MCTS

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is the Dividing Line.

The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll -free across the

United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

James White. Hey, good morning, welcome to the Dividing Line on a Tuesday morning, glad to be back here if ever so briefly here in Phoenix, Arizona.

I will not be able to do a program on Thursday as I will be traveling pretty much all day long and will probably still be in a vehicle somewhere, at least

I hope not, at the normal Thursday time because I'm flying into Birmingham, but the debate is in Jackson, so I got to drive.

I don't know how long it is. I'm not sure who's taking me, somebody is, but I was looking at the map going, why didn't

I fly into Jackson and out of, I don't know, but anyway, I will be in Jackson, Mississippi right across the street from RTS on Thursday evening for a debate on the bondage of the will versus the freedom of the will, not like we've ever debated that subject ever before in the past, so it will be brand new, no one's ever thought of having a debate on this subject at all, but we're going to be doing it

Thursday night. And every generation has to revisit that, especially our generation where there's just so much emphasis upon the abilities of man, the capacity of man.

It's not very popular to talk about the inabilities of man and the incapacities of man, but certainly the

Bible does. And then Friday and Saturday, the Deep South Founders Conference, and Sunday I'll be back in Birmingham for the church services there,

I guess, too. One in the morning, then I guess there's probably, I think it's one of the morning service, fellowship meal, afternoon service things, and then straight to the airport.

And I have a whopping 43 minutes between when my flight is supposed to arrive in Charlotte and leave for Phoenix, I'm not feeling real comfortable about that.

Even my little flight tracker program has put that in red. It says, you sure about this?

So I'm not putting anything in my check luggage that I want to have within two days, because I just not feeling overly confident about that one.

I'm going to make sure everything that's important to me is with me, because I have a feeling

I'll be seeing my luggage at a later date. Anyways, that's what's coming up this week, and so those of you in the

Deep South will be looking forward to spending some time with y 'all, and come back talking like that, probably.

So then have just a few weeks at home, and then off to London as well.

Had a tremendous time at the Midwest Center for Theological Studies, Sam Waldron is the dean there,

Richard Barsalas, one of the guys that does a lot of the work. And I found out that, some of you may remember, many moons ago, that I had

Richard and Sam on the program. I'm going to have them on again sometime in the next couple of months. And found out that there was a fellow in the service that was listening,

I believe, over in Korea to The Dividing Line when I had them on the program, and his name is

Michael Amati. And so shortly after the time I was on the program, all of a sudden he starts contacting

Richard and Sam. He ends up going to MCTS and finding a wife there in Owensboro.

So when I got up to speak Sunday night, Barsalas starts by, we call him Barsaloo, he starts off by introducing me as saying that James White is responsible for such and such a grandchild.

Now let me explain why that is. And then he tells the story about how this program led to someone going to the school, and then they got married, and the whole nine yards.

So I thought that was pretty cool, and Mr. Amati was taking the class via, it was online, so he was one of the online folks in the module, and evidently is going to be looking at possibly heading down to New Orleans and studying textual criticism down there, which would be great.

The CNTTS Center down there, and we need many more believing textual critics, because we've got plenty of unbelieving textual critics already, and they're already dragging that field off into NaNa land as it is.

So the more folks we can send in there, the better. But it was a year ago that I was teaching at Golden Gate in Mill Valley, so to get to teach again, this time for MCTS, to have excellent students with excellent questions, always attentive to what

I was saying. We covered the New Atheism, the foundations of apologetics,

Roman Catholicism, Mormonism, and then five lectures for about seven and a half hours on Islam, and then spoke at Heritage Baptist Church there in Owensboro, and did the fastest

Islam presentation I think I've ever done Sunday night. It was just rattling it off, but everyone seemed to enjoy it anyway.

So a great time with my Reformed Baptist brethren back there in that area, and I very much look forward.

I want to come back. So everybody needs to send emails to Richard Braselis at the

MCTS and say, I would love to take the class that James White wants to teach for MCTS.

What I want to do is I would want to do a module class on the writing, collation, canonization, and transmission of the text of the

New Testament for the first 400 years, which would include discussing not only canon issues, but textual critical issues, the early manuscripts, the papyri, the great unseals, and a discussion of the

Gnostic Gospels and the apocryphal Gospels that were not included in the canon because that's not even a proper term to use, included in the canon.

It sounds like, well, they were sort of left off to one side. That's not what happened. But we all know this is the playground of Bart Ehrman and the

Radical Critics, and this is what our young people are getting hit with, up one side and back down the other.

And so I have suggested that class, and I am rabble -rousing to get other people to suggest that class as well.

So I'm just being very open about that. And hey, Richard teaches a Greek class for MCTS, so he should be cranking out plenty of students that would be especially interested in a class like that.

So anyways, I'm looking forward to getting a chance to go back there to stay with the Barons where I stayed this past week.

They were very, very kind to me, and we had lots of fun. Even though Joe Barron eventually—I shouldn't mention this, but I'm going to anyways because everybody in the church knows about it—such a nice lady.

But she went out of town and figured I'd be gone when she got back. She didn't realize I was actually going to be staying through Sunday night and then leaving

Monday morning. So she left this little nice note on the whiteboard on the kitchen, and thanked me for coming and come again.

