August 24, 2017 Show with Dr. Matthew Richard on “Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? 12 False Christs”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arnton. Good afternoon

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnton, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 24th day of August 2017 and I'm so delighted to have on the program a first -time guest again.

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In fact, he is a close friend of the guest that we had on yesterday, Pastor Chris Roseborough of Pirate Christian Radio.

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Today our guest is the Rev. Dr. Matthew Richard who is pastor of Zion Lutheran Church in Gwinnett, North Dakota, we are going to be addressing his book,

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Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? 12 False Christs, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron, Dr.

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Matt Richard. Thank you, Chris, good to be here. And in studio with me is my co -host, the

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Rev. Buzz Taylor. And once again it's a joy to be here and it sounds like a wonderful subject that we're covering today.

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And if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

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USA. And please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter that you are asking about.

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And we look forward to hearing from you with your questions, whether you agree with our guest, whether you disagree, or whether you're just not certain, we would love to hear from you.

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That's chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Well, before we get into something about your own background, because very often, in fact, most often when

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I interview a first -time guest, I'd like to hear something about the religion of their childhood and basically their testimony of how they providentially came to really be convinced that Jesus Christ is their

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Lord, God, and Savior. And in the case of a minister of the gospel like you, how you knew that you had that coal placed upon your life to become a pastor.

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But before that, why don't you let our listeners know about Zion Lutheran Church in Gwinner, North Dakota? Yeah, yeah,

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I serve at Zion Lutheran Church here in Gwinner, North Dakota, and it's a smaller town just southwest of Fargo in the southeast corner of North Dakota.

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And not sure if your listeners or yourself, if you're familiar with Bobcat Skid Steer, the

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Bobcat machinery at all, the black and white. Yeah, yeah, they're actually manufactured right in this town here.

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If you imagine a factory that employs 1500 people in the middle of a North Dakota prairie, that's our town.

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So we have a huge factory with just a bunch of houses and churches and a school surrounding the factory. So we're a little factory town just southwest of Fargo, about an hour.

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And so I've been at this church for about four years now. And so serving the wonderful blessed saints here at Zion Lutheran, it's just a wonderful privilege, wonderful people, and just kind of a quaint, quiet little community that we get to, you know, my family and I get to live in, get to preach and proclaim

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Christ. So that's kind of the context of Gwinner. And which synod is Zion Lutheran Church a part of?

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Yeah, Zion Lutheran Church is a part of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. And I think, you know, yesterday,

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I just tuned in briefly with Pastor Chris Rosebro. And so you know, Chris is a very good friend and he's in a sister synod.

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We are his synod and the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod are, we would classify as very conservative

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Lutherans. So conservative, theologically, ethically speaking, and we have kind of a rich history of some of the ancient ways of the church that get brought into the church as well.

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And so, yeah, the Zion Church here has been here since 1908 in this community.

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So it's over 100 years old. And again, some wonderful people here. Well, I don't know if you're a

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Cheers fan, but one of the funniest jokes I ever saw on Cheers that actually made me laugh so hard that I'm sure the neighbors all around my house and perhaps even in neighboring towns heard me laughing.

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I don't know if you recall the character Woody in Cheers, but he came into the bar crying his eyes out and everybody was asking what was wrong and he had to break up with his fiancee.

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And they said, why'd you have to break up with her? And he said, I found out that she was a member of another religion.

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And he says, another religion? I thought you were both Lutherans. He goes, yeah, but I'm Missouri Synod and she's

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Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. It's a great scene.

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In fact, even though it was intended to be a joke, they are really different religions, aren't they?

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The Missouri Synod Lutheran and the ELCA, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. Yeah, actually quite a bit of differences.

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And really it stems back to the way that we approach scripture. Do we stand above scripture as authority or do we stand underneath scripture and the scripture speaks to us?

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Yeah, well, believe it or not, I've met on rare occasions, conservative Bible -believing

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ELCA ministers. They do exist, at least they did a number of years ago when

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I recall meeting a couple at Bible conferences that I was attending. Why they stay there,

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I don't know. But tell us something about your own childhood, the religion of your youth, and when you came to recognize that you needed

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Jesus Christ as your Lord, God, and Savior. And then later on, you realized you received the call to the ministry.

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Yeah, it's interesting. Like my wife, I don't really remember a time not having

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Christ. I mean, Christ has been with me, you know, always. But there's different degrees,

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I think, and many times we see this with individuals, different degrees of change and understanding.

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And I've often told people that, typically with life, what happens is when you come to a greater realization of your own sinfulness and your own failures as a human being, so the greater you see your sin, the greater you see the need of a

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Savior. In fact, I think John Newton once said, he said, I know two things in this life. I know that I'm a great sinner and I have an even greater

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Savior. So, you know, I'm thinking back, you know, one of the times was, you know, when

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I was four or five, you know, really kind of coming to understand my sin in the way that, man, you know,

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I stole the cookie from the cookie jar, and I'm really in need of a Savior. I remember Mom proclaiming those beautiful truths of the

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Gospel, that Jesus loves me and He has forgiven me. And then, you know, you go through those stages. I remember going through struggle, you know, 13, 14 years old, and, you know, having a new realization that not only do

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I sin, but I want to sin. And then, boy, that brings a whole different dimension, understanding that it's a war with my sinful nature, that the

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Lord God, the Holy Spirit, through the Word, is going to have to crucify, continually kill off the sinful nature.

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And then, you know, there's an intellectual struggle later on in college that many people go through, where I almost left the

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Christian faith. I really had a lot of doubts and challenges, and, you know, really kind of took to the

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Word, to really study the Word, and to kind of process it, you know, more of an intellectual level.

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And so it was about that time, after going through that kind of bout, you know, struggling with the

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Christian faith, intellectually speaking, where I always say, the Lord, He won, you know, that I was captivated by His Word.

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And then, around that time, I was involved with helping out with youth ministries there in college, and so I really, really wanted to go down the road of being a youth pastor.

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And the only way to do that kind of in that background, that context, was to go to seminary.

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So I set off for seminary with no intention of being a senior pastor, really no intention of being in the pulpit preaching.

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I just wanted to work with youth ministries. And long story short, I went to seminary for three years, and then served some time out in Southern California at a church, and doing youth ministries.

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And then, through a series of events, you know, with marriage and children, the Lord just ends up kind of, you know, moving you along.

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And so I've been, you know, in the pastor role, not necessarily with youth, I still work with youth, but I've been, you know, overseeing the church, almost like a senior pastor type role for the last, let's see, it's been about the last nine to ten years.

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And so that's kind of how that all came about. So with no intention of being a preaching pastor by any means, or no intention of writing a book or anything like that,

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I just wanted to use ministries. And through the, you know, growth in my family and the children, and you know,

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I guess the Lord shifting and changing your gifts, I found myself in the pulpit preaching and proclaiming.

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So that's kind of a little brief context. Great. And well, this is a quite a captivating title of your new book.

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I meet, in fact, I contacted Concordia Publishing House immediately after seeing an advertising, an advertisement for it on the internet.

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And I said, I've got to interview this guy without question. And I checked up with a couple of my

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Missouri Synod Lutheran friends to ask about you. And they all wholeheartedly said,

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Oh, yeah, you got to get Matt Richard on your program. So the title of this book, as we said earlier, is

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Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? 12 False Christs.

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Quite a captivating title. What led you to write this book to begin with? Well, actually, surprisingly,

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I mean, this kind of coincidence that you had Chris on. Yesterday, Chris Rosebro, he lives up in Grand Forks, which is just two hours north of where I'm at.

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He called me several years ago. And he said, you know, Matt, I want to put together a conference here in Grand Forks on the soul laws of the

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Reformation, you know, faith alone, Christ alone, and the word alone. And so he said,

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I'd like to have you come up and speak, you're local, so it won't cost a whole lot for transportation. And so I went up there with another gentleman, another fellow pastor, and myself, and then

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Chris. And we presented on the Reformation, the soul laws, what we would say, the

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Christ alone, faith alone, the word alone. And so I was given the topic of Christ alone.

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And so I wrote a lecture, a paper for that presentation. And it kind of dawned on me that when we talk about Jesus, we kind of have to stop and pause and say, are we all talking about the same

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Jesus? And one of the tendencies is this, is in our culture, you can say to almost anybody, you know, do you like Jesus?

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Do you support Jesus? And I think, for the most part, I think most people in our culture would, you know, have a positive feeling towards Jesus.

