Deconstructed Baptists, Another Confusing Keller Tweet, Second Run at John 6

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:31

Good afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line. James White along with you. We're back in the big studio.

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We've got some stuff to do on the big board. Wanna start off with actually the tweet on the screen.

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See if we can figure it out. It's another Tim Keller. It's one of those Tim Keller tweets where you are left going, what's that about?

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Well, and if you respond to it, then 12 hours later you get some other response about it.

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But anyway, it says, we should not judge another set of faith beliefs on the basis of ours.

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The fairest way to evaluate a world explaining narrative is by judging on the basis of its own premises and beliefs.

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If we decide it fails, we must show it fails on its own terms.

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Okay. Few questions.

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Set of faith beliefs. I think that's like, are we talking about Islam?

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Are we talking about secularism? Are we talking about Buddhism? It's sort of hard to tell exactly what's being said by set of faith beliefs, but we're not to judge on the basis of our faith beliefs.

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So Christians have faith beliefs, which again is extremely strange language, but we're not to use ours to judge someone else's.

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Instead, the fairest, fairest on the basis of what standard again?

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The fairest way to evaluate a world explaining narrative. So this is a worldview.

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This is something that claims to present. So whatever these faith beliefs are, they are extensive enough to be world and a world explaining narrative.

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So worldview. So definitely secularism, naturalism, and all the major religions.

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Is by judging on the basis of its own premises and beliefs. If we decide it fails, we must show it fails on its own terms.

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So fundamentally that would mean that the system would have to be inherently incoherent and allowed to define its own terminology and its own parameters.

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How does that work? I am completely lost.

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I mean, this is today, March 10th, 538 AM, according to this here.

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How does this work for a Christian? Because a Christian believes there is only one real world created by God and defined by God.

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And so any other worldview, certainly we can provide an internal critique of that worldview.

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But what we're doing is we're comparing it to the world that God has actually made. We're not allowing them to define the parameters of what the world really is.

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So I'm just, if you allow someone else to redefine language and reality and the parameters of reality, how can you then provide an internal critique?

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The internal critique that we are to provide, answering the fool according to his folly, is because there is an objective reality that God has revealed, and it is revealed in the

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Christian faith. Now, what's interesting is one of the responses to this, and we've done a little work with the screens here.

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It's a little bit easier for me to see things now. I'll tell you a little bit more about that later. But Jacob Brunton said, no, there is objective reality and we have access to it.

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Well, that's true. There is an objective reality, and we do have access to it.

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But how do we have access to it? He says, all beliefs, faith beliefs is a redundant term, are to be judged by and grounded in objective reality known through observation and logic.

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Observation and logic. And this is really where the disagreement with, if you're familiar with who

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Jacob Brunton is, he is one of those, that group of folks that believes that if you are a presuppositionalist, you're a false teacher and leading people to destruction and all the rest of that kind of, what?

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Well, there's nothing I can do about that. Okay, it's going to be wherever it is, and you just get to live with it.

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Not accepting anything about, adjust that. No, it moves around on its own, and the other option is to take it off and put it down there, and then you got to adjust to that.

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So that's all there is to that. So nope, not doing any of that stuff.

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Okay, back to what we were saying. Brunton and his group are desperately anti -presuppositional, and there's a debate out there that you can find on YouTube, look up the name, and it's on Romans 1.

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I would highly recommend anyone listen to it because I just, Brunton's presentation on Romans 1 was self -defeating.

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It stands on its own as a refutation of his own position. It's just that bad exegetically. Yes, there is objective reality, but there is the issue of sin, and there is the issue of the suppression of the knowledge of God that God has made available to us.

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And so there has to be the recognition of the biblical teaching about who man is, and these folks are saying, no, no, no, you don't need any of that stuff.

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It's all just out there, and we're like, you don't have a biblical anthropology. That's the problem with all this stuff.

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So you can get a bad take from Keller and then an equally bad take from people saying that Keller is wrong if that's where you want to go.

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Now, most people are aware of the fact that over the past,

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I blame, and I blame him for lots of stuff, but I blame the troublemaker from Texas for all of this because sometime last week, he put out a graphic, and it was the bat signal, all right?

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I guess that's really popular right now. I guess there's a Batman movie out. I think

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I've seen one, maybe two Batman movies in total. I'm just not a

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Batman guy, sorry. I've just never, if anything,

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I appreciate the old Batman Robbins stuff from the 60s. That's more my speed.

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All these movies have just been so, I don't know, they're so dark, you can't see what's going on.

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Someone turn the lights up in there. What's going on? I don't know. Anyway. Yes, Batman, it was a graphic that he put up, and the image, the outlined image in the bat signal, instead of it being the

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Batman signal, it was, well, I joked that it looked a little bit like New Jersey with its top rounded off.

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I guess it's just, well, you would sort of look at it. It'd look a little bit like that, but it was a image of Vody Balcombe, and the idea was,

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Vody, we need you, you know? And I was like, what?

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And I can just text Tom, and Tom realizes that I have enough on him.

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He needs to respond to whatever it is I say fairly quickly. Less things get really out of control.

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And so I was like, what's that?

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He says, I was just saying we could really use somebody like Vody, it wasn't really anything serious.

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It didn't take long before it became really serious. And now there's all this conversation going on at the

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Southern Baptist Convention about Vody Balcombe running for president of the SBC. Now, I don't even know if that's possible. I really don't.

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I'm not taking any stands on any of that. I have no idea. I'm not a

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Southern Baptist anymore. So, but as soon as that became somewhat of reality,

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I was, I don't know, maybe I'm just still naive in many ways, but stunned at the level of vitriol that appeared in what is ostensibly called

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Baptist press. There's a number of different publications that have

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Baptist in press and news. And, you know, you put the word Baptist in there. And, you know, problem is

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Baptist is one of the least descriptive terms you could ever have.

