Radio Free Geneva: Hinduism, Racism, and Calvinism

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00:03

Um, you might want to brace yourself. I don't like Calvinists because they've chosen to follow

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John Calvin instead of Jesus Christ. I have a problem with them. They're following men instead of the

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Word of God. And I'm going to be the one standing on top of my hands!

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Standing on top of my hands! Standing on top of my feet! Standing on a stump! And crying out! He died for all!

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Those who elected were selected! For still our ancient foe, doth seek to work us foe.

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His cross and bow our grave, and lock with cruel hate.

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Well, first of all, James, um, I'm very ignorant of the Reformers. I think

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I probably, uh, know more about Calvinism than most of the people who call themselves Calvinists.

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For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever!

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Ladies and gentlemen, James White is a hyper -Calvinist. Now, whatever we do in Baptist life, we don't need to be teaming up with hyper -Calvinists.

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I, I, I said the other day in class that I don't understand the difference between hyper -Calvinism and Calvinism.

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It, it seems to me that Calvin was a hyper -Calvinist. Uh, right,

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I, I don't think there is typically any difference between Calvinism and hyper -Calvinism. Read my book.

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And now, from our underground bunker, deep beneath Bruton -Parker College, where no one would think to look, safe from all those moderate

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Calvinists, Dave Hunt fans, and those who have read and re -read George Bryson's book, we are

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Radio Free Geneva, broadcasting the truth about God's freedom to say for His own eternal glory.

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Okay, I wouldn't have been allowed to listen to that when I was a kid. Okay, just, just saying.

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Um, how long have you had this? Since April. April? Really? And you managed to keep that a complete secret since April, huh?

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Yeah. I don't know, did you? Some of our listeners kind of felt that we needed to up the pace a little bit.

03:26

So who was that? Tim Bushong. And, and, and they actually did the song too?

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Yeah, yeah, he went into his own studio and the whole works. His instruments, the whole nine yards.

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Wow, okay. News to me. Thank you for...

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Well, we've, we've been waiting and... Waiting and waiting... Waiting for an opportunity to do that.

03:53

Someone on Twitter says, sounds like Ozzy got saved. I just figured an idea to give you a little bit of a heads up two seconds before we played it.

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Yeah, someone else's channel, Heavy Metal Geneva. Yep, that's right. All right, well, thank you very much.

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I can play it again if you want. No, that's okay. I'm sure we'll get a chance to hear it again in the future.

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Just, I had absolutely no earthly idea. So if you are, you know, deeply offended by the musical choices made by people, blame somebody other than myself.

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I had nothing to do with it at all. So anyway, welcome to Radio Free Geneva.

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Something tells me that some people in Southern Georgia will say, See? See? Hey, those

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Calvinists, they even have music like that. And yeah, okay.

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We've had a lot of versions of that now. We had the, we had the version from Steve Green, which was

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I think our first one. Yeah, somebody on Twitter says, this is what happens when you keep

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Rich Pierce in the basement downloading debates. Yeah. And then we had

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Mutato's version. And we had a number of incarnations of the Steve Green one as we tried to make it sound better and work better.

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But, and now, now, now the heavy metal version of,

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I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be going over to Wittenberg in 2017, maybe more than once, actually.

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So I'm, maybe I'll bring that over there and see how that flies with my German friends. I'm not, I'm not sure.

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So. I have to say, I think it was very well done. Oh, it was very well done. It really did a great job. Yeah, it's, you know, when you're doing the music, then you can hold stuff and put in, you know, time this things.

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And yeah, that's what made the old way of doing it so difficult. By the way, it has been renamed.

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That is known as a mighty Radio Free Geneva. Oh, okay.

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That is the mighty Radio Free Geneva. Well, we'll have to make it worthwhile then with all of that, waking everybody up.

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And I guess, I guess we can pull that off because this was probably one of the most tweeted articles that has ever appeared on the internet to me.

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I, in fact, I even had to say on Twitter, yes, yes,

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I saw the Calvinist thing. Stop already. Cease. Desist. Because I was just getting slammed with everybody referring to this article on SBC Today.

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Now, evidently, SBC Today is the clearinghouse for every kind of silly anti -Calvinism that can be developed amongst the folks in the

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Southern Baptist Convention who are fighting that rearguard action. And it is a rearguard action.

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They're losing the battle, and they know it, and they're getting more and more desperate. And so we're getting all sorts of odd stuff out there.

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And when I went to get this article, I ended up seeing a number of other articles on SBC Today that likewise were, let's just say, good material for Radio Free Geneva.

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Bad stuff. And then someone sent me a tweet of a video and made some comment about, give us some assistance up here in Canada.

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So I'm assuming that the video is of someone from Canada. He's a rather large fellow with long hair, and we'll be looking at a couple of his comments just in passing as well during the course of today's program here on Radio Free Geneva.

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If you're not familiar with it, if you're a new listener since April, evidently,

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Radio Free Geneva is a program we do once in a while here on The Dividing Line where we address primarily bad arguments against Calvinism.

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And the number of arguments against Calvinism that are bad in comparison to the number of arguments against Calvinism that are good, well, there really isn't much of a comparison.

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The vast majority of material that is out there that argues against Reformed Theology is based upon an ignorance of Reformed Theology, based upon circular reasoning, based upon certain emotional traditions that obviously certain people don't want to try to really deal with, whatever else it might be.

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And so that's what we're normally dealing with.

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Sometimes we deal with some serious stuff, serious arguments. We've reviewed

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William Lane Craig and a number of other individuals who are considered to be leading

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Arminian scholars and stuff like that. But again, the vast majority of the stuff that most of us have to deal with when we're answering questions about Reformed Theology isn't the good stuff.

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I mean, I sort of became known in this area when

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I wrote The Potter's Freedom, and The Potter's Freedom was a response to a bad book by Norman Geisler, and it's still a bad book today.

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Badly argued, badly researched, badly presented, and it ended up being a book that introduced many, many, many people to Reformed Theology and continues to do that even to this day, thankfully.

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So that's where a lot of the stuff is coming from, and I'm going to have to ask you to sneak in here and do the fan thing again because it's still

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Phoenix and it's still the monsoon season. Go to Colorado for just a little while.

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Yeah, I know. Well, go to Colorado, yeah. And when

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I wrote The Triple Bypass, I didn't mention this, I got the worst hypothermia I've ever, ever gotten.

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Maybe I did mention it, I don't know, but I'll blame all loss of memory on the hypothermia

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I got descending Squaw Pass into Idaho Springs.

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But anyway, it was while I was up there that this article was originally posted on the

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SBC Today website, published on Monday, July 20th, 2015 by Dr.

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Michael A. Cox, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Prior, Oklahoma. Now, as soon as I saw that,

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I went, uh -huh, I know this is going to be good. The reason being that, some of you may recall,

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I've spoken in Metropolitan Prior, Oklahoma more than once, in fact.

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And my good brother Derek Melton is down there, and so he had actually sent me a copy of a book by Dr.

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Michael A. Cox against Calvinism, and it's basically the, oh, those terrible

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Calvinists want to send little babies to hell type of stuff. In other words,

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Dr. Cox does not show either ability or willingness, and sometimes until you meet someone, you can't tell which one's which, to actually hear what is being said and to respond to Reformed theology in a serious fashion.

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Instead, it's the, you know, strum the heart strings and go after all the old canards, which again is what you normally end up dealing with when you are dealing with these particular issues.

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And so, when I saw the title of the article,

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I was like, okay, this is not surprising to me, because Dr.

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Cox in his book demonstrated numerous errors of category, commits many category errors, seems to believe as long as it will argue against Calvinism, we'll go with it.

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Whether it's a good argument or not, whether it involves us in using argumentation to make our own position look extremely silly, it doesn't really matter, we'll go for it anyways.

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And so the title is, Is Calvinism Spiritual Racism? Is Calvinism Spiritual Racism?

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In this brief article, I'll contend that Hinduism, racism, and Calvinism have many things in common.

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Now, you immediately stop and recognize, at least if you're a person who has, at some point in your life, done some reading on logic, proper forms of argumentation, this kind of comparison thing can be used, well, is most often abused, and is only overly relevant to people who just don't think with their minds, but with their hearts instead.

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I mean, we could, it'd be real easy to write an article about, you know, the

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Dallas Cowboys, the Obama administration, and Arminianism. I'm sure

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I could find something to tie them all together, sorry Tom. You know, it's real easy to say, well, you know, you've got this kind of person over here, and you've got this kind of person over there, and that must mean, as if similarity proves some kind of substantial argumentative point, when obviously it doesn't.

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He says, I will contend that Hinduism, racism, and Calvinism have many things in common, too many for Christians not to be alarmed.

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Such disturbing common denominators should give pause to all

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Calvinists and any who are entering thoughts of embracing the doctrines espoused by Calvinism and Reformed theology.

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So, the scary thing is he's serious about this. That's what's really frightening about this, to be honest with you, is he's actually serious about this.

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Then you have the, to make these false analogy arguments work, you have to very carefully choose the elements you're going to parallel.

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And to do that, you always have to ignore the fundamental foundations of the systems or groups.

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Obviously, Hinduism is a religion with 330 million gods.

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Calvinism is a religion with one god, who is the creator of all things. Any attempt to parallel anything between those two that does not address the fundamental worldview is obviously vacuous, utterly without merit.

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No serious thinker could ever even begin to think like this, but that's what you get.

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And then you throw in racism. Racism is not a worldview. Racism is not a religion.

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Racism can take all sorts of different forms. And so, anyway, reincarnationists like Hindus avoid the giving of invitations.

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I just stop immediately. Yeah, I know, every once in a while we got to deal with some of the weird stuff that's out there, and this is one of them.

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Yeah, you know, it's going to be hard not to chuckle a little bit.

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Again, the thing that's frightening here is that Dr. Cox actually seriously is suggesting this stuff.

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Reincarnationists like Hindus, obviously, to seriously discuss

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Hinduism in any way, which I doubt Dr. Cox really understands Hinduism.

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I don't understand Hinduism, and I've listened to multiple graduate -level courses on Hinduism, and I find it next to impossible to work through all the variations, because I just have not had dialogue with enough

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Hindus to even begin to start putting it together. But reincarnation is a belief that Hindus and other groups hold in common, but the reason for it is going to differ depending upon the group and the role that reincarnation plays in the cycle.

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Within Hinduism, you have this cycle that you're on in regards to karma and karmic debt and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

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And there's all sorts of forms of Hinduism, so exactly how that works out. Again, this is why all these analogy arguments are normally just for very simple -minded folks that just don't want to actually deal with the issue.

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But this is backwards. But anyways, reincarnationists like Hindus avoid the giving of invitations.

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You mean like Charles Finney invitations in churches? They also generally don't wear bow ties.

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Who cares? What is the logical connection here? There isn't any, and that's one of the things that ties together a lot of arguments against Calvinism.

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When you start searching for the rational, the logical, the truthful, it just goes, phew, it's gone.

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So, avoid the giving of invitations, publicity, or advertisement, and simply trust the law of attraction to draw their own to them and them to their own.

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Now, a reference was provided to William Walker Atkinson, Reincarnation and the

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Law of Karma, a study of the Old New World Doctrine of Rebirth and Spiritual Cause and Effect, Yogi Publication Society, 1908, page 108.

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Do you think if we look that up that he's actually talking about anything that would be somewhat relevant to drawing a parallel to anything else?

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I have a feeling probably not. Now, the

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Hindu, believing in karmic debt and things like that, and the life cycle,

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Hinduism very rarely produces what we as Christians would identify as an evangelistic fervor.

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The need to get others to make a faith commitment or something like that.

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And so I can only assume that the reason for even getting this in here, starting with this, is the oft -made false strawman argument that, well,

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Calvinists aren't evangelistic. You know, Spurgeon never led anybody to the

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Lord. And those first missionaries, they may have said they were Calvinists, they weren't really Calvinists.

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And there's just so, so many. You know, I can barely find time to go debate

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Muslims because there's so many Armenians out there doing the same thing, calling them to Christ.

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But anyway, he goes on, This is fueled by a primary tenet of Hinduism, namely that one is born into a caste out of which there is no escape in life.

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Sort of. That's more of the result of the whole karma cycle type thing.

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Thus, Hinduism propounds social determinism characterized by social superiority, social caste, social election, social bigotry, social prejudice, and social exclusivity.

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Well, that has been the result of the theology of the karmic cycle.

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But all of that is tied up with the entire Hindu worldview, which is extremely polytheistic.

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So, what Dr. Cox doesn't seem to recognize or understand, because I'm afraid a lot of these guys are so focused upon their hatred of Calvinism, they never think twice about, if they were to reach out outside of their little circle to people outside of that, could they use consistent arguments out there that would not contradict the arguments they're using inside this little circle?

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And so, what he's doing here is the same thing that atheists do to Christianity.

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When they try to create these connections between, well, there are all sorts of dying and rising gods in the ancient world, and that's where Jesus came from.

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This is just the dying, rising god stuff. The problem with all of that, as I explained in my second debate with Dan Barker a number of years ago, is this craze to fry, this parallelomania, as it has been rightly called.

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And this is a good example of a Christian practicing parallelomania. And obviously,

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Dr. Cox doesn't have to deal with atheists using parallelomania against Christianity. Maybe he's just not out there doing the evangelism amongst those folks so much.

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Possible. Don't know. You'd think it would cause him to not write things like this.

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But anyway, this parallelomania, the argument being that, well, you see

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Mithra, and you see Dionysus, and you see the Egyptian gods, all that kind of stuff.

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What about that? Ignoring the fundamental problem that Christianity is monotheistic, comes out of its

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Jewish milieu, which is monotheistic, which recognizes all these other gods as false gods.

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There is such a fundamental foundational chasm between the two that trying to draw a parallel is intellectually dishonest or empty.

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And that's what's going on here. So, yes, it is certainly an apologetic issue in dealing with Hinduism, to point out that its theology has resulted in a horrific suffering on the part of many people.

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And that Christianity calls for all men and women to recognize that the ground is level at the foot of the cross.

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And that while Christianity does not, unlike what some people in the modern day world think, destroy the creative intentions of God in male and female, so on and so forth, it does say that all men and women stand on equal ground before God.

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And therefore all these class distinctions and the bigotry and so on and so forth cannot survive.

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Cannot survive that. Then, after Hinduism, we have racism. Racism is the dogma.

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Dogma? That one ethnic group is condemned by nature to heredity, inferiority, and another group is destined to hereditary superiority.

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Thus, racism propounds racial determinism characterized by racial superiority, racial election, racial caste, racial bigotry, racial prejudice, and racial exclusivity.

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Well, this is such an obvious forming of racism into something you're just trying to create something you can draw parallels to.

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Rather than actually examining the experience of racism.

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I mean, there's every single culture. I mean, talk to the Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans about racism.

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I didn't know until I read a book on the rape of Nanking and the atrocities committed by the

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Imperial Japanese armies. In World War II, but World War II before we even knew there was a

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World War II in the United States, to be honest with you, starting in the mid -1930s. And what

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Japan did in China was just absolutely, I mean, most in the West don't know about it.

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Because we have so needed Japan as an ally since then.

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That most people don't realize, while we had the Nuremberg Trials, which should now be called the

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Planned Parenthood Trials. But while we had the Nuremberg Trials, we didn't do that in Japan.

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There were numerous war criminals in Japan that were simply never pursued.

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And even to this day, there remains a hesitance on the part of the leadership of Japan to admit what

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Japan actually did during World War II. But if you want to know racism, wow, there you've got racism.

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And you saw racism in a religious sense in Germany's murder of Jews.

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And you have racism in the United States. In fact, today, the most obvious forms of racism

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I see are on the part of minorities. I mean, you're allowed to be a racist if you're in a minority.

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You're allowed to speak as a racist, you're allowed to act as a racist, you're allowed to think as a racist, you're allowed to express racist thoughts.

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If you're in a minority in the United States. There's racism everywhere.

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But those are all different kinds. Some are ethnic, some are genetic.

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There's all sorts of different kinds of racism. This is such a surface level transparent attempt to throw an emotional thing in.

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And define it in such a way that it provides you with a parallel. That's all it is. That's all it is.

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Then Calvinism. Well, let's see how accurate

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Dr. Cox can be. Calvinism is a dogma of spiritual determinism characterized by spiritual superiority, spiritual election, a spiritual caste, spiritual bigotry, spiritual prejudice, and certainly by spiritual exclusivity.

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Clearly it shares some distressing affinities with Hinduism and racism. Dr. Cox owes his own people an apology.

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And I don't know who runs SBC today, but whoever does, posting this kind of drivel destroys any credibility you're trying to present.

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Do you all not care? I mean, if a

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Calvinist seriously posted an argument like this, and I saw it,

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I would be the first one to say, that is absurd. That is ridiculous.

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Don't do that. But this has been up there now for what?

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Nine days? And no one's polled it? Because of its objective?

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You call that a description of Calvinism? Now, after this, it certainly never happened, but I personally,

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I would personally love, if Dr. Cox honestly thinks that this is a truthful argument, then

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Dr. Cox, you don't have a clue what Calvinism is. You do not know, sir.

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I don't even know how else to put it, but you are absolutely lighting up the biggest straw man

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I've ever seen. I'd like to introduce you to a little pamphlet.

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I should have grabbed it. It's one of the best antidotes for cage stagers as well, but it's called

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The Practical Implications of Calvinism by Albert Martin. Little banner booklet.

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Dr. Cox, you didn't even try to substantiate any of this stuff.

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You just throw it out there without any foundation whatsoever. It's horrific.

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Now, like I said, I've got friends in prior, and Dr. Cox, if you really seriously think this is true, then

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I would say to you, you have a moral debt. If you're going to stand behind this kind of drivel, you have a moral debt to defend it, and I'll come there to be the one to dialogue with you about it.

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How about it? I think a lot of folks would like to see that conversation, because I think they'd like to see you attempt to substantiate this kind of silliness.

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Do you think that Israel, because they were chosen by God, was a spiritual cast?

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That that involves spiritual bigotry and spiritual prejudice and spiritual exclusivity?

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I mean, think about it, Dr. Cox. The Jews didn't even ask the Egyptians to come and participate in the sacrifices in the temple.

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Oh, such exclusivity. But, Dr. Cox, do you preach from the

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Old Testament? Hmm. Well, I happen to know,

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Dr. Cox, that I've got an open invitation to come back there to prior.

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The folks there are so kind that I don't even have to wear cowboy boots.

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Now, they all do. In fact, the pastor of the church may sleep in cowboy boots.

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I'm not certain. In fact, I think if we went out and tried to do some running or cycling or something, he'd probably wear cowboy boots for that, too.

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Very strange. But they're very kind people. They overlook my lack of cowboy bootedness.

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I live in Arizona. I could find boots here, but it's just not my thing. But we could put all that aside.

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They are so kind that they could put it all aside and would allow me to come there.

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And we could arrange a night, and I'll come to your church, Pastor Cox, and we'll have a discussion.

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Are Calvinists spiritual, racists, or Hindus? How about it?

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Because I know that in five minutes, I can demonstrate that this exists solely, your article,

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Dr. Cox, exists solely on the level of drivel. That is the only way to describe it, is drivel. This is not serious stuff.

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But I'll come. Because, you see, you may not be wanting to put out serious material on this. I think the subject is far more important than evidently you do.

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Because if you thought it was really as important as it is, you would put serious thought into what you're saying. There is no serious thought here.

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I'm sorry. There isn't. There isn't. The response to it was universally, you've got to be kidding me.

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And that's not because Calvinists just can't think. We just can't hear the truth. The caste systems of Hinduism, racism, and Calvinism, then, becoming nothing more than media for propagating human prejudice and notions of elitism, and for Hinduism and Calvinism, they are dressed up in religious garb, like a wolf in sheep's clothing, making them even deadlier.

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You know what this reminds me of? Gale Ripplinger. This is theological

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Gale Ripplingerism. Ripplinger? Might be a little higher than this? I don't know.

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Calvinism is nothing short of baptized racism, advocating the dogma that one group, the non -elect, is condemned by God to spiritual inferiority, and another group, the elect, is destined to spiritual superiority.

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I'm not implying that Calvinists are racist. I'm merely attempting to draw enlightening parallels between Hinduism, racism, and Calvinism.

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I'm sorry. We've got to do a lot better than that. A lot better than that.

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To get away with the, I'm not trying to do that, type thing. Yeah, I'm thinking the

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Titanic argument's on a higher plane so far. The Titanic? Yeah. A cello maker from Montana just tweeted,

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I just tuned in, can you start over from the beginning? All three share numerous common denominators.

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See chart below. Hence the term baptized racism denotes the presence of prejudice, though not racial, in the spiritual realm.

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Spiritual bigotry, if you will. Hinduism determines the ins and the outs by birth into a caste. Racism determines the ins and outs by skin color.

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Calvinism, or more properly Calvinism's view of God, determines the ins and outs by election.

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So, evidently, Dr. Cox has a God who has no decree, who is just reacting to man, and has no elect people.

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Even though Paul says, I endure all things for the sake of the elect, and all that kind of stuff.

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I'd ask biblical questions, but there's no biblical argumentation here. We could look at the passages on election, and I looked at Dr.

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Cox's very lengthy bio material on his website. Very central in the description of Dr.

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Cox is his emphasis upon grammatical, historical interpretation and exegesis.

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The Bible is the foundation of everything. Well, how about Dr. Cox, how about you and I do that?

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How about you and I do John 6, and how about you and I do Ephesians 1? We saw what happened recently with Romans 9, when it came to exegesis.

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How about you and I do that? Right there in your church. It won't cost you a dime. We'll make it happen.

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We'll make it happen. We'd be happy to do it. All three fail miserably at acknowledging the presence of the image of God inherent in every human, making each person of inestimable value.

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Really? Really? So, could you explain why the

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Imago Dei is so central to Reformed theology, so central to our understanding of the power of sin, to the seriousness of sin, to the necessity of atonement in light of the wrath of God?

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Have you read anything, sir, that we've actually written on this subject?

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Or are you just sort of assuming this based upon what you think we actually believe or practice?

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It is obviously, on one level, Dr. Cox, I just have to rebuke you.

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Christians are supposed to be honest people. And I don't see a shred of honesty in your dealing with Reformed theology.

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Not a bit. And I can say this as one, look, read

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The Potter's Freedom. Read Chosen But Free. And even when

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Dr. Geisler's classes tried to find some ground of accusing me of misrepresentation, refutation of it was simplistic.

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No one's ever been able to substantiate any misrepresentation. So I just ask you, why do you have to use 100 % pure misrepresentation?

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Rather than an accurate view of the system that you're analyzing. I don't understand it. If you've got good arguments, bring them out.

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This only confirms all of us in our position. Again, all

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Calvinists are not racists, but have many Calvinists embraced what amounts to spiritual racism because it is a more comfortable

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Christian philosophy which allows the seemingly natural human propensity towards some form of individual superiority allegedly predetermined by God.

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It would be interesting, now remember, central to Reformed theology is the recognition that we are all undeserving sinners redeemed by grace.

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Absolutely central. There is no ground for boasting. It's the Arminian who says that he is able, in and of himself, to respond to the

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Gospel call. He's equal with everybody else, but he is able to respond, the other person doesn't.

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And so it's in Arminianism that the final determining difference is in me and not in God.

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It's only the Calvinist that recognizes the biblical teaching that man is dead in sin, has a heart of stone, has to have a heart of flesh given to him.

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Dr. Cox doesn't seem to understand this. It would be interesting to know how many non -Caucasians actually embrace five -point

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Calvinism as a genuine Bible doctrine. My suspicion is that plenty of ethnic minorities do not.

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So, that seems to be a direct assertion of racism in regards to theology.

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I'm sure that all those Korean Presbyterians who were brought up on the

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Westminster Confession of Faith would laugh at you. If you would get out of your small little

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Southern Baptist circles and actually start having some interaction with the people, Dr. Cox. I mean, wow.

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The biblical triune God reveals himself as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit created every human being in his image and loves the entire world of humanity so dearly that he gave his only begotten

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Son to rescue all who would believe in Jesus. I'm glad you recognized the reality there.

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That he gave his only begotten Son to rescue all who would believe in Jesus. There's the particularity, sir. Have you noticed that particularity?

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It's right there. Pas hapistio, and everyone believing. I'm glad you see that.

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He desires all people who save him to come to the knowledge of the truth, 1 Timothy 2 .4. But I'm sure you have taken time,

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Dr. Cox. I'm sure you've taken time to look at the context of that and realize that the all people is defined beforehand as groups of people, right?

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Kings, those in authority, remember? I mean, that's the context. You do grammatical historical stuff, right? And so if you follow the context through, are you then consistent,

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Dr. Cox? And does Jesus intercede for everyone who's in hell?

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Because it talks about Jesus being the one mediator between God and man. So he's mediating for all of mankind as you're interpreting it, right?

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So Jesus is pleading for the Father to save those who are in hell, or will be going to hell, right?

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So there's dissonance in the Godhead, correct? Just checking, because I'm sure you've had to think all these things through to make this kind of bold assertion.

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You've thought these things through, yes? And then, of course, he's not willing that any should perish but all should come to repentance, 2

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Peter 3 .9. Follow the pronouns. We all agree with that. Certainly not in the way that he's interpreting it, because the all is defined there as the elect.

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Racism is rooted in pride, and pride is one of the three root sins identified in 1 John 2, 15 -16, along with the lust of the eyes and the lust of the flesh.

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Racism is nothing short of promoting a prideful ideology of supposed genetic superiority over every other race, and seeking to brainwash others into embracing such, and often blasphemously employing

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God's word of the Bible to do so. Likewise, likewise, likewise, Calvinism is nothing short of promoting a prideful theology of supposed spiritual superiority due to election.

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Dr. Cox, certainly you recognize that you are now under a moral debt to back up with citations from our literature where we promote the idea that the elect are superior, we're better than other people.

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I mean, you're going to have to ignore the constant drumbeat over and over and over again of the fact that we recognize that the you in the tulip, you don't seem to understand, and you don't think we actually believe it.

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Because unconditional election means there was nothing in me that brought about God's election.

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So I can't be superior to somebody else because there wasn't anything in me. We were all equally spiritually dead.

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So you don't understand the T, you don't understand the you. Such misrepresentation of God and Christ cannot go unanswered.

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Like I said, when you make statements like this, sir, you, as a

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Christian minister, are under obligation to back these absurdities up, and you cannot do so.

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So the only thing to do, sir, is to withdraw. Is to say, I apologize, I completely blew it,

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I became overly emotional, and I apologize. I mean, that's really the only thing you can do.

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God has demonstrated his love for all people many times over. He did so by promising to make Abraham, Abram from Ur of the

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Chaldees, a blessing to all the families of the earth. Could you explain how that worked out for the

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Egyptians, sir? No, it works out today because there are elect people amongst the Egyptians, but how about in the days of Moses?

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Seems to have been some election there. Ask Pharaoh and his army. Just saying, ask

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Pharaoh and his army. But there seems to have been a choice that was made there. Abraham placed faith in the

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Bible of God, obeyed God and became the spiritual father of faith, blazing a trail for others to follow as he demonstrated what it truly means to place faith in God and live out that faith.

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A faith that, of course, Paul identifies as a gift from God in Philippians 1 .29 and Ephesians 2. God also, that wasn't in the text, obviously.

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God also showed his love for all people by miraculously allowing the language of Mary to be crossed for visitors to Jerusalem and residents of Jerusalem at the time of the

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Jewish Passover feast, shortly following the resurrection of Jesus, so that each could hear the wonderful works of God. His own language was preached by the apostles, resulting in the evangelization of people from all over the ancient world, which included

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Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, and districts of Libya around Cyrene, as well as visitors from Rome, Cretans, and Arabs, undoubtedly implying the universal scope of God's redemptive plan.

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Yes, as Calvinists so often point out in Revelation chapter 5, Jesus Christ, by his sacrifice, has made men from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation to be a king, a priest, and a god.

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God has elected his elect ever. Sir, you don't seem to even know the system that you're attempting to argue against. When you present arguments that are not arguments against our system, and you think that they are, that once again demonstrates the problem.

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The apostle Simon Peter initially and wrongly thought Christianity was for Jews only. A vision from heaven rebuked him and told him not to consider any human being unholy or unclean.

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Powerful words from heaven which we all need to hear and let resonate within us. When we share the gospel, we can be confident that we are not looking for someone who is elect because anyone with a pulse can be saved.

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Once again, sir, you show a fundamental ignorance of the system that you are criticizing.

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One that everybody who has ever listened to this program before immediately recognized because what is the one thing we say over and over and over again?

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We do not know who the elect are. It is our calling to proclaim the gospel to every creature.

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It is God's work to save his people. You just simply will only believe part of what the

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Bible says. You reject the rest of it. We just believe all of it. There is a difference between us. Fr.

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Gius said, Thus it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones perish. Matthew 18, 14.

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So here is the little children thing. I don't know what Dr. Cox's thing is here, but it is the little child thing.

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Dr. Cox, I just have to ask you. Do you believe that God actually destroyed the world in the flood?

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How many little children perished? Little infants at the mother's breast. How many?

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Do you believe that happened? Do you believe that the firstborn of Egypt were struck dead?

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Which would have included infants of a day old. Do you believe

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God killed those little children? Yes or no, sir? I'd like to know. How about the command to wipe out the

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Midianites? Amorites? Man, woman, child. Leave none, nobody. Including little children.

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Yes, no, maybe, sir? Just looking for consistency. Because there is one thing that is grossly obvious to me.

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And that is consistency is not something you are overly concerned about. We all begin as little child.

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The statement of Jesus includes us all. Not one little child is unimportant to him. Please note carefully the general rather than the particular applicability of Acts 10, 28 and Matthew 18, 14.

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Nobody is to be considered unholy or unclean. Nobody has been willed by God to perish. Talk about a -contextual conclusions.

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Then you have this, from what came before, the chart. Racism, Hinduism, Calvinism.

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Where it's racial, social, spiritual, and they're all in this created parallelism that ignores, obviously, anything of any substance.

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This is one of the worst articles I've ever seen on Calvinism. It is the example of anti -Calvinist derangement syndrome.

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This is unworthy of any man who can put forth serious thought.

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It is an abuse of the use of the gift from God to be able to write and to speak.

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That's how bad it is. And it either needs to be repented of and withdrawn or defended and destroyed in debate.

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Because it will be destroyed in debate. There is no possible way that anyone could stand in front of an audience and defend this kind of rhetoric.

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I hold Dr. Cox to a higher stand here because he stands behind the pulpit of a Christian church and he opens the

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Bible and he says, I am going to be truthful and I'm going to ex -cheat God's Word. If this was some atheist or something,

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I wouldn't even bother with it. Because I can't hold them to that kind of standard.

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But here is a man who stands in a Christian church and opens the Bible and to abuse language and thought and truth in this way is reprehensible.

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It is reprehensible. This isn't a matter of we have differences of opinion. This is full on bigotry.

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It is spiritual bigotry. I mean, he talks about spiritual bigotry. Here it is.

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Here it is. And it should be a reminder to all Calvinists. When you criticize man -centered synergistic systems, you better be accurate in what you're saying.

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Or you won't have any basis to look at this and go, you need to repent of this if you're doing it. Because if you're doing it yourself, you don't have any basis.

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But like I said, SBC Today isn't just got that kind of thing in it.

51:43

Very quickly, Dr. Rick Patrick from the First Baptist Church of a place in Alabama, I would never want to live because I would have to spell the name every single time

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I said it. Sylacauga. I think it's either Sylacauga or Sylacauga, Alabama.

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Wow. S -Y -L -A -C -A -U -G -A. There's some

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Indian names on Long Island too. Anyway, what you have here is a very interesting, and I'm not sure that I want to go through it too quickly.

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But you have here Calvin and Hobbes. And so what you have is a contrast between John Calvin and Herschel Hobbes.

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Now, when I was in the Southern Baptist Church as a young man, starting in junior year in high school, often brought up to the leadership in the

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Sunday school class that I really wished we could do something serious when it came to Bible study.

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Herschel Hobbes was one of the biggest names in the production of the

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Sunday school material. One of the biggest influences in the production of what were called the quarterlies.

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Remember quarterlies? You'd bring them with you. They probably have them on iPads now or something. I don't know. And Herschel Hobbes is a sacred name amongst

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Southern Baptists. Really is. So here is a neat opportunity to contrast

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Calvin and Hobbes. And the reality is Hobbes does not do well in the comparison.

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I don't think that was the intention of Dr. Rick Patrick to show

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Hobbes in this way. But let's look at some of them. Divine Determinism and Salvation.

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For one or the other of these ends, we say that he has been predestined to life or death. Well, I'll defend that biblically.

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It seems absolutely obvious that's not all that's involved.

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Because God's eternal decree also involves the interaction of the elect and non -elect.

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We don't know which are which. And the means that God uses to bring about the salvation of the elect and the judgment of the non -elect is the very fabric of the means by which

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God is glorifying himself in this world. But I agree 1000%.

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Hobbes. Those who follow Calvin say that only the elect believe in Jesus as Savior.

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As I understand it, the opposite is true. Believers are the elect. I agree with Frank Stagg that election is not a rigged television show.

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Now, again, I don't think that Dr. Patrick meant to do what he ended up doing here.

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Again, I just think a lot of these folks live in a very small shell and they don't have a lot of interaction with people and maybe don't realize a

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Reformed person reads this and goes, Do you notice the coherence, consistency? Now, of course, we know what the context of Calvin is, so maybe we can provide that.

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But Hobbes' response is, well, is it even a response? It's not a response to what

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Calvin said. And it doesn't make a lot of sense. Believers are the elect.

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So your believing makes you the object of God's choice? How does that avoid open theism?

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Or how does that avoid some kind of finite godism? Or how do you explain

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God's knowledge of all things if this is the case? How do you explain that when God created, he did so in such a way as to glorify himself?

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Or did he just throw the cosmic dice? How do you explain all this stuff? You can try to get around this stuff, but it's impossible.

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I agree with Frank Stagg that election is not a rigged television show. But what does that mean? What does a rigged television show mean?

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I don't understand that. It does not mean anything to me. I don't understand it.

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God's decree of reprobation. Calvin, the decree is dreadful indeed, I confess. Well, it's short.

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There's a whole lot more discussion of that. Hobbes, Calvin held that before the foundation of the world,

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God elected certain individuals to be saved from the neglect of all others. That's the very nature of God. Why?

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Why? Are you saying that God put out an equal effort to save the

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Egyptian army than he did to save the Israelites? Yes or no?

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I keep going back to the Old Testament because at least there you've got a real, it just shines this bright light on this unbiblical set of assumptions that go out there.

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I'm going to have to go a little bit long. Is that alright? Because this is, I'm not going to get through all of it, but I just want to get this next one, so it's going to take me just a couple minutes to do this one.

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The nature of election. I'll just do this one and then I'll just direct you to, if they even leave it up, which

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I'm sure they will, go to SBC Today. This is under the title Calvin and Hobbes.

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It was posted yesterday by Dr. Rick Patrick. Read through it.

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And despite the fact that it's clearly an anti -Calvinist Armenian that's putting this together, Calvin ends up looking really good in comparison to Herschel Hobbes.

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Really does. I'm sorry, I never found Hobbes to be deep at all. At all.

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And that will make certain people at Southwestern really crazed.

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But I think this shows it. This just shows it. I'm sort of glad to see this on their website, because maybe someone will go, that doesn't look very good.

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But the nature of election. Calvin.

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Although it is now sufficiently plain that God, by his secret counsel, chooses whom he will while he rejects others, his gratuitous election has only been partially explained until we come to the case of single individuals who offer salvation, but so assigns it that the result, that the certainty of the result remains not dubious or suspended.

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So this is a portion from the Institutes of the Christian Religion. It would have been nice if they had included the references. It would have been nice to be able to look it up.

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Of course, you can look up the Institutes online and put in key phrases and pull it up yourself. But it would have been nice.

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Someone on the channel just said, David Allen jumps out a window. Yes. Because David Allen is

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Herschel Hobbes' iteration number two.

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Hobbes. In essence, Paul says that God elected a italics plan, italics closed, of salvation,

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Ephesians 1 -2, and a people to propagate the plan, Ephesians 3 -1 -620, but man is free to accept or reject either or both of them.

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This is what was so frustrating when I was in a Southern Baptist Church. You would make these just grand assertions.

01:00:06

You want to try to walk through Ephesians 1 and say it's the plan that's predestined? So that would mean that when the terms of election and choosing are used,

01:00:16

Ephesians chapter 1, the direct object will be a plan. Right? Well, as everybody knows, as anybody with a

01:00:24

Bible knows, it's never a plan. It's a people. We are in Him.

01:00:31

It wasn't a plan that was united with Jesus. It was a people that was united with Jesus. You can have your impersonal man -centeredness all you want.

01:00:40

I don't have any need for it. There's plenty of human religions around. But that's just simply so easily refuted that you just go, why post stuff like this?

01:00:57

The prejudice that must be functioning here is just amazing. Absolutely amazing.

01:01:10

One more, man's free will. Calvin, this movement of the will is not of that description which was for many ages taught and believed.

01:01:17

That is a movement which thereafter leaves us the choice to obey or resist it, but one which affects us efficaciously.

01:01:23

Hobbes, the Bible also teaches the free will of man is a person made in God's image. To violate man's free will would make him less than a person, only a puppet dangled on the string of faith.

01:01:33

The Bible never teaches that. Again, the Hobbes position, childlike, surface level.

01:01:39

Not serious in looking at the full range of Biblical data. It is, I'm sorry, but how do you deal with the

01:01:47

Biblical statements of man's inabilities? How do you deal with the idea? So God never, ever violating, how about hardening of people?

01:01:59

How about hardening kings so they and their people were destroyed? How about that?

01:02:06

How about keeping men from sinning against him? How about knocking people off of their donkeys and converting them?

01:02:12

I mean, this kind of simplistic stuff. As a teenager,

01:02:18

I started going, we need something more than this in my Southern Baptist church.

01:02:26

But there are a lot of people who evidently are so wedded to that that they see any challenge to it as a challenge to the

01:02:32

Christian faith as a whole rather than a challenge to a stunted Christian faith, which is what

01:02:38

I got from Herschel Hobbes. So there you go. Calvin and Hobbes, look it up on SBC today.

01:02:45

It is amazing. I didn't get to the video, maybe will sometime. The video was just an opportunity to deal with the assertion of an

01:02:55

Armenian up in Canada that when you have things like no one seeks after God, we need to look at that in a

01:03:03

Jewish fashion. That it is Jewish hyperbole. There are people who seek for God.

01:03:09

And that is just Jewish hyperbole. We are going to look at that. Maybe we will at some point.

01:03:15

I don't know. I will keep it on the thing here. It is not like anything possibly could come up that would be fascinating or useful to discuss.

01:03:24

I guess we will have to next time. I don't know. Something tells me there will be a lot to get to by next

01:03:30

Tuesday. So there you go. Were you provided with a Radio Free Geneva outro?

01:03:38

Yeah. So you do have an outro.

01:03:48

Got it. Okay, folks. If I had known, I could have practiced my air guitar.

01:03:54

But I didn't know, so I couldn't practice it. So, thanks for watching, listening to Radio Free Geneva.