Then there was a verse that she put on the whiteboard.

And I remember coming into channel and typing this verse in and having our

BibleBot post it. And she put Luke 11, 24, which says,

When the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest and not finding any, it says,

I'll return to my house from which I came. And I'm looking at this verse, and I went back downstairs to double check

I had the right one. And yeah, it's Luke 11, 24. And I'm just,

I'm going, okay, all right, so I'm the demon, and if I come back, is that the idea?

That if I come back, then I'm the demon re -inhabiting the house? Or I've been kicked out of the house? What's the idea?

So Brother Barron came down, and I said, did

I offend somebody? Could you explain this to me? And he says, I don't understand. He looks at it and goes over and opens his

Bible, and he starts reading the verse, and he just starts cackling, just laughing like anything.

So finally, he texted Joe and said, what's this all about?

He showed me the text response, and it was like, oops, did I write 24?

So I have a picture of her standing next to the whiteboard with her pen, and they've marked out 24 and put 28, which was, blessed is he who hears the word of God and does it, which is what she was trying to put.

But you've got to be very careful with your references, or you're going to tell your house guests that you think they're a demon that's being kicked out of there.

You pop that up, and I'm picturing, you know, the old World War II things that they would scribble on the walls when

Kilroy was here. Yeah, yeah. I'm picturing that picture, and it says Troy was here. Well, let's not give

Troy any ideas here. And so I had to tell him the story, and I hope you folks don't mind my telling you this story.

But I was a staff assistant for Harold Green at North Phoenix Baptist Church for a while, and Harold Green was the associate pastor.

North Phoenix is a huge church, 20 ,000 members, and so he did a lot of the pastoral stuff.

He was the guy that did a lot of the hospital visitations and all that kind of stuff. And he would send out, you know, if someone was going to be in the hospital for a while, he'd send them a card.

I mean, he'd go visit too, but he'd also send them a card, something to brighten their day. And he would often put the same reference into the card.

It was Nahum 1 -7. Not many people have seen Nahum 1 -7, and neither has our

BibleBot evidently seen Nahum 1 -7 because it's going, what is that?

Oh, I need a reference to it. Duh. NAS Nahum 1 -7.

There we go. Now the BibleBot will go, okay, fine. I do not understand your request.

There it is. I found the KJV. Evidently there is no Newberg Standard Version. There it is.

The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble, and he knows those who take refuge in him. And so that's a nice little verse to put in cards to send out to people and stuff like that.

So one day there was a little old lady who had been ill. And so he sent her a card, and she got better.

And she came back to church, and she comes up to Pastor Green, and she goes, Pastor Green, did

I offend you in some way? And he's like, well, no, honey, why would you say that? Well, because the card you sent me.

Well, what do you mean? Well, the Bible verse in it. And he said, well,

Nahum 1 -7, the Lord is good. No, no, Pastor Green, that's not what you put. You put

Nahum 2 -7. And Nahum 2 -7, which she then looked up in her Bible, says, it is fixed.

She is stripped. She is carried away, and her handmaids are moaning like the sound of doves beating on their breasts.

Can you imagine sending a get well card to some poor old lady in the hospital?

And then you put the reverence, Nahum 2 -7. Well, the first lesson of the dividing line today is check your references, or you will send poor little old ladies in the hospital into depression and also tell your house guests that once you leave, you're going to feel like the house has had demons kicked out of her or something like that.

So you got to be careful of your references. So anyways, we had a great time back there.

And poor Joe Barron is going to be living that one down for a long, long time. But that'll be something we'll always get a laugh out of.

So I think that's great. 877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341.

I assume we have Skype up today as well. Dividing that line at Skype is the address there.

So oh yes, and why are you bringing up my favorite Old Testament verse? Yeah, I think the

King James Version of First Chronicles 2618 is just a, that is a great verse.

At Parbar, westward, forth the causeway, and to at Parbar. Yeah, I think that's, and it only really works in the

King James because the New American Standard smooths it out too much. But at Parbar, westward, forth the causeway, and to at Parbar.

Almost sounds like you're speaking in tongues if you say it fast enough. But all you're doing is quoting First Chronicles 2618.

And I think I introduced you to that because I know who I got it from. I got that from the youth minister at North Phoenix.

And so anyway, 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number.

You can tell we are rushing to get to particular things today. Actually we have a phone call coming and I think

I might just stretch until the phone call gets in because I do want to look at a text, but I do like to work with our callers as well and don't want to necessarily keep them sitting on the line forever.

But when we get through our first call and look at the text,

I'm going to be looking at Galatians chapter 5. If you would like to maybe get your

Bible out or as many people today will do, fire up your olive tree or whatever else.

If you had an iPhone or an iPad touch or iPod touch,

I will mention one thing. I don't think I mentioned this on the last program, but right before I went out of town last time, right at the end of the year,

Accordance released its iPad and iPhone and iPod touch program.

It's app as they call it. And it is wonderful. I used it to preach from on a

Sunday morning and it is really, really, really, really, really nice.

I will highly recommend it to everyone if you have Accordance, obviously.

And if you don't, the one thing it's given me, and I still unfortunately do not have

Old Testament textual critical information on my electronic devices, either on my touch or on my iPad.