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I mean, in fact, I was turning through the channels the other day, and it just so happened that show,

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The View, I don't want to confess, I'm a faithful watcher, but I happened to turn on it, and maybe this is my confession here, but they were talking about spirituality and Christianity, and I found the ladies, they were all very positive and very affirming of Jesus.

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And so, I think we live in a culture where we can no longer assume that when we say the name

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Jesus, that we're assuming that we're talking about the same Jesus. And so, back to that paper,

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I set out in that paper to write, you know, Christ, that we confess Christ and then

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Him alone, but before we can confess Christ, we have to ask, what Christ are we talking about?

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So the paper went through and identified about six or seven different views of who

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Jesus is not. And so, before I defined who Christ was, I said, well, we have to define who

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He's not. And then, through a series of events, that lecture was taped and recorded and put on video, and a representative from Concordia Publishing House happened to stumble across it and gave me a call and said, you know,

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Pastor Richard, we came across your lecture on Christ alone and the false

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Christ, and we think that would make a fun book, and would you consider it? So, I kicked it around, and through a series of events,

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I said, you know, let's go for it, and they gave me a couple editors, and we started working on it.

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We went from six false Christs up to eight, and then we made it up to ten, and I thought, well, we'll make it an even dozen.

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So, we got it up to 12 false Christs that are really prevalent in our culture.

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Obviously, there's more than just 12, but these are 12 that I have identified for the book. Yeah, I'm assuming that instead of getting increasingly excited and enthusiastic as you started to develop more material about the addition of more false

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Christs, you were actually plunging into a deeper depression about it because of all these ways that society and humanity in general falsely view

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Christ. I can vividly remember an episode of one of Bill Maher's programs,

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Bill Maher, the very anti -Christian comedian who has a couple of cable television programs, and I was watching that day because he had on the panel a

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Calvinist author or blogger on his program, which actually surprised me, a very open, conservative

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Christian who was a Calvinist, and he was saying something about the exclusivity of Christ and that no one comes to the

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Father but through Christ, and no one is going to heaven without trusting in the shed blood of Christ and so on, and he was talking about hell, and Bill Maher said to this guest, that doesn't sound anything like the

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Jesus we all know and love, and this was the first time

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I ever saw Bill Maher at a total loss for words. The guest shut him up for about 10 seconds at least, and he said,

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Mr. Maher, you don't know the first thing about Jesus, and I was taken aback how

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Bill Maher, as I said, he was just tongue -tied, he didn't know what to say, but my co -host,

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Reverend Buzz Taylor, has something to say. Well, I just think before we get too involved in the subject that it seems there's some influence on another

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TV program called To Tell the Truth. Yeah, so you're saying that he's telling the truth today, our guest, is that what you're saying?

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No, no, no, no, that's literally where it's pulled from, yep, yep. Oh, Chris must be too young to know this.

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Oh, I remember To Tell the Truth, but what are you referring to? Oh, yes, of course, yeah,

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I know what you're saying, that when the people would have blindfolds on or something like that.

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Well, they would have three people pose, well, one real and two fake. Right. And they would ask questions.

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And the panelist said blindfolds, right, yeah, I remember, yeah. At the very end, they would ask the real person to stand up, and he would stand up, and there's two frauds would be exposed, and yep, yep, that definitely,

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I can't say I watched that, I'm a little bit younger in age, but I remember watching reruns of that, that definitely came into play when naming the title of this book.

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Yeah, and for some reason, I knew that when I saw the print ad for it on the internet, or the graphic ad,

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I guess I should say, but it just dislod from my memory until Buzz just reminded me.

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Well, what has been the feedback that you've gotten from this? Has anybody complained that you would dare to question anyone else's personal view of Jesus Christ?

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You know, surprisingly, I was kind of expecting to get some hate mail on this, but for the most part, actually,

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I don't know of any huge critiques. Everything I've gotten from people has been very, very positive and very, very helpful.

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You know, I've had the common response, which I chuckle at, you know, people have said, you know, it's much better than I thought.

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So I guess that's better to have that than the other way around. But I think what really helps with this book, and this is what we were being very conscientious of, the editors and I, when writing this book, is since we're picking out false

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Christs, and since this book is designed in a way where you meet fictitious people who have actually subscribed to false

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Christs, it can be very, very applicable when a person reads it. They can identify these false

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Christs in themselves and their neighbors, which can indeed get a little bit sensitive. We may be hit too close to home.

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And so the overarching theme of the book is to be, it was written in the context of compassion, of a pastoral compassion, where we're not exposing these false

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Christs to beat people over the head, but we're exposing them because they're ultimately fake, false idols that have imprisoned people in false doctrine, false truth, which is a kind of an oxymoron, but lies of the evil one.

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And these false Christs, ultimately, they don't bleed and die and suffer and rise for the forgiveness of our sins.

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So embracing a false Christ is actually detrimental to a person. So the compassion of the book hopefully comes through the very pastoral heart where we expose, where the book exposes these false

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Christs, but does it in such a way that's pastoral and gentle, and then delivers the real Jesus to the reader, the one who is indeed standing, the one who is resurrected with nailed scarred hands for the forgiveness of sins?

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Yeah, like a person would be very tragically misled and mistaken and deceived if he or she were to think that they are somehow safe just because they claim they love a

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Jesus. Sometimes I will have listeners to my program, or people who just overhear something

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I'm saying in a conversation at a gathering, perhaps it's a social gathering or something, and they'll hear me identifying a certain religious group that may claim to be

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Christian. They'll hear me identifying them as a false religion where there is no hope of salvation.

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And the retort will be, they love Jesus. How can you say that?

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They love Jesus. There seems to be something that people think keeps them safe just because they say they love

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Jesus, even though it may be a Jesus that is a figment of their own imagination, a

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Jesus that purely exists in greeting cards, and a

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Jesus that is little better or more powerful than Mr.

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Rogers, perhaps Mr. Rogers with the ability to create miracles or something like that. They don't seem to be concerned about how specifically this

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Jesus is defined and the attributes of this

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Jesus and the details of this being Jesus. They don't seem to be all that concerned about that, as long as you love

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Jesus, whoever that Jesus may be, or whatever that Jesus may be. That's a tragic thing to take hold of, isn't it?

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Yeah, absolutely. And it really comes down to the most important question we can ask ourselves is who do we believe

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Jesus to be, so we can say Jesus. But again, what we've already hit thus far is, who do we say that he is?

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I mean, this is the question that Jesus asks of Peter. Who do people say that I am?

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And we even see with the apostle Peter, who walked with Jesus and ate with him and was side by side with him for those several years of ministry, some 2 ,000 years ago.

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And even Peter himself, he had misguided views of who Jesus was. In fact, I mean, when

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Jesus goes and explains to him that he is the Savior who's going to bleed and die and suffer, you know, at the hands of the authorities and be bloodied up on a cross,

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Peter himself, he stands up to Jesus, has made us never be. And in fact, what he's essentially doing is,

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I embrace you, Jesus, but that description of yourself as a bleeding and dying Savior, that's too much.

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I don't want to have any part of that. That's not going to happen. And we see Jesus going from telling

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Peter that upon this rock of this confession of who I am, the church is going to be built upon this confession, this great confession that he is the

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Christ, the Son of the living God. He goes from that to condemning Peter and saying, get behind me,

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Satan. So the reality is, you see that the apostles, they even got his identity wrong at times in processing who he was.

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And so he had to correct them, the apostles who were right there with him. So to think that we're somehow immune from that is rather naive.

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And I don't mean to be harsh when I say that, but you look at Peter who gets his identity wrong and needs to be corrected.

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Well, we definitely need to be corrected ourselves constantly by the word of God coming to us.

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And as Jesus reveals himself in the scriptures, what he has done for us and who his identity, you know, what his identity is really about.

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I want to read a little blurb here from Pastor Brian Wolf Mueller of Hope Lutheran Church in Aurora, Colorado.

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He's also the author of Has American Christianity Failed? And by the way, any of our listeners, especially our

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Lutheran listeners who may want to listen to my interview with Pastor Brian Wolf Mueller, God willing on October 4th, 4 to 6 p .m.

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Easter time, you might want to mark that down on your calendars. Brian Wolf Mueller will be on October 4th to discuss

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Has American Christianity Failed? But he has said about the book we are discussing, Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?

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Will the real Jesus please stand up will challenge, equip, and most especially comfort you.

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I'm assuming that the comfort is coming from your revelation at some point in the book, who the real

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Jesus is and the gospel of grace and mercy that only he could offer.

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Yes, absolutely. And again, these false Christs, they're figments of our imagination and they're really propped up like a puppet.

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They're propped up with strings dangled by our own assumptions and our own imagination.

