I don't like Calvinists because they've chosen to follow John Calvin instead of Jesus Christ. I have a problem with them. They're following men instead of the Word of God. And I'm going to be the one standing on top of my hands, standing on top of my feet, standing on a stump and crying out, he died for all those who elected, were selected. Well, first of all, James, I'm very ignorant of the reformers. I think I probably know more about Calvinism than most of the people who call themselves Calvinists. Ladies and gentlemen, James White is a hyper-Calvinist. Now whatever we do in Baptist life, we don't need to be teaming up with hyper-Calvinists. I've learned the other day in class that I don't understand the difference between hyper-Calvinism and Calvinism. It seems to me that Calvin was a hyper-Calvinist. Right, I don't think there is typically any difference between Calvinism and hyper-Calvinism. Read my book. And now, from our underground bunker, deep beneath Bruton Parker College, where no one would think to look, safe from all those moderate Calvinists, Dave Hunt fans, and those who have read and re-read George Bryson's book, we are Radio Free Geneva, broadcasting the truth about God's freedom to say for His own eternal glory. we're going to be thinking about moving the bunker eventually uh... i'm not even sure there's anyone at bruton parker anymore other than the groundskeeper uh... i'm not even sure they're still open so we may have to find another place uh... that we would have a little more fun at uh... because uh... i'm not sure anyways welcome to radio free geneva uh... we may have another uh... radio free geneva coming up next week uh... I mentioned on Twitter this morning, uh, the, um... video that's floating around. It's been posted to me about 47,000 times on Twitter. The Achilles heel of Calvinism, just a basic misunderstanding in regards to the meaning of the word work, some category errors. We can clear them up fairly easily, but from a pastor who also just recently had a conversation with I've put both of those on my iPod for closer review on a very, very long ride coming up this weekend. And so we'll review that, get that taken care of. I'm currently editing actually a, yeah, I'm actually editing the sound file. I recorded the Kindle version. Of a book that was recommended to me by one of the gentleman contacted us about the weavers in china. And so i purchased the history of asian christianity it's pretty long. And there's so many notes thankfully there and notes. But there's so many. I mean, one section I cut out was half an hour. Can you imagine listening to half an hour of endnotes? Just too much. So I'm actually going through the sound files, taking some time, but it'll save me time in the long run to cut those out so I can listen to that whole thing. That's definitely an area that we need to expand upon. There's not nearly as much information. That's the problem. But anyway, you could be looking at that and putting that in the running, cycling, That's when I that's when I do my my studying, basically. And so we'll be doing that. But this morning on a fairly brief run, only a four miler this morning, I listened and kept up a race pace. So maybe there was something good about listening to someone ripping and snorting at you that keeps your pace up fairly good when you're when you're running. But listened to Well, a portion anyways, I had to keep listening once I got back. Good old Sean McCraney. I was contacted, actually Jeff Durbin contacted me last night and sent me the URL to the YouTube of Sean's Tuesday night program. He started telling me some stuff and it says and listen to it i really wasn't following exactly what he was saying saying he. Search through his emails and he found something that he had written in like two years ago and misspelled his name and and stuff like that and and cuz he was saying that jeff won't reach you know he's challenging jeff to come on his program i think that'd be a whole lot of fun. Personally just to watch i'm not sure if it's worth jeff's time but hey we can get you a standby ticket up to salt lake pretty easy and not that you do i do that but go to salt lake city and and be on the program i. You know i wouldn't worry too much about jeff you know he's a he's a ninja so he can take care of himself and but. It would be interesting to observe but he was just going on and on and on and and and he i'm gonna play it but he's he's talking about what to l. And how quatu, uh destroyed jeff and I and it's just so painfully obvious. He didn't listen to it He's going with what somebody else told him, but he's repeating it as if it's fact How could you not hear quacku? I mean we we said it clearly enough enough times and uh, I think it was even put up on the screen and and stuff like that and and uh, Uh, it was just really clear By the alleged quotes again, well, someone said that they said he's going on second second hand stuff. But that, you know, we were destroyed by him and then what made me choose to do the program today radio free Geneva. And I'm really surprised, I guess I need to explain it. People keep asking, what's the difference between the dividing line, Radio Free Geneva? Well, obviously, Radio Free Geneva is a program, it is the dividing line, obviously, it's just simply a special edition. where we deal normally with really bad arguments against Reformed theology. We've taken on some of the best. There aren't many of them, but we've taken on what the world considers to be some of the best. But normally, I mean, when we first started doing Radio Free Geneva years and years ago, we really did focus upon really bad straw man argumentation stuff. Because there's so much of it i mean if i wanted to do this pretty much all the time wouldn't be all that difficult to do. And sadly we would be able to do that but. Today it is a really bad version. It is a misrepresentational version. I did specifically write to to Sean. I did so through I didn't do it email. I did it in Facebook. And so I don't know whether we got it or not. Obviously, we'll archive this, but I certainly invited him to. uh... to watch and to listen and uh... what got me going uh... to decide to do this was he took the time to make an argument from Ephesians chapter one and i thought this is worthwhile because of a couple things Before I start playing his material here, I'm going to start with him denying Sola Scriptura, saying that Sola Scriptura is one of the greatest problems in the Church. Remember, he's not really a Trinitarian, doesn't understand the doctrine of Trinity, even though it's been explained to him by three different people who've come onto his program to lay it all out for him. You've got those issues. And then he's a hyper-preterist, who doesn't believe the Church exists any longer. The Church has been removed from Earth. So, non-Trinitarian, rejecter of scriptural sufficiency, who doesn't believe there's a Church today, Confused? How long can that excuse be used? I mean, there's a huge amount of confusion in Sean's teaching. There's a question about that. It just does seem, you know, he's talked about a calling of God in his life like Joseph Smith had. And to be honest with you, I'm not going to play this portion, but after he did the Ephesians 1 thing, he went on for at least half an hour asking the question, why do people hate me? I have to ask myself, why do Christians hate me so much? I guess i was i was on my return lap return leg of the of the run and i didn't want to say it out loud because i am running behind some houses and so they probably wonder who the weirdo running out there yelling things is. I want to say about you that's the problem you think it's about you it's not about you. Are you you are not the center of all things and it that there is a there's a real problem because you really do wrap things around you. And which i guess you. Maybe you can't avoid it once you've adopted the, you know, no eternal punishment, no church today, we're in the eternal state. Once you get there, what else do you got? You're now disconnected from the history of the church, you're disconnected from other churches, and you don't have elders, you don't have deacons, you don't have the Lord's Supper. You're just out there on your own. He actually ended up saying the best way to look at things is, the best way to view Christianity is artistic Christianity. uh... that you know you're you're each one of us is an artist or sort of painting our own faith type thing as i well as pretty much all you got uh... you've denied solo scripture uh... you you reject uh... the fun that i don't know why you pretend to be uh... martin luther at the beginning of your uh... thing there cuz like i explained to you when i was there you're misrepresenting martin luther even but uh... all those things you you put them all together We have a very, very, very, very confused presentation. But what's interesting is he did try to work through Ephesians chapter 1. If you reject Soloscripture, I don't know why. How come Ephesians chapter 1 has authority? Because it's obvious as the day is long, you reject the authority of all those texts that talk about the importance of the didaskalia, the doctrine, the teaching. Oh, it's just back for them