The Revoice Conference on Crosspolitic Then Open Phones from Evergreen, Colorado

Greetings and welcome to Dividing Line. It's going to be an unusual looking Dividing Line today. Hope you don't mind sort of the

CIA effect. Ha, ha, ha. Who is that anonymous man? Well, we had to put him in some sort of a situation where you couldn't see his face.

You actually can. I think you can. But I'm up here in evergreen

Colorado. It is just absolutely positively beautiful. In one of my favorite places on the planet,

I'm out on the deck. We just call it the deck. It's been seven years ago now,

I think, and I need to say thank you to Jesse because Jesse was following out in the mega.

And because of that, it's a long, convoluted story. It's interesting how the

Lord does things. But it's about seven years ago now, maybe eight, seven.

Anyway, 2011, so it would be at least seven full years. Yeah, I ended up having dinner down in evergreen with Bruce and Marty.

And those poor people probably rue that dinner badly, but I hope not.

Because pretty much ever since then, with a few exceptions in those early years,

I have been bothering for Bruce and Marty and basically have become the semi -uninvited house guest for as much as two weeks in a row as it is this year here in evergreen.

This is what I call my home away from home, my second home, my Colorado home. It's just beautiful up here.

And so here I am. And I thought this time, you've always done it downstairs. It's like, you know what, it's 77 degrees.

As you can see, there is a beautiful breeze blowing. The sky is gorgeous. Who knows what the temperature is in Phoenix right now?

And I know it's going to be a whole lot more humid when I get back. And so I'm enjoying my last week.

I head home a week from this morning, actually. So I'll be about halfway there a week from now.

But here we are in evergreen, and it's just a beautiful place.

And this is a very special place, this deck up here. Great friends, great conversations. I look forward to it every single year.

It's just wonderful. So anyway, I survived the triple bypass bike ride, for those of you hoping it was a triple bypass, something else, on Saturday.

And that was the fourth, fifth time

I've done the single. One was unofficial because they canceled it last year because of fires, but we did something else anyways.

It was even tougher. So I still count that. And three doubles. So it's a 120 -mile bike ride with 10 ,500 feet of climbing at altitude.

It's great. But that's what we do up here. It's where it's about 7 ,400 feet right here.

And over that way, you can't see it from there, is Mount Evans. And that's what I will be climbing on Saturday.

Once again, I've already been up there once. I posted a couple of pictures from up there, but I will be racing up it come

Saturday. So I noticed the wind's blowing something around over here that I may have to fix sometime during the program.

So if I just disappear, that's just how it is. Anyway, just got something sent to me, a couple of things sent to me that are way too small for me to read right now without.

That's one of the bummers, is you get stuff sent to you. If it's really small print, you have to go find your glasses. That's what happens when you get old.

Anyway, I had the opportunity to listen to the cross -politic episode that just dropped and has already gotten so much response and interest, wherein the cross -politics guys interviewed the pastor of the

PCA church that is hosting the Revoice conference this weekend.

And I actually listened to it twice. I thought I only heard like half of it while I was getting ready for my ride.

And then I restarted from the beginning and found out I had only missed like the first 60 seconds or something like that.

And so I actually listened to it twice. And it was quite fascinating.

There were a couple times, the first time through, I was really going, you know,

I have a feeling someone's going to hang up about now. And that didn't happen. So you got to give the guy credit.

He hung in there through the battle, you might say. There were some strong things said.

But it was very clarifying, very helpful, very good in laying out what some of the issues are, just as in when the

Sheologians, my daughter and Joy interviewed Nate Collins.

You know, the issues here are extremely difficult because of language and because of changing language and because of the introduction of new terminology that, especially as older folks, never had to deal with in our lives, never had to really think about.

And as a result, the communication very frequently is on a rather shallow level.

And I don't have the answers as to how to get around this. This is a situation where within the

Church, we have to work extremely hard at analyzing the motivations and foundations of the new terminology in light of biblical categories.

And the danger that the Church is facing right now is the insertion of non -biblical categories of ethics and morality that are derived from external sources and sinful sources, rather than derived from a meaningful—in other words, they don't come positively from biblical categories and biblical framework.

And unfortunately, that's just a very difficult and challenging issue.

And I don't know how to get around it. It would be extremely helpful to have some real, full discussions made regarding the background of certain terms.

This even came up on the program, so you may have caught it a couple of times. Identity, what's the source of your identity?

Well, the term homosexual didn't develop until such and such time. Well, gay didn't get used in that way until very, very frequent recent times.

And there was discussion of sodomite and things like this.

And we have to recognize that there is a very purposeful attempt on the part of many individuals and many movements to fundamentally destroy the moral and ethical foundational elements of the gospel.

And so we need to be very, very careful and very, very concerned. When we have language being constantly utilized that does not have a positive foundation within biblical categories.

