September 6, 2017 Show with Marc Grimaldi on “The Importance of Calvinism for Biblically Faithful Evangelism: What it Prevents & What it Preserves”

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this sixth day of September 2017.

I'm delighted to have my most recent former pastor back on the program today,

Pastor Mark Grimaldi, who is one of two pastors at Grace Reform Baptist Church of Long Island, which is located in Merrick, New York, and today we're going to be addressing,

I believe, a very important theme, the importance of Calvinism for biblically faithful evangelism, what it prevents and what it preserves, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, Pastor Mark Grimaldi.

It's great to be here, Chris. Thank you. My pleasure, and in studio with me again is my co -host, the

Reverend Buzz Taylor. And it's really good to be here for this subject. And if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is

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Well, I think an overview or a summary might be helpful.

This may seem redundant, knowing my audience, because I believe most of my audience is

Calvinist in some degree, but not all of them are. I do get emails with questions from my guests, from people from varying backgrounds, but if you could give a brief summary of what

Calvinism is to begin with, because obviously you immediately will have people saying, well that's the doctrines of men, namely

John Calvin, why would else would you call yourself a Calvinist if it's found in the Bible and that kind of a thing?

Just a summary of that, if you will. Yeah, yeah, let me just say this first, that John Calvin, by the way, his teachings and all the work that he's done far exceeds the five points of Calvinism, which we would look at when we think of the idea of being a

Calvinist, we tend to think of the five points. But it's worth noting that his work, it really is what's laid the groundwork for most of our systematic theologies today, and his

Calvin's Institutes have been such a tremendous influence on many throughout the world and throughout history, and through the

Reformation, the Puritans, and so on, so he really is so much broader than just the five points.

However, that said, we tend to think of Calvinism when we say, are you a Calvinist, are you a Romanian? We think of the five points of Calvinism, that's the big debate lies in those five points, and the five points, we tend to think of them in the acronym

TULIP, is one of the best ways to remember what those five points are, and the T in TULIP stands for total depravity, which speaks of the nature of man, because of the fall, saying that his condition is such that he is depraved in all of his parts, not that he is incapable of doing anything good, but that everything in man is affected by the fall, he is depraved in every part of his being.

And then the next letter in the acronym in TULIP is the U for unconditional election, which speaks of God electing his people before the foundation of the world, not based on any condition that they would fulfill, it's not

God looking down the tunnels of time, seeing who would choose him and who would not, because if God were to do that based upon our choice, then he would choose no one.

So he actually elects a people for himself based upon his own wisdom and grace and his own being and character.

And then the L is what we would call limited atonement, or even better, perhaps preferred to say particular redemption, but it doesn't work with the word

TULIP unless you want to say tupit. So limited atonement is that Christ died for a specific people, for those whom the

Father has elected before time, he died for those people and only those people, and so in one sense we can say it's particular because everyone that he died for, those particular people will be saved, his atonement will be successful to the fullest extent, but it's limited in the sense that in its scope it's not intended to cover or to pay for the sins of all people, just for his elect.

The I in the five points in the acronym is irresistible grace, which speaks of the works specifically of the

Holy Spirit, who applies the salvation that Christ has merited on the cross to his people by bringing them to faith in Christ.

He quickens them, he brings them to, he regenerates them unto the truth so that they willingly come, desire to come to God, and will not resist that grace.

And it's not that they are kicking and screaming and, I don't want to come, as people would say, well they're going against their will, it's that God changes the heart, he opens the eyes and shows them the truth, and when he pours out his love upon them and his grace, they will irresistibly, they will want to come and they will definitely come to him to receive salvation freely in Christ.

And then finally the last of the acronym, the last letter is the P, which is for the perseverance of the saints, which speaks of the fact that those who are truly saved will persevere to the end.

They will manifest the fact that they have been saved, that God has elected them, that Christ has died for them, that they have been irresistibly awakened by the

Holy Spirit. They will manifest that by their persevering to the end, by their remaining faithful until the end of their lives.

So that kind of sums up those five points, would sum up in a brief sense what we think of as Calvinism.

But again, he is a lot broader than those five points as well. I'm sorry, Pastor Mark, were you saying something?

Reverend Buzz Taylor has something to say. I just want to save our listeners a little bit of time, because I wasted a lot of time when

I got my first copy of the Institutes of the Christian Religion. I remember opening up eagerly looking for the five points, and I could not find them.

Because they arose later as a result of the remonstrance. Yes, because John Calvin didn't even write the five points of Calvinism.

Right, but during the remonstrance, the defenders of Calvinism, they took, they gleaned from him to develop the acronym.

Yeah, yes. And they were actually responding to the five points of Arminian. Well yeah, and that's what I was kind of hoping that Mark would explain a little bit of, was that, you know, it came a generation later.

Right, and wouldn't you say that you could summarize those five points in, and there's two ways that I like to summarize them personally.

I don't know if you remember, Pastor Mark, the Voice of Sovereign Grace program? Yes. And in the, that was for our listeners who weren't familiar with it, that was a program that I developed in the 1990s originally, that featured five different Reformed churches, who each hosted a night of the program,

Monday through Friday, where their, a sermon of theirs was featured in the half -hour program.

And during the opening announcements, I summarized what the doctrines of Sovereign Grace are by saying that God alone saves sinners, because sinners cannot even help save themselves.

Isn't that an accurate summary of those teachings? Yeah, that's a great summary of it,

Chris, it really is. That's what it comes down to, that God is the one who does the whole work from beginning to end, and even,

I look at it this way too, anything positive that we do is a work of God. Anything negative that we do when our sin belongs to us.

But yes, absolutely correct. And the other way I summarize it is that God does not try to do anything.

Whatever He intends to do, He accomplishes. Into the fullest, that's exactly it.

He's not there weeping, you know, just hoping that people will respond to the message that He sent out, and what

He's done in the brutal crucifixion, and the pouring out of wrath upon His Son.

He's not hoping, it's already settled. I mean, it's guaranteed He will accomplish, and is accomplishing, every single detail of what

He has planned from the beginning. Right. Well, the reason I, one of the reasons I wanted to do this topic, or speak on this topic with you today, the importance of Calvinism for biblically faithful evangelism, what it prevents and what it preserves, is because we who are theologically reformed, or Calvinist, or believers in the doctrines of sovereign grace, or the doctrines of free grace, although that last term unfortunately has been adopted by a group of professing

Christians that don't believe in the necessity of repentance. So that once wonderfully accurate

Calvinistic label free grace has been polluted with false teaching identified with it today.

But we who are in the camp of Calvinism are usually, when it comes to the issue of evangelism, we're usually on the defensive, and today

I wanted us to be on the offensive, and I know we'll be offensive to a lot of people listening, but we are usually reacting or responding to the accusations of those outside of Calvinism regarding things like,

Calvinism kills evangelism, it kills a passion for reaching the lost, it kills a love for the lost, there's all kinds of accusations that the

Arminian or the non -Calvinist, that could also include Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, a lot of Christendom outside of reformed theology would make accusations of all kinds.

But today I wanted to take the offensive about why an evangelism or why an effort in evangelism is sorely lacking and is in fact unbiblical and even anti -biblical at times if it is not driven by Calvinistic theology, which we of course believe is purely biblical theology, it's only a nickname to call it

Calvinism. And I know that there are even Calvinists who disagree with using labels like that, but you know for the sake of clarity and abbreviation

I don't have any problem with calling things Calvinist or Calvinism, otherwise I would have to be describing in detail what

I stand for every time I mention you know the doctrines of grace or something and I think it's a good nickname,

Spurgeon thought it was a good nickname so that's fine with me. For instance, let's start with what it prevents.

I think that if you believe in the doctrines of sovereign grace and apply them to your evangelism, because obviously somebody who's reformed may not even be consistent in his evangelism, his or her evangelism, they may be reformed by name and they may even be a reformed pastor, but they may use non -reformed or even

Arminian methodology either consciously or unconsciously when they're evangelizing. But if you're consistent as a

Calvinist when you're evangelizing, one of the things you're going to be doing is not using man -made methodology for reaching the lost because Arminians very often tend to be pragmatic and they will use creativity and inventiveness because they think that their clever ideas and novel concepts will perhaps convince a lost person of the truth believing that they, with their cleverness and giftedness and even biblical faithfulness in the actual teachings of the

Bible, they think that they themselves can convince theoretically any person on the face of the earth of the truth.

Now isn't that a danger when we delve into the realm of pragmatism?

Yeah, Chris, in fact if God has a specific means of saving people, which we know to be in the correct proclamation of the gospel, then developing any other means or adding to his means is ultimately going to frustrate or compromise or can compromise the gospel.

