November 13, 2020 Show with Gary DeMar on “Restoring the Foundation of Civilization: God’s Government or Chaos” AND James Fryer on “Battle Cry: Reflections for Soul Readiness & the Defence of the Gospel in & out of Season”

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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

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Earth. We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensirenradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday the 13th on this 13th day of November 2020, and I'm quite sure that many whom

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Gary DeMar has critiqued in last day's madness and in other places are thinking that this is a very fitting day that we are having on the program, and it's always a thrill to have

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Gary on. He's on for the first hour, and for the second hour, we will be joined by James Fryer, author of Battle Cry, Reflections for Soul Readiness and the

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Defense of the Gospel In and Out of Season, but Gary, who is president of American Vision, author of countless essays, news articles, and more than 35 book titles, and who is also a featured guest on nearly every major news media outlet, is going to be discussing his book during the first hour, his newest book,

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Restoring the Foundation of Civilization, God's Government, or Chaos, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back,

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Gary DeMar. It's always good to be back, Chris. It's always great to have you on the program, and Gary, I can't even think of a more timely period of our nation's history to produce this book,

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Restoring the Foundation of Civilization, than today, but what were the most compelling factors that led you to write this book to begin with?

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I was first asked from the fellows at CrossPolitic to come out and do a series of video presentations, kind of a master class on the topic of my larger book,

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God and Government, and so I did a number of those, and it was an outline form that I did it, and I thought, well, you know,

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I really need to develop and expand on this, and so over the last year or so, and knowing that we were going to have this, obviously, have this election, and no matter which way it turned out, we weren't going to be out of the woods either way, and thinking multi -generational down the road, we needed to really understand what civilization is, and also the

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Christian's role in civilization, and then what it will take in order to re -establish civilization along a biblical view, and so it was kind of a process book.

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I didn't want to repeat everything that was in my God and Government series, obviously, and I haven't done that, but I wanted to put something in the hands of people that would be much more readable than a, you know, 750 -page book that God and Government is, even though each chapter is pretty, 30 chapters are easily digestible in God and Government.

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So I wanted to get something out that most Christians could read, understand, that wasn't academic, and that, hopefully, that would change the way they looked at the world.

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Well, I'm going to right away, especially since we're only on for an hour with you, I'm going to give our listeners our email address if you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Gary DeMar about restoring the foundation of civilization,

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God's Government, or chaos. Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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

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

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And Gary, when most people likely think of government, immediately what comes to mind is either the federal government, the local state government, the even more local city government where people live specifically, but there are different forms of governments, aren't they, that are included under the umbrella of God's Government?

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Yeah, that's one, I guess one of the biggest things that most Americans don't realize, and Christians included, that the word government is not synonymous with politics, that civil government is simply one government among several governments, family government, church government, and undergirding them, of course, is self -government, and then

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God's Government is overall, and if you look at Noah Webster's 1828

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Dictionary of the American English Language, you'll see that that's the way he, in fact, divides up the definition of government, that God is the governor of all things, and he has established three dependent and attributable governments that God has given the family, church, and the state.

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They each have their own separate jurisdictions, although each one of them is bound by God's law in terms of family government, there's law in family government, there's law in ecclesiastical government, and there's law in civil government, and because civil government is given the power of the sword, you want to be very careful as to how much power and authority you give the civil government, because whatever power and authority you give the civil government, the civil magistrate has the power of the sword in order to enforce those laws, so, and unfortunately, you know,

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Christians don't know those distinctions, most Christians don't know those distinctions, and also, they don't really see their role in society as part of civilization.

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They're living in a particular civilization, and the West has been built on a

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Christian foundation, not a perfect foundation, the Christian foundation would in fact be perfect, but those who are in fact involved in the building of civilization are imperfect people, but Christians have done a very good job of establishing a civilization that is self -correcting, because it has a standard outside of the individual and outside of the state, outside of the civil magistrate, to look to see how things should be corrected based upon God's word.

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So we need to expand our idea of what civilization is, and then we need to also expand the idea of what our role is involving civilization, and then we need to understand a biblical and historical definition of government, so we give each government its proper role, and its proper limitations, and its proper authority.

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And what do you mean in your book by the second most important government? Well, the first important government, of course, is

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God's government over us, and the second most important government is self -government.

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If you're not a self -governing creature, then what ends up happening is you turn to some other governor in order to help you govern yourself, and I think that's what we've had in the

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United States today. We have so many people, Christians included, that will turn authority and power over to the civil magistrate to educate our children, to give us health care, to take care of us from womb to tomb.

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We give more and more power to the civil magistrate, and we ought to be taking that responsibility on ourselves, and we develop a

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Christian community to help in the development of our children and creating schools, whether it's homeschools and a homeschool community, or using the church, which is in fact a government to set up educational facilities in churches.

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Think about it. Churches that have Sunday school classes, the Sunday school classes are used for one hour a week, and yet at the same time we've got

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Christians who are sending their children off to an educational system that denies the very thing that Christians say they believe.

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When they hear they have, they could take their children and have them educated by people who actually believe the same way they do.

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And so that's the responsibility of self -government and also family government. So if you don't have good self -governors, you're going to have, there's a domino effect of poor self -government that's going to affect the family.

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I mean, the Apostle Paul makes this very clear in 1 Timothy chapter 3. How do you pick leaders for the church, whether elders or deacons in the church?

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Well, you see how an individual is self -governing, how they govern their own passions, and then how well do they govern in the family?

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Look, if you can't govern your own family, you're not going to be able to govern other people's families. So the very nature of government in the

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Bible begins with the self -governing individual, that you live your life in terms of God's standards, and you don't need an external governor over you to force you how to live in a certain way or not.

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When you have a society that breaks down at the individual level, you're going to have a corruption of the church, you're going to have a corruption of local governments and state governments, and you're going to have an almighty national government dictating how you should then live.

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Now, first of all, let me say that one of the very few times

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I ever found myself agreeing with leftists when

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I've been watching the media during all of what has been taking place in regard to the coronavirus pandemic hysteria going on, the only thing that I can think of lately that I've been agreeing with the leftists over is, yes, keep those schools closed.

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And all the conservatives are demanding that they open the schools back up. God has a sense of humor.

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Look, I'm giving you this on a silver platter, you know, the schools are closed, you know, life has to go on, either homeschool your children or send them, you know, to a church -affiliated school because the facilities are already there.

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I mean, our grandchildren have been in school for months while the public schools around us, you know, have been closed, and there have been no problems whatsoever.

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But yeah, you would think that this would have been a perfect opportunity here to take advantage of what really should have been done a very, very long time ago.

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But there's been this, you know, a lot of the public education here in the

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United States, you know, started by well -meaning Christians, but they got the civil magistrate involved.

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And as long as the civil magistrate was somewhat Christian, there wasn't a problem.

