December 19, 2017 Show with Gary DeMar on “The ‘Gay Wedding Cake’ Controversy & What this Means for America & for Christ’s Church” PLUS Josh Buice on “The New Calvinism”

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

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

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

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at IronSharpensIronRadio .com.

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you a happy Tuesday on this 19th day of December 2017, and today we are going to be continuing a theme that we actually started with Pastor Josh Bice of Praise Mill Baptist Church months ago, but today we are going to be continuing the discussion on the gay wedding cake controversy and what this means for America and for Christchurch with Gary DeMar of American Vision.

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All right, that's enough of the stupidest song that I've ever heard in my life.

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MacArthur Park, someone left a cake out in the rain, and one of the reasons

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I started the program with that song, or at least a part of that song as much as I could handle, is because,

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I mean obviously that song is supposed to be allegorical about something and I have no idea what it is, but people laugh at it usually because it sounds like this crybaby whining about a cake being left out in the rain, and it seems that we have a tyranny of crybabies who are really gaining far too much foothold in the

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United States and around the world, but today we have Gary DeMar, as I was mentioning, who has his

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Master of Divinity from Reformed Theological Seminary, he's the founder and senior fellow of American Vision, an author of countless essays, news articles, and more than 27 book titles, who has been featured by nearly every major news media outlet, and has hosted the

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Gary DeMar Show, History Unwrapped, and Gary DeMar's Vintage Point, Vantage Point, I'm sorry, and Web Show, and is a regular contributor to AmericanVision .org,

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and as I said we are going to be discussing today the gay wedding cake controversy and what this means for America and Christchurch during our first hour on the program, and it's great to have you back,

03:36

Gary DeMar. It's good to be back. And before we go on to the theme, even though you addressed a summary of what

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American Vision is all about, there are new listeners joining our audience every day, so if you could give us another summary of American Vision.

03:53

Well American Vision started actually in the late 1970s, I'm not really the founder, it was founded by a

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I was asked to come on to be a writer and a researcher back in 1980. He eventually,

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Steve eventually, left American Vision probably about 1983 or 4, and I became president at that particular time, and we started off mostly in the area of America's Christian heritage.

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That was the early theme of American Vision, that's why it was called American Vision, and we expanded the intent of American Vision by getting into worldview issues, how the

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Bible applied to every area of life, and started off with, I did a series called

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God and Government, which showed that government is not equal to politics, self -government, family government, church government, civil government, and a very very decentralized civil government.

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That was the memory of the 1980s, we're talking about Ronald Reagan coming into power, and Christians had finally gotten into the political sphere.

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The Protestant Christians, for the most part, were really not considered to be a voting bloc, and until Ronald Reagan came on the scene,

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Roman Catholics had always been considered a voting bloc, but the Protestant Christians were not, and so Christians getting involved in politics at that particular time was a new thing, and Jimmy Carter kind of started it with his, you know, being a born -again

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Christian, and the media at that time had no idea what a born -again Christian was, and Billy Graham wrote a book called

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How to Be Born Again. So that was the emphasis of American Vision, trying to put in perspective the

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Christians' relationship with the world in which we live, and that included politics, and we've kind of grown in our topics in areas related to apologetics, and this particular case is an issue related to Christian apologetics.

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And what can you update us with in regard to this

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Christian cake controversy, I should say gay wedding cake controversy, and if you could, actually before that, give us a little background, everything that you know about this controversy to begin with.

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Well, for the last few years, state governments have been putting into effect, they've broadened the definition of what constitutes a civil right.

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Originally, the Civil Rights Movement was to bring blacks into conformity to existing rights and our kind of voting rights, and getting rid of segregated schools and so forth and so on, and that was a big issue in the 50s and, of course, the 1960s.

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And that has expanded now to include things related to sex, and so you had women's rights became part of the

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Civil Rights Movement, and then we began to see that there was this emphasis on homosexual rights.

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And when the Supreme Court ruled that homosexual marriage was legitimate, that just kind of opened the door to all types of legal challenges to anyone who would dispute that claim.

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And the homosexual movement has tried to hitch its wagon to the

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Civil Rights Movement, but civil rights related to race is not the same as civil rights related to a sexual act.

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You know, race isn't, you know, a black person isn't identified in terms of the sexual behavior that they're engaged in, where homosexuality, of course, is determined based upon what type of sex a person engages in.

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Now, homosexuals will say that it's their identity that they are, in fact, homosexuals, homosexual just like a black person is a black person.

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Well, that's just a crazy thing. There is no scientific way to determine whether or not a person is homosexual, and then you continue on with that.

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You got bisexual, and you know, I think Amazon has like more than 50 type of gender identities that one can can choose for himself or herself.

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It even has spilled over into race, where Rachel Dolezal, I don't know if you remember her, she was white.

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I mean, I knew her parents. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. She identifies as black, and there's no way in the world that she's black, but since she identifies, that's just the way it is, and you got the whole transgender movement.

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So, the whole homosexual issue has opened up a Pandora's box of judicial, you know, tyranny and confusion, and so anybody who opposes homosexuality, not homosexuals generally, but homosexuality, you know, is deemed a hater and opposing civil rights and is akin to being a racist.

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So, the Supreme Court ruled and said that homosexuality is legitimate, and what has happened is that the homosexuals have pushed this, and when people, you know, homosexuals would go to a photographer and say, could you photograph or film a wedding person, would say no, they'd be sued.

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You had a cake, Sweet Cakes by Melissa, I think, up in Oregon. She refused to do a cake specifically for a homosexual wedding.

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Jack Phillips in Colorado, the same thing, and it's Jack Phillips' case that is before the

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Supreme Court right now. The Sweet Cakes by Melissa, she ended up being fined $135 ,000.

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Wow. She refused to pay, not, she didn't refuse to bake a cake. She refused to bake a cake and then garnish it with specifics related to a particular type of wedding.

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Jack Phillips is the same way. He sells, he'll sell cakes to anyone, but he makes certain distinctions, qualifying distinctions.

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He doesn't like doing anything related to the occult, so if you went in there and wanted something related to the occult, he's not going to make it for you.

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If you went in there and you wanted some sort of lewd, sexual type cake, he wouldn't make that, and in fact, if you went in there and asked for a cake denouncing homosexuality, he wouldn't make that either, and so he's been very consistent in his principles related to whom he will make a cake for, related to the message that's on the cake.

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Yeah, it is quite a scary thing. I mean, we

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Christians in the United States rest on a relative bed of ease compared to what's going on in other parts of the world, but you can't help but wonder what is going to happen around the corner, and there are, as you just mentioned, people who have been having their livelihoods ruined and have been fined outrageous fees, and who knows when the next hammer will fall and we will see

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Christians going to prison and so on. I'm going to give our email address for those of our listeners who want to join us on the air with a question for you about this.

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

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Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence. If you live outside of the USA, and please only remain anonymous if you are asking about a personal and private matter, and let's say you are perhaps a homosexual, you don't want to identify yourself, or you disagree with your pastor on this, or you disagree with your spouse on this, or something like that, or you are a business owner and you're just scared to death because you don't want to be marked out as somebody who is opposed to homosexuality.

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We can understand all that, and you can remain anonymous if you choose to, but other than that please identify yourself by first name, city and state, and country of residence.

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Well, there is a divide in the Christian church, as you know full well,

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Gary. You have all kinds of views on this from one extreme to another.

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You have, I don't know if you would be considered an extreme, but let's say if, let's just for the sake of argument, you're on one side of the spectrum being a theonomist and a reconstructionist, and then you have someone on the other end of the extreme who's an

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Amish person who is totally out of the loop, doesn't get involved in any way, shape, or form in any kind of political discussion or dispute, but obviously most of Christianity, at least professing

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Christianity, is somewhere in the middle of that. And you even have, as you know, people who are theologically in lockstep with one another on most things.

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You have a lot of Reformed people and Calvinists who would agree with you on many theological things.

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They might even be post -millennialists, but they draw the line in certain areas and don't think that it is the church's place to be politically active, even though they may believe individual

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Christians have every liberty and freedom to do such things as even run for office or campaign for candidates and all that kind of thing.

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But, so tell us exactly where you stand on this as a Christian. Well, one of the reasons

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I'm bringing this issue up is because there are ramifications to this.

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If someone can go into a private business and said, you must, you must cater to my particular worldview in a message.

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And let's say you're a... by the way, this is not just a religious freedom issue.

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This is a free speech issue as well. And just to make it about religion,

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I think it's a huge mistake, because anybody's in this position. I'll give you an example. If you're a

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Jewish baker and somebody comes in and says, I want a cake for a

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Nazi -themed wedding. Should the Jewish baker be forced to make a cake for somebody who wants a

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Jewish -themed wedding? Or maybe if only it's a homosexual Nazi -themed wedding.

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Well, I mean, this is where the craziness... and look, by the way, I run a business.

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And in that business, we have to, we get to do business with other people. There's some business we just won't take, because we don't like the worldview, what they're espousing.

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For example, let's assume that you're an accounting, you own an accounting firm.

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And someone comes in and says, we want to use your accounting business. And say, well, okay, what kind of business you're in?

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Well, we're in the pornography business. You say, well, we don't want to, we don't like that kind of business.

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Or, you know, in the past, you could refuse somebody's business because you didn't like the business.

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Let's say you're against gun rights, and you're an accounting firm, and somebody owns a gun store.

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And you go in there and you go to the accounting firm and says, we want you to handle our accounting issues.

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The person says, no, no, no, no, I can't do that. My conscience won't allow me to do it, because I'm opposed to guns. The guy would say, look, there's some, here's another, by three or four other accounting firms out there, they'll do your business, but I can't do it.

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That's just plain common sense in the business, in the business community.

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I'll give you an example. This is a real example, I believe it's in Kentucky, where a lesbian -owned printing company supported a

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Christian printing company, because the Christian printing company would not print t -shirts for a march that condemned, that promoted homosexuality.

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And the owners of the lesbian printing company said, look, he has every right to do that, because if someone came to me that wanted t -shirts printed that opposed same -sex marriage or protested homosexuality,

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I want to have the liberty to refuse that kind of business as well. See, this just isn't about Christians and their rights and freedoms, it's about all of ours.

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And, you know, this is the issue that's going to come down the pike. And anybody who says, oh, we can't get involved in this politically, because we have some we have some scriptural basis for not getting involved politically,

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I guarantee you that isn't going to work when a homosexual couple comes into your church and says, we want you to marry us, and you say, well, we can't do that because it's against our religion, and say, too bad, the law is now, you can't discriminate against us in any way, you must marry us.

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What's the church going to do? This is an issue that's much, much broader than just simply not baking a cake with a particular message on it.

17:57

Amen. And by the way, you were mentioning the black civil rights movement. There are many, many black individuals, even black individuals that are from churches that we might consider liberal in many areas, who are vehemently opposed to having the homosexual activists jump on their bandwagon and ride on their coattails because they realize the absurdity that you mentioned of trying to equate a behavior with someone's skin color.

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And, in fact, in New York there was quite a considerable protest against same -sex marriage.

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I don't know what it was like in your neck of the woods, but I used to live in New York until 2012, but there has been a considerable protest against same -sex marriage and against the equating of homosexuality with the black civil rights movement by even pastors whose churches might be prone to vote for or promote liberal candidates until this came along.

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So I'm sure you recognize that. I'm not sure what the atmosphere is like there in Georgia in this regard.

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Well, Atlanta has a very large pro -homosexual community and it's pretty much a foregone conclusion that Atlanta is very, very liberal and that's just the way it is.

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And there's not much that I think anybody can do about it. A lot of conservative churches around, and unfortunately a lot of these conservative churches, don't get involved politically, don't address political issues, because they think, well, we're a 501c3, we have a protection of the

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First Amendment, you know, on and on and on. But I guarantee you, just like they did in a lot of these cases, especially with Jack Phillips in the

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Colorado case, a homosexual couple actually singled him out. And there was another case,

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I think it was in Indiana, regarding a pizza shop. That was a huge, huge deal a year or so ago.

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They went in there, I think a news team went in there and just confronted the owner about baking pizzas for a homosexual wedding.

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And so these are targeted areas. And they'll do the small bakers and they'll do the small churches first, and then they'll get a precedent set, and then they'll use that precedent against bigger and bigger churches.

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And of course, a lot of churches will capitulate, because they'll end up losing their tax -exempt status, because 501c3 is a government -designated tax issue.

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And so they'll say, well, you know, everybody in the church will go, so we're going to lose our tax -exempt status, this is going to cost us financially.

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These churches are going to have to make a decision as to what they're going to do. Now, there's still some hope in this, because the

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Supreme Court has not ruled yet on the Jack Phillips case, and it looks like right now it's, you know, 4 -4 with Kennedy being the deciding factor, very much like he was on the pro -homosexual marriage case.

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Now, just before we go to some listener questions, do you see anything that you can have empathy with in regard to Christians who agree wholeheartedly with the, perhaps even duty, of Christians being sought in light in the world and having some kind of positive influence in the political arena, but that they don't want the church to do that as an institution?

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Do you have any empathy with that at all, or do you just outright reject that entire argument?

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Well, I'll give you a good example of it. I taught on Acts 4 and 5 on Sunday in our church, and it's two chapters where there's the beginning of persecution of Christians for just presenting the gospel.

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And of course, Peter makes the statement, we must obey God rather than men. Well, I used that lesson to introduce what was happening here in terms of this cake issue.

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Look, all the church has to do is get up and teach the Bible to people. What does the

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Bible say about these issues? Vote accordingly. It doesn't mean that the church has to become a center of political activity.

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What the church should be doing is teaching the people what the Bible has to say about these issues, and go out and act in terms of what

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Scripture has to say. So the church should be teaching about abortion and homosexuality as those things come up in Scripture.

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The Bible's filled with all these issues. You know, you can make a biblical case for anything that's going on in our culture,

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Dave, you just preach the Bible. All right, let's start taking some of our listener questions because I know that you have to leave after the first hour, and you're gonna perhaps have to help me with the pronunciation of this since you're in Georgia.

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Anthony from Hoshton, H -O -S -C -H -T -O -N, do you know that city? I don't know.

23:35

Okay, well I guess that's probably right or close to it, and maybe I'm entirely wrong. But anyway,

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Anthony from Hoshton, Georgia says, in light of the fact that most churches are raised with the dispensational outlook,

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I guess he means most evangelical churches, what would be the most effective thing Christians who believe that the kingdom is present now and spreading to go about making a difference other than education inside the church only?

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And also, is there any groups or legal legislators that Gary has seen that he thinks are moving in the right direction a lot of times?

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He has one more question and I'll wait for that. Well, again, I just think that Christians need to be involved.

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Here you have this, you know, the Alabama election, and only 25 % of the people turned out.

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That was it, 25 % of the voting public turned out for the election in Alabama. And you know,

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Christians who say, well, there's not a dime's worth of difference between the two parties is just nonsense. There is a difference, and if you get in there and you get enough of these guys out of there, you can change things politically.

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Now, let me be very clear here. I am NOT a believer in using the government to do things for me.

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I don't want to change roles here, but you know, let's get conservatives in there. So now we have, we're now in possession of the money and the power.

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We can do with it as we please. Now it's our agenda that we're going to push. I want Christians involved in the area of civil government to decrease the power of civil government, decrease its influence, decrease its spending, to decrease its taxing power, and so forth.

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I don't want to be involved in politics to force my worldview down on people in the same way as I don't want liberals going and using the power of politics to force me to comply with some crazy law that says

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I must use my artistic talent and my company in order to, you know, not so much promote, but to give support to a particular worldview that I think is completely wrong and harmful for society.

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And Anthony's next question is, I don't see in Christian literature providing enough direction on how to bridge that gap.

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In other words, we learn the theology on one hand, but not so much on the practical side of how to implement and obey the command to occupy until Jesus comes that we find in Luke 19 .14.

26:16

Even in reference to this whole cake controversy and those who would try to curtail our liberty, any recommended reading and your thoughts on Abraham Kuyper in this regard?

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Let's start with Kuyper first. Kuyper, you know, he was too much of a pluralist.

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I mean, you go over to the Netherlands today, and if anybody knows who

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Kuyper is, it's only because they actually have a guy, he has his name. But he was too much of a pluralist.

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He didn't give us a distinctive Christian approach. He only gave that distinctive

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Christian approach and said there are other approaches out there, and we just need to all work together.

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You're talking about co -belligerence. Yes, I mean, it depends how you use the word co -belligerent.

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But you can't compromise your position on that. I think there are a lot of good people out there who are holding the line.

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There are a lot of people involved in politics who put their finger up, you know, wet their finger, put it up and see which way the wind's blowing, and they don't want to speak out against homosexuality because they know they're going to be targeted.

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You got pastors and churches who don't want to speak about these issues because they're going to offend certain people, and a certain number of people may end up leaving the church, and as a result, the financial situation changes, and their churches, you know, go bankrupt.

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So in order to have no controversy, don't talk about any of these particular topics.

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And so this is why you've got to look at Acts chapter 4 and 5, because those particular passages, they stood their ground.

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We must obey God rather than men. But they were also willing to take whatever the consequences were for their refusal to heed the prohibition.

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And unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there who are not willing to, you know, to suffer the consequences.

28:23

The sweet cakes by Melissa, Jack Phillips, they've suffered the consequences. There was a

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GoFundMe appeal called Support Sweet Cakes by Melissa, which raised over $100 ,000 before it was shut down by GoFundMe, and GoFundMe stated that the campaign was not compatible with their terms of service.

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There's a price to pay for standing up for the truth, and so this is big business here.

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This is tough stuff. It's not just about, you know, baking a cake for a particular worldview you disagree with.

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The ramifications for this long term is strikingly binding, going to be binding on the

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Church if the Church doesn't stand up now. And by the way, the comment about dispensationalism is that, yeah, we've got lots of people who say, oh, this is just all signs that Jesus is coming back soon.

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There's nothing we can do to change this, because this is a, you know, the world is a sinking Titanic, you know, on and on and on and on and on, and Christians have been talking about that for 50 or 60 or 70 years, and it's one of the reasons why we're in the mess we're in today, because everybody believes that this is all, these are all signs of the end times and that Jesus is coming back.

29:35

Well, they need to go back and read Romans chapter 1 and 1 Timothy chapter 1, because homosexuality was an issue back in those days, in Paul's day as well.

29:44

We're going to go to our first break, and I just, by the way, forwarded you, Gary, an email from Joe in Slovenia.

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His question was rather long, so I figured during the station break you could look it over. I sent it to your email address, and when we come back we'll start with Joe in Slovenia and try to get to as many of the other questioners as we can before our time runs out.

30:07

And by the way, Anthony in Hoshton, Georgia, you have won a free copy of Gary DeMar's new book,

30:14

Wars and Rumors of Wars. It has nothing to do with this issue, but it's his brand new book, Compliments of American Vision, and so make sure we have your full mailing address in Hoshton, Georgia, and sorry if I'm mispronouncing that.

30:26

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33:35

Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the first hour is Gary DeMar of American Vision.

33:42

We are discussing for the first hour the gay wedding cake controversy and what this means for America and for Christ's Church.

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If you'd like to join us on the air, now is the time to do it, because we're running out of time very quickly.

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Our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com if you have a question. I forwarded you

34:00

Joe in Slovenia's question, and he says, Dear Brothers Chris and Gary, what are your thoughts about the argument that by refusing to provide the wedding cake,

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Phillips wasn't engaging in anti -gay discrimination, wasn't involving an anti -gay discrimination, because he happily offered to provide

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Craig and Mullins with other baked goods? He's accepting the idea. Let's start with that one, sir.

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That's a very important point. The Phillips never refused to sell a cake to a homosexual, and would not have refused to sell a cake to Craig and Mullins.

34:41

The issue is always the message on the cake, and Jack Phillips has a track record of refusing to put certain messages on cakes that have nothing to do with homosexuality.

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It's his art, and so forth, and just like if I went into somebody's, I want you to paint me a picture of this,

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I don't want to paint a picture of that. I'm going to call the law on here and force you to do so, and say, well

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I'm sorry, I just can't do that. So this is the argument. In fact,

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Phillips gave them, I think gave them information on where they could go to get a cake for their homosexual wedding.

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And by the way, who goes into a baker and says, hey I'm a homosexual, bake me a cake?

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I don't know if somebody's a homosexual or not, who would come into my bakery and say, of course there's no discrimination related to selling cakes to homosexuals, unless somebody says, well

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I'm a homosexual. In fact, some guy comes in and says, I'm a serial killer. Well, you know, okay, if you say so,

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I'm going to sell you a cake. I mean, these are just crazy arguments.

35:57

The issue in this particular case is the message that was on the cake.

36:05

Now, Samuel Alito, during the question phase of when it came before the

36:11

Supreme Court, he brought up the point that said that some three people had gone into homosexual bakeries and wanted cakes made with an anti -homosexual message on it, and the bakers refused.

36:27

And so they went to the Civil Rights Commission, and the Civil Rights Commission dismissed their complaint.

36:34

So it's wrong to, you know, disagree with a particular message on the cake if that message is homosexuality, a pro -homosexual message, but it's okay to discriminate against someone when the message on the cake is anti -homosexuality.

36:53

This is why the government needs to get completely out of this issue. If you don't want to make a cake for someone, by the way,

37:01

I don't care what the reason is, you don't have to make a cake for them. There are other cake baking places, bakeries, you can go.

37:11

In fact, it's my understanding that this homosexual couple passed quite a few of them on the way to Jack Phillips' place.

37:19

They're out there. You know, this isn't an issue of discrimination. People discriminate in business all the time based upon some very legitimate reasons, and this is a legitimate reason.

37:32

I don't approve of this relationship. I can't put a message on it which would, in fact, be approving of it.

37:41

It's very simple. Okay, we don't like it, but we understand we're going to just take our business somewhere else, and that's the way it ought to be.

37:48

Yeah, there was obviously an agenda behind that, because who on earth wants someone preparing anything that you and your loved ones are going to eat who's mad at you for some reason?

38:02

It's just like that old saying about you never curse at the person at the drive -thru at a fast -food restaurant because you never know what's going to wind up in your food.

38:11

Why on earth would you want anybody to prepare, especially a cake for an event that you think is a very special, even sacred event, and you know that the person's heart isn't in it, that they're not going to do their best with their creativity or anything.

38:27

It's ridiculous. Yeah, right. Yeah, all you have to do is watch the film, The Help. You can get some idea.

38:34

I'm not even going to repeat with that references, but if any of you have seen that, you'll know exactly what

38:40

Gary's talking about. This is the essence of liberty in our culture. Now, will there be somebody out there who will discriminate against somebody just because they're homosexual?

38:52

Yes, there may be. It probably happens every day. There's still some people who discriminate against blacks just because they're black.

38:58

You can't keep making laws where you are cutting the issue so fine that 99 % of the people out there who are doing the right thing are now all of a sudden under the duress of the government.

39:19

Okay, Joe also says he's accepting the idea that refusal to bake a cake for a same -sex wedding constitutes discriminating against customers on the basis of their sexual orientation, a failure to recognize the distinction between sexual orientation and sexual activity.

39:35

If discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is interpreted in such broad terms, would a similarly broad definition of racial discrimination require a black baker to provide a

39:45

Confederate flag cake for a white supremacist wedding, lest he be accused of bias against whites? How about Jews being forced to bake swastikas, and you already brought that up.

39:55

Yeah, now this is an important question that Joe makes here, because the way this is answered by the pro -homosexual side is this.

40:07

There's a special carve -out legally for homosexuality.

40:14

See, this is the issue. There is something legally special about homosexuality.

40:22

There isn't a carve -out for Confederate flag aficionados, and there isn't a carve -out for people who identify as Nazis.

40:36

What we've done in our country, we have a special carve -out for a particular sexual activity.

40:42

People who identify as something related to sex.

40:48

That, to me, is one of the worst things we have ever done in our culture, and again, you know, what's the next carve -out going to be?

40:57

Someone comes in and says, I'm not he or she, I'm they.

41:02

So I want a cake now that expresses my vainness.

41:08

And then the next person comes in and he says, hey, I identify as number 23 on Facebook's designation for gender identification.

41:21

Okay, so where does this stop? Who's allowed in and who's allowed out of the club?

41:27

And so the best thing to do is to get the government out of it. Look, you don't like this baker because he wouldn't bake you a homosexual cake?

41:34

Go somewhere else. Order one online. I mean, there's so many options today. I'm sure pretty soon

41:39

Amazon's going to have a cake baking system where you'll be able to get cakes made.

41:47

And this is just crazy, and we put this in the hands of five unelected judges. Right.

41:53

Well, if somebody comes into your store claiming that they're they, then you charge them from ten people.

42:00

I'll bake you two cakes for the price of one. And then you can put them together, and I'm charging a double.

42:06

I'll charge a double for, you know. And the last thing that Joe says is maybe the wisest thing for us to do considering the pervasive wickedness engulfing the nation is to become comfortable with the

42:15

Apostle Paul's experience. To this present hour we are both hungry and thirsty, and are poorly clothed, and are roughly treated, and are homeless, and we toil working with our hands.

42:26

When we are reviled, we bless. When we are persecuted, we endure. When we are slandered, we conciliate.

42:33

And when we have become as the scum of the world, the dregs of all things, even until now.

42:41

So your comments on that? Well, again, look, we don't have to be mean about this.

42:46

I'm sure Jack Phillips wasn't mean about it. He says, look, these are my principles, my Christian stand on things.

42:53

I just, I can't do this. I mean, you wouldn't want me to compromise my views on this.

43:01

You wouldn't compromise your views, I wouldn't compromise my views. But look, again, there are consequences for doing the right thing.

43:11

There are cultural consequences for doing the right thing the wrong way.

43:18

And that's where, you know, that's where the issue is. I have a little saying, don't give anyone a reason to object your, object your, reject your opinion, other than the opinion itself.

43:31

I think you politely refuse and you know, you know, you want to buy a cake, sell you a cake anytime you want, but on this,

43:39

I can't put a message on it that I disagree, I disagree with. I'm sure you understand that because you wouldn't want, you wouldn't want to be forced to do the same thing if the shoe were on the other foot.

43:50

You know, the irony is that you wonder why there aren't homosexual bakers protesting that the couple didn't use their bakeries, assuming that there was some kind of bias against the homosexual baker.

44:03

But yeah, I mean, this was something that was planned. Many of them are.

44:10

Now sometimes when you go into a small town, it may be the only option, there are very very few options. But in this particular case,

44:17

I'm pretty sure that this, Jack Phillips was targeted for this. But Colorado is just,

44:25

I mean, they, you know, cut no slack at all. And I found, look, I'm gonna tell you why.

44:31

Because homosexuals, unlike so many Christians, homosexuals are politically active, they donate money, they get involved.

44:39

And so, so these commissioners had voted in Jack Phillips' favor,

44:46

I guarantee you in the very next election, the people on that Civil Rights Commission would have been eliminated and they would have gotten their guys on there.

44:54

And this is why Christians need to wise up here, and to say you just, you can't be indifferent to politics as if it doesn't apply to you.

45:03

Look, politics applies to you, they take your money from you. Politicians, people elect people to office in order to take money from the prosperous people and give it to other people.

45:15

So you don't think that applies to you? It does apply to you. The state now could come in to your church, remove your tax -exempt status, which in my mind wouldn't be necessarily a bad thing, but there may, a lot of churches may capitulate to it all.

45:29

You end up having homosexual weddings in your church and so forth, what's next? What will be the next thing?

45:35

This woman is engaged to a chandelier when she, you know, when she decides she wants to marry the chandelier.

45:41

I mean, this isn't a joke. This woman really is engaged to a chandelier.

45:48

A woman in Britain, you know, wanted to marry a bridge. There's a person, it's called monogamy.

45:55

It's the idea that you can marry yourself. You know, this has just gotten absolutely crazy.

46:03

You want a cake? Find a baker who'll make your cake. You want a particular t -shirt? You find somebody who'll make your t -shirt.

46:11

You know, quit going to the state, quit going to the government to force people to comply with your particular view of the world.

46:19

Thank you Joe in Slovenia, and you have also won a free copy of Wars and Rumors of Wars, and we will ship it to your daughter in the

46:27

United States in Georgia, as you have requested. And just very briefly, because we've already interviewed you on Wars and Rumors of Wars, can you just summarize what that's about,

46:38

Gary? Wars and Rumors of Wars is a verse -by -verse exposition of the

46:44

Olivet Discourse, the lead -up to the Olivet Discourse at the end of Matthew 23 and then Matthew 24 verses 1 through 34, and it shows that that particular passage and its parallel passages in Mark 13 and Luke 21 refer not to the end of our world, but to the end of the age, which was a lead -up to the destruction of Jerusalem that took place in AD 70.

47:08

Because, like, I forget which color it was, but this whole idea that we're living in the last days is affecting the way

47:17

Christians are handling the issues of the day. That was

47:23

Anthony in Hoshton, Georgia. Yeah, and just, you know, you just see it all the time on Facebook, and you do too.

47:30

People say, well, you know, Jesus said this year's gonna be Wars and Rumors of Wars, and there'll be false

47:35

Christ, and there'll be earthquake and another earthquake, so there's another sign at the end and all that.

47:41

What is the historical context of the Olivet Discourse? What is Jesus actually referencing here?

47:47

You know, back in 1970, Hal Lindsey wrote a book called The Late Great Planet Earth, in which he predicted that, he said what would happen, that within a generation, within 40 years of Israel becoming a nation again in 1948, that the

48:02

Rapture would take place. That was 1988. Here we are, 2017, we're still here, and Christians are still, you know, fixated on the end of the world with, you know, blood moons and eclipses and earthquakes and all these other types of things, the homosexuality and so forth.

48:20

Christians need to get re -engaging, get off the end times bandwagon, and look, if you don't agree with my position,

48:29

I guarantee you, after you read my book, is when you're very, very little, you're going to be able to disagree with. It'll completely change the way you view your world and you view the future.

48:39

Well, you're gonna be getting that book, Joe, and or your daughter will be getting it, and thanks a lot for the question.

48:45

We have another Joe, and he is from, I don't know how to pronounce this either, Athee, Ireland, and knowing the folks in the

48:53

UK, or actually Ireland isn't in the UK, but the Northern Ireland is, but knowing the folks from over there, the other side of the pond,

49:02

I know that they are going to be pronouncing that differently than I would normally think. He's originally from Dublin anyway.

49:08

Joe from Athee, originally from Dublin. Can you please ask Brother Damar what steps should local churches or denominations take today to safeguard biblical marriage against liberal tendencies that have already corrupted mainstream

49:24

Methodism and Lutheranism, for example, and of course we could throw in Presbyterianism and Congregationalism.

49:32

Of course, you are a part of a very conservative Presbyterian body, but as you know, the

49:38

PCUSA is the largest body, which is very corrupt for the most part, anyway. Well, again,

49:44

I think the governing bodies of the churches and denominations need to come out and, you know, take a stand collectively.

49:52

And, you know, like, I don't know how many churches are in the Presbyterian Church in America, I don't know if there are a thousand of them, and I think the next thing they ought to do is find out all the other denominations that agree with them, and they need to join together on this particular issue and to create a united front, theologically and also legally, and which would mean maybe hiring or at least being put on notice with a, like, the

50:22

Alliance Defending Freedom, which is in the Phoenix, Scottsdale area, and I think in some cases they're involved in this

50:31

Jack Phillips case. And so they need to prepare now, not after the, you know, the horses have left the barn, but all the denominations who are in agreement on this particular issue need to create a large front.

50:48

What happens with the homosexual movement, the abortion movement, and so forth, they do a divide -and -conquer.

50:54

You go after a little church here, a little church there, and these other kind of independent churches should join up with maybe a group on this particular issue, and they don't have to worry about anything else related to their theological commitment.

51:10

Maybe they have just a very, you know, basic thing related to theology, but they're not going to deal with the baptism issue or predestination or the eschatology issue or church government issue.

51:22

It's just going to be on this particular issue where they join together and they create a united, and I'm going to say this, a political front to let the opposition know they're ready to fight this issue financially and legally, on radio, on television, whatever the case might be.

51:40

We're very divided on all this. I don't know if you...

51:45

you know, R .C. Sproul died, you know, last week. Yes. And in fact, his ministry started up in Ligonier, he's from Pittsburgh, I was from Pittsburgh area as well.

51:56

Right. And John Frame, who's a professor, we formed Theological Seminary, made this comment because R .C.

52:05

and John Frame were kind of on the different side of an apologetic methodology.

52:13

In some senses it kept them apart, and he regretted and lamented that.

52:20

And we've got to get over that when it comes to issues like this. You know,

52:26

Baptists and Presbyterians, you know, lay aside the issue of Baptism and church government, and we need to unite on issues where we can in fact agree with and support.

52:37

Right, you can... Very good question. You can unite on things without relegating doctrine to a low rung of importance, it's just that you're focusing on them in a different sphere of life.

52:51

Oh yeah, I mean, yes. We're not going to... you're not going to say, hey, we can't let Baptists in here, because they don't believe in paedo -baptism.

52:59

I mean, it's just, look, this is an issue. But on this particular issue, we agree theologically, exegetically, theologically, we agree on this issue.

53:09

We see an enemy out there, and we need to join with the united front on this particular issue.

53:19

So if we don't do that, you know, united we stand, divided we fall.

53:27

And Joe from Athe, Ireland, has very generously said that somebody from the

53:33

United States can have my book to spare the expense of shipping it to Ireland. That's very kind of you,

53:38

Joe and Athe, originally from Dublin, Ireland. Well, you can tell Joe, if he sends you his email address, and you send me his email address,

53:49

I will send him a PDF copy of the book. Oh, great. Well, I will forward that to you as soon as the show's over.

53:56

Okay. And we have Aaron in Indianapolis, Indiana, who says, please ask

54:01

Gary how he believes small business owners can best protect themselves from this type of action or agenda, no matter what the issue is or theme.

54:13

Well, that's going to be tougher, because you are kind of a sitting duck, and like I say, this is typical of what the left does.

54:23

They've done it with anything related to, you know, religion, you know, the

54:28

Ten Commandments and so forth. They go after the small town, you know, where someone has done something, or a small school in a small area that doesn't have a big budget to use it, you know, legally in order to defend themselves.

54:42

And so the individual is, the individual business owner is left kind of hanging out there.

54:49

I wish there were a way for small business owners to join up with a consortium of other business owners on issues like this.

55:00

I would probably get in contact with someone like the Alliance Defending Freedom and see if, you know, if they have some recommendation with that.

55:09

I think it's the same thing as with the church. We've got to join up and create a united front on these issues.

55:21

Thank you, Aaron. Please make sure we have your full mailing address so we can have the book, Wars and Rumors of War, shipped out to you in Indianapolis, and that will be shipped out to you, by the way, by our friends at American Vision.

55:33

We have Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, and she says,

55:41

How do you respond to those who would be opposed to post -millennialism and theonomy, who would say, this kind of thing that is happening in our country proves that things are getting worse, not better?

55:57

Well, I had mentioned Romans chapter 1. I would say half the chapter, but a good portion of Paul's exposition in Romans chapter 1 deals with homosexuality.

56:11

So this really isn't anything new, and you can see the same thing in 1

56:17

Timothy. So we've always had these types of issues, and you know,

56:25

Christians just need to do their work and become consistent in this particular area.

56:31

We need to get better judges in there. That means you've got to be involved politically. In fact, there was a judge in California, I just read this today, a judge in California, similar case on,

56:41

I don't know if he was a baker, but related to this, and this judge, he didn't dismiss the case against him, but he wanted more information about that, which means that there are judges out there who have some judicial sense, and you know,

57:00

Christians, they don't want to get involved in politics, and so they don't want to be judges, or when they become judges, they take this two -kingdom approach.

57:07

You know, I can't bring my view of the Bible into this. There were cases, a couple of judges that went before the

57:14

Judicial Committee, and they were being questioned very hard on their religious commitment.

57:23

You know, can you deal, you're a Christian, can you deal with these particular issues as a Christian? Well, providentially, they got through, because there were senators there who pushed back against the

57:35

Democrats. You see, you can't change just one thing. All kinds of things have to be changed in order to bring about a solution to all this.

57:45

We can't give up on all of it, and I know a lot of people didn't vote for Trump, and think Trump's a terrible guy, but I can say this without equivocation.

57:54

Trump was the guy for this job, because he stood up to the bullies, and went after them, and so forth, and they are perplexed as to how to stop him on these things.

58:07

Well, just think, if we had people who had a little better disposition, and used Twitter in a little better way, and had a better past, why don't we have other

58:16

Christians out there who were just as strong on these issues all across the country, who understood the limited nature of government, and the proper role that Christianity plays in our society?

58:28

And as far as what's going on being a proof that we are not getting better, the post -millennial position is not a straight arrow pointing upwards.

58:41

You could have centuries of darkness. The ultimate state of the earth is not affected by what is happening now.

58:54

In other words, you know, that people wrongly interpret what post -millennialism is by saying things will just keep getting better, and better, and better, and better, and better.

59:02

Am I right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You think, go back to 1492, and look at the world of 1492.

59:09

Islam was advancing, the occult was rising.

59:15

So 1492, 25 years later, one person, we just celebrated that this year, one person took a stand, made a, you know, published something, and it was finally printed and sent out all over Germany.

59:31

One guy changed the world. One guy,

59:37

Johann Gutenberg, changed the world with one invention. There are tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of Christians in the world today.

59:49

Tens of millions, some have said even a hundred million Christians in China. I don't understand what people are complaining about here.

59:57

We have everything, we have everything on our fingertips that everyone else has. I mean, here you and I are on the phone.

01:00:04

A guy in Slovenia, another guy in Ireland, I can send him a book,

01:00:10

I can send him a book that he can get within a couple of minutes over the internet.

01:00:17

What's the problem with Christians here? Because they think too small. So we just need to think bigger, that's just what we need to do.

01:00:26

One quick last question from Gordy in Mechanicsburg, do you see an increase in this type of calculated activism towards believers, and if so, what should be the response of believers directly and indirectly affected?

01:00:39

Do you believe that there will be a considerable increase in Christian business owners securing legal representation preemptively?

01:00:46

Preemptively is the key there. Again, I don't, look, the other side never gives up. They never quit.

01:00:52

They take a little bit, they'll, you know, they lose, they're going to keep coming back. You got it, that's your first principle.

01:00:58

They never quit, they never get discouraged, they never give up. That's just the way it is.

01:01:07

A lot of it, in this particular case, a lot of it is going to come down to what the Supreme Court does.

01:01:14

And you will find also, if the Supreme Court rules in favor of Jack Phillips, you will find all sorts of legal manipulation at the state level to get around what the

01:01:24

Supreme Court says, and I believe even to the point where states will say, we are not going along with what the

01:01:29

Supreme Court says. You know, conservatives can't say that, but liberals can. Christians just need to get, you know, involved at every area to make these times change.

01:01:40

That's what liberals have done for the last 150 years. All right, well

01:01:45

Susan Margaret in Dauphin County and Gordy in Mechanicsburg, please get me your mailing addresses so that the copies of Wars and Rumors of Wars can be shipped out to you, and also

01:01:56

American Vision's website is AmericanVision .org. AmericanVision .org. Thank you so much,

01:02:02

Gary, for being on the program. We look forward to your return to Iron Trip and Zion very soon and very often. All right, thank you,

01:02:08

Chris. God bless you. And don't go away, folks, because we have Josh Bice, pastor of the

01:02:17

Praise Mill Baptist Church in Douglasville, Georgia, joining us.

01:02:24

He is also the founder of the G3 Conference and he is going to be not only talking about the conference coming up, he's going to be talking about a new book that he has written, which is coming out in January, and several other things.

01:02:39

He's going to pay tribute to R .C. Sproul, so don't go away. We are going to be back,

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01:10:13

This is Chris Sorensen. If you just tuned us in, our second guest for the day, for the second hour of Iron Trip and Zion Radio, is

01:10:21

Pastor Josh Bice of Praise Mill Baptist Church in Douglasville, Georgia. We are going to be talking about several things today.

01:10:28

We're going to be talking about the 2018 G3 conference, which is only about,

01:10:35

I don't know, four weeks away, something like that. January 17th through the 20th.

01:10:41

We're also going to be paying a bit of tribute to R .C. Sproul, even though we had a full two -hour program, paying tribute to Dr.

01:10:50

Sproul on Friday, the day after he went home to be with the Lord, featuring our friend

01:10:57

Stephen Nichols, president of the Reformation Bible College, and also

01:11:02

Tom Askell of Founders Ministries, and Ray Rhodes of the

01:11:08

Grace Community Church of Dawsonville, Georgia. But we have a couple of other things that we're going to discuss as well, as long as time will permit.

01:11:18

But before we introduce Josh Bice, I just have to do some housekeeping here. And once again,

01:11:23

I have to rattle my tin cup and remind you that Iron Trip and Zion Radio is in urgent need of your donations or advertising dollars.

01:11:33

We are really on the brink of going off the air, and that is not an exaggeration.

01:11:38

Our friends at Leading Edge Radio Network in Weatherford, Texas, just forgave an $800 bill for our live streaming fee, and they are being gracious this time, but they they're not guaranteeing that this is going to be a perpetual thing.

01:11:57

So we were really on the brink of going off the air with a live program if it was not for their generosity.

01:12:03

But please, if you love this program, you don't want it to disappear, go to IronTripandZionRadio .com,

01:12:09

click on support, and there'll be a mailing address where you can mail a check for any amount that you can afford made out to Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

01:12:16

And as I always remind you, never ever ever siphon money out of your regular giving that you're accustomed to to your local church where you are a member.

01:12:25

And if you're not a member of a local Bible believing church, you're living in disobedience unless you're actively and prayerfully looking for one.

01:12:32

So you've got to rectify that and become a member of a Bible believing church. But never siphon money out of your giving to your church, and never take food off of your family's dinner table, because those two things, providing for church and home, are commanded in Scripture.

01:12:46

Donating to Iron Trip and Zion Radio is nowhere found in the pages of inerrant

01:12:51

Scripture, but if you love this program and you are blessed financially above and beyond your ability to obey those two commands, then please consider donating to Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

01:13:02

Go to IronTripandZionRadio .com and click on support. Mail us a check or as many checks and as often as you can made out to Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

01:13:12

And we would be forever grateful to you for this. If you want to advertise with us, whether it's your church, your business, your professional practice, your parachurch ministry, a special event you're having, whatever it is, as long as it's compatible with the theology that we that we promote here on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, we would love to advertise with you.

01:13:34

We'd love to launch an ad campaign with you, because we surely could use the advertising dollars. So just send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:13:41

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put advertising in the subject line. We are now back to our live discussion and we are introducing to you my second guest,

01:13:54

Josh Bice, pastor of Praise Mill Baptist Church, Douglasville, Georgia, and founder of the

01:13:59

G3 Conference. It's great to have you back on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Pastor Josh Bice. Good to be with you,

01:14:05

Chris. And first of all, as we always do, tell our listeners about Praise Mill Baptist Church in Douglasville, Georgia, especially for those who are discovering you for the first time.

01:14:14

Sure, Praise Mill Baptist Church is a 175 year old Southern Baptist Church located just west of Atlanta, Georgia, and I have had the privilege to be the pastor of the church for the past seven years.

01:14:29

I grew up here with my wife as children. We met here in the church. After we married, we went away to seminary and then in God's providence,

01:14:38

God would call us back here to serve the people that had served us as children. And you have founded the

01:14:46

G3 Conference. I know that stands for Grace, Gospel, and Glory. Tell us about that conference when you founded it and what it's all about.

01:14:56

Yes, the G3 Conference was established back in 2013.

01:15:02

The plans were put in place sometime back in 2011, but the whole desire was for the conference to be a theology conference here in the

01:15:11

Atlanta area for local churches in the surrounding area to come together for a weekend to study on a particular theme that we would develop throughout the weekend, and the first year something very interesting happened.

01:15:25

We ended up selling out of all of our seats in our church campus the first year, and the second year, and the third year, and the fourth year, all of that started to show us that really this would have turned into, from the very beginning, a national conference rather than just a local theology conference.

01:15:43

And so, year number five, which was back in January of this year, we moved to a convention center just across from the

01:15:51

Atlanta Airport to facilitate the number of attendees, and that's where we will be once again this coming

01:15:58

January as we come together for the theme of discipleship. Yes, and I know that you are kicking off the event.

01:16:07

Well, before you even kick off the event, in the daytime on January 17th, you have a

01:16:13

Spanish -speaking version of the conference, and then on the evening of the 17th, you kick off the

01:16:20

English - speaking portion with a debate between Dr. James R. White and a

01:16:25

Muslim apologist. Tell us about who that Muslim apologist is and what the theme will be. Sure, so we will be kicking off the conference on the 17th, as you mentioned.

01:16:37

The interesting thing is, this is the first annual Spanish conference, so we're hoping that if any of your listeners are

01:16:45

Spanish speakers or they have family that are, if they would put this on their radar screen to consider coming and joining with us in January.

01:16:54

So we're very excited about that, and we look forward to the future as far as what's going to take place with the

01:17:01

Spanish event, and so that's all day on Wednesday. And then that particular evening, what we're doing is we're having a debate.

01:17:09

Now, last year we had a debate in conjunction with the G3 conference as well that was focused on Roman Catholicism, and so this year,

01:17:17

James White will be engaging with an apologist that's, you know, again, it's

01:17:25

Christianity versus Islam, so it's a Christian versus Muslim debate, and so we're really looking forward to, again, this debate being centered on the subject of, or you might say the thesis statement, is do we need the cross for salvation?

01:17:44

Okay, so as we think about this particular subject matter, again, people might ask, well, why don't you just talk about the foundation of the gospel, for instance?

01:17:56

Well, we want to talk about the gospel, but we have to have a clear thesis statement, and so we have

01:18:02

Michael Fallon and the Sovereign Team, along with Alpha and Omega Ministries and James White, who have developed this really good thesis statement that keeps things centered on the issue of the cross for salvation.

01:18:15

So we will be driving everything back to the gospel, and so we're really looking forward to everything that's going to be taking place at the debate itself.

01:18:25

And the speakers, the roster is quite phenomenal, as it always is at the G3 conference.

01:18:30

We have Stephen Lawson, Votey Baucom, Phil Johnson, Keith Getty, HB Charles Jr., Tim Challies, Josh Bice, James White, Tom Askell, Anthony Metheny, Michael Kruger, David Miller, Paul Tripp, Todd Friel, Derek Thomas, Martha Peace, Justin Peters, and Stephen Nichols.

01:18:46

And if you would like to register for this, go to G3conference .com, G3conference .com,

01:18:52

and please make sure that everybody at G3 knows that you heard about the conference from Chris Arnsen on Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

01:19:00

And in fact, off the air, my first guest Gary DeMar was asking me if it's too late to register for an exhibitors booth.

01:19:09

It is not. We are still accepting some applications. They can just simply go on the website.

01:19:15

They'll see an exhibitor application at the top there, so they can fill that out, and it'll go to our staff, and then our staff can review that.

01:19:22

We do still have some spaces, although space for the exhibit is quickly dissolving.

01:19:30

Okay, well that's the website. Even if you want to find out about registration for your exhibitors booth, go to G3conference .com,

01:19:38

G3conference .com. Well, I want to start with your own words of tribute to Dr.

01:19:44

R .C. Sproul. We spent two hours on on Friday of last week, the day after Dr.

01:19:51

Sproul went to glory, and Friday was also a sad time for me because it was also the the sixth anniversary of my own wife going to home to glory with Christ for eternity.

01:20:05

So it was doubly sad losing a hero of mine, a modern -day hero, and also remembering that my precious wife is no longer with me here on earth.

01:20:17

But I know that you wanted to offer some words of tribute and commemoration of this dear brother in Christ who has such a profound impact on the body of Christ globally in the 20th and 21st centuries.

01:20:33

Yes, absolutely, Chris. You know, again, there have been many things said about R .C.

01:20:38

Sproul, I'm sure, since his passing, but as I've been thinking about or reflecting, again, on the day of his death,

01:20:45

I received a text message from Dr. Nichols just inviting me to come down to the funeral, and so tomorrow morning at 4 o 'clock

01:20:53

I'll be at the airport flying down to Orlando to be a part of the funeral, to be there just to pay tribute to a man who's influenced me.

01:21:04

As I was thinking about, you know, words to say about Dr. Sproul, I would simply state that back early in my

01:21:11

Christian development, early on in my, you know, studies of the

01:21:16

Scriptures and studying the things surrounding the doctrines of grace,

01:21:22

I remember that I was very much opposed to the idea that God would dare predestine anyone to eternal life, and I thought that that was somehow an unfair doctrine.

01:21:33

And so I would start reading and digging into these voices of the past.

01:21:39

You know, I would read B .B. Warfield, I would read John Owen, and I would read modern voices as well, people like R .C.

01:21:47

Sproul, and so when I came across his book, Chosen by God, it was, it was, it hit me with a force that I could not really escape it.

01:22:00

In other words, so I would run around and I would have these circular arguments, and I would try to evade the truth of Scripture, but he put me in a very honest place early on in the book.

01:22:13

On page 10, he writes these words. He says, he says, with the topic people find so unpleasant, it is a wonder that we ever discuss it at all.

01:22:25

Why do we speak of it? Because we enjoy unpleasantness? Not at all, he says. We discuss it because we cannot avoid it.

01:22:34

It is a doctrine plainly set forth in the Bible. We talk about predestination because the

01:22:40

Bible talks about predestination. And so just early on in reading

01:22:45

Chosen by God by Dr. Sproul, he really challenged me to see that the doctrine of predestination is not a doctrine that's, you know, put forth in Scripture for us to debate.

01:22:57

It's a doctrine that's put forth to show us who God is and who we are and how precious salvation really is.

01:23:05

And so I'm forever grateful for that book. And then again, his classic work,

01:23:11

The Holiness of God, you know, you see these little clips that are passed along through social media where Dr.

01:23:19

Sproul is addressing the audience at a Ligonier conference where he, you know, just basically stops and asks, what's wrong with you people, you know?

01:23:28

And he's talking about the fact that people don't know who God really is. And so that was a passion for Dr.

01:23:35

Sproul's ministry, was discipleship, and it was trying to help people understand who

01:23:40

God is and to grow to know Him and to enjoy Him and to love Him.

01:23:46

And so I'm forever grateful for his ministry, for his writing ministry, his teaching ministry. Furthermore, he also demonstrated just a passion for truth that demonstrates, you know, the clear reality that, you know, doctrine is not some cold orthodox of some body of words, you know.

01:24:06

Theology is not boring. And so Dr. Sproul really helped me to see that early on, and I'm grateful for it.

01:24:13

Yes, his passion for theology and for truth was very contagious.

01:24:19

Yes. And it's remarkable to me, as I even said to our brother

01:24:24

Stephen Nichols during our tribute on Friday to Dr. Sproul, it's amazing to me how many people

01:24:30

I have met from across the theological spectrum, people who are even outside of Reformed Theology, who just found him, there's something magnetic about him, where they were riveted to what he was saying, even if they haven't yet come to agree with some of the theology he proclaimed, there was still something very unique about him where people weren't necessarily horrified by him or just totally turned away from him.

01:24:58

He was a very gifted man in a very unique way. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you know that his personality was larger than life, and you know,

01:25:07

I'm scheduled to preach there at Reformation Bible College in February. I was hoping when

01:25:12

I received the invitation some time back that I would be able to spend some time with Dr. Sproul when

01:25:18

I would be there in Orlando, but as it would come to pass, he's now with the

01:25:23

Lord, and so we'll have to save that conversation for eternity. Amen.

01:25:28

I'm just so glad that I at least had one interview with him on Iron Trip and Zion Radio back in 2010, and that was such an honor that I will treasure and cherish until I am in glory along with him in the face of our beautiful Savior.

01:25:46

And well, let's move on to some of the things that you wanted to address today in addition to paying tribute to Dr.

01:25:57

Sproul. You had some other things that you wanted to discuss, and I know that one of them is the new book that is going to be released at the

01:26:08

G3 conference on New Calvinism. What can you say about that? Because that is a very controversial issue.

01:26:14

I think that you probably have some level of disagreement on New Calvinism, even espoused by people on the roster at the

01:26:25

G3 conference, at least if you were to combine them all, you might have some differences of opinion on New Calvinism.

01:26:32

And of course it's not monolithic, but if you could tell us about this book. Yes, so the book itself is titled

01:26:40

The New Calvinism. It's, you know, a new Reformation or theological fad, and so the book itself will be, again, just seeking to identify what is

01:26:52

New Calvinism, how can we complement it, and then what must we criticize, you know, as it surrounds and as it pertains to the movement itself.

01:27:02

So New Calvinism is definitely a movement. Again, Colin Hansen has accurately, you know, demonstrated the fact that this is a movement some time back in his

01:27:14

Young Restless Reformed, and then again it's been discussed in Time magazine, it's been discussed in various different publications, even

01:27:22

Christianity Today some time back spotlighted it as well. The fact of the matter is simply this,

01:27:28

New Calvinism is a movement, but it's difficult to define the movement.

01:27:33

But as we start to look at the movement, we see that it's often made up of, you know, an eclectic group of edgy, sometimes hip, young Christians, but that's not always the case.

01:27:45

I mean, you see a lot of older people now that consider themselves a part of the New Calvinism movement.

01:27:50

One of the greatest voices of the New Calvinism movement is John Piper. Another great voice of the

01:27:56

New Calvinism movement is D .A. Carson, and so if you look at the personalities within the movement that are driving it, and you look at the people that make up the movement, there's a wide array of different types of people that cross not only geographic boundaries, but they cross denominational boundaries as well.

01:28:16

So really the book is made up of several chapters, and so I took a chapter,

01:28:22

Paul Washer took a chapter, Stephen Lawson, Conrad and Bayway, and Tim Challies are all contributors to the book, and so we're just simply trying to complement what must be complemented.

01:28:33

In other words, we're very grateful that there's, you know, an uptick, a resurgence for people who are hungry for sound biblical truth, but at the same time, there are some things on the peripheral that even the main headline voices would not agree with and would not promote, but nevertheless, we're seeing some of these what we might call reverse pragmatism, things that are popping up in the lives of different Christians and churches.

01:29:02

So for instance, you have people that are very much attracted to the New Calvinism, often because of a certain type of dress attire or cultural cliches or because of tattoo art or because of, you know, things of that nature, because of cigars and sipping, you know, craft beer and talking theology, but they're not necessarily attracted to the movement because of the theology alone, and that's the problem.

01:29:32

So we want to address some of those issues and say, look, what does it mean that you are a

01:29:38

Calvinist? Is it because you have a t -shirt of Charles Spurgeon, or is it because you like to smoke cigars or whatever else?

01:29:47

So we want to really address the issue that Young, Restless, and Reformed, really, the doctrines of grace have always, as Stephen Lawson says, you know, it's always been the

01:29:58

Young, Restless, and Reformed. That's what the Reformation was all about.

01:30:03

You had these college students like Tyndale and these other guys who were huddled up together at the

01:30:10

White Horse Inn, and they were studying the works of Martin Luther, and they would eventually be burned at the stake, and they would give their lives for these grand truths.

01:30:21

So, you know, again, it's one thing to be immature in the faith, but it's another thing to stay there in perpetuity.

01:30:30

So we want to try to be always reforming, but also growing in our sanctification, and some of the things that we're addressing in the book is that people want to be growing in the knowledge of God, but they're not necessarily growing in holiness.

01:30:46

We're gonna pick up where you left off there. If anybody would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:30:54

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA. Only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter over which you are asking.

01:31:03

Don't go away. We'll be right back with Pastor Josh Bice and more of the New Calvinism after these messages.

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01:38:53

Well, now we are back with our discussion with Pastor Josh Bice, a pastor of Praise Mill Baptist Church in Douglasville, Georgia, and also founder of the

01:39:03

G3 Conference. We are right now talking about a new book that he has written or is co -authored, and this will be coming out in January, just in time for the

01:39:15

G3 Conference. Now, was I right there? Have you co -authored this book? Yes, so I'm actually the editor of the book, and I actually organized the project, and so Paul Washer, Stephen Lawson, Conrad, and Bayway, and Tim Jackson all agreed to be contributors to it.

01:39:34

Right, and what a great group of co -authors there. Before I go to any of our listener questions, can you list some primary things that stand out that would set a person or church or group out, that would set them apart, that make them stand out as a

01:39:56

New Calvinist person, church, or group? Well, that's very difficult to do.

01:40:01

As I said earlier, I mean, you can't really—it's really difficult to define what New Calvinism is, and so the boundaries are always changing.

01:40:12

They're always morphing, so it seems. But again, I think that if I could just complement the movement itself and try to be gracious,

01:40:23

I would say that the New Calvinism movement can be described as really a group of people that love theology.

01:40:31

They have a desire to really serve God faithfully.

01:40:37

Again, they have a desire to use media to get the truth out to the masses.

01:40:46

But again, in just a couple of words, you might say that it's a Christ -exalting group, a spirit -driven group, a missions -motivated group.

01:40:55

But again, it's multi -denominational. It's both charismatic and non -charismatic, and this is where you start to get into issues that might be of great concern to people, and so they tend to hesitate to be called a part of the

01:41:11

New Calvinist movement because of, you might say, people that claim to be a part of the continuationist movement.

01:41:20

And then again, you have both young and old, so it's not just the young, although it's primarily made up of a group of youthful individuals, but it's not that older folks can't be classified as a part of the

01:41:37

New Calvinism movement as well. So really, it's difficult to say, like, if you were to say, okay, what does the church look like that's a part of the

01:41:43

New Calvinism movement? Again, a lot of your younger churches could be seen as hipster churches, or they might have very contemporary music, put a lot of emphasis on the stage and set design.

01:41:58

They might dress rather trendy, and they might not seem so preachy in their approach and things of that nature, but at the same time, they're going to put a very high emphasis upon the doctrines of grace and the inerrancy of the

01:42:15

Word of God and complementarianism that's rooted and grounded in Scripture. And missions is going to be a big thing to the

01:42:23

New Calvinism movement. So again, it's going to be an eclectic group. It's going to be hard to define.

01:42:29

And so when I say that, even that description alone, apart from the doctrinal distinctives, you might find a young, hipster type of church that might be very much

01:42:41

Arminian and not a part of the New Calvinism movement. So it's hard to define just on practical things.

01:42:49

You have to really get into what the church actually believes, which is by far of greater importance than how they're dressed, by the way.

01:43:00

We have a Christian from Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who says, how did this movement start?

01:43:09

Well, the movement itself started, I think, with a distaste for the superficial theology and the pragmatic preaching that had been so much of a common thing, say, over the past hundred years.

01:43:26

So if you go back to, say, the 1930s and 40s and 50s, and it's just a church growth movement that was fueled by pragmatism, the

01:43:38

Southern Baptist Convention in 1954 had a motto that was titled A Million More in 54.

01:43:45

Well, the idea was let's get a million people baptized and added into the ranks of our membership in our local churches.

01:43:54

Well, that's a fantastic goal. But if you find yourself running short at the end of the year and you're doing every scheme under the sun to get people to walk an aisle and get into the baptistry, well, that's detrimental to the church.

01:44:12

And then beyond that, you have very pragmatic sermons that are being preached that's driving away from doctrinal clarity and doctrinal depth so that you appease the seekers, so that you can get more people into the church.

01:44:27

Well, over time, what happened was people that were sitting in those pews and some of those children that were raised by the parents who had come into the life of the church under those types of pragmatic schemes started to become very much complacent with that type of preaching.

01:44:45

And so they were hungry, and so then God started raising up voices. You know, and like John Piper, for instance, has become extremely popular and used by God over the years.

01:44:55

We might differ on some things, but God used him. And D .A. Carson the same way.

01:45:01

And so you start looking at these men who were putting their fingers on the Word of God and their relentless approach to preaching was attractive to a younger audience.

01:45:14

And so you started to see this uptick, this resurgence with this desire to say, you know what, I'm interested in what the

01:45:21

Word of God says. And so they started looking for pastors and preachers who would teach expositionally rather than topically.

01:45:31

And so that started to be a wave, the first wave, you might say, of the New Calvinism movement.

01:45:38

Thank you, Christian. We also have another

01:45:43

Chris, a Christopher in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who says,

01:45:48

I was very surprised to hear that John MacArthur has been considered to be a New Calvinist.

01:45:54

That really shocked me. Do you also place our dear brother in that category? I would say that John MacArthur, again, it's hard to define who is in and who is not in.

01:46:06

But I would say that John MacArthur is very much loved by many people in the New Calvinism movement.

01:46:13

He's also very much not despised, but you might say there's a lot of people in the

01:46:21

New Calvinism movement that look to John MacArthur as a grumpy grandfather figure. And so they're not too pleased with him.

01:46:28

So they find themselves looking to him and having some affection for his biblical depth and his ministry that's been steadfast through the years, but they're not so much interested in immersing themselves under his preaching ministry.

01:46:43

So I think that John MacArthur could be classified as someone who's not necessarily at the center of the movement, but he's very much a voice that has impacted the movement, and you see that with him being there at T4G and other conferences as well.

01:47:01

We have an anonymous listener who says, the congregation where I'm a member has been labeled by some outside of our church as a

01:47:10

New Calvinist church. The thing that puzzles me is that some of these folks actually will say that New Calvinism has a different gospel, and I'm wondering what they mean by that.

01:47:22

I know that you are saying this is not a monolithic group, but can you at least give us some kind of an idea of why that charge would be leveled against at least some

01:47:30

New Calvinists? Well, again, I mean, it's the same thing when it comes to Calvinism in general.

01:47:37

I think that sometimes when we use terms like New Calvinism versus Old Calvinism or Classical Calvinism or whatever you want to call it, you start to have people that don't really understand what they're talking about.

01:47:51

So it's like the guy that signed up for karate and he got his white belt, and then the very next day he goes to school and brags about the fact that he knows karate, and then when someone tests him out on it, you know, he finds out very quickly that he knows just enough karate to get himself in trouble.

01:48:08

That's the way it is with a lot of people when they start delving into the intricate details of Calvinism and New Calvinism and trying to figure out ways to define those things.

01:48:21

So again, having written this book, I say it's very difficult, maybe impossible to truly define what

01:48:29

New Calvinism is as far as the movement is concerned. But let it be known that the

01:48:35

New Calvinism movement might have some different shapes and different forms that might seem different from Classical Calvinism that emerged out of the

01:48:46

Reformation era, you might say, or became more popular during that era. But the gospel is clearly the same.

01:48:55

So someone that's saying that the New Calvinism has a different gospel, I would say they don't really know what they're talking about.

01:49:02

I see the gospel as very much the same, but we might have some differing issues that, you know, cause friction, so let's talk about that.

01:49:11

But the fact of the matter is simply this, the gospel is the same. And when you were describing the origins of New Calvinism, it reminded me,

01:49:24

I'm not saying that this is a direct parallel, but there seem to be similarities, at least to some extent, in that a movement that began with noble motives, but had developed some serious problems.

01:49:39

And perhaps you would view Neo -Orthodoxy as having a lot more serious problems than New Calvinism, but there seems to be some kind of a parallel there where Neo -Orthodoxy, from what

01:49:50

I understand in the early 20th century, arose as a reaction against liberalism, even though many conservative

01:50:00

Christians today equate Neo -Orthodox individuals with liberalism.

01:50:07

Yeah, exactly. So, you know, a movement can start with the purest of motives, but sometimes there's what you might call a little bit of an error in the mission, so some type of a shift, you might say.

01:50:24

And so when you start thinking about a drift in the mission, or the shift in the initial vision of a movement, even the slightest movement can, years down the road, be detrimental.

01:50:39

So, again, it's extremely important, vitally important, that you stick to the main issues, and have a foundation that's firmly fixed on the inerrancy of Scripture.

01:50:51

And so when Sola Scriptura is somehow, you know, when you depart from that foundation, you're going to find yourself, years down the road, in big, big trouble.

01:51:02

So you start doing what I call reverse pragmatism. So you have this idea that, okay, we're going to be very pragmatic over here to get all the seekers into our churches.

01:51:12

Well, that was the error years ago. So now New Calvinism comes along and says, hey, that's really bad.

01:51:18

We shouldn't do that anymore. So we're going to stick to these grand, great, old truths.

01:51:24

We're going to go back to the old paths. Well, that's a good thing. But the fact is, within New Calvinism, you start to see, you know, these young millennial leaders that are putting far more emphasis on their stage design and their stage set in their church and the media ministry of their church than they are the doctrinal clarity of their preaching.

01:51:49

And so, you know, again, we have to be careful. Now, that's not across the board, everyone in the

01:51:55

New Calvinism movement. So I want to be clear, but I'm just saying sometimes on the peripheral, you start to see these errors popping up.

01:52:02

And so I want the New Calvinism movement to be successful and to be a

01:52:08

God -honoring movement. And so only time will tell if that actually will happen.

01:52:13

We're certainly not at a place in history where we can say it was or it was not successful.

01:52:18

So we still need several more decades to, you know, to flow under the bridge, you might say, the water under the bridge before we can make such a, you know, a statement.

01:52:31

Now, what you just said almost seemed self -contradicting because being absorbed or obsessed with stage lighting and all that seems to be a product of seeker sensitivism, which you were saying that a lot of the folks in the

01:52:48

New Calvinism are opposed to. So it does seem to be self -contradictory in some aspect.

01:52:55

Yeah, yeah, so that's what I'm saying when I say reverse pragmatism. So you say, you know, that this is a group that's been very much opposed to pragmatism, you know, at its foundation.

01:53:06

But now you're starting to see these very same people who are very much engaged, spending a lot of time on these things, marketing strategies and various other things, as opposed to, you know, immersing themselves in the word and then just trusting that God.

01:53:24

Now, I'm not saying that you have to have the oldest, most archaic building with the most shaggy old carpet and you can't have, you know, new paint on the walls and you can't try to make your worship center and your campus attractive.

01:53:42

I'm not suggesting that. But what I'm saying is when you see that people are putting far more emphasis on those things to reach their culture, in other words, they say, okay, well ties don't work in our day, so we're not going to wear suits and ties, we're going to wear this.

01:53:58

That sounds like pragmatism to me. So I want to be careful not to just be a product of the culture.

01:54:07

And that's what I'm talking about when I talk about reverse pragmatism. We have

01:54:12

CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who says, one of the things that concerns me about the new

01:54:18

Calvinism is that as I try to have a good influence on my non -Calvinistic fundamentalist friends, they look at that and they see that as a necessary result of believing in Reformed theology, they broad brush us all together, and those who are very opposed to introducing rap music and other kinds of worldly secular music and things into the worship service, they think that we are all in favor of that.

01:54:47

How do we explain this to our fundamentalist friends who are so opposed to things like rap music and secular music, and without overly vilifying those individuals who are involved in those things?

01:55:04

Well, I would say, first of all, let's be very balanced. So I've said this on your show in the past, whether or not you approve of any type of Christian hip -hop or if there is such a thing in your own estimation,

01:55:17

I would say that the churches that are actually seeking to implement

01:55:24

Christian hip -hop into their Lord's Day worship are probably very few and far between.

01:55:32

So let's be very balanced in our approach to broad brushing things. So I would just say to someone like that, look, how many churches do you really know that are actually implementing

01:55:44

Christian hip -hop into their Lord's Day worship? Okay, so second of all, then you go into the other cultural things.

01:55:53

So to be a Calvinist, does that mean that you have to suddenly get a 1689 tattoo on your neck or that you have to wear a

01:56:02

T -shirt of Jonathan Edwards to Starbucks every Saturday morning? I mean, what does it mean to be a

01:56:08

Calvinist? Do you mean I got that tattoo for nothing? No offense,

01:56:15

Joe Thorne. I love you, brother. Yeah, I think, Chris, yours is probably faded from the 60s, so you're the old

01:56:21

Calvinist. But nevertheless,

01:56:27

I think that we have to come back to the question of what does it mean to be a Calvinist? Are we really looking at the doctrinal distinctives, or are we trying to look at the cultural elements that are surrounding the movement itself?

01:56:47

And so that would be where I would try to center the argument. And so believing in a big

01:56:52

God who saves really bad sinners does not make you wear skinny jeans.

01:56:59

Again, there's some appeal, and there's some, you might say, fads, and there are some styles that introduce themselves over time.

01:57:10

People don't dress the same as they did in the 50s, so that's just naturally going to change over time.

01:57:16

So just believing in certain doctrines is not going to suddenly make you change your hairstyle or get these tattoos or wear these jeans or whatever else.

01:57:27

So let's just be clear, what do we believe? And really it just centers on this.

01:57:32

If the Bible teaches something, as Sproul said in his book, Chosen by God, we talk about predestination because the

01:57:39

Bible talks about predestination. Well, I want you to take two minutes now to just summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today.

01:57:51

The most critical thing that we could say is that we need to know who God is.

01:57:56

And so this upcoming G3 Conference on Discipleship is vitally important. I want to invite people to come and join us in about four weeks from now.

01:58:06

We're going to be in Atlanta for three days focused on the subject of discipleship.

01:58:12

If we don't know what it means to, as a church, have a passion for both missions and discipleship, then we've missed it.

01:58:21

We're not called to go out and make converts. We're called to go out and make disciples. And so rather than just dropping

01:58:28

Bibles from a helicopter, we need to plant churches. Rather than having churches that are just pragmatically driven by events and other things, we need to be centered on the

01:58:38

Scriptures and developing mature brothers and sisters in the Lord. And so discipleship is extremely vital.

01:58:45

I want to encourage all of your listeners to be rightly dividing the Word of God and sitting under the preaching that would help them to know who

01:58:53

God actually is. Well, I know that your website for Praise Mill Baptist Church is praisemill .com.

01:58:59

That's p -r -a -y -s -mill .com. And also the G3 Conference, as we've been saying, their website is g3conference .com,

01:59:09

g3conference .com. I want to thank you so much, Pastor Josh, not only for being on the program today but also doing so with very little advance notice.

01:59:18

It was such a joy to be able to have you be a part of our program today. Always a joy to be with you,

01:59:25

Chris. And don't forget, register as soon as you can and register your exhibitors booth especially as soon as you can if you plan on doing so at g3conference .com.

01:59:35

g3conference .com. I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who wrote in questions. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater