December 20, 2005

Casting 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. 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.

So, 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 ahold 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. We've done 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 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. And but the debate, 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. And at that point in time, you definitely will be wanting to make plans because we're only talking 11 months here.

Some people, 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.

And everybody I've talked to said, man, I got to get there. I've got to be there for that one. And so we will be doing this on Thursday.

So a little bit of patience required. But, you know, that's that's that's how we'll work things out.

So anyway, 877 -753 -3341, the program today, a couple of things.

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 the bravery that he showed in at the time of the

Reformation and the things that took place there. But Christianity is not genealogical.

Christianity is 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 trues 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 become legal in Scotland from today, with hundreds of same sex couples playing 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 930 a .m.

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 it is a sad, sad thing.

Later on down the down the article, I read supermarket chains are also cashing in on the pink pound as they 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 the judiciary, 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 our 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 I wish that 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, doesn't doesn't doesn't exist anymore and can't can't be used for that, which is which is a shame because it was really well done.

I think and and very, very understandable to folks. But anyhow, there is a quote in here and I'm just thumbing through it and, you know, sort of wasting my time in the process.

But it was a quote from the the text that I use. At a

Christian college, and it was in reference to the the DNA system, that is the the mechanisms whereby we are able to understand how

DNA is replicated. You've got messenger RNA, ribosomal RNA, transfer RNA. Each has different functions, so on and so forth.

And this kind of of tremendous design, even being described by a secularist, being described by a person who who really honestly does, you know, is trying is her best specifically.

I apologize. My book was 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.

I still had to say, when you look at this, you cannot help but 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 this is the kind of situation that that we're facing today. You 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 you're going to be spending a lot of time preparing them for that, because that's that's our society.

That's our 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 it is 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, oh, this is sort of developed over time.

It doesn't work. It requires a 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 that 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 that's what's going on. It's 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 just the way things things are, unfortunately.

So I've got Bart Ehrman queued up again. By the way, I know that there are there there's two different NPR interviews.

The second interview is much easier to listen to as far as pacing goes. We'll 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 a comment. And so we want 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 have a question concerning limited atonement that my dad proposed to me yesterday.

He said it looks like in Acts chapter two and some other places in Acts that when the gospel is preached, that the hearers are impressed that they themselves are guilty of the death of Christ, such as David Pentecost, that you you simple man basically put

Jesus on the cross. If limited atonement, biblical as I believe it is, then would the people that aren't elect not be guilty of the death of Christ in that way?

Well, you 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, you know, sort of taking off a little bit on Galatians chapter two, 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 have no understanding of that in any way, shape or form.

As far as and so that that becomes a very intensely personal reason for, for example, the hatred of sin.

You know, one of the reasons that we as believers are to hate sin is because we recognize that which our

Savior gave to to forgive us of our sin. And of course, we don't want to add to the burden that he bore in in our behalf.

That, I think, is 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 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 fact, whether they acknowledge it or not, they're not going to acknowledge it if they're not elect, of course, but are they in fact guilty of the death of Christ?

Well, no, they're not paying 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 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 can we say that they have some sort of guilt in the substitutionary aspect of who is joined to Christ?

And I don't think anyone has any 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 chapter two.

That's that's that's an act of grace. That's 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 that's grace and mercy. That's not the the justice area. The justice area comes in when that 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 with the various forms of the quote unquote unlimited.

It's I hate using the term unlimited atonement because everybody limits it in some way. So let's 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 substitutional, substitutionary or if it was, it doesn't actually atone.

I mean, 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 that's not the categories he uses.

He uses the issue of of how much light they received as to as to types of punishment.

But it's not well, it's just simply belief, not belief, belief, not belief. You know, 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 that's simply not the categories that 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. And I that to me really diminishes the issue of of God's justice coming upon sinners by by promoting this idea, in essence, of double jeopardy, where Jesus has already borne that 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 is is goes directly against Hebrews chapter 10, 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 what what place does that wrath have? If in point of fact, this is this is the case that that's no longer an issue.

And the only thing is just this this belief, nonbelief 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, interesting objection based on Acts chapter two. But it doesn't really deal with the intention of the atonement.

And when you start digging down the bottom of what the assumption is, the assumption is something that really isn't there in the doctrine of the atonement.

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 that position?

