November 29, 2023 with William Shishko on “Christian and Liberalism: Celebrating the 100th Anniversary” (Part 2)

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson,

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener,

with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on

the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 29th

day of November 2023.

And I am thrilled, as I always am, to have back on my program a returning

guest who has been featured on this broadcast many times, and he happens to be

one of my dearest and oldest friends going back to the 1980s

when I first received the gift of eternal life through the grace

and mercy and blood of Jesus Christ.

And his name is Pastor Bill Shishko, and he is pastor of The

Haven, which is a church plant of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church denomination

in Comac, Long Island, New York.

And today is part two of a discussion that we began on Reformation Day,

October 31st, part two of the discussion that we began celebrating

the 100th anniversary of the classic work by J. Gresham Machen, which is Christianity and

Liberalism.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Bill Shishko.

Hey, Chris, it's so good to be back with you.

I'm excited about this program, as I am about every program with you.

And by the way, I just realized when I remembered

our previous interview on this subject, that I have for decades been mispronouncing J.

Gresham Machen's name.

And if you could correct me on which part of his name I'm mispronouncing.

It's Gresham.

You got it right.

It's actually Gresum, not Machen.

That's what it was, Gresum.

Well, I've been making the mistake of calling him Dr. Machen, and I never got a doctorate.

But we conferred an honorary doctorate on him.

Everybody else confers honorary doctorates, so we can do it.

Amen.

Well, first, before we go into the topic at hand, which is, as I said, part two of

our celebration of the 100th anniversary of Christianity and Liberalism, tell our

listeners about that wonderful congregation in Comac, Long Island, The Haven.

Well, I'm privileged to be the organizing pastor for Mission Church of the Orthodox

Presbyterian Church, 16 Oak Lawn Drive, Comac, New York, the

upper northwest corner of Suffolk County on Long Island.

And we'd love to have you worship with us.

Our worship is at 10 a .m. on the Lord's Day, and we have what we call Sunday Seminary at 12, 15, and

Haven Food and Fellowship on most Sundays at 1 o 'clock.

But we'd love to have you worship with us.

And I truly enjoyed, beyond my ability to describe in the English language, my

first visit to The Haven close to a year ago, I guess it was.

And I hope to have many more opportunities to visit that wonderful

congregation and worship with you.

I had many opportunities of fellowshipping with you when you were pastoring the OPC in

Franklin Square, but that was the first time I had visited The Haven

in Comac, where you are now pastoring.

And I just love that church.

I love the way you worship.

And I love the liturgy without being dry and robotic, a lot

of lively and enthusiastic and passionate liturgy there.

Liturgy with life.

Yes, amen.

So if anybody lives near Comac, you're passing through, or you have family, friends, and loved ones there,

go to thehavenli .com, thehavenli, for Long Island,

.com, and you can find out all the information that you need.

Well, let's have an overview, for the sake especially of our listeners who did not

hear part one of our conversation on Christianity and liberalism that we conducted on

October.

31st.

Let's have an overview of this class.

Well, it's interesting, Chris, that since we had our last program about a month

ago, World News Group—and I commend, as I know you do, World News Group for

journalism that really seeks to bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ—but

they made J. Gresham Machen's Christianity and Liberalism, which came out

in 1923, they have declared that Book of the Year

for 2023, apparently with no debate among them, which is really

something.

I think that they recognize—I'll use the word prescient here—this is a book that

really not only describes the situation in Machen's day, but as

we're going to learn in the second half of the program today, it is very eerily

prophetic of what we're experiencing today.

Christianity and liberalism is a masterpiece of popular scholarship and

logic.

I find it interesting, Chris, that H. L. Mencken, who was a fellow Baltimorean with

Machen, Mencken did not believe any of what Machen believed

about the Christian faith, but he was familiar with the book, he was familiar with what was going

on in Machen's denomination at that time, the Presbyterian Church USA, and he

was aghast that this man who upheld what

Presbyterians are supposed to uphold was the one who would eventually be thrown out

of the Presbyterian Church USA, because Mencken said you can't—even though again,

he didn't agree with Machen—he said you can't answer his scholarship and his logic.

So what Machen gave—and I think this is probably why World gave it the Book of the Year for

2023 award—it really was kind of the early tremors of this earthquake

of modernism or liberalism that crept into the churches in the

20th century.

And I'll give you the overview, just a hint on reading the book Christianity and Liberalism.

Don't read it first as a theological text.

It's really the map of a battlefield with the different theaters of the

war—doctrine, God and man, the Bible, Christ, salvation, and

the church.

Liberalism, which is not to be equated with political liberalism,

liberalism—which really was not very liberal, but that's beside the point—liberalism,

otherwise known as modernism, really denied the fundamentals of the Christian faith about

God and man and about the Bible and Christ and salvation.

And so what Machen is putting forth in his book is

really three things.

One, liberalism, theological liberalism, denial of the fundamentals of the faith,

is not a different brand of Christianity.

That was what was being espoused in the Presbyterian Church of the United

States of America in 2023 and in other churches.

He said it's not a different brand of Christianity.

It's not Christianity.

And he says that over and over again in the book and proves his point.

Number two, the book makes the point that Christianity is about supernaturalism

versus naturalism.

Naturalism means that really God doesn't intervene in the world.

If he does, it's really just by experience, that religion is just an unnatural

outgrowth of human life and progress.

And Machen says absolutely not.

From beginning to end, the Bible is about the supernatural, the true and living God's involvement in the

world.

And then number three in the book, it's a strong statement about

history, what God has done in history that precedes

Christian or religious experience.

Very, very important for the book, the importance of history before experience.

That's kind of an overview of Christianity and liberalism.

Okay, well, today we have a situation

that makes the liberalism of Machen's day pale

into insignificance in comparison to what we are seeing today, even within

professed Christianity.

We even had professedly conservative and even professedly reformed

congregations and denominations electing into office people who

claim to be homosexuals, who merely

make a vow of chastity and celibacy and so on.

And we could go on and on and on.

Would you say that Machen's work, having said that, is still

as powerful in the 21st century as it was in his day?

Chris, it was last night in preparing for this I finished, I think for the third time I've been through the book,

although I hadn't been through it for many years.

Even I could not get over how powerful that book, this book is as a statement today.

I think that's again why the World News Group gave it book of the year.

But my dear brother, we're getting ahead of things.

I'm looking, I plan to deal with those things in the second hour.

Okay, then we'll wait to the second hour for you to respond to that.

Okay.

Let me just give your audience an overview.

And Chris, you know, you interrupt me at points.

I can just go on and on and on.

Yeah, well, in the first program, we covered just really just the introduction to

the book.

That's the October 31st, 2023 program.

And then that was chapter one.

Chapter two is about doctrine.

And in a real sense, as many people have pointed out, the whole book is really about about Christian

doctrine.

But in a quote, I won't quote too often from Machen, but I want people to get a get a feel for the book.

Machen writes, according to the Christian conception, a creed is not a mere

expression of Christian experience, but on the contrary, it is a setting

forth of those facts upon which experience is based.

That's probably a succinct summary of the whole book.

He says, if any one fact is clear on the basis of the evidence,

it is that the Christian movement at its inception was not just a way of

life in the modern sense, but a way of life founded upon a message.

And what he's getting at there, liberalism put a big emphasis supposedly on the way of life.

Machen says you can't have the way of life without the message that comes.

And he also has in the chapter on doctrine, the primitive church, what we'd call the early church,

was concerned not merely with what Jesus had said, but

also and primarily with what Jesus had done.

Machen's putting himself over against the religious teachers of his day who wanted to follow

the words of Jesus, but they didn't pay attention to what he actually did.

Again, Machen, the world was to be redeemed through the proclamation of an event.

And with the event went the meaning of the event and the setting forth of the event

with the meaning of the event.

That was doctrine.

So that's his really what is his second chapter.

God and man is chapter three in the book.

Again, the introductions, chapter one, doctrine, chapter two, and then God and man,

chapter three.

And when we come to the second section, Chris, in so many ways,

there have been such marked changes, even from Machen's day.

But God and man, for the religion of Machen's day, and it's true to

a large extent today, God was known through feelings.

Not an uncommon statement in Machen's day was this.

The knowledge of God is the death of religion

because the emphasis was on feelings rather than so -called facts.

The emphasis was on the quote unquote, the practical, not the theoretical.

Doctrine would be called the theoretical.

And as Machen points out, there's nothing about objective reality when

you deny doctrine.

Therefore, there really is no knowledge.

At that time, the emphasis was on the fatherhood of God, which was regarded as the

essence of Christianity and the brotherhood of man, a very popular hymn then.

And even today, God, our father, Christ, our brother.

Right.

And as Machen points out so powerfully, in one sense, I mean, God is the father of all

people, his creator.

But the relationship of God to unrepentant sinners, as Machen put it,

is not the relationship of a father to his children.

And this was regarded as inflammatory in Machen's day, that you

would deny that liberal concept of the fatherhood of God.

Machen speaks of the loss of what he calls the awful, and awful is not

bad, but full of awe.

The word awful is a wonderful word when you take it for what it really means, that the awful

transcendence of God, Machen emphasizes the great gulf

between God and the creature.

And regarding man in chapter three, on God and man,

Machen has this statement, according to the Bible, man is a sinner

under the just condemnation of God.

According to modern liberalism or modernism, the denial of the fundamentals of the faith,

there is really no such thing as sin.

At the very root of the modern liberal movement that is in theology is the

loss of the consciousness of sin.

Now, he wrote this in 1923.

The consciousness of sin was formerly the starting point of all

preaching, but today it is gone.

Characteristic of the modern age above all else is a supreme confidence

in human goodness.

The religious literature of the day is redolent of that confidence.

Get beneath the rough exterior of men, we are told, and we shall

discover enough self -sacrifice to found upon it the hope of

society.

The world's evil, it is said, can be overcome with the world's good.

No help is needed from the outside world.

Wow, that Chris was 1923, and that was

the view of man that was held then.

The other statement in this chapter, Christianity means that sin, this is

powerful, Christianity means that sin is faced once for all

and then is cast by the grace of God forever into the depths of the

sea.

The trouble with the paganism of ancient Greece, as with the paganism of modern times,

was not in the superstructure, which was glorious, but in the foundation, which was rotten.

There was always something to be covered up.

The enthusiasm of the architect, God is maintained as a great architect here, was maintained

only by ignoring the disturbing fact of sin.

In Christianity, on the other hand, nothing needs to be covered up.

The fact of sin is faced squarely once for all and is dealt

with by the grace of God.

But then, after sin has been removed by the grace of God, the Christian can

proceed to develop joyously every faculty that God has given him.

Such is the higher Christian humanism, that's over again, secular humanism, a

humanism founded not upon human pride, but upon divine

grace.

Oh, I mean, talk about, I'm jumping already, Chris, into what we're going to be dealing with

in the second hour.

But when's your break?

I can keep going here.

Why don't I take the break now, so I don't have to interrupt you.

Mid -sentence.

Great.

And if anybody has a question for Pastor Bill Shishko on J.

Gressamachin, as I am correcting myself in my pronunciation, please send in

your email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

And as always, please give us your first name at least.

Your city and state and country of residence only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter,

such as you are a member of a church, for instance, that you believe

sadly and tragically needs to hear the warnings of J.

Gressamachin today because they are accurately described

in this classic work as a liberal church, or might even be

more accurately described in the 21st century, a leftist church.

But if you're just asking a general question, it's not personal, it's not private, give us your first name at least, city and state and

country of residence.

Don't go away.

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We're now back with Pastor Bill Shishko of the Haven Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Comac, Long Island,

New York.

And we are continuing part two of a discussion we began on October

31st, celebrating the 100th anniversary of J. Gresham Machen's

classic work, Christianity and Liberalism.

And if you have a question, submit it to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

And since you mentioned earlier H. L. Machen, I want to once again plug

the documentary that was produced by our mutual friend and

also one of your colleagues in the Orthodox Presbyterian denomination, Jason Wallace

of Christ Presbyterian Church in Magna, Utah.

He produced The Unexpected Orthodoxy of an Atheist,

H. L. Machen's obituary of J. Gresham Machen.

And even though, as Pastor Shishko mentioned earlier, even though Machen,

the atheist, disagreed with much, if not most, of what

J. Gresham Machen stood for, he still revered him as a

man of integrity and a man of gifts and power and so on and

wrote this wonderful obituary that I actually had the privilege

to record in my voice for Jason Wallace's video.

So if you want to see that yourself, go to YouTube and

type in The Unexpected Orthodoxy of an Atheist.

That's The Unexpected Orthodoxy of an Atheist.

And you can also go to the website of

Christ Presbyterian Church in Magna, Utah.

And that website is gospelutah .org.

But if you could, Bill, pick up from where you left off there.

You know, that obituary by H. L. Machen really, really is remarkable.

I have to hear it in your voice.

We're in actually chapter four of—.

By the way, you're not going to recognize my voice because after hearing a recording I

actually found of Machen, I tried to imitate him as best as I could.

No, that's interesting.

Makes it even more fascinating.

Chapter four in Machen's volume, Christianity and Liberalism, is on the Bible.

If you're looking for proofs that the Bible is inspired and inerrant

and plenary inspired, fully inspired, this really wouldn't be the chapter you'd want to read.

Not that Machen didn't believe it, but that really wasn't his purpose in this chapter.

But he has what to me was just a fascinating insight into why we have the

Bible.

He said, the Christian message has come to us through the Bible.

What should we think about this book in which the message is contained?

According to the Christian view, the Bible contains an account of a revelation from God to

man, which is found nowhere else.

The way was opened, according to the Bible, by an act of God when almost, we

would now say, 22 ,000 years ago.

Outside the walls of Jerusalem, the eternal sun was offered as a sacrifice for

the sins of men.

To that one great event, the whole Old Testament looks forward.

And in that one event, the whole of the New Testament finds its center and core.

Salvation, then, according to the Bible, is not something that was discovered, but something that

happened.

Now, he's put distancing himself from those who believe the Bible was kind of an evolved historical

document that came out of the imaginations of people.

Back to Machen.

Hence appears the uniqueness of the Bible.

All the ideas of Christianity, listen carefully to this, all the

ideas of Christianity might be discovered in some other religion,

yet there would be, in that other religion, no Christianity.

For Christianity depends not upon a complex of ideas, but upon the narration

of an event.

Without that event, the world, in the Christian view, is altogether dark,

and humanity is lost under the guilt of sin.

There could be no salvation by the discovery of eternal truth, for eternal

truth brings nothing but despair because of sin.

But a new face has been put upon life by the blessed thing that God did when he offered

up his only begotten son.

And Machen's just, his esteem of the scriptures, which, that's one of the things Chris

and I got done last night going over this.

I don't want to be facetious, but that song, Thank God I'm a Country Boy, and I don't want to be irreverent,

but I said, Thank God I'm an Orthodox Presbyterian.

This reverence for the Bible that Machen had is so much a part

of the church of which I'm a part, and I'm thankful for that.

Machen ends the chapter on the Bible by saying, the Reformation of the 16th century

was founded upon the authority of the Bible, and yet it set the world aflame.

Dependence upon a word of man would be slavish, but dependence

upon God's word is lawful.

Bill, you've frozen.

If we were left to our own devices and had no blessed word of God, the Bible to the

Christian is not a birth card of Christian

liberty.

It is no wonder, then, that liberalism, that is theological liberalism, is totally different from

Christianity, for the foundation is different.

Christianity is founded upon the Bible.

It bases upon the Bible both its thinking and its life.

Liberalism, on the other hand, is founded upon the shifting emotions

of sinful.

Next hour in the application, that works itself out in so many ways, but that was the

insight of J. Gress Machen.

His next chapter is on Christ, whom he calls the supernatural person.

Again, for Machen, again, this is for the scriptures, Christianity is a supernatural religion.

We're not talking about something that is the evolution of human thought and development.

It's God speaking and acting in history, and Christ is, as Machen calls him,

the supernatural person.

This is probably the most complex chapter in the book, and in his more

popular way, he develops the orthodox doctrine of Christ.

He's God and man in two distinct natures and one person.

His point here is that Jesus is not an example for our faith

or an example of faith, but he's the object of our faith.

It's not just his person, but also his work.

Interestingly, for those who've read C .S. Lewis's Mere Christianity, there's something similar

to what Lewis famously said in Mere Christianity.

Don't call Jesus a good man.

A good man, because no good man would claim to be God, or he'd be the most arrogant man on the face

of the earth, and he has other things.

But Machen says the same thing in there, telling if Jesus is your

moral example, he claimed to be God, and

that would make him a man of hyper -arrogance.

But anyway, the chapter on Christ, he also deals with miracles in this lengthy chapter.

Miracles were denied by those of the liberal persuasion and theology,

and again, tellingly, Machen says, it is small comfort to be told that there

was goodness in the world, because liberalism emphasized the goodness of man

and so on.

He said it's small comfort to be told that there was goodness in the world, when what we need is goodness

triumphant over sin.

But goodness triumphant over sin involves an entrance of the creative power

of God, that's supernaturalism, and that creative power of God is manifested by

miracles.

Without the miracles, the New Testament might be easier to believe, but the thing

that would be believed would be entirely different from that which presents itself to us now.

Without the miracles, we would have a teacher.

With the miracles, we have a Savior.

Isn't that something?

That's so beautifully expressed.

And there again is the supernaturalism.

One of Professor Machen's other volumes was on the virgin birth of Christ,

which was denied by the theological liberals.

Many denied not all, many denied the bodily resurrection of Christ.

And Machen said, you take that out, and you don't have Christianity at all.

So that chapter on Christ is very full.

Now the one on salvation, especially where Machen

emphasizes the cross and the atonement, it is

Machen's eloquence at its highest.

I will put in my books, Chris, when I'm writing, wow, when it's a statement, that's a

wow statement.

And there's loads of wow statements in his chapter on salvation.

There are so many of them in here.

But he says, according to the Christian belief, Jesus is our

Savior, not by virtue of what he said, because the liberals

wanted to say that they lived out of the words of Jesus, although they really didn't.

But anyway, not even by virtue, Machen again, not even by virtue of what Jesus was,

but by what he did.

He is our Savior, not because he has inspired us to live the same kind of life

that he lived, but because he took upon himself the dreadful guilt

of our sins and bore it instead of us on the cross.

Wow, what a statement in a succinct form of what the gospel is.

Again, quoting him from his chapter on salvation, our religion must be

abandoned altogether unless at a definite point in

history, Jesus died as a propitiation for the sins of men.

Propitiation is to appease the wrath of God.

And of course, liberals, theological liberals, hated the concept of the wrath of God.

And there, as Machen points out, their opprobrium, their

invectives, their opposition to the doctrine of penal

substitutionary atonement, that Christ died taking the punishment for our

sins as a substitute for us.

This was something the liberals railed against.

Now back to Machen, he says, with regard to this

objection to their atonement, it should be observed that if religion be made

independent of history, there is no such thing as a gospel,

for gospel means good news, tidings, information about something that

has happened.

A gospel independent of history is a contradiction in terms.

The Christian gospel means not a presentation of what always has been

true, which was basically what liberalism was saying, but a report of

something new, something that imparts a totally different aspect

to the situation of mankind.

So what Machen just goes right to the heart of things there.

Now what's fascinating, we've got what, Chris, about five minutes before your break?

Actually 10.

Okay, great.

This, Chris, is brilliant.

We're told today, as Machen was told in his day, yes, but the Christian faith is exclusive.

It's narrow.

And Machen takes that on.

He talks about the criticism of the gospel for its exclusiveness, that Jesus doesn't say,

I am a way, a truth, and a life, the way, the truth, and the life.

Now follow what Machen says.

What struck the early observers of Christianity most forcibly

was not merely that salvation was offered by means of the Christian gospel,

but that all other means, or means of salvation, were resolutely

rejected.

The early Christian missionaries demanded an absolutely exclusive

devotion to Christ.

Such exclusiveness ran directly counter to the prevailing syncretism, which is a

blending of paganism and Christianity, the prevailing syncretism of the Hellenistic age.

Salvation, in other words, was not merely through Christ.

It was only through Christ.

And that little word only lay all the offense.

Now some background.

When Machen was writing this, and one of the things that makes him, I think, so passionate in this chapter,

the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America was sending out missionaries

who said, basically, all religions are at the base of a mountain, and they're all

going up the mountain to the same God.

And there was no, to say the least, no emphasis on the exclusiveness

of the gospel.

And that would include Pearl Buck, correct?

Pearl Buck was exactly the one that Machen was dealing with.

But all are on the same road to God,

and a complete denial of the new birth, which Machen has a tremendous section on

the new birth here.

But here we go.

Now watch how he deals with this exclusiveness argument.

He says, in answer to the objection about the exclusiveness of the gospel, it

may be said simply that the Christian way of salvation is narrow only

so long as the church chooses to let it remain narrow.

The name of Jesus is discovered to be strangely adapted to men of every

race and of every kind of previous education.

And the church has ample means, with promise of God's spirit, to bring

the name of Jesus to all.

If, therefore, this way of salvation is not offered to all, it is not the

fault of the way of salvation itself, but the fault of those who fail

to use the means that God has placed in their hands.

I've not read anything like that in other books, but that's powerful.

Machen was passionately concerned with missions.

One of the reasons why I'm glad I'm part of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

It's embedded into our warp and woof.

Yes, the gospel is exclusive, but let's go to people with it and

call them to repentance and faith.

That's an absolutely brilliant, brilliant thing.

The other thing I would say about this is Machen deals with the fact

that Christianity is not Christian civilization.

And today where we have Christian nationalism and things like this, Machen makes the point that

Christianity will certainly impact the culture and form people.

But that formation of a society, that's not Christianity.

Christianity is focused on Christ.

And then before the break, a chapter on the church would be, for many of your

listeners, Chris, kind of odd in a way.

Machen was dealing with a situation in the Presbyterian Church, USA and other churches, where

ministers, as you were mentioning before, ministers would come in with crossed fingers.

They would profess to believe the Bible is the word of God.

But they really didn't.

They reinterpreted that.

They would confess that they believed that in the Presbyterian Church, the Westminster Confession of

Faith was the system of doctrine, contained the system of doctrine taught in Holy

Scripture.

But they really didn't believe that.

And Machen makes the point that here the issue is honesty.

And tellingly, Chris, he makes the point, he says, really, if you don't believe these

distinctives, why not become part of a Unitarian Church?

And a lot of it's because of money.

But here, and then I'll end with this, this is what is prophetic and sad.

Machen says in his chapter on the church, if you don't believe what the church's

confession is, then be honorable and leave.

Either start another church or become part of one that does hold what you do.

But he said, please don't coexist with us.

And what's tragic is that it would be 13 years later that those liberals who

really were illiberal, they would force Dr. Machen, Professor Machen,

out of Presbyterian Church USA.

So I found that chapter on the church.

I wanted to have my tissue box near me.

It was sad when you realize what happened.

Yes, in fact, they should go beyond forming another church.

They should be honest enough to form their own religion because they're not

Christians at all when they are denying the essentials of the scriptures.

Correct.

That's right.

And when you have a confessional standard, and again, you profess it, but with crossed fingers,

as Dr. Machen says, that's dishonesty.

All right.

Next hour, we're going to deal with the application for today.

Great.

And just a quick clarification.

Because there are those of our friends and brothers and sisters who think

somehow having a confession violates the principle of

sola scriptura and the sufficiency of scripture.

How can you correct our perhaps well -meaning

brothers and sisters and their error on that?

Yeah.

Number one, even for example the Westminster Confession of Faith or the 1689 Confession,

they make very clear in there that the Bible is the final authority for faith and life.

The second thing is everybody has a confession.

That's right.

As soon as you say, I believe the Bible teaches this, you have a creed.

So, be honest, we put our creed, our confession, right out there for people to check

and to test by the Word of God.

Yes, we as Christians.

Must.

Never be enslaved to the extra -canonical

teachings of men, the uninspired writings of men.

But at the same time, we must never be so arrogant that we reject great

minds even of the past who have much to teach us.

If we come to the conclusion that we are so insightful and brilliant and wise

that we don't need great teachers of history at all to rightly

understand the Word of God, we are heading on a dangerous path, aren't we?

Exactly. The arrogance of the modern, as it's often

called.

Amen.

We have time right now for one question before the break.

We have Finn in Elwood, Long.

Island, New York.

And Finn says, earlier you were quoting J.

Gressom Machen in his defense of the miraculous.

I am sure he was not defending the understanding of the miraculous promoted by the

continuationists in the charismatic and Pentecostal movement.

Yeah, absolutely.

Machen's talking about the miracles recorded in the Bible, the passage through the Red Sea, the Jesus walking

on the water, the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus, the resurrection of Christ.

Machen would have had no use at all for these pseudo -miracles that are spoken of.

Today.

Yes, and you and I, I know, we believe God does miracles.

We know somebody has cancer, we pray, not only for the surgeons to be skilled at

treating that person, but we pray that God would physically heal that person.

But the difference is that the charismatic and Pentecostals believe that they are humans with the gifts to

heal today.

Correct.

Yeah, the miracles in the Bible are designed to not only show God's work of new creation, but especially in the

Gospels they confirm that Jesus is the great prophet.

Miracles confirm that a prophet was bringing the word of God, and the miracles confirm that Jesus

is the greatest prophet, the God -man.

Well, thank you, Finn, in Elwood, Long Island, New York, and guess what?

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And also let us know if you're a first -time questioner, because you will also receive a New American Standard Bible.

We are going to our midway break right now.

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Before I return to Pastor Bill Shishko of the Haven Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Comack,

Long Island, New York, in our continuation of a discussion we began on October

31st celebrating the 100th anniversary of J. Gresham Machen's

classic work, Christianity and Liberalism.

Before I return to that conversation.

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And if you could, Pastor Bill, begin the application of this classic work.

Thanks, Chris.

This is a painful thing to talk about because we're dealing with our professed brothers and sisters in Christ

as Machen was doing.

Let me begin, I guess, with true confession.

It was with a minister friend of mine and he was lovingly, I think, trying to push me into a corner

and he said, you'd have to say, Bill, first of all, you're evangelical, not reformed,

right?

And I didn't take the bait, and I said, because I don't like throwing around

the word reformed as a buzzword, but I am, but I said, my problem is this.

I don't use a word if I can't define it.

I don't know how to define evangelical anymore.

I have said there needs, and I've actually suggested this to friends that I think would be

very capable of writing something like this.

Take Dr. Machen's Christianity and Liberalism that was done in 1923

and do a volume that we really need called Christianity and Evangelicalism,

or as I put it this way, Christianity and Evangelicalism, or the

trajectories of some forms of today's evangelicalism, and that's exactly the

problem.

Evangelicalism is kind of hard to get your hand on because it's

not a distinct group within a church, as I point out, where liberalism,

and probably do it this way, here's why it's difficult.

In Dr. Machen's, in Professor Machen's day, the emphasis was on

words.

Liberalism came in propositions.

This is a new media world from a hundred years ago, and we've gone from words

to pictures and experience, and that's what makes evangelicalism

really hard to pin down.

But I do want to make some applications of Professor Machen's book to today's

evangelicalism broadly considered, if I could put it like that.

And here, I think maybe probably the best book to recommend, you can get it from

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, which is one of my favorite book services, is the book by David

Wells, The Courage to be Protestant, which in many ways touches on these kinds of

things.

But here we go.

Let's take Professor Machen's five heads in his

book, or six, actually, that we dealt with, and just make some comments.

And Chris, you're more in contact with the modern evangelical world than I am,

so feel free to embellish these things, as I know you'll be able to do.

Doctrine.

Well, you alluded to this before.

We are generally dealing in evangelicalism with a creedless or

confessionless church situation.

Evangelicalism doesn't like to debate the so -called fine points of theology.

The imputation of Adam's sin, the imputation of Christ's righteousness,

what the Word of God says about the magistrate, about church government, and so on.

This has been replaced, as it was being replaced in Machen's day, by the so -called

practical.

That brings this disconcerting situation.

Ask evangelicals questions like this.

What's God?

What's the new birth?

Who was Jesus?

What's the meaning of the cross?

What's the gospel?

What's the meaning of salvation?

And you will be stunned by the answers.

A number of years ago, Mike Horton from White Horse Inn had done an interview with,

either he did it or somebody else connected with him did.

I think it was the National Association of Religious Broadcasters.

And people were asked, what's the gospel?

Very few of them got it right.

The gospel is Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

And it was stunning that in this evangelical

establishment, the National Association of Religious Broadcasters, there was such,

I'm sorry to say, such ignorance of doctrine.

So that would be one thing.

Now you come to Machen's chapter three, or what we've covered in the second, God and Man.

Oh, my.

What atrociously low views of God

proliferate among evangelicals, many of them.

The view of worship, the view of, the attitude,

the conversation about God, attitudes toward God.

Is the fear of God a dominant thing among them?

I don't want to indict all evangelicalism, but again, we're talking about a mood here, the

evangelical mood.

Reverence, is reverence such a thing among modern evangelicalism?

I think of Bob Dylan's song from years ago, in his album Slow Train Coming, which had to be

influenced by some, he had to have been influenced by somebody that was Reformed, where he said, you

think he's just, speaking of God, you think he's just an errand boy

to satisfy your wandering desires?

Not all evangelicalism, but at least what I read and see and hear.

Now when you deal with man, man is front and center in

modern evangelicalism, and there are atrociously low views

of sin and guilt.

Machen said in 1923, page 65 in Christianity and Liberalism,

that the consciousness of sin was formerly

the starting point of all preaching.

Now this is 1923, and he says, but today, it is gone.

I don't know how you can be farther gone than gone, but it's even worse today where you have

atrociously low views of sin and guilt.

So much of modern evangelicalism.

Man doesn't really need a savior.

He needs a helper.

And the fear of giving offense by dealing with

personally and closely with sin, whether it be the sin of infanticide,

or whether it be the sin of sexual addiction, the

unwillingness in many ways to give offense for fear you're going to lose

hearers, that's just— ask people, are you concerned about

offending God with things?

Seeker -sensitive churches in which the professed standard is, what

would it take for people to come to my church?

That was what the late Robert Schuler did with his I think now defunct Crystal Cathedral.

What would it take for you to come to my church?

That's pregnant with painful significance.

And incidentally, when we use that language in the scriptures, man isn't the seeker.

The Bible says no man seeks after God.

It takes a supernatural work of grace to make a man seek God.

The seeker is God, and he seeks those who worship him in spirit, that is by the Holy

Spirit, and in truth.

That's John 4 and verse 23.

So that focus on man, and Chris, I commend—I mentioned World Magazine.

I commend the article by Andre Sue Peterson.

Andre and I were at Westminster Seminary together, the seminary that Dr. Machen founded in 1929.

She writes for World Magazine, and in the August 26th issue,

Andre, who is very concerned for outreach and evangelism,

had an article that I just had to clip, and I'm glad I can quote from it.

A front porch revival, quote unquote.

A front porch revival, question mark.

The welcoming church must take care not to become the apostate

church.

And here she specifically refers to the late Tim Keller, who talked about

the front porch as a place to meet with unbelievers, which in itself is a

good thing.

But then Andre writes, what about Keller's notion that, quote, in this space,

nonbelievers—she's quoting Tim Keller, the late Tim Keller— nonbelievers feel themselves to

be fully accepted, gratified participants.

What could go wrong with that, writes Andre.

Well, it depends on what you mean by ratified participants.

Beware, she says, of extra biblical terms.

Does it mean the unbelieving neighbors you invite to your porch are to be considered

as having spiritual and social views on an equal footing with Christian

views?

Or what if the term ratified participants morphs over time to

mean not only to the unbelievers you invite to your front porch, but also the

unbelievers you invite to your Sunday morning worship service.

Are they ratified participants there too?

Ratified enough, say, to take the Lord's Supper?

To head committees?

To teach Sunday school?

That, incidentally, would be the situation Professor Machen dealt with in 1923, quoting Andre Sue

Peterson again.

If their views are recorded equal validity with believers' views,

do not be surprised if before long a rainbow flag

flies from your church.

Now, this written by a woman who is very, very concerned for outreach and ministry to others,

but even she sees this kind of adrift.

The Bible.

There is among evangelicals, I think, in most cases, a formal acknowledgment that the Bible

is the Word of God.

But what's the attitude in practice?

And that we have to deal with individual situations, but here, something greatly

different from what Professor Machen dealt with.

This is now the internet age, and there is shocking

carelessness among God's professed people about what they

attend to on the internet.

Who wrote these things about the Bible?

What's their way of interpreting the Scriptures, and how do they apply them?

And that's because I think in many cases, most cases, within evangelicalism,

the Bible has really become more of a springboard for experience.

Ministers will read about quote -unquote sermons that impact, or

so many messages by evangelicals are really just kind of short

motivational addresses.

This is nothing at all like an historic reformational

biblical emphasis on the Bible as the Word of God.

Let me go ahead.

I want you to interact.

Let me deal with Christ.

Again, going back to the question, you wonder when you ask people today, who is Christ?

What did he do?

What's the meaning of the cross?

And too often it seems to me that there are symbols, these are symbols, and

they become a substitute for the deep realities given in the Scriptures.

Machen's comment, the cross, this is from 1923, the cross is

celebrated, but it is not understood, and he quotes the

hymn, the very popular hymn, in certain circles, nearer my God to thee,

nearer to thee, even though it be a cross that

raiseth me.

That's not the cross of Christ.

That's dealing with human tribulation, or difficulty, and as Machen points out in the

book, one can only be sorry that the people on the Titanic could

not find a better hymn to use in the last solemn hour of their lives,

because that was the hymn that was played.

And these, Chris, again, I don't gloat in dealing with this.

I'd like to think these problems are not as widespread as I think they are, but if this is the case,

this is a very sorry day of salvation.

Now, if we have the erosion in all of these other doctrines, the

Bible, God, man, sin, and so on, yet one must wonder what

salvation means in many sectors of so -called

evangelicalism.

Often, at least as I hear it, it becomes human improvement.

You know, five steps to improve your prayer life, five steps to be a better dad, five steps to be a

better wife, or whatever it would be.

Machen tellingly at a couple of points in the book dealing with this, in Christianity and

liberalism, points out that view of Christianity is a

return to medieval Christianity and Rome.

It's not an emphasis on grace, but upon works.

And it's an elevation of human experience above what happened on Good Friday

and on Easter and so on.

So, again, I don't want to paint with too broad a brush, but that seems to be the big thing.

And here, this is so significant, Chris.

There's no call to repentance.

If you don't have a view of sin, then there's not going to be a call to repentance.

And that's the clarion call of the kingdom of God.

The book that I was given recently to read, Embracing the

Journey, A Christian Parent's Blueprint to Loving Your LGBTQ

Child by Greg and Lynn McDonald.

I don't know who they are.

I know that they're, I believe they are connected with Andy Stanley's congregation down in Atlanta,

Georgia.

And it's a painful book to read.

These are people whose son came out as gay,

as a homosexual.

And the book is largely anecdotal about the agonies the family went through.

But they came to the view that they needed to embrace.

These are Christians, professed Christians.

They needed to embrace the journey of their son who was in the

LGBTQ category.

And the book concludes this way.

God designed humans to love one another, our friends, our church.

And yes, even those who seem like our enemies.

It's not always easy, but we're made to live together in fellowship to help one another, to bear one

another's burdens, and to encourage those around us to keep going.

Notice how man's the center.

There's something life -giving about taking the focus off ourselves and helping others.

Our unexpected journey, writes Greg and Lynn McDonald, has brought us

to a place where we can be grateful for the opportunity to offer hope to the hopeless.

Help.

Others embrace their journey, which for them is the LGBTQ

journey, and experience true peace and

contentment.

The book doesn't mention repentance from sin once.

This is the stuff, Chris, of so much of modern evangelicalism.

And if there's anything that's an epitome of the kind of liberalism that

Professor Machen was dealing with, it's this.

Man front and center.

The brotherhood of man and no call to repentance.

And then I'll just end with this, and then I know you've got loads of comments in our break as well.

The chapter on the church in Machen.

If Machen were alive today and he looked at the evangelical church,

he would say, I'm in a totally different world.

I look at what's out there, so to speak.

I'm not sure I'm on the same planet as some, if not many, in the

evangelical church.

Some examples.

No church membership in a church?

No church discipline in a church?

If baptism is administered at all, by whom?

What does it mean?

Is the Lord's supper at all administered as part of church life?

Is this church, quote -unquote, accountable to anyone beyond the local level?

And what's its mission?

And so much, sadly, of the megachurch movement, the mission is the megachurch.

Whereas the church is to be about bringing the biblical gospel to all the world.

I'm not saying all evangelicalism, or even a majority of it, doesn't have a sense of that

mission.

A lot of it does, but a lot of it doesn't.

And so, here again, Chris, I don't want to end on a negative note.

I have some practical counsels we'll come to.

But I mean, Chris, you see this.

Is this an overstatement of things?

No, it's not.

And.

I think some of it can be summed up in the fact that

there is an idolatry of niceness.

And it appears that the worst sin or crime in the minds of many

who profess to be Christians today, that a Christian can commit, is to

correct a brother in error, or to warn a lost person that

they are headed for hell without repentance.

And.

What you were saying about those parents who tragically

support a child on a journey into the LGBTQ

community, so -called, reminded me of a very powerful

message in a testimony I heard recently.

There's a dear sweet sister named Patty Height.

That's Patty with an I.

And she spoke recently at a local church here in Carlisle about how

Christ delivered her from her enslavement to lesbianism.

And she has been completely delivered, not only from lesbianism, but from gender

confusion.

And she no longer has any lesbian desires and so forth.

And she said something very powerful, but something I'm sure is very unpopular.

And I'm paraphrasing her because I don't have it written down what she said, but she said very often

parents lifting up their children as idols can lead them away from the faith.

And not only did it remind me of that book that you were just describing,

but just very recently, I arranged a debate between Dr. James R. White and a

professed homosexual named Gregory Coles.

And.

Before Gregory Coles accepted the challenge to

debate Dr. White on the homosexual issue,

I contacted James Brownson, who had originally accepted my invitation, but his

wife urged him to back out because he does have some health

issues regarding his mind.

But James Brownson was considered by many a thoroughly biblical and reformed

exegete, professor of New Testament at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan.

And because his son came out as a homosexual,.

He.

Basically, it seems, forced himself to abandon biblical orthodoxy and accept as

legitimate the wickedness of homosexuality.

And wrote a book titled Bible, Gender, Sexuality.

But the issue, a lot of it, is also, I think,

rooted in a twisting of the scriptures in Matthew 7.

Do not judge so that you will not be judged.

And therefore, those that twist this teaching from the lips of

our Savior, basically are saying, don't criticize anyone

and dare question their salvation because this is forbidding us to do that.

Well, they're obviously not reading the whole text because Christ goes

on further to say, for in the way you judge, you will be judged.

And by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you.

Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?

Or how can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye, and look, the log is in

your own eye?

You hypocrite.

First, take the log out of your own eye, and then you will clearly see to

take the speck out of your brother's eye.

We are to take the specks out of our brother's, our brethren's eyes, but we're not to

do it hypocritically.

And then, ironically, Christ immediately goes on to say, do not give what is holy to dogs,

and do not throw your pearls before pigs, or they will trample them under your feet and

turn and tear you to pieces.

How could anyone obey that command of Christ unless they're using judgment

and discernment?

And that is something that is so prevalent in modern evangelicalism.

I can remember when I first started conducting the debates on Long Island between Dr. James R. White and Roman Catholics,

and there were far more evangelicals that were angry at me for doing this than there were

Roman Catholics.

And I can remember the owner of a bookstore, a Christian bookstore, in the Huntington

area, I don't even know if it exists anymore, when I brought in posters for the debate, the very

first debate, I believe it was, on Mary, he said to me, how dare you?

And I said, excuse me?

He goes, this is a day and age when we should be linking arms with our Catholic brothers and sisters, not stirring up

animosity and disagreement.

And I said to him, well, number one, you're demonstrating animosity towards me and disagreeing with me,

and number two, isn't the most loving thing that you could do is to correct

someone in serious error who's denying the gospel, that they may discover

eternal life?

So that's my two cents about that whole thing.

Yeah, well, Chris, you've just made the strongest point for why the reissuing of

Professor Machen's Christianity and Liberalism is so contemporary.

You made the point because he dealt with the same mindset in his day in praising the

journey when I actually spoke with someone about this and

wanted me to endorse the person's lesbianism and mentioned the

book Embracing the Journey, and I said, let me ask you a question.

Should I embrace the journey when that journey is to your own destruction?

Right.

And I said with a broken heart, but that's what we're dealing with.

The other thing, and when we have the...

I know you've got a break again,.

Right?

Yeah, in about 30 seconds, I've got to go to the break.

Okay, real quickly,.

Evangelicalism, we don't know what it means.

I appreciate the brother in one of your ads.

He says, I'm from Franklin, Tennessee.

I'm a Baptist.

I'm independent.

Tell me what your church believes.

I'm a Baptist, Methodist, whatever that holds to our historic standards.

We've got to start speaking like this.

Yes, amen.

And we're going to our final break.

If you have a question for Pastor Ciszko, and there are some of you who are waiting patiently.

I hope you're waiting patiently to have your questions asked and answered, but if you want to get in line, please send in your email

immediately to chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.

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We have a question from Lolly in Ridge, Long Island, New York.

Lolly asks, what would Jay Gresham Machen think about

friendship evangelism, where we are to win people over by the way we live and

not by preaching the gospel to them, necessarily?

Very often you will hear the quote that is accredited to St. Francis of Assisi, but I'm not

sure that is an accurate way to get the source of that quote, which is,

preach the gospel and, if necessary, use words.

Sometimes the text of Scripture in 1 Peter, where we read, wives be

submissive to your own husband, so that even if any of them are disobedient to the Word, they may

be won without a word by the behavior of their wives.

They'll use that as a justification in the way we try to win our friends and loved ones and neighbors

to Christ.

What would Machen think now?

Well, Machen would have been a strong.

Believer in being friends with people and ministering to them in that way, but he would

abominate the idea that the gospel comes without words.

What Peter's talking about is an illustration of what's given in the Word.

That would be meaningless if you didn't have what the Word of God said, so you have to have words.

Chris, I don't know if you have another question.

Matt, just a moment for some practical counsels in here.

I know we're at some time here.

Yes.

Okay, I don't want to end on a negative note, and again, when I deal

with evangelicalism, I think we've just got to be honest about how that term is very, to say the least, very

mushy today.

But let me give four practical counsels, and if there's other questions, we can deal with them.

Number one, study sound doctrine.

The word sound actually in the pastoral epistles is the word, we get the word hygienic from it.

There's a cleansing power in sound doctrine, so whether it be the

Westminster Confession of Faith, the OPC edition with the proof text is excellent, and it has the larger and

shorter catechisms as well, or the 1689 London Baptist Confession,

which Brother Ravinio mentioned in one of your ads.

Good catechisms, good theological books, a good starting point is Louis

Burckhoff's Summary of Christian Doctrine.

That was used for, I think, for high school students, but it's a good introduction.

But please, please study sound doctrine.

Christianity and liberalism is first of all about that.

Number two, and I say this as a Presbyterian, where we have not been favorable and are not favorable toward

the imposition of a church calendar on people, but we need to revive the use of the

church calendar, at least regarding emphasizing

Christmas, quote -unquote, the birth of Christ, Good Friday, Easter, the

resurrection of Christ, Ascension Day, and Pentecost.

Why?

These are events in history.

Our redemption is founded on those things, and so however it's done, those

historical events of the Gospel need to be re -emphasized.

Number three, Christian education.

I won't read Professor Machen pages 180 and 181, but Christian

education, not just in the churches, but in Christian schools and in Christian

homeschooling.

Machen actually believes that's the number one duty in his day, and he says at the very end of

that section, men have abundant opportunity today to learn what

can be said against Christianity.

Well, if that was true in 1923, how about today?

And it is only fair that they should also learn something about the thing that is being

attacked.

In other words, please, let's teach a Christian education, so important.

And the last one is this, be careful of the church that you are in.

You need to be in a church that has a confessional standard.

It doesn't have to be the Westminster Confession of Faith.

It can be the London Baptist Confession of 1689, the Belgic

Confession, even if it's the Confession of the National Association of Evangelicals.

Be in a church that puts right up front what it believes.

Otherwise, you're going to be in a situation that is, to put it.

Mildly, is not going to be helpful to your soul.

Great.

We have time for perhaps one more listener question.

We have Blair in Little Elm, Texas.

What, in your opinion, is the greatest heresy of the evangelical church in our

modern age?

That's a very, very difficult question to answer.

I really, I believe that the non -emphasis on

repentance from sin would be the top thing,.

Because everything else really flows from that.

Yeah, and there are even some churches that would be very conservative who embrace that

heresy.

We've got to keep in mind, when the kingdom of God comes with Christ, what's the

message?

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Amen.

And I'll throw in one more question from,

let's see, Roberto in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

Are there any documentaries about Machen that you could recommend, especially involving this

particular book, Christianity and Liberalism?

Not that I know of.

I can think of one that I saw on YouTube.

I believe it was John Piper's lecture on Machen, which really is excellent.

That's what I would recommend.

And of course, John Piper's a Calvinistic Baptist, but his about an hour -and

-20 -minute lecture on Machen, which has some pictures in it and so on,.

Is really outstanding.

By the way, everybody who has sent in questions today has won the classic Christianity and

Liberalism by J. Gressom Machen.

Thanks to our friends at Ligonier Ministries and Reformation Trust.

So please make sure we have your full name and mailing address.

And Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com, will ship that out to you.

And if you're a new questioner, they will also include a New American Standard Bible.

Please summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today,.

Pastor Bill.

What I want most etched is believe that the Bible is the Word

of God, emphasize what it tells us about Jesus and the Gospel.

Without Christ as he's revealed in the Scriptures, there's no deliverance from sin and guilt.

Amen.

Well, once again, I want to make sure that our listeners have your website for the Haven

Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Comac, Long Island.

It's thehavenli .com, thehavenli for LongIsland .com.

I also want to once again recommend that our listeners go to YouTube and

find the documentary or the presentation that was

created by Jason Wallace of Christ Presbyterian Church in Magna, Utah,

which was H .L. Mencken's obituary to J. Gressom Machen.

You could just type in H .L. Mencken's obituary to J. Gressom Machen, and that will come up on

YouTube.

And the website for Pastor Wallace's church is gospelutah .org,

gospelutah .org.

And I misspoke earlier.

I remember now that when I said that I listened to a recording of Mencken in order

to try to imitate him, I now remember that I just imagined in his mind the way that he would speak,

and then I verified it later when I dug up a recording of him, and I wasn't far off when I did the

narration of that video.

But I want to thank you so much, Pastor Bill.

You are always an extraordinary guest.

I look forward to your frequent return to the show.

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

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.

And by the way, folks, don't forget, if you're a man in ministry leadership, the next Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Free Pastors Luncheon

will be held on June 6, 2024, featuring Dr. Joel Beeky.

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If you want to register, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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God bless you all.