Beth Moore's Racist Library and Open Phones

And greetings. Welcome to the dividing line on a wednesday. Not our normal time but uh we're doing the monday wednesday friday thing. I'm uh i'm a little tired this morning um and i'll tell you why to bring you up to speed.

Um uh last evening a little after about sometime between eight nine o 'clock i guess 8 30 ish somewhere around there i don't know uh my daughter uh summer contacted me and informed me of what was going on.

At least the initial uh reports of what was going on with uh pastor jeff durbin he had had at that time at that point we just knew he had fallen and uh hit his head and didn't know what all the details were.

And uh i had not been to this hospital in a long long time um um and all the names have changed because banner banner or somebody else buys everything. So i mean i guess samaritan's been gone for a long time but um used to be called good sam but um anyways i tracked it down and headed down there and spent a couple hours in the er which i expected to be extremely busy but it wasn't.

I was really surprised i guess i guess uh tuesday night is a better night than a friday night or a saturday night. Well i'm not sure what that has to do with the how on how on how unbusy the uh uh the emergency room was but um i joined a number of the folks from apologia there in the er as we sort of waited for information and get some more idea of you know what was going on and uh i was there fairly late until uh pastor luke mentioned that jeff was joking with him about something and i figured if he's joking with him about something i can go home now uh i figured that was the uh the thing he's still there uh but mainly for uh testing and you know he needs to get cleared some type of a of a seizure what prompted it things like that we're just not sure yet uh all that information has already been put out by uh by the church on the website but um obviously a very traumatic uh experience for the family for the kids especially you know right before thanksgiving and i know i know the durban's are big on uh family and uh holidays and things like that.

So uh hoping to get word uh maybe luke or zach or somebody will um go ahead and text me i'll still see it on my phone uh during the program if uh if he gets uh gets released or whatever else it might be.

But uh prayers definitely uh helpful for that. I've watched this morning once the um do not disturb time passed on my phone uh it was the grand central station and uh you know i i should go ahead and mention and thank him uh one of the first people to contact me about jeff durbin even though i was in the er for a couple hours um was ajaz ahmed uh who um sent me a sent me a note and i'm not sure you may know about this but if you if you didn't you know i i think i think i think you have a relationship with jeff.

Yeah yeah you could say that and uh so uh the word had gotten out and uh i appreciated uh what he does did and what wanted me to know that i appreciate that it's a good thing um so uh yeah let's continue to pray things like this you know programs like er uh not er um house have sort of ruined a lot of us.

Not that i watched more than a few episodes but a lot of people have the idea that today we can we can just figure everything out because sometimes we do but medicine is not an exact science by a stretch of the imagination no matter how we may want to pretend that it is and these bodies are complex and um things can go on with them that you know um i i i had something happen to me.

I'm not gonna go into detail about something happened to me last july and basically what i've discovered is can't predict it can't treat it no triggers doesn't really have any long lasting effects so i enjoy it just when it happens it happens.

Oh well uh you know it'll you'll you'll get over it um it's real bummer while it's happening but you'll get over it just sort of how you know just sort of how it goes and um so it's yeah that's just the way it is.

I hope i'm really hoping that there will be um more information you know because we can do so much these days you know i think of i think especially eye injuries and stuff you know some of the stuff we can do with with the eye today is just astonishing just undreamed of only 30 40 years ago and uh you know there you go uh but might not ever really find out why.

And of course that leaves you going. Well what if it happens again. And yeah you know that kind of stuff is um is tough. So we pray for the durbans and for pastor luke and pastor zach and all the deacons and the people and uh since i happen to be there and we we knew that uh jeff wasn't gonna be feeling overly good after all of this uh since i happen to be there it's sort of like so how about preaching sunday.

