2 John 11 Abused by Imbalanced Calvinists, Death of LDS President, Further Response to Ijaz Ahmad

Well, good afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line. No special guests today, but we have a lot of stuff to get to and I hope you find what we cover today to be useful and helpful.

We are hunkered down in the bunker here as the bombs fly overhead. It's always good to start off the year with something interesting,

I suppose. I want to start off and make sure I'm sending the right thing here.

It's going to be, I've got so many things to show, it's going to be challenging today. Most of you will recall that during the

May -June period of time we dealt a number of times with biblical texts that were utilized to attempt to argue that you should not engage in meaningful interaction, especially respectful interaction with non -Christians, specifically non -Christians who have a theological belief of their own that is different than your own or denies your own, specifically in regards to the dialogues with Dr.

Yasir Qadhi. And there are only a few texts that were put forward.

We've examined every single one of them rather fully and demonstrated the misapplication that was being made.

This was done by Brandon House and his folks and a lot of folks on the

Reform side recognized that that particular group of people are not exactly known for their exegetical prowess, shall we say.

That's not really their thing. They're more into conspiracy theories, politics, things like that, than doing the exegesis of the text of Scripture.

But one of the texts that was presented, of course, was from the little book of 2

John, and we specifically examined the phraseology beginning at verse 7.

I'm going to go ahead and read through this once again, because now we have a new application, this time being done by ostensibly

Reformed individuals, and we want to document this Scripture twisting on the part of Jordan Hall, Pulpit and Pen, and people like that.

Mr. Haas and and the others. A small, small, but very vocal group of individuals.

2 John 7, because many planoi, deceivers, have gone out into the world.

Let me just stop immediately, point out that terminology immediately connects us back to 1

John and to the deceivers that are found there. And when we examine the specifics of what they were deceiving about, we discover that they were denying that Jesus Christ had come to flesh, and that's exactly what we have here.

When he talks about who these deceivers are, he then identifies them, and you'll notice planoi here is functioning positively, well,

I should say the participle here is functioning positively, identifying who these deceivers are that have gone out of the world, the ones not confessing

Jesus Christ having come in the flesh. And so it's very important to recognize that the

New Testament writers were interacting with an early form of what is later to be fully identified as Gnosticism.

It is one of the most important issues of New Testament exegesis and background to recognize how important this is, because in the first 150 -250 years of the

Church, Gnosticism, in its many forms, it always took— there was never a systematic theology of the

Gnostic movement, but it was really the greatest challenge outside of the

Church's own response to persecution that the primitive Church faced, and from a number of different directions as well.

It was a real challenge, and it is extremely relevant to us today and to doing meaningful apologetics across the board, because one of the primary means that is being used by enemies of the faith today to destroy faith in Christianity is to resurrect the

Gnostics—Nag Hammadi, the Oxyrhynchus papyri find. These have been extremely important to give us background and information, but the enemies of the faith have utilized this information to raise the

Gnostics from the dead, basically, and to utilize them in the context of saying there were all these different perspectives and beliefs back then, and orthodoxy was just one of many, many voices that just happened to win out, the idea being that there was no apostolic deposit of faith in the early

Church. So it's important to recognize that the New Testament does specifically address this movement, and the ones not confessing that particular term— acknowledging, confessing—that means that the

Christians are described as the confessors, the professors, the acknowledgers of the

Incarnation, of Jesus Christ having come in the flesh. Now, what did Gnostics believe?

Well, the Docetic Gnostics specifically believed that Jesus was a spirit, but the idea of him having a fleshly body would be against their

Docetic understanding of the flesh is good, the flesh is evil, the spirit is good, and so they were the ones that would present a truly unenfleshed

Jesus. He only appeared. Docine—that's why they're called the Docetics—Docine only appeared to have a physical body, because otherwise he could not be one of the

Aeons, he would not be one of the good guys, he'd be one of the bad guys. Salvation is getting out of the physical body, not having a physical body.

And so Christians here would be identified as the ones confessing, the the ones adhering to the doctrine of Jesus Christ having come in the flesh.

This is the deceiver and the Antichristos, the Antichrist.

Singular in this particular context, but it's the idea that to stand against Christ is to stand against the reality of the physical incarnation.

Before we can even ask the question, is there a proper modern application to a text like this, we have to understand what it meant in the original context itself.

If you skip that part, then your modern application is automatically suspect.

It's automatically questionable. And so the deceiver— these are the main deceivers that have gone out into the world—the deceiver is the one denying that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.

And so this, this specific group that John is having to struggle against in the early church are the

Protonostics, who, while proclaiming themselves to be Christians, deny the reality of the physical incarnation of Jesus Christ.

This is the meaning of this text. And so any further application has to explain, okay, if you're gonna apply the deceiver phraseology or nomenclature here to someone else, then you have to— the burden is upon any serious exegete to demonstrate that the original author would have agreed with your application as well, and that's frequently extremely difficult to do.

Extremely difficult. It doesn't mean that it doesn't happen. Unfortunately, people will make those extended applications all the time, but that's what you have to do.

And so there's the context. The Protonostic incarnation denying physical reality of Jesus denying deceivers, the

Antichrists. This is the background. And so in light of that, we are to look to ourselves, watch yourselves, in order that you do not lose what we have accomplished, but that you may a full, a full misthos, a full reward you might receive.

And so he's saying to the early Christians, if you fall into this kind of a camp, you're fundamentally destroying the work that has been invested in the production of your churches, your local churches, and everything else, because this is a fundamental denial of a central aspect of the faith.

So he goes on to say, so everyone pro agone, going beyond, going beyond limits, going going too far, and not abiding in the teaching of Christ.

Now, some might argue, well, you have the possibility exegetically of a at least a minor contextual break between 8 and 9.

You don't have to necessarily limit the application of what comes after to the main subject of both 1

John and 2 John. Well, you could argue that, but once again, the serious fair -minded exegete is going to say, well, again, even if I see some kind of a minor break between 8 and 9, if I am going to read into, for example here,

Te Didecae Tu Christu, the teaching of Christ, something beyond what has already been enunciated in 1

John and in 2 John. So the central aspect of 1

John's teaching—love for the brethren, keeping the commandments of Christ, walking in the light as he is in the light, confessing our sins—if you want to take all of that, because these are the things that John has emphasized in 1

John, and add that in to the teaching of Christ beyond the teaching about Christ, specifically of his—the reality of his physical incarnation.

I think that would be appropriate, but I would think that you would specifically—what would be inappropriate would be to assume that in John's usage here, and then you run off to something that Paul mentions to the

Galatians and something like that. I'm going to take teaching of Christ here as the entirety of my understanding of Christian theology would be to go way beyond what

John is indicating here, and you would have to provide some—at that point, you'd almost have to argue some type of disjunction between 8 and 9, because now you've left what he was talking about, and now you've expanded way, way, way, way beyond that.

