Dave Hunt's Traditions then Lynn Interviews Spong

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The Desert Metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is
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The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602, or toll -free across the
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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. Good morning, welcome to a rescheduled edition of The Dividing Line on a
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Friday morning. No, the alarm guys haven't showed up yet, but we're sending out search parties for the alarm company.
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We need to find them, because we can't find them at the moment, and I'm not going to comment any more on that.
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First off on The Dividing Line today, the illustration of why theology matters.
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Some of you may recall this particular comment in a famous movie.
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Well, it just so happens that your friend here is only mostly dead. Mostly dead.
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What happens when you are confused on your biblical anthropology? What happens when you try to hold together what the
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Bible says about the depravity of man and man's deadness and sin, and yet you have that human tradition of autonomy that man's a little god and that he determines his own destiny and God is just basically up there in heaven observing what goes on and he's not the sovereign king ruling over his creation, unlike the rather clear testimony of scripture, but what happens when you try to put those things together?
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Well, you become Dave Hunt. Dear Dave and Tom, I'm puzzled about Matthew 7 -11 regarding the depravity of man.
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Jesus said we are evil, but then he implies that we can do good things.
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That's certainly evident in verse 12. How can we who are evil do something good?
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Dave, let me read Matthew 7, beginning with verse 11. This is
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Jesus speaking, as the writer mentions. If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your
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Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him? Now let's just stop that right now and ask the question, is this text addressing the ability of man, for example, to do what is spiritually good in God's sight?
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Is this addressing Romans 8 and saying that man is innately capable of, in and of himself, becoming obedient to the law of God and doing what is right before God?
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Is this text talking about Jesus' words in John 6 when he says no man is able to come to me?
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Is it talking about coming to Christ? Is it talking about fulfilling the law of God and doing so with the proper attitude
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Is it talking about any of those things? No, it is using an illustration, an illustration that we would, as Reformed people, identify as one being derived from the natural order and what we might call common grace.
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And that is that even though it recognizes that people are evil, it recognizes what
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Jeremiah said, that the leopard cannot change its spots. And so there is this, not just a bent toward evil that sometimes we resist, but in fact it has to be
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God's restraining power that keeps us from being as evil as we could be. We see this throughout scripture and so we would say what we have here is the fact that as God created us,
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God created us in such a way that we are shocked when we see mothers and fathers who abuse their children.
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We consider that particularly heinous, do we not? Because that's the way God has created us.
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We protect our children, we want to nurture our children, and it is a sign of the utter breakdown of a society and the wrath of God upon that society when we see women leaving children in trash cans and women, we hear these stories, we've had this happen here in Phoenix where women would leave their children in cars while they go in as prostitutes or go in and do drugs and the children would be found in the cars and if it wasn't
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June or July or something like that they might still be alive, but sometimes those children are found dead because it is so hot in the cars and here in Phoenix children die very quickly when they're left locked within a car and they cannot extricate themselves and so we are rightly offended greatly by those things, but does any of that have to do with providing a meaningful commentary on the text that specifically address whether man has the capacity outside of the work of the
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Holy Spirit, the effective work of the Holy Spirit, not the tried effort of the Holy Spirit, but the effective work of the
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Holy Spirit in doing what is right before God and in fact bowing the knee in Lordship to Christ, that is the question that we will discover of course
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Mr. Hunt doesn't really answer. Verse 12 as well, therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them, for this is the law and the prophets.
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First of all Dave it is amazing for people today the Episcopalians and anybody else who takes exception to the scriptures that they say wait a minute you are trying to tell us that we are evil, well
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Jesus said it and we can give a lot of other verses to support that idea, it is not exactly building one's self esteem, so the question was if we are evil how can we do any good and the
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Bible indicates we can, so that relates to the tea and tulip.
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Now notice something about Dave and people who have met with him over the years recently have said that this is a regular experience, that is that no matter what you start talking about he finds a way to bring it to the subject of Calvinism and the emphasis in the text of course is on the fact that man is evil and even though he is evil he knows how to give good gifts to his children, you don't give him a rock or a snake when he asks for bread, okay that means that God has created us in such a way, how much more then does
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God know how to give good gifts to those who call upon him, that is where the emphasis is, where does Dave go, well see we might be evil but we can still do good, it is the
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Pelagius emphasis, not the biblical emphasis, it is the emphasis that Pelagius would find in such a text as this.
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The Calvinist total depravity because in the Old Testament in Genesis chapter 6
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God looked down and saw the imagination of man's heart was only evil continually and then if you went to Psalm 14 for example.
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Now I wonder how could the imagination of man's heart only be evil continually, how can that be, there wasn't anybody who, oh yes
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I guess Noah, in and of himself, not by God's grace but Noah in and of himself, maybe that wasn't the case, well again the idea that God by his spirit restrains, that God by common grace is the one who is behind any of the goodness of man, that's just, it's reprehensible to the person who has as the central aspect of their theology, this concept of the autonomy of man.
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In Romans chapter 3 there's none that understand, none that seek of after God, they're all going out of the way, so you can't seek
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God, you're totally depraved, you're dead like a corpse and somehow
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God is going to have to give you some life. It doesn't sound to me like any of those biblical phrases
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Mr. Hunt actually believes, I mean does that sound like someone relating stuff that he really does believe?
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Before you could even open your ears and then he'll give you the faith to believe the gospel.
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But Tom right there in that passage that this person brought before us, we seem to have a contradiction because if we're totally evil how can we do any good?
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You could go back to the Old Testament. Again, I have to stop and go.
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So we take a text that's actually contrasting God's holiness and goodness with man's evil nature and the fact that even though he's so evil he knows the difference between giving a serpent and bread to his children and what you get is, it sounds like there's a contradiction with Calvinism there but no, it's because man's actually not nearly as bad as they think he is and he is capable of doing these things in of himself and blah blah blah and you just go, wow, what a tremendous warping of one's thought comes from the constant fighting against God's truth on this issue.
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And you know people call and we've gotten calls like this a number of different times and they will call and they will say, what do you do with these
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Arminians? They hate God's sovereignty, how can they truly be saved and all the rest of this stuff and I consistently differentiate between those people who are slaves to their tradition and they don't even think about this stuff.
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As soon as you mention it, you see the lights turn off, the closed for business opening tomorrow sign goes up in the window and there's nothing going on as far as any cognitive thought.
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The pastor that led them to the Lord many years ago said, watch, beware of that Calvinism stuff and as soon as they hear anything that even smacks of it, boom, they're gone and that and so they've never really gotten into it.
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There is a danger, however, when you have people who go on crusades and they are so in love with their tradition and so in love with identifying their tradition with the word of God, which is what
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Dave Hunt has always done. You question his particular interpretations of even down to eschatological issues and this is the word of God here, the word of God teaches what
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I teach and so when the tradition becomes equal with the word of God, wow, you end up seeing some tremendous imbalances result and questions concerning the nature of original sin and hear the depravity of man and what that means and man's capacities and dancing across the line into Pelagianism where men can do good in and of themselves.
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Grace is not necessary. I mean, I know Dave Hunt's followers aren't going to like this but there are times when
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Rome is more orthodox in their view of man than Dave Hunt is because of Dave's desperation to denigrate and denounce
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Calvinism and when you start getting on that kind of a thing and we can name some other names here, you start getting into some really dangerous areas.
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A Philistine king, I think he was, Abimelech was his name and after Abraham and Sarah, they pretend that she's his sister and he's about to take her to be his wife and he's warned of God in a dream.
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The king that is. Yeah, the king is and he says to Abraham, why would you do this evil to me?
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You could have brought judgment upon my household and here are his words, I have done unto you nothing but good.
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Okay, and here we have Jesus says, you're evil but you know how to give good gifts to your children.
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You can do good things. We are exhorted to do good and to pursue peace with all men.
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Dave, verse 13, 14 says, enter ye in at the straight gate for wide is the gate, broad is the way that leadeth to destruction.
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I have no idea what that has to do with anything and sometimes I don't think that Dave Hunt knows what T .A. McMahon is talking about.
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I can just sort of tell, Dave just sort of goes back to whatever he was talking about as if T .A. hadn't even interjected anything there.
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But Abimelech, does I've done nothing but good. Is that really what is going on here?
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Or does Genesis chapter 20 say, now Abimelech had not come near her and he said,
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Lord, will you slay a nation even though blameless? Did he not himself say to me, she is my sister and she herself said, he is my brother.
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In the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands I have done this. So Abimelech says, I was lied to.
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Okay, and what I've done, I did out of ignorance. And notice what
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God says. Then God said to him in the dream, this is Genesis 26. Yes, I know that in the integrity of your heart you have done this and I also kept you from sinning against me, therefore
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I did not let you touch her. Why not get to that point? Because he wants to present
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Abimelech as having a natural capacity outside of God's grace to continually do what's right before God.
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And that's not what's going on here. Abimelech is kept from sinning against God by God.
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Now, someone might argue, well, yeah, but God did that because he did that in the integrity of his heart. And so if you have integrity in your heart, then
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God will respond by keeping you from further sin and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If you're a proponent of the autonomy of the human will,
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I don't care what you say went first, God kept Abimelech from sinning against him.
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Now, you think about that for a moment. If God can keep Abimelech from sinning against him, what does that mean?
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What does that mean to human autonomy and the whole concept that lies behind it? Good question.
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But again, you see the difference between those who would accept the full spectrum of biblical teaching about the sinfulness of man and recognize that in the words of someone who is in channel right now to utilize the terminology that he utilized, the difference between intensive depravity and extensive depravity.
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That's the one way of basically saying that man, while extensively depraved, that is, every aspect of his being is depraved, it doesn't mean that there is a absolute intensity of depravity in every aspect of his life.
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In other words, as I've said many times, total depravity does not mean that every person is as evil as they could be.
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They've done everything in their life they could possibly do that was bad, and that's not the case.
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God does not allow that. This entire world could not exist if that were to be the case.
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And no, Dave does not allow for distinctions like that. Instead, when he sees these alleged contradictions in scripture, he just simply dismisses the foundational elements such as the entire concept of the decree of God and the sovereignty of God over against this unbiblical concept of the traditions of men regarding the autonomy of man.
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So anyway, I've got other things to get to today, so let's let this one wrap up here. In other words, we can make a choice.
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There are some good things that we can do. Exactly. So all through the Bible we're commanded. So what does the scriptures teach?
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Well, it's the natural bent of my heart. I'm selfish. I'm going to take care of myself.
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So we are evil. Oh, absolutely evil. There's nothing to do with good, no, not one.
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Even though, do you remember, I didn't go back to track it down, didn't have time to this morning, but do you remember when he was at Calvary Chapel that time he was wearing the sport coat over the
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Hawaiian shirt? I think that's a pulpit crime right there.
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I think he's got one chapter of a picture of Dave Hunt in a sport jacket with a Hawaiian shirt at Calvary Chapel.
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And just make that one chapter, the fashion crime right there. That's just all wrong.
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I mean, either go for the Hawaiian shirt, the shorts and the flip flops, or leave the jacket out, but putting the two of them together, just, no, wrong.
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Yeah, the fashion police need to be called on that one. But when he was there, he was speaking on Romans 3, and he did say, he went in the
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Old Testament, there were men who did good. And so what does that mean? He was basically trying to say
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Romans 1 and Romans 3 is not as extensive as we thought it was. This is just a general thing.
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And did you notice when he defined his own sinfulness, did you notice something about it?
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I'm stopping here just a moment to let you think. Because I can just keep on rolling, because I know what
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I'm about to say, but if I don't stop to let you think about it, then that doesn't really accomplish much, does it? Did you notice the kinds of sins he referred to?
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I'm not disagreeing that selfishness, putting myself first, impatience, those, yeah, they're sinful.
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But isn't there a much more basic level? This is where I really wonder how many people today really, really, really do believe in the doctrine of original sin.
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I bet you anything that Dave Hunt would not say that the newborn child of Adam is actually repulsive to a holy
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God because that is a sinner, and that one is born in sin. I bet you he would not say that.
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And in fact, I bet you the vast majority of people would not say that. Because the vast majority of people would define sin primarily in reference to man rather than the holiness of God.
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They'll define things anthropocentrically rather than theocentrically, and that then leads to a very anthropocentric gospel, anthropocentric concept of sin, salvation, justification.
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All of it can only rise as high as the foundation it's built upon will allow it to rise.
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And you see the result of that. Yet we're told to do good. Now, Tom, then we'd have to say, well, even when we seem to do good things, we do it for selfish reasons, to receive the praise from men, or because I don't really have a choice, or I want to get reciprocated.
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Somebody didn't do good to me, you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. Well, in part, isn't it part of the golden rule,
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Dave? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. What did that have to do with anything?
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We are totally incapable of doing anything good at all.
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Because a mother will go into a burning building to sacrifice her life for her child that's in there.
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Okay, so it's not that we can't do anything good at all. Okay. If he was actually addressing total depravity, which he's trying to do, what should the argument be?
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The issue with Calvinism is doing that which is good in the sight of God, in the sense of bowing the knee in lordship to Christ.
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Having the autonomous capacity to will the death of the old man.
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Not the common grace that exists in God's creative decree to where women are willing to sacrifice their lives for their children.
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There's a difference between the two, and he wants to wipe that difference out. And say that if an unregenerate pagan woman can be quote good end quote enough to run into a burning building to save her child, that means everybody has the capacity of autonomous free will to accept or reject
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Christ. Now that's really bad argumentation, but that's what we're getting.
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And evidently that's what a lot of folks just sort of expect from Dave Hunt, and that's what he delivers.
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There are instances, and I think there are probably half a dozen or more, one not too long ago where an unsaved, as far as I know, soldier throws himself on a hand grenade to save the lives of his buddies.
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Now I would say that that is a great goodness, self -sacrifice.
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Where would you get the motive for that? So we have stories and history of men who rose to great heights of goodness, and they got nothing out of it in order to benefit others.
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And yet our hearts are deceitful. Does he sound confused to you?
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It sounds confused to me, because he's trying to play both ends of the field, and it ain't working.
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What's the one word that just is absent from this discussion, that would have to be a part of this discussion, if he was actually going to be responding to Reformed theology?
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Grace. Grace. But it's not there. I haven't heard it. It's just all man's capacities and man's abilities, and yeah, we're sinful, and yeah, we're evil, but we can't let it go so far as to where we are so sinful and evil that we're actually dependent upon God for any of the good that we do.
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It just says, above all things, desperately wicked. And David says, search me,
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O God, try my heart. So we don't even know our own motives for doing things.
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But to say that I'm totally depraved, as Calvinism says, I can't even respond,
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I can't even believe the gospel. Well, we only need to go to Isaiah 55, for example, where it says,
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Seek ye the Lord while he may be found. Well, wait a minute. But Psalm 14, quoted by Paul in Romans 3, says,
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There's none that seeketh after God. But you can go through the Old Testament, dozens of scriptures.
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I sought the Lord, and was found. Now, anyone who's read
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Debating Calvinism knows that Dave has had this explained to him by yours truly.
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He's undoubtedly had it explained in numerous letters that were written to him. I'm fairly certain that those
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Calvinists who reviewed What Love Is This explained these issues to him.
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He has no ears to hear. He doesn't even acknowledge the response, doesn't even give evidence that he's willing to hear it.
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Yes, you have in the Bible, there is none who seek after God. And then you have the psalmist who said, I sought the Lord.
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And what is his conclusion? Well, it must mean that some do seek. What would the logical response be?
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If there are none who seek after God, but it is God who seeks after us, and God kept
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Abimelech from sinning against him, and God acts in grace, then why would anyone say,
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I sought the Lord? Because he first sought me.
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We love because he first loved us. Isn't that John's exact language?
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In fact, there's a textual variant there. You may have memorized it, we love him because he first loved us.
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But actually, it's we love because he first loved us.
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So there is a priority here. And why is it that man wants to make sure that it's man that has the priority?
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That God can only be in the position of the great responder? Well, it's real simple.
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That means I'm in charge. God did what he did because I enabled him to do that.
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What about all the commands? Seek ye the Lord? Yes. When the Holy Spirit brings me to spiritual life,
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I need to have the instruction of the Lord to know what to do, and that's what that's all about.
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The error is assuming that because there are commands in Scripture, that that means that every single person, including the slave to sin, is in the position to fulfill those commands.
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God's under no obligation to remove the slavery of sin, especially when every single person in it loves it.
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Loves it. Isn't it ironic that it's the libertarians who are arguing that God should remove from us the very object of the love of our hearts for our position to be consistent?
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Isn't that amazing? Well, anyways, we're almost at the end. And I found him. So it says,
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Seek ye the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him turn unto the
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Lord, and he will have mercy upon him. So it's kind of a mixed bag, Tom. We are evil, but we can.
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We are not totally depraved to the point that we don't recognize the difference between good and evil. And who says that?
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Who says that? No one. Certainly not the Calvinist. He thinks he's refuting. Where has a
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Calvinist said that we don't recognize the difference between good and evil? What we say is that we love the evil. We know what we're doing is evil, but once it becomes the very essence of our nature, we love that evil.
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Yeah, I can come to the point. We see this in, what was it, a couple days ago up in San Francisco.
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Who was it I heard talking about this? There's a private school up in San Francisco with the little kindergartners.
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They are going to be functioning this year without referring. That was Laura Ingram. That's right. They're going to be functioning this year without referring to gender.
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So little kindergartners are not going to be little boys and little girls anymore. They've even got a unisex bathroom.
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And if you want to be a little girl one day and a little boy the next day, gender fluidity.
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That's depraved. And yet it's become an entire world view, especially in those places where depravity is enjoined and celebrated as it is in San Francisco and in other places in the
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United States. But it's still depravity. And you may love it, but it's still wrong.
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And it's only a long process down the road, the process described in Romans chapter 1 where he gives men over, he gives women over, gives them over, gives them over.
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It's a process to get to the point where you can actually think that that which is evil is good.
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That starts getting you into the realm of the unpardonable sin, calling evil good and good evil and so on and so forth.
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We can do good, but that's not going to save us. And that's the important thing.
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Because once you're a sinner, once you've committed a sin, you can't make up for sinning in the past by keeping the law perfectly in the future.
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There is a mixture there, but it's not hopeless. In other words...
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It's not hopeless, but I'm not going to talk about grace. Of course it's not hopeless, because of the grace of God.
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But once you've gotten rid of the grace of God as being effective because you have neutered it and made it subject to the authority of the will of man, well, then you've got a problem.
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The sinner can be aroused by the gospel, and his conscience can be smitten.
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God has written his laws in everyone's conscience. And we can't turn to the Lord. Otherwise, what's the point?
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Jesus says, come unto me. Jesus weeps over Jerusalem. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Come unto me, all you who labor and are heavy laden.
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How do you know that you are laboring and are heavy laden outside the work of the Holy Spirit? See the terrible things that happen when you start messing around with God's Word.
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I wanted to bless you, but you would not. It didn't say that, did it? I wanted to bless you, but you would not.
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No, he's talking to the Jewish leaders about their resistance to his ministry. He differentiates between those he wanted to gather.
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Listen to... See, Dave has been told this over and over and over again. He doesn't care.
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He does not care when he mishandles the Word of God. That's dangerous. That's dangerous.
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He needs to be held accountable for the fact that he just doesn't care about the accuracy of his handling the Word of God. So, obviously,
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God wants man to come to him. And it's not something innate within man. If it were, and God had to cause man to come, then what is this weeping over man?
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You wouldn't come to me. No. Is something innate in man? What does he mean by that?
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The goodness, the ability is innate in man? That seems to be what he was just talking about. Well, there you go.
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There's Dave Hunt once again demonstrating. And when it comes to subjects like original sin and the depravity of man and so on and so forth, he remains just as stubbornly wrong as ever.
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One term you can use of Dave Hunt is he is stubborn in his defense of his traditions. You can refute him all day long, and he does not care.
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And I just remembered that I hadn't even been thinking about this during the program at this point. But remember, we have a note. The dividing line is listened to by the folks up at the
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Breein Call. So, hi again to the folks up there. Please pass on our words to Dave and ask him to please do what he tells everybody else to do and handle the
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Word of God aright. Admit when you're wrong. Admit you couldn't get Spurgeon right if your life depended on it.
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Admit that you cannot do exegesis and you've been proven wrong. Bow before the authority of the
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Word of God and do what's right, Dave, and start speaking the truth. You've still got time to make up for all these past few years of silly crusading against Reformed theology.
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We're going to take our break and come back with John Shelby Spong and Barry Lynn and try to wrap that one up, too, here on The Dividing Line.
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We'll be right back. The history of the
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Christian church pivots on the doctrine of justification by faith. Once the core of the Reformation, the church today often ignores or misunderstands this foundational doctrine.
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In his book, The God Who Justifies, theologian James White calls believers to a fresh appreciation of, understanding of, and dedication to the great doctrine of justification and then provides an exegesis of the key scripture texts on this theme.
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Justification is the heart of the gospel. In today's culture where tolerance is the new absolute,
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James White proclaims with passion the truth and centrality of the doctrine of justification by faith.
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Dr. J. Adams says, I lost sleep over this book. I simply couldn't put it down. James White writes the way an exegetically and theologically oriented pastor appreciates.
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This is no book for casual reading. There is solid meat throughout. An outstanding contribution in every sense of the words.
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The God Who Justifies by Dr. James White. Get your copy today at AOMN .org.
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Answering those who claim that only the King James Version is the word of God, James White in his book,
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The King James Only Controversy, examines allegations that modern translators conspired to corrupt scripture and lead believers away from true
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Christian faith. In a readable and responsible style, author James White traces the development of Bible translations, old and new, and investigates the differences between new versions and the authorized version of 1611.
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You can order your copy of James White's book, The King James Only Controversy, by going to our website at www .AOMN
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.org. What is Dr. Norman Geisler warning the Christian community about in his book, Chosen But Free?
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A New Cult? Secularism? False Prophecy Scenarios? No, Dr. Geisler is sounding the alarm about a system of beliefs commonly called
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Calvinism. He insists that this belief system is theologically inconsistent, philosophically insufficient, and morally repugnant.
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In his book, The Potter's Freedom, James White replies to Dr. Geisler, but The Potter's Freedom is much more than just a reply.
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It is a defense of the very principles upon which the Protestant Reformation was founded. Indeed, it is a defense of the very gospel itself.
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In a style that both scholars and laymen alike can appreciate, James White masterfully counters the evidence against so -called extreme
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Calvinism, defines what the Reformed faith actually is, and concludes that the gospel preached by the
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Reformers is the very one taught in the pages of Scripture. The Potter's Freedom, a defense of the
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Reformation and a rebuttal to Norman Geisler's Chosen But Free. You'll find it in the Reformed Theology section of our bookstore at www .AOMN
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.org. And welcome back to Dividing Line.
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James White with you on a Friday morning. I was just about to upload some files to the web, but we will, I guess the break ended there.
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So we will continue on. Caught me trying to make sure I've got redundancy in regards to keeping especially book files available so that we don't lose them, especially when our computers walk off and go someplace else.
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Anyway, I certainly hope that my computer that walked off malfunctions immediately.
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That would be great. I think that would be a wonderful thing. We have for a number of weeks sort of skipped over and have not gone back to visit the interview between Barry Lynn, who of course has been an
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ACLU board member, head of the Americans United for Separation of Church and State organization, well -known liberal and anti -Christian heretic, and John Shelby Spong, retired
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Bishop of Newark, and very much in Lynn's camp as far as theology is concerned. And so we were about halfway through that particular conversation.
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And again, I was attempting to emphasize the necessity to understand where these folks are coming from, to recognize that one of the biggest mistakes
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I think that people make in responding to them is that you fall into the trap of thinking that every single thing they say is wrong.
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And then when you try to prove every single thing they say is wrong, they can prove that they're right about some of the things they say, and therefore they must be right about everything they say, and you must be wrong about everything you say.
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There is nothing wrong with recognizing the truth content of what anybody says.
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That doesn't mean that the entire presentation is true, or that their worldview is true, or that it's equal with yours, or anything else.
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You need to try to avoid that kind of thinking, that kind of mindset that gets us into a lot of trouble.
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And so we're halfway through the conversation in regards to Bishop Spong's book,
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The Sins of Scripture. We find him even stepping beyond the boundaries of his religious tradition.
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His religion said you've got to obey the Sabbath, and Jesus says no, the Sabbath was made to enrich human life.
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It wasn't the other way around. His religion said that a woman taken in the act of adultery was to be stoned, and Jesus stands between these stoning people and their victim.
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Over and over again he sort of steps outside the boundaries, and I think the call of Jesus is a call to a new and deeper humanity, where we recognize that there's no
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Jew and Gentile, there's no American and African and Asian. It's one humanity.
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That's where we've got to go. Ultimately we've got to do that with the other religions. God is not a Christian.
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God is not a Jew or a Muslim or a Hindu. All of those are human systems which we have created to enable us to walk into the ultimate mystery of God, and we don't need to honor them, but we don't need to act as if we've captured
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God inside them. Now notice the presuppositions. First of all, we need to honor them.
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We don't have to honor Christianity evidently, at least historical Christianity, because it is Bishop Spong's stated purpose.
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Christianity is going to die. It must change. So he doesn't honor Christianity, and I would imagine there's all sorts of elements of other religions, including
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Islam, that he would not quote -unquote honor. So I don't know what that's supposed to mean, but what's the presupposition of the statement that was just made?
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The presupposition is that God has not revealed anything in any clear fashion as to how he is to be worshipped so that we can differentiate between human religions.
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All human religions are merely human contrivances. They are human inventions to enter into the mystery of God.
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Now that is a massive presupposition. It is a massive presupposition, and I think one that's totally contrary to human experience, because if our, and of course he doesn't believe this, but I would argue that if our ability to communicate with others is a
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God -given gift that reflects God's capacity in and of himself, what kind of a human being is incapable of communicating what is actually pleasing to him or her?
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What kind of a human being lacks that capacity? And yet evidently God lacks that capacity.
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He lacks that ability to be able to communicate with clarity what is pleasing to him, or he is so much less than a human being that everything is pleasing to him.
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Can you imagine that? I mean, this incoherent view of God that is at the very heart of liberalism is maddening to try to think about.
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You can never communicate to anyone else what it really is all about. All you can do is have subjective experiences together and burn incense and make noises and things like that, because there can be no doctrine, there can be no teaching, because God hasn't revealed anything about himself.
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There's nothing coherent about God. We are not called to think God's thoughts after him. We're not called as creatures to examine the universe around us and to see
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God in it and to see the beauty of God in the DNA molecule or in the function of the eye or whatever else it might be.
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We're not called to do any of that stuff, and we can't do any of that stuff. We can't do any of that stuff at all, because there is no element of revelation in God's creation.
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We can't know what in the world God is up to. That is a presuppositional level at which this kind of stuff needs to be addressed, and unfortunately most of the time, evangelicals are responding to Spong and to Lennon, these people, not at that presuppositional level.
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They are addressing their arguments only at the conclusion level and not getting to this, and that's something we need to change.
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When you say this, which resonates, I'm sure, with a lot of our listeners, everything that you've just said for the last few minutes, but then comes a question about other parts of that portrait, a portrait painted, as you said, by four, in a sense, four different artists.
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But then you have miracle stories, and you have the suggestion that Jesus, this figure, thought it wasn't merely reported of him, but that he thought he had the power to heal illness.
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How do you deal with those passages? Well, first of all... Now notice, Barry Lynn remains a wonderfully consistent, naturalistic, materialist, secular humanist, and his entire worldview is steeped within that kind of a context.
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Remember, Barry Lynn is an ordained United Church of Christ minister.
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So if you're looking for a church, keep that one in mind. If you are a secular humanist atheist, you might find the
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UCLC very useful to you at that point. But again, think presuppositionally.
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Here, the foundation that gives rise to these comments, and what gives rise to this comment is that no one actually believes this type of thing happens.
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And hey, everybody has by now. It's been forwarded to 14 ,000 different people. Well, probably more than that.
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The fellow, I forget what the context was. It sounded like it was Africa or South America or something. The fellow who convinced his congregation that God had spoken to him, and that he was going to repeat
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Jesus' miracle of walking on the water, and he walked out into the lake and disappeared and drowned.
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And I'm not sure. It almost sounded like they didn't find him, but it wouldn't make any sense. He'd eventually float,
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I would imagine. But you see people doing stuff like that, and that kind of silliness only adds to the mockery that the naturalist will have of the concept of the miraculous.
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And certain forms of the Christian faith that don't recognize the difference between miracles that were intended to establish the authority of those providing divine revelation and the normative miraculous work of the spirit, which is much more in the realm of the changing of the hearts of men, enlightening of the mind to God's truth, the sanctification of the believer.
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These issues, they, by their actions, like this action that I just mentioned of the man walking out of the water, do give ammunition to those who would oppose the truth of God, just simply by their activities.
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The earthly life of Jesus is lived probably between about 4 B .C. and about 30
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A .D. Okay. And the Gospels are written from 70 to 100, so 40 to 70 years have passed.
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Now did you catch that? More presuppositions. Those of you who were brave enough to, and my poor folks at the
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Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church had to put up with all this stuff, but it was just over a year ago now that we had the debate with John Dominic Crossan, and in the months leading up to that debate in my
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Sunday school lessons, which are, I think, still available at prbc .org, I went through John Dominic Crossan's teachings, and we went through the issue of the dating of the
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Gospels, and this is where the new Dan Wallace book,
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Reconstructing Jesus, is very useful in raising all sorts of issues in regards to the presuppositions of the dating of the
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Gospels and relationship of Gospels to one to another and things like that, and there are things to talk about in regards to even those issues.
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But here you see, it doesn't matter what group you're dealing with. I could fire up Ahmed Didat right now, and he's going to make the same kind of statements.
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Isn't it interesting that all of these groups that claim to actually be most historic and being unbiased, and it's the
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Christians who are all biased, they all have to agree on one thing. They have to cram as much time as possible between the
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Christ events and the events of the early Church and the writing of those events in the
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Gospels. They have to make it as big a time period as is possible, because they all have different reasons for that, but the main reason, the overarching reason, that many of them will grasp in various ways with different slants and emphases and things like that, is that you need to find some way of making those
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Gospel accounts fallacious on some level, mythological, expanded upon whatever terminology you want to use.
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If we go back a year, it's parable dummy to utilize John Dominic Crossan's language, but whatever you've got to do, you've got to cram that time in there, and that's the situation that you hear right now with Spong and Lin.
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Before anything is written about Jesus, you need to take that into consideration. Secondly, when the Gospels are written, they're written in Greek.
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Jesus operated in Aramaic, so by the time you and I read them, you've already got 40 to 70 years that have passed, and you've got one translation.
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Now, I think it's important... Now, notice, notice again, presuppositional.
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What was the presuppositional, what we just heard? Where does inspiration take place?
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Well, there can't be inspiration, because we're talking to humanists here. And so you've already got a complete worldview break with the authors themselves and their view of the
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Old Testament. You've got a complete break with these individuals on that level, and you then have, well, it's 40 to 70 years, there's a translation here too.
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Well, those are interesting things, and they're true things, and yeah, I think that accounts for some of the differences in terminology between the
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Synoptic Gospels, where you're clearly narrating the same thing, and there is a translation issue. But what is the locus?
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What is the point of inspiration? The point of inspiration is, all scripture is
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God -breathed. Not the process leading up to it, it is the actual inscripturation.
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It's not the person. I know we've talked about this before, but we always have new listeners. We very often mislead ourselves because we utilize the language inappropriately.
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We talk about Paul being inspired, and it sounds like a human being is being inspired, when it's scripture that is theanous to us.
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It is scripture that is God -breathed, and we need to keep that in mind, and if we're a little bit more accurate in our own terminology,
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I make that error, because it's a whole lot easier to refer to the Spirit's work in bringing scripture about utilizing flawed human beings, and yet the result is still
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God -breathed. It's a whole lot easier to just throw that all into the word inspired, and I even frequently do that, but we probably need to be careful about that, because it does lead to confusion.
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We go back and look at where Christianity lived before the Gospels were written. We lived in the synagogue, and what shaped the
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Christian message more deeply than anything else was the teaching and the life of the synagogue. Now let's back up.
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Where have we heard that before? Here we've got a little new perspectivism sliding in there a little bit, trying to define every aspect of the early church based upon Jewish categories, and there is no question that the majority of the early leaders are
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Jewish and that there is Jewish terminology and all the rest of that stuff, but that's one of the reasons you would hear people today questioning
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John's statement that as early as the time of Christ, the Jewish leaders had already decided to exclude those who professed
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Jesus from the synagogue. That didn't happen until much, much later. There's an anachronism there, so on and so forth, and the reason being, well that doesn't fit with our theology of these early writers and the viewpoints we've come up with, but in reality what you see happening in Acts, look at Acts chapter 13.
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We can argue about Acts 13, 48 all day, but what's going on there? We have an illustration there in Acts 13 of what happened when
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Christianity goes into the synagogue because they possess the scriptures, and this is the Jewish Messiah who is the
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Christ, the Lord of all, and he has come and jealousy results and there becomes blasphemy and speaking against the truth and the split takes place and so on and so forth, and so to just simply say, well we existed in the synagogue.
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Now the synagogue was the first place Paul goes to proclaim the gospel, and this within a very short period of time of the
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Christ event in essence, certainly less period of time than Spung is indicating here, but it's not very clearly the church has its own existence outside the synagogue during this period of time.
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Now when you embrace that, then you recognize that in the 35th chapter of the book of Isaiah when the prophet talks about what will be the signs of the kingdom of God, how will you recognize it?
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He says you'll recognize it because the blind will see and the deaf will hear and the lame will leap and the mute will sing.
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So if you begin to believe that Jesus is the in -breaking of the kingdom of God, it is obvious that you're going to make those signs be part of the story of this
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Jesus. So this is exactly the same assertion that John Dominic Crossan was making, and that is there is no such thing as prophetic fulfillment.
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There cannot be by nature, no one can know the future. God doesn't speak, there's no such thing as inspiration, therefore what do you do with prophetic fulfillment?
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Well it doesn't exist, all it is is in essence, let's be honest here, it's the
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New Testament writers lying about Jesus. Now they can put it, they don't want to put it in that kind of language, atheists do,
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Jewish apologists do, but they don't want to do this as quote -unquote Christians, and so they'll use embellishing, parable, myth, they're ransacking the
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Old Testament for language in which to express their faith in Jesus, blah blah blah, but it all becomes fake.
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It didn't actually happen. Since the Old Testament used these words, then that must be what ended up entering into the text to fulfill these things, but it didn't happen in history.
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Secondly, you'll find a lot of the miracle stories, or what we think of as miracle stories, are stories which are heightened
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Old Testament stories. Moses could feed, God could feed through Moses, the people of Israel in the wilderness with heavenly bread.
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So Jesus is portrayed as the new and greater Moses, who's able to take five loaves and two fish, and feed a great multitude out in the wilderness.
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And even I think the most important thing, is that we begin to interpret Jesus in terms of Jewish symbols.
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So again, these are apologetic stories. And so the
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Christians, they're trying to defend their view, why they'd be doing this, I'm really not overly certain what advantage there would be, but they're trying to defend their view, this new cult has gotten started, and so what you do is you ransack the
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Old Testament, Moses could do this, so let's think up some way. And isn't it odd that the ways that these silly
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Christians thought up were not overly compelling? You know, why do it the way they did it?
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It doesn't make any sense to me, but anyways, this is what they're supposed to be doing. And so they become heightened
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Old Testament stories. And remember, once again, John Dominic Crossan, that's the constant emphasis that he has, is that in essence what you've got is that almost every single element of the
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Gospel story is nothing more than an Old Testament story that's been sort of expanded out, and blown up, and made into an apologetic for this kingdom of God and Jesus.
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Did Jesus get crucified at the time of the Passover? That's what the Gospels seem to say.
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Suggest that. There's a better idea, I think, and that is that Jesus was interpreted as the new
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Passover lamb. But it couldn't possibly be what? Both!
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Because you don't have a sovereign God that could have control over these things. See? I mean, it's clear that the writers thought
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God was sovereign. It's clear the early church thought that God is sovereign over all things.
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He's the despotese. He is the ruler of all things. And that it was by his hand predestining these events to occur.
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But, you know, you almost feel sorry for the poor secular humanist who gets stuck in a backwards collar.
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He can't get it off! It doesn't belong there! You know, it's like putting a dress on a dog.
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You know, it just doesn't belong. It might be a very pretty dress, but it's not meant to be on a dog. And you can't put a backwards collar on a humanist.
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It doesn't make him deceased being a humanist. It just turns him into a heretic. Because you're stuck with the word of God, and now you've got to interpret it in a context completely different than what the writers themselves said.
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It just, oh, you almost feel sad. And so the whole story of his crucifixion was put into the time of the
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Passover. And that's a very different way to look at it. If the narrative of Jesus' crucifixion is historically accurate, then you have to ask, why is it based on Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53?
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Maybe because they're prophetic! Maybe because what Jesus and the apostles clearly believed about the inspiration of the
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Old Testament actually happens to be true! There's the idea! Why wasn't it based on eyewitness reports?
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Well, where is the presupposition there? It's not based on eyewitness reports. And even though the
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Gospels say that, our presupposition is that that couldn't possibly be true because then our entire theology would fall apart, and we wouldn't be able to continue doing what we're doing and selling the books.
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There were no eyewitnesses to the crucifixion. There's a John Dominic Crossan absolute statement, there were no eyewitnesses to the crucifixion, even though it happens during Passover.
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Oh, well, no, it didn't, but we're not told why it didn't. And even though it's a public thing, and even though the whole reason that Romans did crucifixion was so that it would be public, and it would be an example, and it would cause the subjected people to cower before the power of Rome, even though all that stuff is true, somehow there were no eyewitnesses.
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And that's how Crossan, if you've forgotten, doesn't believe that anyone higher than maybe some centurion at the highest was involved with the crucifixion of Jesus.
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Pilate certainly knew nothing about it. Herod knew nothing about it. This was no major league big deal.
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Jesus got in trouble with the Romans because he drove the money changers out of the temple, he did something bad during Passover, and his theory is the
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Romans had a zero -tolerance policy. And so as soon as any
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Jewish person got out of line, then just a plain old Roman sergeant type dude would have the authority to crucify that Jewish person to make sure to keep the peace.
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You've got so many of these nutcase Jews, as they would have viewed them, in the city at this time, and there's all this talk of rebellion, and there's all this dislike of the taxation and everything else, and there have been all these nuts that have gathered people, and they've gone out in the wilderness, and we've had to track them down, and we have to keep control here.
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So the theory is he really would have been privately crucified, and there would have been all sorts of other
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Jews that were crucified, and he wouldn't have stood out, and nobody would have known what happened to him, and that's why allegedly
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Crossan's view is that Jesus was not buried, but that his body would have been thrown in a shallow grave and eaten by dogs.
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And all the rest of the stories then become just parables and mythology that grows and develops over time and so on and so forth.
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And that's what we just heard Spong stating. Now most of the time they're not going to be overly clear in stating all this stuff, because once you get really that clear, then you put yourself in the position
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Dominic Crossan was in last year, and that is, okay, can you actually provide us with something other than a circular presuppositionally based argument in defense of that?
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And that's what we focused upon, and discovered that, yeah, it's just derived completely and solely from his worldview, and it is a circular worldview at that point.
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So hopefully once again, even though we got, let me see here, less than four minutes of the interview in, in half an hour.
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So four minutes, that means I talked for about 25. Oh well. We're examining it on a presuppositional level to try to see the most effective way in which we can respond to this.
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Most of us aren't going to have the opportunity of talking to these guys. I have, but I want you to be able to talk to their students and to those who've been deceived by them.
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We're trying to sort of recreate ourselves here, multiply ourselves so we can impact our culture for the
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Lord. So thanks for listening to The Dividing Line today. Thank you for your support. We'll see you, Lord willing, next week. God bless. We need a new
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Reformation day. Brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.
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If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.
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Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the
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World Wide Web at aomin .org. That's A -O -M -I -N dot O -R -G where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.