December 14, 2004

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us.

Yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence. Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. 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 United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is James White.

Opening Remarks, E-mail Distractions, and the Dave Hunt Paragraph

And good morning, welcome to The Dividing Line. It is Tuesday, December 14th, 2004. 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.

I did a real high intensity aerobic thing. It didn't last long, but it was so high intensity that for like the last 30 seconds, 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. And the result of that is called exercise induced asthma. And I knew that I had that because I would climb 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.

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. And so I'm going to be reaching over here to our patented cough drop, and that will make me just disappear like that.

But that's okay. Anyway, second thing that I just learned is I should not open e-mails right as the theme music is starting because there's some folks came in channel two days ago, and they posted this URL to this guy just ripping my head off, just attacking me right and left and talking about I'm a neo-Calvinist and I'm living in comfort and just reading a section here.

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. 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.

So I wrote to this guy, and I just got the message back. 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.

There are Calvinists who are nuts. Being a Calvinist does not guarantee that you will not be completely whacked, but they are out there. In fact, you know what? The fringe of Calvinism is just as whacked as the Arminian fringe or the Pelagian fringe or the King James only fringe.

Just as whacked as everybody else. Should not read e-mails as you start the program because that's just not wise. Anyway, I mentioned a couple of things. I guess part of what bothers me about that is here I am sitting here and talking about how our churches are huge.

The intention, obviously, is this idea that we've compromised. And I think of all the doors that have been slammed in my face by not compromising. 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. And that's in the middle of my continued amazement, absolutely continued amazement at the lengths to which Dave Hunt will go in his attempts to get around the word of God.

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, I think I posted it yesterday morning. And the paragraph that reads, from what love is this, page 264, second edition, the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as comments from early church writers, indicate that the first 15 chapters of Acts were probably written first in Hebrew.

The Greek would be a translation. Some scholars claim that going back to a redacted Hebrew version, based upon word-for-word Greek-Hebrew equivalents, would render Acts 13 -48 more like as many as submitted to, needed, or wanted salvation were saved.

Furthermore, even if ordained were the correct meaning, these Greeks would still have had to believe the gospel and accept Christ by an act of their own faith and will, as all of scripture testifies. Just...

Excuse me. What can you say to something like that? First of all, the Dead Sea Scrolls were written before the Book of Acts. Alright? 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 Book of Acts.

There's nothing in them about the authorship of Acts. It's just... The 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.

And then, this entire paragraph does not have a single footnote. Can you believe that? 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.

What early church writers? Who? What's the early church here? The first thousand years? Who said this? You know, I've taken the time to look at numerous critical commentaries. I've looked at Bruce and Longnecker, and I'm putting together a list of all these sources.

And nobody's ever heard of this stuff. The closest thing come to... The closest thing I have seen is a reference to Nestle having a theory that the first twelve chapters had an Aramaic under... Had sources that were in Aramaic.

Because it's about, basically, the church in Palestine. But not chapter 13. And so, how do you begin to respond to this? And then, the Greek would be a translation. Well, who did the translation, Dave?

And Dave, have you ever thought about what canonization means? If, in fact, the Hebrew was written by Luke, and this is a Greek translation by an uninspired writer, that means we no longer have the first fifteen chapters of Luke in an inspired version.

I mean, this is radical redaction criticism. And Dave Hunt's using it? It would be like him seriously quoting Anton LaVey, as a source for his viewpoint. 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. I mean, you read this and you just... I'm sorry. But then it says, some scholars, that requires a footnote, claim that going back to a redacted Hebrew version, which no one has ever seen, right?

No one has ever seen this Hebrew version, have they? Based upon word-for-word Greek-Hebrew equivalence. Folks, there is no such thing. Anybody who knows anything about both 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. I mean, even if you took this whacked-out theory, that has no foundation in history, and accepted it, and even if you started from that point, the fact of the matter is, whoever did the Greek translation, which is the canonical gospel of Acts, used a paraphrastic instruction.

Now the fact of the matter is, Dave Hunt doesn't know what a paraphrastic instruction is. A paraphrastic instruction, come up and pop him in the nose, he'd have no concept of what it was. He doesn't know.

I keep saying this to him, and he just goes off and mutters about other things. He doesn't have the ability to deal with this. And he should just say, you know what, I don't know. I don't know. I haven't a clue.

I can't talk about any of this stuff. But he doesn't do that. Instead, he makes this stuff up as he's flying along by the seat of his pants. 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, Dave, you're wrong, dude.

