Romans 9 "Prepared for Destruction" then Paul Owen

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.

The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Our host is Dr. James White, Director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an Elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

James White. And good morning. Welcome to The Dividing Line on a Tuesday morning.

Just a programming note for the many, many, many who missed it last time, and that is this

Thursday. Today, the program will be on at the same time as it is now. It will not be on in the afternoon due to teaching responsibilities.

And so just please keep that in mind. Be aware of that. And that will keep you from coming into the channel at a little bit before four o 'clock on Thursday going, everybody, you missed it and so on and so forth.

So just keep that in mind. And you will want to be here

Thursday because we will have a very important announcement concerning the upcoming cruise.

We have managed to do what we said we would do last week. But we want to get all of our

T's crossed and I's dotted and everything else before we go and spill the beans, shall we say.

And so on Thursday, we will be letting you know about developments on that particular aspect.

And it's very exciting. I think there are going to be many folks who want to join us for this particular event in October of this year now, 2007, not very far down the road.

So be listening on Thursday. I suppose it is only fair that we when we

I get a lot of emails. I get a lot of emails, people asking all sorts of questions, many of which have absolutely positively nothing to do whatsoever with anything that I would even pretend to have any level of expertise in.

One of the things that's almost humorous is to see people coming to channel.

And if there's anything that is of dispute or interest at all in the world,

I am supposed to debate people about it. People are always coming to channel. Hey, you should debate this person or you should debate that person or this person has a weird view of that.

You should debate him. And I just, you know, laugh because it's just so silly.

People obviously have no concept whatsoever of the amount of time that goes into debate preparation and the fact that you should only debate those subjects that you actually can debate in a meaningful fashion.

And that I just don't happen to find every single aspect of anything that could be discussed fascinating or interesting or things that I should be spending my entire life on.

And so we get all sorts of interesting stuff like that. And so I got an email from someone and they linked me to a reference from Dr.

John MacArthur and said, what do you think about this? And so I think that it's only fair if we're going to be playing

George Bryson and Dave Hunt and all the rest of that stuff, that once in a while we should we should be level headed and admit that there are differences even amongst people who are pretty much on the same page everywhere else.

But, you know, once in a while you have to disagree about certain things. I've I've disagreed with Dr.

MacArthur, for example, on his understanding of Titus 1 -6 and believing children. And I was linked to a reference on the

Grace To You website, and it is a answer to a question. How do we understand

Romans 9 -22? Vessels of wrath prepared for destruction. And the question is the Bible speaks of vessels of mercy and vessels of destruction, which

God specifically made for his purpose. Romans 9 -21 through 23. Does that mean people like Judas were made by God for destruction?

Well, immediately I would question the going to Romans 9 to discuss

Judas. Judas is called the son of perdition. The scriptures speak of the son of perdition.

You have prophecy here. You have the certainty of what you have in divine revelation in regards to Judas.

So Judas is a very special case, a very clear case. And I don't think that you can necessarily reason from Judas to any general principles.

That's a little bit difficult and certainly not the other way around either,

I suppose. But as it may, my primary concern with an issue with the response is not that it has something to do with Judas, actually.

It's more in reference to the reading of Romans chapter 9 and specifically the terminology in regards to fitted or prepared.

And this is something that we have addressed many times before. And so people have noted that there is a difference of interpretation.

We mentioned, for example, on the blog a couple of months ago, or I think it may have just been last month, that Charles Haddon Spurgeon, for example, in reading

Romans chapter 9, emphasized, took the reading that the fitting that is done there is not done by God.

And that, in essence, is what Dr. MacArthur says here as well. He says,

Paul is saying here that God is sovereign. Paul is clearly saying that. There is no other message here. Verse 18, he has mercy on whom he will have mercy and whom he wills he hardens.

The argument comes, well, it doesn't seem fair. In verse 21, Paul says, hath not the potter power of the clay of the same lump to make one vessel and to honor another and to dishonor?

The potter can make a vessel any way he wants. He's the potter and the vessel is simply clay.

But I want you to notice what happens in verse 22. What if God, willing to show his wrath and make his power known, endured with much long suffering, the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction, and that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had prepared before unto glory?

Now, I don't want to get too deep, and I just want to give you one or two thoughts. Notice there are vessels of wrath at the end of verse 22 fitted to destruction.

In verse 23, vessels of mercy, which he prepared to glory. Now, in the Greek, you have two serious distinctions here in the

Greek tense, and you must recognize them. I should say in the Greek, voice, which is similar to English. You realize the difference between active and passive?

In active, the subject does the acting, and in passive, the subject receives the action. Now, notice verse 21 is a passive, vessels of wrath fitted to destruction.

God is not the subject. The verb is passive. Verse 23, vessels of mercy, which he had prepared to glory.

God there is the subject, and the verb is active. Listen, God says, I prepare vessels for glory, but vessels are prepared for destruction.

And what is happening there in the Greek tense is God is taking one step away from the responsibility of preparing a person from his creative act for hell.

God doesn't take that responsibility. He says there are vessels that have been prepared for destruction. And if you study the

Bible very carefully, you will see that everywhere in Scripture, the responsibility for such preparation lies right in the very heart of the man who goes to hell.

Is that right? Jesus said, you will not come to me that you may have life. At the end of the book of Revelation, he says, come and let him that is a thirst come.

And so God says, I fit for glory, but vessels are fitted for destruction. Judas was not created by God to occupy hell, end quote.

Now, a number of things in response to the very end there, what is happening there in the

Greek tense is God is taking one step away from the responsibility of preparing a person from his creative act for hell.

I'll address the tense issue in a moment, because I don't believe that you can escape the reality that the passive here is what has been called the divine passive.

Passive tenses, passive verbs are used all the time in the

New Testament in regards to what God does in salvation. In Ephesians 2 .8, we have been saved.

There is no, it doesn't say directly by God, but it's clear that that is saying to us,

God is the one who has saved us. He is the one who has acted in saving us. And so the divine passive is the regular way that Paul would address

God's activity. And I think as we'll look at in a moment, we'll see if that's the case.

But just this very last statement here, there is no question that you will not come to me as you might have life,

John chapter five. That is exactly true. Man does not want to submit himself to God.

The rebel is very much at home in his rebellion. He very much wants to reject

God's truth. He wants to continue in his own alleged sovereignty and the twisting of the creator creation relationship.

All those things are very, very true. Everyone, I think, would admit that that is the case, that man is a rebel and that he cannot change his own heart.

There's no real question about that. But the question really isn't relevant to Romans chapter nine.

Yes, man loves his sin and man does those things the way he does those things. And that's just the way it is.

And no one has argued that compatibilism says that man's will is not active.

It is active. It's just a slave to sin. The king of Assyria had evil thoughts and intentions in his heart when he's being used by God.

We've looked at Acts four and Herod and Pilate and all of their wills were active in different ways, but they were all doing what

God's hand had predestined to occur. And that's the issue in Romans chapter nine.

When we actually back up and look at the text, the problem with the reading that some people have of Romans nine is that they're separating this statement out from what came before.

And let me explain what I mean. Romans chapter nine, answering the objector, who after Paul has made it so plain, so then he has mercy on whom he desires and he hardens whom he desires.

The only desire here is that of God. Therefore, whomever he desires, he mercies, not just has mercy on, but mercies, hardens.

These are active voice verbs in the language.

These are things that God is doing. He is mercying. He is hardening. He is the one who is expressing his will and his desire.

And once that is stated, then Paul says, you will say to me that not it's slightly possible, but you will say to me, then why does he still find fault for who resists his will?

And so it is that question that is being answered and what comes after this. And there is an element of rebellion in the question.

Why does he still find fault for who resists his will? This is not the statement of the heart that is subject to God's sovereignty.

This is the standard objection of the sinful man. And that's seen in the response.

On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? And immediately we have the two categories introduced, man and God.

And if you don't see the vast difference between the two, if your theology has given you a

God who is the big grandfather in the sky and the big buddy and the big friend, and if you have the theology of that song we played last week, that God's only sovereign over things that don't have wills.

God can go play marbles with the planets if he wishes. But when it comes to mankind, man is sovereign and God is not.

Then you're going to have some problems understanding what's being said here.

Who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded.

The thing molded. The top plasma, plasma, that which is molded, that which is the object of that someone else is acting upon.

Catch that immediately. Man is acted upon by God. This is just the categories that Paul is using here.

Mormons don't like it and lots of Arminians don't like it. But these are the categories that Paul uses here. The thing molded will not say to the molder.

And when you look at that, it's top plasma, top plasanti.

So the two terms are connected in the Greek language as well. And so it's the molder and that which is molded.

And you couldn't have a stronger contrast being introduced here.

One is the active molder and the other is that which is molded.

And the absurdity is the thing molded will not say the molder. Why did you make me like this? Will it?

That is, there is one that has absolute sovereign authority and power, and one does not have any basis for responding to the actions of that sovereign molder by saying, hey,

I don't like the way you made me. You should have made me some other way. This is the absurdity of the cup and saucer saying,

I am not made. I am not created. This goes back to Isaiah 29 and the absurdity of the thing made, rejecting the one who made it.

Very, very clearly found in the text. But please note, God, man, man is molded.

God's the molder. Here is the relationship that's going on. And then that comes out then, verse 21, or does not the potter have a right over the clay?

Now, there you have the molder and the molded here. Now it's the pot over the clay to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use.

And so we have one lump and it is under the authority of the potter and he takes from that lump of clay.

And if he so chooses that portion that his hand takes from the clay, he is able to then form into a vessel for honorable use.

Honorable use, meaning a fine piece of china, a pot that will that will be fired and and very carefully made and displayed upon the the mantelpiece.

But then you have the same potter and he has the need for a trash can.

He has the need for a garbage can. He has the need for something for waste. And so he reaches over and from the same lump from which he made the honorable vessel, the vessel that will be an heirloom into which he invested a tremendous amount of effort.

You have the creation of one for common use. Okay. The point is that the potter has the right to choose what portion of that clay to use.

It is not the clay that has any right to say, no, do this with me or do that with me, that the clay doesn't have the right to say, well, you can only make something of honorable use for me.

All of the emphasis up to this point is that God, molder, potter, man, molded clay.

God makes determination of honorable use, common use, not the clay.

God is active in every single point from 18 on here.

And we have the same parallel. Now, my suggestion to you is if you're going to go to verse 21.

And you're now going to break that parallel. And say, well, verse 22 is different.

Then you need to provide a strong exegetical foundation for so doing.

So let's look at verse 22. Let's notice verse 20 ends with a question mark.

It's a rhetorical question. Verse 21 ends with a question mark.

It is a rhetorical question. Verse 22 ends with a question mark.

It, too, is rhetorical question. In other words, we have not broken the context here. We're not moving on to something else.

This is the same subject. What if God? Verse 21, or does not the potter see the similarities?

What if God, although willing to demonstrate his wrath and to make his power known?

Now, this takes us back. This connects us again to the preceding context where it was

God's desire in Pharaoh to demonstrate his wrath, to make his power known.

His name might be known through all the earth. We have not left the context. We're still in the same discussion, same argument that has been as come before.

What if God, although willing to demonstrate his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?

Now. How do we define our terms? Well, first and foremost, you stay in a context, you don't jump out of the context and start because you're concerned that this might mean this is might mean that you stay in the context.

And what do we have here? Well, we have God and he is sovereign.

He has wrath. He has a desire to make his power known.

And he is said to endure with much patience, vessels of wrath prepare for destruction.

And he did so, verse twenty three, to make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory.

Now. We have the term prepared in verse twenty two.

And we have the word prepared in verse twenty three.

In verse twenty two. There is no specific person mentioned as to who is doing the preparation.

But in verse twenty three, it says, which he prepared and it's referring to God beforehand for glory.

And so the argument is, well, see. God prepares vessels of mercy, and that's different than his preparation of vessels for wrath.

Now, on the level of recognizing that to prepare vessels of mercy for glory involves the extension of God's grace.

In recognizing that and recognizing those are two different verbs, though they're related directly. One to one another, one is just beforehand.

That's one of the primary reasons that there's a difference in that. You got kartartidzo in nine twenty two and in nine twenty three, you have toimadzo is the root there.

And then beforehand, prepare before him. Not a lot of lexical difference between the two on that level.

But if all that someone wants to say is we need to recognize that there is an extension of God's grace that is necessary for the preparation of these vessels unto glory.

They are vessels of mercy. Remember, you've got mercy and wrath again coming from the same context right beforehand.

That's fine to say, but it does not follow that the action in twenty two becomes non -divine.

That is, it does not follow that fitted for destruction means that somebody else is doing the fitting.

Remember that I have mentioned, for example. The Lutheran scholar who has addressed this,

Lenski, and he somehow brings

Satan in here. And so Satan is the one who prepares the vessels for destruction.

And the more popular way is to read this as a middle instead of a passive.

And this Dr. MacArthur does not do. He reads it as a passive, but that he that it's a middle and therefore we prepare ourselves for destruction.

But it is a passive and the passive automatically. Raises the issue of who is acting upon us.

Where is this coming from? And I would argue that the context leaves us no question.

Unless we're going to build a wall between verses twenty one and twenty two, then we have to allow the parallel to speak in the parallels found in verse twenty one.

The potter. Is the one who from the same lump makes. Same verb, one verb makes one vessel for honorable use, another for common use, if honorable use is vessels of wrath prepared for destruction.

I'm sorry, common use is vessels of wrath prepared for destruction. And honorable use is vessels of mercy prepared beforehand for glory.

Which clearly is the case, I mean, if you if you admit that that's the parallel, then there isn't any question.

Concerning the fitting for destruction. Now, there is a difference in how he expresses that, and there is a you know, the blog articles we had where Dr.

Hartley once again schooled Paul Owen, who just just loves sticking his foot in his mouth on a regular basis.

And we might find time to talk a little bit more about that a little bit later. But pointed out. Yes, there is there it is is asymmetrical, double predestination is asymmetrical, the the extension of mercy prepared beforehand for glory cannot be made.

Just simply the mirror image of preparing that vessel for destruction.

It can't be made the mirror image of a vessel made for common use.

There are differences. No one is arguing otherwise. But I think it is vitally important that we we speak where the scriptures speak.

And part of Paul's response to the objection is to maintain that that massive difference between the creator and the creation and to rebuke the created being who dares to question

God's sovereignty over his own creation. It is that attitude that leads to so much of the of the foolishness that we see in in the world today.

And so I don't have any problem with the recognition at all that the action of God in predation unto reprobation, in passing over, in not extending mercy, in not electing someone into salvation is different functionally from the extension of mercy and grace to an individual creating a vessel of mercy.

There's no question about that. But I don't see that the fact that this is passive does anything more than than recognize that those who who receive punishment do so without God having to do anything more than recognizing their own nature as sinners.

And if that is, in fact, what's being said here, then I would be in complete agreement with what

Dr. MacArthur has said. Now, I don't understand the connection to Judas. I believe Judas is son of perdition.

He's he's chosen and selected unto this from time immemorial. And I think

Judas's role is just as certain as the cross itself is. I mean, unless you can introduce ambiguity into the into the issue of the cross taking place, then

I don't see how you can avoid that. But so anyway, so we get emails, people ask questions and say, hey, do you agree or disagree or whatever?

And so I wanted to respectfully address that particular issue.

And I get once again address the subject of Romans 9 and the fact that we need to read it in its context.

We need to let that flow. And isn't it interesting? Hopefully you've noticed this, too, unless you're a new listener.

Hopefully you've noticed this as well. It is the flow of the text, reading in context, allowing an argument to develop.

That is vital and central in all of the key texts on this subject. Is it not the flow of Romans 8 where we follow the pronouns through and we see the golden chain of redemption and who will bring a charge against God's elect?

And and the identifying of whom has Christ has been given for Romans 8,

John 6. When you start in the beginning of the chapter and you follow the flow and you allow the text to define its own terms, it becomes this juggernaut that cannot be stopped.

You can't. Everybody who has to try to find a way around it has to hop, skip and jump and jump over to verse 40 and then read it back into 37.

They can't follow the context along. And when you go to Romans 9, Ephesians 1,

Romans 9, when you follow the context and you see, I think one of the reasons that people get away with a lot of the bad arguments they use exegetically against reformed theology is that people aren't generally trained today to follow any train of thought that's more than one or two steps.

I mean, we live in the soundbite generation and you're if you actually have an argument that goes for more than 30 seconds, most people's eyes glaze over and they just start looking for something shiny to play with.

And so that's what people do in these situations. If you'd actually be disciplined enough to follow the argument and to keep going with it, you'd see that folks have to chop these texts up to come up with the conclusions they come up with.

And when you don't do that, then they are just overwhelming.

And any of us would be offended if someone treated our arguments that way.

If they took anything we wrote and they chopped it up in that way, we would be offended saying, no, no, that's not what

I said. Listen to the rest of what I said. But that's the type of argumentation that that gets accepted.

877 -753 -3341. We're going to take a break and be right back. Pulpit crimes.

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God's ordinance regarding the roles of men and women. Is a public crime occurring in your town? Get pulpit crimes in the bookstore at AOMEN .org.

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What is Dr. Norman Geisler warning the Christian community about in his book, Chosen But Free? A New Cult, Secularism, False Prophecy Scenarios?

No, Dr. Geisler is sounding the alarm about a system of beliefs commonly called Calvinism. He insists that this belief system is theologically inconsistent, philosophically insufficient, and morally repugnant.

In his book, The Potter's Freedom, James White replies to Dr. Geisler, But the Potter's Freedom is much more than just a reply.

It is a defense of the very principles upon which the Protestant Reformation was founded. Indeed, it is a defense of the very gospel itself.

In a style that both scholars and laymen alike can appreciate, James White masterfully counters the evidence against so -called extreme

Calvinism, defines what the Reformed faith actually is, and concludes that the gospel preached by the

Reformers is the very one taught in the pages of Scripture. The Potter's Freedom, a defense of the

Reformation and a rebuttal to Norman Geisler's Chosen But Free. You'll find it in the Reformed Theology section of our bookstore at AOMN .org.

And welcome back to The Dividing Line. Someone called and asked where I'm going to be in New Jersey.

I once again strongly recommend that everyone learn to use the search capacity on the blog.

That is our means of communication anymore. It's about the only thing I can keep up with. If you try to expect me to keep up with the calendar, just give up on it.

Trinity Fellowship Church, 1644 North Bay Avenue, Toms River, New Jersey, 08753, telephone 732 -914 -8885.

And that will be coming up not this coming weekend, but the weekend thereafter. I'm flying out on the 18th, be speaking on the 19th and 21st.

And the conference schedule is on the website, which is linked on my blog.

And let me see, that was the date on the, that was 12 -27 -2006, if you would like to see the link there.

And I will be addressing Contending for God in the Gospel on Friday evening. On Saturday morning, 9 a .m.

in the morning, oh yeah, I hope they have donuts. Contending for the Scriptures, God's Inspired and Authoritative Word.

And then in the afternoon, I believe there's going to be a little trip that you can take to see the

Old Tenant Church. But if you're not going on the trip during that period of time, I'll be showing the

Shabir Ali debate and taking questions and so on and so forth. And then that evening,

Why I'm a Christian, Saturday at 7 o 'clock, followed by Q &A.

And then Sunday for the worship service, I'll be preaching on Contending for Truth, When Truth Isn't Believed.

And that'll be again at Trinity Fellowship Church in Toms River, New Jersey, for those of you who will be in that area and would like to travel on over.

Before we take our phone call here or any other phone calls that should come up,

I did want to briefly mention some commentary made by Paul Owen.

It is so sad to see people continue to seek to redefine parameters based upon a desire to, in essence, wipe out all meaningful distinctives.

Paul Owen, I mentioned him last week in regards to his coming to the defense of that particular song, only by, of course, taking it completely out of the context in which it was originally written.

But Paul Owen calls himself Calvinist. And I've said many times that if Paul Owen is a

Calvinist, then I am a Buddhist. And this comes up rather clearly in a statement that he makes down in section four of an article.

He put on the Oxymoronic website. Speaking of folks like myself, he says,

They tend to feel very threatened by people who suggest... Now, here's what Calvinists like me, who are just shallow -minded simpletons, here's what we feel threatened by.

I love this. Who suggest that the doctrinal boundaries are not so clear -cut as they have been disposed to think.

The idea that one can be reformed, yet demure from Calvin's own understanding of the doctrine of sin and reprobation, or believe in baptismal regeneration, or libertarian free will, or that regeneration and justification can be lost, or universal atonement are notions that are all well -attested within the reformed tradition, but scarcely conceivable to those modern -day

Calvinists for whom everything must have a neat and tidy answer. So, in other words, if you define reformed tradition as anything that comes after the

Reformation, then you can plug anything in there, and you can have libertarian free will, and you can have no decree of sin and reprobation, and regeneration and justification can be lost.

You can tear the heart out of reformed soteriology, but you're still reformed, unless you're a

Baptist. Got to get that one in there. The first thing says, they seem to have enthusiasm for talking about little else than the particulars of the

Calvinistic system, which is why I've done dividing lines, why I spent last evening speaking about nothing but Islam and Mormonism before that, and why we still need to, and I just need to, we just need to set a date for this.

We still need to do the dividing line where we go over all of the sigla, all of the signs in the textual critical apparatus, the

Nessie -Aland text, and probably we should start with the UBS text, because more people have the UBS text than the Nessie -Aland text.

Maybe we'll do the UBS text first. But that's why we discuss Roman Catholicism. Well, we don't want to do that, because this is the oxymoronic website, and they like Roman Catholicism, but that's why we discuss

Mormonism and textual criticism and Islam and, you know, all that kind of stuff. That's why I was recording to listen while writing to the presentations.

Specifically, I focused in on Richard Dawkins from the Beyond Belief conference, where the atheists all got together.

And man, let me tell you something, we're going to play some segments of that. There's no question we're going to get to that as soon as we can.

The desperation, the desperation of these people is so sad to hear them trying to come up with a foundation for morality, and yet having to admit that their

Darwinism just rips it out from underneath them while they're trying. It's really sad.

It really is. But anyway, UBS, no, UBS is not the United Bank of Scotland, and I do not carry funny money around.

Whenever I go over to the UK, Roger Brazier calls Scottish money funny money, because while it works out in Scotland, don't bring it back with you to England, because they won't accept it.

It's really weird. It's supposed to be the United Kingdom, but everybody knows you don't want

Scottish money when you're outside of Scotland, because they won't accept it. I think I've heard someone say it's too easy to counterfeit or something.

I don't know. What do I know? I tried to order a fish fillet, a chicken fillet at Kentucky Fried Chicken in Glasgow, and no one there says fillet.

It's fillet. And they could not figure out what I was saying. Someone had to come to my rescue. I think he wants a fillet.

How did I get onto that? Oh, that was Mutato. Mutato derailed me. Yep, yep.

I got completely derailed by Mutato and his funny money comment about being the

Scottish money. Anyways, back to Paul Owen real quick here. He says that they seem to have enthusiasm for talking about little else than the particulars of the

Calvinistic system, but these particulars are not emphasized in Holy Scripture anywhere to the extent that they are in the discourses of these people.

Well, what's so utterly inane about that comment is that you could have made that same argument during the

Christological controversies. Whenever there is a controversy, whenever something is under attack, you're going to be discussing it more often than you would other issues, because that's what's under attack at the point in time.

There is during the Reformation, the discussion of justification. There's more discussion of that because that is the issue of controversy that is plaguing the church.

And so it's sort of like, well, OK, yeah, but let's use a little context here.

Number two, I love this. Now, let's just all remember, of course, that Dr. Owen is such a humble man.

They have never grown beyond the R .C. Sproul stage of Reformed theology. John MacArthur, John Piper, Ligon Duncan, and maybe

Michael Horton are regarded as the deep pool of Reformed theology, when in fact these men are mostly popularizers.

Horton is a partial exception. And John Piper and John MacArthur, bless them. Bless them.

Just bless them, are not, properly speaking, Reformed at all, though they are high predestinarians, but so are

Muslims, for that matter. Oh, my goodness.

I just, you got to laugh, because at the same time, you got to feel sorry for the poor students who get exposed to this man.

But oh, my goodness. Well, thank you. Thank you very, very, very much.

And then finally, number three. They think that the disputes over free will, predestination, the extent of the atonement, et cetera, have neat and tidy answers that can be quickly resolved if one is simply willing to engage in, quote, exegesis, end quote, of the text.

This just goes to show how unacquainted they are with the problems that theologians have wrestled with through the centuries and the breadth of perspective which has been entertained within the

Reformed tradition itself over these matters. Excuse me while I swim out of the studio here.

Just, wow. Just, you know, once you don't believe that God's word has spoken with clarity on these things,

I don't know why you bother to believe them. I don't get, I just don't understand liberalism at all. I don't understand the whole thing.

But, you know, what can I say? I gave up worrying about that stuff a long time ago.

877 -753 -3341. I'm going to go ahead and take this call who's been on hold for a long time and then

I keep saying we're going to get back to George Bryce and we'll see what the other callers are about and see if, yeah,

I think they might be relevant there too. And we'll see what we've got to do. Let's start with Micah.

Hi, Micah. Hi, Dr. White. How are you? Doing good. I was doing good, but those

Paul Owens statements made my head hurt. Well, they make my head hurt all the time too. So, and especially since they're normally aimed my direction.

But after a while, you just have to start laughing. Oh, my goodness. Yes, sir. I have a question for you about the

Book of John and some kind of critical scholarly questions that come up. Some critical scholars,

Jesus seminar types from Harvard Divinity School and other places have argued that in John 20, 21 through 23, where Jesus breathes on the disciples and says, receive the

Holy Spirit. They argue that that is a alternative and contradicting account of Pentecost, because the disciples are receiving the

Holy Spirit before Jesus ascends rather than after as he does in Acts chapter 2. I mean,

I think that's speculative on their part, but it definitely made me realize I don't have a good understanding of how do those two events relate, which one of those two events fulfills all those promises that Jesus made in John 14, 15 and 16 about the

Holy Spirit. So I was going to get your take on that. Well, you know, one of the things we've got to keep in mind, and I'm not sure,

Micah, if you're familiar with the series that I've been doing for, I think, four years now, as I recall, at the

Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church, our adult, we still call it Sunday school, Bible study.

At least we haven't gotten to the point of calling it an interaction time or something like that. We've been doing a synoptic study for four years.

And one of the issues that repeatedly comes up and that we have to emphasize over and over again is the fact that many of the criteria that are utilized by modern scholars,

I find at times somewhat humorous, especially when they say, well, here's, we'll use this as an example.

Jesus breathes upon the apostles and says, receive the Holy Spirit. And this must be the same event recorded elsewhere, as if there is, you can only talk about the

Holy Spirit once. You can only address these issues, you know, one time, and that's going to be enough.

And my experience, certainly within the church is, you know, we talk about the same things repeatedly because, doggone it,

I keep forgetting stuff. And it seems to me that the Lord has to repeat many things with his apostles because they keep forgetting stuff.

I mean, the Lord had to drop the sheet three times to get through Peter's thick skull. So one of the things to keep in mind is, upon what basis are we to assume that anything recorded in the synoptics,

I mean, if we're given enough information outside of the actual event of location, names, people, this happened at such and such time before such, okay, then we can say, all right, these are all addressing the same thing.

But especially some of the teachings of Jesus that people say, well, you know, here's a contradiction between Matthew.

Matthew is taking Mark and he's changing Mark. Well, how do you know, how do you assume that Jesus only addressed this issue in these words one time?

It seems like things like talking about preaching a prayer, you look at John 6,

Jesus teaches for an entire day, but nothing is recorded of what he said when he feeds the 5 ,000, not a word.

Now, if he taught for a long time, I'll bet you he talked about a bunch of stuff that is found in the synoptic gospels and things like that.

But just if you had just recorded that one day's worth of teaching, it would have been much longer than what we have in the gospels themselves.

It wasn't their intention to be stenographers in that sense, and I think sometimes conservatives have to get a little bit over their idea of what the gospels are as if these are meant to be newspaper accounts, and they're not.

They have a purpose, and that is by believing you might have life in his name. That doesn't mean they become inaccurate, but at the same time, holding them to the standard of someone staying there with a videotape camera is also silly because that's not what they claim themselves.

So going back to your illustration, the idea that, well, this is, you know,

John, this is what you normally hear, and this is what I hear from people like the Jesus Seminar from John Dominic Cross, and it's very common in Dom's books and stuff like that.

In fact, who was it? Was it? It wasn't Bart Ehrman. Who was it? Man, I just played this just recently. Someone was saying,

Luke does not know of X, Y, or Z simply because he does not record

X, Y, or Z, and someone will say, well, see, John does not know of what's found in the synoptics, or vice versa.

They'll say the synoptics don't know what's recorded in John, though generally in what you read, what's in what's published today,

John is so completely dismissed as having any connection with historical reality at all that they don't even bother going there.

As long as it's found in the synoptics, at least you can deal with it there, but if there's a difference, John, it's just that's because John is pure fiction anyways.

Do they think that because John was written later, or, I mean, what's the argument? Well, yeah, obviously they're functioning on a given though unproved chronology that pushes the

Gospels as far back as possible and puts John way, way toward the end, but beyond that, beyond the time frame, it is the differentiation of material chosen by John that so separates him from the synoptics that they go, look, this just isn't the same story.

Yeah, there's a couple places where it interfaces, but it's just not the same story, and if this is really what

Jesus had said, then you'd see more of this in the synoptics, or the synoptics would record these other things, totally ignoring the fact that you have different purposes, and you do have evidence that I see anyway, that Jesus did say the things he says in John, and that the synoptic

Gospel writers knew it. Let me give you an illustration. This came up in two different contexts, and I have found it rather interesting.

We were on the ship on our last cruise, and I had just sat down to get breakfast, and I saw one of the guys in our group, and he was talking to a

Jewish fellow, or was he a Catholic fellow? Well, he was talking to an older fellow, and there were a couple tables over, but I could hear what they were saying, and so I was listening to the fellow in our group and how he was answering his questions, and how he was approaching them, and stuff like that, but I didn't want to interrupt and get in the way,

I just wanted to hear how it was going, and at one point, the fellow said, well, and as John recorded for us, and then the quotation that he gave came from Matthew 11, 27, where Jesus is blessing the

Father, and I'm thankful, Father, that these things have been hidden from the wise and revealed to babes, and then he talks about how only he knows the

Father, and those to whom he will reveal him, and only the Father knows the Son, and this is found in Matthew, it's

Matthew 11, 27, but the fellow said, John, and I chuckled a little bit about it, and talked to him about it later, and said, you've proven a point that I've tried to make many times before.

That section is sort of called the Gospel of John and Matthew, because it does so much sound like John.

I mean, the interpenetration of the Father and the Son, and the relationship, and the one revealing the other, and that sounds very much like the common theme that's woven throughout

John, but it's in Matthew, and there's no textual reason to say that it was imported, or anything like that.

This was something Matthew did know, and this was one of the places where he chose to reveal that, so it was funny, in class, in the class

I'm teaching right now for Golden Gate, just last night, I read from the

Qur 'an, where Jesus says that he does not, that while Allah knows what's in his heart, he does not know what's in Allah's heart, and I said, where do you, when you hear that, what do you think of from the scriptures that automatically contradicts that, that's completely contradictory to that?

And one of the students in the class goes, well, it's in John, and he's looking through John, you know, and I knew he knew what it was, but the automatic thought was, that's in John, because it sounds like John, yeah, but it's actually

Matthew 11, 27, and I showed him the same thing. So they are familiar with those things, but for their own purposes, the purposes for which they wrote the

Gospels, those, especially, let's remember, so much of John is personal conversations, it's the ministry of the

Lord, you know, 13 through 17 is the ministry of the Lord with the disciples on the night of the betrayal. I can understand reasons why they would not necessarily focus upon those particular things in books written for public consumption, to be distributed far and wide, and that John would at a much later period of time, when most of those folks are no longer walking the earth, and so on and so forth,

I can understand things like that, but modern scholarship doesn't allow for that, and so the whole idea is,

John is so different than the Synoptic Gospels, and therefore he can't really be, and since he has these common themes and stuff, all of this going back to the assumption that, well,

Jesus really wasn't like that, and the real problem with John is, if Jesus was like that, every liberal theory about Jesus is wrong, just right off the bat, it just, that has to be the result of decades of theological reflection and development and evolution, is what the modern theological paradigm demands that it be, and so the historic, and what's worse than this is,

Orthodox historic Christians have always believed that John was accurate, and therefore he couldn't have been.

I mean, that's just a given. Yep. Just from looking at these two events, you know,

Jesus saying, receive the Holy Spirit before he ascended, and then Pentecost happening after he ascended, which of those two events do you think is fulfilling all those promises that Jesus had made to the disciples in the book of John?

Well, remember, we can't, there's nothing in John 20 that tells us that when

Jesus does this, that there was any kind of manifestation. Yeah, it doesn't look like there is.

No, there isn't, and this is preparatory, it is, we see its fulfillment in the future, but it is a command that is preparatory, and then it's connected with the proclamation of the gospel.

If you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been forgiven them, if you retain the sins of any, they have been retained, and you have that as the echo of what we see in Matthew 16 and 18, and the proclamation of the keys, and the loosing, the binding, and things like that, which is all tied up with the proclamation of the work of Christ, which now is going to become their central focus in the future.

So, I don't think that there is any reason to see them as at all contradictory to one another, because there's no discussion here of fulfillment, in the sense that right now they did so.

It is receive the Holy Spirit, and people think, well, if Jesus says it, it must happen right now. Well, no, he also says, the proclamation of forgiveness of sins, well, that's going to be happening in the future.

They're not running out of the locked room at that point in time, that's going to happen after the Holy Spirit comes.

So, they're all connected together. Yeah, that's true. And then there's a point, also, I think in John 16 or 17, where Jesus says, it's good that I go away from you, because then

I can send a helper to you. So, that makes it sound like these promises are after the Ascension, when the

Holy Spirit comes in power, and Acts 2, and all these amazing things happen. Right, if I do not go away in the

Spirit, when I come, and that, just be aware of the fact, you may already be aware of the fact, that's one of the, one of this

Pentecostal's verses to try to, in essence, say, Jesus is the Holy Spirit. Just be aware of that.

That's the apologist in me, always, always don't want people to get run over by a freight train, they didn't see coming with one of those.

So, all righty. Well, thank you. Thanks for calling. All right, God bless. Bye -bye. All righty, let's see here, let's talk with Patrick up in snowy, snowy, snowy

Colorado. All right, is it snowing up there? Not today, it's supposed to come around Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, I believe, and once more.

Just exactly what you needed, huh? Yeah, just some more, our residential streets still haven't been cleared.

Oh, you're kidding. So, from the blizzard three weeks ago. Wow, well then, how are people getting around?

Oh, there's, it's been packed down so much, you can kind of move around now, there's just potholes, maybe about one to two feet deep sometimes, it's pretty bad.

Wow, I was a little surprised, and this isn't your question, well, go ahead and ask your question, because we're almost out of time, so go ahead.

My question is, withholding to limited atonement, how do you justify the elect ever being in a state of condemnation, or needing application of the atonement if Christ had secured, or if Christ had died for all their sins on Calvary?

Yeah, that's one of the issues that came up in a conversation where I went back and forth with Eric Svensson on this particular issue.

And I think in brief, because we're just about out of time, the certainty of salvation, the fact that we've been elected from eternity past, you know, you might as well ask the same question about that.

I mean, if God's choice in eternity is absolutely certain, then how could we ever be considered to be children of wrath?

But what we need to understand is that that divine election, which includes the identity of the elect and their union with Christ and everything else, also includes all the things that God does to bring about the perfect salvation of his people to his own glory, which includes the process of the application.

And so while the certainty is not ever in doubt, there is a point in time when we abide under the wrath of God until he makes application to us.

We as time -bound creatures only see that in a linear line rather than seeing it in God's perspective.

But what we're confusing, I think, when we do that is the certainty of the outcome with the process that God has chosen to bring that about.

And so there have been movements in the past, for example, the eternal justification perspective that some hyper -Calvinists and some hyper -Calvinistic

Baptists developed, that the elect have eternally been justified. But we have to accept what the scriptures state, that it says we are all once children of wrath.

And I don't think that limited atonement would be really the issue that a person might object to there.

But going all the way back to is it God's purpose to purposefully join a particular people to Jesus Christ?

And if that makes their salvation certain, then could they have ever really said to have been in danger? Well, that's taking a human perspective and trying to force it onto an eternal perspective.

We can't think that way. When God reveals the process that he uses to bring us to salvation, he does so within the context of our understanding that we can look back and say we were once children of wrath, we have been redeemed because that's how we experience it.

We can't experience it from God's eternal perspective in that way. So I appreciate you staying on the line. Try to stay warm up there in Colorado.

And don't run into those potholes either while you're up there. Don't understand that snow thing.

I live in Phoenix. It could be 77 degrees today. But so much for winter. Hey, thanks for listening.

Don't forget, Thursday, same time, 11 a .m., big announcement about what's coming up with the debate with the whole situation with the crews.

And we've got really important information for you. Be with us this Thursday. See you then. God bless. We were standing at the crossroads and let this moment slip away.

We must contend for the faith above us fought for. We need a new Reformation day.

It's a sign of the times, make some noise.

I stand up for the truth.

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