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But in the face of sin, death, and the devil, they don't stand at all. And that is the reason why we need the real

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Jesus. And so there's an essence of repentance that needs to happen, being brought to repentance of our own idolatry that we do with Christ, how we fabricate him in our own mind, which is indeed painful.

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Repentance hurts. Being brought to a realization of our sin, there's a grinding to that that hurts, but it is good because then it opens us up to receive and to hear about the real

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Jesus. Again, who lived and died and was crucified, buried and resurrected for us.

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And that's the beautiful message of the gospel that this Christ now who is living, not only died for us, but he's risen for us.

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And that we belong to him, that he has purchased us not with gold or silver, but with his own precious blood.

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And that's the comfort that we have, knowing that these other false Christs, they're gonna change, go left and right, depending on our own imagination.

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But this Christ, the Christ, stands above it all. He's not only the creator of this world, but he's the one who holds all things and he will come back someday to judge the living and the dead.

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And that we are in him, that he will look to us and say, job well done, good and faithful servant.

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And he will give us resurrected bodies and get to be with him forever. So it is wonderful gospel to be and to know

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Christ, the real Jesus. Amen. Well, when we come back from our first break, we're going to have our guest today comment on the first of the 12 false

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Christs, the mascot, Jesus the mascot. And we'll have him explain what he means by that.

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And we'll get to as many of these false Christs as we can today. I don't know if we'll be able to get to all 12 in a two hour program.

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People think that two hours is an extremely long time for a radio program.

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It's really not when you're getting into an exciting topic, a fascinating topic, a challenging topic.

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It can go by like a bullet. And I'm sure today will go by just as quickly as a speeding bullet.

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But we will try to get to as many of those as we can. And we'll try to get to as many of your questions, you the listeners, we'll try to get to as many of your questions as we can throughout the remainder of the broadcast.

26:58

But for any of you who would like to join those already online waiting for their questions to be asked and answered, you can go to send an email to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

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C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. And please remember to always give us your first name, your city and state and your country of residence if you live outside of the

27:20

USA. And if it's a personal and private question, you may remain anonymous if it makes you feel more comfortable.

27:27

Don't go away. God willing, we'll be right back with Dr. Matt Richard right after these messages from our sponsors.

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Solid Rock Remodeling, bringing new life to your home. Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune into A Visit to the

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33:07

.com. We bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you, and we invite you to visit the pastor's study by calling in with your questions.

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Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull. Join us this Saturday at 12 noon

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Eastern time for A Visit to the Pastor's Study, because everyone needs a pastor. Welcome back.

33:26

This is Chris Arns. And if you just tuned in to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, our guest today for the full two hours with 90 minutes to go is

33:33

Rev. Dr. Matthew Richard, pastor of Zion Lutheran Church in Gwinner, North Dakota, a congregation within the

33:41

Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. We are discussing, Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?

33:48

12 False Christs. And that is the new book by Dr. Richard.

33:53

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Dr. Richard, just send us an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

34:00

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. And give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

34:09

USA. And please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter. And before we went to the break, as you know,

34:16

Dr. Richard, we addressed the very first, or at least we identified the very first in the list of 12 false

34:26

Christs that you address in the book. And the first is the mascot, if you could explain.

34:33

Yeah, the mascot is a very, very popular false Christ in our day and age. And if we can think of, just briefly, think of a mascot for a sports team.

34:43

We have just down the road from us in Fargo, North Dakota, the NDSU Bison. And I take my family there all the time for the football games.

34:50

And we just love the Bison. They have done several national championships, FCS. And they have a mascot named

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Thundar. He's a big Bison. And the neat thing with Thundar is Thundar cheers on the

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Bison no matter what is going on. I mean, they could be losing 100 to nothing, and Thundar would be the only one in the stadium cheering on the

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Bison football team. And so this false Christ is much like that. It's a mascot. And this false

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Christ cheers on individuals in whatever they do in life, no matter how sinful.

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This mascot false Christ is all about people being happy, actualizing their pleasure in their life.

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And so with this false Christ, you're not going to hear anything such as hell or judgment. You're not going to hear anything that condemns something as sin.

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In fact, this false Christ is all going to be about maximizing pleasure and the pursuit of happiness at all costs for the individual

35:51

Christian. Yeah. Sometimes people, even, sad to say, people that I believe are truly my brothers and sisters in Christ, their emotions and their sentimentality can overcome their duty as Christians to tell the truth and evangelize the lost with the facts about the gospel, the facts about the sinfulness of man, the facts about hell and heaven.

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And so even though they may believe certain things and certain truths, vital truths regarding Jesus and the gospel themselves, they candy coat these things when they are telling others about them because they're more concerned, at least at that moment, they're more concerned about that person's feelings than they're never dying souls.

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Or perhaps they're more concerned about their friendship with this individual or individuals than they are over their souls and more so than their need to obey

37:00

Christ when they evangelize. Isn't this a tragedy that people tend to be more concerned about the feelings of others and the friendship of others than they are over where they will spend eternity?

37:15

Yeah, this false Christ definitely gets along with about almost anybody. And really at the heart of this, and not to throw out $30 words here, but really at the heart of this false

37:27

Christ is something called hedonism. Hedonism is basically an ideology.

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It's an ancient ideology that basically says to us that whatever brings us pleasure is the pursuit that we should pursue.

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So if it's good, it makes you happy, and if you're sad, then it must be bad.

37:46

So we base our ethics upon that which gives pleasure. So if it makes you happy, as the old rocker, was it

37:56

Sheryl Crow, if it makes you happy, it can't be that bad. But if it doesn't make you happy, then it must be very, very bad.

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And so in this first chapter, we actually meet a lady named Gillian. And so again, each chapter has these fictitious stories based upon real life events that I've encountered these false

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Christs in. And so we meet Gillian, and she's on an airplane, and she's struggling because the

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Jesus that she embraces is quite different than the Jesus of her parents and her pastor and the church that she grew up in.

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And for her, you know, when she looks at Jesus, she cannot understand or have a

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Jesus in her life that would cause her any amount of sadness. And so the Jesus that she has embraced is the

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Jesus that will see to her having pleasure at all costs.

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And really, what is fundamentally at work is this idea of hedonism, which is that which makes you happy is good, and that which makes you sad is bad.

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And she's taken that, and she's hoisted, and she's placed that upon Christ, creating a false

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Jesus in her mind. And again, that's coming back to the mascot, the false Christ I call the mascot, the one who cheers

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Gillian on in whatever she does. And so this false Christ is all about happiness, all about, you know, pleasure for her.

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And so therefore, this false Christ is never going to mention hell. It's never going to mention the law, God's law, because God's law would point out her sin.

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And so this is a Jesus that has been stripped of hell, stripped of the law, and injected with the pursuit of pleasure at all costs.

39:40

You know, this, I don't know if you have another false Christ that more directly relates to this idea or this category of professing

39:53

Christians, and I emphasize the word professing. But it sounds a lot like in a different way than the one you described as far as the

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Jesus of the average person that doesn't want to let go of their idols in life.

40:11

But it sounds even a lot like the word of faith movement, the name it and claim it movement, the prosperity gospel movement, this idea of hedonism, where it seems that the main emphasis of these preachers, these prosperity preachers, is that if you come to Christ, and especially if you give them money, you will achieve the, you will reach the goals of your dreams and hedonistic pleasure of all kinds.

40:46

Yeah, you know, and believe it or not, that's actually chapter 5 in the book, and chapter 5 is on the false

40:53

Christ called the Giver of Bling. And that Giver of Bling is all about, it's very similar, like I said, it's very, very similar to the mascot.

41:04

And all these false Christs, now here, I should back up a little bit, all these false Christs, they all contain an element of truth of the real

41:10

Jesus, but then they're adjusted ever so slightly based upon what we would say the presuppositions, based upon the assumptions of the person.

41:19

So, like a strainer, they take the real Jesus of the Bible and they strain out that which is, you know, unpleasurable to them, that which they don't want to embrace.

41:28

And then the aspects where maybe he's lacking, they'll add an expansion pack of different ideas upon Jesus.

41:36

So, people basically will take Jesus and they strain away that which they don't like and they apply to the real

41:43

Jesus things that they want to enhance him with, all to suit their own fancy. And so, again, all of these false

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Christs, they all have elements of truth to them, but they're adjusted either by taking away or adding to them.

41:57

And so, the mascot is indeed a flavor of a false Christ that is very, very closely connected to the

42:04

Giver of Bling. And the Giver of Bling is all about rejecting suffering and it's about this prosperity theology where by actualizing and having enough faith, if you have enough faith as like some sort of deposit or some sort of way of actualizing and engaging this false

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Christ, then this false Christ is going to dispense health, wealth, and prosperity. Well, the next false

42:29

Christ that you address is probably the most common globally, and that is the option among many.

