June 1, 2005

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 welcome to the Dividing Line on a special Wednesday program.

It is a Wednesday program, of course, because we didn't do it on Tuesday. I have my chloroceptic over here.

I didn't get my glass of water I requested, but I'll get one eventually, I think. And we've got the

Flonase going, that's a good thing. That's good stuff, I got to admit. That's good stuff.

And I had never tried that before, but we got introduced to Flonase. And antibiotics that I won't mention the names of,

I don't know why, they seem to be working. And so hopefully, when we get on the plane, the one nice thing is when

I get on the plane Friday to fly back east to start 10 days there, it doesn't matter who

I sit next to. I will be so packed out on antibiotics that it just really won't make any difference because I can look at whoever's sitting next to me, if they cough and sneeze, and I can just laugh and say, ha, you can't hurt me.

And that's how it's going to go. So anyway, but hopefully the folks back east won't mind too much that I may be looking at trying to sleep a little bit more than I normally would.

But anyway, we need to make sure that we are in one piece for the debate coming up a week from tomorrow on Long Island, Huntington townhouse, details at ailmen .org

slash calendar .html. And that will be on the subject of can non -Christians enter into heaven, an odd subject, an odd subject indeed in light of things that the

Roman Catholic Church has said in the past. One of my favorites, a papal encyclical or sources of Roman Catholic dogma, the papal syllabus of errors lists as some of the errors, this is back in the middle 1800s, a little bit toward the later 1800s, but man may in the observance of any religion would ever find the way of eternal salvation and arrive at eternal salvation.

That's an error. That is, that's something that is wrong. Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true church of Christ.

And once again, that is an error. Good hope, you're not supposed to have good hope. Good hope is not to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those.

I guess that's the key there as well. It's just, it's all, you know, Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true

Christian religion in which form it is given to please God equally as in the Catholic church. Well, equally.

You know, well, it's not quite as good, but you know, you got all the stuff from back in many, many centuries ago concerning the concept of Jews, schismatics and heretics not inheriting the kingdom of heaven, but my how things change.

And so now we have the resources of the

Catholic catechism in the documents of Vatican II. And if you haven't been keeping up with this, just so you're aware, the debate will be focused upon two of the sections of the

Catholic catechism, which, by the way, is specifically with one, is that two sentences with two sentences exception is directly from the documents of Vatican II.

So it's not like this is new. It's not like it's, you know, something that has not been heard of before.

But section 841, the church's relationship with the Muslims, the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the creator in the first place, amongst whom are the

Muslims. These profess to hold the faith of Abraham and together with us, they adore the one merciful

God, mankind's judge on the last day. And so in some way, the plan of salvation, whatever that means, that's that's one of the things that I think is very illustrative about the arguments that Roman Catholic apologists use against sola scriptura is they want us to believe.

In fact, if you've not seen it, the debate that I did with Mitch Pacwa in 1999 on the subject of sola scriptura, you might want to take a look at it.

At the end, I dragged this big silver box out, book box out, book bag.

It's metal, so I don't know if it's a book bag, but anyway, book container. And I pulled out all these, you know, the documents of Vatican II and the

Catholic Catechism and and the documents cited in the Catholic Catechism and the Code of Canon Law.

And I stacked all these things up and I and I said, what we're being told is that this, pointing to the stack of stuff, gives us greater clarity on the nature of the gospel than Romans 5 .1,

than the basic gospel message of John or Galatians.

And in reality, everybody knows that's not the case. Everybody knows that Catholic theologians read this.

And, you know, I've already got one person wrote to me and said, well, you need to understand there in section 841, when it says, these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, that's just saying they claim to, not that they really do.

But the very next portion of the sentence says, and together with us, they adore the one merciful

God. I can't even begin to understand how you cannot read that to mean that Muslims worship and adore

God, that Allah, the Allah of Islam, is the same God as Roman Catholics worship.

And if you really believe that, you've got some major league problems. I asked in Channel last night, why in the world would

Rome continue to anathematize Arius and yet say this? Isn't Arius a whole lot closer than Islam?

I mean, things have changed. And as things change, you get these problems in trying to hold things together and explain the concept of how in the world you can make all this stuff work.

Section 1260. 841 and 1260 are the two primary sections we're going to be looking at in the debate.

Since Christ died for all, and since all men are, in fact, called to one and the same destiny, which is divine.

And let me stop there. And doesn't that sound possibly, maybe, like it really doesn't allow for the

Augustinian interpretation? I mean, again, you just find so much wiggle room and so much contradiction within these things, it's difficult to understand.

But anyways, which is divine. We must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partakers in a way known to God of the paschal mystery.

So, Rome has certainly said that you must have access to the sacraments to be saved.

And so now if we want to start expanding the horizons of who is saved, then we have to come up with these ways known only to God of participating in the paschal mystery and so on and so forth.