And then you have the problem of it saying the one going beyond and not abiding in the teaching of Christ does not have

God. The one abiding in the doctrine or the teaching, this one has the

Father and the Son. Now, what's important there is that in 1

John, you had had the argument that if you deny the Son, if you deny who the

Son is, the essential nature of the Son, then you don't have the Father. So these deceivers that have gone out were not confessing the full deity of the

Son, and as a result, while they were claiming to still be true worshipers of the

Father, John is saying, in light of the revelation of God in Christ Jesus, you can't say that.

You cannot go to that point. Now that the

Son has entered into flesh, now that the Father has testified of the Son by raising Him from the dead and by exalting

Him to His right hand, you can no longer in any way make the argument that a

Unitarian worship of the Father alone is going to suffice.

In light of the Incarnation, you must honor the Son even as you honor the Father. If you go beyond the teaching of Christ, if you don't abide in that teaching of Christ, then you don't have

God. You do not have the Father and the Son. But if you are in that doctrine, in that teaching, then you have both the

Father and the Son. And we might just point out in passing that, once again, you have one of those many, many texts in the

New Testament where it doesn't make a lick of sense outside of a Trinitarian understanding of God.

That is, it doesn't make any sense to speak of the Son in this way if the Son is just an angelic messenger or anything along these lines.

So the one remaining in the doctrine, in the teaching, this one has both the

Father and the Son. So if anyone comes to you, and Humas is plural, so this would be coming to the the church in probability, and so this would probably be a prophet, a traveling teacher in the early church, comes to the

Christian congregation, and is not bearing this teaching.

So this teaching goes back to the teaching of Christ, abiding in that teaching, having the

Father and the Son. If one comes to you and he's not bearing this teaching, the very teaching that's referenced up here, do not receive him into your house and do not give him greetings.

And as we've pointed out before, there were no Christian churches in the sense of a building in that day.

There were Christian congregations, but there were not Christian buildings as we would identify them today.

And so there's a couple ways. One says, do not receive him ice oikion.

That could be into your house in the sense of the necessary extension of hospitality that in this culture especially was considered to be a given.

When a traveling preacher would come, the people of the congregation would provide for that person's needs food and shelter.

And what John is saying is, don't do that. Do not give of the generosity of the

Christian people to an individual who comes to you not bearing the fundamental doctrine of Christ that was referred to in the preceding verse, verse 9.

It could also, in light of the fact that you had house churches at this time, the

New Testament is filled with references to churches in his household, the church that meets in his household, etc.,

etc. It could likewise have as its application receiving that individual into the fellowship of the church in the house.

That's a possibility as well. And you don't have to necessarily pit those two against each other because they'd sort of go together.

And then it says, kairain alto mei legate. So the giving of Christian greetings, for us, it's just simply, hey, greetings are not any big thing.

I mean, we have Walmart greeters today, you know. That's not what we're talking about here.

Just as names carried more meaning, there was much more in the consideration of greetings.

There would be a Christian greeting, the kiss of fellowship, the holy kiss, as Paul referred to it.

And it was something you only gave fellow Christians. So it was an acknowledgment of this individual's

Christianity. And so what is being said is, do not give to him that specifically

Christian greeting that acknowledges him, that anyone observing it would go, oh, there are two

Christians. So when a

Mormon missionary, if the Mormon missionary is knocked on my door, people said, why this?

Well, I can't have him in my house. I don't think that's what this is about. I've had many a Mormon missionary in my house, and I can say, hey,

Elder Smith, Elder Jones, or whatever else it might be, Elders Reed and Reese, the first two missionaries

I ever talked to. Good grief, 1982 now. Yeah, 2022 is not far down the road, man.

We're coming up on the big 4 -0 since my first encounter with LDS missionaries.

I posted a picture on Facebook a couple days ago that I ran across as I was cleaning some stuff out, and there

I am. And do I? No, I put it back in the other. I did remember

UBS 3rd. Somebody on Twitter actually reminded me, hey, grab your UBS 3rd.

So there it is up there. See the GSN, I am the Alpha and Omega. That's actually UBS 3rd instead of UBS 5th.

I'm actually starting to think I don't have a UBS 5th, except on electronically.

So anyway, but I was looking back there for the little red

King James, because it's clearly visible. And I remember those gray corduroy pants.

Remember corduroy? Does anyone remember corduroy? I remember corduroy. I liked corduroy. I thought corduroy looked great. It's going to come back,

I promise you, right after I die. But you can see it in my left rear pocket, that very...

And the spine on that King James is sort of bent that direction from all those years ago.

Anyways, I'm staying there talking to two missionaries. They're trying to lock up their bikes at the

North Temple entrance. And I imagine it was Mike Beliveau that took the picture.

And beyond us is the old parking lot that is now the big meeting house across the street.

And that meeting house looks bigger than that parking lot did. Because it's a pretty imposing structure.

But parking lots are actually normally fairly large. You think they did?

Yeah. So anyway, how did I get on that? Oh, the idea being, someone will say, we can't even say hi to them.

I don't think that's what this is talking about. I don't say to them, hello, brother and sister in the

Lord. The Lord's blessings be upon you this day. May Christ's peace be yours.

No, I'm not saying that to them because I'm seeking to witness to them and to bring them to the knowledge of the true

Jesus. And so no one listening to what

I'm saying is going to go, oh, he thinks you're all on the same page. And you're a

Mormon and they're a Mormon and so on and so forth. And just last time I was down in South Africa, Rudolph and I were sitting at Spur, where I eat a lot.

I think Rudolph gets tired of Spur when I'm down there. Poor guy. Though he seems to like the food too. And I do too.

Their quesadillas are really good. There's just no two ways about it. We're sitting at Spur and these missionaries come in.

And I see him sitting over there and it's like, okay, we were done.

We had just gotten done. And it's like, okay, Rudolph, I got to. And so when we got up, we started talking to him.

And there was no confusion on their part about where I was coming from, very quickly.

And no, I'm not a member of the LDS Church, but I've certainly spent a lot of time studying what you believe and recommended to them that they take a look at the debates we've done and stuff like that.

That's one of the neat things. You know what the best long -term tracks I've ever found is?

Get somebody interested in one of the debates you've got on YouTube. Because they can't lose it.

Somebody else can't tear it up. They're already interested. And especially missionaries, they may not look while they're on their mission, but it's amazing what they'll think about after they get off their mission.

So keep that in mind. Keep that in mind. So I'll come back to...

So the point is, verse 10, is about Christian greetings to someone.

And it's not about having someone come into your house, because when the missionaries come into my house, I'm not feeding them.

I'm not giving them a location from which they can then evangelize my neighborhood. In fact, the entire time they're in my house, they're not going after anybody else.

They're hearing the truth. We've had missionaries sent home after spending time with us.

Or as I can remember the one time that... Well, it wasn't the only time, but the time that I went to a missionary's apartment.