You're wrong. Don't you realize you're undercutting the very authority of the Word of God in what you're doing here? And no one can do that. No one can do that. Okay, so, word for word equivalence. 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. He was at two Calvary chapels over in California. We just missed this, because we probably got enough listeners in Southern California.

We could have gotten this. And January is going to be in New York. So I'm hoping some of you folks in New York, you need to take time to go and face this man and say, give the specifics here. 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 need to go back to a redacted 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.

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 Libronics installation disks, could you give them back to me, please? I'm really getting tired of tearing my office apart looking for them.

Acts chapter. At least there's a full scripture index here. Acts 4. Acts 4, 27 through 28. No references in this 558 page book. You think you know where they are? I don't know. They're in that plastic cover thing.

They're a bunch of CDs, and it's really bothering me. 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. Nothing. I was thinking maybe he would use that.

But I had to go back through all these references to Acts and see if he uses the redacted Hebrew version. Someone needs to go up to him and say, so, the paraphrastic instruction at Acts 13, 48 is not inspired.

It is, in fact, errant, right? So, what's the original reading? Dave, if you found it, we need it. He doesn't know. I'd like to see these Hebrew words. 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? 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 Greeks still would have had to believe the gospel and accept Christ by an act of their own faith and will, as all the scriptures of Scripture testify.

And if Dave Hunt is so deaf to the truth that he cannot even hear the other side saying, we believe that, then, I just, I don't know. I hope, folks, that it bothers you as much as it bothers me to see someone who has sold four million books amongst evangelical Christians.

Four million books amongst evangelical Christians. Willing to throw the 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. We're going to start driving you nuts over time.

And that's just all there is to it. It just leaves me absolutely amazed. Well, I mentioned on the blog, as well, that I forgot something. I completely forgot the fact that we had started, and I finally looked back, even after I posted this thing, we had started looking at the comments made by Paige Patterson at New Orleans Baptist Seminary, this was back in January, February, somewhere, almost a year ago now, on the subject of Calvinism.

And I just, I went to a bunch of places, it was quite some time, it was right before the cruise, and I just, boop, a senior moment, lost it all. And came back and started doing other stuff, the Kelly Power 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.

And the only thing I'm going to say, he's posted this thing about allegedly responding to me and stuff, the only thing I'm going to say in response to him is that he kept harping on, well, you know, 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.

Tim wrote me an email. And I'm like, well, the problem is that Tim's email was a presentation of my position. And allegedly the response, if it's an answer to Tim, who accurately presented my position, would be a response to me.

There you go. How difficult was that anyways? That's not really an overly difficult concept to grasp, but he struggled with it. So I will just point out that he was responding to my position as presented by Tim, therefore that is logically a response to me, but it wasn't really a response anyways, because there wasn't anything exegetical about it, and we pointed that out and may go back to that in the future.

But since I forgot, huh? Since I forgot about that, about the Patterson stuff, I need to, oh yeah, I know he's from Canada, and Canadians are just Canadians, 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 that doesn't really make any sense.

Anyhow, so I want to go back to the Paige Patterson stuff here. I went back to find out exactly where we'd stopped, 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.

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 Arminian at this point is, well, look, you need to understand the sovereignty stuff is actually just about God making salvation available, and the free will stuff is what predominates in scripture, and we're hearing a lot of the whosoever will stuff, we're going to hear more of that today.

I'm going to take some time to once again go over this whosoever stuff, because it is probably the most common thing you're going to hear, and move on from there. Here we pick back up where we left off with Page Patterson and his objections to Calvinism.

Whosoever Believes and the Meaning of Romans 9:33 and Romans 10:11

And whosoever believes on him shall not be put to shame, or Romans 10 .1. Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved. I've actually had some of my Calvinist friends who tell me we're to pray about many things, but the 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?

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. 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, but because of embracing human traditions that are not biblically grounded and are based upon misconceptions and 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.

I believe we had actually right at the beginning of the clip, there was a quote from Romans 9 .33, I believe, was the passage he was referring to there. And I was, yes, he's using for some reason, interestingly enough, the King James Version of the Bible.

And it seems that he did a search for whosoever. As it is written, Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and a rock of offense, and whosoever believeth in him shall not be ashamed. But notice the, for example, ESV says, whoever believes in him.

And you go up to the 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, N-E-T, the one who trusts in him, N-I-V. What is all of that referring to?

Well, in the Greek here, you simply have hapistuon, the one believing upon him. And once again, there is no word, quote unquote, whosoever. The idea in the emphasis of whosoever is that this communicates an element of tradition that has no basis in the text.

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. There's actually a couple steps that generally are, well certainly they're not willing to defend this, because in the original language you can't do so.