That's the one place where when I go into a television studio or radio studio or debate,

I've wanted for years to have in my hand everything I needed right there without having to have a big old honkin'

Hebrew text or a big old honkin' Greek text or anything like that. Some of you may recall, I've told the story before when

I was on KTKK in Salt Lake City. I was walking out of my luxurious hotel room called

Motel 6 and I looked down and I saw my Biblia Hebraica Stuttgart Tentia.

I still have the red leather -bound one, actually. I actually thought I had lost that one, but I do have it.

And I almost didn't bring it, but I stuffed it into my book bag and almost made the book bag impossible to carry, but I stuffed it in there.

And that was the time I was on that marathon four -hour program, and in the last half hour Bill from Provo called.

And Bill from Provo was talking about a textual variant in Deuteronomy 32. And if I hadn't had my

Biblia Hebraica Stuttgart Tentia with me, it would have been pretty tough to respond to what Bill from Provo was saying.

We found out weeks later Bill from Provo was William Hamblin of Brigham Young University, one of Mormonism's leading apologists.

But I had the text with me and I had the textual data with me, so I was able to give a response. Well, that's the one thing

I still don't have. I now have, thanks to the fact that I have Accordance on my iPad, Accordance and Logos, neither one have been able to convince the folks who own the

Nessie Olin text or the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgart Tentia text. We have the text, we just can't have the notes.

We can't have the textual data. It's just not available. They have not been able to get that contract done. And I keep hoping that someday they will, but for now it ain't happening.

And so now with Accordance, I have the CNTTS material up and available, and via Logos, I have the

Göttingen Septigent, which would be very slow to look things up in, but it's pretty extensive, and I believe that's available.

I haven't downloaded all that to my iPad. I was silly. I went and bought a 32 -gig iPad, not thinking that it was going to be nearly the every trip used constantly thing that it's turned out to be.

I'm sort of hoping that when they come up with the new version of the iPad, which is supposed to be out, what, in April, I think, that they will have minimally 64 -gig versions, if not even larger.

But anyways, I've got a 64 -gig iPod Touch anyhow, and so I need to download all the

Göttingen stuff to that. But, be that as it may, I could at least have the

Septigent textual critical stuff, which might address most of the Hebrew issues. But I still don't have the

Hebrew textual data, and I'm not sure of any way of getting that for a while.

But mainly, people are asking about variations in the New Testament, so at least I can handle that.

I can get that stuff now. So that's going to be neat. So we will look forward to someday having all our textual critical data right there on the screen, just like I have in front of me right now.

I have my main workspace up in accordance on one of the three computer screens in front of me.

And I have the ESV, I have the Greek New Testament, I have the NE27 with the textual data,

I have the NET, and then down below I have the NET Notes, NE27 Apparatus, and the

Metzger Textual Commentary. I'm not sure why I have the King James over on this one side. Normally, I have CNTTS over there, but I must have changed it at some point for some reason.

I'm not sure why. Maybe I was looking something up because someone had asked about it, I don't know. But be that as it may, that's what is sitting in front of me right now.

So someday, I think we'll be able to do the same thing. You can't really do that with an iPod Touch.

There's just not enough real estate on that screen. But an iPad, you can. An iPad, you can have two texts up and still have the fonts huge enough to have sitting on a podium in front of you, on a pulpit in front of you, and still see it even with eyes that are getting close to 50 years of age like mine.

So yeah, TurretinFan says, it's a sign! He has the King James up! Not really, guys.

You really don't need to go there. Just not going to happen. Let's go ahead and bring up the CNTTS apparatus here.

And then we put it up like it's up there. Now I've got the CNTTS apparatus up. And it's incredible what you can do today.

Even though I'm excited about this kind of stuff, but I'll be honest with you, I also always keep thinking, to whom much is given, much is required.

So it's sort of like, wow, what could Calvin have done with something like this? I don't know what

Calvin would have done with something like this. He probably would have been way too distracted by all the details to actually do much with it.

But I think that's the way. All right. 877 -753 -3341. Let's go ahead and talk with Dwayne in Missouri.

Hi, Dwayne. Hi, Dr. White. A couple of questions real quick. One's kind of a political question, and the other is a theological question.

The political question is, are you familiar regarding the conflict between the Manhattan Declaration and Apple computer right now?

Yes, I am. Just curious what your position is on that. I don't have any particular position.

I don't know it's even a political issue. We know that there are people who will complain about anything.

Obviously, most places would not allow for the distribution of my book on homosexuality or something like that if it was in an electronic format,

I suppose. The issues of censorship and freedom of the flow of information and everything else,

I don't have any particular answers to how that's to be handled. It seems ridiculous to me, given the stuff that Apple allows in the

App Store, that they would give in to a tiny minority that would complain about the Manhattan Declaration.

Of course, I think the Manhattan Declaration, I certainly haven't signed it and would not for the reasons that I have enunciated very clearly when it first came out, that is that it's a compromise on the gospel.

But here you even have a document that is not as biblically sound as it should be, but the fact that it addresses issues of homosexuality and the propriety of marriage of man and woman gets it booted out of the

App Store. It's been a pretty amazing thing on that level, and I don't have anything against somebody contacting

Apple and saying, hey, what in the world are you doing? You're taking a stand against the very positions that I hold.

