ISIS in Iraq, Roman Conversion and More ACDS on Today's Dividing Line

No, I'm tweeting the deal is live now that is there's proof that it actually is really alive.

Good to be with you very, very early on a Thursday morning of got things to do today getting away with the wife for about what 56 hours or something like that.

That's a that's a long time for us. She works hard and getting our schedules together is a tough thing to do.

So we are doing the dividing line early today. Have a bunch of stuff that's sort of I don't know piled up over the past couple of weeks to get to a lot of different topics.

Sometimes folks like that. Sometimes they don't obviously looking at what's going on in the world today.

Actually believe this. Believe this or not. I have a newspaper. I mean, it's made of paper. It really even has it has has comics in it.

It's a real newspaper. Don Friday was the only way

I get a newspaper is Don Friday, but we may get to that. I don't know. It's relevant to one of the things on the on the list here, depending on what we actually get to today.

But obviously the world is looking very much at what is happening in Iraq. And I was listening actually to some comments made by Al Moller.

And when the United States went into Iraq after 2001,

I had not yet studied my not started my real intense study of Islam. And I know

I came to conclusion in years afterwards once I had a background in the

Sunni Shia issues and things like that, that I just had to look at and go, that wasn't wise, that Iraq is three nations,

Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the middle and Shiites in the south. And what we're seeing is exactly that and that the only reason

Iraq existed as a single entity was the brutality of its dictator who knew how to keep everybody happy and or at least scared enough to pretend they were happy on the two.

There's no question that Saddam Hussein was a brutal man. The reality is that Iraq can't exist without a brutal man at the helm.

And that's not going to happen. So I don't know what's going to go on there. What you're going to end up with,

I think probably Iran will end up annexing the southern portion and you'll have some kind of wild eyed

Syrian Iraqi middle and the Kurds in the north.

And who knows? I don't know. Nobody knows. But I hear

President Obama saying, well, we're not going to do anything until the Iraqis deal with this, this, this strife and division between the

Sunnis and the Shiites. Will you stop that? We're not going to help you. I just go, really?

Okay. All right. You might as well laugh at the foolishness of both the past two

American, well, administration now regime. There's a difference between the two.

You have to, you just have to go, really, seriously? You just figure that the Sunnis and the

Shiites are just going to stop blowing each other up because you suggest that would be the nice thing to do. Okay.

All right. Okay. Um, maybe we could start a, a hashtag thing where we could get people to put up a little piece of paper with hashtag that says, uh, uh,

Sunni heart Shia and Shia hearts and look real sad.

Sure. That will accomplish a lot. You know, somebody is going to take a freeze frame of what you just did and they're going to stick a plaque in the middle.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're going to do exactly that. Yeah. Matter of time. No, they probably wouldn't have until you just now said that.

And now somebody will. No, no. I think, I think, I imagine Micah has Photoshop open right now.

Hasim, son of Ramallah, king of graphics will probably be doing that. Um, oh,

I, I, I must stop long enough to note my, my daughter's tweet was looking up your

Hebrew series and sermon audio. When you tweeted about the dividing line. Thanks a lot. I'll never get through them.

I guess it means you'll never get through the Hebrew series because I tweeted about the dividing line. Maybe.

I don't know. Possibly. Um, yeah, there's what, 75 sermons so far, but we're, we're in chapter 13, we'll be in chapter 13 this, this

Sunday and I can tell you something that chapter 13, uh, defies getting through it quickly, uh, or doing three points in a poem.

It's um, it's going to be, it's going to be a challenge, but anyhow, what were you talking about? You're talking about what's going on in Iraq and you know, as I, as I think about what's going on,

I am once again in that, in that middle ground where I am experiencing the, the disconnect between looking at the absolute animals that I see in video in, um,

Boko Haram, Al Shabaab, ISIS. I have unfortunately seen videos of executions, a video of an execution where there's, and of course the cowards always have their faces covered.

Um, and they're quoting from the Quran and they are quoting from Surah nine, fight those who do not believe in the law or in the last day and who do not consider unlawful what law and his messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the scripture, the people of the book fight until they give the

Jizya willingly while they are humbled. Now it's interesting to me, um, that the very next thing

I've talked about fighting these individuals until they give the Jizya and this translation says they are humbled.

That's the actual, uh, I remember when my Arabic tutor and I went through this, that's the exact same

Arabic term that is used of the humiliation of Satan and being cast down after the

Adam and Eve incident when, when Satan will not, uh, will not bow down before Adam.

