May 15, 2003

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This is
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Dr. James White, Director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an Elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation.
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If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the
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United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. I want you to know how great a struggle
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I have on your behalf and for those who are at Laodicea and for all those who have not personally seen my face, that their hearts may be encouraged having been knit together in love and attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding resulting in a true knowledge of God's mystery that is
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Christ Himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
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I say this so that no one will delude you with persuasive argument, for even though I am absent in body, nevertheless
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I am with you in spirit rejoicing to see your good discipline and the stability of your faith in Christ.
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Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed and overflowing with gratitude.
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See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.
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For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority, and in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him, through faith in the working of God, who raised
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Him from the dead. When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having cancelled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us which was hostile to us, and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.
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When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him.
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Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a
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Sabbath day, things which are a mere shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.
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Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self -abasement in the worship of angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God.
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If you have died with Christ, the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees such as Do not handle,
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Do not taste, Do not touch, which all refer to things destined to perish with use, in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men?
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These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self -made religion and self -abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence.
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So wrote the Apostle Paul to the church at Colossae. That is the second chapter of the book of Colossians, and I want to take some time today to look at this chapter and specifically to encourage our listeners today in regards to learning to be a good exegete, learning how to do hermeneutics.
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It is something I think that is vitally important. Most Christians simply do not take the time to equip themselves to be proper students of the word of God, and as a result, for many people in evangelical churches today, taking the time to even purchase a commentary, to take the time to look up a commentary, is the extent of the depth of the study to which people will go.
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Obviously, commentaries are wonderfully useful things, we can learn much from them, but they are just simply the understandings and interpretations of an individual, and that individual may not have the same mindset that you have.
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Very often, for example, key apologetic passages will be passed over in almost silence in many scholarly reference works and in commentaries, because it is not the commentator's purpose to answer questions regarding the apologetic content or usage of certain passages.
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Many people will call and complain, you know, I got this book and I went out and spent all this money on this commentary, and here, you know,
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I'm trying to deal with Jehovah's Witness, and I went to this passage, and they didn't even mention the key issue.
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Well, that's because it's not the key issue for them. They are not looking at it from that perspective, they simply don't comment on it, and so at other times, there are just some very difficult passages that are sort of passed over without a whole lot of examination, and when we're limited to merely reading someone else's opinion, when we're limited to merely looking at a commentary, then we are limited very much in dealing with the text of Scripture, and so I want to encourage our listeners today to become equipped to engage in the task of exegesis, learn the canons and rules of sound hermeneutics, understand that truly, to learn how to interpret the
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Bible correctly is to allow God to speak in His own language. That is, when we do not self -consciously submit ourselves to the proper means of hermeneutics, then the normal reason we do so, other than ignorance, is because the application of sound principles of hermeneutics would result in the destruction of our own traditions and our own positions, which are actually not biblical.
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In other words, when you do not practice sound hermeneutics, you are not allowing the text to speak for itself.
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You are determining that God must speak in the way that you want
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Him to speak. And so, it is not just simply some fluffy thing, it's not some just scholarly thing that, well, you know, you all can go over there and if you want to study all these complex rules and things like that,
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I'm just going to let the Spirit lead. And that's what we see happening, isn't it, on certain, you know, here in Phoenix Channels between 20 and 22, certain broadcasting networks that use divinely revealed doctrines in their name that they don't really believe anymore.
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What you see all the time on these networks are individuals who are not applying consistent hermeneutics so that they're approaching each passage to hear it in its own context.
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Instead, they have their own overriding traditions and they have their own, you know, perspectives that they are attempting to defend, and they then force these upon the text of Scripture itself.
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And as a result, God's Word is muted for them. Instead, what you get is man's tradition masquerading as if it is the
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Word of God. Now, going back to Colossians chapter 2, this passage and all of Colossians illustrates the importance of learning to understand the backgrounds of books of Scripture.
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And I know when I was in seminary that if I looked around at those who were taking classes with me, it was
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Old Testament background, New Testament background, classes like that. Let's face it, they were the ones that people, you know, sort of did a lot of stretching in and you could sort of see the heads nodding, and it wasn't the most exciting stuff.
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And I understand that. I've had students, for example, through Columbia Evangelical Seminary, you know, complain about the background classes.
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And, man, you have a lot of reading, you know, you got to do, and, you know, so on and so forth.
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And they're, you know, very much complaining about how much study is involved and all the rest of that stuff.
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But I've tried to explain to them the fact that it is that kind of background, it is that kind of information that is so fundamental and so important in being able to apply sound hermeneutic principles to the study of Scripture.
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This comes out a lot apologetically. Some of you in channel right now, it's been a while since something like this has happened, but sometimes we will have
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Jehovah's Witnesses who will come into channel. And over the years this has happened, you know, with a fair amount of regularity, not as much recently, especially since certain one of the individuals decided to start basically being dishonest about who they were, denying who they were, and then later saying, well, yeah, that actually is me.
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And so they've been banned, and we don't have long discussions with those types of folks anymore. But when they were taking place a little bit more regularly, you all may recall that these individuals who really, they've examined probably every one of the common passages that are presented on the subject of the deity of Christ.
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They can give an answer or response with tremendous speed to a standard presentation on the doctrine of the
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Trinity, the person of the Holy Spirit. And yet, many of you should be able to recollect a couple of times, and I'm specifically remembering one specific instance, where an individual, very sharp individual, well -read individual, a person who could present very quick responses to particular passages.
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When we got into the subject of the book of Colossians, and of course this book, there are a number of key passages in regards to the deity of Christ, positively and negatively.
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That is Colossians chapter 1, verses 15 through 18. Positively, the testimony to the
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Christ being the creator of all things. Negatively, it is used by Jehovah's Witnesses in regards to the term firstborn, the firstborn of all creation.
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They think that means first created. Well, that's not what it means, but that's the argumentation there. Colossians chapter 2, verse 9, for in him all the fullness of the deity dwells in bodily form, as we saw when we read the passage at the beginning of the program today.
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And so there are key passages concerning the supremacy of Christ, and the nature of his rulership, and all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge being hidden in him.
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All those things are very, very important. And so when we went into that text, I asked this person to explain how they came to the conclusion that, for example, in Colossians chapter 1,
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Jesus is being described as a creature, as a part of the creation through whom other things were made.
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And as this person explained that, I then said, now let me ask you a question. How would your interpretation have impacted the
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Apostle Paul's argument against his opponents? And it was sort of like you could hear the crickets chirping.
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In fact, I have a sound on our wave channel that sort of has that sort of sound too.
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Yeah, there you go. You know, that's what's going on in channel during the whole time that after I've asked this question, it's sort of like, well, what do you mean?
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And I said, well, you do know the background of the book of Colossians.
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You know why he's writing it, right? And he's like, well,
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I said, well, come on. You're familiar with Proto -Gnosticism, right? No.
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I said, well, wait a minute. Wait a minute. You're giving me this, you're discussing Greek grammar and you're discussing syntax and you're discussing all these things and all these scholarly sources on the meaning of Protodocos of Colossians 1 .15,
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all the rest of this stuff. But you actually haven't ever looked at Colossians as a entire literary unit, the whole, even ask yourself the question, why did
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Paul write this? How can you then accurately handle his argumentation and understand his apologetics, understand his argumentation if you don't even know who he's writing to or why he wrote to them?
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Well, I, and it ended the conversation.
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And I point this out because sometimes these folks just, you can't get them to shut up, basically.
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I mean, they're just going on and on. And very many times I have seen them utterly derailed by simply addressing the foundations of how we would properly analyze what is
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Paul saying. I mean, if Paul's writing against a particular perspective, if Paul is addressing a particular need in the church at Colossae and we interpret him in such a way as to, in essence, destroy his own argument, in fact, make him self -contradictory, are we not obviously missing the entirety of his point?
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Is not our interpretation wrong? Of course. That's interesting.
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There are some who say you can't even raise the issue of the interpretation of a passage being right or wrong.
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There are many today who are so, they are dedicated to an epistemology that basically says we can't know what the scripture says.
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But in reality we can, and especially when we come to understand what
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Paul's responding to. Now, we have some indications, some very clear indications in Paul's own language.
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And if you're looking for, I know this isn't the newest commentary, but in reality it's an excellent commentary.
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It's one of the older commentaries, but it's still very, very much useful in the study of Colossians and in fact
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Ephesians and I believe Philippians is Bishop Lightfoot's commentary on these things.
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And he goes into what we might call today proto -Gnosticism, the developing religious perspective that would eventually be full -blown quote -unquote
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Christian Gnosticism. That would be one of the main enemies of the church for all of its early centuries.
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But we can get an idea of what it was like by some of the things that are said in Paul's epistle to the
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Colossians. And we can also learn some other things along the way. For example, there were certain terms that the
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Gnostics would use that Paul does not in any way shy away from using himself. The Gnostics talked about the pleroma, which we translate the fullness.
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They talked about eons. These are both terms that appear rather regularly in the text of the book of Colossians itself.
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Now, of course, they're given the proper meaning, they're given a Christian meaning, but Paul did not mind utilizing the very language of his opponents and filling those terms with the proper meaning as a means of apologetics or defense against that teaching.
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We're also able to clearly discern that this teaching had something to do, it in some way endangered the
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Christian truth regarding the person of Christ. Because we see Paul addressing the relationship of Christ to all of creation.
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We see Paul addressing his headship, his creatorship, and especially an emphasis upon the physical creation.
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Remember back in Colossians chapter 1, for by him were all things made, whether in heaven or on earth, visible or invisible, principalities, powers, dominions, authorities, all things created.
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By him and for him, he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
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There's this desire on his part to strongly emphasize the overarching creatorship of Christ.
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But then you may have noticed here in Colossians chapter 2, there's a warning. He's talking about his desire for the church of Colossians.
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And remember, Paul hadn't been there. Colossians 4, verse 16, talks about the epistle coming from Laodicea.
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Read that epistle. It's probably Ephesians. Ephesians was probably a circular letter. It was sent up the
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Lycus River Valley, Ephesus being the main city there in the Lycus River Valley, and it was probably a circular letter.
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It makes sense because Paul had been in Ephesus for many years, and yet there is nothing in all of Ephesians of a personal nature.
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He doesn't greet anyone by name or anything like that, and you'd expect a long, long list if this was a letter specifically just to the church at Ephesus.
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But instead, you have nothing like that at all, and some very early manuscripts do not contain the word
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Ephesus at the beginning of the epistle. So that was probably a circular letter meant to go off to the
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Lycus River Valley, and that's why there's some real parallels. You'll notice you can almost do like a synoptic gospel study of Colossians and Ephesians because there's some very close parallel passages between them.
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But we see in Paul's letter to the Colossians this prayer that he basically has for them beginning in chapter 2.
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And for all those who have not personally seen my faith, these are churches, these are second generation churches.
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These are churches begun because of churches that Paul himself began. And so he prays that their hearts may be encouraged and knit together in love and have a true knowledge of God's mystery that is
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Christ himself. And then he says, verse 4, I say this so that no one will delude you with persuasive argument.
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And so he is warning them. He's warning the believers there is a danger. There will be those who will come and they will have persuasive arguments.
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And he says, I know I'm not there, but I rejoice to see your good discipline, the stability of your faith in Christ.
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And since as you've received Christ Jesus, the Lord, so walk in him. And then notice the words he uses, having been firmly rooted, now being built up in him, established in your faith.
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He's talking about the fact that they are stable. They're not the type of shallow type of religious people that so quickly are moved from one perspective to another.
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And then he repeats his warning again, see to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.
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That's a very, very important passage. Paul is very concerned that the church be vigilant, that it be alert and recognize that there are going to be those who are going to desire to take her captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.
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These arguments that are there is their persuasive words will be persuasive.
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They will be very philosophically oriented. They will sound very, very good.
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And yet they are not in accordance with Christ. He is the standard for in him, verse nine, all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form.
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Now that term for deity is a very strong term, theatetos. It means that which makes
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God God, as B .B. Warfield put it. The very essence of God, the very nature of God.
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For in him all the fullness of deity dwells somaticos, in bodily form.
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Now, note that because when we look at the background a little bit further, we're going to see that's very important.
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Why would Paul emphasize that in Christ is dwelling, present tense, this is after the resurrection.
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This is decades after the resurrection. For in him all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form.
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Let me just pause for a moment. It amazes me how many Christians I encounter who don't think that Jesus Christ has a physical body.
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It amazes me how many evangelicals think that somehow when Jesus was, when he ascended into heaven that, what, did he somehow dissolve his body or something?
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It just amazes me. And yet here, decades after the resurrection, Paul speaks of the fullness of deity dwelling in him in bodily form.
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He is the God -man. He has never ceased to be the eternal son.
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In him all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form. And in him you have been made complete and he is the head over all rule and authority.
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Keep that in mind because as you go down and you'll notice, and you know, this is, this is,
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I think I should mention this just in passing. Notice that the, after the assertion, and in fact is part of, let me see here, yeah, this wouldn't be in the
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English Standard Version, which is the NASV without semicolons, but if you follow the semicolons, you'll notice it's one sentence in the
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New American Standard. For in him all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form. And in him you have been made complete and he is the head over all rule and authority.
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And in him you are also circumcised in the circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with him through faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead.
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Now I mention that simply in passing because the fact that Paul can speak of Christ as the one in whom all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form, verse 9, and then in verse 12 recognize that the
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Father raises the Son from the dead. This kind of language where in one sentence
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Paul will go from speaking of the deity of Christ to then distinguishing between the
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Father and the Son, or referring to the human nature of Christ in the resurrection, it's all through the epistles.
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That's why I say the New Testament is a Trinitarian book. Those who wrote these epistles were experiential
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Trinitarians. They were experiential Trinitarians. They had experienced the Trinity.
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Peter had heard God the Father speaking from heaven on the
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Mount of Transfiguration. He walked with the Son. He was now entwelt by the Holy Spirit. He was an experiential
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Trinitarian. And we see this in the language. And then after all of this tremendous discussion of the gospel, our being dead and being made alive together with him, forgiving our transgressions and all these other things, then he says, therefore, no one is to act as your judge in regard to food, or drink, or in respect to a festival, or a new moon, or a
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Sabbath day, things which are a mere shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self -abasement, and then notice this phrase, and the worship of angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflamed without cause by his fleshly mind.
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So we're given an idea here of what kind of false teaching is in the
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Apostle's mind and what he is concerned about in regards to the
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Church at Colossae. And historically, we discover exactly what this is. In fact, we discover that Paul's apologetic methodology is very, very strong, that he did understand well the movements that threatened the churches about which he was so concerned.
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What do I refer to? Well, I've mentioned it before. Proto -Gnosticism, a form of Gnosticism that probably would not at this time, certainly not before Valentinian Gnosticism or Martione and these individuals who flourish in the middle of the 2nd century, but at this time, about 100 years, 90 years earlier, this form of, it's a syncretistic religion.
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It's like, as it was moving east, as it would counter a new local deity or a local god, it would make room for it.
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It would readjust itself to make room for this deity, obviously not in the exact same situation or in that exact same position that it once had, but now it would make room for this deity and sort of absorb it into its own pantheon.
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And evidently, this is the danger that Paul was concerned about, that this movement was coming into the
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Lycus River Valley and that people would present philosophically -oriented, self -deceived, traditional -type argumentation that would, in essence, promote this concept.
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And what were the Gnostics all about? Well, they were dualists. And as dualists, they did not believe in the, they believed positively in the idea that spirit is good and matter is evil.
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And since that which is spiritual is good and that which is made of material is evil, then they answered the question concerning the creation by positing a group of beings that descended down from the one true spiritual god, down to a creature that, while still related to God in the sense of having divine power and hence being able to create, was sufficiently removed from God so that it could become evil.
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This demiurge, this evil god -like character, then created the physical universe in which are trapped the good spiritual aspects, the spirits of men.
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This is why when Paul, on Mars Hill, got to the point of talking about the resurrection, that which died coming to life again, the people began to mock because they likewise were dualists.
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They believed in this concept that resurrection, which would mean the rising of the physical body, would be re -imprisonment, because they saw this life as imprisonment and hence death results in the freedom of the spirit.
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This is still very much a part of many Eastern religions even to this day. And so these proto -gnostics would worship these intermediate beings, which they called eons, and all of them together made up the
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Pleroma. And we see Paul talking about the worship of angels here in Colossians chapter 2.
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And they were very much focused upon doing things that were physically oriented in the sense of religious activities that would result in, allegedly, their becoming more spiritual and being more freed from the control of the physical body.
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And so many of their rules and regulations had to do with not eating, not marrying, not doing this, not doing that.
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Again, the very same type of discussion that we have in Colossians chapter 2.
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And so when it came to the person of Christ, these gnostics would have a number of different problems in regards to his person.
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Specifically, they would deny that he was truly God, of course. He wasn't that all powerful being.
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He was one of the eons. He was a member of the Pleroma. He might be worshipped, but so might other members of the
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Pleroma. And of course, they'd have a problem with the idea that Jesus could have taken physical form.
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Why? Well, because they're dualists. And if he takes physical form, then he had to be evil.
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But he wasn't evil. He was good, and therefore he did not have a physical body.
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He only seemed to have a physical body. Hence, they were called the ascetics, from the Greek term dakhine, it seems.
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And so these are all issues that Paul takes on head -on in this passage.
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He says that Christ created all things. He says that in him all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form.
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These are words that would be like taking your fingernails and bringing them down the proverbial chalkboard to They would be things that they could not confess.
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And I think it's important to realize he utilized language that tore the mask off of the false teachers.
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He didn't change his teaching about Christ by introducing these terms.
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The truth about who Jesus Christ was, was just as true before the
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Holy Spirit had Paul take up his pen and write this letter as it was afterwards.
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It's just the clarity of that truth was greatly magnified through the writing of this letter and the use of the terminology that it contained.
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But what I was pointing out to the Jehovah's Witness in Channel was, look, your view of Christ as Michael the archangel, as an intermediary between God and the creation, in essence, is the same as the
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Proto -Gnostics on many levels. And hence to interpret Colossians chapter 1 and make Jesus a part of the creation is to make
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Paul's argumentation utterly worthless in the context in which it was originally offered.
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And so there is a brief, actually almost 31 minute, example of why it is so important for us to understand the backgrounds of these books, to engage in that kind of study that will give us the foundation upon which to do meaningful hermeneutic studies from that point forward.
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877 -753 -3341. We're going to take our break. We have one phone line already filled.
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We'll take your calls at 877 -753 -3341. We'll be right back. ...save your soul from death.
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It's all works righteousness, you know. Can I manufacture grace, myself and I, in some religious place, by weeping hard on your face and saying praise to some...
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The history of the Christian Church pivots on the doctrine of justification by faith. Once the core of the
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Reformation, the Church today often ignores or misunderstands this foundational doctrine. In his book,
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The God Who Justifies, theologian James White calls believers to a fresh appreciation of, understanding of, and dedication to the great doctrine of justification and then provides an exegesis of the key scripture texts on this theme.
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Justification is the heart of the gospel. In today's culture where tolerance is the new absolute,
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James White proclaims with passion the truth and centrality of the doctrine of justification by faith.
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Dr. Jay Adams says, I lost sleep over this book. I simply couldn't put it down. James White writes the way an exegetically and theologically oriented pastor appreciates.
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This is no book for casual reading. There is solid meat throughout, an outstanding contribution in every sense of the words.
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The God Who Justifies by Dr. James White. Get your copy today at AOMN .org.
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The Trinity is a basic teaching of the Christian faith. It defines God's essence and describes how he relates to us.
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James White's book, The Forgotten Trinity, is a concise, understandable explanation of what the Trinity is and why it matters.
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It refutes cultic distortions of God, as well as showing how a grasp of this significant teaching leads to renewed worship and deeper understanding of what it means to be a
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Christian. And amid today's emphasis on the renewing work of the Holy Spirit, The Forgotten Trinity is a balanced look at all three persons of the
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Trinity. Dr. John MacArthur, Senior Pastor of Grace Community Church, says, James White's lucid presentation will help layperson and pastor alike.
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Highly recommended. You can order The Forgotten Trinity by going to our website at AOMN .org.
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What is Dr. Norman Geisler warning the Christian community about in his book, Chosen But Free? A New Cult?
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Secularism? False Prophecy Scenarios? No, Dr. Geisler is sounding the alarm about a system of beliefs commonly called
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Calvinism. He insists that this belief system is theologically inconsistent, philosophically insufficient, and morally repugnant.
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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.
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It is a defense of the very principles upon which the Protestant Reformation was founded. Indeed, it is a defense of the very
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Gospel itself. In a style that both scholars and laymen alike can appreciate, James White masterfully counters the evidence against so -called extreme
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Calvinism, defines what the Reformed faith actually is, and concludes that the Gospel preached by the
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Reformers is the very one taught in the pages of Scripture. The Potter's Freedom, a defense of the
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Reformation and a subtle to Norman Geisler's Chosen But Free. You'll find it in the Reformed Theology section of our bookstore at aomen .org.
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This portion of the dividing line has been made possible by the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. The Apostle Paul spoke of the importance of solemnly testifying of the
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Gospel of the grace of God. The proclamation of God's truth is the most important element of his worship in his church.
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The elders and people of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church invite you to worship with them this coming
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Lord's Day. The morning Bible study begins at 9 .30 a .m. and the worship service is at 10 .45.
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Evening services are at 6 .30 p .m. on Sunday and the Wednesday night prayer meeting is at 7 .00.
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The Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church is located at 3805 North 12th Street in Phoenix.
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You can call for further information at 602 -26 -GRACE. If you're unable to attend, you can still participate with your computer and real audio at prbc .org,
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where the ministry extends around the world through the archives of sermons and Bible study lessons available 24 hours a day.
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It was a beautiful day today, actually. Today in Phoenix, not quite as warm as it's going to get.
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I understand it's going to heat up real fast over the next couple of days, but today was a real nice day,
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I've got to admit. One of the last ones that we're going to have in a while, I do believe. By the way, there is a lunar eclipse coming up here in about an hour, hour and a half from now, something like that.
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I think it's supposed to be a full lunar eclipse. We'll be all done by then.
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We can all go outside and get a complex automated phone system here.
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Let's start with Logan. Hello, Logan. Hey James, how are you doing today? Doing alright. My question is on the baptismal regeneration.
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What are your thoughts on regarding John 3 through 7? Well, the term baptism doesn't appear there.
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It's a tradition of men to insert it. If you again actually apply the same type of argumentation that I was just presenting in Colossians chapter 2, you might ask, what is
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Jesus drawing from here? And when you ask that question, you discover that in Ezekiel chapter 36, there is this discussion of the new birth, the new covenant that God is going to make with his people, that discusses the fact that God is going to cleanse them with clean water.
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He is going to put his spirit within them. He is going to give them a new heart, take out a heart of stone, give them a heart of flesh.
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You have there in the Old Testament a beautiful description of what the new birth is all about, and it doesn't have anything to do with a human action called baptism.
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Instead, the normative ideas presented to us in Jesus' own words, when he says, go make disciples of all nations, and then we are to baptize them and to teach them all things whatsoever the
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Lord has commanded to us. Baptism there is placed after the making of disciples.
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It is something that a disciple will do as an act of obedience to God in the same way that a disciple will partake of the
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Lord's Supper. These are the two ordinances of the church, and we are definitely to do these things, but it is not the means by which regeneration takes place.
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If that were the case, I have never been able to understand Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 1, when he specifically asserts that he did not come to baptize, but to preach the gospel.
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Well, if baptism is the means of regeneration, then what in the world was he talking about? That would be the very means of applying the gospel.
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It would be part and parcel of the gospel, but the apostle makes a clear distinction between the proclamation of the gospel and the act of baptism, just as Jesus does, in saying that we are to make disciples and we are to baptize them and teach them all things whatsoever the
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Lord has commanded to us. So the idea of baptismal regeneration not only flies in the face of the normal usage of the
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New Testament regarding what baptism is, but it also seemingly does not understand at all the nature of fallen man and the means of the
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Holy Spirit's work of regeneration, which is a sovereign act. It is not something the Holy Spirit does because we enable him or that we somehow do something that results in his then regenerating us.
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Instead, until we are regenerated, we are spiritually dead. We cannot do anything that is pleasing before God, let alone desire to do something that would be pleasing before God, such as being baptized.
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We are dead until we are regenerated by the power of the Holy Spirit of God. That's like saying, well, if Lazarus had just done something, then the result would be that he would be regenerated.
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Well, if you're dead, you don't do things to regenerate yourself. That's your problem. You're dead.
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Briefly quoting on Dave Bernard, as you probably already know, I'm oneness, and that guy is the only guy that would quote.
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He says in the Essential Doctrines of the Bible that when someone believes on Jesus Christ and obeys
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Acts 2 .38, he experiences the birth of water and of spirit and he is born again and actually becoming a new creation.
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So old creations obey God. Old creations do what's pleasing to God.
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I thought Romans 8 .7 .8 said those who are according to the flesh cannot submit themselves to the law of God and cannot do what's pleasing to God.
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Well, me personally, I don't know what your opinions are on this, but me personally,
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I think we can submit to the law of God, we just can't keep a hold of it, because like the
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Bible says, nobody's perfect. Well, I don't remember the Bible ever saying nobody's perfect in that sense.
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Well, in general, nobody's perfect. Well, actually, what it says is all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, but explain to me what this means then, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God, for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please
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God. Romans 8 .7 .8. So, is baptism for repentance of sins pleasing or displeasing to God?
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Well, being baptized for the remission of your sins according to Acts 2 .38 is pleasing to God, because that's what
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God calls all Gentiles to do. Okay, so if it is pleasing to God, and it is the means of being regenerated and made spiritually alive, then could you please explain how
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Romans 8 .8 can say, those who are in the flesh, which is what you are before baptism, right, cannot please
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God? Well, if you're in the flesh, you can't please God. No, it doesn't say whether you're acting in the flesh or acting in the spirit.
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It says those who are in the flesh, those who have not been regenerated, those who are still in the flesh, who have not experienced regeneration, cannot please
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God. Is it pleasing to God to desire to be baptized? Yeah. You just contradicted yourself.
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You just contradicted yourself. You just ran afoul of Romans 8 .7 .8. See, oneness theology does not have a biblical anthropology.
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What I mean by that is, it does not have a biblical view of man in his sin. And as a result, since it's basically a
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Pelagian or semi -Pelagian system, since it does not understand that man is dead in sin, then it can create all these things that you have to do.
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You have to speak in tongues, be justified, so on and so forth. But in this case, you have baptismal regeneration. Well, baptismal regeneration cannot be true because it runs afoul of a true biblical understanding of man in his sin.
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Man is a slave to sin. He is dead in his sins. Jumping out of the oneness field right now, how come oneness people believe that, according to John 3, verses 3 -7, that in order to enter or see the kingdom of God, we have to be born of water and spirit?
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What are your thoughts as far as being born of water and then born of the spirit? As I mentioned, that's from the book of Ezekiel.
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It is a sovereign work of God's spirit, whereby our heart of stone is taken out and we are given a heart of flesh.
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Those are all terms that are used to describe the new covenant, both in Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36.
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Okay. Okay? Alright, thank you for your time. Thank you for calling. God bless.
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Alright, let's go ahead and talk with Johnny now. Johnny, are you there? Hey, how you doing?
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Doing alright. Logan's right here, as a matter of fact. He wanted to ask you this question and I got him to do it.
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Okay. Alright, my question is also on oneness, but it has to do with what you said because you spoke with Logan a couple of weeks ago.
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You were telling
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Logan that there is a stream of oneness Pentecostalism where they teach that the Sonship of Christ is the humanity and the
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Father is the deity of Christ. So basically when Jesus prays to his Father, it's really the human nature praying to the divine nature.
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But you said that this was one of the streams and I wanted to know what is the other view because I've never heard of it.
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Well, there are other streams in the sense of understanding the relationship between the
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Lagos, the nature of who the Lagos is, the relationship between the
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Father and the Son. There's been all sorts of different theories that have been promoted.
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The position of David Bernard has become primarily the position of the
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UPCI, of course, over the past number of decades. But from the 1920s onward, you would find oneness preachers who would take different theories as to who the
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Lagos was and the relationship. There were some who were not nearly as clear on the idea of Christ being two separate persons, things along those lines.
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I do not have in my office anymore some of the books where I could have reached up and grabbed them and given you some names as to some of the various writers.
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But it all has to do with how you work out the fine details regarding the nature of the
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Lagos, the nature of Christ, the relationship of the Father and the Son, was Jesus two persons or was he one person, and all the rest of that kind of stuff.
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Obviously, the UPCI position is a modified form of historic modalism because there were those who were, for example, patrapassionists.
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They held to a position where the Father, the Son, and the Spirit were just simply three different modes of one person rather than making the
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Son the human nature of Christ. And Christ would still be unipersonal in that way. So there's different ways that it's been handled as far as the specifics go.
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Well, the thing is, I remember the debate that you had. I didn't attend the debate, but I got a hold of the tapes with Robert Sabin, which you were originally supposed to have with Dr.
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Bernard. Well, it wasn't initially supposed to be with Dr. Bernard. We were in conversation with him, and it turned out that Sabin's schedule allowed for the encounter while Bernard's did not.
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And since then, we have not been able to arrange anything, though a number of people have attempted to make that type of arrangement.
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So it wasn't that it was set up with one person and changed to another. That wouldn't be accurate. Well, it was intended with him, though.
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It was the original idea? No, we contacted both individuals, and that's how it worked out.
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Oh, okay, okay. Well, but the thing is, in the debate that you had with Robert Sabin, in your opening statements, you made a clear -cut definition of what we understand of the
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Trinity, that there's one being of God, and you made the distinction between being and person.
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Towards the end of the debate, Robert Sabin was getting a little more animated, and he said, you know, you haven't shown one verse.
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He made the point that you have not proven that there is a distinction between being and person.
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But it seems that the Oneness Pentecostal is trying to make that distinction, in other words, play a double standard, where we are not allowed to make that distinction, at least from the standpoint of Robert Sabin, and say that God is one being but three persons, but yet they're allowed to say that God is one person but two in being, because he has the human and the divine nature.
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How does the stream, or the particular people that you just mentioned right now, come to the conclusion that they end up basically being the story, and if I understand you correctly, saying that there's two persons?
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I'm afraid you lost me there. I have no idea how the end of the question relates to the beginning of the question.
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Then that wouldn't really be historic Nestorianism anyways, but I have no idea how to answer that.
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What? You said something about that making Jesus into two people. Well, all
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I was saying is in historic pure modalism, you would have one person who acts as three different persons.
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That's not what you have in the David Bernard UPCI version now, because the
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Son is not a separate, is not a divine person. I was talking about the people that you mentioned, the historic ones.
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I wasn't talking about Bernard right now. I was talking about when you mentioned that you're making Jesus into two people, and that sounds a lot like Nestorianism to me.
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Well, actually that's what the UPCI position does, in that Jesus has two natures that communicate with one another and seemingly have separate wills and communication and everything else.
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I was referring to the fact that historic modalism would have had Jesus as a unipersonal mode or manifestation of God merely as the
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Son, but I'm sorry, I don't understand what the rest of the question's about. Okay. Sorry about that.
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No problem. Okay. Thank you very much. Thanks for calling, Johnny. Bye -bye. 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number you can call today.
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Perfect chance to catch the doctor on a down day.
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I spent 8 1⁄2 hours or, well, 45 -minute, 50 -minute trip each direction, so closer to 9 1⁄2, 10 hours, in a certification class today for something that had absolutely nothing to do with theology whatsoever.
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And so trying to get the brain to work real well on theological issues isn't the most easy thing to do when you just made it in.
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In fact, I'm very thankful the instructor that I got to know, so I got friendly with, was kind enough to allow me to skip out just a few minutes early.
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We had finished everything up, but it was just a matter of discussing a few things and managed to fight through the lovely traffic on Grand Avenue, which is just always wonderful, especially through Sun City.
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So managed to get here just in time to be able to do the program this evening. 877 -753 -3341.
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I guess AOMN doesn't have any follow -up questions to ask today. I was interested to see that we, in fact,
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I had inquired concerning this, that really not a whole lot in the way of comments on Tuesday morning's program where we discussed the issue of predestination and election.
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I was wondering if there would be a lot of response to that or backlash to that.
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And I thought it was done respectfully. I thought it was done fairly.
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It certainly was not done with disrespect. It certainly was not done in the context that sometimes we're forced to in dealing, for example, with someone like Dave Hunt and things like that.
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When Dave stands up there in front of a huge Calvary Chapel congregation and they are ripping and shredding, especially on straw men that have nothing to do with the reality, that's a little different to try to deal with than what we dealt with on Tuesday.
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But we didn't really get any response to that, which
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I found rather interesting in that particular situation. So, you know, good.
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Either no one listened or everyone went, oh, okay, that was a fair response. That was nice. That was good. Cool. You know, go from there.
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No, Pete, I'm not about to fall asleep. I actually have to keep going here and get some other stuff done.
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What is it? Two weeks from tonight. Two weeks from tonight. In fact, let's see, three hours, 853.
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Yeah, we'll be smack dab in the middle of the great debate two weeks from this evening.
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We will be debating. Oh, by the way, oh, man, I'm glad Wacky Pete mentioned this.
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Wacky Pete, who still hasn't sent me a Furby. But anyway, next
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Monday afternoon, and I'm going off top of my head here. I've been having to return phone calls during breaks in this class the last two days.
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I believe 1 o 'clock my time and Pacific time, 4 p .m.,
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I think, Eastern time. That could be wrong. WMCA in New York City.
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I'm going to be on the radio with Mitchell Pacwa.
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And if I understood the call correctly today, the subject is going to be
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Islam. And my first response to that was, okay, why?
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I mean, what are we going to disagree on? And I guess the only thing we're going to disagree on is not how you respond to Islam so much as the specifics of the gospel that you give to them or something.
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And I pray for that. If you're in that area, listen in and, you know, we'll see what happens.
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I mean, I'm just going to try to – no,
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I don't have the energy for vague things like that. I'm going to try to make it a positive presentation of the gospel in some way, shape or form.
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If I possibly can, it won't be easily done in that context. But we might get some real interesting calls anyway.
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I don't know. We were originally going to talk about the scandal of the priesthood, but then he decided he didn't want to do that. So, all right, whatever.
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I think that would have been a little bit more relevant. I think it would have been a little bit more relevant than Islam.
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Though, of course, obviously Islam is very relevant. But I guess how Roman Catholicism approaches
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Islam and how we would approach Islam, maybe that would get into Sola Scriptura. Maybe that would go into the issue of the authority of the church.
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I have absolutely positively no idea. But we'll see what happens. That should be 4 o 'clock
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Eastern time, 1 o 'clock Pacific time, which also happens to be our time at the moment, on WMCA on this coming
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Monday. And then, as I mentioned, on the 29th we'll be doing the debate on the Roman Catholic priesthood.
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Don't have any idea what kind of response to expect. Really do not.
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I mean, I don't know. I think we've been a little bit slower than normal in getting some of the advertising done.
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Though, hey, we do have an updated calendar page. And will the debate be webcast?
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No, it won't. It will be available on MP3 a couple days or weeks later.
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Depends. The last debates we did I don't think are available yet. But anyway, that's been the radio show on Monday.
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Oh, will we be webcasting the radio show on Monday? Yes, we will be. Yes. Hey, all
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I see is will it be webcast. And I was talking about the debate at that time.
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So, yes, actually. If you want to, I'm not sure what link they'd hit.
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I guess the same link they're listening to now, I guess. I don't know. Unless they're listening by archive. You could listen to that program on Monday afternoon, the one on WMCA.
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So that'll be cool. Ah, there, I hear something in the background.
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It is an organ. Pray for us next. Keep that debate coming up with Mitch Pacwa in prayer and the speaking opportunities to go along with it and the three more debates this year after that.
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We press on. Thanks for listening. God bless. Also find us on the
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World Wide Web at aomin .org. That's A -O -M -I -N dot O -R -G where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.