, the ones that the
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Father gives the Son in John 6, 37, all the Father gives me will come to me, they're the ones who had already demonstrated faith in the
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Father, they had made themselves the Father's flock, they had joined the Father's flock by their acceptance of the teachings of Moses.
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So they then become the ones that are given by the Father's Son, and in reality, all of John 6 becomes pretty much irrelevant to us today, because it only had a historical fulfillment in that particular context.
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Their spiritual vanity came to full light when they imagined themselves as being qualified to pass judgment on Jesus, the very embodiment of all truth, while persistently spurning
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God's lesser lights, Moses and John the Baptist. Were they willing to drop their pretensions and surrender to God's teaching, they would have been taught by God and led on to the
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Lord of life, since Jesus promised that everyone who listens to the Father and learns from Him comes to me, John 6, 45.
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Now, that is probably the briefest and clearest presentation of this argument that I've heard.
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I remember within the past five months, someone trying to present this very argument to me, and it was very difficult to get the point.
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But now, there it is, there it is in clarity. Now, how do you respond to that? Well, that sounds nice, but again, when you try to go into the text, and you try to exegete the text verse by verse, line by line, word by word, you don't come up with this.
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You don't come up with that as the context, and you do not follow the argument when you start asking questions like, all the
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Father gives me will come to me. Well, you see, those are just the ones who have made themselves of the
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Father's flock by believing what He said before. Where does Jesus say that? Where are you getting that from the text?
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And that's why, again, I know I sound like a broken record. I will never become popular with the powers that be if I keep saying this, but you need to start with the text.
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You don't start with your conclusions. You don't start with your framework and then take it to the text.
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You start with the text and create your framework therefrom. Now, I know there are people that, you can't do that.
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No one does that. You can't do that. Well, if you can't do that, then there's really no reason for us to have the Word in the first place, is there?
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But when you start working through the text and you start asking questions of what the text itself is saying, this system is not what suggests itself to you.
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Now, we only have one call right now. Just hold on, Jim. I'll try to get to you if I possibly can.
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What will be interesting for those of you who heard the debate with George Bryson on the
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Bible Answer Man broadcast back in December, most of you will recall that over and over and over again, we attempted, one side tried, to get the discussion to deal with the text in Genesis 50 -20,
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Isaiah chapter 10, and Acts 4 -27 -28. We tried to deal with the issue of compatibilism.
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We tried to deal with what the Scripture says, God meant this, you meant it for evil,
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God meant it for good. Guess what? There is an entire section on Genesis 50.
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Yeah, read my book. I don't have time to look it up right now. Yeah, read my book. That's where I dealt with it when we discovered that George Bryson hadn't addressed these passages.
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Well, maybe what he meant was, read the other guy's book. Maybe that's, maybe we just misunderstood.
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The whole time, what he really meant was, read the other guy's book that's coming out later this year, and that's what he meant.
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I don't know, I've got a copy. Do you ever see George Bryson's book?
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It's underneath the, see right there? If you pick up those pieces of paper, you'll see a, there it is right there.
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I'll let Major Storms look at George Bryson's book. You wouldn't believe what I had to go through to get that thing.
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Isn't it wonderfully made? I'm sorry. I'm having to sort of keep an eye on the
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Major, because I just want to remind everybody he's a Marine. And Marines are a little odd, okay? And he was threatening me earlier that he was going to start chanting
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King James only slogans in the background. So I just got to keep an eye on him. He's not armed and I am.
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So anyway, a biblical example. This is page, for those of you who get the book, page 149 of Why I'm Not a
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Calvinist. We finally get an explanation for Genesis 50. He's a Marine.
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He's armed everywhere he goes. He's a loaded weapon. Well, that's what they want you to believe anyway.
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So, all right. We will conclude this chapter by considering a classic biblical text that often figures in discussions of divine sovereignty, namely the
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Joseph story. Sproul sees the Joseph story as a vivid illustration of the Calvinist view of God's providential control of the entire sweep of history.
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In the same vein, a number of Calvinist writers see this text as a prominent example of the compatibilist view of freedom.
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Particularly interesting here are the words of Joseph at the end of the story where he responded to his brother's plea for forgiveness for selling him into slavery.
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You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives,
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Genesis 50. Earlier in the story, Joseph told his brothers that God had sent him to Egypt to save their lives,
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Genesis 45, 4 -7. Although Joseph did not deny or minimize his brothers' guilt or wicked intentions, he nevertheless saw the hand of God in the event in retrospect.
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D .A. Carson claims that Joseph was assuming compatibilism in his remarks to his brothers and goes on to insist that compatibilism is a necessary component to any mature and orthodox view of God and the world.
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By the way, that's D .A. Carson, The Difficult Doctrine of God, pages 52 and 54. In short, many
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Calvinists see this text as a clear instance of compatibilism and a strong support for their account of sovereignty.
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Well, yee -haw, he's right. So how do they respond? As we pointed out in the introduction,
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Calvinists as well as Arminians rely on philosophical judgments at crucial junctures in their arguments.
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This is an excellent example of a case where Calvinism depends on both a controversial philosophical judgment and a contested interpretation of Scripture.
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It is highly misleading to claim that the Calvinist view is based simply on the clear teaching of Scripture. To the contrary, this text can be read quite plausibly in terms of all three accounts of sovereignty and providence we have considered in this chapter.
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Carson's claim of Joseph as a spokesman for compatibilism is singularly unpersuasive.
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That, by the way, when you use terms like that, that's the Calvinist way of trying, the
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Scottler's way of trying to diss somebody else. The text says nothing nearly precise enough to support a particular theory of sovereignty and human freedom to the exclusion of all other competing accounts.
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Since Carson is an astute interpreter of Scripture, we can only assume he does not intend his strong statements to be taken with full seriousness.
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Rather, he is exaggerating for rhetorical effect. What would the text have to say to provide explicit support for compatibilism?
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Listen to this. It would have to say that God caused Joseph's brothers to have their feelings of jealousy, or at least that he moved their hearts to have those feelings like he did with Cyrus, and that these feelings led the brothers to sell
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Joseph into slavery and so on. Or, if God did not directly cause their actions, then he did so indirectly by allowing them to harm
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Joseph due to their jealousy. But their feelings of jealousy cannot be considered in isolation from earlier actions and events that produced those feelings.
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On the Calvinist account, those actions and events are also determined by God. Thus, Joseph's brothers were determined to have feelings of jealousy, and they were determined in such a way that they couldn't do otherwise than they did when they sold
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Joseph into slavery. Nevertheless, the brothers are responsible for their actions because they willingly sold Joseph.
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Their actions flowed out of their own internal psychological states, even though those states were caused by God directly or indirectly for ultimately benevolent reasons.
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We grant that it is possible to read the text in this way. However, the text doesn't come close to stating this explicitly, so we are hardly required to read it in a compatibilist way.
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Wow. I didn't hear much about the fact that the text itself in the
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Hebrew parallels directly God's intention and their intention, and don't expect that you're actually going to hear any exegesis, because, well,
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I'm sorry, but Arminianism doesn't engage in exegesis. That's the whole reason that I'm not one.
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Here's the rest. You notice it's said, but there are two other ways. Here are the other possibilities.
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The text is quite amenable to a Mullinist interpretation. On this reading,
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God's middle knowledge allowed him to know that Joseph's brothers would freely develop feelings of jealousy if Joseph received his coat, that they would freely, in the libertarian sense, sell him into slavery, if placed in that situation, and so on.
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Moreover, God foresaw... Quit laughing over there, Major. Now, come on, you're laughing at Mullinism.
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It's a wonderfully philosophical system. You're not laughing at them, you're laughing with them, right?
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Sure. Moreover, God foresaw the good that would eventually come out of this, and, after considering all possible creatable worlds, he chose the world in which these circumstances and choices took place, and he allowed them for the sake of the good that would follow.