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. There's nothing in the text that says that.

It simply says, and the one believing upon him will not be put to shame. 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, bestuo, to believe.

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 Baptist churches and other churches, generations now of preaching and practice.

The preaching and the practice provide the context by which the Word of God then is interpreted. The Word of God doesn't interpret the preaching and the practice. It's backwards. Here is a position, here is a situation, where if we're going to be consistent and say to the Roman Catholics, you need to examine your tradition.

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.

And here's a place we have to do it. 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, Romans 9 .33? And the fact of the matter is, that isn't there.

It simply says, and the one believing upon him. That's present tense, by the way. Not the one who believes aorist, but that's present tense. The one believing. 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.

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. There's nothing in Scripture, not only is it directly contradicted by James, but there's nothing in Scripture that would substantiate that.

This is the believing one. That's a present tense participle. The one believing upon him shall not be put to shame. That's what Romans 9 .33 is saying. And the same thing is true in the passage that was just cited, Romans 10 .11.

Chapter 10, verse 11. Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame. ESV. King James says, Whosoever believeth on him will not be ashamed. Same exact situation, except here it's pas. So at least you have all.

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. 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.

So what that does actually absolutely exclude is the false representation that is frequently made of Reformed theology, that 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.

He wants to, but God is throwing him down the stairs. Get away from me, I haven't elected you. There is going to be no one who is going to be ha-pistuon, who is going to be believing, who is going to be ashamed, put to shame by that belief.

So that, again, addresses these issues. And we have here a man who is a leader in one of the largest denominations. You would think that these would be basic things. I'm not doing anything here that is unknown.

I'm not doing anything here that's unique to me. If you read basic level introductions to Reformed theology that defend 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.

And it seems very clear that there's one side of this debate that wants to just simply use the bully pulpit. 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. Boy, would I... Man, no wonder he doesn't want to do a public debate now. Can you imagine? Mr. Hunt, provide to us the redacted Hebrew of Acts 1 -15.

He knows he can't do that. He knows it's not possible. 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. I didn't have the book yet.

Believe you me, I would have brought it up. I would have pushed it. I don't care what Chuck Rissmeyer had said. I would have pushed it. But anyways, we continue on. But Paul says,.

My heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved.

Romans 10 -11. I forgot to finish that quotation there. When he says, Why pray? Why would Paul pray? My heart's desire. Well, you know that desire was placed in the heart by the Spirit of God. 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. Patterson and to Dave Hunt and to David Cloud and to all those who use this kind of rhetoric. The question should be asked to them if in point of fact God has done everything He can.

If the Trinity is putting out a 100 effort already, which is fundamental to their position, then why do you pray? Aren't you asking God to do what God has already done? Aren't you asking God to increase His effort?

Are you asking God to put out 110 possibly? I don't know. At least when I am praying, I am praying in light of the fact that I do not know God's decree. I do not know who the elect are. And so I pray that God would save His elect people.

You say, well, He's going to do that. Yes, I pray. What was the Lord's? What's called the Lord's Prayer? It's really just a model prayer. But Lord's Prayer, really John 17. But in what's called the Lord's Prayer.

What did Jesus pray for us to do? Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Well, His will is going to be done, isn't it? But shouldn't it be our desire that it be done? Aren't we by praying that asking, Lord, use me in doing Your will?

Yeah, that's the whole point. And so when He says, why would you be praying about that? Because I want to be used in that way. 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.

I don't have to have knowledge of who they are. Do I? Of course not. So, anyway. Do you think White did the redaction bit on his own? Is there someone questioning? I'm not following it. Oh, well. That's interesting.

Let's continue with, we just looked at Romans 10, 11. He goes past it fairly quickly.

It's just the whosoever thing again. For the scripture says, whosoever believes on him will not be put to shame. Again, in 10, 13. 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, he wouldn't have a long list here. And we're just about to get to the standard ones. We're about to get to 1 Timothy 2, 4, 2 Peter 3, 9.

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 response that have been provided.

So again, one side, we do exegesis. The other side, we avoid exegesis. It's just, it's the repeated experience that I have.

2 Corinthians 5, 1 Timothy 2, and the Question of Why We Persuade Men

In 2 Corinthians 5, verse 11, knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men that we are well known to you in God. In 2 Corinthians 5, verse 20, now then we are ambassadors for Christ as though God were pleading through us.

We implore you in Christ's stead, be reconciled to God. Why all this activity?

I didn't mean to hit that that fast. I want to make sure that we hear this section. So I'm going to do the waveform thing here. Why all this activity? Why all this activity? Did you hear that? You need to be prepared for that.

