August 23, 2005

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Casting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.
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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.
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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the
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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. Well, welcome to Dividing Line. On a
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Tuesday, the 23rd of August, the last Dividing Line for quite some time, at least until, let's see,
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Tuesday, September 6th. So about two weeks off. I'm sure you all could use the rest.
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I confess, I do not have any John Crossan or Marcus Borg sound clips to play.
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And I, you know, I was sort of feeling bad for my folks at Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church the last about three weeks or so.
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They've had to listen to Bible study classes where I've been going over what the
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Jesus Seminar teaches and what John Dominic Crossan teaches. And I got the real impression looking at everyone's faces on Sunday that they had come to the conclusion that for them, that's pretty much all they really need to know about John Dominic Crossan.
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In fact, once the DVDs are available, which I'm sure Rich will be having those babies out just,
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I mean, you know, there's probably going to be a package sitting for me waiting at the gangplank.
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We get off the ship with the DVDs in it so we can watch it on the way home or something on the plane or whatever.
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I mean, it's just going to be boom and the conference. I'm sorry, we'll have the 2005 conference out before the 2004.
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Anyway, yes, but something tells me when that does come out that I probably shouldn't play it at church really early, really soon, like this year, anything like that.
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Oh my goodness, look at that. Okay, well, that's just improper.
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You can't do stuff like that. Anyways, so we've been talking about this a lot.
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And so basically, if you all have questions, and we've not been taking calls when
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I've done the, well, I'll take that back. We took one call. And so today would be your opportunity. If there are just zillions and zillions of questions as to where in the world these folks are coming from, how they handle certain things,
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I can't guarantee that I can role play their position on every single issue. But if you would like to participate in the program today, 877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341, this is your opportunity to so do.
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And we can first entertain those questions and issues that come up in regards to, shall we call it ultra liberalism, the far left.
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I would put, I think I could put Marcus Borg in the ultra liberalism category, at least somewhat, in that,
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I don't know, it's, I don't know that you can even,
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I mean, where do you put that word? How far do you define it? If you don't believe in the resurrection, and please realize,
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I am fully, completely well aware of the fact that these individuals, almost all these individuals say they believe in the resurrection, but they completely redefine it to the point where it no longer means anything even close to what historic
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Christianity has always said it means. And when you still have the idea of Jesus's body in the grave, a grave, or being eaten by dogs or whatever, that's not resurrection.
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That's, I don't care what you say about it, I don't care how you redefine it, that's not resurrection, saying, well, you know, they continue to experience
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Jesus's presence in their lives. Well, what's that supposed to mean? You know, I mean, there are people who live in Chicago that continue to experience
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Michael Jordan's presence in their lives as well every time the Bulls lose. And that's, you know, and for some of them that's very, very real, you know, it's very, very important for them.
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And it may change their lives and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and that's not what the apostles were talking about.
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That's, that's not the same thing. I'm sorry. And to say that, well, you know, he started this program, the
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Kingdom of God, and so his followers continued his program, which is sort of odd because those who say that immediately then have to say they altered that program, they altered the perspective, and they actually didn't start doing things, they started creating a hierarchy and you're not supposed to have a hierarchy.
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And so I guess when the apostles were going around establishing elders and stuff like that, that was against Jesus's wishes and all the rest of the stuff.
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But, but their idea is, you know, as long as you got together in someone's back room with four or five people, and you had a common meal, and you didn't have a hierarchy, and nobody was better than anybody else, radically egalitarianism, that's the
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Kingdom of God, and so Jesus was resurrected. In fact, I should, I should mention this,
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I should go ahead and do this while the calls are flowing in here. There was a citation, it was very interesting.
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Let me see here. I recall this from,
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I was listening, as I mentioned, primarily to these Chautauqua messages, not sermons, but speeches, and I remember very clearly
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John Dominic Crossan making a statement. And what did
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I do with it here? There it is, okay. And I mentioned in channel, in our chat channel,
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I remember him saying something along these lines, and I had to paraphrase it, because I was going to have to be looking through the sound files, and when you have,
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I don't know how many sound files I have now of these gentlemen presenting their viewpoints, but, you know, it can take some time to find it, and I was just sort of lamenting, given that I was having a really lousy day yesterday, having to invest time looking for that.
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So I left, and while I was gone, I get this phone call, and someone in the channel, who is a librarian, by the way, had tracked down a written quote from Crossan that is very much like what he said in a different context, which
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I found interesting, that obviously that means this is a very, this is a part of his notes, this is a part of his presentation he's using on a regular basis, and so using his own,
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I guess using his own standards, since it's been repeated twice, then that really means it's representative of him.
