December 14, 2004

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Casting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.
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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the
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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. And good morning, welcome to The Dividing Line. It is Tuesday, December 14th, 2004.
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The year is almost past. And I'm going to be using the cough button a lot today. I just did something stupid within the past hour.
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I did a real high intensity aerobic thing, didn't last long, but it was so high intensity that for like the last 30 seconds,
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I had this little voice in the back of my head that said, you're about to die. Settle up your account, son, you're on your way to heaven.
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And the result of that is called exercise induced asthma. And I knew that I had that because I would climb
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Squaw Peak here locally and I would need to take a little something before I went up there or I would be coughing for quite some time afterwards.
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And I didn't think that this short thing, it was just a fast run on the rowing machine, would do that, but it did.
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And so I'm going to be reaching over here to our patented cough drop and that'll make me just disappear like that.
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But that's OK. Anyway, second thing that I just learned is I should not open emails right as the theme music is starting because there's some folks came in channel two days ago and they posted this
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URL to this guy just ripping my head off, just attacking me right and left and talking about, you know,
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I'm a neo -Calvinist and I'm, you know, living in comfort and just reading a section here.
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The Republican majority would roll out James White during election years to warn Christians that abortion mongers would overrun the country if the right people were not elected.
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Folks in the family and the other Christian media harlots were glad to have the occasional Calvinist on the air and all the rest of this stuff.
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So I wrote to this guy and I just got the message back. You know, there are some people, it doesn't matter how far off they are and it doesn't matter how obvious their intentions were, they'll find a way around it.
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You know, there are Calvinists who are nuts. Being a Calvinist does not guarantee that you will not be completely whacked.
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But there are, they are out there and in fact, you know what, the fringe of Calvinism is just as whacked as the
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Arminian fringe or the Pelagian fringe or the King James only fringe, just as whacked as everybody else.
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So, should not read emails right as you start the program because that's just not wise.
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Anyway, I mentioned on the couple things, I guess part of what bothers me about that is, you know, here
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I am sitting here and, you know, talking about how our churches are huge.
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Yeah, right. And, you know, the intention, obviously, is this idea that we've compromised and I think of all the doors have been slammed in my face by not compromising.
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And then here comes somebody, I've never even heard of this guy before, he's obviously rebelling against God's word because he doesn't seem to believe what the word says about the church and so on and so forth, but hey, whatever.
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And that's in the middle of my continued amazement. Absolutely continued amazement at the lengths to which
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Dave Hunt will go in his attempts to get around the word of God.
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I mean, you can tell by some of my recent blog entries that I am just shaking my head, especially at that one paragraph that I posted.
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I think I posted it yesterday morning. And the paragraph that reads, from what love is this, page 264, second edition, the
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Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as comments from early church writers, indicate the first 15 chapters of Acts were probably written first in Hebrew.
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The Greek would be a translation. Some scholars claim that going back to a redacted Hebrew version, based upon word for word
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Greek Hebrew equivalents, would render Acts 13 -48 more like as many as submitted to, needed or wanted salvation were saved.
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Furthermore, even if ordained were the correct meaning, these Greeks would still have had to believe the gospel and accept
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Christ by an act of their own faith and will, as all of scripture testifies. I just, excuse me.
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What can you say to something like that? First of all, the Dead Sea Scrolls were written before the Book of Acts, all right?
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Even stretching the phrase, Dead Sea Scrolls, to anything ever found anywhere near Qumran, the fact of the matter is there's nothing in them about the
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Book of Acts. There's nothing in them about the authorship of Acts. It's just, the
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Dead Sea Scrolls would have to be prophetic. I mean, it's just, it's hard for me to come up with an illustration of just how silly that is.
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And then, this entire paragraph does not have a single footnote. Can you believe that?
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How many of these things would have to be footnoted? Dead Sea Scrolls would have to be footnoted with reference. Early church writers would have to be footnoted with references.
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What early church writers? Who? What's the early church here? The first thousand years?
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Who said this? You know, I've taken the time to look at numerous critical commentaries.
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I've looked at Bruce and Longnecker, and I'm putting together a list of all these sources.
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And nobody's ever heard of this stuff. The closest thing come to, the closest thing
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I have seen, is a reference to Nestle having a theory that the first 12 chapters had an
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Aramaic under, had sources that were in Aramaic.
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Because it's about, basically, the church in Palestine. But not chapter 13.
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And so, how do you begin to respond to this? And then, the
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Greek would be a translation. Well, who did the translation, Dave? And Dave, have you ever thought about what canonization means?
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If, in fact, the Hebrew was written by Luke, and this is a
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Greek translation by an uninspired writer, that means we no longer have the first 15 chapters of Luke in an inspired version.
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I mean, this is radical redaction criticism. And Dave Hunt's using it?
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It would be like him seriously quoting Anton LaVey as a source for his viewpoint.
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I can guarantee you Anton LaVey would have agreed with Dave Hunt on the issue of free will. There's no question about that, but I don't think he should quote him.
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I mean, you read this, and you just, you, I'm sorry. But then it says, some scholars, that requires a footnote, claim that going back to a redacted
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Hebrew version, which no one has ever seen, right? No one has ever seen this
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Hebrew version, have they? Based upon word -for -word Greek -Hebrew equivalence.
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Folks, there is no such thing. Anybody who knows anything about both
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Greek and Hebrew knows there is no such thing. You can't do that. If you use word -for -word, that's not translation, that's not communicating meaning.
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I mean, even if you took this whacked -out theory, that has no foundation in history, and accepted it, and even if you, you know, started from that point.
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The fact of the matter is, whoever did the Greek translation, which is the canonical Gospel of Acts, used a periphrastic instruction.
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Now the fact of the matter is, Dave Hunt doesn't know what a periphrastic instruction is. A periphrastic instruction, come up and pop him in the nose, he'd have no concept of what it was.
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He doesn't know. I keep saying this to him, and he just goes off and mutters about other things.
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He doesn't have the ability to deal with this. He should just say, you know what,
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I don't know. I don't know. I haven't a clue. I can't talk about any of this stuff.
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But he doesn't do that. Instead, he makes this stuff up as he's flying along by the seat of his pants.
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And this is why, folks, you need to be involved in a church, because there should be somebody who can go up to Dave Hunt and say,
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Dave, you're wrong, dude. You're wrong. You're, you're, you're, don't you realize you're undercutting the very authority of the
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Word of God in what you're doing here? And he doesn't. No one can do that. No one can do that. Okay, so, word for word equivalence.
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Okay, what words, Mr. Hunt, somebody go up to Dave Hunt. We just missed it, because I posted this on the 12th, two days ago.
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He was at Two Calvary Chapels over in California. We just missed this. Because we've probably got enough listeners in Southern California, we could have gotten this.
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And January's going to be in New York. So I'm, I'm hoping some of you folks in New York, you need to take time to go and, and face this man and say, give the specifics here.
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You're telling us we don't have an inspired and errant Bible anymore. You're telling us that the first 15 chapters of Acts, we haven't, we need to go back to a redacted
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Hebrew version. There's a lot of important stuff, folks, in the first 15 chapters of Acts. I wonder, I haven't taken the time to do this,
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I need to do this. I need to look up, in fact, I'm going to do it right here on the air. Hey, if anybody's found my, my
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Libronics installation disks, could you give them back to me, please? I'm really getting tired of tearing my, my office apart looking for them.
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Acts chapter, there, at least there's a full scripture index here. Acts 4...
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Acts 4, 27 through 28. No references in this 558 page book.
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You think you know where they are? I don't know. It's that, it's, they're in that plastic cover thing. They're a bunch of CDs, and it's really bothering me.
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There's a whole stack of them. And it's just driving me nuts, I can't find them. Anyways, no reference to Acts 4, 27 through 28.
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Nothing. I was thinking maybe he would use that. But you know,
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I had to go back through all these references to Acts and see if he uses the redacted
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Hebrew version. Ah! Oh, yeah, yeah, anyway.
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Someone needs to go up to him and say, so, the paraphrastic instruction at Acts 13, 48 is not inspired.
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It is, in fact, errant, right? And so what's the original reading?
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Dave, if you found it, we need it. He doesn't know. And where do,
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I'd like to see these Hebrew words. I'd like to, I was thinking about providing an actual Hebrew translation of Acts 13, 48, at least the relevant phrase, and printing it out, and sending it to anybody who would like to hand deliver it to Dave Hunts, say, is this it?
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Is this it? In Hebrew, of course, which Dave can't read, but anyway. And then, of course, just for the fun of it, we throw, furthermore, even if ordained were the correct meaning, which it is, these
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Greeks still would have had to believe the gospel and accept Christ by an act of their own faith and will, as all the scripts of Scripture testify.
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And if Dave Hunt is so deaf to the truth that he cannot even hear the other side saying, we believe that, then
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I just, I hope, folks, that it bothers you as much as it bothers me to see someone who has sold four million books amongst evangelical
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Christians, four million books amongst evangelical Christians, willing to throw the
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Bible to the wolves in the service of tradition. If that doesn't bother you, you're not going to enjoy anything we have to say.
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We're going to start driving you nuts over time. And that's just all there is to it. I just, just leaves me absolutely amazed.
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Well, I mentioned on the blog as well that I forgot something. I completely forgot the fact that we had started, and I finally look back, even after I posted this thing, we had started looking at the comments made by Paige Patterson at New Orleans Baptist Seminary.
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This was back in January, February, somewhere, almost a year ago now, on the subject of Calvinism.