Well, there are a couple of problems. I mean, you can certainly listen to it. The presentation, I think, is 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 take care of.

And there was no cross examination in the debate. 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 on DVD, what

I'm going to say is a little bit difficult to understand until you can watch it. But we were asked the

MP3s, they're still working on the DVD. We were asked by the folks who are 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 texts and I have one colored background for the first part of the debate, a second color background for the second part of the debate.

And that's it. It's just straightforward material. It'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, he and you can see this on the DVD and we have the presentation. So we need to 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. So he puts up a he says now, 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 I'm 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, it's I repented right then and there.

Well, no, I didn't because he doesn't believe in repentance. So never mind. But but yeah, it really diminished the value of the debate because A, the way he approached and B, we didn't get that we didn't get to do cross examination.

So you can still hear the two sides and you can still hear just amazing. Isogenical leaps on Wilkins part in regards to First John and what

First John is about. And but it will definitely give you an idea of how these people take their system and enforce it on on any passage of scripture so that there's just no possibility of false profession.

There's no possibility of 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. It's someone who does not want cross examination knows they can't win this debate anyways.

So that's just where I'm coming from on that one. So it would be useful.

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 top 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 him.

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.

So I can put you in touch with him. And you can 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. 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'd 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 been discussing basically take 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 arguments 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 where if you're not reformed, you're on a train straight to universalism.

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 gotta trust me.

It involves a more in -depth study, but like all men doesn't always know. It's like, we'd have to look at that further.

Probably the verse that probably came in most handy was about Judas, you know, be better for him not to be born.

It was for the benefit of a third guy, and I was just, who, you know, 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. 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. It's just come to that point, but, and I was wondering what resources are best for someone who's not a full -time student.

Okay, well, are you talking about trying to do this on your own? Are you trying to, 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.

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 can 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, where 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 managed 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 Teknia, T -E -K -N -I -A dot com, from Teknia dot 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, etc.,

etc. And then the workbook is very good. There are computer programs you can get from Teknia dot com, like Parsworks and Flashworks to drill you on those things.

You can get Palm programs to help you with the vocabulary, etc., 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 emails 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. But he did it using William Mounce's grammar, the workbook, the computer programs, the tapes are now available.

I'm not sure if he even had the tapes available, come to think of it. But now Chris is a really bright guy, okay?

And he was disciplined. Basically, you know, I think most people are capable of it.

The issue is, how much do you want it? How much do you want to accomplish that particular goal?

And that's true in intellectual pursuits and spiritual pursuits and physical pursuits. It's same all the way along.

If you really, really want it, then you're going to put out the effort to accomplish it.

But if it's just something he's like, well, you know, it'd be nice to have, that kind of an attitude, it would be nice to have is not going to get you through Greek.

Unless you just happen to have a job that only requires you to work for two hours a day, and you're independently wealthy, then you might be able to do it.

But the fact of the matter is, most of us work more than eight hours a day. We've got family obligations, we have church obligations. And that normally blows away almost all discretionary time.

And so you really have to have a real strong discipline to be able to do the rest of it. They have come out with a grammar, which if I had more bookshelf space,

I could actually see up on my shelf right now. But Zondervan has come out with a matching grammar for Hebrew to the

Mounce grammar. It came out after I taught my last Hebrew class. And so I cannot comment on the methodology it uses.

And I can't give you any references to tape downloads or things like that. I would imagine it's out there someplace.

But I can't give you nearly as much information on that. Because, to be honest with you, for apologetic endeavors, and all the

Hebrew professors out there are going to have a cow when I say this. But outside of Jewish evangelism and really in -depth stuff, it's far more important to know

Greek than it is Hebrew for two reasons. Unless you're dealing with a specific issue in the

Old Testament. Most of the time you're dealing with New Testament teachings regarding the deity of Christ, things like that, prophecies.

And the fact of the matter is, the text that was used by the New Testament writers when they quote the Old Testament wasn't normally the

Hebrew. It was the Greek Septuagint. And so you're still going to be dealing with Greek when you're dealing with these citations.

Now, obviously, it's very nice to be able to, yeah, Practico and Van Pelt.

Thank you, Deo Valente. That's the name of the authors of the other Zondervan grammar that's about the same size as the

Mounce grammar. And maybe the guys in channel will comment on if they've used both of them, which one they felt was better or the relationship of them, and I can pass it on to you.