And one of those two missionaries was sent home very briefly after that. I didn't finish his mission.

The idea here is, do not give these false teachers a location in your area from which to preach something other than the truth of Christ.

I was just sent a... I'm going to forget this as we continue on, so I just wanted to just send this.

Someone asked someone else on Facebook, what's your objection to James White?

Isn't he a Calvinist? And that individual's response was, so's the devil. So's the devil.

The devil's a Calvinist. Okay. I just love my fellow

Calvinist brethren. They have acid as the blood in their veins.

It's great. We'll be talking about them later. Anyway, so with that in mind, we come to verse 11.

For the one saying to him, chyrine, greetings. That's the Christian greetings.

The one's giving to him Christian greetings, koinai.

Now, New American Statistics says, participates. You know what koinonia means, to have fellowship with, to have purposeful participation.

Fellowships with his evil deeds.

So what are his evil deeds? The false teachings, denial of the incarnation, etc.,

etc. If you know who these people are and then you give them

Christian greetings, you are participating in their denial of the central doctrines of the

Christian faith. So when we look at 2

John in its context and consider the situation in the early church, this is a text that is meant to help avoid confusion.

It is a text meant to protect at the time the house churches from the traveling miscreants who were denying the incarnation and not abiding in the teaching of Christ, so on and so forth.

Now, with that in mind, again, if we're wanting to honor the text, then we have to be very, very careful when we make extended application of any particular text.

I won't get to it today, but I need to make note of it. I have an article in my

Evernote set up from an Eastern Orthodox guy taking aim at, wow, what year?

I don't remember what year the debate with Patrick Madrid was on saints and images, like 2003 -ish, something like that.

It's been nearly 15 years. Well, it would be 15 years. A decade and a half ago.

But attempting once again to revive the

Latria -Dulia distinction. We're going to respond to that because, again, there just isn't a

Latria -Dulia distinction. If you understand the concept of semantic domain, if you have ever done studies of subdugent translations of Semitic terms and how they handle these things, the idea that you can say, hey, as long as you're giving a statue

Dulia and not Latria, you're good, would have meant nothing to Moses whatsoever.

So we're going to be taking a look at that. But the point being, if you're going to make extended application, as this individual does in that article, then you have to be very, very careful about what kind of application you're going to be making.

And once you leave the original application of the original text, you have to have a tremendous care to make sure that as you leave that and go someplace else, that you are not misrepresenting what the purpose of the original author would have been.

There's a large amount of weight upon your shoulders if you are concerned about rightly handling the

Word of God. If you simply want to use it as a legend, if you just simply want to attack somebody, then none of this, none of what

I'm saying is going to be relevant to you. It's going to be irrelevant to you. Now, the reason we're going back over this is prior to the last program, an ostensibly

Reformed group said that I was in sin, even before it happened, but then during and afterwards, for having

Michael Brown on the program, because from their perspective, 2 John 11 would apply to him.

First, what that means is they are judging him to be a non -Christian, and so he is a false teacher, false prophet, non -Christian, and therefore to greet him as a brother is to violate 2

John 11. Now, what that would require, of course, is that that initial conversation that Michael and I had about the

Trinity, the deity of Christ, Christology, justification, resurrection of Christ, they have lied on their website recently, trying to say that, well, as long as they're a

Trinitarian, I'm fine with that. Anybody who's listened to this program knows that's just, it's hard to understand how people can lie so boldly that way.

But once your zealotry overtakes your love of truth, then you can do whatever you want to do, and this group is certainly doing that.

But we talked about who God is, who

Christ is, what Christ accomplished on the cross, death, burial, and resurrection, substitutionary atonement, justification, and went through all of that.

But what you have to say is, okay, all right, on the subjects that John specifically enunciates, incarnation of Jesus Christ, came in the flesh, yep, that's what

Michael Brown believes. There's no question about that. The only way around that is to go, well, he's lying. And there's no reasoning with people like that.

Once you have someone on, you ask them direct questions that say, this is what I believe. And the only response is lying.

All false teachers do it, lying. Well, I can't reason with you. There's no reason for Michael to try to reason with you.

I can't reason with you. You've made up your mind. Facts are not relevant to you. And I bid you adieu.

Have a nice time. Go do whatever you do. You'll have to answer to God for your unwillingness to listen to what people say.

There's nothing I can do about that. But for the people who aren't willing to just simply completely flush any hope of rationality down the tubes, you have to go, okay, yeah, what

John was talking about, loving the brethren, walking in the light, okay, but there's other stuff.

And I'm going to read into the doctrine of Christ the other stuff. And it's all my particular theological specifics, the things that I want to emphasize most strongly.

And so I'm going to read that into that. And therefore, they go beyond that.

They go beyond what I define as the doctrine of Christ. This morning on Twitter, somebody else other than who

I was just referring to, actually picked up on a conversation with those people and basically made the assertion that, yeah,

I don't think you should greet anyone who isn't a five -point

Calvinist as a Christian. And so I said, so you think that te dedicate tu

Christu in verse 9 is all of Christian theology, including all of Reformed Christian theology?

Yeah. And so I said, what about, would you greet as a

Christian brother a Lutheran, a Bible -believing Anglican, anybody, for example, that doesn't hold to particular redemption?

No, no. When I was regenerated, I believed all of this.

And so I put the two and two together, and you have to believe all of it.

And this coincides then with what we talked about last week.

When I mentioned the incident that was relayed to me by a pastor from a church that had, in listening to some gentlemen speaking, had heard one of the men saying, well,

I sure hope R .C. Sproul went to be with the Lord, but it doesn't look good.

And when he asked the question, what do you mean?

Well, he was a moderate Calvinist, like James White.

And what was it? Tolerant. Was it tolerant? Okay. Huh? Oh, okay.

Some word. These concepts go together, and I'll be honest,

I didn't think these folks seriously existed. My entire experience amongst the

Reformed for decades has been that, well, the vast majority of the people that I knew were individuals who had come out of non -Reformed churches and recognized that they had been saved, that the

Lord had worked in their life, had guided them prior to their coming to understand the full realm of Reformed theology, and most recognized that they did not yet understand the full realm of Reformed theology.

I mean, I sit down with some of Mueller's works on the history of Reformed thought, and I realize there's nobody alive that has actually mastered all of this.

There's always something more, there's always... I mean, how do you develop this idea?

You must have an incredibly stunted view of Reformed theology if you don't understand

Semper Reformanda, always reforming. If you've arrived, you don't need to be

Semper Reformanda, do you? You've reformed. By regeneration, you've got it all, got a perfect grasp, the whole thing.

Well, it doesn't have to be a perfect grasp. When it's presented to you, you must always accept it.

That's the idea that this group has now come up with, is, oh, there's never going to be a struggle, there's never going to be even a period of resistance, and in fact, it is

God's intention that every single one of His children, it is absolute demand, they are going to walk lockstep on everything.

