In Memory of Pastor Dennis, Open Lines

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:32

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. We're even taking calls today, but before we do that real quickly,

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I wanted to put this up and make a few statements about the passing of Pastor Dennis Pelay down in Durban, South Africa.

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When I first visited Durban, I don't remember what year it was, but I think it was the second time

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I went down to South Africa, but I'm not even sure about that, to be honest with you. I would start in Johannesburg, and once we ended up at Cape Town, a number of other times we went to Durban.

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Pastor Pelay had me stay in his home.

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I really felt badly putting him out in that way. He was just so tremendously hospitable.

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His wife had cancer. You can put that down in the corner if you want. His wife had cancer. He was dealing with that type of a situation as well.

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And all the... I have a picture of him with the rest of us, his son

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Adrian, waiting outside the Gray Street Mosque in Durban before we did the debate there.

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I remember in one of the debates with the gentleman who would... the name's escaping me at the moment, but who would...

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who purposefully acts like Ahmadinejad. We did,

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I think, two or three debates, and at least one of those, they had a Muslim prayer and a

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Christian prayer at the beginning and Pastor Dennis did the Christian prayer before one of them.

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Just a tremendously kind, loving, hospitable man.

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He made an awesome cola tonic. It's a non -alcoholic drink in case you're worried or something, but they even sent me home with some cola tonic mix once I was really afraid packing it, it wasn't gonna make it back to Phoenix.

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But that was the last time I had a cola tonic, I'm sure, was when

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Pastor Dennis made it. You know, his wife passed away about a year ago,

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I'd say around that time, maybe a little less, maybe a little more, I don't remember the exact date, but he was less than 11 years older than me.

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And when you start seeing that, you certainly are reminded that you don't have a guarantee of next week or the month after.

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My encouragement to the church in Durban really is, you know, remembering

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Pastor Dennis, ministering with the consistency that Pastor Dennis ministered with, but really to seek to be, to finish well.

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That's certainly, once you get up in years, you start realizing that's incredibly important, because you see so many people that don't.

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And Pastor Dennis finished well, he really, really did, and it was just an honor to have him, you know, out there in the audience, you know, right over there during those, during the debate, the

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Gray Street Mosque, and I don't remember if he was in Erasmus or not, for the first one we did inside a mosque like that, but he came to as much of the stuff as he could.

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Just a tremendous brother, and we will miss him tremendously, but he has left such a great testimony to Christ, and I'm sure the church there will press forward with the encouragement that his life gave, so thank you, you can take that down.

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So, our condolences to the family, and of course, the

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Spirit of God can comfort everyone, and we pray for the Spirit's comfort in their lives as well.

05:03

Real quickly, two other things before we go to our calls. What did I do?

05:08

There they are. Yeah, very, very briefly, it's very common, and I saw it again today, someone saying,

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I just don't understand why you complain about what's going on in government, or the world, or anything like that, if you're a post -millennialist.

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I just feel, okay. Yeah, I understand post -millennialists are the smallest of the groups, and so it's perfectly understandable why people don't understand it.

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They haven't read any books on it. They haven't listened to anybody on it, and so, you know, you know, when

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I talk about dispensationalism, I was one, and so that means

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I try not to say silly things along those lines, but most people aren't former post -millennialists, so I guess they can plead ignorance, but there is absolutely, positively nothing inconsistent between seeking to be a prophetic voice of warning, living in a culture that is under the judgment of God, and being a post -millennialist.

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But if you think there is, then you don't understand what's being said, and that's very, very, very, very, very common.

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It's almost as silly, though, as the people who say, well, if you believe that God has a sovereign decree, then you can't complain about anything.

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And it's, it's frustrating. Thankfully, most people grow out of it.

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They, you know, figure things out eventually and go, oh, well, I wish I could cleanse my social media timeline or something like that.

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I suppose you can. But, anyway, just thought

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I would point that out to you. And then, on one of the tweets I just put up, and it may have been on the one today, and what we're gonna be doing,

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I forget which one it was, there was somebody, you'll always, you should never click on the see more replies link, which may contain offensive material and blah, blah, blah, blah.

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Mine just normally is blank. I'm not sure what that is. But anyway, somebody tweeted that, you know, you must be, let me see if it is this one.

07:28

Yeah, yeah, there it is. Any particular reason why you refuse to respond?

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Fear, insecurity, curious for explanation. And as soon as I looked at it, it's a link, you know,

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I used to call him a kid, but I first responded to this person, how to be

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Christian. I looked it up in 2017 and clearly, you know, my recollection was that the first stuff we were dealing with was in regards to John 6 and stuff like that, and the arguments this person was putting out are really barely up to the level of noticeable or worthy of even commenting on because they're just so bad.

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Illogical, unbiblical, clearly doesn't know biblical languages, nothing like that. Um, but you know, at first it's sort of like, well, it's sort of like doing

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Radio Free Geneva. You want to respond to stuff that may be, you know, low -hanging fruit, but it's common enough that you run into it.

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So, and then my recollection was after we sort of decimated a couple of his videos, he disappeared.

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The YouTube channel shut down and just disappeared, and then a few years later pops back up and doing his thing again.

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Um, it, you, you, if you want to know the trolls who are doing nothing more than looking for clicks, they're looking, they don't have a following, they don't have, you know, you look at their numbers and they've got 242 followers, you know.

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Well, how do you get out of the 242 followers is you engage somebody with 135 ,000 followers or more.

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Um, and that's all they're trying to do, is, uh, and so you, you accuse people of cowardice.

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Um, who was it I mentioned? Oh, yeah, it was the people on, uh, the, the comments on, um, oh, the, you keep moving around.

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I don't know which, I'd rather be on that one. Uh, the, the, the comments, there you go, the comments on Leighton Flower's video where he attempted to respond to, uh,

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Jeff Durbin, uh, where again, he just demonstrated that when it comes to almost anything,

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Leighton just doesn't do scholarship well, he just doesn't do it. When it comes to apologetics, you know, a guy calls himself an apologist, but you, you know, you can tell when someone doesn't have a clue what they're talking about when they're critiquing presuppositionalism.

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They just don't, they've, they've never read Van Til, they've, they've never read Bonson, they haven't read Frame, Oliphant, nobody.

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They just, they, they're going on second and third hand stuff that they've heard from other people.

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And that's what's going on here. And Jeff had even offered to send him some books to read if he'd be willing to read them.

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Um, but I was, it was looking to, and I, I, I documented something he said, he, he, he called

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Manichaeism the foundation of Gnosticism and, uh, obviously

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Gnosticism's a few centuries before Manichaeism. It's, it's just your standard Leighton Flowers and church history stuff, but the comments from people, wow, the accusations they were making,

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I mean, toward Jeff of being a coward. And I'm just like, oh, the keyboard warriors.

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Um, uh, this, this guy walks into hearing rooms in the

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Colorado state legislature or the Missouri state legislature, and he knows he's going to be testifying in front of people who hate his guts and who have no morals as to what they're going to say.

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Um, and he'll wait hours to get the chance to do it. And none of these people criticizing him would have the guts to do anything they did to us, but they're, they're sitting there, uh, talking about cowardice and, and stuff like that.

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And it's just like, oh, the online world, it is a, it is a strange and, uh, not so wonderful place at times.

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It really is. All right, we've got to get to the calls here. I'm going to try to be brief. I, I don't know why it is, that I tend to, um, um, give too many illustrations and expand on things and stuff like that when we're taking phone calls, but we've got a lot here.

