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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. And good afternoon, welcome to the Dividing Line on a wet and rainy afternoon here in Phoenix, but it's going to move through pretty quick.

I can even see on the radar where it's going to be clearing from the west and tomorrow is going to be a beautiful day and I'm looking forward to spending it all outside tomorrow personally.

Not sure where you'll be spending it, but I will be studying and also doing that thing that I do a lot of on the back of a bicycle.

But today on the Dividing Line, something we have not done in a very, very, very, very, very long time.

This morning, I was looking through my RSS feeds, which is the equivalent of sitting at the breakfast table with a newspaper, but not quite.

It's sort of you get to pick and choose your own sources of information, which has got advantages and disadvantages,

I will confess. But as it may, I saw an article on the

Mormon Coffee blog and I followed the links because the quotations were quite interesting.

And it was likewise quite interesting because the PDF of Brigham Young's addresses that was linked on that Mormon Coffee blog was collated and put together by none other than Eldon Watson.

Now, Eldon Watson is a name that very few people in my audience are going to remember.

That was back in the early 1990s that I went toe -to -toe with Eldon Watson, a rather well -read

Mormon on the Mormon Echo on the Undernet BBS network.

Now, that's really going back in time here. Most of you have absolutely no idea what a

BBS was. Only nerdy geeks or geeky nerds,

I'm not sure really what the difference between those two terms is, but you put them together and it's somewhat descriptive. Only nerdy geeks or geeky nerds would know what a bulletin board system was.

But it was pre -internet. And it was the mechanism by which you would communicate with people sort of like the way on web boards today, but very slowly.

And there was something called, did I say Undernet? I meant to say Fidonet, excuse me. The Fidonet Mormon Echo was the venue by which we encountered each other.

And you can see what that looked like. There's an old article in the

LDS section of our website where you will see Eldon Watson and I going back and forth.

And if you sort of follow the dates and times on the messages, you'll see that this took days, which was actually not a bad thing.

Because you would write a response and then that night your system would package it up and send it off.

And it would go to one computer, another computer, another computer, and finally would get to somebody else's computer and they'd download their messages and they'd respond.

And they might take a day to respond. Then they'd upload it and it would take a day to get to you. And it actually wasn't a bad thing in that sense.

And so that's how it worked, the Fidonet LDS, the

Mormon Echo. Anyway, Eldon Watson I knew had access to a great deal of information about Brigham Young.

So I was a little bit interested to read quotations from Brigham Young's addresses, volume2 .pdf

that was linked on this particular blog article.

And there was some fascinating things in this. And so we have not talked about Mormonism in a long time.

Phone lines not connecting through. Well, that's great to see, I guess because it's raining, which doesn't make a lick of sense because we're no longer using the old landlines.

We're supposed to be using digital technology now, but the phone lines evidently are not functioning.

Well, the best I can tell at this point is that anybody calling in is getting a pre -recorded message like one of those...

Sorry, just like last Thursday. No, this is a whole different ballgame. They're getting a pre -recorded message saying that the phone line, the call cannot be connected through.

Try again later, stuff like that. So all our phone lines are busy, blah, blah. So it's...

Even though there's actually nobody online at all. It's more of a network thing, not us specifically. I think it's just whatever our provider is having issues with, maybe the neighborhood, maybe the city, maybe the state, the whole world.

It's a possibility. But we're trying to hopefully...

Call them. Problem solved, yeah. Yeah, okay. Well, we still got dividing that line at Skype, as long as the internet doesn't die.

If the internet dies, no one's listening to me anyway, so we can go home. So it doesn't really matter. All right.

Well, anyway, we haven't talked about Mormonism for a long, long time outside of phone calls.

We used to look at phone calls. And it was Mormonism that first drove me into the apologetics area.

Wow, three lines just lit up, all ringing at once. Maybe someone's attacking us.

Maybe we've got someone doing the old dial thing or something. I don't know, but it's raining outside.

And look, in Arizona, that makes everything go wonky. That's just all there is to it. We're being attacked by H2O. There's these little tiny...

Oh, it's drops falling out of the sky. Billions and billions of them. Yes, we're desert dwellers.

We're melting, we're melting. Okay, so anyway,

I'm just going to sort of ignore the phone thing over here, because it's looking pretty... It's very

Christmassy. Yeah, there's all sorts of stuff. Haha, that must be why we're talking about Mormonism today.

Anyhow, we have not talked about Mormonism for a long, long time. It was what got me into apologetics.

Two elders, Elders Reed and Reese, who were older than I was.

I was all of 19 when I met with those two young men. And that's what got it all started.

So lo and behold, many years later, I read this article and admit,

I must find this particular section of addresses by Brigham Young.

Very interesting. Brigham Young is a fascinating man. Arrogant and ignorant.

And when you put arrogance and ignorance together, it's ugly. This guy, what must it have been like to live in Salt Lake City during the

Brigham Young years? You had the Danites and you had blood atonement and you had the

Adam God doctrine and oh, what it must have been like. How different is modern day

Mormonism? You know who Brigham Young reminds me of? Who's the dude that just got convicted on Elizabeth Smart kidnapping?