42:43

Yes, the option among many. We meet an individual named Tamar. And I meet

42:49

Tamar in a coffee shop in Southern California, and through a series of events, what we find out is that Tamar, he embraces

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Jesus, but the Jesus that he embraces is an option among many, no different than from Muhammad, no different from the different religions out there.

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And so, this Jesus has been stripped of exclusivity, and so he is not an exclusive Jesus.

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So what this looks like is for Tamar, that Jesus is not the way and the truth and the life, but he is a way and a truth and a life.

43:24

So he changes it from the, which is definite, to the letter A. So he's just one of many ways, one of many truths, and one of many lives that are out there.

43:34

And so, he gets rid of the exclusiveness of Jesus, and then he also gets rid of what we call, this is another term that the reader will be introduced to, is this, it's binary oppositions.

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So, Tamar doesn't like the idea of there being heaven and hell. So if I say heaven, a person would say hell.

43:55

If you say, you know, if you say good, bad. If you say up, then the opposite of that would be down.

44:03

He doesn't like having those categories where there's an either or decision. But he rather wants to see that removed, where everything's sloshed together, and then he coats this false

44:15

Christ with cultural tolerance and religious pluralism.

44:21

So we have to be tolerant of everyone, and everyone's on the same path, all leading to the same utopia, the same outcome of some sort of heaven.

44:31

So really, this Jesus, this false Christ, I should say, is really watered down to the point where there's no exclusiveness.

44:40

His assertions are not true, and he's all about tolerance, which is really the exact opposite of Christian love.

44:50

Yeah. In fact, the early Christians likely would not have been martyred at the hands of the

44:59

Romans if they had this kind of a Jesus, because the

45:04

Roman government was not insisting that Christians abandon

45:09

Jesus altogether. They just wanted them to add Caesar to the mix.

45:15

Am I right? Right. Absolutely. This one is very, very prevalent in our day and age, and you're absolutely right.

45:21

You know, who can find a problem with the option among many? You really, when it comes down to it, you know, again, people can look at Jesus, and they can, you know, basically appreciate, you know, man, he taught a lot of new things, and the poor guy went to the cross, etc.,

45:37

etc. But, you know, so the average person can, you know, deal with that. But as soon as you make exclusive claims, drawing a line in the sand, saying, this is right and this is wrong, and as soon as you take the exclusive claims of Jesus, saying that he is the only way, that he's the only way to the

45:54

Father, well, then by implying that, you're saying that everyone else is wrong. And that, again, comes against the notion of wanting to have tolerance.

46:05

And tolerance is one of the big no -no's in our culture, that if you sin against tolerance, there's definitely a blowback, definitely a retribution that you have to pay.

46:15

So this false Christ is perfect for our culture that promotes tolerance, and this idea that we can all get along, and that there's no such thing as exclusive ways of salvation.

46:30

And we're going to be going to—actually, no, I'm sorry, I misread the clock there, we're not going to a break yet—I think

46:39

I'm going to take a couple of the listener questions before we go on to any other false

46:45

Christs. Very bizarre way of phrasing things, but the only way

46:51

I can communicate logically and understandably during a conversation like this. But we have

46:57

Rose in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, who says,

47:03

In your book on the real Jesus, are you coming at the topic by way of the many misconceptions people have of Jesus and how that forms their ideas of him, or from the aspect of the

47:16

Mormon Jesus, the Islamic Jesus, etc., or is it both? Well, you've already in some way answered part of that question, but I don't know if you're really getting down to any of the cultic understandings, false understandings of Jesus that, in some cases, bear no resemblance to the biblical

47:36

Jesus. Yeah, actually, with that, I don't necessarily start from the perspective of different religions.

47:43

You know, obviously, Islam talks about Jesus, but their view of Jesus is quite different than the view of Christianity.

47:50

As well as Mormonism, their view of Jesus is drastically different than the

47:55

Christian view of Jesus. And so we're really starting from the, again, the word presupposition, or we would say assumptions, the assumptions that are prevalent in our culture that people have.

48:08

And these assumptions, they kind of function like glasses that we wear. And so if you have rose -colored glasses and you look through those, everything else is going to be rose -colored.

48:17

And so we approach the Bible, we approach Jesus, and we see him through a tainted lens, and usually that tainted lens is derived from our own ambitions.

48:29

And so it's not a coincidence that these false Christs are often created in the own image of the person wanting to have that false

48:36

Christ. And so we will construct Jesus to really look like ourselves. We don't want to have a

48:42

Jesus that stands over top of us, interrogating us. We want a Jesus that works with us, because we don't want to be in conflict.

48:49

We want to be affirmed as human beings in everything that we do. But tragically, when we go that route, we persist in our sins.

48:58

We need a real Jesus who comes and can call out and point out our sin, because then when our sin is pointed out, we can hear about the

49:06

Christ who actually forgave us of that sin and rescued us for all of eternity. Yes, when you said that people don't want the

49:16

Jesus that towers over us, I think that's why Christmas can be such a universally popular holiday, even inside and outside of Christianity, because there we have the harmless, helpless baby in a manger.

49:32

Everybody loves that cooing baby, that baby either in the manger or in the arms of Mary that can do no harm to us.

49:42

That seems to be an extremely popular Jesus. Yeah, absolutely. That's a very good point.

49:47

And even this, too, I've noticed over the years that when we get to Good Friday, some churches will have

49:53

Good Friday services. And I've noticed a tendency among even us as Christians, we sometimes look at the

49:59

Christ who's bleeding and dying on the cross, and we want to skirt over it. We're so uncomfortable with the blood, and we're uncomfortable with the nailed scarred hands.

50:06

And so we want to just kind of skirt over that real quickly, move on to the Resurrection. Not that the

50:12

Resurrection is bad. I mean, we want to embrace the Resurrection. It's wonderful. It's a part of our salvation.

50:18

But we get uncomfortable with a Jesus who's too bloody, a Christ that suffers too much.

50:24

And so we want to jump over Good Friday and get to that Sunday for the Resurrection.

50:29

And so it's all about, again, it's all about taming Jesus. So we want to take him, and we want to make him tame.

50:37

And I'm often reminded of C .S. Lewis's book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. And I just love the line.

50:45

I think it's, boy, I think it's Susan that says in the line, a line in there,

50:51

Yeah, yeah, she asks Mr. Beaver, you know, is he a good lion? Is he safe? And Mr.

50:58

Beaver goes, well, he's not safe, but he's good. And what we want to do is we want to make him safe from the perspective that we want to be able to put

51:06

Jesus in our back pocket. We want to put him on a leash so that we can drag him around and do our biddings.

51:13

But the Lion of Judah cannot be tamed. The Lion of Judah stands over top of us, and the

51:20

Lion of Judah is the one who interrogates us. So really, it's all about us trying to tame

51:26

Jesus so that he might suit our own fancy. But the real Jesus will not tolerate that.

51:32

He stands above us. Amen. I love the line from a Michael Card song.

51:38

Michael Card's one of my favorite Christian recording artists. And he has a song called,

51:44

The Lamb is a Lion Roaring with Rage. And giving that contrast between the lamb that was sacrificed to the lion that is returning with judgment.

52:01

And quite a contrast. And people like to think of the lamb, but they don't want to necessarily think at all.

52:11

Or they, in fact, dismiss the lion. And when you mentioned Good Friday, I think that another way that people, even well -meaning people, perhaps even well -meaning

52:24

Christians, diminish Jesus's power, diminish

52:32

Jesus's voluntary sacrifice on Calvary, the fact that he laid down his own life.

52:39

They diminish that, and they pity Jesus on Good Friday. They view him as an object of pity, and they feel sorry for Jesus.

52:49

But that is not the reaction that a Christian should have over this, is it? No, absolutely not.

52:55

I mean, this is the reality. As Jesus says that he goes to the cross on his own accord, he does this on his own will to redeem us.

53:04

And so the cross is the display of Christ's power, of him bleeding and dying, the forgiveness of all of our sins.

53:12

And so, I mean, the reality is when it comes down to it, he chose to go to the cross, and he chose to go there for you and for me and for all the listeners, that it was an act of love, an act of him going to suffer the sins of the world upon himself to be judged by God's wrath for the sin of the world, and then to say, it is finished.

53:31

And so, indeed, he's not some helpless victim being dragged to the cross, but he went there on his own accord.

53:38

Well, we're going to go a break right now, and what I'm going to do, Dr. Richard, is

53:44

I am going to forward you a question from our listener

53:50

Daniel in San Jose, California, because it's a rather lengthy question, and I figured that during the station break, you might have opportunity to mull over his lengthy question and give it more thought when you answer it because of its length.

54:07

And if anybody else would like to join us on the air with a question for Dr. Matt Richard, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, your country of residence if you live outside of the

54:28

USA, and please only remain anonymous if it makes you feel more comfortable.

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That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Dr.

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Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, for am I now seeking the approval of man or of God? Or am

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I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, pastor of Providence Baptist Church.

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We are a Reformed Baptist Church and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts.

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Or visit lindbrookbaptist .org. That's lindbrookbaptist .org. Welcome back. This is Chris Zarnes, and if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with about an hour to go is

01:03:12

Rev. Dr. Matthew Richard, pastor of Zion Lutheran Church in Gwinner, North Dakota.

01:03:18

We are addressing his book, Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? 12 False Christs.

01:03:24

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Dr. Richard, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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And then in November, from the 17th through the 18th, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is having their annual

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The theme is, For Still Our Ancient Foe. I'm sure that rings a bell with our guest,

01:05:52

Dr. Matt Richard. That is a line from the classic hymn, A Mighty Fortress, by Martin Luther, referring to Satan, of course.

01:06:00

We're still our ancient foe. And the guest speakers include Kent Hughes, Peter Jones, Tom Nettles, Dennis Cahill, and Scott Oliphant.

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01:06:26

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01:09:44

Well, we are now back to our discussion on Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? Twelve False Christs, which is the title of Reverend Dr.

01:09:54

Matthew Richard's new book published by Concordia Publishing House.

01:10:01

And before the break, I told you, Dr. Richard, that we had an email that I forwarded to you so you could read it over from Daniel in San Jose, California.

01:10:12

He says, Hello, brother, would you please ask your guest to address the leading or most detrimental false view about Jesus today?

01:10:20

Well, he has a few questions here, so I'll start with that one. Yeah, you know, very good question that Daniel has.

01:10:27

Here's the thing, is each of these false Christs, through the book, the Twelve False Christs, they are presented within particular contexts with particular individuals.

01:10:38

Some of the individuals that you'll meet in the book who subscribe to a false Christ are active church growers, other church goers, excuse me.

01:10:47

Other ones are individuals you'll find in an academic setting such as college. Other individuals are people that you'll find in the coffee shop.

01:10:55

And so, really depending upon the context and their circumstances, where they're at is going to show which

01:11:02

Christ has come forth. And so, for instance, within the Christian church as a whole, you have a certain amount of false

01:11:10

Christs, and then the other false Christs, some of these other ones, you're not going to see within the walls of the church.

01:11:16

You're going to see them more in the popular context of the coffee shops and the dialogue of the day of the average person, the non -church -going person.

01:11:26

So within the church, I think though we can narrow it down, maybe handle it two -fold. Within the church,

01:11:31

I think some of the top ones we're going to see is going to be the giver of bling, which is a prosperity theology false

01:11:38

Christ. That one's going to be very, very popular. And then, as you work down some of the other chapters, we talk about the moral example.

01:11:46

And so, this false Christ is a moral example. And so, this one really isolates sin as only bad events, and the law of God as an achievable thing.

01:12:01

So this false Christ is all about coaching you on in the moral example of following Him.

01:12:08

Now, we want to affirm that definitely Christ is an example we can look to. We see Him, and we see righteousness.

01:12:14

But if that's all that the Christ is, is just a moral example, then we're left in our sins because we obviously cannot be

01:12:21

Jesus. We cannot fulfill and be perfect as Jesus is, and we fall short in our sins.

01:12:27

So we need a Savior who's going to bleed and die for us, for the forgiveness of sins. And so, those are ones that are very popular within the church.

01:12:34

But as you get in culture, I would say that the false Christ that in culture is probably most prevalent right now is the social justice warrior

01:12:43

Jesus, the social justice warrior false Christ. And this false

01:12:48

Christ is really derived from what we would say is Marxist ideology, and I go in the book and I explain how that comes about, the

01:12:57

Marxist ideology, how that ideology shapes and forms this false Christ called the social justice warrior.

01:13:03

And again, this Christ is not about bleeding and dying on the cross. This Christ is all about helping free those who are oppressed, and then standing against those who oppress, those who hold them down.

01:13:16

So that one's very popular. And then also the other one that's very popular in our culture right now is the feminized Christ, the feminized false

01:13:24

Christ. This is a Christ that has been stripped of masculinity, and so you have very much a very feminized false

01:13:31

Christ at work as well. So again, to that question, it really depends. Are you talking inside the church?

01:13:36

Are you talking outside the church? And then maybe a little bit more specifically, what kind of church are you talking about?

01:13:43

You know, what denominational or heritage does that church have?

01:13:49

And you're going to see different false Christs that are probably more prevalent in some churches than others, as well as culture itself, depending on which part of culture you're actually speaking to.

01:14:00

Well, thank you so much, Daniel. And this goes for Rose, too. I can't remember. I am getting a premature loss of memory at 55 years of age.

01:14:10

But I can't remember if I told Rose this as well. But both Rose and Daniel, you have won a free copy of Will the

01:14:18

Real Jesus Please Stand Up, compliments of our friends at Concordia Publishing House, and also compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, who will be shipping those books out to you free of charge, without charging either

01:14:34

Iron Sharpener's Iron Radio or you. You'll be getting those books, God willing, within the next week or two.

01:14:40

So please give us your full mailing addresses so we can have Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service ship them out.

01:14:46

That's CVBBS .com, CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for BibleBookService .com.

01:14:52

Look for that on the return address on the shipping label in a package in the mail.

01:14:57

It should be arriving shortly. And we thank Todd and Patty Jennings at CVBBS .com

01:15:03

for their faithful support of Iron Sharpener's Iron Radio. And we also thank our friends at Concordia Publishing House for providing these books for us today.

01:15:13

There is a false Christ that I think, here in the

01:15:19

United States, those who are among the

01:15:25

Christian circles that would most resemble, I think, the ones that you and I and the

01:15:31

Reverend Buzz Taylor are a part of, the conservative Christians, the

01:15:37

Christians who may be very strongly and adamantly pro -life, as I believe all

01:15:43

Christians should be. I don't even know how any truly regenerate person could be in favor of the murder of unborn children.

01:15:50

And also those Christians that are outspoken against same -sex marriage and so on, which all

01:15:57

Christians, again, should be. But sometimes these matters eclipse the gospel.

01:16:05

And we have adopted this National Patriot Jesus that you mentioned, the

01:16:12

National Patriot Jesus, that seems to be more about protecting what has been identified repeatedly in the media, especially the conservative media, as protecting our

01:16:24

Western values. I'm not even sure what that means in the 21st century when

01:16:31

I hear our president and when I hear conservative pundits on television talk about we need to protect our

01:16:38

Western values when we are living in a country that is murdering unborn children and where you could lose your job very easily by questioning whether or not same -sex marriage is legitimate.

01:16:57

I mean, this is really a strange thing to be bolstering as a primary thing to be protective of Western values.

01:17:07

If you could comment, do you follow the thread where I'm going here? Yes, absolutely.

01:17:13

In this chapter, we meet the National Patriot. And again, this one is going to hit a little bit closer home to the listeners and ourselves.

01:17:21

And in this opening chapter, we meet and we actually hear a story about me going to the church and coming in the sanctuary, and there's a couple of ladies up at the front by the altar.

01:17:33

Lutheran churches typically have an altar up front of the church, and they're kneeling down by the altar, and I'm really puzzled by what's going on.

01:17:42

I went up front, and they were caught off guard, and they were startled. And through a series of events of conversation, come to find out that they are moving.

01:17:51

There's a Christian flag and an American flag. I think many churches will have that in the

01:17:56

United States, be familiar with that. But the senior pastor of the church was a little uncomfortable with the

01:18:01

American flag being so close to the altar. In fact, it was kind of blocking the view of some of the people on the side of the church.

01:18:08

So he was hoping to kind of distinguish between the difference between the altar representing the church and the

01:18:15

American flag, which represents the state. And so he ended up moving the flag, but he made a person in the church named

01:18:23

Jack very, very angry. For Jack, removing the American flag was very, very appalling to him.

01:18:31

And what was happening is he had actually amalgamated. He had actually combined the

01:18:38

Jesus of the Bible, the Jesus of the church, with an Americanized Jesus. And so the

01:18:44

Jesus that he was really subscribing to wasn't necessarily fully about forgiveness, life, and salvation, but this false

01:18:53

Christ that he had held to was more about life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the American dream.

