Road Trip Radio Free Geneva: Texas Tragedy, David Allen's New Book

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You constantly hear people that are Calvinist Carp on the RAH! RAH! GOD SOVERING! GOD SOVERING!

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RAH! SOVERING! SOVERING! SOVERING! They just keep repeating it And they repeat it so much You start to think it's a Biblical truth

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Oh no! Lazarus, he says

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

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Lazarus came out Does he mean to tell me a dead person Can respond to the command of Christ? Take lessons from Judas White and Jephthah Bint It shows in this kind of sequential format

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The method of exegesis that we utilize

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To demonstrate those other things Um, no Pastors very openly smoke pipes and cigars

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Just as they drink beer and wine Realize that he's gone from predeterminism

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Now he's speaking of some kind of Middle knowledge That God now has to I deny and categorically deny

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Middle knowledge Don't beg the question that would Demand me to force you to Embrace it

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NONSENSE! Not always talking about necessarily

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God choosing something for no apparent reason But you're choosing that meat Because it's a favorable meat There's a reason to have the choice of that meat

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The New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary Safe from all those moderate

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Calvinists Dave Hunt fans And those who have read and re -read George Bryson's book Asking the truth about God's freedom to say

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For his own eternal glory Gotta turn this down There we go, see

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I Really wasn't designed to work this way I'm not sure how in the world we're gonna

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Go out with that But we'll just We'll wing it Welcome to Radio Free Geneva We haven't done this on the road before Or if we did, we did it a different way

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I don't know I had to find a graph I had to find that graphic And it wasn't the way it was supposed to be

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And stuff like that But we're doing the best we can Had to play the theme today Because we're gonna be responding to stuff

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Before we do that though And this is directly relevant And I'm hoping everything's working here

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I hope the sound wasn't working The sound wasn't coming out from over there Like it was supposed to be It was coming from over here

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And I don't know Um There's stuff that isn't set up right

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I guess, or not connected or something Probably something I didn't plug in somewhere I don't know Anyway, we'll do the best we can

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With what we got This is relevant It's directly relevant

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Just saw the tragic Announcement On X That they've found the last of the bodies

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Of the children Mainly girls that were killed in the flood

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A number of days ago in Texas I've been I've stayed On that river

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Not right next to it But I'm sure I It'd be very difficult

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For me to imagine that the RV park that I've stayed at Three times

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Was not badly damaged If they said it was 20, 26 feet Something like that, yeah I was right next to it

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When I was there And how you respond to The simple question

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Where is God At times like this Is very much what

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Radio Free Geneva is all about Because Anyone who has listened to the program

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If you're new to the program Radio Free Geneva Started off I did a series

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Of responses to a sermon That Adrian Rogers God bless him

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Preached against Calvinism And In that In that sermon

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He badly misrepresented The reformed faith Demonstrated he did not understand

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The reformed faith And This was back when

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We were still using real audio This was before MP3, okay

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But it went wildly viral As wildly viral As you can go

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In those days And that was the beginning of Radio Free Geneva We started

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Responding to Normally Bad misrepresentations of Reformed theology

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Now we've engaged with some of the best critics As well But Most of the time

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If you're a reformed believer And I'm not

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I don't care about that phrase There are a bunch of reformed people I don't want to be in their club anyways

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They're just not nice people And their Priorities are all messed up And All they care about is their little kingdom

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When I say I'm reformed I'm saying Sola Scriptura Tota Scriptura Soli Deo Gloria Solus Christus I'm talking about The focus upon the sovereignty of God The perfection of the work of God In Christ Jesus God's freedom to save As he chooses

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And to use his creatures As he chooses Based upon Believing everything that Scripture teaches

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And only what Scripture teaches So it's the glory of God Is what

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I am focused on And if you're one of those reformed folks That thinks that Uh There are all sorts of Sub -issues

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That are more definitional of reformed You can have it If you don't want to say

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He's not really Fine, fine Don't want to be in your club anyways

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Really, really don't You go do your thing But for For the folks that listen to this program

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You know why I'm reformed You see how The freedom of God And salvation

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The centrality of that purpose of God In all things In apologetics

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In building up the kingdom of Christ In confidence in the future

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In responding to Living in a culture That is under judgment

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As we are right now It's all tied together It always shocks me

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When people say Oh I love your work Calvinism stuff, yeah not so much But everything else

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My Biblical defense of the trinity

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Is based upon reformed theology My defense of justification by faith Is based upon reformed theology

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I don't know how you Come to the conclusion You can sort of put that over there

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Put that over there It doesn't really work that way So Anyway We Engage in A lot of responses

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To people In defense of broadly Reformed theology

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Not all the little Cross the T's Dot the I's that A lot of my reformed brethren

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If you don't have the same emphasis I have on this Or this particular

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Puritan writer had on that Then you're not really reformed You go for it

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Have fun I don't think you're Going to be helping too many people

