Equipping Eve: Phil Johnson Interview (Part 2)

Is the Church today doing everything it can to provide women a firm foundation of truth in Christ Jesus? Well, it's true, there's no shortage of candy-coated Bible studies, potluck fellowships available to ladies.

But beyond Sunday morning, are Christian women being properly equipped to stand against the same deceptions that even enticed Eve in the Garden? In an attempt to address the need for trustworthy, biblical resources for women, No Compromise Radio is happy to introduce Equipping Eve, a ladies-only radio show that seeks to equip women with fruits of truth in an age that's ripe with deception.

My name is Mike Abendroth and I'm pleased to introduce your host, Erin Benzinger, a friend of No Compromise Radio and a woman who wants to see other women equipped with a love for and a knowledge of the truth of God's Word.

Christ at the Center of Discernment and Sanctification

Well, hello ladies and welcome to Equipping Eve. I'm your host, Erin Benzinger, and thanks for joining us today. As you know, if you've been listening to the show for a while, we seek to equip you with fruits of truth from God's Word because we are surrounded by deception.

And it is very easy to focus on the false teaching out there. There are plenty of ministries that do that. We here have taken the time to look at some rather questionable teachers and teachings over the course of the life of Equipping Eve, and we will continue to do so, but our primary focus, ladies, must be the Word of God and the Word incarnate, the Lord Jesus Christ.

And we need to know the truth of God's Word. You know, we can talk about the false all day long, but it doesn't do us any good if we aren't still ultimately focusing on Christ. If we find that our focus is constantly on the false, constantly looking for the bad guy around every corner, we have lost, we have taken our eyes off of Christ.

And that's completely contrary to what we are called to do. We're called to keep our focus on Christ, we are called to be in His Word, to be obedient to Him, to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which we have been called, to walk in a manner that is worthy of the price which purchased us.

Jesus Christ, if we have been saved, purchased us with His blood. And so that is our call as Christians, to walk according to the ways of the Lord as He continues to sanctify us and conform us to the image of His Son.

Yes, we need to warn about false teachers, we need to warn about false teachings, but we need to point people to Christ. Don't just stand there when you're in a conversation with someone and talk about all the bad things about their favorite teacher, Beth Moore, Joyce Meyer, Benny Hinn, Joel Osteen, without pointing them to Christ, without pointing them to the Scripture.

That is so key, and it's harder and harder to find churches today that are standing firm on the Word of God, but they are out there, and when you find one, cling to it, pray for the leaders of that church, and serve there so that by serving that body, you can serve Christ.

Okay, I've rambled for a couple of minutes now. I'm fighting a sinus infection, and so I'm a little bit raspy, my voice is a little squeaky slash raspy, so you'll just have to bear with me, but that works out really well because today's episode is actually part two of an interview that I did with Phil Johnson several weeks ago, and if you missed part one, go back and listen to it, and then you can pick up part two here in just a few minutes.

So thankfully you don't have to listen to my raspy voice too terribly long, and the next time I record, hopefully I will be back to normal. Okay, so as I said, we will get to Phil, the remainder of the interview with Phil Johnson in just a moment, but I came across an interesting article here a few days ago in the Huffington Post, so of course that is a bastion of conservative Christian thought, isn't it?

Not even close. But it was hysterical, and so I thought I would share it with you. So the article is entitled, Can You Hear Me Now, God Asks. It's from September 13th, 2015, written by Patty Kogutek, K-O-G-U-T-E-K, I don't know, she is apparently an author, and the name of her book is A Change of Habit, A Spiritual Journey from Sister Mary Kateri to Sister Mary Vodka.

So that sounds like a book you should not read. So okay, here's the article that Patty wrote, Can You Hear Me Now, God Asks. It was actually posted on September 11th, 2015, I'll have to correct myself, September 11th.

Can You Hear Me Now, over and over, asks God, we get so concerned about God responding and answering our prayers that we sometimes forget that God has some important things to say to us. God uses a soft-spoken approach.

He speaks in the language of the soul through our emotions. Let me stop there. How many times have we said over and over again, ladies, that we cannot rely on our emotions, and we certainly can't say that that is God speaking to us through our emotions.

We're emotional people. If God is speaking to us through our constantly changing emotions, we're all in trouble. Correct? Correct. And again, if you go back and listen to part one, I read a portion of an article from another blog in that episode wherein the author discussed emotions versus emotionalism, especially in the church, in Bible study, in the Christian life and the approach there.

So I encourage you to go back and listen to that episode and go to the Equipping Eve blog to read that article. But this author here from the Huffington Post says that God speaks to us through our emotions.

What we feel in responding to what life is asking of us is our communication with God. I refer to these communicative feelings as vibes. These vibes, she calls them voices of intentional beckoning emotions, get it, vibes, allow us to tap into deep soul knowledge.

This realm of nonverbal communication is our very own personal GPS, God pulley system. So it's through your emotions that you tap into God. We come equipped, maybe she means equipped, with our own GPS.

This GPS, rather than giving us a map with direction, will actually tug at us, attempting to navigate us to happiness. Emotions and feelings provide us with, are you ready for this ladies? Emotions and feelings provide us with unbiased, untainted, and untouched evidence.

Has this woman never had real emotions? They are completely biased, completely tainted, and completely touched and affected by whatever is going on at the moment. But she says, quote, our inner guidance system taps into our guiding light.

Our emotions act as the window to our soul. These feelings speak to our truest desires, the knot in our stomach, the hesitation in our smile, the resistance to say yes once again. They are all prods moving us to personal growth.

God wants us to feel our way along our journey in this school called life. Yeah, I guess she's never read the Bible. Practice being still, she says, and listening to your gut feel for firsthand information that will help you along your way.

These gut instincts have route guidance for you. Picking up on God's vibrations leads us to our true calling. Feeling blinded ourselves, we look and feel for subtle resonance along our path. Yeah, to tap into this inner counselor springing up from within, she recommends taking her five times a day challenge.

At various times of the day, check in with yourself, pause whatever you're doing and see if you can get in touch with what you feel and name these emotions. If stymied, try turning your attention to your bodily hints.

Does your headache? Do you have a nervous twitch? Well, I'm getting a nervous twitch reading this article, that's for sure. Anyway, she finishes up here. She concludes and says, by listening to our emotions, the inner voice, and the quiet tugging of our heart strains, is this a joke?

The spirit will lead us. That's just not all the Bible says. Anyway, quiet your mind, she says, listen to your gut, breathe, feel within and those vibes will lead your heart to guilt free happiness. Don't miss out on your own life.

Remember Mother Teresa's business card quote, in the silence of the heart, God speaks. And then she gives her website, don't go there, it will make you want to scream. Yeah, so I do have a nervous twitch after reading this.

So I guess my bodily hints are telling me that God is saying she's a bad teacher. And actually, that would be true. This woman would be a false teacher. I don't know what God she is referring to. It is not the God of Scripture.

But you know, the things that she says, things similar things are being said by quote unquote Christian teachers, male and female. And they're just being, you know, clothed in Christian garb. You know, we throw some Christian words in there, we throw some Bible verses around, and suddenly, it's Christian gobbledygook, and it makes no sense whatsoever.

And reading it from this woman, just reveals how silly this kind of thinking is. And yet it is prevalent. We've talked about it again and again. And this woman, of course, makes no appeal to Scripture, which is the only objective truth that we have.

Instead, she wants you to focus on your feelings, and you know, those are unbiased and untainted, she says. She's wrong. She's flat out wrong. The only way that we can know what God is saying to us is to open his word and to read it.

66 books he's given us. J .C. Ryle says, A man must make the Bible alone his rule. He must receive nothing and believe nothing which is not according to the word. He must try all religious teaching by one simple test.

Does it square with the Bible? What saith the Scripture? And I would say this article doesn't square with the Bible. Not even close. And so, disregard. After this show is recorded, I will be throwing this article in the trash, but I will link to it at the blog if you want to read it, just because you feel like being cruel to yourself.

Okay. I've talked long enough. I'm going to hand it back over to my interview with Phil Johnson. He is the executive director of Grace To You out there in Southern California. That is John MacArthur's radio ministry.

Phil edits Pastor MacArthur's books and has a wonderful ministry of his own, teaches, is the co-pastor out there at Grace Community Church of Grace Life Fellowship, and co-pastors that with Mike Riccardi, and Phil is a wonderful preacher.

If you've never heard Phil preach, I don't know where you've been, but you need to go listen to Phil's sermons. He's an amazing teacher and preacher and expositor of the Word and a really wonderful guy to talk to.

And so, once again, I'm very thankful for the time that Phil took with me when I was out there, and I think you will enjoy our continued conversation. And as we're reading this horrible advice from this woman, and then reading from J .C. Ryle, the importance of testing all things by Scripture, you're going to hear that Phil and I talked a little bit about, you know, what do we do for those who are starving for good Bible study, and the conversation will go on from there.