But the fact of the matter is, it's nice when you're looking at something along the lines of recently, for example, in dealing with Shabir Ali and his citations of textual variants in the

Greek Septuagint. Yeah, it's very nice to be able to look at the

Hebrew, see where the variant comes about in the Greek Septuagint, see how that comes in the

New Testament, etc., etc. But if you've only got so much time to learn a language, then you have to give

Greek the priority as far as apologetic concerns. Yeah, I do Jewish evangelism, though. Well, there you go.

Then two things there, though, is you need to realize you're reading a pointed text over against the end point.

Okay, so, you know, but those are just some of the things to keep in mind as far as that goes. I will pray about it.

But also, I wanted to mention... Just don't look for a burning bosom type thing.

That's not really the way to go. Yeah, I'll consult the Book of Mormon and pray about it. You have a seer stone you can put in your hat, something along those lines?

Yeah. But in regard to the new perspective questions

I had a few weeks ago, you know what really was the key, and this is going back to doing reformed apologetics, is the anticipated objection.

Yes. That really blew apart a lot of the Romans and Galatians kind of text they were using.

It was like, well, they're saying what you're saying they are saying. Right, the objections you raised don't make any sense.

Yeah, like the one in Galatians 3 where it's like, you know, well, that doesn't make sense.

Right. So, I just wanted to give you an update on that. Well, thank you. Thank you very much for your call.

All right, you're welcome. All right, God bless. All right, well, thank you for those excellent phone calls.

Always, always interesting to hear who's listening and what their interests are. I would definitely say that our audience is undoubtedly one of the most unique audiences that exists in all of Christianity.

It really does when you think about it. I mean, then again, that's what makes this program so very, very, very unique.

I can't believe when I travel, the number of people I run into who listen to this program around the world,

Italy, United Kingdom, Scotland. Yes, there are still believers up there and so on and so forth. It's just at times that and reading the blog,

I just don't understand it. It's a truly amazing thing. But anyways, Bart Ehrman, let's get back to speed here.

Bart Ehrman, I picked up, he's got some really well -made books.

In fact, if you're looking for a text, honestly, if you want to have a single text,

I'm going to, you're going to sort of lose me here for a second, hopefully the same one. There we go.

Sound effects are going to show up in channel someday. If you want a single text that gives you the text of many of the early

Gnostic writings, the Acts of Thomas, the Protevangelium of James, in English translation, the

Infancy Gospel of Thomas, these things that you see being cited in various and sundry books, but you wish you could go read them.

In fact, for me, I think I wish you could go read them, because when you read these things, you go, man, this stuff is really way out from the canonical

Gospels and has a completely different worldview and things like that. Well, some of them like the Didache don't, but he has written a book,

Bart Ehrman has written a book, actually two books. One's called Lost Christianities, The Battle for Scripture and the

Faiths We Never Knew, Oxford, and then sort of a companion volume, Lost Scriptures.

Now, what I object to is the subtitle, and this gives you an idea of where Ehrman is coming to, books that did not make it into the New Testament. What does that communicate to you?

Well, it's a true statement, they didn't make it into the New Testament, but the question is, should we even consider it to be a race or a choice or issues like that?

I mean, today's edition of the New York Times didn't make it in the New Testament either, but is that a relevant observation, would be the question.

But as far as just having a text to read, very, very well done, nicely typeset,

Oxford doesn't make cheap stuff, and so he's a well -known guy. Well, we were listening to an

NPR interview where he is discussing his newest book, Misquoting Jesus, and let's roll it back just a few seconds here so we can get the context of where we had stopped.

That changes are being made with each copy. I think the assumption is that changes were made with each copy, and in fact, this isn't just an assumption of scholars, we actually have evidence that changes were being made.

How so? We have thousands of copies of the New Testament over 5 ,700 copies just in the

Greek language in which they're originally made. Many of these copies date from the Middle Ages, but some of them go back to the earlier century, second, third century.

The thing that's striking is that among these thousands of copies, no two of them are exactly alike in their wording.

Now remember, we played this last week. When someone says, what is striking at that point,

I want to just go, what are you talking about? What work of antiquity of anyone's would not be described that way?

