April 16, 2018 Show with Jim Andrews on “Polishing God’s Monuments: Pillars of Hope for Punishing Times”

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

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on the 16th day of April 2018, and I am delighted to have on the program for the very first time

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Jim Andrews, who received his B .A. in Journalism at West Virginia Tech, his

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T .H .M. in New Testament at Dallas Theological Seminary, his M .A. in Classics at the

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University of Colorado, and he is the former head of the Division of Ministries Studies at Western Bible College in Denver and Western Seminary in Portland, Oregon.

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He is also the senior pastor of Lake Bible Church of Lake Oswego, Oregon, and the host of the daily radio program,

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The Final Word, which has been on the air for 15 years. Today we are going to be addressing his book,

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Polishing God's Monuments, Pillars of Hope for Punishing Times, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Jim Andrews.

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Thank you, Chris. Glad to be with you. If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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

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USA, and please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter, and I can see this topic readily lending itself to people wanting to remain anonymous if they are going through punishing times that they want to ask about and they'd rather not identify themselves.

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That is completely acceptable, but if it's not a personal and private question, please give us at least your first name, city and state, and country of residence.

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Before we go into our topic at hand, there's a couple of things I'd like you to do.

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First, let our listeners know something about Lake Bible Church of Lake Oswego, Oregon.

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Well, Lake is technically, formally a Baptist church,

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Southern Baptist specifically, also affiliated with the

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Conservative Baptists of America. We are a Bible -teaching church.

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I am a full -bore expository preacher. Great. Lake Oswego is an upscale suburb, eight miles directly south of Portland, but our congregation reaches out to literally the entire metro area.

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Great. Just out of curiosity, are you affiliated with the Founders Ministries? No. Okay, I was just curious because of the fact that you're

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Southern Baptist and a number of my guests who are in the Southern Baptist Convention are also affiliated with my friend

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Tom Askle and the Founders Ministries. Well, now tell us something about the

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Final Word radio program. Well, years ago, Chris, people kept suggesting that I may want to start a radio program and I never could stand the sound of my own voice.

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Well, your voice sounds completely fine to me. In fact, I think it's a very good radio voice. Well, I think it turned out to be that way.

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Maybe not the best, but different, and it has turned out to be an asset we found.

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In any case, people suggested it, and so finally I looked into it. Really, there's quite a story to it.

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I found out that the ticket was going to be rather stiff, so I mentioned it to a gentleman and I told him,

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I said, you know, this thing is going to be kind of tough.

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I'm going to abbreviate this story. He said, I'm good for half of it, and I said, wow.

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And then I called another man, and I couldn't even get finished with the story.

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He said, I'm good for half of it. He was in Detroit at the time. I never met the other guy.

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And all of a sudden, we had a year's funding to go forward, and we did, and we've been on ever since.

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And we are here and in Pittsburgh. If somebody wants to say, why Pittsburgh? Well, I'm a West Virginia boy, so I wanted to get as near to my roots as I could.

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So we've been in for many years. Great. Well, once again, if anybody likes to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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Before we go into the subject, polishing God's monuments, pillars of hope for punishing times, most of the time when

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I have a first -time guest, I like them to give some kind of an account of the religion of their upbringing, if any, and what providential circumstances the

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Lord used in your life to draw you to himself and save you. Yeah, glad to share that.

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Let's say I grew up in West Virginia. My parents were very devout, so I grew up in a

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Christian home. There were four children, of whom I am the eldest, and I had a good, solid

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Christian example. I grew up denominationally as an

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American Baptist. A very liberal denomination today.

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Pardon? Today, it is predominantly a very liberal denomination, is it not? Yeah, it was liberal then, except in the small churches.

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Yeah, it was very liberal, and I was kind of precocious about those things and had that spotted when

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I was 10 years old. Wow. In any case, of my siblings, my youngest brother,

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I'm the oldest, one brother in between, he was most recently, not at the present time, the

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U .S. Director of the Navigators, and has been, maybe still is, on the board of the

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American Association of Evangelicals. My sister's the youngest. She's in ill health.

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She's down in Baylor country in Waco, Texas, and the brother right behind me is not a believer.

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He's a very good husband, but a very good father. He was a major CEO of companies you would recognize.

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And so, pick up where you left off there, as far as when you realized you really needed a

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Savior, and so on. Yeah, it was at an old -time revival meeting, and I was eight years old, and my friend

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Bingy, B -I -N -G -Y, was also very same age, and both of us came forward in response to an invitation at that revival meeting, and I remember

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I didn't have, you know, very rounded understanding of the gospel, but I knew

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I was lost. I knew I was a sinner. I had no idea how much of a sinner, but I remember I cried like a baby that night, and, you know, the irony of that is that Bingy and I, both of us eight years old, we both went into the ministry, and he's still in the ministry to this day, as am

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I, and both of us are eight years old. Well, praise

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God. You sound very sharp and wit, and... Oh, what's that?

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What'd you say? Oh, I could tell you a joke that was actually told to me by a

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Catholic priest years ago, but perhaps I won't take a chunk out of our time today to tell you that, but it was a very, very humorous joke that went along the lines of what you just did there, but anyway.

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Um, so you have been saved and called into the ministry, and you've been pastoring.

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I understand that the book that we are addressing today, Polishing God's Monuments, was your very first book.

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Tell us about the circumstances that drew you to desire to write this book, where you believed there was a need for it.

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Yeah, it's, I think, an interesting story. When I was teaching at Western Bible College in Denver, that was from 1970 to 1980, we were in a fairly decent -sized church, today it's called a megachurch, and I was very involved in the ministry there, and the pastor asked me to preach one evening, and I brought a message, excuse my allergies,

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I brought a message entitled Polishing God's Monuments, and it was a strange thing. Anybody that's been a pastor and a preacher could resonate with this.

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You bring some message, you believe in them, you love them, and you think they're fit for the people of God, but once in a while you hit a vein, and this message hit a vein, and thereafter

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I preached a message at Western Seminary, I'd be asked to speak in chapel, and I preached it there, and it hit a vein.

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I always said in those days there were tapes. If I had a quarter for every tape that went out, I'd have had me a nice little nest egg.

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So I knew that I was on to something, and it was a message that I really believed in, but I didn't know how much

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I was going to be to live it. Polishing God's Monuments, boy, were we called on to live it.

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Well, then eventually 1987, my youngest daughter was at Wheaton College.

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It was her last year during the spring of her last year, 1987. I'd been at Western Seminary for seven years at that time.

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I wound up being up there 11, but in any case, she got desperately ill at Wheaton, and I'm trying to cut to the chase, but she, it got terrible, got terrible.

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She got married, could hardly stand up, she and her husband. It was awful. We thought that once they got some rest, she would be better.

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She didn't get better. She came, she and Paul to go to Western Seminary. They were going to go to the mission field.

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Both of them were conservatory graduates. He was, both of them were piano performance majors.

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Paul was piano performance and ethnic musicology, and they wanted to go to the mission field and help

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Natives put music in their own

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Native expression, and it was great calling, but they got started, and Julie bombed out.

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She couldn't, I mean, she could hardly stand up, so she's home sick. Paul got sick, chronic fatigue syndrome, and he recovered sooner, but we found ourselves in the midst of this thing, and it has been 31 years of a horror show.

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We've had to live this book, I want to tell you, and still are. Wow. Well, we will certainly be praying for you.

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I'm asking right now, my listeners, please pray for our guest's family, the

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Andrews family, and specifically Jim's daughter and her family, and I pray that the

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Lord brings about healing and victory in this situation. How long has she had the ailment again?

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I'm sorry. Well, it started in the spring of 1987, as I recall,

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I believe that's correct, and my son -in -law will certainly correct me, he's a perfectionist. So, I think

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I have those parameters right, and it continues to this present hour, and it's been a mystifying, baffling illness.

