July 3, 2015 ISI Radio Show with Dr. Peter Lillback on his book “George Washington’s Sacred Fire”

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

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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

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

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

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth, listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Friday on this day before 4th of July weekend,

Friday, July 3rd, 2015. And are you down in the dumps because of recent events in regard to the

Supreme Court decision on same -sex marriage? Are you feeling a little bit less than patriotic?

Are you pessimistic about our future? Well, let's start 4th of July weekend with a good dose of patriotism, and I'm so delighted that I have for the very first time as a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron, Dr.

Peter Lillback, who is Professor of Historical Theology and President of Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and today we're talking about his monumental 1208 -page work,

George Washington's Sacred Fire. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron for the very first time,

Dr. Peter Lillback. Chris, thank you so much. What a joy to be with you on this special weekend talking about the wonderful life and faith of George Washington.

It's great to be with all your listeners. Yes, and it's great to have you. I did, as you recall, years ago, when

Iron Sharpens Iron ran between 2006 and 2011, before I went on a four -year hiatus,

I did try a couple of times to get you on the program, and providentially, it just didn't work out those couple of times.

But thankfully, a very opportune and timely day that we have to interview you on the day before Independence Day weekend, or I guess

I should say it's the first day of Independence Day weekend. But first of all, tell our listeners briefly something about Westminster Theological Seminary.

Some of our listeners may be unaware of that institution, but most of them are, because most of my listeners are more than likely

Reformed in their theology. But for those of my listeners who are unfamiliar with Westminster, tell us briefly something about that.

Well, it's great to tell folks about the seminary I serve. It started in 1929.

It grew out of Princeton Theological Seminary, and the reason for that is our founder,

J. Gresham Machen, was convinced that with the reorganization of the Board to reflect the

Presbyterian Church, instead of reflecting the historic theology of Princeton, that there would come a time where the

Gospel would not be preached and the Bible would be rejected as the authority of God. People thought he was pretty radical, but as we look back now, some 86, 87 years, we realize he was absolutely right on the money.

So Westminster was started by Machen with five or six of the faculty members from the faculty of Princeton coming and starting

Westminster. They took the name Westminster because they wanted to maintain the historic theology of the

Westminster Confession of Faith. It's the real climax confession of the

Reformation period. It has the highest possible view of biblical authority, and its expansive understanding of theology based upon Scripture is without peer.

It is truly an extraordinary accomplishment, and that's the legacy that we build on. Westminster through the years has had many significant contributions to the

Church. One of the things that we're especially known for is called presuppositional apologetics, sometimes called worldview analysis today.

That was Dr. Van Til. We still require our students to learn the Bible in original languages.

Every student who is in our major programs has to learn Greek and Hebrew. We study in the original languages.

We have Christ -centered preaching from Genesis to Revelation. We've developed a very important discipline called biblical counseling, counseling that doesn't ask you to just become a human being when you go to share your family or personal challenges, but the ability to come to someone who recognizes you as a human being who's made in the image of God, one who has a hope to find the grace of God through the

Word and the Holy Spirit. So biblical counseling has been part of our heritage. We teach

Church history from the ancient Church right up to the modern age, and we've been studying very deeply in Reformed theology, trying to understand how the

Reformed faith has grown out of all the traditions right up to the present. So lastly, we have students from all around the world.

We have over 600 students studying with us, doing master's and doctoral level studies, and they become leaders all around the world.

Over 100 denominations have been with us, and I think probably 50 or 60 countries we've lost track now have come and gone in the last 20 years from the seminary.

So it has a worldwide impact, and as Machen's vision was to train specialists in the

Bible, and that's what we do. We train specialists in the Bible who preach the whole counsel of God to advance the kingdom of Christ worldwide.

Well, somebody sends their greetings to you, the innkeeper of the 19th century manse that is the new home of Iron Sharpens Iron.

This program is broadcasting live from the 19th century parsonage of a local historic figure here in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, George Norcross, who was a

Presbyterian pastor. In fact, he was the pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church here in Carlisle in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and the current owner of this manse, the old manse as we call it around here,

Albert Stever, who just celebrated the 50th anniversary of his graduation from Westminster.

He and his wife Dottie Stever send their greetings to you, and I actually invited

Al to be a co -host with me today, but he was unable to due to prior commitments, but Al Stever, the

Reverend Al Stever, is a retired Orthodox Presbyterian pastor, and he sends his greetings to you.

That's great. I had the joy of seeing him at our recent commencement program. Oh great. We celebrated his 50th year of graduation from Westminster, so he was a 50 -year alum, so we welcomed him back, and it's good to know the connection of your broadcast from that historic location.

Yes, I'm delighted about it too, and it was more than fascinating to me to discover this after moving in here, and I'm so delighted to be a part of this community here now.