What's striking about this? These are handwritten manuscripts, for crying out loud. What is,

I mean, this is a simple fact that any beginning student knows, and here you have an

Oxford -published head of religion, School of North Carolina, multi -book publishing scholars say, it's striking that no two of them are the same.

Well, duh, there's nothing new about that.

That's not exciting. That's not, that's, I mean, I'm sorry, I know it's going to sound harsh, but this is scholarly prostitution.

This is taking a basic fact that scholars go, yeah, so what, and selling books with it.

That's all it is. I'm sorry, I don't understand how anyone could call that striking. That is a simple fact that if you have 100 different people write out the

Gospel of John, you're going to have textual, if you had 100 different people type out the

Gospel of John today, you're going to have differences between what they type. That is a fact.

Big deal. Big deal, but it sells your books when you put it in this context.

There are thousands and thousands of differences. In fact, there are so many differences among these manuscripts that nobody's been able to count them all.

What I usually tell my students is, I actually put it in comparative terms and tell them that there are more differences in our manuscripts than there are words in the

New Testament. And last week, I commented on that again. This is playing with the numbers.

We're talking about a text that is 95 percent pure without question. The number of variants deal with that other five percent.

And you're taking, if I have two, if I have three manuscripts and they read, one of them spells, has the word and, and the other does not, and the other has and one word forward to that, those are three different changes.

And then you compare them all, the rest of them, and that number starts multiplying. And you're playing a numbers game here. That's all you're doing.

You're playing a numbers game here. And if you apply the exact same standards to any other work of antiquity, the only result would be that we don't have a clue what anyone wrote before a printing press.

And in fact, you could start looking at the printing press materials. You can start looking at the differences in the King James Version, for example, and all the changes that have been made in the, in the years that there were errors made in the, in the printing press, because remember, when you first started using printing presses, your hand typesetting that, it was more accurate, but not completely.

And you can say, we have no idea what the original King James read for that matter. But this is, this is absolutely ridiculous to make this kind of argumentation, but it goes real well on NPR.

Well, now, what does that mean in terms of who was doing the changes?

Not only that question, but why? And were there political elements being incorporated in each of these changes?

Well, most of the changes, in fact, were, appeared to have been pure accidents. Scribes in antiquity could spell no better than most people can spell today.

Let's keep that one in mind. They most appeared to be pure accident. The vast majority were pure accident.

And only Bart Ehrman seems to have the ability of reading minds of dead people. He sees dead scribes.

To be able to figure out the ones that weren't. And of course, they didn't have spellcheck, let alone, well, they didn't even have dictionaries.

So, so there are all sorts of spelling differences. There are accidental mistakes where scribes are sleepy, or, or inattentive, or maybe they're, they simply aren't trained to do the job.

There are intentional changes, though, as well. There are places where it looks like scribes have planned to change the text and change it for, for reasons of their own.

Give me an example. Now here, here's where we stopped last week. Or did we get this far? Give me an example.

Here's the, here's the, the thing, okay? Here's the examples of scribes changing things.

Well, there are examples that involve a range of, of, of issues. For example, there are theological issues involved.

Scribes in the, in the second and third centuries, when most of the changes are being made, were battling heresies.

And occasionally a text might be usable by a, by a heretical point of view, and so scribes would, would change the text.

Just as a very simple example. In Luke chapter 2, Jesus is in the temple as a 12 -year -old boy.

And his, his mother and Joseph have been looking for him, because they thought he had gone back with them in the caravan, and it turned out he had.

So they go back to Jerusalem, they find him in the temple, and his mother says, Jesus, what are you doing here?

Your father and I have been looking all over for you. Well, that's a difficult passage for some scribes, because that, that's indicating that Joseph is

Jesus' father. But if Jesus was born of a virgin, then Joseph wasn't his father. And so what do you do with a text like this?

Well, scribes change the text, so that in these changed texts, in fact, Mary doesn't say, your father and I have been looking all over you, for you.

She says, Joseph and I have been looking all over for you. Or some scribes change it to say, we have been looking all over for you.

Now, it's not a huge difference. That, that one isn't, but there are other passages that, in fact, are immensely important for Christian theology, that scribes change for theological reasons.

Part of the... I was, I was loading, that's one of the problems doing this all on computer, is

I was, I was loading the Greek textual data at the same time that I was playing this, and it opened the window on top of the program that plays, that plays the sound.

And since it was still loading, it's like, I, I do not want to allow you to multitask right now.

We're just going to sit here. You're not going to be able to, to, to hit stop when you, when you want to, want to hit stop here.

Luke 2, 43 is the, is the passage that we want to look at here.

And it would be nice if you would give that particular, you know, information.

Actually, I'm sorry, Luke 2, 48 is what

I was looking for. And I believe, if I recall correctly, I did specifically address this in the

King James Only controversy. Let me, whoa, drop books on top of myself. That's one of the issues that we're going to be dealing with here soon.

Let me move page 218 for those of you who are following along in your example.

Page 218, it just has a, a reference to it.

This is in regards to the assertion that the modern translations deny the virgin birth by recognizing that Joseph had the role of father in Jesus's life.

I mentioned on page 218, likewise, Luke 2, 33 is a textual issue as well, though this time is not a matter of parallel influence as it is at Matthew 1, 25.

Here, the charge that is leveled is obvious. The use of father rather than Joseph lends itself to his denial of virgin birth, making

Jesus the son of Joseph. Yet given the plain teaching of loose gospel, that Joseph was not the natural father of Jesus, Luke 1, 34 to 35, is it not much more natural to take this term as referring to the role of Joseph in Jesus's life?

Was not Joseph the husband of Mary? Are we to believe that Jesus never referred to or thought of Joseph as his earthly father, the head of his family on earth?

Could this not be a perfectly plausible explanation? Surely it is. Yet KJV Only advocates are not likely to accept such an explanation.

Their certainty that the modern versions are up to no good keeps them, most of them, from allowing for such clarifications.

But in this case, they have no choice. Their own KJV forces them to abandon Luke 2, 33, if they are in the least bit consistent in their arguments, because, notice the reading of the

KJV at Luke 2, 48, and when they saw him, they were amazed, and his mother said unto him,

Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. Here, from the very lips of Mary, no less, we have the use of the term father of Joseph with reference to the

Christ child, and that in the authorized version of 1611. This use of father by Mary is perfectly consistent with the use of father at Luke 2, 33, where both

Mary and Joseph are in view as a family unit. Also, the KJV itself refers to Joseph and Mary as his parents in Luke 2, 41.

There is absolutely no reason to read into the use of the term father as a denial of the supernatural nature of the birth of the Messiah.

But that issue, I think, is, you know, properly addressed.

But the fact of the matter is, let's say there is some variant at Luke 2, 48, and somewhere, a scribe didn't like the idea, didn't, you know, woke up one morning and was copying this thing and said, you know what,

I ran into a heretic the other day, and he didn't like the idea of this particular reading.

And I'm looking at the text here, and it is such a minor variant that the

Nessie Olin text does not even cite it. It mentions, interestingly enough, the term syngenous appears here.

For those of you that are interested in such things, behold your relatives and father, that's still there in at least one manuscript there, the terms used there.

The question is, do we know what Luke wrote at Luke 2, 48?

Now, if you were listening to the NPR interview, you would come up with the idea that we don't know.

How does Ehrman know that an early scribe changed it? And if we can tell he changed it, does that have anything to do with our knowledge of the original?

Is there any question that there were later scribes who were concerned that, well, you know, this account in the

Synoptic Gospels, I'm confused, as to, it almost sounds like it's contradicting,

Luke is contradicting Matthew, so I'm going to change it. Yes, there were scribes who did that. They weren't necessarily, and in fact, normatively, the scribes in the first few centuries, actually, because they weren't doing a lot of synoptic studies in the first few centuries because they were running from the

Roman soldiers in the first few centuries, okay? In the first few centuries, the vast majority of scribal errors are directly due to simple inattentiveness and the fact that they were doing this with a candle on.

Is that really the music this early? Oh my goodness. Okay, well, I'm sorry. I normally see it another 15 -20 seconds, and I ran out of time.

The point is, we know what the original text of Luke 2 .48 was, and that's not the indication that Ehrman's giving, and that's my real problem with the presentation he makes.

It's rarely about the factual reading of the manuscripts. It's about the spin that's being placed upon it.

More next time on The Dividing Line, the big announcement Thursday evening. Tune in then, and more of this as well.

See you then. God bless. Has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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