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Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the
United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
James White. Hey, good morning and welcome to The Dividing Line, a special, well, it's supposed to be a special Tuesday morning broadcast because we announced last week that we were going to be doing this on Tuesday evenings, but we lied.
And hey, you know, it's sort of like a game, it's can I find The Dividing Line on live.
And you get a special prize or something if you manage to work that out, I guess. And the prize is that you get to listen live, you get to call in and do all sorts of neat, fun stuff like that.
Anyway, the reason we're doing this basically is because we're going to have a special program today.
It is going, we're going to go 20 minutes long. You might say, why not half an hour long? Well, because we're going high tech basically.
We are, we're doing the CD thing these days, you know, and CDs don't go 90 minutes, at least not the old style
CDs, the normal style CDs. I mean, on MP3 it could go forever. But anyway, so we're going to go till 1220
Arizona time, 80 minutes today. That'll leave time hopefully for some phone calls. If you'd like to make some comments about what we're going to talk about at the beginning of the program today, that's great, 877 -753 -3341.
I wouldn't bother really calling right now, simply because I have some commentary to present first, and then once we get that opportunity taken care of, that'll give us the basis for a discussion later on.
And the primary reason we're going long today and doing it earlier in the day, it would run into things in the evening if we did it tonight.
Also there's not going to be a program this Thursday. I'm going to be in Springfield, Illinois, for the big seminar we're doing there over this coming weekend.
And then it looks like we probably won't have any dividing lines on next week, unless we do one early
Tuesday morning. I haven't talked to the powers that be yet about that.
That's a possibility. Maybe even a Monday evening thing. We'll have it on the front page.
The front page of Alpha Omega Ministries, by the way, has become active. It's a living document now, as it was just being described a little while ago.
For those of you who have become accustomed to the front page not being updated for months and months at a time, that's probably not going to be happening much anymore, unless I'm not in town.
And if I can remember to get the proper software on my laptop, I might even be able to take care of that from a distance, in essence.
And the reason for that is, instead of, you know, the problem with the front page was
I was constantly having to come up with a full -size article. And you know, when you write a full -size article, people, in essence, you know, require, they hold you to a higher standard, in essence.
They basically say, well, you know, if you've written a full article, then you took time to study it, and I'm going to hold you to a higher standard.
Actually, anything I say gets held to that standard, but at least with some logical ramifications, the longer things that I write.
So what we've done is we've blogged the front page. And I know everybody has their blogs today.
But you know what? It's a whole lot easier than writing something really long.
And there's lots of interesting things that the folks in the chat channel, I talk with them about it every day.
I'll see something online. Look at this. Consider what that means in light of what the scriptures say here. Well, it's real easy to, you know, throw that up there and voila, you have a blog.
And so if you look at it today, there's, I don't know, there's four or five things on it. Once I update this one,
I'll start pulling stuff off the bottom and putting it into an archive so we'll have the past stuff archived and, you know, sort of how blogs work.
And for those of you who are wondering, I didn't know this. I think it was tired of Utah Mike up there in Utah that explained what blog is.
It comes from web log and you just take the W E off and you've got a blog. That's where it came from.
For those of you who didn't know that, I didn't know that either, but now I do. So I am now part of the elite people and don't even get into elite.
I don't want to hear about elite. That's a whole nother thing that really starts getting into really geeky stuff. But anyway, so up there on that we have, uh, we have a new blog and that's going to keep people,
I think a little more updated. And what that also means is right there at the top, if you look even right now, if you're listening live right there in big red letters, it says we're doing the dividing line at 11 a .m.
Mountain standard time on Tuesday, and that's going to be your best way of keeping up. And that might actually keep things a little more current there.
So, uh, be watching the main page of, uh, a O M I N .org.
And you'll know when we're going to be on, maybe if we remember or something like that. So why are we doing this today?
Well, first I was going to be spending some time, uh, talking about, uh, beyond Calvinism, Arminianism and inductive media theology of salvation by C Gordon Olson, which in essence is a, a slightly better version of, of a combination of, of Geisler and hunt and Vance, uh, all sort of rolled into one.
And, uh, when I say slightly better, they're actually, you know, once in a while you'll be sitting there going, Oh, grief.
Oh, there's, there's that same old thing there again, up that you're not listening to what we said here. And then all of a sudden, bang, all of a sudden he'll say, now, you know, the
Calvinists have a point here and he'll make a statement. For example, I, uh, on, um, page two 40,
I was sitting here going through John six and the stuff on John six is really bad. I mean, it's not good stuff, but in the middle of that,
I'm reading along and I'm going, I wonder when he's going to get to John chapter 12, you know, leap out of John six and try to drag
John 12 in. And, uh, instead I run across this, the Lord Jesus used the same word.
How QO again in John 12 32. And I, if I'd be lifted up from the earth, we'll draw them into myself in the context, especially of 1220.
It is clear that he is referring to Gentiles as well as Jews. And he speaks of all men, which we know can be translated as all kinds of men.
Therefore, I would not claim this passage as a proof of general redemption. And it's like, woohoo. Yay. Uh, something, you know, bright light, uh, blinding.
Ooh, give me my sunglasses. Uh, neat thing. So we're going to talk a little bit about that. But since I already wanted to do that and had told some folks about that, something then happened yesterday, as most of you know, uh,
ABC last night and ABC stands for always bashing Christianity or anything but Christianity.
Uh, we can come up with a lot of things, uh, that would be reflective of the fact that ABC is the, uh, the news outlet that is it, that is most clear and open about the fact that we are not
Christians. We don't like Christians. We think Christianity is stupid and we're going to do everything we can to mock it.
Uh, we are journalists, but we are going to use our journalistic position to completely destroy any claim of objectivity whatsoever.
And we are going to mock Christianity in every possible way we can, uh, both directly by attacking it as well as by, um, uh, airing, uh, the most egregiously, uh, uh, perverted stuff we possibly can and pushing the envelope and all the rest of that stuff.
So anyway, uh, ABC last night, uh, aired and I was thankful that at least here on the
West Coast, uh, well, I'm not really the West Coast, but in the Western time zones, mountain and Pacific, uh, which are now different for us here in Phoenix.
But anyway, uh, that sort of got knocked back into, uh, the real late hours of the night, uh, by Monday night football.
So, so sports continued to, um, uh, to, uh, you know, edit things, but ABC aired it's, uh,
Jesus, Mary Magdalene and Da Vinci, uh, primetime special thingamabobby Glover.
And I had heard about this thing coming. I'd heard about a couple of weeks ago and the yesterday Sean Hannity had, um, had the reporter at the, did it, uh, no, no disrespect tenant, but, uh, on the, on the program and was, uh, you know, talking about that and all the rest of that stuff.
Well, I was heading to a doctor's appointment yesterday and everything turned out fine. Thank you. And, um, uh, as I'm walking into the building, my phone rings and it is
Michael Fallon, good old Mike from back in Florida. Actually, he's younger than I am. So I should say, sorry,
Mike, he normally does listen and make long story short for a while, the possibility existed.
It was never really big possibility, but it was enough of a possibility that I really had to act on it. There was a slight possibility of having an opportunity to respond to this stuff on a, a national television program.