Start with the Bible Itself for Bible Study

So enjoy. Let's go back then to those who are seeking after the truths of Scripture, those who are remaining faithful to the Word, but who then are starving for good Bible study. I mean, we all know it's difficult to find a church where the Gospel and the Bible is proclaimed without compromise, and those of us who have those churches are incredibly thankful.

But how would you direct someone, and of course I'm thinking particularly women who are looking for study that would be faithful and solid, you know, would provide a good Biblical foundation for them so that they can raise their families and grow themselves.

My counsel is start with the Bible itself, because I get this question a lot, you know. People say, well, alright, you don't like this curriculum on parenting, what do you recommend? And I always say, oh, I recommend the Bible in the first place.

The Bible doesn't say an awful lot about parenting in the sense that these, you know, parenting guides say. You've got, you know, a few chapters that say, you know, fathers don't exasperate your children and things like that.

But if you add up everything the church has to say by way of imperative about parenting, it's pretty meager, really. You could fit it all in one chapter of one book. But if we were obedient to that, we'd be better parents.

It's not that we don't know how to parent, it's that we just simply aren't obedient to the simple commands that Scripture gives, and not just to get off on parenting, but that's true in everything. I think whatever a women's group would want to study, I think they're best to start with the Bible.

And I say this as someone who, for 45 years I've been in Christian publishing, and yet I have developed a pretty deep contempt for the contemporary Christian publishing industry. What Christian publishers are doing is shameful, and they bear a large part of the blame for the decline of the church.

And of course, I wouldn't say that across the board. There are publishers I work with who I respect more than others, but in this era where some of the Christian publishers who were doing the most important things 30 or 40 years ago now have been bought out by, you know, Rupert Murdoch, and they've all become part of big conglomerations.

Other media organizations own them and all of that. Christian publishing really isn't Christian publishing anymore. And evangelicals haven't really caught on to that fact yet. They think because a book comes out from a publisher that has a Christian imprint on it, they can automatically trust it.

But all you have to do is look at the list of evangelical bestsellers right now. Take the top 20 books in terms of sales. And I haven't looked at it this week, so I don't know what it is. But I can tell you, this would be my prediction, you look at the top 20, and there probably aren't two books on there that really would be worth reading and free of any kind of serious doctrinal danger.

They're books by heretics. It's like a rogues gallery of, instead of what ought to be the evangelical bestseller list, they're terrible. And I don't say that because I have a narrow perspective. You could go back, seriously, 40 years and find that what publishers are publishing now, no respectable evangelical publisher would have touched 40 years ago.

It's the publishers, the publishing companies, that have shifted and they're force-feeding junk to people in the evangelical movement, and that's dragging the whole movement down. And women are the biggest market, so publishers actually think like this.

I've worked with publishers where I've edited a book, for example, once where the publisher looked at the manuscript and gave it back and said, it's too biblical, he said. Most of our readers are women and we want to reach those women.

Can you put some anecdotes and jokes and heart-wrenching stories and stuff like that in between, because all you've done here is talked about what the Bible says and you've illustrated it with biblical illustrations and there's nothing in it that's contemporary or that would be interesting to women.

And I'm saying, you're saying the women who buy your books aren't interested in scriptures, what you're saying. Because that is what he assumes, you know. And if you assume that and publish books on that basis for 10, 15, 20 years, pretty soon you have cultivated an audience who, that is exactly how they think.

They cannot tolerate, will not tolerate sound doctrine. That's what Paul warned against, and yet it's what the publishing industry in our generation has deliberately cultivated.

I can imagine there are a lot of women hearing that and probably screaming right now because they want that biblical truth.

Probably some publishers who are saying they don't want Phil Johnson to be in front of their books either.

Well, we'll make a sound bite out of that audio and get that out there. Now I agree with you 100 and go back to the Bible and let's study a book of the Bible, you know, one at a time or whatnot. However, if you get a group of anybody, women or men, around just the Bible, especially if you have individuals who aren't trained, perhaps, you're going to run into problems.

Because the typical Bible study today is, well, what does this first mean to you? And then we go around the room, you know, sharing our ignorance. Yeah, there's that danger. There is. There is no easy, quick fix to the problem we're in right now.

Because we do have a whole generation of people who've grown up in churches, actually grown up in youth groups where they were taught to appreciate fun and games and to look at biblical teaching and doctrine as, you know, something that needs to be minimized.

I mean, that's the example they've been given. And so, in the first place, the average evangelical doesn't really see the need and doesn't appreciate how far astray from the biblical standard we've moved.

Plus, there are very few people now who are equipped to teach people how to do good Bible teaching. So, you know, there's no quick fix to that. I think, looking at church history, I mean, I'm hopeful that, because I know that the gates of hell are not going to prevail against the church, right?

I mean, I'm not pessimistic about this, it may sound like it, but I am pessimistic about the future of the current evangelical movement. But I'm excited to see and interested to see what the Lord is going to do to preserve the testimony of the gospel and raise up a multitude of faithful people.

Because I know, in the end, there's going to be a sea of believers so large that no man could number them. And I'm intrigued to see how the Lord's going to do that, and I know he will. And in church history, you see the pattern of wave after wave.

When you think the testimony of the gospel is dead, something will happen suddenly to spark a renewal or a revival or a great awakening. And I think, frankly, we must be on the precipice of that now, because rarely in church history has the Lord allowed the church to get in such a deplorable state and for the testimony of the gospel to be as buried as it is today.

I've often said, I think the movement that identifies itself as evangelical today is actually in a worse state spiritually than the Roman Catholic Church was when Martin Luther was born. So it's time for another Reformation, and I believe the Lord's going to bring it about.

And usually that happens in obscure and unexpected ways. There is no program that can make it happen, but I think the Lord will do it.

I don't know, Rick Warren's big on programs, though, so I don't know.

Well, he's the last guy, I think, to formulate a program to do what needs to be done with the church. Oh, I totally agree with that.

Women's Teaching, Authority, and Ministry in the Local Church

Okay, if I could segue just very briefly, because we've been talking for quite a while already, which is wonderful. Women's roles in the church. I think oftentimes women may hear, you know, we can't have authority over a man, can't teach, and so my role is just to get married, have children, raise the children, you know, just keep doing that until I can't do that anymore.

What opportunities are available to women within the context of the local church? I guess that would be my first question, and then a follow-up.

Yeah, well, in the first place, there are ample opportunities for women to teach. They just have to teach in the right contexts. And one of the first and most important roles that most women have as a teacher is to teach their own children.

That is the God-given and God-ordained role for a mom, and even nature teaches us that, you know. So I don't want to denigrate that or say that that's insignificant, because it isn't. And you know, in some ways, Susanna Wesley was a better teacher and a more important influence than either of her famous sons.

Right. So we must not denigrate that, but even in the context of the church, there are opportunities for women to teach other women, older women to teach younger women, Scripture says, and you know, women teach in our church throughout the children's ministry alongside men and under the authority of men.

But I think we need to recognize and affirm the biblical structure, and yet I don't think that minimizes opportunities for women to teach. I was saying recently, I got a letter from a woman who was very upset with me because she heard that I agreed with the Apostle Paul that women should not teach men.

And she said, you know, that I was behind the times, and she called me some other angry names. And I wrote back to her and said, no, you misunderstand. It's not merely women that I think that, but I think most men shouldn't teach other men either.

Only those who meet the qualifications of an elder. And if we started with that, I think if we started with what's spelled out clearly in Scripture and only gave teaching roles to people who actually have shown the giftedness and qualifications, it would solve a whole lot of these problems in a sort of trickle-down way.

And I think it also would open up more opportunities for women to be engaged in ministry, both teaching and service ministries, according to their gifts. If God has given you a gift, He's also going to open the opportunity for you to use it.

In some cases that may take a long time. You know, I was at Grace Church for 11 years before I ever taught a group of adults larger than a living room Bible study. So you know, I don't have a lot of sympathy with these young seminary students who come in and say, you know, well, but I need to be teaching somewhere.

It might be good for you to spend a few years learning too. And so not to pick on women, but you're asking specifically about women. When I hear this question, you know, well, should we, are we limiting the opportunities for women and all that?

I say, you know, the average churchgoer, man and woman, that I know, really needs to be more worried about what he can learn than he is about what he can teach.

Absolutely. I agree with you 100 percent because you see it quite often where people are thrown into a teaching role, even if it's, you know, just a Sunday school, a child's Sunday school, and they aren't equipped.

And then what are your children coming out with?

And another thing on that same line, I'm trying to think, and I can't really, this is a pretty blanket statement, but I can't think of an exception to it. I don't think I've ever encountered someone who is really qualified and gifted to teach who's been shut out of any teaching role.

Those opportunities do open up for people who are truly qualified.

I would think the Lord would ensure that that would happen. Yeah. Yeah. So, perhaps moving beyond the walls of the local church, I was having a conversation with a group of men. I noticed that in the conversation, I was being, by one particular person anyway, kind of shut out and ignored.

Now, whether that, I didn't confront it, so I don't know whether that was because I am a woman or not. Talking about biblical things, where does a woman's voice stop in that type of situation, you know, in a conversation perhaps with men?

What's appropriate? Yeah, you know what, honestly, I think in an informal conversation, I am wary of men who think that the biblical structure of authority means that women should simply be silent. If I'd be in big trouble, if my wife ever thought, you know, that her responsibility was simply to be silent, because she bails me out of a hole, I wouldn't want her to be silent.

She's wiser than I am in many, many ways. Make sure we get the soundbite of that, too. All right. But, so, and I do recognize that there are men who abuse and twist the fact that scripture does assign men the authority in church and teaching responsibility, and it doesn't mean women should simply shut up and not have an opinion.

And in an informal conversation, I would invite any of those, any opinion from anyone, and, you know, I think, I think the internet has given a lot of women the opportunity to have a voice, and it's been abused by some women, you know, who, I've scolded some women who come onto my Facebook page and leave, you know, snarky comments that show disrespect to men whom they ought to at least show respect for.

I mean, that's, and men do that as well. Men do that. It's not, I'm not meaning to say that it's a problem only with women, but, yeah, but I do understand how, especially if you're a well-taught woman with, you know, wise opinions, and you're listening to a conversation of some ignorant men batting around, you know, their stupid opinions, I'd want to jump in there and correct them, too, and I think it's perfectly legitimate to do that as long as you're not breaching the authority structure in a church or a marriage or, you know, you know, the sort of structure of authority that God himself has established, and normally in a private conversation like that's not a problem.

Right. Women can still offer instruction in that context, because there might be a chance that the woman is more informed, not saying that that was the, not saying I'm more informed necessarily.

That is exactly what you see with Aquila and Priscilla, you know, and that's a private setting where she's instructing, helping to instruct a man who really had almost apostolic authority. Now, she, if she stood up in church and rebuked him in front of everybody, that would be a whole different matter, and that's what I mean about, you know, leaving snarky comments on the internet or a Facebook page to, I think both women and men need to be extremely careful because it's way too easy to be insulting and disrespectful in public internet forums.

But in a private conversation like that, if somebody needs to be corrected, I think it's perfectly appropriate for him to be corrected by a woman. She's part of the conversation. Thank you. My mom would have thought that too.

But I do think there's a misunderstanding among some groups in the church of that, you know, women should just be silent all the time, and so I think it's helpful to have some instruction.

It's like, there are people who think women shouldn't have opinions. Why do you even have an opinion on that? Well, that's part of the problem. The men who think women shouldn't be interested in doctrine or concerned about it or whatever, that's a huge part of the problem.

Really? Do you want your wife to be ignorant? And if you do, you've got a problem.

Right. Yeah, and that has led to so many women, and I've heard it, say, well, you know, that doctrine stuff, those big words, that's just for my husband and for the pastor and the elders.

And that's not the case. That's a terrible twisting of what Scripture teaches. Absolutely. Okay. In fact, one of the ironies is, when Paul says, act like men, he says this to the whole church, well, in a way, in a sense, that includes the women.

He's not telling them they should act like men in the sense of usurping authority or whatever. He's saying, look, be grown up, be mature, act like men, not children, you know. And so, the necessity for women to be mature and well-taught and filled with understanding about doctrinal issues equals that of men.

Men don't have any higher duty to know and understand sound doctrine than the women do. And in 2 John, when John is writing and saying, you know, these people who come with false doctrines, don't even let them in your house, he's writing that to a woman.

He expects her to have enough discernment to know the difference between a heretic and a true, sound teacher. Right.

That's an excellent example. Thank you. Okay, I'm going to try to wind it up here, but I have to ask you, if you were to write a book, this is a completely different topic, but you edit John MacArthur's books, and you've been doing that for your entire career, but if you were to write a book, Phil, what would it be about, and when can we expect it?

Never, never. Oh, come on, so many of us would read it.

I don't need any more deadlines, that's the problem, I've got all the deadlines I need. If I wrote a book, if I was really fortunate and it was a really good book, it might sell a couple of thousand copies, but then it would go out of print.

The stuff I'm editing for John MacArthur, I think a lot of that stuff will still be in print and being read 200 years from now, so it's more worth my time to do what I do than it would be for me to write my own books.

One of my big interests is certain eras of church history. I love church history and certain characters in church history. One of my favorite characters, and I fully understand his deep flaws, Cotton Mather, the last sort of American Puritan, and a few years ago I actually thought I might write a book about Cotton Mather and his involvement in the witch trials and things like that, and try to set the record straight on some things that are often confused, and I collected all the material, got all the notes and everything, but I don't know that I'll ever do that.

Because in the first place, I don't have the credentials to write a book on history and have any publisher take it seriously. The other thing I'm interested in writing on, and probably have enough material to do it, would be the Charismatic Movement.

I see just such a poverty of resources doing honest, biblical critiques of the Charismatic Movement, and so many people, even men whom I respect, just sort of flippantly either ignoring the problems with the Charismatic Movement or actually promoting Charismatic Doctrine, and I think there really needs to be some thorough material, more than what John MacArthur has written even, delving deeper into the problems with the Charismatic Movement.

That's sort of ingrained in my history. I grew up in Tulsa, and my best friend was the son of a faith healer, and he's a pretty well-known Assemblies of God faith healer, and so these are issues I've wrestled with and thought about for years, and it would be pretty easy for me to write a book on the Charismatic Movement.

If I ever do a book, that's probably what the first one will be, you know? So...

Okay, well we'll wait for that. Yeah. Well, that's all I had, Phil. Thank you so much for taking the time, and thank you for what you do with MacArthur's materials. I know I have personally benefited so much from all of that, and thank you for your own ministry as well.

Well, thank you. Thanks for what you do. I read your blog, and I love your pastor. Take good care of him. I love my pastor too, yes. We're taking good care of him.

We're very thankful for him. Good. Thank you, Phil. All right. Okay, so that concludes my interview with Phil Johnson. Once again, a huge thank you to Phil for his time and for his ministry. If you've not heard Phil Johnson preach, I will link to some of his sermons at the Equippeneve blog, so go there, check them out, and you will want to hear more after you listen to those.

He's a gifted teacher and expositor of the Word. When you heard us talking about my pastor there at the end of the interview, Phil said, you know, I love your pastor, and take good care of him out there.

And I said, well, I love my pastor too. That's no exaggeration. I'm very thankful for the church God has given me, and if you aren't aware, my pastor is Don Green of Truth Community Church, and he and Phil used to co-pastor Grace Life together, and so that is why that little side comment was in there.

And if you follow Equippeneve on Facebook, you will see that weekly I will be sharing sermons from our church here that Pastor Don Green has preached, and you will be immensely blessed if you tune in to those.

He is another gifted expositor of the Word, so there are wonderful pastors out there. They are faithful to the text, they are faithful to their Lord, they exalt Christ. Phil is one of them. Pastor Don Green is one of them.

We've talked about many of these wonderful pastors on various episodes, John MacArthur, Steve Lawson, Mike Ebendroth, these men and many more whose names we don't know, because maybe they don't have a podcast, or maybe they don't have quite as well known of a ministry as these other men.

There are faithful pastors there, and if you are in a church with one of those pastors, ladies, thank him, thank his wife, thank his family, and pray for them. Please pray for them. I want to leave you with one thought that kind of piggybacks off of what we started, what we led into Phil's interview with, just the importance of Scripture and testing all things against Scripture and trusting Scripture alone as the Word of God.

Continuing with some words from J .C. Ryle, he writes, Reader, the man who has the Bible has everything, which is absolutely needful to make him spiritually wise. He needs no priest to break the bread of life for him.

He needs no ancient traditions, no writings of the fathers, no voice of the church to guide him into all truth. He has the well of truth open before him, and what can he want more? Yes, though he be shut up alone in a prison or cast on a desert island, though he never see a church or minister or sacrament again, if he has but the Bible, he has got the infallible guide and wants no other.

If he has but the will to read that Bible rightly, it shall certainly teach him the road that leads to heaven. It is here alone that infallibility resides. It is not in the church. It is not in the councils.

It is not in ministers. It is only in the written Word. Amen and amen. And on that note, ladies, I look forward to our next time together, but until then, get in your Bible, get on your knees, and get equipped.

Thanks for listening.

You've been listening to Equipping Eve, a no-compromise radio production. If you'd like to get a hold of Erin, you can reach her at equippingeve at gmail .com, or you can check out one of our two websites, donotbesurprised .com or equippingeve .org.

Thanks for listening.