James Cone Eulogized, Andy Stanley Unhooks the Old Testament, Open Phones on a Ton of Topics

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line, hope you can hear us well today, see us well today.

Rich is playing with stuff, so who knows what's going to happen with that. I can't show you anything today, that's broken for the moment, but I can play stuff for you.

I wasn't playing, I'm showing you something. Though, showing you Clementine's pictures from Facebook would have been sort of fun, because it's sort of like how most people look at me when

I start explaining CBGM to them. But this could be like seminary professors.

It's pretty much the same look Clementine had in these pictures, but I can't show them to you.

You can go look for them, something like that. Anyway, a few things to get to, and then we'll open up the phones, sort of how we've been doing things.

I don't know how many programs there's going to be between now and August.

I forgot that I had said I'd be willing to do something, because I hadn't gotten final confirmation on it.

I said, yeah, yeah, okay, and then I hadn't gotten final confirmation, so I didn't put it in my calendar. Whoever keeps my schedule should be shot, and of course that would be me.

I don't have a secretary, I don't have someone that does that stuff too much for me, and so I just got confirmation, and I'm excited about doing it.

I'm not going to mention it right now, simply because there are just so many people out there.

The only life they have is causing problems for me, and so I'm just not even going to give them something to be doing, but I'm going to be teaching at a major university in June, and it butts right up against a trip to Dallas.

I'm going to be with Emilio Ramos at his church in the middle of June, and all

I can say is I get like four days home after this next trip, and then

I'm gone for a week and a half, and then

I think I get 10 days home, then I'm gone for three weeks. Just insanity, just craziness, but I'll be missing a lot of the

Phoenix heat. I'll just come back for the worst of the Phoenix heat. I'll be here through all of August and preaching most of that, so yay.

I'm going to count the I'll be perfect and honest with you's on the DL today. You're welcome. What are some of my other favorite phrases?

Dollars to donuts. I'll bet you dollars to donuts is a common one, and then there's another one that...

Well, zippity -doo -dah. Okay, yeah, but there's another one that I use a lot of, too, that people play games with.

Verily and sundry? Verious and sundry. Yeah, various and sundry is a good one. Yeah, various and sundry is a good one. She was probably typing it while you were saying it.

Yeah, various and sundry. They're Midwestern stuff that I got from my youth, and that's just the way it is.

I love Milo Hotzenbuehler. Yes, I say that all the time.

We need to have Milo back on. It's been a couple years since we had Milo on, and so we'll have to see if we can...

Because it's tough to get him, because he's a rock star, so it's tough to get him.

You know, I'm really glad to be sitting here and feeling okay, because I got my inoculations a couple hours ago from my trip to Zambia, and I'm now immune to everything.

If it can kill you, I'm now immune to it, except for malaria, which you have to take those meds.

I'm really bummed, because the pastor of the church in Belfast, did I tell you about this? I was talking to him on Facebook, and he's like,

Dude, I went to Zambia, and I couldn't even take it. It was so bad, I just had to risk malaria. That's encouraging.

I hope I don't end up... I suppose if it just gets really bad, you just bathe in insect repellent, and just hope for the best.

We will see. Anyways, let's get to our stuff here.

I'm going to get to Andy Stanley in a moment. I want to read something to you.

And make some application here. I know this is going to...

I'm reading somebody else, so this isn't me. I know this is going to get me in trouble, but it must be said.

What so many people don't understand is this. There is a kind of ideology and worldview that literally leads to the deaths of transgender people.

When transgender people support or defend this narrative, it isn't just differing opinions. They are fueling ideas that are killing people.

They are supporting and helping fuel narratives that are literally leaving transgender people traumatized and oppressed.

It infuriates me when I hear people say, Oh, you can't handle other transgender people who disagree with you.

It is so utterly ignorant, and it speaks to how little people understand the impact of ideas.

I have no problem having other transgender people disagree with me, but when narratives are supported and defended by transgender people that are literally destroying the transgender community,

I can't stand by it. Tokenism kills. It oppresses.

It fuels devastation within the transgender community because it vindicates oppression and marginalization.

When transgenders side with the narrative of oppression against their own communities, it destroys.

This will be my last thread on transgender -related issues for a while, but before I depart from the subject, this is a point that needs to be made clear.

I have not sacrificed and lost all that I have because of petty disagreements and differing perspectives.

The reason why I and many others have been willing to put so much on the line to discuss these things is because we see the deeper cost of not pressing against the ideas and even other transgender people who have chosen to press forward narratives that devastate other transgenders without their privileges.

Now, we have heard this kind of rhetoric for quite some time now.

You can put transgender in there, and we are told that if you address transgender issues, if you say that there's anything wrong with transgenderism, you're going to kill people.

You could put the term homosexual in there. But the whole idea is to chill or to silence discussion of certain issues by saying that one side is literally killing the other, not in the sense that anyone is taking a gun and going out and shooting someone, but the idea now is, well, there are things that you can say that will result in suicides, that will result in encouraging other people.

If you oppose homosexuality, then that might encourage someone to be violent toward a homosexual or any of these things.

Now, what is never said is to put the word Christian in it. So no one ever talks about, well, if you say things like that, then you might encourage people to be violent toward Christians or something.

It only goes one particular direction.

Now, what I just read, I edited. Because what

I just read was a series of one, two, three, four, five, six tweets from Kyle J.

Howard that were posted on May 7th. And I replaced transgender people with people of color or race.

But it was the exact same narrative. I said a few weeks ago,

I said, what's odd is I get treated by those pushing the racialist agenda the same way that I get treated by those pushing the

LGBTQ agenda. They're using the same categories, the same forms of argumentation, they're chilling speech in the exact same way.

They're drawing from the exact same well and playbook. And they are.

There's no question about it. Now, what's fascinating is at the very same time, it's funny, it was

Kyle Howard that said, I don't agree with James Cone. I don't buy into that type of thing.

I come from a different perspective. But just today, if you will go over to the

Kingdom Diversity website at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, you will see a newly posted podcast.

Cortland Perkins discusses the life of James Cone and his value for evangelicalism with Dr.

Strickland. And I'd like to just play just a brief section here.

There are a lot of people that said, yeah, come on. Cone was just so far out there. That stuff you read, he was very clearly a racist, very clearly, just so far out there.

And just to remind you in case you didn't catch previous stuff or you didn't hear that program, just one little quote from A Black Theology of Liberation by James Hal Cone.

If there is one brutal fact that the centuries of white oppression have taught blacks, it is that whites are incapable of making any valid judgment about human existence.

The goal of black theology is the destruction of everything white so that blacks can be liberated from alien gods.

The god of black liberation will not be confused with a bloodthirsty white idol. Black theology must show that the black god has nothing to do with the god worshipped in white churches, whose primary purpose is to sanctify the racism of whites and to daub the wounds of blacks.

Just one of many, many, many quotations that to any fair -minded, rational person are deeply racist from a black perspective.

There is a tremendous amount of black racism. Can you imagine if you had someone saying something similar from a white perspective and that person died to hear podcasts being put up about how wonderful that person was in the modern context?

Wouldn't happen. Couldn't happen. But a black racist is lauded.

Why? Because he was at Union Theological Seminary. If you don't know theological seminaries, you might go, well, theological seminary is a theological seminary.

No. If Union were an aircraft, it would have two left wings.

And as a result, as a seminary, flies about as well as an aircraft that has two left wings.

And a left... the rudder always jammed to the left and only a left wheel. You're getting the idea.

The prop only works on the left side. Not sure exactly the physics of any of this, actually, when you think about it, but exactly.

That's the issue. Yeah, someone's telling me to bathe in deet.

Yeah, I get that. Anyway, let's just... this is just a brief section from the podcast that was posted today from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Let's just listen a little bit. We really hadn't seen someone who waves that banner, that vocational banner in African American trappings.

And so he is a precedent for me personally, because he's the first one to sort of break through that barrier to be able to go into an environment where he was a minority and then still not lose the uniqueness of his cultural background in the process.

Because prior to him, there probably was a couple of people who are black and white spaces and theological spaces, but they were so forced by the dominant culture to lose the uniqueness of their

African American -ness in that environment, their writings and their engagement almost just parroted the dominant culture.

So he's really a precedent to me about, okay, this is how you exist in those spaces without losing who you are.

Now, what I find so concerning about this is how did he maintain his culture by being wildly racist?

I don't understand. How is that a positive thing? I mean,

I'm not going to go back and read all that stuff again. It was depressing to read all of it, but you can read it for yourself. It's right there in print.