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This way of reading the story makes perfect sense of Joseph's claim that the brothers meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.
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Now, if Mullinism and middle knowledge leaves you scratching your head, let me just again remind you,
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Mullinism named for Louis de Molina, a Jesuit theologian, who worked directly with the founder of the
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Jesuits, and his purpose was to find a way to short -circuit, to undercut the
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Reformed emphasis upon the sovereignty of God, and to maintain the libertarian freedom of man, the reason being that Roman Catholicism cannot live without libertarian freedom.
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Sacramental systems, where God's grace is controlled by the activities of man, cannot survive without libertarian freedom.
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Therefore, this is a philosophical construct. It is not derived from the exegesis of Scripture.
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Most of its proponents would admit that they only find it to be compatible with Scripture, but that they have not derived it from the actual exegesis of the text of Scripture itself, and therefore it is a philosophical construct.
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And basically what they argue is, well, your position is a philosophical construct. You may claim that you are deriving this from the text of Scripture, but you're really not.
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And so we take this, it is our grid, and we accept it as being extra -biblical, and we place it on the
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Bible, and here's how we interpret it. That's what Mullinism is all about. The idea is that God has a special knowledge, middle knowledge, where he can know exactly what a libertarianly free creature will do, given any circumstances.
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And so what God does is he micromanages all external circumstances so that each free creature is put in the exact circumstances so that he knows exactly what they will do.
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Now, a lot of folks, including open theists, say, I'm not really sure that's libertarian free will anyway. And how could
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God have it? And there's all sorts of problems with it, but there are those who rely upon it just to get around the sovereignty of God.
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It comes from an external perspective. Now, notice, so we have the Calvinistic compatibilism.
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We have Mullinism. And guess what the other possible view here is from our
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Arminian friends here. Finally, consider how the text can easily accommodate an openness interpretation.
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In this view, God has knowledge that can function similarly to middle knowledge. That is, God has perfect knowledge of all actual persons, including their characters, their beliefs, their tendencies, and the like.
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Knowing this, God would know what all persons are likely to do in various circumstances. Granted, he could not know with infallible certainty what choices persons would make, but he could know the probability of all possible choices any person might make.
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Armed with this sort of knowledge, God could orchestrate events like those in the Joseph story. Knowing the brothers' tendency toward envy, he could know how they would in all probability resent
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Joseph's colorful coat. Likewise, he could know that they likely would sell Joseph into slavery in the right circumstances.
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Again, God could not have the same degree of control over their particular choices as he does in Calvinism and Mullinism, but he could still have sufficient control to orchestrate things to the degree necessary to get
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Joseph to Egypt, to get him promoted to prime minister, and so on. Given Joseph's understanding of God's purposes for the children of Israel, it would also make sense for him to say that God had sent him to Egypt to save lives and that God had meant for good what his brothers meant for evil.
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Now, I'm sorry, but it's one thing to try to talk about Mullinism, but to try to make open theism fit into Genesis 50, that's just sad.
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That's the only way I can put it. I mean, when you read the open theists, their primary concern is to defend the libertarian freedom of man.
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So the idea that God could have this knowledge, and just think for a moment, how many free will choices, which
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God cannot have knowledge of beforehand, how many free will choices went into Joseph's being sold into slavery?
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I mean, what if the slave traders who were heading to Egypt, what if they had in a free will choice decided to go a different direction that day?
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What if they chose to go to a different water hole? Then they wouldn't have happened by at that particular point in time.
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And God has no knowledge. God does not exhaustively know the future. He does not know how all these free will choices are going to be interrelated with one another.
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How can he then, not knowing these things, somehow orchestrate it so that his purpose was, at the time of Joseph's being sold into slavery, to promote him to that position to save lives?
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It's obvious in Genesis 50 that what's being talked about there is the entirety of God's purpose of bringing
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Israel down to Egypt, building them into a nation there, and then bringing them out in the exodus and despoiling the gods of Egypt and all the other things that the exodus is a picture of.
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But remember, from an open theist perspective, God did not know who would be alive only a few generations down the road.
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In fact, his knowledge of the very next generation is a probabilistic one, not a true one. Remember, in open theism,
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God did not know that you would exist. When he created, he had no idea that you would ever exist because you are the result of innumerable free will libertarian choices that God does not have control over and does not have knowledge of.
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And so he did not know that you would exist. He did not know the day you would be born. He does not know the day that you will die because your death is dependent upon numerous libertarian choices that he does not have control over and does not have knowledge of what their eventual results are going to be.
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I mean, the major and I could go grab a bite to eat at a Mexican restaurant. Now, I could do something crazy and say, let's take my motorcycle.
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Or we could take a rental car. And let's say we got into an accident either way.
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In the rental car, we survive. In the motorcycle, we're toast. God doesn't know which one we're going to do.
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So God cannot have any future purpose in either myself or in your life.
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He can't because he doesn't know when we're going to die. I wouldn't want to be in Iraq believing this.
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Let's put it that way. I mean, what kind of comfort can you give?
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God's going to be with you and he's going to be just as surprised as you are if you get trapped. But he'll do his best to help you if you do get trapped.
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The open theism stuff has just always left me going, what is attractive about this stuff anyways? That just doesn't work.
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I'm sorry. That explanation, Genesis 50, just leaves me going, excuse me, what in the world are you talking about?
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That makes no sense at all. Well, there is one other section I'm going to try to, I'm not sure I'm going to get through it here quickly enough.
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The Golden Chain of Redemption, Romans 8, verses 29 -30. Calvinists often speak of these verses as the golden chain, an unbreakable sequence of steps in God's sovereign plan, leading from unconditional individual election to final glorification.
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The elect can find great comfort in the assurance that all those who begin the process by God's election will make it through to glorification.
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All those who know for certain that they have been justified possess an ironclad guarantee of their final salvation and glorification.
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Our first hesitation in accepting this interpretation stems from the warning Paul issued to his Roman readers, only 16 verses earlier, if you live according to the sinful nature you will die, but if by the spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body you will live,
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Romans 8, verse 13. Paul makes it clear that glorification depends on a Christian's continued connection to Jesus, but if we are children then we are heirs, heirs of God and co -heirs of Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings,
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Romans 8, verse 17, emphasis added. Later we find Paul again warning his Gentile Christian readers that those who veer away from God's grace face fearful prospects, and he goes through Romans 11.
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In other words, he goes into what he, now I completely reject as grossly misreading
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Romans 8 at the beginning what he just said, and I've been preaching on Romans 8 at PRVC, you can go listen to the sermons there, but in essence what they're doing here, he jumps off into Galatians and other passages, it can't mean what
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Calvinists think it means because of all the apostasy passages. So therefore, it sounds certain, the golden chain sounds certain, but we can't read it that way because of all these apostasy passages.
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Well, we can go to all those apostasy passages and we can read them consistently and contextually in a way that does not lead to the conclusions that they present.
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And then, again, he just goes over and over the apostasy stuff. If there is good reason to question the
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Calvinist interpretation of Romans 8, 29 -30, what other viable understandings might the text suggest?
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Now, again, if you're expecting a whole lot of in -depth exegesis here, one direction relates to the verb tenses found in the five -fold sequence of God's actions.
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He foreknew, he predestined, he called, he justified, he glorified. By the way, anyone who's heard me go through this before, we've gone through this, remember, how many times have
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I gone over this with Pierre, our LDS caller? Over and over again, they're all past tense verbs.
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They're all past tense verbs. This is the certainty of God's action. Well, listen to this.
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Many point out that Paul expresses the last step in the past tense, glorified, even though for Paul and all
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Christians today, glorification lies in the future. Less often realized is that the third and fourth steps, called and justified, are likewise presented as past events, though God has been and continues to be about the business of calling and justifying people down through the ages.
