First of all, the term heretic
or heresy is used in two distinct ways historically. On the one
hand, the term heresy is a somewhat benign term to describe any departure
at any point from classical orthodoxy. In other words, a theological
error, as small and insignificant as it may be, can be called a
heresy. But the general use of the term
historically is to describe errors. that are so serious and so severe
that they cut at the very heart of the Christian faith, like
the heresy of Arianism that denied the full deity of Christ, or
the denial of the Trinity. Those are heresies upon which
the whole structure of the Christian faith is determined. Now, in
the history of the debate of understanding the genre of the
opening chapters of Genesis, people who were profoundly committed
to biblical orthodoxy and even to the inerrancy of the Bible
have differed over the intent of the author in Genesis to describe
the time frame of creation. So, if somebody did not embrace
a strict 24-hour day view of creation, I may disagree with
them. I may think that they're an error,
but I would be very reticent to call them a heretic. Ladies first. Oh, thank you. Dr. MacArthur, you gave us two Scriptures. that popped out to me. The natural
man cannot get to God in his unaided condition. And then in
Acts, God now commands all men everywhere to repent. So does
that mean God would help everyone to repent since he commands it? The question you're asking is,
why would God command all men everywhere to repent if they
can't, unless He aids them? The answer to the question is,
I don't know why He chose to do it that way, but that is the
way it is. Everyone is held culpable and
guilty for not repenting. Everyone is culpable for his
own sin, guilty before God for his own sins. Like in 2 Thessalonians
passage, God will deal out when Christ returns retribution to
those who know not God and believe not the gospel. This is the great
ultimate question that you come to in the doctrines of grace
is personal moral responsibility and the sovereignty of God. How
do those two things come together? Clearly they are taught in Scripture.
Clearly they are both taught in Scripture. What you want to
avoid is some kind of middle ground that assaults both of those things.
But that's for God to fully resolve in His own mind. All men are
sinners, all men are culpable, all men are guilty, all men are
commanded to repent, all men are in disobedience and violation
of that command, yet at the same time they are unable to respond
apart from the intervening sovereign grace of God. That is what the
Bible teaches. The resolution of that is, I
think, clear to the mind of God, but difficult for us to understand.
SPROUL JR.: : I'd like to add to that that the very term responsibility
carries within it the idea of the ability to respond. And it's a normal thing to draw
the inference that if God commands somebody to do something, The
implication is they must have the ability to do it without
some kind of supernatural intervention. I might add that that's exactly
the logic that was used by the arch-heretic Pelagius when he
says, you know, the Bible says, be ye perfect even as your heavenly
Father is perfect, and that God commands you to be perfect. you
must have the ability to be perfect, and so he rejected the idea that
grace is at all necessary for anybody to do the will of God. And that's because of texts like
the very one that says you've got to be very, very careful
of a rush to judgment and concluding that because God holds you responsible
for something that therefore you can do it. I like to use
this illustration to describe the situation at the time of
the fall. God comes to Adam and said, look, you're responsible
to dress and keep and till the ground here and make sure that
this garden is well taken care of. However, there's this big
ditch over here, and you've got to stay out of that ditch, because
if you go into that pit, okay, you're not going to be able to
fulfill your obligations that I've imposed upon you. Do you
understand that?" And Adam says, sure. As soon as God leaves the
garden, Adam goes over and jumps in the pit. God comes back and
sees the mess there in the garden, and He says, hey, Adam, where
are you? He says, I'm in the pit. Why
didn't you take care of the garden like I told you to?" Now, how
do you expect me to take care of the garden when I'm in this
pit and I can't get out of the pit by myself? That's our condition
as fallen people. We are dead in sin, but we're
responsible for being dead in sin. We are unable to respond
to God apart from the intervention of the Holy Spirit, but we are
still…that's no excuse for not giving the response. Does that
help? Almost. I would that you were not almost
but altogether convinced by it. Me too. This question is a good
question. It comes up repeatedly, not only
from the time of Pelagius, it came up with the Wesleys. This
was one of John Wesley's arguments against Calvinism. And Luther's
little book, The Bondage of the Will, which I'm sure is in the
bookstore, is all about this question. And don't think that
you won't be able to understand it. You'll be able to understand
it perfectly if you pick up the book. The whole book is devoted
to answering this question. My question is distilling. Is
that grace available to everyone then, God's help to be saved? You mean regenerative grace?
No. Okay. You know, that's what…
the whole point is that God is not obligated to give saving
grace to anybody. And He sovereignly determines
to have mercy upon whom He will have mercy, and that is His prerogative. When Paul deals with this doctrine
in Romans, and he's anticipating the objections that people raise,
you know, like, that's not fair. God is not being righteous by
not giving everybody the same amount of grace. God's not an
equal opportunity Redeemer. How can that be? And then he
has to remind them what God told him through Moses, I will have
mercy upon whom I will have mercy. God owes me no grace whatsoever. That's the whole doctrine of
election, I'm not sure. The other thing to remember is
in Romans 9, if Paul were teaching a doctrine of prevenient grace
to everyone, you couldn't get the objection which is raised
against his teaching in Romans 9, which lets you know that's
not what he's teaching in Romans 9. Right. Okay. I'm going to ask a question
for Ligon Duncan because nobody asked you questions. I'm the dumb one up here, you
know, so. I'll give you room to speak. Well, what happened, I went out
to California to visit a brother of mine, and I know he was struggling
with some issues with the doctrines of grace, and then soon as God
illuminated it to him about being dead in trespasses and sins,
I was like, bam, you know, he understood. And, but the problem
was, is that he's, his marriage and his, you know, in-laws, everybody
goes to this fellowship, and they all embrace everything contrary
to that. Actually, they're really influenced
by Dave Hunt and The Brain Call and all that. And he wrote a
book called What Love Is This? And anyways, I had a conversation
with, some of his family and basically saying that it's blasphemous,
doctrine of demons, and this and that. And I didn't purpose
to go there to debate them on doctrine. I know that that's
something God can only illuminate. So even if I can explain it to
a T, it's not gonna do anything good. But my question is, is
that in application, if people are robbing, are people
robbing God of his glory and thinking that a wicked man can
choose a righteous God? And if, let's say I'm in a church
setting like this, and one of my brothers is an Arminian, am
I tolerating a false gospel, and is that a fellowship breaker?
You know, is that something I, not to say that I would, you
know, bash him because he doesn't believe the doctrines of grace,
but that it potentially leads people astray into thinking that
they can choose God, they can do this and go these steps and
say the sinner's prayer and this and that. And I know overall
God is sovereign, but when it comes down to the gospel and
making your stance for regeneration and for the doctrines of grace,
How far are we willing to go and make that stand? And where
should our stance be when it comes to people preaching a false
gospel? Should we tolerate it? And I'm
trying to understand as far as how to make this application
within even the body of believers. And, you know, because, you know,
we should fellowship, we should be a body, but I'm just, I just
need a little bit of clarity on that and for my friend as
well. Yeah, it's a complex question. I will say this, I think John
and R.C. and I are all in the same situation
with regard to our local fellowships. If you heard John answer the
question last night about a church statement of faith and saying
you didn't have something that everybody had to say that they
believed, but you had a statement that where you said, this is
what we teach, R.C. and I are in the same situation
as well. Our officers have to say, yes, we embrace the doctrines
of grace, or you can't be officers in our church. But our members
have a much briefer statement of faith that they affirm. And
it's probably, do you use the five questions of membership
that are traditional? Traditionally, Presbyterians
do not require every church member to affirm the Westminster Confession
of Faith, the Reformed Theology, or the Doctrines of Grace. Our
church members have to affirm basically three things. One,
they have to acknowledge themselves to be sinners in the sight of
God, justly deserving His displeasure, and without hope except in His
sovereign mercy. Two, that they believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God and Savior of sinners,
and that they receive and rest on Him alone for salvation as
He is offered in the gospel. And three, that they will endeavor
to live as becomes followers of the Lord Jesus Christ in humble
reliance upon the grace of the Holy Spirit. And if you could
affirm those three things, you can be a member in good standing
of R.C. Sproul's church or my church,
and I'm sure something in the equivalent. in John's church
at Grace Community. But if a person is going to come
in and agitate against the teaching of the church, which we are up
front about, is going to be in accord just like John has what
we teach, we are up front about the Westminster Confession of
Faith is what's going to be taught, then obviously that person is
going to be disturbing the purity and peace of the church. Actually,
the fifth vow is do you submit yourself to the government and
discipline of the church and promise to strive for its purity
and peace. So if you had someone in our
midst that was agitating against the doctrines of grace, they'd
be breaking the peace of the church. So can people that struggle
with the doctrines of grace be a part of a fellowship where
the doctrines of grace are believed? Yes, but not if they're inveighing
against it and arguing against it, and certainly if they're
calling it blasphemy and unbiblical like you would get out of the
Dave Hunt crowd was just a gross distortion of anything that remotely
resembles historic Calvinistic belief. I mean, if you want to
find out what Calvinists believe, do not pick up, What Love Is
This? You won't find anything out about
Calvinism in that book. Pick up a book that's written
by a Calvinist if you want to find out what Calvinism believes.
Can reformed believers and brothers that are still struggling with
Arminian beliefs get along? Sure they can. And how should
reformed believers relate to their Arminian brothers? We ought
to show the fruits of the spirit. We ought to adorn our doctrine
with a life of service and love and grace, and we ought to seek
to serve those brothers and sisters in humility. But should we equivocate
on our doctrinal beliefs? Absolutely not. We ought to be
crystal clear, grace and truth together. in the way that we
relate to others. SPROUL JR. I'd have to say, too,
that historically that the debate between Reformed theology and
Arminianism has always been understood, at least by the Reformed group,
as an intramural debate among genuine Christians. It's not
a debate over which you break fellowship. However, you get
extreme forms of Arminianism, which may even reflect a logical
consistency where you get to open theism. where there your
historic orthodox doctrine of God is clearly under attack. I would say that the open theism
is a grounds for breaking fellowship, but it's not your garden variety
Arminianism. My question is on Romans 10,
9, that says, if you confess that Jesus is Lord, then you'll
be saved. And since Lord has to do with complete
sovereignty, I was wondering if you thought that an Arminian
could be saved? I would say yes. Again, Arminianism historically
believes in the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and in the essential
truths of the Christian faith, of the lordship of Jesus, the
atonement of Christ, the deity of Christ, all of those things
they believe in. Now, if I ask an Arminian, Why
that person believes and their neighbor doesn't believe, and
I say to them, is the reason you believe and your neighbor
doesn't believe is because you exercised faith, which was the
right response, and your neighbor made a sinful response, so that
the reason why you're saved and your neighbor isn't is because
you did the good thing and they did the bad thing. Now when you
ask an Arminian something like that, they'll say, no, no, no,
no, no, no, no, I don't want to believe that I'm saved on
the basis of my good deed. Now they should say that if they
were consistent, but there is a happy inconsistency built into
Arminianism by which I believe the Arminian can and in most
cases will be saved. When I was saved as a Christian
I was saved on the basis of faith alone. I had never heard of the
doctrine of justification by faith alone. I couldn't have
articulated the doctrine of justification by faith alone, but in reality
I was trusting in Christ and in Christ alone for my salvation. You have to understand that not
everybody who is in a genuine saving relationship to Christ
has a correct theological understanding of how they got there or what
it involves to keep them in there. So, yeah, of course Arminians
can be saved. to believe in the fact of the
Lordship of Christ, not necessarily understanding the extent of it.
I don't think there is a person, or rarely would be a person who
was saved at the point of their salvation fully understood the
extent of the Lordship of Christ. So you understand the fact of
it, the reality of it. that He is above every name,
just exactly how far above every name comes when you begin to
understand the fullness of that. SPROUL JR.: : There are noble
reasons why people reject Reformed theology. The Arminian, in many
cases, really believes that the doctrine of election as we teach
it casts a shadow on the righteousness of God. They are convinced that
it makes God look unjust and unfair. And they are, in their
mind, fighting for the angels to defend the integrity of God
against this awful view of His sovereign grace. Another thing
that they often want to defend is the reality of human freedom. Often the doctrine of human freedom
they're trying to defend is a secular one. They don't know that. And
so, their motives, their intents may be altogether godly. That's why this debate has to
be carried out in a spirit of mutual trust and patience between
the parties they're engaged in. Good morning. First, I just wanted
to say praise the Lord for edifying us with your presence here this
weekend. You're blessed to be a blessing
to us. My two-part question is for Dr. Sproul, and it has to
do with classical apologetics. I was very blessed by reading
the book you co-authored with Gerstner and Lindsley on this
topic, but often find myself alone in embracing the classical
view. I was wondering if you could name any rising stars in
the Reformed world who are carrying the torch for classical apologetics.
And secondly, could you help me understand why presuppositionalism
has come to dominate almost exclusively the Reformed church? SPROUL JR. Let me start with the second
question first. I think, you know, I've asked
that question myself. How could an approach to apologetics,
which I believe is inherently defective and represents a significant
departure from classical Reformed thought, have such an overwhelmingly
sweeping impact in the reform community. It's almost totally
restricted to that community. One of the problems with presuppositionalism
is it has never shown its ability to cross the street into other
communities. But within reform circles, it's
clear in a way the majority report and the classical view held by
not just by Calvin, but by Warfield, Hodge, Thornwell, you know, and
all the rest of the historic theologians of Calvinism is held
in suspicion. You know that, okay? So how in
the world did it come to have such an impact? Well, I think
that the, you know, the major voice for presuppositional apologetics
in America was Cornelius Van Til. who was a wonderful godly
man and a brilliant scholar, and he took this Dutch approach
from Kuiper and so on to apologetics. And at the time, the bastion
of education for Reformed theology was Westminster Seminary. And
so the students out of Westminster Seminary became the dominant
influence in Reformed circles in America, and they carried
their Vantillianism with them. Then there's another reason,
and that is that – I hate to say this, but I'm going to –
that presuppositionalism is an easy approach to apologetics.
You never have to do your homework. You're telling the unbeliever,
well, you're just… you have the wrong presuppositions. If you
want to come to the conviction that God exists, you have to
start with the conviction that God exists. So, it's really anti-apologetics. And Gerstner said it was the
death of apologetics. It is the death of apologetics.
There's no apologetic there, unless it's a very cryptic, hidden
kind of ontological argument the way Greg Bonson would present
it. Greg presented it, I think, gave
it the the most credible defense of anybody who's done it. Now,
you want rising stars in the Reformed community that are not
presuppositional but are classical. There are people like Ligon Duncan. And other young men who have
adopted this view would include me. I'm not as old as Gerstner. Does that help? Yes, thank you. Okay,
my question is about double predestination. So first, I'd want Dr. Sproul to define it, and then
I want Dr. MacArthur to state his view on
it and with Scriptural support, and then if either of you disagree
with him, I want you to state your view with Scriptural support. Is that all? Okay. You know, many years ago
we published a feshrift in honor of John Gerstner, which included
essays from men around the world and various points of theology,
including men like John Murray. John Murray's last essay, by
the way, was in that feshrift. And I wrote the article there
on double predestination. And so, let me give you my quick
definition of double predestination. Double predestination historically
teaches that in God's sovereign predestinating work, it has two
sides to it, election and reprobation. So double predestination initially
rejects universalism. It teaches that God in His sovereign
grace saves His elect, and those who are not numbered on the elect
are numbered among the reprobate, those who are not saved. So if you believe in divine election
and you believe in predestination, the Lutherans to the contrary,
unless you're a universalist You have to believe in double
predestination, that it has two sides. Not everybody is elect,
and the non-elect are distinguished from the elect. Okay? Now, however,
what that term usually refers to is a specific view of election,
which has been called historically a symmetrical view of election. or a view sometimes called, with
the bad use of language, equal ultimacy. And the idea of the
symmetrical view of election is this, that in the case of
the elect, God intervenes in their lives and creates faith
in their hearts through the supernatural power of regeneration activated
by God the Holy Spirit. On the other hand, in the case
of the reprobate, God also intervenes in their lives to harden their
hearts, to create, as it were, fresh evil in their souls to
make sure that they don't repent and come to faith. Now, that view of equal ultimacy,
or what we would call a positive-positive view, where God positively intervenes
in the life of the elect and positively intervenes in the
life of the recruit is abhorrent to orthodox Calvinism. That is
not what Reformed theology historically teaches in terms of double predestination. Rather, predestination is asymmetrical. It is positive-negative. God
positively intervenes in the life of the elect and gives them
mercy that they don't and He leaves the rest of corrupt mankind
to their own devices. He does not coerce them to unbelief,
so that one group gets grace, the other group gets justice.
Nobody receives injustice. Okay? Now, that's what we mean
by double predestination in a nutshell. Now, you'll have to see whether
John agrees with that. Oh, I agree with that. That's
one of the reasons that you have to define your terms because
that's one of the reasons that we are criticized because people
make assumptions about what you might mean by double predestination.
opens up by saying there were certain men who have crept into
the church who were long before ordained unto condemnation. Before they ever showed up in
this world, there was a divine ordination to condemnation. So there's no question about
the fact that when God chooses to give grace to some, He chooses
not to give grace to others. But I think that that's the best
explanation I've ever heard of what God does and does not do. I agree with that. Thank you. My question is for Mr. MacArthur.
We were discussing this after the last R.C. Sproul's talk last
night. We kind of came to a conclusion, but it was kind of sketchy. I
want to know what you thought about it. Yesterday you said that it's
part of God's eternal nature to be angry at evil and sin. Did I understand that right?
I'm not sure I heard you very clearly. It was part of God's
eternal nature to be angry with evil and sin. Would that be an
accurate representation of your position? Sure. Then I came to
the question of what would God be angry at before the creation
of angels and the world that would be sort of a manifestation
of the evil? But in asking that, I assumed a timeline for God.
But then I found when I removed the timeline for God, it became
basically impossible to say anything meaningful. So what was your…what
do you think? I think this is a philosophical
question here. What are you looking at me for,
John? I mean… Well, you're asking me, was God angry when there
was nothing to be angry about? Well, when there was…when you
say… No, I'm… I guess not. In God's foreknowledge, it is
eternal. God knows from all eternity of
the coming, futurition of the manifestation of true evil. He's
angry about that from all eternity. But when you say He's angry about
coming evil, that assumes He's within a timeline. No, it doesn't. No, it assumes He's not within
a timeline. This is from the perspective
of eternity, okay? Now, if you want to try to understand
God in a super-temporal way, be my guest. Many people have
attempted that, but it's really a fool's errand because there's
no way that you can think apart from the categories of time and
space. Well, that's kind of the conclusion that we came to was
some things you just, you know, you can't understand or communicate,
but it was sort of a letdown. like God becomes a sort of big
mystery, like, you know. Maybe to help you a little bit,
Christ was the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the
world, so in eternity past, in which there was no time, in the
eternal presence, the cross was already predetermined. The solution
to sin was predetermined before there was any. So in the mind
of God, all of that existed as reality. Does that help? It's just that I can't…you can't
really escape sort of a time when you speak about God in that
way. Like, pre means before, and before implies time. And
then we found that when you remove time from the question, when
you try to speak of God as always present or whatever, it became
basically impossible to say anything really meaningful. Why does that
follow? Well, like we tried saying, for
example… Just a minute. If you tried to say something
meaningful and couldn't, does that mean that it's not possible
to say something meaningful? Because you guys couldn't do
it in 15 minutes last night. Well… Well… It seems to me that you're
speaking meaningfully about the question right now. But you can't…
Well, I… All that John was saying is that God is what He is eternally. Do you have a problem with that? No, I don't. I don't have any
problem with that. And I don't want to take too much time up
for like the other people's questions. But look, in classic Christian
systematic theologies, the discussion of the relationship between God's
attributes and His eternality and temporal sin is discussed
regularly. So, for instance, I'm sure you
have Shedd's Dogmatic Theology in the bookstore. Shedd has a
discussion of how you relate language in the Bible that reflects
the activity of God's attributes in a specific situation, language
like wrath and anger to eternal attributes of God that are always
there. And I really do think that material will help you in
wrestling with this question. R.C. Sproul, Jr.: : It's not
just that. It's not just anger. What about
compassion? On whom did God have compassion?
Or anything. There's nobody to have compassion
for. But God always had all those attributes fully functioning,
and they attached to creation when creation was brought into
existence. Okay, thank you. As a former Arminian, I had sharing
the gospel down. It was so easy, you know, step
one, step two, step three, step four, pray this prayer and out
the door, praise the Lord, you're a Christian. But now that God
has granted me the reform knowledge of the truth of salvation, I
feel like I have this much information that I need to share in this
much time. Unless I feel like I can meet
with this person an hour or set up weekly meetings, I just don't
know how to get it done in a short period of time and I don't feel
like I'm doing it well. Can you help me? I think in a
very short period of time you can talk to a person about the
holiness of God, and it's about if that God is holy and they
are not, that they have a serious problem. And we say, okay, how
do you expect as an unholy person to stand before a holy God on
the last day? You are manifestly unprepared
and unequipped, and obviously what you need and I need is Now, how long does it take to
say that? I don't think that you have to explain all of the
complicated dimensions of predestination and all the rest when you are
communicating the essence of the gospel to somebody. In the
early church, there was a method, and if you look at it in the
book of Acts. You'll see the presence of what is called the
kerygma, the proclamation. The apostles preached a summary
of the gospel to people, to Gentiles who didn't know anything about
the book of Deuteronomy or of the history of David. But they
proclaimed to them the character of God, the problem of sin, the
work of Jesus and told them of the benefits of faith that would
give them salvation, and then when they made the profession
of faith, they were brought into the church. And then came catechism. Then came the teaching or the
didactic dimension of Christianity where they would go back and
fill in all of the gaps. But to try to give all the stuff
at one time, you know, it just can't be done. Thank you. Just a footnote, a great illustration
of true conversion is the thief
on the cross. That's the only person anywhere
in the Bible that Jesus gave instantaneous assurance to. Nobody
else did he say, today, you will be with me in paradise. And for
all the people throughout history who have struggled with whether
they're saved or not, that would be really good information coming
from him. But he didn't say that to anybody
else. Today, you'll be with me in paradise. That's a guilt-edge guarantee
that you just got saved. And what were the components
of that? It seems like out of nowhere He rebukes this other
thief, and He says, don't you fear God? And I think that's
where it stood. That's where it started. To Him,
far more threatening, and He was crucified just the same way
Jesus was, suffering the same agonies and realizing His crime,
that He was getting what He deserved. We indeed suffer justly. He had
a far greater fear of what was going to happen to him after
this was over. Don't you fear God? And I think
when he turned to Jesus and said, remember me when you come into
your kingdom, he was affirming the lordship of Christ, the deity
of Christ. that this was the Christ. But I think he did that
because he had just heard Jesus say immediately before that,
Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. And he
realized that if there was forgiveness for the people that did this
to him, and he had been one of them, Matthew and Mark both tell
us that he was also insulting Jesus, that this is something
he desperately needed. So you have an awareness of divine
judgment the tribunal of God, you have an awareness of the
availability of forgiveness, you have a penitent heart, you
have a belief that Christ was the true king, and when he said,
remember me when you enter into your kingdom, nobody survived
crucifixion. So he knew Christ would triumph
over death. There was an awful lot of theology
swirling around in that guy's head. And whatever it was, he
even knew there was a coming kingdom and he wanted to be a
part of it. All the elements were there in some ways with
very limited information. By the way, he probably heard
the conversation because he was coming to the hill the same time
Jesus was about, cry for yourselves and what's coming on you. So
an awareness of judgment, a fear of God, a recognition of one's
sinfulness. and then an embracing of the
reality that in Christ there is hope in the kingdom. And then
you add, of course, the reality of the cross which was unfolding
to Him. And I think that's exactly right. That's where you go with
the sinner. I've said this so many times to people who ask
me what I do. I tell people God will forgive
all their sins. Would you be interested? That is the issue. So I think
you start at that point, not necessarily trying to defend
everything. You want to find out whether there is somebody
under the weight of the convicting work of the Holy Spirit who convicts
the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment. And so when you
go to the sin issue, immediately it reveals whether that convicting
work is going on. You can help that if it's not
going on, but that's the place you're going to have to get to.
Great. Thank you so much. Okay, for Dr. MacArthur, yesterday
you spoke a little bit about Mormonism, and today about how
Jesus is the only way. At my school and places, I encountered
these people, and yeah, we disagree, but they say we basically believe,
we believe in Jesus too, and we believe he died on the cross.
I was wondering how I can, talk to them and how I would approach
them without, like, I don't want to call them demon worshipers
or anything like that. You may get to that. of necessity. Just to talk about Mormonism
for a moment, because we all confront this. I have had a couple
of personal private meetings with the Theological Brain Trust
of BYU, who came down, spent hours and hours with me. Robert
Millet, I don't know that name, who writes most of their stuff
on theology, and We have talked through all of these issues.
Here's the problem. They are polytheists. They have millions of gods, just
millions of them and more all the time. Every time Mormons
have a baby, they potentiate another god. So this is anything
but Christian in its view of God. They have a Christ who is
another Jesus. And another Jesus is a way to
preach another Jesus and you get cursed. 2 John. I have nothing to do with
them or become a partaker of their evil deeds. But what they
said to me was, we love Jesus. In fact, they said, we love Jesus
so much, and we want our young people at BYU to love Jesus,
and so we've had our students in some of the classes read the
gospel according to Jesus that you wrote to help them to love
Jesus more. I went into panic. What did I
leave out? That was not a good experience
for me. But they said to me, we also
believe in grace. And they do. They have this sort
of, this massive grace concept that Most people, even though
they don't become Mormons, they won't get…there are three heavens
in Mormonism, and only one of them is where you want to be.
The other two are…you're stuck with being single forever. There's
a lot of weird sexuality in Mormonism, as you know, that is part of
it. But there's this first heaven,
which is where grace operates. And this is a kind of near universalism,
where just because God is gracious, He'll let you into that place,
and it's better than hell. Most people will get to that
place, but you're stuck being single, and you're stuck in a
deprived situation. But if you have any desire to
get to the second or the third, then you better crank up the
works. So in the end, wrong God, wrong
Christ, wrong way of salvation. They also say the Bible is corrupt. You see that in all their literature.
The Bible has been corrupted. It is not trustworthy. It is
not always right. It is not correct. And you have
to turn to them for the correct interpretation of it and all
of that. So I think you can start with the authority of Scripture,
you can start with the person of God, you can start with the
person of Christ, or you can start with salvation by grace.
They even said to me, we believe in salvation by grace. And I said, well, explain the
full extent of that. Well, God didn't have to give us a way
to earn our way into heaven, so it's a gracious thing that
He allows us to do that. But I think you can pick any
one of those you want, or try one and then try another, but
you need to first distance them from Christianity. This is the
thing they're trying…they're trying to close the gap. This
is their formidable effort. You need to make sure they understand
that this is more like Hinduism and paganism and false religion
than it is anything to do with Christianity. And so they need
to understand that, that they are anything but Christian. They
are seriously, fatally and terminally non-Christian. John, don't you
think that there's a schizophrenia in Mormonism in the sense that
in this kind of a context, they desperately want to be considered
as Christians, but the whole rhetoric of Mormonism has been
Christianity has been corrupted, and we alone have corrected it.
So we only understand it, but we want to be considered one
of you too. At the same time, both of those sides are played.
That's right, and the best can be said of us who are non-Mormons
is that we may get in the grace heaven, the lowest heaven, and
be stuck being single forever, and with all the deprivations
that also go along with that situation. Yeah. Good morning. In Proverbs 31
and in Titus 2, 4 through 5, married Christian women are both
directed to be and portrayed as keepers at home, wives and
mothers. Are these passages to be understood
as suggestions that are optional and seasonal? If not, does the
husband's blessing or approval release the woman from her primary
responsibilities in God's eyes? Who are you referring to? Anyone. Yeah, I'm willing to know. The answer is that the command
of Scripture for a woman to love her husband, love her children,
be a keeper at home is not a seasonal suggestion. That is an explicit
command. In fact, if you wanted to be
put on the list as a widow, according to Paul's letter to Timothy,
you would have had to have cared for by the church. You would
have had to have demonstrated a life like that. Does that mean
Does that mean that the woman has to be in the house 24 hours
a day, you know, barefoot and pregnant kind of approach? No.
Does it mean that she can't be enterprising? Certainly Proverbs
31 would work against that. If she bought a field, she left
home to look at it, at least. And she also gets her food from
afar, so that would be a journey. Right? I'm sorry to interrupt. Can I be a little bit more specific
then? So would working outside of the home at the time where
you are raising young children, would that be, to me that seems
conscious. I think that's generally speaking
a bad thing. I think because the primary responsibility of
the mother is the nurturing of those children. A woman is saved
from any second class stigma that might have come out of the
fall because Eve was deceived. I think Paul is saying she is
saved by childbearing. That is to say, saved from the
lack of distinction that may come to her when she raises a
godly seed. And I think the priority for
a woman is to love her husband. And in those years when the little
children are in the home, that is to be her investment. That's
to be her life. The husband exercises the leadership,
but she has the responsibility of the nurture of those children. And I think that's exactly what
Scripture is saying, and that's what Scripture models. You can
abuse that, you can be a stay-at-home wife and spend all your time
in your SUV going from mall to mall, and that's not responsible
either, or dumping your kids off with a babysitter. I think
the intention of Scripture is that God made women to be in
the home nurturing those children, evangelizing those children,
catechizing those children as a as the highest, the pinnacle
of a woman's life if God gives her children. And you make those
investments in those little ones' lives in those years, and you
have a lifetime of joy that comes back to you in return for that
investment. By the way, we have a tape series
at Grace to You, and I mentioned this, on the fulfilled family
that deals with that issue rather extensively, if anybody would
be interested in getting that from our ministry. It is a privilege
to be here, and I just want to thank you all for your ministry.
It's been a tremendous blessing. My question is for Dr. Sproul. Regarding, I recently heard a
popular radio host claim that limited atonement is unbiblical,
and he cited 1 Timothy 4.10, and I know it's not right to
say that just because, you know, it says that, that limited atonement
is not true, but I don't know, how would you respond to that? I think that there's a lot of
misconceptions out there about what the doctrine of limited
atonement or what we call definite atonement means. I've heard it
expressed or explained this way, that the death of Christ is sufficient
for all, but efficient only for some, namely the elect. Or to put it another way, it's
efficient only for those who put their trust in Him. Well,
every Arminian believes that, and every Reformer believes that,
so I don't think that's what the issue is. I think the basic
question of limited atonement is really a simple one, but the
issue seems to get obscured in all of these debates. The question
has to do with the Father's intent in sending Jesus into the world
to die on the cross as the Redeemer of His people. Was God's intention
from all eternity to make salvation possible for everybody, but certain
for no one Or was God's purpose in eternity and in the covenant
of redemption in the Godhead that God send Christ in the world
to effect salvation for those for whom God intended salvation? I think that's a no-brainer.
God knew from all eternity who was going to believe and who
wasn't going to believe. and He sent a Savior to save
those who would believe, so that the atonement was limited to
those who would believe always, that is, in terms of God's purpose. See, the argument against limited
atonement seems like, well, in the Reformed view, God really
isn't kind enough. He's not gracious enough. He's
not doing enough. He's not making salvation possible
for everybody. If all the atonement did was
to make salvation hypothetically possible for people who in their
death, in their state of corruption, spiritual death, who would come
to Jesus where Jesus says they can't anyway, I would have no
confidence that anybody would be saved. But I think that the
purpose of the atonement was to save the elect. The purpose
of the atonement was for Jesus to lay down His life for His
sheep. And in one sense, it was for the world, not just for Israel,
but for people from every tribe and tongue and nation, and so
that the Jewish could say that He died not only for But for
all those people out there that there's a multicultural direction
in focus for the scope of the atonement, does that make sense
to you? It has to do with God's purpose
from eternity. Just a footnote, too, on the
verse you're asking, which 1 Timothy 4.10, God is the Savior of all
men, especially those who believe. That is not a good verse to prove
Arminianism, because if God is, in fact, the Savior of all men,
then you've got universalism, and you can't explain the rest
of the verse, especially of those who believe. What does that mean?
So, the way to understand that, I think, the best way to understand
that verse is, God is the Savior of all men in some sense. In
what sense? Well, He's not the spiritual,
eternal Savior of all men, because not all men are spiritually,
eternally saved. I think it is just manifestly indicating to
us that God by nature is a Savior, and that He has manifested that
desire to save by not giving the sinner what the sinner deserves
the moment the sinner deserves it. In other words, you could
put common grace into that. You can put the rainfalls on
the just and the unjust in that. You know, R.C. has done some
great teaching in his series on holiness, on the fact that
the question you ask in the Old Testament is not, why did somebody
die, but why did anybody live? So, God is by nature a Savior,
and by looking at the forbearance of God, Paul says in Romans 2,
we should be led to repentance because we understand God is
a Savior. He is proving it because sinners live, and they smell
the coffee, and they kiss their wives, and they have a baby,
and they see a sunset. God says to Adam, in the day
you eat, you'll die, and he lives to be 900 plus. What is that? It's the nature of God. It is
a true expression of God's nature to be a Savior. He puts it on
display temporally and physically, but especially is He the Savior
of those who believe eternally and spiritually. And that's the
way to see the distinction there that Melissa, the little adverb,
makes. Okay? Thank you very much. Good morning and thank you for
this opportunity. In light of Genesis 128 being
fruitful and multiplying, in Psalm 127 and Psalm 128, which
I'm sure that you know and I don't have to quote them, children
are heritage from the Lord, et cetera, with couples waiting
longer to marry and postponing their having children until later
and having only 1.8 children per family. Using all sorts of birth control,
could you please speak to that issue of birth control and being
fruitful, God's plan for the Christian family? For you, sir. To me? Yes, sir. You know, there's a lot of controversy
about that. in the creation mandate to be
fruitful and multiply and to dress until and keep the earth
and everything, that does not preclude the opportunity for
in the subduing of the earth to come up with medicinal cures
to diseases. Some people take it to the extreme.
It's saying is that we are to live by nature and die by nature,
and so to use artificial medicinal remedies for our diseases is
a violation of the creation mandate. No. And so, people would say,
no. And so, in response to that, they say, contraceptive is a
legitimate form of treating us from the potential ills of overpopulation
and everything, and so that we ought to be able to use them. The Roman Catholic Church, on
the other hand, has taken a very grim view, a narrow view about
contraceptive, and we disagree with it because they say the
only legitimate use of sexual intercourse in marriage is with
the view of the propagation of children. I don't agree with
that. Luther didn't agree with that.
Calvin didn't agree with that. And therefore, then we jump to the
conclusion that, therefore, it's okay to use artificial means
of contraception. There are many different kinds
of contraceptive devices, many today of which are frankly abortive.
And I don't think there's any question in my mind at all about
the evil of using such things. But you're asking now about legitimate
forms, I mean, not abortion, but actually anti-conception
devices, right? Now, I don't die on this hill,
and I don't… You know, make this the central point of my teaching
or preaching. I personally have a big problem
with contraception because part of it is the attitude that we
have in our culture that since we're no longer an agrarian society
where lots of kids helped economically on the farm, now they're a tremendous
burden to us to take care of them legitimately, and so we
ought to regulate the size of our family. That's a value that
I hear coming out of the secular world. I don't find it in the
Bible. In the Bible, a large family is seen as a tremendous
blessing from God, and the more arrows you have in your quiver,
the better is the blessing. And I don't know anything in
history that has changed that value judgment that God has placed
upon the family. Now, I'm in a minority on that,
and I may even be in a minority up here before you this But I've
never been comfortable with artificial birth control. Yeah, I think
I would just add one very quick thing to that. When God designed
a woman so that there's only a certain period of time every
month that she can become pregnant, God handed to every couple the
discretion of having children. In other words, if God expected
you to have nonstop babies, then women would be capable of that.
So I think the fact that God has limited that to a certain
time, and that that is manifestly obvious, generally speaking,
that God has put that decision in your control, and it's a decision
you make mutually before the Lord as to how many children
you want to have. And I think that is the best
methodology. to just follow the pattern that
God has designed. I wouldn't be against the other
things, but I think that's where we see the discretion indicated
in the creative structure of the woman and how much time each
month is time when she could be pregnant. So the decision's
in our hands. Now you're speaking to just the
contraceptive idea, but what I wanted to see was after that
we've thought about that now what's God's plan for the Christian
family to not just enjoy the intimate relationship that we
have with our spouses but the growth of our families and not
to take the control ourselves and to allow God, as you said,
that he has handed us a means, or as you said, to hand us a
means of birth control in effect, because there's only a certain
period of time during each month. The growth of the family seems
to be limited in most families, Christians too, in the nature
that they're all small families now, shouldn't we be seeing large
families during this time as Christians? Especially when we've
got Muslims having 6.8 children per family? I think statistically
you do have larger Christian families than secular families,
if you run the numbers on that.