And then here, that's a quote again from, I think it was Gaudium et spes, but it's also referencing

Lumen Gentium 16. Then you have the two sentences that are the commentary of the Catholic Catechism, which is, every man who is ignorant of the gospel of Christ and of his church, but seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding of it, can be saved.

It may be supposed that such persons would have desired baptism explicitly if they had known of its necessity.

Now, again, there's just so many things and, you know, we have 25 -minute opening statements.

I'll get to as many of them as I can next week. But how ignorant do you have to be of the gospel of Christ and his church?

Total ignorance? Partial ignorance? We don't know. Who is it that seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding?

What kind of anthropology does that assume? That men actually seek truth?

That they don't run from divine truth? I thought John said something about men flee from the light because their deeds are evil.

Well, that's just some men. That's not all men. On what basis can it be supposed that such a person would have desired baptism?

Don't these folks believe in libertarian free will? I mean, there's just so much stuff here.

So, there's all sorts of stuff. I did want to read one other thing, and lines are filling up amazingly. I wanted to read another section from Nostra Aetate of section three.

Good grief. On a car phone? Well, what is a car phone?

Isn't that a mobile phone? A mobile phone in a car? Isn't that what we all have? I'll get there in a second. The church regards with esteem also the

Muslims. Spelled differently here. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in himself, merciful and all -powerful, the creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to men.

Now, wait a minute. Time out. Excuse me, Mr. person writing Latin stuff here. The Muslims think that he has spoken to men in the

Quran. Yeah, that book that the Pope kissed. What about you?

Do you think the Quran is the word of God? Why don't you just be upfront about these things?

You can't possibly believe that in light of what it teaches. They take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even his inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God.

I don't understand the submitted to God part, but anyway. That's probably just a Latin translation issue. Though they do not acknowledge

Jesus as God, they revere him as a prophet. Well, that's nice. Even the

Jehovah's Witnesses do better than that. They also honor Mary, his virgin mother. At times, they even call on her with devotion.

I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean. I wouldn't want to tell a Muslim that he was praying to Mary. That would be a bad thing.

That would generally cause much consternation and difficulty. In addition, they await the day of judgment when

God will render their hearts to all those, render their deserts, I'm sorry, to all those who have been raised up from the dead.

Finally, they value the moral life and worship God, especially through prayer, almsgiving and fasting. Well, couldn't that be said of almost any religion?

I mean, talking about the nice things about it doesn't deal with whether it's true worship, does it? That's, I don't know.

Later on, that same document you have. Besides, as the church has always held and holds now, Christ underwent his passion and death freely because the sins of men and out of infinite love in order that all may reach salvation.

It is, therefore, the burden of the church's preaching to proclaim the cross of Christ as the sign of God's all -embracing love and as the fountain from which every grace flows.

Well, do you want to know why you need to have sound theology? Do you want to know why you should consider the issue of the atonement and what the atonement accomplishes?

There you go. There you go. You have bad theology of the atonement resulting in what does in order that all may reach salvation mean?

Does that mean that all will have the opportunity?

That all are savable? What does that mean? I could certainly hear a Roman Catholic universalist grabbing hold of that and going,

See? There it is. And there are such things. In fact, I'd say a large portion of the priests and bishops in the

Catholic Church today would hold to at least a blatant form of inclusivism, if not universalism itself.

It's going to be a very, very, very interesting discussion because it will all come down to what we believe about the gospel, and God's purposes in the gospel.

That's the issue. And that will be what we will be discussing.

A number of people already know that the number is 877 -753 -3341. 877 -753 -3341.

I don't know. I guess when they say that they're on a mobile phone.

You know, I use my mobile phone as well. I don't even have a phone anymore. But we'll go ahead and throw

Peter up to the front of the line and say hi to Peter. Hi, Peter. Hello. How are you? Good.

How are you? Not so good, but we're trying. All right. Well, my question was,

I'm from a Roman Catholic background, and my mother tried to get me to try to embrace the faith and come back to the faith.

She wanted to have our deacon come over. And he wants to talk to me about the Eucharist. About, I think it's the sixth chapter of John chapter 55, where they talk about feed on the flesh.

And he was giving me some more about the Greek word. And he literally gnaw, ask, and so on and so on.

So I'm just trying to get some information on exactly where they're coming from and what would be some good things to help me prepare for a conversation with them.

Well, Peter, what kind of a church are you in now? Well, right now I attend an

ED3 church in Colorado. Oh, okay. All righty.

Well, first thing I would always say is make sure that your elders are aware of the situation so they can be of assistance and pray for you.

Secondly, it sounds like the presentation, excuse me, that they are going to want to make to you is very much along the lines of the presentation made by Robert St.