What's that guy's name? I've forgotten. No, it's not Jeffrey Dahmer.

Similarly wacky. But anyway, the guy that got convicted on the

Elizabeth Smart thing, that's what I think of when I think of Brigham Young, except he's in charge.

Just the real, real weird stuff. And I read this sermon, which some people identify as just this great sermon.

It's this rambling, incoherent, eisegetical, heretical weirdness.

And yet this was a man looked upon as being the very prophet of God in Salt Lake City.

I just read some of the stuff here. I can tell you that no man from the days of Adam, no woman from the days of Eve, this day who has lived or who is now living upon the earth will go into the kingdom of their father in God to be crowned with Jesus Christ without passing the same ordinances of the house of God you and I have obeyed.

I wish you distinctly to understand that. He definitely taught that the ordinances of the temple there in Salt Lake City were absolutely necessary for exaltation.

Now, of course, anyone who knows Mormon history knows the ordinances you go through today are very different than the ordinances of the days of Brigham Young.

And that was one of the things. It was back in April of 1990, I believe, that all the temples in the world shut down for it was about two weeks as I recall, 10 days, two weeks, something like that.

And the endowment ceremony went from two hours to 90 minutes.

And the stuff that was taken out was all clearly removed because it was politically incorrect. It was stuff that people found to be...

Brian David Mitchell, thank you very much. Brian David Mitchell, Brigham Young, they both start with B -R.

B -R -I, in fact. B -R -I. There's proof. Ask Gail Ripplinger.

There is proof that the two are directly connected. But anyway, the endowment ceremony got cut down there in April of 1990.

And oh, there were certain people, the old timers were so angry because they knew what

Brigham Young had said. They recognized that, wait a minute, this is supposed to be a revelation. And even the one that was changed in 1990, even what people were used to then was different than what had been going on during the days of Brigham Young.

Things have changed greatly. And I remember talking to some fella at the South Gate of the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City.

And I remember him looking at me and he was saying, 20 years from now, you'll see a cross on top of the steeple of that temple.

He was talking about how the church was going into apostasy. I bet you he was a polygamist too. Uh, but, uh, there's no cross up there.

I haven't gone that far, but oh, how things have changed. I go back to Brigham Young here. Listen, listen to this man speaking.

I believe in the eternities of worlds, saints, angels, kingdoms, and gods in eternity without beginning.

I believe the gods never had a beginning, neither the formation of matter, and it is without end.

It will endure in one eternal round, swimming in space, basking, living, and moving in the midst of eternity.

All the creations are in the midst of eternity, and that is one eternity, so that they move in one eternal round.

Consequently, when you hear philosophers argue the point how the first god came, how intelligence came, how worlds came, and how angels came, they are talking about that which is beyond their conception, about that which never was and never will be, worlds without end.

It manifests their folly. Uh, there you've got a really good example of Brigham Young's polytheism and his rather interesting worldview.

Now, what caused the citation of this material from Brigham Young comes up in this next section.

There was over and over again, you could just see the Adam -God doctrine popping up in what he was saying.

When you speak of the system of salvation to bring back the children of Adam and Eve into the presence of our

Father and God, it is the same in all ages among all people under all circumstances, worlds without end. Amen.

Well, again, that's changed. And when you know what Brigham Young thought our Father and our God was, which is

Adam, it's patently obvious as you read these things. Even Eldon Watson, in his attempts to try to rescue

Brigham Young from the Adam -God doctrine, just, I'm sorry, it's just twisted. You can't do it.

It's right there. But this was the section that caused the citation of this. Listen to the prophet of God in Salt Lake City as, just listen to these words.

I think these preliminaries will satisfy me, and I feel prepared to take my text. It is the words of Jesus Christ, but where they are in the

Bible, I cannot tell you now, for I have not taken pains to look at them. I have had so much to do that I have not read the

Bible for many years. I used to be a Bible student. I used to read and study it, but did not understand the spirit and meaning of it.

I knew well enough how it read. I have read the Book of Mormon, the Book of Doctrine and Covenants, and other revelations of God, which he has given to his people in latter times.

I look at them and contrast the spirit and power of them with my faithfulness. My clerks know how much time

I have to read. It is difficult for me to snatch time enough even to eat my breakfast and supper, to say nothing of reading.

I tell you my text is in the Bible and reads as follows. And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true

God in Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. Now a later redactor, shall we say, has inserted

John 17 3 into the text to identify that. But isn't it amazing to listen to a man standing before people in Salt Lake City and saying,

I'm going to take my text, this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God in Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.

It's in the Bible somewhere. I didn't bother to look it up because I don't read the Bible. I just don't have time to. I'm very, very busy.

Now, of course, later on, the same thing, and I should have marked this because it was sort of hilarious, but I don't think

I'd have time to look it up right now. But he talks about how many wives he has and how he doesn't know how many wives he has and how he has many wives he's never even met and that he does not even keep up with how many wives he has.

Yeah, I suppose if you had 94 wives or however many wives it was that Brigham Young had, and we have had some enjoyment over the years looking at the pictures of Brigham Young's wives.

