SRR 114 Heaven’s Diaspora: John Piper & the Decline of Sola Fide at Final Judgment (5)

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I do a podcast. I'm not interested in your podcast. The kingdom of God was for those who denied justification by faith alone.
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When that is at stake, we need to be on the battlefield, exposing the error and combating the error.
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We are unabashedly, unashamedly Clarkian. And so the next few statements that I'm going to make,
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I'm probably going to step on all of the Vantillian toes at the same time. And this is what we do at Simple Riff around the radio, you know.
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We are polemical and polarizing Jesus style. I would first say that to characterize what we do as bashing is itself bashing.
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It's not hate. It's history. It's not bashing. It's the Bible. Woe to you when men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way, as opposed to blessed are you when you have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness.
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It is on. We're taking the gloves off. It's time to battle. All right.
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Welcome back to Simple Riff around the radio, where the Bible alone and the Bible in its entirety is applied to all of life.
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Thankfully for today, I'm not flying solo this time. I've got a very, very special guest with me.
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Once again, we have Hiram Diaz back on the show. Very grateful for this brother to be back on with us.
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We had a really good, really good interview with him going back a while back about critical race theory.
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And we got some really positive feedback on that show. Really good feedback. People have really been appreciating the discussion and the stuff that we talked about back then.
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So I'm hoping that we can have Hiram on more as a regular rather than as a guest, more of as just a regular contributor.
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He's been contributing some great articles recently as well on the Thorn Crown Ministries blog, the scripture list.
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So I encourage you to check that out and look at stuff up. He's a sharp guy, so he's got some really good material out there.
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Before we but before we get started on that. Oh, so the topic is going to be we're going to continue talking about Piper and I want to continue on to the fifth fatal flaw.
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But I want to lead up to that a little bit. So first of all, just a few announcements. I started
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I started a new a new series. I guess you can call it a series for basically reflections on the
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Lord's Day preaching at my church. So it's just a brief kind of like one or two pages of notes that I take from the sermon and from just kind of the service in general.
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And they're just reflections, thoughts, things that come across my mind when when the preaching is going on and and tying a bunch of things together.
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So you that might be something that you can check out. Some of the people, some people that I've talked to use that as like a sort of a supplement to their family worship or to their
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Lord's Day worship. So I encourage you to check that out. You might find it useful. I talk about a lot of different things and in each sermon.
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So it's kind of a mishmash of topics like ranging from the well -meant offer of the gospel to using
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Christian labels and so on and so forth. So there's a lot of there's a lot of stuff in there that you may get some some food for thought from.
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So that's that's the one new thing. And so there's there's another new semi new feature to our website called
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Carlos's Bookshelf. And this is something that I really enjoy doing.
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It's basically like my Goodreads library. It's my library of books and I have my reviews up there as well.
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So I kind of want to start this into a potentially a new thing for the
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Thorn Crown Ministries to if people have a question about a specific book that they're curious about that they want, they would like some clarity or some answers on, which is kind of what
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I did recently with Josh Harris and his book Dug Down Deep. And so I'd like to continue doing that and just kind of I enjoy doing that.
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I enjoy reviewing books and kind of discussing them and things like that. And you kind of take me for that kind of guy as well,
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Hiram. You like to do that stuff, too? Yeah, over at Biblical Trinitarian, where I write, usually
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I have a section on book reviews. And I've been, yeah, I've been aiming at least since this month,
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I want to try to get a book every once or every one or two weeks reviewed.
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So right now I'm going through patristic literature and studies on the patristic fathers and patristic authors to get different views of, you know, what it is they believed about different subjects.
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I just finished a book on patristic bibliology, their understanding of the scriptures.
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And it was enlightening. It wasn't the best book, but it was good. But yeah, I spend quite a bit of time reading.
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More reading than writing, actually. I'm trying to balance that out at some point. Yeah, that's, yeah, that's fantastic.
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I am eating your dust, man. I don't know how you do it. I wish I could read that fast. That's very cool.
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Yeah, so I want to encourage people to ask us questions, you know, about different, you know, a bunch of books.
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There's obviously a lot of books coming out. And so I think that's great that we have a pretty good team to be able to look into stuff like that.
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I mean, you're putting out, starting to put out book reviews already. So and I'm trying to do the same thing, but a much slower pace, unfortunately.
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But I'm going to try to keep that somewhat consistent. So that's that's awesome.
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So I recently just posted a review of Edward Snowden's book called
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Permanent Record. And it's kind of fascinating because like, what does that have to do?
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What does a former NSA whistleblower have to do with final salvation?
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And it's pretty interesting. I encourage you to check out the review for that. It's a very it's a brief review. It's nothing convoluted, but he's essentially describing the
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Internet in a very soteriological manner. It's kind of interesting how people idolize these things as a way to start over, to create aliases online and feel like you're being born again, almost.
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It's very interesting. So it's all it's all related to salvation. Everybody wants some kind of salvation and everybody has these different ways of trying to obtain it.
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And so, yeah, I encourage people to check that out. It came out pretty recently, like in September, I think.
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So you can check that out. So that now basically brings us to our main point, which is the issue of continuing to unravel the final salvation theology of John Piper.
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And we picked up on fatal flaw number five.
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And so before that, I want to just kind of give a brief recap of the previous one.
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So the previous flaw was number four, which was the active obedience and congruous merit of the believer.
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And I say that deliberately because Piper is saying, you know, the perfect active obedience and passive obedience of Christ as a satisfaction for God's wrath and justification of believers is not enough for Piper because he's still saying that you have to face
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God on the last day as a judge. And you have to pass the final test by showing your own works, your own righteousness, your own active obedience, your own congruous merit in order to go to heaven.
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So it's not enough for Piper to have Christ alone. You need to have your own works present at the last judgment in order to get to heaven.
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And so I wanted to ask you because you're kind of new to this discussion.
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It's mainly been between me and Tim. And I wanted to get just like, what's your past with Piper?
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Did you ever like Piper? How much of his stuff have you read? You know, what's your take on all this final salvation stuff going on?