I was gonna have to run down to a TV studio and do all the rest of this stuff. And, um, it didn't work out.
In fact, that program didn't even end up addressing the issue last night. Uh, probably wisely since it would have come on right after it had shown only in the
East and in the West, no one would have had any idea what in the world you were talking about. So I guess that makes sense. Uh, maybe they'll do something about later.
I don't know, but, uh, there was going to be an opportunity. And so it forced me to gather up, you know,
I've been reading a few little things, but, but when you're not thinking about doing anything special on the
Da Vinci code and all the rest of this stuff, you just sort of read some stuff. You, you, I had a bunch of bookmarks that I had put together and had started reading some articles and then bookmarked it and said, you know, if need be, come back to it later, et cetera, et cetera.
So, uh, last night, uh, we recorded the program. I'm gonna play a few clips for you.
No, we did not stay up till all hours in the morning. It's, it's nice to have access to a satellite system. Uh, but we recorded it and, um, obviously, you know, that's why we're doing this special program today.
Uh, obviously the big issue, um, is, well, first of all, this is nothing new except for the, the new packaging, uh, the book by Dan Brown, which has been a bestseller now for a number of weeks, the
Da Vinci code, uh, published by Doubleday. Uh, 2495.
Uh, if you pay the full price for the thing, not sure if you could even find it for full price anywhere, but anyway, um, this, um, the only thing that's new about this is that the packaging, this is old, old, old stuff.
It's, it's the Gnostic Gospels, um, mingled together with, um, uh,
Grail mythology and, and the whole nine yards. It, it, it really, to, to anyone who is familiar with the gospel of Thomas and, and second century
Gnosticism and the, the struggle of the, the early church, uh, against that, you know,
I've got some, some, uh, students that, uh, through Columbia Evangelical, especially that are, uh, studying church history.
And, uh, one of them joked just this past week, um, something along the lines of,
I think I'll do something unique. I'll write something against Marcion. What he was referring to the fact is that for centuries, uh, early church writers wrote against Marcion.
I mean, the guy made a, made a splash. Well, he was a, an early Gnostic. He had a particular
Gnostic view of, of, uh, things and, and you had Valentinian Gnosticism and, and it was a, it was a major, it was the major, uh, after Judaism in the first century, it was the major apologetic, uh, concern from a religious perspective, what we might call, um, interfaith apologetics over against, um, an apologetic against, uh, the philosophers of the day, you know, things like that.
It was a big thing in the early church. Very, very big. And so if you're familiar with those things, if you've read the
Gospel of Thomas and, and you've, you've gone through all that stuff, um, uh, you obviously recognize the necessity of, of dealing with these things.
You, you know, where it's coming from. There's nothing new there. Uh, by the way, do excuse me. I should have done this right at the beginning.
For those of you tuning in going, Hey, where's Jerry Medetics? Um, he said he couldn't be here today.
Um, his, he had initially said this week would be fine. We, uh, I tried to arrange for that. I'm too busy.
Uh, I've offered him one opportunity. Uh, the only opportunity that I've got is the 18th of this month.
And if he can't make it for that, well, uh, we tried and, uh, uh, did our best.
So I'm, should have mentioned that right off the top. Please forgive me. Uh, we will just simply put it up there.
And, uh, since this is the digital age, just cut and paste that up there in your favorite, uh, sound editing software and all will be well.
So we go back to what you're saying about the Da Vinci code. So this is, this is a work of fiction. Uh, it is, it is a work of fiction.
It is. And when I first picked up the book, uh,
I thought, well, you know, the, the perfect defense for Dan Brown, the author, uh, in, in when he's on ABC tonight would be, uh, basically along the lines of, um, folks, it's fiction.
It's, it's just, it's just a story. It's, it's just, you know, I'm just making things up as I go, but that's not how it's being presented.
Is it those of you who saw the program? No, that's not how Dan Brown's presenting it. It is being presented as if this is, this has meaningful historical validity to it.
When in reality, it is a mishmash and frequently a grossly, uh, perverted, twisted, um, errant mishmash of unfounded mythology.
Uh, it's, it's just so bad to anyone who has almost any, even a surface level knowledge of, um, of history, uh, to just boggle the mind.
And yet, because the writer is a good writer, uh, we live in a society now where it's not the substance of what you say, it's how you say it.
It's, it's all appearance. And when it comes to writing, it's, can you write nicely? You know, I'm not,
I don't want to insult the man by the parallel. Uh, but it is somewhat like why so many people are willing to just grab hold of N .T.
Wright's views on justification. He's a good writer. He writes about difficult subjects in a way people can understand.
And he shows passion. Well, you know, Dan Brown writes, writes a good story. And so, uh, people glom onto it as if somehow this has some sort of meaningful, uh, historical element to it.
And then of course, what he does is he does what anybody who wants to sell a book, um, and believe me,
Dan Brown has sold a thousand times more books than I will ever sell already. Uh, so he knows how to do it.
And that is in essence, uh, all you got to do is make plausible connections, especially in a fictional context.
And the American people, especially we'll just go, wow, that's cool.
That sounds like it's really important. And the reason we're going to address it this morning, uh, even briefly is this obviously has and will become an apologetic issue.
I know how many times I've had to deal with the books that came out like Holy Blood, Holy Grail back in the eighties. And most people have forgotten about that.
Well, now it's coming back again. If it's even mentioned here, I'll mention in a second here, the DaVinci code, once these things get out there, even though they are protected under the cloak of, of, of fiction, so you don't have to stand up to the same rigors of when you're writing nonfiction, they are presented as if they are not fiction, as if they have some kind of, of meaning to them.
Now you need to understand right off the bat that Dan Brown is an anti -Catholic. Now, when
I say that you might go, well, so are you, you know, there is a vast difference between being a committed
Protestant apologist, a committed Reformed Baptist apologist, who has theological, biblical, and historical objections to Roman Catholicism, especially since the positive claims of Rome would say that my beliefs are wrong.
There's a vast difference between being that and being an anti -Catholic like Dan Brown.
There is a vast difference between saying all the evils in the world are due to, to Rome, and I know of fundamentalists who are that kind of anti -Catholic, that, you know, there's a, there's a pope, there's a bishop, there's a priest behind every bush, they're just waiting to jump out and get you.
That's, that's, you know, there are those kinds of folks, and if you think that's what I am, then you obviously have either never read a word that I've, I've written or listened to a word that I've said or listened to a single debate, or you are so incredibly biased that, that rationality is, has, has waved goodbye to you a long, long time ago.
Those are the, those are the possibilities. Honest Roman Catholics will admit, yeah, White's perspective and White's approach is very different than all of that stuff.
His response to Catholicism is theological and biblical in nature. It isn't all this stuff like that.
Well, Dan Brown is an anti -Catholic. Dan Brown's book is specifically designed to attack the
Catholic Church as an institution and vilify it as an institution, and in the process, and this came through in the
ABC thing last night, to, in essence, identify Christianity with the Roman Catholic Church, which, of course,
I object to very, very strongly. In fact, Rich and I were talking about one of the statements made by one of the
Catholic priests, O 'Brien, that they kept interviewing last night. He was lots of fun, wasn't he?
And one of the things he said was, well, Christianity has had a very unhealthy attitude towards sex.
