June 13, 2006

Webcasting around the world from 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.

The Summer Schedule and the Southern Baptist Debate Over Calvinism

And welcome to The Dividing Line, a special time on this Tuesday, just simply trying to make things work during the summer schedule. But first time in, well, it's been a while. Haven't done this for a while, so it's your opportunity.

877 -753 -3341. 877 -753 -3341. The summer heat certainly has arrived here in Phoenix, Arizona. Nothing surprising about that in the middle of June for it to be 108 degrees outside. But that's what it is.

And some interesting things going on, of course, in the world today. Today I just posted a few moments ago, I don't know, about half an hour ago, less than that, actually, an e-mail that I sent to Ergin Canner and to Dr. O'Donnell and to the group of folks that are involved in attempting anyway to put together the debate in October on the subject of Calvinism, especially since there really wasn't any debate, as most of us expected.

Yesterday at the Pastors' Conference on the Baptist Convention, there was a nice little discussion about a few things, but not much in the way of debate as far as actually getting into the biblical text.

We are attempting to set up that debate at the New Thomas Road Baptist Church for October 16th. And as most of you know who have been following that particular saga, you know that once again we have entered into the zone of silence where one side, for some odd reason, chooses not to respond to what the other side is asking for lengthy periods of time.

And then when the other side decides to start talking again, it's like it never happened. It's like it's just normative to ignore what people ask you. I've honestly just, I don't remember ever running into this kind of behavior before.

It's just absolutely amazing. And so a month ago today, we started including Dr. O'Donnell, who is the head of the debate program at Liberty, which won all three categories for the first time. That's been done, all three collegiate categories, a nationally known program.

And so we assumed that someone in charge of that kind of a program would function as an unmoderated, unbiased moderator, not an unmoderated biased. That doesn't make any sense, does it? Anyway, we have not been able to get a single response from Dr. O'Donnell.

It's been a month now. We've written a number of emails, asked a number of questions. We have many questions about this proposed format, which seems, the more we look at it, to be specifically designed to keep the canners from having to answer direct questions, from actually having to engage in cross-examination, which, of course, as they know, and I know as well, is the heart and soul of debate.

And if all you have is bluster and sound bites, your wheels fall off during cross-examination. That's just how it works. Many people who have listened to the debates that we have done, and I have frequently asked Dr. Kanner to provide us with tapes of his debates.

He generally ignores those requests or then at one point said, well, you know, we've just done some junior college debates. We're not in the big time. And that's all he's bothered to say about that. And I would love to listen to the debates that he has done, the formal debates, because in our debates there have been a number of times where after the opening statements you go, well, you know, you've got this side over here and you've got that side over there.

They both have made, you know, good, strong presentations. And, you know, maybe there's, we just don't, we can't figure out what the answer to this question is. And then you get into cross-examination.

And all of a sudden the issues are very, very clear. And that's what cross-examination is all about. And so we want to make sure that there is biblically-based cross-examination. There's one side that wants to spend a lot of time with an open Bible looking at the text of Scripture, and there's one side that does not.

That, I think, is extremely telling, very, very telling indeed. I think anyone who really wants to consider this issue should take a look at that. So what I'm doing from now on is I am sending, instead of this, do a bunch of correspondence, talk about it a little bit, and all of a sudden, oh, I can't believe what's happened, let's post it all at one time.

I'm just going to post everything I write immediately to the blog, just at the same time. You hit send and you post to the blog. So that everybody can see exactly what it is that's going on. And everybody can see who it is that wants to have a focused, fair, properly moderated, equal time, biblically-based, let's get into the Word of God, let it say what it needs to say type of debate, and who doesn't.

Now, I can't blame, especially Eric and Cantor. Would you like to be Eric and Cantor in a debate like this?

Can you imagine this?

Dr. Cantor, the scriptures say that before the twins had done anything good or bad, so that God's purpose and election might stand, these things were said to Esau and to Jacob. So before they did anything good or bad, could you explain your statement in your sermon at the Tom's Row Baptist Church that the reason God hated Esau is because of what Esau did?

Could you explain, Eric and Cantor, Esau is hated because of what he did. Bible, Esau is not hated because of what he did. Could you explain that, sir? I wouldn't want to be in that position. That would be difficult.

Now, the irony is, however, who has written on this subject? I mean, from a simple debate perspective, who has the advantage here? Dr. Askew and I, together, have written probably thousands of pages. You put it all together.