Now God in his grace, don't get me wrong, he uses as we know the expression he uses crooked sticks to draw straight lines.

He's used many Arminians throughout history of course to give the gospel and people have been saved through their testimony and that's because the gospel is there.

However, it can be and oftentimes is shrouded by all kinds of techniques and seven steps of different kinds of steps that people have to take and trying to get people just to repeat a prayer or just different ways that we try to get people to fit into a certain mold that we think if we do that that automatically that will make them saved and so it's a danger because it's as you said it's man -made.

It puts the dependency upon people being saved on us, that burden on us, and no one can be saved through that means.

Again, God is gracious, he still uses the gospel even when it has those kinds of trappings surrounding it for his glory and his grace, he does do that, but it definitely is a hindrance.

It's the best thing is to preach the unadulterated gospel depending upon God's work, trusting in him to accomplish his work, and us being willing to be the vehicle or the messenger that carries the message which alone can bring salvation.

As we know the gospel is foolishness, right? The message is foolishness. Yeah, 1st Corinthians 121.

Right, exactly. It's foolishness. It's the foolishness of how

God saves. It seems foolish in the sense of the message that's preached, but it all the more exalts the power of God, right, over man's pride and man thinking that he's the one who can do anything.

And so, yeah, it's definitely important to use God's means. Also, I think is that there's a great neglect of understanding the work of the

Holy Spirit. It's almost like stepping on his feet when he's the one that must regenerate.

We have to depend upon him and rely on him to do that, and if we're taking that initiative on ourselves, we become then a replacement for the

Holy Spirit. We're going to try to be the ones to regenerate and bring about that salvation. So it's definitely, it's incorrect.

It can be very dangerous and has been oftentimes, and has caused many people just to assume that they were converted when they weren't, and just a lot of problems within the church.

But even in there, we know that because God is sovereign and gracious, because of what we believe in Calvinism, that he still has saved many, even in those means, because the gospel is still there.

Yes, so many years ago, I was a fairly new Christian, I believe. I think it may have been in the 80s.

It might have been in the 1990s. I don't remember exactly when. I don't even remember what

I had for lunch today. I mean, I'm getting old. But I remember there was a

Billy Graham crusade at the Nassau Coliseum, and my Roman Catholic sister Mary said to me, are you going to the

Billy Graham crusade? And I told her that I was not planning on it. And she said, why?

And I said, well, the church that I'm a member of, and myself personally, do not believe in the methodology and much of the theology that is preached by Billy Graham and those associated with him at these crusades.

And I'll tell you one vivid example I told my sister, is that during an invitation to come forward for salvation at these crusades, you'll typically have hundreds if not thousands of people, depending upon where what the venue is, where these crusades are being held.

You will have people go forward, and no matter what church they are a part of, whether they're in a

Roman Catholic church or a liberal Protestant church, those at the front, those volunteers that have been designed to counsel people regarding salvation after they hear the message, they cannot, they are forbidden from recommending any church.

And in fact they are told to, it just to return to the church where they came from.

So my sister, after we went to the crusade on the bus ride back, we took a bus there, a bus that was rented by a church, a local

Baptist church, and my sister said, you know, it kind of makes sense what you told me about why your church doesn't get involved, because I know that if anybody referred them, the people that who came forward to my own

Roman Catholic parish, they wouldn't learn anything. She actually said that about her own parish.

And there was a Baptist minister who had the bus, the rental bus for the crusade, was sitting right across the aisle from me in the bus, and I said to the pastor, just out of curiosity pastor, do you believe that the

Roman Catholic gospel is a false gospel? And he said, yes. I said, well why are you so actively involved in the

Billy Graham crusade knowing that people who go forward cannot be dissuaded from returning to the

Catholic Church? He said, well I just know a lot of people are saved there, so I think that the ends justify the means and the good outweighs the bad.

I said, really? Is that really the way that we're supposed to look at things when we are seeking to win the lost for Christ when we are evangelizing?

That is a completely foreign concept to the Bible, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely.

And it's also, Chris, it's also really an affront upon the Great Commission that Christ gave.

You know, unfortunately today you have, and not just today, I mean this has been going on, you know, for many years, and even back to, like you said, with Billy Graham back when he was starting, even early on, there's this this notion that, you know, that all that matters is just get people saved.

Just get them saved. You know, go out there and get them saved. And that is an important part of the

Great Commission, is to go out and to preach the gospel. But there is the idea, obviously, of baptizing them, and there's also teaching them to observe the things that he's commanded.

And all three of those things, it's like a three -legged stool, are critical to the life, to the building of Christ's church, to the life of the church, and to glorifying

God. It's not just get people saved. And you can see even in that, it's kind of a, it's a man -centered gospel.

It's a man -focused attention, as opposed to glorifying God, seeing Him as the ultimate end of all things, which includes not just the gospel, but also the other aspects of teaching them the truth, and so on.

So when Billy Graham was going out, as you said, and God did save people through that means, again, we know that, but overall he also, there was a lot of problems created through those

Crusades, because people were just left in their condition. If they said the prayer, they were given an assurance that they were saved, even though many of them went back and just did whatever they did, and had a false assurance, and also went back, as you said, to Roman Catholic churches, or churches that, you know, were teaching a false gospel, and other avenues, and so on.

And just, and so there were a lot of, there's a lot of damage that was done as well through those Crusades, when if it could have been, they could have been in some way sanctified and brought into the true way of reaching out with the gospel.

A lot of great good could have come through them, and a lot of great good has come through others who have done things the correct way. So yeah, that's definitely very dangerous.

Reverend Buzz Taylor. And look what happens when, I've talked to a lot of people, you know, when you ask them, how did you come to Christ?

And I'm not kidding, almost, almost unanimously, it's, you know, well I went forward at some kind of a crusade, or something like that, you know.

It's amazing, you would think that there were no other way. Yeah, yeah. And in fact, when non -Calvinists will visit a

Calvinist church, now I know that there are rare exceptions, there are Calvinist churches out there that have invitations at the end of the service, although they have a different meaning behind what is going on.

In fact, my old friend, did you, I don't know if you ever met or remember Dr. Robert J Cameron, who yes, he was a dear friend of mine, and they were formed

Episcopal Church, then he became a PCA pastor, then he became an OPC pastor, before he went home to be with the

Lord. But he had invitations, believe it or not. He was a thoroughgoing Calvinist, and he had invitations. But he would not declare, as non -Calvinist pastors typically do, he did not declare that the people who recited a prayer were certainly saved, which is something that's frequently done.

Isn't that also a danger, because you could be misleading a false convert, and giving him comfort and encouragement to fearlessly continue on in unrepentant sin?

Oh yeah, in fact, that's something that's been happening, and probably much more than we even realize, in droves for many, many years, where there's just many people,

I mean, look at our country, right? It wasn't too long ago, I don't know where it's at now, but we're like 90 -something percent of our country claim to be

Christian. You know, in Kenya, when I went to Kenya in 2000, I remember Keith Underhill saying that there was the majority of the people in Kenya said they were

Christians, and yet it was like, it has the worst crime rate in like all of Africa, you know. And so the reality is that, well, what makes these people think that they're

Christians, they're putting their confidence, right, and their assurance, is put in their confession or an action that they perform.

And that's part, one of the schemes of a lot of these, again, these Arminians who would preach, who would have the altar call and that kind of teaching, is they get you to do something in an active sense, and what happens is you then put your confidence in the act.

Well, I did this, I did that ten years ago, and it's not in Christ. Your confidence is not in Christ, it's in the act.

So I remember when I did this, I went forward to the altar, I said this prayer. I could remember one time real quick,

I was online, this is years ago, when I thought there was some merit to actually trying to have some reasonable discussion about Christian issues online, and then

I realized the hard way that you just can't do that today, unfortunately. But there was the chat rooms when

AOL was big back in the day, and I remember somebody was asking about, they were interested in the gospel, and they were just saying, hey, what do

I need to do? And somebody was directing them through the whole, you know, the prayer, say this prayer, okay, I just said it, do this, okay,

I did, okay, now you're saved. Don't let anybody ever tell you different, you know, praise the Lord, you're saved.

And I hear this person through a keyboard, within five minutes of time of interacting with this person, gave them an assurance. Now, I'm not saying that person could not have been possibly saved, but that's the kind of thing, they have this assurance because they said, and they went through the routine and said the words, they did the magic spell, as it were, they have an assurance that they're saved, when in reality, they're not.

The issue of regeneration is not a reality, the reality of them living that life, of the repentance aspect of that, the moving forward and living the life of Christ, those kinds of things aren't affirmed, and so on.

So it is a danger to put their confidence in their own acts, or in a prayer that they've said, and not in Christ, for their salvation.

Now, many of our listeners might be shocked to hear that no one in church history, at least in recorded church history, and especially not in some kind of a routine manner or regular practice, had altar calls until the 19th century and the rise of Charles Finney.

Charles Finney, who was a heretic, who was not even semi -Pelagian, but purely

Pelagian, believing that salvation did not require any act of the

Holy Spirit at all. In fact, he even denied substitutionary atonement in regard to the death of Christ.

So this anxious bench, or mourner's bench, which became the altar call, didn't even exist in all of church history, not in your

Baptist churches or any of the other churches that were known for passionate evangelism, not even the revivalist

Methodists prior to Finney did this. And that is something that, even though church history is not absolute proof of anything, it should give you serious reason for pause and to seriously consider something, if you're doing something novel that for eighteen hundred and fifty years was never practiced.

And Reverend Buzz Taylor has something to say. You know, Chris, though, along those same lines, though, I think a lot of this has to do with evolutionary teaching as well, because there is a thinking out there, a mentality that the system used to be broken, and people weren't getting saved.

Now we've refined the system so much, now finally people are being saved. Yeah, you're right.

That is an interesting way of putting it, but I think you're right. So we're going to get our first break right now.

If anybody would like to join us, and we do have a couple of people waiting to have their questions asked and answered, but if anybody would like to join them with a question of your own, if you want to get in line, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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USA, and please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter. Don't go away, we'll be right back with Pastor Mark Romaldi of the

Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island and Merrick, New York, on the importance of Calvinism for biblically faithful evangelism, what it prevents, and what it preserves.

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We are talking about the importance of Calvinism for biblically faithful evangelism, what it prevents and what it preserves, with Pastor Mark Romaldi, one of two pastors at Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island, New York, in Merrick, Long Island, New York.

And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, city, and state, and country of residence if you live outside of the good old

USA, and only remain anonymous if it's a personal and private question. One of the other things that would go along with pragmatism and even inventiveness and adding terminology and adding even promises to people when we're evangelizing them that are nowhere to be found in the

Bible, like for instance, invite Jesus into your heart. Now that concept is nowhere found in the

Bible, is it, Pastor Mark? No, no, and I think part of where they draw that from,

Chris, is a misunderstanding in Revelation. Is it chapter 2 or 3 when,

I think chapter 2, when Jesus is speaking to the seven churches of Asia, and in one of the churches when he rebukes them, he says,

Behold, I stand at the door and knock, if anyone hears my voice, know I will come in, and so on. And that text is actually dealing with a church, calling them to repentance and calling them to return to the

Lord, and how he would return to them. What happens, though, unfortunately, is people have taken that and have wrested it from its context, and would say that, look, that's speaking to you as a non -believer, and the

Lord is knocking, and he's knocking, and he's knocking, and he's waiting for you to answer. And if you just open that door, you know, and you answer it, he'll come in.

And so I think from there, you get into a lot of the ideas of asking the

Lord to come into your heart, you know, that kind of terminology. And Reverend Buzz Taylor. You know, really, though, one of the things

I've noticed since I was once not Reformed, and I now am Reformed, that one of the things

I've discovered in the Reformed camp, of course, is a very meticulousness in interpreting the word accurately, you know, original intention and all that.

And just what you have mentioned in Revelation 3, where you see Jesus knocking on the door.

Of course, we all know the painting, and, you know, there's no knob on the outside of the door, you have to let him in.

And we have just automatically said over the years, this is the heart's door. Well, the text never said that.

When he is talking about churches, he's talking about, just like you just said, Pastor Mark, he's talking about churches.

He's not talking about hearts at all. He's talking about churches. And when he says he's standing at the door and knock, you have to interpret it, first of all, if not the only way, is that he's knocking on the door of the church.

But when you change the words, that sounds so innocuous. Well, you know, it's the heart.

Jesus is knocking at your heart's door. I mean, you know, wow, that's really nice. You know, who could possibly contend with that?

But yet, it is not being accurate scripturally. And we've got a whole concept of evangelism based on that now.

Yeah, in fact, I can vividly remember my dear friend, and I know that you are familiar with him, I don't know how close you are with him, but Ed Moore, pastor of North Shore Baptist Church in Bayside, Queens.

I can vividly remember a sermon he preached in the 90s. And in fact, when family radio was still biblically sound,

I remember I submitted a sermon that Ed preached to them, and they played it actually quite frequently on Conference Echoes.

But in the sermon, he said, you want to invite Jesus into your heart?

You want to invite Jesus into your heart? He doesn't want to be in your wretched, sinful, filthy heart.

He wants to rip it out of you and give you a new one. And that is true.

I mean, people through, I mean, things have very serious consequences. We might think this is a trivial matter of nitpicking, but people think, therefore, not all of them, but many people think that there is something less serious, seriously wrong with them by thinking, well,

Jesus coming into my heart, I'm adding Jesus to my life. I'm not really all that bad right now,

I'm just not good enough for heaven, but I'm not really that bad, and I'm adding Jesus into my life to make myself even better and more worthy of heaven.

And it really going back to what Calvinism prevents, if, obviously, if people are consistent and accurate when they are evangelizing, it prevents pride in men, both in the preacher and the one evangelized.

Yeah, absolutely, Chris, you're 100 % right. That's the biggest thing that Calvinism presents.

It really comes down to the issue of pride. You know, what is this all about? Who is this all about?

I could remember speaking to a friend of mine several years ago. He was in his vehicle, and he had pulled up, and I was talking to him about the

Lord in our conversation, and I remember him saying, you know, if God would just do this, this, and this, you know,

I might, I might go, you know, turn to Him. And I looked him in the eyes, and I said it, you know, not in a nasty way, but I just said,

I said, brother, it's a friend. I don't want to say his name, but I said, I said, God doesn't need you. I don't know if you realize that.

He doesn't need you, and it kind of shocked him when I said that. Like, it just turned his whole world upside down, because there's this view out there that it's like, if we would just come to God, you know, we're in the driver's seat.

If we would just do Him the favor, and come to Him, and make Him successful, and make

Him happy, because He needs it. It's just such a backwards, man -exalting, you know, form of theology, and it's so wrong, and diminishes the glory of God.

When Calvinism, which is the truth, which is what we believe, the biblical truth, it exalts the glory of God.

We say, this is all about God. This is His glory. When God saves me, when God saves anyone,

He's reaching into the dirtiest, wretched heart in all the world, and He is completely, when

I'm running away from Him, when I'm cursing at Him, when I want nothing to do with Him, when I'm spitting at Him, He reveals to me

His grace, and His love to me in Christ, through the gospel. He is willing to pardon me, to forgive me for my sins.

He draws me to Himself, and He shows me nothing but His unconditional love. That's Calvinism.

You come empty. You come with nothing, but here I am, this filthy prostitute, at the feet of Christ, when

He saves me, washing His feet with my hair, because I realize that His love is so great, that He's done everything.

It's all His work. He's come to me. He's pulled me in. The faith that I have comes from Him. It's a

God -exalting theology, and that's what the Bible is all about. And it may be hard to grasp that, and it is,

I think, at first, for the human mind, in the sense, because we think, well, this is fair, or we want to be able to say, well, at least we made this decision.

But when you come to see just how wicked and wretched we are, and how dead we are in our sins, and what we really deserve, when

God opens up a gateway into your heart so that you see it with any sense of honesty, it leads you to say, wow, it is right and proper that God alone be exalted.

It is right and proper for Him to be glorified in His creation, and to accomplish what He will in a world that has completely abandoned

Him, and running in the wrong direction, with no desire to turn back. It's right.

It's good. And so it is, it's a big difference between all these, this man -centered, again,

I've seen, you ever see that painting on the internet? I used to think it was a great thing, but I look now, it had like a picture of Jesus, right?

The alleged picture of what He looks like, the typical European one, and He's there, and His face is looking at the world, and there's like a tear pouring down His face, and He's very sad, and it's as if He only,

He just wishes that He had the power to cause people to believe, you know, and it's such a, like a victim

Jesus, you know, as opposed to the conquering King, who will redeem His people. Yeah, and by the way, if anybody wants to look up what

Todd Friel has to say, Todd Friel, who's the host of Wretched Radio and Wretched TV, he has an article,

I'm assuming it's still to be found there somewhere, but he has an article, the ten, or the top ten reasons not to invite

Jesus into your heart, and it was an excellent article that he wrote, and you can go to wretchedradio .com,

wretchedradio .com, if it's not there on the website, I'm sure if you contact them, they can direct you where you can find that article by Todd Friel, the top ten reasons why not to invite

Jesus in your heart. The other thing that is a very common phraseology in non -Calvinist evangelism is to indiscriminately walk up to anyone, you could even be walking up to a death row inmate from the other side of the bars, and of course a

Calvinist believes firmly that even a death row inmate may be one of the elect, and you should evangelize every single human, regardless of how despicable and wicked and evil their life has been.

I mean, you can look at the Apostle Paul, for instance, when he was Saul of Tarsus, rounding up men and women to be slaughtered because they were

Christian, but the concept being you could walk up to anybody, even a death row inmate or anybody, and say,

Jesus loves you and died for you. Now, does anybody in the

Scripture, any Apostle or any faithful Christian mentioned in the

Scripture, including perhaps the most primary example of all, did Jesus ever say to anyone indiscriminately,

I'm not talking about the letters that the disciples wrote to churches, and I think this is where the confusion comes, but was anybody ever approached indiscriminately, especially somebody who was obviously an unbeliever and in rebellion, with the message,

Jesus loves you and died for you? No, no, you won't find that anywhere in Scripture. Chris, the sad thing about that, and I want to say this in a respectful way, because I know there are a lot of good people out there, good brothers, even in a

Reformed faith, I don't know if they think about what they say sometimes, or maybe some of them are four -point

Calvinists, I don't know, but you'll hear them say those words from the pulpit, or you'll see it in their writings, you know,

God loves you, and he cares for you, and Jesus died for you, and you won't find that language there, nor will you find the language, you know,

God has a wonderful plan for your life, you know, that kind of language is just not in Scripture at all.

Now that one's even crazier to say to somebody that you don't know. That one has absolutely zero, there's no way you could come to the conclusion that a non -believer should be comforted with God has a wonderful plan for your life.

Yeah, yeah, that guy gets hit by a car that day and is in hell, you know, I mean, he had a wonderful plan, you know, it's like, how do you have a right to say that, you know, what if God's plan for that person is

Judas Iscariot, you know, or Pharaoh, you know, do you think somebody went up to Pharaoh and said, hey,

God loves you, and has a wonderful plan for you, you know, so we don't know what God's plan is for anyone, and we don't need to know that, and that's not our job to know that or say that.

That was not a banner on the side of Noah's Ark. No, no, most certainly not, and it really does, it really does,

Chris, it gives a false assurance, it does make, it's a way of almost, you know, preparing people in some way to feel good about themselves, you know, that guy going, well,

God loves me, you know, and I'm not saying you want to go to the other extreme, some people go to the other extreme with some of the hyper -Calvinistic stuff, and they'll just, you know, they'll, you know,

God hates you, you know, or they use language that's very offensive and unnecessarily offensive, and just basically, you know, push people away from the

Gospel, you know, but we want to be able to copy what, or to imitate what we see going on, like you said, in the

Scriptures, we look at the book of Acts, we have good examples there, and also in the epistles, we have a lot of philosophy of ministry, and what we should do and what we should say that's there, and you just don't find it anywhere in there, this idea that, you know, well, you know,

Christ died for you. In fact, the word love is nowhere to be found in the book of Acts. No.

And the Reverend Buzz Taylor has something to say. This is a battle that I've been fighting much longer than I've been reformed, even, as long as I've been in ministry, and we're going back to the, you know, the mid -80s here.

The whole idea of what do you tell the sinner, because some of the earliest sermons that I preached actually went through the

Scriptures looking at this, and, you know, we have something where all men are commanded, you know,

God commands all men everywhere to repent, and we are told right away in John chapter 1, you know,

Jesus went out and he preached repentance and faith. Repent and believe the gospel. There is the message.

We present repentance and faith to the lost, and whenever Jesus confronted multitudes, he would say things like, you know, count the cost, because there's a cost to repentance.

It's going to cost you your sin. You know, count the cost and see if you've got enough. You know, look at the man who built the tower and so forth.

He says, so too, you know, if you want to be my disciple, you have to give up all you possess, and he goes on, but then when he confronts individuals, he takes the same message, but he applies it more accurately to their situation.

You know, Nicodemus, the ruler of the Jews was told, hey, you got to be born from above, and, you know, he told the woman at the well, go get, you know, she says, give me this water.

He said, go get your husband, and thus exposing the fact that she was an adulterer. It's like, we're going to deal with the sin issue, and then we'll talk about the living water and even the rich young ruler.

He alone was told, go sell all you possess. Because he was a rich young ruler, and that was his need of repentance.

Now, Pastor Mark, would you agree that we are to bring up the death of Christ when we evangelize the lost, but in such a manner that is biblically faithful, where you're not lying to people or where you're not acting as if you were a prophet or a mind reader or some kind of a sorcerer, where you can know that that person is going to heaven by giving them a comfort that God has a wonderful plan for your life and that Jesus died for them and loved them?

Isn't the proper thing to say is that Jesus died for sinners to make salvation, to give them the gift of salvation, because man could not ever in any way earn or merit an eternal life?

That Jesus had to die as a substitute for sinners. And not by saying he died as a substitute for you, but that he died for sinners.

Yeah, yeah. I think as you present the gospel to them, and as Brother Buzz just said, you know, sometimes we forget that the gospel has, in a sense, a preface to it, right?

The preface to the gospel is the problem, right? Or it's who God is first, who God is, who our

God is, the God that made us and created us, and then to speak about the offense, the way that we've offended him and that we're sinners.

And so there's a guilt that comes from that, right, when we present the truth about our offending this

God and what we deserve, the consequence. And in the gospel, the good news is a response to that, to say, look, you know,

God has sent his own son, Jesus, the son of God, came into the world and became one of us.

And we explain what happened at the cross and how he died, as you said, Chris, for sinners. Even the worst.

There's no sin that's so horrible that he could not wash clean.

And if you would but come to Christ, right? And we present it that way. We're not hyper -Calvinists that neglect to see that there's a means that God uses to call people to himself.

I have no problem saying if you come to him, if you confess to him your sin and you repent and call upon his name, call upon the name of Jesus, you know, he will save you.

And so we give them that gospel. We present to them the means that God uses to save without saying, you know, that, hey,

God has, you know, has done this already for you. But it's only going to be applied what he has already done for you if you do this, this, and this, you know, and which implies like double jeopardy in a sense.

Well, he's already taken the punishment. There's really no crime there anymore, but you still need to do this. So it really, it's problematic in several ways.

You know, and again, God has been gracious. We know that through that, even with people, you know, with Aaron, like you said,

Chris, before we all have error in our lives. Even our theology is not 100 % tip top, and in a practical sense, we fall far short many times, and God is gracious.

But still, we want to present the gospel, right, as clearly and accurately as possible, because it is a danger to interfere with the truth by adding these things that aren't in the scriptures.

And, Buzz, if you could hold on to your thought, because we're going to a break right now. Don't forget what you were going to say or ask.

Maybe make a note of it. And we're going to our midway break right now. It's a bit longer than our normal break, because we have to submit to Grace Life Radio 90 .1

FM in Florida, in Lake City, Florida. We have to submit to them two 54 -minute segments of our program to fit their format.

So this midway break is a bit longer than the usual break. But if you will remain patient with us, we, in fact, in the meantime, while you're listening to the ads, also write a question for us and email it to us at ChrisOrensen at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. And please always give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence, unless you are remaining anonymous due to a personal and private matter.

Don't go away. We'll be right back, God willing, after these messages from our sponsors. Tired of box store

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

Or am 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 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.

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That's the Thriving Story. 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

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Or go to BatteryDepot .com. That's BatteryDepot .com. 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. 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.

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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.

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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 don't forget,

CVBBS .com is having a sale over the next couple of days. Reverend Buzz Taylor, if you could repeat that information.

That's only today and tomorrow. They're highly anticipated after Labor Day sale. So all the things that are normally at discount prices are even offered for a greater discount.

So you can save even more money. That's today and tomorrow at CVBBS. Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

CVBBS .com. Today and tomorrow only. Time's running out. Thanks, Buzz. We are, if you just joined us for the entirety of this program with about an hour to go, interviewing

Pastor Mark Rimaldi, one of two pastors at Grace Reform Baptist Church of Long Island, located in Merrick, New York.

We are discussing the importance of Calvinism for biblically faithful evangelism, what it prevents and what it preserves.

If you'd like to join us with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. That's chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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

USA and only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter. Before I return to Pastor Mark, I have a number of important announcements to make from sponsors who are having special events.

The Word of Truth Church in Farmingville, Long Island, New York, in cooperation with Long Island Spurgeon Fellowship, present the

Gospel of the Reformation, a 500th anniversary celebration featuring my dear friend

Dr. Tony Costa, professor of apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary.