Now this book, which is obviously an enormous labor of love on your part, 1 ,208 pages long, the book has a very captivating title,

George Washington's Sacred Fire. Almost sounds like George Washington may have been a precursor to the

Pentecostal movement with a title like that, but tell us why the title,

George Washington's Sacred Fire? Well, it's interesting that George Washington, as he was giving his inaugural address to America, he said, the sacred fire of liberty has been entrusted into the hands of the

American people, and it's interesting, he saw the republican form of democracy that we have in our constitution as an experiment, and he recognized that it may not work.

The people may not be able to live up to its challenge, but he saw what it was intending to do was to preserve liberty.

It was the sacred fire of liberty that was entrusted to the people, and so the image is not, it's just a wildfire of liberty like the

French Revolution that burns out of control. No, it's a gift from God. It's holy, and he saw republican liberty as a form of conscious following of transcendent laws.

The freedom was grounded in God, and he said, Americans, you need to understand this experiment is in your hands, and whether it survives or not is up to you, and so I named the book

Sacred Fire using the very words that Washington himself used in a way of saying that his faith was actually something that impacted the way he governed and the way he lived his life, which of course was something that people were knocking and attacking and denying and basically saying he was not a religious man.

In fact, he was a deist, which is really the form of a denial of any revelation from God or that there's a personal

God who acts in history, and it's really the idea that you just have a first cause to get everything going, and then

God is utterly irrelevant for the rest of life, and I wanted to show from Washington's life and his writings and his relationships and people who knew him closely and their testimonies and reports that he was in fact a man who had a deep

Christian faith, and that's what I wrote about in that long book. And of course, a deist, as you did explain a little bit about what that is, a deist basically makes

God into a celestial spectator, that he created the world, the universe, set it in motion, and basically just watches and doesn't have any intimate personal relationship with what's happening, correct?

That's exactly right. So you could think of a deist as the idea of an absentee landlord, kind of owns everything but never shows up, doesn't take care of anything, he lets it just go on its own.

So he's the first cause, but he doesn't hear prayer, he doesn't intervene in providence, and therefore pastors can't possibly be speaking

God's word because he never revealed himself. And Jesus Christ, who may have been a historical figure, clearly could not have been the

God -man, he could not have been someone who was in fact fully divine, fully human in one person.

And so that approach of deism was actually celebrated in the

Age of Reason by a man who wrote Common Sense, a very important patriotic book in the

Revolution by the name of Thomas Paine. And Thomas Paine said, providence is just one of the mythologies of Christianity, and he ridiculed the idea that there was a notion that God was active in history.

Well I like to respond by saying, well, Johnny Cochran is not my favorite attorney, and O .J.

Simpson is not the best person ever to be on trial, but Johnny Cochran had a great line, he said, if it doesn't fit, you must acquit.

So I like to say, let's take the glove of deism, and let's see if we can make it fit on Washington's large hand.

Did he in fact say, there's no providence? Well guess what? That's Washington's favorite theological word.

He uses it some 260 times or something like that, and I'm not talking about Providence, Rhode Island, I've counted them all.

They're all theological, and with his favorite doctrine. Secondly, did he believe in prayer?

Well, there are over 100 prayers in Washington's own handwriting in his letters.

There's as short as a sentence, and some are two or three paragraphs long. He was in fact someone who believed in prayer.

Did he reject clergy? No, he didn't. He said that the clergy were very important.

He required that there be chaplains in his army, even when money was very scarce, and according to his records, he entertained over a hundred pastors or wrote to them personally.

I think it breaks out 50 -50, something like that. 50 pastors spent time at Mount Vernon on visit, and he wrote over 50 letters to pastors personally.

That's amazing. He was not opposed to the clergy. In fact, he was a church warden, a chief vestryman in the

Anglican slash Episcopalian church. What about the Bible? Did he reject the

Bible? Well, he calls it the blessed religion revealed in the Word of God will remain an eternal monument that human nature can, by its depravity, destroy the very best of institutions.

Wow, he sounds like a Presbyterian minister when he says that. He called the Bible the Word of God. It's revelation, it's eternal.

Well, you can't get more orthodox about the Scripture. On top of that, in Appendix 2 of Sacred Fire, I indicate over 200 biblical phrases, allusions, or citations that come out of Washington's writings, and I know

I didn't get them all. Those are the ones that were really obvious as I was working through it, and I actually identify the passage and the place where he uses it.

One of my favorite examples of this is that there are a couple times he writes a letter one of them is to the

Marquis de Lafayette, and I've forgotten who the other one is, but in the one paragraph there are literally seven to nine different biblical allusions in one paragraph.

Now, Washington didn't have a strong concordance when he was doing that. He was doing that either with a

Bible on his desk or just from his own memory. I'd like to give your listeners a homework assignment. Go home today and write a letter to a friend and include in it biblical phrases from nine different passages of the

Bible, and it can't be a Bible commentary. You're just using Bible phrases to talk about life.

I dare you to do it. To be able to do that, you need to know the Bible right down to your fingertips.

This is the guy who really knew the Scripture. So, we can see the glove doesn't even fit, but what about the

Christ? Was Jesus just a good man? No, he calls him the divine author of our blessed religion.

That's his phrase. He's divine. He's the author of our personal religion, Christianity.

And he goes on to say, America can never expect to be a happy nation unless it imitates the divine author of our blessed religion.

And he says, therefore, we must do justice, we must love mercy, and we, instead of saying, and walk humbly with our

God, like Micah 6 -8 says, he says, do justice, love mercy, and we must imitate the divine author of our blessed religion.

So, he's basically seeing Christ in the Old Testament. He sounds like he's a Westminster student at that. But, you know, what's interesting is that he says there's three things

America needs to imitate Christ on. One is commitment to charity or love.

The specific temper of mind, that is, a commitment to peace. And then, thirdly, is humility, someone who is willing to humble himself to serve others.

He said, unless we have those qualities of love, peace, and humility, like Jesus Christ, we'll never be a happy nation.

These were his official words that he wrote as the victorious, conquering general at the end of the

Revolution. He wrote it to 13 governors of now independent states. He signed it 13 times, and this is the longest prayer that he wrote.

He says, I now make it my earnest prayer for you. And then he goes on, and he includes then that our prayer that we would imitate

Christ. So, let's go back. There's the glove of Jesus. Does he reject providence?

No. His favorite doctrine. Does he reject prayer? There's over 100 prayers. Does he reject clergy?

No. 50 were in his home, and 50 letters written. Does he reject the Bible? No. He calls it the

Word of God that's eternal, a revelation, and he cites it over 200 times.

And then, finally, what about Christ? He says he's divine, and he is the one who we must imitate if we're going to be successful as a nation.

You know what? We can no longer call Washington a deist. It is a lie. It is a historical fallacy.

It is historical revisionism. If Washington is speaking himself, the facts are just straight up.

He was clearly identifying himself as a Christian man writing to what he understood to be a generally

Christian public. I want to give our email address here if you are listening and you have a question for Dr.

Peter Lilback on the life and faith of George Washington, the father of our country as he is known.

The email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. This is a live broadcast, so please send your emails as soon as you can.

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

How would you respond to the argument that George Washington was just speaking in the reverent language of common in his day?

You have people even like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson who would be far to the left of Washington, but in comparison to today's world would have been arch -fundamentalists if they were alive today.

But you have people just using this reverent, very deeply reverent and religious language about God and about Christ, and yet you had someone like Thomas Jefferson having a version of the

Bible where he removed all the miraculous occurrences and so on. So how would you describe or answer that question,

I should say? Was he just merely mimicking the popular language of the day in reference to God?

Well, it's clear that you could argue that Washington was just simply trying to get votes and had speechwriters making him sound religious, which seems to be the practice today.

The only problem is that when much of what Washington said, he wasn't running for office. He used this sort of language not just in public speeches, but he used it in private correspondence.

It reflects his personal commitment, and sometimes he does it in public situations where it's utterly unnecessary, and he does it consistently when he's writing to churches.

It's amazing. I think Washington actually wrote something like 30 different letters to different churches throughout his life, and he could have easily given those away to letter writers and not bothered to sign them.

But in doing so, he consistently uses language that reflects a belief in eternal life, a belief in the work of God in history, the belief of biblical truth.

So he's indicating himself as a person of faith to people of faith, and he never had to do that.

It was not required of him at all. So I think the bottom line is he communicates his religious language, his faith language, in private and public, but there's a couple places where he actually, and this is actually written to a minister, which is fascinating.

He says, there is no man who has a more commitment of faith and trust in the

Almighty than me. I think that's quite a statement. He's saying, this is a private letter to a minister, and he says,

I have a deeper faith. And you know, the reason he had to say this is when he was at Valley Forge, remember,

Congress had fled Philadelphia. They had never supplied him adequately.

The British now control the capital city, and Washington was freezing in the cold at Valley Forge.

He didn't have anything except a prayer. And that's the point. The reason that he was able to continue to persevere when everything was against him is that he believed, as he says, our cause is just and God will stand with justice.

He was a man who believed that God's goodness would supply the need of his people if they were faithful to follow him.

One of the best examples that I love to appeal to, and when people come with me on a tour to Valley Forge, I love to take them to the place where General Muhlenberg was actually encamped as part of the army.

Muhlenberg was actually a Lutheran minister. He's the man who famously was preaching on Ecclesiastes, where it says there's a time for war and a time for peace.

And he opened up his Geneva robe as he was preaching, and there under his preaching robe, he had on a

Continental Army uniform of an officer, and he said, this is a time for war.

Suddenly drums were beating in the background and he marched the men off from church to go to battle.

I wondered if you were a wife and you said, you got to go to church this Sunday, you never go. And all of a sudden he goes and off he goes to work.

