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

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

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio

platform on which pastors, Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues

facing the church and the world today.

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

man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, 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.

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 Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania,.

Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at

ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you 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. Arnzen, 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 fail 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, of a friend that I

value amongst my closest friends, who has demonstrated more

concern and interest and excitement over my radio program, Iron Trumpet's

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 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.

Trumpet's 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.

Yeah.

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 a independent Baptist congregation,

filling

the

word

of life in

this for

many,

many years,

for

almost

history.

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

Wading River Baptist Church.

And if you do not have a church home, joining Wading 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 Wading 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 9 .30 a .m. Eastern Time and Sunday at 7 .30 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 in

regard to his overall way of,

he's just simply not

a great surprise to me.

But let me also say, one of the reasons that 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.

I think this is a time at

looking at this

whole, I was

a little surprised,

Evangelical

Theologicals.

So I got a,

here's one of the major books that they're advertising in there.

The title of the book is Was the Reformation,

and this is an evangelical, has published a

book by a man,

professor, who's part of the University

of Illinois.

He has tried to help the

readers get a Catholic perspective on several major themes,

like script.

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 interpretation.

You have to admit that there's all these different interpretations out there, so Roman

Catholic.

So you have this.

Now the book concludes with a response from

just the question, was the ref, the

statement is made.

In one of the books, a book that

Gilquist was,

and was a

church, and

he has written a influential, it's

called Becoming Orthodox, and in that book

he makes the statement.

So that kind of thinking.

There's another fact, a

little

more now, rather well

-known, officially took

on, magazine is

normative, and much of

it's, so it's

out there.

And this is a question that I think all of us, especially 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.

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,

you know, 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 -unquote, 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.

But if you could.

Comment yourself on this.

Yeah, let me say first, 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.

But it was a rebelling, again,

to be

prominently involved in this.

Young people who had come out of fundamentalist

backgrounds, we

could call it preacher.

The other thing that

was, in fact, the seeker -sensitive,

the mega -churches, and what they were finding was

in

the worship,

was

a college,

40 books.

I wrote a lot

of books, and

several of them, the book

that I first

encountered a number of years ago from Robert Weber was called Evangelicals on the

Canterbury.

Weber came from

college, and when you read the description, he was something of a hippie, I think,

had come out of that generation, and was unorthodox.

He would sit on the floor with his students about existentialism and

stuff like that.

Well, he eventually took

Evangelical worship.

To make

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

Persuading.

Numbers of faculty and students who had abandoned their

Evangelical church.

Now, there were Evangelicals.

Well, so interrupt me

when you have to stop.

I want to just mention some of the things that he wanted,

that he was missing in his Evangelical experience.

The first thing that he wanted a new

story.

That term mystery looms large in

the future movement, whether they're going back to Anglicanism or Romanism

or Orthodox.

God can't really

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, and they

wanted to just rediscover them.

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

They

wanted, they

felt that the traditional churches

wasn't

the

sermon.

That's what he wanted,

richer worship experience.

The third thing that he wanted was sacramental reality.

The idea of God working through that he grew up in, the university

he went to, would not have held to sacrament.

That wasn't enough

for Weber.

Weber wanted sacrament

in what he did.

This is

my body broken for you,

and so

on.

Well, Orthodoxy.

The fourth

thing that he wanted was spiritual identity.

He thought that he

needed to get over

primitive Christianity.

He came to believe that our

identity is with God's people everywhere.

The fourth

is

ecumenical.

What Weber came to say is a fundamental

Baptist church, and

I heard message after message on

separation, both

fragmentation and

formation.

You know,

you had an

array of denominations.

There is no unity.

There's no, 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.

He felt that

he discovered,

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.

Those are the things.

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

.com.

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

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

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 a

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 quote

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 .com.

Chrisarnsen at gmail .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.

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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?

Well, let me

just, what Peter

Gilquist, Peter

Gilquist, a

worker,

1907

nomination

of which

then eventually merged in

church, it's called the Antioch and Evangelical Orthodox Mission.

So,

interestingly,

he's got some of the same concerns.

One,

again, his concern for

tradition

become

disillusioned

with the

Christian.

They're

looking

for a sense,

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, before he

was, as he moved into the Eastern Orthodox orbit,

sensory

worship, that

liturgy

touched all

of those things from

a rich

point of view.

Another thing that

he

had, another

area

that he had

to struggle with,

acceptable

to

the

Orthodox at

the Roman, but

he did

have a

stumbling block because of his,

once he got past all of these and began to accept all of these things, it was, it was not a problem to

the Orthodox orbit.

The thing that, how little

concern that scripture does not play

a, let me

give you,

for

example,

historically speaking, the idea that the written word of

God is formally sufficient for all things,

reasonably good intention,

Orthodoxy, and orthopraxis, all

of that is not, of

the early

cantigraphs made an issue, people who've gone back into the Roman

Catholic Church.

Scripture, they go back to the Church Fathers, and that's their major authority.

Why is that?

Well, here's another

statement

from a, Albert,

he said, 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

so, 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, as

you know, that it was very early on in the history of the Church, the

writers and Church leaders, and they were great men,

but nonetheless, much of their thinking,

they

go.

Back to those, and

they're not even really fairly using the patristic writings

to develop their beliefs.

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

Fathers.

They, they are picking and choosing where they are comfortable with what the Fathers had to say,

and, or they are just parroting the Roman Catholic apologists who are, 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, 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, that,

who said to, no 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, one of the most pillar,

uh, 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, they will discuss the, the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, but they do not

go to the heretical extreme, uh, and even the, the idolatrous, the idolatrous

extreme of the fact that Rome, since Trent, and, and of course perhaps earlier than Trent,

but things that were made dogma at Trent, uh, 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, uh, in the patristic evidence, but

anyway, uh, 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 being, uh, cherry -picking what we want.

And these are the errors rebelled against.

That's where they, I

mean, these kinds of things

you're...

Amen.

Well, we are going to go to another break, uh, 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, 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, uh, commercials and so

on.

But, uh, let me read a, 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, uh, I'll email that to you, uh, Pastor Ron, and you can, uh, have that in front of you so you

could refer to it and, 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.

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But before I return to my guest today, Ron Glass, who is pastor of Wading River

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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 Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is having their two

-day Bible conference in Quaker Town, Pennsylvania at the Grace Bible Fellowship Church of Quaker Town

titled, For Still Our Ancient Foe, which is a reference to Satan from that classic Reformation hymn

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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 Trip and Zion Radio.

And I will be, God willing, at both of those events, Manning and Iron Trip and Zion Radio exhibitors booth.

So if you attend, please greet me at the Iron Trip 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 rattled my tin cup, and I beg you for money.

Iron Trip 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

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And please always remember, I never want anybody to ever siphon money out of their regular giving that they're

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I never want you to take food off of your family's dinner table if you're struggling to make ends meet.

Those are two commands of God to provide for your family and your church.

Providing for Iron Trip and Zion Radio is not a command of God, obviously, but if you

are blessed financially above and beyond your ability to obey those two commands, then

please consider donating to or advertising with Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

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?

Underlying this question is something that I think is really important to understand here,

but what Murray is saying is absolutely

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

My

confidence,

we

believe, you and I,

and we believe in a set of,

that is drawn, we believe that true

Catholic theology is, the

Word of God is our greatest

mind, and all of this

are looking at, and that's where,

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,

certificate, license, which says that I am

married, and our

names are both on,

and our children acknowledge both.

It is, however, possible to go home to my wife, as I'll do in a

little while, and sit down and eat,

basically, you know, very

much to do with her beyond just what we have to do to live.

Now, that's not a very satisfied, our

marriage, we want intimacy.

We want to experience each other.

I want to talk to her, and I want to hear her answer me.

I want to be able to,

we want to be able, I

think that it's something like that.

What they have said is, that our Orthodox theology is contained, and whether you're looking at

Lutheranism, or Calvinism,

creeds

in, contained in these.

So you want to know what, for example, a person, look at the Westminster,

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, 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,

we don't, where are you going to find it?

And what they have said is, we find it in the historic practice,

we talk in terms of that,

the way forward into the future, is actually by going back.

We find it by an ornate sanctuary,

sit there, those burning,

the chance, or

there's in

Christ, or

hold their hands as we worship.

We sing, we hear,

we come away with, is a sensory experience.

We haven't just heard a sermon.

We haven't just become, we have actually met Christ.

And so what they have said is, let's get, call it

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.

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

See, that's what I mean when I talk about 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, Sephardic experience for

many of us.

I felt as though my guts and everything within me

was sucked out.

I feel clean.

Wow.

Well, thank you, Murray, for your insightful question and comment.

And keep listening to Orange, Rep and Zion 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 and 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?

It seems

strange

because

it

seems strange

for Roman Catholicism.

And we know that Romanism cannot faith.

The Roman Catholic Church, the average Roman Catholic person, in fact, the average Roman Catholic priest,

understands Scripture only on the basis that the

Church says, here's what it means.

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,

you know, what this says to me,

this kind of...

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.

Grace through faith was God's way of saving, that his whole life transcended.

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...

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.

Yeah, Weber, in his book, I'll

lay my hand on it here.

Somebody, great

preaching

had

great content, but he said there was no worship.

The problem that Weber encountered was the fact that he grew up in a

fundamentalist background.

He says, I grew weary of listening,

began to realize that it had 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 invitation.

After another 10 -minute plea of psychological enticements in the book, we

sang the whole hymn again, but there was no response.

And if no one responded, he would wash his hands of this church.

And he counted to 10.

But he went on to say, it's too late, the invitation is finished, the

door is closed.

I watched this man.

I wondered about what he had done and why.

My quest, educational approach,

what he had to do was to try to remove himself.

What we're saying is, a desire on the part of people that grew up

in the theology history,

by definition, is something elusive.

It's, you can't put your hands on, it's slippery, you know, you can't hold onto 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

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 value, 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.

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Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko inviting you to tune in to A Visit to the Pastors Study every Saturday

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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, and I really think that that's the

part.

Too many pastors today who are frankly too lazy to do the study,

especially of the text, that is our authority.

And anything scripture,

it's on the

other hand,

who are

simply

sermons to try to straighten out wrong thinking on some

specific doctrinal.

He preaches, you know,

what's this God?

And there's also the book.

Are you kidding?

Members of many congregations, there is an unwilling,

just flat out laziness.

And that's why they don't get the answers.

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 orthodoxy or what he calls

pop evangelicalism?

Why in light of church history?

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

in the 12th.

And 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 so

that somewhere in our broad

and

penning for

salvation through sanctification by the spirit,

our gospel, which implies, you

know the gospel, you got to know the gospel, that you may gain the glory of our Lord

contained in that verse is at least three of the great

Resola gratia, sola fide, the scriptures alone, faith alone, grace alone.

So then brethren,

either by the preaching of the word or reading,

preaching through

the word.

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?

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 Canegraaff 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 hardy 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 Canegraaff, 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 Canegraaff 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 excited me about Norman Geisler was

years ago, I heard in...

If you were

marooned

on...

Wow, one book, that would be it.

Yep.

Yes, Tony with an I.

It's a woman, Tony.

Well, my response to you is

people just like you.

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 to just

believe Jesus was a wonderful teacher or something.

I don't know.

I haven't really done my research on Frankie Schaeffer.

I just remember when he was an open practicing Eastern Orthodox

person that he was a very biting and

insulting to those who disagreed with him.

And I knew a man who was very expert, 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 Schaeffer.

In fact, the thing that's interesting is about six months ago, he actually contacted me wanting me to interview him and

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.

Bottom

line,

traditions of...

It takes discernment.

And this is where it's so critical

people whose heart is and are willing to

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

See, a Christian, professing Christian, who hears the arguments,

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 Christian life or prayer life.

You may not have good faith.

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 the smells and the bells and all of that.

That's my plea.

If you are a pastor, please 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,

especially willing to answer the questions, people.

This is one of the objections that some of these who have moved away from

Eastern Orthodoxy or

they have, especially young people, have said, nobody could answer my questions.

Be able to answer the questions of our young people.

A church member, read the Word of God.

Study the Word of God.

Books, read some of the biographies like the one that Chris has been talking about, the biography of Luther, the biography of

Calvin.

Read these.

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 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, we might indeed hold the tradition.

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 becomes, 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.

I admit freely, I'm a Baptist,

and our church is probably a little more formal and traditional than

what a lot of Baptist churches are, that we

do these things, yes.

But an

evangelical scholar and pastor, R .C. Sproul, and in his

church, 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 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.

And that's what's...

If the Word of God is being preached and Christ is being preached...

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 a very liberal and 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's 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.

And the radio program, River of Life, can be heard Saturday at 9 .30 a .m. Eastern and Sunday at 7 .30 p

.m. Eastern at eastgatebroadcasting .com.

Do you have any other contact information?

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.