May 18, 2006

Desert Metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded

Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

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

This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602, or toll free across the

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

James White. Good afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line, Thursday afternoon.

No, Tom Askle is not here, so that means the phones are not going to be ringing off the wall today.

Then again, if you couldn't get in last time, you know, if you can put up with just little old me, then you can go ahead and call 877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341, as someone, in fact, is doing even now.

I like how I did that, that was sort of an interesting, normally I just point at Rich and he knows to look at the phone, but that time

I did it as a part of the presentation because I am a highly trained broadcast professional. Actually, I am, believe it or not,

I grew up doing radio. Well, grew up doing radio, it sounds like I started when I was three or something, but I didn't.

But, well, starting 15, 16 years of age, I was on the air doing, back then we had those big round things called records that we spun and they would skip and you have to learn how to bounce them just right so that they would skip to the next thing properly.

Normally, you turn them down before doing that, but then sometimes you just got bored and you just did the other one. But, no, anyway, why did

I get on that? I don't know. Lots of stuff to talk about in the program today and talk with you, take your phone calls.

I have seen some very interesting things on the web, no twist about it, over the past couple of days about the

Ergen -Kanner, Ymir -Kanner, Tom Askell and the guy in Phoenix thing.

And Gene Cook's not dead? He isn't dead? I didn't think that he was dead, but did we actually say that he was dead?

I don't remember saying that Gene Cook was dead. Did I say? The guy called in and he was talking about Gene Scott. We got the names mixed up and so he's calling in to let us know that he's still alive.

We know that Gene Scott's dead. Yeah, but. I know Gene's. But you got the names mixed up. Oh! The caller did.

He said Gene Cook was dead. Yes, he did. So Gene is calling in to tell us and make sure that we know that he's not dead.

You know, all I can say is it's a sad, sad day, Gene, when you have to call into a program to tell people that you're not dead.

Gene? Yeah? I'm glad that you're not dead. I'm not dead. Thank you.

I appreciate it. But, you know, I have to tell you, it kind of freaked me out because I had two people email me and they said,

James White said you were dead. Are you dead? And so I said, what?

And they said, no, you've got to listen to the feed or the file. So I went back and listened to it and somebody asked you a question about, they said, you know

Gene Cook? And you said, yeah. Isn't that the guy that just died? And I knew you were probably thinking about Gene Scott a little bit later in the program.

You said, actually, it was Gene Scott that I was thinking of. That's the guy that died. Right, right, right. We knew you weren't dead.

How many Genes can there be in California anyway? That's right. There's a lot. There are a lot of Genes in California?

Yeah. Okay. All right. And, but the good thing is that there's not a lot of Gene Scotts.

You know, that's a very good thing because if there had been a lot of him, it would have been a lot weirder than it actually is.

Yeah. But I got to tell you, that's also not the first time it happened. I was preaching at a church one time and the pastor got up to introduce me and he introduced me as Gene Scott.

Now, that is really not good because you probably don't even smoke, do you? Well, I do have an occasional cigar.

Well, okay. All right. But not when I'm preaching. That's the difference.

I don't have any live dancing girls behind me when I'm preaching. I was going to say, you generally also watch your language while preaching as well?

Yeah. Well, unless it's in the Bible. Oh, okay. All right. Well, all right. Hey, now, we had a call.

I thought we had a call. Something about a guy who debates

Calvinists. Was that the same call? No, that was a different call. I have that on my list. I've got three things that I wanted to talk to you about.

Oh, okay. Number one is I'm not dead. You're not dead. All right. That's good. Number two is this guy named

Steve Gregg. Okay, Steve Gregg. All right. Yeah, Steve Gregg is a former Calvary Chapel Jesus Movement Christian that has come out of the whole

Jesus Movement Calvary Chapel thing. I think he lives in Idaho, but he had a regular talk show on some local station up there in Idaho Monday through Friday, and it was actually called

The Narrow Path. I don't know if he still has it. I haven't checked up on him. Yeah. But he was actually the publisher that published the book called

Four Views on the Millennium. Oh. So if you look at that book, Four Views on the Millennium, I'm not sure.

I don't think he contributed, but he is all millennial, which is kind of strange. Okay. But he's a five -point

Arminian. Let me back up a second. Why is it strange that he's all millennial? Well, I guess you don't expect people that are coming out of the

Calvary. You expect them to be Arminian, but you don't expect them to be all millennial. Okay. Well, that's probably part of his coming out.

It probably was. You're right. So somebody got us together, and it wasn't actually a formal debate.

It was just a series of dialogues on his radio program. But the guy that called you and said that Steve Gregg is the guy that you should probably discuss

Calvinism with, the only difference between Dave Hunt and, say,

Norman Geisler and Steve Gregg is that Steve Gregg is not afraid to defend his position, which is good.

And Steve Gregg is a very smooth talker. He's about the most creative Arminian that I've ever come in contact with.

