39 - Calvinism vs. Arminianism, Part 1 - Total Depravity

Well, welcome to the

Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Systematic Theology.

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This is going to be the start. Now I was told last week, I didn't know this was going on in the chat room, but I heard and I didn't quite realize there was actually,

I guess, well I guess it wouldn't be betting because we're Christians, but there was some friendly negotiations going on that I didn't realize that people said that if I completed the class, the entire lesson last week, that people were upping how much they were going to donate to the ministry and we're all for that by the way.

Someone gave a $50 donation because I actually got the lesson done. I didn't know that was going on, but I can rest assure we're going to deal with the issue of Calvinism and Arminianism and there is no way we are going to get it done in one week, okay?

So lesson eight, we are going to be on for a while, all right? Now I do want to say this up front because even in posting online that this was going to be the topic this week, it's really funny how people take jabs and make statements of an extreme definition of one of the two sides and then when you go to correct them, they're like, hey keep me out of this debate.

It's like, well wait a minute, you're the one that made it into a debate. You started the argument. So let us try to remember as we go through these next few lessons that this is for some people an emotional topic, a heated topic, and one that we are going to try to do here in a fair and balanced way.

Oh wait, no that's Fox News. But we're going to be trying to do it in a fair and balanced way to be able to explain these issues, these doctrines that are known as Calvinism or Arminianism.

We're not really going to deal with that title so much, but you're going to see as we go through this. I want to try to explain what these positions are, what the views are, and really do this in a way that we give a proper understanding of things.

This is the issue is that everyone kind of has, well, differing definitions.

What we often see is that people go off on tangents on an extreme view. Let me give you the two extremes so that we can get them out of the way.

One extreme on the Calvinism side, which is more on God's sovereignty, is going to be the issue that God is the author of sin because God completely determines everything and there's no choice, no will whatsoever, everything is determinism.

Now God is in control of all things, but He's not the sole cause of all things.

And so He's not the author of sin. That's an extreme view when it looks at determinism.

Now what's the opposite view? Well, the opposite view really is open theism, if you're familiar with that.

Open theism is this idea that God doesn't even know all things. I mean, He can't know the future because He doesn't know who's going to be saved until they choose

Him. So their will has to first choose God, and then it's like a surprise to God that, oh, that person just chose me.

Oh, yay, I can now regenerate that person. Those are extreme views, okay?

So now that we got those out of the way, let's deal with the real views, okay? So we are in book number two of our systematic theology.

Now with book number two, we are looking at specifically the doctrine of salvation.

And the lesson we're on, we are calling, it's lesson number eight, and we're calling it

God's sovereignty and human responsibility. Now with this, why are we using those terms?

Why don't we say Calvinism and Arminianism? And so, and actually,

I will say this too, because some people say that these views are not found in Scripture, whether you go with Calvinism or Arminianism.

Well, let me finish the thought. So the reason I don't use those labels is because labels are only good if we all have the same definition.

If I'm defining Calvinism as believing that God is sovereign in salvation, that God does the saving, and you're defining it as determinism, that God is the author of sin, we have two differing views.

Now, I know it's a generalization. But the idea being is that the labels are only helpful if we have the same understanding of the meaning.

And what I find often with these is that no one really understands the meaning. And so, that becomes a problem.

Now, I also want to say that whichever side someone takes on this, let us be fair to say that everybody approaches this from Scripture.

I know that's hard for some to understand because they think that the other side from them just has no

Scriptural support and they got all of it. I forget, so I have like 60 or 70 verses,

I think, of Scripture that we are going to go through in this lesson. So let us not think that the

Scripture is silent on this, alright? So the issue here, though, is we need to be fair with what the other side actually teaches.

Now, I say that because I've discovered early in my seminary career that most people actually don't do a fair job of explaining the other view from their own.

And so, what we have here is a case where we look at this and we think our side is so solid.

I mean, we have all the answers. And so, there's just, why doesn't everyone believe our point of view?

And the reality is that everyone's taking the Scriptures and often what they're doing is they're viewing it with their blinders on.

They attack a differing view without giving due consideration of what that view actually teaches.

Let me give you an example where I saw this used. And I know this is a tangent, but I already said

I wasn't going to finish class, okay? I'm not going to finish this lesson this week, so give up on that thought.

