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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors, Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.
Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.
It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon, Cumberland County,.
Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Monday. On this 30th day of January 2017, and I thank you all for your patience, as obviously we did not start on time as we normally start right on the button at 4 p .m. Eastern Standard Time.
We were 14 or 15 minutes delayed because of some software problems, it appears, with the live streaming of the program. I'm not sure why that happened, but something that they did over at Leading Edge Radio Network in Weatherford, Texas, finally allowed us to break into their live feed, so we are now thankfully on the air.
We are going to be doing something different today. I'm not conducting a live interview because I conducted, as many of you have heard, a number of interviews at the recent G3 conference in Atlanta, Georgia, the G3 conference which took place between January 19th and the 21st of January, and I was delighted to have the opportunity to interview not only a number of the speakers there, such as Todd Friel and Phil Johnson, of grace to you, and a number of other of the speakers, but I also had an opportunity to interview some of the guests who are attending, some fascinating pastors, and just your average listeners of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio that I had the opportunity to providentially meet for the first time face-to-face, although I have heard from some of you over the years via email and text and so on, but I had the great privilege of meeting some of you for the first time face-to-face, which was a great joy for me.
Many more people that I met there at the G3 conference than I even realized were listening to the program. In other words, I was meeting some of you for the first time in any shape, any way, shape, or form, having not ever heard from you before, so that was even a double joy, just constantly bumping into people who recognized my name from the name tag and told me, I've been listening to your program for years, even going back to the old days in New York.
Even one brother from London, England, spotted me from some distance away, recognized my face, I guess, from the internet, and shouted out to me that he was so delighted that I returned to the airwaves after that hiatus that we were on, and I actually had the privilege of interviewing him.
So we'll eventually, God willing, get to all of these interviews that I conducted there. Today we're just going to try to squeeze as many of these interviews in the program as we can, and I will begin the program today with an interview I conducted with Todd Friel.
I was so delighted to finally have the opportunity to do so, and here is our interview with Todd Friel of Wretched TV and Radio. Well, I'm Chris Arnzen from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and I'm here at the G3 conference with the person I think I wanted to interview more than anybody else,.
Todd Friel of Wretched Radio. Okay, that confirms it. You're out of your mind. Steve Lawson is here, Phil Johnson is here, Vody Baucom is here. You're very confused, and Mr. Dapper, look at you with the pocket stuff.
There's just one thing missing from this outfit of yours. You forgot your razor. What's this? Are you trying to become like a.
Cool reformed guy? No, actually. I just shaved yesterday, and I'm very manly. Good on you. And for those of our listeners who aren't aware, I'd be shocked if they weren't, but Todd Friel is the host of Wretched TV and Wretched Radio, and as he said in a recent ad, an occasional guest on Chris' show, Iron Sharpens Iron.
I have been so blessed by your television program on NRB. I don't get the local radio program on a station near where I am, but the.
NRB television program is a real blessing. Can I tell you they're good folks there? Yeah. We've got a new product that we created called Drunk in the Spirit. It is a screed against the extreme nonsense that is going on in something called the New Apostolic Reformation, which has about 365 million adherents.
I mean, that thing is like pedal to the metal going after it. Are they actually reviving that Drunk in the Spirit thing? Oh yeah. They're going to air it on NRB. Really? How courageous is that? Yeah, you're right.
Seriously, that might be the edgiest piece of Christian TV ever aired, because the men at NRB, they're serious, and they mean it, and they're about the gospel. So it's a real treat, because in so much of not so much radio, but more so in TV media, the Christian TV is not good.
And so when you run into one that is good, it's a joy. Yeah, unfortunately a lot of the people that can.
Afford to have TV programs are not necessarily the most faithful to the Scriptures. Well,.
But I pondered that. Why is that? If you listen to most Christian radio stations, overall it's dominated by John MacArthur. He's on 900 stations. R .C. Sproul. You hear these solid preachers overall, because radio is a thinking type of media only.
You've got to think. When you're listening to somebody, blah, blah, blah, you've got to be interested. You've got to be able to keep up. You've got to become educated in the subject matter. It requires thinking, and so the conservative teaching that we hear overall is good.
TV, however, is a visual media, and these rascals who know how to put on a show have gotten there first, and they keep people entertained with the shenanigans and the antics and the big hair and all of the nonsense, and they kind of dominate Christian TV, and I've got a little life's goal to change that.
Yeah, in fact, I don't know if.
You remember the late James Montgomery Boyce, but he purposely did not have a TV ministry for a lot of the reasons that you mentioned, and that he thought that the video distracted from what he was saying, but tell our listeners something about the basic concept of wretched TV and wretched radio.
What are the kinds of things that you address and whatnot? Yeah, we have a.
Threefold purpose. We want to preach the gospel, help people preach the gospel, and teach people how to apply the gospel to their lives, because it is applicable. The Bible does something. The especially when you come to a conference like this, we're not the deep end of the theological pool.
We just want to try to find some folks who don't even know that there's water, and to get them to dip their toe into it so that they can start getting immersed with better and better teaching. So that's what we're about, ultimately, so that the local church will be strengthened, the pastor hopefully encouraged to stay faithful to the word, and then people that are participating in their local church will simply improve the local church.
Now, one thing that I have been.
Wanting to ask you about that you haven't addressed with me on Iron Sharpens Iron before is something that you kind of left as a cliffhanger on wretched TV once. You were discussing about pastors needing to hear the gospel, too, because sometimes men behind the pulpit are lost, and you said at the end of the program, and that would include me, and then you walked away or.
Something. You were a lost man who was a pastor. Thankfully, I wasn't pastoring a church. I studied to be a pastor, and I was a pagan. The application didn't ask, so I didn't tell. And so, I mean, I wouldn't have ever thought this way, but I learned years later that I was just a false professor.
You don't study about Jesus during the day and live like a devil at night. If you keep on sinning, you're of the devil, and I was keeping on sinning. I was present and ongoing sin. I just, I didn't love the Lord.
I wasn't grateful, and interestingly, it's not that the gospel was never presented that Jesus died for our sins. I heard that a thousand times, and this is maybe an encouragement to pastors to ask themselves if they are ever pointing a finger at the congregation to say, and this day, you must respond.
You must repent and put your trust in Jesus Christ now. Today is the day of salvation. Examine yourself. See if you're in the faith, and if not, humble yourself before the mighty hand of God. Nobody ever challenged me.
Nobody ever casted out the gospel net. I heard the gospel, but that's not the same as casting the net. So, we need to remember that there are people sitting in our congregations who've never been confronted to see where they are at with the Lord, and that was me.
So, what kind of a religious.
Atmosphere or upbringing did you have, if any, and what were the providential things that the Lord brought into your life that actually drew you to himself in a saving way. If you had reached the point where you were actually applying for pastoral positions and you realized you were lost?
Yeah. What happened before, and what brought you to the point? You know, I'm grateful.
For the education that I received because it was a classical education, and so I studied Latin and Greek and Hebrew. Wow. Did all of that, so it was a very fine education, and what I appreciated about it is they were very earnest about theology.
You took them at the seminary that you went to, your family. Well, nobody in my family was a believer, just talking about how I was trained to value the Word of God and theology. So, my issue, Chris, was not a lack of knowledge of theology.
When I got saved, the reason for it really was, what started it was listening to Chuck Swindoll on the radio. You know, he's Insight for Living, and Chuck has a way of teaching without it sounding like theological highbrow business, but I heard exactly what he was doing.
It's like, oh, I see what he's doing there. He's taking that theology off the shelf, and he's applying it to life, and I increasingly was listening to him with a fascination that, wow, this all kind of fits together and does something, and so my wife and I, we decided, we looked up Chuck Swindoll to see what he was, and we found out that he was Evangelical Free Church of America.
So, we took out the yellow pages. That dates the story, doesn't it? We took out the yellow pages, and we looked for ECFA churches near us. Well, one Sunday morning, I went. My wife stayed home. I went, and the pastor was just a godly preacher, and I'm hesitating to tell the story because I'll start to cry, but he read something that simply devastated me, and I don't think that I would ever share this.
I mean, I don't think I'd ever preach it. Maybe you've seen it out on the internet. It's pretty gloppy, but it's a letter to a friend from Jesus. Dear friend, I watched you wake up this morning, and I was hoping that you would stop and talk to me, but you didn't, so I prepared a sunrise for you so when you walked out the door, you might be struck by the creation and talk to me, but you didn't.
You went throughout your day. I carried you through, and I was hoping when you put your head on your pillow that you would stop and talk to me, but you didn't, but that's okay. I'll wait for you because I love you, and that simply crushed me that I had been the most pride-filled, arrogant, obnoxious, foul jerk that has ever walked the planet, and so I sat there, and so the pastor finishes reading this thing, and he said, you are dismissed, and I was like the...
You talk about the king of ugly crying. I was like the big blub. You know, I was like heaving and sobbing and snot and wiping out my face, and you are dismissed, and what am I going to do just sitting here in a puddle of tears, and that is when God was breaking me.
