June 30, 2005

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602, or toll free across the United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341.

And now with today's topic, here is James White.

Opening Remarks and the Apologetic Meltdown

And good afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line, our regular time on this, the last day of June. Can you believe that? The last day of June of 2005, halfway through the entire thing. I don't know where it went either, and take my advice, the older you get, the faster they go.

So anyway, 877 -753 -3341, the looniness and craziness out there continues on. I'm not referring to Canada and Spain joining the growing ranks of nations to stand up and spit directly in God's eye, in essence, by saying we don't care that marriage was defined by God and that it is the first institution that he created and established by his own authority.

We simply don't care about that. Instead, we are going to define it the way we want to define it, and they have done so. So I'm not talking about that, though that certainly is part of the looniness and the craziness.

And we certainly have enough looniness and craziness in our own society. I'm referring to the looniness and craziness in the apologetic realm. And if you have been following the blog at all, and you click on links, and you've continued clicking on links, you are probably just as utterly amazed as I am at the complete meltdown on the part of many people regarding, I guess this is all just a response to the Rutland debate.

We've seen stuff like this in the past, but just never to this level of vitriol. I guess that's just going to continue to get worse and worse as the years go by, if things don't change, I suppose. I don't know.

But it is just maybe it was a fact. This year is the first time we've put the video clips up there. And maybe that's why they're just so utterly out of their minds with the ad hominem personal stuff.

I don't know. Someone just sent me a link to a Wikipedia entry on Dave Armstrong that was more a slam on me. It had anything to do with Dave Armstrong. It's just these people seriously think that if you just insult me, you've somehow proven something.

I don't even begin to understand that kind of thinking. But hey, you know what? What can we say? Anyhow, 877 -753 -3341, in the middle of writing a fairly lengthy blog entry here. And I last when was this?

This was today's must have been Friday-ish of no, no. Well, let's see. What's the date today? It was last week sometime, okay? Last week sometime. I got word that there were a number of comments made in the Pastors' Conference, the Preachers' Conference that precedes the Southern Baptist Convention.

A number of comments made by some of these speakers regarding Calvinism. Now, it's been said for a long, long time there are certain people within the Southern Baptist Convention who are saying something along the lines of, well, we got rid of liberals.

We won that battle. Now let's get rid of the Calvinists. And I don't know if they can do that, I suppose, if you control all the powers of and you just want to do that, you can do that. It's certainly not going to be through debate.

It's certainly not going to be through actually debating the issue and dealing with the facts. But, hey, people will do things however they want to do it. So I listened to some of the sermons that were preached prior as part of the Pastors' Conference of the Southern Baptist Convention.

There were two fairly brief discussions, two fairly brief snippets here. First, interestingly enough, was Jerry Falwell. And as you know, Jerry Falwell has gotten up in years. And, in fact, he had some pretty serious health problems.

Went into cardiac arrest and the whole nine yards. And he was asked to speak as part of this group. And in doing so, as you'll see here, he in essence sort of runs through a definition of who and what a real Baptist is.

And so I just wanted to listen. It's about I can probably skip forward here a little bit. Let me skip forward so we're not listening to the whole section. Let's just listen to a little section of Falwell's sermon here and see what he has to say.

Liberty University was mentioned a moment ago. And we have a booth in the Exhibit Hall. Aaron Venesar is there. Just stop in. All we're trying to do is get all you young people, just all of them, that's all we want.

And stop by and get some propaganda. Our message, mission, and vision. When we define our message, you can say, well, I'm a Baptist. But that really doesn't do it. I'm an evangelical. Even that might not be adequate.

Because there's nothing deader than dead orthodoxy. And I know some Baptist churches I wouldn't allow my children to attend. Orthodoxy on ice is just as damaging as liberalism on fire. The best verse to describe our churches, the ones that are delivering the right message, is 1 Corinthians 2, verse 2.

For I determine not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. We believe five things, basically. No debate here. First, the inspiration and infallibility of Scripture. We believe in all the miracles of the Bible.

We believe in the Genesis account of creation. We believe in 24-hour days. We believe in a young earth. We reject all theories of evolution, Darwinian and otherwise. We reject theistic and atheistic evolution.

We believe in the infallibility of Scripture. We believe in the deity of Christ. We believe that Jesus Christ is co-equal with God the Father and God the Son, and God the Spirit in all attributes pertaining to deity.

We believe that He is the only way to heaven. And when Phil Dunne, you asked me that many, many years ago, before Oprah knocked him off. He said, you Baptists believe that the Jews and the Muslims and everybody else, except you guys, is going to hell.

I said, no, I've never said that. I don't believe that. I believe some Baptists are going to hell. I do believe what Jesus said. I am the way, the truth, the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me.

And if a Jew or a Muslim or a Baptist or a TV talk show host dies without Christ, he goes to hell. The deity of Christ. We believe in the substitutionary atonement of Christ for all men. We do not believe in particular love or limited atonement.

We do not believe that some are damned to hell before they're born and others destined to heaven before they're born. We believe in whosoever will, let him come. We believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ on the third day.

And so on and so forth. So there you have the assertion that to be a Baptist, the Baptist message is universal substitutionary atonement and a denial of the doctrine of election. Now, does Jerry Falwell know about James Pettigrew Broyce?

I would assume he does. Does he know the fact that there have been individuals in the Summoned Baptist Convention from its very beginning who have believed in particular redemption because they recognize what the ramifications are of being a consistent theologian and believing in both universal atonement, that is, that Christ died substitutionarily, as we're going to come to substitution in a moment, but died for every single individual who has ever lived or ever will live, and then adding that concept substitution, a real doctrine of substitution, not just a theoretical doctrine of substitution, but a real doctrine of substitution.

You put the two together, and the result of the position that he just took would, if you're consistent, have to be universalism. It would have to be the salvation of all people. Obviously he doesn't believe in that, and so the result is the substitutionary atonement has to be reduced not to the point, the vital issue of the actual union of the elect with Christ, and I know I'm still probably six months behind now on finally getting back to a discussion of this issue on the blog.

Someday, when I stop traveling for a while, I might actually be able to do that, but the vital issue of the union of the elect with Christ. If the elect, and it sounds to me like he just denies that that term exists, denies that term is specifically used in scripture, just simply doesn't deal with the exegetical necessities regarding the understanding of who the elect are and the specificity of the elect and all the rest of these things, but if the elect are united with Christ personally in an intimate union in his death, Galatians 2 .20, I have been crucified with Christ.

Dr. Falwell, could the person who will be in hell for eternity say with Paul, I have been crucified with Christ? I say no. Because if you've been crucified with Christ, then the penalty of the sin that condemns you has itself been forgiven.

It has been taken away. Obviously, what they have to do is turn the concept of substitution into something much weaker, something much less specific to where Christ's death becomes available for all, but it's not specifically salvific.

It just makes salvation a possibility. It makes us savable, similar to what Norman Geisler said and so on and so forth. That seems to be what we're looking at there. I don't know. But obviously, it didn't become the substance of what his comments were, but it is interesting and sort of sad to hear someone make the kind of statement that he's making here that to be a Baptist means you must believe in a sub-biblical, weak doctrine of atonement where you can't really talk about union with Christ and you can't talk about substitution that in reality brings about forgiveness of sins and things like that.

You just can't do that. To be a real Baptist, you have to believe that every man when he's born has an equal chance. In other words, let's just ignore the entirety of the whole discussion of election and God's sovereignty and the whole thing else.

Let's just forget the whole thing. That seemingly is what Pastor Falwell was saying. But then we had Johnny Hunt. You can actually watch these. You can go online. Boy, they've got a fancy website with lots of servers, big servers, powerful servers.

You can watch the videos, the streaming videos of all these. Johnny Hunt went at it for about an hour and a half. Getting toward the end of his time, again, he didn't make a whole lot of comment on it, but it seems to almost have been a concerted effort to make sure that individuals would get the message that the leadership that is being represented in the convention today as far as preaching is concerned are not friendly toward the preaching of the doctrines of grace.

I can't imagine that anyone from the Founders Conference could be overly excited. Either with the tenor of the entire presentation, the whole thing. When I first turned on the video, I first brought the video up to be honest with you, I thought I had tuned into TBN.

And I said that in channel. I said, what is this? It looked like TBN. I mean, I don't know how else to put it. The entirety of that kind of quote-unquote worship service has been adopted lock, stock, and barrel.

I mean, the whole thing, the band and the choir and the praise team. I mean, if you had just popped that video up on the screen, didn't tell somebody where it came from, it really appeared to me like I had just tuned TBN on, except I didn't see anybody with poofy hair or people sitting answering phones in the audience type of a situation.

So anyway, turned it on and watched all of that. And I can't imagine that the folks in the Founders Conference in watching this were overly impressed or encouraged by that particular experience, shall we say.

But anyway, getting toward the end of Johnny Hunt, his sermon, he made the following comments.

And by the way, aren't you grateful that there's hope. Listen to me carefully. It's important we understand this convention. There's hope for everyone in Jesus. Everyone. Everyone. Not a select group.

Everyone. Someone says, Pastor, you believe you're the elect? I sure am. And everybody that gets in is the elect. And he's elected all of us. I believe everyone can be saved. Anyone can come to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

Someone says, I don't think you ought to preach like that. Well, I just hope nobody gets saved that's not supposed to. I'm serious. We better get away from that and get back to the book and invite everyone to come to Christ.

Preach and invite everybody. Tell everyone.

Again, it almost seems a little bit unfair at one point to even respond to someone who obviously is speaking off the cuff and isn't going into detail and is speaking primarily emotionally and not from a biblical or theological standpoint.

But I thought that's what preaching was supposed to be accurate in its theology and careful in its theology because you are speaking for God and in God's place there and speaking his word and things like that.

Anyway, that was Johnny Hunt. And again, just simply yelling, we need to get away from this stuff. Well, where are you going to get away to? Just not going to preach out of Ephesians? Not going to preach out of Romans?

Not going to preach out of John? Not going to preach out of 2 Timothy? Is that how you get away from it? By getting to the book? I mean, it sounds sadly like these folks have made up their mind and have accepted these grossly surface-level, non-biblical, incomprehensible definitions of election.

And they won't allow discussion. They won't allow debate. They won't allow any type of dialogue. They're not going to respond to meaningful exegesis. They're just going to throw it out there. And I guess they figure the louder they scream, the more people get on their side.

That's what determines truth. Now, I don't know Johnny Hunt. Maybe he just hasn't a clue what the biblical doctrine of election is. He's never bothered to look at it. I don't know. How many people have we listened to now?

We listened to Herb Revis and we listened to the fellow in St. Louis. And we've caught them using bad sources and engaging in plagiarism and just absolutely, positively, grossly mishandling the subject.

And as we listened to Adrian Rogers, again, just over and over again, misrepresenting. And so it seems that the only way that they can make progress is to shout down the other side. And I'll be perfectly honest with you, this is a political statement, but this is just how I see it.

That seems to be how the left works in our land. You look at the political debate in our land, you don't have a discussion of what the Constitution actually meant. You just have shrill screaming. And, you know, when someone starts screaming, you just want to shut them up.

You'll satiate them. That seems to be the direction that people are going here, too. If you just say it loud enough, that's enough to make it all work. And so you don't hear exegetical studies that demonstrate that God's elected all of us.

Really? Well, if he's elected all of us, and that seems to be what both were saying, if he's elected all of us, then what was Paul talking about? In 1 Corinthians chapter 1, when he says, Seeing that Jews demand signs, and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews, and folly to Gentiles, but unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

But everybody's called. So, Paul, that makes no sense. Aren't all those Jews to whom it's a stumbling block, all those Greeks, those Gentiles, to whom it is foolishness? Paul, you just said that it's foolishness and a stumbling block, but now you say to both Jews and Greeks who are called, that's everybody, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Well, of course, it absolutely positively makes a mess out of the entirety of Scripture. Paul talks about those who are perishing. Verse 18, the word of the cross is them that are perishing foolishness.

But unto us who are being saved is the power of God. Well, there's a difference there, isn't there, between those who are perishing and those who are being saved? And Paul explains that in the context of the elect.

He says in Romans chapter 8, who will bring a charge against God's elect? Well, if the elect's everybody, then no one can bring a charge against the elect. And so, universalism, and again, it just makes absolute mincemeat out of the text of the New Testament.

And while that may be more than enough for a lot of folks who really aren't overly concerned about such issues as consistency. They're not really overly concerned about such issues as what the Bible is actually saying and things like that.

It may be enough for them. It can never, ever, ever be enough for the person who seriously wants to obey the entirety of the word of God. And so you take that course and you may win. You may drive out of the Southern Baptist Convention anyone who would dare to believe what so many of the founders themselves believed and wrote and taught and preached.

You may succeed. I mean, if you control all the political machinery, then you may succeed. But what's that going to leave you with? You stand up there and say, we believe in the Bible. We just don't believe in all of it.

We believe in the scriptures. We just won't let you preach all of it. And we won't talk with anyone who says otherwise. That's really not going to get you anywhere, is it? Doesn't seem to. If you'd like to defend that or, obviously, given the incredible statements appearing out in the blog world.

If you'd like to accept an invitation that had been earlier given to people who are just posting every kind of cavil concerning me. 877 -753 -3341. Even saw it right before the program started. John 6 JMJ.

If you may not be a former Roman Catholic or something, JMJ stands for Joseph Mary Jesus, the Holy Family. John 6 JMJ, who is very liberal with his insults and his various attacks, has put up a blog spot under my name, James R. White.

And that's so that people can make comments on what I say on my blog. Because they're all jumping up and down going, you should open your blog comments. Can you imagine the amount of time it would take?

I would have to hire two people who did nothing but sit there all day long and hit refresh, refresh, refresh. And not only these kinds of Roman Catholics whose only argument. These are inquisitional Roman Catholics.

This is Rome as she was back when her best apologetic was a stake in a prison. That was her best way of defending herself was to imprison her prison heretics and burn the stake. And that's the same mindset here.

Just attack, attack, attack. Just use whatever standards, hypocrisy, double standards, whatever. Just go after people. It doesn't matter if there's not a shred of truth to it. That's how it is. And not only these folks, but then there's all sorts of folks from all sorts of other perspectives, who likewise don't like me, who would be landing on that as well.

And it would be an absolute war zone. And there's plenty, plenty of places for war zones in the Internet today without turning ailmen .org into such a place. And unlike, and this is going to sound like an insult, but it's true.

Unlike most of my detractors, I happen to be very busy. They seem to have all the time in the world. But I'm teaching and I'm writing and I have book contracts and I have places to travel around the United States and, in fact, around the world.

And it takes time to do those things. And I don't live on web boards. And so, anyways, they think that that's a sign of weakness, that I don't have comments. I think it's just a sign of sanity, personally.

And so they've, this fellow has put my name on something. And I, you know, you see stuff like that. You see the unbelievable behavior of people like on Amazon, where anything I write, it doesn't matter.

I could write something on a completely separate topic. And you would find Roman Catholics and others posting things on that just simply to try to slam me. I mean, that's just how these people operate.

And I guess what that does is it makes them feel better about the fact they know they could never call in here. They know they couldn't do any better than anybody else has done in the debates. And so that bothers them so much that this is sort of their psychological means of getting around their own inability to defend their position, is to just attack folks.

And it's a sad thing to watch, but that's what's going on. We'll come back with some Adrian Rogers or your phone calls at 877 -753 -3341. We'll be right back.

Sponsor Break and Ministry Announcements

Such a rarity today. So many stars, strong and true, quickly fall away.

This portion of the dividing line has been made possible by the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. The Apostle Paul spoke of the importance of solemnly testifying of the gospel of the grace of God. The proclamation of God's truth is the most important element of his worship in his church.

The elders and people of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church invite you to worship with them this coming Lord's Day. The morning Bible study begins at 930 a .m. and the worship service is at 1045. Evening services are at 630 p .m. on Sunday and the Wednesday night prayer meeting is at 7.

The Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church is located at 3805 North 12th Street in Phoenix. You can call for further information at 602 -26-GRACE. If you're unable to attend, you can still participate with your computer and real audio at prbc .org, where the ministry extends around the world through the archives of sermons and Bible study lessons available 24 hours a day.

Crossan Debate Announcement and The Same-Sex Controversy

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

Join us August 27, 2005 at the Sea-Tac Marriott for an historic debate between evangelical Christian apologist Dr. James R. White and world-renowned Jesus Seminar co-founder and Bible skeptic Dr. John Dominic Crossan as they debate a topic which every Christian should be concerned about.

Is the Bible true? Seating and tickets are limited, so call today 877 -753 -3341 or visit AOMIN .org to reserve your seat today. That's 877 -753 -3341 to be a part of this historic event that will illuminate the fault lines of faith between conservative and liberal Christians alike.

Under the guise of tolerance, modern culture grants alternative lifestyle status to homosexuality. Even more disturbing, some within the church attempt to revise and distort Christian teaching on this behavior.

In their book, The Same-Sex Controversy, James White and Jeff Neal write for all who want to better understand the Bible's teaching on the subject, explaining and defending the foundational Bible passages that deal with homosexuality, including Genesis, Leviticus, and Romans.

Expanding on these scriptures, they refute the revisionist arguments including the claim that Christians today need not adhere to the law. In a straightforward and loving manner, they appeal to those caught up in a homosexual lifestyle to repent and to return to God's plan for His people.

The Same-Sex Controversy, defending and clarifying the Bible's message about homosexuality. Get your copy in the bookstore at AOMIN .org.

Steve Camp, the Blogosphere, and Adrian Rogers on Election

Now the pilgrim's progress is not an easy way. It's a journey to the sun day by day.

It's a walk of grace. And welcome back to Dividing Line, that of course is Steve Camp singing and Steve has joined the blogosphere. I blogged his blog. Is that blog-spotting? I guess I spotted his blog, so I blog-spotted the blog.

Man alive. I wonder how many verbs have been added to the English language that way of late. I'm not sure. I spied his blog. Actually, he told me about his blog. Like I said, I was going to sit down and write him a letter yesterday.

I was going to fire him off an email saying, you know, he keeps sending out all these articles. And you go to his website and there's article after article. It looks like a blog. But it's not a blog. There's no RSS feed or anything like that.

So it's like, you know, it would be a whole lot easier if we could do that. Someone said the link doesn't work. Actually, oh, different link? I'm confused. What link doesn't work? The link that I gave to Steve's?

Okay, I'm lost. Oh well, don't worry about me. It's the one he gave me. So anyway, it just so happens that the very next day Steve's got a blog. And he just wrote to me, I mean, during the program and said, what's this RSS stuff?

I wrote back to him and said, don't worry about it. You're on Blogger and it's built in. I've already added his feed to my Sage reader and it worked just fine, grabbed all the top ten things and everything worked fine on that end.

So take a look at Steve Camp's blog and you will be happy that you did. Or maybe you won't. I don't know. Steve has a way of stepping on a few people's toes. There's no two ways about that. Anyways, you'll remember that we were listening to Adrian Rogers' college Bible study.

I mentioned, whenever we had the last Vine line, which I think would have been a week ago today, that Adrian Rogers is not feeling well. He did speak and someone said, you know, you shouldn't play this anymore.

And my response to that is, it's not personal. What he said is about theology. What he said is about the gospel. It's not about Adrian Rogers and it's not about Johnny Hunt and it's not about Jerry Falwell.

It is about what gospel we're going to be proclaiming and how we're going to proclaim it. And if my intentions were to, in some way, shape, or form, cause Adrian Rogers harm, then yeah, you'd have a point there.

But that's not my intention. I would love to sit down with Adrian Rogers over an open Bible, over an open Greek text, and say, let's talk. Explain to me what Jesus is saying in John 6. Let's walk through this together.

Let's listen to what the Savior says in John 10 and John 17 and let's go through Ephesians 1 and Romans 8 and 9. Let's talk about these things. Let me correct some of the misapprehensions you have here concerning Reformed theology.

That would be wonderful. That would be great, but I'm not in a position to get to do that because I'm basically nobody. And so we talk here. So anyway, we were about 11 minutes in, and that means we have about three minutes left of really bad audio.

Oh, by the way, ye of the controls on the other side of the wall, someone, when I said today, I was mentioning in channel that we couldn't really do the dividing line because it's a two-man job, they said, oh, so in other words, Rich, you should call him Roz.

And I said, if I call him Roz, then I'm an uptight psychiatrist. No! Well, we could make Zeke Mad Dog, and that would work, actually. Zeke could fill that role pretty well, and you could be Roz, and I'd be Frazier, and all would be well, but we won't.

We're not any of those people. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. That's good. Anyhow, so for the next three minutes, bad audio. Listen carefully, turn it up, whatever, but please don't whine about it, and then it's going to clear up, it's going to get better, and we'll go from there.

Total Depravity, Faith, and the Ordo Salutis

What could a dead man do? No, a dead man can hear.

A dead man can know God. A dead man can resist the truth. I didn't say he's saved, but when they knew God, they glorified him not as God.

A dead man can resist truth. In fact, a dead man must resist truth, and that's the only capacity a dead man has, spiritually, is to resist the truth. That's really the issue there.

They know who God is. They are without excuse. You must believe first in order to be saved. The Bible makes that so clear.

Okay, you must believe first to be saved. Do you mean by saved, regenerated? Or do you mean by saved, justified? Do you mean by saved, what? I mean, there's no question about certain elements of the Ordo Salutis, but does Dr. Rogers give any evidence in anything I have ever heard him preach of being familiar with the discussion of faith being described as a gift of God?

1 John 5 .1, the Ordo is found there. Philippians 1 .29, does he give any evidence of any of that? I do not hear any evidence that he has truly interacted with those materials in a meaningful fashion.

Romans chapter 5 and verse 1, therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God.

Exactly right. No one, including Reformed theologians, would even begin to question what he just said. But the assumption that Rogers is making is that justification is the same thing as either all of salvation or identical to regeneration.

Does that mean that justification is identical to adoption? Or is he actually wanting to argue that all of this is completely simultaneous and you cannot make any distinction logically or basically cannot have any Ordo Salutis order of salvation whatsoever?

I mean, I know believing in an Ordo Salutis today is extremely unpopular because that's a proposition, see. And we want to make sure that the gospel and Christian theology is as muddled and as much a simple matter of personal preference and tradition as it possibly can be.

That seems to be the big thing. But I don't think that Adrian Rogers wants to go that direction. Faith first.

As John 1, 12, as many as received him, to them gave he the power to become the son of God. Even to them that believe on his name. So I believe that man is to pray. I don't believe that any man can come to God except God enable him to come.

I don't believe that we seek God. God seeks us.

Okay, wonderful. Enables him to come, John 6, 65. No man seeks God, Romans 3, 11. All right, let's follow that through. What does John 6 say in 65 and 44? Are not all of those who are drawn, all of those who are enabled, all of those who are taught by the Father and hear from the Father, are they not all coming to Christ?

Isn't the order God's work first resulting in our coming to Christ? Yet he just said the opposite of that by making faith prior to all of salvation and specifically in regards to regeneration, though he didn't use that terminology, that was the point that was being addressed there.

This is just skirting the issue. It's not addressing the issue directly. It's just skirting around it and allowing two contradictory propositions to stand side by side.

I don't believe that we could have faith unless God gave it to us. And when does he give it to us?

Does he give it to all men? If he doesn't give it to all men, then you have the elect being given faith, yes?

Is that what follows? I don't believe that we could repent unless God granted us repentance. Same question. But I reject with all of the unction, function, emotion of my soul that a man is regenerated before I believe.

Okay, well, then at this point, if I were to stand before the congregation at the Phoenix Foreign Baptist Church and say, I reject all of the unction and function of my soul, proposition X, I am then going to not only explain why, I am going to give biblical foundation.

And if I'm addressing what someone believes, and in fact what someone is trying to get someone in my congregation to believe, and they give biblical arguments for that particular position, I am going to refute the arguments.

And I'm going to refute the best of the arguments that they have. Not the worst, the best. Is that what we have happening in response? Well, I'll leave that to you to judge.

That's just a totally contrary description. Now, you can't come unless the Lord draws you. That's very clear. I've based my whole ministry on that. That's the reason why before I preach, I get on my knees.

I mean, I have a place where I kneel every Sunday, and I say, oh, God, open hearts, open understanding, because Jesus said in John 12, verse 32, no man can come unto me except the Father which hath sent me.

Draw him.

Actually, that's John 6, verse 44. John 12, 32 is, if I be lifted up, I will draw a man unto myself. And normally, isn't that ironic that that's 12 minutes and 32 minutes into this clip? John 12, 32 at 12, 32.

That just sort of struck me as odd. Anyway, aside from just the wrong citation there, which anyone can do, everybody does that, no big deal, how do you fit these two statements together? That's the question that you wish you could ask, but unfortunately you can't because you're just listening to an audiophile.

But you know he does draw. How many does he draw? Just the elect? John 1, verse 9, Christ is that light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.

So there you go. I think what he was trying, I think the reason 12, 32 came into his mind is because of that concept of drawing, draws all men. So the light is equal to the drawing. Where does John make that assertion?