August 19, 2024 Show with Stephen Totter, Esq. on “Keeping America Safe from Terrorism”

Opening Broadcast and Guest Introduction

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron.

This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 19th day of August 2024.

Before I introduce my guest and our topic for the day, I want to remind all men in ministry leadership that you are invited to the next free biannual Iron Sharpens Iron Radio pastors luncheon, which will be held Thursday, October 10th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, which is in Perry County, Pennsylvania.

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So that's ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, and put pastors luncheon in the subject line. I hope to see you Thursday, October 10th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania.

Stephen Totter’s Background, Church, and Salvation Testimony

Well, very few things make me feel older than interviewing someone whose parents I knew long before they were born and whose parents I knew before they were even married, and such is the case with my guest today.

Today we have a first-time guest who is a member of the church where I was formerly a member before moving to Pennsylvania, Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, New York. His name is Stephen Totter, attorney at law.

He is a decorated veteran of the Iraq War, chairman of the deacon board at Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, New York, chairman of the school board at Grace Christian Academy of Long Island, whose headmaster we've had on this program, Steve Schultz, and a reservist and lieutenant colonel in the Army National Guard specializing in anti-terrorism in New York City.

Today we're going to be addressing the theme, One Christian in the Armed Services' Efforts to Keep America Safe from Terrorism, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the first time ever to Iron Sharpen Zion Radio, Stephen Totter.

Thank you so much, Chris. The honor and the privilege is all here.

Well, first of all, tell our listeners something about Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, where your dad is one of the pastors.

Yeah, thank you, Chris. Appreciate that. Grace Reformed Baptist Church is just a body of like-minded believers. We're located in Merrick, New York. We're blessed to have a beautiful building and a wonderful place to meet, but the real blessing of Grace Reformed Baptist Church is, of course, its members.

We have just a wonderful, warm body of committed believers who are there, who make up the church. And, you know, we have three great pastors. I might be a little biased about my dad, but the other two are great as well, Pastor Bob Carson and Pastor Dan Mercado.

And, you know, it's just a very solid church where the word is preached every Sunday, where you can come and be ministered to. We have just a lively number of events, too, that the church participates in on a daily basis.

So it's just a great, warm, but very solid body of believers on Long Island.

And we cannot forget to mention the upcoming Courageous Marriage seminar or conference, which is coming up on Friday and Saturday, August 23rd and 24th, featuring your keynote speaker, bestselling author Dr. Joe Rigney.

What can you tell us about this conference coming up?

Yeah, I think every single one of your listeners who is in the geographical area to travel to this should definitely make an effort to attend. It's going to be just a wonderful, great conference. If you've seen the list of topics or you've listened to the episode of Iron Sharpens Iron, where Dr. Rigney detailed the things that he's going to be talking about, it's relevant especially to married believers or believers who are entering into marriage.

But really, anyone who wants to learn more about God and the Bible should make an effort to attend if they can. It's really going to be a time of blessing. The topics are going to be great. The price is set just so that we can encourage as many people as possible to attend.

And we've even put it out, and I'll put it out again on the show, that if anybody cannot afford to attend for any reason, just to get into contact with the church, we really want to make sure that as many people are blessed by this as possible.

So again, that's this Friday at 7 p .m., and also all day Saturday, too. And people can find out more about that by going to our website, and that is gracereformedbaptistchurch .org. And the first pop-up that comes up on that website will be for the conference to register.

Great, and we'll be repeating that website later on. And also, if anybody wants to listen to the two-hour interview I recently conducted—in fact, it was on August 2nd—I interviewed the keynote speaker at this Courageous Marriage Conference, Joe Rigney, for the first hour.

And I had Pastor Bob Carson, one of three pastors at Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, New York, on for the second hour. And you can just type in Rigney, R-I-G-N-E-Y, into the search engine at irontreppanzionradio .com, and that link will come up where you can listen to that interview.

Well, it's hard to believe, when you get to be as old as I am, Stephen—I'm 62—time flies like a bullet. And I still can't really get over the fact that it seems like yesterday you were a goofy little kid wandering around at Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island, picking your nose and drooling on yourself.

And now you're a decorated veteran and helping keep America safe from terrorism. But we have a tradition on Iron Treppanzion Radio, whenever we have a first-time guest, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony that would include the kind of religious atmosphere in which you were raised, which we've already explained, the kind of providential circumstances that our Sovereign Lord raised up in your life and drew you to Himself and saved you.

So we would love to hear a summary of your story.

Yeah, thanks for that, Chris. I appreciate that. I'm grateful to have been saved at an early age. I grew up, as you said, in a Christian household with two Christian parents that were dedicated to the Church and dedicated to the Lord.

And they attended Grace Reformed Baptist Church, which was Calvary Baptist probably at the time, most of the time that you were attending. And from an early age, I always believed in the existence of God and of hell and of heaven.

I can remember pretty distinctively crying out to the Lord several times as a pre-teenager. And through all my younger years, all the examples I remember of baptisms and testimonies that I would listen to often had some sort of a drastic before and after experience.

So as a pre-teen, I struggle with that a little bit because I remember believing in God and crying out to Him and not really feeling the same before and after experience I saw with many of the examples that were put before me.

And so I just struggled with discouragements in my early teenage years and confusion over the status of my own soul, feeling lack of assurance for my salvation and wondering if I was saved. And even if I was saved at the time, I certainly went through a period in my teenage years of not taking my sanctification seriously and doing things that typical teenagers do to fit in.

And I wish the simplicity of the gospel had been something that had stuck with me better. I'm sure many people did a great job, including my parents, of bringing that before me. And thankfully, I was preserved from a lot more serious sins, thanks to my parents.

But, you know, I certainly had opportunities because I started attending college much younger than most people did. And then at age 17, I joined the army. And during basic training, I cried out to the Lord once again.

And this time through reading the scriptures and praying, I was given a confidence in the Lord that He gave me an assurance that I was saved through confessing my sins and believing in Christ. And God still had a lot of sanctifying and growth for me in those early years.

And I was baptized not too long after I got back from basic training and I began serving in the church. And then not too many years after that, I was married, went through a combat deployment to Iraq, getting back, finishing law school, and then starting my career and having children.

But God has provided for me, though completely undeserving, many opportunities to serve in His church, first on the board of Grace Christian Academy and then as a deacon and now chairman of both those boards.

And it's just a testament to His grace from generation to generation in the way that He used His church. He used godly men around me who witnessed to me and who stuck with me and certainly my parents and my family.

And that's that's my story of how I came to the Lord.

Yeah.

And we want to thank your lovely wife, Melanie, for arranging this interview, for contacting me and and putting the bug in my ear to invite you on. And as soon as I found out what you are doing in the realm of terrorism prevention, I immediately knew that I wanted to have you on the show.

And I know that you have three daughters and a fourth on the way in November. Congratulations. I do.

I do.

Yeah. Fourth daughter on the way in November. Praise God.

Well, praise God for that. And I'm going to give our listeners our email address right away in the event that they want to ask a question of their own. Chris Arnzen at Gmail dot com. Chris Arnzen at Gmail dot com.

As always, give us your first name, at least your city and state of residence and your country of residence. If you live outside the USA and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Real Estate, Stewardship, and Christian Investing

Well, before I even go into our topic, I wanted to give you an opportunity to explain what you do in the realm of real estate, because it's a unique niche with curious consulting.

Yeah, absolutely. So I never really intended to go into real estate. But, you know, over time, you start to realize that there's patterns. One of the patterns is that our country continues to accumulate debt and continues to kind of put everything on a giant credit card of printing more money.

And so when you look at how to wisely take care of your money and look at how to, you know, best, you know, be responsible for the funds that God has given you, you realize that, you know, if you if you leave your money in cash and you leave your money in savings, which should be the normal responsible thing to do, then unfortunately, a lot of that is depreciating because of the way that the government is using the funds that they're responsible for.

So, you know, about five years ago, I started to look into real estate and started very small and after a while began to scale and eventually had people coming on board and asking to invest through my different operational efforts.

So I started originally in North Carolina and kind of built out from there into New York and now largely have consolidated in the northeast, oftentimes investing in places like New Hampshire, where there's kind of a limited market and, you know, a lot more opportunity for risk management and for safe scaling of the real estate investments, my own portfolio and the portfolio of others.

I did a syndication recently in New Hampshire and was pleased that God worked through mostly Christians, in fact, all Christians coming on board for that syndication. So I continue to do that. I also do some mentorship as well with believers exclusively to try to help Christians to understand real estate a little bit better and continue to take on some partners in my real estate efforts.

But it's something that God has blessed. It's something I certainly never thought that I would be involved in in any way. I still have my full time job and obviously my other responsibilities, but God's helped me to see the value in it and to just give me a place where I can provide value to other Christians.

Well, if anybody wants to find out more details about what Stephen Totter has to offer, go to Consulting by Kyrgios, K-Y-R-I-O-S dot com. Consulting by Kyrgios dot com. And God willing, we'll remember to repeat that later on in the program.

National Guard Anti-Terrorism Work in New York City

Well, we are discussing an element of your life that is a vitally important element, and that is the protection of our nation from terrorist attacks. And let me say at the outset that because of the fact that my guest today is an active member of the Army National Guard and Homeland Security, that there are issues that are too sensitive for him to explain in detail.

And there may be times when I'm asking him a question or that my audience members may ask a question where he's going to have to decline answering it. So I hope that you understand that at the outset of the program and don't be overly disappointed knowing of the reasons why.

But first of all, how long after you were involved overseas in Iraq in the Iraq War did you get led into this duty where you are involved in New York City seeking to keep this nation safe from terrorist attacks?

So like a lot of National Guardsmen, you're mostly in a reserve capacity. For me, you know, I work as an attorney unless the National Guard calls me up. I typically will only do one week in a month of military duty and then maybe two weeks during the summer.

But the unique thing about the National Guard is that it kind of has a dual role. It can be used for overseas operations like Afghanistan or Iraq to fill in the gaps of the active duty military force.

There's many National Guardsmen who have more deployments than even some of the active duty service members. But the Guard also has another role in which they respond to their state as well. So when a natural disaster happens or a flood or a fire or a hurricane, the National Guard is called up to respond.

And that's true of acts of terrorism as well. We have a longstanding mission to guard New York City, for example, that was started after 9 -11. And about three years ago, I was activated to that mission.

So like many National Guardsmen, your civilian job goes on hold. And then in my particular case, I lead as an intelligence officer for that mission, providing the threat picture for service members who protect New York City.

And many people are surprised by the fact that the military has anything to do with New York City. But that's just because of the unique role that the National Guard plays with, you know, having this dual responsibility of responding and filling in for the active duty force, but also for meeting the needs of the governor of that state.

So I started that about three years ago when I was called up, and I've been working on that ever since.

Yeah, well, if anybody has visited New York City, they would very easily discover, at least the last time I was in New York City, which was not that long ago, there were many soldiers in uniform, armed, patrolling Penn Station and so on.

I'm assuming that is still a normal thing in the daily life of New York City residents and also those who work there and commute through there to see that.

Yeah, very much so, Chris. That's been an enduring mission since September 11th. So it's something that most New Yorkers have now gotten pretty used to seeing and find as a source of comfort that there's armed service members in New York City and other areas throughout the state where there's critical infrastructure.

Terrorism Threats Since 9/11 and the Islamic Extremist Danger

Well, we're going to go through our first commercial break. If anybody does have a question, once again, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least. City and state and country of residence.

Don't go away. We're going to be right back with Stephen Todd.

I'm Pastor Keith Allen of Linbrook Baptist Church, a Christ-centered, gospel-driven church looking to spread the gospel in the southwest portion of Long Island, New York, and play our role in fulfilling the Great Commission, supporting and sending for the spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth.

We're delighted to be a part of Chris Arnzen's Iron Sharpens Iron radio advertising family. At Linbrook Baptist Church, we believe the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the inspired Word of God, inherent in the original writings, complete as the revelation of God's will for salvation and the supreme and final authority in all matters to which they speak.

We believe in salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. This salvation is based upon the sovereign grace of God, was purchased by Christ on the cross, and is received through faith alone, apart from any human merit, works, or ritual.

Salvation in Christ also results in righteous living, good works, and appropriate respect and concern to all who bear God's image. If you live near Linbrook, Long Island, or if you're just passing through on the Lord's Day, we'd love to have you come and join us in worship.

For details, visit linbrookbaptist .org. That's L-Y-N-BrookBaptist .org. This is Pastor Keith Allen of Linbrook Baptist Church reminding you that by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves.

It is the gift of God, not a result of words, so that no one may boast of the Lord's blessing and the knowledge of himself.

I'm Pastor Bill Shishko of The Haven, an Orthodox Presbyterian church in Comac, Long Island. I hold the Iron Sharpens Iron radio program hosted by my longtime friend and brother, Chris Arnzen, in the highest esteem, and I'm thrilled that you're listening today.

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A rifle stops evil, a body armor and a med kit keep you in the fight and preserve your life. Armored Republic is a body of free craftsmen united to create tools of liberty. We are honored to be your armorsmith of choice.

Civilian ownership of body armor is about increasing decentralized power, and by comparison, reducing the advantages of centralized power. The danger of centralized power is often represented by the word king.

As Americans, we hate the word king applied to any mere man. We are Armored Republic, and in a republic, there is no king but Christ. Arm yourself with tools of liberty at ArmoredRepublic .com. Greetings, this is Brian McLaughlin, president of the SecureComm Group and supporter of Chris Arnzen's Iron Shopping Zion radio program.

SecureComm provides the highest level of security systems for residential buildings, municipalities, churches, commercial properties, and much more. We can be reached at SecureCommGroup .com. That's SecureCommGroup .com.

But today, I want to introduce you to my senior pastor, Doug McMasters of New High Park Baptist Church on Long Island.

Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur. In the film Chariots of Fire, the Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt God's pleasure when he ran.

He knew his efforts sprang from the gifts and calling of God. I sense that same God-given pleasure when ministering the word and helping others gain a deeper knowledge and love for God. That love starts with the wonderful news that the Lord Jesus Christ is a savior who died for sinners, and that God forgives all who come to him in repentance, trusting solely in Christ to deliver them.

I would be delighted to have the honor and privilege of ministering to you if you live In the Long Island area, or Queens, or Brooklyn, or the Bronx, in New York City. For details on New High Park Baptist Church, visit nhpbc .com.

That's nhpbc .com. You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672. That's 516 -352 -9672. That's New High Park Baptist Church. A congregation in love with each other, passionate for Christ, committed to learning and being shaped by God's word, and delighting in the gospel of God's sovereign grace.

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So go to royaldiadem .com today and mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And we are now back with my guest today, Stephen Totter, who is a decorated veteran from the war of Iraq or the Iraq War, and he is a reservist and lieutenant colonel in the Army National Guard specializing in anti-terrorism, and we are discussing one Christian in the armed services efforts to keep America safe from terrorism.

Our e-mail address with questions is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. And we do already have a listener in Oceanside, Long Island, New York, Vicky.

Vicky wants to know, since 9 -11, has the threats of terrorism reduced in our nation, especially in New York City, or have they increased and we just don't know about it?

That's a great question, Vicky. I will say before I begin to discuss anything that I just give the usual disclaimer that my views are my own and not that of my employer, whether that be state or federal.

I just have to give that little disclaimer before I begin discussing anything publicly. I would say on the one hand, our efforts at preventing acts of terrorism have greatly improved. So the risk to the average New Yorker or even just citizen of the country has probably reduced greatly over the years, just thanks to those efforts.

But certainly the threat is still there. And since the years since 9 -11, New York City has been the most featured city in terrorist propaganda, encouraging people to conduct attacks on it. And considering that it was already not only a victim of large-scale terror attacks, but was certainly something that was identified by almost every terrorist worldwide as a potential target, the threat still remains.

So in terms of the number of people who have New York City within the crosshairs, it has probably increased throughout the years. But fortunately, the efforts to protect New York and to protect the United States as a whole have gotten better over the years and have improved.

Well, thank you, Vicky. And one question I'd like to ask you is I'm assuming that the vast majority, if not all, of the terrorist attacks that you're aware of behind the scenes that may be squelched and brought to an abrupt halt, or not so abrupt halt, but a halt nonetheless, that we may never know about.

I'm assuming that these are primarily the attempts of Islamic extremists, and the reason why I say that is that there have been voices on the left who have made what I would say are insane claims that the most existential threat to the safety of the United States next to global warming are the threats of terrorism by white supremacists.

Now, maybe your answer will surprise me, but if you could answer that to the best of your ability.

Yeah, so like a lot of things, it depends on how you categorize the data. If you're looking at the number of victims, or you're looking at the number of overall attacks, or how you add definitions into this greatly matters.

I would say the threat of Islamic terrorism is certainly still there and very active. It's certainly one of the main things that we are on the lookout for. But a lot of the terrorist attacks, potential terrorist attacks, threats that are out there are also the work of people who are mentally unstable.

And the reason that they give for why they are going to conduct an attack or the particular ideological issue that they latch onto are almost secondary. So certainly, when you talk about acts of terrorism, somebody who has mental issues, such that they're unstable, and the people who conduct terrorist attacks, that Venn diagram has a lot of crossover.

So it's hard sometimes to pin down, is this somebody who's mentally unwell, who just latched onto this ideology? Or is this somebody with an ideology who's intent on conducting an act of terrorism? So I would say Islamic terrorism is still an enormous issue.

And we tend to see that a lot more as a kind of guiding philosophy behind why somebody wants to conduct an attack. So certainly for my foxhole, that still continues to be the major issue that we're dealing with.

But there's just a wide variety of reasons that people give. And sometimes even finding out the motive for these things is very challenging. So if an attack happens and then they find Facebook postings or social media attribution from that particular person, again, it's very difficult to nail down exactly what the motives were in many of these cases.

So you can kind of have fun if you're somebody who's ideologically guided by saying that a majority of the attacks happened for this reason or that reason and kind of play with the data. I can really only say what I'm seeing from my end of things.

Islamic terrorism continues to be a major issue. And at the same time, a lot of these attacks are guided by people who are just severely mentally unwell and who are triggered by something that they see in the news.

Certainly we talk about terrorism and acts of terrorism a lot. On the news as a country. So a lot of people are triggered by that and unfortunately wake up and decide to commit an act of violence.

How Terrorism Plots Are Detected and Stopped

Now, can you explain, I know that some of these things are secret, can you explain how plots of terrorism are brought to your attention? I know that there may be many, many different ways, but could you perhaps describe some of these ways?

And what is specifically done to bring an end to these threats?

Yeah, that's a great question, Chris. And I think that's an area where there's a lot of just confusion or mystique about it in the general public. Here at Stateside, a lot of the efforts to prevent terrorism are done through normal criminal investigations.

And that's done by the usual means that you would discover a conspiracy to conduct a bank robbery, let's say. So there's a lot of ground level intelligence that's conducted by civilian tips that are given, people making reports to different agencies to try to bring to light something suspicious that they saw.

The see something, say something efforts that the city has gone through and certainly our country has gone through have yielded a lot of results. There's also, of course, social media. But a lot of these things end up in civilian criminal investigations.

And fortunately, you can head off a lot of these things before they get more serious. Sometimes somebody who is plotting an act of terrorism, they vocalize that in some way. What really scares us is the amount of people who are out there who you just don't know about because they don't post online and they don't have any formal communication with an outside terrorist organization.

And they maybe just have seen something on the internet or read something and that has become the catalyst for them to turn violent. So many times it's fortunately civilians speaking up and saying something to even just their local police department and saying, hey, this didn't look right.

Or I saw something online and it looks like somebody's using some threatening rhetoric online. And so that continues to be one of the main ways in which we thwart these events. Fortunately, there's also oftentimes indicators that you see beforehand of people conducting surveillance ahead of a terrorist attack.

So that can be another way that it's prevented. But all the usual ways that we would stop a crime in general can also be applied to acts of terrorism as well. And the vigilance of New Yorkers has helped out the efforts of anti-terrorism many a time and resulted in an investigation and ultimately a prosecution.

And that has made the city a lot safer.

You know, I should have asked you this in the very beginning, but it may seem like a no-brainer, but it may not be when you get involved in the technicalities of semantics. What legitimately can be categorized as a threat of terrorism and perhaps even define terrorism?

Yeah, so terrorism would be an act of violence that is perpetrated usually for ideological or political ends. Now, whether that title is applied to a prosecution can vary based on the prosecutor and their discretion of what they decide to bring, what kind of charges they use when they bring a prosecution towards somebody.

Sometimes it's very clear-cut. Somebody has had communication with an outside terrorist organization. They're giving materials of support to terrorism. Perhaps they've even, you know, pledged their allegiance to an organization like ISIS.

And in those cases, it would be pretty clear-cut. Other times, as I expressed before, it can be a little bit challenging to find out what somebody's motivation is. You know, is this somebody who, you know, woke up one day with severe mental illness and decided to conduct some sort of a knifing or a stabbing attack or use their vehicle to run down some civilians?

And, you know, it can be challenging when there's no paper trail as to whether, you know, they had terrorist motivations or not. So really, it depends ultimately on what charges are brought and what motivations can be found out about the attackers.

Some cases are very clear-cut, and other ones are just a little bit more puzzling, and you have to do a little bit more work to find out if there indeed was an ideological terroristic intent.