there. You know, you've turned the Bible into a pile of Play-Doh that you get to artistically make whatever you want. So why don't you just artistically get rid of Ephesians 1? Which, after I demonstrate his many errors in Ephesians chapter 1, he may end up doing. uh... that is a a possibility so but it it will be useful uh... to to work through uh... if he should chapter one and once again demonstrate that consistent exegesis is the mechanism whereby you honor the scriptures of the word of god allow them to speak for themselves and it's also means of exposing those who are introducing falsehood but first let's listen to some of the uh... of the introductory material here before we got to the Ephesians 1 stuff. Okay, maybe we won't. I have the thing plugged in. I've done shows on Sola Scriptura, so I'm not going to repeat all of it now. The problem didn't really start in the 1500s. It didn't start with Constantine. It didn't start really with the early church leaders, or fathers as they call them. The problem started, listen carefully, the problem started in the faith when God took his apostles from the earth. along with his church bride, took them away as a means to protect it from the gates of hell, which would surely have overcome it if it was allowed to tarry. Surely. God knew that after that happened in 70 AD... Okay, so here's the... and I'm not sending video, this is audio, no taker, doesn't have video. So, There you have your hyper-preterism, the church has been taken away, AD 70, so, you know, all, what's written wasn't written to you anyways, is written to, you know, these people back then, you know, this is... part of the heresy of hyper-preterism, and no hyper-preterist can ever produce any meaningful ecclesiology or anything else. Once you've bought into this stuff, it's just all pick-and-choose, what you want. But so, the problem starts by the way God designed things. And of course, the biblical teaching is that God the Father be glorified in the Church throughout all ages. uh... the apostles taught that the church would be there until the coming of christ and not in eighty seventy uh... that it was his purpose for this message to be preached around the world and if if if you want i want you know at least uh... released to spain that's good enough uh... uh... it wasn't preached around the world and there is a bigger world than people knew back then uh... anyways you can see how all these things come together, you might actually be able to say, well, how could he ever have an orthodox thought given all the flaws in his foundation in the first place? That may be true, but remember, he's coming from the Calvary Chapel background, Calvary Chapel College. And while we obviously have lots of problems at Calvary Chapel College, they're not this whacked out by any stretch of the imagination. And so he does know better. He has been taught better, but has rejected all of that stuff for all sorts of other personal reasons, which we won't get into here, but you start seeing some of the issues here. When he took his, when Jesus came and took his bride and saved it from imminent destruction, and all the apostles are then killed off and dead, John the Beloved being the last one, God knew that there would be people from that point forward who would spend their lives flailing about trying to recreate brick and mortar religion in the name of what the New Testament says. On out to the present. Folks, the victory was had. That book, the New Testament, is a wonderful summation of what God did in that age to have victory over all things so that we could live in an era where we don't have to hate. Obviously, you know, the greatest obvious problem with hyper-preterism is to say that we are in the eternal age. What a bummer. That's a real letdown. That's not really what the apostles taught about that. We don't have to get angry over doctrinal disputes, where we don't have to have denominations. none of that. So we had to have that for only 30, 40 years? That did have to happen then? What's all this emphasis in the New Testament on doctrine and standing firm and passing things on to the next generation, when they all knew there wasn't going to be a next generation? Well, no, they actually did know. We are to live in the expectancy of the coming of Christ. It is this idea that, well, yeah, He came, and it's all wrapped up, leads to this kind of stuff is necessary in an age where the spirit and the fruit of love of that spirit should abide among believers but soul scriptura and this idea that we need a brick-and-mortar church is what has led to the situations that were in today So, sola scriptura, the sufficiency of scripture, the idea that scripture is sufficient in and of itself to reveal everything we need for life and godliness, this is a bad thing. It's a terrible thing. So, we know automatically that we're not going to get any orthodoxy out of Sean McCraney. It's impossible. It's not going to happen. But then the brick and mortar church, in other words, a church, You know, as Paul described it, as Paul went around establishing it, I don't know why he was, why in the world did he say to Timothy, Timothy, pass these things on to the next generation and the next, no, no, no, no, you don't need to do any of that. I mean, he would have written that to Timothy within a matter of years when it's all wrapped up anyways. So why worry about this? You know, here's the qualifications for elders, here's the qualifications for deacons. This is only going to be for a little while longer, so don't worry too much about it, Timothy. It's not what's there. But when you can blame the inspired word of God and the Church of Jesus Christ established as the primary problems, you're the problem. Not those things. That's, yeah, there's, yeah, this is a big problem. Speaking of Sola Scriptura, I'm going to keep rolling forward. Our show tonight is going to talk about a very sinister theology called uh... reformed theology don't don't uh... and he's i need any better better sound effects and i said that i should look for some kind of uh... uh... organ thing reformed theology calvinism I'm not going to talk about Reformed theology in the tulip, what is known as Calvinism to some, five-point Calvinism. I embrace all Reformed theology. Now here is, Sean McCraney is nothing if not an absolute collection of contradiction just just one huge massive i'm gonna contradict myself and i'll do it in one sentence and i'll do it five times and i'll do it on while doing a handstand i mean that this is this is sean mccree agreeing all over the place and how many times when i was on on the program that whoa sean you dude you just didn't you just Hey, but you know, you know, it's just what I'm feeling. Five point Calvinism. I embrace all reformed theologians and believers as brothers and sisters. It's heinous. It's horrible. It's disgusting. But you're my brothers and sisters. uh... but i think it is my view just as i believe that if lds people want to say that they'd their view of god in the gospel is theirs and they love jesus is the lord on the say hands off go ahead have added i'm not Because there is a truth about who God is, and there is a truth about who Jesus is, and there's a truth about what Jesus has done, and there's a truth about how you get to know him. And once you say there isn't, you become an enemy of the faith. That's certainly how the apostles understood it, and I try to follow them. To the Calvinist, I say, go ahead, have at it. But in my estimation, the Calvinistic God is far more heinous than the Mormon one. So remember folks, the non-trinitarian, anti-sola scriptura, conditionalist, hyper-preterist. uh... shockingly uh... thinks that the sovereign god who does according to his pleasure the sovereign god of psalm one thirty five six the sovereign god of deuteron of daniel chapter four uh... that nebuchadnezzar came to understand that the sovereign god uh... all through isaiah the sovereign god of ephesians one eleven which interesting enough listen carefully if i forget He goes through Ephesians 1-11 real fast, doesn't deal with what it says, because it says what he thinks is just so terrible and heinous and terrible. But that sovereign God is more heinous to him than the Man become God who dwelt on another planet, who is one God amongst billions and, well, an infinite number of deities, God, of Mormonism, who cannot create anything, who is sovereign over absolutely nothing, who has to get his elder children to vote on what he wants to do with the world that he has organized out of pre-existing matter. Yeah, that's more heinous. You tell me! When you think of what is necessary for the Spirit of God to do to bring someone to spiritual life, What's going to be more attractive? The God that looks like a big man, who doesn't, you know, is dependent upon us, or this sovereign God, you know? I don't know, it sounds a lot to me here like what you hear in Romans 9. Who can he blame? How can he blame us? I mean, this is just terrible. And you're going to hear that over and over again. I mean, I cannot relate to Calvin's God at all. I relate to the Mormon one far more, and the Mormon one is reprehensible relative to Scripture, so don't get me wrong. See, it's just a walking contradiction. Who cares relevant to Scripture? Scripture doesn't matter anymore. I mean, well, the principles, not solo scriptura, but it's heinous according to Scripture. The man has so many influences and he's just you know picking something here and picking something there and you put there into this messy thing and you wonder why people respond to him it's because this kind of stuff is absolute. soul poison to anyone who falls under his influence. That's why godly men who, shockingly, read the scriptures and come to the same conclusions about the key issues of the faith, warn and warn again and warn again about teachers like this that lead many astray. Now, apparently, there was a recent debate at Apologia Studios in Arizona. It's a reform-based studio, and what makes the debate interesting is that there's a reformed debater named Jeff Durbin who's very popular online. I've invited Jeff to be on the show, but he doesn't respond to any of my invitations because I think he knows that his stances would be proven foolish. That's a challenge to you, Brother Durbin. Come on and let's talk. Not debate, talk. What do you mean, not debate, talk? You can't prove someone's perspectives foolishness. And believe me, Sean, I know Jeff, you don't stand a chance, brother. Well, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that as a fellow believer. I can't accept you as that. But you don't stand a chance. You don't stand a chance. You're being foolish. If he takes you up on this, If he takes over this, I'm going to end up looking like the nicest guy who's ever been on your program. Can we get a round-trip ticket for Jeff? Rich says, Jeff, we're sending you, bro. Not only that, not only that, I know how to get to Motel 6 downtown or the other Motel 6. Either one, I can give you direct directions. I've stayed at both of them many, many times. Many, many times there in Salt Lake. We can get you there. You know how much they're charging at those Motel 6s up there now? Oh my goodness. It's like $69.95. We were up there, was it $24.95 in those days? Or 1995, something like that. I don't know. Anyway, we'll get you up there because the result would be such a wipeout that I would end up looking like, remember that kindly old Christian apologist man who was on with Sean? He was very nice in comparison to that mean ninja man. Oh, wow. Sean, dude. Again, you're a walking contradiction. Absolute walking contradiction. A discussion, not a debate. No, you're talking about a debate. Don't tell me you're not talking about a debate. It's exactly what you're talking about. You sort of caught yourself, but you can't sit there and say, his views are so ridiculous, but we'll have a nice discussion about it. No, you want to debate it. You think you can answer it. Now, maybe after this program, you might If you're smart, we'll rethink it. But, dude, come on. It was with Jeff Durbin and Dr. James White, who's been on the show, spent a lot of time with us, and I thought it was really good. His people are saying he won, and my people say they're not sure what to think. I wanted to stop that so I could see Rich's reaction. You know i don't know i don't waste my time looking around what people said one way or the other anything like that i just know that there are people who watch that who had. leanings toward Sean that after that didn't anymore. And I think that's what he's referring to. Well, I think we think you won, but there is the element of we didn't know what to think either. Won what? I mean... I don't know. You can lead the horse to water, but holy cow. No, no way. But nevertheless, I thought that was a good time spent. And there was another debate that's out there, and it was with another apologist, Reformed apologist, Aaron Shafafaloff, who also has turned down—if I mispronounce your name, Aaron, I'm sorry—but he also turned down an opportunity to be on the show because he's just mad at me. Now, Aaron will admit that his last name does not exactly flow off the tongue or off of anything. It's not easy. So I'm not going to pick on him for that, because I could mess it up myself. What he doesn't mention, because I don't think he knows this, he's going on secondary stuff here. is that Kwaku, and he's about to completely mispronounce his name, Kwaku L is one of the three Mormons. And, well, was. You're not supposed to call yourself Mormons anymore, so I don't know what they are anymore, but anyway, you know, there's a rather extensive YouTube channel, and they're presenting what I would call nouveau Mormonism. The New Mormonism. Kwaku, I guess, is the head of the, we didn't know this at the time, but the head of the Young Democrats at BYU. I didn't even know there were any Democrats at BYU, but there are, and there's gonna be a lot more of them in the future, and the cultural transformation and shift in Utah is going to be amazing. That state is going to go blue so fast. You won't know what happens. And the result is going to be places like BYU, U of U, the split's coming. The split is coming. Well, don't forget the, of our youth, the politicians, Mormon politicians, who were Democrats. in our youth. Morris Udall was a Democrat in the Mormon. Yeah, but Democrats back then were not Democrats today. Yeah, it's a whole different animal. Let's be honest, Democrats today are socialists. That's just straightforward. But there's a history of the Yeah, I don't know. Anyway. So, he doesn't seem to, Sean doesn't seem to know anything about the Three Mormons or have watched any of their materials or anything like that. So, he doesn't mention that the whole reason that he's done this is because he has a social media platform and there are certain, you know, if you want to reach young Mormon people with a message they've never heard before, then this would be someone that you would want to interact with. uh... doesn't seem to be aware that anyway uh... these calvinist who have all the answers and that's but godness heinous box that is unbelievable to me who are they debating uh... durban and white against this guy and then shuffle up against this guy a young black lds man-boy i'm gonna call a man-boy because he is young he's a man child he is a young kid and his name is caught to al Now this Kwaku L. I'm glad I got his name right because I'm the one that had to make sure it was put on the Bible and spelled right. Can you imagine if we had done what, you know, the level of research that Sean McCraney has done here and, you know, put the wrong name on that. I think Sean may be a little bit upset that Kwaku L. Which, by the way, is a very good Ghanan name. He got a really, really, really cool Bible, and Sean didn't. Now, I didn't know Post-Tenebrous Lux Bible rebinding at that time. But it wouldn't have mattered because I don't think we would have we could have done that in that context But maybe there's maybe there's some jealousy there that you know, you didn't Sean you didn't get you know, they're really well Then again, you don't know about the Bible because you didn't watch the program. We gave him a super nice Reformation study Bible had been rebound by Brother Jeffrey over there at Post-Tenebrous Lux, a Bible rebinding. It was beautifully done. And so I've had, I can't tell you how many people have had come up to me since then and say, hey, how much serious heresy do I need to get involved in for you to give me a Bible like that? If I debate you, you know, pretty desperate folks, pretty desperate folks. Now this Kwatu L, by the way I invited him to be on the show, he won't be on the show because he looked us up and he saw the man in white, that was the LDS guy who painted his face white and wore the temple clothes on the show years ago. He saw that, wrote me back and said, I saw you dressed in our temple clothes and painted your face white so I'm not going to be on the show. I wrote him back and said, that wasn't me, that was an active LDS guest. who is on the show i'm not going after you that way caught to he didn't care he will be on the show either but in any case could it be that you didn't get his name right each time you're going to build a baby uh... that might have had something to do with it i i did you didn't notice when you're back but you know it'd be five Didn't misspell his name? There was a tag-team debate with White and Durbin against Quattu L, and then a single debate with Shafafaloff against Quattu. Which had been, I don't know, was that earlier this year? I forget what the date on that was, but it was months before ours, at least. I don't remember what the specific date was. That kid He did a remarkable job in making them look like fools when it came to Calvinism. Now, I would ask him, because he doesn't bother to say why, I would ask him, how was it that only one side ever cited a single biblical reference? And that all Kwaku could do would go, I just can't believe anyone would believe that. I mean, you really think? In other words, Kwaku did the best impersonation of the Objector from Romans 9 I've ever seen. I can see why you would find that convincing, because you're doing the Romans 9 objector too, but for people who sit back and go, I don't want to object to the apostle like the guy in Romans 9 did, that sort of impacts things, don't you think? But again, when you start making comments about something you actually didn't watch yourself, that's where the problem comes in. I find that ironic that you can take an LDS black man, child, young guy, just say a young guy, I don't mean disrespect, and he can go in with the big way-end shooters of the faith in the West Coast, James White and Durbin and Shofalov, and he can hand their- Now, now listen. Listen to what he says here, because he sort of betrays. He's going on second-hand information. Heads to them. Apparently, I have a good friend, and Quatu got Durbin and White. I have a good friend. It's sort of like one of those situations like, Doctor, what do you say about someone with this? I'm asking for a friend. Yeah, uh-huh, Sean, we got you. Yeah, good research there. Good research. who are just pounding the gavel. Okay, then he goes on to make some grand observation about what's going on in the world, and I'll just give you a sense of it. This must be seen this way. So he's talking about people who have doctrinal content. Specific, clear doctrinal content to their beliefs. These terrible, horrible people. God is crushing them. He's crushing them with unbelievable things that are telling other people that this dogma is ridiculous and it never should have been. I really think that we are in an age, and it's probably been going on for a hundred years, where enlightened thinkers who love God have been saying, you know, this doesn't make sense. But it's the loud voices and the pointing fingers of these Calvinists who say that you are not predestined to heaven but are going to eternal hell. Yeah, I'm sure it's happened over and over again. Again, one of the things I said in my Facebook message to Sean was it's really sad that you just refuse to accurately represent the other side because our beliefs would not allow us to have any knowledge of who the elect are. I can't look at somebody and say you are predestined or you are not predestined. I don't have that information. So this kind of, you know, I guess I should probably, you know. have this guy standing on the on the computer is like that i got a straw man here and i left i left the. I left the the the lighter but i can i can get it quick enough cuz cuz this guy is in deep trouble when it comes to shama cranny and his his misrepresentation. He survives another day yeah i think he would light up pretty well the way the way he feels there alright so let's. Let's get to Ephesians 1, shall we? Because that was the primary useful thing. It's one thing to listen to Sean railing at folks. It's another thing to... What struck me was, hey, you know what? This was... What was neat here is it was all in one section, and it was coherent. Now, it's contradictory to what he says elsewhere. uh... because i don't know see this is this is the chapel cal calvary chapel side of him popping out uh... which he hasn't quite figured out he's abandoned any foundation for doing this in this way uh... he's still trying to use grammatical historical interpretation Whereas once you deny solo scriptura and start adopting some of the stuff that he's adopted is really no reason to do that anymore and you can there's all sorts of more interesting ways of doing things. So it's it's massively inco inconsistent but. It's there. I'm going to speed it up one click, just so we can get through it a little bit faster. What? Oh. So, well, if you're going to do that, then I'm going to put that over there and bring the text up over here. There we go. You might want to turn in your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 1, and we will be starting with verse 1, because he starts with verse 1. But please note something, so let me just point out what one of the very first errors he's going to make right off the bat. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus and faithful in Christ Jesus, grace to you and peace from God our Father and Lord Jesus Christ. Some reason he really strongly emphasizes the alleged distinction between the Father and the Son. Again, the use of theos for the father and kurios the son, standard Pauline usage, but there's still this Trinitarian confusion that exists there. But what's important to see is that this is not written to apostles. It is written, Tois Hagiois, to the saints who are in Ephesus. I'm aware that N-epheso is a textual variant, and it's a fascinating textual variant, but that's not relevant, really, at this particular point in time to our interpretation. To the saints who are in Ephesus, and faithful in Christ Jesus. And so you have a specific audience, and so when Paul then goes to the first person, plural. He's already addressed a plural subject, which are the saints and the faithful in Christ Jesus in Ephesus. And so when he goes to the first person plural, we or us, he is including his audience, not excluding his audience. And if Sean wants to say he's excluding his audience, he has to come up with something positive from the text that does so. But since it starts off with the address to the audience, the natural reading of the text, is going to be to recognize that Paul is now including himself in with the audience. You can't find anything where you say, well, I think this is just the apostles. Show me from the text. You're importing it. There's nothing here. Where is apostoloi in Ephesians 1? Could you show that to me? No, you can't, because it's not there. let's keep that in mind and uh... let's uh... let's listen to what he had to say I went to Calvary Chapel School of Ministry. It wasn't accredited. I didn't learn a bunch of stuff to make me smart. I just read the Bible with my own eyes. So go with me to the first chapter of Ephesians. In Ephesians chapter 1, we come upon some really interesting views that so many Calvinists have used on unsuspecting people to say, we are predestined. God has predestined us from the foundation of the world to be his followers. and they use Ephesians chapter one to prove it. Well, I want to use Ephesians chapter one to prove they're full of it. Okay, so the standard here is they're full of it. Alright? Sean does not have a sanctified tongue, evidently does not believe in the authority of scripture, the book of James, and even the title of this particular episode was slightly vulgar. But at the and he's gonna say that in ten minutes in the ten minutes he presented this that he shot in the head the Reformed understanding of Ephesians 1. So, the bar here is all the way at the top. It's not, here's another way of possibly looking at it, shot in the head and full of it, do not leave you in a position of saying, well, I think mine is at least equally as likely to yours, or something like that. No, you're saying, yours is right, the Reformed one is wrong. Which goes against his whole thing. Well, you Reformed people, you all do your thing, I'm fine with you. No, you're not. No, you're not. If you can use language like this, what you're saying is, there's a right way of reading this and a wrong way of reading this. Now, you won't defend the hermeneutical or exegetical foundation, because you can't, because you've already abandoned all those things with all these other wacko beliefs that you've adopted over the past number of years to get your little group going. But I'm just going to keep pointing out the massive contradictions and say to you, contradiction is not something that a person who is truthful and loves the truth wants to embrace and live in. It is the mark of falsehood, not truth. So, we keep that in mind. And I want you to test and challenge it. Don't believe me. Get your Bible out and read it along with me. So, it's all about free will. Let's start. Catch that? It's all about free will. Can't help but thinking of good old Norm Geisler at that point when he says John chapter 6 is all about free will. I mean just because the phrase doesn't appear anywhere might not mean anything if it's just demanded but of course Well, let me take that back. You know what? Sean is exactly right. It is all about free will. God's free will. Not man's free will. It's about God's free will. So Sean, you know what? You're exactly right. Since you didn't say whose free will it was, we'll give you a mulligan on that one and say, The Holy Spirit reached down and made you say something you didn't intend to say. You're right. Ephesians 1 is about free will. God's free will to do as He predestines and as He chooses. It talks all about the kind intention of His will. The one will that is involved here is the divine will. That powerful will. You are right about that. You just did not intend to be right about that. So, it's all about free will. Let's start in Ephesians 1 and learn together. Ephesians 1, 1. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of God, he says, to the faithful saints which are at Ephesus and to the faithful in Jesus Christ. I just stop and go, by the will of God. Okay, so there's your will. Was Paul, an apostle, by his will or by God's will? Because Paul doesn't say, by the will of God and my will. By the will of God as enabled by my will, he says, by the will of God. God is the one who placed me in this position. I am an apostle of Christ Jesus. So, was that a synergistic will? Was it a free will will, somehow? Questions that people have that I think are appropriate. standard opener for Paul in most of his epistles, except this one, he does open it up to the faithful in Jesus Christ. You might say Ephesians is to everybody. Could be wrong on that one, maybe it's to everybody. Um, yeah, and in fact, one of the interesting things is, if an epheso is a later amendation that shows that the first church that received this, it was meant to be a circular letter that was to be read by all the churches in Lycus River Valley. And I think that is quite probable, personally. And in fact, I think that this is the epistle that Paul refers to over in Colossians 4 when he says, read the epistle that's coming from Laodicea. I think it's this one. So yeah, it is to a wide number of people. It's written to all believers in those churches, which is why it remains just as valid and relevant to us today, because it's God's intention that that church continue to glorify Christ Jesus throughout all ages, and not just that one generation up in heaven. But I think it was primarily first to the people of Ephesus. And then he says, Grace be to you, another standard opener, and he writes, and peace from, he says, God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I'll say no more, but Paul emphatically calls God the Father and our Father, God. And he refers to Jesus almost always as the Lord or the Savior, Jesus Christ. Always that. God, the Father, Jesus Christ, okay? Let's go to verse 3. Well, okay, not sure why the observation is being made unless you are trying to say that Paul never uses the os of the Son, which he does. It is not the normal usage. Kurios is a high term. It's the term used in the Greek Septuagint to take the place of the Tetragrammaton. But theos is used in the sun by Paul, for example, in Titus 2.13 and possibly Romans 9.5 as well. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He does it again there. who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. Now, at verse 3, we learn that God is the Father who blesses with all spiritual blessings, and we come upon something really important here. Our first us is mentioned by Paul. Okay, and that's why I emphasized ahead of time the reality that in any other situation, any meaningful reading of the text, when you go to Romans, when you go to Galatians, when you go to any place else in Paul, you're going to have the audience identified first, and then if you go to the first person plural, if you go to hamas, which is the term here, The one who blessed us, Hamas is the accusative, it's because the very term there has action to it, the one who blessed. The one who blessed us, it is simply understood. that unless there is something where he immediately identified, for example, the apostolic band in contradistinction to the church at Ephesus or something along those lines, that what has happened is the plural is the joining of Paul to his audience. And it happens many times. And there are only a couple of times, especially when a discussion of apostles in 1 Corinthians comes up, that you can make an argument because you have the false apostles in Corinth, and you have the super apostles, which are also basically false apostles. But anyways, in those contexts, later on down the road, The context tells you what it is. That's not here. And Sean gives us no argumentation whatsoever to accept what he's about to say in regards to the nature of the we. Our first us in these passages. He says, "'Blessed be God, the Father of Jesus, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.'" Now, most readers of the Bible today will say, that us is me. I'm reading the Bible, Paul says us, I'm an us, it's me. Well, it would be us if we are described as who? What did it say up above? To the saints and faithful in Christ Jesus. That's the audience. And he's a saint, and he's faithful in Christ Jesus, so that's the us. So, if you are called and believe in Jesus Christ, if you are hagiois and pistois, then yeah. Obviously, historically, immediate application to every saint and believer in that day But given the gnomic character of Ephesians 1, that is, he's not stating, now this is only true in regards to you guys at Ephesus, I wouldn't say this ever to the Romans, or I wouldn't ever say this to people at Thessalonica or something like that, but just to you Ephesians, no, he's not saying that. And he's talking about overarching, top-level theological concepts that result in the salvation of human beings, but he goes all the way back to eternity. to lay these foundations. And so, you've got to find something in the text to try to limit this, as he's about to do, but he doesn't. He's going to limit it, but he's not going to do that because the text limits it in any way. Right? And then they apply everything else that's said in the first verses of Ephesians 1 to themselves, thinking they're the us. It's wrong. I'm going to prove it. Okay? He's going to prove it. He's not going to offer another perspective, he is going to prove it. Prove it. So there you go. The standard here is way, way high. So when we read us, we're so self-centered, we think it's me as a believer. That's not a matter of self-centeredness. That's not a matter of the world revolves around me. There's a theological recognition that the church is made up of all those who are called out from every generation. And the relationship, the redemption that has been provided for me is the same redemption that was provided for them And for the generation before me and the generation after me, that's the consistency of the body. Here this us is speaking not of us now, nor was it speaking of the believers then. Now, catch that? It's not talking about the believers then. Okay? Then you can explain then, and you'll be able to demonstrate from the text, where the disjunctive took place. Because we have the saints and faithful, specifically identified in verse 2. And now, when you go to Hamas, the natural way of reading this in the rest of the Pauline corpus, if you weren't trying to get around something here, it would be Paul and his audience. But you're gonna say it's something else. What? What are you talking about? Paul, when he writes us here, is speaking either about the Jews or he's speaking about apostles. Just the twelve apostles. Jews? What? He's talking about the Jews? At Ephesus? Ephesus isn't the Jewish city. The vast majority of the people in Ephesus are going to be Gentiles, not Jews. If I, just to make it simple, I think he's talking about apostles alone. He says us, and he's talking about the apostles. So, there's the assertion. Where's the, where's the foundation? Where's, where's, uh, is this sort of revelation or something? I don't, I don't know. But, uh, This is how teachers like this, you know, he says, well, these Calvinists who, you know, they convince people who have not had a chance to study the Bible. Okay, well, we're studying the Bible, and right now, you're just making a wild claim that's going to become the foundation of your entire rereading of the entire text. What's it based on? What's it based on? So every time we read us or we, in the next passage, you try to hear who you think he's talking to, but hang with me till the end. So he goes on to verse 4 and he says, speaking of God, according as he, God the Father, have chosen us, this is the second us he's used. in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love. That must be talking to me! I'm supposed to be holy and without blame before God, so it's speaking to me. It's not. Again, most people today apply the us or we to themselves, referring to them, but they are not. God has chosen in himself, before the foundation of the world, the apostles. To be what? Holy and blameless before him in love? So you're really suggesting that what Paul is doing is he's writing to the Ephesians and he's saying, um, let me tell you about our special relationship we have. Now, we've been chosen to be holy and blameless before him in love, but you haven't. They weren't, see, notice the contradiction here, because if you look at the root of holy, now this is where, to my knowledge, the gentleman, Sean, does not read the original languages. He is dependent upon English translation. If he could read the original languages, then he would recognize that the term, twice haigiois, the saints, this is where the English translation is a little bit misleading, unless you know the original language, twice haigiois, and what is the term here in verse 4, to be holy, haigious, haigious, haigious, it's the same term, uh, here being used descriptively, but it's the same root. And so, if he's writing to the hagiois, and he talks about, uh, that we should be hagios, the only logical result of that is that this is Paul and his audience. Paul and his audience. That's the natural reading, and now, with the terminology being used here, He's going to tell the Ephesians, and later on when he starts talking about the Ephesians and the one body, they're going to be blameless, same terminology, everything he's going to be talking about about the Jews and Gentiles together in the one body later in Ephesians is based upon what he said in chapter 1! You limit this only to the apostles and you're making this irrelevant to the rest of the book. It is eisegesis to the nth degree. And when