March 29, 2018 Show with Earl Blackburn on “John Chrysostom: A 4th-5th Century Doctor of the Church More Evangelicals Should Discover Today”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th -century Gospel Minister George Norcross in downtown

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

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth. We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 29th day of March, 2018, and I'm delighted to have back on the program an old friend of mine who has proven to be an excellent guest, and I look forward to today, and I look forward to many future interviews, as many as the

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Lord will allow. I am speaking about Earl Blackburn, who is chairman of the administrative council of the

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Association of Reformed Baptist Churches of America for six, I'm sorry, for eight years.

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That is also known as ARBCA. He is the pastor of Heritage Baptist Church of Shreveport, Louisiana, and the author of a number of books, and today we are going to address one of those books,

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John Chrysostom, and we hope to provide reasons why a 4th to 5th century doctor of the church should be discovered by more evangelicals today, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Earl Blackburn.

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Thank you, Chris. It's a joy to be with you, and it's a joy to talk about someone that has formed my life in so many ways, and especially my ministry, and it's very appropriate that we do so at this time, because this coming

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Sunday, Easter Sunday, will be the 1 ,650th anniversary of his baptism, of his immersion in the triune name and confessing the name of Christ as his

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Lord and Savior. Yes, and of course, you being a Baptist, but specifically insert the word immersion there.

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You and I are both Reformed Baptists, so we rejoice in that, and that probably comes to a surprise to many listening who are not

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Baptists. It would probably actually come as a surprise to many who are Baptists as well, but it is clear that the immersion of believers was indeed a practice in the ancient church.

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It's not something that arose on the scene of 19th century revivalism in America.

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That's what some people might think. In fact, we would think it is obviously the biblical mode and the biblical candidates being repentant believers.

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But before we go into the topic of John Chrysostom, please let our listeners know who missed you the previous times you were on the show.

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Let our listeners know about, first of all, we'll start with the Association of Reformed Baptist Churches of America, also known as ARPCA, where you once were the chairman of the administrative council, and you were for eight years, but of course are still a member of that association.

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Well, I have been snookered into being the chairman for the last two years.

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My chairmanship will end this May at the General Assembly of the

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Reformed Baptist Churches of America. We are a small group, a humble group, I trust. We have a desire to exalt the triune

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God, to make known the excellence of Christ, and like John Chrysostom, who preached and believed strongly in a life -changing salvation, and of carrying the

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Great Commission to the ends of the earth, to those who have never heard. And so we have no pretensions about who we are.

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We're just a simple confessional body, association of churches, that wants to see the glory of God as revealed in the face of Jesus Christ, made known over all the earth.

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And so it has been my esteemed privilege, I came back on the administrative council two years ago, and I could only commit myself to two more years, so this will be my tenth year as chairman, and what a godly group of men to work with, who have been faithful, committed to the scriptures, committed to our confession of faith, committed to world missions, and so forth.

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It's been a great, great joy. Amen. And the church where I'm a member,

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Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, is also a member of ARBCA, and if anybody wants more information about ARBCA, they can go to ARBCA .com.

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That's A -R -B -C -A, standing for the Association of Reformed Baptist Churches of America. ARBCA .com.

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And now tell us about the church where you currently pastor, Heritage Baptist Church of Shreveport, Louisiana.

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This church is historically connected with the

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Southern Baptist Convention, and we are duly aligned with the

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Southern Baptist Convention and with ARBCA, and the building in which we are in has its roots all the way back to 1919, 1918, 1919.

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We're not exactly sure because the blueprints are not as clear.

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It is an inner -city church. At one time it was one of the most prestigious churches in the

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Shreveport area, but the neighborhood began to decline, and we had a lot of what

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I call white blight. A lot of the people, white people, white -collar people left.

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But there was a core group of people that said, you know, if we leave, who's going to give the gospel to these people that so desperately need it?

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So it's an inner -city church. It's multiracial. It's multilingual. Our services are translated into Spanish every

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Sunday, and sometimes when we have people from other countries, those that are fluent will also translate into whatever language is needed.

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We're not a real large church. We're dealing with people that are literally the outcasts of society.

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The police chief of Shreveport told me that he wouldn't want to be in this community for anything.

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It's tied with the first most crime -ridden neighborhood of the entire city, and yet here we are, and we're reaching people who are broken and in great bondage to unspeakable things

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I couldn't even mention on the air. Of course, our conviction and belief is that the great need is not for another program, not another self -help program.

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The great need for our community, for our city, and here in Louisiana, we're the only state in the 50

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United States that has parishes instead of counties. Our parish and our state, the great need is not for another social program, not for another social justice agenda.

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The great need that will break the power of all bondage and all dominions is the gospel of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. It is still, as Paul said, the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes, to the

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Jew first and also to the Greek or to the Gentile. And so we're ministering, laboring in an inner -city setting, and it's wonderful.

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Every Lord's Day we gather to see so many people of various backgrounds, colors, and many people whose first language is not

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English. And yet we're sitting there side by side not looking at our race or our color or our language, but we're looking at the fact that this is a sister or brother in Christ who has been redeemed by the blood of the

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Lamb, and that we rejoice. It's just wonderful to see the gospel transform lives.

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People who had no hope and people whose lives have been broken and destroyed by all sorts of sins and many of the unspeakable things that I would not even talk about on the air.

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See them rescued by the mighty Savior Christ the Lord in His all -powerful gospel.

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Praise God. You know, it's interesting that you are staying in that area, and I happen to be someone that a number of churches have contacted up north, up here, in not only

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Pennsylvania but even in New York where I lived previously, where they have asked me to help them find a new pastor.

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These are churches that are having a pastor who is about to retire or leave for some other reason or their pulpits are open for one reason or another.

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And when they have asked me to provide this assistance to help them find a replacement, it is interesting how often the brethren from down south or the

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Midwest are terrified and have no interest in seeking or accepting the call to a church that in their minds, because of a stereotype of New York from the movies,

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I'm assuming, they think that the entire state of New York is nothing but a crime -ridden urban city.

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But the fact that you are knowingly remaining in a crime -ridden urban area is quite to your credit because of the gospel that is needed in places like that and pastors who are only taking and accepting calls to beautiful safe communities.

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Now, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. I mean, if you have a wife and children and that is something that you are diligent to make sure that they are safe or something of that nature,

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I'm not going to bad -mouth pastors like that. But there are few and far between is really what

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I'm trying to say, men like you, who wish to remain in a place like that. Well, my first ministry was in Utah among the

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Mormons for seven years and then I was called to Metropolitan Los Angeles to plant a church and I was there for 22 years.

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And many people have the same idea about Los Angeles as they do New York, but, man, these places need the gospel.

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And I was diagnosed with cancer 14 years ago. All three of my doctors told me

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I needed to find another church, a smaller church in a more rural parish, as they put it.

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And there were several churches that were interested in me, but when this church made contact, we made contact, to use the words of Charles Wesley, my heart was strangely warm.

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And when I spoke with the Pulpit Search Committee, I told them, I said, now, I am originally from the

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South, I know there's been a lot of racism, and I want you to know that I'm not going to talk.

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If you were to call me and I believe it to be the will of God, I will not tolerate racism of any kind.

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I don't care if the person is green or purple. If they want to come into this church and hear the word of God and the gospel of Christ, they will be welcomed.

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And if they repent of their sins and believe upon Christ, I will baptize them and bring them into the membership of this church.

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And if you're not in agreement with that, then there's no need for us to talk any further. And immediately one of the men on the

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Pulpit Search Committee, a doctor who has remained faithful, been with this church, he said, no, you're the man we're looking for.

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And several times we have been approached by others, why don't you leave this community? Why don't you leave this inner city area?

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Go out into the suburbs. And I am just so pleased with the mind and opinion of the people, and especially the church leaders.

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They report. If we leave, who will give the gospel to this community?