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Because all it's technically referring to is, you know, in a minimal sense, a mode of one of the ordinances of the church.

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And maybe you push it a little bit farther, you know, Credo Baptist versus Pato Baptist or whatever.

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But there are massively liberal Baptists and conservative

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Baptists and every kind in between. And so it doesn't really tell you much. Then again, what does anymore?

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A Methodist, Presbyterian, Anglican, even

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Roman Catholic doesn't tell you much anymore. You've got these wide, wide, wide, wide divergences amongst all these.

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So it didn't take too long until a opinion article was published and I saw some,

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I started seeing some discussion about it. And well, this guy's a stay at home dad with pronouns in his bio.

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Okay, I'll admit, pronouns in your bio automatically says something to me.

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No question about it. I mean, that's an issue that is just from the

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Christian worldview, there aren't any questions to be had, so. Anyway, but eventually

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I tracked down the article. And I did not even know what in the world that was. I mean, it was so completely out there that I was just like, what?

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And it goes after, I mean, the left has no limits.

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Remember back in the Clinton days when people started talking about the politics of personal destruction?

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That seems like a long time ago. We have gone so far beyond that.

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People on the left, there are no limits. They will say and do anything as long as it promotes their agenda and their perspective.

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We know that politically now. We see that in our nation right now. I mean, every time

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I see anyone speaking for the current regime, as long as their lips are moving,

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I know they're lying through their teeth and they're smiling. And the facts will be exactly opposite of what they're saying, but they don't care.

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Everything that's going on right now, oh, it's all Russia. You had a 513 % increase before the whole thing with Russia started and it's all

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Russia's fault. No, everybody knows, some of us were warning a long time ago that these people will destroy this nation.

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They will destroy its economy. They will destroy its energy production. They will destroy its military. They will destroy it morally, ethically, legally, every possible way.

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We have a completely open border. We're being invaded by literal armies every month from the

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South and they just sit there because that's what they want to do.

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They're the enemies. We have been taken over by our enemies. I don't know how long the ship will stay on the surface before it just sinks beneath the waves, but we've been taken over by our enemies and our enemies are in charge.

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And they're being run by people outside this country, in my opinion. And you got to understand something. Let me just mention this in passing.

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What these people have said in the past, what these people have said openly is that they want you living in a box eating bugs if you happen to still be alive and haven't been killed off by wars, famine and everything else.

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If you happen to still be around, they want you living in a box eating bugs. You do not get to go where you want to go.

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You do not get to have any more energy than they allow you to have. You do not get to have the freedom that comes from association with other people, communication with other people.

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These people want to enslave everyone in the world, not just people in the United States. The World Economic Forum should be called the

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World Enslavement Foundation or the Woke Enslavement Foundation, however you want to put it, because they're behind all this stuff.

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They're putting out videos and books saying what they want to do. And yes,

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I agree with a video that I saw a couple of days ago. I think Klaus Schwab, when you think about it, he is the quintessential

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Bond villain. And that other guy he's got that we showed the video of him talking about hacking humans and stuff, he's his mad scientist.

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And they're exactly what you'd expect them to be. They wear the very clothes they're supposed to wear. They've got the accents they're supposed to have.

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It's almost like it was purposeful because no one's ever going to believe this if these people really look like Bond villains, that they are

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Bond villains, but they are. They're right there in front of us. It's astonishing. And we just, and it's, people say, well, what can we do?

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I don't know. I don't know, but we have the Bond villains and what they're trying to do is enslave us all and they're working on it and they're succeeding.

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They're succeeding. Anyway, sorry about that digression out there.

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Just by the way, just by, now I have to use code language here because we're on what we're on.

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You won't find this out in regular media because we don't have journalists anymore, anywhere.

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I don't care if it's Fox or whatever it is. Nobody's out there. I mean, okay, there are some, but they're the, you have to go searching for them and then frequently the only place they get published is places that publish other weird stuff.

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And so we're just, all of us are in the same boat. We're like, it sounds like it'd be really bad, but I mean, there are some sources out there that I ended up seeing linked by somebody else.

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And so I started following it for a while and then I'm like, what are these people talking about? This is weird.

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And found out they're anti -Semitic and all the rest of this kind of weird wacko stuff. So there, look, there are wackos everywhere.

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There are wackos on the right, wackos on the left. Sometimes I think one side plants wackos on the other side just to make the other side look bad.

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But anyway, one thing you will not hear because as I said, it's hard to find journalists anymore.

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The United Kingdom, our good British friends, the

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Brits love to keep records of things, you know? And so unlike many other nations, including your own, they're still putting out all of the records and the numbers concerning a certain recent sickness.

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No, no, no, no, I'm not talking about cookies yet. This is a sickness. It's just a sickness. I won't mention what the sickness is.

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But did you know that there are more people dying in England of this particular sickness now than there were a year ago?

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And in England now, at least 95 % of the population has eaten the cookies.

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And they estimate that 99 % of the population has antibodies due primarily to the cookies or having survived without cookies, if you get my meaning.

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More people are dying now per week than a year ago. Think about that for a second.

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That's right when the cookies rolled out and they've been everywhere. And what's going on is there are a lot of people who are going, yeah, we told you it was going to happen.

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This isn't happening in nations that used other kinds of cookies that are not genetic, but it's happening in all the

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Western countries that use the super technical genetic cookies. And basically what the cookies have done is they've destroyed herd immunity.