Well, anyway, here's this Muhlenberg, General Muhlenberg at Valley Forge. His father,

Henry Melchior Muhlenberg was a Lutheran minister. And in his diary, he said,

I was in camp. He lived in Trapp, Pennsylvania, just a few miles away from Valley Forge because his son was an officer.

He was able to get in to visit. And he wrote, George Washington came to the camp and he told his men to put away their swearing and their unbelief and to put their faith in the person who only talks it.

He is preaching the gospel. That's quite an amazing thing for a missionary preacher to look at the commanding officer and say, this man was actually preaching.

So that's an eyewitness testimony of Washington by calling on his men as he did in some of his general orders, while you're becoming a patriot, a man of honor, add to your honor, the highest honor of being a

Christian. He wanted his men to put their faith in Christ. Amen. Now every child, well,

I don't actually, I don't know if every child today knows this story, but when I was a child, and I'm sure when you were a child, you heard the story about George Washington being so honest that when he chopped down his father's favorite cherry tree and his father was upset, his father had to ask him about it.

And George, in his honesty admitted that he chopped it down. Now, obviously, legends like that sometimes come from a reality, and was there something about his honesty that seemed above and beyond the ordinary man in that day where that legend would come from such a person?

Well, let's put it this way. We'll start with the written statements of Washington. He does say honesty is the best policy, and he really believed that speaking authentically was part of true leadership.

He recognized that leaders, especially in the military, cannot say everything they know because they have to operate under a plan that were surprised as necessary.

But his position was it was important to be as authentically truthful as you could. But now, while that was an important thing, that doesn't say anything about the cherry tree episode, so let's talk about that.

Number one, we know George Washington had an axe, and we know also that he grew cherry trees on his estate because he mentioned them.

Now, how do we get this story? Well, it actually comes to us from an Anglican minister by the name of Mason Weems.

He's sometimes called Parson Weems. He was actually from the part of Virginia where Washington was from, and he actually was someone who

Washington knew personally, and Washington actually endorsed one of his books, gave him a very high endorsement.

So he heard him preach. He knew his writings, and according to Parson Weems, whose first biography of George Washington has never gone out of print since the beginning, it was known by Abraham Lincoln.

It's still in print to this day. It's the bestseller for 100 years on Washington's life. He was from that area, and according to him, he went around and interviewed all the families that knew

Washington, and he asks, well, tell us some of the anecdotes and stories you know about young George.

None of us knew he would become such a famous man, but everybody wants to know about him, and I'm writing a book.

Tell me some of the stories. Well, he tells us this story was learned by the people that knew George Washington and his family as he was growing up.

That doesn't mean it's true, but that's where it comes from, that it was a legend that was heard and it was picked up.

Now, what is interesting is that there is an ability to show that the story was circulating even in the early years of the

American independency, because there was a very special kind of tile, excuse me, porcelain,

I should say, that was being made in Germany, and there was a special vase that was made of this very unique porcelain that's only made for a few years in Germany.

They can date it as experts, and it has a cherry tree axis, 1776, and the letters

GW on it, which shows that the story of the cherry tree and George Washington made it all the way to Europe very early after American independence in the 1780s.

So it wasn't when Washington was now the president when someone made it up, but there's actually evidence that it had been picked up probably by the

Hessian soldiers. Remember, a number of German soldiers came and encountered Washington, and he became recognized as one of the great military heroes of history.

So this childhood story was actually being commemorated in Germany, and there's evidence for that.

So I actually include that in the book and my sources, if anybody's interested. We're going to be going to a break right now.

If you have a question for Dr. Pete Littleback on George Washington, his life and faith, please email us at chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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

When you email us, please give at least your first name and the city and state from where you are writing, and we look forward to hearing from you and your questions for Dr.

Pete Littleback after these messages, so don't go away. I'm James White of Alpha Omega Ministries.

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That's wrbc .us. Welcome back.

This is Chris Zarnes, and if you've just tuned in to Iron Sharpens Iron, our guest today is Dr. Peter Lilback, who is professor of historical theology and president of Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

And before I forget, let me give their website. It's wts .edu.

W -T -S for Westminster Theological Seminary dot edu. And we are discussing

George Washington's Sacred Fire, the book, the 1 ,208 -page monumental work by Dr.

Pete Lilback. And before we even go into our audience questions, how long did it take you to write this 1 ,200 -page massive monumental work?

Well, let's say I never knew I was going to write the book, but I got embarrassed very early on in my first pastorate when

I was in the middle of what, believe it or not, was the year of the Bible in America. Ronald Reagan was president.

The Congress had signed this legislation, and Bible storybooks were being passed out at a local school in Oxford, Pennsylvania, and the

ACLU came to town and said, you're going to get sued unless you stop. I was appalled that they were taking away children's storybooks in the year of the

Bible, and I wrote a letter to the editor. Little did I know that when you stick your head out of the foxhole, you get shot at.