Because let me tell you something, there were some really homely women in that picture. Oh my,

I would be a heretic too. Go ahead, what do

I want to say? Because you know what I'm talking about. What he's saying about how Russian women look like Russian men and wondering why that is.

Russian women got a lot up on their weddings. And it's amazing because you go to Salt Lake City and there's some very pretty ladies up there now, but there doesn't seem to have been back then.

Or Brigham didn't meet them, one of the two, I don't know. Is it all you're being mean?

No, folks, if you haven't taken the time to look at some of these ladies, oh my, I would have been a heretic if I had been married to 94 of them too.

We got to give that man some leeway there. But anyhow, it's quite interesting.

Notice what he says. I have not read the Bible for many years. I used to be a Bible student.

I used to read and study it, but did not understand the spirit and meaning of it. The only thing

I can figure that is being said there was before his embracing of Mormonism.

I can't imagine he was saying that he used to read and study it as a Mormon, but did not understand the spirit and meaning.

I just, I don't know. That's the only way I can understand it. But there you have the prophet standing before the people, telling them that he doesn't actually read the

Bible. He goes on and he really, it's very clear that he does not read the

Bible given the things that he says. He says, I will now put another text with this. And then after a few remarks, it is one of the sayings of the

Apostle Paul, for though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as there be gods, many and lords, many, but to us, there is but one

God, the father of whom we're all things. And we in him and one Lord Jesus Christ by whom we're all things and we by him, which of course is first Corinthians chapter eight, verses five through six.

This God is the father of our Lord Jesus Christ and the father of our spirits. I feel inclined here to make a little scripture where I under the necessity of making scripture extensively,

I should get brother Heber C. Kimball to make it. And then I would quote it. I have seen him do this when any of the elders have been pressed by their opponents and were a little at a loss.

He would make a scripture for them to suit the case that never was in the Bible, though nonetheless true and make their opponents swallow it as the words of an apostle or one of the prophets.

The elder would then say, please turn that scripture gentlemen and read it for yourselves. No, they could not turn to it, but they recollected it like the devil for fear of being caught, end quote.

So here you've got Brigham Young. And again, the arrogance of this man is astounding to me.

There's not much that commends him to me in any way. But here you have him talking about how, and one of the major ways in which

Mormonism has changed is that in this day, the day of Brigham Young, the

Mormons were in constant dialogue and debate with others. That is how

Mormonism grew in its early years. They would go out and they would engage people.

And given that nobody knew their background and most people didn't have the Book of Mormon and they didn't have a, didn't really know what they believed, it would be very difficult to take someone on like that because they could be a chameleon.

Even what he says Heber C. Kimball would do here, he'd make up Bible verses. Now it's a shame that the people he was debating were so ignorant that they didn't recognize he was making it up, but maybe some did.

I don't know. But the point is they were very much in the debate department and you can't get

Mormons to debate today for nothing. And why? Well, Mormonism's changed.

I mean, the Mormonism of Brigham Young's day was receiving revelation and you had living prophets. And yeah, they still talk about living prophets and stuff, but they don't receive revelation.

I mean, for all intents and purposes, after the 1978 revelation of the blacks, the quote -unquote canon was pretty much closed.

And everything, I mean, the church would shudder, the LDS church would shudder if Monson got up there as prophet and said,

I am going to speak the words of the Lord today. This will be the next section of the Doctrine and Covenants and here it is.

That happened all the time during the days of Joseph Smith and that early period, but it has changed and it has altered.

So he goes on to say, I will venture to make a little, that is a little scripture.

This God, now listen to what he's saying here. This God is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ precisely as he is our

Father, varying from mortality to immortality, from corruptible to incorruptible.

And that is all the difference. This is the same doctrine he taught elsewhere that God the

Father in a physical body begat the person of Jesus Christ. There is no virgin birth in the historic

Christian sense in the Mormon theology here. Now, most Mormons don't even believe that anymore, but that's what was taught by the early

Mormons all the way through to just a few years ago. What they believe these days, what they talk about these days is hard to say, but there is no question that the early

Mormon prophets believed that God the Father in a physical body begat the body of Jesus Christ. He had sex with Mary.

I mean, that's not even a disputable or debatable point.

He goes on to say, he is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, both body and spirit.

He is the Father of our spirits and the Father of our flesh in the beginning.

There's his Adam God doctrine coming out because he's talking about Adam. There's the Adam God doctrine coming out.

That's who he's talking about. And you can try to get around that all you want. You can try to go, well, you need to look at this over here and then look what this person over here said, you know, and all the rest of that.

Look, it's just as obvious as can be that that is what he is talking about.

There's just so much more in this one that would be worth looking at. Notice it says,

I tell you more, Adam is the Father of our spirits. He lived upon an earth. He did abide his creation, did honor to his calling and priesthood and obeyed his master,

Lord, and probably many of his wives did the same. And they lived and died upon an earth and then were resurrected again to immortality and eternal life.

There's the words of Brigham Young. It's right there. Now, today that's because they're in heresy.

But, you know, there's just one of the many problems with the idea that Mormonism is a true religion and a restored religion.

And there's been this unchangeable line of the priesthood and prophets and all the rest of that stuff.

It just simply isn't true. And that's what happens when you actually study the history of Mormonism.

And it is interesting to me, so much more information is available today. I mean, back in the olden days,

I remember going up to Salt Lake City and going into the archives and photocopying some of the early stuff.

And it's all in book form today. It's all online. It's digitized. It's everywhere. There is so much more ready availability for people today to know the errors of Brigham Young and Joseph Smith and to realize that Mormonism is purely a made -up religion that has nothing to do with Christianity and has no historical foundation to it.

The information is there if people are willing to go look. And I'll close this.

We'll go to our Skype callers because the only way you can get in today is Skype. Dividing that line, I keep hearing

Rich sitting there going, hello, hello. And he's pressing buttons and buttons and lights are flashing.

But nothing is working. But my wife and I were riding,

I think it was Thursday of last week. And we passed two more missionaries going the other direction on their bikes.

And let me tell you something. Let me tell you something. I turned to my wife and she pulled up next to me and she was laughing too.

One of those two guys has to be, his nickname has to be Babyface.

It has to be. This kid honestly looked at the oldest like he was 12.

I felt sorry for him. And what was worse, not only was his face just like a 12 -year -old, but for some reason he was wearing what looked like hand -me -down clothes that were like three sizes too big, which just made him look even worse.

I mean, I looked at my wife, we were both laughing. And I said to her, I said, there is no way on earth

I could call that guy Elder anything without laughing because it's just not, it reminds me of, remember

Elder Hollywood? Remember Elder Hollywood? The guy had actually had a name badge that Elder Hollywood, that wasn't his name.

But he was really fancy. This guy has a name tag, it says Elder Babyface. He just, if he doesn't, some of his fellow elders have purchased him one, or they need to, one of the two.

I'm not sure which it is. But, oh, it was absolutely amazing.

They just get younger and younger and younger as they go by. I realize it's because I'm actually getting older.

But anyway, so there's some interesting stuff from Bring Him Young. It is, there's so much that stuff out there and the vast majority of Mormons have no earthly idea.

Someone just asked, what's the relationship between James White and Dr. Oakley? Well, it's a close relationship.

Sort of like mirror and reflection, maybe? I don't know. I've heard they're engaged, yeah.

No kidding. All right. I was going to say 877 -753 -3341, but that ain't working.

I don't know what's going on out there, but dividing that line is the only way to get hold of us today.

That's great. That's wonderful. I'll have to come up with something else to fill the rest of the time. Dividing that line on Skype, let's talk with Sean in Massachusetts.

Hi, Sean. Hi, Dr. White. Thanks for taking my call. I really appreciate your ministry.

It's a great blessing. Yes, sir. Sorry that my question has nothing to do with the topic today, but...

Oh, that's okay. You don't sit around and read Brigham Young's collected sermons regularly?

No. Not ever, actually. Okay. I've ever seen pictures of Brigham Young's wives? No, I have not.

Okay. You need to look that up on the website. Google Brigham Young's wives and then read a few of his sermons, and then you'll never listen to me again.

Anyway, you have a different question. Yes, sir. All right. Yeah, the reason why I'm calling is just recently

I started going to a Calvinistic Baptist church near my home here, and I love the teaching.

I love the Calvinistic doctrine and everything, but my pastor's into, I guess, what is called

New Covenant Theology, and he's given me a book called

What I Say Unto You by John Reisinger. Yes, and I started reading it, and I found myself having real problems agreeing with basically his thesis for the whole book.

And the fact that Christ brought a new and contrasting moral law to replace the law of God given through Moses.

I was wondering if you had any resources that I could look into this a little bit more.

Basically what happened was I wrote my pastor a short response to this book that I'm reading, and he then put me in touch with a couple of people that he knows,

I guess, are authors that defend this system, and it seems like I'm on my own here.

Who did he put you in touch with, if I could ask, if you wouldn't mind mentioning? I guess a guy named

Fred Zaspel and someone named Blake White. Not familiar with that one.

Okay, yeah, it's an ongoing discussion. We actually had, if someone could find for me, maybe the rookie or Algo or somebody, we, didn't we do it on The Dividing Line?

Did we not have a, and I'm asking Rich this, not you. Sorry, Sean, but didn't we, I remember sitting in this room with a

New Covenant guy on the phone, and I was here, and I don't remember if it was Renahan or Barcellas or who else we had on, but we had a

New Covenant debate. And I don't remember if it was something that Chris Arnzen cooked up, or if it was something that we did on The Dividing Line.

But I have a very, very clear recollection of sitting in this studio and discussing, it may have been with Fred Zaspel, I don't remember who it was, might've been him.

I remember discussing Jeremiah 31 with him. And the issue of the law, the very nature of the

New Covenant is I will write my law upon their hearts. You would have to have two different fulfillments of that.

You would have to, what did Jeremiah 31 mean? You'd have to, from the New Covenant perspective, this is my main problem with New Covenant theology.

I read Riesinger's book, and I dabbled with that for a while, but got away from it because here's the main problem.

You basically have to believe that the Jeremiah 31 prophecy would not have had any meaning in its original context, where it says,

I will write my law upon their hearts. What law did Jeremiah mean? Did he mean solely ceremonial law?

No, I think he's really talking about the moral law of God, but I don't see any difference between the moral law of God in the

Old Covenant and the moral law of God in the New Covenant. The issue is not the law, it's the application of the law and what

Christ has done in providing us with the very means, the Holy Spirit, of loving that law and living in light of it and seeing

God's holy precepts and things like that. It seems to me that a lot of the New Covenant guys, the primary reason that they go that direction either is some type of overreaction to a pedo -credo debate, and I think

I have demonstrated you don't have to go that direction. You can be a Covenant theologian and be consistently non -pedo -baptist, and my pedo -baptist friends are there, no, no, no, but hey,

I've debated that a number of times. Go listen to the debate with Bill Shishko. Go listen to the debate with the other guy.

Too many names going on here. We've done the debates. I'm not going to go back overall right now, but I think

I've demonstrated you can be consistent. As to resources, your go -to guy there is

Richard Braselis. He's written on the subject called

In Defense of the Decalogue and Reformed Baptist Academic Press.

Google that. You'll also find a number of articles in the Reformed Baptist Theological Review on the subject, but Richard Braselis, he teaches there in Owensboro.

I'll be seeing him coming up here in January when I teach the polemics class, but track down.

If you can't find his email address, and you should be able to find it, just Google him. And if you go to the

Owensboro website, you should be able to contact him there. But anyways, if not, contact us and I can give you his email address.

He'd be glad to probably... He probably has online someplace or can send to you a rather full bibliography of materials and responses to the

New Covenant perspective. Some New Covenant folks have really gone out into the woods.

They've taken this stuff so far that one even... We've pressed them on this idea that, well, it has to be repeated in the

New Covenant or it's no longer valid. Really? So how about incest? Well, yeah, that would be okay.

If it wasn't illegal, legally, it would be okay under the New Covenant because it's not repeated in the

New Covenant. It's not repeated in the New Testament. And you're just like, I think that illustrates a problem, okay?

I think there's where you go right there. But there are other ramifications as well that we get into.

But like I said, Richard Braselis, I think is going to be your go -to guy on that. Okay, great.

Yeah, I really appreciate it. All right. And thank you very much. Appreciate your ministry again.

Okay, thanks, John. Thanks for calling. All right, God bless. I am a creature of habit.

I think most people would be going, 877, I can't do that. It's dividing .line on Skype.

And I do have TweetDeck up. So if you wanted to shoot something, even though it oddly has not updated at all during the program.

So maybe it's not working too well. I don't know. I heard

Facebook was down. So maybe it's dead. I don't know. But Dr. Oakley1689 is my

Twitter address. If you wish to likewise get hold of me there, I might look over there and see it.

We will see. But dividing .line on Skype. Let's talk to Marcus in Virginia.

Hi, Marcus. Hey, Doc. I had a question for you about assurance of salvation.

And the question we've been shooting around in our evangelism team is, what objective basis does the believer have in his assurance of salvation that is not based on subjective experience, like his current state of sanctification and stuff like that?

Well, obviously the objective basis of assurance of salvation is not found in looking at yourself.

It's found in the finished work of Jesus Christ. The objective element is the promises of God.

The subjective element has to do with the nature of your own faith. But that's really a massively important distinction to be made, is that there is an objective foundation for a belief in the assurance of salvation.

So we might need to define the terms we're talking about here. Are we talking about assurance of salvation in the sense that there is a biblical teaching that the person who is in Jesus Christ will not fail to receive eternal life under the glory of the triune

God? Or are we talking about the much more personalized version of that?

And that is, how do I myself know? How do I have a certainty of my relationship with Christ?

And that, of course, is a different issue in the sense that it is experiential.

It is a result of sanctification. It is a result of growing in grace.

You look at 1 John, and he goes to the end of the book, and he says, these things I've written that you may know you have eternal life.

What are these things? Well, everything that came before that. And so a person who loves a brother and a person who walks in the light and is not seeking to walk in darkness, the person that believes that Jesus is the

Christ, there is a solid doctrinal content to his profession.

These are all the things that John lays out for us as evidences by which we know that we have eternal life.

But that kind of assurance outside of the objective reality of the promises of God, my personal assurance is something that should naturally increase with my sanctification and my walking with Christ.

I mean, a person who has walked with Christ and seen the work of the Spirit, the fulfillment of the promises of God over decades of that person's life, seen the faithfulness of God over and over and over again, cannot help but grow in the assurance of the reality of the promises of God.

Now, that's not to say that the brand new believer cannot have a certain level of assurance, but it's an oddity of modern evangelicalism that we actually get to the position of believing that, well, the new believer possesses the

Holy Spirit, so he has everything that he needs. Well, that's true, but the role of the Holy Spirit in the person's life is that of sanctification and conforming them to the image of Christ.

And anybody who thinks they've arrived at that point is just self -deceived.

I mean, anybody who can look at their lives and go, oh yeah, I'm just like Jesus. I respond to everything in life just like Jesus.

Wow, I've not met those folks. And the few that I've met that did say it, as soon as I questioned them, did not respond like Jesus for some odd reason.

I'm not sure how that works. But anyhow, so it's important to make the distinctions that sound theologians have down through the years as to the grounds of our assurance and the objective element of our assurance, but then the reality that as we walk with Christ, there is a growing subjective nature that is based upon the observation of the fulfilled promises of God over and over and over again in our lives.

That sounds good. Thanks for that, man. All right, I appreciate it. Bye -bye.

Wow. That's interesting. Unfortunately, someone snuck in and got around my

G -lines. This has nothing to do...

Everyone's going, what did he just say? But we have a... There's a guy named

Troy Brooks. Troy Brooks is a heretic from up in Canada. And why doesn't somebody in channel, one of my ops, send the command to NA27?

I don't know. I'm going to need to see what's going on with this, but I don't have that command here. Or maybe,

Rich, you could go in and... Just a second.

I'm trying to type in the window over here. Maybe you could go in and type that.

In the NA27 window, the phone window. And that might help. I just typed it in the message thing.

Thank you. Sorry, folks. This fellow by the name of Troy Brooks. Yeah, CGI400.

He's a heretic up in Canada. And he has made it his life's work, and it's a sad life's work, to violate the rules of Starlink IRC, the chat channel that we are on, that we have a community in.

And to, in essence, send private messages to everyone who's in our chat channel.

Right now, there are 65 people in our chat channel about how I'm going to hell, R .C. Sproul's going to hell, John MacArthur's going to hell,

Matt Slick's going to hell. All Calvinists are going to hell. In fact, he recently sent one in that said, what was it?

Less than 1 % of Calvinists ever repent and are able to get to heaven, as I recall.

It seems to me the list seems to be growing. Oh, it is growing. And I'm thankful to be in that list. Tried to private message him, but your script nailed him before I could last time around.

Maybe he needs to reword it so it's not so long and just say, I'm going to be the one that gets to heaven.

I'm going to be the only one that gets to heaven. Yeah, I think that is. But he's got his own little cult. And it's sad to observe the man because he claims to be a

Christian. He brings tremendous disrepute on the name of Christ by his behavior. He doesn't follow rules, laws.

We've seen other things about him online where he just treats people in a horrific fashion. It's a shame.

But there you have your hyper -Arminian folks, downright Pelagian heretic. And they're out there.

And he just happened to pop in while we were doing that. So you might actually find some stuff from him on YouTube.

And it would be laughable if it wasn't so sad. It would be laughable if it wasn't heresy, if the man was just not completely imbalanced and unhinged.

But that's what we were... Had to deal with that for just a moment. Squirrel just gave us the title for the dividing line today.

Brigham Young had ugly wives. Thank you. You know what? No one, no one would debate me on that subject.

Yeah, but I am going to get some serious email on this. Okay, what we have to do, it's in the

Encyclopedia of Mormonism. We're going to go get that picture. You can scan it to a JPEG. And then just make the automatic response to anybody.

And we'll call it evidence that demands a verdict. Yep, I was about to say the same thing.

You got there before I did. So, all right, let's continue on with the dividing line, having gotten rid of Nutty Troy.

And let's... Oh boy, here we go. Let's talk with Johnny. Hi, Johnny. Hi, how are you?

Oh, pretty good. I guess you called into into ABN when I was on too, huh? Yes, I did.

In fact, I think it was the same topic, wasn't it? You know, like I told you online,

I thought it was a different one with David Wood. And I noticed you were on there at the end. I was like, oh, darn it, they're totally off topic.

Yeah, so you were watching a recorded version and thought you were calling the live one. Exactly.

Well, I hadn't been that often. I haven't been on that website very often. And when I clicked on it, it said live on the screen.

And but apparently it was a recording of a live program. Well, I thought your voice sounds like Johnny, but it must not because it didn't say anything to me or anything like that.

And it's like, oh, okay, whatever. Well, yeah, I mean, I figured you would recognize me.

I didn't say anything because I just wanted to focus on the question at hand. The screener didn't ask me what

I was asking or anything. So it was the first time I ever called on the show and the screener didn't ask me what I was going to ask. Well, actually, that is the one disadvantage that I have found of being on ABN is the screeners never ask.

And as a result, you only get the time at the beginning of the program to make your point. Because after that, the calls are going to be absolutely all over the map.

And many of them are going to be what I would call anti -Muhammadans. There are people who obviously are not

Muslims who hate Muhammad with a passion. And that's all they focus on is just expressing their hatred of Muhammad.

And I find that somewhat troubling, to be perfectly honest with you. That's not a good thing.

That's not where we should be going. But it happens. So anyway, please press on.

Yeah, well, I tried to call you through the phone line, but it didn't work. So I had to create a Skype account just so that I could call you right now.

Well, you know, that's a good thing. Yeah. Well, anyway,

I have a question because I just downloaded... I got a new Droid and I downloaded an application for Kindle.

And I bought this book called The Dictionary of Islam. And I can't remember the whole title of the book.

And the English on the book is not all that great. But I was looking for a section, something dealing with the subject of atonement.

And under the section called Expiation, it says, quote, The doctrine of expiation or atonement for neglected duties in sins of omission and commission is distinguished in the

Muslim religion from the doctrine of sacrifice. Sacrifice is being strictly confined to the

Eid al -Asr or Feast of Sacrifice in the month of pilgrimage. So when

I was reading this, I'm a little bit confused because even in Christianity, even though we don't have a sacerdotal priesthood on Earth where we're practicing blood sacrifices for atonement for sin because Jesus is the finished work, even in our religion, the sacrificial system is linked to the concept of atonement, expiation.

You know, we go to go to Judaism. It's part of paganism in the various strands thereof.

They're in. But in Islam, I'm a little bit confused as to how their doctrine of atonement seems to be for, you know, making almsgiving and, you know, doing good deeds, you know, giving to the poor, feeding, you know, all these different things.

But it's not an expiation or something like that or a sacrifice. Do you know? I'm trying to understand the system because I don't understand how you can have passages in the

Koran where it talks about actually giving sacrifices to Allah, like such as Cain and Abel, Abel being accepted and Cain's not being accepted.

What is the point of the sacrifice? And in addition to that, I also understand that they give sacrifices for infants or babies.

What is the purpose of that sacrifice? I have no earthly idea. I've never heard of it. But as far as the rest of it goes, obviously, again, you're assuming that there has to be some kind of a continuity between the

Old Testament revelation and sacrifices and things like that and what comes into the new because the

Koran makes reference to Cain and Abel and makes reference to biblical stories. But that's part of the problem is you cannot assume that there is any type of continuity because the author of the

Koran simply doesn't understand many of the stories that he relates or their biblical backgrounds or did not have access to the

Hebrew Scriptures or even a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures or really even knowledgeable people that could explain to him the meanings and backgrounds of those things, let alone the

New Testament. So the idea of expiation and forgiveness of sins in light of a person's giving of zakat or going on pilgrimage and things like that, that is specifically in modern

Islamic theology distinguished from any concept of sacrifice primarily as a negative reaction to the proselytization of Christians, the proclamation of the sacrifice of Christ and things along those lines, in light of the theology that developed out of Surah 4, verse 157, a denial of the sacrifice of Christ, denial of the crucifixion, hence resurrection, and all those other things.

And the development over time, and again, there are going to be different views on this. There's a huge, huge mountain of difference between the

Sunnis and the Shias on this matter. The Shias have a completely different perspective. And in fact, some have said that the concept of sacrifice and atonement is so much stronger in Shiism that it provides an opening for Christians to make application in regards to Christ, because there really does seem to be a very specific negative reaction on the part of Sunni Islam to the

Christian doctrine, and therefore they respond in that particular way and are closed down to any of those types of things.

They really, many of them mock the idea of substitutionary atonement and things like that, but Shiism is not that way.

So you not only have those kinds of divisions, but then you're going to have other divisions even within Sunni Islam, depending on the jurisprudence that one follows and the group that one follows and where you are in the world and all sorts of things like that.

So there's not just one understanding, but the basic issue of distinguishing between sacrifice and expiation is there primarily as a response to Christianity.

The sacrifices of pilgrimage really are not expiatory in any way.

They're not substitutionary or anything like that. It would be improper to try to read those backgrounds of the

Bible into the Islamic practice at that point. James, here's the thing.

I understand what you're saying, but I was also reading this in the Hadith. This is from Sahih Muslim, Book 22,

Number 4818. And it reads, "...Jun'da bi -Sufya reported,

I was with Allah's Messenger, may peace be upon him, on the Day of Diyal. But while he was not returning, having offered the prayer and finished it, he saw the flesh of the sacrificial animals which had been slaughtered before he had completed the prayer.

Thereupon the Holy Prophet and one who slaughtered the sacrificed animal before the prayer of our prayer, he should slaughter one instead and do not..."

I'm sorry, wait a minute. I apologize. The point is that in one of the Hadiths that I saw, I thought this was it,

I apologize. It actually said that if he slaughtered the animal after the prayer, it actually said that he would be justified in his family or something like that.

And if he did it after, I'm sorry, if he did the sacrifice before the prayer, that he justified himself, which confused me as to what the meaning of the word justify meant in that You can't, again, you cannot assume that the term justification there has any relationship whatsoever to the

New Testament concept at all. You are allowed to sacrifice animals to Allah, but it is, again, it is not an expiatory sacrifice.

It is not a sacrifice that takes away sin. It is much more in the way of the free will offerings or the demonstration of one's making of vows, demonstration of one's fealty to Allah, but it is not a blood atonement removal of sin issue as far as that goes.

That concept just isn't there. Allah, you're seeking to appease

Allah and to gain, I don't want to use the term merit because, again, all these terms have different meanings.

It's a completely different worldview and understanding, but you are seeking to have more good works on your side of the scale, and that kind of sacrifice can be part of that.

But one must remember that there's another hadith where Muhammad said that a man was brought, a single man, one man of the ummah, of the

Islamic ummah was brought forth on the Day of Judgment, and there were 99 scrolls of his evil deeds that were brought out.

And Allah said, have you been unjustly treated in any of these? Did you do all these things? Yes, I did all these things. And he says, do you have any good works to put on the other side of the scale?

And the man said, I have none. And Allah says, but you do. And he brought out a single card.

