Being Saved, Marxists Everywhere, Graeme Codrington vs. John Piper

Guten Tag. Guten Tag. Wie geht's mit Ihnen? Oh, I'm sorry. Let's Google Translate that.

Good afternoon. It's a... I think it's Tuesday. Is it Monday or Tuesday? It's Tuesday.

Thank you very much. Tuesday. All day. Yes. We were here yesterday, weren't we? Yes. It's hard to keep track anymore.

You know, it used to be that you could sort of figure out what day it was by, oh, you know, something happened, you know, meaningful, you know, last

Thursday, and so it's been a few days. Now, it's just like every day, oh, hey, the Supreme Court, you know, just demonstrated that Roberts is a way left of center type guy.

I mean, I wasn't going to mention, I wasn't going to talk about this. There's already been a lot of good discussion about this.

But I hope you realize, you know, there are four Supreme Court justices where it's just, if it has anything to do with abortion, their souls were purchased by Satan for a lot of money a long time ago.

That's just all there is to it. People thought this was the case to make some progress, this incrementalism, this idea, let's go a little bit here, a little bit here, a little bit here.

The incrementalist case just collapsed big time in this situation because everybody thought, well, we don't have

Kennedy anymore, and we've got two new justices. And so it was 5 -4 before, it'll be 5 -4 our direction this time.

That was what all the calculations were, everything else. It went 5 -4 the other direction because Roberts. Now the four leftists, they keep calling them liberals,

I wish they wouldn't. But the four leftists, you know, they're just repeating row. But the thing that's amazing is what

Roberts did, because Roberts had been amongst the four that supported the

Texas law that was almost identical, not quite, but almost identical to the

Louisiana law. And he had argued that it had been badly argued before.

Okay, so he was in the minority before and said the minority had misargued, or the majority had misargued.

So everybody's like, okay, so here's basically the same case. Now we've got five, and he said the last one was misargued.

So the four put out their statement for the majority.

He puts out a concurrent statement because he doesn't agree with the argument.

But as chief justice, his biggest thing is precedent. You must respect the court's precedent.

And so even though he'd already said the court blew it last time, he blows it again, all because he's the chief justice.

And that's what you have to do to protect the court, the court's legacy. I lost all respect, gone.

He's just throw them in with the other four that are minding them zombies when it comes to all of that.

So there's really only one justice on the court right now that you can actually trust to think things through in a meaningful worldview perspective.

He's the only one left. And so one out of nine ain't going to get you very far. That's just all there is to it.

So it's Clarence Thomas, by the way. And remember what Joe Biden did to him? Oh, no, nobody remembers.

I do. I was around back then, but almost nobody else does.

I mean, that alone should be enough to disqualify Joe Biden. But that was the Joe Biden who remembered who

Joe Biden was. So I'm not even sure if Joe Biden remembers what he did to Clarence Thomas, to be honest with you.

I'm serious. You're terrible. No, I'm absolutely serious. I'm not sure he remembers that.

The man is not functional. And that means if you elect him, you're electing people you don't even know who they are, who will be in control of everything.

That's all. It's just, I don't know.

Yeah, it's possible. Who knows? But it's a mess. It is. If you want judgment, folks,

I mean, how could, honestly, answer me a question here.

If we're not experiencing judgment in this nation right now, what would it take for you to think that we are maybe every volcano in America that has, you know, all of a sudden erupting, maybe locusts, blood in the water.

Okay. Rich has got some ideas. I wouldn't suggest these things because it is 2020 and it's we're only halfway through.

So you never know. I mean, seriously, we are the

Senate voted down a bill that would protect babies that were born alive during botched abortions last year.

The Nazis didn't even do that. I mean, the real Nazis, not not the not the

YouTube Internet Nazis. I've read enough. I've visited death camps in Germany.

I can read the signs. Okay. I've been there. I've been in the medical places. Sachsenhausen was was the last one that I had seen.

I drove by Buchenwald. But so I know something about the

Nazis, the real Nazis, not the not the almost everyone talking about Nazis today know nothing, zip, zero, nada about who they really were.

And they didn't even dream of some of the stuff that we now do regularly. And so you've got that going on.

We inject by law, by by judge's decree, we inject eight year old boys with puberty blockers to pretend that they're girls and vice versa.

This is this is the nation. This is the nation that is now celebrating our highest judicial individuals.

People in Supreme Court presiding over marriages between two men, two women, eventually be three women, one man, two women, two women, one man throwing orangutan in for the fun of it.

Why not? Doesn't matter anymore. This is where we are as as a people.

And you look at who we have running for office. And you just go, yeah, there's something there's something in the

Bible about unrighteous judges. There's something in Psalm 82 about how unrighteous judges are, you know, this this this causes an upheaval to the very foundations of the earth and and you.

What would it take to convince some of you? Because some of you are like, oh, no, you're just not you're just overreacting.

We look at what has happened to this nation in the past six months. We the collapse of freedoms and liberty and the fear and the panic.

This is not the nation that landed on the moon in 1969. This is not the nation that did that.

What happened? Well, I was just mentioning a number of the reasons.

So if this isn't judgment, what is? Could you tell me what it would look like? The division, the strife, the hatred, the animosity, the the the embrace.

I mean, I was I was looking at pictures of Black Lives Movement gatherings in Austin, Texas.

As far as the eye could see. People of every different color doing the communist salute in the

United States of America. How'd that happen? How if you can get through an education and not realize what communism did in Russia, Eastern Europe, what it's continuing to do in China, what it's continuing to do in in Vietnam, North Korea.

If you don't you know, when when people talk about the North Koreans putting political enemies and by the way, being a political enemy just means someone who doesn't smile exactly the same way that the divine family wants you to smile in wood chippers.

No one goes, that's impossible. Everybody who knows the system goes, yeah, that's how they do it.

Or being executed, not by a firing squad, but by an anti -aircraft gun. So you just, you know, there's nothing to be found afterwards and that sort of thing.

Yeah, these people killed between 120 and 150 million people in the last century, continuing to do it now.

Who knows how many Christians, Uighur Muslims, everybody else in China have just, you know, just disappeared.

That's aside from all the forced abortions, which you can't even talk about that. Communism is not only a failed system, it is a satanic system.

It is as anti -human, evil as you can't define the term evil any more clearly than when you're looking at communism.

And here in the United States, all of a sudden a movement has 60, 70 % approval rating and they're doing the communist salute.

And I'm just sitting here going, sorry, I've been saying it was coming,

I did not, did not see, did not see it happening quite that quickly.

So yeah. How'd you get me onto that? I wasn't going to start with that. I was going to start with something. It's your fault.

I think you did. I think you said something. I don't, we're just getting so old, I don't remember what it was, so you get away with it.

So anyway. I did want to start with something fun. So after that 10 minute rant, well, it's because I got stuff on my screen to talk about later and that's it.

I see that. Just a reminder to everyone, if you haven't seen it, I posted it on Facebook.

But our friend Chris Arnzen has been hospitalized. He has probably a form of congestive heart failure.

And so he's there in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. If you'll be praying for the doctors and for him, he's too young to be having this kind of thing.

But be praying for Chris Arnzen, iron sharpens iron. And obviously it would be extremely encouraging for him right now if there were some gifts coming in to help him during this time.

So iron sharpens iron is the radio program. You can look him up and pray for him and thanks to Mike Gaydosh for getting that news out.

That's how I first heard about it and then Chris called me. So I was aware of that. Now, I did want to do one sort of fun thing.

Fun. I'm not sure. I'm not sure that's really the best term to utilize here. Something other than the fact that my nation is collapsing into communism, which will take the entire globe with it, by the way.

You do realize, you do realize we have nuclear weapons, right? You know, do you want

Joe Biden with the codes? He won't remember where he put them. I mean,

I mean, that sounds humorous and on one level it is. But the fact is, do you really, really want the one nation that has been the counterbalance to the communists that has nuclear weapons to go communist?

Well, they're marching in our streets and I've seen a number of articles recently and this follows through with something

I've said in the past. You do not need 51 % to change a nation.

The Muslims say you need 11%. It's a minority number that can change a nation and intimidate everybody else.

And that's exactly what's going on right now. Look at the people getting bounced off of. I mean, we're working on getting ready for how we're going to do this program in completely different ways than we're doing it right now.

It's so convenient for you right now to watch it on YouTube. We will not be there for long.

We will not be on Facebook, Twitter for long. There's going to have to be other ways to do things.

That's why, by the way, make sure you've bookmarked AOMin .org. Do you remember something called

RSS feeds? Do you remember RSS feeds? That was the beginning of the blogosphere. And I had, you know, a reader and you picked what

RSS feeds you had put in there. And when stuff came across, it would notify you. We're going to have to go back to that.

We got away from it because there was all this freedom for people to use social media and stuff like that.

That will be taken away from us. It's happening right now. They are banning people right now, left, right and center.

You just don't necessarily see it unless they've got enough people for other people to risk going, hey, this guy just got kicked out and and it's just because he won't go with the narrative.

People getting fired left, right and center for saying stuff that is so middle of the road, vanilla, that it's astonishing.

Yes. Yes. So I don't like the straight on shot.

You need you need the side shot. You need I need to go over here. I'll do this then. Well, that actually helps a little bit, but it's still a bit a bit of a of a up close and it's sort of look like the mug mug mug shot thing.

OK, does that make you feel better? A little bit. OK, anyway, I'm not going to go for it. So I use

Feedly. Yeah, I used to. It's still around and it is a there is, by the way, in the new design, we

I deliberately put an RSS link up there. So if you have Feedly or need to go get an easy

RSS reader that actually works and you can organize, it's actually pretty nice now. Get Feedly, organize it and go click on that RSS link.

If it doesn't work on the click, you can just copy it and drop it into Feedly and you're going to start getting our feed everything from the blog, from the blog.

Yeah. So there may be other stuff coming. Yeah, we can't talk about that right now.

Oh, but but there may be other stuff. There may be others. Well, I think you're right. I think it's not a matter of maybe.

I think it will be. It's just a matter of time and us trying to fend that time off as long as possible and trying to come up with ways in which to do that.

But in the meantime, we need to be prepared and we're working on doing that. Gotcha. So, yep, yep.

Yeah, I think I think a lot of us are going to be going back to those ways once regular social media is closed, closed off to us because it's happening right now.

It's happening. And so, yeah. All right. So let's do something that we spend other six minutes there.

I saw this clip, this this. This fellow went when he first started showing up on on YouTube and on Twitter with people posting clips from him.

I said at the time, is this guy for real? Is this is this really happening or is this somebody who's just purposefully trying to mock independent fundamentalist

Baptist King James only folks? Because it was just such a caricature, just so classically,

I don't care. I'm uneducated. I'm proud that I'm uneducated.

I don't want to be educated. I'm just going to say the dumbest things in the world and then say, bless

God and go from there. Well, everything that I've heard about Rager, Pastor Rager, everybody has said, hey,

I've gone by, this is where they meet, you know, and there's like six people there.

But yeah, it's real. And and he really believes this stuff.

So there was a clip yesterday that I saw where he's sitting there going,

I don't need to know anything about this, that. And he goes, I don't need to know anything about the hyperstatic union.

It's hypostatic union, but and you're just like, you don't even know how to respond to stuff like that.

But this clip I wanted to to deal with because I remember from my youth,

I've I've been in contexts where this was an argument against modern translations that I heard from people.

And it's important that all of us be able to correct this kind of misapprehension, this kind of misunderstanding.

It's one thing to watch this guy doing it because he's literally going to throw a Bible across the room, but it's an

NIV. So for him, it doesn't matter. He's going to throw a Bible across the room, but it's why he throws it across the room and says it's straight out of the pit of hell that I wanted to talk a little bit about before we get into some other uber serious stuff.

So here is Pastor Rager, very well named prophetically, clearly addressing the issue of First Corinthians chapter one, verse 18.

So here we here we go. All right. So let's also see what the new international version has to say about these texts.

Ironically, Matthew 7, 14, the new international version gets that right. But let's go ahead and see what it said.

The new international version says in First Corinthians 118. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those which are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

Those of us who are being saved. Are you saved or you're not? Was this thing written by a person in the middle of a sinner's prayer who was in the process of accepting

Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior? Being saved straight out of hell.

So you get such an interesting look on your face when

I write stuff like that. Yeah, so this is the theatrics that take place regularly in Rager's church, if that's the terminology it will use, the independent

Baptist church that always has different backgrounds. So I think they move from place to place, maybe different hotel venues and stuff like that.

But hey, that's fine. But that's the kind of stuff you get, you get the NIV being thrown across the way because of how the

NIV rendered First Corinthians chapter 1, verse 18. So if we look at First Corinthians chapter 1, verse 18, and I know we've dealt with this before, so bear with us as we deal with it again.

Not everyone catches every program, but the

New American Standard Bible currently reads, for the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved is the power of God.

I think that's identical to the NIV, so I guess that should be thrown across the room as well.

The problem is that is a perfectly accurate translation of the

Greek, which obviously Brother Rager would have no idea of and would not think that is all that relevant.

And he'd probably throw the Greek across the room as well, because First Corinthians 1 .18 says, the word, the logos of the cross, stauru, tois men apolumenois, to those who are perishing.

Now, this is a participial form. To perish is a concept found, in fact, the substantival participial form is used by Paul elsewhere.

Those who are perishing is his description of the non -elect. They are perishing.

They're in the process of perishing. They do not have true life.

Where they will end up is destruction. And so the word of the cross is to those that are perishing, moria, foolishness.

Foolishness. Now notice, tois men apolumenois.

Now, if you know the language, you know mendai. Mendai is a standard grammatical form, but on the one hand and then on the other hand, in essence.

So you have one thing, the word of the cross, the message of the cross, to indeed those that are perishing, foolishness.

But to those that are being saved, sois men apolumenois, us, to us who are being saved, dunam estheu esten, it is the power of God.

So one message to those that are perishing, foolishness.

To those that are being saved, us who are being saved, power of God. So does the message change?

No, it is how that message is received and interpreted. And so to those who are perishing, it is foolishness.

Those that are being saved, power of God. Now you're going to go down later and he's going to say, no.

To Jews, stumbling block, to Gentiles, foolishness, but to those who are called by God.

So this is about election. This is about predestination. Rager doesn't believe in any of that stuff.

So he wouldn't be aware of that type of thing. But the point is that you have tois apolumenois and you have tois sozamenois.

So there is clearly and plainly an intended parallel in the original language itself.

It's the King James that missed it. It's the King James that did not translate this with the clarity that the modern translations render it.

So perishing is descriptive of the non -elect in this life.

They are separated from the life of God and they are perishing. So the message of the cross is to them foolishness.

But to us who are being saved. So here in Rager's theology, in an independent fundamentalist

Baptist theology, there is a overarching definition of sozo.

Sozo means to save. It can also mean to heal, to deliver. It has a identifiable but fairly wide what's called semantic domain as far as its meaning is concerned.

And so in the fundamentalist mindset, you are saved at a point in time, basically when you walk an aisle.

You walk an aisle, you say the sinner's prayer. Boom. Saved. And they struggle with the

Pauline reality of the now and the not yet. The fact that in Paul's theology, we're adopted, but we're awaiting adoption.

We're seated in heavenly places, but we're still walking on this earth. We've been freed from sin, but we still struggle with sin.

There's the now and the not yet. This is the reality of where we are now. They don't really get that.

The idea of having an ordo salutis, the order of salvation, which is not just a temporal order.

It can have temporal aspects to it, time -based aspects to it. It's more of a logical order where you differentiate between regeneration, adoption, forgiveness, justification, sanctification, the aspects of sanctification that you have to, you just simply have to deal with in the

New Testament, that different New Testament writers use that term sanctification in different ways. You have to allow passages to speak for themselves.

And that's one of the other problems with fundamentalist interpretation is that fundamentalists, not all of them, but many fundamentalists believe that in the priority of first appearance.

So in other words, when you encounter a term for the first time in the

Bible, what it means there, they think needs to be read into every other text. That comes after that.

The result is abject confusion, but there are people who believe that this is the first time we've run into it.

Now it doesn't work. John uses words differently than Paul does and Mark differently.

And obviously the Old Testament uses things differently. And so it creates a mishmash, but they operate on that, on that basis.

And so you put that kind of mindset together and you get this discombobulated, disjointed theology where you can't even start doing serious exegesis because if Rager was trying to do any kind of serious exegesis of 1

Corinthians 1, verse 18, he would have to go, well, this, this is a standard

Greek formulation, Mende. You have the same participial forms being used, both are substantival in the same case.

And so they're being plainly put in parallel to one another. And so you'd either have to, if you want to avoid the descriptive participial element that is found in being saved, then you have to go and come up with some way of those that perish, or those that are perished and those that are saved.

That'd be the only, only way to, to meaningfully try to maintain the parallel or to recognize that perishing right now, because Paul's talking about,

I go out and preach the gospel. People hear the message of the gospel. The message of the gospel is to them that are perishing, foolishness.

But to we who are being saved, it is the power of God. And so it's talking about now in this life, the reaction that people have to the message of the cross is dependent upon their spiritual nature.

And he's going to say that's dependent upon the electing grace of God. That's what 1 Corinthians chapter one is going to be all about, as you follow through later on.

But the point is the accurate translation that represents the underlying concepts in the original language is the one that says those who are perishing, those who are being saved, but his theology is you're just saved, you're not being saved.

There is no ongoing reality. That is why these guys don't understand why

Paul writes the church at Rome and says, I want to come evangelize you. Well, they're already Christians. Why do you need to be evangelized?

Because you only evangelize the lost, you see, because it's all just a point action thing.

They don't realize that point action thing initiates all sorts of other things, which are part of the overarching concept of salvation, but they have a very simplified view that just simply does not correlate in any meaningful fashion to the text itself.

So what do you do when you encounter an accurate translation of the text? You check it across the room during your sermon.

That's what you do. But since I have encountered believers who have been confused by this, who have heard somebody saying this thing,

I felt it was important to address it. Once again, we have addressed it many times in the past, but to address it one more time, so that you would be aware of it.

So thank you to Pastor Rager for bringing this issue up so that we can, you know, someone is at my front door.

I love finding out these things, you know, while I'm sitting at the program. But what?

Oh, really? Well, I hear you. I get you.

Okay, let's switch over. I have two more important areas to deal with here.

I hope she doesn't mind. I'm going to be recording with my daughter and Joy on Sheologians on Friday, and so I hope you'll be watching for those programs.

I feel like I've got a lot to live up to there, you know? I mean, you know, they get a lot of people on the program and I'm just sort of dad now, you know, just nothing exciting about that.

And, but we're going to be talking about is extremely important and is extremely relevant, and so be watching for that.

But Summer also tweeted a while back a

Bret Weinstein, and you know who Bret Weinstein is, you know, the Cedarville stuff and all the stuff that took place at the university and all that kind of stuff.

Here's what Bret Weinstein said. He said, this is simple. Black Lives Matter is an excellent motto implying black lives are undervalued and we must correct that.

True. That motto has become a front for critical race theory, which is a lethal anti -American, anti -black fiction that threatens all.

We must oppose it. So that's a single tweet and you, you got to give credit where credit is due.

When you can get that much clarity into one tweet, pretty good.

That's, that's pretty good. Of course, you focus on the word matters like a laser beam, folks.

We have an opportunity to present the very gospel we were just talking about in First Corinthians chapter one.

Do you believe black lives matter? What do you think the word matters means?

What? What do you think the word matters means? You're saying black lives matter. What does matters mean? Because see,

I believe that black lives matter because black lives are created by God who defines what matters.

And if you don't know what matters to God, then you're just babbling. You're not actually saying anything meaningful.

And in fact, if you're saying the government can determine what lives matter and that what matters comes from the government, man, that is dangerous and deadly, that killed 150 million people just last century.

Did you know that? But you see, I can say black lives matter and Asian lives matter and white lives matter and Hispanic lives matter and fill in all the other colors of the rainbow because I have a reason for understanding the word matter.

I have a creator and that creator has revealed himself. And in fact, he's revealed himself in such a way that I can say lives matter because Jesus, the incarnate son of God gave his life and that makes my life matter.

See, we cannot, we dare not miss this opportunity.

And that's what our culture needs to hear. That's what the church needs to hear. The sad thing is in the church right now, we have people blathering the black lives matter stuff and they've lost the foundation of the matters part.

They're, they're, they're ashamed of the gospel, which defines why black lives matter.

Why do black lives matter? Because Jesus gave his life so they would matter. How many people have you heard talking about that way?

A small minority. I'm not the only one, but a small minority. It's a powerful message.

And we, we just need to pray for boldness to be saying it right now, because yeah, that could get you, get you beat up in our culture for daring to even try to make it a meaningful statement, which reminded me of, uh, reminded me of the

Lecrae situation last week. Did you see that some more information has come out that, that, that, that Lecrae has commented about what happened when

Kathy tried to shine his sneakers, which really does not work. I've, I've, that's, that's not, I'm sure those sneakers were probably a whole lot more expensive than anything

I could afford, but white privilege. Um, but do you remember

I commented on this and what's interesting to me is that when Lecrae commented on what

Lecrae said, Lecrae talked about the same thing I mentioned. It wasn't just an embarrassed, ha, ha, ha, ha.

It empty virtue signaling. Let's shine somebody's shoes thing.

And when he does it for a couple seconds, which didn't shine anything and goes back to sit down,

Lecrae said something and most people just let it pass. Didn't say anything.

I focused in on it. Lecrae said, now how about some Chick -fil -A stock? Lecrae understands.

Lecrae understands reparations. Lecrae understands redistribution of wealth.

Now it's only Chick -fil -A stock wealth. It's not

Beyonce, Jay -Z wealth or Oprah or Michael Jordan or King James or anybody else.

No, no, no. They get to keep what they, what they got. More than I do. But I would be being asked, even though I can,

I can show you the pictures. Here's where my ancestors came after the Civil War. Doesn't matter. This is socialism.

This is redistribution of wealth. It's communism, really. Socialism is just communism without guns. Um, so that, but he said it.

He's bought the narrative, lock, stock and barrel. And he meant it. He meant it.

Show me what he was saying was that's nice, but until you pay up, it doesn't mean anything.

It doesn't, it doesn't accomplish anything. That's what he was saying. That's where it's coming from.

It's, isn't the sixth this year? I think November 6th is the, is the election. That's what you're gonna get

November 7th. If you, if, if, if God just completes the judgment of 2020, the great fall and hands the reins of government directly into the leftists, you've got the equality act.

You're going to get reparations, your freedoms, your liberties gone. What? So election day for the leftists is the sixth for the rest of it's the third.

November 3rd, really? Yes. Um, it works for you.

Yeah. Okay, fine. Whatever. Um, that's, what's coming just. And when

I see these pictures, when, when I see a Marxist organization rallying everyone under 40 and a lot of people above,

I just go, wow. You know, you'd take over the educational system of a, of a nation.

And, uh, it, it, that works very effective, very effective. Um, there's just something super fitting about seeing 20 ,000 people in a field doing this with their arms up like this in the, in the communist salute.

And they're all masked. They're all submitting. It's like, yeah, wowsers didn't couldn't, you couldn't write this.

You could, well, I guess some people did. I haven't seen it yet, but the V for Vendetta movie, I've got to, I got to cue that up because, um,

I've been told it's eerily, eerily accurate. Um, so yeah, there, there, there you go.

I just found it fascinating. Um, and then did I have, uh, no,

I've only got 20 minutes left anyways. Well, as if I care about what the clock says.

Um, yeah, that's enough for now. Um, well, I'm sure we'll have plenty of things to be, to be looking at, uh, along those, along those lines on, you just, you just encounter so much stuff these days, just so much in the church, absurdly anti -biblical stuff when it comes to this whole issue that it's, it's, it's hard to say.

Um, I, a friend of mine, I'm going to, I mean, you're going to look him up. I just don't want to necessarily,

I didn't ask him if I could do this, but it's, it's public, so he wouldn't care. I don't think I know him well enough. I don't think he would care.

But, uh, a friend of mine in South Africa posted a quote, I guess

Piper has a book out, I mean, I'm, I obviously write books differently.

I mean, Michael Brown's put a book out about coronavirus and all the rest of this stuff, I just sort of do it this way, uh, these days, but rather than written word, that may change in the future.

But here's a quote from Piper, coronavirus and Christ, coronavirus and Christ, quote, the coronavirus was sent by God.

This is not a season for sentimental views of God. It is a bitter season and God ordained it.

God governs it. He will end it. No part of it is outside his sway. Life and death are in his hand.

End quote. Now, let me just say right there that I don't,

I can't give you numbers, but I would think in the

United States, amongst all those who call themselves

Christians, less than one half of 1 % would believe what John Piper said.

Amongst evangelicals, less than 5 % would believe that. Amongst people who go to historically reformed churches, small minority viewpoint, amongst people who call themselves

Calvinists, I'm not sure it's a majority view because it puts it straight out there.

It just says it. God ordained it. Uh, if you have some other view, you have got a sentimental view of God that is not a biblical view of God.

Uh, God ordained it. God governs it. He will end it at his time. No part of it's outside his sway.

Life and death are in his hand. If you don't believe that, please stop calling yourself a Calvinist.

Okay. Don't call yourself reformed. Do not call yourself a Calvinist. Um, and in fact, when

I think of Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, they all would have looked at all of us and gone, what is disputable about that?

I mean, I cannot, I cannot think of any of the reformers that would have struggled with that at all. They all live with the plague coming and going from their cities.

If you went off to the university, if you sent your kids off to university, there was, there was about,

I'm just running numbers in my mind. It's really funny. I, my, my wife recently had to take a retirement thanks to the panic of 2020.

And so she's got extra time on her hands and she discovered my, the

Great Courses Plus login on the television, because you can watch the,

I subscribe to the Great Courses Plus. So you can just pick classes and just watch them and stuff like that. And I had listened on my bike about a year and a half, two years ago to this entire class.

I don't know how she found it. Maybe it just popped up because I had done it before or something. I don't know. She's almost done with an entire class on the black plague on the,

I walk out in the front room and there, there she is just, just,

I mean, she, the last section, I took a nap because I got up at 2 10 this morning and did a ride out in the dark, which is fun.

But, uh, I took a nap. I get up and she's in the other room and she's finishing up the section.

And I remember the section. Cause I, I remember what I was when I heard it before about the persecution of Jews as a result of the black, the black death.

And so here she's, I should have known this because last December we went up for Christmas up in Las Vegas.

When the kids were up there on the way up on the way way back, we listened to a great courses plus class on the history of Egypt and she loved it.

So I, something tells me she's gonna be getting more use out of that stuff that I am anyway, now that you know more than you need to know, um,

I'm trying to sort of run the numbers in light of all the books and classes that I've done on the great mortality, which we call today the, the, the black death.

Um, I wonder how many people, if I were to ask, how many people know when the black, the black death struck Europe? Um, just wonder how many about 1347 to 1351, but then it kept coming back and it was still coming back at the time of the reformation.

And so if you sent your kid off to a city to attend a university, like university of Wittenberg or whatever else, um, there was pro

I'm just going to estimate there was probably about a 50 ,000 time greater chance that they're going to die of plague than any one of you is going to die of coronavirus.

About 50 ,000 times. I would say that sounds about right. The mortality numbers and stuff like that, mortality numbers keep going down, down, down.

I don't know if you've seen it. Look up the CDC death numbers for coronavirus right now.

You wouldn't know by watching TV. You wouldn't know by living in Arizona.

Straight down. Cases. Yeah. Deaths. Anyway, point is it was a different world, much more dangerous world back then.

And so the reformers, um, I think Zwingli got plagued.

Zwingli's recovered from plague once. Yeah. Luther had lost children. Um, Calvin lost a child.

Calvin ministered to plague victims in Strasburg when he was a pastor in the church,

Strasburg in the interregnum between the two times he was in Geneva. So they knew, and they would look at all of us and go, yeah, so?

Duh. That's what the Bible teaches. But today? Ah. So my friend who posted this is in South Africa and someone else is in South Africa, South Africa, who

I have debated more than once. Graham Codrington. Graham Codrington is a graduate of the

Baptist schools down there. Very good speaker. You may remember that after our last debate, last time

I was down there, who knows if I'm ever going to get a chance to go down there again, but after the last time

I had to, you know, he made a lots of comments on Facebook and we had to go back and correct a bunch of things.

I think those debates are extremely useful. By the way, public service announcement, download them.

If you want to see them, download them. They will not be available on YouTube for forever.

They will not be. The totalitarians cannot allow for the expression of any other viewpoint.

They must silence it all. And so if you want to have those, those debates, um, there's lots of ways of downloading stuff and making archival copies and you need to do it with this program, anything that you want to be able to have access to again in the future, it's not like our hard drives are small anymore.

You can buy hard drives with an insane amount of space on them.

Just keep them protected in from EMPs. What I've said this before, when you mentioned that, um, the product we use here is called

YouTube downloader. That's not what I use. Oh, okay. Well, I use airy. Yeah. Well, you have a

Mac. No, well, maybe that might be, but airy. I'm not sure if there is a, if I recall, airy is just for Mac.

I could be wrong, but it works. We, we use, uh, uh, youtubedownloader .com is free.

Uh, you, you can download that. And if you pay their, uh, their fee, you can actually line a ton of them up and it'll just take them one at a time.

Yeah. Aries, Aries pay too, but it's worth it. They, they've, they, when programs are supported over time, they're worth it.

And area has been supported for years for me. A I R Y. Uh, if you want to, if you, if you're a

Mac guy, like I am anyway, uh, grab these things because they're just not going to be out there forever.

It's not. So Graham Codrington responds to the

Piper quote. Um, and I, I don't think time -wise it's in South Africa.

It's real late right now. So I don't think my friend would be watching. Uh, but if, if, if he is, and you want to like text me or something like that, let me know if you want, want me to use your name or not, um, it's, it's public people who look this up, but anyway,

Graham Codrington responds to this quote from Piper, here's what he says.

I do not find Piper's God anywhere in the Bible. Ugh, this version of God is one that is always spoken against by the biblical writers, where they speak of a

God who brings suffering on people. It is always only as a warning against those who utterly reject and work against God.

Piper's God is not a God of love. The Bible's God is love incarnate. Now remember

Graham Codrington trained in Baptist seminaries, but now affirmative of homosexuality, gay marriage, transgenderism, and as you watch the trajectory, whether it's

Jonathan Merritt, Graham Codrington, um, uh, Jen Hatmaker, uh, all,

I mean, the, the names, I'm starting to lose track of all the names where you can follow this trajectory.

Now, like I said, I doubt Graham would do this, but I would debate him on this any day, and once we get our debate studio put together, which we're working on, um, man,

I, I do this in a second. I don't think, cause I didn't think Graham would debate me a second time and he did.

I don't think he'd do this. I think he knows better than this, but I could be wrong. I would,

I would be more than happy because I don't know what I, I need to get down there, but right now it's just not a possibility, but hopefully when the opportunity opens up, we can either do it on the net or, um, you know,

I need to get down there, um, for other reasons, um, study wise. But anyways, so here's, here's,

I do not find Piper's Got Anywhere in the Bible. Notice this, I do not find. That's, that's a dead giveaway.

I do not find. Maybe Piper does, but I do not find. At the base of this,

I've said this, I've been saying this for years now. Graham Codrington, when I first debated him, still said that he had a, what we would identify as a fairly, um, conservative

Orthodox view of the Bible. You can't maintain that and hold the positions he holds to.

There must be, and here's an example of over time, the collapse of any kind of meaningful bibliology.

It has to be turned into something that can be supportive of these positions that no

Christians had ever held before the modern period. Piper's God is not a

God of love. The Bible's God is love incarnate. So here you have omnibenevolence turned into the ultimate divine attribute, which then results in the redefinition of the rest of the divine attributes.

So holiness, Isaiah 6, kadosh, kadosh, kadosh, no.

Now it is, the Bible's God is love incarnate.

Um, and once again, Jesus is

God's love incarnate and he dies on a cross because of God's holiness. And if you don't see that, you're not seeing the cross.

You end up with the, the cross you're seeing in United Methodist churches and Episcopalian churches and liberal

Presbyterian churches draped in gay flags, carried in by a tree.

Seriously, all the meaning, all the history, all the consistency with God's law, gone, sacrificed, burned, thrown out, done.

Just, just, just get rid of it. Just get rid of it. Um, so there was some discussion that then took place as a result of that.

Um, and someone had mentioned Job and Graham Codrington said to him, what is the message of the book of Job?

Job, it is wisdom literature. So what is the wisdom we should extract from it? Hint, it is not that God bring, brings calamity on the righteous.

Well, okay. But the whole context that does bring the revelation of what

Job is about, Job 38 and following, the interview with Job where Job covers his mouth and says,

I should never have spoken. What was the wisdom that was communicated? God is

God. You are not. God's purposes determine what is right and good, which is what

Piper said. Right. Okay. Right. Um, then

Codrington says to someone else, do you believe that God was bringing in the Chaldeans to destroy the righteous people of Israel?

Well, there weren't any righteous people of Israel to destroy at that point, but, um, that's what

Isaiah 10 says. Well, that was, yeah, that's direct, almost direct quote.

Do you believe that? Well, evidently Graham Codrington doesn't believe that. Um, then he says later,

I believe in the love of God above all else. That is not a

Christian statement. If that's, if that was it, then why do we have the

Bible? Why do we have the entire narrative of the flood? Why do we have the book of Judges?

Why do we have Isaiah? Why do we have Habakkuk? Why do we have Nahum? Why do we have any of it? It's all extraneous.

It's, it got in the way. Look at how badly it's been abused and misunderstood. I believe in the love of God above all else.

If you can separate the love of God from his glory, his purpose, his holiness, his justice, his wrath, his power, then you no longer are talking about a

Christian view of God. You are now out with the religions of the world.

Just don't call it Christian anymore. Then he says, the sovereignty of God is interesting, isn't it?

Can you imagine him saying, the love of God is interesting, isn't it? Probably not. The Bible says that God desires that all people be saved.

If this is God's desire, then why doesn't it happen? Because God has granted his creation free will and chosen to limit himself.

Theology matters. What? I was just wondering, do you think Leighton might be interested in having him on?

I think he probably would. I think they'd get along quite well. Yep. Yep. It's true.

Cause that sounds, yeah. If I had thought ahead, I could have read that and said, who said this?

Yep. Yep. You're right. Because God has granted his creation free will and chosen to limit himself.

That, that's just what Ephesians one says and Romans nine says and Psalm 135, six says, and yeah, that's all over the

Bible. Yeah. Well, it's not. So do I believe that God could do anything? Yes.

Do I believe that God does do everything? No, because he's limited. He's limited by his creature. The theology matters.

And I'm not saying that everyone who believes that will end up affirming homosexuality, gay marriage, transgenderism, becoming pro -abortion and all the things that Graham Codrington has become in his apostasy out of the faith, because that's what we're seeing.

But it does make me wonder where the stopping point is. Yeah. Then there was pushback from the words of R .C.

Sproul. My friend had said to Graham, in the words of R .C. Sproul, if there is one single molecule in this universe running around loose, totally free of God's sovereignty, then we have no guarantee that a single promise of God will ever be fulfilled.

Which of course, Graham Codrington does not believe. Then to someone else,

Codrington said, Piper is saying something more than God allows something to happen. That's my issue.

Yeah, he is. Codrington is right at that point, that Piper is not saying God allows this.

He's saying it is a part of God's sovereign decree, his purpose, and it demonstrates his glory. Yes, that is exactly what he's saying.

So the last one I'll have here, I'll read from Codrington. You and I don't disagree. You said that God doesn't direct everything.

Some things happen. God knows about them and lets them happen. That's fine.

COVID is just happening. Piper is saying that God designed and deployed COVID.

I disagree. Okay, so I wonder if Graham hasn't become an open theist as well.

It makes sense, because really believing that God infallibly knows all future events requires a pretty high view of scripture that I don't think he can sustain any longer, but God knows about them and lets them happen.

So they are originated, and this is where Flowers is too. They are originated in something other than the decree of God, the mind of God.

They are self -originated from within the context of creation, and God does not stop them from happening.

So they have no purpose. How God knew this is one of the big issues, and I don't know that Codrington is saying that he did with any more prescience than we would have, but he says

COVID is just happening. It's just, so if, have any believers died of COVID -19?

So are our days written in his book, Psalm 139? It doesn't really work, does it?

Nah, it really doesn't. It doesn't. COVID is just happening. Piper is saying that God designed and deployed

COVID. I disagree. He doesn't just disagree. He says that's not even his God. So COVID -19 is just happening.

God has no purpose in it. He'll do his best to make some good come out of it, you know, but he has, there's no purpose because it's just, it's just happening.

And that's the sort of how God designed the universe and it's going to have hiccups and sort of have problems.

And that's all there is to it. How do you get here from graduating from the

Baptist schools in a nation? Once your view of scripture collapses, it's inevitable.

Now you may not go to these extents because it would cost you your job or your friends or whatever.

And I'm sure Graham has lost a lot of friends and a lot of opportunities.

I mean, everybody in South Africa knows that Graham Codrington has swung hard, hard left, way out there with everything.

I mean, I've said I'd be willing to debate him on a number of issues. The other thing is the issue of abortion, but we may have to do that kind of thing electronically.

I don't know that there'd be the freedom these days in South Africa to do that kind of thing anymore. Sadly, the internet may be the last bastion of any semblance of expression or speech, and believe me, big tech is working hard to make sure that that can be controlled as well.

China is, the Chinese firewall is amazing. And our people know how to do that.

And we are literally facing an election where one of the choices is, do you want

Chinese style communism to replace the constitution of the

United States? That's what we're facing. That's what we're facing. And yet, by the way, since I went a few minutes over anyways, and so it doesn't really matter.

Can I say something else? Let me go ahead and just make everybody angry. Is it okay, Rich, to make everybody angry at me? I might as well.

I'm really put out with a number of you in social media because I dared to comment on the reality that what we're facing in the

United States in this election, and it's amazing how the globe, the entire world is looking at this. There are nations where there are people far more interested in this than they are in any elections going on in their own country, there are, because they know how important it is.

I have pointed out that I, as a Christian, have absolutely, positively no positive energy toward anyone who is running in this election.

Okay. I, when, when I look at Joe Biden, aside from the fact that I believe him to be mentally incompetent, he has been a liar his entire life.

This is documented. He was caught many, many times lying politically about things he had said and done, this isn't just gaffes, this isn't just sniffing people's hair, he has been caught, documented more than once to just be a liar, just lie, so has

Trump. And everybody expects it. Okay. That's just, anymore, that's politics. All right.

But the fact is Joe Biden is an empty suit, which means you elect Joe Biden, you're, you're electing a whole cabal of people who will control

Joe Biden, speak through Joe Biden's mouth if they can. And these are radicals.

These are radical leftists. These people make Hillary Clinton look like mashed potatoes.

Yeah. Yeah. Rich has just said it's weekend at Bernie's. That's exactly what we're looking at. And so, yeah.

So would you stop that? Trying to say something serious in here. I tell you people, you don't understand what I have to fight, what

I have to overcome every single, anyway. Um, so on the one side,

I, I am not voting for homosexuality, gay marriage, transgenderism, um, infanticide, um, and Marxism all at the same time.

And if that's where you're going, that's what you are voting for. And when we end up in the same gulag together, we'll have a discussion about who got there faster as a result, but that's what you're doing, whether you want to admit it or not, that's what you're doing.

But then I dared to say, cause everybody's, you know, a lot of people in this audience like, yeah, yeah, you get them, you stand, whoa, and then

I dared to say, and I don't have any love for the other side, the

Republicans have run for the Hills in the face of mob rule, almost, almost, there's been a few, but almost none of them have shown any backbone at all.

They're just concerned about their retirement accounts. I am, I'm not a

Republican in case you haven't noticed. I am one of those dreaded eyes and have been for years.

And I've announced on this program when the Republican national committee refused to not give support to pro -abortion

Republicans. I left the, I was a Republican. That was sort of the default thing, but I left and I, uh, and, and in Arizona, that has meant that there were things

I couldn't vote in because they're closed to the members of certain parties, whatever.

So when it comes to Donald Trump, I have said straight up, and here's where the problem is.

There's a bunch of you out there. They're going, you're right about Joe Biden. You're right about the left and you're right about what's coming.

And as a result, you must love Donald Trump.

You need to wear a MAGA hat and you need to join the apologists for Donald Trump, and you need to explain away his childish, childish tweets and his behavior and the fact that if you just sit there and listen to the man talk for any period of time at all,

I am of the opinion he is an ego maniac. Oh, you can't, no, you can't say it's my opinion.

I think it's a sound opinion and I'm not, no, no, no.

The polarization that has taken place is intentional. It is intentional, but I see the choice that we have to make as a judgment from God, I saw it in 2016,

I was like, oh no, when the last of the nominees that I could in any way go, well, guy seems to have somewhat of a

Christian worldview and he's, and they're gone. I'm just left going, but as bad as Hillary Clinton was, and Hillary Clinton was bad, just imagine how things have changed since 2016 just,

I mean, where is the middle? There is no middle. There is no middle any longer. And so some of you have this idea that if you see the danger of the coming of communism in the

United States, Marxists, Marxist organizations being promoted by every big tech company in the world, and you go, this is really bad, it automatically means you've got to swing way over here and go, this guy is awesome.

No, he's not. No, he's not. You, I'm a

Christian. I can't ignore the rest of the stuff. I have to balance it all out.

And yeah, that makes for a really, really difficult, sad.

I mean, I can, I can remember being excited about voting for a candidate because I, I really believed what this guy was about and I really believed that he would be something good for the country.

Right now, it's just, where do you apply the tourniquet to try to stop the bleeding, to keep the, a little faint heartbeat going?

That's all we've got. That's all we've got. And can you remember, remember 2016?

It's all about the Supreme court. Wow. Things have changed, huh? Things have changed.

Well, we still could. No, you're not. No, you're not. I'm sorry. I hate,

I, you know, I, I, you know, it doesn't work that way. So I'm sorry for those of you who don't recognize that you've, you've got to learn to think in categories.

I forgot something. Oh, drat. Um, somebody out there is going, oh, he said drat.

Yes. I said drat. Um, um, uh,

I, I, do you remember, um, there have been so many of these, but there was a, and now

I, you know, I thought that was a fairly decent description. I threw it. It's just so many of them now that you can't even track it down.

There was this elderly black man trying to defend a monument.

You remember? Uh, white beard and this

BLM white woman is he's trying to educate her.

He's trying to talk with her and I wanted to, I'm going to have to track it down because the stream of emotional absurdities that flowed from this woman's mouth, she looks like she's about 22 white turned into a zombie by the university educational system.

And when I say zombie, I mean that purposefully when you cannot hear, when all you can do is scream the same words over and over again, there's no reasoning going on in this woman's brain at all.

None. And you can see the frustration of this poor man's face. Here is a man who is educated.

He is a black man. He is an educated man. He is a red man. He is a man who can reason he can use categories and thought, and this woman cannot, wow, what does that say?

There was a day. And it does not seem like it was that long ago. In my experience, when the vast majority of the human family that lives in this country would have looked at that and go, what is wrong with that woman?

And now it seems like our population looks at that and says, what's wrong with that man?

And the only explanation I have for that is judgment is judgment. Sorry to finish with that, but I'm going to track that down.

Were you looking for it? No, you were looking for, gotcha.

Um, I think I can find, I was, I, I, I forgot to save it to where I need to save it to find stuff.

So anyways, all right, folks, um, tomorrow is Wednesday. Won't be here. We'll be back Lord willing on Thursday here on the dividing line.