Sandra Fluke Controversy

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

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

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

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This is a live program and we invite your participation. 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. And good afternoon. Welcome to the Dividing Line on a Tuesday afternoon, about an hour late.

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It's only 9 a .m. where I am, however, which is actually the only reason we didn't do it the regular time is

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I couldn't remember exactly when my internet access expired. When you're in Hawaii, everything is a little bit more expensive and the idea of free internet at a hotel doesn't work.

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So you got the 24 -hour thing and so we had to make sure that we were able to,

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I just didn't want to start the program and five minutes in, oh, disappeared and then be sitting there typing away, putting credit card numbers in real quick just to get access back.

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So that's all been taken care of and so here we are. I am in Hilo, Hawaii, looking out at the ocean right now and I must confess, it's turning out to be a pretty nice day.

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We've had a lot of rain recently and I hear they've had a lot of rain in Honolulu, though the forecast is for when

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I get there, it's just going to be partly cloudy. So that hopefully will all work out, but I did tell my wife who will be joining me in Honolulu on Thursday to bring a jacket, not so much obviously for the cold, but just simply because it can be very, very moist here.

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I have seen the volcano for the first time since I got here. It is, I think they said over 13 ,000 feet up to the top of that thing, so that's gorgeous.

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But being as it may, I am at Breean Bible Church here in Hilo, Hawaii. I spoke on apologetics on Sunday and then last evening discussed

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Mormonism. Tonight will be Jehovah's Witnesses. As I got off the plane, everything here is open.

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It's really weird getting off the plane in both Honolulu and here in Hilo.

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The gates are open. I mean, they're covered, so if it was raining, I could be getting soaked or something, but they're all open.

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There's no air conditioning or anything like that, and there's birds flying around and all that kind of stuff. I got my luggage real quickly, which was real nice, and I see this man standing there and he's got a tie on.

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Now tie, I brought a tie just because I just felt like I had to, but I haven't worn it and there probably won't be any time when

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I do. I went to Target, and it's funny, I went to Target here in Hilo, and there were like three

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Hawaiian shirts and all the Target in Phoenix, and there's like an entire bank of them here in Hilo for some odd strange reason, and that's sort of what you're supposed to wear around here.

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So, being as it may, what was

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I saying? Oh yeah, I saw this fellow standing there in a tie, and how do you say

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Target in Hawaiian? Target. But I saw this guy standing there at the airport with a tie on, so I pretty well knew, and I looked down and there's all these watchtowers, and so the pastors had to get out of the car and come try to find me because I was talking to the nice Jehovah's Witness man who was a

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Baptist up until 1999, sadly. And we gave him our number and hoped he would call, but unfortunately he hasn't.

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I wanted to get together with him, but that hasn't happened. It might still happen, but I sort of doubt it right now.

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Anyway, lots to talk about today, regular -sized program as I sit here in my hotel room and hope that it's not going to be raining when

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I get done because I want to get a chance to get on the road and get some riding in.

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Taking calls? I don't know. You know how that is. I've got a few things to cover, and we'll see.

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Maybe toward the end, let me know if there are some, and we'll see if we get to calls or not. I don't know. As I said,

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I'm at Berean Bible Church tonight and tomorrow night, and then starting

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Friday I'll be at Central Baptist Church in Honolulu. I think Hasim, son of Ramallah, King of Graphics, is putting the information about Central Baptist into the ad page on the front page at aomin .org.

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So if you want to get a chance to, if you're in the Honolulu area, be glad to get a chance to meet you there, as I'll be doing similar subjects and apologetics there at Central Looking forward to our time there with the elders and the people there.

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Now, having said all that, a couple things on my mind and on my heart today.

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Certainly from a Christian perspective, I'm starting to wonder,

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I think it would be much greater wisdom on my part to change my normal morning routine and to avoid, normally

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I scan through my RSS feeds and listen to Al Mohler before I get into any serious biblical studies or things like that.

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I might need to change that, because it's just such a torture to the

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Christian soul to be exposed so quickly to the deluge of godlessness that is the news in Western culture today.

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It's just every single day, if you want to find a tremendous amount of examples of the depravity of man, all you got to do is just turn on your television or fire up your

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RSS feeds or whatever else it is, and there you are. It's just all around you.

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And to be honest with you, it becomes discouraging and troubling and heavy upon the heart.

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When you feel like you need to keep up with what's going on, you don't want to be one of those

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Christians that lives in a lead mine and goes off to a monastery and just lets the world spin off into its own destruction.

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We are called to be salt and light. We're called to be a light in the darkness. And so we have to know how to speak to our society.

