April 20, 2022 Show with Dr. Joe Morecraft on “An Assessment of the Church in the 20th & 21st Centuries” (Part 3)

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I'm always thrilled to have back as a frequently recurring guest

Dr. Joe Moorcraft, author and pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia.

And by the way, keep your ears peeled for an upcoming advertising campaign that will be launched,

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Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia. And today we are going to be addressing part three of a theme that we began over a week ago.

And that theme is an assessment of the church in the 20th and 21st century.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Joe Moorcraft. Always a joy,

Chris. Well, as always, for the sake especially of those who have not heard you on this program before, tell our listeners about Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia.

Heritage Presbyterian Church is a small congregation in Hanover Presbytery.

We have 50 or 60 people on Sunday morning. It's a bedroom community of Atlanta, Georgia.

People come from all kinds of backgrounds, but we are united in the truth. That is, we believe that biblical

Christianity and its purest human expression is found in the Westminster Standards.

We're dedicated to the Great Commission. We spend a lot of effort trying to win people for Christ here around us.

We spend a great amount of effort and money with missionaries, this report, like somebody in Brazil.

We sent a team to Mexico recently to witness to illegal aliens down there at the border.

And so it is a great and growing and friendly and godly and reformed organization.

Well, if anybody wants to know more about this church, go to heritagepresbyterianchurch .com,

heritagepresbyterianchurch .com. And Joe, in our discussions, our first two discussions on your assessment of the church in the 20th and 21st century,

I don't think that we have quite reached the 21st century yet. But if you could, pick up where you left off in history of things that you want to highlight, both the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Yes, sir. I think one reason that the church in the 20th and early 21st century hasn't gotten any farther along than it has is because the failure of evangelicals to live like the sons of Issachar.

You remember the sons of Issachar were in Old Testament Israel's army. And the Bible says of them, they were men who understood their times and they knew what to tell

Israel to do. That's two things. Number one, they understood what was going on, what the war was all about, what's the difference between the

Canaanites and Israel. They understood their times. They weren't naive. And secondly, they knew the word of God.

They knew what God had given them in the books of Moses, how they were to live and shape their cultures.

They knew what to tell Israel to do. And once evangelicals in America today learned those two things again, we'll march ahead even more rapidly than we had to tell people to understand our times and to tell people what to do from the word of God.

Understanding the times also involves understanding how we got to where we are.

And the thing that always disappoints me when I talk to many evangelicals and even some reformed people about when our culture started unraveling, they think it was because of Biden.

Oh, and it wasn't. They think it was because of Obama. Or they think it was because of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Or even some of my southern friends think it was because of the Civil War. And all of those have had terrible influences on our culture, but I want to read a verse to you that says more than we've got to recognize that this applies to America.

God tells Israel through Jeremiah that he's going to send the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar to burn

Jerusalem to the ground because of its evil and its apostasy. And then in Jeremiah 32, 31, it says,

God says, indeed, this city of Jerusalem has been to me a provocation of my anger and my wrath from the day that they built it, even to this day, that it should be removed from before my face.

So this was 586 B .C. And God's saying,

I started being angry with Israel as soon as you built it, because you started carrying the seeds of your own destruction with you in the building of Jerusalem and the formation of this covenant nation.

And then it took a while. God had to destroy the northern kingdom, but then in 586, 600 years after the building of Jerusalem, he destroyed the southern kingdom.

Now, I think that's true of the United States as well. Our founding fathers, and I mean by that the

Puritans, I mean by that the good guys, the people we love, the people that founded

Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, and all the rest.

They carried the seeds of America's destruction with them in the very building of the new world.

Now, what do I mean by that? These men and women that were reformed, they were not just sort of reformed, they were thoroughly and truly and tenaciously reformed.

And they were dedicated to building a reformed civilization based upon the word of God with Jesus Christ as king.

And they weren't aware that they were carrying the seeds of what would eventually be

Joe Biden as president of the United States. But before I explain what

I mean, there is a great book, The Guise of Every Graceless Heart.

The Guise, G -U -I -S -E, of Every Graceless Heart. That book

I read is only, it's a hardback book, but it's only just less than 100 pages. And I've given away scores of that book published by Rush Studios organization.

And it's on the subject, why did the great New England empire collapse?

Why did it fall? That for many years, it was a strong Christian and reformed culture.

It survived Indian attacks and wars. It survived threats and lies of the king of England.

And it was a mighty force for righteousness and thoroughly Puritan and thoroughly

Christian, except for one thing. And that is, they gave too much room to human reason.

Let me put it in another way. Their Thomism eventually ate up their

Augustinianism. What that means is,

Augustine, who lived in the 5th century, was one of the truly great men since the New Testament.

And he's the one in his books, the city of God taught us that Christians are civilization builders.

We are not to live in this life just to seek to win individuals for Christ before Jesus comes back and burns everything up.

That we are to build civilizations. And those civilizations must be based upon the word of God.

And any knowledge we have of God is based on faith in that word.

As long as Augustine was the most influential man for several centuries, the church had a lot of strength to it.

But then in about the 13th century, a man came along named Thomas Aquinas. And his philosophy is called

Thomism, T -H -O -M -I -S -M. And Thomas Aquinas also believed in a lot of great things.

He believed in predestination, and he believed in the law of God, but he disagreed with Augustine.

He said, in so many words, he said, Augustine said that our knowledge is based on our faith.

He said, it's the other way around. Faith is based on knowledge, that is, on reason.

We believe what we can reason out in our minds. And so once the church started believing that compromised view, that there were some areas of life, now this is oversimplification, that there were some areas of life that you could understand apart from the

Bible, without the Bible's guidance, Augustine said, we need the word of God to understand any area of life.

But Thomism says there are some areas of life we don't need the word of God for, we only need reason.

That led to the Middle Ages and the betrayal of the church, of the Christian civilization in the

Middle Ages by the church. It created the Renaissance, which was not a

Christian movement. And then later, the Enlightenment. And what those movements said was, well,

Mr. Aquinas, if you don't need the Bible to understand some areas of life, you don't need the

Bible to understand any area of life. And so the

West would have fallen quicker than it did if it wasn't for the Reformation that made as its goal the restoration of Augustinianism and the defeat of Thomism.

And so Calvin said over and over again, he was just an Augustinian, that you must have the word of God to interpret every area of life.

And so the Reformation stopped, to some degree, Thomism, but it didn't stop it completely because even the great reformers and Puritans did not escape the idea that there's some areas of life that we can understand by reason alone, apart from the word of God.

And that has stayed in the church and has grown. And as Francis Schaeffer would say, eventually nature ate up grace.

So what we're seeing now with Joe Biden and all the rest and the preachers we have in the pulpits today, what we're seeing is the result of the seeds of destruction that were sown in America with our founding fathers who wanted to be straight and on target, but who brought

Thomism, which was actually Greek philosophy into their theology and philosophy.

Jonathan Edwards, I love. Jonathan Edwards was a great man of God.

I've read his books, I've plagiarized his sermons. He was great, but whatever he wrote on philosophy, he was an atheist, his philosophy was atheistic because it was based not on the word of God, but on reason.

And I mean, that's a terrible thing to say, but I'm trying to make the point that we are what we are, not because of an election in 2020, but we are what we are.

Where we are in this country because of the seeds that were planted by the great men of God.

Now that should cause us to live in great fear and trembling because we're tasting something of a revival among the preaching of Calvinism and the formation of Calvinistic churches in this country since the middle 20th century.

And we have more and more churches that love the Westminster Confession of Faith, 1689

Confession of Faith. We believe those are telling the truth and expounding the scriptures accurately.

Father, is there anything in our thinking as individual men and women, anything in what we're trying to get across or what we're teaching and what we're trying to lead people to believe that unintentionally is inconsistent with the reformed faith and the word of God?

I, every preacher, every Sunday he preaches ought to preach in fear and trembling.

I've been preaching since I was 12 years old and I'm now 78. And I never preach that I'm not nervous before I preach the sermon because I know what

I'm doing. I know the great responsibility that I have before God of holding people's souls in my hands.

And I don't want to lead them in the wrong direction. So we thank

God for the great men and women that have laid a firm foundation for us in the past.

But we also realize that man's frail thing and man is not a perfect thing.

And so we pray, Lord, help us to learn from our past. That's why it's so important to know history. Help us to learn from our past.

Help us to imitate the strength of the men and women that have preceded us and help us to avoid the mistakes of those that have preceded us.

I think one of the best books, if not the best book, on all the various seeds, false seeds, terror seeds, that have been planted in American history, through our, in America through our history, the best book on the subject

I know is by Greg Singer, who's not with us, he's in heaven.

Greg Singer was a friend of mine and a great, great man, lived to be up in his 90s. Last time

I heard him preach, he gave over an hour lecture and he was over 90 years old and he didn't have any notes.

But the name of his book is A Theological Interpretation of American History. The one thing in that book

I disagree with is in the introduction, where he would be more critical of the

Declaration of Independence than I am. But nevertheless, I have to have to say that. This is a book that I have read over and again, that I've preached through over and again.

Because if we're going to understand what's happening in our culture correctly, and where the roots of its destruction have been sown, and if we want to give answers that are solid and effectual, we've got to know where all this came from.

If we just think it's a political thing, if we just think it's because the liberals got in charge of the government, the socialists got in charge of public schools, if that's all we think it is, our answers are going to be ineffectual.

And if we think that the issue of all issues in the 20th and 21st century is abortion, we're going to give ineffectual answers.

I believe abortion is murder. I believe it's conspiracy to commit murder, that anybody who had a part in abortion should be brought before a court of law and if found guilty, executed.

That includes the doctor, the nurses, anybody that paid for it, anybody that drove the car to get the woman there.

I hate abortion. I don't want to downplay the wickedness of abortion, but I am going to say that though abortion is more important than any of our economic issues today, and even more important than any of our international issues, it's not the most important issue today.

The most important issue today is Christ or Caesar. The most important issue is the source of law.

The most important issue is who is king, man or Jesus.

And so Christians, if we're going to do what we want to do, and that is work toward a solution, bring some change, we've got to know where this culture came from.

So we can know what the real answers are. Besides knowing where it came from, we've got to know where it's supposed to go.

Now, it can only go downhill if things don't change. And I expect it to go downhill for a little while longer.

But we've got to know what the goal is, what does God want us to do with this culture?

We know several of the bad things. We've got immorality, we've got perversion, transgender, homosexual, statism, all those things.

We've got all those. Where does God want us to wind up? That is, what is the model?

What is the goal that God wants America to look like? I don't even think the average

Christian has thought that far. And I think the reason he hasn't thought that far is because so many evangelicals believe that there's going to be a rapture and he's going to snatch us all out of here.

The world's going to be burned up and nothing's going to change significantly anyway. So it's because of this escapism that has been inbred into the evangelical movement for the past 150 years.

This escapism that we haven't thought about. What kind of America are we working for?

Do we want to be nostalgic and take America back to the way it was in the middle 1700s?

Nope. We don't want to be nostalgic. We want to go beyond that. And so we've not only got to know history and how we got to where we are, but we've got to know, and I don't mean this in any kind of limited sense, we've got to know eschatology.

That is, we've got to know where it is God wants us to get to in this time and space history.

And thirdly, we've got to know how to get there. We've got to have a battle plan.

I think I've said before on your show that it was a great change in my life when

I realized the difference between the first and second commandments. Because when I was young, I thought they were both saying the same thing.

I would admit to it, but it sounded like they were saying the same thing. The first commandment says, thou shall have no other gods before thee.

The second commandment says, don't make unto thee any graven images. Sounds sort of like the same thing to me back then.

But when I realized the difference, that made a difference in my ministry. The first commandment says, worship and serve

God alone. The second commandment is, worship and serve

God alone, God's way alone. You cannot reach

God's goals by using man's plans.

Wow. That God's goals can be reached only when we commit ourselves to God's revealed way found in Holy Scripture, i .e.,

the law of God. We live in an antinomian age.

Anti means against, nomian comes from the Greek word law, anti -law. We live in an antinomian age, that is, a culture that hates

God's law, Psalm 2. Rulers of nations that see God's law as chains to be broken and to escape from.

And we see a malicious rejection of God's law, particularly today in the

United States in this culture. We see it in the church. We see it in some reformed churches.

We see it in a lot of evangelical churches, and we see it in all liberal churches, that there is a plan to get from here to there.

God has a plan towards reaching his goal for America or any culture.

And it's revealed in the pages of the Old and New Testaments in his law.

We don't obey the law of God in order to make points because the law of God can't save from sin.

Jesus saves from sin. So the law Jesus takes, the law of God, and drives us to himself.

Shows us there's no other way of salvation except in him. And in the moment the law of God drives us to Christ, Christ puts that law in his nail -scarred hand and says to us whom he saved, now here's how

I want you to live. We've lost that. The law sounds so legalistic.

We like to talk about the spirit, about grace, and so do I, and I do. But remember, the longest chapter in the

Bible is not about love or grace or the spirit, or even

Jesus so much as it is about the law of God contained in Holy Scripture. And I'm preaching on a second job

Sunday, and there is a verse in Psalm 119 that I'm gonna bring into the picture, and that is

I walk at liberty because I love your statutes.

I'm free only when I stay on the path of the laws of God.

You remember what Romans 12, one through four say? There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

For the power of the spirit of life has set us free from the power of sin and death. What the law could not do, weak as it was because of the flesh,

Christ did by sacrificing himself in our place for our sin, verse four, in order that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, not for us.

That's another point. But that the requirement of the law, which is obedience, might be fulfilled in our lives as we walk, not in our own power, which is frail, but as we walk in the power of the

Holy Spirit. So those are the three things

America has given up on over 100 or so years ago, and I'm trying to be as practical as I can possibly be.

We've got to know where we came from, why Joe Biden was elected president in 2020.

It was because the Puritans in the 18th century, unknowingly, as great as they were, brought their

Thomism in with their Augustinianism. Wow, there is, you may be aware of this, maybe you're not, but there is quite a controversy, a debate brewing these days over Thomas Aquinas and the importing of his philosophy into the church.

There's sharply divided divisions and debates going on amongst

Reformed Baptists and other theologically Reformed folks. And my dear friend,

Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries has been vilified by some because he is openly and adamantly opposed to the importing of Aquinas into our

Reformed ways of thinking and teaching and living.

And it's been quite an interesting thing. Well, I know something about it with the reference to Brother White, I praise

God for him. Here's the thing, realize, and we're talking about Reformed brothers here. We're talking about brothers that would agree with us on all kinds of things.

But the problem is, is what most people today, in our perspective, our people, say the problem is a deep state.

We have a deep state, it's infiltrated everywhere. That is the superficial evaluation.

The problem in America is not deep state, it's deep religion and deep faith.

We have two religions in this country. We have two faiths in this country, fighting for the future of our children and of this country.

And one is an Augustinian Christianity that is going to cause grief to some of our good and faithful brothers who have not yet seen the seeds that Terry Heldup writes about in his book,

The Guise of Every Graceless Heart. I mean, it's 100 pages long. I wish I could memorize the whole book because it is that important.

I've read it over and over again. So I recommend all my brothers, particularly anybody that thinks

I'm as crazy as James White is, and I hope I am as crazy as James White is. That's up.

My dear brothers, I challenge them. I'll even, if they would buy from Rush Duty's organization,

Calcetan, this small hardback book called

The Guise, G -U -I -S -E of Every Graceless Heart by Terry Heldup, E -L -N -I -F -F.

On what happened to New England Puritanism. Wow, I know I've got to get ahold of that.

I have never heard of that book, obviously, nor have I read it. So I'd love to get ahold of that to be more up to speed on this, especially since I see this issue dividing brethren who once were very close friends.

And probably. It always has, by the way. I'm sorry? It always has. Yeah. It's nothing new about that.

It's just that God gradually is opening the eyes of some of our brethren.

And some of them just, they've had their eyes open to so many things that this view is so challenging.

It's gonna change a great deal to say that we cannot understand any area of life by reason alone.

Now, all of us would say that to one degree or another, but they don't realize just how radical a statement that is.

Politics, raising children, agriculture, horticulture. I mean, it's amazing what there is in the law of God, particularly in Mosaic legislation, on how funerals, military, waging war, building a church, building a nation, worshiping

God. You see, the reason some of these brothers are real hostile is they may realize that the view that no area of life can be understood apart from the word of God, they may realize that that's gonna require them to give another good look at the laws of God in the

Old Testament. Interesting. Well, we have to go to our first break right now, Dr. Moorcraft, and if anybody wants to join us in the air with a question of your own for Dr.

Moorcraft on his assessment of the 20th and 21st century, or assessment of the church in the 20th and 21st century, and of course, since Dr.

Moorcraft is a pastor and a theologian, we will broaden the area of questions that we will permit.

You may have a pastoral question, you may have another issue of theology that you want to ask about.

Well, feel free to, and please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence.

Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter, and don't go away.

We'll be back with Dr. Joe Moorcraft right after these messages from our sponsors. When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

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Call 717 -258 -4688 today. Welcome back.

If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours is Dr. Joseph C. Moorcraft III.

He is an author and pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia. We are addressing part three of a theme that we began several weeks ago, an assessment of the church in the 20th and 21st century.

And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. We have Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, who asks the question,

I was wondering if Dr. Moorcraft could clarify on something that he said earlier. He was criticizing those who are constantly looking to the rapture of the church and escapism as one of the main problems in the church that has been plaguing us for centuries.

But does Dr. Moorcraft believe that this will occur in our future?

Is the issue really an overemphasis on the imminent return, or is it on the return itself?

I am hoping that Dr. Moorcraft is not a hyper -preterist. Very good question, and I assure you

I am not. I believe the Bible and the apostles greet that there is a coming of time in the future with majestically, historically, physically,

Jesus Christ shall return. When he does, every eye shall see him. He'll raise everybody from the dead.

Everybody that's living at the time will be transformed. They'll stand before him, and that'll be judgment day, and he'll separate the sheep from the goats, send the goats to hell.

The sheep will be given unto himself. He'll rejuvenate the universe with fire, and we have a perfected new heavens, new earth.

So I do most certainly believe in this second, the literal, physical, second coming of Christ at the very end of history as we know it.

Now, that is the historical view of the church. What I was trying to get at was this escapism that has dominated the church for 150 years, maybe a little closer to 100, and that is the view that our only hope is escape, escapism, and that there's going to be an unknown time when all

Christians will disappear, and the world's getting worse and worse and worse until that time that all

Christians will be raptured up into heaven, and then there'll be seven years of terrible tribulation under an antichrist.

I do not believe that, and that is a new view that was not found in the church prior to the 1820s or 30s.

Pre -tribulationalism. Yes, sir. That is a new view, and what has it done?

It has ruined the church to any kind of culture engagement that the only thing we could do is escape our enemies.

Well, in the Bible, Christians don't escape their enemies. God destroys their enemies, and you go all the way back to Moses and Israel and the

Egyptians, that how did the Israelites, how did they survive?

By God destroying Egypt with the plague and the

Egyptian military in the Red Sea, and that's how they survived, and throughout history, you have this idea.

This planet belongs to us. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

This planet belongs to the children of Abraham, that is all those who believe in Christ, regardless of ethnic origin.

It does not belong to the bad guys. They're the squatters. It's our inheritance, and we're irresponsible if we turn any inch of this planet over or are happy to turn any inch of this planet over to the enemies of Christ.

We must seek to retake it by the preaching of the gospel, by world missions, by evangelism, by Christian education, by the planning of churches and the changing of cultures all over this world, and when it comes to retaking the earth, which is ours by covenant, when it comes to that, we've gotta make sure we're following God's plan and not our own.

We don't want to just have a small group of people to impose themselves upon a larger group of people and then tell them what to do.

The spearhead of any attempt to build Christian civilizations, the spearhead is evangelism and world missions of winning the hearts and minds of people to Christ, and having won their hearts and minds to Christ, then we proceed to educate them, to show them how to build states, churches, cultures, every aspect of civilization according to the word of God contained in Holy Scripture and not according to human reason.

So I'm glad you asked that question so I could clarify I'm not an escapist. I believe this world and everything in it,

First Corinthians says, everything in it belongs to us because we belong to Christ, Christ belongs to God.

And so our responsibility is to advance his kingdom over all the other kingdoms of men.

And I said a while ago that we not only must know where we came from, we've gotta know what the goal is.

We've got to know what is God's goal for a civilization? What does he want a civilization to look like?

And there are several very good books on it, two books I would recommend by Rush Dooney.

They're small books, but you can't read them quickly. One's called This Independent Republic, and the other's called

The Nature of the American System, This Independent Republic, and The Nature of the

American System. And then anything, about anything that Gary DeMar writes on civil government is worth getting, particularly his books,

God and Government. There was a book written in 1900, which was the seminal book in teaching

Christians how to take their cultures for Christ. We wouldn't agree with everything in it.

We don't agree with everything any man wrote. The only thing we believe in, in fact, is the word of God, but nevertheless, it is one of the greatest books in history.

And it's called, it's written by Abraham Kuyper, and it was simply called

Lectures on Calvinism. Sounds boring. It's not on what you would think it's on.

People think of Calvinism, they only think of five points of Calvinism, soteriology, human depravity, limited atonement, all these things, but it's not on those things.

It's on how, at the beginning, it's just little planting little seeds on how to build

Christian cultures. And I would recommend that book to people.

I don't recommend everything in it. I don't recommend everything. I preached my life.

Sunday, for instance, Sunday morning, I'm preaching on 2 John. It's written to an elect lady and her children.

I wrote a book on 2 John. I disagree now with myself years ago in the book on who the elect lady is.

So, the point I'm trying to get at is, this man, Abraham Kuyper, a interesting person.

In many ways, we should imitate him. Let me just give a quick thumbnail sketch so you can see what

I'm talking about, because I'm not just talking politics. Abraham Kuyper was a liberal.

He was a liberal preacher, theological liberal. That's before his conversion. Oh, yeah.

And a little lady in his church led him to Christ. Yep. And he was converted, and so he realized now that because he belonged to Christ, as well as everything else in the universe belonged to Christ, he needed to start a new denomination that was not theologically liberal.

So he did. He said, we also need a place to send our children to be educated in higher education that's based upon reform principles.

And he created a university. Then he realized we need some kind of church weekly newspaper so we keep in touch with each other.

He started one. Then he realized we need a daily newspaper so we keep up with each person nationally and internationally.

So he started one. He said, well, now we need a political party that can press the claims of these things, we believe.

And he started one. And then in the early part of the 20th century, got himself elected prime minister of Holland.

So here's a man who realized, as he said, I wish I had it on my tongue,

I gotta let my brain, he said, there's not one inch anywhere in the universe about which

Christ cannot say, this is mine. And that's the way we look.

America belongs to Christ. It's not enough to be conservative, it's not enough to be constitutional.

There's things about the constitution that need to be reformed by the word of God. So get some of these books and read them.

This Independent Republic, The Nature of the American System. And what's easier to read is

Gary DeMars' books, God and Government, and there's a lot of others too.

Well, we gotta go our midway break now, folks, and please be patient with us because the midway break is longer than the other breaks in the show because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show because the FCC requires of them to make clear that the programming is based out of a station in Lake City, Florida.

They have to geographically localize all of the programming to Lake City, Florida, and therefore they have to air their own public service announcements and other local things to do so.

While they do that, we air our globally heard commercials. Please use this time wisely.

Write down as much of the information provided by our advertisers as you can so that you can more frequently and successfully respond to our advertisers.

Hopefully that will often mean that you're purchasing their products, using their services, supporting their para -church organizations, and visiting their churches, but when you cannot do those things, please at the very least respond to our advertisers using their contact information in their radio commercials to say thank you for sponsoring

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We absolutely positively need our advertisers to exist. So thank them and send in your questions to Dr.

Joe Moorcraft at ChrisOrenson at gmail .com. ChrisOrenson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and country of residence.

We'll be right back after these messages with more of Dr. Joseph C. Moorcraft III. When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

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One such faithful advertiser who really believes in what Chris Arnton is doing is

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Thanks for helping to keep Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio on the air. If you're near retirement or thinking about retiring, you probably have questions.

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Call 717 -258 -4688 today. Hello, my name is

Anthony Uvino, and I'm one of the pastors at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Quorum, New York, and also the host of the reformrookie .com

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And finally, if you're looking to worship in a Reformed church that holds to the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, please join us at Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Corham, New York.

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♪ Oh hail the power of Jesus' name ♪

This is Pastor Bill Sousa of Grace Church at Franklin here in the beautiful state of Tennessee.

Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio financially.

Grace Church at Franklin is an independent, autonomous body of believers which strives to clearly declare the whole counsel of God as revealed in scripture through the person and work of our

Lord Jesus Christ. And of course, the end for which we strive is the glory of God.

If you live near Franklin, Tennessee, and Franklin is just south of Nashville, maybe 10 minutes, or you are visiting this area, or you have friends and loved ones nearby, we hope you will join us some

Lord's Day in worshiping our God and Savior. Please feel free to contact me if you have more questions about Grace Church at Franklin.

Our website is gracechurchatfranklin .org. That's gracechurchatfranklin .org.

This is Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our sovereign

Lord, God, Savior, and King Jesus Christ today and always.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said, Give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read.

He who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves he has no brains of his own.

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Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Before we return to Dr. Joseph C. Moorcraft III and our discussion of an assessment of the church in the 20th and 21st century, this is the third edition or the third episode or a third installment of this topic that we began several weeks ago.

Before we return to that, I just want to remind you of a couple of things. If you love this show, you don't want it to disappear from the airwaves, please,

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Those two things are commands of God providing for church and family, providing for my radio show is obviously not a command of God.

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God from the very depths of our hearts for the extraordinary act of benevolence and kindness, recently demonstrated by Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, in their renewal of an ad campaign, an ad campaign that we actually hope starts very soon once we get the ad recorded.

And we thank Dr. Moorcraft and Elder Tim Renshaw and everybody at that fine congregation for helping us.

If you'd like to advertise with us too, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com,

and put advertising in the subject line. Last but not least, if you are not a member of a

Christ honoring, biblically faithful, doctrinally sound, theologically solid church like Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia, no matter where you live on the planet

Earth, I may be able to help you find a church because I have extensive lists spanning the globe of biblically faithful churches, and I may even have a church to recommend that's within minutes from where you live in all parts of the world.

I have already done that for many people in our audience spanning the globe. So if you are in that predicament, or if somebody that you love is in that predicament of not having a biblically solid church home, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put I need a church in the subject line. That is also the email address where you can send in a question to Dr.

Joseph C. Moorcraft III as we continue our discussion on part three of an assessment of the church in the 20th and 21st century, chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. We have a listener,

Bobby in Hartsdale, New York, who says, do you think one of the reasons that those who really cling to Thomas Aquinas as a great hero that we must emulate and imitate and glean much of his philosophy in order to function properly in the church, that these same people are very often evidentialists rather than presuppositionalists because of their overemphasis on human reason?

Uh, yes. Next question. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

I think the great thing is, I have a saying, you know, viva la inconsistency.

Is some of my dear friends who say they're evidentialists and not presuppositionalists are extremely inconsistent with that.

They love God's law. They think God's law applies to every area of life. They believe that you cannot reason a person to Christianity.

He must be born again before he can believe. So there are these inconsistencies.

In all of us, we try our best not to be inconsistent. We try to be consistent with the truth.

And I'm seeing more and more people who think they're evidentialists, who think they like Thomas Aquinas' philosophy, really don't.

In fact, this revival of the Reformed faith that I keep talking about, that to me began in the late middle 20th century, continues to advance that in the 21st century, that frequently, it just continues.

I hear of something else that has been started that God has used to reach thousands of people.

I don't say this to flatter you, Chris, but I think Arn Shopperton is one of those major institutions that not only is it evidence that there is a revival, but is an instrument that will advance it so that people all over the world will listen to you.

I told you the other day on the phone about a Persian guy in England that spreads your program stuff to his own listenership.

There are several institutes of higher learning that are thoroughly

Reformed that have been established over the past decade, one within the past year, and that one is called

Christendom Bible College. Christendom Bible College. It's in a small town not far from Cincinnati, Ohio.

It is a one -year college program. Every single one of the faculty is a thoroughly

Reformed Christian. Praise God. And I have graduate degrees.

The man that is behind it is a man named Kevin Clausen, C -L -A -U -S -E -N.

He's been around a long time in Reformed academic circles, and I would recommend you go to Google and look up Christendom Bible College because it is a great place where you can send your children and grandchildren for a year before you send them anywhere else.

It's going to present people, the young people, with a distinctively Christian and biblical worldview.

Another one of those institutions is Greenville Theological Seminary. Seminaries in the past have fallen very quickly to compromised views of the

Reformed faith. Greenville Theological Seminary is less than, ah, it's about a decade old, but it is one that I wouldn't hesitate to send young men for if you want to send a young man to seminary to prepare for the ministry.

It's the only seminary in the country that I can recommend, largely because of the influence of the former president,

Joseph Piper. And he is still on the faculty. Yeah. And he is the president emeritus now.

Right. And so they also have a program that my brother -in -law went through.

I think it's a year long, but it's a seminary program just for elders. By the way,

Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary has been in existence for over 30 years, not a decade. Just thought

I'd let you know. 30 years, that is true. Like a friend of mine says, time flies when you're not paying attention.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. But also, there is another form of education that is not institutional, it's by means of historical tours.

And it's called Landmark Tours. Yes, I've interviewed Bill Potter on the program.

Bill Potter, who's one of my very dear friends, is the man who takes tours to the various places in the country and in England and Scotland, and teaches them what went on there in terms of history.

Reformation history, World War II history, Civil War history, whatever. He's one of the foremost

Christian historians in the country. He has a few lectures on sermonaudio .com,

but I would also look up Landmark Tours. It's for families, and it's a great and fun way to take a vacation and also to learn, advance your knowledge of history firsthand.

And then there is Kevin Swanson. Kevin Swanson is a preacher who is very involved in advancing the goals of homeschool.

He has a conference in his own house every year that I used to go to back when

I could walk, that he has men come to this house, and he teaches them all the various aspects of the

Reformed faith. He's one of those great men. And then there is New St.

Andrews University in Moscow, Idaho.

And then there is New Geneva Academy, I think, in Appomattox, Virginia.

Well, I've seen several people come out of that one particularly, and they have been very sound.

So there are things happening everywhere. And I praise the

Lord for it. Well, I wanna thank you for such a glowing commendation for Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, somebody of your caliber to say such words as is gonna have me flying like a kite for quite a while.

Well, I really meant it. It's a very, very useful instrument of God, and I pray that there'll be more of them.

And I look forward to it. Almost every week, something else will come up. For instance,

I don't think I've mentioned this. Our church is connected with an organization owned by people in our church called

Christian Fine Arts of Forsyth County. It has some 200 young people from elementary through high school.

And it teaches them whatever you wanna know about music and the musical worldview.

It has marching bands, chorales, orchestras, chamber music.

You can learn almost any musical instrument you wanna learn. They even teach karate.

But it has been around for many years and has influenced a great many young people from all kinds of denominations.

That's just another example. Look up Christian Fine Arts of Forsyth, F -O -R -S -Y -T -H.

So the next time you're tempted to make fun of somebody who's performing chamber music, you never know when they're gonna be a black belt, so you better shut up.

That is exactly right. That's exactly right. And so we could go on all day talking about these places around the country and world.

I tried to think this week. There is a German Institute of Reformed Theology.

I had lunch with the head guy there, but my German's not that great, so I can't remember it.

But I praise the Lord. Now, let me say I also believe that in the present state of things, that God is giving us a little breathing room with all of these new things that are starting.

But my overall attitude is I expect things to get worse in this culture before they get better.

And this is coming from a post -millennialist. That is true, that I don't believe the line upward is straight.

I believe that the line is upward, it is up and down. And there's times in which

God is chastening the church like he is now.

There's times in which God is getting the church ready for better things in the future. I pray that's where we are.

I think the quicker we learn the lessons that he has to teach us, the sooner we can get out of the mess we're in.

But we didn't get here simply. It took years of betrayal. It took centuries of betrayal.

Now, the thing of how it is, to show you how optimistic I am, although I'm a realist, I don't believe things.

You know, the Bible says the problem with false prophets in Israel's day is they wanted to declare

Israel healed too quickly. But Europe was in the, quote, dark ages for 1 ,000 years.

Now, I don't believe they were completely dark, but I believe the church had betrayed them. For 1 ,000 years, in less than one generation through the prophets and reformers, northern

Europe was transformed by the gospel. Less than one generation after 1 ,000 years of false doctrine.

And not only less than a generation, but out of that generation comes the birth of America.

And if it wasn't for these, this reformation that took place in the 16th century in northern

Europe, it never would have been an America. Now, that's not a racist statement. I'm not saying that America was built simply by Europeans.

There were also Africans involved. But I am saying that in spite of the fact that they were

European, in spite of the fact that many of them were Anglo -Saxon, they had been reformed by the word of God.

And it's not because of their European nature, it's because of what God had done in their heart that they were able to create a culture here that has been one of the most prosperous and significant cultures in history.

What's interesting is you compare North and South America. South America has more resources than North America.

And yet South America, go backward, it has petty dictatorships, it has a great amount of poverty.

And the reason is, is because South America was populated by Roman Catholics, and North America was populated by Protestants.

And God blessed Protestantism to create a great, though not perfect, civilization in North America that has influenced all the nations of the world for Christ.

Now, for evil, but through the centuries, they have sent missionaries and people to influence all over the world.

So the Protestant Reformation goes from Northern Europe to North America, to the whole world.

And I don't think that it's gonna stop until all the nations of the world have been brought to bow before Christ.

There'll be ups and downs, like we're going through right now.

There's no easy way out of Biden. There's a simple way out, but there's no easy way out, because to get out of what's going on, which means newspapers, schools, politicians, churches, the simple answer is that we must repent and renew our faith in Christ and obey his law.

There is no other answer. And the people most responsible for where we are today in the

United States, not the politicians. Politicians have a great amount to answer for.

It's not the scientists and the educators. They have a lot to answer for. The ones most responsible for where we are now, propagating falsehood and anti -Christianity and compromised

Christianity, are the pastors and the churches. The pulpit in this country has always been, from its start, the most powerful influence on culture.

In the early days, it was the most powerful influence on American culture from a

Christian perspective. Since the middle 19th century, it's been the most powerful influence in the advancement of evil.

Now, do you think one of the things that I have observed over the years,

I have been in Christian media for the greater percentage, the majority of my adult life.

And that means I have been surrounded by and witnessed a lot of different varieties of professing evangelicalism.

And I have come to conclude, and maybe you agree with this, that one of the reasons why the church has been, not only turning a blind eye to sin, but even at times celebrating it, is because of a warped and unbiblical and false version of love.

How true is that? They want to remove the sting of rebuke from sermons and even conversations.

They do not want to warn about hell. They don't want to command men everywhere to repent.

They want to coddle people and comfort them in the midst of their unrepentance.

They have become really wickedly soft on the sin of homosexuality.

Basically following the footsteps of leftists, treating this as if it is an ethnic group or a nationality, a subcategory of humanity, these homosexuals, rather than treating it the way the

Bible treats it, a damnable and abominable and unnatural sin.

And of course, that's not the only sin. But it seems that a lot of this is based on a false version of love, which may be connected to a lust for growth in numbers in local churches, denominations, and so on.

They think that the only way we're gonna grow numbers here, fill the seats that we want to fill and fill the seats that are going to be in our expanded facilities that we are building is to be as kind and as accommodating to the goats in this world and putting out troughs filled with goat food so that more people will come and fill those seats regardless of whether they are repentant and regenerate.

So your comments on that. You've just preached my sermon for Sunday on 2 John. Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

I mean, that is the point of 2 John. 2 John tells us to love people, but not loving somebody that means hurting somebody else.

That love has its limits and that love is obeying the commandments of God. There's no such thing as lawless love.

That if we're not loving somebody in terms of how God demands us to treat other people, we're not loving them no matter how affectionate we may feel in our hearts.

That there's time after time in the New Testament in which love is defined not as a feeling, not as something warm and fuzzy, but as obedience to the commandment of God from the heart, treating somebody the way they should be treated and bearing in mind other people.

For instance, even some great, in quotes, Christian scholars are very critical of 2

John. It says, they say that 2 John is not loving because it says if a heretical teacher comes to your house to try to convince you of a falsehood, don't let him into your house and don't even say goodbye to him.

Now, we don't do that today. It seems so unloving.

And yet I think the reason that that seems so harsh is because we don't appreciate fully the glory of God and the deceitfulness of sin and the deceit of false doctrine.

God wrote 2 John through the apostle John. And God says to us, walk in the truth, walk in love.

You can't walk in love if you're not walking in the truth. You're not walking in the truth if you're not walking in love.

And that love has boundaries. That don't show love and kindness to somebody if it's gonna hurt somebody else that's good.

And when some false teacher and heretic teacher try to influence in you, don't even be friendly to them because false doctrine is so evil and God is so glorious.

Amen. Isn't it interesting that a blueprint for the church, the book of Acts, never mentions the word love once?

Didn't realize that. That's pretty good. So I don't have to interrupt you in mid -sentence.

I'm gonna take our final break right now and it's gonna be a lot shorter than the other breaks. If anybody wants to join us on the air with a question for Dr.

Moorcraft, send it to chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

And only remain anonymous if the question involves a personal and private matter. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Dr.

Joseph C. Moorcraft III and his assessment of the church in the 20th and 21st centuries, part three.

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Welcome back, Dr. Moorcraft. It seems that throughout the entire history of Christendom, there is a rollercoaster going on where horrible things occur to the church and horrible things spring out of the professing church, and then

God blesses the faithful and rises up men of God and even movements of God that restore truth and spread the gospel, and then there eventually comes a day when that down slide begins again.

Would you agree with that, that even as we saw as recent as the fundamentalist modernist controversy in the early 19th, or should

I say early 20th century, where we had all of these denominations collapsing to liberalism, you had rise up faithful men like Machen, who we had mentioned in our last program, and others who restored biblical truth to the denominations or created new denominations and new seminaries and so on.

Would you think that that is something that is true and that should give us hope as we look around us and may fall into despair seeing how bad things are?

I'll never forget years and years and years ago what

Ian Murray told me. Ian Murray was the founder of Banner of Truth.

He's up in years now, but many, many years ago he told me, he said, Joe, you know the

Bible says that someday the earth shall be covered with the knowledge of the

Lord as the waters cover the sea. He said, I believe that's gonna happen like waves on the seashore.

He said, waves come up on the seashore and then they go back off the seashore.

And the next time they come up, they come up the seashore just a little farther and then they go back.

And then the next time it comes up just a little farther. He said, I think that's what we have seen and we'll see in the history of the church, that the church will grow and the kingdom of God will advance gradually and progressively like waves.

Amen. Amen. And perhaps you could, before we run out of time, rather than leaving on a dark note, you might want to offer some more encouraging words about what you witness and experience in the body of Christ in the 21st century.

Like I said the last time, that the great preachers today are the people that nobody's heard of.

Now there are some great preachers. There are some celebrity Calvinists that I don't like, but there are some that are good.

I mean, like Stephen Lawson is a very good preacher of the gospel and I enjoy listening to him.

But the people that I'm talking about, that I'm more excited about, are the pastors of churches, some of them small, not so small.

For instance, I had a preacher at a conference in Southern California. It was a

Greg Bonson conference and I preached at it and it was the largest congregation in the

Orthodox Presbyterian Church. It had hundreds and hundreds of members. And the pastor's sound, the associate pastor's sound.

So there are some big churches that are faithful to scripture, but not many.

Most of them now are small churches. Some are dying out, some are growing and more are being planted.

I just talked to a young man today, or yesterday or today, who's coming to see me in a couple of weeks if he passes his ordination exam and he's planting a new church and he's thoroughly reformed.

And this is happening everywhere. I know another young man in South Carolina, another young man in East Virginia, that they are everywhere in this country and literally everywhere in the world.

And so I am excited about what God is doing. I have the utmost confidence that his kingdom is triumphant.

I think there'll be times of struggle. I think that the seed of the martyr, the blood of the martyr is the seed of the church.

I think there'll be a lot of bloodshed, but blood is always a great seed.

Let me tell you real quick, we only have a few minutes. I'll tell you about an evangelist in Romania, I think, in our lifetime.

His name was Son, T -S -O -N, I think. And this was back during the communist era.

And they arrested him. And they told him that they were gonna kill him because of people being influenced by his preaching and his tracts and his booklets.

And Son said this after they arrested him. He said, that's okay.

That's okay. That's okay if you kill me. As long as you understand a couple things.

The most powerful thing I can do in the advance of the gospel is die. The most powerful thing you can do in the advance of the gospel is kill me.

If you kill me, that's gonna baptize with blood all of my tracts and sermons and tapes.

And I'll be far more influential for Christ's dead that I'm alive.

They didn't kill him. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Amen. As much as we hate persecution, and as much as I expect more persecution in this country, it's gonna be a powerful instrument in the hand of God.

They're just killing, they never learn that the more they kill us, the more they're killing themselves, actually.

You've seen it throughout history. We'll see it again. There's gonna be, in my opinion, more persecution in the church in this country and in the world, but it's just nails in their own coffin.

Amen. And would you say something that I have recognized, something that saddens me, and I may have even brought this up to you before,

I know I've brought it up to other people, but those who are theologically sound and doctrinally solid in many ways have remarkably, at times, very often, actually, in wanting to see strength in numbers, in feeling too much of a minority, numerically, in this enormous, monumental, colossal task that we have in front of us, evangelizing the world in the midst of such a satanic culture.

They seek to find strength, numerically, by aligning with those that may agree with us on Christian morals, and they wind up linking arms and anointing, figuratively, those who have a false gospel as brothers and sisters in Christ.

And I'm speaking especially about the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodoxy, and this happens far too often with Reformed believers, even brilliant Reformed men who

I admire greatly in many other ways. Unity in the Church is based on truth.

It's not based on feelings. It's based on truth. And only if we walk away from the truth or compromise the truth or act like not believing the truth is not that important, we lose.

You cannot even tell a false teacher goodbye if he comes to your house.

Amen. Well, I wanna make sure that our listeners have all the information they need to find out more about Heritage Presbyterian Church and some of the other things that you are involved in.

First of all, Heritage Presbyterian Church's website is heritagepresbyterianchurch .com,

heritagepresbyterianchurch .com, a very easy website to remember, obviously. And then there is a website for Dr.

Moorcraft's eight -volume, is it eight -volume? Eight -volume commentary on the larger catechism, westminstercommentary .com,

westminstercommentary .com. And also you can find out more about other writings of Dr.

Moorcraft in addition to sermons and so on by going to comprehensivechristianity .com,

comprehensivechristianity .com. Do you have any final words that you'd like to say to our listeners before we go off the air?

And then go to sermonaudio .com where we have about 2 ,500 messages, and of course they're all free to download.

But thank you for having me on because it's really always a joy and encouragement to me.

Oh, it's always a joy and encouragement to me to have you on, and I always, before and during and after having interviews with you,

I always have people contact me telling me how much they love hearing you exposit the scriptures, discuss history, and anything that flows from your

God -given mind. I have a growing number of listeners discovering you and falling in love with you and praying for your ministry, and I am just so thrilled for the friendship that has formed between us over the years.

And I look forward to collaborating with you in kingdom work, God -willing, for many years to come.

And I look forward to meeting you. Oh yeah, you know, we have never met face -to -face. That's amazing to me. Well, I'm gonna have to, the next time

I go to the G3 Conference in Atlanta, I'm gonna have to make a trip to wherever you are in coming and...

I'll pay for your lunch. All right, I will do that. And I appreciate that.

I want to thank everybody who listened. I want to thank everybody who took the time to write in questions.

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