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This may show us that Paul is viewing the entire series, not from a vantage point within human history, but from the end of human history, after God has brought to completion the whole redemptive plan.
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Seen from the end of history, Paul observes that all Christians who have been glorified have, of course, been foreknown, predestined, called, and justified.
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As James Dunn suggests, ding, ding, ding, ding, anyone recognize the name? Ding, ding, ding, ding,
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James Dunn. Ding, ding, ding, ding, new perspective on Paul, hello! As James Dunn suggests,
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Paul is not inviting reflection on the classic problems of determinism and free will, or thinking in terms of a decree which excludes as well as one which includes.
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His thought is simply that from the perspective of the end, it will be evident that history has been the stage for the unfolding of God's purpose, the purpose of the creator fulfilling his original intentions in creating.
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A second non -Calvinist understanding of Romans 8, 29 -30 takes its cue from Paul's teaching in Romans 5 and 6, that sinners who once lived in Adam's lineage may, through faith, be incorporated into Christ through baptism.
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Those now residing in Christ live in a new reality and benefit from the mighty events of death and resurrection that Jesus himself experienced.
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The apostle can therefore address believers themselves, all of whom are in Christ, as those who have been buried with Jesus, or as those who have died with him, or as those who walk in the newness of life, or as those who will experience resurrection with him.
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Since Jesus is the primary character in the events of God's redemptive drama, we experience these events only indirectly by being in the lead player.
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It is difficult to overstate just how significant for the whole of Pauline theology is this corporate vision of the church, finding its identity, its salvation, its wealth, and its security in him.
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Well, there's no question about the union with Christ being central to Paul's theology. Here we are back to the same ground already covered regarding Ephesians 1, 4 -5, where believers are described as having been chosen and predestined in him.
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This only encourages us all the more to read Romans 8, 29 -30 as referring not to a specific set number of persons who individually progressed through the five steps without mathematical gain or loss, but to the whole body of Christ without particular focus on the individuality of its members.
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The people of God as a whole, having been incorporated into Christ, are most certainly destined to arrive at the goal God has established from the beginning.
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Each of us is assured of participating in that most certain end, provided we remain among this people and remain in his kindness,
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Romans 11, 12. In other words, corporate election. Now, read that with the following verses.
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What shall we say to these things? If God before us, who can be against us?
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Are we going to read what follows this about justification, the giving of Christ, in a not -about -individuals context?
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Seemingly that's what the Arminians are suggesting here, that the intercession of Christ is just for a nebulous group, not for individuals.
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Man, I'll tell you, think about that one for a second. What does that do to substitutionary atonement?
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Remember, Arminians don't believe in substitutionary atonement. If you believe in substitutionary atonement, you're not an
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Arminian, at least not a historical one. You may be an inconsistent one, but you're not a historical one.
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And so they don't believe that. That's why they believe in the governmental theory of atonement anyways. And so hopefully you start to see just how much this impacts the entirety of what justification means and intercession means in the rest of Romans 8.
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And all that stuff about neither height nor depth, any creative power which will separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, that's just about the body of Christ at the end.
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You may not make it. It's up to you to keep yourself in it. A completely different vision.
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Anthropocentric versus theocentric. Man -centered versus God -centered.
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Why I am not a Calvinist. Well, that was quick, but that gives you an idea of the philosophical character of that kind of critique.
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Hey, next week, thanks again for being with us. I appreciate you being with us, and we're going to go ahead and get something to eat.
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I just started thinking about eating. My stomach started grumbling. It was a terrible thing. I hope you didn't hear that. Thursday morning, 11 a .m.
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Mountain Standard Time, whatever that is on the East Coast. I guess that's 2 o 'clock. We'll see you here on the Dividing Line. God bless.
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We were standing at the crossroads. Let this moment slip away.
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We must contend for the faith of Father Spock, Lord. We need a new Reformation day.
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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.