So it's not just feel themselves humbled. It's, it's humiliated is what it is. Um, but the very next

Ayah Surah nine 30 says the Jews say Ezra is the son of Allah. I've never seen any evidence they actually ever did that.

But anyway, uh, and the Christians say the Messiah is the son of Allah. Well, uh, that is their statement from their mouths.

They imitate the saying of those who disbelieve before them may Allah destroy them. How are they diluted?

Many of the ISIS people and the people in Al Shabaab and, uh,

Boko Haram and all the rest of these, these, uh, terrorist groups, um, will apply theological standards for the shoot somebody.

Are you a Christian? Yes. Boom. You're dead. Uh, where'd they get this right there, right there, 39 and you go, well, but, but there aren't there arguments against that?

Sure. Sure. I mean, um, but the problem is these are not the most brilliant people that have ever walked the face of the earth.

Many of these individuals are just not overly bright, but they're overly violent and they want an excuse to rape, pillage, murder, and this gives them the perfect excuse.

And the problem is that those who would say, well, no, this doesn't represent Islam. And thankfully for the vast majority of Muslims, it doesn't because if every

Muslim in the world read Surah 9, 29 and 30 and did not have a, a, uh, a, uh, to see, to see the, the, uh, graphic that was just tweeted, it's a guy and a gal and she's got the hijab on and a pretty little young girl.

And, um, it's, he's saying, I am Shia and she says, I am

Sunni and their daughter says, I am sushi. It's a combination of, uh, okay.

I appreciate that, but I can guarantee you something. I can guarantee you something. That picture was not taken in Iraq.

Yeah. That can happen in the West. Thanks to us. Uh, can't, can't happen.

Can't happen over there. Um, unfortunately, but, um, yeah, Jason Alligood, uh, tweeted that.

That's, that's cute. I like that. Anyway, obviously, ah, see, I'm being,

I am being distracted today. Now, summer, uh, is tweeting pictures of my gorgeous granddaughter pointing at me on the computer again.

Uh, but for some reason, uh, Clementine is in a phase where she identifies me as a baby now, instead of grandpa, uh,

I'm, she's pointing at the computer going baby. And um, I don't look like a baby anymore.

I suppose since I don't have any hair, I suppose maybe that's what she's thinking. Uh, bald equals baby.

I don't know. In the mind of an 18 month old, what can you, uh, what can you expect? I don't know.

But, uh, yeah, that's, that's the current picture cause that's actually me wearing what I'm wearing right now. So there's a, thank you summer for posting that and now

I have no idea what I was talking about. Oh yeah. Um, the, the problem that we have, obviously, um, if, if there were, if the internet was filled with videos of men who call themselves

Christians with black hoods over their faces, making

Muslims bow in front of them, um, and then quoting from the

Bible and then shooting them in the back of the head, which is one of the videos that I saw over the past few days that they tumble into their own grave.

There would be videos, blog articles, sermons all over the place demonstrating that the quotations they were using were a contextual, that they were ignoring this, this, and this, and that that person is not a

Christian. That person is an unbeliever. That's what you'd have.

Why am I not seeing the internet filling with this stuff? My dear moderate

Muslim friends who don't want to kill me, why, why is it so difficult to find?

And I know what the answer has been in the past. The answer to that, Oh, we've covered that a thousand times. Doesn't seem to stop us

Christians from covering it a thousand times worse. Where is this stuff? Where is the clear, compelling argumentation that goes so far as to say that that person with the gun in his hand and the black mask over his face, coward that he is, who blows somebody's brains out is not a

Muslim and is going to hell. Where is that? And one thing, the reason

I'm talking about this is for those of you, my Muslim friends who are absolutely embarrassed by these things, but you're the ones

I want to talk to because how do you determine who is and who is not a Muslim? How do you do it?

They said the Shahada. Some of them have gone on, on Hajj.

They say the prayer. They would look you in the eye and say, I believe Muhammad was a prophet. I just, they, they, and you know that there are historical streams of jurisprudence that allow for amazing behaviors in light of jihad.

And when I listened to almost any conservative Muslim arguing that they can't be doing this, the about the only dividing line

I hear is that, well, we don't have a caliph to actually proclaim a state of jihad.

And it seems to me these radicals have some pretty strong arguments against that saying, well, look at the situation, look at the reality, look at what's going on here.

Jihad does exist. You don't have to have a caliph to make that argument. And again, it takes us back to my argument.

And that is this text, let's go on over there. This text is not sufficient in and of itself to provide the context and the means of exegesis.

For example, I look at this and, and this again, when

I listened to my Muslim friends, this is not what I hear them saying.

It's not how I hear them talking. When you all listen to us and you hear us, I'm going to be interacting with someone on other issues here.

We're going to be going to the text of scripture and we're going to be talking about word usage context what this particular author uses has done with this particular term and, and, and all the rest of this stuff.

When you listen to us, we are utilizing all of these contextual grammatical linguistic tools to allow the scriptures to speak to certain issues.

You can't do that with, that's not what I hear people doing with the, with the Quran. When I look at Surah nine,

I could say, what about the doctrine of abrogation?

What about the various groups and how they apply the doctrine of abrogation? Because Surah nine is one of the last

Surahs to be written. So does Surah nine overrule Surah two? Surah Taubakara? Well, how does that work?

How does that work? Because there's so much in Surah two that is still vitally important to creating

Islamic orthodoxy. So, so how do you know? Well, it's when one contradicts the other than the later abrogates the former.

Okay. Well, okay. There can be no compulsion in matters of religion, Surah two and early

Medinan Surah. But this is right at the end. This is right.

This is, this would, there would be nothing that could abrogate Surah nine. And so we have all the abrogation stuff that we have to argue about.

But more than that, when you look at this, I would say fight until they give the jizya willingly while they are humbled.

I don't see that option being given to the guy that they put a, they, they put a hood over, well, went down to about here on his face, where they blew his face off.

I don't think jizya was offered to him. One matter of just humiliation.

This is pure execution. So could I argue that this, if it, if it means the fight until they give the jizya, that that place is a limitation on what's going on there.

But then we have the very next phrase, which gives a religiously motivated reason to engage in fighting in warfare, because it says it identifies our statement.

The Messiah is the son of Allah. They imitate the saying of those who disbelieve before them. So that's unbelief according to Islam.

Why do you think I have so often engaged the debate that the author of these words was ignorant of what we believe?

You see right there. And so may Allah destroy them.

How are they deluded? They have taken their scholars and monks as lords besides Allah.

No we haven't. No we haven't. Now again, I've heard, take the time to listen to various lectures, different perspectives.

They'll say, well, this is not saying that they were worshiping their, their, their scholars and monks. What they're saying is that they're allowing their scholars and monks to mislead them away from the truth into the worship, into shirk, because they say the

Messiah is the son of Allah. Well, does the Quran understand what sonship means? I've seen no evidence of it.

Seen no evidence of it whatsoever and seen a lot of evidence that it doesn't. A lot of evidence that it doesn't.

And look what's happening. Point is, you can't just look at the text. You know, we may get to some comments on John 6, 44.

I'm not sure. Actually, I don't have no list, but we'll, we'll get some comments on Romans nine. I will be able to demonstrate that the person

I'm criticizing has ignored the flow, context, grammar, syntax, everything of the text.

Can't really do that here. It is not Mubinun. Mubinun means clear, perspicuous. It's a claim made by the

Quran, for the Quran, and it's not a true claim. It's just not a true claim. You can't demonstrate it.

So there you go. There's the problem. Um, do I recognize that those animals, those cowardly animals who are executing men, women and children, raping, plundering all while quoting from the

Quran. Do I understand that these people, it wouldn't really matter what the text was.

Yeah, I understand that. I get it. What I don't understand is why

I don't hear the Muslims who recognize that that is evil.

It is horrific. Why aren't you just coming straight out and putting out videos and putting out books and putting out everything saying these people are not

Muslims? I think part of it goes to a fundamental theological difference between us. We can identify who a

Christian is. At least those of us who believe what the Bible says, that a person is a Christian. Not because they were ever born that way.

You're not born a Christian. There is a radical spiritual work of God in taking out a heart of stone and giving a heart of flesh.

There's faith. There's repentance. And I don't see that in Islam.

I don't see that in Islam. Go online right now. There's this guy. I want to see if we can arrange a debate with this guy because I've got to,

I need to put together a list in one of my programs to remind me because I download the video and I forgot to bring it in here.

I have a video of, there's this guy who does, it's Dawa Made Easy.

He does it in London. And Fazul, I think is the name, I'd have to look at it.

And he runs across this quote unquote Christian guy who's obviously as clueless as a day as long.

But they call him a theologian. And then he just, you know, makes him look silly.

I would love to engage this guy in debate sometime

I'm in London, sometime in the UK. It would be, it would be awesome. But the point is you will find all sorts of videos.

You know, the Dean Show does it and Dawa Made Easy where you have these people saying the

Shahada on the street in three minutes, three minutes. Now we've got our own easy believism.

We've got our own easy evangelism where you get people to mouth some words and you use the right music and the right emotions.

And at least I can consistently say I oppose that too, which makes me really anathema amongst a lot of people today.

But we actually believe, at least biblical Christians actually believe that there are certain marks that identify a true

Christian and you don't become a Christian by simply mouthing certain words, going through certain ceremonies.

It's a spiritual act of God, regeneration. That's where we differ.

I sense a tremendous hesitation on the part of my Muslim friends to be willing to say that someone who's said the

Shahada, who does the daily prayers, isn't a Muslim, despite the fact that what they do is clearly demonic.

It's evil on any level. That's why

I think there's a real problem. Real, real problem. Now, of course, there's a really, oh, thank you very much.

This is what happens when you don't turn your phone off. It hasn't happened for a while. Oh, well, my wife is just now leaving work.

Thank you, dear. I thought that was actually maybe a World Cup update. I have a FIFA app on my phone now and it lets me know after each of the matches who won so at least

I have some idea what's going on. Anyhow, that was a good transition part anyways because I've got other things to get to here.

I said we had a lot of stuff to get to and this is another one. In firstthings .com,

there was a talk by John Beaumont, author of The Mississippi Flows Into the

Tiber, a guide to notable American Catholic converts to the Catholic Church. Now, once in a while, and one of my favorite troublemakers, different troublemakers, this guy

I don't believe is a Cowboys fan, so that's a good thing, but he likes to send me stuff and he sent me this one and he sent it to me and said, notice anything missing here?

And I read through it. I listen to EWTN once in a while.

I can't listen to it all the time, but it's in the feeds in the car and sometimes, especially in the afternoons when

Catholic Answers Live is on or something like that, I'll take the time to listen to it. And there is absolutely no question that I am struck over and over and over and over again, especially if I happen to run across the coming home stuff,

Marcus Grodi. There is such a massive difference between how we as Protestants, believing historic

Protestants, speak of conversion and how Roman Catholics do. We speak of conversion to Christ, the gospel, eternal salvation.

They speak of conversion to the church. That's just the only way to put it. I mean, listen, take some time to listen sometime.

What's the focus when you listen to Roman Catholics? The church, the church, the church, conversion to the church, came home to the church, church, the church, church, church.

And what's the emphasis upon Protestant testimonies? My sin, my repentance, my looking to Christ, his sufficiency, the gospel, our relationship to God.

Now, should there be amongst Protestants a recognition of the gift that the church is to his people?

Of course. By tradition at PRVC, I tend to be the one that offers the final prayer after the

Lord's Supper. There are other men in the congregation that offer the prayers before we partake of the supper, before we partake of the bread.

But generally, as long as I'm there, I'm going to be the one that offers the prayer at the end.

And very, very often, part of my prayer is, thank you for the wisdom shown by giving to your church these ordinances whereby the gospel is portrayed to us and we are reminded of the tremendous cost that was paid for our redemption.

And so I am a churchman, and I do see that there is a real danger, and I speak against this danger, of the individualism that is rampant in much of evangelicalism today.

And seek to strike a meaningful, biblically -based balance in regards to these things.

But that balance isn't even tried for on the part of our

Roman Catholic friends. So here in this article, it says, my Protestant friends sometimes accuse first saints of encouraging

Catholic triumphalism. We're not entirely innocent. No, they're not. But then he gives a list of eight things.

Eight things here. And so in that spirit, with the urgent reminder that there's no reason

Protestants don't share in the reasons in their own way, I'll recount John's summation, adding my own observations.

And this was, this is a wonderful compilation of convert stories that includes a few folks associated with Fine Magazine, etc.

Why do people convert to Catholicism? Why do people convert? So here's why they convert. Visibility.

Catholicism attracts because it's visible. Universality. Church is universal, spanning the entire globe.

Of course, the true church. Endurance. There's a joke about a papal representative who meets with Stalin.

The man of steel announces his intention to destroy the church. The cleric responds, good luck. We've been trying for 2 ,000 years and haven't succeeded.

Ha ha ha ha ha. Of course, that assumes that Romanism is the same church that's existed for 2 ,000 years, and I would very heartily argue against that.

Authority. In our age of exalted individualism and false views of freedom, the church's authority is often seen as a liability.

It is, in fact, the opposite. Well, we'd have to have a discussion about how that has been exercised in the past.

And what the actual authority of the scripture is. Beauty. The church's beauty has its own power as well.

Hierarchy. Number six, seven, saints. Eight, moral witness.

That's, yeah, that's a two -edged sword, isn't it? So there they are. And of course, this was sent to me, and I says, anything missing there?