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I got to be honest with you. I've always kind of been wary of John Piper, even though I found some.
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You know, I don't know if people still do it, but you know, like sermon jams on YouTube. Well, they have like a sermon, a clip of a sermon playing, you know, like a hip hop in the background.
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I think that's where I was introduced to Piper. And I have a friend who really likes Piper. But I've always been wary of him primarily because of how emotional he is.
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I just don't trust emotional preachers. I don't, you know. And the reason why is because, look, if you have something with content to tell me, you can tell me in a monotone voice.
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And if it's truth, it should have an effect on me. If you have to flail your hands around and gesticulate, right?
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Raise your voice, drop your voice, have all these different things that you're doing to affect my emotions.
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Then chances are you're slipping some poison in the orange juice you're giving me. You know what
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I mean? And that's how I've always felt about Piper. That's funny. But I remember years ago when I first encountered
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John Robbins, Trinity Foundation, Gordon Clark. And I read about the Pied Piper, you know, the article that he wrote.
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And I remember, OK, well, this ties right into how I feel about the guy. Obviously, there's something wrong that I could sense in some way.
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And so this makes sense. I kind of forgot about him, though, until people started posting stuff about Salvation by Faith Alone and Piper's renunciation of that.
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And so I started remembering more about the Pied Piper situation.
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But the more I heard Piper's attempt to justify himself to people and his beliefs, the more
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I was reminded of the sixth session of the Council of Trent. Because what he's saying sounds like it's taken directly from that.
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And if you remember, that's the session on justification in the Council of Trent, where they basically say the same thing that he said, where,
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OK, well, you get in by faith and you stay in by works. And you're going to be judged on the basis of not only the faith that you have that brought you in, but the works that you have that you've persisted in.
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So faith working itself out through love is their understanding of faith. It's not just faith in terms of sent to a proposition.
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Right. Yeah, it's it's works basically snuck into the back door the same way that the
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Federal Revisionists talk about faith. That's how Piper talks about it. And they're both talking about in the same way that the
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Romanists do. And the Romanists did way back in the Reformation time. So, yeah, the more I heard from Piper, the more
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I read about Piper, the more that I was reminded of the Council of Trent. And it's just it's amazing, because I remember going through to some threads on Facebook and just showing people,
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OK, here's what the Roman Catholic Church said about justification in the six in the what is it, the 1500s, late 1500s, early 1600s.
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And here's what Piper says. And people are like, yeah, but there's no but there. You know what I mean? There's no but if you claim to be reformed and you're talking like the
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Council of Trent when it comes to justification, you're not only not reformed, you're not a believer. You know what
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I mean? But that's that's in a nutshell, more or less, you know, just listening to Piper's teaching online, listening, reading it, reading some of the articles that Desire in God.
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In addition to me thinking that he's just a weird emotional person, the justification issue becomes really clear.
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You know, he affirms a doctrine of justification that is basically Roman Catholic without all the sacraments.
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Yeah, yeah. And it's funny because, you know, going back to his preaching style,
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I don't necessarily mind it that much, I guess. What does concern me is his theology of emotions because and I wrote a review of his book.
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What did you expect? No, what's the difference? What's the difference? The difference is between biblical manhood and womanhood.
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And he really bothers me because he says that he's very fixated on emotion, like your emotional state.
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And it's like, why are you so concerned about people's emotion? And he says, like, you shouldn't be. If you have a begrudging attitude, then you shouldn't be devoid of that.
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And you need because you know how he is. He's focused on Christian hedonism and your greatest desire should be joy and being joyful in God and all that stuff.
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And, you know, I can kind of see where he's going, but honestly, it's sort of missing the mark because what you should be concerned with is the truth.
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And what you should be concerned with is laying preaching convictions that line up with the word, which is the truth.
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If you do that, the emotions will follow and everybody's emotional state is different.
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Some people are not as emotional as others. And that's the same with preachers. Preachers have different styles. You know, some people are more expressive.
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Some people are less outwardly, you know, like Piper, you know, they're flailing limbs around and stuff.
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And, you know, there's good and bad preachers that do both of those things. And I think it's important to just be natural.
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You know, don't be unnatural. Don't try to stifle your emotions unnaturally or don't try to exaggerate them unnaturally.
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Just be natural. Just be human. It's human to express emotion and conviction, but do it in a way that you are concerned primarily with the conviction.
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And Piper tends to focus a lot on the wrong thing, on emotion. So were you going to jump in?
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Yeah, I was going to say, not to give the wrong idea, like when I say I don't like emotional preachers or I don't trust them, what
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I mean is more like, you know, the stereotypical black pastor or the stereotypical, you know,
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Hispanic Pentecostal pastor, where it's just a performance, you know what I mean? It's like, well,
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I'm going to open up with a word of prayer and start off with this low tone where, you know, and gradually constrain them until you're screaming at everybody and everyone's like, wow, this is amazing.
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That's the feeling that I've always got with Piper. Like the whole thing is emotional. Does that make sense? Yeah, I see what you're saying.
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Like listening to give a contrast, a huge contrast, but someone who's emotional in his preaching for good reason, you know,
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Pastor Patrick Kynes, when he preaches, you know, I don't have a problem with it because I know that he believes the truth.
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I know that what he's feeling is a response to what he's believing and what he's talking about. You see what
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I'm saying? Right, right. Amen. Yeah. It's not a show being put on. This is a guy who's preaching the truth and his concern is for Christ's sheep.
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And so if he's angry about something, it's because it's something legitimate to be angry about as a pastor, as a
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Christian, etc. If he's happy about something, etc. But for John Piper, like I said, it's always felt like,
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OK, here's here's my moment where I am. I'm humbled before God and everybody's going to see this in the way
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I put my head down and my hands up. And here's the part where I start getting bold in the spirit and everybody's going to see it because I start shaking.
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And here's the part where I get, you know, valiant for the truth because I start yelling and hitting the pulpit. Like, dude, you know, maybe he is legitimate.
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But that's what I meant when I said the pastor, the pastors who are emotional for me are, you know, I'm wary of them.