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But over time, civil magistrate got more and more power, got more and more secularized and so forth, and here we are where we are today.

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Same thing with the colleges, you know, Harvard and Yale and what is today Princeton and Columbia.

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These schools were started by Christians, and then they made this...they didn't believe in...and

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they, over time, didn't believe in Christian civilization. They said, well, there's neutrality in terms of factual laws and so forth.

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There's, you know, mathematics is neutral and science is neutral, and then we need to separate the religious part of education from the secular part of education.

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This has been a steady stream for, you know, more than 300 years.

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It's taken a long time to get us to where we are today, where we don't even have a civil religion anymore that's wedded at all with Christianity.

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We have a new civil religion today, which is primarily secular. Now, there are some folks listening, no doubt, who would not even be left -wing at all.

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They might even be Christians. They might even be Reformed Christians, like you and I are, and they are very patriotic, and they may say, now, one of the things that is most beautiful and one of the things that would be considered the genius of the

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American way, having a constitutional republic and so on, is that in this nation we have always stood for the freedom of people, some of these freedoms even guaranteed in our

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Constitution, the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion. How can you be seeking to witness a government of God in the realm of the civil government?

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As we already said, it's not the only government. But the government of God in a civil government, when this is not a theocracy that we live in, and there are many who, especially perhaps those of the more conservative bent that would be libertarian, who say that we should not be imposing anything upon a society that may be representative of a specific religion like Christianity, or you might even say the

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Judeo -Christian idea. But how do you respond to people who recoil and get nervous when they hear about Christians talking about restoring the foundation of civilization with God's government?

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Well, first of all, every government is theocratic. This is the big myth that Christians believe in and secular theocrats perpetrate.

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Every government is theocratic. We have a theocratic government right now. What we have is a false god of that government.

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These politicians today believe that they are

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God. We've got five justices on the Supreme Court, no matter how good they are. But that is the standard today in the

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United States. It's five unelected people determining for the rest of us how we should believe and what we should believe.

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That is, in fact, theocratic. There's no way of getting around a theocracy. We have today a theocracy.

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God's theocracy in terms of the church, the ecclesiastical government, it's 10%.

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People say, oh, I'm afraid of Christianity being involved in our government.

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And I'm afraid of Christians in the church. And yet you're okay with the existing governmental powers to tax you 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40 % of your income?

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And this doesn't count all the other taxes you have? The secular government today is theocratic.

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It's also theocratic. You take your children, you can compel them to go and fight in wars. On what ethic does the secular government have to determine whether or not a war is legitimate or not?

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And you just go down the line right now. Here you have in Norway, the law being passed in Norway today, that to speak out against transgender rights is considered a hate crime.

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So please tell me, Christians, those of you who don't want Christianity involved in civil government, what is your option?

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There is no neutrality here. There's no other place to go. You're going to get one theocratic government or another.

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Now, the difference between Christianity and a secular theocracy is because Christianity has jurisdictional separation between the governments.

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There are only certain things that the civil magistrate can do, and there are certain things the civil magistrate cannot do.

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And one of the things the civil magistrate cannot do is force people to comply with doctrinal things about whether someone is a

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Calvinist or an Arminian or not, whether he's a Baptist or a Presbyterian. That's not the role of the civil magistrate.

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The civil magistrate deals in terms of what is the civil aspect of the law.

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And so, again, if you don't have some restraint, some fixed standard by which you can determine what that restraint is, then you are advocating to let someone else make that determination based upon an ethic that is always evolving.

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So I'm always kind of perplexed by Christians who say they don't want a theocracy, and they're already living in a theocracy, and they're paying the tax of a theocracy, and they're living under the absolutism of a theocracy, and they are also living on the forced compliance of whatever law that secular theocracy implements.

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Now, would you say that because even though secularists, some of whom might even identify themselves as atheists or agnostics, but even those of all kinds of false religions, whenever they claim they are not imputing their religion into the way they govern, when we're speaking of politicians, that is, everything that we believe is most vital in our ideology is really religion, because it's responding to a belief or a fact about God in the

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Scriptures and His commandments in the Scriptures. So they're either saying that the

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Bible is false about their understanding of God, even whether He exists, or they're saying what

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He commands is false, or it's not something that should be demanded of us.

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So they're really, because of the fact they are reacting, even if it's not consciously or admittedly, they are spewing a religious philosophy or even a theology in spite of their denial of that.

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Am I right on that? Yeah, because look, what the secularists do is they maintain that religion is, number one, it's the fundamental basis upon which one makes a decision, and that's got to be in something.

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The federal government maintains this. They are the final arbiter of what is right and what's wrong.

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And so when the civil magistrate then passes a law that says, you have to hire somebody who believes that he is a she or she is a he, they are forcing compliance based upon their ultimate, their ultimacy of what is right and what's wrong.

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Now the atheist doesn't have a leg to stand on. There is nothing within atheism that allows them to come up to say that anything is right or wrong.

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We are just, we are matter in motion. We don't really have a mind, because they're materialists, and there's no way to determine what the mind is.

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You can't account for the laws of logic, you can't account for mathematical formulae, all that sort of thing.

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There's no morality. You can dig down into the deepest regions of a person's

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DNA, and you're not going to find thou shalt not murder. It's not there. And so atheists who complain about people who believe in God and the

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God of the Bible and so forth, they have no say so in any of this. They bring nothing to the table, morality.

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They borrow morality from the Christian worldview while the whole time denying that the God of the

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Bible that makes those morals reality, they use them because they can't get them from themselves.

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That's the problem. So the point is you have to get down to specifically what should the civil magistrate do.

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I'll give you a good example. You will not find the word education in the

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Constitution of the United States. The Constitution is a document of enumerated powers.

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Therefore the federal government, based on the Constitution, has no constitutional authority to be involved in education.

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And yet we have a Department of Education that siphons off tens of billions of dollars of years from the states, and then using that over us to direct us of what kind of curriculum we should be involved in.

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And so here we have, back to the biblical argument here, it is not the job of the civil magistrate to be involved in education.

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You want to educate your child? That's your responsibility to do that. It's not the state's responsibility, and it's not the state's responsibility, the state doesn't have the authority to take money from me and to give it to other people.

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Now, how do you argue against that in terms of the upper ceiling as to what constitutes the ultimate law?

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Where is that ultimate law in the system that we've got today? The Constitution begins with we the people.

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Is that what we want? Is that the final arbiter of truth and morality, the we the people?

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So if 51 % of the people say this is right or this is wrong, so be it. It's written in stone until we get another different opinion down the road.

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That is one of the problems with the Constitution. It doesn't have a solid foundation as to determine what's right and wrong in a society.

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It's left up to the people. But in the 18th century, the operating premise in those days was we were living within the context of a

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Christian worldview. Even people like Jefferson in Washington and Madison understood this.

