Finishing the Jon Modene Sermon

Alpha & Omega Ministries iconAlpha & Omega Ministries

6 views

Comments are disabled.

00:00
The world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is
00:17
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.
00:28
Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
00:34
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
00:43
United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
00:50
James White. Paul says man is dead.
00:57
He is not merely drowning, he is already sunk to the bottom of the sea. It is futile to throw a life preserver to a man who has already drowned.
01:04
If I understand Paul, I hear him saying that God dives into the water and pulls a dead man from the bottom of the sea and then performs a divine act of mouth -to -mouth resuscitation.
01:13
He breathes into the dead man new life. It is important to remember that regeneration has to do with new life.
01:19
It is called a new birth or being born again. Much confusion exists about this matter. The new birth is closely linked in the
01:25
Bible to the new life that is ours in Christ. Just as in natural biology, there can be no life without birth, so in supernatural terms there can be no new life without a new birth.
01:35
Birth and life are closely connected, but they are not exactly the same thing. Birth is the beginning of the new life.
01:41
It is a decisive moment. We understand that in normal biological terms. Every year we celebrate our birthdays.
01:48
We are not like the queen in Alice in Wonderland who celebrated all her unbirthdays. Birth is a one -time experience.
01:54
It may be celebrated, but not repeated. It is a decisive moment of transition. A person is either born or not yet born.
02:01
So it is with spiritual rebirth. Rebirth produces new life. It is the beginning of new life, but it is not the total sum of the new life.
02:08
It is the crucial point of transition from spiritual death to spiritual life. A person is never partially born again.
02:15
He is either regenerate or he is not regenerate. The clear biblical teaching of regeneration is that it is the work of God and the work of God alone.
02:25
We cannot cause ourselves to be reborn. The flesh cannot produce the spirit. Regeneration is an act of creation.
02:32
God does the creating. In theology, we have a technical term that may be helpful, monergism.
02:38
It comes from two root words. Mono means one. A monopoly is a business that has the market to itself.
02:44
A monoplane is a single -winged aircraft. Erg, you may remember from grade school, refers to a unit of work.
02:50
We get the common word energy from it. Putting the two parts together, we get the meaning one working.
02:56
When we say that regeneration is monergistic, we mean that only one party is doing the work.
03:02
That party is God the Holy Spirit. He regenerates us. We cannot do it ourselves or even help him with the task.
03:10
You can tell that I'm reading from a source. Who am I reading from? Well, I am reading, of course, from R .C.
03:16
Sproul and his book, Chosen by God, a book I read over 20 years ago for the first time and it made a huge impact upon my life.
03:26
There is a brief discussion on his part of the new birth. Regeneration.
03:32
Well, someone, like John Modine, might say, that was just back then, that's not now.
03:39
Well, let's look at some of R .C.'s more recent works. How about his book,
03:45
Willing to Believe, page 204? The monergistic regeneration of Reformed theology, however, does not violate the sinner's will.
03:51
Indeed, it is a change of the sinner's will wrought by the sovereign agency of God. It is precisely this work of God that liberates the sinner from slavery.
04:00
It is a strange thing to deem the liberation of an enslaved will as a violation of freedom. It is
04:05
God's work of freeing, not violating, that is in view. And earlier in the book, there was more discussion of that monergism idea.
04:13
And in another book, R .C. Sproul's book, Grace Unknown, the heart of Reformed theology.
04:21
When I pose this question to my Arminian friends, page 156, they readily see the lemon and seek to avoid it by saying, certainly it is not a matter of intelligence or of any inherent superior virtue in those who respond positively.
04:32
They respond this way because they see their need for Christ more clearly. With this reply, they dig themselves deeper into the pit.
04:38
The answer only postpones the problem one step. Why do some people see their need for Christ more clearly than do others?
04:44
Have they received greater illumination from the Holy Spirit? Are they more intelligent? Are they less prejudiced toward Christ and more open to his call, which is itself a virtue?
04:53
No matter how one delays it, sooner or later, we must face the question of greater or lesser inherent virtue.
04:59
Following Paul's lead in Ephesians, Reformed theology teaches that faith itself is a gift given to the elect.
05:05
God himself creates the faith in the believer's heart. God fulfills the necessary condition for salvation, and he does so without condition.
05:14
Again, we look to Paul's words, Ephesians 2, 8 -10, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.
05:22
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
05:30
Another discussion of monergism. Now, I just simply walked into my office and I pulled three books by R .C.
05:36
Sproul down off my shelf and I popped them open and it was very easy. It did not take a tremendous amount of time or effort on my part to discover that R .C.
05:46
Sproul has written for many, many years about the new birth. He has written about monergism, the fact that it is
05:54
God who brings about the new birth. And in none of these books does he even begin to present the idea that we are saved by our works, that we are saved by what we do, that we have works' righteousness.
06:11
Any person with a semblance of integrity and honesty would be able to, in a very brief amount of time, determine exactly what
06:22
R .C. Sproul believes on these issues. When a person has written as many books as R .C.
06:29
Sproul has written, it is reprehensible, it is sinful, it is wrong to ignore everything he has written, go to a single service with a deeply prejudiced mind, and on the basis of that one service, attack the man, exclude him from the kingdom and identify him as a false teacher.
06:53
But as we saw in the last dividing line, that is exactly what John Modine has done of the,
07:00
I believe it's the Maumee Valley Bible Baptist Church, did a little looking around since last week, and playing the first 20, actually we skipped about 7 minutes in, so what about 17 minutes
07:11
I believe, of a sermon that John Modine posted on sermonaudio .com.
07:18
Now, he heard that I did that, I couldn't tell from his email whether he had actually listened to anything that I said.
07:25
Honestly, I wouldn't be overly surprised if he didn't listen to what I had said, but in his email to me, which also kicks me out of the kingdom of God, I also preach the false gospel of Calvin, and so on and so forth.