But at the same time, there are only certain numbers of avenues of getting information and computer programming and stuff today, and I'm very hesitant to hand authority over to governmental groups to try to either do censorship or anything else, because I don't trust them as far as I can throw them.

So I don't know what the answer is. I think it's perfectly fine to let Apple know you think they're being idiots, but I don't know what the answer is.

Well, I asked the question because I know you're an Apple fan, so it's going to be tough for you. Well, the product works, and I was a

PC guy from the time PCs came out, and I am thankful that Vista came out and threw me out of the

PC realm, because Vista didn't work. This is all there is to it. I'm not the only one that came to that conclusion.

When a computer does not do the same thing each time you tell it to do something, it's busted. And so I had to find a computer that would work every time

I turned it on wherever I was, and Vista couldn't do that, and so I found a computer that did.

But it's just a matter of what works and what works regularly and what can take a beating and keep working, and that's all there is to it.

A second question is regarding the fall of man and Adam and the fall of man, being

Adam being representative as the first Adam, and that's where the depravity of man came from.

Is that correct? Well, the depravity of man came from our union with Adam.

He is our first... Yes, uh -huh. Okay. This leads to my second question. This is what I haven't figured out.

So maybe you can help me. I would think that with the... Or my logical thought would be that, okay, if mankind fell with Adam and his choice, then mankind is fully restored with the second

Adam, which is Christ. If all of mankind was in Christ, then that would be the case.

That's the argument of universalism, yes. Of course, all of mankind isn't in Christ, so that's why universalism is not true.

But the analogy was that all mankind was in Adam, the first man. Yeah, but the analogy is not...

Why would all mankind be in Christ, the second man? Because that would require you to be a universalist.

Romans 5 does not say all of mankind is in Christ. It says those who are in him, and you're only in him by faith.

So that would be the answer to the question. All of mankind is in Adam and receives from Adam the only thing they can receive from Adam, which is a fallen nature.

But not all of mankind is in Christ, only those who believe in Christ are in him.

There are obviously those who continue in their rebellion and in their love of their sin and who are not the objects of God's grace.

So there are two humanities, those who are in Adam and those who are in Christ. All who are in Christ were initially in Adam.

We are all sons of disobedience, even as the rest, as Paul says in Ephesians 2.

But the whole point of Romans 5 is to explain why you have these two humanities and why you have those who are in Christ and those who are not, and why we receive from Christ what only we can receive from him, while those who remain in Adam receive from him only what they can receive from him.

But in essence, whichever of the two we end up in, neither you nor myself really has anything to do with that decision.

Is that true or false? I would never express it that way because the New Testament doesn't. Ultimately, God is the one who chooses who he is going to be gracious to in drawing them to Jesus Christ.

But I think Reformed people need to be very careful that you not express yourself in terms the

New Testament doesn't use. Because I have believed in Jesus Christ. God didn't believe in Jesus Christ for me.

Yes, he had to give me a new nature. He had to even grant me the gift of faith. But that doesn't mean that I'm just a wooden board.

That takes out all of the personal element of the work of the Holy Spirit in the spirit of man.

It takes out the personal element of the renewing of the mind, of the creation of a new nature. All these things are very, very personal, and they're very, very important.

And so, while the identity of the elect, and hence the identity of those who receive

God's justice, certainly is a part of the divine decree of God, everything else, which includes the personal working of the

Holy Spirit of God in a person's life and my decisions and my actions, are also a part of that decree.

And it is a, I think, tragic leveling out of that decree to a black -and -white, one -dimensional thing if we do not recognize that there is so much more to it than that.

The language that is used of the resurrection of the person from spiritual death and the giving of new life and recreation and the pictures used in the

New Covenant in regards to taking out a heart of stone and giving a heart of flesh and all these things show us just how intensely personal and how important those aspects are.

So I would never use that kind of terminology, even if on a real simplistic, logical statement, you could say, well, it all goes back to God's decree.

Yeah, but God's decree includes everything else, including the means that He used to draw me to Himself and the changing of my heart and the love of my heart for Christ and the reality of my faith.

I believe in Christ. Just because we say that I could not do that savingly without God's grace enabling me to do so does not change the reality of my faith in Christ.

And so I think sometimes, especially, I hear this from some of our younger

Reformed friends that we call those who are in the cage stage, there's such an emphasis one direction that there's a loss of balance and we need to be very careful to be balanced in our presentation because certainly those who oppose

Reformed theology will not be balanced in their characterizations of us, so we have to be very careful to provide the balance of that ourselves.

I'm not meaning to challenge what you're saying. I'm just trying to understand this. And it sounds to me like what you're trying to express here is that we do have a choice, we do have input in the ultimate outcome of whether we're in Adam or in Christ, but on the other hand,

I really don't hear that as being the real position. So I'm hearing both things, and that confuses me, you know what

I mean? Well, the answer is we do not determine the identity of the elect.

We do not determine the identity of the reprobate. God determines all of those things, and like I said, that is all a part of God's divine decree, as well as is the reality of the work of the

Holy Spirit and the renewing of the mind, as is the nature of saving faith, as is repentance, as is all the means to the end that God has decreed for himself.

And only by flattening out that decree into a simplistic linear line can we come to the conclusions that the enemies of Reformed faith do, and that is that we're just puppets and marionettes on a string.