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Who will be salt and light? Who will be a light on the hill for this broken, perishing, dead community?

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And we're not going to leave. It's such a thrill to me to pastor people like that, that have that same burden and vision.

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And if you please, that same passion to make the gospel known in the most difficult places.

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I remember a statement made by a man that is probably little known today, a missionary named

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C .T. Studd, S -T -U -D -D. He was a famous cricketeer, cricket player in England, and was converted.

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And in his lifetime, he planted churches on five different continents.

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And he used to have a little saying, and my mind and soul resonates with it so much.

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He said, some people desire to live within sound of church or chapel bells, but as for me,

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I want to run a rescue shop right at the door of hell. Wow. And that's the mindset that I have and the mindset of these people here.

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We want to run a rescue shop right at the door of hell. Amen. And you know, some want to, you know, and Isaac Watts put it well in his famous hymn,

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Am I a Soldier of the Cross? He says, must I be carried through the skies on flowery beds of ease, while others fought to win the prize and sailed through bloody seas.

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And it is our desire here to be in this downtrodden community.

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People, they're not hungering for Christ. They're not wanting Christ. They're in bondage to their addictions and slavery to their sins.

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But we want to proclaim unto them the great shepherd, the good shepherd, the chief shepherd,

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Christ, who can lead them out of those bondages and into the green pastures and beside still waters.

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Amen. Well, this may go over the heads of a lot of our listeners, including yours, but you in an odd way reminded me of the pizzeria owner in Do the

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Right Thing, Spike Lee movie where this Italian -American pizzeria owner played by Danny Aiello remained in a very dangerous neighborhood even though it changed radically over the years and one of his sons who worked there with him wanted him to leave, thought he was nuts for wanting to stay.

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But, of course, your mission and your purpose is infinitely greater than serving pizza to the people that were raised on this pizzeria owner's food.

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Yours is a mission to be used of God to bring the gospel of everlasting life to those in darkness.

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So you are to be commended, and I want to make sure that the listeners, I will repeat this

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God willing later, but the website for Heritage Baptist Church of Shreveport, Louisiana is hbcshreveport .com.

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That's H -B -C for Heritage Baptist Church, Shreveport, S -H -R -E -V as in victory,

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E -P -O -R -T dot com. Well, now we are getting into the theme for today,

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John Chrysostom, a 4th to 5th century doctor of the church more evangelicals should discover today, and it probably does surprise a lot of people to discover a

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Reformed Baptist wrote a biography of John Chrysostom. That is strange.

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If somebody is having a Bible conference on the patristics or the church fathers, and they want somebody to address the life and legacy of John Chrysostom, a

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Reformed Baptist from Shreveport, Louisiana would not be the first person that might come to mind.

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But why is it, before we get into a lot of the details about his own history, what is it that drew you and fascinated you so much about this giant of theology from history that led you to research him in much greater depth and write a book about him?

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Well, let me say first of all that I am not a Chrysostom scholar.

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I'm not a patristics scholar. But from my earliest days of Christianity, I came across some writings of the early church fathers, and they whetted my appetite in an unusual way.

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So I want to just make this disclaimer, I am not a Chrysostom scholar.

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There are a few men out there, and a few books have been written on a great scholarly depth regarding Chrysostom.

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Secondly, the book that I wrote, published by Evangelical Press, I was asked to write what is in a series called

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Bite -Sized Biography. And the purpose of this series by the publisher was so that people today might be introduced to famous Christians of yesteryear, and to do so on a very elementary level.

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By the way, brother, can you make sure your mouth is as close to the mouthpiece as possible, because sometimes you fade out.

19:52

Okay, I'm sorry about that. Is that better? That last word you said was better, yes.

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Okay, great. Well, the publisher asked if I would write a biography.

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I referenced John Chrysostom several times in other writings, and asked if I would write a bite -sized biography that could be read in two to three hours.

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Say someone is on a plane trip across the Atlantic, or on a train trip from the south of England to the north of England, or from the south of France to the north of France, or wherever.

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And, of course, I agreed. And what began this pilgrimage for me,

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I remember very early on in my theological studies in one of my church history classes, the name

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John Chrysostom was mentioned. But little was said about it. And that, too, whetted my appetite.

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And the more I began to read about this guy, the more fascinated I became with him.

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And over the years, just read a lot of materials about him, materials by him, sermons by him.

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Of all the early church fathers, he has the greatest stand of sermons above them all.

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No other church father was as profuse in writing or in sermon production as John Chrysostom.

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And so the more I read, the more fascinated I became, and the more thrilled

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I was at the Christocentrism, the godliness, the integrity, and the sufferings that this man endured for the cause of the

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Gospel. Well, he is more readily associated with, or typically associated with, the

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Eastern Orthodox Church, I know. And I know that the Roman Catholics uphold him as a father of the church as well.

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But I have discovered, the longer I have been a born -again believer, that many of the church fathers on the most crucial of issues have much more in common with Bible -believing

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Protestants than they do with Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic individuals and churches.

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Tell us about the history of John Chrysostom as far as what you know in regard to his own religious upbringing, if any, and how he came to learn about Jesus Christ and got more deeply involved in study and in leadership, etc.

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Well, of course, he was born, probably. We don't know the exact dates because of the

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Julian calendar and the Gregorian calendar and things of this nature.

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But in all probability, he was born around 349 A .D.,

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A .D. 349. He was raised in a quote -unquote

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Christian home. There's no doubt that his mother was truly a converted woman.

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His father died very early in infancy, or very early in his life, somewhere in his first two years of life.

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And he was raised with the godly influence of a mother that prayed for him and cared for him, much like Augustine and many other

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Christians throughout history. The godly influence of a mother can never, never be underestimated or understated.

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And somewhere around, though he was raised in a Christian home, somewhere probably around his 17th, 18th year, he experienced a genuine conversion.

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He had been fascinated with rhetoric. He studied at the School of Labienus, the last great

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Greek rhetorician, and learned much there.

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But he was converted and he was baptized in 368 on Easter Sunday.

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And as it was the tradition of those days, well, in the Eastern Orthodox Church, they still baptize by immersion.

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I remember this Greek Orthodox friend of mine told me, he said, you know why we Greek Orthodox immerse, don't you?

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And I said, well, not really, why? And he said, because we know the meaning of baptizo.

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That's right. Baptizo and so forth. If anybody saw the movie

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My Big Fat Greek Wedding, when the woman's fiancé has to convert to Greek Orthodoxy before he can marry this woman, they baptize him in a kiddie pool.

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Because normally they're baptizing babies by immersion, and obviously they don't need anything that large.

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But for his circumstance, they brought a baby pool into the, a baby swimming pool into the church.

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Well, he was, and as it was the custom, oftentimes Easter was the time in which they baptized the catechumens.

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The catechumens were those who had confessed Christ, but they didn't immediately, unlike most of evangelicalism today, receive them into the membership of the church.

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They taught them. They catechized them from the Greek word catechesis. And they taught them basic Christian doctrine, basic Christian living.

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They taught Orthodoxy and Orthopraxy, right belief, right practice.

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And once the catechumens proved to be a genuine convert, they would baptize.

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And usually Easter Sunday, at least in the early days of the church, was the time in which they were baptized.

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John was baptized. And, of course, the Greek word for wisdom is the word sophia.

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And so he plays off of this oftentimes in his sermons because the

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Greek philosophers talked much about sophia and about wisdom and knowledge and so forth.

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And John Chrysostom, John as he was simply called then, John of Antioch, said

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Christianity is the true sophia. It is the true wisdom. And he would use that passage from Paul and Colossians, you know, beware of vain philosophies, vain wisdom.

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And so he became a true convert there. I go into his life as much as the editors would allow.

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He very early on has such a zeal and desire to walk with Christ that he goes into monasticism.

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And we often think of monasticism in a negative term. But in those days, in the early days of monasticism, or the ascetic life they called it, they were given over to just prayer and meditation.