you find somebody messing with the scriptures like this, twisting the scriptures like this, it's because there is a belief being taught by the scriptures that they don't like. And they're in rebellion against it. It's what Joseph Smith did. It's what Sean McCraney does. And they sound a lot alike. They really sound a lot alike. Sean, you do. I have a calling on my head, like Joseph Smith did. Really? Sounds just like Joseph Smith did in his day. You've still got a whole lot more connections to him than you want to admit, and that's a problem. That they should be holy and without blame before him in love. He is still talking about them. He goes on, verse 5, having predestined us Everyone who reads that thinks it's talking about Christians. The whole body of Christians. Yeah, because it says unto adoption through Jesus Christ unto himself. Are only the apostles adopted? Where do you get this stuff? Where do you get this special apostolic adoption that is different or better? What about Romans 8? Who is adopted? Golden chain of redemption, same term. Who's adopted? Only the apostles? No, all those who are justified. So, I mean, you are absolutely tearing Paul's own theology apart. Paul would have no idea how you came up with this. What are you doing? Didn't you read what I read? I mean, come on. Didn't you read what I wrote? You're completely messing with everything here. But I say, having predestined us the apostles unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will. to the praise and glory of his grace wherein he has made us, the apostles, accepted in the beloved, verse 7, in whom we, the apostles, have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins. Again, redemption, forgiveness of sins, the apostles have a special redemption? A special forgiveness of sins? No, the we is all the saints and faithful in Christ Jesus in Ephesus. It's the people he's written to along with himself. This is the common experience of all believers. This is the theological foundation of our relationship to God. according to the richness of His grace. Verse 8, wherein He has abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence. Verse 9, having made known unto us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure which He has purposed in Himself. You got all that? That is, again, Paul has mentioned us or we crowd in the last six verses six times. He's talking about an us and a we. That's a group of somebody God the Father has elected, chosen, predestined from the foundation of the world. I'm telling you, the apostles, according to the goodwill of His pleasure, to be redeemed in the precious blood of Jesus. Why? When? Yeah, why? That is a good question, because what you just described is what Reformed people believe about all Christians. So, if that's only about apostles, then you have different means of salvation for different people. The apostles had one special mechanism, and then the rest of us have some other mechanism. Is that how this is supposed to work? Verse 10, that in the dispensation of the fullness of times, He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are in earth, even in Him. Verse 10 tells us that the reason God has chosen and predestined the apostles, the us and the wes, was so that in the dispensation of the fullness of times, He, God, might gather together in one all things in Christ. both which are in heaven and which are in earth even in him himself the dispensation of the portfulness of times phrase has been misread and misinterpreted for ages by christians and religious groups who think that the dispensation of the fullness of time started at jesus birth and continues out to our day-to-day or the dispensation of the fall of this is where your hyper preterism is going to come in is going to uh... mess everything up, and whoever's sending me text messages, please stop. I know that you're trying to be helpful with the specific information about exactly how to pronounce Ghanaian names. We're past that. We're in Ephesians 1 now, so I don't know how to turn that off. Maybe if I quit that, that might help, but appreciate the help. But that's neither here nor there right now, and it is interrupting everything else we're trying to do. Back to 10, the hyperdispensationalism. hyper-preterism, where there's no church any longer, allows you to accomplish this kind of thing, where you are trying to avoid the fact that, well, if this is just the apostles, it seems really strange that he would say, you know, with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is the summing up of all things in Christ, because, oh, the summing up of all things in Christ must be just what happened back then. Um, Christians have seen that this is so overarching and involves everything that God is doing in drawing the elect into himself and the building of the church and all these things. This hyper-preterism just is a, it's a different religion, it's a different faith, it just ends up giving you something that looks completely different than anything that the apostles ever would have been able to present. And, by the way, I might note, the things in heaven and the things upon earth, it's possible the numeric standard does translate that in him we have obtained an inheritance goes with the next verse, possibly. There's multiple ways of looking at that. Times was the restoration of the gospel through the Mormons. They called the Mormon Church since 1820 till now the dispensation of the fullness of times. It's been misappropriated by many people. Not so. The word dispensation is oikonomia in the Greek and it means an economy. Now if you're gonna play the Greek game, then you need to play it all the way. Because you can look a word up. But if you throw it out there, then you're responsible for noting the other things that are so obvious to anyone who actually does read the Greek. So, if you're throwing Greek in there now, then why didn't you notice the relationship between saints and holy? Which connects the two together and you said nope nope nope nope nope can't be the right there i mean on my screen and i sort of got the window a little bit smaller they were they were both right there. You know if you're actually reading it then you see that that's one of the reasons it's good to. Learn the language, so just keep that in mind if you're gonna throw it out there. And so in other words, it's the age management approach of any business anciently, especially a household, and here it means the economy that God established when everything would come together in one so he could make Christ all in all. Here Paul speaks of the oikonomia, of the fullness of time. So this has happened? This is done? Seriously? We're having this disagreement and yet Christ is all in all? I certainly hope not. a period when the consummation of the preceding ages came together and culminated, hence the fullness of times, into one place where the new oikonomia, the new economy, could launch forth, in this case, to a waiting world. What did God intend to do in this period called the dispensation of the fullness of times? The next line tells us that He might gather together in one, I believe that is this whole group, the whole world, forever and ever, in one, all things, which are in heaven and which are on earth. That almost sounded like universalism there, didn't it? That sounded like some kind of universalism. Are we throwing universalism in with the hyper-preterism? I mean, so many noxious fumes theologically here that I don't know how you'd survive it. In Him. That's called victory. That's called total victory right there, alright? All heavenly inhabitants and earthly into one common denominator. That's why I hate denominationalism, because it creates many denominators. No. So that is the victory Christ had already, where he has gathered together and won all things that are in heaven and earth unto himself. We're not waiting for this to happen. Jesus isn't waiting to have the victory. He has had it, and it all happened in the dispensation of the fullness of times, in and through himself and his apostles, who from the foundation of the world were predestined to come in and do that very thing. And so we read the next line, where Paul says at verse 11, speaking of... Now listen carefully here, because, alright, even if you bought all of that, even though we've demonstrated it has no foundation and goes against the text, even if you bought all of that, verse 11 still says, describes God as predestining according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will. Now, I think Sean had described this as a heinous box that those terrible, horrible Calvinists put God into. It's going to have to explain pretty clearly, especially in light of all those Old Testament texts we can go back and grab and go, yeah, it says it pretty straightforwardly there, that it's not saying that God works all things after the counsel of his will. He's got to tell us what he means is God works all things in the economy, which includes free will. I mean, that might be some, I mean, it's not what the text is saying, but The text doesn't teach what most people teach they've got to come up with something and so something like that listen as he zips by this sort of like whistling in the dark when you're when you're going by the. the cemetery, you know? I'm nervous here. "...and he uses another we, in whom also we, the apostles, have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things after the counsel of his own will." Now, hold on. He's reading it very, very fast. I may go back. Inheritance. Hmm. Paul used that anyplace else, like the third chapter and the fifth chapter about, oh yeah, all believers? Hmm. Isn't that a part of exegesis? To honestly represent what the author himself, how he uses terminology? You really want to try to twist chapter 3 and chapter 5, verse 5, and we've obtained an inheritance, but it's just us, it's just us apostles who obtained the inheritance. No, it's not. The whole, over and over again, Paul will talk about the inheritance that is that of the believers. Oh, but this is a different inheritance. Really? You want to substantiate that? That's a positive affirmation. You want to substantiate that from the text? Good luck. You can't do it. You know you can't do it. And that's just the way it is. being predestined, according to the purpose of Him who works all things after the counsel of His own will, that we, the Apostles, should be to the praise of His glory, who first trusted Christ. That's the end of the we's and us's in this introduction of the Ephesians, alright? The we's and the us's, the Apostles, were predestined, not believers, just them. Okay, we've already totally torn this apart. I mean, Refutation-wise, been refuted, it's done. Whether he can see it or not, everybody else can't. But did you notice? Right past verse 11, right on into verse 12, nothing about the description of God as the one who works all things after the counsel of his will. It's just like, what? Was there something I needed to say? I didn't see it. Just right on by it. I understand why. It's a pretty clear description. But there's the problem. Whether you agree with my assessment or not, it is now where Paul makes a shift. You ready? He's been talking about them as apostles predestined from the foundation of the world to bring in the dispensation of the fullness of times, and at verse 13 he then says, He's been talking about us and we the whole time. Now he turns his attention to his audience, the reader, in whom ye also trusted after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. Okay, now in verses 4 through 12. Okay, now let's think that one through a second. First of all, If you have the critical text, you know that every pronoun in verse 13, well, there's two plural pronouns, enhokai humais, and ta euangelion te satarius humon, have variants. And in, for example, the first, who mice do you have? Hay mice. In second corrector, Sinaiticus, Alexandros, KL, Psi, 326, 629, etc, etc. And you even have a homone in some other... And then the second one is homone in K, Psi 323. So there's some interesting text with variants. I think the selections in the critical text are correct, and it is a U, because Paul is now talking about their experience in coming into Christ. You also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in which also you believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. Okay, so the description here is now applying what happened in eternity past has to interface with time. And so if you're chosen in eternity past, then God chooses the very time at which you are going to hear the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and upon hearing and believing in that, you are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. So, with regeneration, the Holy Spirit raises you to spiritual life, and you receive the seal of the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the, verse 14, the arabon, the down payment, of our what? Do you notice it? Claironomia. Our inheritance. Um, wasn't that just what only the apostles had just a few verses ago? Well, no. Because in Paul's understanding, now they come to understand what their inheritance is, but it's not some different inheritance. It's not that the apostles have a different inheritance and they've got a lesser inheritance or whatever else it might be. There's no inconsistency because the error was made by ignoring the connection that the text itself made in the audience right up at the beginning. There's where the problem comes in for Sean. Paul speaks of a special apostles who were predestined from the foundation of the world to bring in the dispensation of the fullness of time. He clearly explains what they were called to do. That is not applicable to all Christians, like the insipid Calvinists try to suggest. But at verse 13, Paul shifts into another group, the ye's and the yours. You mean Paul did not believe? and was sealed, having heard the gospel of his salvation? Paul hasn't been sealed by the Holy Spirit? Paul doesn't have the Spirit as an Arabon? Paul doesn't have a clarionimia? No, of course not. These things are all things that Paul and his audience shared together. He is simply now taking the discussion out of what God, the source of blessing in God, the Father in eternity past, and that meant and resulted in the experience of salvation in time to those to whom he is writing. It's really not that difficult to understand if your ultimate desire is to understand what Paul intended to communicate to his audience back then. If your ultimate intention is to hide from doctrines and dogmas you don't like, then I guess you just gotta do what you gotta do. And that's exactly what is being done by Sean McRaney. anymore. There was before, I skipped over it. And at least predestination is true for the apostles, even in his own view at that point, I guess. I guess the apostles' free will doesn't matter. Paul couldn't have said no, or Peter couldn't have said no, I guess. I guess that's the cost of all these things. But no, just, you know, you have the same dynamic here that you have in John 17. where in the high priestly prayer, Jesus is talking about the apostles. And then he says, I don't just pray for them, I also pray for those who believe because of their word, because of their testimony. He sees the ongoing nature of these things, that they may all be one as we are one. He makes that connection, you have the same connection going on here, except Paul had included himself, he had to, from the eternal perspective, the small time difference between Paul's conversion and the conversion of the churches under his ministry from the eternal perspective is meaningless. And so, when he's talking about the elect of God as a whole, then he includes himself in there, and then when he comes to their particular experience, and he is one of the primary people through whom that came in his ministry in Ephesus, then he switches pronouns. makes perfect historical sense, and it does not interrupt the audience that was introduced at the beginning. This is why you do exegesis, not eisegesis, which is what Sean McCraney is doing. because he's talking to believers now, and they are the ye's he's speaking to. Five times he refers to the non-apostles as the ye's and the yours, and nothing about predestination. And then finally, he brings both groups together, the apostles and the believers, verse 14, which the Holy Spirit of promise is the earnest of our inheritance. He does bring them all together, uh, because there's only one inheritance. It makes perfect sense. There was no reason to divide it up above. There is only one spirit that indwells all of them. There is only one Arabon, one down payment. Um, and it is our inheritance. And so the inheritance of the previous verses, then the inheritance, it's all the same. It's all the same. There's not a bunch of different inheritances. It's not, well, the apostles get there. None of this is true. There's no reason to complicate the text in this way unless you don't like what the text teaches. And that is what it did teach. That back there in verses five and six, he chose us in him. If you are in Christ, if you're adopted, if you have the Holy Spirit, you've been chosen by God in eternity past in Christ. Nowhere else there is no salvation in any of the name. in Christ, but Christ is not the chosen one. We were chosen in Him. Our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of His glory. Now, having now walked through this, listen to these final words. In the past 10 minutes, I've explained to you the scriptures that Reformed theologians use to convince people, unsuspecting people, who haven't been able to study the Word, that predestination is a concrete, biblical tenet that you must understand in order to understand Calvinism. And in those last 10 minutes, it was shot to hell. There you go. That's the voice of arrogance. That's the voice of ignorance. That's the voice of a man who refuses to submit to proper authority and just picks and chooses what he wants to believe. And now he takes what he was taught at Calvary Chapel Bible School. And in service of something they never would have accepted, obviously, we need to give them kudos for that. In service of something they never would have accepted, he now uses that kind of argumentation to present this twisted interpretation of Ephesians 1 to avoid the teaching of the very text itself, which is such a You know, can you imagine, how would Ephesians 1 be a, first of all, its relationship to the rest of the epistle goes out the window, but how would this be an encouragement to those believers in Ephesus? Well, we apostles, we were chosen from eternity, but y'all weren't. We're the only ones. You just chose us. And once we're gone, then, you know, it's just all up in the air? I don't know. There's no coherence here. There's no coherence in Sean McCraney's teaching. It's all over the place, and he revels in that. He thinks that's great. Sure, you can't make heads or tails out of it, but hey, that's what makes it so fun. Well, it's not fun. Um, it's, um, it's misleading and it's, uh, it's dangerous and it's just simply not biblical by any stretch of the imagination. So like I said, he went on from here to go, you know, I've, I was sitting around pondering and I was, I was wondering why do people hate me so much? And he starts going through and what he, what he does is, And like I said, my first response when I heard this was, it isn't about you. It's not about you, Sean. Quit putting yourself in the center. But then he starts going through, well, then I started asking, well, what is Christianity? Why is it that Christians dislike me so much? And he ends up giving us, you know, we've talked about the mere Christianity movement here. Mere Christianity is a full set of dogmatic decrees in comparison to what he comes up with. Basically, love God, John 3.16, believe in Jesus, don't ask what any of that means. Don't ask about why, don't ask who Jesus is, no, no, no, you can't ask anything like that. And he comes up with these little statements, and then the fourth statement is, and there's more to it than just that, because there's revelation, there's more revelation, and there's other things in there, and, you know, basically, the simple recognition that we've been given an entire Bible And we've been told, stand for sound doctrine, don't be deceived, there's gonna be people who teach this, that, and the other thing, and don't be misled. But you see, that was just all back for then. And Jesus came. And that's all over. So, what do we do now? I don't know. And neither does he. once you have jesus returning back then and there's no more church and there's no more uh lord supper or anything like that is uh you get to sort of well it's eternal state i guess you sort of make things up as you go along um but his idea is it's those people those people that add that stuff up see if we just stuck with this artistic christianity where You you've literally honestly the the mere christianity stuff that we've talked about before Where you've got trinitarian, you know, believe in the trinity and the death, burial and resurrection of jesus deity of christ, of course personally spirit and then the christ, you know, you know the the cross and the empty tomb and the resurrection And that's pretty much it. That's a whole lot more because his simplified statements, you can't even ask what they mean. You know, John 3.16, there's a lot of theology in there, people don't even, well, I don't want to ask what, you know, what believe in him means, and I don't want to, you know, that starts getting too complicated, so can we be, you know, And so you end up with this Christianity that has, it's just, it is the sloppy agape amorphous blob stuff that has no power in it, it can't challenge anything, it can't change anything. Why would anybody die for something like this? Why would anyone die for a message that is absolutely vanilla paper thin? I don't know. Why did the apostles bother with all this stuff? If it was just for that generation, I mean, did that one generation really need all that information? And the rest of us are just gonna go, whatever. I don't know. So, there you go. What an amazing, amazing, And, you know, I've been told, well, good luck, if you respond to this, he's gonna go ballistic. Well, I don't know. I don't even know if he'll bother listening. He actually didn't listen to the Paul Gaia stuff. That was obvious. So, I don't know, and I don't determine what I'm going to address based upon what Guys gonna blow up and okay believe me if I was looking for the easy way to just you know get around all the little explosions and stuff. There's a lot of dividing lines that never would have aired, and never would have gotten recorded in the first place. That's not how we do things. But I just felt like, hey, he actually read through the text! Yay! Hey, you gotta give him credit! How many times have we dealt on Radio Free Geneva with people who would not have even read every verse from 1 to 11, or 1 to 14. Give him credit for that, at least. That's about all we can give him credit for. We can give him credit for that. Because how many people have been, well, I'm going to pick a part of it here, but that's what Norm Geisler did. The fact is, Sean, after everything I've said and torn your position to shreds, at least I'm thankful you read the whole thing in such a way that you could actually interact with it. you could actually interact with it. That was actually helpful. Your position is completely whacked. Notice, I say it was completely whacked. I didn't say it was shot in the head or whatever else. So there you go. All right. Hopefully, It's just been my experience that one of the most useful things that people have gotten out of Radio Free Geneva is when we go through text, we go through it in the original languages, we go through it and apply meaningful exegetical and hermeneutical considerations to it. And when you're responding against claims, you get to see how people bring in stuff from outside that ends up changing the text, but they never grounded where it came from. And the problem is, this little secret, when you start seeing that in the context like this, you end up seeing it all over the place. And it's not just from the weird folks out there that have lots and lots of problems, theologically speaking, but you start hearing it in good churches too. And if that's your experience, don't allow a root of bitterness to develop. You might need to find a place where there's a more consistent teaching, but you might not be in a situation where you'll find that. So you need to be patient with the Lord and take that to Him and handle it in the best way that you can. So, if any of you are saying, well, I tell you, you're pretty hard on him. Remember, he's the one that said that our reading of the text is full of it, and he just shot it to Hades. He didn't. was not our perspective that was full of it. We went through the text, responded fully and completely, and I'll just be perfectly honest with you, I don't believe that Sean has the depth to even begin to respond to what we just said. I'd invite him to try to, and I don't know what's going to happen. You know, Jeff was talking to me, so do you think I should do this? You know, what do you think? And I hadn't listened to it yet. And look, in every one of these situations, it is a judgment call based upon your ministry priorities. And obviously, at one point, I felt it was appropriate to go on the program and try to explain the doctrine of the Trinity. Um, in the process, I got to explain that to a much, to an audience that otherwise would not have heard. If Jeff could get to an audience that otherwise would not, um, hear an explanation of these things and unpoison the minds of anybody toward the glorious truth of God's grace, well, there you go. then it would be worthwhile doing if, in the full spectrum of the ministry that Jeff is doing, that that's a good investment of time and funds. It's something that you and the people in the ministry, you and your elders if it's part of the church, have to decide for yourself. So we'll see what happens. But as soon as I heard that this morning, and I haven't had any contact with Jeff today, I hope it doesn't feel like I jumped the gun on him or something like that to respond to this, but as soon as I heard that shot it to heck line, and I recognized that he had stayed focused on his argument from Ephesians 1, In situations like this, it's so hard at times and takes so much time when you spread your argument out over 40 minutes for me to sit there and I love this program, Audio Notetaker, but still, I just have one big red blob in the middle of that sound file, which is his Ephesians 1 section. I didn't have to break it up. I didn't have to skip anything. It was just stop, start, stop. That makes it a lot easier. So I do appreciate that. And as soon as I heard that, I'm like, that's... That's what my people want to hear is let's get into the text. Let's hear someone saying, no, that's not what you reform people. You're wrong. You're all wrong about that. And here's why. And then let's demonstrate where the problems lie. And that's what we did today. So there you go. There's Radio Free Geneva. We will, like I said, look toward next week for maybe another edition because then I'm going to be gone for a lengthy period of time. So we'll maybe, who knows, maybe be able to sneak an extra one in next week. We try to do that for the view addicts that get all angry and antsy and depressed and things like that. when I go on these multi-week overseas trips, which is what I'm doing. So, we'll see. But Lord Willem, we'll see you next week. God bless.