“Dr.” White:
Thanks for the plug on your blog, however mendacious it is.
Please note, not for accuracy’s sake, but for your own future judgment, that although SermonAudio.com takes credit cards, my church does not sell anything on SermonAudio. And we do not sell anything in or at our church.
Such merchandising of the Gospel is offensive and sinful. And it is what you practice. So while SermonAudio.com charges for things, as a business should, the Maumee Valley Bible Baptist Church does not. Any sermon requested is sent at no charge to any person anywhere in the world.
By the way, on your Spiritual Cruise do you meet in the bars or the casino? Do you take in the shows together and worship with naked women present? Just wondering!
Here is another language study for you to try, since it looks like your current Catholic targets are rather esoteric in nature:
In the Bible ALL means ____________
World means ____________
Whole means ______________
Sinners mean _______________
By the way, the answers are not some, some, some, and elect. At least in the Bible.
Just trying to help! Remember to go over my last sermon where I cover this amazing truth in detail. I will be in Phoenix next year, Lord willing, so perhaps I can visit your church and see if God will grant me liberty to preach about it.
Pastor Modene
I’m not sure why I am so concerned about folks like Pastor Modene. It is not like he is unusual. There are plenty of tradition-enslaved folks like him about who, as a result, struggle mightily with that little thing called truth. Possibly part of it is that consistency thing. I hate to see folks allegedly “in the family” acting in such a fashion, showing such disrespect for truthfulness. He seems to suffer from the same antipathy to truth that Art Sippo has: I can understand its source with Sippo, but Modene should know better.
In any case, I received the above note from Mr. Modene earlier today. I had pointed out the inconsistency of attacking us for accepting credit cards (he indicated this proved I am not a Christian but a false teacher) when SermonAudio, which hosts his materials, does so as well. I had also pointed out that a KJV Only preacher he has recommended, David Cloud, does so too. He has ignored the Cloud comment, and now evidently wishes me to believe that it is OK for SermonAudio to provide him with disk space and bandwidth to promote his sermons, and help to pay for that through the use of credit cards, as long as he does not do so. I just love consistency, don’t you?
Next we have Modene’s sour grapes combined with a large dose of ignorance in evidently not having the slightest idea of the nature of our meetings onboard ship. Hard to take that kind of rhetoric seriously, though, obviously, Modene does.
Then we have a real example of the depth of Pastor Modene’s study of the truth. Evidently he’s not overly interested in those Roman Catholics, so, he’s got some good ol’ Arminianism to promote! Once again, it is a bit scarey to realize that he probably thinks you can define words in the simplistic way he does in his little quiz. Context, language—who needs all of that? What happens when you force an anachronistic, a-contextual meaning on every appearance of a word in the Scriptures? Well, here are a few examples regarding Modene’s first question about “all”:
Acts 5:34 nobody disrespected Gamaliel…not even one?
Acts 7:22 Moses knew everything the Egyptians knew, completely?
Acts 9:21 Every single person said the exact same words?
Acts 9:35 Every single person in Lydda and Sharon both saw Peter and converted? Not a single exception? Entire villages converted without a single unconverted person?
Luke 14:29 Every single person who observes, without exception, will mock?
Matt 2:3 Every single person in Jerusalem was troubled? Including Anna and Simeon, for example?
Matt 3:5 Every single person in all of Judea, young and old, went out to John?
Those are just a few examples that could be given. All is defined in its context. It can mean all extensively (Colossians 1), it can mean all of a particular group, at a particular time, etc. And yes, all can mean all the elect, if the context indicates it to be so. The same is obviously true of world, where you can find more than a dozen different uses of the term in John alone, let alone elsewhere. And so we are truly left to do nothing more than chuckle at Modene’s smug little note, remembering, of course, that he’s the fellow who thinks if your pulpit is off-center, you are a false teacher. Along with all the blessings of the Internet comes the sad reality that it likewise gives a platform to those who surely do not deserve it, and who will only misuse it.