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In the process but we'll be over here Doing our thing Anyway So Radio Free Geneva Developed out of that And generally when we

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If you listened to it you heard some Pretty amazing stuff Quotations from people

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Saying some astonishing things And We've got some stuff to deal with today

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On the subject of reformed theology But before we get to that As I was saying

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Reformed theology covers everything And what do you How do you respond as a reformed believer

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To something Because we all

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You know When people talk about the sovereignty Of God Very often

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What they'll say is yes God is sovereign Over natural events Earthquakes Tsunamis Lightning strikes

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Hurricanes and floods And the bible says that Pretty much directly

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And so It's one thing to argue about Man's responsibilities

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And free will And yeah we've dealt with that Over and over and over again But this is a situation

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Where you have An act of nature You have a river

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Rivers have existed for a very long time Now I haven't heard anything about Well this river is improperly managed

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And a lake and a dam I haven't heard any of that Stuff being discussed This was

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A massive storm Massive precipitation Sudden flash flooding

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Um Not uncommon Um In many areas

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Where I live Almost all rivers and streams are dry Except during monsoon season

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And then they're only Filled because of a flash flood And you know

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You're just taught as a teenager If you're out in the desert And you see thunderstorms

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And you're in low lying area You're in a dry wash or something Get out of there It doesn't matter if it's 20 miles away

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You get out of there I was taught that as a child Well we moved there when

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I was 11 So I guess I was still a child That's just basic survival stuff

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So It happens And there were Christian girls

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And there were other people There were camp counselors There were all sorts of things How you respond

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Or let's put it more honestly Whether you can respond or not Has much to do with whether you have

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Thought through The sovereignty of God And the accomplishment

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Of his will and his purposes In this world And we have taught From 1986

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Or so I'd say for right at 40 years When Alpha Omega started I've said before My dad went to Moody Bible Institute Not exactly a bastion of Reformed Theology But his systematic theology

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Textbook was written by a Presbyterian And P .B. Fitzwater And So The form of Independent Fundamentalist Baptist Upbringing that I had was not

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Anti Reformed We just didn't use the terminology And we certainly weren't consistent

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But it wasn't Anti -reformed in that sense And so There was a point in time

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Shortly after the founding of the ministry When In the providence of God as we

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Reform folks like to say If God wills Is the biblical term

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We were introduced to these issues And I started reading books And I was taking

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A certain class at that time From a Presbyterian professor And it all came together

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Apologetically, theologically All came together Rather suddenly I still remember the night

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That I did a presentation On this The first presentation I made

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To our people And the look on Rich's face Was He probably remembers that night too

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Was like What are you Talking about What's this?

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You know And so We've been a

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Reformed minister All along We've never Hidden that We've always

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Known that that has limited Support Limited Opportunities But The fact is

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It is central To the theology That we are presenting

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In our presentation of the gospel I don't have them with me But you look at a bunch of the old

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Tracts that we used to distribute Out at the Easter pageant Still do, we're using up our old supply

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When we go out there And they're very Reformed I mean, we're talking to Mormons About how they're dead in sin

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And most people would never Do that in talking to Mormons You gotta get them to come along No They think they are

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Little gods With ultimate freedom And they're God's creatures

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And are dead in sin Somebody needs to tell them the truth And We can trust

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God To do What he's said he will do In that situation

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It takes a lot of pressure Off of you, it really does So How you respond to this situation

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In Texas And look Let's be honest Things like that happen

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Every day around the world We don't hear about it in India You might see a little news

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Summary some place or something like that But it happens everywhere Children die

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Animals die And We generally

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Try to keep all that out of our thinking We don't want to Think about it

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But It happens every day And Jesus taught us Not a sparrow falls without the father's knowledge

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He is He has perfect knowledge Of All the wildlife,

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I'm sitting here and there's some Nice pine trees And stuff around me outside the The RV Which by the way

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I had to do a Three point backing turn to get it into this spot But it's perfect It takes a little practice

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To do that when you're 57 feet long But anyway We're parked really nicely here And there are birds in these trees

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And I hear them singing And I know the incredible complexity

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Of the life In the Pine tree right out here The insects

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And things like that That live in that tree That actually contribute to that tree

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Or can damage the tree, it all depends The complexity of what's happening right now Is the sunlight hits

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That tree and photosynthesis And you know what? God knows all of it too Which is astonishing

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To us Thinking about that is one of the times When we realize how small we are and how big he is

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And we need to realize that Every time I think of the

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Vastness of Space And the smallness of me

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And yet then realize that God has been actively involved And providentially

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On the basis of his Decree to his own glory Has been involved in Bringing Events to this day

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That all things Are going to result in the praise of his glorious grace And That that was true

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In 1349 -1350 When the black death was sweeping across Europe In some cities

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Seven out of ten people died Some within 24 hours of contracting

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The disease It looked like I've said it many times before, if Tim LaHaye had been around back then

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Oh Oh Um Looked really

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Dark Like God's purposes couldn't possibly Have any fulfillment

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But He had a purpose in all of that And Much of modern day theology

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Cannot affirm that If you have a God Who is reacting to mankind

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If you have a God Where the ultimate power In his creation Is man's will

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In other words God may want to do X but God can't do X Because man's will

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Ultimate authority, ultimate power Um You're gonna answer the questions about Floods and children

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And disease and cancer And everything else Very differently

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Than I am And I think very differently Than the psalmist Or Isaiah Or the apostles

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And that's what this subject is really all about When you dig down into it And so We pray for the families

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And you go, well why would you pray for the families if you're a Calvinist Because we're commanded to Because God says that we are to Make our desires known to him

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And the peace of God which passes all understanding Should keep our hearts and minds to Christ Jesus I'm not trying to convince

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God to be better That would assume that I know What better would look like And I have so little information

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I don't know how all those lives That have been lost Interfaced with other lives and what God's gonna do

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And all that, I don't know and I can't know And I'm not gonna pretend like I can But I am gonna believe what scripture says

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Jesus Remember he talked about the The tower that fell And there was nothing

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In Jesus' words It was like, oh God didn't see that Coming and oh

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No, he accepted Hey, God's wrath is seen In this world

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It's a fallen world And don't think you're gonna escape Unless you repent

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Can you imagine someone preaching that today? Not many people would

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So When we address this, yes, on a practical level

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I want to try to help believers to give Meaningful answers To have confidence in their faith

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To be able to give answers to their kids, their families Inside their churches and then outside To fellow believers

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Who've just been given tradition And other stuff Rather than Biblical, sound exegesis

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And theology Um But it also impacts your heart, it really, really does

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At times like this To be able to trust God To be able to trust God So the reason for Radio Free Geneva today

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Is that on July 4th Dr. David Allen Um Put out

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A self -published book And I'm not by saying That doesn't mean that it's

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Bad Or worthless or anything else, but I will be honest with you I can't imagine any academic Publisher that would accept this book

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Because it Starts off at the beginning Um With words of praise for the

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Two -part Romans stuff And I If you didn't see our stuff about that Go back, look up two -part

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Romans At almen .org We did What, four programs maybe

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We responded to one fellow Who was doing videos And We responded

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To bits and pieces, then we did A couple longer ones in the big studio And Two -part

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Romans is the idea that Romans 1 through 8 is written to Jews And Romans 9 following is written to Gentiles It's, the only way

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I can, the only term I can Use, it's absurd, it is foolishness I don't know Of any serious scholars that accept it

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At all, anywhere Um There's no question

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That you can look at anything That Paul wrote, and there will be times when He specifically addresses

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Jews, sometimes he specifically Addresses Gentiles, normally in talking about The Jewish -Gentile relationship

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But the idea That The epistle of the Romans A church is predominantly

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Gentile, though it has a Jewish Element in it Um That The whole

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Key discussion on human Sinfulness, I mean It makes such a hash of the book

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And It came from a guy who was trying to find a way Around Calvinism, sitting on the Beach, and I think it was

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June of 2017, ooh, it's Ancient church history Um, it's just It's worth mocking because it's that Foolish It's Gail Ripplinger -esque

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If you don't know who Gail Ripplinger is, sorry Um The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society Has deeper theology than this stuff

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Okay, it's that bad It really is Um, and so It doesn't surprise me that this is

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Self -published Um, because like I said, I cannot Imagine an academic publisher that would

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Look at that and go Really? Do we want to Get on that wagon? Um This is, wow, this is bad

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So it came out July 4th, and I left On this trip on July 5th

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And I suppose I could have Jumped online and Looked for it, you know, at the first stop or something

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Like that, I didn't, I'm honest with you I didn't even think about it, it didn't cross my mind Um, I don't

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Consider this an overly serious Challenge, is what I'm saying Um But I finally grabbed it today

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I've only had A few minutes to look at it Again, thankfully it was in Kindle format immediately

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And as soon as I got it I First of all

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Those of you who don't remember Last week, I had

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Again put out a challenge to Dr. Allen To debate these things in public Um I have debated

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Non -reformed people For decades And I did a debate with a

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Church of Christ fellow Only a few months ago Um There is

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No question anywhere In anyone's mind Who has a modicum of fairness

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That we could do this Debate properly In a scholarly fashion Um That honors the scriptures

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Anybody who says otherwise You have no leg to stand on Well, Dr.

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Allen has Declined every challenge we've given him He's had friends contact him, he's had People who are on his side contact him

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For years, I think he's just tired of it now And so he put out this Two page PDF, and he basically said

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That I don't have a Christ -like spirit He doesn't know me, so he has His judgment is irrelevant

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To me and should be irrelevant to everybody else too Um Because my challenge to him

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Isn't whether he has a Christ -like spirit Or not, I'm sure he's a nice guy But he

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Manhandles the scriptures He does not handle the scriptures Appropriately And that's the reason that I've challenged him

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Now we may have different Motivations, maybe he just wants to have nice Kind talks with people

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No matter what they believe That's not why I do what I do I think these are important issues

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And he's touching on these issues And it would be very useful for people To hear cross -examination

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Of his position, and I will say it Once again, the reason he will not debate is because He knows he could not survive cross -examination

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His position cannot answer That kind of critique, he knows that I believe that firmly

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And so I said Last week, okay, if I'm The big meanie man, then

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Debate Turton fan, debate someone else Debate someone who is Reformed That you think

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Is nicer than me His position still cannot handle cross -examination So I don't think it's going to happen

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Other people said, you ought to do it in writing And it Seemed to me like David Allen Was amenable to that, so I'm like Okay, you want to do that?

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Let's arrange it Let's Let's agree on Initial Opening statement length

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Where we both exegete Romans Chapter 8

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Which you admit, even in your new book Is the central text We'll exegete

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Romans 8 28 Through 35, 36 Somewhere in there

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And then we'll exchange And we'll do rebuttals And we'll exchange and do second rebuttals

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And exchange and do closing statements Written form, how about it? I'm willing to do it

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He will not be willing to do it I'm putting it out there, once again And if you say, well

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I don't have a Christ -like spirit That's dodging That's all it is I'm a pastor

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In a church, anyone can Follow the preaching and teaching that I do I've written many more books than he has

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I have far more debate experience than he has There's He just doesn't have any basis for doing this

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Other than I know my position cannot handle cross -examination Now, the problem is

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In a written form, he can obfuscate all he wants And I only get

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One, maybe two opportunities To point out the obfuscation And if he continues

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To Grandstand, there's nothing I can do about it In a live debate, you can shut somebody down And say, no, no, no, answer this question

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You can't do that in writing Oh, sure, I can say it And then by the time someone gets done

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Reading his next response, they've forgotten what the challenge was Anyways, that's why Live debate has a great advantage over written debate

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That's the way it is But remember, he was the one Who said last week Big meany man, un -Christ -like spirit

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So I looked for the word white And all I got

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Despite the hours And I'm pretty much convinced He's never listened To the rebuttals that we've provided Where we have demonstrated errors on his part

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I'm pretty convinced of that Because there's no attempt to respond to those things

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In this book, at all The only thing I get is a footnote And here's what the footnote says

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James White of Alpha Omega Ministries Is known for his webcast, The Dividing Line White is often caustic

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In his attitude and words And lacking in basic Christian courtesy Sometimes treats his non -Calvinist

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Opponents with disdain Page 359, that's it That's it Um Now, if I were to Make some reference to David Allen First of all,

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I'd interact With what David Allen said As we have done, which he has never done That's a fact

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You can go back and find Hours, Rich did this, while I was on the road Rich went back

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And there's a whole thread on our X account, Alpha Omega's X account Which by the way, he runs, I don't even have access to it

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That I know of anyways And He and some other guys went back And put together the links

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For the stuff that we've done I think it was all the way back to 2008, if I recall correctly And Just Decimated His claims

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Here's what was actually said He's holding your book up Your hardback book, here he's holding your other hardback book up And he's then putting it on the screen

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From Kindle, and he's demonstrating That this is an error, and that's an error And you're not doing Dr.

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Allen has never done that With my books Or my presentations And he won't

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And that says everything It should say everything Anyone who's honestly thinking about this

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Should answer all the questions As to what's really going on But please notice

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I'm known for the dividing line Well that's true Because the dividing line

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Has been going since The 1980s A few interruptions in there

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And then has been online Since 2000 So it's been around For a long time

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But I've written more books than David Allen has King James Only Controversy The God Who Justifies the

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Forgotten Trinity Those are Popular books, they're used as textbooks Doesn't mention

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Any of that I have taught a much wider field Of topics than Dr. Allen has

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Greek, Greek Exegesis, Hebrew Hebrew Exegesis, Church History Development of Tristic Theology And who knows

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All the Church History stuff And who knows all the Stuff in apologetics

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And then you've got Nearly 200 debates On a wide variety of topics Which he would never attempt to address

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But I'm just An online guy And I'm often caustic

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Well You know The tone police are popular

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Online And I'm not, you know Turretinfan is

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Much nicer than I am But let me tell you something I get

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Hit for being a compromiser from all Sorts of directions, there's all sorts of folks On both sides of this battle

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That are significantly More caustic than I am, by a long shot

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So I'm sorry I don't buy that either I'm not

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I'm not a pushover And I'm not going to compromise And I'm not going to You know, let people get away

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With things But that doesn't mean that I'm mean -spirited It doesn't mean that I'm caustic

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And And I think the problem here is Dr.

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Allen Lives in a context Where everybody just looks up To him because of His background at Southwestern And stuff like that And he's not interested

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In serious critique Of his actual claims So I found that rather interesting

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That that was the only reference And so I started looking at the book And so I looked for Okay, is he finally actually

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Going to try to offer Because the one time that he's tried To deal with Romans 8, it really

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Collapsed badly And we documented that, like I said, I spent two hours on it On the program, we've

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Relinked it, you can go watch it yourself Has he come up with Something new?

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How does this two -part Romans thing Have any impact on Romans 8 at all? It doesn't seem to have almost any

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From what I'm reading Around pages 94 and following Of his new book

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Because it's the same old stuff He said before And what's amazing is

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I was sitting here And I was reading along and oh Here's a citation of Douglas Moo And I remembered

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That one of the One of the texts That I had

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Focused in on Um A few years ago when we first Responded, not first But we did that in -depth response

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Had Been from Douglas Moo And So I posted

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This morning Um A fairly lengthy

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Tweet About Seeing the book,

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I said I just got it, only been able to look A little bit of it And I said

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Um Alright, it says, remember a few years ago

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When Alan attempted to rescue his work on Atonement in Romans 8 In an article, we looked closely At his use of sources and found him guilty

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Of abusing commentaries, etc., ignoring Context or completely misrepresenting the author's Intentions. Again, if I Hadn't documented these things, that would be

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Caustic, but unlike Dr. Alan who will just Throw out insults but not

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Substantiate it, I back it up So I looked this one up Here is his citation in his new book

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So here's what he says, page 79 Of the Kindle edition Romans 8

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Specifically highlights the divine Initiative, accomplishment, and consummation Of salvation for all believers

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Remember, in Provisionism, you're

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Free to believe Your active belief Determines everything else God can do. Once you believe

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Then God does these things he's promised to do You May be dead in sin, but People who are dead in sin can still believe

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Can still do good things The anthropology is, the whole thing is Upside down and backwards, but We've gone through all that This point is recognized by our

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Minions and Calvinists alike, yet as Mu correctly cautioned Quote This does not entail any minimizing

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Of the importance of the human response Of faith that has received So much attention in chapters

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One through four, end quote So I'm like,

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I wonder what the Context of that is with Dr. Mu The footnote

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Said page 533 in Mu's commentary on Romans Now I'm in an

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RV, you don't carry a library In an RV if you want to get up hills I still have some hills to climb

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And So I have my Electronic library, which is a good electronic library And I have

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Dr. Mu's commentary But I realize Electronic Versions can at times

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Differ from printed versions, though they're not supposed To, though it might be due to different editions And until I get home

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I Can't check that against my printed Edition and stuff like that So In accordance

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The key phrase is found on Pages 554 through 55 Not 533 Please note that this is a discussion of the verb

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For know Now see if Alan's position is commensurate with or Contrary to Mu's Was Mu warning us

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In a provisionist sense As he uses it Here's what Douglas Mu said, and again

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Just reminding you Those whom he foreknew He predestined And We've gone over this a thousand times before It's an active verb

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It's something God's doing It is not obtaining Knowledge If you believe

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That God is obtaining knowledge Then there are things that exist outside of God's creation

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If God made it God cannot increase in knowledge

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Of it When he says to Israel You alone have

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I known Of all the nations on the earth He's not saying Egyptians never heard of them Babylonians don't know

39:50

He's not saying that When Adam yada'd

39:55

Eve She had a child That's what to know means It's intimate relationship

40:04

And so To foreknow Is not like for us The future is unknown to us

40:09

The future is not unknown to God It is not Taking in knowledge from a future that Exists outside of his decree

40:18

And as always With provisionists Trying to get them to start with God And start with theology is next to impossible

40:26

It's just next to impossible It can't do it Because provisionism starts with man And creates a God in its image

40:35

Most of evangelical theology does too If we're perfectly honest with ourselves So Here's what

40:44

Douglas Moo actually said He did not misquote him But listen to what he actually says

40:49

The first of verbs is the most controversial For know as its etymology in both Greek and English suggests usually means to know ahead of time

40:56

See Acts 26 5 Where Paul says the Jews knew before now For a long time if they wished to testify

41:02

That I had lived according to the strictest party Of our religion This being the most common meaning of the verb It is not surprising that many interpreters

41:08

Think it must mean this here also Since however it would be a needless truism To say that God knows about Christians Ahead of time

41:15

The verb would have to suggest that God foresees Something particular to believers Perhaps their moral fitness

41:21

So many patristic theologians Their destiny or which is far more likely If this is what the verb means

41:27

Their faith In this manner the human response of faith There's the phraseology

41:33

It's actually he quotes but it's used twice In this manner the human response Of faith has made the object of God's foreknowledge

41:40

And this foreknowledge in turn Is the basis for predestination For whom he foreknew he predestined

41:45

But I consider it unlikely That this is the correct interpretation Number one the

41:50

New Testament usage Of the verb and its cognate noun Does not conform to the general

41:55

Pattern of usage In the six occurrences of these words in the New Testament Only two mean know beforehand

42:01

Acts 26 5 cited above And 2 Peter 3 17 The three others besides the occurrence in this text

42:07

All of which have God As their subject Mean not know before in the sense of Intellectual knowledge or cognition

42:15

But enter into Relationship with before Or choose or determine

42:21

Before Romans 11 2 Acts 2 23 1 Peter 1 2 and 20 That the verb

42:27

Here contains this peculiarly Biblical sense of know is suggested By the fact that it has a

42:33

Simple personal object Paul does not say That God knew anything about us

42:39

But that he knew us And this is reminiscent of the Old Testament sense Of know moreover

42:45

It is only some individuals those who Having been foreknown were also Predestined called justified and glorified

42:51

Who are the objects of this activity And this shows that an action Applicable only to Christians must be

42:57

Denoted by the verb If then the word means know intimately Have regard for This must be a knowledge or love

43:05

That is unique to believers And that leads to their being predestined This being the case

43:11

The difference between know or love beforehand And choose beforehand Virtually ceases to exist

43:16

What then is the meaning of this beforehand While it is of course true That God's actions and of themselves

43:23

Are not bound to created time It is also clear that the Before can have no other function

43:28

Than to set the divine action in the conceptual Framework of what we call time The before of God's choosing

43:35

Then could relate to the time At which we come to love God But 1 Peter 1 .20 and Ephesians 1 .4

43:41

Suggest rather that Paul Would place this choosing of us before The foundation of the world With this first verb then

43:48

Paul highlights The divine initiative in the Outworking of God's purpose This does not

43:54

Here's the quote But notice what's come before He is specifically

44:00

Presenting the Understanding of foreknowledge Proigno, the verb to foreknow

44:06

That is specifically Rejected By David Allen I've read that section of the book

44:14

He's rejected that Then listen to the quote And then listen to what comes right afterwards

44:20

With this first verb Then Paul highlights the divine initiative In the outworking of God's purpose

44:25

This does not entail any Minimizing of the importance of the human Response of faith that has received

44:31

So much attention in chapters 1 -4 That's where the quote ends Here's the next sentence But this before does make it

44:39

Difficult to conceive of faith As the grounds of this choosing That's Allen's position

44:47

That's the whole Provisionist position That's the next sentence And I honestly

44:54

Imagine that there are people listening Going, well, he could be right about That, but wrong about the next thing

45:00

So you're literally saying Yeah, it's okay to quote something And then the next verse

45:06

Is in direct contradiction to what you're trying to say But you don't have to quote that, and that's okay Because the first sentence was true

45:12

If you think that's how you're supposed to do Fair use of sources More power

45:19

To you As Murray puts it What is involved is not the foresight of difference

45:25

But the foresight That makes difference to exist That's the opposite of provision

45:32

Murray is saying The opposite He's saying what is involved Is not the foresight of difference

45:39

That is God seeing Someone's got faith and someone's not But the foresight

45:44

That makes Difference to exist Because I enter into love with this person

45:51

I raise them to spiritual life I grant them the gift of faith Not a foresight that recognizes

45:57

Existence But the foreknowledge that determines Existence That is the essence of what

46:04

Provisionism hates That God's Creative Decree Determines the very fabric of time

46:14

They detest that They detest it And reject it

46:21

But what or whom Precisely has God foreknown in this way The answer of many contemporary exegetes

46:26

And theologians is the church What is foreknown or elected is not the individual But Christ and the church was as in Christ But whatever might be said

46:34

About this interpretation elsewhere It does not fit these verses very well Not only is nothing said here About in Christ or the church

46:41

But the purpose of Paul is to assure Individual believers, not the church as a whole That God is working for Their good and will glorify

46:50

Each of them End quote Again, pages 553 -555

46:56

Of Moo's commentary On Romans Well, what's funny

47:02

I posted this whole thing Put it out there And A guy named

47:09

John Bolan Um Responded to it

47:16

And he said Um I remember you going over That Moo quote on the

47:22

DL a few years ago And I said, was it that exact Citation?

47:29

I'm on the road and I can't check Right now. That would be almost humorous if Having pointed out the problem before He simply ignored the correction and repeated the same mistake

47:36

He comes back with the With the reference to The dividing line and what 49 -minute mark

47:44

In, on YouTube And the program we did, the two -hour response Many years ago Uh, Brian Gunter Said, wow, that is an impressive catch

47:53

I often pray for God to give me a better recall of memory Now I'm also struggling with coveting your memory It's true

48:00

He nailed it, so I said Fascinating, so his new book is just rehashed Already refuted material, got it

48:06

So yeah, again I don't Have any reason to believe I've never, never gotten the sense

48:13

That David Allen listens To any criticisms of his position So I doubt he listened

48:20

To that And hence recognized that His misuse of Moo had already been caught

48:26

And so he just still had it in his notes And now it appears in a new book Self -published book, but a new book

48:32

Uh So Still demonstrating the same Misapprehension Of what

48:39

Moo's point is Uh That was documented years ago So I sat down A little while ago,

48:49

I spent a few minutes I found the section on Romans 8 We will see

48:57

If it's something worth going through It is A horrible mishmash

49:03

It really is Um Hey, go ahead and get it for yourself

49:09

Read it yourself, I don't Buy a self -published Kindle book Fine with me

49:16

Read what it says in Romans 8 It is a Convoluted Collection of citations

49:23

From all sorts of different sources Many of which are contradictory to each other Um But most of which

49:31

Just come from provisionist And Arminian synergistic Sources anyways But once again

49:39

The one thing that's missing Same thing with Layton Flowers With all these guys

49:47

Exegesis When I went through Romans 8 in the

49:52

Potter's Freedom I went through Romans 8 Word by word

49:58

Phrase by phrase, sentence by sentence Starting at the beginning, going to the end Demonstrating how the meaning

50:04

Is carried through and how this This is the message Of the text

50:11

It wasn't Well, let's jump over here and this can't mean this Because that sounds like Calvinism And then this guy said this about this over here

50:17

And then you eventually get back to it and it's like But you never told me what it Actually means

50:25

You've Explained why you don't believe it It can possibly mean It sounds like it's saying

50:31

But then what is it saying? And you are left in the dark I honestly don't know what these guys

50:40

Sermons sound like But it really seems like they struggle

50:48

To just walk through a text of scripture And What has been demonstrated over the years in Radio Free Geneva Is that there is a

50:58

Glorious freedom In allowing the text of scripture

51:05

To say what the text of scripture says And just walking through the text And the text that present

51:12

God's Freedom and salvation, they're fairly lengthy They're not It's not, well you know, there's a phrase

51:19

Over in this verse And yeah the verse is talking about something else Not even talking about salvation, but there's a phrase there And that sounds like what we believe

51:28

You know These false prophets Were redeemed

51:35

You know And so that must be redemption means this Instead of going through entire chapters

51:41

That talk about what redemption means And then interpreting that In light of this, you interpret the big long stuff

51:47

In light of the little short stuff That's Arminianism That's Synergism, that's

51:52

Provisionism And it's just It's glorious to be able to walk through John 6

52:03

You don't have to walk through it backwards Sideways You don't have to do any of that stuff

52:09

Ephesians 1 That's not about us, it's just about the apostles When you put together

52:20

All the attempts On the part of Provisionists And Arminians and stuff like that To get around the freedom of God and salvation

52:31

Most of the most beautiful Texts of scripture that we quote In evangelism and we quote in our church services

52:38

Are taken away from it Because they're not about us That was just about the Jews that God was hardening at the time That's just about the apostles over there

52:44

That's just about Jews, not Gentiles, two part Romans What's left?

52:52

What's left? And it's so obvious why It's not that the text is unclear

52:58

It's that They've got to come up with ways to get around this And that's exactly

53:05

What they've done And so I don't know

53:15

How much time I'm going to spend on this I really don't And given how

53:24

Mishmashy The stuff on Romans 8 was Again, there's no You get statements

53:32

You get assertions You get statements But you don't get

53:38

Actual exegesis So you don't get the

53:46

Here's how this flows From the text Instead what you get is This text cannot mean this because of this over here and that over there

53:53

Therefore it doesn't mean that That's not exegesis Anybody can do that But you just get

54:04

Well for example Romans 8 29 -30 Undermines the traditional reformed

54:10

Ordo salutis Which places predestination prior to foreknowledge Origin had made clear

54:18

That the foreknowledge of God Preceded predestination and that foreknowledge Is not the cause of future events Man When origin

54:26

Is somebody you're quoting on this On soteriology Whoa But Mu Addressed all that if he had read it

54:39

I mean I'm honestly Tempted to think Because I've seen this so many times in this

54:45

Area that David Allen Was given that quote years ago

54:51

By Maybe certain people That we might know, might not know Who knows,

54:57

I've got suspicions Was given that quote Has used that quote

55:03

And never Read Mu himself Because I If he derived that himself

55:11

And the very next sentence says what it says Okay But what

55:17

I read To you from Mu's commentary addressed This very thing Because it says the traditional

55:23

Ordo salutis which places predestination Prior to foreknowledge No it doesn't

55:30

Unless you're confusing What predestination is Unless you're confusing Creative predestination

55:37

Decree of all things With the salvific predestination Of a people in Christ Which is highly probable

55:45

It's highly probable Because even his knowledge Of reformed theology has been mediated

55:51

To him by Semi -reformed others And we know who they are

55:57

Um But still This isn't exegesis

56:03

This is He says prior to Augustine All the early church fathers

56:09

Followed this chronology All the early church fathers didn't address this issue This is another one of these Whenever you hear anybody

56:18

Say all the early church fathers Did this, they don't know What they're talking about Because we don't have

56:28

The vast majority of what they wrote For those Who we do have a lot of what they wrote We still don't have all of it

56:34

Sometimes it's very fragmentary And many of them didn't even address this stuff Didn't even talk about it It wasn't a part of their battle

56:42

So anybody who says that Just dismiss them immediately They don't know what they're talking about Or they're getting everything second hand

56:50

And they're not checking it out That's very very common Uh Augustine however

56:55

Reversed the biblical order of foreknowledge And predestination and taught that God's predestination Is not based on his foreknowledge

57:00

Rather God foreknows everything Because he has predestined everything So he is confusing Salvific predestination with the overarching

57:09

Creative decree of God That results in All the other forms of predestination

57:15

Come below that So I suppose we could

57:20

Walk through this but One of the things that would be helpful For example Here's a quote

57:31

Let's see what great theological source this is Under the pressure of an assumed paradigm It is all too easy to read into this

57:37

That Paul is saying that God has predestined Them to be believers And then using this statement to buttress

57:42

Theistic determinism however Paul is saying something completely different That God has predestined those who are believers

57:48

To be conformed to the image of his son Okay first of all That is not in dispute

57:55

Yes God has predestined That all who believe

58:01

Will be conformed to the image of his son Notice how he says That God has predestined Those who are believers

58:09

Well If you have any type of meaningful Biblical soteriology You have to deal with man's deadness and sin

58:16

Resurrection to life The nature of faith Nature of repentance This is why they're described as gifts These guys don't do that They don't even bother

58:26

Provisionism from man Upward to God Biblical theology Who is God Revelation down to man

58:36

But who's this source? John Lennox John Lennox is a brilliant guy But he's not a theologian

58:43

And we walked through his stuff on John 6 It was bad It was Very simplistically bad

58:50

But that's the kind of stuff that's being cited Here So it might be He quotes

58:58

Sherwood Romans 8 28 -30 does not speak And is simply not relevant to questions of election to salvation

59:04

Divine foreknowledge or predestination So called of any kind That's just At least most people sitting there going

59:12

What? As well it should It should Because it results in the atomization

59:17

Of the text And Disconnection from what comes afterwards

59:25

Because it's talking about bringing a charge Against God's elect It just tears it apart I honestly believe

59:33

That only reformed believers Start walk through One coherent

59:39

The rest is We've seen it happen We've seen it happen with Layton Flowers We've seen it happen with David Allen Okay So that was

59:49

Radio Free Geneva Wanted to talk about that just ran into it We do have a bunch

59:54

Of stuff coming up I'm not going to be able to do another

01:00:01

Program until I'm on my Way to Colorado Which means it will be on the road

01:00:08

Those are long days I'll do the best I can Next time around But right now what

01:00:14

I want to do Is I want to I have some Stuff it's getting a little older now

01:00:21

If it's 10 days old It's like ah old news who cares But I want to talk a little about Roman Catholic Integralism And that's their version

01:00:36

Of Christian Nationalism In essence

01:00:41

Even though That also resulted in the Inquisition And Stuff like that And Alex Wright I hadn't seen this

01:00:55

I hadn't had time to look through the Twitter feed Beautiful little girl in the picture and it says

01:01:01

She's grateful Her 4th, 5th, and 6th word were Radio Free Geneva That's funny

01:01:11

That's good Anyway There are Joel Webben On a recent webcast

01:01:20

I think last week Basically said Let me see if I have the

01:01:27

Thing here Yeah If you think Roman Catholics Mild Off color word here

01:01:35

If you think Roman Catholics are your biggest greatest threat Then you need to wake the hell up Direct quote

01:01:42

From Joel Webben When you start exalting the crusades

01:01:51

And you start exalting Sacralism And you make fun of sacralism

01:01:58

You mock it And when his co -host

01:02:03

Is saying hey I'd much rather be under papalism And then

01:02:08

I'll get busy making it Protestant Okay Okay Alright These guys are kicking the door open to Rome And I've heard they're already losing people to Not necessarily

01:02:23

Rome but maybe Eastern Orthodoxy But things similar to that Sacramental churches And maybe they don't understand why

01:02:31

It's quite possible they don't But Once you start playing footsie with Aquinas And His understanding of natural law

01:02:41

And natural theology And you start going that You're leaving where you once were

01:02:49

They've definitely done that They've left where they once were And now they're trying to redefine where they once were

01:02:57

Sacral Secularism Is I think the great

01:03:03

Danger In all of its various forms But Roman Catholicism As an entity

01:03:14

With all that it represents Um Very few

01:03:22

Who call themselves Um Protestant Very few who call themselves

01:03:33

Protestant Um In any way shape or form Uh Understand What Rome's all about They just don't know

01:03:45

Um So We need to talk about that Need to talk about that big time

01:03:52

Really really do So anyways I'm going to try to get this to work Um I'm going to do my best here

01:04:02

Uh but we'll We'll see if this is going to work at all So I want to use the

01:04:09

Radio Free Geneva Outgo But I'm going to have to I'm not going to be able to use the other thing

01:04:15

Sorry can't do it that way Anyways thanks for listening to Program Today We'll see you next time