July 28, 2009

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Well, Mr. Camping, we could, for five minutes, give an opening presentation as to your view on the churchage.
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We're not going to have any more commercials until the very end of the program. All right, I'll, uh, shall
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I begin then? Yes. Yeah, well, you know, uh, the, uh, uh, it was exactly eight years and a few days ago
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I had a group of people, uh, having dinner with me. I was celebrating my 80th birthday.
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And at that time, I made a very solemn and sad statement.
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I said to them, you know, I am, uh, this is the saddest birthday
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I've ever had. It was my 80th birthday, but it was sad.
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I said it's sad beyond measure because I've really been studying the Bible very, very carefully, and I've become totally convinced that the
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Bible is teaching that we have come to the end of the church era.
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Just like it was, uh, back in 33 AD, the era of national
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Israel representing the kingdom of God, which had gone on for 14, uh, they had been a representative for, uh, ever since they left
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Egypt, 1480 years approximately before. And now after 550, or excuse me, uh, now after 1955 years, beginning at, in 1833, when
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God had shifted from national Israel representing the kingdom of God to the church age, now he has ended with this.
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And it was a, it was a dreadfully, dreadfully terrible thing to think about because I felt like I had been,
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I was betraying all of the churches. I had been a church member all of my life, uh, for the 40 years previous.
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I had constantly told people to try to find a church that is reasonably true to the word of God because this was
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God's plan. But the, but the fact is that I, I, recognizing the truth of the
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Bible, I had to teach the way I was teaching. Well, uh, in fact, during these last few years, our
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God has been opening my eyes and eyes of others, uh, to a great many truths that we had never seen before.
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And I wondered about that, but just a couple of years ago, I was reading
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Daniel chapter 12, Daniel 12, and there God made a very, very profound statement.
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And incidentally, the Bible, every word in the Bible comes from the mouth of God.
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It is a very holy ground. We tremble before the word of God. We don't ever look at it casually, or we should never look at it as something to bandy about or whatever.
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It is something that is very serious business. And in, and Daniel had been receiving a great amount of information concerning the very end of time.
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And then, and it made him very ill because of the sorrowful nature of it.
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And then we read in Daniel chapter 12, verse 4, remember, this is
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God speaking anything in the Bible. In the original language, it is
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God speaking. But now, O Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book.
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Then even to the time of the end, many shall run to and fro and knowledge shall be increased.
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And then it says further in verse 9, and he said, go thy way, Daniel, for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.
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Well, you know, what is happening, what is happening here? And then when we go to Revelation chapter 5, we find that where God talks about the book being opened.
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And as we see the book being opened, we begin to understand why it is now that we are at the time of the end.
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And the Bible shows us when that book, when the seven seals had been taken off, we can know that date very exactly.
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And when, now that the book has been opened, and that, of course, is the
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Bible. Now, the Bible has never had anything added to it in the last 1900 years.
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But God has a lot of ways in which he has hidden truth until he wants it to be known.
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And this is what God is doing now. He is giving us a lot of information that he has never given before, and it's all coming out of the
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Bible. OK. Yeah, that's the five minutes, Mr. Camping. And by the way, before James starts,
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I want to let you both know, if you're free to stay till 430, we can carry this on for the full hour now that everything's working.
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I certainly am. That's up to Mr. Camping. Great. Well, if you can stay on till 430, that'd be great,
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Mr. Camping, because we could have this full hour of broadcast for day number one. Yeah, great. All right.
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Mr. White, Dr. White, you have five minutes to give your opening presentation.
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Thank you. The scripture teaches that the triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, did in eternity past covenant together to bring about the glory of the triune majesty by means of the creation of the universe and the redemption of a particular people.
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And that counsel in eternity past, it was determined that the Father would decree the glory of the Trinity. The son would accomplish the means of redemption through the incarnation, his crosswork outside of Jerusalem and his resurrection from the dead.
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The spirit would bring the eternally decreed salvation purchased by the son to fruition in the hearts of undeserving rebels, raising them to spiritual life and making them sons of God by adoption through faith in Jesus Christ.
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These redeemed sinners are united to Christ, placed in his body, the church, the plain teaching of scripture, believed and accepted by God's people down through the ages, is that the church is central to God's purpose in this world.
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Though many imposters have arisen calling themselves the church, Christ has in fact been busy in every generation building his church so that the gates of Hades would not be able to withstand the onslaught of God's spirit led people.
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The universal fellowship of true believers has been, by God's wise design, revealed the world through the local fellowships led by elders and ministered to by deacons.
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When Paul wrote to Timothy, he spoke of the local fellowships and referred to them as the church, the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth.
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And while individual local fellowships can cease to exist as God's blessings move to and fro across the earth, nations rise and fall in God's providence.
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Christ's church goes on his redeemed people joining together for the preaching of the word, the observance of the ordinances of baptism and Lord's Supper and fellowship in the spirit of God.
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Today, I have the privilege of responding to the claims of Herald Camping of Family Radio, who has abandoned his former beliefs and is now promoting a whole host of novel doctrines.
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The central assertion that brings us together is his insistence that the churches of Jesus Christ are now under the wrath of God.
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The spirit has withdrawn from all churches that no one can find salvation therein any longer. Mr. Camping has taken the amazing position of insisting that his interpretations of the
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Bible, based upon allegory and numerology, are sufficient to allow him to claim that God is revealing new things today, never known to anyone in the history of the church.
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This claim is the foundation stone of all of Mr. Camping's idiosyncratic teachings, such as his assertion that Jesus died twice, that the death of Christ on the cross outside of Jerusalem was not relevant to the forgiveness of sins, his annihilationism, and his teaching that the world will end
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May 21st, 2011. Indeed, as I listened to Mr. Camping throughout the doctrine of the Trinity just last week on his open forum radio program, identifying
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Christ as the Father, resurrecting one of the earliest heresies of the church, I was reminded yet again what happens when the sound exegesis of the text of inspired scripture gives way to personal revelation and spiritualization.