It's available to all of us. The gentleman mentioned,

I would disagree with him about the atonement and about his view of Scripture. Yeah, and the

Trinity and the deity of Christ and the resurrection of Jesus. The man was not a Christian.

If you call that kind of teaching Christian, then

Muslims are Christians and Jehovah's Witnesses are Christians and Mormons are Christians. Everybody is. Let's not even worry about this whole idea of, well, he was a systematic theologian.

Well, he read systematic theology. I'll grant you that, but wow, when you compare a

B .B. Warfield with a James Cone, not even on the same planet, as to communicating

Christian truth. And I've not had anyone argue against this from a meaningful perspective.

In other words, saying, oh, here. Here is where he accurately. I mean, when you identify the

Holy Spirit as blacks violently revolting in the inner cities, the black

God, the blackness of Jesus, what can even be said in response to him like that?

And this is what's coming out of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Troubling.

Very, very troubling indeed. So there continues to be a lot of stuff there.

You're grabbing a microphone? Yeah, I'm grabbing a microphone. I didn't get a chance to share this with you yesterday.

Uh -oh. Or today. But I was having a conversation with a local pastor who's been listening, and he said this whole thing has troubled him greatly.

And the most of all is that it has caused him to have a lens now when he walks into his church that he did not have before.

And he said this, he says, I feel dirty. This has scandalized me, because now

I'm looking for things in my congregation, which is a mixed congregation, that I never, ever considered before.

But now, because of the things that these people are saying, and the responses that we're being forced to have to formulate and give.

You're running a filter, even as you're preaching and teaching. I'm walking in, and these people that I love so dearly that I've come to know so well,

I'm looking at them in a way that I believe is so sinful. Because I've been forced to have to see something through this lens.

I'm not sure what, in a way that is so sinful. Well, in other words, he's noticing color.

He's noticing the distinctions on the outside when that was never his paradigm before, ever.

Nor should it be, but there's no way, there isn't any way to avoid it. And that's the whole purpose of this.

That is the whole reason for it. It is destructive of the unity of the

Church. And it forces you into a paradigm of constant filter running.

And yeah, it's extremely problematic. And I understand that. And I'm sorry, believe me,

I'm still learning lots of terminology. For example, my daughter put a post up on the

Sheologians page about allyship. Allyship.

And I guess that's the new... Well, I remember when Kyle Howard said last year, and I hadn't seen it until I was following tweets back on another subject, when he said last year that I am not an ally.

Well, okay, I understand. I understand, but now there's a word allyship.

And I guess it's prominent amongst the ladies. And this discussion is going on amongst

Christian women as well. Some of you saw the... Was it

TGC that was having the women's thing? And they were going to have a breakout session, a session only for women of color.

And a bunch of people jumped on that and said, Excuse me? You can have a melanin meter at the door?

I mean, how do you... Is there a way... Is there an app on the iPhone that you can put it up to someone and they pass or don't pass as far as sufficient amount of melanin?

You could do that with an iPhone. You really could. The camera is quite excellent. So you probably could come up with a way of doing that.

But what if they put makeup on? Are you a woman of color if you're using makeup?

That's a question. Anyway, there was such a pushback on it that they went,

Oh, no, no, okay. All right, never mind. Everyone's welcome. Everyone's welcome.

Because everybody has a color. And this is such an

American thing. It's an American thing in this particular embodiment.

You go to other cultures, and unfortunately, the people who are pushing these paradigms will just shift the words.

They'll just shift to whatever color or ethnic group or whatever you want to make it.

The whole thing is to divide people. It's to divide people. And that's got a basis in other things.

So allyship. So if you're not woke, you're not a part of the allyship.

This is going to come to a head next month. It's going to come to a head next month because there has already been an announcement that there is going to be another resolution.

Resolutions just accomplish so many things, but there is going to be a resolution introduced at the

Southern Baptist Convention, which does make mention of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Reverend Dr.

Martin Luther King. On April 4th, 1968, affords our nation and our churches an opportunity for reflection, repentance, and renewed resolve toward racial unity.

But there also are such phrases as our associations have rightly disfellowshipped churches that insist on excluding from fellowship anyone on the basis of race or ethnicity.

And then you have toward the end that we maintain and renew our public renunciation of racism in all its forms, including our disavowal of any attempt to distort or misappropriate the

Bible to justify this evil. We confess before the watching world that ultimately it is only through the power of the gospel.

Oh, here it is. And that we declare our abhorrence for any cooperating

SPC church that tolerates or advocates racism. And so the question has gone out, how are you defining racism?

Because I've been accused of it. We're already seeing people who will not accept the racialist lens and the racialist agenda that was promoted at T4G and the

MLK50 thing. So people who say, excuse me, exegetically when we go to Ephesians 4, we go to Colossians 3, there's problems here, there's problems...

No, no. Is that racism? So is this going to be used to talk about the abhorrence of any cooperating

SPC church that tolerates or advocates racism? I don't know if there is a plague of SPC churches in the

South that won't allow Black members. If there is, that would definitely need to be addressed without any question.

But what does racism mean? I think there needs to be a definition of what that means.

Because we're seeing that term, it's used as a blanket insult of anyone who will not buy neo -Marxist phraseology in oppression, marginalization, all the standard stuff that is part and parcel of this movement that there is tremendous reason to question the utilization of it today and the motivation for it.

Is that now racism? It needs to be defined. It needs to be defined openly,

I think. So it'll be interesting to see what's going to happen with that and with who's...

Danny Akin is one of the people that's promoting it, as is Dwight McKissick.

So obviously those are two people very much in the racialist camp promoting the racialist lens as a necessary aspect of Christian unity.

So it will be very, very interesting to see what will come up from that.

Now, switching gears. I... How long ago was it that we played the

Andy Stanley sermons? Seems like it was about a year ago.

As you get older, that time goes by real fast.

And at that time, we were talking about his views of the inspiration of the Bible and the unity of Scripture.

There isn't much new in this, but it does, once again, illustrate that theology matters.

And really, in a sense, this is just another example of the reason that we do meaningful exegesis, the reason that we study backgrounds, the reason we study biblical languages, is to give us as many tools and options as possible to filter out our own unbiblical lenses.

We all have unbiblical lenses. When we are raised within a particular context, we are given a set of lenses by that context.

And every serious believer is called to examine those lenses.

And some people say, you can't examine your lenses. Yes, you can. If the Scriptures are what the Scriptures are, and the

Spirit is who the Spirit is, yes, you can. And the reason that we study the languages and study backgrounds and do things like that is not, as some people say, to reinforce those lenses, but to give us the tools to identify them and to seek to have godly lenses, the appropriate lenses that would be given to us.

This goes back to Dave Hunt saying to me, James, I have no traditions. Yes, actually, you do.

And if you don't recognize that you have traditions, you are probably a person who is going to be in tremendous slavery to your traditions.

And when we look at where Andy Stanley is going, I tweeted this morning after starting to read some of what he had said about unhooking the

Old Testament from Christian experience. I said, it's not going to be long.

It's going to be five years. He's going to be sitting around and sipping coffee with Peter Enns.

And then someone sends me a tweet where Peter Enns had tweeted to him about one of his sermons. Hey, that's really great.

So it's too late. They're already sipping lattes at Starbucks. So I listened to this and I want to just play a few sections because what we hear in Andy Stanley is what happens when the foundations start breaking down.

It is your mere Christianity concept joined together with a deteriorating view of Scripture.

The result ends up being a way -off -base view of God's law, a form of antinomianism.

And of course, he was exposed to antinomianism in his days at Dallas. This was back in the days of Zane Hodges and Norm Geisler.

When we hear what Andy Stanley does with the Scriptures here, the eisegesis that he presents is very much on par with the outrageous eisegesis of James 2 from Zane Hodges.

I mean, you really have to work so hard to get

James 2 to basically say the opposite of what James 2 actually says.

Well, that's sort of what ends up happening here, too. So I'm going to play this a little fast, 1 .2,

so we can get through it a little bit quicker and we can get to the phone calls when we open the phones here.

But let's listen to some of what Andy Stanley had to say. See, when you read the

Old Testament, when you read the Old Covenant, when you read the story of Israel, when you read the prophets of Israel, you don't see much of this.

It's I will if you will, I will if you will, I will if you will. That was God's contract with the nation. We believe it is through the grace, but here's the subtle part.

We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is so big that we, we

Jews, are saved just as they are. Now, what's troubling in all of this is because Pastor Stanley does not differentiate between ceremonial law and the moral law, does not seem to recognize that the

New Testament writers fundamentally assume the continuing validity of moral law. It is just a given. When Paul writes to the

Corinthians, they're supposed to know that incest is wrong, even though there's nothing in the gospel accounts about that.

For what reason? Because it's said specifically in Leviticus 18 and 20 to be wrong.

It's a given. The moral law remains in effect. It's what defines the sexual behavior of Christians, etc.,

etc. That's gone in Stanley's understanding. That is completely rejected.

And here the idea is, well, you don't see in the Old Testament much about the grace of God.

Man, I'm not even sure. What do you do with chesed? What do you do with the fact that chesed,

God's loving kindness, which is His grace, His covenant faithfulness, is used more times in the

Old Testament text than agape, love, is used in the New Testament? What do you do with that?

It is a horrifically imbalanced view of what is there, and it's inexcusable with our

New Testament insights to miss the beauty of grace that's found in Isaiah, in Jeremiah, in the prophetic promises of the coming of the

Savior. It's just, it's hard to hear that kind of thing coming from a pulpit, something

I've been fighting against for so long. Letting go of and setting aside the traditions, the scripture that we grew up with.

Now, notice what he just did. Letting go the traditions, the scripture that we grew up with.

Those are two different things. Those are two different things. Jewish tradition and the

Tanakh are not the same things. I mean, what is amazing here is the utter lack of careful, consistent distinctions that must be made to build a meaningful

New Testament theology in regards to its relationship to the Old Testament. It's astounding.

Letting go of and setting aside the traditions, the scripture that we grew up with.

It took him 20 years, but Peter finally figured out that Christianity was not Judaism 2 .0. This was not an add -on.

It was a stand alone, say goodbye to the past, new. Say goodbye?

I mean, you want absolute disjunction. This is absolute disjunction.

What happened to fulfillment? What happened to a meaningful interpretation of telos as Christ, the end of the law?

Telos is not end as in this. It's fulfillment. It's as in goal.

But this is complete disjunction. That Jesus was not an and.

Jesus was an instead of no mixing and matching, no blending, no little bit of Jesus, no little bit of Moses.

It was Jesus only, the law of Moses, God's covenant with Israel was a means to an extraordinary end.

Now, again, I think a lot of this goes back in some ways, but now it's taking on even more ominous shades with a move to the left, but it fits with the antinomianism of Dallas back in the day, the anti -lordship stuff.

You know, when you can have Wilkins presenting the stuff that he presents as if that's sola fide, faith without repentance, faith without lordship, faith without change, you can see where some of this actually is coming from, but taking on a new form.

And abstain from sexual immorality. Okay, now here he's talking about, okay, so what does James do?

He says, you know, abstain from blood, things strangled, offered and sacrificed to idols, and rightly says these were things that were meant to promote unity within the church.

He's correct about that. But then, and sexual immorality.

And now you've got a problem. How do you define that? How do you define that? How are you going to define sexual immorality?

And abstain from sexual immorality. Now, if I were to hand everybody a 3x5 card, and I were to say, tell me what you think this means, or what this means to you, how many different answers would

I get? About as many answers as there are cards, right? So, yeah, the idea is, well, this is a, you know, sexual immorality.

It's just vague. Unless you, like, read James, or read

Peter, or read Paul, where they consistently in all of their writings draw directly from the moral law, quoting from the

Greek Septuagint to define these things, then it's not ambiguous at all.

But that's not what he does. That's not what he does. It's amazing what he does here.

This was a, this is so important, this was a general call to avoid immoral behavior, but not immoral behavior as defined by the

Old Testament, or the Law and the Prophets. Why? Because they didn't have one. They weren't Jewish. But as defined by, they didn't have one.

Which is why all the apostles kept writing to all their churches, quoting from it! I'm just,

I'm sitting here going, what is he talking about? What do you mean they didn't have it?

The Greek Septuagint was the Bible of the early church. The New Testament is filled with quotations of it.

What do you mean they didn't have it? That's a, what planet has this theology landed from?

I'm just, Or the Law and the Prophets. Why? Because they didn't have one. They weren't Jewish.

But as defined by the Apostle Paul, who had been teaching in Antioch for two or more years.

What do you think, what scriptures do you think Paul was teaching for two years in Antioch? What do you think, how central, how central to the teaching of the

Apostle Paul do you think the Greek Septuagint was?

Can we determine that? Yeah. Look at his sermons, and look at his epistles, and it's quoted all over the place.

Quoted all over the place. So if that's the means by which we can determine how central that was, what was he exegeting?

What was he teaching? Oh, but you can't exegete or teach the resurrection and the life of Jesus from that.

You can the prophetic passages, as he did so often. I'm not saying that's all they had.

There is the work of Jesus, but there is a perfect consistency between these things.

And do you know what the Apostle Paul consistently tied sexual behavior to? Not the

Old Covenant. Not the Ten Commandments. The one commandment that Jesus gave us, that you are to treat others as God through Christ has treated you.

So when Paul talked about relationships, he said stuff like this. In your relationships to one another, in your relationships with one another, have the same attitude as Christ Jesus.

Any questions? Kind of covers it, doesn't it? That is the section from the

Carmen Christi in Philippians 2, where Paul is exhorting the Philippians to act in humility of mind toward one another.

He wasn't addressing sexual immorality! What kind of outrageous eisegesis is that?

Is there no one there that can say, Excuse me, Andy, but that's not what that was about.

And here's example after example after example after example where Paul did exactly what you said he didn't do!

Now, maybe you figure the people that are listening to you are never ever going to question you, but how do you do this?

Stunning. Absolutely stunning. The Apostle Paul was explicit and specific about teaching on sexual immorality, but he did not tie it to the

Old Testament. Yes, he did. Ask the Corinthians. Ask the

Ephesians. Ask in any instance where he is addressing this issue.

How about his vice list? He has lots of vice lists. Oh, he uses... Oh, well, wait a minute,

Romans. Oh, but that's drawn directly from the Greek Septuagint, and that's from the Old Covenant Law. Oh, you see what he's doing here, and again, it's the error of the anti -lordship, anti -repentance folks, is he's putting the idea of ceremonial law and ceremonial fulfillment of the people of Israel, and that's not how you get saved.

He's conflating all that and forgetting that God has revealed his law, and there's a moral law, and that Paul says that is a good law.

It's good and righteous, and hmm, the fulfillment of Jeremiah 31 in the

New Covenant is the writing upon their hearts of God's law.

What law would that be in Jeremiah 31? But this is in the New Covenant. What law is written upon the heart?

Oh, it must be Jesus' law, and it's, you know, think of others as... be like Jesus.

Okay, there you go, and the result is no one has any earthy idea of...

track with me for a second. In five years or less, how is

Andy Stanley going to stand against the tide of the

LGBTQ flood, the redefinition of gender? How's he going to stand? He has no grounds.

Knox, stop tweeting me. That's what's going on there.

Anyway, that's not tweeting. It's in channel, but I don't know how to turn that off.

Sorry about that. Anyways, let's press on here. Oops, got to go here. The Old Covenant, the

Old Covenant Law of Moses was not the go -to source regarding sexual behavior in the church. More importantly, and perhaps more disturbingly, that's a word, or offensively, the

Old Testament, or the Law and the Prophets as they called it, was not going to be the go -to source for any behavior in the church.

Any? Now, to make this point, because this is so important, I originally in my notes, I was going to put a screen up here that said, in other words, that means thou shalt not obey the

Ten Commandments, but I knew someone would take a picture of that, and it would define me for the rest of my life, so I'm not going to put it up there, but I want you to hear me say it.

Here's what the Jerusalem Council was saying to the Gentiles. You are not accountable to the Ten Commandments.

You're not accountable to the Jewish law. We're done with that. God has done something new.

Besides, he would say to them, and he would say to you, thou shalt not obey the Ten Commandments because those aren't your commandments. Yours are better.

Which is why nine of the ten, nine of the ten commandments are repeated in the

New Testament Scriptures is because they're not relevant anymore, maybe? This is what happens when you can't tell the difference between not trimming the corner of your beard and not committing adultery.

When you can't differentiate between ceremonial and moral, absolute insanity follows, and that's what you have here.

The Scriptures that the New Testament Church held to, the only Scriptures they had, were actually being told were irrelevant.

They didn't matter. They could not provide any type of ethical or moral foundation for the

Church. Now, this is a wildly unique perspective outside of Martione and the

Gnostics and people like that, but as far as within Orthodoxy, way, way, way, way out there.

Everything's new. And finally, 20 years after the Resurrection, Peter and James and John and Barnabas, they detached the

Church from Judaism, not because there was something wrong with Judaism, but because Judaism, the

Law of Moses, was a means to an extraordinary end. Besides, the

Old Testament prophets predicted it. Besides, Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount said, I've fulfilled it. I've landed that plane.

