The NXR Podcast - October 13, 2023


DAILY TRUTH - Calvinism, Arminianism, Unregenerate Children, & Covenant Succession

Topics
prevenient grace total depravity debate
Hosted by
Joel Webbon Harrison Smith Antonio Griffith Dale Partridge Wewsley Todd Calvin Robinson
Mentioned
Jacobus Arminius Charles Finney Jesus Christ John Calvin Paul
DAILY TRUTH - But Men Loved The Darkness…  SUNDAY SERMON - Persistent Prayer ｜ Luke 18_1-8

Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

156.73

Word count

1,483

Sentence count

95

Harmful content

Hate speech

7

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Jacobus Arminius is one of the most influential thinkers in the history of the Christian church, and he was born in a state of total depravity. In fact, he was so depraved that he denied the existence of God altogether. In this episode, Pastor Ken teaches us about the role of the doctrine of prevenient grace as a window of opportunity for salvation.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00 In less than a year, our podcast has gone from an average of 10,000 downloads a month
00:00:04 to 50,000 downloads. What made the difference? You leaving us a five-star review. The more
00:00:10 positive reviews, the more the algorithm picks us up, and more people are confronted by the law
00:00:16 and gospel of Jesus Christ. Help us press forward the crown rights of King Jesus by leaving us a
00:00:23 five-star review on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks. One of the most riveting
00:00:29 and descriptive definitions of total depravity comes to us, not by John Calvin,
00:00:39 but Jacobus Arminius. He would never have dreamed of denying the doctrine of total depravity
00:00:47 because it's basic Christian orthodox orthodoxy he knew people were totally depraved the only
00:00:55 difference with Jacobus Arminius that's where we get Arminians is not that he denied total depravity
00:00:59 that he thought that people were somehow born in a moral neutral state he knows that that's
00:01:05 completely antithetical to everything the bible teaches Jacobus Arminius all he thought was that
00:01:11 people are born totally depraved, but that there's such a thing as prevenient grace. And that
00:01:18 prevenient grace was something that would come to a person before saving faith actually occurred.
00:01:25 And it would be kind of a window of opportunity unto salvation, a window of grace. And that under
00:01:31 prevenient grace, which often would come through the preaching of the gospel, perhaps in an old
00:01:36 timey, you know, revival meeting, that the Holy Spirit would work sovereignly this prevenient
00:01:42 grace and that it would bring the individual person to a temporary state of neutrality.
00:01:47 Not that they were born with moral neutrality. They were born, even according to the father of
00:01:53 Arminianism, totally depraved. But in some kind of moment, a window of grace with a prevenient 0.75
00:02:00 grace, it would bring someone who's totally depraved to all the way up. It would temporarily
00:02:05 rarely suspend their spiritual blindness. So like the man who Jesus prays for, and he says,
00:02:11 can you see now? He says, well, I see people walking around, but they look like trees.
00:02:15 That would be kind of a good illustration for the doctrine of pervenient grace. 0.96
00:02:20 That the person is not a Christian yet. They have not placed saving faith in Jesus yet, 0.57
00:02:23 but faith is actually a work of man in this scheme, not a work of God, which for the record,
00:02:29 that's wrong. And the person is able to place faith in Jesus because a totally depraved person
00:02:34 never would, but somebody who's neutral would and prevenient grace brings them from total depravity
00:02:39 and hostility against God to this temporary place of neutrality. It brings them not the perfect
00:02:46 spiritual sight, but the momentary temporary suspending of spiritual blindness where they
00:02:52 all of a sudden can see for a little while and they can see a little bit. And with this spiritual
00:02:58 sight, seeing men walking around like trees, in that moment, in this gracious window, momentary
00:03:04 window, prevenient grace, they then, in hearing the gospel, must choose, as a work of man, conjuring
00:03:11 it up on their own, choose to make the right choice, choose to make the decision, right? This
00:03:17 is where you get guys like Charles Finney. He's the father of the modern altar call, right? Because
00:03:24 that the idea was in a decisionism, revivalism, Arminianism kind of church history, somewhat
00:03:33 recent church history in our nation, think second, not first, but second great awakening.
00:03:38 The idea was right now under the preaching of the gospel, come down to the anxious bench,
00:03:43 right? That was your original altar call. Come down to the anxious bench and I'm going to preach
00:03:48 just to you for the next 45 minutes. And people would come trembling. The whole idea was,
00:03:54 Decide. Decide. Decide. Make a decision. Now's the moment. Now's your opportunity.
00:04:02 The window of grace is opened and it could close in the next 30 seconds. Who knows?
00:04:08 You've been brought to this place of a temporary suspended hostility against God
00:04:13 and all of a sudden you have a moment of neutrality where you can choose to fall back
00:04:18 into your depravity, harden your heart against God or believe. And if you believe,
00:04:23 then you'll be regenerated. This is the Arminian scheme. I'm saying scheme just means theological
00:04:30 framework, not necessarily a malicious scheme, although I think it is. Here's the point.
00:04:38 Faith does not gain regeneration, but rather regeneration precedes faith. A person is born
00:04:45 again as an act of God's sovereign grace alone, and then responds with this new heart, being born
00:04:52 again, being made alive, spiritually alive, a new creature in Christ Jesus, that person then places
00:04:57 faith in Jesus. That's when they place faith in Jesus. But again, this whole idea of, of
00:05:06 prevenient grace, these kinds of things that you're brought to this temporary suspend, suspension,
00:05:11 partial suspension of spiritual blindness, that's not the picture of a human child when they're
00:05:17 physically born into the world. And there are many people who teach this still to this day.
00:05:22 There are many parenting books that ultimately affirm this.
00:05:26 They believe that children are blank slates, that they could go either way.
00:05:31 They teach moral neutrality when it comes to a child.
00:05:35 And that's why it would be taught that you could train a child in the same way you train an animal.
00:05:39 Because an animal actually is neutral.
00:05:43 That's not part of the curse of sin.
00:05:45 The part of the curse of sin is not that dogs have hostility towards Jesus in their hearts.
00:05:50 no it's that man has hostility towards jesus in their heart in iniquity i was brought forth
00:05:58 and in sin did my mother conceive me from the beginning of my life that is a human being made
00:06:05 in the image god their life from the beginning of life i'm starting off with a hostility towards
00:06:11 god romans chapter 8 says that the mind of the sinful man the unregenerate man the non-christian
00:06:16 is neutral, indifferent, uninterested? No. Hostile towards God's law, he does not submit to it, nor
00:06:24 can he. He is unable and unwilling. Why? Because his nature will not allow for that choice.
00:06:33 In the same way that the nature of a herbivore doesn't allow for them to eat meat.
00:06:40 they won't do it they won't do it why because it's not the way they're made it's not their design
00:06:50 it's not who they are the whole idea of the gospel is that we become new creatures the whole idea of
00:07:00 christian faith of salvation is that we gain by god's grace alone a new nature the reason why
00:07:07 the Christian can say, as the Apostle Paul does in Romans chapter 7, in my inward being, I delight
00:07:13 in the law of God. I love it. The reason he can say that in my inner being, I delight in the law
00:07:19 of God, is because he now has a new inner being. He has a new heart. This is Ezekiel chapter 36,
00:07:27 that the heart of stone is removed and replaced with a heart of flesh. Faith follows the new
00:07:33 nature. Faith follows regeneration. And all this is the sovereign work of God and the sovereign
00:07:40 work of God alone. God does this and he must do it for all of us. He must do it for each of our
00:07:48 children. And I believe for the record in covenant succession, even as a Baptist. And so I believe
00:07:54 not as a 100% guarantee, but as an ordinary principle that we should eagerly expect that
00:08:00 God will do it for our children. That he will. That he will save each one of our children. But
00:08:06 listen, your children do need saving. That's the point. I believe he will save them.
00:08:13 But they do need saving. You cannot train up a child from the womb in the way that you would 0.99
00:08:18 train up an animal. Because the animal doesn't have a hostile nature against the law of God,
00:08:25 but your child does. And to deny that is to deny Christian orthodoxy. It's not up for debate. 0.82
00:08:33 Jacobus Arminian is. The father of Arminianism would agree with me and not you.
00:08:40 The idea that total depravity is not a thing. The only question is, is prevenient grace a thing?
00:08:48 And would it overcome total depravity so that faith could precede regeneration? Or is there
00:08:53 no provenient grace, only sovereign grace, salvific grace, where regeneration precedes
00:08:58 faith. That's the debate that's an in-house debate, a debate among Christians. Now somebody's
00:09:03 right, somebody's wrong, but you can have either side and still be within the bounds of orthodoxy.
00:09:09 To debate total depravity at all, that your child isn't totally depraved, that people are not born,
00:09:14 that's not a debate that's in-house. That's a debate with Christians and heretics. 0.97
00:09:19 period 0.99
00:09:21 there's no question about that
00:09:26 it's not up for debate