And by the way, there's a lot of sex in this book. That's one of the reasons I'm sure it sells and is being referred to other people.
But he said Christianity has had a very unhealthy attitude towards sex. No, Catholicism did.
You see, from his perspective, since Catholicism, and I'm not talking about Dan Brown here, I'm talking about the priest, since Catholicism and Christianity are the same things, then his statement, for him, makes perfect sense.
He's not even including what any of the rest of us would be saying. There's no question that especially during the medieval period, and starting even earlier than that with the rise of monasticism, there was in the external formalized church, even before it could be called a
Roman Catholic Church, very unbiblical and truly non -Christian views concerning sexuality.
No two ways about it, no argument about it at all. But by saying that is
Christianity, that's where the problem comes in. Now, let me read some stuff in the book and let me then play some stuff from the program, because if I keep going like this, we're never going to get, we're not even going to make it in the 80 minutes.
Chapter 60, if you want to skip the garbage and just get to the heart of the matter, chapter 60, starting on page 253 of the
Da Vinci Code, the hardback edition, which is only available, I think, really gives you the idea.
It starts off, sangrial, sangrial, sangrial, royal blood, holy grail, which, by the way, is a completely fallacious and absurd division of a word into improper parts.
But anyways, the holy grail is Mary Magdalene, the mother of the royal bloodline of Jesus Christ.
By the way, the whole theory here is that the grail literature, the grail mythology, which most people only know because of Monty Python, instead of looking for either that or the
Indiana Jones stuff, the idea here is that instead of the grail being the cup from the
Last Supper, that in reality, the grail is Mary Magdalene, that she contained the blood of Jesus in the sense of having born a child to him as his wife.
This is the great secret that you look at the Last Supper painting by Da Vinci, and there's no cup, but John looks like a woman, and therefore that's actually
Mary Magdalene. I'm not sure where John went. They're supposed to be the Twelve Apostles, but John, I guess, was out on an errand or something, and so John becomes
Mary Magdalene, and therefore this is Da Vinci, who was a part of this special secret order that went back to France, where allegedly
Mary Magdalene went and had this child, which was a daughter, and all the rest of the stuff.
He was a part of the secret order, et cetera, et cetera. So he was hiding this in his painting. See, I know
I'm ruining all the plot here, but who cares? If you're going to get on national television and use your silly fiction to attack the
Christian faith, expect folks to reveal your stupid plot in the process. Anyway, so in Chapter 60, you've got this conversation going on in a library, and as you can see, my dear,
T -Bing said, hobbling toward a bookshelf, Leonardo is not the only one who has been trying to tell the world the truth about the
Holy Grail. The royal bloodline of Jesus Christ has been chronicled in exhaustive detail by scores of historians.
Now, again, in a fiction book, that's one thing, but this is being taken seriously, and to say things like chronicled in exhaustive detail, those are words that have meaning in nonfiction, in true history, and there is no such thing as this true history to begin with, so it's just amazing.
So he says this, he ran a finger down a row of several dozen books, ah, what books do we have?
Let's see. Sophie tilted her head and scanned the list of titles, The Templar Revelation, Secret Guardians, The True Identity of Christ, The Woman with the
Alabaster Jar, Mary Magdalene and the Holy Grail, The Goddess in the Gospels, Reclaiming the Sacred Feminine.
All of these are wild -eyed, conspiracy -laden fantasies that, from a serious historical perspective, are absurd, but these are the foundations that are being used.
Here is perhaps the best -known tome, Teebing said, pulling a tattered hard cover from the stack and handing it to her. The cover read,
Holy Blood, Holy Grail, the acclaimed international bestseller. So here you have this book of fiction, giving as its documentation of its historical claims, further books of fiction that have been published in previous generations.
It's just a repackaging of this whole garbage. And so he mentions this book and this
Sophie, his names are funny in themselves, what was the Church's reaction to the book?
Notice, Church, capital C, i .e., Rome. There is nobody else. Nobody else even matters in this perspective.
Outrage, of course, but that was to be expected. After all, this was a secret the Vatican had tried to bury in the fourth century.
Notice, Vatican equals Church. That's part of what the Crusades were about, gathering and destroying information.
The threat Mary Magdalene posed to the men of the early Church was potentially ruinous. Not only was she the woman to whom
Jesus had assigned the task of founding the Church, but she also had physical proof that the
Church's newly proclaimed deity had spawned a mortal bloodline. The Church, in order to defend itself against the
Magdalene's power, perpetuated her image as a whore and buried evidence of Christ's marriage to her, thereby diffusing any potential claims that Christ had a surviving bloodline and was a mortal prophet.
Well, there you got it in one paragraph. In one paragraph, Mary Magdalene was supposed to be the founder of the
Church, Jesus isn't God, and the Inquisition was to wipe out all evidence of this, that the
Church proclaimed Jesus as a deity at the Council of Nicaea. It doesn't say it here, but it does later. We've all heard all this stuff before.
You go to real history, not to the history you can just simply write for the fun of it, and just throw in anything you want, make things up as you go along.
You go to real history, and the idea of the deity of Christ being founded in the
Council of Nicaea is absurd. Remember Ignatius? Multiple times referring to Jesus Christ as our
God? Oh, well, that just doesn't appear in the book. Well, I guess we sort of missed that in the extensive and exhaustive research of Dan Brown, the historian.
I'm sorry, but this stuff is just so... By the way, surely there is one thing to be said.
The New Testament does not identify Mary Magdalene as a whore. It does say that she was delivered to seven demons.
Now, that's not overly good in and of itself, but it does not identify her as a whore. She was an important person in Jesus' ministry, no question about that.
All you have to do is look up Mary Magdalene, she's definitely there, no question about it. But at least the story was somewhat correct in that, again, good old
Pope Gregory, Pope Gregory, the same one who wrote the allegorical interpretation of Job that gave rise to the doctrine of purgatory in the
Middle Ages, who couldn't have exegeted his way out of a wet paper bag, likewise preached a sermon in which he identified
Mary Magdalene as a prostitute. And so this feeds right into their theory at that point. Ah, see, this
Pope, you know, he's trying to bury the Mary Magdalene stuff. No, the guy was just clueless. The guy had no idea which end was up biblically.
He couldn't, he could not read the scriptures and come up with the proper interpretation of his life depended on it.
Now, of course, Rome doesn't like that because now we're getting into a theological aspect. How do you get a bishop of Rome who couldn't read the
Bible for his life? But that's the point. And so, yeah, let's know two ways about it.
Pope Gregory did that. So anyways, so Jesus, just a mortal prophet, not the church's newly proclaimed deity.
Yada, yada, yada. Sophie glanced at Langdon, who nodded. Sophie, the historical evidence supporting this is substantial.
I admit to being said the assertions are dire, but you must understand the church's powerful motivations to conduct such a cover up.
They could never have survived public knowledge of a bloodline. A child of Jesus would undermine the critical notion of Christ's divinity and therefore the
Christian church, which declared itself the sole vessel through which humanity could access the divine and gain entrance to the kingdom of heaven.
Are you starting to see the real purpose of this whole thing here? I hope so. Then they start talking about roses and they go into Eros and female genitalia, folks.