There's going to be no disagreements on this. Now, we know this is not what Reformed people believed in the past.

We know this, but once you point out that they didn't believe these things, then they get labeled as tolerant

Calvinists, and their salvation becomes questionable, too,

I guess. I'm not sure what's the result of this.

I mean, I've got theories, and if we see it continuing to develop, then maybe some more data can come forward to help us understand and formulate these theories more.

But just sitting here thinking about it, it reminds me a lot of internet theology.

We read so little, and what we read on the net, we read so shallowly.

I look over at the Edwards volumes over there, and I see some pieces of paper sticking out from them, and if you open up to those, there's going to be yellow markings for pages every direction.

I still have those magnifying glasses that you can actually lay on the page and do a whole line, because this is in columns, of course.

Teeny, tiny print. I remember maybe why my eyes went so badly, and I needed to have

LASIK. I was trying to read that crazy collection of Jonathan Edwards stuff.

That takes a lot of time, and maybe that's what's changed, is that many quote -unquote

Calvinists today didn't get their training in that fashion, and hence are able to in some way imbibe this wild imbalance.

But it is wildly imbalanced. Let me give you some examples.

I've got to switch over here. One of the examples, and can make a little bit of a—oh, this is going to be fun.

That's probably it. Yeah, that's actually the right one,

I think. You've got the whole—got the whole thing?

Late last year—strange to say last year—late last year, we started interacting with the

Reforming America Ministries guys, Sonny Hernandez and Theodore Zacariades. I didn't even realize at the time, like I said, that I knew who

Sonny Hernandez was because of his quotation by Christian News back in 2016.

That's the first time I'd ever heard of him. Then I'd never heard of Theodore Zacariades, just never heard of him, hadn't seen anything that he had done.

They did the quote -unquote free will debate at a Lutheran church, and we played it, and I critiqued it.

Most of my critique was aimed actually at Leighton Flowers and the positions that he was presenting, but I most definitely did criticize

Hernandez and Zacariades for the basic reason of their approach and the reality of the fact that they made it very, very clear we will not acknowledge these men as our brothers.

We are viewing this as an evangelism situation. We are evangelizing

Armenians because we do not believe that the Armenian gospel saves.

We've gone back and forth, especially with Dr. Zacariades, on his challenge to debate.

As we have documented, the first few things that he wrote completely misrepresented what

I believe. He wanted to debate issues that we don't disagree on.

Toward the end of the year, we sort of got down to, well, I suppose it sounds like there could be a thesis here in regards to the necessity of the reality of man's will in the demonstration of God's justice, and that was sort of the last

I made comment about it because I didn't see any response specifically to what

I had said about that. I could have missed it, I suppose. Like I said, I had never heard about him before, and I find them incredibly distasteful in the way that they treat

Christians and non -Christians and other people like that, so it's not something

I do to be sitting there reading them regularly. But then in December, I did some traveling, and then we had the holidays.

I have grandkids, and I just figured at the end of the year here, it's a good time to focus on some other things, and we'll get back to it in January.

Well, I guess you're not allowed to do that. Some of you have seen that some absolutely incredible articles were put up by these guys.

It's very hard to understand how you can expect someone to actually want to invest time and effort and money in contacting churches and arranging locations and everything else to debate you when you behave the way these men behave.

I mean, they're just not nice people. And so you can see the things that they posted.

Actually, well, okay, we'll look at some of the public stuff, but they would send me private messages in Facebook almost begging me to post them.

I guess they realize I've got a little bit more of an audience than they have, and so they're begging me, challenging me to post what they're saying.

And so here's one, and at the top it says Sonny, so I guess this is Sonny Hernandez.

Mr. James R. White, of course, you did exactly what we said you would do, appeal to emotions by running to your social media diary to play victim.

Great job. You are very predictable. Your response that you will happily respond to our claims at the appropriate time is comical.

Translation, you will run to your DL so you can tell your audience that you refuted us without anyone debating.

Again, you are debating you. Again, you are predictable. Prove us wrong.

Just remember, Mr. White, your social media immaturity does not bother us in the least.

Other than we feel that you are a bad example for younger men to follow, and we will continue to teach this.

Your question -begging epithets, appeal to emotions, mocking or ridiculing us to the public means very little to us.

Therefore, snapshot these comments and then do what I have perpetually said and will continue to say that you will do next.

Run to your social media diary to incite others by either mocking, ridiculing, or playing victim.

After all, that is what mature men do according to your worldview. And you're supposed to take this seriously, that these are serious individuals that you want to invest time in arranging a debate with, etc.

etc. And you're not even sure how to respond to someone like this because online you run into folks like this a lot.

But the last time I really had to interact with people like this on a personal level was probably 6th grade playground.

You know, the bullies going, you know, are you a chicken, McFly? That kind of thing.

That's sort of the level of maturity here. And I didn't respond to it.

I mean, how do you reason with someone who's going to be using this kind of language?

And so, let me, yeah.

Well, actually, I have the better version of this. Oh, no, this is, this is, yeah, okay.

Here's one of, okay. 85, there we go.

Starting to learn how to use these identifiers. Is that able to, you able to get that one?

Okay. So, here's the two of them. Senator Hernandez, Theodore Zacariades, December 22nd.

So, three days before Christmas. Three days before Christmas. James White's hypocrisy and cowardice.

Hernandez and Zacariades offer a third challenge. Mr. James White, your conduct is not only disconcerting in so many ways, but by your own standard is also cowardly.

You called the halcyon group cowards for not putting the theological interpretation on the line for examination, yet you ridicule our position on Arminianism as heresy and our view on determinism, yet you have clearly ignored our debate request to put your theological interpretations on the line.

This is hypocrisy and cowardice and you know it. And then you've got, you know, let's, let's do the graphics.

Let's get the, all the weird faces we can and stuff like that and make the man look as weird as possible, you know.

I mean, this is so childish. It is really hard to overlook it and take these guys seriously and ask a church, what church can

I ask? What conference can I ask to give these men a platform when we've already saw, we already saw how they behaved in the debate.

Now we're seeing how they're debating online, behaving online. We see how they behave in, in private.

How can I ask any church to open itself up to this kind of behavior?

I think the only thing that could possibly be done would be some kind of online thing.

And then I have to ask myself the question, where in my priority list in the coming year would a face slashing battle with nasty

Calvinists come? I mean, I think there, I do think there would be benefit from a moderated discussion of whether or not the reality of compatibilism is vitally important to the demonstration of God's justice.

I think that has value. I'm not sure these guys are the ones to do it with because you, you, that is a subject that should be addressed with a certain level of respect and scholarly acumen.

And I'm sorry, but that's, that's just online childish bullying.

That's all, that's all that is. I have interacted very carefully with what they have written, pointed out that their challenges were not challenges to me.

We've actually thought I was making a little progress. And then

I start getting all this kind of stuff. It's like, since there wasn't an immediate, we're gonna, we'll do it right now.

Well, I don't think it's that important. Sorry. I know it's all the world to you. I really do.

I get that, but it's not real high on my priority list. So it is something to consider doing.

It's something you go, well, I'm going to such and such a place.

Maybe you could tie it into something like that or something looked at down the line.

But I'll be honest with you, with this kind of immaturity on their part, it's sort of like, but I'd really have to find some kind of, some context where I'm just not asking a church to bring somebody in that's just going to spew venom all over the place or behave in a completely inappropriate fashion.

I mean, you can have a moderator. And I suppose the moderator could just shut someone down and say, shut up, sit down, turn his microphone off.

But those types of things are just so, you know, they want a food fight.

And yeah, the reformed version of Brother John Mary.

Yeah, you're right. There isn't much of a difference between the mindset of the wild eyed crazed

Sedevagantist and the wild eyed crazed Calvinist. I mean, I'm sorry, but you guys, where are you?

Hypocrisy, cowardice, you're afraid of me. I am not afraid of either one of you. I'm sorry.

You have not produced anything that would cause me to go,

I really need to rethink what I've always taught about that. I mean, your childish antics are not in any way compelling to me and not really compelling to anybody else.

The other reason that I would keep it on the list, though, as something that has some value to it, is because I am concerned about young cage stage

Calvinists who might encounter others that convince them to stay in the cage stage.

That's what this seems to be all about. And so I'm not closing the door to that, but I am saying, you guys, do you treat your families this way?

Do you treat your churches this way? It's astounding to me, but there you go.

Cowardice and cowards. And then there's another one here. Well, here, of course, they all work together.

And so Slandering Keyboard posts their stuff.

And so here's Slandering Keyboard's commentary when it was posted. Do you have it?

James has called out a lot of consistent Calvinists over the years. Dr. Robert Moore is one of them. Now, this tells me immediately this isn't actually

Hall. This is Hernandez again, because Hernandez has specifically said that he learned a lot from Morey.

Well, that tells you a lot, because we've, you know, nuke the cobb of Morey is what's behind a lot of this stuff.

White seems to have a problem with men that do not embrace his namby -pamby philosophy of ministry on Arminianism and Islam.

Well, Hernandez and Zachariadis, that's funny, because if this is Hernandez, and I think that it is, then he's referring to himself in the third person and trying to make it look like this is somebody else.

Hernandez and Zachariadis now have a problem with him. Let's see if this moderate comes out from behind his computer where he loves to boast about refuting others, which is easy when no one is debating him.

Now, a lot of people commented, and I'm sorry, I have to comment on it too.

Put Hall, Hernandez, Zachariadis together, wrap them all up.

I've written 10 times the number of books of them combined and done minimally, what, 10 times the number of debates.

You're bragging again. Yeah. And yet, they can actually sit there and type at their keyboard that I'm the keyboard cowboy, that I'm the brave one behind the keyboard, but I don't debate.

But then when I talk about the debates and use that as a basis saying, gentlemen, you should have done it this way.

Oh, you're just a constant arrogance, conscious, constantly. Darned if you do, darned if you don't.

Doesn't matter. Once you've made up your mind about somebody, doesn't matter.

And so it is sort of funny. I'm pretty certain that that was Hernandez referring to himself, which is sort of funny there.

But then you got this one. Here you go.

The Cowardly Calvinist. So this one is from just before Christmas Eve, this one appeared.

The Cowardly Calvinist. One, men that will typically talk tough about being bold Calvinists to soothe their

Christian conscience, yet they will not call Arminianism heresy.

Two, men that pander to Arminians by not calling it heresy so they don't offend a friend or a family member.

I just point out that if you're going to make a meme, you might want to check on your grammar a little bit, but it's memes.

Three, men that will attempt to mitigate the heresy of Arminianism by calling it inconsistent, erroneous, and almost

Christian, but not heresy. Four, men that are ashamed of the gospel or act like the doctrines of grace is just not that big of a deal, so they avoid refuting men who reject it.

Beware of the Cowardly Calvinist. You know, like I said, we have encouraged people for a long time to get out of the cage stage, to become balanced and mature, and to recognize that Calvinism is not all there is to the

Christian life. And there's two ways of refuting sub -biblical teaching or fully erroneous teaching, false teaching.

And once again, down through the decades of this ministry, three and a half of them as of this year, we've been very consistent about this.

But one of the early controversies that we got involved with that started giving me an idea that this may be happening again in the future was the original

Godmakers film was pretty decent. Then it started going downhill and we started having some problems with a fellow by the name of Ed Decker, who when we first started,

I mean, there were so few people involved in this field that everybody was pretty much on the same page, we thought.

But in reality, we started recognizing that some of the argumentation that some people used against Mormonism wasn't consistent.

And from the start, you know, I'm so thankful in that first encounter with Elders Reed and Reese, I recognized at that time that what they really needed was to understand the truth.

I needed to learn what they believed so I could communicate to them, but what they needed was a huge injection of truth.

And you don't present the truth with acid in your pen.

The truth resists the pride of man, the arrogance of man. And when you act as these men act, you are acting in pride and arrogance.

You hide that by saying, well, it's just zeal for God's truth. Yeah, the Inquisitors did the same thing while they were turning the rack.

But the most effective means of responding to error is presenting truth.

And when you present truth, you have to do so as a redeemed individual dependent upon that truth.

And the Spirit of God resists arrogance in the presentation of His truth. He does.

And so we learned early on that the most powerful and effective way of dealing with Mormonism was to go deeply into the

Word of God. Let the Word of God and the Spirit of God have their work. We're Calvinists. We actually really are

Calvinists, and we believe God has an elect people. And that's why we can go and witness to anybody.

But we do so graciously because we're commanded to do so. We believe

Ephesians chapter four and everything that it commands. We don't just put that off. That's for other times. When you're doing what we do, you don't need to worry about that gentleness of spirit and stuff like that.

You don't want to be a cowardly Calvinist. And so you go back.

Go back to the 1980s when we started doing radio in Salt Lake City. Is the stuff with Van Hale and those radio programs are up on Sermon Audio, aren't they?

They're up on Sermon Audio. Look them up. The Mormonism section on Sermon Audio.

That's what we've always done. Let's get into Isaiah. Let's get into what the text of the

Word of God says. And let's give a positive presentation of what God's truth is. And let's trust the

Spirit of God to do with it what he's going to do. And so we've been consistent with this all along.

And when dealing with Arminianism or Synergism or any of the related subjects, we are going to fundamentally seek, first and foremost, to exalt

God's truth by directing God's people to God's Word. I've told the story before.

I won't go into all the details, but we have seen people that have come into our chat channel and we have, over lengthy periods of time, simply directed them to God's Word.

One person I'm thinking of, it was a constant discussion of John 6. And I can assure you that if that particular individual had run into Hernandez and Zacariades, they would not be

Reformed today. Theoretically. I realize God has his purposes and God can do whatever he wants to. But the point is, there is no way that they would have embraced the message of John 6 if it had been used as a bat to bludgeon them over the head.

And they just simply... We acknowledged this person as a fellow Christian and appealed them as a fellow

Christian and directed them to the Word of God. If we had said, you're not a Christian if you don't believe it, that would have been it. They would have visited once, that would have been it.

Done. It's not what we did. The Lord honored that. He's going to honor his word in that way.

Here is a person, we have people coming to the channel, they're not interested in listening to the

Word of God. Okay. Can't force somebody to hear.

But when you have a person who is truly under the authority of the Word of God, man, that's...

Spend all the time you need to talking about what the Word actually teaches to that particular person.

And so that's what we've done all down through the years and will continue to do.

And if we have to continue warning people about a movement that calls itself

Reformed, that is so narrow that it will not recognize

Christians outside of that tiny little spectrum.

Well, we'll warn about them. I find it awfully strange that one of these guys that promotes

Hernandez and Zacariades does stuff with Lutherans. I don't get it, but hey, what can

I say? Not looking for consistency there. Not looking for consistency there.

Speaking of Mormonism, switching gears. The president of the

Mormon Church passed away, and news broke this morning, but I guess it was about 10 o 'clock last night when

Thomas S. Monson, at age 90, passed away. I wrote a little something about it today.

And once again, whenever this happens, you really can tell the difference in the motivations that people have for doing apologetics work.

There are going to be those who rejoice, and then there are going to be those who mourn in light of the fact that here is another person who lived their life seemingly very dedicated to falsehood.

It angers me, I'll be honest with you. When I see people who have never banged a

Huey in their 1972

Chevy Love Pickup Truck, the look on those two missionaries' faces just crossed my mind.

I was on Shea Boulevard, and I saw these two missionaries on their bikes, and I banged a

Huey, pulled in front of them, jumped out of my truck and said,

Hey guys, guys, wait a second. And they're on their bikes. They stopped. My tracks were behind the front seat of my truck.

They see me diving behind the front seat of my truck. When I come up, they are white as ghosts because they figure

I'm pulling an AK or something. They took the tracks, but they did not want to talk at all because it was taking too long for their heart rate to go down.

So don't do it now. If you're gonna stop the missionaries, have your tracks at all ready.

Don't go digging for them because you'll scare the poor guys to death.

But if you've never not only sat down with these young men, and man, today, these are children.

I mean, my grandkids are starting to get to 10 years from now, my grandkids will be the same age as the more missionaries.

And when I first started, they were older than me. So, wow. If you've never sat down with them, if you've never gotten to know them by name, if you've never spent time like that one missionary that started calling me at night with all of his questions, and then honestly pled before the mercy seat for their salvation, and yet you'll pop off about Monson's death, shame on you.

Absolutely shame on you. When I think of Thomas Monson, I think of a man who grew up in a false religion, and I think of the power of deception.

He knew all the things that are now coming out for years.

He knew all about the seer stone. He'd probably seen the seer stone. Now, I can't prove that, but he had access to it if he had wanted to.

Those things wouldn't be hidden from them. And from everything

I can tell, he was a nice guy. They played a clip. Did you see the clip? They played a clip.

I should have queued it up, because it definitely humanizes me. It's a conference talk, and there was a young boy seated down front that was imitating everything that he did while he was speaking.

And so he focused his attention right on the young man, and he says,

So you think you can do everything that I do? Well, try this. And he goes, and he wiggles both of his ears.

Now, not everyone can do that. And the little boy tried as he might, but he couldn't do what

President Monson had done. And they played that. And so here's this nice elderly guy, and some of the nicest people you will ever meet on this planet are

Mormons. Some of the best neighbors you will ever have on this earth are

Mormons. And if all you can do, if the extent of your

Christianity is to hurl the anathemas and mock the heretics,

I truly feel for you. I really do. Because I didn't drive up to Salt Lake City in a 1964

Dodge Dart with the floorboards so rusted out that we had to stop at the dam at Page to put extra socks on because the air was coming to the floorboards and freezing our feet off.

I didn't go up there because it gives me some thrill to tell people they're heretics.

And when we stood outside the temple gates, the reason those, especially those first few years, we had lines of people waiting to talk to us was because we weren't like that.

We weren't the fire -breathing, anathema -pronouncing people. We were serious in our study of Mormonism, and we were serious in having an in -depth message to present to the

Mormon people. And that made us different than what they were used to. And so, when you think of Thomas Monson, what you should think of is, oh

Lord, send a revival amongst these people. Because Mormonism is in crisis.

You look at the numbers, the backdoor is getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.

And there are so many people that are starting to find out that what they've been taught down through the years just doesn't hold up.

And the problem is, it's very similar to when you have people in the watchtower that discover the watchtower is not what the governing body says it is.

The vast majority of people that leave Mormonism become the religiously abused.

They don't become Christians. They don't embrace truth. They become the religiously abused.

They abandon everything. And it's a crying shame. It is a crying shame.

And so, it is obvious to me Joseph Smith did not intend, did not intend for this to be the way that his successors would be chosen.

It's not the next longest serving guy. Because you know who the next guy, Nelson is? Not old he is.

93. Monson was 90, three years older than Monson. The LDS Church has been stuck in this system now of being led by decrepit men for decades.

Decades. Clearly not what was intended by Smith or anybody else really, but that's what they're stuck with.

You would think eventually one of these guys is going to pull a Benedict and he's going to say, know what?

Not only am I too old to do this, but I hereby receive the next revelation in the

Doctrine and Covenants and change the whole system. Because they could do that. They could do that.

It would shake things up up there in that very non -shakable place, but it would shake things up.

I would not be surprised if that doesn't happen eventually because they just can't keep doing this.

The prophet's a figurehead because he's older than dirt. I mean the next guy, 93?

That's a mess. That's really a mess. But you don't rejoice to see the ungodly enter into...

I mean, this man is going to stand before a holy God, having used the name of Jesus Christ his entire life, and he had the wrong

Jesus and the wrong gospel. He was trusting in his own righteousness. He was trusting his own temple works.

He died wearing that temple garment and the amulets and the whole nine yards. And if that doesn't break your heart, then

I don't think your you need to consider what's going on there.

So yes, Thomas Monson has passed away, and that is a shame.

We pray for the Mormon people, and we continue to do what we can to reach out to them.

Let me switch to the last subject for today. I've wanted to get back to this, and I'm going to need to find the...

because I got to hear it myself. Don't have a whole lot of time, but I want to get a few more minutes done. I don't remember.

I'm sorry, Ijaz, the last time that I even did this. Ijaz Akhved did a presentation.

I don't remember. It was October or November. I forget when it was. And it's only...

I'll stop doing that. I hate when it moves the bar over. It's only 1552, so just under 16 minutes long.

And it's on the alleged corruption of scripture. It's extremely useful because of the fact that we need to recognize what's in the mind of the

Muslim. And Ijaz is being looked to as the Muslim doing regarding textual critical issues in the

Bible, both Old and New Testament. And so, because of that,

I think there are some issues that need to be raised as to the consistency of the utilization of the term corruption, what it means in scholarship.

And that comes out in what was being said here. And so, I apologize that it's been at least a month since we last looked at this.

It happens between travel and things like that. We do the best we can. But I want...

I actually wound it back just a little bit so we can sort of get some context and do at least a few more minutes and continue to try to do this because I want to get through all of it.

It is useful. So, we pick up with Ijaz Akhved's comments on... This is called an advanced presentation on Bible changes.

So, I'm starting at four minutes in. We covered the previous part in a previous dividing line.

I don't know when. Maybe someone can look it up for me and I can mention that to you. Testament testifies that when

Moses went to receive the commandments from God and he took too long to return to them, the

Israelites immediately decided to worship a golden calf. And this is what Exodus chapter 32 verse 1 indicates.

When the people saw that Moses delayed in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said to him, get up, make us gods that will go before us.

So, as you can see, you don't need 1 ,000 years for corruption of God's words for the Israelites.

So, I think that's where I stopped because what we need to understand, especially in talking with Muslims, is we have...

And there is in Islamic theology an objective idea of, for example, the

Quran as the word of God existing on the heavenly tablet for eternity past.

So, in fact, it's as eternal as a loss. It almost has an objective, uncreated reality to it.

But, functionally, there isn't much room in Islamic thought for the

Quran to have a textual life of its own, given the fact that there isn't any of Muhammad in it, for example.

Its giving has no real history to it.

It's revealed over the course of 22 years.

Well, it's revealed in one night and being sent down on the Laylat al -Qadr, but experientially, recording -wise, over that period of time...

But there's no understanding of any thought on Muhammad's part in the sense of Muhammad's understanding grows over time.

That, within at least Islamic orthodoxy, is rejected.

There are Muslims today that will recognize... Well, we sort of need to think about that, but they are in the minority and pretty much not in Islamic lands very much.

So, the idea in their mind... December 7th.

Thank you very much. Garrett looked it up for me in line. So, it's been... Yeah, what's today?

The 4th? Yeah, it's been almost exactly a month since I last looked at this. I did say about a month, so at least we're somewhat close on that.

Yeah, good enough for government work, as they say. Anyway, so in Ijaz's mind here, the idolatry of the people of Israel is connected with the concept of corruption.

From our perspective, and this is where theology matters, the biblical concept of the depravity of man...

And I know Ijaz has put something up recently about how that's not a biblical concept. From Genesis to Revelation, you can demonstrate the depravity of man.

Man's heart is evil continually, and there's too much of it to even be arguable.

But the consistent testimony of Scripture is the depravity of man. But we don't believe that the revelatory act of God can be interrupted or corrupted by the sinfulness of man.

God is big enough to use imperfect and even sinful vessels. And remember, we have a major difference with Muslims in that they have this concept that the vessels through which the revelation must come must be holy themselves.

Many believe that all the prophets were sinless, or at least only guilty of what they would call extremely minor sins.

And we don't have that concept at all. It's not a biblical concept. There's nothing in Scripture.

Men spoke from God as they're carried along by the Holy Spirit, and the psalmist can speak of the depravity of his own heart, the darkness of his own heart, the sin of his own heart.

God can use sinful men and give his revelation perfectly.

He's big enough to do that without having to engage in what we would call a transcription methodology, turning men into an mp3 player type thing.

We have a much more dynamic and much more personal concept of revelation and how it is brought to us in that initial stage,

I think, than Islam does. I was just talking about Mormonism.

I'm past 55 now. I can do whatever I want. It's my new excuse.

It's great. I love it. The wife's not buying it, but everybody else has to. So we have a completely different perspective there.

So just because the people are demonstrating their sinfulness doesn't have anything to do with the revelation that God gives.

I mean, Moses throws the tablets and has to go get them again, but the point is that the content of the revelation is not, quote -unquote, corrupted by the sinfulness of the individuals.

I think that's the important part to get there. My friend Alex said in his debate with Brother Sadat, have you ever seen two

Jews agreeing to anything, implying here that it would be impossible for collaboration to be done, for corruption to be done, to the

Torah? To that I answer, have you read the verses I just quoted? They answered in unison that they would obey him, and they corrupted in unison, worshipping the calf.

Some may argue that if we ignore these Okay, I'll be perfectly honest. I'm going to have to ask Ejaz for explanation.

I didn't follow that point. It may be because there was something beforehand. It's been a month since I saw it.

I just didn't follow that point. So I'm not trying to skip it. I just don't get it. Sorry.

It happens. That it would still be impossible for the Jews to want to change the text of scripture.

To that I say, let's see what Jesus says they are capable of. Okay, so I would not agree.

Well, it is impossible for the Jews to want to change the text of scripture.

God sent a spirit of false prophecy so as to cause some of the kings of Israel to be destroyed.

So it seems to me that possibly what we have going on here is one of the issues that I frequently have to bring up in Islamic commentary on biblical texts is anachronism.

And what I mean by anachronism is taking an Islamic perspective on scripture and reading it back into periods of time where no one had that idea.

The idea of needing an Isnad chain is totally anachronistic to Old and New Testament.

No one ever believed that was necessary. So to read it back into that is placing it in a completely different context.

And the same way, the Islamic understanding of Revelation, the dictation methodology that Muhammad presents to us, not known either.

Even when it says, the word of the Lord came to me, it's not the same type of thing as some tablet and an angel, you know, that type of issue.

And so one of my criticisms very often of Muslims when they engage the biblical text is they're doing so from a

Quranic perspective. They may say, well, that's faithfulness on our part, but it results in anachronism because you have to first establish what

I think is the key apologetic issue. I don't believe the author of the Quran had firsthand knowledge of either the

Old or New Testament, not in Arabic, not in the original languages. And there's a lot of reason to believe that there were horrible misconceptions on the part of the author of the

Quran as to what actually constituted what we would call the Christian scriptures, both Old and New Testament.

I would challenge Ijaz, here's something for you, Ijaz. I would challenge you to present a study of the

Quranic use of the Bible that demonstrates that the author knew what the canon of scripture was.

The canon for the Old Testament and the canon for the New Testament, because you've got to admit that all the

Ethiopian canon stuff aside, the canon was well known. The canon of the

Old Testament, if you just want to limit to the Old Testament, the canon of the Old Testament was well known, well before Muhammad.

Well before Muhammad. I mean, if you want to argue apocryphal books, we can argue apocryphal books, as in the

Deuterocanonicals specifically, the later elevation of those things to canonical status by Council Trent.

