Responding to Pastor Mike Winger on Radio Free Geneva

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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You constantly hear people that are Calvinist harp on this, God's sovereign, God's sovereign, sovereign, sovereign, sovereign.

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They just keep repeating it, and they repeat it so much, you start to think it's a biblical truth. Jesus stands outside the tomb of Lazarus, he says,

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Lazarus, come out, and Lazarus said, I can't, I'm dead. That's not what he did.

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Lazarus came out to me to tell me a dead person can respond to the command of Christ. Well, I can talk over your head like that.

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I know the Hebrew, the Greek, I've done theology, you can tell I know. Do you really believe that it parallels the method of exegesis that we utilize to demonstrate those other things?

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Um, no. Some new

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Calvinists, even pastors, very openly smoke pipes and cigars, just as they drink beer and wine.

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Even Jesus cannot override your unbelief. A verse like that to him, you know what it would sound like if he were listening to it?

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He wouldn't make any sense to him. A self -righteous, legalistic, deceived jerk. And you need to realize that he's gone from predeterminism, now he's speaking of some kind of middle knowledge that God now has to...

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I deny and categorically deny middle knowledge. Then don't beg the question that would demand me to force you to embrace it.

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You're not always talking about necessarily God choosing something for no apparent reason. But you're choosing that meat because it's a favorable meat.

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There's a reason to have the choice of that meat. Deep beneath the faculty cafeteria in New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, safe from all those moderate

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Calvinists, Dave Hunt fans, and those who have read and re -read George Bryson's book, we are radio broadcasting the truth about God's freedom to say for his own eternal glory.

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And welcome to The Dividing Line. You notice I brought two sweaters in today just because I knew we were doing two different programs and this one, a more fun one, because I think this will be more fun, because it's more fun to respond to Mike Winger than to certain other people who remain nameless by a long shot.

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What in the world? Oh yeah, sure. Actually, this is one of about the top five colorful

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Coochies that I own. So I thought... I'm just hoping it don't break a camera. Well, you know, if the cameras can't handle it, then they're just not up to recording the best that we have to offer.

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Anyhow, I actually also owe another RFG to Michael Brown.

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Both Michael Brown and Mike Winger recorded videos back when

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I was in Colorado in July. Yeah, July of this year.

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And I think it was because both of them did at the same time. I never got to either one of them because I sort of felt like,

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OK, I owe a response to both. And it just takes a long time. Mike's video is an hour and a half long.

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So if you figure it takes minimally three times the amount of time to respond to something, you can see what's going to happen here.

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That would take us out to, you know, like five hours. And then it gets a little crazy after that.

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So I just didn't get around to either one. But I didn't forget them. I had the downloads and I knew that eventually we need to get around to them.

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And so I saw Mike on Twitter say something, not about this, but something else.

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And I thought, you know, I need to I need to get around to doing that. So I tracked down the information,

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I tracked down the video and listened to it again. I've listened to it a couple of times. And so we're going to we're going to take a shot at it.

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My gut feeling is, if I do really well, we'll get through to a section where he was talking about intercession.

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And we'll probably have to do that tomorrow because we're doing a program tomorrow. We might as well make it a Radio Free Geneva. And I really because, look,

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I appreciate the fact that Mike started this video. He he played a

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Mighty Fortress on a guitar. You know, he Mike's a really nice guy.

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We had lunch together. I realize there are people who will consider me a compromiser because I would call him my brother and all the rest of the kind of stuff.

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Fine. I'm not going to really not like I've said for a couple of years now. I'm not concerned about the

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Calvinist Kids Club these days. But at the same time,

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Mike, you frustrate me, you just you frustrate me. And here's here's why you frustrate me.

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We're going to play this part. Well, hopefully we'll get to it. You you go to the big three.

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And my assumption, Mike, is that that you have this.

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But when you're responding to a verse, numerous verses that I have addressed rather fully in here and then don't show any knowledge of that.

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It's frustrating, you know, when you when you looked at First Timothy two, four and following and said, now some

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Calvinists say, but then you didn't give the key issue of what Calvinists say you did. You did say that Calvinists say these are kinds of people because it talks about kings and those of authority.

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The whole point, Paul saying, don't limit your your prayers. Even those people who are persecuting you pray for those people are persecuting

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God has his people everywhere. But then you didn't go on to see that the rest of the text talks about Christ as mediator.

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And in fact, when we get into the mediation stuff, probably tomorrow. At one point, you said one thing and another point, it's complete opposite.

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And so it's got to be some clarification there. But you frustrate me because either

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I'm an extremely inept communicator of Reformed Theology, and that's not what people have told me down through the years.

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But either I'm a really inept communicator or there's something keeping you from hearing what

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I have to say. Because, for example, your definition of the

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Trinitarian harmony in the atonement argument doesn't really grasp what's actually being said.

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And fundamentally, what we end, I ended up hearing from you was you called that argument as a trump card that allows me to dismiss biblical passages.

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And that's the exact opposite of what I'm saying. Let me start from the beginning and point out, because this was really,

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I listened again this morning. I'm almost afraid to say that I listened on a bike ride, but I did because there are certain people who, you know, just are going to pick on everything.

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But I listened to it and a number of other things on a bike ride this morning specifically to have it fresh in my mind.

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And here's what

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I want you to hear, and then we'll start interacting with what you actually said. I hope everybody else just gets to listen in to my conversation with Mike, basically.

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I'm inviting you all to participate in that fashion. I get the,

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I hear what you're saying. What you're saying is that you feel that Calvinists have a philosophical system, that's the term you used, a philosophical system that trumps the plain teaching of the

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Bible. And so, when we look at the verses, you think plainly, clearly, refute, limited atonement, that we just subservient them to a philosophical system.

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And what I'm trying to communicate to you, I'm going to use an illustration, and I don't want you to be offended by it.

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I want you to think it through, please, to hear what I'm saying. When I have debated over the years

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Roman Catholics on the subject of justification, if you listen to Jerry Mattis, X.

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Roberts, and Janice, the various Roman Catholics that I've debated over the years on that particular subject, you will see that they will go to passages of Scripture that are not about justification, but that mention the word, and will attempt to build a theology out of them.

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For example, Jesus at one point says, wisdom is justified by her children. There's term justification.

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So wisdom and, you know, the works that the children do, and you start trying to develop this doctrine of justification.

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In, I think the first book I wrote, I think it's in the Fatal Flaw, which is the first book

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I wrote. I think in there, or the second one, one of the two, I used the analogy.

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I said, if you want to know what, if you want to know, you know,

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I got a new car recently. I got a Subaru Forester, and I love it because it's just got gadgets galore.

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I mean, I feel like I'm flying a Star Trek space shuttle. I'm really, all the stuff it's, it can do and all the rest of the stuff.

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So it's got an owner's manual, that's that big. And if you go to the owner, and so it's only become more real instead of less real over time, this illustration, but if you want to know about the lights on your car, you go to the section that tells you about the lights.

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Now you may find passing references to the lights in the section on the battery or the electrical system or maintenance and a listing of the light bulbs, you know, at some point, but that's not where you're going to get, it is unwise to not start with the section on the lights and just derive a doctrine of lights from the section on the battery and the section on maintenance and the section over here, because those sections aren't meant to actually tell you about the lights in the same way when, so I made the application to Roman Catholics.

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If you're going to passages that aren't about justification, when you have a whole section, you have chapters on justification,

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Romans 3, 4, 5, Galatians 2, 3, you've got entire blocks of argument and teaching on the subject of justification by faith.

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You start there and then you interpret wisdom we justify by our children in light of that, not the other way around.

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You don't overthrow the lengthy discourses for the sake of some kind of one -off mention, side mention over on the side in the same way when debating with Unitarians who deny the doctrine of the

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Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity is derived from a view of the entirety of the revelation of scripture.

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In fact, in the New Testament, it's the matrix in which the New Testament even makes sense.

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It's being written by people who've experienced God in this fashion and therefore, they don't have to stop every time and say, oh, this is what we believe, this is a new doctrine or something like that, because it wasn't a new doctrine, it was how

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God had revealed himself. And so, you have to take the entirety of what the

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New Testament teaches together to understand the doctrine of the Trinity. And what Unitarians will do is they'll take a single verse over here and a single verse over there that may not have anything to do with who

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Jesus is, the deity of Christ or the deity of the Holy Spirit, the personality of the Holy Spirit, whatever else it might be. They will take a reference here and say,

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I'm going to take this to mean that Jesus couldn't be God because of this side reference over here.

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Now, the topic in that section isn't about who Jesus is, but a reference is made and therefore,

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I'm going to build a theology out of that. You have to deal with Unitarians on that level at all times. So those are two areas that you and I would agree.

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Justification with Roman Catholics, Unitarianism with those who deny the doctrine of the Trinity. And so, you would see, yes, you have to have a consistent theology that's overarching over all scripture and you need to derive that from the texts that are actually discussing the subject, not from texts that just happen to mention a word or a phrase and therefore, you develop something out of that.

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Well, Mike, the verses you use are never about the subject that you then use them to build a systematic theology out of.

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The verses I use are derived from entire passages addressing a particular subject, whether it's

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John 6, John 8, John 10, John 17, Ephesians 1, Romans 8, Romans 9, et cetera, et cetera.

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Lengthy blocks of text and the subject is what we're talking about, whether it's election, whether it's the effect of the atonement, the whole argument of Hebrews 7, 8, 9, and 10 is an argument for particular redemption and limited atonement.

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You understand the entire argument of the book of Hebrews. You can't take a verse over here and a verse over there and string all this stuff together and say, this is a biblical presentation, but that's what

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I see you doing. So that tells me you have a tradition. And I remember there's a guy sitting across the window from me.

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I remember the look on his face the first time in a building that doesn't exist anymore.

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The first night I started presenting Reformed Theology and he had some traditions he had to work through.

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Yeah. Excuse me. Do you mean what? But what about? We'll get to that. But yeah, that was, yeah.

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So, you could say to me, but you have traditions too. Yes, I do. But I hear where you're coming from and I understand where you're coming from.

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I understand where David Allen's coming from, who you are very dependent upon. And I don't know if you've had time.

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I would highly encourage you, if you choose to respond to this, to my response,

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I would highly encourage you to look back. What was it? I don't even think it was a full month ago.

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We did a response, it was a decalvinizing Romans 8, as I recall, was one of the topics.

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And I detected in your comments on Romans 8, your reliance on David Allen.

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And we did a very thorough, we read everything that David Allen has in both of his books on this subject, on Romans 8.

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And I don't know how to say this without sounding braggadocious, but we refuted it completely.

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I do not believe there is any way to repair the position that he took.

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He was in error, just fundamentally. And so I strongly encourage you to listen to those as well, because it'd be very important in formulating a meaningful response.

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So, what's frustrating to me is that you think that my asserting the

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Trinitarian harmony in the atonement is a philosophical thing. It's not a philosophical thing, unless you're taking as philosophy the idea that the triune

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God will be consistent with himself in bringing about his own glorification. Because that's the heart of what we're saying.

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What we're saying is the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are in absolute harmony in everything they do.

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I could substantiate the foundations of THIA, or just simply TH, in anything by going to John chapter 5.

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And numerous other passages, but John chapter 5 would be, again, a whole context where you have that theme being developed in the pages of Scripture.

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Not just a one -off text over here or something over there that's not even about the subject, but that's the focus of what

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Jesus is teaching in John chapter 5, after verse 18, is about is the unity of the

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Father and the Son and the harmony that is theirs in giving life, in salvation, in all the activities that take place.

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And so, it's not a trump card, as you described it.

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What I'm saying is, is that your position based upon inference texts, because, see, if you take a text talking about false teachers and say, well, see, he bought them, you're inferring from that something about the extent of the atonement.

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That's not what the text is about. You're making an inference. I'm going to text in Hebrews that are specifically talking about what the actual effect of the atonement is that goes on for verse after verse after verse, chapter after chapter.

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And what I'm saying is, that's where you should derive your positive teaching.

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And then you look at other texts in light of the clear, you kept using the term clear and plain, but a single verse that is not on the topic can never be clear about a topic it's not about, okay?

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You can wish it is, you can say my inference is clear, and so you infer from 1

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John 2 to certain things. But that's not what the text is actually attempting to address.

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So it can only be an inference. I can provide a different inference that is then consistent with the passages that are specifically on the subject.

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And you build a systematic theology by taking those central texts, exegeting them consistently and then putting together divine truth.

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Now you and I would agree, you and I don't have to have the argument that unfortunately you have to have in most circles today as to whether there is a consistent truth.

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I'm sure you believe in inerrancy. I'm sure you believe in the full inspiration of the entirety of God's word that we're not missing anything.

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We don't have anything added. So we have a level of agreement there that should allow us to get to some common ground and some common understandings.

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So the argument that I'm still hoping that you will encounter, because the way you put it was negatively instead of positively.

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So what you said, the Father only elects some people, so Jesus only dies for some people and the Spirit only regenerates some people.

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Well, the point is that the Father, the Son and the Spirit in eternity past, so this is a

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Trinitarian theology, in eternity past chose to bring about the glorification of the

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Godhead through the salvation, through the creation of the universe and the salvation of a particular people through the incarnation, death, burial, and resurrection of the

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Son of God, and then the indwelling of those people and their sanctification and being conformed to the image of Christ by the

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Spirit of God, bringing about a demonstration through creation of God's, of all of the attributes of God.

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So His wrath, His power, His justice, all seen at the cross and seen in the punishment of those, the just punishment of those who are not united to Christ.

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His love, His mercy, and His grace also seen at the cross. So when we talk about, it's a positive thing.

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It's not just a limitation thing. It is a positive thing that the will of the

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Father in the matter of salvation is consistent with the actions and the will and actions of the

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Father are consistent with the will and actions of the Son, which are consistent with the will and actions of the

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Spirit. And if I understand your position, you know, some of the questions

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I would ask is, is God attempting to save everyone equally? Is it

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Jesus's desire to save everyone equally? Is it Jesus's desire that His death, that He bear the sin of every individual?

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Is the Spirit attempting to bring about conviction of sin of every individual in the same way not just in a restraint way, but in a salvific way?

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Is the Spirit attempting, well, the Spirit can't raise to spiritual life unless allowed to by the human act of faith,

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I guess, from your perspective, but because you said God could do everything you wanted, but you said

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He's chosen not to do so. So we'll get to that when we listen to it, if we even get there.

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I've spent half an hour doing an overview, because I want you to understand what

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I felt you had. And then, by the way, when I say that you missed, there were a number of times in your presentation when

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I said, hey, if you don't deal with what we're saying about the intention of the Father, Son, and Spirit, then you're not dealing with our position.

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And you took that to mean that nothing I said was relevant, that all these bio -verses were relevant. That's not what we were saying.

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What I'm saying is, if you actually want to respond to our argument, then you have to respond to our argument.

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And if you're not responding to our argument, you can be off there, you know, shooting away if you want, but you're not actually responding to what we're saying.

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I'm not sure why you would take it, because you did this more than once. You would quote me, and you'd say, so everything

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I said about the Bible is irrelevant. No, but if your exegesis is not providing an argument against what we're actually saying, then you're not really accomplishing anything, are you?

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That was the point there, and there were a couple times that you sort of didn't go there.

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So if we're going to get through almost any of this, I have to, and you talk fast, just as fast as I do.

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So let's get to it. Let's see what we've got here. I could be wrong on these topics, and I'm open to the idea that I could be wrong, and perhaps one day

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I'll make future content saying I've changed my mind on something. I'm open to this idea. I am convinced, though. And while I say

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I could be wrong, I am convinced, and it's not just like a completely uninformed convinced. I try to hear the arguments from both sides, and I am convinced that biblically this is really clear, and so I want to present what

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I think is a very clear biblical case for the fact that Jesus died for everybody. So James White's video, it was not really so much just a response to me.

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It wasn't exactly. He didn't actually deal with most of the content in my video. He brought up something he thought I didn't address and made that the focus of most of the video.

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But I'm going to deal with that issue called Trinitarian Harmony and the Atonement. And he also addressed a bunch of stuff that I never taught and don't teach, that stuff like N .T.

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Wright or other people he's encountered have taught. So it wasn't so much, even though the title says it, it wasn't really about me that much. But I'll use that as a launch pad to talk about these different issues.

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And so here we go. Thanks for joining me. My name is Mike Winger. This is the Tuesday live stream. Every Tuesday at 5 p .m.

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Pacific time, I do this on YouTube and it also goes out to podcasts and it goes up later on, you know,

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God willing, if we're able to get it up on the Facebook page and all that stuff too. So let me lay out for you.

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Here's the overview. Several Calvinist objections. Here they are. I'm going to give you at least five, maybe six Calvinist objections to limited atonement.

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Let me give you all the objections right now. Then I'm going to go back over them one at a time and slowly unpack those issues. Some will take longer than others, but that's the plan for today.

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So the first objection is called Trinitarian harmony in the atonement. And if I could summarize what this is, it's the idea that the father elects, and I want to speak, say it like I'm a

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Calvinist here. The father elects only certain people to be saved and then he sends the son to save just those people.

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Then the Holy Spirit only regenerates those same people. So there's this cohesion in the plan and in the working together of the persons of the

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Trinity. Now, if you're to say the son tries to save all people when the father has only chosen certain ones for salvation, then you create a conflict in the

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Trinity where the son's trying to do something against the plan of the father. That is the basic idea of Trinitarian harmony in the atonement.

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It's that if Jesus died for all people— There is—that's fairly accurate. There certainly cannot be disagreement between the members of the

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Godhead, and they cannot function at cross -purposes to one another. And so, if the

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Bible teaches, for example, that there is a specific people who are united to Christ in his death, if the atonement is personal rather than just simply generic—and

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I would challenge you to think about that very issue because I think you are stuck with a—I think you have made statements in this video that fundamentally require an absolutely generic and not personal atonement.

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And I want you to think what that means, because I think union with Christ is central to the concept of atonement.

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I fear that in what I've heard from you, there is a distinction there, that you don't really have a personal atonement.

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You have Christ's death making provision—maybe you've been listening to Leighton Flowers or something—provisionalism—making provision, but not actually accomplishing something.

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Maybe that's based on your assertion that, well, you know, but there were people—you know, once Jesus died, you know, we can get into some of that stuff, too.

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I think that was a—I think you really missed the point there, big time, because there is a—we, the entire people of God.

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All those who—all the elect were united with Christ in His death, but we do not experience the results of that until time.

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If it were any other way, then only those who were alive at the time could be saved. So to confuse the now and the not yet and say, well, but Jesus could have died for somebody, but they're still in the wrath of God, and therefore that somehow is a problem.

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No, it's not a problem, because not only has God determined who the elect are, but exactly when

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He's going to save them. At the right time, Paul said, God called him.

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And when He called him, Paul's—it was not Paul's free will that determined the outcome of that particular encounter,

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I can assure you of that. That was rather an effective call. It threatens our theology of who

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God is. Okay, so that's a pretty big objection. We'll come to answering it later. The second objection is that—it's called the failure of the

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Son objection. It's the idea that if Jesus died for people, for all people, then He died for people who will end up in hell, many of them.

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Well, the point is, if it was His intention for His death to propitiate the sins of all people, and their sins are not therefore propitiated, and they themselves are then punished for those sins, then there is a failure, there is a desire unfulfilled.

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So therefore, Jesus failed at His task. He's a failing Savior. And so I'll deal with that objection.

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A third challenge would be the intercession issue. And this is the idea that Jesus intercedes for whoever

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He died for. Yes. You know, He ever lives to intercede for us. Hebrews speaks about this a lot. He's living to intercede for who?

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For the people He died for. Now, and why, Mike, why? Because He is the

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High Priest. And the High Priest, when He offered the sacrifice, that wasn't the end.

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What does both Testaments tell us? Once the blood was spilt, it was taken in and sprinkled upon the altar.

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It had to go into the holy place. Jesus does that in and of Himself, as the sacrifice Himself. So the audience of the sacrifice is the same audience as the intercession, and I got conflicting responses from what you said as to how you respond to that.

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And whoever He intercedes for is going to be saved, yet not everyone is saved, therefore He does not intercede for everyone, because they would all go to heaven, right?

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So therefore, if He doesn't intercede for everyone, then He didn't die for everyone, because there's a parallel between who

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He dies for and who He intercedes for. And that parallel comes from the fact that He's the High Priest. That is a biblical category.

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So therefore, Jesus didn't die for everyone. That's the intercession argument. Then there's a group of false dilemmas.

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Several of them, I was going to do more, but I decided to narrow it down to this one from John Owen, a famous, famous dilemma, or trilemma, you might call, and I'll just read to you this dilemma.

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John Owen, and I'll put it up on the screen, I'll put it up again later. Sometimes it helps to hear things twice, because these are weird ideas if you've never heard them before.

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If you're not a Calvinist, you're like, wait, what, what, what, what, what? I mean, this is a lot of stuff that just seems like it's coming out of nowhere, and so it's good to hear it more than once.

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So this is John Owen's dilemma, or trilemma. He says, I may add this dilemma to our universalists.

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God imposed His wrath due unto, and Christ underwent the pains of hell for either all the sins of all men, that's the first option on your screen, or all the sins of some men, the second option, or some of the sins of all men.

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If the last, if it's some of the sins of all men, then have all men some sins to answer for, and so shall no man be saved.

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Now, I didn't even tell you this. I'm actually quoting John Owen from his book, The Death of Death and the Death of Christ. This is a famous Calvinist work, and as I read on, he says, if the second option, if you pick the second option, that is, that is it which we affirm, the

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Calvinists, that Christ died for all of the sins of some men, that Christ in their stead and room suffered for all the sins of all the elect in the world.

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If the first, if you pick the first option, why are not all freed from the punishment of their sins? You will say, because of their unbelief.

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They will not believe. But this unbelief is a sin, is it not? If not, why should they be punished for it?

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If it be, then Christ underwent the punishment, do it or not. If so, then why must that hinder them more than their other sins for which he died?

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If he did not, then he did not die for all their sins. Let them choose which part they will. So this is like a dilemma where you're like, if Jesus died for all the sins of all men, then it's universalism, everyone's going to be saved.

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And this is one thing that I would suggest at this point. I think our job as Calvinists would be a little bit easier if there were more universalists around that we actually interacted with.

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I really do. Because I honestly think that Leighton Flowers, yourself,

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David Allen, your positions are wide open to a sharp universalist, really are.

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You have to avoid the Calvinist, the dreaded

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Calvinist onslaught. I would like to suggest that you have adopted positions that would make you highly suspect, highly subject,

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I'm sorry, highly suspect, highly subject to serious difficulties in responding to universalist argumentation.

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But there just aren't that many universalists running around. I mean, most people who even use the term could care less about scripture.

36:46

So what I mean is a biblical universalist, someone who at least still, in some fashion, takes seriously

36:57

Bible as the word of God. That would, if there were more of them, lots of your arguments against us would not take the form that they do.

37:06

Now, universalism, you have to say he basically died for all the sins of some men, because unbelief is going to be included in this.

37:13

I'll answer this later. And then number five, fifth thing I'll deal with, is the double jeopardy issue.

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This is the idea that if I say Jesus died for everyone, and yet people still suffer for their sins, then

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I'm saying that there's double jeopardy or double payment for their sins. Let me read to you a summary of this argument.

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It goes like this. If Jesus died for all people, then the sins of all people have been paid for. There is no wrath left for them.

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Therefore, to punish sin would be to punish it twice, once in Christ, and again upon the death of the unbeliever.

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So there's someone, you know, suffering in the future in hell for a sin Jesus paid for. So it's being paid for at the cross and in hell.

37:52

Wait, that doesn't make sense. So that's the double jeopardy objection. The conclusion has been Jesus didn't die for everybody. Now I don't agree with any of these, but those are the objections.

38:00

And then finally, at the end, after this long video, I will get to the part where I'm just going to say there are clear, clear teachings in the scripture that refute the doctrine or the idea that Jesus died for only a certain group of people and not for all people.

38:13

And 1 John 2, verse 2 was a major verse I used in my previous video. James White actually responded directly to this verse, and I'm going to continue the conversation.

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I think my position was misrepresented there, and I want to bring clarity to that issue. I don't think it was done on purpose or maliciously, but I think it was misrepresented.

38:27

And so we're going to get to there. To the clear teaching passage where the extent of the atonement is directly addressed in scripture and how

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I think the Calvinist interpretation doesn't undermine the power of this passage to prove unlimited atonement.

38:42

OK, so that's that's that's just the summary. That's just the intro. Here we go. We're digging in.

38:48

And and yeah, I do appreciate you guys joining with us. I, by the way, I'm going to say I don't intend to do this constant back and forth on these issues.

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I have a lot of videos people make in response to me, and I did pick one of them to respond to today with Dr. James White's video.

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But don't just for those who are watching, don't expect me to respond to everybody's videos or to respond to whatever next response comes out.

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I'll watch it. I highly respect James White and love him as a brother, and I'll definitely consider everything he has to share. But I don't

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I don't plan on taking my once a week major live stream and making it all response videos to the same issue further down the rabbit hole, so to speak.

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So I'm covering new issues, and I think it's worth doing this time around. All right. Trinitarian harmony in the atonement.

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This is the thing that I was told I did not address, and because I didn't address it, I had completely ignored the issue of limited atonement.

39:30

By the way, James White's video is in the description. Okay. I did not say you had completely ignored the subject of limited atonement.

39:38

What I was saying is, if you were given that my response had been focused upon that, if you don't respond to my central argument, then you're not dealing with my argument.

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You can deal with somebody else's argument or say you're dealing with John Owen or whatever else it might be.

39:56

And the fact is, Mike, I hear the deep influence of David Allen.

40:07

Central to my criticism of David Allen since 2008 for 11 years has been that he was put on the wrong path when he first started his campaign against Reformed theology, and he has not left that wrong path.

40:27

And as a result, his books, I'm sure if you're looking for a reason to believe something other than Reformed theology, they seem to give that to you, but they really don't once we dig in.

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And that's why I said, again, I would really highly recommend listening to the responses that we provided to David Allen.

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We responded to an article that he wrote, and then about two weeks later, maybe, we responded to his books, both of his books, everything that he wrote on Romans 8.

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And I would highly recommend that you take a look at those. My original video on limited atonement also in the description and a playlist of every video

41:11

I have that deals with Calvinism in the description. So here's how Dr. White and other

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Calvinists, they use this concept of Trinitarian harmony in the atonement, the first objection that we'll handle, and I'll spend more time on this one than the others.

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They use it like a trump card. It's like saying this issue of Trinitarian harmony, it becomes this immovable theological reality.

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So that discussion of verses, like the ones I brought in my last video, verses that seem to refute limited atonement, that's a secondary issue because this primary issue trumps those scattered verses and says, nope, we have this theological framework.

41:44

You cannot violate. That's kind of how it functions, and I'm going to play some clips to show you what I mean. Okay, so Mike, when you have a

41:56

Jehovah's Witness who presents John 1428 to you, how do you answer it?

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Because I'm going to provide a meaningful interpretation of John 1428 to demonstrate that it does not have to be taken the way that a

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Jehovah's Witness takes it, but the text by itself could be taken the way the

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Jehovah's Witness takes it. If all you had was John 1428, you wouldn't know what it was teaching in regards to Jesus.

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You have to have a greater context. You have to have a canonical testimony to the person of Jesus Christ.

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So you have to have, you have to take into consideration all of Scripture. This is one of the most difficult things in dealing with the cults is that,

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I mean, you know, I don't know if you saw the debate that I did with Joe Ventillacion of the

42:57

Iglesia Ni Cristo, but there was a glowing example of how the cults twist

43:05

Scripture. They'll just take a verse here and a verse here, and it might be half a dozen grand total, and they cram their meaning into it, and they just repeat it over and over and over and over again.

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John 17, 3. Don't worry about 17, 4, and 5. Don't worry about the next two sentences. Boom. We have our one verse, and that's just all there is to it.

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And to respond to that type of thing requires a broader biblical teaching.

43:43

No, you can't interpret John 14, 28 that way in light of this entire section here where Jesus is the creator, and this entire section here where he's identified as Jehovah, and this entire, you know, the entire

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Carmen Christi, verse after verse after verse, laying out the person of Christ. You've got all of this.

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And so, when you go to a particular text that isn't talking about the atonement but infer a meaning from it, and we say that would result in the overthrow of the assertion, the central assertion of the betterness of the ministry of the mediator of a better covenant in Hebrews, based upon a better sacrifice, a sacrifice that is non -repetitive, and a sacrifice that actually perfects those for whom it is made, so that Jesus becomes the one who is able to save to the uttermost.

44:52

And see, this is where, you know, we're going to get into this, but I think that the thing that bothered me the most, honestly, about your video was you didn't hear what

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I said about Hebrews 7. I suppose I should wait for that, but you actually did exactly what

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I said we can't do. Hebrews 7 is about the perfection of the mediator and his power as a demonstration that there's nothing to go back to in Judaism.

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And I said, anybody who looks at Hebrews 7 and focuses upon the description of those who draw near to Christ, that's a description, those who draw near to God through him, that's a description, that's not a prescription, that's a description.

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This is a specific people, the people who would come to the temple, not the people who stayed away.

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This is a description, not a prescription. You turn it into prescription so much so that it limits what the mediator can accomplish.

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The point of Hebrews 7 is he is able to save to the uttermost, and you say, ah, but only those who do this.

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And I'm like, how can you not hear that you're changing the focus?

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And Mike, it's tradition. You've got your tradition, and you say, so do you, yep, but I know that and have examined that tradition from numerous perspectives, numerous, numerous perspectives.

46:38

Have to, have to be able to do that, have to be able to do that. And I just think that's going to be going on here too, so anyway, sorry,

46:48

I jumped ahead there. When we get to it, we'll definitely dive into it.

46:53

I'm thinking, honestly, that, oh man, well, let's just see how far we get in the next 15 minutes, and then we'll decide where we go from there.

47:06

Here's clips from Dr. White's video where he explains the importance of Trinitarian Harmony in the Atonement. It shows you how it's used, why we should bother talking about it, even though we have seemingly clear verses that refute limited

47:16

Atonement. The only meaningful Biblical way you can address the issue of the subject of the

47:21

Atonement is to see it as the act of the Triune God, and hence you must understand the

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Father's role and purpose, the Son's role and purpose, and the Spirit's role and purpose. You must see the Atonement not merely as one act separated from everything else, but you must see how that act is a part of the specific intention of the

47:41

Triune God to glorify Himself. So, this is, in other words, this is like central.

47:48

Again, you can use this to trump the text that I was using. Let me share another video. Yeah. You can use, again, if the

47:59

Gospel is Trinitarian, and I believe that it is, then there are overarching truths that mean that when you look at passing references, they can't be interpreted in a way that causes them to contradict the core of those central truths.

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So you do this. I'm sure you do this. If you're an

48:29

Orthodox theologian, you do this. You recognize that there are central truths that are derived from the positive exegesis of entire texts, not just a verse here or a verse there.

48:44

You don't derive the central aspects of your faith from passing references when the topic is something else.

48:55

So I'm sure in other areas that we would be at the exact same point here except this one, and I would suggest to you,

49:03

Mike, that there has been such a long emphasis upon the almighty will of man in Western society since the misnamed

49:19

Enlightenment, and there is such in Western thought such an individualism that when

49:31

I look at church history, I see Augustine recovering

49:38

Paul's emphasis upon grace, and then ever since then, even in Roman Catholicism, it's moving farther and farther and farther and farther and farther away from that emphasis upon grace toward a man -centered thing.

49:52

By the way, you are a synergist. You made the statement

50:00

I think more than once, I'm not a synergist, and I've got a video on that. No, yes, you are.

50:08

We cannot, just because we live in the internet age, just because you can put a video up doesn't mean you get to redefine theological terminology.

50:19

Theological terminology is a good thing. It's good that we have defined these things so we can discuss positions.

50:26

One of the things that just drove me bonkers about Norman Geisler's stuff is that he called himself a moderate

50:33

Calvinist. He was not a moderate Calvinist by any stretch of the imagination.

50:40

So why redefine terms when those terms are very useful for describing positions and making positions understandable?

50:50

You believe that there is more than one power involved in bringing about the salvation of a human soul.

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You believe that God's grace is absolutely necessary, but you do not believe that that grace is sufficient to save in and of itself outside of the human act of free will.

51:13

You've made that statement. It's part and parcel of your argument over and over and over again.

51:19

The whole thing about the atonement for you is that God's made the provision.

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That's his part, but it doesn't become effective until you believe.

51:31

Your will has to submit. So obviously there are previous issues between us.

51:41

We need to establish whether there is such a thing as election. We need to establish whether there is such a thing as predestination.

51:47

We need to establish whether man is dead in sin. And obviously we're going to have severe disagreements on those topics.

51:57

And so in a sense, to be honest with you, in a sense, this is a debate that can go nowhere.

52:05

In a sense. It's worth discussing. But in a sense, whether atonement is meant to be general and nonspecific or specific and limited is dependent upon previous conclusions.

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And those previous conclusions are going to be what we believe about God's sovereignty, election predestination, whether it's unconditional.

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And the nature of man, whether man is a autonomous creature or whether he is a fallen creature under the slavery of sin.

52:51

So there is a sense at which some might say, yeah, you're going at it all wrong.

52:58

But just as you said, you're making your video for your particular followers. At one point you said, you're not trying to convince me.

53:05

I've heard all this before. I have heard it all before. But you would have to come to conclusions.

53:13

The only reason I'm not hearing what you're saying when I am hearing what you're saying is tradition or I'm not a

53:20

Christian. There are some people that would go that far. I'm simply saying for you, I think you have a tradition that you have been taught.

53:29

And I think it's, it would, I don't,

53:36

I would, I would ask you if you've ever read the first written debate of the

53:41

Reformation, and if you haven't, I would, I would encourage you to do so just so you can position yourself in, in the stream of the

53:50

Christian faith. You know, we didn't just land here.

53:56

We didn't, church history has something to say here, I think. And I think you'd, if you've read

54:01

Luther's On the Bondage of the Will, and Erasmus' work, if you can track it down, you'd see that our conversation has sort of happened in times past.

54:13

But anyway. This is actually, in his video responding to me, this is the only clip of my video he played, was a part of the end of my video where I said,

54:20

I'm not dealing with Trinitarian harmony today because I think that the texts I've brought clearly refute the idea of limited atonement.

54:27

And this was his response. That was, that was the whole point. That is the whole point.

54:33

If you don't deal with that, you're not dealing with the issue, at least not as it's being presented by us.

54:40

Right. And, and I'm not sure why you would object to that, because I responded to you.

54:47

My response was very heavily based upon Romans chapter eight and upon what many people find to be a very compelling argument that there needs to be consistency in all of theology.

55:05

Our doctrine of the Trinity, our doctrine of the sovereignty of God, our doctrine of salvation, atonement, sanctification, the building of the church,

55:14

God's entire purpose in this world. They should be consistent with one another. They should not exist separately from one another.

55:22

And so I was not saying that what, anything you're saying, saying is irrelevant.

55:28

What I'm saying is you're not responding to me. You're not responding to our position unless you actually deal with that.

55:38

So I'm not even handling the issue. I'm ignoring it. Let me play one more, one more clip to help get this point across.

55:44

If you're going to respond, then you need to, you need to hear what we're saying. If y 'all are going to respond, then you need to, you need to hear what we're saying.

55:53

If you're going to respond, you need to hear what we're saying. That's the idea. So in other words,

56:00

I did a video that, sorry, I'm still really small. I did a video that, that unpacked and handled the doctrine of limited atonement, dealt with several objections and gave multiple scriptures to support that Christ died for everyone.

56:10

And the response from a, from a Calvinist thinker that we've got here, who I respect and love, says,

56:15

Mike, you didn't even handle it. You didn't, because scattered secondary references from texts that are not specifically on the subject of the atonement can never overthrow the consistent exegesis of the texts that are about the extent of the atonement and how that extent of the atonement is specifically related to the entire body of divine truth.

56:45

I have for decades been warning Western Christians about pigeonhole theology, where you have this doctrine up here, you've got the doctrine of Trinity up here, you've got doctrine of the

56:59

Bible down here, doctrine of prophecy, church, worship, whatever. And they're, they're all in separate holes and they're never brought close enough to one another to see if they're actually related to one another.

57:10

That's dangerous. And dealing with the atonement as a separate issue from the relationship of Father, Son, and Spirit, from the fulfillment of prophecy, from the role of Christ, we just started a new catechism question last night at Apologia.

57:35

And I forget how many months we do this. I think we do two or three months where we're working through Keech's Catechism.

57:42

It's part of the worship service, and our kids memorize the catechism and the answers, and it's really neat.

57:52

But I've sort of adopted doing the catechism as part of the worship service, and I'll go through each of the sections.

58:03

Well, we just went to the section, what roles does

58:09

Christ fulfill as our Savior? And of course, the answer is the role of prophet, priest, and king.

58:17

And so, that prophet, we've been emphasizing that a lot recently in Matthew 24, priest, how does he fulfill that role as priest?

58:31

Well, you can't disconnect his functioning as priest from atonement and from the human response to the gospel.

58:45

That all has to be brought together. That's the task of Christian theology.

58:52

If you separate these things, you're going to end up with an inconsistent, unclear presentation over time.

59:01

It's not going to be compelling. I believe Christian theology is beautiful when you allow it to stand together, when you allow it to speak for itself.

59:11

I think it's really important. I'm going to mark this, and if you don't mind,

59:20

Mike, I'm going to save this. I cannot guarantee that even tomorrow that we will get through all of this, but I personally think these are vitally important issues, and they do give us an opportunity.

59:37

We're going to be getting into the text, but right now, very frequently, it is disagreement and conflict that give clarity to foundational issues such as how we do interpretation.

59:56

You can sit in a class and be taught it, but when you see how it actually impacts how we interpret scripture and the theology that we create as a result, that's really where the rubber meets the road.

01:00:12

I think this is vitally important to do. What's nice is, in responding to Mike Winger, we can do so without hurling anathemas and kicking each other out of the kingdom.

01:00:27

Isn't it sad that Mike Winger and I can have a better conversation than I can have with a lot of Calvinists that I know?

01:00:34

That says something in and of itself. So we're going to pick this up tomorrow.

01:00:41

This will also, much to Rich's chagrin, will allow me to add a third

01:00:49

Coogee to the series of Coogees that we have just for this one week, and eventually, he's going to start dreaming about them and having nightmares.

01:01:04

On the contrary, eventually, I'm just going to turn the heater way up before you get here. I got a fan over there.

01:01:12

I'll just blast it as high as I can, and we'll survive one way or the other.

01:01:18

You know what? I bet you Mike Winger would wear a Coogee.

01:01:25

Don't do it, Mike. Don't do it. Just, Mike, think about it.

01:01:30

Your blue background with this Coogee? Come on, dude. You know. You know you want to.

01:01:37

You know you want to. Just don't buy the new ones. They're ridiculously expensive. eBay, dude.

01:01:43

eBay. Snipe it. If you don't know how to snipe stuff on eBay, you're not getting anywhere in this life.

01:01:49

So, anyways, we'll continue. That means a second run at Radio Free Geneva on the morrow,

01:01:59

Lord willing. And so we will pick up at that point, and Lord willing, we'll see you then.