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Wow, gosh, you'd think that would be front headline news. You'd think that there would be people calling for inquiries because you could go back and you could prove this person said this would happen and this person said this would happen.

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There were entire articles that said that if you do it this way, you're not going to have a full cookie response in the body.

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And yet it was shoved on us and those people got fired. And you would think that there would be entire inquiries going on in the halls of Congress, but no,

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Ukraine, that's all there is to it now. And you just go, what is going on?

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Anyhow, sorry, how did I get from there? Okay, so we go back to what happens.

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The story comes out about voting and an article is published in one of these

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Baptist news services. Here's just one sentence from it.

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R .L. Stoller, a child liberation theologian.

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Now, if you're sitting there going, I've never heard of a child liberation theologian, join the club.

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A child liberation theologian who advocates for survivors of abuse details how

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Balcombe's comment. Now, this was, everybody knows, this was the viper in a diaper comment from long, long ago, where Vody had said, people who don't believe in original sin don't have children, that's a viper in a diaper.

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The angry cry happens early, the demanding cry happens early, the stiffening of the body, that happens early, so on and so forth.

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He says, Stoller, a child liberation theologian who advocates for survivors of abuse details how

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Balcombe's comment was born from a theology that combines the Calvinistic doctrine of total depravity with a complementarian doctrine of patriarchy in order to position men as animal control and police officers over their children.

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Stoller notes that according to Balcombe, parents must treat their children as criminals deserving of restraint, must expect and see the worst in their children, should assume children are disagreeing because they are naturally covetous and murderous, and must also threaten their children with eternal torture in the flames of hell, end quote.

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I'm reading this. There is nothing journalistic about this. It is, if it was a aircraft, it would have two left wings.

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This author wouldn't know how to write a fair piece if his life depended on it. It's a hit piece.

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It's selective, it's unfair, it's biased prejudice. Everything that yellow journalism is, it is.

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And what's amazing is the people who publish it go, it's perfectly fair, it's wonderful, it's great.

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They can't even see it. They can't even see it. I looked up this

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Stoller guy, and he's very proud of the fact that he has been quoted by Julie Ingersoll in Building God's Kingdom and by Kristen Cobes -Dumais in Jesus and John Wayne, both cited his research.

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He's a co -founder of the viral website, Homeschoolers Anonymous.

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He's an anti -homeschooler. That's who these people are quoting and citing.

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And so I eventually looked up the author of this article,

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Rick Pidcock, and so I made some comments, and last night I noticed an article came out on Baptist News that quoted one of my comments.

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I'm glad they saw it. That means they're accountable for it. But someone else on Facebook sent me some material from this

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Rick Pidcock's Facebook page. And lo and behold, over a year ago, here is this article about his what?

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Deconstruction. Yes, his deconstruction. Now let's remember, deconstruction comes from Derrida.

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It is a term that, what's going on now?

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And again, bless his heart, John Cooper from Skillet has been taking a tremendous amount of heat because he made a comment at one of his concerts that we need to declare war on deconstruction.

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And people like Phil Vischer, you know, VeggieTales, also the guy with the two and a half left wings, they did a response to that, and John's responded to their response, and John's finding out what it's like to live in my world these days.

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It's a little bit different than the other world, but it's tougher for him because I don't have record companies that want me to keep my mouth shut.

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So I get to say whatever I want to say, and John is still saying what he needs to say, but as a result has a whole lot more coming back in him than I ever would.

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Anyhow, pray for him in those areas. But the people on the left are trying to say that deconstruction can simply be rethinking the things that you were raised with as a child in Christianity.

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And it's a spectrum, you see. Folks, rethinking what you were taught as a child and coming to understand your faith in a more mature way is called sanctification, okay?

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We've all gone through it. I was raised in a Christian family, I had to mature,

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I had to analyze what I was taught, and there were things that I was taught as a child

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I do not believe any longer. They were traditions. They weren't biblical.

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But I didn't throw everything out, which is what you have in the emergent church and stuff like that.

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That's called sanctification. What we're seeing people doing like this Rick Pidcock is not sanctification, it's called apostasy.

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It's called abandoning the faith, walking away from the faith, rejecting the faith, then turning around and attacking the faith.

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That's completely different than talking about sanctification, okay?

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So deconstruction is apostasy. So let me read you just two things and we'll get on to some other stuff.

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Let me just read you two things from Rick Pidcock from his, these are his own words, from his own

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Twitter feed. All right.

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Okay. I am so thankful for cold liquids, it's so good. I've got to read something,

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I can't look over there. Mr., you know, Mr. Director Man, you know, if you want to get yourself on those director seats, you know, and the little thing, the yell at people, so you just go ahead and I'll ignore you just as much then.

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Anyway, listen to this. Evangelical worship lyrics celebrate justice through violence.

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Evangelical worship lyrics celebrate justice through violence. So they are formed through the power of community, music and technology to be gleeful about God's violent judgment on Jesus, which is what they think their neighbors deserve.

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Eventually that takes a toll on the soul. Do you hear that? Do you hear that?

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Where have you heard that before? How many years ago was it now? I'd say minimally 10 years ago, minimally 10 years ago, probably 15.

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We talked about on this program the words of a guy named Steve Chalk, Steve Chalk from England.

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And Steve Chalk claimed to be an evangelical, but he made a name for himself by talking about the idea of penal substitutionary atonement as cosmic child abuse, cosmic child abuse.

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That's what this is about. Now, that perspective has been prevalent in mainline liberal

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Protestantism for decades, but we normally don't listen to those churches because we all know they're dying anyways.