Genes in our debate on the Mass just a few years ago. He especially likes to try to argue that the

Greek term trogo can only mean literally to eat food.

It can never be used metaphorically. And so there is a discussion of that in that debate.

If you'd sort of like to hear what's going to be heading your direction, it's available in MP3 if you know how to listen to MP3s. So that's a really fast way of getting you information very, very quickly, as well as responses to that.

But most importantly, I would say, depending on when this meeting is going to take place, is the issue of actually looking at what

John 6 is all about and recognizing that to jump to the last three quarters of the chapter and to miss what

Jesus said before that, which defines his context and defines his terminology and defines his meaning, is to engage in classical eisegesis, reading into the text a meaning that it did not originally have.

And that's, I don't know, that's something that can be done on a very, very quick basis in a fashion that would allow you to communicate it to this individual.

But that information would be found in the Roman Catholic controversy. I think there's material on that subject, if I recall correctly, at AOMN .org

in the Roman Catholicism section. It's really a matter of allowing the text to speak for itself and letting

Jesus define what it is he's talking about. The whole point of turning this into a physical activity is the exact opposite of what

Jesus is trying to say. These men were seeking food. They were seeking for him to redo the miracle he did the day before, the loaves and the fishes.

And Jesus is saying, no, you don't understand. You're only seeking me for physical reasons. You have a spiritual need.

I am the only source of spiritual food. You need to feast upon me. And when he presses that upon them, they turn around and walk away.

That's not what they're looking for. They're looking for miracles. They're looking for the show. And it's interesting that Rome ends up making the exact same error that the

Jews were making in not seeing the connection that Jesus himself made. But you'll notice that earlier in John 6, 35,

Jesus first uses the food terminology of coming and believing on him.

He says the one coming to him will never hunger. The one believing on him will never thirst. Well, if hungering and thirsting, if we're supposed to be absurd literalists here and not allow

Jesus to define his terms, then you can assuage hunger and thirst by coming and believing.

That doesn't fit their paradigm, and that's why they don't start there. They don't start back at that and allow Jesus to define things.

They certainly don't walk through John 6, 35 and following and allow

Jesus to explain the sovereignty of God and salvation and everything else that's found there either. So I was sitting here thinking, you know,

I just spoke about this, and then I realized that's not going to do any good because I was speaking at a conference and it was being translated into Italian.

So unless you listen to Italian, that's not going to do you much good. Anyway, is that where they, he also brought up the one word that's very familiar with the

Eucharist. You know, he says the purpose of the priest is to serve the Eucharist and so on and so on. But he says that's where they draw their doctrine of transubstantiation from too.

Well, certainly John 6 is key to modern Rome's doctrine of transubstantiation, but you need to realize that's not even a term that appeared in the first thousand years of the church.

They read that terminology back into the concept of the real presence of Christ, which was a spiritual presence of Christ.

And there's a lot that goes into this, but there's no reference to a priest in John 6. And in fact, there's no reference to a

Christian priesthood outside of the priesthood of all believers, male and female, anywhere in the

New Testament. We did a debate on that just a couple of years ago as well that you might find interesting on the MP3 site.

So I'm not sure what that reference would be as far as the priest goes.

Maybe that would be more like 1 Corinthians 11. I'm not sure. Okay. All right. So take a look at the

MP3 site. And depending on what kind of time frame you've got, you know, there are excellent works available on the subject for reading, but that takes time.

And that's the best way to do it, of course. You know, the fast thing you can come up with quick answers, but to have long -term conclusions takes a little work.

All right. Yeah. And just a quick question. Since I'm here in Utah, I'll just kind of bring this one out of the blue since I'm here.

Do you think the Mormon Church is in any way whatsoever maybe making a move towards a more

Christian view or teachings in their gospel? Or no?

Well, what's going on is that the Mormon Church, especially under the leadership of the current prophet who worked for 34 years in public relations, is seeking to mainstream.

It's seeking to utilize terminology and to gain access to Christian fellowship without allegedly sacrificing its unique doctrines in the process.

And what you see, for example, in Roger Millett at BYU is a willingness to be much less clear and open about particular doctrines, especially the idea that God was once a man who lived on another planet in comparison to previous generations of Mormons.

But I don't see any evidence that that means that the Mormon Church as a whole is quote -unquote moving toward a more

Christian perspective. I mean, as long as you remain a polytheist, as long as you continue to believe that there is more than one true

God, I don't think there is a way of moving toward that. It would require

Mormonism to jettison the claim that Joseph Smith was a prophet of the

Restoration and what he taught and what was taught by the first 160 years of Mormon leaders to adopt anything even remotely like the gospel or anything remotely like Christian orthodoxy.

And so I don't think that the Church is quite ready to do that. And it is interesting, very, very interesting to follow the developments at BYU and the impact on the

Church as a whole and things like that. But at the same time, that's not changing the teachings of the general authorities and things like that.

So it's definitely a religion under a tremendous amount of stress. It's under a tremendous amount of stress because of the fact that it basically was designed by history to be a religion of the

Intermountain West. It struggles when it has to be exposed to the entirety of the human culture all around the world.

And the result of that is a fascinating line of development. Where it's going to end up, nobody knows.

But it would require a complete redefinition of Mormonism for it to be anything close to orthodox

Christianity. So you think it's part of a PR campaign then? Well, I don't have any doubt about that.

When you listen to Hinkley on Larry King Live, saying, you know,

Larry King asked, well, don't you believe that God was once a man? Well, you know, Larry, we don't know a lot about that.

And then at the very next conference, I was at the very next conference after that happened. And I heard with my own ears,

I heard him saying inside the conference, he said, and as to rumors that I don't know we believe about the

Godhead, don't worry, I know we believe. And then there's this ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, all across the conference floor.

So yeah, there's a little less honesty than needs to be going on.

And you know, there's Mormons who recognize that. There are Mormons who are very upset about what's going on as far as that's concerned as well.

So, all righty? All right. I appreciate your time, sir. Thank you. God bless. You too. Bye -bye. Bye -bye. I'm not even reaching out for the cough button right now.

I've got too many buttons to play with here anyways. Let me see here. Let's go to line three.

And Aaron, hi, Aaron. Hi, Dr. White. How are you? I'm doing fine. I hope that you get to feeling better soon.

I hope so, too. I wanted to tell you, first of all, it's kind of a little introduction to my question.

I am a youth minister in an Episcopal church. Wow. I reformed about two years ago,

I think. And ever since then, life has been nothing but a giant theological mess.

Isn't that the way to describe the Episcopal church as a whole right now? Yeah. As a giant theological mess?

I mean, did you see the statement from Canterbury two weeks ago on Mary? Well, you know, it's hard to defend someone that you disagree with so vehemently.

I know. And believe me, I was giving one of our Episcopalian channel members, who is actually, he's from England, but he's down in Australia right now.

I was giving him a wonderfully horrid time last night about that. But I know there are many, especially conservative

Anglicans and Episcopalians, who are quite upset about things. And I'm not trying to pick on you, but it is amazing what's going on.

Yeah, it is. Well, my question has a little bit something to do with that as well.

I was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church as an infant. And I think

I have you to thank for a great many things. First of all, you know, when

I reformed, I started having to rethink all of these things. Because, well, when you're an

Episcopalian and you become a Calvinist, you can no longer think about baptism the way you used to. Yeah. And the more that I've examined these things, the more that I've, you know, had to get rid of these things.

And I think the last straw was when I listened to your debate with Dr. Strimple, and it was a tag team debate.

Right, it was Gary Johnson and Dr. Strimple, yeah. Yeah. And I kind of came away from that just really reeling from the whole experience.

And I've been hoping to get a chance to ask you this question now, because it's really bugging me.

So now you can get all my Presbyterian friends upset with me too, right? One can only hope.

Anyway, my point is, when I listened to the debate, and also in all of my study that I've been doing and discussions with other people,

I became convinced of the Credo Baptist view. I am,

I'm 26, I was baptized as an infant. I've been working in youth ministry for eight years.

Wow. And that's a long time for youth ministry. Yeah, well, yeah, it is. I mean, when

I say that, what I'm saying is, at least like in Southern Baptist churches, youth ministry is sort of like purgatory before you get a real job.

So that's what I meant by that. I mean, if it's an advocation, if it's a calling, that's a different thing. Right.

Well, you know, and for a lot of my friends, it has been a calling. And for others, it's a stepping stone to seminary.

Yes. At this point, for me, I'm really looking towards seminary at some point, but it's going to be a huge jump because, you know, you and I both well know that Credo Baptist, with a

Zwinglian, you know, Eucharist theology, is not going to get into an Episcopal seminary.

Uh, well, why not? I mean, we're open to everything else. Well, you know, you would think.

You would think, yeah. For a church that prides itself on its diversity. Yeah, yeah. Well, diversity only goes one direction.

Exactly. But anyway, so here's the question. I am, my wife and I are very perplexed and disturbed by the revelation to us when we looked at, you know, we looked into each other's eyes and we thought, we've never been baptized.

And for me, as someone who is working in an Episcopal church, in order to be publicly baptized as an adult, it would mean that I would basically have to either announce my resignation or expect my, you know, expulsion.

I was reading where the Ethiopian is in an act when he says, what is preventing me from being baptized?

And my first inclination is to say, oh, look at that. I have to get baptized immediately.

My second thought is, there is something keeping me from being baptized. Is it something valid or not?

Yeah. I've discussed this with a lot of friends and no one has really been able to give me any sort of guidance.

And I was hoping you might be able to. Well, no one is, it's a first for me as far as the situation you're in.

That's for certain. But, you know, my first thought is, I really, really appreciate the spirit with which you are approaching this.

In the vast majority of situations, when you're talking with someone who is struggling with a decision concerning baptism, it's over their willingness to be obedient to Christ.

And that's not your point at this point. But the issue, honestly, that I would say, that I think is prior even to that, is how can you stay where you are and plan for the future?

In other words, you're at that, you're obvious at that point in time. You're looking at seminary. You're looking at continuation of ministry.

Where is that ministry going to be? What's God's calling on my life? And it strikes me that listening to what you're saying, you need to have a level of consistency between your faith and where you're ministering.

I mean, that was one of the reasons that I had to leave the very large evangelical church that I was in and ended up at the very small

Reformed Baptist church that I'm at right now, the inconsistency that existed between what

I was teaching and not what was being taught from the pulpit all the time, but what would be taught from the pulpit about half the time.

The other half was okay. It was just the inconsistency. I could not handle that. I could not grow in that situation.

I could not grow in grace. It just wasn't possible. Really, when

I think of your public testimony in baptism, the question would be, where would you go to be baptized?

And I see baptism as not only a public profession of faith, but a lot of folks see baptism as being done at the hands of the church and as being part of my association with, this is where the

Lord has placed me to serve. These are the people that I'm going to be serving with, at least in that initial baptism.

Obviously, I don't mean that every time you move to a different town or something, but where would you go? I mean, what do you want that context to be?

What do you want that situation to be? And it would seem that you'd want to do that in the context of the community that you are going to be using the gifts

God has given you in. And so it strikes me that the first issue, really, in reality would be,

Lord, I want to be obedient in this. I've come to understand this way. This is what I desire. But I also recognize that that involves making a long -term commitment in regards to what my future is going to be.

Where am I going to go? If seminary is something that you are intent upon doing, where am

I going to go? Who am I going to talk to? What are my directions here? And the question

I would just basically ask you is, do you feel that you can stay where you are and minister with consistency, knowing that eventually when you're 57 or something, they want you to be doing something other than the youth thing.

And playing some of the games you all play is sort of tough at 57 anyways. So there's going to be some movement there eventually.

And could you handle the politics of the Episcopalian Church? I mean, I was a hospital chaplain for a while, and that was one of the reasons

I had to stop doing that, was the politics involved in having to let the Satanists in and stuff like that.

I just couldn't handle it. So those are just some of the first thoughts across my fevered mind today.

Is it seems to me that the first issue is the church issue.

And whether you believe that you can continue, you can plan your future with your wife and your family in that context where you are right now or not.

That would seem to be the first thing. And then once the decision has been made there, then the associational issue of baptism, what that means in the community that it would be involved in, and so on and so forth, would sort of flow from the decisions made there.

Yes? I think you've really hit the nail on the head, but I have one last question for you.

If I'm going to do that, because I'm a lifelong Episcopalian, well, at least except for those when

I was a child and I was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church. It's easy to find an

Episcopal church. But how do you find a Reformed church? Where are you located?

I'm in Houston. Well, probably the easiest way, there are about three or four, well, two or three different websites that have fairly extensive lists.

Johnny Farisi has a very extensive list of Reformed Baptist churches.

And a Reformed Baptist pastor in our chat channel just said, nice dodge of the bullet, Dr. O. I'm not sure what

I was dodging. But anyway, I think he was talking about the actual question itself.

But anyway, that gets you started. I was actually thinking if you wanted,

Rich could get your information or give you my... You've got reformedbaptist .com, founders .org,

farisi .com, those are the websites that will tell you who's in the area. reformedreader .org

will give you some more. And then I could get you in touch with some folks. I would love to have you possibly...

Someone just told me that there is a listing in Houston on the Farisi website. So I was sort of dragging this out long enough for everybody to hit their web browsers and give me this information.

So I sound really smart. But there is one there listed in Houston. I would love to invite you to talk to, and I'm sure he'd want to talk to you as well and share in your journey,

Jim Renahan. Dr. Jim Renahan is the Director of the Institute Reform Baptist Studies at Westminster Seminary in Escondido.

And he's going to be joining me in doing the on -board debate with Crosson and Borg on the resurrection issues.

And so he lives in that realm and would probably be able to give you some really, really, really practical advice.

And he would also have the added advantage of being a reformed

Baptist who is teaching at a Presbyterian seminary. So in other words, he knows the issues as far as that is concerned.

So if you'd like, I'll put you on hold when we're done here.

And then Rich can either give you my direct email or vice versa, he can get yours and I can get you in touch with Jim and look at some of those websites and start working from that direction to try to get you the information to act on when you make that decision to do so.

All right, I appreciate it. Thank you so much, Dr. White. Oh, hey, thanks for calling and God bless. You too. All righty, bye -bye.

Put that on hold there if you can grab line three. And someone asking me in channel if I'm here.

Yes, I'm here. Just a tad bit on the busy side. And that was neat. Well, I tell you, it's nice to have encouragement once in a while.

It really, really, really, really does. Yes, we need to take a break. I need to take a break.

My chloroceptic is calling me. And so we're going to take a break. Be right back right after this. Try to save your soul from death.

It's all works righteousness, you know. Can I manufacture grace myself?

But not some religious place. The Bible.

True. Never before in history has the authority and inspiration of the Holy Scriptures been so viciously attacked by those outside the pale of orthodoxy and within the walls of traditional evangelicalism itself.

Join us August 27th, 2005 at the Sea -Tac Marriott for an historic debate between evangelical

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Dr. John Dominic Crossan as they debate a topic which every Christian should be concerned about.

Is the Bible true? Seating and tickets are limited. So call today 877 -753 -3341 or visit

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And many evangelicals are finding the history, tradition, and grandeur of the Roman Catholic Church appealing.

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I've known this for a long time, but it's sort of scary to be reminded of this. What makes chloroceptic work is something called phenol.

Where's the thing on phenol here? Yeah, active ingredient phenol, 1 .4%. You know what I know about phenol?

When I was a biology major at Grand Canyon College, that was before it was Grand Canyon University, I was department fellow anatomy and physiology, and that meant one of my jobs was demonstrating our cadavers.

We had cadavers, but we did not have cold storage. So how do you store dead bodies without cold storage?

You use phenol. Phenol was what we used.

And so I always thought it rather odd that my favorite sore throat spray uses the same stuff that we used to preserve the dead bodies that we then did presentations on to high school students.

It was fun. I've talked about that before. It's a fact I've written about in a couple of my books. And it was fun. 877 -753 -3341.

Let me see here. I got to scroll back up here. And let's talk with Charlie.

Hi, Charlie. How are you? I'm good. Hi, Dr. White. How are you? I already asked you that question.

Yeah, I'm nervous. I'm the one who's not doing so hot. So nervous. Why in the world would you be nervous?

I don't know. I mean, unless you're a heretic, then you have reason to be nervous.

But if you're not a heretic, then this is fun. I don't think I'm a heretic. Well, let's find out here real quick.

Yeah, OK. All right. You have some sort of like ladies' home journal quiz? Well, something tells me you're going to, you know, most folks sort of give away their actual beliefs fairly quickly.

But let's find out what happens. Now I'm really nervous. Thanks, buddy.

I met with some friends this weekend who have, they have not been connected with the church for a long time.

And I didn't even realize that was a big deal until fairly recently, largely thanks to you. The question came up for them.

They have been listening to a friend of theirs who has developed a pretty extensive universalist theology.

I guess he's not the only one. Calls it restoration. I'm not, I wasn't really familiar with the term.

I've seen it a couple of places when I Google around. But I've heard that term used of a lot of things.

But that's a new usage on me. But go ahead. Well, this might be as new as any heresy is.

Anyway, but the idea is, yeah, I read the initial, I guess, huge text file that they sent me that was his basic study.

And I thought, well, this is going to be easy. I'll go in. I'll prove that eternal life and eternal punishment are parallel.

And, you know, I don't know, two or three little things like that. And, you know, and we'll be done before lunch.

And it didn't really work out that way. I was a little surprised to see how internally consistent it is.

I'm not swayed at all. But I had a lot of trouble on the apologetic side, just really working my way down to, you know, just where the presuppositional differences are.

I guess what surprised me was, you know, a lot of people turn to, OK, well, if we, you know, there are passages like at the end of Matthew 25, you know, there's eternal life, there's eternal punishment.

You know, same word is used. They're seen as, you know, being parallel in that sense. And if we throw out eternal punishment, what do we have left?

And surprisingly, they say, well, if, you know, the punishment isn't eternal, then the life may not be eternal either, which is a bit of a surprise.

They actually said that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, they left it open. They didn't say for sure.

That's odd. Yeah, I thought I was, you know, that took me for a loop. I figured maybe

I'd go in there and, you know, hit a little limited atonement and we'd be fine. And anyway, like I said, it really didn't work out.

Well, you know, I've said a number of times that when we look at various passages, the only consistent ways of looking at them is to either see them in the

Reformed perspective or in a universalistic perspective. And it's just that we don't normally talk with a lot of universalists, simply because, well, most universalists are universalists because they don't really believe anything is really true enough to be overly concerned about one way or the other.

Therefore, they're not likely to be pressing the issue one way or the other. This kind of individual, and there are a number of groups there, they tend to be smaller groups, but they're out there.