I've completed that assignment. Now, Jesus said that anyone who teaches you to ignore these commandments, to break these commandments, is the least in the

Kingdom of God. And each one of these apostles that allegedly were disconnecting the

Church, you know, Judaism, in the sense of Pharisees or something, fine. That's different.

Again, no proper distinction is being made here. The very essence of the preaching and teaching grounded in God's Revelation in the

Tanakh, in the Torah, the Nevi 'im, the Ketuvim, the Law, the Writings, the Prophets. Actually, it'd be

Prophets, Writings, there. But that is the essence. And that's the essence of what the early

Church was studying, proclaiming, the foundation of the Gospel.

It's all there. And here we're being told, Nope, Nope. Took them 20 years, but they've finally unhooked the wagon.

As if, up to this point in time, they had had this sort of mixed idea. Yeah, God is having to deal with Peter and others, with visions and stuff, to get them to see the prophetic reality that, yes, the

Prophets had said that what God was going to be doing was going to be for the whole world. But it was getting over Tradition.

That's not getting over Scripture. If you can't tell the difference between the Tradition and the Scripture, you've got a serious problem.

I've only got a couple more quotes, so let's go ahead and open the phones at 877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number to take your phone calls today on the program.

I've only got, like I said, a couple more quotes from Andy Stanley, 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number.

Let me get back to the right screen here, and two more quotes. Because many have lost faith.

Many have lost faith because of something about the Bible or in the Bible, the Old Testament in particular. Once they could no longer accept all the historicity of the

Old Testament, once they couldn't go along with all the miracles, once somebody poked a hole in the Genesis creation, you know, myth, once all that went away, suddenly their house of cards faith came tumbling down because they were taught it's all true, it's all

God's Word, and if you find one part that's not true, uh -oh, the whole thing comes tumbling down, not Christianity. The Bible did not create

Christianity. The resurrection of Jesus created and launched Christianity.

Your whole house of Old Testament cards can come tumbling down. The question is, did Jesus rise from the dead?

And the eyewitnesses said He did. So I know, you know, it's a little...

So there's what we dealt with last time. There is the sola resurrectio, um, sola resurrection, um, the resurrection without any context to gospel, without any context to the identity of the one who is raised, without any identity, any connection to the purposes of the resurrection, the meaning of the resurrection.

It's just the resurrection. And as long as you've got the resurrection, then you've got true

Christianity. You just can't ask any questions of it. You can't ask why. You can't ask who.

You don't have the prophetic testimony to it. You don't have the New Testament teaching.

You don't have what the apostles taught. But you've got a bulletproof truth because, well, you've got the myth of the creation, and you've got all these errors in the

Old Testament. It's plain as day that he thinks that's what they are. He's given in on these things instead of fighting the good fight and dealing with the naturalistic presuppositions of critics and things like that.

It's just so much easier to just go, well, you know, as long as Jesus rose from the dead, the rest of it.

And we've heard this from a lot of folks. There's apologists who present this very kind of an apologetic, and that's where he's getting it from.

But the whole idea, your Old Testament house of cards, don't worry about it as long as you've got the resurrection.

You're fine. Well, what does the resurrection mean? Why did

Jesus have to die? Who was the suffering servant? Why is it that even in the most primitive kerygma of the church that it is said that Christ died for our sins katagrafe, katagrafe, according to the scriptures?

What do you mean according to the scriptures? Well, there was prophetic fulfillment. What scriptures? Well, the very scriptures that are a house of cards.

It sounds so nice to be able to say, we don't have to worry about all that stuff. Yes, you do.

And if you don't trust the Holy Spirit of God to actually bring about a change in our heart, change in mind, true regeneration, well,

I can understand why this would be a very problematic thing. I can understand why you would want to make it as easy as possible because what you're selling is something significantly less than biblical conversion.

What are you calling people to believe in? Well, let's not get too complicated here. We've got to make it easy.

Got to make it easy. Last quote. But I'll tell you who it's liberating for.

It's liberating for men and women who are drawn to the simple message that God loves you so much he sent his son to pave the way to a relationship with you.

Is that the gospel? God loves you so much that he sent his son to pave a way for you.

Even if you take that as a not overly accurate or contextual paraphrase of John 3 .16.

John 3 .16 is preceded by verses 14 and 15 and continues on into 17 and 18.

And in those verses you have the wrath of God against sin.

And as unpopular as that is, in the early church, if you wanted to illustrate the wrath of God against sin, you went to the very text of the house of cards that Andy Stanley says you don't have to worry about whether it stays standing or gets blown over by the winds of secular skepticism.

And if you don't understand that the gospel is really something that God does and it's primarily a

God thing, if you have the idea that you're pretty important,

I was listening, remember we played some of the quotes from that Bethel church guy?

It wasn't the pastor guy. We've got problems with Bill Johnson's stuff too, but that's on a different level.

This was one of the youth guys or something, or singles guys. I forget what he was.

But anyways, it was just all focused upon just how God has such special thoughts about you.

I mean, it's almost boyfriend, girlfriend, text message type stuff.

God's just always thinking about you and you're just all the world to God. Well, God is supposed to be all the world to me, but as one of many billions of God's creatures,

I can't be all the world to God and I shouldn't be and you shouldn't want to worship a God where you are all the world

God. God's love of his elect people and sending Christ is truly amazing.

But if you confuse that, if you confuse yourself with the most important thing to God, you've missed the point.

Big time. Big time. I just...

Thanks a lot. I just looked in channel and it's amazing how fast you can read things in channel.

But one of the channel users Nick is Monergist1 and just posted,

God sent you a heart emoji. Will you respond? Will you swipe right?

Yeah, that's the point. Yeah, there. There we go. Thank you very much,

Monergist1. God sent you a heart emoji. Will you respond? Will you swipe right?

Or will you swipe left? Yeah, there you... That is the problem with an imbalanced, unbiblical presentation.

But I'll tell you who it's liberating for. It's liberating for men and women who are drawn to the simple message that God loves you so much he sent his son to pave the way to a relationship with you.

It's appealing and it's liberating for people who need and understand grace, who need and understand forgiveness.

And it's liberating for people who find it virtually impossible to embrace the dynamic, the worldview, and the value system depicted in the story of ancient

Israel. Wow. Jesus accepted it. So they can accept Jesus just a different one from the

New Testament? I don't know where this is going, but I can guarantee it's going to be ugly when it gets there.

It's troubling. Very, very, very troubling. Other people have already responded as well. I guess

I just wanted to get some comments in there as well. 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number.

We've already got four calls there. We might be able to take a few others depending on how fast we go through these.

I need to learn to take calls more quickly, actually. Looking at the times here,

I start with Jay. Hi, Jay. Hey, Brother James, how you doing? Doing good.

I praise the Lord for your ministry. I'm glad for the gifts He's given you. I've got a question about a particular atonement.

Okay. I heard you talk about it, of course

I know you believe in particular atonement, and I've heard you talk about it a couple of times where you say that His atonement is sufficient for everybody, though, even though it's, in a way, particular for the elect.

I just wanted a little bit of an explanation on that. Well, it's been very common to address the objection that you are saying in some sense that the efficacy of the sacrifice of Christ could be in some sense limited, as in not powerful enough to redeem all people.

And I certainly believe that if it was God's intention to establish universalism and to save every person, that the death of Christ could do so.

The point is that given the personal nature of substitutionary atonement and the personal nature of the wrath of God against sin, if there are an elect, if the number of the elect is a particular number, then the work of the

Son is going to be consistent with the action of election. And so the whole reason that people have said, well, it's sufficient for all, but efficient only for the elect, is just simply to say we're not positing that Christ could only save a certain number of people because there could only be some type of, because there's a limitation to the efficacy or the power of His saving grace.

We're saying that there is a consistency between the Father's electing of a certain people, the

Son's dying in their place, the Spirit's coming and making application. But that limitation is based upon God's choice, the triune

God's choice, to reveal Himself in all of His attributes, both

His holiness, His wrath, and His power in the destruction and punishment of the wicked, as well as His mercy, love, and grace in the salvation of an undeserving people.

Otherwise, if you had universalism, you would never see the demonstration of God's wrath and power.

And if you had no one being saved, you would never see His love and mercy and grace. And so He has chosen to reveal all of His attributes.

And as a result, He saves a particular people, which is why you have particular redemption, not due to any inherent weakness in the actual act of the

Son Himself. Right. Yeah, I agree with all what you just said. So would you say that His atoning work on the cross did anything at all for the non -elect?

Oh, yes, I would. But it's non -redemptive things. There is a basis by which

God can deal with mankind in a very merciful fashion because He's demonstrated

He has been consistent to His word through the prophets. He has demonstrated

His justice. The very fact that He is now gathering His elect and has by extension of grace for 2 ,000 years.

Look at all the benefits that have come to non -elect individuals because of the existence of the

Christian church down through the ages. There's a great number of things, but they're not salvific things.

They're not soteriological things in the sense that it's God's intention to bring something about that His decree will not actually provide for.

So, you know, when we talk about the light of mankind, there's been many a non -elect child that has been ministered to in a hospital that was founded by followers of Jesus.

And so, yeah, there's lots of benefits that have accrued to mankind in that way, but they're not specifically salvific benefits.

And when we talk about the extent of the atonement, that's specifically what we're addressing. Yes. Okay.

Okay. So you're talking about common grace and the kind of the common graces of, and you think that was dealt with on the cross.

Well, it certainly, well, God acted in common grace before the cross, but the point is that there are specific benefits that have accrued graciously to mankind because of the cross as well that are not specifically the intention of the

Son salvificly to bring about salvation for those people, but they benefited anyway.

Okay. Yeah. So when I've always heard particular atonement explained by R .C.

Sproul and MacArthur and some others, it seems like they're talking about, you know, when he was on the cross, that it's actual, the father treating the son as if he had committed every sin of every believer or whoever would believe, you know, the elect basically.

Well, those are two different things. I can't speak for Dr. MacArthur and I can't speak for Dr.

Sproul, but the historic Reformed understanding would be that Christ takes on the sins of the elect, not of the non -elect.

Right. Okay. Right. That's what I was dealing with was I didn't know if when you're talking about being sufficient for all is somehow in a way…

Sufficiently powerful, but not applied in their case. But would you agree with that? That the atoning, the particular atonement is actual specific sins like everyone you've committed and will commit, that they were specifically laid on him or are you more of a, in a general way, that he took on the elect sin?

Well, I can't see how you can differentiate between the two, to be honest with you. And given the personal nature of union with Christ, if I am the one united with him, then my sin is what he bears.

And so they're both the same. I'm not sure how you differentiate between them. Okay. Well, I appreciate your time.

Like I said, I've gained a lot from your ministry. Thanks, Jay. God bless.

All right. 877 -753 -3341. Jack in Kentucky.

Hi, Dr. White. Thank you for once again taking my call. That article that you referred me to the last time

I called in greatly helped me with the issue that I raised then. So thank you so much. I'm sorry that I don't remember specifically what that was about.

It's okay. I'm actually calling about a completely different issue this time. I follow your ministry quite regularly, and I also follow the ministry of Dr.

Michael Brown quite regularly. I greatly get a lot out of both of y 'all's ministries, and you guys have both deeply blessed me in that sense.

I know that there are deep divisions that exist between you, one of them being that of epistemology in regards to gifts of the

Spirit. And I wanted to get your opinion on a particular verse, and I guess what the cessationist answer to this would be, because I actually don't know where I line up on this issue yet.

Okay. That'd be 1 Corinthians 13, 8 -10, where it talks about if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away.

If there are tongues, they will cease. If there is knowledge, it will be done away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.

And I know charismatics tend to point to that and say the gifts are to continue until Jesus Christ comes back.

I would ask kind of what your take on that verse is. Well, there are those who argue that this is specifically in regards to when the perfect comes is the canon of the

New Testament. I realize there are people who make that argument. I don't think that that's the case.

I think when the perfect comes is the conclusion of all things. But that doesn't say anything as to prophecy, tongues, knowledge, and what their purposes are.

By 1 Corinthians 13, you've still got the discussion that Paul is going to provide, well, has started providing, chapter 12, 13, and 14, and his own statement that tongues specifically function as a sign to the

Jewish people that judgment has come upon them, drawing from, as I recall, the prophecy of Isaiah.

And the issue for me, very plainly, is is there a differentiation between apostolic sign gifts and the gifts given to the

Church for the continuation and maintenance of the Church? Now, there are some people who do not make that distinction. There are some people who actually are what

I would call ultra -cessationists, who believe that all the gifts— well, there's two extremes.

There are those who say that all the gifts ever given by the

Spirit to the Church continue in the Church to this day, which I guess would have to include apostleship, raising the dead, everything that you see at any point in time in apostolic experience.

You know, if someone falls asleep and falls out of a window in your church service, you should be able to go over and raise them up, and so on and so forth.

On the other side are those who say that none of those gifts continue in the

Church. So there is no spiritual gift at all. They've all ceased with the apostles, whether it be discernment or any of them that are listed.

They're all done. Now, in between there, you're going to find a whole range of perspectives, including some who would, on the charismatic side, who would say, well, the gifts that have been given to the

Church for the maintenance of the Church will continue, but there might be gifts like, well, even

Michael would say, he differentiates between Apostle with a capital A and Apostle with a small a.

Apostle with a small a, he would have, like, someone like Agabus, who is called a prophet, or people who are sent by churches, for example, but are not of the

Twelve, are not Scripture -giving, revelatory -giving, for the whole

Church, apostles. So he would differentiate there, which would mean that the spiritual gift of Apostleship with a capital

A, he would have to agree, in a sense, because of the uniqueness of the apostles, has ended, because it was attached to them.

I am just farther on that spectrum in saying there were certain apostolic sign gifts.

In other words, they were gifts given to the apostles that established their authority to preach the

Gospel. And so, when Peter goes into the temple, and Peter and John, and they encounter the man who's been lame for ever and a day, everybody knows who he is, we don't have any money to give you, but we have, in the name of Jesus Christ, rise and walk.

Here is a miraculous healing of this individual, and it's so plain and so clear in the narrative that follows in their appearance before the

Sanhedrin, that this miracle was done, well, in fact, the poor man's lameness was a part of God's purpose as well, and the miracle is now done to establish what?

That these unlearned men are the apostles of Jesus Christ, they are the ones who are proclaiming this

Gospel message in their day. And what I see going on in the

New Testament is Paul explains the gift of tongues as a sign to the

Jewish people of God's judgment. After AD 70, that would no longer be relevant.

And so, if that is the case, then there would be connections historically to the development of apostolic authority, the writing in the

New Testament, the establishment of the Church, that would, over time, lead the mature, functioning

Church to possess what they did not possess at the beginning, and once they lose what they had at the beginning, that is the apostles, you either have to say they were replaced with apostles of equal authority or recognize that there was a specific period of apostolic authority.

And then the sign gifts that they themselves exercised would not continue after their ministry within the

Church. And so, there's, and then you've got disagreements between people as to exactly how to identify what those sign gifts are.

There might be some who would say that, you know, raising the dead was an apostolic sign gift, but tongues was not.

And so, there's a lot of discussion and argumentation.

I would place that as one of the apostolic sign gifts, especially when you see the apostles not exercising that power in every instance as the

Church matures over time. Paul writes epistles where he says, God was very merciful that so -and -so didn't die of a certain disease.

And you just want to go, well, Paul, couldn't you just raise him up? Couldn't you just heal him? Well, he didn't.

He had to pray, and it wasn't like walking into the temple in that very unique time at the very beginning of the presentation of the

Gospel. And so, I think you do see in the Book of Acts and in the epistolary literature the rise of the developed

Church. And this is one of the arguments I have against Bart Ehrman, but it's, believe it or not, it is related.

Because he has the theory that you couldn't have had that developed Church that early on. Well, I think that you do.

And so, that's really where I would come down in regards to that. I would not say that that particular text—

I could not defend exegetically that particular text as meaning the perfect is the closing of the canon.

I know that's very popular. I just don't think that I could consistently defend that. Well, can

I ask a follow -up question about something else that you said, kind of regarding this whole issue? Yeah, we'll probably be able to sneak it in.

Go ahead. Thank you, sir. You talk about how certain gifts were apostolic sign gifts.

My curiosity is that if these are apostolic, if some of these gifts were meant specifically for the Apostles, which

I'm willing to agree to, as I said, I'm not entirely sure on this subject. Or the period of the Apostles. Or the period of the

Apostles. Okay, that clarifies things. Yeah, because obviously it wasn't just the Apostles who were speaking in tongues.

But the giving of that gift, as I understand the discussion that the

Apostle provides in regards to that particular subject and then his citation of Old Testament text, that is during that time period.

In other words, if someone were to come into the Church, this spirit working amongst the people is a demonstration to the people of the fact that the

Gospel has gone to the Gentiles, that judgment has come upon Israel, that the people speaking with a strange tongue means that this is what the

Holy Spirit has done, that that is being provided to the Church. And once AD 70 comes,

I think there is a major change that takes place at that particular point in time that is then seen in what takes place afterwards.

So, I had a feeling that's probably what you were thinking of, and so I didn't mean to cut you off,

I just wanted to make sure that you understood what I was... Oh no, you totally got it. If we still have time,

I would ask... The other people online are not going to like you very much, but go ahead.

I guess I would ask, is there ever a time, I guess in this day and age, where you would see certain gifts that you would say are designated as sign gifts as beneficial and edifying for the

Church today? Is there ever an instance where they could be revitalized or used again? Well, again,

I use the term apostolic sign gifts, and so we don't need, there aren't going to be any more apostles.

What they have delivered is sufficient. But don't get me wrong, if God decided, for whatever purposes, to give a missionary the ability to communicate in the language of the people to whom he was speaking,

I've got absolutely no problem with that. He's not claiming to be an apostle. And I think that's what those gifts were.

God can work in the miraculous. I'm not denying that he can. But to make that normative in a non -apostolic period is where the problem is.

So what was the purpose then? The purpose was the establishment of the authority we have now. Could he have a purpose in opening up the gospel to a particular people or anything else?

I would find that highly unusual, but I'm not going to tell God what he can and cannot do. So there's a difference between saying, this is the normative standard given to us in Scripture, and saying, and that means there could never be an exception to that.

I'm not saying there could never be an exception to that. But the majority of Pentecostal denominations, however, turn that around and say that is the normative.

And if you don't do it, then you're the odd man out. That's where the difference is. All right.

Well, thank you so much, Dr. White. For the sake of those who are also on the line, I will bid you adieu. Thank you so much for taking my call.

Thanks a lot. God bless. Goodbye. I don't know why this one hasn't...

The time thing doesn't seem right to me. Is three the next one or is one the next one? Yeah, that doesn't seem right, because I didn't see that one before.

I'm going to take one just because... Anyway, let's talk with Eric. Hi, Eric. Hi, Dr.

White. First of all, I just want to say thank you. Your teachings, your ministry, have been really good to me.

I've learned a lot from you. I can't tell you how many hours, well over 100. Probably close to 200 hours of your teachings.

Along with Dr. Sproul, yes. I mean, I use you for my ride to work, my ride back, when

I go see my kids in Texas at college. That's what I listen to. Well, good. I've taken a lot of your advice.

When it comes to reading books, I get them on Kindle or Google Books, and I listen to them that way because it helps me learn more.

Oh, yeah. You bet. Oh, yeah. So, I mean, anything you put out, I probably say.

As a matter of fact, just a little side story real quick. We were tearing down audio for one of the campuses

I help at, and we were talking about this, just about church in general, and talking about witnessing and evangelism, and I mentioned

Jeff Durbin, and the guy's like, oh, yeah, I love Jeff Durbin. I was like, yeah, well, if you love Jeff Durbin, you'll love James White.

And the guy said, yeah, I love Jeff Durbin, but... And he said, but, and he goes, I love... He goes, but James White, he's too much for Calvin.

And I was like, huh. And so I know you get a kick out of that, but so what I did, I used your method.

I said, well, huh. I said, I said, I didn't make him that Jeff Durbin had learned under. I just said, huh.

You know what I love about James White? I said, you know, if you ever have a question about what he believes, he won't argue with you.

What he'll do, he'll just sit down, he'll let you voice your, voice what you have to say, and he'll try to answer you in a reasonable and kind fashion.

We try. I've seen him do it with Muslims. I've seen him do other things, and the guy just completely shut up, never said another word.

I was like, huh, okay. And I just let it go and walked away. Well, I'm not sure Jeff Durbin is any less

Calvinistic than I am either, so, but anyway. I know, I know. I laugh because I've listened to you both, and I just love you both, and I get a lot of good ideas for evangelism because I do a lot of witnessing around.

Well, good. I've got a lot of Koreans around me, so it gives me an opportunity to work with them, so. But the reason

I called, you can talk a lot about racial reconciliation. I'm sorry, I'm from Alabama. You can tell by my accent.

I'm not going to touch that with a 10 -foot pole. Look, brother. Hey, look, my kids make fun of me when I go to Texas, and if Texas people make fun of Alabama people, it's all right.

You're from Arizona. It's okay, brother. So, but what

I find fascinating about all of this, and it just doesn't seem like people are ready to say. When I had questions about this, because I grew up in the

South, and because I grew up in a very mixed neighborhood, I grew up in pretty much a project, and so I was pretty much in a multi -ethnic area all the time.

So I didn't understand what people were talking about race, even though I was confronted with it all the time. So as I got older, and I heard about a lot of this stuff,

I started doing a little research, and I ran into Thomas Cole. And my question was, have you had the opportunity to read anything from Thomas Cole?

Oh, of course. Yeah, I've been suggesting to people because T4G and certain people are promoting the book

Divided by Faith, which is a book that is written by sociologists.

It's not a Christian book. It doesn't take into consideration the nature of man and sin, and it's not complete in the data that it provides.

I've said, hey, why don't you pick up a couple of Thomas Cole's books on the similar subjects and get the rest of the story?

And... Well, what I... Exactly. Yeah, well, you know, what I found fascinating, if you read Quests for Cosmic Justice or Vision of the

Anointed, both of those two books deal with the very subject they're talking about. And they both talk about race and this push for this anointed class or this justice that needs to be done for that anointed class and how we need to raise certain people up above others.

But then when you look at this three -part series on culture and, like, migration or conquest or ethnicity, it totally destroys these ideas because you realize that there's no such thing as an anointed class.

There never has been in history. So when you think about that, you realize that the things they're pushing, they don't even understand what they're talking about.

And it's sad. It's sad because it destroys the Christian church. Well, especially in this regards, you know, when

I started the program, I read that series of tweets, and I can assure you, though Thomas Sowell would not have been someone that Kyle Howard was specifically referring to, the people that he was referring to would be people who have deeply read

Thomas Sowell and have appreciated what he has to say. Now, I think one of the problems we have right now is that we're drawing from a lot of non -Christians and applying theological conclusions to what non -Christians are saying.

We can learn from non -Christians about what Thomas Sowell is so good about in pointing out the holes in the narrative that is being presented, a very simplistic narrative that's being presented to us today, and that the things have been different in the past and that we only hear a certain part of that, especially in public education today.

But the reasons for that in regards to man's nature and the reality of sin and the effects of sin upon an ethnic group, even, those things have to come from a

Christian perspective. They can't come from the sociologists. And unfortunately, it sounds...

Oh, yeah. Well, I totally agree. And I think it is a question of anthropology. I think it is a question of a misunderstanding of the nature of man and a misunderstanding of sin.

And it's like Dennis Prager said, when he always asks folks, when he debates them, one of the number -one questions he asks them is, how do you see mankind?

How do you see man? Do you see man as generally good? Or do you see man as sinful and evil?

And that's really what it boils down to. And when you don't recognize that nature, and then you don't recognize who

God is, then you totally miss that in -between. And you've said that a thousand times. I'm not saying anything...

I'm really quoting you. But what I'm saying is that I think people just fail to understand who man is and who

God is. Yeah. Well, and that shouldn't be taking place in the church, but it is.

That's what has caught so many of us by surprise, is that particular issue.

But, Eric, I appreciate the call. Thank you, sir. Yeah, thank you, sir. And God bless and save people.

Okay. All right. Thank you. God bless. All right. We'll just cut it off there because it's going to be tough to get these in.

Let's talk with Ross. Hi, Ross. Hey, Dr. Wade. How are you? Doing good. So my question is about...

So basically I ran into a Facebook ad in my news feed from a

Facebook group called Reforming Hell. And I think it's...

The best I can tell is it's sponsored by a guy named Dr. Robin Perry, who considers himself, apparently, the world's greatest proponent of evangelical...

What's the word? Universalism? Yeah, that's the one. Okay. So I read the article and I commented on it, and I referenced

Romans 9, which to me kind of refutes universalism because it shows that God intends for some people to perish.

So I just commented that, and I quoted from a chunk of Romans chapter 9. And then the person from the

Facebook group responded to me, basically quoted a chapter...

Well, sent me a PDF for a chapter of Robin Perry's book, which it pretty much relied on,

Romans 5, 18, and Romans 11, 32, for the entirety of its content.

And I honestly had some trouble dealing with those two passages and trying to, you know, exegete them in a consistent fashion.

So I was wondering if you could provide some insight on those for me? Yeah. Well, we have done a program.

Maybe someone could look it up for me real quick. I remember responding to a Southern Baptist traditionalist.

Hold on a second. I think it was

Adam Harwood. And I think we were responding to this little booklet right here called

Born Guilty, A Southern Baptist View of Original Sin. And you have that,

Rich? Yeah, just go ahead and use the search engine on the website at the bottom of the main page. Put in Adam Harwood or anti -Calvinism.

Just put in Adam Harwood, and it's the first thing that pops up. Okay. So if you look up Adam Harwood, you'll find an entire program where I walk through Romans 5.

And very briefly, what we demonstrate and document there is that Paul presents two humanities in Romans 5.

Romans 5 .15. But the free gift is not like the transgression. For by the transgression of the one, the many died.

Much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many.

So who are these many? Well, you have one humanity in Adam, and the only thing you get from Adam is death.

You have a humanity in Christ, and what you get from Christ is life. All of us are born into Adam, but not all of us are transferred into Christ.

That's where the Universalist misses this. And so the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned.

For on the one hand, the judgment arose from one transgression resulting in condemnation.

But on the other hand, the free gift arose from many transgressions resulting in justification. For if by the transgression of the one, death reigns through the one.

So that's in Adam. Death reigns through the one. Much more, those who receive the abundance of grace, there's a distinction there, and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one,

Jesus Christ. So you've got your two groups. The one group in Adam, death. The one group in Christ has eternal life.

So then, as through one transgression, Adams, there resulted condemnation to all men who were all born in Adam.

Even so, through the one act of righteousness, there resulted justification of life to all men.

Now, if you want to ignore everything that came before, and the distinction that Paul has already drawn between those who are in Adam and those who are in Christ, then that's why they utilize this, out of its context.

But the all men is the all men in Adam versus all men in Christ. It's the two groups that are being contrasted with one another.

And the fact that that transgression, that's all Adam can give you. But the righteousness of life comes to those who are in Christ Jesus.

For as through the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners, even so the obedience of the one, the many will be made righteous.

And so it's, who's in Christ? Who's in Adam? They want to say everyone is in both, that there's no distinction between the two.

That is not possible to read into what Paul had said at the beginning of Romans chapter 5, or anything that came before that.

You have to isolate this and remove it from what has already come before and after to make that type of an argument.

Once you see the two humanities, then it's straightforward from there. But like I said, look up Adam Harwood on the search engine, and I walk through it much, much more slowly than that in response to him on the issue of original sin in Romans 5.

Okay? Okay. Could I sneak in another question about the Mormons who came into my house about two hours ago?

Um, really quick. Sneaky day, yes. So basically,

I have your book, Letters to a Mormon Elder, and I read a few days ago because I knew they were coming, the chapter on truth.

And that was one of the things I asked them about. How do you know that the Book of Mormon is true? And the answer

I got confused the living daylights out of me. Basically what they said was, well, we prayed, and the

Holy Ghost told us, or, you know, witnessed to us that the Book of Mormon is true.

But then they were talking a little bit later and said that God, Heavenly Father, loved creation so much that He gave

Joseph Smith the Book of Mormon as the evidence, or I think they used the term witness, that the

Book of Mormon is, or that, you know, Joseph Smith was a real prophet. And what he had to say was legit.

So then I asked them, wait, wait, wait, I thought you said that praying to the Heavenly Father, the

Holy Ghost, or whatever, that's how you know. But then you just said the Book of Mormon is how you know.

And so what they explained to me was that the Book of Mormon is the evidence, but the

Holy Ghost is the witness. Well, there's two different things being testified to. What they're saying is it's a subjective mess, and LDS epistemology is a subjective mess.

But at least what I would understand a normal Orthodox Mormon to be saying is that the

Book of Mormon is a witness to Joseph Smith's prophethood, and the

Holy Spirit has to witness to you of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. So there's just sort of a step in between.

It's all subjective, because if the Book of Mormon is not historically true, which it is plainly not, then it cannot testify to a false prophet who gave it.

And none of this is relevant, of course, to how a person actually knows truth from the scriptures, which is not based upon burnings in the bosoms or anything along those lines, but the consistency of the prophetic testimony and so on and so forth.

So, you know, you can't expect, especially if these are the two young guys, the guys out on their normal missions between ages 18 and 21 or so, you can't really expect them to have ever really been challenged on having a consistent epistemology.

They're going with what they were taught to do at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, and specific categories of witness and testimony and epistemology just are not things that they're discussing there at the

MTC. Okay, Ross, I gotta get to the other callers. I appreciate it. Okay, thank you.

Thanks, God bless. Bye -bye. All right, and we talk with Ivan. Hi, Ivan. Hello, Dr.

White. I have a question on 1 Corinthians 14, verse 1. Okay. It says,

Pursue love and desire a spiritual gift, but especially that you may prophesy. And as I read that and following the doctrine of sola scriptura, we want to order our lives and our worship according to the scripture.

So I see here, if we were not to pursue love, we would be naturally in disobedience to the scriptures.

But as I see in the contemporary Christian world, if we're not pursuing spiritual gifts, and especially the gift of prophesying, a lot of churches would say, well, we're not being disobedient to the scriptures here.

And I find it strange that pursue love is indefinite, but then the second part of the sentence has an expiration date, and I just cannot see that from the exegesis.

I'm sorry, an expiration date? Yeah. Like, it ended after the apostolic age, kind of, that kind of thought.

No, I would disagree. I think to prophesy is proclamation of the word.

I don't think it's prophesy in the sense of receive prophetic revelation that's supposed to be canonized.

So I would not see any kind of— I would see, given what's going to be in the rest of 1

Corinthians 14, especially his discussion, I'd rather say a few words in a known tongue than to speak in tongues all the time so that I can communicate gospel truths.

The idea is you have the pneumatica, which are the spiritual gifts, which the

Corinthians are obviously very zealous to be seeking after, but there's something greater than that, and that is the ability to communicate

God's truth to others in the sense of prophesying. We tend to think of that just as future events or something like that, but that's actually a very limited element.

Most of the prophets were not prophesying future events. They were proclaiming God's word to the people of Israel, and it was normally a word of judgment.

So, the first command, diokatei tein agapein, that is in the imperative, pursue love.

That's what's going to hold any fellowship together. And then, you know, desire earnestly, be zealous for the spiritual gifts, but rather, and some might actually say you could possibly look at that in the, you have a bunch of imperatives here, and so, pursue love, be zealous for the spiritual gifts, but rather, so he's placing on a higher level than the pneumatika, is the proclamation of God's truth, the setting forth of God's message, which of course at this time and in the early period of the

Church is the main thing that was needed to be done. You had to get the message out. You had to get the proclamation out.

So, I don't see there being a time expiration in that way.

Thank you for that. Just one quick follow -up question, if I may. The daughters of Philip did prophesy, and I think isn't that different from preaching, whereas, like, elders are supposed to be teachers and preachers, but the daughters of Philip were prophesying, so there's a different work of grace happening than preaching.

The nature of what the daughters of Philip were doing probably, again, in reference to Philip's being very well -known in the

Church, it's the apostolic period, and I don't see that.

That would be one of those things that I would say there's a good example of an apostolic sign gift.

It's the period of the Apostles. It demonstrates Philip's important role,

I mean, so much so that the story of his being a missionary is found there in the

Book of Acts. I would see that as one of those examples of something that is there, needs to be recognized, but not necessarily something that continues on.

And so, you don't see, for example, the Apostle Paul providing for any kind of qualifications for female prophetesses in the

New Testament Church. That's not an office. That is provided for in Scripture, and so the question becomes, and this is really where an issue is, because if you're going to say that some of these things that were specifically seen in the early

Church, but are not seen in the New Testament later in the Church, if you're going to insist that they need to be there, why aren't we given any qualifications?

Why aren't we given any guidelines? Could it be... Go ahead. It says that if a woman prophesies or prays or prophesies with her head uncovered for the

Corinthians. So, there were those women in the Corinthian Church who were prophesying with their head uncovered.

So, what the daughters of Philip were doing in the Book of Acts, they're doing in Corinth, and I traced that word prophesy as an expositionally constant, and here we're commanded to, an imperative, that you desire prophesying.

So, I would say that that link takes us from what the disciples at Ephesus were doing, the daughters of Philip were doing, and we're commanded for the

Church to do in 1 Corinthians 14. Prophesying as in doing what? Well, if I can just bring up an illustration how this happens in our prayer meetings,

I go to a classical Pentecostal church. So, here's what we do.

The service begins at 7 p .m. A person preaches from the Scriptures for like half an hour, and then we begin to pray.

Everybody, there's corporate prayer, everybody's praying in tongues, and then as the

Holy Spirit moves a woman or a man, whoever feels the gift is being stirred in him, begins to prophesy.

They speak in tongues, and then they begin to prophesy, and it's a fast -paced, the Holy Spirit type of prophecy.

Sounds like Scripture. There is that huge weight. Yeah, it sounds like Scripture.

Do you record these? We do record these on the phone, but they're not

Scripture. I believe that the gift of prophecy here is because it's being commanded by Scripture, it's not adding to the canon of Scripture.

As we see in the Book of Acts, Paul tells the people that in every city, the

Holy Spirit is prophesying to me that this and this awaits me in Jerusalem.

But those were not recorded. So we see the gift of prophecy, the daughters of Philip, practicing this gift, and it's not being recorded as canon

Scripture. So when these people are speaking in tongues in your meetings, are those being interpreted?

Well, one of the things as we follow is

Ephesians 6, verse 18, which is to pray in the Spirit at all times. And we do distinguish the gift of tongues from the gift of the

Holy Spirit with the initial evidence to pray in tongues. So we do distinguish prayer in tongues with speaking in tongues, which is speaking in tongues as a proclamation, while prayer in tongues is a worship and prayer gift that happens, that is available to a believer when he receives the baptism of the

Holy Spirit. Okay. Well, I appreciate that, Ivan. I obviously disagree. I believe these were apostolic issues.

I don't believe that they're continued today, and I think the fact that you have to distinguish tongues into two different categories there is probably evidential of that.

But you asked what my interpretation was, I provided it for you, and hopefully that's helpful to you.

Appreciate your phone call today. All right, one last call, and it's John in L .A. Hi, John. Hey, Dr.

White. I am driving right now, and I hope I don't get pulled over by a cop. Well, that's probably, yeah.

If you're in Washington State, I'm not sure that I may be doing something illegal even talking to you.

Can you hear me, sir? Yes, I can. Okay, I'm on the good spot. This is a

Book of Mormon question. I've searched the internet, I've looked through your books, I've not seen this particular detail, but I want to see your thoughts on it.

I asked Richard, he probably had it set up for you earlier, it's in 3 Nephi 15, where Jesus, you know, obviously he's been teaching through the, quote,

Jesus has been teaching through the Beatitudes, etc., etc. Joseph Smith is quoting, you know, recording scripture, but if you could just pull up 3

Nephi 15, verse 20, and we're going to go all the way to the end. So let me know when you got there.

Well, I have it in front of me. It's, it's, looks like a...

Okay, I'll go ahead and read it out loud. So, unverily, I say unto you again that the other tribe hath the

Father separated from them, and it is because of their iniquity that they know not of him. Unverily, I say unto you, that ye are they in whom

I said other sheep I have which are not of this fowl... Hold on a second, John. John, hold on a second. Your phone doesn't sound very good, so I don't think anyone can understand what you're saying, so I'll read it, since it seems important to you.

Unverily, I say unto you again that the other tribes hath the Father separated from them, and it is because of their iniquity that they know not of them.

Unverily, I say unto you, that ye are they of whom I said other sheep I have which are not of this fowl, them also

I must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and it shall be one foal and one shepherd. And they understand me not, for they supposed, and they understood me not, for they supposed it had been the

Gentiles, for they understood not that the Gentiles should be converted through their preaching. And they understood me not that I said they shall hear my voice, and they understood me not that the

Gentiles should not at any time hear my voice, that I should not manifest myself unto them, save it were by the

Holy Ghost. But behold, ye have both heard my voice and seen me, and ye are my sheep, and ye are numbered among those whom the

Father hath given me." All right. So, other than the gross mis -twisting of John 10, 16, there's a particular verse which speaks of him saying, you know, at no time should

I manifest myself unto the Gentiles, except it be by the Holy Ghost. To me, that sounds like the equivalent.

I want to see how, if you could possibly defend this, if you could put on your elder white badge and your

Mormon bicycle helmet and try to defend this one, but Jesus claims that the

Gentiles would not manifest themselves, and this text is speaking of though him manifesting himself physically to where they hear his audible voice and see him, that sounds like the death of the

Book of Mormon there, because we have actually in a few texts in the Bible in which Jesus does, if you were to take that interpretation, manifest himself unto

Gentiles. We've got Matthew 8, Romans and Tyrion, we've got

Matthew 15, the Canaanite woman, John 4, the Samaritan woman, and the entire Samaritan village.

How would you, if you were to do some role -play, defend that text in which

Jesus says, you know, at no time should I manifest myself unto the Gentiles except by this method.

How would you, if you were a Mormon, how would you defend that to me? Because I've looked all over the internet and I've not even found an answer.

I've not even seen anybody point that particular detail out. I would, if I were, if I were

Alma Allred, my response would be, you're missing the context of 3515.

This is after Jesus' ministry and all those references that you gave. This is after the resurrection.

This is when he's come over and established the church in the Americas and therefore it'd only be relevant to the time period after the resurrection and that the only way that he had done so at that point was by the

Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost in the revelation there in Mesoamerica or wherever in the world it was.

And that would then also be the mechanism that he would use in Revelation to Joseph Smith later on by the power of the

Holy Ghost. Certainly seems odd considering he's speaking in context. Jesus is, with those

Jews in John 10, saying that there are, quote -unquote, other sheep, and if there are particular sheep in his time period in which he's ministering prior to his crucifixion, it seems, again, problematic.

I could be wrong about this, but I'm pretty certain 3 Nephi 15 is after the resurrection and ascension.

Right, it is. And I just wonder why, you know, why would he even go so far as to dialogue with these— again, we know it's fiction.

Because Joseph had to fill the page, dude. Come on. You can't sell a book that doesn't have any words in it.

It is obvious. To us, it's an obvious mishmash of King James stuff from a guy who had no biblical understanding whatsoever.

It is amazing to me that so many intelligent people can look at this book and go, yeah, it sounds just— it is astounding to me.

But you asked me to put on my Mormon missionary outfit, so I think that's a pretty decent defense there.

All right, I think you're wrong, Elder White. I probably am. I appreciate your attempt.

I really thought that was almost an equivalent of a surah for 157 Crusher, because you're denying the fact that, yes, he did actually talk to some people.

But I think that's how most of them would probably get around it if they recognized what the context was.

Temporally speaking, I think that's probably what they do. Words have no meaning. At any time means at any time.

Because remember, you'd have the prepositional phrase after my resurrection to actually clarify that. Like I said, words have no meaning.

Well, okay. Well, back to verse 14. And not, at any time hath the

Father given me a commandment that I should tell it unto your brethren at Jerusalem. I mean, look, transporting

Jesus over to Mesoamerica is the problem here. That just didn't happen. So we're playing with a myth to begin with.

But anyway. All right, man. Thanks for your call. Yes, sir. Thank you. God bless. Bye -bye. Bye -bye.

You know, why don't we write down the topics of these calls? I'm never going to remember all that stuff.

I don't even know how to summarize all that stuff. I mean, wow. There is a bunch of stuff there.

Many, many, many calls there. Very excellent stuff. I'm awful glad I have that Book of Mormon.

You didn't warn me to fire up my Book of Mormon program. You should have put me at...

Yeah, but you should have typed in there, fire up your LDS Scriptures thing. But thankfully, it popped up nice and quick and I was able to get to it.

It's been a while since I've done much reading in the Book of Mormon, but there you go. We can go from prophecy, limited atonement, and Book of Mormon questions.

There's at least three of them that we got to there. Yeah, ping -pong, king -pong, all over the place. Yeah, that was fun.

All right. Thanks for listening to The Dividing Line. We are going to... My intention is to do a program on Tuesday, as difficult as that's going to be, because I leave

Wednesday for the big, long trip. Please, once again, prayers requested. I got my inoculations today.

I'm still feeling pretty good. Arms are a little sore, but other than that, I'm good. Big question...

Look, it's real simple. We've got a lot of stuff lined out, and I need my health.

I need... I'm really concerned about this medication.

A lot of people saying it just makes you feel like you want to die. It's not going to be real easy for me to be trying to do debates and teaching for hours on end if I feel like I want to die.

So, prayers appreciated for that. It's nearly three weeks long.

It's a marathon trip. I just found out today that I actually had scheduled another week's worth of stuff within one week of when

I get back, which will be exciting. I can't tell you about it, but you just put it all together, it's going to be insane.

So, I mentioned at the beginning of the program, that was a long time ago. Prayers appreciated. We'll try to do a program on Tuesday, and Rich is contacting folks to try to put together some dividing lines for when

I am not here anyways, which is pretty much most of the summer. So, I may lose my job, but by the time

I get back, you may have all said, ah, who's that guy? Get him out of here. We don't want that guy around here anymore. Anyway, thanks for watching the program today.