A week later is the weekly newspaper, and they criticized my lack of knowledge, and I thought, my goodness, maybe

I'm wrong. I'm not an American church historian. I did Reformation. It's my field. And so I thought, well,

I better know what I'm talking about. So I decided I would never talk about this subject again until I'd researched it.

So it became a hobby out of sheer embarrassment. Fell in love with it, and early on came across the debate on Washington and started to pursue him.

So 20 years later, after note cards and study leaves and on and off, you know, a hobby, you don't do it all the time, but I put a lot of energy in.

I got a call from one of the staff members of Dr. James Kennedy at Coral Ridge Presbyterian, and it was amazing.

He said to his staff, if you can get your book done this year, I will buy 19 ,000 copies for my ministry.

I was stunned. The book was not even written. He just knew my research and my theme, and he said, well, that meant

I had to get it done. So for the next nine months, from about 11 o 'clock at night to two in the morning, almost every day, every night,

I should say, I just was in there cranking out those notes, trying to get the book done. By God's grace, it got done.

So we published 25 ,000 of them, and 19 went, and we sold them out for the next two or three years, and they were just kind about running out, and we thought, well,

I guess that's the end of that. What a wonderful story. And then that's when some guy named Glenn Beck got a hold of the book.

He started telling his folks on his national television radio program, every American needs to read this book.

And believe it or not, it shot up to be the number one best -selling book on the Amazon book list for a week.

It's an extraordinary success. Totally unplanned, but so, what can

I say? It was a hobby for 20 years, and it took me nine months to write it, but I actually thought, before all that first invitation came along,

I would probably just have a lot of note cards and files that I would pass on to my children, and they'd throw them away, and I'd just research and have fun.

There it is. It's a book. Amen. And let me say, with all respect to Glenn Beck, I hope that he one day embraces the faith of George Washington, as he did enthusiastically embrace your book.

Some of our listeners may not be aware that he is a Mormon, and we hope that one day he comes to faith in the true living

God. But before I go on to a couple of our audience questions, one of the controversies, as you are fully aware, that surrounds

George Washington is the fact that he was a member of the Masonic Lodge. And my very dear friend,

John Otis, who happens to be a Presbyterian minister, wrote a really phenomenal work.

In fact, it's the largest book critiquing the Masonic Lodge from a

Christian perspective in print, unveiling Freemasonry's idolatry.

And so, this seems to be an incompatible thing with Christianity, membership in the

Masonic Lodge. How do you explain the fact that George Washington was a member of this lodge?

Well, I think it's an excellent question, and a very important one. In fact, when

I started researching Washington, when I discovered he was a Mason, I said, okay, well, that destroys my case.

I just simply said, it's impossible that he could have been a Christian. But I said, but then

I started doing some more research, and I found some interesting things. The man, Parson Weems, who is this

Anglican minister who is known as a gospel preacher, who did so much work to publicize

Washington as a moral man and a leader, he himself was a Mason. And I thought, wait a second, why would a gospel man be a

Mason? What's going on here? It didn't make any sense. And well, I started doing research, and I was able to get up to the

Boston Athenaeum. The reason I went there is that that's where most of George Washington's personal library ended up residing.

It's a long story how it got there. But it's a limited access library. It was given permission to do research there.

And as I did, I came across various volumes of sermons that George Washington had actually collected and then had bound together.

They were not published by anybody except him. According to the family tradition that every

Sabbath afternoon, Washington would read a sermon to Martha. That was the way they would celebrate the quietness of a

Sabbath in the afternoon. They would read sermons. And so he had bound them together. He called them his political sermons, and they had miscellaneous sermons.

And there are multiple volumes, maybe five or six of these. And one of them he called his Masonic sermons. And I said, what in the world is that?

Masonic sermons? I started opening them up, and lo and behold, I discovered it was the practice of the

Masonic order in early colonial America and into the Washington era.

On St. John's Day, to have one of the leading ministers of the area to come in and preach the gospel or preach a text to the

Masonic order. In fact, one of the Presbyterian ministers that a lot of our men loved to this day, Samuel Miller, used to preach

Masonic sermons. That was part of his regular preaching. And let me tell you, he was as orthodox and faithful as they come.

And so I thought, what in the world is this all about? I've got to start reading this. And so one of the things

I did is I went back, I got a Masonic encyclopedia, and I discovered a segment that was called

Christian Masons. And as I read the article, it said, we as Masons must recognize that wherever Christianity goes, it evangelizes and it

Christianizes. And we must admit there is a form of the Masonic order that calls themselves

Christian Masons. Now, we don't see ourselves as Christians in this tradition, but they exist.

I thought, well, that's fascinating. They admit that. And then I went a little bit further and I started reading the sermons from Washington, from this collection of Masonic sermons.

So here's one of my favorites. A particular preacher was preaching and he said, let me, in the midst of my sermon, remind you of what the bylaws of our

Masonic order tells us. Well, we are Christian Masons. And then he quotes the bylaws.

It says, because we are Christian Masons, no stupid atheist or deist may be a member of our fraternity.

Now I'm quoting now, if there's any atheists or deists out there, I didn't call you stupid. That's another debate for another day.

That's right out of the bylaws. They said, you can't be a deist or an atheist to be a member because we believe atheism is stupid.

And then I went a little bit further and I started looking at some of the biblical preaching. And here's one of my favorites.

There was a minister who was preaching in one of the Masonic sermons that went like this. Some of you think you're going to get into heaven because you have worn the robe of Martin Luther.

You're in the Lutheran tradition, but that won't get you into heaven. Some of you think you're going to get into heaven because you've worn the robe of John Calvin.

That's not going to get you into heaven. Some of you think you're going to get into heaven because you've worn the robe of St. Augustine.

But Augustinians aren't going to get to heaven because of being an Augustinian. Some of you think you're going to get into heaven because you've worn the apron of a

Mason. I assure you, no Masonic apron is going to get you into heaven. If you want to get into heaven, you must be clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ received by faith.

Amen. And I said, that's a sermon that was preached in a Masonic home.

And it was in George Washington's Masonic sermons in his library that he personally collected, and the answer is yes.

So I want to say, I'm not a Mason. I've never been a Mason. I don't intend to become a

Mason, and I don't urge anyone to become a Mason. I recognize the Masonic order can, in fact, be absolutely hostile and alien to biblical

Christianity. But apparently, for a period of time in America, there was a movement called

Christian Masonry, and they saw themselves as being compatible. Now, let me give you a good example of this going on in America.

Maybe you know the name of John Wanamaker. Wanamaker was one of the great retail experts in America, a young Reformed Presbyterian businessman in Philadelphia.

He started the Wanamaker's Department Stores, and he started the Sunday Breakfast Mission and many other wonderful deeds that Christians shared, known as one of the most godly men of his day.

And he said, here was his principles. He said, if you want to become an important biblical sound leader in your community, you need to read the

Bible as a Christian. You need to keep the Sabbath. John Wanamaker used to close the curtains on his window on Sundays so he wouldn't be tempted to do window shopping on the

Lord's Day. And then he said, you should become a Mason. I don't know what to tell you about that, but this is part of the history.

So as a historian, I discovered that there is a sound historical contextual analysis of the

Masonic Christian intersection in the colonial era in America that did not demand that you rejected the

Christian faith. I mentioned Parson Weems, who was known as an evangelical gospel preacher, who was always attacked because of his gospel analysis and moral character of Washington.

He was an active member. So do what you will. I don't recommend anybody to do it, but that's part of the story.

And I think, so therefore, my point is that being a Mason at that time in history did not prove you were a deist or a non -Christian.

We have a listener, Calvin in Fayetteville, North Carolina, who wants to know how

George Washington viewed slavery in light of Scripture. Obviously that's even more of a controversial issue than the

Masonic Lodge is, and it is brought up very often today, especially by liberals. So if you could comment on that.

Yes. First of all, George Washington lived a productive life, as we know, but he was the fourth generation of Washington Virginians, and he had known slavery from the very first breath he took until the day he died.

Slavery surrounded Virginia. It was part of his family, and he owned slaves. So his earliest writings, he has a cavalier attitude toward his slaves.

He mentions one slave that's giving him problems. He says, take him back to the Caribbean and sell him and bring back lemons and limes and molasses and maybe some rub.

I want to get rid of him. Your heart breaks when you read about that, because he had indifference.

But you know, it was interesting, from that point, something happened when America began to realize that they were being enslaved by Britain through the taxation of the

Stamp Act and the Intolerable Act, so that when the Fairfax Resolves were passed, the decision was made by the

Virginians that they would no longer participate in the slave trade with Britain.

They ended it entirely. Now, that was not renouncing slavery. It was renouncing the international slave trade.

That was the first step, and I think there was a moral conflict that began to emerge in the minds of several of the leaders who were slave owners in the colonies.

They said, you know, we don't want to be slaves. How is it that we have slaves?

The golden rule began to do unto others as you have them do unto you. We don't want to be slaves.

Why do we have slaves? Now, that was a moral struggle. It was endemic.

It was culturized. It was accepted. But then what happens is that after the Revolution, the traveling

Methodist ministers stop in to visit George Washington. The bishops of the church, as they come in to visit, they record this actually in their minutes of their visit with him.

They said, General Washington, now that you are back home on your plantation, we believe it's time for slavery to end.

Where do you stand on slavery? And George Washington, according to their records, the

Methodist bishops that visited his home said, slavery must end in America, and I believe it must end.

I think it's wrong. Amen. The problem is, how do we end it?

And he began to envision the question, is this something that is going to eventually phase out because it has to?

And so Washington said, I'm not in political office at this time, which he wasn't. He was a private citizen before the

Constitutional Convention and all the things that happened there. He wasn't serving in the

House of Burgesses. But he said, so I can't do anything publicly, but I want you to know, slavery does need to end.

So he admitted at that point in a private conversation. Now, Washington continued to have slaves as we go on from that point, even until his time as the president.

But what is interesting is that if he gets to the end of his life, if he's thinking about his life and what he's done and the fact that he believes he's going to meet his maker and give an account for his life, he began to wrestle with this.

And in his will, he said, I, upon my death, intend to free every slave that is mine, and I personally will provide for them.

And I especially remember my body slave, Billy Lee, and he provided a lifetime endowment for him.

During these years, as Washington made a commitment in his will to free his slaves, he actually began to train them in trades.

They began to learn skills that they would need upon the ending of their life as slaves of a master, but becoming self -employed.

And so what is interesting is that as we look at Washington's life, we see a man who is clearly flawed by his era and his conviction, who over time begins to realize his failure and begins to address it and then takes decisive actions to end it, so that Washington is the only slave -owning president that freed his slaves on his own initiative that America has ever had.

The other president who had slaves were forced to end them by death or by the

Civil War. Washington actually set the model as America followed his pattern that we could have avoided the

Civil War and freed the slaves. He said, we need to end them at the end of our generation and provide for them.

Amen. So even where he's the most flawed, he is a man who is showing integrity and beginning to show the way forward.

And so I have to even admire him, I guess condemn his owning slaves, but I could see over his life, he actually began to have an attitude of, this is wrong,

I have to do something. He did something and he showed the way forward. Amen. Even here, I say thank

God for his integrity. Yes, I agree with you 100 percent. And we have to go to our final break. And one more time, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away, we'll be right back with Dr. Pete Lillback and George Washington's Strange Fire.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Ornzen. If you've just tuned us in, we have been interviewing Dr. Peter Lilbeck, Professor of Historical Theology and President of Westminster Theological Seminary on God's on George Washington's sacred fire.

And this is his 1200 -page monumental biography of the founder of our country or the father of our country,

George Washington. And before I go back to our listener questions, I have to announce, especially since this is a friend of Dr.

Lilbeck, Dr. Albert Moeller is going to be my guest on Iron Sharpens Iron on Monday, August 31st, to discuss his soon -to -be -published book,

We Cannot Be Silent, Speaking Truth to a Culture, Redefining Sex, Marriage, and the

Very Meaning of Right and Wrong. So mark your calendars for Monday, August 31st for Dr.

Albert Moeller on Iron Sharpens Iron. Dr. Lilbeck, we have a listener.

We have Mike in Birmingham, Alabama, who says, What words of wisdom from Washington's farewell address on September 17th, 1796 are most needed for Americans today?

That's an excellent question and a great way to end our program today. Well, those words of Washington are extraordinary.

And I think they have been forgotten, ignored, and downplayed through the years, sad to say.

One of the things that Washington did warn us out early on was avoid entangling alliances.

He said, America needs to make sure it stands strong on its home turf.

And we've gotten involved in some international issues from time to time that maybe we shouldn't have been involved.

But that was for an earlier time, and we can debate whether it's good that America has sought to be so involved all around the world in so many different things.

But what I would say are the two most important lessons that we need to pay attention to and are forgotten is that, number one,

Washington warned America about debt. He said, debt is dangerous and it will destroy.

He said, we need to get out of our war debts and we need to be a country that does not accumulate debt. If Washington saw the amount of indebtedness that we have today, he would be unable to contain himself at the folly of what the country has done to itself.

He said, debt is dangerous. And boy, we've indebted ourselves for future generations. And all of our founders believed putting in national debt that future generations would have to pay for was an immoral act, that each generation needs to pay off its debts, not push them off on somebody you say you care for.

But the words that he gave us were very simply these. He says, religion and morality are indispensable supports for political prosperity.

No matter what experience, excuse me, what minds of peculiar structure may say or people of a peculiar turn of mind might think, experience teaches us that national morality cannot exist without religion.

What was he saying? He said, we need to have a way of reminding ourselves that our values are transcendent.

They don't come from the state. They're not defined by a community. They are something that's that are literally above this rule.

They come from God. And so with our destruction of the Ten Commandments, with our emphasis on what we call values clarification, because there are no longer ethics or morals that stand,

Washington said, we have taken away the pillars that support our Constitution.

I, you know, we often hear about the wall of separation that separates church and state.

That's the Jeffersonian metaphor. I wish we talked more about Washington's pillars of our political prosperity, religion and morality.

Those are the supports. When they're taken away, the floor begins to sag and one day it's going to cave in.

Well, we're seeing it happen right now. There's one institution after another is being redefined and changed.

Washington, if he had been alive to hear the Supreme Court decision where he basically told that same sex marriage is legal, he would have said, don't you know that I drummed out of my core two men for the sin of sodomy?

That's right in his records. They saw that as unacceptable. He would have said, don't ask. Don't tell.

What do you mean? Don't ask. Don't tell. You discover it. It destroys the integrity of the military. Well, now we see marriage being defined as anything goes.

We're hearing about polygamous lining up, getting ready to get married because they're saying, well, you're not giving us marriage equality.

Well, we don't know what's going to happen, but Washington told us that experience shows us that national morality cannot exist without religious training.

So what does that mean? That means the church is far more important than ever. But sadly, the church has lost its voice.

The apostle Paul now, not George Washington, but Washington would have understood it. If the horn no longer sounds like a horn, where's the clarion call to go into battle?

You know, we don't know what the church believes anymore because it's confused. It's your feelings.

It's not God's word. So I think Washington's call to have a bedrock support for political prosperity and moral and religious training, especially true for the reformed faith, because we believe historically that the true religion is revealed in the word of God.

And it is the Ten Commandments that gives us, if you will, the basis for true morals. And so we are the left of the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

If we no longer shine in darkness, then darkness prevails. If we no longer are salty, then decay proceeds.

But you know, it's amazing. The darker that the day becomes, the more brilliant a little candle becomes.

This is a day for us as believers to shine even more brightly than ever before by speaking the truth in love, by being salty, by being light -filled, speaking the truth in love.

Not unloving truth, not love without truth, but speaking the truth in love. So I think

Washington's call is still valid for us, but I think biblical Christianity is what needs to step forward.

And Washington would have understood that very dearly because he called the

Bible, the blessed religion revealed in the word of God will remain eternal.

Those are his very words. Amen. And I know that with time running out that we have to have you back on this program,

Dr. Littleback, if you're willing, because there's a lot that we still haven't covered on the life and faith of George Washington that I want to address in another program.

So I hope that you do agree to come back sometime in August when we have our first opening on the calendar.

Well, we'll work on a date. August may not work because of schedule, but we'll find a time. It's an honor to be with you,

Chris. Okay, well, we're not actually finished yet. We just wanted to say that, first of all, the listener in Birmingham, Alabama reminded me that I want to thank

Solid Ground Christian Books in Alabama for being one of our sponsors of this program.

That's Solid -Ground -Books .com, Solid -Ground -Books .com.

You can order Dr. Littleback's book from them, and you can also get it from another one of our sponsors,

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com, CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for Bible Book Service .com.

The last question, which is also being posed to us from Mike from Birmingham, Alabama, what would shock

George Washington most if he were alive today about what has happened to this country that he is called the founding father of?

And I know that you already addressed some of that, but if you could close the program with just some of those or a couple of those.

Well, there was a letter that he intended to send to Congress when he was the new president, and he actually opined on the future of the

Constitution. And he said, it's very possible we'll lose this Constitution. And he said, if it happens, it will come about, these are my words summarizing his, because of the laziness of the electorate and the drunkenness for power of the politicians.

And I think he would be surprised to see just how lazy the electorate is and how drunk for power our elected officials are, where they're setting aside the

Constitution to do whatever they want because they can get away with it, and the people are not standing up and saying, you can't do that.

Imagine the whole state of California voted in Proposition 8 to define marriage, and the

Supreme Court justices said, we don't care what the will of the people is. We're telling you what you have to do. Well, for Washington, that would have said, to arms, men, we're going to take down that government.

They're destroying our freedom. The loss of love of freedom that's happened in America, lazy electorate,

I think that would have most surprised Washington, because he was the richest man in Virginia, and he risked everything for freedom.

And he said, that's what I want for my country, is a nation of free men, the sacred fire of liberty.

Amen, amen. Well, it has been such an honor and privilege to have you on this program,

Dr. Lillback, and as I said, I definitely want you back as soon as your schedule permits.

And I know that the Westminster Theological Seminary website, as I said earlier, is wts .edu.

That's W -T -S, standing for Westminster Theological Seminary dot E -D -U. Are you available for speaking engagements at churches and other places like that?

I try to get out and speak as much as my schedule permits, and the way you do that is just contact the seminary, and we'll talk about availability.

It's an honor to share the message. And I want to finish, since so many folks are informed, the seminary obviously doesn't focus on the theme of my book.

Washington is not one of the classes that we give at Westminster. But Westminster is very concerned about what we call public theology, how what we believe as Christians impacts the world we live in.

And so a very deep concern that we have to develop is how do we engage the world around us with wisdom, with truth, and love?

How do we speak to our neighbors and to our government in a way that shows we're Christians, both in truth and both in love?

And that's where we gotta end it. That's where we have to end it, Dr. Lilbeck. And thank you all for listening. Thank you,

Dr. Lilbeck, for being on the program. I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

Savior than you are a sinner. Have a safe and joy -filled Independence Day weekend.