But the sources that the canonic author uses that appear nowhere in any

Jewish or Christian view of scripture, that the author of the Quran thinks are a part of the

Torah and Injil, that I think is something you need to deal with. That's something I would challenge you to recognize, because from our perspective as we listen to you talking about these arguments, until you can establish that the author of the

Quran himself, themselves, whatever, had an accurate knowledge of what

Torah and Injil are, it's hard to take seriously arguments about corruption when the knowledge of the author of your book is corrupted.

You see what I mean? I think that'd be a step forward, and obviously,

Ijaz, you know me, I'm not saying next week. I recognize that if the conversation is going to go forward in any meaningful fashion, it's going to be slow, and it's going to have to be done in a painstaking fashion.

And from my perspective, if it's actually going to happen, if people on both sides that want to see it advanced are going to be attacked by people in their own group for doing so.

To be honest with you, that's what I see happening. But so this, you know,

Matthew 23 -37, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets stone those sent to you. How often I have longed to gather your children together.

Hey, at least you quoted all of Matthew 23 -37. Ijaz, if you don't know what that's about, you haven't listened to our conversations about the big three and Calvinism, and I wouldn't expect that you would.

But as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, you were not willing. This is a condemnation specifically of the

Jewish leaders. But at the point at time in which this was spoken, I would argue, if you look at Roger Beckwith's fine work,

The Old Testament Can and the New Testament Church, The Old Testament Can was already a reality and had been for a minimum of 100 years amongst the

Jewish people at the point where this was set. So how could that be relevant to corrupting the scriptures?

And not only that, but there were copies of all the canonical scriptures that had been laid up in the temple 200 years before this happened.

So it is a condemnation of the Jewish leadership that they want to kill the

Messiah. There's no question about that. Your own text bears that out.

Um, well, to a point. But how is that relevant to the textual issue is a little bit difficult for me to understand.

Q2337, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you.

What is the argument here? The argument is simple. On the one hand, we are told that the

Israelites would dare not change the Word of God. On the other hand, Jesus in the

New Testament testifies that they would be more than willing to kill the very prophets sent to deliver scripture.

If they would be willing to kill the prophets, wouldn't they be willing to alter, hide, or even destroy what message those prophets brought?

Did Jesus... Okay, yeah, yeah, there's strong words of condemnation, but you're assuming something that I'm a little surprised you assume, and that is that God would allow this?

Um, your own Quran seems to testify, again, and not just in Surah 5, but in a number of different places, as to the indefectibility of that which is

Natsal, sent down. Can't Allah protect that, even from the peoples?

Um, sometimes I wonder if in your attempt to establish corruption of the

Christian scriptures, you don't end up sawing off the legs of the table upon which the

Quran has to stand. Because even though, theoretically, in your mind, it is the final revelation and it's consistent going all the way back, historically, it's the last of the three.

And in its own text, it makes that connection. You can't avoid that. So, I've raised the issue of consistency in sources and application and methodology before, and it seems to come up here as well.

The New Testament does not stop there. In an order of magnitude, he declares something even worse.

So, I'm going to jump ahead here to John chapter 8, verses 44 to 48. This is what he says to the

Jews, you belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desires.

He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him.

When he speaks, when he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

Yet, because I tell you the truth, you do not believe me. Can any of you prove me guilty of sin?

If I am telling the truth, why don't you believe me? Whoever belongs to God, here's what

God says, the reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God. Now, since we have the text on the screen,

I know what your intention, Ijaz, is in citing this.

And certainly, John chapter 8 is a tremendous text in regards to the opposition, again, of the

Jewish leaders. And in this particular instance, if you go back, Ijaz, in the context, you see that these were individuals who, having heard

Jesus's interaction at the beginning in John 8, 12 through 29, are impressed and they believe, point action, they believe in Jesus.

Now, you know, I had a brother write to me, well, you know, there's some people today that aren't certain about, you know, they say that that present tense aorist thing,

I know about that, but the fact is the author of the Gospel of John specifically differentiates these things.

So no matter what you do, with whether it's point action or simple action, action sort and all the rest of that stuff,

John's differentiating between whatever the present tense form is indicating in that continuous context versus whatever the difference that is with the aorist as to the nature of true faith.

And they don't have a true saving faith, they believe. And when Jesus turns to them, he then says to them, if you continue in my word, then you're my disciples.

Indeed, you should know the truth. Truth shall set you free. And when he says to be set free, these

Jews say, we've never been enslaved to anybody. They're self -deceived. And that's what prompts this later on the same context.

And I just point out to you in using this text, I'm not sure whether you believe

Jesus said these words. I don't know how you can avoid it if you think that Jesus said John 14 and John 16. But if Jesus said these words, he taught that men are slaves to sin.

You don't believe that. There is a fundamental difference in anthropology between what

Jesus teaches in the gospel of John and what you believe. Now, if he was a prophet, why is there a difference?

And it's a fundamental difference. It's a foundational difference. And in fact, the very last verse you quoted, whoever belongs to God hears what

God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God. He likewise says to them, why can you not hear me?

Because you do not belong to God. It's not as in Islamic theology, you have the ability to choose.

You're a slave to sin. Jesus taught it. And until God frees you, you will not hear.

And so here in yourself quoted, I know this is not your topic. I'm not pretending to offer criticism of your quoting of this.

I see your point. We'll continue on with that. I just want you to see what the verses you're quoting actually say consistently through the gospel of John.

Look at John 17. Listen to Jesus' high priestly prayer when he talks about those the Father's given him and those that will believe because of their words.

This is the sovereignty of God. Why would there need to be this sovereign action of God? It's because the

Bible does teach that man is dead in sin. He's dead in sin. And I don't believe that the author of the

Quran understood that. Why not? If the author of the

Quran is who you say the author of the Quran was. The prophet Jesus, who was the word made flesh, taught this.

And I'd invite you to believe what he said, even if someone later didn't believe what he said.

So we'll continue at that point. I know we didn't get very far, but I will try now that it's

New Year, we'll try to make sure to sneak some of that in. Because like I said, we only got nine minutes, 22 seconds left after this.

So we will get through it. And I hope it's helpful to folks to work through some of this stuff and to see what some of the presuppositions are so that we can speak more clearly to those who hold these presuppositions and to challenge those presuppositions.

But as you can see, you don't have to do that with razor blades. I think when you're talking about what the

Lamb of God said, that you, in this life especially, when you're representing the

Lamb of God, then represent Him as the one who is the very essence of the demonstration of God's love and grace.

Because there will come a day according to the book of Revelation, when

God's judgment comes and the day of salvation has passed, that men will cry out for the mountains to fall upon them and hide them from what?

The wrath of the Lamb. But until that day, let us not confuse which day it is.

Today is a day of salvation, today is a day of grace, and so let us proclaim that grace while we have the time to do so.

And so we pray for our Muslim friends, and we pray that we will model Jesus Christ to them in the appropriate way.

So thank you for listening to The Dividing Line today. Lord willing, we will be back next week.

And something tells me something will have been said between now and next week, but we'll be back.