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Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:01

And good afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White and it is a cool blustery day here in Phoenix, Arizona, but we are live and we invite your participation today at 866 -854 -6763.

00:18

I just asked the folks in the chat room what we should talk about today and one of our chief geeks, we have two geeks of tremendous credentials as far as geekiness in our channel and those would be

00:35

MDH, who got his lips ripped off by his wife last week, and E Nielsen.

00:41

And so he's one of the two chief geeks in channel and he suggested that we do a

00:48

PDA sequel. Oop, got to get the cough button down here because my asthma came back this week, isn't that fun?

00:57

It started coming back last Monday, or yeah, Monday, I think it was Monday. And so it's obviously allergy -induced asthma, which is a wonderful thing, but we have a little cough button here and I'll probably be, if you hear dead air, you'll know exactly what's going on.

01:10

I'm coughing up another lung, so just don't worry about that part of it, but that's what we'll use it for. I guess you're not supposed to say that in here, are you?

01:17

Well, anyways. And I am not going to do a PDA sequel because I could not believe the complaints.

01:24

Well, the geeks loved it because geeks have PDAs and then the non -geeks were just like, would you please do something other than that?

01:35

I will only say one thing about PDAs. I was going to do this and it has nothing to do with E Nielsen suggesting this, but I did this week.

01:44

One thing I didn't talk about last week, and some of you might find this useful and interesting, it's only one thing, it's only going to take about two minutes, so don't start complaining.

01:54

What about Hebrew on your PDA? Well, there is a program called

01:59

Hebrew Support from pentacon .com that provides you a pretty decent

02:05

Greek font on your palm or handspring visor device, and most other devices like that, they have different versions of it available.

02:16

Last year I purchased the Tanakh, the Old Testament as we

02:21

Christians call it, but the Tanakh, the Torah, the Nevi 'im and Ketuvim, the Law, the

02:26

Writings and the Prophets, and those were separate files for each book that you could open under TealDoc, and it worked pretty well.

02:43

But I recently changed how I have my PDA set up, and now I have actually two

02:48

PDAs, I have two visor edges, and one visor edge I have dedicated solely to biblical stuff.

02:55

I mean, I've only got 300k left on that thing, it is just packed out completely, there's just not much room left there at all.

03:06

And so, I couldn't move the files over because they are linked to your hotsink name, and you might want to keep that in mind when you download something from the net, you put your hotsink name in, it's probably going to be stuck with that hotsink name for the rest of your life.

03:19

So, if you decide to change PDAs, and of course I'm hotsinking two different PDAs off the same laptop,

03:26

I have different names for each one. And so, I started looking around because I still wanted to have the

03:31

Hebrew Old Testament, and lo and behold, the people didn't make these anymore, they don't make this particular, they don't offer these just files in this format anymore.

03:40

Instead, they use another Bible reader program, and I'm not sure if this is the Bible reader program from Luridian or not, it doesn't have

03:47

Luridian anywhere, so I don't think that it is. But anyways, it's a

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Bible reader program that allows you to have the English Tanakh, and it's a Jewish translation of the

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Old Testament, and the Hebrew, it splits the screen, puts them in the windows, and when you scroll the one, it scrolls the other.

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And it's really cool, it's really neat, it works very, very well, it has a better search engine in it than BibleReaderFromOliveTree .com

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does, unfortunately. And I happened to just discover that if you use

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Teal Lens, from, what is that, is it TealPoint .com? Yeah, I think

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TealPoint, that's where you get TealDoc and all the rest of this stuff. Teal Lens is another neat program that allows you to blow up, basically sections of the screen and move it around and magnify stuff, which sometimes, especially when you're looking at a small

04:42

Hebrew text, is very, very nice to double the size of it. And so that's what

04:48

I'm using for my Hebrew Old Testament. So I now have the New American Standard, New King James Version, NET New Testament, and that's the

04:54

All in 27th Edition with Gram Chord, the Hebrew Old Testament with an English Tanakh translation of it, along with P -Greek, which is a

05:00

Greek vocabulary program, and Scripture Partner, all on the same PDA, and I carry it in a small little thing, and that's my

05:08

Super Bible. So it is now the Mondo Gizmo, for those of you who know what that is, the

05:14

Mondo Mega Gizmo, and so that'll be cool. Another thing to mention, and I hope I'm not jumping the gun here,

05:20

AOMin, because I know that you're going to be putting this up on the website, but we got a videotape in, and now that I think about it,

05:34

I remember that when I did the pastor's conference on the Giga Gizmo, when

05:40

I did the pastor's conference on Harold Camping's teachings, there was a member of the church there who had a video camera up in the balcony, and I didn't really give it a lot of thought, it obviously didn't register with me.

06:00

So this videotape arrives, and I give it to Rich Pierce to throw in, and we throw it in there, and it comes up, and wow, it looks really good.

06:09

I mean, as good as it can be with me in it, that's the downside of it, but as far as the quality goes, it's just incredible.

06:19

And we didn't think we'd be able to make something like that available, but lo and behold, we do have it, and so we're going to be putting that up on the website for sale,

06:29

I believe, ASAP. So if you would like to have the videotape, now you can get the, we're going to be putting, do you have any idea how long until we're going to be able to start doing the stuff with the

06:42

MP3s? Any possible idea? There's a question mark.

06:51

That's all I'm going to get is a question mark. You do have a microphone out there, don't you?

07:02

Doesn't that sound really good when I start doing that kind of coughing? It sounds just, I know I have a cough drop.

07:07

I just keep forgetting to use that. Anyways, we are eventually going to do, I'm not getting any responses from anybody.

07:14

Well, I wasn't actually planning on getting on the air here, so I'm going to have to scrabble, get a microphone hooked up, get some headphones.

07:22

Be ready in season and out of season. The Bible says that, you know. Uh -huh.

07:28

Okay. Yes, well, I will be working on getting the script built to make that happen this week, along with all the print shop duties

07:39

I have the next three weeks, and filling all the orders that we're behind on, et cetera, et cetera. I'm looking for a wave.

07:45

No one should actually get sorry for me or anything like that. I'm looking for a wave here. I guess,

07:51

Warren, you're probably going to have to pot up number six there now. Why don't you pot up the computer there? Not that one.

07:58

That's not working. Oh, I'm sorry. That's not that. Anyways. We get you a cough button, and what do we get?

08:04

I keep forgetting this stupid thing. Now, so we're going to make a lot of these things, the tapes that we have available, available in the form of MP3s, or is it just going to be the radio programs?

08:15

No, my goal is everything. Make everything available in the form of MP3s that people can buy for, like, $1, $1 .50,

08:23

$2, depending on how long it is? Yeah, it would be based on how long the recording is. So based on an hour, it would be $1 an hour.

08:30

Okay, $1 an hour. So if it's an hour and a half, $1 .50, two hours, $2, something like that. Right. And then we're going to have the server, and you can just grab them that way, download them real quick, and then you can do with them as you wish, other than, of course, you know, reducing them and setting up a separate site and saying, okay, we'll sell them to you for $0 .50.

08:47

You know, that's probably not the really good thing to have happen. Who is NA27 disputing with them? Am I disputing with you?

08:53

Do you feel like we're disputing? I don't think so. We're just talking, aren't we? You're giving me a hard time because I'm not doing any of this fast enough, though.

09:01

Well, I wasn't giving you a hard time. I feel a little persecuted here. I was not giving you a hard time.

09:06

We just want to get people excited about all the things happening at Alpha and Omega Ministries, at the plush, luxurious offices of Alpha and Omega Ministries.

09:17

Could you get Zeke out of here? I'm sorry. And this cough drop is going to wear out here pretty soon if I actually start using it.

09:26

Well, I just wanted people to know that we're going to make the videotape available, right? Yes, we will.

09:32

I will get right on that as well. And we have those two MP3s that have already been made, or you may have already recorded the stuff from the

09:41

Herald Camping stuff, right? I recorded it. I've dropped it into WAVE format. It came out real crisp and clean.

09:47

So we're going to drop that down to MP3. That will probably be one of the first items that we put up for people to get their hands on.

