November 10, 2017 Show with Ron Glass on “Smells, Bells & Climbing the Candlestick: Tracing the Mysterious Evangelical Odyssey into Rome, Anglo-Catholicism & Eastern Orthodoxy”

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

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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.

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

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

This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you a happy Friday. On this 10th day of November 2017, the day before Veterans Day, and before I introduce today's guest and topic,

I have a special announcement to make in regard to Veterans Day. Veterans Day has given me the opportunity to right a wrong

I am guilty of and give honor to whom honor is due, my heroic father,

Harry E. Arntzen, born in 1920 and died in 1998 at the age of 78, who volunteered to be a glider pilot in the

Army Air Corps during World War II. While growing up, I unfortunately, as many kids, took my dad for granted for the most part and never really grasped what a truly courageous man he must have been.

As the old saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt. But what many of you may not know, and what

I failed to genuinely appreciate while my dad was still alive, is that the role of a glider pilot was a uniquely dangerous one, which was accompanied by an extremely high fatality rate, so high that their missions were often dubbed as suicide missions and the pilots were nicknamed suicide jockeys.

If by God's sovereign and merciful providence my dad had not been prevented from going on a glider mission after contracting pneumonia, there is a very strong likelihood that neither my four siblings nor I would have ever been born.

I only wish that I had the sense, humility, and gratitude to pay my dad the honor and respect due him, and that he could have enjoyed the comfort, joy, and sense of accomplishment as a father, knowing that his youngest son viewed him with the proper level of awe and reverence his bravery deserved while he was still with us.

I now publicly salute a very brave, adventurous young man from Brooklyn, New York, named

Harry E. Arnzen, who out of love and gratitude for his country was sacrificially committed to do something

I very seriously doubt I could ever muster the courage to do in the best days of my life.

Here's to you, dad, and happy Veterans Day to all of you listening. I hope that you take the opportunity this weekend to pay tribute to someone you know and love who is a veteran, whether they are a fallen veteran or still living with us, and do so in the love of Christ as an ambassador with his life -saving message.

And today we have on the program a very good friend of mine, a friend that I value amongst my closest friends, who has demonstrated more concern and interest and excitement over my radio program,

Iron Trumpets Iron Radio, than anybody that I know. His name is Pastor Ron Glass. He is the pastor of Wading River Baptist Church in Wading River, Long Island, New York.

He's also the host of the River of Life radio program, which is heard every

Saturday at 9 .30 a .m. Eastern Time and every Sunday at 7 .30 p .m.

Eastern Time, globally via live streaming at eastgatebroadcasting .com.

Today we are going to be discussing a very controversial issue, and I think especially in light of the recent apostasy of Hank Hanegraaff of the

Bible Answer Man. And I'm titling the program today, Smells, Bells, and Climbing the

Candlestick, Tracing the Mysterious Evangelical Odyssey into Rome, Anglo -Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy.

Or as my guest today has recently, or just today actually, informed me, there's a name for this attraction to this kind of thing called

Ancient Futurism. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Trumpets Iron Radio, Pastor Ron Glass.

Thank you, Chris. It's my privilege to be your guest today. And did I get that right? Did I remember it?

It's Ancient Futurism? Well, Ancient Future Christianity, yes. Okay. Well, before we get into that subject, let's hear, even though we've had you do this before, let's hear more about Wading River Baptist Church of Wading River, Long Island, New York.

Wading River Baptist Church is an independent Baptist congregation affiliated with the

Conservative Baptist Association. We are located about, oh, about 50 miles from Queens.

We are directly south and across the Long Island Sound from New Haven, Connecticut, on the

North Shore of Long Island. Beautiful little town, and we are a small church, but we are seeking to hold forth the gospel of life in this rather challenging community, which has been in need of the

Word of God and the truth of the scriptures for many, many years. We meet on the

Lord's Day at 11 o 'clock, 945 for a

Bible class, and then we are currently in an evening series of studies at 5 p .m.,

and then we meet for prayer, Bible study and prayer on Wednesday evenings at 7 p .m.

So I've been here as pastor of the church now for almost, in February it'll be 25 years of ministry.

Wow. And I have to say, with all honesty and without hesitation, that I would strongly recommend anybody living within a two -hour drive, or depending upon how ambitious you are, perhaps even a farther distance than that, but anybody living within reasonable traveling distance,

I would strongly urge you to visit Waiting River Baptist Church, and if you do not have a church home, joining

Waiting River Baptist Church, or even if you are currently a member of a church that you are increasingly becoming leery of, perhaps you are realizing as you grow in your knowledge of the scriptures that your pastor is quite heretical perhaps, or is departing gradually from the inerrant scriptures as the only infallible rule of the faith of the church, and I would strongly urge you, perhaps you're listening and you're a

Roman Catholic or an Anglo -Catholic or an Eastern Orthodox individual as we are addressing today,

I would strongly urge you to pay a visit and ultimately join Waiting River Baptist Church, that being if the

Lord is gracious to save you, and I would love to hear good reports about that, because this is a diamond on Long Island, one of the best -kept secrets on Long Island, a really precious jewel and wonderful church that I can't speak highly enough about, and I know of which

I am speaking because I am one of two people that edits the sermons of Pastor Glass for his radio broadcast,

I have to turn one sermon into two radio broadcasts due to the fact that the radio show is a half hour long, so I am primarily involved in that and hear many, many, many sermons by Pastor Glass and he is surely a consistent and biblically faithful preacher, and not only with the content, but he is also, in regard to his homiletic gifts, he is quite a powerful preacher and a gifted proclaimer of the gospel, and his show,

River of Life Radio, as I mentioned, is heard every Saturday at 930 a .m.

Eastern Time and Sunday at 730 p .m. Eastern Time, globally via live streaming at EastgateBroadcasting .com,

EastgateBroadcasting .com, and if you go to that website, you can also find out the

FM radio stations where you can actually hear it on Long Island on the

FM dial. Well Pastor Glass, this is a very timely topic.

When Hank Hanegraaff first announced that he had joined the

Eastern Orthodox Church, and then very puzzingly,

I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right, bafflingly, he acted as if, in fact said, that he hasn't changed anything in his belief system or teaching, which is just remarkably dishonest.

It's just clearly dishonest because he has decades of recorded programs that will testify to the opposite fact.

But when you first heard about this, I don't know how familiar you were or are with Hank Hanegraaff and the

Bible Answer Man program. It goes all the way back to the original host,

Dr. Walter Martin, who I think began the program in the 70s. I could be mistaken about that, but it was quite a while ago that he began the

Bible Answer Man program, and then Hank Hanegraaff took over the program after Walter departed into glory for eternity.

But what was your first reaction when you heard about what I would call the apostasy of Hank Hanegraaff?

Well, I was a little surprised to hear that, but I can't say that it doesn't make some sense with regard to his overall way of looking at Scripture.