That's going to be held Friday, September 28th and Saturday, September 29th at the

Word of Truth Church in Farmingville, Long Island, New York. For more details, go to wotchurch .com.

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or call them at area code 631 -806 -0614, 631 -806 -0614.

The very next day of Sunday, October 1st, Dr. Tony Costa will also be preaching at the

Hope Reform Baptist Church of Medford, Long Island, New York at their 11 a .m. worship service.

If you'd like to join Dr. Costa and hear him preach in celebration of the 500th anniversary of the

Protestant Reformation, you can find out more about Hope Reform Baptist Church regarding directions and other matters by going to hopereformedli .net,

that's hopereformedli, standing for Long Island, dot net, or you can call them at 631 -696 -5711, 631 -696 -5711.

And after that, in November, our friends at the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals are having their annual

Quaker Town Conference on Reform Theology at the Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Quaker Town, Pennsylvania.

It's on the theme for Still Our Ancient Foe, a reference to Satan from that classic hymn A Mighty Fortress by Martin Luther, and speakers include

Kent Hughes, Peter Jones, Tom Nettles, Dennis Cahill, and Scott Oliphant. That's November 17th through the 18th.

If you'd like to register for that event, go to alliancenet .org, alliancenet .org, click on events, and then click on Quaker Town Conference on Reform Theology.

I intend to be there with an Iron Trupman's Iron Radio exhibitor's booth, so look for me at that event,

God willing. And then, in January, from the 17th through the 20th, the

G3 Conference returns to Atlanta, Georgia, G3 standing for Grace, Gospel, and Glory.

The 17th of January will be exclusively a Spanish -speaking edition of the conference, and the 18th through the 20th of January will exclusively be an

English -speaking edition of the conference, and the English -speaking conference includes Stephen Lawson, Vody Baucom, Phil Johnson, Keith Getty, H .B.

Charles, Jr., Tim Chalies, Josh Bice, Dr. James R. White, Tom Askell, Anthony Mathenia, Michael Kruger, David Miller, Paul Tripp, Todd Friel, Derek Thomas, and Martha Peace.

If you would like to register for the G3 Conference, go to g3conference .com, g3conference .com.

The theme in January is Knowing God, a Biblical Understanding of Discipleship. If you contact any of these organizations, churches, or ministries to either register for the events that I mentioned or just to find out more information about them, please always remember to tell those orchestrating these events that you heard about them from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And now, once again, it's my uncomfortable time to beg money from you.

The advertisers that keep this program on the air have pled with me for years to make daily public appeals for donations because they know that times are desperate in regard to finances and that we are at risk of going off the air.

Those who advertise with me want this program to remain on the air for many years to come, God willing. And if you share that thought, if you share that view that you want

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And as I try to remember to say every day, please never, ever, ever siphon money out of the giving you are accustomed to to your local church where you are a member.

And if you're not a member of a local church, you need to rectify that in order to be in obedience to God. There is no biblical example of a maverick or a lone wolf

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And if you want to advertise with us, as long as what you are advertising does not conflict with the theology expressed on our program, you may feel free to send us an email to chrisarnson at gmail dot com, chrisarnson at gmail dot com, and put advertising in the subject line.

Whether it's your church, parachurch ministry, your business, your professional practice, if you're a lawyer, a doctor, a dentist, a chiropractor, whether it is a special event you're having, as long as it's not in conflict with the theology of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, it doesn't have to be identical.

You don't have to be a Calvinist to advertise on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, but whatever it is you're advertising cannot be in conflict with the theology of this program.

We would love to talk to you about that, so please send us an email to chrisarnson at gmail dot com, chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

That is also the email address if you want to ask a question for Pastor Mark Romaldi. chrisarnson at gmail dot com, and please give us your first name, city and state and country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. We are discussing the importance of Calvinism for biblically faithful evangelism, what it prevents and what it preserves, and we're going to hear from Buzz Taylor before the break, and what was it that you wanted to say?

Well, in reference to what we were speaking of before the break, I mentioned the text in Mark.

It's actually Mark 1, 14 and 15, where it says, The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel.

If God had a plan of salvation, as we like to refer to it, that is it. It is not ask

Jesus into your heart. It is not any of the other things that are going around today.

It is repent and believe in the gospel. But with that command is the word gospel, to believe the gospel, because you mentioned about the cross of Christ and so forth.

And yes, but I don't want to just take for granted what is the gospel. Paul tells us very plainly that in 1

Corinthians 15, he says, I declared to you the gospel, which I gave you beforehand, and by what you're saved, if you stand fast on the word that I proclaim to you, otherwise you have believed in vain.

And we see right there, there is even a believing that is in vain. But he says, he declared to us of first importance that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, was buried and was raised again on the third day according to the scriptures.

And then, of course, the rest of the chapter, he's going into proving the resurrection. But very clearly, the gospel, the good news of Christ is the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Thank you, Buzz. And Pastor Mark, included in what Buzz said, was believing and repenting.

Earlier on, you said that one of the dangers of the altar call is that you're telling somebody to do something to be saved.

But how is that different from telling somebody to repent and believe, because that's telling them to do something.

So how do you differentiate that from the altar call? Yeah, well, the altar call is telling people to come forward, right, to say this prayer.

It's giving them a prescription that's just not at all what would lead to salvation.

It's just putting your confidence in an action. Repentance is the idea of, as it says in Acts, when

Paul says that in Acts chapter 20, that he has gone from house to house and he has talked to the brethren in Ephesus.

He's preached repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And repentance really is the turning away, right, from our sin, from our life, from our independence, from trusting in ourselves and to turning to God in repentance.

So we're acknowledging our sin. We're turning away from it. We're turning to God, and our trust and confidence, though, is in Jesus Christ to deliver us from the consequence of what we're turning away from.

So the repentance is not a work in that sense at all. We're not even saying trust in your repentance, right, but the faith is in Jesus Christ.

However, in having faith in Jesus Christ at the same time, right, you cannot turn to Christ unless you also repent and turn away from your sin.

So the call to repent, when you look in Scripture, in Acts chapter 2, Paul commands

Peter to command the people he's speaking to to repent, right, and to be baptized as well and so on.

In Acts chapter 17, when Paul preaches to those who are in the Areopagus, right, in Athens, it's his message there after he gives the gospel there, he says, he goes on to say, truly these times of ignorance

God has overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent because he has appointed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he has ordained, and et cetera.

So repentance, preaching repentance toward God and faith in Jesus Christ is the response that we call for in the gospel.

And we know that God, those who God will save, right, those who the Spirit of God works in will use that call based upon the message that has been presented.

He will bring conviction to the heart and he will use that call to bring his people to himself, as opposed to adding other things, which you never see anywhere in Acts or in any of the epistles where it says, okay, we'll just say these words or, you know, say this specific prayer, we'll just go down over here to where this cross is and, you know, take the action of coming to the altar.

None of that is in Scripture as a call to the gospel. Rev. Bustillo.

And I think it's interesting also that in that context that you were referring to, when word gets back to Jerusalem that the gospel had gone to the

Gentiles, it was God granted that the Gentiles also the repentance that leads to life.

So we can see that even there, repentance is a gift from God and we already know as Calvinists that faith is a gift of God.

So the thing about it, when we tell people to repent, we are using the actual words of the

Holy Spirit as he penned them down in Scripture. We're telling people simply to do what God is commanding them to do and you can't improve on that.

That's right. Absolutely. One of the things that you mentioned a few moments ago,

Pastor Mark, when you were referring to Acts is something that may cause confusion in our listeners, but that is in regard to baptism.

When people are wondering what is the physical response to repentance and belief, there's got to be some kind of a physical response.

It doesn't mean that the response is what actually activates salvation or cooperates with God to save someone or anything like that, but baptism is a command that is to be a physical response in regard to accepting and believing and obeying the gospel, and the

Bible does refer to the gospel as something that needs to be obeyed. Now I may be treading on some thin ice here or maybe get my own

Reformed Baptist brethren or Reformed brethren in general a little upset, but I actually believe that Reformed people are in an effort perhaps to separate ourselves from Arminian or semi -Pelagian activity or from any misunderstanding that we are teaching and participating in a sacramental understanding of baptism that would involve baptismal regeneration.

I think that Reformed people delay and put off baptisms far too long.

Like for instance, you'll have somebody who comes to faith in Christ and they may go through a year's worth of study and training before they pass a test to be baptized or whatever it is.

Maybe the church says, we baptize people every Easter, so you've got to wait until next Easter to be baptized.

Is this really biblical? No, you know, Chris, that's a great question, and I think some of the challenges with that are,

I think, as you see, like you said, in Scripture, generally when people believed, and in that case, they were right there by water and they were baptized immediately.

And sometimes we can be—you know, I think there's wisdom in evaluating a confession to some extent, and during the time of the

Apostles in Acts 2, when Peter baptized the thousands that were baptized and so on, a lot of these people were learned

Jews or people were very educated in Judaism, and the big differential was understanding that this

Christ who had just died was the Messiah, is the Messiah, and he had risen again, so for them it was understanding that this is the one who has been proclaimed throughout all of history.

He is the one who is the way of salvation, and he was raised from the dead, so the emphasis is on the resurrection of Christ more than anything at that time, actually, because everybody knew that he existed and so on, but that he was raised from the dead.

Today, when you're dealing, I think, more with—sometimes when you're dealing with people who either have very little knowledge, let's say, of the

Scriptures, or even of their own sin, you know, we just—there's a good sense of caution in just ensuring that people understand what the

Gospel is, you know, and so on, but I agree. I mean, you don't—there is something worth evaluating on how long you prevent someone from being baptized.

I mean, from a practical standpoint, you know, we have the baptismals in the church, we don't have the Jordan River right outside that we go to, especially with the cold weather and things like that, so we might have to wait a few weeks, and then we want to do it together with everyone and so on, but yeah, when you put it off and make people do all kinds of class work and go on and on and on, in Scripture, you know, they were baptized pretty shortly after they made that profession, so I think what you're saying definitely has warrant.

I do also think, and because of the context that we live in with what happened with Christ being 2 ,000 years ago and some of the differences of what people understand in general and what they understood then, there is some warrant to have some sense of evaluation of—or at least talking to people and understanding what they understand to some extent, but I think we can, as Reformed people, especially with God in all our eyes and crossing our

T's, sometimes we can go too far and say, hey—and we don't do this by God's grace here—but we can say, hey, well, we need to make sure they understand all this doctrine.

You know, how many people were baptized by Peter there, understood all the aspects of election and of everything, even the full extent of some of the doctrines that we grasp about the hypostatic union, let's say,

I mean, it's things that we just—that have been studied and further understood as you're in the

Church to learn more of these things in depth. So I do think we have to be careful that we don't make—you know, you have to understand the whole 1689

London Baptist Confession of Faith or the Westminster, you have to be able to agree with these doctrines before you can be baptized.

I don't even fully understand it, but... Hey, pal, take your foot out of the water.

Are you infra - or supralapsarian? Yeah, you can't—you have to keep it at the

Gospel. And by the way, I don't know if you've ever read a really, I think, magnificent biography by John Thornberry, who's also a

Reformed Baptist, a biography of the life and times of Spencer Cone, or I should have said a biography of Spencer Cone called

The Life and Times of Spencer Cone. Actually, that's the subtitle. The title is A Pastor in New York, The Life and Times of Spencer Cone, C -O -N -E, and he was a pastor, he was the pastor in the 19th century, or at least a part of the 19th century of First Baptist Church of Manhattan, which still exists, and has the first Calvinistic pastor in nearly 100 years, or maybe even more than 100 years now.

But Spencer Cone came to faith in Christ in the dead of winter in February, and he cut through three feet of ice in a lake so that the pastor could baptize him in the frigid temper of February.

So there's dedication for you. And he didn't believe in baptismal regeneration. He wanted to obey Christ. He didn't see a reason to put it off.

And of course, you say, okay, well, we would love to baptize you next Easter, so mark that down on your calendar.

Well, what about the Lord's Supper all those months that pass by? I mean, most Christians that I know that are being faithful do not participate in the

Lord's Supper with people, or do not extend the table to those who have not yet been baptized.

So I mean, what do you do? And about even voting privileges and all kinds of things, you're making a person wait.

For what? Because you want to have a celebration that is emotionally appealing, like on Easter Sunday or something?

I don't know. And I know that I got some of my even fellow Reformed Baptists mad at that, because I know some of them do that. It's something,

Chris, that I think legitimately needs to be better addressed. I agree with you on that. I think it's a good thing that you bring it out, and maybe to shake the caught a little bit.

I'm glad that you brought that up. I mean, it should be addressed better. Are we doing that in the correct way?

Yeah. And let's suppose a person gets sick on Easter Sunday, so would they wait another year? I mean, you know.

But anyway, let's go into now the preservation aspect.

How Calvinism preserves important issues in regard to evangelism.

Well, the first thing that immediately comes to mind, which you did touch on already, but perhaps we can expand on it, it preserves the holiness and glory and sovereignty of God.

It preserves the understanding that you cannot yet farther apart from God than man.

I mean, we are not peers with God.

And God is not our butler. God is not our genie. People very often act as if God has so humbled himself that he basically is at our bidding when it comes to, some churches would say, everything.

But when it comes to eternal life, he's basically sitting there anxiously waiting for our approval of him.

And this is not at all what the Bible teaches, is it? No, no. The whole message from beginning to end, when you look at the scriptures, this is

God's plan, his plan of redemption. Everything that, you know, we have all of our news channels that everything's focused on this

Hurricane Irma and what's going on in the Middle East and what's going on with Donald Trump. And, you know, there's got to be some attention given to those things, obviously, from our historical standpoint.

But at the base of all this, you know, when we, our history, when we look at what the scriptures teach, everything, everything comes down to, it's one big arrow pointing to the glory of God.

And every single iota of history, every detail, every breath in the end will spill into the river of glorifying

God. Not one thing will be left out somewhere, one drop anywhere. It's all about his glory. It's all about his plan of redemption, what he's accomplished.

It's about him. And so it does, we need to preserve the integrity of that message that declares solely their glory.

It's all about God's glory, the integrity of God's holiness, that he is holy, that he is distinct, that he's not like us, that he is to be respected in a way that no one else is to the extent that he is as God.

The integrity of the message is presented as well, that the gospel and its purity, that God is able to save with the message that, from our standpoint, seems insufficient from our own logic.

Like, are they going to, you know, this message of a Savior who has died and rose again from the dead in light of all of the movies that we have and Santa Claus and all this stuff, are people really going to believe this?

Don't we need to do something else? It's, you know, the integrity of his message being able to save, you know, with foolishness to the

Greeks and a stumbling block to the Jews, but it's the power of God unto salvation for all who believe. The integrity of the

Holy Spirit's work, his ministry, and what he does in regenerating, is preserved. We acknowledge that it's his work.

He's the one who does it. And so when somebody believes the gospel, if I'm the one who has been used in some way in that person's life, even in some small way to deliver that message, and God has brought them to faith,

I don well know that that was the work of God. Because I know that I can't save a single soul.

I can't turn anyone on. I can know more than I can take the heart out and put a new one in.

So all those things, and much more, are preserved when we have an understanding of the Calvinistic truths, which are the biblical truths given in the

Word. Yes, it preserves our humility and our dependence on God, and it preserves the notion that God deserves 100 % of the praise, honor, glory, and thanks for our salvation.

And no matter what anybody says, and you will hear Roman Catholics and Armenians, perhaps even members of some cults, but you will hear routinely people say, such as your

Roman Catholic friend, oh, I attribute 100 % of the glory to God and my salvation.

They're not really being accurate or consistent. They're not being logically consistent, reflecting their theology and the dogmas that they believe.

And that goes to, even with the Armenian evangelical, they are not really giving 100 % of the glory to God, if they believe that a man, either the preacher or the one evangelized, could somehow shift an eternal decision of God, or decree of God.

Yeah, even if you look at it, Chris, it all comes down to this. You have two people who are sitting in the same pew. They hear the same exact message.

They both have their sinful lives, horrible, wretched lives. In fact, the one who has the worst sin, let's say, let's just say that, the one who has the greatest amount of sin in their lives, if we can compare them that way, believes the gospel and is saved.

The other one doesn't. They both leave that church. They leave that pew. They walk out, one's saved, one's converted, one's not.

The difference between those two people is what? Is what? Is it the decision, the connection of the wires, the light switch that's turned on from them, or is it the grace of God?

It all comes down to, even that, and they might say, well, it's just that one little thing, you know, which is, God does everything else.

But the one little thing that we do is all the difference in the world between us and anyone else.

And there is, no matter what they would say, and they mean well, and like I said, we're not saying that all

Minions aren't saved. There are many all Minions who are good, godly people, love the Lord, are saved. But at the end of the day, even though they would say, it's all for the glory of God, that even that one click of a decision that differentiates you, differentiates you from anyone else, there's a sense in which there's a piece of that crown that you throw at the feet of Christ that still belongs in your hand.

And that's just not what we see in Scripture. The whole crown, the whole glory goes to Christ. And I have heard, and perhaps you have too,

I have heard with my own ears while fellowshipping with some of my fundamentalist Baptist friends and other non -Calvinist evangelicals,

I have heard pastors and others say, we had a great revival last week, and I got 20 people saved.

I got 10 people saved. You got 20 or 10 people saved?

You got them saved. I mean, whether the person recognizes it or not, they are certainly sinfully sharing the glory of God in that regard, aren't they?

Yeah, it's really, and again, without judging the heart, it really is, how can you not?

Chris, you know yourself, I know myself, Buzz, I'm sure, we all know our own hearts to some extent, when you start keeping count like that, there's definitely a part of you that sees what you've done, how you've done it, how well you've done it, as in some way being to the credit of what's happened in that individual's life.

I know I'm convinced thoroughly. I look, and I say this in my prayers all the time. I say,

Lord, I know when I pray, when I look at what happens in the preaching of the Word and the church and evangelism that we do, Lord, if you don't act, if you don't revive, if you don't regenerate, not a single soul, not a single soul will be saved under my ministry.

And not only that, I will ruin everything. I will ruin everything, you know, if you leave me to myself.

And I'm begging God to do what He only He could do. So there's never a sense in which we can say, hey, you know, and you're right,

Chris, sometimes they go door to door to door, and they go to whatever they do in their ministry, their evangelism, they keep numbers.

And it's like, oh, look at how many people. There were 75 people baptized this week, and last year we baptized 600 people.

And it's all this number -taking, you know, about what's going on. And I say, I look in Scripture, the last time numbers were taken was when

David took some numbers. David took numbers. There was some judgment that came upon him for that. You know, it's not about us and our strength and what we do and how well we do.

It's God. You know, so we don't want to neglect our responsibility. We don't want to use that as an excuse to go to the other extreme.

Well, it's not really about us and how well we do it anyway. So you know what? I'm not even going to really worry about it. I'm not going to, you know, be too diligent in how well and accurate

I present the gospel. No, we have a responsibility to do everything we can to be faithful. But at the same time, if there's any light turning on in that heart at all, it's 100 % what

God has done, 100%. And we're going to our final break right now. If anybody would like to join us on the air and get in line with others who are waiting.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Sorensen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And Reverend Buzz Taylor, if you could remind one more time our listeners about the sale that CVBBS .com

is having. You better hurry, because it's only today and tomorrow. But in addition to the already low prices on all the stock at CVBBS .com,

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All right, great. Thanks, Reverend Buzz. And we are, if you just tuned us in, we are interviewing today

Pastor Mark Romaldi, one of two pastors at Grace Reform Baptist Church of Long Island, located in Merrick, New York.

And we are discussing the theme, the importance of Calvinism for biblically faithful evangelism, what it prevents and what it preserves.

We are now in the what it preserves category for the final 20 minutes. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

And Pastor Mark, before I go to the audience questions, one of the things, don't you agree that Calvinism, when it is logically and consistently and biblically applied to our evangelistic efforts, doesn't it preserve patience?

There are some pretty sad stories I have heard of missionaries who are out on the mission field.

And I have even heard this from some of our Southern Baptist brethren, where they will be yanked off the mission field if they, there is not some kind of expected numerical count of salvations reported back to the home office or the mission board that sent them.

And this is not really, I mean, I can understand there might be wisdom in certain areas of life where you do things like that, but there were missionaries who labored in areas like India and other places in China, who labored there for years with very little fruit, but then later on, even perhaps after the death of that missionary, all of a sudden revivals sprang up and souls were being saved by the hundreds of thousands.

Isn't this something that is very much connected with the understanding of Calvinistic teaching that all we do is plant and water seeds, and God is the only one that gives the increase?

Yeah, in fact, Chris, if you look back historically, some of the biggest times where missions really went out in droves, the 1600s during the time of the

Puritans, and then in the 1800s, the great missionary explosion that came out of the Haystack Prayer Meeting, and you had people like William Carey before that, and Judson, and all these guys that were involved going overseas, and willing, first of all, willing to lay down their lives.

Many died before they even got to where they were going to go to, because of different health issues with diseases and so on, and yet it was the sovereignty of God that drove these missions.

If you look it up historically, their understanding of God's sovereignty was the drive and the glory of God that drove them to go all over the world at a time when they didn't have airplanes and things like that, and they knew that they could very well die.

And you had people like William Carey in India, Adam and Adam Judson in Burma, and you look and you read their biographies, these men didn't see a single convert for probably three, four, five years in some cases, in both of these men, if you look at it.

And you look at the responses, I don't remember the exact quotes, but William Carey and Judson, just,

I know that God is sovereign, I know that he's going to act, I know he's going to bring about for his glory a people, and that's what drove them, that's what kept them there.

And it's hard to imagine staying somewhere and being faithful to the gospel, not changing it, not looking for other methods of reaching people, and not having a proper view of God's sovereignty after, like you said, after a year or two, or even less than that, saying, you know,

I need to do something different, maybe I'm doing something wrong, maybe question of my own salvation, maybe return home. It's the sovereignty of God and understanding that he has a people, that he is going to accomplish all of his work with or without me, and that I'm privileged to be a tool in his hands that keeps people on the mission field even until they die.

And these men, in the case of Carey and Judson, after those times, five, six years, you find that, I think

William Carey, by the time he died, I think there were 26 churches planted in India, and Adonai and Judson, just all kinds of great fruit that came later on.

His first wife died, didn't get to see any of that, but she was a faithful woman, Ann Judson, but she didn't even see all that fruit.

So it's definitely the sovereignty of God. You look at the driving factor, the sovereignty of God and the glory of God, both of them going together, is what drove and kept these men faithful in their calling to the

Lord, knowing that God has a people. Yes, a people from out of every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.

There is a promise in the book of Revelation that those worshiping the Lamb will be from every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation.

And why is that? Because God ordained them to be saved. He has a sheep who will hear his voice.

It is a fact that his sheep, which are his elect, will certainly hear his voice.

And his sheep don't become sheep by believing. They believe because they are his sheep.

You don't have goats becoming sheep. Am I right? Yeah, absolutely, Chris. His sheep are those who belong to him, whom he has chosen.

And he says that very clearly in John, when you look at what he's talking about toward the end of the gospel there, when he speaks also about...

In 1027, I think it is. Yeah, 1027. Yeah, he talks about that his sheep will hear his voice.

And I have sheep that are not of this fold, right, just within the confines of Israel. I have sheep that are outside.

Well, who is he talking about? Gentiles and others and people like us, beyond, right, even that time, that they will hear his voice.

We belong to him. And I lay down my life for them, for this specific sheep that he has in mind.

Yeah, and an example of a missionary who went to a people that were hostile.

Well, he didn't know beforehand that they would be hostile. He knew that they were ignorant of the gospel, but then very quickly discovered they were hostile.

And we're talking about Jim Elliott here, who went to the Alca Indians in Ecuador and was murdered by them, martyred by them.

And what happened? His wife returns to the very people that killed her husband. And there is a revival that breaks out there amongst the tribe's people, and many come to Christ.

Yeah, in fact, some of the very people who killed him, who killed him and his companions there, when they slew them on the beaches with the spears, some of those very people were converted and were saved.

John Payton, right, is another one. He was the king of the capitals. He was the guy who went... I mean, how many would be excited to go to get the gospel in a place where they eat people?

And he went. And again, you look at these guys. These guys were driven by a fervent desire to see

God glorified and a confidence that God has a specific people that he has for himself set apart from all nations.

And in fact, speaking of somebody who ate people and got saved, what about Jeffrey Dahmer? I don't have infallible insight into his heart, but I have no reason to reject his testimony of salvation that he had before he was murdered in prison.

And here you have an example of one of the worst, despicable, evil people who not only murdered people, not only was a promiscuous homosexual and a murderer, but he was a cannibal.

And he comes to Christ behind bars because people did not forsake him because he was this evil person.

They knew that God's elect can come from any rock that God chooses to bring to life.

And if he has ordained somebody before the foundation of the world, no matter how they are living now, he has the power and the grace and the mercy to bring them to repentance and faith.

Yeah, and the more wicked, from our standing standpoint, the more wicked the individual is, the greater we see the power of the cross, right?

The greater the glory of the cross in that it saves sinners, even of the worst. And like you said,

Chris, we've all said many times, when we're honest with ourselves, we know that ultimately we're no better.

You know, the heart is ultimately contaminated. Well, let's start going to the questions. We have

Susan in Scottsville, Kentucky, who says, I bet you never expected a book called

The Feminization of American Culture by Ann Douglas to have one of the most compelling descriptions of Calvinism I have ever read.

This book basically discusses the change in our culture from the masculine Calvinism to the more feminine evangelicalism that occurred in the late 19th century.

Anyhow, it is a good read, but my question is this. Ann Douglas describes the

Calvinism of the 18th century as the most persuasive example of independent yet institutionalized thought to which our society has even temporarily given credence.

Its members studied together, they trained, questioned, and defended one another. This Edwardsian theology, a reference to Jonathan Edwards, seemed to represent the wider culture.

Douglas goes on to say that the Calvinist minister, an omnivorous reader, did not read in our modern sense of the word.

Rather, he was producing, not consuming. It seems to me this means that Calvinist training enabled those who studied important works of literature and theology to do so with the expectation of fruit.

It was not the kind of emasculated religion that became persuasive or pervasive,

I should say, in the 19th century Victorian world and beyond. Do you agree that this type of rigorous theology of Protestant America, which dissipated with the onset of industrialization and sentimentality in the 19th century, enhances intellectual pursuit and would education in America benefit from a revival today?

You know, one thing I wish is that some real intelligent people would finally become members. I mean, finally start sending in questions and become members of the audience.

I'm just tired of these inane, banal, uninformed nonsense that—I'm only kidding,

Susan, you know that. But anyway— I was going to say that, you know, that question is so simply put that I would like to defer to Buzz to answer it.

Well, one thing that she—I think she hit at the nail on the head, certainly, is the fact that the

Calvinist writers participate in their endeavors with the expectation of fruit.

It's actually a lot of what we were talking about before, about a missionary who goes to a land barren of the gospel and yet is patient, sometimes for decades, to see what

God will do in— you know, what God will bring forth from that soil after the missionary plants seeds and waters them.

You know, there is an expectation because of the promises of God that, you know, an

Arminian may have hope and confidence in these promises, but very often they are inconsistent and not logically consistent with their own theology when they share our confidence.

Yeah, I think with what she's saying, Chris, too, it would fall right in line really with the famous phrase from William Carey that he said in his study of Isaiah 56—I'm sorry,

Isaiah 54, where he talks about, you know, strengthen the tent peg or spread out the tent pegs and, you know, enlarge them, because I'm going to bring in, you know, this massive amount of people from the outside and so on.

But his famous saying is, attempt great things for God, expect great things from God. That was always a big

William Carey statement, that what drove him is, look, we, by faith, we love the

Lord, we're jealous for His glory, we can take great risks for God's glory with great expectation that He will do great things, because He is soft and because He has a people that He will call out for Himself, we can take those risks and be confident.

And not only that, we can take risks and even with respect to our own lives, when we're out there, if you're taking a risk wherever you are in life, whatever you're—in giving the gospel, these people go all throughout the world, they know that their hands, their lives are in the hands of God.

They know whatever happens, right? There's—they don't have to fear death even, because it's all—God is completely sovereign.

So wherever I go, I'm in the hands of God. So all these things with sending missionaries, the motivation for missions, the fruit of missions, the expectation of missions, all these things are grounded in our understanding of the sovereignty of God.

I love the way—I don't know who Ann Douglas is, and I've never heard of her book until now, and I'm definitely compelled to find out about it and perhaps get a copy of it.

But I love the way that she described and compared and contrasted the masculine

Calvinism with the feminine evangelicalism, because there is a lot of truth in that phrase.

You have, one, the masculine Calvinism that is based upon cold hard facts of the

Bible, and the other that is much more subject to emotionalism and a softening of commands to repent and all kinds of things because of the pragmatic aspect of non -Calvinist evangelicalism.

If you really believe that you can convince someone through their own intellect and their own desires by evangelizing them and changing those thoughts and desires through your efforts, if you really believe you can do that to anybody, you are bound to compromise.

If it means the choice between eternity in heaven and eternity in hell, you're going to say, well, what harm can this be if I do this or that and the other thing?

Yeah, when you don't see the success that you want to see, and, you know, in your ministry, you're going to say, well,

I'm doing everything I can to convince. I'm using all these means. And you're going to look to additional creative means, creative ways, and that comes into the territory of, well, let's not preach anything that's offensive.

Let's do with, what's his name, the Crystal Cathedral over there that he had that big...

Robert Schuller. Robert Schuller. Let's go around the neighborhood and ask what people would like to hear, what would make them come to church, you know, what would be something that's palatable, or even, you know, the

Osteans and these guys today who just will not say anything that makes people uncomfortable and it's just that God loves everyone, you know, and he wants the best for your life and everything else.

All those things, and I don't want to associate every... I want to be careful not to associate all Armenians with these kinds of men, because I realize, again, there are a lot of Armenians who would, you know, who would speak against these men fiercely.

But I do think underneath what these men believe is certainly not a Calvinistic theology that's leading them in that direction.

It would be more along those lines. And keep in mind, folks, that it was a woman who used that phrase in this book that our listener was citing.

And perhaps it would be better to not upset too many of our sisters here to use masculine

Calvinism and effeminate evangelicalism rather than feminine. Maybe that will help heal some wounds.

But anyway, Reverend Buzz Taylor. Yeah, well, as long as we're going to be offensive on this. Yeah, I was trying to keep it as brief as possible.

I'm going to keep it brief, but I just want to say while we're on the subject, yes, absolutely.

It was so refreshing to hear somebody even mention Ann Douglas and the feminization of American culture. Yes, I have it.

Yes, I've read it. Every evangelical should sit down and read it and think about evangelicalism in light of what they are reading.

And that's all I'm going to say. Is she alive? Is she a contemporary? I read it years ago. I have no idea. Okay, well, let's look into that.

Thanks. Thank you very much, Susan. And keep spreading the word in Kentucky and beyond about Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

We have RJ in White Plains, New York, who says, You said earlier that Calvinism prevents pride.

Why is it that I know so many proud and arrogant Calvinists? That's true.

We all do, don't we? Yeah, you know what? Chris, what I would say to that, and what that individual is saying is not far from the truth at all.

What I would say to him is this, and even from a missionary standpoint or from an evangelistic standpoint, there are also many who would acknowledge the deductions of Calvinism and would parade them and hold them up on a banner, and yet do no evangelism.

You know, and that's why you hear about the frozen chosen and things like that. And so the argument that people like this man are making, it's not without warrant when you think about what we see in the sense of how some people in the

Reformed Faith Act. But the problem, what I would tell him is the problem is not with the doctrine. The doctrine is not the issue.

The issue is with the individuals and how they process this doctrine. When you take a sinner of any kind and you put any kind of doctrine in the hand, true or not, there's going to be a tendency to distort that in some way.

And so when you take these truths about the sovereignty of God, which ought to motivate us unto humility, which ought to motivate us to be the most risk -taking people in the world, which has driven missions for many years, which has brought great humility into the lives of those who properly absorb it, when you take that and put that into the hands of a sinner, the tendency is going to be for that individual and their sin to become proud, to become arrogant.

Maybe not to have to perform their duties as they ought to. Maybe to sit back and to process these things in a practical sense that just the

Scriptures never intended them to be processed in that way. God doesn't tell us about these things, about His sovereignty, so that we can sit back and be lazy or that we can be proud and arrogant.

That's the very thing that's contrary to what He's telling us. And so the problem is not with the doctrine.

And we've been defending the doctrine today on the radio program here. It's with the individual.

It's with the sinner and how they handle that doctrine. And you will find that with any doctrine, whether it's true or not.

When you put it into the hands of a sinner, there's going to be extremes and there's going to be tendencies to fall into different extremes when it's not properly processed.

So not the doctrine, it's the people. Yeah, just like when the Apostle Paul says, should we sin that grace may more abound?

Well, God forbid. He knew that people would hear the truth and misuse it.

Exactly. So the teachings are not at fault. It's the individual, the sinner involved.

Well, we are actually out of time. I apologize to everyone who was waiting to have a question asked and answered.

Perhaps when Pastor Mark returns, we could have your question on the air.

But Pastor Mark, I know that Grace Reform Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, New York, I know that the website is gracereformbaptistchurch .com.

gracereformbaptistchurch .com. Any other contact information you care to give? If you go to gracereformedbaptistchurch .com,

if you go to that website, all our information is there. You can get our phone number from there, our street address, whatever you need is right there.

And Pastor Mark has written several books and I've interviewed him on all of them. You can go to irontreppanzironradio .com

and if you type in M -A -R -C, as in Charlie, his name will come up and you can listen to any of the interviews that I've conducted with Pastor Mark Romoldi and hear about his books that he's written.

Well, thank you so much for being a guest today, Pastor Mark. If you could hold on, I'd like to schedule you for another interview. Thank you, brother.

Appreciate it. Love that. I want to thank Reverend Buzz Taylor for being my co -host today. I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially those who wrote in.

I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives. Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.