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I mean, a lot. Uh, there's no way I should be able to get through this in an hour. Um, but we will, we will see.

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And again, I'm not the Bible answer man. I don't pretend to be the Bible answer man.

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Um, there are lots and lots of topics where I go, well, you know,

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I've done a little reading here, done a little reading there. I've seen some things and mentioned in passing while reading this out.

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The other thing, uh, but I'm, you know, don't claim to be an expert on everything. Uh, so we'll, we'll see what, uh, what happens with it.

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So let's start with, uh, Noah, who was waiting patiently two days ago. Um, and so we're going to finally get to the question.

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I assumed that Noah had, uh, from two days ago, uh, on the descent of Christ. Go ahead,

12:58

Noah. Yes, sir. Thank you so much. Um, my name is Noah. Um, I'm a member here in San Diego, San Diego Reform Church.

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I just want to say thank you from the start. Well, first of all, let me extend my, my sincere condolences to you, uh, living under communist, uh, rule, uh, there in, uh, in California.

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And, uh, we will pray, uh, that you'll be able to maintain your freedom and to escape someday. Please do.

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Yeah. Um, I wanted to say thank you for your ministry. I mean, it's been a great blessing in my life and it has been a part in, you know, convincing me to seek out a, you know, a faithful Reform Baptist Church, um, in my area.

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So I appreciate that. Okay, super. Um, yeah, um, my question was,

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I was reading your, um, article concerning the descent of Christ and confessional, like, subscription.

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And I, I understand. Oh, that wasn't mine. Oh, it wasn't? That was Chris Wizenant. Okay. So I, I can only, yeah, well, yeah, but Chris is one of our guys and, uh, what

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I, I think, I'm not, I don't remember if that was a part of a series or not. Uh, I'm sure Chris will let me know here in a second.

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Um, but I, I saw when he was commenting in our private chat channel, um, that he was going to be writing some, uh, blog articles or at least a blog article, um, primarily focusing upon the issue of the kinds of confessional subscriptionism that there are, um, and how that particular topic, um, sheds some light on how the

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Reformation viewed the interpretation of ancient creeds. Uh, I'm assuming that's what you're referring to.

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Yes, sir. Okay. Um, yeah, um, I, you know, I read the article and it was, you know, it's really interesting and it had me just thinking just particularly, uh, you know, on the descent of Christ and, you know, in the

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Apostles' Creed, um, if really, like, what is your opinion or, um, from the text of scripture?

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Like, is it, can we say that, you know, the Lord went into, you know, into Sheol and that, you know, him binding

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Satan and, um, taking, you know, out of Abraham's bosom, the saints of old, um, or I think that in the articles, the contrast between that, which the early church fathers, um, if I'm not mistaken, believed, and then what, you know, the

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Reformers tended to believe, which was, um, that that was not the case. So I just wanted to, well, there's,

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I'll be brief. There's a lot of theories and um, not necessarily a whole lot of information.

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You have, you have a few references, um, and, and we have to be, uh, circumspect with what we do with them.

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Unfortunately, people will take short references and will go a long ways. I don't like looking this direction, to be perfectly honest with you.

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So, yeah, yeah, I mean, I know the list's over here, but that's all right. Um, it's just making me turn the wrong direction.

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Um, we have to be circumspect as to exactly how far we take it. And unfortunately, uh, down through church history, people have had a whole lot of time to speculate and, and then you get a big name that speculates, and his speculation becomes foundational to everybody else's speculation.

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That's how you get a lot of weird stuff down through the history of, uh, of the church, uh, certainly amongst the monks and, and things like that.

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Um, anyway, the, the best I, I can give you is, um, I don't believe, well, first of all,

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Hades, uh, Sheol, the realm of the dead, if you take

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Luke 16 as your standard, has different compartments. There are some who believe that with the resurrection,

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Jesus leads captivity captive. That is, he, he takes those like, um, like, uh,

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Lazarus, uh, not Lazarus, like the, well, traditional, anyway, removes the, the godly, um, from the, the place of refreshment that they were in, uh, to now be with him, uh, leaving the others under punishment for the day of judgment.

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And then of course, when people die now, uh, they would go there for their punishment to, uh, continue until that final day of judgment.

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Peter seems to indicate that they, the Lord now knows how to keep the, the, uh, uh, godless under punishment for judgment.

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So that it's a continuing type thing over against people, people who believe in soul sleep and things like that.

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Um, but that there's a shift and a change that takes place after the resurrection, which, you know, given that, um, interesting text in Matthew, uh, about the resurrection of some, uh, saints,

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I think just people who had died, uh, recently there in Jerusalem and hence would be known by people when they came back into the city.

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Um, something special happened there. Uh, but if we, if we really needed to know the details, there'd be a whole lot more in scripture about it, uh, to, to tell us about that type of thing.

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And so it seems to me that, um, uh, the descent that is talked about, uh, is either just that, or if it is associated with what

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Peter says in regards to making proclamation to the spirits who are in prison.

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One, certainly it was, it was the view that I was taught when I was younger.

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One view of that is that this was Jesus making proclamation of his victory over those forces that had sought to, uh, keep him from, um, accomplishing his mission by corrupting the human line long, long ago with the

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Nephilim and stuff like that. Uh, that's an interesting, again, it's, it's taking stuff in the old testament and then looking at references in Jude and second

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Peter and going, well, that must mean this, that must mean that. Maybe, maybe not. It's, again, it's another situation where if we really were meant to be dogmatic about it, there would be uh,

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I think more discussion of it and it's, um, it's specific relationship to the gospel and the mission of the church would be, would be mentioned.

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Um, but, uh, whatever, you know, when I, I think some have translated that, that passage preached to the spirits who are in prison as if this leads to some post -mortem opportunity of repentance or something like that.

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And I, I don't think that's what's going on there, uh, at all. There certainly isn't anything that would provide a foundation for that or an explanation of what would happen, uh, because of that.

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So, uh, whatever, whatever the central aspect that needs to be affirmed, it is that Jesus truly died and went to the realm of the dead.

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Um, that he truly gave his human life and as a result, the resurrection is a true resurrection rather than just a resuscitation or something along those lines.

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But as to all the specifics of what's, what's he doing and, you know, what's the exact order of events and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

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Um, that's, that's an area where you start getting into, well, it could be this, could be that, could be that, and a lot of people don't like couldbes, but the fact is in scripture you have the central doctrines that are focused upon and explained and grounded and, and everything else.

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And then you have the next level and next level. And once you get past a certain point, you start getting into areas where there can be lots of appropriate believing, um, disputation and disagreement.

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And that's one of the big, big, big problems with fundamentalism is that fundamentalism demands certainty on every point of theology, or you can't have certainty on the key defining points of theology.

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And once you buy that perspective, uh, you're going to end up on an island alone as the only person really knowing what's going on, uh, in the

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Christian faith, and that doesn't really work out too well. Okay.

21:36

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time. Okay. Well, I, and by the way, I, I have been to San Diego back when you could still go there as a citizen of the

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United States. And it's, it's a beautiful, beautiful place. But I hear that, uh, you have robots running all of your fast food restaurants, uh, as of, uh, as of Monday.

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Is, is that, is that what I heard? Because you have to pay everybody 20 bucks an hour to work at the drive -thru.

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And so now everybody got fired and there's just robots doing it. Is that, is that, is that true? It's sounds like it.

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Yeah. It's that's pretty crazy. All right. Thanks for your call Noah. All right. God bless.

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Thank you. All right. It is true that they 20 bucks an hour.

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And I was looking at the list of restaurants that had closed, restaurants that had fired all of their employees and all the rest of this stuff.

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And it's just like, wow, idiocy is everywhere. Okay. Uh, I don't know how to pronounce that.

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Um, but Adan, is that the name? Yes. Hi, Dr.

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White. Hi, how are you? I'm a little starstruck. So I'm going to try to speak real fast. Um, yeah, no, um,

22:48

I was hoping to just get a question about, um, some comments you made about Catholic answers, sanitizing some of the

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Catholic doctrines. Um, it's just, uh, I've, my brother -in -law, he's recently converted.

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And so we've had, you know, I've had conversations back and forth about some of my objections and some of his objections and a lot of the times over texts, he sends me things from Catholic answers, almost all, every time he, uh, has refutation or objections, it's coming from Catholic answers and, um, listening to you.

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And of course, so I'm, so one of the first things I bring up is the council of Trent, our families are all, our family's shocked, you know?

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So I'm just sharing them some documents from, you know, the Roman Catholic church and just the anathemas of Protestantism is one of the very first things

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I, uh, drew from, uh, for our family. And he was really upset with that. Uh, said that we had prejudices, that things are different today.

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Um, and he's has personal comments. Yeah. Well, well, let me just, let me just make a comment about how things are different today.

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First of all, things are different today. Uh, ask a lot of believing

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Roman Catholics about Francis and Tucho Fernandez and, um, the changes he's making.

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So yeah, things are different today. But what that means is, um,

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I firmly believe that if Francis had lived and taught what he's teaching today in 1600s, so the, the, the catechism of the council of Trent came out in 1592.

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So this is at the point of, that's a high watermark of the counter -reformation from the council of Trent.

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Um, I think if Francis had lived back then that he would have been burned at the stake by the

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Roman Catholic church. So does that mean things have changed? Yeah, but not in the way that can be explained as being as a continuation of the one true church and further reflection upon the deposit of faith and all the rest of this stuff.

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No, it's fundamental evolution and change which demonstrates that it's not apostolic tradition that is guiding any of this.

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It is just simply the church changing, um in response to the changes in the world.

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Um, so yeah, it's difficult because they're really good at reconciling a lot of these things.

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Uh, well, especially for my brother -in -law. He has correspondence with the canon

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Michael Stein. Um, I don't know who that is, but just a highly revered priest apparently and uh,

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I mean when you, when I bring up Francis, it's well, he's considered an anti -pope.

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Really? Well, wait a minute. To make that, um, determination that Francis is an anti -pope, um, puts you in the realm of a set of vacantism that you don't believe that the chair is currently occupied by a true successor of Peter.

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So that's, that's someone who's in schism. Uh, Catholic answers would not say that and I don't think,

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I don't think they would link to somebody who would say that. Now Catholic Answers is struggling and has been struggling for 10 years now, um, pope -splaining, uh,

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Francis. And, you know, there's a new document coming out on Monday, um, that I don't, by the way,

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I don't think the document on Monday is going to be overly remarkable. I think what's going to happen, uh, even though, uh,

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Victor Fernandez, Tutu Fernandez, the head of the Inquisition basically, um, even though he's had a big hand in writing this,

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I think what they're going to do is they're going to do what they've done, what, what, uh, John Paul II did.

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And what he did is one year he'd throw out a liberal statement and the next year he'd throw out a conservative statement and the next year a liberal statement.

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And so he'd be throwing a bone each direction trying to keep everybody sort of going the same direction.

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And so I have a feeling that this, um, thing on human dignity it is going to address some

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LGBTQ issues. So that could be interesting, but my gut feeling is after fiduciary supplicants in December and the huge pushback that they got on that,

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I think this is going to be the conservative bone to try to, uh, provide some cover and then we can be looking to the end of the synod that's supposed to be taking place sometime this year.

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I forget when it is for the next liberal leftist wild stuff. That's my guess.

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I could be wrong. I'm just throwing it out there. Just sort of going. Yeah, I sort of got a feeling this is what they're going to be doing, but we'll see.

27:54

But, but they, but the Catholic answers would, I just, I would just be stunned if Catholic answers would link to someone who would identify

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Francis as an anti -Pope because that would pretty much um, would it be, would you be stunned if a priest, like a highly revered priest would even say something like that?

28:11

No, no, I wouldn't because there are lots of people like that, but Catholic answers has to play a different game because Catholic answers has to get into a wide variety of Catholic churches.

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So they have to be, they may have people, and I know of at least one person who used to be there that got red -pilled by Francis shortly after he became

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Pope and left, but as an organization, they may have people internally that privately wonder if Francis might not be an anti -Pope, but they're not going to say that publicly and they're, it would just, too many doors would be slammed in their faces.

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So I, I would be surprised with that, but there are lots of priests and others who are saying that.

28:57

Yeah, I, I get that and I, and I sort of feel sorry for those folks because they know what historic

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Roman Catholic teaching is, at least since the Council of Trent, and they know that in, in their private moments, because I've been saying this for months now,

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Francis would have been burned by the church in the year 1600. And I think a lot of them in their private moments go, yep.

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And I think some of them go, and he should have been. Because I, I remember in the 90s,

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I did a debate. What was that guy's name in Austin, Texas? I did four recorded debates with him. Remember? He was a priest

29:39

Yeah, Festigi, Festigi. He and I did these, these recorded debates in a studio in Austin, Texas.

29:48

And at one point he came over to my desk and we were discussing, I had quoted somebody in the previous debate that he felt was a liberal and I shouldn't have quoted him.

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And he made the offhand comment, just as, just as honest as could be, he didn't mean to be saying anything other than just what he really felt.

30:05

But he said, I said, well, you know, he, here's what he said. And, and he says, yeah, he says, ever since we stopped the inquisition, there's a whole lot wider views, a whole lot wider range of views being expressed.

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And it's sort of like, well, yeah, okay. I guess when you're, when you're not burning folks anymore, there, there might be a few more opinions being suggested.

30:29

Yeah. Have you thought through what that means? It's like, anyway. Yeah. He's, he's used all the, just getting a lot of resources.

30:37

I was hoping to have a little bit more time from this next call because I got your reply with the top 10 reasons not to join the

30:44

Catholic church. And, you know, I just had printed out some material that I wanted to go over, but is there like a, one of them is on Peter and the

30:52

Keys. Is there a book quickly that you could recommend? Well, there, there's certainly the whole subject of the patristic interpretation of Peter and the

31:04

Keys has been addressed by believing Protestant scholarship, especially in the 200 years after the

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Reformation. It's today, no one writes almost anything on the subject just because of all the ecumenism and, and stuff like that.

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But the early church's interpretation of that I'm pretty certain that the, the

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Boston college debate that I did in 94, I think that we went into a lot of that in that particular debate because the, the early church, if you read

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Cyprian's on the unity of the church, you know, Cyprian was addressed as Pope Cyprian by the deacons of Rome and the

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North African church rejected Stephen, the Bishop of Rome's meddling in their internal affairs.

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They, one of their councils said, none of us set ourselves up as Bishop of Bishops. That's an official title of the

32:15

Pope of Rome today. So there's, there's a lot, Cyprian in fact taught that every

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Bishop sits upon the throne of Peter, the Cathedra Petri, every Bishop does.

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That's what being a Bishop is. And it is Rome that initially the deference shown to the

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Bishop of Rome was because he was the Bishop of Rome, the capital city of the empire.

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Only over time did that emphasis shift from the city to the

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Bishop of that city. And so when, when Ignatius writes to the

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Romans, he doesn't even address the Bishop of the, of the city because there was no one Bishop at the time.

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The, the monarchical Episcopate, the idea of a one Bishop over a city that had arrived in the

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East where Ignatius was from, it not had not yet arrived in Rome. So Rome had a multiplicity of elders till about 140

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AD when it too adopted the monarchical view. The biblical view is plurality of elders, but the monarchical view only comes along, what, 50, 90 years after the

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Church at Rome is founded. So initially the Church of Rome could not have held to some type of papal view because they didn't think they needed to have just one

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Bishop. This is, you know, this kind of stuff is pretty much unknown to the vast majority of listeners to Catholic Answers and things like that.

33:59

And so they're just going to go with the, the stuff that the Jesuits developed during the Counter -Reformation long, long ago.

34:06

But it's the historical stuff that, you know, causes a problem for their position. Okay.

34:11

Thank you so much for that. And all that's just early Church writings that I could probably find online somewhere.

34:17

Well, yeah. Which, which book are you talking about? Oh, well, you, you mentioned...

34:22

No, no, I'm sorry. I'm talking to Rich. Oh. I, you know, that thought crossed my mind.

34:30

Rich is saying that Bill Webster has a book called Peter and the Keys. I, I don't think so.

34:36

I don't think that's the name of the book. But Bill Webster has certainly written, if you look up Bill Webster, Holy Scripture, his, the three volume set right there.

34:48

Oh, is that the same one that Jeff Durbin or Pastor Durbin had mentioned? Probably. Yeah, yeah, probably.

34:54

The same Bill Webster's written other books. And I know that the issue of the papacy and things like that have been, has been central to what he's done.

35:04

So I'm sure there would be a fair amount of material there. And then when I was talking about older books, I'm talking about The Infallibility of the

35:11

Church by George Salmon and other huge works on the subject of the defense of the

35:20

Reformation by Puritan era writers. So yeah, hold on a second.

35:26

Rich, Rich is raising the microphone. So Algo has jumped in and he, Bill's website is christiantruth .org.

35:34

Okay, yeah. If you go to christiantruth .org, I'm sure that all the books will be listed there, and you'll probably find a bunch of material to go with in there.

35:43

Perfect. Thank you, Dr. White. Most welcome. Have a good one. Thanks. Okay. Oh, this is weird.

35:50

Well, I don't know if it's weird or not. Hi, Jeremy. Christian YouTubers. Go for it. Hi, Dr.

35:57

White. Yes, sir. Well, first, I want to just kind of second what everybody else has said.

36:03

You know, thank you for your ministry. It's definitely been a blessing to only recently kind of discovered you like a year ago.

36:09

So it's definitely been a big help that year. We've been here for a really long time.

36:15

I'm sort of a fossil. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure you don't remember.

36:21

I actually got a chance to ask you a few questions at G3 last September about post -millennialism. Yeah, you know, that would make you one of, you know, about 3 ,000 people.

36:32

And so yes, I remember just like that. Yeah. Yeah, that place is packed.

36:38

It was. But yeah, my question, you kind of touched on a little bit on the front end of the show because you're talking about Professor Flowers and, you know, some of the commentary you've had as far as Jason Brenna and some of the things he's done in his videos, you know, points out,

36:55

I think you've kind of alluded to, and I think rightfully so, that some of these guys don't really maybe know what they should know as far as, you know, certain things.

37:07

And I myself am actually kind of wanting to, maybe it's not the best idea, but kind of get into a similar type of ministry, maybe online.

37:15

I don't want to have that same problem. I want to be somebody that does know their stuff and to segue that into kind of, because I did try to call on the other day.

37:27

I'm also in my local church context, I'm trying to do my part. I'm not a leader or anything, but I do have a position where I can teach on occasion and things.

37:37

And I want to be a help to the church to maybe reform it, you know, things like that, to get us into a better direction theologically.

37:44

Because it's, you know, it's kind of a typical Southern Baptist church, you know, kind of somewhat provisionist,

37:49

Arminianist type of theology. And so I guess what my question is, is what would your advice and what suggestions maybe for resources would you give to someone in my position who wants to better educate themselves, to be a better help in the local context, but also to have their stuff together in a more public arena?

38:12

You know, there are, um, while we still have free access to information, um, and I, I'm just being honest in saying, uh, you know, world developments could start limiting, uh, even being a quote -unquote

38:32

Christian YouTuber and things like that. We, we all can see, we saw during COVID, you know, what, what could happen there.

38:41

Um, but while we still have access to those things, uh, I would, there are, there are good seminaries that have classes online.

38:52

There used to be, and I'm not sure what happened to it, iTunes U. I don't know if that still exists, but I enjoyed, uh, for example, um, a, a church history class.

39:04

It was on iTunes U from the old covenant seminary, not the new covenant seminary, but the old covenant seminary.

39:10

Um, there are, there are tremendous resources out there. And I just think a lot of people, you know, they read a book or two and then get in front of a camera and somehow having a camera aimed at you makes you an expert on things.

39:28

And, uh, people sort of believe that. I'm not sure that they should, if anything, if anything, it should make you more skeptical, not, not less skeptical, but, but, um, there are certain grounding subjects.

39:43

So if you can, uh, take a church history class, um, or minimally my church history class is available on sermon audio.

39:53

I only went up just a little bit past the reformation. Um, but, uh, so few people, even in apologetics, even have that level of knowledge of where we came from and what came before us and, and have a knowledge of the vocabulary and why we even talk about some of the stuff that we talk about and how, how certain doctrines were fought over.

40:17

And there were even sub biblical, uh, and sub orthodox views that held sway for entire periods in church history in regards to the atonement, for example.

40:30

Um, it's important to, to be aware of those things. And so if you, if you can do some church history, um, and not just from one perspective, but from a couple of different perspectives, um, obviously the, the most important capacity and ability for doing apologetics and theology, uh, that takes the

40:58

New Testament seriously is New Testament Greek. And, um,

41:04

I actually just started taking Greek. Okay. Uh, I mean, on my own, uh, but I got, uh, Bill Mounce's okay.

41:10

I was going to say, I was going to say mounts. When people ask me, I say, most people can't do it.

41:16

Not because they're not smart enough, but because they don't have the discipline and they don't have the encouragement of a class that, um, it's so easy to put something off because everybody has stuff come up in life.

41:31

You know, uh, my poor mom -in -law, my, my mom is helping my mom, my wife, my parents are gone.

41:38

My wife is helping, is taking care of her mom in, in many ways right now. She's still living alone in her home, but my, you know, my wife spent their last three nights because, uh, she was going to adopt a little dog, a little rescue dogs, like 12 years old.

41:54

They go out for their first walk and the dog's doing just fine. But my mother -in -law, uh, trips while walking the dog and falls and hits her face on the sidewalk and breaks her wrist and knocks teeth out.

42:11

And, and, you know, so my wife is just, you know, so you never see that kind of stuff coming.

42:16

You can't budget for it. You can't. And so if you're doing Greek, what happens is the water heater explodes or whatever.

42:26

And you, you, you stop and you, you, you lose the, the consistency because what a class does is you're learning your vocabulary.

42:36

And then as you're doing the readings and stuff, that's in current, that's, that's helping the vocabulary to stick.

42:43

You take a couple of weeks off because you just have to, and it goes and you lose it.

42:49

So I'm not saying that people aren't smart enough to do it. And if mounts, you know, the, the, the, the textbook, the workbook, the programs, he's got his lectures online.

43:00

You can do this whole thing. So that's as close as you're going to get to a class.

43:07

But obviously even then, I think the best way to do it is to see if a close friend wouldn't do it with you.

43:15

A lot of them, they kind of just laugh at me when I say it. Well, that's, you know, that, that, that would be the ideal way to do it.

43:25

So the, the, at least one biblical language, church history, and then yeah. Um, plow your way through, um, a, a serious systematic theology and, uh, learn the, the necessary vocabulary, recognizing that it doesn't matter who

43:45

I read. If I'm reading Hodge, if I'm reading Grudem, if I'm reading Boyce, uh, whatever, whatever it might be, um, you're going to be getting that particular individual's take.

43:58

And, you know, there's going to be disagreement amongst many of the leading systematic theologians, but it helps to expose you to a lot of stuff that you would never get exposed to in a

44:10

Southern Baptist church. Okay. Uh, it really, really would. So I mean, and, and should,

44:19

I know I need to do those things, but should that be something that prevents me from maybe getting my feet wet as far as the

44:26

YouTube side of it already? I mean, I haven't been in ministry for over a decade, but yeah, well, you know,

44:32

I haven't had the formal education. Not necessarily, but you, you, you know, um, as one famous theologian says, a man's got to know his limitations.

44:43

So, um, you know, uh, uh,

44:49

I think I heard him chuckle. Did you get that? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, good. Rich, Rich was,

44:55

Rich was reminding me that we have a lot of Gen Z -ers, uh, uh, listening to the, listening to the program that are going, what theologian was that?

45:05

Uh, the Reverend Dr. Harry Callahan. Um, but anyway, um, you really got to know, uh, and, and don't try to, you know, don't let yourself get drawn in over your head.

45:18

Um, you know, would be, I think the best advice along those lines. Okay. Okay.

45:24

Well, I appreciate it. Uh, that answers my question. Thank you. Okay. Thanks. I pray for your mother in law. All right.

45:29

Thank you. Thank you. God bless. All right. Uh, let's, uh, talk with, uh,

45:34

Jeff about communion. Hi, Jeff. Hey, Dr. White.

45:40

Greetings from the People's Republic of California. Oh, I'm so, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm glad they still let you have, uh, have phone privileges.

45:47

That's, uh, that's a good thing though. We know they're listening in, so be careful what you say. Yeah. I, uh,

45:54

I, I got the chance to meet you in 2021. And when you asked me where I was from, and I told you, you just put your hand on my shoulder and said,

46:01

I'm sorry. Yeah. I I've, I've, you're not the first, I hate to tell you this, but you're, you're not the first person

46:07

I've done that with. So, so there you go. What's up, Jeff? Uh, uh, my question was around,

46:12

I know that you did your series on the reformed view of the Lord's supper, um, and reformed

46:18

Baptist. Yeah. Yeah. One of the, one of the things that I see kind of cropping up in certain, um, neo charismatic and, uh, word of faith preachers is they're moving away from a memorialist view that seemed to be a staple of early

46:35

Pentecostalism and, uh, either implying or explicitly saying that, um,

46:41

Christ is present in the supper either in the spirit or spiritually and things like that.

46:48

Um, from your perspective, would you say that implying that there's a spiritual presence there, is that enough to qualify that as leaning more towards the reformed view of communion or is that, uh,

47:03

I know Calvin has some Ascension language when he writes about it in the institutes, but, um, yeah, yeah.

47:08

What most people don't realize is the, um, the sections on the Lord's supper in the

47:14

London Baptist Confession of Faith, and that's what I preached my sermons on at, at Apologia about two years ago, uh, are, are very much in harmony with Calvin's view of the supper.

47:27

And so, um, they're not strictly Zwinglian memorialistic.

47:33

They're certainly anti -papal transubstantiation, anti -consubstantiation, any of that kind of, um, sacramental, uh, type of thing.

47:43

But there is a recognition that since Christ establishes this, um, you know, baptism is an initiatory rite and hence is necessary to, at the very beginning of the

47:59

Christian life, is obedience to Christ. But the supper is regularly participated in, in obedience to Christ as, as an anamnesis, a remembrance of him.

48:11

And hence, when we do what he has commanded us to do in remembrance of him and in proclamation of his death until he comes, um, that there is a special presence of Christ with his people when they gather in his name and obediently do, uh, and picture his self -giving in their behalf.

48:31

Um, it's not the, um, ubiquity of Christ's body idea that you find in some aspects of Lutheran theology or anything like that at all.

48:44

Um, and it's, there is no concept of sacrifice in the sense of soteriology or having relevance to forgiveness of sin or any of that kind of stuff, but it, it's considerably deeper than the

49:00

Zwinglian view. And hence, I don't think, now

49:06

I've not seen what you're referring to, so I can't, I, I can't comment on it, but I, I suppose it's possible that some people in that movement are reading outside their movement and reading some historical theology and went, oh, that's really cool.

49:24

But the, the point is, is that that view of the supper is really interconnected with, um, a whole lot of the

49:33

Reformed faith and including the, the continuing ministry of the

49:39

Spirit of God to, uh, drive believers to a position of faith and embracing of Scripture as their final authority, which is a little bit tough in some of those movements, uh, to, to really square that with that.

49:55

So, so I, I've not seen it, so I can't really comment on it, but my initial feeling would be, yeah,

50:02

I doubt it. Um, I, I, I can't see how that would be the case, but I could be wrong.

50:08

They could be, you know, I've seen people in some weird movements all of a sudden start reading

50:15

Spurgeon or something and start popping off stuff that doesn't make a lick of sense in their, in their theological system, but they've decided it sounded real good, so they thought they'd run with it.

50:25

So who knows? I don't know. Yeah. Uh, Benny, Benny Hinn has a story he tells of his interaction with a

50:32

Catholic priest, and his conclusion is, well, we disagree. You think he's literally there, but I think

50:38

Christ is there in the Spirit. And, um, Joseph Prince even has a, has a book, and he, he's very clear.

50:46

He says, uh, I, I do not believe, he focuses mainly on John 6, but he says, I do not believe that this is symbolic.

50:52

I do not believe we can take these words to be merely symbolic. And so they, they seem to deny the

50:58

Zwinglian view and, and at least, at the very least imply some sort of spiritual presence, but I didn't know if that was, you know, well,

51:06

I can't tell you much about Joseph Prince. I've, I've not ever read a word he's said, and the only thing I even know why he, only reason

51:13

I even know who he is, is because Michael Brown wrote a book against what he called hyper -grace, and he talked about Prince in that.

51:20

But, um, I, I don't, I don't know how you can look at John 6.

51:26

The, the, actually, the literal reading of John 6 is not the Roman reading of John 6.

51:32

If, if you, if you read it literally, Jesus defines the eating and drinking as coming and believing.

51:40

I mean, that's, before he ever says, eat my flesh, drink my blood, he says, uh, he who comes to me will never hunger, he who believes in me will never thirst.

51:50

So he, he defines the categories before he ever gets to that. So that, that's what makes that the literal reading.

51:56

That's what's so ironic about the Roman Catholic reading is that's not literal. Um, that's ignoring the, the categories definitions that the text itself provides.

52:06

But that requires you to actually read from the beginning of John to the end of John 6. And we already know there are other

52:12

Protestants that don't do that. So anyway. People have a hard time with that. Yeah, they do. I don't know why. All righty, sir.

52:19

Thank you, Dr. White. Thanks. God bless. All right. So you'll be glad to know that, uh,

52:27

Adan and Jeremy are actually over here in the Zoom chat. I, I put them together and Adan has offered to, uh, come alongside

52:36

Jeremy in going through mounts. I guess he just started it himself. So, you know. Well, there you go.

52:42

Well, you know, the thought crossed my mind. Uh, I almost said something like, well, you know, something tells me we've probably got a bunch of people in this audience that are thinking the exact same thing and feeling sort of alone, um, and want to do that.

52:57

Um, and maybe we ought to find some way of hooking everybody up. I'm not sure exactly how that would work, but, uh, you know, cause

53:05

I say it over and over again. Now we're up to three. Okay. The whole group calling in today will soon be

53:11

Greek experts. This is great. Uh, it's wonderful. Uh, but yeah, for just, for just for everybody's information.

53:19

And I've said this many, many times and everybody will tell you that they've talked, if they've talked to me at G three or wherever else

53:25

I'm speaking, they say, how can I learn Greek on my own? Uh, mounts, um, uh, technia,

53:32

I think it's technia .com. Uh, the, he has a very friendly textbook, uh, workbook with assignments, um, parsing programs for your phone, vocabulary programs for your phone and his lectures where he goes through each chapter and answer keys.

53:53

And that that's what you need. And that's how you can do it.

53:59

Yes, sir. So Peter has just now dubbed us AO Mingle. AO Mingle. I think we can't use that.

54:07

We'll probably get sued by someone. Uh, cause you know, okay.

54:14

All right. Uh, now we go to Josh. Hi Josh. Okay.

54:22

Yes, Josh. You're the next contestant on the dividing line.

54:30

Yes, sir. How are you doing Dr. White? Doing all right. Uh, yes, sir.

54:35

Uh, get right to it. Uh, Dr. White, um, been struggling, uh, with, um, some of the language that Reformed Baptists and Reformed folks for that matter, um, use when we're talking about, um, some of the language that was used by our forefathers, um, uh, to develop the

54:53

Nicene Creed and other things. And so I'm currently reading a book called the Trinitarian Controversy that basically does, um, you know, original sources of these conversations leading up to the councils and stuff.

55:05

And so, you know, it's very technical and very heavy, you know, language. And I guess

55:10

I'm just struggling with, I know you have said that you have no problem with extra biblical language as long as that language is derived from the text itself.

55:20

But I guess I'm having a hard time squaring, uh, some of these. No, as long as, as long as what the language is seeking to communicate in the context it's being used is derived from the text of Scripture.

55:36

So in other words, um, it, it should be, uh, we should be able to use different language in communicating biblical concepts in Eastern context, uh,

55:51

China, Japan, where Buddhism and the philosophical, um, underpinnings that found there are prevalent rather than saying to the whole world, we need to only use

56:06

Greek philosophical concepts and Greek philosophical language. The development of Western Christian expressions took place in the fall during, during the rise and fall of the

56:20

Roman empire. Um, but Rome really didn't do a lot of its own, um, in Latin in developing stuff it borrowed from the

56:29

Greeks. And so it's primarily limited to Greek philosophical categories,

56:34

Plato, Aristotle, Neoplatonism and the various schools, nominalism and realism and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

56:42

And unfortunately, uh, what, what has resulted is that becomes the

56:49

Orthodox standard rather than, um, the Orthodox standard being the accuracy, uh, to the biblical text of the concepts that are represented by that language.

57:02

And so I use the term hypostatic union. Hypostatic union, uh, obviously has specific relevance and reference to questions that are being asked at a particular time in history due to particular developments in theology.

57:19

Other questions have been asked and answered, and that raises new questions.

57:25

And so when I affirm the hypostatic union, that doesn't mean that I'm affirming every argument, um, that for example, the

57:36

Cappadocian fathers presented, because when I read the Cappadocian fathers, I'm often going, yeah, that's not really what that text was about.

57:44

That's nah, sorry. Um, and I have to go, I have to be consistent and go, okay.

57:51

But the concept, um, is clearly seeking to accurately express the fact that what we're given is scripture is that Jesus is the

58:06

God man. He is the Lord of glory. He is, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

58:11

Well, you've got to do something with the categories that are introduced by the language of the Lord of glory, because you can't crucify the

58:19

Lord of glory. That's not possible. So the word became flesh, the word eternally existed. You've got to put all these things together.

58:27

Um, and as I've started talking about in December of 2020,

58:32

January, uh, 21, it's, it's like the headlights on, uh, on your, on your vehicle.

58:40

The light is produced by divine revelation and scripture. And, you know,

58:45

I drive a big old honking truck now to pull our big old honking RV around. And, um, we've put a light bar on the front, uh, because I sometimes end up in RV parks that are out in the middle of nowhere with no streetlights.

59:00

Um, so it's nice to have some light, but even with that, I, I put all the lights on my truck on and I can go walking down the road in front of me.

59:09

And, you know, for a while, I'm going to be able to see the rocks and the holes and stuff like that. But you, you get to a point where stuff starts becoming unclear that the light can only go a certain, a certain distance.

59:23

And so the, the, the problem that we have is determining what, what are the necessary, um, implications of biblical revelation and how do we express them?

59:39

And where do we get to the point where we cross the line from necessary implications and conclusions so as to continue to hold biblical truth in balance and move into the realm of theological speculation?

59:54

Because it's just beyond question that the tendency for theologians and theology is to go way past that line and still call it necessary.

01:00:09

Um, and you especially see this within Roman Catholicism. You look at Roman Catholic arguments, uh, for things like the immaculate conception, the bodily assumption, these things are fitting.

01:00:19

This is this, this is that. And it's just so obviously so far beyond anything that the apostles could ever have even dreamt of that it's astonishing, but people are still trying to do the, oh yeah, this is faithful to the biblical revelation.

01:00:37

No, it's not. You, you left, you left the lights of the, of the, the truck behind and you're out there running, wandering around the dark saying, oh,

01:00:45

I can see just fine as you fall off the cliff or whatever else and fall into a mine or whatever it is. So the, that's, that's where the, the, the problem lies is, um, especially ecclesiastical organizations have an investment in saying our theological conclusions are the necessary implications of scripture.

01:01:12

Okay, that has to be true up to a certain point or you're not teaching anything. But how far do you go with that?

01:01:19

And once you go past the lights on your vehicle, you're going to need another source of light and it's not going to be coming from scripture.

01:01:28

And that's when you get, uh, authoritarian systems, traditions, magisteriums, whatever, uh, new revelations, whatever, uh, filling in, uh, the gaps.

01:01:41

And that's where the danger comes in. And for, uh, us, since you mentioned

01:01:46

Reformed Baptists, uh, for us, you know, that's the key issue right now.

01:01:51

How far can you go? Um, and where is that line?

01:01:56

And, uh, every denomination has to, has to deal with that. Probably every church has to deal with that.

01:02:04

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, I won't name names, but somebody you have talked to who talks about how they came to this conclusion of reading those proto -Nicene, uh, you know, fathers and, you know,

01:02:14

Gregory of, uh, of Nysa and all of these, and that kind of was the language that they use.

01:02:20

Um, and, and like you said, and it's very technical, it's very tough, but I, I guess from my perspective where I'm at, where I'm confused and don't know how to answer these brothers who, who want to ask me is, you know, you come to, they come to through all this technical language and their original writings, they talk about, you know, being and person and that different and how they differentiate and they use, you know, different language and stuff.

01:02:42

It's very technical. And we do come away with one being, you know, of God with three persons, you know, and they're, you know, and they're saying, well, that's not in the

01:02:51

Bible, you know? So obviously we, we're using extra biblical language and stuff to communicate that.

01:02:58

So why, why can't you come the full way of embracing these, uh, philosophical, uh, systems or, you know, these metaphysics or whatever?

01:03:06

And I guess I don't have an answer to that. Well, again, uh, the, the, when you, when you look at the arguments that are being put forward, uh, for example,

01:03:16

I like to use the second council of Nysa as an example in the eighth century. Um, they put forward all sorts of metaphysical, uh, philosophical defenses of the veneration of icons.

01:03:30

And they even put forward, uh, biblical texts that they, they are asserting demonstrate the consistency of this, this type of action.

01:03:40

Um, the reality is that almost nothing that council said had anything to do with the apostles.

01:03:48

It was 99 % political. Um, and you, you could never look someone in the eye and seriously say that if I explained what

01:03:59

I believe about this, the apostles, that they would agree with what I was saying. It's just, it's just not possible. You have to believe in the establishment of some kind of magisterium, um, that can develop doctrine and, and leave the apostles in the dust, uh, to come up with the idea that second

01:04:17

Nysa has some kind of validity or, or teaching. Um, and again, many of the, um, of, of the post -Nysene, the developers of post -Nysene orthodoxy, again, it's worthwhile to consider what's being said.

01:04:36

It's important to answer certain questions because once you affirm the full deity of Christ, um, as the new

01:04:42

Testament plainly does, uh, then there are questions about, well, what's the relationship with the divine and human in Christ.

01:04:48

That's a, that's a perfectly valid question to deal with. As long as you recognize that once you leave biblical revelation, the value of the language you adopt is going to be directly correspondent to its faithfulness to the apostolic witness.

01:05:06

And so, um, you know, I, the, the, the post -Nysene fathers say many good things about the doctrine of God, but they also had some other beliefs that were, that they also use the same kind of argumentation for that most of us today don't believe and we don't accept those things.

01:05:29

And so, you know, what, what do you do when you hear them using terms like tradition and they believe that there are traditions about, you know, trying baptism, you get to be baptized three times, sometimes facing forward, um, uh, in the nude, uh, and that they have tradition that demonstrates this?

01:05:49

Well, we, we all go, yeah, I don't think so. Well, okay, then what, when they say they have tradition that then defines other terminology on more central doctrines, why do we just go, well,

01:06:02

I guess I have to accept it because they said it. No, it, the question is, uh, when they are dealing with any particular biblical text, um, you have to hold them to the exact same standard that you would hold anybody today to, uh, and that to me is, is where you, you draw that line and you can learn from them.

01:06:26

You can go, man, I had never even thought about that. That's very, very interesting. But it's when you, you go, and as long as they said it, and as long as somebody can quote them saying it, then now the burden is on you to explain why you don't believe that rather than upon them to demonstrate that what that particular writer said is in fact consistent with the biblical, uh, revelation itself.

01:06:55

Because remember they're, they're explaining these things within various contexts. They're, they're dealing with, uh,

01:07:01

Polynarianism, they're dealing with Nestorianism, they're dealing with Eutychianism, and they're also dealing in political contexts.

01:07:09

We, the farther you go into history, the farther after Nicaea you get, the more that becomes an inextricable element of the context of these writings.

01:07:23

And I would hope that we, we were not, we would not have a major argument that we shouldn't be looking to, um, extricate ancient politics from the formulations of Christian doctrine that we, that we hold to today.

01:07:40

Uh, I think that would be a good thing to do, but there are a lot of folks that get really twitchy, uh, when you start going, well, you know, um, there, there were, you know, you know, the

01:07:51

Empress was involved in this, right? You know, and she wanted this done and, and this guy wanted that done.

01:07:56

And, and, oh, you must be a heretic. It's like, no, I just read church history. So I've seen what's happened in the past.

01:08:04

So, um, yeah, that's, that's, that's where I stand. And obviously I've been called a heretic and everything else for saying ultimately, no matter what our formulation is, it, it needs to derive its authority from its consistency with biblical revelation.

01:08:23

And so I'm not saying that you can't use extra biblical language. In fact, I have a little section on the use of extra biblical language in the

01:08:30

Forgotten Trinity that I quote from B .B. Warfield, uh, because he explains why we need to use it and why we can remain biblically faithful while doing so.

01:08:43

But obviously it has very strict limitations. Okay.

01:08:52

I can't, I can't, I can't hear you anymore. Sorry, sorry,

01:08:59

Josh. We're gonna have to have to move on. Cause I can't, I can't hear you. You're, you sound like you're calling from Mars.

01:09:06

You're Sorry, Josh. Can't hear you. Um, let's try to get one more in.

01:09:13

Sorry, everybody else. Uh, I was trying to be brief, but these are in -depth questions, you know, they're, uh, uh, let's at least try to get to a

01:09:22

Blake here. Uh, I did go, I did go in order. Um, let's talk to Blake about, uh, equal ultimacy.

01:09:29

Hey, Dr. White. Can you hear me? I can. Wonderful. Uh, thanks.

01:09:35

Thanks for having me. Sorry. That's my child in background playing with some toys. Um, my question is on equal ultimacy.

01:09:41

I'm actually the same guy that asked the question at the end of the, uh,

01:09:46

Steve Cassie debate, which wasn't really a debate, of course. Um, but, um, essentially what

01:09:53

I'm trying to work through is distinctions, um, uh, in equal ultimacy that are relevant.

01:10:02

So when I had asked back then, um, I essentially was equating, uh, equal ultimacy with God having some type of active part in reprobation.

01:10:15

And then you immediately corrected me and you had said in response, essentially, it's not that God is not involved in election reprobation, but that there's not that symmetry right there, which of course

01:10:31

I agree with. But then there's another distinction where it's not just, um, how

01:10:38

God applies the eternal decree of election reprobation in time, but it's also the decrees themselves, whether or not they're equally ultimate.

01:10:47

And so, for example, with, uh, Robert Godfrey and Ligonier Ministries, he has described that the decrees themselves are equally ultimate, but then the application of them in time are not.

01:11:00

And I just want to bring this up because I, I've just had a confusion in reading, you know, different Calvinist authors, also including

01:11:10

R .C. Sproul, who essentially says if there's any sort of, like, active part that God takes in reprobation, and especially in the application of reprobation in time, then that's just hyper -Calvinism and we should just absolutely reject it.

01:11:27

But I'm not really able to square that with, you know, the language of Scripture where it talks about, you know,

01:11:34

God sending strong delusions so that they believe the lies, so that they're condemned, and, you know, the language of hardening hearts, which

01:11:41

I guess would also get into, you know, primary cause and secondary cause and so forth. So I was wondering if you could help set me straight or help give more relevant concepts to equal ultimacy so that I know how to navigate the issues, because I think

01:11:59

I've gotten better over the years, but I'm still not quite sure how to situate myself.

01:12:06

Well, I'll be honest. I've never heard a Calvinist talking about multiple decrees.

01:12:15

The decree of God includes everything else. I mean, it's the expression of the one divine will in creation.

01:12:24

He has decreed what he's going to accomplish, and that includes the identity of the elect and therefore the non -elect as well.

01:12:35

So I wouldn't even know how to interact with the idea that there are differing decrees that have differing levels of authority or actuation or anything like that.

01:12:49

All I'm concerned about when I hear someone using the language of equal ultimacy is when people say, well, you know,

01:12:57

God has elected a certain people and he has elected another people unto damnation, as if the action of the extension of divine grace to one portion of Adam's offspring is the same extension of power that is used to reprobate another portion, the rest of Adam's offspring.

01:13:31

And my concern is that it communicates the idea that they are the same thing and they're not the same thing.

01:13:39

We are all in Adam, and in Adam we are the enemies of God, and that doesn't mean that we're all equally rebellious or anything like that.

01:13:51

We rebel in different ways, and God in his grace restrains some of us more than he restrains others.

01:13:59

And by where you're born, you know, I wasn't born into a culture that eats people, and so I've never gone to that level of things.

01:14:08

But even that is a part of the extension of a form of grace, common grace we call it, but the point is that it is a expression of divine grace and power that brings about the salvation of the elect.

01:14:26

Union with Christ, adoption, all these things are undeserved, unmerited, and are an astonishing expression of divine power to bring about an end result that glorifies

01:14:44

God, whereas the just leaving of people to their own desserts, all part of God accomplishing his final ends and which will likewise result in his glory, but in that instance it's the glory that comes from the demonstration of his holiness rather than the glory that comes from the salvation of the elect.

01:15:14

That's a very different thing. God does not have to extend power to reprobate people, if anything, so as to accomplish his purposes.

01:15:24

He has to extend power to restrain the evil of those who will abide under his wrath.

01:15:33

So it's when people just present the two sides as if they're the same action, just one negative and one positive.

01:15:45

That's what I'm trying to say is no, they're completely and utterly different actions at all.

01:15:53

One is strict justice, and even that strict justice tempered by common grace, the other is astonishing expression of grace, not just unmerited but demerited favor.

01:16:12

That's why I deny the language of equal ultimacy is that it confuses that terminology and results in confusion,

01:16:26

I think, on the part of a lot of people. I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to when you talk about decrees.

01:16:34

I'm not familiar with that language. Yeah, I understand that God's eternal decree, we can talk about it in a unified sense, like it's singular, but then we can talk about different aspects, right?

01:16:52

I'm just bringing this up from my own understanding, but also because non -Calvinists like to use this type of language so much in the sense of saying, you hold to equal ultimacy, therefore you make

01:17:06

God the chargeable cause of sin. I guess part of this will get into the difference between primary cause and secondary cause.

01:17:15

Just as I'm looking into some of the literature, whether it's some of the comments that R .C.

01:17:21

Sproul has made or Peter Salmon's book or elsewhere, I haven't yet gotten to the point where I know exactly what's being discussed so that I can respond to some of those objections and so that I situate myself so that I don't go too far.

01:17:37

Yeah, some of this conversation goes back to issues related to superlapsarianism, infralapsarianism, how you order these things, how you see purpose being expressed in the divine decrees.

01:18:01

People have criticized Robert Raymond for some of his discussions, even though I found his discussion of why he wouldn't identify as either infra or supra really useful, because he said,

01:18:15

I think you need to organize this on lines of the expression of God's purpose. And so that results in some some changes there.

01:18:23

But yeah, there's obviously hesitation on the part of even a lot of Reform people today that wasn't necessarily present in Calvin and the second and third generation

01:18:37

Reformers, but has developed since then. So you're going to see more strict and what we might call hard expressions in regards to reprobation among some people.

01:18:54

And of course, the vast majority of people today don't even use the term, wouldn't even know what it meant. So it's not an overly popular topic, to be certain.

01:19:08

And like theology proper, we have to be careful just how far we take it.

01:19:14

And we have to be careful that we don't try to answer a lot of questions that are not themselves answered in scripture.

01:19:25

That is a tendency for a lot of people. And once you get into the interface of the eternal with the temporal, it's real easy to end up so far out in the weeds that even an intellect like Jonathan Edwards, I think, went beyond the bounds and ended up in a massive contradiction when he tried to do that, because we just don't have enough biblical revelation to answer some of the questions that can be asked out in that area.

01:19:56

So that's about the best I can give you. Yeah. A lot of this has to do with working through issues and historical theology, and I don't want to make it seem like the systematic theologies that were written from centuries ago or what we need to stake our claim on them today.

01:20:16

And I don't want to just impose them on the text, but because people still use the phrase, equal ultimacy, or because somebody as popular as R .C.

01:20:27

Sproul essentially saying that if you have God having any active role in reprobation, that's just equal ultimacy or a hyper -Calvinist, and then there's just the sort of railroading that goes on instead of looking through some of the finer issues.

01:20:44

And this isn't something that should keep us up at night or anything, but I don't want the kind of me being a high

01:20:51

Calvinist, I guess. I don't want to take that extra step, and I also want to find the justification for denying certain things when

01:21:03

I see that active role in the language of Scripture. Yeah. Well, I think the safest thing to do is preach the

01:21:13

Word, and when the young guys during the fellowship after church want to be up till three o 'clock in the morning parsing every little thing, just let them know you're older than them, you're going to go to bed.

01:21:30

That's what I do. That's my way out. I need to go to bed. That's right.

01:21:36

There you go. All right. Thanks for your call, brother. All right. Thank you. All right.

01:21:41

God bless. Bye -bye. All right. Caleb, Nick, Peter, Brenda, and Matt, sorry, but we have already gone 21 minutes over time.

01:21:49

So that sort of gives us an idea of just how many calls we can try to cram into an hour. Yeah. Right around that area.

01:21:57

So yeah. Don't erase any of that. That helps me to type up the blog article afterwards. So anyway, thanks for the great calls.

01:22:05

We don't discuss real simple stuff on the phone calls when they come in.

01:22:10

We end up going for the seminary level stuff here, but that's the nature of the topics that we address.

01:22:19

So again, my hope, honestly, is maybe sometime next week, toward the end of next week, certainly the

01:22:32

Monday of the week following, I hope to be doing the dividing line from the new unit.

01:22:39

Like I said, don't expect fancy backgrounds. It's going to be a white blackout shade behind the couch.

01:22:48

That's what we've got right now. But we are hoping, it's not looking real good right now, we're hoping to pick her up tomorrow.

01:22:58

It's probably looking more like Monday, but get in there, start getting cables, put where they're going to be put and testing this, testing that.

01:23:08

Lots and lots and lots of stuff to do. And don't forget to be praying for the debates coming up in Louisiana.

01:23:14

You have the microphone up? I do. This is really interesting. These guys are still chatting over here.

01:23:20

I think we're up to five. We started a Greek movement today. And they're getting together.

01:23:27

They're creating a group room and they're going to open up mounts and go for it. That's the way to do it.

01:23:34

I explained that just the way human beings are, I remember my first year

01:23:41

Greek class and there was a sense in which it was so hard and so challenging because the first semester in college,

01:23:51

I thankfully, thank you Lord, took it in college for taking in the seminary. We met four days a week and I remember sitting in the hallways, that building doesn't exist anymore sadly, but I remember sitting in the hallway of Fleming classroom building with the 12 other guys in that class because it got whittled down.

01:24:13

We wondered who Judas was going to be. And no, we did. And, oh, you're looking at something else.

01:24:19

And we're all sitting there with our rings of vocabulary cards and we're quizzing each other.

01:24:26

And it's sort of like when you're in battle, you know, you're suffering together. You grow together.

01:24:31

I remember those guys. And so it does help. It is an encouragement along those lines.

01:24:38

So Peter says that he needs only enough Greek to be able to read your tweets. That ain't much.

01:24:45

That ain't much. That is not much. So anyways, all right. Thanks for watching