November 14, 2017 Show with Phil Johnson on “The Evangelical Limbo: How Low Did We Go? (An Assessment of the Theological Health of Modern Day Evangelicals)”

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

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio

platform on which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues

facing the church and the world today.

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

man sharpens another.

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.

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.

Now here's our host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, 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.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 14th

day of November 2017.

I'm so delighted to have one of my very favorite of all time guests back on the

program today, Phil Johnson, Executive Director of Grace to You, the radio,

TV, and publishing ministry of John MacArthur, and today we are going to be speaking on the

evangelical limbo, how low did we go, an assessment of the theological health

of modern -day evangelicals, and this is actually in response to someone

who both Phil and I highly regard, who we agree with on most things, Tim

Challies, who wrote an article recently, a blog article, basically commending

the theological health of modern -day evangelicalism, of course, with some

very notable exceptions, but it is my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens

Iron Radio, Phil Johnson.

Thank you, Chris, my privilege to be here.

And in studio with me is my co -host, the Rev. Buzz Taylor.

Hello, Phil, it's good to talk to you again.

It was good meeting you and spending some time with you there in the Poconos, so I'm looking forward to today's program.

Me too.

Yeah, that was a great time in the Poconos where Phil spoke at a pastor's

conference for the Bible Fellowship Church denomination that was on the

Protestant Reformation, and it was really a blessed time to see Phil and

hear Phil speak and preach and to share fellowship with him, and I hope that these

occasions arise many more times in the future, and I hope to have Phil as a keynote

speaker for my own Iron Sharpens Iron Radio pastor's luncheon at some point in the future, and

I would ask of you listening to join me in praying that that comes to fruition.

Well, the article that recently came out, the blog article, by

Tim Challies, who, as I said, you and I both highly regard.

In fact, you two are going to be on the same roster at the G3.

Conference coming up in January.

That's right, I'm looking forward to that.

That'll be a great.

Conference.

Yeah, I am too.

I'm going to have, God willing, an Iron Sharpens Iron Radio exhibitor's booth

there, as I did the last time they had the conference in Atlanta, Georgia, so I'm looking forward

to meeting not only new faces who listen to this program, but also becoming reacquainted

with faces I've already met, and it was such a joy last time.

I couldn't believe the number of people who I had never heard from before who told me how

much they love Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

It was really an encouragement to me, people from all over the world telling me this, and also

meeting for the first time people that I have known for years through the program,

including you, but I met for the first time face -to -face at that G3 conference when I interviewed you.

That's right.

And that was certainly a privilege.

But we have the humorous title of the blog by our friend

Tim Challies, The State of Evangelicalism in America and All That Blah Blah Blah.

And first of all, before we go into anything critical about either Tim's article or about

modern -day evangelicalism, why don't we start with things that you do find

encouraging, things that you're optimistic about, things that you can applaud and commend

as a whole or in general the modern evangelical church at large.

What healthy things can you cite or report?

Yeah, by the way, also Tim Challies.

I love Tim Challies, and I think he's one of the one of the bright spots in the evangelical movement today.

He's not American, he's Canadian, and so he's much more polite than most of us Americans.

And he's definitely trying to be polite,

I think probably 50 times in the past two months, as we've talked about the

anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, and I've done conferences on the subject.

And I keep saying, I think American evangelicalism today, the broad evangelical movement,

is far worse and in more need of reform than medieval Roman Catholicism.

And I really think the state of the evangelical movement is deplorable.

When you're feeling that, if we sat down and talked about it, Tim Challies would agree

with me.

He's looking for broad movement, and there are some.

And he identifies, I think I agree with everything he commends.

He's talking about how as he's gone around the world, he meets missionaries from America, and he's

commenting on the generosity of American evangelicals who still are the major

supporters of missionary work worldwide.

And all of that, obviously, I agree with.

And I would also even add that when I first became a Christian in the 1970s, churches where the

Bible was preached, where you had expository preaching, the pastor would open the Bible and

preach through the text of Scripture.

Back in the 70s, they were much more rare than they are today.

It is easier to find Bible.

They tend to be a small remnant, however, and those tend to be small churches.

And if you look at the movement as a whole, the way any person outside the church would see it,

the evangelical movement is seriously a mess, and it's a huge mess

of evangelicalism, and been moved deliberately by evangelical leaders

so that the movement is so broad now that pretty much anything goes.

And Christianity Today magazine, which is

people for

American evangelicalism, and I was

their 50th, and they wrote an article in which they talked about

what isn't evangelical, and they really couldn't define the term.

And they boiled it down to say they think the distinctive feature of American

evangelicalism now is

so broad

and

so

diverse.

Evangelicals were of everything that

was the center of their message that was

and self

-identify as evangelicals.

You'd find there's very little agreement even on what the gospel is.

So it has become a very.

Now, the side of the diversity that is positive, at least in my experience, is

that, well, I can remember when I first became a born -again believer in the 1980s.

When I would attend Reformed conferences or Calvinistic conferences,

conferences that promoted the doctrines of sovereign grace, there would be a sea of

white faces with maybe a couple of African Americans.

And of course, the Asian community was typically always well -represented in some degree at these conferences.

But today, when I go to Reformed conferences, I see quite a number of black brothers

and sisters there.

I see quite a number of Hispanic brothers and sisters there.

So the doctrines of grace seem to be spreading in areas where they were hardly ever

found just back in the 1980s, which is not all that long ago.

So that kind of diversity, I think,.

Is obviously very much praiseworthy.

Yeah, and I think there's no doubt that that's true.

The drift of the culture, too, which is a bit of a concern because

evangelicalism from the beginning all the way back to the 1970s

has been that evangelicals seem to think that they have some sort of biblical mandate to follow the

culture and its fads and styles and interests and all of that, and as

right now is becoming more tense about racial issues and more divided,

actually, than we were, say, in the 1990s, it seems to me.

My fear is that if evangelicals follow that, then we're going to lose

some of the, you know, racial harmony.

Yeah, I know what you're talking about.

You're talking about a politically correct hypersensitivity where people

are beginning to hurl accusations of racism against innocent people

just because they disagree with the way that they parse words and so on, and they seem to be,

there's a new movement amongst even people who agree with us lockstep theologically who are

mimicking the leftist agenda where racism is the hidden motive

for nearly everything that a white person or conservative does.

Yeah, yeah, and you see that just in the subject matter that's, I mean, watch the

watch the people with the largest following in the evangelical communities

on Twitter, and you'll find their obsessed,

you know, popular

comments about

hooks

against people for unintentional slights and things like that.

It just seems to me that tensions are building, and again, it's a reflection of what's

going on in the culture at large.

I don't think racial tension begins in the Church, or

even the Improvement don't think that's because of anything other than

racism.

One thing, just to go back to positive things that are going on,.

I have heard from fellow believers who would agree with

us theologically, not that you and I necessarily agree on everything theologically either, but you know, the

camp of conservative Calvinism, sovereign grace, and so on.

I have heard not only is there an encouraging resurgence of Calvinism, and I have experienced

that myself, I have seen the doctrines of grace spreading into denominations where they were

nearly totally absent even back in the 80s when I first became a Christian, but

also not only a resurgence of the doctrines of grace, but a resurgence of complementarian

views of gender roles, whereas obviously the

trend was moving towards the left for decades, where an egalitarian view was being

adopted by denominations that were previously more conservative on the

issue, you have some of the new churches and

fellowships and brotherhoods springing up where a return to complementarianism is a

hallmark of how they operate their ministries.

Yeah, I hope that's true.

I hope that's true.

I don't know that there's any statistical proof that that's the case.

It at least shows about

gender roles are getting more and having more influence than they would

have, which I think is a positive development.