Yeah. How about the gospel and Jesus? That would be good. Yeah, that's where the difference really is.

It really does strike me that there is just such a, listen to the Coming Home Network sometime.

I'm not making this up. I can just say, go listen. And the church, the church, the church, the church, the church, the church.

Oh, and then Jesus might jump in there once in a while as part of the church. But there is a real, real fundamental difference between the two.

There was a, the Assyrian Encyclopedia actually sent me a link to a discussion between a

Roman Catholic in William Lane Craig's Bible study class recently, because they record his

Bible study class, the Defender's class. And it was on the subject of the mass and the transubstantiation.

And of course, once again, I may go ahead and play it.

And just to give you an idea of the difference between a reformed response to the apologetic presentation of the

Roman Catholic and a virulently non -reformed response, even though I'll have to say in the preceding

Defender's class, when Craig had gone over Rome's doctrine of the

Eucharistic sacrifice, it was pretty good. It was, it was accurate. I mean, the guy's a scholar, just severely compromised on a theological level, unfortunately.

Okay, now I was directed to this article yesterday by the other troublemaker, who is the

Cowboys fan. I think it was, maybe it wasn't him.

I'm sorry, I've forgotten where it came from. I'm experiencing social media overload because I have finally started doing stuff on Facebook.

I'm way behind the curve. I do post some things on Facebook now.

It still has an interface that is absolutely sophomoric. But anyway, so I now have a perfect excuse to say,

I don't remember who sent me this link because I've got stuff coming from Twitter, email, Facebook. Who's to remember?

Who's to remember? I am experiencing that kind of problem now.

And so somebody, some mean, nasty Calvinist somewhere, because we all know all

Calvinists are mean and nasty. At least that's what we're getting from the many people who suffer from Anti -Calvinist

Arrangement Syndrome. And there is a lot of Anti -Calvinist Arrangement Syndrome out there.

But this is an August 9th, 2009. Am I a landmarkist?

No, I am not a landmarkist. We get some real interesting comments out there at times.

But we have to remember, you and I know what I believe because we've been doing this for decades.

And you get new people in and they're like, I don't know. I've not listened to every dividing line and every sermon and read every book.

And I've got to keep that in mind. Anyway, there's a fellow by the name of Steve Horn. And my understanding is he was just elected the head of the

Louisiana Baptist Convention. Now, I have it on good authority that Georgia is the epicenter for Anti -Calvinist

Arrangement Syndrome in the Southern Baptist Convention, which would explain why

Ergon Kanner is hiding in the backwoods of Southern Georgia. Having two and a half hour altar calls.

I didn't hear about that. Oh, yeah. I went back and forth with one of his guys this morning. The guy's like, oh, it was such a great thing.

The invitation started at 930. We went till midnight. I'm like, how many stanzas of just as I am can you go through in two and a half hours?

Wow. A two and a half hour long altar call. Okay. Anyway, it seems to me that Louisiana is putting up a serious argument that the epicenter for Anti -Calvinist

Arrangement Syndrome needs to be moved to Louisiana. It really seems that New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, wow, is likewise seemingly trying to vie with Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary as the producer of people suffering from Anti -Calvinist

Arrangement Syndrome. Here we have an article by a man with a

PhD in New Testament from New Orleans. Okay.

PhD, New Testament, New Orleans. Just going to read it.

Not very long. This is the new president of the

Louisiana Baptist Convention. Chapters 9 through 11,

I'm assuming he's talking about Romans. Chapters 9 through 11 are quite possibly three of the most difficult chapters in all the

Bible. The concept of predestination, sometimes called

Calvinism, is derived from this passage. I'm not stopping, but really?

A little background into this theological question would be helpful to fully understand these chapters. Strict predestination held by many evangelicals, including some

Baptists, is a belief that God's elect go to heaven. God's elect, they would argue, are going to be saved.

They talk about irresistible grace, which means that God's elect have to become believers.

These elect could not resist God's grace even if they wanted. Now, while a

Calvinist would never state exactly this way, the reverse of their theology is that some are not of the elect.

The non -elect can do nothing in order to be saved. I'm just reading what it says.

The two classic passages that are used for this theology are Romans 9 through 11 and Ephesians 1.

Today, I want to use Romans 9 to argue that these chapters cannot possibly give us this theology.

To understand the purpose of any book, we must first of all understand the overall purpose of the book.

The purpose of most, if not all, of Paul's writings to churches is to show the folly of a works -based righteousness.

Romans is certainly an example of this. Jews believed that they could work their way into being right with God.