Could I say it was that moment? Perhaps. I don't know. I don't think the moment, but I know that that was the season, and I don't even remember what year it was, frankly, but I remember when God got a hold of me and convicted me and crushed me and promised me that He would save me anyway, and that was the season I got saved, and now immediately I knew that everything that I'd been doing as a pretend Christian was just a ruse, and it was fake because I knew the difference.
I knew about Jesus. Now I know Him,.
And it changed everything. Oh, praise God. Yeah. Well, even after that rebirth, has there been any major changes in your theological perspectives over those years? Oh, sure. You know, some,.
But overall, you know, pretty much the same. Conservative, high view of Scripture. I've changed my understanding. I would tweak my understanding a bit on eschatology, Lord's Supper, baptism, things, you know, just slightly different perspective, but like I said, I'm grateful for the education I received.
I just wasn't saved. That's all. Actually, I did a little math once because I went to prep too, and we had chapel twice a day, Monday through Friday and then Saturday. I think we just had one chapel service and then church on Sunday, and over the course, I added up over the years, I went to church service, chapel, 2 ,700 times.
Wow. And I wasn't a Christian. Wow. Just because you talk about the gospel doesn't mean that people are getting the gospel, so the encouragement would be preach the gospel. Don't, there's a bit of a movement.
It's not organized, but in evangelical Christianity, there's a big push about the gospel. It's all about the gospel. Well, you go and listen to some of those sermons, and they use the word gospel a ton.
Isn't the gospel amazing? The gospel's so incredible. Mmm, I love the gospel. Isn't it gospelicious? But they never preach the gospel. Preach the gospel, and if somebody complains, preach it to them more because they probably need to hear it because those of us who.
Are born again. Love to hear it. Yeah, I think that the perception I get is that most evangelicals, whether they are in the pew or on a TV screen or even a radio station, are teaching that the gospel is that Jesus loves you, so invite him into your heart.
Yeah. That's the gospel. Sure. Yeah,.
Now look, it's hard every week to try, okay, how do I talk about Calvary again? So I get that there's a bit of a challenge to that, but don't worry, Pastor, you can repeat yourself. We're okay with that.
Use your text to get us to Calvary, and that will make it inventive sounding. You know, it'll be clever enough, unique enough sounding, but get us there. Sir, we would see Jesus, so get.
To the cross and camp there. Amen. Now, you have had an opportunity to interview, I don't know if you've interviewed all of the key speakers here or all of the speakers, period, but... Oh, but Votie.
Baucom, who didn't show up, but I'm not going to name names. That's interesting because I've been completely bailed. You'd think he was living in Africa or something.
But I was wondering if you can summarize, perhaps, the essence of what is most vital that the folks that you interviewed over the course of the time that you've been here about the, I'm assuming that some of the content had to do with the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, which is the theme of this conference, obviously.
Anything that you care to share that.
You could walk away with? Yeah, I would summarize the interviews that I've had with Steve Lawson, Phil Johnson, James White, Nathan Busenitz, Whippersnapper out of Master SEM, Sharp. Boy, he gave us a 1500-year history of the Catholic Church, how to understand, okay, when did it get off the rails?
When did this happen? Brilliant young man. And I would say that the theme throughout all of those conversations, and we talked about justification, and propitiation, and atonement, and adoption, and expiation, and all the big Reformation words, but I think I would summarize it based on the t-shirts that we've been seeing walking around here at the G3 conference.
Did you see the quote from Martin Luther on the back of the t-shirts from the people who are running this thing? Did you read the quote? No. I'm paraphrasing, but it's pretty close. Martin Luther. Give me Scripture.
I'll say it again. Scripture, Scripture, Scripture. Did you hear me? Scripture. That's really what it says. It's about the Bible. Amen. And it's about that being our source of authority, our source of everything.
The Protestant Reformation was about authority. Is it the Vicar of Christ in Rome, or is it Jesus Christ? Is it tradition in the magisterium, or is it the Word of God? So the Word just kept coming through, the proclamation of the Word, the recapturing of the Word, the translating of the Word into the language of the people.
So the theme really throughout all of it was the authority of the Word.
Amen. And what an uncomfortable moment it was recently. As you may remember from our last interview, last week I had a debate, another debate that I organized between a Roman Catholic, Robert St. Genes of Catholic Apologetics International, and my friend Dr. Tony Costa.
If you're not familiar with him yet, you need to be. He's a professor of apologetics at Toronto Baptist Seminary, a friend of Dr. James R. White, who actually introduced him to me. And they debated on Mary, Sinless Queen of Heaven, or Sinners Saved by Grace.
Great title. And Dr. St. Genes knew that he could not maintain any kind of credible defense for Rome's teachings about Mary by remaining with a biblical discussion. So he kept trying to steer the ship to focus on sola scriptura, which he obviously denies.
And when Dr. Costa had brought up the fact that only Scripture is described in Scripture as theanoustos, God-breathed, it's the only thing that we have that is from the breath of God. And to hear Dr. St. Genes, the Catholic apologist, say, who cares?
He actually said that. Just means it's a little more special. That's all it means.
Wow.
He was backed into a corner, running out of arguments, and out of the anger and frustration really revealed the heart of Catholicism is that who cares? Because our traditions mean just as much, if not more, because they trump what the Bible says anyhow.
And you actually had the role of speaking on, was Peter the first pope?
No. You're dismissed. Yeah. In fact, I won the Puritan award at the conference because it was a three-point sermon, but the first point actually had 25 sub-points. So I win the Puritan sub-point award with 25.
You have to see a group of people say, everybody's up and paying attention because it's just starting. And we're going to talk about, is Peter the first pope? And I have three points, and the first point has 25 sub-points.
Just everybody slumps and just the air leaves the room. 25 points. So I broke it up in three points. Basically, when we look at it biblically, I'm a theological nincompoop. By myself, without reading commentaries, I was simply able to come up with 25 reasons biblically why Peter is not the first pope.
And a few of my favorites, if you don't mind, it's Matthew 16, 13 through 18 are the contested verses. On the ring of the Sistine Chapel, there are two Bible verses, thou art Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church, and I give you the keys to the kingdom.
I only tackle the first one. Is Peter really the rock? Well, if you read the very next story, Jesus now, having said, thou art Peter, and upon this rock, I will build my church. We, of course, believe it's confession.
The Greek language, you know that. But look at the next story. Jesus now starts to get specific. I must go to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man must be turned over. I'm going to die. And Peter, again, jumps up.
Forbid it, Lord. This was never going to happen to you. And Jesus turned and looked to the new pope, the Holy Father, the Vicar of Christ, and said, Get behind me, Satan, which is a pretty good sign that he had not simply just been installed as the new pope, that he was a sinner.
And we see this again, then, in Matthew 18. The disciples come and ask Jesus, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? Please note, Jesus did not say, Hello, knuckleheads, weren't you listening? I just said it was Peter.
I'm building my church. He's the most special. Why weren't you paying attention? Apparently, the disciples didn't get that message, because Jesus didn't deliver it. He was talking about himself. And even if you want to say that Peter is the rock, okay, what was Peter all about?
Same as Paul, he preached Christ and him crucified. So no matter how you slice it, the cornerstone is not Peter. It's Jesus Christ. I'm sorry, but when you look through the Old Testament, too, in Zion, I lay a cornerstone.
Isaiah was talking about the Messiah. The Old Testament understood who the rock was. Think about Jesus in Exodus 17. And the rock was Christ, 1 Corinthians 10, about the rock and the water and the splitting of it.
The Bible always points to the rock in the Old Testament, Psalm 18. You can read it three times. God is the rock. The rock is God. In other words, the rock is divine all throughout Scripture. So for Jesus to say to Peter, you're the rock, is simply preposterous.
So that was point one, 25 of those, basically. And then we got into, historically, we took a look at the bloody and tawdry history of the office of papacy, which wasn't pleasant. And then we got to my favorite part, which was point three.
Confessionally, Peter was making it clear he was not the first pope. What did he say? The confession that was God revealed to him, thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, thou art the Messiah.
He was making the same confession the entire Old Testament had been making. There is a Messiah to come. Look for the Messiah. Because the Bible is all about one subject, that Messiah. And as you make your way through the Old Testament, it's preaching about the Messiah.
It's preaching about forgiveness of sins. It's preaching about the need to be justified. It's the sacrificial system. It's Passover that's a picture of Jesus. It's Isaac that's a picture of Jesus. It's the ladder that's a picture of Jesus.
Assurity, the tabernacle, the bread of life. He's the manna. He's the ark of our salvation. He's the door that we must enter through to be saved. Jesus is in the Old Testament because that is what God is doing.
Ephesians 2, 1 through 10, the reason for the planet is for God to send his Son to save sinners that he might be glorified for his loving kindness. With that in mind, Peter was making that confession.
This is the one. And that is why the church's one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord, not Peter.
Amen. And I know that you said you could only spend 20 minutes with us, so I'll let you summarize.