So it's like looking at a diamond from only one side and saying, well, this is all it is, without refusing to be able to look at it in its full order beauty.

There is much more to it than what you can see from any one perspective. And the one perspective that God's decree determines everything is one perspective, but included in that is that it includes his providential actions within time, his interaction with us, his entering into time in the person of Jesus Christ, the preaching of the gospel, the building of the church, the work of the

Holy Spirit, the means of grace, the preaching, all of these things are a part of that decree. And so to flatten all of that out and say, well,

God just decrees who gets saved and who doesn't, it leads to the error of equal ultimacy.

It leads to all sorts of errors that need to be refuted, because the Bible is far richer than a one -dimensional flattened out, well, this is all there is to it, type thing.

When you give the analogy, though, of salvation being akin to Jesus saying to Lazarus from the tomb, come forth, and saying that Lazarus had nothing to do with this coming forth, it was totally up to Christ.

It gives that impression, though, you know what I mean? Well, I can't help if people have false impressions.

I can only speak the truth, and if they want to come up with a false impression that only takes a part of what

I'm saying, you know, the Potter's Freedom wasn't 10 pages long. It was 300 pages long.

So I can't, that I have to leave up to the Holy Spirit, and when

I hear people say, well, you gave me the impression, you know what? You're responsible for God, for the Word of God.

I can point you to it, I can preach it to you, I can show you how it's considered itself, but if people want to take that and come up with a false impression and blame me for it,

I can't stop them, but I'm also not going to worry much about it either, because that is not my responsibility. If I speak the truth, speak it clearly,

I leave it to the Holy Spirit to make application from there, and I can't worry too much about that.

I have so many times talked about God decreeing the ends as well as the means and have attempted to be balanced, and yet people like David Allen and others continue to lie about me.

I leave that to God, you know? I correct it, I put the truth out there. If they insist on misrepresenting me, they stand before their own

Lord. There's nothing I can do about it. I just move on from there. One last helpful comment. I've worked my way through the

Potter's Freedom. I've worked my way through 99 % of the debate with David Hunt, the book that you have.

And it seems to me— Which was not nearly as much fun to read as the Potter's Freedom, I can assure you. Sure. But it seems to me that something that would be helpful for everyone is this, because just about all these debates and all these discussions, everybody's singing the same song.

You're singing one song, they're singing another song, and you're referring to a certain set of scriptures, they're referring to a certain set of scriptures, and they seem to be pretty much the same in every debate and every discussion.

And one thing I think would be helpful to sort all this out would be for you to crystallize this all and summarize it down into, basically say, look, here's all the scriptures the

Armenians are primarily throwing at the Reformed position, and here's sort of a summation, summary statement to all these positions.

Once and for all, it encapsulates it, and that's pretty much it. You wrap it up in a package, and that's pretty much it.

You got it. Well, there is no question that there is a commonality to the threads of presentation.

I really, really doubt there's going to be anything Thursday night that people have not heard before on the bondage of the will and the freedom of the will, for example.

Right. I mean, anybody who's listened to me knows which texts I'm going to be going to, how I'm going to present them.

I have not been able to find anything from my opponent anywhere on this subject. That makes me a little bit nervous.

I like to listen to what my opponent has to say, know where they're coming from. That helps the debates be a lot better. I have not been able to find anything, so I'm a little bit concerned about that.

But I'll do my best anyways, and yeah. But I really think that, okay, the potter's freedom would have had one particular bent to it because it's

Norm Geisler, and Norm Geisler is unique in where he's coming from on some of these things. But the big three,

Matthew 23, 37, 1 Timothy 2, 4, 2 Peter 3, 9, I've dealt with them.

We've dealt with the, why does God call people to repent if he's not going to grant faith to everybody?

Actually, I think if you put together what I've written and Sproul's written and Piper's written and other people,

I think we have looked at pretty much every – I don't hear new objections very often.

Right. I agree. So I think we have done that. But no debate. This has been going on for years.

Yeah, and every generation has to redo it. And I think the reason that every generation has to redo it is,

A, partly in our context, we know nothing about church history, so we don't know these things have been debated before.

But secondly, language changes, the parameters change, the emphases change. And so each generation, you know, 20 years from now, there's going to be some 30 -year -old fellow who's just a kid right now that's going to come out with a book on this subject, and it's going to rock the world because the parameters of the discussion and the language that's used to express it, not the essence of it, but those things will have changed.

Because I look back, and I see some books from generations gone by that were huge at the time, and they were very useful at the time, they were very needful at the time.

And they don't speak as clearly today as they did. That's one of the things that's always been amazing to me about Calvin's Institutes is they seem to speak to every generation, and that's just an ability of writing that's beyond me.

But I think that's one of the reasons each generation has to struggle with it. You can't just simply go back and look at the nations that were

Calvinistic at one time and fell into the trap of thinking, well, we've got it all figured out, and we don't need to be very passionately presenting this to our children and passionately defending these things.

It's all been laid out. Here's the systematic theology. Just believe it. A lot of those nations are some of the most godless nations there are today, because you cannot just simply codify something.

It has to be something that is the result of the Spirit of God in people's hearts. And you can have the truth and take it for granted.