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And I just, I went a bunch of places, it was quite some time, it was right before the cruise, and I just, boop, it just, senior moment, lost it all, and came back and started doing stuff, the
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Kelly Powers stuff, and he's sort of gone wacky in his responding, not even responding to the exegetical stuff, he doesn't do that, but he throws this stuff out there.
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And the only thing I'm going to say, he's posted this thing about, you know, allegedly responding to me and stuff, the only thing
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I'm going to say in response to him is that he kept harping on, oh, well, you know, I didn't,
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I wasn't responding to James White. He's responding to me, but I wasn't responding to James White, I was responding to Tim.
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Tim wrote me an email. And I'm like, well, the problem is that Tim's email was a presentation of my position.
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And allegedly, the response, if it's an answer to Tim, who accurately presented my position, would be a response to me.
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There you go. And how difficult was that?
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Anyways, that's not really an overly difficult concept to grasp, but he struggled with it.
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So I will just point out that he was responding to my position as presented by Tim.
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Therefore, that is logically a response to me. But it wasn't really a response anyways, because there wasn't anything exegetical about it.
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And we pointed that out and may go back to that in the future. But since I forgot. Since I forgot about that, about the
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Patterson stuff, I need to. Oh, yeah, I know he's from Canada and Canadians are just Canadians.
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That's just sort of how it is. Well, when you're Canadian, if somebody says something about you, that's automatically an attack, you know, and it doesn't really make any sense.
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Anyhow, so I want to go back to the Paige Patterson stuff here. I went back to find out exactly where we'd stopped.
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And if you may recall, maybe you don't recall, maybe you didn't hear it. He went through a series of verses presenting the sovereignty of God in salvation.
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Then he began his so -called Arminian verses. And the idea is to present there's these two perspectives and in essence, the common argument of the
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Arminian at this point is, well, look, you need to understand the sovereignty stuff is actually just about God making salvation available.
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And the free will stuff is what predominates in scripture. And and we're hearing a lot of the whosoever will stuff.
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We're going to hear more of that today and take some time to once again go over this whosoever stuff, because it is probably the most common thing you're going to hear.
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And move on from there. So here we pick back up where we left off with Paige Patterson and his objections to Calvinism.
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And whosoever believes on him so will not be put to shame.
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Or Romans 10, 1. Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved.
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I've actually had some of my Calvinist friends who tell me we're to pray about many things, but the
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Bible knows where it says. We're to pray for the salvation of the lost. And indeed, they are right if we are totally consistent, because if they are the elect of God from eternity past and they are going to be saved no matter what they do, because they are irresistibly the products of divine grace, then why on earth would you waste time praying for what's going to already happen anyway?
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Well, of course, one of the reasons that we respond to recordings like this is because these are the people that are being listened to and hence are raising objections to the gospel of grace.
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And if we want to be consistent in our proclamation of the gospel to all people, then we need to be consistent in giving a response, including to those who may be, quote unquote, on our side.
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But because of embracing human traditions that are not biblically grounded and are based upon misconceptions and in common errors in regards to the biblical text, that we need to be able to give a response and to challenge people to understand what the text is really saying.
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I believe we had actually right at the beginning of the clip, there was a quote from Romans 9 .33,
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I believe was the passage he was he was referring to there. And I was, yes, he's using for some reason, interestingly enough, the
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King James Version of the Bible. And it seems that he did a search for whosoever, as it is written,
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Behold, I lay in Zion, a stumbling stone and a rock of offense and whoever, whosoever believeth in him shall not be ashamed.
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But notice the, for example, ESV says whoever believes in him and you you go up to the
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ASV and he that believeth on him or the New American Standard and he who believes in him, yet the one who believes in him,
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NET, the one who trusts in him, NIV. What is all of that referring to?
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Well, in the Greek here, you simply have hapistuon, the one believing upon him. And once again, there is no word, quote unquote, whosoever.
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The idea in the emphasis of whosoever is that this communicates an element of tradition that has no basis in the text.
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The element of tradition is that when you hear the term whosoever, that it sounds like it is communicating the concept of a universal ability.
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There's actually a couple of steps that generally are, well, certainly they're not willing to defend this because in the original language you can't do so.
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But the assumption is, well, whosoever means there is no limitation on this. And that then means that there is no election because it implies universal ability.
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There's nothing in the text that says that. It simply says, and the one believing upon him will not be put to shame.
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It does not address, in Romans 9, 33, or any of the places where whosoever comes, it does not address who has the ability to do the action of the verb, in this case, pastuo, to believe.
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It does not talk about that. That's not a part of what is being said. This is an assumption that has been provided by, especially in certain
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Baptist churches and other churches, generations now of preaching and practice.
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The preaching and the practice provide the context by which the word of God then is interpreted. By which the word of God, the word of God doesn't interpret the preaching and the practice, it's backwards.
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Here is a position, here is a situation where if we're going to be consistent in the Roman Catholics, you need to examine your tradition.