The founder's journals and all the stuff in the blogs and the books that we've put out on this subject. There is a wealth of information that they could quote from and hold us to. And you know what? We go, do so.

Do so.

As far as I can tell, and I keep asking, outside of the current article, which is nothing more than a rehash of the why I'm predestined not to be a hyper-Calvinist sermon that just appeared in one of Liberty's publications and on the blog that I reviewed last week.

Apart from that, what do we have to go on? There are no books. To my knowledge, there are no scholarly articles. There's nothing that we can look at as far as holding somebody accountable for what they've said in the past on those levels.

It has to be quotations from just a couple sermons and a few blog articles and things like that. So it would seem that they would have the advantage there, but for some odd reason, it's just hard. And what's equally hard and what's equally frustrating is the constant misrepresentations.

The I'm not a Calvinist and I'm not an Armenian, I'm a Baptist thing is not just the problem of Ergen Kanner. I've heard that, and in fact I'll play you someone saying it again from the Southern Baptist Convention that just is taking place right now.

And some of you may know that Dr. Frank Page of First Baptist Church in Taylor, South Carolina, was elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention today. First ballot, 50 .48%, 4 ,546 votes that were given to him.

And you might go, I haven't a clue who Frank Page is. Well, somewhere in my library, and I can't find it because it's in a box, but I have this book. I have a book that came out, I believe, in 2000. I recognize that cover.

It's a short little book. It's about the length of like the first two, maybe three chapters of The Potter's Freedom. And it's by Frank S. Page, who was just elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

And the title is Trouble with the Tulip, A Closer Examination of the Five Points of Calvinism. And like I said, I wish I had the book in front of me at the moment. I do own it. I have looked at it in the past.

It is currently in a box somewhere or on a shelf, a shelf or a box. But the shelf would not be where the boxes are, which is I'm where the boxes are anyway. To say that this is not a good book is to be kind, simply because, once again, for some odd reason, a reason I cannot begin to understand, what I'm hearing at the Southern Baptist Convention, what I'm reading demonstrates to me that there is a broad spectrum of leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention who simply have no interest whatsoever in doing their homework on this issue.

They've made up their minds. The soundbite theology refutations that they've heard in the past are good enough. It was good enough for the preceding generation. It's good enough for me. The same mantra is repeated over and over again, and I don't see any evidence that almost any of these individuals have taken the time to do any serious research on their own or to listen to what is being said about the key subject of monergism versus synergism, whether it's God alone who saves, whether it's God's grace that, in its power, is able to save perfectly and completely without human cooperation, or whether it is a synergistic system so that we are going to join all the world's religions, we're going to stand against the Reformers, we're going to join with Erasmus, we're going to do this synergism where God's grace becomes dependent upon the cooperation of the almighty human will, and, in fact, that the freedom of God is going to be circumscribed, it's going to be denied by the freedom of man's will himself.

The rebel sinner becomes the one who controls all things. And so, in looking through, for example, Dr. Askell does have an article that was just posted about a week ago on the book, The Trouble with the Tulip, by Dr. Page, and he has some quotes here.

For example, If one does follow the logic of Calvinism, then a missionary or evangelistic spirit is unnecessary. If irresistible grace is the truth, then there is no need to share Christ with anyone, since those persons whom God has elected are irresistibly going to be drawn into his kingdom anyway.

If one studies the pages of history, one will see that Calvinistic theology, five-point, has encouraged a slackening of the aggressive, evangelistic, and missionary heartbeat of the church. Now, everybody knows that that entire paragraph is simply based upon ignorance.

You don't find that historically. It's untrue, easily refuted from any number of sources, and it demonstrates an abysmal ignorance of what irresistible grace means. It shows no understanding whatsoever.

At least I'm consistent here, because for many, many years, when we have encountered bad information being written against others, we've put our necks on the chopping block. We have offended people by daring to say, You know what?

Such and such a person has written a book about Mormonism, and you know what? That's not a good book. It does not represent Mormonism accurately. Or this book over here on Jehovah's Witnesses. There are problems here.

There is an error here. There is an error there. We've been consistent in doing that. And so I don't feel any guilt in looking at someone's book like this and saying,.

Hey, where's the standard here?

I mean, if we're going to take a look at books that are written against Roman Catholicism and say, You know what? Obviously this person has never interacted with any Roman Catholic sources at all. This person has never talked to a decent Roman Catholic apologist or a priest who knows what he believes.

It's just clear. It comes screaming through the language. This person just simply doesn't care about what he's addressing. He's certainly not concerned about convincing the people who believe these things.

If we're going to say that, then here's the situation. Here's the new president of the Sun of the Baptist Convention writing against Calvinism. And it's clear he has no idea what he's talking about. He has not sat down and actually worked through these issues.

He's presenting a synergistic perspective which deeply impacts how we defend the faith, how we present the faith, and all the rest of the stuff. But he's doing this based solely upon traditions that he has imbibed in the past.

And there's no fresh insight into what's going on here. It was very disappointing to read the blog articles about the Patterson-Moller dialogue. Again, Patterson's comments showing no meaningful interaction with any kind of apologetic materials produced by Calvinists.

It's just very, very, very disappointing. The same thing is true. We have an article here, My Hope for Our Convention, by Morris Chapman, dated June 13, 2006. Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, Convention Report.

I'm assuming this is the written text that he delivered. He says, Most Southern Baptist Calvinists are in the tradition of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who said, Divine sovereignty is a great and indisputable fact, but human responsibility is quite as indisputable.

Faith is God's gift. Spurgeon vs. Hyper-Calvinism, The Battle for Gospel Preaching, Ian Murray, page 86. While there are Southern Baptists who believe in the doctrine of election, I'm not sure how you could not believe in the doctrine of election.

Isn't it in the Baptist faith and message? Most Southern Baptists are not strident Calvinists or ardent Armenians. Now, I'm hoping maybe someone just doesn't know how to spell, but yes, it is misspelled.

A-R-M-E-N-I-A-N-S. There it is again. Armenian, that's an ethnic group. Armenian, that's a theological position. But at least we know what they're talking about, if that only demonstrates, again, no reading in the area.

I could just be a spellcheck someplace. Quite possible. Spellchecks don't like Armenians. They've never heard of them before. You've got to add that in there. You've got to add in the proper spelling of Armenian to your dictionary program.

Everybody needs to know that. Anyway, they are biblical and they are Baptist. There it is again, this utterly illogical category error that is part and parcel of this new movement. It's almost like they all got together and they got each other's fax numbers and they sent this all out.

What we need to start doing is we need to start emphasizing this phrase, I'm not a Calvinist, I'm not an Armenian, I'm a Baptist. As if somehow that is a different category, because it isn't. No one has been able to refute the statement that I made when Ergin Kanner used the same line with me.

And that is, that is as illogical, so lacking in critical thought, as to say, I'm not a Republican, I'm not a Democrat, I'm blue. That's the direct parallel. Blue is a different category than Republican and Democrat.

Baptist is a different category. It's talking about something different than Calvinist or Armenian. Now you could be a blue Democrat or you could be a blue Republican. You could do the Wallace thing, you know, remember Braveheart?

You could pull that one off if you wanted to.

They're different things.

They're not in the same category. It is a category error to make that statement, but it's happening constantly. I'm not a Calvinist, I'm not an Armenian, I'm a Baptist, and I'm biblical. We're going to hear some more of that.

Now here you go. Now this was stated by Jerry Falwell last year. There are people in the Southern Baptist Convention that make it a part of the definition of to be a Baptist. They say, They believe Jesus shed his precious blood for the sins of all mankind, and that the Bible teaches whosoever will may come.

Now, again, what do you mean by shed his precious blood for the sins of all mankind? Do you mean all mankind as in every tribe, tongue, people, and nation? Jews and Gentiles alike? Sure. Do you mean as every single human being?

That's what they mean. But to say that is to simply ignore the reality that the Baptists that come out of the Reformation, and that's where we came from. The Baptists that came out of the Reformation, there was two kinds.

There were the particular Baptists that have never believed that, that's the whole point, and the general Baptists that did. And both have always been in the Southern Baptist Convention. These people are trying to rewrite history.

Or, let's be more specific, they just probably don't know their history. They just don't know these things, and are not interested in finding out, evidently. Yes, whosoever will may come. That's exactly right.

The question is, who will? Jesus said, isn't it odd, whosoever will may come, but no one wants to preach upon, no one is able to come to me unless the Father has sent me to draw us in, but I will raise him up on the last day.

Let's preach all the Bible, not just the parts that fit with our traditions. Salvation is the work of a sovereign God who extends his grace to us. My salvation was an instantaneous event the moment I repented of my sins and trusted Jesus by faith as my personal Savior.

Well, that sounds wonderful, but what does it mean? Does it mean he extends his grace to every single individual and to some people because you're better than others? You accept his grace, you get saved.

People who aren't as good as you, don't accept his grace, don't get saved? Are you smarter?

What is it?

You've got to answer that question, that if that grace is extended to us equally, the peanut butter grace position, then what made the difference?

What made the difference?

You had to have been better in some way. Where did that come from? I don't get answers to that. Continuing with Morris Chapman here, if you wish, debate Calvinism. We should not fear theological debate as long as the participants understand they are brothers debating one another in a friendly environment.

Copy that one and send it over to Dr. Cantor. While Calvinism is a fair debate in the halls of academia, we do not need to bring the debate into our churches at the cost of dividing our congregations.

Now, right then and there you go. Whoa, Nelly, that doesn't sound very Baptist to me. That does not sound very Baptist to me. I hope it doesn't sound Baptist to you. Y 'all discuss that stuff out there in the halls of academia, but keep it out of the church because our folks, they can't handle that kind of thing.

That will divide our churches.

What do you mean?

So what you're saying is what we believe about whether God is free in the matter of salvation, whether God is glorified in the perfection of salvation in Jesus Christ is something that should be kept out of the churches.

Let's not confuse our people with something like that.

Wow.

That is an amazing statement. I mean, the only way you can make that kind of statement is if you believe that the entire issue, it's really unimportant.

It really doesn't matter.

It's not definitional of how we're going to preach the gospel. And that's exactly what these folks are saying. In actuality, continue on. In actuality, the Bible contains a healthy and dynamic tension between the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man.

Let's leave it where God left it in his holy word. Oh, that sounds so good to so many people. That is so attractive to folks that say, hey, you know what, I like the idea about that holy tension. I don't think we can really come up with answers to all this stuff.

So we should just leave it there. Folks, what you're saying there is that God's word is not clear enough to answer these questions. Is that what you really want to say? I mean, it's obvious, sadly, that these folks think human responsibility equals free will.

I would point out that given what the Bible teaches about Satan's interference with our wills, taking people captive, slavery to sin, that unless God is sovereign, there's no ground for talking about human responsibility.

Do you hold slaves responsible for doing what they're forced to do by an evil captor? I mean, once you actually start asking questions about this stuff, the wheels fall off these positions. But the whole idea seems to be, let's not ask these questions.

Let's just leave that to the academics and academia, and they can have their debates over there. You know what the irony is? Right after this, right after basically saying, let's not worry about Calvinism, this was interesting to me.

Elder Rule, Church Polity, and the Logic of Calvinism

Speaking of debate, the insistence by pastors to incorporate elder rule in churches that have practiced congregational rule from their inception will serve only to cripple the ministries of our churches, divide the people, and ultimately destroy the witness of churches that have been lighthouses for the kingdom in their communities and cities.

It's already happening. Now, isn't it ironic that we have seen, in the Cantor correspondence as well, a connection between Calvinism and the biblical view of the church, which is a plurality of elders, and I'd be happy to debate Dr. Cantor on that too.

It's just amazing. See, what happens is, once people start realizing, wow, that Arminianism I was raised in, it's just a human tradition. Their eyes get open, they start looking at the word of God, and they start going, wow, you know, the apostles appointed elders in the churches.

Not an elder. Where did this kingship thing come from? Where did this one pastor who rules over everything come from? I keep seeing elders. And Paul says to Timothy, pass these things on to those men, plural, who have heard my commands in a public place, that they're trustworthy.

There's more than one. There's more than one in there.

Hmm.

And so they start going, I wonder if maybe some other things I've been taught are just traditions. And they start going to the word of God. And the folks are just happy with their traditions. They don't like when that happens.

Now you're going to start splitting churches when you do stuff like that. You don't want to challenge anybody to do something they've never done before, even if it is very clearly found in the word of God.

And so it says, The Southern Baptist Convention originated in 1845. Our founders' vision was for Southern Baptist churches to network and evangelize in the world. The convention was organized for the purpose of world missions.

Unlike hierarchical denominations, our convention was not organized to be a governing body. It was organized to facilitate the sending of missionaries and the pews of our churches. Then it says, The debate of Calvinism in our churches can distract us from fulfilling the Great Commission.

The debate of elder rule in our churches can distract us from leading the lost to Christ. Now, how does that distract you from leading the lost to Christ? Are you just simply saying that the only thing that should ever be discussed is not what God has revealed in his word concerning how the churches should be organized, but the only thing that should ever be discussed is sending missionaries?

You should never discuss anything else in the New Testament. All that other stuff in the New Testament about godliness and sanctification and the organization of the church and the ordinances and God's self-glorification.

Forget all that stuff. Just send missionaries with four spiritual laws in their hands. Is that what's really being suggested? I'm simply left amazed by some of the stuff that I encounter here. So I did pull down, by the way, some audio.

So are we ready to play some audio here? The first one here started off, fell by the name of Dick Lincoln, sort of started off the annual meeting, the pastor's conference, and he had some interesting things to say.

Whether Evangelism Can Increase the Number of the Elect

Verse 19, you will believe that more is always possible. There is a theology that is coming up in the Southern Baptist Convention. We're going to have a debate about it tomorrow night. I don't have a lot to say about it tonight.

I'm not a theologian. But it's the idea that there is an elect group and nobody can do anything to expand the size of the elect and nobody can do anything to diminish it. It's amazing that Paul didn't get the message.

Paul says, I'm doing this that I might win more. I don't know what more means where you come from, but I can tell you in the Greek, it means I'm planning to do this so that the number will get bigger.

And if he had believed that there was a number that was fixed in eternity and that nothing could be done about it, I think he would have said, I'm going to do whatever God wants me to do, but I want to make sure that I never step on the boundaries of that set number.

But he said, I'm going to keep working at a strategy, being a slave to others that I might win more than I could win if I didn't do that.

What do you say? You just gently go to 2 Timothy 2 .10 and say, Well, you know, Paul himself said, For this reason I endure all things for the sake of the elect, so that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus and with it eternal glory.

That's the same Paul, I think. And there he's specifically talking about the elect. He's not talking about that in 1 Corinthians 9. And so the idea is you have to have a certain number of, you have to be able to increase the number of the elect.

Hopefully everyone listening to this recognizes that this gentleman, once again, does not understand the system that he is critiquing or rejecting. There is nothing whatsoever inconsistent about a Calvinist like Paul saying, I am going to do everything I can to win as many people to Christ as I can.

Because Paul recognized that there is none righteous. There's no not one. There's none that seeks after God. That's Romans 3 .10 .11. He knew that God had elected, chosen every single believer in Christ.

Ephesians 1. Had had the love of God placed upon them in eternity past. The idea, he would have had to say he didn't want to go past the number of the elect. Excuse me, Pastor Lincoln, we don't know who the elect are.

We are not given that information.

What books have you ever read?

What reformed theologians have you ever spoken to that ever said to you, Oh, well, I know who the elect are, so I only preach to the elect. Name their names. Tell me who they are. I want to go see them.

I want to talk to them. But you can't because you haven't. We don't know who the elect are. We proclaim the gospel to every creature. There's no fear in running over the number of the elect. But look at what Pastor Lincoln is willing to sacrifice.

Look at what he's willing to sacrifice. This is what bothers me, folks. Some people say, I shouldn't get all upset about what these guys are saying. Think about what he's sacrificing. You cannot present a coherent view of God, his sovereignty, and his knowledge based upon what he just said.

You've got no means of protecting yourself against open theism, given what he just said. The only way that you can defend what Pastor Lincoln just said.

Would be to adopt open theism,.

Which the Southern Baptist Convention in its Baptist faith and message condemned a couple years ago. If the number of the elect has not been fixed in God's mind from eternity, then God does not know the future.

So why in the world was everybody sitting there clapping? Who were those people out there going, I like that?

They're not thinking. They're not thinking.

They're willing to chuck the theology of God and clap at this kind of teaching. Folks, later on, I'm going to play another clip here in a moment. Later on, one of the folks we listened to, he talks about the fact that the Southern Baptist Convention isn't really doing so well.

I mean, you may be aware of the fact that their baptisms were down far below what their projections were. And what the guy did is, it was Ed Young, by the way, he put eight mannequin-type things, two-dimensional mannequin-type things behind him on the stage.

And he started talking about Southern Baptist kids, and he said, you know what our numbers are? You know how many of our kids, when they reach 18, we keep? He started knocking mannequins over to indicate how many of kids raised in Southern Baptist churches leave once they become adults.

You know how many he knocked over? It was actually a very good illustration. You know how many he knocked over?

Six out of eight.

Six out of eight. Two left. Now that was an interesting thing. And he went on to say, you know, if we keep going like this, within four generations the Southern Baptist Convention is going to be a footnote in history.

It was pretty strong. Now we're going to play some errors that he made, but it was pretty strong. So there's this almost, I don't know, I would sense a panic. Our number's down. We've got to go out there and save people.

And of course, if you're an Arminian, if you are a synergist, how's that? If you don't like Arminius. If you're a synergist, and God's done everything God can do. It's up to us. We've got to do the rest.

We can't blame God. God's given 100%, and we're the ones that aren't given the rest of it. So we've just got to redouble our efforts. If that's the way you're coming from, and your number's down, then you're going to find Calvinism to be a bad thing.

And you're going to attack it, just like it's being attacked repeatedly in this particular situation. That's what's going to happen. You want synergism? Here's synergism. Here's Pastor Lincoln again.

I have never believed that salvation was all up to me. And if you do, I frankly think you're crazy. Salvation is up to God. Of course it is. But salvation also requires your faithfulness. Paul says that I might save some.

He doesn't mean that Jesus is not at work, or the Holy Spirit is not at work to convict of sin and righteousness and judgment. But he does say, I understand that unless I am faithful, more will not be won.

Unless I am faithful, some will not be saved. Unless I am creative, unless I am open, unless I am a servant, there are some that will not be won. What you do in your church, what you do with your ministry, what you believe about people, how committed you are to people, is going to make a difference in the size of the population of heaven.

And you need to believe that. That's what the Bible says, and that's what Paul says, and that's what God says.

Well, folks, that is pure, unadulterated synergism. That's semi-Pelagianism right there. If you think it's all up to you, you're crazy. That's called Pelagianism. But obviously he doesn't believe it's all up to God either.

And there isn't a Roman Catholic on the planet that couldn't have said what he just said.

Do you realize that?

Isn't that exactly what you hear Scott Hahn and others say? All the sacraments come from the grace of God. God has given us all these things graciously. We couldn't do without him. But there's your part.

You've got to do your part. You've got to make your additions.

What's the difference? There is no difference.

They're all synergists. That's always been the dividing line. That's always been what has separated the two sides. You've got the Roman Catholics and the Arminians. That's why the early Calvinists, when they started encountering Arminianism, it started growing and so on and so forth.

Hey, this is popeless Catholicism. Because on the issue of the will of man, the grace of God, they're hand-in-hand. They're synergists. God's grace tries. God's grace fails. And the deciding factor is the sinner man, not the grace of God.

So, there you have it.

Pure synergism. And by your activity, by your action, you will determine the population of heaven. There it is. God doesn't know. I don't know how he puts those together. I don't know if you went up to him, if someone runs into him at the Sun Baths convention tomorrow or something, says, Pastor Lincoln, this crazed bald guy out in Phoenix, was talking about you and he was playing some clips on his webcast.

And he says, How does Pastor Lincoln put these together? How can you increase the number of the elect? How could God not know from eternity who he himself had chosen? I'd like to find out if he believes God does know infallibly.

And if he does, then how can the number increase? I'd like to know. And that's when you start getting, Well, you know, we should let the academics debate about that stuff. We don't want to split the church over this kind of thing.

And I go,.

You know what?

We are moving into an ever more challenging anti-Christian culture, and that kind of stick-your-head-in-the-sand-ism is going to lead to the end of every one of those kinds of churches. That kind of thinking cannot stand in the marketplace of ideas.

And we don't have to accept that. The Bible's clear on these issues. We can be consistent. One more.

The human responsibility doesn't really matter in the long run. It's an insidious idea. I understand all about the sovereignty of God. What else would you believe in? But, oh, my friend, a theology that human responsibility in the long run doesn't really matter in the process of salvation will keep many from being one who could and should be.

Now, of course, another pure canard. There's nothing meaningful there. We believe in human responsibility. We just don't make the human will the decider of whether God's grace is able to save. Light up that straw, man.

Burn it all you want,.

But it's not going to change the facts. And that's why you can tell these folks who want Calvinism to just go away. They want folks to just stop talking about this stuff. Our nice, brief responses should be good enough for you.