Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses on the Internet

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is within us, yet to give this answer with gentleness and reverence. Your host is
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Dr. James White, director of Alpha and Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. If you'd like to talk with Dr.
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White, you can call now by dialing 602 -274 -1360. That's 602 -274 -1360.
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Or if you're out of the Metro Phoenix dialing area, it's 1 -888 -550 -1360.
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That's 1 -888 -550 -1360. And now, with today's topic, here's
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James White. And welcome to The Dividing Line this Saturday afternoon. My name is James White, and yes,
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I have returned. I have a feeling some folks thought that I had abandoned my duties here on Saturday afternoons, but in reality
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I have been traveling, mainly down to Tucson, teaching systematic theology for the
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Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, and not doing that this weekend, and so we have the opportunity of being here.
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Now next week, by the way, next week a little housekeeping information here.
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We won't be here. Nobody will be here. I won't be here, and Rich Pierce won't be here, and Sean won't be here.
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Nobody's going to be here, and there is a reason for that. We are preempted, and don't get me on the reason why we're preempted.
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That would be another complete subject that we don't need to talk about quite this week, maybe sometime in the future, but we are here this week, and I have some topics on the table.
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We will be getting to our announced topic in giving answers to Jehovah's Witnesses on some specific subjects, but a couple things came across my desk this week
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I wanted to share with you that I thought you might find interesting and might prompt some conversation.
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The Salt Lake Tribune, Friday, October 15th, 1999, ran the following article.
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It says, Website prompts Mormon Church to sue critics. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day
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Saints is suing long -time critics Gerald and Sandra Tanner, accusing them of violating copyright laws by posting information from an internal church handbook on the
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Internet. The Tanners run Utah Lighthouse Ministry in Salt Lake City, a non -profit organization offering books, a newsletter, and a website disputing
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LDS Church teachings and practices. And for those of you stepping out of the article here for a moment, for those of you who are not familiar with the whole subject, the information from Gerald and Sandra Tanner is always top notch.
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They have a tremendous history of accuracy and fairness in their research and in their conclusions on Mormonism.
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They've been doing this for many, many years, and the Utah Lighthouse Ministry is a ministry well worth your support and your prayers as well.
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Continuing off the article, until this week, their website at www .utlm .org
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included pages from the Church Handbook of Instructions, Book 1, Stake Presidencies, and Bishoprics, a guidebook printed by the
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LDS Church in 1998, to assist its lay clergy. Wednesday, Intellectual Reserve Inc.,
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known as IRI, demanded the removal of the pages from the Internet and sued the
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Tanners in federal court. IRI, created in 1997, is the Utah corporation that owns the copyrights and other intellectual property assets used by the
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Church. The handbook is protected by registered copyright and its distribution is limited to Church officers,
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IRI said in its lawsuit. Officers who leave their positions must return their copy, the suit said.
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The Tanners had posted a chapter outlining Church discipline procedures and additional pages about requests to remove names from Church membership roles.
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Sandra Tanner said she posted the information as a public service for members and inactive Mormons interested in having their names removed.
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You can quit going and never go for 30 years and they still call you a member, she said. The Mormon public has the right to know what the ground rules are.
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It's something I have received requests on for 40 years. She said the handbook contents were provided to the
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Tanners anonymously this summer on a computer disk. The Tanners removed the pages within hours of receiving a demand from IRI on Wednesday.
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However, IRI proceeded with the lawsuit because it also wants the Tanners to post a notice acknowledging they violated
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IRI copyrights and asking readers to destroy any portions they copied or downloaded, said
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IRI attorney Bernie S. Broadbent. The core issue here is the infringement of copyrights,
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Broadbent said. IRI has asked U .S. District Judge Tina Campbell to issue a temporary restraining order requiring the
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Tanners to post the notice, delete the pages, and refrain from future copyright violations.
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A hearing is scheduled Monday. Attorney Brian Barnard, who represents the Tanners, will argue they have already removed the material and added the notice via their posting of IRI's demand letter.
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But Broadbent said IRI believes readers will be more likely to respond to a notice from the Tanners themselves.
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Sandra Tanner said she questions whether posting the pages violated copyright law under the
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Fair Use Doctrine, portions of a copyrighted work can be legally reproduced for criticism, news reporting, scholarship, or other limited reasons.
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Barnard said he is still researching whether the Tanners' postings may be protected by the doctrine. Broadbent argues there are violations of IRI copyright, quote, because the handbook is unpublished and because there was so much of it that was published on the website, end quote.
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Well, if it's not published, how can you have a copyright on something that's unpublished? I haven't figured that one out. Well, in other words, here's the situation.
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For a long time, we have had a little handout that we used to send out to folks, and I'm not even sure if it's, is it on the webpage,
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Rich? It's not on the webpage. It needs to be on the webpage. You will fix that on the webpage, will you not? Yes, Rich has two thumbs up saying you better believe it.
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We have a sample letter that you can use to send to the LDS Church, guaranteed to get you removed from the roles of the
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LDS Church. And there are people who struggle with this. There are people who want to know, where do I send the letters to, what are the addresses, what do
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I need to say, so on and so forth. And so what the Tanners did is they take this manual that they were provided, and they don't reproduce the whole thing.