And unfortunately, we see a lot of examples of that in history, especially over in Europe today.

So I think that's what we've got to do. But anyways, hey, Dwayne, thanks for your call. Fair enough. Thank you. All right. God bless.

Bye -bye. 877 -753 -3341. Another thing that this week that I – oh,

I blew right past the break, didn't I? Oh, well. And I've mentioned this before.

It's one of the reasons that I wish my wife could go with me to a lot of these things, not that she'd want to sit through hour -long lectures on Islamic theology.

Or you'd get a chance to go to some of these things. I'm looking through the window here at Rich. But when

I do debates, when I go to these things, how many young guys – and older folks, too.

It's a broad spectrum, but it especially strikes me when younger guys will come up and – they're in seminary because of what we've done over the past 25 years.

They've made major life decisions about ministry because of what we've done.

Even this program, books. The Potter's Freedom. May I publicly thank

Norman Geisel for having written Chosen but Free because that one book has produced more

Calvinists than any other book I can think of. It really has. And I know it wasn't his intention, but when you write a book that is just that completely off -beam in its argumentation and its exegesis.

Well, I had the opportunity of responding to it. I did it. People were shocked and amazed that anyone would do that, but I felt it needed to be done.

And the result has been absolutely fantastic. And so you look at those things.

It's incredibly encouraging. Let me just say to those young men that this past week told me about how this ministry has impacted them.

First of all, you made me feel very old. Because sometimes I'd make reference to things that happened and you start realizing that was a decade ago or that was even longer than that.

And I see things that happen, say, in 2000, and I realize the foundations for those were built many years before that.

This ministry will be doing 28 years. I think 28 years this

October. Isn't that what it is? Yeah. And coming up on the big 3 -0 for Alpha and Omega Ministries.

And there are not a lot of apologetics ministries that last that long and that are going strong at that point.

And so it is incredibly encouraging to hear those folks come up and to say those things.

And there have been some other folks while we're waiting for your phone calls at 877 -753 -3341.

Some folks have done some incredibly kind and encouraging things for me over the past few weeks, especially.

And I don't want to name names, so I'll use initials. But, for example, there are some folks on the ministry resource list.

M .A. seems to listen regularly and follow the blog. And there were some expensive items.

I mentioned a lexicon that I'm going to be using for the work

I'm doing on the Koran, a very expensive lexicon. And I just posted on the blog that this is something we needed.

And within 24 hours, it was purchased. And a couple days later, it arrives here. That ministry resource list means so much to me.

When you all buy items from that to help me with that, you are personally entering into that kind of ministry.

And it's extremely encouraging. B. McEl and V .L.

You know what you all did at the end of last year to extremely encourage me. One of our own folks from Channel that just recently announced.

Folks at Channel, you know, ditto. Just provided me. On Thursday night when

I debate, I'm going to be dressed well. And you might say, well, why wouldn't you be dressed well anyways?

I've lost a lot of weight. All my clothes disappeared. Man, can you imagine if I wore a suit that fit me in February in this debate?

I would look like a homeless guy wearing a tent. And suits are expensive.

So I was given two brand -new suits. Just rushed to the alterations place today to get the slacks hemmed.

But they fit perfectly. I'm down to a 38 regular now. And they fit like I bought them at a tailor.

That's just really practical little things. That wasn't a really little thing. But just things that people do that are so encouraging to me.

And really, really help. So are we getting a, oh, our wacky

Toronto Muslim. We've got a little jihadi up in Toronto.

I've mentioned some of the things he sent to me. Crosshater at gmail .com and things like that.

He's one of the worst of the worst. We had to kick him out of the MCTS thing when we were recording the podcast.

We let people know that we were going to live stream it so people would watch. Well, he came in. They had to kick him out and ban him and stuff like that.

So he listens and follows us. I don't know. Maybe in his warped mind he thinks he's doing dawah or something like that.

I don't know. But right now we've had to busy out all of our phone lines because he's calling in and trying to sort of keep other folks from being able to call in.

So those of you who might know him up there in Toronto, if you ever run into him, you might want to explain to him that that kind of behavior, sir, makes

Islam look like the demon -infested religion that people think that it is. And you don't seem to understand that.

You don't seem to get that. Your irrationality, your inability to enter into any kind of meaningful intellectual exchange is the very thing that people like Bilal Phillips and Sheikh Yasir Qadhi are constantly preaching against.

If you think you are a good representative of Islam, sir, you have no earthly idea. Actually, I've explained that very thing to him, and we all seem to like the idea.

Oh, yeah. Oh, sure. These guys, they, well, you know what the mindset is?

Who's coming to Phoenix or come to Tucson that we all want to go away? Fred Phelps.

It's the same kind of ugly, irrational religiosity that the world points to and says, there's what we don't want.

And at least in our situation, we look at a Fred Phelps and we say, this man is a nut.

He is a hate -filled cultist. He runs a cult. And here's why biblically, but he is insane.

But you cannot reason with Fred Phelps, folks. I've tried. I tried once.

Remember? You were there. That's right. I ran into Fred Phelps in Salt Lake City outside the

LDS meeting house during General Conference. I don't remember what year it was. 2003, 2004, somewhere.