09:57

I'm looking to start marketing the MP3 feature with stuff that we don't even have available yet.

10:03

Right, that makes sense. And then slowly start getting the other stuff that is available in other formats into the

10:08

MP3 and make that available too. Good. Well, a lot of folks are buying MP3 players now. I have one.

10:14

That's a really good way of listening to stuff and so on and so forth. That's a really good way of doing it.

10:19

So thank you very much for that insightful information, Dr. Pierce.

10:25

You can go back to your corner of anonymity in there where you just send me little nasty notes in the window that I never talk about.

10:33

I don't point out that I get those little notes and things like that. But that's okay. That's okay. Bye. I guess he's gone.

10:39

It's really quiet now there. Anyways, I just had someone in the channel mention something about Dave Hunt's book.

10:49

And I haven't seen it. I would like to see it.

10:57

I've had it on order for a very, very, very, very long time, since sometime back in December now.

11:05

And every time I go back and look, they have moved the publication date back.

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And I understand how that works. Sometimes that's the author's fault. Sometimes that's the publisher's fault. I don't know.

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I've heard rumors about it. But since they're just rumors and I can't confirm, I'm not going to go with it.

11:23

But his 500 -page book, Calvinism's Misrepresentation of God, is supposed to be out.

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I obviously would like to have a chance to look at it prior to the next time that Dave and I speak at the same place, which actually is going to be

11:42

April 19th and 20th.

11:49

So that's next month, April 19th and 20th, at the PFO Apologetics Conference in St.

11:57

Louis. He and I are both speaking. He's speaking on Islam. I'm speaking on the

12:03

King James Only controversy and the Roman Catholic doctrines concerning Mary. And so we're both doing plenary sessions there, and I'm doing a workshop session.

12:15

I didn't see if he was doing a workshop session or not. I don't recall. But anyways,

12:21

I would like to have a chance to see it before then, because I'm sure I'm going to be asked about it. But we will see what's happening with that.

12:30

I need to turn my timers off here, because that's sort of silly to be announcing that the program's already started. So that's coming up, and obviously once the book comes out, then we will have the opportunity of reviewing it, and we'll provide a full review.

12:44

I've even been asked if I'm going to respond to it in print, and I sort of doubt it, unless I really feel that there's a major need to do so.

12:54

I've got a number of other books to be writing right now, including the third of the

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Dudes series. We've done What's with the Dudes, The Door, What's with the Mutant and the

13:06

Microscope, and the next book is a book on the Bible for youth, and so we're going to be doing that one.

13:13

I have a book on Sola Scriptura and a book on Bible translation, so they're all in the same general area. Numerous debates, by the way,

13:22

April 2nd at Biola will be the debate.

13:28

It starts at 7 .30 p .m. Myself against George Bryson. What is the role of man in salvation?

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Obviously I'll be defending election and predestination, that man is the dead sinner who must be regenerated by God, and hence man's role is to be saved by God, period, and end of discussion.

13:50

And What's with the Dudes at the PDAs? Excuse me.

13:57

See, I used the cough button about halfway through that way. I'm getting close. I haven't really done all of it, but I'm getting close.

14:03

Anyways, What's with the Dudes at the PDAs? It's pretty good. We could do What's with the... Well, I'm not going to say that. Anyways, we've got

14:10

April 2nd. Mark it on your calendars. To my knowledge, there is no entrance fee.

14:15

There's nothing about tickets or anything like that. The debate's going to last about three hours.

14:21

Looks like it's really good format. And there were almost 2 ,300 people who turned out to the debate that they had last week, the first in this series, on eschatology.

14:38

So they're looking for really good turnout for this debate as well. It should be very exciting. And so those of you out in the

14:46

Los Angeles area or just California in general, April 2nd, that's like a month from today, we will be engaging in that debate, and that's going to be really interesting.

14:57

And, of course, the end of this month will be the Easter pageant in Mesa. Then after that, we've got the debate in Los Angeles.

15:05

Three days later, I'm debating Gilbert Scharf's is the new opponent that I have on the subject of the effects of sin upon man.

15:17

Gilbert Scharf's is LDS, and we will be debating that in Salt Lake City. And then the next day is the general conference of the

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Mormon Church in Salt Lake City. And then the next weekend, oh,

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I'm looking at the wrong calendar. The next weekend, possibly up in Colorado.

15:38

The weekend after that is St. Louis. The weekend after that is the Biblical Discernment Conference in Toledo, Ohio.

15:46

And the weekend after that, I have a nervous breakdown. So that's the current calendar of events between now and that's just the beginning of May.

15:55

And then in July, we have all that stuff going on. Good grief. By the way, of course, we will also,

16:06

I just want to remind you of the cruise coming up August 31st through the beginning of September up in the wilds of Alaska.

16:15

I'm looking forward very much to that. And if you could do us all the favor, if you've been interested in that, even if you just have an interest, you just want to get some details.

16:25

You're not really certain, but you just want to get some details. Get a hold. There is a link at the bottom of the page on our website.

16:31

Get a hold of Michael Fallon and let him know that you're interested. Talk to the guy. He is absolutely infectious in his excitement.

16:40

He puts these things together himself. He's just a really cool dude.

16:45

So give him a call or drop him an email, whatever it is, and talk to him, and he'll get you hooked one way or the other.

16:54

So if you're hookable, he will hook you. So get in touch with him and look at that.

17:01

So with all that stuff coming up, people ask me, so what are you doing on the dividing line today? And basically

17:06

I always say to them, it's going to be something religious, and they get mad at me, and it's like, you know, honestly,

17:14

I don't always know since we've got stuff going on. I mean, you know, I just got an email in just as I'm sitting here.

17:21

And was this forwarded to me? Let me see this here. No, actually it came directly to me.

17:30

And, you know, sometimes when there's stuff like that that comes in, ten minutes before the program,

17:37

I'll change everything that I had thought about doing and just roll with that. I like to have that kind of freedom to be able to just simply, you know, go with the flow, respond to folks in the channel, you know, whatever else it might be.

17:52

You know, that's what this program is all about. We don't have to worry like you do on a radio program aside from the fact that you're shelling out, you know, who knows how many dollars per second that you're on it.

18:01

You don't have to worry about the specific, you know, station concerns and all the rest of that stuff.

18:06

And it's just nice to be able to interact with folks, and especially since we have a phone number called 866 -854 -6763, you can get in and ask your questions as well.

18:17

There were a couple things I wanted to discuss today. One of our two super -duper geeky guys that, like, make this whole thing work, because I had to sit here with a microphone in front of me and do my thing.

18:35

The guys on the other side of the wall there, Mr. Warren, a .k .a. Scott, he has a split personality.

18:43

We're dealing with him on that thing. We've contacted a deliverance ministry, and they'll be over today.

18:49

No, seriously, he just came in with a copy of a,

18:55

I remember when this booklet came out, in fact. In fact, was I at the general, was

19:02

I at the district conventions when they, I may have been at the district conventions when the

19:09

Trinity booklet came out. I know I was there when the Reasoning from the

19:15

Scriptures booklet came out. This was back in the 80s when I had hair. But, of course, he had run into one of Jehovah's Witnesses this morning and had a very nice conversation with the gentleman, and he had given to him a copy of the

19:32

Trinity booklet, and there have been entire books published in response to the

19:38

Trinity booklet. I believe Ron Rhodes makes extensive reference to it. Robert Bowman makes extensive reference to it.

19:46

There was an early book that was published, sort of self -published, in response to it that was pretty much a page -by -page response to the entirety of the

19:56

Trinity booklet, and, of course, the main arguments in regards at least to biblical passages I dealt with in The Forgotten Trinity as well.

20:03

And I guess the specific area of discussion there was in regards to the

20:09

Council of Nicaea, and, of course, I addressed that in the article that I wrote for the CRI Journal, what really happened at the

20:15

Council of Nicaea. And, in fact, I'm going to ask somebody in the channel, in fact, that's another thing that Eni Olson is, like,

20:23

L -super -geek on, is I'll just mention something on the channel, and, like, 30 seconds, a minute later, all of a sudden, here's this

20:31

URL. In fact, we were getting bothered. We were getting harassed by this interesting fellow earlier this week, and I happened to mention the fellow's name and channel, and it couldn't have been two minutes later, and Eni Olson posts this

20:49

URL about the guy. I mean, it's got his picture and the whole nine yards, and I'm like, whoa, this is really frightening.