By that I mean, as far as I'm concerned, there were several issues where he just simply didn't accept the teaching of Scripture, so that's not a great surprise to me.

Let me also say, and one of the reasons that I think it's important to talk about this, and I'm glad we're talking about it now, is that we have just passed the 500th anniversary of the

Reformation last week, the nailing of the theses on the

Wittenberg Castle Church door by Martin Luther. And I think this is a timely event, that is, that looking at this whole thing of ancient and future

Christianity is something that we need to do in light of some of the thinking that's going around.

Now let me give you an example of that. I was a little surprised when I received, as I often do, catalogs from book publishers as part of the

Evangelical Theological Society membership. So I got a catalog from the

Zondervan Company. Now here's one of the major books that they're advertising in their catalog, and it says this.

The title of the book is, Was the Reformation a Mistake?

And this is an Evangelical publisher who has published a book by a man named

Matthew Levering. Matthew Levering is a professor of theology at Mundelein Seminary, which is part of the

University of St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein, Illinois. He is a Roman Catholic.

And his whole point is to try to help the readers get a

Catholic perspective on several major themes like scripture and Mary, Eucharist, monasticism, justification, merit, the saints, the priesthood, and so on.

And he examines the positions of the Roman Catholic Church as well as that of Martin Luther, and he makes the case that the

Catholic position is biblically defensible. But it's interesting how the article attached to this advertisement reads.

It says that he makes the case that the Catholic position is biblically defensible once one allows for the variety of biblically warranted modes of interpreting scripture.

So you have to admit that there's all these different interpretations out there, so Roman Catholicism is valid.

So you have this. Now, the book concludes with a response from a

Protestant theologian, but just the question, was the

Reformation a mistake? Now, that question is asked in—well, actually, it's not a question, it's the statement is made in one of the books

I want to reference today, which is a book that came out a number of years ago.

Actually, it originally came out in 1989. It was updated in 1992 and 2009 by a man named

Peter Gilquist. Gilquist was originally brought up in an evangelical

Protestant environment, and he and a bunch of his friends who were attached to the

Campus Crusade movement at the time became Orthodox. They went into the

Orthodox Church, and he has written a book which has been very influential. It's called Becoming Orthodox, A Journey to the

Ancient Christian Faith. And in that book, he makes the statement, the

Reformation was a mistake. So that kind of thinking is out there.

And there's another factor that has been very influential as well, and I don't know whether people are aware of this or not, but in the last decade or more, probably a little more now, the rather well -known

Christian periodical Christianity Today officially took on the ancient future perspective.

In other words, the magazine has adopted ancient future Christianity as normative, and much of the articles, its approach has been channeled in that direction.

So it's out there. And this is a question that I think all of us, especially those of us who have just celebrated the

Reformation with a certain sense of joy and thanksgiving to God for what He did through Luther and the other

Reformers, now to come up against the question as to whether it was a mistake, or the statement that it was a mistake, it causes us to stop a little bit and say, what are these guys thinking?

Yeah. Well, it is indeed baffling why there is an attraction to a significant group of Bible -believing or professedly

Bible -believing Christians into these different groups. And I'm sure that you would probably agree with me that if you want to be critical, the best place to start is at home.

And don't you think that there are things, first of all, that we can be critical of that are going on within our own ranks within churches that describe themselves as evangelical

Bible -believing churches that perhaps have robbed worship of the awe and reverence and the

God -centeredness of what worship is supposed to be? And perhaps people are craving for something that they aesthetically would view as quote quote religious.

Some of the so -called worship services and sermons that are taking place, especially in the rapidly growing seeker -sensitive type churches, are those services that you can barely distinguish between a church service and a self -help seminar or something.

When I watch Andy Stanley on TV, there seems to be little that resembles what

I would call a sermon or an aura of worship.

What if you could comment yourself on this? Yeah. Well, let me say, first of all, that I became aware a number of years ago of what was called the

Emerging Church, and that got a lot of discussion for a few years until the Emerging Church sort of splintered, kind of fell apart.

But it was a movement among young adults, first generation of millennials,

I guess, the younger adults, who were rebelling against their past.

And there were two main areas or two main backgrounds that seemed to be prominently involved in this, and that was there were young people who had come out of fundamentalist backgrounds, fundamentalist environments that were very legalistic and that were very,

I guess we could call it preacher -centered, and didn't put much stress on worship.

The other thing that they were rebelling against was, in fact, the seeker -sensitive movement.

They had gotten involved in the seeker -sensitive churches, the megachurches, and what they were finding was they were attending, essentially, a show, rock concerts.

It was not satisfying to them. They weren't getting a worship experience. So that was a problem.

Now, the history of this, I think, goes back even before that, though, to a man named

Robert Weber. Robert Weber, spelled with two Bs, was a professor of theology at Wheaton College.

He later went on to be a professor at Northern Seminary. He was a professor there when he passed away.

He lived from 1933, passed away in 2007. He was the author of over 40 books, and was an acknowledged expert in the area of worship, and particularly the history of worship.

Now, he wrote a lot of books, and several of them, you can go online on Amazon or whatever and you can see his books listed there, they're still there.

A number of them have ancient future in the title. The book that I first encountered a number of years ago from Robert Weber was called

Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail. What happened was that Weber came fresh out of seminary to teach at Wheaton College, and when you read the description, he was something of a hippie,

I think, had come out of that generation, and was unorthodox. They would sit on the floor with his students and they would talk about existentialism and stuff like that.

Well, he eventually changed, and he began to question this whole matter of evangelical worship.

Weber himself grew up in a pastor's home, he did undergraduate work at Bob Jones University, and then he just rebelled against it.

So, to make a long story of his life short, he wrote this book,

Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, because he was persuading numbers of faculty and students at Wheaton College to abandon their evangelical churches and essentially follow him into an

Anglican community. Now, there were, and this gets to your question, Chris, and this will take a little while so interrupt me when you have to stop,

I want to just mention six things that he wanted, that he felt that were missing in his evangelical experience.

And so I'll just go real quickly through these. The first thing that he was concerned was that there was a new, he wanted a new sense of mystery.

Now, that term, mystery, looms large in these people in the ancient future movement, whether they're going back to Anglicanism or Romanism or Orthodoxy.

They're basically saying that God can't be contained in a theological system.

So the question they were asking is, how can we find the mystery of God's presence? They're looking for the presence of God in a mystical way.

And so what they tended to do was abandon what they call literalness. They abandoned a theology based on reason, and they wanted to rediscover the mystery of God.

Secondly, they wanted, and you mentioned this, they wanted a richer worship experience.

They wanted, they were on a quest for meaningful, God -centered worship.

In other words, they wanted a new experience, and that's the key word, they wanted a new experience of the supernatural.

They felt that the traditional churches, fundamental evangelical churches, had a deficit of worship.

And that was especially true in Weber's background. He details some of that in his book.

And so they found it, he said that he found it in a liturgical setting, where he believed that the worship was centered on Christ and not on the preacher.

So the main thing wasn't the sermon, the main thing was the liturgy. And that was

Christ -focused, so that's what he wanted, richer worship experience. The third thing that he wanted was sacramental reality.

The idea of God working through the sacraments, and the churches that he grew up in, the university he went to, would not have held to a sacramentarian view, they believe as our church believes in what we call the ordinances of baptism in the

Lord's table. That wasn't enough for Weber, Weber wanted sacramental reality.

It was not that the sacraments, as we believe, were memorials, ways of remembering

Christ and what he did, and of visibly demonstrating what the

Lord Jesus did by way of redeeming us, buried in the likeness of his death, raised to walk in newness of life, and this is my body, broken for you, and so on.

Well, he believed that the sacraments actually had efficacy, and that is the traditional position,

Roman Catholicism, and of Orthodoxy, and of the Anglican Church, as well as some other

Protestant churches, that they are sacraments, not ordinances. The fourth thing that he wanted was spiritual identity.

He thought that he needed to get over what he called historical amnesia.

He had a desire to have a link with primitive Christianity, an openness to Catholicism, for example.

So he came to believe that our identity is with God's people everywhere, and at all times, that we belong to the great ecumenical company of the saints.

There is an identity that we have with all Christians of all times.

The fourth thing that he saw, excuse me, fifth thing, is ecumenical unity, and that's kind of implied by the spiritual identity.

What Weber came to say is, we need to abandon the fundamentalist notion of separation, which is something that,

I mean, I grew up in an independent, fundamental Baptist church, and I heard message after message on separation, both personal and ecclesiastical.

He said, we need to get past this. We need to get over this. The fragmentation of Christianity is a bad thing, especially following the

Reformation, where you have Luther and Calvin, and then from Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, all of these other denominations divided.

You had the Anabaptists, and then, you know, as time went on, they just split and divided until you have this whole array of denominations.

There is no unity. There's no connection between them, and he thought that there should be that sense of unity.

And then the final sixth thing is he was looking for a holistic spirituality. In other words, he was saying, let's get past that spirituality of do's and don'ts, what many would refer to as legalism.

You can't do this. You can't do that. You must do this. You must do that. Rather, he advocated what he called an ethical spirituality, a spirituality of experience.

It was an attempt to integrate Christ into all of life, but as you read it, what you find is it becomes a matter of feeling, and he felt that he discovered the value of, for an age of his own personal spiritual devotions, he was longing, again, for the sense of mystery or a sense of spirituality or a sense of reality, of experiencing the reality of Christ through the sacraments and an identity with the

Church historically. Those are the things that drove him into the arms of the

Anglican Church. And we're going to be going to a break right now. If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail dot com.

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

USA. And please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter.

Perhaps you have some concerns about your own pastor and your own church in regard to this climbing the candlestick, which actually is quite a humorous derogatory phrase that I learned from my conservative,

Calvinistic, Anglican friends who are very dismayed to see how much of a foothold

Romish belief and doctrine and practice has taken place within what is called

Anglicanism. And they call those that are transforming or morphing into more and more like a

Roman Catholic pastor or quote -unquote priest or church than they are historically

Protestant pastor or church. As I said, they call that climbing the candlestick.

But we'll be back, God willing, right after these messages from our sponsors with more of Pastor Ron Glass.

And if you have a question, send it in right away at chrisarnsen at gmail dot com, chrisarnsen at gmail dot com.

We already have several of you waiting to have your questions asked and answered, and we'll get to each and every one of you that time will allow us to.

So don't go away. God willing, we'll be right back with Pastor Ron Glass. Tired of box store

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Well, we are now back to our discussion with Pastor Ron Glass of Wading River Baptist Church in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York.

He is also the host of the River of Life radio program, and we are discussing smells, bells, and climbing the candlestick, tracing the mysterious evangelical odyssey into Rome, Anglican Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy.

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

Now, Pastor Glass, it's up to you if you want me to go into some of our listener questions now, or did you want to continue a thought that you were speaking on before the break?

Let me just move briefly from Anglicanism to Orthodoxy, and just sort of summarize what

Peter Gilquist says in his book. Now, again, let me just mention that Peter Gilquist was, like Robert Weber, brought up in an evangelical context, and he became a worker, a staff member, with Campus Crusades for Christ back in the 1970s, and he became, to put it simply, dissatisfied, and he and his friends ended up developing a new

Orthodox church, sort of a new, you want to call it a sub -denomination of Anglican Orthodoxy, which then eventually merged into the

Antiochian Orthodox Church.

It's called the Antiochian Evangelical Orthodox Mission, was what they established. So, interestingly, as you read what he has to say, he's got some of the same concerns that we see with Weber in his

Odyssey into Anglicanism, and I can just go very quickly through these, just mention them.

One, again, is concern for tradition. He believes in the importance of tradition, of being connected to something in the past.

This seems to be a very important concern on the part of these, many others, of especially younger people who have become disillusioned when they looked at the churches that they're attending, or the churches they grew up in, and they don't see any connection with historical

Orthodoxy at all, and that's Orthodoxy with a small o, with the Christian tradition,

Biblical Christianity, they don't see a connection with that, and so they're looking for a sense of connection that really is tradition.

They want to be part of an ongoing tradition, and that's why Anglicanism is attractive,

Romanism is attractive, Eastern Orthodoxy is attractive, because they go back so far. Now, Gilquist said that there were certain kinds of things that he had to really adjust to before he was, as he moved into the

Eastern Orthodox orbit, there were some things that he, as an evangelical originally, had to deal with, and here were the things that were the hardest for him.

Sensory worship, that is, the smells and the bells, but he came to appreciate that, that the liturgy of the

Orthodox Church touched all of the senses. Seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching, all of those things were involved in the worship, and it was, again, a rich worship experience from his point of view.

Another thing that he had a trial with, that is, it was a challenge to him in moving into Orthodoxy, was calling priests father, because he had been trained before as an evangelical, he wasn't supposed to call any man father, that's what

Jesus says, and so he had trouble with that one. Another area that he had trouble with was venerating

Mary. Now, the Orthodox do venerate Mary, and he had to struggle with this.

There was one area that is not acceptable to the

Orthodox that the Roman Catholics are committed to, and that has to do with the

Immaculate Conception. He could not accept that, but he did have to accept the doctrine of perpetual virginity and the bodily assumption of Mary and the reverence with which

Mary is regarded. The other thing that he mentions is the sign of the cross, being willing to give the sign of the cross, which, again, was a major stumbling block because of his evangelical upbringing.

So, once he got past all of these and began to accept all of these things, it was not a problem to him to move into the

Orthodox orbit. The thing that kind of strikes you in this, as you read through these things, is how little concern there is for the

Word of God. Scripture does not play a role in this. Let me give you, for example, a statement.

This is from a guy named Jason Feldman, who had been a member of the

Presbyterian Church in America, trained in Presbyterian Church of America institutions, who became a

Roman Catholic priest. He says this in his explanation. Historically speaking, the idea that the written

Word of God is formally sufficient for all things related to faith and practice, such that anyone of normal intelligence and reasonably good intentions could read it and deduce from it what is necessary for orthodoxy and orthopraxy, that is, practice or righteous living.

He says, all of that is not a position that I see reflected in the writings of the early

Church Fathers. This is something that you see, especially in the

Orthodox. And Hank Hanegraaff's made a big issue of this.

And you see it in these people who've gone back into the Roman Catholic Church. They do not go back to Scripture.

They go back to the Church Fathers. That's their major authority.

Why is that? Well, here's another statement from a Presbyterian -turned -Catholic.

His name is Albert Skarbock, and he had graduated from Westminster Theological Seminary, and he became a

Roman Catholic. And he says this. This is sort of amazing.

He says, as any convert knows, Scripture itself does not teach that the

Bible is our sole source of doctrine, but rather that the Church is the pillar and foundation of the truth.

And so he is going to accept, therefore, the Roman Catholic view of tradition as holding equal authority with Scripture.

So when you move away from the Bible as your authority, where are you going to go?

And the answer, most of them, is they go to the Church Fathers. And if you know anything about the

Church Fathers, you know that it was very early on in the history of the Church that these great writers and Church leaders, and they were great men, and they made some valuable contributions to the

Church. But nonetheless, much of their thinking got infected very early with Greek philosophy, and as a result, theology got kind of messed up.

They go back to those Church Fathers as of greater authority, really, than even the

Bible. And they're not even really fairly using the patristic writings to develop their beliefs.

They are basically doing what they claim Protestants do in regard to the

Church Fathers. They are picking and choosing where they are comfortable with what the

Fathers had to say, or they are just parroting the Roman Catholic apologists who are picking out exclusively a certain select group of fathers or quotations that seem, on the surface, taken out of context to bolster their understanding.

But if anything that has come to be certain in my mind and heart, being a former

Roman Catholic, people may have heard a very famous quote by Cardinal Newman, an

Anglican convert to Roman Catholicism, who said, to know history is to cease to be

Protestant. Well, I have found the absolute reverse of that to be true. And the thing that's very astonishing is that the

Catholic Church will falsely claim that the Fathers were unanimously in favor of the vast majority of their dogmas that they have today.

But there are major things within Roman Catholicism that are nowhere to be found at all amongst the patristic writers, such as transubstantiation, one of the most pillar doctrines or dogmas of the

Church of Rome, that the bread and wine are actually transformed into the body and blood of Christ.

That's nowhere to be found amongst the patristic writers. They will discuss the presence of Christ in the

Eucharist, but they do not go to the heretical extreme. And even the idolatrous extreme of the fact that Rome, since Trent, and of course, perhaps earlier than Trent, but things that were made dogma at Trent, you don't have the

Church Fathers worshiping the elements of the mass and that kind of thing. There's so many things that are foreign to the writers in the patristic evidence.

But anyway, I went on there for a bit. But it gets me angry because I know that the Catholics very often misuse the

Church Fathers, and they do exactly what they accuse us of doing, of cherry -picking what we want.

And these are the very things that Luther and the Reformers rebelled against. That's where they,

I mean, the whole notion of transubstantiation, the veneration of Mary, and these kinds of things you were just referring to were the very things that brought about the

Protestant Reformation. Amen. Well, we are going to go to another break.

And what I'm going to do is I'm going to read one of the questions that we got. And it's rather lengthy, so I will read it to you.

And I'll also email it to you so you have it during the next break.

The next break is lengthier than our normal breaks. It's 12 minutes because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, who airs our program every day in a pre -recorded fashion twice a day, they require that we have a 12 -minute break between the two hours so that they can air their own material, their own commercials and so on.

But let me read an email that I received from Murray in Kinross, Scotland.

And he says, As someone who was an Anglo -Catholic before I was saved, I find it very disappointing that anyone should seek something through the medium of priests and man -made idols and decorations.

But why would an individual church or even a denomination be seeking anything from anybody if Christ is really all their salvation and all their desire?

Are we really making much of Him? And I will email that to you,

Pastor Ron, and you can have that in front of you so you could refer to it as you prepare for an answer when we come back from the break.

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

And I know that others of you are already waiting to have your questions asked and answered and we'll get to you as soon as possible. Don't go away.

We'll be right back with Pastor Ron Glass of Wading River Baptist Church, Long Island, New York. I am

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So this way you kill two birds with one stone and keep two of my advertisers happy. But before I return to my guest today,

Ron Glass, who is pastor of Wading River Baptist Church in Wading River, Long Island, New York and host of the River of Life radio program, before I return to our discussion on smells, bells, and climbing the candlestick, tracing the mysterious evangelical odyssey into Rome, Anglo -Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy, I have some special announcements to make to let you know about events that are going on right now being run by a couple of our advertisers.

First of all, this coming Friday and Saturday, a week from today, the

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And please, if you register for either of these events, let those organizations running those events know that you heard about those events from Chris Arnzen on Iron Trump and Zion Radio.

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So if you attend, please greet me at the Iron Trump and Zion exhibitors booth at either or both of those events.

Last but not least is the most uncomfortable portion of the program for me, but it is an urgently needed one.

This is where I rattle my tin cup and I beg you for money. Iron Trump and Zion Radio has been in a very dangerously precarious situation financially for quite a while.

And we are in need of new benefactors who are willing to donate money or new advertisers who are willing to launch ad campaigns with me to keep this program on the air.

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If you want to advertise with us, as long as whatever it is you're advertising is compatible with the theology expressed on this program, we would love to help you launch a advertising campaign.

You don't have to believe identically with me or the theology that is expressed on this program, but you do need to have a theology that is compatible with what we believe here, especially in regard to what it is you're advertising.

Nearly anybody who wants to advertise their shoe store or their appliance store or things like that, that's obviously got a neutral theology there.

There is no theology involved in that, but if you're involved in some kind of a religious event, you obviously have to have a theology that is compatible with mine.

You send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com chrisarnson at gmail .com

and put advertising in the subject line. Well, we are now back with our guest Ron Glass of Wading River Baptist Church, and before the break,

I read a question from our listener in Kinross, Scotland.

His name is Murray, and Murray says or asks, as someone who was an

Anglo -Catholic before I was saved, I find it very disappointing that anyone should seek something through the medium of priests and man -made idols and decorations, but why would an individual church or even a denomination be seeking anything from anybody if Christ is really all their salvation and all their desire?

Are we really to make much of him? And that's

Murray in Kinross, Scotland. Do you have a response, Pastor Ron? Well, underlying this question is something that I think is really important to understand here.

But what Murray is saying is absolutely right. He probably is a reformed certainly evangelical,

Bible -believing Christian, and we could all agree with his sentiments.

My confidence is in the Word of God and in the finished work of the

Lord Jesus Christ, and I believe that in that I stand with Luther and Calvin and all of the

Reformers, that I stand really in the historic tradition of Christianity back to the first century, to Paul and to Jesus himself.

We believe in that truth. Now, here's the problem, though. You and I, in believing this, we believe in a set of doctrines.

We believe in teaching that is drawn from the Word of God. We believe that truth is expressed in propositional statements, and those statements can be organized systematically.

That's why we have systematic theologies. The Word of God is preached verbally from the pulpits of our churches.

Our greatest minds write books in all of this, but this is not the way these people in the ancient future movement are looking at Christianity.

And that's where somebody like Murray and myself, as well, we have a hard time associating with this.

Let me give an example of perhaps what we're getting at here.

I have a wife. I'm married to her. I have a marriage certificate that says, a marriage license, which says that I am married to her.

We live in the same house. There are things that we own, and our names are both on these, on the documents that show ownership.

We have children, and our children acknowledge both of us as parents.

It is, however, possible for me to go home to my wife, as I'll do in a little while, and sit down and eat some food that she has prepared, and not say a word to her, basically live in the same house with her, and hardly ever have anything, you know, very much to do with her beyond just what we have to do to live.

Now, that's not a very satisfying relationship. In terms of our marriage, we want intimacy.

We want to experience each other's in an intimate way. We want to talk to each other.

I want to talk to her, and I want to hear her answer me. I want to be able to touch her, hold her hand, put my arm around her.

We want to be able to seek each other's counsel, decisions, and so on.

Now, I think that it's something like that with these ancient future advocates.

What they have said is that our Orthodox theology is contained in, whether you're looking at Lutheranism or Calvinism, or whether you're looking at historic

Baptist position, or the Presbyterian position, or whatever it is, is contained in creeds, in doctrinal standards, confessions, and various other kinds of authoritative writings, catechisms, and that kind of thing.

It's contained in these. So you want to know what, for example, a Presbyterian believes?

Well, look at the Westminster Confession or the Westminster Catechisms. But a person would say, okay, that's fine for you to believe in that, but that's not enough for me.

I want to experience Christ. I want to talk to him and have a sense that he's talking to me.

I want to, as it were, embrace him. I want to feel his loving arms around me. I want intimacy with Christ.

And what they're saying is we cannot find that intimacy with Christ in the

Protestant world, in the historic Protestant denominations, through their creeds and their catechisms, their various standards, statements of faith, and so on.

Sermons of their preachers, the books of their scholars. We don't get that intimacy.

Where are you going to find it? And what they have said is we find it in the historic practice of the ancient future church.

And we talk in terms of that because what they mean is that the way forward into the future is actually by going back to the past.

And so we find it with the smells and the bells. We find it by sitting in an ornate sanctuary with stained glass windows telling the stories of the

Gospels. We sit there, perhaps in the dark in certain cases, with candles burning.

We smell the incense. We hear the chants or the hymns, perhaps the organ.

We participate in the sacrament. We drink the wine.

We eat the bread. We're tasting. We're swallowing. We're touching.

We put our arms around our brothers and sisters in Christ or hold their hands as we worship.

We sing. We hear the priests as they chant or as they sing.

We hear as they read the Word of God to us. And what we come away with is a sensory experience.

We have experienced Christ. We haven't just heard a sermon.

We haven't just become familiar with theology. We have actually met Christ.

And so what they have said is, let's get past what they call the rationalism.

Let me just read you one paragraph from Weber's book. He said, Many students, along with myself, identified the neat little rationalisms we were hanging onto and gave them up for an encounter with the living

God. See, that's what they want, an encounter with the living God, which sounds, for some of us, sounds very neo -orthodox, but that's what they say.

Many of us, though believers, we're believers in our personal belief systems.

See, that's what I mean when I talk about the creeds, the confessions, the catechisms. In our cozy sets of answers, in our logical systems about God, our systematic theologies, we were placing faith in a

God substitute, a creation of our mind, an intellectualized image of God. By giving that up, by throwing it away, we were open to an encounter with God himself, a mystery that defies a complete explanation, a mystery that rises above all rational systems and pat answers.

It was a cathartic experience for many of us. As one student said to me, I felt as though a vacuum had been put in my guts and everything within me was sucked out.

I feel clean and whole. That's it in a nutshell. Wow. Well, thank you,

Murray, for your insightful question and comment, and keep listening to Orange Represents Iron Radio and spreading the word in Kinross, Scotland and beyond.

What you were just saying reminded me of something that occurred not so long ago that left me baffled.

I was involved in an interview recently in a radio program or on a radio program in the

United Kingdom called Unbelievable with the British host

Justin Brierley, who is an evangelical, and he had me on as a part of a

Reformation Day special where he interviewed me on my testimony, having converted from Roman Catholicism to Reformed Protestantism, and he also had on the program

James Bogle, who is a British attorney or barrister, as they call them, and who is also the executive director of a

Catholic apostolate in the UK, and he was the exact opposite.

He was somebody who left Protestant Anglicanism and converted to Roman Catholicism, and one thing that he said to me,

I thought that he really had it completely in the reverse. He said that he believed that Roman Catholicism is a religion of the intellect, whereas evangelicalism is a religion of the emotions, and I think that there may be partial truth in that.

It seems that a lot of the converts that Rome has received from Protestantism were scholarly

Protestants and particular Presbyterians, more than anybody, I believe, but I believe that your average person who converts to Catholicism is being drawn into that religious system because of the sensory aspect, the fleshy, sensual aspects, some of which you were just reciting, which exist within Rome which exist within Anglo -Catholic and Eastern Orthodox worship.

It seems to me that they bypass the intellect very often and enter into those religions, and that's one of the reasons they remain in those religions, even if they were raised in them and never left them.

It is a very sensual, fleshy, and emotionally driven thing.

Do you disagree with me or do you agree with the British attorney? Well, yes,

I would agree with you. It is interesting that there are many...

In fact, I've got a testimony sitting right in front of me here, this Presbyterian who went into Romanism.

That seems strange because the Presbyterians are pretty well -schooled, and especially this guy like this who was seminary -trained are well -schooled in theology and other disciplines too, like church history and the biblical languages and exegesis and so on.

So it seems strange that they would abandon all of that for Roman Catholicism.

And we know that Romanism cannot face Scripture. The Roman Catholic Church, the average

Roman Catholic person, in fact, the average Roman Catholic priest, understands Scripture only on the basis of the authority of the magisterium.

That is, the Church says, here's what it means, and here's what you have to believe.

So you can't bring an inquisitive mind, or you can't bring scholarship to bear upon your search, upon your study of the

Scriptures, because the Church says you believe what we tell you to believe. Well, how does a person who has a high degree of intellect and a substantial degree of training, how does a person throw all of that away and go into a system where they're not allowed to think, and where, quite frankly, the system of Romanism denies much of Scripture and ignores most of it?

Well, the answer to that, I think the only answer that I can come up with is the one

I said a while ago. They are looking beyond the intellect to the emotions, to the experience.

They want, if I can put it in this rather flippant way, they want the warm fuzzies.

They want to feel good about Christianity. And you know, what this says to me, frankly, and as I read

Weber's book, this kind of struck me, I question whether these guys are even believers.

Because if you really believe, look, the process is exactly the opposite that the one

Martin Luther went through. In our church on Reformation Sunday, we watched the old classic movie on Martin Luther, the one made in 1953.

They're very clear in that film. Luther punished himself. He did everything he could to gain the experience of pleasing

God, and nothing worked. And it wasn't until he came to the truth of Romans 117, that Joshua lived by faith, when he saw that grace through faith was

God's way of saving, that his whole life transformed. And see, that's my thinking in all of this.

Once a person sees that you don't need the smells and the bells, you don't need the emotional experiences.

Generally speaking, I question as to whether a person who is seeking that kind of thing really knows

Christ in the first place. Yeah, I would agree. And to give some significant level of credit to what

Mr. Bogle said, the British Roman Catholic barrister, I think that much of modern day evangelicalism and going back decades actually is based on shallow emotionalism.

So I don't want to completely remove any level of truth from what he said.

But he is no one to speak with that kind of a criticism, because I think

Rome is far more historically devoted to not only attracting converts into their midst, but also keeping them through emotionally driven religion and sensory and sensual and fleshly religion for all the reasons that you were mentioning before.

One thing that also stands out in my experience is that those things, the smells and the bells and the candlesticks, to many people, that is religion.

And they cannot, in their minds, separate a relationship with Christ without a religion that has specific ornaments and rites and ceremonies and costumes, etc.

I can remember when I was a fairly new Christian, I used to volunteer when I was single.

I used to volunteer at a local nursing home on Long Island where my grandmother actually was.

And I used to partake in or involve myself as a volunteer at a weekly worship service they had at this nursing home that my congregation where I was a member had.

And we had a very simple service that included the singing of hymns, and they were traditional hymns, and a sermon was given.

And then it would close with some more hymns and so on. But in the middle of this service, a woman, an

Italian woman, who I think was very clearly a first -generation immigrant, who

I asked when she was sitting in a wheelchair, as we would do, the volunteers would go around the nursing home and ask people, would you like to join us for a worship service, a

Christian worship service? And this woman, this Italian woman, said yes. And I wheeled her into the worship service.

And then within about five minutes, I saw her head looking left to right, and she looked like in a state of panic.

And then she started to say to me, this no church, this no church, this no church!

And she was yelling at the top of her lungs, this no church! So I had to wheel her away. She was looking for all the elements of a religion that relies upon smells, bells, candles, and costumes.

This was so foreign to her, just to have a singing, a worship service that involves singing worship to God, singing praise and honor to God, and hearing a sermon preached.

This was just totally foreign to her. Mm -hmm. Yeah, Weber, in his book, gives some examples of this as well.

He mentions a... I'm trying to lay my hand on it here, and I'm not finding it right away.

But somebody, I think a fellow professor or somebody who was in the

Catholic or the Anglican church, who one day visited an evangelical church.

And when he asked him what he thought of it, he said, well, the preaching was great.

Preaching had great content. But he said there was no worship. And the problem that Weber encountered was the fact that he grew up in a fundamentalist background.

He says, I grew weary of listening to preaching and hearing soul -winning messages and began to realize that evangelism, important as it was in the church, could not become a substitute for worship.

Well, see, I can associate with that because I grew up in the same kind of thing. For me, the straw that broke the camel's back occurred one summer in 1957 in a church in suburban

Philadelphia. A visiting evangelist who had preached his heart out brought us to the final point of the meeting, the invitation.

We sang all the verses of the age -old hymn, just as I am, but no one stepped forward. After another 10 -minute plea, accompanied by threats and tears and all the psychological enticements in the book, we sang the whole hymn again, but there was no response.

With a tone of absolute exasperation in his voice, the evangelist announced he was going to count to 10.

After 10, if no one responded, he would wash his hands of this church and let our blood be on our heads.

He counted to 10 slowly. Then with the air of an omniscient and all -powerful judge, he announced that he knew

God was working with someone in that congregation to be saved, but he went on to say, it's too late.

The Holy Spirit is gone. The invitation is finished. The door is closed. I watched this man of God as he stomped from the pulpit, his face flushed with anger.

I wondered about what he had done and why. And you see, he says, therefore, that my quest led me into an educational approach to worship.

And what he had to do was to try to remove himself from that into a more experiential.

So what we're saying is that there is a desire on the part of people that grew up in these kinds of environments to move away from theology and to move to mystery.

And what does that mean? What is mystery, by definition, is something elusive.

You can't put your hands on it. It's slippery. You know, you can't hold on to it. But that's what they want.

They want this certain something that generates an experiential fulfillment that they don't get from expository preaching or teaching or the more traditional type of worship.

We're going to our final break right now. And before the break, I will read you another email right now that I just forwarded to you because it's rather lengthy again.

And you can look it over during the station break. But Joe in Slovenia says,

Dear brothers, Chris and Ron, I'm constantly puzzled by the lack of scrutiny when it comes to religious beliefs held by people in general, including, quote, quote, evangelicals of all stripes.

I suppose this is at the heart of why I enjoy your program so much. And I think it is so valuable to the body of Christ.

I used to be one who coasted on the belief system that I inherited from my upbringing.

Thankfully, it was conservative Baptist evangelicalism. And through it, God brought me to saving faith in Jesus Christ.

In recent years, however, I've come to realize that I had many erroneous presuppositions on a wide range of doctrinal and theological topics within Christianity.

Now I'm very eager to analyze, critique, and scrutinize every faith position based on scripture guided by the historic orthodox creeds of Christianity apart from tradition.

Why is it that the vast majority of professing Christians are unwilling and therefore unable to examine religious truth claims of Rome, Constantinople, and pop evangelicalism scripturally in light of verifiable church history?

What is the overriding value or hindrance that is driving the widespread denial of the incompatibility of historic orthodox

Christianity and the counterfeits housed in Rome, the former

Constantinople, and Christianity Today magazine? Thank you, brothers, for holding the line on the biblically orthodox faith once delivered to the saints.

And of course, it's obvious our friend Joan Silvinia, when he's using the phrase orthodox, he is using that the way that the word is actually defined, meaning straight, or correct, or accurate, or in this case, biblically faithful.

He's not speaking about eastern orthodoxy when he uses the phrase biblically orthodox. But you have or should have that email in front of you now,

Pastor Ron, and you can answer his questions when we return from our final break. Don't go away. God willing, we are going to be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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That's liyfc .org. Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune into A Visit to the

Pastors Study every Saturday from 12 noon to 1 p .m. Eastern Time on WLIE Radio, www .wlie540am

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Join us this Saturday at 12 noon Eastern Time for a visit to the Pastors Study because everyone needs a pastor.

Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, we are now conducting our final 25 minutes or so of our interview with Pastor Ron Glass of Wading River Baptist Church, Wading River, Long Island, New York, and host of the

River of Life radio program heard globally Saturdays at 9 .30

a .m. Eastern and Sundays at 7 .30 p .m. Eastern on eastgatebroadcasting .com,

eastgatebroadcasting .com, which live streams the program. You can also find out the actual

FM numbers on the dial where you can listen on Long Island, New York to Pastor Ron's program

Saturday and Sundays. We are talking about smells, bells, and climbing the candlestick, tracing the mysterious evangelical odyssey into Rome, Anglo -Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy, or as Pastor Ron has informed me, which has a nickname called

Ancient Future Christianity. And if you'd like to join us, do so now before we completely run out of time.

Our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com. Pastor Ron, to summarize for the sake of the time at hand, we have

Joe in Slovenia who is basically asking, why aren't people Berean when they are searching for a church to attach themselves to or a religion to attach themselves to?

They don't use the scriptures as a litmus test. They use other litmus tests as to why they choose one religion over another, and if you could respond to that.

I have one word. I didn't get that. You cut out there. What was the one word?

Getting feedback again. I have a one word answer, laziness.

And I really think that that's the problem on both sides of the coin. There are too many pastors today who are frankly too lazy to do the study, especially of the text of scripture.

That is our authority. And anything that comes up by way of questioning our doctrinal beliefs or the practices of churches and so on, can be answered from the text of scripture.

It's all there. There are just way too many pastors that are too lazy to study, to apply themselves to the word and to get the answers.

On the other hand, we have a lot of people in our churches who are simply too lazy to do any study on their own.

First of all, they're really not that interested. So that if you preach, say a pastor decides to preach a series of sermons to try to straighten out wrong thinking on some specific, excuse me, some specific doctrinal error.

So he preaches this and the people, they're bored. It goes in one ear and out the other.

They go to sleep during the sermon. You know, what's this got to do with me? There's that kind of an attitude.

And there's also the attitude that says, what, me? Read a book?

Are you kidding? I mean, there's a lot of that. There's so many of our people in our churches that never read books.

And so on both sides, from the pastor's standpoint and from the members of many congregations, there is an unwillingness to apply themselves.

It's just flat out laziness. And that's why they don't get the answers. I mean, he's asking, why is it that the vast majority of professing

Christians are unwilling and therefore unable to examine religious truth claims, whether it's Rome or whether it's

Eastern Orthodoxy or what he calls pop evangelicalism, secret sensitive kind of stuff,

I assume. Why? In light of church history? Well, how many of the people in our churches even know anything about church history?

You know, that's why, and there may be some people here at Whiting River that haven't appreciated this.

I don't know. Many have. But I'm, this week, preaching the 12th in a series of sermons on remembering the

Reformation. I want our people to know something about the Reformation heritage, about Luther and Calvin and the doctrines that they preach and the errors of Rome and so on.

And this is what we need to do in order to get our people informed.

So that, and this is important, and I think somewhere in our broadcast here, it's probably appropriate to go to the word of God.

And this text is one that strikes me. 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, verses 13 to 15,

Paul says, therefore, we should always give thanks to you, to God for you, brethren, beloved of the

Lord, because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the spirit and faith in the truth.

It was for this He called you through our gospel, which implies you know the gospel.

You've got to know the gospel, that you may gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Contained in that verse is at least three of the great Reformation solas. Sola Scriptura, Sola Gratia, Sola Fide.

The scriptures alone, faith alone, grace alone. So then brethren, verse 15, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us, either by the preaching of the word or reading the letters of Paul.

That's at the point, through preaching, through reading, you learn the gospel and therefore you are able to stand firm and hold, and Paul uses the word, traditions, which you were taught.

That's the secret. Amen. And thank you, Joe, in Slovenia. Keep listening to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and spreading the word in Slovenia and beyond.

We have a listener in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Is that anywhere near your wife's hometown?

Pastor Ron? Hello? Yes. Is Rock Hill anywhere near where your wife's hometown was?

Ah, well, my wife's hometown is Columbia, which is about 90 miles south of Rock Hill.

Okay. Well, Tony with an I in Rock Hill, South Carolina says,

I was not surprised when Hank Hanegraaff converted or when he said he had not changed his views based on what

I heard the two years I listened. I would have to agree. He constantly affirmed

Catholicism as Christian, heavily promoted theistic evolutionists and scientific philosophies in the church, promoted a very man -centered gospel that resulted in his hearty support for Rick Warren, and excoriated anyone who did not agree with his version of eschatology.

He was suspected of several questionable financial practices at CRI. I came to the conclusion that he did not believe the

Bible and stopped listening years ago. I had long abandoned Zondervan as a reputable source for sound theological publications, and I thought everyone knew

Christianity today had gone apostate. What surprises me is that everyone is so surprised.

Yeah, Hank Hanegraaff, as long as I can remember, agreed with Norman Geisler on Norman Geisler's position on the

Roman Catholic Church, which I adamantly reject. Norman Geisler and Hank Hanegraaff always agreed that the

Church of Rome was not a false church with some truth.

They viewed the Roman Catholic Church and view currently the Roman Catholic Church as a true church with some false teachings.

And I'm assuming, knowing you, Pastor Ron, that you would agree with me that the Church of Rome is a false church with some true teachings.

One of the things that persuaded me about Norman Geisler was years ago

I heard an anecdote where someone asked him, if you were marooned on a desert island somewhere, what book would you want to have?

And he said, I would want my copy of Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas.

I said, well, that's— Wow, one book. That would be it. Yep. So I would—my response to—is it

Tony? Yes, Tony with an I. It's a woman, Tony. Well, my response to you is

I'm on the same page with you, 100 percent, and I wish

I had a church full of people just like you. I think we would have a maturity that would be exciting.

Well, thank you so much, Tony, for your contribution today, and keep spreading the word about Iron Trump and Zion Radio in South Carolina and beyond.

We have RJ in White Plains, New York, who says, do you know whatever happened with the son of Francis Schaeffer, Frankie Schaeffer, who years ago converted from Presbyterianism to Eastern Orthodoxy?

I don't know if you know, Pastor Ron, the only thing that I know about Frankie Schaeffer is that he was for a while in the

American Orthodox Church, which is actually a wing of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and he has since begun to identify himself as a

Christian atheist and has some very liberal understandings about sexual morality, but I don't know much about more than that.

Do you know anything? That sounds like enough. Yeah, well,

I don't know if he is just totally, you know, full -blown atheist now, or I don't really even know what a

Christian atheist really is. Well, yeah, I'll ask you. You tell me what a Christian atheist is.

That's all I know is that was what he was calling himself. I don't know if he was trying to take a play on words there, because as you may know, the first Christians were actually called atheists because they wouldn't worship the

Roman gods. I don't know if he was making a play on that, or if he was actually considering himself an atheist who just believed

Jesus was a wonderful teacher or something. I don't know. I haven't really done my research on Frankie Schaefer.

I just remember when he was an open practicing Eastern Orthodox person that he was very biting and insulting to those who disagreed with him, and I knew a man who had a lot of expertise,

I should say, in the Eastern Orthodox movement, coming from an outsider as an evangelical, who had some sad run -ins with him that were very nasty on Frankie's part with ad hominem remarks and all that.

But I don't really know. I'll have to do some research on Frankie Schaefer. In fact, the thing that's interesting is about six months ago, he actually contacted me wanting me to interview him,

I just didn't respond to it, but perhaps I should, and maybe we could have some kind of a debate with him or something eventually.

Before we run out of time, oh, thank you, RJ in White Plains, New York. But before we run out of time,

Pastor Ron, I want to make sure that you have about five minutes of uninterrupted time to really summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners.

Well, the bottom line of all of this is that our

Christian faith is based upon objective propositional truth, contained in an inerrant and authoritative

Bible, that we believe the Scriptures, and therefore we do not deny, in fact, we enthusiastically embrace the traditions of Christianity that are consistent with the text of Scripture.

However, we would part ways with those traditions which are mad -made or have been developed by an institutional religious organization.

So it takes discernment, and this is where it's so critical for pastors to preach with precision and with accuracy the inerrant

Word of God to people whose hearts are hungry for the truth and are willing to hear, to read, to absorb it, and to cherish it.

This is what we have to do in order to protect ourselves against this kind of thing.

A Christian, a professing Christian, a church member, who hears the arguments of these people who have moved from the present to the ancient, it sounds good to some of them.

It sounds, especially if you're sort of the typical pew -sitter in today's churches, you don't have a vital

Christianity. You may not have a good devotional life or prayer life. You may not have good fellowship with strong Christians.

You may not be sitting under good preaching. And as a result of all of that, you are sensing an emptiness.

Something's missing from my Christian life. And then somebody comes along and says, well, what you need is the experience of the mystery of Christianity, and you can find that in the sacraments and, you know, the smells and the bells and all of that.

That's dangerous. So my plea is, if you are a pastor, please preach the

Word. Go back to expository preaching. If you've never done it, learn how to do it.

Open the Word of God and preach. Make sure you're teaching staff in your churches, teaching the

Word of God from your children on up. Especially willing to answer the questions, people.

This is one of the objections that some of these who have moved away from Christianity, Biblical Christianity to Eastern Orthodoxy or to Romanism and so on, they have, especially young people, have said, nobody could answer my questions.

We need to be able to answer the questions of our young people. And then for the people in the churches, those of you who are lay persons, church members, read the

Word of God. Study the Word of God. Read the best books. Read some of the biographies, like the one that Chris has been talking about, the biography of Luther, the biography of Calvin.

Read their theological works as you're able to. Be faithful.

Don't just go to church whenever you have the opportunity, the time when you get up in time or whatever.

Make sure you're in that pew every single time you can be there.

And absorb the Word of God in its truth, and stand by your pastors who stand by the truth.

And God help us in this apostate age. We might indeed hold the traditions which have been committed to us.

Amen. We do have CJ from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who says,

Don't you think that we need to be very careful about criticizing liturgical churches?

Because, after all, liturgical just means an order of worship. And there are varying degrees.

And I'm sure from the way you describe Wading River Baptist Church, you perhaps might be considered a highly liturgical church by your average charismatic or Pentecostal church.

That might be true, actually. Because of the order and structure that you may have there, and that you do have,

I should say, at Wading River. Yeah, I mean, there's nothing innately wrong with liturgy. It's when it directs the person to an unbiblical response that it becomes dangerous.

Like, for instance, you and I have talked about the kind of meditation that certain people are practicing, imitating some

Catholic mystics, for instance, where they empty their minds and so on. Or if it's a liturgy that leads one into vain repetition and robotic behavior, and that kind of a thing.

Well, yes. What I would say is, I admit freely, I'm a Baptist.

I've grown up a Baptist. And I am convinced of our beliefs. Our practice in our church is probably a little more formal and traditional than what a lot of Baptist churches are.

That's true. I mean, we have a pastoral prayer. We have moments of silence. We sing hymns. We read scripture.

We have sermon. We observe the Lord's table. We do these things, yes. But I would say that we can look at, say, another good brother and Christ and respected evangelical scholar and pastor,

R .C. Sproul. And in his church, his worship service is going to be much more formal, much more liturgical, to use that term.

But I'm not going to criticize that. That's okay. The thing that I care most about is, is the truth of God being proclaimed.

And I think that if you're putting your faith, your hope for your spiritual life in these external things, that's what the

Reformers argued against. They were liturgical, but they argued against the liturgy that substituted material things for the person of Christ.

And that's what's—if the word of God is being preached and Christ is being exalted, that's the important thing.

Amen. And by the way, our listeners might be interested to make a note on your calendar to listen to an interview

I have coming up on Wednesday, November 22nd, with Dr. Ashley Null.

Dr. Ashley Null is an Anglican who is actually involved in the reverse of what we are talking about today.

He is trying to draw Episcopalians and Anglicans into true

Christ -centered, God -centered, Protestant, biblical worship theology and practice.

He is very opposed to the Oxford movement in the Anglican church, which is the Roman Catholic or Anglo -Catholic, high church experience, which can be both either conservative or very liberal.

It basically is involved in both of the extreme wings of Anglicanism, that apostate group.

But he is a firm believer in the simplicity of worship and perhaps is even a lot less liturgical than some of our

Presbyterian brothers are. But he is a brilliant brother and he is probably the foremost expert alive today on the life and teaching of Thomas Cramner, who himself was very opposed to the

Roman Catholic church. And when he, out of fear for his own life, recanted his

Protestant beliefs when the Roman Catholic church had once again taken over the throne of England, he later recanted his recantation and asked when he was being executed, when he was being burned at the stake, he asked that they burn the hand that signed his recantation before the rest of him.

So that took a lot of courage, obviously. But you might want to listen to that Dr. Ashley Null, Wednesday, November 22nd.

He is going to be discussing his book, Reformation Anglicanism. But I want to make sure, Pastor Ron, that everybody has all of your contact information.

First of all, the Wading River Baptist Church website is wrbc .us, wrbc .us,

and the radio program, River of Life, can be heard Saturday at 930 a .m. Eastern and Sunday at 730 p .m.

Eastern at eastgatebroadcasting .com, eastgatebroadcasting .com. Do you have any other contact information?

We are located at 1635, 1635 Wading River Manor Road between routes 25 and 25A in eastern

Long Island, New York. And our phone number is area code 631 -929 -3512.

And I want everybody to have a safe and blessed Veterans Day weekend. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

Savior than you are a sinner. We look forward to hearing from you and your questions next week on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.