Radio Free Geneva (90 Minutes), Further Topics
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Stumbled on a Soteriology 101 video asking if I am “right” about Matthew 23:37, so we dealt pretty fully with that new presentation for the first ninety minutes, then touched upon some other topics including Bart Barber’s amazing defense of Ed Litton. Mega edition, two full hours! I head out on Road Trip #2, heading for G3, so programs for the next three weeks will be at odd times, so download the A&O App so you can know when we will be hitting the airwaves! Visit the store at https://doctrineandlife.co/
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- 00:16
- You can constantly hear people that are Calvinist harp on this. God's offering,
- 00:21
- 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
- 00:27
- Biblical truth. Jesus stands outside the tomb of Lazarus, he says,
- 00:39
- Lazarus, come out, and Lazarus said, I can't, I'm dead. That's not what he did.
- 00:45
- 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.
- 01:00
- 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?
- 01:18
- Um, no. Some new
- 01:24
- Calvinists, even pastors, very openly smoke pipes and cigars just as they drink beer and wine.
- 01:32
- Even Jesus cannot override your unbelief.
- 01:53
- 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, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah
- 05:56
- This video that had been posted only yesterday, um, by Leighton Flowers, and is
- 06:04
- James White right about Matthew 2337? Well, you know what? There's, there's really not much to argue about, about Matthew 2337.
- 06:14
- There really isn't, and, um, when you get done listening to the big long thing, the fundamental answer is, well, yeah, actually, as far as what he actually said about it, not all the applications that Brother Flowers wants to try to make, but anyway, uh, so I started looking at it, and I'm like, uh, all right.
- 06:40
- I wasn't looking for this. Like I said, I was, I was watching a different video on a different topic.
- 06:46
- We'll do it anyways. Okay, so let's, uh, let's dive into it, and let's use this once again to illustrate the fundamental difference between a
- 07:02
- God -centered, exegetically -derived theology and a man -centered, um, traditionally -derived methodology.
- 07:16
- What I mean by that is we will see over and over again that the reason, the only reason that anyone would ever have to believe the things that I believe as a
- 07:30
- Reformed individual, um, sometimes the word is used,
- 07:36
- Calvinist, yet I recognized it, as much as I truly, um, honor the work and legacy of John Calvin, he would have had me kicked out of Geneva.
- 07:46
- I know that, um, teaching church history requires you to be consistent about a lot of things, but the reason
- 07:56
- I believe the things I believe on this issue is because I am committed to applying the same standards of exegesis and hermeneutics to this subject that I use in defending the deity of Christ or doing things like that, and of course, it's fascinating.
- 08:16
- I was just looking, and I'll, like I said, I'll show this to you later, but someone on Twitter was just, uh, asserting that, uh,
- 08:25
- I no longer deal with theology and apologetics, and, um, I'm just, just deal with politics now, uh, because there's no connection between the theology and apologetics and what's going on in the world.
- 08:39
- The Bible has nothing to say about tyranny. No, no, no, no. I feel sorry for folks who have that kind of bifurcated world because all you have left to actually address the world is your opinions versus their opinions.
- 08:55
- You've got no authoritative position to stand upon. So anyway, we'll get to that later on.
- 09:02
- So, the, the key that you, you must recognize is there is a difference between having a theological belief that is derived out of the text of scripture and having one that you have created someplace else, and then try to find various scriptural texts that sound like what you're saying.
- 09:34
- There is all the world of a difference between those two, and I, I understand a new
- 09:39
- Christian may not even be able to recognize what the difference is and certainly doesn't have a foundation to be able to discern that, but it's something that should be what we are working toward regularly.
- 09:52
- We want that kind of maturity. We want that kind of, of foundation in, in our
- 10:01
- Christian walk and in our theology and our biblical studies. So, what raised
- 10:10
- Matthew 2337? Well, I didn't take the time, didn't have the time to go back and try to find the sermon this was from.
- 10:15
- It was from Apologia. I, I may, maybe I was dealing with the big three or something.
- 10:21
- I don't, I'm not sure, but I commented on Matthew 2337.
- 10:26
- So, let's look at Matthew 23. Let's, let's back, back up the truck a little bit. If you've read the
- 10:32
- Potter's Freedom, you've heard all this before, but let's consider what is said in, in the text of scripture.
- 10:42
- If we look at, no, I'm not, I'm not trying to put that up. If we, it's the font's way too small.
- 10:50
- If we look at the context of Matthew 23, it's always important to get these foundational issues down because it gives you a place to stand.
- 11:05
- When you think about where we are in the gospel of Matthew, we're coming up on Matthew 24 and Matthew 24 is about the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the
- 11:21
- Jewish age is right there. I say to you, not one stone's gonna be left on another.
- 11:30
- The apostles are just so impressed with the beauty of the structure and everything else.
- 11:36
- And Jesus is like, it's doomed. And this generation will see it.
- 11:44
- And you can jump up and down and spin and do all the generational stuff like I did for years.
- 11:50
- If you want to, there's no need to. And so,
- 11:59
- Matthew 24 is the final judgment on the
- 12:04
- Jewish nation. And what comes before it then in Matthew 23 is extremely important.
- 12:14
- I would argue that there is no place else in recorded scripture where Jesus uses stronger language than in Matthew 23.
- 12:29
- It is what would be called in scholarly circles, a judgment oracle.
- 12:37
- Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, repeated over and over again.
- 12:46
- This has been coming for a long time in Jesus' ministry. And now, before Matthew lays out what's coming for Jerusalem itself, which in the early church was used as evidence of Jesus being a prophet and having that supernatural ability, it's fascinating that we may get to some of the day where a
- 13:10
- Roman Catholic buys into and promulgates the idea, which a lot of evangelicals buy into as well, that the early
- 13:20
- Christians were mistaken, and that the scripture writers were mistaken about when
- 13:28
- Christ was coming. And it's all because of a bad eschatology that we end up accusing the
- 13:38
- New Testament writers of having blown it, whereas the early church was like, nah, Jesus predicted all this stuff.
- 13:46
- And anyway, I won't get into that right now. So anyways, the point is, it's a judgment oracle.
- 13:52
- So let's just jump in. Verse 29, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous and say, if we had been living in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partners with them in the shedding of the blood of the prophets.
- 14:07
- Consequently, you bear witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murder the prophets. Fill up then the measure of the guilt of your fathers.
- 14:14
- Now, that's strong language, okay? There is a deep, broad accusation of hypocrisy that is just part of what
- 14:28
- Jesus is asserting here. You hypocrites, you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous.
- 14:41
- But if you've been alive in their days, you've been the ones that would have killed them. You are hypocrites.
- 14:48
- You build yourself up based upon what others did when the reality is you would have opposed them and you would have been amongst those who murdered them.
- 14:58
- Fill up then the measure of the guilt of your fathers, you serpents, you brood of vipers.
- 15:04
- How shall you escape the sentence of hell? Not trying to make friends and influence people here in the sense of our modern.
- 15:16
- Therefore, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes. Some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city.
- 15:25
- Evidently, Jesus knows that after his death, burial, and resurrection, as the church spreads, there is going to be tremendous persecution.
- 15:38
- In fact, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes. They're not going to be coming from you folks.
- 15:45
- They're going to be simple believers, unlettered men, as you would like to call them. And some of them you'll scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city.
- 15:55
- Boy, Paul certainly figured that part out, didn't he? Chased halfway across Asia Minor.
- 16:03
- That upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth and the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.
- 16:12
- I don't know how many years ago it was, many. We did a study, probably need to do it again sometime in the future, on this text in regards to some of the historical challenges that are raised, especially in regards to Berechiah, understanding of genealogies and things like that.
- 16:37
- But what's important not to miss, two things not to miss. One is that the blood of righteous
- 16:44
- Abel is in the book of Genesis and the blood of Zechariah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar, is in Second Chronicles.
- 16:53
- And if you are familiar with, well, where did
- 17:00
- I put mine? Well, that's interesting.
- 17:09
- I don't have one just sitting out. Well, I guess I do back there, but I'm not going to dig that up. If you're familiar with your
- 17:17
- Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, the current scholarly edition of the Hebrew Old Testament, if you're familiar with the
- 17:25
- Old Testament in Hebrew, its order of the canon is different than what we have in English.
- 17:33
- Malachi is not the last book of the Hebrew canon. In fact, the minor prophets were rolled into one book.
- 17:42
- And so the last book in the Hebrew canon was
- 17:48
- Second Chronicles. And so if I said from Genesis to Revelation, you know what that means.
- 17:57
- If I say from Matthew to Revelation, you still know what that means. And so when
- 18:03
- Jesus says the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, He's saying all the prophets of the scriptures.
- 18:11
- He's using the canon of scripture that they would have recognized the Jews had laid up just those books as being holy that made the hands unclean in the temple 200 years before this.
- 18:25
- And so that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth.
- 18:33
- It sounds like something's coming and it's going to be final. It's going to be big.
- 18:39
- And it was. Matthew 24. Instruction of Jerusalem. It's coming.
- 18:46
- Only 40 years down the road, which is about a generation. Truly, I say to you, all these things shall come upon this generation.
- 18:59
- There's no reason. There just isn't any reason to read that in any other way than that generation.
- 19:08
- And it happened. It was fulfilled. It was fulfilled. It happens 40 years in the future, but it was fulfilled.
- 19:19
- And Jesus knew it. So there is the immediate context of Matthew 23, 37.
- 19:26
- What is it about? Is this a section about the will of man? Is this a section about synergism or monergism?
- 19:35
- Does it really have anything whatsoever to do with the discussion of, well, like John chapter six, where the discussion for verse after verse after verse is specifically on soteriology, the center, the centrality of Christ, God's election,
- 19:58
- God's enabling men to come to Christ, all that stuff. No, it's a judgment oracle.
- 20:07
- And if you have to try to come up with your key texts by reading your theology into judgment oracles, that may, it should tell you that you have a problem in your theology.
- 20:23
- But that's the context. Truly, I say to you, all these things shall come upon this generation.
- 20:29
- These are judgments. Holding the blood of all the righteous blood shed on earth will be held against this generation.