It was after I had debated Barry Lynn, and that was 01. Yes, and it crossed my mind that he was there the year before the

Street Screechers showed up. Yes, that's right. That's right. He was there. They showed up, was it the year before or the conference before?

It's hard to remember. I think it was just the conference. Yes, the conference before. Yes, but they showed up to do their protest stuff.

And I actually managed to get a few words in before the insanity kicked in.

I remember exactly what you asked him. Well, remember, I introduced myself as having just debated.

So this would have been like 02. As having just debated Barry Lynn on homosexuality in New York.

And I mentioned I was from a Reformed Baptist Church. So that was enough to keep him from not just automatically yelling and screaming and going insane.

But as soon as, oh, you debated Barry Lynn on homosexuality.

Reformed Baptist Church, that's interesting. Nice to meet you, or whatever it was. That's how

I got through the initial outer ring of people without his cult members immediately descending upon me.

But then what I did was I said, but sir, this is as far as I got.

This is as far as I got. But sir, the scriptures likewise tell us to speak the truth in love.

And as soon as I said that, what was the call? What was the phrase he was using?

It was a God hater? He immediately started going, God hater, God hater. And that was his signal to his cult followers to get between me and him and start yelling at me.

That was clearly a signal to just protect me, protect me. It reminded me of some of the stories

I've heard about what the children of God used to do. Oh, every mind cult like that, yeah. And they immediately got between you and him and all started yelling at you simultaneously.

Yep, yep, yep. Will not allow for any rational type of conversation whatsoever.

Because he's not rational. And some of you may know he's coming out here to Arizona to protest at the funeral of the little girl who was born on 9 -11.

The nine -year -old that was shot by the evil man. And at least, you know what? You know, I almost, if I had dentures,

I would have dropped them the night that happened. Because I was watching in Owensboro.

And did you see John McCain's press release the night that it happened? You missed it.

The direct terminology he used was this wicked man. And folks, that's the very terminology you don't hear used in our society anymore.

Wicked or evil. But he said this wicked man. And I was like, yay!

I wonder who's going to attack him for saying that, you know? But it's like, yay!

Someone finally spoke the truth. John McCain said something right there and referred to this wicked man.

Because that's what he is. He's a wicked man. But you can't really talk about wicked men anymore. Anyways, I guess we do have a

Skype call. Do we have a Skype call? Dividing .line is the

Skype number. And let's... Oh! Douglas in Milwaukee.

Hi, Douglas. How are you doing? Hi, Douglas. Hello, Douglas.

Hello, Douglas. I'm looking at Rich here.

And he's staring at his screens. And he's going, come on. Now it's there. Now he's there,

Douglas. No, I got nothing. Because it's an interesting question.

John 5 .18. While you're working on that, I'm going to read John 5 .18. This is why the

Jews were seeking all the more to kill him. Because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling

God his own father, making himself equal with God. So I see in channel that Douglas is going to call back.

So we'll try again. We did have one caller. We did have one

Skype caller a couple weeks ago. And we got hooked up.

And he could type to us. But he couldn't hear us. Just say, I can't hear you.

I can't hear you. And after the program was over, he was looking around and didn't have his speakers on.

You got to have your speakers on so you can hear us. But I couldn't even hear him. So we had some.

So were you all able to hear him before the transfer? Yes. So we had connection.

But the transfer somehow didn't work. So Douglas in Milwaukee. Actually, he claims to be in London.

But, see, we pick on Douglas because last year when I was in London, he kept saying he was going to come and that he'd never show up.

And so I just sort of decided that that's because he actually isn't in London.

He was some guy that lives in Milwaukee who wants to act like he lives in London. Because people in London are cool. So do we have

Douglas now? Hello, Douglas. There he is. Yay. Hey. You're sort of overriding a little bit, so it sounds a little loud.

But how are things up in Milwaukee? Cold. Cold, yes. I'm in London where it is cold.

Oh, yeah, sure. Whatever you say. Well, like I said, you have opportunity. Now, I'm not in London very much.

So if you don't make it either to the street preaching in Leicester Square or to the debate with Bassam Zawadi or to the services at Trinity Road Chapel, then we are going to permanently, since we have a new network and I'm an

IRC op, I will go in and I will change your nick to Milwaukee Truth and make it permanent.

So how's that? No problem. So you've got three shots there, brother.

So I better see you walking up with a broad grin or you're going to be stuck with Milwaukee Truth for the rest of your life in our

IRC chat channel. So what can we do for you? All right. I'm teaching on 1 John 5 tonight.

I'm walking through the book and finish up tonight. Oh, 1 John 5. Well, great.

Fine. Nothing like being misled by the guy out in the, you know. So anyway, so you're not looking at John 5 .18,

which I was ready for. You want 1 John 5 .18. 1 John 5 .18, yeah. All right. We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him.

He who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him. All right. I'm using the

New King James Version for the study I'm doing tonight, and when I was preparing all my notes and what have you,

I noticed in the margin that it mentions that there's a textual variant there. Let me pull up the

New King James here and see what it says. We know that whoever is born of God does not sin, but he who has been born of God keeps himself, and the wicked one does not touch him.

All right. Well, I'm looking at the variant over in the, this is why we need to have the, this is, we started off the program talking about the necessity of having the right reference, and unfortunately, okay, let me look here.