We'll probably be taking three, more likely four or five weeks, because I want to take time to go through this slowly, okay?

I remember in seminary, I was studying out the topic actually of dispensationalism.

And we were studying dispensational theology and covenant theology, and I was blessed to have a professor in seminary who taught me, actually not only taught me, required me to study both sides of an issue.

So I didn't read just Martin Luther's bondage of the will, but I read

Erasmus' freedom of the will first, which most people haven't read Erasmus.

And when they read that book, they realize, yeah, they think Luther really nailed the guy. Actually, read

Erasmus. The guy spent 75 pages destroying his own argument, going, gee, I don't know what the big deal is with this argument.

So Erasmus kind of served it up for Luther. But what ends up happening is

I ended up reading from a dispensational book about the covenants.

And this is basically what they said. They said that dispensationalists teach that there is one way of salvation, and I'm kind of summarizing, that dispensationalism teaches one view of salvation, salvation by grace.

But that covenant theology had a covenant of works and a covenant of grace, so they taught two ways of salvation, by works in the

Old Testament and grace in the New. And dispensationalists have always believed since the fall of Adam that it's grace.

And I was like, well, yeah, I believe that ever since the fall of Adam it's been by grace, so yeah, that's right.

Then I read some covenant theologians explaining dispensationalism, and they basically said, you know, dispensationalists have two ways of salvation, works in the

Old and grace in the New. And I went, what? And they said, yeah, look at Schofield. In the Schofield Reference Bible, the first edition, it talked about works being saved by works.

And therefore, all dispensationalists must believe that. And therefore, dispensationalists believed in two ways of salvation, works in the

Old, grace in the New. But we covenant theologians have always, from the fall of Adam, believed in grace.

And I went, wait a minute. I went on the shelf, grabbed that other book, looked at them both. These guys are not listening to one another.

They're not talking and dialoguing with one another. They're attacking one another, and I realized they're doing it unfairly.

And we didn't want to be guilty of that here. So, we're kind of asking that we put the labels aside, give what you think are your definitions for things, put that aside, and let's look at what the

Scripture actually says about some of these topics. Okay? That's kind of a longer introduction than we're used to, but I think this topic is one that needs it.

This is an area where most people jump in on their theology here. I think as we go through this, if you have started with lesson one of our

Systematic Theology, and we're on like I think 39 now. So, if you started 39 lessons ago, then by now,

I think the things we're going to teach you, you're going to go, well, duh, because you're going to see that it started in understanding the character and nature of God, working through the character and nature of God, to seeing the works that God did, the ministry that the individual people in the

Trinity have. So, looking at man and his condition and sin, and then looking at the definition of salvation.

And as we get to these lessons, I hope by the time we're done looking at God's sovereignty and human responsibility, that you're going to say, yeah, that one's clear.

Now, one of the things that I realized up front, I preached at a conference this, well this topic, not this message, but basically this topic.

The irony is when I got done preaching, I stepped down from the podium and I had two individuals who

I knew personally that came up to me. The first one came up to me and he was a hardened

Calvinist. And he said, Andrew, I gotta thank you.

You preached the view of the Bible that was so accurate to the scripture.

And then I had another friend of mine who came up. He wouldn't be a Calvinist. Actually, he hates the term

Calvinist. And he came up to me and he goes, hey, Andrew, I just want to thank you for that message.

It was so refreshing to hear someone preach, you know, my view of, you know, the proper view of salvation from the scriptures.

And I just looked at these two and went, do you guys know each other? And they're like, no. Did you guys hear what each other said? They were like, yeah.

So do you realize you're a Calvinist and you hate Calvinists? And they just looked at each other and it was like, and you both think

I preached your side of the argument. What does that say? Right?

When I removed all the labels, they actually thought that I preached their side.

I actually did this with a guy who, kind of a well -known individual, who in recent years has turned a hatred toward Calvinism.

Actually to the point where he told me that Calvinists are heretics.

It's a false gospel. And he, someone who I was friends with, and he no longer talks to me because I actually had a

Calvinist at a conference with me. I've also had that individual with me at a conference.

Does that make me whatever he is? Which, let me get to that point in a moment too. But the reality is, is that we see some people that will do that.

They'll cut people off on that. What I did with this one brother that was on one of the phone calls is I didn't use any of the labels, but I gave all the definitions for, you know, the

Calvinistic position. And this guy agreed with every point of Calvinism. It was really funny.

I said, do you realize you just agreed with all five points of Calvinism? I did not. I don't believe in this and this and this.

The irony is, is he was attacking a false definition that he had. And he wasn't willing to correct it.

So we want to be careful not to do that, okay? So, you know,

I realize that I'm giving a big warning and I'm probably going to have to do it each week because this really is a topic that I do know that I have to be careful with because so many people jump off the rails because of the fact that they hear something and they think they know what it means.

So what I'm asking is for you to be a little bit tolerant. I know that's hard supposedly for Christians, right?

That's what the world tells us. We're not tolerant from an intolerant world that hates

Christians. But let's be tolerant here. Let's try to understand how I'm using these terminologies.

Let's take a look at what the Scriptures actually say and deal with that. Is that fair,

I hope? If not, too bad. You're just going to tune me out. You probably already did that.

So one thing that I can guarantee is we won't have to worry about everyone hating one another in the chat room because you're all just going to hate me.

I've been told. I've been told that I am a heretic because I am a Calvinist.

I've also been told that I am a heretic because I am an Arminian. One thing everyone agrees,

I'm a heretic. Oh well. So I guess that's one thing that everyone can agree on.

I can bring people together in hating me. But we do want to be careful not to let the heated rhetoric happen.

So let us look in our syllabus for those who are still tuned in, who haven't left because I mentioned that nasty

C word. And I'll say this, by the way, too. Do you realize there's really one position?

I've come to this conclusion. There really isn't anyone that admits to being an

Arminian. I've never known, except for the open theists. They really do say that they're

Arminian. And they're being consistent about it, too. But the reality is people either are

Calvinists or not Calvinists. It's not that they're Calvinists or Arminians. There's people who don't like the

Calvinist label, like myself. Not because I may not agree with what it teaches, but because I don't like the label and how so many people misunderstand it.

I remember being in a church that was a Reformed church. And basically, what would a dispensationalist be doing in that church?

Well, there weren't any good churches. But the reality is that when I was in that church,

I remember going to a conference at 10th Presbyterian Church, and they had a workshop on Calvinism versus Arminianism.

And one of the deacons from the church said, Andrew, you really need to go sit in on that workshop. And I said, why? He goes, because you're an

Arminian. And I went, really? What in my theology is Arminian? And he just sat there and stared at me.

And I was like, well, can't you tell me what in my theology is Arminian? And he just stared at me.

He says, well, you're not a Calvinist. I said, that's right. I don't use the Calvinist label.

But what in my theology is Arminian? And he said, well, if you're not a Calvinist, you must be an

Arminian. And it dawned on me that day that there's some who view that there's only one.

You're either Calvinists or Arminian. And there's actually a kind of a wider range.

So, let us start with this. Where did these labels come from? This may shock some people.

But what happened was that Calvin wrote a lot, was a very good exegete of scripture, and dealt with a lot.

And what happened was, as he dies, his followers start going off, taking his teachings, and start going off into a degree where Calvin did not go.

In other words, they start teaching double predestination. They started teaching determinism. They started teaching that you have no control over anything.

I remember speaking to someone that actually believed in this, and I asked him point blank. I said, if I just pull back and cold cock you, did

I do that or did God do that? He said, God did that. I said, so I have no responsibility whatsoever for hitting you.

He said, that's right. I was like, wow. Well, that's where some of the followers went. In comes

Jacob Arminius, who actually, believe it or not, he was a Calvinist.

Oh, you don't want to take my word for it? Even R .C. Sproul says that in Wits' book, Willing to Believe, I think it is.

But he even points out, Jacob Arminius actually was trying to pull back the followers of Calvin from determinism, from these extreme views of hyper -Calvinism, to come back.

But you know what happened? James Arminius, he didn't agree with everything with Calvin. We know that. But he was closer to Calvin than some of the guys that said they were

Calvinists. And so Arminius, after he died, his followers went to the other extreme and started teaching that God doesn't do the saving.

It's man's choice that actually saves a person. So it's all human responsibility. And then after that,

God would save. So what happened was they came up with five points to what became the five points of Arminianism, the

Romantra. And at the Senate of Dort, there was the

Calvinists who came up with five responses. And those five responses have been called now the five points of Calvinism.

