Radio Free Geneva: Response to a Provisionist Video

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00:16

The Calvinists harp on this, ma, ma, God's sovereign, God's sovereign, ma, sovereign, sovereign, sovereign.

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They just keep repeating it. And they repeat it so much, you start to think it's a Biblical truth. ♪ I will burn in your fire ♪

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Jesus stands outside the tomb of Lazarus. He says, Lazarus, come out. And Lazarus said, I can't,

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I'm dead. That's not what he did. Lazarus came out. Do you mean to tell me a dead person can respond to the command of Christ?

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♪ You're still waiting for me ♪ Adam, you take lessons from Judas White and Jeff Durbin.

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It shows in this kind of sequential format, and... Do you really believe that it parallels the method of exegesis that we utilize to demonstrate those other things?

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Um, no. Calvinists, even pastors, very openly smoke pipes and cigars just as they drink beer and wine.

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

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Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He wouldn't make any sense to him. A self -righteous, legalistic, deceived jerk.

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You need to 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...

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

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

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There's a reason to have the choice of that meat. Cafeteria at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

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Safe from all those moderate Calvinists, Dave Hunt fans, and those who have read and re -read George Bryson's book, we are

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Radio Free Geneva, broadcasting the truth about God's freedom to say for his own eternal glory.

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And greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. It is, yes, getting very close to...

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It's not just looking a lot like Christmas, it even feels a lot like Christmas here in Phoenix. It's been nice and cold since I got back.

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It's good to be back in the studio, though I must admit, I really enjoy doing the program on the road, enjoy doing

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The Driving Line, getting better and better at that. Haven't crashed in the process.

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Wearing what might be my most multicolored Coogie at all.

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I'm not sure that I have any others that can rival this particular one, so I figure that's good as we are this close to the

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Christmas holiday. And look, if you're smart, you're not watching what's going on with the celebration of the profaning of marriage at the

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White House and drag queens and all the rest of the, let's see if we can make

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Sodom and Gomorrah look really, really, really moral and upstanding stuff that's going on in Washington, DC right now.

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It is, as I've said, it is, it is, you sign that thing and you're saying to God, please destroy us, please.

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You don't want to have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah, just, you're gonna have to wipe us out.

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That's what we're looking at. But you don't want to be watching that. Anyways, we'll probably talk about that some other time.

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But instead today, we're going to be doing an edition of Radio Free Geneva.

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As you just heard, I have to sadly report that it took

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Rich about 20 minutes to find the theme for Radio Free Geneva. He claims, as always, as always, it's the computer's fault.

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And I think that's why Rich continues to stay in the Windows world, is so that he can always say it's the computer's fault.

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Ever since Windows Vista, which had just had a mind of its own, it would just do its own thing.

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It was artificial stupidity. Yeah, well, ever since then,

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I've moved on to more stable platforms and he just keeps using Windows.

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So what can you say? Anyway, anyway, good to be back.

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We'll be here till late, late January. There's lots of stuff going on right now as far as debates coming up at the beginning of, well, early, the first half of next year.

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And possibilities abound, shall we say.

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So we will obviously keep you apprised of the situation as things develop.

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But the next trip will be, like I said, either very late January, very early February, through South Texas, Louisiana, up into Tennessee.

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And then back again. And then we've got April, we'll be up in Utah.

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And then May is back to Texas again.

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And so we will see how all that ends up developing as time passes by.

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So for Radio Free Geneva today, I wasn't sent, evidently someone sent

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Rich a link to a response to,

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I'm not sure if this was one of the Apologia Shorts or just what. You have the microphone up.

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No, I tripped over this on Twitter this morning, that they were promoting it. And so it's like, okay,

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I figured I'd just share it. And that's how I tripped over it. It was one of those Twitter things. So Rich put this in our chat channel and I started listening to it.

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And once again, you have an individual who claims to be a former

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Calvinist wanting to provide a response to, as I said,

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I think Apologia Studios does these Apologia Studio Shorts where they take just a segment from a sermon or something like that and throw it out there.

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And it was a portion of a sermon that I preached at Apologia Church at some point in the not too distant past.

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And it was obviously on the doctrine of election and what I was dealing with was the attitude and the perspectives of those who reject the biblical doctrine of election.

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Now, obviously we have over the past many decades spent a tremendous amount of time going in depth exegetically using the same hermeneutical principles that we use to defend the deity of Christ and the resurrection and those things.

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In other words, seeking consistency in establishing God's divine decree,

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His sovereign election and predestination and the existence of the elect, as well as biblically looking at the deadness of man and sin, man's inability to do what is pleasing in God's sight, which is directly stated in the text of scripture.

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And all of these things, of course, stand inalterably opposed to all of the man -centered systems, the synergistic systems that are out there, including your standard

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Arminianism, not necessarily Arminius' views from long ago, but modern day

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Arminianism, as well as the infant child on the block being called provisionism, which is nothing but synergistic

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Arminianism with a little bit of a, I don't know, it seems like a

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Baptist twist to it. And so evidently someone shared, someone recorded a video, what,

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I'm sorry, it was something, something, wrath and grace, or it wasn't wrath and grace, it was something along those lines.

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Wrath was the last word, that's what it was. And so I happened,

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I happened, like I said, just got home, and so I happened to be sitting at a, grace, mercy, wrath, okay.

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I happened to be sitting at a car care facility, getting the oil changed on our new pole vehicle, which we call

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Doggy. And, you know, I have actually been told that if we really take really, really, really, really good care of this engine transmission, we could get half a million miles out of this thing.

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And so, all right, it's time for an oil change. I think, if I'm recalling correctly,

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I think that, remember the brown bomb? Yeah, he laughs. The car whose heater never turned off.

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Yeah, that's true. Could not turn it off in July, the heater ran. But that really helped keep the engine temperature down.

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You gotta understand. That was a function of helping the radiator.

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Because that poor car wasn't designed for Arizona. I had a 1972

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Buick LeSabre. It was a beat up old car that I drove to high school.

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And then I gave it to your roommate who drove it into the ground, pretty much.

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Anyway, I think that took four quarts of oil.

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I think it took four quarts of oil. I think it was four. Anyways, this beastie, 10 quarts of oil.

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10 quarts of oil for this thing. So we were doing the oil filter and we did fuel filter, air filter, we did a bunch of stuff because we don't know how this vehicle's been dealt with.

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Anyways, it took a long time. I was there much longer than I anticipated.

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And so that's when Rich posted this link. And so I'm sitting there in the waiting room and I can guarantee you the stuff that, at least,

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I'll take this back. At least the one thing they had on the television was semi -interesting.

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It was a guy who is the doppelganger of Leighton Flowers. I mean, honestly,

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I stood there with my camera on. I was gonna take a picture of the

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TV and say I didn't know Leighton Flowers was now doing this as a side gig. But it was about German automotive racing and stuff.

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It was actually interesting. Anyway, I fired this up and started listening to it.

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And I thought, you know what? I get two major complaints all the time when

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I travel. One, you're mean to Rich, okay? Which, again, is just, it has the same level of truth content as all the stuff

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Twitter was putting out about COVID and the elections and all that stuff until Elon Musk bought it and exposed all of that.

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That's how much truth content that has to it. And then the other one was, we don't do enough radio -free

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Geneva's. And that's the other complaint that we get. So I thought, all right, it's almost the end of 2022.

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Let's fire up the thing. And then I get here and find out that Rich has lost it.

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So, okay, but we found it. We think that's the most recent one.

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That sounded like the most recent one to me. So it was the most recent one. But again, he blamed the computer for that.

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All right, so let's play the section of the sermon that he's responding to.

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And I don't know why, but instead of, maximizing the screen or something, the guy just, like when he would put scripture verses up, it was so small, you couldn't read anything.

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And instead of maximizing the video, it's just a small little window. And it was a little weird along those lines.

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But anyway, so the sound's not the best. So we'll see how it goes.

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And I am gonna pick up the speed a little bit because we do need to get done today. So what?

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Oh, you know what? We didn't do that, did we? And I'm gonna guess it's that and hope that it works.

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Let's see. An election doesn't fit with that idea.

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I want a God who's trying his best to save everyone. That sounds good, doesn't it?

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Play along. Oh, you don't have to go that far. It was a rhetorical question.

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Really, it was. Got some literalists in here. No, it sounds good. It doesn't make any sense, biblically or logically.

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Do you really want a God who's doing the best he can, but he's going to fail over and over and over again?

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I mean, if he really is trying to save every person equally, then doesn't that mean in heaven that God's gonna be extremely disappointed with his results?

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I mean, think about it. That would basically mean God's gonna have to be standing on the parapets of hell going, oh,

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I'm so sorry. I tried, I tried my best. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we did our absolute best for you.

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Do you see that picture in Revelation anywhere? I don't see that picture in Revelation anywhere. I hear about God's justice, and I hear about the recognition of the fact he's accomplishing his purposes, but I don't get the idea that God is gonna be eternally bummed at how many people he wasn't able to get saved.

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Not with the New Testament teachers. Now, what's gonna be interesting, and it's toward the end, well, he actually says it a couple of times.

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Our interlocutor identifies this as emotionalism, as if this was the substance of my sermon.

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It was a clip in which I am dealing with a fundamental issue, and that is you have to answer the question, is

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God trying to save? Now, it seems that this young provisionist is saying, no,

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God is not trying to save at all. He is simply making salvation possible and completely leaving it up to us, which raises all sorts of serious questions.