07:39
I was also informed that one of the clear evidences of my lack of spirituality and my being a false teacher is that we accept credit cards.
07:50
Yeah, we, on our website, I'm not sure how else you do anything on a website, but on our website we accept credit cards.
07:57
And so I was thinking, I wonder how consistent Brother Modine actually is.
08:05
And so I jumped online this morning, and I went to sermonaudio .com
08:14
where you can listen to Brother Modine's sermons.
08:20
And guess what, if you look over on the left, you'll find a little link, you can contribute to helping sermonaudio .com
08:26
do what sermonaudio .com does. And I've certainly got a lot of stuff off sermonaudio .com, I would encourage you to support the work they do.
08:33
You'll get a wide variety of stuff there, but there's some good stuff there, no two ways about it. And guess how you can do that?
08:40
Yeah, you can use credit cards. So the very source from which you can listen to John Modine actually uses credit cards, which demonstrates that I'm not a
08:53
Christian, but evidently he's not a Christian. And then I was looking around a little bit more, and I had noticed that Pastor Modine had, there was a recommendation from him for David Cloud.
09:10
Now some of you remember who David Cloud is, he's the King James only anti -Calvinist, who at least has had the integrity and the guts to stand up to Gail Riplinger and criticize her.
09:22
And he says some good things, when it comes to Calvinism, the King James only issue, he's completely off base.
09:28
But he said some good things on other issues. And so I found a recommendation from Pastor Modine for David Cloud.
09:41
And so I went to wayoflife .org, to David Cloud's website.
09:48
And guess what? David Cloud accepts credit cards too. And evidently, for some reason, that doesn't mean that David Cloud is outside the kingdom, but it is evidence that I am.
10:07
So we only had a few minutes left of this, so I sense it only got worse. And you repeatedly hear him say that R .C.
10:16
Sproul teaches works salvation here. That's why I wanted to start off by reading Sproul himself.
10:21
And just allow that documentation to do what it needs to do in addressing the reality of what this gentleman has to say.
10:33
Let's finish off his little quote -unquote sermon here. They've never heard the preaching of the new birth.
10:39
They're taking communion, they're getting baptized as children, they're baptizing their children, they're being told about this wonderful covenant
10:44
God has for them, and they're marching lockstep to hell. They've never heard the new birth preached. It's amazing when you think about it.
10:51
It's amazing. This foolish fellowship with a man who preaches a false gospel, this filling of a church with people who are not saved and not born again, but who are saved by a covenant coverage of their mothers and fathers, and their baptism as infants, and their partaking of the communion cup and bread on a weekly basis, this raising up to national prominence of a false gospel preacher by John MacArthur and Albert Mohler and others, it's simply shameful.
11:16
It's wrong. It's wrong. Those men ought to check out R .C. Sproul and see if he preaches the new birth like I did.
11:22
He doesn't. That's catch it. Check it out like I did. What did he do? Did he read a book?
11:28
Did he look at any documentation? Did he slightly, fairly represent
11:33
Sproul at all? Not in the least. Not in the least.
11:40
The reason these men don't have Modine's view is because they do know what
11:46
R .C. Sproul teaches. They did take the time. They didn't go to one service at one time and ignore 30 or 40 years of the man's ministry beforehand and then come up with an idiotic conclusion.
12:02
That's why they continue to support him. And it's not Al Mohler. And it's not
12:07
John MacArthur who's going to answer for their quote -unquote promotion of R .C. Sproul. It's going to be
12:12
John Modine who's going to have to answer for the level of dishonesty that he is promoting in this kind of a thing.
12:19
R .C. Sproul thinks human works save. You and I can dress it up with pretty words about covenants and cups and we can make lots of magazines and lots of pretty pictures, but it still comes down to human works.
12:31
Human works. Again, pure, complete, total dishonesty.
12:37
I mean, it's the only way you can describe it. I mean, given how easy it is to obtain this information, how can this kind of thing be described in any other way than pure, utter laziness and unwillingness to actually do some kind of research to find out what on earth you're talking about.
12:55
R .C. Sproul preaches human works. I have a message to you and a message to R .C.
13:02
Sproul. God will not accept your work or my work. He'll only accept the work of Jesus Christ his
13:07
Son. He will not accept your work, your baptism and my baptism, your communion and my communion. It is all sophistry.
13:13
It's word games. It's a denial of scripture. Baptism is not a means of saving grace. Rather, grace is
13:18
God's unmerited favor in choosing us before time began. And grace is given to those that believe and call on the
13:25
Son of God for salvation. Grace is Christ dying in our place, the atonement, the propitiation for our sins.
13:31
Grace is the work of God in our hearts bringing us to saving faith. We proclaim the gospel of the grace of God and when this gospel is believed, that person is instantaneously saved.
13:41
There's no process at all to it. It happens immediately. And God does all of the work. The man does nothing.
13:47
Isn't it ironic that that's almost the exact citation I just read from Chosen by God?
13:55
Almost word for word. Isn't that amazing? It's almost like the Lord put those words there just simply as a testimony to just how far off this guy really is.
14:04
The gospel is the message of God's kind and gracious undeserved favor when he provided for our salvation.
14:10
The way Christ is received is simply by faith alone in Jesus Christ. There's no other way to have salvation today.
14:18
Not by baptism. Not by a sacrament. Faith is a matter of your heart. Oh, how serious is that error of baptismal regeneration?
14:26
How serious is that error of communion and the elements partaking of the Christ in us?
14:32
It is fatal. It is fatal. Apostle Paul said, Those who worship God in spirit and rejoice in Jesus Christ have no confidence in the flesh.
14:42
You better not have any confidence in what your flesh does. It's not going to work. He goes on, and Paul says in Philippians 3 .3,
14:48
He suffered the loss of all things. He counts them all dung. I'll tell you what that Lord's supper communion is down there and the baby's baptism.
14:55
Paul said it's dung. It's dung. It's not fit to eat. God doesn't want dung put on his altar.
