Bassam Zawadi Continued

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Webcasting 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. Hey, good morning, welcome to Dividing Line on a Thursday morning, unusual time, but it is an unusual week.
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It is, of course, Christmas Eve Eve, and we all have 147 ,000, let me check this, 147 ,619.
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Yeah, that's how many things I have on my to -do list. Before my head hits the pillow on Sunday night, preaching both services at the
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Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church, we'll be heading back into Hebrews. Those of you who've been wondering if I apostatized from my
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Hebrews series, I have not. But I do have a member of my church who, after my last sermons in Hebrews, which was back in August, informed me that I needed to explain next time exactly how the
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New Covenant is better on every level. He sort of scared me, sort of like, hmm, okay, well, if he wants that much detail,
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I'm going to have to really make sure that I work hard here. So that's one of the reasons we've been delayed.
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But actually, I just had some other things I wanted to address, and we'll be back into Hebrews 8, verse 6 on the
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Lord's Day at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. That's what I will be doing Sunday morning.
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But I have a few things to do between now and then as well, obviously, and that includes this program, 877 -753 -3341, dividing .line
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via Skype. Be patient, Skype callers, because for some reason, probably has to do with Windows, but for some reason, the laptop we use for Skype isn't wanting to do
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Skype anymore, and so we're having to do it through a different computer. And so I'm watching Rich run sprints in the other room, and, you know, for an aged man like him, that's a little tough.
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He's just over two years older than I am, but anyway. Dividing .line on Skype, unless he just turned that off and is now walking out of the offices, and at which point this will eventually just stop anyways.
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But 877 -753 -3341, I saw an article by the great anonymous one, a
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Turretin fan yesterday. Article, it's not really an article, it's just a little notice, but it made me think, and I've been thinking a lot about maybe next week doing an end -of -year program, and when
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I think about 2010, and that's what the last week of the year is for, is thinking about what happened in the preceding year, which, again, has gone by at an incredible speed.
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As I think of 2010, the first date of 2010, the only date, really, honestly, as I think about it, the only date that really crosses my mind about 2010 is
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February 25th, because that is the day that, when I was in London, I posted an article exposing
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Ergin Kanner for having lied in twice, claiming to have debated
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Shabir Ali, claiming to have debated Abdul Salib, who is a Christian, of course.
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And you know what that led to, and you know what happened during the spring and summer of this year.
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You know that the great evangelical cover -up has worked, and as I think about, you know, somewhere to say, what did you see in 2010 that concerned you about the state of the
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Church, I would say the great evangelical cover -up. I mean, talk about evangelical apologetics taking a punch in the nose, a black eye.
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Its utter incapacity to deal with a simple truth, a false prophet in its midst, is one of the clearest examples
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I could give of where even the, quote -unquote, discernment ministries have shown very, very little discernment whatsoever.
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And so a Turretin fan noted that he had listened, he's a glutton for punishment, to some recent sermons from Ergin Kanner from, is that the
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Clough Pike Baptist Church, C -L -O -U -G -H, haven't a clue, says
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Ergin preached with, apparently, both his brothers in attendance. There were a couple of things that struck me as I listened to his messages, but most of all,
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I noticed that most of his criticized material was gone, and he had some new material in his presentation.
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He did not make claims to know Arabic or to have been raised in Istanbul. By the way, we just found another video that was pointed out to us recently where, again, before the exposure, he had claimed to have been born and raised in Istanbul, which we know is not true.
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It is a lie. But that means that it was, again, as we've documented so many of them, a lie repeated multiple times.
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It was part of the persona, part of the story. Or anything else of that kind that I noticed.
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I hope this shows a change in Dr. Kanner's approach, and that he will stick to this kind of presentation going forward.
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Well, yeah, but there's one problem with that. And that is, if he has removed all the stuff that his defenders have been saying all along was actually truthful, and if Norman Geisser's defenses were truthful, then why stop making the claims?
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Why stop talking about being raised as a, being trained as a jihadi in Turkey?
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That's what he told us he had done. Why not claim to know Arabic if all the stories he told his own students were true?
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But if he stops making these claims, I guess some people are saying, well, isn't that enough? Well, you tell me.
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When we catch a politician lying, which is fairly regular, do they have to apologize?
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Or is just stopping lying about that enough? And shouldn't the pulpit have a little bit higher standard, just a skosh higher standard than, say, the political barnstorming rally?
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I'd like to think so, but evidently that's not the case. And that's a shame.
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It is, it is, I don't know what it's like. I don't know how, I could not be
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Eric Enkander. I could not stand in front of an audience knowing that there's a high probability that at least a few of the people out there know what
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I used to say about myself and that I have not come clean. I have not admitted that it was all a bunch of lies.
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I have instead just done everything I possibly can to sweep it under the rug with the willful help of men like Norman Geisler.
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And that I'm just going to, how can you stand up there and talk about integrity? How can you stand up there and talk about truthfulness?
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I don't, I don't understand it. But that's what he's doing. And there are lots of people that, you know, come and listen and he's still showing up at Veritas forums and making a mockery of the term and that's just going to keep going because, like I said, evangelicals have very short memories.
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They have the attention span of the rest of the world and the rest of the world's moved on, you know. I mean, oh, did you hear about WikiLeaks today?
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Oh, did you hear about this? Oh, no contemplation, period, no meditation, no, nothing like that at all.
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It just, it's just not there. And so that's, that's, that's great concern to me.
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But most of all, I noticed that most of his criticized material was gone. Well, that says a lot.
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And that says a lot to me about those who defended him. And that says much more to me about him as an individual.
