July 2, 2026 Show with Samuel Farag on “The Ancient Costume Party of Orthodoxy”

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

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

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

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

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, 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 second day of July 2026.

Before I introduce to you my guest and our topic of the day, I want to remind you to please mark your calendars for tomorrow. That's Friday the 3rd of July. I am having not only two first-time guests, but it may be the first time this category of interview has ever taken place anywhere.

I, for over a year, scoured the Internet, even consulting AI, trying to find former members of a cult known as Swedenborgianism, and I could not find any. And when I posted on Facebook an advertisement inviting anyone who was a former member of that cult, Swedenborgianism, who is now an evangelical Christian, inviting them to contact me because I had interest in interviewing them, and thanks be to God, I had two, a brother and sister, contact me, and they are going to be on the program tomorrow.

And one of the compelling reasons that I wanted to conduct an interview on Swedenborgianism is that even dating back to the 18th century, the mentor of this religion, Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish scientist, inventor, mystic, and spirit medium, even back in the 18th century, he was promoting the idea of intelligent life on other planets, whom he claimed he was communicating with.

And so, therefore, because of the explosion of interest in this concept of extraterrestrials and belief in intelligent life on other planets and the media being saturated with topics related to this, I had the idea that Swedenborgianism might become a prime cult seducing people to join its ranks.

I could be entirely wrong about that, but they would seem to be an ideal cult for people of that ilk. So I'm thrilled to have tomorrow Tony Cowley and his sister Teri Caterano, who have both left Swedenborgianism.

In fact, they are from a family that is a prominent family in the Swedenborgianist cult dating back many, many years. And so I'm really looking forward to that conversation, which I said may be the only interview of its kind anywhere in the annals of history ever since interviews have existed.

I could not find a single one, so if you can correct me if I am wrong, feel free to contact me to let me know that there are other interviews out there, but I could not find a single one. So this is very exciting to me, and I hope you tune in tomorrow.

Samuel Farag on Eastern Orthodoxy and His New Book

But today I'm also very excited because a very dear friend of mine is on the show again. He is a returning guest, Samuel Farag, who is a convert out from Oriental or Coptic Orthodoxy into the Reformed Baptist faith, who now pastors Bethel Baptist Church of Gorham, New York.

Today he's going to be addressing the ancient costume party of Orthodoxy, examining the claims of the Orthodox, that they are the ancient church and the dangers of equating antiquity with truth. And we're also announcing that Samuel Farag's new book, Eastern Orthodoxy Through the Lens of Sola Scriptura, is now finally in print.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Pastor Sam Farag.

Thank you so much, dear brother. It's always a blessing, and looking forward to our conversation today.

And if you could, let our listeners know something about Bethel Baptist Church of Gorham, New York.

Yes, so at Bethel Baptist Church, we try to be faithful to the Word of God. So you're going to hear faithful songs praising our Lord. You're going to hear expository preaching. We're currently in the Gospel of Luke, and we've been in there for a few years, just going verse by verse, being faithful to the text.

And it's a loving family, where when people come in there, they treat people as family there. So if you're in the area, love for you guys to come on by and visit.

Now, for those of our listeners who are totally unaware of Gorham, New York—by the way, it's spelled G-O-R-H-A-M—. Where approximately is it geographically?

So it's in western New York, about two hours from Buffalo and about 45 minutes from Rochester.

Great. And if anybody wants to find out more about Bethel Baptist Church of Gorham, New York, you can find them on Facebook, but you can also go to vmchurches .org forward slash c forward slash Bethel-Baptist-Church.

That's vmchurches .org forward slash c forward slash Bethel-Baptist-Church. And also, Pastor Farag operates expositingtheword .org. Tell us about that.

Yes, on Expositing the Word Ministries, we really focus on collecting the different sermons, interviews, debates that I've been a part of, and really focusing on teaching through God's Word. So it's really a collection of those.

You'll find anything that I've been involved in has been uploaded on the website and orally through the YouTube channel, although I do have to upload my most recent interviews and debates on there.

Great. And it's expositingtheword .org, and you can also find Sam Farag on YouTube. Well, first of all, let me congratulate you on your book finally being in print. And I must say that Free Grace Press did a wonderful job with this book.

It's a very attractive book. It's a hardcover book. And I am so honored with the privilege of having my commendation for your book, not only on the back cover in an abbreviated form, but also the full commendation being included inside the book.

Tell our listeners about this wonderful book that you've written.

Yeah, so the book is really meant to show what does Eastern Orthodoxy teach through their own words. So these are doctrines that they officially teach and then comparing it to the Word of God and showing where it falls short.

And ultimately, the big thing that it shows is that it actually promotes a different gospel. So we're not just talking about Christians in the East. We're talking about a church that is actually promoting a false gospel.

It's actually an apostate church. But the goal is to not strawman, but to steel man and to show what the church teaches in their own words and then comparing it to the Word of God.

Yes, and people listening might immediately recoil from such harsh language that you use. They might think, oh, what an unloving man Sam Farag is. Oh, that is so bigoted. That is so hateful. That is so nasty.

Well, it is very rare, just for your information, brothers and sisters, ladies and gentlemen, it is very rare to find an Eastern Orthodox who is a theologian or in the clergy, who does not have the same exact view against evangelical Protestants as Sam just described the Eastern Orthodox.

They believe that they are the one true church and outside of that church, there is no salvation. And they are very quick to say that we are apostates. We have no eternal life and we are guilty of the most serious heresies you can conceive of.

And in your estimation, from what your experience is, the percentage of Eastern Orthodox, especially those in clergy and the halls of academia, that would be ecumenical, that would be welcoming evangelicals and others with open arms?

It would be to a much lesser degree, although it is increasing. And here's the thing. A lot of times they'll give language as if they're welcoming. But once you're actually in the church, you'll realize that that's not the case.

For example, a great example is when it comes to icon veneration. A lot of people be very uncomfortable, which makes a lot of sense of why I can not wanting to participate in icon veneration. It obviously feels foreign.

It feels like it's something that's the exact opposite of what Scripture is saying. So oftentimes you'll hear clergy say, oh, it's OK. Don't worry about it. Just keep coming. Just keep attending the divine liturgy.

But what you realize is that the church's official stance is that icon veneration is actually mandatory. So there are some who speak in a way where they seem very welcoming. But when you actually see their actual beliefs, that's not the case.

And then you have others who just hold to more radical views, even within Eastern Orthodoxy. They'll say, well, we know where the church is, but we don't know where the church isn't. They try to go against what the church has taught.

And some even believe in universalism because there are some Eastern Orthodox saints who hold to universalistic ideas. But I would say that's the minority view. Most of the people who are in the Eastern Orthodox Church who are clergy, because they've been trained, they've gone to seminary, they've experienced training, most clergy would understand that you can only be saved through the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Although they will sometimes give a very political answer when pressed by others.

Yes. And as Jason Wallace, who you are probably familiar with. Yes, he does. Yes, he's an Orthodox Presbyterian pastor in Magna, Utah. And that's Christ Presbyterian Church in Magna, Utah. He is a documentarian and has created many videos of documentaries on a whole host of subjects, including Eastern Orthodoxy.

And he uses the very words of the Eastern Orthodox clergy and theologians in these videos. And in one of them, it could be the failure of Eastern Orthodoxy. I'm not sure if that's the specific one. But there are Eastern Orthodox clergy involved in a liturgical service where they are pronouncing the anathemas on Protestants and condemning to hell those that don't kiss the icon.

Correct. I believe it was from that same documentary where they have this event that they have called the Triumph of Orthodoxy. And all churches are actually supposed to do this. Not necessarily all of them do, but they're actually supposed to.

And in their service, they are actually declaring the anathemas. So, yeah, if you are not bowing down to icons, if you're not venerating them, if you don't love them and cherish them, you are under anathema.

Cursed by God to hell unless you repent. And in their view, repent and join the Eastern Orthodox Church because they see themselves as the Ark of Salvation. They are the only source where you can actually be truly saved because anyone outside the Ark would be under God's wrath.

So, yeah, they have a specific day of the year where they actually sing out these anathemas.

So, if anybody listening wants to investigate Jason Wallace's videos, you could just go to YouTube and type in Ancient Paths TV and specifically Eastern Orthodoxy. And quite a number of videos on Eastern Orthodoxy will come up.

And I believe that their website is AncientPaths .TV. Yes, it is. AncientPaths .TV. And I happen to have the honor and privilege of doing quite a number of voiceovers on various documentaries that Pastor Wallace has created.

But going back to our theme of the day, the ancient costume party of Orthodoxy, examining the claims of the Orthodox that they are the ancient church and the dangers of equating antiquity with truth. Perhaps we'll do things in reverse because I think we should get out of the way the very last statement I made as a subtitle.

People seem to think if something is very old, has antiquity attached to it, it must be true. But they seem to forget or ignore the fact that there were heretics that rose up even during the days of the apostles that the Scriptures warn about.

And there has been heresy ever since, not only since the birth of the Christian church, but even in the Hebrew Scriptures, in the Old Covenant, there were heretics. So tell us about that, about that danger that seems to be the fascination of many people that lure them into false religions, including Eastern Orthodoxy and, of course, Roman Catholicism as well.

Yeah, no, that's a great point because, yeah, ancient doesn't mean true. Because if we're actually pinpointing where is the very first lie or we're questioning God's word, it's all the way back in Genesis where you had the enemy questioning, did God really say?

You know, so just because it's ancient doesn't necessarily mean that it's true. Look at the Pharisees, for example. When the Pharisees were around, they were considered the religious elite of their day.

And when you saw John the Baptist and Jesus and the apostles, they could argue, hey, we were older, you know, based on what people could visually see. They could say, hey, we were actually older, so therefore we have authority.

In fact, even when they would teach, they would quote the rabbis that were older and the older the rabbis, they would assume that it was more authoritative. However, Christ came back with saying, no, we're supposed to trust in what the word of God says and lead back to the word of God.

And really, when we actually look at the scriptures, when we actually look at church history, we realize there are many points in history where there is a reformation needed. But those who are against truth will say that that reformation is birthing something brand new.

But really, it's going back to the original teachings. So you can look at King Hezekiah and Josiah. You look at Ezra and Nehemiah. You look at, again, the Pharisees and the response with Jesus and the apostles.

There were constant reformations. They were going back to the original. Although those who attacked them would say, no, you're starting something brand new. In fact, even the named Christians will say, oh, you are just following this man, Jesus Christ.

But they just saw him as a man. That's all they saw him as. So they saw him as a new cult. But really, it was going back to the original and following what the scriptures have been prophesying all about.

And that's what we saw with the Protestant Reformation. The Protestant Reformation wasn't something brand new. It was going back to an original. But what a lot of these false churches will say is that, no, we're older, therefore we're true.

But again, if we use that same philosophy and we were in the first century, we would be following the Pharisees and rejecting Christ if we use that same mentality.

Amen. Well, going to the main point of our conversation, how would you go about disproving to an Eastern Orthodox member, whether they be in clergy, whether they be in the halls of academia, whether they be just a so-called layman, making the claim, well, I'm Eastern Orthodox because that is the true ancient church.

That is the church that Christ established 2 ,000 years ago. How would you begin dismantling that false claim?

Yeah. So I would first look at and show them, again, in the Eastern Orthodox' own words. There's a confession called the Confession of the Scythiast from 1672, which I would recommend to anyone who's going to engage with somebody who's Eastern Orthodox to read that document all the way through.

The reason that this is such a key document is that this was a response—and speaking of documentaries, Ancient Paths makes a great documentary about Cyril Lucaris, great person to take a look at, who was—.

Calvinist bishop. Calvinist, yes, exactly, exactly. He was Eastern Orthodox, he was a patriarch, but he saw the truth of what the Reformers were saying, and that became a big problem. It ultimately led to a plot with the Eastern Orthodox, the Jesuits, and the Muslims, because he made enemies of them all, who killed him.

But what he saw is he saw what was being said in Scripture, and he saw what the Reformers were doing was actually correct, and so they wrote this confession against him. And in this confession, they actually speak in a very—they use very Western language, which actually makes it great so those in the West and the East can communicate to each other properly, and they make it very clear what their beliefs are.

And one of their huge claims, which is really outlandish when you think about it, they claim that they as a church are just as inspired as the Holy Scriptures. They say they are just as God-breathed as the Scriptures.

In fact, they see themselves as giving us the Scriptures. So it's important to understand how the Eastern Orthodox Church views themselves. And then we have to then look at their claim. This claim that they're just as infallible as Scripture, well, just like Scripture itself.

Scripture is very clear. It says that it's God-breathed, and Scripture itself says it's inerrant and infallible. Well, now we have to test that claim. And there have been, for centuries now, people have tested the claims of Scripture and fallen short.

Every time you have an atheist, agnostic Muslim, regardless of who they are, when they try to poke holes at Scripture, you see that the archaeological findings that we have, the historical things that we find, it all points that Scripture is true.

And there's not a single error within Scripture. So Scripture claims to be inerrant and infallible and passes the test. Well, when it comes to the Eastern Orthodox Church, they also claim to be infallible.

But when we put it to the test, we see a big difference. One of their big claims, as we talked about, was icon veneration. They claim that this is a mandatory practice. Well, first we can look at the Word of God and see that there's nowhere in Scripture that commands the veneration of icons in any way whatsoever.

And then on top of it, it actually shows that Scripture actually condemns the practice. That we're not supposed to do this to any object. We're not supposed to use images in a cultic way, which is how icon veneration is done.

And then on top of that, we look at church history, and we can very clearly see, for at least the very first 600 years, 700 years, there is no practice of icon veneration that's spoken about in a positive way.

In any type of cultic use of images, all the church fathers unanimously condemned the practice and tie it to origins from paganism. And it wasn't until much, much later that this practice became an accretion and a development and codified in the Seventh Ecumenical Council.

So just looking at a practice like icon veneration, we can see that though the church claims to be infallible, they are promoting a doctrine that is clearly incorrect, clearly in error, clearly not apostolic.

And therefore, their claim to be inerrant and infallible falls flat on its face.

Yes, and one of the issues that is a huge roadblock or hurdle when we as Bible-believing Christians are attempting dialogue with our Eastern Orthodox family, friends, and loved ones, is they don't seem, just as Rome, they don't seem to care at all if something is not in the Scripture.

How do you overcome that? Because they will say, Sola Scriptura is an invention of the Reformation. Nobody believed it before them. The church fathers did not believe that before them. In fact, let me quick, before I forget to plug it, some dear friends of mine, two dear friends of mine, William Webster and David King, who have been on my program a number of times, they have co-authored a groundbreaking three-volume, 900-page book, or series of books, titled Holy Scripture, the Ground and Pillar of Our Faith.

And some of the patristic writings in these three volumes were translated from the Latin for the very first time into English for this work that they have created. And they really proved that before the Reformation, the church fathers did believe in Sola Scriptura.

And in fact, there has never been any rebuttal attempted by Roman Catholic apologists on this three-volume work. I think that they would rather not bring these three volumes to the light of day and have people starting to research them, so they just ignore them.

If anybody's interested in this three-volume work by William Webster and David King, go to christiantruth .com, christiantruth .com. But going back to my question to you, when you're in conversation with the Eastern Orthodox, how do you overcome that protest of, well, it doesn't matter that it's not in the Scripture?

Yeah, and that's important for us because we're going to often bring up these points. But all we have to do is really first look at Scriptures themselves, and we see that, well, that's exactly what Scripture says.

You see, when Paul is writing to Timothy, he makes it very clear that all Scripture is God-breathed and it's used for every good work. So if we're going to proclaim that something is a good work, then we can tie its origins directly back to Scripture.

When Jesus was debating with the Pharisees and the religious elite, they constantly appealed to their traditions of men. Their traditions, they claimed, came from Moses. But Jesus constantly went to Scripture to prove his points.

So what was Jesus practicing? Sola Scriptura. And then when we go beyond Scripture and we look at the earliest of the early fathers, we see that there is a unanimous concession that the early fathers all appealed to Scripture.

In fact, Irenaeus says this quote, he says,. So he's talking about when he's debating those who are heretics who are promoting false teachings. However, when they are disproved from the Scriptures, they turn around and accuse those same Scriptures as if they were not correct, not of authority, and that they are ambiguous and that the truth cannot be extracted from them by those who are ignorant of tradition.

For they allege that the truth was not discovered by means of written documents, but oral. So if you look at what Irenaeus is saying, he's describing what you see with the Eastern Orthodox Church, with the Orient Orthodox Church, with the Roman Catholic Church, that when they are pressed to a wall because we're coming back with what it says in Scripture, well, then they're going to appeal from an outside source.

And they're going to say, well, this was passed down orally. And the reality is nobody can actually prove that. If you're going to claim something is oral and there is no proof, how can you prove that that is actually true or not?

Especially when the early fathers in many instances actually do contradict each other. You know, when certain people claim that this is this old, but when you're actually looking at the history, you see that it seems like a much later accretion.

What are we going to put our faith on? We have to realize that if you look at Scripture, if we look at church history, it's very clear that sola scriptura is constantly being practiced. This was not a practice invented in the Reformation.

This was when we had a Reformation and we went back and saw what were the original teachings. In order for sola scriptura to be ignored, that means we have to make the claim that when the Holy Spirit compiled the Bible together, he gave us an incomplete book.

A book that did not actually tell us how to be saved. That's not in God's character whatsoever.

Yes, and would you say that both the Eastern Orthodox and Rome have made the horrific, heretical, damnable error that the Pharisees made not only in the Old Covenant, but at the dawn of the New Covenant?

They were demanding people obey their rules that were not even canonical in the Hebrew Scriptures, and they were inventing teachings. I mean, some of them had been passed on for centuries and so on, but they were not canonical.

They were not a part of the God-breathed words of the Hebrew Scriptures, and therefore, they were revealing that they were teaching things and binding upon the hearts of men things that God did not command.

Oh, absolutely. When you look at the Eastern Oriental Orthodox Churches and the Roman Catholic Church, they are truly the spiritual descendants of the Pharisees because they teach in the very same manner by elevating these man-made traditions, even though they were handed down for some time.

They're not as ancient as they claim to be, and they elevate them truly above God's actual command. And that's why when Christ, in Mark 7, was debating with the Pharisees, he says, because of your traditions, you actually make void the Word of God.

And we see that with the Eastern Orthodox Church. Because of their official stance on icon veneration, they're actually making void the Word of God, which actually commands us not to participate in anything close to icon veneration.

So absolutely, with these churches that claim to be apostolic, that they claim to be ancient, they're actually following the same traditions and teachings and methods and hermeneutical style of the Pharisees and scribes.

And tell us about some things that you know cannot be traced back to the days of Christ, which are clearly primary teachings and practices in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Yeah, another practice that's prominent within the Eastern Orthodox Church is the veneration of Mary. So when we look at Scripture, we see that Mary was a blessed woman of God. She was the most blessed.

Why? Because, again, we understand in the first century that blessings were seen for women, especially on whether they could have children, how many children, or who their child was. And Mary gave birth to the Messiah.

So therefore, she is the most blessed. But again, her blessing is because of who Christ is. And we see that when there was an exaggerated veneration of Mary, even during Jesus' time, Jesus rebuked the person.

In Mark 11, there's a woman who cries out, blessed is the woman which you walked out of and the breast which you nursed. And Jesus replied back, blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.

Now, again, that doesn't take away from the fact that Mary is blessed. However, what he's saying is even more so is not who is tied to Jesus because of his bloodline, but the fact that Mary is a servant of Christ.

And what's the most important for us as believers is to hear what the word of God says and obey it. Yet, if we actually look at what are the practices in the Eastern Orthodox Church, in their hymns, which are viewed as inerrant and infallible, they say some of the most shocking statements.

So in the Akathist hymn to the Most Holy Theotokos, they call Mary the propitiation of the whole world, the restoration of men, that she take us away the filth of sin. Those words should not be said to Mary.

In the entry of the Most Holy Theotokos, they call Mary the acceptable sacrifice, the new lamb of God without spot and a dove without blemish. And then you'll hear Eastern Orthodox say, well, those hymns are done in a poetic style.

They're just exaggerations. But you look at their prayers, you look at the homilies of their teachers, and you see the very same type of language. In the Mother of Light prayer book, they actually show Mary as being completely sovereign.

They say that she can bring about whatever her will is. Again, only God is sovereign in that manner, but they present Mary in that same way. And Gregory Palamos, who is one of the most revered saints in Eastern Orthodox, he says this.

He says, she, Mary, alone forms the boundary between created and uncreated nature, and no one can come to God except through her and the mediator born of her. And none of God's gifts can be bestowed on angels or men except through her.

So to elevate Mary to this style, this is completely contrary to anything within Scripture. And these are foundational teachings in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Well, we have to go to our first commercial break. If you would like to join us for the question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

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

Let's say you are Eastern Orthodox. You're beginning to question whether the religion that you find yourself is indeed a legitimate Christian religion or not. And you don't want to identify yourself publicly at this stage of the game.

So we will obviously respect your request to remain anonymous. And there may be many other legitimate reasons why you would remain anonymous, and we will respect your request. But if it's a general question on the Scriptures and on history, please just give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

Don't go away. We'll be right back with Sam Farag right after these messages from our sponsors.

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