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And John had a desire and a burden to memorize all of the word of God.

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Now, whether he did or did not memorize the entire Bible, there's reason to believe that he probably memorized a great deal of the

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New Testament. It's so evident in his sermons. He quotes

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Scripture with such liquidity and such fluidity. And so he does this for several years.

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And then he went from the communal life, that became too noisy for him, to a solitary life.

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And following the ascetic practices of the day, he did harm to his body and he had to leave.

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And he comes back home and he begins to work there with Meletus, the

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Bishop of Antioch, who very quickly recognized a very gifted and godly man in John.

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And he follows the ladder up the orders of ordination, first as a reader, then a deacon, and then eventually as a presbyter or, as we know today, a priest.

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So that's the first great chapter and segment of his life, his conversion, his ascetic life, the solitary life.

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And then that eventually led to his ordination. And when you say that he became a priest, what was a 4th to 5th century

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Christian's understanding of what that is? I mean, from what I understand of Etristics, things like transubstantiation and the unbloody sacrifice of the

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Mass and things that are known in modern Roman Catholicism and other things that are similar in Eastern Orthodoxy were absent from the patristic era for the most part.

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What, to your knowledge, was someone who was identified as a priest doing or believing in the 4th to 5th century when

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Chrysostom lived? Well, of course, the seeds of those things, like transubstantiation and baptismal regeneration, were there and some were more latent and some were more on the surface.

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But in John's day, the basic presbyter, as we would use today a presbyter much like an elder or a bishop in a parish church, his primary role was to minister the

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Word of God. And this is where Chrysostom becomes so noted throughout history.

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One of the things to recognize about him, he lived in some very formative times.

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He lived after the first great ecumenical council, and for those of you out there that don't understand the meaning of ecumenical, don't be afraid of the word ecumenical.

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It simply means worldwide. The first great ecumenical council, of course, was

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Dionysus in 325, where the doctrine of the Trinity was formulated.

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It wasn't discovered. They simply, from the scriptures, reasoned from the scriptures and formulated what we know today as the doctrine of the

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Trinity. So he was born after that. The second great ecumenical council was the first council of Constantinople in 381.

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And so he at that time was in Antioch, and he had no part in that great council, such as Gregory Nazianzus or the great creed that came out of that, the

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Nazino -Constantinople Creed. He was ordained.

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So he didn't play a role in any of these first two great ecumenical councils, nor did he play a role in the third great ecumenical council, the

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Council of Ephesus in 431. He was dead by that time. So in between these great ecumenical councils, he lived.

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He became popular, and I know we're going to come out on a break and I can tell more about that later, but he became popular because of his preaching.

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And the primary work of a priest, as we would know now, but a presbyter in that day, or a bishop, was that of preaching.

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And his name was simply John of Antioch. And it wasn't until a century and a quarter later that he was given the name

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Chrysostomus, which is the Greek word for golden mouth. And that name has stuck with him more than anything.

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That's why he's known as John Chrysostom, John the Golden Mouth. He was so eloquent.

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He had learned in his unconverted days the principles of rhetoric, and upon his conversion he was endowed with unusual gifts by Christ through the

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Holy Spirit, and he was a master orator and preacher of the Word of God.

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And so a priest of that day primarily dealt with ministry of the

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Word of God. And what an expositor he was. Of course, he did baptize, and he did observe the

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Lord's Supper, and there in the Greek Orthodox Church they observed it every Lord's Day.

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But he also did a lot of counseling, a lot of pastoral work, caring for so many different distressed folk in the flock.

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But again, the primary work, which I think has been lost in Eastern Orthodoxy, in Roman Catholicism, and all the various branches of Protestantism, was to be a minister of the

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Word of God. And that is what he is the most known for in our day.

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What an outstanding preacher. And I can say more about that later. Right.

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We have to go to our first break right now. In fact, I have forwarded you a question that you can mill over during the break, and I'll read it when we come back and you can answer that.

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That was a question from Joe in Slovenia. If anybody else would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

34:21

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

34:29

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

34:35

So don't go away. God willing, we'll be right back with more of Earl Blackburn and our discussion on John Chrysostom.

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Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And Solid Ground Christian Books wants you to know about a couple of things.

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First of all, their editions of the 1689 London Baptist Confession and also the

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Go to Solid -Ground -Books .com, Solid -Ground -Books .com and tell them that you heard about these offers and about Solid Ground Christian Books from Chris Orensen and Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and I thank the many of you who are listeners to this program who have already purchased many books from Solid Ground Christian Books and have told

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Mike Gaydosh, the founder, that you heard about him and this publishing ministry from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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He has called me with very, very long lists of people who have ordered from him through hearing about Solid Ground Christian Books from Iron Sharpens Iron, and the list was so long that I had to say,

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OK, you can stop now. And I think my guest may have fallen off a chair or something.

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But we are now back with Earl Blackburn, and as you may have heard me say earlier, he is or has been chairman of the administrative council of the

42:05

Association of Reformed Baptist Churches of America for eight years, and he is the pastor of the

42:10

Heritage Baptist Church of Shreveport, Louisiana. We are discussing his book, John Chrysostom, and we are hoping to provide reasons why a 4th or 5th century doctor of the church should be discovered by more evangelicals today.

42:23

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

42:28

And before I go to our listener in Slovenia's question, I just want to read a plug for this book by a friend of mine,

42:36

Tom Nettles, who has been a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio a number of times. Dr.

42:41

Tom Nettles, who is a former faculty member at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and also a former faculty member at the

42:49

Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Illinois. But Dr.

42:54

Nettles says, This is truly a charming, informative, and inspiring book. Blackburn, as an experienced pastor himself, has sought out those aspects of Chrysostom's ministry that show the strengths, courage, humility, faithfulness, doctrinal integrity, confidence, and the power of proclamation that every pastor should covet while pointing to the weaknesses and troubles endemic to the historical context of Bishop John.

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I found not only the subject, but the style of presenting it to be engaging and provocative of high thoughts.

43:35

That is Dr. Tom J. Nettles, who we hope to have back on this show very soon. And now we have the question that our guest, or our listener,

43:46

I should say, from Slovenia, Joe in Slovenia, says,

43:52

Brother Earl, I noticed that the book description mentions that John Chrysostom influenced

44:00

John Calvin, and what are some of those most significant influences? In what ways are we blessed today by John Chrysostom through Calvin?

44:13

Well, first of all, I want to use the word that Chrysostom deplored, applauded our brother

44:22

Joe in Slovenia, and if he would send you, and then you send this on to me, his address in Slovenia, if he doesn't have a copy of this book,

44:33

I would like to personally mail him an autographed copy. My heart, my soul goes out to those who are laboring as missionary church planters in places where the gospel is not known.

44:50

And I pray that the Lord will strengthen and enrich and bless our brother laboring there in Slovenia with a great harvest of souls for whom

44:59

Christ died and much success in preaching the gospel and planting churches. So if he would send in his mailing address to you,

45:07

Chris, and then you can forward it on to me, I would like to send our brother an autographed copy. I can't do that for everyone, but I would love to do this for the servant of Christ laboring in the mission field.

45:18

Now to get to his question. In order to answer this question,

45:25

I need to give you a little background about the times in which John lived.

45:31

The question has been and still is today, how do we interpret the

45:39

Bible? And though there are many answers given, in John's day there were primarily two schools of thought.

45:49

One was the Alexandrian school of thought, which dealt more with allegory and symbolisms and so forth, and the other was the

46:00

Antiochian, from Antioch, school of hermeneutics.

46:06

And their approach was, now this is not hard and fast, because both of these views would overflow with each other throughout

46:14

Christendom of that time. You might have someone in Antioch that would hold to Alexandrian hermeneutics, or you might find someone in North Africa that held to Antiochian school of hermeneutics.