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You need to practice Sola Scriptura. Here's a position where we have to practice Sola Scriptura and say to those on our side of the fence, look, you can sit here all day long and say that you believe in Sola Scriptura, but if you won't practice it, then you really don't believe it.
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And here's a place we have to go back to the text and we have to ask, is there something here that communicates this whosoever that you just emphasized,
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Romans 933? And the fact of the matter is, that isn't there. It simply says, and the one believing upon him.
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That's present tense, by the way, not the one who believes aorist, but that's present tense, the one believing.
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I'm going to be debating a man in a matter of months who would rather have that to be an aorist tense, but it's not there.
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There's nothing in Scripture that gives the concept, that gives basis to the concept that a faith that saves can be a dead faith.
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There's nothing in Scripture, not only is it directly contradicted by James, but there's nothing in Scripture that would substantiate that.
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This is the believing one. That's a present tense participle. The one believing upon him shall not be put to shame.
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That's what Romans 933 is saying. And the same thing is true in the passage that was just cited. Romans chapter 10, verse 11.
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Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame. ESV, King James says, whosoever believeth on him will not be ashamed.
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Same exact situation, except here it's pas, so at least you have all.
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But again, it's every believing one. Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame. That is not addressing who will believe.
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That's not addressing who has the ability to believe. It is simply saying there is no such one who is believing, present tense, upon him who will be put to shame.
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So what that does actually absolutely exclude is the false representation is frequently made of Reformed theology.
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It is frequently made of Calvinism, that you could have someone who wants to believe and who wants to repent and who wants to cling to Christ, but because he's not elect, he can't.
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He wants to, but God is throwing him down the stairs. Get away from me. I haven't elected you.
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That is not, there is going to be no one who's going to be ha -pistuon, who is going to be believing, who is going to be ashamed, put to shame by that belief.
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OK, so that, again, addresses these issues. And we have here a man who is a leader in one of the largest denominations.
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You would think that these would be basic things. I'm not doing anything here that is unknown.
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I'm not doing anything here that's unique to me. If you read basic level introductions to Reformed theology, that defend
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Reformed theology, these issues are rather simplistic. And yet, how often, as we over the years have responded to numerous people, do we hear the same traditional arguments that have no meaningful foundation in the text repeated as fact over and over and over and over again?
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And it seems very clear that there's one side of this debate that wants to just simply use the bully pulpit.
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You've got the David Clouds of the world that just want to go out there and do their preaching. You've got the Dave Hunts who won't do the debate in public where I can ask the questions.
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Boy, would I, man, no wonder he doesn't want to do a public debate now. Can you imagine,
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Mr. Hunt, provide to us the redacted Hebrew of Acts chapter 1 verses, you know,
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Acts 1 through 15? He knows he can't do that. He knows it's not possible.
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And so there's no way he's going to do a debate. He can't do a debate. Oh, I wish I had known about that paragraph just two weeks ago.
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I didn't have the book yet. I would love, believe you me, I would have brought it up.
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I would have pushed it. I don't care what Chuck Rissmeyer had said. I would have pushed it. And but anyways, we we continue on.
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But Paul says my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved.
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Romans 10, 11. I forgot to finish that that quotation there. When when he says, why pray?
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Why would Paul pray? My heart's desire. Well, you know, that desire was placed in the heart by the spirit of God.
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And the regenerate heart is desirous of seeing God glorify himself in the salvation of his elect. And the question really should be placed to Dr.
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Patterson and to Dave Hunt and to David Cloud and and to all those who use this kind of of of rhetoric.
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The the question should be asked to them if in point of fact God has done everything he can.
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If the Trinity is putting out a 100 percent effort already, which is fundamental to their position, then why do you pray?
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Aren't you asking God to do what God has already done? Aren't you asking
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God to to increase his effort? Are you asking God to put out 110 percent? Possibly. I don't know.
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At least when I am praying, I am praying in light of the fact that I do not know
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God's decree. I do not know.
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Who the elect are, and so I pray that God would save his elect people.
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You say, well, he's going to do that. Yes, I pray. What was what was the Lord's, you know, what's called the
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Lord's prayer? It's really just a model prayer. But, you know, Lord's prayer, really, John 17. But in what's called the Lord's prayer. What did
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Jesus pray for us to do? Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, earth as it is in heaven. Well, his will is going to be done, isn't it?
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But shouldn't it be our desire that it be done? Aren't we by praying that asking,
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Lord, use me in doing your will? Yeah, that's the whole point.
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And so when he says, why would you be praying about that? But because I want to be used in that way.
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I want to see God's will done. I want him to change me and to use me in bringing glory to himself in saving his elect people.
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I don't have to have knowledge of who they are. Do I? Of course not. So anyway, what do you think?
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Why did the redaction bid on his own? There's someone questioning that's not following it.
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Oh, well, that's interesting. Let's continue with we just looked at Romans 10, 11.
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He goes past it fairly quickly. It's just the whosoever thing. Well, the scripture says whosoever believes on him will not be put to shame again in 10, 13.
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For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. You know, if you took all those out, if you took those out that have no textual meaning, they're irrelevant to it in reality.
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He wouldn't have a long list here. And we're just about to get to the standard ones. We're about to get 1 Timothy 2, 4, 2 Peter 3, 9.
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We already did Matthew 23, 37, same ones. And no indication as far as I can tell in listening to the presentation that the speaker has any knowledge of the rather full exegetical responses that have been provided.
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So, again, one side we do exegesis, the other side we avoid exegesis. It's just it's it's the repeated experience that I have.
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We are in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 11, knowing, therefore, the terror of the
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Lord. We persuade men, but we are well known to you and God in 2
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Corinthians chapter 5, verse 20. Now, then we are ambassadors for Christ as though God were pleading for us.
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We implore you in Christ's stead, be reconciled to God. Why all this activity in behalf of that which is already written?
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I didn't mean to hit that that fast. I want to I want to make sure that we hear this section. So I'm going to I'm going to do the wave form thing here.
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But God, why all this activity in behalf of that which is already written in the book of God in eternity past?
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Ephesians 5, 14. Why all this activity? Why all this activity?
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Do you hear that? You need to be you need to be prepared for that. Why? This persuading of men.
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And that's a good question to ask a Calvinist who's an apologist, right? You seek to persuade men.
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You don't seek to use improper means of doing that, but you seek to persuade men.
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Right. OK. So. Why? Why do that?
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Why all this activity? Why the prayer? Why the ambassadors for God be reconciled to God and so on?
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Why is that? Well, is that inconsistent with the reform perspective? Of course not. Of course not.
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Over and over and over again, we have to keep saying and people sometimes we get tired of saying the same thing over and over again.
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And as a result, we we want to come up with new ways of saying it don't. We have to keep saying, look.
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God ordains the ends as well as the means.
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He ordains to use people to the proclamation of the gospel.
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He ordains to use us to proclaim the gospel, to teach the truth, to engage in apologetics.
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He uses us as the means. The regenerate heart will desire to do these things.
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What is so hard to understand about that? That is not contradictory.
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That is only contradictory to hyper Calvinism, not to Calvinism, not to a biblically balanced view of these things.
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God commands us to do the work of the proclamation of the gospel.
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You do it out of obedience. You don't do it because you think
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God cannot help himself without your help.
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You've got to be prepared to give that response. It's written in the book of God in eternity past,
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Ephesians 5, 14. Therefore, he says, Awake, you who sleep and arise from the dead and Christ will give you life.
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And first Timothy two, three to six for this is good and acceptable. Well, no, no, wait a minute.
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What did that have to do with anything? Wait, I I don't understand. Therefore, it says,
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Awake, O sleeper and arise of the dead and Christ will shine you. Since no interpretation is given, we can't know why in the world that's considered to be contradictory to reformed theology.
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Well, on the side of our God, our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of truth.
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And in verse five, he gave himself a ransom for all. Now we have a real problem because God is the one who desires that all men should be saved.
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And yet in eternity past, he only chose some to be saved. How can he will some to be saved while he desires all to be saved and yet all not come to him?
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Puzzle, isn't it? Not really. Not when you take the time to do what has been done many, many times and taking the time to examine the context.
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And that's one of the real disappointments from my perspective, is that even Arminian scholars seem unwilling to engage this debate in a public forum to where during the cross -examination period, we could say something along the lines of, well, you know what?
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This is a context. There is before this, the definition of all men is all kinds of men, rulers and those in authority.
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And then after this, we have the statement that Jesus Christ is the mediator between God and men.
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And does that mean that Jesus Christ is mediating, interceding for those who will not be saved?
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And so we could get into the discussion of the intention of the atonement, the mediatorial work of Christ, the teaching in Hebrews that Jesus Christ saved the uttermost, those drawn nigh unto
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God by him, seeing he ever lives to make intercession for them. Hence, intercession is a perfect work on his part.
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He never fails in it, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And but that doesn't get to take place.
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Only one side is going to take the time to look at the text, ask those questions, get into the meat of the matter, allow the text to stand as a whole rather than just taking bits and pieces of it, reading my understanding of all men into it, and then force then creating self -contradiction with other viewpoints concerning the work of Christ.
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And things like that. It is just very disappointing that you only get one side that's willing to play the other side as I'm playing the other side, letting them put their best foot forward and then responding to it.
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You're not going to get them to do that. Unfortunately, I wish that was not the case. First Timothy four, 10 part of this and we both labor and suffer reproach because we trust in the living
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God, who is the savior of all men and in some way, especially of those who believe.
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Well, in what sense is he the savior of all men and how, especially then from that those who believe
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Hebrews 2. Now, you know, I was just trying to watch the time on that. And see how much time is spent now.
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I, I recognize that the gentleman is not seeking to provide a full exegesis of each one of these.
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He's hurrying. I will try to give grace, shall we say, because of that.
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He's he's trying to he's got a very limited period of time. He's got about 35 minutes. OK, with all of that said, however, the fact remains that you're just throwing these out there.
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And if you actually had to try to exegete them and actually deal with them to any level, you wouldn't get very far.
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What is being asserted in first Timothy four, 10, is he saying that Christ is a savior who fails?
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Is he trying to assert the idea of potential savior ology or something like that?
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First Timothy four, 10. It's not even a soteriological context that the context is not a discussion of the gospel.
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It's not talking about salvation, atonement, issues like that. Is it teaching universalism?
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Well, he would say no. So what is the context of this potential savior of all men?
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Is he saying he's really the savior only of those who, then you insert the implicit idea, freely believe?
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Where else is the Greek term savior used to refer to a hypothetical saviorhood rather than to a true one?
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What does that actually mean? When you think about it in reality, this is a general statement about God.
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And just as God is the creator of all, even of those who do not acknowledge his creatorship.
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And he's lord of all, even over those who refuse to bow to him. He's king of kings and lord of lords too.
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He is also the only savior that exists. Hence, he's the savior of all men, even of those who reject his role and reject his work.
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If the term was meant in a hypothetical sense, the following phrase, but especially, would make no sense at all.
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That term in Greek, malista, does not take one from the hypothetical to the real.
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Instead, the point is that since God is the only savior that exists, he is the savior of all, but only those who believe, know him in that role as savior.
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Nothing in the text is speaking to the issue of the atonement, its scope, its purpose. The problem is in a, what would you call this, a let's throw as many passages together at one time as we can type of presentation.
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You don't have time to go into all that. But I haven't heard a lot of folks who do go into all of that and try to explain what a potential savior is or what a potential savior who doesn't save is or any of that.
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I've not heard them do that. It's just thrown out there and say, see, it can't be this because of this.
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But they don't then want to go. But positively, it means this. When you hear that kind of thing happening, well, you know that you've got a problem immediately at that at that point in time.
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Now, we do have a call and I need to need to go ahead and take that. And then maybe we'll come back because we only have a few more passages of scripture to be thrown out here.
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And there's actually three MP3 files. We're only 23 minutes into it. Take a month at the rate we're going to actually get through all this.
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But let's go ahead and take our call from Johnny down in Arkansas.
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How you doing? Hello, Johnny. Caller dropped.
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Oh, well, so so much for that. I see now one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten repetitions of caller dropped.
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The problem being, of course, that I had to scroll back in the window to get the name of the caller. And hence,
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I could not see that. And so we can't do that. Do the do do the do the do.
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So we will continue with. I think I need to roll it back a little bit here because I think he said
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Hebrews to those who believe Hebrews to nine. But we see Jesus, who is made a little lower than the angel for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor that he might, by the grace of God, taste of death for the elect.
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No taste of death for every man.
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And so it appears that the atonement was universal. Well, you know, we talked about that last week, didn't we?
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We we went through Hebrews to nine and we allowed the context, which Dr. Patterson doesn't touch to define exactly who this is, because verses 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, all define for us exactly who it is that he tastes death for.
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And again, it's just simply skipping the fact that pass pass upon can be defined within the context as to its scope.
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And unfortunately, the the good doctor didn't allow that to happen.
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I'll say it again in a moment. But in Hebrews 10, 29, of how much worse punishment do you suppose?
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Will he be thought worthy who has trampled the son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing and insulted the spirit of grace?
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Surely this is not a reference to believers, has to be a reference to unbelievers. And yet it says the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified.
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What on earth do you do with that? Well, you take the time to read John Owens comments on it.
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That would be a good start. You read 10, 29, light of 10, 10 to 14, which comes beforehand and talks about the perfection of the new covenant and the perfection of those for whom the sacrifice and offering is made.
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And hence, you realize that you've missed the whole point again when you just throw these things out there like that.
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It just strikes me that there should at least be some desire to listen to what the other side is saying and respond to even even if you don't agree, at least try to make your presentation in light of the best they offer.
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We do that. We do that, but they they don't. To Peter two, chapter one, that there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you who will secretly bring the destructive heresies, even denying the
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Lord who bought them. Here you have heretics, men who bring heresies into the church.
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And yet it's said of them that the Lord bought them. Hang in there with me just a second. We're about through.
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Yeah, yeah, we're hanging in, of course. Once again, we have a lengthy discussion of this on the website.
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And so what does that mean? Do we have another potential savior here? Were they bought?
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Were they redeemed? Were they truly saved and then lost? You know, the only meaningful use of such argument of such passages is to try to argue against internal security, not against election.
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It you know, this is I know common stuff. But again, it it shows the willingness to, in essence, undercut the very foundation for the perfection of salvation.
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So as to come up with these human traditions. This is the concept that is being thrown out here.
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Second Peter three, nine, the Lord is not slack concerning his promises. Some count slackness, but is long suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish.
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First John two, two. Well, again, not willing that any. Let's take the time.
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Let's follow the pronouns. Who is the you? Why do you think that that second
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Peter was written to every single human being who's ever lived? I never hear responses to that.
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All I hear is, well, it's clear, it's plain, it's perspicuous. It's anybody can see what that says.
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Well, no, that's that's not true. You know, if it was any other subject other than one touching on the will of man, folks would not use this kind of hermeneutic.
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They would abandon it and they would use a sound hermeneutic that follows the argument.
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He and he himself is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but even for the sins of the whole world.
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There it is, ladies and gentlemen. Well, there it is, ladies and gentlemen.
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I'm sure what there it is is, but there it is again. All the common passages, world
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Jews and Gentiles, all the common passages that are thrown out there. No seeming understanding of the myriad of of conflicts, the myriad of contradictions that are created by inserting synergism into the text.
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These point at this point, and does it encourage me in the sense of of of increasing my confidence in the position that I have promoted for many years now?
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Just to hear over and over again, the same kind of very shallow argumentation, well, in a sense, yes.
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In a sense, this is the kind of preaching that is heard every
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Sunday from pulpits around our nation, around the world, literally. And this is what keeps people from taking the time to listen to what we're trying to say.
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Is this solid argumentation? No. You know, when people come into our channel and they're asking very basic questions,
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I will first ask them, well, are you Reformed? Do you call yourself a Calvinist? If you're going to use that terminology, then frequently they'll even have nicks that'll say that.
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And I am not overly patient with people who come in and they say, oh,
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I'm a Calvinist. Oh, yeah, five points. Anybody want a tulip? Da -da -da -da -da. And then they run into the most basic argumentation.
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From First Timothy 4 .10. That's a common one. I have a pop -up I use in the channel, First Timothy 4 .10. And they go, wow,
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I've never thought about that. I don't know what to say to that. And that bothers me, and I'll tell you why it bothers me.
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It bothers me because that should have been something considered long before you ever put your roots down and said, this is where I stand.
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In other words, there are people who get caught up in stuff and they too quickly jump ship and they grab hold of a position.
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And those tend to be the people who, well, for a while they're Calvinists, and then they go and they join this group, and then they go and they're in that group.
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And some of us, especially in the channel, know about people who are very accurately described in Scripture as being blown about by every wind of doctrine.
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And over the years we've known when they were this, and then they were this, and then they were this, and now they're this, and they're moving toward that.
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And you just go, wow, that's scary. You don't want to have someone like that.
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You can't trust someone like that. They are a double -minded man, or a double -minded woman for that matter. That's not considered to be a really good thing.
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So let's listen to see if we can catch the conclusion of that list here. Here it is, ladies and gentlemen.
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Our Lord desires that all should be saved, that all should come to repentance, and he has made a free and open offer for any to come to him whosoever will.
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We have seen the evidence favoring election as the predominant theme in salvation.
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But we have also observed the evidence featuring a decisive moment in the life of an individual when any man can come to God through Jesus Christ.
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Now notice, none of the passages that Paige Patterson presented actually substantiate that assertion.
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None of them addressed this universal ability. There was no explanation of John 6, 44 given.
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There was nothing like that. That's a tradition. That was read into those passages. It was read into it invalidly.
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But that now becomes the foundation upon which the entire discussion is going to continue from this point on.
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Hence, we're really not going to hear anything we haven't heard before. What on earth are we going to do about this terrible problem that we have in hermeneutics and exegesis of trying to do something with this apparently contradictory manifestation in the
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Word of God? And of course, we've already seen there is no contradiction in the
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Word of God at this point. We don't have a bifurcated Bible as you heard last week when we played that section.
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That's simply not the case. Well, in order to permanently resolve the problem, you're going to have to come back tomorrow.
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Tomorrow we will find the solution. But for now, I do want to point out just two or three things and we should be through.
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Number one, one way to handle this is to say, as our liberal friends do, well, that is just exactly what we're trying to tell you.
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The Bible is a book full of contradiction. You have Paul on the one hand over here, and he seems to think that salvation is bound up in the election of God.
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But you have John over here and Peter, and they never did care too much for Paul anyway.
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And you see this conflict between them as they seem to emphasize rather the nature of man, that he can come to God and that he is responsible for coming to him.
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And so you might conclude that the Bible is hopelessly in contradiction of itself.
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That is one possibility. Not one that I embrace, obviously. Paul, is there a better alternative that enables us still to take serious biblical revelation and believe that God has spoken inherently and infallibly and that it will not lead us into misunderstanding?
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I'm glad to announce that not only did I agree with that first point, that we don't agree with the liberals on this, but thankfully,
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Dr. Patterson will not point us to a mythical redacted version of the
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Hebrew of Acts 1 -15. Well, maybe. One way to do that is to crush that portion of the scripture on a grid of your own construction.
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Ah, which is exactly, I believe, what we just heard in the eisegetical comments made in the list of verses just presented that did not show any consideration of the concerns that are raised exegetically through, for example, emphasizing the
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King James rendering of the word whosoever without taking a look at the underlying Greek text.
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Do you remember Procrustes? He was that fascinating thief in Greek mythology who not only robbed his victims, but loved to inflict pain upon them.
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And so he had a famous bed. And after he had robbed his victim, he would spread the victim on the bed.
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And if the victim were taller than the length of the bed, he would see to it that the victim was perfect for the bed by lopping off his feet.
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Or if the victim were too short for the bed, he had a contraption rigged up by which he would stretch the victim until he fit the bed that way.
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Now, you know, that's exactly what many people do in theology. I call it waffle house theology.
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You ever been to a waffle house? Surely you have. Most of you like elegant dining. And so I know that especially here in New Orleans, you would want to seek out the highest in elegant dining.
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And so you go to a waffle house. And one of the first things that, of course, always impresses itself on your mind is that the same people work at all the waffle houses all across America.
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It's positively amazing. And the cook, you know, he's in all of them, the same one.
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And he's ubiquitous and he does a remarkable thing. He always does the same thing.
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I thought ubiquitous was my own term, but it's nice to hear that someone else uses it, too. He never does it right.
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He has a batter in a pan and he has a ladle and he opens the waffle iron when you order one and he gets some of the batter with the ladle and he pops it onto the waffle iron.
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Now, have you ever seen him get just the right amount? Never. He always puts too much batter in.
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And the waffle begins to cook. And of course, as it does, it begins to swell. And the first thing you know, by the way, that was just proof that aliens are actually channeling this message through Dr.
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Patterson. He's got too much batter in there. So it makes its way outside of the iron, doesn't it?
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Now, because they're into aesthetics at any waffle house, it will not do to serve a waffle to a customer that has, shall we say, rough edges.
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And so what he does, the last thing before he serves you the waffle while it's still in that hot iron, he takes his paring knife and he cuts all around it to cut off the excess batter.
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And then he opens up the waffle iron and he serves you a beautifully round waffle.
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That's exactly what many exegetes do with God's Word. For example, let's suppose you're a
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Calvinist and so you come to all of that list of passages that I have just read that say that Christ died for all men and that whosoever wills may come.
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And you don't like those passages. So you just take your Calvinistic paring knife and you cut around on your
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Calvinistic waffle iron and then you're ready to serve up a Calvinistic waffle that just suits your taste perfectly.
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Yeah, well, the question is who's doing that? And the facts seem to indicate that it's not us that's doing that.
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Now the problem is you've just paired off a significant portion of God's Word. That's true.
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You say, well, those naughty Calvinists, why would they do a thing like that? Well, they do it for the same reason that the
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Armenian waffle iron cooks do. And the Armenian, he doesn't like all those first passages
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I read. And so he comes to his waffle iron and he pairs off all those passages that he doesn't like.
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And he just effectively crushes those scriptures that don't fit his system.
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Hear me well, beware of systematic grids imposed on Holy Scripture.
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Amen and amen. Agree a thousand percent. But what is the only way that God has given to us to recognize when we are doing that very thing?
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Are there Calvinists who do that? Yes, of course there are. Now, am
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I saying that Calvinism is driving that? No, but what I am saying is that there are Calvinists who are
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Calvinists before they're exegetes. And that's what I was saying before.
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I'm consistent at this point. When someone comes into the channel and their Calvinism is upset because they've run into one of the basic, simple passages, that means they became a
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Calvinist before and not because of the interpretation of the text of Scripture.
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Maybe because they like R .C. Sproul. Maybe because they attended a Ligonier conference.
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And anybody who can talk like that must be right. In other words, they had the wrong motivations for becoming what they were to begin with.
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And so there's the issue. There's the problem right there. And we have to recognize when this is happening.
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And of course, since you can't get the folks on Dr. Patterson's side to dialogue about this in a public format, you can't demonstrate that.
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You just have to prove it in the way that we're doing it right now. And so that's how it works.
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So anyway, we've been listening to Paige Patterson's presentation. And we're 31 minutes and 14 seconds into it.
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That's pretty much the end of the first presentation. So we will be pressing forward with that as we continue examining that and examining the standard responses that are offered.
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Obviously, there's a little bit more substance there, at least. Oh, we've already gotten to the point where Steve Camp's singing.
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How'd that happen? I put somebody to sleep on the other side of the wall, I think. Anyway, we'll be back
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Thursday afternoon, four o 'clock Mountain Standard Time. See you then. God bless. This has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.
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If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602. Or write us at P .O.
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World Wide Web at aomin .org, that's A -O -M -I -N dot O -R -G. Where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.