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Because if those things are true, then how dare you stop saying them? If all that stuff was true, don't you dare back down.
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There's a bunch of lies and you need to repent of it. And he just simply won't do either one. And that's, that's how it goes.
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Looks like the Skype connections are not working from what I'm seeing in our chat channel.
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So I guess it's just going to be 877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number that you can call to get into the program today.
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I want to play a few sections once again from the series
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I started on the last program, just responding to just a few brief comments as they go by in a seminar given in the
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United Arab Emirates by Bassam Zawadi, who was my opponent in debate on February 12th in London at the
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Trinity Road Chapel, same location where I debated Abdullah al -Andalusi last year.
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Also in February, I forgot what date that was. I think it was later in February, but I could be wrong. That'd be funny if it was the same day.
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I doubt it would be. But anyways, there's some time in February. And really, maybe we'll actually have that on video available from last year by the time
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I debate Bassam this year. That would be nice. But we had a good debate last year and looking forward to a good debate on whether Islam misrepresents
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Christianity. And I think that's a very important subject. It's what
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I sort of discussed on Iron Sharpens Iron this past weekend as well. So you might want to take a look at that.
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But back to Bassam Zawadi, we are going to—again,
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I'm using this—I'll tell you a little behind -the -scenes thing here while Rich is queuing up calls in the other room as well.
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We've already got three people online, so we'll get to you all in just a few minutes. But Greg—that's how we call him—Greg, but we call him
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Greg, from New York, popped in the channel, I don't know, a couple of months ago and said, hey, you know,
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I found this program. And given what you're doing, the dividing line, I think you'd find this useful. And unfortunately, it's only a
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Windows program, but I have a little Windows box in here, a little—actually, it's sort of more like a netbook type thing.
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But anyway, so I can run it. It's called the
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Sonocent Audio Notetaker. And it'll take any
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MP3, WAV, whatever, that's spoken, you know, sort of like the dividing line, spoken material, and it displays it instead of a
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WAV form. If you've ever seen, you know, Adobe Audition or Audacity or anything like that,
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I've used all of those. I use Peak LE6 on my Mac and stuff like that. It displays the file as a
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WAV form. And so as I listen to it, you know, I will find something that I want to mention.
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I'll put a marker there, and then I can skip that marker. And that's how you can go from point to point without necessarily playing everything in between and stuff like that.
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Well, this program, instead of doing a WAV form type thing, it breaks the spoken word up into phrases and sentences as little lines.
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And you can, you know, the cursor goes down these lines, and you can mark off sentences, whole sections of different color, and then go to them very, very quickly.
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And then there's a note pane to the left of it, so you can put notes in it. So like last week, or last week, last time that we listened to Bassam, I had all this stuff in different colors.
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And then over in the notes section, I had the references to the verses. For example, when he talked about Nathan coming to David, and he mistakenly said that, you know,
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David had slept with a prostitute, and then Nathan comes to him, and God says he's going to, you know, take his wives, and they're going to be ravished by his companion under the sun.
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What David had done in secret was going to be done to his wives in open, because David had taken one man's wife.
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Remember the whole story, Bathsheba, Uriah has one wife, and David takes that one wife. Remember the story that Nathan tells about the man who had the one sheep, and the rich man takes one.
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Well, God's going to do to David what David did to Uriah. Now, it's funny, I forgot to mention this, but Bassam said, now this didn't happen.
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David repented. That's not true. 2 Samuel 16 .22 says it did happen. God actually brought that punishment to bear upon David, and David knew exactly what it was, that it was punishment.
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And so, I didn't mention it last time, but those references are just right over on the side.
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So it's a nice little program. It was weird, I tried to buy it. I guess the guy's from Germany.
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If you only have a Gmail address, don't bother trying, you're not going to be able to get it. You have to have a non -free email address to purchase this program.
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It's a little weird. But anyway, I got it, and that's what I'm using now, and I think it works really, really well.
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So if you do something similar, if you're a student that records your professor's lectures, for example, this would be really useful.
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Not quite as useful as the pen that I mentioned to you all before, but anyways, that's another story. All right, let's listen to some of Bassam's claims here.
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Then we've got four people online, so it looks like we'll be able to fill up the rest of our time with that.
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But let's listen here. I mean, let me give my own personal opinions of what I don't find to be superior about their teachings.
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For example, I don't know if you ever heard, Christians would always say, Jesus said, love your enemies. And they always think that that's something good.
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Oh, Jesus said, love your enemies, isn't that amazing? Well, if you love your enemies, it also means that you'll have to love
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Satan, because Satan is your enemy as well. I find that to be morally objectionable. I don't find anything good about that.
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Now, I have mentioned to Bassam that I feel that there are some basic category difficulties that he has.
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He seems to miss the categories in which the scriptures are teaching.
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And this is a good example of that. I don't think anyone listening to Jesus when he spoke about loving our enemies would have thought that what he meant by that was that we should love
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Satan. In fact, in an article on his website, he has criticized me because at one point
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I was responding to the Dean Show and to a former youth minister becoming
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Muslim, as if being a youth minister makes you an expert on Christianity, but who was talking about how, well,
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Muslims love Jesus. And I was saying, wait a minute, how can you say you love Jesus? When you deny all the fundamental teachings that were presented about Jesus by his closest disciples.
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And I said, that's like my claim to say I love Muhammad. I do not love Muhammad. And he took that phrase,
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I do not love Muhammad, and see, you're violating Jesus' teachings. He said love everybody. So you're supposed to love false teachers.
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So I'm supposed to love Brigham Young and Joseph Smith and Judge Rutherford and Mary Baker Eddy and Ellen G.
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White. I guess I'm just supposed to love all false prophets, as if that has something to do with Jesus' teaching, where clearly he's not talking about false prophets and false teachers or any of those things.
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He's talking about the fact that Christians do not respond to those who hate them in the way that many other world religions do.
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I mean, just, you know, I use as an example in response to this Toronto Muslim who wrote to us.
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And by the way, he's written back, and it's worse than what I posted on the blog. And he's been calling the offices and stuff.
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And he's a real radical. He's a hothead radical. But you don't respond to him with hatred.
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I mean, I pity the man. I mean, what a life to be just constantly enraged.
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I hope he's not married. My goodness, what must it be like to be married to somebody like that? But you don't respond with hatred.
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You pray for the man. You pray that God will do a work in his life and change his heart, because he needs a new heart.
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He's got a heart of stone. It's granite. It's not limestone. It's granite.
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And that's what Jesus is talking about. He's not talking about loving Satan or anything of the kind. I mean, that's just, there's a level of absurdity to that kind of argumentation.
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I don't really think, you know, people might, you know, maybe the psalmist saying, well, people do that to Islam.
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Well, when I do that, then you can hold me accountable for that. But two wrongs don't make a right. And this kind of argumentation just does not work very well, because it involves rather obvious category errors.
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Let's go to the next one. To make it harmonized. Secondly, I would say there is no harmony between the books, because there are contradictions between these books in the
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Bible. So give a few examples. Now, first, second book of Samuel talks about David, and he slew the men of 700 chariots of the
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Syrians and 40 ,000 horsemen. Whilst first Chronicles, another book in the
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Old Testament says that David slew the men of 7 ,000 chariots and 40 ,000 footmen.
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So you see, they're contradicting each other on these numbers. And another example, second Chronicles chapter 9, verse 25,
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Solomon had 4 ,000 stalls for horses. While one king, 426, will say they have 40 ,000 stalls.
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And these examples are so clear that there's no way that they'll deny it. And that's why they will admit to you, yes, these contradictions are there.
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But what they will tell you is that these contradictions are insignificant. This is what they're going to tell you.
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And they're going to tell you, who cares if Solomon had 4 ,000 stalls or 40 ,000 stalls.
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That doesn't affect the belief of Jesus dying on the cross, etc. So they're going to acknowledge that there are small mistakes in the
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Bible. And that's why they won't say it's 100 % pure. They'll say it's 99 .5
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% textually pure. But the thing is, if you read the Gospels, Jesus said, whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much.
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And whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So what does that indicate?
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Indicates that Jesus in the Gospels, he's teaching that even if someone is being dishonest about something very little, that also shows that he'll be dishonest about much.
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So you're not supposed to trust that person. So according to your Bible, I'm not supposed to rely on your
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Bible. Now, there's so much to respond to there. But since it's fresh in your mind, let's start with the last point.
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That, Ed, is an incredibly bad reading and application of the parable of the pounds, which, interestingly enough, we also just finished in the
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Synoptic Gospel Studies the week before last, as I recall. Which had nothing to do with texts, transmission, scribes, honesty.
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It had nothing to do with honesty. Where did he get dishonest? I have absolutely no earthly idea. When it says who has been faithful in much, he's talking about the fact that these people had been entrusted with certain amounts of money, gifts, talents, and that they were to use them in the service of their master.
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And those who were found faithful in that would be made faithful over many cities, would be rulers over many cities.
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Those who are faithful in little things will be entrusted with more. Those who are not faithful in little things will not be entrusted with more.
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That was what the parable was about. Has nothing to do with scribal emendations or Hebrew numbers in handwritten documents transmitted over thousands of years.
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Nothing whatsoever. So major category error once again. But even beyond that, you know, this list, and of course,
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Bassam included the PowerPoint presentation that he was making in this presentation. It was in 2008 in the
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United Arab Emirates. I thought it was in London because I thought I recognized one of the other voices. But I was incorrect about that.
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The PowerPoint includes a table of your standard numerical contradictions from the
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Old Testament, mainly between the Kings and the Chronicles as far as numbers are concerned.
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And I don't see any evidence that Bassam has taken any time to read Gleason Archer's responses to these things, discussion of how
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Hebrew numbers are transmitted. And I see, even though there are times he will accurately represent some of this,
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I see a fundamental confusion in his own mind concerning the difference between inerrancy and the idea of perfection of transmission of text over time, the difference between the originals and what was written in the originals and was transmitted over time in the scribal process.
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There seems to be some major confusion on his part and, of course, I would say many people's parts, not just Bassam, obviously.
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He may well have spoken with many people who were just as confused as anybody else on this particular subject, though I know he has had contact with people who have accurately represented a sound and orthodox position in regards to that.
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And I don't think it is an accurate thing to say that, well, Christians just say it just doesn't matter. No, where in the world do we say, well, it just doesn't matter?
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It's not a big issue. The difference between saying—a person would say, well, there are errors in the
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Bible. Would you mean they were written as errors or they're transmitted over time as errors?
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There's a major difference between those two perspectives, which I don't think he's fully grasped what those are. But there's a major difference there.
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I don't remember—I suppose some wild -eyed liberal might say, I don't care about that.
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It's no big deal. But the vast majority of Christians who would be concerned enough to even try to present the
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Gospel to a Muslim is not going to be one of those types of folks anyways. Those types of folks are more likely to want to sit around around a cup of coffee and share religious perspectives than they are to actually be proclaiming something and saying this is true and that's false.
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So that doesn't really work. Two more, then we'll go to our phone calls. So you could respond back that way.
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Another way you could reply back to that response is, the Bible says all
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Scripture is inspired. So you're telling me that God inspired small mistakes?
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So I think you can nail that. But the thing is, if he insists, well, small mistakes don't matter, then—I'm not going to go through these, by the way.
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These are examples of contradictions of important things in the
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Bible. What's important in the Bible? Jesus' crucifixion, Jesus' resurrection, correct?
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So the four Gospels, each Gospel talks about the crucifixion and resurrection from its own point of view.
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But they contradict each other on many things. So you could even show them contradictions on significant issues.
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So the thing is, when they say there's perfect harmony, you can say to them, well, first of all, prove there's no conspiracy.
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Secondly, I don't believe there's harmony. Look at these contradictions. Now, of course, we could look at each one of these alleged contradictions, and we can produce lists of alleged contradictions in the
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Quran. And they'll say, oh, we have answers to that. Well, you know, I try to find out what those answers are. It doesn't seem that most of my
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Muslim opponents—not all, but it doesn't seem most of them really take the time to find out what their counterparts in Christianity are saying.
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In other words, they seem to be much more attracted to the Bart Ehrmans of the world, the liberals of the world. And later on, he'll quote from a number of theological liberals about authorship and stuff like that.
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Why are they reading them? Why not read their own counterparts? Those of us who actually believe that the
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Bible's word of God and that Jesus is who he said he was, and actually believe in divine revelation. Because I really don't think most of those who give dawah would really have much time for Muslims who don't believe that Muhammad was a prophet, or he was just one prophet amongst many prophets, or that the
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Quran contains divine teachings but isn't really the word of God. I really don't think they'd even consider those people Muslims.
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And yet they will bend over backwards to identify people as Christians who deny the central doctrines of faith, or who at least are wishy -washy on very important elements of the faith as well.
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But notice there was a little more confusion there, it seemed to me, in citing 2 Timothy 3 .16,
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that all scripture is God -breathed, that, well, God inspired mistakes. Well, it seems like he was comparing the mistakes to the transmissional issues rather than what was in the originals.
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Again, that seems to indicate some level of confusion on his part. And that confusion,
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I think, does come out very clearly when he talks about textual critical issues. And we'll just do one quote here, and then go to our callers.
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Secondly, manuscript evidence has unveiled false verses deliberately inserted into the
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Bible. Whole passages. For example, 1 John 5 .7, which talks about the
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Trinity formula just 60 years ago, they've discovered that this is a false verse inserted in the 15th century.
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Or John chapter 7 to John chapter 8, Mark chapter 16, verses 9 through 20.
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There is a possibility that future discovery of manuscripts will unveil more false verses. So what's the significance of finding out about these false verses?
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Just in the past 60 years, with the manuscript evidence they gathered, they found out that these verses were inserted into the
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Bible over the centuries. Now, when
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I first heard this, I just wasn't sure. You know, I've gone back and listened to it, and I think
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I finally figured it out. This is 2008. 60 years before that, 1948.
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Dead Sea Scrolls. I'm really thinking he's thinking. I've become confused.
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It doesn't understand the difference between Old Testament, New Testament, textual critical. I don't know. But the idea that, for example, the
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Kamiohonium was discovered 60 years ago is rather humorous, actually, given that the
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Kamiohonium, 1 John 5, 7, when Erasmus finally included it in the third edition of his
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Novum Testamentum. It was not in the first two editions of, at that time it was the
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Novum Instrumentum. But when he finally included it in the third edition, he included, along with it, a lengthy footnote explaining why he felt that the passage was bogus.
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Now, that's at the beginning of the 16th century. Okay, that's just under 400 years ago.
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This is nothing new. I mean, we've had, obviously, numerous textual, critical textual
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New Testaments that existed before 60 years ago. The text has been known to be highly questionable and rejected by the vast majority for a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long time.
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And even when you look at, well, for example, the Percopaea Adulterae, John 7, 53 to 8, 11, the longer ending of Mark, there are discussions these things go back into the ancient church.
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Many early manuscripts mark off the longer ending or the Percopaea Adulterae with obeli and asterisks.
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So we could talk about 1 ,000 years into the past, not 60. So, you know, again,
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I want to be fair. I really doubt that the vast majority of evangelicals could answer a meaningful question as to how long has it been known that there is a textual variant that the longer ending of Mark is not found in ancient manuscripts?
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How long has that been known? You know, I mean, that's not something a lot of people know, but most people then do not do presentations representing themselves as knowing these things.
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So that's where the problem arises. But I would, if Bassam does not have my book on the
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King James Only Controversy, which is used as a introduction to textual criticism by lots of folks all across the
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United States and colleges and seminaries, be happy to send it to him because there's a whole section on the
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Kamiohanium and Mark 16, 9 through 20 and the Percopaea Adulterae and all sorts of stuff.
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Be happy to bring an extra copy to London in February. Speaking of which, forgo to our callers,
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London, London, London, that banner ad at the top of our website, still need your assistance, still need your help out there, folks, to get to London in February.
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Because not only do we have to fly over to London, but because we've had some scheduling issues where Revelation TV, remember last year when
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I was on Revelation TV, it was really nice because I was able to put up the program really quick. They gave me a DVD of it and I got it posted.
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Revelation TV wants to do a debate with Pastor Jack Moorman, who is a published
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King James only author, on February 2nd. Now, I'm already scheduled to debate
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Bassam Zawadi, who we've been listening to, on February 12th, both in London. That makes for a long time period.
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That's 10 days between the two. I am also going to be going up to Dublin, Ireland.
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I'm going to be looking at some manuscripts there. I've got a specific project that I want to pursue in examining manuscripts.
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So I've got to go from, I'm going to fly into London, then I need to, after doing the Revelation TV debate, fly up to Dublin.
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And the possibility exists, we're going to see if this works, go from Dublin to Glasgow, from Glasgow back to London for the debate with Bassam Zawadi and ministry at Trinity Road Chapel.
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So there are three more flights in there that we need to be covering and all the travel that goes with it.
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And so on and so forth. And so we just need to let you know that need is there.
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And if you click on the banner ad at aomin .org, it will take you to a place where you can help us with travel expenses and travel costs.
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And I'm sure that the saints will be blessed over there, Lord willing.
33:06
And of course, the results, hopefully, of seeing some of those manuscripts and pursuing a particular project that I would like to pursue in the apologetic realm and being able to see those manuscripts would be useful to folks as well.
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So please pray about helping us with that. We would love to have that opportunity of doing that.
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877 -753 -3341 is the phone number. Let's get to our phone callers here.
33:35
And I guess to just start at the top and go from, all right. Let's talk with Anthony. Hi, Anthony. Hey, Dr.
33:42
White. Hi. I had a question for you on baptism. A Lutheran friend of mine—and keep in mind, this is a very good friend of mine, and I believe
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Lutherans are our brothers in Christ—told me that Baptists were all wet when it came to baptism, because we think that baptism is just a public declaration.
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I wasn't sure how to answer him. Could you help me out? Well, obviously, our sacramental friends—and there are those that are out there—attach to baptism a spiritual significance, even to the point of baptismal regeneration, that baptism actually affects the regeneration of the person who receives it, including the regeneration of infants.
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Now, I would have major serious problems with that. How in the world would a Lutheran who believes in justification by faith believe that?
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Well, that's what Luther had to come up with. That's why Luther had to come up with the concept of infantile faith, that a child could have true, genuine faith expressed in the faith that they have in their parents.
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Now, you know, I love Luther, and I am appreciative of many of the insights
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Luther had, but the to be able to recognize the traditions they're still holding on to from their past.
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And I would just simply say to everybody who gets upset with the Reformers who didn't necessarily go as far as you think they should have, as quickly as you think they should have,
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I would simply say one thing to you. If you were in their shoes, how far would you have gone? So I just say that to everybody.
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But just my response to a Lutheran who would propose the concept of any type of sacramental baptismal regeneration would be to go to the ultimate authority in such matters, and that is to Scripture itself, and that regeneration is not the result of baptism.
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While baptism is the universal experience of believers, it is not the mechanism whereby the heart of stone is taken out and the heart of flesh is given.
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That is the work of the Holy Spirit of God. It is always associated, first and foremost, with faith, true, saving faith, not just infantile faith, but true, saving faith in Jesus Christ and repentance.
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And baptism in the New Testament is eschatological. It looks back upon something that was completed before it.
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It is not something that's looking forward to something in the future. And so you really have to build up an entire sacramental system to be able to elevate baptism that way.
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You have to come up with a concept of sacraments and a concept of grace that I just don't think has a biblical foundation.
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And so rather than arguing just a few texts on baptism, personally, I think it's far better to deal with the actual nature of regeneration, the actual nature of justification, and then demonstrate that it is a system being forced on the
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New Testament that leads to those conclusions rather than the exegesis of the text itself.
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So I would go to all those texts that talk about what it means to be born again, what it means to be justified, the mechanism whereby that takes place, and you will not find that baptism is the mechanism that the
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New Testament is presenting as how God does that. Okay, thank you very much.
37:15
That was most helpful. Okay. Well, thank you very much, Anthony. You stay warm up there in—I'll bet you it's what, about 65 degrees there now?
37:24
It's just above freezing, so we're doing good. It's warmer than I'm used to, actually.
37:30
Well, that's good. I'm glad you're down from Anchorage. Anyways, thanks,
37:36
Anthony. You too. God bless. 877 -753 -3341.
37:42
Boy, here comes Troublemaker. Jamin Slam -Baman -Mannin from the person who writes many blog articles.
37:50
Hello, sir. Hi, how are you doing, James? Doing pretty good. I have a few questions on infant baptism and covenant theology.
37:59
Oh, really? Yeah, I listen to—well, it's kind of a long story, but I went to a
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PCA church for a while, and so I got to asking questions. It was kind of the first time I got confronted with the baptism issue.
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And so I listened to, like, four debates in a week and read a bunch of different things, and so now—and then
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I restarted re -listening to them. Year three debates, you know, with Strand -Polichesko and so forth and Strawbridge.
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And so now I have a couple different questions, and they might—maybe I should have had them answered just by listening closely, but I still have a couple things.
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First of all, what is the difference between Presbyterian covenant theology and Reformed Baptist covenant theology when it comes to the land promise in Genesis 13?
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Well, what is the difference between—when you start asking that question, the first thought across my mind was that the fundamental difference that I see—obviously, since I am
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Reformed Baptist, I see a consistency issue, because it goes to the signs that were or were not given in each of the dispensations of those covenants.
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And we talk about the covenant works in the Noahic covenant, the Abrahamic covenant, the
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Sinaitic covenant, and the fact that in some of those you have no signs given to infants at all.
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So the argument that you have to have a sign given to infants as part of a covenant is just not the case.
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What was the covenant sign from Adam until Abraham, or even Adam till Noah? There wasn't any sign given to the infants in that situation.
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But then you changed that and altered the question, and I'm not exactly sure how to answer the specific element that you added to that.
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Okay. Well, I guess I just remembered during some of your debates, you mentioned the promise having a land promise, because obviously,
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Beta Baptists, they want to import this prayer promise for your children and so forth into the new covenant.
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Yeah, well, obviously, it's interesting, and I don't have it with me right now, but Sunday morning or Sunday evening,
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I haven't decided exactly where I'm going to fit this in the order I'm going to address these things. But I am going to be going over 17 differences between the
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Old and New Covenants, and they are all listed by John Owen in his commentary on Hebrews chapter 8, verse 6.
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And as you probably know, John Owen could write 47 pages on today's weather report.
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I mean, it's just—and it could be a very boring weather report, too. So that's just the way it is.
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But he goes through 17 differences, and it is interesting. This is one of the things—I think you would find different understandings amongst different Presbyterians as to exactly how that fleshes out, because while Owen was a
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Paedo -Baptist, he likewise saw that there, in essence, is no land promise in the
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New Covenant, that this is one of the differences, that there is a specific tying of the Old Covenant promises to a specific people in a specific context, geographically and temporally speaking, and that that does not have a fulfillment in the
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New Covenant in the sense of a spiritualization or anything along those lines. And like I said,
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I don't have that in front of me right now, but if you—since it is available online,
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I believe, Owen's commentaries on Hebrews—if you look at Hebrews 8, 6, you'll find the listing of those there.
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And then there's an excellent book, since I know you're a bibliophile, and hence any excuse to put a book on a wish list is a good thing.
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Reform Baptist Academic Press published a book by Nehemiah Cox on the
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Covenant. I've read that. Okay. I have read that, and that was good.
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But just a question about the land promise thing, because I guess in your debates with Presbyterians, they would just reply by saying, okay, that is physically fulfilled.
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It's just the whole world. Now, is that something that is common between Reform Baptists and Presbyterians?
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Is that a literal fulfillment, you could say, or is it different? Well, I don't know if there's any one answer to that, because like I said, you'll find folks that will not make that spiritual application one way or the other.
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So you have the use of the promise to children, live long upon the earth in the
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New Testament, and I've actually heard people try to make a connection to that somehow with New Covenant fulfillment or something along those lines.
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But yeah, no, I don't know if there's any one position amongst everyone.
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If you look at the Strawbridge book, you found a tremendous amount of conflict, even within that one book, on this very kind of thing.
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I don't know if you saw my responses to Jeff Neal on this subject that I wrote for the
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Reform Baptist Theological Review, but I responded to Jeff Neal's article on Hebrews 8 in that book and then pointed out that a later writer in the same book completely contradicted
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Jeff Neal's position. So to say there's just one position on some of these things, unless it's really dogmatically stated in the
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Westminster Standards, I'm not sure that there is just one position. Right, and that leads me to my second question, because I'm just realizing when you start to ask different people their reasons for having baptism, there's some kind of common base, but it's different.
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And my seminary mentor is a PCA pastor, and so we talk about this a lot.
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And I guess my question is, what exactly is the quote -unquote mixed covenant, and what is the clearest scriptural evidence of that?
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Because as you know, I mean, the whole idea of what it means to be quote -unquote in a covenant is something that's really hard to kind of pin down, or at least it is for a lot of Paedo -Baptists, because at least a couple pastors that I know of, they believe that all covenants that God ever makes with anyone are only with his elect people.
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And so while it appears to be, you know, like a mixed covenant in the Old Covenant with the bearing of the sign and so forth, and they're really not regenerate, they really weren't in the covenant.
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And so that kind of does away with the entire idea of a mixed covenant. Yeah, but why would the prophets constantly be upbraiding or having broken the covenant if they weren't actually in the covenant?
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No, that is—obviously, that is a question that I would highly recommend you placing to some of our brethren and channel who are good
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Presbyterians and actually hold positions of authority in that, because honestly, I think it's a question that they need to answer, because that, to me, is one of the primary areas where my understanding of covenant theology is more consistent.
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That's why I hold it. And that is, when you come to the New Covenant, that sort of defines exactly what we're talking about.
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What was it? In Romans—I'm sorry, Romans—Hebrews 8, he finds fault with two things.
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He finds—he first of all says that if the first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no seeking for a second.
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So there's some type of a faulting of the first covenant. And then finding fault with them, he says—and then you have the
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Jeremiah 31 text. Well, what is the answer to the fault that is found in the covenant -breaking
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Jews who did not keep the covenant to which they had been pledged by the sign? The answer is that, well, the
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New Covenant's not going to be like the Old Covenant in that. And what's the in that?
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The in that, I will write my law upon their hearts, and they will no longer say to one another, know the
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Lord. In other words, there is a complete changing of the covenant member himself through regeneration.
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Now, there were Old Covenant members who regenerated, but the Old Covenant did not bring about regeneration as a necessary aspect of it.
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And so that really, from our perspective, we are—I think all Reformed Baptists are absolutely united on that.
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And we say to our Pentecostal brethren, okay, this ticking time bomb is yours, it ain't ours, because you're the ones that are trying to say that, you know, well, the
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New Covenant is a mixed covenant and, you know, the church membership and, you know, all the rest of that kind of stuff.
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And we're the ones saying, nah, I don't think so. And that's really where the debate devolves. But, you know,
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Edwards struggled with that, and it's been a constant area of discussion in Pado -Baptist circles as to how to deal with that, because there is the constant tendency for that perspective to end up resulting in the kind of nominalism in state churches and established churches that Europe is a great example of to this very day.
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Because, you know, the tendency is, well, you know, we've got these promises to our children, and therefore they're in the covenants, and that has resulted very often,
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I think a lot of my Pado -Baptist brethren would admit, in a diminishment of the fervor of the proclamation and calling of the
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Gospel to those that are allegedly, quote -unquote, in that situation.
48:26
Okay, well, I think that helps a bit, so it should be it. But is there any book on the history of Pado -Baptism that you know of, written from, like, a non -Pado -Baptist perspective?
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Because I know David Wright wrote some work on it in 2005. Well, you mean in the modern
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Presbyterian views? Yeah, like in the last 15, 20 years or something.
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But about the modern views of Pado -Baptists, or ancient views? Like historical?
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Oh, yeah. Again, I know someone on the channel who probably knows a lot more about this than I do.
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Maybe he'll pop off here. Right now he's seemingly keeping his head low. But I can see the cover of the book on my shelf.
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There is a work that deals with the historical issues in regards to the ancient
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Church. You're probably aware of Kurt Allen's work on it, and the people that have responded to him, and back and forth, and stuff like that.
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I'm not, actually. Okay, yeah, there's some good stuff there. What you really want to get is the
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Reformed Baptist Theological Review's journal issues that dealt with this, because the bibliographies would be a goldmine.
49:46
Oh, okay. That's where you get to, you know, those bibliographies are really, really useful. So if you get...
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Are those online? Um, RBTR, Google it. Some of them are.
49:57
I'm not sure if the bibliographies would be. Richard Barsalas is a guy you might want to contact to see about getting any back issues and stuff like that.
50:05
Okay. Okay, well, thanks a lot. Thanks, man, for calling. Have a good one. Yeah, you too. Okay, bye. 877 -753 -3341, time is going.
50:15
So we go to Ryan up in New York. Hi, Ryan. How are you doing? Merry Christmas, Dr. White. And to you, how are you?
50:21
I'm doing pretty well. Um, I had a question on 2 Corinthians chapter 5.
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Um, I go to a church right now that, uh, I think they fall just...
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I don't really know where you'd put them, but just, I guess, kind of semi -Arminian in that they'll say
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John 3, 16, and the world there is, of course, in each and every sort of sense. And, um, on Sunday, my pastor was preaching on 2
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Corinthians chapter 5. Um, in verse 19 where it says, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, again applied that same interpretation of the word world, verse 19, which to me,
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I don't understand. I don't see how that wouldn't necessitate, um... Universalism. I guess coming...
51:09
Yeah, right. Universalism. Yeah. Unless, of course, you input that idea of the possibility of salvation to actually affecting salvation.
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So I guess my question was wondering, then, that understanding of 2 Corinthians 5, 19, going back to verse 14 of the same chapter where it says,
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For the love of Christ compels us, because we judged thus, that if one died for all, then all died, and he died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again.
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Would we be relating that back to Romans chapter 5 and the discussion of Jesus Christ as the head, and Adam as the head of the sinful human race, and Christ as the head of the elect,
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I guess, or of the Church? Yeah, don't have much to add to that. You're smack dab on. Um, um, so many times in this situation, the question really is, well, is propitiation propitiation?
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Is reconciliation reconciliation? Um, there might be. There's a really tough text.
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It's not this one, because if you look at 5, 19, that is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself.
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And then you have sort of a positive phrase, which is a renaming, a redescription, not counting their trespasses against them.
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Now, that's a, that's a incredibly important term, because if anyone looks at the original language, the not counting is logizomai.
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That's imputing. That's imputation right there. And so if, if whatever this, this reconciliation is, it involves a non -imputation of sin, which would involve the imputation of that sin, of course, to Christ.
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Now, modern theologians today are trying to get away from imputation and all the rest of that stuff for various and sundry reasons.
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But if you are taking any type of conservative theological perspective whatsoever, you're going to be very careful in looking at a term like logizomai and making it a mere theoretical thing.
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There are those that create a theology that basically says that the entire world, the entire, all of creation itself has been reconciled to God through the death of Christ.
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But that's not enough. You have to enter into that by your free will choice, et cetera, et cetera.
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So the reconciliation has taken place. The sin issue has been taking place. It's, all of that's done.
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It's just a matter of whether you will live in what has been done for you or not. And that's very, very common in liberal circles today to take that kind of a perspective and say, you know, the peace is already there, but you just have to live it out.
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And that really becomes the foundation for second chance after death, post -mortem evangelism, all those other concepts that almost always end up flowing out of liberalism as well.
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But when you're consistent with Paul and listen to Paul's categories, then
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I think you're exactly right. He is talking in the same way that he's talking in Romans 5. We're talking about the two different humanities.
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And there always is the emphasis. We need to maintain this emphasis and emphasize this emphasis, and that is that when it talks about the world, that is a constant reminder that the gospel can never be limited to any geographical location or any individual group of people.
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There is a tendency toward that. We've seen, we saw that in South Africa, for example. We've seen that in Europe over the years.
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There's just a tendency for people to become complacent and to define the world as just the people around them.
54:59
That's not the case. But at the same time, to expand that out to the idea of the atoning work of Christ becomes universal.
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Reconciliation, justification, atonement, propitiation all becomes merely theoretical and not actual, all based upon what man does.
55:18
That's a hugely unwarranted leap the other direction. But it's very common because there isn't a whole lot of push to be consistent in your theology in most places today.
55:28
Right. Yeah. Well, I guess, well, thank you very much. That was definitely helpful for me. Okay. Thank you,
55:34
Ryan. Thanks for calling today. Take care. All right. God bless. Bye -bye. All right. We're getting close on time.
55:39
Let's sneak George in here and say hello to George in Virginia. Hi, George. Hey, how you doing,
55:45
Dr. White? Doing good. Yeah, I'm a Reformed, and I like to study, you know, objections to Reformed theology.
55:51
And I had a question on two verses. In Mark 10, 21, it says, looking at him,
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Jesus felt a love for him and said to him, I looked up the word love there, and I'm pretty sure it was the agapio love.
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And it's like, there's like no evidence that this rich young ruler, like, you know, gets saved or anything like that.
56:12
I was hoping that you would address that and also second Peter 2, 1 in reference to limited atonement.
56:19
Well, in regards to Mark 10, 21, first of all, there really isn't any biblical distinction between agapio and agape and others.
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I know it's really common, and you hear people preaching about, oh, well, that's an agape kind of a—no, good luck trying to substantiate that from the actual uses of the terms in the
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New Testament. It's a good, solid word for love, and unless you believe that God has no love for the non -elect, then the text doesn't cause you a problem.
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Because of the fact that God shows his love for the non -elect through his patience and through the general call of the gospel and everything else, you just have to recognize the difference between a general love and the redemptive love that actually brings about the salvation of someone.
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We don't know what happened to the rich young ruler. We don't know if after Pentecost he was converted.
57:17
We're not told, and this text isn't attempting to answer these things. The point is that it does seem to indicate that this particular individual, in giving the answers that he gave, was giving an answer not out of self -deceit.
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He really did answer the question honestly.
57:40
He really did think that he had kept these things from his youth up. And I personally interpret that,
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Jesus's love for him, that is expressed in his then exposure of his sin, as a wonderful example of what
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God's love really does. Because what does Jesus do? And he says, you lack one thing, go sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you have treasure in heaven, and come follow me.
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What is Jesus doing? He's exposing the fact this man's an idolater. This man thinks he has actually kept the second table of the law, when in fact he's violated the first.
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And so real Christian love, love as Jesus illustrated it, will always point out sin and will point to the true worship of God.
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That's what real love is. And it's not based upon what's going to happen as a result. It's not based upon whether this man is elect or non -elect or any of the rest of that stuff.
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That's not even in view here. What is in view is here you have a man who may well have been led astray by the externalized religion of his day.
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But Jesus exposes his self -righteousness, and he does so in love.
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It is a loving thing to point out self -righteousness to someone. And that's how
58:58
I understand the text. Now, as to the other text, if you're talking about the master who bought them, is that what you're referring to?
59:08
Yeah. Yeah, there's an entire article on our website. If you'll go to the Reformed Theology section, there's an extensive article by Simon Escobedo there that is—I'm sorry?
59:19
Yeah, well, just go to Articles, and it takes you there. And it's many pages long, and will take you about an hour and a half to read.
59:27
But since you asked, that's where you want to go. There's certainly no way we can get into it today.
59:33
Do you know any good books on reprobation, on the doctrine of reprobation? Every discussion
59:40
I've read on reprobation that was any good was found in a larger work on elections.
59:47
So, you know, what Raymond says in his Systematic Theology, or what a—most of your major theologians who address election will address reprobation as a subset of that.
01:00:01
But I don't know of any—personally, there may be, there probably are books out there specifically on that subject. I don't know what they are, though.
01:00:07
All right. Thanks a lot, Dr. White. Thanks a lot. All right. God bless. Really, really, really super, super quick, because we're already well past our time.
01:00:15
Tom in Huntsville. Yes, sir. Thank you very much, Dr. White. I'm trying to find a good resource that's a refutation of the
01:00:24
JEPD documentary hypothesis of the Pentateuch. Scholarly or popular level would be fine.
01:00:30
I wanted to get some recommendations. Well, I'll be probably horsewhipped for this, but I think the best place to start there would be to search on the name
01:00:42
Wellhausen, W -E -L -L -H -A -U -S -E -N, on my blog. That will turn up the papers written by a student of mine by the name of Colin Smith.
01:00:51
Yeah, I've read one of those. Okay. That would be where I would start. And then, of course, there would be a bibliography attached.
01:00:58
I believe that Colin recently put a link on the blog to a website where he's posting his papers.
01:01:05
And so if, for some reason, the bibliography was not a part of the posting of the blog article, it would be,
01:01:12
I think, in the PDF version that would be there. And that would give you a bibliography to work from.
01:01:17
And that's always the kind of resources you're looking for. Because most of that kind of stuff, yeah,
01:01:23
I'm sure there are certain specific books on the unity of the text of the Old Testament. Kaiser and others have written on those subjects.
01:01:31
But very often, that kind of discussion is found within a larger work rather than just as a journal article or an entry in an encyclopedia -type thing, but normally as a subset of a larger work.
01:01:44
I'm sure that I would think, anyways, that Colin's bibliography would have a good place for you to start there.
01:01:51
Excellent. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you, sir. All right. God bless. All right. We got everybody in, and we only went three minutes over.
01:01:59
Nothing too bad. The wife won't get too upset with me if I'm a little bit late getting home today. I have got a long list of honeydews today, let's not only say, but that's what happens when people come over to the house.
01:02:10
Hey, we will be back, believe it or not. Lord willing, on the 28th of December, we've got one more week of 2010.
01:02:18
And then, man, I'm teaching the polemics class in January. I'm at the Deep South Founders Conference right at the beginning of February off to the
01:02:28
UK. Please help with that. It's going to be a busy, busy, busy, busy time. Please pray for us, support us.
01:02:33
We'll see you next week. God bless. God bless.
01:03:28
God bless. Join us again next