Creative? Creative, yeah. As far as twisting scripture around. Okay. And, I mean, the man has an incredible imagination, which is good if you're defending

Arminianism, because you're going to need that. If you're trying to do so biblically, yes. Right. But what happened was, one of the days, we actually, they had some problems with the radio station, so we weren't able to go on.

So we did four shows on his radio program, and then the fifth one we actually did on mine.

And that was kind of the grand finale. But the highlight is, I think back on those five dialogues, and by the way,

I can send you a link if you want to listen to those. I would like to listen to them. He's also got, I think on his website, if he's still got it up there, he had all of his lectures on Calvinism.

Now, one other difference about this guy is that he is honest in his representation of Calvinism. You know, he doesn't blow things out of proportion.

He doesn't necessarily, I haven't known him to do the straw man thing where he just exaggerates and tries to make the doctrine look as ugly as possible.

I think he does a fair example or a fair representation in representing Calvinism. He does a whole teaching.

I think it's like 15 sermons or 15 lessons that he did on Calvinism in a Sunday school class.

So I listened to that stuff first, so I kind of knew where he was coming from. But as I think back on the five dialogues, the highlight for me was, he kept denying that men were regenerated in the

Old Testament. You know, he was equating the giving of the gift of the Holy Spirit with regeneration.

He said it was impossible for a man to be regenerated without the gift of the Holy Spirit. So the highlight for me was when

I demonstrated from Scripture that they had circumcised hearts in the

Old Covenant. And he said, so what does that mean? And I said, well, let's take a look at Romans chapter 2.

At the end of chapter 2 there, I think it's verses 19 through 21, right at the very last verses it talks about having a circumcised heart.

And he said, so what does that mean? And I said, well, it says that it's circumcised by the Spirit, or it mentions the

Spirit in the context of the circumcised heart. And he said, no, no, no, the Spirit's not mentioned in the book of Romans until chapter 8.

And I said, well, open your Bible to chapter 2, and there it was. So he kind of put his foot in his mouth at that point.

And I think that that really kind of drove home, at least for me, the fact that he really didn't understand the work of the

Spirit in the Old Testament as it relates to regeneration. Interesting. Well, I have had people make a reference and tell me to look at, you know, what he had to say.

And if I recall correctly, I may have even downloaded some MP3s a while back. But that's about my extent of it.

So, well, good, I'd like to be able to listen to those. Yeah, I'll send you over a password and a username that you can log in and listen to it.

The other guy that's recently contacted me, I ran into him a couple times, but he just refreshed my memory last

Tuesday night when I spoke to him on my program, a guy named Eric Lunsbury.

And he mentions you. He's all upset with me. He mentions you in the email that he sent me, the scolding email.

Basically the subject of God speaking to us in an audible voice came up on the program.

And I gave the standard reform position on that, that God does not speak audibly apart from the

Scriptures. And he called me up and rebuked me. But he said in the email that he's working on getting a debate together with you because you guys have a mutual friend.

Really? Yeah, that's what he said. Did he mention who the friend is? Let me take a look real fast.

I don't think he did. Because it's not ringing any bells with me whatsoever. Ringing any bells with you,

Rich? He also lives in Idaho. And this is the first time that that crossed my mind, that maybe these guys know each other.

The only guy I know who lives in Idaho. Oh, yep, okay, bingo, I got it. I just made the connection.

Is he a Calvary Chapel guy? He sounds like one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, just made the connection.

All right, I know who he's referring to. Bing, bing, bing. Yeah, a couple weeks ago we got a call about this because a friend of mine was dialoguing with somebody.

And he does live in Idaho. So, yep, there you go. So that is interesting. Yeah, he says in the email,

I'm in the process of trying to get a debate set up with your friend James White on Calvinism. And I think he says he wants here to debate the subject of limited atonement.

Or actually, no. He wants to debate me on the subject of limited to God speaking through us in the scripture alone.

Oh, he wants to actually go after Sola Scriptura? Well, I told him that his position was the denial of Sola Scriptura.

Right, right. No, it's not. He basically compared himself to Agabus in the Book of Acts. And Moses, you know, as God spoke to Moses face to face as one man speaks to another.

He's describing that as normative Christian prayer. And he says you can't have fellowship unless God is actually speaking to you and you're hearing what he says.

And I'm thinking, well, I wonder what he would do if the Mormon missionaries came to his front door and asked him to pray about the truthfulness of Mormonism.

Right. I mean, it seems to me that holding his position, he'd be obligated to do so. He couldn't appeal to the scriptures and say, well, you know, the scriptures already indicate to me that Mormonism is false.

Right, right. Because then he would be limiting God, which is exactly what he is accusing me of doing. Interesting.

Well, that obviously introduces a rather interesting dynamic into any discussion of Reformed theology as well, to be perfectly honest with you, as far as the normative authority of scripture.

So, all right, that's two of the three. What was number three? Let's see, you're alive. No, that's three.

That is number three. Okay, all right. I'm alive. Steve Gregg and Eric Lunsbury.

Okay, all right. And by the way, the Jehovah's Witness debate, I don't know if you got a chance to listen to it, but I felt that it went well, and I appreciate you coaching me on that.

I haven't heard from those guys since then. Well, as long as they're not calling you up and chasing you around all the time, that probably means something.

Yeah, it does, doesn't it? All right, sir. Okay. Thanks a lot, Gene. All right, God bless.

Bye -bye. All right, there's Gene Cook, everybody. He is alive and well and kicking, and I didn't mean to kill you,

Gene. I really didn't, but, you know, sometimes someone calls up, and as soon as they say

California, there's just so many things that are wrong there. Every time someone posts something in Channel about California, but now it's

Idaho. I mean, after today, I thought that I knew of at least two Orthodox folks up there in Idaho.

There's Hobster is up there, and then, of course, our friend is up there who's listening. Probably not right now, but listening by archival at a later time, a little time -lapse thing there.

But no, now we find out that Idaho is filled with Mormons and Calvary Chapel folks who talk to God.

So here I was thinking that would be a good place to open up a tire shop, you know, but now

I'm not so sure because, you know, Hobster's only got, you know, they're only going to need four tires, and so I'm going to start dealing with everybody else after that.

So that's not a real good thing. Anyway, appreciate that, Gene, for your call in today.

By the way, everyone, Matt Slick's up there? Oh, my goodness. That is just an odd state, just completely now.

I've only been there once. I drove, was it Bear Lake down there near the Utah border? I think it's the only time

I've ever been to Idaho. And I do not believe I saw a human being while I was in Idaho. So that tells you something.

The Shabir Ali MP3 debate, the MP3s are available in our

MP3 shopping cart on the web. The only reason that we have them available is quickly, no, we have not yet received the materials.

I was just told by a little bird that flew by earlier today that Biola is supposed to have the DVDs out by June 1st.

So I'm not sure what that means, but I'm not sure what our agreement was there, whether we're getting final

DVDs and then we're just making them available or just what the story is there. But I thought we were getting raw footage and then we're doing the, you know.

So I might want to give somebody a ring -a -ling on that. But we have the

MP3s because we had a videotape running as redundancy in one of our cameras, and therefore we had an audio feed.

I'm hoping the audio feed that ends up on the actual DVDs is a little better at some points because when

I start off and I start responding to certain things, I sound like I'm – why is it always me that sounds like I'm a million miles away from the microphone?

And whoever I'm debating, they get the good feed. I'm not sure why that works that way.

Anyway, the MP3s are available. If you go to the website, the top article on the blog right now will have the link that you can take a look at that.

Yes, for anyone who would dare to ask, and I'm not sure why anyone would dare to ask, tomorrow morning

I will be looking at – I will be heading over to the earliest matinee showing

I can of the DaVinci Code. Yes, I am well aware of the fact that it has been panned pretty badly.

The critics ain't liking it. I don't know how it could have, to be honest with you, survived overly well on the critical level.

Since everyone knows the book, and the book itself is questionable on certain levels.

I mean, there's a lot of folks who have taken it on on just a stylistic level. But the really bad parts of the book are long dialogues.

And they're long dialogues in a front room interrupted by a – all of a sudden, sudden violence.

But actually nobody dies in that situation. But you've got this big long situation in Teebing's mansion where you've got a front room, you've got an art room.

And it's just dialogue, dialogue, dialogue, dialogue. And there's lengthy discussions between the characters.

And there's the airplane section. And how do you – I don't know how you speed those things up.

There's not a whole lot going on other than people talking. And what they're talking about is not really the kind of stuff where you can speed it along real well.

How else can you do it? And so I saw in the critics' panning of the movie a lot of discussion of how slow and plotting.

And there's all this extra detail. And I'm like, you couldn't tell this story without the detail.

I don't know how you can miss that. And that would indicate, of course, that all the material that we have been discussing on this program and the presentations

I've done at various churches, at Auburn University, so on and so forth, that material is going to be in the film.

It's going to be presented. And the sad thing is, now that I think about it, the man who says most of the worst stuff probably really enjoyed saying it.

And that is actor Sir Ian McKellen, who plays Teebing in the film, who also played the

Gandalf. He also plays Magneto in the X -Men films. So I imagine he is probably richer than a lot of countries are.

Yeah, the critics liked him. I'm sure they would. But he is an open, avowed homosexual.

I linked – Dan Phillips sent me a link earlier today to his own website, not

Dan Phillips' website, to Ian McKellen's website, where he discusses the fact that when he goes into hotel rooms, if he looks in the little drawer there and finds that Gideon Bible, he will rip

Leviticus 18 .22 out of those Bibles so that he is, as he says, can relax.

He doesn't want that to near him when he's trying to sleep, and so he rips it out of the Bible. So I imagine he really enjoyed very much saying the things he's saying.

Someone in the channel just said, yeah, and he's going to be all the richer because of you. Well, using that kind of reasoning,

I would have no Mormon books in my library. I'd have no Jehovah's Witness books in my library. In fact, I'd have nothing, almost nothing in my library that wasn't absolutely perfectly orthodox.

I would have none of that material that I need to utilize to be able to give a response.

I would never have purchased the Da Vinci Code book itself because that added to Dan Brown's riches as well.

And I've – many, many years ago when I was building my LDS library, someone basically said that, well, you're helping the

Mormon church by buying those books. And I said, well, you know, I sort of like to think that somewhere an air conditioner goes out every time

I buy one of these books, and they have to fix it, and therefore they don't get helped by that. But obviously I feel that it's significantly more important for someone in my position to have original resources and to be able to address these things in a direct fashion than the six or seven bucks that the film's going to make off of me.

That's a pretty small little price to pay for being able to address a subject in a meaningful fashion and to be able to report to you tomorrow,

Lord willing, the amount of the same material that was in the book, the lies concerning Constantine, the

Bible, et cetera, et cetera. How much of that is in there, and how much of that has been embellished, and how much of that has been diminished?

Has anything been added? Has anything been deleted? What has been added? What was the spin on it?

So on and so forth. So I need to try to listen. It's going to be difficult. Bart said, is he richer than you?

Not he is richer now because of you. Yay. Okay, that's nice. I'm sorry.

That's still really silly, Ian McKellen. Something tells me that Hollywood actors make a little bit more than Reformed Baptist apologists do.

Just a little, you know, just a tad. Like he could buy me.

What are you talking about? Excuse me. Anyway, silliness.

I imagine he enjoyed saying what he was saying, and I will try to blog by tomorrow afternoon my thoughts on the entirety of the

Da Vinci Code stuff. It was interesting this morning I mentioned this. I'm missing the

Today Show more and more. And by the way, the number 877 -753 -3341.

I'm missing the Da Vinci Show. The Today Show. Did I say the Da Vinci Show? Today Show, Da Vinci. Right now it's the same thing, if you've been watching it, because they've been on the trail of the grail.

And I'm missing it more and more because you've got to, with the temperature the way it is in Phoenix these days, you've got to get on the bike and you've got to get on it early.

And you've got to get your rides done very, very early, or you'll have what happened to me happen to you.

Yesterday we did a long, long ride, 57 miles, and by the time we got back it was like 95 degrees, and all the water in my bottle was like also 95 degrees.

You just don't want to drink 95 degree water when it's 95 degrees. It was terrible. And so I need stringer glasses.

Okay. I'm just sort of watching the odd commentary going by.

So I've not been watching it as much as I have in the past when I'd be able to ride later in the day.

And yesterday when they had the stars and Tom Howard.

Tom Howard? I don't think it's Ron Howard. Tom Howard is his older brother who didn't get to play

Opie. Tom Hanks and Ron Howard.

I was trying to think of the two guys that I can tell are really nervous about this. I don't know if you've been watching this, but I've gotten the feeling these guys know they've got a stinker on their hands.

And what's worse is they've got a stinker on their hands with more publicity than they know what to do with. And, I mean, some people actually said that at times it's next to impossible to understand the

French actress in what she's saying in the film. And she says some stuff you can't, if you don't understand what she's saying, you're lost.

So that in and of itself is a problem. But anyway, when McKellen said what he said about the

Bible needing to have a notice in the front that it's fiction.

A disclaimer in the front saying that it's fiction. The camera was only on McKellen at that time.

But, of course, they've all got microphones on. And somebody gave this very nervous little laugh.

And you could tell it was a laugh coming from someone who's really trying to cover it and realizing, oh, no, this is a disaster.

Did he have to say that? And I don't know if it was Howard or if it was Hanks that said that, but it did that little laugh.

But you could just tell after that nobody wanted to touch that one with a 10 -foot pole. They were going into damage control almost immediately.

And so I will be reporting on all of that, Lord willing, tomorrow afternoon.

Today, I don't know if this was penance or what, but they went from the

Cannes Film Festival to the Vatican. There's Matt Lauer sitting in the

Vatican with some of the American cardinals and bishops and stuff. And I'm going, ah,

I was there last year about this time. In fact, it was almost exactly this time, about exactly a year.

That is interesting. And they were talking about various and sundry things, but they didn't really want to get into da

Vinci so much. I mean, the guy that talked about it did criticize it properly. He focused on what was most important, the stuff about Constantine and things like that.

But it was funny to see the

Today Show almost doing a mea culpa to the Vatican after doing this whole thing on the Holy Grail and all the rest of the silliness as far as the da

Vinci Code was concerned. So it will be interesting to see what is going to take place after all of this.

And then notice, yes, I said various and sundry. I always say various and sundry.

I do not say the capstone, the arch of Christianity. So I say various and sundry.

Everybody has their terms, okay? It's just the way things work. Someone on the channel mentioned, and I don't know,

I just mentioned it on my blog, Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, has crossed the

Tiber River. He is now a Roman Catholic. Of course, he was a charismatic

Episcopalian, which is basically an emotional, popeless

Catholic anyways. So he wasn't that far down the road as it was.

But it was interesting reading some of the article.

I linked it off the blog. And obviously, you go back to 1994.

In 1994, you have evangelicals and Catholics together,

ECT. And when I responded to that long, long ago, this was back before blogs.

This was back when you actually wrote stuff in a thing called the dividing line newsletter, which you then had to print and you had to fold and you had to address and you had to bulk mail.

And I think we eventually put it on the web. I'm not sure once we got this, that odd web thing going. I mentioned at the time, what is the primary driving factor in regards to this kind of ecumenical dialogue and ecumenical compromise?

And what causes people who start off with a strong commitment to biblical truth to see them compromise that over time?

What is it? And in many situations, what you have going on is cultural co -belligerence resulting in a shifting of perspective, a shifting of attitudes and a shifting of priorities.

And basically, when you've stood outside of an abortion clinic together with somebody, you've now created a bond and you like this person and you share your concern about the unborn.

And therefore, whether a person is justified by grace alone and faith alone or justified by grace through faith, but with other things, just doesn't seem to be as important an idea.

And, of course, in a postmodern society, almost nobody thinks that's very important anymore. And that is the background.

That's what leads to this. And when you read Randall Terry's story, you see it written in between every other line is this activity, this co -belligerence leading eventually to a crossing of the

Tiber River into the fullness of Roman Catholic communion, et cetera, et cetera.

So that is linked on the blog as well. So 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number that you can call.

I'm sure someone would like me to move from here to any developments that have taken place in the

October 16th debate scheduled for Lynchburg, Virginia.

And we'd love to do that right now. But actually, we need to take a break. Yes, we have, do we have new commercials?

No. But we still need to do it anyways. So here now is the old commercial music.

A godly man is such a rarity today. So many stars strong.

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 aomin .org.

This portion of the dividing line has been made possible by the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

The Apostle Paul spoke of the importance of solemnly testifying of the gospel of the grace of God. The proclamation of God's truth is the most important element of his worship in his church.

The elders and people of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church invite you to worship with them this coming Lord's Day.

The morning Bible study begins at 9 .30 a .m. and the worship service is at 10 .45.

Evening services are at 6 .30 p .m. on Sunday and the Wednesday night prayer meeting is at 7.

The Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church is located at 3805 North 12th Street in Phoenix.

You can call for further information at 602 -26 -GRACE. If you're unable to attend, you can still participate with your computer and real audio at prbc .org,

where the ministry extends around the world through the archives of sermons and Bible study lessons available 24 hours a day.

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. I say canter once in a while too because we all did that one time, that's canter.

We have dramatic music. Dramatic music? Dun, dun, dun. And what would we be selling with this?

Well then we'd put the Alaska commercial right after that. What does that mean? We'd have Mike going,

Alaska. So what you're saying is Ergin Canter wants Alaska? I think he needs a vacation,

I really do. After the correspondence we've had recently, yeah. I'm the one that needs the vacation.

Well, I think they're clearly overdue. Well, I don't know. Emir's only said two emails the whole time.

He's been fairly quiet. Anyway, speaking of which, any developments?

Not much. The last that we were mentioning the last time when

Tom Askell was with me was that we, well, you saw everything that we had posted.

And, again, I very, very, very much appreciate those who took the time to put that into a

PDF because it's a whole lot easier to read than the HTML format that was posted up there originally.

But, anyway, that was everything up until Sunday night,

Monday morning. And the only other correspondence that has taken place has been my attempting to contact

Dr. O'Donnell, who is the head of the debate department, with the questions that you did read in the literature that you looked at.

And, specifically, I have questions about this form of debate, this parliamentary form of debate, because unless I'm missing something, there is almost no opportunity for meaningful cross -examination.

There is almost no opportunity for anyone to really ask.

I mean, there is these called points of information, and you can yield during presentations to answer a point of information.

But the idea of actually having that give and take, and everyone agrees that's where debate takes place, is when you have the back and forth.

I mean, think about the debates we've done in the past. Think about the debate with Stravinskis. And getting into the text and asking him, who is the blessed man?

And here you have this Roman Catholic priest, two doctorates, and he responds by saying the blessed man of Romans 4, 7, and 8, blessed is the man whose sins the

Lord will not impute to him, is Jesus. I mean, there's just no way to defend that kind of a viewpoint.

And that comes out only in cross -examination. One side can answer questions, one side can answer consistently, one side can answer biblically.

And when the other side can't, that illustrates what the issue is. And I've said many times,

I would love to get these folks who are so confident in their denunciation of Reformed theology to sit down for an hour of cross -examination.

And let's start through John. Remember what happened with the

Roman Catholic fellow right around a year ago? When I started trying to go into John, I'm not a biblical scholar, and we're not going to get anywhere with that.

And the same thing happened when we were up in Salt Lake City. Went into John, started asking an

LDS scholar. Well, I don't know. I don't know. I remember we talked with Dr.

Sanders. What do you think about John? Well, you know, it's been a number of years since I've looked at that.

And when you get into the cross -examination and you start getting into the text, that's when people find out who can actually handle the biblical text and can do so consistently and who cannot.

That's where the rubber meets the road. And as far as I can see,

I think, I could be wrong here, but I think I saw four minutes of cross -examination in the current format.

Four minutes. In some of the debates we've had, we've had as much as, what, 45 or more minutes of correspondence in the form of cross -examination.

That's vitally important. It absolutely is vitally important. It needs to be there.

There will not be any meaningful debate if that is not there. And so we've been trying to,

I've been trying to get a hold of Dr. O'Donnell. And finally, yesterday, I believe it was, I sent a message.

And it basically said, you know,

I've put these return receipt attachments into the email.

I'm not sure exactly how that works. And I have gotten the response.

I've gotten the return receipts back. And it says that my email was read at such and such time.

Now, I recognize if a person's, maybe a person's email system is just set up to automatically handle those and send them back.

I don't know. I just don't know. I just haven't heard anything. I have gotten no responses at all.

And so what I said was, you know, I hope that what we're facing here is not a situation where Dr.

O'Donnell is not going to talk to us. Because, you know, that would just, there would be no way to even have a debate if the moderator won't talk to one side and answer questions.

I have questions to ask about the parliamentary debate procedure. What is a point of information? How many times can you do that?

Is that limited to one person per 10 -minute speech, et cetera, et cetera? There's all sorts of questions that I've got. Because if this is being forced on us, this is not what we want.

You know, we have suggested a format. We've got a lot of experience. Obviously, I have far more experience than both of the canners put together in doing formal public debate.

And I have tried to present a meaningful, you know, concept.

But if we're going to be forced to do this 10 minutes, 10 minutes, 10 minutes, what it is right now would be each person would have 10 -minute opening statements.

And then you'd have 10 -minute closing statements. That's right there. That's 80 minutes of the two -and -a -half hours they've allowed.

And so you'd have to fit what? You'd have two more segments in there? Would that be? No. Yeah.

Yeah, right around two more segments. So each of us would basically speak four times for 10 minutes each.

In the center portions, in the two times in the middle, the other side can interrupt you and ask for a point of information.

And you can either yield and answer the point of information or decline. That's it.

I don't know exactly what all that means, and I have questions, so I want to be able to ask questions. I want to have the rulebook.

I want to have the official debate rulebook that's going to be used because I want to know the rules. I will know the rules before we walk into that debate.

And I would really like to see if maybe some others who know debate just as well would be willing to attend and also sort of keep track of things and make sure that all is well.

Well, anyway, I just haven't gotten any word back. So finally yesterday, I send that out, and I say, you know,

I know that this is the end of the semester, difficult time. But could someone just, like, you know, at least hit respond, really busy right now, finals week, talk to you in 10 days?

You know, what would that take? 10 seconds, 12 seconds, 13 seconds to do something like that?

And we haven't gotten anything like that. Well, finally yesterday, I heard from Dr.

Kanner himself, Ergin Kanner, and he said that he had seen Dr. O'Donnell at the airport and that he was leaving.

And for some reason, he told me there are three flights in Lynchburg and three flights out of Lynchburg. And I remember that because I flew into Lynchburg.

It's a very small little airport. And so he said that he didn't want me losing confidence in our moderator and that we would be hearing from Dr.

O'Donnell in due time. So he wanted to assure me that Dr. O'Donnell was going to respond to all of my concerns about the format of the debate.

So we will see what comes of that. We will see what the development is.

And there is some interesting stuff. Before we take our first phone call, the blog comment thread on this particular issue at the founder's blog may end up getting bigger than the one that really blew up a long time ago.

It's up to 180 some odd. Last time I looked, I've actually commented three times on it myself.

And it is truly amazing to me that there are still people who are going, well, you never should have posted those emails.

You never should have posted those emails. And I go, wait a minute. Wait a minute. I posted the original emails between Ergen Kanner and myself.

And I did so after he raised the issue himself. He said, I suppose I'll be seeing these things on the web.

If so, I just want everything quoted in totality. So I said, fine.

I think people should. 201 right now. Well, I think people should take a look at the conversation we've had.

And I think they'll learn a lot from it. And so I posted it. So going into the second round, there was five people initially.

Now there's six people on the two or CC list of this conversation.

So you've already got a small group there to begin with. And beyond that, as soon as the issue was raised, we want to keep these private.

Immediately within, I would say within an hour, I haven't looked at time stamps, but I think it probably could be within an hour.

Dr. Askew wrote back and said, I will not be constrained by your desire to keep this out of the public eye.

I am not making that promise at all. And so it was well known. Very clearly.

In fact, if you read the Cantor's responses later after that, they'll say, well, since these aren't going to be private, say no.

To try to make that a, to try to throw dust in the air and try to distract people from the actual content and what that content reveals is an act of desperation on certain individuals, if you want my personal opinion of that particular element of it.

But one of the things I wasn't even thinking about when

I did post it, I posted it so the people of God can know exactly what has taken place.

We have announced that we're doing a debate. Dr. Cantor announced that the debate was going on before we even knew about it.

And so this is a public issue. The format of the debate, the topic of the debate, this is all a public issue. This is our discussions of these things.

These are all public matters. It was not like we were having some private conversation where there was a lot of self -revelation and self -confession and things like that.

And then you went and exposed all of that. No, that's ridiculous. These were discussions about something that's going to be taking place in a very, very public context.

And some people, upon reading them, have just been amazed, absolutely amazed at the vast difference between the two sides and how we approach issues, how we argue our points, how we try to be consistent.

And just like when I posted the original Cantor correspondence, and now this, the effect has been the same.

People sit back and go, wow, there is a huge difference between how these two sides are approaching this subject.

And that needs to be understood. My motivation for engaging in this debate is obviously very different than that of the

Cantors. It must be very, very different. And that manifests itself a lot in how we're approaching things.

Anyway, 877 -753 -3341. Let's talk with John up in that bastion of conservatism,

Portland, Oregon. You got that right. Actually, what makes it worse is

I moved in, been out here like a year and a half, and I moved from Connecticut. That's another great conservative.

Yeah, yeah, New England, yeah, you got it. You just like being in the minority, huh? Well, that's what happens when you're a

Calvinist. Oh, so God predestined that you were going to live amongst liberals?

What did you do to need this purging? Well, good question.

You don't have to answer that question. It was completely rhetorical. So what's your question about,

John? Well, basically, you've talked about... I just got picked up Bible Work 7. And I know you also have

Lebronics on your laptop. What else do you have for theological software?

Well, this initially takes us back to the debate between Dr. Askell and myself on Macs and PCs.

Because my understanding is there is supposed to be an excellent program available for Macs as well that I know absolutely positively nothing about.

So I'm assuming that you have a PC and not a Mac, right? That's true. Okay, all right. So all the

Mac heads can now start talking in channel about what they think is really good about whatever their program is.

And we won't worry about that. But anyway, my primary programs, in fact, are those two.

For biblical study, I still primarily use Bible Works because the interface is one that I still find to be easiest.

However, Lebronics is doing everything it can through Logos Bible Systems to become competitive on that level.

A lot of people have complained that Lebronics is a huge system slug.

It slows their computers down, especially if they have older computers that don't have as much

RAM or don't have as much processor speed, that if you're running Lebronics, it can really, really, really take a chunk out of your performance.

I think in talking with the folks at Lebronics, the third edition just came out, and they said they were addressing issues like that with that.

I haven't had time to play with it yet enough to know exactly what it looks like.

I do use the Lebronics materials because they have – it's a library system.

You need to realize those are two different programs with two somewhat different purposes, but they obviously cross into each other's fields in certain ways.

And some people would simply like Lebronics better, and some people would like BibleWorks better.

And it really depends on are you looking to do lots of searches, that you want to be able to search a wide range of books, like if you get the

Theological Journal Library, which is available for Lebronics, you can search the Westminster Theological Seminary and their journal and Jets and all these other things.

They've got all these huge collections that you can have and search on keywords and really track down a lot of information and BibleWorks really isn't designed to do that.

Now, they're getting more and more modules that you can add in, but they're primarily focused on Greek, Hebrew, the grammars, vocabulary, being able to put stuff on the screen and really compare, for example, synoptic stuff and a whole lot of that kind of thing.

And I normally have both of them running, to be perfectly honest with you, but that's rather expensive, let's face it. I mean, to get everything that you'd really like to have in Lebronics is going to be a fairly major investment.

Now, obviously, if you're starting off new and you haven't already invested a lot into a huge paper library, it's cheaper to buy electronic books than it is to buy paper books.

That's all there is to it. I mean, you can buy large, major commentary series and things like that for less money.

And if you're a person who searches on keywords and you're searching for stuff, that's obviously the way to go.

If you're a reader, most people report that trying to read that stuff off the screen isn't nearly as enjoyable as sitting down with a nice book, a nice big heavy book in a nice leather chair under a nice lamp and reading.

So, you know, there's a lot of things to be thinking about as to how you make your decisions.

But primarily, my resource program is Lebronics, in the sense that that's where I've got the theological journal libraries, that's where I've got

Luther, that's where I've got Van Til, that's where I've got all these collections that I can search on keywords, including historical stuff, early church fathers, things like that.

BibleWorks is much more my parsing, lexical resources, quick run into the septuagint type of a program.

And if I'm just going to grab some text or something like that, I'm going to go to BibleWorks first. But if I'm going to be examining, for example, textual critical material, the only way

I can do that really fully yet, BibleWorks is working on this and they're coming out with the modules.

And in fact, we were supposed to be looking at those textual critical modules for BibleWorks. I haven't gotten them yet because I haven't followed up on that.

But there is a new textual critical module for BibleWorks 7 that I'd like to be able to tell you about.

But unfortunately, I've been a little bit busy and haven't been able to dig in and get it from Lebronics.

It's not Lebronics. It's just BibleWorks anymore. I keep telling them. Hermeneutica, that's right. I haven't been able to install that yet and take a look at it.

So I still use the Lebronics log off system to do that. So, you know, each one has its advantages.

I mean, obviously, on a financial level, BibleWorks is a little bit easier to handle than getting the full -blown

Lebronics package. But, you know, very much so. But if you're looking at a long -term investment, building something up over time, then the log off system certainly has advantages there, too.

But those are really the only two. Honestly, outside of that, any quote -unquote theological program

I have is cultic. Cultic are from another religion. What do I mean by that? Well, you've got the

LDS collector's library. So I've got all my Mormonism stuff. You have the Watchtower library,

Watchtower CD -ROM, which is actually a pretty cleanly written little thing that's quite useful along those lines.

I have Aleem 6 .0, which is the best Islamic software in English by far.

And that's pretty much it. I really don't have anything else as far as theological software is concerned.

Okay. So, but I know a lot of folks are torn between the two because you see stuff in the one, you go, oh,

I've got to have that. But then you see stuff in the other and go, oh, man, I'd really like to have that, too. And you wish they would just sort of all get together and it would all be one program, but it doesn't work that way.

And competition is actually healthy as far as price control is concerned. So I know up there in the

Northwest that no one believes that, but they just let the government decide what all the prices are. But in the real world, you know.

But, yeah, those are the two programs that are running for me all the time. Okay. All righty? Yeah, great.

Thanks for calling. Bye -bye. Bye -bye. Yeah, I'm trying to remember, what is that, what is the

Mac program? I saw some of the comments on it on Tom's blog.

Assurance, something like that? Is it Assurance? Someone actually gave me the website once, and I'm just waiting for folks on the channel to finally throw it up there.

And Accordance, Accordance, yes, okay. Accordance, Assurance, Accordance, they sound pretty much the same to one another.

It's a Mac. And so what you get is just simply what you get, and you can't change anything.

And because Mac tells you to be cool, you have to do it our way. So I don't have

Tom on to argue with me about it right now. Look, I recognize Macs are beautiful machines, and they work just fine.

And I personally am not all that excited about viruses and spyware and all the rest of that stuff.

But at the same time, it would be ridiculous to attempt to try to convert over to a

Mac system. Now, you, on the other hand, everyone has told me that Mac's video editing stuff can beat anything

PC can throw out. So that's what they tell me. Now, I just can't see you wearing

Birkenstocks ever, so I can't see that that would actually really work for you at all. But that's what they've told me, is that the video editing stuff is just incredible.

Yeah, but this ain't Hollywood. I don't need to do all kinds of fancy -dancy, flashy, have your image of the one debater spinning in over the top of the other debater as the transitions happen.

I just need to be able to do picture -in -picture stuff. Couldn't you sort of stop the glow on my head, though, better on a

Mac? No, we need better cameras for that, and we got them. Oh, the cameras can do that. Filters.

Filters? On the cameras. There's a bald filter? Well, there's a glow. Glow filter?

It cuts down the light. The glow filter? Yes. That's cool. It's a light issue.

It's the light bouncing off of your forehead. When did you give up trying to get me to powder that down?

Well, when you kept turning me down, so I had to go get better cameras. Oh, okay. So you think about how much cheaper and less money we could have spent on getting you to wear a little bit of makeup, but no.

No. No. No makeup, so we have to spend all this money to get better cameras.

Could you do CGI hair? CGI hair? Yeah. Probably, yeah.

On Mac, but not on PC. Oh, sure. Sure, on PC. Yeah, that'd be easy. Oh, okay. Yeah, I could superimpose all kinds of things on you if I wanted, you know.

Or... Strange mustaches. Or have things come up in the middle of my opponents speaking. Yeah. Just big old words across their faces.

Mm -hmm. Haven't we done that? You know, just like cartoon things. Have them pop, you know, little thoughts popping up.

Oh, you like things? Yeah. Bing! Uh -oh, I'm in trouble. Bye. Okay, well, you know,

I wonder if we could sell those. You know, the alternate version of the debate.

No, no, we don't want to do that. We don't want to do that. The red -faced Barry Lynn. Oh, yes.

We could have fun with that. We could have fun with that one. Yes, we could. Well, anyway, thanks for listening to the Voting Line today. Let me see.

Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday. Yep. As far as I can tell, I'll be here next Tuesday if you'd like to be here, too.

We'll get back together again and do it again. Thanks for listening. God bless. Like the strong in a simple way

We must contend for the faith of Father's power We need a new Reformation day

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