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They're not charging anything for it. They're not making any money off of it. And they're simply providing people information about how the
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Mormon Church works when it comes to disciplinary reviews and discipline of its members and stuff like that.
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And the main reason I bring this up is not only for those of you who are in the audience to pray for the Tanners and to support them in this situation as well, but also, most importantly, you know, if you want to know what, for example,
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I'm an elder to the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. If you want to know how we deal with situations like that, we have a church constitution.
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We have a confession of faith. If you want to know really clearly the ground rules,
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I suggest to you something called the Bible, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus would be a good place to start.
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We don't have secret ceremonies and secret documents and these rules and regulations and hoops you have to jump through and all the rest of that kind of stuff, because I don't think that's what
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Christianity is about. What we do, the message we proclaim, it's open.
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It is clear to everyone. We proclaim the whole counsel of God. We distribute the
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Bible to everybody. We don't have an edited version of the Bible for the people outside and then the real version for the people inside.
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Hey, it's all out there. That's not the case with Mormonism, and I think there is an issue to be brought up in regards to the fact that the scriptures teach us that we are to be open and honest in our dealings with others and open and clear in presenting what we believe to others.
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And I think what we have is a situation here where IRI is using legal means to attempt to, in essence, shut down this information in regards to how you can most easily have your name removed from the rolls of the
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LDS Church, because they don't want you to remove your name from the rolls of the
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LDS Church. That's not something that is high on their priority list. And it's interesting that right at the same time
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I have another piece of information that came to me, again electronically this week.
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And this sort of takes us to the subject that we're going to be looking at, and that is the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society.
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Each month the society publishes something called our Kingdom Ministry, KM for short.
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And the Kingdom Ministry is sort of similar to what the Mormon thing is. It's really, it is not for distribution to people outside, it's for distribution only to people within the
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Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, even more so than the Watchtower. I mean, if you're familiar with the publications of the
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Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, they have the Awake magazine, which is the primary magazine they give to people outside of the society.
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And then they have the Watchtower magazine, which is more aimed toward people within the society. That's what they use for their
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Watchtower studies. And if you go to a Watchtower study at the Kingdom Hall, everybody's got their Watchtower and it's got these little questions at the bottom of the page, and they ask the questions and they stick a microphone down the row and you answer the questions based upon what you were reading, so on and so forth.
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So the Kingdom Ministry, however, is even more of a guarded thing. It's much more internal in being distributed specifically to the members of the
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Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. In the November Kingdom Ministry, there is an article,
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Use of the Internet, Be Alert to the Dangers. And this was a special four -page insert.
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So this is not something they do with great regularity, putting a special insert in. And so what you have going on here, as a result of this particular
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Kingdom Ministry, is that over the past couple of weeks since this came out, a number of websites that had been sponsored by active -believing
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Jehovah's Witnesses have disappeared. They've simply shut down. And there is a noticeable retraction of the activity of what
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I called a few weeks ago, the last time I was on and we talked about some of these folks, a noticeable retraction or diminishment in the activity of the
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Watchtower apologists online, the Internet Watchtower apologists. Now, a lot of us had been speculating as to when something like this would happen.
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Indeed, the Internet presents quite a challenge to the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. You need to realize that even more so, far more so than the
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LDS Church, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society keeps tremendous tight control over its people, over what they read, over what they expose themselves to, and especially over how they choose to present their own doctrine and belief.
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The Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses in the headquarters, Bethel headquarters in Brooklyn, want to keep tight control over exactly how they present their beliefs.
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And there's a real obvious reason for this, a very obvious reason. You see, the Watchtower Society changes its theology, and as they change their theology to attempt to, for example right now, they're very subtly, but very clearly, laying the groundwork to change their 1914 prophecy.
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They are working on laying the groundwork to buy themselves some more time. Their 1914 prophecy is a failure, it hasn't worked, and now they need to come up with some way of building in some extra time.
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And so, you can see in this way and that, that they are subtly providing for a way of saying, well, we never really meant it to be understood this way.
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What we meant it to be understood was like this. But you have to have absolute control over the promulgation of your doctrinal statements to be able to do this.
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And so, the Watchtower Society has not ever shown itself overly friendly, even to its own members who become zealous in the defense of their own beliefs.
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So back in the 1970s, a fellow by the name of Jay Hess was well known as a Watchtower apologist, and he began publishing in defense of the
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Society. They disfellowshipped him for, quote, running ahead of the Brethren.
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They want to have full and complete control over the dissemination of their doctrinal beliefs.
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So, if you're Jehovah's Witness, don't get too excited, because they might get you in trouble if you were to run ahead of the
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Brethren, shall we say. So obviously, as people like Gregory Stafford have begun publishing in defense of the
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Society, a lot of us have been sitting back and going, hmm, how's the Society going to deal with this?
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Last November, in Orlando, I presented a paper at the Evangelical Theological Society, basically discussing this very issue of Gregory Stafford's book, and asking the question, how's the
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Society going to deal with the phenomena of the Internet? How is the
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Society going to react, a monolithic, totally authoritarian group?
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How are they going to respond to the fact that, look, they can't keep their people from being exposed to this type of information, and so how are they going to deal with people like a
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Gregory Stafford, who clearly takes the time to read books that are opposed to the
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Watchtower Society. Now, the Watchtower Society tells people, don't do that. Don't read such books. Don't expose yourself to such things.
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How are they going to respond to that? And now, the question being, how are they going to respond to Jehovah's Witnesses, who create websites specifically for fellow
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Jehovah's Witnesses? Now, I've known for a long time, we have a worldwide chat room in the
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Internet, in what's called Internet Relay Chat, IRC. You can get details as to how to get into the room and chat with us and things like that, on our webpage, it's www .aomin
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.org. And thank you very much, Rich, I know you appreciate getting a little clap in there.
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You can go there and get information, and I've known for a long time that there were other chat rooms out there specifically for Jehovah's Witnesses.
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We have some folks come into our chat room. One fellow by the name of Cunningham who comes in and is sort of an expert on these things, and he had directed me to some of these, and in a number of them, you have to be able to answer certain questions to even get into the chat room and talk.
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They'll ask you, for example, what is the scripture verse for this week in the
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Watchtower or in the Kingdom Ministry or something like that. It would be information that only a Jehovah's Witness would know.
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So I knew they had chat rooms out there, but they were protected, and they have websites where, again, they protect themselves, because they know that there's all sorts of folks that want to get into these chat rooms, want to share the
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Gospel with these folks, want to talk about the various false prophecies of the Watchtower Society, mistranslations in the
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New World Translation, whatever it might be. So I knew they were there. Those specific types of chat rooms, those specific types of webpages, are specifically addressed in this new
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Kingdom Ministry. Let me just read a couple things that this particular Kingdom Ministry says.
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The seventh point, and I forget how many points there were here, there's a large number of them, more than 30,
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I think there's, I sound like Rush Limbaugh here. 36 of them. I'm going to rush through all my pages here next to the microphone.
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36 of them. Point number seven, electronic mail can be sent to and received from people you do not know.
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Well, anyone with an email account does know that particular fact to be the case. The same is true when you converse electronically in a forum or in a chat room.
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Participants may at times claim to be Jehovah's Witnesses, but often they are not. Someone may claim to be a youth when he or she is not, or a person may even falsely claim to be of a certain gender.
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Information number eight, information passed on to you may come in the form of experiences or comments about our beliefs.
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This information is passed on to others who in turn pass it on to still others. The information is generally not verifiable and may be untrue.
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The comments may be a cover for spreading apostate reasoning. Number nine, with this danger in mind, if you use the internet, ask yourself, why do
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I use it? What do I use it for? I'm sorry, what do I use it for? Is there a possibility that I could be harmed spiritually by how
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I am using it? Could I be contributing to the spiritual injury of others? Number ten has a capitalized title,
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Websites of Jehovah's Witnesses. Consider for example some internet sites set up by individuals who claim to be
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Jehovah's Witnesses. They invite you to visit their websites to read experiences posted by others who claim to be
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Witnesses. You are encouraged to share your thoughts and views about the society's literature. Some give recommendations about presentations that could be used in the field ministry.
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These sites offer chat rooms for individuals to connect to, allowing live communication with others similar to talking on the telephone.
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They often point you to other sites where you can have online association with Jehovah's Witnesses around the world. But can you tell for certain that these contacts have not been planted by apostates?
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Number eleven, having association via the internet may not be consistent with the recommendation found in Ephesians 5, 15 -17.
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The Apostle Paul wrote, Keep strict watch that how you walk is not as unwise, but as wise persons, buying out the opportune time for yourselves, because the days are wicked.
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This account seeks becoming unreasonable, but go on perceiving what the will of Jehovah is.
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That is the worst translation! My goodness! I'm teaching a first year class right now, and if any of those folks are listening, they could do better than that with that passage.
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I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I should not be so critical, but that is the worst translation.
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I don't know why anyone thinks that's a scholarly translation. Anyways, continuing on, number fourteen, thirteen says,
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It has become apparent that the opposite is true. Some websites are clearly vehicles for apostate propaganda.
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And there are, by the way, folks, all sorts of websites designed to help Jehovah's Witnesses. Ours is one of them.
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We don't claim to be Jehovah's Witnesses, we're very open with what we do, but we have information on the Witnesses on our website.
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Such websites may claim otherwise, and those who sponsor a site may give a detailed explanation to affirm that they truly are
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Jehovah's Witnesses. They may even request information from you in order to verify you are one of Jehovah's Witnesses.
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When we go to Kingdom Hall, number fifteen says, There is no question that we are with our brothers. We know them. No one requires authentication of this, because the brotherly love manifested makes it obvious.
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We are not personally required to provide credentials to prove that we are one of Jehovah's Witnesses. It is here that we find true interchange of encouragement that Paul spoke about in Hebrews 10, 24, and 25.
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Websites that encourage online association cannot be depended on to provide this. Having in mind the words of Psalm 26, 4, and 5 can alert us to dangers that could easily be encountered when using websites on the internet.
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Well, what's the long and short of all this? The long and short of this, yes, Big Brother Watchtower is watching,
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Rich, that's exactly right. The long and short of all this is that we have noticed that a number of Jehovah's Witness websites, and these, as far as we could tell, were most clearly internet websites that were being provided by Jehovah's Witnesses who thought they were providing a ministry to their brothers and sisters in the movement, have simply disappeared.
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And we can expect that others will do so as well. What does this have to, what does this mean for people like a
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Gregory Stafford, for people like a Martin Smarts, or a Rick Stamp? I don't know.
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I don't know. We are arranging right now, I've been working very hard at trying to arrange certain individuals to engage in the debate that I mentioned the last time
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I was on on our website. We have a few people signed up, but I just got turned down by a
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BYU professor yesterday. I'm still looking for the Mormon representative and the Roman Catholic representative for our website debate, and I did see a message that Mr.
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Stafford has posted saying he's still going to be doing that. But could these folks just simply disappear from the internet because of action by the
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Watchtower Society? Well, you better know one thing. If the elders of those congregations bring those folks in and sit down with them, you better believe that could happen.
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They have that kind of authority. They have that kind of power where they could simply tell folks, yet, no more, cease and desist.
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And then it would be up to them to decide whether they continue their association with the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society or whether they don't.
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If they're obviously faithful, believing Jehovah's Witnesses, then they would simply stop doing that. It is interesting to observe.
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We will try to keep you up to date with new information as it comes along, and if you have some comments on that, we do have one caller online,
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John of Phoenix. We'll get to you in just a moment. You can get involved at 602 -274 -1360, 602 -274 -1360, if you're outside the
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Phoenix dialing area, and I know that I listen to the station as I'm down in Tucson. It's sort of tough to pick up a little bit during the middle of the day, but it can get that far.
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We are the 50 ,000 watts of the Q Giant here in the desert, 1 -888 -550 -1360, 1 -888 -550 -1360, if you are outside of the
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Phoenix dialing area, otherwise it's 602 -274 -1360.
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For your comments and your questions and answering Jehovah's Witnesses, we have a caller online. We'll go ahead and take that call here, and let's talk to John in Phoenix.
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Hi, John. Hi, James. How are you doing? Doing pretty good. Good. Hey, I have two questions for you. One is regarding the
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Jehovah's Witnesses, and the other one is a different issue. I used to go out and witness the Witnesses on Saturday morning when
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I'd see them out there, and I'd hand them sheets or tracts that I put together on the
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Trinity and stuff, and they'd just keep their hands by their side, and they'd receive me like I was
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Satan himself. I mean, why are they all on it? Oh, I know. Why are you doing this to us? I know.
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The poor people are so brainwashed. It's unbelievable. But I do have one guy that I correspond with, and my latest correspondence with him was, you know,
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I had wrote him about John 5 .18 where it says, this is why the Jews sought more to kill
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Jesus, not only because he was breaking the Sabbath, but because he was calling God his own father, making himself equal with God.
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And his approach was to attack the entire scripture by saying, do you think
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Jesus would really break the Sabbath? And, of course, if I would say no, then he'd say, well, then why would you believe their statement saying he was making himself equal to God?
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But I wrote him back saying, yeah, Jesus did break the Sabbath, and according to the letter of the law, he broke it.
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I even quoted him scriptures on David eating the showbread from Matthew 12 .5. And then
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I went on to say that actually Jesus' discourse in 5 .19
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on is an excellent testimony as to his equality with the Father. But was
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I correct in my statement? Well, I think the standard Jehovah's Witness response is that 5 .18
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is not giving us the words of John, but giving us the words of the Jews, and saying, well, they were wrong about this, and the standard
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Jehovah's Witness response is 5 .19 and following is actually a denial of the deity of Christ, because he says the
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Son can do nothing of himself, but only what he sees the Father doing, and so on and so forth. So they would say, well, 5 .18
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doesn't really teach the deity of Christ because of that. However, I think this is one place where sometimes our
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English Bible verse divisions lead astray. The key really is to see the connection between 5 .17
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and 5 .18. The context is Jesus has healed on the Sabbath day, and there's a persecution going on, starting like in verse 16, for this reason the
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Jews were persecuting Jesus because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. But he answered them, my
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Father is working until now, and I myself am working. Very rarely will you find either
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Christians or Jehovah's Witnesses discussing 5 .18 in the context of 5 .17.
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Now obviously when John wrote this, there was no chapter and verse divisions, and this was all one giant paragraph of capital letters with no spaces between words.
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And we tended to separate these two out. But, verse 18 says, for this reason, therefore, the
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Jews were seeking all the more to kill him. What? Because of what he just said. Well a lot of folks never take the time to think, what does
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Jesus say this? My Father is working until now, and I myself am working. Why would the Jews find that so offensive?
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Well they would find it so offensive because in Jewish belief, they recognized that Jehovah God works on the
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Sabbath. They recognize that God continues to cause the sun to rise, and the clouds to drop rain, and the wind to blow, and the little seeds to grow, and butterflies to do whatever butterflies do.
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God continues to uphold the created order on the Sabbath day. God works on the
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Sabbath day. The Sabbath is created for men, not for God, and they recognize that God works on the
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Sabbath day. So when Jesus says, my Father is working until now, and I myself am working, he is substantiating his setting aright the created order and healing this man, on the same basis that the
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Jews believed that God could work on the Sabbath, and that is, he's God. And so when the passage says that he was calling
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God his own Father, making himself equal with God, that flows from the prerogative, the priority that Jesus claimed for himself in verse 17.
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So when the term breaking the Sabbath is used there, it's actually the Greek term that refers to loosing, and the
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Jews recognized that God did that. And so they were saying, look, if you're claiming a divine prerogative, you're making yourself equal with God, and therefore the persecution.
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Now then it makes perfect sense what chapter 5, verses 19 and on, is telling us.
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Jesus is not here denying his deity, he is, however, very clearly asserting the perfect unity that exists between he and the
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Father. He's not some extra deity out there, the renegade deity who's pursuing his own course.
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What he's doing, what he's saying, how he's ministering, everything he's doing in his life, he's doing at the will of the
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Father. There is a perfect unity that exists between he and the Father. And so when one recognizes what's going on, it all flows together beautifully and perfectly, and we can see what it's all about, and it definitely does testify to the deity of Christ.
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Just a little bit below that is where the Lord Jesus says that the Father gives life, verse 21, just as the
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Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom he wishes. We translated that passage in our
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Greek class on Thursday night at Golden Gate, and I pointed out to the class then, the source of life can only be
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God. To say that the Lord Jesus can give life to whom he wishes, you can't predicate that of Michael the archangel.
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You can't predicate that of a human being or any created thing. To give life as you want and desire is a divine prerogative.
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And so the whole passage speaks to that, but it does so in a beautifully and wonderfully balanced way. So that is what
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I'd present to your friend, and certainly if he's corresponding with you. That's pretty unusual for a person to do, very unusual.
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So press that. Hold on just a moment, I'm going to hold you through the break.
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We need to take a break. We'll come back with John in your phone calls at 602 -274 -1360 here on The Dividing Line.
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We'll be right back. And welcome back to Dividing Line.
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My name is James White, and we are talking about, well, whatever it is you want to talk about. Right now, however, we are talking with John in Phoenix, and John said he had two questions.
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And I, unlike many radio hosts, remember that he said he had two questions, and that's why we held him through the break for question number two.
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Hi, John. Hey, thank you very much. Yes, sir. My second question was this. I was speaking with a friend of mine about Tulip, Calvin's point, and I explained to her,
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I said, if you believe in unconditional election, as taught by Calvin, you really have no basis for assurance of your salvation, because you really won't know until it rolls called to glory, so to speak, if you are the elect or not.
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I mean, you can be zealot, you can go to church and sing the hymns and cry and get emotional, you can go witness and do all this and that.
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But if you take it to its logical conclusion, the unconditional election, you really have no basis for assurance of salvation.
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You know that you know that you know that you're saved. How do you feel about that? About 180 degrees from you.
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I would honestly say that it's just the opposite, simply because if you don't believe that God is the one who saves and saves completely on the basis of his own mercy and grace,
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I don't see what basis you have for assurance. Many people have recognized that if you, by your actions, get yourself into this situation, then you, by your actions, can get yourself out as well.
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I don't see why it follows at all that a person could not have assurance if one believes in unconditional election.
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Now maybe what you're referring to, I do have a real problem with those who claim to have assurance and yet ignore, for example, most people will cite 1
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John 5, 11 -13, these things I've written to you. You may know that because you believe in the name of the
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Son of God that you have eternal life. But they never discuss what these things are. The preceding these things are, we know that no person who loves
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God walks in darkness, hates his brother, loves the world, etc.,
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etc. So there are clearly laid out for us in Scripture these things that help us to avoid presumption.
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And I'm not sure what your background is, but I find presumption a very, very ugly thing.
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I know a lot of churches that are absolutely frozen in their ability to do anything because there's so much driftwood in the pews that if you dare preach the holiness of God or zeal for His truth or anything else, that you're going to have a full -scale rebellion on your hands and the pastor's going to find himself looking for a job the next week.
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So presumption's a dangerous thing. So I would strongly assert that the unconditional electing grace of God, not only taught clearly in Ephesians 1 and elsewhere, is the foundation for assurance because it provides us the foundation that says it is
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God who saves, it is the perfect work of Christ that avails for us, and that if we love that which is about God's nature that the unregenerate man hates, in other words if we love that aspect of God that the lost man detests, that is the greatest evidence of our having truly been regenerated by the
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Spirit of God. So no, I'm not sure how long you've been listening, but we did a series, well,
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I'm not sure how long ago now, but we did the series Responding to Norman Geisler's book, Chosen but Free, and Norm really dislikes unconditional election, and we have an entire tape on that,
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I don't know which one it is, but we'd be glad to track it down for you, on unconditional election where I responded to his criticisms of it.
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But no, I firmly believe that it's very important to believe that and it's quite biblical. Yes, no,
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I just felt, well, my response to her was that I felt that God desires all men to be saved, and His election is more toward the corporate nature, and therefore that would be my assurance of salvation, knowing that it is all of God, but nonetheless it's open to all men.
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So I wouldn't have to wonder, gee, am I one of the elect or not? Well, I again would disagree with that.
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I think if you look at the context of the passage you just cited and say, well, God wants all men to be saved, well, the
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God of the Bible, He rules in heaven and does whatever He pleases. And I really think the issue here is to look at John 6, 44, to look at Jesus' statement that no man can come to Me unless the
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Father who sent Me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day. All those who are drawn are raised up, really you're either stuck with being a universalist, or recognizing that God the
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Father draws His people unto Christ, and He does so efficiently. I think all those, do you have access to the
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Internet? I'm sorry, yeah. All those programs have been put by Stephen Luker, who runs straightgate .com,
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which is linked directly from our website. All those programs have been put into a specific page, and he's put the topics of each of the programs that we did,
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Unconditional Election, the issue you just raised. We did entire hour -long programs on each one of those.
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So you might find those to be useful, and they can be accessed directly off of our webpage, which is www .aomin
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.org. And I think, Rich just told me it started
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June 23rd and ran through August, was the series. Nine weeks. So you might want to take a gander to some of those and see what you think of them.
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Okay? All right, thanks for calling, God bless. Alrighty, I told somebody before the program started,
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I said, I guarantee you that Dennis will call today. Thank you, Dennis, for keeping my predictions right on line there.
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Well, one of these days, when I have the urge to call, I should not call and see if it makes you look bad or whatever. No, I wouldn't do that.
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Oh, just, I was told I'm allowed to make somewhat of an oblique reference. I'll just say, I don't blame you for not being in a certain place the last two evenings.
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Well, Dennis, I would like to say to you, I appreciated your phone call last night. And I'll get myself in trouble and mention it.
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When a Mormon called the program last night, an example was given to him that is purely modalistic.
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It is an explanation of the Trinity that I, two nights, three nights before, on Tuesday night, had pointed out was improper and have discussed previously on various programs as an improper response.
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And so I appreciated the fact that you attempted to provide some correction there, even though for some strange reason, you know, when
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Dennis is on the line, it's really easy for people to hit the off button. And it's just like, poof, it's just amazing.
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Even when you called when I was on, what was it, Tuesday night? Yeah. Was it Jehovah's Witnesses or Roman Catholicism?
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I don't remember which it was. It must have been Jehovah's Witnesses. Okay. It was Tuesday night? Yeah, I missed Monday. You were accidentally disconnected.
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Seriously. It was an accident. They told me the phone line was bad. Well, no. I was sitting here watching and they hit the, he hit the wrong button and went, oh, no.
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And so I can't tell you at least that much. Anyways, that's neither here nor there. Anyway, to tie in, just to briefly tie in what you were just talking about, at least the first, well, one of the points, a phrase came to me, you know, they say no pain, no gain.
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Well, I'd say no fruit, no faith. Yeah. Well, that's James' argument. Anyway, in regards to the
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Trinity, and I really resonate with that statement, I love the Trinity because I do, too. I was thinking,
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I don't know, a couple of weeks ago, I'm going to become a philosophical apologetic, if you will, for the Trinity, because I was just thinking, if God was one in the most simple singular sense, you know, not
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Trinity, but just one person, how could he create, because he would have no sense of otherness, and how could he love, because unlike Whitney Houston theology, the greatest love of all is not to love yourself, but to lay your life down for another.
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Oh, isn't that just one of the most new -agey songs you've ever wanted to hear?
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It's such a shame to hear such a beautiful voice and beautiful music being used to promote such a putrid message.
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But anyways, you are quite correct, and I'm sorry to tell you this, but you are not the first one to come up with that thought.
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I'm not the first great thinker. No, I'm afraid Jonathan Edwards beat you to it.
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In fact, Augustine beat you to it quite some time ago. Well, good company. Yeah, not bad company to be in, but you're exactly right in the sense of especially the expression of love.
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I'm not sure totally how I would defend the concept of otherness, and if anyone's familiar with my work,
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I normally avoid philosophical speculations, but the second element of that, that is the idea of expression of love.
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Jonathan Edwards argued that, in fact, one could come up with an apologetic for the existence of evil in saying that God desired to express mercy as well.
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How else could mercy be expressed unless that is a part of the created order, so on and so forth. But those things are true,
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I think, as far as they go. I personally would say that those types of discussions are best amongst the believers, and that as far as unbelievers go, if they want to object to the biblical revelation,
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I'm not sure how much reasoning is going to really reach them and impact them personally.
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Well, maybe a campus philosophy major or something, I don't know. Yeah, most definitely. Oh, but just remember something,
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I didn't mention this to Rich, but one time I heard the ghost of J. Vernon McGee, as in he lives on through recordings.
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I listened to him both nights when I was coming home from being on the program. I listened to J.
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Vernon McGee talking about Daniel, and Daniel is about to go in the lion's den, and things like that.
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And it was just really wonderful. Yeah, I'd really recognize that imitation if you didn't tell me who it was.
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Anyway, I heard him once talk about, and I know he's not a Jehovah's Witness, but he said, according to the
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Greek, and lots of people say according to the Greek, and they may or may not know what they're talking about, that the cross was actually,
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I don't know exactly how to say it, but it was like a stake. A stake? Yeah, like the same Greek word for a walking stick, or something like that.
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I'm trying to picture Jesus carrying this post after he's beaten a hamburger, but it's kind of hard.
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No, that is a Jehovah's Witness argument. I've not heard J. Vernon McGee say that, but the problem, the quick response, and we need to take a break, the quick response to the
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Jehovah's Witness argument is the plural use of the word nails in his hands.
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There would have only been one nail in his hands, as the Jehovah's Witnesses view it. And the posting of the names above his head, and the fact that we have actually found ossified bodies of people who were crucified with a cross beam on a cross in first century
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Palestine. So, there are a number of problems with the Jehovah's Witness argument, but the simple fact of the matter is, the only reason the
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Jehovah's Witnesses do that is to try to show themselves to be real studiers of the
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Bible, that type of thing. So, anyways Dennis, we need to take a break. Thanks for your call today,
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God bless, and that opens up a line for you at 602 -274 -1360 or 1 -888 -550 -1360.
40:22
Get on the line, get involved. And welcome back to Dividing Line, my name is James White. We have about 13 minutes left together, maybe not even quite that much, and before we go across the pond to Birmingham, England, just another reminder, we won't be here next week.
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No, it's nothing wrong, we'll be here the week after, but next week there's something else going on.
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That's just all I'm going to say about it. Maybe we'll talk about it more some other time in the future, but right now we will safely go across the pond to Birmingham, England, and talk with Martin.
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Martin, hasn't that phone card expired yet? Well, no, not yet James. It's actually a company that you subscribe to, and they just provide you with cheap calls and whatnot.
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Okay, well, what can we do for you today? Hey, by the way, I don't know,
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I probably shouldn't announce this because I'm not sure yet, but we have been given an inkling that the possibility exists in the future, and in the not -too -distant future, that we will be able to be live on the internet.
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Yes, um, Rich said something yesterday. Shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh,
41:33
That's a possibility. Okay, okay. So anyways, go ahead. All right, um, it's just sort of linking in a little bit with what you said.
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I was, um, I might have mentioned a few weeks back that I'd been talking with some Jehovah's Witnesses, and I'd finally got around to talking about the deity of Christ, and I'd gone through the passages in the
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Hebrews and Psalms 102, and Isaiah's temple vision, and they sat around there and sort of gave sort of pretty sort of, you know, fairly lame excuses, and I went through, you know, who is the
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Alpha and the Omega, and who did Thomas say, you know, my Lord and my God, and they were sort of coming up with, you know, and basically with a lame excuse, but it really sort of took the biscuit when, um,
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I took them to Revelation 5. Took the what? Took the biscuit. Took the biscuit. Yes. Okay.
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Reach an extreme. The height of absurdity. Oh, okay. All right. We just need a universal translator online here, that's all.
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Okay. Okay. Um, Revelation 5, 13 and 14, where, um, the lamb and, you know, the father and the lamb is both being worshipped, and this is all, you know, are you trying to say there's idolatry in heaven, or that, you know, there's, you know, creature worship in heaven, and the best thing they could come up with, and it sort of made me sort of clasp my head and think, no, surely not.
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The best they can come up with, when they got to verse 14, they turned around and said, well, it doesn't say the lamb's being worshipped, and you think, oh, goodness sake, well, you know, the context is clear, but this is another point
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I was going to make. Don't you think that this is confirmation of what we've been talking about the last couple of weeks, and sort of the beginning of Romans 1, where you can take the people to these passages, and you can show them clearly, you know, that Jesus is
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Jehovah, and they just look blankly at you, and just say, well, I don't see it. Isn't this confirmation of Jesus' words the reason that you don't hear my words, because you're not our father in heaven?
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Exactly. You don't belong to God, or not literally from God, in John chapter 8. Yeah, it is a constant source of frustration for many who do not understand the role of the
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Spirit of God in opening a person's heart and mind, that they can show them all of the classic passages.
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And they can do it in the proper way. It's not just simply, well, read this verse. It's providing the context, showing why it's relevant, going through the whole thing, and yet there is this tremendous blindness.
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I mean, I have a New World Translation here. So I just happened to open up to Revelation 5 here, and it says,
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And every creature that is in heaven, and on earth, and underneath the earth, and on the sea, and all things in them, I heard saying,
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To the one sitting on the throne, and to the Lamb, be the blessing, and the honor, and the glory, and the might, forever and ever.
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And the four living creatures went saying, Amen, and the elders fell down and worshipped. Now, to separate 13 and 14, and to not recognize that the ascription of praise,
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To the one sitting on the throne, and to the Lamb, be the blessing, and the honor, and the glory, and the might, forever and ever, to not say that that's praise, that that's worship, and that it is directly in line with verse 14, just absolutely makes no sense whatsoever.
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It requires, the Greek term is katakanton, the suppression of the truth.
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And there is in Romans chapter 1 a suppression of the truth of God that every man has. But then, when you get into cults, there is a suppression, there has to be a suppression of truth that is encountered in these groups that carry the
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Bible around, and read from the Bible. And that's what you see happening in a situation where you've got the
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Jehovah's Witnesses, and really, there's nothing that you can do about that. And I have people all the time that say,
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Well, you know, if I could just have you come over and talk to these folks. No, not necessarily at all. You know,
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I can present all the best arguments, and I can throw Greek and Hebrew at them, and all the rest of that stuff. That's not going to change a heart.
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If I can argue them out of a cult, somebody else can come along and argue them into one. There has to be something else going on.
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And people end up going to one extreme or the other. Either they think it's just, if I just arm myself with all the facts, that'll be enough.
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No, it isn't. Or they'll go the other direction, saying, I don't need to worry about being accurate about this, or doing my homework, or having stuff prepared to share with them.
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I'll just pray them into the kingdom. Well, God wants us to grow in His grace and knowledge, and He wants us to be sharp instruments in His hand, and it's a balance of both.
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You have to know what to share, and you can't look at those individuals and really know what they're thinking.
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Because if this gives you some encouragement, in talking with former Jehovah's Witnesses, and this is my experience all the time when
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I speak with them in people's homes, is they are specifically trained not to give any indication to you whatsoever that you're getting through to them, that you've shown them anything they've not seen before.
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In fact, one of the things I strongly encourage people to do is not ask them a point -blank question that requires them to come up with an answer when it's quite obvious they've never even seen this thing before.
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What people will tell you if they've been out with me witnessing to the Mormons and people like that, is I'll say, now,
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I don't expect you to answer this right now, especially if maybe you've not had an opportunity to study this. But looking at this passage, and then that gives them an out, because I've seen a lot of folks come up with an answer and then absolutely go to the wall, defending the most absurd response in the world.
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And they just become attached to it because their entire faith is now dependent upon that. So I try to give them a little bit of an out, in the sense that not that they can forget it, but saying, now,
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I really wish you'd think about that and maybe we can get together sometime and talk about it. But you give them that opportunity to hear something you've not seen before.
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And then they don't have to come up with some wacky answer immediately in response to it. But they're not going to show you.
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You can absolutely devastate their entire position. But they're going to look at you with this nice smile and they're not going to sit there and do what
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Rich and I once went out and talked to two Mormon missionaries. And they actually had to deceive their partners to get time to meet with Rich and I.
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And we go into this missionary's apartment, there's two of them sitting there, and they throw every question in the book at us. And we answer every single one of them.
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And then there's this awkward silence for a moment. And I go, well. And this one missionary, you've got to picture this.
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They're sitting there facing us. We're on this old rickety couch. I was afraid to actually lean back in it because a spring would come through and kill me.
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And they're sitting in these two chairs facing us. And you've got to picture this. The one missionary, I say, well, he reaches down.
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And you know what a Mormon missionary looks like. They've got their white shirt and they've got their tie. And then they've got their little badge. He reaches down, grabs the badge out of his pocket, and throws it over his shoulder across the room and says,
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I don't know what to say. Now, the witnesses are not going to respond that way.
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They're trained a little bit more to walk out and make you feel like you accomplished nothing.
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You don't know whether you did or didn't. Because once that person gets away from that other elder or that other person that's with them, what are they thinking about them?
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Yeah. What was interesting in this particular encounter is that we were talking mainly to the one guy,
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Pete. And we'd gone through a number of things. And he'd raised 1914.
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So I'd gone back at him with actual photocopies from Watchtower. And I basically said to him, well, look, the
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Watchtower have been completely wrong on this. They're either, A, false prophets, or B, a very bad interpreter of the scripture. Do you want to follow them?
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And he actually admitted that the Watchtower had lied. But the interesting thing was the following week when he came back and we talked to the deity of Christ, he'd brought his friend with him.
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And that was, you know, everything that we'd accomplished, his friend just did all the talking and he just sat quietly.
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Yes, yes. And exactly what you said, neither of them wants to show in front of the other one that they, you know,
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I mean, I'm sure if his friend had heard the previous week where he turned around and said, well, okay, yeah, I admit it, the Watchtower have lied here.
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Right. That would have been big trouble. Oh, very much so. You've got to recognize that element of the control that the society exercises over its people is found in the reason they don't send them out alone.
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It's that they are actually encouraged to basically rat on one another when they feel that somebody else is in some way, shape, or form showing some weakness.
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And so keep that in mind. Hence, don't become discouraged because you don't know what kind of seeds you're planting and how they're going to germinate in the future.
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We're out of time there, Martin. Thank you very much for your call. God bless you over there in England. Keep serving the Lord there. And we thank all of you for listening today.
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Please remember, we won't be here next week, but we will be here the next week after that. And Rich asked me, well, am
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I going to be here? I think so. I'm not sure.
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I'm in Illinois next week, but I think I'm going to be here the week after that. I hope so. And you all join with us there on The Dividing Line.