April 18, 2006

the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded

Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Our host is Dr. James White, Director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an Elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the

United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

James White. Well, good morning, welcome to The Dividing Line on a

Tuesday morning, a beautiful day here in Phoenix, Arizona, heading to a high of 85 degrees today, 75 right now and we have air conditioning.

It's not running at the moment. No smoke coming in on top of me like we had last week, but hey, you know, one way or the other, we'll get it all figured out eventually, but it is nice and comfy in here and it will be interesting to see if we hear when, oh, you're actually away from the keyboard.

Okay, I'm sitting here sending messages to the one that says it's you and now you're away from the keyboard.

Okay, I'll adjust because AFK doesn't mean, you know, I guess it means at frequent controls spelled with a

K or something, I don't know, but anyways, I'm talking to someone who's got their knicks all messed up, but hey, it doesn't really matter.

We have the phone lines open at 877 -753 -3341 and of course,

I mentioned on Thursday we did our uber long dividing line wherein

I responded to, reviewed Dr. Ergin Kanner's sermon at Tom's Roadmaps Church on hyper -Calvinism that if you would like to respond to what

I said, if you would like to comment on what was said, if you'd like to try to defend what Dr.

Kanner said, if you found errors in what I said, this is your opportunity, 877 -753 -3341.

Of course, I did invite Dr. Kanner to, if he wanted to respond. In fact, over the past 48 hours, at least about 20 emails have gone back and forth between myself and Ergin and Ymir Kanner and Dr.

Thomas Askell and in fact, I had 11 emails waiting for me from Ergin Kanner yesterday morning because I had written a fairly lengthy email that, the night before in essence and so yesterday was an interesting day and one of the things that was asked was that the correspondence be kept out of the public eye and Dr.

Askell responded before I did and said, I will make no such promise. This is a public debate.

I think that the fact that one side is asking for a formal debate, we'd like to have like a thesis statement and things like that needs to be available to people.

People need to be aware of the fact of what led up to this particular encounter and what issues were discussed and so on and so forth.

That was one of the things that happened. One of the things that happened was very interesting. Dr. Askell rather quickly responded when in essence, it became very clear, we have been asking from the beginning specific issues concerning the nature of the debate, the amount of time, the thesis statement, the nature of cross -examination, if we're going to have sufficient time, if there's going to be sufficient focus and we've really struggled to get any meaningful response from the

Kanners on these particular issues. I should report a positive thing and that is

I mentioned that in the program last week that Dr.

Kanner had said he barely had time to address the issue in his sermon. I said, you know what? I think that's a good statement.

It's a good point and we need to have enough time to actually address this issue and a two -hour debate just is not sufficient.

We need to have a longer debate. I think it should go from 7 to 10 or if we want to have more audience questions later than that.

I don't think there's, I mean we go 7 .30 to 11 on Long Island in the Roman Catholic debates and so I think we need to be out of time and Dr.

Kanner, Ergin Kanner agreed there needs to be sufficient time to actually allow each one of us to speak.

I mean if we had four men speaking, it's only a two -hour debate, it's half an hour per person. That's half of one of these programs.

That's hardly worth anyone even traveling to hear and so anyway, that was positive but everything else has been somewhat befuddling.

I have sent page after page of documentation, references, quotations from books and I, as we saw in the original correspondence between Ergin Kanner and myself a couple, a month and a half when

I was in the UK, none of that gets any response at all. It's not even acknowledged as having been sent.

I mean I spent hours yesterday writing these things and it's like it's not even there.

It's like I don't even send it. There's no response to any of those kinds of things at all.

There goes the AC and Rich now turns the little knobs and makes the

AC disappear but anyway, that stuff just disappears. There's no response offered to it.

Great offense was taken by both of the doctors, Kanner, to the fact that I referred to straw men and misrepresentations.

One of the things that I know is going to happen because it's been stated it's going to happen. We're going to be identified as hyper -Calvinists no matter how often we point out what the historical definition is, we're going to be called hyper -Calvinists and so I've talked about misrepresentations, straw men and that's been identified as calling names to identify improper argumentation, that's calling names and yet I have been described as arrogant and cowardly in response and that's not calling names.

So one of the things that Dr. Askell pointed out that I think is important is the fact that while they keep saying they're looking forward to this debate,

Dr. Askell specifically said to them in one of the emails, is it a debate that you look forward to or a free for all?

Liberty, that's Liberty University, has attained wide acclaim for its excellent debate teams. Why not consult with the professors on campus there about the format and tenor of genuine scholarly debate?

Now I thought that was an excellent suggestion and more I thought about during the day. Last night,

Alan Kirshner from the Calvinist Gadfly mentioned something similar and gave me a link.

I looked it back up just a few minutes ago. You can go to liberty .edu and look for the debate section and there's an entire section on their website about debate.

There's a picture of the debate team there. There's a mission statement. There's the coaching staff that is provided there.

You've got Brett O'Donnell, the director of debate. You've got Michael Hall, assistant director of debate.

Heather Holter Hall, assistant debate coach. John F. Nagy, assistant debate coach. William Hayes Watson, assistant debate coach.

And so debate is something that is very important at Liberty University. Now I can't help but wonder if any of these fine students, and I applaud them in,

I applaud at Liberty University for example for kicking the Soulforce people right off their campus as they should well have done just a couple of months ago.

There's some great folks there at Liberty. I'm going to be speaking at some churches, at a church, at least one church, prior to being there, and the pastors involved at Liberty University.

There's some great folks there. But I'm just sort of wondering, what would some of these students or these debate coaches think if they come to a debate and there's not even so much as a meaningful debate thesis, a statement about which we're supposed to be talking.

And there's no meaningful cross -examination and one side has no interest in following any rules as to how cross -examination is supposed to take place.

And one side is just throwing out 16 million different subjects so that nothing can ever actually be discussed.

How does that work? What are they going to be thinking? And then the response to Dr.

Askle's, I thought, very fine suggestion. Let's go talk to, why don't we talk to Brett O'Donnell.

Brett O'Donnell is Director of Debate. He was Director of Debate for 14 years at Penn State and Liberty University, coached number one ranked

NDT teams in 95, 96, 99. Here's somebody who knows debate.

And I would be happy to go to Dr. O'Donnell and say, suggest the proper format.

It's a four -man debate. Here's our amount of time. I would be happy to say, here,

Dr. O'Donnell, give us the format that we are to use. I will leave it up to him to do that.

That would be fine. That would be fine with me as long as both sides have the same amount of time. There's cross -examination that takes place.

Super. I mean, I'm not insisting that we have to have some rigorous academic format where you have just little snippets of time.

I'm not saying that, but there needs to be order. There needs to be, I mean, debate is supposed to be on a particular subject and you get to hear both sides interact and interact with one another on a particular subject.

If one side insists on throwing 47 topics out there, what good is that? What is going to be accomplished in any meaningful amount of time?

Well, nothing at all. And you know, it's funny, I keep asking Dr. Kanner, could you give me a list of the debates you've been in?

I'd like to listen to your debates. He will not respond to that. I've given him mine, mine are easy enough to find.

He claims we've done 60 some odd debates. I'd like to hear these debates, but I never hear back.

There are certain things I can write and I've just come to the conclusion they just don't appear on Dr. Kanner's screen. I'm not going to respond to that.

I'm not going to answer that question. I'm not going to provide these debates, anything like that. And so I just wonder if the folks at Liberty would be surprised to hear that their

Dean of Students responded to Dr. Askell's statement where he says, why not consult with the professors on campus there about the format and tenor of genuine scholarly debate?

Here's Dr. Kanner's response, excuse me, is this debate about form or substance? We will not, all capitalized, be entering the classic system of modern academic debate.

A free -for -all, as you put it, puts all the cards on the table. I have little interest in offering a public roundtable with Jim Lehrer moderating.

Question answer, lion's den type response, refusing to allow one's opponent to dodge due to time constraints.

So that evidently is his view of academic debate. And later on, when

Dr. Askell said, ask Liberty's debate coaches to define that for me, which was free -form debate, the response given was,

I could not possibly care less, all capitalized, what any debate coaches, I think what he meant was any debate coach says.

This is not 1960 Kennedy -Nixon, it is Hoobmeier -Zwingli. So what does any of that mean?

I don't know. One side, once again, in this correspondence, offers scriptural reasoning, documentation, references, citation, logical argumentation.

The other side has, so far, offered that kind of response. One side will use standard terminology, scholarship, and the other side refuses to do so.

In fact, that's been one of the issues, is, I keep pointing out to Dr. Kanner, referring to us as hyper -Calvinists destroys your credibility to anyone who actually knows the field, because anyone who actually knows the field knows that we are not hyper -Calvinists, that we have spoken against hyper -Calvinism, and anyone who knows the field also knows that Dr.

Kanner did not identify hyper -Calvinism properly in his sermon at the Thomas Road Baptist Church.

Now, evidently, from the Kanner's perspective, no one gets to define hyper -Calvinism.

Hyper -Calvinism is a word that anyone can define for themselves. What has happened in history, theological terminology, is irrelevant.

Every generation can define words as they see fit to define words, evidently. And this is what, again, makes me sit here and shake my head.

Now, I know that, you know, Dr. Geisler sort of did that a little bit in his extreme -Calvinism, moderate -Calvinism stuff, and as I pointed out, that doesn't accomplish anything.

I'm sorry, folks, but words have meanings, and when you will not utilize those meanings, then you're not wanting to communicate with anybody.

And so, I haven't had the chance yet this morning to respond to Dr. Kanner's last email. I'm actually going to slow down my responses so that we can get other things done.

Remember, this coming Friday evening, I'm debating this very issue against someone else,

Mr. Wright, there in Sedalia, Missouri. The directions and so on and so forth are finally on my blog for those of you in the area, including a map and contact numbers and things like that.

But when I respond today, one of the things is, one of the responses

I'm going to provide, you know, I've asked Dr. Kanner, I said, Dr. Kanner, if basically what you're saying is that I'm arrogant to suggest to you that you're misidentifying theological terms and that you simply don't know what you're talking about in this field, then

I would like to ask you, please provide to me your published works and your published debates in the field of Reformed Theology.

Could you show me what books you've written? Can you show me what articles you've written? Can you show me what debates you've done?

And of course, those requests have been ignored. They have not even been acknowledged. No response has been provided by either

Dr. Kanner's in response to my inquiries on these particular subjects, because the fact of the matter is, they haven't addressed it.

And so I'm like, all right, if you've not actually published in the area, how can you in essence claim to be one of the greatest living experts?

Because you have to be one of the greatest living experts to in essence say, I get to redefine the terminology that has been used to discuss this subject for hundreds of years.

And here's the illustration that I'm going to be sending to Dr. Kanner's later today.

If you do look up their publications, their primary, shall we say, claim to fame, their area of formal expertise is rather obvious.

They are converts from Islam. And if you look at the programs they've done, when they've been on John Ankerberg and things like that, what's the subject?

Islam. Islam, Islam, Islam. And in fact, Emir Kanner, as I expected, accused me of being a fatalist as a

Muslim fatalist yesterday. And I had to point out where that again, demonstrates a lack of understanding.

It may be repeated again. But again, I've done my best to try to clarify issues and be accurate in my statements.

And I'm not getting a whole lot of meaningful response there.

But be that as it may, let me use Islam as an example. There are certain words in Islam that have certain meanings.

And if the brothers Kanner wish to communicate with Muslims, they are not going to come along and say, well, you know, shirk has one meaning for you, but we have decided to redefine shirk.

Now, what is shirk? Now, I can look up the term shirk in a dictionary. And here is a definition of shirk.

Idolatry, paganism, polytheism, ascribing plurality to the deity, associating anything with God.

Then there are different kinds of shirk, four different kinds of shirk, for example, ascribing knowledge to others than God, ascribing power to others than God, offering worship to create things and the performance of ceremonies which imply reliance on others than God.

And then there are breakdowns of each of those particular meanings of shirk.

And you can go into various sections in the Quran and you can see how it's used.

And shirk has a meaning for Muslims. Now, most Muslims think that our worship involves shirk.

In fact, that when we present to them the deity of Christ, that we are presenting to them the temptation to commit the unforgivable sin of shirk.

That's what's in their mind. And so when I lecture on the subject of Islam and I go around and talk about these things,

I define shirk as it's found in the Quran and as Muslims utilize the term. It would be ridiculous for me because I want to argue differently or I find the particular definition of shirk to be limiting in my preaching.

It would be ridiculous for me to redefine the term in a way that I want to say, well, you know what?

I don't trust all those people who have defined this before. Besides, they're Muslims. They're wrong. And so I'm going to come up with a new meaning for shirk that won't refer to Christianity at all.

And that's what I'm going to use. Now, how would that work? Would that enhance your ability to communicate with Muslims?

Would that enhance your ability to present Christian truth to Islamic people by using terms that they all know what it means?

Muslims know what shirk is. I'm using another example. There's another term,

Qiblah. Q -I -B -L -A -H. Anything opposite, it means the direction in which all

Mohammedans, that's an old term, Muslims, must pray, whether in their public or in their private devotions, namely toward Mecca.

It is established by injunction, instruction of the Qur 'an, and then it gives the references and the quotation.

There's all sorts of interesting stuff about Qiblah.

For a while, you were to face toward Jerusalem, and then in a short period of time, toward Mecca. And if you actually go to the

Dome of the Rock, they don't have anything pointing away from there, as you have in other mosques. And there's all sorts of interesting stuff that we could discuss about Qiblah.

But if you say the term Qiblah to a Muslim, they know what it means.

If I change the meaning, I'm no longer wanting to communicate with that person. If I will not define it the way they define it,

I am not showing respect for the person to whom I'm speaking. And so,

I don't believe that either Ergin or Emir Kaner would ever change the meaning of those words in talking to Muslims, because they recognize that's just ridiculous to do that.

That doesn't accomplish anything. In fact, it closes down all meaningful communication.

So, my only way of responding to that is, why do you treat

Calvinists in a lesser way than you treat Muslims? Well, Dr.

Kaner, Ergin Kaner, has said that Calvinists are worse than Muslims. And in fact, you know, it's interesting,

I'd have to check this, so I'm just going off the top of my head. I don't think I have been addressed as a brother by either of the

Kaners. I've referred to them in that way. I've explained to them. I don't consider them to be my enemy.

But I honestly don't believe that I've even been addressed as a brother. And I guess if you believe that Calvinists are worse than Muslims, maybe they don't even believe

I'm a Christian. Maybe I'm a full -blown heretic and I'm not even a Christian. I don't know. I suppose I should ask. That would be interesting. But the fact of the matter is, they will not treat

Calvinists the way that they would treat Muslims, in defining terms. Dr.

Askew and I have informed them. We are not hyper -Calvinists.

This is what a hyper -Calvinist is. This is the historic meaning. We deny these things.

We have spoken against hyper -Calvinism. We have written against hyper -Calvinism. And therefore, we are not hyper -Calvinists.

And if you call us that in the debate, then you're simply being dishonest. But their response is, hey, we can use the term any way we want to.

Are they consistent? No. And if truth is determined by consistency, then we can only hope that those who listen to the debate will be able to tell by that lack of consistency.

Who is speaking the truth and who is not. So, there is the situation as it stands at the moment.

As I write back today, I'm going to present that particular aspect. But I'm going to say, you know what? Obviously, though I've provided numerous citations and references and everything else, that's not getting anywhere.

And you don't have time for this and we don't have time for this. Let's just stick solely and only to the reality of the need to have a very specific, written out, agreed to format and a debate moderator who will hold us to that.

And personally, what I would be willing to do right now, let's get one of those debate coaches from Liberty University to moderate it.

I will allow a man who works for Ergon Kanner as the

Dean of Students and as the President of Liberty Theological Seminary. He's on staff there. He's got authority there.

He's one of the leaders there. I will allow one of those debate coaches, one of those people who teaches debate, to be the moderator.

Why not? These are folks, this is their life. They know how debate is to take place.

In fact, I would be more than happy for them to judge. Yeah, judge.

Now, that's not something we've had done in debates before, but I'd be interested See, folks, let me explain something.

Then we'll go to our calls. 877 -753 -3341 Listen to what

I'm saying here. Debate takes work. When you have a format to a debate, that format exists for a reason.

And the reason is to highlight proper debate over against improper debate.

And in real debates, you get disqualified or you get penalized for using bad forms of argumentation.

When you insult people, when you go off topic, when you go ad hominem, when you use appeals to emotion, you lose points.

You lose the debate. It requires you to think with clarity and with discipline.

And folks, I'm going to tell you right now, there's only one side that wins when thought with clarity and discipline reigns.

You look at Dr. Cantor's sermon. Was that a sermon filled with in -depth, accurate exegesis?

Or was it one that was meant to inflame the emotions? To appeal, not to the rational mind, but to the emotions of man?

I think it's quite clear. And so,

I'm certainly open to allowing these folks to step in and say, hey, here's how we'll do it.

We won't use as strict a format as we normally do. We need to allow a little bit more time for you all to make your presentations. But here's how the cross -examination is going to take place.

And I'm going to keep a very strict watch here. And we're going to control the audience because we want everyone to be able to hear and to follow the argumentation.

And let's see which side wins. And if one side says, no way, then I can only say that's because they know they can't win that debate.

They can't win a debate where the facts and the biblical presentation and history are the issues.

If they're not willing to do that, then they know the only way they can win a debate is to muddle the mind with emotion so that the facts and the coherence of those facts are not seen.

So, there are my thoughts on the issue this morning. 877 -753 -3341.

Let's go to our phone calls and let's talk with Brad. Hi, Brad. How are you? I'm pretty good.

How are you? Doing all right. Good, good. I actually just graduated from Liberty in May.

Oh, really? Do you do any debating there? No, I didn't.

My brother did. He's actually right now on the debate team there. Well, then I may be looking at his picture on the website there.

Have you looked at the website? Yeah, he's a really tall one in the back. I see him right now.

In fact, because of the chandelier in the window behind him, it looks like he's wearing a crown. Is that him?

Yeah, that's him. Well, good. Excellent. Awesome. Well, I did want to comment on a few things with Dr.

Kanner. When I heard his treatment of Romans 9,

I almost fell onto the floor thinking, how can anyone treat

Scripture in such a reckless manner to say that why did

God hate Esau was because of what he did, rather than the previous verses clearly indicate that it was before he was born by anything he could do or anything.

I'm going to actually be at the debate at Liberty. I'm from Denver. Hey, by the way, let me ask you something.

Do you know how large the new Thomas Road Baptist Church worship center is supposed to be?

I've been there. We had the Purpose Driven Church there with Rick Warren, and it hosts,

I'm thinking about 8 ,000 people. Now, that's the new facility? That's the new one, yeah.

Really? Okay. Wow. It's pretty large. Actually, it's in the former

Erickson building, which is actually bigger than the local mall there. Wow. That's the whole complex that's now across the street from it.

Okay. Well, I appreciate that. So, yeah, I heard the exact same thing you did. Now, did you have any classes with Dr.

Cantor? I did. I had church history with him. Okay. Did it surprise you that he would say that in light of how he had handled his teaching duties?

Well, he, like you said previous before, he does have quite a bit of knowledge in things like Islam.

He actually has a lot of knowledge in church history, and his books, Unveiling Islam and Christian Jihad are very good and very scholarly.

But me and a few Calvinist guys in the back, when he got to this topic, he actually had said the title of his sermon was,

Why I'm Predestined Not to be a Calvinist. He's actually said that in class before, and we basically said, well, we agree.

I mean, his argumentation, as you saw, is going to be more ad hominem, appealing to emotions, trauma and red herring, all that stuff.

Almost kind of like Dave Hunt debating Calvinism in that book that I read.

Yeah. Well, and in fact, have you read the correspondence we had back in February?

With Dave Hunt? No, with Dr. Kanner. No, I haven't. It's on our website.

If you look at my blog back in February, you'll see a link to the correspondence that took place over about three days between Dr.

Kanner and myself. He kept making reference to Dr. Dave Hunt and to the stellar example of both

Dr. Hunt and Dr. Geisler in simply wiping the floor with me. And I sent to him a tremendous amount of information.

And, of course, I got no response back to any of the documentation I provided. So, yes, it's very clear to me that he is reliant upon someone like a

Dave Hunt, which, again, it would strike me that a person who is familiar with scholarly argumentation in the forms of scholarship would immediately recognize that Dave Hunt is not familiar with any such things and, as such, would avoid such materials.

But when it comes to this one subject, my experience has been that when you experience a certain tradition, you simply have no respect for those people.

I think it's the same with Dr. Geisler, Dave Hunt. You just consider these people to be so far off that you will not extend to them, in this case, the same courtesy that Dr.

Cantor would extend to Muslims to get to define their own terms. And so, I think that explains the utilization of that information and then the lack of critical examination of whether that information is actually solid.

So, you know, but... I have heard Amir come to Liberty before and his presentations have been more...

have been less emotional and more scholarly. I was hoping for that. Now, I've got to admit, yesterday, he was the one to first refer to my arrogance in identifying terms as straw man and as misrepresentation and to identify me as a fatalist.

And so, I was a little disappointed yesterday because I had hoped that there would be some balance at that point and I'm still hoping that, but yesterday, that unfortunately wasn't the case in the correspondence we had.

It was disappointing, but be that as it may, my hope, obviously, I know that we're walking into the quote unquote lion's den and everything else, but you know what?

There are some great folks at Liberty and my hope quite simply is that I want to be an encouragement to folks and I want by the way we present ourselves to have a testimony just at that point.

Just simply in the way that we feel this is a vitally important issue but it's vitally important that it be addressed in a way that's honoring to God and honoring to that truth.

And that, to me, is one of the most important things, to encourage the people that are there and then to give a clear testimony to what we believe and certainly

I'm looking forward to cross -examination as long as I don't get interrupted all the time. I think that I can provide a solid response to the criticisms that are normally offered and certainly

Dr. Tanner offers to the position that's mine. Even though, I know you mentioned that it's going to be a lion's den obviously at Liberty with him being on staff and that kind of stuff.

There is a population among Liberty who are

Reformed in their thinking and in fact on your website you have that Amazing Grace DVD.

I can't remember the teacher. He's a history teacher. He's not in the religion hall but he's a Liberty professor that's on that DVD.

There's quite a bit of you'll see the stark difference between the

Canor fans and the whooping and yelling and all that other stuff and the Calvinist Reformed kind of thinking that will be represented there.

You actually might be getting some whooping and yelling. I don't know if you're used to that. Signs will be made,

I'm sure. I was wondering, did you listen to Dr.

Tanner's sermon from the week before last at Liberty? Do you have any idea what

Dr. Falwell was referring to when he referred to a guy sitting down front in a t -shirt? No idea. Man, me too.

I'm thinking about calling my buddies and seeing if anybody was there. I would like to. It's bugging me because I would love to have had a

TV camera spin down there and catch what in the world this was because everybody else evidently got the joke but we didn't get to catch that.

Well, you know what? I do know that there are a lot of people who are looking forward to this particular encounter.

I know that there's a lot of fine folks at Liberty. I've already been invited to speak at the church there in Lynchburg prior to the debate because it's a

Monday night. Which church is that? It's the one that I spoke at at the Founders Conference about four years ago.

Wayne McGraw used to be the pastor. I don't know. It has something to do with the road in it.

I might be able to pull up the email here.

I'll look for it and see if I can pull it up a little bit later on. I've been invited to speak there. I've already said yes.

I'd be more than happy to do so. Very honored that someone would be kind enough to give me that opportunity.

I know there are fine, fine folks there and I'm looking forward to that kind of an opportunity to do so.

I'm looking forward to if you get a chance to come on up and say howdy and introduce yourself.

It's a long ways to go, however, for a debate. I'll be there visiting my brother and my wife's family.

They still live in Lynchburg. It'll be a good time. I just can't wait to see.

Like I said, there are a lot of very good points. His Islam expertise, his church history, his passion for evangelism, all of these things.

I think he's a little bit out of his league in trying to debate this particular topic.

Even in class, when we would debate it, you have undergrad students holding their own. There's one problem.

Honestly, and I may have to put all this correspondence up so people can see this because that's one of the issues that's come up between us.

I don't think any of this should be secret. I think it should be out in the open. I have bent over backwards to try and in as brotherly a fashion as I can say, this is an area that you've got to do some study in.

There's issues here that you're not showing any familiarity with at all. Don't you think it would be better for all the people that are there if both sides are on the same page were using the same definitions?

I haven't yet seen any willingness on his part to admit that there is any possibility whatsoever that I might be right about that and that it might be worthwhile for him to look at that.

I've seen none, none whatsoever. That's disturbing to me. I don't ever want to get to that point.

You'll never find me debating eschatology. It's not my field. I'd have to read so much stuff to be able to do so in a way that shows respect to your audience.

See, for me, if you're going to address an issue, you have to respect your audience and do the work that's required to do so in a meaningful fashion.

That's how you respect the truth and that's how you respect the people who have invested the time to come hear you speak.

I don't understand why someone would address a subject like this and not accept the fact that, you know what,

I may need to do some more study on this. I don't understand it. I really don't. By the way,

I just did find one of those. OFRBC I'm looking for what that what that refers

OFRBC. Does that ring any bells? It could be Something Road Baptist Church Old Forest Road There it is.

Old Forest Road Baptist Church. I'll be speaking on the 15th, the day before the thing.

There is one debate that you can have access to on his website. He has an online debate with another...

That's Nadir Ahmed. Nadir's name is a description of his arguments as in Nadir.

I know this guy. I've reviewed a couple of his statements on The Dividing Line before. This guy is absolutely one of the worst

Islamic apologists on the planet. I mean, he's... There's no meaningful interaction to be had with this particular fellow.

So I did see that one. But it's not a live one. It's only a written type thing. Yeah. It's just email back and forth.

That fellow can't do anything without engaging in ad hominem. So I still really, really wish

I could see or hear some of these real debates because I've asked about them. The only comment

I finally got once was well, they've just been like community colleges. We're not in the big leagues. That's all he said.

And it's like, I would like to hear a formal debate. He claims to have been involved in 60 of them.

That's more than I've done. So I don't understand why this unwillingness to provide that kind of information.

I have a feeling what he's counting as debates is any radio appearance, John Ankerberg show. If I started counting all the

Bible Answer Man's and radio programs I would have done 500 debates by now.

But I only count the ones where you've got a moderator and you've got a time frame and it's put out there for public use.

That's the only way I think it's meaningful to define something as a debate. Anyways, thanks for your insights.

I appreciate that. I look forward to seeing you in October, Lord willing. Hey, I'm pretty confident that you will not be bit by the intellectual pit bull of the evangelical world.

I don't think any collars or nooses. I wasn't planning on bringing any at all. He did say he'd wear his leathers and I could wear my kilt, however.

We'll see how that goes. Have a good day. God bless. Bye -bye. 877 -753 -3341

I guess we blew right through the break there, didn't we? Eh, that's okay. We've got other folks calling in.

And room for you, however, at 877 -753 -3341

We still need to Where are we going to stick that in here? Up on the wall? Put it in the window there?

Something like that? Nice, big. The phone number. I'm going by memory and that's not always a really good thing to do.

You're sticking your fingers up. Thank you very, very much for all of your high -tech assistance in there, Mr. Super Dude with all the buttons and knobs and things like that.

Can't get my poor little laptop to sound good in the pre -feed. Anyways, 877 -753 -3341

I think is the phone number. We'll, you know, something along those lines. Dial and you'll eventually get to it somewhere.

But that's the number that Seiko has dialed. Hi, how are you, sir? Dr. White, how are you doing?

Great, great. I'm calling from Houston, Texas. I was listening to you on the internet. Would love to get your show.

You know what? That's the only way you can listen to me. We tried the radio thing and let me tell you something.

Here's, and I'm not going to try to take away from your time, but here's the issue everybody needs to understand when they say, hey, you need to be on the radio.

If you listen to folks on the radio, what do they spend about a quarter of their time doing if they're nice?

Fundraising. Yeah, you're right. And you don't hear me doing fundraising around here, and I don't figure most people like to listen to a whole lot of fundraising, so that's sort of how it works.

The internet's becoming ubiquitous. We figure this is the best way to do it, and we are cheap, and we make every penny scream before it leaves our hands, and so there you go.

You know, that's, and that's, you know, some people say, yeah, but you charge a buck for your MP3s.

Well, you know what? Here's your choice. You can pay a buck for the MP3s, or you can listen to me spend a quarter of my time raising money.

Which would you rather do? I mean, the french fries cost more at McDonald's than that MP3 does.

So, anyways, how are things down in Houston, Texas? Very hot. Very hot.

Ah, well, hey, it's more humid there, but our, the digits on our thermometer get a little bit higher than they do there, so, but I would rather have the dry heat, believe me.

Yeah, I bet you would. It's definitely, I mean, being April right now, it's kind of like a warning before Uh -huh, yeah, here we come.

Here comes the heat. Exactly. Well, speaking of heat, this is a pretty good caveat to talk about what you're talking about right now.

Yes, sir. I listened to the sermon last weekend, matter of fact. I listened to your past program,

When I Get a Chance, and I heard the sermon that Dr. Cannon had spoken on, and I kind of like echoed the same thing that the previous caller had made.

I don't see how you can do justice to Romans 9 or any passage that deals with the doctrine of election.

Matter of fact, I don't see how any person that has any type of exegetical insight can disregard that particular doctrine.

For the life of me, I don't understand that, but he did it, you know, and got the applause and the adoration that he,

I guess, wanted. Yeah, in fact, let me mention something to you, Seiko. One of the things that was mentioned in the emails that went back and forth was, well, first of all,

Dr. Cannon, when he originally wrote to me, hadn't listened to my response and, in essence, said, I'm not going to waste my time.

And I said, wait, wait a minute, you haven't listened to it?

Honestly, if Shabir Ali said, I have responded to your comments about Islam, and here's the audiophile, and I'm going to be debating him at Biola May 7th,

I'm going to listen to what he has to say. I mean, I cannot even understand it. He said eventually that he did listen to it, and basically all he said was,

I couldn't disagree with you more, but he did not respond to anything about Romans 9.

He did not respond to anything about Paulus, Pass, any of the exegetical information.

It's like it wasn't even there in my response.

No answer given to it at all. And all he could say is, they can't keep up with the

DVD and CD sales of the sermon, and the church was greatly blessed.

That's all he would say. So I'm like, okay, well, alright, but many, many people have heard this.

Do you have a response? And I can't get responses to that, and if I can't get them now, when there's no television cameras on, and there's no lights on, what are the chances

I'm going to get it then? That's my concern, because I'm wondering, are you sure? Of course, I'm looking forward to hearing the debate, because my wife and I got your debate, received your debate on is

Jesus God or a god, and that was just awesome to me. Oh, that was with Stafford? Yes, sir.

So we definitely enjoyed that, but my thing is, if it's going like that, do you feel that you may be wasting your time, humanistically speaking, as far as dealing with a gentleman that may not even desire to have a scholarly debate?

Yeah, well, obviously I am very concerned that the debate has sufficient control to allow something to be accomplished.

That is a great concern that I have, and I am going to continue to press that there be sufficient controls to keep one side from just simply throwing out 47 different topics and never actually addressing something.

However, at the same time, am I expecting this to break new ground? No, I'm not.

I'm looking at the opportunity of talking to about 8 ,000 folks there in Lynchburg and representing my faith in a way that honors my

Lord, honors the Word of God, and causes people to start thinking about these things, and maybe opening some minds that otherwise would not be opened.

I mentioned to my brother, Tom Askell, and I'd like to say this, there's nobody else that I would rather have with me in this encounter than Tom Askell.

He's a wonderful brother, he's an excellent speaker, he knows his stuff, and he and I share the same desire for the glory of God and the promulgation of the gospel, and it's just wonderful.

But one of the things I mentioned to him, that I was convinced of two things. First of all, there are a number of Reformed folks at Liberty who need our support.

I mentioned some of the speaking opportunities that I'm going to have. For us to come in, and for them to hear us saying the same things they're saying, is a great encouragement to them.

And that's the first thing. Secondly, I said there are serious -minded young people who will be in that audience that night.

And we, Tom Askell and I, are not going to roll over and play dead. We can be just as forceful and passionate as anyone else, but we will not lose our cool, we will not go nuts, we will honor the truth, we will give a gentle answer, a gentle biblical answer, that turns away wrath, and I want to draw the very same sharp distinction in behavior and attitude that is found in my interaction with Dave Hunt in Debating Calvinism.

And so, if we can accomplish those two things, then I think it's worth all of the time and the expense and the travel, and obviously what

I would like to see happen is I would like to see the Canners present a fair, non -misrepresentative defense of their position.

I would like to see that happen. I would like to see scholarly interaction take place. That's my desire.

I'm not giving up on that hope. There's plenty of time between now and then. Maybe somebody can talk to them, other than us, that says, you know what,

I think you do need to listen to what these guys are saying. Here's a better way to approach it. I'm an optimist.

I would love to see that happen. But this will be, I forget which number,

I think this will be my 60th or 61st debate by the time I get there. And I've been in situations where people really lost their cool.

And I've been in situations where people were just throwing everything but the kitchen sink at me, and I think if they could have pulled it off the wall, they would have done that.

And I recognize that is a sign of a lost side. And I'll never forget

Robertson Jenis, who is a former Protestant, well he's been a former everything at some point in time in his life, but now he's out there arguing geocentrism and stuff like that.

But anyways, we did a debate on the mass in 1999,

I believe it was. And he was just nasty. I mean, he was just angry and nasty and you could see in people's faces,

I could look out over the audience, and it's that same type of situation, the same type of look you see when the guy goes nuts at the airline counter, you know, and he's jumping all over the poor lady who has no control over anything at all.

You know, they're cussing him out or whatever. The same look everybody else has, like dude, calm down, you know.

That's what people in the audience were doing, because Jenis was taking every snide little opportunity to take shots and do all the rest of this stuff, and of course

I'm not going to return that kind of stuff in a public debate. A couple days later, I was speaking at Grace Reformed Baptist Church, and this 14 -year -old young lady, 13 or 14 -year -old young lady comes up to me and says,

Dr. White, could I ask you a question? And you know, they're always sort of a little bit shy, you know, oh sure, go ahead. And she says, why did that man hate you so much?

Wow. They see it, you know, and those are the people that I debate for. Those are the people who are listening and they're thinking and they're watching, and is there a part of me that would love to just go toe -to -toe and retort for retort and insult for insult?

Sure, there's a part of my flesh that would like to say to Ergon Kanner, dude, I've got so much more experience than you in this area, it's not even funny, and I can wipe the floor with you, and I can get just as loud as you and all the rest of it, but there's a higher priority here, and it's who

I'm debating for. And, you know, for years and years we go out to Mason.

Yeah, we go out to Mason and we witness the Mormons out there, and this last

Saturday night, we're standing there. Actually, I was going to mention this anyways, and I hope you don't mind my telling you all these stories, but we're standing there, and one of our volunteers tries to pass out a track to this guy who's walking by.

He's got sunglasses on. It's completely dark, but he's got sunglasses on. And he stops, and he just turns around and lets into our volunteer.

Well, immediately I take this over, and I direct him to me. And, I mean, he's getting louder and louder, and he's angry, and he's saying, you know, you're trying to stop people from worshipping the way they want to, and all the rest of this stuff.

And I sort of waited for him to take a breath, and in between sentences I said, a gentle answer turns away wrath.

And it was like I had popped a balloon. And he just stopped, and I started explaining to him.

See, what had happened is he had walked by the King James Only Fundamentalist Baptist down the way with the signs. They were sitting there yelling and screaming at people, and he figured we're with them.

And once the guy found out that they hate me more than they hate the Mormons, we ended up having at least a 45 -minute long conversation.

It was great. I was able to present stuff to him that he had never heard before.

And then, of course, I immediately did not ask an answer from him, because I could tell he didn't know what the answer was.

And if you demand an answer, they're going to come up with an answer. It may be the dumbest thing they've ever said in life, but they'll go to their grave defending it.

So what you do is you say, you know, could we correspond about that? Or could we follow up on that at a later point? Blah, blah, blah.

We had a great conversation. He left with tracts in his hand. I left with his email address because he had brought up the

Council of Nicaea. And I said, you know, it's funny. Now, the Council of Nicaea did not determine the canon of Scripture.

And, in fact, I wrote an article for the CRI Journal back in the late 90s. What really happened to the Council of Nicaea? I'd be happy to send it to you, et cetera, et cetera.

And so we left on great terms. He was telling us about his dad and his grandfather and all the rest of his stuff.

And we had turned the whole situation around. And we learned a long time ago that when we're standing out there and we're talking to somebody, not only is the

Lord observing and people around us, but there is very frequently somebody off that we don't even notice.

They're leaning up against a tree. They look like they're looking someplace else. They're actually listening very carefully to what we are saying.

And we may, in that situation, they may be being nasty to us. They may be, you know, insulting us.

But you know what? There are people. There are people who are listening.

And we always have to keep that in mind. And so we can never give in to that temptation. And we all have to admit, sometimes we actually have.

But we should not give in to that temptation to respond in the flesh. That's why we have to pray before we go out there and ask the

Lord to help us. And so that's my hope as well. And I'll ask everybody, pray for me, because I know

I'm going to be tempted more than once to say something I shouldn't say. Sometimes there's this great zinger that just pops into your mind.

And you've got to, sometimes it's worth saying it if it's not dishonoring, if it's actually funny and communicates something.

But there are other times, and you need to have wisdom to know which one's which, basically. And so you all pray for Tom Askell and I that we respond the proper way.

Hey, before then, this Friday night, 800 high school students at Smith -Cotton High School in Sedalia, Missouri, are going to be listening to a very similar kind of debate.

You all have listened to, if you've listened to The Vying Line, you've heard Dr. Davis' sermons. It's going to be very similar to that. Pray for me then.

And then the Shabir Ali debate. I mean, this is, we're talking about the Cantor stuff, but I've got a lot going on between now and then in reality.

You pray for it, that's for sure. I mean, I've been blessed by your ministry, and I've been blessed by the information in the literature and the tapes and things like that that I have received from your ministry.

And I guess one more thing, and I'll definitely let you go because I don't want to take too much of your time, but I'm basically, you know, pretty much probably can tell, well, anyway,

I'm one of the people that's kind of like the, what is the word I want to look for to try to sound quote -unquote politically correct, extinct, spiritually extinct

African -American, black, Reformed. No, you're not alone. Yeah, I know there's a remnant out there somewhere.

I mean, I just don't know where, but my church here in Houston, we're a Reformed church, and I kind of, you know,

I've kind of tried to shy myself away from being called a quote -unquote Calvinist, not because, you know,

I don't believe in all five points, but because the fact is, I mean, Calvin was not around when

Jesus was, so I would consider myself a Biblicist. Right, right. Well, I understand exactly what you're saying, and one of our ops in channel,

OSX, is an African -American Reformed fellow, so they are out there, and you just got to keep looking for each other, that's all.

All right, hey, thanks for your call today, brother. All right, God bless, bye -bye. That was an excellent call, and by the way,

Brad did call back, thank you, Brad, the new Thomas Road Baptist Church will be 6 ,000, not 8 ,000. Hey, I just hope we pack the place out, and something tells me that we will, and that would be absolutely great if we had 6 ,000 people, and I, they don't want to charge admission, and that's great, but they could honestly be turned people away if they're not careful.

They could pack this place completely out and have no place else to go, especially if Kanner gets to preach the

Sunday beforehand, or the day beforehand, he preaches another sermon like that, you better believe that place will be packed out, and my hope, of course, is that it will be packed out with Liberty students.

Those are the young minds I want to get to, especially since I had a number of Liberty students tell me that when

I spoke at the conference, and by the way, I just, you didn't see this, but the official librarian of Cross Apology On is not currently in channel, but is clearly listening to the program, because we have

Marie P. Now, if you want to know any fact on the planet, you ask

Marie, okay? This young lady is frightening. I mean, she is the

Uber librarian, and I remember I was trying to find the name of the church,

I was searching through all my emails, all of a sudden my email thing comes up, and here is Marie, and she has

Old Forest Road Baptist Church, 3630 Old Forest Road, Lynchburg, Virginia, 24501, and the phone number.

And it just goes flying into my email box, and thank you very much,

Marie. Marie is one of our ops, and she gets kudos for yeah, will

Dr. Cantor give an altar call for Calvinists at the end of the debate? Well, we'll see. We will see how that ends up going.

But yes, I am currently scheduled to speak there the

Sunday beforehand, and I can tell you right now that one of the sermons, one of the opportunities

I would like to have is to address the issue of John chapter 6. I would like to walk through Jesus' words.

I would like to point out that the Lord Jesus Christ taught the absolute freedom and power and perfection of God and salvation.

He did so in the synagogue, Capernaum, and I will invite

Dr. Cantor, I will even make my travel plans so that I stay a day after the debate.

And if Dr. Cantor is willing to do it, I will walk into every one of his classes with nothing but a

Greek New Testament and discuss John 6 with him in every one of those classes alone.

That's how confident I am that the word of God teaches the sovereignty of God and the perfection of Christ as Savior.

So, thanks for listening. Thanks for the great phone calls. Just wonderful that we have such excellent people listening to this program and it is encouraging to me that you're out there.

I do not have to leave until Friday morning for the debate so we will be here Thursday afternoon. I had said we might not be, but I'll be here

Thursday afternoon here on The Dividing Line, taking your calls. Thanks for listening. God bless. We're standing at the crossroads

Let this moment slip away We must contend for the faith our fathers fought for.

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