46:32

The two schools were basically, one was, of course, primarily fathered by Origen, the early church father,

46:41

Origen. And he believed there were four levels of interpretation of each scripture.

46:47

And I don't want to go into all those. I'll just briefly touch on it. You can do research on your own. But the main one was the allegorical level, which, you know, you can make the scriptures basically say anything that you want to.

47:04

Martin Luther was quite a champion of that, and you read some of his commentaries, his commentary on Genesis and other places, and he spiritualizes a lot of things that I don't believe he had the liberty to do so.

47:18

But the Antiochians were very, those of that school were very strict.

47:25

They were really the fathers of what we would call literal historical interpretation.

47:33

And they didn't go in for a lot of this allegory, except where the scriptures allowed it.

47:40

I mean, for instance, you can't take the Book of Revelation literally in every sense.

47:46

I remember hearing one famous radio preacher haranguing people for not taking the

47:51

Book of Revelation literally, and then he turns around and he's reading from one of the seven churches where Christ says, the one that overcomes

48:00

I will make to become a pillar in the temple of our God. And I thought to myself, now, dear brother, does that mean when we go to heaven we're all going to be turned into pillars of marble?

48:10

We're all going to be frozen. So you can't take that literally.

48:17

And the Antiochians were aware of that, too. Theodore, who was

48:22

Chrysostom's primary teacher in theology, was great in handling the scriptures.

48:30

And so Chrysostom was one who believed that the Word of God is the

48:37

Word of God. The Bible just doesn't contain the Word of God. It is the Word of God. He believed himself, and the

48:44

Reformers got this, I believe, from Chrysostom. A pastor, a minister, an elder, a presbyter is not there for himself.

48:57

He is to be a servant of the Word of God. From Acts chapter 6, where the apostles said, we will not wait on tables.

49:06

It wasn't that waiting on tables was below their dignity. They said, we will give ourselves continually to prayer and ministry to the diakonia, the servant of the

49:17

Word of God. And the Antiochians and, of course, Chrysostom himself was notorious for this.

49:27

And he writes a book entitled On the Priesthood, in which he devotes a good portion of it to what it is to be a minister of the gospel and a minister of the

49:41

Word and what is necessary. And Calvin was influenced heavily by that.

49:48

When Calvin set up the academy in Geneva, he had certain requirements for admission into the academy.

49:58

Among them were you couldn't neither be affected by the praise of men or the criticism of men.

50:07

And he knew that both of them changed, and sometimes people are praised and they get puffed up and they're criticized and they become deflated.

50:16

And Chrysostom deals with this. And he lays down in his book

50:22

On the Priesthood 14 principles of what makes a man a good minister of the

50:30

Word of God. I'll not go into those. You can see that in the book. How did this affect

50:35

John Calvin, the great reformer of Geneva? The only other book that was published in Geneva during Calvin's lifetime, except for Calvin's sermons and his commentaries, was a book of selected homilies by John Chrysostom.

50:55

And Calvin himself selected these homilies, or sermons, and in the preface to the

51:01

French translation of Chrysostom's homilies, Calvin writes these words, quote,

51:08

The outstanding merits of our author, Chrysostom, is that it was his supreme concern always not to turn aside even to the slightest degree from the genuine simple sense of scripture and to allow himself no liberties by twisting the plain meaning of the word.

51:29

End quote. And Calvin was, and I want to use this word properly,

51:36

Calvin was notorious for being a literal, strict, historical interpreter of the scriptures.

51:44

You've got to let the scriptures speak for themselves. And that's what

51:49

Chrysostom proclaimed. That's why he's really the father of what we would know today as expository preaching.

51:57

Today we're living in a time in which men are, I remember, I think I've shared this with you,

52:03

I'm preaching through the book of Romans at our church at this time, and before I started I was talking with some of the men in our association, and the subject came up, what are you going to preach on, or what are you preaching on, and I said,

52:15

I'm getting ready to start the book of Romans. And one guy spoke up and he said, wow, I would never preach on the book of Romans.

52:21

I did. Because if I did, it would drive away half the people in our church.

52:31

And I thought to myself, maybe they need to be driven away.

52:37

If that, if the book of Romans, preaching through the book of Romans drives people away, then the sooner they leave, if they're not going to submit themselves to God's inspired, inherent, infallible word, sufficient word, then let them go where they'll have their ears tickled and where they'll be entertained.

52:55

In fact, we have to pick up right where you left off there when we return. We have to go to our lengthy break, our midway break that is approximately 12 minutes.

53:05

That is because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, requires a long break between our two major segments.

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So please be patient with us as we go to this break, and please not only write down the information that the advertisers are providing for you so you can patronize them, but also write questions for our guest,

53:26

Earl Blackburn, to ChrisOrensen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

53:32

And I already sent you, I forwarded another question to you, Earl, from Tony in Rock Hill, South Carolina.

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So if you could look that over, and of course we'll let you continue finishing the answer to Joe and Slovenia's question as well.

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Don't go away, we'll be right back with Earl Blackburn right after these messages from our sponsors. Tired of box store

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listeners can help keep my show on the air is to support my advertisers. I know you all use batteries every day, so I'm urging you all from now on to exclusively use batterydepot .com

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Or go to batterydepot .com. That's batterydepot .com. Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko inviting you to tune into A Visit to the

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Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull. Join us this Saturday at 12 noon

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Eastern Time for a visit to the Pastor's Study because everyone needs a pastor. Hi, I'm Buzz Taylor, frequent co -host with Chris Arnson on Iron Sharpman's Iron Radio.

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if you mention Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Also, I have to announce that the

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Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology is coming up soon, very soon, April 13th through the 15th in Byron Center, Michigan, and then

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April 27th through the 29th in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. That's the location

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I planned to attend. That's the Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology, no longer held in Philadelphia, but sentimentally named that out of honor and respect and tribute to the late

01:04:48

Dr. James Montgomery Boyce, who for many years held this conference at the 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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This year's theme is the spirit of the age and the age of the spirit.

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Speakers include Daniel Aiken, Richard Gaffin, Daniel Hyde, and I will bet you that my guest, Earl Blackburn, would agree that one of the most powerful preachers on the planet

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Earth alive today is Conrad M. Bayway of Kibwata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, Africa. He is one of the speakers.

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Richard Phillips, Jonathan Master, David Murray, and Scott Oliphant. If you would like to register for this conference, or these conferences,

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I should say, because there's two locations and two different dates, go to AllianceNet .org, AllianceNet .org,

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click on Events, and then click on Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology, the spirit of the age and the age of the spirit.

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Right now, it's the very top thing on their calendar when you click on Events, so you don't even have to search for it.

01:05:48

Please mention to the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals that you heard about them and these events from Chris Arnzen on Iron Trap and Zion Radio.

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Last but not least, I just need to remind you that Iron Trap and Zion Radio is in urgent need of additional funding.

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Never put your family in financial jeopardy by giving to Iron Trap and Zion Radio. Providing for your church and providing for your home are two commands of God.

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Iron Trap and Zion Radio to remain on the air through your financial assistance. If you'd like to advertise with us, send me an email to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com,

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and put advertising in the subject line, whether it is your church, your parachurch organization, your business, your professional practice, if you're a doctor, a lawyer, a dentist, a chiropractor, whether it's just a special event you're having, whatever it is, as long as whatever you're doing and promoting is compatible with the theology we express here on Iron Trap and Zion Radio, we would love to help you launch an ad campaign because we surely could use the advertising dollars.

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You don't have to believe exactly as I do, you just have to be promoting something that's compatible with what we promote here on Iron Trap and Zion.

01:08:16

So that's ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. And that's also the email address for our guest,

01:08:22

Earl Blackburn. We are discussing his book, John Chrysostom, and I know it's pronounced different ways.

01:08:28

Chrysostom, I believe, is the way some people pronounce it. And our theme is also a fourth century doctor of the church.