They, this is their subject. This is, you know, they've talked with folks like you a dozen times before.

And so they're ready. I mean, they are ready for the basic responses.

And especially if they have a response you've not, you aren't expecting to hear, they probably don't get challenged a whole lot one way or the other, because of the fact that once you throw something out there,

I mean, that's the challenge of doing what I'm doing right here, or doing the Bible Answer Man broadcast, or Janet Parshall's America, or something.

I've more than once, and I always see people that are so disappointed. People call up and go, I don't know. And they're like, but you're supposed to know.

No, no, no, you will not find anywhere on the website, the little statement says, any question you ask will be answered.

No, I recognize that there are things I don't know, and there's stuff I haven't studied, and I'm not going to come up with, you know, something fake just to look like I'm smart or something.

So we struggle with stuff that we've not encountered before, and that doesn't mean that the question doesn't have an answer.

It just means we're going to have to, you know, spend some time looking it up and doing some basic analysis.

But in essence, you know, what I would do, there's so many different directions to go.

My mind is sort of in this area right now, because I'm not dealing with universalism, but with inclusivism in the

Roman Catholic context. And my approach there, and I don't care if my opponent hears this, in fact,

I'd be glad if he did, because that would make it hopefully a better debate. But my approach really is to demonstrate that both universalism and inclusivism approach the doctrine of soteriology, the gospel itself, from a human perspective.

They're looking at it from below. They start with man. They do not start with what is the purpose of God.

Because if you're going to ask what is the purpose of God, certainly you can find all sorts of passages about God's love and things like that.

But when it comes to the issue of the gospel itself, God says some pretty tough things.

One of the things he says about Pharaoh is, I raised you up for this very purpose that my name might be proclaimed through all the earth.

There's this demonstration of his power, demonstration of his mercy, and demonstration of his wrath.

And you only have a part of that in universalism.

That is, demonstration of mercy. You do not have a demonstration of God's wrath or judgment or anything along those lines because of the imbalance of the position.

And so you have to ask the question, what is God's purpose? Right. The argument there, of course, is that temporal wrath is plenty glorifying for God.

Yeah, well, the problem being that that temporal wrath has to somehow have a means of being assuaged for one to have eternal life.

Now, when you say universal atonement, except the problem is that that then creates an atonement where you have no protection from temporal wrath, but only from eternal wrath.

And well, that's okay with them. This guy believes that every believer is going to end up in the lake of fire. Wow. Well, you know, this is where I was right about 10 o 'clock

Sunday night. Yeah, yeah. Well, why would believers end up in the lake of fire? Oh, because let's see here.

The actual reasoning was the passage at the end of Revelation that indicates who's going to be in the lake of fire includes unbelievers as only one category.

So the rest must be believers. Well, actually, it says all those who are not found written in Lamb's Book of Life were cast in the lake of fire.

So who's in the Lamb's Book of Life? Those who get saved before they die. But those who get saved after they die, they end up.

Okay. But I thought he said believers were going to end up in the lake. Oh, they're there. Oh, I can't even follow that.

But well, yeah, after a certain point, it's like, okay, somebody has looked up a lot of passages, redefined every single term in the gospel.

And here we are left talking totally past each other. That's one of the reasons you can demonstrate the inconsistency of such a system over against various points.

But anyone who is simply unwilling to bow to the authority of Scripture in the sense of listening to all of Scripture.

I mean, the fact of the matter is the Bible attracts some weird people.

Okay. It really does. I mean, there are some really odd folks out there that are going to grab hold of a particular idea.

And especially if they can gather a little group of followers around them, then they're willing to use that Scripture in totality, just totally messing it up, totally ignoring what context is, the messages, and totally ignoring what anybody else has ever said.

And they're going to come up with their unique little perspective. And as long as they've got enough little followers, that's fine with them.

That's one of the reasons that there is a balance that has to be maintained. I've many, many times said,

Sola Scriptura does not mean that you reinvent the wheel with every generation. I remember my dad said long, long ago, and this was before I started getting involved with apologetics or anything like that.

This was back when I was in high school. I remember him saying, if you think you've come up with something no one has ever seen before, you probably haven't.

In other words, you're probably wrong. And that's, I think, wise advice for anybody.

But it doesn't slow these folks down at all. Anybody can misuse the Scriptures in that way. But once you have an overriding position like that, you can read it onto anything.

It was similar to the debate I did with Bob Wilkin. It doesn't matter what passage you look at.

You can always find a way out of faith being anything more than just simply intellectual assent.

You just have to redefine terms and go from there. And ultimately, I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine a number of years ago.

He was talking with a very sharp Jehovah's Witness. They can be very challenging. And the

Jehovah's Witness said something about a particular passage in regards to the Holy Spirit. And he said, how do

I get around that? How do I deal with this? And I said, to be honest with you, if you're only looking at that one passage, his interpretation is as valid as your interpretation.

There is no grammatical way, just with that passage, to say he's wrong about what he's saying about that passage.

The way of dealing with that is beyond the immediate context of just that one particular verse.

And a lot of folks don't like that. A lot of folks, for example, will call this a program, and they want a humdinger, zinger refutation of Heretic X, who they work with, on verse

Y. And if they don't get that, then they're going to be very disappointed. Well, the fact of the matter is, sometimes the most abiding, long -term, deepest refutation of a heresy is found in the entire counsel of God, not in just one particular passage.

And that's what I have found to be the beauty of the way that God has revealed his truth, is that it is that consistency.

When you honestly approach the text and desire to allow it to speak for itself, it is the consistency of the word of God in its breadth that really is, to me, one of the great testimonies of its inspiration and of its truthfulness.

That, however, requires work. It requires in -depth study.

It requires a lifetime of studying the word of God and really desiring to be a student of it.

And in our microwave world, that's not the popular way to go. Yeah. I mean,

I tend to be the one that people rely on to tell them and explain to them why this is right or wrong. And I'm sure you do, too.

I really appreciate your comments on this. At the end of our very late discussion on this, about all

I could end up saying was, you would have a grasp of this if you were in a church, if you were hearing the word of God, if you immersed yourself in it and understood.

I didn't use the term the whole council, but that's basically the idea. It's everything.

If they're in a church where that was actually being preached. Unfortunately, that's why little cults like this do so well, is that the vast majority of churches have eschewed that kind of a ministry of the word of God.

They don't consider it to be friendly to church growth. And that's a bad thing. All right.

Thank you very much. Thanks for calling. God bless. Bye -bye. All right. Let's see here.

I still have a blinking light. That's good. But I only have three minutes here. Let's talk to Luke.

Luke, do you know who your father is? Sorry. Thanks for taking my call, Dr. White. Luke, search your feelings.

I can sort of do Darth Vader today. It's coming out sort of naturally. Yesterday, I had the breathing part down, too.

And the sad part was I wasn't trying to sound like Darth Vader. That's a really bad thing. What's up, sir? I have two quick questions.

One, when discussing with Jehovah's Witness, what particular issue should you focus on?

Depends on whether it's going to be a short -term or a long -term discussion. If they're visiting at the front door or if they're working with you.

That's two different contexts. Probably working. Or, excuse me, be at the front door. Two suggestions that I make that are equally valid,

I think. A, Jehovah's Witnesses do not spend a lot of time studying the doctrine of soteriology, the gospel.

Once you get them past their rather minimal verses on the 144 ,000, they're pretty well lost.

And hence, that can be a very profitable direction to go if the person seems like one that would be willing to listen to the word of God.

That's A. And in fact, I thought we had something on the website about that, but I'd have to look back at it really quickly.

B, there is a chapter in my book, The Forgotten Trinity, where I present two passages, specifically the comparison of Psalm 102, 25 -27, with Hebrews chapter 1, verses 10 -12, and then the comparison of Isaiah chapter 6, verse 10, with John 12, 39 -41.

I have really gotten Jehovah's Witnesses to sit back and think and listen by presenting to them, basically on the lines of,

I'd like to show you in the Bible why I believe in the biblical doctrine of the Trinity. And they're like, but you know the word

Trinity. Yes, I realize that. However, the name Jehovah is used as the father and the son of the Holy Spirit.

And I know you know it's used the father, you use the name Jehovah all the time, but I'd like to show you a couple of places where the name

Jehovah is used of Jesus. And most of them, some will be turned off by that.

Some automatically fear a discussion like that and they run. Others I've found to be fascinated by it.

And if you follow sort of the pattern in the book, you'll find that you can do it in such a way that you really can sort of grab hold of their interest.

So that would be the other direction. You said you had two questions, so I wanted to get to that one real quick. Okay, the other one was a canon question.

A gentleman I spoke with at work one day, he said, since the

Bible doesn't give us a book chapter or there's not a verse in the Bible that tells us how many books belong in the

Bible or which books belong in the Bible, he doesn't accept it. Oh, well, that's interesting.

In other words, he said, since there is not a book chapter and verse that says... Okay, here's the question I'd ask back. Once he...

Let's say he got what he wanted. Let's say God revealed a golden index to the

Bible. How does he know the golden index is a part of the Bible? I mean, he's automatically saying that if God gives a revelation and that revelation has parameters, it's limited.

In other words, God doesn't inspire every book in the Bible, in the world, that unless there is a golden index given to that, you can't know that's actually

God's word. There's a chapter on the subject of the canon in scripture alone. It'll address that.