20:56

Of course, another dude, a few, I don't know, months ago, private messaged me a

21:02

URL that was a picture of my own stinking neighborhood, which made me feel really good that you can find that kind of information about folks and get an aerial picture of their own neighborhood so I could sit there and look at my own house, and this guy is on the other side of the nation, so it's a scary thing.

21:18

But, anyways, I would like to find out, because I was just mentioning to Warren and I didn't get a chance to finish and look up, is the

21:25

Nicaea article, what really happened at Nicaea, on the CRI webpage, because there's a lag.

21:34

This neighborhood does not stink. You know what I meant by stinking neighborhood. I just didn't like seeing an aerial picture of my own neighborhood.

21:42

No, it's a very nice neighborhood. Thank you very much. If someone could hit equip .org

21:48

and tell me what really happened at Nicaea article is on the website, then

21:55

I can let people know. They can hit it and find out and take a look at it.

22:03

Yes, I mean no. Geeks are so easily confused. If someone could let me know, either yes or no, in an open way, like, yes, it is on the equip .org

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website, what really happened at Nicaea. That way you can go look at it yourself. But, anyways, we have addressed a lot of the issues that this particular booklet, that the societies, they've been publishing this thing now,

22:27

I forget what the exact publication date it is on.

22:32

I think it was about 86 or so, something along those lines. I'm just guessing off the top of my head. 85 -86, it's one of their older ones, but obviously one of their more effective ones.

22:42

It is interesting to note, though, those of you who deal with Jehovah's Witness apologists, and I don't get to deal with them as much as I used to,

22:50

A, and to be honest with you, most of them that I encounter on the Internet are, well,

22:58

Mr. Parker, for example, came in a couple days ago into the channel, and I think he left on his own, but they're just,

23:08

I guess they think they're being funny or something, but they're just, 1989, okay, thank you.

23:14

Yep, there it is. Thank you, Mr. Nielsen, you are the man. You get today's

23:19

Ultra Geeky Man Award on the dividing line. I'm not sure exactly what comes with that, but I'll tell you what, we will double your ops pay for today, for being

23:31

Ultra Geeky Man today. Equip .org slash free slash DN, those are capitalized, 206 .htm.

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So that's www .equip .org slash free slash capital D, capital N, 206 .htm

23:45

is the URL that has been provided by Ultra Geeky Man for us today, who, by the way, does have a

23:51

PDA. And, in fact, it is a Handspring Visor PDA, and I just thought we should mention that because it's a very important thing, at least to us, anyways.

24:03

I love that cough drop. Anyways, what was I talking about? Oh, the Jehovah's Witness apologists who come and channel are frequently really not enjoyable to talk to, they really aren't listening to what you're saying, so on and so forth, but the point

24:19

I was trying to make is they really are not using the argumentation that is found in that booklet any longer.

24:32

They realize, since they have gone against at least what the society used to say, the society used to very, very plainly say, do not read anything that is critical of Jehovah's organization.

24:46

And we've talked about this before, but the situation really hasn't changed. People like Greg Stafford and others, they have yet to feel the wrath of the society, at least to my knowledge, and I could be wrong about this, but at least to my knowledge, they have not yet felt the wrath of the society.

25:06

And they are obviously, by the materials they're producing and the arguments that they're using, going beyond what the society is saying, and they're obviously reading anti -Watchtower literature, even though the society says not to do it.

25:28

And the fact that they have developed arguments that take the arguments in the Trinity book two or three steps farther in response to the refutations of them demonstrate that they are doing this, that they are going beyond the society.

25:41

And we've said many times in the past, if the society does not crack down on this, it does signal that at the very least the society has recognized that they just cannot insulate,

25:57

I guess is the best term, their people any longer in light of the basically ubiquitous nature of information in the information age, between the internets and emails and so on and so forth.

26:11

They just can't keep their people away from this information. And so I don't know if they're just sort of in that state where, all right, we don't like it, we can't insulate our people anymore, but we don't know what to do about it.

26:23

Or if they've made the conscious decision that how they're going to handle this is, well, we're just not going to talk about the opposition out there.

26:33

We're not going to forbid you from reading their stuff, but by just not mentioning it, we're sort of going to let it be known that we don't encourage that, knowing, however, that certain people, especially those people who have an apologetic bent, are going to go ahead and do that kind of stuff.

26:52

Who knows? We just don't know which direction they're going to be going on it. But it is really interesting that when a

27:01

Jehovah's Witness passes that pamphlet out, you'll be able to tell pretty quickly in how you respond to it, whether this is an individual that that's the extent of their apologetics, that they are not in contact with what seems to me to be a fairly small group of Internet Jehovah's Witness apologists, or whether they are.

27:21

It really depends. So it was interesting to see that that pamphlet is still being passed out.

27:27

Of course, I knew that it was. You see it in laundromats and stuff like that all the time. It's still out there, but it's been responded to over and over and over again, and the better apologists, in the sense of the more well -read, have already responded to it by going beyond it and responding to various refutations of it and things like that.

27:49

So you may have some questions about that particular issue, 866 -854 -6763.

27:55

The other subject that I was going to be addressing as we come back from the upcoming break would be the subject of the

28:04

Church, the reason being, as you all know, generally the subjects that I raise are subjects that I'm currently working on, and I am working on the book called

28:17

Dangerous Airwaves. This morning, starting last night and then this morning, I have been working on the chapter on the biblical teaching on the

28:26

Church, and so I wanted to make some comments about that and take your phone calls at 866 -854 -6763.

28:33

We'll be right back. A couple things before we go on to another subject.

29:44

I got a message from a banned person, and I'm not sure if you should talk about banned people.

29:51

I guess you can, you banned them. You might as well talk about them. A fellow who, actually we've talked about him before now that I think about it.

29:58

Yeah, of course we've talked about him before. Computer chopped it, not me. Choped, C -H -O -P -E -D.

30:04

That's good, the computer choped it. Good, fine. Anyways, I'm merciless at times.

30:12

There was a fellow who we talked about, oh, I don't know, two, three months ago now,

30:19

I forget what it was, in regards to James Aiken's error about the quote -unquote aggressive heiress at John 644.

30:28

In fact, we played his phone call to Catholic Answers Live and then refuted what

30:34

James Aiken had to say after that. He has since been banned from the channel, and yet he likes to come in once, twice a day and get kicked out.

30:43

I think it's sort of earns him indulgences type thing, experience martyrdom, I'm not really sure what it is.

30:48

But I got a note from him in the

30:54

IRC channel, and it was a fascinating thing. I'll just read this to you, this is from, was this yesterday?

31:04

Yesterday or day before yesterday, I forget which one it is. It was at 536 in the evening, anyways.

31:10

And it says, by the way, in answer to one of your questions you posed, the author of By What Authority, yes, that lesbian witch at Boston University is indeed a

31:19

Christian, albeit a bad one, but a Christian nonetheless. You know full well that my church teaches that anyone who has been baptized with the

31:27

Trinitarian formula is a Christian. There's the quote.

31:35

And my response was straightforward and not politically correct.

31:41

I said, yes, which proves your church is utterly clueless. Try reading 1

31:46

John, my friend. And of course I was referring specifically to 1

31:52

John, well there's a number of passages, but 1 John 2 -4 comes to mind.

31:57

The one who says, I have come to know him and does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him.

32:04

This idea that, well, as long as man has, by his sacramental authority, done the sacrament right, then bingo, bango, bongo, you're a

32:13

Christian. The New Testament knows nothing of such a theology, nothing of such a concept.

32:19

A lesbian Wiccan cannot be a Christian. As Paul said, such were some of you, but you were washed, but you were cleansed, so on and so forth.

32:29

There is simply no possible way of putting the two of them together. And so that was, it was just fascinating that someone would read the question that I had asked to the author of By What Authority, who is

32:42

Mark Shea, about this particular individual and the response is, oh yeah, lesbian witches can indeed be

32:51

Christians as long as they're baptized properly. So much for the authority of Scripture and the teachings of Scripture at that point.

33:00

One other thing, some of you who have been around a long time are going to know what

33:06

I'm talking about here, but we're coming up on the 20th anniversary. It will be

33:13

July 28th, I believe is the date of this year, and I'm not certain, let me grab one of my many

33:22

PDAs here, see how close we're going to get to July 28th as far as, let's see here, let's go to the month view and go over to July, how close are we?

33:36

Oh, the 27th, that's real close. So I think it's July 28th will be the 20 -year anniversary of something.

33:46

Anybody happen to know what happened July 28th? This is cool,

33:51

I can move the microphone with me over to my books. There it is, reaching over here, sort of like Rush Limbaugh going with his papers and stuff like that.

34:00

Let me double check this. Yep, July 28th, 1982. What happened

34:05

July 28th, 1982? I guess I have to put the book back where I got it.

34:14

There we go. Does anyone know? What happened July 28th, 1982?

34:20

20 years ago, on the 27th, I'm going to do, I'm going to try to arrange a special program on the 27th of July.

34:31

I should be back and hopefully have survived the preceding months. And if I can arrange it,

34:43

I'm going to see if I can't track down my friend Steve Camp to come on the program because he would know what happened

34:51

July 28th, 1982. Some of you will understand what

34:58

I'm talking about when I say that back when I was a young person, back in my high school years, starting midway through my sophomore year, the

35:11

Lord really got a hold of me and I really fell in love with the Word of God and I was spending a lot of time,

35:17

July 28th, 1982, and I was spending a lot of time looking at the Scriptures and studying the

35:23

Scriptures and all sorts of things like that. And one of the things that had a really big impact upon my life at that point in time was music.

35:37

Believe it or not, I'm not very musical anymore. Ever since I developed asthma, I cannot phrase worth anything and really can't sing very well anymore.

35:53

I took voice when I was younger and could actually carry a decent tune, but I can't anymore because I just can't hold my breath that long.

35:59

But I love to sing and music had a big important part in my life at that time.

36:06

And there was one particular individual in the early 1980s who is not exactly the heyday of contemporary

36:14

Christian music, shall we say, but there was someone at that time who was really blazing the way in what eventually became contemporary

36:27

Christian music. That person's music meant a lot to me. I can sit back today and I can see elements in this man's music that I wouldn't necessarily agree with today, but I don't do that.

36:43

And on July 28, 1982, is the day that this man and I believe three of his children died in a plane crash.

36:55

And I hope that my computer is up because he's the man who sang a song that goes like this.

37:47

And that is the voice of Keith Green. And that's one of my favorite songs anyways,

37:54

How Can They Live Without Jesus. There are so many others. I remember When Your Love Broke Through and just all sorts of songs.

38:02

Of course, I have all of his CDs and things like that. But that music meant a lot to me as a young Christian at that time.

38:11

And I was working at a radio station. That's one of the reasons microphones don't bother me is

38:18

I grew up in high school working at a radio station. And I was working the night shift six to midnight.

38:24

And we had one of those old style UPI news wires just outside of the control room.

38:33

And when an important newscast would come through, an important message would come through, there was a little bell on it.

38:40

It would go ding, ding, ding to let us know of an urgent message. And the reason I know that that took place

38:46

July 28, 1982, is because inside of my old, old, old

38:53

The Way Bible. You wonder how old this thing is? The Living Bible Illustrated, not only does it have pictures of 1970s style people in the front, and it's held together by tape, but it costs $5 .95.

39:10

And that tells you right there that this is very, very, very old. And I taped this inside the front cover of this particular

39:20

Bible that I evidently had that day.

39:25

And it's yellowed and old. And here it says, Van, Texas.

39:31

Officials now say only 11 people were killed late Wednesday when a small plane taking off from a Christian Evangelical group's private airstrip near Van, Texas, crashed just 500 yards from the end of the runway.

39:42

Earlier reports had said 12 people died in the crash. A staff member at Last Days Ministries says the plane burned upon impact in a densely wooded area.

39:50

The crash occurred about 20 miles northwest of Tyler. Authorities say among those killed was Ministry Director Keith Green, who also wrote and recorded

39:57

Christian music. Jim McNichols, a Dundee, Illinois radio personality, calls Green one of the top

40:03

Christian contemporary artists in the country. That's UPI, July 28, 1982, 1016

40:09

PMS. And that is still there in my

40:15

Bible from long, long ago. And the reason I mention having Steve Camp on the program, other than the fact that Steve's a good friend of mine and we talk fairly regularly, is

40:26

Steve knew Keith Green and could give us some personal insights into him.

40:33

And I think he'd probably enjoy being with us if we could schedule it anyways. And if we can't schedule it for that day, then we'll just record it if we need to.

40:42

But play some of Keith's music and talk about stuff like that. It had a big impact.

40:48

I can honestly say that if it has appeared on a

40:54

CD or, of course, back then it was records. Remember those things, guys, records? LPs, the things you could scratch and skip and all that kind of stuff.

41:04

If it has appeared and Steve Green, Keith Green, y 'all are confusing me up there because you keep talking about Steve Green.

41:13

Steve Green is not Keith Green. If Keith Green sang it and it was recorded and it's been released,

41:19

I know it. I know it verbatim. I can sing it without actually giving it a second thought.

41:25

In fact, I know Keith Green music so well that it's one of the few vocal things I can listen to while writing because it's, of course,

41:35

I don't have to think to hear the words.

41:41

They're already there. And so that's really, really interesting that that's coming up here.

41:48

I had forgotten the exact year that it was, and I forget what it was that got me starting to look at that. But I thought, well, we're coming up on the 20 -year anniversary of that, and I would like to do something about it.

41:59

So you might want to mark your calendars. I'm going to try to do something about that. July 27th we're going to talk about Keith Green and the impact his music had, and maybe some of you in the channel, some of you who listen, you too were impacted by his music as well.

42:15

866 -854 -6763. We actually already have one caller online, and so actually let's go ahead and take some calls.

42:25

And if calls fill up the rest of the program, that's cool. If not, then we can go on and look at some of the issues

42:31

I was going to raise in regards to the church. But I didn't finish that chapter, and I wanted to, but I didn't get around to finishing it.

42:39

So, well, we've got the phones wide open at 866 -854 -6763.

42:46

So let's go ahead and take our first caller. And that's Steve from a place that I lived in for six years,

42:55

Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, where I went to as a young person, Bible Baptist Church in Charminstown, actually.

43:04

Pastor Cass F. Santos, Jr., back then, many, many, many, many years ago. Do you know where Bible Baptist Church is,

43:11

Steve? If I could put a driver in my hand, I could probably drive right up to the front door. As a matter of fact,

43:17

Dr. White, my... It's right on the road. Did they tear that down, or is that being used as a classroom building now?

43:24

That is being used as a classroom building. And if you would come back now on a jet plane, you wouldn't recognize the place because they put a very aggressive building program together.

43:34

Their school has become much larger. I see. Okay. And they've even applied for a certain,

43:40

I think, sports program, which puts them in the league where they can play public schools.

43:45

Wow. So they've become more competitive. Wow. See, the building, I went back there in 1993.

43:52

And you'll find this, I don't know if you'll find this fascinating or not, but since they mentioned where you're calling from, I left when

43:59

I was 11. So, of course, I had never driven in Pennsylvania. And I rented a car up in Boston, and I was going to be speaking in Philadelphia, so I had a couple extra days.

44:08

Drove down into the Harrisburg area. And remember, I had never driven there. Okay. But from the time

44:14

I got into Harrisburg, I never took a wrong turn. I went directly to my old home that was behind a bowling alley over in close to Shiremanstown.

44:29

And then we moved across the highway there. Also, a little bit later, found both those homes.

44:35

First shot, never missed a turn. It was absolutely one of the weirdest experiences of my adult life to just drive exactly where I was supposed to go.

44:44

But the larger building that they built behind that original building, my father designed, and I mean designed, the sound system that originally went in it.

44:57

And what I mean by that is he didn't just say, okay, we'll go buy this component, that component. He designed it from the ground up.

45:03

He burned the printed circuits. He soldered the resistors and transistors on them, put it all together, did everything in the sound at Biobaptist Church in that new building that they built behind the old one where I was baptized.

45:18

Oh, great dad. And so I remember being in that building, lying there while my dad was working on stuff, reading

45:25

Mike Mars books. Mike Mars goes to Mars. Mike Mars and the X -15 or whatever it was. And so I have a lot of memories of that particular area.

45:36

I can guarantee you that. But that's not why you called today, but now you know all about the connection there.

45:42

Did you know anything about that before? What was that now? Did you know anything about the connection that I had there? No. Well, now there you go.

45:49

What a coincidence. No, Dr. White, I just finished reading your book, The Potter's Freedom. Yes.

45:54

And I have a question. I know this issue of free will and predestination can really be a hot -button issue.

46:01

Now I have a question. When Satan fell, and I threw this out to my

46:06

Sunday school class, I said, why didn't God eradicate sin at that time and do away with it so he wouldn't have to hassle with it anymore?

46:16

Do you have any views on that? Because later on he creates man and he in turn falls.

46:24

Right. Into sin. So why didn't God, and again, we're only speculating, why didn't

46:30

God eradicate sin after, like I said, the angels fell?

46:36

And I told my class, this is in a much larger plan that God has. Am I off base on this or what?

46:43

No, you're not. I think you're right on, especially when we start thinking about a couple of basic things.

46:49

Are you familiar with the great debate going on right now concerning the concept of open theism?

46:58

You betcha. Very hot issue right now. Very much so. It really comes down to that issue, because if God does know in absolute divine certainty all future events, as I believe the

47:15

Bible very clearly says that he does, if that is the case, then there are certain things that flow from that.

47:23

And those who attempt to get around the freedom of God in bringing men unto salvation generally don't get very far because their arguments, in essence, basically leave

47:36

God with more difficult questions to answer than the one, well, why didn't God just eradicate sin?

47:41

If God didn't know it was coming, it's an even worse thing, actually, to create a universe that you don't know what could end up happening, and all of a sudden this terrible thing happens, and now, oh no, what do

47:50

I do? I think that's a much worse question than going to the scriptures and discovering that, as you say,

47:56

God has a much greater plan than sometimes we are willing to give him credit for. And when

48:02

Paul started addressing the whole issue in Ephesians chapter 1, when he talks about what

48:07

God has done from before the creation of the world and includes such terms as predestination to adoption of his sons and the revelation of the kind intention of his will, in verse 6 he says, "...to

48:18

the praise of the glory of his grace which he freely bestowed on us in the

48:23

Beloved." And I think that first phrase, "...to the praise of the glory of his grace," is as close as you can possibly bring our human minds to an understanding that in the final analysis it is

48:37

God's purpose to bring about his own glorification in everything that takes place.

48:43

This is very clearly expressed in Romans chapter 9 in regards to Pharaoh as an individual. For this reason

48:48

I raised you up that my name might be made known throughout the earth, and so on and so forth.

48:54

So you have it in a very specific instance there, but here in a very broad scope you have "...the

49:01

praise of the glory of his grace," as the final reason why any of these things take place.

49:07

Certainly God could have eradicated evil at any point in time that he desired to do so.

49:14

He chose to eradicate evil in a way that brings the greatest glory to himself, and that is through the incarnation of the

49:25

Lord Jesus Christ and the redemption of God's people. Now we are really,

49:30

I think, somewhat amazing in that we can sit back as time -bound creatures who have very little knowledge of what's going on around us right now, let alone of what happened in the past and no knowledge of the future, and put

49:44

God in the box, so to say, and say, you know what, I think you could have done it better.

49:51

It's amazing the arrogance of the creature man at times toward God that we would actually entertain such things.

49:59

And when we have such a clear word from him that says, I know what's going on, in fact this very same passage continues on to say, to describe him as the one who works all things after the counsel of his will.

50:11

It talks about his purpose and his working all things after the counsel of his will, so on and so forth. So this is the

50:16

God that we're talking about. He has a reason in all these things. And one of the best works that I've ever read on this, if you have access to it, and if you're fortunate enough to especially have access to it in electronic form, because I read this back in the 80s in what

50:35

I call the iStrain version. It's the Banner of Truth two -volume set of the works of Jonathan Edwards.

50:41

And Edwards' sermon on the purpose for which God created the world, and that's probably not the exact title, but it's not in the book section, it's in the sermon section in Edwards' work.

50:57

The sermon was one of the most penetrating discussions of it that you could possibly get to.

51:07

And I would really highly recommend it to your reading if you haven't had a chance to read it yet.

51:13

In fact, it's probably short enough that if your Sunday school class is intrepid enough, you might be able to run off a copy of it and let them take a look at it as well.

51:23

I was surprised because many of them were very divided over the issue, especially when you talk about the origin of sin.

51:30

Boy, it's like dropping BBs off a wall. They come in all different directions. Oh, sure. You better believe it.

51:35

I mean, this is fundamental stuff, and yet so much of the traditions that we have, we have simply accepted without ever considering whether the tradition

51:45

I hold on this subject here is consistent with the position I hold over here on this other subject.

51:53

And once people start opening up these cans of worms, in essence, it can very quickly, sadly, become very, very emotional rather than, you know,

52:05

I really need to go to the Word and compare my beliefs with the Word here because there's a lot

52:11

I don't know about the Word. It's like we don't want to admit that there's much that we don't know about. There's all sorts of things

52:17

I don't know about. I can guarantee you that. Well, very good then. All right. Dr. White, it's been a pleasure talking with you.

52:23

Thank you very much, sir. God bless. And God bless. All right. Thank you, sir. Bye -bye. Bye -bye. 866 -854 -6763.

52:32

That's a section from Edwards. I'll tell you what. When we come up on this break, I'll go get it.

52:41

There's no way this microphone can get far enough that I can reach it. It's on the other side of one of my shelves over there. And I'll go track that thing down.

52:48

I'm talking about the two -volume set from Banner of Truth. Big, huge books. I mean, if they typeset this at normal typeset, how many volumes do you think that would be?

52:59

I bet it would be eight volumes at least. Because, honestly, the main text print might be eight points, eight -point font, maybe smaller.

53:10

The footnotes are probably six -point or four -point. It is just, I could read it years ago.

53:18

I can't anymore. The eyes just cannot handle it anymore without a magnifying glass.

53:24

But awesome stuff. We just had a Catholic in -channel diss Jonathan Edwards.

53:30

All I can tell you is Rome's never produced anyone that could hold a candle to him, Mr. Orta Doug.

53:36

And I really wonder what you've ever even read of Jonathan Edwards. Incredible intellect and incredible grasp of things.

53:44

Infallible? No, not infallible. But a tremendous man of God. The biography by Ian Murray.

53:54

Excellent work. I'll admit I teared up when I read, in that biography by Ian Murray, the words of Sarah Edwards.

54:03

And this was years ago, but it still has a tremendous impact on me. When Jonathan Edwards died and she received word of it, her first response was, in essence, to cover her lips and to pray that she would not do anything that would in any way dishonor

54:27

God in her response to the death of her husband. It was just absolutely incredible.

54:34

And very, very, very incredible stuff. Excellent material.

54:40

And so we have two folks online. We have Johnny and we have Bradford from Escondido.

54:45

And Bradford wants to talk about a lot of discussion of this stuff going on anymore, and I guess

54:53

I should have expected that this was going to be thrown in my direction. He wants to talk about N .T.

54:58

Wright, James Dunn, E .P. Sanders and their goofy view of justification.

55:03

Maybe that answered your question right there. In fact, I can tell Bradford right now I didn't deal with it in my book because my book is exegetical, and I don't think that their whole concept is exegetical.

55:16

But we'll let you explain it to folks and we can talk about it when we come back from our break.

55:21

And we'll also talk with Johnny about, I don't know about what, but we'll find out when we get around to it.

55:28

We'll be right back. All righty, let's see here.

55:52

For those of you who have it, and it's only one, two, three, it's only four pages photocopied.

56:01

Like I said, this is microscopic print. But it starts on page 107 of, which volume is this?

56:09

Volume 2 of the works of Jonathan Edwards, Sermon on Divine Sovereignty, The Sole Consideration that God is

56:15

God, Sufficient to Still All Objections to His Sovereignty. Some great, incredible lines in this thing under applications.

56:24

What thoughts have you of God? That you think He is more obliged to hear what you say to Him than you are to regard what

56:31

He says to you. It is from little thoughts of God that you quarrel against His justice in the condemnation of sinners from the doctrine of original sin.

56:43

What horrid arrogance in worms of the dust that they should think that they have wisdom enough to examine and determine concerning what

56:51

God doth and to pass sentence on it as unjust. If you had your eyes opened to see that He is

56:59

God indeed, you would wonder how you could think to commend yourselves to so great a being by your gifts, by such poor affections, such broken prayers, wherein is so much hypocrisy and so much selfishness.

57:13

Those are just some of the things that I marked many, many moons ago here in Jonathan Edwards.

57:22

I'm going to have places to put books here. I need... Yes, all phones, all filled.

57:29

You would only get a busy signal if you called us right now, and of course it's at the end of the half hour. So, let's...

57:36

Johnny, I know you're there. I know you're there. But you've called a few times before, so let's let some folks who haven't called before have a little bit of priority here, and let's go ahead and talk with Bradford first, if that is possible.

57:51

Is that possible, oh great wizard of the... I hear something.

57:56

You there, Mr. Bradford, sir? I don't hear anything at all. Doo -doo -doo.

58:03

I heard something. No, I didn't hear anything. You didn't hear me. There you are. There I am. We just got to...

58:09

Just, you know, the guys in the other wall, they're not used to when I throw them curves. That's okay, that's okay. You're probably a pretty tricky guy to work with.

58:15

I'm a tricky guy to work with, but I can find things under the hoods of cars.

58:23

So, we just want to keep that in mind. I won't say anything more than that. Save some face in front of all your audio.

58:30

That's quite true, yes. I appreciate it. And when people roleplay about the cannon with me, I have great responses.

58:38

You do, you do. Okay, anyways. But we don't know each other, do we? No, no sir, not at all.

58:44

This is the first time I've ever heard your voice. That's right, sure. Anyways, your questions, sir.

58:51

Yeah, Doug Moo came to our seminary this week, and he gave some info on E .P.

58:57

Sanders, N .T. Wright, James Dunn, and referred to New Perspectivism a little bit, but he never got into the view of their justification.

59:08

And I know that, you know, you've got to throw in Fuller in there sometimes, and John Piper has battled with this view of justification and so forth.

59:20

And I've never heard anybody... Who's the fellow that is with Piper? What's the name?

59:28

He's written a bunch of books for Zondervan that really sort of promotes the same thing. The name's just completely escaping me.

59:34

I have no idea. Okay, all right. Well, you know, and I look at Piper's view of justification on DesiringGod .org,

59:41

and I just don't understand what the New Perspective view of justification is.

59:47

And I was wondering if you had dealt with it, if you had confronted it, if you had refuted it, or if you could just tell me exactly what it is they're saying.

59:56

Well, I don't know that I can, because I think all those people that you listed would probably in some way, shape, or form want to be differentiated from everybody else, because there's all these little things going on.

01:00:08

In fact, I was speaking with a pastor on Long Island a few weeks ago about John Armstrong and John Piper and all the stuff that's going on in regards to that.

01:00:20

And as far as the modern folks, as far as Piper and Armstrong and stuff like that, obviously it's something that if I can ever get done dealing with the stuff

01:00:29

I'm dealing with, I need to because I've written on justification. And I can't tell you what

01:00:34

Armstrong is saying right now. I've read a few newsletters where he was going back and forth with questioners about it about a year and a half ago, and the only thing

01:00:46

I could say at that point was, boy, I'd like to have some more clarification on this down the road at that point.

01:00:53

But basically, what I'm seeing happening, especially among scholarly stuff, and of course you're dealing with more scholarly material, you've probably seen

01:01:02

Moo's section on this in his rather large commentary on Romans, where he takes on these folks and basically says, look, we're starting from the wrong viewpoint here.

01:01:14

I think Sanders has misrepresented the Jewish viewpoint at this time with the emphasis on covenants, and actually there was more legalism there than he wants to admit and all the rest of that stuff.

01:01:26

But for me, I sort of stand back, and I don't fit into the scholarly realm myself.

01:01:33

I'm sort of a little rough on the edges. And I go, well, wait a minute, excuse me, excuse me for being stupid, but are we actually saying, and it almost sounds to me like Sanders and some of the others are saying this, that Paul overreacted, that Paul misunderstood his own opponents.

01:01:54

And I really have to stand back and go, excuse me, how do you view

01:01:59

Scripture again? Where are you coming from here? And that's sort of why I didn't address it in the

01:02:04

Justification book, because it would have been inconsistent for me to do so. At the beginning of the book I say, look, there's all sorts of stuff out there on Justification.

01:02:11

What I want to do is not bore people to tears with a history of the current debates on Justification.

01:02:18

What's missing is a modern presentation of the Pauline doctrine from Scripture in an exegetical sense.

01:02:27

And I start from the assumption that we actually can determine the nature of the truth of the

01:02:32

Gospel, because Scripture is consistent with itself. I don't get the feeling that, and of course

01:02:37

I'm not talking about Piper Armstrong at this point, but the other folks, I don't get the feeling that there is quite as strong a commitment to the absolute consistency of Scripture as a body of revelation from those folks as I certainly hold.

01:02:53

That then is, we come at it from a very, very, very different perspective. They would look at something that I've written as basically a throwback to the time of the

01:03:03

Reformation. And many of them would feel, hey, we've already gotten way past that stuff. And sadly, most seminaries today would actually view it the same way.

01:03:12

That's a sad statement, but I think you probably recognize that the number of seminaries today that would stand firm for the idea that Scripture as a whole is theanustos, and that we can dig into it as deeply as we desire and find it to be consistent with itself, is very small.

01:03:31

Very small indeed. Would you agree with that? Oh yes, yes, I would, definitely. There are very few seminaries left in the nation.

01:03:38

I'm very glad that he did address it. There really needs to be some open discussion of this stuff in the near future in regards to what's

01:03:51

John Armstrong's view. My understanding is that John Piper doesn't agree with some of the applications that are being made there.

01:04:01

I don't know, I haven't talked with these folks, but there really does need to be some discussion of it because I really think we need to hold firmly to the concept that we have to allow

01:04:12

Scripture to be the final authority. Here's an example to demonstrate to everybody that the application of sola scriptura can be handled without people beating each other senseless with ad hominem argumentation.

01:04:28

That's what I would really like to see happen, and I think the Church would be greatly blessed by it. Well, if you could ever address the view from sola scriptura without presupposing

01:04:41

E .P. Sanders' biases on what Jews thought in the first century

01:04:47

B .C. and A .D. Well, I would have to ask, don't you think we probably have enough between 1st and 2nd

01:04:56

Thessalonians, Galatians, Acts, and Romans to at least conclude what the

01:05:03

Apostle Paul thought they were? And so my question then becomes, alright, are we saying that Paul was dealing with only a minority group in Judaism?

01:05:14

Does he give us any indication that he's thinking that this is... Now, I recognize most

01:05:19

Jews don't believe this, but there's this small group that follows me around that are a real pain, and I don't get that feeling whatsoever.

01:05:28

In fact, he speaks in very wide terms.

01:05:33

And where else do we have, in antiquity, a perspective from a person who was raised at the feet of Gamaliel as to what the

01:05:47

Jews really thought concerning their relationship with God? I look at Romans chapter 2, and I go, wow,

01:05:55

I mean, how can I not take this as being the final word on the subject?

01:06:04

Well, I agree. I mean, for him to be a Jew among Jews, you know, the top

01:06:10

Pharisee of his day, I don't think he's misrepresenting the faction at all of what is being said.

01:06:17

But I still haven't heard a good argument, or even a public evangelical argument, because apparently

01:06:26

Moo reported that many evangelicals are starting to take on aspects of New Perspectivism.

01:06:32

And he started naming them, and they are Wheaton now. Yes, oh yes, yes, yes, in fact, hold on a second, let me move my thing back here.

01:06:40

It's actually in my trash can here. Oh, that was my shredder going off.

01:06:46

Thankfully my finger was not in it. Here it is. Oh, it's all crunched up. I can't believe

01:06:52

I threw this out. Here it is. Well, I can believe I threw it out. Does that sound like Rush Limbaugh when

01:06:57

I do that? I'm really not sure. Wheaton Theology Conference, Catholics and Evangelicals in Conversation, April 11th through the 13th.

01:07:06

Who are the speakers here? Let me give you here, we've got

01:07:13

William Shea, Mark Knoll, Susan K. Wood from St. John's University, J.

01:07:19

Darrell Charles Taylor University, J. I. Packer, Regent College. Then we have

01:07:24

Brian Daly from Notre Dame, Gerald Bray from Beeson, Howard Lowen from Fuller, Margaret O 'Gara

01:07:33

St. Michael's, Richard John Newhouse, Timothy George, who has given the keynote address,

01:07:40

Thomas Rausch, Loyola Marymount, and R .E. McKenzie, Trinity International University.

01:07:47

So you think this is part of an ecumenical movement to try to bring Protestants and Romanists together? Well, I don't know that it's necessarily, you know,

01:07:58

I'm not real big on conspiracies, but I think that the willingness for cooperation certainly goes to the point where Evangelicals who are no longer, and this is the main thesis of The God Who Justifies, Evangelicals who are no longer passionate about the fundamentals of Sola Fide and the necessity of Sola Fide, and it was shown with ECT almost a decade ago now that that passion is lacking for many in leadership positions.

01:08:41

Once that passion is lacking, it is very, very easy to not only diminish the centrality of justification, but then to start looking for reasons to, in essence, modify one's view of justification anyways, and the

01:08:57

Sanders New Perspectivism gives you a perfect excuse. It looks really scholarly, it looks like it's really rooted in history, and therefore we can sort of move this whole issue off to the side and we can cooperate together.

01:09:11

And on the other side, and Roman Catholic apologists will tell you this, they recognize that their theologians, especially their

01:09:19

Biblical theologians, are willing to question the normative nature of, say,

01:09:26

Tridentine theology, and they are willing to express viewpoints and perspectives that are much more

01:09:36

Protestant than you would expect coming from Roman Catholicism. I've said many times,

01:09:41

I'm not sure if you've had a call in your seminary training, I'm letting people know more than you probably want them to know, but the commentary is on James.

01:09:53

I don't know if you've had an opportunity to work through The God Who Justifies, but I spent a long time in James 2, and one of the best commentaries was

01:10:01

Luke Timothy Johnson. And he's a Catholic, for crying out loud, and he was actually much more

01:10:06

Biblical in his exegesis than any of the liberal Protestants were, and so that bothers

01:10:13

Roman Catholic apologists. I mean, Roman Catholic apologists do not like to have Luke Timothy Johnson quoted to them, but what that means is there is a widening gap there to where Roman Catholic theologians are recognizing these things and are willing to say these things, and of course in America, Rome gives them that freedom, so on and so forth.

01:10:33

So you're exactly right, there's going to be more discussions about these things coming up in the future, and I just wish

01:10:43

I could be smack dab in the middle of it, but right now there's just so many things that need to be handled.

01:10:51

How far are you from graduation? I've got about two semesters left. Two semesters left, you know,

01:10:57

I think it would be a great thing for you to get involved. There you go.

01:11:03

Well, I appreciate the questions and the answers. Okay, thanks a lot, sir. Have a good one. God bless.

01:11:08

Bye. Bye -bye. 866 -854 -6763. We are still full up on the phone lines here, and let's go ahead and talk with Ashraf in Detroit real quickly, and then we have

01:11:25

Johnny, we have Pierre, and we're going to try to get everybody in here before the end of the program if we can.

01:11:31

So Ashraf, are you there? Yep, hello. How are you doing, sir? Pretty good. My question is on regeneration.

01:11:37

Yes, sir. And the means by which God regenerates. I guess the main text that my friends and I are talking about is 1

01:11:46

Peter 1, 2, 3. 123. Yeah, sorry. I'm reading it off the chat channel.

01:11:51

Yes, so am I. For you have been born again, not of seed, which is perishable, but imperishable it is through the living, enduring word of God.

01:11:58

Right. That's one of them. There's another one from, I think, Jude. But the question is the means by which

01:12:05

God regenerates. Is it through the gospel? Is it solely by the gospel? Or can it be apart from the gospel?

01:12:14

Very good question. I think that this does reveal to us the fact that in God's providence, we see, for example, in Romans, that Paul says, how shall

01:12:25

I believe unless someone proclaims the message to them, unless there is a preacher, that in God's decree, he has chosen to bring about the regeneration of his people through the proclamation of the word.

01:12:38

And when you think about it, what is regeneration? Regeneration is being raised to spiritual life.

01:12:44

And notice it does not say that it is the gospel that itself regenerates. That's the work of the

01:12:49

Holy Spirit of God. It is the means through which the Holy Spirit brings us about is through that preached message.

01:12:54

Now, that would mean that regeneration is the work of the Spirit in the life of the individual, and then the gospel becomes the means that the

01:13:05

Spirit uses. And, of course, what happens in regeneration? Well, a person's raised to spiritual life.

01:13:11

They're given the gifts of faith and repentance. Well, wait a minute. Faith and repentance require something. What do they require? They require a knowledge of God's message,

01:13:20

God's truth. What's repentance? It's turning from sin. We need to know what sin is. What is faith?

01:13:25

Faith is the acceptance of God's promises. We need to hear God's promises. We need to know what the gospel is to be able to have faith in it.

01:13:31

And so it is a, and this is a term that sometimes we don't like to use because of the erroneous uses by other people, but it is a synergistic relationship.

01:13:43

The Spirit utilizes the Word so that the individual who is raised to spiritual life has knowledge of what they are to do with this life that is theirs.

01:13:54

The faith that is theirs is placed in Jesus Christ, so on and so forth. You know what? I was afraid to use that word myself.

01:13:59

I'm glad you brought that up. Well, we've got to be careful. Sometimes, well, sunergon is a word that occurs in the

01:14:05

Bible. We are called fellow workers with God. So there's beautiful examples of synergy, but the one place where you don't find an example of synergy is this alleged cooperation of the autonomous will of man, who is dead in sin, with the grace of God, which then subjugates the grace of God to the will of man.

01:14:26

So that's the one thing you don't find is that kind of concept. But, yeah, don't let the false teachers steal perfectly good words from us.

01:14:35

So in application of this, could we say that we can preach the gospel to unregenerate people, and by God's grace alone they can be regenerated?

01:14:44

Well, of course. That's what we're always doing. That's what we're talking about. Oh, yeah. When we preach the gospel, we recognize that it's

01:14:50

God who honors that message. It's God who honors that proclamation. And that gospel is going to have one of two effects.

01:14:56

The natural man, without the Spirit of God to enlighten the eyes and to remove that heart of stone and give a heart of flesh, is going to reject that gospel and is going to be hardened in his rejection of that gospel.

01:15:07

But the person who, in God's providence, is the object of His grace, maybe at that time, maybe at a later time, the

01:15:16

Spirit of God applies those things, makes those dry bones to become a living person.

01:15:21

And upon hearing that gospel, we go, Well, that's what I need. That is true. I give my amen, and hence begins our

01:15:30

Christian life. Okay, that's great. Okay. That's exactly what I was looking for. I appreciate it. Okay, thanks a lot, Ashraf.

01:15:35

Bye. God bless. All right, two more calls. Can we get them in in time? I don't know. Let's go ahead and talk with Johnny, then

01:15:41

Pierre. Johnny, can we do this in approximately three minutes? I'll try. I'll just limit it to one question.

01:15:47

All right. I spoke with Dr. Craig Hawkins. I mentioned this to you in the chat channel, and how

01:15:53

Dr. Craig Hawkins mentioned to me something that I had never heard before regarding the nature of Christ's body when

01:16:00

He became a man, and basically that His body was not a mortal nor a corruptible body, but He was able to die by His own will.

01:16:11

Now, the problem is I have never heard this before, and I spoke with Rich about that, and he mentioned that I should speak with my pastor.

01:16:19

I did speak with Pastor Earl and Pastor Mike, and they said that they had never heard that either, so they're going to go and study this.

01:16:27

Okay, so I'm going to you. Okay. Well, basically, I think what's being referred to, and there's no discussion of it.

01:16:36

Let's look at least at what the Bible does say. The Bible says that Jesus voluntarily gave up His life.

01:16:43

He said, So we do know that Jesus had control over His own life, and we know that as the unique incarnate

01:16:57

Son of God, that that was something that He said. Now, why did He have that particular ability?

01:17:06

Well, I would assume that He had that particular capacity and ability because of the hypostatic union.

01:17:14

Well, does that tell us something about the nature of His body? Well, no, but I would assume that what's being asserted is since Jesus did not have a sin nature, being the virgin -born

01:17:27

Son of God, that without the sin nature, He would not be under the curse of sin, and hence comes the idea of being immortal.

01:17:36

Well, immortal, mortal, those are terms used in Scripture primarily in, for example, 1

01:17:43

Corinthians 15, about the contrast between that which is corruptible, of the fallen nature of mankind, and the resurrection body.

01:17:52

Well, would that mean there was no difference between Jesus' pre -death body and His resurrection body?

01:17:58

No, there obviously were differences there. Jesus' resurrection body does have the glorified state, and so there is the same relationship that Paul draws between the seed that is dropped into the ground and dies, and then the plant that comes out.

01:18:15

There's the same relationship between the body that goes into the grave and that which comes out.

01:18:20

Jesus still had the scars upon His hands, so on and so forth. It was a real resurrection. In fact, the very word resurrection means that which died coming to life again, but it exists in a glorified state.

01:18:32

Now, as to the use of immortal and mortal, outside of those categories, that's where I get a little bit uncomfortable using those biblical terms in a context that the

01:18:47

Bible doesn't use them, which may then bring sort of a meaning into them that we don't want to.

01:18:53

Basically what it sounds like to me is it sounds like speculation. And what I like to stick with is, well, we know these as biblical facts.

01:19:01

If you want to speculate based upon those biblical facts, beyond that, that's one thing. But if you're going to do so, make sure that you're differentiating between this is my speculation and this is the biblical fact.

01:19:16

Because when you use a biblical term to describe the end result of your speculation, it sounds like you're saying this is what the

01:19:22

Word of God of certainty teaches. And not all of us are really good at necessarily making those differentiations, but we need to try to.

01:19:30

So either of you would be within the pale of orthodoxy? That's a big pale, man. Pale has got some holes in it, but...

01:19:37

Excuse me while I cough. Well, yeah, I didn't hear anything in what he was saying.

01:19:44

Let's put it this way. I could hear the way you described it in an orthodox way.

01:19:50

That doesn't mean that I'm necessarily hearing it the way that it's actually meant, but I can hear it in an orthodox way.

01:19:57

I checked Dr. Geisler's book on the Encyclopedia of Apologetics, and I was checking out the section on Docetism, and I was just checking it out just to see what it said, and all of a sudden it talked about Christ's body, and how he says the words, it was not inherently mortal, but capable of dying, which seems to be, or at least

01:20:22

I'm assuming, or thinking that that's probably what Dr. Craig Hawkins was trying to say.

01:20:27

I would assume so, too. I really don't think Dr. Hawkins is a Docetist. He's not denying the reality of the physical body in any way.

01:20:34

This is just simply a discussion of sin nature and the results of sin nature and stuff like that.

01:20:40

Okay, well, I'll ask you the question on justification maybe next week, if I can. Well, we'll see what we're doing next week.

01:20:45

Okay, thanks a lot, man. All right, real quickly, let's talk to Pierre. Sovereignty of God and Man's Free Agency, which is going to come up,

01:20:54

I would assume, in the debate coming up April 5th or 6th, I think it's 5th, in Salt Lake City, because it is a question on Mormonism.

01:21:03

Yes, sir? Is that debate going to be available on your website? Yes, sir.

01:21:08

In fact, I think an aleman can verify this for me. I believe we have the tapes of the previous ones we've done, including the one with Richard Hopkins, on a similar issue in regards to free will.

01:21:21

I believe we make that available. I'm not getting any responses from the other side of the wall at the moment, but I think, yes, we do have that available on the website as well.

01:21:30

Well, anyway, I just also wanted to answer one of your questions that you raised last week, kind of threw it up in the air, about the

01:21:37

Latter -day Saints Church, as to whether it was undergoing some sort of paradigm shift toward a more mainstream

01:21:44

Christianity. And I think that President Hinckley answered that in a news conference at the end of the

01:21:53

Olympics. I think somebody may have asked him that question. But anyway, the answer is that the

01:21:59

Church is not undergoing any kind of paradigm shift. There's been no change in the doctrines of the

01:22:04

Church since the days of Joseph Smith. And I think the only thing that's changed is that we're simply trying to make sure that everyone understands that we do believe in Jesus Christ, even though our views of him may be somewhat different than traditional

01:22:19

Christianity, because many people seem to try to picture us as being non -Christian and therefore

01:22:27

Buddhist or something of that nature to those who don't know much about the Church. So we want to make sure people understand that we are believers in Christ.

01:22:36

Well, and of course, we have often pointed out that the Mormon Church claims to believe in Christ.

01:22:42

The issue is which Christ? The issue is, is there more than one God? Has God been a man? I mean, I think we've been accurate about those things.

01:22:48

Our problem that I'm seeing is that when President Hinckley is asked directly on Larry King's show, do you believe that God was once a man?

01:22:58

I don't think Brigham Young or Joseph Smith would have answered, well, we're not really sure about things like that.

01:23:06

Now, I know that then in conference he then said, I know what we believe, and everybody chuckles. But I'm not the only one,

01:23:13

Pierre, who is seeing a real difference between the

01:23:20

Mormonism of, well, let's put it this way. Wouldn't you admit that there's a pretty big difference between the

01:23:27

Mormonism of how Gordon Hinckley presents it and Bruce R.

01:23:34

McConkie presented it? Well, I think the doctrines are the same. I think that the way it's presented might be different, yes.

01:23:43

I think it's a sort of, I guess you could say, a public relations situation. Is it an emphasis thing? I mean, is it a spin thing?

01:23:49

No, I don't think it's an emphasis thing at all. I don't think things have changed at all. I mean, I've been a member of the Church for 33 years.

01:23:54

I don't see where any of the doctrines have changed. Do you still hear, if I can ask you, we're about out of time, but do you still hear in the priesthood meetings, do you still hear a discussion of things such as exaltation or the necessity of worthiness, that God himself went through a mortal probation?

01:24:14

Are those things still discussed within the Church? Not that God himself, but the concepts are still there.

01:24:25

Well, you know, Pierre, I'm sorry we ran out of time. I'd like to talk to you some more about it. Please keep listening. We do talk about Mormonism.

01:24:32

I may do a program on what we see as the shifting changes, and your insights would be very, very welcome.

01:24:38

And I really appreciate your call today. Thank you very much. Okay. All right. Thank you, sir. Hey, real quickly, straightgate .com

01:24:44

is back on the air, folks. Our archives are back, and the radio programs and debates and all that neat, fun stuff, www .straightgate

01:24:52

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01:24:59

Stephen Luker is a good man, and we appreciate all the work that he does. And you can get back on there and listen.

01:25:04

In fact, if you're listening to us on archive, you already knew that. Anyways, it's been quite the program today.

01:25:10

I have been talking very quickly, and we're out of time, and we'll see you next week here on The Dividing Line. The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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