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We can't give in to these temptations, but there is a very strong temptation to just turn it all off and let it all go, because it is just amazing to listen to people today who have become utterly and openly morally depraved.

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Now, they think that their depravity is the new morality. And they're intelligent people.

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They know that this is not the historical way that mankind has looked at things like marriage and sexuality and everything else, but they don't care.

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They just do not care. Everyone is aware of the fact that a woman by the name of Sandra Fluke has been thrust into the spotlight.

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Many people think that she didn't want that. That, I have discovered, is untrue. In fact,

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Sandra Fluke is an activist and not only believes that the government should pay for the contraceptive costs of legal students who are already paying $45 ,000 to go to law school or more, and so they should be paid to be able to have immoral sexual relationships

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But she also believes that if she should decide that she needs to become

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Sam Fluke, Mr. Fluke, that you and I should pay for that too.

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And that kind of depravity is difficult to even begin to comprehend once again.

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But what has struck me in all of the Rush Limbaugh, Sandra Fluke kerfuffle and controversy and all the rest of this stuff, isn't it amazing?

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I think most people would agree that the specific terminology that Rush Limbaugh used was, well, very

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Rush. That's the way he talks. That's the way he is. And he does that purposefully, and everybody knows that.

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But all of the moral outrage has been directed at Rush Limbaugh. I have not heard,

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I have not heard a single person. Now, I'm okay. I'm traveling.

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I'm busy. You know, your schedule is never quite the same when you're on the road and all the rest of that stuff.

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So maybe somebody has. Maybe somebody has. But I have not heard a single person that had the moral integrity or guts to stand up and say, you know, this idea of unmarried people engaging in sexual activity outside of marriage is called fornication, and it's immoral.

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And so what you're saying is the government should fund immoral activity. And you know why no one's saying that?

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Because in our society today, it's not immoral anymore. It's not.

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I mean, you know, once somebody gets married, then you're sort of not supposed to do that.

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But you know, it's a wink and a nudge and a nodding of the head. And we just, we honestly don't have any kind of even semi -biblical morality left in the marketplace of ideas in Western culture.

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You just expect, hey, if you're single and you're unmarried, jumping in the sack with anybody is just fine.

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That's your freedom. That's what it means to be free. And you see, when a society gets to the point where freedom is not the freedom to do good, but the freedom to do evil,

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I have to conclude that God has released the parking brake. And the rickety machine is heading straight over the cliff at an amazingly fast speed.

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Because freedom and liberty is meant to be freedom and liberty to do what is right, not freedom and liberty to do what is wrong.

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And our society now, I mean, just, am I wrong? Has there been a lot of discussion in the

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Sandra Fluke Rush Limbaugh debate about the simple fact that to demand that the government forcibly remove the fruits of my labor and give them to other people so that they might use medical devices so that they might engage in fornication and adultery?

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That, I mean, that is evil in and of itself. But shouldn't the fundamental discussion be on the immorality of the behavior in the first place?

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And yet I don't hear it. And there is, it just seems to me that just as in, well, let's look at a parallel situation.

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Look what happens to Kirk Cameron. He's on a program to promote a new movie that he's produced, and I've seen the trailer for it, and it looks really good.

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I'm looking forward to seeing it. I thought Fireproof was just an awesome movie, and most of you know that I know

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Kirk, and that we talk once in a while, and I think he's a good brother in the

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Lord, and I support what he's doing. And I was just reading his written response to the outrage that has been expressed at the fact that he dared to express

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Christian morality. We live in a society where Christian morality has become immoral.

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It is immoral to even hold to Christian morality in our society. You will be shunned.

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You will be attacked. That is what the media elites are all about, and this has happened in our lifetimes.

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And as a result, most of us, people like myself, I don't like when things change quickly.

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I sort of like the same old, same old type thing. And the speed at which this is happening is leaving a lot of us in the dust, and we just, in our heart of hearts, we can't really believe that this is taking place in our lifetime, but it is.

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And I really appreciated what Kirk had to say in responding to this whole thing.

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You can find this at ChristianPost .com is where I'm reading this.

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And let me just read some of what he said. In a recent interview about my film Monumental, I was asked to share my views on homosexuality, gay marriage, and abortion.

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I spoke as honestly as I could, but some people believed my responses were not loving toward them, those in the gay community.

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That is not true. I can assuredly say that it's my life's mission to love all people. The only way to properly answer these kinds of questions is to begin the discussion with another question.

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Is life and sexuality sacred, or are they not? If they are, then

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God has something to say about these things. If not, then everyone is entitled to their own opinion on the matter. Now, that's a good way of putting it, because you are, in essence, forcing the other side to say, no, these things are not sacred.