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But that refers back to his viewpoints of other things. Anyhow, here is the quote as he spoke it at the
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Chautauqua lectures. Here's what he says. Paul says, now let me back up a second, as soon as you start talking about someone like John Dominick Crossan saying
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Jesus' body was eaten by dogs, and you start hearing Marcus Borg saying, well, nothing spectacular or unusual happened to the corpse of Jesus, he was absorbed into God, you know, sort of the force type thing.
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As soon as you hear that, the first response of the vast majority of evangelicals, conservative
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Christians is, but Paul said, if Christ be not raised, then our faith is in vain. And so here is how
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Dr. Crossan responds to that. Paul says, if there is, let me get this right,
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Paul says, if there is no resurrection, vain is our preaching, vain is your faith.
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Right. Now reverse it. If your faith is vain, that is, if it is not visibly showing a change in the world, then our preaching is vain, that it is not about showing a change in the world, then we would have to say that Christ is not risen.
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We could say if we wanted to that Christ is exalted, that Christ is with God, but we cannot say that Christ is risen unless we can show that the world has been changed by the presence of the risen
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Christ. We should not say it. We have not the right to say it. That is what he said.
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And then what our librarian lady found, from the resurrection of Jesus in his
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Jewish context, invited opening lecture, New Testament Society of South Africa, in Pachastrum, South Africa, Tuesday, April 9, 2002, the following.
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Third, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, 14, that if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain.
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True, of course, but then so is its reversal. If our faith has been in vain, that is, if it is not visibly and publicly making the world more divinely just, then
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Christian proclamation has been in vain. That is, it is not about, if it, hmm, that's not quoted correctly.
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That is, if it is not about making the world more divinely just, Christ has not been raised, that is, as the start of the general resurrection and apocalyptic consummation.
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Exalted maybe, as in Psalm 2, but certainly not raised. I remember listening, the first time
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I heard that, I don't know if your brain works the same way that mine does, but when
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I'm listening to something while exercising, I remember I listened to all the Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church conference lectures from that first big year that caused the big explosion.
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I listened to them while climbing Squaw Peak here in Phoenix, and I can still remember exactly where on the trail up to the top of Squaw Peak I was when certain people would say certain things.
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And it would, whether I was going up or whether I was going down, all the rest of that stuff. Same thing with these lectures.
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For some odd reason, I remember where I was out on the Sun Valley Parkway when he said this.
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You know, how fast I was going, which direction I was going, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's really odd how the mind works along those lines.
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And I remember him saying this, and I remember thinking to myself, well, you know, the first thought that crossed my mind is, that's not grammatically correct.
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In other words, you can't just reverse a statement like that and say that these two phrases are equal.
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That's not what Paul was saying in any way, shape, or form. And then
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I started thinking about it. What kind of illustrations can you use to demonstrate this isn't true? And the one
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I came up with was, we are hunting Osama bin Laden. Since what took place on 9 -11, we are hunting
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Osama bin Laden. Reverse it and say, if we are not hunting Osama bin Laden, then 9 -11 didn't take place.
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No, 9 -11 took place. It's a reality. That's all there is to it. And to reverse it like that makes the resurrection of Christ not the historical event that 9 -11 was, not something that actually happened in history.
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And that, of course, is exactly where these guys are coming from. It isn't something that happened in history. It's not something that took place in time.
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There was no incarnation, and there was no divine son of God. There was no unique experience at that point in time.
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That's what we need to understand, that they are, in fact, saying to us. And as I said,
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I don't know that you can put someone like a Marcus Borg even in the realm of liberalism. Because at least liberals still attempted to maintain some level of semblance of orthodoxy.
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And I know they do, too, because they come up with all sorts of new definitions for all the creedal statements, but what they mean by them is so far removed from what anybody had ever said, that it's playing word games.
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It really is playing word games, and there's just no two ways around it. So anyhow, that's all going to be coming up.
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Those of you who are going to be going to the conference and debate this coming weekend,
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I look forward to meeting you. Those of you in channel, please don't do what
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Syzygus did to me once. His name is actually Brock. But he comes up to me, and I was at John MacArthur's church.
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And I just, was I just about to speak or had just spoken? I think I had just spoken in Phil Johnson's Sunday school class, and of course his
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Sunday school class is about seven times larger than my church. Anyway, this fellow comes up to me,
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I've never met him, and he says, I'm the fellow from your chat channel whose nick is a hop -box legomena.
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Now I'm picking stuff up. I've got to catch up with someone who's already ahead of me, and someone's looking at me going, my nick is a hop -box legomena.