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They believed in something called natural law, the laws of nature, nature's

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God, but that only operated in terms of having a Christian worldview. Darwin destroyed all that in 1859 when he said there is no such thing as natural law, that everything came into existence by chance over a long period of time.

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There is no God, there is no real natural law outside of the way the universe operates, and we're not even sure that can be the case 100 years from now.

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Okay, let me go to a listener question. This is a first -time listener, I believe. Bill from Atlanta, Georgia.

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And Bill says, is the United States indivisible? And is it a foregone conclusion that it can or should remain such in its present form?

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And he has a second question as well. Well, the Constitution itself gives the people the right to change the

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Constitution. I mean, it's written in there. It's a whole amendment process. We originally had 10 amendments. We have many more than that now.

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So the Constitution can't be changed. I mean, there's no doubt about it.

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You could call for a constitutional convention and change the Constitution, and that's how we got the Constitution in the first place.

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The actual, those who went to Philadelphia to work on the Constitution, they didn't go there to work on the

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Constitution. They went on there to revive the Articles of Confederation, and we got the Constitution instead.

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So in terms of that argument, you know, can we remain the way we are today?

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There's permanency to what we have today. Absolutely not. It can be changed. Here we have, you know,

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Democrats arguing what they're going to do if they get the Senate. Right now we're looking on here in Georgia, these two

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Senate seats are going to go for a runoff in January. You know, the

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Democrats say, hey, we're going to pack the Supreme Court. We're going to go from nine maybe to 16 and so forth, and we're going to get rid of this.

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We're going to get rid of that. They could do all these types of things. You could, if you get enough blue states out there, they could pass all sorts of constitutional amendments.

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That is our nation system, and that's the problem.

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We don't have a fixed moral standard to determine if anything is right or wrong, especially when you're operating under a

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Darwinian worldview, which every single public school in the United States teaches. And I will read

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Bill's second question, and we'll go to a break and have you answer it when we return.

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Bill's second question is, is peaceful separation from the union a legitimate option for states if their residents should choose to form a new independent

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Christian republic? And we will have you answer that when we return. And by the way,

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Bill, send us your full mailing address in Atlanta, Georgia, because you've just won a free copy of Restoring the

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Foundation of Civilization, God's Government or Chaos by Gary DeMar. And since you're a first -time questioner, you also have received a free

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New American Standard Bible. So send us that full address in Atlanta, and we'll be right back with more of your questions for Gary DeMar right after these messages from our sponsors.

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Here's what 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. I have to tell you, 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 do I owe 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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If you just tuned us in, our guest for the first hour of the show is Gary DeMar, president of American Vision, discussing restoring the foundation of civilization,

34:04

God's government, or chaos. And Gary, as you likely remember, a bill from Atlanta, Georgia, asked before the first break if, let's see, is peaceful separation from the union a legitimate option for states if their residents should choose to form a new independent

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Christian republic? And you know something? If I were to hear somebody saying that that would happen ten years ago,

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I probably would have laughed at them and called them a nut, but I have a feeling that that may be in our future, states wanting to retreat or separate from the union.

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But anyway, what do you have to say about that? Well, I mean, I don't think there's nothing constitutionally that says a state couldn't do that.

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I'm sure there are some people would fight, of course, we did fight a civil war over that very idea.

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But you've got, for example, you have the southern Washington state and northern

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Oregon residents who want to join up and create a new state.

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Because what's happened across the United States today, of course, is the large cities in many of these states make the decisions for the rest of the state.

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You know, New York City, of course, and then Albany, the state capital, pretty much governs the state.

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It's interesting in this particular election, one of the things which was a surprise to many people, especially to the

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Democrats, is because you had, I think at the number at this particular time, 11

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Democrat seats flipped to Republican seats. And many of those are in very blue, very liberal leftist states like California and even

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New York. So I don't know how it would be possible.

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I don't really see it coming. I guess it's possible. But my guess is that if it did take place, you would have a lot of these states like California, Oregon, and Washington, and maybe other very liberal states refusing to do business with those states.

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I mean, they already do it now. I mean, there's California, because of laws regarding homosexuality, state employees are not permitted to fly to those states for business.

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So those states would be ostracized, you know, those that are like Tennessee, and Kentucky, and Indiana, and Arkansas, and Oklahoma.

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See, they have no access to ports. So I could see some of the more liberal states punishing them for leaving the

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Union. And look, this is the reason why I wrote this book.

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Christians are always on the defensive. They're always, okay, how do I, like, I'm going to leave the Union, and, you know, let's do this and let's do that to kind of isolate ourselves more and more.

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We've got to stop thinking like that. We need to think broader. We need to start thinking in terms of a full -on

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Christian civilization. We need to get out of this idea that winning the presidency somehow is going to fix all these things, or even winning the

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Senate. We need to start at the basic level, and that is itself government and family government and ecclesiastical or church government.

37:32

We need to get back to the basics in our own lives. There are tens of millions of Christians in the United States today, many of whom voted for Biden in this election, and go along with so many of the policies.

37:46

And I know pastors and churches are afraid to speak out on these policies because they're afraid they're going to lose maybe 10 or 20 percent of their members, and if the church isn't paid off, there's always a mortgage on it, and so they end up not saying anything.

38:03

I mean, most pastors don't address these topics from the pulpit. That's just the way it is.

38:09

And one of the reasons, and the other reason is many of them don't know how to address these topics from the pulpit.

38:16

I suspect that most pastors could never teach on what does the

38:22

Bible say about taxation? What does it say about education? What does it say about journalism?

38:29

What does it say about all these things? My suspicions are that most Christians have never heard messages on these topics and many more related to those topics.

38:41

Well, thanks again for your excellent questions, Bill, and make sure we have your full mailing address in Atlanta, Georgia, so that CVBBS, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, can ship that out to you at no charge to you or to us.

38:58

And we thank CVBBS .com for always shipping out our winners in the audience, the free books and Bibles and other things they win when they submit questions.

39:07

We also want to thank our guest, Gary DeMar, for providing the books to begin with that we are giving away.

39:14

We have another first -time questioner, Joe in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

39:22

I would like to know if you think there will be persecution against Christians when the Biden administration takes over.

39:29

Well, obviously, he's not very optimistic about Trump having victory after the recounts, but if you could answer

39:38

Joe's question. Probably. It'll come slowly. It's not going to come overnight.

39:45

I think probably the first thing will be some sort of executive order dealing with homosexuality and transgenderism.

39:56

That may be the case. There'll be probably some national mandate on masks and shutting down the various states and assembling.

40:11

And so, if it's already taking place in some states, some are calling for a, I forget what state it is, like a four or six -week shutdown, and churches would be included in that.

40:24

It will come in terms of, we're from the government and we're here to help you, and this is for the betterment of our nation.

40:35

But at the same time, there probably will be some persecution when it comes to homosexual rights because the homosexual lobby is very, very strong and very, very well financed.

40:46

There's going to be some sort of possible social credit persecution taking place.

40:51

It's already taking place. Some law firm, I guess, dropped out of working with the

40:57

Trump administration on this legal battle because there were people rebelling within the law firm because they were helping

41:05

Trump. We're going to start seeing a lot of this social credit idea, the same type of thing that's taking place in China today may come in terms of credit cards.

41:14

You have a company and you're specifically Christian. This credit card company may say you're a hater based upon the

41:22

Southern Poverty Law Center, which has happened to a lot of Christian ministries that I know. So, it's been going on for quite some time.

41:28

You may see harassment coming from the IRS, which we saw during the Biden administration.

41:34

Again, I don't want to say it's the fault of Christians, but we're in the mess we're in today because Christians are out of the loop.

41:43

They have no understanding of how government ought to work. They've separated their Christianity from the all of life.

41:53

The Bible only applies here. It doesn't apply there. Over here, it's neutral. Over here, it's more specifically religion.

41:58

We can't impose our morality on other people, but they don't seem to have a problem with letting those people who oppose our worldview to have their morality imposed upon us.

42:08

So, this all comes down to what Christians are going to do in the next 20 or 30 years.

42:15

Now, didn't you actually directly quote Ronald Reagan when he said something like, the most terrifying words that you can ever hear uttered are, we're here from the government, and we're here to help, or something like that?

42:30

That's a very popular phrase of Reagan. And look, that's the way the government works.

42:37

The government never comes and says, hey, we're here. We're going to pass this law that's going to hurt you. No one ever does that.

42:45

They always come and say, well, this is for your own good. This is going to help everybody. And that was the message that was presented in the 1960s during the

42:55

Johnson administration, the war on poverty. We're going to implement the war on poverty because we're going to help the poor.

43:02

Well, all we've done is we've created almost a perpetual poverty class that is dependent upon the government, multi -generational.

43:16

Something designed to help people ended up hurting people. But see, there's this general principle here.

43:23

The more money you give to something, the more of it you get. So if you give money to people who don't work for it, but there's no reason why they ought to work for it, you get more people who are going to want that.

43:37

And you end up having a perpetual voting class, which generally votes for the

43:42

Democrats because they're always offering free stuff. And who doesn't like free stuff? But being in jail, you got your lodging paid for, you got your food paid for, you're taken care of, but you're a prisoner.

43:59

And I remember when Katrina hit and had a lot of people moving here from Louisiana that were in housing projects.

44:09

And they came here and they had no idea what the rest of the world was like and how they were trapped in those housing projects.

44:18

And look, we lived in the projects until I was five years old.

44:25

And my parents, my father came back from the Korean War, he had lost his right leg in Korea.

44:33

And by the way, I was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He ended up going to Korea and came back with a leg missing and job opportunities dried up.

44:45

And here he was, here we were stuck in the projects. But my parents did everything they could possibly do in order to get out of there.

44:53

And that was the time before we had this massive welfare state. But now that we have such a massive welfare state, oftentimes people end up staying in there.

45:02

And it's, you know, you aid to women with dependent children, you have more and more children, you know, government comes in and pays for it.

45:10

It just, it becomes a moral and political morass that is driving our country into people who are now more and more dependent upon the government.

45:23

Well, thank you, Joe, and make sure we get your full mailing address in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. So that's CVBBS .com,

45:30

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service can ship that free copy of Restoring the Foundation of Civilization by Gary DeMar off to you.

45:39

We have Laszlo in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Based on exit polling, 76 % of evangelicals voted for President Trump this year.

45:50

This is a drop of three to 5 % from 2016. It contributed to the

45:56

President's losing the election. The reason for this shift was generally claimed to be dissatisfaction with the

46:02

President's personality and character, not with his policies. Were these or I think he meant to say were, were these evangelicals like John Piper justified in abandoning the

46:16

President? My short answer? No. I'll give you an example.

46:24

If someone comes up to you with sweet words, is very, very kind to you, and then he's a pickpocket, you say, wait a minute,

46:31

I don't care how nice this guy sounded. He stole money from me. And what you have to look at are

46:38

Trump's policies. Why in the world would people vote for Biden and his policies when the guy, they're anti -Christian policies?

46:50

I mean, if you look at Trump's record, I always ask people, what is it about Trump and his policies that you disagreed with that are out of accord with a

47:01

Christian worldview? And compared to say, George, George W.

47:06

Bush, or even Ronald Reagan, he lowered your taxes. He decreased unemployment because of his economic policies.

47:16

He did more for the pro -life community. I mean, he actually showed up personally for the

47:22

March for Life in January. No other president had ever done that before. Because he had certain powers as president, he ended up cutting out funding for almost 900 abortion clinics across the

47:35

United States, whatever Republican president had ever done that.

47:42

And so people are going to vote for Biden? Biden, who just automatically says on day one, if he makes it all the way through to the presidency, on day one, he's going to overturn all of Trump's pro -life policies.

48:01

I don't understand. These people are insane. And the arguments that they were using, they're just,

48:08

I don't know, I've lost respect for so many people. Now, John Piper didn't say he was going to vote for Biden.

48:15

He said he wasn't going to vote for either one of them. And I wrote a pretty lengthy response to Biden's, to Piper's article,

48:22

AmericanVision .org, which, by the way, ended up getting 33 ,000 shares.

48:30

Yeah, I'm one of those people. Yeah, I mean, I was shocked by that.

48:38

So I just read a lot of these arguments that these guys were doing. I mean, they even had evangelicals for Biden.

48:46

These people are, I don't know what's wrong with them. I mean, look, I didn't like everything

48:51

Trump had to say, but man, his policies, considering that the man wasn't, isn't even a

48:56

Christian, never really came across as a conservative. And he followed through with his promises as best he could.

49:05

I don't understand why any Christian would not have voted, voted for Donald Trump. Just because you didn't like things he said on Twitter.

49:17

So you voted for the pickpocket. Voted for the pickpocket because there's an interesting little scene, if you've ever seen the movie

49:24

Casablanca with Humphrey Bogart, where this pickpocket comes up to this couple and just treating them very nice and giving them some advice and so forth.

49:33

The whole time he's stealing their wallet. And so you vote for those types of people because they sound nice?

49:39

Give me a break. Okay, we have time for one more. By the way, Laszlo, you can pick up your copy of Restoring the

49:47

Foundation of Civilization at CVBBS on North Hanover Street, since you live in Carlisle.

49:54

So you can pick that up tomorrow when they open between 10 a .m. and 4 .30 p .m. Grady, we have time for one last question.

50:02

Grady from Asheboro, North Carolina. From what I understand, Howard Zinn, a communist, is responsible for the change of our country's history.

50:12

They say he was responsible for writing the history textbooks used in our public schools.

50:19

Do you know if this is true? Yeah, he has been involved in rewriting history.

50:26

And if you want a reputation of Zinn's work, I suggest a book, a very, very good book, a very readable book that will teach you a lot of history as well.

50:37

It's called Debunking Howard Zinn, Exposing the Fake History That Turned a Generation Against America by Mary Graybar.

50:46

So Debunking Howard Zinn. And again, I've written a couple of history books myself.

50:53

And again, we don't know our history. And at the same time, when

50:59

Christians need to be honest about our history when Christians do wrong things.

51:05

And we're coming up on Thanksgiving. And I always write an article every

51:12

Thanksgiving about how Thanksgiving is taught in our government schools.

51:18

And one of them is Thanksgiving was when the pilgrims thanked the

51:24

Indians. Well, it's true that the pilgrims, in one instance, did, in fact, thank the

51:31

Indians because the Indians helped them or Native Americans helped them. But in all that process, of course, they thank

51:40

God as well. So there has been a lot of rewriting of history and a lot of people have been duped by it.

51:45

Just like we got duped by the media today, that 93 to 95 % of the news that was coming out regarding Trump was negative.

51:58

Hardly anything was brought up about what he was doing in the Middle East. Hardly anything was done on the economic policy.

52:06

They kept calling him a racist. And the problem is, I've never really heard one reason why he was a racist.

52:13

I know he was dealing with the issue of immigration. But that isn't a racial issue.

52:20

What race was being discriminated against? And of course, they continually lie and misquote him about saying that there were fine people on both sides.

52:29

And when he was talking about the monuments, whether they should be taken down or not, that's what he was talking about.

52:35

Yeah, I mean, these are really dishonest, dishonest people.

52:40

Journalism today is dead in the United States. Unfortunately, we have some conservative alternatives.

52:52

But anyway, yes, get the book, Debunking Howard Zinn, Exposing the

52:58

Fake History That Turned a Generation Against America by Mary Graybar. Yes, and remember, don't leave the

53:03

R out of that name. It's very important. You get it, Graybar? Never mind.

53:11

Well, Gary, we are out of time. And I wish we could have you back for two hours at some point.

53:17

But I know that your website is Americanvision .org, Americanvision .org. And people can look up more information about restoring the foundation of civilization there.

53:28

And I want to thank Grady for sending in a great question again, and give us your full mailing address in Asheboro, North Carolina.

53:34

So CVBBS .com can ship you out a free copy of the book. Thanks, Gary. And I look forward to you returning to Iron Trip and Zion Radio very soon and very frequently.

53:44

Thank you. God bless. And if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question for our second guest, send it in to chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

53:59

Our second guest today, if you didn't hear the opening of the program, is

54:05

James Fryer, author of Battle Cry, Reflections for Soul Readiness and the

54:10

Defense of the Gospel In and Out of Season. chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Don't go away.

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We'll be back with James Fryer after these messages from our sponsors. I'm Dr.

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Tony Costa, professor of apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary. I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love,

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James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here. If you've watched my Dividing Line webcast often enough, you know

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That's ptlbiblerebinding .com. Chris Orenson, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, announcing a new website with an exciting offer from World Magazine, my trusted source for news from a

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James White of Alpha Omega Ministries and the Dividing Line webcast here. Although God has brought me all over the globe for many years to teach, preach, and debate at numerous venues, some of my very fondest memories are from those precious times of fellowship with Pastor Rich Jensen and the brethren at Hope Reform Baptist Church, now located at their new, beautiful facilities in Coram, Long Island, New York.

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I've had the privilege of opening God's Word from their pulpit on many occasions, have led youth retreats for them, and have always been thrilled to see their members filling many seats at my

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I also want to congratulate Hope Reform Baptist Church of Coram for their recent appointment of Pastor Rich Jensen's co -elder,

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Pastor Christopher McDowell. For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net.

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That's hopereformedli .net, or call 631 -696 -5711.

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That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island that you heard about them from James White on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio depends upon the financial support of fine Christian organizations to remain on the air, like the

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01:13:19

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01:13:27

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01:14:57

Before we go to our second guest today, James Fryer, we just have a couple of important announcements to make.

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01:17:33

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com and put I need a church in the subject line. And that's also the email address where you can send in a question for James Fryer, our second guest today, author of Battle Cry, Reflections for Soul Readiness and the

01:17:48

Defense of the Gospel In and Out of Season. And I am so thrilled to welcome for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, James Fryer.

01:17:57

Yes, hello. Hi, James. It's great to have you on the program for the very first time. And James, before we go into the discussion of your book,

01:18:07

Battle Cry, Reflections for Soul Readiness and the Defense of the Gospel In and Out of Season, we have a tradition here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio where we let our first time guests give a summary of their salvation testimony, if you could do that now.

01:18:26

Sure, absolutely. It's always a privilege. I was blessed to come to the

01:18:32

Lord fairly dramatically about almost 30 years ago as a university student. I grew up Roman Catholic, Catholic school,

01:18:40

Catholic church, and as a teenager I learned far from anything that even resembled

01:18:45

Catholicism, but that I, as a university student, dramatically converted to Christ, visited a church that was advertising at meetings about the occult and the

01:19:01

New Age movement and things. I didn't know what their agenda was, but I knew they were opposed to it, and I was very, very much involved in those things.

01:19:11

So I went at that time and listened. I realized quickly it was a Christian church, and I was very cynical about it and doubtful, but something gripped me, and the

01:19:26

Lord had me just focus in and sit and listen. That night,

01:19:34

I went on and talked to it. I woke up in the middle of the night, suddenly and dramatically,

01:19:41

I think a demonic intrusion into my sleep, and then at the same time the next morning

01:19:48

I felt I needed to go and talk to the missionary. So the missionary was speaking and sharing the gospel and doing the workshop opposing the occult and the

01:19:59

New Age movement. Well, when I went to go talk to him, I packed various books and things with me of religions and occult and Eastern mysticism, and I went to the man and said, well, can you show me how all of these really fit together?

01:20:16

I was a little bit of a religionist and a philosophy student, and how do they all fit together with Christianity?

01:20:22

He just said, quote, straight, you know, they don't. Jesus Christ is exclusively the way, the truth, and the life.

01:20:31

There's no other way. There aren't other paths up the mountain. So as a kind of a young philosophy student in the occult and all that, that truth and that exclusivity of Christ, that gripped me.

01:20:44

As well, he told me about demonic activity and the people who were involved in believing they were reincarnated and all kinds of things.

01:20:55

I was very much involved in all that, so I knew what he was saying. He was saying the things that I had been involved in was absolutely demonic.

01:21:04

And so I became very much understood what he was going for, what he was talking about. I ended up going back to the church where he prayed.

01:21:14

At that time, I understood that he was speaking of the cross of Jesus Christ as an exclusive way that God has made for man to be reconciled with God.

01:21:27

And at that time, I came to Christ, repented, and believed that more than anything at that time that spoke to me was that I was very, very lost, that this was the absolute truth.

01:21:43

What comforted me was that as a lost soul wandering in different religions and the occult and all that,

01:21:51

Christ had gripped me. I had come face -to -face with the absolute truth of spiritual things and reality, in fact.

01:22:00

So God awakened me. I remember calling my parents at that time, university students, saying,

01:22:07

I've been saved. I remember my dad saying, well, saved from what?

01:22:14

I was very, very excited to tell everyone. I began telling everyone at the university and friends who were

01:22:21

Buddhists and Hindus and Muslims and atheists. We worked together and so immediately I began what

01:22:26

I put in my heart to begin to share with them. It began kind of a journey of heart for evangelism, heart for international folks, heart for missions.

01:22:35

That's the path the Lord has seemed to have led us down over the years. It's been a wonderful, amazing journey.

01:22:43

I've been serving the Lord in Eskimo Village for four years, Red Bull Arched Circle, not a very dark, spiritually dark area, much need for the

01:22:52

Lord and gospel. We were in Nicaragua where we did theological education for a number of years.

01:22:59

We applied to theological training centers there. Wonderful folks in Hungary for sound theology and doctrine study of the

01:23:07

Lord there. The Lord led us back to the States where I was a

01:23:13

U .S. Army chaplain. And that really part of where this book came from in my heart was studying the metaphors and battlefield imagery and whatnot in the scriptures throughout the

01:23:28

Bible. So tell us about the church where you eventually wound up and where you are a member and so on.

01:23:37

Oh, yes. Well, I mean, it's a place where we deeply believe in the membership of the local church.

01:23:47

We were coming back from the mission field where we worked hand -in -hand with local churches where we were sent by local church order members.

01:23:57

We came back to the States. We were with a Reformed Baptist Church in Hawaii. And it was a wonderful time of growth and season of life there where I served in the military as a chaplain and as a family we worshipped and fellowshiped at the local church there.

01:24:15

As well, to make a long story short, we were headed to the mission field but I had been wrapped up in some doctoral studies.

01:24:26

I was trying to finish a Ph .D. And so we took a position that was open and offered and I pursued as a correctional chaplain in Virginia Beach.

01:24:38

On our way there, we were looking for the right church to belong to, the right church to join. We've been blessed to be members of a local

01:24:46

Reformed Baptist Church in Newport News, Virginia.

01:24:53

It's been a sweet time. The Lord is growing his church. We're finding people.

01:25:00

We're finding our church online and showing up, transferring into the Navy and other things. They're looking for sound doctrine.

01:25:07

They're looking for Reformed theology. They're looking for people to take word of God's doctrine seriously.

01:25:14

Well, praise God. Now, let's discuss this book. I was very eager to interview you on this book because my dear friend, who is actually my first pastor as an evangelical, as a born -again believer that is,

01:25:32

Mike Gaydosh, who is the founder of Solid Ground Christian Books, called me and was very enthusiastic about this new book that was published by you,

01:25:43

Battle Cry, Reflections for Soul Readiness and the Defense of the Gospel In and Out of Season.

01:25:50

So, when Mike is that enthusiastic about a book, I take his word very seriously.

01:25:56

I have the highest respect for his discernment. So, first of all, tell us about the main title,

01:26:03

Battle Cry, because in our day and age, sadly, that kind of a name is not what you would call a popular connotation with Bible -believing

01:26:14

Christianity. People are far too politically correct, I think, when it comes to even conservative -professing,

01:26:23

Bible -believing Christians, and therefore they would shy away from such a notion of anything involving

01:26:33

Christianity being involved with a battle cry. But tell us about that. Yes, absolutely.

01:26:39

As I mentioned briefly, I was studying and began to get into a larger study on the battlefield imagery and the metaphors of fighting a war and the weapons of our warfare in the

01:26:55

Scriptures, and I realized it was a theme throughout the Scriptures in various, many different appearances for the

01:27:03

Psalms, the writings of Paul, the words of the Lord. In that,

01:27:09

I thought, well, this is definitely a theme in Scripture. I quickly reflected back on different hymns, me from days gone by, many of the hymns that are in our hymnals that we're not using anymore in many churches, and I realized there's a whole collection of hymns that were written at an earlier time, of course, dating all the way back to the

01:27:36

Reformation and things like that with Martin Luther, but certainly there's been many songs, pieces from Isaac Watson up through Soldiers of Christ and whatnot.

01:27:50

So I thought it was something that this theme has not been covered much in recent years and maybe in recent decades.

01:28:00

It's kind of, to me, like you said, it's not, we don't want to have the impression that we're coming to attack, but at the same time, we are definitely, you know, we have a victory.

01:28:13

In one sense, we have the victory march, because the battle's already been won in Christ. There's a victory march of the

01:28:19

Christian life, but at the same time, there's the reality that we are in a spiritual war. I've thought much that the

01:28:27

Christian church, evangelicalism in America, in other places, in many has taken a very laissez -faire perspective of the

01:28:35

Christian life, and the Christian church becomes more like a walk at the mall or a carnival or, you know, playtime, and really, there's much more of a robust call to embrace the, you know, fervently, prayer, the

01:28:51

Christian journey, struggling against sin, opposing the things of the world, and the reality that we are to resist, you know, submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from us.

01:29:01

So that's how we see that the devil's going by those roaring lines to see may devour.

01:29:08

At the same time, I saw that in kind of the excesses of terrorist masses and all this, you have all kinds of bizarre impressions of spiritual warfare, and we're, you know, chasing around demons and this and that, and we don't see that in Scripture.

01:29:24

So trying to really bring back some exegesis of passages of the soundness, the reality of the spiritual war that we are in every day, and maybe this season we're seeing some more of that in our culture, in America for sure.

01:29:41

But when times are, if we don't go outside of our culture, we tend to not realize that even the

01:29:48

Christians in other places sometimes are under severe oppression, persecution, opposition just for a name in the name of Jesus, and it's very hard to relate to that,

01:29:58

I think, sometimes in America. So I think part of it speaks to our culture, just hopefully a rallying to see that the

01:30:07

Christian life is a goal, and we cannot be unalert, we cannot be unaware, we can't be sleeping in the fight.

01:30:21

Amen. Well, how do we ready our soul?

01:30:29

What are the things that your book reveals, and of course that the Scriptures teach on how to ready one's soul and be prepared in and out of season to ward off evil and to defend the truth and to proclaim the truth and to evangelize?

01:30:48

How do we ready our soul for these things? Definitely, just good old -fashioned

01:30:57

Bible study and meditating on the Word and gathering with the saints in worship and in prayer, seasons of prayer, certainly that must be at the heart of it.

01:31:09

There's not a gimmick or anything else that we find outside of Scripture that we're called to look to, but rather just what we see in Scripture.

01:31:19

So I think that's very key. We see some of the traditions, like I have a couple historical chapters, one on the patristics, where they lived their lives in generations of acute opposition, persecution, and martyrdom, and so that is very foreign to us.

01:31:43

So as I kind of did some, like a search process through the patristics,

01:31:48

I saw the theme very, very strong through the patristic writers. As I look to one of my favorite time periods of the

01:31:57

Puritans, through the writings of the Puritans, you won't look far, you will find they saw things in a very sober way.

01:32:07

And so they saw that the reality that we are living is not only fighting against the flesh and sin, spiritual darkness, things of the world, and opposition from the devil.

01:32:24

And how is a Christian in jeopardy from the devil and his minions?

01:32:36

Most Christians from our theological circles do not believe a regenerate person can be demon possessed, but can we not be oppressed?

01:32:49

Can we not be attacked? And should we not even expect these kinds of attacks from the dark realm?

01:32:55

Absolutely, I totally agree. Absolutely, the born -again believer is secure. There's a confidence that we are in Christ, and we can be comforted by that.

01:33:04

At the same time, I think, in some ways, we have kind of, the

01:33:11

American church has a little bit of the sign -pen mentality of, we don't see what we are being lulled by in the world.

01:33:23

And so in that, I think it's a little bit more like, in a modern day America, we don't expect to see the devil walking with a pitchfork and a red suit on, but it's certainly in the spirit of the air of our culture.

01:33:39

So there are things that we have to be sober about and alert to. We see in scripture, we should have our heart much stirred toward affection for Christ.

01:33:52

And certainly, there's like one chapter from 1

01:33:58

Peter about being sober and alert and being ready for the return of Christ. You know, there's a balance in that as well, but we are to have a heart for the return of Christ as well.

01:34:14

And so there are obviously different eschatological views. We should say with that, we're not running around chasing demons and this kind of thing, but we definitely, you know, certainly, you know, think of, you know, back on a mission, certainly missionaries and folks who have served in other cultures where there is much darkness, but it may be a little bit more feeling the reality of the opposition in a very overt way to the gospel and things of the

01:34:48

Christian faith. But we're starting to see it, certainly we see it very much in our culture in this modern, you know, this time period, we're seeing much opposition, maybe a little bit more sophisticated, but certainly strong opposition to the things of God.

01:35:02

And that much of that, you know, what is it? If they're opposing Christ, opposing his word, opposing sound principles of biblical ethics and morals and godliness, they're opposing

01:35:13

Christ. That is of the devil. So I think there's that sense that we need to evangelize, we need to win our neighbor, we need to love them.

01:35:20

We're not coming to attack people, you know, with the Bible, but we are coming to winsomely, lovingly, prayerfully win our neighbors to Christ, to preach the gospel to them, tell them of Christ, tell them of the needs of their soul, you know, so that should be in our hearts as we live in our neighborhoods and workplaces here in America.

01:35:43

We're going to our final break right now, and if you have a question, please send it in immediately, because we're rapidly running out of time.

01:35:49

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

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01:42:42

Welcome back, this is Chris Arnzen, and if you have a question for my guest

01:42:47

James Fryer, I would suggest that you send that question in immediately because we are rapidly running out of time.

01:42:53

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. James, can you hear me? Yes, hello.

01:42:59

Yes, I'm not sure what happened before. I could hear you loud and clear the entire time. I'm not sure what happened, but we do have a listener,

01:43:08

Johnny from Queens, New York, who has a question for you. In fact,

01:43:14

I have to enlarge his question because it's microscopic. The font on his email, so while I'm doing that,

01:43:22

I will repeat our email address if anybody else would like to join us. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com,

01:43:27

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Hello, James.

01:43:33

The metaphor of battle and warfare is very prevalent in the pages of Scripture.

01:43:39

As a former charismatic, I had a preoccupation with spiritual warfare, which was more dualistic, with Satan as an equal and opposing foe in nature.

01:43:51

How would a believer take Scripture seriously without falling prey to mystical sensationalism?

01:43:57

How should we battle the current culture and doctrinal errors with the full armor of God?

01:44:03

Well, let's start with his first question. How would a believer take Scripture seriously without falling prey to mystical sensationalism?

01:44:11

Yes, absolutely. I think that there are sound principles of hermeneutics in just good old -fashioned

01:44:17

Bible study. It takes you into the text. We don't want to get carried away with any other, you know, life of Jesus and things that would grant to our imagination things that are not of Scripture.

01:44:31

I think we want to think of the historical, you know, kind of the balance that we find in Scripture, the scriptural balanced perspective of things.

01:44:42

Reading certainly good old writers from history like the Reformers, Calvin, Luther, certainly the

01:44:49

Puritans, some modern Reform writers who write on the, you know, the reality of these things,

01:44:59

I think it helps us all temper and mature our perspective, our perspective, so we're not, you know, tossed around by maybe extremes or unbiblical ideas or thinking that we, you know...

01:45:15

I remember early on as a Christian, I remember reading this present darkness by Frank Crady, and I was living in a university town, right, and I was thinking, this sounds just like the town

01:45:25

I'm living in. And if I wasn't careful, I remember my pastor warning me, you know, read that with a grain of salt, because think of the cross, and you know, meditate on the cross, and he was calling, he knew

01:45:37

I was reading, I mean, as a newer believer, and he said, you know, kind of call me back to meditate on the cross and the gospel, and not kind of in my imagination all the things that could be going on in the spirit world and different things.

01:45:51

So I think that biblical discernment that we need to come to and hold to, without anchoring, you know, anchored firmly in scripture.

01:46:02

Well, thank you, Johnny, and keep sending in those questions, and keep spreading the word about Iron Sharpens Iron Radio in Queens, New York, and beyond.

01:46:13

We do have an anonymous listener who says, I find myself, when defending my faith, erupting far too often into arguments with members of my family and friends.

01:46:27

I was wondering, how do we have this determined manner in which we speak about Christ and his word, like a warrior, like a soldier for Christ, but at the same time, remembering that we have to be gentle, patient, meek, and mild?

01:46:43

I find it a hard thing to strike a balance. Do you have any counsel? Well, I would say, yes, absolutely.

01:46:52

Again, going to scripture, that we find the character of the

01:46:57

Christian life in scripture. We don't see that we are, you know, in the sense of maybe attacking in the sense of a more aggressive or violent way toward people, but at the same time, we definitely see the attributes of the

01:47:14

Christian life. We see the character of Christ, though we even see him expressing emotions of anger and different things.

01:47:23

These things are all tempered in, I think, a theological perspective, a biblical worldview of life, our character, sanctification.

01:47:35

Pray for them. I think when we're praying for people, it's hard to come at them in a way, if our heart is tender in prayer and we reengage them, after having prayed for them, we find,

01:47:49

I think, a different perspective. Well, thank you, Anonymous, and keep listening to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:47:56

And something I was about to ask you before, because you had brought up the

01:48:03

Christian should be living consciously in regard to the return of Christ, and I can't remember exactly how you phrased it, but there are different eschatological views in the body of Christ, and the one in particular that would not necessarily, at least in the 21st century, be preaching and teaching or believing in an imminent return.

01:48:30

There are post -millennialists who believe that the return of Christ could be centuries away.

01:48:37

Is there a way that this idea of keeping the return of Christ as an important factor in the way that we ready our soul, as your title reflects, without having to necessarily believe that Jesus is coming right around the corner while we are still alive here on earth?

01:49:07

Yeah, I think that we're warned against being too relaxed about the perspective, and certainly

01:49:13

I think that there's been those who have made that the central part of their theology, which I think may not be the best focus on that thing.

01:49:21

But we certainly see, as my great professor said in seminary, that Paul was an eschatological man.

01:49:27

He certainly tempered his writings with here and there a smattering of thoughts and things throughout his writings.

01:49:37

So it is something on his heart we see in his writings and as we see throughout

01:49:42

Scripture. Certainly one thing comes to mind, drawing from something recently

01:49:48

I learned, listening to a series by John Gershner on the virgins and preparing the lamps in the parable of the virgins.

01:49:59

It's a wonderful, wonderful study, and he used that to show that we are to be alert and aware at preparing our lives.

01:50:08

But the things that are preparing us are also things like orthodoxy and prayer and pursuing the

01:50:13

Lord. That is the readiness. That is preparing our hearts to see

01:50:22

Him. No one knows the day or the hour. We have to go on living our lives responsibly each day in work and family and in our communities in a sober way, and at the same time with a heart that we know the end of the story we have in Scripture.

01:50:44

And before we run out of time, I would like you to basically have five minutes of uninterrupted time to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners regarding your book,

01:50:58

Battle Cry, before we go off the air. Yeah, I think that we have to be pursuing the

01:51:08

Lord. We have to be kindling a fresh heart for Christ each day, being in His Word, nourishing our souls.

01:51:15

And in that, I think we will have our eyes open. We won't be deceived by any extremes of charismatic ideas and even our own imaginations that will help us to live in discernment and to walk with the

01:51:32

Lord and to cultivate a heart for Christ in our relationships and as well to help people who may be swept away from the prosperity gospel to cults to various extremes in the

01:51:52

Christian or cult area. So, regarding our hearts against things that would be maybe our imagination or a false teaching.

01:52:11

Well, we do have another listener, and this is another anonymous listener who says, sometimes we see that the liberals and the leftists and the non -Christians are seeking to bring down our culture, our country, and even us personally, and we make the wrong decision to ally ourselves with other enemies of Christ who have false religions just because they agree with us on social, moral, and political areas.

01:52:48

Don't we, as Christians, need to be very careful not to be overly ecumenical during desperate times when we are desperately seeking friends wherever we can find them?

01:53:01

Absolutely. Amen. I agree. You know, God's man is never in the corner. God's church is never going to be extinct.

01:53:12

Jesus said he's building his church, and he's held up against it. So, there's that part.

01:53:17

We do need to, we cannot be swept into any type of ecumenicalism that is ecumenism that is watering down and compromising on sound doctrine of theology.

01:53:30

If you look at the Catholic Church, their central doctrine is unity, and they want to unify with undiscerning evangelicals all the way to Islam.

01:53:42

And so, they are all about unity. We love unity in truth and with the brothers and sisters in Christ.

01:53:54

That is why, you know, unity is precious, but unity must be certainly tempered with Christian orthodoxy, sound doctrine, reformed faith, and we have that to hedge our excesses,

01:54:11

I think. Yeah. And something that occurred to me that I was going to say earlier that I forgot to say.

01:54:18

When we were talking about the concept of looking forward towards the return of Christ, think that even folks on either end of the spectrum, whether they be those that are dispensationalists and they're teaching that a secret rapture can occur at any second, or they are a post -millennialist to believe that Christ might not return for another thousand years.

01:54:55

We should be always ready to meet Christ because in our deaths is where we will more than likely, no matter what our eschatological view is, and no matter what the eschatological truth is regarding Christ's return, as far as the timing of it, we are more than likely going to meet

01:55:13

Him after we die far sooner than He is going to return.

01:55:21

And therefore, especially those who are unbelievers who may be listening, they must be really examining their hearts, their lives, and do they really feel confident that they are going to enter into heaven when they meet this

01:55:40

Christ? And even those that are professing believers who may be under a delusion that they are truly saved just because they made a profession 30 years ago or something.

01:55:51

They raised their hand at Bible camp when they were five years old or eight years old or 12 years old and came forward to quote -unquote accept

01:55:59

Christ, but there was really no genuine rebirth. There was never any real genuine transformation.

01:56:06

Isn't that really what we have to be focused on more than anything in regard to meeting

01:56:11

Christ face -to -face and seeing Him as not necessarily the return of Christ in our eschatological framework, but when we die?

01:56:23

Absolutely, absolutely. In the book, there's just one or two chapters that really reference more the return of Christ.

01:56:31

I think we see central to the Christian faith, first primarily the heavy area of soteriology, and then we also see the doctrine of sanctification that's so central, so thorough through Scripture that I think that takes the focus of our life.

01:56:51

And these other areas are wonderful things, encouragements in the

01:56:56

Christian life and then certainly part of it, but I think it was

01:57:02

Janet Packer who said that the doctrine of sanctification makes up 90 % of the

01:57:09

Christian life. And so it was that aspect that we are growing every day.

01:57:15

We have to live out our faith. We can be fixated on some precise detail of eschatology and create joy of cultivating a heart and growing in Christ and maturing in our faith.

01:57:33

Well, folks, if you want to get this book, Battle Cry Reflections for Soul Readiness in the

01:57:39

Defense of the Gospel, in and out of season, go to solid -ground -books .com.

01:57:47

You can type in our guest's name in the search engine,

01:57:53

James Fryer, which is spelled F as in Frank, R -Y -E -R, or you could even type in Battle Cry, two words,

01:58:01

Battle Cry. That's solid -ground -books .com.

01:58:07

And of course, I always mention that you heard about Solid Ground Christian Books when you're placing your order.

01:58:13

Tell them that you heard about them from Iron Trip and Zion Radio. But do you have any additional contact information or websites or anything else that our listeners should be aware of,

01:58:25

James? No, I know it's available through a couple of different areas.

01:58:31

I did find for some reason that Solid Ground Christian Books has the lowest price out there, which was,

01:58:37

I think, encouraging. And then I'm just so thankful for this privilege.

01:58:42

I appreciate you, Chris, and for this time together. Oh, it's my pleasure, brother. And I just want to thank everybody who listened today, and especially those who took the time to write in questions.

01:58:55

I hope you all have a safe and happy and healthy and joyful and Christ -honoring weekend and Lord's Day.

01:59:05

And I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.