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And it's like, why bother? But when it appears in this context, it's important for us to understand there are so many people who have such a twisted understanding of penal substitutionary atonement,

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Trinitarian theology, the reality that the Father and the

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Son and the Spirit are working in perfect and complete harmony in accomplishing

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God's will and God's purpose in creation, that the

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Son takes the position that He takes. And in fact, the description in scripture, and keep me from getting into what

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I see as some real Trinitarian weaknesses in our day because they're unbiblical.

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But the terminology of scripture is that the Son makes

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Himself of no reputation. The Son does this voluntarily, uses the reflexive pronoun.

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And whatever your Trinitarian theology, if your Trinitarian theology is not big enough to fit biblical categories, then you need a better Trinitarian theologist.

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Mention that in passing. But these folks don't understand the

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Trinity, they don't understand penal substitutionary atonement, they don't understand what the Bible's teaching. And so evangelical worship lyrics celebrate justice through violence.

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So rather than the Son freely taking what is necessary see what's underneath all of this is the rejection of the idea that the breaking of God's law brings death.

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No, that's, God just loves you the way you are, right?

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Just the way you are. And this leads of course, to complete redefinitions of what the cross is all about.

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And some of them will, there are some stopping places along the way. Once you become an apostate, you look for stopping places along the way.

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And so you can jump into the Christus Victor model, you can jump into the ransom model. And as I've said many times before, there's elements of truth to both of those, but they're only partially true.

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And if you separate them from penal substitutionary atonement they become untrue. But they'll jump into one of those along the way, but eventually they just abandon it because there's no reason to stay there, there's no foundation left.

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To be gleeful about God's violent judgment on Jesus. Anyone who can confuse the thankfulness that the

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Christian heart has in recognizing what was due to my sin and the taking of that punishment by my

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Savior in my place. And of course, recognizing that this all flows from the decree of the

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Father in the first place. Realizes that this man either never understood what he professed, which is a possibility, or is just simply so utterly self -deceived in his rebellion that he's just, he can't speak to anything truthfully about it.

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Elsewhere he says, and I think this is a continuation from that previous tweet.

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Think about this. Actually, he's actually responding to someone who just basically said, look, it looks like you've been given over, your heart's hardened, so on and so forth.

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What kind of a God would pour concrete into people's hearts, angrily set them on fire for eternity for their heart being a heart of stone that he poured and then expect others to sing to him about it?

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Now, we know this is a person who openly says I have deconstructed. It's an apostate.

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How many Christians will say the same thing against the

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Bible's doctrine of man's sinfulness? I've heard provisionists and Arminians say almost the exact same words.

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Almost the exact same words. Yeah, here's, actually, it's right in front of me.

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This was the tweet he was responding to. Rick, you're in serious trouble. Your soul is kicking and screaming because God is actively exposing you.

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Please understand you're being given over to God's wrath. I still will pray the Lord, crack open your heart of stone, but right now,

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I'm only seeing more concrete being poured in, so that's worthy. Now, obviously,

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I don't know who this person is, but it is a biblical concept that when a heart of stone continues in its rebellion, it's hardened.

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Remember Pharaoh? Pharaoh? God hardens hearts, and Rick Pidcock no longer believes in the

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God of the Bible by any stretch of the imagination. And his response to that was, I'm not the one being exposed here.

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Your God is, and God is not capitalized. I have read the tuperations of my faith by apostates for a long time, and that's what this is.

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That's what this is. But he's writing for, what was it, Baptist Global News, Baptist News, whatever, it's part of the leftist

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Baptist people out there. And that's the stuff that you're going to find from these folks, so there you go.

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That's what we're up against. Hey, all right, now, last time we were together,

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I messed up, that's all there is to it. I was doing pretty good. I was juggling the audio, and finding the clips

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I wanted to play, and playing them long enough, and then you switch over. And I'd done all right for a while.

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And then I think it may have been because we were going to a text that I've gone over, I've written books about, and gone over, over, and over, and over, and over again.

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I got lost, and I even circled a finite verb and called it a participle, and then

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I'm like, wait a minute, where am I? And we have, by the way, for those of you following the technological evolution, and for those of you secretly going, oh,

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I wonder if we could get one of those for us, because I know who you are, because you've written to me. You've written to me, and you've said we want one of those.

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And we're talking about the flip board here. Here's, just real quick, just a little tech thing.

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We just, you'll notice, I'm not sure if you can notice this, there's only one line going into my computer right now.

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The HDMI cable is down there someplace. So, Rich discovered the

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Apple Play portion. I guess it's inside the software of the flip?

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How come you hadn't seen that before, Rich? I don't know, just all you get.

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I don't know, okay, fine. I hadn't seen it either, but you know, anyway.

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So, what that has allowed us to do is to change the resolution.

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Because what you need to understand is, one of the things I was struggling with is there was no way I could see the little box down at the corner, which is where you enter your verse references.

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That's because what was being displayed was, what was it, 3 ,000, 3840.

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So, I could make the fonts nice and big so everybody could see them. But you now had all the stuff around it, including the entry box, at 3 ,840.

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And I don't know, what is it, 60 inches across, like that? 65 inches. So, it wouldn't matter, there you go.

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See that little guy down there? So, now watch what I can do now. See how much bigger that is now?

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Now, I can see that on the screen over there, it says John 635. I can sort of make that out from this angle, but it's tough.

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At least now I know when I've got it selected, okay?

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So, that's gonna help some. But we've made some changes.

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And what I've done right here is I have put this,

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I've put accordance on that side, and I can now draw notes over here.

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I've taken the English off, but we're normally talking about the original languages anyways. And I can mark in the text, write notes over here, and we'll continue.

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The only thing I can't do yet, and I don't know that I'll ever be able to do, unless I go back to a

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Windows, and those of you who were around when I first started, you know that I've struggled far more with having to deal with Windows than anything else.

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So, I'm not going back to that. But I can't manipulate the programs directly on the screen.

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I can do that in Windows, but I can't in the current situation. But we're close, and I can work my way around it.

39:25

Anyway, on the last program, I felt so super badly, because this is a text that means so much to me.

39:36

Like I said, I've written entire books on the subject, drawn by the Father, chapters in God's Sovereign Grace, the

39:42

Potter's Freedom, all the rest of that kind of stuff. And what are you looking at?

39:49

It looked like you were signaling for me to look at my phone or something like that. No, okay, all right. Anyway, that, oh, that's what it was.

39:57

Oh, okay. Gotta come up. We need a big, we need two arrows right above your head.

40:05

One points that way, one points that way, and that way we'll get this figured out, yeah. Go steal some of those lighted things from the

40:14

Southwest guys that are doing the dances out there, getting the planes in and stuff. I guess they don't do that anymore.

40:20

I guess a lot of people are like, the fun of flying Southwest ended with COVID. So anyway,

40:26

I just felt really badly about how that whole thing went.

40:32

I just felt it was not clear because I was struggling and I got lost and I couldn't tell where I was and I made mistakes.

40:39

And so I want to make sure this is clear because we'll eventually get to it. In fact,

40:44

I understand that a third video has been posted. I've downloaded it and converted it to MP3, haven't listened to it.

40:51

But I really want to do that. And there's,

40:59

I wonder what he was doing with him. Cooper just sent me a picture with Dennis Prager.

41:07

It's like, oh, that's cool. That's cool, I like Dennis. Dennis is a great guy, needs the gospel.

41:12

He needs to, great guy. Anyway, so I want to take another run at this and hopefully do it a little bit more clearly and clarify rather than confuse.

41:24

So if you recall, we were responding to the claims of David Paulman regarding John 6.

41:31

He is a student at Trinity. Leighton Flowers is a professor at Trinity, probably where the connection is.

41:41

So the assertion that was being made is that John 644, which

41:49

I'd quoted, no one is able to come to me unless the father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up on the last day, right?

42:06

So what I was discussing was inability, the inability of man to come to the son apart from the effective action of the father.

42:23

The assertion that is being made, and he's going to expand upon this in the future, so I'm sure that I'm giving him plenty of time to hone his position,

42:37

I suppose, is that John 644 is not relevant today because it is contextually limited to the ministry of Jesus.

42:47

That there was a hardening that had to take place amongst the Jews for the ministry of Christ to take place, for the sacrifice to be made.

42:56

And that after the cross, John 12, verse 32, if I be lifted up,

43:05

I will draw all men unto myself. And so the assertion being made is that the drawing in John 6 is identical to the drawing in John 12, and that it will be a universal drawing in the future, but currently it is not a universal drawing.

43:29

Now, illusion was made to John 637 where a present tense verb was used.

43:42

And that's where I made the mistake in trying to get there.

43:48

As we will see, that present tense verb is part of a subclause that is controlled by a future tense, and there are other present tense, participles in the context that raise insuperable problems for the exegesis that is being offered.

44:08

But in John 637, all the father is giving me will come to me, and the one coming to me

44:18

I will not cast out. Now, there are lots of questions that just immediately present themselves.

44:28

And we did cover this last time, but I want to do it in a little bit more cogent fashion.

44:36

Does this mean the father is giving certain people to the son, the people who worship him?

44:44

So there are people who are able to come to the son because they have enabled

44:53

God by coming to God the father. It almost sounds, both in Flowers and in Pullman's perspective, that coming, that worshiping the father is a different category than worshiping the son.

45:11

Pullman seems to maybe hesitate a little bit more than Flowers does at that point.

45:18

It'd be interesting to hear a conversation between the two of them on it, see if they just go ahead and say, yeah, we're presenting the same thing. But it sounds to me as if you can, you are able to come to the father, but you're not able to come to the son.

45:35

And I'm left going, why is that? If you are able to hear what the father has to say and be a worshiper of the father because you humble yourself or whatever it might be, then why couldn't you come to the son?

45:54

And I've not heard an answer to that yet. Does that mean that the apostles were already worshipers of God in the way that other

46:05

Jews were not? Lazarus, Mary, Martha, Nicodemus, the woman at the well, that one's a problem.

46:19

Because obviously the woman at the well had not given herself in worship to the father. The blind man, see, these are all in John.

46:31

We don't even have to go to Matthew, Mark, and Luke. We'd have to go to Matthew, Mark, and Luke because it's the same timeframe.

46:38

So if the idea is that during Jesus's ministry, you come to Jesus differently than after Jesus's ministry, that there is a hardening so that Jesus can be crucified, but now that he's crucified after that, then there's prevenient grace for everybody, right?

46:59

Well, that would mean that this isn't the hardening of Romans, is it? Because Romans 9, 10, 11, you have a discussion of that hardening that takes place and the time of the

47:11

Gentiles. And yet Paul himself says that there is a lima, a remnant that is saved who aren't hardened.

47:23

So that can't be that because that doesn't fit with how this interpretation from the gospels is being put together.

47:33

And then the idea that, well, John 12, 32, tells us that there is going to be a day someday when the cross will draw all men.

47:44

The problem is the Bible doesn't teach that. After that time period in Jesus's ministry,

47:54

Paul writes and says that the word of the cross is what? Scandalon, foolishness.

48:01

It's the stench of death to those who are perishing, right? That's Paul's teaching.

48:07

So if we believe that the Bible's consistent with itself, then the idea that the cross draws all men,

48:16

I mean, we just read the words of a guy today writing for Baptist News that finds the message of the cross to be repulsive.

48:28

So that doesn't fit. So how does all of that work?

48:34

Well, I think the problem comes with the assertion that was made.

48:41

And so let's go ahead and go over here. I always like to make sure that we know that we have a context.

48:49

And so let's remember something. Before we get to verse 37, look at verses 35 and 36 here.

48:58

Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. And yeah, I do realize that ego -i -me is right there.

49:05

And maybe that's significant, except that when ego -i -me is used without I am, and then here's what

49:11

I am. I am the bread of life. When it's used without that predication following after it, that's when it's really significant in John 8, 24, 13, 19, 18, 5 -6, 8 -58, so on and so forth.

49:25

Anyway, I am the bread of life, the one coming.

49:31

Now, erkemi is a middle deponent, so it has an active meaning, but that's present.

49:37

The one coming pros emei. The one coming to me without hunger and the one believing, active participle again, present participle, the one believing in me shall never thirst.

49:59

Now, these are present tense. So if, because this was what

50:04

I wanted to try to get to. If the assertion is that the present tense verb in a subclause that is actually controlled by a future tense verb is enough to say, well, this is just now in Jesus's ministry.

50:22

What about these? And are these, is this claim, this is the one thing

50:29

I like about doing it this way is I can go outside of it. So I think this might actually work.

50:37

Is this whole section, is this still valid?

50:47

Can we say to believers today, the one coming to Christ, who is the bread of life?

50:57

When you, I've preached in the Lord's Supper a number of times. I think the

51:02

Lord's Supper is something that is unfortunately exceptionally misunderstood and de -emphasized and diminished amongst evangelicals.

51:16

This would be a passage that I would preach. John 6 as a whole would be a passage I would preach. Yes, all of it.

51:23

It's not about transubstantiation or anything else, but it is relevant today.

51:30

If these present tenses limit us to this period, what is any of this meaning?

51:37

Did the people who believed in Jesus in Jesus's day have a special relationship that we don't have?

51:49

What does it mean? But as I said last time, but I said to you that you have seen me and you do not believe.

52:01

Sorry, that's down there. You are not believing. You are not believing.

52:08

He's talking to unbelievers and he's about to explain their unbelief. He's about to explain their unbelief.

52:17

So here's what I have to do too. So, and this isn't all that difficult to do. So I'll just get my thing over here and then zoop.

52:30

All right, so here is the present tense verb that was,

52:40

I misidentified, listen. That was the key to Paulman's assertion.

52:47

All that the father is giving, okay, is giving to me prosimae hexai, will come.

53:00

That's future. So what I had said last time is that this whole section here, so all that my father is giving to me, that is the subject of the verb, will come.

53:27

Who will come? All the father gives me. So this is future and it is all.

53:38

Now there is another present here and this is what I was looking for last time. The one coming.

53:45

There's your present person. And the one coming to me, I will never cast out.

53:52

I will never cast out. So if this limits us to the time period of Jesus' ministry, then what about that?

54:05

Is it only the people who came to Jesus during his ministry, he will not cast out? So that's what happens when you don't realize that this verb is in a clause that is being controlled by that verb right there, will come.

54:23

Not only that, but I thought about doing this, but I figured it would take way too much time and probably wouldn't be all that visible.

54:33

I would highly recommend to anyone who really wants to dig into this, that you minimally look at the briefer presentation or the full presentation.

54:48

Dan Wallace's syntactical grammar, the big green beast is the fuller one.

54:55

And I don't know what it is now. Is it blue now or something? I think it might be blue now. Whatever color cover they're putting on now.

55:01

He has a shorter version because the green monster was just, well, it's big.

55:09

A lot of people will take first -year Greek and not realize, if you want to discourage someone, once you get through first -year

55:25

Greek, then you start going, oh, look, from heaven. And so like I was taught the 8K system, but I've taught the 5K system too.

55:35

So genitive, ablative, and you're like, oh, I can recognize genitives now.

55:43

And then you get into second -year Greek and you start doing syntax and discover there's at least 12 different kinds of genitives and five different kinds of ablatives and stuff like that.

55:54

And that's when you just want to become an accountant or something like that and just give up on all of it.

56:00

But the same thing is true with the tenses. And in fact, there has been a little bit of a revolution over the past 20 years or so in regards to just exactly where the emphasis is to be found in Greek verbs.

56:23

And a lot of people, I expect a correction eventually, sort of swing back in the middle, but there's a lot of discussion about that right now.

56:34

Anyway, look at Dan Wallace's discussion of present tense verbs, because the problem is here, while we are in the gospels, this is not, this is a non -narrative context.

56:52

Why? Well, yes, it's narrative in the sense that John's narrating Jesus' teaching, but he's not narrating actions that are going on.

57:03

He's giving Jesus' words. So this is more didactic, this is teaching. And if you have, for example, a

57:12

New American Standard Bible, you may have noticed, and I'm not sure if they're still doing this.

57:18

I haven't looked for a while. I think eventually you just don't even notice anymore. But they would use an asterisk where in the gospels, what it literally says, and Jesus is going over the lake, or Jesus is walking through the village or something like that.

57:38

And they're translating it, Jesus walked or went over, because the verb is present, but there's no emphasis on the ongoing action.

57:49

It is simply narrating something that took place in the past, and so in English, you would use a past tense.

57:55

And they felt the need, at least initially, to mark where they were not translating it strictly in a literal sense, because it doesn't really make sense in English.

58:05

When you look at presence, you have such things as nomic presence, which are just making a generally true statement without any emphasis at all on its present tense right now.

58:21

Part of the discussion going on today is that the assertion being made is the heiress, for example, is the simplest form of expression of the

58:33

Greek verb. And hence, when there is nothing in the context that demands it, there should not be an emphasis upon it being past tense.

58:43

It's just the simple statement of the action. So in a context like this, most translations simply said, all the father gives me, not is giving me, will come to me.

59:01

And it's true that no matter where you stand in the modern debate, this is your controlling verb.

59:08

That's where you're going to get, all the father gives me will come to me.

59:14

And then having said that, and the one coming, which is the result of the giving of the father, the one coming to me,

59:22

I will never cast out, which then becomes the explanation, the Hatti clause, because I've come down from heaven, not in order to do my own will, but the will of the one who sent me.

59:36

So the whole point is that if you're going to say, well, this present tense verb places all of this into a historical category that cannot have application today, that means anything in this text would have to do the same thing.

59:54

But all of that's ignoring the fact that, yeah, that may be a present tense verb, but that's a future tense verb.

01:00:00

And that's the controlling verb. That's in a, that's just part of the subject. All that the father gives me will come to me.

01:00:10

That's what's being, and then that's the first clause, and then Kai introduces what continues on from there.

01:00:16

And because of that, the one coming to me, I will never cast out. All right?

01:00:24

I think it's important to recognize that and to see what's going on there. So, you know what?

01:00:31

Next time I'm going to remember to do that differently because there's, I think there's a way to just, can't

01:00:38

I just draw that? Well, we'll find out here in a second. All right.

01:00:45

Yeah, well, you know, I don't know. Toys, toys, it's so much fun. So briefly, and this is the will of the one who sent me, and it's possible, you notice, to Pem Santasme, heiress, does seem like there is a connection to the fact that the son has been sent, not as being sent, that there's a historical reality of the incarnation possibly in the background there, maybe.

01:01:21

But then here's another pawn, right? Here's our all, in order that all which, and this takes us right back to 37, what?

01:01:34

He has given me. Ooh, what? You see this here?

01:01:40

Epsilon reduplication. What's epsilon reduplication indication of? Perfect tense?

01:01:47

Hmm. And all which he has given me,

01:01:52

I lose none of it, singular, but raise it up in the last day, which in this context is giving eternal life.

01:02:07

How does the perfect tense? Because this is 39's repetition of 37, and the present tense verb there, but this is perfect.

01:02:26

Or that all which, and then singular, and it's neuter.

01:02:37

Why? Well, first of all, neuters, neuter singulars, often, well, how, okay.

01:02:51

Are used for groups. I was going to try to find a shorter way of writing that, but so you take a group.

01:03:02

So this is a group that is given to the son by whom?

01:03:10

By the one who sent him, the father. And it's an accomplished thing.

01:03:17

It's an accomplished thing. So how do you put the accomplished thing together with the present tense earlier?

01:03:26

I would say it's because you don't put the emphasis on the present tense earlier, because that present tense is a part of a phrase that is controlled by the future.

01:03:34

The emphasis is there, they will come to me. Why will they? Because as a group, they have been given to me by the father and I will lose not a single one of them.

01:03:46

Not a single one of them. Now, the problem here is this has to be personal or it doesn't make any sense.

01:03:53

You understand what I'm saying? Groups do not come to Jesus.

01:04:00

People do. And so this fits with the historical reformed interpretation of John 6 .37.

01:04:10

I don't see how it fits with the choice meets interpretation of John 6 .37. All which he has given to me,

01:04:19

I lose none of it, but raise it up on the last day. That's the son's, that's the son's promise.

01:04:30

Yeah, I think, yeah, no, can't do it that way. If I wasn't using this part, then

01:04:36

I could, but all right. So, for this is the will of my father that everyone gazing upon.

01:04:57

And what is that? Well, it's a substantival participle. You've got the article right here.

01:05:04

Substantival participle. And this is too, pisteum, it's just simply borrowing that article right there.

01:05:15

Gazing upon, looking upon, and believing in the son.

01:05:23

That one has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day, which is the same language from verse 39, which is of all those given by the father to the son.

01:05:34

So here's a description of what those given by the father to the son are.

01:05:39

They're the ones looking, present tense, the ones believing. Now, these are substantival participles, and everyone would agree that the temporal aspect, once you go into the participle, is not as strong as in the finite verb.

01:05:59

It is more in the background. Unless there is something in the context that brings that back out.

01:06:07

I think there is, especially in John. The one seeing, the one believing, over and over in John, especially

01:06:15

Happist Ubon, is contrasted with heiress faith. Remember John chapter two?

01:06:23

People saw what Jesus did at the wedding in Cana of Galilee. What does it say? Jesus, they were believing in Jesus, but Jesus, it literally says, was not believing himself to them, because he knew what was in men.

01:06:36

John chapter eight, men believe in him, heiress. By the end of the chapter, they pick up stones to stone him.

01:06:42

Not exactly saving faith. So it is the ongoing nature of that faith in Pistuon that seems to be what

01:06:51

John is emphasizing across his gospel. And so it's not just simply, because remember, what's being explained here?

01:07:00

The unbelief of whom? Think about it.

01:07:07

There were certain people in this group who are going to walk away from Jesus who had just gotten done doing what before this conversation?

01:07:17

They rowed boats. Rowing, not road. Rowed boats across the lake looking for Jesus.

01:07:27

They were seeking Jesus. By the end of this conversation, they're gone.

01:07:34

So they probably thought they did believe. And Jesus is saying, you don't believe.

01:07:43

Real faith is going to be lasting faith. Real faith is going to be lasting faith.

01:07:50

And when you have that lasting faith, then you will be raised up by Jesus on the last day.

01:07:57

So the Jews gung a smoo about that. They grumble and they complain.

01:08:04

And that results in Jesus' response. Do not gungudzete metz alelon.

01:08:12

Do not grumble with yourselves, amongst yourselves. U'dais dunatai.

01:08:21

No one has the ability to come to me unless the father, the one who sent me, draws him.

01:08:30

Now, this is in a conditional context.

01:08:37

And so conditionals will frequently use the subjunctive. As I've emphasized over and over again,

01:08:45

I've not heard a response to. Unless the father who sent me draws him, kago anastaso auton ente eskate hamero.

01:09:03

And I will raise him in the last day. Now, this is where I wish

01:09:09

I had the Windows capability so I could scroll from here. Though I think having the screen up would probably still keep it from doing that because I don't think it allows you to control the programs as long as you have the screen up.

01:09:21

So it may not make any difference one way or the other. But anyway, if you remember back in 39, this is what?

01:09:31

Let's think. It's neuter. Auton is masculine. Back in 39, it's the group as a whole.

01:09:42

Now you have, I will raise him, singular, masculine, on the last day.

01:09:51

Him is the one who's been drawn. These, this auton and this auton.

01:09:57

All of the synergistic interpretations of this passage either have to do what these folks are trying to do and say, this is just all about back then and it's interesting for us to read this stuff.

01:10:13

It doesn't matter to us anymore. Or you have to somehow between these two autons insert right there an entire disjunction so that all are drawn, but only those who believe are raised up.

01:10:39

So this auton, everybody, this auton defined by man.

01:10:45

There is nothing in that text that gives you that room. Nothing at all.

01:10:52

It's just not there. It's just not there. The last thing to address here then, and I think this has been significantly clearer than last time, is verse 45.

01:11:09

Now, we could go through much more of this and go down and find more present tenses and ask questions like, well, let me just point one out to you before I do this here, because I did mention this last time.

01:11:30

I am the bread of life to come down out of heaven. Flesh which

01:11:38

I give, how can you give his body to eat? My flesh is true food.

01:11:45

My blood is true drink. There it is. Ha trogonmu teyn sarka kaipinonmu tahima ekaizoen ionion.

01:11:57

The one eating my flesh and drinking my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day.

01:12:08

So it says, isn't it? Well, what's this? The one eating, present tense participle.

01:12:18

And again, article borrowed, drinking my blood, present tense.

01:12:26

So simple question. How did anybody do that during Jesus's ministry?

01:12:38

Now, what this points out is that this isn't about sacramental theology or anything else.

01:12:45

It's about finding your life totally and completely in Jesus Christ. But is this stuff here true today?

01:12:57

What's the cost guys of not taking John six for what it means?

01:13:05

Can you teach this today?

01:13:14

Can you teach this today in your churches? Or will you be consistent and say, well, you know, that was back then, not now, it's not now.

01:13:28

I don't think most of you are gonna be willing to do that. I really don't. So when we finally get back to the verse that prompted all of this stuff, this is where the attempt is being made.

01:13:44

We'll wrap up with this. For it is written in the prophets, they shall all be taught, didactoi theou.

01:13:55

They shall all be taught by God, by God, by mean,

01:14:03

God is the one who's gonna be doing the teaching. Not themselves, this is not something that they do.

01:14:11

They will all be taught by God. Everyone haakousos from the father and mathon learning.

01:14:25

So hearing, learning from the father.

01:14:32

So this is exactly what you've got right there. So didactoi is explained as a kousos and mathon.

01:14:42

But these are both things that God is doing because how do you hear something? Can you hear something in and of yourself?

01:14:49

No, the sound has to come to you from outside yourself. Can you learn it in and of itself?

01:14:54

But there has to be something to learn. And where's it coming from? Didactoi theou, it's coming from God.

01:15:02

So everyone who hears and learns from the father, this is what the drawing is.

01:15:12

You hear and learn from the father. And as a result, erikotai prosimae, coming to me.

01:15:20

Have we seen prosimae before? Yeah, all the father gives me will what? Come to me, come to me.

01:15:30

It is such an incredibly consistent text that the handstands that people have to do to try to get it to teach something other than what it has taught for 2000 years, but it's right there.

01:15:52

There's no way to get around it. So I thank you for allowing me the time to make, at the very least, it made me feel better, that by not having other distractions going on,

01:16:10

I think at least we laid that case out much more clearly than I was able to last time and with more order.

01:16:18

So hopefully there'll be a response to that. I think there needs to be a response to that. And it needs to be something other than an allegorical response or an analogical response.

01:16:31

Well, it's sort of like the policeman who pulls over. No, don't give me a policeman who pulls over response.

01:16:39

If you can't go into the text and show its consistency, just be straight up and say, we don't like what it says.

01:16:50

And so we're not gonna believe it. That's the honest thing to do and go from there.

01:16:59

All right, thank you for allowing me to do that and for the technology to see things a little bit more clearly now.

01:17:08

The only thing that most people don't understand, one just real brief thing that you don't understand is when you get up to a written text and you have it blown up like this, when you get this close, how many times do you see me have to do this?

01:17:23

I've got to back up to be able to see where I am in the verse because you get this close and I can only see this little portion of it.

01:17:33

I don't see the whole big thing anymore. For those of you who have not tried it, try it sometime.

01:17:42

You might find it to be a little more challenging than you initially thought.

01:17:49

There was one other thing I was gonna talk about, but we'll just save that or I'll forget about it before the next time around, one of the two, that was interesting, but it has to do with the

01:17:58

SBC and so something tells me that we'll probably have opportunity to talk about more

01:18:03

SBC stuff in the future. I don't think that the whole subject's just gonna go away. With that said, thanks for watching the program today.