Radio Free Geneva: Brian from Faith on Fire and Leighton (Again) on John 6:44

You constantly hear people that are Calvinist harp on this, God's offering, God's offering,

God's offering, God's offering, God's offering. They just keep repeating it, and they repeat it so much you start to think it's a biblical truth.

Jesus stands outside the tomb of Lazarus. He says, Lazarus, come out. And Lazarus said, I can't,

I'm dead. That's not what he did. Lazarus came out. Do you mean to tell me a dead person can respond to the command of Christ?

And then you take lessons from Judas White and Jeff Durbin.

It shows in this kind of sequential format. Do you really believe that it parallels the method of exegesis that we utilize to demonstrate those other things?

Um, no. Calvinists, even pastors, very openly smoke pipes and cigars just as they drink beer and wine.

Even Jesus cannot override your unbelief. You quote a verse like that to him, you know what it would sound like if he were listening to it?

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He wouldn't make any sense to him. A self -righteous, legalistic, deceived jerk.

And you need to realize that he's gone from predeterminism.

Now he's speaking of some kind of middle knowledge that God now has to... I deny and categorically deny middle knowledge.

Then don't beg the question that would demand me to force you to embrace it.

You're not always talking about necessarily God choosing something for no apparent reason, but you're choosing that meat because it's a favorable meat.

There's a reason to have the choice of that meat. ...cafeteria at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

Safe from all those moderate Calvinist, Dave Hunt fans, and those who have read and re -read George Bryson's book, we are

Radio Free Geneva, broadcasting the truth about God's freedom to say for his own eternal glory.

I was thinking about starting off playing an air guitar, and then the Tassie quote came up.

And every time that plays, I just get a headache. I mean, it just, it hurts.

That was 2016, and after all these years, it still hurts.

It's foreknowledge, and then middle knowledge, and predestination, and oh, wow, that was...

Somebody pointed me to the fact that he's still making videos. That he's still out there doing his thing, and I live rent -free in his head.

It was the first time I'd even had anyone mention the poor brother to me.

Anyways, welcome to Radio Free Geneva. We haven't done an RFG in a while. Some of you may not even understand why we have that pagan music at the beginning.

At least that's what, I think that's what my parents would have thought. And John Cooper's parents,

I think, would have thought too. But have Tim Buschong singing a rock and roll version of A Mighty Fortress.

I was, I forgot to do this today. I was going to use our new super -duper search engine on the website.

What's that under forms? What's the term that you look under? It's right in the middle. Anyways, transcripts, transcripts, transcripts.

I was going to use our super -duper transcript search engine, because I think if you put just the word

Adrian in, that would probably give you the first Radio Free Geneva.

When I responded to the then extremely popular Southern Baptist pastor,

Adrian Rogers, and a pretty standardized denial of Reformed theology, and I, that's what started it.

I don't, sitting here thinking, I don't think we called it Radio Free Geneva that time.

I think after that, yeah, I think after that we said, wow, there were a lot of people that really wanted me to do more of that.

What should we call it? That's when we came up with Radio Free Geneva. So, that was a long time ago.

That was more than 20 years ago. We have been doing segments on the dividing line where we address particularly bad forms of argumentation.

We've addressed some good art forms of argumentation, but there aren't all that many of them. And there's just, especially with the advent.

When we started doing Radio Free Geneva, there wasn't something called YouTube. And YouTube has, of course, exponentially expanded the amount of information that if I spent even a small portion of time in a week scanning through YouTube, we could do

Radio Free Geneva's 24 -7. We really could. There's just that much bad stuff out there.

And, of course, there are some channels. That's just all they do. I was going to look at Leighton Flowers because we're going to be looking at Leighton Flowers here a little bit later on.

I was going to go to his because I did go to his, but I didn't do any counting.

Looking at all the titles and just go, what percentage of everything that Leighton puts out is just simply anti -Calvinism?

I'd say it's about 98%. That would be my guess. It may be higher. And I commented to some guys recently.

I said, I pity anyone who has to put out anti -Calvinism videos every few days.

I mean, I don't put out Calvinism videos every few days. And so to be putting out a negative statement about another perspective with that level of regularity just cannot be an enjoyable life.

It just can't be. I don't know. I feel sorry.

But anyway, so what happened for this program was

I was sent a video. And I started listening to it and went, yeah, okay.

Yeah, you're right. And then when I posted the video and said, let's take a look at this.

Then it was like, well, you should probably look at some of the other things. His name is Brian from Faith on Fire.

And I think what happened is I was looking at some of his stuff.

And on the sidebar, another Soteriology 101 video came up on John 644 that was fairly recent.

And we are attempting to get a debate, a formal debate in Houston for the second weekend in March, I think it is.

Or is it the first? I'd have to look at the thing again because we're trying to get as many people as we're trying to get together for debates, to travel, and all that sort of stuff.

It's not easy to do. We've gotten two of the three individuals locked in as far as dates are concerned.

And so I'm going to be hitting Houston first, debating Trent Horn twice, going from there to Tullahoma.

We've got a debate with Dr. Ross in Tullahoma and the conference there. The next weekend,

I'm teaching Baptist Church History Intensive in Conway, Arkansas.

And so the next week after that, we'll be back in Houston and the debate with Dale Tuggy on Jesus as Yahweh, and then hopefully with Leighton Flowers at that same time period on John 6.

So I'll be helping Leighton with the debate preparation today. That's what today will be for in a little while.

It's going to be a big trip. I think I'm just going to try to stay as far away from people as possible except at the conferences to try to make sure

I'm only going to make my own food. I'm not going to drink any protein shakes from Circle K or anything like that at all because this is the largest number of debates

I've ever done in the shortest period of time. There's no question about it. So it's going to be incredibly challenging.

So anyway, I'm pretty sure that I was looking at something here when that popped up.

I want to check something just to make sure my facts are where they need to be.

Yeah, it was on Friday.

Okay, so it was on Friday that Justin Peters texted me this video right here that Brian from Faith on Fire is talking about in a later video.

So this video, one illustration destroys Calvinism. Now, I'm starting to think that maybe

Rich is missing part of the necessary elements of his job here because you know what?

Look at that screenshot. Look at that capture shot. We have one thing that we upload with all of our videos, and it's just simply the

Alpha and Omega Ministries logo. But I've noticed Leighton Flowers and Brian here from Faith on Fire, they all have titles.

And look, they've got little babies and stuff like this. And I'm thinking this is stuff that Rich needs to be doing to make our videos.

We're just not keeping up. We're not competing with the other guys here.

We really aren't. Yeah, well, what can I say? So maybe things will pick up here because when you go to ours, it's just a whole page of Alpha and Omega logos.

You can't tell by looking at it what it is, see? So I'm just sort of thinking that maybe we need to start fixing this up.

But anyhow, Justin sent me the link to one illustration,

Destroys Calvinism, and then I think early this morning or late last night, one of the two, he sent me,

I think, this other video that you're actually seeing on the screen right now, Is the

God of Calvinism the God of the Bible? Now, I had never heard of Brian.

I had never heard of Faith on Fire before. Again, I do not spend much time in YouTube looking for stuff like this.

I mean, I suppose there are people that, you know, they YouTube their name and stuff like that.

I can't imagine what would come up, you know? I mean, I think back to when

I did that debate with the black Hebrew Israelites and amazing how many people were let out of that movement by just that one debate.

It's astonishing. But, you know, the stuff that was being posted then of me with horns and all the rest of this kind of fun stuff,

I would imagine that searching on my own name would be sort of depressing, basically.

But I don't do that. I don't have time for that, especially now with the debate with Gregory Coles coming up in barely a month from now and all the preparation and the travel and everything that's going to be going on with that and then the preparation for that class

I'll be teaching in Conway and then all those debates and don't have time.

So when I do programs like this, it's because someone has already taken the time to send me, you know, something and I looked at it and I don't always have time to look at it.

But these were relatively short videos. I mean, like when someone sends me a Layton Flowers video and it's two hours and 37 minutes long,

I don't look at it, not unless there's a time index or, you know, you need to see what he said at such and such a point in time or something like that.

I just don't have any interest in it. I don't have that kind of time to be listening to that kind of stuff when

I'm trying to do all the preparation that goes into this program and into preaching.

I preached Sunday on the Ascension at Apologia Church and stuff like that.

So anyway, normally what we would do is I would either use

Audio Notetaker or Note Studio. So Audio Notetaker is audio only. Note Studio, I can do video clips and we've used both of those in here before.

Here's the problem. Very often people's presentations, they don't get to their point for a long, long time or they get to a little bit of a point here and a little bit of a point there and a little bit point there and you just have to play so much of it that then you don't have really much time to do any reply, honestly.

And so what I'm going to do in this situation is

I'm just going to sort of let you know what these two videos were about and respond to them that way. It just seems like the best way to do it because I want to spend some time on the big board, once again, getting into Greek grammar and syntax.

Got some sentence diagramming to do and all sorts of things like that. So here's

Brian and in the video that's actually up there, in fact,

I think I could, yeah, I could actually play it at that point. I just froze the video right there. In the video here, it's the standard, the

God of the Bible is not the God of Calvinism because the God of the Calvin is a big mean baddie. He's a bad man.

And the argument is you've got Ephesians 5 .1, okay?

So here's Ephesians 5 .1, Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children. Now I did find it,

I want to try to stay focused upon the key issues and avoid all the side stuff today as much as possible.

But I did find it funny that when he introduced Ephesians 5 .1, he read it.

He said he normally uses the King James Version of the Bible. I could have guessed that one. But he read it from the

ESV. And I guess the KJV has a strange translation of mimetai there in Ephesians 5 .1.

Mimetai, mimic, imitate. And so he wanted to get to be imitators.

So that's why he needed to use modern translation. And he read the NASB, the ESV. And then he said, and even though I detest this translation,

I'll go ahead and read it anyways. And it was the LSB. He calls it the

Legacy Substandard Bible. And I, and of course it says imitators too, since it's the

NASB with very few changes. I don't know that he knows that. I didn't get that feeling that he did.

But what I've discovered is this fellow detests John MacArthur and Justin Peters especially.

He's got all sorts of stuff going after MacArthur and Justin. And I'm not really sure exactly all the reasons why.

But the fact that they are Calvinists is seemingly more than enough to explain it.

And here's basically his argument. And that is that we are to be like God.

We are to imitate God. And since God in Calvinism does all sorts of things that we should never do, therefore the

God of Calvinism is different than the God of the Bible. I mean, that's just a summary of what it is.

I mean, we are to love our neighbors and the God of, even love our enemies and the

God of Calvinism doesn't. And so that's not the God of the Bible and this kind of stuff.

And that was what was behind the previous video that he's making reference there to and suggesting people listen to.

One illustration destroys Calvinism. What was the illustration? Well, it's one that he came up with himself. And there were no choice meats involved in this particular illustration, which is good,

I suppose. And in this illustration, a woman finds a man who just seems to be the perfect husband.

And they're going to get married and they're talking. And he tells her that they're going to have five children.

Oh, I just want to have a big family. That sounds good. And then he gives them their names.

Wow, well, I'd like to have some input on that, but okay, all right. And he says, these two, a boy and a girl, we're going to just lavish love upon them.

And we're going to do everything to make their lives just perfect and wonderful and great.

But the other three, we're going to hate. And they're going to turn out to be miscreants and, you know, psychopaths and have horrible lives.

And she's like, what on earth? This is insane. I'm not marrying you.

And this was the illustration because, you see, that's what God is like in Calvinism.

God has determined that this number of his children are going to be just terrible, horrible, because he hates them.

And that's why he said, we're going to hate these children and stuff like that. And then these others are going to be good and everything else.

And so this one illustration in Brian's mind, and I'll just be honest,

I don't think Brian's read almost anything in Reformed theology. I doubt he's done any original reading at all.

His commentary is extremely biased, shallow, prejudiced. So it's your standard anti -Calvinism on the

Internet, unfortunately. But in Brian's mind, this is enough to destroy

Calvinism, is this one illustration. That's what he's telling everybody. One illustration destroys

Calvinism. And as in every single other episode of Radio Free Geneva, to one extent or another, but normally to a great extent, we see what you normally see in social media, in preaching from a large number of Calvary Chapel pulpits, lots of independent

Fundamentalist Baptist folks, things like that. And it's a caricature, an attack upon Reformed theology that only focuses upon one disconnected element and does not see the system as a whole, especially as it's derived from believing in sola scriptura and tota scriptura.

Scripture is the sole and final rule of faith and believing all that Scripture has to say. And so when you think about the illustration and the argument that Brian is making,

I think it's important for all of us who are Reformed, it's very easy to become frustrated with the 47th misrepresentation you've seen this month when there isn't a reason for it.

It's not that there are not clear, obvious... I mean, you don't even have to look at the

Potter's Freedom or God's Sovereign Grace or drawn by the Father and the books I've written. You know, read

Chose My God by R .S .E. Sproul. And nice, short presentation blows away the vast majority of these straw men.

It puts it into a wonderfully balanced biblical presentation. It's very understandable.

But these folks just don't seem to have any intention whatsoever of engaging the perspective from any kind of fair approach whatsoever.

And so when you encounter this type of thing, you have a choice to make.

Every time you see a misrepresentation of Calvinism does not mean you have to be investing your time in correcting that misrepresentation.

No one would have the time to do it. You would have to not be going online at all because it's pretty much every single day.

I've never estimated, but I'll bet you there's 50 anti -Calvinism videos posted to YouTube every single day.

Probably more. I don't know. You could absolutely lose your mind trying to correct all the same things.

And the thing is, it'd always be the same things you're correcting over and over again until you just get sick and tired of it and stop bothering.

At the same time, you have to go, will there be any usefulness in my correcting this individual's misapprehensions and false statements and misunderstandings and everything else?

And sometimes there is. Radio Free Geneva has helped all sorts of people come to understand what we're really talking about and the message that really was at the heart of the

Reformation that brought freedom to Europe from the works -oriented gospel of their own

Catholic Church. So there are times to do it. And so when we do this,

I'm not so much concerned about Brother Brian here. It'd be nice if 10 years down the road he comes walking up to me at G3 or something like that and says, been a long journey, but here we are.

I mean, that kind of thing has happened. That would be wonderful. That would be great. I would certainly welcome something like that.

You won't beat him with a cane then? I might beat him with my cane then. It's possible. I probably will be definitely using a cane by then.

Just simply as a self -defense mechanism, primarily. Because they were very useful along those lines.

So anyway, yeah, get off my lawn. Yeah, if he comes to visit me, get off my lawn. Because I'll be old enough 10 years from now to do that kind of thing.

But anyway, now, when you think about answering an argument like this, what you immediately need to do is point to the fundamental error of all of this.

And that is the same fundamental error that Leighton Flowers makes, all the provisionists make.

It's repeated over and over again. What is this individual doing in his illustration of God and God's relationship to mankind?

He's starting with man. He doesn't start with God. He starts with man. He starts with human relationships.

And he defines what God can and cannot do on the basis of what men can and cannot do.

And as long as you start there, you're never going to end up with Reformed theology. There's no one, honestly, who doesn't get what

Isaiah said in Isaiah 6. When Isaiah said, woe is me, for I am undone.

I am coming apart. I am discombobulated. I am broken into pieces.

Why? Because he saw himself as he was. And he saw God as God is.

And he realized the massive chasm that exists between the creature and the

Creator. And I'm convinced that no one will long remain

Reformed that has not had that kind of soul -shaking realization of the otherness of God.

The Hebrew term, chesed, that the angels repeat, holy, holy, holy, chesed, chesed, chesed.

That, kadosh, kadosh, kadosh, excuse me, chesed is grace, kadosh, kadosh, kadosh.

That concept of, in the Greek, hageos, it's, yes, it's got the moral cleanliness and purity and all that stuff in it.

But it also has otherness, otherness, holy, holy, holy, otherness.

And that is what's missing from Brian's theology. Is God is,

God can fit into an illustration of a family, and in fact of a potential groom. He's not

Creator. There is no recognition of the relationship of Creator to creature.

There is no recognition of the rebellion of man. There is no recognition of Romans 1 and the fact that each one of these individuals is suppressing the knowledge of God, hates

God. Oh no, no, no, that's because you have a decree, you see.

And so that decree from, in their mind, if God actually does what his word says he's going to do, if he actually works all things out of the counsel of his will, if he's the one who does whatever he pleases in heaven and earth,

Psalm 135, 6, if he's like what Nebuchadnezzar says in Daniel chapter 4, and no one can ward off his hand, and he does as he pleases, if any of that is true, and he decreed from eternity past to do these things, then

God cannot create in such a way to where the activities in time are real.

They're just puppets. That's all there. Just puppets. The problem with that, of course, means that Jesus could never have become flesh.

You see, I've never met a synergist, Arminian, whatever you want to call them, provisionist, that had really thought that through.

Well, if you have a divine decree, then what happens in time, it just doesn't matter. And you can hear them all the time.

They'll say, well, I've just been predestined not to believe this. I always cringe when

I hear that, because you're going to answer for that someday. And it's not an answer, but you're going to answer for that someday.

What that would mean is that if God decreed the incarnation, the lamb slain before the foundation of the earth type stuff, that the

Son was going to enter into flesh, and this was going to be the reason for creation, was the triune

God was going to glorify himself in the incarnation, death, burial, resurrection of Jesus Christ.

That what he did in time is irrelevant. It has no meaning, because it was predestined, so who cares? And if you take that perspective, then you don't believe the

Bible. You have such a man -centered view of things, you just don't even believe what

Scripture says. So, I don't know how folks like this deal with the reality of God's providence in time, illustrated in Genesis 50 and Isaiah 10 and Acts 4, and illustrated in the lives of God's people.

How does he deal with the fact that, you know, from his perspective, if you're going to be like God, then

God should make us all healthy, wealthy, and wise, right? Because that's what you want for all your kids. Now, of course, one of the main problems here is he has this idea that everyone is a child of God.

That's just not true. In fact, he was really confused about this. What he was talking about here is that people pushed back on that illustration.

They said, but we're not all children of God in that way. Jesus said, you're your father the devil.

He even goes, I can't believe anybody would think that Satan created anyone.

Satan has never created anyone. It's like, I'm like, what? In his mind, being a child of God means

God created you. He doesn't have any category for the biblical teaching that while God created all people, there are only a certain people that are in relationship with him as sons and daughters.

I mean, there's the basic teaching of scripture, but he doesn't even seem to have a category for that.

And so he's like, I can't believe anybody would believe Satan never created anybody. And I'm like, I've never heard anybody say that. I have honestly in my life.

He is the first person I've ever heard saying that Satan created somebody. I'm like, what?

No one's no one's saying that. But you are not a child of God except through faith in Jesus Christ.

So, I mean, you know, the Mormons have everybody as children of God that way, too. You better be careful who you're hanging out with there.

But that's just a biblical teaching. It's just it's just basic. And so, yes, God has a has a different kind of relationship with those who are in Christ Jesus than those who are not.

That's a given. That's not it's not even arguable. So how does how does he deal with the fact that God has decreed that some of his children?

You know, Justin Peters is in a wheelchair. I think Justin got to go to Israel recently. And I saw there were these guys, they were carrying him upstairs because Israel is not the most wheelchair friendly place on the planet, especially if you want to go visit any of the sites.

I think about a lot of the places we went. And being in a wheelchair would be really, really hard in a vast majority of those places.

And so there's people carrying him around all over the place. And it's like, so how do you deal with the fact that God, you know, you've got your

Johnny Erickson tattas and what they experience in life and how many of us have been encouraged and challenged.

When we look at our brothers and sisters in Christ who do not have the physical blessings that we have, or maybe do not have the financial blessings that we might have.

Why has God chosen to do these things? Or is it just all a random thing? I don't know.

But you see, if we're to imitate God, then wouldn't God do that for all of his children?

But he's chosen not to. Why would that be? And if everybody is the children of God, then why does he have so many of his children born, for example, in a

Muslim country, where the chances that they're ever hearing about Christ are very small? The real Jesus, anyway.

Or in North Korea, why would you have anyone born in North Korea? The things that they would experience, the trials, oh, why would

God do any of these things? Because the God of the Bible does what pleases him, not what pleases us.

And if you take Brian's perspective and you run with it, then this is why you end up with universalism.

Because once you adopt this idea of, well, you know, we're supposed to be like God.

Well, the problem is there's all sorts of ways in which we're not supposed to be like God. We aren't to seek a people to worship us.

We're not to seek to be worshiped and honored and glorified. Because we're creatures, and God isn't.

It just astonishes me that anyone would read the entire testimony of Scripture and come up with this man -centered

God, who's just a big guy. He's just grandpa in the sky. That's all he is.

There's nothing different about him. I guess he said, my ways are not your ways, but he didn't really mean that.

When we are told to be imitators of God, we are told to be imitators of his revealed will in his law.

This is how I want you to live. But that doesn't mean that God cannot bring judgment upon his enemies.

Well, the Bible says we're to love our enemies. Well, God destroyed his enemies. Do you remember Noah's flood?

And there's a reason why universalists and many people today, they just don't want to believe that God wiped out the

Amorites. That God flooded the earth. Because that's a

God of judgment. But God does bring judgment. And it strikes me,

I mentioned in the sermon on Sunday, once again, in my opinion, the most striking language in all the

New Testament that is just meant to slap you across the face is when the men of earth call upon the mountains to fall upon them and hide them from whom?

From the presence of him who sits upon the throne and from the wrath of the

Lamb. The wrath of the Lamb. That's meant to make you go, huh?

Because here you have the Lamb who by his blood has purchased a certain people, not all people, but a certain people and made them a kingdom priest who is

God. So there is the gracious, loving, self -sacrificing

Lamb. But there comes a time when the seals are open, when judgment comes, and now you have the wrath of the

Lamb and all the great men of earth from top to bottom call upon the mountains to hide them from the wrath of the

Lamb. That doesn't fit into this because a man -centered God and a man -centered understanding has to filter out all those unique aspects of God that are not mirrored in mankind.

They're not mirrored in mankind. And so God had the right to drown

Pharaoh's army in the sea. And God had the right to despoil

Egypt. You know what he was doing when he was doing that? He was demonstrating his supremacy over the gods of Egypt.

Each one of the plagues was aimed at a specific god of Egypt. And then he destroyed the armies of Pharaoh in the sea.

Now you don't have a place for that in that kind of provisionist, synergistic perspective.

You don't. You can't fit it in there. Your God's too much like a big man.

There's much more in the Bible than that. And so this kind of stuff just really makes me go, have you read the rest of the story?

Do you have any idea? The New Testament is to be read in light of the Old Testament, not separate from.

And it's very obvious the God that you're talking about is not the God that destroyed the

Amorites, that overthrew Canaan, that demonstrated his holiness and his wrath, that worked in Nebuchadnezzar's life.

You're the one that doesn't have the God of the Bible because you have decided that God needs to look like your

God, yourself, I'm sorry, look like you, and make you comfortable. The God of the

Bible doesn't make anybody comfortable. And we just spend all of our time trying to make him as comfortable as possible.

But he doesn't work that way. He doesn't work that way. So the illustration was, again, if you've got an idea of God, not derived from the text of Scripture, not derived from what

God did with the nations around Israel or with Israel itself or any of those types of things, but if you've got a

God that's just sort of meant to make you feel comfy, grandpa God, who can then be fit into this kind of man -centered idea, you don't have the

God of Scripture. And you're going to have to, if you convert people using that kind of thing, you're going to have to be very careful lest they read the rest of the

Bible and they come up to you after a service and go, I've been reading the

Bible, and it seems like the God of the Bible is a little bit different than what you said. And then you're going to have a problem.

So Brian from Faith on Fire, well, all

I can say is I'm concerned. I'm concerned about where he's going.

Okay, so that's why I had Ephesians 5 -1 up here.

But let's go over here. There we go. Okay, switching gears, as I said,

I want to have enough time to do this. I've only got 18 minutes. Because Rich has something to do after the program, and he's got to deliver some paint.

So I need to make sure that we're good. I can get to blame you for whatever I want to. You don't have a microphone.

So he says he can always hook one up. All right.

Probably not. So here we are again. I told you that, let me see how much bigger that is.

That's about as big as I can get it. What happened was I was looking at some of that stuff, and this video popped up with Layton Flowers.

It was one of the short ones, for which I was thankful. And I'm only looking at a certain portion of it.

There was other stuff. There was a guest that I'm just not even going to give the time to even bother responding to. It's just not even worth it.

It just doesn't have anything worthwhile to say. But toward the beginning, they were playing a portion from this studio.

The last time that I went into John 6, and Layton gave a new spin, shall we say, or at least in response to me anyhow.

And I wanted to respond to it, and it gives us the opportunity to dive back into the text and illustrate, as we have been doing, honestly, it was probably one of the first Radio Free Geneva's after that initial one, that we started going through all of the wild, strange ways that people try to get around John chapter 6, because John chapter 6 teaches

Reformed soteriology. There's no question about it. It's right there on the surface of the text, in depth.

However you want to handle it, it teaches it clearly and plainly. And the way that people get around it, you know, you've got the hyper -dispensationalists that say, well,

John doesn't have anything to do with us today, because that was a different dispensation. But I'm not sure that I've actually run into someone who was willing to take that all the way and say, yes, that means

John 3 .16 is irrelevant today. Yes, that means all the promises of the

Gospel of John. What Jesus says to the disciples is only for the disciples. And so all the stuff about the

Holy Spirit of God, all of that, it was just for them. It's not for us today. I'm not seeing too many people do that.

And if you're going to say that John chapter 6 is just about the Jews of Jesus' day, then that means

John chapter 3 was just about the Jews of Jesus' day. And John chapter 10 and the sheep is just about the sheep of Jesus' day.

And John chapter 17, the only part of John chapter 17 you could apply would be,

I also pray for those who will believe on the basis of their preaching and teaching. You might make an application there, but again, you have to do what the

Church has never done in the past. And that is take the

Gospels and all of their promises to those who are followers of Jesus and say, yep, nothing to do about us.

Now, there are people who detest the freedom of God and salvation so much that they're willing to do that.

They're willing to do that, to lose those precious words of John 3, 4, 5,

I mean, every single chapter. You're going to have just incredible things. Yep, that was pretty cool back then.

All done now. So what happened was toward the beginning, actually,

I have to un -maximize that so I can put this up there. Leighton put this up.

And I guess I can maximize this. There you go. Oh, took it a second there.

Leighton threw this up on the screen and said he had used it in a recent debate that he had done.

And basically, to give you sort of the background here, notice what having a light background does.

It just washes out on the camera. But there's nothing we can do about that on this because it's not a cordon.

It's just a screen. Basically, Leighton said that I emphasize the two altons.

So here's John 6, 44. Alton, alton. That I put so much emphasis on alton.

Well, the reason that I do is because of the fact that most of the excuses that try to get around John 6, 44.

Let me put John 6, 44 up here. Now, what I have on the screen, and let me scroll this up a little bit.

What I have on the screen here is I have the Greek text on this side. And by the way, some of you really need to get a life.

Really do. The thought crossed my mind. Last night,

I took that screen from Leighton's thing, and I took this sentence diagram from a cordon.

And I posted them on my Twitter feed. And I said, for those of you who are Greek literate, here are two screens for Radio Free Geneva tomorrow that illustrate, and you'll be able to tell what the problem is just by looking at them.

And I didn't say anything more. I just put that out there for people who'd like to have a little more background reading.

Maybe they've gone to seminary, Bible college, something like that. I just threw it out there. I couldn't believe. Now, one of them

I understand. One guy that was like, oh, so you're saying you have to. He's LDS. So, okay. You believe

God came from another planet. You don't really get into this conversation. But there were others that were just upset that you would dare do this.

Folks, let me remind you once again. In the 1600s in England, before you could graduate with a master's degree as a minister of the gospel, you had to not only be able to read

Greek and Latin, you had to be able to debate in Greek and Latin.

That was in the 1600s. That was just to be a minister. We are so far beneath that now, it's not even funny.

And the result's not really all that good. That's how you have Kenneth Copeland. Okay? So, I am not going to apologize for providing in -depth information to people.

I mean, I just... And it is not... If you are insulted by that, you really need to look in your own heart.

I mean, seriously. I was just stunned. I couldn't believe it.

Anyway, this is God's word. You're supposed to put far more effort into understanding this than any video game you watch or anything else you do in this world.

I just couldn't believe it. Anyhow. All right. Back to the screen here.

So, here's why I have emphasized this. So, let me see if I can...

Let me see. We have to do that over here, I think. There it is. And... Still does that weird little noise.

So, here's what's happened in the past. No one is able to come to me unless Yanmei, the father, the one who sent me, draws him and I will raise up future of resurrection, him, on the last day.

Okay? So, what I've said many, many times...

It's sad. And I have admitted that when, in eighth grade, we switched

English teachers. There were two English teachers in my junior high school. I was public educated. We had real schools back then.

I had the cool English teacher and everybody and the other people had the strict English teacher.

I wish I had had the strict English teacher. I really do. Because I remember we switched teachers once and, man, she was just cramming grammar down our throats.

And once I got into college and was studying Greek, I so wished that I had had that happen.

Because I was in all the advanced accelerated classes. We always talked our teachers out of doing all that stuff because we found it boring.

Well, it wasn't. One of the things we didn't do, and I didn't do until I took

Greek, was sentence diagramming. So very, very important. So very, very useful.

This is Diagram of the Greek New Testament, which is available in Accordance. I know there's similar things in Lagos and probably some of the other programs.

I've not seen it in Olive Tree, but I haven't looked for it in Olive Tree, so it's probably there somewhere. But if you want to see how words are related grammatically, and that's the basis that gives rise to syntax, sentence diagramming is the way to do it.

Now, sentence diagramming is not completely objective. There is some level of interpretation in sentence diagramming.

I didn't do this one. This is just something, literally, you can scroll through here and the sentence diagramming will scroll along with you.

It's pretty nice to have available if you want to look at that. But I just want to show you where these altons are.

And I just realized you can only see one because I have the font too big, which is a bummer.

All right. Well, I just got to squish it down. All right. Sorry about that. Only way to get it all on there.

Here's our two altons, right here and right here. All right.

Now, what is significant here? It's real simple. The drawing,

Helcusei, has as its direct object the first alton, unless the father draws it.

No one has the ability to come to me.

Now, that right there, do you believe that?

Provisionists do not. They don't. They do not believe that. Oh, yes, we do.

There has to be grace. Oh, don't give me your prevenient grace stuff. Prevenient grace is nowhere in Scripture and you know it. You made it up.

Actually, the Roman Catholics made it up and you're just borrowing it. No one has the ability to come to me unless the father who sent me draws him.

And I will raise him. There's only two words between, technically two words, between the two altons.

Cago anastaso, but that's actually cago is kai, ego, together. I suppose you could call it two words if you wanted to.

But cago anastaso, and I will raise him up on the last day. All synergistic systems have to insert a huge chasm between these two altons.

So if you have somebody that goes John 6, 44 and they immediately leave John 6 and run to John 12, which is eisegesis exemplified.