Remember, there's 99 scrolls of sins. He brought out a single card upon which was written, la ilaha illallah, the shahada.

And the placement of that one card on the other side of the scales outweighed the 99 scrolls of sins that he had done.

And so he was allowed to enter into paradise. Now, it's interesting to hear Muslim scholars talk about that because they say, well, now that was just one man.

There's only going to be one man that's going to be true for. So there could be lots of other people that said, la ilaha illallah, but they're not going to actually enter.

That's not going to work for them because if they have all those evil deeds. But the point is that it wasn't, well, if you had sacrificed something or if there was some type of sacrifice that could save you, it's just not there.

It's just not a part of the theology. You might sacrifice something, but it's not substitutionary in any way like that.

It just doesn't work that way. Rich is giving me the wrap it up sign because he has some emails that he needs to get to.

So I would imagine there is probably a discussion on answering -islam .org

on the subject of atonement that would go far more in depth. It's not the main subject

I've looked at. It may be related to the intercession materials. You might be able to find some stuff in there, but that's where I'd send you to.

Okay, thank you very much. Okay, thanks. Thanks, John. All righty, yes, sir. Okay, well, I wanted to at least get to one email today because I thought this was interesting and actually dovetails into a fellow that we have on Facebook, drop by every now and then, who basically promotes himself as a genuine

Arminian, where a lot of the people that we interact with, he doesn't believe are true Arminians.

They're more Pelagian or semi -Pelagian, dah, dah, dah, dah. And this is the reason why he thinks this way.

Gary is writing in asking, work prevents me from listening live, but I love your program. I have a friend who is a

Wesleyan Arminian. He gave me a copy of their doctrinal statement containing a thing called prevenient grace.

Can this be supported from scripture? Also, it talks about the entire sanctification. I can't find any information about such a thing.

Is this like an advanced Christianity thing? Yeah, entire sanctification is the

Wesleyan concept of complete sanctification, sinless perfection. And it is the result of a second work of grace where your abiding sin is removed.

And that was the teaching there. Of course, most Wesleyans today are so liberal, they don't believe in the deity of Christ anymore.

So all that's sort of gone by the wayside. But yeah, that was the teaching way back then. The concept of prevenient grace is much more central,

I think. Many evangelicals have glommed onto this, not knowing what its background is.

But it's the concept of this pre -working of God's grace that frees us from slavery to sin or the negative effects of sin so that we, in essence, are brought to a moral neutral point and therefore can exercise our free will to embrace

Christ. And this is a kind of pre -salvific grace that is presupposed by many people.

I don't see any evidence of this. I do believe in certainly in common grace.

But the idea that there is a prevenient grace that brings people to a moral neutral point and then it's up to their free will to accept or reject from there.

The grace of God that is salvific is a grace that is specifically intended to accomplish the salvation of an individual, not just simply make it a possibility that he can bring about his own salvation.

And so I think the concept of prevenient grace is a cop -out. It is a mechanism whereby you try to avoid the biblical teaching that the grace of God actually saves, and hence that terrible, horrible, irresistible grace that is the grace that brings about spiritual life.

So I'm not sure what prevenient grace actually accomplishes if it's not actually bringing about spiritual life. Now our

Facebook poster, when he discusses his position on this, he believes that he truly and that Arminius truly believed in total depravity and that the prevenient grace enters into this picture.

And this seemed rather foreign to me as I'm watching this guy describe his position.

There are very few people today that actually hold Arminius' position on all sorts of things.

I think he would agree with that. He came out of a Reformed tradition, and so Arminius was more orthodox than most

Arminians today, but he was not consistent on that. To even begin to accept the concept of the sovereignty of God, which

Arminius would have, but then to, in essence, say, well, but God has freely limited himself so that blah, blah, blah.

It's an incoherent system. You have all sorts of questions about, well, how does God know the future? Does God have an eternal decree?

All these things come flooding back. And people who call themselves Arminians today or called themselves

Arminians back then, the fundamental problem with Arminianism is it's just not consistent. There are all sorts of different levels of it.

And yes, most Arminians today would not believe in man's deadness and sin, and they would not believe in total depravity, would not believe in all those things.

And Arminius believed in elements of those things. But what you're searching for is some kind of consistency in the midst of all of this, a consistency that will not only allow you to exegete all of Scripture and do so consistently, but also to look at all of what

Scripture says concerning the grace of God and the sovereignty of God and the nature of God and all those other things.

And that's where Arminianism collapses. It just can't do it. And many Arminians have even given up thinking you should do that.

There are a lot of people today that say, oh, even to look for that is to violate biblical standards and to try to go for something that the

Bible does not provide us with. That's why Arminianism has led to so much universalism and so much liberalism as well. That's just a fact.

But anyway, sorry about the phone lines today, folks. I'm glad we had

Skype. I mean, it would have been all that long ago. We would have had to go, you know, folks, just going to be all solo today because there's no way you can get hold of us.

But thankfully, that's not the way it works. So Lord willing, we will be back next

Tuesday, and I'm planning on doing Thursday as well here on The Dividing Line. We'll see you then. God bless.

I stand up for the truth, and won't you live for the Lord? Because we're pounding, pounding on the wing bones.

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