Okay, now that we've exhausted every positive thing we have to say,

one of the things that may immediately give a knee -jerk reaction

to an attitude of disbelief in what you've said in regard to the modern evangelical

church needing more reform than medieval Rome, I mean, obviously medieval

Rome, they were torturing and murdering Protestants.

They were, I mean, they still are involved in

grotesque idolatry, and that varies from country

to country on how overtly present that kind

of idolatry is present in the Church of Rome.

And, you know, you have all kinds of superstition that might have been more

rampant in that day, but what do you exactly mean by evangelicals needing more

reform than medieval Rome?

Yeah, well, I'm not killing Protestants yet.

They were having inquisitions and things like that.

Vatican was built, you had Tetzel

going through Germany selling indulgences and making false promises that they could get their relatives

out.

It was one guy.

You have a whole lineup of people like that every night on TBN, people who are bilking

millions of people.

I was going to say Americans, but really they're worldwide.

Miracles in return, exact kind of thing.

People who are obsessed with money and taking advantage of

people, in many cases people who can offer

forgiveness of sins.

It's not like they even

have any

consciousness

of it.

And ask pretty

much anybody worldwide, what chief representative

of Billy Graham?

I think now it would probably be T .D. Jakes or somebody like that.

And, you know, in the classical sense, in the historical sense, T .D. Jakes is not even evangelical.

He doesn't even believe in the trinity.

He doesn't preach the gospel.

And he's the greed

mongers that scripture warns us against.

And that is the worldwide face of American evangelicalism.

And because that's so large, I mean, comparatively, just numerically, people who follow the

televangelists and the prosperity preachers so far outnumber the conservative reform

people that you and I and Tim Challies would have to see

that we are just a small remnant.

I'm encouraged by the remnant.

And it's not anything different from the rest of church history.

God always deals with a

remnant.

Taking the name, it's

huge.

Yes, I guess when my use of the term medieval, I perhaps carried it farther into

the future than that word is intended to be.

That's pretty much the close of the 15th century, I'm assuming.

But we still had John Huston people who were martyred by Rome.

And Reverend Buzz Taylor has something to.

Say.

Well, I think it's interesting to note that, though I can't remember his name, the fellow who played

Tetzel in the Luther movie said he learned his part by watching the modern

TV preachers.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's a fitting comparison, seriously.

And, you know, when I say we're more in need of Reformation than medieval Roman Catholicism, I don't mean

to downplay the fact that Catholic inquisitions and inquisitors actually

did put people to death.

And I'm not suggesting something of that nature is going on now, but I'm

thinking more of the Christian

priestly corruption and church leaders

who seem to be driven by, you know, greedy motives

on in the

evangelical movement today.

I don't see how anybody can not say, yeah, it's worse.

It's worse today, even among Protestant evangelicals than it was

in the Catholic Church as Aquinas.

Yeah, the umbrella of evangelicalism seems to be

expanding as each year passes, where things under it are becoming

more diverse.

Things that are considered to be evangelical are becoming more diverse.

You brought up T .D. Jakes before.

I was mocked at a Christian radio station where I worked because I dared

to complain and protest that we were hiring Phillips, Craig, and Dean

to perform at a major event that we were running.

And I said, excuse me, folks, Phillips, Craig, and Dean are oneness Pentecostals.

They're anti -Trinitarian.

And the boardroom, the conference room where I was sitting with my

colleagues, everybody was like rolling their eyes.

Are you kidding me?

Are you going to nitpick.

About that?

I'm like, what?

That's the price we pay for several decades of seeker -sensitive

ministry philosophy with numbers, and how to draw a crowd,

and how to make our church into a megachurch.

And it's the number of people that, I mean, they judge their success based on the number of people they

trust.

And the way

to get numbers

to the

point where it doesn't matter if an anti -Trinitarian guy, if he can,

like T .D. Jakes can, then why would you exclude him?

Because your entire ministry philosophy, and, you know, I was looking

at those on

there along with other people

who show no sign of

evangelicalism.

They wouldn't fit that category in the historical sense.

He's been considered an evangelical because he's not.

But because he fits that category of someone who knows how to draw a crowd, evangelicals

have embraced him.

And I

think the...

Do you think that some of this is because, just like the

growth of the co -belligerence movement, and I don't necessarily trash

all of that either, where people see

astoundingly satanic things that are becoming the norm

in our society that even a decade ago, liberals would be

shocked to hear someone affirming.

Even, keep in mind, some of our listeners may have amnesia, but even the Clintons and

Barack Obama were originally opposed to same -sex marriage.

And the fact that now you have men not only marrying men and women marrying women, but you have

people who are losing their livelihoods for criticizing that,

or for disagreeing with that.

But you have all this atrocious, abominable things, all of these things going on.

And so there is perhaps more of a tolerance level for evangelicals to

think that we have strength in numbers, that we shouldn't be so

obsessed with doctrine and theology when we should be more concerned about having numerically more

allies in these areas, which ironically has backfired because you have more and more

evangelicals becoming softer and softer on those things.

But anyway, if you could comment.

Yeah, well, I think that's a generational thing, too.

I think we are reaping the fruit of two or three generations of evangelical churches

that devoted their youth groups to, you know, very shallow teaching and lots of

fun and games and entertainment.

And they grew up, you know, separated from the main worship service and their own services, where nothing

was handled seriously, doctrine wasn't taught.

And so you've got a generation of evangelicals who've come up in the church and now are old enough to be in

positions of church leadership who've never seen the importance of sound doctrine.

They think any kind of dispute or disagreement over doctrinal points of doctrine,

they don't

want

to discuss

that.

The truth

is

far more important than the number of people we're drawing.

And they take their...

In fact, you see

this,

that

evangelicals

have become apologists for...

As a Republican and a

conservative, he can say or do anything he wants.

In fact, I think it was Trump himself who boasted that he could kill somebody on Fifth

Avenue.

And sadly, evangelicals are no different in that

regard from the...

Morality and

doctrine and everything else, there's no way that cannot affect the purity of the church.

And Reverend Buzz Taylor, you have something to say?

Back what you were saying about the church became very seeker -sensitive, seeker -friendly.

I think we have lost a lot of our identification as...

We're saved to be a worshiping community.

And we get together for church for the purpose of worshiping our God and Savior.

And certainly where I believe a church should have some form of outreach, that outreach

has become so important that now, even if you go to a rock concert, it's considered a worship experience, and we've kind.

Of lost our whole identity there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, in fact, the typical evangelical thinks worship is

an emotional state that you sort of get worked into in large crowd environments.

And so I've met evangelicals who would insist that a music concert is

usually a more worshipful experience than a church service with preaching.

And they say that because they have the idea that worship has to do with how I feel about

when I'm

emotionally stirred.

Stir me emotionally.

If my emotions are touched, then I see that as a profound event, you know, a spiritual

event, because it stirred my emotions.

And that's as evangelicals.

We have to go to

our first break right now.

And Phil, I just emailed you or.

Forwarded an email to you from a listener in Slovenia, Joe, who has a very lengthy

question.

So I thought it would be best to have you have it right in front of you so you could read it during the break and then

respond to it when we return.

All right, we'll do.

And if anybody else would like to join us on the air with a question for Phil Johnson, our email address is ChrisArnzen

at gmail .com, 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 USA.

And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal, private and intimate matter.

Don't go away, God willing, we'll be right back after these messages with more Phil Johnson.

Tired of box store Christianity, of doing church in a warehouse with all the trappings of a rock concert?

Do you long for a more traditional and reverent style of worship?

And how about the preaching?

Perhaps you've begun to think that in -depth biblical exposition has vanished from Long Island.

Well, there's good news.

Wading River Baptist Church exists to provide believers with a meaningful and reverent worship experience

featuring the systematic exposition of God's Word.

And this loving congregation looks forward to meeting you.