It is how you do, how you don't deal with John 6 and how you try to defend your tradition.

That's what anybody who does that, and everybody I know does it, go to a completely different context, ignore that context, read this backwards.

Nobody that Jesus heard could have understood any of those things. That's not how you do it. Anyway, the direct object of the drawing is him.

And what they have to say is everybody's drawn, but then it's up to you to believe or not believe.

And when you believe, then you become this him who's raised up on the last day.

So there's this big chasm right there, okay, between the two.

There's nothing in the grammar that allows for any of that. There's nothing in the text that allows for any of that. And if you had started back at verse 37, and we're following this through, you would see it's impossible.

It is eisegesis, it is I have my tradition, I don't believe this stuff, and so I'm going to read it in there, whatever, you couldn't do it.

But my assertion all along has been these autans are the same person, which means if you are drawn by the father, you're raised by the son.

That means drawing by the father is not some general enablement out here someplace.

It is effective and effectual, which is what you have in the next verse. It is where it's been written, the prophets, they shall all be taught by God.

Everyone hearing from the father and learning is coming to me. That's what the drawing is.

All the father gives me will come to me, John 637. How is that? How is it you're drawn?

You're drawn by the learning from the father and hearing from the father.

It's an effective, efficient act on God's part. It's not that God's just making learning and hearing available, then it's up to you to choose.

What God does, every one of them is coming to me. That's what being given by the father to the son is all about.

So again, just letting John 6 be John 6. That's why I say again, no synergist can start at John 636 and walk through the end of the chapter.

Can't do it? You know you can't do it. That's why you run everywhere else, because you can't do it.

That's not what the text teaches, and you know it. You know it deep down inside. So that's what the whole thing here has been about.

Come on, erase, there you go. I've just simply been saying, hey, these two

Autons right here, they're the same person. There is no way to make the division that people try to do.

So let me put this back up here. If that's what I've got, where'd it go?

Oh, this is, no, get out of the way. Thank you.

No, I already was. Okay. Let me find, oh, there it is.

There we go. Be there someplace. So here's Leighton's thing again.

And what he said, what he did, I need a different color here. That's going to stand out against what he's got.

What he said in this video was, you know, he does all the things, but you see, you need to understand that Udais is a nominative masculine, and it's what, see how he's drawn here?

It's what Autons, both Autons are referring to the same thing here. So the hymn, the two hymns are going to the, no man can come to me.

And then what he did, and I forgot to do this. Oh, drat. No, no, no, I didn't forget.

Here. There we go.

So here's the next screen. And I'm pretty sure I can erase this here too.

Yeah, I can. So he comes up with what he thinks is a parallel, a parallel statement.

And now I'm going to say that, by the way, there were some responses to my tweeting of this that I really found offensive by people on my side.

There's no reason to become super nasty.

It's one thing to say, you know, Layton just doesn't get this. We've explained it over and over again, and the tradition lenses are very, very thick, and this happens.

But you don't have to go beyond that. You don't have to go into some of the, just the nastiness that I saw.

That doesn't help, folks. That doesn't help. Before you hit that return, think about what you're saying.

So here's the same thing he had before, but now he's replaced it with this statement.

No man can come to the son's wedding banquet unless the father, and notice what happens here, invites, enables him, and he, the man who comes.

Now, contextually in John 6, who's, all that the father gives me will come to me.

That's the end of provisionism in John 6. The order is not disputable.

It is the giving of the father that determines whether you come to the son, not whether you are choice meets, not whether you are humble enough, not whether you are spiritual enough to come to the father.

It is the giving of the father that determines whether you will come to the son. So the man who comes is the one who's been given by the father, but, and he, the man who comes, will have a great feast.

Okay. Notice the complete disconnection from the whole point of John 6.

It's sad. Who is the focus in John 6, 44?

It's not us, and I will raise him up on the last day.

It's about Jesus's ability to do what he said in John 6, 39, be a perfect savior.

This is the father's will for me, that of all that he's given me, I lose none of it, but raise it up on the last day.

This is about the father and the son, and we are simply the gracious objects of the father and the son's powerful work, which we will see a few chapters later is going to be accomplished in time through the father and son doing what?

Sending the Holy Spirit. Sending the Holy Spirit. Try and work. So having a great feast is not the same thing as passively being raised up by the powerful

Savior on the last day. Not even close. Okay. Secondly, there is the idea here no man can come to the son's wedding banquet.

That's not the same thing as coming to Christ. That's not the same thing as repentance. That's not the same thing as taking up your cross and following him.

This is something that requires spiritual life. And see, in provisionism, it doesn't.

The spiritually dead person can do these things that are pleasing to God. That's the substance of their anthropology and Rome's anthropology.

They're hand in hand. It's the exact same perspective. So no man can come to the son's wedding banquet.

Going to a wedding banquet does not require you to crucify self.

It does not require repentance. It does not require anything like that. So there's no comparison there.

Unless the father invites, enables him. Well, again, what is that in John 6?

Learning, hearing, there are spiritual activities that are the result of God's, the expression of the father's power.

And so the father invites him, and he who is invited, not who comes.

What did John 6 say before? All the father gives me will come. In provisionism, all who come are given by the father.

Provisionism reverses John 6. Can't help but do it because John 6 does not teach provisionism.

And having a right face is not the same thing as being raised up on the last day by any stretch of imagination.

So go back to,

I'll get rid of that in a second, hold on. And we'll just leave this up here.

There we go. So, take these out of the way so it's not a mess anymore.

I think I got all of them. So the point then will be this.

When you bow before the text and allow the text to present its own message, what do we see?

Men who have, remember, these are the individuals who have rowed across the lake to Capernaum to follow

Jesus. I'm thinking about what that looks like right now. I'm so thankful I had the one shot, one shot to stand there and to talk about John 6 in Capernaum.

So thankful I got to do that. He is saying to people who rowed across a lake to find him, you are not believers.

So he says, you've seen me, but you don't believe. You're not believers. Let me, you know what?

I know the sentence diagram is fascinating, but it would be better to have this up here.

Oh, that ain't doing any good. That ain't doing any good either. Well, let's do it this way.

But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. We'll put the English up there so that no one will complain.

All that the Father gives me will come to me.

Will come to me. The Father is the one who gives an all.

All that the Father gives will come to the Son. That's Reformed theology. That's Reformed theology.

And that destroys all of the man -made systems of sacramentology and everything else that goes along with it.

It really does. The Father is absolutely free to give to the

Son whom he pleases to give to the Son. Now everybody loves, everybody just thinks this next section is just awesome and wonderful.

And the one coming, so there's the coming one. And why does he come?

Because the Father gave him. It's not because he's choice meats. It's not because he's humble.

It's not because he's more spiritually sensitive. It's because the Father gave him to the

Son. The one coming to me, prosimae, prosimae, they're right there next to each other.

I will never cast out. So tell me, do we still have that promise?

Or was this only for first century Jews prior to the cross?

Is that what you really want to do this? That's why God preserved all this so we could just go, but it would have been great to be

Jews back then. Well, actually, there are only a few of them that were saved. Right?

Very small number. No, this is the one coming to me,

I will never cast out. That's promise for today. We can allow the whole Bible to speak.

That's promise for today. And why will he never cast out one of those? Because I've come down from heaven not in order to do my will, but the will of the one who sent me, and this is the will of the one who sent me, in order that of all that he's given me, and I'm just getting down toward the bottom of the page.

Almost, I can almost do it that way. Just line them up and we'll make it say whatever we want to say.

And this is the will of the one who sent me, in order that of all which he has given to me,

I lose none of it, singular, it's taken as a group, but raise it up on the last day.

Please notice raise up on the last day. That's the same language used in John 6, 44. You see, once you start here and you follow it through, and there's a bit of a interruption with the unbelief of the

Jews, and their Gungus moving that is there, complaining about Jesus' claims about himself, and all the rest of that type of stuff.

And as long as you don't do what Norm Geisler did, and having said all this, you go to verse 40, for this is the will of my

Father, in order that everyone looking upon the Son, and believing in him might have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.

And so what he does, he looks at that, he looks at the looking, and the believing, he says that's what everybody can do, everyone has that capacity, and therefore he reads that backwards, into everything else to get rid of predestination and election.

Now, if you read it down, sort of the way it was written, then you realize that what does it mean to be given by the

Father? What does it mean to come to him? It means to look upon him, and to believe in him.

And you will have eternal life, and you will be raised up on the last day. That then leads to the grumbling, and then finally to verse 44, which we've already looked at.

No one has the ability to come to him, unless the Father who sent me draws him, and the one who's drawn, is the one who's raised up on the last day, we've already seen that as well.

That's the result of being given by the Father to the Son. Yes, it does result in my looking into the

Son and believing, but that's the result of the Father, that's how I come to him. The only reason

I can look to him and believe in him, is I have been taught by the Father, and learned from the Father as to who he is.

So there is a mutual revelation, there is a sense in which the Father is the one who reveals the

Son, but there's also a sense in which the Son is the only one who can reveal the Father to us. Inter -Trinitarian, beautiful harmony and relationship found in the

Gospel of John. This is John 6, and John 10, and John 17, and John 8, and all sorts of other things like that.

It's beautiful, and it's full, and I feel for those who have to waste their time trying to get around instead of just believing.

But that's what we have to deal with. And I went 12 minutes longer than I thought it would. Rich is never going to make his appointment now, so such is life, such is life.

So every time someone comes up with a new way around this, all we've got to do is go back through and go, okay, let's compare it to Scripture.

And when you do, the positions simply fall apart. They really do.

All right, I hope that was of use to you. Once again, that's why we do Radio Free Geneva.

Let me just say, in light of what I said a few moments ago, there's everything right and good in defending biblical truth, there's everything right and good in saying to believers we need to know what

Scripture teaches on these things. But there's just no reason, like I said, for a lot of the unnecessary side stuff that I was seeing on Twitter.

I wasn't looking anywhere else, but maybe there's stuff elsewhere too. These are beliefs, hey, you didn't get yourself into this.

You're not choice meats. You're not better than somebody else. You're not more spiritual than somebody else. You are the recipient of God's grace.

Let's behave in that way. Doesn't mean you shouldn't warn people who, you know, they're holding the

Bible in their hand, and yet they've got such thick lenses of tradition on that they can't see what it says.

That's a dangerous situation. That's a dangerous situation. That can lead to all sorts of problems down the road.

All right, thanks for watching Radio Free Geneva on The Dividing Line today. Lord willing, we will see you on Thursday, I think.