Meet Battle Royale X's Dr. Samuel Lamerson

[Jefferson]

Meet Battle Royale X's Dr. Samuel Lamerson

Wednesday August 3rd, 2005. This is show # 153.

Get to know Dr. Lamerson more personally by listening to this show.

 

[jeremiah]

This was a very good show. Both men were very gracious to each other, and you could almost touch the goodness that seemed to emanate from them.
It did my soul good to hear Dr. Lamerson extol the virtues of his parents. That they were both wonderful models of true Christians to him. He obviously loved and respected them both: Rare and precious words these days. Prasie God!

 

[Army of One]

I really enjoyed the show as well. It was clear that both Sam and Bob are on the same team when it comes to the essentials of the Faith, and are both seeking to glorify God. :thumb:

 

[SOTK]

I really appreciated this show. I thought it was very generous and great of Bob to have this show. I enjoyed listening to both of them, and I respect Bob more now than I ever did before. This is an emotional subject for me and it was very neat and healthy to see that there is more common ground than not. I don't think that should ever be forgotten in this debate. We are all Christians here who wish to glorify God and bring His message of Salvation and Grace to all!

Way to go, Bob! :up:

It was great getting to know the both of you in a more personal way!

SOTK

 

[Delmar]

I really appreciated this show. I thought it was very generous and great of Bob to have this show. I enjoyed listening to both of them, and I respect Bob more now than I ever did before. This is an emotional subject for me and it was very neat and healthy to see that there is more common ground than not. I don't think that should ever be forgotten in this debate. We are all Christians here who wish to glorify God and bring His message of Salvation and Grace to all!

Way to go, Bob! :up:

It was great getting to know the both of you in a more personal way!

SOTK

:up:

 

[Bob Enyart]

Non-prophecies and Psalm 139:16

I cut these two sections from my Battle Royale X fourth round post because I was beyond the "average limit" of 6,000 words per post. So for those interested, I've copied this here, and plan to add this to a later round in the debate! -Bob

Non-prophecy

I have never heard the term ‘non-prophecy’ used to refer to that which is not predictive… I would like to see some criteria for determining a “predictive prophecy” as opposed to a “non-prophecy. -Sam, 3A​

​

A predictive prophecy explicitly makes a prediction. A non-prophecy makes no explicit prediction, but later can be seen to have illustrated a future event (as Hos. 11:1 with Mat. 2:15). But why use non-prophecy? Why not just say typology, or non-predictive prophecy? Such terms are too imprecise. All non-prophecies are types (symbols, illustrations, shadows), but not all types are non-prophesies. Not every type refers to a future event. When Moses struck the rock (Ex. 17:6) that type symbolized the crucifixion; but the Rock itself was not a symbol of a future event, but of a person, for “that Rock was Christ,” (1 Cor. 10:4), which though not predictive encourages the believer! The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil can be seen as a type of the law [Deut. 1:39; Rom. 3:20; 5:18 & 20; 7:7, 10; Luke 11:52]. Some types can be a “shadow of the heavenly things” (Heb. 8:5). Thus many types do not qualify as non-prophecies (which must “illustrate future events,” by definition). Prophecy is anything spoken by a prophet, and so the excellent term non-predictive prophecy doesn’t specifically refer to non-prophecies since it also includes past-tense reminders of God’s deeds. If you Google “non-prophecy,” you will see that Jewish “anti-missionaries” currently own the term, trying thereby to discredit most Christian prophecy. Just as homosexuals with worldly wisdom (Luke 16:8b) appropriated and redefined stigmatizing terms with extraordinary effect, Christians should refer to non-predictive but illustrative prophesies as non-prophesies. The term non-prophecy exposes the modern error that views all prophecy as predictive, and far from being “blunt,” is instructive, extremely specific, and fills the students’ need to distinguish between classes of prophecies. And hey, it’s better to have a term to identify a class of objects than not, especially when it helps clarify theological debates which confuse predictions with illustrations. Sam, if you have a better term that specifically refers to a non-predictive prophecy which illustrates a future event, please suggest it.

And in the same section, Sam asked, “Did Mary and Joseph have the choice not to go to Bethlehem?” Yes. “What would have happened if they had chosen to ignore the census?” While it is unlikely that a young betrothed pregnant couple would risk death by obstinately disobeying the decree of the brutal Augustus Caesar, still, if they were so inclined, I am sure that God would have communicated to them as He had done at other times, by a vision or a dream. I am sure D. James Kennedy can carefully select new-hires, and confidently send them out on a ministry trip. Sam, I’m sure you would honor a request from Dr. Kennedy to go on a business trip, even without a concurring decree from Caesar or angelic visitation. And if any of you refused, Samuel, Mary, or Joseph, God and Kennedy would deal with it. “Was the census ordained by God?” Yes. The Holy Spirit inspired Korah to prophesy (interpretation in brackets):

And of Zion it will be said, “This one [David] and that one [the Son of David, the Christ] were born in her [Bethlehem]; and the Most High Himself shall establish her [Bethlehem, the city of David].” The Lord will record, when He registers [Caesar’s census] the peoples [throughout the ruling empire]: “This one was born there [to document Micah 5:2].” -Ps. 87:5-6

God planned to persuade the future emperor to conduct a census. See the section on Roosters for a discussion of the divine power of persuasion.

All Our Days Numbered In Advance: Amen!

The answer is fetology.

Yes, I believe that in His book all my days were written before there was one of them (Ps. 139:16). But the Settled View has the wrong book! Even though David claims this comforting knowledge of himself, we understand that it is true of everyone, the just and the unjust. This book records the days of the unrepentant too. And God is an Author who has written many books. Christians debate whether or not everyone’s name, the saved and the unsaved, appears in the Book of Life of the Lamb Slain. But regardless, David is not speaking of that book. For the Holy Spirit inspired this, not referring to the book that documents your salvation, and not referring to the book that documents your death, but the book that documents your birth.

In verse 16, David is bragging about God’s extraordinary design of the development of the baby in the womb, but those who desperately look for proof-texts to prop up the Greek concept of a Settled future have wrenched this passage out of context, from the third stanza of Psalm 139 which is about the development of the fetus. The embryo goes through the trimesters of development not haphazardly but by direction from God.

The child forms in the womb by God’s intricate plan of fetal development, which we now know He recorded in the written instructions of our DNA, which contains step-by-step, day-by-day directions of the 280 days of gestation, which are the days that the Spirit inspired David to write about. By the context of Psalm 139, the days that are numbered are not the days of your life, but of your development in the womb.

(By the way, God did not originally design human gestation to be 280 days. After Eve sinned, God announced the curse of pain in childbirth, but this was not because He was a sadist, inflicting pain on future mothers. Rather, God cursed Adam and Eve pronouncing merciful consequences. One of these effects increased gestation to nine months. For, “To the woman He said, ‘I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in pain you shall bring forth children,’” (Gen. 3:16). Conception is used here as a figure for gestation, which God lengthened so that newborns would remain longer in the womb, growing stronger to survive being born into the hostile environment of the fallen world. God had already commanded them to multiply (Gen. 1:28), so this was not a reference to having more children, which is a blessing, but to a longer gestation, which leads to lower infant mortality rates and greater pain in delivery! I only mention this to illustrate that when we throw off the Greek-influenced OMNIs and IMs, we begin to realize that the Bible makes extraordinarily good sense, and that God is not arbitrary, sadistic, nor capricious, but more wonderfully obviously good and loving than we had realized!)

Even though Psalm 139:16 refers to the length of human gestation, theologians conditioned by Augustine to look for proof-texts of a settled future, so misconstrue this verse that not one Christian in 100 has been taught that the immediate context of this passage is about the development of the baby.

Psalm 139:13: For You formed my inward parts; you covered me in my mother’s womb.

God designed the process by which the baby is formed, protecting the little one (Latin, fetus) with the cover of his mother’s womb.

Psalm 139:14: I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well.

David rightly is in awe of the human body, and how “wonderfully” it is “made” in his “mother’s womb.”

Psalm 139:15: My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.

David praised God, for even as he developed in the womb, God could see his frame (Hebrew, skeleton, lit., bones) being knit together, “skillfully wrought,” in “my mother’s womb.” By the way, “the lowest parts of the earth” was a common Hebrew expression for “the womb,” as you can see from the reverse use of the idiom in Job 1:21.

Psalm 139:16 Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.

God saw me, who I really am, my substance, my soul-spirit interfaced to my body, all through the extraordinary DNA code which God wrote (which David had no concept of, but which as the author, God knew all about). So, from the moment of conception, “being yet unformed,” that is, just a single cell, in my mother’s womb (but not before conception!), God saw me, and knit me together, and in His book (of His instructions for my awesome development in the womb), all “the days fashioned for me,” that is, all the days which God decreed for the fashioning of a fetus, they were written and set from the very beginning, before a single day’s growth unfolded, even before the first cell divided into two, all 280 days of gestation, from that moment of fertilization!

Sam twice claimed that verse 16 seems clear that God knows “all of the days of our lives.” Let’s eliminate that possibility. Hebrew parallelism, so common in Scripture and especially in the Psalms, is the technique whereby the author repeats the same idea twice, so that we get a deeper understanding of the meaning. Parallelisms are fascinating, and there are nested parallels, and inverted parallels, but the simplest are typical couplets, as exist around the world as a standard structure of poetry (that’s why we have our English word couplet). Read Psalms through and mark the parallelisms and carefully consider them, and by the time you reach Psalm 150, you will have learned more about God than the average church member learns in a lifetime.

Psalm 139:16 is a simple Hebrew parallelism, a couplet. And Hebrew couplets, as in English, typically form a complete thought. (Rhyme however was possibly not as important in Hebrew couplets as in English, for the lines of a Hebrew couplet would “rhyme” in meaning more importantly than in sound.) We know that most chapter and verse divisions were marked by mere men, and so we can argue that some chapters or verses are poorly divided and lead to misunderstanding. But the chapter divisions in Psalms are divinely inspired. And the strong poetical “meter” and parallelism makes the Author’s verse divisions more plain, as we have here.

The two sentences of Psalm 139:16 form a couplet, speaking of the same topic, with each further explaining the other. Thus, “the days fashioned for me,” were not the days of my childhood, or my marriage, for these were the days when only God could see “my substance, being yet unformed.” For He knows what a human being is like, in the most extraordinary detail, at the moment of conception. Praise Him!

From the comprehensive answer I gave to your SLQ2, our readers can now understand what drives us to opposite interpretations here. The Open View is free to accept David’s immediate context of fetology, because it is consistent with the greater context of God’s attributes of Him being relational, good, and loving, and because we are not desperate to find a passage that proves that the day of your death is already settled.

The Settled View outright ignores the immediate context of Ps. 139:16, because it is beholden to the Greek-influenced, quantitative, lesser attributes of immutability and knowledge. And worse, Sam, Calvinists further embrace pagan Greek error by exaggerating power and control (above relationship, goodness and love), and teach that God had recorded the day of Conner Peterson’s death, and so He ordained Scott to an adulterous affair and thoughts of bloodshed, and finally, to murder Laci, all in obedience to God’s eternal, unchangeable decree. Sam, I know you love God, but you’ve read even murder into this delightful verse.

Through Augustine this Greek influence is ubiquitous. Thus the entire Body of Christ has missed out on this passage as providing biblical teaching on God’s loving care, as shown through all three trimesters of the baby’s development. And even worse, millions of believers are apathetic about the abortion holocaust. (I know, and am glad, that D. James Kennedy is not; but he’s unusual.) And so many Christians I’ve talked to in fifteen years of pro-life work (like my Calvinist aunt) tell me they’re not that concerned about abortion, because after all it’s God’s will. And by the way, to those Arminian Settled Viewers out there, please don’t quote Psalm 139:16 to refute Openness, because you’ll be propping up Calvinism; for if you ignore the Greater Context of the pre-eminence of God’s deeper attributes, and also the immediate context of fetology, then the passage smacks of Calvinistic preordination by God “fashioning” all the days of your entire life including even the day of your death!

And some even use this beautiful verse, about how God carefully designed the precious development of the baby in the womb, all nine months worth, to justify a lack of concern for the killing of the baby. After all, God has decreed the day of each death, and that includes abortions. So that means, “you might not like it, but it’s His plan for those babies to be aborted today.” For He wrote that baby’s days in His book, and they just ran out.

So in one of the greatest ironies of theology, the Settled View has turned this verse of God’s plan for the baby’s birth, into a death certificate, effectively sacrificing that little one to a pagan Greek idol.

Pastor Bob Enyart
Denver Bible Church

 

[Zakath]

Now there's an interesting way to get around the word limit in the debate. Post as much as you want on different threads and link to your original post... :chuckle:

 

[jeremiah]

To Bob:

Are you now confident in saying that all Arminians, {which is apparently the label that I must be given} are really Calvinists? Also are you equally confident in stating that all Settled viewers are really pro- abortion, if taken to its logical conclusion?
Since I believe that God knows the future, yet does not change it, does that mean that I am claiming that God has foreordained the future, and all the evil actions committed by evil people?
If that is true, according to your thinking, at what point in the Open view, when God "knows" the future, does He become the one who then foreordains it?
In other words when a young lady decides to abort her baby, does the "open" view mean that until the very last second, God is still unsure if she will repent and therefore "lets" the abortion happen. Or, does God know a month, a week or a day before that the young lady will go through with her abortion. If so, is the God of the Open view still foreordaining the death of this child, just as you claim the Settled view must conclude. Is this simply not a matter of foreordaining by degree, rather than a true difference?
The question that God is asked, "Why did you let my child die?" is answered better by the Open view, but also only better by degree.

 

[jeremiah]

To Bob Enyart:
Now that the debate is over, could you take some time and address some of my questions in the previous post? I thought it was a preety serious charge you made. You inferred that "settled viewers", who oppose abortion, are fighting against their own intellectual argument of foreknowledge.
I challenge your conclusion!
Also, upon rereading your post, I am unsure whether you are claiming that God cursed Adam and Eve, or not. I do not believe that He cursed them, and therefore mankind. He cursed the serpent and the ground. He also caused the pain of childbirth and the "undesirable" rulership of husbands over wives, for women.
We are not cursed by God, from the fall. Do you agree?