Now, I've got to stop for a moment. This is why

N .T. Wright has such an easy time promoting his perspective.

When I respond to Wright, and I've responded over the years and as we engaged on the

Unbelievable broadcast, I had to differentiate myself from many.

I am very, very thankful. This is sort of an aside. It doesn't have anything to do with this, but maybe this will be the most important thing we end up talking about, actually.

I am so thankful that there is a Jewish bookstore. There was a

Jewish bookstore. You know, I haven't gone by there in so long. I don't know if it's still there. I'm going to go by there and find out.

It used to be at Missouri and 7th Street. There used to be a Jewish bookstore there.

I'm going to go back by, because I loved going there. I've got some good mezuzahs there for my house.

Anyway, I would go to the Jewish bookstore. I don't remember what it was. I just recognized when

I was in seminary that to be a good apologist meant that I needed to spend a lot more time than most everybody else was spending in a proper understanding of the

Jewish background in the New Testament. That meant understanding what the Pharisees believed and that kind of stuff.

Even as a poor seminary student, I invested in purchasing the

Mishnah, the Talmud, the Sunsino Talmud, the 22 volume.

Now I have it on my phone. Back then, you didn't have anything on your phone except your phone.

This was before I ever had a cell phone. This was before I had a pager. This was in the dark ages for you young folks.

This was before penicillin and air flight. It's all just a blur. When the phones were connected to the wall.

That's exactly right. They were this big, and you picked them up, and you went beep, beep, beep, beep.

Or you went ch -ch -ch -ch. Anyway. Anyhow, I even took classes on Midrash and the

Mishnah at the Jewish Community Center and took classes with Jewish scholars at ASU.

I did a lot of looking into and trying to understand the Jewish backgrounds in the

New Testament. When I read something like this, Jews believed that they could work their way into being right with God.

I just want a face plant. I know how common that is.

I know you've probably heard it from a thousand people, but you didn't get it from reading primary sources.

And it's a shame, because it really has impacted things. And it's allowed a new perspective to get a foothold.

Because there were a lot of people who did have a very surface -level, shallow, inaccurate understanding of Jewish piety.

And, of course, the whole idea that there was just one Jewish perspective, which everybody should know there wasn't.

I mean, just read the New Testament. You've got the Pharisees. You've got the Sadducees. And obviously, there were all sorts of differences between the

Pharisees. I mean, just look at Nicodemus in comparison to somebody else.

Look at Simeon and Anna in comparison to others. It's right there.

It's not that the New Testament misrepresents it. It's just that it's easier for us to focus upon the nasty guys than it is to recognize that, as with everything else, you had a spectrum that you're dealing with.

And so, this is an extremely simplistic statement. It shouldn't be coming from anybody with a

Ph .D. in New Testament. I'm sorry. It shouldn't be. None of this should be coming from anybody with a

Ph .D. in New Testament. None of it. Jews believed that they could work their way into being right with God.

They also had great confidence in the fact that they were the chosen race of God. Paul in Romans, as in most of his writings, attacks this viewpoint.

This is illustrated in Romans in the following scriptures. Romans 1 .17, But the righteous man shall live by faith.

Romans 1 .18, The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness. 2 .17

-29, Steve's paraphrase, It does not matter if you are a Jew in name only, but the true

Jew is the one circumcised of heart, not circumcised of flesh. Romans 3 .23,

All of Romans up to this point is to make this one point all have sinned. Well, there is truth in the fact that the beginning of Romans is all meant to bring everybody in the same position of being condemned before God as sinners.

There is no question about that. Romans 2 is directed to the Jew who is trusting in his own righteousness, and yet he is actually breaking the very laws of God that were mentioned in Romans 1.

Romans 3 begins with that catena of passages. Verse 10 verses, summarizing the 11 verses, bring together the

Old Testament witness of the universal sinfulness of man. And hence, all men are brought before God, mouths closed, self -righteousness ended, standing before God as guilty.

Now we are ready for the good news. Very important to keep that in mind. Very true. That's good.

So, we must read Romans from the perspective that Paul wrote. That perspective is simply that we cannot work our way or be born into a relationship with God.

Thoroughly agree that that is one element of what Paul said. Why is this important and what does this have to do with words like predestined, chosen, etc.?

For starters, we must understand that Paul is speaking from the perspective that some are thinking that they can work their way into heaven.

He has no intention that someone would raise the question that God has chosen some for hell.

He simply speaks from the perspective that some are attempting to work their way to heaven. When we understand this perspective, we then can hopefully understand that Paul is using extreme language to underscore that there is absolutely no merit that any human brings in order to be made right with God.

If there was any merit that a human could bring in order to be saved, that same human would boast or praise himself that he has come to God.

Salvation is not meant to bring glory to a human, but rather to God. In sum, read

Paul's writings from the perspective of answering someone trying to work their way to heaven. You're expecting the rest of it?

There is no rest of it. That's the end. What does any of that have to do with Romans 9, 10, 11?

I don't have a clue. I have no idea. No application was made.

I agree. Paul does absolutely believe that only

God brings someone in the right relationship with him. All of grace. That's what Romans 9, 10, 11 is about because it follows after Romans 8.

Yet, the new president of the Louisiana Baptist Convention thinks that's somehow the answer to possibly three of the most difficult chapters in all the

Bible. I do not believe that they are three of the most difficult chapters. The concept of predestination is not sometimes called

Calvinism. Calvinism includes the concept of predestination, but every system has to deal with the reality that the term predestined actually appears in the

Bible. I guess what he's trying to say is that when you talk about predestined and chosen, those are just extreme words.

Is that the terminology that was used there? Extreme language to underscore that there is absolutely no merit that any human brings in order to be made right with God.

I guess that's what he means. I don't know.

It's a little scary. It's a little scary. There was no exegesis. There was really not much in the way of...

Anyhow, two other things real quick. Am I going to be able to get back to this?

No. I'll try to do these two quickly. I read a book on a ride last week called

Defining an Errancy, Affirming a Defensible Faith for a New Generation. This is a book by James Patrick Holding and Nick Peters.

I've heard of both, obviously. They were holding an eye. Clashed many, many years ago over something called block logic.

Some of you may recall that from many, many moons ago. Basically, this is a blast back at Norman Geisler.

I have not had a whole lot of interest in getting into the middle of this because I've got so many other things going on, so many other topics going on.

I think I probably will go ahead and read the Geisler work. Some of you may recall what happened with the

Mike Licona situation. What was that?

That was a good two years ago now, wasn't it? At least two, maybe three years ago now. I certainly am a person who well knows that Norman Geisler can be very aggressive when it comes to politics.

When Norman Geisler decides that you're not right, you are not right.

That's just the end of that. At the same time, I am very uncomfortable with what

I do see as a degradation of the view of inerrancy on the part of many people.

I wanted to see what this book had to say. I was troubled.

I agree with some of the things that it says. Obviously, I think Geisler is a evangelical curmudgeon.

Very often what I read from him is very surface level. Certainly, Chosen but Free was surface level, filled with errors.

Geisler clearly, once he's made up his mind about something, doesn't seem to be one who's ever going to think that through and think it through to a deeper level.

At the same time, in regards to the Matthew text with Lycona, I pretty much agreed with Norman Geisler on that.

I offered my own understanding of the text. I don't think you have to turn it to midrash or do anything like that in regards to what was going on there.

One of my problems with this book, Defining Inerrancy, is that it presented two camps.

There aren't two camps. That's a massive oversimplification, and it's not a good simplification at all.

It was not helpful because it had the traditionalist versus the contextualizer.

I would identify some major differences between people that were identified in this book as contextualized, some of which go well beyond any meaningful interpretation of the

Chicago Statement. By just creating these two camps,

I thought there was a lot of inaccuracies that resulted from that. All of that to say that the 15th chapter, which is written by Nick Peters, is titled

Lordship over Scholarship? This was the very last chapter.

Maybe that stuck with me more because it's the last thing you hear. Your closing statement needs to be something that really communicates.

Yeah, Dan Wallace actually supports this book, which troubled me.

But I'm to the right of Dan on a number of things, so it doesn't surprise me. But putting Dan in the same group and saying all these people are on the same page, they're not.

That's one of the problems I had. Anyway, what really concerned me was this last chapter.

Let me give you a sense of it. Peters is quoting from Geisler.

Geisler says further, As evangelicals, we must beware of desiring a seat at the table of contemporary scholarship, which is riddled with presuppositions that are antagonistic to evangelical

Christianity. End quote. I agree 1 ,000%. I agree 1 ,000%.

But listen to Nick Peters' response. On the contrary, I think we should eagerly be desiring it.

How are we supposed to make an impact in the world of scholarship if we don't want to sit at the table? Imagine what it could mean for Christianity if Christians were seen as trusted authorities in each field.

Instead of fearing antagonistic presuppositions, what happened to correcting them with real scholarship? Now that paragraph really concerns me.

That's muddled in an amazing way. Now, I find it interesting.

I had lunch with Norm Geisler. This was before, obviously, The Potter's Freedom, back when Norm liked me.

I know we were at the Dallas Christian Booksellers Convention. Whatever that was, it was a really hot one.

In Dallas, it was like 106. We had lunch together, and presuppositionalism came up.

Well, Norm is deaf on presuppositionalism.

I mean, I tried to correct what were obviously to me some misunderstandings on the good doctor's part as to what presuppositionalism was actually saying.

He was having none of it. You've got to realize that for Norm, he's the final authority on anything that he speaks on.

And nobody who's younger than him could possibly offer him anything that he could learn.

One thing I've learned from Norman Geisler is I never want to be that way. Anyway, so it's funny, to me anyway, it's somewhat ironic, that Geisler here recognizes the central role of worldview and presupposition in doing scholarship, and that the table of contemporary scholarship is defined by the enshrinement of a non -Christian worldview as its very definition, its very reason for existence.

And he recognizes these presuppositions that are antagonistic to evangelical

Christianity. And the whole point is, to sit at that table is to compromise and give in to those presuppositions.

To say that there is a moral neutral ground. That there are things that are true outside of Jesus Christ having defined them to be true.

To say that we should go ahead and lay aside our commitment to the absolute lordship of Christ and to the radical elements of that.

That is that everything that is true, every fact that is a fact is a fact because Jesus defines it as a fact. We should go ahead and lay those things aside so we can have a seat at the table.

That's what Geisler is talking about. And he recognizes the impossibility of that. And I'm thankful for that.

That's good. But I don't know where Nick Peters is coming from. We should eagerly be desiring this, to have a seat at the table of contemporary scholarship which is riddled with presuppositions that are antagonistic to evangelical

Christianity. Now, what I'm hoping he's saying is that we should be seeking to challenge those presuppositions, but that's not what

Geisler was talking about. How are we supposed to make an impact in the world of scholarship if we don't want to sit at the table?

Well, maybe by demonstrating that the presuppositions that they have enshrined as dogma and demand we accept are incoherent.

How about doing an internal critique of the world view? How about demonstrating that their form of scholarship becomes incestuous because it does not have reference to an external source of objective truth that can make their scholarship meaningful?

How about doing that? Imagine what it could mean for Christianity if Christians are seen as trusted authorities in each field.

Do you really think that they're trusted, that the idea of trust is given outside of the world view?

The reason that we're not trusted is because there is a deep -seated spiritual hatred to those who bow the knee to the

God that these people are suppressing knowledge about. Instead of fearing antagonistic presuppositions, what happened to correcting them with real scholarship?

The presuppositions are what give rise to the scholarship. There's some real epistemological problem here in what

I'm seeing here. It just struck me that the entire tone and tenor of this chapter missed the point that there is a fundamental difference between practicing scholarship underneath the lordship of Christ and in the open confession of the lordship of Christ and practicing scholarship as the world demands that we practice scholarship.

The world will not accept us at all if we are open and upfront as to what our beginning presuppositions and commitments are.

Jesus told us that a long time ago. This is a topic that I've raised many, many times.

I am very concerned, and this is an example of it, very, very concerned that there are many people who are embarrassed today by the open profession of the lordship of Christ over every area of knowledge.

It has had a deeply detrimental impact upon Christian scholarship as a whole.

I just wanted to mention that it had struck me, it had concerned me. I didn't get to the second aspect.

I'm sorry, I was going to respond to a couple of Max Andrews' comments, but I didn't get to it.

Sorry about that. We will keep that on the list, the ever -growing list of things that we need to get to here on the program that we haven't actually gotten to yet, but there's still a lot of things here in my pocket list, so there's lots of things to be coming up.

Next week, I am very certain that there will be a change in the scheduling.

My assumption is the Thursday program will be either on Wednesday or late on Friday, but probably on Wednesday.

That's my gut feeling. Then starting after that, two weeks, I'm gone.

I'll be in Santa Fe. I'm going to be speaking in Santa Fe. We've got a banner ad up letting you know about that.

Then I will be speaking in the Denver area, just not sure exactly what yet. We're still working on that stuff.

There's going to be another trip to the Denver area in September as well.

My fall is going to be insanely busy. There may be some times that I just simply have to do some brief

ScreenFlow videos in lieu of the dividing line, but we'll do our best to figure out how to get around some of that because the

Internet is fairly ubiquitous these days. We'll see about that. Next program should be normal time on Tuesday, probably around 3.

Then we'll see what happens after that. Thanks for listening, watching, however you did it. We'll see you next time.