May 7, 2020 Show with Dr. Gregory Reynolds and Dr. Bill Shishko on “Salvation, Incarnation, & Communication: The Importance of Physical Presence in the Media Ecology of the Church”

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

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

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

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions, and now here's your host,

Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday. On this seventh day of May, 2020, and I am thrilled, beyond words, to have two excellent guests return to the program, and although each of them have been on before, this is the first time they are on together on this show, which makes it even more exciting to me.

We have Dr. Gregory Reynolds and Pastor Bill Shishko on the program today.

Dr. Gregory Reynolds is a former church planter and pastor in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church denomination, and current editor for Ordained Servant, a journal for church officers, whose doctoral dissertation,

The Word is Worth a Thousand Pictures, Preaching in an Electronic Age, was published.

And also Pastor Bill Shishko, who is the pastor at The Haven in Deer Park, Long Island, New York, a congregation of the

Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and Pastor Bill is probably most well known for pastoring the

Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Franklin Square, previously, and I believe, Pastor Bill, was it over 30 years?

Thirty -five years. Thirty -five years, wow. A little bit longer than you are old. I wish that was true.

But it's my honor and privilege to welcome Dr. Greg Reynolds and Pastor Bill Shishko back to Iron Sharksman's Iron.

Great to be here with you. And today we are addressing a very unique theme, and one that I think is very important and should be quite fascinating and controversial, salvation, incarnation, and communication, the importance of physical presence in the media ecology of the

Church. And before we go into that major theme, Dr. Reynolds, if you could go into a brief summary of what your book,

The Word is Worth a Thousand Pictures, Preaching in the Electronic Age, is all about, which, as I said before, is your published doctoral dissertation.

Yes, actually, Jay Adams made us get something that would be publishable so that it wouldn't be sitting on a library shelf somewhere and not be good to anyone since it was a doctorate of ministry, so we ought to be ministering to at least other ministers.

And in this case, my major emphasis was to try to help, first of all,

I had to learn, and then to try to help others understand the nature of electronic media in order that we might not be intimidated by it as a replacement for the actual live pastoral preaching of ministers of the

Word. And live pastoral preaching, those three words are important to go together as they give really the theme of the book that I was really promoting, the importance and the centrality of the medium that God has designed for the edification of his people and the evangelization of the world, which is live preaching.

Now, unfortunately, the first eight of the ten chapters are examining the nature of media and the way it's affected the

Church, and I say unfortunately because I don't get to preaching until the last two chapters.

I actually have a book that I've written that I am now trying to get published that unpacks the last two chapters in another 350 -page book that hopefully will encourage preachers in a number of different areas that I didn't have the space to cover in the first book.

Do you have a title for that one yet? And yeah, it's The Voice of the Good Shepherd. Wow. And it's going to be about preaching in the electronic age, and so we'll be really focused on preaching.

It would be quite adequate, I think, to be a textbook for homiletics, because it covers media in a way that I don't think most, if any, textbooks that I know of cover.

Well, is the word is worth a thousand pictures still in print? Yes, it is.

So it probably needs to be, I probably need to go and update it a little bit. But it could be. Of course, the one thing that it doesn't deal with is it doesn't deal with social media and mobile media.

So the smartphone, the iPad, and the various social platforms that we have, such as Facebook, it doesn't deal with those at all.

And of course, this definitely impacts the personal presence that is so important to the

Church. Yeah, I was amazed when I was looking at my old website for Iron Trip and Zion Radio when

I was broadcasting out of New York and found out how many years ago

I interviewed you on that program. I think it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 years ago or more.

Yeah. Well, the book was published in 2001, and boy, the last two decades have flown by.

Yeah. But I still, this is a subject that I have a great passion for. In fact,

I'm working on an article now, which we can discuss a bit later in the program, for Ordained Servant, for the

June -July online edition, that will give my reflections, because not everyone's going to agree with every detail of my reflections on the virtual streaming of virtual so -called worship or church meetings that we've been forced to do as churches because of the pandemic.

By the way, I don't know if you even know this, although I know you remember the conference quite well,

I'm sure. But I had the privilege, while you were still the pastor at the

Westchester Orthodox Presbyterian Church, I had the privilege of hearing and seeing one of my heroes of the faith,

John Gerstner, conduct a conference on Jonathan Edwards there. Oh, yes, that was amazing.

We had wonderful conferences back in those days. We've actually had duplicated a number of them here at MSK Presbyterian in Manchester, New Hampshire, over recent years, and John Gerstner was definitely one of our favorites.

He and his wife stayed with us, and we have wonderful memories of that great fellowship, and also his great expertise on Jonathan Edwards.

It was inspiring to so many. So you were at that conference, that's right. Yes, I was. That's a neat memory.

And I recall, at least on several occasions, I was the only one in the building laughing at John Gerstner's jokes.

That's funny. Sometimes we ministers can be subtle with our humor.

Now briefly, let us know about the Ordained Servant. Well, Ordained Servant is something that was started by G .I.

Williamson back in 1992, and in fact, next year, 2021, we'll be celebrating our 30th anniversary as a publication.

It was conceived originally as a print journal, published four times a year, quarterly, and it was meant to be for church officers to help ministers, elders, and deacons in their ministries in the church, and so it was published that way.

It went into PDF form, so all of those up until 2005 are on our website in PDF format.

And then I was asked, when G .I. retired at the age of 80, I was asked by Danny Olinger, General Secretary of our

Christian Ed Committee, to come on if I was interested in taking the editorship of Ordained Servant.

Well, it didn't take me more than three seconds to answer a hearty yes, and I've enjoyed doing that ever since.

And we've expanded in that I try to cover topics such as media ecology and also our interface with contemporary culture, so lots of issues that elders and ministers have to deal with in their ministries.

Also, one of the things that we did that we'd never done before, there was a kind of debate on the committee, should we go electronic and just do it on the web, or still have a print edition, and we decided that we'd go with both, so that now we have an annual print edition, which takes pretty much all of the content from the ten issues that go online each year.

I had a fascinating interview with Danny Olinger back in the old days when we were broadcasting out of New York on WNYG and WGBB on Gerhardus Voss.

Oh yes, he is an expert on Voss. He has a biography that was published by our committee on Christian education back three years ago, because he did it serially in ordained servant from month to month, and then when it was done, he put it together and has published that work, and it's very comprehensive.

It gives wonderful summaries of some of the work that Voss did that ministers might not have time to read completely, and so it's a very valuable resource.

Great, well if anybody wants more information on the ordained servant, go to opc .org

and click resources, and then click periodicals, and I'm sure we'll be announcing that again later on.

And now I'd like to formally introduce my dear friend, one of my oldest friends after having been born from above by the grace and mercy of Christ, Pastor Bill Shishko.

And Pastor Bill, tell us a little bit about the Haven for the sake of those in our audience who have not yet heard you on the program, or they may just have a fuzzy memory.

Yeah, it's been so long since we've met. We've been in lockdown mode a month and a half. I'm not exactly sure what to say.

We have a rented facility. We rent the facility of the Ascension Lutheran Church in Deer Park.

We meet at 4 .30 in the afternoon when we're able to meet publicly. But it's a church plant, and I love to say we're reaching out to people.

A lot of Orthodox Presbyterian churches don't reach out to, not that they don't want to, but we deal with people from very troubled backgrounds in many cases, and we focus on the gospel.

We emphasize three things, music, message, and mission, and that pretty much defines what we're all about.

We love singing the praise of God from psalms and hymns. The preaching opens up the scriptures as it teaches us about Jesus, and we are very much involved in ministering to people in various ways.

So for those in that part of western Suffolk County, once we can begin meeting again, we'd love to have you join us with us for worship.

Oh, I would personally love to visit there. I have not yet had the opportunity, but looking forward to it. Of course,

I have had the privilege many times to visit the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Franklin Square when you were still there, and it was always a joy to be there.

Well, let me give our email address for our listeners. Anybody who wants to send in a question, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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

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

And if you could, Greg, give us a brief introduction to media ecology.

I've got to admit, that's the first time I recall ever hearing that phrase before, as when

I was going over the notes for today's program. Yes, it is a mystery to many people because it's not something that's used out in the general public.

It came really from Marshall McLuhan. Back in the 60s,

I thought he was a hippie like me, but no, he was definitely a kind of pre -conservative

Roman Catholic, a brilliant professor, and someone who was trying to get people to understand the nature and power of electronic media and the global village that it's creating.

His view was he tried to remain somewhat neutral in terms of his assessment, just trying to get us to understand the nature of media.

And so he would come up with all these interesting statements, like the title of one of his mysterious books called

The Medium is the Message. And it really could be, it was really The Medium is the Massage.

And he came up with many, many different variations of that to try to wake people up to think about what media is, what it does, how it changes the way that we view the world.

And he used the analogy of a fish in water, and basically saying like fish in water we don't really pay attention to the environment, we just kind of swim in it.

And for Christians, or for all human beings really, it's a dangerous thing to swim in the environment of our creations because our creations, and especially electronic creations, use us rather than we using them much of the time.

I actually have, Chris, a definition. It's a somewhat technical definition, but I'll unpack it here.

But I tried to put it all in one brief paragraph. That media ecology is the study of the relationship of media to their cultural environment.

Ecology is from the Greek oikos, which means house, and deals with the management of households and other realms as interconnected environments or systems.

So Joseph was a house manager for Pharaoh and for Potiphar, and so that kind of household management involves every aspect of what a household is.

And media ecology focuses on the critical analysis of media as environments and as part of the larger environment of culture.

And secondly, media ecology deals with the management or stewardship which the analysis of media warrants.

And so we have to, it's sort of like fighting a war. You have to understand and analyze the terrain and the armies and the strategies and everything else before you can do anything, but then you must act.

And so it is that if we understand media, we can act wisely.

And this is so important for Christians who often think of media as simply tools, and they certainly are tools, but that metaphor doesn't really get us where McLuhan and I think

I want us to go, which is to see them as that which alter the way we view the world, the way that we relate to God, the church, our families, and our culture, the people around us.

Just one quick example of that, and it's not an electronic technology, it's the automobile.

And the automobile has changed the social fabric of the

Western world in a dramatic way. We're distant from families and even from our churches.

I often have to drive a long way, and it has completely changed the social and cultural structure of our world, both for good and ill.

We can go places that we couldn't go back when we only had horses, but at the same time we all also can miss the flowers in our neighbor's yard if we're speeding by in an automobile.

And so it changes the way that we look at the world.

So, Pastor Bill, if you could, tell us about the importance of the physical presence in the media ecology of the church.

Let me back up just a bit. I'd mentioned along with the book Dr. Reynolds mentioned, the book that actually got me catapulted into thinking about all of this is the book that came out in the 1980s and actually later at a 20th anniversary edition,

Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. Oh yeah, I remember James Montgomery Boyce first introduced that book to me.

Dr. Reynolds can fill you in more on that. I believe he interviewed him, but that's on a relatively popular level.

It is an excellent introduction to the whole field of media ecology, and I guess

I always illustrate this in this way. The media is the way we communicate with one another, and each medium is different.

If, for example, a military officer must notify a parent of the death of a son or a daughter, you're not going to text them, and you're not going to email them.

And you may phone them if that's the only way you can reach them, but more than likely you're going to go personally to announce that to them.

And that illustrates simply that the medium itself affects the message.

And then if you want a more biblical way to look at it, think about Christ.

The Old Testament tells us about God who comes to us in the

God -man, the Lord Jesus. It tells us about him in word. But the

New Testament, in the Incarnation, Christ brings to us the very heart of God in his person, not only in his words but in his actions, which is why we should never try to picture

Christ, the God -man, because everything about his humanity was united with his deity, and he demonstrated those things.

And this will lead you to your question, Chris. There's a profound reason for that, and that is that God is with us.

And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory as of the only begotten of the

Father. Now, with respect to your question, the importance of physical presence in the media ecology of the

Church, that is embedded in the New Testament. In 1

Thessalonians 1 .5, and here's where the American Standard Version, Chris, that you promote, does a much better job of translating it than the

ESV does. When Paul says, our gospel came to you not only in word, it wasn't just information, but also in power and in the

Holy Spirit and with full conviction. And the original language is, just as you know what kind of man we prove to be among you for your sake.

That's the importance of physical presence in the media ecology of the Church in one verse.

Paul's presence with the Thessalonians and with others was inseparable from the power of the

Holy Spirit and the deep conviction that the word is meant to bring. Because people are not just to hear our words, they're meant to know who we are, what we are, and so on.

And really, by the Holy Spirit, we are representing that Christ to people.

Therefore, physical presence is absolutely, it is not an option.

It is absolutely essential to the effectiveness of ministry. I won't mention them all,

I don't want to take too much time with it, but just so you see how this is embedded in the

New Testament, in 1 Thessalonians 2 and verses 7, 8, and 10,

Paul says the same thing. We were gentle among you, we labored among you, and he bores that in.

It's the same language of Christ being among us. The elders in Acts 20 and verse 18, they have been called out to labor among the flock.

Peter says, Shepherd, be among you, flock of God. And I always love to tell people the original email is an epistle.

And Paul in Romans 1 and Romans 15 says, I wrote to you, but he said,

I would much rather come to you, I want to be present with you, that I might impart some spiritual gift to you.

And then in 2 John 12, though I have much to write to you,

I would rather not use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to come to you and talk face to face, so that our joy may be complete.

So whatever else is being said here, information is not enough.

The distinctiveness of Christian ministry, like the distinctiveness of the Incarnation, is that we are with people, that being with people is inseparable from our message.

And I'd go so far as to say it's inseparable from the effectiveness of that message by the

Holy Spirit's power. Well, we actually do have an anonymous listener who has sent in an email.

And this anonymous listener says, Dr. Reynolds and Pastor Shishko, I fear that during this pandemic, when we are banned from actually physically attending the corporate public gathering of the

Brothers and Sisters in Christ for worship, that while we either listen to recordings of our pastor or watch a live streaming program visually, that although we are singing and we are hearing the word preached, that this is not truly fellowship, and it is not technically truly worship.

Am I correct on this? Well, that's in a way getting to something that's near the end of the program this evening or this afternoon.

But I think that he's definitely correct, or she, in asking that question and having, really it's not so much a question as a concern that I would say is extremely legitimate.

And in fact, I know people, brothers in the ministry that I've had conversations with recently that don't even want to call what we do when we instruct or preach, they don't want to call it preaching.

And certainly calling it worship is difficult. There are, of course, a number of different ways that sessions that churches are handling the communication of the word each

Lord's Day. But I think that live streaming can never replace the live worshiping of God's people.

And when Pastor Shishko was just very nicely and clearly explaining the importance of personal presence in the church, and especially quoting this, one of my favorite verses of late from 2

John 12, it reminds me of an example. Years ago, I knew someone, a minister, who had someone in their congregation who came to them one

Sunday and said that so -and -so, a famous preacher that's broadcast on television every week, is a much better preacher than you, and I'm leaving the church, and I'm going to stay home, and that's going to be my worship.

Well, of course, this is always troubling, and my friend was chagrined.

And several years later, this gentleman came to him and asked him if he would do a funeral for his father, who had just passed away.

And the response of my friend was, why don't you ask your TV preacher to do this?

Well, I think my friend actually did the funeral, but he made the point, which is a powerful one, that nothing replaces that personal relationship that a congregation has with the pastor preacher.

And that's why I say that I'm defending, and the word is worth a thousand pictures, the concept, the biblical concept, of live pastoral preaching.

That connection, as Pastor Shishko so well said, is essential to the

Church and to pastoral ministry. Well, Pastor Bill, yes.

Yeah, I would agree exactly with what Dr. Reynolds said, and urge your listener to continue to listen, because we're hoping to unpack that in a little more detail in the next segment, and then in the latter part of the program, talk more about some of the implications of this, what the electronic environment has done in relation to the pandemic.

But all I would say at this point is, I think that terms have been very much confused here.

We talk about corporate worship when a minister, sometimes in an empty building, or sometimes with a skeleton congregation, leads a service, and then others are getting it in their home.

That's not corporate worship. That's family worship. It's family worship that's led by someone else.

And not that I want to make a person an offender for a word, but even that confusion is not at all a healthy situation.

People then begin to think less of what corporate worship really is, as well as, and here's where Dr.

Reynolds can develop it more than I can, it is in a real sense pandering to the performance and media star mentality.

It's not that a minister intends this. I'm sure they don't. But people perceive it this way.

This is the ministerial personality that I'm seeing on a television or on YouTube. Now they can do that at a gathered assembly as well, but they're less prone to do that, because it's a whole person communication, which is to hold people in a physical presence, which is not what television is.

Television is an observer. But as we go on, I'm sure Dr. Reynolds will develop that more.

Yeah, there's some good things that I can say, and I think we're running out of time in this segment, but about Neil Postman, whom you mentioned,

Pastor Shishko, and he has a wonderful chapter in that book called

Shuffle Off to Bethlehem, and we can talk a bit about what you said and unpack that a little bit, in terms of the preacher being, as he says, top banana on television.

In fact, it was quite fascinating the in -depth insight that Neil Postman had, even though he was a secular

Jew, from what I recall. That's right. He was quite a liberal Jew, and yet he did understand a few important things about the

Second Commandment and what worship is. I remember when

I read the book, and I read his section on the Second Commandment, not to make graven images, and while he probably had no idea who the

Puritan John Owen was, it was a very Owen -esque kind of exposition of what the

Second Commandment says. Wow. Well, we have to go to our first break right now, and if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of their own,

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And we are now back to our discussion with our guest today Dr. Gregory Reynolds and Pastor Bill Shishko and if you just tuned us in, our theme is

Salvation, Incarnation and Communication The Importance of Physical Presence in the

Media Ecology of the Church If you'd like to join us, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com

chrisarnzen at gmail .com And Dr.

Reynolds, if you could tell us about virtual church meetings and their impact.

Yes, thank you Chris. It's something that I had lots of ideas about as a media ecologist thinking about being good stewards of electronic media and being firmly opposed to the idea that somehow cyber church would ever be a real church or have real worship and so now

I've actually experienced what I've always thought would be really a horrible attempt at substituting something like virtual church for the real thing but we have to by necessity because of this pandemic whatever one might think of the shutdowns which

I'm going to be looking at hopefully in the summer after I've had more time to reflect the problem is that we're stuck with this but it's also given some of us an experience that we can reflect upon and so that's what

I've been doing I'm actually working on an article that will be published on the first of June in the electronic version of Ordained Servant Years ago,

Chris, back in 2012 I was thinking it was only a couple of years ago but as you get older you forget how quickly the time goes and I wrote an article based on some lectures that I was doing for the local ministers here called

Face to Face The Importance of Personal Presence in Ministry and Life and if you go online you can find this it's in the 2012

PDF version of Ordained Servant so that's like the print version that's been put into PDF or you could get it in the

December electronic version online 2012 but I went through the

Bible and I thought it would be fascinating to see just what the Bible teaches about face the face, and of course you have the face of God you have the faces of people you have

Paul talking about the importance and Roman justice of having your accusers come before you face to face something we're forgetting in our culture called due process and so the importance of the face is really amazing there are hundreds and hundreds of references to the face and as Pastor Shishko quoted a couple things

First Thessalonians is a wonderful place to see the importance of this in worship and to see how very deficient the present situation is in terms of our gatherings on the

Lord's Day I thought one of the helpful things though I personally believe that what we're going to be doing is that those of us who have never thought that any kind of electronic mediation was good for Sunday gatherings because it wouldn't actually be a gathering we're so hungry now to get back to worshipping together gathered in corporate worship that I think it will actually improve those who've already come with those convictions to the post -pandemic situation however, the larger church

I believe and there may be some within more solid churches that might be tempted by this need to go back and think about the nature of what public worship is in itself and so I'm just thinking about the terms that Pastor Shishko mentioned corporate and think about the word congregation it actually means to gather a flock from the

Latin congregare and so to congregate involves our physical presence and I was thinking that here what are we celebrating on Sundays on the

Lord's Day it's the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ and Orthodox Christians have always emphasized that it was historical bodily resurrection of the

Christ of Scripture that this was absolutely essential and central to the nature of our celebration and so for us not to be bodily present is a contradiction to that our directive for public worship in the

Orthodox Presbyterian Church which has as of 2011 been revised and expanded and I think in a very helpful way it says this so eloquently because God's people worship not as an aggregation of individuals but as a congregation of those who are members of one another in Christ public worship is to be conducted as a corporate activity in which all the members participate in the body of Christ so they're really emphasizing having no idea about what this pandemic would do of course written a decade ago but recognizing that as embodied image bearers of God who are now connected with the resurrection from the dead that our presence together gathered is essential to the very nature of worship and Pastor Bill tell us about the approach during the time of church shutdown the promotion of family worship let me just add one other thing to what

Dr. Reynolds said I'm not the brightest light on the pole so these things are all happening out here and I didn't think much about the virtual worship until I read an article about the virtual Lord's Supper and that's when

I started blowing the whistle with different people but I would just add to what

Dr. Reynolds said before I get to that our gatherings on the Lord's Day as our whole

Lord's Days are meant to be they're foretastes of our everlasting Sabbath and our everlasting

Sabbath there's nothing virtual about it it's real we're really gathered with real people and the extent to which we emphasize the virtual aspect detracts from that but what we did and I don't think we did it right churches were broadsided by this and thank

God they wanted to do something to keep congregations together and they had Zoom they had

Facebook they had YouTube that they could use and many churches had the kind of equipment that they could do this well so I'm not faulting them it's just that Dr.

Reynolds and I are Orthodox Presbyterian ministers and we're used to thinking things through biblically before we do it and so what we opted to do is

I created I formed a bulletin that is similar to our regular bulletin that includes the hymns in it and so on but we just made clear that it was for family worship and so there's a section for the head of the home to lead or if it's a single individual a single individual can do it it didn't include the things only a minister can do but it included portions of reading the scriptures and so on and then when it actually came and then there were links there were links to where people could sing along with a congregation in their family worship if they wanted to do it in most cases

Margaret and I just sang acapella because we're used to that and then at the point of the message

I did record something for the congregation to listen to but I wouldn't regret that for one minute because family worship is something that should be should be embedded in our piety and this has given us that opportunity to do it again

I want to be clear Chris I'm not saying others who did it differently did it wrong I don't mean that but I do

I really wonder if we have thought through the way we should what we've done for worship during this time of the pandemic well what

I'm going to do now is I'm going to read you a question from RJ in White Plains, New York and then

I'll have you two each answer the question when we return from our midway break and RJ says what is your greatest concern about the live streaming of worship services during the pandemic because this is only intended to be a temporary measure obviously so what is the great concern and we'll have you respond obviously to RJ and we are going to our midway break right now this is the longer than normal break folks so please be patient with us

Grace Life Radio 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida who airs this program twice daily in a pre -recorded format once in morning drive and once in the evening they are required by the

FCC to localize this program to Lake City, Florida so therefore while we are airing our globally heard commercials they are airing their local public service announcements and other things that are local to Lake City, Florida so please be patient with us as it's a longer break but also please use this time wisely write down the information provided by as many of our sponsors as you possibly can so that you can more frequently and successfully patronize them which will result

God willing in the longer life of this program because we depend upon our advertisers to exist

I know that some folks complain about the number of ads that we run but we just do not take in enough donations on a monthly basis to have that alone carry the broadcast we require our advertisements to exist so please be patient with the length of this break and also please write down that information provided by our sponsors and also write down questions for our guests today

Dr. Greg Reynolds and Pastor Bill Shishko and send them to chrisarnson at gmail .com chrisarnson at gmail .com

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That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. The coronavirus pandemic has rapidly changed our way of life, bringing so many uncertainties.

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That's 800 -656 -0231. And before we return to our guests,

Dr. Gregory Reynolds and Pastor Bill Shishko, who are addressing salvation, incarnation, and communication, the importance of physical presence in the media ecology of the church.

I just have a couple of important announcements to make. First of all, you've been hearing commercials promoting our weekly

Friday coronavirus update with Pastor Joe Jakowitz of Christ Bible Church in Pleasanton, California, where he not only gives updates, but gives biblical application on how we should respond to these updates on the virus.

Well, tomorrow we are taking a break for just one day from that update because our friend

Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries is going to be our guest tomorrow, 4 -6 p .m.

Make sure you put a note on your refrigerator or wherever else you'll most likely remember about the program, perhaps on your screen on your laptop or something.

But we look forward to hearing from you and your questions tomorrow for Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and that's

Friday, the 8th of May. And then on Monday, we've got returning to the program

Dr. Kurt Daniel for Part 3 of his discussion on his monumental 900 -page book,

The History and Theology of Calvinism. And I will give you folks a heads up, the first six people who write in very good questions that are intelligent enough to be asked and answered on the air, the first six of you will receive a free copy of this book.

So it's well worth your while to start thinking of a question now. It's Monday, May 11th.

We are having Kurt Daniel, Dr. Kurt Daniel return to the broadcast for Part 3 of our discussion on The History and Theology of Calvinism.

And every other day, Monday through Friday, in this month is booked, and they're all fascinating guests, and I hope that you listen every day, or as often as you can, and send in those questions.

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click support, then click click to donate now. And if you are not a member of a local

Bible -believing church, please, if you're having a hard time finding one, I may be able to help you.

I have lists of biblically faithful churches all over the planet earth, and I have helped many people in this audience find churches where they live, or sometimes they're looking for churches where they're vacationing, or for friends, loved ones, and family members who are unaware of churches near where they live in all parts of the world.

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and put I need a church in the subject line, and I may be able to help you. That's also the email address where you can send in a question to our guests

Dr. Gregory Reynolds and Pastor Bill Oshishko on salvation, incarnation, and communication, the importance of physical presence in the media ecology of the church.

And remember folks, always give your first name, city and state, and country of residence, and only remain anonymous if your question is personal and private.

And as you both may recall, our last question comes from an individual who is wondering why you're so concerned if these live streaming of the worship services, even if they are deficient, even if there's many things that technically separate them from true corporate worship, even though that is the case, it's a temporary measure.

Why is there a great concern? Well I think, and I'm just working of course on this article for the

June edition of Ordained Servant, and I believe that one of the things that we all notice is that it's so informal, and we can talk about the details of this a bit later, and it's so easy, it's so efficient.

We don't have to drive, I mean we've hardly put gas in our automobiles over the last six weeks, because we don't drive very far.

And we're at home, we're comfortable, we're in leisure clothes rather than dressing up for worship, and while that's very appropriate in the home environment, it's really what home is made for.

You just described about 80 % of the evangelical churches in the United States. Well exactly, and so the point

I think of our concern, and I'm sure that Pastor Shishko would share this, is that while I don't worry so much about our churches, though there are many people in them that are really wonderful believers that have never thought through any of this about the electronic media, but we've got the first church in cyberspace goes back 30 years, and so the electronic media has made huge incursions into the evangelical church and the

Bible -believing church in America, and all this will do is simply reinforce it with some people, and I've just been checking up on some things that have been said in an article in Christianity Today on communion, and what churches are doing with that, and I find it to be very, very troubling.

Now what are they doing? Because I haven't seen this personally. Are they having somebody on the screen partaking in the elements of the supper, and everybody at home is supposed to have their own portion of the elements?

There's quite a variety, and Chris, I can send you this article. I've been collecting a lot of material on this matter of communion, but one of the things that they do is one church passes out little communion cups that are sealed with the grape juice, of course it's not wine, it's grape juice, and then a little piece of bread, and they're passing that out so that people can have it at home, and of course one of the things, not only is it contrary to the idea of being the gathered people of God partaking of the body and blood of Christ in this symbolic and powerful way, but there's no oversight, and it's very clear in the

Bible that there must be oversight, that the Lord's Supper is an in -house business, and it's a corporate business, and so kind of the whole idea of doing it via the internet to me is, again, it's totally contrary to the nature of what the

Church is. Do you have anything to add, Pastor Bill? Yeah, well first of all,

I commend R .J. from White Plains, New York. He's one of these very, very rare New Yorkers who really knows how to ask a question.

What do you mean? They usually preach? Yeah, most New Yorkers give you a lecture, but yeah,

I mean, he asked, what's your greatest concern about live streaming during the pandemic, but then he said, this is temporary.

Well, I'm not so sure. The more you read now, there were people who were saying, building on what

Dr. Reynolds just said, boy, there's things that we can incorporate into what we do down the line, and as I put it, it's convenience over commitment, or even commandment, we're not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together, and what

I think both Dr. Reynolds and I are trying to emphasize is that's not negotiable, that's indispensable to the idea of the

Church as Dr. Reynolds put it, a congregation is a gathered flock.

I think in a real sense, the Lord's Supper is kind of a flashpoint in this, because you can't have the

Lord's Supper unless you're together as a body. First of all,

Paul says, when you come together as a Church, because in a real sense, the loaf not only represents

Christ in his body, but it also represents the Church of which he's a part.

There's self -examination, the fact that you're to be reconciled to people in connection with the

Lord's Supper, that is absolutely blasted by anything like a virtual Lord's Supper, and that's one of the things that we wrestled with.

I never really have come to a satisfactory answer, because we have the

Lord's Supper weekly, and it pains people immensely not to have the Lord's Supper, but now to see this kind of thing happening,

I mean, that's not just a mutation of what the Lord's Supper is, it isn't.

It is not what the New Testament teaches as indispensable to the

Lord's Supper as a physical ordinance for a united body that does things together when it has the

Lord's Supper. Now, Pastor, go ahead, I'm sorry, Greg, were you saying something?

Yeah, just to reinforce what Pastor Fischke was saying, that our Directory for Public Worship, which of course is rooted in biblical truth about the

Lord's Supper, says this, because the sacraments are ordinances of Christ for the benefit of the visible

Church, they are to be administered only under the oversight of the government of the

Church. That, of course, would be impossible via the internet. Moreover, in ordinary circumstances, they are properly administered only in a gathering of the congregation for the public worship of God.

So Pastor Fischke and I actually have taken vows to uphold this reality, but we do so only because we believe that it is thoroughly biblical, and it impoverishes.

We have to be careful not to be self -righteous in judging other churches that don't follow this way, but I feel sad for other churches that are really impoverishing the power of the sacraments of baptism and the

Lord's Supper. Okay, Pastor Bill, I know that you wanted to address at this point of the program the importance of cultivating the counter -environment of the

Church. Would you like me to take one or two more questions first, or would you like to move on to your next segment?

No, let's hear your questions, Chris. Your listeners have been patient, and we should field their questions.

Okay, we have a listener all the way in the East Caribbean, St. Lucia. His name is

Ben, and Ben says, Chris, I have recently been moved to a new country by my vocation.

I have exhausted myself in searching for a sound church with a Bible -teaching pastor. This is not a good option.

There is not a good option anywhere near me. Am I better off watching sermons online from churches and pastors

I know and whom feed me in a blessed way each

Sunday than going to a local church service where I wince throughout the service from the music and the preaching?

And he has one more question after that. I know Dr. Reynolds is ready to answer that one.

Oh, that's so tough, I mean... Wouldn't it depend on how heretical these churches are?

Because if they're just not your cup of tea, there's still the Body of Christ.

Yes, those are tough questions. We'd have to know more about the possibilities around him, but I always encourage people that before they move or have a job change, and sometimes it might not be possible to make this kind of decision, but they ought to go and scout out a good church in that location where they're considering taking employment.

Because if you get transferred within your current employment, and especially in this present economic environment, it may be very difficult or impossible to make that choice.

But as you say, Chris, you have to assess the churches that are there available. If they're liberal and don't believe in the

Gospel and the Bible and salvation in Christ alone, then of course that's not an alternative.

But if they are not your cup of tea, I mean, I can think of churches that preach the

Gospel that wouldn't be my cup of tea for a number of reasons. But if I were there in that place,

I would be there worshiping, though I would hope not to have to make that choice.

But he's in a difficult position. I would amend what Dr. Reynolds said. Listening to a live stream service is not a substitute for involvement with the

Lord's people in a gathering. And so, yes, if it's there, if you go to a church, it's not your cup of tea, quote -unquote.

We need to be careful not to fall prey to the consumerist view. You know, I like Earl Gray and somebody else likes

Sue Long, but go to the church to be part of the solution rather than to be part of the problem.

Well, while our brothers were answering your question,

Ben, I looked up some information for one of my favorite preachers alive.

My favorite preacher on the planet Earth is Dr. Conrad Mbewe in Lusaka, Zambia, Africa.

But a close runner -up to him is also a friend of his, Dr. Hensworth W .C.

Jonas. Dr. Jonas is from the

East Caribbean, and he's a Reformed Baptist. I see him at every Banner of Truth conference here in Pennsylvania that I attend.

And he is a remarkable brother, and although I don't know how close he is to St. Lucia, he is the director of the

East Caribbean Baptist Association. So I'd be shocked if he didn't know, actually, it's the

East Caribbean Baptist Mission. So I'd be shocked if he did not know something that would be exactly what you're looking for that was reasonably close to you.

And you can go to this website. It is Baptistantigua .org,

Baptistantigua .org.

And if you still need further assistance, let me know, and I'll try to get in touch with Hensworth myself if need be.

Thank you very much, Ben. Oh, wait a minute, Ben had a second part of his question here. Let's see.

Am I better off? Let's see. Lastly, it is my hope that God may use me in a small way to plant a church here soon.

Okay, so that's something that we should be praying about. And obviously, if Hensworth does not have a recommendation for you that's near St.

Lucia or in St. Lucia, perhaps you could speak to him about that. So thanks again.

And keep me updated on that, Ben. I'd love to hear more about that. Let's see.

We have Bobby in Hartsdale, New York, who says, don't we as brothers and sisters in Christ need to be very careful about not being overly judgmental and condemnatory against our brothers who take a different approach to how they responded to this pandemic as long as they were not breaking

God's law or even laws of your local government? Some churches are still worshiping uninterrupted because they say that their governments have not made it a hard and fast rule officially that ban public gatherings, but they're only strong suggestions.

Others are very serious about taking these suggestions to heart and they have ceased from worship.

And the issues are complicated because sometimes we don't know for certain if these are really constitutional laws that these governors are creating.

So if you could please give us your opinion about the overjudgmental attitude of some in the church over how others have responded.

I just wrote this sentence this afternoon in the article that I'm working on, on this very topic, and I, along with, you know, some pretty strong convictions that I'm expressing,

I say one caution. We must be careful in this fluid and hopefully temporary situation to be generous in assessing the practices of various churches in response to this pandemic.

And it is hugely complicated, and even within our small presbytery here in New York and New England, we have several, a number of different ways of handling church meetings on the

Lord's Day. And so we need to be gracious, I think, in our assessments and not rush to judgment.

So I would agree with what that person says. Of course, there are elements of what

Pastor Shishko and I are seeking to protect, which are biblical absolutes, and those we cannot compromise, but there are many ways of implementing those absolutes in a time of crisis and challenge.

Yeah, and I think, I'm not quite sure, again, Bobby's question is more typical of New Yorkers.

It is a question and a lot of information in it. First, I think we made it quite clear we're not criticizing others for what they've done.

We're raising some questions about whether this is really worship as it lies, if people thought through the implications of it.

But we all admit we've been broadsided during this pandemic, and we're thankful that people do want to keep churches together.

But I think Bobby, from what he was saying, was also asking about judging whether some churches would say, well, we should be meeting on the

Lord's Day. The state has no right to tell us we can't, and yet others that have submitted to that.

And I think, Chris, probably better to deal with that. What is it, June 20th?

You're going to have a ruling elder, Richard Guido, on your program dealing with church -state issues.

I've got the date on my calendar, and I think probably Bobby should tune in on that, because Elder Guido, who's done a lot of work on this, would be the better one to answer that.

I think that program is May 20th on your show. That's wonderful.

I was just looking at pictures of my ordination in 1980 at Franklin Square Church, and Dick Guido was there in those pictures with Gale.

I have great respect for him, and he is very knowledgeable. So I would strongly second that idea,

Pastor Shishko. I do think that Romans 13 tells us very clearly that we must obey the of the civil magistrate, the leaders of our culture, even when we disagree with them, as long as they're not asking us not to worship, or they're seeking to single out the church in opposition to the gospel.

That's where we must be willing to risk our lives. But when it comes to the pandemic, it's difficult, because in some places

I've seen that there are definitely governments that are overreaching, and they're treating the church more strictly than they are businesses.

And I think that's quite unfair, and will need to be dealt with in the courts. But I think generally,

I know our own governor here in New Hampshire, I don't completely agree with all the shutdowns, but I'm trying to follow them respectfully, because I don't believe he's opposing the church.

I think he's trying to do the best that he can for the citizens that he's the governor of. And what we'll have to do is watch very carefully afterwards to see the aftermath in terms of civil liberty and religious liberty.

It also reminds me of the debate between Orwell and Huxley, that one thought that the tyranny of the state,

Orwell, the tyranny of the state, which he knew well from his own experience, was the main problem of modernity.

And then Huxley believed that the tyranny of pleasure was, and I think it's actually both, that we have to be vigilant about.

But God in all of this is sovereign. Amen. Well, Pastor Bill, if you would like to add to anything that you wanted to say about the cultivating of the counter -environment of the church.

Yeah. I think one thing, just a little P .S. on that, it is going to be important for churches, however they do it, to once we're through the pandemic, have some time to step back and assess what did we learn from the use of the technology?

What are the strengths? What are the limitations? I'll give you an example so you don't think that I'm negative on all of this.

We don't have our church building yet for the Haven. We've not been able to incorporate a prayer meeting into our weekly schedule.

But now we're doing that through Zoom, and we're thankful for it. It's not like meeting together, but there's a place where you can assess positive things that have come, and then negative things, and we're meant to do that.

Well, let me... Yeah, I'm cultivating the counter -environment of the church. Looking at this in a positive sense, this is a tremendous time to cultivate community.

Everyone senses that the very fact that there's so much debate and discussion about this means everyone senses that this is not completely right, this virtual worship stuff.

I actually have a... It was an email that I got from a person who notified me that a message that I gave years ago, information is not enough, is in print and is available through sermonaudio .com,

and she's actually a listener to Iron Sharpens Iron, but her comment in here was quite profound.

She said, I don't think this COVID -19 is changing us to want to give up meeting all together.

One thing I think it's doing is exposing the ignorance that is there in some of our churches or congregations.

Many of us miss not getting together with other humans. We just don't understand why. That is, other than we feel it.

We also don't really know why we meet and what's happening during corporate worship, fellowship time, or Sunday school.

We just do it. Preaching and teaching only give information, but true genuine biblical communication does not take place.

We are too busy filling ourselves with information to slow down and reflect upon, excuse me, the implications of our incarnated

God in the ministry of presence, which of course affects everything we do as the corporate body of Christ.

That's a lot to unpack, but that's precisely it. I think we need to reflect on why everybody says there's something really lacking by having a worship service during a

Zoom meeting. And I think one positive thing that may come is people are going to be so fed up with this home quarantining that it might drive out some of the personal quarantining of people just isolating themselves with their earbuds or whatever.

And I just added a couple of other things to that. There are very real needs of people.

Let's put corporate worship aside for a minute, but there are very real needs in people that you cannot meet at a distance.

You have to meet with people. We have one of our members at The Haven is a medical doctor on the front lines, and she's now having to do this telemedicine with her iPad.

And in one sense, it's better than nothing. But she commented last week, she said,

I was so glad to be able to get back and do some surgeries because she knows that everything connected with surgery involves personal communication and assessing tests and talking with people and following up.

And there's no true fulfillment in just doing something with information.

So I think that's it. And then the last I would say is this, and this is going to be a challenge. We have emphasized,

I have Chris, on your program many times, I've emphasized that hospitality is critical in our culture that is very fragmented and is isolated.

It has for its metaphor, Sherry Turkle's book, Alone Together. That's our culture. And hospitality is a way of breaking that down, of building up, getting people to trust you more, to get to know people and so on.

I'm concerned, I see it in ourselves. We tend to get a little bit lazy now with social isolation, it's going to be harder to come back and be doing the hospitality again, but we'll need to do it.

So those are just some of the things, there's many others that I think we're going to have to process once we get through this pandemic.

Well, we're going to go to our final break right now. It's going to be a lot more brief than the last breaks.

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This is Chris Arnzen, and this is our final segment of our interview today with Dr. Gregory Reynolds and Pastor Bill Shishko.

We hope that you join us with a question before we run out of time, and our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

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

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

And if you could, before we take another listener question, Dr. Greg Reynolds, if you could continue on the importance of cultivating the counter -environment of the church.

It's such an important subject within our larger theme today. Yes, Chris, thank you.

You know, that phrase counter -environment actually comes from Marshall McLuhan. My study of him back in the late 90s really brought me to see that this really is a wonderful way of describing the church.

He was thinking more broadly of simply creating relationships and influences that would help you to be critical of and be a good steward of the media.

But the church is the place where we are really called to be cultivated in the knowledge of God, whether we're in the immediate age that we're in or back in the first century.

And so that's why the writer of Hebrews really exhorts God's people to pay attention to the means of grace and to their mutual encouragement and says, let us consider how to stir one another up to love and good works, not neglecting them to meet together as the habit of some is, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

And so I think paying attention to the means of grace and the gathering of God's people each Lord's day is absolutely essential to cultivating those sensibilities which make us aware of how to be better stewards of everything in life, but now particularly in the midst of this very powerful influence that we know of as the media electronic environment.

We do have an anonymous listener who asks, if your church actually had to shut its doors permanently because of the financial devastation due to these bans on public gatherings, do you recommend any sermons that we can listen to by pastors whom you think are among the finest and most biblically faithful?

And I'm assuming this person is talking about as a temporary means before he can begin to visit local churches in the hopes that he would join one of them eventually.

Yes. Yeah, I mean, I'm somewhat perplexed.

I don't know where the person is, but the person should be immediately looking for another church and not allowing...

You can go on sermonaudio .com, for example, and get a lot of sermons along with the place,

Chris, that was mentioned in your advertisement previously, but that shouldn't be satisfactory.

The person should be... You look for a church that has a commitment to the Bible as the Word of God.

I mean, it used to be there were certain things you could look for. Does a church have a morning and evening service, although that's not always the case?

Does it have a prayer meeting? What does it say about itself? Do some investigation. What's its doctrinal statement?

And then visit and ask questions, but don't settle for just listening to a sermon on an outlet like sermonaudio .com.

Now, if you're in a position, at least for the time being, like our listener in the

East Caribbean who has not yet found a church anywhere near him, and hopefully Hensworth Jonas will help him, but in the meantime, do you have any of your favorites who you think would be most edifying to this individual?

I would say Pastor Shishko. Yes, yes, definitely. I was going to say Pastor Reynolds. How's that?

It's interesting. Well, I'm not preaching regularly anymore, but we do have lots of sermons on our website.

But, you know, it was interesting, years ago, there were some very well -known speakers that were going to speak at a conference that's maybe an hour and a half from Manchester, and we were having our

Reformation Day lecture, which I always gave, and I picked a topic and always look forward to doing that each

Reformation Day. We always had a good gathering of people, and someone said, gee, you know, you're having it at the same time that these well -known speakers are speaking at this other conference.

My response was, we need to pay attention to our local situation and get to know the preachers and the ministries in our local area.

That's where our ultimate commitment is. And so we may make fun of, you know,

Roman Catholics for having their, they're making their pilgrimages, but the fact is that we can also do this with the so -called famous preachers of Reformed Christendom, and I think that's a danger, though I have many preachers, but Sinclair Ferguson comes to mind, and so many others that are wonderful preachers, and I'm sure that you probably,

Chris, have some very good recommendations, as well as Pastor Fischko. I would add,

I mean, Sinclair Ferguson is the first name that comes to my mind, because it's the most, in my opinion, the finest blend of biblical scholarship, piety, outstanding communication skills, and a warmth and application.

Another name that comes to mind for the same reasons would be Ted Donnelly, who's a minister of the

Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America. Yeah, I had the privilege of seeing and hearing him preach at the

OPC of Franklin Square many years ago. Yeah, yeah. You look for faithfulness to the Word of God, you look for warm pastoral application, and also certainly a good communication ability, because preaching is about communication.

Okay, we have Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, who wants to know, sorry if I tuned in too late and you already said this, but could you, in a nutshell, tell us what the best temporary substitute is for the physical gathering with your brothers and sisters in Christ in the local church building where you attend every

Sunday, but have been prohibited to in these recent days? I mean,

I'm not quite sure what that question is asking, but if it's speaking about, you know, the first thing that we had to figure out at the little church that we go to in Dover, New Hampshire, which was formerly a mission church of our

Manchester church, and, you know, what, is there, are we going to go on Facebook? And I counseled against that because I felt that Facebook is something,

I'm not on Facebook for various reasons, some of which are principal, but it would exclude people, and so we also, there's, you know, you have gotomeeting .com,

but you have to actually be a paying member if you're going to use any of the settings on that particular application, and so I think it's one of the reasons why so many people have gone to Zoom, but Zoom to me is just like the paper and pen and paper that John is talking about in the verse that Pastor Shishko quoted.

It's much, it's just not any, it doesn't replace face -to -face presence, and so we have to go with what we're able to do, and I think it's up to local leaders as to how they're going to implement some kind of Sunday meeting that will edify

God's people. So, Pastor Bill, I know of your aversion to the visual media for preaching and teaching and worship.

I'm assuming that you are recommending people listen to sermons?

Well, let me back up a minute. I think, here again, the Bible's our final authority.

You had the example in King David, when he had to leave Jerusalem, he couldn't worship what was the tabernacle at the time, and he lamented in the

Psalms, he lamented that he could not be with the Lord's people, and he grieved over that. He said, I used to go with the

Lord's people. But clearly, he was worshiping personally, and that's the nature of the

Psalms. I'd say that's the first thing. If there's absolutely, you know, your Robinson Crusoe on an island someplace, certainly there's personal worship.

The second is, as we've emphasized during the pandemic, is family worship. When the

Scriptures speak of the church that's in your house, there's a lot of ways you can interpret that. But at least, heads of homes should regard their families not as a church with ordained ministers and sacraments, but it's like you've gathered them together and they worship.

And the Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob, because in the dwellings of Jacob, there was worship.

So I say that would be the second thing. If you don't, if you absolutely do not have some place that you can gather.

And I'm assuming for those that are single, live alone, widows, widowers, just single people in general, if they have healthy friends that they can invite over their home in small numbers, that would be something.

We emphasize that, Chris. We emphasize, and we know at least one of our families that actually had, they didn't violate the rule of more than 10, they observed social distancing, but they use this as an evangelistic opportunity in their own home.

Great. Well, Pastor Bill, did we miss anything before we go off the air today? Well, yes.

Dr. Reynolds is not going to toot his own horn, but I am going to toot his horn.

I want to remind people again of his book, The Word is Worth a Thousand Pictures, Preaching in an

Electronic Age. It is available on amazon .com, and there's an excellent review there by a person

I know very well that I would urge you to read. It will encourage you to pay,

I think, the rather hefty price for the book, but it's worth it. Anyone interested in this topic, this is the book to read.

And also I want to highlight Dr. Reynolds' excellent work as editor of Ordained Servant.

It's the OPC officer publication, but it gets a lot of use way beyond the

OPC just because it's a trusted resource. And there, go to opc .org.

That's the website for the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, opc .org. Go to Resources, and you can subscribe.

For obvious reasons, I prefer the print version. You can subscribe there, opc .org,

Resources, and subscribe to Ordained Servant. And our hat goes off to Dr. Reynolds for his outstanding editing of that monthly volume.

And you might want to give it a shot to order that book through cvbbs .com, our sponsor, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

There you go. And if they don't have it in stock, I'm sure that they will do their best to get ahold of it and get it into your hands.

Well, I am so honored that you two took the time out of your schedules to be on the show today.

I look forward to you both returning. And I want to, once again, make sure that our listeners have all the information they need to get ahold of you.

OPC .org, I'm assuming, is the best way to get ahold of Dr. Reynolds. And The Haven in Deer Park, Long Island, where Pastor Bill Shishko is the pastor, is thehavenli .com,

thehavenli .com. I want to thank everybody who listened to the program today. And don't forget to mark your calendar for tomorrow when

Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries returns to the program. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater