And So the Big Announcement Has Been Made

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded

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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.

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Our host is Dr. James White, Director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an Elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

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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

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United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now, with today's topic, here is

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James White. Well, good afternoon. Welcome to The Dividing Line.

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It is 4 o 'clock Mountain Standard Time on Thursday, January 27th. And yes, we have been inviting everyone to join us as we make the big announcement today.

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In fact, I'm going to let the folks in the channel, I'm going to give them at least a slight advantage over everybody else.

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As I make this announcement, I'm going to post into the channel a link first that will give them the...

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No, no, not yet. Oh, wait. Oh. Okay. Well, I'm still going to hit that first.

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But joining me to make this announcement, way over on the other side of the nation, we have

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Mike O 'Fallon. Hi, Mike. How are you doing, Doc? I thought you said you lost your voice seeing with Keith Green.

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Oh, just barely. Just barely. Okay. All right. Well, you know, I guess we need to break it to everybody. Dr. White and I are going to be going on a diet, and let me tell you all...

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That's not anything that they really were surprised about. It sounds like you're getting a little bit of feedback on your line there, but no, actually, starting...

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When was our first cruise? 1999. 1999. That sounds like he's...

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I think Mike is converting over to the Borg. You are the first... Oh, that was funny, wasn't it?

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You are the first caller that we've had on the air since we reset up all the equipment.

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So this could be really, really interesting. But 1999, we did our first...

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That was... We didn't have... Did we do a... We didn't do a debate with that. We didn't do a debate that year.

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We just had a conference. It was my first time out really trying to make something like that work. Hello.

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Yes, we need to definitely turn down the something over there. Just make sure that I'm louder than he is, though.

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No, no, no. So anyways, yeah. And then the next year we did.

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We had the debate with Robert Syngenis, as I recall. Papal infallibility. Papal infallibility. The self -piloted, self -moderated debate.

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And so anyway, and then, of course, this year we had our first national conference in Los Angeles.

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In fact, when I spoke in Los Angeles Monday night, I stayed at a hotel that was right around the corner from where we had that, in fact, at LAX, and we had a debate there with Douglas Wilson on the federal vision.

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But as we talked about the Alaska trip, obviously it has been very much on my mind to equip the saints and warn the saints about the upcoming flood of stuff that is going to be coming at us because of the

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Da Vinci Code. And so we've been talking about how we can deal with the issue of biblical sufficiency, defending the

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Bible in the sense that it's going to be constantly under attack by the forces of secularism and those who would undercut our faith in the scriptures.

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And so we've been talking about who we could get to engage in this debate. And of course, the big announcement is that we have managed to arrange that debate.

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And obviously you want to say something about that. Well, I think it's important for folks to understand that really what our calling has been, and I have actually tried to arrange a debate with Dr.

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White and this gentleman for a number of years. We finally just basically had all the pieces of the puzzle come together.

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And gosh, I think for so many Christians that have spent time watching some of the

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Peter Jennings specials, some of the CNN programs, et cetera, that sort of thing, they have really vocalized a lot of frustration that there has not been an opportunity to have someone strongly from the evangelical camp that is equipped to be able to really debate one of these gentlemen.

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Certainly we have folks like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and so forth that will show up on one of these programs opposite one of these folks.

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And all of us, you know, go, oh, gee, why couldn't it be Dr. O? Why couldn't it be

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Dr. White? So what we have done is we have arranged this fall,

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August the 27th, to bring a gentleman who was educated at the

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Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, and who has also, I believe, received his doctorate from the

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Eclo Biblique in Jerusalem, and a gentleman who was the co -director of the

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Jesus Seminar from 1985 to 1996, and chair of the Historical Jesus section of the

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Society of Biblical Literature. Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies, DePaul University, Chicago. That is correct, and would you like to tell everybody who that is?

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John Dominic Crossan is his name, of course, a name that some people recognize.

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It's been interesting as I have been expressing this to various individuals. Some just go, who?

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Because they're not aware of what's out there. They're not aware of the books that are being published. They are not aware of the fact that he's written four national religious bestsellers, the

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Historical Jesus, Jesus, a Revolutionary Biography, Who Killed Jesus, and The Birth of Christianity, and that these books are extremely subversive to the conservative

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Christian understanding of the resurrection of Christ, the ministry of Christ, the inspiration and errancy of scripture, very, very much coming from a completely different perspective.

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And yet, obviously, when Peter Jennings went looking for individuals to interview on his program,

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John Dominic Crossan and the rest of the fellows from the Jesus Seminar were very, very quickly available for that kind of duty.

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And so, obviously, we're talking about someone who is undoubtedly probably the most published person, certainly in this area, that we could possibly obtain.

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And so that is, this is going to be the Friday or the Saturday? This will be

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Saturday, August the 27th. Saturday the 27th. And this is going to be in Seattle.

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Now, you've been working on getting information up on the website. It's actually up right now, and if folks want to go, if you want to go ahead and give that link to folks and channel, that would be a good time,

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I guess. Well, I'm sure it's, hopefully it's available from the main page, because I don't know what the link is, but...