The NET, let me just go to that fast, that's the fastest way. The meaning of the phrase, the one born from God is keeping himself in 518 is extraordinarily difficult.

Again, the author's capacity for making obscure statements results in several possible meanings for this phrase.

The fathering by God protects him, the Christian. Here, a textual variant for ha -genetheis, and the variant is haegenesis, has suggested to some that the passive participle should be understood as a noun, fathering or perhaps birth, but the manuscript evidence is extremely slight.

This almost certainly represents a scribal attempt to clarify an obscure phrase. Number two, the one fathered by God, Jesus, protects him, the

Christian. This is a popular interpretation. It is certainly possible grammatically, yet the introduction of a reference to Jesus in this context is sudden.

To be unambiguous, the author could have mentioned the Son of God here or used the pronoun akinos, that one, as a reference to Jesus, as he consistently does elsewhere in 1

John. This interpretation, while possible, seems in context highly unlikely. Number three, the one fathered by God, the

Christian, protects himself. Again, a textual problem is behind this alternative since a number of manuscripts, including the majority text, supply the reflexive pronoun haeauton in place of auton in 518.

On the basis of the external evidence, this has a good possibility of being the original reading, but internal evidence favors auton as the more difficult reading since haeauton may be explained as a scribal attempt at grammatical smoothness.

From a logical standpoint, however, it is difficult to make much more sense out of haeauton to say that the

Christian protects himself means the context is far from clear. Number four, the one fathered by God, the

Christian, holds on to him that is God. This results in further awkwardness because the third -person pronoun in the following clause must be for the

Christian, not to God. Furthermore, although tereo can mean to hold on to, this is not a common meaning for the verb in Johannine usage, occurring elsewhere only in Revelation 3.

Number five, this is a huge footnote, number five, the one fathered by God, the Christian, he,

God, protects him, the Christian. This involves a pendent nominative construction where a description of something within the clause is placed in the nominative case and moved forward ahead of the clause for emphatic reasons.

This may be influenced by Semitic style. Such a construction is also present in John 17 too. This view is defended by K.

Bayer and appears to be the most probable in terms of both of syntax and of sense. It makes God the protector of the

Christian rather than the Christian himself, which fits the context much better, and there is precedent in Johannine literature for such syntactical structure.

So you have, very often, when you have an extremely difficult phrase to interpret, you will end up with textual variants based on either people who specifically want to make a change because they don't understand it, or who do so just by nature as they're trying to copy it.

I love this. It's the end of the program with no time left. We get all the calls. This is great.

Let me just finish up with Douglas here. Sorry, Rodrigo, we'd love to get to you, Vince, but you've got to call at the beginning of the program, not at the end of the program.

That's the problem there. We had all sorts of time at the beginning of the program, not here at the end. So that gives you some of the range of things here.

Basically, the textual variant that the New King James would be referring to is the difference between auton and heauton.

Heauton is the reflexive that the footnote was referring to there. And so that's why it says, but he who has been born of God keeps himself, over against the

ESV, but he who was born of God protects him. And so it seemed that the

NET was suggesting that the best way to understand that without necessarily going with the reflexive, which is at the basis of the

New King James version, was to understand that as the one fathered by God, that is the

Christian, he protects him, he, God, protects him. This involves what's called a pendent nominative construction, which does have a parallel in Johannine usage in John 17 too.

So that's probably, I would assume, I don't have a footnote in front of me in my

New King James on the screen, but I would assume that it is attached to the word himself. Yeah.

Yeah, that's what they're referring to there. The only difference between heauton and auton is a single letter, epsilon, but it is probably reflective of the fact that it's a very difficult phrase to translate without using the reflexive pronoun there, and hence that's sort of a smoothing out of it.

Do you have the NET? Well, on my Windows side of the computer.

I'm not using Windows anymore, so I don't have it. Well, you'll have to fire it up and look at that. That's a very lengthy footnote.

Since I know who you are, if you want to drop me a line, I'd be happy to quote that for you, or I can put it in channel or something like that so you have that information because I read all of it.

But that's what the textual variant is about, and it seems like that fifth way of understanding it ends up with the exact same meaning as the majority text heauton in that phrase in 1

John 5 .18. Okay. All right. So if you'd like, would you like me to put it all in channel in a few chunks here in a little while?

Sure, no problem. Okay, I'll do that once we get wrapped up here, okay? Thanks, Seth. Thank you a lot, sir.

Thank you very much. Thanks for listening to The Dividing Line today, folks. Again, no Dividing Line on Thursday.

I will try as best I can to bring the streaming PC with me so that I can try to live webcast the debate.

I will do my best. It's harder and harder to do that, honestly, thanks to TSA, who don't like it when you have multiple computers in your carry -ons.

But that one's solid state, so I can actually put it in my luggage. It doesn't have any problem with that as long as I wrap it in a sweater or something like that.

So I'll do my best to try to live stream the broadcast on Thursday of the debate on the freedom of the will and the bondage of the will.

We'll do our best. We'll see you then. Thanks. God bless. God bless.

God bless. God bless.

God bless.

God bless. God bless.

God bless. God bless. God bless. God bless. God bless. You can also find us on the World Wide Web at aomin .org. That's a -o -m -i -n .org where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.