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This encounter is about rescuing the Bible's trustworthiness. It is about demonstrating that the Bible is not the playground of any person who decides he has new spiritual insights no one else has ever had.
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It is about defending Christ's church, his bride, and the local fellowships to which the Spirit of God joins all who are truly united with Christ.
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As we will see, no matter what element of this teaching comes up, the fundamental issue will be this. Harold Camping refuses to use any kind of meaningful, exegetical, or hermeneutical set of principles in his handling of the
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Bible. There are no rules when Mr. Camping opens the Bible. He is the final authority when it comes to his system of interpretation, if that word can even be used as a complex system of allegory and numerology that he utilizes to make the
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Bible speak. I believe firmly that the only way to profess that the Bible truly is God's word,
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God's speaking, is to expend every possible effort to avoid inserting my desires and my thoughts into the reading of the
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Bible. That is why sound exegetes unanimously avoid all of the errors that Harold Camping's entire set of teachings illustrates in glowing colors.
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Sound exegesis seeks to understand the meaning of the original writers in their original language, in their original context, first and foremost, and that is the exact methodology rejected by Harold Camping.
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In fact, given that he says that no one has seen what he now sees, and given that he makes connections across all sorts of contradictory and differing contexts without the first thought of concern as to what the original authors actually intended, there is no way that Harold Camping can claim that what he is teaching is in any logical or rational way the teaching of the
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Bible. It is the teaching of Harold Camping expressed in the words of Scripture wrongfully ripped from their proper and original context.
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And so the issue that we need to address today is not just the individual teachings saying that Christ died twice and things like this and the the allegation against the church, but the foundational issue.
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How do we rightly handle the word of God so that it remains the word of God and not merely something that we are inserting our thoughts into?
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How do you handle the Bible? That's what this discussion has to be about. Thank you very much, Dr. White.
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And for those of you who just tuned us in, this is a two day debate. This is day number one of a two day debate between Harold Camping, the founder and president of Family Radio, and Dr.
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James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries. On the theme, has the church age ended? And now,
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Mr. Camping, you have three minutes to continue your thought or to respond to Dr.
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White in any way you choose to. You have three minutes. Well, you know, when we start talking about hermeneutics, the
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Bible gives us the biblical hermeneutic, and I've never been able to find in the
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Bible the historical grammatical method of hermeneutics. Where does that come from?
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That's one question I'd like to have an answer. Where do you find that in the Bible? I'll tell you what the
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Bible has to say. We read in Mark chapter four, in Mark chapter four, where God says that without a parable, verse 34, spake he not unto them,
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Christ is speaking. In other words, Christ is saying he spoke in parables and he did it for two reasons.
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He said in verse 12, that seeing they may see and not perceive and hearing they may hear and not understand, lest at any time they should be converted and their sins be forgiven them.
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And on the other hand, for the true believers, the parable message is giving them a lot of new information.
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In other words, God designed the Bible so that on the one hand, it would remain impossible to understand by those who are not elect of God, that is spiritually understood.
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But on the other hand, for the believers, it would be. Now, the fact is that God gave further rules that have to be followed.
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The first rule is in 1 Corinthians chapter two, verse 13.
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We are to compare spiritual things with spiritual. In other words, any time we look at a verse and we are wondering, what does it mean?
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Even though it sounds like we know the meaning right now, until we compare that with everything else in the
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Bible that might relate and find harmony, we have not found the truth.
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We have to really compare everything with every idea, with every possibility in the
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Bible in order to find truth. And that's a terrific protection when
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Christ spoke in parables. You just can't go out and say, well, the spiritual meaning of this or the spiritual meaning of that.
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It has to be found in the Bible. The Bible has to always be the core of truth and never do we go out.
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That's why on my kind of program, I only quote the Bible. But the fact is that, you know,
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God has given us all kinds of ideas, like a lamb.
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It can refer to Christ. The fields can refer to the world.
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Christ is the way. So when we see the word way, we can think about Christ.
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He is the truth. He is the life. There are just all kinds of emphases in the
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Bible where God is given, like, for example, Jerusalem.
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I'm sorry, Mr. Camping, your three minutes are up, and you can continue your thought after Dr. White, who has now three minutes.
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All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Just let me give an example of what happens when we do not go first to what the original authors meant in their original context, what they intended to communicate to their audiences.
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Obviously, we know that not all the Scripture is written in parables. Only certain portions are. Jesus taught directly in a non -parabolic form.
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But Paul's letters are not written as parables. We have to recognize the different kinds of literature we find in Scripture.
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But let me give you an example. I was listening to the open forum just this morning, and a caller called in and asked about Hebrews chapter 10, verses 24 through 25.
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And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near.
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Now, if we read the book of Hebrews in its original context, original language, this is talking about gathering together in the church.
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And it is talking about stirring one another up. The King James says, provoking one another. To do what?
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To do love and good works. So it is a positive thing. And so when we read this, it is talking about gathering together in the fellowship of the body of the church, and provoking one another to doing godly things.
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As soon as Mr. Camping started reading this, he got to the word provoke, and he said, well, this proves that this is actually talking about that period of time when the church age has ended.
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Because to provoke means to create dissension. And so whenever you preach that the church has come to an end, you bring about dissension.
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And so this proves that this is about meeting outside of the church, and no longer meeting in the church.
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Now, the writer of the Hebrews never would have had that idea. His audience never would have had that idea.
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That ignores the context where the term itself is being used in a positive sense of stirring one another up, stimulating one another to love and good works.
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And so the original words inspired under the direction of the Holy Spirit of God, their meaning is completely lost.
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And instead, a completely foreign concept. Now, there have been all sorts of folks down through the history of the church who have attacked the church who could have used this very same text in the same way that Harold Camping used it.
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The Montanists could have done that, and Joseph Smith could have done, all sorts of people could have done that.
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But does anyone seriously suggest that that was the actual intention of the spirit of God in penning these words?
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No. These words had a meaning to the person who wrote them, they had a meaning to the persons who received them, and we are first and foremost to discover that, and then live in the light of the principles that are laid down by the
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Word of God. If we don't do that, then we cannot claim that our teaching of the
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Scriptures is reflective of the Word of God itself. We simply cannot do it, because we are not accurately representing what the original intention of those inspired writings actually was.
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Thank you, Dr. White. And now, Mr. Camping, you have three minutes as well. Yeah, well, you know, the biblical rule is that the
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Bible interprets itself. The Bible is not subject to private interpretation.
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It is its own dictionary. We find words in the Bible that we are looking at, and then we want to, if we want to understand it, that's the wonder of the commentaries, that we can find all the other words, all the places in the
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Bible where that word is used. And if you go on in Hebrews 10, for example, the word provoke, incidentally, is only used in one place.
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It was used in the book of Acts, when there was heavy contention between Paul and Barnabas concerning taking
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Mark with him on the next missionary journey, and so there was a provoking between them.
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There was dissension. That is the only place it is used, and it is indicating there was contention.
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Now, when we go on in Hebrews 10, we find, it says that in verse 26, for if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins.
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Well, my, that's, how do you understand that? The whole Bible is telling us that Christ is a very merciful
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God, and Israel came to him again and again and again for forgiveness, and here it says, however, there will be no sacrifice for sins.
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You're out! You're out! And the only time that could be in our day, because in the churches there no longer is any sacrifice.
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The Holy Spirit is not working there, and that gives us the meaning now of Hebrews 10.
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But outside, outside wonderfully there is salvation going. Now, when we look again, when we talk about what did it mean to the local person, when
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Abraham, for example, back in Genesis chapter 13, he was told of God, he was told in verse 14, lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward and southward and eastward and northward, for all the land which thou seest, to thee will
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I give it, and to thy seed forever. Forever. Now, how did
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Abraham understand this? And this has been emphasized in chapter 15 and in chapter 17.
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All the land, from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates River.
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Well, we'll talk about that next. Thank you very much, Mr. Camping. Your three minutes are up. And now,
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Dr. White, you have three minutes. Just a couple things to recognize in what was just said. First of all, the text from Peter, I think, was being misapplied when it says it is not of any private interpretation.
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If you'll look carefully at that text, what Peter is saying is that no prophecy of Scripture ever came about by the prophet's own interpretation.
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It instead comes from God. Men spoke from God as they're carried along by the Holy Spirit. So that is a misapplication of that text.
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But secondly, I hope everyone heard what was just said. And that is, we were just told that the actual meaning of Hebrews 10, 24 -25 could not have been understood by anyone until a few years ago.
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Every age of Christians, whatever they thought that text meant, they were in darkness.
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They had no concept of what that was actually about. They must have been misled to do all sorts of things by this cryptic text that no one could understand until just a few years ago when
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Mr. Camping determines that the book in Revelation is actually the Bible. There's no reason to believe that, but that's what he asserts.
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And so here you have the author doesn't know what he's writing. His recipients don't know what he's writing. The words in their own context, he mentioned that word is only used twice.
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It's actually used four times in the Bible. It's used twice in the Greek Septuagint. And yes, it can mean dissension as it's used in Acts 15 -39, but that's not what it means in Hebrews 10, 24.
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In Hebrews 10, 24, it is a positive thing. It is to stir one another up to love and good deeds within the community of the faith, which is the church.
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And so to just simply say, well, it had this meaning over here. That means it can have this meaning here.
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What if we interpreted Harold Camping's books in that way? What if we took the words that he uses in the
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English language and we could find any use anyplace else of the same word and import it into his?
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His context doesn't matter anymore because what he's telling us is the context of the Bible writers doesn't matter.
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We could make, we could turn him into someone who teaches anything that we want. We could read anything into his voluminous writings based upon ignoring the original context of the authors, the original context of those who initially received these epistles.
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The epistle to the Hebrews was written to keep Christians who were being pressured to go back to the old ways.
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And so when he says, well, how can you understand there's no forgiveness? Hebrews chapter 10, he's talking about those people who would go back and offer sacrifice and therefore do disrespect the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
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He's talking about the same people first John talks about. And John says, I do not even say that you should pray for such a one.
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He's talking about those people who deny Jesus Christ. And that was the issue in the early church.
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And we need to understand that first and then make application to our day. There is no reason to say that these words never had any meaning until our modern period, none whatsoever.
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Thank you, Dr. White. And let me just make a quick announcement. For those of you who are listening on MP3, you may hear an
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MP3 cut short today because of the difficulties we had for the first half hour. This program is being extended until 4 .30
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p .m. Eastern Standard Time. And the MP3 of the full one hour exchange between Harold Camping and Dr.
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James White will be available at some point hopefully this evening or tomorrow. But I just wanted to announce that for those who are listening on MP3 and also for those of you who tuned in late, we are extending this program until 4 .30
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p .m. I want to thank the management of WNYG. And I want to thank Wayback Wally, the evening drive disc jockey, for allowing us to have a half hour of the evening drive segment.
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I also want to thank the technicians and engineers for both WNYG and Family Radio for helping us to resolve the issue.
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But, Mr. Camping, you now have three minutes. Well, you know, you still haven't answered my question.
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Where did the historical, grammatical, hermeneutic come from insofar as the
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Bible is concerned? I can tell you what the Bible says. It says that Christ spoke in parables.
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And the Bible says that we are to compare Scripture with Scripture. And the
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Bible says that the Holy Spirit will lead you in the truth because the
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Holy Spirit, because the Bible is a very spiritual book. And we have to follow that very, very carefully.
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And that's why I raised the issue of, just as an illustration, and they're sprinkled all through the
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Bible, about Abraham. He was told that he would inherit all the land that he saw, and he named it a little later, as all the way from the river of Egypt to the
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Euphrates River, that that would be given to his seed forever.
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Forever. Are we to understand that the land over there, adjacent to the
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Mediterranean Sea, is going to be there forever? That's what the Bible says. The Bible says that.
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And what did it really mean to Abraham? Did he understand what he was being told?
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Incidentally, we were arguing or discussing this matter of Hebrews 10, and I have tried to answer that question of how to handle that there remains no more sacrifice, and every theologian has tried to answer that.
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But it's in our day that now we find a very clear and concise answer, and there are many verses like that, that God kept under wraps, so to speak.
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He would not give us a clear and concise answer until today, like Nicodemus, for example, where it's told nobody has ascended into Heaven except the
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Lord Jesus. Well, now we understand, and we always have had some kind of an answer, but now we can understand it perfectly.
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Now, when it comes to the church, the gates of hell shall not prevail.
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What happened to the church in the wilderness? What happened to it?
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That was Israel on Mount Sinai. Did it prevail?
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And it was the corporate or the external church.
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When the Reformers, you know, talked about the invisible church, now it's true.
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The invisible church is every true believer, but when it says that the gates of hell should not prevail, does that include the
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Charismatic Churches? Does that include the Roman Catholic Church? Does that include the Methodist Church?
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Just what does it include? In fact, Mr. Campion, your three minutes are up, and we're going to just make a quick break for station identification, and we will resume the debate with Dr.
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White's next three -minute segment right after station identification. Today's Christian hit, music and ministry,
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The Spirit of New York at 1440 WNYT Babylon. All right.
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Just for those of you who are tuning in very late, or perhaps tuning in to hear the music of Way Back Wally on WNYG, 1440
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AM, for the next half hour, we have been given an additional half hour to conduct a radio debate between Harold Campion, the founder and president of Family Radio and host of the
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Open Forum broadcast, which is heard around the world, and Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, and also author of Dangerous Airwaves, Harold Campion Refuted and Christ Church Defended.
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We are discussing today, or the debate, I should say, is on the theme, Has the
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Church Age Ended? And we will now resume our debate with Dr.
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James R. White, and you have three minutes. Yes, indeed. Thank you very much, Chris. Where did the historical grammatical hermeneutic come from?
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Well, every time that Paul writes to, for example, the church at Corinth, does he expect them to understand what he is saying?
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Does he expect them to interpret his letter in such a way that his words mean what his words mean in the context that his audience would have understood?
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Does he not hold people accountable for their behavior in light of what he has written to them in a historical and grammatical way?
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The answer is, of course, he does. And what if the Judaizers in Galatia had decided to interpret the
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Book of Galatians in the way that Mr. Campion interprets the text that says the church is going to continue? And said, well, you understand,
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Paul is writing spiritual things here, and what he really means when he says we are anathema is that we find this other use of this word over here in the
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Old Testament, and that actually means we should have the preeminence in the church. Now, how would that work?
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No, his words had a meaning when they were written in the form they were written. When the apostles and Jesus interpret the
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Old Testament, do they interpret it in the way that Mr. Campion is interpreting it? Where they say, well, you need to look at this word here, and then we can connect it over here, and there are 153 fishes, and that's 3 times 3 times 17, and they took numerology apart, and they connected things together.
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Is that how they used the Old Testament? The answer is, no, it is not. And so why should we follow that methodology?
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Because you can do anything with it. Mr. Campion has done much with the 153 fishes that are pulled out of the sea, and I would just point out, you know, well, there are so many people being saved, we can't get them into the church anymore and things like that.
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Why can't I point out that those 153 fishes were dragged up on the shore and died, and that this is therefore the end of the fishes?
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I can interpret anything any way I want to when the original intention of the authors and the original language and their original audiences is ignored.
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You can't claim to be accurately representing Harold Campion if you don't interpret
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Harold Campion in the context in which he intended to write his words. The same thing is true with the
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Word of God. You cannot say you're accurately representing the Word of God when you do that.
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Now, again, what I said about Hebrews 10, very clearly, you have to know what the book of Hebrews is about, and this pressure upon the people to go back to the old ways.
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And there's no question about that. This isn't, you know, when you come up against a difficulty of interpretation, do you just simply throw out exegesis?
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That's the easy way to do it, to have this overarching system that you just force onto every text, but that's not a way that honors
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God's Word. And what is the result of all this? Even though Paul taught that God would be glorified in the church throughout all ages, we're being told by Mr.
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Campion, flee the churches. The Holy Spirit of God that forms the churches is no longer in the churches.
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He's no longer saving people in those churches. That's what happens when you ignore the original context. Thank you very much,
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Dr. White. And for those of you who just tuned in to WNYG, this is the day number one of the two -day debate between Mr.
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Harold Campion, the founder and president of Family Radio, and host of the Open Forum broadcast, which is heard worldwide.
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And also, Dr. James Earl White of Alpha and Omega Ministries in Phoenix, Arizona, who also hosts the program called
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The Dividing Line, heard over the Internet, and he is the author of Dangerous Airwaves Harold Campion Refuted and Christ First Offended.
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And now we have three minutes for Mr. Harold Campion to continue his thought or to respond to Dr.
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White. You know, I've heard that many, many times. What did that statement by the prophet mean to the people of that day?
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I ask you the question, what did the statement that God made to Abraham, that he would be given all the land that he could see?
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He was looking at physical land, and it would be given to him forever.
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What did that mean to him? How could he understand that?
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And as we look at Israel in the wilderness, they were told again and again this and that, and they were given all kinds of ceremonial laws to follow, which were all, incidentally, like a parable, because to offer a blood sacrifice was a picture.
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It was the earthly story pointing to the heavenly meaning, which is what a parable is, of the fact that it required the atoning blood of the
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Lord Jesus Christ. How much of this did they understand? Who is the Bible for?
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The Bible is for all of the nations, not for those people that just happen to be living there.
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And God has set up rules. He spoke in parables.
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And in fact, he spoke in parables, as I've read from Mark chapter 4, so that for those who are not elect of God, they would not understand at all.
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He wrote it in a way so they could not understand. All the information that he had sealed in the book of Daniel, or excuse me, the book that is spoken of in the book of Daniel that was sealed, was in the
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Bible, because nothing has ever been added to the Bible, once it was completed about 2 ,000 years ago.
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It was all here, but God sealed it. How did he seal it? He sealed it by the way he wrote it, and by putting in difficult verses, very difficult verses.
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The Bible is not easy to understand at all. For example, right today, we have always believed, and this is a terrible thing that has happened, but God has allowed it to happen, namely that if we only believe on the
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Lord Jesus Christ, we will become saved. And yet now we understand.
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Why did God wait until now to tell us that faith, which is the noun for the verb believe, faith is the noun, believe is the verb, it's the same word, and the
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Bible says faith is work, and we're not able to be saved by work.
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In fact, your three minutes are up, Mr. Camping. Okay, Mr. Camping, thank you, your three minutes are up.
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And Dr. James R. White, you may now continue with three minutes. There is no question that the
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Bible contains many different types of literature. It also contains ceremonial laws, it contains types and shadows in the
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Old Testament, but these are fulfilled in the New Testament. And the problem is, Mr. Camping does not see that distinction.
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He blurs that, and turns even the New Testament writings into something that is but a type and a shadow, that then allows him to fit it into his modern viewpoint of eschatology.
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This ends up turning what is didactic teaching, what is straightforward teaching, that is not in any way, shape, or form expressed as future promises, into the foundation of such things as saying that Jesus died twice, or identifying
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Christ as the Father, or saying that the church by which God is going to be glorified can be destroyed completely, that the church, which is the body of Christ, can experience the very wrath of God.
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That's why you have this tremendous confusion, because you're not allowing the Bible to speak for itself.
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You come up with a system, and then you force it upon the Bible. He says, who is the Bible for anyways?
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Is it just for those people back then? No, it's for all believers through all times. And yet, it's
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Mr. Camping who is saying otherwise, when he says, well, no one has understood, until now, what the
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Bible is actually saying in places like Hebrews 10 .24, or other texts where he assigns a new meaning that no one in all of church history has ever understood.
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Why should we believe that the book mentioned by Daniel is the Bible? What's the basis for that?
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Does the book of Revelation make that connection when it talks about the opening of the seals? It does not. So why make, just because the term book is used, there's all sorts of places where words are used, the
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Bible, and again, you have to make a meaningful argument that they should be taken together, that the original author intended for those things to be taken together, because if you don't, again, you can do with Mr.
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Camping's words what he's doing with the Bible, and you can connect all sorts of things together that he never intended to be connected, and make him contradict himself all over the place.
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Why is it that the Bible is liable to this kind of treatment, but Mr.
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Camping's material is not? Instead, we go to the New Testament, we ask ourselves a simple question. Did any of the apostles of Jesus Christ teach that the
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Christian church would cease to exist before Christ returned? The answer is no, they did not.
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You have to claim modern day revelation. You have to claim some type of spiritual insight that nobody else has ever had, to be able to force these things upon the scriptures.
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Jesus himself gave us the Lord's Supper, and said that we are to do this until he returns. I ask
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Mr. Camping, are you partaking in the Lord's Supper? Has Christ returned? If he has not, then clearly you're violating his own command in not doing.
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Well, there... Yes, you can begin, Mr. Camping. Dr. White's three minutes are up.
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You can begin your three -minute segment. Mr. Camping, you can resume.
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Okay. Yes. The... You know, you mentioned the Lord's Supper. It's very interesting that Israel, they looked at the ceremonial laws and decided if they could keep them faithfully enough, that was their salvation.
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And we read in Romans 9, that they came to an end, because of unbelief.
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Now, the fact is, when God introduced the New Testament era, the next external evidence of the representation of the kingdom of God, he gave two more ceremonial laws, water baptism and the
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Lord's Supper, both activities that we perform. And we put a lot of trust in that, that that assists us in our salvation, or initiates salvation, or is a means by which
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God is helping us in our salvation. We just put a lot of trust in it, and yet there are ceremonial laws, and God warns, and this is something that really hit me hard a few years ago, that the seventh day,
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Sabbath day, for example, is a sign, we read this in Exodus 31, that I, the
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Lord, sanctify thee. In other words, even as you are not to do any work of any kind, you're going to be under the wrath of God.
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And then we go to Numbers 15, and we find there a man that picked up some sticks on the seventh day
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Sabbath, and Moses asked God, what should we do to him? And God said, execute him.
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That is, stone him to death. And they did stone him to death. Why? He had only picked up a few sticks on the
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Sabbath day. He hadn't made a fire, he wasn't building a building, or whatever, it was a very slight thing.
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Now remember, the Lord said that you keep the seventh day
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Sabbath because I, the Lord, sanctify thee. And that means that you are not to do any work of any kind.
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It was representing the fact you're not to do any work of any kind in becoming saved.
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And then we find, as we examine what the churches are doing, every one of them have got work after work after work that they do in order to assure their people that you now are safe and secure in the arms of Christ.
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And the fact is, all the work was done by Christ, and we simply have to wait upon him.
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Well, thank you, Mr. Camping. Your three minutes are up. And now, Dr. White, you may resume.
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Harold Camping just said that every one of the churches say that they have works that you have to do to demonstrate you're safe in the arms of Christ.
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That's just simply not true. I know my church is very clear in teaching that salvation is completely of the
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Lord, that there is nothing we can do to save ourselves in any way, shape, or form. What was just presented to us, just simply,
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I'm sorry, doesn't make any sense. We were told that the Lord's Supper is a ceremonial law.
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No, it's not. It is part and parcel of the new covenant in the blood of Jesus Christ.
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And what we need to understand is there is no covenant beyond the new covenant. The new covenant is the last covenant.
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It is a perfect covenant. The law is written upon the hearts of those who are in the new covenant.
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And the Lord's Supper is a part of that new covenant. And Jesus said, you do this in remembrance of me, and we do this until he returns.
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This is our proclamation as members of the new covenant, that we have faith in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and that it alone avails for our salvation.
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There are many churches. There are many people listening today. There are many pastors listening right now who are preaching that God alone can save in Jesus Christ, and that he saved upon the cross of Calvary.
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Not some mythical pre -incarnational death, but as the
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Bible has always taught, and as all Christians have always believed, it is the blood of the cross of the
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Lord Jesus Christ by which our sins are forgiven, not something from before that period of time.
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Certainly the cross was certain from God's perspective, but Jesus became incarnate in the person of Jesus of Bethlehem at a particular point in time.
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He died under Pontius Pilate. That is when the blood is shed and the forgiveness of sins is wrought.
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So that is the new covenant. And so here you have, I don't know of anyone, any sound biblical
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Christian who believes the Lord's Supper initiates or starts our salvation as was just alleged.
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That is not what Reformed churches believe. That is not what we have been teaching. Those things are part of our proclamation of the death of Jesus Christ because we recognize that it is only by that single one -time sacrifice that any of us can have the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ imputed to us.
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That is why the cross is so central. That is why the incarnation is so central. That is why the resurrection is so central.
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And I would just like to point out that the doctrines of the deity of Christ, the Trinity, the incarnation, the cross, the resurrection, justification by faith, were not hammered out and defended by Harold Camping's method of interpretation.
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And it is that method of interpretation that has always been used by those who have undercut these beliefs.
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That is why I am so concerned about this because I believe that we must honor the
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Bible for what it actually states. Thank you very much, Dr.
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White. And I want to thank both of our participants for being so faithful to keeping to the three minutes.
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And Mr. Camping, you have three minutes to continue or respond. Well, first of all, the idea of that being a covenant, really, we have to read in Hebrews chapter 8, where God says,
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Now that he hath, at verse 6, hath obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much more he is a mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises.
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For the first covenant, if it had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second.
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And then he says, and finding fault with them. He finds fault with both of them. And then he tells about a covenant, the covenant that now is in action.
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The law, the word covenant is the word law. In verse 10, For there is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith
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Jehovah. And after those days, when we search that through the Bible, we find it's talking about our days, after the end of the church age.
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After those days, saith Jehovah, I will put my laws into their mind and write them in their hearts.
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And I will be to them a God and they will be to me a people. And they shall not teach every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying,
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Know the Lord, for all shall know me from the least to the greatest. In other words, there is this time when
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God is saving directly, not through a church, not through elders and deacons and Bible pastors, or teachers,
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I'm just directing people to show them in the Bible where to look.
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But the fact is, we've aborted the fact that we were looking at, that there was another book that was open, and we read about that in Revelation 5, and it was not open until the beginning of the
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Great Tribulation, this final 23 -year period. And that is why we are understanding so many things.
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But I don't know of a church that has ever considered at all what that little book, or that book of Daniel that was sealed, what all that has to do with, if they have considered the import of that.
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But until we do, we don't have the truth. And, you know, when
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Christ came, you were saying, well, what did it mean to them when Christ was preaching around the
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Sea of Galilee? Those people, none of them became saved. Virtually none of them became saved.
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We have plenty of evidence in the Bible. And the church had started. It was a dead church.
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And what about, I still want to know, what church is still alive? There is a church that is alive.
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It's the Invisible Church. God is still building that church. He will build that until the day of the
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Rapture. But it's an invisible church. It has nothing to do with a local congregation.
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The Bible comes up very clear when we see that God with the nation of Israel and then with the church age.
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Thank you, Mr. Camping. Your three minutes are up. And I just want to make a quick announcement for those of you who tuned in late.
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This is a debate between Harold Camping of Family Radio and Dr.
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James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries. This is day number one of a two -day debate on the theme,
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Has the Church Age Ended? And, Dr. James R. White, you now have three minutes. I want to point out that Mr.
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Camping has just misrepresented Hebrews chapter 8. And this is a good example of what happens when you do not do exegesis of the text directly.
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In verse 8, he said, For he finds fault with them when he says, He identified them as the covenants.
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Read what it says. He goes on to quote Jeremiah 31. He's finding fault with the people under the first covenant.
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That's why you have the new covenant that is then enunciated in the verses that follow.
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The them is not the two covenants. There's not some third one or something that's coming. That's not what
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Hebrews chapter 8 is talking about in any way, shape, or form. That does not follow the argument of the book of Hebrews.
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That's again where you just, he said, Well, and we see elsewhere. No. You have to find out what the original text is saying before you run off to another text.
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One is exegesis, allowing the text to speak for itself. The other is eisegesis, reading into the text meanings that the original author and the original audiences would have had no idea of.
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Now, there were many people who were saved in the outpouring of the
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Holy Spirit of God. I'm not sure what the idea of, well, there weren't many people saved during Jesus' preaching.
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Well, that may be true, but there were 120 in the upper room. And when the church began to expand, there were thousands very quickly.
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So when the Spirit came and it was the Spirit's time to draw those people, he drew them. That's what the
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Spirit can do. Revelation chapter 5, talking about this book that is sealed. The question is asked, who's worthy to open it?
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Is Harold Camping the one who's worthy to open it? No. It is, of course, the Lord Jesus.
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Is this the Bible? Is that what anyone reading John's words would have understood?
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Again, we need to understand, if you take this perspective that is being presented by Mr. Camping, then
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John wrote this book, and Christians read this book, and Christians died protecting this book.
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Christians gave their blood protecting this book and preaching this book, and they never had the slightest idea what it was talking about.
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Until 1900 years later, when someone in Alameda, California, has the book open to them and then can begin teaching this.
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I'm sorry, but the very teaching of the scripture is that it's given to us for our edification.
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It is given to us to build us up. And that's why the scriptures were given to us. And there have been many people down through the history of the church who have come along and said,
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Oh, I have the special insight. I have the spiritual insight that no one else has ever had. They've all come, and they've all gone.
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And the only thing left is the church of Jesus Christ. And he asked, what churches are still teaching? Mr. Camping, there are faithful Christians sitting in prison cells in Muslim lands today who have never heard of you or your message, but they stand firm for the name of Jesus Christ.
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They will not give up their confession of faith in Jesus Christ, and you cannot say that they are not true believers, even though they don't believe what you are teaching.
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Thank you, Dr. White. Your three minutes are up, and Mr. Camping, you have three minutes. Yeah, well, you know, you're saying
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Mr. Camping this and Mr. Camping that and Mr. Camping the other thing, and as if I am just poking along just with my own ideas.
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I'll tell you, I have a very deep concern for the authority of the
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Bible. It's not the church that has any authority. Incidentally, you quoted one place from 1
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Timothy 3, the church is the pillar of truth. That absolutely is not true, and it didn't say that either.
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It's still the pillar and ground of truth, and Christ is the foundation. And the church can never, never write hurt on the
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Bible. The Bible is God's Word, and the church was formed by the law of God.
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It was not the law of God that formed the Bible. And the Bible is not what
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John wrote or what Peter wrote. The Bible is what God said. What God said. And in Jeremiah 36,
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God shows us. He gives us a detail of how God dictated the book of Jeremiah to Jeremiah.
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And then Jeremiah's secretary wrote it down and put it in the role of the book.
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And that is illustrating how God has given us the Bible. Every word came from God. And whether the apostles who wrote or the men who wrote understood, that's beside the issue.
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It's what God wanted to give us. And as we read in Mark 4, he wrote it in a way that is very, very conducive to unbelief in the lives of those who, you know, have you ever preached a sermon on Mark 4?
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Let's look at that again. Because that really, when I discovered that years ago,
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I was shocked at what God was saying there. As he says in Mark 4, he's saying in verse 11, unto you it is given, he's talking to the apostles, is given the word of God, or excuse me, unto you is given the mystery of the kingdom of God.
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But unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables, that seeing they may see and not perceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand, lest they at any time be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them.
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Now, that's the word of God. That came from the mouth of God. And we have to deal with that.
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And that shows that God's intention was that a lot of the Bible was written in a way so it could not be understood.
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But as we learn the rules, and now wonderfully, as we're talking now, for example, about the time of the end,
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May 21, 2011, God has given us marvelous proof, right out of the
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Bible, that shows that we've done our homework. Okay, Mr.
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Camping, your three minutes are up. And now, Dr. James R. White, you may resume with three minutes.
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I would like to ask Mr. Camping to respond either today or tomorrow to one of the most key issues for me, and that was a statement
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I heard him make, where he identified Christ as the Father. I would very much like to find out if he has abandoned the historic doctrine of the
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Trinity at that point and embraced a form of modalism. I think that's extremely important. But we just had a statement made that I somehow was misrepresenting 1
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Timothy 3 .15. Let me read it to you. But in case I am delayed, Paul writing to Timothy, I write so that you will know how one ought to conduct himself in the household of God, which is the church of the living
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God, the pillar and support of the truth. The pillar and the bulwark of the truth.
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Probably a better way of rendering hadrioma there. So that is the statement that Paul makes.
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And the context is right after he's been discussing the qualifications of elders and deacons.
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So we're talking about the local church. So he's writing to Timothy so that he might know how people must behave in the local church, which is the church of the living
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God, the pillar and foundation of the truth. It does not require us to believe that the church rules over Scripture.
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Scripture is the speaking of God. The church listens to the voice of her spouse speaking in Scripture.
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There's no question about that. I have defended sola scriptura against the leading Roman Catholic apologists out there. But it does not follow then that what is being said here should not be believed, that it is
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God's purpose, that that which holds up, that which protects the truth is the local body of believers with elders and deacons.
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That was what Paul wrote to Timothy. Now, if you want to explain to me from the text, not jumping to another text, but looking at 1
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Timothy 3 .15, how do you understand that to teach anything other than that the local church is the pillar and foundation, the pillar and support, the pillar and bulwark of the truth?
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That it is God's purpose that in the ministry of the word of God, in the gathering of the saints, the instruction of the word of God, the worship that comes from that, when we enter into that place of worship.
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And I have seen people saved, Mr. Camping, in the years since you started teaching this, wonderfully changed in the fellowship of the church.
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The Holy Spirit of God has applied the word of God to their hearts and lives, and has changed their lives.
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That has happened since you have been teaching that the Holy Spirit is no longer in the church. One of us can go to the word of God and explain why that is.
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I do not believe that you can simply stay in 1 Timothy 3 .15 and explain what is being said there in context, in light of Paul's intention, and what
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Timothy would have understood, and explain how your system of denying the church exists is consistent with that which is found in the inspired word of God.
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Well, first of all, you know, Christ spoke about tares.
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Remember in Mark chapter 13 that the enemy sowed tares, and they were so much like the wheat, and incidentally this is parabolic language again, the tares representing people who look so much like a true believer that you cannot distinguish them from the wheat.
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The wheat representing, again parabolic language, the wheat representing those who are the true believers.
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And God says, don't try to throw out the tares because you're going to be throwing out the wheat.
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Wait until the end, and it's in our day that that separation is developing.
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That's the whole purpose of the Great Tribulation. One of the big purposes is a testing time where God is separating the wheat from the tares.
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But mankind can't see the heart. You can't see the heart of any people that claim that they're saved and their life has really been changed and say, now
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I know they're a true believer. Nobody can see that. What about these tares that come in that look exactly like true believers?
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They love the Lord. They are very good Bible teachers and whatever and whatever and whatever, and yet they are tares.
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God knows who they are. Now insofar as 1 Timothy chapter 3, you know,
01:00:01
God, this is not untypical. God wrote the Bible and put traps in the language in order to separate.
01:00:11
Here, this verse, for example, it says the church of the living
01:00:17
God, the pillar and ground of the truth. Now the church being the pillar and ground of the truth, that grammatically will work out.
01:00:27
That was true. But also, it will work out the living God is the pillar and ground of truth.
01:00:33
This verse is written in such a way that you can look at it either way.
01:00:39
And we know without question Christ is the ground of truth. He is the foundation of truth.
01:00:46
And we're not going to try to figure any way in which the church is the ground of truth.
01:00:53
Now you can do that, but you're not doing it giving
01:00:59
God all the glory. Glory, glory, glory goes to God. And incidentally, insofar as the
01:01:06
Trinity is concerned, the Bible is very clear. There are three persons in the
01:01:11
Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And yet, we read that in Christ dwelleth all the fullness of the
01:01:22
Godhead bodily. And we see this when he told the disciples in John 14,
01:01:29
You have been with me, you have seen the Father. And you have been with me, you have seen the
01:01:35
Holy Spirit. Three final minutes of this broadcast, and then we will resume tomorrow.
01:01:43
Oh, wait, we will be able to go another three minutes? Yes, yes. Oh, okay, well thank you very much. Again, in answer to a number of the things that were just brought up, the pillar and support of the truth is in apposition to the subject of the preceding phrase, which is the church of the living
01:02:00
God. To make God the description of that is, again, to just completely miss the point that Paul is attempting to communicate there.
01:02:09
Next, I wish I could, maybe tomorrow we can understand this a little bit more fully, but I don't understand
01:02:15
Mr. Camping's response just now. He has identified Christ as the Father. He has just used classical terms that modalists use.
01:02:23
Does he believe that the Son has existed as a divine person from eternity past, or at least the second person of the
01:02:31
Trinity, has he existed as a divine person from eternity past in communication with the
01:02:36
Father so that there are three divine persons who have eternally existed? I realize he says that the
01:02:42
Son had a beginning at the resurrection or something like that, but he actually uses the word
01:02:48
Christ for the pre -incarnate Jesus. It's very confusing, but I would like to maybe tomorrow get some clarification on that, because I think that is extremely, extremely important.
01:02:57
But once again, I hope the people in the audience can hear. I would like to offer to Mr.
01:03:03
Camping and to Family Radio that on May 22, 2011, I will do the open forum broadcast for a month to explain to people how to do biblical interpretation to avoid what has happened, because on May 12, 2011, when these things don't happen, then there's going to be a lot of people who are going to need to have their trust in the
01:03:25
Bible re -established, because they've been told over and over again, the Bible taught this, the
01:03:30
Bible taught this, and just like in 1975, when Jehovah's Witnesses predicted the end of the world, and it didn't happen.
01:03:36
Over a million people left the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society over the next few years. And the sad thing is, studies have shown the vast majority of them didn't end up anywhere else.
01:03:47
They are the great religiously abused. They no longer believe the Bible. They don't believe anything. And so I would like to offer to, starting
01:03:53
May 22, 2011, to talk about how to do meaningful exegesis and hermeneutics, so that you can again trust the
01:04:02
Bible and recognize that it has an unchanging message that is not dependent upon any one individual.
01:04:08
It is not dependent upon having a charismatic leader that claims to have a special insight, an opening of seals, and all the rest of those types of things.
01:04:16
I would like to warn people and exhort people that the
01:04:22
Bible itself should not be blamed for incoherent teachings that are attributed to it by not allowing its own words to speak for itself.
01:04:31
Don't blame the Bible for what people do to the Bible. Recognize that you need to listen to what the
01:04:37
Bible said as it was originally written, its original intention, and to its original audience. Thank you very much for the day.
01:04:44
Thank you so much, Mr. Harold Camping of Family Radio and Dr. James R.
01:04:49
White of Alpha Omega Ministries. This has been day number one of a two -day debate on the theme,
01:04:57
Has the Church Age Ended? We are going to be continuing our program tomorrow. I implore all of you listening to please pray for God to be glorified during that hour tomorrow.
01:05:10
I want to thank the technicians from both WNYG and from Family Radio for making sure that today's broadcast was a success.
01:05:19
And keep in mind that on Thursday, for those of you who have been itching to call in with questions, we are not taking phone calls tomorrow.
01:05:26
On Thursday, Dr. White will be on his own to receive your phone calls, and on Friday, hopefully, if Mr.
01:05:33
Camping is available, he will be on all alone to receive your phone calls. But thank you everyone for tuning in, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far far greater