Has it been 20 minutes?
Yeah, believe it or not. But if you could, let our listeners know in summary form.
You kind of made me sound like a jerk with that. You could only stay 20 minutes, hot shot. Listen, I want to stay married. My wife is down the aisle, and I'm looking at her. She's being gracious.
I'll tell you what, you can make it up to me by the next time you're on. Iron Sharpens Iron over the phone, be on for an hour at least.
So this is sort of a little scam that you've got going, a little chess game you're playing. All right, I understand you better now.
If you could summarize what you want my listeners, both Catholic and Protestant or otherwise, with what they should most bring home with them in regard to the summary of what the Reformation stood for.
Because obviously, as Phil Johnson said, and I'm sure you agree, the evangelicals need just as much of a Reformation today as Rome did.
Yeah, yeah, I think he's right, which is a pretty provocative statement. Let me speak specifically to the Roman Catholic who might be listening. I understand you. In fact, all of human history understands you.
We are bent toward working our way to heaven. We just, we want to do something to clean up ourselves. The gospel of Jesus Christ comes along, and it crushes that. And it announces, at its core, the gospel says, no, you can't.
So I understand why you try to do things. You think that baptism is a necessary thing, a work that you must do, acts of love, taking the Eucharist, doing confession, last rites, not committing any mortal sins.
I understand that because that's the way we're all bent. But Jesus has a rather staggering message for you. Stop it. Stop it. You can't. And the reason that even very nice people who pay their taxes and they mow their yard, they even edge the lawn, are not pleasing to God, is because every good thing that we do is offered with sin-stained hands.
Think of it like receiving a beautiful bouquet of flowers. And as you look at the flowers and smell them and appreciate them, you notice the hand that is attached to them, that is giving them to you, is connected to Adolf Hitler.
You'd go, you know, okay, look, Adolf Hitler was a wicked man. How many sins did he commit? I don't know, but I know how many I committed. And our hands are dirty. So even the good things that we do are not pleasing to God.
And Jesus has some great news for you. If you've done bad things, and you have, because again, you're like me. You've done bad things. You've broken God's laws. And unlike so often the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, God is serious about justice.
And he is going to judge every deed done in darkness. In fact, the psalmist said, you know my words before I speak them. Even the Old Testament supports what Jesus said when he said, you've heard it said of all, thou shall not commit adultery.
I say, you look at a woman with lust, you've committed adultery in your heart. He's going to judge our thought life. My Roman Catholic friend, you have a sin problem. Like me, like Chris. And the gospel has more news for you.
And this is the good news. Jesus can. You can't, and Jesus can, and Jesus did. Jesus paid it all. All of your sins, past, present, and future, gone. And think about it from this perspective. If you can get to heaven and say, I gave this much money.
I did this many confessional. I said my rosary this many times. I did this many acts of charity. Who can take some credit for your salvation? You can. And he is God, and he will not give his glory to another.
You can't, Jesus did. And he's going to get all the credit for saving you because he's everything you need for salvation. So if you have been relying on the traditions of men, Jesus warned about this in John chapter six.
You've exchanged the teaching of the word for the teachings of men. It was a rebuke to them, and it's a rebuke to you today if you've been trusting in traditions that are not found in the Bible. By grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves.
It is the gift of God, not of works, so that nobody can boast. If you have never repented, told God you're sorry for your sins, turned from your sins, not in perfection, but in a new direction, stopping sinning, and put your trust in Jesus Christ, you have his promise.
He will not cast you out. In fact, he will save you to the uttermost, and it gets even better. Contrary to what the traditions of men teach, you will be in his hand, and nobody can snatch you out of it.
You will be eternally secure in the Savior who did it all for you. Repent and trust that good Savior today, and you will inherit everlasting life.
Amen.
Well, thank you so much, Todd Friel, for being on the program, for making time in this busy schedule at G3 to sit here with me. I'm honored. I'm delighted.
I always love it, bro. I really, I do enjoy it, and I'm sorry to, like, scoot on you.
No, that's quite all right.
Yeah, but I've got about an hour-long ride home with my wife, and it can be a pleasant ride or not, and that is all up to you, so your call.
All right, well, God bless you, brother.
Keep up the great work, yeah.
Looking forward to your return. Well, I am delighted that I had that opportunity to interview Todd Friel, as you just heard, and we are going to be coming back shortly, God willing, after these messages with another one of the interviews that I conducted.
We're going to try to squeeze as many as we can in the remaining time that we have on today's program, so don't go away. We will be right back after these messages.
Charles Hedden Spurgeon once said,.
Give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read. He who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves that he has no brains of his own.
You need to read.
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Welcome back, and we're going next to an interview I conducted with the man whose voice you just heard, Rich Pearce, who is the president of Alpha and Omega Ministries, the ministry of Dr. James R. White.
And Rich Pearce is quite a precious brother in Christ, and—. This is Rich Arnzen again at the G3 conference, and this is a very monumental moment in my life. For a long time, I've wanted to interview Rich Pearce, the man behind the curtain at Alpha and Omega Ministries.
I've been wanting to interview him for a long time, and providentially, for one reason or another, it has never happened.
You can run, but you can't hide from Chris Arnzen.
A lot of it, I think, has to do with this opportunity, that is, because the Alpha and Right across from the Iron Sharpens Iron booth here at the G3 conference in Atlanta. But Rich Pearce, I have been grateful to God for quite a long time, since about 1995 or so, that God saw fit to develop a friendship between you and I, and you are the backbone, the central nervous system, the man controlling a lot more things than the average person knows about in regard to Alpha and Omega Ministries, to free up Dr. White to use the skills that has blessed the body of Christ in so many ways.
Well, let me take a moment and tell you about why that is. Before I came along in 1987, which is ironic because here we're at the G3 conference, and Dr. White and I actually met this month, 30 years ago.
And the structure that was originally set up for Alpha and Omega Ministries as a corporation, the president at the time, who was the original one, the co-founder, his name was Mike Beliveau, and James and Mike set up a structure where James would have sole concentration on the theological ministry.
His job was to read and to minister, and Mike's job was to do administration, and the two were to be separated so that James is not burdened with administrative issues as they would come along. And it was a very wise thing to do, it really was, because when I came along and became the vice president a few years later, Mike kind of showed me the ropes, and eventually Mike had to move his family away from our area, and so I took over as president.
And I just saw the wisdom in how that structure was, and the importance of being able to keep James focused on doing the ministry, doing the theology, and being able to lead the ministry in that way. And so that's where we came up with the title of Director of Ministries.
So it's not just he's the director of Alpha Omega Ministries, he's the director of ministries. And so when we get into, when we got into Islam a number of years ago, this was James's decision. When we got into, we started off with two groups, and that was Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormonism.
And one of the interesting things that these guys did initially, you got to think 1985, you know, circa era there, they set up phone lines, and they would advertise in local newspaper for the phone lines, and the phone numbers were 2662 LDS and 2662 JWS.
And they would every week update a five-minute long message on these recording machines, and James would write them, and eventually there was a whole slew of these messages. And that's really the roots of Alpha Omega Ministries, starting off with that.
And eventually, I'm going to say around 1989, came 2662 RCC for Roman Catholicism. And then shortly after that, James was contacted by Jerry Matitix of Catholic Answers in wanting to do a debate. And so when you look back at our history of doing debates, it was actually Catholic Answers that brought that about by approaching it.
It wasn't something that James saw in, I mean, certainly you can tell it's naturally in his wheelhouse, but it wasn't something that he really saw as something that he would be doing. And when it came to the doorstep, it was, he was just a natural.
And it's kind of interesting how for.
Quite a number of years after that initial relationship with Catholic Answers, they pretty much stayed away from Alpha Omega Ministries and James White like a pariah until.
Very recently when Trent Horn agreed to participate. A new and very encouraging generation of leadership has come into that organization. We had dinner with them this week, and they are certainly, both Trent and John, are very personable, very nice young men, and they're eager.
They have the same kind of fire in their eyes that I saw in Jerry Matitix, Pat Madrid, Scott Hahn, way back when. And I just hope that these guys keep that fire up, because I do look back and I kind of find it sad that at that time they walled off the debate thing at a certain point, because I look back and go, how many good, solid, good debates that would have been edifying would have taken place during that time, could have taken place if they would have continued to move forward?
I honestly believe they would have, I mean, they've grown tremendously. They're so much bigger than we are. But the debates, I want to address that issue real quick. The debates are not what a lot of people portray them to be, where it's just this great big argument.
They think James has been called a debate junkie, and that is just not the case. He's been called a bigot. Well, yeah, we've been called a lot of names. But the issue here is that folks need to understand that Alpha Domingo Ministries does debates because this is an opportunity to witness to a group of people that we would not otherwise have access to.
Where can you go where you can go into a room and half of the number of people, you know, like I think of back in the mid -90s and the great debates, you have 800 people in the room and half of them are Roman Catholics, devout Roman Catholics.