01:08:35

More evangelicals should discover today. If you have a question for Earl Blackburn, send that email to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

01:08:41

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

01:08:49

USA and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. And you got right to the point,

01:08:55

Earl, before the break, where you said that there was a pastor who said, I would never want to preach on the book of Romans because it'll drive too many people away.

01:09:04

And you said, well, maybe they need to be driven away if they refuse to hear what the word of God has to say and they want their ears tickled.

01:09:10

But if you could pick up where you left off there. Well, I really don't have anything more to say about that except that the main thrust and the thing for which

01:09:21

Chris Ostrom is most noted is his simple, direct, clear, plain preaching of the

01:09:30

Holy Scriptures. He preached through books of the Bible. It was rare that he ever preached anything topical or things of that nature.

01:09:39

His preaching was direct to the point that it offended a lot of people. Not only the emperor, but his tempestuous wife,

01:09:48

Eudoxia, at that particular time. So there's so much that can be said and we don't have the time to do it, but I want to address the question.

01:09:59

Oh, yeah. Well, let me read the question first. You're talking about Tony in Rock Hill, South Carolina, you mean?

01:10:06

Yeah. Okay, well she wrote in a question that I think may be on the minds of a lot of people who are not ecumenists.

01:10:13

When I say ecumenists, I'm talking about the modern use of it where people are linking arms with Catholics and Eastern Orthodox and Jews and other people who are in opposition to the historic gospel of not only the

01:10:28

Scriptures, but the Reformation. And so they hear about you promoting the writings and teachings of a church father and very often people who are perhaps fundamentalist or even from our own background,

01:10:44

Reformed Christians, they get in an uproar. And Tony says, ecumenical just means worldwide?

01:10:51

I don't think so. The so -called church father that your guest is promoting was a priest who led a monastic life that would eventually lead to living in solitude.

01:11:03

Is that the Great Commission? To live in solitude? I don't think Eastern Orthodoxy is biblical

01:11:09

Christianity or that the monastic life is biblical. Implying that terms and definitions were different back then sounds like a spin job to me.

01:11:18

Well, happy Easter to you, Pastor Earl. But I could empathize with our listener if I did not know more about the church fathers than I used to because I used to wonder about that myself when

01:11:35

I would hear people allude to the patristics and so on. But if you could respond to our listener in Rock Hill, South Carolina.

01:11:44

I would be happy to. And I just think, and I don't mean to offend

01:11:50

Tony in any way, but I just think that this shows a prevailing ignorance in Christianity in general.

01:12:00

So many people know so little about 2 ,000 years of church history.

01:12:07

And there's no spin job here with me. Ecumenical, as it was used in that day, it came from the

01:12:16

Greek word oikomenikos and later oikomene, oikomene, which literally means inhabited earth, and they interpreted that as worldwide in these seven ecumenical councils.

01:12:29

And Catholic even meant universal, or means universal. Universal, worldwide, whatever.

01:12:36

It's different. The usage for it today is different. Like the World Council of Churches, they consider themselves an ecumenical body which is all -encompassing of anything and everyone that even mentions the name of Jesus.

01:12:49

That's not what they had in mind. And that was not the meaning of the original word oikomenikos, which is translated ecumenical.

01:12:59

It did mean inhabited earth. It did mean worldwide.

01:13:05

And by that, those councils were comprised of church leaders from all over the inhabited world as they knew it then.

01:13:16

And then secondly, I think your guest is mistaken and maybe has misunderstood me, and I will take the blame for not communicating clearly.

01:13:25

She's a she. Tony with an I is a woman. Okay, I'm sorry. Nothing intended by that.

01:13:35

But he was not a priest who led a monastic life that would eventually lead to solitude.

01:13:42

As a young Christian, he went into the ascetic life, and he was not ordained.

01:13:49

His desire, and I'm not defending monasticism because I do not believe it is biblical either, and nor do

01:13:56

I believe that the Eastern Orthodox Church is biblical Christianity. I believe they do hold some things right.

01:14:04

They do hold to the Trinity. They do hold to the essential deity and eternal godhood of Jesus Christ, both

01:14:12

God and man. They do believe in the virgin birth, but they're off on their salvation by grace and works.

01:14:19

They're off on so many things like that. They're even off on their whole concept of priesthood. And you would agree with me that they have a false gospel as well, correct?

01:14:31

Agree. All I'm trying to do is just give you the historical facts about the man.

01:14:39

And he did go for seven years into a monastic living, and I think God and His providence broke him because his life failed.

01:14:47

And I do not believe the monastic life is fulfilling the Great Commission. But what you do need to understand is that once he came back from the monastic life and his whole point in going was not to earn his salvation or anything of that nature, but his main point was to, as a young Christian, he had been raised in a worldly influence and had fallen into some ungodly things.

01:15:15

He wanted a closer walk with Christ, and his main intent was to memorize the word of God following Psalm 119.

01:15:24

Where can a young man, wherewithal can a young person cleanse his or her ways by taking heed thereto according to the word of God?

01:15:31

Your word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against God. And his whole desire and burden was not to try to earn salvation but to have a closer walk with the

01:15:43

Lord. He was not a priest at that time. He came back, and from the mount, and he then began to serve the church.

01:15:53

He was later ordained as a presbyter, and he was known primarily as a presbyterian. By that time, the whole episcopal system of church government was developing.

01:16:05

I don't believe that was what the New Testament taught. I don't believe it was the practice of the apostolic churches of the

01:16:11

New Testament, and I don't believe that episcopacy is the correct form of church government today.

01:16:18

In the book, I'm just simply trying to report the facts as they are, not change them to my liking or disliking, but report them as they were.

01:16:29

And I do not believe that living in solitude is the fulfillment of the Great Commission. You can't fulfill the

01:16:35

Great Commission by hiding in a cave or being in a cave, even if it's with the most earnest and sincere intent to have a closer walk with Christ and to memorize the word of God.

01:16:46

And so, the terms and definitions that we have today, we have...

01:16:51

I mean, for instance, the word fat used to be someone gracefully overweight.

01:16:57

But now, fat is something P -H -A -T is good. Pronounced the same way, terms and definitions have changed even in our generation.

01:17:05

And so, the word ecumenical did not mean, then, what it means today. And to think that Chrysostom did not believe in the

01:17:15

Great Commission and did not fulfill it, I'm not going to say much about that.

01:17:20

That's just nonsense. When he becomes... When he is forced, really, against his will to become the 12th bishop of Constantinople, the personal sacrifice he made out of his own pocket to get the gospel to the ends of the earth really fascinates.

01:17:40

There are Christians in Iran today because of the labors of John Chrysostom.

01:17:47

Praise God. Now, whether they're born -again Christians, as I believe the Scriptures teach, at least they, in the midst of a

01:17:54

Muslim society, are confessing Christ as the only Savior. And it can all be traced back to John Chrysostom's influence.

01:18:04

The gospel was carried into Germany by John Chrysostom among the

01:18:09

Danubian peoples along the Danube. Man, he sent missionaries to preach the gospel and plant churches.

01:18:18

And he would go through the streets of Constantinople giving the gospel to people, bidding people to come to Christ, bidding people to come to the worship, and so forth.

01:18:29

So I think Toni needs to read more before she jumps to conclusions about him.

01:18:36

He never married. And that was by conviction. But he gave himself in an unprecedented way to making

01:18:48

Christ and the gospel known. And the gospel, as he preached, was the gospel that we would believe today of Christ dying for our sins according to the

01:18:56

Scriptures. Amen. Being buried and rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. And that without repentance and faith in Him, even though you may be baptized or a member of a church, you will not enter into Heaven at last.

01:19:10

Amen. And John Chrysostom preached that clearly and unmistakably. Did not he give his life?

01:19:16

Read his sermon. Did he not give his life? Was he not martyred for preaching the gospel?

01:19:23

No. No, he wasn't martyred, but he was exiled because we can get into that, but later on I'd like to close with how his life ends.