And we're going to look at those. They're known as an acronym that we're going to look at in a few minutes. So let's start in our syllabus.

I know. It's like a 20 -minute introduction. I realize. I'm being asked if I'm going to do a 20 -minute introduction every time.

Not the Senate of Dort. Really? No, it's not the Senate of Dort. It's the Senate of Dort, with a

T. D -O -R -T. Man, you're making me sound like a dork.

Oh, I already am. Thanks. All right. So the doctrine known as Calvinism is very popular among evangelicals.

Some seem to think that a Christian must be either a Calvinist, believing in God's sovereignty, or an

Arminian, believing in human responsibility regarding salvation. This study is designed to examine these two positions from a biblical perspective.

Okay? So we are going to start with God's sovereignty, looking at the topic known that, as we said, is known as Calvinism.

So that's the one we're going to look at to start with. Now, Calvinism, and I know that there are some who argue on the streets that if you are a

Calvinist, you are not into evangelism. They believe that God's sovereign, and because He's so sovereign,

He's going to save people apart from someone going out and sharing the gospel on the streets. Okay.

Most of the people I know that are out on the streets evangelizing actually are Calvinists. So I guess there goes that argument.

But I like what R .C. Sproul actually said. He was in a class in seminary, and someone said, Why do we evangelize if we believe

God's sovereign? And they went around the room, and R .C. Sproul said, He just sat there and went, Because God commanded it?

That's right. That's the answer. We are not responsible for what people do with the message of the gospel.

We are responsible with delivering the message. The rest is up to God. Okay. Someone's saying the

Council of Dort is better than the diet of worms. It's not a diet of eating worms.

Okay? It's worms. Alright. So Calvinism is a systematized doctrine developed by the followers of John Calvin, a reformer during the 16th century.

In response to the doctrine of Arminianism, these individuals produced a system known by its acronym

TULIP. And that's your first blank there. TULIP. T -U -L -I -P.

And we're going to look at what that acronym stands for. I will say that there are many people,

R .C. Sproul, I think, is really the one that popularized it, to re -entitle these in terms that are less charged, emotionally charged, to kind of diffuse some of that, so people can discuss this without some of that.

And I may go through some of those re -terms, new terminology. But TULIP is the acronym.

So these five points were to reflect the beliefs of Calvin himself and intended to be understood as a complete set.

Therefore, only a five -point Calvinist can legitimately say he's a Calvinist.

And that's actually a thing that you'll hear people say. Well, I'm a four -point Calvinist. In other words, they're going to say they don't take the

L, which is limited atonement. You'll sometimes hear John MacArthur for years used to say he's a leaky four.

In other words, he's solid on three of them. He wasn't sure about dealing with limited atonement, wasn't quite sure about the unconditional election.

So kind of not so sure on some of these. Sorry, the irresistible grace. I think we're going to go through these.

We're going to define them. We're going to explain them. And really what I'm going to ask is this is the first of what's going to be several parts.

I'm going to ask that you follow all the parts because at the end I'm going to give some conclusions.

All right? And so it's going to be really important that you pay attention to all of the classes on this topic so you get the full breadth of it and not jump off a handle and think, okay,

I got just this. He's a heretic. I'm going to start with one position. I'm going to get to the other position.

I'm going to define them. And then at the end I'm going to tell you what I believe. So I'm basically trying to say that I'm going to try to be fair on both sides, go through them, and then give the conclusions.

All right? Okay, so the first is total depravity.

If you have in your syllabus a T, the fill in the blank there is total depravity.

Total depravity. The term is often misunderstood and probably more confusing than helpful.

Okay? Some think that this means that man is as bad, that's your blank there, bad, that some think that this means that man is as bad as he could be, while obviously not all people are as sinful as they could be.

So the idea here in this misunderstanding is that some people argue that total depravity means that I act as bad as I possibly can all the time.

In other words, I'm wicked, evil, and horrible person all the time. There's no good in me at all morally.

That's not the meaning, okay? So the idea here is that total depravity is not talking about us being as bad as we possibly can be.

This is talking in the realm of salvation. Okay?

Keep that clear as we go through this. The realm of salvation. It is not talking about morality.

You and I can do good things, but those good things do not merit salvation, and that is the issue being discussed.

