2 Thessalonians 2:10 & James White | Leighton Flowers | Soteriology 101

Dr. Leighton Flowers welcomes back Warren McGrew to theology geek out on 2 Thess 2:10 as it relates to a recent comment made by Dr. James White on Twitter: JOIN US LIVE!

Or @soteriology101 on Twitter

Please SHARE on Facebook and Twitter and help spread the word!

Thanks for watching.

#Leighton Flowers #Predestination #Calvinism #Provisionism #Calvinist #Salvation

[DamonNomad]

"Flattening it out" = "How dare you pull aside the rug I'm trying to hide all the inherent flaws of my doctrine under!"

[KevinEDF]

Love your humility and gentleness in your approach. Please continue to push back the error of Calvinism in Love! Also, Love your long videos, can't wait

[janetdavis]

Warren, I’m glad you had a great Thanksgiving with your children! You’re a great dad, with a Father’s heart. God bless!😎

[mannycano]

two of my most favorite theology geeks

[AlexanderosD]

March 7th, 2024!
Looking forward to the debate.
It's such a needed discussion, and I'm sure you're going to go into it, sharing Christ and showing love!

[dosisdedoctrina]

Couldn't the idea of being chosen from the beginning in the context of 2 Thess 2:13 just refer to the beginning of Paul's work in Macedonia, Greece, and Acaya? Especially in light of 1 Thess 1:4-8. In other words, they have been chosen to be among the first to hear and believe, becoming a positive testimony for believers. This idea could also be expressed as being firstfruits, which happens to be a reading in some MSS.

[Behavelee]

I know this is not exactly the subject, but I also know that I have prayed for people on their deathbed to receive the Lord Jesus Christ. I have a man that I prayed with, and I did his funeral. His family did not know he was saved. His sister came up to me and said that she been praying for him for 20 years and thought he died without Christ. We just do not know. What God is working behind-the-scenes

[Richard_Rz]

Word Salad is a GUARANTEE of cog dissonance.

Flattening? Orb shaped? 😂😂😂

[sheilasmith]

White is highly unlikely to change his Calvinist point of view. White has built a career on his point of view.
The human consequence to him is enormous if he were to abandon his belief.

[quickattackfilms]

I’ve encountered that first question recently and my answer is now “You.” You were different from that guy, so you made different choices. His choices unfortunately led to death without Christ.

Humans are each the ultimate self determiners of their own actions. God made us this way so that we would be entirely separated from his actions, allowing for God’s holiness to be maintained despite our wickedness and allowing for us to have true love.

Did we then save ourselves? Obviously not. We haven’t lived up to God’s perfect standard of holiness to warrant being in his presence, we’ve all fallen short of the glory of God. But some of us chose to simply believe God and his promises. And God has graciously decided to grant those of us who have faith to obtain eternal life. He saved us, period. I just chose to believe, which warrants nothing.

[SpielbergMichael]

Dear Calvinists, tell me if this analogy is an inaccurate representation of Calvinism:

Side-note: By the way, this has nothing to do with angels (or angels having wings) - I just picked an ability that is very obvious that humans don’t have and can’t do.

Imagine God said “all humans must have wings and must fly, and if they don’t have wings and don’t fly they are evil and will go to hell for eternity.”
Then this God makes all humans without wings and without the ability to grow or make wings and fly.

But God gives them a Wings-Bible which contains a Wings-Gospel which says:
if you admit you are evil because you don’t have wings and you don’t fly and if you repent of refusing to fly and if you ask the Wings-Jesus to give you wings then because of the Wings-Jesus’ sacrifice and rising from the dead, God will give you wings and you will be able to fly.

However, on top of creating all men without wings and without the ability to grow or make wings, God also made all humans:
Totally incapable of ever recognising or being aware that they don’t have wings and they can’t fly.
Totally incapable of ever wanting to fly.
Totally incapable of understanding the Wings-Gospel in the Wings-Bible (they simply won’t be able to read and understand the words - although they can understand words in other books).
Totally incapable of accepting the Wings-Gospel’s free offer of divine help.
Totally incapable of wanting to accept the Wings-Gospel offer.

Only a few people who God elects and regenerates can become capable of understanding that offer and asking God to help them and give them wings to fly.

But most people, who God made without wings, and also made them Totally incapable of ever understanding+accepting the Wings-Gospel offer - these billions of people will be damned to eternal torment and punishment in hell.

That’s why the Wings-Gospel is called “Good news” (that’s what the word ‘Gospel’ means) because the Wings-Gospel is literally useless and not good news to anyone - it’s absolutely totally useless and worthless unless God chooses you to be one of the elect and regenerates you and makes you alive so that you can hear the Wings-Gospel to enable you to hear it and understand it so that he… can make you alive again.

Something else:
Throughout the Wings-Bible the consistent message is to repent of failing to fly and believe in God to give you wings.
In the Wings-Bible, over the centuries God repeatedly sent prophets to preach to people, telling them to “repent and believe, or you will go to Hell.”
In the Wings-Bible it often says God is giving humans a choice and asking them to please Choose wings and choose life.
The Wings Bible says things like God reaches out his arms to people asking them to come to him so that he could give them wings, and that he is not willing for any to perish.
But it’s a bit strange because all humans were made by God so that they are Totally Incapable of repenting and believing in God to give wings, and Totally incapable of understanding these offers. So this God has 2 totally contradictory wills: one will which damns people from before the beginning of the universe, and another lip-service will which doesn’t wish any person to be damned.

I forgot to say, on top of making them all without wings, and also making them all Totally Incapable of understanding the Wings-Gospel offer and Totally incapable of responding positively to it - on top of all of that, in case that wasn’t enough, this God also sovereignly decreed and determined that all these people would always reject the Wings-Gospel offer every time they are offered it.
He didn’t really need to do that since he’d already made them Totally Incapable of doing that, but this God did that because… well, because there’s a doctrine which says he sovereignly decreed all things, so we have to say that as well.

And this God is a good and just God for sending these people to Hell for all eternity as a punishment because they failed to fly - because: it will glorify him.
God made them without wings and made them Totally incapable of understanding or responding positively to the Wings-Gospel offer to ask God to give them wings - so that he could ultimately send them to hell for not having wings and not flying - so that it would glorify him.

“The doctrine of Total Depravity… may thus turn Christianity into a form of devil-worship."
- C.S. Lewis - The Problem Of Pain, pp. 28-29

[sheilasmith]

White should write a new book titled, "I am dancing as fast as I can."

[gene]

Calvinist have to keep jumping through the hoops in order to patch all the holes in their false narrative.

[sheilasmith]

White: "Everyone loves darkness rather than light."
If true, explan the actions of Abel, Noah, Moses, Abraham.
David is a perfect example of humans ability to be obedient and disobedient.
God created in us both will and desire, without controlling either....God's choice of design.

[sheilasmith]

We must understand that God's will is completely different than God's desire.
God has both, and demonstrates both will and desire in scripture.

[danbrewster]

Notice when Jesus speaks to the large crowds he does not single out the elect and tell them this message is only for It's for everybody who has ears let them Showing Jesus love for all people not just the elect..

[JohnQPublic]

In an "Ultimate Fighter Championship Fight” with a dirty fighter bully [James White], for that brief moment, Queensberry Rules, fighting fair, like a mealy-mouthed Sunday School teacher, ain’t gonna cut it; you have to be meaner, ruthless and a cutthroat. No Dragon Slayer ever won the day by spitting at the Dragon.

[annakimborahpa]

To Kimberly who wrote: "I labored for years over a loved one, with the gospel, prayers and many tears. He died without Christ."
Response:
1. Are you sure he died without Christ? Unless he made a specific rejection of Christ on his deathbed, then do you really know whether or not he received the grace from God sought for by your prayers whereby he silently embraced the gospel, maybe unbeknownst to you?
2. Recall the hope provided by Jesus in the parable of the persistent widow and the judge in Luke 18:1-8 (ESV):
1And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. 2He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. 3And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ 4For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, 5yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’” 6And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. 7And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? 8I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily.

[steventhompson]

Only humility can break the hooks in James White Calvinist stance, because Scriptures does not support Calvinism/Reformism, when we read the NT in context.

[sf]

A reformed friend of mine who is a big fan of James White and admittedly I used to be as well before I saw all the manipulation and gas lighting and just factual errors he was constantly putting out, I just pointed out to him that he married his wife by wooing her. Not by forcing her. I pointed out to him that just because he has the strength to r*pe her, he didn't because he loved her and he wanted her to love him back. If that's true in a natural level between husbands and wives, how much more true is that regarding Christ and his church?

For goodness sake, Christ is described as the bridegroom and the church is described as the bride. Christ is gathering to himself a people out of love not molestation. God also doesn't do it through Cosmic gaslighting either from before the foundations of the world by some irrevocable fatalistic mass hypnosis decree that makes a a lie out of the way all reality presents itself and all human interactions are supposed to be conducted.

Reformed folks really do not like it when you put it that way.

Just because God has the power to do anything doesn't mean he does evil to accomplish his goals.