- 20:43
- Let me tell you, when Christians were fleeing from Jerusalem because they listened to what
- 20:48
- Jesus said, as Titus and the Roman legions circled the city, and when that place was set to the torch and destroyed, you don't think there weren't people looking back at what
- 21:01
- Matthew said going, wow, that was pretty accurate. In fact, that was spot on.
- 21:08
- Of course. Judgment oracle. So then you have a direct address.
- 21:48
- Your house is being left to you desolate. Desolate.
- 21:55
- Desolation is coming to you. And what's the next section? Matthew 24.
- 22:02
- Now, again, chapter divisions, all that kind of stuff. Later editions. These are strong words.
- 22:17
- Unfortunately, Matthew 23, 37 has been ripped out of its position as a summary statement of condemnation upon the rebellious people and specifically their leadership.
- 22:34
- Woe to you, Pharisees, scribes, hypocrites, all the way through Matthew 23, and has been forced into other work, shall we say.
- 22:47
- And so what I pointed out, and that's why I skipped over it in the video we'll look at here in a second, and I hope
- 22:55
- I put the sound back where it's supposed to be. Oh, I didn't. There we go. Hopefully that'll work. What I pointed out and what
- 23:04
- I point out in the Potter's Freedom over 20 years ago now is that, first of all, it is extremely common.
- 23:15
- And in fact, the last Radio Free Geneva, when we respond to Church Christ guys, they misquoted
- 23:25
- Matthew 23, 37. And Norm Geisler would always misquote
- 23:32
- Matthew 23, 37. But even Reform guys can misquote Matthew 23, 37.
- 23:38
- And so I pointed out that what you will almost always hear is it, quote, how often
- 23:46
- I want to gather you chilled you together. And very frequently, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings just goes by the wayside.
- 23:56
- But you were unwilling. Now, for the Synergist, the point is, and the whole use of this text by Norman Geisler and by other people, the whole use of this text is, well, the object that God wanted to gather was unwilling and therefore able to resist the action of God in gathering.
- 24:29
- Them together. That's, that's the understanding of what Matthew 23, 37 is.
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- And I simply pointed out that in reality, that's not what the text says.
- 24:43
- When it says you were unwilling, it is referring to something other than the ones who were to be gathered.
- 24:52
- That there is a distinction and that therefore the utilization of this text by people who say, well,
- 25:00
- God wanted to gather them, but couldn't gather them because they weren't willing.
- 25:05
- There's free will. There's God honoring our will, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's not what this passage is about.
- 25:12
- That's not what Matthew 23 is about. But even if you tried to cram it in there, that's not what the text says.
- 25:20
- There is a distinction made between those who are unwilling and those that God is holding them accountable for, for having kept them away from the truths of God.
- 25:32
- And we see that all through Matthew. We see it in all the gospels, the mechanisms whereby
- 25:40
- Pharisee -ism had by the first century devolved from its higher plane,
- 25:50
- I guess we could say, if you want to trace it back to the reforms of Nehemiah.
- 25:57
- It had become externalized. That's why Jesus has to say, you say this, but I say you, and he makes specific application of the moral law to the heart and to the attitude instead of just external stuff.
- 26:16
- But the point is that this particular text is not addressing anything that's relevant.
- 26:27
- It is the summary statement of a judgment oracle.
- 26:35
- And so to try to force it into other categories, trying to force it to function in other ways, you would have to come up with something in the context to substantiate that kind of reading.
- 26:50
- Yeah, I know this is actually just about the coming destruction of Jerusalem and the condemnation of the leaders.
- 27:01
- And it's almost like if you find any text, like John chapter 5 or here, where someone is unwilling, see, that proves that God doesn't have a will.
- 27:16
- Because when you listen carefully to where these folks are coming from, that's fundamentally their argument is that God has no sovereign decree that he is accomplishing.
- 27:27
- That is the one thing they detest more. And they will read that into every text. They will ask questions about that from every text in the
- 27:34
- Bible. They have no desire to let the
- 27:40
- Bible define the categories of what's being discussed. They want to raise questions about everything, whether that's what the text is talking about or not.
- 27:52
- We'll see that as we play Layton's stuff. So my assertion was this text is being abused by being miscited and taken completely out of its own nature as a judgment oracle and asked to answer questions it was never intended to ask.
- 28:21
- There are all sorts of passages of scripture that you can ask questions of that are utterly inappropriate questions because they were never intended to address the subject that you want to try to make them address.
- 28:34
- That should be something that a mature exegete is well aware of, something we need to be teaching to people.
- 28:41
- Because a lot of younger Christians or ungrounded Christians get taken in when people will quote a verse and then they'll say,
- 28:52
- Now why didn't the writer say this or the writer could have said that? That's mind reading that you can't do, or at least you shouldn't be doing.
- 29:03
- And it really has, it reflects very badly upon your ability to handle scripture.
- 29:09
- Let's just put it that way. Okay, so there's Matthew 23, 37.
- 29:16
- And I had summarized all that in this sermon at Apologia.
- 29:24
- And this was a little while back because we haven't put the camera over on that side of the church in a long time.
- 29:31
- So you can already tell it was a while back. But let's get involved with, oh yeah, let's dive in here.
- 29:46
- The Jewish leaders are being addressed here. And Jesus says,
- 29:54
- Okay, before we go on, notice what he talks about the misquoting where often even
- 30:00
- R .C. Sproul mistakenly said this to where he says, Jerusalem, what I, what I gather you like a mother hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were unwilling leaving out the children part.
- 30:10
- Okay. And the reason that some Calvinists may leave that out inadvertently is because it makes no difference to the interpretation for most of us.
- 30:20
- Now this is, this could be fascinating because believe it or not, the argument that is going to be presented here is that, well, first of all, though later in the video, he will admit that he knows.
- 30:38
- He's trying to do the divide and conquer thing. All right. And so he knows that I have taught and have taught in response to him as a refutation of his own abuse of scripture, the reality.
- 30:57
- And in fact, it's been central to my refutation of provisionism that we have expressions.
- 31:07
- We have the prescriptive will of God where God reveals to us how we are to live in the prescriptive will of God.
- 31:18
- And yet we have the decree of God, the decretive will of God that includes the death of Christ.
- 31:30
- You can't get around that. It's right there in the Bible. If you deny either one of them, you're going to end up with a mishmash that is utterly incomprehensible.
- 31:38
- You cannot, it's just obvious. And so I have, that's been one of my primary refutations of provisionism is that provisionism flattens out what the scripture never flattens out.
- 31:54
- The scripture gives us so much deeper perspectives because it's 3D, it's 4D, if you include time in there, and they want 2D.
- 32:08
- They want, put it on a piece of paper, flatten it out. That's all there is to it. And as a result, you don't have the decree.
- 32:16
- You can't see the relationship between God's decretive will and his prescriptive will. You can't make heads or tails out of all sorts of passages as a result, which is why, for example, when he was on Unbelievable, couldn't make heads or tails out of Genesis 50.
- 32:29
- Because his system can't allow it. It's just not there. So he knows that that's my perspective.
- 32:37
- But what he does here is he actually tries to say that the reason that R .C. Sproul misquoted this as if he would know.
- 32:47
- I don't think he ever sat down and talked with R .C. I don't think he knew him.
- 32:54
- And so I'm actually offended that you would even do something like this. But we have this theory presented that the reason that some
- 33:04
- Reformed people might misquote it. I don't know why you would ever misquote a text of scripture, but it's because that part doesn't matter.
- 33:14
- Because they believe in the two wills, the decretive and the prescriptive.
- 33:21
- And this is just simply the prescriptive part, the well -meant offer part, over against that decree stuff.
- 33:32
- They're still wrong about that, but there's that decretive will stuff. And I'm like, but that's been my primary argument all along.
- 33:42
- And it doesn't change. Just because you recognize the decretive will of God and the prescriptive will of God doesn't give you a basis to rewrite
- 33:56
- Matthew 23 -37. What do you mean? Well, it doesn't impact our understanding.
- 34:03
- Really? You can extract entire sections. You can change the direct object of the verb. And it doesn't change your understanding?
- 34:11
- That tells me your understanding is really bad. And here again is the difference between having an understanding that comes from the text of scripture via exegesis.
- 34:22
- And well, but we have this theology thing, see? And so that part of the text just doesn't matter.
- 34:31
- It literally doesn't matter to how we interpret the text. Well, I appreciate the admission.
- 34:39
- What the text actually says doesn't matter to our conclusions. That's sort of what
- 34:46
- I had to sort of say in our Romans 9 debate a long time ago, and it really hasn't changed.
- 34:52
- But now we have, along with choice meets, the assertion that what the text actually says doesn't really impact our interpretation.
- 35:02
- It just doesn't matter. Most Calvinists that aren't taking
- 35:08
- James White's particular approach here. Now, how does he know that? How does he know how they would exegete the text?
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- Did he somehow ask R .C. Sproul to interact with the exegesis of the text?
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- To interact with the identification of this text as a judgment text, a judgment oracle.
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- The identification of the scribes and Pharisees, leaders. Does he know any of that? Or is he just guessing?
- 35:44
- I think he's just guessing. Because when you talk about Jerusalem and you talk about its children, you're just simply it's just a common colloquial way of talking about your inhabitants.
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- You know, like you Dallasites, you know, you Dallas, Dallas, would you allow your inhabitants to come into me?
- 36:04
- But you were unwilling you. In other words, the object that he's addressing is Jerusalem and its inhabitants.
- 36:10
- And therefore, R .C. Sproul knows this because R .C. Sproul isn't attempting to take the interpretive methodology and the defense.
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- He's taking the R .C. will take the more of the two wills of God approach that. Which he knows is my position.
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- So that doesn't make a lick of sense. He has never talked R .C. Sproul about this. He knows that.
- 36:32
- But what does any of this have to do with the fact that you are fundamentally changing the meaning of the text?
- 36:40
- The distinction is in the inspired text. And now we have, well, it's sort of like Dallasites.
- 36:47
- There's really it's it was just extra words. It was just a bunch of extra words. And we just we just made it flow more smoothly.
- 36:56
- To try to create this. Alleged contradiction or distinction or something like that, he's going to even use the
- 37:03
- Geneva Bible footnote. I'm sorry, Ligonier's study Bible footnote, which doesn't address anything
- 37:11
- I said. At all, to try to create some kind of odd, strange argument here, hypertext, not this more high
- 37:24
- Calvinistic perspective of. It's not a high Calvinistic perspective to simply point out what the text is saying.
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- You're the one dragging in all sorts of external stuff. I'm the one saying, hey, you know, there's something called a context here.
- 37:40
- And Matthew 23. Wow. You know, pretty consistent context.
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- Is someone really going to argue that this is not a judgment oracle?
- 37:51
- You can't. It's impossible. Utterly impossible. This is what happens when instead of getting the meaning out of the text, you're just floating around up here going, well, we're going to have arguments about this, that and the other thing.
- 38:07
- And so and I'm like, wait a minute, you start down here. You start with the actual context, you start with the actual meaning.
- 38:16
- And then you can ask questions. Can we apply this in some other way? Is there some other means of of considering this?
- 38:24
- And even if it becomes popular, I mean, just example pops into my head.
- 38:31
- Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Wow. There are so many people that have preached so many sermons about some idea of a essential disruption of the
- 38:46
- Godhead at the time of the death of Christ. And big names. Big names.
- 38:54
- Does that change the fact that it's a quotation from Psalm 22? And that we should apply the same standards that we do in the interpretation of other
- 39:02
- Old Testament texts when they're cited in the New Testament to look at the original context was and how it's being used and recognizing what
- 39:09
- Jesus is doing here. By the way, I only heard this last week, but someone was saying, and I haven't had time to really pursue it, but it was sort of fascinating.
- 39:22
- Someone pointed out that Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani is the beginning of Psalm 22 and into your hands
- 39:33
- I commit my spirit is in Psalm 31. And so this,
- 39:39
- I haven't verified this, but the assertion was made that Jesus was quoting, if not out loud in his mind, the 22nd through the 31st
- 39:51
- Psalm. And only the beginning and the end gets recorded as to him saying these things because it's fitting him.
- 40:00
- It's messianic fulfillment, which be fascinating. I want to, I want to dive into that a little bit more.
- 40:06
- Certainly Jesus would have known the Psalter backwards and forwards and inside and out. But the point is there have been all sorts of famous big name preachers that have preached sermons based on something that just doesn't have any actual exegetical value to it.
- 40:25
- And so I just go, okay, great. So they preach a sermon about it. It doesn't change the exegesis of the text.
- 40:32
- It's this consistency thing. I want to apply the same standard here that I do in, well, on Friday morning, was it
- 40:44
- Friday? Yeah. Friday morning sometime. Yeah. This, this coming Friday morning, for me, it's gonna be like midnight.
- 40:51
- I'm doing a radio program in South Africa from the mobile command center. You have to get up in the middle of night to do it.
- 41:00
- And it's about Jesus's use of Isaiah 43 in identifying himself as the
- 41:08
- I am to the disciples in John 13. I'm using the same standards.
- 41:15
- And it's interesting. A lot of these folks, they'll take what I say about that. And use it to defend the deity of Christ against Jehovah's Witnesses or Muslims or whatever else it is.
- 41:25
- Not recognizing that they then are not using that same standard later on once the subject switches.
- 41:37
- What was the phrase that, it's one of the few phrases I have coined. But I definitely coined the phrase, inconsistency is a sign of a failed argument.
- 41:50
- I remember what hotel room I was in when I came up with it, preparing for the debate in Southern California with Shabbir Ali.
- 41:58
- And here it is, inconsistency, the sign of a failed argument.
- 42:05
- I would only express something that he's actually going to accomplish because otherwise he'd be failing kind of an approach that White's approaching here.
- 42:11
- And the reason I know that is we can go over to, for example, the Geneva Study Bible, which I believe Ligonier Ministries and R .C.
- 42:18
- Sproul had a hand in, obviously. Where Matthew 23, 37, it's on the screen for you. If you can't see it, let me make that a little bigger.
- 42:26
- Notice that their commentary here is where the mercy of God is greatest.
- 42:35
- It was there that the greatest wickedness and rebellion and at length the sharpest judgments of God.
- 42:40
- He speaks of the outward ministry. So what approach is
- 42:45
- R .C. Sproul taking? This isn't R .C. Sproul. Oh, every footnote in anything ever published by Ligonier was written by R .C.
- 42:56
- personally. Okay, whatever. Nothing here in response to what
- 43:03
- I said about the judgment oracle. Is there? Nope.
- 43:09
- Where the mercy of God was greatest to the Jewish people.
- 43:14
- It was there that there was the greatest wickedness and rebellion and at length the sharpest judgment of God, which is actually consistent.
- 43:25
- He speaks of the outward ministry of the apostles. I'm not the apostles, the prophets to the
- 43:32
- Jewish people. And as he was promised for the saving of his people, he was making sure that it would happen even from the time that the promise was made to Abraham.
- 43:46
- Now, is this talking about prescriptive, descriptive decree?
- 43:52
- There is a decree there. He was making sure it would happen. I'm not sure where in his theology
- 43:59
- Light and Flowers can make room for that. But it doesn't say what he's trying to make it say.
- 44:09
- It's he speaks of the outward ministry. The apostles, the prophets spoke to the
- 44:21
- Jewish leaders. Where were some of these prophets murdered in the streets of Jerusalem?
- 44:28
- I mean, the name Zechariah, Santa Barbara, Temple, the altar. Where's that?
- 44:34
- Jerusalem. So he speaks of the outward ministry. And as he was promised for the saving of this people,
- 44:42
- Messianic prophecy, he was making sure that it would happen. Sounds like the sovereignty of God to me, even from the time that the promise was made to Abraham.
- 44:57
- You got to be desperate to try to dig this kind of stuff up. You really do.
- 45:03
- Wow. Okay. Well, was that a refutation of anything I said? No. In fact, it's quite consistent with what
- 45:09
- I said. Is it even about the subject that we're talking about? No, it's not. There you go.
- 45:15
- Taking the concept that Jesus would be failing if Jerusalem rebelled.
- 45:23
- What is he doing? He's taking the two wills of God approach. This is the prescriptive desire of God.
- 45:30
- This is the external desire. This is the expression of God's longing. Which is why the text says he was making sure it would happen is because of the free will of man.
- 45:42
- It's the exact opposite. I don't know how you can miss something that's sitting there glowing in the screen in front of you.
- 45:48
- But actually, I do. Once you are as absolutely identified with a particular perspective to where 98 % of everything you do and just go look at Soteriology 101.
- 46:11
- Look at all the titles. Look at all the artwork. What's 98 % of it about? The same subject.
- 46:19
- All of a sudden, the danger is it'll consume you. And it'll become the lens through which you look at everything.
- 46:30
- And that's happening right here. His wanting for Israel to be saved. But this is not the decreative will of God.
- 46:37
- Because those are two separate wills for, I guess, the more seasoned
- 46:43
- Calvinist. That's the approach they would take here. They wouldn't try to remove.
- 46:49
- Remember, this is the seasoned Calvinist. Even though this is laid out in the
- 46:56
- Potter's Freedom that I wrote two decades ago. Just point it out.
- 47:04
- This expression of God's longing and desire. They're not trying to take out the appeal of the gospel like James White's high
- 47:11
- Calvinism does. The appeal of the gospel like James White's high
- 47:16
- Calvinism does. Well, I don't know how you get any of that from this footnote.
- 47:23
- Because the footnote says that he was promised for the saving of his people all the way back at Abraham and accomplished that.
- 47:31
- That's God's decree. And I certainly believe that. And I'm just simply pointing out
- 47:37
- Matthew 23 is about the judgment of the Jewish people. If you want to find the appeal of the gospel, there's plenty of places to find it.
- 47:45
- You just don't insert it where it isn't. Nowhere in this, as is always the case, does
- 47:53
- Leighton Flowers provide any kind of exegetical response. Have we not seen this before, like all the time?
- 48:04
- Yeah, it's what marks provisionalism. Some would even call it hyper.
- 48:09
- Again, there was a big debate about this back in the day, and I'm not going to get into that. Yeah, I'll throw it out there, knowing it's a lie, but I'll throw it out there because I know that it gets the emotions going.
- 48:25
- Label it hyper when you try to take away the longing and appeal, the well -meant offer of the gospel, the desire of God, true, genuine desire of God for the salvation of others.
- 48:35
- And this is the way James White deals with 1 Timothy 2 .4, the way he deals with 2 Peter 3 .9.
- 48:42
- And how do I deal with those texts? Exegetically. Exegetically.
- 48:49
- Has Leighton Flowers ever refuted that? Not to my knowledge. I would love to see it, because I do not believe that he is able to do so.
- 48:58
- But I'd love to see the attempt, because he utterly fails here.
- 49:06
- And when it comes to the other two, again, I simply do the context thing, you know, follow all the way through.
- 49:14
- And what he's talking about is application down the road, and I'm talking about, let's talk about the actual text, shall we?
- 49:22
- And that's what people don't want to do. Instead of saying, well, those are prescriptive desires, those are the external desires of God, and it's genuine.
- 49:28
- He really does have an external expressed desire. But behind the scenes, the decreative will of God is different than his expressed will.
- 49:38
- And therefore, they would deal with those passages that way by not removing the will meant offer and the desire and the appeal of God from the scriptures, like James White's approach does.
- 49:49
- Y 'all see the difference between the two? So even among reform scholars, depending on where you land in the spectrum of Calvinistic thinking, don't approach these texts in the exact same way, like the
- 50:01
- Geneva Study Bible here. Now notice, it's like he doesn't know what exegesis is.
- 50:08
- And I've never seen him actually exegete a text fully. I've never seen it. But it's like he doesn't even know, because he confuses.
- 50:16
- Well, some people have used this verse and such and such. Okay, fine. Did they offer an exegesis?
- 50:24
- Did they explain why they were inserting this text into a discussion of the wills of God from the basis of the judgment of Israel and the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70?
- 50:41
- Did they start down there? That's the issue. And if Leighton Flowers wants to say,
- 50:49
- James White's wrong about Matthew 23 -37, get to the text. Otherwise, don't waste our time. Don't waste our time.
- 50:58
- Get to the text. Show me where what I said was wrong. All this other excess stuff is just further demonstration of what we've said from the beginning.
- 51:10
- One of us drives our meaning out of the text. The other one flits around on the surface and lines verses up and makes it sound like, well, that's where I'm coming from.
- 51:20
- But it really isn't. It approaches it the way John Piper does by expressing this concept of the two wills of God.
- 51:26
- This is just the outward expression of God's longing to see Jerusalem saved. But decreatively, seek the secret will of God.
- 51:35
- Behind the scenes, God does not really want their salvation. God has decreed for them to be born
- 51:41
- God -haters from birth. He did not send Jesus to die for them. He does not provide for them the sufficient amount of grace for which they can actually respond and be saved.
- 51:51
- Because decreatively, and it's secret, we don't understand why. Who are you to question God? You can't question why he doesn't want some people to be saved.
- 51:57
- He just doesn't want them to be saved. And we just have to leave that in the mystery of God's secret counsel and just not question it.
- 52:05
- Because if we question it, we're ultimately flying up against the interlocutor of Romans chapter 9.
- 52:10
- In their mind, at least, from the vantage point that they're interpreting it. Everything you will listen to from Light and Flowers is predicated upon an absolute rejection of the freedom of God to be
- 52:25
- God. That's what it's based on. God has to limit himself to human categories.
- 52:34
- His freedom cannot be greater than, on a completely different level than, mankind.
- 52:40
- You start with man. You put God in that category. You limit him in that way. Just listen to everything that he says.
- 52:48
- There is no place for the God that even Nebuchadnezzar recognized. Who said, who can stay his hand?
- 52:56
- Light and Flowers say, we can. The righteous man can. That's what is coming out here.
- 53:03
- Because he's not even talking about me right now. He's talking about the other folks. He thinks that we're different then. Which we're not.
- 53:09
- But he's confused. And so, he's talking about the other folks. And you can just hear.
- 53:16
- He has run through these arguments so many times that it just becomes a mantra.
- 53:26
- And even if you're dealing with a passage that has nothing to do with these things. You're always going to drag in.
- 53:32
- I just hate the fact that you say that there are people that God doesn't give sufficient grace to.
- 53:38
- As if grace can be demanded. It's totally redefinition of grace. By the way, before I go on.
- 53:45
- I wanted to read something to you. I just noticed this. And I had sort of forgotten about this.
- 53:50
- It's been years. The old mind just doesn't. We live in a dangerous era with regard to Christian literature.
- 53:58
- Many dear believers assume that any book in print has come out of a serious attempt to discern the truth. By wrestling with scripture and trying to fairly understand the thinking of the great
- 54:07
- Christians. Who have wrestled with the same doctrine in the past. Sadly today, no matter how unfairly one misrepresents the classical understanding of biblical truth.
- 54:15
- One can often find uncritical readers. Few in this day of lukewarmness for truth. Are willing to be painstaking.
- 54:21
- Do the painstaking work of refuting such works of distortion. By God's grace, Dr. James White has used his considerable gifts in this essential arena.
- 54:29
- We are delighted to see his work, The Potter's Freedom. Expose the work of Dr. Norman Geisler titled Chosen but Free.
- 54:35
- Scholars of the debate about free will and God's sovereignty immediately see that Dr. Geisler's book is a simplistic defense of Arminianism.
- 54:41
- Notable only for the audacity of calling Arminianism moderate Calvinism. And historic Calvinism, extreme
- 54:47
- Calvinism. Indeed, any who have read Jonathan Edwards' inquiry into the freedom of the will. Will assume Dr. Geisler is hoping his readers have never carefully read this definitive destruction of Geisler's concept of human freedom.
- 54:59
- On which his whole work rests. Dr. White patiently exposes Dr. Geisler's work to the broader evangelical world.
- 55:06
- Noting Geisler's complete unwillingness to wrestle with the exegetical, theological or historical argument of historic reform thinkers.
- 55:12
- Indeed, I am sure that Dr. Geisler with his distinguished work in the field of apologetics. Would be embarrassed of any Christian apologist who have evidenced as little knowledge of the opposing worldview challenged.
- 55:21
- As he himself has shown of the knowledge of the biblical defense of reformed orthodoxy. Dr. White also provides his readers with a careful presentation of truths from scripture.
- 55:30
- And the importance of this truth for the Christian life. After reading Dr. White's careful work, the reader will clearly see Dr. Geisler as the emperor with no clothes.
- 55:38
- Whose arguments cannot stand serious scrutiny. We pray by the work of the spirit readers, the Potter's freedom and Dr. Geisler himself.
- 55:44
- We'll come to see the truth of the only true God who is sovereign over all things. Especially the salvation and damnation of men.
- 55:54
- Recognize who wrote that commendation long, long ago. No longer with us. Dr. Jonathan Gerstner.
- 56:04
- Who was R .C. Sproul's mentor? Primary mentor,
- 56:10
- Dr. Jonathan Gerstner. Yeah. So that's the approach that some
- 56:19
- Calvinists take. And so it depends on which kind of Calvinist you are as to which kind of take you're going to come.
- 56:25
- Though, as he will admit, I actually agree concerning the decreed will of God and the prescriptive will of God.
- 56:34
- Doesn't explain how that is. He'll just simply say that I'm not consistent. Well, he'll imply that sort of dismissively.
- 56:41
- He won't document it because he can't. That's beyond the level.
- 56:46
- And you'll understand, I think, why Piper's perspective of the two wills of God approach is actually a stronger perspective.
- 56:55
- Because this is not the only verse that has this problem. Piper actually points this out.
- 57:00
- He said, now, if it was only 2 Peter 3 .9, or if it was only 1 Timothy 2 .4, or maybe if it was only
- 57:07
- Matthew 23 .37, maybe if it was just those verses, then we could get away with trying to explain them from this older methodology, this higher
- 57:16
- Calvinistic methodology. But he said there's so many more passages which clearly express
- 57:22
- God's longing and his desire for the salvation of Israel that you really can't get around it.
- 57:27
- And therefore, he says the two wills of God approach, the prescriptive versus the creative will of God approach, is the better model of hermeneutics, of exegesis to deal with these troubling passages.
- 57:40
- Those are not models of either hermeneutics or exegesis. And if you think they are, you don't have any idea what exegesis or hermeneutics are.
- 57:50
- They're theological models for dealing with higher order issues. But neither one of them are models of exegesis or hermeneutics.
- 57:58
- That's the Calvinistic worldview. And quite frankly,
- 58:05
- I don't know how Calvinists get around these kinds of passages, to be honest.
- 58:12
- Well, before we go through these verses, listen to the rest of what Dr. White has to say here before we move along.
- 58:19
- Here, let's listen to the end of it here. It's just a couple more minutes long. Okay, so we don't need to be dealing with that.
- 58:27
- You can go watch it if you want. I'm just cutting my own commentary out here. They stood in the way.
- 58:46
- So, did Jesus fail in his intention to gather the children because the leader stood in the way? Okay, now, once again, the emphasis that you can find here is if you step back and you ask,
- 59:05
- How's Matthew 23, 37 functioning? It is the summary statement of judgment upon the Jewish leaders that is followed by,
- 59:14
- Your house is left to you desolate. So that's the realm, that's its category.
- 59:21
- So look at this question. Did Jesus fail in his intention to gather the children because their leaders stood in the way?
- 59:33
- So, the text makes reference to the fact that prophets had been sent to the people.
- 59:43
- Now, from his perspective, the only reason God would do that is because God doesn't have a sovereign decree.
- 59:50
- There can be no purpose to sending prophets if it is not
- 59:58
- God's intention that everyone be saved. So that's the simplistic, smash it all down.
- 01:00:06
- God cannot have a purpose in having Israel as an example of unbelief for us today.
- 01:00:15
- Can't do it, cannot do it. There is no place in this man's theology for that. Nowhere.
- 01:00:23
- There cannot be a divine decree and there cannot be any usefulness in the means by which
- 01:00:30
- God accomplishes things. It all has to be the simplistic, God's just trying to save everybody, trying to save everybody equally.
- 01:00:37
- That's all there is to it. There can't be any purpose or meaning in anything else.
- 01:00:44
- And so, we look at Hebrews chapter 11. We see the faith of these individuals.
- 01:00:52
- And we see that they, some of them were sawn in two and they were thrown in pits and they were murdered and they were exiled and all the rest of this kind of stuff.
- 01:01:02
- But, there can't have been any purpose in any of that. That can't have been a part of God's decree so that we would have these examples ourselves.
- 01:01:13
- No, there couldn't have been anything in their lives that was being, no, no, no, no, no. That's just way too complicated.
- 01:01:20
- That's just allowing way too much of the biblical text to talk about stuff that's way outside of merely human will and good people doing their best.
- 01:01:31
- So, what you got to do is here, instead of looking at the statement, and that is the judgment, your house will be left to you desolate, is a fitting judgment for people who in possession of much light sinned against that light.
- 01:01:54
- Can we learn from that? Is it God's intention to use that?
- 01:02:01
- Did not Paul warn against unbelief in light of what had happened in the past?
- 01:02:07
- Exactly. But you can't have God ordaining the ends as well as the means.
- 01:02:13
- You can't have the ends being purposeful, not in the simplistic world of provisionalism. And so you get rid of that stuff and then you can ask questions like this.
- 01:02:23
- Did Jesus fail in his intention to gather the children because their leader stood in the way? No, Jesus being part of the triune
- 01:02:29
- God is accomplishing the decree of God in time. And so by abusing the text and making it ask questions or answer questions,
- 01:02:41
- I guess is a better way to put it, answer the questions that were not a part of its intention in the first place, it allows you to try to convince your followers you have something worthwhile to say, but it's not doing exegesis.
- 01:02:57
- This doesn't help your interpretation any, James White. Refocusing the discussion on Jerusalem and its inhabitants being the children as if that has anything to do with it.
- 01:03:11
- So, hopefully what you're hearing is, he wants this text to be addressing something over here.
- 01:03:19
- I've already said it's not addressing that. And I have simply pointed out before Matthew 22, 37, woe to you, scribes,
- 01:03:28
- Pharisees, hypocrites. Scribes and Pharisees. Is that a distinct group from the standard inhabitants of Jerusalem?
- 01:03:37
- Of course it is. Does Layton Flowers care about that? Of course he doesn't.
- 01:03:43
- Because he's not exegeting the text. Context means nothing. It's all about,
- 01:03:48
- I have to demonstrate that Calvinism is wrong. And so every verse in the Bible is relevant to that.
- 01:03:54
- Guess what? It's not. It's not. That's why you don't see him producing balanced material on anything else.
- 01:04:03
- There's no motivation to do it. To focus on, well, he's talking about the leaders.
- 01:04:10
- So are you saying the leaders can thwart the will of God? Because they're unwilling? Do you think their free will is able to thwart the will of God?
- 01:04:18
- Because you don't have, you're not answering the problem. That's because I'm exegeting the text and you're exegeting the text.
- 01:04:26
- You're changing the, you're taking it out of its context. You're not allowing it to be a judgment, a summary judgment statement.
- 01:04:33
- And you're bringing it over here and, oh, this is talking about this stuff over here. This is, this is the only place we can discuss this.
- 01:04:40
- And I'm going, that's not what it was about. Well, prove it. Prove it, Leighton. Go to the text, exegete it, demonstrate that it's actually, that's actually what it's addressing.
- 01:04:50
- You can't. You didn't even try. Because you know you can't. Well, I'll take that back.
- 01:04:56
- I don't know why you didn't try. I just think in reality that this is how you view scripture.
- 01:05:04
- It's all about your big thing. And that's scary. It's sad, but it's scary.
- 01:05:14
- I mean, do you preach? And when you preach, can you preach through a text without mentioning
- 01:05:21
- Calvinism? Without drawing on these themes? I really wonder if that's even possible for you.
- 01:05:31
- Because this is your thing. And I know it's insulting, but because it's true, you're a one -string banjo.
- 01:05:39
- You got one note, ding, ding, ding. That's sad.
- 01:05:45
- I really, really find it sad. Because it leads to this kind of imbalance. You still have
- 01:05:50
- God wanting something that isn't happening. And it's not happening either because of their own individual wills, unwilling to come, or because of the wills of their leaders.
- 01:06:00
- In fact, that's even worse. That's even worse. Are you trying to say that there are people who would have come to him, who would have believed, who would have followed, but because of who their leaders were, that their leaders thwarted the will of God to save the quote -unquote children in the land?
- 01:06:17
- Are you trying to say that leaders can thwart whether individuals within their country can be saved or not?
- 01:06:25
- Is that your interpretation? I know that it's not. I mean, I'm not trying to be mean here.
- 01:06:32
- I'm just trying to say, the way you just explained that doesn't answer the problem of this passage.
- 01:06:38
- It just compounds it. It just brings more confusion. And this is again— And I just have to point out, the confusion is all
- 01:06:46
- Leighton's. The confusion is because he's not allowing the text to stay in its context and function the way that it is.
- 01:06:51
- He doesn't follow categories, doesn't seem to understand the necessity of putting things in proper categories, allowing text to address those things that were intended to address, and not other things beyond that.
- 01:07:01
- The confusion is completely created by his abject rejection of meaningful interpretive process.
- 01:07:11
- Due to a massively imbalanced emphasis upon just one thing.
- 01:07:17
- I've got to prove the free will of man. I have to fight
- 01:07:23
- Calvinism. And if you think I'm being unfair, go to his YouTube channel, scam through the titles.
- 01:07:30
- Just keep going. And see what he talks about.
- 01:07:35
- All. The. Time. This is one of the reasons that I think other
- 01:07:41
- Calvinists don't take this approach to the text. Instead, they will bring the two -wills -of -God approach in.
- 01:07:47
- Which, by the way, yes, Dr. White does use the two -wills -of -God approach at times, too, when it serves his purposes. When it serves my purposes.
- 01:07:55
- When it serves my purposes. Catch that? So, you see,
- 01:08:03
- Layton cannot see the difference between doing foundational exegesis and then doing theological synthesis of the results of your exegesis.
- 01:08:18
- They're all the same thing. They're all the same thing. So, he knows, because it's been the fundamental means of my refutation of his argumentation from the beginning, that that's the position
- 01:08:30
- I hold. All of this up to this point, therefore, has been a strawman. It's been, let's see if we can...
- 01:08:37
- I've got to do something for today. I've got to get my fans on YouTube to donate their money.
- 01:08:45
- And so, let's trot these dead, beaten horses out and beat them again.
- 01:08:54
- And he doesn't even have a cool theme like ours. I mean, I feel sorry for him. I mean, let's just be honest.
- 01:09:01
- Now, he does all the silly artwork, but he does not have a cool... Well, and then again, he stars in two different quotes in our theme as well, which are really great.
- 01:09:13
- What? Yeah, yeah, no. But he also still brings that canard argument of, you
- 01:09:20
- Arminians believe God's trying and failing, and that doesn't make any sense, because we can also believe in the two senses of God's will, like C .S.
- 01:09:28
- Lewis expressed it. If you are saying that God intends to save all people and is trying to save all people equally, then yes, he's trying and he's failing.
- 01:09:47
- How can you even dispute that? Is it your assertion that there is no category of redemptive love, redemptive grace?
- 01:10:04
- Do you obliterate all distinctions in God's love and all distinctions in God's grace? If you do, and I think of necessity you have to, you have no decree, you have no sovereign decree that gives shape to events in time.
- 01:10:22
- I don't even know how you affirm that God has knowledge of future events outside of mere cognition where he learns things once he creates.
- 01:10:34
- And again, eventually, eventually, I think you'll recognize you have to abandon that.
- 01:10:42
- And now that I know you're not in a Southern Baptist context any longer, I'm not sure why you haven't, but give it time.
- 01:10:50
- Give it time. Just watch. Just keep watching. But it seems that you're the one that isn't really answering these questions and has struggled to answer these questions for a long, long time.
- 01:11:08
- But again, to simply sit there and refuse to allow a text to remain in its proper category and to address what it addresses rather than everything else.
- 01:11:23
- Clear demonstration of the problems we've had since we started responding to Leighton long ago.
- 01:11:28
- God wills for men to have their own will, and therefore he can genuinely will for the salvation of all people, but while at the same time allowing for people to have a free decision in the matter, which is the most common sense, basic understanding of the term.
- 01:11:42
- And so, for example, let's look at a few other passages that I think can speak into this. For example, in Isaiah chapter 30, let's begin in verse 12 here before you jump to verse 15.
- 01:11:54
- Let's begin in verse 12, because this whole section really, really speaks volumes.
- 01:12:00
- Because this passage that Jesus is quoting from isn't new vocabulary.
- 01:12:06
- Jesus often pulls in Old Testament texts in order to emphasize a point to especially a
- 01:12:12
- Jewish audience, because they're going to be familiar with the Old Testament, right? And this is no different. Jesus is quoting from Old Testament vernacular and idioms and understandings of ways of speak that they would have been familiar with, which we should be familiar with as well, obviously, when we're trying to have an explanation for how this works.
- 01:12:32
- So let's pay attention to this. Isaiah 30, verse 12. Therefore, this is what the
- 01:12:38
- Holy One of Israel says. Because you have rejected this message. Okay, so what is the cause for what's about to happen?
- 01:12:46
- Because you have rejected this message. Not because you were born hated by your Maker. Not because I didn't really love you.
- 01:12:52
- Not because I withheld a measure of grace or light to you. Nothing like that. Notice that he puts it back onto them personally, which is exactly what
- 01:13:00
- I wanted to do in Romans chapter 9 with regard to the hardened Israelites. Okay, so here we go. Once again, there is no practice of sola scriptura and tota scriptura in provisionalism.
- 01:13:18
- Instead, what you have is this kind of, all right, here's a situation where God says to Israel, you have rejected this message.
- 01:13:32
- You've relied on oppression and depended on deceit. This sin will become for you like a high wall cracked and bulging that collapses suddenly in an instant.
- 01:13:41
- It's a, yet again, a judgment narrative that leads inevitably to the finality of the judgment in Matthew chapter 24.
- 01:13:53
- It will break in pieces like pottery, shattered so mercilessly that among its pieces not a fragment will be found for taking coals from a hearth or scooping water out of a cistern.
- 01:14:02
- So utter destruction. And the idea is because you have rejected this message.
- 01:14:13
- And so what's the assumption being made? That God has no purpose, cannot have any purpose that is higher than that which results from the sinfulness of man.
- 01:14:30
- So when Yahweh promises to Abraham the blessings that we see coming in Jesus Christ and now in the church and everything that was attendant to bringing those things about, think about it, all the way back to the days of Moses.
- 01:14:52
- What is the New Testament message? From Moses onward testified of what? Of me.
- 01:14:58
- So there is prophecy all the way through about the entirety of God's purposes, which includes the necessary rebellion of the people of Israel.
- 01:15:16
- Now I'd have to ask Layton Flowers, could Israel have done otherwise? Could Judas have done otherwise?
- 01:15:25
- Could things have worked out to where Israel simply accepted
- 01:15:31
- Jesus as the Messiah so that there is no sacrificial death? Yes or no?
- 01:15:40
- If you don't have a sovereign decree and you have autonomous human will, you have to say, yeah, it could have gone that way.
- 01:15:46
- So you have no basis for prophecy. That's why I say the only consistent
- 01:15:52
- Arminian is an Opitheus. Because if you have all of this, including what
- 01:16:00
- God does with Israel, being a part that leads to inevitably and perfectly the situation.
- 01:16:09
- Have you ever noticed, ever thought about this? Think about this. Think about this.
- 01:16:17
- When Jesus preaches and teaches, there are certain sections that are just positive, beginning in the
- 01:16:29
- Sermon on the Mount, Beatitudes. But how much even in the Sermon on the Mount is dependent upon the existence of the
- 01:16:38
- Pharisaism and Sadduceeism of that day? Was that a part of God's sovereign decree or did it just happen that way?
- 01:16:48
- Might there have been only godly Jews and so there wouldn't have been any need to or any even ability to address?
- 01:16:58
- For example, you have heard it said to you, you shall not commit adultery.
- 01:17:03
- But I say to you, if a man looks upon a woman to lust after, he's committed adultery with her already in his heart.
- 01:17:10
- So there was a situation that existed in that day where you had people who boasted in their righteousness because they had not committed an act, even though they treasured the idea of the act in their heart.
- 01:17:27
- Jesus then addresses this. And by addressing this, provides in scripture that needed guidance for the church down through the ages.
- 01:17:39
- Would that have all changed? Was the very nature of the New Testament known to God by His choice before the ministry of Christ, before the incarnation?
- 01:17:57
- Again, as soon as you insert autonomy, man's autonomy, you have no way of affirming any of these things after that point.
- 01:18:09
- Yeah, well, remember, what was that Greg guy that I, oh,
- 01:18:16
- Greg, his last name was Greg, Steve Greg. Remember, I forget, man, that was a long, went over, was that three or four days long or something like that?
- 01:18:26
- It was really long. But toward the end, he just came straight out and said, yeah, Paul could have done something differently.
- 01:18:32
- Paul could have said no. And so once you embrace that perspective, then that means the
- 01:18:42
- New Testament would have been completely different because men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
- 01:18:48
- There's a bunch of stuff in the New Testament that is unique to Paul's experience. And that was because God's decree forms the very fabric of time.
- 01:18:57
- So I have an explanation as to why the scriptures can be exactly what they are and they were intended by God to be that way.
- 01:19:09
- I don't believe that this position even begins to have a foundation for trying to do anything like it.
- 01:19:18
- So all of this does come down to, and we've said this, I don't know how many times before, we,
- 01:19:28
- Reformed theology, begins at a completely different place than provisionism does. There's never going to be some way of getting us all together.
- 01:19:37
- You start with God, His nature, His purposes, and you move from there.
- 01:19:45
- If you start with man, you're never going to rise higher than man. You're never going to rise higher than a human methodology of salvation.
- 01:19:55
- And that is seen over and over and over again.
- 01:20:01
- So you look at this, because you have rejected this message, biblically, that is a part of God's purposes.
- 01:20:15
- You want proof of that? What does Paul say in Romans? There's a remnant, a remnant according to grace.
- 01:20:28
- If Israel had never rebelled, there wouldn't be a remnant, right? But there's a remnant according to grace because we know what man's actual heart is all about.
- 01:20:38
- We know where it goes. We actually believe in the depravity of man.
- 01:20:43
- We actually accept Romans 1 and Romans 3 and Romans 8 and what they say about man in slavery to sin.
- 01:20:55
- We believe in the absolute necessity of God's grace. But as we will see, if I play it fast enough here,
- 01:21:03
- I wish I could speed it up. There is a way to speed it up, but I've forgotten what it was. There's a key command.
- 01:21:09
- But as we're going to see, very different perspective. They are cut off not for arbitrary reasons or for unilateral reasons.
- 01:21:18
- What are they cut off for? For their unbelief, for their rebellion. That's the reason they're being cut off.
- 01:21:23
- That's why Paul, when he begins the chapter, by talking about he would willing himself to be cut off in their place, is talking about them being cut off not because God doesn't want them or Jesus didn't really send
- 01:21:36
- Jesus to die for them. No, he's praying for them. He even says in chapter 10, verse 21, I've held up my hands to you all day long.
- 01:21:44
- And so this is important. So Andrew, thank you for your donation, by the way. I appreciate that.
- 01:21:50
- And I may try to get to your comment in just a minute, but I want to get through this text. Verse 12, therefore, this is what the
- 01:21:55
- Holy One of Israel says. Because you have rejected this message, relied on oppression and dependent on deceit, this sin will become for you like a high wall, cracked and bulging that collapses suddenly in an instant.
- 01:22:06
- It will break in pieces like pottery, shattered so mercilessly that among its pieces, not a fragment will be found for taking coals from the heart or scooping water out of a cistern.
- 01:22:19
- This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel says. Okay, so we're about to get to it right here.
- 01:22:27
- I want you to see it. In repentance and rest is your salvation. In quietness and trust is your strength.
- 01:22:33
- But you would not, you would have none of it. Okay, now let's see. Let's just see.
- 01:22:41
- Does Leighton even know what the context is? Because it's laid out in the text.
- 01:22:49
- Does he even know what the context is and will he make proper application of it? Okay. This is a restatement basically of the same rebuke that Jesus is expressing in Matthew 23, 37.
- 01:23:05
- No, it has absolutely positively no connection to it at all. Same kind of a thing right here.
- 01:23:13
- And there's no children mentioned here. There's no versus leaders versus children, so there's no confusion on the part of James White's audience.
- 01:23:20
- It doesn't need to be any confusion about him speaking to leaders versus children as if that somehow undoes your problem here.
- 01:23:26
- This is the sovereign Lord. In repentance and rest is your salvation. In other words, how would you get salvation?
- 01:23:32
- Repent. Humble yourself. You know what this is about? If you looked it up, what was, remember, where did
- 01:23:43
- Jeremiah end up? This is where actually knowing your Old Testament history is really helpful.
- 01:23:50
- Where did Jeremiah end up? Remember what happened with him? He got dragged off to Egypt. Remember that?
- 01:23:57
- And what had Jeremiah been doing? What did Isaiah do? Warn the people.
- 01:24:04
- God is bringing judgment. God is bringing captivity. Submit. Submit.
- 01:24:13
- Deuteronomy 28 and 29 had said it a long time ago. God had been patient for a tremendous amount of time.
- 01:24:21
- But what did the people of Israel do? The prophets come and say, submit to the judgment of Yahweh.
- 01:24:26
- What do they do? Well, as it said up above, he scrolled past it. Deceit. They went to the nations of the world.
- 01:24:35
- They tried to create political mechanisms to save them from what
- 01:24:42
- God was bringing against them. It didn't work. And notice the next verse.
- 01:24:48
- You said, no, we will flee on horses. Therefore, you will flee. You said, we will ride off on swift horses.
- 01:24:54
- Therefore, your pursuers will be swift. A thousand will flee and so on and so forth. They refused to obey what the prophets said to do in light of judgment.
- 01:25:10
- And so the sovereign Yahweh, the Holy One of Israel says, in repentance and rest is your salvation.
- 01:25:16
- Pause. In quietness and trust is your strength. But you would have none of it. So the prophets are saying, accept the judgment that God's bringing.
- 01:25:26
- And they're saying, nope. We're going to try to get some political alliances going here. We're going to trust this king and that king.
- 01:25:35
- And God says, you'll have none of it. That's right. So what does any of this have to do with anything?
- 01:25:43
- Well, it has to do with, again, whether what he's trying to say is, see, this had nothing to do with God's purposes.
- 01:25:54
- He hadn't decreed this to happen. If they had not rebelled, but they were already smack dab in the middle of the whole cycle.
- 01:26:09
- In fact, this is Isaiah 30, right? What do we have only a few chapters later in 40 and following?
- 01:26:20
- We have someone named by name who is actually called an anointed one.
- 01:26:29
- His name's Cyrus. Remember? By name. This is one of the reasons that naturalists divide the book of Isaiah up and after a certain point, call it
- 01:26:40
- Deutero -Isaiah, because Isaiah couldn't have known the name of a king in the future.
- 01:26:46
- And if you don't believe in the sovereign decree of God, you too.
- 01:26:51
- I don't know how you even explain that. If you believe in the autonomy of man, I don't know. That's why open theists struggle with prophecy.
- 01:26:59
- I don't know. But the point is, if there wasn't a decree here, then it might've gone differently.
- 01:27:09
- And all those prophecies about Cyrus all of a sudden become invalidated. Does Isaiah become a false prophet?
- 01:27:20
- See where you start. See, he's starting not with where Isaiah starts, because this is the same prophet.
- 01:27:29
- This is what just amazes me. This is the same prophet who in his calling is told what
- 01:27:40
- God is going to do to Israel. Remember Isaiah chapter six, I'm going to make their hearts fat and I'm going to close their ears and I'm going to blind their eyes.
- 01:27:54
- But are we being told that? Yeah, I may have told Isaiah that back then, but it's all on them.
- 01:28:03
- They could have changed. They could have done something differently. And then it all would have been different. I guess that's where we're coming from.
- 01:28:11
- I don't know. Turn to him for salvation. In repentance and rest is your salvation.
- 01:28:16
- In quietness and trust is your strength. In other words, the weak will be made strong. You have to come from your pigsty.
- 01:28:22
- You have to humble yourself. You have to confess your sins so as to be healed. That's your responsibility.
- 01:28:28
- In repentance and rest is your salvation. In quietness and trust is your strength. But you would have none of it.
- 01:28:35
- Not I would have none of you. Not I don't really want you. I just didn't send Jesus to die for you people.
- 01:28:40
- I just didn't really like you that much. Just unilaterally before you were born, I just decided, eh, I'm going to cry. Does the text have anything to do with any of that?
- 01:28:47
- Of course not. This is the imbalance. The man cannot look at any scripture without arguing against Calvinism.
- 01:28:56
- Even if we would look at it and go, no, it's actually not saying any of that. All it's simply saying is that the prophets had told the people the judgment of God and that needs submit to it, but you would have none of it, which means
- 01:29:11
- God had not changed their hearts. So they remained rebellious, and they were eventually utterly destroyed as a result.
- 01:29:18
- That's all. We don't have to get into all the rest of it. We can allow the text, say what the text says, but for Layton Flowers, every text is about Calvinism.
- 01:29:28
- For Calvinists, it's not, but for Layton Flowers, it is. Wow. Well, except for the verses that came afterwards that actually provided the context, but that's...
- 01:29:40
- ...for destruction. I don't really want them. No, he puts it onto them. Any system that puts it back onto God's decree or God's will or God's design is completely turning the scripture backwards and saying, no, it's on me, not you.
- 01:29:55
- I don't really want you. Secretly, it's behind the scenes. I'm pulling the knobs. I didn't really care.
- 01:30:01
- Yeah, you know, I'm actually accomplishing something in this world. I'm bringing a Messiah to redeem mankind.
- 01:30:09
- I'm accomplishing things here, and it's not based upon you little individual human beings and your autonomous wills.
- 01:30:19
- Yeah, that is the message of scripture. Yes, we begin at completely different places. No question about it.
- 01:30:24
- None whatsoever. But even Nebuchadnezzar, the pagan king, knew that God is not dependent in the way that Layton Flowers thinks that he is.
- 01:30:34
- ...for you so much. It's not what he's saying. You would have none of it. I wanted this for you.
- 01:30:41
- I want you to repent so as to believe. We see this. This is all throughout the
- 01:30:47
- Bible. Matter of fact, I had 61 verses picked out to show you today. I narrowed it down to seven, eight maybe.
- 01:30:55
- There's so many of these. The most popular ones are like Ezekiel 18. He's speaking to Israel, same
- 01:31:02
- God, speaking to Israel, same situation, speaking to the same nation, same group of people. Rid yourself of the offenses you have committed.
- 01:31:08
- Get a new heart. There's a pleading kind of a voice here throughout this entire chapter, kind of a lament before Israel.
- 01:31:16
- Get a new heart and a new spirit. In other words, how do you get a new heart and a new spirit? God unilaterally picked you before you were born.
- 01:31:21
- He didn't give it to you. Nope. What's he say? Rid yourself of the offenses. Humble yourself.
- 01:31:28
- Repent and get a new heart and a new spirit. In other words, God will give a new heart and a new spirit to who?
- 01:31:33
- Those who humbly confess they have a bad heart. Ezekiel, huh?
- 01:31:44
- Ezekiel. Isn't Ezekiel where we have the vision of the dry bones?
- 01:31:51
- The valley of the dry bones. And God's spirit comes.
- 01:31:59
- And those bones come together. And they receive flesh and they stand up.
- 01:32:08
- That's the same Ezekiel who talked about taking out a heart of stone and giving a heart of flesh. And yet this man has just mocked the sovereign spiritual work of God.
- 01:32:23
- In regeneration as zap. I don't want to be.
- 01:32:28
- I don't want to stand before God. And be accountable. For that kind of statement.
- 01:32:37
- Especially because. Be so easy to say. Did you not read the rest of what the prophet said?
- 01:32:46
- Did you miss the valley of the dry bones? Do you really think that your heart of stone is going to want to be taken out?
- 01:33:00
- Be given a heart of flesh? Voluntarily? In of itself? There's more.
- 01:33:10
- But there's some other stuff I want to get to. There's some other stuff I want to get to. And in fact, that's the end of Radio Free Geneva, technically.
- 01:33:19
- Even though I guess we might. We might play the closing statement.
- 01:33:32
- Just one thing real quickly here. I will try to blow this up so we can see it here.
- 01:33:42
- This was the thing that I was looking at. I don't know why it won't get any bigger than this.
- 01:33:53
- But it just refuses to do so. So I'll play around with it.
- 01:34:01
- Oh! Well, that's not helping. Is that big enough?
- 01:34:11
- Alright. This is what I had seen right as we went on the air.
- 01:34:17
- Josh Lumley posted this. James White used to tweet about theology and apologetics.
- 01:34:24
- Sure, grandma. Let's get you to bed. I don't do any of that anymore.
- 01:34:33
- I just talk about politics. I am thankful that we still have the freedom to bring the claims of Christ to bear during a time where this nation and Western culture as a whole is collapsing into a totalitarianism that is just as evil and just as destructive as that which enveloped
- 01:35:07
- Eastern Europe after World War II. And unlike some of my younger brothers,
- 01:35:18
- I've read enough about history to know what happened to Christians under those things, and therefore
- 01:35:25
- I want to be one of those people who didn't just sit back and go,
- 01:35:34
- Well, we just want to talk about spiritual things because I recognize that those are spiritual things.
- 01:35:44
- I suppose this is a good time as any to mention what happened yesterday.
- 01:35:51
- As is often the case when television people schedule stuff, television people change stuff.
- 01:36:06
- But if you watched Tucker Carlson last night, he started off with a discussion of how the elites are seeking to fundamentally alter the world.
- 01:36:22
- And I had not heard about that. Had you heard about the German situation and their same type of group being gotten rid of and stuff like that?
- 01:36:35
- Yeah, it was pretty weird. If you watched
- 01:36:41
- Tucker Carlson last night, you heard him talking about...
- 01:36:48
- Come on. Now I can't get rid of this thing on my screen.
- 01:36:57
- Navy SEALs. And there it goes. And he was...
- 01:37:07
- What had been originally planned was my fellow pastor
- 01:37:16
- Jeff Durbin was going to be on because Jeff has been selected by this group of Christian Navy SEALs.
- 01:37:26
- Many of them. Not four or five. Many of them. To be their only representative because they're the silent professionals.
- 01:37:37
- They don't come out and reveal themselves.
- 01:37:42
- They're active duty. But they are being forced by the guy who looks like Darth Vader who's in charge of the armed forces to be inoculated and vaccinated.
- 01:38:02
- Now they've been inoculated and vaccinated against all sorts of stuff. That's not an issue. This is a specific issue with vaccines that have no long -term safety data.
- 01:38:14
- And that's not even an arguable point. That's not an arguable point. You can't argue it. We don't have long -term safety data.
- 01:38:21
- I don't even have to mention the Project Veritas stuff last night. Did you see it?
- 01:38:29
- Oh, really? Oh, Project Veritas dropped their videos and of course they're being banned all over the place but they've been viewed millions of times.
- 01:38:36
- It was a woman who works in a HHS hospital videotaped all sorts of stuff where you had people dying, adverse reactions right after vaccinations.
- 01:38:52
- And then the discussion about this will not be reported to VAERS. VAERS is the
- 01:38:57
- CDC database that they are supposed to report adverse reactions to.
- 01:39:06
- These vaccines have had over 10 ,000 times more negative reports than any vaccine in history.
- 01:39:13
- But still the point was here's someone documenting over and over again no one in this hospital, because it's a government hospital, is going to report this to VAERS.
- 01:39:28
- It's going to be chalked up to something else. And this is just part one. There's more coming.
- 01:39:34
- And of course Facebook and all the rest of these folks are doing everything they can to suppress all of it. Just don't even want to talk about it.
- 01:39:41
- Anyway, the point is this. Jeff was supposed to be on to talk about these warriors, and they are warriors, who have asked for spiritual assistance.
- 01:39:59
- They're Christians. They want to live under the lordship of Christ. And they believe that they are being commanded to do something that creates a conflict that did not exist before, but that does exist now, and evidently is existing in lots of nations other than our own.
- 01:40:27
- These are the most highly trained soldiers that we have. We're talking about probably 400 out of allegedly around 2 ,500.
- 01:40:39
- So in other words, this will have a major impact upon operational readiness. We all know what's really going on here.
- 01:40:46
- This has nothing to do... These people, no Navy SEAL has died of COVID. These are the healthiest people on the planet.
- 01:40:53
- Remember all the jokes about Chuck Norris? These are the guys that those jokes would actually be about.
- 01:41:05
- These are the guys where the virus, the COVID virus is afraid of the Navy SEALs. It doesn't even want to go there.
- 01:41:13
- None of them have died of this. They're not in any danger of dying of it. And spreading it, what are they going to do?
- 01:41:19
- Give it to a terrorist in another country or something? It's so obvious that this is totally a sign of submission to get rid of anybody who would not just simply do whatever
- 01:41:35
- Big Brother now says is to be done, even if it's utterly irrational, which is scary when you think about it.
- 01:41:44
- It's scary when you think about it. I just saw, before we started, a protester in Australia talking to an
- 01:41:53
- Aussie cop. Did you see it? And the Aussie cop says, Hey, look,
- 01:41:59
- I agree with you. And the guy said, Why are you over there? He says, Because I'm paid to be. I'm paid to be.
- 01:42:07
- That's frightening. That's frightening. Anyway, so look back.
- 01:42:13
- If you didn't see it, go back, see the thing. They ended up having an attorney who did a great job, by the way.
- 01:42:21
- And I knew about this before it happened, but had an attorney on that did a great job in explaining.
- 01:42:28
- And he brought out the Christian faith, these men. So just pray for them. And my understanding is there's going to be a website being produced where you can help these individuals, where there'll be some resources.
- 01:42:46
- And so hopefully something that I was doing Sunday and Monday as a resource will be made available in that context.
- 01:42:57
- And what's interesting is, I wonder if Josh Lumley would go, Oh, so you wrote something in regards to the
- 01:43:05
- Christian worldview, Lordship of Christ and its interface with injustice and things like that.
- 01:43:13
- I guess you're just doing politics now. I don't know. I don't know.
- 01:43:18
- But that's what the memes seem to say. I don't know.
- 01:43:24
- And am I just doing politics now when I point out that even the
- 01:43:30
- Roman Catholics are saying, I think this has taken place as a result of Texas.
- 01:43:45
- But, quote, the most radical abortion bill of all time,
- 01:43:50
- House to vote this week on codifying right to abortion. So I think they are responding to the
- 01:43:56
- Texas situation, the Women's Health Protection Act. This is basically putting Roe into law.
- 01:44:03
- Now, it can't get past the Senate at the moment. But it creates a statutory right of women to have abortions.
- 01:44:15
- It states the rights of doctors, certified nurse midwives, nurse practitioners and doctors assistants to perform abortions.
- 01:44:21
- It prohibits many limitations on this right, such as state pro -life laws regarding ultrasounds or waiting periods before abortions.
- 01:44:28
- And of course, who's spearheading it? But Roman Catholic, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
- 01:44:35
- Look, even I know that ain't no Roman Catholic. But I still have to say to my
- 01:44:42
- Roman Catholic friends, why is she not excommunicated?
- 01:44:49
- Why, please? Nancy Pelosi is behind it and pushing it.
- 01:44:57
- So if I point this out and point out that these individuals are motivated by the culture of death and that the culture of death has a direct connection to much that is going on in our world today, including the
- 01:45:16
- LGBTQ movement, am I somehow just doing politics?
- 01:45:26
- I thought the claims of Christ actually extended, well, to all of his realm, which is everywhere.
- 01:45:35
- I had, and I cannot get this thing to, for some reason, I don't,
- 01:45:41
- I don't get it. I just, I think it's because we have that other thing going over there.
- 01:45:48
- But I had somewhere, and lost it, the video of Justin Trudeau, who, oh,
- 01:46:00
- I am so sorry, Canada. I'd like to be more positive about 2022 in my own country, but I don't know that I can be.
- 01:46:15
- It's not that there aren't more people that are waking up and seeing what's going on. I just don't know that our votes really count much anymore, to be very honest with you.
- 01:46:23
- So the election in Canada yesterday was not good. And I would expect that the tyrants in Canada will be emboldened to, because there's more lockdowns coming, folks.
- 01:46:44
- These vaccines ain't doing it. They ain't protecting people. The vaccinated are in hospitals.
- 01:46:50
- The vaccinated are dying. You can blame it on the unvaccinated all you want. That's just absurd. It is stupidity on a level that is stultifying.
- 01:47:01
- But once that happens, they're going to be closing down churches again. And once again, lots of Christian pastors are going to be getting free lousy meals in Canadian jails.
- 01:47:17
- And that seems to be the case down in Australia as well. In fact, I was talking.
- 01:47:24
- I've got some interesting contacts down there. And I was told that one group of folks that I actually know fairly well went to court and discovered that their charter rights only protect them from what the federal government does, not what from state governments do.
- 01:47:46
- Now, they have only a few states relevant. They don't have 50.
- 01:47:52
- I forget exactly how many there are, but Victoria and New South Wales and stuff like that. But they're basically told, yeah, there's an implied freedom of speech that the federal government can't suppress, but the state government can.
- 01:48:11
- Oh, cool. Great. And I think when they see elections like this, where people just are like, sure, big brother, keep giving me free stuff.
- 01:48:25
- I will wear your mask of submission and stay in my house, but please give me free stuff.
- 01:48:35
- They see people willing to do that. They're going to keep right on taking every right, freedom, and liberty they can get, because we all know they don't do it.
- 01:48:48
- Did you see the mayor of San Francisco?
- 01:48:55
- I was feeling the spirit. Oh, my goodness.
- 01:49:04
- Wow. Okay. Anyway, that insanity aside, there was only one other thing I wanted to chat about.
- 01:49:10
- Now, by the way, my plan, my hope, and I'm not sure what your schedule is going to be like, but I start the next road trip on Thursday.
- 01:49:25
- And so as last month and a half ago, two months ago, what that means is the dividing line times will be whenever the dividing line times are.
- 01:49:38
- It's when I get to where I'm going and can get set up and do stuff like that.
- 01:49:44
- Get the app. Get the app, right. And so hopefully
- 01:49:52
- Friday, but it'd probably be late. Hopefully Friday, maybe
- 01:49:58
- Saturday, would be the only other time I can do the program this week. And again, it just all depends on when you get out in the morning and how traffic is and how long it takes you to get to the next stop and getting set up and all stuff like that.
- 01:50:13
- But we will try to do that. We will try to do that as much as we possibly can. And of course,
- 01:50:18
- I'm looking forward to seeing a bunch of you at G3. It looks like everybody's going to be at G3.
- 01:50:24
- I mean, it's going to be huge. Huge. Huge.
- 01:50:30
- It's going to be huge. As some former famous person said.
- 01:50:36
- Last thing. Last thing. I mentioned it earlier, and that was the
- 01:50:42
- Bart Barber tweets. I had never heard of Bart Barber before. I may have seen something from him in the past.
- 01:50:53
- I don't know. But Bart Barber was on the resolutions committee of the
- 01:50:59
- Southern Baptist Convention. So in other words, when resolutions come before the floor, they go through this committee first. And that committee, we know with Resolution 9, they turned a resolution that said one thing 180 degrees around.
- 01:51:13
- And so these are people who have tremendous control.
- 01:51:19
- Power. And when I started reading through this
- 01:51:24
- Twitter thread that he did, where he's literally saying, plagiarism is a sin.
- 01:51:31
- These are all modern standards. And then he said,
- 01:51:36
- Mark was not bound by any such authority. He plagiarized as God inspired him to do.
- 01:51:50
- I mean, it just kept going on and on. Our rules about citation or sources are just that.
- 01:51:58
- Our rules. They haven't been around for that long. They weren't binding upon any of the gospel writers. It's just crazy to expect that they needed to follow
- 01:52:06
- Terabian or else they were in sin. What? We're not talking about citing sources.
- 01:52:11
- We're not talking about footnotes. We're not talking about MLA or Terabian. We're talking about taking someone else's work, their sermon, not only just their outline, their words, their illustrations, and presenting them not once, not twice, but for years as if it's your own work.
- 01:52:47
- Are you serious? Again, this is, it'd be one thing if this is just some guy in the backwoods of West Virginia someplace.
- 01:52:58
- He was on the resolutions committee. Are you seriously suggesting that even if you accept, as most people do,
- 01:53:09
- I do not. But even if you accept the literary dependence theory, however you put that, whoever you make primary fact,
- 01:53:19
- I'm not sure why you would put Mark. Okay. Because he'd be the first he'd be.
- 01:53:28
- So it would make more sense if you talked about Matthew and Luke, because at least you're talking written documents, but he also brings up Luke.
- 01:53:36
- Luke used written documents as if that is, you actually think that's a parallel to presenting to your people for years, sermons that somebody else wrote their outlines, their words, and their illustrations don't even know what to say.
- 01:54:02
- So if I came on the dividing line and I started talking about where I was at, when I was riding my bicycle up South mountain, which makes you laugh.
- 01:54:13
- Immediately because you would get up. Okay. And I know exactly which curve
- 01:54:21
- I was on when I heard this. Okay. And I saw that rock sitting there and that I remember exactly what.
- 01:54:28
- Okay. You think maybe I might be just a little bit out in the weeds here. Maybe.
- 01:54:36
- Yeah, but you'd only get away with it once. If you did it for years, now you've got a parallel.
- 01:54:42
- Wow. Wow. Brother Barber, I'm sorry, but, but there is, there's being sold out and then there's being sold out and, and, and, and you, you, you done been sold out by yourself.
- 01:54:57
- It's astonishing. Just absolutely positively astonishing.
- 01:55:04
- Any, hey, any, who, anyhow, well, we're pretty close to right at two hours. So yeah, that worked out fairly well.
- 01:55:12
- We're going fairly well. So are you, are you going to do the, okay. So we're still going to do the radio free
- 01:55:19
- Geneva closer, but we finished radio free Geneva like almost 30 minutes ago.
- 01:55:26
- So I don't want anyone to go. You ruined radio free Geneva by talking about vaccines.
- 01:55:33
- Sort of, I don't know. How do you, how do you divide it up? I don't know, but anyway, so if the
- 01:55:42
- Lord blesses the journey Friday or Saturday, someplace in there, we will try to get another program in.
- 01:55:51
- And then we've got, we've got stuff in Conway, Arkansas with Jeffrey Johnson and Owen Strand.
- 01:55:58
- We're going to be in Jonesboro the next night doing two things that day. And then we're off to G3 and there,
- 01:56:12
- I just got word that there may be something. Let me, it was a text message.
- 01:56:21
- Hold on. Did he, did he, did he, did he, yeah. Just so you know, it looks like the
- 01:56:29
- Q and a that I was supposed to be part of on Saturday morning will be an hour earlier. 8 a .m.
- 01:56:35
- On a Saturday. Who in? Okay. I'm going to, I'm going to make one demand of Virgil and Josh.
- 01:56:41
- If you're going to make us do a Q and a at eight o 'clock in the morning on a Saturday, my required rider for getting up that early.
- 01:56:54
- Cause I'm staying minimally 35 minutes away from the venue, my rider for getting up that early on a travel day.
- 01:57:02
- Cause I'm gonna have to travel that day to Florida. Maple frosted, long
- 01:57:08
- Johns. Okay. Otherwise I'm just going to sit there and stare at people when they ask questions,
- 01:57:17
- I will need maple frosted, long Johns. Okay. So somebody hear me.
- 01:57:23
- Okay. Saturday morning when we do that Q and a, if someone doesn't give me a maple frosted, long
- 01:57:29
- John, I'm just leaving. That's okay. I mean, and then there's talk about something
- 01:57:36
- Wednesday night. I was just going to try to get there on Wednesday cause an eight hour drive that day. I know you're getting there
- 01:57:42
- Wednesday, but I may be doing a presentation late that evening.
- 01:57:50
- Yeah. Yeah. No, no, I'm not thinking that that venue is overly friendly too.
- 01:58:00
- I mean, I don't know, but I'm not thinking I want to take that thing downtown Atlanta. Yeah. Cause I, I'd pull in and I'd have left behind me or two, two wheels and everything else is gone.
- 01:58:13
- So, so yeah, no. So we got stuff going on. And then Friday, Friday, I am,
- 01:58:21
- I'm the, I'm the warmup for Votie, Balcom and Paul washers. So there you go. I feel a little pressure there, but that's better than being the 9 0
- 01:58:32
- AM speaker. So, cause I was never given maple frosted long
- 01:58:38
- Johns before, and that's why we need them this time. Okay. Anyways. So we're looking forward to seeing y 'all there.
- 01:58:44
- And then down in Niceville, Florida, don't know if the debate's going to happen yet.
- 01:58:50
- I sent an email today to Doug Stouffer. Are you going to debate? Are we going to do this?
- 01:58:57
- We'll find out. I'll be addressing the subject one way or the other. That's going to be Sunday night and Monday night down there.
- 01:59:03
- Lafayette the next night, Lafayette, Louisiana. We're going to be there. And then
- 01:59:09
- Lindale, Texas, Tom Buck, troublemaker from Texas.
- 01:59:15
- I could be there two evenings and then that's it. Cause I stopped once in New Mexico and literally drive straight to church from New Mexico.
- 01:59:27
- I thankfully we have a parking lot across the street. I can park the RV during church. So that's how we'll do it.
- 01:59:34
- So, yeah, lots and lots of work to be doing. Prayers appreciated your support makes it all possible.
- 01:59:41
- I got it. I got to stop every approximately 189 miles at most and put gas in that beast and you help make all that happen.
- 01:59:51
- So we appreciate that. Travel fund ailmen .org. And we'll see you all at G3 and all those other places along the way.