The issue up for discussion is what is good toward earning

God's favor. And in that sense, we can't do good. If we try to do something that's good to earn

God's favor, it's actually evil. It's filthy rags. Why? Because our quote -unquote good works, or as I think it's

Titus 3 .5 says, righteous works, they're pretty horrible in God's sight if we're going to compare our good works to God's good work.

That comparison, I mean, if we raise up our works, what we're doing is diminishing God's work. We diminish what

He did by lifting ourselves up, yeah, that's why our good works are such filthy rags.

Okay? So it's not saying that we are going to be as bad as we possibly can be.

We're not all like murderous people. But it is saying that people are going to be, well, let's deal with the next one, the next paragraph, because that's going to answer it.

The actual idea of total depravity is that the whole person, that's your blank there, whole person, is affected by the curse of sin.

Therefore, the whole being is influenced by sin, including one's will.

That's your next blank, their will, including one's will. The question we will address here is the sin -influenced human will.

This is more, I think R .C. Sproul calls this, instead of total depravity, total inability.

The issue here is not how bad of a person you are, but remember when we talked about sin and the influence of sin?

If you go back to those lessons, well, that's basically what we're discussing here. The fact that sin affected every part, not only of the human being, but the whole universe was affected by sin.

And so the issue here is, was the human will affected by sin? Now the two views are this.

There are some who view that man is born morally neutral without a sin nature.

Being born morally neutral, he can choose to sin or he can choose to do good in God's sight.

And he can do that freely because he's not influenced by sin.

Okay? That's really where you get to when you get to what's called Pelagianism.

And if you don't know these titles, the names Pelagius is who Pelagianism is after.

Pelagianism is where they go to that extreme where they say, there wasn't even original sin. Let's go to what's called

Semi -Pelagianism. That's where they say, okay, there was original sin, but with that original sin, we have an ability.

Basically it said, there was original sin. It affected everything but the human will.

So people still have an ability to choose God apart from God doing any work whatsoever.

They can freely choose God completely on their own without God working.

Okay? That's what Semi -Pelagianism is. And really, it's also what's called Arminianism.

And so the issue there is that the belief that, do you believe that sin has an influence on the will?

In other words, when Paul says in Romans 5 that we are slaves to sin, does that mean that our will is a slave to sin?

In other words, when we do good works, are we doing it even for selfish reasons?

That would be sinful. So the idea there in this one, and the reason why some people title this as total inability is because what they're meaning to say here is that total depravity has this idea that we are as wicked as we possibly could be and that's not the point.

The idea here is to be as, really to look to see, did the effect of Adam partaking of that fruit, bringing the curse into the world, did that have an influence, an enslavement of our will to sin?

Romans chapter 5. Sin entered into the world. By one man,

Adam, we all have sinned. That affected all of us. We know that, but did it affect your will?

That's the question in this one of total depravity or total inability, whichever you choose.

Now let's look at what the Scriptures say on this. I don't think I'm going to get past total depravity, but that is okay.

I had no expectations I would. But if we look at the Scriptures, let's look at this first category.

People are born with a sin nature. They're born with sin and a sin nature.

Let's look at some verses to support this. We're first going to look at Psalm 51 verse 5.

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin. Did my mother conceive me?

Now, David is writing this. Some have tried to argue this verse is actually teaching that David's mother had an adulterous relationship and he was born out of a sinful relationship.

That's not the case. It's not arguing for that. He's saying that he was born with a sin nature.

He was conceived. In other words, before he was even born, while he was still in his mother's womb, he had this nature.

Now, Psalm 58 verse 3. The wicked are estranged from the womb.

They go astray from birth, speaking lies. That is from the womb.

I mentioned, and this one's way too long to get into if I'm going to finish on time, but we should.

This is what I mentioned earlier, Romans 5, 12 to 19. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sinned.

For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law, yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even though those who were sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who is to come.

All right, we'll just stop there because we did get, for the sake of time, but you saw what it said.

Through one man, sin entered in. This is talking about the sin nature, okay? We are born with sin.

That's point number one. All right, I hope we can all agree with that. We're also born spiritually dead because this is an important aspect of this because some will say that we are born neutral.

Are we neutral or are we dead? Are we spiritually dead? Because if we're spiritually dead, we can't revive ourself, okay?

So, if we are born with a sin nature, okay, in the womb, let's look if we're born spiritually dead,

Ephesians 2, 1 through 3. And you were dead in trespasses and sins in which you once walked following the course of this world, following the prince and the power of the air.

And the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all live once in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

Let us also take a look at Colossians 2, in verse 13.

And you who were dead in your trespasses and uncircumcised of flesh,

God made alive with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, okay?

So, what we see here is we're born from the womb, from conception with a sin nature.

Due to this, we are born spiritually dead, okay? Now, one last, well, two last points.

The heart. In the Old Testament, the idea of the heart means the will.

So the heart was cursed with sin. That's an important one to look at, so let's look at Jeremiah 17, remembering what the heart is.

The heart, in other words, the idea of our will, so we can, in our day and age, we'd say the will, our will, is deceitful above all things.

The heart is our full being. It involved our will and our emotions, okay? The heart is deceitfully wicked above all things and desperately sick.

Who can understand it? Well, do we have something in the New Testament that talks about that? Well, we happen to have something.

Look at this in Titus 115. To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure.

Both their minds and their consciences are defiled. So, what we have there is a case where we see that the heart, our will, was cursed by sin.

Lastly, I want to say, and I mentioned this already, is that people are slaves to sin.

Let's look at some verses for that. John 8. John 8, 34, Jesus answered them,

Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.

Romans 6, 16 -20. Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone who is...

Sorry. Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness.

But thanks be to God that you who were once slaves to sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

I'm speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.

For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.

So what you see there is that we were slaves to sin.

So bringing this together, I hope this makes it clear that when we look at this, what total depravity actually is, is asking the question of was our will influenced, enslaved to sin.

I think the answer to that question is yes. We're conceived with a sin nature.

We are born spiritually dead. I would even argue that because of the sin nature, we're conceived spiritually dead.

Then the fact that our heart or the will was cursed by sin and we are enslaved to sin.

We look at all this, we see that I would argue that we have been cursed, our will included.

So that our will cannot by in and of itself, by itself, choose

God. I understand when you got saved, you chose

God. I understand you're going to use that terminology. We need to separate the theological from the experiential.

If you can't wait until I get done with teaching all these lessons, go to the website down there, look up Romans 9 and 10.

I have a message on that under the, I guess it would be biblical commentaries or something,

I think is what it's under. If you look under biblical studies, just do a search on the website for God's sovereignty, human responsibility, but you'll see what my view is on it if you can't wait or you can go to our doctrinal statement.

But what we have is a case where when we look at this, we see that we have a will that is cursed by our sin.

It is influenced by it. Now this brings up an interesting question. If you're hearing what I'm saying, you're going to think to yourself, what about children,

Andrew? You're saying that children who are conceived have a sin nature and are spiritually dead.

Does that mean that if a child dies, it goes to hell? I don't know.

We lost a child while still in my wife's womb. I would love to think that I will see that child in heaven one day, but I don't know any scripture verse that I can fairly interpret to give me that assurance.

I know some say, go to 1 Samuel 12, when

David says he's going to see his son again, we don't know what he's saying.

He's not saying that his son is in heaven. He could be saying he can go to death, he can't bring his son back to life.

I don't know any verse that talks about that. I just want to encourage you.

I know that we only got to the first of five points, but if you have any questions, email us at academy at strivingforeternity .com.

Please contact us there. Let us know your thoughts. Let us know what you think.

This is going to be a tough one for some people to get through, and we want to take our time. We want to encourage you to invite others to pay attention, to watch the class so that they can jump in on this.

We want to have good dialogue on this, and not the attacking kind of dialogue.

Make sure you go to our store. Pick up 125 of the most important message

CDs. You can hand these out, well for some of you, you can hand it out in a week. Very easy to give out because they have an intrinsic value, being that they're

CD. We had one person who put it in her glove compartment of her car. She wouldn't throw it away, so she kept it.

If you want to get this, and you want to purchase some clear envelopes to put them in, or hard case envelopes, contact us and we can have them shipped to you as well.

We did this way so we can get them even cheaper to you. For $100, you're getting 125 of them, as cheap as we can possibly make it.

Ohio Fire is coming up May 30 and 31. We strongly encourage you to be registering for that.

As much as we want you to make sure you register and come to that, a lot of good speakers.

You can go to the website, find out about it. Jersey Fire is not far behind, so we want to encourage you with that, to make sure that you register for those.

Jersey Fire is going to have, is going to have, let's see, we got

Paul Taylor. No, Paul Taylor is going to be in North Cal Fire. We have, I know we have too many of them.

I can't keep up with this. We have the, let's see,

Paul, Eric, no. I'm drawing a complete blank. From Grace to you.

That's right, Phil Johnson. I'm not going to be told because we're going to test my memory.

I'll go through all of them. Mark Spence is going to be at Ohio Fire with Carl Kirby Jr.

at Ohio Fire. Eric Kunin, Pastor Eric Kunin will be there. Then we have at Jersey, we have

Phil Johnson and Emile Zwang. And then in North Cal, we have

Greg Cockel and Paul Taylor. So those are all the folks that are going to be speaking.

And so make sure next class, you pay attention, we're going to be talking about the next one, which is unconditional election.

We will continue going through this throughout. Now we have a brother of the week this week.

And as if you've been following with us, you know that we want to encourage you to encourage others. Every week we give a different person for you to encourage.

And this week I want to give somebody for us to encourage. And I want to try something.

This may completely fail, but I'm going to try to call this brother on the phone.

And let's see if we can actually get him on the phone and let him know if he's not watching live, that he's the brother of the week.

I don't know if this is going to work. Let's see. He's probably not going to pick up.

Well, then we'll have to leave him a message. He's not going to pick up. The reason we're doing this is this is what he did to me, but I picked up the phone.

On a live show, he had the nerve to call me and not tell me we were live. He can't come to the phone.

Let's leave a message. Well, it's a pity that our brother, Tim Hurd, didn't pick up his phone.

Because if he did, he would know that he was live on the Striving for Eternity Academy, being the brother of encouragement for the week.

If you look on the website down there, that is the site for Mixler .com, the

Bible Thumping Wingnut. That is his name, I guess, on YouTube.

Bible Thumping Wingnut, a .k .a. Tim Hurd. He does a weekly podcast.

He's the brother we want you to encourage this week. He and another brother,

Len Pettis, and another brother, Collin Peterson, Peterson, Peterson, I forget now, are putting together the

Bible Thumping Wingnut podcast. With that, we want you to check out their podcast, encourage them by,

I don't know, maybe subscribing to their podcast and listening every week. That would be a great encouragement.

Follow them on Twitter. They're having some contests to see who can get the most followers on their tweets or retweets or things.

Tim is a great brother of the Lord. He's someone who loves to just try to get good dialogue.

That's what his show, The Bible Thumping Wingnut, is all about. Actually, what's happened is he tried to do a show to try to encourage brothers to get together and talk, and the atheists overran his

YouTube channel. Now it's really a show that answers atheism, which is really fun.

They do a lot of Google Hangouts. I've been invited on them. Really, really sweet brother. He will be at Ohio Fire, hopefully with Len Pettis.

We're hoping to do a Bible Thumping Wingnut podcast from the Ohio Fire, which is another reason you'll want to be there so you could be in the audience for that.

If we can do that, maybe we could drag them out to Jersey Fire to do the same thing there. Just a thought.

Recording stopped. Your message has reached the maximum. That's all he got to hear. Rerecord your message. Press 1.

So he will not hear the rest of what we say unless he watches live. But we want to encourage you to encourage brother

Tim this week as he is trying to start up a new podcast and website and do a bunch of things.

Actually, someone's saying, well, they have too many podcasts to listen to. There's a bunch of podcasts. That's actually why you want to go listen to their podcast.

What the Bible Thumping Wingnut is trying to do is they're trying to be the podcasts of podcasts.

In other words, they're arguing that they'll listen to the podcast for you. They're going to listen to all the podcasts during the week, a bunch of different podcasts, and then what they're going to do is they're going to go and do like a one -minute review of the different podcasts so that you can see, hey, this is a great podcast.

I want to listen to that one, and you don't have to listen to all of them. Let them listen for you, and they'll tell you what to think about it.

So we encourage you to encourage him. Remember to let others know about this class for next week, okay?

Let them know about this class, and then we're going to keep going and hopefully answer this issue of Calvinism and Arminianism, God's sovereignty, human responsibility.

We'll go through this. We're going to continue it next week. Encourage you to be part of that. Encourage others to be part of that, and remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.