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But like we've seen through your article, through your articles and through the podcasts that have been done regarding Piper, we see this concern isn't for the truth.
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His concern is for his own doctrine, you know, regardless of what the scriptures say, because he's not going to be corrected on it.
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As far as we can tell. Sadly. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm glad you brought up Trent, too, because in all of our articles, basically the
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Tim's article and Tim's article and in my articles, we quote
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Trent heavily to show how just how closely he lines up with what they're saying, rather than what the reformers are saying, with the
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Protestant Reformation writings, the mainstream writings that he claims to agree with are saying.
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And so that's what fatal fault number four dealt with largely as well.
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I quoted a bunch of mainstream Protestants from the past,
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Martin Luther, Charles Spurgeon, Horatius Bonner, and showed that the
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Belgian Confession, you know, the confessions, they basically all express things that are directly opposed to what
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Piper is teaching. So, yeah. And I also wanted to clarify something because I think people when...
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So the Trinity Foundation published the first part of my article, but not the second. And I think people got confused because they published the first part in two parts.
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And so people might because people might have thought that they read both parts on the
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Trinity Foundation, but that was only the first part. So if you haven't read the second part, you have to read it on the Thorn Crown Ministries website.
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And that covers a lot more material. So it's fatal flaws number four through six and a few other sections.
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So, yeah, people just wanted to throw that out to make sure that there was not... Because there's much less views on the second article than the first.
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And I think it might have been due to some of that confusion. So, yeah, if you haven't checked, if you haven't read it yet,
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I encourage you to read it. We're going to deal with a lot of the sections here, but you can see it for yourself with your own eyes.
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And it's just very, it's very clear cut.
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So jumping on to fatal flaw number five, and I call this flaw Heaven's Diaspora.
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And the reason I call it that is because when we were dealing with this issue back in the Bible thumping wingnut, there was a lot of opposition.
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There was a lot of support for Piper. And I was very concerned that I was already concerned back to the article that you referred to from John Robbins, the
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Pied Piper. You need to read that article if you haven't already. It's a very good article. It's mainly a critique of Piper's book,
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Future Grace, which he revised in 2012 and apparently is still pretty much a mess. I mean, it's no surprise.
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The stuff that he's saying is still a mess. So, I mean, you know, recently, so he is not sound.
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And so when we were deliberating about this and going back and forth with people, I was on my way home one day and I suddenly realized, like, wait a minute.
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If Piper is saying that in order for you to go to heaven, you have to face
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God at final judgment and prove your works to him, your salvation to him with your works.
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What about believers that have already died? Where are they? You know, like, and it's such a simple, that is one of the most, it's such a simple question, you know, like, what happens to these people?
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And so that's what Fatal Flaw number five is basically unpacking. It's, you know, because the
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Bible very clearly says in 2 Corinthians 5, 7 through 8, it says,
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For we walk by faith, not by sight. We are confident, yes, well pleased rather, to be absent from the body or dead and to be present with the
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Lord. So departed, in other words, departed believers, believers who have already passed away, have already, quote, attained heaven without having to step foot in, quote,
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Christ's courtroom. And this is Piper's words that I'm quoting, stand before Christ as judge at the last judgment.
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Those are Piper's words. And so there's a problem there, you know, and it's a very basic problem.
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Like, there's something seriously wrong there. And, you know, and also in Philippians, it says,
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Philippians 1, 21 to 24, for believers to live as Christ and to die as gain. But if I live on in the flesh, this will mean fruit for my labor.
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Yet what I will choose, I cannot tell. For I am hard pressed between the two, having a desire to depart or die and be with Christ, which is far better.
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And so the teaching is absolutely clear. And so this very simple doctrine refutes
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Piper's absurd claim that all believers must first be evaluated at the final judgment before they can enter heaven.
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But it gets worse. This is what's so interesting, because Piper actually affirms that.
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He affirms that when believers die right now, they go to heaven. And you would have to.
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I mean, that's such an obvious doctrine, like you would have to affirm that. And he does. That's what makes it so weird.
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It makes it even worse in a way. Because if we follow Piper's logic initially, you know, without knowing that he affirms it.
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If you follow his logic initially, it would mean that not a single believer is in heaven now because they would not have yet been deemed worthy to enter it at the last judgment.
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The last judgment obviously hasn't happened yet. And Piper believes that the last judgment is in the future.
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He's not some weird kind of like a preterist or whatever. He believes that there will be a final judgment, and it hasn't happened yet.
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So therefore, where are they? You know, what are they doing? Where are they?
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And so Piper actually acknowledges this. He says, this is quoting him,
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Our judgment will be after we die. That's implied in the text, but Hebrews 9 .27 makes it explicit.
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So there he's emphatically saying repeatedly what he's been saying in his article on,
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Does God really save us by faith alone? He says, in final salvation, at the last judgment, we will have to conform our fruit on the final judgment before God and everybody else to prove that we're really worthy of heaven.
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And so this is what's so interesting because, and it's not just that, you know, it's not just the part of believers.
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It's also raptured believers. You know, there's raptured like Enoch. By faith,
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Enoch was raptured and taken away so that he did not see death. Not by faith and a trial to present his works at the final judgment to see if it was really there.
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If he was really saved and proved his inherent righteousness before God. It's like, okay.
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And or worse, he's not even there yet. He must be, where would he be? Where can he be?
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He's still in transit. He's traveling still. Here's what's interesting.
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See, this is what's interesting. We just talked about how close he is to the
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Council of Trent, to Romanism, to Roman Catholicism. So what's one of the implications of that view?
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They must be in some other place, like maybe, who knows? I don't know, purgatory? Limbo?
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Yeah. Where else would they be? Yeah. If they can't get in until they get judged at the last judgment, where else would they possibly be?
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You know, or soul sleep maybe? Didn't you write about annihilationism or soul sleep? Yeah, I wrote a small book on soul sleep called
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Soul Sleep and Unbiblical Doctrine, showing that it's not even possible. The interpretation of sleep as being a state of unconsciousness is not possible, given the
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Bible's literal depiction of literal sleep. It's never a state of absolute unconsciousness. So yeah, it's called
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Soul Sleep and Unbiblical Doctrine. It's pretty short. It's like 50 pages or something. Yeah. No, and that's great.
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And we just quoted the verses disproving that. Obviously, it's a very unbiblical view.
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Well, I was going to say, speaking of Romanism, even though Roman Catholicism has the doctrine of purgatory, they don't deny that some
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Christians go to heaven immediately upon death. They'll say that the Christians who are sanctified enough, who are perfected now, they make it directly to heaven.
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So maybe that's Piper's view. Who knows, man. It is insane.
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So we'll see just how bad it's going to get. It's going to get worse. So yeah, the
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Bible talks about raptured saints like Enoch and who else got raptured? Elijah. Elijah.
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He was raptured. He was brought up in chariots of fire. So where would he be going? Would he be going to a courtroom to await his…
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It's so blatantly contradictory to the plain teaching of the Bible.
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So yeah, Hebrews 11, 5 says, By faith Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death and was not found because God had taken him.
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For before he was taken, he had this testimony that he pleased God. And so it's very clear that when believers die, their spirits go directly to heaven with God.
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Their spirits, their bodies are not redeemed yet. That's not going to happen until later. But their spirits go directly with God to heaven, in heaven.
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And so even the transfiguration of Christ where he appears with Moses and Elijah, you know.
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In Matthew 17, 1 through 3 says, Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, led them up on a high mountain by themselves, and he was transfigured before them.
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His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as a light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with him.
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So this is clearly showing that Moses and Elijah were glorified spirits in heaven, fellowshipping with God already prior to the final judgment.
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So there's something very clearly wrong there. And you know, there's just so many things.
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We can keep going. We can keep going and going and going. And I encourage people to read the article to get the full scope of this because it is that bad.
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And it's going to get worse. And I was going to say, I don't think you quote Hebrews 12, 23, right? But in Hebrews 12, 23, the writer says,
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He's talking about the people. The people that are in heaven right now are spirits of the righteous who are made perfect.
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I mean, they're sinless. They're glorified. There you go. They're awaiting the resurrection of their bodies, of course.
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But they're in heaven right now. So that's just another way in which Piper's error is shown to be false, shown to be an error.
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Amen. Who are enrolled in heaven right now, this very moment, present tense.
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I mean, it's so clear. And so obviously, what are we getting at? And it's very clear. It should be clear by now, right?
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If Piper were consistent with his view that believers cannot be finally saved and get to heaven until the final judgment when
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God publicly confirms their works, then heaven must be currently devoid of all deceased and raptured believers who would instead have to be in some kind of soul sleep or some other midway realm, like maybe
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Rome's Limbo, Purgatory. Who knows? The options are very limited.
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And they're flatly unbiblical. So he doesn't have a whole lot of places to turn to.
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So where does he turn to? Well, interestingly enough, in 1993,
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Piper said this. What we have seen so far is that believers in Jesus go to be with him when we die.
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Verse 8. So he just affirmed what we were just talking about.
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That deceased believers are already in heaven. Okay, so what is going on? Now that's just a major blatant contradiction.
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Those two are irreconcilable realities. Unless you do this.
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This is the only... Because I thought about this. What could he possibly say to reconcile that?
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And this is what I came up with. This is the best I could do. This is me trying to be as charitable as I possibly could be with Piper.
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Given what he just said. Two very sharply contrasting things. And apparently very contradictory things.
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So for Piper, believers who die prior to final judgment go straight to heaven.
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But when Christ returns to judge the living and the dead, evidently he's going to evict all of them from their heavenly abode and put their works on trial to see if they're worthy of re -entering heaven.
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That's the only thing I could come up with. It's double jeopardy too. It's a disaster.
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And I mentioned that earlier. That this is a form of double jeopardy as well. Because why are you being put on trial for something...
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If you've already gone to heaven, it's contradicting everything that you've been saying about having to face the final judgment in order to enter heaven.
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It doesn't make any sense. That flatly contradicts what he's been... He's contradicting himself.
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And the only thing... The only possible way to reconcile it that I'm seeing is basically that God is going to initiate a massive heavenly diaspora.
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He's going to kick everybody out of heaven, put them on the judgment line. Hey, you've got to get back in line.
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You've got to get back in line. And you have to prove yourself to me, because you never did, that you are fully qualified enough to go to heaven with your works.
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And so, again, folks, we can just... Can we end it now?
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Can we just end it now? How much more absurd does this have to get?
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Because sadly, it still gets worse. We're not even done yet, is the sad thing.
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Yeah. Well, like you and I know, I'm assuming most of the listeners know, logic is not...
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People in, I guess, people like Piper and stuff like that, they are opposed to, quote -unquote, mere human logic.
32:04
You know what I mean? So when you point out things like that... Surprise, surprise. Yeah, I can imagine them being like, well, you know, that's just...
32:10
That's your way of trying to reconcile the mystery in Scripture. Like, this isn't a mystery. You're flat -out contradicting yourself.
32:17
It's either one or the other, you know? But given the mythology, the hatred of logic that you find among a lot of people, even those who profess to be
32:25
Reformed and Calvinistic, it wouldn't surprise me if somebody tried to use that as a defense, you know? Like, we have to hold these things in tension.
32:32
Yeah. It's not... Oh, man. That's terrible. It's a flat -out contradiction. There's nothing to hold in tension, you know?
32:39
That's terrible, yeah. And if you want a good perspective on logic, you recently published an article on Thorn Crown Ministries, right?
32:46
What is it called? Contradictions are carnal. Yes, yes. So, again, if you're listening,
32:54
I highly encourage people to check that article out. Get a good perspective on logic, which will help you to see these...
33:01
You know, and it doesn't take much. It honestly does not take much. It doesn't take a genius, a proficient logician, to see the problem here, you know?
33:11
It should be pretty obvious. Like, this is not something that you can get away with easily. This is not something...
33:18
This is clearly... Something is clearly wrong. And it's nonsense.
33:23
And it destroys biblical eschatology, the assurance of believers. How can you be assured?
33:30
How can you possibly be assured if even deceased believers who have died and gone to heaven are apparently still going to have to get back in line to be judged?
33:42
There is no... That's even worse. That's like... That's even worse than just being nervous about this life, you know?
33:49
Like, man, if I die, what's going to happen? It's like... No, it's worse. If you die and you go to heaven, it's almost like...
33:58
It's... What a horrendous feeling must that be like. Hey, you know, your seat might get reclaimed.
34:05
Your house might get reclaimed by somebody else, you know? You may not make it after all in the long run.
34:12
So... You know, it reminds me of... It's just horrendous. It reminds me of, you know, like mafia movies where you got this guy who turned on the mafia boss.
34:19
And he's like, well, maybe I'm still in good standing with him. So the boss invites him over. And he's like, yeah, you can have dinner with me, just hang out.
34:26
And the whole time he's like, he's going to shoot me. I don't know when, right? It's like, this is what Piper's heaven is like right now.
34:32
You know, like a whole bunch of guys. And Piper's God that he's envisioning is like a mafia boss who's like, yeah, come on, come have some of these heavenly delights for a little while.
34:40
And then bang, on resurrection day, he's just going to bang, shoot him, you know, throw him in a ditch. That is...
34:45
I mean, it's... That is horrible. I use a silly, exaggerated example. But I mean, in essence, how different is it?
34:52
You know what I mean? If you are a believer who's in heaven, and you're still awaiting this last trial, like...
34:58
How could you be in any sort of peace, even right now, in heaven? You'd be wringing your hands. Not only because you don't know whether or not your works are going to count up for you to be led into heaven eternally, but also because you can't change anything after that point.
35:11
Once you're dead, that's it. Yeah. That's it. That's it. You can't add to, you can't take away.
35:18
That's it. The record is set for you, you know? So either you're in Christ or you're outside of Christ. And if you go by that work salvation, well, your working has ended.
35:27
Your shift is over. You can't feed a homeless person in heaven. There are no homeless people.
35:32
You can't address sin issues because there is no sin. So you're screwed either way. You know what I mean? So it's pretty crazy.
35:39
Man. Oh my gosh. That is so horrendous. When your theology starts to look more like a mafia crime family, the way they operate, rather than, you know, the
35:54
God of all justice and righteousness and peace and love, and a sound mind.
36:01
This is insanity. This is blatant insanity. And what concerns me, I don't even know if Piper's really thought about this.
36:09
I don't even know how carefully he's really thought this through because it seems like we're the only ones bringing this to light, like calling attention to this.
36:15
I haven't seen anybody else talk about this stuff, and it's so basic. Like a lot of times, all you have to do sometimes is back up even just a little bit.
36:26
Don't get so fixated on the trees. Back up just a little bit, and try to make sense of what he's saying, in light of what's going on, and what else the
36:34
Bible is also teaching about these doctrines. Like you can't even make heads or tails of this, on a basic level.
36:42
So if he can't reconcile something as basic as deceased believers going to heaven with the final judgment, you need to seriously recant something.
36:57
Something is seriously wrong. Unless, of course, you hold to that mythological view and don't think logic is valid or applies to this situation, then you're really screwed.
37:10
Maybe you think hell is heaven and heaven is hell. If that's the case, well, hey, all options are on the table, right?
37:18
So this is ridiculous, honestly. And we're talking about somebody who's claiming the mainstream reform view.
37:27
What an insult. What an insult this is spitting on the face of every single faithful reformer,
37:37
Protestant, the people who died were martyred for the rejection of Roman Catholic justification by faith and works.
37:50
Here he is spitting on everybody's face, concocting this absurdly blasphemous, blunderous, contradictory system that doesn't even reconcile the most basic of doctrines in the
38:03
Bible. You know, sadly, something that I've noticed is that there are people who have historically gotten a pass for saying similar things.
38:11
I mean, like, you look at Richard Baxter, right? Richard Baxter was a heretic of heretics.
38:18
Richard Baxter denied the covenant of works. Richard Baxter denied the imputation of Adam's sin to us, if I'm not mistaken.
38:23
He denied the imputation of Christ's righteousness to us. He denied justification by faith alone. He taught that salvation was by faith and by works.
38:29
And basically, like the merit that you're talking about in your article, I believe it's, what is it again?
38:35
It's congruous merit. Yeah, basically he says a peppercorn of obedience is enough for Christ to justify you.
38:46
So basically it's the same sort of idea that you get in Romanism, Piperism, etc. And people give him a pass because he wrote some good books on practical living.
38:53
Well, when you do that, you know what I mean? If we're talking about the broad
38:59
Reformed tradition, when you do that, those people get lumped in with the other people who are sound. You know what
39:04
I mean? When you don't call these people out for being heretics, then they get lumped in.
39:10
And then when people come along like Piper or like Wilson and the Federal Visionists, and they have a heretical view of justification, they say, well, you accept
39:19
Baxter over there, and my view's no different than Baxter, and you accept Doug Wilson, and Doug Wilson's view is no different than Norman Shepard and Richard Baxter.
39:27
You see what I'm saying? Yeah. Oh, yeah. So that's the problem that I see because there's so many people who are lumped in with the quote -unquote
39:35
Reformed tradition. And unless you're digging more deeply into it, and if you're on the surface of what's considered
39:44
Reformed writing, it's the same thing with the Puritans, right? You have the same sort of issue where somebody like John Milton is called a
39:50
Puritan, but John Milton was a complete heretic. John Milton denied the doctrine of the Trinity vigorously. He was an
39:56
Arian, so he wasn't a believer. But because of the time period that he lived in and because he had general similarities with those people, with Puritans, with actual
40:05
Puritans, he's considered a Puritan, and this is a problem. And this might be part of the reason why people have a hard time rejecting
40:12
Piper because there are other people that we've accepted, not we, but you know what I mean, that have largely been accepted as brothers who aren't brothers.
40:19
For instance, Richard Baxter. Everybody knows about Richard Baxter having... They call him...
40:25
I've heard people say, well, he was an Amoraldean. That's another thing, right? He denied limited atonement, and people usually think...
40:33
When I say Richard Baxter's a heretic, people are like, well, is that because he was an Amoraldean? I say, no, it's not because he was an
40:39
Amoraldean. It's because he denied the gospel. You know what I mean? But people usually, they do that two -step.
40:45
They say, well, the only reason why you're opposed to Baxter is because he's an Amoraldean.
40:50
It's like, no, I'm opposed to him because he's opposed to the gospel. And people do that with Piper as well. They'll say, the only reason why you're opposed to Piper is, let's say, because he believes in charismatic gifts.
41:01
I'm like, well, that's not the issue. It's because he doesn't believe the gospel. But that's a problem that I've seen, not only with Piper, but with other teachers, like I said.
41:12
Too much of a readiness to accept somebody for some other reason other than the pure teaching of the gospel.
41:21
Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Like Doug Wilson, just to bring him up again, because he's popular again.
41:31
He's largely infiltrating Baptist groups and those who are opposed to the social justice movement within the
41:37
SBC. Because they're like, wow, he writes so well. He hits the nail on the head when it comes to gender and race.
41:45
Yeah, like James White. James White's always praising him. But the man, he was a federal revisionist, and he still affirms people like James Jordan and Steve Schlissel and those guys who flat out denied the gospel.
41:58
He still affirms them as brothers. He still affirms them as Christians. You see what I'm saying? I don't know, maybe that might, it might just be the general,
42:06
I guess what I'm trying to get at is, it might just be the general climate that has grown over the years with the acceptance of just about anybody who calls himself reforms.
42:16
That might be part of the reason why people aren't pointing out the obvious when it comes to Piper. You know what
42:22
I mean? Yeah, you bring up a lot of good points there. And I think one of the things that you're bringing up illustrates a very important point.
42:30
And a lot of these situations you have to take on a case -by -case basis. It's not necessarily a good idea to make categorical pronouncements about a certain area or group or thing like that.
42:43
Because it can get very sticky when you start identifying people who supposedly associate with that movement or theology or whatever the case may be.
42:52
And I think, you know, you mentioned Richard Baxter and I've heard some very serious concerns that he was more on the neonomian side of things.
43:00
That he was kind of a neonomian. And yeah, I mean, I haven't looked at him too much myself.
43:07
I haven't read hardly any of his works. But I have heard some of the critiques of R.
43:13
Scott Clark illustrating that he was a neonomian. And, you know, Milton was an interesting one.
43:21
I actually took a Milton class, going back to, because I mentioned before that I took literature. I studied literature in college and I took a
43:28
Milton course. And he's an interesting character too because there's been divided opinion on him as to, initially a lot of people said that he was very heterodox because he denied the
43:42
Trinity. And my professor was telling me, who himself was a Christian, he told me that later research has kind of, people have started kind of to think that maybe he wasn't as heterodox as they thought he was.
43:55
But he was definitely, at the very least, he was pretty heterodox nonetheless. He vehemently rejected
44:02
Calvinism. And he was very much against it. And that's what the Puritans were. They were basically
44:07
Calvinist. So, I mean, that already in and of itself is already a problem. It's hard to call somebody a
44:14
Puritan when they reject fundamental tenets of Puritanism. Obviously, you have to take things on a case -by -case basis with a lot of these individuals.
44:27
So that's a very good point. Doug Wilson, man, we need to talk about him too. We need to get Sean Garrity on the show and you as well to really flesh that out because we've been neglecting that for a little too long ever since he supposedly renounced his...
44:40
I guess he renounced the label. That's really what it seems like he just did. Just renounced the label and still calls everybody friends from the old movement.
44:48
So it's like, okay, well, that's a problem. Yeah, it's...
44:55
And, you know, we've talked about this before in our previous episodes as well. A lot of this stuff, you know,
45:01
Mark Jones, we're going to deal with him later, but he does this repeatedly.
45:07
He quotes these Puritans who say things that start sounding like Piper and it's like, look, what you're doing is actually making things worse because you're bringing in another entire person like a snippet of what he's saying and maybe that is what he's saying is close to Piper.
45:27
Maybe what he was saying is a little bit different. Maybe it's nuanced. Maybe you have to look at the broader context of what he's saying.
45:34
But the thing is that Piper is not even claiming some obscure group of Puritans.
45:40
He's quoting supposedly appealing to the mainstream reform tradition.
45:46
Mainstream, like the Confessions, the mainstream people. Calvin, that's mainstream.
45:52
Luther, mainstream people, right? Spurgeon, Bonner, and those are the people that I quote in the article and look at what just happened now.
46:03
His blatant contradiction of being unable to reconcile something as simple as deceased believers in heaven with final judgment.
46:11
So that tells you really a lot about what's going on. His fatal flaws, and I still stand by this, every single one of these things
46:22
I've called flaws, fatal flaws are fatal. Taken by themselves, they are utterly fatal to Piper's theology.
46:31
They are just undefensible and undermine the gospel, the very core of the gospel.
46:37
And so when you're talking about his problem, what is this illustrating?
46:43
What it illustrates is a utterly reckless disregard for the whole counsel of God.
46:50
Yep, exactly. That's really what it comes down to. He is so fixated on a few passages, he inserts a bunch of eisegesis into them, makes them talk about final judgment when in reality they have nothing to do with final judgment, and he completely ignores other passages like we've talked about repeatedly,
47:11
John 5 24. Jesus clearly says, he who believes in me shall have eternal life and shall not come into judgment.
47:21
That is reconcilable with the view that deceased believers are in heaven.
47:26
Why? Because there is no judgment for them. There is no judgment for believers. Yeah, like even in John 11, remember when
47:34
Jesus is talking to Martha, I believe it is, right? He says, do you believe that I am the resurrection, right?
47:39
The resurrection and the life. And one of the things he says is that he who believes in me, even though he dies, he won't see death, right?
47:47
He won't die. And that right there, again, that's another slap in the face to John Piper's heretical teaching because Christ is saying, there is no judgment after this because in Christ that life has been applied to you.
47:59
You have eternal life. It's not something, okay, physically it's something that you will receive in the future and in terms of the age to come, eschatologically, it's something that you're going to receive, right?
48:10
But in terms of a present day reality, you have it right now. And if you die, you're not going to go to limbo, you're not going to purgatory, you're not going to soul sleep until the day of resurrection.
48:19
You are going directly to be in the presence of God because you have life. And so even if you see death, like Jesus says, you will not die, right?
48:27
If you die physically, you won't die spiritually, eternally. So that, again, that's another place where, like you said,
48:34
John 5 24, same teaching is right there. Yeah, amen. Yeah, so you're telling me that I'm not going to get evicted from heaven if I die before he comes back?
48:43
Are you sure? I mean because if what he's saying is true, we're all in some deep doo -doo, man.
48:51
I don't know what's going to happen. So yeah, I mean, and I actually just thought about this.
48:59
So we were having a study. We have Monday night Bible studies at my church and we talk about we're going through the
49:05
Westminster Larger Catechism. We're Baptist, so we qualify it, right? We make the corrections where needed.
49:14
Got nothing but love for my Presbyterian brothers, obviously, but anyway, so we were talking about one of the questions.
49:23
I forget what question it was, but the question dealing with the covenant of works basically and it got me thinking about when
49:32
Adam and Eve, because a lot of people tend to assume that Adam and Eve had eternal life before when they were initially created.
49:40
A lot of people assume that they had eternal life. The problem with that is that God put them conditions.
49:47
He put conditions on them. He said, if you eat this, you die. So if you have eternal life, but you're threatened with death if you disobey, does that mean that you still have eternal life?
49:57
No. I don't think so. If there's a threat of death, it sounds like you have to pass some kind of a condition or test.
50:05
A covenant of works, in other words, in order to have or inherit or gain eternal life.
50:11
Of course, they failed and what happened? They died. They did not have eternal life.
50:18
At least not initially. This is what's interesting. If you say that you have eternal life, because the
50:28
Bible says, Jesus clearly says, you can use the most popular verse in the Bible to contradict Piper. He who believes in me shall have eternal life.
50:35
Shall have eternal life now. Like right now. Everlasting life right now.
50:41
Not till you wait to get to the final judgment. So if you already have eternal life and you show up at the final judgment, but you're being put legally on trial where you have to present forensic evidence to prove and in fact justify yourself forensically, then do you really have eternal life up until that point?
51:06
No. You're still under probation. You're still under probation. You're still on trial. Exactly. You're still pending trial.
51:14
So that's what that does is what all of these federal visionists, these new perspective on Paul, they fundamentally break down the distinction between law and gospel, between a covenant of works and a covenant of grace because they either end up denying it or fusing it with the covenant of grace the covenant of works with the covenant of grace or they deny the covenant of works like Piper does and you end up inserting legalism into the covenant of grace because there has to be a righteousness has to be earned.
51:47
The only problem is we can't earn it ourselves. No matter what Piper tells you, we can't earn it ourselves. Thankfully Christ already earned it on our behalf and so the promise is there but it's not going to happen.
52:00
You can't reconcile that. You clearly can't reconcile that with Piper's view. So this has been a really good discussion.
52:08
I'm really glad that we had you on here. So we can probably close with this and again it just destroys your assurance.
52:20
You can never be sure even if you're in heaven right now you can't be sure that you're going to pass the final judgment.
52:26
I mean it is a horrendous prospect to think about but going back to what we were talking about earlier.
52:32
This is a little bit of a message for Piper. I'm going to quote
52:37
Hebrews 5 .12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God and you have come to need milk and not solid food.
52:51
So Piper should probably take a hard look in the mirror himself before he tries to admonish seminary students to not be sloppy with scripture and reform slogans like he does in his sermon called faith alone how not to use a reform slogan.
53:11
Honestly this is like an incredible amount of I want to call it hypocrisy but what concerns me is that I don't even know if he is fully aware of this and that's partly what concerns me here because it's such a basic error and I don't know that people are pointing this out.
53:29
We have a limited audience so it's going to have limited reach. I doubt that Piper is looking at our stuff and I would love to question him on this.
53:39
I would love to question people who are defending Piper so adamantly about this. You can't possibly reconcile this.
53:47
You're going to lose. There's no way around it. It's a false teaching and so that was basically the end of fatal flaw number five.
54:00
We'll have to pick up flaw number six. This was one of my favorites. I really am looking forward to that one.
54:09
Hopefully this showed people how bad this is really getting. It started off already extremely bad.
54:16
It kept getting worse and now we are starting to hit the low point and if you think it couldn't possibly get worse, brace yourself because it's going to.
54:27
Any closing thoughts, Hiram? Yeah, I think something that and I'm sure you agree with me because we're both
54:34
Clarkians. I think something that needs to be stressed when we, you know, whatever the reaches of the podcast, we also have friends, we have family, we have church brothers and sisters that we talk to and something
54:45
I think that we should be stressing is the systematicity of the scriptures. You know what I mean? I recently did a live stream over on my
54:53
Biblical Trinitarian Facebook page because I was reading a friend's comments about epistemology and he was trying to take individual narratives from scripture to build up to a doctrine of the mind, build up to a doctrine of knowledge.
55:07
He was doing an inductive study basically and the thing that I was talking about was that that's an inversion of how you're supposed to do theology.
55:15
You see what I'm saying? When it comes to the Bible teaching specific things about let's say salvation, epistemology, ontology, etc.
55:23
Scripture gives you very clear general statements like these universal propositions. Right? Romans 3 .23
55:29
All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. So when you come into a passage where it talks about the blamelessness of Abraham or the blamelessness of so and so in the
55:38
Old Testament or the New Testament or the righteousness of the parents of John the Baptist, Zechariah, St.
55:43
Elizabeth, you have to interpret those in light of the general statement that's made about the nature of fallen man.
55:49
You see what I'm saying? And that's something that a lot of people don't understand when they read scripture. They think, well it says this here, this universal proposition that says all have sinned but at this other place it says that so and so was righteous, therefore it's not the case that all have sinned and we have to interpret that sort of loosey goosey.
56:05
You know what I'm saying? And it's something that Roman Catholics do. I've pressed Roman Catholics before on this issue and said if Mary is born without sin then what do you do with Hormones 323?
56:14
And they say well that's you know that's just pretty common Hebrew overstatement.
56:20
Well if it's Hebrew overstatement then it's not true in what it literally conveys and that throws everything in scripture out the window.
56:26
You see what I'm saying? But that's why I think in terms of an encouragement and an admonishment I think we should really point out to people that scripture is to be understood logically.
56:36
As simple as that is. You know what I mean? If you find a contradiction in scripture, that doesn't mean that you're wise or that you're mystical or that you have a special relationship to God because you don't care about the truth basically.
56:46
It means that you have more work to do in understanding the scripture. If you don't know. It means that you're wrong.
56:52
If you're not sure how to interpret the passage, then you shouldn't be speaking very adamantly about this particular doctrine like you were saying.
57:01
If you don't understand, this is what Federal Revisionists did with Romans 323 and then a passage like Psalm 7 where David says, vindicate me according to my own righteousness.
57:10
That's literally one of the passages that they try to use to say, well look, there's righteousness in hearing in us. Read the context.
57:16
That's not what it's about. It's about standing before God in prayer and bringing before him the accusation that someone has made against you.
57:24
Right? He's saying this person made an accusation against me but I didn't do that thing. So vindicate me according to that.
57:30
But if you don't interpret things logically, if you don't interpret things in terms of here's the categorical teaching regarding the nature of sin, here's the individual instance of sin, then you're going to get things all screwy and it's going to be a mess.
57:43
And you'll find somebody like Piper contradicting himself and teaching you falsehood and you won't be able to properly judge, to properly discern.
57:52
So my admonition would be to think in basic logic, logical categories.
58:00
A is A. A is not not A. Either A or not A. That's it. Basic. Because God doesn't confirm contradictions.
58:10
Contradictions are false and there is no falsehood in God. Yeah. Amen. Yeah. Let your yes be yes and your no, no.
58:17
I really appreciate you bringing that up. Regarding the this is what we've brought this up before.
58:26
You can use these arguments against basically every single system of salvation that teaches an initial and final justification.
58:35
All of these theologies fall apart completely when you try to reconcile basic doctrines like what we just talked about today.
58:44
Deceased believers already in heaven. And so this applies to all of them.
58:50
You basically, when you refute one, when you refute Piper who is the more careful one, Piper's probably the most careful that I've seen.
58:56
You basically refute them all. And it's very important to have a systematic grasp of Scripture.
59:03
I like how you brought that example up of studying the Scriptures, doing an inductive study and studying
59:10
Clark myself as well. And Clark talks about this in a very informative way.
59:17
He says, when you study something inductively, the induction is always invalid unless it's complete.
59:26
When you're talking about premature, because that's what science does. Science selectively chooses isolated cases, a sample, but it can never examine the entire whole.
59:36
And so therefore you're left with an invalid induction because you can't possibly examine every single case of every single experiment of every single possibility.
59:47
And so you're left hopelessly incomplete. That's why science is false. And partly why it's false.
59:53
That's one of the many formal fallacies that it commits. The other thing, however, is that when you study the
01:00:00
Bible, it's a good concept to apply because what
01:00:05
Piper is doing, he's studying the Bible inductively in a premature way because he's taking one group of verses here, one group of verses there, and he's saying therefore it says this.
01:00:16
And he gives you his system, and it's utterly contradictory when you start thinking about, well, what about this verse? What about that verse?
01:00:23
It's not adding up. And so because he's making a premature induction. But when you make a...
01:00:31
because there is a form of inductive Bible study that would be valid if you do a systematic full induction of the doctrine that you're studying.
01:00:43
If you're doing an inductive study on sin, you have to examine every single passage that talks about sin or depravity or God or whatever the case may be in order for you to say, okay,
01:00:54
I just examined all... because the Bible is a finite document. So you can do that. You can take these subjects, you can study them systematically in an inductive way and then, okay,
01:01:05
I just learned that every single passage that talks about man in his original fallen state is utterly depraved.
01:01:12
Therefore, man is totally depraved and in his unnatural, unconverted state.
01:01:19
And so what that becomes then is a deduction. Because when you fully induce something, you conclude okay,
01:01:28
I just examined every instance. Every instance teaches that man is depraved. Therefore, categorically, man is depraved.
01:01:36
And so that becomes a valid deduction. So that's the only way you can make a valid induction.
01:01:43
And I'm really grateful. That's why I'm grateful for ministries like the Trinity Foundation, because that's really what it takes.
01:01:51
If you want to understand the Bible, you have to understand it logically, consistently, and take all of it together as a whole.
01:01:57
You can't ignore. That's what false teaching almost always does.
01:02:03
It almost always truncates the Bible or adds to it. And it creates a bastardized
01:02:11
Christianity that is a false Christianity. It's a false gospel. It doesn't work. It doesn't line up with what the
01:02:19
Scriptures teach as a whole, systematically. I'm really glad. This was a great discussion, Hiram. I really appreciate you coming on with me and hashing this out.
01:02:27
Hopefully, you can join me on these last couple of episodes that we'll hopefully wrap up with soon.
01:02:36
Tim has been wanting to do it, but he's been very strapped right now. Hopefully, maybe he can jump on later on.
01:02:42
But I'm looking forward to talking about this with you again, Hiram. And all the other topics that we talked about as well, the critical race theory.
01:02:48
We still need to talk about the MLK50 conference, hopefully. Doug Wilson. There's so much stuff to talk about.
01:02:55
And I'm really glad that you've joined our team. I really appreciate the stuff that you bring to the table.
01:03:02
It's been a blessing. So I really encourage people to keep looking up Hiram's material.
01:03:09
Get a hold of his books, his articles. Check out the podcast that he's done with us.
01:03:16
Hopefully, a lot more to come in the near future. Thank you, everyone, for listening and take care.