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They have no intrinsic value outside of what you assign to them. And in other words, our behavior with one another is absolutely, fundamentally, biologically identical to what dogs do and cats do, and there's nothing more to it than that.

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Nothing more to it than that. And if you want to assign anything more to it than that, well, you go ahead and do so, but we as a society refuse to do so.

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He goes on. I believe that freedom of speech and freedom of religion go hand in hand in America. I should be able to express moral views on social issues, especially those that have been the underpinning of Western civilization for 2 ,000 years, without being slandered, accused of hate speech, and told from those who preach tolerance that I need to either bend my beliefs to their moral standards or be silent when

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I'm in the public square. Well, amen to that. In any society that is governed by the rule of law, some form of morality is always imposed.

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It's inescapable. But it's also a complicated subject, and that is why I believe we need to learn how to debate these things with greater love and respect.

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I've been encouraged by the support of many friends, including gay friends, incidentally. Thank you. I look forward to those who will join me as I seek to show you our true national treasure at the live nationwide viewing of Monumental on Tuesday, March 27.

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So I really appreciate the paragraph that once again reaffirms and reasserts the necessity of freedom of religion and freedom of speech.

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These things are being removed from us at an amazingly high rate of speed, and it's interesting that the people who call themselves civil libertarians are normally at the very forefront of the press, the move to change that.

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Oh, look, the sun's exciting. Okay, that's enough of the dividing line today. I'm out of here now. That's the first sun

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I've seen since Sunday, so that's sort of exciting. I've learned that someone told me,

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Biff up in Alaska told me, that Hilo has the most rain of any city of its size in the

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United States, so I guess that explains something. Anyway, I appreciate what

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Kirk Cameron had to say. It goes hand in hand with what we're seeing in the

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Sandra Fluke situation, and that is the enemies of godliness do not seek to defeat our arguments in the public square.

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That is not what they wish to do. They know that that will never happen.

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They know they cannot do that. They seek to silence our arguments in the public square.

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They seek to control what is actually said and what people are exposed to.

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That's why they have taken over so much of the educational system, and they want to have complete control over what is communicated to the next generation.

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They know they cannot win the battle head to head. I have engaged, for example, in debates on homosexuality with leading proponents, published proponents, the very people who appear on the national media in defense of homosexual rights,

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Barry Lynn, John Shelby Spong, two very big names in that area, and I defeated them easily in those debates.

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That's not an arrogant statement. I believe any debate judge who is a judge of debate and not a political person promoting a particular view, who would simply chart the arguments and follow the dialogue, would declare without any question who won those debates.

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Both of my opponents showed up at a debate where the subject was is homosexuality compatible with biblical

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Christianity without a Bible. It's just absolutely amazing.

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Anybody could tell that John Shelby Spong could not engage in cross -examination. He could not answer questions.

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When Barry Lynn sought to sue us to suppress the tapes, you tell me what that tells you.

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They cannot win if there is a level playing field. What's going on is very clearly there is no level playing field any longer.

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You're not allowed to discuss these things. We see the degradation of the moral climate and character of our nation continuing apace.

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It is a sad thing to see, but I really do believe in light of the sermons that I preached just a couple of weeks ago now, that what we're seeing is the judgment of God.

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We as believers are called even in the midst of judgment. This is where our pragmatism will get in the way, by the way.

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If you're a pragmatist, if you do what you do for Christ in light of, and in fact this is a good transition into the next subject, in light of what you think is going to make things better, then you will stop being a light in this world.

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Because after years and years of trying, after years and years of being faithful to the message, when you see that the numbers are getting smaller who are listening, just like in the days of Noah, just like in the days of many of the prophets, when you see those things, if you are driven by pragmatism, if you're driven by numbers, if you're driven by how you define success by your audience, the size of your church or something like that, you will give up.

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And so the only people who are going to remain lights, the only people who are going to remain salt, the only people who are going to continue to be faithful, are those who realize that we do what we do for the glory of our

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Savior, and we leave the results to Him. Now we are mocked for that by many people.

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Not only by unbelievers, but by believers. And that allows me to transition into my second of three topics, and I haven't seen any.

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Go ahead if you want to call in. I mean, we may get to it. I just can't guarantee it right now. But if you want to, hey, we pay the phone bill, so if you want to call in, we might be able to get there.

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It might speed me up if I see a note from Rich that says there's somebody online or something along those lines.

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Which leads me into a transition, and that is I was informed this morning by someone who was in attendance over the weekend at Ergon Kanner's sermons at a church in Florida.

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I would like to play these comments for you, but as is so often the case now, Ergon Kanner requests that the churches where he ministers, first of all, that they not advertise his coming, and secondly, that they do not post what he says.

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Because, I mean, I cannot even begin to imagine that. I mean, I'm speaking here at Berean Bible Church, and if you look up Berean Bible Church, Hilo, Hawaii, you will see that what

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I said last night was available just a few minutes after I got done speaking, and I spoke on Mormonism.

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And what I spoke, I preached in 1 Peter 3. I spoke on Sola Scriptura on Sunday night.

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It's all there. I cannot imagine coming into a church and pulling the pastor aside and saying, look, you know, hey, man,

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I got a lot of folks out there that don't like me, and, you know, they take what

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I say, and they respond to it on their blogs and their webcasts, and so I think we could have like a technical difficulty, you know, maybe not post this.

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I just, what is that like? How can a person who calls himself a

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Christian live that way? I just don't understand it. I'll just be honest with you. I just can't begin to understand it.

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And so here we have a situation where Eric Encantor comes in, and he speaks, and the church doesn't advertise it, only amongst themselves, but they don't even put it on their website.

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And if you want to hear what he said, you can't because they'll post it. They post everything else, but they won't post Eric Encantor's stuff.

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Not only do I not understand how Eric Encantor can do that, how can the church do that is what I want to know.

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That's just, it's, I don't know, it leaves me absolutely amazed. But an eyewitness who was there reported that Eric Encantor, one of Eric Encantor's statements while he was there is, quote,

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Calvinism is poisonous to the gospel and the Great Commission, end quote.

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Calvinism is poisonous to the gospel and the Great Commission. Now, obviously, in light of the recent discussion of a name change for the

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Southern Baptist Convention to Great Commission Baptists, I don't, when this first came up,

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I mean, I don't have a dog, I don't have a dog in this hunt, but, or that dog don't have a dog in this race. How does that work?

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Anyway, I don't have a dog that hunts in this race. How's that? Anyway, I don't really care what the name of the convention is one way or the other.

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But the reality is, I think that's actually a fairly decent, a fairly decent name,

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Great Commission Baptists. I think that's great. Because when you actually read the Great Commission and you put it in its context, the first part of that really is about teaching the whole counsel of God.

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And that's what Reformed theology is all about, is teaching the whole counsel of God all around the world.

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And so the whole idea of making the assertion, Calvinism is poisonous to the gospel in the

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Great Commission. That is absolutely irresponsible. And that doesn't surprise me coming from Ergen Kander, because Ergen Kander is an irresponsible man.

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He was irresponsible when he was lying about speaking Arabic. He was irresponsible when he said he was born in Istanbul.

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He was irresponsible when he said he trained in madrasas in Istanbul and Cairo and Beirut. He was irresponsible when he said his father brought multiple wives here.

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He was irresponsible when he said he'd always lived in majority Muslim nations. He was irresponsible when he lied to everybody to promote himself, just as he's being irresponsible today to continue the cover -up, as are all those who are helping him.

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And all those who are helping him are Ymir Kander, Norman Geisler, the staff of Veritas Theological Seminary, and every single church that brings him in and does not face him with his sin.

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I didn't mean to rhyme that, but it just happened. They're all a part of the great theological cover -up, the great evangelical cover -up, sorry about that.

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They're all a part of it, and they're all being irresponsible. And so it doesn't surprise me very much that Ergen Kander would say irresponsible things, such as Calvinism is poisonous to the gospel and the

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Great Commission, because it's irresponsible, it's untrue, and it's dishonest, and he knows better.

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He knows better. He's been corrected on these things. I've corrected him on these things. You can go to our website, you can read the

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PDFs of our exchanges back before the non -debate of 2006, and you know he's been corrected.

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But he doesn't care, just as he's been corrected on the lies he's told about his own life and his expertise and Ramadan and everything else that he has messed up on over the years.

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But there are so many others who are saying the same thing. There is this knee -jerk reaction

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I'm seeing amongst many Southern Baptists. The greatest threat to the convention is

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Calvinism. Well, you know, part of it still just strikes me.

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I just shake my head and go, oh, man, some people just can't step back and get any type of historical perspective on things at all.

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But actually, this doesn't surprise me because I was told years ago that it had been said by certain very well -known leaders in the

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Southern Baptist Convention that once we win the battle on inerrancy, the next thing to face is

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Calvinism. And so this is actually just a continuation of prejudices and bigotry that have existed for a long, long time.

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And may I say the convention didn't win the battle on inerrancy.

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That battle has simply shifted. It's morphed into something else.

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And I think that by thinking the battle has been won, the battle has been lost. But that's another issue.

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And so we have a situation where, once again, this weekend, you've got a dishonest man who will not face the facts about his own history and the exposure of his frauds and falsehoods and so on and so forth, who is being enabled by others to continue running around and promoting himself as an expert on this, that, or the other thing.

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He will not repent. He will not seek restoration. And yet his words of anti -reformed prejudice are embraced by many.

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And, in fact, I think that one of the reasons that he continues on this line is to continue to garner the support of those who may not like the fact that they have to hold their nose because any person with a semblance of knowledge of the situation knows what this guy is all about.

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And they know what his dishonesty is all about. But they will hold their nose and they will continue to promote him because he will make these types of statements and will aid them in their, well, ironic to mix metaphors here, but in their jihad against Reformed theology.

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And I think that's what's going on there. 877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341.

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You know, it's getting toward the bottom of the hour, and I was sort of wondering if there are any phone calls online at 877 -753 -3341.

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Maybe we could take a quick break, if we could queue one up. And then when

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I come back, interesting transition into one of the nastiest anti -reformed and, in this case, anti -John

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Piper blog posts I've ever seen from one of the most, well, to be perfectly honest with you, arrogant writers

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I have ever seen. And, well, let me just, what

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I'll do while we're queuing this up, let me just read the article, then we'll take a break and come back and discuss it.

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It's fairly short, shouldn't take me more than a minute or so here. This is from the voxday .blogspot

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.com website called Vox Populi. And I've been directed to this website more than once by people because this fellow is rabidly anti -reformed.

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And yet, everything I've read, likewise, let's just say that he thinks he's

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Rush Limbaugh and all that. Tuesday, March 6th, 2012. I think that's today, isn't it?

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John Piper's Murderous God. Murderous and God are not capitalized. If you aren't convinced that the, and then he uses a word that I looked up on his website, he made up.

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You know, when you come up with folks, it's sort of like Norm Geisler. Norm Geisler thinks that he has the authority to completely redefine theological debates that have been going on for hundreds of years.

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But this guy thinks he can come up with his own words. And he's come up with a word that he defines himself.

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Omnidirigent. Performing universal action, providing soul and total motivation, all acting.

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I'll look at that later on. But anyways, he uses this to describe,

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I guess, reformed folks. Omnidirigists worship the

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God of this world rather than the genuine Christian God. You're probably not paying attention to their words.

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So the first line is to accuse reformed people of worshiping Satan. That's the balance of this fellow.

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And he quotes from John Piper. John Piper said, Why would God reach down his hand and drag his fierce fingers across rural

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America, killing at least 38 people with 90 tornadoes in 12 states and leaving some small towns with scarcely a building standing, including churches?

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If God has a quarrel with America, wouldn't Washington, D .C. or Las Vegas or Minneapolis or Hollywood be a more likely place to show his displeasure?

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We do not ascribe such independent power to Mother Nature or to the devil. God alone has the last say in where and how the wind blows.

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If a tornado twists at 175 miles an hour and stays on the ground like a massive lawnmower for 50 miles,

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God gave the command. Therefore, God's will for America under his mighty hand is that every

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Christian, every Jew, every Muslim, every person of every religion or non -religion turn from sin and come to Jesus Christ for forgiveness and eternal life.

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Jesus rules the world. The tornadoes were his. But before Jesus took any life in rural

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America, he gave his own on the rugged cross. Now, there were some dot, dot, dots there, and I'm sure the article was considerably longer than that.

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But Piper's point, of course, was that we do not look at Mother Nature as if it is a deity outside of God's control.

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I mean, the very term Mother Nature is rather pagan in its origins. So, we go back to the commentary here.

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Piper's Jesus is a serial killer. He is a murderer, a slayer of children, and like those who follow his lead, he also appears to be a fairly shameless liar.

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His Jesus isn't merely responsible for tornadoes, but also the gulags, the gas chambers, and the guillotines.

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The more I read of what John Piper has written, the more I am convinced that he worships Satan in the cloak of Jesus, the more it is readily apparent that he worships an antichrist.

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Piper states very clearly that he does not ascribe independent power to the devil, but rather to his God, small g.

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But if I am correct, and I believe there is copious scriptural evidence and Christian tradition to support my contention that Satan is the rule of this world and is responsible for much of the evil in it, and if Piper worships the

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God, small g, that he believes is responsible for committing such havoc throughout history for its, its, small i, own mysterious reasons, how can one possibly conclude that the man is anything other than a grievously deceived

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Satan worshiper? There you go. We will respond to that on the other side of the break, and hopefully your phone calls as well, 877 -753 -3341, and we'll be right back.

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This portion of the dividing line has been made possible by the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

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The Apostle Paul spoke of the importance of solemnly testifying of the 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 Lord's Day.

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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.

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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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Pulpit Crimes The criminal mishandling of God's Word may be James White's most provocative book yet.

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White sets out to examine numerous crimes being committed in pulpits throughout our land every week, as he seeks to leave no stone unturned.

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Based firmly upon the bedrock of Scripture, one crime after another is laid bare for all to see.

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The pulpit is to be a place where God speaks from His Word. What has happened to this sacred duty in our day?

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The charges are as follows. Prostitution using the gospel for financial gain. Pandering to pluralism, mortis under fire, felonious eisegesis, entertainment without a license, and cross -dressing, ignoring

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

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And welcome back to the Dividing Line on a Tuesday afternoon. I am coming to you live via Skype from Hilo, Hawaii, where the sun has come out and it's looking good here for a while.

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Anyways, we'll see if we can get out without getting rained on. I just read a blog article posted today by Vox Dei is the name of the individual.

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Evidently, he has written a book called The Irrational Atheist and The Great Depression, Return of the

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Great Depression. I guess he's into economics and things as well, but evidently he fancies himself a theologian as well.

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Though this kind of commentary that was posted here is so bigoted and so biased that it really normally would fly below the radar of not even being worth responding to.

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Because someone who can write something this bad, this offensive, this imbalanced, this inaccurate, this untrue, generally

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I don't invest my time, but it was brought to my attention and I know that Dr.

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Piper would never respond to something like this, so I thought it would be worthwhile to respond to it.

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Clearly we have here a man who thinks that he has thought through the issues of divine sovereignty, but clearly has not.

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Or if he has, he has come to very, very shallow and I would assert absurd conclusions.

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Evidently, in light of what he says here, if you aren't convinced that the omnidiregists worship the

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God of this world rather than the genuine Christian God, then the genuine Christian God has created in such a way that things like tornadoes happen and they're outside of his control.

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They are just something that he cannot control, they're something he cannot handle, they're something that I cannot tell from this particular commentary whether this man believes that God had complete knowledge of all future events when he created or not.

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He might be an open theist for all I know. He doesn't say here, he doesn't give an answer.

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Over in his definition of omnidiregence, he says,

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I certainly don't invent the concept, I merely constructed the word to describe it. It is a word I consider to be required for describing the logical and theological fallacy of those who interpret omniscience plus omnipotence to equal

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X, X being a singular source of will and action in the universe. It summarizes the popular idea of God as a detail -oriented puppet master, and man, capital

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M, being without free will, merely playing out his assigned role in God's grand master plan.

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This notion of an encyclopedic plan, capital P, reduces every being, great and small, to insignificant sock puppets in God's grand self amusement, a concept which strikes me as not only psychologically nonsensical but boring, but bordering on the unbearably silly.

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Despite his popularity, omnidiregence is, in my opinion, a demonstrably anti -biblical concept.

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The fact that God knows the number of hairs on a head, or when a sparrow dies, does not necessarily require him to personally pluck them out one by one, or strike down the sparrow on the oak tree instead of the one on the birch.

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While it is true that there are one or two verses that omnidiregists can turn to for support, just ask the

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Calvinists for their favorites if they don't spring to mind immediately, there are many, many more that can be cited in opposition.

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How many times have we heard that one? Well, there's dozens, and then you examine them, and anyway. It is always amusing to see how people deal with God's declaration that he can change his mind based solely on the actions of individuals that they claim are acting according to God's will.

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When one finds oneself in opposition to the Lord's own prayer, one would do well to at the very least seriously reconsider one's position, for why pray that our fathers will be done on earth if it is already being done here?

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Furthermore, the omnidiregent position reduces Jesus Christ's frequent explanation of this world as a proving grounds.

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What is the point of testing for an answer that one already knows beyond any shadow of a doubt? If you think about it, omnidiregence logically leads to the

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Gnostic heresy of a God that is not only responsible for evil, but actively wills it on a universal basis.

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If you take offense to this post, there's really no point in wasting your breath attacking me. Hold true to your beliefs and take it up with the one you believe is responsible for making me write these words.

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So here you have, again, just shallow, incredibly surface level,

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I'm not even going to bother to listen to what you guys have to say in response to me, anti -Calvinism, mixed with a massive amount of arrogance.

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And when you mix ignorance and arrogance together, the combination is often explosive, to be sure.

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So as a result, evidently, to worship the true Christian God, you need to have a

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God who had no purpose in those tornadoes. Now he created, and if he's not an open theist, then he created this world knowing that those tornadoes were going to happen, but there is no purpose in them.

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He just, he can't control these things. And don't talk to me about man's free will, man's free will didn't create tornadoes.

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He created a world in which tornadoes were going to exist, but they have no purpose. And so here you have the grand specter of the purposeless

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God of the Arminian. And it's basically, it's really born out of an embarrassment that there could be purpose in all things, and that God is big enough to have a purpose in those things.

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And that is what John Piper was trying to say, and this man is so opposed to the God of the

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Bible, the God of the prophets, the God of Isaiah, that he would identify that God as Satan, and say that if you truly believe as Job believed, and Isaiah believed, and Jeremiah believed, and as the early church believed in Acts chapter 4, when they talked about the greatest evil that man had ever done, and the crucifixion of the

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Son of God, they said, what your hand and your will predestined to occur. This man doesn't believe that. And he sounds to me, in fact, as I started reading the article,

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I was looking in Channel, and someone in Channel said, is this guy an atheist? Yeah, he certainly sounds like one. He really does sound like one when he, in such an imbalanced and absurd fashion, demonstrates he's not even listened to what the other side has to say, and will not represent it accurately.

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And so, it's very similar to the Ergenkanner situation. Irresponsibility.

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Ergenkanner will make wild, irresponsible statements, but he is not nearly as good with words, and not nearly as nasty as this fellow is in his anti -reformed rhetoric.

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It's amazing. Piper's Jesus is a serial killer. He is a murderer, a slayer of children, and like those who follow his lead, he also appears to be a fairly shameless liar.

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I mean, you know, on any level, that is just, that's lying. That is so dishonest, that is so biased, that is so bigoted, that it's almost difficult to respond to it in a meaningful fashion.

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It's amazing. He worships Satan in the cloak of Jesus. Somebody has an emotional issue here.

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That's for sure. Somebody has a very strong emotional issue going on here, because that's not even rational language that's being used there.

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So, keep an eye on any citations you see of this fellow, Vox Populi.

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Obviously, a smart guy with some serious issues. I guess we can call, and the phone lines are open at 877 -753 -3341.

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Don't have a lot of time left in the program, but time to sneak in a few. And let's see if we can make this work.

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And let's talk with Tom in Enid, Oklahoma. Hi, Tom. Hey, Dr.

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White. How are you doing? Doing pretty good. Good, good. Well, my question for you today is about, well, let me put it this way.

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What I wanted to know is what kind of books or authors have you turned to in your education to inform your own apologetic methodology?

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I mean, I ask that because I've been kind of casually engaged in apologetics for a while, but I've never actually developed a framework to put it all in.

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I know there's evidential presupposition, et cetera. So, I just kind of wanted to get your opinion on where I should turn to for actually building up a framework.

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Yeah. Well, there are lots and lots of books, some better than others.

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When we're talking about apologetics in regards to the existence of God, and I do see a fundamental issue here, and that is dealing with an atheist is different than dealing with a theist.

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A theist, from my understanding, who is not a Christian, is a person who is responding to the fact they've been created in the image of God and that they are doing so inconsistently, whereas the atheist is really fundamentally contradicting

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God's own creative, the fact that God has created him in the image of God and is suppressing that knowledge of God.

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And it is a matter of prying up those fingers of suppression to cause him to become uncomfortable and trust the

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Holy Spirit will change his heart and his life through regeneration. Every apologetic methodology, from a reform perspective, has to pass the muster of biblical presentation and a biblical anthropology, a biblical theology, and a biblical doctrine of the gospel.

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And unfortunately, a lot of apologetics books are far more concerned about philosophical issues and pragmatism than they are, first and foremost, saying,

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I want to present the true God, I want to present the true Jesus Christ, and I want to present the true gospel, and I want my apologetic method to never get in the way of the truth of those issues so God might be glorified in all that I do.

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And this sort of ties back into what I was saying before, and that is, if we do apologetics and we measure our, quote -unquote, success by numbers in an ever -increasingly secularized society, then we are going to adopt methodologies that will fundamentally compromise

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God's truth so as to create some kind of success on an unbiblical basis.

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If we recognize that our calling is to be salt and light in an ever -darkening world, then we will remain faithful to the biblical message, to the gospel itself, and to the biblical means of defense of that gospel, and we will not collapse into the pragmatic forms of apologetics that is now very much popularized in our day.

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Obviously, as a presuppositionalist, all presuppositionalists read

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Van Till. Almost all presuppositionalists read Greg Bonson.

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In my classes, when I teach apologetics, I have my students read Always Ready, which we have available at AOMN .org,

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which is a posthumously published compilation of articles by Greg Bonson.

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Bonson is easier to understand and to follow than Van Till was.

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English was not Van Till's first language, and so it can be challenging, especially if you start with Van Till.

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But his works on Christian apologetics and Christian theology are very good.

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I think if you read Bonson first, then you'll be able to follow Van Till a little bit more easily at that point.

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Pratt's book, Every Thought Captive, is similar to Always Ready. Pushing the

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Antithesis is another book that you can use along those lines. All of these are books on developing a framework.

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Obviously, John Frame is another interpreter of Van Till, but I'm thankful for Brother Frame's ministry, but I'll be perfectly honest with you.

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Some of the mechanisms that he has developed, the framework hypothesis and how he applies all those things,

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I simply haven't found to be useful in my own thinking on the subject, and it wouldn't be one of the first resources that I would put on my list.

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Now, obviously, I think in dealing with apologetics issues outside of the existence of God, you still stand on the same foundation in the sense that you do not grant to the unbeliever a source of autonomy.

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There is no such thing as neutral ground. All those things remain the same. But once you are critiquing a contrary or contradictory theistic system, for example,

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Islam, you would discover,

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I think, a necessity to go beyond just a presentation of a transcendental argument and the necessity to accurately critique the claims of that system within a theistic framework.

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And so, I'm not sure, I really can't direct you to a specific book that talks about the application in that way.

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I think that's something that has to be done in taking sound theology and applying it to each one of these aberrant systems.

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I would like to think that the mechanisms that I've used in dealing with Mormonism, for example, which is a rabidly non -Christian system, just so far removed from biblical

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Christianity that's not even in the same time zone, same universe for that matter, that in providing the internal critique of Mormonism, I made it very clear that we're not doing what most apologists do, and that is putting the individual

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Mormon in the position of judging God's truth. I think one of the things we have to emphasize, no matter who we're dealing with, is that God's truth judges us.

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We do not judge God's truth. And no one, even the most staunch secularist, is given the right to judge

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God's truth, because as the creature of God, we have to recognize that we exist under His authority, and He does not exist under ours.

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We have a couple of tracts that we've passed out to Mormons over the years that have really raised a lot of eyebrows from fellow

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Christians who would go out and pass out tracts, because they, in essence, emphasize the very things the

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Mormons find the most offensive. For example, we had a tract, No Man is Able, that was on John 6.

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We'll talk about just being on the complete opposite end of where a Mormon would be with his view of man as a

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God and embryo, and God as an exalted man, to emphasize total depravity and total inability.

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But again, any meaningful apologetic approach to any of these groups will require us to be dependent upon the

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Spirit of God to make the Gospel to come alive in that person's heart. And so, I think that Letters to a

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Mormon Elder sort of illustrated that, and hopefully in my work with the

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Muslims as well, I have demonstrated an approach that, while I can be passionate in my calling to the

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Gospel, I never put the claims of the

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Lordship of Christ on the level to where the Muslim is invited to judge these things.

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I proclaim them as the truth, and what man's responsibility is in light of that truth.

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So, I think there are ways to consistently apply the overarching principle to specific competing systems.

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Perfect. Thank you so much, Dr. White. All right. Well, thanks for your call today. Appreciate it.

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All right. God bless. Bye -bye. Bye -bye. And stay safe down there in Oklahoma with all those storms and stuff.

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I've been told that in Phoenix we've got a storm coming in on Wednesday, and that normally means about a day later, a day and a half, two days later is when those storms, if they get down far enough to hit

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Phoenix, then they start hitting the gulf flow and stuff, and that's when we can end up with these springtime tornadoes and storms like that.

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So, something along those lines might be heading your direction. So, we will definitely keep that in mind.

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Anyways, thanks again for listening to the program today. I know that listening on Skype can be a little bit difficult.

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I forgot my headset to bring it with me, and so the sound quality probably wasn't quite as good.

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But hopefully these issues, like I said in the blog article I posted yesterday, hopefully these issues, the tendency is to look out at what's going on and to look at the

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Kirk Cameron situation and to look at the decay in regards to love of truth and consistency within the church, illustrated by the

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Ergen -Kanner situation and the cover -up that so many are responsible for in regards to that.

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And the tendency is to just throw your hands up in the air and say, let's just eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die, and let's not be concerned about the church, and let's not be concerned about what's going on in our culture, and let's just move into a monastery and give it all up.

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But as I have to point out to myself as well as to others, we have to recognize that Christians have existed in this difficult situation of living in a society under God's judgment all through the history of the church.

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I mean, just look at what was happening during Augustine's day and the collapse of the Roman Empire. And for many

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Christians, that meant the collapse of everything that was good or right or anything else.

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And the reality is, that's not the case. God is still on His throne. The Lamb, slain from the foundation of the earth, continues in His presence and is pleasing in His sight, and we have eternal life, and we are called to be faithful.

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So let's continue to do that. Take great pleasure from the salvation that is ours, and we'll see you next week when we get back from here in Hawaii.

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You're on The Dividing Line. God bless. The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.

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Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can 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.