Call them at 631 -929 -3512 for service

times, 631 -929 -3512, or check out their website at wrbc

.us.

That's wrbc .us.

Researched and prepared by biblical scholars devoted to accuracy, the new topical reference Bible includes contemporary topics

relevant to today's issues.

From compact to giant print Bibles, find an NASB that fits your needs very affordably at nasbible

.com.

Whichever edition you choose, trust, discover and enjoy the NASB for yourself today.

Go to nasbible .com. That's nasbible .com.

One sure way all Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners.

Can help keep my show on the air is to support my advertisers.

I know you all use batteries every day, so I'm urging you all from now on to exclusively

use batterydepot .com for all your battery needs.

At batterydepot .com, they're changing the status quo.

They're flipping the script.

They're sticking it to the man.

In other words, they'd like to change the battery industry for good by providing an extensive inventory

of top -of -the -line batteries that are uniformly new, dependable and affordable.

Ordering from batterydepot .com ensures you'll always get fresh out -of -the -box batteries

you can count on to work properly at competitive prices.

Whether you need batteries for cordless phones, cell phones, radios, PCs,

laptops, tablets, baby monitors, hearing aids, smoke detectors, credit card

readers, digital cameras, electronic cigarettes, GPSs, MP3 players,

watches or nearly anything else you own that needs batteries, go to batterydepot

.com.

Next day shipping available.

All products protected by 30 -day guarantees and six -month warranties.

Call 866 -403 -3768.

That's 866 -403 -3768.

Or go to batterydepot .com.

That's batterydepot .com.

Hi, I'm Buzz Taylor, frequent co -host with Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio.

I would like to introduce you to my good friends Todd and Patty Jennings at CVBBS, which stands for Cumberland Valley

Bible Book Service.

Todd and Patty specialize in supplying Reformed and Puritan books and Bibles at discount prices that make them

affordable to everyone.

Since 1987, the family -owned and operated book service has sought to bring you the best available Christian books

and Bibles at the best possible prices.

Unlike other book sites, they make no effort to provide every book that is available because, frankly, much of what

is being printed is not worth your time.

That means you can get to the good stuff faster.

It also means that you don't have to worry about being assaulted by the pornographic, heretical, and

otherwise faith -insulting material promoted by the secular book vendors.

Their website is CVBBS .com.

Browse the pages at ease, shop at your leisure, and purchase with confidence as Todd and Patty work

in service to you, the church, and to Christ.

That's Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service at CVBBS .com.

That's CVBBS .com.

Let Todd and Patty know that you heard.

About them on Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio.

And you can also call CVBBS .com toll -free at 800 -656

-0231.

800 -656 -0231.

They have an offer for $50 or more.

If you purchase $50 or more of Bibles, books, and other Christian materials, you will receive

absolutely free of charge a phenomenal biography of John Calvin titled

John Calvin, A Pilgrim's Life by Herman J. Selderquist.

And I may be butchering Herman's last name, but this is a remarkable book that has

commendations for it from many major Reformed theologians and scholars, and

even has some high commendations from some notable Arminians who, although remaining

Arminian after reading the book, have a revolutionized view

of John Calvin for the better that they never had before, having previously believed

in slanderous stereotypes of the man.

This is a remarkable book.

It's a $25 book, and you'll get it absolutely free of charge by purchasing $50 or more

worth of Bibles, books, and other Christian materials from cvbbs .com.

And you can also call them at 800 -656 -0231, 800 -656

-0231.

And they're starting tomorrow a sale, a new sale that I will let you know

about tomorrow.

So keep your ears open for the sale that begins Wednesday, November 15th

with cvbbs .com.

We are back to our discussion with Phil Johnson, Executive

Director of Grace to You, the Media Ministry of John MacArthur.

We are discussing The Evangelical Limbo, How Low Did We Go?

An Assessment of the Theological Health of Modern Day Evangelicals.

And if you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail

.com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

And please, as always, give us at least your first name, your city and state of

residence, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA.

And before the break, Phil, Joe in Slovenia sent me an email which I will now

read and which you have in front of you.

Our end of I was just about to read the Cumberland Valley Bible Book

Service commercial for tomorrow.

Here we go.

Here's Joe in Slovenia.

Dear Brother Chris, thank you so much for having Brother Phil back.

I am completely amazed that though you and I have the opportunity to interact with one of my

favorite contemporary teachers of Scripture.

Oh, I see.

He said, I'm completely amazed that through you, I have the opportunity to interact with one of my

favorite contemporary teachers of Scripture.

How far have we fallen?

One of the most telling indicators of the relative health of the church is her missionary activity.

By far, the heretical and nominal Armenian and semi -Pelagian missionaries around the world

outnumber solid conservative, much less reformed missionaries.

American evangelicalism is, by and large, exporting NAR

charlatans, and I guess he's speaking about the New Apostolic and I

can't remember what the R stands for.

The New Apostolic Reformation.

That's right.

Word of faith, heresy, and prosperity.

Another gospel, hucksters rather than ambassadors of the true gospel of the reformers.

Sadly, it is very difficult for solid reformed Baptist missionaries to get reformed local churches

behind them in direct partnership in the gospel for the nations.

I'm speaking from experience.

I'm very thankful for a resurgence of reformed theology in some areas of evangelicalism, especially in the Southern Baptist

Convention, where it was almost absent in the recent past.

Be that as it may, Brother Phil, what do you suggest we do to get a vast

increase in the solidly reformed missionaries around the world?

What do you suggest about how to get reformed churches to partner with reformed career missionaries already

on the field?

Thank you, brothers, for such an encouragement to me and many others around.

The world.

Yeah, he makes a great point there, and I've experienced this as well.

I'm not an expert when it comes to missions and missionary strategy, but I've traveled the

world.

I've been in at least 35 different countries and worked with missionaries on every continent,

and I agree that even the missionary movement itself

is reflective of the evangelical movement.

I lay a lot of the responsibility for

that branch of Fuller Seminary that in 1965 or so

to have an influence on missions worldwide, and of course 1965 was at the peak of the time when

Fuller Seminary was moving away from it, abandoning any conviction

about the inerrancy of Scripture, and Fuller Seminary was probably the worst place in the world to

become the anchor and the place people look to in world

mission.

I've done several studies at Fuller Seminary, and I'm thankful for the name change,

and I hope it means to the end that missionaries worldwide would

look for guidance and how to...

As I've traveled, there are a lot of concerns.

Tim Jalley's article, one of the arguments he makes is that in his travels around the

world, he's encountered one missionary in Rome that took

him away.

My impression was the guy moved to Rome specifically so that he could be

there in that culture.

There are people like that who you deeply appreciate, good missionaries out there doing

important work

in the

mission field who are by churches to do missions work who really

aren't doing

population, and I

think

that...

Well,

does that

mean

that

there is

a

reversal of.

Missionary passion that Calvinists were once known for?

Are we actually becoming the caricature that Armenians

paint us as being as a whole, hyper -Calvinists who are indifferent about the.

Lost overseas and other parts of the world?

Yeah, I wouldn't go that far.

I have reformed theology

in the 1990s or

so, and one

of the things

that it naturally... I

think it is, these

in my view,

there just aren't

enough of

us and enough

information if it's going to take.

Place at all.

Yeah, well, historically, those who believe in the doctrines of sovereign grace have been more patient

in their missionary work because they realize that men only plant and

water seeds and God brings the increase alone, God alone brings the increase, so therefore

missionaries were far less frequently yanked off of certain mission fields because

of impatient sponsors of.

Those missionaries.

Yeah, plus, again, I go back to the influence of Fuller Seminary.

From the beginning, Fuller Seminary's goal was to sort of be a bridge between conservative evangelicals

and the mainstream denominations,

and I think the Fuller School of World Mission, from the beginning, had

this tendency to redefine what missionary work looks like in a way that would sort of compromise

and bring in some of the already discredited social gospel trends that

sin people

preach the

gospel, then

they ought to be preaching the gospel and

planting churches where the gospel is proclaimed,

rather than,

you know, supported

to be missionaries of anthropology.

They're not doing anything to further the spread of the gospel.

What, to make the message.

More palatable to a culture that they may be entering into?

You know, I honestly don't know.

What their long -term goal is.

I think many of them have so lost sight, and

in fact, I think they're moving away from that area, and

that's one of the reasons Fuller changed the name of the School of Intercultural

Studies.

Intercultural Studies, as I said, it's anthropological, like now,

fine, because that's largely what they've been doing anyway.

And thank you, Joe, in Slovenia.

Keep spreading the word about Iron Trip and Zion Radio in Slovenia and beyond.

We have Gordy in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who says, First of all,

thanks to your faithful proclamation of the gospel in defense of God's sovereignty therein.

Question is, what do you believe is the answer to today's evangelical bankruptcy, so

far as the true gospel is concerned?

Is it just a matter of a person -by -person process?

There are so many false gospels within evangelicalism, and it's so frustrating to hear

people who profess Christ and yet can't articulate a lucid soteriology.

Yeah, and I think it does start at the grassroots with

individual interaction.

When you have a neighbor or a friend who professes to be a Christian, but clearly doesn't understand the

gospel, who does understand the gospel,

understands it,

and it isn't evangelistic, that's evangelism,

because a lot of... well, a person who professes to be a Christian but doesn't understand the gospel has never really...

you can't regard him as a genuine believer, even though he professes faith in Christ.

He doesn't understand the gospel, but he doesn't really have

a person to his

heart, but

really understands that.

I think you have to regard him or her as an evangelistic person,

all of

that.

But conservative evangelicalism,

sometimes, faith

in Christ is

all about

people who, it says, believed in one sense, and yet they turned away from Christ in

what we're dealing with today.

Masses of people who believe only nominally, and if we accept that as true

evangelical faith, we're sending the wrong message, not only to the world, but to those people

who thought that they...

And, of course, the book that you edited, the classic book, The Gospel According to Jesus, and

a couple of these sequel books that came into print after that, are just as needed

today as they were when they were first written in the 80s.

Yeah, exactly.

And that really is the heart of the issue.

What is the gospel?

What is the

content of the gospel message?

And as you said, there were two or three books that John MacArthur was

calling of the Church.

What is a legitimate ministry philosophy?

And John MacArthur also wrote several books on that, A Shame to the Gospel

for the Church.

And if we can't sort out the answers to those...

And the Reverend Buzz Taylor

has something to say.

You came very close to doing.

What I'm about to ask you to do, but I'm just thinking that there may be people listening,

because you never know who is listening.

I'm sure it's not just with foreign people, and there could be people who are even considering Christianity, but you

started to define the gospel.

Could you just take a few moments and explain what you were telling us about?

What is the gospel?

What is the.

Basic theology of the gospel?

Right, okay.

The gospel is God's promise of salvation to those who believe in Christ

on the basis of what Christ did.

And therefore, the historical facts of the gospel are that Christ died for our sins according to the

scriptures.

That's a very loaded statement, because by saying, according to the scriptures, what the Apostle Paul, who

wrote that phrase, what he meant was that Christ's death was the fulfillment of what was pictured

in the scriptures in the Old Testament sacrificial system, that Christ died as a substitute for sinners

to pay the price of their sins.

And not only that he died, but that he rose from the dead.

And Paul goes on to say in 1 Corinthians 15 that his resurrection

was verified by hundreds of eyewitnesses.

So what he's saying, and in fact the whole argument of 1 Corinthians 15, is that the historicity of the

resurrection is a fundamental fact of gospel truth.

You can't doubt the resurrection of Christ and claim to be a believer in Christ.

The resurrection of Christ are the historical facts of the gospel, and the

meaning of the gospel is that Christ freely offers forgiveness of sins and a right standing with God

to those who simply embrace him by faith, who believe the facts, the historical facts of the gospel, and

turn away from their sins to follow Christ.

And we have to go to our midway break right now.

It's a longer break than normal, because Grace Life Radio 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida

requires a 12 -minute break in between our two hours, so please be patient with us.

And please, if you intend to send in a question, I would do so as soon as possible, because time runs out

before you know it.

So if you have a question and you'd like to send it in, send it to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail

.com.

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

Are you a Christian looking to align your faith and finances?

Then you'll want to check out Thriving Financial.

We're not your typical financial services provider.

We're a not -for -profit Fortune 500 organization that helps our nearly 2 .4 million members be wise

with money.

We provide guidance that reflects your values so you can protect what matters most.

We help members live generously and strengthen the communities where they live, work, and worship.

Learn more about the Thriving Story by contacting me, Mike Gallagher, Financial

Consultant, at 717 -254 -6433.

Again, 717 -254 -6433.

Lending faith, finances, and generosity.

That's the Thriving Story.

Chef Exclusive Catering is in South Central Pennsylvania.

Chef Exclusive's goal is to provide a dining experience that is sure to please any palate.

Chef Damian White of Chef Exclusive is a graduate of the renowned Johnson and Wales University with a degree in

culinary arts and applied science.

Chef Exclusive Catering's event center is newly designed with elegance and style and is available for

small office gatherings, bridal showers, engagement parties, and rehearsal dinners.

Critics and guests alike acknowledge Chef Exclusive's commitment to exceeding even the highest

expectations.

I know of their quality firsthand since Chef Exclusive catered by most recent Iron Sharpens Iron Radio

Pastors Luncheon.

For details, call 717 -388 -3000.

That's 717 -388 -3000.

Or visit.

Chefexclusive .com.

That's chefexclusive .com.

Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko inviting you to tune in to A Visit to the Pastors Study every Saturday

from 12 noon to 1 p .m. Eastern Time on WLIE Radio,

www .wlie540am .com.

We bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you and we invite you to visit the Pastors Study by calling in

with your questions.

Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull.

Join us this Saturday at 12 noon Eastern Time for a visit to the Pastors Study because everyone needs

a pastor.

Iron Sharpens.

Iron welcomes solid.

Rock remodeling to our family of sponsors.

Serving South Central Pennsylvania, solid rock remodeling is focused on discovering,

understanding, and exceeding your expectations.

They deliver personalized project solutions with exceptional results.

Solid rock remodeling offers a full range of home renovations including kitchen and bath

remodeling, decks, porches, windows and doors, roof and siding, and

more.

For a clear, detailed, professional estimate, call this trustworthy team of problem solvers

who provide superior results that stand the test of time.

Call solid rock remodeling at 717 -697 -1981,

717 -697 -1981, or visit

solidrockremodeling .com, that's solidrockremodeling .com.

Solid Rock Remodeling, bringing new life to your home.

Every day at thousands of community centers, high schools, middle schools, juvenile institutions,

coffee shops, and local hangouts, Long Island Youth for Christ staff and volunteers meet with young people

who need Jesus.

We are rural and urban and we are always about the message of Jesus.

Our mission is to have a noticeable spiritual impact on Long Island, New York by engaging young people in the lifelong

journey of following Christ.

Long Island Youth for Christ has been a stalwart bedrock ministry since 1959.

We have a world -class staff and a proven track record of bringing consistent love and encouragement to

youths in need all over the country and around the world.

Help honor our history by becoming a part of our future.

Volunteer, donate, pray, or all of the above.

For details, call Long Island Youth for Christ at 631 -385

-8333, that's 631 -385 -8333, or

visit liyfc .org, that's

liyfc .org.

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is sponsored.

By Harvey Cedars, a year -round Bible conference and retreat center nestled on the Jersey Shore.

Harvey Cedars offers a wide range of accommodations to suit groups up to 400.

For generations, Christians have enjoyed gathering and growing at Harvey Cedars.

Each year, thousands of high school and college students come and learn more about God's Word.

An additional 9 ,000 come annually to Harvey Cedars as families, couples,

singles, men, women, pastors, seniors, and missionaries.

Ninety miles from New York City, 70 miles from Philly, and 95 miles from Wilmington,

and easily accessible, scores of notable Christian groups frequently plan conferences at

Harvey Cedars, like The Navigators, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Campus

Crusade, and the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.

Find Harvey Cedars on Facebook or at hcbible .org,

hcbible .org.

Call 609 -494 -5689, 609 -494 -5689.

Harvey Cedars, where Christ finds people and changes lives.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said, Give yourself unto reading.

The man who never reads will never be read.

He who never quotes will never be quoted.

He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves he has no brains of his own.

You need to read.

Solid Ground Christian Books is a publisher and book distributor who takes these words of the Prince of Preachers to heart.

The mission of Solid Ground Christian Books is to bring back treasures of the past to minister to Christians in the present and

future, and to publish new titles that address burning issues in the church and the world.

Since its beginning in 2001, Solid Ground has been committed to publish God -centered, Christ -exalting

books for all ages.

We invite you to go treasure hunting at solid -ground -books .com.

That's solid -ground -books .com and see what priceless literary gems from the past

or present you can unearth from Solid Ground.

Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be.

A weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And please keep Solid Ground Christian Books in mind when you're doing your holiday

shopping.

Christmas will be here before you know it, so why not do a lot of your Christmas shopping at solid

-ground -books .com.

Solid -ground -books .com, they are a faithful supporter of

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and their advertising dollars are what help keep us on

the air.

And if you really want Iron Sharpens Iron Radio to remain on the air, one of the ways that you could do that

is by purchasing regularly books from solid -ground -books

.com.

They are experiencing a very serious lull in sales lately.

For some reason it coincided with their move to Florida.

That may be just coincidental, we don't know.

But when they moved to Florida, there was a massive hurricane down there and thankfully

Solid Ground Christian Books was spared of any kind of damage or anything, but there seems to be

ever since then a serious lull in sales.

So I would urge you please to help rectify that situation by going to

solid -ground -books .com, solid -ground -books .com, and order

Christmas presents for those whom you love.

In fact, even when you purchase things from cvbbs .com, our other

advertiser who sells books, you could purchase Solid Ground Christian Books publications

from cvbbs .com.

Cvbbs .com is not a publisher, they are a book distributor, so therefore you

can order the books that Solid Ground Christian Books publishes from cvbbs .com and

kill two birds with one stone, and you can take advantage of that $50

purchase minimum offer to receive the free $25 book by Herman J.

Selder, who is John Calvin of Pilgrim's Life.

So why not keep that in mind with the holidays coming up?

And before we return to our interview with Phil Johnson, I have some important announcements

to make in regard to special events that are coming up.

The Quaker Town Conference on Reform Theology is being held this weekend, Friday and Saturday,

November 17th and 18th, at the Grace Bible Fellowship Church of Quaker Town, Pennsylvania.

The speakers include Kent Hughes, Peter Jones, Tom Nettles, Dennis Cahill, and

Scott Oliphant.

The theme is For Still Our Ancient Foe, a reference to Satan from Martin Luther's classic hymn, A Mighty

Fortress.

If you would like to attend this conference, which is an event sponsored by the Alliance of Confessing

Evangelicals, go to alliancenet .org, alliancenet

.org, click on events, and then click on Quaker Town Conference on Reform Theology.

I urge everybody, especially my listeners in Pennsylvania or nearby, please

don't let this conference come and go without attending it.

And I look forward to seeing many of you at my Iron Trip and Xyron Exhibitors booth at the

Quaker Town Conference on Reform Theology.

Then coming up in January, an event that my guest, Phil Johnson, will be speaking at, God

willing, it's the G3 Conference, G3 standing for Grace, Gospel, and Glory,

held January 17th through the 20th.

January 17th will be exclusively a Spanish -speaking edition of the conference, and

January 18th through the 20th is exclusively an English -speaking conference featuring

not only our guest, Phil Johnson, but also Stephen Lawson, Brody Baucom, Keith

Getty, H .B. Charles Jr., Tim Challies, who we've been mentioning, Josh Bice, James White, Tom

Askell, Anthony Mathenia, Michael Kruger, David Miller, Paul Tripp, Todd Friel, Derek Thomas,

Martha Peace, and Justin Peters.

If you would like to attend this conference, which, by the way, is on the theme, Knowing God, a Biblical Understanding of

Discipleship, go to g3conference .com, g3conference .com,

and if you attend, please look for me manning the Iron Sharpens Iron Exhibitor's Booth at that

event as well, and I'm looking forward to meeting many of you for the first time and also becoming reacquainted

with friends that I met the last time I was in Atlanta, Georgia at the G3 Conference.

So I am very excited about this event and looking forward to hearing and seeing Phil Johnson

speak once again there in Atlanta.

And we are back now with our discussion with Phil Johnson.

Our theme, as you may remember, is The Evangelical Limbo, How

Low Did We Go? An Assessment of the Theological Health of Modern -Day Evangelicals.

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

We have RJ in White Plains, New York, who said,

Chris, you conducted an eye -opening show yesterday on how soft Evangelicals

are becoming in regard to the sin of homosexuality.

Does Phil have any thoughts on that phenomenon as well in regard to the decline of the Evangelical Church?

Phil.

Yes, well, that's one more.

Evidence of what I was talking about, how to

hate secular culture rather than being counter -cultural.

Do you think a lot of that is because Evangelicals are

buying into a mythological Jesus who is nothing but purely

love and comfort and the open arms

of a welcoming Savior?

He's that period.

There is no wrath, there is no anger, there is no condemnation of sin, there is no discussion

of hell.

The modern Evangelicals are just trying to paint a picture of Christ that is

one -sided, only focusing on some of his attributes, which happen to be wonderful and

glorious attributes.

But if they are focused on alone at the expense of

all of his attributes, they really become fictitious.

You can't have an amazing grace if salvation really isn't that amazing.

If you're really not that bad, and you're really not deserving of eternal

torment, then being saved from whatever punishment people think that you're being

saved from isn't really that spectacular.

Yeah, but again, I think the root problem is this philosophical

idea, this misconception that Evangelicals have had for now two or three generations, that

basically preaching the gospel is

supposed to be attractional.

The goal is never to offend anyone.

Then without even meaning to corrupt the gospel, preachers now for generations

have the message

about a

couple of generations of

they just don't think it's important that God is

a threat in many

Evangelical circles.

Yes, and we have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who says,

Isn't it ironic that when the Pope of Rome is more liberal than any previous

Pope in history, Evangelicals have warmed up to him and embraced him more than any other

Pope in history?

Yeah, in fact, that surprises even me.

It sort of

shocked

me because

I'm a

Christian,

and yet this Pope really doesn't seem committed to either

of those principles.

Evangelicals seem more warm towards him than they have to any previous Pope,

but it's another sign of how degenerate the movement has become.

Yeah, I don't remember who the stand -up comic was, but there was a stand -up comic who said, Is the

Pope Catholic? is no longer a rhetorical question.

Yes.

And yeah, it is really bizarre that you have Evangelicals coming out of the

woodwork to embrace this Pope, and even have people like Rick Warren

calling him his Pope, where you have conservative Catholics

barely mentioning him in public because in their closeted

discussions amongst each other, they are really disturbed by this Pope.

They continue to believe in an infallible papacy because he

hasn't declared anything ex cathedra yet that would disturb them, that would militate against their

previously held convictions.

But the fact that he daily says things that embarrass them, it's kind of ironic how you have your

conservative and traditionalist Catholics being more disturbed by the Pope than many Evangelicals are.

Yeah.

And let's see, we have another person from Mechanicsburg,

Pennsylvania.

We have Harrison from Mechanicsburg, and Harrison has to

say, Do you think that one of the reasons why Evangelicalism has

plummeted to the depths it has fallen is because Calvinism is

far less Calvinistic than it used to be, and having far less of an influence on other

denominations?

No, I wouldn't say that.

Well, maybe I would.

Like, for instance, you have Tim Keller, who we've been critiquing in a couple of our interviews.

I mean, he doesn't resemble—when I first became a born -again believer in the 80s,

you could hardly find someone that was

representative of someone like a Tim Keller back then, and you have people rushing to him

as a mentor today.

Right.

Yeah, no, I guess, and I see the point now, but my objections to Tim

Keller and his ministry philosophies don't have anything to do with his brand of Calvinism.

I see what he's done as a department of confessional Calvinism.

Yeah, that's exactly what I mean, and perhaps that's what our listeners mean.

Yeah, and on the other hand, at the other extreme, it seems to me that there are some flavors of

hyper -Calvinism floating out there today that are more virulent and more aberrant

on the internet, some

extreme hyper -Calvinists who seem to want to make God the instrumental cause of evil.

Right, and I've had somebody unfriend me on Facebook—not that I really

cared—but who publicly accused me of not being faithful to

the 1689 London Baptist Confession because—get a load of this—because I defended

Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

He didn't think that Spurgeon was faithful enough consistently to the Confession, and

because I defended Spurgeon, I was anathema.

To him.

You have seen that kind of thing out there.

I think it's an overreaction to the very thing we're talking about, that the evangelical movement

has drifted so far away from anything evangelical.

A lot of Reform people I know don't—they want to say that they're not evangelical

and make those things separate.

Actually, the term evangelical comes right out of the Reformation, and the

Lutheran—what it meant was somebody who proclaims and believes the gospel,

and it is antithetical.

It kind of has become that way, and I can understand why some of my Reform

friends want to shed that label, evangelical, because in the popular—it's like the word

fundamentalism—in the popular consciousness,

negative terms and ideas that both you and I.

Would reject.

Yeah, you very rarely today will find a theologically

Reform person who will identify themselves as a fundamentalist because

of the way that that term is immediately recognized today.

It has become synonymous with nastiness and—.

Right.

And it's a shame,.

Because the original idea, the idea of fundamentalism, was a pretty simple one and a pretty

obvious one, that are so essential to the

gospel, so fundamental to what we believe,

cannot be compromised on in any way.

I can fellowship with a brother in Christ who disagrees with me on a secondary issue,

say, and I deny the doctrine of justification by faith, a fundamental

doctrine.

You can't embrace religion

as—take them out of

the equation—evangelical at

the same time

upon

all of them have—.

Yeah, Jake Reshamation, obviously, is a

notable name on the forefront of.

The fundamentalist modernist controversy on the side of the fundamentalists.

Yes, but early on,.

He began to shy away from calling himself a fundamentalist because he could see the direction the fundamentalist

movement was going.

They began to argue over things that weren't truly fundamental, and

the kinds of

things that tend to be not

fundamental—.

Oh yeah, definitely.

But the ones who, you know, perhaps

people who made big issues out of things—.

Yes,.

Where they really have, as the old saying goes, they have turned

molehills into mountains.

You know, they have, you know, been sidetracked against or

away from the gospel and have focused on things that are secondary or tertiary in

importance.

And even at times, I mean, there's all different kinds of fundamentalists, and they have all kinds of

infighting going on.

And internal wars going on.

But—.

Well, that's one of the identifying factors that makes a person a

fundamentalist, is his

willingness to

fight.

Even from the beginning, fundamentalists tended to be too militant, even with

one another, on secondary issues.

And so the movement became divided and divisive, and it's pretty much become

very non -influential today.

But the same thing happened in a different way with the evangelical movement.

The evangelical movement and the fundamentalist movement really began to part company, I think, sometime in the

1920s.

By the 1950s, you had neo -evangelicals who expressly repudiated

fundamentalism and founded, you know, the whole philosophy behind

Fuller Seminary

too

much.

And fundamentalists and evangelicals began to see themselves as competing movements,

you know, aiming at similar—.

Yeah, in fact,.

As you may know, a lot of fundamentalists would include you and I and many of our

modern -day heroes in the camp of neo -evangelical.

Yes.

They would broad brush us and slander us in that way.

On the other hand, there are a lot of evangelicals who would categorize me as a fundamentalist.

Yes, right, exactly.

I'm rejected by both groups, but we need a new name for a

different—returns to the principles of—the founding principles

of—keeps them all together.

Well, what, before we go to our final break, can you give us some

guidelines that you think would be wise counsel in what we can do as not only individuals and

members of congregations, but what congregations can do in some way?

Obviously, sometimes we think that your own personal contribution to anything going on

in the church or going on globally is so insignificant that it's not going to make a difference.

But when more and more people are united in a godly driven

cause, that can do a remarkable transformation.

I mean, when you even look at the man that we've been celebrating during the 500th anniversary of the

Protestant Reformation, when you see what happened with Martin Luther and a simple thing like trying to spark a debate

with Rome's intelligentsia and it turns into a global movement, what do you think that we could.

Do to reverse for the better this trend that's been

occurring?

I would say I'm content to be part of a remnant.

I think one of the mistakes that all these groups have made is the idea that they could perhaps engineer a

more effective influence.

They could have more influence and more clout if they could just maximize their numbers,

and that's always kind of a bad

pragmatic.

You're more concerned, I think, with what people think and what's going to attract people as opposed to what does the

Word of God say and what's true.

We've got to get back

to those sorts of things.

All of us, I think, tend to be too obsessed with.

I don't exclude myself from that.

The cool thing in this era of speedy communications and you have

the internet every day spitting at you lists of what's trending now, and we all watch those

things, so we're aware of what's trending, and we have this innate

sense that if we can leverage what's trending, we can maybe

be more effective, and yet that's a wrong way for a Christian to think.

The Gospel itself is the power of God unto salvation, and how we ought to be thinking is, what can we

do to make the Gospel clearer and get it proclaimed more widely?

It's not a question of numbers and clout.

The Old Testament is full of languages like that.

It's not by might or by power in the

army.

It's a small remnant,

and pragmatic thinking

increases our numbers.

How can we be more clear in the message Christ has given?

And we have B .B. in Cumberland County,.

Pennsylvania, who says, how can we strike a balance when we look at all of the deterioration

in modern -day evangelicalism surrounding us, when we might be

prone to fall into the category of one of these self -proclaimed discernment

ministries, where all we do is complain about others?

How can we see this deterioration and not go to that length?

Yeah, and you know, Tim Challey's article, I think nobody's done a

better job of that than Tim.

He's got a whole book on discernment, and he has managed for 15 years

to be, and that's why I know he would agree with most of what we're saying here,

who Tim is.

And that's one of

the ways that

negative voice and a cynic, and yet, talk a lot about discernment.

He's written a book on discernment.

I recommend it to anybody who contemplates, I don't like to, I

don't even like that term, a ministry

that helps us in ministry, but ministry, true ministry, has to do with the proclamation of the gospel,

and the fellowship of God's people, and the true

ministry, and people who critique and criticize.

Well, we're going to our final break right now.

If anybody would like to join us before we run out of time, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail

.com, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -s -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 USA, only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter.

Don't go away.

God willing, we are going to be right back.

Right after these messages from our sponsors.

Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune into a visit to The Pastor's Study every Saturday

from 12 noon to 1 p .m. Eastern Time on WLIE Radio,

www .wlie540am .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.

Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull.

Join us this Saturday at 12 noon Eastern Time for a visit to The Pastor's Study because everyone needs

a pastor.

Linbrook Baptist Church on 225 Earl Avenue in Linbrook, Long Island is teaching God's timeless truths in

the 21st century.

Our church is far more than a Sunday worship service.

It's a place of learning where the.

Scriptures are studied and the preaching of the gospel is clear and relevant.

It's like a gym where one can exercise their faith through community involvement.

It's like a hospital for wounded souls where one can find compassionate people and healing.

We're a diverse family of all ages enthusiastically serving our Lord Jesus Christ in fellowship, play, and

together.

Hi,.

I'm Pastor Bob Walderman, and I invite you to come and join us here at Linbrook Baptist Church.

And see all that a church can be.

Call Linbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402.

That's 516 -599 -9402.

Or visit linbrookbaptist .org.

That's linbrookbaptist .org.

I am Chris Arnsen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio,.

Here to tell you about an exciting offer from World Magazine, my trusted source for news from a Christian

perspective.

Try World at no charge for 90 days and get a free copy of R .C. Sproul's book

Relationship Between Church and State.

I rely on World because I trust the reporting, I gain insight from the analysis, and World provides

clarity to the news stories that really matter.

I believe you'll also find World to be an invaluable resource to better understand critical topics with a depth that's

simply not found in other media outlets.

Armed with this coverage, World can help you to be a voice of wisdom in your family and your community.

This trial includes bi -weekly issues of World Magazine, on -scene reporting from World Radio,

and the fully shareable content of World Digital.

Simply visit wng .org forward slash iron sharpens

to get your World trial and Dr. Sproul's book all free, no obligation with no credit

card required.

Visit world news group at wng .org forward

slash iron sharpens today.

Paul wrote to the church at.

Galatia, for am I now seeking the approval of man or of God?

Or am 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.

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

We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts.

We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do

than how men view these things.

That's not the best recipe for popularity, but since that wasn't the Apostles' priority, it must not be ours either.

We believe, by God's grace, that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man, and to be

vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us, and to build up the body of Christ in truth and

love.

If you live near Norfolk, Massachusetts, or plan to visit our area, please come and join us for worship and fellowship.

You can call us at 508 -528 -5750, that's 508 -528

-5750, or go to our website to email us, listen to past sermons, worship songs, or watch our TV

program entitled, Resting in Grace.

You can find us at providencebaptistchurchma .org, that's providencebaptistchurchma .org,

or even on sermonaudio .com.

Providence Baptist Church is delighted to sponsor Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen.

If you just tuned us in, we have been interviewing Phil Johnson, Executive Director of Grace to

You Ministries, for the last 90 minutes, and we've got a half hour to go on the issue,

The Evangelical Limbo, How Low Did We Go? An Assessment of the Theological Health of Modern -Day Evangelicals.

If you would like to join us on the air before we run out of time, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com,

chrisarnzen at gmail .com, and Reverend Buzz Taylor, my co -host, has something to say.

Well, no, Chris, I was actually going to say something to you during the break that just ended.

Oh, well, you got to get your hand signals.

We got to fix our signals here.

Okay, and believe me, some of his hand signals are really confusing.

But anyway, Phil, I would like to make sure that

everything that you have to critique

in our dear brother Tim Challenge's blog article has been stated on the program, because

that was the catalyst behind your wanting to discuss this today.

Yeah, I read that this morning, and I thought, wow, you know, there's so much that he says that I agree with.

It's so much positive that among

conservative evangelicals and younger evangelicals who've discovered the

doctrines of grace and are suddenly interested in sound doctrine and the sovereignty of

God and an accurate proclamation of the gospel, he's pointing those things out.

I definitely agree with him.

I just think it would be too rosy and maybe misleading to say that this

should nullify any concern, which is a huge

mess.

Everybody recognizes it.

In fact, during the break, I was just looking at my email, and somebody

sent me a link to an article that the National Review published while we were on the air by David

French, and it's called The Enduring

Appeal of Creepy Christianity.

He starts out like this.

He says, Speaking broadly, there are two great competing temptations that tug at the Christian church.

Both of them are based on the fear of man.

And he's right on that, by the way.

He says, The first

is the old

argument that the world would embrace the church if only the church were more like the world.

And he says, It is the path to religious extinction.

In the effort to, the logic for its distinct existence disappears,

thus the rapid decline of denomination after denomination that has decided to essentially merge with

America's secular culture.

And then he goes on to say the second fear is the opposite, and that is the idea, the temptation to,

he says, to run towards a form of hyper -legalism, to build a firewall to protect your family from the

sins of the world.

And I agree with him on that as well.

I think that hyper -legalistic tendency is likewise rooted in the fear of man.

The first tendency is really what we're talking about.

And the only thing I would disagree with David French on, as he writes in this article,

is that it's not as quick an extinction as he

seems to want to portray.

Now, a century and a half to

try to change the message,

and while

it's what they used

to be, they're still functioning, and those ideas are still floating around.

And the evangelical converging

church movement was at its peak, and all that was was a revival, a kind of neoliberalism,

modernist.

And that movement did die pretty quick.

It's like, you know,

kill that one weed, but it launches all those seeds

out

and

find

those and

think they're brand new ideas, when in fact all it is

is a

revival of

Sassanianism.

And yet it

seems...

Now, you say that the emergent church or emerging church have or

has died.

Now, what did those advocates of those movements or that

movement become?

I mean, did they return to orthodoxy for the most part, or are they manifesting themselves in a different way?

Yeah, no.

In fact, a lot of them just left Christianity altogether.

The emerging church movement spawned, I would say, probably hundreds, if not

thousands of some

of the leaders of that movement have turned away from Christianity, and

you had

evangelicals.

And yet a lot of the ideas,

that because of the ideas,

they moved away from Christianity to a kind of new age,

and

he's a universal... make

him much anymore to...

And his ideas haven't changed, but where it

took him away from the church and away

fragmented and

died

emergent,

I think

there

are also

a lot of cohesive movement anymore.

No one's talking about the emerging church the way they were 10 -15 years.

Ago.

Yeah.

Back, I think it was around 2006 or somewhere thereabouts, I

interviewed, one of the few times that I interviewed a Roman Catholic guest.

And whenever I do that, on those rare occasions that I interview a Roman Catholic, I am very clear,

not only at the outset of the interview but throughout the interview, that I'm not an ecumenist in regard to

relationships with Rome.

I believe that Rome has a false gospel, and I make that clear.

But I wanted to interview this person because I wanted to get the

views of someone outside of evangelicalism looking in, to see

what that person... how that person viewed the evangelical church.

And this person, this specific person, happened to be a liberal Catholic named Peter

Feuerherd, and he wrote a book called Holy Land, USA, A Catholic

Ride Through America's Evangelical Landscape.

And one of the things that triggered my memory of that is your reference to Oprah Winfrey, when

Peter, in his book, said that in most megachurches that he had visited,

you'll find much more, thus saith Oprah, than thus saith scripture.

And I agreed with that assessment.

I agreed with a lot of what Peter Feuerherd said in his book.

Unfortunately, Peter thought that that was a wonderful thing.

He thought that all these developments in evangelicalism were positive movements

because of the fact that he's liberal.

But that is a pretty sad commentary, when somebody on the outside looking in is

viewing us in that light.

And even though that was back in 2006 that he wrote that, I guess not much has changed.

Perhaps it's.

Gotten worse.

Yeah.

Well, I think it has gotten worse, and you've got more people

now at a level of leadership in the church

to deal with those sorts of things.

I mean, I agree with the person who raised the concern about the negative tendency of, you

know, full -time discernment ministry is even more deadly.

The idea that there's just something unkind or unhealthy about this

or commends and even

contempt with it, they'll

immediately turn you off or even...

We have Kathy in Medford, Long Island, who says, May I please have the title of Tim

Challey's book on discernment?

Thank you.

Good program today.

You had mentioned before Tim Challey wrote a book on discernment, and this listener wants.

The title, the full title.

All right, let me look it up.

And while you're looking it up, I'll just.

Repeat our email address one more time.

That's chrisarnsen at gmail .com, 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 USA.

It's called The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment, and it's available from

Amazon.

Yeah, in fact, I interviewed Tim on that a year or so ago.

It's a really very well -written book.

Well, Kathy, if

you want to get

that book, go to cvbbs .com,.

C -V for Cumberland Valley, B -B -S for BibleBookService .com, and I know that they carry a

number of books by Tim Challey's there, so that would be the best way to get it since you'll be helping

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio at the same time.

And people are probably getting

tired of the doom and gloom and dark clouds that

we are constantly bringing to the attention of my listeners.

I probably, unfortunately, have more bad things to say on my show than I have good things to say.

Do you have any more optimistic things that you care to share with our listeners?

Well, I'm always optimistic because I know in the end the truth will win out over error.

So people sometimes think I'm pessimistic because I tend to be.

If you've ever read my blog, you'd find, you

know, I'm

not against them, it seemed, and so I started blogging

that needed criticism.

And yet, if you listen to my preaching, I think you'd find,

you know, as positive as scripture is.

And I'm very positive about the end of all things.

The truth will triumph over error in the end and the gates of hell.

But in the meantime, we're commanded by scripture to keep

guard and to sound warnings and to be critical.

You know, even when the apostle

makes sure these things are so, that's a good discipline.

We have Ronald in eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York,

who asks, can you give us between three and five major movements

within Christendom that pose the most threat to modern evangelicalism?

Well, I think I'd have to start with the prosperity gospel, the prosperity preachers.

That's a massive thing worldwide.

And the billions of people who follow that and watch TBN and think this is mainstream

Christianity, the numbers are frightening.

Occasionally you do see statistics about how far -reaching the TBN signal is and how many

people follow T .D. Jakes and Benny Hinn.

And to say just in terms of sheer numbers, that's got to be the biggest problem

we've got.

And as I said, the leaders, even the

soundest of our leaders, seem to be one.

Another would be the whole

seeker -sensitive movement.

Well, he said between three and five.

You don't have to follow his request.

And the seeker -sensitive movement, I would be thrilled with that.

Now, I remember Bill Hybels admitting that he had

taken a wrong approach in his brand of seeker -sensitivism.

How did he make a correction, if at all, in his church's.

Approach?

Yeah, he didn't.

He went the wrong way.

In fact, I blogged about this at the time, that he acknowledged after nearly

two decades of following that seeker -sensitive philosophy,

to really disciple people or teach people.

And he said he really thought

people

immediately then,

they

set up.

That was really at the end of the influence of the emerging church movement.

So why he decided to turn that way, I don't know.

But they definitely turned.

And Will Creek,

going way back, sort of, since you bring them up.

He used to live in Chicago, had lots of friends who went to Willow Creek.

And going way back, they always had a policy of sort of shying away from

voicing their opinion on abortion or homosexuality.

And so they, you know, just pointedly didn't take a stand on that.

I'm sure that, and

probably most of them,

homosexuality never get that far.

And ironically, Lee Strobel comes out of that church, doesn't he?

And I have heard him highly commended by men that you and I both embraces

as gems in the, you know, today's church.

Yeah, yeah.

And one of the things that is interesting about something that you just said, I think that there is an

extreme on either end.

You have on one extreme, something that I know that you and Dr. MacArthur are

opposed to, that's politicizing the gospel.

And then you have on the other end of the extreme, people wrongly

relegating some crucial issues that are going on in the world

today, such as homosexuality and abortion.

They're relegating them to political issues and saying, we're not going to discuss those because they're simply

political issues that divide, and we don't want to unnecessarily divide

people over these political issues.

But these aren't political issues at all.

I mean, they are political, but they're not exclusively political.

Right.

They're moral issues.

And that's everything complex these days.

You should just stay out of politics, you know, meaning local politics and

government policy

at the church.

I still would say the church should stay out of partisan politics,

apologists for the...

So even though I'd be

more concerned, I

don't think

the

answer to the

American people and

the work of this have

to change public perception on that.

And if we don't get to preaching balanced,

and we're not going, the

church is never going to have influence in American politics.

But I believe I remember having conversations with you about this in the past, where you

have no problem whatsoever with individual Christians becoming actively involved in.

Politics.

And if that's your calling, it's like any other vocation, that's, that's your job.

But it isn't, it isn't the calling of the church

out any more than it would be for the church,

not what God has called it.

And that would be this, this

sort of punishment to evildoers.

The church has never

been called

not against flesh and blood.

And I think evangelicals have...

Well, if you could, in about three minutes time, just summarize uninterrupted, what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our

listeners today in regard to this subject.

Well, I think we need to acknowledge that

the religion is not, it

has become a monstrosity, which means that the true

church is a remnant within this,

and faithful Christians need to find one another, band together, and stand in

opposition to every corruption of the gospel, and every twisting of biblical truth that

is out there.

And it's not an easy task, and too many Christians regard that as an odious task,

at times a bit of negativity.

But we need to be faithful to what we are called to do, and that is not only to proclaim, to

wage war against error.

2 Corinthians 10, as tearing down

strongholds, and then Paul goes on to dissolve what he has in mind as

complex worldviews that

are wrong.

American culture right now, America has bought into

worldviews, and

it is our task as Christians to challenge that, and proclaim the truth

and the faith, and

call people to faith

in Christ, and the

Holy Spirit working in that context, that actually changes hearts and

brings to change culture.

It's our calling to proclaim the truth, and that in turn will change the culture.

And I know that Grace to You has an interesting offer, a booklet titled How to Study Your

Bible, which I think sounds like it's a very valuable tool, because a lot of people,

especially new Christians, you hand them a Bible, they really don't know where to begin.

Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

In fact, your listeners can contact us if they like through our website at gty .org,

and if you've never been on our website, it's pretty easy to find your way around there.

All of John MacArthur's sermons, nearly 40 years of preaching, online there, you can

download them for free, and lots of other free study

aids, a website that is full of

check out our website.

Yeah, that's gty, standing for gracetoyou .org,

and I thank you.

I already.

Thank you off air, but I want to thank you again on air for being so generous to the approximately

100 pastors that attended my recent Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pastors

Luncheon.

You provided enough copies of a book on forgiveness by Dr. MacArthur that we were able to give

to each and every person who attended the conference, and we thank you so much for the past

several years being so generous.

To us.

Well, thank you.

Thanks for having me on.

Hey, it's my pleasure, and do you have any other.

Contact information you care to give other than gty .org?

No, actually you can probably get in.

Touch with me through that, and there's an email if you send me an email there at the gty .org.

And don't forget that Phil Johnson is on the roster at the G3 conference coming up in

Atlanta, Georgia, January 18th through the 20th.

If you'd like to register for that conference, go to g3conference .com,

g3conference .com.

I appreciate you praying for this conference, and I will be there, God willing.

I am already registered and have an exhibitor's booth that the

fine folks at Praise Mill Baptist Church have provided for me

absolutely free of charge because I advertise them so heavily as far as the G3 conference

is concerned.

So I'm looking forward to meeting many of you, God willing, this January in Atlanta, Georgia.

I want to thank you, Phil, again for being on the program.

I want to thank my co -host, Reverend Buzz Taylor, for being on the program as well.

I want to thank all of you who listened today, especially those who wrote in questions, and I want you all to always

remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you

are a sinner.

We look forward to receiving your questions for our guests tomorrow on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

God bless.