15:02
He said, Put this here. Do it this way. Anything else is strange fire. And take the rest of it outside the can.
15:09
These are religious rituals. Religious exercise. Human works. In order to gain Christ, a person must completely reject everything else as meritorious for salvation.
15:19
You must trust in Christ alone for salvation. If you bring your offerings of dung with you, God's not going to accept you.
15:24
If you say, Well, I accept Christ. See, on all their things down there, they say, Solo Christo Deo.
15:31
Solo Scriptura. They've got Latin for Christ alone, Scripture alone. But you know what? You can say that with your mouth.
15:37
And if you've got plates and handfuls of dung with you, God's not going to believe your mouth. Your actions are speaking louder than your words.
15:44
Here's my last point. The result of preaching a false gospel is going to be eternal punishment, no matter how many books you sell today.
15:55
Leviticus 10, 1 and 2. Nadab and Abihu. Took their own censors. They put fire therein.
16:01
Offered strange fire before the Lord, and the Lord devoured them with flame. Now, please don't lie to me and tell me
16:06
R .C. Sproul is God's ally and God's friend. And it's fine to appear on the platform with him and treat him like a brother when he preaches a false gospel.
16:16
You are helping to damn millions of people. Millions of people! I would not want to have to be responsible for being so far out to sea as this guy is and so completely ignorant of what the world is talking about.
16:34
Wow, what an amazing thing. You know, writing pulpit crimes, here is a glorious example of a pulpit crime.
16:43
This guy standing behind a pulpit and just filling however many people there, few or many,
16:50
I have no idea, and it does not matter. To stand behind a pulpit and be so completely unwilling to do your homework and know what in the world you're talking about is a pulpit crime.
17:02
Don't lie to me and tell me he's God's friend. Listen, do you want to go stand with Nadab or Abihu? That's what you're doing.
17:10
That's what you're doing. The mixture of impure with pure is not acceptable to God.
17:16
God has told us how we're to worship and that's the recipe we're supposed to follow. The mixture of impure with pure is not acceptable to God.
17:23
And you say, well, Nadab's motives were pure. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter how his motives were pure.
17:31
You might say, Abihu was taught wrong. Doesn't matter, you're still responsible. Your desire should be in life and in worship to get as close to the true gospel and as far away from the false gospel as you can.
17:44
No one would even argue with any of that that was said there. It's just a shame the man shooting at R .C. Sproul rather than the people he could be shooting at because there's lots of folks that would exactly apply to.
17:54
But he's not talking about them, is he? Bowler and MacArthur and Falwell will each have to answer to God for what they've done by elevating this false prophet, this false teacher, this person who's damning men to hell today.
18:06
There were beautiful, wonderful families down there. My wife and I, we almost wept. I think I did weep a little bit in the service.
18:12
I'm not ashamed of it. We went out of there, we were shaken. Shaken to our core that all these beautiful families and these beautiful kids were being fed a poison gospel and sent to hell by this man.
18:23
Can you believe it? John MacArthur, Albert Mueller, Jerry Falwell, they'll have to answer to Jesus Christ for what they've done.
18:33
If you would go to Emerald's house, you'd most likely get a good meal, wouldn't you? I mean, you would.
18:40
Get a good meal. In case you're wondering, back at the beginning, last time, remember
18:46
Emerald was Legosi? Is that what the name is? I don't know.
18:52
I don't watch any cooking stuff. What do I eat? What does that matter? What, cuisine?
18:57
What's that? But he was connecting the two with R .C. Sproul. In case you're just wondering, did this guy just completely lose it?
19:05
No, actually, he's going back to his original really bad illustration, but he's at least going back to it. He's going to Emerald's house to get bad food.
19:12
At R .C. Sproul's home church, the truth was found out, and it left us with a spiritual bellyache. May God have mercy on all who have fallen for this false gospel to deliver them out of it.
19:22
May God have mercy on R .C. Sproul to convict him of his spiritual treason and poisoning. May God have mercy on the men who support him and aid him.
19:30
May God have mercy on those who are misled by this gospel that cannot save. It is indeed a strange fire to offer to God bread and wine and water when he has already declared,
19:39
I'll only accept the blood of my only son as the payment for your sins. Don't offer him bread and wine and water.
19:45
Don't offer him your life or your money. Don't offer him your heart. Those things have no meaning to God. He said, I'll only accept...
19:51
And that's where the file ended. That was all there was. So, there you go.
19:59
You know, some might say, ah, this isn't important. Go back to this one. Who's listening to this guy?
20:05
You've given him more prominence than he deserves. You know, I understand all that. And I understand that, you know, some people say, you know, you should not even pay attention to these folks.
20:15
You've got to have some idea of what in the world, especially in the light of the internet and what the internet allows.
20:24
You know, someone like this would not have had a voice outside of a very, very, very, very, very restricted area not very long ago because the vast majority of people who are serious thinkers and they recognize the importance of reading and studying and knowing what you're talking about before you start talking about, you know, he would have been rejected and wouldn't have had any voice.
20:49
But the internet bypasses that, unfortunately, bypasses that proper filtering mechanism.
20:58
And this kind of stuff gets out there. And people hear this kind of thing. And unfortunately, when you're trying to talk to others, it's just this kind of stuff.
21:07
Well, you know, that sounds like what that guy R .C. Sproul says. And I've heard R .C. Sproul's false teacher. And if you've never heard what these people are saying or how they're saying it, you can be completely blown away by that.
21:18
And I even know how to begin to respond to it. But if you've heard it and you've gotten the, you know, the chuckles out of the way and gone, okay, you know, now you've heard it.
21:29
So now when you hear less strident stuff, you're not going to be blown away by it. You're not going to be just completely taken by surprise.
21:36
You're going to realize, you know what? There are actually people who think this way. And so how can I break through this thought process and help this person to get rid of their prejudices and start to really think about the issues that we need to be thinking about?
21:52
How can I do that? And there's, you know, there's certain ways that you can do that.
21:58
So anyhow, there's the rest of the sermon. I fully expect in the not too distant future, if it hasn't already happened, to be the object of just such a cannon blast of ignorance myself.
22:14
I just get that really distinct feeling. And, you know, we haven't found anyone sneaking into PRBC and measuring the exact center of the pulpit in comparison to the room quite yet.
22:28
So I'm not sure, you know, what's going to happen there. Maybe he'll just take my word for it that the building was built off -center and that the pulpit, even though it's centered, you know, between, you know, it's centered in the archway.
22:41
But that arch, there's like a foot more on one side than the other. So it's just a little bit off. And that will be taken as sure evidence, sure evidence of exegetical error and false teaching and that everybody at PRBC is on a straight slide straight into the seventh level of hell.
22:58
And it's sad. I'm sorry.
23:03
I shouldn't laugh, but it's sort of hard at times to listen to that and just go, man, how do you put yourself out there and just, you know, shoot your credibility repeatedly until it doesn't even twitch anymore?
23:18
I mean, good night. How do you? I did find out, by the way.
23:25
Oh, here, let me give him some more for his sermon. Guess who it was who read
23:33
Psalm 38? Because remember, he said last, remember we played last week, he said that someone, he said an elder read
23:39
Psalm 38 as if he was God. That was Burke Parsons who's speaking at the
23:44
Pulpit Crimes Conference in November. And that's how we know this was either
23:52
May 21st or May 28th. And so I still, I've got half of, it's not like I have time to, but I've got half a desire to go ahead and get the sermon tapes from both those
24:04
Sundays and see if I can figure out what on earth set this guy off?
24:10
Because I just get the real feeling that there was a massive set of filters functioning here and that anything that was good or proper just got filtered right out of there so that nothing was left.
24:23
And it would be interesting to hear what was actually said. So who knows?
24:28
At the very least, maybe we can ask Burke about it come November and say, what was this guy talking about?
24:38
Did somebody drop the communion wine on him or just what? I mean, good night. Where did he come from?
24:45
I can't even begin. We'll have to go up there when we run into him and say, so you've been reading the
24:50
Psalms in the first person, have you? But there's nothing in Psalm 38 to read that way. I looked at it.
24:55
It didn't make any sense. Talk about changing the scripture. There you go. There you go. That was a real pulpit crime.
25:02
That's what you try to do, provide your own examples? Uh -huh. Yeah, that's what we'll have to do. Oh, goodness.
25:07
Well, anyway, what can I say? It was interesting. Well, 877 -753 -8334.
25:13
And I've still got Spong and Lynn queued up here. Still got a few minutes left for them to get to, but we've got a few phone calls also to get to, so let's run through them here real quick.
25:28
And let's start by going out to Virginia and Jerry. Hi, Jerry. Hey, Dr.
25:34
White. How are you today, sir? Doing pretty good. Hey, brother. Just haven't really been following a lot of the controversy with Erg and Kanter out there in Liberty University, but I was condemned to a brief time in purgatory on Sunday when a friend of mine decided to bring over a video sermon that he had preached called
25:56
Why I'm Predestined Not to be a Hyper -Calvinist. Yeah, that was something. We went over that on the program, by the way.
26:04
Did you really? I wish I saw that. Almost word for word, we went through the entire sermon back in June, as I recall.
26:11
Yeah, right after it was delivered. Well, you know, it's funny. The first time I met Dr. Kanter and heard him speak, and I tell people this, and they don't believe me.
26:22
I mean, it's not like they think I'm lying. They're just so shocked they can't believe it. The first sermon I heard that guy preach, now it was from either first or second
26:29
Thessalonians. I don't remember the exact chapter in the text, but his sermon point, it was a three -point sermon,
26:37
Why You Should Vote Republican. And I sat there and I listened to it, and I have never heard so much eisegesis, scripture twisting.
26:49
I mean, it was a travesty. I was waiting for lightning to strike. You mean it was as bad as what you get in certain
26:59
African -American churches when Jesse Jackson shows up? Jesse Jackson is an eminent scholar compared to Ergin Kanter.
27:08
I mean, I am serious. This guy is an exegetical nightmare. And I mean,
27:14
I have two master's degrees. One's in church history, one's in philosophy.
27:22
And as I listened to this guy, because I love logic, I sat there and I was just going through all the formal and informal fallacies of logic he was creating or employing.
27:31
But what really caught my attention was when he said, Original sin is not enough to condemn anyone.
27:39
Yeah, you know, that was... Now, which sermon are you talking about? That is in Why I Am Predestined Not to be a
27:47
Hyper -Calvinist. Yeah, I pointed out the fact that it seemed, and I wanted to be fair, because the debate is going on October 16th, so I basically made the comment, because, see
28:02
Jerry, this is where you and I differ a little bit, is that I go, Well, you know, that might indicate a less than orthodox view of original sin.
28:13
And you just used the .45 caliber response that says, That's a radical!
28:19
Well, you know what, I want to grant, if I may, I'm going to re -read, because I'm going to read something.
28:27
I'm typing a letter to Jerry Falwell. Perhaps this statement was made in haste. Perhaps it was not.
28:33
It is possible that the man is simply ignorant of both church history and systematic theology.
28:38
After watching the entire broadcast, this is highly probable. In his sermon, if that's what you want to call it, that he cleverly labeled
28:46
Why I Am Predestined Not to be a Hyper -Calvinist, he misrepresents classical
28:51
Calvinism, he demonstrates that he hasn't a clue what constitutes hyper -Calvinism, he isegetes biblical passages, and commits just about every formal and informal logical fallacy known to logicians.
29:03
Now Jerry, hold on a second. I'm going to have to ask you now not to go to my blog and read the exchanges between myself and Ergin Kanner, which have addressed the issue of hyper -Calvinism and how one defines it, which have addressed the issue of systematic theology and his stating that he's a biblicist and so on and so forth.
29:32
Because if just the sermon got you going this much, reading these huge files might not be good for your health.
29:41
I'm very concerned for you Jerry, I really am. Because if you read the exchanges, you're not going to bother with the letter, you're just going to drive to Lynchburg and camp out on somebody's doorstep.
29:55
So just make a promise, you're not going to go to my blog and search for the
30:00
PDFs that have all of my exchanges. Well you do know that Liberty has quite a few
30:06
Calvinists. Yes, I do know that. Dr. Roger Schultz is a very good friend of mine.
30:12
He was in our DVD, Amazing Grace, the History and Theology of Calvinism. Dr. Steve Sampson, who
30:23
I believe is now head of the Political Science Department. He was actually a member of the church I was the associate pastor for.
30:30
And also Dr. Kevin Claussen, who's kind of an adjunct professor there now, who's also over at Christ College.
30:38
So it's not like they're totally devoid. And of course what I like is all the students from Liberty that are buying our
30:44
DVD. Yeah, I understand. And I spoke, in fact we'll be speaking there the weekend beforehand, before the debate in October, on the subject of Reformed Theology and Evangelism.
30:58
And I spoke at a Founders Conference meeting there in Lynchburg a number of years ago with Bruce Ware and some other people.
31:05
And Mark Dever was there. And a number of students talked to us at the time.
31:10
But they also indicated that there was a lot of, not only resistance, but denigration of Reformed Theology.
31:18
So I know it's a mixed bag. But certainly Dr. Kanner's arrival there and his elevation to the
31:27
Dean of Students and now the president of the seminary, of Liberty Seminary, has brought the issue really to the fore.
31:36
And that's why it really does need to be addressed and it needs to be addressed in a full way.
31:43
Obviously I've said more than once that I would be more than willing to go to each one of Ergin Kanner's classes with nothing but my
31:53
Greek text to discuss the sovereignty of God straight from the text of Scripture in regards to that great act of self -glorification called salvation.
32:03
But the chances that I'm going to get to do something like that are fairly slim. But at least right now, on October 16th, that debate is going to be taking place.
32:13
And I'm thankful for that, for the opportunities, especially since it will be in the new Thomas Road Baptist Church, which, from the pictures
32:20
I saw in the Liberty Journal, that somebody was kind enough to send to PRBC, is a pretty big place.
32:27
So we'll have the opportunity, hopefully, of modeling a clear presentation, a biblical, grounded presentation, and let the
32:35
Lord work from there. Hey, let me ask you, are they going to allow you all to bring any books and sell them and make them available? Honestly, I haven't even given consideration to it.
32:45
That doesn't even cross my mind. My biggest concern is making sure that a high -quality
32:52
DVD and MP3 recordings are available of the actual exchange and that they are made available to folks afterwards.
33:01
Are you all going to film it yourselves? Well, that's just it. We're not 100 % certain that's the next thing we need to start working on.
33:09
Obviously, given the location, there isn't a question of the installed facilities to do an excellent recording of it.
33:23
You know, the Apologetics Group, of course, that's our forte. We produce documentaries.
33:29
We've got three high -quality, high -definition cameras. And I'm talking about these are $6 ,000, $7 ,000 a piece.
33:37
Talk with Richard. If you all would like us to come out and film it, we'll give you the DVD. You all can own it.
33:43
We'll just come out and do it for you. Well, like I said, this is Thomas Road Baptist Church. This is Falwell's Church, so it's not an issue of the quality of what can be there.
33:51
We just need to make sure that both sides get a good recording so we can make it available.
33:58
My only concern has been from the beginning that there have been a few debates I've been in that we don't have available because we weren't the ones doing the actual recording, and the tapes went poof, and we don't want that to happen in any way, shape, or form.
34:12
Well, you and Richard talk about it, and if there's any way we can help us out, Richard has my number. You all just give us a call.
34:18
Well, I understand. Well, I appreciate the fact that you... Now, that was preached.
34:24
When was that preached? That was early June, late May, something along those lines. Right. Yeah, I responded to it, and if you do what
34:31
I told you not to do and look up the correspondence, you'll see that I even wrote to them and said, here's where I have responded to the sermons, and I would enjoy your interaction.
34:44
I would like to know what you think. I tried to get communication going, but like I said, if you have any blood pressure issues, anything like that,
34:53
I just wouldn't do it if I were you. You know, I don't mind if somebody... if you're discussing the issue of the sovereignty of God, and somebody takes an alternate position, and at least they can formulate an argument and they understand your position, they don't make straw man's, but both with Ergen Kanner, with Bob Ross, with Dave Hunt, it really concerns me that these guys don't know what they're talking about.
35:20
Well, on this part... Bob Ross is more intelligent than the other two, and I would probably grant to him that he does understand what he's talking about, but I think he's wrong.
35:30
Yeah. Dave Hunt and Ergen Kanner, these guys are, you know, they're just totally devoid of the ability, because everybody is going to have a systematic theology.
35:44
Systematics are inevitable. The problem is it's either going to be coherent, cohesive, and have a logical starting point and take you to a logical conclusion, or it's going to be schizophrenic.
35:57
This guy, schizophrenic, is theology. In fact, there's probably a new word there, schizology or something like that, that Ergen Kanner employs, because I sat there and I watched him bounce around.
36:08
You know, one of my favorite questions, I love to ask people who deny original sin, who deny total depravity, who believe in this
36:15
Arminian, semi -Pelagian, made -up doctrine of the age of accountability. I love to ask them, if the age of accountability is true, which they cannot prove to Scripture, they pretty much have to assume that it's true.
36:27
If it is true, then wouldn't abortion doctors be responsible for sending more people to heaven than anybody else?
36:35
Would you not be doing a child a favor by actually aborting them and never giving them the opportunity to come to the age of accountability?
36:43
Because they could choose the wrong thing. I've tried to point that out to folks. In fact, if you listen to the
36:50
MP3 of my review of his sermons, when I went over his child -who -dies -in -infancy scenario,
36:58
I once again raised the issue that, look, this is not a simplistic thing. It's very easy to preach it as a simplistic thing.
37:05
However, there are questions that must be asked, and here are some of the questions, and that was one of the issues that I brought up at that time.
37:11
But I honestly think that it's not a lack of ability for either Dr. Kanner or Dave Hunt.
37:17
It is for both, and certainly for Dave Hunt. I've documented this over the years. It is an enslavement to tradition coupled with a denial that they have any traditions to begin with.
37:29
The very first thing I ever said to Dave Hunt when he said to me on the radio, James, I have no traditions, is
37:35
I said to him, Dave, no one is more enslaved to traditions than the man who thinks he has no traditions.
37:41
And that, I think, is what you've got going on here, and it does have an incredible result to it.
37:49
And on this program, I play these folks. I play their sermons, and we have to deal with the question all the time, why don't we find these folks accurately representing the position that they are attempting to critique?
38:02
Why are we the ones who play their words, let them set their own context? We are bending over backwards to make sure that we're accurately representing them, but we do not get that kind of response from the other side.
38:14
What does that say? Well, I think it says a lot, and we sort of let it speak for itself as far as that goes. But like I said,
38:21
Jerry, if you look up that correspondence, you've just got to be careful now, okay? I will. One more thing, and then
38:26
I'll let you go, because I know you've got other calls. Yes, sir. When I first became a Christian, I had been a Christian for about a year, and just to let everybody know,
38:33
I was saved in a Pentecostal church, Church of God, Cleveland, Tennessee. We considered the assemblies of God liberal.
38:41
And I say that with affection and an affinity towards the Pentecostal church, because I do believe that there are a lot of good
38:48
Christians, but I'll leave it at that. But when I had been a Christian for about a year,
38:54
I was reading a Spurgeon sermon that somebody had given me. I didn't know who Spurgeon was. But at the very beginning of the sermon, about the third paragraph, he made this comment.
39:03
For a man to admit himself wrong yesterday proves himself wiser today.
39:08
And I can remember reading that. I can remember just asking the Lord, never, ever let me get so arrogant.
39:14
Never, ever let me get to the point where I believe I'm unteachable. Lord, let me live this statement by Brother Spurgeon.
39:23
Because if somebody can prove me wrong, praise the Lord! They've set me on the right path.
39:28
Since I wrote The Amazing Grace History and Theology of Calvinism, I had one dear sweet lady call me up, and she had been a missionary for 25 years with a
39:37
Baptist outfit. And she said, if everything you say in Amazing Grace is true, then for 25 years
39:44
I preached a false gospel. Now, I tried to console her and say, ma 'am, you can't look at it that way.
39:52
You know, there are elements of the gospel even in an Arminian presentation, and God doesn't call us to be theologians before He saves us.
40:00
He saves us in spite of our bad theology. But I noticed that a lot of people refuse to acknowledge the sovereignty of God, or it can be any issue, simply because, look at all the history behind me.
40:17
I would have to admit I was wrong. And that, more than anything else, just crushes my spirit.
40:25
And I see that with Dave Hunt. I don't know about Ergen Kanner, because I haven't read and seen enough.
40:30
I've seen him preach five times, again, if you want to call it that. The guy's more of a comedy show.
40:38
But Dave Hunt, I've read all of his books. In fact, he borrowed a book from me years ago and actually used it to document a book he was writing.
40:48
And, you know, Dave doesn't get it, but I often wonder if Dave just refuses to change, because, man, look at all the history behind me.
40:57
All of my books would be wrong. Yeah, well, shortly after I entered into conflict with Dave Hunt, someone else who had debated him on a completely different subject wrote to me and said, there is one thing
41:09
I've never, ever, ever heard Dave Hunt say, and that is, I was wrong. And given that Dave has been proven just to be grossly wrong in his statement that Charles Haddon Spurgeon unequivocally denied limited atonement, and he said that on the basis of a sermon that was actually in defense of limited atonement,
41:27
I mean, you just couldn't be more wrong than Hunt was. But he has yet to admit his error. He will not admit his error.
41:33
In fact, he just has to pawn it off on Spurgeon being unclear, contradicting himself, or anything else.
41:38
And that kind of an attitude does demonstrate someone who has gotten to the point where they cannot be corrected. I mean, what he's tried to do on Acts 13 -48, his current book where he says the first 15 chapters of Acts were written in Hebrew, and that if you read the original
41:51
Hebrew, then it doesn't present a Calvinistic perspective and all the rest of it. We've documented all this, and Dave just simply closes his eyes.
41:58
He won't deal with it. He won't debate. When my book with him came out, he would not, and you know as a person who does advertising and promotion, how weird this was, he would not appear with me on any radio station that was giving free advertising to the book.
42:13
If they wanted to interview the authors of this book, they had to interview one of the two of us first, and then the other person, but not together.
42:20
Of course, I was willing to be on with him. He wasn't willing to be on with me. So that demonstrates that he knows.
42:25
He knows he could not debate me. He knows he would not stand a chance in that context. And that he knows he can't answer these questions, but he refuses to even consider what the possibility might be that he's that far wrong about what he's been saying all this time.
42:41
Anyway, thank you, sir. One other thing. Can I tell you real quick what projects we're working on? Yes, sir. I guess.
42:47
If you don't mind, just to let your audience know, we're working on a new documentary. It's going to be four to five hours long called
42:55
The Late Great Planet Church. The subtitle is Dispensationalism and the Decline of Western Christianity.
43:03
You just love being popular, don't you? We're going to fight with that one, laddie. Our second one is
43:08
Global Warming, What You Haven't Been Told. Oh, yeah. I was up in D .C. about three weeks ago with Dr.
43:14
Cal Beissner and the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance, of which I'm on the board, and we interviewed some of the top climatologists in the country over this whole issue of global warming.
43:24
And Lord willing, we're just going to tear down and expose the junk science that's trying to be perpetrated on not only the
43:30
American public, but the church, the world, about this big giant scare of global warming.
43:37
Rick Warren's not going to carry that in his church. I doubt he will, but I've got to tell you this real quick.
43:42
Eric Holmberg called me up yesterday. He goes, man, you won't believe what I found. I said, what? It was a documentary done in 1975.
43:49
Leonard Nimoy hosted it about the coming global ice age. Oh! And so, needless to say, that's going to be real cute on the documentary.
43:58
Now, that one's only going to be about 50 minutes long. We do have a new one coming out in about three to four weeks.
44:03
We're calling Pandora's Box Office, and it's subtitled The Pop Media's War on Western Culture.
44:12
And those are the three main ones that we're hoping to try to get wrapped up this year. All right.
44:18
Well, you're a busy man then. Lord willing, we are not settling idly by. Brother, keep the
44:23
Reformation going. All right. Thank you. God bless. You too, sir. Bye -bye. Bye -bye. As Rich just said, the bill is in the mail for the advertising.
44:33
All right. Let's press on here, and let's go to California with Aaron.
44:43
Hi, Aaron. Hi. How do I sound? Well, you sound clear. Oh, thank you.
44:50
I'll try and cut this quick as usual. There is a very –
44:56
I'm in the SBC, and there is a really high attack on the sovereignty of God going on.
45:06
And although I call Arminians – as long as they preach grace, not works.
45:12
I know we all call people who preach the grace of God our brothers, but at the expense of sounding hyper -Calvinistic, and especially with the treatment you've received from Cameron and stuff, is there –
45:25
I just want to hear your opinion on this. I haven't come to my conclusion yet.
45:32
Selfishly, could there be something wrong with someone who professes a profound hatred of one of the defining aspects of God, and that being his sovereignty?
45:42
Well, obviously, no one is going to say that a person who expresses a fundamental detestation of a part of God's truth is by so doing ensuring that person's calling an election.
46:01
The question has to be when they do so, what, first of all, is their level of knowledge?
46:07
Do they recognize that – have they ever been even challenged to consider what the word of God says here?
46:17
And is that joined with other aspects in their life in regards to a general malaise concerning the deep things of God, concerning spirituality, concerning consistent
46:28
Christian life? Is there a general mark of worldliness that can be observed?
46:35
Or is there – are we looking at a situation where, again, a person has a tradition, and that tradition is causing them to have a deep inconsistency in their beliefs?
46:49
And yet, for example, in their prayers, do we see inconsistency there to where when they pray, they are recognizing the sovereignty of God, even though they don't see the inherent contradiction that exists between what they state and how they pray.
47:04
So I think it's always best to, especially given the fact that the harshest words the
47:13
Lord Jesus had were for the Pharisees who were very quick to judge, very quick to proclaim themselves to be the sole possessors of truth.
47:21
I think for Reformed folks, there is a real need to be slow to judge, quick to hear, quick to allow for God's spirit to have a wide realm of movement.
47:37
And we should be just as quick in those areas as we are to defend the truth and to point out the necessity of being not only good biblical exegetes, but recognizing that once you compromise on the centrality of God and salvation, you're on a slippery slope that has no logical stopping place into Pelagianism and into Universalism and every other form of heresy that's out there.
48:03
And so I personally, in speaking with, for example, Ergen Kanner, referred to him as Brother Kanner, and I attempted to extend every kind of grace there.
48:19
And I wanted and continue to want this to be an intramural conversation between people who are committed to the authority of the word of God.
48:30
I cannot in any way control anybody else's actions along those lines. I can only try to, on my own part, be very consistent.
48:38
When you talk about someone, for example, in a Southern Baptist church, you're going to find a wide variety of viewpoints expressed within that context.
48:50
Someone who is a willful, knowing, acknowledging Arminian and is consistent in that is going to have to deny a lot of things, not only the sovereign decree of God, but also the nature of substitutionary atonement, the very nature of atonement itself.
49:08
And that starts getting into some very, very problematic areas, no question about it.
49:15
But the vast majority of the people that I know don't know those things. They don't know anything about historic
49:21
Arminianism. They don't go there. They continue to hold to a substitutionary atonement perspective.
49:28
They continue to hold to perseverance of the saints. Their systematic theology is just simply incoherent.
49:35
I definitely was referring to people who are in the know, who have basically been a
49:40
Christian for a long time, have studied the issues, at least have claimed to have studied Calvinism. They are openly teachers, like hopefully
49:51
God rest his soul, Dr. Rogers at the SBC. Well, let's use him as an example.
49:59
And especially because he has declared an open hatred of a God who would deny free will.
50:04
I've heard in his sermons, I think something along the lines of, he would openly hate a
50:10
God who would send an unborn baby to hell, something like that. Well, okay, now there's two different things there.
50:17
The baby issue, again, is 99 % emotion and 1 % thought on the part of the vast majority of the folks who use it as a,
50:29
I would call it a nerf bat, to try to beat people over the head with it.
50:35
It has no substance to it. Once you can calm the emotions down and actually begin to discuss the subject meaningfully, but that's the whole point behind it is you're trying to keep people from doing that.
50:44
But let's look at Adrian Rogers. When I reviewed his sermons on the golden chain of redemption in Romans chapter 8 and then his comments in Romans chapter 9,
50:53
I demonstrated a consistent pattern of eisegesis. But I also demonstrated it was a consistent pattern that was inconsistent for him because when he was doing the golden chain of redemption and he went through the link of justification, everything he said on justification was spot on.
51:12
He used a completely different form of eisegesis for discussing justification than he did in addressing all these other issues.
51:22
So what does that tell us? Well, I've said many times when you see a person's eisegesis changing, when you see the hermeneutic varying on the part of an individual, what you've just encountered, what you've just found out in their theology is an element of their tradition where their tradition doesn't have a solid biblical foundation.
51:49
It is what they've been raised with. There can be all sorts of reasons why that sometimes are not even known to us in their history, but you've encountered their tradition.
51:58
And when you encounter someone's tradition, you cannot just assume, and I think charity demands at this point that we be very slow to make any other decision at this point.
52:11
You cannot simply assume that they have in fact examined this issue and they've examined it fully and they know what both sides are because especially someone who comes into theological training with a deep rooted tradition that comes from the people who actually introduced them to the faith tends to result in their simple inability to even begin to listen to what the other side has to say.
52:41
And I've experienced this myself. I've talked to people. I've expressed myself with as much clarity as I possibly could.
52:48
Their ears just shut down. I'm sorry? Their ears just shut down. And it's like I'm talking to a wall.
52:54
They're not hearing me. And if they have done that consistently, then I cannot come to the conclusion. I cannot say, well, you know and you are purposefully rejecting what you know to be true.
53:07
I can't come to that conclusion. Since I know the
53:13
Spirit of God had to work in my heart to work me through these issues over a period of time, then
53:21
I cannot tell the Spirit of God when and how he's supposed to do that for everybody else. And so I honor what
53:29
Adrian Rogers said about justification. And I say, look, if Adrian Rogers applied the same standards of hermeneutics and exegesis to the rest of the golden chain of redemption that he did to justification, he would have had to say the same things that I'm saying, but he didn't.
53:45
Now, do I have a basis upon that to say this man was not a Christian and he's not my brother and he's going to hell?
53:52
No, because if I did that, I'd be in the same boat as John Modine in attacking R .C. Sproul, because in many other contexts, he contradicted himself.
54:01
He said all sorts of things in prayers and in preaching that totally and completely contradict what he says about little babies going to hell.
54:09
It's far more likely that what you have here is a tradition that for Dr. Rogers no longer exists whatsoever.
54:17
You have a tradition that was getting in the way. Then you have a willful rebellion against truth and a false prophet in sheep's clothing or anything along those lines.
54:26
I think we need to be very careful. As often as we are called false teachers and John Modine calls me a false teacher and R .C.
54:32
Sproul a false teacher and we're leading people to hell and all the rest of that stuff, that doesn't give us the grounds of turning around and treating everybody else in the same way.
54:41
What you do is you demonstrate the consistency of what you're saying.
54:46
You demonstrate the consistency of your hermeneutic, your exegesis. You tell people, you know what, I don't think God is honored when we engage in self -contradictory teaching and when we engage in illogic.
54:58
He gave us a brain for a reason. He's given us his truth for a reason. If we, in fact, do not utilize those things, we're not honoring
55:08
God. We keep speaking the truth, but when it comes to making that kind of final judgment about someone, when
55:16
Adrian Rogers says that Jesus Christ's sacrifice on the cross is the only means of salvation and that we are to believe in Christ and in Christ alone and it is only in him that we can have salvation,
55:30
I have a hard time sending that person off to the pits of hell. Thank you, doctor.
55:37
Thanks. Give me a chance to say goodbye. Okay. All right. God bless.
55:44
Good luck with your debate with the canner. Bye. Okay. Thanks a lot. Bye -bye. I think someone had to all of a sudden go there very quickly.
55:49
Cell phone. Oh, okay. All right. I didn't realize that. Must have been watching the time there and saw that the month was about to expire.
55:58
But anyways, the point being that I think that when you have the truth and when you know what the truth is, you don't have to engage in the kind of behavior that Modine engages in and that Dave Hunt sadly engages in these days and things like that.
56:18
In fact, I've told the story before when I was speaking at a conference with Dave Hunt during one of the speakers' dinners.
56:31
Well, the only speaker's dinner, actually. I was listening to Dave talking and someone asked him about somebody.
56:36
He didn't recognize the name that had been in ministry at some point. He says, ah, yeah, it's a shame. He went off into heresy.
56:43
Really? What happened to him? Yeah, he went off and denied the rapture. And when you can make specific elements, and I know people,
56:53
I know post -Tribbers who will go so far as to make pre -Tribbers heretics and withdraw fellowship from them.
57:01
And I just look at that type of thing and I just shake my head and I go, oh, my goodness. Lord, give us the balance and the insight to be able to recognize what is core and defining and what isn't.
57:15
And that's not an easy thing, folks. And people will disagree with me on that. Dan Wallace just posted an article that I want to read again.
57:24
I read it fairly quickly the first time because I guess over on the Pyromaniac blog, people were going after him and accusing him of all sorts of things.
57:31
And Dan says a lot of stuff. Dan says stuff in footnotes in his ecstatical grammar that make you go, eh?
57:40
But every time he does so, if you just take the time, if you don't just respond with a knee -jerk reaction, but actually think about it, he does make you think.
57:49
There's no two ways about it. He and I disagree on the reading of Philippians 2, but he and I stood there.
57:55
In fact, the only exciting thing that happened to me at the ETS conference in 1998 was Dan Wallace and I standing at a booth for an hour discussing the grammar, syntax, and theology of Philippians 2, 5 -11.
58:07
And he makes you think, you know? And he discussed that very same issue. What's core? What's definitional?
58:13
What's the next level? What's the next level beyond that? What's important for the health of the church? What's the importance for the health of the individual
58:19
Christian? Where can error exist in these things, etc., etc.? And it's well worth the read.
58:25
I would like to have the time to respond to it, but I don't know if I can write Pulpit Crimes and respond to that at the same time and all sorts of other things
58:31
I'd like to be doing. So anyway, thanks for listening to the program today. We never did get back to Spong and Lin, but we'll get back to them eventually.
58:37
Maybe on Thursday here on The Dividing Line. See you then. God bless. We need...
59:36
Brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries. If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.
59:43
Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the
59:49
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.