And you have an opportunity to be able to speak to those people the gospel. What other venue do you get those people in that room? You don't. You don't get their ear. You don't get their attention. And that's why we do what we do.
And that's why these debates are so very important. And that has now turned into focusing on Islam and so many other groups. I mean, I look at 2017 and I see that because of the historical nature, we're going to be doing more with Roman Catholicism.
And that kind of waned there for a while when Islam came onto the table. But we're going to continue to do Islam as well and Mormonism. And the other thing is, while I'm here, since I've got your ear, back in the 80s and 90s, James was very prolific in writing tracts and information sheets.
Many of these things have not seen the light of day since that time. Back in those days, when we put those things together and went to printing press, we literally put them together with the cut and paste method.
And I'm talking scissors and glue. And the text of these items are needed to be scanned. They need to be scanned. And then somebody sits down. We have volunteers doing this, but it's a very laborious task.
And one of those items I would mention to you would be an item called the New Age Bible Versions Refuted. We have that on our website, but as a booklet, we only printed 50 of them. We could not afford to print any more.
But that came actually before the King James Only Controversy, which is James' most popular book. So we're working on getting all those back into print through digitizing. And then at some point in time, we're going to have to turn them over to a graphic artist who's going to bring the look and feel of them into the 21st century, as well as eventually putting them on PDF on our website and making it to where, you know, if you're witnessing to a Mormon, and there's the sheet over there called Three Levels of Heaven.
And if that's in a PDF form and you want to witness to your Mormon friend, you can take that, download it, and send it through email. I mean, we're in an age where we can digitally witness to people. We can digitally track.
We don't even have to be in the same part of the world to be able to witness to these people. We have more ability to be able to share the gospel than ever before.
I praise God. Well, tell us something about yourself. What was the religion, if any, of your childhood, and what were the providential circumstances our sovereign Lord brought about?
I was a Philistine. I pretty much was just a general run-of-the-mill. My folks, when I was born, had a United Methodist Church around the corner. And so at eight days old, they decided the thing to do was to take me around the corner and get me baptized by the Methodists.
And after that, it was Easter and Christmas. And so that's why I use the term the Philistine, because I was I was raised in this, you know, we do this because we observe these days, because that's what the society does.
It was secularism. And that was the way I was raised. I came to Christ through some difficult times in my teenage years and was introduced to a Baptist pastor up in Prescott, Arizona, where I grew up.
And he shared the gospel with me. And that's where my exposure to Christianity really does find its roots in that regard. But still, in a lot of ways, I was a very lazy young man when it came to these kinds of things.
I worked hard in my job, but when it came to really thinking hard on things, it wasn't something that really came naturally to me. And fast forward to when I'm 25, I'm going to now, I've moved to Phoenix in 1982, and I'm going to North Phoenix Baptist Church.
Over time, I'd come to realize that I need to be in church, that the only time that I was ever really happy in life was being with and around Christians. And so I started regularly attending church. And I had met a young lady that I very much wanted to be around.
And she wanted to go to these Christian training classes that North Phoenix had on Wednesday night. And there was this young guy named James White teaching one of them. And basically, it was the basics of the faith and basic Christian doctrines class was what it was called.
And wherever she went, well, that's where I wanted to be. And so I went with her and we went through, it was a quarterly class. So it was every Wednesday night for 13 weeks. And right towards the end of that first 13 weeks, and I can guarantee you, I was pretty zoned out most of it.
And she broke up with me. And that hit me pretty hard. And I started thinking about, you know what, I'm remembering this guy and the stuff he was saying, and it seemed to be pretty good. And I decided to go back and take the class all over again.
This time I paid attention. And so I will never forget the first time sitting there and listening to him introduce the class. And he's going over these different belief systems. And he starts talking about the Trinity.
And he says, Well, we've got the person of the we have the Father, we have the Son, and we have the Holy Spirit. And sometimes God manifests as the Father, sometimes God manifests the Son or the Holy Spirit.
And and I'm sitting back in the back of the room going, Yeah, that's right. Exactly. Yes. And he's, then he goes in, he says, This is known as the ancient heresy of modalism. And so afterwards, I went up and introduced myself.
And he will tell you to this day, I scared the daylights out of it. Because up to this point, my diet of Christianity had been Sunday morning Baptist preaching, and TBN. And my favorite TBN preacher was Richard Roberts.
So you got to plug that in and make that and so you got Richard Roberts devotee, who loves the fact that Richard Roberts can stand in front of the TV. What's that Lord? Oh, oh, someone on TV right now has a hanging.
And now put your hand on the TV, and God's gonna heal that. That's the way it was. And that guy meets James White. And James started ministering to me started sharing how we need to show what we believe and why we believe it from the scriptures.
And, you know, it was sinking in with me, but it didn't hit me until one night he and the Alpha Omega group had invited me to come out to the Mesa Easter pageant and share the gospel. I really got into this.
This was here. I'm one on sharing the gospel with these people. And there was this Mormon couple. And my friend and I had actually been talking to them for so long, most of our group had already left.
It was like 11 o 'clock at night, it's starting to rain. And my Bible's getting wet. And the young man and I are looking at John 1030, I am the father of one. And he's pointing at that and he's going in purpose.
And I said to him, No, you can't believe that because it doesn't say that that's not what it says. It just says I am the father of one. And at that moment, it hit me like a ton of bricks. If I had to defend what I believed by that standard, I couldn't, there wasn't anything I believe that I could defend.
And that night, I was no longer considered myself to be a charismatic. And I threw everything that I believed out the window. I went, you know, I'd been listening to Jimmy Swaggart, I'd been listening to all these guys on TBN.
And it was very difficult because they had told me that if I go down this road, I'm going to grieve the Holy Spirit, I'm going to blaspheme the Holy Spirit, and I could not be saved or any of that. And I went through a good year of really self-doubt and questioning my faith.
But James kept pressing me to know what I believe and know why I believe it from the Scriptures. And it was through that process that I was girded up and strengthened and began to know what it was to be a Christian.
And it was through the Scriptures. And so that's where really our journey in Alpha Omega Ministries and my coming into Alpha Omega Ministries through a very windy road of faith and weird faith that I came to eventually become the president of Alpha Omega Ministries.
And again, I'm very content doing the administrative side of things, but at the same time don't think I haven't, you know, been studying and can hold my own.
Now, I know that James was not raised in a theologically Reformed home as dad pastor, but not a fellow believer in the doctrines of grace. When that initial meeting had come between you and James at that church in Phoenix, was James at that point a Calvinist?
That, I think at that point in time he might have seen himself in the four and a half range. I know that when he started doing further classes in the Alpha Omega Ministries offices, and he had invited a number of people over to go through the five points of Calvinism.
And it was very difficult for him to do this because I objected to four out of five points, strenuously. I kept interrupting. Eventually he had to ask me to be quiet.
We're going to pick up Rich Pierce right where we left off because we have to go to a station break right now. We hope that you're enjoying these interviews that were conducted on site at the G3 conference.
So we're going to be right back after these messages, God willing. So don't go away.
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Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, Am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, pastor of Providence Baptist Church.
We are a Reformed Baptist Church and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts. We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things.
That's not the best recipe for popularity, but since that wasn't the apostles' priority, it must not be ours either. We believe, by God's grace, that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man, and to be vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us, and to build up the body of Christ in truth and love.
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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. We have been playing interviews that I conducted on-site at the recent G3 conference in Atlanta, Georgia, and that explains why there is a lot of background noise and chattering or chatting that you hear, because this was a live event with thousands of people milling around.
And so therefore, I think it kind of adds to the ambiance of the interviews, because they were right there. They were conducted right there on the spot, live, at this wonderful conference. When I left for the break, I was in the midst of interviewing, or should I say I was in the midst of airing an interview that I conducted with Rich Pierce, the president of Alpha and Omega Ministries, the teaching, preaching, writing, and debating ministry of Dr. James R. White.
And I am going to resume airing that interview right now, and we reached a point where I was asking Rich Pierce what James White's theological makeup was when they first met. I was asking him if he was a full-blown Calvinist at that point, and Rich indicated that James was on his way there, but had not yet arrived at the full-blown.
Tulip. But here we are resuming that interview right now. And he had invited a number of people over to go through the five points of Calvinism, and it was very difficult for him to do this, because I objected to four out of five points strenuously.
I kept interrupting. Eventually, he had to ask me to be quiet so that he could finish before the night was over, because it was that aggressive. And then he handed me Chosen by God by R .C. Sproul. And that book sat on my table, and I don't know why to this day I could not open that book.
And a friend of mine, we're in a Christian bookstore about a month later, and there was a brand new book that R .C. Sproul had put out called One Holy Passion, A Consuming Thirst to Know God. Why that book got my attention, and I walked through that book, and I could not have read and understood Chosen by God without having read One Holy Passion first, because my understanding of God was just so broken and so sub-biblical that all these other things—when I read Chosen by God, I plugged right in.
But I had to have read One Holy Passion first, because it was my theology at its core that was problematic.