01:18:58

And so, back to the story here, the ladies in the church, they moved the flag back in order to appease

01:19:06

Jack, but then the pastor told them to move the flag two inches every week subtly so Jack wouldn't know.

01:19:13

And so, again, it's kind of a humorous story, but the point being is, any time we take these two kingdoms, we would say the kingdom of the left and the kingdom of the right.

01:19:28

These are terminologies that are used in theology. The kingdom of the left, which would be the state, the government, which is really, when we think back to it, is

01:19:38

Romans chapter 13. All government is established by God for the sake of keeping order in society, and that is a kingdom that God has established.

01:19:48

And then the right -hand kingdom being the church. So when you have the church and the state, when you move them too closely together, typically what has happened, historically speaking, is that the state will end up gobbling up the church.

01:20:02

In other words, the church then has to be subjugated to the state. And so, when we combine these two closely, we fail to distinguish

01:20:12

Jesus Christ and his mission of forgiveness, life, and salvation, and actually that is lost, and then we create a false

01:20:20

Christ called the National Patriot, who is a Jesus who is not wrapped with blood and tears, but who is wrapped with an

01:20:27

American flag who is all about life and the pursuit of happiness, the

01:20:32

American dream. Now, when I say that, immediately we kind of can react, our patriotism can react to that, and we can find ourselves being defensive.

01:20:41

But here's the whole point of this chapter. Jack was a very patriotic person for the church, and there's nothing wrong with being patriotic for one's country.

01:20:52

The problem was that he melded these two kingdoms, the state and the church, he put them together, rather than distinguishing them separately from each other.

01:21:03

And so, the point of that is that we want to distinguish both kingdoms, both the state and the church, from each other.

01:21:10

That way, the state can rule through the sword and good governance, and the church can rule through the proclamation of the gospel, to keep those separate and distinguished, so that we don't confuse the identity of Christ.

01:21:23

Amen. Yes, and I can remember right after 9 -11, one of the most horrific dates in American history, where more

01:21:39

Americans died from an attack from a foreign enemy than any other time in history.

01:21:47

You had this idea amongst a lot of Christians and Americans in general, that God could possibly not have had anything remotely involved with that in his providence.

01:22:06

This was only in the hands of the evil one, it was only in the hands of those maniacs and satanic individuals that perpetrated the event.

01:22:17

But there is this idea that God is always on America's side.

01:22:23

God could not possibly ever be opposed to America, no matter how many babies we murder, or how many open doors to licentious activity we provide for all kinds of perversion, and celebrate it.

01:22:41

Not only tolerate it, but actually celebrate it. We act as if God could never be opposed to us, when in fact we have

01:22:50

Israel and the old covenant going through really horrific trials that were brought upon God's people by the hands of God himself, that he orchestrated using the enemies of Israel.

01:23:04

And I'm not saying that we are to be compared to Israel, America, but if God were to orchestrate those chastisements against a nation that truly was his uniquely chosen nation, why on earth should we expect anything different in the 21st century here in the

01:23:28

United States? Yeah, you know, when it comes to that, I mean, think of that example, you know, establishing the two kingdoms, we would say the kingdom of the left and the right, the kingdom of the state and the church.

01:23:41

We as citizens, we as citizens are a part of the left -hand kingdom, the state.

01:23:47

We pay our taxes, we vote, we're citizens of the United States, but we're also citizens on the other side, citizens of the kingdom of God, that we belong to Jesus, we belong to the church.

01:24:00

So we're churchmen and churchwomen, parishioners, you know, baptized Christians into Jesus's name on that side.

01:24:09

And so when calamity happens and struggles happen culturally, one of the things that can happen is we can, you know, say, well, that's the state over there,

01:24:17

I have nothing to do with that, and so I'm part of the church over here. Well, the problem is that's, you know, casting off aside our left -hand kingdom, that is being, that we have a dual citizenship, that we are part of the state as citizens.

01:24:33

So when bad things happen or there are problems in politics, when there are national disasters, we as Christians, we can repent, we can say,

01:24:43

God, be merciful to me, a sinner, because we are part of that society in the left -hand kingdom. And at the same time, we can also repent as Christians in the church when we find there are being struggles in the church as well.

01:24:55

And so in essence, we wear two hats. We have the hat of a citizen and the hat of a parishioner, being members of God's kingdom by His grace and mercy, and being members of the state through our citizenship.

01:25:09

And so I often tell people that we don't need Christian doctors, we don't need

01:25:14

Christian lawyers, we don't need Christian politicians, but rather we need politicians who are

01:25:20

Christians, doctors who are Christians, and lawyers that are Christians. And I think that's a little bit of a different nuance which captures these two kingdoms, being faithful in both avenues and both venues, if you will, serving as a faithful citizen, advocating for life, advocating for a fair society, advocating for just laws and just judges and so forth, and at the same time, coming like beggars before the

01:25:48

Lord's table to hear His precious gospel and to be forgiven of our sins and to walk as Christians in that right -hand kingdom and, again, the left -hand kingdom at the same time.

01:25:59

Yeah, I don't know if it disturbs you as much as it disturbs me, but it is very popular amongst conservative

01:26:06

Christians. And I think that in some ways, I don't want to go overboard here, but I think that in some ways a liberal

01:26:14

Christian is an oxymoron. But what disturbs me about my own people is when you see this parading of the uniqueness and wonder and glory and beauty of America, which is declared by professedly

01:26:40

Christian clerics on the news and on television and on radio and so on on the internet, without any call upon our nation to repent.

01:26:51

It's amazing that even as I was mentioning about 9 -11, how many people in the ministry who, when they were given a voice in the media to say something in response as to what happened, you hardly ever heard those words,

01:27:07

America must repent. That doesn't mean, of course, that the Islamic terrorists were right in their activity.

01:27:16

They will go to hell for that. But at the same time, when we just constantly have the drumbeat of God bless

01:27:24

America, and as my friend Dr. James R. White has said many times that we should be singing

01:27:31

God bless America with repentance, that seems to be absent from the patriotic

01:27:38

Christian in many senses, especially those that you see and hear in the media. Well, you know, you're right on repentance.

01:27:46

You know, Martin Luther said in the famous 95 theses that were nailed to the door of the

01:27:52

Warburg Castle, you know, 500 years ago, coming up this October, he said that the whole life of a

01:27:59

Christian is one of repentance. And so we as Christians really, you know, being citizens, again, of the

01:28:06

Church, our life is one of repentance of our own sin, and it's so much easier, though, to point out the log in our neighbor's eye, you know?

01:28:16

And a parishioner once said, you know, Pastor, I want to take the log out of my neighbor's eye and beat him over the head with it.

01:28:23

And but, you know, the life of the Christian is one of repentance, where we're confessing our sin, and we can carry that over into the left -hand kingdom when we operate in the left -hand kingdom with a spirit of repentance with our fellow citizens.

01:28:38

And so that indeed, when we cross over into the arena of politics in the state, we indeed advocate for life, like you mentioned, the life of the unborn, and we do that with the spirit of repentance, even though maybe a

01:28:54

Christian hasn't had an abortion or supported, but we as fellow citizens, we mourn the atrocity and the destruction of human life.

01:29:04

And so we come into that left -hand kingdom, the state, with repentance and tears, and we plead, and we work hard, and we're faithful with the laws that we have, and we try to enact the system of justice and politics to make a change for that.

01:29:21

But we do that, indeed, in the spirit of repentance and tears, and with hope of fighting for life.

01:29:29

And so again, that's where we distinguish the two kingdoms, and we oftentimes serve in that left -hand kingdom, the state, driving our identity and our hope and our assurance from that right -hand kingdom.

01:29:41

So through the Church being citizens of God's kingdom, we then enter into that left -hand kingdom, and we act as faithful Christians by the laws and trying to enact change with repentance and fear of God and love for our neighbor in that left -hand kingdom.

01:29:59

We're going to our final break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air, now is the time to do it. At chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:30:06

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. I would send in the email as soon as possible before we run out of time, and we will get to those who are waiting to have their questions asked and answered as soon as possible.

01:30:19

chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Dr.

01:30:24

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01:38:29

This is Chris Arndsen. If you've just tuned us in for the last 90 minutes in the next half hour to come, our guest has been and will continue to be

01:38:38

Reverend Dr. Matthew Richard, pastor of Zion Lutheran Church in Gwinner, North Dakota.

