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 Bryan Houston discussion in Hillsong Church.

And I noticed a couple days after that broke, and I made some comments on Facebook, that Dr. Moller likewise commented on the situation and pointed out that the quote-unquote clarification the next day that says, I agree with what Paul said, really wasn't a clarification because, I mean other than, you know, 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.

Megachurch Size, Church Consistency, and Moral Clarity

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 local body? I've thought about that.

When I think of megachurches, the first thought across my mind is not normally healthy. I mean, I had experience in megachurch. 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. Boy, you know, family life centers, and tennis courts, and never did the bowling alley thing, did they? No. They finally did?

Oh, after we left. That's always how it works for me. Look at Grand Canyon now, after I leave.

Believe it or not, they actually moved the bowling alley since then too. Really? Yes. It now has a more central role in the family life. Wow.

I have no idea what's going on there now, because 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. No, it was never really. It was like a couple of lanes, and that's all you.

But 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. There was a lot of stuff in there. 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.

Got one of the old ones there. One of the ancients have returned. Yeah, yeah. You know, we're fulfilling exactly what that guy said in South Africa. He skips the first ten minutes because he and I started doing this stuff.

Anyway, what was I saying? I was talking about big megachurches. I experienced it. And I saw the distance that existed between the upper staff, the lower staff, and the people. And I just wonder if there's sort of a, you know, I think MacArthur does it well, but man, he's got, I don't know, how many elders there?

And 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. So 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 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 who 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. The Bible's going to be opened, and there's going to be consistency.

And so you don't really have to, you know. If you draw people in with promises and entertainment and stuff like that, oh man, it's hard to hold something like that together. It really, really is. And so when it comes to this issue of where the church stands on God's moral law and what sin is, well, it's going to be really, really hard to be really straightforward on that.

So I did find Dr. Mohler's comments on the Hillsong situation, but it doesn't surprise me. It just doesn't surprise me. You're going to have those people. They're going to come out, and they're going to be straightforward.

But there's going to be two kinds of straightforwardness on this subject. One is the biblically faithful. We present a positive understanding of God's creatorship, male and female roles, 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, it's a twisting within the person themselves, et cetera, et cetera.

You've got that. And then you've got the, 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 witness to homosexuals.

You just tell them they're going to burn the fire, and then you burn them in the fire. That kind of 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 pile, and as much as we differentiate ourselves, the world's not going to do it. And you know a theme that I'm hearing a lot recently?

And we are going to take calls. I need to actually fire up the phone lines here. We will take calls toward the end of the program. So if you'd like to get in, 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. It just sort of seems a little yellow.

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

Ambiance. 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. You saw me looking at it. Yes, I did. It caught my attention. Usually I can change things and you don't even notice.

You notice the lava lamp is really lavaing well. It is in mega lava mode.

I just thought I might, you know, a little bit of just, it's a very light touch light there and just illuminates the lava lamp desk and stuff a little bit better.

Frustration, Discouragement, and Christian Hope

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

Every day you fire up the briefing, you listen to whatever sources you listen to to get your news, and, you know, now the president is saying that the constitution guarantees the profaning of marriage.

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 human being involved.

We all know that, but every one of you sitting going, yeah, we got a constitution. You 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. Maybe it's my Scottish heritage, I don't know, but 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 just the Scots have just developed the attitude that says you press on and you don't let your circumstances determine how you're always feeling, so on and so forth.

And I was just raised, my departed mom used to say, there's two kinds of people in the world. Those that choose to be happy, and those that choose not to be happy. And it's pretty much up to you. And there is a lot of truth to that, a lot of truth to that.

You can see two people facing the same issues, and 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 is 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 the city is empty out, and we're eking out an existence on a little parcel of land someplace, or whatever else.

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.

We've already received eternal life, so what's there really to complain about? 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, demonstrate to us that God is good, and God is sufficient for anybody.

And so, when people say, oh, it's just so discouraging. I say, well, I look at it, this is where God has placed me, I'm going to take the opportunities 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 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's going on in the world and just go, ah, who cares? Because I care. I mean, my heart breaks over 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'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, you know, God's judgment is God's judgment, and it's going to be just. It's 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.

I posted an article yesterday where I talked about that YouTube video that 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. 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 there. Oh, great. I wonder if he's watching. OK, Fred, you watching? And that's why you throw something in Twitter at me right in the middle of the program. Fred Butler, did you see that 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 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, 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. 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 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. I guess it's really important. You're going to recognize it's not really important. And so it just it just diminishes.

The authority of your statements, right? I just I just mentioned that to you. Now, I don't know what you're going to say about my Twitter picture. I'm riding a bike, but up a 10 percent grade in Vail Pass, about 100 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? Yeah, there's now Chris going, what? And that's that that's going to have to go without me. We're going to take some phone calls.

But I did want to mention something else here. Yesterday, I posted it's actually two things. I might get back to Austin Fisher today. I have it queued up. Who knows? But yesterday I posted a video. Yesterday morning, I got up.

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. And just real. I love the regularity of that. And I want to get at least about 60 miles in because I wanted to listen to Shadid Lewis debates.

I wanted to, you know, I met Shadid back in 2008. I'm going to be debating him at New Hyde Park Baptist Church on Long Island in about two weeks. And 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. And so I found three debates directly relevant. One, unfortunately, it turned out to be a pal talk debate. But 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. And I was a little concerned about what he thought that meant. But the others were on the Trinity, at least polytheism.

Trinity is polytheistic. 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. And, you know, there really wasn't a moon. And listening to this stuff and just going, oh, no, Shadid does not understand the Trinity.

Sent in 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.

But the point being that 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 want to see the Muslim Christian dialogue move forward.

And 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, 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 220 and Mormons.

You know, you've just got to ask for patience as you deal with the same topic for the forty seven thousandth time. So if it turns out to be that, then OK, 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 Act 17 web page about Paul Belal Williams. And, you know, I'll be honest with you. I don't even know what Paul's doing these days.

For for a while, he. Cut down his blog and left Islam, allegedly, and he goes back and does 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, you know, it is interesting. There is a lot in the Koran 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.

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 of homosexuality?

It's not the Muslims. It's Christians. So anyways. I don't even know what context this was in. I don't recognize the format. There is a screenshot at answering Muslims dot com. And I think it was posted.

Yes, posted today. So you can get it there. But shows Paul Williams, October 23rd, 2014, at twelve thirty two p .m. And here's what he said. Now, Paul Williams, for those of you who don't know who Paul Williams was.

Paul Williams. Is an apostate. He is a British man. Who was a Christian, quote unquote, for a period of time and then became a Muslim. And he, of course, plays on his alleged expertise in 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 Neik type guy as far as picking and choosing who he will and will not debate. And he knows who he shouldn't debate.

And so he won't debate us. But 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 in the middle of his sermon broke out a saxophone and started jamming with the band as part of his sermon.

And he said, you know, I don't think this is how you worship God. And 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 in a position of hearing the whole counsel of God.

Because you're not going to get that in Rome. Rome has 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. And it makes you wonder why. Why? Why does Paul Williams feel he has this this freedom? 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 coequal persons, each one a separate God. That's called tritheism. And 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? But, of course, Christians are not claiming that. And unfortunately, it seems to me that Paul Williams is attempting to communicate as well. Oh, him? Oh, man. Really? Yeah, I know. I know. I'm sitting here going, if I talk to him, other people might call in and we'll never get around to Austin.

So I'd actually like to play a few minutes of Austin before we get to that. He's used to sitting in purgatory and stuff like that anyways, whether it's whether it's cyber purgatory or phone purgatory.

It doesn't really really matter. We do have a theology of purgatory around here. It's just not the Roman Catholic one. OK. Yeah, yeah. For those asking, everybody's starting to ask me and I'm just going to have to get hold of it.

I'm seeing all about this. Let the lion roar thing. I'm going to have to track it down. The what I've seen at this point, I saw a I was sent 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 evidently the film is about Christian anti-Semitism and that to complete the work of the Reformation, we need to change our view of the Jews specifically need to adopt some kind of of.

Well, you know, the big term these days, as grossly inaccurate as it is, is replacement theology. If you believe. That the promises. Are fulfilled in the church, then you are keeping the Reformation from actually reaching its final fruition.

And I'm just like, really? Seriously? OK. So I got to track it down and. At least watch the video or. Maybe I can, if I can get it as a digital download, I can rip the MP3 and listen to writing. That's that's how I watch most of most of my movies these days.

So in that way, not quite as exciting, but for reviewing on the program. So I'll get to it. I'll get to it eventually. But not not yet. I'm not going to certainly not be able to get to it before the trip to New Jersey and New York, which is coming up.

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

I you know, it's kind of wild when you're doing Google stuff in Arizona for stuff going on in New York. And the Google calendar seems to have a mind of its own.

It does. But 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. Where we. You know, I know.

Right. And I had sent something to him. Yeah. Yeah.

And, you know, it's it's when he says on about Friday and he's he's he's sent stuff back now. And, you know, I told him, 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, you know, I don't know. We've picked our texts and we'll we'll we'll we'll chat about them in time. So anyway, let me let me get to Austin Fisher here real quick. And then we'll take the phone calls if there are any others 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, now being described as, you know, an expert on Calvinism.

I wouldn't be surprised to run to 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 20s, short period of time like John Piper.

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. You know, the guy who was United Methodist youth pastor, former Christian scholar.

Oh, please. So anyways, Austin Fisher, we we've started listening to his presentation and we're about halfway through it. And so we're going to pick up with that, 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.

OK, 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 a 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. You know, it's like it's like what they do with God's love. God's love's got to be that peanut butter, you know, and not the crunchy, not not crunchy peanut butter, but but smooth.

It's all the same. There can't be no crunchy part because that because then the elect would get the crunchy part and then they not elect to get the smooth part. No, no, no, no. All got to 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 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 so biased that you don't even seem to see what you're what you're doing. And so this this idea, 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 about because I'm certainly guilty and wasn't owed anything.

And I fell in Adam and it's perfectly just federalism is perfectly just God's one sets up the rules. And fundamentally, I really this whole synergistic system eventually does and has historically led to people rejecting like Brian's on 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 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 while my daughter and I talk about her earliest memory and her earliest memory was when she got tubes in her ears and we went to this, uh, this hospital and I still remember it too, which is half the time.

My kids are talking about something. I only had this vague recollection, but I do remember it's something else. They remember a lot of, which was when Josh pulled the decorative, he was trying to open one of the, the, um, uh, drawers in your kitchen to find a fork or something.

And he pulled on the thing underneath the sink and actually pulled the, the, the thing off, uh, 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, that we don't remember.

Uh, but it was, it was back at the old house years and years and years ago. Anyway. Um, she remembers, uh, these, these masks, they must've looked like mass 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 and it took a few minutes for it to come back and that would be freaky.

And I remember that as well. Um, 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, uh, 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. He wasn't in 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. And now moving on to what I think is fairly obvious.

Now, of course, Calvin's expression of these things is so far beyond, uh, 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, I would wonder, Austin, um, 250 ,000 people. You gotta stop that. You gotta stop that. Did he have his purposes? Was he just, was that his wrath? Uh, these would be some of the questions that I would like to ask and, uh, didn't get a chance really to ask them in, uh, 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?

Wait a minute, there's no God with secret decrees lurking in the shadows? Um, notice the conclusion has already been drawn before the argument's even been made. Um, 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, uh, I give my life to my sheep. You are not my sheep.

That's in John 10. That's Jesus. Um, 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.

Um, and so, my problem with the, this neo-orthodox movement out there is that you're trying, 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 going to 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 has ever heard, Mark 15, 24.