And what year was this when the Doctrines of Grace became solidified?
I'm going to say 89, 88, 89, somewhere in there. So there was a lot in that first year, first two years, that was really poured out on me. And like I said, I had to dump everything that I believed, everything that I thought, and start over.
And a lot of Bible study teachers will tell you that it's very difficult—it's more difficult to take someone who already has, well, even business. It's harder to untrain someone who's learned how to do it wrong than it is to take someone from a fresh start in teaching to do it right.
And that's where I was. It was harder to untrain me in the doing it wrong process.
And I know these days—it wasn't that long ago that you joined King's Church.
Pastor John Sampson.
Pastor John Sampson, who's become a friend of mine as well, and I always enjoy having him on the program. And exactly which city in Arizona?
We're in northwest Peoria, up around the 91st Avenue and Union Hills area. And John relocated the church up in that area, well, two years next month—two years ago in March. And it's five minutes from my home.
And I knew he was trying to start something up very small. And Phoenix is a difficult area to evangelize. It really is. And so there's a lot of people that go to church. There's not a lot of those people that really understand the Scripture or have that interest in it.
It's more an emotional reaction. It's the worship band. That's when we worship. And one of the things that John and I really gelled on is talking about that particular issue and recognizing, look, it's the whole church service that is worship.
And when we open the Scripture, we're doing the Lord's work in that place. So the idea of the band can get up there, and if you can wave your hands to it, it's worship. I think back on American Bandstand.
It's got a good beat, and you can dance to it. What do you want? That's not how it's supposed to be. We're not supposed to turn our minds off when we're worshiping. Our minds, if you look at the New Testament, the one thing that you find, the Apostle Paul pointing you to, is the renewing of, it feels good, do it.
No, it's a renewing of the mind. If you look at the book of Colossians, the focus is on our minds, and we are told to use our minds to put these things off and put those things on. And it's our mind that is being appealed to.
And the problem with me, James will tell you, is, yeah, some people may think I'm not very emotional. I'm very emotional. The problem is, waving my hand in the air doesn't get me going. If I get emotional, it's floodgates.
So the last thing you want to see is me standing up front bawling my eyes out. I literally, James will tell you this, he did our wedding. He married Marianne, and I cried the entire thing, from start to finish, from the moment we walked out of that room, till the picture started.
I cried our entire wedding. That's Rich Pierce getting emotional. So I tend to kind of keep that in check, because, you know, we're Reformed, and we don't really do that, you know. But, you know, we're to have self-control.
That's fruit of the Spirit. And to me, I don't think there's anything wrong with having an emotion and having a feeling, but the Christian faith is defined by the Scriptures, and our minds is where that is the.
Battleground. I know James has famously said some of the most irritating words he ever hears when he's been invited to preach or lecture somewhere, is when either the pastor or the worship leader gets up to the podium and says, and now that we've concluded our time of worship, here's Dr.
James R. White. Yeah, that's a huge problem theologically. It really is. They're not thinking this through. They aren't. And by the way, before we leave the topic of King's Church, I teach the Sunday School there, and tomorrow morning I won't be, but one of the elders will be filling in for me.
But we eventually expanded last October into having a Sunday School. We were, you know, such a small group, we weren't able to really marshal that together, and that's gradually growing. We are a small group, but we are Reformed.
Our focus and interest is on the Scriptures, and that's what we do. We walk through the Scriptures and follow their lead. And I have been very blessed.
And impressed with those occasions where I've seen you fill in for Dr. White on the dividing line, and I have to commend you for the job. Very well done. Thank you. Very well done. I'm looking forward to having more opportunities to see and hear you do that.
Well, I know that the website for Alpha and Omega Ministries is aomin .org, aomin .org for Alpha and Omega Ministries. Anything that's coming up on the horizon that you want to announce before we conclude the interview?
We are going.
To be sending James to South Africa again in March, and so we do need to always keep the travel account funded. And so if folks can help us out there, we'd greatly appreciate that. And again, we're trying to republish the tracks and information sheets, probably two dozen titles on each category, and a lot of stuff that folks have never have not seen in 20 years.
Wow. And so at this point in time, with the exposure that we've got now with the internet and all that, it's very valuable that people be able to see these tools and be able to use them in ministry.
And in fact, I just got an email today from an Iron Sherpins Iron listener in South Africa who had questions about whether or not he should remain in a band that he's in, because some of the members of the band are atheists.
He's a Christian in South Africa, and apparently it's a fairly well-known band down there. But pray for that individual. But Rich Pierce, I just thoroughly enjoyed our interview. I look forward to you coming back to Iron Sherpins Iron, perhaps even.
For the full two-hour show at some point. Maybe sometime. We'll see. All right. God bless you.
Thank you, brother. Thank you. Blessings. And now we're going to go to a final interview for the day. I want to air an interview with my dear friend Doug McMasters, Dr. Doug McMasters, who is the pastor of New Hyde Park Baptist Church on Long Island, New York.
And he is, he was, I should say at one time, a staff member at Grace TU Ministries, the ministry of Dr. John MacArthur. So we're going to be hearing Doug McMasters any moment now, and we hope you enjoy our interview.
This is Chris Arnzen of Iron Sherpins Iron Radio, live at the G3 conference, and we are on a break right now. And I am with my friend, pastor, I believe it's Dr. Doug McMasters, is it not? Just pastor.
And Pastor Doug McMasters is pastor of the New Hyde Park Baptist Church, Nassau County, Long Island, New York. And I've had the honor and privilege of knowing him for a number of years. And he is one of the few people that I know personally that has known Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries longer than I've known him, I believe.
When you were pastoring in England, Dr. White was making.
Annual trips there to speak, was he not? Yes, he was. Yeah, we would have James come, he would preach, we'd often set up at least one debate, if not more, during his time with us. That goes back how many years?
That goes back to the early 2000s, but my time in knowing him goes back to 94. Oh, well, actually, yeah, then you know James about.
Two years, or a year longer than me. Right. I first became acquainted with him in 94 or so, but I first started dialoguing with him in 95 when I arranged our first debate with Jerry in 1996, is when it actually was held, and Jerry Matitix and James White.
That was the first of the Great Debate Series on Long Island, New York. Yes, yes. And that was a decade-long debate series, and the theme of that very first debate was Mary, Sinless Queen of Heaven, or Sinners Saved by Grace, which also happened to be the theme of the debate that I hosted last week in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, my first Carlisle, Pennsylvania debate with Dr. Tony Costa and Robert St. Genes, Dr. Robert St. Genes, Dr. St. Genes being the Catholic in that debate.
So tell us something about your affiliation before you became pastor in New Hyde Park, Long Island, and even before you were pastoring in England. Tell us something about your affiliation with Grace View Ministries,.
The ministry of Dr. John MacArthur. Right, well, it's a delight to find that your booth is actually adjacent to Grace To You's booth, and it brings real joy to my heart to see the guys over there and saying hello to people coming up to their booth.
I served there for eight years. I was the director of pastoral correspondence, so all the mail that would come in to Grace To You, often also from the seminary or college or even to the church, with people asking personal life issues, Bible questions, church-related problems and difficulties.
They would send the letters to us, and I had a staff of seminary-trained guys who would assist me in answering those questions.
On John's behalf. Great, and I was honored and delighted that in God's providence I had some hand in you actually coming to Long Island to receive that call to the pastor there at New.
York. It was quite a providential act. James had just been with us, and when we were talking, I was telling him that it was probably time for us to begin to transition our way back to the States. I had a brother who is diabetic and at the time was in hospital, and we didn't know what would happen, how to take care of him, and doing that across the notion was very difficult.
That and a few other things kind of led us to a perspective that it was time to come back. James gave me no encouragement. He said, you know, Reformed Baptists don't really have a lot of churches around, and I can't think of any that are very large, and I was like, okay, James, well, you can pray for me.
And just, I think, a couple weeks after he left, you had put out an email, I believe it was, in a Reformed Baptist discussion group saying that there were a couple churches you were aware of that were looking for a pastor, and so I sent you my resume and said, talk to Bill Johnson, talk to James White if you want to know more about me, and there it went.
Yeah, and I know that they immediately fell in love with you over there, so I'm very delighted about that, and I can see the, you can remove the Yankee out of the UK, but you cannot necessarily quickly remove the UK out of the Yankee.
The way you said, in hospital, and obviously in America, we say in the hospital, or in a hospital,.
You just said in hospital. It's a state of being, not a place where you're at.
And so tell us about what the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation means to you.
Specifically. Well, it was a tremendous experience when I lived in London to make my way over to Germany, there with the EBTC in Berlin, and often to go to Wittenberg, and there to go to Luther House, and to see what is left of what is called the Tower Room.
It's really just an air space where the tower is no longer, and to recognize, as historians say, that that's perhaps the place where Luther came to his awareness of the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and recognition that it was because of Christ's righteousness that he lived, not because of any righteousness which he built up by way of cooperation with God's grace.