01:19:35

Okay. No, he was not martyred, but he was one of the most bold, uncompromising preachers of his day.

01:19:47

None was like him. He was just so... His love for Christ, his love for the souls of people.

01:19:55

I mean, he was forced against his will after he became a presbyter in Antioch.

01:20:01

He was deceived. He was literally hoodwinked. They put a hood over him, blindfolded him, and transported him from Antioch to Constantinople.

01:20:13

How do you think I got to Pennsylvania when I used to be a member of Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island? Just kidding,

01:20:20

I'm sorry. Somebody knocked you over the head and put a sack on you. Yeah. Sorry about that.

01:20:30

Well, that's how he became... He was never... By that time, what we know as the concept of archbishop had not yet been developed.

01:20:39

He was consecrated as the 12th bishop of Constantinople. And the work that he did there,

01:20:44

I mean, man, he literally cleaned house. If you look how

01:20:49

Christ cleansed the temple, when he got there, he saw a worldly, decadent form of Christianity.

01:20:56

And he did away with all that stuff. He did not live in the lap of luxury. He did not eat the finest of meats and drinks and so forth.

01:21:06

He gave himself to the ministry of the word. He cleaned house, which angered...

01:21:12

His primary opponent was the Empress Eudoxia. And, man, he would preach about her lavish lifestyle.

01:21:21

She would be sitting right down there on the front pew, and he held no punches. He talked about the...

01:21:28

He dealt with her publicly. You know, we... These millennials get offended if somebody seemingly is called out.

01:21:35

Man, he called out really the most powerful person in the Roman Empire at that time, the

01:21:40

Empress Eudoxia. Her husband, Arcadius, was a weak, spineless man, and she was the de facto ruler.

01:21:48

And she would sit there with the Praetorian guard on the Lord's Day, and she would get so mad.

01:21:55

He would preach at her for her... her rich, opulent clothes and jewelry.

01:22:02

And he said, these things need to be taken away and sold and given to the poor and given to the cause of the spread of the gospel to the ends of the

01:22:13

Earth. And she would just become furious and storm out of the church. He never backed down.

01:22:18

He never backed away. He said about her one time, he said, one day she calls me the 13th

01:22:26

Apostle. The next day she calls me the son of Judas Iscariot. Ha ha ha!

01:22:31

Some things never change. Yeah. And one time she stormed out of the Hagia Sophia, the holy, wisdom church there in Constantinople, present -day

01:22:42

Istanbul. And she is so angry at him because of his preaching.

01:22:49

And he would just take a book in the Bible and start with chapter 1, verse 1, and preach through the book.

01:22:55

And I still contend that is what pastors should be doing today. And he preached one sermon and she became angry at him, stormed out of the church.

01:23:07

And he said the next day, he said, Herodias is dancing again, calling for the head of John, making reference to John the

01:23:16

Baptist and Herodias and Eudoxia. But no, he was a man that loved

01:23:24

Christ. And I don't have time to get into it, but some of his writings and some of his sermons, man, the preaching of Christ and the cross and the resurrection are so powerful.

01:23:38

I've read some of his sermons and they've just been moving in so many levels.

01:23:44

And calling people to repent and calling people to turn from their sins. He didn't believe in penances.

01:23:52

Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox institutions believe today.

01:23:57

He called for people to make a complete break with sin and find Christ to be there all in all.

01:24:03

And so, no, there's no sin here. I'm just trying to be honest with the times and interpret them as they are, not interpret them through today's lens, but interpret them through the lens of that particular day.

01:24:17

By the way, by the way, Tony sent in a disclaimer.

01:24:24

She said, I was not implying that your guest was spinning the truth so much as those of whom he reads or gets his information from.

01:24:35

But I can say that, unfortunately, there are many people who are playing into the hands of the

01:24:43

Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholics by trying to impute the later heresies believed by those churches into the early centuries.

01:24:53

They are actually playing into the hands of the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholics by making the church fathers out to be as if they were modern -day

01:25:05

Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics, and they were not. I mean, like I was saying before, on the more important issues that are salvific, they had much more in common with Bible -believing

01:25:19

Protestants. Exactly. Just for Tony's clarification, like I said,

01:25:26

John Chrysostom has more sermons in France than any of the other church fathers, more writings than any of the other church fathers.

01:25:36

And I drew the greatest majority of my material from his own writings and his sermons, and I have here in my hand right now perhaps what, at least in my opinion, is his greatest book, and it's called

01:25:54

On the Incomprehensible Nature of God. And he deals with these matters that we face today.

01:26:04

I mean, Jehovah's Witnesses didn't come into existence at the early part of the 20th century with Judge Hayes Russell.

01:26:14

I mean, they've been around since before Nicaea, and Chrysostom fought them tooth and nail, and there was the belief that God didn't know everything and that demons ruled the world and things of this nature, and Chrysostom addresses these things, and he addresses,

01:26:32

I think, a lot of modern -day Christians need to go back and read some of the early church fathers, and their great and magnificent views of the

01:26:43

God of Scripture and of Christ as being the mediatorial

01:26:48

Lord of Heaven and Earth. The Eastern Orthodoxy of today could not resemble anything like the

01:26:56

Eastern Orthodoxy. It wasn't even known as Eastern Orthodoxy in those days, of the day in which

01:27:02

John, Bishop of Constantinople, later to be known as John Chrysostom, or John Chrysostom, and there are very few similarities in so many ways, and I think we need to read these early fathers and see that there is a direct line, there is a continuity, not in churches, but in continuity of truth.

01:27:29

These guys were such defenders of the doctrine of the Trinity, where today, modern

01:27:37

Protestantism, the Trinity is nothing. The virgin birth and deity of Christ, these guys bled and died for these truths.

01:27:46

Today, they're secondary. We're more concerned with people having a quote -unquote relationship with Jesus, rather than knowing who

01:27:53

Jesus really is, that he is very God of very God, very man of very man. So, my primary sources for the book that I wrote were taken from the writings of John Chrysostom himself.

01:28:07

His sermons and his writings. Though I did get other historical data from other authors, but the bulk of the material comes from the mouth of Chrysostom, which

01:28:21

I think is what a historian, though I'm not a historian, I'm primarily a pastor, that's what a historian should do.

01:28:29

He should go, he or she should go to the primary sources, and if they can't find the primary sources, to the source as close to the primary source as possible, to get their information.

01:28:42

By the way, the Eastern father who I was thinking of who was martyred, that was

01:28:47

Polycarp, among others, of course, but Polycarp was the one I confused with Chrysostom in regard to being martyred.

01:28:55

Right. Also, you know, there are great figures from the past, and even from the present, who have believed and do believe in some odd things, unbiblical things that still have been and are being used powerfully for the cause of Christ and his gospel.

01:29:18

I mean, when our listener, Tony, was talking about monasticism, we have a modern -day example of that that wouldn't quite fit the exact description of monasticism, but our great hero of the modern

01:29:34

Reformed faith, A .W. Pink, 20th century giant of the faith, he unfortunately ended his life in solitude like a hermit, and just because he did that, which was sinful, doesn't mean we should discount everything that he has given to the

01:29:53

Church today and blessed us with. That's exactly right. But I would just say, read what

01:30:02

I've written, and one of the things, I mean, there's an account that I give in there where Chrysostom was so burdened and concerned that the gospel goes to the unreached peoples of the world, that one

01:30:17

Sunday morning as the time for the sermon came, and they sang, without musical instrumentation, all the music of those days was a cappella.

01:30:30

They sang a lot of the psalms and the Christian hymns that were being written. When it came time for the preaching of the word of God, instead of Chrysostom mounting the pulpit, in comes this man, and he begins to speak in a

01:30:45

Germanic dialect. And in his own language, he begins to tell how that the gospel came to him along the

01:30:53

Danube, and he heard Christ and received him as Lord and Savior.

01:31:00

And wonderful moving story. The people are looking at each other, and then Chrysostom gets up,

01:31:07

John gets up, and interprets what this man said. And he said, this is what

01:31:12

I've been trying to tell you. This is what

01:31:31

I've been trying to tell you.

01:31:39

This is what I've been trying to tell you. This is what I've been trying to tell you. This is what I've been trying to tell you. This is what I've been carrying out for the great commission.

01:31:45

It would put most of our churches to shame today. And we have to go to our break.

01:31:50

I also forwarded to you another question from a listener in Clifton, New Jersey, Joey, and we can have you respond to his question when we return from our final break.

01:32:01

If anybody else would like to join us on the air with a question, do so now or forever hold your peace, because we are rapidly running out

01:32:13

In the country of residence if you live outside the USA don't go away. Not willing. We'll be right back with More of Earl Blackburn and our discussion on John Chrysostom Hi, I'm buzz

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Dial 540 a .m Every Saturday 12 noon to 1 p .m. Eastern Time. Well, we are now back with our final 20 minutes or so of our discussion with Earl Blackburn pastor of the

01:38:11

Heritage Baptist Church of Shreveport, Louisiana and author of a number of books including John Chrysostom And if you'd like to join us on the air before we run out of time, please do so now

01:38:21

Send in the email to chrisarnson at gmail .com chrisarnson at gmail .com

01:38:26

and by the way, Tony in Rock Hill, South Carolina I am gonna make sure you get a copy of Earl Blackburn's book from the publisher's evangelical press so Please make sure

01:38:38

I have your full mailing address because I want to make sure that you get one perhaps more than anybody so That you can learn from that book that John Chrysostom has a lot more in common with Bible -believing

01:38:48

Protestants that you than you might imagine We also have now

01:38:54

Joey in Clifton, New Jersey waiting to have his question answered he writes dear Earl, I Fondly remember your time with us in Long Island should be on Long Island Joey.

01:39:05

Yeah I am glad you continue to do well by God's grace I appreciated your comments on how the hermeneutical issues of the day related to related to Chrysostom.

01:39:16

I Am hoping you can similarly comment on issues of ecclesiology where was the church in its

01:39:25

Ecclesiology at this time and where did Chrysostom fit in? Whether at his time or in influence on future theologians

01:39:37

Well, that's a that's a loaded question. That would take another two our program

01:39:45

But let me just say this I believe the ecclesiology which is the doctrine of the church

01:39:53

From the New Testament was a simple one There were I believe there was a plurality of elders in each church as well as deacon you can see that in Philippians 1 1

01:40:05

But very within a hundred years after the death of the last Apostle there began to rise this form of Episcopacy in Which because they were there were many martyrs and men and women were being killed left and right and and others arriving up and and all of a sudden here's the

01:40:29

Church without a pastor who had been martyred for the cause of Christ and some younger man that's in and What happens is that these younger pastors begin to look to older pastors and they begin to consider them spiritual fathers

01:40:45

And hence the title Bishop was transferred over from the pastor of a visible church to be the spiritual leader over a number of churches and It didn't find its full fruition until Gregory the sixth in the middle part of the 7th century

01:41:03

What we know today is a full Episcopacy, but it's rise started very early on Chris Austin was part of that.

01:41:12

He was a man of his time just like we are people of our time men and women of our time and I don't really have time to develop this because Ecclesiology he did not really change anything in ecclesiology nor did he really shape

01:41:29

The future or the Protestants or anyone else with regard to ecclesiology

01:41:35

His main focus again was primarily as a preacher of the

01:41:41

Word of God But Chris, if I may I'd like to touch on two things in the time that we have definitely definitely

01:41:49

First of all, I'd like to consider his preaching this theology and there's there's several points that that I Think evangelical

01:42:03

Fundamentalist reformed Protestant Christians, whatever grouper rancher segmented with We need to learn from John Chris.

01:42:13

I First of all, we need to see a God that is incomprehensible

01:42:19

It doesn't mean that he can't be known he can know but we can knowing but we don't know everything about him

01:42:25

We know something of his grace his love his power and his might have we exhausted those things

01:42:31

Absolutely, not. We know of his wrath. We've fled from the wrath to come But do we know the extent of it?

01:42:38

No and Pothos had a high and exalted view of the triune

01:42:43

God. He was a strong defender of the Trinity He was trinitarian to the core Another thing that that just so predominant in his preaching not only

01:42:54

God Incomprehensible but a Christ that was magnificent and I just wish

01:42:59

I could give you some of the quotes from his sermons I just definitely time But he just he exalts

01:43:05

Christ Christ was never far from his thinking his death his burial his resurrection his life -giving power

01:43:13

The third thing that you see from his preaching as you read the sermons The fact that he believed that Salvation was not simply making a little decision for Christ or coming forward at the end of the service that a so -called altar call

01:43:29

By the way, the only altar in the New Testament is not in the front of a church building It's that on the hill called

01:43:35

God got this called the cross. Amen And and Chris Austin believed that the gospel changed the person's life and if it didn't then they really didn't know

01:43:46

Christ and he did Understand the centrality of the church and God's redemptive purposes and his views on worship he said when

01:43:56

God's people gathered together on the Lord's Day and I tell you he would make a lot of evangelicals mad today with his view on the

01:44:05

Lord's Day it was a day given over to worship not to the NFL or the

01:44:11

NBA or anything like that and There was a hippodrome right across from the

01:44:17

Hagia Sophia and they'd have horse races on Sunday chariot races man He thought that vehemently and it got him so in trouble with the

01:44:26

Emperor and especially Eudoxia the Empress but there's some lessons that I think that we can learn and I close out the book with these and I just want to Touch on them and The first lesson that we can learn is that That it is dangerous and can be destructive when the state controls or try to control the

01:44:47

Church of Jesus Christ That's what Chris Austin fought against from the very day that he came to Constantinople Emperor thought that he had

01:44:58

Charging control of the church Chris Austin said no Christ is the only head of the church secondly

01:45:05

Fashionable and popular Christianity is a blot as a blight on the progress of the gospel.

01:45:12

I'm here in the deep South We got so many people that are cultural Christian Christians, but they've never really been converted.

01:45:20

They've never been to the cross They've never experienced the life -changing power of the gospel and a break with sin.

01:45:27

He had to fight a popular and fashionable Christianity of his day another lesson

01:45:33

It is not only good but necessary to have a thoroughly trained gospel ministry and today one of the things that just astounds me is the basic ignorance of the

01:45:48

Holy Scriptures in our churches today and One of the things that Chris Austin did to overcome this ignorance of the

01:45:55

Bible even in his day Was to preach through entire books of the Bible another lesson is

01:46:02

So many times we think if we're not a pastor an elder missionary church planner

01:46:07

We can't really serve Christ in the years after he left The ascetic life and he served the church there in Antioch He did some of the most menial path

01:46:19

Most most pastors wouldn't even think about doing them today, but Chris Austin did them unto the glory of God Another lesson that we can learn is the great value of memorizing large portions of the

01:46:31

Word of God, which he set out to do Most people only know John 3 16 if they even know it and I'm sure that they don't even understand what it is

01:46:40

Saying there, but Chris Austin memorized large portions of the Word of God It may be that he even memorized the entire

01:46:48

New Testament. We'll only know when we get to heaven another thing is that God's providence often places the servants where they would not choose to be and furthermore keeps them there longer than they would prefer and He did not want to go.

01:47:06

He wanted to be a simple Presbyterian pastor preacher teacher in the church at Antioch, he was such a powerful preacher his renown became so widespread

01:47:18

They literally kidnapped him and took him to Constantinople and against his own will

01:47:23

He was consecrated the 12th bishop but he looked at all of this and he saw it nothing more than the hand of God's providence and Then next thing is he did not fear men and the fear of man can hinder gospel effectiveness

01:47:40

Preachers today and Christians today are more Concerned about what others may think about them than they are about what

01:47:47

Christ thinks about and The fear of man brings a snare and man Chris Austin did not fear any man or woman and He preached his preaching got him in trouble and then there's just so many lessons more lessons.

01:48:03

I could bring out but what I'd like to close with is that that He he was faithful against political pressure against all sorts of monetary pressure

01:48:20

Every pressure imaginable. He stayed true to the Word of God and it got him exiled and he was exiled for three years and what is known today as present -day

01:48:29

Armenia and Then because his influence even in exile

01:48:35

Continued to be exerted over the Roman capital of that time Constantinople the

01:48:41

Emperor had him exiled into near what is present -day, Georgia and Here is this humble servant of God and there's there's just so many wonderful encouraging things to see how that he faced slander and libel

01:48:57

Everything imaginable. He he faced it with such grace and Here he is with a small squadron of soldiers

01:49:07

Man that had never picked up a sword never wielded a sword the only sword that he ever wielded was the sword of the

01:49:13

Spirit the Holy Scriptures and He's being treated as a hardened criminal escorted to exile they deprive him of food and comfort and of clothing to keep him warm and he comes to a small little village and there's a little chapel there and he goes in and They let him rest and he asked for a baptismal robe

01:49:36

And they give him a baptismal robe. He puts it on he Asked the soldiers to donate his clothes to the poor people ones in the village that would need it and he lays down on his deathbed and You can read from his correspondence

01:49:55

During this time of exile. There's no bitterness. There's no complaint He's not bellyaching.

01:50:02

He's not grumbling about this or that He is blessing the Lord I'm thankful for his hand of providence that has led me all the way and as It's on his deathbed the last words that come out of his mouth before he closes his eyes and death are these and To me it's right in line what

01:50:24

Paul said whatsoever you eat Do whether you eat or drink do all to the glory of God the last words that John Chrysostom uttered were

01:50:34

Glory be to God for all things Amen, and he and he closed his eyes in death.

01:50:40

Amen, and what we and what we need to do Instead of we can bellyache and complain and gripe and grumble about all sorts of things we just need to Walk closely with Christ and I conclude with this is good that Christ rules over all things reigns over all things

01:51:01

Particularly in his church Otherwise biblical Christianity would just simply disappear from the earth

01:51:08

Good awesome. John Chrysostom John of Antioch later known as Chrysostom is proof positive that the mediatorial

01:51:16

Lord of heaven and earth and hell below is Still ruling and reigning and Satan is not reigning and We need to look to Christ and we need to cling to his word and proclaim his words and Not Bellyache we need to be people of the book

01:51:39

Like Chrysostom and this to me. I mean was the man with flaws Absolutely.

01:51:44

Did he have besetting sins? Absolutely, one of his greatest sins was the sin of anger and there were times man

01:51:51

His anger would flare up, but it was anger at the unrighteous, but He still didn't control it the way that he should

01:51:58

I deal with his weakness But in the end, he was a servant of the Word of God and he exalted the

01:52:05

Christ of Holy Scripture Amen, there's where we find his strength and there's where we can find a pattern to follow and emulate today.

01:52:13

Amen We have a Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania who asks

01:52:21

It was wonderful to hear How Chrysostom had such an impact on John Calvin because of the connection that I always heard

01:52:28

Was purely or Primarily with Augustine. I know that Augustine had a very similar view of Predestination to Calvin.

01:52:41

Do you know what Chrysostom believed in this area? Well, I don't know that we could call

01:52:49

Chrysostom a Calvinist or an Arminian? I Where you read him and you think yeah, he believes in the doctrine of election and predestination and then there are other places where you think well, no, he doesn't really but the thing that That still strikes me about John Chrysostom Is when you read his sermons,

01:53:17

I think of his sermon on Acts 1348 and as many as were ordained to eternal life he leads

01:53:24

He didn't hedge on it. He didn't back up He just simply said this is what

01:53:29

God's Word says and we have to take it as that and and When the

01:53:34

Pelagian controversy broke out between Augustine and Pelagius Pelagius tried to claim

01:53:41

Chrysostom as his ally and Augustine rose to the occasion and said you are so wrong

01:53:49

He defended Chrysostom and he said your idea of provenient grace is nowhere to be found in the sermons and writings or beliefs of John Chrysostom Amen, and so You know he was

01:54:04

Things were not as systematized then as they are today and we have 2 ,000 years of soul shoulders to stand on and You know, we they didn't see things as clearly as maybe we have because of godly servants of Christ to the age

01:54:26

Well, I'd like you to wrap up now with about three minutes of what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our

01:54:31

Listeners today before we go off the air well, I think that The first thing

01:54:38

I'd want to know about is that this is a man a man of his time

01:54:44

That was radically converted by the gospel. He was Labienus the the great rhetorician that taught

01:54:53

The thought them as he was on his deathbed they said who shall succeed you and who shall become the principal of the

01:55:00

Academy and Labienus said it would have been John had the Christians not stolen him from us and John was

01:55:10

John was radically converted by Christ. He loved Christ was the amount of his time absolutely, but he loved

01:55:18

Christ and he loved the Word of God and He taught to preach

01:55:24

Not funny stories and cute little jokes and anecdotes. He sought to preach the whole counsel of God He did live more aesthetically

01:55:37

He he thought that Christians should be giving of themselves and giving of their goods for the cause of the gospel and to the spreading of the gospel to the ends of the earth and that caused him to Eat sparsely and sparingly he would not partake of the feasts of that were designed for the bishop at Constantinople and That infuriated him with that made the

01:56:01

Emperor infuriated at him he was a man whose life was completely devoted if you want to use today's terms sold out to Christ and That is his love for Christ his view of God incomprehensible his

01:56:18

Understanding of the radical life -changing power of the gospel and His willingness to lay down his life for the cause of God and truth these things we should should esteem and we should emulate in our own lives and John Christopherson was not important to himself

01:56:39

His reason was just like Paul said in the Roman jail For me to live as Christ and to die as Cain and I think this is something that Christianity and in the

01:56:53

Western world and especially in the United States needs to recover We know little of what it is to live for Christ in this hostile environment in which we live

01:57:03

John Christopherson can model that for us as he lived for Christ in a most hostile

01:57:10

Environment and the Well, I want to thank you so much pastor

01:57:18

Earl for being my guest today with very little notice Thank you for Taking heed to the call to come on iron trip and Zion radio when we had an unexpected opening

01:57:31

And I look forward to having you come back to address every one of the books that you have written and even more subjects beyond Those books.

01:57:39

I look forward to many return visits from you I want to make sure that our listeners have all of your contact information.

01:57:45

We have the Heritage Baptist Church of Shreveport, Louisiana which could be found at HBC Shreveport comm

01:57:55

HBC for Heritage Baptist Church Shreveport comm and then of course, we can't forget about the

01:58:02

Association of Reformed Baptist Churches of America Arbuka as as it is commonly called a

01:58:09

RBC a .com a RBC a .com that stands for the

01:58:14

Association of Reformed Baptist Churches of America You can learn more about the book

01:58:21

John Christopherson By our guest a Earl Blackburn by going to EP books org that stands for evangelical press books org

01:58:30

EP books org and Also, I want to let you know that we're having a special Good Friday edition of iron sharpens iron radio tomorrow

01:58:44

And that is going to be featuring a man who's become one of my favorite guests on iron sharpens iron radio

01:58:52

William Hill William H Hill Who is a pastor in the the

01:59:00

PCA? He is has a church that he is ministering in in the

01:59:05

Tennessee Pigeon Forge, I believe it is area of PCA of Tennessee, I'm sorry, and I'm looking forward to what he has to say about the death of Christ and the atonement and All that is connected to Good Friday.

01:59:25

I want to thank everybody who wrote in today. I want to thank especially those who

01:59:32

Have been donating to iron sharpens iron radio and helping us to remain on the air I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater