98 Minutes With John Piper & Rick Warren

Shyju Mathew

"Experience the Word of God, in the power of the Spirit."

October 29, 2011

Respected author, theologian and speaker John Piper recently interviewed Rick Warren, author of Purpose Driven Life (Download eBook here) on various doctrinal aspects covering – the glory of God, whether negative life circumstances are caused by God, eternity and more.

Here is the video:

The nature of the interview is mainly doctrinal. The whole video is around 98 minutes and is worth watching. If you like to skip to a particular subject you can refer the below index:

Introduction:

3:29 The glory of God.

7:16 David Wells and the weight of God’s reality.

9:00 Would you write the book the same today?

12:00 The sovereignty of God.

18:47 How do you speak of God’s sovereignty in the presence of tragedy?

22:01 How do all things work for bad for those who reject Christ?

24:14 Do you hedge on Larry King?

27:00 Unconditional election.

30:18 The importance of eternity.

34:42 How do you conceive of eternity: in heaven, on earth?

38:53 What is the Gospel?

42:00 What did Jesus achieve on the cross?

43:40 Repentance.

50:50 Why don’t you call yourself a Calvinist?

53:09 Propitiation.

54:39 Prevenient grace.

1:00:01 Total depravity.

1:03:00 Hell.

1:09:10 Eternal destiny of those who never heard.

1:12:40 The extent of the atonement.

1:17:00 Do unbelievers always do the devil’s bidding?

1:18:40 Your view of the Bible.

1:22:40 Expository preaching and doctrinal depth.

1:28:10 Rick Warren’s sacred trust.

If you are more of a reader, you can download the whole transcript of the video here:

John Piper with Pastor Rick Warren – Transcript – Pdf

This informative and inspiring interview gives deeper insight in to the author and pastor. It is overwhelming to see how God has been using these two different personalities with different approaches, for His glory. In the words of Piper: “Rick and I are very different in methodological instincts and inclinations. I take almost the exact opposite approach in preaching—wanting to make the theological categories explicit and to show how I got them from the text. But then I am not even close to the fruitful evangelist that Rick is. We both have chosen risky ways. There are pitfalls of short- and long-term unfruitfulness. But in the end we do not govern the impact of our lives. God does.”

Let their remarkable testimony of faith send you down into the Word for a deeper understanding of God and his ways. And don’t forget to drop in your thoughts or anything you’ve learnt or like to know below in the comment section.