It's like all righty uh so we will be uh i'll be filling in for jeff and some other folks have been lined up for the next few sundays um just to give him some time off uh he's gonna need to have some recovery time from this and i started looking at my schedule and good grief um with what i've got going on um uh just just astonishing uh how long it's going to be before um i would have another opportunity uh to help fill in uh so i've got a very very very very busy start to the to the next year and uh uh that's uh that's interesting anyways so just to just bring you to a little bit of speed there um uh last i knew uh they're hoping that jeff will get to go home this evening uh and not have to have to be there again because i'm sure he's just really enjoying hospital food and all that kind of stuff um so um continue to pray about that that situation thanks everybody who tried to let me know um i forgot uh it was working out of things sorry um so i uh i want to address we're going to take a phone call today seven seven seven five three three three four one eight seven seven seven five three three three four one um but before then uh because we we do get really good calls i i just want to compliment this audience um we we really do and i don't want to put any pressure on anybody you know but you you call this program and you do have a little something a little bit of a reputation live up to so let's try to let's try let's try to make a good that's good that's gonna really make everybody unhappy thank you i don't know why it is as i get older i i used to you know when i used to go speak at places people say would you like water and i'm like well you know i probably won't use it and now um.

No we need it getting old in many ways so it's because we're drying out the older we.

Get the dryer. We're desiccating. Yes it's it's it's in preparation for for uh burial. Yep so.

A couple of things i know i said this on monday but i want to remind i've gotten a number of phone calls and some uh contacts from the uh the website but yeah i know you're thrilled with this housekeeping stuff but if you send us checks and i don't have your email address and yeah i know stop sleeping uh and i don't have your email address.

You know i don't have your email address because you haven't been getting receipts from me on a regular basis so you need to call me or contact those two lines of people calling right now. Yeah. Well it'll take care of itself i'll be on it here in a second so so make sure you do that so that as your end comes up i can get you receipts out in a rapid and quick fashion.

So that's that's all from here for now. Goodbye. We're we're good.

Down here. Thank you everything's okay. Yep all right. Good. Thank you for um you know i can't given that he controls the horizontal and the vertical i can't stop him when he wants to do that kind of stuff so it's just i just have to go with it huh.

No matter how hard i try i mean i can mock him while he's doing it but i can't really stop him because he he has all the knobs and buttons and stuff like that in there and he's now taking your phone calls uh at eight seven seven five three three three four one this morning in the midst of all the uh back and forth uh with uh various folks uh at the church regarding jeff um i was linked to a tweet from future president of the spc beth moore.

It does seem to be going that way. Um and uh it was in response well i don't know i i couldn't see the whole thing because it was already in graphical form so it was not clickable and besides i would have had to i can do it.

It doesn't take that much time to do it but kyle james howard is in the list and so since he's afraid of me and has blocked me um i have to take a couple extra steps to see his stuff which is easily done.

By the way if you're wondering how that's how you can do that fairly quickly you just copy the the link to the tweet that you're blocked from and then you paste it into a private window in your browser and the private window will bring it up because it doesn't identify who you are and so you can read whatever's whatever's blocked.

Uh you know just just to you know i block folks. I muted a bunch of folks today i muted a bunch of romanists today that were just droning on and on about stuff that we've refuted decades ago and they don't really care to do the reading and stuff like that.

So um that's fine you know uh so anyways it's a tweet from uh beth moore responding to someone named bethany jenkins and kyle james howard and it says. So agree it's way past time to inventory our personal libraries to add to them where they are woefully lacking and to quit being clay theologically shaped by only one shade of hands that needs to be over.

It has failed and robbed us. For starters jesus didn't have white hands. So i um i responded to that fairly strongly because i am sick and tired of this racialism which in this case is nothing but racism.

It's reverse racism. But it's the acceptable form of racism. The woke church is the acceptable you know it. Racism involves prejudice based upon your perceptions of race wearing these lenses and glasses that that's uh.

But there's if it goes one direction it's bad if it goes the other direction it's perfectly fine. I don't see anybody talking about racism as a whole people having animosity animus prejudice actually based upon thinking that my race is better than another race or that this other race is incapable of doing x y or z or any of that kind of stuff.

When people actually believe that your desire to not take someone's skin color or the social status of their great great grandparents into your mind in evaluating their themselves as a person or their arguments in what we used to in society called dialogues debates discussions things like that which almost never happened anymore.

If you do that if you have that attitude well you're now a racist yourself uh you know with your privilege and all the rest of there there is no way to even begin to reason with someone who absolutely insists on keeping the racialist glasses on and not taking them off long enough to to reason with you because the racialist glasses change the nature of facts and their relationship to one another.

Or they actually render that relationship to one another irrelevant if it goes against the flow of the racialist memes and and ideas that you have already established and that you want to you want to support.

And so you know i i just basically responded to this and just said this is just got this this is so wrong. It's it's so fundamentally wrong you to not sit there and look at a library and go okay. Well it's too white.

So we need to get our libraries more rainbowy. It's so worldly it is so stupid it is so ridiculous. You judge a christian library based upon the faithfulness of what is written to the revealed revelation of god in jesus christ.

Is that really that difficult to understand. And the color of someone's skin is so stinking irrelevant it just angers me to no end. It doesn't matter who wrote it and if you're sitting there oh well and i saw so many people oh well but you see you need to understand because you know certain people have to you know because of your cultural background you're going to have certain perspectives and you're going to have certain insights and blah blah blah blah blah.

God's truth is not dependent upon your skin color and is not dependent upon your great grandpapa stop it. Don't you see how destructive this is. It is absolutely battery acid to theology apologetics everything.

I mean we've got people out there now literally linking alleged income disparity between men and women which is almost always based on the fact that women actually god made them to want to have kids. But that aside actually linking alleged income inequality to the pro-life movement.

Talk about destroying any type of effort to make progress in the education of the people in regards to the fact that we're murdering unborn children. Let's just completely engage in the most egregious category errors possible.

And there are so many christians that around going. Well that sounds okay. That sounds then you know i just want to be nice to everybody. It's like start thinking like an adult. Stop thinking like a child.

Don't you realize our society the level of maturity of thought in our society has taken a nosedive. It's in kindergarten right now. It is in kindergarten right now. You don't want to think like kindergartners.

It may be the people who think and emote like kindergartners are the people who are being praised by our society. But you can't want to have that societal praise. You've got to stop. You got to stop. People think you can't make heads or tails out of what paul says to the if they won't work they won't eat.

Utilizing kindergarten level emotive anti-intellectualism. It's not gonna work. You're gonna end up with the wacky wackadoodly theology that we see coming out of seminaries these days. Oh you don't look at your library and go.

I need to figure out the skin tone of all these authors. No you don't. You need to find out if these authors have been faithful to the word of god and accurate in handling it. That's far more important.

That's foundational. This quit being clay theologically shaped by only one shade of hands. Oh good grief. The shade of someone's hands. If you are so play-doh. If you are such a snowflake that you can be shaped on the basis of the the clay the color of somebody's hands.

Again you're stuck in kindergarten. What should shape you is the consistency and force of the argumentation the command of the history and the theology. And the consistency and the logic and the argumentation.

Isn't that what's supposed to provide the power of of of conviction. But but but we need to but we need to hear what others say. No we need to hear what god has said. And we need to hear faithful representations of what god has said.

And down the road once you have that solidly established and once you've seen the the consistency of god's truth and the power of god's truth then you can make application way down there in different contexts to different people in different places.

And then you can start taking into consideration something like you know when we apply this in the inner city then we need to emphasize these things because those are the context. There need to emphasize these things over here in the more rural context there is an application out there.

But we're skipping past this stuff here the central stuff and getting down there as if it's the primary thing. And it can never be it can never be. This is divisive it's destructive and it's deceptive inventory.

Our personal libraries. Wow. Based upon race. Yeah. Okay all right. Well anyway uh i think you can tell that i found that particular that that i find that particular uh way of thought significantly uh beneath appropriate christian um maturity.

And that's what's going on in in the church today. You've you've you've got people standing positions of leadership that are illustrating for us how to degrade christian leadership down to the level of our society today where you're emoting things you emote things.

It's all emotion. It's all emotion instead of seriously consistently seeking to represent what has been given to us in the objective revelation of the word of god which our lord jesus christ directed us to.

Okay. Well anyways hopefully um hopefully you get the idea of why that kind of a statement by beth moore just makes me go. And that's she's got a whole lot more followers than i do. And the problem is you keep repeating that kind of thing and repeating that kind of thing.

And you are destructively degrading your readers by putting in their minds ways of thought that are simply fundamentally destructive. That's all there is to it. That's all there is to it. Hey so as i said on twitter i said stop.

Um. And i did. I didn't mention i was going to address this. Um dustin hollingsworth wrote to me before right before the program started and taking umbrage with what i had said in response to beth moore said isn't it safe though to check yourself in terms of what you're reading and listening to.

It's natural to read and listen to those who look and sound like us. If we don't keep healthy checks on that can't we miss out on good teaching theological writing. I don't care who wrote it. I don't look.

I'm not looking at the picture on the back. What's the standard. Dustin the standard. Isn't it safe though to check yourself in terms of what you're reading. Listen to. Yes on the basis of its orthodoxy its soundness its consistency not on the race of its author.

And when you say you know it's natural to read and listen to those who look and sound like us. How do you even know. How do you even know i don't go looking for pictures of authors. It never crosses my mind.

I could stinking care less. Why does everybody all of a sudden only over the past few years we've got i've just i've just got to think about i just i just need to know what that that person's great great grandfather did and how they lived in.

And really seriously i can't conceive of this. I cannot conceive of this. I did my entire seminary training all my study of church history. And i never once sat there and said oh i wonder uh i wonder exactly what uh tone of skin athanasius had over against melito sardis in comparison to augustine.

And what about tertullian. And huh you know i sort of need to i wonder if i could look up some artwork. And maybe you know how accurate would it be. And it doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter judge them on the basis of the objective unchanging revelation we've been given in scripture.

It doesn't matter. Oh oh oh stop stop stop. Hey. Okay anyway i didn't get a lot of sleep last night. And probably by now everybody on the line's going. I'm not sure i want to be the first one up um you know uh because he may he may say things to me that i'm not sure i want to say okay.

Textual Variant at Ephesians 5:30

Our uh first question is about a textual variant that uh there is a lengthy edition at the end of ephesians 5 30 because we are members of his body. And so let's talk uh to nathan hi nathan hi dr white uh first off i just hey nathan nathan nathan are you a better.

Are you a beth moore fan.

Uh well sir uh my mom listens to her a lot and my mom is a calvinist and so i she grew up listening to her a lot. So uh okay all right. My mom also my mom also buries her her theological intake. So um i was just trying to scare you.

Just trying to scare you. I first off just wanted to say uh thank you for your ministry. I first heard of you when i read king james only controversy. Yeah. And i read. I read it in a day. I was so thrilled about it i.

Didn't write it today. I just want. You know i did not write it in a day it took. My question has to.

Do with um a textual variant. Uh last year i wrote my own personal commentary on ephesians where i went through every variant as i went along like i found one one to be interesting. Uh 314 was pretty explainable but ephesians 530 gave me such a headache because i feel like it's more of a homo atelier time with how uh verse 30 ends with uh out to doma out too and then also uh osteon out too and that was the way i think peter gurry from evangelical textual criticism explained it.

But.

I think i think you know wallace i think peter would rather be described as being from phoenix.

Seminary. But uh that's okay. Oh roger that sir. Um well daniel wallace in the net bible said that uh and and i'm just paraphrasing here because i don't have it in front of me but it was a scribe solved genesis 224 quoted uh in the previous or the the following verse in verse 31.

And so it was a way of i expanding upon the uh old testament um usage. But i i just wanted to engage your thoughts on what conclusions you came to because at the end of the day i do want to know what paul wrote and not just what i think he wrote.

Right. I just wanted your thoughts on that sir. Well.

For those uh who are interested in textual criticism the the variant uh in most translations today um for no one ever hate his own flesh but nourishes and cherishes it just as christ also does the church because we are members of his body period verse 30 being fairly short verse 31.

For this reason a man should leave his father and mother should be joined. His wife too should become one flesh. So you have the quotation from uh genesis 2 uh from the greek septuagint beginning at the beginning of verse 31.

And then this mystery is great but i'm speaking with reference to christ and the church uh however there is what is known as a variant um in a number of manuscripts you have um because we are members of his body um and then uh act a sarcastic of his flesh and of his bone.

Uh is the majority of the manuscripts that contain this uh which is the majority reading. By the way the majority of greek manuscripts most of which would come after 1000 a .d uh contain this citation that is as was noted derived from genesis 223 in the greek septuagint um codex uh k um which i it's interesting as i'm looking at this here it's cited twice um i'm not sure if that means that it just simply includes that extra addition um i think it does just continue to have it has a what looks to me like an obvious um repetition in its citation.

But uh it um is a majority reading. It's. It's not overly early. It's the second hand of sinaiticus.

Um but which is there was an interesting note on that. Uh is it's in the margins and there's an arrow point. Hello. Oh lost you there. Are you still there. Uh yes i was saying that in codex sinaiticus there's an arrow pointing at where it would have gone.

Well yeah. Um. But uh the second hand.

Um are we having problems rich because the the thing just flashed up there. What's wrong. We're having internet issues. Okay. Well hopefully we're still getting it recorded. That's the important part.

Um the the problem is that uh the second hand of sinaiticus at least sinaiticus two uh superscript two is from around the seventh century um so that's that's a a fair fairways down the road uh from so you're talking you know three and a half uh centuries after the original writing.

But anyway um yeah i'm it is possible uh given that out two ends both uh the the shorter phrase and longer phrase it is possible that the earlier manuscripts like p46 the original sinaiticus alexander this uh vaticanus uh a number of basically not only unseals but early minuscules and and two really important early miniscule 1739 1881 those are both manuscripts we know are uh taken from very early uh exemplars um it's it's possible that there was a line that lost that uh that variant because of homo etelioton i suppose um but that's actually a when you when you look at it that's that's a fairly wide um ranging uh number of witnesses 1739 has the has uh that missing in the text but it's been inserted later into the margin um which means that you know the the someone who worked on that manuscript knew that that was a had become the majority reading over time um so yeah you know i would i would tend just as a general rule when you have a septuagint citation like this to recognize that that that tends to involve addition over time rather than rather than something being deleted uh so i would i would probably go with the with the editors uh who have placed that in in the footnote um i don't know that it massively changes the uh the meaning um other than maybe trying to connect it a little bit more closely to the genesis 2 thing but.

It well that that was what i came to also like um because the order is mixed up if you notice because i think adam says bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh and then uh this says of his flesh and of his bone so the order is reversed.

But you're right it's still the fact that it says that for we are members of his body that that unity with christ is it's not lost if that.

If that's not an original reading well it's certainly not lost. No uh not by any stretch of.

The imagination um it really does you think that if this if that wasn't the original do you think that i i was trying to like think up ways that that became fuller where he wanted to expand upon the body of christ.

And just say also like with genesis 224 being quoted in the following verse. And then i was i just couldn't really think of like because daniel wallace in the net bible you know talked about the expansion of the quotation.

But yeah well uh obviously ascribes.

Would have had access to the to the greek septuagint they would probably would have this would have been a well enough known citation that they could have looked it up that that could uh add to the possibility of expansion.

I can't see how looking it up would would in any way lead to not having it uh expanded. But um yeah it's an interesting variant. I don't like i said i don't know that it changes uh changes the meaning.

It just uh gives you a slightly thinner new testament if you don't. If you don't have it um but i don't think that uh you know obviously i wouldn't because the variant i wouldn't put a huge amount of weight if you included the phraseology on uh differentiating between flesh and bone or something like that and in this particular context.

But um uh it is interesting to note. And i didn't take the time to look what kind of textual notes are provided by esv or nasb or anybody else as to whether they note that or uh do or do not. But i'm sure the net does.

That's for sure uh the net notes all that kind of stuff. So um but we've pretty much bored everybody to tears now. Nathan. So uh we're.

Gonna have to. Yeah. I hope you have a great thanksgiving sir. Thank you for taking my call.

All right thanks. Nathan god bless. Bye-bye. All right. Uh 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number i see on uh twitter. Al gore seems to have stopped peddling and our internet is not happy about that hoping to get him moving again soon.

Uh that bad huh. So we're pretty much deadheading it huh. Really bad. Okay. Well i wonder why that you know right before a holiday why that would be. But we will press on and uh at least we have our phone callers and so we can talk with uh.

God's Sovereignty, Human Responsibility, and Free Will

Scott down in texas. Hi scott. Hi dr white how are you doing doing. Good good. Hey. Thanks so much for taking my.

Call. Um i have a lot of respect for what you do and for your ministry and i just want to thank you for that. So thank you. Um yeah you bet. And uh so the nature of my question is on i guess man's free will and his personal responsibility.

Um and i'll i'll say straight away that uh you know frequently you address objections to calvinism and you always say well if you've been listening to the vine line for any length of time you should know.

And i feel like i'm one of those people that should know and just doesn't know right. So um anyway also if it sounds like i'm reading my question i am because one i'm nervous. Two i've got a 16th one year old uh 16 month old that i'm trying to keep track of.

So i keep myself on track. But um anyway so with regard to man's free will i guess my struggle is the fact that all mankind has fallen and willing active rebellion against god which we see pretty clearly in scripture.

And yet none of mankind it seems to me is capable of being in anything other than this state because of sin nature. And then with regard to free will god holds us accountable for our sinful state because of our free will choice to rebel.

And yet again it seems to me no one has any hope of being anything other than sinful apart from god's election. So ultimately the way i see it is man is he's being held accountable for his free will choice to sin and yet he's unable to make a free will choice not to sin.

Well based on my understanding.

Somewhere somewhere in there i didn't hear anything about our having fallen in adam uh which yeah is always central and um and the majority of conundrums in regards to um the fallen nature of man and his creaturely free will over against an autonomous free will um almost always involve if not openly then in a hidden sense a fundamental rejection of the concept of uh federal headship and our falling in adam.

And so the vast majority of people simply today will not accept the idea that there is a corruption of our nature that flows from um an intimate relationship to our federal head adam. And i think that's directly related to the fact that a lot of people today don't really have much of a concept or connection to the idea of union with christ and the imputation of his righteousness.

So we're so individualistic we're so naturalistic we're so anti-supernatural in our in our fundamental outlook and how we've been to think that we we see ourselves as these these autonomous individuals and uh do not see our relationship to adam.

So what needs to be brought into the form of the question is when you say we are held accountable for our own free will choices it's we are held accountable for our own creaturely choices which are limited by the desires that are presented to um to us by our fallen nature to to the will by our fallen nature.

And so um we desire to do what is opposed to god's ways and unless he graciously removes us from that situation which is really where the objection is because we're saying well we should not be in that situation we don't.

We reject federalism we reject god's right to hold adam's posterity accountable for adam's action. That is that is the fundamental thing when you when you look at uh at where denominations go that that that may have been reformed at one point and then move away from and move back toward a more roman catholic soteriology really on the subject of the nature the will.

Um inevitably there is an abandonment um either openly or functionally of that relationship between adam and his posterity which leaves romans 5 just hanging out in the breeze just just sort of floating around out there uh even though it's the transitionary text from the introduction of on the universality of sin through the beginning of chapter 3 justification 3 4 and then beginning of 5 and then that difficult section that no one wants to preach because they don't really know what's going on but the relation the the one humanity in in adam the other humanity in christ becomes the transition into roman 6 and the practical living of the christian life.

Um and so uh you look at those denominations that that that go that direction and eventually they they back away on this very issue. But that's that's where the that's where the answer is found is to understand that there is a fundamental limitation um that is placed upon those who are in adam and it takes an act of grace which cannot be demanded to free someone um from that that uh slavery to sin that comes from being fallen in father adam and so all of the categories that we utilize and saying well it doesn't seem fair right.

Just we are almost always importing human categories that cannot even begin to um deal with the idea of federal headship and so in our minds we're we're we're we're going with some kind of uh autonomous american constitutional justice idea uh rather than the covenantal head federal headship uh concept that is actually found in scripture.

And i understand why it is because our seminaries really struggle uh to make clarity out of this partly because if you don't if you don't believe scripture is actually consistent with itself then you don't really have any basis for for doing that.

And so what becomes a mist in the pulpit becomes a fog in the pew and uh it leads to what we see all around us today. So in answer to the question the the the answer is found in rephrasing the question in a more biblical context and recognizing that we are held accountable fundamentally to our father in our father adam and then individually for acting upon the desires of our hearts and loving those things that are in opposition to god.

You might say well you can't do anything else unless unless what unless grace is extended to you exactly but if it's grace it cannot be demanded and so well but it's not fair that we're all in that situation.

Well it's not a matter of fairness it's a matter of either justice or mercy. And you don't want fairness. You want the mercy part not the not the fairness part. So um okay yeah thank.

You so much i'm probably gonna have to relisten to it just to chew on all that but uh well you'll.

Get and you'll get to hear the the little one in the background while you listen to it again too. So that'll be able you'll be able to keep this recording. And and and. Is it boy or girl. It is a girl i it sounded like a little girl and about 16 years.