01:38:44

We have been discussing and will continue to discuss, Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? 12

01:38:49

False Christs, a new book by our guest, Dr. Matthew Richard. If you'd like to join us, now is the time to send in your email.

01:38:57

Before we run out of time, chrisarndsen at gmail .com, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

01:39:04

By the way, I just want to announce for those of our Lutheran listeners who may want to especially hear these guests coming up in the very near future,

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Chris Rosebro of Pirate Christian Radio is returning to the program on August 31st.

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I should say, is Lutheranism 101. This is basically going to be a program to help explain

01:39:37

Lutheranism because of the fact that a lot of people outside of Lutheranism are very confused about it.

01:39:44

I'm not making any effort to convert my fellow Calvinists to Lutheranism.

01:39:49

I'm a very thoroughgoing five -point Calvinist, but I think that it might be helpful to understand our brethren in Christ more deeply so we can have even richer fellowship with one another.

01:40:02

And we can even have vigorous and enthusiastic debate with one another while remaining friends and brethren.

01:40:09

But it should be an interesting time. And then Chris Rosebro is actually returning on September 20th and September 27th to do part one and two of the 500th anniversary of the

01:40:24

Protestant Reformation. We will be going into detail about why that is such an important date with Chris Rosebro.

01:40:31

On those two dates, a week apart from each other, September 20th and September 27th.

01:40:37

And then, as I mentioned before, Brian Wolfmuller, another

01:40:42

Lutheran author, is going to be our guest on October 4th to discuss his book, which actually

01:40:49

I think had a lot to do with what we just were discussing moments ago, the

01:40:55

National Patriot Jesus being one of the false

01:41:01

Christs that our guest today was discussing or describing.

01:41:06

Brian Wolfmuller is going to be talking about his book, Has American Christianity Failed? So that's going to be on October 4th.

01:41:14

You might want to tune into that. And we have a listener in our audience who has a question for you,

01:41:20

Dr. Richard. His name is Gordy, and he is from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. And he asks,

01:41:26

Is something along the lines of a Second Reformation what is needed to stem the flow of seemingly endless false

01:41:36

Christs, both within and without the Church? Wow, very good question.

01:41:43

Second Reformation. Well, you know, really, when we think of the First Reformation, it was a return to the

01:41:49

Word of God. Luther and the Lutherans of the 1500s were very, very focused on not necessarily starting and rebelling a new

01:41:59

Church, rebelling and making a new Church. So Luther had not set out to carve out his own section of Christianity for himself.

01:42:10

He was solely focused on fixing the abuses and the struggles in the

01:42:16

Church at that time, bringing them back to the sole authority of Christ alone, faith alone, grace alone, and the

01:42:24

Word alone. And so I would say that the Church is always needing a

01:42:29

Reformation, always needing to be returned back to the Word of God. And boy, right now in our time and age, you know, maybe

01:42:38

Pastor Wolf Miller can hit this a little bit more, but I sure look out and I just see no shortage of craziness regarding the false

01:42:47

Christ and false theology. And really, it stems back to, you know, not being captivated to the

01:42:54

Word of God. And so in that sense, yes, I would say we do need a Reformation, being reformed and being pulled back to the

01:43:01

Scriptures as the sole source and norm for our faith and our ethics and who we are and our identity.

01:43:10

But any time that we place ourselves over top of the Word of God, or dismiss it or neglect it, we end up just going down all these rabbit trails.

01:43:20

I mean, I'm thinking of the old hymn that we're prone to wander, we're prone to leave the God that we love.

01:43:25

And we see that throughout history. We see that throughout even the Old Testament with Israel, always chasing after that which is glittery and bright, always chasing after the pagan gods, always chasing after something else that is more attractive rather than being brought back in repentance to the

01:43:46

Word, to the source of our Christian faith, which is the Bible. So, do we need a second

01:43:52

Reformation? We're always needing a Reformation. You know, would I say we don't need it?

01:43:57

Absolutely, we do need it right now. But once that happens, though, if we were to have a profound Reformation, then again, it's just we're prone to wander, we're prone to leave the

01:44:06

God that we love. So it's always being brought back to the source of the Scriptures, always being captivated by the

01:44:12

Word of God, rather than trying to be independent and trying to be autonomous beings doing it all on our own strength.

01:44:19

Amen. Well, thank you, Gordy. And by the way, Gordy, I know that you live very close to Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

01:44:26

Concordia Publishing House just shipped out those free books to us today.

01:44:32

So the Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service here in Carlisle on North Hanover Street, just about 10 minutes away from Mechanicsburg, where you live.

01:44:42

They should have those books by next week. So be patient. If you go over there too soon, it may not be waiting there for you.

01:44:49

Just wanted to let you know. Thank you for the excellent question. Keep listening and keep spreading the word about Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio in Mechanicsburg and beyond.

01:44:58

One of the false Christs may, when I mentioned the title that you've given to him, may startle people because they may get the wrong idea.

01:45:08

But you've titled one of the false Christs, The Good Teacher. Isn't that a proper title for the true

01:45:14

Christ? Well, yeah. I mean, we definitely... Jesus is referred to as a rabbi, and he is referred to as a good teacher.

01:45:23

But this false Christ, and when we look at this chapter, it's chapter three, we meet a professor named

01:45:29

Mr. Darby. And he is the possible atheist. And so you meet him through my experience in college.

01:45:36

And again, these are fictitious people based upon real life events. And Mr. Darby, he diminishes the divine nature of Jesus.

01:45:45

So anything referring to, in the Bible, referring to the miracles of Jesus are strained out.

01:45:51

So Jesus walking on water. Well, he wasn't walking on water. It might have been a sandbar, you know, underneath the water.

01:45:57

Or Jesus multiplying the bread and the fish. Well, the people probably were inspired by his love, so he really didn't multiply it.

01:46:04

This is the way of Mr. Darby. So anything of a supernatural understanding, his view of Jesus is that he can't be more than just a good teacher.

01:46:16

That's all that he is. So he excludes and he strains out the divine nature, the divine aspects, the divine miracles of Jesus.

01:46:24

And in so doing that, all we're left with is just a moral teacher, a person who has some good parables, really no different than, you know,

01:46:34

Mohammed Gandhi or any different than any of the spiritual gurus of the day. And so, again, yeah, he strains out the divine nature.

01:46:41

And the reason why he does this is that he puts his own intellect over top of the scriptures.

01:46:47

He puts his own secular reasoning over top of the scriptures. And he judges on the basis of his knowledge and his understanding that these things would not be possible.

01:46:58

So, again, it can't happen. Anything of a divine flavor could not happen for Mr. Darby. Does Mr.

01:47:05

Darby have a friend named Mr. Schofield? I was just curious. Go ahead,

01:47:13

I'm sorry. No, no, no, that's fine. You know, I think the thing is, you know, readers, when they get to this chapter, they'll find a couple phrases, like Mr.

01:47:21

Darby, he says that he doesn't read the Bible literally. And with a lot of these things, these people that you'll meet in this book, it's kind of fun to share that I went online to social media with a lot of these people, and I wasn't necessarily too much of a troll, but I did poke at individuals and try to have them kind of cough up some of the language so that it was very authentic language of people that actually embrace this.

01:47:47

And so Mr. Darby is one of those who doesn't take the Bible literally. In other words, that phrase, take the

01:47:53

Bible literally, means basically he doesn't take it in its entirety. He picks and chooses that which he wants to believe for himself.

01:48:02

And again, kind of like Thomas Jefferson, you know, Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson Bible, he strained out anything that was of the divine flavor from the

01:48:11

Bible and essentially created a Bible and created a Jesus that is just only a good teacher.

01:48:18

Amen. Amen. You have another false

01:48:23

Jesus that may, the title may confuse some who view

01:48:29

Moses as a type of Christ. You title this false

01:48:34

Christ the new Moses. How does that differentiate from an appropriate understanding of Moses being a type of Christ?

01:48:41

Well, yeah, this new Moses is seeing Jesus as a new

01:48:48

Moses who brings new and improved laws. So we think of, you know, maybe Moses, the

01:48:53

Ten Commandments are 1 .0 type of laws, but this Jesus, he brings new laws that are improved that are 2 .0.

01:49:01

And the problem with this false Christ, this new Moses false Christ, is that he creates laws that are not in the

01:49:07

Bible. And so in doing that, this new Moses is all about creating laws, usually that are the laws or the opinions or the stances of the individual person subscribing to this false

01:49:21

Christ. And then these new laws that are used to judge everyone else around the individual. And if they do not meet up to these new laws, then therefore they're condemned.

01:49:31

Well, the problem with this is when they're new laws and they're not in the Bible, well, if it's not the law of the Bible, then it's really not sin, as we know sin by the law.

01:49:40

The law shows us what is good and true, and the law shows us how we understand our sin. But these new laws are made up, and usually they're made up by the person subscribing to this false

01:49:51

Christ, and they're laws that are made up in a way for the person subscribing to them that they can fulfill in their own strength.

01:49:57

So it leads to a self -righteousness. And so again, this false Christ is all about man -made traditions and self -justification.

01:50:08

And so it creates laws that the person can fulfill in their own strength, and also rejecting the law of the

01:50:15

Bible, and then the person jumps through the hoops of this new Moses false Christ, and then they pat themselves on the back and condemn everyone else around them for not fulfilling these made -up man -made rules.

01:50:29

At the risk of stirring up further controversy with my Roman Catholic friends, as I have a habit of doing, doesn't the

01:50:35

Church of Rome perfectly reflect what you're talking about, because of the fact that they invented traditions of men that eclipsed the traditions of the apostles and the commands of God?

01:50:47

Yeah, this new Moses phrase was used by the founding father of our church, the

01:50:54

Missouri Synod, C .F .W. Walter, and I believe, I'm almost 90 % sure that Martin Luther used this idea of new

01:51:04

Moses as well in his writings. And so it's basically implying that, you know, if God's laws are not enough, then we add a bunch of human and man -made laws, but then what happens is that we reject the law of the

01:51:17

Bible, and then we start living by these new laws, and typically what happens with these new laws that are man -made, they change.

01:51:25

They're always changing, depending on the opinion of the person subscribed to the false Christ. And so my whole contention in this chapter on this book is we meet a couple different individuals who are subscribed to this new

01:51:39

Moses, a guy named Walter. Walter's condemning individuals around him on the basis of these individuals not fulfilling a law that he believes comes from this false

01:51:50

Christ. But if it's not from the Scriptures, then how can we repent of it?

01:51:56

So he's actually spiritually abusing individuals by applying law that is not of the

01:52:02

Bible to individuals, labeling them as sinners, and then not giving them an opportunity to repent of it, but they have to kind of appease this new law and to make it up.

01:52:14

And so it really leads to spiritual abuse. We have Ronald in eastern

01:52:20

Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who says, What do you think of the false

01:52:25

Christ that has been invented both by those who create a black

01:52:32

Christ, which militates against the historical fact that he was

01:52:38

Semitic, or should I say Jewish, and even the one that's existed for centuries, the white

01:52:45

Anglo -Saxon Protestant Christ with blonde hair and blue eyes and pale skin? Is this not a dangerous area to be treading on by anyone of any ethnicity, race, or culture?

01:52:57

Yeah, very good question. That indeed happens, and unfortunately, I don't really hit on that in the book as a false

01:53:03

Christ. The closest thing that I would hit on that is the feminized Christ, and that is a

01:53:10

Christ who has definitely been feminized. And again, you strain, you know, we talked about before, we strain attributes of Christ out or we add attributes of Christ to him, and then we create in the imagination of our mind a false

01:53:24

Christ. And usually, again, like I said before, that these false Christs that we create are usually credited in our own image as a way to justify ourselves and our own endeavors and our own aspirations.

01:53:36

And so, again, when we go that route, we end up hijacking the

01:53:41

Jesus of the Bible, and we use him to suit our own fancy, and then, oh boy, it leads to chaos.

01:53:49

Rather than relieving everyone, you know, whether our ethnic background, whether our context, regardless of any of that, the real

01:53:59

Jesus will lead us all in a joint repentance, beating our breasts and confessing together that we are all sinners in need of forgiveness.

01:54:07

Whereas when you create a false Christ, you have some who are living by their own righteousness and their own justification, and you're putting others under your thumb, and then you have division.

01:54:17

But the real Christ, again, leads us all to repentance, confessing we are sinners in need of grace, and then he, the real

01:54:23

Jesus, then absolves us and gives us that wonderful, precious news of his grace and his mercy, that forgiveness of sins.

01:54:30

Now, what do you mean by the Christ who is a mystical friend? Yeah, this one is very prevalent, too, as well.

01:54:40

What happens with this Jesus is that we can go the way of, you know, taking

01:54:46

Christ and we separate him. Now, we have to remember that Christ rose from the grave, he indeed rose from the grave, and he ascended to the right hand of the

01:54:57

Father. So he has actually been raised bodily speaking. So Jesus right now lives victorious with body and soul being reunited and is alive and well, and so he is a being, all right, a human being who lives and reigns victorious.

01:55:16

And we, too, someday will have resurrected bodies at the great resurrection. But what can happen is the mystical friend is we take

01:55:23

Jesus and we strip away, you know, we strip away his body and then we take a spiritized, ethereal being of Jesus and we take that spiritized, ethereal

01:55:36

Jesus and we tuck him deep down in our heart. Now, here's the danger of doing this is we tuck him so deeply in our heart that we confuse, you know,

01:55:47

Christ from our own emotions. And so then when we want to know what God's will is or we want to understand life, instead of going outside of ourselves to the

01:55:57

Word of God, we start digging around in our innards and digging around in the different layers of our heart, and we're trying to discern things on the basis of our own emotions and our feelings.

01:56:09

And the problem when we do that is when we go to our inward feelings and emotions, I don't know about the rest of our listeners, but I typically don't trust myself because when

01:56:18

I start looking inward, I want what Matt Richard wants, and usually what Matt Richard wants is sin, versus looking outside of myself to the

01:56:26

Word of God. And this, again, we want to make sure in this chapter we're not talking about the

01:56:31

Holy Spirit, we're talking about separating Christ from his body, and then we take him captive and we throw him into the deepest desires of our heart, and then we let our desires and our own ambitions and our own thoughts run wild, and we write it off as the mystical friend

01:56:48

Jesus is justifying ourselves. And in about a minute time or a minute and a half, if you could explain the teddy bear

01:56:56

Jesus. I hate even saying that phrase, but if you could. This one, yeah, twofold for this one.

01:57:04

One, with the teddy bear Jesus, we strip any suffering, the nailed, scarred hands, the blood, we pull that away from Jesus, so we skip over Good Friday, because we want to have a tame

01:57:15

Jesus, you know, like a teddy bear that can sit on the shelf. And then we also strip away from this

01:57:21

Jesus to create this false Christ. We strip away any intellectualism, we strip away any doctrine or teaching, because that's intimidating.

01:57:31

So what we're left with is a Jesus that doesn't have any blood, because the blood scares us. We're left with a

01:57:36

Jesus that doesn't have any suffering, because that scares us. And we're left with a Jesus that doesn't have any teaching, because we don't want to have any teaching that would interrogate us or challenge us.

01:57:46

So then we're left with a teddy bear that we drag around, but unfortunately this teddy bear is full of stuffing and really can do nothing against sin, death, and the devil, which is the reason why we need the real

01:57:58

Jesus to come to us and to proclaim to us that sin, death, and the devil have been indeed conquered.

01:58:06

Amen. Well, we're out of time, and I know that your website for Zion Lutheran Church is

01:58:13

ZionGwinner .org, that's Zion G -W -I -N -N -E -R .org. And I know that the

01:58:19

Concordia Publishing House website is C -P -H .org, C -P -H for Concordia Publishing House, .org.

01:58:28

You can also order the book, Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? through Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, C -V for Cumberland Valley, B -B -S for BibleBookService .com,

01:58:37

that's C -V -B -B -S .com. Do you have any other contact information you care to give? Yeah, I would say

01:58:44

I have a blog that I use, you can find it on Google, but it's PastorMattRichard .com

01:58:50

or PastorMattRichard .org, or if you just put Pastor Matt Richard in Google, it should pull it up, and it's a place where I house many of the different sermons and articles and so forth that might be enjoyable for people.

01:59:03

Well, I want to know if Zion Lutheran Church in Gwinner, North Dakota has a

01:59:10

Gwinner Gwinner Chicken Dinner at any time. My kids say that all the time.

01:59:17

Yep, yep, Gwinner Gwinner Chicken Dinner. They've said that before, yep. Well, thank you so much.

01:59:23

I look forward to having you back on the program. If you could remain on the phone, I'd like to chat with you a bit after we go off the air.

01:59:29

Sounds good. And I want to thank everybody who listened today. I want to thank everybody, especially who took the time to write in questions.

01:59:36

And by the way, Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, you've also won a free copy of the book we were addressing today,

01:59:45

Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up. Please make sure we get your mailing address. And Reverend Buzz Taylor, it's been a pleasure having you in the studio again.

01:59:52

And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater