March 11, 2024 Show with Tobias Riemenschneider on “Resisting Tyranny: A Christian Response to Government Overreach”

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Introduction and Show Theme

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, 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 11th day of March 2024.

Before I introduce my guest and our topic for the day, I want to remind you that this Friday, March 15th, at 7 p .m., I will be on Long Island, New York, at the Coral House Catering Hall in Baldwin, Long Island, to emcee the Grace Christian Academy of Long Island Fundraising Gala.

The guest speaker that night will be author and educator Dr. Ernie Zara, who's been on my program a number of times. And I hope that as many of you in the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listening audience can attend that as possible, especially those of you who live on Long Island or near there.

And if you want more details on registering for this fundraising gala, go to gcali .com, gcali .com forward slash gala. Once again, that's gcali .com forward slash gala. And all the information that you'll need to register will be right there on that website.

And I hope to see as many of you as possible there. It's this Friday, March 15th, 7 p .m., at the Coral House Catering Hall, Baldwin, Long Island. But I'm absolutely thrilled to have a first-time guest today, whom I was introduced to through the webcast of my very dear longtime friend, Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries.

I'm speaking, of course, about the dividing line. And I saw the interview that James conducted with Tobias Riebenschneider, and I knew immediately that I wanted to have Tobias on the program. Tobias is pastor of the Evangelical Reform Baptist Church in Frankfurt, Germany, where he is conducting this interview live right now.

He's also a trained lawyer, founder of Pro Reggae Ministries, and an anti-abortion activist. He's also the co-author of the Frankfurt Declaration of Christian and Civil Liberties. And today we're going to be addressing the theme of his book, Resisting Tyranny, a Christian response to government overreach.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Tobias Riebenschneider.

Thank you, brother. It's a great pleasure and honor for me to be here.

The Evangelical Reformed Baptist Church in Frankfurt

Well, first of all, let our listeners know about the Evangelical Reform Baptist Church of Frankfurt, Germany.

Yes. So, we started working on this church plant in April 2014. That is my now co-pastor, Peter Schilt, and myself. And the church was officially constituted in November 2016. And it's one of only very few Reformed, especially Reformed Baptist churches in Germany.

And by the grace of God, we grew and still are still growing quite a lot, at least for German dimensions, not for American dimensions, I guess. But, so currently in our church service, you know, we have about 150, 160, 170 people in our church services right now.

Wow. And the number is growing. And I, yeah, so this makes us the biggest Reformed church in all of Germany.

Well, you know, you're not far from being the biggest Reformed church in all of the United States, because Reformed Baptist churches, I should say, Reformed Baptist churches tend to be rather comparatively small.

Not because of the stereotype of us not being interested in evangelism is true. That's false. But because the things that we teach are, very often, depending upon where you live, they're very unpopular.

Yes.

Because we really militate against the modern culture and the watered-down gospel of mainstream evangelicalism.

Yes, that's true. And so do we. I mean, just preaching Calvinism, that is, you know, no one in Germany really likes Calvinism. That makes you a really strange guy. And of course, other things. But actually, that is precisely why people, especially younger people, are drawn to us.

Because most churches in Germany are very liberal, are more about entertainment than actually about the Bible and the Word of God. And they are charismatic and so on and so forth. So if you're looking for something like a Reformed church, where there's good Bible preaching and so on, where there's solid, robust theology, then you don't have many options.

And I guess that's why we are growing, because we are one of those few churches. And people, especially young people, are more and more yearning for this, because I think they realize how empty most churches are.

So yeah, I think that's a good development. It's still a small development, but something is happening, I hope.

Amen. Well, if anybody wants to find out more about this fine congregation in Frankfurt, Germany, go to erb-frankfurt .de. That's erb-frankfurt .de. And God willing, we'll be repeating that throughout the show.

The Frankfurt Declaration and Resistance to COVID Overreach

And also, let us know about the Frankfurt Declaration.

Yes. So during COVID, Germany was really hit hard. Not so much by the virus, but more by the state measures. And I know there were a few states in America, like California, that also had very harsh restrictions.

But I guess Germany was probably even harsher. So we ended up with every politician, basically, advocating for a general mandatory vaccination for the entire populace. And so by God's grace, it never came.

But it was a very frightening time. The state really was very aggressive and overreached. And at first, I was a little scared. I mean, I knew right from the beginning, when they first started and said, okay, there will be a lockdown in three days.

No one is allowed to leave the house. And also church services are not allowed. Close your church. I knew right from the beginning, that's not right. I cannot do that. We cannot stop worshipping God. So we still met.

We couldn't meet in the church building we were using, because it's not our own. We rented it from another church. And they said, you can't have it. It's closed. So we met in the houses of brothers and sisters.

We split up into smaller groups, met in the houses. So I knew right from the beginning, we cannot just do what the state is demanding. This would be wrong. We have to worship God. We have to have fellowship.

We have to continue to care for our sick and so on. But I was a little afraid. This was the first time I really went against the state, went against law. Normally, I didn't do that. So this was exciting.

And I tried to basically to do everything in secret. So hoping and praying that no one would find out, that the police wouldn't come, that the neighbors wouldn't call the police and so on. But then something changed.

And I can pinpoint that. It was exactly when I heard that Pastor James Coates in Canada was thrown into jail, because his church stayed open. And there I realized, OK, now they're really going aggressively against my brothers.

I cannot remain silent. I have to join the fight. And I have to raise my voice against this injustice. So I, together with my co-pastor, we draw a first statement. Statement for Germany, where we basically said, OK, this is wrong from a biblical standpoint.

We brought biblical arguments, gave the Bible verses. OK, this is wrong. We should not obey. This is tyranny. We have to resist. And then came the time when, you know, I was contacted by a brother from London.

And he had this idea to bring together pastors from all around the world to write a joint declaration, a joint statement against those COVID measures. And so I joined this group online. But after a few weeks, I guess, it became clear that not everyone was going to the same direction.

So a group split up, which consisted of three pastors, including myself, and then also a pastor from France, who is actually an American missionary to France, but has been ministering in France for 40 years, and a pastor from South Africa.

And over the course of, I don't know, a few months, we met on a regular basis online and draw up this Frankfurt Declaration. And, you know, of course, we had no idea if anyone would be interested in reading our declaration.

Yeah. But I tried to pull my contacts. I tried to contact my friends, for example, James White, a common friend we have. Also James Coates, who became my friend during COVID. And everyone I contacted, almost everyone, I mean, there were one or two exceptions, of course, but almost everyone was really happy, was really delighted with this declaration.

And they said, I will sign it, and I will help you to send it on to other guys who might also want to sign it. And so this quickly became a much bigger thing than we had ever imagined. And probably the biggest surprise probably was when I got an email in the middle of the night, 2 a .m. or 2 .30 a .m., from the office of John MacArthur.

They were telling me John MacArthur wants to sign the declaration. Wow. And this was really amazing, because I was told in advance, you know, it will probably not happen, because normally he wouldn't sign anything where he wasn't involved and so on in the drafting.

So this was, I really got tears in my eyes. I was so amazed how God was blessing this declaration we dropped. So yes, this is basically the story behind this declaration.

Well, praise God. And if anybody wants to find out more information about the Frankfurt Declaration, you could go to frankfurtdeclaration .com, frankfurtdeclaration .com. And before we go into the heart of our theme today, which is your book on resisting tyranny, a Christian response to government overreach, we have a tradition here on Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

Whenever we have a first-time guest, we have that guest give a summary of his or her salvation testimony, which would include any kind of religious upbringing in which that person may have been raised, also what kind of providential circumstances our Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them.

And I would love to hear your story.

Salvation from the New Apostolic Church to Reformed Baptist Faith

Yes, I'm happy to give you my story. So I was born in 1983, and I was born into the New Apostolic Church. Not the New Apostolic Reformation, the New Apostolic Church. They trace their roots back to England, 1830s England.

There was a group around Edward Irving. Maybe that name rings a bell with some, yeah.

Yeah, he's considered to be the grandfather of the charismatic movement in many.

Exactly, exactly, yes. And I think John Nelson Darby also joined the meetings a few times. But this was this circle, and out of this circle came this, well, they first called themselves the Catholic Apostolic Church.

So the basic idea was that there are new apostles now, 12 apostles, which would basically lead the bride, lead the church to Christ. So they thought that Christ was coming back during their lifetimes, of those 12 apostles, so that there were those 12 apostles who founded the church, and now there are 12 apostles who are the last in the last days when Christ returns, and they will present the bride to Christ.

So obviously, that did not happen. This is almost 200 years ago. Those apostles, self-proclaimed apostles, started dying, and Christ did not come back. And when there was only one apostle left in England, this church had already spread to Hamburg in Germany, and the Germans said, okay, we need new apostles.

And so there was a split, and this became a little later on the new Apostolic Church, and they now have, you know, they are a global church. They are especially big in Germany and Switzerland, but also in quite a few African countries.

They are also in America, but it's a small minority.

By the way, are they anti-Trinitarian?

No, no, they are not. No. So, you know, they have some true teaching. They believe in the Trinity. They believe that Christ is the Son of God. But it's still a false church, because you put your main trust not into Christ, but in those apostles.

They are basically like the Pope or like the Catholic Church. Yeah, you need them as your mediators.

Right. Like the Jehovah's Witnesses as well. They do that with the Watchtower Society.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, right. So, and he would also not really hear the gospel proclaimed, because, you know, sin wasn't really an issue, at least not when I was in that church. I mean, it became more and more liberal.

And you wouldn't hear much about sin. And if you don't hear about sin, if you don't hear about a righteous God, but only a loving God who would forgive everyone freely, then you don't understand why you need Christ dying on a cross for your sins.

So, I never really heard the gospel presented in a truthful, biblical way. I thought I would earn my way to heaven. Just be a good Neopistolic Christian. Go to church, try to be not as sinful as those outsiders, and that's it.

So, and so I was in that church for 30 years.

Wow, there was a, I don't know if it's still there, but I was saved in a Reformed Baptist Church in Amityville, Long Island. At that time, it was called Calvary Baptist Church of Amityville. It later became Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick after a merger with a Reformed Baptist Church in Merrick.

But when the church was in Amityville, it was right down the road from the New Apostolic Church of North America.

Oh, oh, okay.

On County Line Road in Amityville. And I don't know if it's affiliated with the same group, but I remember I brought flyers for a debate with James White over there once. And every man in the building, I was sneaking in during a worship service, every man was wearing a black suit, white shirt, and black tie, and every woman was wearing a white blouse and a black skirt.

Yes, yes.

So they did that in your group too?

Yes. So they don't do that anymore except for really important church services. So when an apostle actually comes to your church, to your congregation and preaches there, then you would still dress up.

And also all the office bearers, they always wear black suits, black tie, white shirt. So they still kept some of that. Um, right. So, and then what happens is, you know, I turned 18 and was about to finish school.

And I wanted to use the last summer vacation to go to America and be with a host family, an American host family. And my sister wanted to join me. She's two years younger. So I was 18, she was 16. And we contacted an organization that, you know, that found host families for you in America.

And they found a family for us in Florida. And everything really sounded great. You know, they had a big house, they had a pool, and we were really looking forward to that. Yeah. So Florida, sun and beach and everything.

And then about two weeks before our departure, this organization called us and said, well, they are very sorry, but something happened. This family cannot take us. And they had already made some inquiries.

But on such short notice, only one family was willing to take us. And that was a family not in Florida, but in Wisconsin. And that is quite, quite something different, right? So and, and they, it was a family with seven small children at that time.

And my sister and I thought, well, that's not really what we, what we were looking for. We wanted to have sun and beach and not seven small children in our vacation and during our vacation. But we decided, well, before we have to stay at home, let's do this.

So in God's providence, we ended up with this host family. And this host family, the father and the mother, they were the first born again Christians we ever met. And now they had six weeks, the entire summer vacation, they had six weeks to talk to us about the gospel or the word of God.

And they did. And we had some discussions. And I was very proud. You know, when they first told me, yeah, we believe in a six day creation because the Bible says so. I thought, oh, well, OK, they are stupid.

You know, I thought that's a prejudice some Europeans have, I guess.

And you mean the New Apostolic Church did not believe in a literal?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. They believe in science, you know. And yeah, so there's a prejudice some Europeans have, I guess, is when you meet someone in America on the countryside, they are probably not very well educated.

So and I thought, well, yeah, that's the proof. They believe in a six day creation. Have they not heard of science? So I was very proud. But but, you know, what they said, it just stick with me. And I saw their faith and I realized this faith is better than my faith.

They have actual faith. And there was a power to it because you could see how this really transformed their lives. So everything they did, they did for Christ. And I'd never seen that before. You know, just being in a McDonald's and praying loud and giving thanks for the food.

If you would never do that as a New Apostolic, you know, that would be embarrassing. Right. So everything I heard and saw from them really convinced me that this, that there was something to that, what they were telling me.

So when I was back in Germany, I still was in the New Apostolic Church. I didn't know where else to go. I, of course, knew of the Lutheran Church and the Catholic Church and the Mormons and the witnesses.

But I knew, OK, those are not the churches I want to go to. I want to find a church like I experienced in America. But I didn't know where to turn to. So I stayed in the New Apostolic Church. And then I don't think I was saved by that time.

But God had begun a work in me. And then I, you know, I wanted to have this, to see this faith again that I experienced in America. So I started watching sermons by American preachers. I thought, well, maybe this kind of faith is an American thing.

Maybe it's an American faith. Yeah, I've never seen it here in Germany. So let's try to listen to American preachers. And, you know, I think YouTube was just, you know, just started. Yeah, it was very new.

And I went online and found the shocking youth message by Paul Washer.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah. And that got me, you know. I understood that he was talking about me, that I was pretending to be a Christian, but was actually on my way to hell.

Isn't that the message where Paul said to the audience something like, I don't know why you're smiling. I'm talking about you.

Yeah, I don't know why you're clapping. I'm talking about you.

Yeah, there you go.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yes, and I understood he was talking about me. You know, I wasn't transformed. My heart wasn't changed. I was like, just like the world. I was just pretending outwardly to be something else.

But I understood for the first time. I really understood that God is an angry God and a just God, and that he will judge me at the end of time. And I will not make it to heaven because I'm just a hypocrite.

And something changed there. So this was my looking back, at least. I had no concept of what the new birth really is. Yeah, what conversation really is. But looking back, that's where I was saved, right?

So, and because things started to change, I began to read the Bible and actually believe it, including the sixth day creation and everything else. Yes, and the more I read the Bible and believed the Bible, the more I realized that what I heard from the pulpit in the Neapolitan church didn't align to what I read in the Bible.

It wasn't the Bible they were preaching. It wasn't the gospel they were preaching. So I got more and more upset with the Neapolitan church. And of course, I tried to convince people of what I have newly found out, but they were not really interested in having my thoughts.

So there came the time when I just said to my wife, I was married by then, and I said to my wife, I have no idea where to go now. I don't know what the alternative is, but I will not go to the Neapolitan church again.

I'm finished. I will not go there again. I don't know what to do. Let's just pray and wait what God will show us. And two weeks later, I heard that Peter Schilt, my now co-pastor, was coming to Frankfurt and was starting a church plant.

So I went there and after about two minutes, I knew that's what I was looking for. That's the faith I had seen in America. It's just faith in the Bible, in the word of God. And I knew I had found my new home.

So God was very gracious. It took only two weeks until I had a new church. And maybe to add this, my wife was also saved. My sister was also saved. And even my parents were saved. They had been in the Neapolitan church for 61 or 63 years, I think 63 years.

And, you know, my mother wanted, when I told my mother, I'm not going back to the Neapolitan church. I'm leaving that church. She cried through the entire night because she thought I was lost. The Neapolitan church, you think, well, that is the only way you need those apostles because only they can proclaim the forgiveness of sin.

And only they can give you the Holy Spirit by laying on of hands and so on. So we thought salvation is only with those apostles in the Neapolitan church. So my mother cried for the entire night. And then she got really upset and said, I want to go where you go.

I want to see what's going on there. And she came with an attitude. But she was convinced that this was actually the word of God that was spoken there. And she stayed. But my father didn't want to come.

Um, I think it took another half a year or so or even longer. And my mother was always, you know, telling me, you have to come. You have to come. And in the end, in the end, he said, OK, so just so that you would stop asking me.

And yeah, and I will come. And he came once and stayed. And he told me later, you know, he was a very successful businessman. And he told me later that the thought, the sheer thought that he could have been wrong in his entire life on something as important as the faith was just unbearable for him.

Because he always was right. He always had success. And and he couldn't he couldn't really bear this, even the thought that he might have been wrong in his entire life. But by the grace of God, he humbled himself and he came and he was also saved.

So the entire family was baptized in in January 2015. And yeah, they are all part of the church now. And my father, my father is now 73 and he's a deacon in our church. And I'm so grateful to God that that he that my father can can use his last his last years to really work for for God and work in his kingdom.

So, yeah, that's my story.

I love the story.

And was that congregation even back then when you visited the Evangelical Reform Baptist.

Church?

Yes.

So it was the church plant. It was the beginning of the church plant, which then two years later, two and a half years later, resulted in the constitution of Evangelical Reform Baptist Church.

Oh, praise God. Well, we're going to go to our first commercial break. If you have a question for Tobias Riemenschneider, either on his testimony or on the Frankfurt Declaration or on the congregation where he serves or on his book on tyranny, we ask of you to submit that question to Chris Arnzen at Gmail dot com.

C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at Gmail dot com. As always, give us your first name, at least your city and state and your country of residence. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

Commercial Break and Sponsor Reads

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We're now back with Tobias Riemenschneider, and he is pastor of the Evangelical Reform Baptist Church of Frankfurt, Germany. And he is also the co-author of the Frankfurt Declaration and the author of Resisting Tyranny, a Christian Response to Government Overreach.

If you have a question for Tobias, send it to chrisarnsen at gmail .com, give us a first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. Tobias, a part of the testimony you have not revealed yet is when you realized the Lord had placed a call upon your life to enter into pastoral ministry.

How did that come about?

The Call to Pastoral Ministry

Yeah, so I was part of this church plant from 2014 on, and so I first had to learn a lot. But only by the grace of God, I really made fast progress, and to the point where people starting to come to me with their questions, and I was somehow able to answer them, and answer them biblically and correctly, yeah?

So, and this development continued to the point where people said, well, he should be our pastor, together with Peter, yeah? So, and so I slowly grow into that role. I've never really, no, I wanted to have some, I wanted to have some, yeah, some role in that new church that was going to be planted.

I knew I wanted to contribute, but I really didn't think of becoming a pastor. But it just so happened that more and more people actually told me, well, we think you should be our pastor. And this was very important for me.

I mean, I think, you know, you should also have some sort of inner calling. What is more important for me is the calling by the church, because I can deceive myself. I know many young men who believe they are called by God to do great things, and I'm not sure if others agree.

So, for me, it's important that others see this as well, that the church agrees and says, we think you should be a pastor, because we see how God is working in you and through you, and we see the progress you're making, and we think you meet the biblical qualifications.

So, I was still a little afraid, because I knew what a great sinner I was and still am. So, I didn't feel fit for that ministry. But I think Paul says, no one is fit, right? So, it was basically how this came about.

Then also, in my heart, the desire grew to be a shepherd for these people. You know, it changed how I viewed those people. I began to view them as sheep and feel, I became a shepherd, or I got a shepherd's heart for them.

And so, I slowly just grew into this. And then when the church was constituted in 2016, Peter and I were both ordained as pastors. So, I still worked full-time as a lawyer. So, Peter was full-time pastoring the church.

I was just trying to do my best, but was still fully employed as a lawyer. And just, I don't know exactly, maybe three years ago or so, I was able to also become a full-time pastor, which, yeah, also this desire, it just grew and grew stronger and stronger while the years passed.