December 1, 2005

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Casting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.
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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.
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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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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
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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. Welcome to The Dividing Line on Thursday afternoon, the beginning of December.
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Those of you in the St. Charles area, St. Louis, I was just looking at the weather. It's going to be nice and cold.
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I'm looking forward to it. Only one day it's going to crack into the 40s and that'll be in the 30s and the 20s.
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And that means I'll probably go walking around outside just for the fun of it, since I don't feel temperatures like that very often.
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I will in February when I go to England, but I'm looking forward to that as well.
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Anyway, those of you in that area, I'm going to be at Covenant Grace Church again, look on the blog and the calendar page.
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Yes, a calendar page that actually exists. And I'll be discussing the new perspectives on Paul in a little bit more of an informal fashion, not so much just standing up there like a seminary professor yammering away, but would like to discuss it in a little more,
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I don't know, edifying way, shall we say. I guess that would be the way to describe it.
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But I'll be doing that starting tomorrow evening and then three times on Saturday.
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And then I'll be speaking on Sunday morning for both the
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Sunday school and then the morning service. And so you are certainly welcome to come along to Covenant Grace Church there in St.
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Charles. The directions, address and so on and so forth are on the calendar page, at least
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I think they are. I seem to recall having put them there at some time in the past.
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No one's saying no. So I think I did. I know I put it on the blog at one point, so hopefully it'll it'll be there.
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877 -753 -3341, you may recall that during the last dividing line, we went over a number of clips.
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I didn't even play all of them. There was one, a couple of them that I wanted to get to, didn't have a chance to to get to from a debate that Sam Shamoon did on Pal Talk with Nadir Ahmed.
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He I sent him the program, the link to the program and and said, again, if you feel that there's anything
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I have misrepresented or, you know, if you have response, here's the number.
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Feel free to call him. A few hours ago, an individual came into our chat channel. And basically asked, would would he be treated fairly if he if he came on the program?
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And I said, look, we've been doing this program for on and off for the better portion of well, over 20 years.
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Started on KXEG, went to KHEP, we've been on KPXQ and we did it on radio.
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We've been doing the webcast. I don't know how long now for for quite some time and over two decades worth of evidence that when people call in who have a differing viewpoint, they are treated respectfully.
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And of course, there would be a great advantage to this gentleman because I've already played his comments. I mean,
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I've already played many minutes worth of of his of his statements and interacted with them already.
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And so at one point, this gentleman said, well, he wouldn't just call in unheralded.
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He would want a formal debate. And I'm like, wait a minute. I am leaving town tomorrow.
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I'm in Tampa the weekend after that. I'm going to the UK. I've got a number of presentations prepared for that.
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I have books to write. I have already more than enough debates for all of 2006 for any human being to do properly anyway on a wide range of subjects, not just not just one range of subjects, but a wide range of subjects.
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And so, no, I don't see any reason to do that. We have open phones.
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You'll be treated fairly. If you feel that I've in some way, shape or form misrepresented, have not given proper information, whatever, here's your opportunity.
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Certainly, if someone had played one of my presentations and responded to it and said, hey, feel free to call in,
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I I would not not even, you know, not even an issue there at that level.
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So we ended up having a nice conversation. It was it was a calm conversation with this Muslim gentleman,
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I assume, as a gentleman. I didn't ask. I just assumed so. And he asked a number of common questions that I was able to answer very clearly.
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For example, at one point he said, look, you know, the early early Christians would not even have the concept of the
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Trinity. And I said, really? And this was in our chat channel. Some of you have visited our chat channel.
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And I use a client for the channel called MIRC, M -I -R -C. And I have a number of I have a lot of materials that over the years, since ninety six, nine years of of being in the channel,
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I have developed over the years and I am able to just simply with a click of a button come up with various citations on discussions that are fairly common in an apologetics chat channel.
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And so I had quotations from Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch, ready to go on the subject of the deity of Christ, his view of the
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Godhead, so on and so forth. I had my translation of Melito of Sardis, his Passover sermon, one of my favorite quotes, ready to go.
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And so I provided these. And the gentleman was kind enough to say, I've never seen anything like that before.
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I was unaware of that. And OK, that's fine. And and I was able to address a number of these issues.
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And so we had a good conversation. It was it wasn't one of those things where someone stalked off all mad or you had to kick somebody out because they got all nasty or anything like that.
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We had a good conversation and the gentleman left. And I said, you know, please, you can call in.
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He said, well, maybe I'll get someone from AnsweringChristianity .org to call in or something. Well, at that point, he left and I didn't see the left.
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And I tried to make the comment before he left that it would at least be nice if whoever would call in had actually listened to what
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I've said over the past number of weeks where we have played in context the statements of Islamic apologists and respond to them in context so that at least the discussion that would take place would be one that is based upon what's actually been said and and so on and so forth.
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And so the phone lines are open. It would be best to call now so that we have the most amount of time in which to dialogue.
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I have all of the clips that I played last week and some others ready to go, ready to play. If you want to have them played, we could go over those things.
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We discussed some of the issues in channel a couple hours ago. It was right at two o 'clock my time.
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This this conversation took place a little bit before and after we discussed some of the issues.
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A lot of the questions I didn't get answered. And if there are some Muslims listening right now, maybe you'd just like to answer this question.
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One of the things was said was, why are you trying to make it look like we're mean and nasty by quoting?
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I quoted from where was that? Surah four was four forty nine, somewhere around there where it said that the sin of shirk would never be forgiven because the
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Muslim had quoted from Surah 269. I'm doing this off top my head right now about people of the book receiving their reward.
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And I said, well, you know, people recognize that there's a difference between the Meccan surahs and ayahs and the
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Medinan surahs and ayahs. And of course, I believe that the Koran is self -contradictory in its viewpoints on certain things.
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I do not consider it a consistent book, of course, a Muslim will. But I made that reference.
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And so I asked the question, how do you put together the promise of a reward for those who follow the the people of the book,
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Christians, and the fact that you believe that the doctrine of the Trinity is an example of shirk and that that can never be forgiven.
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So how do you how do you put those two together? So I didn't I did not get an answer to that outside of, well, not all Christians believe in the
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Trinity, to which I said, yes, all Christians do believe in the Trinity. That would be like saying you can be a
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Muslim and not believe that Mohammed was a prophet. It's definitional. And I certainly stand behind using that as definitional to what the faith is.
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And I didn't get an answer to any of that. And so I even said, you know, we could do this a whole lot faster when you talk and when you type.
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I mean, I'm a good typist, but still, it takes a whole lot longer to accomplish things.
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And so the phone lines are open 877 -753 -3341. You can call in.
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We can have a conversation, chat about things here during the course of the dividing line. I'll keep my eyes on the on the phone bank over there and we'll see what what happens.
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Let me just play one little thing here, a couple of things. And then if those invitations are not taken up, you may see on the blog that lots of other stuff's going on in regards to reform theology.
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And so we will take a look at those things. Having certainly made a good faith effort,
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I believe, in providing opportunity for individuals to fairly air their position and their responses to what we have said.
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And if they choose not to to take us up on that, there is absolutely positively nothing we can do about that other than just simply make note of it and move on from there.
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But I was one that I didn't get to. For those of you who have listened to the debate that I did against Hamza Abdul Malik in 1999 on the deity of Christ in the
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New Testament, I have often mentioned that the last portion of that debate, which encompasses the audience questions, is without a doubt one of the most educational portions of that debate.
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And what I mean by that is the audience questions were primarily those of Muslims.
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The Christians in the audience, a couple of them did ask some questions, but the majority did not simply because they could already tell the debate was over.
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That my opponent had taken the debate simply to attempt to argue the idea that the
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Bible was contradictory to itself, that he admitted that the New Testament as it exists today does teach the deity of Christ.
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He just doesn't accept those portions. And so for most of the Christians, they figured, well, the debate's over.
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Most of the Muslims had not even heard my opening presentation. They had left for prayer time and then had come back in all during my presentation, you know, interrupting things and so on and so forth.
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And so they were getting up and asking questions. And the questions are not the standard questions you're accustomed to answering in regards to the deity of Christ, most certainly.
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And they were all based upon some real confusion concerning the issue of the deity of Christ and concerning the issue of what the doctrine of Trinity is and things along those lines.
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And so an example of that came up at one point. Now, this was not the subject of the debate between Nadir Ahmed and Sam Shamoun.
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But listen to this statement, because it demonstrates once again, I have yet honestly and it doesn't mean they're not out there.
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They're just not the ones that their debates end up on on the Internet to be able to be listened to. I'm sure there must be somewhere
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Islamic apologists who actually understand the Christian faith. They actually seek to represent it accurately.
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Got to be someplace. I've not met one yet, however, who actually does represent the doctrine of the
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Trinity correctly, shows any real understanding of what the doctrine of the Trinity is, that there is this this very simplistic dismissal of it without even trying to understand what it is.
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Maybe that's because they associate it with shirk and they don't want to be don't even want to think about such things. I don't know.
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But listen to this, this comment. And I'll comment on the other side. If you read the
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Bible, you're not going to come out with a Bible saying, oh, yeah, there are other gods other than Allah or that there are human gods and stuff like that, because the
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Bible, there's so many places that show that Jesus was a human being. And that's the point on that. Again, both points were addressed by Sam Shamoun, and he jumped up and said, oh, my
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God, it's the uncropped word of God. This doesn't prove that it's the uncropped word of God. It's simply pointing to specific truth mentioned in your book, and it's telling you to act upon the truth which is in your book.
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Now, let me play just this this one section right here again, because the Bible, there's so many places that show that Jesus was a human being.
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And that's the point on that. Jesus was a human being. That would be like saying
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I object to Islam because Mohammed was a human being. Well, that's not an objection to Islam.
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Well, why is it an objection to Islam? Because Muslims believe that Mohammed was a human being. Exactly.
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And Christians believe that Jesus was a human being as well. Do you think we believe that Jesus was a ghost or something like that?
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They believe he was a God. No, we believe that he was the God man. We believe that he was
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God, the second person, the Trinity entering into humanity. But we believe that Jesus Christ was fully man and fully
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God. He was a human being. If he wasn't a human being, there's no gospel. There's no redemption. There's no substitutionary atonement.
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There's no forgiveness of sins. He was truly man. He lived.
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He was born. He lived. He died. He ate food. He he was truly a man.
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And I recognize that that's one of the big problems in Islam is that Allah lacks the ability to enter into mankind.
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He cannot become a man. He cannot enter into his own creation. He can create it. He can't enter into it. For some reason, once he's made it, he can't enter into it.
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He cannot perform the miracle of incarnation. And my God can. That's one of the differences is that the
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Bible says that the word became flesh, the word which had eternally existed, the word which was in personal communion with the
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Father through eternity. That word became flesh and be held as glory. Glory is of the only begotten father, full of grace and truth.
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He was truly man. So there's no objection there.
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And if you have someone in a debate throwing something out that's an objection to the side that they already believe, the only thing that can mean is that debater doesn't know what the other side believes.
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And is debating on a basis of ignorance. That's the only conclusion
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I can come to. And I know that we have Muslims listening right now. And I'd like to know why you think that that kind of statement would be an objection.
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Where is where is the objection here? I've listened to I believe it was the first thing by Sibyl, was it
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Sibyl Ahmed who debated Sam Schuman and he kept saying, well, you know, the Trinity can't be true. That can't teach the the deity of Christ because that would make two gods.
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Well, no, it doesn't. In fact, that's the whole point of John chapter five. Is the perfect unity between the father and the son, they are not the same person, but they share the one being that is
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God, unless you're going to say that God's being. Is finite and limited and cannot be shared by more than one person, you really haven't even started to engage the debate as yet.
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And if you'd simply take the Bible for what it says, if you allow it to speak with a unitary voice, it's teaching on the subject of the nature of Christ is quite compelling and in fact, extends across the entirety of the inspired text itself.
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And so that's that's not an objection. And that that does, I think, indicate a real a real problem on Mr.
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Ahmed's understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity. I would be very happy to be able to explain why that is.
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I had made one little clip. As well, to illustrate. One problem that comes up over and over again, you may recall, we listened to the
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Shabir Ali debate. Again, Sam Schuman at one point, he says, look, I don't treat the Bible the way you treat the
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Bible. I don't have to take all of it. I, you know,
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I don't have to take it in context, and I said, you know, there's the end of his credibility as far as providing any exegetical commentary right there.
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And. At one point during the debate with Nadir Ahmed, he misspoke.
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When you listen in context, you can tell he misspoke. But you see, if we don't have to apply context to the
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Bible, why do we have to apply context to anybody else? And so I had made this little quote, this little clip here.
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And this is actually what he said in the debate. The Koran is corrupted.
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There it is that those are his words. You can tell it's his voice. The Koran is corrupted. There it is.
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Now, what happened was in context, he meant to say the Bible is corrupted, but he switched
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Bible and Koran. But see, that requires you use context.
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And if you're going to go to the Bible, for example, go to Jeremiah 8 8 and ignore its context, then why can't we go and the
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Koran is corrupted, say that's what he says, because that would be untruthful.
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That would be doing something that is in error. And I was going to use that as an illustration if we had an opportunity, but I looked down upon the the phone lines there.
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And how did Gutenberg get in channel? But Gutenberg is not supposed to be able to be in channel, is it? Hmm. That's odd.
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Anyways, our our channel Bible bot just got in and I'm not sure how the channel Bible bot managed to get in because I thought it couldn't get in right now.
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How do you do that? Oh, well, anyhow, 877 -753 -3341.
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I guess the silence of the phone lines indicates that in light of the fact that there is no documentable evidence that we do not treat our callers fairly, that that is an admission that what we have said on the program over the past number of weeks is true and accurate and that we can move on from that particular point in time.
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I mentioned on the blog this morning that there has been an explosion of what
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I called anti -Calvinism out there in the the Internet.
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The phone lines are now blinking. Good. I am thankful that they that they are.
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There is a explosion of anti -Calvinism out on the Internet over the past number of days.
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And oddly enough, what I mentioned this morning was a
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Lutheran explosion of anti -Calvinism, which I found. I don't know.
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I've known it was always there. I have seen that kind of stuff before. But I don't know, it's still it still seems to me different than the
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Dave Hunt style. I'm not sure why. I maybe because there were a number of Lutherans I went to seminary with or something.
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I wouldn't make it. I shouldn't make any difference, I suppose. I don't know why it is, but it just strikes me as being quite different than if I sound quite distracted, it's because I'm seeing phone lines blinking, but I have no information as to what they are.
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So I'm just sitting here on pins and needles waiting, just like everybody else.
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And it's especially the. Relax.
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Great. Do I continue with this subject or do I go elsewhere? Do do do do do do do do do do do do do do start some music here, do do.
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Oh, OK. All right. And line two would be somebody else,
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I assume. So I guess the. Colors are on different subjects.
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OK. All right. Well, that makes sense to me. OK, so I can continue with this, then we'll start picking up our other phone callers or other subject.
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I guess they were just sort of waiting until we sort of said, oh, well, nobody's going to be called. All right.
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Sorry about that. A fellow by name of Paul McCain, I confess I've only seen him.
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On the World Magazine blog, which I like. I like the World Magazine blog. I it's one of the first things
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I look at in the morning. And I. I really do like seeing what what's up there and things like that.
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So it's not like I have any bias there. And I just could not believe the stuff
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I was reading. I quoted the poem this morning. And at the same time, looking at this,
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Dave Hunt comes out with his new briefing call and. What are we going to do with this guy?
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He just. He is so dogged. He can be refuted over and over and over and over and over again, and he'll just keep saying the same things, there's just.
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There's no. It's so incredibly frustrating,
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I need to try to find some time even while traveling to. Get some blogs up on what he has in his currently in his current newsletter.
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Trying to get another fellow who will remain nameless the moment to actually debate and trying to get
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Armenians to debate is, well, it's very difficult to to do all of this all at once.
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And. It just really bothered me because I guess for some reason
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I would expect out of someone like Paul McCain, I would expect a higher standard. I'm not sure why. I don't know the man.
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And I guess tradition can be extremely strong for anybody. But. It was just so the poem that was posted on the blog is just so ridiculous, there's.
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Who are you trying to convince with these things? That's what I'm wondering. Who are you trying to convince?
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You're certainly not trying to convince us. I mean, that's one of the reasons that I wonder about folks who engage in apologetics without studying the other side.
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Who are you trying to who are you trying to convince here anyways? Why are you engaging in debate at all if you don't study what the other side says and you misrepresent them, you know.
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Are you not that you are going to be driving them away? They are going to I mean, when someone misrepresents my beliefs, their credibility suffers and stuff like what
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I have read on Mr. McCain's blog tells me the man doesn't know anything about what I believe, or if he does, he doesn't want to represent it.
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Accurately, that doesn't help me start off going, well, let's have a nice conversation here, because I'm not going to do that to him.
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You know, I look at. I don't how often have
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I discussed Lutheran theology on the dividing line, I don't know that I have I'm sure it's come up in some call at some point or some other, and what
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I've probably said was, well, in my reading anyway, it seems like you have the
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Luther of the 1517 to 1521 area.
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You have the same Luther pretty much of the freedom of the will, bondage of the will debate.
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And I think a lot of folks will admit. That 1525 changed
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Martin Luther, changed Martin Luther a lot. And the the peasants revolt and what happened during that had a tremendous impact upon him.
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And the later Luther, I don't think you can create a real consistent picture of Luther's theology if you take it all all at once.
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There's there's too much change is too much development over time. And there are many things
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I can agree with Luther on. And the areas where I don't agree with Luther on are generally areas where I would say that.
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I give him tremendous amount of credit for going as far as he did and and and accomplishing what he did.
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But I would also say that, you know, I don't know that I would have been able to go as far as he did even.
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But that doesn't mean that he went far enough. There was other things to be dealt with, and I don't think that he necessarily dealt with them.
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And those things come up in these conversations. We have four lines full now. I think we're totally full up on lines now, all on completely different subjects.
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I'll get to those calls in just a moment. But it would never cross my mind to to post a poem.
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A mocking, inaccurate, straw man filled, absurd poem like that about Lutheranism, even though I don't agree with a lot of modern
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Lutheranism at various a sundry point, it would never cross my mind. I don't understand it. I just I throw my hands up and go, don't get it.
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So, you know, it's in a blog today. I invited Mr. McCain, Paul McCain. Let's do exegesis.
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Let's go to the heart and soul of Calvinistic theology.
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Let's go to the text. Let's go to John six. Let's let's let's see how your Lutheranism impacts your exegesis.
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Let's go to the inspired word. I haven't gotten a response that yet, but I have also been busy with other things.
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And so we will see what what goes now. Let's start taking our my goodness, a whole bank of calls.
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We can only take one more call, but we can't because I'm using that line for the Internet right now. So so we need to get some phone lines taken care of here.
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Let's talk with Scott. How you doing, Scott? Hello, Dr. White. How you doing?
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I'm doing pretty good. It's pretty cold out here in Nebraska. That sounds really good to me.
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Last night, we I was at Bible study and it's a campus Bible study here. And he went over, we were talking about the
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Holy Spirit and he brought up John three five. Which says, truly, truly,
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I say to you, unless a man is one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. And I was wondering, he was he explained what he felt water meant.
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That was the physical birth. And I was I wasn't really sure about that. And I was just kind of wondering, this might be a simple question, but.
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Yeah, well, that that's a common understanding is unless a person is born of water, physical birth and the spirit, spiritual birth, you know, in the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God.
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I think there is a better explanation than that found in the
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Old Testament background to Jesus's entire conversation with Nicodemus.
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And that is found in recognizing that the the symbols and the language is being drawn from is found in Ezekiel chapter thirty six verses twenty five and following, which says,
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I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness and from all your idols.
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I will cleanse you. Now we'll give you a new heart and a new spirit. I will put within you and I'll remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
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Now put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
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And so this sounds to me like the exact fulfillment of that in the description of what it means to be born again and being described in Ezekiel thirty six parallel in Jeremiah thirty one, the concept of the new covenant and what will take place in regards to the new covenant, the sprinkling of clean water, the giving of the spirit, the taking out the heart of stone, the giving of the heart of flesh.
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This is all what lays behind, I believe, Jesus' language in John chapter three. So I would at one point prior to my seminary education, that was how
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I viewed John three five was the way that your Bible study teacher did. But it was in seminary that I found the the parallel passage in the
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Old Testament background. And so I would suggest that as a stronger foundation. OK, OK.
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All right. All righty. Well, you stay warm up there. I'm looking forward to the cold starting tomorrow.
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Yeah. All right. Thanks, Dr. All right. God bless. Bye bye. All right. That opens up one line.
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Let's go to Bo over in California. Hi, Bo. Hi. How you doing?
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Doing good. Good, good. I'm the guy that was emailing you. Yes, sir. I know. And it's been a pleasure to talk with you.
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And I don't know if I could ask you a quick question about Acts chapter 17. OK, Acts 17, verse twenty seven.
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In contrast with Romans three. Uh huh. Could you talk about that a little bit?
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Sure. Acts chapter 17 is talking about this is Paul's Mars Hill sermon he made from one man, every nation of mankind live on all the face of the earth, having determined a lot of periods and boundaries, their dwelling place that they should seek
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God and hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us. For in him we live and move our head and have our being, as even some of your poets have said, for we indeed are his offspring, being then
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God's offspring. We ought not to think the divine image is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.
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So what Paul's doing is he is starting from the idol that he saw as he was passing by to an unknown
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God. And he is seeking to use that as a as an apologetic stepping stone to introduce to these individuals who are not worshippers of one
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God, they are pagan worshippers of multiple gods, to introduce them to the one true
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God. And so he is speaking in very general terms in regards to the fact that God made man and he put his, he determined the families of men and where they would dwell, so on and so forth.
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And there is a general responsibility that is a part, well indeed the entirety of the law is responsibility because that law is written upon the heart of man for man to do those things that is right before God.
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We notice, for example, that Paul says in Romans chapter one that even though men knew they should give thanks and they should honor
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God as God, they refused to do so. Instead they turn that and they worship and serve the creation rather than the creator.
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So there is in general revelation sufficient knowledge for man to know that he is to honor God. He is to give thanks to God.
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The same type of concept here that we are to seek after God. But the question is, who is going to do that?
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And in fact, can the fallen children of Adam truly, outside of an act of grace in their heart that frees them from the slavery of sin, do that which they are required to do in this general revelation of God, where God has made man in his image, so on and so forth?
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And Paul's answer to that would be no. Because they are in Adam, they have fallen in the federal head of the race, that they lack that capacity to even do the most basic things that would be considered pleasing in God's sight.
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Seeking after him, honoring him as God, giving thanks for all the things. They become corrupted in their activities, corrupted in their minds, corrupted in their thoughts.
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That's the whole description of Romans chapter one. And so it's two different contexts that are being addressed there.
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One is the the general requirements that God has for man. And the other is who is is able to do these things, who is able to actually fulfill the requirements for man.
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And the answer before God on man's part, the answer is, well, man can't until that change has taken place in his heart.
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And he has been made capable of. Well, as the passage is read to the other caller,
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Ezekiel chapter 36, I've taken out that heart of stone, given you a heart of flesh, that heart of stone. Doesn't want to be taken out.
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It's perfectly happy where it is and doesn't want to change. So two different contexts as far as that phrase, seeking
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God. And hence the, I guess, apparent contradiction is not a contradiction at all.
35:51
OK, OK. Thanks for sharing, Jay. All right. Thank you very much. We look forward to hopefully seeing you down here sometime.
35:56
I'm hoping for May already. OK. All right. Thanks a lot. Indeed, we are working on hopefully being at Biola in the
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L .A. area in May of next year. Pray that a debate will work out.
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We're working on a very important debate topic and subject there. It's not not set in stone yet.
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And so pray that that will, in fact, take place, because I certainly want to. I'm looking forward to it.
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And it would be, I think, very, very, very useful. And from my perspective, would be one of many debates on the subject
36:30
I would like to do. I'll let you guess from there what what that would be. Did it, did it, did you?
36:40
Oh, OK. Moving lines around on me is is really going to leave me confused here. Let's talk with Jeff.
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Hi, Jeff. How you doing? Hey, Dr. Wright. How are you? Doing good. Good. You're like a Calvinistic Bible answer man today.
36:55
I, you know, we're sort of covering not quite as broad a range. Sometimes some of the some of the calls,
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Hank, Hank gets leave me going. I'm glad no one asked me that one. You know, especially the does my kitty go to heaven one.
37:08
That one just would leave me going. So anyway, I don't. I had a couple of quick questions for you.
37:15
I know you've done a lot of work with the early work with the new perspective on Paul. And in fact, that's what
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I'm speaking on this weekend. OK, cool. I have been, as you know,
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I deal a lot with, you know, Jewish believing circles. And I've kind of been telling them that the new perspective on Paul is probably going to they're probably going to start encountering a lot more than they have been because, you know, it has would have a radical impact on actually proclaiming the gospel to Jewish people.
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And a lot of the research I see and understandably so and deal specifically with justification.
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And I was wondering if there is what resources you would probably recommend for dealing with the question of or if anybody has tackled it of, you know, that Jesus, Jews don't need
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Jesus. And that kind of seems like a consistent theme with at least some of new perspective like Gager or however you pronounce his name.
38:14
Well, good, good question. Actually, you know, it's odd. I this is not my favorite subject, not because I don't like talking about justification.
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I do. But but so much of this is put into a context where you have to go over so much foundational information concerning the theory of this particular writer.
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So you need to look at you look back at W .D. Davies and you have to look back at Sanders, of course.
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And and who was Davies' son -in -law. And you have to look at previous stuff that sometimes you have to go into into the 1800s and 1900s.
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You have to do all this stuff with all that. It's very hard to be overly passionate. In fact, the result of all of this, in my estimation, especially in many of the churches, is a dramatic drop in as if there was much before, but a dramatic drop in in passion for the doctrine of justification, because most people are left going, look, no one really knows.
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It's so complicated. I don't want to open my mouth and have someone walk up and smack me upside the head with some 500 page book that says what
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I just said is is completely, you know, out to lunch on something like that.
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So it's not one of my favorite subjects. And when I approach it and I'm sort of giving away what I'm gonna be doing this weekend, when
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I approach it, I really self -consciously attempt. To avoid what
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I have heard in a lot of the scholarly and even good responses to new perspectivism, and that is
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I I don't understand how to address this issue without being passionate about it.
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I mean, I don't understand how to address the whole concept of my standing before God without being passionate about it.
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And so when we talk about something like this, well, you know, Jews don't really need
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Jesus because they're perfectly fine where they are. If you if you take Sanders conclusions to their final conclusion, all of this, honestly,
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I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to. I saw just just now one of our OPC elders in channel scrolled something by it said that there's a track that OPC dot org on that very subject.
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I've not seen it, but I pass that information along to you so that you're so that you're aware of that. You might take a look at it.
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But when I address this issue, one of the things that is absolutely fundamental.
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Is that so much of this entire subject is based upon a view of scripture and a view of inspiration that is utterly foreign to the people who, for some reason, are starting to embrace these things.
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I guess I don't understand that part of it. I mean, if a lot of scriptures I'm like what
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I'm reading now, it's like they kind of aren't doing really. I know I'm not probably reading the most scholarly of their books, but what
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I'm reading, I'm reading Gager right now or Gadger or however you pronounce it. And he's just like pretty much skipped in verses that don't fit in and like, you know, referring to the early part of Romans 11 as like the remnant theory, which out without actually doing exegesis, you know, of saying, well, maybe they people came up with that theory because it uses the term remnant in, you know, early part of, you know, it's very frustrating.
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It's very frustrating to read. Well, and that is unfortunately a phenomenon that extends all the way across all of the
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New Perspectivists, including their most leading proponents, because the system is based.
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I don't know of a single leading New Perspective proponent that would even use the term inerrancy of his view of scripture.
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First of all, I mean, that's just that's just a given. Secondly, almost all of them that I know of, in fact,
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I don't know any again that would violate this, the major ones function on a minimal
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Pauline corpus. In other words, the only function on viewing Paul is the author of six or seven books at the most.
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And they knowingly take Ephesians, Colossians, the pastoral epistles out of that mix and do not allow that to speak to the viewpoint of what what
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Paul actually believed. And that leaves a lot of folks going, oh, what in the world are you talking about?
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How how can you say this was Paul's perspective when he says right here, well, you need to know that Paul didn't write that. See, I guess they leave out like Clement, who knew
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Paul, you know, and speaks to justification. And that's the epistle, you know, it's unsympathetical. They don't they probably don't even go there.
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Well, not well. I mean, let's let's let's face it. When you when you have an E .P. Sanders who can talk about second or can talk about Second Temple Judaism, Tananic Judaism without even giving lip service to the insights on Second Temple Judaism provided by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, those are those are irrelevant to his.
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They might know. Yeah, even though they're written by Jews. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, once you have those things in mind, you start realizing, wow, these folks are being exceptionally selective in what they're going to allow in.
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And then when they're dealing with those texts, they're dealing with Romans, so they're dealing with Galatians.
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No, they don't have to worry about context. They don't have to worry about the normal rules of exegesis that you and I would have to function by.
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They can just simply say, well, Paul, I like his emphasis over here rather than his emphasis over there.
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And I don't have to treat it in a in a consistent fashion. And yeah, that leaves most of us going. So the relevance of all this is exactly what.
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And it really does make me wonder and I'm going to try to avoid getting on my hobby horse here, but this is one of the another way that I am very different in how
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I approach this. It just seems that even some of the best minds we have today have been so.
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Inculcated with the modern educational theory that basically says, look, if someone's a good scholar, which means they're smart, they do great research, it doesn't matter how heretical or wacky their responses are.
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You are or their positions, their final positions are. You are to respect them and give due credence to their viewpoints, even when it comes to theology.
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And and this is what people are being trained to do. And so you can listen and I've listened to some of our best people and they're talking about these folks and they talk about how, you know, how nice they are and how brilliant they are and stuff like this.
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And I disagree with them here and there. But boy, you know, you don't want to debate this guy because he'll really intimidate you and blah, blah, blah.
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And I think we're listening to the same thing. I probably listen to all the same things. And you're you're you're sitting there going, but but but wait a minute here.
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He's saying what he's saying. There's another way of salvation. He's saying this. He said, what on the world?
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What? Why can't we just come out and say this person in chatting with them might, you know, be someone you wouldn't mind having a cup of coffee with.
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But the fact of the matter is, this person is subverting the faith of the saints, but he's a great scholar.
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Well, yeah, there are great scholars who are who are atheists, but we need to draw our lines rather more clearly.
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And the problem is that we we are afraid to do that because and the result of that, let's let's get to the cut to the heart here.
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The result of that is a an ever diminishing confidence in the clarity of the gospel.
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I can't see how someone in seminary today in the vast majority of seminaries where this kind of conversation is going on on a regular basis,
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I have a hard time understanding how they can stand in the pulpit and preach with any type of passion and in any way view themselves as the ambassadors for Christ, speaking with his authority and proclaiming the great doctrine of justification when the vast majority of them have been in in schools where they went to seven different classes and got forty seven different viewpoints on the subject.
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And they're not going to sit there and go, well, I'm just going to choose this one and preach it with authority. No, you can't do that.
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And so to me, it's a it's a real crisis where the academy is has really fallen on its face at this particular point in time.
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And even though you will find it in those in those lectures that you and I have both listened to, you will find them saying, you know what, most of these people, you know,
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James or E .P. Sanders said to Guy Watters once after Guy Watters presented a paper on the modern
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Roman Catholic view based on on their their reinterpretations and understandings of Trent.
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E .P. Sanders said he had never seen that stuff before. And if he had, he would have had to have given credit to the
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Roman Catholics for his own theories. Now, why in the world is this man not knowing what
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Roman Catholics have taught all along? Well, yeah, the huge thing I thought was they misunderstand like, you know, heretics never say they're heretics.
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Legalists never say they're legalists. You know, right. You know, it's not like the reformers didn't know that, you know,
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Rome mentioned grace every once in a while or that the Jews mentioned grace once in a while. That's the other thing is anti right.
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And these folks are always misrepresenting the reformers as if they thought that the Jews were a bunch of Pelagians pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.
48:03
I'm sorry. I must have missed that. But I I didn't get that. I think any any layman, any reformed layman who is in the know kind of knew that.
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So I was wondering how good question or how on earth could a professor? I don't know.
48:19
I do not know. I mean, you know, if you did, did you have you seen J. Ligon Duncan's paper?
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He did a new perspectivism about a year and a half ago. It's coming out with a book called
48:30
Misunderstanding Paul or something. Right. Well, the paper's been out for quite some time. Fairly lengthy is almost book length of the
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South. But there is a footnote in J. Ligon Duncan's paper where he narrated a conversation between a student and N .T.
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Wright on the subject of Luther and Calvin and Wright's utter ignorance of the
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Westminster Confession and Calvin and Luther. And what they said was absolutely appalling.
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It was appalling. Now, OK, fine. I'm not saying the man has to be a church historian, but if he's going to over and over and over again say these folks missed it, then
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I think there is a requirement that he might want to actually read what they had to say rather than just simply taking some some some other other viewpoints and just throwing it out there repeatedly over and over again.
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And so there's. Why accusing them of reading back into Paul? Right. Even know what exactly. Exactly, exactly.
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So in answer to your actual first question, no, I don't I don't know of any specific resources that are addressing that outside of the simple fact that, you know, isn't that what the book of Hebrews was all about?
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I mean, is it? You know, I mean, like you. Yeah. You feel like you're in Alice in Wonderland.
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You know how far down the rabbit hole do I have to go before I get to the end of this freaking book? Yeah, I believe me.
49:57
I know exactly what you mean. It's not enjoyable reading a lot of this stuff. It truly is not.
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It's it's a chore, but we have to do it because that's what's troubling the church these days. So, well, anyways, brother,
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I hope that's of some use to you. All right. Then I'll send another question. I'll call back next week. All righty. Thank you very much, sir.
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All right. God bless you both. Bye. All righty. Boy, we've lined up the the phone calls today.
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Let's get to our last one here with plenty of time. Let's talk to Adam. Hi, Adam. Hi, Dr.
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White. How's it going? It's going pretty well, other than the fact that all your people are talking about being cold. And I'm up here in Wisconsin by Lake Michigan and my phone doesn't work indoors.
50:39
It's already it's already under 20 degrees. All right. So I bet you can see your breath real well right now, huh?
50:46
Oh, yeah. Oh, boy. I'm looking forward to that. It's it's sixty nine degrees here right now.
50:52
Just just let you know. So anyways, what can we do for you? I was reading your blog article and I'm a confessional
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Presbyterian and I attend the Lutheran University here. And so I get a chance to talk with a lot of Lutherans.
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And one of the things I've been noticing, especially about Lutheranism and dialogues with reform theology, is they seem to say things that are true.
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But if they're not qualified, they can be kind of deceptive. Like, for instance, this morning we were discussing
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Romans 830 and the pastor, the person, the
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Greek teacher was talking about predestination. And he said that the reform, he said, you know, it's one of these things where God has a plan for your life and so forth.
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And he said, and so on. And he said, well, do you believe God has a plan for the non -elect? And he said the reform would like to like us to think that he doesn't.
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And I thought a statement like that, if it's not qualified, you know, can be really kind of deceptive. If you mean, does he have a salvific plan where he tries to save them, then no.
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But if you mean, does he have, you know, a plan whereby he works their evil to his glory, then yeah.
52:05
I mean, you know, that's one of the things that I've noticed. But my question is, Romans 830 is the golden chain of redemption.
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Those who be predestined, he also called. Those who be called, he also justified. Those who be justified, he also glorified. Doesn't the fact that this is in a chain that uses predestined, called, justified, and glorified define the soteriological context in which it's being used?
52:27
Well, he wanted to say the glorification was the process of sanctification only.
52:33
Really? Yeah, he wanted, well, and John Piper even said that it was partially that. But he also said the glorification, but John Piper also said the glorification also had salvation and final salvation.
52:45
Oh, yeah. It has to be in light of 831 and following, but still, these are all soteriological.
52:53
What does it do with justification? Calling. I mean, these are all soteriological terms. You've got to understand, you've got to understand
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Lucanism, too. You've got to understand, you pour water over an infant, and they're considered justified. This is true, yeah.
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But that's because they had infantile faith. That's how you have sola fide. Remember to keep that, you know. Well, the problem is is that, you know, their main argument that they use against Arminians is that they say,
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Arminians will say, well, he's not at the age of accountability yet, he can't have faith. And they come back and say, well, why is it that there has to be something in that person in order for them to be saved?
53:28
Isn't it all by grace? And that argument doesn't work against Reformed theology. Right, right. And that's the reason that I found, you know, just some really, you know, if I'm reading
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Francis Pieper's Dogmatics, how just really, you know, bad the responses are to Romans 9.
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I mean, things like God isn't the agent of the vessels of wrath being fitted to destruction and things like that.
53:54
And, you know, the pra means that this is predestined before time, but, you know, if there's no pra on the verb, you know, therefore it's not before time.
54:03
I mean, all this stuff is just, you know, you're thinking to yourself, you know, what's going on here?
54:08
And in fact, I was talking to, I was reading a book by John Pieper called The Pleasures of God, and one of my friends who's studying to be a
54:18
Lutheran pastor asked me what I was reading, so I showed it to him, and he looked at the bottom, and he was upset that I was reading something by a
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Baptist. Really? And I said, he's basically a
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Presbyterian who doesn't believe in infant baptism. I said, why would you be surprised by that?
54:35
And then he said something that was really telling. He said, infant baptism is something which the
54:41
Church stanza falls on. Really? And I just about dropped the book. I said, the cross of Christ is something which the
54:50
Church stanza falls on, and he had to agree with me, but, you know, it's the point where they want to be able to defend this view of the means of grace, where God works salvifically in the means of grace, you know, and only works in that area.
55:08
And when you take that position, you know, I always ask the question, well, if that's the case, should we just take
55:13
Bibles in buckets of water and douse people? And then you get back to, well, yeah, they can resist it, and then, you know, then you're asking, well, if they can resist it, then what's all this about the bondage of the will?
55:26
Well, that's, again, trying to go back to making Luther consistent with himself at that point, which I think is pretty difficult to do at that point.
55:33
But yeah, trying to hold all these different concepts together, I knew that there was,
55:40
I know certain individuals, especially over in California, who are Lutheran, who are just rabidly anti -Calvinistic.
55:46
I knew that there was that stream, but I have had some good friends who were monergistic
55:53
Lutherans, and it just strikes me that this explosion on Paul McCain's blog, and I know it's representative, so it's been there all along.
56:05
You can go back in history, and there's always been fighting back and forth between Calvinists and Lutherans, and it goes right back to Zwingli and to Luther himself, no question about that, even though I think you could make a pretty strong case that Calvin was more than kind and Christian in many of his comments he made about Luther and attempting to mediate and so on and so forth, and Luther would have none of it.
56:35
But I know it's been there, but it still, for some reason, bothers me a lot to see it.
56:41
And I meant it when I said on the blog to Paul McCain, how about raising the level of the dialogue here?
56:48
How about dumping this mockery and this silliness, and let's get to the text itself, and let's be consistent.
56:55
Let's not get to this point where you say, well, you Calvinists, you know, you demand too much removal of mystery, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
57:05
No, let's be consistent. If you're going to say something about verbs in this text, let's apply that throughout the
57:12
New Testament. Let's not just make it on these particular areas where, my experience is, a lot of Lutherans run off to mystery, mystery, mystery.
57:19
Let's not do that. Let's exegete the text. The funny part is, is Lutherans are more than willing to talk with you.
57:24
I mean, Lutherans are more than willing to discuss. That's why I was so surprised when I was sitting there reading that. I'm like, you know, you'd think he would have, you know, called or written you an email or something, or written something.
57:35
You know, like, I actually had a dialogue, but, you know, it just seems like there are some
57:40
Lutherans who are really good. You know, I have a pastor here who's a guy who has his PhD from Harvard, actually, in the
57:46
Semitic phase here, and he's a real nice guy, but there's some folks that, it just seems like they love, in fact,
57:56
I had one professor one time, during the whole class period, into how the book of John talks about the presence of Christ in the
58:04
Lord's Supper. Right. I mean, that came out on McCain's blog, too. That becomes another big issue that pops up as well.
58:11
Hey, brother, we are out of time for this particular edition. Thank you for calling, and get in and get warmed up.
58:16
Okay, thanks. All right, God bless. Bye -bye. Well, thanks to the callers for a very lively edition of The Dividing Line today.
58:24
A shame that we didn't get the callers that we were looking for as far as a dialogue on what we have said over the past few weeks, but we certainly made the offer, and that means,
58:34
I guess, what we said is accurate and true, and we'll stand behind it. We will see you, Lord willing, next Tuesday on The Dividing Line.
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God bless. If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602, or write us at P .O.
59:39
Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the
59:45
World Wide Web at aomin .org, that's A -O -M -I -N dot O -R -G, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.