December 20, 2005

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.

Technical Problems, Conference News, and the Coming Pulpit Crimes Conference

And good morning, welcome to The Dividing Line. Let me tell you right up front, Sprint Broadband is not in good shape, hasn't been for a number of days, and that's how we get the signal to you. Therefore, we may be dropping in and out a bit today.

I apologize for that. There is nothing we can do about it when you call them. You know how it is in our modern day. You call folks, you get recordings. They hide so many of the technology institutions out there.

You can't get hold of anybody. And so, you know, we've been bouncing around on Sprint Broadband for over a week now. And they say there's no outages, but they've obviously messed something up somewhere along the lines.

And who knows? You got Sergeant Schultz.

Nothing? Nothing?

Yes, that's the problem. So secondly, if you're tuning in for the big announcement, you need to read the blog right before the program. I have been asked by the powers that be to please delay until Thursday so that sufficient preparation can be made.

Nothing's changed, as far as I know. But due to primarily a medical situation, those who have to do all the work, and that is a lot of work in putting things together so that everything works right, have asked that we hold off until Thursday.

Hey, Thursday's still before Saturday night or Sunday, so you're waiting on exciting stuff until then anyways. So there you go. Thursday afternoon, Thursday evening, we will be able to fill you in. I will tell you one thing.

The conference, this will all be being held in Orlando, actually in a resort that I understand is actually in Disney World. And so those of you who have families with kids and things like that and you've been wanting to go there, this will be your perfect opportunity to arrange for something next November, early November, to be with us at that particular point in time, barring any hurricanes, of course.

And you even thought of that, it's enough to make you shudder. But the topics we're going to be covering really tremendously wide application to a large number of people. I honestly think this will be by far our largest conference it needs to be, simply because I can't imagine us putting together a better lineup of people.

I can tell you right now just off the top, just to give you a little something here, two of the speakers that will be joining me in speaking on the subject, Pulpit Crimes. Pulpit Crimes, Lord Willing, will also be a book that will be being released around that time by yours truly.

Pulpit Crimes, by its very description, tells you a lot about what we're going to be talking about, the state of the church and what's going on and what calls itself Christianity today and what the Bible has to say about that.

Two of the speakers we are going to be having, Tom Askell and Philip Johnson. Yes, Phil Johnson, the pyromaniac. Who else can have the pyromaniac speaking, but we will have the pyromaniac speaking. I'm not sure that he's going to be able to be doing any of his pyromaniac type stuff, given fire codes and things like that, but he'll be with us.

The topic of the debate, the subject of the debate, and the person I will be debating, we will announce, Lord Willing, on Thursday evening. At that point in time, you definitely will be wanting to make plans because we're only talking 11 months here.

Honestly, I've told some people about what's going to be going on, and they are talking about putting in their vacation time for next year, around this period of time, and so on and so forth. Everybody I've talked to has said, man, I've got to get there.

I've got to be there for that one, and so we will be doing this on Thursday. A little bit of patience required, but that's how we'll work things out. So, anyway, 877 -753 -3341. The program today, a couple of things.

Christianity, Cultural Decay, and the Judgment of God

First of all, I sadly, a couple, two cultural comments here, both of which are very, very sad. I love Scotland, I love my tartan ties, I love John Knox, and I love the bravery that he showed at the time of the Reformation and the things that took place there, but Christianity is not genealogical.

Christianity is not passed down from generation to generation by mere teaching. Christianity is a thing of the heart. Teaching must take place, but unless the Spirit of God brings spiritual life, Christianity is not genealogical.

It is not something that can be passed down as a culture. I'm sorry, all of those who think that's such a wonderful idea today. Look to Europe, look to England, look to Scotland, and see what happens.

Places where great truths have been trumpeted from the highest hilltops from every pulpit for centuries. And today, in the Scotsman .com article, Gay Weddings Legal From Today, they already began taking place.

Gay weddings will become legal in Scotland from today, with hundreds of same-sex couples planning to tie the knot. Same-sex couples who already have married in certain countries abroad will be recognized in Scotland from now on, while the process towards allowing partners to marry at home will begin from today.

There's a number of... The first gay wedding in mainland Britain is expected to take place in Edinburgh at 9 .30am Tuesday the 20th. That, of course, is today. And Nick in the UK told us that he saw it on the telly, which proves that Nick is from the UK.

And John McGuire and Lawrence Scott McKay, who work for an IT and engineering firm in California, were exporting our depravity, will marry at India Street Registry Office after nine years together. Later in the day, a couple of counselors are expected to marry in Aberdeen.

John Stewart and Neil Fletcher will tie the knot at King's College Chapel. And, of course, when you think of King's College Chapel, who built it, what it was built with, and so on and so forth, you just... you want to shudder.

And then you have high-profile celebrity civil partnerships are expected to be Elton John and his long-term partner David Furnish, and TV homemaker-over-experts Colin and Justin, who live in Glasgow, where I will be speaking in a matter of weeks, actually.

Unless they hear about this, and then maybe I won't. I don't know. But it is a sad, sad thing. Later on, down the article I read, supermarket chains are also cashing in on the pink pound. Asda have launched a range of Mr. and Mr. and Mrs. and Mrs. cards, while sets of darling, dearest, queerest, embroidered soaps and towels went on sale at Superdrug on Friday.

What's next? Well, remember the fact that four of the same people who pushed for same-sex marriage in Massachusetts have now introduced legislation there to decriminalize bestiality. Scriptures tell us this is what's going to happen.

The scriptures describe the condition of the heart of man with tremendous accuracy. And we just simply see this happening over and over again. In our own country, of course, a federal judge, those king priests who believe themselves to be free from the law of God, folks, when a judiciary that does not believe it exists under the authority of God to judge, that individual is a judiciary that will continue to gather to itself all the power possible, all the power it can gather to itself.

And the same thing has happened in our country in the intelligent design debate. You cannot teach students in the public schools that design comes from intelligence. Now, this one to me is absolutely beyond imagination.

I have yet to find a proponent of neo-Darwinian micromutational evolutionary theory who can, with a straight face and not by engaging in the most absurd, ridiculous argumentation, deal with the fact that biochemistry has taught us that living organisms contain a tremendous amount of purposeful information that cannot be explained on random explanations, that cannot be explained on the basis of mere micromutation or any of the other theories that have been propounded that do not involve intelligence.

I mentioned in a little book of mine, let me get off the shelf here, unfortunately it no longer exists. I wish that it did exist. I don't know why it stopped existing because it was doing just fine and lots of people were really enjoying this particular book.

But my two dudes books, these particular books no longer exist. In fact, Richard Braselis came in channel recently and had read the dudes at the door book and was going to use it for a Bible study and I had to inform him, sorry, it doesn't exist anymore and can't be used for that which is a shame because it was really well done I think and very understandable to folks.

Anyhow, there is a quote in here and I'm just thumbing through it and sort of wasting my time in the process. It was a quote from the text that I used at a Christian college and it was in reference to the DNA system that is the mechanisms whereby we are able to understand how DNA is replicated.

You got messenger RNA, ribosomal RNA, transfer RNA, each has different functions, so on and so forth and this kind of tremendous design, even being described by a secularist, being described by a person who really honestly is trying her best specifically, I apologize, my textbook was written by a female biologist, trying to do everything she possibly could to avoid talking about design, to avoid talking about any of that kind of stuff, still had to say when you look at this, you cannot help but realize that it looks beautiful, even though it is not designed.

You just can't avoid doing that kind of thing and the more information we get, the more people have to try to suppress, suppress, suppress and suppress this knowledge that is right in front of us, that we simply cannot get around and so I'm unable to find the specific quote, but I'll track it down at some point, I know it was in there somewhere.

Anyhow, this is the kind of situation that we're facing today. You cannot, let's just face it folks, if you're going to put your kids in the public school, you're putting your kids into a system that by law is opposed to your faith, there's no question about this, none, none whatsoever.

As long as you know that, then you're not going to be nearly as upset about these things and in fact you're going to be spending a lot of time preparing them for that, because that's our society, that's our world.

By law in their place, where they are under control, they will promote their religion and it is a religion, secularism is a religion, it is a worldview, it is the worldview, the religion of our nation now, let's just face it, that's the way it is and secularism cannot accept the reality, even of facts, I mean intelligent design, like I said, I've never found anyone who can even begin to argue this in a meaningful fashion, intelligent design is right there, it's right in front of us, you can't look at the structure of the eye, you can't look at how blood clots, you can't look at these complex biochemical processes and go, it just sort of developed over time, it doesn't work.

It requires an exercise of the suppression of the knowledge of God. It's just all there is to it and so we shouldn't be surprised by this, I mean this is what has been going on in our society, God's judgment is falling upon this nation and that's, we shouldn't be surprised, I'm not surprised at it, we're seeing God's judgment falling upon Scotland and England and Western culture as a whole, Western culture can't even defend itself anymore.

There are cities in England that they've outlawed Christmas decorations because it might offend the Muslims for crying out loud. This kind of utter backwards thinking, it is a part of the judgment of God, it's the only thing that explains it.

Self-destruction, that's what happens, what's Paul's term? Turns them over, turns them over. God's law protects us, you hate God's law, you go against God's law and what's the result? You destroy yourself, right?

Self-destruction, self-destructive behavior. There you go, that's what's going on, it's all around us and that's just how it is. So a couple of comments on things that are going on in the world right now, doesn't surprise me in the slightest, that's just the way things are unfortunately.

Limited Atonement and Guilt in Acts 2

So I've got Bart Ehrman queued up again. By the way, I know that there's two different NPR interviews, the second interview is much easier to listen to as far as pacing goes. We'll bring that up in time, but I figure we'll just continue with this one for a couple of reasons.

You know, we're halfway through our comments and so we wanted to continue with that. But before we get to the Bart Ehrman material, let's go ahead and take our first phone call and talk with Andrew. Hi Andrew, how are you?

I'm fine, how are you Dr. White?

Doing pretty good.

Great. I had a question concerning limited atonement that my dad proposed to me yesterday. He said, it looks like in Acts chapter 2 and some other places in Acts, when the gospel is preached that the hearers are impressed that you sinful men basically put Jesus on the cross.

If limited atonement, then not be guilty of the death of Christ in that way?

Well, you've got to realize, first of all, the people who would recognize their role, I mean some of the most beautiful, in fact I was thinking of the Christmas program I was involved with the weekend before last over in Tampa.

One of the songs that for some reason is escaping me utterly at the moment, talked about it was my sin that held him there and sort of taking off a little bit on Galatians chapter 2 where Paul says that Christ died for me in my place and so on and so forth.

The elect are the ones who realize that. The non-elect have no understanding of that in any way, shape or form. And so that becomes a very intensely personal reason for, for example, the hatred of sin.

One of the reasons that we as believers are to hate sin is because we recognize that which our Savior gave to forgive us of our sin. And of course we don't want to add to the burden that he bore in our behalf.

That, I think, is perfectly proper thinking on our part, which I've never heard a non-elect person, of course, express because they don't have any understanding of their sin in that way. Or if they do have any type of conviction of sin in the general sense of the Holy Spirit convicting the world of sin, they're suppressing it and they're using various and sundry other means of getting rid of that.

But the question, seemingly, that you're asking is, would it be an untrue thing for the unbeliever to say that? Is that the question you have?

The question is, are they in Acts?

Well, no.

Because he did not pay for their sins.

Yeah, well, of course, the people that were specifically involved with the actual crucifixion of Christ, which is what you have in Acts, I mean, you have the same time period there. You do have that, and despite the tremendous unpopularity of this particular passage, you do have the Jewish leaders saying, His blood be upon us and upon our children, which had to be deleted from the Passion movie because it was politically incorrect to say those things.

So outside of those particular aspects and applications, you wouldn't have the idea that Christ is substitutionarily atoning for the sins of those individuals as part of what the reason for that is.

No.

Their guilt is, A, their simple being in Adam and falling in him, B, their love of their own sin, and there is guilt, I think, very clearly in their persistent, dogged, and I would say natural, given their everyday suppression of the knowledge of God, natural rejection of the lordship of Christ, and so on and so forth.

But the idea, I think, what's being asked is, Can we say that they have some sort of guilt in the substitutionary aspect of who is joined to Christ? I don't think anyone has anything to do with that. That's God's choice as to who he unites with his son, and who can say the words of Galatians 2.

That's an act of grace. That's not really a category of justice so much as it is, who is it that God unites with his son so that they can say, Christ loved me and gave himself for me. That's grace and mercy.

That's not the justice area. The justice area comes in when that uniting has taken place. What is the result of that death? The result of that death then becomes the justification, the perfection of those for whom it's made.

And that's where the problem comes in here, because the assumption that I think is behind the objection that you've heard is that the real guilt of the sinner is not his personal sin. This is one of the problems I see with the various forms of the quote-unquote unlimited.

I hate using the term unlimited atonement because everybody limits it in some way. So let's use it in the sense of non-particular redemption. That is, it's just sort of a general thing that was not fully substitutionary.

If it was, it doesn't actually atone. It depends on which viewpoint the person is taking. One of the problems I see with that position is it really diminishes the actual guilt of the sinner as to their own personal sins and makes the idea, well, the real reason you end up getting punished is unbelief, not because of your own sins.

Which isn't, I mean, when Jesus talks about Sodom and Gomorrah and Chorazin and Bethsaida, that's not the categories he uses. He uses the issue of how much light they received as to types of punishment, but it's not, well, it's just simply belief, not belief, belief, not belief.

All your sins were actually atoned for in Jesus, and the only sin you're ever going to be punished for is unbelief. That's simply not the categories that he utilizes. So I think that's one of the problems in that perspective is it really, in essence, says, you know what?

Sin is no longer an issue for anybody. It's all just this one thing. That, to me, really diminishes the issue of God's justice coming upon sinners by promoting this idea, in essence, of double jeopardy where Jesus has already borne that wrath in his body upon the tree.

All my sins have been taken care of, and now it's just this one issue. And that, to me, goes directly against Hebrews chapter 10 and so on and so forth. So in answer to the person who would say that, you have to dig down to asking them, well, what do you think is actually the basis upon which any sinner in the future is going to be punished?

Certainly, the Scripture says the wrath of God abides upon the unbeliever. Well, what is that wrath? What place does that wrath have if, in point of fact, this is the case, that that's no longer an issue and the only thing is just this belief, non-belief issue?

No person outside of faith is going to experience that. There's no question about that, but that gets us all into the issue of who's going to believe, what's the nature of saving faith, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But interesting objection based on Acts chapter 2, but it doesn't really deal with the intention of the atonement. And when you start digging down to the bottom of what the assumption is, the assumption is something that really isn't there in the Doctrine of the Atonement either.

Answering Free Grace and the Need for Cross-Examination

I have a real quick question. You did a debate just a while back, I believe, with Bob Wilkin?

Yes.

And he was a free grace proponent?

Yes, he is.

Would that be the best resource, getting that debate on knowing how to answer someone that would hold to that position?

Well, there are a couple problems. I mean, you can certainly listen to it, and the presentation, I think, is very straightforward as to which sides are dealing with Scripture. Unfortunately, I will take the blame for the fact that I did not watch the preparations for the debate closely enough.

We had some real problems in getting the debate format arranged, and I just sort of had to leave that to others to take care of, and there was no cross-examination in the debate.

Oh, oh.

And since there's no cross-examination, and the other thing is, and I'm not even sure if we've gotten that ready yet in DVD, because if it's not available in DVD, what I'm going to say is a little bit difficult to understand until you can watch it.

But we were asked, the MP3 is there, still working on the DVD. We were asked by the folks who were putting this on to put up on the screen the texts that we were presenting so that the people in the audience could follow along.

So if you see my presentation, you will see that I have my outline, and I have the biblical text, and I have one colored background for the first part of the debate, a second colored background for the second part of the debate, and that's it.

It's just straightforward material that's there for people to be able to follow along because we had a very limited amount of time and a lot of material to cover. Unfortunately, Dr. Wilkin decided to take a completely different approach to this debate and decided to go after me rather than the issue.

The only time I even quoted him was so that people could understand, since I went first, what his beliefs are on this particular subject. I didn't go after him, but he decided to go after me sort of in a preemptory way, and he inserted a bunch of pictures almost on a comedy level.

At one point, for example, and you can see this on the DVD, and we have the presentation, so that's what's taking so long to do the DVD is we need to take the PowerPoints and mix them into the video, and that's not a short thing to do.

He says, now Dr. White thinks that this is what his gospel looks like, and he puts up a picture of a beautiful palace-type thing, like an English palace or something like that, but in reality, this is what his theology is, and he puts up a picture of this ramshackle little one-room shack that's leaning over and about to fall over in a dust field.

And most of the time, I was just taking notes about what he was actually saying, but I actually turned around and saw this, and I was like, you've got to be kidding me. I mean, so unfortunately...

That's a irrefutable argument.

Oh, I repented right then and there. Well, no, I didn't, because he doesn't believe in repentance, so never mind. But yeah, it really diminished the value of the debate, because A, the way he approached, and B, we didn't get to do cross-examination.

So you can still hear the two sides, and you can still hear just amazing, eisegetical leaps on Wilkins' part in regards to 1 John and what 1 John is about, but it'll definitely give you an idea of how these people take their system and enforce it on any passage of Scripture, so that there's just no possibility of false profession, there's no possibility of false faith, nothing like that at all.

But I'll take responsibility for it not turning out overly well, simply because I didn't see that there wouldn't be cross-examination. If I've learned anything in almost 60 debates now since 1990, if you don't have cross-examination, all you've got are two people standing up front making speeches.

And we've got a situation right now. We're trying to get a proponent of anti-reformed bent to do a debate in April of next year, and the one thing that this particular individual wants to avoid doing is having cross-examination.

Now, I've debated this person before, and I can understand why he doesn't want to have cross-examination, because the wheels fell off of his position during cross-examination. But I'm not going to ask our people to fly to another state and set up video cameras and do all the rest of this stuff if there's not going to be cross-examination.

There just isn't any reason to. Someone who does not want cross-examination knows they can't win this debate anyways. So, you know, that's just where I'm coming from on that one. So it would be useful, you know, but what you might want to do is drop us a line through the website.

Rich is listening right now, so hopefully he'll see us coming through. Have him pop that over to me. I'll get you in touch with a friend of mine. Or, wait a minute, I just realized something. Unfortunately, I'm on dial-up, so this is slower than molasses in January.

But I think I have in here, there's a new blog. Which one was it? I put it on my own blog just a little while back, so I may have to look for it, because I don't have the URL off the top of my head, and I don't see it in my Sage feeds here for some odd reason.

I'm not sure why. But there is a new blog that just came out that has a fair number of big hitters on them. And one of the folks that's doing this is a friend of mine named Chris Jenkins. He's a doctoral student at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

He did his master's thesis on the issue of Wilkin and the whole movement there. And getting hold of his thesis would be what you'd really want as far as documentation stuff goes.

Okay.

So I can put you in touch with him, and that would be even more useful to you as far as, especially if you're talking with somebody in a written form, so you can have the documentation right there at your fingers.

All right.

All right?

Thank you.

Okay.

Thanks for calling.

All right.

God bless. Bye-bye.

877 -753 -3341. Let's just go ahead and press on here and talk with Jeff. How you doing, Jeff?

Hey, Dr. White. How you been?

I've been doing pretty good.

How did your new perspective talk go?

It went quite well. I had a lot of interest and had more interest in the federal vision than I expected, so that sort of got us going a different direction. But it all worked out just great.

What's up?

Well, I wanted to call to thank you for something and ask you a question. My manager's manager at work has basically taken the form of a belief that hell is only temporary.

Yes, uh-huh.

And so...

Temporary as in followed by destruction or temporary as in followed by reformation?

Followed by restoration.

Oh, okay.

So it's almost a purgatory concept.

Yes.

Okay.

Well, but anyway, I wanted to thank you because pretty much it all boils down to having the centrality of reformed thought within your apologetics.

Right.

Because pretty much the best argument to come up with is there's a lot of things in the epistles which are like, all things will be restored, all men, God is the savior of all men, especially of believers.

Things like that are trained straight to universalism.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, there's no question about it. I mean, honestly, I think all you have, once you abandon an exegetically centralized apologetic, in other words, once you abandon the idea that a sound theology is what gives rise to a sound apologetic and you cannot change your theology to make better apologetic points, which unfortunately is something I see a lot of tendency on the part of many people today.

Once you abandon that idea, all you have are different gradations of inconsistency, people who stop at different points, but there's no particular reason why they have to stop there. So if something happens in their life that starts pushing them on farther down the road, that's where they end up going.

And you see that happening a lot.

Well, for me, it's like, it did sound, I'm like, you've got to trust me. It involves a more in-depth study, but like, all men doesn't always, you know, it's like we'd have to look at that further.

Right.

Probably the verse that probably came in most handy was, Thou, Judas, it would be better for him not to be born.

Yes.

So I kind of had like, it was for the benefit of a third guy. You know, it was persuaded a lot by my manager's manager. And it was just kind of like, well, you're right about the cross-examination, because I'm kind of like, well, then why would that be the case?

You know, so I was calling to thank you.

Okay.

And my question was, there's a lot, I basically realized at my point in time, even though I don't really intend to go for a full seminary degree, I really do need to pick up the original languages.

Ah, yes.

If it's come to that point. And I was wondering, for someone who's not a full-time student.

Okay.

Well, are you talking about trying to do this on your own, or are you talking about taking a class?

Probably on my own. I'm not sure when I would have time to take a class.

Well, this is the Chris Jenkins hour, I guess, because Chris Jenkins, who I mentioned to the last caller, contacted me a number of years ago while he was still doing his undergraduate degree. And, in fact, he brought me into his church, and I got to know him when I was speaking there and things like that.

And one of the things he asked me for was this exact question. I get this question all the time. People who say, look, I want to learn Greek, but I'm just not in a situation in my life, in my family, in my employment, in my situation to be able to head off someplace or take a nighttime class.

And, sadly, a lot of places just don't offer that kind of stuff anymore. People aren't necessarily close by someplace they can do that. He says, how can I do it? And I said, well, I'm going to tell you something.

I don't know anyone who's done this, who's survived it. Because the main thing that learning a language on your own. And I'm discovering this right now. I want to be farther along in my Arabic studies than I am now.

And it takes discipline. And when you've got 47 ,000 different things going on, I've got seven or eight different debates next year. Three of them are on the same subject. All the rest of them are on completely different subjects.

Man, I'll tell you, it's hard to carve that time out, stop your mind from thinking about everything else, and focus on this. And focus on language is vital because you're having to learn an alphabet. You're having to learn vocabulary.

You're frequently having to, and this is the problem for most of us, you're frequently having to learn two sets of grammar. And what I mean by that is most people fail in their study of Greek and Hebrew because they don't know English.

And let's face it, most of us manage to get through school. Some of you had good teachers. Some of you had strict teachers. And you know your grammar. But most of us didn't. And we end up having to try to learn two languages at the same time.

And that all takes a tremendous amount of discipline. So what I told Chris is I said, look, Bill Mounce's material, his grammar from Zondervan, his workbook you can get from Technia, T-E-K-N-I-A .com.

From Technia .com you can get the lectures of Bill Mounce actually presenting his own material. Bill Mounce, William Mounce, M-O-U-N-C-E. Mounce's beginning Greek grammar is truly the friendliest Greek grammar you'll ever encounter.

I've taught through it I don't know how many times. I taught Greek for a number of years for Golden Gate Seminary. And it really, really helps people get through it because it's encouraging. He knows when you start running into the wall.

He has some humor there. It's not just the dry, dry, dry stuff that you get in most grammars where they think they have to be mean and nasty and dry and boring or they're not really teaching you properly, et cetera, et cetera.

And then the workbook is very good. There are computer programs you can get from Technia .com like ParsWorks and FlashWorks to drill you on those things. You can get Palm programs to help you with the vocabulary, et cetera, et cetera.

So it's really a complete system. And I suggested that to Chris. And I said, you know, if you're going to do it, this is going to be the way to do it. Well, he did it. That's why I can point to him and say he's the only one I know so far personally.

I'm sure there are others, and I'm going to get a bunch of e-mails from other folks now saying I did it too. But he did it, and he proved it by testing out of Greek at Master's Seminary, which has a fairly high standard for your Greek proficiency to be able to do that.