Let's just be honest about it. I'm not going to read that section. But then
I'll continue right afterwards. The point here, Langdon said, motioning back to the bookshelf, is that all these books substantiate the same historical claim.
Folks, none of them are history. They're all pure fiction. They're conspiracy -laden wackoism.
But when wackos quote wackos in postmodern America, all of a sudden it becomes history. That Jesus was a father,
Sophie was still uncertain. Yes, Teebing said, and that Mary Magdalene was the womb that carried his royal lineage.
The Priory of Sion, to this day, still worships Mary Magdalene as the goddess, the holy grail, the rose and divine mother.
Sophie again flashed on the ritual in the basement. According to the Priory, Teebing continued,
Mary Magdalene was pregnant at the time of the crucifixion. For the safety of Christ's unborn child, she had no choice but to flee the
Holy Land. With the help of Jesus' trusted uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, Mary Magdalene secretly traveled to France, then known as Gaul.
There she found safe refuge in the Jewish community. It was here in France that she gave birth to a daughter. Her name was Sarah.
Sophie glanced up. They actually know the child's name? Far from far more than that, Magdalene's and Sarah's lives were scrutinously chronicled by their
Jewish protectors. Remember that Magdalene's child belonged to the lineage of Jewish kings, David and Solomon.
For this reason, the Jews in France considered Magdalene's sacred royalty and revered her as the progenitor of the royal line of kings.
Oh, yeah, I'm sure that's exactly how Jews would have responded in the first century. Yeah, yeah. Countless scholars that era chronicled
Mary Magdalene's days in France, including the birth of Sarah and the subsequent family tree. Sophie was startled.
There exists a family tree of Jesus Christ? Indeed. And it is purportedly one of the cornerstones of the
Sangreal documents, a complete genealogy of the early descendants of Christ. But what good is a documented genealogy of Christ's bloodline?
Sophie asked. It's not proof. Historians could not possibly confirm its authenticity. Listen to this. Listen to this, folks.
Teeming chuckled. No more so than they can confirm the authenticity of the
Bible. You hear that? We've got pure wacko fiction being paralleled with the sacred scriptures.
You think there might be a little bit of a bias here someplace? Just maybe just a little bit of one.
Oh, unbelievable. Meaning? Meaning that history is always written by the winners.
When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated. And the winner writes the history books, books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe.
As Napoleon once said, what is history but a fable agreed upon? He smiled by its very nature.
History is always a one sided account. So let's destroy any possible objectivity to history.
And let's just simply remove the Bible from the category of divine revelation and throw it into the realm of biased, one sided, non -verifiable history.
That's what we want to do with it. Let's let's not let's not allow it to be what it is. Sophie had never thought of it that way.
Well, Sophie, I'm glad you hadn't. Too bad that you now do. One last thing. The Sangreal documents simply tell the other side of the
Christ story. In the end, which side of the story you believe becomes a matter of faith and personal exploration.
But at least the information has survived. The Sangreal documents include tens of thousands of pages of information.
Eyewitness accounts of the Sangreal treasure describe it as being carried on for you know, in for enormous trunks.
And those trunks are reputed to be the purest documents. Thousands of pages of unaltered, unaltered.
I wonder what that might mean. Unaltered pre -Constantine documents written by the early followers of Jesus, revering him as a holy human teacher and prophet.
Can you believe this stuff? Ah, also rumored to be part of the treasurer's legendary
Q document, a manuscript that even the Vatican admits they believe exists. Allegedly, it is a book of Jesus teachings, possibly written in his own hand.
Oh, so Q, the Q source is now written in Jesus' own hand. Oh, man, there is absolutely nothing that can be said in response to such absolute absurdity.
I mean, you know, that is one of the difficulties here. How do you provide a rational response to the irrational?
I mean, here you have someone, from what I've understood, I didn't see him. He was on Good Morning America, I guess.
But probably, I mean, we saw him last night on the ABC special, a well -spoken individual.
And as long as you smile and you sound nice and make sure to sound tolerant, even if your whole message is gross intolerance, as long as you sound tolerant and use the proper words and smile while you do so, then how in the world do you respond to that?
I mean, it's total irrationality. It's pure fiction. But as long as you put it into this form, then it's
OK. It's all right. It's just, oh, my goodness.
And anyone who knows about Q, Quella, the source, Jesus wrote that? Oh, really? Wow. Unbelievable.
Unbelievable. Absolutely possible. There's all sorts of other historical and factual areas in the book.
In fact, a Catholic writer, Crisis Magazine, I don't have the
URL in front of me, wrote an extensive article on it. You'd find other things. And from a
Catholic perspective, and it did a good job on it. So take a look at that sometime. But I wanted to get some of these clips real quick, play a few of them, because I still want to get to the
Olson book in the process here. But it's just, folks, this stuff, sadly, the people at work are reading, and they're going to be asking you, if you're a
Christian, they're going to be, well, what do you think about the Da Vinci Code? And you might say, well, I prefer real history.
I mean, history that actually has like something behind it, something you can point to, you know, that isn't based upon wild -eyed conspiracy theories and stuff like that.
You know, the real history is like sort of more important. Let's now, here, let's listen to this clip.
This first one just, as soon as I heard this, I was just walking around my living room, watching this, just going, oh, my goodness.
Here's, let's just start with it. Whoops, sorry about that. Here, let's just start with it.
...told in the stories we have about the life of Jesus. The Church chose the four Gospels that tell his story in the
New Testament. Well, now, did I mess that thing up? I wonder if it did, to cut off the few seconds thing here, because there was a, yeah, well,
I don't know how to do that, to start how to do while you're on the program. I don't see anything on my thing here that I can do that with.
I don't know what to do with the, there was a section there that got cut off, and I don't know how it got cut off.
I apologize for that. But, there,
I got it. It came back from a commercial, and, well, we'll just pick up where it was.
New Testament. But there were other stories written about Jesus, other Gospels so controversial, the
Church ordered them destroyed. And they were, except for one set of copies. And it remained hidden in Egypt until about 50 years ago.
Well, now, is that a true statement? Well, obviously, when you start taking this apart, you have this concept.
First of all, the Church chose four Gospels. No, again, the reporter is functioning upon the concept that there has always been this ecclesiastical body that had monolithic control, especially during the period of persecution.
Well, we've heard this before. We hear this all the time, the great boogeyman Church, this one monolithic organization with extensive control over all things.
And no such Church existed at that time period. Rome certainly wished, some of her bishops anyway, like Stephen, wished to have such authority, but did not.
And especially during periods of persecution, there would be no possible way. You know, we've heard this, for example, with John Gee, the
Mormon. Or with atheists and things like that. This, you know, let's just all blame it on the boogeyman Church.
Well, historically, it just simply didn't exist to have that kind of power and that kind of authority. There is obviously errors concerning the nature of the canon.
There is later, there is an amazingly semi -accurate statement made that many scholars believe that the canonical
Gospels were written within a few decades of the time of Christ, but the Gnostic Gospels were written later.
Well, that only comes later. At this point, it sounds like an assertion is being made that these
Gnostic Gospels, the Gospel of Thomas and things like that, are actually co -extensive or equal with the writings of the
New Testament. And since people don't know Church history, even most Christians don't know Church history. They don't know the difference between the time period of the 1st century or the 4th century, the changes that had taken place, the developments that had taken place.
They just don't simply have any idea. And so, this kind of a statement makes people think, oh, well, you know, see the
Bible, the Church just picked and choosed. They sat around in a dark smoke -filled room,
I guess, with stogies, casting lots as to what books got in and what books didn't get in, or because they were a bunch of men and they didn't like Mary Magdalene and it was a feminist thing, an anti -feminist thing, and they kicked those
Gospels out that wouldn't fit into their paradigm. That is absolutely ridiculous.
You could never substantiate that on a meaningful basis, a fair basis, but again, meaningful and fair have nothing to do with what is being asserted in this stuff at all.
And so, we get to, you know, the Church ordered them destroyed. Well, which ones are we talking about?
I think once we get to it here is what they're talking about is what Cyril of Alexandria did when his followers went after the library in Alexandria.
And so here, this action of one person in one place becomes this big conspiracy and all the rest of that stuff.
Let's listen to that section again. ...other Gospels so controversial, the Church ordered them destroyed. And they were, except for one set of copies.
And it remained hidden in Egypt until about 50 years ago. Hidden in Egypt. We're talking about Nag Hammadi here, folks.
That's why we need to start, you know, Christians living in this culture need to start studying their own history.
We need to start studying this stuff. It's very, very important. There's nothing that there's no way to get around this anymore.
We need to know this stuff. Let's pick up there after we take a break with some cool music that they throw in there just to sort of add to the conspiracy theory regarding the destruction of these books and the one set that survived.
And well, what was in that one set? Well, we'll find out. But we're going to take a break first and be right back here on The Dividing Line.
Under the guise of tolerance, modern culture grants alternative lifestyle status to homosexuality.
Even more disturbing, some within the church attempt to revise and distort Christian teaching on this behavior.
In their book, The Same Sex Controversy, James White and Jeff Neal write for all who want to better understand the
Bible's teaching on the subject, explaining and defending the foundational Bible passages that deal with homosexuality, including
Genesis, Leviticus, and Romans. Expanding on these scriptures, they refute the revisionist arguments, including the claim that Christians today need not adhere to the law.
In a straightforward and loving manner, they appeal to those caught up in a homosexual lifestyle to repent and to return to God's plan for his people.
The Same Sex Controversy, defending and clarifying the Bible's message about homosexuality.
Get your copy in the bookstore at almen .org. Answering those who claim that only the
King James version is the word of God, James White, in his book, The King James Only Controversy, examines allegations that modern translators conspired to corrupt scripture and lead believers away from true
Christian faith. In a readable and responsible style, author James White traces the development of Bible translations, old and new, and investigates the differences between new versions and the authorized version of 1611.
You can order your copy of James White's book, The King James Only Controversy, by going to our website at www .almen
.org. What is Dr. Norman Geisler warning the Christian community about in his book, Chosen But Free, A New Cult, Secularism, False Prophecy Scenarios?
No, Dr. Geisler is sounding the alarm about a system of beliefs commonly called Calvinism. He insists that this belief system is theologically inconsistent, philosophically insufficient, and morally repugnant.
In his book, The Potter's Freedom, James White replies to Dr. Geisler, but The Potter's Freedom is much more than just a reply.
It is a defense of the very principles upon which the Protestant Reformation was founded. Indeed, it is a defense of the very gospel itself.
In a style that both scholars and laymen alike can appreciate, James White masterfully counters the evidence against so -called extreme
Calvinism, defines what the Reformed faith actually is, and concludes that the gospel preached by the
Reformers is the very one taught in the pages of Scripture. The Potter's Freedom, a defense of the
Reformation and a rebuttal to Norman Geisler's Chosen But Free. You'll find it in the Reformed Theology section of our bookstore at www .almen
.org. Here I stand, well we're standing today and we're pointing out what's being said against the
Christian faith on ABC, the always bashing Christianity network.
It has nothing to do with reality or truth or anything else. And I guarantee you, if this kind of ridiculous stuff was pandered off, can you imagine
ABC doing a program like this if someone wrote such a work of historical fiction about Muhammad?
To say, what could you say about Muhammad? He had multiple wives and all sorts of stuff like that anyway.
Well first of all, they'd be putting out a hit on Elizabeth Vargas and the whole network. Yeah, that's exactly right.
You wouldn't want to work for ABC if you lived in a Muslim country, would you? But they just wouldn't do it.
It's just not possible. They wouldn't do it. But hey, as long as it's Christianity, let's bash the
Christians. The persecution of Christians. I don't say persecution. Hey folks, what else do you call it?
I mean, when you use hypocrisy and unfairness, let's call it what it is. That's what's going on and ABC loves it.
It's good for the ratings. It's wonderful stuff. Well, let's keep listening to some of these cuts. And we still need to get the
Olsen book today. I'm talking a whole lot. Let's listen to this next section. ...which essentially tell what you might call an alternative history of the time of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.
The church made a very concerted effort to take these documents and destroy them throughout time.
Don't you love the background there? The ooooooo, you know, all this stuff.
They've got the music going big time. And I see what happened for some reason. Don't ask me how.
When I went to MP3, it cut off the first five seconds of every clip I've got. Which included all the neat, fun music there.
It just went, gone. And nothing I can do about it now because I tried to open up all those WAV files while talking and stuff.
Just ain't going to work. So, anyways, here you have, that's Dan Brown talking there, talking about these alleged
Gnostic Gospels. At least, and hopefully it will come up in maybe this one here.
Let's see what this one's talking about. Hopefully, at least here you get the statement that we do have...
There's at least a difference between the issues regarding the canonical
Gospels and those regarding the Gnostic Gospels. At least there is a difference there.
Let's listen to it. ...think these documents were originally hidden by a monk from a nearby monastery in the late 4th century.
At the same time, they were ordered destroyed by the Bishop of Alexandria. The question historians ask themselves is, if the church was making such a concerted effort to destroy this information, you have to assume that it was fairly heretical.
These writings have names like the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Truth, and the Gospel of Philip. A fragment found in a different place is called the
Gospel of Mary Magdalene. They're sometimes called the Gnostic Gospels.
Gnostic means knowledge, and the groups who wrote them often claimed special knowledge about Jesus. But did these documents contain information that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married?
Well, no, actually they didn't. Maybe this will be the one that has the proper discussion.
But there is some question about when the Gnostic Gospels were written. They were certainly around by the 4th century when the church officially rejected them.
So some scholars say they should be disregarded altogether. There we go. Oh, so let's see here.
The canonical Gospels were written within a generation. Man, this cut off like 10 seconds, because she made mention of that.
They were written within the lifetimes of those who were eyewitnesses, but instead these
Gnostic Gospels, well, you know... Then we have Elaine Pagels here, and of course it's always great when they quote her.
Elaine Pagels disagrees. From internal evidence and from evidence of manuscript tradition, we realize that in fact some of them may be in fact very early.
Very early. Let's go ahead and turn that down now. Very early! What does very early mean?
Well, very early would mean sometime in the 2nd century, long after Thomas or Philip or any of these people were dead and gone.
What does all this mean? Well, you know, we could go on forever. There is a tremendous amount of absolute abject silliness in this material.
But one thing that hopefully you all can see here is the fact that we as believers need to know more about the history of our faith.
We used to be able to leave this just simply for individuals like myself or the local
Bible college, and once in a while a question might come up and you can get an answer and you can go on from there. Folks, this stuff is going mainstream.
It's not just the goofiness in the National Enquirer. When ABC is putting it out and AA is putting it out and it's a national bestseller and you live in a land where people want to believe a lie anyway, then to be able to give a response we need to be able to understand these things.
We need to be able to talk about the Gnostic Gospels. On the front page right now at aomin .org, there is a link to an article that I wrote on the
Gospel of Thomas a number of years ago that appeared in the CRI Journal. The CRI Journal has carried a number of things on that particular issue that you can look at.
The information is out there, but sadly it's not exactly at the top ten of your sales at your local
Christian bookstore. The prayer of Jabez is not going to help you here. You can live the purpose -driven life, but it's not going to help you to respond to our culture and the questions that come up about these things.
So we need to consider those things and remember about them.
Okay, so Da Vinci Code, there's the book. No reason to go buy it.
Let's move on to C. Gordon Olson. Just to remind all of you, we're going to go 20 minutes longer today.
We're going to go 20 minutes after, so we have about half an hour left. I did want to take some time to look at this book.
You might say, wow, major league change in direction. Yeah, sort of.
In the sense that we're now leaving absolute wild, wacky, zany craziness that's being looked at as if it's somehow important, and now you're talking about splitting theological hairs.
Well, not completely. We've had at least two calls on the program about this book.
We've gotten emails about this book. The book is making the rounds. It's a fairly newly published work, published by Global Gospel Publishers.
It doesn't look like it's really a major publication here, but it has been revised a number of times.
The 2002 edition of it goes all the way back to 1981, but there are references in it, a number of very positive references in it.
For example, the Chosen but Free, there's a whole appendix in the back, an uncritical appendix, attempting, as so many do, to establish the idea of John Calvin on general redemption.
At the end, you see sources. Norman L. Geisler, Chosen but Free, Appendix 2.
R .T. Kendall. Nothing providing a response to these things.
No discussion of it in a historical sense. Just simply, let's throw this stuff out there. Let's not provide a context.
That kind of thing is standard in these works. By the way, this is not an attempt to come up with an intermediate view, any more than Geisler's was.
It is Arminian. It is inconsistent Arminian. It's Arminianism with eternal security.
That's all it is. That's not immediate view, folks. It's synergistic to its core. This isn't immediate position.
This isn't in the middle someplace. This is an anti -reformed work.
It's an anti -Calvinist work. You start reading it in every other page. Well, almost every page. Calvinists, ignore the context here.
Calvinists do this. Calvinists do that. It is all against Calvinism. So saying beyond Calvinism and Arminianism, all it's saying, all
C. Gordon Olson is saying is, well, we can't be Calvinists.
We need to be synergistic Arminians who, for some strange and wild reason, believe in eternal security, which is exactly what
Dave Hunt does. Dave Hunt's just not nearly as polished. Obviously, C.
Gordon Olson, he went to Dallas Seminary. He knows Greek. He can utilize resources.
Whether he does so consistently is a completely different perspective, but the attempt is out there.
Seemingly, this book is bothering some folks because of the amount of reference it makes to Greek and to lexical sources, whether it's
Kittles or Bauer and Gingrich and Donker, Bauer, Donker, Art and Gingrich. Now, I'm not sure
I didn't look to see if he had made sure to use the third edition, actually. And so people look at this and they go, ooh, wow, well, if someone argues that, how can someone who knows
Greek ever be wrong about something? Folks, we need to demythologize scholarship again here.
Hello. I mean, this is a theme that I strike many, many times. Just because you can read the original languages doesn't mean that you are going to accurately handle what is said in the original languages.
I'll give you a very clear example here. The Constitution was written in English.
How many constitutional scholars today can read it in its original language, but they don't handle it correctly?
They still ignore the original context. They import their own thoughts into it and all the rest of that stuff.
So just because you can read Greek doesn't mean you're going to be fair in your use of Greek in any way, shape or form.
So just because someone makes reference to a Greek word, don't just go, ooh, ah, ee.
There's a real tendency, unfortunately, on the part of otherwise sound believers to do that.
Don't do that. Just because, you know, well, this source over here says that.
Well, if they can then take that, explain what it means, demonstrate its relevance and demonstrate the contextual exegetical necessity of having made reference to that, okay, that's one thing.
But if it's just simply a scattergun approach, that's not going to accomplish anything. It normally is used to confuse the truth, not actually to present the truth, okay?
So what I want to do is I just want to look at two sections. What I normally do when
I grab one of these books and, for example, when I got Vance's book, when I got Dan Korner's book, one of the first things that I do, and this is sort of similar to what
I do when I get a new Bible translation, I immediately, there's certain passages I look at, see how they're handled. It tells me a lot about the committee or if it's by an individual person, that individual person's perspective on how you're supposed to do translation, what your background is, what your view of certain things are.
There's certain key passages that sort of bring that stuff out. Well, for me, I want to see immediately how someone deals with John 6.
And so when I got Vance's book, I looked at John 6 and went, not even a serious attempt.
Dan Korner, laughable. Purely laughable. Not even, didn't even show up on the field.
Just really, really bad. And some of you may recall that someone called in a few weeks ago and mentioned this book and we looked a little bit at John 6 as it was mentioned in this book.
But I was looking at Romans chapter 9. So what we're going to do is I'm going to look at the section on Romans chapter 9, briefly look at the attempt to deal with the concept of foreknowledge, and then look over at John chapter 6.
And in both of these, unfortunately, the primary thing we're going to discover is that C. Gordon Olson is pretty much just like Dave Hunt and Norm Geisler, except that he likes to use a lot more
Greek. And that's about it. I mean, the bias and the lack of interaction with meaningful reformed works is on the same level, unfortunately.
So when you look at the section, not so much on Romans 9, but just simply
God's Glorious Foreknown Purpose for His Church is the title of section 7.
He's going to try to deal with prognosco and prognoscine, prognosis.
He's going to try to deal with both the noun and the verb. Now, those of you who have heard us discuss this before, maybe you've read The Powers of Freedom, you know that there is a necessity to distinguish between the noun and the verb.
There is a necessity to recognize that there has been a theological development over the history of the Church regarding the meaning of foreknowledge.
There is a philosophical meaning of foreknowledge, that just basically being God's knowledge of future events.
And that's over against a biblical use. We can't just automatically take a philosophical meaning that's developed over time, read it back into the text.
There is a need to be very careful with this particular word, because in English we render it in such a way that it is, it's seen to be at least in the word we use to translate it, foreknow, or foreknowledge, to be transparent.
That is in the sense of, well, it's made up of two words, you put those two words together, you can separate those two words, examine them separately, see what they mean, then put them together and somehow it's going to have a necessary meaning.
That's not necessarily the way things work. It's like saying television means far -seeing. No, it doesn't.
Well, but tele means far, and vision means to see, so it means far -seeing. No, that's the box that sits over on the shelf, and we plug things into it, and we play video games on it, we can watch
TV and cable and everything else. It has a different meaning in the way that it's used than the transparent meaning of the words that came together to form it, actually what they would mean when considered separately.
Well, the same thing, we're looking at foreknowledge. We need to be careful. We also, and this is where I have my biggest problem with Mr.
Olson, or is it, I think it's Dr. Olson, he was a professor of missions theology at Northeastern Bible College, I went to Dallas Seminary, he has a doctor of mythology from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
So Dr. Olson, in essence, and this is one thing that did bother me a little bit at this point, at this point he does seem to at least know what the issues are.
And he tries to get around it. And if you read this section, for those of you who have the book,
I'm looking at pages 154 and following, it looks quite impressive.
Now, it's primarily just quoting from one other guy, unfortunately, Thomas Edgar, but, and I really don't think that's the way you should do it, but be that as it may, it's interesting, it starts off, the meaning of the terms, a word study of foreknowledge, the very first subtitle is
Calvinistic Claims. I don't see Arminian claims in here anywhere. Why?
Because he agrees with the Arminians. He's an Arminian on this point, and the meaning of foreknowledge to him.
But basically he recognizes that first of all, you've got nouns, you've got verbs, but he mixes them up.
He refuses to allow the two to be distinguished. And they have to be distinguished.
I mean, when you look at the use of, to foreknow in the golden chain of redemption, you have to allow that active verb to have a meaning in a chain of other active verbs that are all divine actions.
Olson doesn't allow that. That's not good exegesis, and it's inconsistent for Olson, because it's clear to me that he does know that's how you should do it.
So I think we see here further examples of how even those who know how to do exegesis, remember when we talked about Adrian Rogers, and he was attacking
Calvinism, but when he went through the golden chain, when he talked about justification, man, he hit it perfectly.
I mean, he was right on, but then as soon as he got back to the golden chain, because of his tradition, his exegesis fell apart.
Inconsistent exegesis. And that is what we see here. He goes through, and one of the things, and he says, well, yada.
Yada doesn't, you can't say yada necessarily means to choose. Well, yeah, in the vast majority of places, it simply means to know something.
But we're talking about specific instances here. You're saying it can't have that meaning. And there's all these pages of, you know, the
Calvinists have misrepresented that, and the Calvinists have misrepresented that, and there's no basis for this kind of assertion, no basis for that kind of assertion.
Even in a reference to early church fathers, as if origins knowledge of this would necessarily be relevant, which I don't think it is. But then there's this really interesting statement, page 157, under the subtitle
Complete New Testament Usage. Some writers only examine the usages where God is the subject.
Edgar shows that this is a defective methodology, which implies that a verb changes its meaning dependent upon who the subject is.
Other verbs do not change meaning when God is the subject. Now, folks, it's very obvious to me that at this point, he does know exactly what the real issue here is.
Because if the verb to foreknow is an active verb in the part of God, then to read into it some concept of passively taking in knowledge of time outside of God's sovereign decree,
God looking into the future and learning what's going to happen, even if it's done instantaneously, that does not fit with the active verbs in the golden chain of redemption, especially he also knows that when
God is the subject, when he is the one foreknowing, it is not actions that he is foreknowing, that is, looking into time and seeing what happens, it is persons that he is foreknowing.
He knows that. He tries to deal with that. But let me just, let me re -read this and let you think for just a moment.
Some writers only examine the usages where God is the subject. Edgar shows that this is a defective methodology, which implies that a verb changes its meaning dependent upon who the subject is.
Other verbs do not change meaning when God is the subject. Well, let's stop right there. Okay, other verbs don't, but are you asserting that it is a rule that every verb when used with God as the subject has to have the same meaning?
For example, when we say God loves, do we not all recognize that God, when he loves, that that word has a much fuller meaning, a purer meaning than when humans love?
Of course we do. Let's use create. God created. If you use the term create with God as the subject or a man as the subject, will you not automatically understand the verb in a different way?
Now, you may argue, well, you shouldn't. The Mormons probably would. But in this context, obviously,
Olson would be forced to recognize that when God redeems, when God justifies, are we really to seriously say that there is no foundation for saying that when we use dikaiao with God as the subject, that that is the same as when a human uses dikaiao?
Of course not. And this is especially true in this context where we're talking about to foreknow, especially when we do it in eternity, when
God is doing this outside of a time context. See, he recognizes that if you allow it to have a different meaning, this entire section that he's presenting is going to collapse.
Now, I wanted to... Here, he goes through a couple passages and, again, mixing nouns and verbs and not being consistent there.
And, again, given his knowledge of language, there's no reason for him to do this outside of just trying to obfuscate stuff. But I did want to read this one section.
We come to Peter or Luke's use of the noun prognosis here with a straightforward linguistic procedure in mind that if the primary meaning fits, we must look for no other.
Here, Peter's meaning is transparent that our omniscient God, listen to what he thinks, is a transparent, clear meaning.
We're just driving this into text. I don't have any philosophical or theological baggage here.
Here, Peter's meaning is transparent that our omniscient God worked out his eternally fixed plan by means of his absolute foreknowledge of all the human factors which went into the crucifixion, the motivations and situations of Judas Iscariot, the
Jewish leaders, Herod the Tetrarch, Pontius Pilate, the Roman soldiers, the mob, etc. Excuse me, that sounds a little bit like middle knowledge.
Maybe. But it's clearly, very clearly, a very developed theological concept that is being read into this, allegedly,
I'm only getting it from the text. I'm not deriving anything from any of this stuff.
God worked out his plan, but he did so, he worked out his eternally fixed plan by means of his absolute foreknowledge of all the human factors.
What does that mean? There is an entire theology, an entire
Arminian theology, that is being read into this text as if, I'm just doing it, this is just simply,
I'm just reading the text. No, you're not. You're taking your whole thing and just reading it right in there as if it had nothing to do with it.
Well, then he tries to deal with, when
God knows someone, he knows something about them, that it's not a personal thing.
Well, I suppose that would refer to Christ, too, and the elect, and then foreknowing my faith and all the rest of that stuff.
But my time is, I obviously was not thinking straight here. I still want to get John 6.
Let's look real quick at John 6, page 238 and following. I'm not going to get calls today, sorry. Pages 238 and following on John 6.
I stop right there to say, that's not exactly an overly gracious or accurate interaction with the extensive exegesis of the text in John 6 that would be available from many sources, not only my own.
But then to follow that with the following statement made me grumble just a little bit.
There is no consideration of any alternate interpretation which might be suggested by the context.
Can you imagine stating that all reformed, all Calvinists never bother to even listen to what anyone else is saying?
That's basically what that sentence says. That's baloney. I mean, I have attempted to take into consideration every alternate possibility there is.
I've found them all to be on various and sundry levels utterly ridiculous, but I at least have listened to them and tried to get into the mindset that produces that kind of an interpretation.
I mean, we've even listened going all the way to discovering that Proverbs 129 is the key to John 6.
I mean, we've looked at all of it and so to say there is no consideration of any alternate interpretation which might be suggested by the context.
That's ridiculous. But rather than assuming that the Lord Jesus is referring to all the elect, we should seek to understand the expression in light of the historical contextual flow.
But what does that mean? Well, he goes into the context and he's not completely wrong about the context, but it's not the totality of it.
He does make the statement on page 239. A little later he emphasized the human response factor. If anyone is willing to do his will, he will know the teaching whether it is of God or whether I speak for myself.
That's actually from chapter 7, not chapter 6. It's not the same context as this pericope here in chapter 6.
And it's interesting that when he tries to identify who it is the
Father gives to him, he leaves
John chapter 6 and in fact has no problem whatsoever turning John chapter 17 far in the future into the determinative context for John 6.
So while I gave him credit earlier in the program, if you weren't listening then, for properly recognizing that leaping to John 12 isn't going to help you here and that John chapter 12 is talking about all kinds of men,
Jews and Gentiles, that are drawn by the cross and I think that does definitely refer to particular redemption in the sense of it is
Jews and Gentiles, Revelation chapter 5, men from every tribe, tongue, people and nation. Here, for some reason, he doesn't have any problem leaping off into John 17 and the fact that in John 17
Jesus does specifically refer to his disciples as being given to him out of the world and then those who will believe on him because of their testimony and therefore his whole point is from this context, the
Lord's high priestly prayer becomes clear that he is referring to the living disciples whom the Father had given him especially the 11 apostles.
This could not be a reference to that abstract concept of the elect of all ages for a number of reasons.
We see first in 17 .6, remember we're supposed to be talking about John 6 here, that the Lord Jesus had shown the
Father to them personally. This could not be true of the elect of past ages. Well again, this is proving something that is not even under dispute.
He's allegedly talking about John 6, runs off John 17, says he talks about the apostles over here as being given to him, therefore we read it back into John 6 and therefore this can't be about the elect.
The problem is, if he had bothered to actually present a reformed exegesis of John 6, he could have made an argument that in John 6 .37
alone, because of the present tense there, they are being given to me that this is, we're only talking about the living disciples at the time.
The problem is, verses 38 and 39, because in interpreting, the
Lord Jesus interpreted his own words in verse 37, in an eternal context in verses 38 and 39, in his coming to do the will of the
Father. All that the Father has given him, he lose none of them. Now are we really going to want to follow
Dr. Olson into saying, well actually this is just about the disciples. All the promises in John chapter 6 are only about the apostles.
That the wonderful statement about, I'll never cast them out. All that the
Father gives me will come to me and the one coming to me I'll never cast out. That's only about the apostles. That's really only about the eleven.
Because even though Jesus is staying there, I guess we can just sort of kick him out. Not have to worry about him too much. So that statement only has to do with the apostles.
Well then, why did the Jews take offense at it? Why didn't
Jesus go, oh guys, guys, I'm not talking about you. You have free will to believe in me. I'm just talking about my apostle.
I tell you, I can't, John 6, it just keeps blowing our minions up right and left. So after he goes through 17, then he comes back to the bottom of page 239.
So the idea is clear in both contexts that the Father is turning the godly Jewish remnant over to the
Son during his earthly ministry. Whoa, wait a minute. Where did the John 6 context come from? All I see is chapter 17 being quoted.
See how that works? And I was talking with someone just last night. And honestly, to be perfectly honest,
I don't remember who it was. But I was talking, oh yes I do. Now I remember who it was. And I was talking with someone last night and I was saying, well,
I know someone who's reading this and they're saying, boy, this is really challenging.
Here's where you have to listen to this. Here's where you have to focus in. And we have to really recognize bad argumentation.
When you see someone say, so the idea is clear in both contexts, you go back, well, wait a minute. Where's both contexts?
This identification section only talks about 17. And in context, he talks about, well, there's nothing there.
Wow, how did both contexts end up in there? It doesn't end up in there.
It's not there. So the idea is clear in both contexts. The father is turning the godly
Jewish remnant over to the son during his earthly ministry. These are the believing ones who inevitably come to him. So in other words, their beliefs prior.
What drives Olson? The same thing that drives Geisler. The same thing that drives
Hunt. The same thing that drives Rogers. Synergism.
Libertarian free will. We can't have a free god. We have to have a god who is his actions and even his act of salvation is determined by the free will of the creature that is the heart of man's religion.
These are the believing ones who inevitably come to him. Thus, this passage has nothing to do with irresistible grace upon the believers since these were already sincere believers.
So, 637, the coming to Christ is determined by being given by the father.
So evidently, these who are coming to Christ were already believers. And so, even though the preceding context establishes coming and believing as synonyms, we just throw that out.
Now normally, in almost any other context, Olson would see that. But here we see the role of tradition.
And tradition trumps exegesis when it comes to defending synergism, the heart and soul of human religion.
Now on the next page, 240, it becomes increasingly clear that those contemporary disciples who were under his ministry and were really open to the father's teaching from the
Old Testament were the ones who came to him in faith. That's in regards to 645. No, if you read 645 in the context of 644, what he's saying is, and they shall be taught of God as being paralleled with drawn, everyone who has heard and learned from the father comes to me.
To make all this based upon something in the creature rather than in God is to turn the text on its head completely.
So, you then have a discussion of drawing. And, again, sadly, all he does is say, well, it's a better way to understand it to be drawn by being attractive or to draw something physically.
That's not the point. I mean, I think you can establish the use of physically drawing something, but that's not the point.
The point is, in the context, no man has the ability outside of this drawing to be saved,
A, to come to Christ, and, B, all those who are drawn are raised up.
So, again, and then you can just turn to the next page. It goes to 242.
There's no discussion of the reformed exegesis. And yet, what does the section end with on page 242?
End quote. Calvinists have ignored the context. End quote. Where have we heard that?
Well, we've heard that in Geisler, Hunt, Rogers. Now we hear it in Olson.
And yet, when we read the section where we should, this is where we should, you know,
I mean, if you really believe this stuff, why don't you interact with the best that's offered? I mean,
I don't have any problem in dealing with John 6 with the best that's been offered. I deal with Olson. I can deal with Olson and Geisler and Hunt and anybody they've got out there and we can demonstrate exegetically it doesn't follow.
You don't derive it from the text. But, you don't see any response to that.
If you can't deal with the strength of the opposition in a biblical fashion, then obviously you cannot call your position biblical.
And, why there is this absolute necessity to be constantly saying, well, you know, those
Calvinists, they just ignore the context all the time. Ignore the context. I wonder why we can't get most of these folks to debate.
Maybe we could see Gordon Olson. I don't know where to contact him. Maybe we'll write to global gospel publishers.
See if he'd do a debate. We can't get anybody else to do it. We can't get Dave Hunt. We can't get Norm Geisler. We keep trying though.
We can at least get George Bryson anyhow. As we have tried. Well, hey, we have gone for our 80 minutes.
I hope that, two very different topics, I know. But, hopefully very useful to you.
I do not know next week about when we're going to be able to do a dividing line. Possibly on Monday. Maybe early
Tuesday. We'll work something out as far as travel schedules and stuff go. We'll try to get one out there because we know there are a few of you who are addicts and we feel for you.
We have some 12 -step programs we might be able to refer to you to to get rid of that addiction.
But we know that folks like the program. We appreciate that. Honestly, you're listening. And hopefully today's program has been useful to you.
Go out there and find somebody with the Da Vinci Code and say, hey, I want to talk to you about the truth. Talk to you later. Phoenix, Arizona.
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