May 21, 2021 Show with Dr. Owen Strachan on “Christianity & Wokeness: How the Social Justice Movement is Hijacking the Gospel & the Way to Stop It”

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

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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

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

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

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions and now here's your host

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Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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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.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 21st day of May 2021.

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Before I introduce my special guest today and the topic we are going to address,

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I just want to announce some sad news to my listeners, perhaps some of my listeners, especially those that have been listening for many years going back to 2005 when

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I first launched this program on WNYG radio and WGBB radio in New York.

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Perhaps those faithful long -time listeners will remember the name

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Fern Hill who has been interviewed on this program most often alongside of her husband

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Jerry. They were co -founders of the Timothy Hill Children's Ranch in Riverhead, Long Island, New York, one of my favorite charities that I've been supporting for many years.

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In fact, in the 1980s, I was their very first winner of their

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Volunteer of the Year award. This is a home for abused and abandoned children and orphans in Riverhead, Long Island.

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For most of its existence, it was exclusively for young boys, but they not long ago established a separate facility for young girls.

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Well, it was very sad news merely minutes before going on the air today that I heard that Fern Hill, at 86 years of age, went home to eternity with the

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Lord and Savior that she so faithfully served for most of those 86 years. It was on Monday.

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She peacefully passed away in her sleep, and she was very sad.

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I just ask of you to pray for the Hill family as they attempt to manage to move on without the physical presence of their precious mother.

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What a godly influence this woman has been to so many, an incalculable number of people.

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She has mentored an incalculable number of women and has been an inspiration to an incalculable number of both men and women for decades, including me.

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It is with great sadness that I heard of her departure, but of course, when a

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Christian at 86 years of age has got a reputation for being one of these stellar disciples of Christ that you hear about, whose love for the

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Lord is unwavering, whose lives have just been marked with humility and unwavering service to their

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Lord, God, Savior, and King. Of course, remaining a sinner, Fern would always remind you of what a sinner she was, and that she was saved by the mercy and grace of our

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Lord and Savior, but amongst us here on this earth, she was certainly someone who stood out as such a godly and precious woman and a dear and sweet woman, and I will miss her greatly personally.

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As I said, please pray for the Hill family. Pray especially for her husband, Jerry. He, not long ago, suffered from a stroke, so it's going to be obviously more difficult for him to get along without his faithful companion and bride assisting him.

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And I am so delighted that providentially I interviewed Fern only days after Jerry had his stroke, because they were both going to be on the program together.

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I providentially interviewed Fern for the last time on December 3rd, 2020. I'm so glad I did.

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In fact, that program will be a rerun this Monday on Iron Trumpets Iron Radio, and I hope that you listen to it, and I hope you spread word about it.

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There is going to be a memorial service this Saturday on the grounds of the

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Timothy Hill Children's Ranch, and if anybody wants to find out more information, if you live locally especially, how you can attend that memorial service, or how you can contribute to the

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Timothy Hill Children's Ranch in honor of Fern, you can go to timothyhill .org,

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timothyhill .org. And now, let me introduce someone who

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I have loved interviewing already on this program, and I am honored and privileged to be interviewing him again today.

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His name is Dr. Owen Strand. If you're trying to Google that name, it is not spelled anything like you would expect.

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His last name is spelled S -T -R -A -C -H -A -N. And he is the provost and research professor of theology at a seminary known as Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Arkansas, Conway, Arkansas to be exact, which was established by my friend,

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Pastor John Jeffrey D. Johnson, the pastor of the church that hosts that seminary.

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And today we are going to be addressing a vital book that will be in print,

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God willing, next month, called Christianity and Wokeness, How the

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Social Justice Movement is Hijacking the Gospel and the Way to Stop It.

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And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Dr. Owen Strand. Thank you so much,

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Chris. Great to be back with you. Appreciate it. Amen. And we're also going to be plugging a conference where Owen will be featured as one of the speakers.

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This is the Wokeness and the Gospel Conference in Denton, Texas, to be held at the

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Denton Bible Church, June 11th and 12th. And God willing, I will be manning an exhibitor's booth there for Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

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I'm really excited about this trip, having never spent a full day in Texas before.

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I've only been there on a layaway at the airport and never ventured outside the airport.

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So I will be there for an extended stay, even longer than the conference, because my oldest brother,

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John, lives about 20 minutes away, providentially, from where this conference will be held.

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And I ask for your continued prayers for John, my oldest brother, 76 years old. He is not a believer, and he has cancer, and he has critical stage emphysema, and he has an inoperable aneurysm.

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So someone in that condition who is not a believer certainly needs prayer. Pray that I can effectively minister to him with the love and tenderness of Jesus Christ, and enable me to not be ashamed of the

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Gospel when I speak with him. So please continue to pray for John. But I will be giving you more details about Wokeness and the

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Gospel very soon. So tell us, I know that you haven't actually begun your post, you haven't begun serving in your new post as Provost and Research Professor of Theology at Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Conway, Arkansas yet.

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That's something that I believe is taking place next month. So tell us about your decision to leave a very large and highly esteemed seminary,

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Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, to take upon this new position. Yeah, I appreciate the question.

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I'm very thankful for six great years at Midwestern Seminary here in Kansas City, and five years at Southern Seminary and Boyce College before that.

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So it's been a joy to teach Systematic Theology now for eleven years in these contexts.

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Very thankful for tons of friends and churches in the Southern Baptist Convention, and want to keep partnering and co -laboring with them in many respects.

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But Jeff Johnson reached out to me some months ago and indicated that he was aware of my material, aware of my writing, and appreciated it, and was interested in talking about adding a faculty member at the school that he began about three years ago called

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Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Conway, Arkansas, about 30 minutes northwest of Little Rock, Arkansas.

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Conway is a beautiful little town, really one of the nicest spots in the entire Midwest, a lot of nature, college town, three different colleges in it, including

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University of Central Arkansas, about 10 to 15 ,000 students. So a real opportunity in terms of ministry in this town with lots of college students and that sort of thing.

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But the real thing that pulled me was this seminary that he's trying to build in the

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Reformed tradition, specifically in a 1689 sense, but with a big vision of God, and that really appealed to me, to locate seminary training in the local church.

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Now, many people who hear that might think, oh, okay, that's neat. Grace Bible Theological Seminary must be, like, held in the basement of the church,

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Grace Bible Church here in Conway. Not that there would be anything wrong with that. Not that there's anything wrong with that at all.

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Definitely not. There are many good works, many good extension centers, for example, out there that different seminaries have, and students get trained through those centers, so we're thankful for them.

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A lot of good can be done there. But that's not what this is. Grace Bible Church has actually acquired and very nicely done up a whole building with a big library, a reading room, beautiful, elegant wood -paneled reading room, and then a huge classroom, a modern classroom with all the latest bells and whistles, none of which

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I really know how to work, and then other offices and rooms as well.

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And so, what drove me to this school was this big

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God vision, this desire to locate seminary training in a local church context.

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It's not that I think larger seminaries have no function or role to play in the kingdom of Christ and the training of pastoral ministers.

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Of course they do. Of course they do. But I'm just excited, Chris, to frankly play a little bit of small ball for a little while and see what the

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Lord does and try to build a strongly Reformed ministry. You know, it's a time for us not to pull back on ministry training and taking people, including future pastors, deep in the

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Word of God. It's a time to double down and actually do more than we're currently doing.

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So Grace has that vision, and I'm excited to go as the number two at the school, as provost, and try to make a dent in the universe for King Jesus.

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Praise God. Well, I am excited for you, and in fact, I know someone who is excited to explore possibly getting long -distance training from this theological institute, this seminary.

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A pastor sends his greetings from North Dakota named

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Josh Fryman. He is in awe of your work and has been following you for quite some time and making use of the gifts that God has given you to bless others from his pulpit and elsewhere.

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Josh Fryman is pastor of the New Testament Baptist Church in Larimore, North Dakota, and he sends his greetings to you and our audience, and I highly recommend

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Pastor Josh Fryman. In fact, he almost became my pastor while he was still pastoring on Long Island, New York, in eastern

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Suffolk County, and God had other plans, and I moved to Pennsylvania, and he providentially also had other plans,

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God had other plans for Pastor Josh, and he moved to North Dakota to accept the call at the

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New Testament Baptist Church there, but I just want to give a plug for his congregation.

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Their website is larimore, L -A -R -I -M -O -R -E -N -T -B -C .org.

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That's N -T -B -C for New Testament Baptist Church .org, and we are going to be interviewing

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Pastor Josh, just to let you know, next month. If you want to mark your calendars for Monday, the 28th of June, God willing, so we are excited to have

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Pastor Josh back on the program, and I want to also make sure that our listeners have the website for the seminary there, the new seminary where you are going to be using your gifts and serving

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God's people. That is, as I was saying before, Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Conway, Arkansas, G -B -T

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Seminary .org, G -B -T for Grace Bible Theological Seminary .org,

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and we'll hopefully remember to repeat that information later on.

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We are going to be addressing, a lot of people are probably saying, wow, Chris Arnzen is doing another interview on the heresies of the

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Wokeness Movement, because I've been doing a lot of them with very qualified men who have written books or who have just become very knowledgeable about the issue, or perhaps they are also fellow speakers along with Dr.

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Strand at the upcoming Wokeness in the Gospel conference, and some people might think that I'm beating a dead horse, but Dr.

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Strand, don't you think that this issue is so serious that you really cannot be guilty of sounding the alarm and blowing the trumpet too loudly and too often to warn the

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Church about its existence, can you? No, this is a hugely important issue.

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By the way, thank you to that kind pastor from North Dakota for his words that you shared. Really appreciate that, that brother.

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God bless to him. You know, this is really the matter of our time, Chris. This is really the test of our day.

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It's not that there are no others that rise to the fore and that demand attention. There are many things that a pastor -theologian has to be aware of.

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Truly, if you are in ministry, and even if you are a Christian of any kind, a member of a local church, you have to be watching at all times.

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You have to obey 1 Corinthians 16, 13, and do what Paul says there.

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Be watchful, he says. 1 Peter 5, 8. Be sober. Be on the alert,

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Peter says. Peter knows what it means to need to be on the alert. Peter knows what it is like to be taken captive temporarily because he denied his

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Lord and Master three times, as we all know, historically recorded for us in the Gospels. So these

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New Testament writers know that there are things we have to watch out for.

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You think about this in light of the Old Testament motif of the watchman in the city of God, in the cities of Israel, where if there was a wall, a high wall, there would be men who would keep the night watch, and they would not sleep.

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They literally would not sleep through the night in order to keep the city safe. And they had to constantly be walking on the wall, scanning the horizon, spear in hand.

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And if there was any threat, they had to sound the alarm. There's no one else. There's no one else up there to sound the alarm.

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Well, we don't live in a walled city in an Israelite theocracy now. We are all called to be watchful in the power of the

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Spirit. We are all called, Colossians 2, 8, to watch that ungodly ideologies which are everywhere around us.

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It's not like there's one or two out there, or 3 .5 out there in human history. No, they're all around us, and they seek,

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Paul says in Colossians 2, 8, to take us captive. So, Satan's ideologies, all the different viruses, intellectually and theologically, he tries to send into our bloodstream, are not playing nice.

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They're not here to play Yahtzee with us. They're imperial. They're here to take us over. They're here to destroy our faith.

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They're here to eat away our piety. And Paul teaches us very clearly that we have to not let them take us captive.

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And that is just what wokeness is seeking to do now, as it even seeps into the

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Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Yeah, one of the reasons why this issue, this heresy, is so serious is that it has invaded and has captivated the hearts and minds of people who were not long ago considered to be among the modern -day heroes of Reformed theology.

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Yeah. Men who would stand by our side, declaring a nearly identical message to you and I, and to Pastor Jeff Johnson, on the core issues of the

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Scriptures especially. And in fact, not only that, but men who, some of whom were on this very radio program only nine years ago, who were actually, in their interviews, openly condemning the mindset that is now a prevalent theme and apologetic for the woke movement.

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So this is one of the reasons why it's mind -boggling. Reformed churches, over the centuries, one of the greatest errors that entered in the ranks of Reformed Christians was hyper -Calvinism.

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And it still exists to, I think, a small degree. I think it's a minority, for sure, in the

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Reformed faith or in the Reformed churches globally. And you also had churches that began as Reformed, and institutions, some of the

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Ivy League schools that began as Reformed institutions driven by Puritan thought and theology, who became apostate and liberal and leftist, but it wasn't because of their

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Reformed theology, it was because they abandoned it. But this, other than those two very serious areas, this seems to be the most profound intrusion and invasion of false teaching of the

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Reformed faith in history, isn't it? I cannot think of a more direct attack on, yes, the

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Reformed movement in recent decades, at the very least, than this. In terms of a corollary historically, you have to go back directly a hundred years ago to Protestant liberalism and the fundamentalist modernist controversy that played out in my native

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New England in the north, not far from where you are in Pennsylvania, and you have to recognize that J.

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Gresham Machen led a lonely stand in the 1920s and 30s and lost in institutional terms.

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You can think back 30 years before that to Spurgeon's ending years of his life and recognize that he, too, faced what we would call

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Protestant liberalism, an earlier version, not the same precise Presbyterian version, but a very similar one.

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So there are two flashpoints, a hundred years ago and 130 years ago, basically, that we can identify, and I think,

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Chris, we're still dealing with Protestant liberalism. We thought we weren't. The histories we have written in the last 10 to 20 years effectively had an

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R .I .P. on Protestant liberalism. We laughed, almost, as we thought of how there was the book

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Why Conservative Churches Are Growing in the 1970s, because they surely were, and at the same time, many liberal denominations and churches were dying.

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And that is a real trend that continues into the current day. But here's the thing. Movements like liberal

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Protestantism don't stay the same. They change shape. They morph. Satan is always testing the fence.

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He never stops testing the fence. He never stops trying to get into the walled city.

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He is always looking for the weakest point, and he's always shapeshifting, and he's always causing his ideologies to shapeshift.

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That's what's happening with wokeness. Wokeness is really Marxism. There's been a lot of debate in evangelical and gospel -centered and reformed circles about whether it's appropriate to call wokeness or critical race theory cultural

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Marxism. There are different niceties that we can point out, different particularities of history.

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But here is the deal. Here is the bottom line. Wokeness is Marxism. It is Marxism with a racial twist.

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It is predicated upon the idea that in society there are oppressors, and then there are the oppressed.

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And in modern -day Marxism of the critical race theory or woke kind, the oppressors are basically white people or people who do not challenge whiteness in society.

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And the oppressed people are black people and people of color. And that is a Marxist, not a biblical, vision of looking at the world.

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And if you embrace it, you are embracing a different system than biblical

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Christianity. And that will have tremendous consequences for the gospel and the faith that you preach.

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Amen. And we are going to be learning more about exactly what the woke movement is in greater detail when we return from the break.

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If you have a question for Dr. Owen Strand on this issue, please submit your question via email to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com,

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

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USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter, like for instance if you have great concerns over woke ideology entering into your own church, into your own pulpit where your pastor is supposed to be opening up the word of God.

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Perhaps you're even a pastor and you have serious concerns about this creeping into your own congregation or denomination.

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You might even be at odds with your fellow elders over it. Well, we understand that that would be reasons why you might want to remain anonymous.

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But, if it's just a general question on this very serious issue, please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence.

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Don't go away. We'll be right back with Dr. Owen Strand right after these messages from our sponsors. I'm James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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My friend Chris Arnson, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and I are headed down to Atlanta, Georgia once again for the

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G3 Conference. This year's G3 will be held Thursday, September 30th through Saturday, October 2nd on the theme,

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Christ is Supreme Over All. I'll be joined by over 20 other speakers and musicians to lead in the worship of God through preaching, teaching, and singing, including

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John MacArthur, Phil Johnson, Conrad M. Bayway, Daryl Bernard Harrison, and Virgil Walker.

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For details, visit G3conference .com. That's G3conference .com. Chris Arnson and I hope to see you

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September 30th through October 2nd at G321. This is James White reminding you that Christ is

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Supreme Over All. The Wokeness and the

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Gospel Conference is coming to Denton Bible Church in Denton, Texas, June 11th and 12th.

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Register now by going online to Wokenessandgospel .org. Featuring speakers such as Dr.

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Owen Strand. If you just buy this ideology, the world's going to be made right. No, it's not.

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Only Jesus Christ makes the world right. Daryl Harrison of the Just Thinking Podcast. Sinners like you and me can be reconciled first and foremost to God and consequently to one another.

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Pastor Tom Buck of First Baptist Church in Lindale, Texas. Like Satan in the Garden, woke hermeneutics undermines the very authority of the

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Word of God. I don't say that lightly. Also hear from Tommy Nelson, Charles Stolfus, and Rodney Brown.

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Confronting the lies being impressed upon the culture today, threatening even to divide the Church, and answering with the

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Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Wokeness and the Gospel Conference coming to Denton Bible Church, June 11th and 12th.

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Register online at Wokenessandgospel .org. When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

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Hello, my name is Anthony Uvino, and I'm one of the pastors at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Quorum, New York, and also the host of the reformrookie .com

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Thanks for helping to keep Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio on the air. Welcome back.

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This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest for the full program today is Dr. Owen Strand, Provost and Research Professor of Theology at Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Conway, Arkansas.

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We are addressing his latest book, Christianity and Wokeness, how the social justice movement is hijacking the gospel and the way to stop it.

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We're also announcing the Wokeness and the Gospel Conference, and I hope that you join

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Dr. Strand and I and other speakers. Not that I'm one of the speakers. I'll be manning an exhibitors booth there.

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But Dr. Strand is one of the speakers, among others. And of course, you'll be hearing the ads for that conference not only today, but every day until the day of the conference.

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You can find out more details about that conference at wokenessandgospel .org, wokenessandgospel .org.

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But for the sake of those who may be listening to this program, especially for the first time, it seems

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I have people discovering this program every day, judging from the emails I'm getting every day.

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Can you please define what wokeness means, and what social justice means, and what critical race theory means?

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Those are good questions, Chris. Wokeness is what I would say is the general mood that is driven by the embrace of critical race theory.

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Critical race theory is the system of thought that, in its mind, explains the racial injustice of our society.

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It does so according to that concept that I mentioned before the break, the oppressor -oppressed dynamic that it pulls from Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto.

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So basically, to synthesize, Marx and Engels targeted economic inequality, economic oppression.

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I just coined my own term there. Sorry, Marx and Engels. That's the only time I'm ever going to apologize. So I have nothing but fire for them otherwise.

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So economic oppression is what they targeted in the 19th century. They looked at wealthy people and said, wealthy people are oppressing poor people, and what we need to do is overturn society and make this right.

35:45

And their movement was nothing less than fantastically successful. Perhaps the second most successful idea in the history of ideas to Christianity.

35:55

Christianity being the most successful by a country mile. That was then applied in the 20th century by critical theorists in terms of deconstructing bourgeois culture.

36:06

So think of middle class culture with a focus on religion and father and mother and the family and a good virtuous life.

36:15

Basically, critical theorists took a look at that kind of existence and tried to torch it and deconstruct it.

36:20

In our time, there's a third movement along those lines, but it's not economic. It's not as much targeted at the bourgeoisie.

36:28

Now it's targeted at a specific race, so -called white people and those who benefit from the construct of whiteness.

36:37

So critical race theory says, basically, our chief problem today is this oppressor -oppressed dynamic that obtains when white people get together and oppress others.

36:49

That creates conditions of white supremacy. The only way that can be fixed is by applying what is called social justice.

36:56

Social justice sounds good. If you hear that phrase on ESPN or if you see it on Pinterest on a pin or something like that, you can tell

37:04

I know a lot about Pinterest, then you're going to think, oh, that sounds good. Justice. I like justice. I'm a

37:09

Christian. Justice is in the Bible. But what is meant by social justice is altogether different from biblical justice.

37:15

Biblical justice is retributive, fundamentally. When someone does something wrong, they get their just due.

37:21

That goes all the way up to the top. God is going to pay back every wrong ever committed by sinners.

37:29

Okay, so that's the foundation of justice. It's divine. But social justice is all about making society equitable and equal such that there will be no oppression from those who are oppressors, which means white people and those who benefit from the construct of whiteness.

37:46

Now, I'll wrap up this overheated little summary by saying this. Wokeness, I use as the blanket term to cover all of that, because a ton of people out there are never going to cite a critical race theorist or a scholar of what's called intersectionality.

38:04

That's another can of worms we can talk about. Most people are going to tweet a hashtag about justice or Black Lives Mattering, and they're going to assume that they're doing something good, when in reality, they don't know the system that those ideas are coming from.

38:20

As believers, it is of course true that every life matters, including black lives, absolutely.

38:26

But there is a specific rootage. There are roots in the ground from which these ideas are springing.

38:33

And to be woke means that you're awake to all of this. You see that American society is not fundamentally equal.

38:40

It's not fundamentally just. It's wicked. It's shot through with white supremacy. And when you are woke, you see that.

38:48

And now you become an enemy of the order, and you're actually one who is going to advance social justice.

38:56

So the riots we saw last summer were not, you know, people being frustrated by lockdown.

39:02

No doubt they were frustrated by lockdown. But they were actually rioting in order to destroy, in many cases, the existing social order, white supremacist order.

39:13

There's a lot more I could say, but that was plenty for now. Well, I know some of my listeners may roll their eyes as I repeat something that I've said many times about this subject.

39:26

But one of the things that boggles my mind, personally, when

39:31

I hear very biblically literate and theologically astute and sound scholarly brethren who have come to embrace this garbage, they must know that the

39:52

Jewish people in the scriptures had been tormented and persecuted and enslaved and tortured and murdered for centuries by the

40:06

Gentile pagans. And yet, when we enter into the New Covenant, they were not given, the

40:13

Jewish Christians who were the first of the Christians, they were not given some kind of a liberty or even duty to view the

40:23

Gentiles who had come to Christ in some different way, a lesser way, where they viewed the

40:31

Gentiles as owing them something from the past persecution they experienced.

40:37

In fact, the Apostle Paul, obviously, was so infuriated by that idea that existed in the church, the early church, that he even rebuked the

40:52

Apostle Peter in front of a number of other brothers and sisters in Christ, rebuking him for even contemplating, let alone participating in that mindset where they were refusing, the

41:08

Jewish Christians were refusing to even eat with Gentiles. Isn't that just a clear evidence that there is no basis, that alone other than many other things, isn't that a clear basis on which

41:20

Christians can say there is no excuse for any Bible -believing

41:25

Christian to believe and participate in, let alone lead a woke or social justice warrior movement?

41:34

Yes, it is. I mean, it's time to turn out the lights in the gym and go home.

41:42

Yes, that's right, Chris. I mean, seriously, what you just said is the very crux of the matter, no pun intended, because in Ephesians 2, 11 -22,

41:53

Paul directly deals with this issue. Jews and Gentiles are being smushed together, technical theological term, into the church, and no doubt in the first century there are all kinds of questions, because of the background you mentioned, as to how this is supposed to play out.

42:12

Individual families on the Jewish side, perhaps also on the Gentile side, are going to be bringing real historical circumstances and even pain into the church.

42:26

These are not massive cities and contexts, remember, in the first century. These aren't mega -cities of the 21st century.

42:34

Many of these churches that Paul is writing to are going to have people whose lineages go back in that territory for generations.

42:43

People didn't move all around the place like they do now. So, all that to say, that only makes it more revolutionary that the

42:50

Apostle Paul does not say, Alright, everybody, elders of Ephesus, get out a nice big table, sit there for nine hours, and have everybody in the church on the

43:03

Jew side bring their grievances, and then have everybody on the Gentile side bring their grievances, and everybody's going to need to retain all of this pain and this memory, and you're going to need to oversee an extensive system of reparations by which everybody's going to have this made right, and you're going to need to carefully apportion not only money, but the appropriate apology levels.

43:28

You're going to need to figure out how each person in each situation is going to owe people on the other side appropriate reparational pain, and then you're going to have to sort that out, not only a period of, you know, a few hours when you just make reconciliation.

43:44

Oh, no, that's very simple. No, no, no. This is going to play out over years. These people who have been caused to damage by someone on the other side, they're going to get years of payment, fiscal payment, because of what has been done.

43:59

Chris, this is all a little ridiculous, because you go to Ephesians 2, 11 to 22, and Paul says that the hostility between Jew and Gentile has been killed.

44:10

He uses a really unique Greek verb in Ephesians 2, 15. He says it's been murdered, basically.

44:17

Hostility has been killed by the cross. That's how powerful the cross is. So that is our apologetic.

44:25

That is our unifying agent. That is our hope. That is not only how we plan reconciliation, that is where we go to find the reconciliation that has been achieved by the blood of Christ.

44:40

That is a situation so radical that the world doesn't want it, but that is what we are in business to offer, not repristinated leftism with an evangelical spin.

44:52

We have RJ in White Plains, New York, who says,

44:58

I have heard glowing reports about Votie Baucom's book, Fault Lines, the social justice movement, and evangelicalism's looming catastrophe.

45:08

I've also heard Chris Arnzen, the host of Iron Shepherd's Iron Radio, interview

45:13

John Harris on Social Justice Goes to Church, the new left and modern American evangelicalism, and Jerry Boyer on what

45:22

Jesus really said about social justice economics. I don't know if you're familiar with these other books, but has your book taken a different approach or provided different information than these books contain?

45:37

That's a good question, and I appreciate it. I endorsed Votie's book, Fault Lines. Fault Lines is with Salem Books and is, as I'm sure your listeners know, a national bestseller on several lists.

45:51

My book, Christianity and Wokeness, which comes out in almost precisely two months, is also with Salem Books, so Votie and I have the same publisher.

46:00

Salem is one of the only publishers, just about the only publisher in the world that was willing to take on an unwoken book, and it was pretty surprising how few evangelical publishers with long -standing reputations for convictional publishing did not want either book without getting too much into the details here in public.

46:26

But I'm happy to say what I just said and leave it there on the record. Suffice it to say,

46:31

I know most about Baucom's book. Suffice it to say that Fault Lines is just a tremendous work.

46:39

And Chris, this book has reset evangelicalism. It has absolutely landed the plane.

46:46

It has thrown down the gauntlet, but in a positive way.

46:53

Because until this book, there was not a major work by a

47:00

Christian author opposing wokeness, what I call wokeness. There have been several books that have taken the right stand against this ideology, including

47:10

Harris' book and others. A very important book, by the way, is Jeff Johnson's What Every Christian Needs to Know About Social Justice.

47:16

Very helpful book. But Votie's book, In God's Providence, is the one that has been appointed thus far to really take the heat.

47:25

And in being a bestseller, ironically, we saw that though there was very little interest on the part of evangelical publishers, there is nothing less than humongous and surging interest in unwoke thought from Christians.

47:40

And even beyond. Votie's book had Fox News personalities tweeting it, because there is so little out there that offers people sound resources about this wicked ideology.

47:56

So I'm very pleased on air here to recommend, as I'm sure you have, Chris, Bauckham's Fault Lines.

48:03

I think everybody should own it. I think pastors should buy copies at cost, as much as they can, and hand them out like candy at church.

48:12

I also think that pastors should buy What Every Christian Needs to Know About Social Justice by Jeffrey Johnson.

48:19

I think they should have Tom Askell and Jared Longshore's By What Standard?

48:25

And then I hope that they'll also make use, at some level, of my book,

48:30

Christianity and Wokeness. My book attempts to be basically a systematic overview of the whole system.

48:37

So if you're going to take down an ideology, you really need a systematic presentation of that ideology, and then you need a systematic

48:47

Christ -driven refutation of it. And there are different books that make different contributions, and I'm very thankful for them.

48:53

That's what my book tries to do. Well, I'm glad you finally got around to plugging your own book. And I want to give a shout -out to Salem Books for having the integrity and courage to publish both

49:10

Dr. Owen Strand's book, Christianity and Wokeness, and Votie Bauckham's book, Fault Lines.

49:16

And by the way, RJ, you have to be patient because it's not in print yet, but our dear friend

49:24

Katie Anderson at Salem Books has promised that we will get a limited number of giveaway books, giveaway copies of Christianity and Wokeness by Dr.

49:36

Strand, that you will receive in July, as soon as we get them.

49:43

And Cumberland Valley Bible Book Services will be shipping these books out.

49:48

That's cvbbs .com. We thank our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service for always shipping out the winners in our audience, the

49:56

Bibles and books that they win by submitting questions to the program.

50:02

And we are praying that Votie is well enough to come onto the program.

50:07

In fact, Salem Books and Regenery Publishing were working on an interview, getting an interview set up.

50:18

Timothy Peterson was very instrumental in that of Salem Books to get Votie on the show.

50:23

But that was before Votie had his quadruple bypass surgery, which

50:29

I'm asking our listeners to please pray for Votie. He is one of the speakers that was scheduled at the

50:35

G3 conference where I'm going to be manning an exhibitors booth this fall in Atlanta, Georgia.

50:41

And he has had a question mark put next to his name because obviously now it's not certain whether he will have regained the energy and health that he requires to still participate.

50:55

But pray that he is fully recovered, not only so we can be blessed, those of us who attend the

51:02

G3 conference, and that I could be blessed with another interview with him. It was so much of an extraordinary blessing to see him and hear him speak before his health set back here in Pennsylvania, where he gave a remarkable series of lectures at a conference on social justice and critical race theory.

51:24

And if anybody wants the audio or video of that presentation or those presentations, plural, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

51:35

and I'll try to get a hold of them myself from this church in Pennsylvania that hosted this conference.

51:42

But please pray for Votie. And we have to go to our midway break right now. So please be patient with us because the midway break, as always, is a little longer than the other breaks in the show because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

51:55

FM in Lake City, Florida, is required by the FCC to geographically localize

52:00

Iron Sherp and Zion Radio and all of their programming to Lake City, Florida. So in order to do that in the midway break, they air their public service announcements and a lot of other local things to localize

52:14

Iron Sherp and Zion Radio to Lake City, Florida, while we simultaneously air our globally heard commercials.

52:20

Please use this time wisely. Write down as much of the information as you can provided by advertisers so that you can more frequently and successfully respond to them, first and foremost, to purchase their products, use their services, visit their churches, or support their parachurch organizations.

52:35

But when you can't do any of those things, please, at the very least, respond to our advertisers by thanking them for sponsoring this show.

52:44

This show cannot exist without the finances that come from the advertising campaigns that you hear on this broadcast.

52:51

So write down the information provided by advertisers, respond to our advertisers, and write down questions to Dr.

52:57

Owen Strand on Christianity and Wilderness and send them to chrisarnson at gmail .com. As always, as I said before, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

53:14

USA. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Dr. Owen Strand after these messages from our sponsors.

53:19

Back together again, yeah. Back together again, yeah.

53:29

Hi, I'm Phil Johnson, host and executive director of Grace to You, the media ministry of John McArthur.

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I hope you plan to join me and Chris Arnzen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, for the

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G3 conference in Atlanta, Georgia, Thursday, September 30th through Saturday, October 2nd.

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The theme this year is Christ is supreme over all. My friend Chris Arnzen and I will be joined by several of our other friends, including

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Votie Baucom, Justin Peters, Daryl Bernard Harrison, Virgil Walker, and James White.

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More than 20 other speakers will be joining us, and the lineup this year includes my pastor, John McArthur.

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For details, visit g3conference .com. That's g3conference .com.

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Chris Arnzen and I hope to see you September 30th through October 2nd at G3 2021.

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This is Phil Johnson reminding you that Christ is supreme over all. Here's what

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Gary DeMar, president of American Vision, had to say about Iron Sharpens Iron Radio recently.

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Good to be back, Chris. I always enjoy our time here. I have to tell you, you're one of the better interviewers out there, and I've been doing this for 30, more than 30 years.

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Wow, that's some compliment. How much joy are you for that? You don't have to owe me anything.

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We're in good shape. I'm glad you said it on the air, so I don't have to brag about myself.

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Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support

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Sovereign Lord, God, Savior, and King, Jesus Christ, today and always.

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When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

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The Wokeness in the Gospel Conference is coming to Denton Bible Church in Denton, Texas, June 11th and 12th.

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Register now by going online to wokenessandgospel .org featuring speakers such as Dr.

58:41

Owen Strand. If you just buy this ideology, the world's going to be made right. No, it's not.

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Only Jesus Christ makes the world right. Daryl Harrison of the Just Thinking Podcast. Sinners, like you and me, can be reconciled first and foremost to God, and consequently to one another.

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Pastor Tom Buck of First Baptist Church in Lindale, Texas. Like Satan in the Garden, woke hermeneutics undermines the very authority of the

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Word of God. I don't say that lightly. Also hear from Tommy Nelson, Charles Stolfus, and Rodney Brown.

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Confronting the lies being impressed upon the culture today, threatening even to divide the church, and answering with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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The Wokeness in the Gospel Conference coming to Denton Bible Church, June 11th and 12th. Register online at wokenessandgospel .org.

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In Psalm 139 verse 14, the psalmist offers praise to the Lord like this.

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He saw God's goodness and mercy, kindness, and the beauty in what

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01:08:58

I. Before I return to our discussion with Dr. Owen Strand, who is provost and research professor of theology at Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Conway, Arkansas, and author of Christianity and Wokeness, how the social justice movement is hijacking the gospel and the way to stop it.

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And also one of the speakers at the Wokeness and the Gospel Conference in Denton, Texas next month.

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01:10:52

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01:11:00

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01:11:09

Also folks, if you are not a member of a theologically sound, biblically faithful church, no matter where on the planet earth you live,

01:11:16

I have extensive lists of biblically faithful churches spanning the globe, and I have helped people all over the world find churches, sometimes within a few minutes of where they live, in all parts of the planet earth, that they didn't even know existed, or they didn't know that the churches that they pass by every day were theologically sound.

01:11:38

So, if you are in that category of being in need of a biblically faithful church near you, no matter where you live, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:11:47

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you could send in a question to our guest today,

01:11:55

Dr. Owen Strand. That's chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:12:01

where you're discussing his book Christianity and Wokeness. We have B .B.

01:12:08

in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who asks, What does the cancel culture have in similarity with what you are discussing today, wokeness and social justice?

01:12:22

Well, in a lot of respects, wokeness is the ideology that is determining who should be canceled.

01:12:29

In most cases, that is true. It's a very good question. These dots are not usually connected, and this is why

01:12:36

I use the broad term wokeness, because though critical race theory and intersectionality are technically the academic disciplines, if they deserve to be called that, we're going to leave that matter hanging in the air before us.

01:12:53

They're the academic disciplines. Wokeness is the mentality, is the mindset, is the mood of our culture.

01:13:00

When you read a headline about somebody saying something racist, for example, and getting canceled for it, occasionally, the person who has been canceled, who has lost a book contract, who has lost their job, whatever it may be, has actually said something abhorrent about another image -bearer that is biblically wrong.

01:13:24

That is true. Certainly when we look at the American past, we recognize many failings along those lines.

01:13:29

And so racism is a real problem. Ethnocentrism is a real problem. It's all classed under partiality, according to James 2, for example, showing undue favor to some and then being prejudiced towards others.

01:13:45

That's always wrong. But in many cases today, this is what is so twisted. The person who has been canceled is not actually a racist.

01:13:54

They are a person who questions wokeness. They're a person who has been told something like, you're a white supremacist and have white privilege just by virtue of having white skin.

01:14:07

That ideology is everywhere today. Ibram X. Kendi teaches it. He's at Boston University.

01:14:13

Robin DiAngelo teaches it in her book White Fragility. There are many other authors and sources we could name.

01:14:20

This is in Evangelicalism. Jamar Tisby teaches that. Thabiti Anyabwile teaches a version of that.

01:14:27

Kyle Howard teaches a version of it. We could go on. The list now stretches on and on.

01:14:34

And in a surprising number of cases, when someone is being canceled, it's for these kinds of reasons.

01:14:40

It's not always purely because of race. And race, by the way, is not a biblical category.

01:14:45

It's a construct. Ethnicity is a biblical category. There are Greek terms that sketch out ethnicity.

01:14:51

There are not Greek terms or Hebrew terms that sketch out race, but that's a digression. In other cases, it's not race that is causing somebody to be canceled.

01:15:00

It's them not being a feminist. It's them defending what is called capitalism, better called the free market.

01:15:07

Capitalism is Karl Marx's term. See, I told you I was going to hit Karl Marx again, and I just did. And what we're seeing in our society in those kinds of instances of cancellation is intersectionality at work.

01:15:21

I should say a very quick word about this. Intersectionality is basically the idea that there are all sorts of groups of oppressed people out there.

01:15:28

It's not just racially oppressed people. It's economically oppressed people. It's disabled people who are oppressed by able -bodied people.

01:15:37

It's fat people who are oppressed by thin people, and the list goes on and on.

01:15:42

And the argument made by scholars of intersectionality is that if you are in those privileged categories, for example, if you are thin, then you are an oppressor, and those who are not thin are oppressed peoples.

01:15:56

And so when you dare to speak out against such ridiculous ideology as that, then yes, if you are in the mainstream, if you are in a secular university, if you're in an

01:16:07

Ivy League school, if you're a major executive at a major corporation in America, you may very well be canceled.

01:16:15

Now, I know that you're not a prophet, and I know that you don't believe that anyone has extra -biblical revelation in the 21st century.

01:16:24

But what do you envision to be the future of this movement?

01:16:30

Because it is very cannibalistic. I mean,

01:16:35

I believe that many of the people who are giving lip service to this stuff in the media are eventually going to be canceled themselves.

01:16:45

I mean, it seems that it must be a very difficult thing for people who are frightened by the wrath of the woke movement to keep up with the ever -changing vocabulary and grammar and definitions that their revisions of the dictionary keep going through.

01:17:09

I mean, you even have, very recently, a very popular black comedian,

01:17:19

Chris Rock, who is a very vulgar individual, not known for being a bulwark of conservatism by any stretch of the imagination, but he's realizing this is killing that industry.

01:17:31

You know, the stand -up comics are so afraid to speak boldly in the way that they normally would, that he is recognizing, man, comedians aren't funny anymore.

01:17:45

I mean, when you even turn on the late -night shows, they have become really an arm of Pravda.

01:17:52

They get involved in giving these serious lectures on socioeconomic issues coming from the script of wokeism, and they're not even in any remotely way funny.

01:18:04

I mean, what are your thoughts on the survival of this? Yeah, it is absolutely a piranha -e -piranha culture.

01:18:14

And so, yes, if you are... Man, there's all this talk about the right side of history.

01:18:20

Let me just say this. If you think you are on the right side of wokeness, you are in a terrifying place.

01:18:27

Because this is not a stable element. It is exactly what you just said. You are...

01:18:32

It is a matter of when you are going to be eaten by this ideology, for most people.

01:18:38

Not if. Matter of when. And you're going to have to... People think

01:18:44

Christianity is moralistic or legalistic, or however you want to frame that. When you think about man's ideologies and how absolutizing they are, how there is no compromise, how they make no room, as Christianity does fascinatingly, for free speech and religious liberty and concepts like this, that Christians surely have not always developed perfectly or practiced perfectly in different societies.

01:19:11

And yet, look at the track record of Christianity in the West in the last 500 years.

01:19:16

There's a trend line. It's developing upward. It's not always at the peak. And yet, Christianity, and I mean

01:19:23

Biblical Christianity, as well as others who are not truly born -again people, but who buy into some form of the doctrine,

01:19:31

Christian principles have created a system where there is something called free speech.

01:19:40

And Christian principles from the Scripture have created something we call religious liberty.

01:19:45

And these concepts are not concepts that we preach as if they are the gospel.

01:19:52

The gospel is our message. And yet, man, when you start to see free speech and religious liberty, and the two go hand -in -glove, by the way, deteriorate in a society, wow, do you not realize how significant and what a common grace blessing these concepts are?

01:20:14

They are not everything. They're not what we're giving our life for most as believers.

01:20:21

And yet, when an ideology like wokeness comes to the fore, you have a terrific opportunity to assess it in light of Christianity.

01:20:31

With the New Atheists 20 years ago, there was such a smashing critique of Christianity that arose in the

01:20:39

West. And then, with the rise of the gay lobby in America and the LGBT movement, again, another massive wave of criticism of the

01:20:48

Church. And yet, now, it's kind of funny, almost, Chris, in a tragic way, because now wokeness is imperial.

01:20:58

Now wokeness is ruling the roost in the academy, and you are dead right about how it is drying up every facet of culture.

01:21:07

Whenever you have a society that moves further and further away from biblical principles,

01:21:15

I'm not saying, you know, that America was a Christian nation, but, you know, I'm defining my speech carefully here, when it moves further and further away from biblical principles, there is always going to be a corresponding loss of liberty and freedom and flourishing.

01:21:31

And does that not sound familiar today? Oh, yeah. We have, let's see,

01:21:38

I was just looking at the question. Oh, Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York.

01:21:44

And Ronald says, please forgive me if this question makes you feel uncomfortable, because that is not my intention behind this question, but I think it's an important question, because it involves where young men are going to be trained to be filling pulpits all over the

01:22:02

United States, if not overseas and Canada and other areas.

01:22:08

I'm speaking about how trustworthy should we be today of the

01:22:14

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, knowing that wokeness exists, even though there are voices in opposition to it there, it is still permitted in the institution and is also not officially condemned.

01:22:33

That is a good question. I am not at Southern, and so I truly don't know what things are like on the ground in terms of, you know, how strong the woke presence truly is.

01:22:50

My sense is that having numerous friends and even a family member on the faculty of Southern, my sense is that there is significant pushback to wokeness from many.

01:23:02

My sense is also that there are some who would be more friendly to that ideology in certain ways, and I think that's true at different Southern Baptist institutions.

01:23:13

And so I think somebody who is at Southern would be in a better position to answer that question definitively.

01:23:20

I'm not truly able to do that. What I am able to say is this, though, publicly. Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Conway, Arkansas is a

01:23:30

Reformed school. It's a Reformed Baptist school. It's a small school. We have no pretensions of grandeur or greatness.

01:23:38

We are not locating our value as an institution in our size. I, as the provost of the school incoming, do not care.

01:23:47

I do not care one bit if this school ever gets to 1 ,000 students or 2 ,000 students or 5 ,000 students or something like this.

01:23:57

It may. It may not. What I care about is biblical fidelity. What I care about is training men to be pastors in hard places, whether nationally or internationally.

01:24:08

What I care about is keeping the flame of the Reformation lit. I want men to be trained in a kind of Reformational spirit.

01:24:16

I would much rather produce John Knox's, and I have no desire to produce

01:24:22

Dale Carnegie's, who count the success of their ministry in terms of never upsetting anybody and how many friends they have.

01:24:30

I want to train pastor warriors in the name of King Jesus to go out there and preach the gospel and love to dead and dying people under threat of eternal judgment.

01:24:41

And so I can tell you this. I'll land the plane here. There is not going to be a single molecule of wokeness on this campus.

01:24:49

There will be none under my leadership by the grace of God, at least none intentionally. The president of grace is

01:24:56

Jeff Johnson. We've mentioned him already. He has written a book called What Every Christian Needs to Know About Social Justice that is fantastic and is as un -woke as you can get.

01:25:06

And then this July, July 20, my book, Christianity and Wokeness, comes out. And suffice it to say that if listeners are not picking up the gentle strains of my thought, that book is not going to be woke either.

01:25:19

And so this is the ideology that is imperial in our time, and our seminary is not indifferent to this.

01:25:27

We're not a little mildly concerned about this. We don't have a plan to respond to this in 10 or 15 years.

01:25:36

We are responding now. We are writing books about it early. And we are going to do everything we can to strengthen our students in all facets of the word of God, including an appropriate response to this ideology.

01:25:51

So I'm a bit confused. Are you for or against it? Just kidding.

01:25:58

I've got a new slogan for Grace Bible Theological Seminary. The only thing woke about us is our faculty and students after morning coffee.

01:26:10

Yeah, well, that level of wokeness not only will be tolerated, but will be necessary for me.

01:26:19

Yeah, caffeinated wokeness is different from ideological wokeness. So let that be said. Well, Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, make sure we get your full mailing address, because you will, in July, God willing, when the book is actually in print, you will get a free copy of the book we are addressing today,

01:26:39

Christianity and Wokeness, How the Social Justice Movement is Hijacking the Gospel and the

01:26:45

Way to Stop It, compliments of our friends at Salem Books and Regnery Publishing, and also compliments of CVBBS .com,

01:26:55

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, who will be the ones shipping it to you at no cost to you or to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:27:04

One of the things that I'm sure that everybody is on the edge of their seats waiting to hear is the way to stop it.

01:27:13

That's a part of your subtitle. So give us some of these ways if it's not going to be, you know,

01:27:20

I don't know if we need a spoiler alert about the book or whatever, but it's not going to destroy any surprise factor.

01:27:27

Can you tell us about some of the ways we can stop it? Yeah, I mean, the major way to stop it is ecclesiology, biblical ecclesiology and biblical soteriology.

01:27:39

So you and I have already run through what I talk about at length in the book, which is

01:27:45

God's plan for the Church. The Church brings together, by the grace of God, people who do have very little in common, perhaps nothing in common in terms of background.

01:27:55

But we're not forming our churches according to the homogenous unit principle. We're not trying to get people who have all the same class or background or educational level or age in our churches.

01:28:06

We're trying to have multi -generational fellowship. You know, we want appropriate right diversity in our congregations in all sorts of ways.

01:28:16

And so the way to get that, the way to achieve what we all seem so desperate to have is just to preach the

01:28:25

Word. And it's to be a loving Christian. And then in terms of stopping the spread of wokeness, it's for pastors and elders not to buy into this system and then to teach about these things to their people.

01:28:39

And then the sheep are equipped. Instead of the sheep having no clue how to respond when someone brings up social justice, when the

01:28:49

HR department at work tells them they have to go to an equity training session, when there's intersectionality that's creeping into the curriculum of their fourth grader at school, whether it's a public school or a

01:29:03

Christian school. It's everywhere today. Then the sheep are equipped. Then fathers and mothers know how to handle this and know how to at least inoculate their children against it.

01:29:14

So the real answer that I see, Chris, is not some silver bullet. There's no button to press that will make wokeness magically vanish.

01:29:24

The solution is to know the truth. The truth is that which sets us free. And then to preach and proclaim that truth in all the world, to resist the devil and his lies, and then embrace the truth, that's very simply the way

01:29:39

I believe we can stop it. And all of that takes place in the context of the local church.

01:29:44

So, for example, here in Kansas City, my pastor Rick Holland, who was formerly the executive pastor under John MacArthur in L .A.,

01:29:52

took two Sundays, and I would encourage any pastors listening to us to do this now or in the future on the recording of this show, he took two

01:30:03

Sundays and he preached from James 2 about partiality. And he made clear how we are in danger of being lured into being partial toward one group over another today.

01:30:17

And then in recent weeks at my church, Mission Road Bible Church in Prairie Village, Kansas, I've done some teaching on this.

01:30:24

So the elders of this church are meeting this head -on, not in a belligerent way, but in a reasoned, hopefully thoughtful, biblical, expository way.

01:30:36

And I think that's the answer, honestly. I don't think there's some fancy solution. I do see, though,

01:30:42

Chris, a fair number of pastors out there who are wondering if that is appropriate, who are wondering if they're hijacking their pulpit by speaking to this.

01:30:53

And I would just tell them, no, you are not. Do it from the Scriptures. Do it expositorily.

01:30:59

Maybe it's in your application section. Maybe it's in a Sunday school class. Maybe it's in a special Friday night or Saturday afternoon equipping session.

01:31:08

The world is yours. The oyster is yours. Choose what you want to do. But do it. Equip your people.

01:31:14

And you'll be amazed at how encouraged they are to now be able to give an answer for the hope that lies within them instead of having no clue.

01:31:24

Yes, you preach the Bible week by week. That's what we have to do. But many Christians, I'm telling you from experience, as one who is speaking on this all over the place, as I'm able, many

01:31:36

Christians have no idea either how to systematize this and understand it or how to respond to it.

01:31:42

Praise God, everything we need is right there in the Scripture. Amen. We have

01:31:49

Bobby in Hartsdale, New York. And Bobby says in 1

01:31:56

Corinthians 13, 5, we read, Love does not keep an account of a wrong suffered.

01:32:05

The interesting thing about this passage is that it covers all bases that even if the white heterosexual males were guilty of past wrongs that the woke movement is trying to hold them accountable for, this text seems to say that you are in sin or you are not acting in true biblical love by keeping an account of these wrongs.

01:32:36

But the irony is that the people being targeted as having done something wrong or having been born in a race that has been guilty of doing things wrong are not even themselves guilty of these crimes.

01:32:54

Isn't this absolutely absurd for any Bible -believing Christian to be using as a part of their ideology and theology?

01:33:04

Yeah, that's really well said. That is a great question and implied answer there that you just read out, because it is true that effects of sin will indeed be born, be felt by following generations.

01:33:21

So, God forbid, if I blew up my family in some form, my children would be affected by that, and it may well be the case that future generations would be affected by that.

01:33:31

We know from the Old Testament that that will play out. That is precisely what the chronicle of David's line following David's kingship shows us, that sin has effects and can have generational effects even.

01:33:46

But that is not at all the same as saying that if my ancestors were slaveholders, let's say four generations back,

01:33:56

I am somehow guilty for their sin, or if somebody was on the reverse side of that and their ancestors were enslaved, they have a claim they can lay hold of from me.

01:34:09

We do have a biblical category for what's called restitution, where you directly pay someone back for what you have done that is part of biblical justice grounded in God's own character, but that is not at all the same as reparations, for example, which is what this question,

01:34:25

I think, is alluding to, where if there's generational sin, let's say, 50, 80, 100, 200, 300 years ago, then you and I today are held accountable for it.

01:34:38

That biblical principle of holding no wrongs, of finding real hope and meaning in forgiveness is tremendously important,

01:34:50

Chris. People think of forgiveness as this airy -fairy spiritual category.

01:34:56

There is nothing more boots on the ground than forgiveness in human terms, motivated by God's grace.

01:35:03

To forgive somebody is not this wishy -washy, sentimentalized moment of feeling that you and I enter into sometimes as believers with our heads in the sky, so heavenly -minded we're no earthly good.

01:35:17

No. Forgiveness is the most gritty, mud -on -your -boots thing that you will do in this life.

01:35:26

It is very hard to forgive. It is not easy. This is why some listeners out there know, in families, for example, aside from the race issue or something else, there are years of bitterness that accrue in relationships, in families.

01:35:45

Why? Well, because it's hard to admit our sin, it's hard to confess sin, and then it's hard to forgive.

01:35:55

And that is what is so explosive about the Gospel. That is what is so practical.

01:36:01

That is why every Christian has such muddy boots in a positive way, because we go out there by God's kindness to us in Jesus Christ, by him forgiving our sin through Christ's death on the cross and resurrection from the grave,

01:36:16

Christ absorbing every drop of the Father's wrath on our behalf, we are then able and freed and called and commanded to go and forgive.

01:36:27

And so that is why, yes, to bring this little disquisition to an end, there is no grounds for people of certain skin color holding others guilty for wrongs done hundreds of years ago.

01:36:41

That ideology is not Christian. That ideology is deeply man -centered, and we need to reject it in full.

01:36:51

In fact, you could even, if you're going to be logically consistent, you could use the argument that if you could trace somebody's ancestry to tribes in Africa that sold their own people into slavery, that they should be somehow held accountable.

01:37:09

I mean, it's just, you could go on and on with this insanity. Yeah, it is truly the rejection of biblical thinking, because if you do not want to forgive, you do not want what the

01:37:26

Bible absolutely commands as the first principle of the Christian life. I mean, that is 1A of our duty as a believer, to forgive others.

01:37:37

We who have been forgiven much, you know, we struggle with this sometimes, frankly, in our sin, but we have to go and be forgiving people.

01:37:46

But wokeness encourages us to hang on to anger. It encourages us not to forgive.

01:37:52

It encourages us to stay upset and aggrieved for things that happened a long time ago.

01:38:00

And when we study history, yes, we are strongly confronted by injustice and wickedness and evil.

01:38:06

And we will feel just anger rising in us.

01:38:13

We will when we're reading about real sin. But we have to make sure. We must make sure that we do not deal with that and address that in worldly terms, but we think about it in terms of God's grace.

01:38:25

Think about Hebrews 11. Think about the Hall of Faith and those different people who are mentioned, men and women alike, many of whom had serious flaws and failings.

01:38:35

And yet God's testimony about them is not negative. It's positive.

01:38:41

God uses sinners in His plan, redeemed sinners. And we've got to remember biblical material like that in these kinds of conversations.

01:38:50

We've got to go to our final break right now. It's going to be a lot more brief than the other breaks. If you have a question, please send it in immediately because we're rapidly running out of time.

01:38:58

ChrisArnson at gmail .com. ChrisArnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least. Your city and state of residence and your country of residence if you live outside the

01:39:06

U .S .A. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. We'll be right back after these messages with more of Dr.

01:39:14

Owen Stratton on Christianity. Hello, dear ones.

01:39:23

My name is Justin Peters, and my friend Chris Arnson, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and I are frequently blessed to share great times of fellowship with one another at conferences all over the

01:39:35

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01:39:47

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For details, visit g3conference .com. That's g3conference .com.

01:40:08

Please join Chris Arnson and me September 30th through October 2nd at G3 2021.

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01:42:21

Thanks for helping to keep Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio on the air. The Wokeness in the

01:42:30

Gospel conference is coming to Denton Bible Church in Denton, Texas, June 11th and 12th. Register now by going online to wokenessandgospel .org

01:42:39

featuring speakers such as Dr. Owen Strand. If you just buy this ideology, the world's going to be made right.

01:42:45

No, it's not. Only Jesus Christ makes the world right. Daryl Harrison of the

01:42:51

Just Thinking Podcast. Sinners like you and me can be reconciled first and foremost to God and consequently to one another.

01:42:59

Pastor Tom Buck of First Baptist Church in Lindale, Texas. Like Satan in the Garden, woke hermeneutics undermines the very authority of the

01:43:07

Word of God. I don't say that lightly. Also hear from Tommy Nelson, Charles Stolfus and Rodney Brown.

01:43:12

Confronting the lies being impressed upon the culture today, threatening even to divide the church and answering with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

01:43:20

The Wokeness in the Gospel conference coming to Denton Bible Church June 11th and 12th. Register online at wokenessandgospel .org.

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01:46:30

Welcome back. This is the final segment of our interview today with Dr. Owen Stran on his book

01:46:38

Christianity and Wokeness How the Social Justice Movement is Hijacking the Gospel and the

01:46:44

Way to Stop It. We have another anonymous listener who says,

01:46:49

I am fearful that the wokeness ideology is creeping into my church, and there is clearly no prominent or vocal opposition to it.

01:47:00

My question is, is the heresy of wokeness so serious that we should view other so -called brothers and sisters in Christ with suspicion as to whether or not they are regenerate as we would with other heresies in the church, such as a denial of the

01:47:21

Trinity, a denial of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone, and other issues that are so much a part of the pillars of what

01:47:31

Christianity is that we are forced to look at these people either with certainty as being lost, or at the very least, view them with great suspicion?

01:47:42

Yeah, that's a very good question. I think that we want to make sure that we approach this issue with a degree of, how should we say it, care when it comes to other people, recognizing that people are going to be at different levels.

01:47:59

In my book, Christianity and Wokeness, and in this conference coming up in June, June 11 and 12 in Denton, I and the speakers are going to make clear that there are people in different places with regard to wokeness.

01:48:13

So what I say in my book, Christianity and Wokeness, is this. There's the first group. That's the unwoke.

01:48:19

There's a second group. I think those people are confused. They don't know where they are. They don't know what's happening.

01:48:24

I think that's a ton of people in the church today. The third group, I call the engaged. These are people, they're not necessarily all the way bought in.

01:48:32

They're not walking up to white people and telling them they're white supremacists, but they are engaging woke ideas, and they are definitely in danger.

01:48:41

So hear me very clearly. They're not in a good place. They're in danger. They're more than confused.

01:48:46

And then I think the last category is the clearest category. That's the committed. If you're a committed, woke person, then you are the type who, if you're a pastor, is calling for white people to repent of complicity in white supremacy by virtue of white skin, which is what

01:49:04

I've heard pastors are doing today. So I think we want to try our best, Chris, to this good question that was just asked by your listener, to figure out where someone is.

01:49:15

Not everybody is going to be in the same place, but in terms of the official teaching ministry of the church, in terms of the pastors and elders of the church, those who are charged by God, the men charged by God, to shepherd the church, if they are buying into wokeness, then they are buying into an ungodly ideology.

01:49:35

They are letting themselves be taken captive, and they are letting the church be taken captive by extension.

01:49:40

And that is going to mean that we face some very hard questions as a church member. And I would encourage somebody who is in a church of that kind to have hard questions and conversations with elders if that drift appears to be happening.

01:49:56

I would encourage members in a gracious spirit to try to advocate that the church not go that way in a respectable, respectful, godly way.

01:50:08

But then, honestly, if the eldership is not listening, and if the church is turning toward wokeness or toward any ungodly ideology,

01:50:18

I think it's time for a faithful follower of Jesus Christ to find a new church.

01:50:23

You've been talking about that on some of the breaks. You've mentioned on the show today how you're helping people find strong, reformed, expository ministries around the world.

01:50:34

And I think that need is going up. I think that market is only going to get hotter in days to come.

01:50:41

By the way, the listener in Oklahoma City who recently asked me for church recommendations, please be patient.

01:50:47

We'll try to get to you by this evening with those recommendations. And thank you,

01:50:53

Anonymous. Please give us your full name and full mailing address via email, of course.

01:51:00

We're not going to reveal your identity. And you will receive a free copy of the book we are addressing today,

01:51:08

Christianity and Wokeness by Dr. Owen Strand, compliments of our friends at Salem Books and Regnery Publishing, and compliments of our friends at cvbbs .com,

01:51:19

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, who will be shipping the book out to you. We have

01:51:26

Michael, and I was just looking at Michael's question from upstate New York. Come on, where is it?

01:51:33

Let me just... Oh, here it is. Mike from Monroe, New York. We need not apologize for anything which has occurred in the past, whether by commission or omission.

01:51:43

This woke evil is just another ploy and trick of the devil and the spirit of Antichrist to hide and cover their sin and rebellion against Yahweh and His Anointed.

01:51:55

This is ultimately what really lies behind the false and deceptive movement. It is wicked through and through.

01:52:02

This is just one more angle from hell to lay siege of the Church of God and render our faith and testimony of the

01:52:10

Lord Jesus void of its true saving power. Would your guests say, or should

01:52:16

I say, what would your guests say about Satan's power and scheme in the woke movement?

01:52:22

Of course Satan can do nothing that God has not ordained in His sovereign will and providence, but it is clear to me that Satan is the author of this and every other assault presently challenging the

01:52:35

Gospel today. Wow, that was a pretty lengthy and thorough comment slash question.

01:52:42

Yeah, I don't think we need to apologize for what happened in the past, and I've spoken against that.

01:52:49

I've said, you know, we're not responsible, for example, for reparations from past real evils in the

01:52:56

American history. I do think we are honest, though, about our failings.

01:53:02

I think we're honest about, for example, the American Church's failings with regard to slavery and racism and Jim Crow law and so on.

01:53:12

That doesn't mean that we only weep in our cheerios about, you know, the

01:53:18

American past, which is what wokeness wants to do. Wokeness wants to submerge American history, whether it's broader public history or Christian history, in never -ending sadness and despair.

01:53:32

And that's not good. That's not healthy. That doesn't honor the Lord. That doesn't honor the many men and women who stood against those evils.

01:53:38

That doesn't honor just God's work in general in the Church. So, I think that's some of what the commenter slash questioner there is after.

01:53:46

And I agree with that instinct. I don't teach students in my classes to hate the American Church or even to hate

01:53:52

America more broadly. Instead, I think, when we go to Scripture itself, do we not see real complexity in human beings, in Israel, in the

01:54:04

First Century Church? I think we do. And we can be honest about the failings, even at the same time as we are just overwhelming with gratitude to God for the good that He has done through redeemed people much like us.

01:54:20

So, much more to say about that body of material covered there, but that's a stab.

01:54:26

All right, Mike. You are the final winner, so please get your full mailing address to us in upstate

01:54:32

New York, and we'll have cvbbs .com ship that book out to you in July when we get it ourselves from our friends at Salem Books.

01:54:41

We have Terrence, and I'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing the city and state in Malaysia, Terrence, but Terrence from MIRI, M -I -R -I,

01:54:52

Sarawak, S -A -R -A -W -A -K, in Malaysia. He says, Fault line seems to be one says it's critical race theory or nothing, while the other says parts of CRT can be a tool redeemed for the church.

01:55:08

The latter seems to be using woke language, my privileged systemic racism,

01:55:15

I'm here to listen to you, to assure or reach out to woke people or people who don't know

01:55:21

CRT, but can appreciate Christian humility. Is it possible to redeem woke language for Christian ministry on race relations?

01:55:32

I've heard similar questions about Islam, people referring to God as Allah, which

01:55:42

I believe is just Arabic for God, but people will use that same mindset using

01:55:47

Islamic language, but what do you think about that? I'm not a fan of it.

01:55:54

I do not want to urge people to embrace any element of wokeness.

01:56:01

That system is developing, so really what you have today in the church and outside the church are three major positions, and I'm thinking most specifically of the

01:56:12

Christian world here. You have the unwoke, hi, my hand is raised, I'm part of that group, and then you have on the other side the woke camp, and there's different shades of that camp, of course, but let's just say people who are happy to embrace woke thought and woke practice, and then what you have is an emerging third way, and the third way would probably be captured by what that commenter was after.

01:56:36

So, okay, maybe we should reject critical race theory, but we should still admit that there is racial oppression in America, that white supremacy is a problem, that white privilege is a reality, on and on the list goes, and so we can affirm some form of social justice.

01:56:55

Really, that third way is what is making headway in evangelical circles today.

01:57:00

Yes, the woke crowd is as well, but in terms of the reformed world, it's really what is called the third way that is advancing, where you'll have a ministry, an outlet, a major conference that is saying, okay, we reject critical race theory, but we embrace the idea that we have to fight racial oppression, which is a major problem today.

01:57:24

If you're embracing, the problem with that is if you're embracing woke categories like racial oppression being active today, systemically and structurally, you're not actually rejecting

01:57:38

CRT. You might think you are, you might say you are, but you're not. That's a broader matter for me to talk through, and I have material online under lectures on YouTube that are called

01:57:50

Christianity and Wokeness. Those are the lectures that have birthed the forthcoming book, Christianity and Wokeness.

01:57:56

But suffice it to say that I reject the third way approach here as in just about every other category

01:58:02

I can think. I do not commend third way. Let's merge Aristotle with Christian metaphysics.

01:58:10

Let's merge Christianity with homosexuality and create gay

01:58:15

Christianity. Let's merge Christianity with Marxism and create

01:58:21

Christian socialism. Instead, I think our dominant instinct needs to be to understand worldly ideologies, not let them take us captive, and then as 2

01:58:32

Corinthians 10, 3 -6 articulates, destroy them. Amen.

01:58:38

You reminded me of the former Black Panther. He's now deceased, but before he converted to Mormonism of all things, which definitely has racist roots,

01:58:50

Eldridge Cleaver started a religion called Chrislam, where he attempted to combine

01:58:55

Christianity and Islam. Obviously a failure. But I want to thank you so much for being such a superb guest as I knew you would be,

01:59:03

Dr. Strand, and I want to remind our listeners of the Grace Bible Theological Seminary website, gbtseminary .org,

01:59:14

gbtseminary .org. And don't forget, at the conference, June 11th and 12th in Denton, Texas, go to wokenessandgospel .org,

01:59:22

wokenessandgospel .org. By the way, thank you Terrence in Malaysia. Keep listening and spreading the word in Malaysia about our interpreters on radio.

01:59:30

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.