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Sorry, didn't ring, didn't click. A hop -box legomena, for those of you who are wondering, is a term that appears one time in the text of the
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Bible, or normally it's a Greek term, so it occurs one time in the canon of the
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New Testament. And so I had no idea who in the world I was shaking hands with, and just sort of, hi, bye, boy, that's weird.
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And then, I don't know how long it was later, someone says, hey, did you meet
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Sisyphus? I said, no. Well, he said he said hi to you, and then I was like, oh, you know. So those of you who are in the channel who have your own nicks, when you come up to me, at least try to use your nick before your name, something, because especially if we're meeting on Saturday evening, late afternoon, something like that, my mind's going to really be focused on other things at that particular point in time, so please be aware of that, and I'm looking forward to meeting you, but I will be significantly less stressed out after the debate.
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But only slightly, because it's actually, this is sort of like a double -header. You do the first seven innings, and then you've got the last two innings on the ship, basically, so that's how that's going to work.
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But anyhow, that's what's coming up this weekend, and once again, we've already covered the ground as far as the fact that we certainly desire the
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Lord to bless this time, and we had a little prayer meeting amongst some of the staff here last night, and this is a major, major, major undertaking, so I pray that the
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Lord will undertake, and it'll all work out. 877 -753 -3341,
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I see a line lit up, but it doesn't look like it's someone who's calling in for that. It's calling in for something else, so, yeah, that's how we'll do it.
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Hi, I'm the guy on the channel whose nickname features letters from the alphabet and a number invented by the Mayans. That'll definitely help me remember,
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I'm going to deign that with a response. I was searching for a sound file, and generally, right before we hit the theme music, isn't a good time to be stopping the music and trying to cue stuff up, but some of you may recall a number of moons ago that we had made reference to Dave Hunt's new book, his little book on Calvinism, and I mentioned just in passing that we were trying, there was a group back in, let's just call it the
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Midwest, trying to arrange a debate, and they're doing it for as part of a high school class, and I guess the past two years, they've had a creation evolution debate, and according to the fellows who put it together, they've had like 800 people show up for this debate at a high school, and that's pretty good.
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That's a lot of work. Believe me, that's a lot of work, and so this year, the students said they wanted to have a debate on Calvinism and Arminianism, and I don't get the feeling that it's like a
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Calvinist school or something like that. It's just obviously a divisive issue. It's an issue where there's two strong sides, and people on both sides have strong things to say, and so the first thing
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I heard about this was a fellow trying to get a hold of me saying, would you be willing to debate Norman Geisser?
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Well, you know, that's like back in 94 when the Roman Catholic attorney called me and said, would you be willing to debate
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Scott Hahn? Yeah, I can do that, and so we talk, and he's all excited about that, and in the next day, he has to call me and disinvite me because Scott Hahn had said, if White's there,
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I'm not, so that was the end of that, and so I get hold of this guy, and I go, now,
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I would be more than happy to debate Norman Geisser on the doctrines of grace, but I just have the sneaking suspicion that you haven't quite gotten that commitment from him yet.
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Am I right about that? And of course, the answer came back, well, yeah, we were just about to contact him, and I'm like, well, let me tell you about the process that you're about to start going through, and it has been a process.
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This poor fellow could probably write a book now. Who has he contacted? Well, I mentioned to you that they were contacting
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Dave Hunt, and of course, Dave Hunt's response is the same all the time now, and that is,
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I've said everything I need to say about Calvinism. If you want to hear James White's and I debate, we have the radio program, and they do make that radio program available, which is amazing to me, when you think about it, and you can read the book.
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Of course, he keeps putting books out on Calvinism, but he won't defend it, so we all know exactly why Dave Hunt does what
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Dave Hunt's doing. He knows he would not have a ghost of a chance in that debate, but he just figures that our following is so small, even though, of course, he accuses
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Calvinists of controlling the Christian media and the Christian bookstores and all the rest of that stuff. He knows that our following is so small that he can get away with that and not have to really explain it all that often, so he declined again, which is, like I said, not unusual.
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And then they start contacting all sorts of folks, and one of the folks that they contact is Dr. Ergon Kainer.
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Now, Dr. Kainer is at Liberty University, and Liberty is very strongly anti -Calvinistic.
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Jerry Falwell has sort of added that to his retinue of things.
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We mentioned, in fact, played a little clip from Falwell at the Southern Baptist Convention, the preacher's conference before him, and so they are very, very opposed to Calvinism.
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You would think if a university is opposed to Calvinism that they would be willing to discuss the issue in a scholarly fashion, maybe even host a debate on their campus, but of course that's not the case.
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And someone had already been in contact with Dr. Kainer about doing a debate on the subject, and initially he had said yes, and then he sort of went silent, and I had written to him as well, and I wasn't getting much in the way of response, and so the folks at the high school contacted him, and they get back this email that, you know, it's the same old thing.
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You can always tell when someone really, I'm just going to be very blunt here, is completely clueless about what they're talking about in a particular area, in this particular area being
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Calvinism, when they say, well, I'm not an Arminian, I'm just a Biblicist, and, you know, thank you very much, you know, when they try to play the name game stuff.
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And, but what was amazing to me was what he then said.
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He said, I could bring up the specific here, but I'm paraphrasing it. I do not hold to the, was it damnable?
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I should look it up now that I bring it up, but he identified the concept of total depravity, in particular redemption, as cultic beliefs, totally outside the realm of orthodoxy.
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And so when I saw that, I was like, hmm.
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So I finally wrote to him, and I said, you know, I quoted him directly, and I'm like, you know, how about those of us who happen to teach in the same schools you do, who believe these things and who are willing to defend these things, isn't it time for you to, you know, step forward and debate this issue?
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And, of course, I never got a response back. So many of these folks just simply, they want a monologue, they do not want a dialogue.
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They just want to be able to just blast away and have absolutely no responsibility for what they say at all.
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And so that's what ended up happening. So the list, one guy that was, he talked to Tim LaHaye.
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Now that would have been fun. Wouldn't that have been fun? I think that would have been fun. I would have enjoyed debating Tim LaHaye.
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I wonder how many times the rapture would have come up in that debate. I think by the end of the debate he would have been hoping for the rapture, but, you know, predicting it.
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And, oh, by the way, I forgot to mention this. Please, you can take a deep breath.
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I am not going to be calling for the assassination of any national leaders on the program today, okay? Everyone can relax.
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I'm not going to do it because I ain't stupid. And, you know, people, yeah, well, no, he's not a leader of the world.
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He's the leader of a nation. That's what makes him a national leader. It's a little tiny nation, too, but maybe a little tiny guy, but it doesn't matter.
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It was still stupid. Yeah, yeah, another nation, not our own. Thanks. Appreciate that.
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Wow, master of context there. There you go.
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Anyway, getting back to Tim LaHaye, he didn't want to do it.
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I'm not sure. I don't remember why. But he had a list of other people, and one of the folks who he suggested, this is funny,
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I really think that all the people who arrange debates should get together and write a book about it because it's really entertaining.
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Chris Arnzen could literally write a book about all the stuff he's gone through in arranging the great debates on Long Island and all the stuff that's happened and the weird things and the weird people that show up, and it would be sort of funny.
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But anyhow, one of the folks that was suggested writes back and says, actually,
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I've read James White's The Potter's Freedom and agree with almost everything in it, so it wouldn't be much of a debate.
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So obviously, Tim LaHaye thinks this guy is on his side, but actually this guy is not on his side, and I haven't told
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Tim LaHaye that, and that's why I didn't mention the name there because we don't want to get anybody in trouble who doesn't need to be in trouble.
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But anyhow, that was sort of funny. And finally what happened was, all of this was taking place, and I started to mention the
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Why I'm Not a Five -Point Calvinist DVD that I had recorded.
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That's not a DVD, is it? No. Yes. Yes, it is a DVD. That's right. Never mind. I still recorded the audio from it, and we had played some sections here on the dividing line, and so I said, well, and the guy's starting to pull his hair out.
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I mean, he's been rejected by entire seminaries' worth of people, and he's getting a little tired of it.
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And all these people who are more than happy to blast Calvinists and how unbiblical they are and how ridiculous it is, and anybody who can just read the print on a page knows that Calvinism's stupid, but no,
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I'm not going to debate anyone who can defend Calvinism. No, not going to do that. So anyway,
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I said, well, there is this guy, and I think this is his email address, and he speaks at homeschooling conventions all over the place, so maybe,
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I don't know. Well, what eventually ended up happening is I get an email back, and he's not willing to do it, but he has an attorney in his congregation who is.
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An attorney in his congregation. And he even says he also has read
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Dave Hunt's book. Well, woohoo, all righty then. I wrote back and said, you sort of might want to suggest that they read the other books that came along too, and so I guess that's what we're going to work out.
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I don't know. I would rather have debated the pastor, but, you know,
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Tim Staples would be fine. We're trying to get Tim Staples.
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This is in the channel, in case any of you are wondering. We're trying to get Tim Staples to debate on Long Island, because he's with Catholic Answers now, and he's putting out a ton of stuff on Mary.
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He's putting out a DVD set, and he's putting out a book, and he's all this, I don't know how many
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CDs, and all this stuff on Mary. I would think, obviously, if you're cranking out a book,
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DVD set, CDs, you've got all these talks that you do in churches on one subject, that isn't it somewhat of a no -brainer that if you're an apologist, that that might be a good subject to debate?
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I mean, it's not like you say, well, give me two years, and I'll say the subject. Hopefully, if you're putting books out on it, you've already done that, right?
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And so, I mean, how many times have you all heard me doing talks, debates on the subjects of books that I've just put out?
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It's just, it's obvious. It's just how it's done. So we're trying to get
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Tim Staples to debate the Marian doctrines on Long Island, because I think that would be, you know, it's been, this would be the 11th year.
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That was the first year. It was, you know, we did four subjects in one debate.
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We need to be more focused than we were in that first one. It would be great, but we haven't gotten a positive response on that quite yet, and I hope that it will.
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And Tim Staples would be a really interesting person to debate on, have me defend
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Calvinism against him, because let me tell you something, as a former Assemblies of God youth pastor,
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I've heard his viewpoints expressed a few times, and to call them downright entertaining is hard to avoid.
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There's no two ways about it. Well, boy, I don't know if we're going to have enough time in the next half of the program to get to all these phone calls, and, you know,
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I keep hitting these buttons here, and there's nobody there. Hey, I guess that's what happens when you stop taking calls for a while.
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You just sort of kill the interest in doing that. But I'm sure during the break here that the phone lines will explode at 877 -753 -3341.
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We're going to take a break. Be right back. Do your best and nothing less to be blessed.
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Try to save your soul from death. Is the
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Here I stand I look down there at those phone lines and my heart is truly warmed.
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Yes, yes, yes, indeed. 877 -753 -3341. I don't remember exactly where we were in listening to Dr.
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Davis, so we're just going to jump into things here. I thought I had made note somewhere in all of my...
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I had this cool program called Sticky Note, if you're looking for something to jot stuff down in.
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Sticky Note is really neat, but unfortunately I'm so busy these days, I have numerous sticky notes.
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And so unfortunately I just keep going from sticky note to sticky note, going, where did that go?
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It was in here somewhere, and unfortunately I can't find a number. So I'm just going to sort of jump in some place, and if I go, oh yeah,
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I remember that. That's the wonderful thing about technology is we can just get past that. So let's listen to Dr.
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Davis here. All ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation.
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That's close. So it's almost like the Lord has to save you before He saves you, and it's almost like you're getting saved twice almost at the same time.
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Being regenerated or born again, which the man himself has nothing at all to do with.
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The way a Calvinist will often introduce his doctrine is by asking, which do you think comes first, faith or regeneration?
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When people answer faith, then the Calvinist will say something like this, but mankind is totally dead in trespasses and sins.
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How can a dead man believe? And then they point out that what they believe, that you have to be regenerated first, then you trust
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Christ by faith. So it's almost like the Lord has to save you before He saves you, and it's almost like you're getting saved twice almost at the same time.
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Just a quick, brief response to that. Once again, the use of the terms saved and salvation in numerous different ways is in the same context.
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It's like you're getting saved twice. No, you're being regenerated. We're talking about an ordo salutis here.
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This is logical priority, and there's debates about the role of temporal priority, but the point is what leads to what, what is the foundation of what, and so often
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Dave Hunt, and if those of you haven't heard Dr. Davis before, he holds up Dave Hunt's book.
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So like I said, this is what happens when a guy who can speak well, doctor, this gentleman can speak so much better than Dave Hunt can.
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He can cram so much more information into a period of time than Dave Hunt can.
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They say I'm funny. So here's what happens when you take Dave Hunt's really, really, really, really, really bad information and say it really fast.
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In essence, it's easier to listen to him than it is to listen to Dave. Let's put it that way.
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You can really cover a lot more ground a whole lot faster. So what we see there is a failure to recognize more specific utilization of terminology and just throw saved out as if it's always the same thing as sanctification or justification or in this case regeneration, etc.,
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etc. Calvinism is also referred to as Reformed theology because of its development primarily by John Calvin during the time of the
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Reformation. Two major conferences took place in the 1600s which clearly stated the five points of Calvinism.
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The first was the Synod of Dort, a six -month long conference held in 1618 beginning in November of that year continuing into 1619 in the country of the
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Netherlands. The Synod of Dort was convened by the state of the Netherlands which was seeking religious unity among its citizens.
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After the Synod of Dort, more than 200 ministers who could not agree with the points of Calvinism were removed from their pulpits and many of them were exiled from the country.
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A similar gathering was held in Westminster, England in 1643. The Westminster Assembly was also convened by the state of England and produced the famous Westminster Confession of Faith which has been called, quote, the most systematically complete statement of Calvinism ever devised.
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The Westminster Confession of Faith declares about this first point, total depravity, quote, Our first parents became dead in sin and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body, wholly inclined to all evil.
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Man by his fall into a state of sin hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation, being altogether averse from that good.
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I like when they quote this but then do they remember it when they start to criticize it?
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Because it's very clear, it's very balanced. It's not saying that man's will has been destroyed.
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It's not saying that his will is not capable of acting. It has to do with the will doing that which is pleasing before God and isn't that what
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Romans 8 is all about? Romans 8, 7 -8? It is. We'll see if that sticks.
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And dead to sin is not able by his own strength to convert himself or to prepare himself thereunto.
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It's important to understand that once you believe one of these points, you are likely to believe them all.
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Now isn't that interesting? At least there's some consistency here and he's going to end up taking, sadly, the same track on Perseverance of the
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Saints toward the end but at least there's a recognition. If you believe this one, it does lead to this one.
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So I reject that. So here you have an assertion. Man's will is not enslaved to sin.
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He's not totally dead. Did you catch totally dead? What does totally dead mean anyway? All that stuff is right there.
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It's on the surface. You can hear the gears going around here. All five points of Calvinism, beginning with this one, total depravity or total inability of man to respond to God at all, tend to interlock with each other and tend to either stand or fall altogether.
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There are some who believe four out of the five points. I'll point out to you the one point that some do not believe but those people are often referred to by other
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Calvinists as being inconsistent. The U in TULIP stands for unconditional election.
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You know, we should say one thing. We've listened to a lot of preachers on this program over the course of the last couple of years defining the
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TULIP and he's doing better than most of them did. Let's at least go that far, right?
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I mean, most of them aren't even, you know, Westminster, quoting Westminster, ends up being
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Westminster, you know, that kind of stuff. At least we're on a little better plane here.
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Gotta be appreciative of that. Meaning that God elects some to go to heaven without any conditions being met on their part.
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They are the elect. They are chosen unconditionally, elected unconditionally by God to go to heaven.
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They will be saved regardless of what anyone does or doesn't do. Everyone else but the elect are allowed to go to hell and there's nothing anybody can do about it.
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God could save all, but he chooses not to do so. Okay, I have to take back part of what
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I just said. That's Hunt showing through there big time. That's Dave Hunt and his argumentation big time because if he was going to continue the same level of attempted accurate representation, what you'd end up having to say there, of course, is that those who are under God's wrath never had the desire or never wanted to be outside of his wrath in the sense of in submission to Jesus Christ.
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And so you'd at least say it. You'd at least try to represent it accurately. But given that that's the main punch of Hunt's presentation is to constantly misrepresent that and to skip that point and to tell people, you know, the
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Bible never says that we're predestined to salvation, all the rest of the stuff. He's got to keep that stuff going over and over and over again.
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Most Calvinists will also teach that God loves only the elect whom he has chosen to be saved.
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I've seen pamphlets published by Calvinists where they quote John 3, 16 and they quote it like this, for God so loved the world and then they will put a parenthesis, the elect.
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God so loved the elect that he gave his only begotten son. And so they're saying God only loves...
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All I can say is I hope the attorney fellow takes the time to read the stuff on the website prior to the debate so that he can actually respond to the actual exegesis of John 3, 16 rather than the
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Dave Hunt version of it. That would be really, really helpful.
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Those that he's elected to take to heaven he does not love the rest of the world. At the
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Synod of Dort it was declared that some receive the gift of faith from God and others do not receive it proceeds from God's eternal decree by which decree he graciously softens the hearts of the elect however obstinate and inclines them to believe while he leaves the non -elect in his just judgment to their own wickedness and obduracy.
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Now notice nothing he just quoted nothing he just quoted supports the point that he's making unless he were to have the temerity and maybe honestly again if all he has read is
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Hunt and he believes him then this is Hunt's fault. Now I'm not saying he's completely innocent because you can't say well that's what it said in the book but it is quite possible that he has never read a reformed response that's quite possible he did not read the debating
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Calvinism book all of that stuff and hence is unaware of redemptive love the kinds of God's love common grace all the issues that go into this it's quite possible that that's not a part of his background part of his experience so you can at least at that point go okay but that's definitely what happens when you take
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Dave Hunt and trust what he has to say and his information is in balance based on what
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I believe is a misinterpretation of Romans 9 .13 which reads Jacob have
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I loved but Esau have I hated most Calvinists believe that one baby in the womb is loved and another unborn baby still in the womb is hated by God when they are children
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God loves one and hates another when they are adults
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God loves one and hates the other has nothing to do with them has to do with God he chooses to love one he chooses to hate another in old age all the way through their life and on into eternity the belief is
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God chooses to love one God chooses to hate the other unconditional election the
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L in to look stands for limited atonement meaning that the atonement for sin that Jesus accomplished on the cross was limited to only those
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God elected to save and is not and cannot be effective for anyone else that the elected
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Jesus died for them but he died for no one else the atonement was limited to just those he chooses to save again the synod of Dort declared for this was the sovereign council and most gracious will and purpose of God the
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Father that the most precious death of his son should extend to all the elect all those and those only who were from eternity chosen to salvation he purchased by his death
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Dr. James Trumpton told how a preacher friend of his began preaching that Jesus' blood wasn't shed for everybody and then a friend said to him well so and so you know that you're the elect and that the blood was shed for you but how are you going to ever prove to your little daughter that the blood was shed for her also now as we listen to this and I'm not making a whole lot of comments because we've gone through this numerous times in various contexts but as I listen to this isn't it interesting how particular redemption especially does not garner the kind of response that well unconditional election did beforehand oh yeah
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I know there are some who just give emotional responses to every single point but I honestly let me think here a second now
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I cannot think of any of these representations any of these sermons any of these books where there was any meaningful interaction for example with an
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Owen any meaningful interaction I'm not saying that there are not in fact someone sent me a link within the past three weeks
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I would say to a Baptist publication defending universal atonement in a scholarly context so I'm not saying that there have not been those who have attempted to make argumentation on various things like that but the people who preach the people who go out there let's face it people recognize that that kind of scholarly interaction as rare as it is isn't going to preach real well and sadly this whole perspective tends to recognize you need to keep people really interested we don't want to talk about any of this stuff it's going to turn people off now and so why not deal with what substitutionary atonement actually means why not deal with Hebrews why not deal with this information in such a way as to actually communicate something
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I don't know but again if the primary source he's using is Dave Hunt's work Hunt didn't do it so why would he feel challenged that he would have to do so like I said
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I really really really hope that Dr. Davis will take the time to read at least debating Calvinism obviously the
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Potter's Freedom would even be better I think on that level and I would like to hope to believe
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I really honestly do despite how many times I've been proven to be utterly naive at this point
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I would really like to believe that if these men were to do that if they were to start reading those and read them seriously and read them in such a way as to really think about what's being said that even if they didn't agree at least their presentations would change their tone would change the subject would be handled in a different way
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I'd like to think that I really really would I could be wrong obviously in fact
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I've been proven wrong in hoping that way over and over and over again but I keep trying to hope can you prove to her that she is one of the elect now this is the one this third point is the one of the four points with which many
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Calvinistic preachers such as Charles Spurgeon disagree okay here's like I said and I may have played this portion because I seem to recall it
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I know I've mentioned it here's what happens when you have
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Samuel Fiske writes a book he takes a quote from a sermon where Spurgeon is defending particular redemption he isolates it takes it out of its context and turns into assertion where where Spurgeon allegedly is denying what you read on the very next page he's actually promoting then you find someone like a popularizer like Dave Hunt who's just looking for stuff he's looking for quotes you know
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Dave sees on a page what Dave wants to see on a page what could be on the page could be exact opposite of what he's looking for but if he can string a few things together not averse to using a few ellipses here and there and everywhere to make it say what he wants to say that's all he can see he simply he's done that to me in quoting me he does that to Spurgeon here and so he's just looking for ammo he's not looking to do research he's looking for ammo and so he takes what's written by someone who's not overly popular and he puts it into a popular book and now the popular book gets spread around and of course he starts the rumor that the
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Calvinists want to kill this book and the Calvinists want to suppress this book and that always helps anybody's book there's people trying to suppress my book they don't want to hear they don't want people to hear what
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I have to say and that helps a lot and so now now we're at step three false information repeated by popularizer now being preached to the people how many people in this audience are going to look this up even could look it up given they're only hearing it they're going to have to go to the pastor they're going to have to ask for the reference he's probably just going to reference back to Hunt and then you've got to look up Hunt's reference and you've got to find it and you've got to read the whole sermon how many people?
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none, probably maybe just a few at the most and so here we go again the same lie and it's a lie you know,
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Dave Hunt keeps repeating this quote he's even putting this you know, he keeps it in his books and he just keeps changing first he said
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Spurgeon unequivocally denied and then well, he contradicted himself which, by the way, is not unequivocal but he won't admit the mistake and so he just keeps repeating it and here's what ends up happening and it's a sad thing to see however, if you read
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Spurgeon's sermons you know that they often sounded un -Calvinistic and he was also attacked by his
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Calvinistic friends for that same thing in fact, one of his sermons had so many people saved and was severely attacked by several of his
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Calvinistic friends and he said, I don't care what you think about it it brought a lot of people to Jesus Christ the
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I in TULIP stands for Irresistible Grace which means that God sovereignly works so that the elect have no choice but to willingly receive
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His grace at some point in their lives it doesn't matter what you or I or anyone else does or doesn't do the elect will somehow some way, sometime receive
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God's grace and everyone else is going to be damned to hell that is
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Irresistible Grace the elect are going to get saved that's all there is to it I haven't heard a whole lot about the fact that all men are under sin and again, that comes from Hunt but I haven't heard a lot about that I haven't heard how the elect are actually the enemies of God and that they love their sin until they have that heart of stone taken out and given a heart of flesh a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of it and then the
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P in TULIP stands for Perseverance of the
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Saints which means that those who are truly God's saints will persevere to the end and none of them will lose the salvation
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God has given to them this point is the one that causes those who believe you can lose your salvation to call you and me
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Calvinist have you ever had anybody call you a Calvinist because you believe in eternal security but the truth is you and I are not either
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Calvinist or Armenians I'm talking about what we believe as a church we are neither
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Calvinist nor Armenians we are Biblicist we believe the Bible and what it says there we go again he doesn't believe a single point of the
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TULIP but he's not an Armenian even though his theology is the same here is this well I refuse to be identified well you know that doesn't really accomplish anything whatsoever because we're talking about your soteriological position what is it that you believe well
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I believe the Bible well that doesn't tell me anything everybody says that what does that mean where do you fall let's understand where we get started here okay
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I mean what a waste of time to be constantly trying to get somebody to just say what it is they believe we encounter that in the channel all the time people come in one of the first things
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I ask is do you go to a church or which one is it and every I don't know maybe monthly every other month we get somebody in and they just don't understand why
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I am so insistent on asking that question but I try to explain to them it's because especially given the context of a chat channel where we are typing to one another you need to have a proper context you need to have some idea of where someone's coming from and if I don't know where you're coming from I could be putting all sorts of improper interpretations upon your words so we need to know where you're coming from and that's what these types of descriptions do
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I'm not pledging allegiance to John Calvin I'm simply saying that when it comes to soteriology
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I am reformed I am a Calvinist does that tell you where I'm coming from okay now we don't have to go back over all that stuff let's go from there and maybe we can possibly get someplace
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Bible believers who believe in eternal security we don't really agree with the statement perseverance of the saints
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I haven't been saved for 45 years because I persevered
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I've been saved all these years and never been lost because Jesus preserved me now is there any reformed person at all that would disagree with the statement that the elect persevere because Jesus preserves them no of course not does that demonstrate that Dr.
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Davis doesn't know many Calvinists and hasn't really studied this issue very deeply yes it does very clearly the problem of course is that once you abandon this concept of perseverance now what you're saying is
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God can save me and then he can fail to do anything in my life to where I am described by Scripture in Titus chapter 2 is one of those who's zealous for good deeds those people who's being changed those people in whose lives the
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Holy Spirit is operational and that leads of course to the libertarianism the easy cheap grace movements of Wilkin and others and the non -lordship perspective and that's where that ends up going and that's exactly where Hunt is
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Hunt is smack dab know that stuff you can't even it's not even meaningful to address the phrase false faith at all there can be no false faith all faith is saving faith there is no such thing as false faith there is no reason to examine yourself to see whether you're in the faith all those descriptions of the godly actions of the saints are just there for window dressing they're not really there for any particular reason and the
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Holy Spirit of God if God is dependent upon you to get yourself into this situation then obviously he would be completely dependent upon you as well for whether you go anywhere with it as long as you get your ticket punched that might be just enough for you you don't want to be a super Christian you don't want to get too much into this religious stuff because people tend to look at you a little bit oddly when you do that and therefore let's just skip all that just get your ticket punched go into heaven that kind of thing and that's where it leads so anyway two weeks off folks enjoy your time pray for us as we head up to Seattle and for those debates obviously we will be reporting on what takes place once we get back look forward to seeing those of you who will be there next week pray for us
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God bless a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates and tracks join us again this