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Well, I'm going to go ahead and do it right now. Well, it is available on the main page, right?

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I'm not sure. You'd have to talk to the wizard behind the screen over there. Ah, okay. All right.

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Well, I'm hoping... Not yet. We, this is all coming together so quickly. We're still scrambling on some information, and we haven't linked it from the main page, but we will.

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Okay. Well, for those who don't want to wait for that, it's aomin .org slash cruise slash debate .htm, which is there in the channel now, but for those who are listening and not in the channel, they're going to be exceptionally unhappy if they can't see what we're talking about.

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So, it's aomin .org slash cruise slash debate .htm, no capitals in any of that, and that should give you the information you need to have there now.

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I'm sure there's more details to be worked out over time, but the subject of the debate.

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The subject of the debate, actually, if you, if you're folks in channel right now, you want to take a look at, it's, is, the thesis is, is the

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Orthodox, Biblical account of Jesus of Nazareth authentic and historically accurate?

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There you go. So, that obviously is a fairly wide subject, but it's a very, very much focuses upon the work that John Dominic Crossan has produced and his work with the

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Jesus Seminar and things like that, and so, obviously, folks are going to want to very much take this into consideration, shall we say, as we plan on the issue of the, the conference and then the debate that follows there, or the cruise that follows thereafter.

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Well, and I think if they take a look at just how we're basically lining up the, the conference as well, and the overall title of the conference debate is, is the

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Bible true? And then certainly the, the conference section of, of the entirety of the conference is going to be focused upon the authority of Scripture, and certainly we've, we've posted up on the site now some, some of the, the different titles and, and subjects that it ran through our heads of what would be important to, to have discussed in the, in the conference.

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So, if you want to take a look at that, folks, that will be building as time goes on. I think one of the most important parts about this is, though, is as people are readying themselves this spring to go to all sorts of different large conferences held by Reformed Christians and so forth, they will see a considerable amount of value in being able to come to this conference and this debate.

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Really, I don't think anybody else has a deal like what Alpha Omega Ministries is offering them right now.

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No, definitely not, and this will be in Seattle, and the, the cruise will be going out of Vancouver and then up to Anchorage.

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It's going to be incredible. Now, we're not completely done. We can't say much, but there's going to hopefully be some more in the not -too -distant future, isn't there?

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Well, yes, and, and I can go ahead and tell some folks about that. I just received another email today. Okay. And, but I do want to say first, folks, is that, yes, what you see on the website is true.

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You can receive free admission to the conference and free admission to the debate.

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If you book a room at the Seattle Marriott with us before March the 31st, that's a, we're trying to do the best we can to make sure that we keep this available and easily readable for, for anybody that wants to come.

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Students, I understand that pension dollars, even macaroni and cheese, well, this is the perfect opportunity to come and be a part of this, but on the cruise itself, cruise itself, we have the opportunity to have a potential discussion that will be coming up, another debate on board that would be a, actually, two against two.

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We are trying to, to line up someone right now with the, the Reformed Evangelical side to, to be a part of this, but we are going to be having

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Dr. Marcus Borg, who is the other large figurehead with the Jesus Seminar coming on board, and hopefully with a discussion and debate on the resurrection.

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So that'll be occurring on the ship itself. Right. Along with our other subjects that we'll be tackling.

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So in case, in case folks didn't hear that, we will actually have a, hopefully, we are working on arranging the two -on -two discussion on board with Dr.

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Croson and Dr. Borg, that is Marcus Borg. Again, you add all of that up, and that's a lot of stuff that the two have written together on this particular subject.

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And, but for that discussion, which a lot of people would very much like to observe and be a part of, the only way to do that is to be on the cruise.

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Right. And so I'm really hoping that this will be more than enough to cause those who were somewhat on the, on the fence to have the opportunity of getting off the fence and going, all right, okay, between the best

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Alaska cruise you could ever do, plus the opportunity of being there in an encounter between James White and John Dominick Croson and Marcus Borg.

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Are you guys going to be sharing a cabin? You know, I think Kelly's coming with, so it might be best not to.

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Yeah, I don't think we were really planning on that. I was thinking maybe you could. That would be certainly interesting.

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Oh, yes. I think after about three days of no sleep, one of the two of you would crack. One thing

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I do want to announce in regards to that is, because we understand that we have just been able to kind of put this together recently, we are going to be extending the early savings date from January the 31st all the way through until March the 31st.

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So folks, just be aware of that. We're going to go ahead and extend that, excuse me, January 30th through until March the 31st.

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So if you have not gotten a chance to take part in that yet, and if you're planning on going, we want to give you a little bit more time and make sure you get the chance to be able to sign up and go along with us.

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And I tell you, if you haven't taken a cruise before, Dr. White, I think I would consider you a veteran of cruises now.

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I think so. This will be, what, number seven for me, I think. Wow, you're right.

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I think so, yeah, I think so. What would you say is your favorite itinerary and why?

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Oh, well, Alaska is always the best. There's no question about it. I like cold weather.

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It's not that it's really massively cold at that time of year necessarily. I mean, obviously, in Alaska, you can't guarantee weather, but Alaska is just so gorgeous, and it's so vast that you feel very, very small.

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And both of the cruises that I've had in Alaska have just been wonderful, but we'll see so much more on this cruise than I did in the first two put together, actually.

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Well, what is, I mean, I've never been to Glacier Bay before. It's just, well, we have a picture.

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I put a picture on my blog that I took from the front of the Volendam, and it's just, I don't know.

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It is very, very difficult to explain just how incredibly gorgeous

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Glacier Bay is. So, I mean, that's just it. Words don't do

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Alaska very well. That's the problem. It's beautiful.

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Our challenge, honestly, Mike, is going to be to find a way of scheduling this discussion that someone's going to attend it, because we certainly can't do it while we're in College Fjord or Glacier Bay or sitting in front of Hubbard Glacier.

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That just ain't going to happen. Probably from 1 a .m. to 4 a .m.

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Yeah, that may be about the only time we can do it. It's dark, so there's no competition, because between the whale watching and the glacier experiences, what can you do?

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Well, I did want to say also, the president of the ministry, Dr. Rich Pierce, had asked me to make an announcement.

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Careful, that'll end up being on a website someplace. Sorry. Rich Pierce had stated that he did want, and I think this is important, too, folks, as we start the advertising for this, especially in the

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Seattle area and so forth, this is something you probably, if you want to make plans to do this and if you want to be there for this particular event in Seattle, you don't want to wait, because we do have capacity in the ballroom that we're renting right now of 600.

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And if you were at the last debate, you know that we were right at capacity, basically, for that Wilson and White debate.

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So make sure that you get a chance to jump in and take part in this if it's something you want to do.

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If you wait, honestly, I don't want to see you not be able to do this and have to just catch it on the

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DVD later. But, gosh, love to have you with us, especially in the cruise portion.

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If you get the chance to do both, folks, we are certainly trying to keep things as cheap as possible all the way around.

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And you're not going to have an opportunity like this anytime soon. Now, anybody who really has a deep interest in this field of study, in the field of apologetics, the field of Christian worldview, all this stuff, you just cannot possibly put together something that would be more interesting than this.

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I mean, let's say you've got a guy who has – he's married, and he's really interested in this area.

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His wife is like, oh, that's nice, honey. Boy, put the two of them together. You make your wife happy and yourself happy all at the same time, and you can do so for incredibly reasonable amounts in light of the fact that, look,

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I just invite you to go look at some of the other cruises. I'm not going to get into competition with anybody here.

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I'm not naming any names. But look at some other Alaska cruises that are not going to include the kind of onboard stuff that you can see here, and just compare the prices.

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That's all I'm saying. Just, you know, people who want to talk about, oh, just using them for money, just don't really know much about what's going on there.

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I think it just proves to be said here that the cruise that we have with Alpha Omega Ministries is half the price of just about every other major reformed personality that's out there.

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Let's just say that. And you get the opportunity to not only take part in the apologetics that's going to be occurring onboard with Dr.

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White, with Steve Camp, a Grammy Award -winning musician, but then you're also going to have the opportunity to possibly sit through this debate that's going to be onboard as well.

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Sit through it. Sorry. Do enjoy. Endure.

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Survive. Should we use some nicer words like that? Yeah, it's an incredible thing.

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And those especially up in that area of the Northwest, don't put this off.

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If you're talking about bringing a group or something like that, you need to start making your plans now. You need to, you know, because I really honestly think we are going to fill this place all the way up to the brim, and you just don't want to be showing up at the door without any way of getting in to see it.

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So make your plans now. And thank you very much, Mike, for all the work that you've done in arranging this.

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Thanks. I'm certainly excited about it, and I've obviously got a lot of work to do between now and then, in the sense that this is actually the third debate.

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That'll be the third debate. I've got two debates before then, and I'll be in England, Scotland, and Italy between now and then, and I'll be teaching in the fall, so it's going to be a busy year.

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How do you have time to read on planes? Oh, that's about the only time I'm going to be able to read is while I'm on planes.

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That's quite true. So it's going to be a busy time, but I hope that your phone begins ringing or you start getting lots of e -mails from folks who go, hey,

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I need to know all about what's going on here. Help me out, and that's what you do so well, right?

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And I'll just direct them to Rich Pierce. No, no, no, no. I think you're the one that knows all the answers to that.

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All right, brother. Thank you very much, sir. Thank you for doing the announcement for us. Keep us online. All right.

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God bless. Bye -bye. Well, there you go. John Dominick Crosson, Marcus Borg.

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That's going to be absolutely incredible. Hey, we call it an apologetics cruise.

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Let's see somebody beat that one. Not going to be easily done, that's for sure. And so we invite you to participate and so on and so forth.

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So it's going to be very, very exciting. We have a caller before we go back to finishing off the

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Rivas audio, and if you want to maybe comment on what you just heard, the big announcement, 877 -753 -3341.

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877 -753 -3341 is the phone number.

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And I'm not sure what the topic is here, but we'll go ahead and take our first phone caller and talk to Sam.

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Hi, Sam. Hey, Dr. White. How are you doing? Doing pretty good. What brings one of the greatest living experts in the subject of Islam to the dividing line today?

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Well, you got me excited about the debate with Crosson, and what I wanted to ask is this.

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You're well aware that Crosson presupposes the existence of the

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Q document, a mark in priority. Well, obviously coming from the perspective that he comes from, there is going to be a tremendous amount of foundational difference as far as the approach to a, well, obviously what

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I would call a very naturalistic approach to the subject of the text of Scripture.

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And I am not in any way, shape, or form, in my own thinking, downplaying the difficulty that is going to be a part of this particular debate in light of the foundational and fundamental differences that,

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I mean, that what you just mentioned would actually be a small portion of just one of the issues that would sort of need to be addressed in a full manner to address all the issues that could be addressed.

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We can't do that, but we do need to start getting a discussion of those things outside of the realm of academia and into the preparation of individual believers because the fact that this stuff, these folks, especially the

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Jesus Seminar, use the media. They know how to use the media, and they just know how to take this stuff and encapsulate it and get it out there, and our people need to at least be aware of why these people are saying what they're saying so that they can at least begin the process of evaluation.

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If they don't know, they have no way of even beginning to respond to it, and I really see a problem heading our direction in 2006 when the

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Da Vinci Code, which takes a lot of this stuff and mixes it together with a lot of conspiracy and so on and so forth and a tremendous amount of just pure bunk, but it throws it out there under the name of scholarship, and so many evangelicals, as soon as they hear the word scholar, go, well, it must be true.

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I'm really, really concerned along those lines, and you know, of course, that that's an approach to use that term scholarship that some of the folks that you deal with regularly utilize to say, well, here we've got the folks, here are

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Christian scholars who agree with us about the corruption of the Bible and so on and so forth. So, you know, the fact of the matter is folks really, really, really need to be prepared.

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I know we're calling folks to a higher standard, but we have to. It's just required when the enemies of the faith start using arguments of that level, our knowledge needs to be above that level, and that's just the way it is.

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Since the debate is limited time, he's going to bring up these issues. I'm sure you're going to have to tackle it.

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I mean, what do you think your approach will be to offset those arguments in that debate? Well, actually, in looking at the actual outline of the debate, you have 30 -minute opening statements, so how much can be packed into that amount of time is really the question.

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How you approach it, you know, obviously I'm not in a position right now to, since the discussion just came up as to exactly how

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I want to do that, but obviously the issue is going to be to compare and to contrast what a naturalistic worldview is willing to accept as valid scholarship and valid argumentation over against a

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Christian worldview, and to demonstrate that, in essence, what you have within the

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Jesus seminar perspective is not only an unwillingness to hear anything that they would identify as quote -unquote fundamentalist.

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I mean, anybody who reads Robert Funk's material recognizes that, but beyond that, there is a untenable approach to history that basically, when it comes to the scriptures, begins with guilty until proven innocent.

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It does not approach it the way that you would approach almost any other ancient document.

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It starts with the assumption of a non -consistent, non -inspired nature, and so I think that recognizing the presuppositions that are being brought to the table will be somewhat important at that particular point in time.

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My assumption right now, this far out, is that that's going to be extremely important in the evaluation of the two perspectives, is which is cognizant of, recognizes the existence of, is consistently dealing with the presuppositions of its worldview, and which side is not.

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And I really don't think that the Jesus seminar has really got a long track record of really handling well the presuppositions that it brings to the table, and very rarely are those presuppositions actually exposed.

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So, I mean, that's the first thing that crosses my mind, but I certainly, given that this only came up yesterday as far as the actual agreement to do so,

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I haven't even begun the process of putting that together, especially in light of the fact that I have two major debates before then.

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In fact, I've got two major debates within the space of one month coming up in April and May.

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Well, April and June, so it's a month and a half maybe. But it's going to be a challenge, no two ways about it.

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Well, by the grace of the Lord Jesus, you're the best bald and muscular apologist we've got out there. Well, does that mean you've grown some of your hair back?

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No, actually, I've become an upside -down V. If you flip me over, then you can see my

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V taper. There you go. Eddie Dalcour has hair, so. Ah, there he does. And a very, very, he's got a book.

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It's phenomenal. Well, like I said, if you keep balding, you'll be the best bald and muscular apologist we've got. I'll do my best, brother.

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Thanks a lot, man. God bless you, brother. God bless. Bye -bye. That, of course, being Sam Shamoon. He was with us on the last cruise, the cruise before that, and spoke on the subject of Islam.

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And in fact, I'm consistent. I mentioned to the folks at Stand to Reason on Monday night, they were asking afterwards if I could speak on Islam.

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And I said, yeah, I can. But if you want someone who can speak on all of Islam and do so with passion and fervor, and, in fact, you'll have to have bouncers to stop him once he gets going, then you'll want to talk to Sam Shamoon.

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And I'm sure they'll be getting a hold of him, and I'm looking forward to hearing the results of that.

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So pray for Sam and the folks at answeringislam .org. I wondered yesterday, I was trying to get the website.

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And I should have asked Sam that the website had disappeared. It was gone. I was hoping that they hadn't been hacked or something.

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That is certainly a concern these days as far as that goes. So I appreciate

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Sam's listening in. And, of course, we would appreciate your prayers, prayers for the preparation.

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There's a lot of work that goes into these things, folks. There really, really is a tremendous amount. And preparation on my part,

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I mean, I do have three major debates this year, and that's before the end of August.

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So we're pretty much at the end of the next six months. So basically every two months, a major debate.

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They're not evenly spread out that way. In case you're wondering what they are, I'll be debating Bob Wilkins.

30:42

Some of you may know Bob Wilkins and the Gracie Evangelical Theological Society. That issue is, in essence, an issue concerning the nature of regeneration and whether repentance is part and parcel of saving faith or whether it is a secondary work.

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There's a lot of issues that go into that particular debate, but we will be debating in Oklahoma City on April 22nd.

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June 9th will be the debate in Long Island at the

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Huntington Townhouse on the subject of, in essence, inclusivism. In Roman Catholicism, that's not really the best way to put it.

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The question is, can non -Christians enter into heaven? And that would include the discussion of invincible ignorance, but also the discussion of Muslims, the discussion of the baptism of desire and the like in regards to Roman Catholicism.

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Bill Rutland will be my opponent for that. That's June 9th on Long Island. That will be the tenth, believe it or not, ten years.

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The great debate number ten. And now the debate in Seattle against John Dominic Crossan on the scriptures and their testimony to Christ, followed by the further discussion.

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I guess if we break those into two, they are two, we'd actually be looking at four debates, with the fourth being on the cruise.

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And I'm hoping that that's going to work out. I really, really do hope that that takes place.

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But a lot of stuff going on that does not include the fact that we're going to England and Scotland in March and Italy in May.

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I'll be speaking at least 14 times over the course of about ten days there in Italy.

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And so a tremendous amount of work that we are looking at doing here.

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And we could use your support and your prayers. This is not a large organization. Many people think that we are because they look at the website, they look at all the stuff, and they go, wow, you must have all these people downstairs.

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There are no downstairs here. You must have all sorts of folks filling orders. Nope. There'll be two of us.

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And you hear both right here on the dividing line. I was going to say, we need to also pray for smooth waters on the trip, on the boat, because videotaping that exchange in rough seas is going to be real interesting.

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But you've got to realize something. Think, think, think for a second. Your camera and your object are on the same thing.

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Remember, I videotaped stuff on last year's cruise. But remember, that was probably more the vibration of the ship than it was the movement of the ship.

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Well, all of it adds up, man. It's like, whoa, where'd he go, where'd he go? And he didn't move.

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I did, and I'm not feeling well. Yes, indeed. Indeed, well, we will have plenty of Dramamine in the patches and the little wrist thingies and all that kind of stuff, because that stuff doesn't bother me.

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In fact, one of the best pictures we ever took on a cruise, a family picture, the smiles on our faces are real smiles because we're simply holding on to each other.

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It was rocking and rolling so much. I was on the Alaska cruise on the way back. We hit a storm, and after dinner, the picture, it's one of my favorites because we're really holding on to each other, because if we weren't,

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I would have fallen right off the thing. I was sort of holding the whole group together, and it was lots of fun.

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So it was neat. But anyway, yeah, that's going to be a bit of a challenge as well.

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But we do elicit your prayers and your support. It takes time and effort and patience and even funds, yes, funds, to do these kinds of things.

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So if you will keep us in your thoughts and your prayers, we would very, very much appreciate it.

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877 -753 -3341. I hope that that satisfies everyone concerning the big announcement.

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I think it was quite big. I mentioned the announcement this afternoon. I was having lunch with my superior at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, and when

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I mentioned this debate, he said, wow, that is going to be big. And he's a

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New Testament guy, so he knew what I was talking about, what I'm going to be up against. And yeah, that would be interesting.

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So it's the big one, and don't put off getting on board.

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Don't put it off. All right, so let's try to put the clutch in here and shift gears, because I do want to try to finish up this sermon right toward the end of the sermon from Pastor Herb Rivas on the subject of Calvinism.

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So if we're ready on the other side, there will be no more weird sounds. I should explain, for those who are wondering, why did we keep hearing wind chimes last time?

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The reason we kept hearing wind chimes, I discovered eventually, was due to the fact that I have a little program, and I had never heard it do this before, but I have a little program that monitors the weather.

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In fact, it's currently down in my system tray telling me it's 62 degrees outside. And we had some heavy rain hitting our direction, so it was a weather alert, a severe weather alert.

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That is – okay, now I turned the sounds off in the chat. You know,

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Micah does that to us all the time. Do you notice it's only Micah that plays sounds during the dividing line?

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He is the only one I think, possibly, Micah might be, a Jesuit spy that just comes in and does this stuff.

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So anyway, the rest of that's not going to happen. Thank you very much, Micah. We appreciate that. So let's continue on with the sermon.

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I want you to know I would rip my hair out if I had to sit and listen to a pastor who every other word was

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Greek. As far as I'm concerned, that's just trying to impress everybody that you know Greek. Don't be intimidated.

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Let me give you a verse for that. These early Christians, they didn't all go to seminary and study

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Greek. No, they spoke the language, actually. I'm sorry, but that is a lame observation.

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Of course they didn't. But the point is we are preaching and teaching in a language that did not exist when the

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New Testament was written. And if you want to really understand when you get into controversial areas where people are reading meanings into the text, well, then you've got to be able to consult what was actually written.

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Boy, they preach the gospel. And let me tell you, while you sit around these little Bible studies, argument, predestination,

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God will take those of us that are the ignorant, and He'll take us and in spite of ourselves use us to touch a lost and dying world with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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That was a direct shot at the Southern Baptists, but who are

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Reformed in their soteriology, who are seeking to establish churches and to begin works, works that honor

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God and honor the whole message of Scripture, not just a portion of it.

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And that's the background there, if you would like to be aware of what it is. The Bible says this in verse 13 of Acts 4,

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Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were unlearned, that means they had no technical training in the

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Greek. That's what that means. I get the joke.

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That actually means that they had not gone through the training, for example, sitting at the feet of Gamaliel as Paul.

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Oh, Paul the Apostle, the one God used to write at least 13 books in the New Testament, had gone through that.

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But anyway, that's true. But again, we're not talking here about a parallel situation.

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By the way, there's two sections in this recording where the quality just goes way down. And this is one of them.

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You'll have to listen a little bit more closely here for about the next two or three minutes. Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were unlearned, and ignorant men, they marveled and they took knowledge that they'd been with Jesus.

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Be balanced. Don't be a man follower. Don't be intimidated. Be humble. The folks, there's something wrong when you start saying,

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I'm the only one that's got it. And the thing that burns me about the modern -day hyper -Calvinists is they have got the great commissioners to get all the people in the churches to embrace five -point

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Calvinism, not to share the gospel with the last. Now let's stop right there. Because that's a common, that's also a central theme of David Cloud's argumentation in the portion of the sermon

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I played the last time, or in the sermon I played last time, not the portion I played, that was in John 644. But it is very much a part of this argument.

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But notice what he said. He said right there, the hyper -Calvinist. I think he said five -point hyper -Calvinist.

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Now is a five -point or a hyper -Calvinist or not? Now obviously, people like David Cloud and Pastor Rivas here, like to utilize this terminology.

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They'll switch their targets. Initially the target is Reformed theology, and then when you want to try to prejudice people's minds, then you switch over to hyper -Calvinism.

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And then you go back to the other, back and forth, back and forth, like that. That's what they're doing in this particular situation.

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And it's just not fair any more than recognizing that there are, in essence, hyper -Arminians.

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There are individuals who are opposed to almost any freedom of God at all.

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And as such, do we hang their false beliefs upon this individual?

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No, you try to look at where a person is. It's just a matter of being accurate in your descriptions. And they sort of have this superior attitude.

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I have a knowledge you don't have. I have an insight that you don't have. You are the ignorant.

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You are the peons. Well, okay. It's always best to confess the best spin you can put on what someone says.

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Is it possible for a Calvinist to act in this way?

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Of course it is. The attitude of the Pharisees can infect us all. And it is quite possible for someone to act as if, because I know the five points,

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I'm somehow better than you are. And the interesting thing is, I hear my fellow elder preaching at my church all the time about people who are so proud of their head knowledge, and yet they don't live their life in such a way as to adorn what they say they believe.

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There's a disconnection there. It's one thing to have the knowledge. It's something completely different to live what that knowledge should demand of you.

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And so I think, you know, Pastor Al Martin's wonderful book, The Practical Implications of Calvinism.

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And yet, at the same time, I don't agree with this argument that's being put forth here, because there's no differentiation being made.

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You can be, and should be, a humble Calvinist while being bold in the proclamation of that truth.

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Do not confuse being bold because John 6 is clear, or Romans 9 is clear,

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Romans 8 is clear, Ephesians 1 is clear. Do not confuse boldness in speaking the truth with a lack of humility on the part of the individual.

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I would like to point out that obviously Pastor Revis seems to think that he knows better than Calvinists do. Even though he did not, in point of fact, accurately represent the

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Reformed position in the sermon. I get to thinking about early

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Elijah in that cave at Mount Horib. And the Lord came in there and said, What are you doing in here? And he said,

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God, I'm jealous for you. Everybody else is turning on you, God. Nobody else is following you. Nobody else loves you. I'm the only one.

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And you know what God said? I hate to pop your bubble, big boy. But I've got 7 ,000 more who have never bowed their knees to Baal, folks.

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That's not the Spirit of Jesus. And it's not the Spirit of Jesus... Listen, I've got friends that are five -point

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Calvinists, and their church is embraced. I don't tear their church down. They're preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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You go around tearing people's churches down? That's not the humility of Christ.

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Be humble. And then I would say my last exhortation is, Don't let anything distract you from the

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Great Commission, which is to go on down and we're going to preach the gospel. One day, this is a fable.

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In this fable, one day, the devil and one of his cronies, his demons, were walking along watching a human being, a man.

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And the demon noticed that the man reached down and picked up something shiny. And he said to the devil,

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What did he pick up? And the devil said, He has found a piece of truth. The demon said,

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Doesn't that bother you that he's found a piece of truth? He said, No, I'll just see to it that he makes a religion out of it.

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When you take a piece of truth, when you take one doctrine and you make a religion out of it, you're out of balance.

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I like what Warren Wearsby said, Blessed are the balanced.

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Again, you've heard me preach this. Balance is absolutely important, but obviously what is being said here is that to be reformed, to be a

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Calvinist, is to be imbalanced. And obviously, if we were to allow the scriptures to speak, the balance is to be found not in, well,

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I think doing this over here is what defines balance. The balance is going to be found by the consistent exegesis and proclamation of the inspired text of scripture.

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That's where balance comes from. That's where balance comes from. That's why I've always appreciated at our church, we preach through a book of the

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Bible. We preach through a book of the Old Testament. We preach through a book of the New Testament. And you know what? Sometimes you hit some sections.

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I mean, my fellow elder preached from Genesis 38, Sunday night.

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Go read Genesis 38. It isn't easy. In fact, it's very, very difficult.

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But he did so, and he did so in an excellent way. If you want to see, go to prbc .org,

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listen to Sunday Night Sermon. If you want to see how you can make positive application of a difficult text, it's a text about Judah and Tamar and Onan.

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I mean, it's tough. The vast majority of folks, let's face it, would duck it.

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They would simply duck Genesis 38. He didn't. That is what leads, I believe, to balance, is preaching the entire counsel of God.

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So I agree up to that point. The problem is it's being presented here as if Calvinism is imbalanced, and that's, of course, where I disagree.

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I want to say one more thing for those who may be Calvinist among us about the imbalance.

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I have in my hand a sermon preached on April the 3rd in 1859 that is from a book

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I have in my library called Princeton Sermons by Charles Hodge, a great Calvinist theologian.

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It's a sermon on the sovereignty of God. And this is what a five -point

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Calvinist says about divine election, predestination and the truth of divine sovereignty. His last point is this, how this doctrine lies in the

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Scriptures and how it should be preached. Now listen, the doctrine of the sovereignty of God is to all of the doctrines of Scripture but the granite formation is to the other strata of the earth.

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It underlies and sustains them, but it crops out only here and there.

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So this doctrine, divine election, predestination, sovereignty, so this doctrine should underlie all our preaching and should be definitely presented and asserted only now and then.

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Blessed are the balanced. Well again, what

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Hodge means there is exactly what I talked about and that is you will not find us preaching on the five points of Calvinism every

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Sunday at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. When you preach on the entire context of Scripture, you are not going to be going over the basics all the time, but Hodge's point is completely detrimental to Pastor Revis' point.

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And that is, I submit to you, that if you take this viewpoint that says we don't have to really come up with answers to this and we don't have to emphasize the freedom of God, we just need to do it the way we've always done it.

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If you allow the sovereignty of God to be so redefined in that fashion as to not any longer be the sovereignty of God, then how can you say you're even doing what

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Hodge said? How can that become... If you don't preach it to people, and remember, Hodge was living in a time when this wasn't nearly the argument that it is now.

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We live in a day when people exalt the freedom of man, the creature, to such an extent that God has reduced the prayer of Jabez.

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God's reduced to a servant who runs around and... I mean, there are people who believe in open theism today, for crying out loud.

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God doesn't even know what's coming tomorrow. Obviously, there is much more of a concern about the freedom of God and the sovereignty of God today than there even was in Hodge's day.

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And so his point is, it is the granite foundation. It must be understood. So if you're living in a context where more and more people are coming into your church and they don't know these things, then you're going to have to emphasize them over against the denials of them that are common in the culture and sadly, in this case, within evangelicalism itself.

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Let's pray together. Now listen to the invitation. Now you know, if you're here tonight and you're lost, I want to tell you, you are in a church that believes that if you will cry out to God tonight for salvation and faith,

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Jesus will save you sitting right there on that pew. I don't care if you're tall or short, rich or poor.

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Jesus will save you right there where you sit. And I want to encourage you right now to rest your faith on the finished work of Christ.

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Listen, I don't believe you're going to get saved by walking down an aisle. I don't believe you're going to get saved by shaking somebody's hand.

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But this is an opportunity for you to respond and confess your faith. Jesus did say, if we confess our faith before men,

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He'll confess it before the Father who's in heaven. And these men stand down here to simply give you counsel and to help you and to point you to the

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Savior. I'm going to ask these men to come and stand down here. We're all going to stand together.

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And if you need to get saved right now, let's all stand up together.

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Heads are bowed, eyes are closed. If you need to get saved right now, just say, Lord, I'm a sinner. My sins will send me to hell.

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But Jesus, right now, the best I know how, I want You to save me. Please save my soul,

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Jesus. Now, if you want to get saved tonight, just from the balcony or on this main floor, you come down here and Jesus will save you.

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Some of you here, you've been saved. You never followed the Lord in believers' baptism. I'll go ahead and stop it right there because you can hear, you know, there was something positive, very clearly, something positive about having to discuss

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Calvinism. Because it forced the presentation to be different than it normally would be.

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But you still heard, you come down here and you'll get saved. Verse says you can be saved right there, but you come down here and you'll be saved.

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We've all heard the invitations, haven't we? We've all heard enough of them. You start, I surrender all, and just as I am, whatever it might be.

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That is completely and totally up to Pastor Revis. If that's how he wants to do things in his church, if that's what the elders,

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I don't know if they have elders, if that's what they're doing, fine. The point is, obviously, that the criticism to which he was responding that many

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Reformed individuals have is the fact that functionally, let's face it, when someone walks that aisle, what do we treat them as?

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We treat them as a Christian. There's not going to be any serious inquiry into their understanding of such things as repentance, of what they're doing.

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That's what I talked about last week, the Encourager program, the church that I was in at that time, how we were trying to get people to do something serious, and it was next to impossible to get people to do so because, in reality, the vast majority we were dealing with had made an emotional decision that had no lasting value to it at all, at all.

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And so I mention that to you just simply as closing this off.

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Once again, I have no problems whatsoever in taking the time to listen to what someone has said.

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We've played the entire sermon. You cannot say, I took anything out of context.

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We played the whole thing. And you might say, How dare you play someone's sermon and disagree with it?

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Well, you know what? We can't get too many folks to actually dialogue about this stuff. And there are certain aspects of the truth that are most clearly and forcefully illustrated in dialogue.

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They are most clearly and forcefully illustrated in debate. And you look at Acts 17, you look at Acts 18, don't tell me there is no basis for dialogue and debate in the proclamation of the gospel and in confirming those who have embraced the gospel in their faith.

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It's right there. So I do not mean any disrespect for anyone that I review, even when

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I disagree with them, and sometimes when they do not take the opportunity and they do not show the respect that I think the word of God requires to be accurate and thorough in what they're saying.

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I'm going to point that out. But I'm going to point that out for the benefit of the listeners and I'm going to point that out in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, it might result in a change.

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I would like to see, I would like to see David Cloud be consistent to his own words.

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If he were to do so, he would have to apologize for what he said and he would have to completely change the approach that he's taken to respond to Calvinism.

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If he were to use the same methodologies in representing Calvinism that he says we should use to honor

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God's word, he'd have to change. So would Pastor Rivas. So would Adrian Rogers.

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Remember when I reviewed Adrian Rogers' sermons on Romans 9, when he was right and when he was using accurate exegesis, when he was talking about justification,

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I said so. I don't have any reason not to. Some people just don't understand.

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How can you say that that, how can you say that, that you said something nice about a non -Calvinist?

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As if there's something wrong with that. It's not. There's nothing wrong with that. When someone uses exegesis accurately, you go, see, there, they do know how to do it.

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So why aren't they doing it in reference to the doctrines of grace?

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It's a common question. And what's the answer I always give? Tra -di -tion.

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Tradition. It'll be real obvious in some like it is in David Cloud. I mean, it just, it's like a big, bad, pink suit that he doesn't know he's wearing.

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In others, it's much more subtle. It's not quite as clear, not quite as obvious, but it's still tradition.

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It still needs to be identified as tradition. And if you're sitting there going, yeah, well, you've got yours too. Yes, I do.

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But I own them, I recognize them, and I take them, as Jesus taught us to, to the

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Word of God. And that's one of the big problems with these Reformed Catholic folks and all these folks running around who used to be

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Reformed and now they're who knows what in the world they are, but they certainly don't believe in the solos anymore and mock people who do, is that you can't do that.

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You can't test your traditions. That's just a pipe dream. Well, then why did Jesus tell us to do it?

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Did Jesus tell us to do something we can't do in Matthew 15? He held men accountable for testing their traditions on the basis of the

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Word of God. And I sort of think if the Incarnate Son of God says that we're to do that, then that means we have the capacity to do that, that God has communicated with sufficient clarity to do that.

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That's what I think. And so I think it's an important thing to do in examining all of these particular things.

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Well, hey, folks, thanks for being here for the big announcement. And we will be back on Tuesday morning at 11 a .m.

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Mountain Standard Time. That's 1 p .m. Eastern Standard Time and 10 a .m. Pacific Standard Time as we continue this thing called the dividing line and Christian apologetics.

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Thanks for listening. God bless. Brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

59:35

If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.

59:40

Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the

59:45

World Wide Web at aomin .org. That's a -o -m -i -n .org. Where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.