And God would receive him because Christ's sacrifice was perfect, and his righteousness was perfect. The 500th anniversary to me is for us to remember, reflect upon, and to tell out that same doctrine.
And so it means a lot to me. It is what we preach every week at New Hyde Park Baptist Church, that you can know that you are forgiven by God and accepted by God because of.
The righteousness of Christ. And you were present last night at the debate between Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, who we've been talking about briefly, and the representative from Catholic Answers, Dr. Trent Bourne.
And that debate was on the theme, can a Christian lose their salvation? And it reminded me of a meme that I saw on the internet of a quote, with a quote by Dr. John MacArthur, your former employer. And the quote was, if I could lose my salvation, I would.
And for anyone to think less or other than that, they're thinking too highly of themselves. And they're also thinking far too less of sin, or giving sin a less level of severity than it truly has. If you can actually think that you can go through life in a way that is pleasing enough to God, where you will not go to hell,.
You are sadly mistaken. Absolutely. And Roman Catholic theology believes that sin is a disease, not a death. And therefore, we need healing and not new life brought into us. And so they believe that by cooperating with God's grace, they can find themselves whole again.
Whereas we understand that any spiritual life we have comes because God has awakened it in our heart. It is his work,.
And we give him all the praise for it. Amen. And one of the things that I've been facing for the last, let's see, well, since 1995, when I had started the arrangements for the very first debate that I organized, I've been facing a backlash, not only from Roman Catholics, but a lot of evangelicals who think that debates are very distasteful, inappropriate activities to be involved in.
You will have a lot of evangelicals today saying things like, in a day and age, when abortion is rampant, and now we even have in the 21st century, men marrying men and women marrying women. And of course, you and I know that those are not real marriages.
That's just a totally redefinition of what those things are. Absolutely. But you have the complaint that we should not be bickering and arguing and debating with those who stand with us toe-to-toe or side-by-side, I should say, on these issues or against these issues, who stand with us in objecting to and vociferously protesting against many of the moral ills that plague not only the United States, but the globe.
And we are basically, in their minds, straining out gnats and swallowing camels and involving ourselves in exercises of hate and bigotry. And this could not be farther from the truth when we do something like this, when we.
Are involved in a debate. No, absolutely not. I mean, the question is, what is the highest priority for the Church? Is it social change or spiritual transformation? And of course, spiritual transformation is the focus of the Scriptures and therefore must be our focus.
We're looking not to bring some general higher degree of morality into society apart from life in Jesus Christ. It's not to say that life in Christ won't bring change into people's lives. It certainly does.
True faith will bring true change. But what is our priority? Our priority is to bring the gospel to bear upon the hearts of people. And if we can do that in whatever format that we do, we ought to take advantage of those things.
Public debate is just simply one of those means, a legitimate and justifiable means, I believe. We shouldn't restrict it simply to that. There are many other ways to do that. I think a lot of people's intimidation with that, along other lines, or objection to that, is because of an intimidation factor.
They see someone like James White debate, they think, I can't do that. And to justify their sense of intimidation a little bit, they will say, well, maybe we shouldn't be doing that. Whereas they ought to realize that God has given us gifted men who are able to debate on the level that James does.
He is actually being a gospel witness to the people that he's debating and to the audience that hears him. We should thank the Lord for it. Amen. And of course, not everybody.
Should debate. In fact, just like not everyone should teach or preach, even though debater is in a specific office in the scripture, it is clear that to be setting yourself up publicly to be engaged in such a difficult task, which involves a vast breadth and great depth of knowledge on the issues you're debating, especially if you are debating somebody who has experience, knowledge, and skills representing the opposing view, you could be bringing great reproach upon the church of Jesus Christ, and you could be making a mockery of.
The things that you claim to believe. Not only do you need an encyclopedic mind, you need the ability to access that information very quickly and pinpointedly. Yes, there are.
Geniuses who should never debate. Right. Because they pause and they think about things for five.
Or ten minutes. Yes, very reflective and very helpful if they wrote books, but not if they.
Engaged in a debate. And James White is one of those gifted brothers. Able to do both. Instant recall. And same with Dr. Tony Costa, who I had the pleasure of having do a debate on Long Island that I'm sorry, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, last week that I mentioned earlier, Dr. Costa has that same instantaneous recall of mind.
And I'm so glad that it was Dr. White actually who first introduced me to Dr. Costa. But this whole mindset, even this conference, people might even view this conference, since it's celebrating a rift, if you will, between those espousing different religious views that were once, in some fashion, united under an umbrella of authority.
They would view this as just an unnecessary rehashing of things that opened wounds that we should just allow to heal and move on with life. They view this as just another demonstration of sectarianism and perhaps even hate speech and bigotry, if you want to take it to an extreme level.
But this is ridiculous. If you believe something to be the truth of God, and if you believe it has vital importance to the degree that eternity hinges on it, wouldn't it be the height of selfishness and the height of disregard for the life and soul of your fellow men, if you just let them go on their merry way, believing as they do, even if you believe what they are believing and teaching others is an offense to God and is also going to carry them into hell?
Absolutely. If you love God, you love.
What God says, you love his truth, and therefore you're going to love that truth living in other people. But, you know, if people are looking at this and the Reformation celebration as some sectarian, divisive event, we need to bring that thought back into historical perspective in recognition that it wasn't Luther's desire to be separate.
It was his desire to see the church reformed by the truth. He was the one that was ousted. Yes, and he also needed to flee for his very life. He did. Absolutely, he did. And so who were the sectarian ones, but the ones who hardened their theological position to Council of Trent and therefore anathemized everyone who.
Believes what we're celebrating today? Yes, and the frustrating thing is the more modernist Catholic, which would be most Catholics, even those on the conservative end of the spectrum who are to the left of Latin right traditionalist, but to the right of the more liberal Marxist Catholics that you have today, or the anything goes Catholics, you have you have either an ignorance of the fact that the Council of Trent is still binding, or an ignorance of what the Council of Trent really was anathematizing, or an ignorance of what that even means, anathema, or you have people naively thinking that that was for a bygone error and it's not applicable today, or they're being deceitful.
It's got to be one of those categories, but I am constantly hearing about how Vatican II has brought the church into a different relationship with Protestants, and the fact that those teachings in Trent, although they are dogma, the anathemas are not dogma, or infallible, or inerrant, and they try to distance themselves from the severity of those anathemas, but those anathemas still stand, and it's interesting that as liberal, even, dare I say, leftist as Pope Francis is, so far left that most conservative Catholic apologists barely bring him up at all in conversation, especially those involved in the media, that he has not overturned those anathemas, nor can he, because the whole.
System of papal infallibility crumbles into an ash heap. Right, it's a counselor decision which would need a whole council to make a change about it, not just his personal perspectives. That's very true.
The problem is that Protestantism and Roman Catholicism have both drifted toward universalism, and therefore they can find a ready embrace of one another because they've bypassed all of their doctrinal distinctives.
That's another reason why this Reformation celebration is so necessary, because it's not only a call of distinction from Roman Catholicism, it's a call to those who claim to be Protestants, saying these are your roots,.
This is where you need to be standing. Right, and whatever, in this day and age you have, I would say the majority of Roman Catholics, when we have conversations with them, if we are taking the gospel seriously, and if we're going to be honest with them out of compassion for their souls, and of love for them, we are going to tell them that if they believe in the gospel of Rome, they are lost.
And they immediately, typically, with some exceptions, when you have those that are logically consistent with their religion, they will typically accuse us of being the bad guy in the conversation, but I always point to Trent, and I say, long before I was born, centuries before I was even a twinkle in my father's eye, your church has anathemized everyone who agrees with me and what the scriptures teach, and those anathemas, those curses, are still binding in the Catholic church today.
No matter how much you may look at me as the bad guy, or the mean guy, or my fellow evangelical Protestants who share a bold stance against modern ecumenism, you are really being disingenuous, or you're just being naive about the fact that your church, meaning the church of Rome, has anathematized us before we were even.
On the scene. And leads into a great conversation about what those anathemas are about, and to say, let's bring ourselves to scripture and see what the Bible has to say about the nature of faith, true life in Christ, what it means to have an assurance of salvation.
Where does that come from?
And the, unfortunately, you have a lot of, for many years, you have the Catholic church really engaging in smokescreens with varying approaches to public relations, where people will be deceived into thinking that the Roman Catholic church has actually changed their dogma because of statements made by popes, and bishops, and priests, and Catholics in the media, because what they must remember, or those listening right now must remember, is that a pope can pretty much say anything he wants to say that is in violation of Catholic teaching, and history, and Bible, as long as he doesn't pronounce it ex-Catholic.
So, there are many Roman Catholics today who are far to the right on the spectrum, who are horrified with their current pope. They're typically not being very public about it. And they, but they know that this man is saying a lot of things that are not representative of true Catholic teaching, let alone the Bible, let alone Christianity.
And therefore, they get around it, or they try to, by saying, well, he's not pronouncing dogma. So, this makes him no less fallible. And I even asked a Catholic apologist on my radio program, which I got a lot of heat for, for having a Roman Catholic apologist on my radio program.
I made it clear that it was not an exercise in ecumenism. I wanted to get a Catholic, a conservative Catholic's view of their liberal pope. And I thought that would be an interesting conversation, because you're never going to hear it anywhere, it seems.
That's a great spot to hear it. And, but now I forget where I was going with that. But he, oh yes, I asked him, I posed the question to Dr. Robert Sugenis, who I'm speaking about, who was involved in the debate last week.
Months ago, when I had him on my program, I asked him, can you tell me that Pope Francis is a faithful shepherd for you? And his response was, and now you're getting me involved in a trick question. But you would think if it had any meaning, because obviously the whole concept behind papal infallibility that has always, the whole part of the Roman Catholic rhetoric, or apologetic, or polemic, is that you guys are just a bunch of fallible people, ranging in varying degrees of ignorance on what the scriptures say.
And you're basically your own magisterium, picking and choosing whatever you want to believe, or twisting the scriptures in any way, shape, or form that you want to twist them to make you feel comfortable, which is obviously never what historic Protestantism has been about.
But the only way that you can have anarchy in the church prevented is to have an infallible magisterium, or infallible pope. But when these infallible proclamations are rarely ever made, in fact the last one was in the 1950s, I believe.
Was that the assumption, Mary? I think in all circumstances in life, the whole purpose of your saying that you need this figure, when he could say all kinds of atrocious things that are even in violation of your own church.
So long as he maintains the status quo of what the magisterium's already declared, then he's sort of off the hook, as you're describing. Now, let's have some of your feedback,.
Your personal opinion about last night's debate that Dr. James R. White had with Dr. Trent Horn of Catholic Answers. I can say that Trent Horn, I think, was one of the best Catholic apologists.
I've seen and heard involved in one of these debates. Agreed. In fact, I had breakfast this morning with James, and I was telling him how much I was impressed with him, and saying that, you know, he's a young man, he's got a lot of years ahead of him.
I prayed that the Lord would open his eyes to the grace of God and truth, but if not, he's going to be a formidable opponent on behalf of Roman Catholicism, if God gives him life. Correct. And he is a very humble man,.
Very gracious man. Seemed to be, very much so. But tell me your assessment, other than what you just said with James this morning, tell me your assessment of the debate.
Well, just in general, for one, I was curious about the topic. I think it was said last night that this is not necessarily a Protestant-Roman Catholic discussion and topic for debate.
Which is actually why it was a disappointment for me to hear before the debate what the topic.
Would be. Yeah, I agree. It may be a little, even perhaps a little more intriguing to discover why we were having that debate before us on such an event as this that's centered on the Reformation.
It was really an in-house Protestant debate. Yes. And in fact, if you did not know that Trent Horne was from Catholic Answers, you might have thought it was two Protestants debating because of the...
Well precisely, apart from maybe some of the quotes from church, early church fathers or something. Right, because there were a lot of Protestants quoted by Dr. Horne. Yeah, quite a few. However, bleeding through that more general topic, there were some statements by him that were very clearly Roman Catholic-oriented issues.
Statements such that Christ's death on the cross really is just a treasury upon which people can prevail themselves, cooperating with the grace that's there in order to rectify and remedy their own lives and present themselves as righteous.
That came through. So there was definitely some punctuations, I guess, of Roman Catholic theology that came out, though that wasn't really the central focus of the debate.
Itself. Yes. And as always, whenever you're feeling a little tense, perhaps even upset, perhaps even... I'm not saying that I felt this last night, but at times in the past when you feel rage building up and you're hearing falsehood being taught by one of Dr. White's opponents, that sigh of relief always comes when they sit down for cross-examination, because Dr. White is a master at cross-examination, and he always shines most brightly because of his vast knowledge of not only the Scriptures, most importantly, but also church history, and he knows his opponents' beliefs very often more than they do.
Yeah, I think that's the key point to any of the debates that James does. You know, the presentation of his position, presentation of the opposing position are going to be there, and they're allowed to speak without interruption.
And so, you know, there it is. But when you get to the real debate, that's with the cross-examination, that's where the interaction happens. That's where you're able to make the distinctions between those two positions that have been posited by both debaters.
It's a key point. And just reflecting back on some of the things that were said last night in social media, some people were saying that they felt that was the highlight of the debate for them, and I would agree that that was probably the best part of it all.
Yes, it typically is the cross-examination, because that's where you really see people having to give an answer for what they've already said, and having them really define things in more depth, and there is no tree or wall to hide behind.
When you can make a speech...
When you say whatever you wish. You make whatever assertion you desire until someone says prove it.
And you could have somebody who is an extraordinary orator, if he is unchallenged in a debate, like some of these debaters or apologists who have been approached or invited to debate Dr. White, they have come to learn of his great skill in that area of cross-examination.
So sometimes those that actually accept the invitation will say, but there's one thing I insist upon, there will be no cross-examination, because they just want to get up and give speeches or preach sermons to an audience that is not going to be challenged, other than in a rebuttal statement.
But a rebuttal statement is entirely different when you're cross-examining somebody, and they are on the spot. The spotlight is on them to give an answer to your specific questions. And when they dodge those questions, it is evident, usually, that they are doing so, that they are hiding something.
And so those are very valuable aspects of every debate. Now, what would you say, as a Bible-believing Christian, a Protestant, an Evangelical, as a Reformed Christian, a Calvinist, Sovereign Grace believer, all these labels we have, but the primary things that we are to be thankful for being heirs of the Protestant Reformation, what do you think are the most valuable and vital aspects of that that we must cling to today.
And be very bold to proclaim to the world? There's so much that we've received from them, a lot of things we don't even really think about. It was a surprise to my congregation just a few weeks ago when I told them that no one in the Church sang until the Reformation.
Congregational singing was unknown until Luther brought it into the Church.
Hmm. Other than, obviously, the New Testament Church, because we have the clear example.
Of course, yes. But it had been lost for a long, long time. Little do we realize that we get up, we sing the praises of God as a congregation, and we do so gladly, but we ought to do so thankfully that there was a distinction made during the time of Martin Luther that the congregation could be involved in worship, directly involved in worship, not just witnessing what was happening.
Remembering that the Mass was in Latin, all things were done away from them and apart from them. They couldn't even receive the cup, only the wafer. So many things that had removed people from any aspect about corporate worship.
So all of that to say, I think one of the things we should be very welcoming of, by way of the Reformation, is how we worship as churches. Then you could go adjacent to that. I wouldn't put it under it, but adjacent to that is our understanding of Scripture, the Gospel and its clarity and effect in our lives.
So many things.
Yes, I think that one of the watchwords or the pillars of the Reformation, Sola Scriptura, is something that really needs to be discovered, embraced, and adhered to by evangelicals, millions of evangelicals who are really unconsciously violating that very precious concept and truth.
Yes, last Sunday night I brought in, I have a copy of the Geneva Bible, brought it into the church and was talking to them about it, and was telling them that this was the first complete Bible that was translated in the Old Testament from the Hebrew and the New Testament from the Greek.
That the Word of God had often been hidden and unknown by the church. And we should be thankful that in our day, we commonly have the Scriptures, that we can hear the leaves turning when we tell people to take their Bibles and to open them up.
That we have God's Word available to us in our home. We don't have to take someone else's opinion or perspective or affirmations about what God has said.
Of course, there may be a day soon where we don't hear those precious leaves turning, because everybody's got a gadget. Like even our mutual friend, Dr. James R. White, very rarely ascends into a pulpit with an actual Bible in his hand.
He has.
Some electronic form of it. Well, there's nothing spiritual about paper rustling.
But there is something beautiful about it. And obviously, the core of the matter here, when it comes to the Reformation, is that final watchword that is a summary of all of them, soli deo gloria. We who are heirs of the Reformation, and I'm not saying that we perfectly and consistently do this, but I'm saying that the things that we claim to adhere to and stand upon, the system of theology that has become known as the doctrines of sovereign grace, is really the only logical and consistent and biblical system of theology where one can truly say that he is giving 100 of the glory to God alone for every blessing and especially his salvation.
Everyone says that. Even Rome says that they give God all the glory. Armenians say that, but they really cannot logically and.
Consistently say that. Yeah, they all tie together. God's word has sole authority. His gospel is my only means of life. Christ's righteousness is the only thing that stands for my righteousness. We look wholly and utterly outside of ourselves to God for life and direction.
And so we must say, to God alone be the glory. There's nothing for us to claim. Nothing. And gladly so.
Now, you and I are both Baptists, Christians first and foremost, but just to be more detailed and conveying to those around us what we stand for on specific issues that separate Baptists from the rest of Protestantism.
In fact, as you know, many Baptists have refused to wear the label Protestant. And I don't hold any grudge against them for that. I just have a different perspective on it than them. But there are not only Baptists who say that it makes no sense for us and other Baptists who are here to be celebrating the Protestant Reformation because Baptists were very often the victims of the very reformers and their heirs who we are paying tribute to because of the fact that Baptists and Anabaptists have been persecuted for the uniqueness of our on the autonomy of the local church, having no earthly authority outside the local congregation, the only authority above the local elders being Christ, and the belief in credo or believer-only baptism.
You have Baptists who are saying that Luther and Calvin had such harsh views against those things that we should not be celebrating them or paying tribute or paying tribute or honor to them in any shape or form.
And you have Presbyterians and other Phaedo-Baptists, and of course I'm not saying all of them, I'm just saying some, who would agree with that. They would look at us as some kind of an outside phenomena that has no rightful claim to the Reformation, which is why some of them will say the term Reformed Baptist is merely an oxymoron.
But if you could comment as a Baptist why you disagree with those statements.
Yeah, I do disagree with those statements. Well, first of all, recognizing the Reformation happened in a certain time, in a certain place, with certain perspectives, and with certain issues that came to the forefront, whereas others had to be teased out and played out in a different day.
And so the matters that were core and central to the Gospel are the matters that we're talking about here. Justification by faith alone, Christ's righteousness being the only means of our deliverance, faith alone being the only channel through which God distributes His grace to us as we find life in Him, the Scripture being our final and sole authority.
It was for a later time for matters concerning church governance and all of that to be played out. And they were, and it took time. We're not only Baptists here today, but we're also English-speaking Baptists, which means that we have a history that's connected not just to continental Anabaptists or Baptists, but particularly flowing out of the English Baptist movement.
And when the Civil War happened, when Cromwell and the Puritans, largely Puritans, gained an ascendancy... You're obviously not talking about the Civil War here in the States. Not the... Yeah, the Civil War in England.
Right. Right. And the one in the 16th... You just have to clarify things for people. Yes. In the 1600s, in the mid -1600s, when they came to the ascendancy and took down all the bishops and removed the king, who asserted at that time that he was the head of the church and the state, but now there was no king, what did that mean?
Well, it opened up freedom of religion quite a bit. And as church history shows, the Presbyterians gained an ascendancy, but there was also a great openness to independence. We call them Congregationalists today.
And the Baptists, who were largely centered in the southeast of England and Kent and many of them in London, were also welcomed and allowed to exercise their beliefs freely and openly. And so, as a sign of their commonality, the Baptist issued statements of faith, which show great alliance to what the Presbyterians and the Independents were also producing in the Savoy Declaration and the Westminster Confession of Faith.
There's a large commonality in what we call the Reformed.
Doctrines. Well, also, I think that, wouldn't you agree, that one of the reasons we who are Baptists cherish the Reformation and the Solas upon which it was built is that we believe, and this is not to be meant as a statement of arrogance, but we believe that we have actually followed through with those Solas more fully, especially in regard to Sola Scriptura, by following the where we believe they led, apart from the influence of human tradition.
Now, obviously, we all are influenced by human tradition, extra-biblical or unbiblical. Of course. But we believe that we have further separated ourselves from Rome. And the very fact that we see some abuses of power in some of the Reformers, the Magisterial Reformers and Protestants, who even were responsible for executing some of our Baptist forefathers, we're not going to disassociate from the whole movement because those things, those abuses and those sins of our Protestant forefathers, who were Pato Baptist and Magisterial, that just proves even further that the Solas were necessary in those pillars of the Reformation, because what those Solas were, were basically contrasting the purity of those things which God has breathed and also God himself and his Son, Jesus Christ, in contrast to things that have become polluted by the involvement of men trying to intrude on the truth of God and intrude on the finished work of Christ by their own impure and sinful participation and commingling of these things.
Well, wonderfully, we're able to go now to Scripture with our Presbyterian brothers and speak to them about the nature of the New Covenant, who's to be included in that, and have debate and discussion from a biblical framework, not necessarily dealing with state church and some of the pressures that are inherent in trying to maintain the purity of that.
Grateful indeed.
Yes, and I think that we have to always remind not only our Catholic friends and neighbors, but especially our Protestant or Evangelical friends and neighbors, who seem to think it is sufficient as a bedrock of unity between Protestants and Rome, they think it's sufficient that we both believe in faith, in grace, in Christ, the glory of God, the Scriptures, the inerrancy of the Scriptures, etc., that those solas were there for a reason, because the Church of Rome never said that grace was unnecessary.
The Church of Rome never said the Scripture was unnecessary. The Church of Rome never said that Christ was unnecessary, and on and on.
Yeah, you go to the New Testament, never did the Galatian Church say that faith was unnecessary. So, yeah, it's a matter of what is the nature of faith, what is the final authority, what is salvation based upon.
Those are key questions. Those solas are absolutely vital to the discussion.
And it seems that those who would look upon, those of us who have a strong opposition to modern ecumenism, and I have to stress the word modern because we believe in ecumenism, this building, I'm sure, has dozens of denominations represented.
Oh, it certainly does. I've met several guys from different perspectives.
Which is also a precious sign of the unity that the doctrines of grace have brought between those who disagree on secondary and tertiary issues. But those that look upon us with disdain over these differences that we have in our opposition to the modern ecumenical movement, they must remember that the reason why those solos were hammered next to the precious, vital, and required elements of faith and grace and Scripture, and of course Christ himself and the glory of God, is because when you remove alone or solo from them, all sorts of heresies come flooding in that can be masqueraded under those banners that would seemingly to a naive world looking upon them as being a part of the Christian church, just like the Judaizers did.
It seems to me that those who would be in such great opposition to us for not being modern ecumenists, is that they really think they are nicer than the Apostle Paul, and more loving than the Apostle Paul, and they expect us to be nicer and more loving than the Apostle Paul.
Well, because of the fact that, look at what he said about the Judaizers, he basically said they are accursed, let them be accursed. Of course he did.
Yeah, he even made some rather strong statements, you know, that if a Judaizer is going to say that someone needed to be circumcised in order to complete salvation, then well, why stop there? Right. The question is, how much do you love God, how much do you love Christ, and if you love him fully, you're going to hate what detracts from his glory, and therefore anything that tries to supplant Christ by way of human effort or achievement, that is something worthy of hating?
Yes, and there is nothing in the scriptures.
That requires Christians to always be nice. People act as if nice is some kind of vital element of Christian behavior that is equally as important as love and compassion and truth.
Well, I was reading Thomas Goodwin yesterday, and he was talking about the love of Christ in heaven for sinners on earth, and he was saying that Christ looks upon our sin like a father looks on disease in his child.
Wow. With a desire to be rid of that because of the intense love that Christ has for his own. Now, if we love souls, all people on earth, and we desire for them to have Christ formed within them, we're going to look at their sin, sin expressed in their erroneous perspectives about salvation, as something that must be rid of so that Christ might be fully formed in them, that they might truly know the love of God that's found in Jesus Christ.
Amen. Well, I don't want to monopolize your time here. It's been such a delight to have you sharing with the Iron Trip and Iron audience your thoughts on very important issues as well as your reflections on the events going on, and we're only in day one of the conference.
The debate was last night, and we're in day one of the G3 conference. Before we go, I really want to make sure that you let our listeners know more about New Hyde Park Baptist Church, how our listeners could get in touch with you if they either live on Long Island or plan to visit there, and some of the core elements that you believe are fitting for a description of New Hyde Park.
Baptist Church. Well, thank you for the opportunity to talk and also to share more about a church I love. New Hyde Park Baptist Church is right outside Queens. In fact, we're less than a mile outside the boundary of New York City, and so we're quite accessible for people all in Nassau County and also on the island of Long Island.
Brooklyn and Queens and even the Bronx is not very far away. We'd love to have them come be with us, our body of believers in Jesus Christ who hold to the solas just as we've been discussing the doctrines of grace.
We sing to the praises of Christ. We look at his word carefully, and we seek to make our our body life and our believing walk in compliance with the scriptures in every way. If they wish to know more about us, they can go to our website nhpbc .com and find us there.
They can also go to Sermon Audio and find us on NHPBC. If they wish to listen a little more to the preaching there before they show up, they can certainly do that. But we're in New Hyde Park on New Hyde Park Road, and we're called New Hyde Park Baptist Church.
So you say that three times, you're going to have it forever etched in your mind.
And that's N for New, H for Hyde, P for Park, B for Baptist, C for church .com. Well, it's been a delight to have this conversation with you, my dear friend, Dr. Douglas McMasters. I look forward to visiting again New Hyde Park Baptist Church when God gives me the opportunity to return to my homeland of Long Island.
And I hope to have many more conversations with you, not only in terms of personal and private fellowship, but also on.
Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio. Thank you, Chris. It's been a joy and a pleasure. Thank you.
Send my greetings and love to Brian McLaughlin and all the folks over there at New Hyde Park.
Baptist Church. I'll be very happy to do that. Thank you. God bless. God bless.
Well, we're out of time for today, and I hope that you tune in tomorrow as we attempt to air more interviews that took place there at the G3 conference. And I want everybody to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.