Austin Fischer and Calls on Today's Dividing Line

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. It's Thursday afternoon and here we are again.

There always seems to be lots to be talking about. Last week was the Brian Houston discussion and Hillsong Church and I noticed a couple days after that broke and I made some comments on Facebook that Dr.

Moeller likewise commented on the situation and pointed out that the clarification the next day that says

I agree with what Paul said really wasn't a clarification because other than just open non -Christian homosexuals who would say

I don't care what Paul said, doesn't everybody in the gay Christian movement say they agree with Paul?

They just redefine what Paul said. And so I'm certain that all the folks we've,

Justin Lee thinks he agrees with what Paul said, it's just revisionist reading of what Paul said that he's agreeing to.

And so I'm still thinking that it would be nice to get a real clear, what's wrong with being wide open on this?

Just stating exactly where your church stands. Now, there is really right here you start seeing the discussion that I've sort of had in my mind a few times and maybe with a few people too.

Is there a maximum size to a church, to a church?

When I think of megachurches, I, the first thought across my mind is not normally healthy.

I mean, I had experience in megachurch. I was, I was in a megachurch. I think 20 ,000 members counts as a megachurch.

As I keep pointing out, we can never find more than 7 ,000 of them at any given time, but the names were there.

And in hindsight, now I had some great times there, especially as a young person, uh, boy, you know, family life centers and tennis courts and, uh, never did the bowling alley thing, did they?

No, they finally did. Oh, after we left, that's always how it works for me.

That's a look at, look at grand Canyon now after I leave. Believe it or not, they actually moved the bowling alley since then too.

Really? Yes. It's, it now has a more central role in the family life. Wow. I have no idea what's going on there now.

Cause it's not really a megachurch. Let's just say they've got a lot of room to move things around.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Big time. Yeah. Yeah. That's one of the problems. As far as I can tell though, it's still just a two lane bowling alley.

Oh, just two lanes. Oh yeah. That's no, it was never really like a couple of lanes and that's all you, but there was a, there was an indoor jogging trail and there was a weight room.

No, that's all still there. And they never did a pool, did they? No, I don't think so.

No, never did a pool. Uh, but, um, there was a lot of stuff in there. Yeah. There's just, it's,

I was there, what, six months ago. Were you? Yeah. Did you feel strange?

I did. I kept pointing out, wow, that used to look like this.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Got one of the old ones there. One of the ancients every time. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, we're fulfilling exactly what that guy said in South Africa. He skips the first 10 minutes cause I started doing this.

Anyway, what was I saying? I was talking about a big megachurches. I experienced it. And I saw, uh, the, the distance of, you know, the distance that existed between the upper staff, the lower staff and the people.

And, um, I just wonder if there's sort of a, you know, I think, I think MacArthur does it well, but man, he's got,

I don't know how many elders there. And let's, let's be honest. Most of those

Bible studies, quote unquote Bible study departments, classes or whatever, are little churches unto themselves. They really are.

Um, so I just, I just wonder, and what you see here is sort of a mini version of what you see in Roman Catholicism, where the

Pope's always having to throw a bone over the conservatives and a bone over the liberals and a bone over to the moderates and trying to keep this big, huge thing going the same direction.

And when you've got a megachurch, man, you've just, you've got such a varied constituency, unless everyone comes there, not because they've been wooed in by advertising and stuff.

The one nice thing that I really love about my little church is the people are there, choose to be there.

They're there because they know who we are, warts and all, and they know that what they're going to get when they show up on a

Sunday morning, they know what they're going to get there. The Bible's going to be opened and, um, there's going to be consistency, consistency.

And so you don't really have to, you know, if you, if you drop people in, uh, with, with promises and entertainment and stuff like that, oh man, it's hard.

It's hard to hold something like that together. It really, really is. And so when it comes this issue of where the church stands on God's moral law and, and what sin is, well, uh, it's going to be really, really hard to, um, to be really straightforward on that.

So I did find Dr. Moeller's comments on the, uh, the Hillsong situation, but it doesn't surprise me.

It just, it just doesn't surprise me. I, you're going to have those people, they're going to come out and they're going to be straightforward, but they're going to be, there's going to be two kinds of straightforwardness on this subject.

One is the biblically faithful. Uh, we present a positive understanding of God's creatorship, male and female roles, uh, thorough biblical argumentation.

You present the positive before the negative, the negative condemnation of homosexuality flows from the positive recognition that this is a twisting of the creator creation relationship is a twisting within the person themselves, et cetera, et cetera.

You've got that. And then you've got the, um, well, the

Steven Anderson style, remember a few weeks ago when he decided to go off after me and then in the process, you know, demonstrated that you don't, uh, uh, you know, you don't witness to homosexuals.

You just tell them they're going to burn the fire and, and then you burn them to the fire, uh, that kind of, uh, bigotry, which obviously the world's not going to differentiate between them and us.

That's the problem. That's the problem. The world is just simply going to throw us all in the same, same pile.

And as much as we differentiate ourselves, the world's not going to do it. And, uh, a lot, you know, you know, a theme that I'm hearing a lot recently and we are going to take calls.

Oh, I need to actually fire up the phone lines here. Um, we will, we will take calls toward the end of the program.

So if you'd like to get in, uh, 877 -753, you can look through the lights here.

877. We've now got two lights right there. The lights seem a little lower today.

They seem like they're not as bright, which is okay with me. Uh, it just sort of seems a little yellow.

I added in a, uh, a more yellow. That's what that was. You saw me looking at that, trying to, um, illuminate the, um, the scriptures over there and the, you know, just trying to get a little bit of ambiance going.

Ambiance. Ambiance. Not, not ambiance. Ambiance. Are you trying to do the French thing? I know you have

French ancestry. I try to overlook that all the time. It's an act of grace on my part. One would expect that from a

Scotsman. I'm not going to go there. Anyways, I wonder what that was.

It just did. You saw me looking at it. Yes, I did. Usually I can,

I can change things and you don't even notice. You notice the lava lamp is really lava -ing well.

It is in mega lava mode. So, but I, I just thought I might, you know, a little bit of just, it's a very light touch, uh, light there and just illuminates the lava lamp desk and stuff a little bit better.

Uh, what were we talking about? I was saying that, um, um, a, a theme that I'm hearing a whole lot more often in Facebook and Twitter and just talking with people is, uh, frustration, discouragement, frustration, discouragement.

Every day you, you fire up the briefing, you, you, you listen to whatever sources you listen to, to get your news.

And you know, now the president's saying that the constitution guarantees the profaning of marriage and you and I both know that it doesn't, you and I both know that there is not a single founder of this nation that would have ever even conceived of this absurdity that they would have recognized the fundamental alteration of the human family and the degradation of the, of the human being involved.

We all know that, but every one of you had sitting going, yeah, we got a constitution. You've got a piece of paper that has been already so vacated of its meaning because the intention of its writers has been ignored and just dismissed, no longer even relevant.

That's all you got. All we've got is the grace of God, keeping this country from collapsing on top of itself.

And I see that hand of restraint being withdrawn every single day. And how do you stay positive?

How do you, well, I don't know. It's a matter of being positive. Um, maybe it's my, uh, my, my

Scottish heritage. I don't know, but, um, you know, it rains a lot in Scotland.

Every time I go up there, it rains a lot in Scotland and it's dark and dreary in Scotland. And I guess this, the

Scots have just developed the attitude that says you press on and you don't let your circumstances determine, you know, uh, how you're always feeling so on and so forth.

And I was just raised my, my, my departed mom used to say, there's two kinds of people in the world.

Uh, those that choose to be happy and those that choose not to be happy. And, um, it's pretty much up to you.

And, uh, there was a lot of truth to that. A lot of truth to that. Now you can see two people facing the same issues and, uh, one chooses to do so with a smile on their face and one chooses not to.

And I'm not just talking about some happy go lucky type thing. The fact of the matter is for a

Christian, you've been redeemed. Your sins have been forgiven. You have eternal life. All the rest of it's fluff when you think about it.

I mean, all the blessings and everything else, if God were to take them away, do you have any reason to complain?

I mean, if God brought his judgment against this nation and we all lose the vast majority of our physical blessings, we have to start growing our own food or, or, you know, the city's empty out and we're, we're eking out an existence, uh, on a little parcel land someplace or, you know, whatever else.

Uh, I mean, all that kind of stuff could happen. Do you really have reason to complain against God? No. So no matter what the situation we face, we still have the same high calling of being his servants.

Uh, we've already received eternal life. So what's, what's there really to complain about?

Um, you know, it's easy to say when you're in a healthy body, I understand that, but I've thankfully known some tremendous people and we have some real examples out there of people who despite the limitations of their physical capacities and the experience of pain and everything else that demonstrate to us that God is good and God is sufficient for anybody.

And so when people say, Oh, it's just so discouraging. Well, I look at it.

This is where God has placed me. I'm going to take the opportunities he has that he gives to me.

I'm going to do what I can to be salt and light all to his glory. And I'm going to enjoy my family and my kids and my grandchild and my church and my friends.

And, and as long as he continues to give me help, I'm going to keep cranking out the miles, running, rowing, riding, whatever, studying everything

I can study and doing everything I can do. And whatever he's called you to do, you do the same thing.

And I'm not saying you just look at what the world is, what's going on in the world. Just go, ah, who cares? Because I care.

I mean, my heart breaks over the, the, the profaning of marriage, the destruction of the human family.

This was once a great nation and it will not be for long. It will not be for long.

We we're proud of our military. Well, you know what? A military requires a strong economy. The economy is something that God basically is in control of because no one else has been able to figure out how it runs.

And, um, uh, you know, God's judgment is

God's judgment. And it's going to be just going to be just, that's all I can say. The judge of all the earth will do right.

The judge of all the earth will do right. Um, I posted an article yesterday, uh, where I talked about that, uh, that YouTube video that I, I, I just it's, it's, it's hate speech.

It is, it is, you've got to watch it. And already it's, it's picked up a lot of watches because I posted that I didn't want that to happen, but I felt that it was an appropriate thing to do.

Um, these, these are the types of folks that will be militating, not just to close us down, but to lock us away.

That's the kind of people they are. That's kind of people. Um, Oh, great.

I wonder if he's watching. Okay. Fred, you watching. And that's why you throw something in Twitter at me right in the middle of, of the, the program,

Brad Butler. Did you send a video where Robert Gundry claims Peter, the apostle was an apostate? No, actually

I have not. And thankfully you didn't include a URL because then we'd have to go to a commercial break or something.

I don't even know if we still have commercials queued up anywhere. Uh, so I can find it or something like that because, you know,

I mean, you know, and, and Fred, while I'm on the topic, um, your

Twitter picture has always bothered me. It has always bothered me because you, half of your face is covered by a coffee mug.

Now that's normally Rich's stance in life as well. Uh, there's a, there's a bunch of folks that their

Twitter pictures should be only half of a face covered by a coffee mug because that's, that's their normal experience of life. But the problem with that picture is that it's difficult for me to take seriously what someone is saying to me while they're sipping on coffee.

It just, it just communicates the idea that whatever I say, don't take it overly seriously.

That's, that's just, you're such an anti -coffee nut. Oh, I'm sure it's true.

If someone's sitting there doing this number and talking to you and going, yeah, this is really important.

Yeah, I can say it's really important. You're, you're going to recognize it's not really important. And so it just, it just diminishes the authority of your statements.

Fred, I just, I decided to mention that to you. Now, I don't know what you're going to say about my

Twitter picture. I'm riding a bike, but, um, up a 10 % grade in about a hundred miles into 120 mile ride.

So don't pick on it too badly. Anyway, it didn't, it didn't, it didn't say what, uh, yeah, there's now

Chris is going, what? And that's that, that that's going to have to go without me. We're going to take some phone calls.

Um, but I did want to, uh, mention something else here.

Uh, yesterday I posted, it's actually two things. I might get back to Austin Fisher today. I have it queued up.

Who knows? Um, but, uh, yesterday

I posted a video yesterday morning. I got up, uh, real early, not as early.

It wouldn't have been very early at all back in June, but the sun, the sun just not getting up as early these days, you know what

I'm saying? And, uh, just real, I love the regularity of that. And, uh,

I wanted to get at least about 60 miles in because I wanted to listen to Shadid Lewis debates.

I wanted to, you know, I had met Shadid back in 2008. I'm going to be debating him at New Hard Park Baptist church on Long Island in about two weeks.

And, um, I, I wanted to listen because I had been told by some

Christians, Shadid has really improved his presentation. He's gotten, he's gotten to be a better debater. Um, and so I found three debates directly relevant.

One, unfortunately it turned out to be a pal talk debate, but, um, uh, one was on the very topic of our debate is

Jesus Christ, God Almighty. And I had talked with Shadid a little bit about that.

I was a little concerned about what he thought that meant, but, um, the others were on the

Trinity, uh, at least polytheism Trinity is polytheistic, theistic, and then one on the

Muslim view of Jesus. And so there I am crunching through the dark and it was, it was really dark.

Um, and, uh, you know, there wasn't really, wasn't a moon and, uh, listening to this stuff and just going,

Oh no, Shadid does not understand the Trinity. I sent him the book. Obviously this was, this would have been after these debate.

Well, one of them might not have been, I think about it. One of them was posted in September and I think

I sent it before then. So, uh, but point being that I, I posted the video because I think it's just vitally important for us to be debating the real issues and not misrepresentations.

I mean, I, I want to see the Muslim Christian dialogue move forward. Now I realize that I'm not going to be able to do that in every single debate.

And I realize that you have to debate individuals who represent the majority of Muslims and the majority of Muslims do not understand the

Trinity. The majority of Muslims have a false idea of the Trinity. And so, yeah, uh, as, as frustrating as it might be, there will be those times that you have to continue to deal with those.

It's sort of like dealing with James two 20 and, and Mormons, you know, um, you've just got to ask for patience as you deal with the same topic for the 47 ,000 time.

Um, so, and if it turns out to be that, then, okay, it turns out to be that.

And we leave it up to the Lord as to what he does with it. Well, then we get an example this morning.

I saw this, this is on the answering Muslims, uh, uh, act 17, uh, web page, uh, about Paul Belal Williams.

And I, you know, I'll be honest with you. I don't even know what Paul's doing these days. Uh, for, for a while he shut down his blog and left

Islam allegedly. And he goes back and there's all this stuff about homosexuality and all that kind of stuff going on.

And, and he had been a speaker, but yet it was very obvious for years. He had been traveling around this other guy and, and, uh, you know, it is interesting.

There is a lot in the Quran about homosexuality against homosexuality. It really is. I don't see

Muslims talking much about it in the West. We know what they do in Muslim countries.

Uh, but you know, you would think there would be a, a good

Muslim apologetic out there on that subject, but who's, who's really doing the work in dealing with the fundamental moral and ethical problems with homosexuality.

It's not the Muslims, it's Christians. Um, so anyways, um,

I don't even know what context this was in. I don't recognize the format. There is a screenshot at, uh, answering

Muslims .com. And I think it was posted. Yeah, it was posted today. So you can get it there, but it shows

Paul Williams, October 23rd, 2014 at 1232 PM. And here's what he said.

Now, Paul Williams, for those of you who don't know who Paul Williams was, uh, Paul Williams is an apostate.

He is a British man who was a Christian quote unquote for a period of time.

And then, uh, became a Muslim. And, uh, he of course plays on his alleged expertise and things

Christian though. He's really not a trained theologian in any sense of the, of that term.

And of course we've challenged him. He, he just, he picks and chooses. He's a Zacher Nike type guy as far as picking and choosing who he will and will not debate.

And, uh, he knows who he shouldn't debate. And so he won't debate us. But, uh,

Paul Williams, here's what he says. The concept of God being three co -equal persons, each one, a separate

God is utterly alien to the religion of Jesus and all Jews today.

Now I don't want Paul to faint here, but I agree a thousand percent.

Every Christian would agree a thousand percent. The problem is most of us would probably conclude that that wasn't what

Paul Williams was trying to communicate in all probability.

What Paul Williams was actually addressing was the Christian doctrine of the

Trinity. And if that's the case, then he grossly misrepresented it the same way that Shadid Lewis does.

But there's a difference between Shadid Lewis and Paul Williams. Now they're both technically apostates because, you know,

Shadid raised as a Catholic, joined a Baptist church, black

Baptist church, left the black Baptist church as to his own testimony on the day that the pastor, uh, in the middle of his sermon, uh, broke out a saxophone and started jamming with the band as part of his, uh, his sermon.

And he said, you know, I don't think this is how you worship God. And, uh, he left

Christianity. Well, should have left that church, not Christianity, but being raised in Roman Catholicism and going to a culturally black church, neither one of them gives me much of a hope that he actually was ever truly, uh, in a position of hearing the whole council of God, because you're not going to get that in Rome as a false gospel.

And in that kind of a cultural Christian situation, very often the gospel is not there either.

And so I hear just tremendous confusion on Shadid's part.

I hear deception on Paul Williams. Um, and it makes you wonder why, why, why does

Paul Williams feel he has this, this freedom? Um, now I think with Paul Williams, there's other, other issues going on there very clearly, but I did want to say,

I completely agree with that statement. The concept of God being three co -equal persons, each one, a separate God that's called tritheism.

And, um, Christians would agree that is utterly alien to the religion of Jesus and to all

Jews today, even though the relationship of Jesus and all Jews today, who knows? Uh, but, uh, of course,

Christians are not claiming that. And unfortunately it seems to be what Paul Williams is attempting to communicate, uh, as well.

Um, oh, him? Oh man, really? Yeah, I know.

Yeah, I know. Um, I'm sitting here going, uh, you know, if I talk to him, the other people might call in, we'll never get around to Austin.

So I'd actually like to play a few minutes of, of Austin before we, uh, get to that.

You know, he's used to sitting in purgatory and stuff like that anyways, whether it's, whether it's cyber purgatory or, uh, uh, phone purgatory, it doesn't really, really matter.

We do have a, a theology of purgatory around here. It's just not the Roman Catholic one. Uh, okay.

Uh, yeah, yeah. For those asking, everybody's starting to ask me, and I'm just going to have to, um, get hold of it.

Uh, I'm seeing all about this, let the lion roar thing. I'm going to have to track it down.

Um, the, what I've seen at this point, um,

I saw a, I was sent, uh, Michael Brown sent me a review of it this morning.

And when I read through it, I'm like, seriously, evidently, and I know this is one of Michael's big areas, but, uh, evidently the film is about Christian antisemitism and that to complete the work of the reformation, uh, we need to change our view of the

Jews specifically need to adopt some kind of, um, of, well, you know, the, the big term these days as grossly inaccurate as it is, is replacement theology.

If you believe, uh, that the promises are fulfilled in the church, then you are keeping the reformation from actually reaching its final fruition.

And I, I'm just like, really seriously. Um, okay. So, but I got to track it down, uh, and at least watch the video, or maybe

I can, if I can get it in a, as a digital download, I can rip the MP3 and listen to what

I'm writing. That's, that's how I watched most of the, most of my movies these days. So, um, in that way, not quite as exciting, but for reviewing on the program.

Um, so I'll get to it. I'll get to it eventually. Um, but not, not yet.

Uh, I'm not gonna certainly not be able to get to it before the trip to New Jersey and New York, uh, which is coming up.

Did we ever fix the, uh, all the time stuff? Yeah, I think we did.

I, you know, it's, it's kind of wild when you're doing Google stuff in Arizona for stuff going on in New York, the

Google calendar seems to have a mind of its own. It does. But, um, yeah, you cannot trust that thing for love and money.

I do want to do a shout out here real quick. Manuel has called and we're trying to work things out and just kind of get it scheduled and where we, you know,

I know. Right. And, and so. I had sent something to him. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, it's, it's when. He had sent something about Friday.

Yeah. He's, he's, he's sent stuff back now. And, and, you know, I told him it's, look, stay honest. We want to make this happen.

And, you know, we've made promises and we've, we want to, we want to make this right. So, um, you know, I don't mind saying that publicly.

We've picked our texts and we'll, uh, we'll, we'll, we'll chat about them. Yeah. Uh, in time.

Um, so anyway, um, let me, let me get to Austin Fisher here real quick.

And, uh, then we'll take the phone calls if there are any others, uh, that come in as well.

For those of you who don't remember, it's been a long time. A debate took place a couple of months ago, Austin Fisher, Brian Zond were the synergists and Austin Fisher, of course, uh, now being described as, uh, uh, you know, an expert on Calvinism.

Uh, I wouldn't be surprised to run into somebody pretty soon as we saying this guy was one of the leading

Calvinist scholars and he saw the light. And it's just like, remember he was a teenager, maybe early twenties, short period of time like John Piper.

Uh, but I'm sorry, calling this guy, some kind of an expert on Calvinism is about as dishonest as most of the people are called experts on Christianity on the

Dean show. Uh, you know, the guy who was United Methodist youth pastor, uh, former

Christian scholar, you know, please. Um, so anyways, uh,

Austin Fisher, we, we've started listening to his presentation and, uh, we're about halfway through it.

And so we're going to pick up with that, uh, listening to what Austin Fisher has to say. Now, maybe, maybe

God does have complex emotions about all this. Like John Piper says, that's fair. But at the end of the day, God still wants most people to be damned forever.

And that's why they will be. So this is the unconditional predestination you have to believe in again, says Calvin. Okay.

So Austin's big thing is if there is a divine decree, then everything in that decree represents

God's desire. There can't be any differentiation.

You know, my, my synergist friends really when, when trying to look at the, the deep things of God really want them to be flattened out and simplified.

And so they would admit that if a human being produced, if we had a tremendously brilliant human being that produced a highly complex plan to, to bring about the intended result, that this plan might include elements that from a certain perspective do not seem necessarily to fit in with everything else, but in the grand scheme, they'd see that.

But when it comes to God, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You know, it's like, it's like what they do with God's love.

God's love has got to be that peanut butter, you know, and not the crunchy, no, not, not crunchy peanut butter, but, but smooth.

It's all the same. There can't be no, no crunchy part because that, because then the elect would get the crunchy part and then the non -elect would get the smooth part.

No, no, no, no. All gotta be very smooth. You know, undifferentiated love and very, very simple, you know so if, if God chooses in his decree to utilize human sinfulness and to bring great redemption out of, of tremendous evil of their times and he removes his hand of restraint and you can really see what fills the hearts of man unless, unless God was, was restraining him.

He's got to have the same desire for that as he has for the growth of the kingdom and, and the, the love that exists between the brethren and the unity of the saints around the world.

And it's, it's all got to be the same thing. See, and I just go, you're, you're, you're so biased that you don't even seem to see what you're, what you're doing.

And so this, this idea, well, well God wanted those people to be damned. Well, on one level, in the sense that if he had wanted my damnation, he could have brought it about because I'm certainly guilty and wasn't owed anything.

And I fell on Adam and it's perfectly just. Federalism is perfectly just. God's what sets up the rules.

And fundamentally, I really, this whole synergistic system eventually does and has historically led to people rejecting like Brian Zahn, penal substitutionary atonement and things like that.

It all starts unraveling because once you start picking and choosing which parts of God's revelation you're going to like, where are you going to stop?

What's going to stop you? That's the question. And so this idea then leads the idea that, well,

God wants this person's damnation and he wants this person's salvation. And what does that eventually lead to the idea of equal ultimacy?

But biblically, those are not equally ultimate things. There is an expression of grace and power and love and mercy in the one that is not in the other.

And so when you say God wants this and God wants that, there obviously are going to be different kinds of wanting or desiring just as there is in human beings.

You know, every once in a while, my daughter and I talk about her earliest memory. And her earliest memory was when she got tubes in her ears.

We went to this hospital and I still remember it too, which is half the time my kids start talking about something.

I only had this vague recollection. Though I do remember something else they remember a lot of, which was when

Josh pulled the decorative. He was trying to open one of the drawers in your kitchen to find a fork or something.

And he pulled on the thing underneath the sink and actually pulled the thing off of the.

And you don't even remember it. I don't remember it either. But boy, do they remember it. It's amazing what kids will remember that we don't remember.

But it was it was back at the old house years and years and years ago. Anyway, she remembers these these masks.

They must look like masks, giants coming out of this room and taking her from her parents.

And she's screaming. And yeah, I can understand why that was a first memory. That was that was rough for me to believe me.

And then she remembers waking up and when she woke up from the anesthesia, she couldn't see. She didn't have her sight.

It took a few minutes for it to come back. And that would be freaky. And I remember that as well. Anyway, the point being, you know, for her, what was

I doing? I was actually handing her over to these masked creatures.

How terrible of a dad I was. For me, I knew this had to happen because she was constantly on erythromycin.

She was constantly having the infections and we needed to get this done. And it worked and it cleared it up.

The point was I knew better. There was a greater purpose to be fulfilled. It wasn't a position to judge.

And we don't like recognizing that when it comes to God, we are like she was and God is way beyond us.

But like I said, my synergist friends don't like to give God that role.

If you want to be a Calvinist and I think I think Calvin himself would be ashamed of you if you claim to be a Calvinist and don't own up to it.

Now, moving on to what I think is fairly obvious. Now, of course, Calvin's expression of these things is so far beyond the shallow representation was just made that it makes you chuckle a little bit.

But anyways, even though really good and smart people like Daniel and Timothy disagree with me, and that's that unconditional predestination, no matter how much it's softened or qualified is completely incongruous with the

God revealed in Jesus Christ. I'm of the opinion that the question behind every other question that impinges upon Christian faith is this, and Mark said it earlier, what's

God like? You know, a tsunami hit Sumatra a few years back and 250 ,000 people died.

And Christians inevitably start to ask questions about the nature of God's sovereignty and God's relationship to the world. But the question behind all those questions, the question we all are dying to know is, is what's

God like? Well, you know, I would wonder, Austin, 250 ,000 people.

Could God have stopped that? Could God have stopped that? Did he have his purposes?

Was he just? Was that his wrath? These would be some of the questions that I would like to ask and didn't get a chance really to ask them in the brief encounter that we had before.

What's God like? And if there is anything that the Bible is absolutely crystal clear about, anything that every single one of us should be able to agree on here tonight is that if you want to know what

God's like, then you look at Jesus, right? John 1 .18, John 14 .9, 2 Corinthians 4 .4,

Colossians 1 .15, and perhaps most importantly Hebrews 1 .3. Jesus, Jesus is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of God's nature.

In Jesus, the glory of God shines forth so brightly that there's just no place for some hidden God lurking in the shadows with secret decrees.

That's my opinion anyways. And so what do we see of God when we look at Jesus? But wait a minute, there's no

God with secret decrees lurking in the shadows? Notice the conclusion has already been drawn before the argument's even been made.

Yet Jesus is the one that uttered John 6. Wasn't it?

No one can come to me unless it's been granted to him by the Father. Isn't that in John 6?

I think it was. Yeah, I think it's there. And I give my life to my sheep.

You are not my sheep. That's in John 10. That's Jesus. There is a thing about the

Tower of Siloam seems to have some kind of a theology behind it. It sounds like the

God of the Old Testament. It seems that Jesus identified his Father as the

God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And so my problem with this

Neo -Orthodox movement out there is that when you try to create a

Jesus that's separated from the scriptures that he was immersed in, that he quoted from, that he considered to be

God speaking, and that he held men accountable to, you're gonna end up with a false Jesus.

And you should know better. You should know better. And yet that's what people are doing.

And that's a question that takes a lifetime to answer, but I've only got a few minutes. And so I'll answer with a really short verse that I think says the most horrific and yet beautiful thing that humanity's ever heard,

Mark 15, 24, and then they crucify Jesus. They crucify

Jesus. So what do we see of God when we look at Jesus? Well, I think we see a

God, a God, who would rather die than give sinners what they deserve.

That sounds so spiritual, but it is pure bunk, pure bunk.

You can't take one little verse and pull it out and create something that's going to give everybody just goosebumps and ignore the fact that Jesus said it's necessary that the

Son of Man do this. Why? Why is it necessary? Oh, there's all that sin stuff, and there's all that law stuff, and there's all that wrath stuff, and there's the

Son of Man giving himself as a ransom for many. And when you take just a part of that, pull it over here, remove it from the context that Jesus intended to have it.

You are lying about Jesus. You're lying about Jesus.

Don't tell me that you're trying to accurately represent Jesus when you take this little snippet out here and that little snippet over there and, well,

I don't like this stuff. And that's what Zahn's all about, is I don't like this stuff. We've already seen that. And you cobble these things together and then sugarcoat it with a ton of yummy white chocolate spirituality.

It's still a lie. It's still a lie. What you have in Jesus is the expression of God's love,

God's mercy, but the necessity that he himself taught of the cross shows us

God's holiness, God's justice, and the fact that God's law is intimately a part of God's purposes in what he's doing in this world, and he's not just going to put that stuff off to the side.

And that's why these folks always collapse on homosexuality. That's why they always collapse on it.

Because fundamentally, they've already disconnected wrath, justice, law, holiness, the demonstration of God's true nature through those and vindication of those things from the cross itself, to where it becomes, well,

God would rather die than let sinners get what they deserve. If that's so true, how come none of the apostles ever said it?

It's not true. It's imbalanced. And an imbalance doesn't help us.

We're almost at the end of his statement, so I'm just going to go ahead and press on, and we've got enough time here. I think we see a

God who, as 1 Timothy 2 .4 says, wants all people to be saved, not just all sorts of people, all people to be saved, and then puts his money where his mouth is by being nailed to a wooden stick.

That's real nice, except I doubt that Austin's ever going to put himself in a position.

I could be wrong. I could be wrong, but right now, I would be doubtful that Austin would ever put himself in a position of ever having to offer a counter -exegesis of that text to what

I've offered in the Potter's Freedom. I bet you he wouldn't do it. I bet you he wouldn't do it. He says he read it.

He says he read my book. That's what he said on the program with me while he was still a quote -unquote Calvinist.

Okay, Austin, what's your counter -exegesis? How do you explain Jesus being the intermediary for all people?

Is Jesus interceding for every person before the throne of God? What is the nature of that intercession?

How is that related to his role as high priest? Let's talk about these things, because my experience, once you start getting into that, that's when you start hearing all about, well, you know,

I don't really want to argue and la, la, la, la, la, la. I think we see a God who, as 1

John 2 says, is the atoning sacrifice for the sins of the whole world and not just some of the world.

And so, long story short, for me. Well, again, so what does propitiation mean? How do you, how do you keep yourself from falling into universalism if you're even going to try to keep yourself from falling into universal?

Maybe you're already buying your Rob Bell glasses, Austin. I don't know. But wouldn't shock me.

Wouldn't shock me. The crucifixion of the god man Jesus is what ultimately crucified my

Calvinism because the crucifixion of Jesus, it just, it just burst the wineskins of Calvinism.

Calvinism can't contain it in my opinion, biblically, theologically, perhaps most importantly, aesthetically, it reveals a

God that's just too. Aesthetically? Aesthetically? So, so you've got the crucifixion of Jesus.

Whose version of it? How about we go to Hebrews? How about we go toward the scriptures, lay these things out for us.

The only system that takes seriously the function of the high priest, the role of the high priest, the perfection of his work, the non repetitive nature of his work, the union of the elect with Christ, intermediation, intercession before the throne.

It's all there. Only one, right?

Okay. Good and too beautiful for Calvinism to make sense of because when you've got a

God who's crucified for sinners, I don't think there's a lot of space for a God who creates sinners no matter how it's explained in order to crucify.

You can't hold those two images together. Can't hold those two images together. Well, if you're gonna believe the Bible, you're better because what you just told us is the crucifixion is an afterthought.

Right? This plan B, is this the lamb slain from the foundation of the earth?

Or are you gonna argue with that translation? Because well, no, this is plan B. He didn't intend this.

These guys, remember when we were on together, he was really wishy -washy about answering questions about this very kind of thing.

He's not quite as wishy -washy anymore. Not quite as wishy -washy anymore. Now, you can make the case that Calvinism is biblical, obviously, by which

I mean it's one of the ways you can make sense of the teachings of the Bible. Although I do think there's a better biblical case to be made. However...

And what is it? What is it, Austin? You didn't present it in your book.

I think you know. Because fundamentally, part of that argument right there is there's multiple ways.

There's multiple ways. We really don't have to decide. There's multiple ways. That's what you're saying. That is what you're saying.

I don't think you can make the that Calvinism is beautiful. And I think the new

Calvinism has done an unbelievable job at that, but what I think has happened is a false veneer of beauty being painted over doctrines that just aren't that beautiful when you get down to the bottom of what's really being said.

And if there is a God whose true nature and even glory, glory, is revealed in the damnation of a soul that was predestined to hell,

I'm afraid I can't see how that's the crucified God of Jesus Christ. So, there's his opening statement.

And it's all about whether it's beautiful. What is beautiful,

Austin, is when man, redeemed by the

Spirit of God, bows the knee to the lordship of Christ and to his revelation in his word and seeks not to enforce his emotions and feelings upon God's truth, but instead to believe consistently everything

God has said about himself so that we can worship God as he truly is, not as we want to form him in our own image.

That's beautiful. Now, I'm not even going to, one of the things that bugged me completely about this entire debate, even by the

Calvinists, was they bought into this God invites us to the dance garbage.

And I call it garbage because I know what it's meant to say, but the only way that this topic is ever going to be meaningfully addressed is if we stay within the realm of solo scriptura.

Once we start dancing around outside, painting pretty sunsets, the chances of actually answering these questions pretty much disappears, really does.

So, then there is a Calvinist presentation, and the next up was Brian Zond, which we will,

I'm going to mark this right here, put a little red thing there, that means that's where we start, and listen to what

Brian Zond had to say in that. We were actually, now that I'm thinking about it, we went into his stuff with Michael Brown, and I was going to come back to this.

Oh, well, that's what happens when you travel around the world and come back, and getting ready to travel across the

United States, a nice short flight in comparison to what I got used to on the other wing, but only a few weeks after that,

Kiev and Berlin. So, we'll just keep pressing on here.

So, all right, let's, oh, I got one phone call. I'm wondering if he's just blocking everybody else, but yeah, anyways.

All right, we're going to talk to a man who was supposed to be banned from the chat channel until next

Tuesday, but I was kind enough to give him one last shot, because he seems to really need a lot of extension of grace.

What's that? What, what? Hasn't he had a number of one last shots? Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, there's no two ways about it, but anyways, oh, what was, no, that's not his name.

What was, what was his name? Remember the last time he called in? Oh, Horatio, Horatio in Georgia.

You're, you're on, Horatio. That's nice. Thank you. As always, I can feel the love and the mercy.

Let me just go ahead and make a public apology for, for using a sacred nickname and channel.

I'm, you know, very sorry for that. How, you know, how thoughtless of me to, to go ahead and do that, especially after I'd been warned.

You had been told directly. Yes, you have. Oh, there is no doubt about it. I pushed the envelope.

You did. Purposely. Oh, yeah. Yep. Yep. And aren't you, wait a minute, aren't you, aren't you a father?

I am. Yeah. And do you, do you, do you set limits for your, for your kids? Let's get to my question.

We could, we could, we can get to my question. We don't have to, we don't have to compare me to my own children.

And you are, you are a Christian, right? Just, just checking. And in fact, in fact, who's your, who's your

Sunday school teacher again? What's that guy's name? The freakishly tall Todd Friel. Yes.

Yes. Okay. In fact, I'm in Sunday school class with your daughter and son -in -law.

Yes. Well, no church is perfect. So anyways. So I wanted to,

I was listening last night to the final caller that Rich had let on on Tuesday night and it, it was.

The Rich snuck on, on Tuesday night. Well, yeah. And you know what, to be honest with the exception of, of my calls, that was probably one of the best calls that I've heard into the dividing line in, in a long time.

I mean, Pierre had some good stuff back in the day and then there's my calls, but that was a really great call.

And it got me thinking, and you wanted to know what I was so excited about earlier in the channel.

And it was this article that really kind of answered a question that you brought up with that caller

Tuesday afternoon, which was, which was on like, where is the line, you know, and when it, and, and take, take the issue of homosexuality and same sex marriage in our culture today.

I have found myself over the last couple of years pushed into one corner or another by both sides, by either the side of say, theonomists who would have the, the civil law of Israel as the, as the law of the land, or by,

I have some Christian friends that are libertarians who see no big issue with legalizing same sex marriage, as long as they maintain the scriptural position that it's sinful to participate in homosexual behavior.

So I, and I'm constantly kind of, I feel kind of caught in the middle of like, well, you have to go all the way one way, or you have to go the other way.

And this article, which is by a guy named Brandon Adams, and he posts that article in the channel today, and he had some quotes from Richard Barcelos in it, and it really resonated with me today.

And I think, I guess my question, it's not really a question, but I think it's an answer.

I think the line is that the moral law of God transcends his judicial law given to the nation of Israel, specifically that which we find in the civil law of Israel.

Would you agree with that statement? Well, what do you mean transcends it?

It came about before, I guess. Certainly the civil law of Israel is reflective of God's character.

I agree with that. But I think it's reflective of his moral character.

It's reflective of the moral law. Marriage, Adam and Eve, predates government and civilization.

Also, I mean, the murder of Abel by Cain predates government and civilization, unless you want to talk about the family being the first form of government, which you could make an argument for that.

But it seems to me, the article, I wish I had sent you the article.

I wish you'd gotten it. It put it so much more eloquently than I could ever say. Yeah, I clicked on the link, but I didn't have time to do much more than read a couple of quotes from Barcelos.

Well, it seemed to kind of latch on to the fact that, you know, can we just, the question was, can we just replace

Canaan, the law for Israel, with California and just, you know, overdub it that way? But it went in a different direction.

We don't have to do that. No, because I don't think the Canaanites were nearly as crazy as the Californians.

Yeah, there's definitely, yeah, there's a problem. That's a good point.

I guess there's, you don't have to, and this may be the balance that I've been looking for, but if we base the, and the word equity was used a lot, but if we base the law of the land off of the moral laws of God where it's applicable, it's still okay.

I mean, I know the Reconstructionist crowd would probably argue that and have a different take on that, but it seems that,

I guess, I don't know what I'm trying to say. Yes, we can tell.

Thank you. I appreciate that. And we're running out of time, but I think I know what you're saying.

I don't know that it's any different than what I have said, which is there are principles contained in the law that we have to examine the applications that were made in the law to see what those principles are.

The most commonly used example of that is in regards to the rooftops and the railings around rooftops and the concept of saving life and that that has a transcendent reality that goes beyond rooftops.

We don't sit on rooftops anymore, so we don't need to put railings around them, but we should have them around pools so little children don't fall in and drown.

The issue is of life. Same thing, there's all sorts of stuff in the law about the fearing and honoring the dead, for example, and we shouldn't be doing that.

That's certainly big in a lot of cultures outside of Western cultures.

That's a another transcendent concept that can transfer across. And so, yeah, but it still requires a lot of,

I think, very careful and faithful examination of the specific text, which is what

I'm trying to do in the sermon series I'm doing, to see what those principles are and to see what is specifically relevant to Israel as a theocratic nation over against the moral principles that are then reflected therein.

And that's where the disagreement comes in. But it's not like there's been a whole lot of debate on the subject, to be perfectly honest with you.

Most people just go, well, we're not in a law, we're under grace and ignore all the rest of that stuff anyways. But there is still a lot of work that needs to be done in that area.

So that's true. But anyway, yes, I saw you were all excited about that, and I'm glad it was useful to you.

I'll have to try to find some time of listening to reading the whole thing myself. And thank you for enduring the abuse and calling in today,

Horatio from Georgia. All righty. Thanks, Horatio. And thanks for listening to The Vying Line today.

Lord Willen will be back next week. But then there's going to be interruption for a while again, because I'm going to be gone just as long as I was gone to South Africa.

But this time, at least I'll still be in the States, here in New Jersey, New York. Schedule's on the website. And hope to see a lot of our friends back there in the

East for the debates and the various things we're doing there. Look forward to seeing you then. See you next week.