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There's a little background to it. When Julie was 10 years old, she was nearly killed in a horseback riding accident at a park in Wheeling, West Virginia.

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She was dragged about 330 feet over rocks and stumps and everything else. The horse got spooked, and they had

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English saddles, and she was the youngest one in the whole train, the last one, and I was in the parking lot,

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I thought they were slow coming back, and all of a sudden I heard a lot of yelling and screaming, and up out of the pathway where the horses went and into the gravel parking lot, here came a big white horse, and I mean a big white horse, dragging what looked like a sack of feed.

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That sack of feed, oh God no, that was my daughter! Wow. Right in front of my face, as I tried to get over there fast enough to grab the horse's bridle, the horse sped up, first because the barn was in view, and secondly, because I was approaching it, it didn't want to be stopped.

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I couldn't grab the bridle. Right in front of me, the horse stepped on her head, and in the providence of God, it left a half -moon, a quarter -moon hoof mark, right on her skull, still there to this day, but just light enough it didn't crush her skull like an egg, but heavy enough that it did its damage.

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Anyway, that broke her loose from the stirrup, she skittered over in the gravel, into the weeds,

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I ran over there, saw her teeth just set, and I thought my wife fortunately had left to go to the restroom, she was up in another building.

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I didn't know what I was doing, I tried to get my fingers down between her teeth, I couldn't do that,

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I was afraid she'd swallow her tongue. Like I say, I didn't know what I was doing, somebody started calling, what today would be 911,

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I don't know what it was in those days, I wasn't paying attention. Anyway, we got her to the hospital,

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I thought she was gone, I told my wife, she got word of it, she came out,

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I said, honey, I don't think she's going to make it,

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I really didn't think she was. Anyway, we got to the Ohio Valley Hospital there in Wheeling, West Virginia, and Julie was unconscious for about two weeks, she was battered and bruised, she was unrecognizable, and several broken bones, and it was very, very bad.

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But we knew how rich we were that night when a lady sitting right across from us in that all -night vigil, her son had been in a motorcycle accident, and they came in and told her,

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I'm sorry, he's gone, and we knew how rich we were. Anyway, she wound up there for about a month, and she healed up, but the residual was that a neurologist there told us that when she was about 21 or so, she may start having seizures and that kind of thing.

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Well, Chris, those never developed, but about that same age, she had just come back, oh,

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I don't know, a year, a couple years before from a mission trip to Kenya, and she wasn't right, and the health was, but it was touch and go, and she got there to her spring of her senior year on a spring choir tour,

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California, she got desperately ill, and so it's been a downhill ride ever since.

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But right there, we think there was an autoimmune factor, the brain damage, that set her up for this terrible, terrible bout with chronic fatigue, which, you know, used to be denied.

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Now we're learning this is a real disease, and one expert has said it's more complicated than AIDS.

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Hmm. Well, in fact, the thing that's popping into my head right now is that your daughter should certainly consider writing a book herself.

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Oh, yeah, well, I wish they could, but you'd be amazed at what she and my son -in -law accomplished, but he has to devote himself 24 -7 to her care, and right now, he's so sick that he can hardly get out of it.

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He does. Oh, wow. He has to carry her to the bathroom. Oh, boy.

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The only time she can get out of the house is when he's sick as he is. Goes in there, puts her in a wheelchair, brings her to the top of the stairs, then we have one of these electric chairs and brings her to the bottom.

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He picks her up, puts her in a wheelchair, takes her out to the car, and my wife drives her for about 45 minutes just to smell the roses with the windows rolled up and all of that so she won't get any exposure she doesn't need, and then he goes in and tries to rest.

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If you would look at his legs, it's not diabetes, but it looked like the worst case of diabetes you've ever seen from the knees down.

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Wow. I'm telling you, you can't imagine the suffering that these two have been through at so many levels and what they're still going through.

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And what a phenomenal example of a Christian husband your son -in -law is. Oh, he's a story in himself.

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You know, he's been historically one of the most patient guys you've ever seen, and we're fortunate.

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He's also one of the brightest guys you've ever seen. I don't think he's ever made anything less than a in his life and valedictorian than everything he's ever looked at, you know, in education, summa cum laude all the way.

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And they both have prodigious memories, and my daughter, I don't know how.

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I just can't explain it to you. I don't know how and all the conditions that they're under, what they produce.

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She helped me write a book. It's a small book. It's The Finality of Christ, and somebody told me the other day, said this book is brilliant.

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Well, you can give her part credit for that, but I don't know how she does it from her bed. Yeah, well, you never know with today's computer technology what still may yet come from her mind and through her pen, and I'm using that as an allegory there as far as a pen, but who knows what she may be able to share with the body of Christ and the world for that matter.

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Yeah, well, they've got their book. Their life story is a love story like you've never seen. I believe it.

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But they're being taxed to the very limits, especially Paul right now. And what did you say his illness was?

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I'm sorry if I... I hesitate to try to describe it to you because Paul's very particular about that, and I know when it comes to medical issues,

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I'm a little bit of a bull in a china shop, and I'm a big picture guy, and I don't always get the details right, which is kind of upsetting to him, but he started out with chronic fatigue.

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Men don't get this generally quite as bad as the ladies do.

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There are millions affected around the world, and there's a great breakthrough in this disease.

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I don't know whether any of your listeners know about this, but Dr. Ron Davis, who happens to be the professor of biochemistry and genetics at Stanford University, was the co -chair of the

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Genome Project, which mapped the human genome for the first time. That was a huge breakthrough in medical research.

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You probably know about it. Anyway, he's one of the world's finest researchers. Well, believe it or not, his son has come down with it.

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He's on a feeding tube. Very brilliant boy. Very nice looking boy. And his wife is also a

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PhD and a researcher, but it's a pitiful thing. And I've seen

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YouTube videos of this thing, and he says if he doesn't solve it, nobody will. So he's pulled together major scientific players, including,

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I think, some Nobel Prize winners. This country and around the world, they've got a project going,

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Open Medicine Foundation. You can look it up, Dr. Ron Davis. Look it up, people. All of that, and they're working feverishly on trying to decode this disease.

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And we hope that there is hope. Otherwise, it'll take a miracle.

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But we're praying every day that they'll make a breakthrough. And then there's, again, for your listeners, because some of them may know somebody who's affected or they may be affected.

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But in case they don't know, there is a wonderful documentary that came out, won many awards.

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It's the story of Jennifer Bray. She was a Harvard PhD student.

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She was about to marry the love of her life when she was struck down by this fever and left her bedridden.

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Now, all these people are on a spectrum. They're not all affected to the same degree. And she's not nearly as bad as our

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Julie or Paul, not nearly as bad. But Dr.

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Davis' son is the only one we know of is worse than our daughter. So months before Jennifer Bray's wedding, she became progressively more ill, eventually losing the ability to even sit in a wheelchair.

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And then she had to go through what we've been through for 31 years. Doctors, and I have great respect for doctors.

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We have many of them in our church. But some of them, I must say, are village idiots.

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Yeah, I've come to know that myself. They can't understand the limits of their own knowledge.

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And they're afraid to say, you know, we don't know. So what they do is lump all these people into a file 13 and say, you've got some sort of mental illness.

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I had a lady who was a nurse, her husband was a doctor in the foyer of our church, scream at me one

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Sunday, your daughter has a mental illness, you need to see a psychiatrist.

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Oh boy, that was tough. And we've had some other experiences like that. And all these people who are afflicted this way, have had to go through some of this idiocy.

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And I'm sure you may have listeners who have seen that kind of thing.

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But anyway, this Jennifer Ray documentary, it can be accessed, I think it's still on YouTube. Is this

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Ray or Bray, B as in boy, R -A -Y or R -A -Y? B -R -E -A.

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B -R -E -A, okay. Yes, Jennifer Bray. And she's got this documentary called

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Unrest, simple title, Unrest. And it's very affecting.

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But it also traces the story of people, you know, all over the world and some of the terrible things they've been through at the hands of medical doctors and psychiatrists and others.

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But now fortunately, we know this deal is real. You know, it used to be that way with Parkinson's MS, I think, you know, a long time before they recognized this was a real problem.

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Yeah, well, I repeat to my audience, please pray for the

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Andrews family and specifically the daughter and son -in -law of our guest, Jim Andrews.

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And my wife. She goes through hell every day. She was on the verge of crying coming to work today.

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It's just, she's as stable as we get, but she feels like she's got to hold us all together.

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And it's wearing on her. I mean, 31 years will wear you down a little bit. Yeah, I can imagine.

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Well, we are going to be going to our first break right now. And what I'd like to do is

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I'd like to read you a question before we go to the break, and you could mull it over and answer it after the break.

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In fact, I'll also email you the question so you have it in front of you.

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And then you could look it over during the break. But we have Gordy in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who says,

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I like your daughter and am afflicted with an autoimmune disease that has significantly slowed me down.

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I believe one of the most important foundations a believer must hold to in order to endure suffering is an unshakable faith in the inspiration, inerrancy, and infallibility of God's word.

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Confidence in His goodness and faithfulness rooted in the scriptures is a key.

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What are your thoughts? And you could respond to that when we come back from the break. And as I said, I will also email you the question so you could look it over during the break.

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If anybody else would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisorenson at gmail .com,

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chrisorenson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages with more of Jim Andrews.

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solid -ground -books .com. We are now back with our guest Jim Andrews, pastor of Lake Bible Church of Lake Oswego, Oregon, and host of the daily radio program

35:07

The Final Word. We are addressing his book, Polishing God's Monuments, Pillars of Hope for Punishing Times.

35:14

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

35:23

And right before the break, I emailed you, as you must have by now, a question from our listener in Mechanicsburg, Gordy.

35:38

And in fact, I am looking for Gordy's question because I misplaced it.

35:44

But oh, here it is. And while I am enlarging Gordy's email, because the font is very tiny, let me give you our email address again.

35:54

If you'd like to join us, chrisarnson at gmail .com if you have a question for our guest. Okay, we have

35:59

Gordy in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania says, I, like your daughter, am afflicted with an autoimmune disease that has significantly slowed me down.

36:08

I believe one of the most important foundations a believer must hold to in order to endure suffering is an unshakable faith in the inspiration, inerrancy, and infallibility of God's Word.

36:18

Confidence in His goodness and faithfulness rooted in the scriptures is key. What are your thoughts?

36:25

Well, I think it's a great question. And hey, it's a perfect segue with where I would like to go,

36:32

Chris. Oh, sure. Let me just jump right to it. Look, this is not about me.

36:37

It's not about my wife. It's not about my daughter, really. I mean, we are all just an excuse for the whole theme here.

36:44

The thing is, as we walk along in this Christian life, Chris and Gordy, lots of times we and I'm going to get to answer

36:54

Gordy specifically and directly. But lots of times we ask God to fill our cup and sometimes it seems like he just eats our lunch.

37:04

I mean, what's going on here? We love God's Word. We trust God's Word.

37:10

And Gordy says confidence in His goodness and faithfulness is rooted in the scriptures. And that's the key, right?

37:16

What are your thoughts? Absolutely. But listen to this, and I'm reading from the book, if you don't mind.

37:22

I'll try not to sound ready. Oh, you could narrate all you want. Don't worry about that.

37:28

So is the answer when we run into these situations where God doesn't seem to perform as advertised and the operative word there is seen, is the answer when

37:40

God doesn't seem to be living up to His billing as we find in the scriptures, is it blind faith?

37:48

Well, blind faith, we all know, is not biblical faith. So I say to Gordy, biblical faith is rooted in revelation.

37:55

It's grounded on historical testimony and evidence. So blind unthinking faith is not the answer.

38:03

Blind faith is just gullibility. And that has nothing in common with Christian faith, which is rooted in biblical conviction and confidence in the inerrancy and the infallibility of God's word.

38:15

So the alternative to blind faith is what? Ah, here comes the book, monumental faith.

38:21

Well, what do I mean by monumental faith, Chris? And Gordy, by monumental faith,

38:27

I don't mean great faith or heroic faith. No, I mean a faith that has trained itself in the midst of adversity, like all this hell we've been through and are going through.

38:40

To look back, that's the key, to look back. It's all through the Bible, to look back at God's past demonstrations of His character and confirmations of His promises.

38:51

These monuments are a testimony of what God will do in the present, regardless of the difficult things that are happening.

38:59

You see, sometimes our faith may be under such heat. Hey, I know, from the friction of affliction that we find ourselves at risk of a spiritual meltdown.

39:14

So long before that happens, it's time to practice preventive maintenance. I'll tell you a story from my pastorate when

39:24

I came out of seminary, and I was back in my native state of West Virginia, in the great metropolis of Polka, West Virginia.

39:37

The mascot of the local athletic teams are the Polka Dots. That's what they were called, but they're a good ball team.

39:48

Anyway, I would get down to my office and study about seven o 'clock in the morning. And I don't know, maybe

39:55

I was three years in, I don't remember. My habit normally was to go to the church.

40:02

There were no secretaries, there was no nothing, and I'd just walk around. I love to walk when

40:07

I pray. Walk around the auditorium and pray for about an hour. One day, things were kind of tough at that time, and I caught myself walking around the auditorium praying, and the

40:22

Spirit of God just made me self -conscious all of a sudden. I was whining. I was complaining.

40:30

I was singing, poor me, to the Lord. Well, that's all right, the psalmist knew that too. But all of a sudden,

40:40

I said, Jim, you're whining, you're complaining, but is there nothing to thank

40:48

God for? And then all of a sudden, Chris, I remembered.

40:55

I started remembering all the good things, and I said, Lord, I'm sorry. I was walking slow, my head hanging down, but I started saying,

41:03

I'm sorry, I want to thank you. And then I started literalizing, cataloging all the good things that God had done for me, remembering, dredging up from my memory bank all of the blessings, not the burdens,

41:17

I've been talking about burdens, all the blessings that God had heaped upon me in my young life at that time.

41:23

And then I became self -conscious again. I mean, I noticed that my gait was rapid.

41:30

My chin was up. It changed the whole mane of my

41:36

Christian spirit. Well, that's what we've got to do. The Old Testament did it.

41:42

That's what the Passover was all about. It was a monument. That's what the Feast of Booze was all about.

41:48

It was a monument. When Joshua had them plant rocks on the other side of the

41:53

Jordan after they went through, what were they? They were monuments. And he said explicitly so that when your sons later on said, hey,

42:00

Dad, what are these rocks? Oh, son, let me tell you what God did for us. All through the

42:05

Old Testament, the Psalms, they talk about the monuments of God's works. Well, listen, that has been our anchor.

42:12

That needs to be the anchor of all your listeners. I don't know what they may go through or are going through, but I can tell you one thing.

42:19

I would not be sitting here, we would not be having this interview and this book would not exist were it not for the fact, this very important fact in our lives, that we learn to polish those monuments, to polish the monuments of God's great activity in our lives.

42:36

I'll tell you how that saved me one time. There was a time in Denver.

42:44

We lived there when I was teaching at Western Bible College, which no longer exists, it merged with Colorado Christian University.

42:53

But we had a home up for sale and it wouldn't sell. The market had been hot and we started building another house.

43:01

That house didn't sell and it didn't sell. And oops, our other house was about to come online and we were supposed to move in.

43:09

Hey, our house had to sell. We were the mess. Real estate contractor ran out and I had one weekend, one weekend, there's no exaggeration here, one weekend to sell that house.

43:21

I put an ad in the Denver Post. What are we going to do? We were going to be in the bridge loans, everything. I was on a

43:26

Bible College salary, which is a near poverty wage. Oh Lord. So we were entertaining a missionary one night.

43:37

It was a Saturday night and a phone rang. I said, I see you got an ad in a paper for a house.

43:44

I said, yeah, we talked a little bit. He said, I'd like to come over tomorrow, tomorrow,

43:49

Sunday and see it. I said, well, brother, we'd welcome you. Come on, come ahead. But it'll have to be the afternoon because we have church in the morning.

43:57

Oh, you mentioned, uh, you mentioned church. Where do you go to church? I said, well, we go to Riverside, Riverside Baptist.

44:04

Are you Jim Andrews? You're my Sunday school teacher. That guy came over on Sunday and bought our house.

44:12

Okay. That's a monument. So we go to Denver. It turns out some years, a couple of years later,

44:20

I got called to Western seminary here in Portland. Well, our home didn't sell that home that we had built.

44:30

It didn't sell. The market went south. Longer story, but it didn't sell. It didn't sell.

44:35

I had to spend a year up here, roughly a school year up here without my family. My daughter's senior year, it was rough.

44:42

It was rough. Then all of a sudden, one day my wife called me. These were days before we had all these cell phones and she said,

44:51

Jimmy, please pray. Please pray. A guy was here today. I think he's going to buy the house.

44:57

Oh boy. I told everybody, faculty, all the colleagues, students, you know, Hey, you've been pregnant.

45:02

It's about to happen. Well, it didn't happen. Never heard from that guy again.

45:08

Well, the next day I was mad. I'd never experienced being mad at God.

45:15

I don't know what that was like. I did that day. Normally my office door was open. People went in and out and I left the class.

45:24

I just went over and shut my office door. I didn't shut it. I slammed it. I went back, sat behind my desk and I just looked, you know,

45:33

I just always said, I wish I had arms long enough. As I looked at the books lining both sides of the wall,

45:39

I just wanted to get up, take my arms, throw all those books in my wake and go down, get my

45:44

B210 Dodson and go back to Denver and say, Lord, I've served you better than this. I don't deserve this.

45:53

And then I experienced, you know, a rebuke, a rebuke, not a, not a vocal one, but as if I heard the spirit of God say,

46:01

Jim, what are you mad about? Aren't you forgetting something?

46:07

What Lord? You forgetting that house I sold that weekend?

46:15

Oh, Lord God. Yes. Well, Jim, if I loved you and cared for you and did that mighty thing for you that weekend, why are you so upset?

46:33

Have I changed? No Lord. Well, Jim, have you changed? No Lord. Well, Jim, what has changed?

46:41

I wasn't hearing all this. There's just a spirit of God provoking a logic in my mind.

46:47

All that changed, Lord, is your purpose. And then I was on level ground again, but right there,

46:55

I learned double time. Polish your monuments, Jim. Don't forget those things that God does in your life.

47:02

And when you get in the next cracks, flee to the shadow of those monuments and let your faith take shelter there.

47:10

And remember what God has done. I don't know what he's doing now. I don't need to know what he's doing now.

47:17

And I need to stop asking the foolish question. Why? I just need to go there and wait.

47:25

Take God's word, talking to Gordie now, take God's word. God is faithful.

47:30

All things work together for good, our eternal good. The things that we need,

47:36

God will provide for when he wants to, how he wants to. And if he decides to kill me, he can kill me.

47:43

You know, whatever he does, but just rest on him and rest on his promises, rest on his character, rest on his character.

47:51

I may not understand how all of this stuff is fitting into his character. I don't need to understand.

47:57

Take his word for it. Yeah, I agree with Gordie. Well, thank you, Gordie. And guess what?

48:03

You have won a free copy of the book that we are discussing, Polishing God's Monuments by Jim Anrus.

48:11

And since you live within minutes of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service there on North Hanover Street in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, why don't you just stop by there and pick it up tomorrow rather than having them mail it out to you and giving them reason for an expense.

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Just pop by there and tell Todd and Patty Jennings, the owners of CVBBS .com, that the book

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Polishing God's Monuments, Pillars of Hope for Punishing Times by Jim Anrus, that a copy is there waiting for you since you asked a question today on Iron Turpin's Iron Radio.

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We have a listener from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, CJ, who says, please forgive me if I missed something, but if you could explain specifically what you mean by polishing

49:03

God's monuments. Oh, good question. Okay. I mean, when

49:11

God has done something in our lives, like he did something yesterday, I was in a financial need and I prayed and God answered that prayer.

49:23

Well, my tendency, perhaps your tendency and most people's tendency, is to say, thank you,

49:29

Lord, and race off with all the cash and put it in the bank and then forget about it. Israel did that constantly and they're warned about it in the

49:38

Psalms. You forgot God's works. Polishing God's monuments means that when my faith is under heat,

49:47

I go back to my memory bank, my pantry, as I sometimes call it, my pantry of all the store that God has given me and I remember and I polish those things like monuments and let them gleam in the storehouse of my mind.

50:05

God has done X and he's done Y and he's done Z. I don't know what he's doing today, but he's done these things and as I polish on those monuments, they lift my spirit and lift my faith and my confidence.

50:21

Well, thank you, C .J. You have also won a free copy of Polishing God's Monuments, Pillars of Hope for Punishing Times.

50:29

Please make sure you give us your full mailing address there in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York and cvbbs .com will ship that out to you at no charge to you or to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and we'd like to thank the fine folks at Granted Ministries, the publishers of Publishing God's Monuments, for providing these free books today.

50:50

Thank you very much, Chad Thompson and everybody there at Granted Ministries. One thing that I'd like to say and I'm not disagreeing with Gordy, going back to Gordy's question, but perhaps bringing about a different scenario as a result of what he said.

51:08

There may be people listening who are intimidated and downcast and feel even more hopeless as a result of what

51:19

Gordy asked because they know that their faith is not unshakable.

51:26

They know that they are holding on to a thread of faith. They feel like that thread is about to snap and they are going to spiral down into the abyss.

51:39

They are at their last grasp of air, it seems to them.

51:48

Obviously, wouldn't you say that we have to make sure that we're not looking at our own faith in God or our own love for God when we go through these unspeakably horrific trials in life?

52:03

Don't we have to look at His love for us, primarily? Yeah, I would totally agree.

52:12

But you know, sometimes that even gets shaken, His love for us.

52:18

Does He really love me? I mean, why is all this going on? You know, Chris, one thing that has helped me, and this is in the book, is a prayer that I wrote many long years ago, even before I wrote this book.

52:34

And I think all of us, every believer out there, needs to buy into this prayer.

52:41

I call it the unconditional prayer of the utterly serious. And it fortifies me when all this stuff comes.

52:49

Sometimes we're kind of serving God on condition, and I don't know whether I can hang on because I need you to do

52:57

X and I need you to do Y. I think we need to get to this place, and I've got another book that relates to all of this.

53:10

By the way, could you continue where you left off? Because we have to go to our midway break right now.

53:16

I'm sorry, I didn't catch that. We have to go to our midway break right now, so could you pick up where you left off when we return?

53:22

Yeah. And this is a longer than normal break because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, requires a 12 -minute break between our two segments, so please be patient.

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Please write down your questions for our guest during this break, and also write down the information that our advertisers provide so that you can patronize them.

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But God willing, we'll be back momentarily with our guest, Jim Andrews, and more of Polishing God's Monuments, so don't go away.

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Before I return to our topic today with Jim Andrews, who is our guest today,

01:04:52

I'd like to make a couple of very important announcements. First of all, the

01:04:59

Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology is coming up very, very soon.

01:05:06

In fact, it already has been conducted in Byron Center, Michigan.

01:05:15

And now the other dates for this conference, the 27th through the 29th, are just ahead of us very shortly at Proclamation Presbyterian Church in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

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The speakers include Daniel Aiken, Richard Gaffin, Daniel Hyde, Conrad M.

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Bayway, who I believe is the most powerful preacher alive on the planet Earth. In fact, the Granted Ministries, who published our guest's book on polishing

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God's monuments, they also published a phenomenal work by Conrad M.

01:05:50

Bayway, entitled Foundations for the Flock, that you should look into. But Conrad M. Bayway, who's been my friend since 1995, will be there preaching.

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Richard Phillips, who is the pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church in Greenville, South Carolina.

01:06:05

Jonathan Master, David Murray, and Scott Oliphant will all be speaking at the

01:06:11

Spirit of the Age, the Age of the Spirit, Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology. That is the theme, by the way, the

01:06:17

Spirit of the Age and the Age of the Spirit for this year's Philadelphia Conference. It is named

01:06:23

Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology in tribute of the late Dr.

01:06:29

James Montgomery Boyce, now in Eternity with Christ, who used to have this annual conference at the 10th

01:06:37

Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. So they maintain the Philadelphia name, even though it's not held in Philadelphia specifically anymore.

01:06:45

But Bryn Mawr is not far from Philadelphia, and I plan to be there, so I hope that many of you will take the opportunity to take a plane, train, or automobile to Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and attend the

01:06:58

Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology, April 27th through the 29th, at Proclamation Presbyterian Church, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

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Then, coming up next month, we have the Banner of Truth U .S.

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Ministers Conference. The theme is Ministers of Christ. It's being held

01:07:17

May 29th through the 31st in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, and the speakers include

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Alistair Begg, who we have had on this program. It's been a long time. I hope I can get Alistair back on the show.

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Also, Johnny Gibson, Mark Johnston, who's been a guest on this program. Al Mohler, who's been a guest on this program.

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Craig Troxell, who's been a guest on this program. And David Strain, who I don't believe I've interviewed yet, but I would love to get him and Johnny Gibson on the program as soon as possible.

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If you would like to register for the 2018 U .S. Ministers Conference of Banner of Truth in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, May 29th through the 31st, just go to banneroftruth .org,

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banneroftruth .org, and click on events. And please tell them that you heard about this conference from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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Please also tell the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals the same if you are registering for the

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Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology. It's very important that you let our listeners, that you let our advertisers know,

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01:08:33

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01:10:49

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01:10:56

Jim Andrews on our subject today, Polishing God's Monuments. That's chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

01:11:03

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

01:11:08

USA. And by the way, I want to read a commendation for this book by Joni Eareckson Tada. She says,

01:11:28

That's world -renowned author and speaker Joni Eareckson Tada, who is a quadriplegic and who is bringing the

01:11:35

Lord praise, honor and glory through her own suffering and her own trials that she has been battling with for decades and actually considers her condition as a blessing from God because it gave her more opportunities than she could ever dream of to proclaim the gospel over and above what she probably would have had in regard to opportunities as a healthy woman.

01:12:01

But we're picking up where we left off, Jim. If you could, you were about to talk about a prayer,

01:12:10

I believe. Yes. Well, Chris, there's a prayer

01:12:16

I wrote, I was saying years and years ago before I ever wrote the book, and it is included in the book.

01:12:25

Many have asked for this prayer and we have freely given them at no cost, but it's entitled

01:12:31

The Unconditional Prayer of the Utterly Serious, and this really anchors me. I pray this prayer in some form most every day.

01:12:41

Lord God, my singular ambition in life is to magnify your son.

01:12:55

I don't care how you fit me into your plan. You may spend me as you please.

01:13:02

I place no conditions on your arrangements. You set the terms of my service.

01:13:08

My only prayer is that you ordain for my life whatever will glorify

01:13:13

Christ most through me. If my Savior be more honored by my death than my life, more in sickness than in health, more in poverty than in wealth, more through loneliness than companionship, more by the appearance of failure than the trappings of success, more by anonymity than notoriety, then your design is my desire.

01:13:39

Only let me make a difference. And I think that if we learn to pray that prayer in some version or other, then we become much more accepting of the mysteries.

01:13:55

We have to have a low threshold of mystery in walking with God. The Lord's not going to explain to us all the things that happen, why they happen, and how long they're going to be there for.

01:14:07

We just need to learn to just unconditionally put ourselves at His disposal.

01:14:16

I tell people this all the time. I told a lady, a doctor, only yesterday.

01:14:22

Whatever she wanted, I said, it may not happen. She says, I'm waiting for God to do a miracle. I said, it may not come.

01:14:28

It may not come. With my daughter and son, 31 years. 31 years. They're brilliant people.

01:14:35

31 years. Gee whiz. But you have to get this attitude that, look,

01:14:43

I'm in. I'm all in. All in. And whatever, Lord, you choose to do, spend me as you please.

01:14:50

Only let me make a difference. Praise God. Let's see here.

01:14:57

We do have another listener. We have

01:15:03

Michael from Rocky Mount, North Carolina, who says, I just tuned in and suffering is the subject at this time.

01:15:12

First time question in my life, it seems like suffering is polishing me. 20 years with hepatitis

01:15:19

C and cirrhosis of the liver and multiple treatments six months at a time. Four times.

01:15:26

Cancer. Then liver transplantation and doing great. God has been my rock and I am thankful for September 7th, 2017.

01:15:36

That's when I got a chance to live a little longer. More praise than question. Well, it certainly is a wonderful thing to hear that someone is praising the

01:15:47

Lord in the midst of all of that. Absolutely. And there are all kinds of people.

01:15:53

I've got all kinds. I've got a suffering church here. I've got all kinds of people that have so much heaviness on them.

01:15:59

So the good thing you can tell that listener, I forget his name. Michael from Rocky Mount, North Carolina.

01:16:06

You can tell Michael, look, these kinds of things, he's not a pastor apparently, but it doesn't matter.

01:16:13

These kinds of things enable me as a pastor or anybody. When I see terrible things happen,

01:16:21

I no longer have to blush. We look at these things and we've been through them.

01:16:28

Okay. I haven't suffered in exactly the way that God is allowing you to suffer.

01:16:34

I don't know what it's all about. I don't have to have the answers. I just know, I just know that God is

01:16:41

God and God is doing what he wants to do. And by allowing me to enter into this suffering,

01:16:48

I'm able to enter into yours. So, you know, I've said with my daughter, I've never lost a child, but I lost a child.

01:16:57

I mean, things were so bad at one point, Julie was never like that. But frankly,

01:17:03

I wish she could die because I couldn't stand to see her suffer the way she was.

01:17:08

I couldn't stand to see Paul lose his life, basically being able to do nothing but take care of her.

01:17:15

As I say, that's never been their attitude, but I know what it is to lose a child, even though I haven't lost one.

01:17:23

Because when you get to the point that you wish you could lose one, you know what it's like. Yes, so what you said reminds me of something that the great

01:17:35

Episcopal Bishop or Anglican Bishop from the 19th century, J .C. Ryle, what he said about sickness.

01:17:45

In fact, I strongly recommend everyone listening to look up his booklet that is available from Chapel Library and other ministries have also reprinted it.

01:17:57

I think it is a chapter from his book, The Upper Room, if I'm not mistaken. But, and I'm going by memory here with this quote, but J .C.

01:18:07

Ryle said, Jesus was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

01:18:13

None have such an opportunity of learning the mind of a suffering Savior as suffering disciples.

01:18:21

And that has gotten me through my own trials in life, having lost people dear to me, including my precious late wife who

01:18:31

I lost in 2011, who's now with Christ for eternity. But at the same time, there is an erroneous way of looking at this, isn't there?

01:18:43

There are Roman Catholics and others who believe that physical suffering is somehow meriting heaven for them or a higher place in heaven and in the medieval time, in fact, not even in just the medieval times, even going up to prior to Vatican II, the self -punishment was promoted by the

01:19:17

Catholic Church, especially for those in the clergy and the monastery and convent and so on.

01:19:23

But this is a false notion, isn't it? Yes, there's no merit in suffering, there's value.

01:19:30

That's a different thing. Value, if endured by faith, if we persevere in it.

01:19:40

Tribulation produces perseverance, and perseverance produces godly character, and godly character leads to an increment in hope.

01:19:49

And that increment of hope does not make us ashamed because it's never materialized. For God pours out the sense of the love of God in our hearts through the

01:19:58

Holy Spirit. So it has great value. Listen, nothing ever becomes stronger without suffering.

01:20:04

Have you ever seen anything become stronger with, any organic thing become stronger without counterpressure?

01:20:12

No, we become stronger through suffering. Amen. And by the way, Michael in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, thank you so much for your question.

01:20:20

You have also won a free copy of the book we are addressing today, Polishing God's Monuments, Pillars of Hope for Punishing Times by Jim Andrews.

01:20:29

Please give us your full mailing address so that cvbbs .com can ship that out to you at no charge to you or to us.

01:20:36

And once again, we thank Granted Ministries for providing us the copies of this book.

01:20:43

Let's see here, we have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who says, how do you respond to somebody, perhaps a believer, perhaps not a believer, who says,

01:21:00

I don't have any monuments to polish. My life has been nothing but a unending series of torturous events and I'm ready to just check out because I don't believe

01:21:14

God has a monument for me to polish. How do you respond to such kind of reactions to what you are saying today?

01:21:23

Oh my, that's easy. Let's say you're a newborn believer. I mean, we'll just say that theoretically, for the sake of argument, a newborn believer, you don't have this history in the

01:21:34

Christian walk where you've seen God do all of these things that I call monuments in your life. Well, listen, you have a

01:21:42

Savior, don't you? God sent a Savior into the world. He sent Jesus Christ to be our

01:21:48

Redeemer. What a testimony to the love of God, the care of God, that he sent a

01:21:54

Savior. What do you mean you don't have a monument? But then you have the whole Bible. You have the monuments all through the

01:22:00

Bible, the works that God did in the lives of all these saints, the works that he did and the outcome.

01:22:06

Read Hebrews chapter 11. That's nothing but monuments. This one believed

01:22:12

God and God did this and this one believed God and God did that and this one. Well, those monuments are our monuments because we too are

01:22:18

God's people. So I remember, Chris, in seminary, to bring that up to date,

01:22:26

I would sit there in chapel. Occasionally we'd have days of prayer, usually one a term, as I recall.

01:22:34

And we'd have students get up and they would say, I wish you guys would all pray for me.

01:22:41

It looks like my wife and I may have to leave school. We're just out of cash and it's not there anymore.

01:22:51

Well, the day would end and then we'd come back maybe the next term. I'd see this guy still around campus and he'd get up and he'd give a testimony and he'd say, you remember when

01:22:59

I got up? And I saw a lot of these, heard a lot of these during that time. And I told you guys, well, when

01:23:07

I went to my mailbox, I had a check for X amount. I mean, the stories would vary, but it happened repeatedly.

01:23:15

That didn't happen to me, but it happened to them. And they were believers just like I was.

01:23:21

They put their believing pants on one leg at a time, just like I do, their shirt the same way. Their God is my

01:23:27

God. And I adopted their monuments and those monuments strengthened me because I said, you're that kind of God.

01:23:35

You do that for your people. And when I had need, God then gave me monuments. But until then

01:23:41

I used their monuments, but then I had the monuments of all the scriptures. Do we believe the word of God?

01:23:47

They're people like us. Amen. We're going to go to our final break right now.

01:23:54

And if you'd like to take advantage of asking our guests a question while we still have time, send it in right away because we're rapidly running out of time.

01:24:05

We do have a number of you still waiting online to have your questions asked and answered. We'll get to as many of you as possible as time will permit.

01:24:14

But if you'd like to get in line, please send in your email immediately at chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

01:24:20

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

01:24:29

USA. And your question may be anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter.

01:24:35

Don't go away. God willing, we will be right back with more of Jim Andrews and polishing God's monuments.

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01:32:53

The Final Word. We are discussing Polishing God's Monuments, Pillars of Hope for Punishing Times.

01:32:59

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

01:33:07

And by the way, I forgot to mention to Michael in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina, since you are a first -time questioner, you not only won a free copy of Polishing God's Monuments, but you also won a free

01:33:20

New American Standard Bible. On top of that, thanks to our friends who publish the

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01:33:31

We have an anonymous listener, Pastor Jim, who says, I have a teenage child who has almost died several times from drug overdose.

01:33:43

I am at my wits' end as to what I can do. There have been many Christians who have reached out to this child of mine, in addition to my wife and I, and there seems to be no answer.

01:33:56

There seems to be no compelling reason that this child of mine will repent of this deadly activity that has almost taken her life already.

01:34:06

What advice can you give? Well, that's very difficult. I wish I had a little handy -dandy answer that the listener would say, oh, that's it.

01:34:16

If I were in that situation, I've seen a lot of those situations, the only thing

01:34:21

I know to do is prevailing prayer, pray, pray, pray. We've got to remember that salvation is

01:34:31

God's sovereign work, it's not ours. Only the Spirit of God can break up all of the formations and the underlayments of that kind of condition, and we see it.

01:34:43

But sometimes, unfortunately, people never come out of it. Our children, as well as ourselves, have sinful hearts, rebellious hearts, and they use drugs to fill those gaps, to fill those voids.

01:35:00

And other than just be supportive of our children, that doesn't mean we condone or approve what they do, but we always want to show them that we love them without condoning what they do.

01:35:14

We always want to pray for them, we always want them to know, as long as it's safe, that's sometimes an issue, that there's a door open, there's a door of love open to their parents.

01:35:26

Beyond that, I don't know what you can do. Well, thank you, Anonymous, and if you give me your full name and mailing address, obviously, off the air, we will have a free copy shipped to you of the book

01:35:40

Polishing God's Monuments, Pillars of Hope for Punishing Times by our guest Jim Andrews.

01:35:45

Thank you so much for sharing such a personal and intimately private situation.

01:35:53

We have Christian in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who says, do we not have to be very careful when addressing the problem of suffering and pain with others that we treat those who are in Christ in a very different way than those who are not in Christ?

01:36:15

We cannot offer the same hopes and promises that we offer our brothers and sisters as we do to those who are lost.

01:36:25

Absolutely, I totally, totally agree with that observation, and I hope that nothing

01:36:34

I have said about Polishing God's Monuments would be interpreted or construed to mean in any way that this book was written for a non -Christian audience.

01:36:46

I know it was written to Christians for Christians, and others have read it, and I would hope that maybe some would come to Christ, but it's not an evangelistic book, but God can use these things.

01:37:01

Oh, yes, of course. Well, thank you, Christian, and give us your full mailing address because you have also won a free copy of Polishing God's Monuments by Jim Andrews, and that will be shipped to you by cvbbs .com

01:37:15

as soon as possible, so please make sure we have your full mailing address. We have

01:37:21

B .B. in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who says, what kind of hope can you offer the family of those who have a loved one who has died and there was no evidence that that person has come to Christ?

01:37:43

Well, that's a very difficult pastoral question. I think that the advice

01:37:52

I have to give there is rather generic. There's always the hope when we don't know all of the circumstances.

01:38:00

That's right. An individual somewhere along the line between their passing and whatever point that maybe, just maybe, the light of Christ broke through from some direction or venue or other, and like the thief on the cross, maybe they made a confession of faith.

01:38:23

But if we know that there was no such thing, well, there is no hope for them, and that's all we can say.

01:38:33

We've just got to say that God is a loving and God is a just God, and with Isaiah say that God is glorified in his justice as well as in his deliverances.

01:38:47

Yes. Will not the judge of all the earth do what is right? And nobody will ever be in a place where they are not deserving to be or supposed to be,

01:38:59

I should say, because nobody's deserving of heaven, of course, and yet there will be multitudes in heaven, but nobody will be where they're not supposed to be.

01:39:09

Exactly. And what you said is very true because I have met people who shockingly have told me that they know with certainty people that they love, like their parents or one of their parents or someone that is close to them, they will be certain that that person is in hell, and I'll ask them why.

01:39:33

And they'll say, well, you know, he was a blasphemer and a rebellious person and an anti -Christian all of his life, and I said, but were you with him when he died?

01:39:45

Many times you will hear the answer, no, I wasn't. I will say to these people, well, how then can you have certainty that that person's in hell?

01:39:53

Because knowing you as a Christian, you no doubt shared the gospel with your dad or your brother or whoever the person's speaking about, and you don't know if that gospel, proclamation, you don't know that for certain that it did not take root and blossom into a faith, even perhaps moments before the person entered into eternity.

01:40:19

So I'm just— I totally agree with that, but there's another perspective that I would share.

01:40:25

I don't know always how people will receive it, but I talk to people about this a lot.

01:40:33

Look, I grew up, I was something of an athlete growing up, went to college on a football scholarship, so I think in those terms, and I'm a partisan.

01:40:48

I'm a partisan and I'm a competitor for the Lord Jesus Christ. Uh, my loyalties are to God, and God is a good

01:40:58

God, and He is a just God. I don't always understand His goodness, and I don't always understand

01:41:03

His justice, but I believe it. And I don't care, really, I really feel this way.

01:41:12

I don't care whether it's mother, father, brother, sister, or whoever it is. I love them and I care for them, and while they're here,

01:41:19

I want them to come to know the Lord Jesus Christ and to share the blessing that I have. But if in the final analysis, especially in this country, if they've heard all that they've heard and had access to all the truth that is available to them, and in the end said,

01:41:36

I don't want it, I won't have it, I don't care for it, I don't need it, and they turn their backs on God and they go out into eternity, well, that's sad.

01:41:47

But I'm not going to whine at God. How could you send somebody to hell? God sent

01:41:54

His only Son, how could He send His Son to suffer and die like He did for our sins?

01:42:01

I tell people, God will not forget. And if anybody's listening to me in that posture, accidentally maybe,

01:42:10

I tell you, God will not forget that you trampled in the blood of His Son. So, I'm pro -God.

01:42:17

I'm a partisan. I'm on His side. I don't understand everything, but if that's

01:42:22

God's judgment, that's God's judgment, and it is right and it is just. Amen. Yes, it is a tragic thing, and no

01:42:29

Christian is doing anyone a favor when they allow emotion and sentimentality to form their doctrine.

01:42:39

I just saw, I think it was day before yesterday, a movie that has just been released on Netflix called

01:42:47

Come Sunday, which is the story of a true -to -life figure who is still a pastor,

01:42:55

Carlton Pearson, who was a Pentecostal. I'm not sure if he still is because I know he's pastoring in a

01:43:02

United Church of Christ denomination congregation now, but he believed in eternal conscious punishment and then became overwhelmed with depression and inner agony and turmoil, knowing that there were so many people who were living and dying without Christ, that he eventually came to reject the concept of eternal conscious punishment.

01:43:36

And then he, not long after that, embraced universalism, where he now believes that everyone is going to be in heaven with Christ for eternity, regardless of what they believe or how they live.

01:43:53

And there's a very tragic scene in the movie where the organ player or pianist in his church confides in him that he is a homosexual, and then he confides in him later that he is dying of AIDS, and Pastor Pearson tells him that he has nothing to fear because he doesn't need to be saved, he already is saved, and basically to be comforted by the fact that he will be in heaven with Christ.

01:44:23

Now that is a tragic and horrific thing for a Christian to tell somebody who refuses to repent.

01:44:30

Well, it wasn't a Christian who told him that, it was an apostate. Right, exactly. Or I should have said somebody who professes to be a

01:44:38

Christian. But anyway, I hope to do an examination of that movie at some point with some guests, so stay tuned for more information about that.

01:44:53

Um, could you provide some more of the monuments of which you speak in the book

01:44:59

Polishing God's Monuments? Well, yes, yes, I'd be more than happy to.

01:45:06

So many in our lives, so many. I mentioned a house, well let me tell you one in Portland.

01:45:15

We came here, finally my family got moved here, and we had a, long story but short story is, we found a home, it's an amazing story, it's now in the

01:45:30

Oregon Historical Register, 23 rooms, 7 ,700 square feet of carriage house and all of that, and I kept students,

01:45:40

I had five different student couples live with us in that home, but eventually it was like inheriting a golf course.

01:45:48

You know, how do I take care of this thing? It's beautiful, but how do I do it? And I didn't want it to degrade, and it had been such a monument when we got it.

01:45:58

I didn't tell you all the backstory, but I don't need to because I got another monument to tell you connected with the house.

01:46:04

So I kept praying for years, I said, we had it, we were in there about six years, probably three years of that, we didn't have any money, you don't make much money teaching at a seminary, and I kept saying,

01:46:19

Lord, this was such a monument, this home you've given us, it amazes everybody, and don't want to put a for sale sign up, a distress sign in other words, and say up for sale,

01:46:34

I know Lord this is very irregular, but this is nothing to almighty

01:46:40

God. I said, if you want us to sell it, would you please do this? Would you maybe just call somebody someday out of nowhere, come up and knock on our door and say, would you like to sell your house?

01:47:00

Well, I think it was June, we were expecting company, and one morning,

01:47:07

I don't know, 10 or 11 o 'clock, there was a knock on the door, and there was a grandmotherly lady there who happened to be an outstanding realtor, and she said,

01:47:17

I hope, sir, I'm not intruding, but she said, I have a couple who love large, elegant homes, and they've been looking at yours, and they have great interest and wanted me to ask you if you might be willing to sell your home.

01:47:35

And I said, well, possibly. Yes, absolutely.

01:47:44

We sold our home, and can you believe that? How often does that happen? Sure, that can happen, but it's just an amazing thing.

01:47:53

We did not have the means, the resources, I did not have the time, I work all the time, literally.

01:47:59

I work all the time, and I certainly didn't have the resources to keep up with that great place. But it was a great place, beautiful place, still is.

01:48:10

But the Lord provided what I needed and provided a sale, and I didn't have to dishonor him by putting up a for sale sign.

01:48:18

That was another just outstanding monument. On another time, we were exhausted.

01:48:27

This was early in Julie's illness. We were just financially exhausted. Paul's grandfather was an industrialist of some level up in the northeast, and he had helped underwrite the massive expenses.

01:48:42

I should tell you that we figured, this is just a little interlude on my way to the end here, we figured that my wife and I alone over these 31 years doing the averages have spent about $2 million out of our own pocket on this illness.

01:48:58

His parents spent less, but probably approaching that, and I don't know how much

01:49:06

Paul's grandfather, I mean, it's just been overwhelming. We were one of those points where Paul could no longer ask his grandfather.

01:49:13

His grandfather would have allowed it. He was just embarrassed. He just couldn't put in another call saying, Grandpa, we're needing something.

01:49:20

We didn't know what we were going to do. We just didn't know what we were going to do. Well, the brother next to me, as I say,

01:49:26

I'm the oldest, and he's been in business at that time. He was executive vice president of Circuit City back in the days when it was flourishing, and he was leaving to go to Wards to become the

01:49:40

CEO. And Bernard and I, he's not a believer.

01:49:46

We're very close today, but we're not all that close then. Didn't even know that he knew about Julie's situation and hadn't bothered to tell him.

01:49:52

I didn't even know that it would matter. He found out about it. He called me up, and he says, Jimmy, he said,

01:49:58

I'm leaving Circuit City. I'm going to Wards to become

01:50:04

CEO, but I have $50 ,000 of Circuit City stock that we would like to send to you all to help support you all at your expenses with Julie.

01:50:18

You talk about a monument. Talk about timing. I mean, I could go on and on with that kind of thing where the

01:50:26

Lord has shown up in our lives to do things that have just knocked our socks off.

01:50:34

His financial provision for us. I tell people that our lives are like the feeding of the 5 ,000.

01:50:41

I don't make that much money. Our church gives me a very adequate salary, but listen, we don't have the resources to fund all of this, but the

01:50:52

Lord keeps pulling bread and fish out of the hat, and I can't do the math.

01:50:58

I wouldn't try to dishonor God by doing the math. I don't know where it all comes from, but somehow it is there, and where are we?

01:51:06

Well, we own two homes. One of them is completely paid for. How is this?

01:51:13

That's a story. Our own home, we owe about $100 ,000 on, but have the means, if we wanted to, to go out and pay it off.

01:51:23

We are not in debt. We drive one car. It's a good car. It's not a fancy car.

01:51:29

It's a good car. But God takes care of us. Those are monuments. Now, I don't know what will happen tomorrow.

01:51:37

There may be a crash of some kind. I don't know what will happen. But we have learned not to get too stressed about it, because as my wife and I talk and we pray about this kind of thing, we say, for 31 years, we have seen

01:51:50

God take care of us in this way and that and another. So, yeah, we're human.

01:51:56

Once in a while, it worries us, but let's not buy tomorrow's problems for today. God has taken care of us, and somehow in the future,

01:52:04

He'll take care of us. But hey, Chris, what if the next time He decides not to take care of us?

01:52:11

Well, remember that prayer I read? Lord, spend us as you will. You've shown us your faithfulness.

01:52:18

Now you have a different purpose, and if that is your purpose, we're good with it. Help us to be faithful.

01:52:26

Amen. We have Ronald in eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who says,

01:52:34

I am sure from what I've heard that you did not intend to convey the idea that the

01:52:40

Word of Faith and name it and claim it Pentecostals declare, but don't we need to be careful not to convey the idea that if we are faithful and obedient to God, that He will automatically bestow upon us many blessings that are earthly, such as wealth and health, etc.?

01:53:02

Oh, listen, amen, amen, and amen. I totally agree. Did you say his name was

01:53:08

Ron? Yes. Yes. Ron, I couldn't agree more. In fact, that whole new apostolic

01:53:17

Reformation movement with its bland trail mix of prosperity theology and Word of Faith is abhorrent, and it is demonic, and I in no way intend to give aid in comfort.

01:53:29

That said, God does take care of His people, but as I just said, and if you remember, there are times when the

01:53:37

Lord says, okay, I've taken care of you. This time you're going down for the count. I must be prepared for that.

01:53:46

Just because I give faithfully to the Lord doesn't mean I'm not going to lose my job.

01:53:54

Ordinarily, the Lord takes care of us. I mean, you go to Hebrews chapter 11 and you see God's provision. There's a classic example, case study of God's provision for these people who had faith, but then you get to the end of the chapter and what do you see?

01:54:07

All of these people who went down for the count and they didn't see, the world was not worthy of them. They were living in caves and rags and all that kind of thing, but still they clung to their hope.

01:54:17

That's what we've got to do. Amen. God doesn't always give us what we want, but He always provides for our needs.

01:54:24

Absolutely. We have a listener who wants to hear the joke that I mentioned at the beginning of the show.

01:54:32

I'll tell it real quick. Since you seem to have a self -deprecating humor, Jim, I think that you will find this humorous.

01:54:41

We have three senior citizens sitting on a park bench and one of them says, oh,

01:54:46

I hate being old. I can't even enjoy the foods that I used to eat. I just really hate being old.

01:54:52

The second senior citizen says, you're talking about not being able to eat the foods you used to eat.

01:54:58

I can't even remember what I had for breakfast this morning. Then the third senior citizen says,

01:55:04

I don't know what you two are complaining about. I'm older than both of you and I've got my health. I've got my mental faculties.

01:55:11

Knock on wood. Come in. I would go forth and say, what did you say?

01:55:22

That was actually told to me by a Jesuit priest before a debate. He debated

01:55:28

Dr. James R. White, who's a Reformed Baptist, a dear friend of mine. When I had lunch with Mitch Pacwa, who's a

01:55:35

Jesuit priest, he told me that joke over lunch. But anyway, I want to make sure that you have the next three minutes uninterrupted to summarize what you most want etched into the hearts and minds of our listeners.

01:55:47

Well, I would just like to emphasize, by the way, if anybody wants any of my books, because I've written several, they can go to the

01:55:59

Jim Andrews Books, capital J, capital A, capital

01:56:04

B, JimAndrewsBooks .com and find the other books that I have written.

01:56:12

None of them are national bestsellers. Not yet, but who knows after this show?

01:56:19

And nothing I could ever write. I think I'd be embarrassed if a book I wrote was a national bestseller, given the atmosphere.

01:56:28

I would just like for people to know that the sober reality and the life of faith is that through many tribulations, we enter into the kingdom of God.

01:56:41

God's people are buffeted. I want everybody to know in two ways. Sometimes we suffer for the faith.

01:56:48

Other times we suffer with faith. But either way, Chris, our faith remains a work in progress.

01:56:56

In the midst of troubles, our emotions can vacillate between hope and despair, submission and rebellion.

01:57:03

Our understanding can alternate between moments of comprehension and times of total confusion.

01:57:09

Well, this book, Polishing God's Monuments, confronts these issues head on and offers believers biblical perspective, practical direction, and sustaining hope.

01:57:19

Amen. Well, we do have time for a couple of more, well, at least one more question from a listener.

01:57:27

We have John in Bangor, Maine, who says, must we not be very careful when we are ministering to those who are suffering, not to just quote scripture at them like placards and we have to at sometimes just be silent and weep with them and hold them?

01:57:45

Of course, we will eventually always have to give them biblical truth, but isn't it true that we don't always need to open our mouths?

01:57:53

He's right. Sometimes we don't need to open our mouths. However, if we have been a sufferer or are a sufferer, then without blushing, we can open our mouth.

01:58:07

But sometimes there are things that we don't understand and don't know what to say, then shut up.

01:58:13

But we eventually need to say something about the gospel, especially if a person's lost. These sufferings are a gift.

01:58:20

They don't feel like a gift. No way. But they're a gift from God, as Paul says in 2

01:58:26

Corinthians, so that the hope we have, we might be able to share with others.

01:58:32

That's what he's essentially saying. Your sufferings are a gift, so you might be able to minister to others. Well, I want to repeat all of the contact information that we have for you.

01:58:42

Don't forget, folks, if you want to order any of Jim's books, go to jimandrewsbooks .com,

01:58:50

jimandrewsbooks .com. Also, we want to thank our friends, again, at Granted Ministries, who provided these copies of the book that we discussed today.

01:59:00

Grantedministries .org is their website, grantedministries .org. And, of course, you can get most of the books, if not all of the books, that we discuss here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio from cvbbs .com.

01:59:12

That's Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com. Thank you so much, Jim Andrews. If you could hold on the line,

01:59:18

I'd like to say a proper goodbye to you off the air. And I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write in questions.

01:59:25

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