Is the Future Settled or Open? James White vs Bob Enyart

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The following presentation is a production of Alpha and Omega Ministries, Inc. and is protected by copyright laws of the

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United States and its international treaties. Copying or distribution of this production without the expressed written permission of Alpha and Omega Ministries, Inc.

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is prohibited. Greetings everyone and hello

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James White. I am Bob Enyart, pastor of Denver Bible Church. Of course, regardless of our differences,

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I am thankful that James White loves the Lord and mostly that God so loved the world that he sent

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Jesus Christ to die for those who could not save themselves and to give eternal life to those who trust him.

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Open theism is the Christian doctrine that the future is not settled but open because God is alive, eternally free, and inexhaustibly creative.

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The settled view disagrees and as a result claims that God cannot think a new thought and so his creativity is not inexhaustible but completed.

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Open theism grows as Christians realize that its foundation is not based on man but rather on God's freedom.

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I will show tonight that the future is open based on three fundamental truths,

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God's freedom, his attributes, and the incarnation. The first is God's freedom for he is eternally free.

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In the doubly redundant terminology of theologians, we'd have to say that God has libertarian free will.

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And if God is free right now and forever, then the future must be open.

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Secondly, we will show that the Bible's five main attributes of God.

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The Bible shows five attributes and they are different from the five main philosophical attributes of God which come from pagan

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Greek philosophy. I will attempt to show you visually by flipping through the pages of the

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Bible in a way that your eyes may actually help you perceive that the five biblical attributes of God being living, personal, relational, good, and loving are way more important to God and are a better description of him.

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And that the biblical attributes of God teach an open future. We will see that theologians like Dr.

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James White arrive at the settled view by using the philosophical and not the biblical attributes of God.

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And thirdly, the incarnation irrefutably shows that God is not outside of time.

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The incarnation proves that God is not outside of time because the life of God the son is being lived in a sequence.

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First, he existed through eternity past with only one nature, a divine nature, not having a human nature.

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Then by the incarnation he became a man, even the son of man, taking upon himself a second nature, our human nature.

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So that now and forever he is both God the son and the man Jesus Christ.

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For 1600 years the church has argued that the future must be settled because God is outside of time.

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But that collapses by the force of the central doctrine of Christianity, the incarnation.

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Now let's look at those three truths, starting with the incarnation, which shows that God is not outside of time because God has a past.

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For God, God the son, was not eternally a man. Back before the incarnation, the books of Numbers and 1

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Samuel explicitly state that God was not a man. Moses even wrote that God is not a man nor a son of man.

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So in God's past, God the son was not a man and had only a divine nature, which was perfect.

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Then he became a man, as the Bible says, and became is a word that indicates change.

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So he took on a human nature. So now he has two natures, which is still perfect.

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That proves that God lives in sequence, which also shows that God is not outside of time and that perfect things can change, contrary to the doctrine of immutability.

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James White does not believe that God experiences sequence, but I posit that the sequence experienced by God through the incarnation is irrefutable.

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Now for those who think that time was created by God and not an aspect of his existence, please consider that time cannot be created.

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Why not? Because creation means going from nonexistence to existence, which itself is a before and an after.

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And since time, therefore, is a precondition of creating, time itself cannot be created.

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Now to the second reason for an open future, the attributes of God. You may have been told that the five primary attributes of God are immutability, impassibility, omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience.

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We refer to these as the omnis and the ims. They are quantitative.

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The five biblical attributes of God are that he is living, personal, relational, good, and loving.

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These are qualitative. The omnis and ims are philosophical attributes that mix pagan

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Greek philosophy with theology, and they deal with quantity, like how much or how little.

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For example, how much knowledge? That's omniscience. How much power? That's omnipotence.

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How much presence? Omnipresence. How little emotion does God have? That's impassibility, and their claim that he cannot change, that's immutability.

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Jesus told us in Mark 13 .32 that God the Son did not know the day or the hour of the second coming.

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That falsifies the claim that God must possess all knowledge or else he couldn't be

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God. Luke shows this also recording that Jesus, who is God the

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Son, grew in wisdom, and also that Jesus grew in favor with the

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Father. That shows change also in the Father. The things that God says that he did not know, and the things that the

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Bible says that God learned, these things disprove omniscience, and also they disprove immutability.

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Settled view proponents like James White believe that God is impassible, which is the claim that he has no emotion.

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The whole Bible shows that God has emotion, yet John Calvin taught that God, quote, is incapable of every feeling.

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In fact, when you read in the Bible that God is angry or grieved, Calvin wrote, it's just a figure of speech.

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But many verses in the Old and New Testament describe God's emotion, with Jesus, for example, going from joy to weeping.

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And then in Gethsemane, he became distressed, and then was in agony. Is that all a figure of speech?

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Until three days later, when the Lord said to the women, rejoice. Why does

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James deny that God has emotion? Because even that kind of change would prove that God lives in sequence.

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Do you get that? The doctrine of immutability dissolves in Jesus' tears.

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So the Bible shows that God has emotions, which falsifies impassibility, and also refutes immutability, because they show that he can change.

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In preparation for the debate, I read the four Gospels to highlight each verse that plainly reveals

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God's biblical attributes in yellow, and anything that looked like the omnis and ims in green.

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I was able to highlight four verses in green. Then for the yellow, remember the biblical attributes that God is living, personal, relational, good, and loving?

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Highlighting each verse in yellow that plainly demonstrated those attributes took 15 hours.

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You can visualize, you can visually see the results. As I flip through the pages of the

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Gospel, thousands of verses highlighted in yellow, thousands showing that God is living, personal, relational, good, and loving.

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Unlike the interpretation required to highlight those four green verses, not one of these yellow highlighted verses are in the least questionable or arbitrary.

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Not one is in the least contradicted by the Lord himself or mitigated by any other passage.

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None of these is subject to metaphor. Instead, each of these verses demonstrates boldly, in the flesh, the unequivocal doctrine of who

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God really is and what his attributes actually are. Sometimes a single verse shows all five, like Mark chapter 10, verse 45, for example, the

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Son of Man did not come to serve, sorry, the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.

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That verse shows that God is alive because it says he gave his life.

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It shows he is personal because he's referred to as the Son. It shows he is relational because he is the

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Son of Man. It shows he is loving because he was coming to serve, and it shows he is good because he gave his life a ransom.

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Our webpage for tonight's debate is opentheism .org slash James White.

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I hope that's okay, Dr. White. It has the opening statement on it, my opening statement, and we have all of our references.

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That page also lists the methodology that we used to do the highlighting describing our very conservative approach.

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Let's test how the different sets of attributes affect James White's and our interpretations.

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Two hotly contested verses often put in opposition to one another from Ephesians and 1

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Timothy both use the word all. They can't both mean all without exception. Does God work all things according to the counsel of his will, that is, predestining everything, or does

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God desire that all men would be saved, that is, everyone? First, some background.

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While on location in Asia Minor, studying there, we learned that Ephesus was the international center of the worship of Diana, a wild goddess who might throw a tantrum and turn you into an animal.

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Pagans would worship in the high places, so Paul told the Ephesians that we are blessed in the heavenly places, where Christ is seated above any acropolis, in fact, far above all principalities and powers.

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If you prioritize the omnis and ims, as James does, that God has all power and all knowledge and cannot change, if you put those above the biblical attributes, then by those philosophical attributes, you immediately conclude that the verse must say that God has predestined everything, for you conclude that before you even look at the verse.

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If instead, you prioritize those thousands of highlighted verses, the biblical attributes of God above the omnis and ims, and you focus on God being living, personal, relational, good and loving, then the other interpretation is this.

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You immediately see that God does desire all men, without exception, to be saved, because that interpretation is not based on quantity, but on quality, and it fits with his biblical attributes.

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So God wills that all would be saved. Yes, as the Bible says that the lawyers rejected the will of God for themselves, many others will reject

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God's will that all would be saved. Then God, being good and loving, shows that he would never predestine filth and evil, just the fact that he's good and loving.

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So God working all things according to the counsel of his will means that unlike the pagan gods, who are arbitrary and capricious, everything that our

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God does, he does thoughtfully, according to the counsel of his will. So Ephesians does not teach that everything that happens is done by God, for God is not even the author of confusion, let alone evil.

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Rather, unlike the cruel and unpredictable Greek gods, everything that our

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God does, all God's works, not all of man's works, but all of God's works are done deliberately and out of his goodness.

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So by the biblical attributes, we reject the omnis and ims interpretation, and see that God wants everyone to be saved, and also that not everything is settled, but rather, everything

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God does is for a good reason. So by prioritizing the attributes highlighted in these verses above the omnis and ims, you get a powerful biblical framework for interpreting the

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Bible, which never leads to the settled view, but to the God who is eternally free.

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And those thousands of highlighted verses, they're just in the Gospels. There must be more than 10 ,000 such passages throughout the

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Scripture that show those attributes of God. And that framework makes sense because the

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Bible shows which set of attributes are more fundamental and more important to God, for Scripture systematically elevates

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God's goodness above his power. For example, Jonah interprets the unfulfilled prophecy of Nineveh, their impending destruction, not attributing it to immutability, omnipotence, or omniscience, but to God being merciful and loving.

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For the prophecy did not come to pass, as Jonah put it, because God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abundant in love, one who repents from doing harm.

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The book of Jonah is understood by the biblical attributes, but it confounds the omnis and ims.

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It says that God saw that they turned from their evil way and God repented from the disaster that he said he would bring upon them, and he did not do it.

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This is exactly what God says in the potter and clay passage. Depending on how men respond to his promises and warnings, that he will not do that which he said he would do, that he will not do that which he thought he would do.

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But why does the Bible prioritize love above power? Because quality trumps quantity, and God's primary attributes are qualitative, not quantitative.

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Goodness is greater than power, for might doesn't make right, but right makes might.

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For as the Bible says repeatedly, righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne, oh

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God, and God's throne represents power, and it is righteousness that is the foundation of that power.

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So the banner under which we have the victory is not a flag depicting omni -powerful nuclear weapons.

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Rather, the banner over us is love, showing the lamb that was slain.

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Just as might doesn't make right, it cannot be that from before the foundation of the earth that God for his glory and pleasure decreed every thought and every action and controls every molecule.

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For that would mean that all the world's hatred and perversion flowed from the mind of God. And that, as happened in Florida, when a man abducts a little girl from her own bedroom, torments her, molests her, and then buries her alive, that would mean that all of that played out in the mind of God before he even, before that criminal came into existence, a criminal who could perform, who could perform in no other way than the way in which he was created.

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Which is why James White consistently says that all wickedness is meaningful, because even though he doesn't want to be held to it like Augustine, he traces all evil directly back to God's omnis and ems.

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And that's another thing about open theism, which James White has admitted publicly, that even on its face, that unlike Calvinism, open theism does not bring men to question the goodness of God.

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Now returning to the first of our three fundamental truths to close, we began by stating that the future is open based on God's freedom.

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The settled view is forced to deny, to deny God's freedom, taking away his ability to think a new thought, write a new song.

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For example, we believe that God was actually free to create or not to create, and in how he designed the universe.

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But if the settled view acknowledges God's actual freedom, even in what he decrees, then exhaustive foreknowledge is not an eternal attribute of God, because he could have done otherwise.

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Yet if they deny that God was free to create differently, then like Zeus, they trap

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God himself in fate. God is free, and therefore the future cannot be settled, but must be open.

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Now as James White comes up and presents proof texts, he will view them through the lens of the omnis and ems.

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With that mindset, some verses actually sound like everything is settled. But 30 times the

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Bible calls him the living God, and living things change. Each of the claim proof texts based on the omnis and ems has an opposite interpretation based on the biblical attributes that God is living, personal, relational, good, and loving.

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So with each verse you hear, consider two questions. First, am I being asked to interpret this by the omnis and ems?

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And secondly, what is the other interpretation? And you will find that there is always that other interpretation which speaks of the living

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God who is eternally free. Thank you. Well, good evening.

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Thank you very much for being here this evening. This is a very, very important topic, and I hope you will listen very carefully.

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I also hope you will allow each one of us to define our own positions. Unfortunately, Bob has misrepresented me pretty badly already on a number of instances.

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He didn't give citations because he wouldn't be able to. I'll try to correct those in my rebuttal period because I only have a few moments to try to explain to you why it is that Christianity, all branches of Christianity, have never believed what

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Bob Enyart just presented to you to be true. The primary reason is this. What you've heard Bob do just now is he's taken certain attributes which all

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Christians believe, that God is personal, that he's living, that he's good, he's relational.

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We all believe that. What he does is he elevates those above the other attributes that are revealed in Scripture.

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The only way to truly understand God is to go to his word and allow his word to tell us about him because we are not like him.

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We are his creatures, and therefore we're dependent upon his word to explain to us who he is. So what

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Christian theology has done down through the years is not follow Plato and all the rest of that kind of stuff. That's a bogus argument.

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What we have done is we've allowed the Scriptures, all of the Scriptures, to reveal the entire range of God's attributes, and we as his creatures do not have the right to say,

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I'm going to pick this one, this one, this one, this one, and I'm going to subservient everything else to these because those are the ones that make

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God most look like me. That's why you won't find this belief in church history because people recognize that there are so many passages of the

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Bible that teach otherwise. It's not a matter of, well, you've got your interpretational system and I've got mine.

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It's allowing the Bible to speak for itself. So I'm going to begin with Ephesians 1 .11, and I'm going to suggest to you that if you read

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Ephesians 1 .1 through 1 .11, you're going to find no way to limit what God is saying there when he says, when he is described as the

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God who works all things after the counsel of his will because the context there is the accomplishment of the highest act that God is engaged in, and that is his self -glorification, the salvation of a specific people that he has elected from time eternal.

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And so everything that goes into that has to be a part of God's plan and God's sovereign action, and so when it says he works all things after the counsel of his will, it actually means that.

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But we don't even have to stick with Ephesians because Paul, I think, is just simply echoing what we hear in Isaiah chapter 46.

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Listen to these words. I would invite everyone this evening to go home tonight, before you go to bed tonight, go home and read

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Isaiah 40 through 48. It's the trial of the false gods. And listen to what

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God says about himself in those chapters and ask yourself a question, who represented that God this evening?

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That would be very, very important. But listen to these words beginning in verse 8 of Isaiah 46. Remember this and stand firm.

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Recall to mind, you transgressors, remember the former things of old, for I am God, there is no other.

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I am God and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done.

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How can God do that if the future doesn't exist? How can God do that if he doesn't have exhaustive knowledge of the future?

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Saying, my counsel shall stand and I will accomplish all my purpose. Bob's going to tell us this evening,

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God hopes his prophecies fail. He hoped the prophecy concerning Judas would fail.

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And it's okay if it did. But here God says, my counsel shall stand and I will accomplish all my purpose.

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That is my assertion this evening. I have three points to try to cram into 16 minutes and it's not going to be easy to do.

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Point number one, the Bible directly, plainly, clearly, and unalterably teaches God's eternal nature and his absolute knowledge of all matters in time because everything that happens in time is a result of his creative decree.

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Number two, the Bible teaches that the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the demonstration of his deity, is based upon God's eternal nature and his knowledge of the future.

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They're tied together and I believe there are serious Christological errors in Bob Enyart's theology.

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Serious Christological errors that we will need to address this evening. And number three, my friends, and this is why this is most important, this is a

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Gospel issue. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is directly impacted by this teaching.

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And I will submit to you that as we look at Scripture, God's knowledge of future events and specifically his knowledge of the people that he's going to redeem is made impossible by the open theist perspective and therefore the

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Gospel itself is greatly impacted. Turn with me to Isaiah chapter 41 and I want you to hear what

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God says in his inspired word. Isaiah chapter 41 verse 21, here calling the false idols to come into the court.

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Set forth your case, says Yahweh. Bring your proofs, says the King of Jacob.

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So he's inviting these false gods. Come in, set forth your arguments, let's hear what you have to say.

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Let them bring them and do what? What's the test that God gives us in his own inspired word for who is and who is not truly

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God? Tell us what is to happen. The true

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God can do this. A false god cannot. An idol cannot tell you what's going to happen. This is the very test given to the people of God.

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Here is the dividing line between the true God because he knows the future and a false god because he does not.

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Then notice what else it says. Tell us the former things, what they are, that we may consider them, that we may know their outcome or declare to us the things to come.

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Tell us what is to come hereafter that we may know that you are gods. And then he gets sarcastic. This is sarcasm.

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Do good or do harm that we may be dismayed and terrified. Behold, you are nothing and your work is less than nothing.

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Toeva, an abomination is he who chooses you. Strong words. But notice that something is frequently missed in this text.

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It's not just so clearly stating that a fundamental test of the true God is he knows the future and can tell you what's going to happen.

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That's clear. That's obvious. But notice something else. Tell us the former things, what they are, that we may consider them and that we may know their outcome.

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Folks, do you know what that means? I had the opportunity of teaching church history in Kiev.

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I landed in Kiev right as the U .S. State Department issued a travel warning, don't go to Kiev. And I was there during the revolution.

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And what was I there? Therefore, I was teaching church history. I've taught church history for many years.

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And historians can very often tell you what happened in the past. But very often historians cannot tell you why it happened in the past.

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It's one thing to know the facts. It's another thing to know why. And God says not only can

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I tell you what's going to happen in the future, I can tell you what happened in the past and why it happened.

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You know what that means? That means there was a purpose. That means it happened according to his divine decree.

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There was a reason. There was a purpose. And God, we may not know what it is. We may not know till eternity.

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But God knows what the purpose was. Because he is an awesome creator. And that's how you tell the difference between the true

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God and idols. And it says anyone who chooses a God who can't do those things is themselves toevah, an abomination.

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Those are strong words. Those are strong words, but that's not the only place. Look at Isaiah chapter 44 verses 6 through 8.

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Same section, but this is where God reveals so much about himself. Listen to what he says in verses 6 through 8 of chapter 44.

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Thus says Yahweh the King of Israel and his Redeemer, Yahweh of hosts, I am the first and I am the last.

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Beside me there is no God. Who is like me? Let him proclaim it. Let him declare and set it before me since I appointed an ancient people.

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Let them declare what is to come and what will happen. Fear not, nor be afraid.

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Have I not told you from of old and declared it? And you are my witnesses. Is there a God besides me?

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There is no rock. I know it on any. You see folks, I've been debating this issue from the time

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I started ministry because the first people I dealt with were Mormons. And on an epistemological and ontological level,

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Bob Enyart's theology of God's knowledge of the future is identical to Mormonism. Finite Godism is nothing new.

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And so when I hear these things, I'm like, oh wow, we need to go back to Isaiah. That's where we've gone so many times before in the context of demonstrating the one true

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God. What does God say? Set forth what is going to take place. The true prophets can do that because they serve the true

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God who has an exhaustive knowledge of future events. Now I said the next thing that very much concerns me is the issue of the incarnation.

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Turn just one page back probably in your Bible to Isaiah 43 .10, or maybe these days just tap back.

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That may be the way most people are doing this. To Isaiah 43 .10, this is an incredibly important text dealing with Mormons all the time.

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That last phrase, before me no God was formed, nor shall there be after me, cuts the Mormon law of eternal progression right in half.

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But notice what comes before that. Isaiah 43 .10 is the Bible verse from which Jehovah's Witnesses get their names.

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You know that? Notice it says, you are my witnesses declares Yahweh, or as we slaughter it in English, Jehovah, and my servant whom

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I have chosen, who may know and believe me and understand that I am he. This is in the context of God revealing future events.

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And he's chosen his servant, Israel, that they may know and believe me and understand that I am he.

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In Hebrew, that's Anahu. In the Greek Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which was the

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Bible of the New Testament church, that is the phrase, ego imi, I am. Now keep your finger there and turn with me to John chapter 13.

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Here in the gospel of John chapter 13, in the context of the betrayer

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Judas, verse 18, I am not speaking of all of you.

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I know whom I have chosen, but the scripture will be fulfilled. We may need to talk about that word because Bob has a very unusual understanding of what plairothe means.

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He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me. Notice citation of Old Testament text,

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Jesus says it's going to be fulfilled. Then verse 19, I am telling you this now before it takes place that when it does take place, you may believe that I am he.

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Then notice this verse 21, after saying these things, Jesus was troubled in the spirit and testified, truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.

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So here's the context, the betrayal of Judas. And notice what Jesus says. In verse 19, I am telling you this now before it takes place that when it does take place, you may believe that I am he.

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Sound familiar? Yeah, if you look at the Greek Septuagint and you parallel the language that's found in Isaiah 43 .10

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with what's found here in John 13 .19, Jesus is drawing from Isaiah 43 .10 and applying verses about Yahweh God to himself.

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This is one of the places where I am is used in John 8 .24, 8 .58,

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13 .19, and 18 .5 -6. John is clearly in each one of these indicating to us that these are references to the deity of Christ, not just the deity of Christ, these are references to Jesus being

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Yahweh. And how does Jesus present this? In the context, I'm telling you this before it happens so that when it does happen, you may understand, you may believe

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I am deity, I am Yahweh. My esteemed opponent this evening believes that Jesus could have been wrong when he said this.

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Judas could have repented. That would have been great. And then he misrepresents us Calvinists because he says, see

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Calvinists don't like this because they think it's terrible that a man repent. Has nothing to do with it at all.

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I've heard him say it over and over again. Has nothing to do with it at all. Our objection is simple. Jesus can't prove he's

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Yahweh by lying. We need to know who Jesus is. And if Jesus says you can know me because of this, then if Jesus is wrong, we have no way of knowing who

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Jesus really is. That's the issue. It has nothing to do with Judas repenting.

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It has everything to do with God having to be true. Because my friends, if you want to know

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God as personal, if you want to know God as loving, you've got to first believe that God is true and consistent and faithful.

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What if his gospel changes tomorrow? We're without hope. We're without hope. Fascinating.

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Well, very little time left. Turn with me please to Acts chapter 2. Acts chapter 2 verse 23.

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Read these words. It's beginning of verse 22. Men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst.

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As you yourselves know, this Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.

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The cross was not something that came along later in God's thinking. I debated a scholar of this subject by the name of John Sanders a number of years ago.

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And Dr. Sanders, a consistent open theist, believes that when God created, he did not know that Adam would fall.

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In fact, he was shocked. He was surprised. He didn't know it was going to happen. And that means when

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God created, he had no idea that you would ever exist. None. Because you're the result of thousands of free will choices.

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So God could never know that you existed. And so he couldn't know what was going to happen.

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He created all the potentiality of all this evil, but he had no purpose other than to show that he's good and loving and personal, but all that evil, all that stuff that he didn't know what happened, but it just sort of took place.

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And so then he has to find a way to solve this problem. So we have the cross, right? And yet, according to Acts chapter 2, this

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Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God.

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Well, you can't have foreknowledge if you don't have knowledge of the four. And so God has a definite plan, and the cross has been a part of that plan.

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In fact, as Peter tells us, it speaks of Jesus, the lamb slain for our salvation, foreknown before the creation of the world.

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The early church believed this. Look at Acts chapter 4, verses 27 through 28. It's so clear in their preaching, for truly in this city they were gathered together against your holy servant

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Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel. Look at all those different people involved there.

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Think of all the different motivations in Herod's mind and Pilate's mind and the Jews' mind and the

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Romans' mind. Herod was a nut, Pilate was a coward, the Jewish leaders hated

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Jesus because he kept exposing them, and the Roman soldiers just were getting their pay and doing their thing. All of them have all sorts of different motivations, but was there any uncertainty about the crucifixion?

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Was there any uncertainty about the crucifixion? No, because look at what it says, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

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There's the faith of the early church. That's why Christians have always believed what Christians have believed about the unchanging nature of God, His purposes,

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His intentions. You see, what we believe is that God is eternal, but you see, He has decreed in the creation of this universe to enter into relationship with His people.

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It's a personal relationship, it's an intimate relationship, it's all a part of His decree.

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He decrees in the creation of time to enter into time in the person of Jesus Christ and to also interact through His spirit with His people.

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So you see, the only way that there can be a contradiction there is if you squish God down to someone who looks like us.

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If you insist, well, He either has to be timeless and He's Plato's cold stone idol, or He has to be a person like us and experience

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His time. What if He's bigger than either one of those? What if He exists outside of time, creates time, and interacts with us in time, and demonstrates

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His love for us by the second person of Trinity entering into human flesh, which does not create a change in the being of God?

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You have to have a very wrong Christology to come up with that idea. What if He does that?

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That's exactly what the Bible says He did. That's exactly what the early church, they recognized in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ to do whatever your hand and your plan predestined to take place.

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Now, two minutes and two and a half minutes is ridiculous, but here we go, Romans chapter 8, let me just make a few comments as to how this is a gospel issue.

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You see it's a gospel issue because it has to do with the very crucifixion of Jesus Christ Himself, but now let's look at some other aspects, but I'll only be able to touch on a few.

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Verse 29, well, verse 28, and we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to His purpose.

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That is so personal, my friends. That is so personal. God has to be in control of the future to make that promise come true.

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That has been the bulwark of the hope of God's people for 2 ,000 years.

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But notice the application, for those whom He foreknew. Wait a minute, for the open theist,

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God didn't know you were going to exist. God had no idea. You're the result of all sorts of free will actions of men.

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God didn't know you were going to exist, so He couldn't have foreknown you. You see, you end up with an impersonal concept of salvation where God simply chooses a nameless, faceless group, and then we fill it in by what we do, by our belief, by our repentance, whatever else it might be.

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It becomes impersonal just like the cross becomes impersonal. Because, see, I believe that the elect were united with Christ in His death, so that His death becomes my death,

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His resurrection becomes my resurrection. My name was written on His hands. Not for the open theist.

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My name didn't exist yet. At the crucifixion, Jesus didn't know I'd exist. How could my name be on His hands?

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It becomes impersonal. That changes the gospel, my friends. Those whom He foreknew,

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He also predestined to be conformed, the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers.

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And notice the golden chain. And those whom He predestined, He also called. Those whom He called,

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He also justified. Those whom He justified, He also glorified. It's the same group all the way through.

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And it's personal, my friends. You do not justify nameless, faceless groups. And that is why the apostle could then say, what then shall we say these things?

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If God is for us, who can be against us? It's personal, and that requires

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God's knowledge of the future. The God of the Bible says,

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I am with the first, I am with the last. Why? Because by His grand creative power,

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He has created all things, including everything that happens in time, time itself. And the glorious thing is,

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He is then condescended to enter into experience with us in time, and especially in the person of Jesus Christ.

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Thank you for your attention. I'll try to deal carefully with what

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James always says is one of his strongest arguments. He opened to Isaiah. Reading Isaiah 40 through 48, through the lens of the omnis and ims, settled view theologians see exhaustive foreknowledge in that passage, but they do so by greatly exaggerating what is there.

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They call it a deity test, which boils down to two things. God names a future king,

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Cyrus, and God declares the end from the beginning, which is either big picture, from the very beginning to the very end, or short -term moral or political outcomes over a period of days or centuries.

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From the beginning in Genesis 2, God declared life to those who obey

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Him, and death to those who disobey. And in Genesis 3, that the seed of the woman would deal a fatal blow to Satan.

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That's what God declared from the beginning. Settled view proponents, even the presuppositionalists, say frequently that this is a deity test, with God giving evidence that He is

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God. But instead, the context is primarily a comparison between God and stone idols.

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Go ahead, God says at one point, let your stone idol sin. Let's see if it can do good or evil.

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Let's see if it can sin. Of course it can't sin, it's a stone. That idol actually does have, in reality, it has an attribute called impeccability, which means an inability to sin.

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So that stone is impeccable. By the way, that's another of the omnis and ims, impeccability, which

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James White and settled viewers generally hold to, an inability to sin.

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Significantly, a stone idol has three of their philosophical attributes of God.

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It is impassable, immutable, and impeccable. Impassable, because it has no emotion, it's a stone.

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Immutable, because it can't change. And impeccability, because it cannot sin. Whichever entities the ims actually describe, they preclude living beings.

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You cannot be alive and have the ims. In Isaiah, with God predicting a future king's name.

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Okay, in Luke chapter 1, God wants two babies named, one John, the other

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Jesus. Joseph was a righteous stepfather and immediately would comply with the

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Lord's desire. Zacharias was doubting. He questioned the angel and was struck mute, until the very moment nine months later, when he wrote, his name is

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John. The settled view is maintained by presuming that if God doesn't see something in advance, or didn't decree it, then therefore he, and I hate even to say these words, but it is how they calculate.

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If God doesn't see it, or decree it, then he is completely incompetent and powerless.

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But in an instant, God could devise a thousand ways to get something done. Getting someone to do something is easy.

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Getting them to humble themselves and repent is hard. It's harder than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.

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Which, by the way, speaks against Calvin's irresistible grace. Because if that doctrine were true, it would be as easy for a rich man to be saved as for a poor man as for the whole world.

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Which, by the way, also testifies against love. Because love is commitment to the good of someone.

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And there are sins of commission, hurting someone, and sins of omission, not loving them.

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Which is why Calvinism has a hard time showing God's goodness and love. Whereas even

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James White has admitted that open theism has no trouble defending

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God's goodness, and that it is because that open theism is based, now

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I'm saying this part, because open theism is based on God being personal, good, and loving.

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Okay. Any charismatics in the room?

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Okay. Give me a second to see where I was. Okay. So I was just saying that that's why

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Calvinism has a hard time showing God's goodness and love. Whereas even James White has admitted that open theism has no trouble defending

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God's goodness, and that's because open theism is based on God being personal, good, and loving.

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And so his goodness is apparent from beginning to end. So what they call a deity test is not.

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For if it were, then Joshua's generation would have had to conclude that God was not

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God, for the Lord had told them, quote, I will without fail drive out from before you the

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Canaanites. But then just a few years later, God said, I will no longer drive them out, because of how evil his people were being.

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So if this were a short -term deity test, since the prophecy did not come to pass, just as Jonah's generation would have had to conclude, they would decide that God wasn't

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God. And if it's a long -term deity test, then the test is not yet complete, and the jury would still be out, because they would have to wait until the end to decide if he passed the test, but thankfully the end will never come.

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Instead, God is simply saying he is alive, and the stone idols are dead. God is wise and capable.

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He says he has spoken it and will bring it to pass, whereas they know nothing and can't even sin.

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An American president, likewise, predicted an outcome that would take years, dozens of nations, hundreds of millions of individual human beings.

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Let's hear from FDR. We might not hear from FDR.

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On July 8, 1941, FDR said that we will reach the inevitable triumph.

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FDR did not have exhaustive foreknowledge. Instead, he had determination and power.

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So Isaiah is not an evidentiary deity test. And even James White's favorite anti -open theist author,

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Bruce Ware, says of Isaiah 45, which he can say of the entire passage, that, quote, this text stops short of explicitly asserting

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God's exhaustive foreknowledge. Yeah, it stops short by a billion years, stops short by an eternity of him thinking new thoughts and writing new songs, taking off the omnis and the ems, glasses, and reading with the biblical attributes in mind, we see this is not a deity test, but a declaration that God is alive.

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Settle view authors point to Isaiah as among the strongest biblical evidence, even though in no way does it say that the future is settled.

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Thank you. Well, I'm not certain how that clear testimony of Isaiah was refuted.

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Were we just told that that's just simply had something to do with short -term political outcomes? You can read that text and go, well, that's just about Cyrus.

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It has nothing to do beyond that. I've had a number of things attributed to me so far that just make me go,

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I did? My favorite anti -openness author, Bruce Ware, and then you quote from him as if that has something to do with, let's try to listen to what

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I've said and respond to it. Let's look at a couple of things here. First of all, we were just told that a stone has three of the attributes of God, impeccability, immutability, and impassibility, only if you completely ignore the context of all of systematic theology in the entire history of the

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Christian church, because, of course, we've always defined these things in the context of God being good and personal, interactive.

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So, for example, when we talk about impeccability, what we mean is God can't cease being God. God's goodness is a part of his very nature.

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He can't change. So, Bob wants to say God's good. How do you know God's going to be good tomorrow?

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If he's not impeccable, he could change, right? And he could become less good than he is now, right? You see, being able to trust in God's hesed, his loving kindness, in that Hebrew term, there is an element of faithfulness, and that faithfulness requires what?

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Immutability. He does not change in his being. Secondly, we have impassibility.

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By the way, that comes from the term that refers to experiencing suffering. A meaningful doctrine of impassibility is not that God does not rejoice, etc.

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God is not subject to external forces that will change his course of action and his being.

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That's what impassibility is really all about. There's not something else in the universe that God has his intention, but then it comes along and, oh, well, okay, we'll get 90 % there.

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It's not that he's a stone -cold idol, that's what Bob keeps saying, but it's just a misrepresentation. If you even read

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Calvin, the longest section of the Institutes is on what? Prayer. Prayer.

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Read it for yourself. It's amazing. So when we talk about a stone having those attributes, the stone's not personal, therefore it's completely irrelevant.

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It doesn't have anything to do with what we're talking about this evening. Bob says, well, God could micromanage things.

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He can get Zechariah to name John properly and get Mary to name Jesus properly. I've listened to this a number of times in the debates that he's done with Gene Cook and in his written debate with Dr.

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Lamerson, and it sounds like he heads toward Neo -Molinism. If you know what Molinism is, God knows what any person will do given a certain circumstance, and what

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God does is he micromanages everything in the natural world to get people to do what he wants them to do.

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So he gets everybody to do what he wants them to do by putting them in the circumstances where they can act freely to do it.

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Now most of us go, that doesn't really sound like it really works, and I don't think that it does either, but it sounds like that's where he's going because, well, can he make a rooster crow?

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Can he make Zechariah name John? The historical origin of open theism had nothing to do with worrying about the freedom of God.

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It had everything to do with worrying about the freedom of man. And that's really its ultimate goal, is to assure that man has libertarian free will.

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And that's not a repetitive phraseology at all because there's all sorts of different kinds of will revealed to us in Scripture.

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Jesus said in John chapter 8 that there were certain men who were slaves of sin. They had a will, but they were enslaved.

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Does that mean they had a free libertarian will? No, they were slaves to sin. So it's not a merely repetitious thing.

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He said that Calvinism has a hard time showing God's goodness. I think

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I spent quite a few minutes talking about the incredible goodness of God that's been demonstrated, the incarnation of the

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Son of God and his self -giving for particular people upon the cross of Calvary. We have no problem whatsoever demonstrating

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God's goodness unless you reduce divine goodness down to what only a man could exercise because he doesn't know the future and he can't have overarching purposes in all of creation.

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Then you could make that argument. He says that I've admitted that open theism has no problem defending God's goodness. Where did

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I admit this? Because I think it has a major problem defending God's goodness. I think there's a major philosophical problem in saying that God created this universe and he created all the potentiality of evil, but he had no purpose for it.

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Just, well, I didn't know. I didn't know that was going to happen. I think there's a real problem with God's goodness.

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Even once evil starts happening, when God saw the plans,

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I mean it took a while to plan 9 -11, you know what I mean? Once God knew what these guys were planning, couldn't he stop them?

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You've got to answer all the questions about God's goodness and now you don't have a divine decree and an eternal purpose upon which to answer those questions.

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I think open theism has serious problems answering the question of God's goodness.

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Now, could I just lay out a real basic, I think important element of biblical hermeneutics that we can all see?

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There is a difference between a specific prophecy that has a specific fulfillment and judgment oracles that come from God.

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Now, we all know what judgment oracles are, right? I mean, God proclaims, I am God, you're not God, you break my law, and wrath is going to come.

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In fact, we know Romans chapter 1 says God's wrath is being, present tense, revealed against all in godliness and righteousness and men who suppress the truth and unrighteousness.

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So, we know that that's the case, and yet we know that God is often very merciful, he is long -suffering, he will delay judgment, but judgment will someday come.

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And so, when you have something like a Jonah, Jonah gets angry because, oh, Yahweh, I knew you were merciful and I knew that if they repented, this is what you would do.

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See, even Jonah knew the character of his God. And so, if we want to go and look at Jonah and go, well, see,

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God, there's a false prophecy right there. Is that really comparable to Micah telling us about where Jesus is going to be born?

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Could Jesus have been born any place other than Bethlehem? And from the open theistic perspective, he'd have to have been able to be born almost anywhere.

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All depend upon the free will actions of mankind. What if some king decided to wipe out

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Bethlehem so there wasn't any city to be born in? God doesn't have any control over those things. So there's a major difference between the two that we need to understand, and we need to apply them as we listen.

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We have seen the clear and plain teaching of Scripture. God has exhaustive foreknowledge. It's based upon his decree.

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There has been no argument presented against that thus far. Thank you. Okay, you guys didn't get to hear that audio from FDR.

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Hopefully it'll work. I'd like you to hear that and consider whether he has exhaustive foreknowledge when he said this.

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We will gain the inevitable triumph. The American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.

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When I say the only consistent opinion is an opinion. Okay, so FDR made an extraordinary prediction involving hundreds of millions of human beings actively involved in a period of years, and he was right, and he did not have omniscience.

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That is not a test of an exhaustive future to be able to predict the future events even of nations.

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James White a couple times now has said I misrepresented him. First, regarding open theism, in that it doesn't have any trouble defending

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God's goodness, like Calvinism has to deal with that. We have audio from James White.

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He said I couldn't provide any references. I have references, I have audio for everything I've said, and we'll post them on opentheism .org

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slash James White. But let's hear right now clip number two.

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The theist is that the questions of God's goodness that are aimed at Calvinists are questions that anyone except an open theist actually has to answer themselves.

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Because the question is not a... I'm sorry, could you play that again, number two?

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And then what's happening? It's continuing into future clips. Let's try number two again, and then the last one will be number seven.

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When I say the only consistent Arminian is an open theist is that the questions of God's goodness that are aimed at Calvinists are questions that anyone except an open theist actually has to answer themselves.

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Okay, now I have no intention of misrepresenting James White. I don't believe

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I had. He accused me yesterday of severely misrepresenting him and Calvinists by saying that God, in their theology, decrees rape.

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I mean, that's a pretty disgusting thing. And for that to be in God's mind for eternity past, running forever, that's why you have to defend

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God's goodness if you're a Calvinist. Let's hear that, and Dr.

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White said yesterday I misrepresented that. Let's hear this from Dr. White. I think it's just in the last year.

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Let's hear this. Oh, I apologize. Let me give you, hold on,

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Biff. I'm going to give, I'll tell you what was said.

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An unbeliever took James White's appearance with Hank Hanegraaff, and he put it to music because he thought

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Christians looked like fools saying that God decreed rape. So, unfortunately, we have to deal with the music, but you'll be able to hear

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James White agree, although he didn't want to answer, yes, God decrees rape. And he has very good reasons for it.

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Let's hear it. It's further in.

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Sorry for the opening. This entire debate was set up extremely rapidly, including all of our audio.

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So I apologize for the problems. Okay, we can't get that. Could you give me my notes there?

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I have the transcript. And while I'm getting those, let me say something about Peter's denial, because James White has addressed this frequently, saying that Peter's denial is an example showing that how could

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God predict the future, even something like that? On its face, predictions like that say nothing like the future is settled.

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They're low -relevancy texts, and they're emphasized because exhaustive foreknowledge is not biblical, so they don't have much to go on.

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The entire Peter matter comes down to the rooster, as James White sort of made fun of me about.

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Why is it down to the rooster? Because the rest is present knowledge, not future knowledge.

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James will agree that I'm not God, yet my audience routinely hears me predict that pro -life presidents, that pro -life

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Republican politicians will deny the personhood of the unborn child when they think they might lose an election.

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That is an evidence that I have exhaustive foreknowledge, but only that I know people. Jesus is

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God. He knew Peter. And regardless of the rhetoric, he knew Peter was not ready to die for Jesus, which the

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Lord could see as easily as we see those around us. That's present knowledge. The Lord also knew there were thousands of people in Jerusalem who would recognize him as the guy who hung out with Jesus.

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It was easy, I'll close with this, to get three people to remember they had seen

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Peter, and then to confront him, and he denied the Lord.

01:00:04

That's based on present knowledge, and then you need a rooster to crow. Thank you. Well, I'm obviously disappointed that I've become part of the debate here, and with clips and things like that.

01:00:27

I'm going to stay focused on the subject, if you don't mind, folks. I didn't bring any clips, because I'm not trying to catch

01:00:34

Bob Enyart in something, but I will respond to the one clip that he did manage to play. I said that I spoke of questions aimed at Calvinists, specifically because of the divine decree.

01:00:46

Since open theists don't have a divine decree, therefore they don't have to answer those questions. That's all I was saying. If you'd like to actually listen to the debate, it was a very good debate between myself and Dr.

01:00:54

John Sanders. It's available online. You can watch it on YouTube. But that, again, is taking it out of context and misrepresenting my position.

01:01:02

The FDR example, to me, is a clear example of what the real problem here is. FDR was a politician trying to get his people to engage in war and to do so with great ferocity, and he was successful.

01:01:16

To compare that with Yahweh saying to his people, this is how

01:01:21

I reveal that I'm the true God against the false gods, this is how you'll know you can worship me, is because I'll not only tell you the future, but remember what

01:01:29

Bob didn't mention that I did mention? Tell us about the past and why it happened. We haven't heard a word about that in 12 minutes of rebuttal so far, have we?

01:01:37

Not a word, because there isn't any answer to be given from the open theistic perspective on that subject.

01:01:43

You can't answer that question. You simply have to say, Isaiah is just talking about a short -term political thing.

01:01:49

It's not about how you can really know who Yahweh is. Read the text for yourself, and then remember

01:01:55

Jesus. You want to accept Jesus as the best interpreter of Isaiah?

01:02:00

What do you think? Why did he apply a text that Bob's telling us was a short -term political thing to himself?

01:02:08

700 years later to demonstrate his deity in John chapter 13? Sort of puts holes in that theory just a little bit.

01:02:18

What do we have here this evening? At the end, we had something that I call the absurdity.

01:02:25

There is a man that put up a YouTube video, and he took a little clip, took it out of context from my discussion with George Bryson.

01:02:32

That entire discussion is available. I've done an entire dividing line going through it and providing the proper context.

01:02:39

It's the same context I provided to you in the opening of this statement. The man who put the clip together is dishonest.

01:02:45

George Bryson is dishonest, and anyone who uses it is dishonest. That's a fact, and I've documented it. Go and look for yourself.

01:02:52

I can just simply say, you all be the judges. Go to YouTube and listen to yourself. That's all you've got to do.

01:02:58

Here's what I had said. We've seen that the Bible teaches that God foreknows his elect people, that God knew that Jesus Christ, it was the absolute purpose of the triune

01:03:08

God from the very beginning of creation that Jesus Christ would enter into human flesh, would give his life voluntarily upon the cross of Calvary.

01:03:18

He humbled himself voluntarily. He uses the reflexive pronoun of the fact that he makes himself of no reputation.

01:03:25

This is the very essence of the gospel. And so God knew that sin was going to exist.

01:03:31

He restrains the vast majority of the evils of men's hearts.

01:03:36

The Bible says he not only hardens men's hearts to bring judgment, but he restrains the evil of men's hearts.

01:03:42

We don't hear anything about that. We don't hear any thanks given to God for the evil that he has restrained. And when he does allow evil to enter into our existence, it has a purpose, it teaches, and eventually the victory over it will bring

01:03:57

God glory. That's what he taught in Ephesians 1. That's what he taught in Isaiah, and we haven't heard any rebuttal of that at all.

01:04:04

But I do want to warn you about one other thing. I mentioned to you the fact that Jesus demonstrates his own deity based upon drawing from these very same texts of Scripture, and that Jesus and the

01:04:17

Father, their unity is a perfect unity. I defend this against Muslims all around the world standing in mosques in South Africa.

01:04:26

And yet, Bob would tell us that because Jesus was a free moral agent, he could have chosen to hate the

01:04:33

Father and brought disruption into the Godhead. God would cease being

01:04:38

God. That, my friends, is not anything that any Orthodox Christian has ever believed.

01:04:45

God can't cease being God. God's very ground of all being and his goodness and his righteousness and the unity of the

01:04:54

Father, Son, and Spirit is so definitional that to take the idea that we put a hierarchy of attributes into the

01:05:03

Bible and therefore come up with a God who doesn't know the future and could cease being

01:05:10

God? Friends, that's why I'm here this evening, because if that's the case, we have no trust that the gospel will be the same tomorrow, and that's a tragedy.

01:05:19

Thank you. James, I have 15 quick questions that I would love to hear your answers to.

01:05:37

First, regarding the Incarnation. Speaking of the divine and human nature, did

01:05:43

God the Son go from one nature to two natures? He took on a human nature, yes.

01:05:49

Okay. How is that not a change? Because a change would require an alteration in the actual divine being.

01:05:54

There was no alteration, if you understand the doctrine of the hypostatic union. Change and action are not the same thing, and that's one of your fundamental misunderstandings of mutability.

01:06:03

In all of your lectures and everything that I've listened to, you assume that if God acts in time, that involves a change in God.

01:06:08

Okay, let me ask you a question. You said an action. Isn't God the

01:06:14

Son today and forever in the future? Doesn't he have two natures, a divine and a human nature, forever?

01:06:23

Yes. Okay, so that's not an action, right? That's a state. He took an action in joining a human nature to himself.

01:06:29

He took an action, and today and forever he has two natures. That's correct. So you agree that eternally past,

01:06:35

God the Son only had one nature. Of course. And today God the Son has two natures. That's correct. And so you don't think that's a change?

01:06:42

No, because it did not involve a change in the divine being, which is the only assertion we make in regards to divine immutability.

01:06:47

His nature did not change. The Muslim debate you mentioned in 2013, that was titled,

01:06:53

Can God Become a Man? Which one are you referring to? I've done it a number of times. Well, the one in 2013 that was titled,

01:07:00

Can God Become a Man? And so you're asserting that when God the Son lowered himself and became a man, that was not a change.

01:07:10

The divine being did not change in his doing. It was an action that God undertook. Okay, I think the only reason you're saying that is because you're struggling between the omnis and ems and Jesus.

01:07:19

I've never mentioned it. And God the Son becoming flesh. Is that a question? Because, okay, I'll go on to the next.

01:07:25

Thank you. Beginning with God's freedom, this question asks if God has libertarian free will.

01:07:32

Jesus said that he could call on the Father to save him from the cross. Do you believe that the

01:07:38

Father could have saved Jesus from the cross? If he had eternally decreed to do so, yes, of course.

01:07:45

At the moment that Jesus said that he could call on the Father to save him from this hour, do you believe at that moment that the

01:07:55

Father could have saved Jesus? Well, again, you're asking a question about a decision that was made before the creation of time playing out within time.

01:08:03

This is something I've tried to explain to you. And so the divine decree will not be changed. If God had chosen to do things differently when he created, then he could have done things differently.

01:08:13

But once time is created, that's the way it's going to be. Could God have decreed it differently when he decreed the way things would go?

01:08:23

Could he have decreed it differently? God was absolutely free to glorify. The triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit, could have chosen to glorify themselves in whatever way they find best.

01:08:32

So God was free. The future was not exhaustively settled in eternity past until God decreed how many weeds would be outside in the parking lot.

01:08:41

Of course. Okay, so you reject that exhaustive foreknowledge is an eternal attribute of God because God was free to decree whichever way he wanted to.

01:08:52

No, sir, you've misunderstood that, again, for many, many years. And it's a misunderstanding on your part. It's not a misunderstanding on the part of systematic theologians that have recognized that the relationship between the before the decree and after the decree is not a temporal one.

01:09:06

It's a logical one. And you want to insist, because you believe God is in time, to make it a temporal one. Once you don't have that misunderstanding on your part, then the entire question dissipates.

01:09:15

Forgetting time, did God ever exist in a state when this future was not a requirement?

01:09:25

God freely chose to create this time. Before that, again, requires a temporal element that does not exist in God's consciousness.

01:09:35

So it's a question that is, again, asking to put God into a time parameter that the

01:09:40

Bible doesn't put him into. So you're saying that God could have saved Jesus from the cross back before the foundation of the earth, but when

01:09:49

Jesus said, do you not know that I could call on my father and he could send 12 legions of angels to save me, you're saying right then the father could not have saved

01:09:59

Jesus because it was decreed. Is that what you're saying? I obviously disagree with your understanding of the text. Well, right then.

01:10:05

We're not talking about before the foundation of the earth. When Jesus was in Gethsemane, are you saying then, when

01:10:13

Jesus said those words, that the father could not have saved him then? The point of Jesus' words is that he was not under the control of anything other than the father, that he was giving his life and he was doing so under the father's direction in unity with the father.

01:10:30

It was not a theoretical question about God being able to change the parameters of time. Let's go to God's attributes, of the biblical and the quantitative attributes of God.

01:10:44

You have admitted that when Jesus said that he did not know the day or the hour of the second coming, that Jesus was referring to God the son, because we're not very good at audio clips tonight, but he gives a hierarchy and explicitly says that, yet Jesus acknowledges that, as God the son, he did not know all things.

01:11:07

Specifically, he didn't know the timing of the second coming. So, do you acknowledge that God the son did not have all knowledge when

01:11:19

Jesus said that? Well, if you have the audio clip, then you have the entire discussion that I've given a number of times, and so I will explain what

01:11:26

Jesus meant there. In Mark chapter 13, verse 32, in the parallel passage in Matthew, what

01:11:32

Jesus is saying is he does give that hierarchy, and there are certain of Jesus' natural attributes that he has as the son that are veiled during the incarnation.

01:11:42

For example... Dr. White, when Jesus said, no man knows the day or the hour, not the angels in heaven, not even the son,

01:11:52

Jesus said the son didn't know the day or the hour, only the father. You're more comfortable using the word veiled.

01:11:59

Jesus said the son didn't know. Isn't it true that the son didn't know the day or the hour?

01:12:05

Is that true? For example, he... Is that true? Are you going to allow me to answer the question? Well, could you say if it's true?

01:12:12

If it's true. Okay, do you all want to hear the answer to the question? Go ahead. Okay, all right. Let me answer the question.

01:12:19

Jesus veiled his glory voluntarily. Jesus did not glow as he walked down the streets of Jerusalem, so as to fulfill his purpose as the

01:12:27

Messiah. Dr. White, I'm agreeing with you. There is a reason why... Dr. White, this is a cross -examination.

01:12:34

No, sir. No, it's not. You want to say... You don't want an answer to this, Bob, because your system can't handle it.

01:12:39

You've been misrepresenting our position for years. Okay, Dr. White, please. Jesus said that the son did not know the day or the hour, yet he was still

01:12:48

God, right? Yes. Even if that knowledge was veiled to him, so he didn't know it. Do you agree that the son was still

01:12:54

God, even though he was not impassible, that is, even though he experienced emotion?

01:13:00

I disagree with your definition of impassibility, as I have already defined it. Well, you said impassibility. God is not subject to external factors regarding his emotion.

01:13:08

But we grieve God when we sin, right? Yes. We grieve

01:13:13

God, so that's God being subject to external factors, which are human beings who sin.

01:13:19

No. So doesn't our sin affect God? It does not change his being as I... We didn't...

01:13:25

Do I get more than one word, sir? This is ridiculous. Well, you just said it didn't change his being. For the sake of these people.

01:13:31

Dr. White. For the sake of these people, allow answers, please. I'm not asking if it changed his being.

01:13:37

Yes, you are. I'm asking when we sin, does it grieve God? God has chosen to enter into relationship with his people via his decree, and in that he has chosen to enter into relationship with, be grieved, to rejoice, everything else.

01:13:53

It does not change his being, which is the only issue in regards to impassibility. So that when we sin, we grieve

01:14:00

God, that is an external factor affecting God, which many theologians that you quote repeatedly say could not happen.

01:14:09

Do you agree... Is that a question? Because you misrepresented what I said. It is an external factor that he brought into existence.

01:14:17

Next question. Therefore, it cannot change his being. Do you agree that God the Son was still God even though he was not everywhere?

01:14:26

There is a possibility that in the Gospel of John, the assertion is made that he did maintain omnipresence.

01:14:33

I think you're probably aware of that. Even if that was one of those attributes that was veiled, though I think there's a strong argument to be made for that textual variant and the possibility that he maintained that, and that it was his consciousness that is specifically centered in the person of Jesus Christ, but that omnipresence itself was not veiled.

01:14:55

Dr. White, he wasn't sharing glory with the Father as before, as you have said, because he wasn't seated at the right hand of the

01:15:03

Father when he was on earth. He said he would return to that place. The angel said he's not here, he's risen.

01:15:11

He wasn't in Abraham's bosom. He wasn't in the lake of fire. So when Jesus was here on earth as God the

01:15:17

Son here on earth, isn't it true that he was still God even though he wasn't in the lake of fire?

01:15:23

He was not seated at the right hand of the Father. Wasn't he still God? As the God -man, he was definitely spatially, temporally located because to be a human being is to be spatially located.

01:15:32

Was God the Son in the lake of fire? Was God the Son seated at the right hand of the Father when

01:15:37

Jesus was here? I think there's a misunderstanding of your understanding of omnipresence as well at that particular point. That's a different topic.

01:15:44

No, because you're asking me whether he was in hell or not. The question is specific. Was God the Son seated at the right hand of the

01:15:52

Father when Jesus was on earth? If he maintained his attribute of omnipresence, then the

01:15:57

Son would be properly ascribed as to being present in all of creation. If that was veiled and there was a focus upon Jesus as the

01:16:05

God -man, then you could make that statement. So you asserted earlier that even though God the

01:16:11

Son had one nature for eternity past and now has two natures for eternity future, still he has not changed essentially.

01:16:20

That's correct. I got that right? Yep. Do you agree that God the

01:16:27

Son was still God even though he did not possess all the glory and power that he had before the

01:16:34

Incarnation? Philippians 2. He laid these things aside, made himself of no reputation, so as to become obedient to die on the cross as a sacrifice for God's people.

01:16:43

So if someone looks at the Scriptures and says that Jesus said the Son did not have that knowledge of the second coming, would you assert that they're not a

01:16:54

Christian because they think Jesus was speaking literally and that to be God you don't have to have all knowledge?

01:17:01

Well, there's a false assumption there. You earlier said that God does not have omniscience because of what

01:17:07

Jesus said. The Father knew and the Spirit knew, so God still knew even though there was a veiling for the

01:17:13

Son for a specific purpose in a specific time. So that is an improper assertion that you're making because God hadn't forgotten,

01:17:20

God still knew, God was still omniscient, and the attributes of God are of the triune God. Dr.

01:17:26

White, you believe, of course, the Bible's teaching that God has foreknowledge and He predestines.

01:17:33

Is that true? I certainly do. Is that literal or are those figures of speech? Well, it depends on what you mean by literal, but God has literally predestined a specific people unto salvation in Christ Jesus.

01:17:45

When the Bible says God repented, you say it's a figure of speech. I'm wondering, when the Bible says God has foreknowledge…

01:17:51

Where did I say that? Where did I say that? When the Bible says God has foreknowledge… Where did I say that, sir? When the Bible says that God has foreknowledge and that God predestines, do you think they're figures of speech or literal?

01:18:04

Okay, I never said that repentance was a mere figure of speech. The term nakam means to sigh deeply.

01:18:09

I didn't say a mere figure of speech. You said, I said it was a figure of speech. Yes. Dr. White, let me continue with my question.

01:18:18

Isn't it true that the only person up here who believes that God has foreknowledge and predestination is the open theist because you believe that God is outside of time, lives

01:18:31

His life in a simultaneous now, and God cannot do anything in sequence. He can't have one thing before another.

01:18:39

So God can't foreknow anything. God can't predetermine anything.

01:18:44

Those very doctrines at the heart of Calvinism and even Arminianism show that God lives in sequence.

01:18:52

He does some things, He plans before He takes action. The question ignores everything

01:18:57

I've said so far this evening because I have explained to everyone that God has the ability to decree the creation of time and to enter into relationship with His people in time.

01:19:07

So it's just ignoring it. Simply ignoring the position that has been held rather than dealing with it is not a refutation nor is it an argument.

01:19:14

It's just a continued misrepresentation. Dr. White, you indicated that the church, the tradition of the church has always held these fundamental views like God is outside of time.

01:19:24

I just did a review of all church fathers, what they've written about God being in or out of time.

01:19:32

Would you agree with this? I did not say that. Could you ask a question relevant to something

01:19:37

I said? Would you agree with this? That there is no church father writing before the time of Augustine and his bishop

01:19:45

Ambrose who said that God was outside of time. Would you agree that's the first time in church history that that is taught that we know of in writing?

01:19:54

Well, knowing the early church fathers, that was not particularly an issue that they were focused upon.

01:20:00

But I do believe that you would be able to at least establish some argumentation for immutability well prior, especially in Tertullian, as a possibility.

01:20:10

But those are issues that were not yet coming up. Would you agree with me then that you're not aware of any assertion in the first almost 400 years of the church that God existed outside of time?

01:20:21

Would you agree with that? I don't remember a discussion of that particular subject. Okay, thank you. Would you agree, do you remember from Augustine when he struggled before he became a

01:20:30

Christian, he went to his bishop Ambrose and he said, yeah, but the Bible disagrees with Plato, and the counsel was interpret the

01:20:37

Bible in light of Plato. Do you remember that in Confessions? No, I do not, but our time is up.

01:20:44

Thank you. Mr. Enyart, did

01:20:51

God know that you would exist when he created the world? No. Did God know that sin would exist when he created the world?

01:21:03

He created free moral beings, so he knew it was a – he had a contingency plan to send his son.

01:21:09

He knew it was a grave possibility. So you just identified the cross as a contingency plan.

01:21:16

Is that correct? Yeah, if man didn't rebel against God, Jesus wouldn't have died. Okay. And so when

01:21:23

God created, he already had the contingency plan, or did this come about after Adam's fall?

01:21:31

God is omnicompetent. He knew that if he created free moral agents, angels or humans, they may turn against him, and he determined before he created them that he would lay down his life to save us if we were to rebel.

01:21:46

But given – do you agree with Dr. Sanders that God cannot know what a free creature will do without sacrificing that creature's freedom?

01:21:59

It's not possible to violate someone's will. That's an impossibility. It's a non sequitur.

01:22:07

God is abundant in wisdom and knowledge, and so God does not.

01:22:14

I assert that God does not force a man to sin, to say, See, I know he's going to sin tomorrow.

01:22:21

And when God does say they're going to sin, he says, If you repent, then I will repent of what

01:22:27

I thought I was going to do to you, of what I said I was going to do to you. If God cannot violate someone's will, can we violate

01:22:34

God's will? We can reject God's will. But we can't violate his will. The Bible says the lawyers rejected the will of God, the serious will of God for themselves.

01:22:47

So yes, we can reject God's will. Is rejection and violation different things than you're thinking? Well, sure.

01:22:53

It makes it sound like you're saying we could force God to do something against his will. The Bible says

01:22:58

Israel limited the Holy One. Israel, they limited the Holy One of Israel. We could reject

01:23:04

God's will, and we could limit him in the blessings he wants to pour out on us.

01:23:10

You do realize that the Hebrew there is actually not translated correctly into King James, limited is not a proper translation?

01:23:16

One of my friends was on the New King James Translation Committee, and they were mostly

01:23:22

Calvinists, and they translated it, they limited the Holy One of Israel. So they disagree. So when

01:23:27

God restrains men from committing evil, is he violating their will?

01:23:37

No, of course not. No. If you stop a criminal from committing a crime, you're not violating his will.

01:23:44

He still may want to commit the crime. If you take somebody's hand and cause them to pull the trigger and kill an innocent person, they didn't kill the innocent person.

01:23:54

They were compelled. So you cannot violate a will. But if God restrains evil, then how is that not a violation of the person's will?

01:24:05

James, it's no conceivable violation. When somebody wants to commit a crime, we have law enforcement officers here tonight.

01:24:12

If they stop the person, they're not violating his will, they're stopping him from acting out his desire, but his will is completely unchanged.

01:24:21

In Isaiah 41, we hear, tell us the former things, what they are, that we may consider them, that we may know their outcome.

01:24:28

Could you please explain how it is that God can give this challenge, and could you tell us how

01:24:34

God can fulfill this challenge himself in an open theist universe? Sure. If it was tell us the future things, we don't know the future things.

01:24:43

So if it was a deity test from a presuppositionalist like yourself, then we would not be able to know if God was

01:24:52

God until we got to the end, because he said, I told you the end from the beginning. I didn't ask about that, sir.

01:24:57

Let me read it again. I don't think you heard me. Tell us the former things, what they are, that we may consider them, that we may know their outcome.

01:25:04

How can God know what the outcome of everything that has happened in the past is if he does not have a divine decree that makes all those things meaningful?

01:25:14

You're using present knowledge and past knowledge to claim that God has exhaustive foreknowledge. When God says,

01:25:20

I know why the things in the past happened, that's because he's wise. Knowing the past,

01:25:27

God knows because he was there, and the future doesn't exist, and God could think new thoughts.

01:25:34

That's why he can't tell us everything that will ever happen, because he's going to continue to be creative.

01:25:40

So that we may know their outcome. The outcome is just simply what any human being could see. God doesn't have any purpose in that.

01:25:46

Is that what you're saying? Well, if anybody tried to follow your idea of that test at the time of Joshua, they would have said,

01:25:53

God is not God, because he failed the deity test, because his explicit prophecy didn't come to pass.

01:25:59

Jonah 2. I don't see how it has anything to do with this, but anyway. You are my witnesses, declares Yahweh, Isaiah 43, 10.

01:26:04

Could you please explain, do you believe that Judas could have repented and not betrayed the

01:26:13

Lord? Yes. In light of what

01:26:19

I presented from John chapter 13, when

01:26:25

Judas says, he specifically cites the Scripture, but the Scripture will be fulfilled.

01:26:31

He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me. Could you explain how the Scripture could not be fulfilled, and yet Jesus not be speaking falsehood here?

01:26:40

Sure. Just like the Scripture was not fulfilled that Jonah would be destroyed in 40 days, or that God would cast out the

01:26:46

Canaanites, the Greek there, you mentioned earlier, plerothe, fulfilled, and often that comes with a

01:26:53

D -E -I, delta, epsilon, Yoda, day, or die, and it means that it is something that ought to happen, or something that is fitting to happen.

01:27:08

When the Bible says that Judas had to do this, because, well, the prophecy said it.

01:27:13

Jesus said the same exact thing about the lawyers. The same exact thing.

01:27:20

They ought to have been baptized, and he used the same word, but they were not.

01:27:26

So it's a word that means fitting. There was no prophecy about Judas. If Judas had not betrayed

01:27:31

Jesus, we would not find, an atheist wouldn't find one verse in the Old Testament that says, see, that was unfulfilled, unfulfilled prophecy.

01:27:40

Okay, so, but it says, but the scripture will be fulfilled. He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me.

01:27:46

In this context, this is specifically said about Judas, and in verse 26 he says, it is he to whom

01:27:54

I will give this morsel of bread when I have dipped it, and then he says to Judas in verse 27, what you are going to do, do quickly.

01:28:02

All of that could be invalidated. The reference from the Old Testament, all of that could be untrue.

01:28:08

Yeah, most of that is present knowledge. Judas had already agreed with Satan that he's going to betray Jesus. Jesus said it, and he told the disciples,

01:28:16

I'm telling you this so you'll be able to trust me when you see it happen. It was already a foregone conclusion in Jesus' mind.

01:28:22

That's present knowledge. Okay, when you just made a number of assertions concerning plerothe and die, you do realize, of course, that die is not used here, but when it is used,

01:28:34

Jesus, for example, says it is necessary for the Son of Man to go to Jerusalem. Are you saying that all he was saying is, that's a good place to go?

01:28:40

No, not at all. So it can mean necessary? Well, it certainly can be, yes.

01:28:46

Okay. Unnecessary at some level. Okay, and when you have verse 19, when

01:28:52

Jesus quotes from Isaiah 43 .10 and applies it to himself, if Judas had not done what

01:28:58

Jesus said, then how would the disciples know that Jesus was the

01:29:04

I Am? The same way that those who loved the Lord in Jonah's day knew, because when prophecies of warning fail,

01:29:11

God rejoices. Is this a prophecy of warning, sir? Yeah, it is. Where? Judas, it's going to be worse for you than if you had never been born.

01:29:19

I think what he says is, what you are going to do, do quickly. I don't see a warning in there. Well, prophecies, and James, you should realize this, prophecies repeatedly go unfulfilled, and God says that they go unfulfilled, and he's proud about it, because it shows his mercy and love.

01:29:38

I don't believe any such thing, but be that as it may, so Jesus gives a specific statement.

01:29:44

Yeah. And he identifies the individual, and he bases his self -revelation of his own deity on these words, that when it does take place, you may believe that I am he, and the only answer you have to that is that, well, it's like Jonah.

01:30:01

God identified men by name and said they would serve him forever, Aaron's four sons, and then two of them he killed and sent them to hell because of how wicked they were, and we still know that God is

01:30:12

God, even though what he said, naming them by name, that they would serve me as priest forever, and it didn't happen, because if you know

01:30:20

God, you're on the same page. You know why he changed his mind. So in Acts 1 .16, brothers, the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the

01:30:30

Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested

01:30:36

Jesus. So is it your understanding, based upon your understanding of plerothe and di, that what this is actually saying is that this didn't have anything to do with Judas, it was just illustrative, and this happens to give us an illustration?

01:30:53

Yes. When David wrote that, it was about his son betraying him, and that was not a prophecy, but it was fitting.

01:31:00

That's why Jesus took one who would betray him, who hated God. He chose him anyway, so that this parallel would play out, and those of us who love him would realize that Jesus really knew what he was doing.

01:31:13

This was well thought out. Mr. Enyard, how would any of the Jews of Jesus' day have known that he was the

01:31:22

Messiah, given that your entire exegetical stance is now that any

01:31:29

Old Testament citation that must be fulfilled is actually just an illustration that may or may not be fitting?

01:31:36

How could the early church... It happens over and over. I called my son out of Egypt.

01:31:43

There is no prophecy that says that God the Father would call his son out of Egypt. They take non -prophecies, historical events that are not prophetic in any way, and we draw a

01:31:54

New Testament parallel, because when God had that recorded, the Lord knew that this would represent events in the life of Jesus, because God is an active player.

01:32:05

He's not a passive participant. All right. In light of this, please explain Jesus' words in Luke 24.

01:32:12

Then he said to them, These are my words I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled.

01:32:24

You just told us there's nothing written about him. Didn't you? No. The entire

01:32:29

Old Testament is about the Lord. Such as? And it must be such as that he would be the seed of the woman.

01:32:35

He'd be born in Bethlehem. His hands and his feet would be pierced. He would be raised from the dead. How could

01:32:41

God know these things? Because God is not incompetent and powerless. God had a plan to send his son.

01:32:47

So he could violate the wills of men? No, not at all. So no king could ever choose to destroy

01:32:52

Bethlehem? God could have stopped them. So you are a Neo -Molanist then? That's ridiculous,

01:32:59

James. Well, isn't Molanism where God micromanages things to accomplish his purpose? God intervenes a thousand times in the

01:33:06

Bible. You pretend that if the future's not settled, God is impotent and foolish.

01:33:12

No. He just has to watch. I can't respond. I'm going to follow the rules here. Verse 46, Thus it is written that the

01:33:20

Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem.

01:33:30

Where was that written? I don't recall. I'm getting older. It's in the Old Testament. Could it have been invalidated because Jesus chose not to go to the cross?

01:33:41

Jesus went to the cross willingly. Could Jesus have not gone to the cross? Yes. He said,

01:33:47

Father, not my will, but thine be done. Could Jesus have hated the Father? Jesus loves the

01:33:52

Father willingly. Could Jesus have hated the Father? If Jesus turned against the Father, the

01:33:57

Godhead would come undone. Is that a possibility? Jesus is committed to righteousness.

01:34:04

Is that a possibility, sir? Yes. Jesus is committed to righteousness. Yes. You said

01:34:13

Jesus is committed to righteousness. Is it possible for the Son as a human being with free will to have chosen to rebel against the

01:34:23

Father, yes or no? Yes. The temptation of Jesus was real. It wasn't a ruse. Because he's a person, he could be tempted.

01:34:29

He's not a stone idol. He's not impeccable. So the Godhead could have ceased to exist. Could have come undone.

01:34:35

It wouldn't have ceased to exist. That was the risk that God undertook in the Incarnation? That's part of it.

01:34:40

Okay. All right. Thank you very much. I think that is enough.

01:34:47

Thank you. Okay. Thank you all for being here tonight.

01:35:03

I presented at the beginning that I would show three reasons that indicate that the future is not settled.

01:35:10

And they are that God is free. God is eternally free. I think you heard,

01:35:17

I think, James White, when I asked him when Jesus was in Gethsemane and he said,

01:35:24

If I prayed to the Father, he could save me from this hour? James White wanted to talk about what

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God did before the foundation of the earth. And I was asking, How about right at that moment? Because Jesus said,

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Do you not know I can pray to the Father and he can send these angels and save me?

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Jesus went to the cross because he loved us, not because he was compelled from eternity past.

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Up to that very moment, he did not lose his ability as a living person to decide for himself.

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And he did humble himself and submit his will to the Father because he loves us, not because God cannot change.

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We are told that God will not ever turn against us because he cannot change.

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There's another answer to that question of how can we know God will not turn against us?

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It's because he sacrificed his son. He sent his son. By doing so, he showed us his love for us.

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He showed us the level of his commitment to righteousness and to love.

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That's how we know that God will never turn against us. Not because he has no chance, no choice, because he's immutable and impeccable.

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Jesus took on a human nature. Adam and Eve had the ability to sin.

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If Jesus is truly human, as the Bible asserts, as even the creeds, which

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James White quotes frequently, affirm

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Jesus became completely human. He was fully human and fully divine.

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Adam and Eve had the capacity to sin. If Jesus did not have the capacity to be tempted, then the temptation of Christ was a ruse.

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When the Bible says that Jesus learned obedience to the point of suffering, to the point of death, that was new.

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God the Son had never before learned to the point of death that he would submit to the

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Father. If Jesus could not sin, then that would mean that he wasn't fully human.

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Because Adam and Eve, in their innocence, was able, they were able to disobey.

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Jesus' righteousness is glorious. His love for the Father is praiseworthy and cherished because it is freely given.

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It's easy to put words together and make it sound scandalous, depending on how you look at it, but when you realize that love is freely given.

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Love must be freely given, and the Son loves the Father freely. And that threatens some people because they think if that's true, why should we ever trust the

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Son because he might turn against us, but the very passion of the Lord shows us why we trust him, not because he's impeccable like a stone idol or impassable or immutable, but because he's living, personal, relational, good and loving, and he was willing to give his life so that we would know that he loves us and so that he could save us.

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God learns. The book of Hebrews said that God the Son learned obedience to that point.

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God said to Adam, name the animals so I could see what you're going to call them.

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He said to Abraham, now I know that you will obey me even to the point of sacrificing your only son, which for the next 2 ,000 years meant so much to God because he was going to sacrifice his only son on that same mountain,

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Mount Moriah. And so when God said, now I know, to Abraham, with all of these statements where God is saying, let me see perhaps if Israel will do this.

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When God said in Isaiah 5, I've done everything that I could to get you,

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Israel, to repent, yet you haven't. I expected you to repent. What more could

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I have done? That's what God says, just pleading with Israel. And you know what more

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God could have done? He could have just decreed differently and then they would have repented. But he says over and over,

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I'm going to have them go this way because it's not the direct route, but if they go this way, then lest they fear and turn back to Egypt, I'm going to have them go this way.

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Over and over and over in the Bible, it's the norm that God says, let me see what they're going to do.

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So the settled future says God cannot learn. Do they get that from the biblical attributes of God or following the text, or do they get it from the omnis and ems?

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So the biblical attributes of God will provide a different interpretation of every verse that is put forth as a claim that the future is settled.

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And once you do that processing yourself and you say, is there a biblical way of understanding this instead of a platonic way, then you realize that over and over again these passages, like Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever, shows

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God in time, in sequence, yet you could always trust him. God who is and who was and who is to come.

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Yet if God is outside of time, there are hundreds of verses in the Bible talking about God's duration that have to be taken as figures of speech, and there is not a single verse quoted from the

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Bible that says that God is outside of time. And with Augustine and then Boethius and Aquinas, that is where this idea came from.

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The first 400 years of church history, nobody was saying God is outside of time. That came after Ambrose said, let's interpret the

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Bible based on Plato. He said that to Augustine. Augustine wrote in his Confessions, that's how

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I interpret the Bible, based on Plato. He said it, he admitted it, and he said especially with immutability, and he said, where does evil come from?

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He said, I'm afraid to answer the question, but it must be traced to the attributes of God, because he is immutable.

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The future is open, because God is eternally free. Thank you all. I believe in the impeccability of Jesus for a simple reason.

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Because sinlessness is more definitional of who God is, than the ability to sin is definitional of who man is.

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We believe that when we go to heaven someday, we won't sin any longer. Does that mean we become less human?

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The reality is, the idea that God can sin, and the

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Godhead be disrupted, cannot be identified as Christian theology by any stretch of the imagination.

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It has never been held by anyone, and it is the result of demanding that rather than letting

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God be God, God be eternal, God be the one who decrees all things, and enters into time with his people. He has to be like us, he has to learn like us, he has to grow like us, or I just can't understand him.

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This is what happens when you take certain attributes that are true, and then take other attributes, and subsume them, and say there's a hierarchy.

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That's falsehood. That's what the Mormons have done, Jehovah's Witnesses have done, everything else. And that's what we've seen this evening.

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We just heard something about Abraham. Now I know, God learned something. Remember something, folks, if you go there, a number of chapters earlier,

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God had said to Abraham, I will bless you, and through you, I will bless all the nations. And so if Abraham failed the test, and God became a liar in Genesis chapter 12, and besides that, even when

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Abraham did what he did in Genesis 20, the next day he could change, because we all have free will, and it can't be altered, it can't be forced.

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So just having knowledge of now doesn't mean that God knows that Abraham's going to remain faithful, and yet that means that all those promises, all the types, all the shadows, meaningless.

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God cannot foreshadow what's going to happen, because God doesn't know what's going to happen in that future.

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I'd like to read Isaiah 29, 16 to you. It says, You turn things upside down. Shall the potter be regarded as the clay, and the thing made should save its maker?

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He did not make me. Or the thing formed save him who formed it. He has no understanding. Tonight, what we're being invited to do is to abandon the commitment that Christians have had from the beginning to the

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Christian doctrine of God, to something that's completely foreign to us. And we must stand against that, because we have heard no meaningful response to so many of the texts that have been presented other than, well, maybe it means something else.

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We can't really tell you what it is, but in Isaiah 44, listen to these words. Thus says Yahweh, your Redeemer, who formed you from the womb.

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I am Yahweh who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself, who frustrates the signs of liars and makes fools of diviners, who turns wise men back and makes their knowledge foolish.

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How can he do that if he doesn't know what they're going to be doing? Hmm. Seems like his plans, they're established.

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That's what all of Psalm 33 is about, by the way. Men make their plans, I frustrate them. My plans, they go through.

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That's what Psalm 33 is about. I don't believe an open theist can believe Psalm 33. Just don't believe...

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Maybe there's a process of decanonization that could be begun for some of those texts, because I don't see how you could possibly do it.

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It is so, so clear. In Isaiah 45, 23, we read these words,

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Now, stop right there. Wait a minute. We've been told God can say all sorts of things and it not come true, and God will be happy about it.

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Right? That's what you're told. But, what's the next part of the verse? To me, every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance.

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Sound familiar? Yeah. That's what's found in the Carmen Christi in Philippians 2. What's it about? Bowing the knee in allegiance to Jesus Christ.

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The fulfillment of the cross. Oh, but that's just all up in the air. It's a contingency plan.

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No, that was God's eternal purpose. The triune

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God eternally purposed, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that the Son would enter into flesh.

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Not as a contingency plan. This is the very way, the central way by which

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God has chosen to glorify Himself. And tonight, we've been told that not only was it a risk that could have destroyed the

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Godhead, but it was a contingency plan.

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Not the settled, eternal purpose. My friends, what you've seen this evening is a clear warning of what happens when you allow a single individual or a small group of individuals to set themselves up and say, we are going to create an interpretive methodology and we are going to make these the most important things.

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And everything else, we're going to find a way around it. If you read passages that clearly say

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God knows the future, well, you know it came from Plato, you know. I think

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Isaiah was sort of before Plato. By a long shot. We've heard no response to these things other than, well, it might have been, you know, a limited political thing.

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This is what happens when you basically say, you know what? Christ may have said

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He was going to found His church, but He really hasn't had any concern about what's been going on in that church.

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Now, I'm a Protestant. I am not a person who believes in extra -biblical tradition. I don't believe in papacy or anything else.

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But I recognize one thing. God has been building His church and it is greatly to my detriment to ignore what men who have come before me have to say.

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And there's one thing they've all said. They believe these texts.

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They recognize there is only one true God who does not change and it has eternally been His purpose to redeem a people in Jesus Christ.

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Now, the world probably looks at us today and says, you folks are nuts. You spent a whole evening arguing about some arcane point of theology.

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My friends, as I pointed out in my opening, this directly impacts the gospel because if God's learning, then you do not have any meaningful basis for saying

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His chesed, His loving kindness, His faithfulness is going to be new every morning. Because He might find out something that would change

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His perspective. Immutability is not about stone -cold idol.

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It's about the eternal God who does not change, who has entered into time and redeemed us in Jesus Christ and it is