Why this persuading of men? That's a good question to ask a Calvinist who's an apologist, right? You seek to persuade men. You don't seek to use improper means of doing that, but you seek to persuade men, right?

Okay. So why? Why do that? Why all this activity? Why the prayer? Why the ambassadors for God? Be reconciled to God? Why is that? Well, is that inconsistent with the Reformed perspective? Of course not.

Of course not. Over and over and over again, we have to keep saying it. Sometimes we get tired of saying the same thing over and over again, and as a result, we want to come up with new ways of saying it.

Don't. We have to keep saying, look, God ordains the ends as well as the means. He ordains to use people to the proclamation of the gospel. He ordains to use us to proclaim the gospel, to teach the truth, to engage in apologetics.

He uses us as the means. The regenerate heart will desire to do these things. What is so hard to understand about that? That is not contradictory. That is only contradictory to hyper-Calvinism, not to Calvinism, not to a biblically balanced view of these things.

God commands us to do the work of the proclamation of the gospel. You do it out of obedience. You don't do it because you think God cannot help Himself without your help. You've got to be prepared to give that response.

It's written in the book of God in eternity past, Ephesians 5 .14. Therefore, he says, Awake you who sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light. In 1 Timothy 2, 3 -6, this is good and acceptable.

Wait a minute.

What did that have to do with anything? I don't understand. Therefore, it says, Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. Since no interpretation is given, we can't know why in the world that's considered to be contradictory to Reformed theology.

God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved, and to come to a knowledge of truth, and in verse 5, 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, 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?

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. 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?

This is a context. There is, before this, the definition of all men as all kinds of men, rulers and those in authority. And then after this, we have the statement that Jesus Christ is the mediator between God and men.

And does that mean that Jesus Christ is mediating, interceding for those who will not be saved? 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 God by Him, seeing He ever lives to make intercession for them, and hence intercession is a perfect work on His part.

He never fails in it, etc., etc., etc., etc. But that doesn't get to take place. 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 creating self-contradiction with other viewpoints concerning the work of Christ 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. You're not going to get them to do that.

Unfortunately, I wish that was not the case.

1 Timothy 4:10, Hebrews 2:9, and the Scope of the Atonement

1 Timothy 4 .10, part of this end, We both labor and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, and in some way especially of those who believe. Well, in what sense is He the Savior of all men?

And how especially, then, from those who believe. Hebrews 2...

Now, you know, I was just trying to watch the time on that and see how much time was spent on that. Now, I recognize that the gentleman is not seeking to provide a full exegesis of each one of these. He's hurrying.

I will try to give grace, shall we say, because of that. He's got a very limited period of time. He's got about 35 minutes. Okay. With all of that said, however, the fact remains that you're just throwing these out there, and if you actually had to try to exegete them and actually deal with them to any level, you wouldn't get very far.

What is being asserted in 1 Timothy 4 .10? Is he saying that Christ is a Savior who fails? Is he trying to assert the idea of potential Saviorology, or something like that? 1 Timothy 4 .10, it's not even a satirological context.

The context is not a discussion of the Gospel. It's not talking about salvation, atonement, issues like that. Is it teaching universalism? Well, he would say no. What is the context of this potential Savior of all men?

Is he saying he's really the Savior only of those who, and then you insert the implicit idea, freely believe? Where else is the Greek term Savior used to refer to a hypothetical Saviorhood rather than to a true one?

What does that actually mean? When you think about it, in reality, this is a general statement about God, and just as God is the creator of all, even of those who do not acknowledge his creatorship, 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.

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. If the term was meant in a hypothetical sense, the following phrase, but especially, would make no sense at all.

That term in Greek, malista, does not take one from the hypothetical to the real. 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.

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, 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.

I've not heard them do that. It's just thrown out there and say, see, it can't be this because of this. 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 point in time.

Now, we do have a call, and I need to go ahead and take that, and then maybe we'll come back because we only have a few more passages of Scripture that could be thrown out here. And there's actually three MP3 files.

We're only 23 minutes into it. It would take a month at the rate we're going to actually get through all this. But let's go ahead and take our call from Johnny down in Arkansas. How are you doing? Hello, Johnny.

Caller dropped. Oh, well, so much for that. I see now 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 repetitions of caller dropped. The problem being, of course, that I had to scroll back in the window to get the name of the caller, and hence I could not see that.

And so we can't do that. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do. So we will continue with, I think, I need to roll it back a little bit here because I think he said Hebrews 2, wasn't it?

Those who believe, Hebrews 2 .9. 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, haste of death for the elect.