I think that's really important to recognize. And so it was a fascinating program to listen to.

It was fascinating that the guys specifically at the end asked that the conference be canceled, knowing that it wasn't going to happen, but at least they can say, hey, we specifically attempted as best we could to, you know, they said, you need to repent of doing this.

You're bringing dishonor upon the church, you're bringing confusion, this is going to be bad for people.

They were very straightforward in what they had to say and specifically said, you need to cancel this thing.

Don't let this happen. Obviously, I didn't even know when it was.

I kept thinking, well, it's next week. When I was driving up here, I thought it already happened. And then

I thought it was last weekend and it's next weekend. And so I don't know when the audio or video is going to be posted.

And given how some things have happened, sort of makes me wonder if it will be.

I can't imagine that it, you know, the, well, I don't know, we'll see.

I would assume that the plan is that it would be posted.

But I know that I certainly am not looking forward to have to listen to the large majority of it, but I will have to.

Because, you know, if it's revoiced this year, what is it next year? What is it the year after that?

If we've learned anything from what has happened this year within reform circles, once this stuff happens, we just tend to be real slow on the uptake.

We tend to be behind the times. Error can run halfway around the world before we are even, you know, beginning to provide a meaningful response.

So we'll definitely be looking for the video, or the video and audio when it comes out.

Now, one of the things that I specifically wanted to address, and by the way, we're going to try, we're going to try to take phone calls.

Now, I don't know how it's going to work because we were testing it out and there was some echoing and stuff like that.

And so, uh -oh, yeah, there it goes. There was some echoing and stuff like that, so we'll see how that ends up working out.

But if you'd like to call 877 -OhGoodGrief, put it in channel, put it in the topic of the channel,

Rich, because I don't have my little thingy. You'd think, yeah, 877 -753 -3341, you'd think after all these years, but you become dependent on that little thing.

So we'll start taking your calls. I will not be able to see who, well, you know.

No, I can't because I'm not in the studio. There is a way to do that. I just don't think we have it set up for me to be able to do that, but I think our system can actually allow me to do that remotely.

It certainly has the capacity to do it, but 877 -753 -3341, we can talk about that particular subject.

But one of the things I did want to specifically mention was one of the things that came up in the conversation was the topic of one of the,

I don't know, breakout sessions, lectures, whatever you call it, was redeeming queer culture.

And part of the discussion was, what are you going to be able to bring into heaven?

What elements of our lives and experiences are going to be brought into heaven?

And of course, that's a discussion of what is true, honest, just, what's going to be lasting over time.

And that's what I really found quite fascinating. It was obvious, really obvious, to see the differences on the two sides in regards to inherent orientation.

There was, you know, the issue that I addressed before I left town,

I think in the last dividing line I did, was the fundamental disorderedness.

Now, there was agreement. There was a lot of agreement. One of the things that was interesting to me is, if you listen to that program, you're not going to get much discussion about why, from a biblical perspective, homosexuality is sinful, because that was basically a given, that was sort of accepted by both sides.

So most of what you would be discussing with your unbelieving neighbor or super liberal

Christian type person, whatever, wasn't being addressed there. There was an acceptance of the disordered nature of homosexual desire.

But there was disagreement as to whether the disordered nature of the desire means that it in and of itself is evil, because it was pretty obvious that the pastor of the church had accepted the idea that orientation just is.

It is not in and of itself simple. And that, one of the big things is, is there a difference?

Because the pastor kept saying over and over and over again, fundamentally, this is just one sin like other sins.

So he talked about gluttony. And he kept trying to draw that parallel between the two.

And I have a problem with that. Not that I believe gluttony is not an abuse of a proper and good and necessary desire that God has given to us.

There is everything good and right in encouraging believers to a healthy lifestyle and to an avoidance of gluttony.

And I think American Christians really should give more thought to that, to be perfectly honest with you.

I do everything I can to try to be in shape.

And I've encouraged others along those lines. And some people obviously think I'm just nuts, some of the things that I do.

I mean, yeah, Saturday's ride was a nutty thing to do. Yeah, 120 miles in one day with 10 ,500 feet of climbing, that's a little bit crazy.

But it's something I train for during the year. And everybody in my family dies of heart stuff, circulatory stuff.

And so just a few days ago, I passed 120 ,000 miles on bike, logged miles, since 1993.

There was a seven -year break in there when I did that Jesse Ventura stint.

But yeah, I think that's a perfectly valid subject to race. However, the desire for food is a

God -given natural desire that is, in some people's experience, inordinately powerful and is satisfied to an inordinate extent.

That's what gluttony is. Engaging in heterosexual acts outside of marriage is taking what is a natural desire and taking it out of bounds and engaging in it in an excessive fashion.

But it's a natural desire. It is not a desire that is contrary to the very nature of how you've been created.

If you're a male, you desire a female. If you're a female, you desire a male. And that is described in scripture as a natural desire.

It is an appropriate desire, but it is a desire that is to be engaged in within a particular context and within a particular range.

Homosexuality is not a natural desire. You may say, well,

I experience same -sex attraction. I believe that the number of people who, from their earliest time of memory, experience explicitly and exclusively same -sex desire is a small minority of the homosexual community.

And I've seen good data from studies amongst homosexuals that they would agree with that.

There is an honest recognition on the part of many that, for many, this was a choice, and this is a lifestyle choice.

But now we're focusing upon the very small minority, saying, well, what about these individuals?

They want to live the Christian life. What about that? Well, there needs to be an answer to the question, is this a disordered desire?

Now, there was general agreement on the program. But if that's the case, then how can there be what we would call a queer culture that can be, quote unquote, redeemed?

I mean, the pastor was actually talking about they didn't develop their own music. And since we're all made in the image of God, and music is music, and you know the old stories, you can take a tavern song and turn it into a hymn, and it's glorifying to God, and it all has to do with your motivations and everything else.

But the question I have is, this whole concept of queer community, what does that mean?

How can that be defined within a biblical worldview? I mean,

I really struggle with that. And the guys kept bringing up, why is it just this unique area?

Why don't we do this with any other area of sin? They did bring up the issue of pedophilia.

And the pastor said, yeah, hey, if there were people who have desires for children, we'd have a conference for them, too, as long as they weren't engaging in that kind of stuff.

And you're just like, oh, OK, all right.

Well, that's interesting. And so what is redeemable out of a culture of rebellion?

Because it's one thing to say people experience certain desires, but the experience of desires is not a basis for the creation of a culture.

And beyond that, there is certainly nothing that can be appropriately identified as an

LGBTQ community. Because as I've pointed out so many times, every single one of those letters represents something fundamentally different than anything else.

The poor bisexuals, they just get ignored by everybody. But there is no way to fit.

Well, they'll do it. Maybe that's next year. Maybe there's something going on at Revoice about bisexuality.

I don't know. But bisexuality is a completely different realm than homosexuality.

And I would say male homosexuality and female lesbianism are two different things as well. And I don't believe they create community.

And then you throw in transgenderism into it, and you just have such massive internal contradiction that you can't even begin to, quote unquote, create a community out of something like this.

And so if you have music or art or poetry or spoken word or whatever coming out of a community like this, how can you even talk about redeeming something like this?

It's extremely difficult to begin to understand. And it will be very interesting to see what comes of all this.

It is going to take place. And you just wonder if maybe some of the presentations will never be posted or only posted for certain people or who knows what.

I do not know. But be that as it may, it's fascinating.

Now, I don't know if anyone has called in at 877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341.

If there is, I'm not seeing it. It's sort of hard when you're on a laptop to see everything that is.

One second. OK. Well, that was one second. Unfortunately, my text program is going to beep every time

I get a private message. And that's just how it works when you're doing the program on the fly, shall we say.

And that's what we're doing out here. And I hope all of you have noticed, and it is purposeful on my part, that you can just see the hummingbird feeder.

And there's one now. And I'm not sure if you can hear, but when its wings are flapping, there is a fascinating sound.

Now, that's the little less colorful one right there.

And there is a red one that, if he sees that one drinking out of it, this red one comes along and chases him off.

What was interesting is some larger birds, regular birds, were around there this morning.

And that red one dive -bombed them. I mean, the whole nine yards. And it was fascinating to watch.

We just see little bubbles as he's drinking the sugar water. And they are fascinating little creatures.

They really, really are. They're fun to watch. So anyways, OK. All right, well,

I have no idea how to pronounce the name here. But we have a caller with a chin.

That doesn't help me at all. Naive, nev, nev, I don't know.

I can't tell. But I'm sorry? It's Neve. Neve, OK.

Hi, Neve. Yes. Hey, hi, Dr. White. How are you doing? Doing good. Good, good.

Well, hey, thanks for your ministry. I've been a big fan and have followed you ever since coming into Reformed theology out of the charismatic movement.

Anyway, my question is regarding this whole uprise with the

LGBTQ community, or if you can even call it that. But how does, so recently, a friend of mine who is studying, he's getting his

MDiv to go into the mission field. He's in the military. Then he's going to go into the mission field somewhere in the

African territory. And so polygamy is something that is really big over there.

And he was mentioning to me how with the way that our government is going currently, obviously, gay marriages is becoming so normative, even within the church, as you can see, that he really thinks that polygamy is not far behind.

And so he mentioned how he's not for it in any way, but that technically, there is no explicit condemnation of polygamy in the scriptures.

What's your take on that? And how should Christians respond to issues that are kind of ambiguous like that?

Well, first of all, I don't believe for a second that it's ambiguous. The New Testament is very, very plain, very, very clear.

The fact that the New Testament utilizes one man and one woman, the marriage relationship, as the example of Christ's relationship to the church.

And Jesus' teaching in Matthew chapter 19 makes it very plain that the experience of the degradation of marriage that was polygamy in the

Old Testament times was a step down and away from the creative design of God, and that under the

New Covenant, that creative design is firmly re -established.

And so if the elder of the church is to be a one -man woman, there's arguments about what that means in regards to divorce and abandonment, and whether you have to be married, for example, to be an elder.

There's all sorts of discussions, things like that. But whatever else it means, it definitely means no polygamy in the leadership of the church.

And so you'd have to say, well, why would that be if polygamy is an acceptable thing that is not condemned?

I think your friend is correct that as long as Obergefell is case law in the

United States, that polygamy is going to be a given. It's going to happen. Obergefell was a joke as far as legal reasoning and argumentation is concerned.

But it is what it is. And so that is an issue in Africa.

And as far as I know, the churches there, the vast majority of them continue to hold the line in regards to what a person is supposed to do.

That does raise very serious and difficult issues when you have a man who converts who is a polygamist.

You have a woman, you have children. These women and children cannot just simply be cast out into the outer darkness and stuff like that.

And so it is a very hard thing. But it would require, at the minimum, when you're raising someone in the church, that they are taught what the biblical truths are regarding monogamy.

But I can certainly see a situation if someone converts and they're a polygamist, you don't kill the women. You don't send them away.

There's got to be some means of providing for them, while at the same time not compromising and saying, well, you know, he came in that way, so that's cool.

It needs to be taught against as a lower form of the marriage relationship, at the same time making sure you don't completely destroy families once conversion takes place.

So yeah, that was something the early church dealt with, and it's still something that has to be dealt with in Africa.

And yeah, it may well be something we end up having to deal with as well in the United States. What happens if a burgophile results in plural marriages, and then a person who engages in that wants to join the church, is repentant, recognizes the sinfulness of those things?

That would be one important aspect of it. Then what do you do? That's not an easy question.

But the answer isn't to be found, though, in modifying our views and modifying the biblical norms.

Because once you do that, then the whole importance of Ephesians 5 and the relationship of Christ to the

Church and everything like that becomes compromised. So no, there's no way to go there.

Amen. Yeah, that's so good. Yep, and I do, I believe it is a gospel issue, like you said, in Ephesians 5, that's pretty clear.

But in any case, I wanted to ask the question, and I do appreciate your time. Thank you. OK, thank you very much.

Have a good day. All right, have a good one. Bye -bye. 877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341.

Could we in the United States end up dealing with that particular question?

It is quite possible. It seriously could happen. I'm glad the phones worked.

That was very clear on my end. I hope it was clear on everybody else's end as well. That was better than I expected it to be as far as that went.

Because I'm just sitting out here, got my laptop plugged in. The sun's hitting it. I've got the laptop plugged in.

I'm just using the internal stuff. I don't have any microphones set up or anything like that. That's why you can probably hear cars going by in the valley behind me once in a while.

I wish the wind would keep blowing because it does get a little warm. But 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number.

I haven't looked at Twitter. I went ahead. I shouldn't have, but I moved over to Hootsuite.

It's a pay service, but it does have a few nice things to it.

And oh, this is interesting in looking at,

I have to take my sunglasses off to be able to see it, in looking at what

I've got up here. I did mention, and I do want to mention it again, I was really amazed how many times, while I was up in Salt Lake City, in talking to many former

Mormons who were up there, how often people had either found me because they had first found

Apologia and Jeff Durbin, or vice versa.

But it seems like our names have been forever linked as far as the ministry to Mormons is concerned up in Utah.

And there were a number of people I talked to that the two ministries together were involved in leading those folks out of the

LDS church. And the thing that's so exciting to me is that when

I know for certain that when we deal with Mormonism, we're not just dealing with an attempt to destroy someone's faith in the

LDS church or Joseph Smith. There is always, the intention is always to present the gospel.

And I know it's the same thing with Jeff and Apologia. There's going to be a clear gospel presentation.

And people are going to be directed toward solid Reformed churches and a solid understanding of the gospel and things like that, which is very different, unfortunately, than many of the people who are leaving

Mormonism. But they are leaving disillusioned and agnostic toward the existence of God or Christ and things like that because of all the false elements of Mormonism.

And so I'm really thankful about that and thankful for Jeff.

I just learned today that Marcus has taken another job,

I guess a really good job, which is great. We're happy with that. But man, I'm going to tell you, I know how important he has been to Jeff and to Apologia.

And so whoever's filling his shoes, very, very large shoes to fill.

So I'm sure they would appreciate your prayers during that transition time. And I think it's, you know, how many times

I've seen Marcus out there behind the camera. The man's a busy man, a hard worker.

And they've produced some really important stuff. OK, we have another caller.

And let's talk to Stephen. Hi, Stephen. Hey there, Kawhi.

Thank you for taking my call. Yes, sir. I was recently, I guess, educated somewhat on the

Jewish tradition of the ordering of the Old Testament books. And I was just curious.

I wanted to hear your comments on whether you think it's important to read the scriptures or read the

Old Testament from the Jewish perspective and those orders, the ordering of the books, that that was traditional in Jesus' day and age.

I mean, I love what you've done with the King James only controversy.

And I just wanted to hear your comments on that ordering of the Old Testament scriptures from a historical standpoint.

Right, well, let's mention what that would involve. At least we can, because of the fact that we've been able to discover various scrolls and things like that, we have a fairly decent idea.

Well, not only do we know what the canon of the Old Testament was, or the

Tanakh, even the term Tanakh, which is one of my favorite terms for that body of scripture,

Torah, Nevi 'im, and Ketuvim. Torah, law, Nevi 'im, the prophets, Ketuvim, the writings. That terminology was being used at the time of Christ by Jewish leaders.

And the Tanakh, the 22 books, now you go, wait, we have 39.

Yeah, but the 22 books, or some kind of 24, of the

Tanakh, the minor prophets were considered one book. Some others were rolled into another book.

For example, Lamentations, continuation of Jeremiah. There's different ways in which

Old Testament period writers viewed these particular issues.

Those 22 books were laid up in the temple about 200 years before the time of Christ.

And they were the only books that made the hands dirty when you touched them.

And so that meant they were the holy books. And what's interesting and what's important to recognize is the apocryphal books were never viewed that way by the

Jews. They were not laid up in the temple. And they were not viewed as having that kind of character, or as the books of the

Old Testament, as we possess it today, did. Now, the order is interesting.

And there are a couple of points that we end up missing, I think, when we don't recognize what the order necessarily was.

Specifically, differently than the way we have the order of our canon. And no, I do not think there is a, quote unquote, inspired order.

But there is a recognition of what that order was in the teachings of Jesus. A lot of people don't notice it, but when he is bringing judgment, proclaiming judgment upon the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew chapter 23, he specifically makes reference to the blood of Abel, to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berekiah.

And most of us struggle a little bit about what does that mean.

But when you think about it, the story of Abel's in Genesis, and the story of Zechariah, son of Berekiah, is in 2

Chronicles. And 2 Chronicles was the last book of the

Old Testament canon amongst the Jews in the traditional form that existed in that day. And so what

Jesus is saying is the blood of all the prophets from the beginning to the end of the scriptures is going to be held against these people.

And we sort of miss that when we don't have at least a knowledge of what the canon order was amongst the

Jews. And so I think it's important that we recognize these things, that we are aware of what's going on there and have that knowledge in our background.

But I don't think we need to necessarily. The Jews had a tradition at the time.

Well, not the time of Jesus, but they held a tradition not to say the divine name. I don't think that's something that's binding upon Christians.

And the canon order is something we should know about, but it's not necessarily something that we should tear the bindings out of our

Bibles and reorient stuff and somehow get lamentations into Jeremiah or whatever else we need to do.

So it's good to know it, but it doesn't necessarily mean that we have to have the exact same thing.

Because, for example, in the New Testament, there were numerous early manuscripts that had different order to the

Gospels than Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. There's, I think,

P46, which has Hebrews right after Romans.

And so, yeah, that's after the time of inspiration.

And so it's a later development. But it is good to know that. OK? Yeah, thank you.

I appreciate it. That helps a lot. Thank you. OK. All right, thanks for your call, Stephen. 877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number that Francisco called.

Hi, Francisco. Hi, Dr. White. I just have a lot of questions that I wanted to ask you.

But right now, I have one that's been bugging me. Because, well, I'll just start. The last year or so, we've been looking for a new pastor at my church.

And in January, they voted me in as a deacon and as also a youth leader for the youth group there.

And so the elders and the deacons both have been involved in selecting a new pastor.

And this person has come up as the person that we're probably going to suggest to the congregation.

But I strongly have suggested not to go with them to the other deacons and the elders, because he holds to a low view of God's sovereignty, that he says that certain things have been planned by God, like salvation.

That has always been part of God's plan. But that's just like every single thing that happens is not necessarily part of God's plan, that we don't know that for sure.

And he also doesn't hold to a limited atonement. And so it looks like they're going to vote.

They're going to suggest him anyway, despite my concerns. And to be fair, the only other board member that agrees with me is one of the elders.

But the church, when I started going, it was a pastor that would agree with me.

That's why I was coming to the church. And now I'm not sure what

I should do. If he becomes the pastor, if I should stay, or if I should go, because I'm a deacon there, a youth leader.

And I also help with the Juana, which is another children's ministry. And with the music, my wife and I both are involved in that and other ministries.

We don't know what the correct thing to do is. And I just wanted to hear maybe what your thoughts are concerning this.

Well, first of all, does the church have official membership? Yes, it does.

My wife and I, we've been members for two years, or three years now. OK. Does it have a statement of faith, a confession, anything like that?

It has a statement of faith, but it's not very specific, so the positions are like sovereignty of God and limited atonement.

They're not addressed in there. Yeah. Yeah, well, there's the problem. A lot of churches have a very nonspecific statement of faith that allows for a lot of differing perspectives to try to coexist.

And likewise, the membership of the church can change over time or very rapidly, either way.

And so I'm never one to want to counsel a quick move.

I'm not into church hopping. And I think when

God calls you to serve some place, that there has to be a really strong reason for you to leave that place.

And obviously, if what drew you there was the pastor had a consistent, reformed method of teaching and preaching, if that changes, then certainly, you know,

I had to leave a church once for that reason.

I would make sure that that's exactly what ends up happening. I wouldn't necessarily jump ship overly quickly.

But if over time, there was a consistent impact upon the teaching and preaching, the ministry of the church, and things like that, then certainly, you know, you want to be able to want to get up in the morning and go to church and to teach.

I needed to have consistency between what I was saying and what was being said from the pulpit.

Not everyone has the same strong desires along those lines or necessities along those lines that I do.

But, you know, you are in somewhat of a leadership position. So that is something to consider and to give thought to.

But whatever you choose to do, don't do it at the drop of a hat.

Don't do it in anger. Try to do it in such a way that if you were to meet the people involved five or 10 years later, you know, they wouldn't be trying to walk across the street to avoid you.

So you're trying to avoid them, that you could, you know, greet one another in a proper way and things like that.

That's not always easy to do in every time that we leave a church or something like that.

But it's always a good goal to have, I guess. Yeah. OK. Well, I really appreciate it.

Thank you for taking my call. Thanks, Francisco. Have a good day. You too. Bye. 877 -753 -3341.

877 -753 -3341. I know over the years we've had a number of folks who called with a similar question along the lines of, you know, leaving church and very frequently it is associated with Reformed theology and having embraced

Reformed theology or the church moving away from Reformed theology, as this one was, or not accepting anyone holding to Reformed theology.

And certainly I think most people will testify that over the years I have very strongly counseled a gracious exit if necessary.

Not everybody has any place else to go. I should have mentioned to Francisco. I assume he's still listening. One thing, don't go anyplace until you have someplace to go.

That's really important. It's very, very important not to go anywhere until you have someplace to go, which itself can be a challenging thing.

I mean, if you're in a leadership position and you're ministering, how do you necessarily check anyplace else out because you're so busy?

I mean, I've never understood the life of the church hopper, one place to another.

You can never really know what's going on anywhere when you handle it that way. 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number.

The phone lines are open. 877 -753 -3341.

Oh, really? Okay. Well, this will be interesting because if this actually works, this will be a real long -distance discussion between myself and Dino in Sri Lanka.

877 -753 -3341 is the phone number. The phone lines are open. 877 -753 -3341.

I'm getting myself back there from a couple minutes ago, so I'm not sure how that's working.

But I can't talk to myself that way. There will be a real long pause because that was about 60 seconds behind, so I'm not sure how to handle this.

I'm not sure exactly what's going on there, but I would like to try to talk with Dino from Sri Lanka.

Are you there, Dino? Hello? Yes, Dino. Yeah, this is

Dino from Sri Lanka. First of all, I would like to say I'm a

Catholic, but I'm a big fan of your work. Especially I've watched several debates that you have had with Catholics, and it has been educationally very informative.

So the thing is, the question, are you there? Can you hear me,

Mr. White? Yes, yes, I can hear you. Yes, go ahead. Yeah, it's regarding, to be honest with you, these days

I've been questioning my faith. I mean, certain things that you have told,

I mean, it is like certain doctrines that I've been following,

I am questioning these days regarding Catholicism. So I would like to get some clarity with you.

I mean, I'm a little confused currently. So how would you,

I mean, what would you suggest to me? I mean, I'm kind of leaning towards the reform perspective, but at the same time

I'm not, I can't leave my faith all at once.

I have to be, there should be a strong reason. Right.

Reason and, yeah, yeah, yeah, you get what I'm saying, right? Yes, I agree.

What are the areas that you're thinking on? It's regarding the doctrines regarding Mary, the

Marian dogmas, and as well as, like,

I'm a little confused with purgatory as well.

Purgatory, I've been kind of like researching things regarding purgatory to a certain extent.

So, but correct me if I'm wrong, but certain,

I mean, certain people, certain testimonies, I mean, as far as I read, seems to make some sense, but I'm sure you disagree with that.

But even with that, I would like to get your clarification, I mean, in terms of purgatory.

And Marian dogmas, I would say it's very much on the weaker side.

I mean, because as you know, I mean, there's no base for the

Marian dogmas from the scripture. So it comes from an outside scripture basis perspective, right?

So you have talked about that, and I am aware of that as well. On top of that, the issues,

I mean, the areas I have trouble with is regarding generations of saints, generation of saints.

Right. Well, Dino, obviously the... I think you get some idea regarding what

I'm going through, yeah. Right, yes, definitely. I'm not sure how much is available to you in Sri Lanka as far as documentation and books to read and things like that, that would give you a lot of good information.

But obviously, if you recognize that the Marian dogmas come at a much later period of time, that they were not a part of the apostolic proclamation, they were not a part of what the apostles taught, they were not a part of the experience of the early

Church. But yet today, you have to believe these things on the basis of Rome's claims to authority.

That in and of itself raises the issue of the sufficiency of scripture versus the insufficiency of scripture that Rome teaches.

And everything else is going to come back down to that. I mean, if we were to talk about how you're justified before God, if I were to point out, for example, that every person in Romans chapter 8 who has been predestined is called, and each one who is called is justified, and everyone who is justified is also glorified.

In Roman Catholicism, that's not true. You have people who are justified who will not be glorified.

And so, if we were to talk about the nature of the gospel from Romans chapter 8, as a

Roman Catholic, you're going to have to say, well, that's not enough. We need to have these traditions which allegedly go back to the apostles but can never be traced back to the apostles.

And so the foundational issue of the sufficiency of scripture has to be there. A lot of light has been shed on that by the current pope, who clearly does not hold to historic

Roman Catholic doctrine and teaching on many subjects, doesn't believe in the sufficiency of scripture either, but he also doesn't hold to many doctrines that even his predecessor would have been very strong in holding to.

And so these issues of authority do touch upon the nature of the gospel, which of course is the most important thing.

What is the gospel? How is it that we can truly have peace with God? And so, those are some of the main issues that you need to be looking at.

Do you have, what books or resources do you have available to you?

On the resources, I would say, as we have access to the internet these days, so finding resources has been mostly through the internet.

So it's like, very little resources

I have in terms of books. So it's like I've been regarding, if I had certain questions and I had to find some answers,

I mean, I would automatically go to the internet, but I would not,

I go to some authentic sources like some verified, even if it is from the internet, like I would go to the closest possible legitimate source as possible, yeah.

Yeah, do you have Kindle books there from Amazon? Do you have that? I agree with you regarding the papal infallibility, right, the papal infallibility, although the, sorry,

I mean, the papal infallibility that Rome claims,

I disagree. I disagree in the sense, as you said,

I mean, there is nothing consistent that has been coming through the popes, right? I mean, from the first pope and now up to Pope Francis, there has been good and bad and a difference of opinions.

So how can Rome possibly claim that the pope is infallible?

So in that aspect alone it falls down, right?

Dino, can you hear me? I'm trying to talk back to you here.

Do you have the ability to get

Kindle books? Do you know what Kindle books are, Amazon? Yeah, Amazon, right?

Right, right, right. That might be a way to be able to get some of the more important books.

Why don't I have you hold on and you give your contact information to Rich, and we'll see what kind of resources we can track down for you, electronically especially, but there are some really good books that are available through Kindle or in forms like that, that would

I think be more helpful to you than just simply websites or stuff like that. Yeah, I agree,

I agree. I mean, you can't entirely rely on websites, that I agree with you.

And I had asked you regarding generation of strains, you didn't comment anything on that.

Well, I only heard it in passing, it was a little bit hard to... you said that that was one of the questions you had, but I wasn't sure what your question about it was.

I mean, I did a debate on that particular subject a number of years ago with Patrick Madrid, and then

I think it's important, about nine or ten years after that, he did a series on that debate, bringing up, it was either in published form,

I forget what it was, but we ended up doing a number of dividing line broadcasts, expanding greatly upon that debate ourselves in response to Madrid, and so maybe one of the things we can provide to you are the links to that, because we ended up going really in depth into many of the texts that were brought forward, such as from the

Book of Revelation and things like that. So there would be a fair amount of information that would be immediately accessible to you, once we can just track down that series we did in response.

It was probably about ten years ago, but it would be posted at Sermon Audio, so it would be something you'd be able to get hold of even right now that would have much more in -depth information.

Sorry to interrupt you, yeah, I've watched that debate you had with Patrick Madrid regarding Generation of Saints, I've already watched it through YouTube, yeah.

Yeah, but like I said, we went into much more depth at a later point because he did a series about it, so we did the same thing.

You know, debates aren't all that long when you have two different people speaking, so you can't get into quite the detail that you can at a later point, so we can probably track those down for you and provide those to you pretty immediately, as to what you could grab for that.

So, why don't you get your... Yeah, but what would you, I mean, if you, in a nutshell, if you had to put the core issue with Catholicism, what would it be?

Well, the core issue is twofold. It is the issue of authority, the sufficiency of Scripture, and then that defines the

Gospel. So, the Marian stuff's important and the Pope's important, but they're all ancillary, they're all secondary to the reality that Rome has a source of authority that the

Apostles did not teach, and as a result has a Gospel that the Apostles did not teach.

Now, that didn't happen overnight, but certainly by the time you get to the Council of Trent, that is the case.

And so, the central, central, central issue boiled down is, how do you have peace with God?

And Rome's answer to that question is not the Apostles' answer to that question.

And that's the most important thing. When I asked Mitch Pacwa many, many years ago about that very issue, and asked him if he could commit immortal sin before going to sleep that night, and no longer be the friend of God, how can that mean that he really has peace with God, according to Romans 5 .1,

he really did not have an answer to that, because he recognized that the peace that the

Bible talks about is a peace that is really not provided within the

Roman Catholic system, because you can commit immortal sin and lose the grace of justification, you can commit venial sins and end up having to undergo status passio in Purgatory before you can enter into the presence of God, and you have the whole sacramental system, and the radically beautiful message of God's powerful way of salvation in the

Gospel, through a finished work, not a work of Jesus that is represented in the

Mass over and over again, but is a finished work, that's just simply not something that Rome possesses any longer.

And that's the key issue, it really, really is. So the Gospel's central, but I recognize that since Rome makes the claim of authority over the

Scriptures, and hence to even define the Gospel, that has to be addressed as well. So it's authority in the

Gospel, those two things are the key things, dealing with veneration of saints and angels, mariology, papacy, priesthood, all the things we've dealt with, the canon of Scripture, all these are things that we deal with to get back to those core issues, to clear up objections, basically.

So those would be the main things. So please, Dino, hold on and give your information to Rich, so that we can try to get you much more in -depth information than we can here on the program right now, okay?

Sorry to interrupt, Mr. White, before I end this, I would like to ask you one more question which popped into my mind.

It was regarding the Eucharist. It is said that Martin Luther believed in some sort of a presence, it was like,

I guess it is a spiritual presence rather than a physical presence, what

Rome believes now, I guess. I'm not really sure about that. What's your take on that?

What's your comment on that? Well, that's a big subject. The Roman Catholic dogma of transubstantiation is certainly central to the beliefs of the vast majority of Roman Catholics.

That is different than Martin Luther's concept, which has been identified as consubstantiation, but others dispute that.

Martin Luther's idea was that the body of Christ is ubiquitous, and therefore is present in, under, and around everything, literally, but especially the elements of the supper.

A spiritual presence of Christ with his people is very clearly the position of, for example, the

Westminster Confession of Faith, and documents similar to that, the

Confession of Faith that my own church uses, the London Baptist Confession of Faith. But the key issue regarding the

Eucharist is the Roman Catholic idea that it is a propitiatory sacrifice, that it is actually a representation of the one sacrifice of Christ, but that it does not perfect those for whom it is made.

That's the key issue, as far as I'm concerned, because there is no finished work within Roman Catholicism as a result, and hence you don't have a finished work where the elect of God are united to Christ, so that his death is their death, his resurrection is their resurrection.

If you don't have that finished work, then you really can't have a doctrine of justification, you can't have a meaningful recognition of the difference between justification and sanctification.

It all comes down to what Jesus Christ himself did. And so it is that idea of a non -finished, non -perfecting, ongoing, represented type of work of Christ that is the real issue that goes directly against what we see in Hebrews 7 -10, which talks about the once -for -all sacrifice of Christ and how it perfects those for whom it is made, rather than going to the

Mass 20 -30 ,000 times in your life and yet dying imperfect and having to undergo sadduce, apostio, and purgatory before you can enter into the presence of God.

That's not the apostolic message at all. So those are issues, you know, one of the reasons

I was asking about Amazon is that my book, The Roman Catholic Controversy, is available in that way, and so we'll try to find some way of making sure that you're able to get that.

But thank you very much for your call, Dino, all the way from Sri Lanka. Stay on the line and talk with Rich, give him your information, and we'll try to get that information to you.

I very much appreciate it. So I know that Rich is busy getting that information, so he's going to have to multitask here, but we've gone well over time, so I appreciate your joining with us today on The Dividing Line.

We'll probably try to get another program in toward the end of the week, and hopefully in just as beautiful a context, weather -wise, as today.

So I appreciate your being with us today. Pray for Dino and for Francisco, and we'll see you next time here on The Dividing Line.