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So, salvation is of the Lord, he is to be worshiped and praised for all of its accomplishment and everything else, but he's not trying to save anyone?

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His whole intention and purpose was simply to make a system available and then just leave it up to us, evidently, seems to be the idea.

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So, I'm dealing with the issue of people who say that God is trying to save everyone.

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The vast majority of synergists do believe God attempts to bring about human salvation, that this is something that God expends energy to do.

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Now, if this guy's position actually is, nope, God doesn't try to save one person more than another, because once you get down to that level, then the only people who are saved are the people who are better than you.

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Oh, the choice meets, yeah, that's how it works, I guess. But that's what

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I was dealing with. And the response from an individual who claims to have been a

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Calvinist does not seem to even recognize what the real issues are. And that's one of the things that so often on Radio Free Geneva over the decades, when we have responded to people who claim to have been reformed at some point, you just have to go, okay, look, you can put in a sermon something that sounds

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Calvinistic, but there's more to being reformed than having once read

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Romans 9 out loud. And it's more than just simply professing to hold the five points.

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If you don't see how that impacts everything else, if you don't see how that impacts worldview and worship and ecclesiology and everything, you really weren't reformed.

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And again, I have no interest in the reformed club, the reformed label.

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There's a lot of people in the reformed club that are jerks. There's a lot of people in the reformed club that don't want me in the reformed club to begin with, and I don't care.

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There was a day when I was much younger, when I would have, I do not care any longer at all.

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I really, really don't. So be it as it may, let's jump into it here because there were specific texts eventually that were cited, and I want to deal with those.

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If you have been, if you're an algo, if you are a long time listener to Radio Free Geneva, there is absolutely positively nothing new in this presentation or in the texts that are cited.

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Believe it or not, Matthew 23, 32, 2 Peter 3, 9 are going to be cited yet again. And sometimes, if you've listened, like I said, for decades, you go, well, that's the 137th time you've dealt with that verse.

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And that's true, but we have a lot of new listeners and people listen for all sorts of different reasons.

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And so, yeah, when you're dealing with certain areas, there we go. Oh, I made the mistake of looking at Twitter.

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So before I play the first section, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Joe Biden, today

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I signed the Respect for Marriage Act into law. We are reaffirming a fundamental truth, reaffirming something that's never been believed in the history of the

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United States, that every president through Barack Obama rejected, that no founder of this nation would have ever even thought of.

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We are reaffirming this regime, this regime makes

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Pravda blush at its willingness to lie through its teeth. Love is love.

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Now there is the stupidest, most airheaded, idiotic, immoral, amoral statement we hear, love is love.

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They don't believe it. They don't believe it for a second, because the application would be pure absurdity.

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If you really believe love is love, then you should make it legal for a woman to marry an orangutan or a robot, right?

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Because love is love. You have leaders who are absolutely morally and intellectually bankrupt.

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They have no idea what they're babbling about. They're fiddling while Rome's burning.

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And Americans should have the right to marry the person they love. Yeah, okay.

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So there you go. That just popped up on my screen and turned my stomach and again,

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Sodom and Gomorrah, apologies may be coming your direction.

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I have no earthly idea. All right, let's get back to our topic here. Sorry about that. And if this is what

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God's word revealed, I mean, I was a Calvinist. I always feel like I always have to say this for the Calvinists who are listening to this.

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I was a Calvinist for 20 years. When I went to the scripture and I was challenged on my views in Calvinism, if I had studied the scripture and I had come up with Calvinism, I would still be a

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Calvin. I didn't move away from the Calvinist doctrines because I wanted to. I wanted, my desire, my utmost desire is to know

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God truly as he's been revealed through his word. And that usually is a shot that's taken at people who are non -Calvinists.

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Well, you just don't listen to God's word. You have a very low view of scripture. No, I have a very high view of scripture.

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I have a very high view of God. And that's actually what led me out of Calvinism is looking at answers to some of these questions and seeing that the

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Bible doesn't teach Calvinism. So 20 years as a

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Calvinist. Now, I don't know what that means. I don't know who this individual is. I honestly don't even know the person's name. Again, when you're on a phone at a, well, this wasn't auto dealership, it was an auto repair facility.

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But anyways, when all you've got is your phone and you didn't get your phone charged up last night and so you're,

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I don't even know who the gentleman is. So there's absolutely nothing personal here at all on my part.

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But as we listen to the commentary provided on biblical texts, ask yourself a question.

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Would anyone who was in a reformed church where you had the whole counsel of God being preached, where you had, well, let me put it this way.

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I do the catechism question as a part of our worship service at Apology of Church when I'm there. And just in the past three questions, and really almost just in the current question that I think we're still on, unless they changed it while I was gone, we have already covered almost all of the claims and assertions he's going to be making.

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So I don't know how you can spend 20 years as a self -consciously reformed

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Christian, knowing what you believe, reading reformed authors, listening to reformed teaching, and not have answers to the objections this gentleman's gonna be raising.

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I don't know how it's possible. So the definitions that people use,

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I was once a Calvinist. I've met people who thought that just because they said they believed in eternal security, that made them a

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Calvinist. And I can assure you, it does not. So we'll look at the statements, and you can judge for yourself whether, once again, we have a situation where it's individuals who have really just been given a bad definition of what reformed means, then again, these days, that's very understandable.

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It really is very understandable. So let's do that. Let's look at these verses here, and let's go through this, and let's paint a picture of what the

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Bible says about salvation, and what the Bible says about what the judgment will be on the day of judgment.

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No, I don't think, I agree with Dr. White. I don't think God's gonna be over the pits of hell going, oh, you know, being bummed eternally.

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No, I think the - So I'm taking it from what he's saying is that God is not attempting to save each and every individual equally.

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He is only intentionally providing a way, well,

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I was gonna say for each individual equally, but that's historically not the case. It's not been historically the case in the

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New Testament era as well. I mean, look at the number of people who lived in the

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Americas prior to any kind of Christian missionary work here.

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So even in the New Testament age, that wouldn't work. So you still have to deal, you know, unless you deny to God foreknowledge, which

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I think provisionism contains within its own

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DNA, that kind of perspective, because it just fits.

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How many times have I said, you know, open theism and provisionism fit hand in glove, unless you deny to God knowledge of future events, you still have to answer the question, why did he create as he created, knowing that he would know what the outcome was gonna be?

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And there are only a certain number of answers to that particular question that can even laughably pretend to be biblical.

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I believe the Bible teaches that there will be no excuses on the day of judgment, that God's glory reigns in the universe.

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Every bite of every food that you put in your mouth as the sensation of pleasure or disgust shoots through your body that irradiates

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God's glory and says there is a God, and that there will be no excuse on the day of judgment for anybody who has turned their back on a forsaken

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God. And so, yeah. Just happened to just want to comment here. No Reformed person would have any argument that there will be any excuses or anything on the final day.

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I think that'll be one of the things that we see in eternity is all the grace and mercy that God did have on people, calling them to repent and follow him.

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Okay. So what was the grace and mercy shown? Okay, I live in Arizona and we have a very large

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Native American population. And they've been here for a long, long time. What was the grace and mercy shown to them in the sense of light of the gospel prior to the arrival of the first missionaries in this area?

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Was God, if you define the proper response to God as a humble heart, and that anyone who's humble can cry out to God, and out of their humility,

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God will respond to them. Does that mean there were no humble American Indians? Or did

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God not know they're going to be here? Or is it just simply best God could do? These are, these all take us back to the reality that when you talk about most of the time when we discuss these issues, we're talking at the human level of experience, history, rather than at the divine level of intentionality and purpose.

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Because the only way you can be up here is with scripture, right? You can't just speculate about things like that.

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You can't just guess about it. You need to have divine revelation to be able to answer those questions.

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And so that's where a lot of this stuff ends up sticking. All right, so let's get into these verses here.

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And we're gonna start in the Old Testament and work our way up. And so in 2 Chronicles 7, 14, it says, and my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways.

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I will hear from heaven and I will forgive their sins and will heal their land.

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So here we see God who is willing to heal, willing to forgive, willing to hear the cries of those who are humble, who are praying and seeking his face.

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Okay, so I would assume, and again, if the gentleman was actually reformed, then he would know that all of us who are reformed are sitting here going, yes.

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And this is relevant, how? Because the only way this could be relevant, aside from the fact that he's talking to a covenantal people at that point, and boy, that verse is misused for all sorts of other people too,

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I get it. But that aside, the reality is that there is a, as is always the case, an unspoken assumption that is being read into the use of the text.

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And they don't want to come straight out and say it. That's when Layton gets in trouble all the time, because he will come straight out and say it.

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And when he says it openly and clearly, everybody goes, that's, that's palatianism,

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Patrick. You know, because it is. What he's presupposing here is that every, is that all natural men have the capacity and power to be humble enough to call upon the

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Lord. That the rebel sinner can change his heart of stone into a heart of flesh, because only a heart of flesh can be humble, right?

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So the heart of stone can choose to become a heart of flesh and in humility, call upon the

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Lord. That's the assumption that is being made. Well, it must be, because it says right here.

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And the reformed person goes, yeah, but since God ordains both the ends and the means, the means of getting to his ends is using warnings, exhortations, pleadings.

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They only become effective through the work of the Holy Spirit of God, but he chooses to use those things.

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So we don't have any problem with this at all. And again, if you're reformed, you already knew that. So if you're using texts that assume argumentation you're not even providing, and then you don't even recognize that, well, for 20 years,

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I heard preaching that said all these things, and I've just forgotten all of it now or something like that.

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How do you explain that? Unless the definition of what it means to be reformed is extremely elastic.

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And a lot of stuff that isn't reformed is being described as being reformed. This next verse in Romans 10 .21

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says, but as for Israel, he says, I have spread out my hands all day long to disobedient and obstinate people.

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And I think in the ESV, it says that my hand was outstretched like a hand reaching out to people.

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And this comes from Isaiah 65, verse two. This is the quote from that Old Testament.

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So this is an Old Testament. God's saying in the Old Testament, my hand has reached out to you.

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Take it, repent, turn, salvation. Today is the day of salvation for you.

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So yeah, we have a New Testament. We have Paul bringing an Old Testament verse into the New Testament in Romans 10 .21.

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Again, we go, yeah, God showed tremendous patience toward the people of Israel.

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He sends prophets and apostles, but again, God also had a purpose in hardening

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Israel. Did he not? And so what's happening is you look at the use of means, exhortation, pleading, warning passages, and then you create an unbiblical anthropology on the basis of those.

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Rather than the clear text of scripture, no one is able to come to me unless.

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No one is able to do good. There is none who seeks after God.

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You know, the clear stuff in passages about salvation specifically.

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And you just put them aside because that's too hard. Because if man is a slave to sin, then the son must set you free.

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And that means the son is the one who chooses who's going to be set free. Because it's the son who reveals the father to those whom he wills.

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So the one thing you got to avoid is that it's the will of God that determines this because it has to be the will of man.

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And so you set all that aside and then you take these means that God has given and you build up an anthropology leaving aside the other stuff.

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And if you've ever listened to provisionist leaders, try to deal with those texts, you see exactly what

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I mean. And that's how you create your system. What did you just do?

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Yes, you did. It was loud enough for me to hear it in here. I thought that's, you know, here

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I am. See, again, you folks don't see what goes on during that.

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You only see this side of the camera. And so it took me a second to figure it out.

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But when I was talking about how they respond, he goes, run away from Monty Python.

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And, you know, that's funny, but I had to interpret that in the midst of my trying to speak to you all.

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So, you know, everybody who comes up to me, I mean, I literally had somebody on this last trip was disappointed that you weren't there.

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And I said, I'm not disappointed that he's not here at all. Because if you put the two of us in a 30 -foot

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RV, it would be catastrophic. It really, no, that's not gonna work.

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And then we have Matthew 23, 37. And this is Jesus. This is

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Jesus. Now listen, look, all our old time listeners, you're sitting there going,

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I wonder if he's gonna quote it correctly. Because that's the big thing. If you've been listening to this program for decades and decades, you know we've dealt with Matthew 23, 37 over and over and over again.

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It's part of the big three chapter in Potter's Freedom and da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da.

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And so what happens is the Vassar people, even Reformed people, miscite the text.

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They say, how often would I have gathered you, but you were not willing. But that's not what it says.

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He almost misquotes it. It's clearly in front of him as it's accurate. But listen, and he'll say you before then going, you, you're chicks.

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Because that's the whole point of Matthew 23, 37. This isn't a text about salvation. This is a text about judgment.

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It's judgment on the Jewish leaders. It's judgment on the Jewish leaders for standing in the way with their traditions and their selfishness and everything else.

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And so that's all it's about. It's not even talking about whether you're willing to be saved or not willing to be saved.

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All that's completely outside the context of Matthew 23, 37. And so when it says, how often would

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I have gathered your children, your chicks, your children under my wing, that doesn't fit the narrative.

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The mind is saying, how often would I have gathered you, but you weren't willing.

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So listen, listen to how it functions, even in the reading of the text. And he goes, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who have been sent to her.

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How often I wanted to gather you, your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were unwilling.

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So here we see God's desire to save and man's unwillingness to be saved. So there it is.

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So that's not what Matthew 23, 37 is about. Clearly he hasn't read the potter's freedom, doesn't even, and when people present it like this,

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I can just tell they've never seriously listened to the side, even though they claim to have been on the other side for 20 years.

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And that just leaves me going, because if I were to leave a group and then talk about what

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I believed back when I was part of a group, if you're a Christian, you have to be honest about where you were, you know?

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Though I've dealt with enough converts to all sorts of different perspectives to know.

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And the fact of the matter is, I've seen converts to quote unquote Calvinism that scared me to death in their cage stage because they weren't accurately representing where they had been before either.

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And so it's the convert thing, you know, I do get that, but still get used.

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And that's all you got in Matthew 23, 37. No attempt to deal with any counter -argumentation. It's just make the assertion, ignore the context, throw it out there and it works.

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Acts 17, 27, that they would seek God if perhaps they might feel around for him and find him though he is not far from each one of us.

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God is not far from us. He is but a humble prayer away from you right now today.

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If you're hearing this message, today is a day of salvation, repent and turn to him, cry out to him for forgiveness and mercy.

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Well, again, Acts 17 is focused upon something else.

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Again, there's a bunch of presuppositions being, you know, the idea of humility, the ability to have humility.

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You're dealing with the very arrogant Athenian philosophers in Acts chapter 17.

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And there's a lot more going on that is not even addressed. And so you end up just reading a whole bucket load of synergistic semi -Pelagian human capacity ideas into what is really just simply

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Paul's demonstration of their false religiosity in having an altar to the unknown

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God. And yet the true God has revealed himself in creation and they are suppressing that knowledge.

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And we'll suppress that knowledge because at the end, he's going to say, God's going to judge the earth by a man whom he has appointed and he's provided evidence to all by raising him from the dead.

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And as soon as he says, raising him from the dead, whoa, that's too much for us.

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We're out of here. We're out of here. We're done. That's just too silly for us. So we're not talking about humble people here or anything else.

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And he's missed the point of what's actually going on. John chapter three. Now this is actually talking about the judgment.

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So what's going to happen on the judgment day when the world is judged by God and there is a proclamation of guilt or innocent, this is what the judgment will be on that day.

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And this is a judgment. This is John chapter three, verses 19 to 21. And this is the judgment that the light has come into the world and people loved the darkness rather than the light for their deeds were evil.

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Everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light so that his deeds will not be exposed.

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But the one who practices truth comes to the light so that his deeds will be revealed as having been performed in God.

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And so that is the judgment that the light of God's glory is revealed to the heavens. The light of the light

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Jesus is revealed in this world. And every time you share the gospel with someone, that's what you're doing.

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And this is why people get really angry at Christians and they don't want their deeds brought from the darkness.

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They want to live in the darkness with their deeds. And that will be on the day of judgment what sends people into an eternal separation from God.

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Not that God was lacking or not that God was insufficient. Not that God tried. God did make a way for salvation.

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There was no trying. It is there. It is open. Not gonna catch that because I keep seeing this distinction.

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God didn't try. He accomplished a way of salvation.

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So it almost seems to me, and I only have this one video to go off of.

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Okay? So I can only deal with what it's saying. But it almost sounds to me like what he's saying is God was absolutely positively successful in making salvation possible.

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And I hope everyone understands there is a universe of difference between God actually being savior.

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You know, the glorification of God because the triune

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God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit actually save a specific people and save them perfectly. John 639 salvation.

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Romans 8, 28 and following salvation. Ephesians 1 salvation.

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That's not simply making a plan available or possible.

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It's not just provision. It's accomplishment. Huge difference between the two.

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Huge, huge difference between the two. That needs to be recognized. For all who would find it and all who would seek it and all who would enter into a relationship with God.

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All who would seek it. There is no God seeker. Which one is it? Uch ha 'exeton tamtheon.

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There is no seeker after God. That's scripture. This young man is talking about people who seek

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God because provisionism doesn't have a biblical anthropology. Doesn't have a biblical doctrine of sin.

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Through God, the Son, born again through the Holy Spirit, God, the

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Holy Spirit, given a new heart to walk in obedience to God. Given a new heart, why?

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Why do you need a new heart? Because you're saying you're given a new heart as a result of humbly asking.

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So you're saying the heart of stone can have the level of humility that is necessary for repentance and faith.

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So why do you need a new heart? I don't know. I would think that this is the basic stuff that you talk about in Sunday schools and stuff like that in Reformed churches.

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And if you've been in the church for 20 years, you probably should have thought of these things. Don't you think?

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I think that's probably. And so this is always a verse that, even when

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I was a Calvinist, this was a verse that I really struggled with because you have to redefine the word all here.

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Calvinists cannot have all mean all in certain situations. And the thing about that is, is there are times where all doesn't really mean all.

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And so the question is, is the application for all meant to be all? Like does

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God work all things out? Or when God said, or when Peter writes that, this 2

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Peter 3 .9, the Lord is not slow about his promise as some count slowness, but is patient towards you, not willing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance.

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So the all is defined by you, right? So who is

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Peter talking to? You have to assume every person, every human being that's ever existed or ever will exist.

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Can you demonstrate that from the context? Because I can demonstrate from the context who Peter's talking to. Okay. Peter has a specifically addresses at the beginning of the epistle to the elect.

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Okay. So he's addressing God's elect and God will not allow any of the elect to perish.

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That's clear, but you are reading it and you're not alone.

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You know, you hear people around you doing it. And so you just start picking it up and you just run with it.

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But that's not how we do the deity of Christ. That's not how we do the resurrection. That's not how we do justification by faith. That's not how we do any of these things, except in this one subject.

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And then we use a different methodology of interpretation. It's how it works. And then that verse, and then the verse that led me out.

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So when I say, okay, so here we go. I love when someone says, led me out, you know, people talk about being led out of Roman Catholicism while being led out of the dreaded beliefs of Chironism.

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Here we go. This must be a killer verse. I may not have any response to this. Led out of Calvinism.

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When I stopped believing Calvinism is when I realized that inability is not something that's biblically taught.

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Inability is not something that's biblically taught. So when Jesus says, no man is able, which is that means every man is in able.

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Okay, that's John 6, 44. And then John 6, 65 repeats the same thing. And Romans chapter eight says, no one has the ability to submit to God's law, to do what is pleasing to God.

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And you've got John chapter eight that continues that whole theme.

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Why can't you not hear my words? Because you don't belong to God. That's inability, inability, inability, inability, all through the...

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And in fact, how many examples of inability do you get in the continuum of passages in Romans chapter three, which is

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Paul's summary statement of the sinfulness of man before he finally gets to justification by faith.

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Again, you either have a biblical anthropology that recognizes the deadness of man's sin, or you're with all the religions of men because that's where the religions of men are.

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And so if you don't accept what scripture says about God's absolute sovereignty and decree, and you don't accept what it says about man's fallenness and his slavery to sin, yeah, you're gonna come up with all sorts of interesting, strange systems.

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They can be simple, they can be very complex and sacramental, but you'll come up with something.

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That man is not unable to respond to God's promises, and that man does have the ability to respond to God.

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Of course he does. It's always in rebellion, but he responds to God. No one ever says man does not respond to God.

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Man's, what we say is man is unable of responding to God in repentance and faith.

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Man always responds to God in rebellion, suppression. That's the point of Romans one.

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The gospel and salvation. And so, and the final verse for me that really broke the camel's back, the

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Calvinistic camel's back, was this in Romans chapter two, where it says, "'But do you suppose this, you foolish person, "'who passes judgment on those who practice such things, "'and yet does them as well, "'that you will escape the judgment of God?

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"'Or do you think lightly of the riches of his kindness "'and restraint and patience, "'not knowing that the kindness of God "'leads you to repentance?

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"'But because of your stubborn hearts, "'your unrepentant hearts, "'you are storing up wrath for yourself "'on the day of wrath "'and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.'"

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And so here we have what I think summed up almost everything that we've talked about in this video so far.

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You've got God's kindness that's meant to lead people to repentance, but because of their stubborn hearts and their unrepentant hearts, instead of repenting and turning to God, they are refusing to do that and storing up wrath for themselves on that day of judgment, when the judgment of God will come out and say, the light had entered the world, but you loved your evil deeds and you ran away from the light.

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Instead of coming to the light to expose your evil deeds and to be born again and to enter into a relationship with God through the way that he made, which is

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Christ on the cross. It almost strikes me that the young man is unaware of what

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Romans chapter two is about. It almost strikes me that he doesn't see that Romans chapter one, universal sinfulness,

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Romans chapter two, the Jews are going, go get them, Paul. Yep, that's what we believe. You're just talking about the

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Gentiles and Paul's going, nope, I'm including you too. And just because you possess the law doesn't mean that you're doers of the law.

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So that in chapter three, he can then say, we've concluded that all are under sin so that all the mouths may be closed.

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And there's one way of peace with God, faith in Jesus Christ. It almost seems like he's not aware of what

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Romans two is up to and where it's going, but notice, or do you think lightly of the riches of his kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?

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It sounds like you need some supernatural assistance to come to repentance.

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I thought that anyone had the ability to pray the humble prayer and to have repentance.

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Why does God's kindness have to be involved? And how was God's kindness shown to us who have believed in comparison to people who've never heard today?

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Doesn't that mean that someone's receiving more kindness from God than someone else? And once you have any kind of inequality in the kindness of God, you either have to have a divine purposes being fulfilled or the cosmic wheels fall off, which is why you can't start where we're starting.

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You can have the foundation for answering all this if you had started with God, God's purposes, eternality decree, and then a proper biblical anthropology and then grace and everything makes perfect sense.

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But it really doesn't. Once you don't start up here and you start down here with man and start trying to build your way up, you'll never get to the gracious message of the

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New Testament, which is why provisionism doesn't get there and can't get there. But I heard nothing in that commentary that gave me any reason to believe that the gentleman understands the function of Romans 2 in Romans 1, 2, and 3, and their conclusion in Romans 3, 18, 19,

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Jew and Gentile, you're all, we're all guilty. Only one way of salvation.

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At the end of the day, it's not about, I get the emotional things, I get that.

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I understand in sermons, you're gonna do that. You're gonna seek to make an emotional plea with the people that are listening to you.

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Okay, mine was not an emotional plea. I was simply dealing with the mindset and the attitudes of individuals who say that God must be, quote unquote, fair.

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That he must try to save each person equally. And that's all it was doing.

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I'm normally not accused of being overly emotional. You Scotsman, you're always overly emotional.

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Yeah, no, not really. I've encountered a lot of emotionalism in my life, to be sure, but no, no, no.

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But at the end of the day, we do not want what we want.

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We want the God that is revealed in scripture. We want the God that has revealed himself through scripture and that's the

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God we want to take to the world. And that's the God we will worship forever. And so, yeah, I agree.

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What I want doesn't matter in this discussion. I have a high view of God.

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I don't think I'm any kind of final authority on anything. And I don't pretend to be.

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I want to look at the word of God. I want to understand what's being said in the word of God. And then I want my theology to be shaped and formed by the

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God of the scripture. And so you can frame this discussion like Dr. White did. And I could do the same thing in a sermon.

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And sometimes arguments online or discussions online, they do a spiral into this emotional, you want a

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God who's not sovereign enough. And then the other side is, you want a God who just randomly picks. And so then...

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And that's right toward the end. Let me just point out, some of the most emotional stuff

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I've ever seen has come from provisionals. Constantly haranguing at the sovereignty of God and that kind of stuff.

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And there are emotional Calvinists but let's be honest. What's the normal accusation?

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It's the reverse of that. You Calvinists are so cold, stone cold hearted. All you're concerned about is systematic theology and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.

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Okay. Can't win for trying one way or the other, I suppose. But again, if a simple illustration in a broader sermon, and by the way, the sermons at Apologia don't tend to be overly short.

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That was just a couple of minutes. And I can assure you, every time I've spoken on the subject of election, we've gone pretty much in depth with the text of scripture.

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And emotionalism has not been the mechanism that we have attempted to utilize.

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So there you go. Like I said, nothing new at all.

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And he wasn't claiming that it would be, but the thing that attracted my attention was if you had been reformed for 20 years, don't you think there would be significantly more substance to your criticisms?

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I mean, if I became a provisionist, don't you think I would feel some compulsion to respond to what

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I had actually argued for all those years? But that's generally not what you get when you read folks that are doing this kind of response.

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So there you go. And again, if anyone is upset that I didn't use the gentleman's name,

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I don't know what it was. All I had was my phone. And I threw the text in here.

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And as Rich will tell you, until matters of seconds prior to the program, I was busy with other things.

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Specifically, my dear chiropractor sister showed up with her portable table and got me put back together again.

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But as Rich will tell you, it was not a pleasant experience. I was, you know, hours.

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Yeah, go ahead, put that microphone down there. No, no, that's the wrong direction. There you go.

01:00:03

There you go. Sitting for hours and hours and hours. And then, you know, well, look,

01:00:11

I'll just close with this. Just a little inside humor from inside our vast ministry offices with all of Rich and I in it.

01:00:20

In all of the traveling I've done, and hooking and unhooking and hooking and unhooking,

01:00:27

I've lost track how many times now I've hitched up, unhooked, gotta do all the stuff with the truck.

01:00:33

In all that time, I have never thwacked my head on my fifth wheel. But someone else who will be nameless but is behind the glass over there, has just about put himself unconscious at least twice doing this.

01:00:58

So I know how to duck, okay? I know how to get the head down below.

01:01:03

Now he's a little bit taller than I am, but that doesn't explain this at all. And I've been there both times.

01:01:11

So it may have happened at other times when I wasn't there, because you've gone over to the unit and measured things and stuff like that.

01:01:19

And I don't think you would tell me if you thwacked your head again. You wouldn't tell me for Lovner money.

01:01:24

Oh, look at the time. Your time is up.

01:01:32

There you go. Anyway, all righty. Well, we're gonna wrap this one up.

01:01:42

Thank you for listening to Radio Free Geneva on the Dividing Line. We will be back more this week at some point or another if this old man survives long enough, because this

01:01:57

Saturday I enter into my seventh, actually, technically not.

01:02:03

That's actually only next year, seventh decade. Because remember we had that stuff about 2000 and it was more about computers back then.

01:02:13

But anyways, it's that season of the year. I've got two or three grandkids with birthdays coming up.

01:02:19

It's gonna be great and fun, but we'll be back. We'll see you in a couple of days.