Aug. 27, 2015 Show with Joe Thorn and John Divito

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, quote, 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 Arnton. Due to technical difficulties, the audio for the first 30 minutes of this broadcast suffered digital corruption.

During this time as you listen, you will notice an unpleasant stutter effect. We would like to apologize to you, our listeners, and to the guest,

Joe Thorne, for this difficulty. However, much of the first 30 minutes is understandable, and the topic will be valuable to the patient listener.

So the decision was made to include this program in its entirety as part of our podcast.

Now let's join Chris Arnton and his guest for today's program. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arnton, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 27th day of August, 2015.

And I'm very happy to have back as a returning guest on Iron Sharpens Iron, Joe Thorne, for the first hour.

Joe Thorne is going to be discussing his book Note to Self, The Discipline of Preaching to Yourself.

And then in the second hour, we have John DeVito of the Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky, and he is going to be discussing, during the second hour,

African Pastors Conferences, which is an organization directed by my friend

Conrad M. Bayway, who is probably the greatest preacher, the most powerful preacher

I have ever heard in my life, and I'm very honored that he, over the years, since about 1995 or so, has become a good friend of mine, and I have heard him preach probably six times in person, and other times via sermon audio and the old cassette tapes and CDs and so on, but you don't want to miss the second hour as well as we interviewed

John DeVito. And I just want to introduce to you right now the brother who

I mentioned at the outset of the program, Joe Thorne, whom we're going to be discussing

Note to Self, The Discipline of Preaching to Yourself. Joe Thorne is the founding and lead pastor of Redeemer Fellowship in St.

Charles, Illinois. Did I say Illinois? And he is an active blogger at joethorne .net

and has written for Founders Journal, and he has written other books other than what we are discussing today, but it's my honor and privilege to welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron again,

Pastor Joe Thorne. Thanks so much for having me back on time.

Last time I was on, I'm hoping for more of the same. I am as well. And I'm going to give our listeners our email address right away in the event that you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Joe Thorne regarding his book,

Note to Self, The Discipline of Preaching to Yourself. Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And as always, please provide your first name, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. And we understand that there are occasions when folks have personal and private matters that they do not want to disclose their identity when they ask questions in those matters, so we respect your privacy and we will allow you to remain anonymous.

But please only remain anonymous if it's something of a personal and sensitive nature. Joe Thorne, before we get into the book, once again for our listeners who may not have heard your previous interview, if you could, let our listeners know about the church where you pastor.

We planted Redeemer Fellowship eight years ago in the 30 miles west of Chicago, and I grew up in this area.

I was a little pagan troublemaker in this area until I was converted shortly after graduating from high school.

I called to the ministry shortly after my conversion and went to Moody Bible Institute, then

Southern Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and came back up to plant. And so, yeah, Redeemer is eight years old, and we've been able to plant three other churches in a college town almost 30 minutes away from us.

Once again, if you want any more information about the church where Joe pastors,

Redeemer Fellowship in St. Charles, you can go to Joe's personal website, joethorne .net.

There's no E at the end of Thorne, it's just joethorne .net. I just want to announce before I forget, since you mentioned the

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, that this Monday we have

Dr. Al Mohler on our program, and we are very excited and enthusiastic to have him on our show for the very first time, and he's going to be discussing his book that just recently came out in response to the

Supreme Court decision on legalization of same -sex marriage, and we're looking forward to that very much.

So mark your calendars and get your questions ready. In fact, you can start emailing your questions right now if you want to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com, obviously, distinguish in the subject line who the question is for, whether it's for our guests today or for Dr.

Mohler. But I just have to read a couple of these excellent commendations that you received for the book, and a couple of these brethren have been guests on Iron Sharpens Iron in the past.

In fact, Tom Nettles is going to be my guest just in about a week or so on his new book about Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the great 19th century prince of preachers from London.

Tom Nettles says, I am thoroughly engrossed with Jo Thorne's personal meditations on preaching the gospel to oneself.

He combines a clear biblical knowledge with an excellent grasp of doctrine from a historical, reformed perspective, and is able to press home a rich application of each aspect of truth to the development of personal holiness.

These applications are not trite, but arise from knowledge of the church's best soul doctors.

My wife and I have been reading this each evening and have profited greatly. Each chapter can be managed in less than five minutes, but provides an evening's worth of rich reflection.

As I said, that's Dr. Tom Nettles, professor of historical theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

And one more from a former guest on Iron Sharpens Iron that we hope to have back,

Chris Braun's, pastor of the Red Brick Church in Stillman Valley, Illinois, who also is an author.

He wrote a book called Unpacking Forgiveness that we did at least two interviews on in the old Iron Sharpens Iron program.

Chris Braun says, Jo Thorne has written a series of devotions that are concise and clear, but also profound and penetrating.

This is just the sort of resource that frazzled and frayed people like this pastor need to read to come back to center and be refreshed by the wonder of the gospel and the beauty and majesty of the

Lord Jesus Christ. Well, those are pretty profound words for this book. Note to self, the discipline of preaching to yourself.

And Joe, let me start off by asking you, why the need for this book?

Why did you write it and explain something about it? Well, in the,

I guess in the aughts towards the end of 2009, 2008, we were hearing a lot about this idea of preaching the gospel to yourself, particularly among Reformed Evangelicals, among the

New Calvinists, and among a lot of younger Evangelicals. They had rediscovered this idea that we ought to be preaching to ourselves, and preaching the gospel very specifically to ourselves.

And while I was happy to see that this was getting some play again, this idea, which is so important to us as Reformed theologians,

I was oftentimes disappointed that there wasn't much clarity on what it looked like and what it really means.

And also, we're not just supposed to, if you wanted to write a book, why it's important, and then model it for them, so that they could actually have a tangible, because you know, preaching to ourselves is a meditation on a particular truth or passage of scripture that's being brought to bear on our minds over and over again.

So, I wanted it to have an introduction that would explain things well in daily reading, where people could benefit from.

And you use a phrase called New Calvinists, that has been a phrase coming up a lot, and the last few years, and not without criticism, both from Calvinists and non -Calvinists.

If you could tell us something about what you mean by a New Calvinist. Well, I don't know exactly when it happened, but at some point, there began to be a much quicker acknowledgement of the value of the sovereignty of God and salvation.

We know that this came from teachers like R .C. Sproul and John Kuyper, and they're very good.

At some point, because of that, it seems as if there was a pretty, it does appear that there is a growing theme.

But these New Calvinists are traditionally, when we're using that phrase

New Calvinist tradition, they are new to Reformed theology.

And generally, their Reformed theology only consists of a Reformed group. I know,

I really don't have a

Reformed group in one particular area.

They have great people that are a part of the

New Calvinist movement, Yes, maybe also included could be the wine and cheese

Calvinists who just like to sit around and speak ethereally and smoke pipes, and I'm not necessarily criticizing those activities, but I'm saying that they really don't roll up their sleeves and get down there in the streets and do a lot of heavy evangelism and so on.

The thing that's really an excellent phrase that C.

Samuel Storms, who I hope to get on this program, I've never had him on the program, and I hope to very soon, but I love the way he describes this book as a an old, no -holds -barred appeal to expose our lives to the searing searchlight of Scripture and to let its voice speak to the way we formulate our beliefs and relate to other people and think about God and make choices in the course of our daily life.

And do you think that, having as I teach, not as I do, is a sad reality where people who really need to preach to themselves because they think that their audiences really need the information that they have really a lot more than they themselves need it, and they are living in such a way that is really unbecoming of a preacher, teacher, or minister of the gospel of any kind?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think if we're honest, most of us will drift in that direction. You know, we're in the freedom that comes from the gospel.

And all we really are doing is parroting information to people. We are not preaching with earnestness and change and it continues to be changed by the truth.

So yeah, this is very much about getting back to the idea that we need to be men and women who are so gripped by God and the gospel that when we speak, we are not wagging our fingers at others as much as we are inviting others to experience and to know what we have come to experience.

Amen. And let me repeat our email address. It's chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

chrisarnson at gmail dot com. One of the things that you brought up that is very misunderstood, it's not only misunderstood today, but it really has been misunderstood for centuries and there has been much debate over it.

And that is when you refer to the preaching of the law and gospel. You have people who are on the side of legalism, who might even be bordering on Judaizers or perhaps even truly guilty of that.

And then you have other people on the other side of that who may be teaching a gospel that breeds licentiousness, true antinomianism, lawlessness where they say that all that God requires is that you follow the leader and go up an aisle and recite a prayer and invite

Jesus in your heart and then you basically have a free one -way ticket to heaven and you never need to worry about your spiritual state again.

And repentance of course is a good thing because you really want to be a good testimony to others and lead them to Jesus too, but it's really not required.

And then you just have people who misunderstand what you mean by preaching the law and gospel because they do also teach the urgent need of repentance, but they have a theological concept that misunderstands what you are truly speaking of.

They may wrongly accuse you of reviving Old Testament laws that have been fulfilled or accuse you of being a

Judaizer. If you could explain the preaching of the law and gospel. Sure.

Well, when we read the scripture, we find both law and gospel. And when

I say law, what I'm referring to is the command or the commands of God.

So the Ten Commandments, right? This is the law of God, His commands.

Now, we're not going to go into the different types of law that God gave

Israel under the Mosaic economy or the Mosaic covenant, but what I'm talking about here are

God's commands. So His commands, right? We find them in the Big Ten, we find them on the

Mount, right? These are God's, the law of God, His command, it is

His will, and that's a good thing. Law of God, you're talking about the law, gospel, distinction.

Everyone has to answer the question. In answering what the law does, the

Reformed tradition has long settled this. And we've articulated that in a very specific way.

What I did in my little book was, or the way

I put it was this. When you're looking at the commands of God, it's designed to do three things. First of all, the law of God walks in these ways.

So, do not lie, do not steal, worship me and me alone. The law of God also always tells us what's wrong.

The law shows us both, and then thirdly, the gospel shows us mercy and redemption and salvation.

And so it's the law of God that does all three of those things, and it does all three all the time. It shows us the way to go, it all prepares us for the gospel.

And the gospel is, to build all of the law, to weigh all of our guilt and sin, we can be reconciled.

So we have to preach both, because that's what we consistently see throughout scripture. Law and gospel.

And now, how is this book a manual, basically, to strengthen the discipline that one has in their own life, of preaching to themselves?

I mean, what you said there, as a description of what should be preached, is something that most

Reformed pastors are fully aware of, that they must preach this to others, and of course we have an excellent book that was written in the 70s by Walt Chantry, Today's Gospel, Authentic or Synthetic, that was lamenting the lawless gospel that had become to contaminate, and had already contaminated the church, and still does, but in regard to it being a discipline to preaching to yourself, if you could be more specific about that.

Right. Well, in the beginning, in the introduction of the book, what

I'm doing is I'm setting up what it is, in sort of practical terms, and in a way, pointing in a particular direction.

And so I'm explaining throughout that preaching to ourselves is essentially the discipline of meditation.

That's what it is. And most of us, I mean, we have so, as evangelicals, we have so emphasized

Bible study, that the discipline of meditation is owned by the wayside for most people. And Bible study is good, but it can oftentimes really fall into a simple academic, ongoing, intense application of, and so in the intro,

I try to paint this picture that it is a very active, a very personal, talking to ourselves about the

Scripture that we are reading, and that this is not a new idea.

Scripture certainly models this and encourages this. And you see this in Psalm 41, 42, you definitely see it in Psalm 42, you see it in Psalm 43, you see it in Psalms, addressing himself, the

Lord, right? Like in Psalms, this is the intense application where we're examining ourselves.

So, this is a Biblical idea, of course the Puritans were big on this idea. The way,

I think the best way to think about it is, when

I know, when I'm reading God's Word, and it's this one idea, and it might be a piece of law, it might be, whatever it is, night or day, and it's so to itself, it's held onto and applied.

Yeah, this has been nicknamed experiential or experimental Calvinism, correct?

Right, historically, that is a part of experimental or experiential

Calvinism, right? Right, and what you said before is unfortunately something that has been a caricature of Calvinism that is not without warrant, that there are

Calvinists who have a dead orthodoxy, a cold, dry, academic approach to theology and truth, and basically this is a call that you have written to a more vibrant and personal faith, that even some

Reformed folks have mocked the idea of the overemphasis on personal relationships with Christ, and obviously those can be distorted when one is not an active participant in the body of Christ, but we can't drift too far in either direction, can we?

I mean, there are sins on both sides of the spectrum when it comes to avoiding personal relationship and exalting it.

Right. Yeah, it's not about my relationship with Jesus, it's about Jesus.

But I can't have any real concept of Jesus that matters outside of a relationship.

So the relationship is absolutely critical, but Christ himself is the focus.

And I think the danger is that we sometimes settle for simply knowing a lot about Christ, especially in the

Reformed tradition. We get the answers right, we memorize the Catechism, we get very particular about our theology, like Christ was, but none of that means anything if the glory of Christ is not manifested in my own heart through a relationship with him by faith.

I mean, this is the idea, right? He ransomed a people for himself.

A people who were zealous for good. What I want for our people in our theology,

I want them to be theology strong, but I want that theology to always give birth to worship, to repentance, to godliness.

Amen. And we have to go to a break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Joe Thorne, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com, chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

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It's about God and His glory, and the gospel is about man and his sin. Welcome back. This is Chris Arns.

And if you just tuned us in, we are speaking with Joe Thorne, who is the author of Note to Self, the

Discipline of Preaching to Yourself. And if you have any questions for our guest, you can email us at ChrisArnsen at gmail .com.

That's ChrisArnsen at gmail .com. We do have a listener in Newville, Pennsylvania, Susan, who wants to know,

I strongly believe that a woman is not to preach in a church with a mixed audience where there are both men and women present.

But your book is titled The Discipline of Preaching to Yourself. Can I personally as a woman benefit from reading this?

Absolutely. In fact, I didn't write it with women in mind.

I was writing it in some sense. A lot of those were just my own reflections for myself.

But the book was really well received by a number of women, by many women. So I would encourage you to get it, because preaching is simply the communication of truth, really, in a verbal sort of form.

It is an energetic and lively communication and exhortation, and women, biblically, are called to preach.

Now, they may not be called to preach as a pastor on a Sunday in a church in a mixed audience, but certainly women are called to preach the gospel.

And whether they're doing so evangelistically or preaching and exhorting other women, they are called to preach, and we certainly must preach to ourselves.

So, yes, I think if you want to know the

Lord more deeply, if you want to know the Word more thoroughly, and you want to have a more experiential faith, then you have to preach to yourself on,

I think, a very regular basis. So I would say, yes, check out the book. Either this one or the follow -up called

Experiencing the Trinity. It's the same basic model, but it has a different introduction. This book that we're talking about has an introduction that speaks specifically to this issue, so it would probably be better for you to start there.

Well, we have a surprise for you, Susan, in Newville, Pennsylvania. You are getting a free copy of Note to Self, The Discipline of Preaching to Yourself by Joe Thorne, compliments of the publishers

Crossway Books, who have sent us three copies to give away. So since you are one of the first three whose question we read on the air, you will be expecting that soon,

God willing. You should be expecting that soon, I mean, God willing. And you have chapters in this book under the headings of love and rejoice.

Those are words that are perhaps the most wrongly used words in the church today.

They have really been redefined by a lot of feel -good theology that is out there from some of the pastors of mega churches and elsewhere or those who want to be pastors of mega churches.

And, you know, Joel Osteen is probably the key figure in people's minds when they hear about a preacher of love and rejoicing and little else.

How is your approach to this in your book different from that type of pablum that we hear from pulpits today?

Well, the main difference is going to be Scripture. You know, those ministries are not characterized by the

Word of God. They are not governed by the Scripture. And those teachings by the popular televangelists like Osteen, their teaching is not even stemming from the

Scripture. So the main difference is going to be that, you know, when all of the preaching to ourselves that is modeled and explained in this book is a mining of the

Scripture itself. So when we're talking about rejoicing or joy, we're not talking about mere happiness.

And we certainly aren't talking about pleasure that is derived from the absence of conflict and the presence of material comfort.

Joy and rejoicing is the fruit of knowing God. It is a byproduct of our salvation that is really something that rests in this awareness that though I lose my family and my health, though I can lose all things,

I know that God is with me and for me and in me and that he will provide me what I need to endure and persevere in faith no matter where I'm at.

So this joy and this rejoicing is something that we can have in times of plenty and in times of want, right?

When we have earthly comforts and when we have none of them. So I would say the main difference is that it comes from the

Word and that it is ultimately rooted in the knowledge of God, not in worldly status or goodness.

And the other things that we have here or one main chapter that I'd like you to address is a very unpopular subject when it comes to modern day theology and that is fear, the concept of fear and that obviously is not only very often neglected today from pulpits, the whole concept,

I mean people are actually told that you are in great error if you are teaching and challenging

Christians to fear God in any way and of course there have been those who have been extremely guilty of fear mongering on the other end of the spectrum.

You have fundamentalists and even many Calvinists who really harp on fear and wrath to an exaggerated proportion and when

I say exaggerated, not that God is not to be greatly feared and that his wrath is terrifying, but I mean as far as the time that occupies their preaching, they sometimes have been known for preaching all wrath and fear and have not balanced that with the freedom that the gospel brings and the joy and so on.

But if you could respond on that. Yeah, well first of all, the whole idea, people are so reactionary,

I think we all tend to be this way, reactionary and reductionistic and we see somebody beating up on people, telling them to be afraid of God and we read in 1

John that true love casts out fear, so we don't talk about fearing God anymore. There is so much more that the

Bible has to say about this that we need to be more careful and nuanced as we are talking about these truths. There is no sense in which any

Christian can say, I do not fear the Lord and be a Christian. Now you might actually be a

Christian, but you are in error in saying that because the scripture is overwhelmingly clear in showing that we are positively to fear the

Lord. I would say the main difference is this, that there is a fear of God that is a dread of His judgment that is just and good and coming against us.

And every Christian has experienced that at the point of their conversion or just before their conversion as God was convicting them.

So there is that fear, the dread of God's judgment, and that is a good thing because that is something that precedes or coincides with regeneration and saving faith and all of that.

But as a Christian, there remains an abiding fear of the Lord, which is not a dread of His judgment, it is a, and I honestly don't have a nice crystal clear sentence to put this into, but I'll do my best to explain what

I mean. It is a coupling of awe of God's holiness and justice and truth.

We are in awe of His, not just His grandeur, but His absolute purity and righteousness.

We are not afraid of God anymore because we know that we have been reconciled through the blood of Jesus Christ.

We've received Christ's righteousness. Our sins have been forgiven. So we're no longer afraid, but we are still in awe, and there is a kind of fear that comes with drawing so close to someone who could utterly and justly destroy you, but who doesn't, and who chooses to love you.

So it's not being afraid of God as much as it is a true sense of awe for who

God has revealed Himself to be, not only as righteous judge, but also as a loving and forgiving

Redeemer. So I think you have to embrace a concept of the fear of the

Lord that means more than respect. It should still take our breath away.

It should still cause us to pause. It should cause us to take our sins seriously, not because we're afraid

God's going to zap us, but because we are so taken aback with His purity and goodness and His righteousness.

There are, as you know as being a pastor, I'm sure, Joe, that there are many people whose lives, even decent, good, repentant, obedient Christians who battle with serious depression because sins that they have committed perhaps before their rebirth, or perhaps even while they were

Christians, plague them. They lose sleep over them. They are being robbed of joy, and no matter how they seem to cry out to the

Lord to be given peace over these sins that have scarred them emotionally and mentally and spiritually, and yet you encourage people to remember your sins in this book.

If you could explain that in light of what I just said, and what's the remedy for the problem that I mentioned.

Right. Well, let me go in reverse order if I could. Sure. The remedy for the person who is overwhelmed and despondent because of their sins, particularly the sins of the past, whether they be from before their conversion or during their conversion.

When people are truly despondent, I think the most important thing for them to recognize is,

A, I know the law here. They don't need more law. They've got the law.

They are feeling the weight of it. But it sounds like they have not really yet fully embraced the gospel.

Not meaning that they haven't been saved. I mean they are not experiencing the benefits of the gospel in the way that they should be.

What they need are the reminders of who we are as believers.

They need the reminders that now, yes, you are sinful, but you've been made a saint, and all of your sins, past, present, and future, are forgiven, washed away, and you are seen as holy and just before God.

He calls you a holy one. He also calls you a son. He also calls you a co -heir with his son,

Jesus Christ. He calls you a member of his household. There are all these truths that God declares about us that we have to come to embrace personally.

So this is a key area where preaching to ourself is necessary when people are overwhelmed with melancholy because of their sins.

Listen, I've been there. We talked about this, I think, on your last program, last time I was on, about anxiety and how people get messed up.

One of the most important things that we do when we are depressed, overwhelmed, and anxious, particularly about our weaknesses, is to preach to ourselves.

Now, I would still recommend that we remember our sins. When I wrote that reflection,

I was thinking about this idea that in the future, in the eternal state, right?

New heavens, new earth, paradise, perfect bodies, resurrected death, all that. I'm absolutely convinced that we will remember our sins.

I think the difference is, because I think we will know that Jesus is our

Savior, and he saved us from our wickedness and our death and our deserved judgment.

So I think we will never lose sight of the fact that our sins are or were, in that case, very real, and something that we need a deliverance from.

So I remember my sins of my youth. I mean, I got into so much crazy stuff before my conversion, and I've made so many terrible decisions as a believer.

I will remember those sins not to beat myself up and not to make myself feel bad.

I don't need much help there. I remember those sins in order to see just how beautiful the gospel is, so that I can marvel at the goodness of God.

So when we say, God, help me to see if there's any hurtful way in me, when we pray with the psalmist, that God would expose sin in our lives, it's not just so that we can see it and stop doing it.

That's not the point. It's so that we will see how ugly it is and how beautiful Christ is, how amazing

God is, and that we will go and follow him in that. It's not just about stopping a problem.

It's about seeing the glory of Christ. Do you think that when

Revelation 21, 4, I believe, when John says that he,

Jesus, will wipe every tear from their eyes, do you think that is because those that are standing before him are fully aware of the sins that he has forgiven them for?

Yeah, well, you know, I don't know. But I would certainly say that that is fair enough, a fair enough take on that passage.

You know, I think people tend to just kind of say, oh, he's going to wipe every tear, there's not going to be any sadness in heaven.

And it's like, well, okay, I'll grant that there's no worldly sadness in heaven, but there is certainly an awareness of what has happened.

And if there isn't sadness, there can still be a place for a faith -fueled mourning of what was and a simultaneous rejoicing in what is.

So I definitely don't think that it just means that we'll never cry. We may, in that case, it may be a picture of that very thing, that he's wiping away the tears that we shed over all that has transpired.

You have two chapters, Jesus is Big and Jesus is Enough. That is definitely something that we all need to remind ourselves when we're going through trials and anything that is bringing us into despair and perhaps even to the point of forgetting our first love and so on.

If you could comment on that. Yeah, I think when I was writing, I mean, I wrote that back in like 2010.

And I don't go back and read my books, but I'm pretty sure that Jesus is

Big is where I was focusing on this idea. Like one of my problems, and I think we all do this, is that we tend to favor certain aspects of who

Jesus is, right? And we get very captivated with certain parts of his being or work, and we emphasize those, we focus on those, and we neglect the others.

And so some people love to think of Jesus as the friend of sinners. Jesus is the friend of sinners. I'm a sinner,

I'm a terrible sinner, and yet Jesus is my friend, and this is a wonderful truth that we need to embrace.

We need to preach this to ourselves. But he is bigger than that. He's not just a friend. He's also

Lord. He's also King. He's also Creator. And so we want to be able to look at all that Jesus is, right?

We want to have a fully worked -out body of divinity, right? A teaching on who

God is based on Scripture, who Jesus is, so that we don't narrow down our focus to Jesus as just one or two things revealed in Scripture.

Sure, Jesus is the friend of sinners. He calls himself a brother, right?

A brother, and those are true, but we need to look at all the other things that Jesus says that he is.

I tend to love the shepherd thing. I like the shepherd thing because I feel dumb, and I feel like I need him to guide me and protect me half the time.

But I also need to know, like, wow, this is my king, and I stick my knee in the dirt for my king.

Amen. And I think that the world needs to be reminded about this concept that you've just mentioned, especially, it seems like, during Christmastime, when they only think of Jesus as this helpless, meek, and mild baby in a manger.

And that's when they really love Jesus. Jesus, that's the Jesus that's not going to pour wrath on them.

That's right. And that Jesus just wells up tears of sentimentality and so on.

But the God or the Christ of the modern gospel is a very tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny,

God, God, God, God, God. A God that cannot accomplish his missions, to save those whom he chose to save.

Right. You're going A .W. Pink on me. That's some

A .W. Pink fuel right there. I love that. Remember that?

Like Pink says that in The Sovereignty of God. He says it differently, of course. The modern God commands the respect of no thinking man.

That's great stuff. Well, that brings me to another chapter. God does not answer to you.

If you could explain. Yeah, I think... Listen, this is important for us in the

Reformed tradition because we so geek out about theology. We're so thrilled that God has revealed himself that we love to pore over the books that mine the truth of God's word.

And so we develop this biblical theology and we try to clarify and parse everything and we put it all together.

And theology... Theology sometimes becomes a way in which we expect

God to answer us. Hey, God, I know who you are and you're supposed to be doing this. And you're not doing it the way that I want you to do it.

So step into line. We don't say it that way. We're smart enough to not say that out loud. But God doesn't answer to us.

We answer to God. And the theology that we have is not something that we can tether

God to. We tether our theology to God.

We are the ones flapping all over the place. And the way that we articulate the faith is the thing that might be movable and fragile at times, but God is immovable.

And so He does not answer to us. I mean, He... In Job and in elsewhere,

He makes this very plain. But I think on an everyday level, it's good for us to be reminded that whatever my circumstances,

I don't let my circumstances dictate what I believe about God, nor do

I let my own desires determine what I think God should be doing in my life. Rather, I really want

God to be God and His word to be that which settles these sort of internal arguments or debates.

We have an anonymous listener in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who says that she has a very close loved one who thinks that he is saved, but she is fairly convinced that he is not a true believer.

Would this book be an appropriate gift to this person? Yes. Yeah, it certainly would be.

I'm trying to decide if experiencing the Trinity might be better. And the reason

I say that is because experiencing the Trinity, actually in the introduction,

I specifically come out and say that if you do not yet know

Jesus Christ by faith, then these are not things that are true for you.

They are promises that can be yours through faith in Christ, but they are not yours until you exercise faith.

But then again, if this person already thinks that they are, they're probably just going to get on to it.

But the reason either one would be helpful is because of the law gospel dynamic where the truth of God's command is presented, our inability to keep those commands is revealed, and how

Christ satisfies the demands of justice for us. And if the one thing we know is true that we should all be able to agree on, it's that men and women are saved through the preaching of the gospel.

And so this is nothing but an ongoing preaching of the gospel throughout each chapter. It could be good for them.

We do have a listener in White Plains, New York, Bob, who asked the question,

I come from a background that was very legalistic at one point, and my life was filled with fear and the constant wonderment if I would lose my salvation.

I am now starting to believe in grace alone, but have been accused by others of having an antinomian gospel.

Can you please explain further what that is, because I do not want to believe in anything that's heretical on the right or the left.

We brought that up before, but if you could maybe reiterate. Right, right.

Well, listen, antinomianism is this idea that there is no longer any law, that there is no law, and that the law, if it exists, it doesn't exist functionally for you.

Let me put it this way. The Reformed tradition has said that the uses of the law are threefold, right?

And one of them is that it restrains wickedness through the threat of punishment.

So all Reformed Christians have seen this, right? Some people don't do bad things because they know punishment's going to come.

That's one thing that the law does, even the law of God. The second thing that the law does is that it prepares our hearts, right?

Or at least it is used by God to prepare us for Jesus. It's a tutor that leads us to Christ, showing us that we need redemption.

But the third use of the law, now this is the big one, this is what a lot of people are debating right now in this antinomian debate.

The third use of the law is that God's law remains a rule for godly living.

And so your assurance, right, your conviction that you are saved by grace alone and that you cannot lose that status of salvation,

God will not unjustify you. He will not unredeem you. Once you are justified, you are secure in his arms forever.

That is not antinomianism. That is just what the gospel does.

It might be antinomianism if you deny the third use of the law, that as a person whose salvation is secure, as a person whose salvation will never go away, you know that God's law still remains a rule for godly living and his will for your life today.

And so we follow that law not to earn God's favor, not to earn God's love, but to walk in his ways and rejoice in his plan.

Well, thank you so much, Joe, and both the anonymous listener and Bob in White Plains, you're going to be getting free copies of Joe Thorne's book.

I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for being a guest once again on Iron Sharpens Iron and for enlightening us all, and I look forward to having you back in the very near future,

God willing. And any final words in a minute or so? Well, no, seriously,

Chris, I really enjoy you and your program and your listeners, and so I would love to come back on again and we can chop it up over something besides one of my books.

Yeah, sure. Have a real good time. We'll stay on the phone the whole time. I'm looking forward to that.

Great, and your website is joethorne .net? Yes. And that's no E at the end of Thorne, joethorne .net.

No English E. That's right. Well, we thank you so much, and God bless you, brother. All right, you too, brother.

And if you stay tuned, ladies and gentlemen, we are going to be joined at any moment with John DeVito, joined by John DeVito, who is going to be discussing the

African Pastors Conferences, which is an organization directed by Conrad M. Bayway, one of the most powerful

Reformed Baptist preachers living today, in my opinion, and in the opinion of many others as well.

And actually, he's just one of the most powerful preachers of any kind today. But don't go away.

We're going to be talking with John DeVito about this right after these messages. And if you have any questions, as always, go to or send an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. We'll be right back. I'm James White of Alpha Omega Ministries. The New American Standard Bible is perfect for daily reading or in -depth study.

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LindbrookBaptist .org That's LindbrookBaptist .org Welcome back. This is Chris Arnsen.

If you just tuned us in, our second hour today on Iron Sharpens Iron is a discussion with John DeVito.

John DeVito is a former Mormon who was saved in college. He is a graduate of the

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky and a member of Heritage Baptist Church in Owensboro, Kentucky.

In addition to his preaching and teaching ministry, John has served as the administrator of Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary.

John is married to Jennifer and has four children. God has previously given John a number of opportunities to serve

Christ in Africa and he loves providing the hope of the gospel to the lost as well as the encouragement of the gospel to the saved.

John has been asked to serve as the conference manager for African Pastors Conferences. He will fulfill a critical role in overseeing and managing more than 40 conferences each year as well as in teaching and helping pastors to shepherd churches.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron, John DeVito. Thank you so much for having me,

Chris. Yeah, the pleasure is all mine, brother, and my audience's as well. Tell us, first of all, tell us something about, before you even get into your personal testimony, which is obviously something that we can't overlook, coming from Mormonism to faith in Christ, the true

Christ of the Scriptures, not the Christ of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints. Yeah. And tell us something about, first of all,

Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary. Well, Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary was started a number of years ago back when

Dr. Sam Waldron decided that he wanted, well, he actually wanted to pursue doctoral studies so that he could equip men for the ministry with a confessional,

Reformed Baptist conviction. And so that led him, together with Pastor Ted Chrisman, to begin what was then known as the

Midwest Center for Theological Studies here in Owensboro, Kentucky. Over the years, God has greatly blessed that ministry.

Dr. Waldron, again, had received his Ph .D. from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, which is where I actually met him.

And together, the institution has grown to the point where the Board of Directors, about a year ago, decided that we wanted to change our name to Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary to let people know that this is more than a residential study center here in Owensboro, but we have national and even now international students who are all seeking to be equipped and prepared for gospel ministry.

Well, that's something that we have to remind our listeners about from time to time, because there are a lot of people who want to go into the ministry, who are looking for seminaries, and there seems to be a dearth of them that are teaching the truth,

I'm not saying that they're not out there, obviously yours is, but just let's repeat the website of Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary before I forget to do it later, because I want people that have contacted me on several occasions asking for recommendations for seminaries from guests that I've had and so on, if you could give that contact information.

Sure. It's www .cbtseminary .org, and I agree with you with the concerns you've mentioned.

For so many seminaries today, there can be a minimalistic tendency in terms of doctrinal convictions, whereas we hear, obviously, from a confessional commitment are coming from a

Reformed worldview, which I think provides consistency and help to those who are preparing to rightly divide the word of truth.

And before I forget, I also want to remind our listeners that someone that you are obviously aware of, being a graduate of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, this

Monday we have the honor of interviewing Dr. Albert Moeller, who is the president of the

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and he is going to be discussing his new book that he wrote in response to the

Supreme Court decision legalizing same -sex marriage and the culture that exists that would enable something like that to happen.

So I hope that you mark your calendars for this Monday, August 31st, and we will have

Dr. Moeller on, and please start sending in your questions for him as soon as possible, because we're probably going to be receiving a lot that day, and the earlier we get them, the better.

We'll further guarantee that your question is read. Well, tell us something about your upbringing.

Were you raised Mormon, or did this happen later in your life? Tell us something about this

Mormon connection of yours. Sure. Well, no, I was raised in the Mormon church. Both of my parents were first -generation converts, so by the time they were married, they were married and sealed in the

Mormon temple. So I was raised in the church, had a typical upbringing for a

Mormon. I was baptized at the age of eight, received the Aaronic priesthood when I turned 12, had my temple recommend, so I was baptized for the dead, and so, you know, had a typical upbringing in the

LDS church. But by the time I reached high school, things had started to change for me, like a lot of you, frankly.

I just became very interested in worldly things, so I started working more, not going to churches consistently, just not caring as much about, you know, religious questions or spiritual matters, to the point where when

I reached 18, I had to wrestle with a decision because, of course, when you're raised in the church, the natural thing to assume is that you're going to go on your mission, right, the two -year mission where you devote yourself towards proselytizing or evangelizing the

Mormon faith. But by that point, I didn't care about spiritual things. And decided

I'd rather go on to college. So that was more of my upbringing.

Now, how Christ, the true biblical Jesus Christ comes into the picture is that while I was at college,

I met a woman who's now my wife. She was raised as Southern Baptist, and I quickly saw how devoted she was to her faith.

And while I hadn't cared about spiritual things in several years, I took a look at her and said, well, you know, if she's going to care about spiritual things, then she needs to know the fullness of the gospel.

Because, of course, the fullness of the gospel I'd been raised to know was found in the Mormon church. But in order to do that,

I realized I was going to have to study what other Christians were saying about Mormonism so I could refute it.

So I really wanted to move from being a Mormon agnostic to almost becoming a Mormon apologist.

So on the one hand, God used this research, as I'm starting to read about the history and the doctrine and the development of Mormonism, to really show me some serious problems in Mormon history and Mormon teaching.

And secondly, this woman that I'd started seeing was very involved with the campus ministry.

So I started going with her to the campus ministry, frankly, just to spend time with her. But still, the gospel was preached.

The Bible was taught. And so you had God kind of combining my research and showing me the problems with Mormonism at the same time hearing the

Bible taught and the gospel preached through the campus ministry. And so he brought both of those things together for me to realize that there was no real hope for me in Mormonism, that their gospel is no gospel at all, no gospel of hope, but that it is through Jesus Christ, His atoning work alone,

His righteousness, when I'm united to Him in repentance and faith, that that saves and that I can have the security of eternal life sheerly through His grace and having faith in what

He's done for me as my substitute. And so I, through that campus ministry, gave my life to Christ, committed to Him, trusting in Him alone, and so rejoice to this day that I've been redeemed and delivered from my sins and can count

God as my Father through my Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. And we have to have you back to specifically address your testimony,

I think, for the full hour or more. Sure. And since we are two hours now.

And before we go into specific questions about the climate of Africa, and I'm not talking about the temperature,

I mean the theological climate and so on, tell us how you came to meet my friend

Conrad Mbewe, pastor of Kobata Baptist Church in Zambia, in Lusaka, Zambia.

Well, to be honest, I actually have not yet met Conrad in person. That's a long story, but Conrad is one of the directors of African Pastors Conferences, this ministry, and so it is through him helping to lead this ministry that I've come into contact with him.

The main director, who's in South Africa, where the ministry's headquartered, there's named

Pastor Irving Steggles, and so it's really through Irving that I've gotten to know Conrad.

We haven't yet met in person. We have obviously talked and gotten to know each other well.

He, being one of the directors, was involved in wanting me to serve as the next conference manager for that ministry.

But I do, obviously, have come to dearly love and respect him over the last number of years as I've become familiar with his ministry and have such a deep passion for what he's been able to do, along with many other men there in Zambia, in bringing biblical reformation there to Southern Africa.

Yeah, I just urge everybody listening to go to Sermon Audio and look up sermons by Pastor Conrad Mbewe.

He is one of the most remarkable and powerful preachers. I keep repeating this, but I can't help it.

It's just so true. And many of you may recognize him from some of the major conferences that have been held, including one at the church where John MacArthur pastors, the

Strange Fire Conference, and others. But he is a remarkable man and a humble man when you get to meet him in person and a real precious brother.

And also, I want to give the website for African Pastors Conferences, africanpastors .missionsplace

.com. That's africanpastors .missionsplace .com, just in case

I forget to do that later. Well, tell us now, what is the state of Christianity in Africa today?

That's a very large continent, and there's a lot of diversity in Africa, obviously. Tell us something about the state of Christianity there.

Sure. Well, like you say, it is a big continent, and one of the things that I had to come to grips with a number of years ago is

I would almost think of Africa like a big country, and so each country is more like a state.

Right. But the continent of Africa actually would include, by land mass, not only

America, but China, India, and many other countries. So it's a continent.

It's a big continent. You know, to oversimplify things, I really think, in general, the further north you go, the more

Muslim Africa becomes, and in the further south you go, the more quote -unquote

Christian Africa becomes. And so that's kind of a general way of looking at it.

So you notice, of course, most of the clashes happening between the Muslims and the, well,

Christians generally, as they describe themselves there, where those two really meet there in the middle.

That's where you see, of course, there's Christians all throughout Africa and there's Muslims all throughout Africa, but just in general, a way of looking at it.

But I really can't summarize in terms of the spiritual situation or condition there in Africa, but by quoting from Conrad.

I mean, when he was talking about Christian Africa, he said, the church in Zambia in particular, in Africa in general, has a great inheritance.

The evangelical pioneer missionaries did what they could to give us New Testament Christianity. By now, most Africans south of the

Sahara would consider themselves to be Christians, though most of them would be nominal Christians. Granted, low levels of education at the time led these missionaries to give us only the basics of the

Christian faith, but the faith they preached was largely true to the Bible. So he talks about this reality that you have a, quote,

Christian, unquote, Africa. But then he goes on to say, sadly, it left us vulnerable to Christian aberrations which have come in like a flood.

The health and wealth form of Pentecostalism has now taken center stage as the most widely known form of evangelical Christianity.

And the result of this has been a loss of the true gospel and a loss of servant leadership in the Church. African traditional religions have come into the

Church through the back door in the name of deliverance. And so you really have this situation where many

Africans would consider themselves Christians, I mean, statistically speaking. You know, you may have a great majority of an

African country saying they're Christian, and yet the spiritual condition of that Christianity is very anemic, if not outright corrupted and dangerous.

Yeah, in fact, I've heard Pastor Conrad in sermons saying that there's a lot of pastors in Africa, especially from the fringe wings of the charismatic movement, who are really glorified witch doctors.

Yes. Who are witch doctors with Christian names and Christian labels and so on.

Yes, and actually what you see as well, of course, because of the history of colonialism, you have the rise of what are called

AICs, African Independent Churches, which many times wind up with a syncretism of kind of African tribal beliefs, you know, baptized with some

Christian doctrine combined together. But they set themselves apart as a truly indigenous expression of Christianity as opposed to the kind of Western Christianity which they associate with colonialism.

But the problem often winds up being that the Christianity they're saying is African or genuine is frankly and simply not biblical.

Yes, that's interesting. You have the same kind of thing,

I don't know how identical it is, but I've heard that in Trinidad there are pastors,

Reformed Baptist pastors, that do not use the name Baptist in the name of their churches because Baptists in Trinidad can be very commonly associated with a group that mixes pagan culture and ritual with Christianity, and they seem to be primarily using the name

Baptist to identify themselves. Well, I'm not as familiar with Trinidad, but I do know that there are many places where we're used to using certain terminology, but because of the association we want to avoid using them in other cultural contexts like Africa or Trinidad or other places, yes.

Yeah, there's a really powerful Reformed Baptist preacher in Trinidad, Amr Simarath, who just describes his church as an evangelical

Reformed church rather than as a Baptist, even though that's what he is. Also in South Africa, of course, with the history of apartheid, you have the

Dutch Reformed tradition with the white Afrikaners. The challenge with some of the Reformed, and I'm not going to say all of the

Reformed there in Southern Africa aren't healthy expressions of it, but you do have some forms of the

Reformed faith that are tied together with racism. And so, again, you have to consider those things when you're thinking of how to describe yourself theologically as well.

Oh, that's interesting. Now, would you say that that type of racism is actually taught theologically, or it just happens to be that these white

Christians are racists from a lot of the Reformed churches? You do have some denominations who will include in their statements of belief statements of racism.

Now, I don't want to say that's the majority of the church. I'm still learning more about the places there, but I have been told there that there are indeed some denominations who hold tenaciously to certain racist views.

Let me remind our listeners, if you'd like to join us on the air with a question for John DeVito about Africa and the

African pastors' conferences and so on that he is involved in, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com

chrisarnson at gmail .com And please don't forget to include your first name, city and state, and country if outside of the

U .S. In fact, we, several weeks ago, received an email from a listener in South Africa who was a

Muslim who was contesting something that our Christian guest had to say about Islam.

And as you were saying earlier, the Muslim dominance is really in the northern part of Africa.

Well, there are many Muslims in South Africa, and in Southern Africa. I don't want to hear anything else, but in terms of the dominance, the majority, obviously you go up north towards Egypt, and up toward that, the northern part of the country where the vast majority are going to be

Muslim, where you get down further south, and I mean, you might have 10 -20 %

Muslim, but it wouldn't be anywhere near the percentages you get higher further north.

And it would probably be, I'm assuming, a lot more dangerous the further you go north, because I'm assuming that the

Muslims in the southern part of Africa are probably a lot more tolerant of their

Christian neighbors since they're a minority. In some sense, yes, there is more toleration, even though I do think

Muslim convictions still lead to a fair amount of the challenges between the groups.

So it depends on the Muslim imams and leadership there.

Right. Well, amazingly, a friend of mine, Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, a

Reformed Baptist theologian and debater, he has been invited into mosques in South Africa to debate imams, and it's just amazing that these opportunities have arisen where Muslims are hearing the

Gospel for the very first time, especially in their own mosques. Yes, it's a remarkable, obviously

God -given, providential opportunity I'm so thrilled that he's able to do. I've heard

Pastor Mbewe speak of a lot of the heresies that are spreading throughout

Africa as originating in Nigeria. Do you know anything about that specifically? I'm not as familiar with Nigeria.

Most of my background would be more in Eastern Africa as well as, again, sometime in Southern Africa. But there does seem to be something about Nigeria specifically.

Even when I was in East Africa, a number of the prosperity Gospel preachers had come from Nigeria.

So there is something about Nigeria, I just don't know what it is. Well, it's interesting that a prosperity

Gospel could even get a foothold there for long. I mean, obviously it may be initially appealing to anybody who is living in poverty, but after a while, when they see that things aren't changing and they're still living in a hut and so on, tell us something about how can the prosperity

Gospel actually have longevity? Well, you know, my understanding of the situation, really, with the prosperity

Gospel, what you have there is, in a sense, a form of hope.

It's a worldly hope, but it's a hope for those who are sick or hurting, for there to be health, for those who can't afford to regularly have food every day, to be able to gain monetarily.

And so I think it becomes very attractive. I mean, for many of these people, frankly, they can't afford typical medical care like we can.

There aren't support structures like we're used to for things like medical care and food and other support structures like that in many places in Africa.

So I think where you don't have the support systems that we may have in more

Western countries, as well as the difference in worldviews where you don't have a strong division between kind of the physical and the spiritual there.

So it's not uncommon. You have a physical malady, you go to a witch doctor, you go to somebody else, a spiritual person to help solve that problem.

And within that kind of worldview, I think it can become a very attractive way of seeking hope in this world.

We have a listener here in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Harrison, who says, here in America, as most folks know, the diagnosis of AIDS is not thought of as an automatic death sentence as it once was.

Have conditions in that area, to your knowledge, improved in any considerable amount in Africa?

Yeah, I'm not as familiar with that. I do know, obviously, as I'm sure Harrison has already said,

AIDS has been a largely difficult situation there given, as I've said, the medical abilities that many, many people there in South Africa and beyond can afford is going to present a number of challenges to providing help with AIDS and counteracting some of those things.

So I haven't heard of any large -scale changes there, even though I do know that, obviously, there has been a strong desire to address those things in Africa.

We're going to be going to a break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for John DeVito on the

African Pastors Conferences, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

chrisarnson at gmail dot com. Please give your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. We look forward to hearing from you and your questions. And don't go away.

We'll be right back with John DeVito. Charles Haddon 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. Solid Ground Christian Books is a publisher and book distributor who takes these words of the

Prince of Preachers to heart. The mission of Solid Ground Christian Books is to bring back treasures of the past to minister to Christians in the present and future, and to publish new titles that address burning issues in the church and the world.

Since its beginning in 2001, Solid Ground has been committed to publish God -centered,

Christ -exalting books for all ages. We invite you to go treasure hunting at solid -ground -books .com.

That's solid -ground -books .com and see what priceless literary gems from the past to present you can unearth from Solid Ground.

Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Thriving Financial is not your typical financial services provider.

As a membership organization, we help Christians be wise with money and live generously every day.

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That's wrbc .us. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arms. And if you've just tuned us in, our guest for the last half hour has been

John DeVito of African Pastors Conferences. And we are discussing this ministry.

And if you have any questions of your own for John DeVito about the spiritual needs in Africa and other issues involving

Christianity in this continent, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

That's C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. John, what is the greatest spiritual need in Africa?

Well, the greatest spiritual need, of course, in Africa is for Christ to be proclaimed, for Christ's churches to faithfully proclaim the

Gospel message to the lost, and for Christ to be glorified through many lost souls being saved.

For this to happen, though, in Africa, the African Pastors Conferences really sees four specific needs to help this happen.

The first is to begin by establishing churches, either by planting or replanting. So we need faithful,

Bible -believing churches. Second, to identify pastors whose desire is to be biblical in their ministries, but whose churches are dysfunctional and whose preaching is weak or unbalanced, because frankly, most of these pastors have no training or education formally to speak of in terms of their ability to interpret and handle

Scripture. Third, to help those who desire to be faithful to Scripture and who cannot take on full -time training.

So, you know, many of these men are not in situations where they can go and leave to a traditional seminary or receive a traditional education in other places, so there's a need to go out to them and then forth to combat the advance of spiritual darkness across the southern half of the continent, as we've already been talking about.

Being a former Mormon, I'm just curious, because of the racist roots of Mormonism, it still is a vastly, predominantly white cult, if you will.

And I hope you don't mind me using that word, since you must have family and friends and loved ones in there.

I understand. But has Mormonism had any real significant foothold in Africa?

There has been a large amount of growth. One, there have been a number of converts to the

Mormon faith. I remember the first time I was in East Africa. I went there, and when

I'd see Mormon missionaries, they were largely white, walking two by two. But over the years, I went back, and then

I started seeing more black Mormon missionaries walking down the streets. So there's obviously been an inroad.

You also see the Mormon church actively helping with various relief and support efforts there,

I think trying to, again, gain more of a foothold there. So I don't know the statistics yet. I'm sure they're still minor compared to other religious groups.

But there has been a good deal of success. That change made in 1978, which allowed the blacks to hold priesthood in the

Mormon church, has really changed things substantively, and frankly, most of them are not going to go into Africa talking about their history.

So it has, in some ways, had some success.

Yeah, obviously, even if the Mormon evangelists are not bringing it up, though, it's not that hard to find out about the racist roots.

You don't have to dig very deep to discover. Oh, no. And there's actually a ministry in East Africa called the

Africa Center for Apologetics Research that has put out a tract that they hand out about blacks and Mormonism to try and help people understand more of the racist background of the church.

Yeah, I remember as a very new Christian, I invited a Mormon missionary into my home after seeing an ad on TV, if you'd like a free book of Mormon delivered to your home by a

Mormon missionary, write this number down. And I did, and I called, and the

Mormon missionary showed up, and I brought up the racism of the Mormon's history, of Mormon history, and he said to me, well, who are you to talk?

You're a Baptist, and there are Baptists who are in the Ku Klux Klan. And I said, yeah, but I'll tell you that I believe there are many

Baptists who will be in hell. We're speaking about your prophets here. There's a different, this is a totally different thing about racism existing amongst professing

Christians who are wicked and lost individuals, and racism that exists a part of the theology of prophets.

Wouldn't you agree that there's a vast difference? Absolutely. I think that that's a, I've heard that objection raised as well.

The difference being, you know, we as Christians can misinterpret scripture. And unfortunately, many

Christians have historically in their understanding of racial questions. But with Mormonism, here you have prophets who have been given, you know, inspired revelation from God.

That's a different category than how I interpret, and frankly, may misinterpret scripture. This is, actually for Mormons, can literally be new scripture.

They don't have a closed canon. So it's a different, different categories that need to be thought of.

And what other churches are in, or churches and cults that have a false message of hope are competing with Christianity there in Africa?

I mean, obviously, there must be many. Yes. Yeah, it would be hard for me to even, you know, come up with a list of all of them.

I mean, the most common and well -known one would be just all the different versions of the prosperity gospel. But I mean, the

Jehovah's Witnesses are active. You also have other kinds of cults and movements there as well.

Again, for those kinds of questions, I actually have leaned on, the ministry already mentioned, the Africa Center for Apologetics Research.

On their website, they have a database you can look at where you can select a country and see the different groups active there, or you can select a group and see the different countries where they're active.

So, you know, I don't know off the top of my head a lot of them, but I mean, again, Africa's a big continent, and many groups that are, you know, seeking to be international in membership are probably present in some form or fashion there throughout

Africa. How is African Pastors Conferences seeking to make a difference in Africa specifically?

Well, it's such an important question. The ministry actually began as a result of a meeting between Errol Hulse.

I don't know how familiar you are with him. Oh, yeah. Errol Hulse preached at the congregation where I used to be a member on Long Island back in the 90s.

Might have been even the late 80s. And what a remarkable brother in Christ. Amen, amen.

So here you have, now he's actually, you know, a white South African who was ministering for a number of years there in the

UK. In Leeds, right? In Leeds, exactly. And so he wound up meeting

Pastor Irving Steggles, who's a British man who's pastoring now in South Africa.

So they come together in God's providence and recognize the challenging situation that the churches were facing in South Africa.

So they committed to begin having conferences with Reformed teaching and books so these pastors and other

Bible teachers could more faithfully serve Christ's churches and reach the lost with his gospel. And so what you have then are over 40 conferences a year going on through several countries throughout

Southern Africa, one to three days each, where you have, you know, biblical teaching going on as well as a bookstore where the books are, due to the generosity and partnership we have with many publishers and people who give at costs that the

African pastors can afford. So, you know, we're trying to really help equip these men through teaching.

And the main teacher we really try to have as much as possible be an

African, you know, where it's not seen as us Americans or us Westerners bringing in, you know, teaching, but it's the competent, qualified Africans themselves who are doing the teaching.

Many of them do wind up being drawn from that Reformed Baptist movement there in Zambia, but in many other countries as well,

South Africa and elsewhere. And so you have the teaching going on and really the level of this teaching,

I mean, is literally like preaching Christ crucified. What is the gospel?

You know, it's basic biblical truths, but we're trying to reach pastors who, again, have not had a lot of theological training or equipping going on.

And so they are, any pastor who is willing to affirm the

Bible as, you know, the full and final arbiter of truth for the faith is free to come.

So most of the pastors who come, you know, many of them are going to be charismatic. Some are going to be other forms, but we've really seen a hunger, a genuine hunger for this.

And frankly, we've even seen pastors converted through the faithful ministry of God's word through these conferences.

Oh, amen. Amen. And just another note about Conrad Mbewe. When he, back in the mid -90s, preached at Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island, New York, in Merrick, New York, he preached at a three -day conference the first time he came out.

And I was involved in getting an ad campaign on the radio where we took an excerpt of one of Conrad's really passionate, heart -wrenching sermons, really powerfully proclaiming the gospel and warning about hell, and really powerfully trumpeting the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary in a really dynamic way.

And we put that excerpt of Conrad's preaching in the commercials that we ran, probably ten of them a day for two or three weeks before the conference.

And we had, over the three days, over 500 visitors to the church that were not members of the church.

And that was the biggest result that we had ever seen from any advertising campaign.

And the place was filled with predominantly black Pentecostal Christians.

Well, praise God for his faithfulness and the results that came from that. That's wonderful. How significant, as far as numerically, are

Reformed churches and Reformed Christians in the portions of Africa that you're most familiar with?

Well, it is a small but growing movement. Again, I don't have any formal statistics before me.

I do know there is kind of a network called the Sola 5 Network, which has churches, again, a number of them from Zambia, but we've seen in Namibia, South Africa, and elsewhere that come together in light of the

Five Solas of the Reformation to encourage one another and help one another be united together in bringing

Biblical Reformation there to Africa. So we have seen growth there in God's blessing of the ministry.

But I would still say, comparatively speaking, it's a rather small movement for the general

Christianity there. As you look at the wide understanding of Christianity in Africa, it would be a rather small amount of people.

Is the outreach from and by Reformed Christians in America and the

U .K. and other places, it would obviously predominantly be America, the

U .K., Australia, is there a significant outreach to Africa by these countries, or is it really a thing that we've neglected to do as Calvinists or as Reformed Christians?

You know, I can't say I know enough to really be firm in that.

There are a number of Reformed missionaries and preachers and pastors who have been very involved in Africa.

So I wouldn't want to say anything disparaging or negative. I simply think what you have had over the decades has been such a strong growth of charismatic ministry, both through charismatic missionaries and indigenous preaching and other means, that really, as Conrad would say,

I think it leads to an easy meld between some African traditional worldview ideas with Christian veneer.

And so it's been much more successful. So is it possible

Reformed Christians could be more missions -oriented? Well, I'm sure many of us would say sure.

You know, absolutely. But there has been a lot of wonderful, good Reformed work going on in Africa, and so I'm grateful for that.

Now, how will you personally be involved with African pastors' conferences?

Well, the leadership there have asked me to be the next conference manager.

And so what that really looks like, I mean, you can imagine over 40 conferences a year spread out through several countries.

It takes a lot of effort to manage, to organize, to get to these places, to help, you know, just make sure that they are handled well and appropriately in a well -ordered way.

And so they looked at me as a man who has had a heart for Africa for a number of years.

I've been on several mission trips over there short term. As somebody who obviously, since I'm currently an administrator for a seminary, can hopefully help with the organizational aspect and the administration of these conferences, but also with my theological background and my heart for pastoral ministry, really a strong desire to help mentor these men and help there at the local church level.

So they have asked me to serve as the conference manager to help teach at these conferences, help organize them with helping with local organizers.

And so to do that, really, you know, we're out, my family is out seeking to move to South Africa.

So we're raising awareness, you know, raising support, speaking at churches, doing all the things we can do to help develop a partnership team so that we can get out there and help make a difference there in South Africa and beyond.

So you're actually relocating? Yes, yes. My family would actually, our plan is to move to the

Johannesburg area of South Africa. The African Pastors Conferences is essentially a ministry of Birchley Baptist Church, which is a confessional reform

Baptist church there in Kempton Park. And so we would be involved through this church.

And by the way, an encouragement for a lot of smaller churches here in the state, because here you have a wonderful ministry with a church that has, you know, maybe 40 members, but a heart to reach people.

And so Birchley is a small work, but a work that is profoundly involved in helping to raise up pastors that are going to be biblically faithful and also active in reaching out to some of the townships where, again, a lot of the poor black

Africans continue to live there in South Africa today. Now these areas that you're going to be working in, is

English pretty much a common language? Yes, yes. South Africa itself,

I was told, has 11 official languages, English being one. But, again, most of these countries were former

British colonies. So for many of them, English is still the official language or an official language, but it is, you know, the economic trade language, generally speaking.

So that does allow us some degree of flexibility. It also allows us to, again, get theological books and materials there in English.

So, you know, we would love to go into other parts of Africa where, say, maybe it's

French or some other language, but it does create more challenges where you have more needs for translation, where, you know, you're going to have to have books in other languages.

So the main focus of this ministry currently, at least until the Lord enables us to have more opportunity to do more, would be more in areas where English is generally understood.

And so that's where we focus. We have a listener in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, CJ, who says that we have heard stories, especially in decades past, where missionaries, perhaps even with good intentions, imposed upon African converts unnecessary baggage of Western culture in order to be deemed obedient Christians.

And would that be something that has diminished in current years, or is this abuse still taking place?

Well, I guess that's an interesting question, because you have a difference between cultural things that are satanic or ungodly or in clear contradiction to the teachings of Scripture, and then you have perhaps some that have nothing more than a cultural significance and are not at all in violation of any biblical teaching.

Yes. One area, when you get into areas of mission studies, that can become quite controversial and lead to people to a number of disagreements, really comes down to what is the relationship between Christ and culture, the gospel and culture, but they have specific ramifications when you get into missions.

I mean, obviously, throughout history there have been many examples where you had, for example,

David Livingstone, who came in as a missionary to Africa and went inland, and he said his goal was

Christ and commerce, so very much wanting to bring in the

British way of handling commercial matters. And so you've definitely had a confusion over the years.

The degree to which that continues, frankly, depends on one's larger understanding of what is the relationship between, again, the biblical faith and culture.

Some are going to see a higher degree of that continuing on. Some are going to see less. Some go so far as to argue that there must be an

African theological tradition separate from, say, a Western theological tradition, and that can get into problematic areas where you don't have kind of a universal faith but a faith that particularly can only be expressed in various cultures.

And so that's a huge question in mission studies and debates, but it's something everybody needs to be aware of, that our goal isn't to have an

American church kind of lifted up, brought over the Atlantic Sea and dropped down into Africa, but that these churches need to be an expression of the

African people and their salvation in Christ and their worship of him. Arnie from Perry County, Pennsylvania writes,

I have heard even from some theologically sound pastors and missionaries that when they are confronted in Africa and other places with polygamy, they do not necessarily demand that the converts leave other spouses, but they just prohibit them from offices of leadership.

Is this a universally held view, or are there differences of opinion in the

Reformed faith on this methodology? Well, polygamy in Africa is a very challenging question.

I don't know if we could say it's universal. Obviously the universal things we as Reformed men hold dear would be summarized in the

Confession, and so the question really becomes the practical question of how do we apply biblical truth regarding marriage.

Do we ask a man to divorce every wife but the first one he married and present some difficulties for the family life that has developed, some of the children that they've had and the family they've shared?

So some would say, okay, the Bible standard is man of one wife, so he cannot serve in leadership, but it would be wrong to ask a polygamist man to divorce his other wives.

So you have that, and then you have others who come along, and they may say, no, if this is the expectation, he's genuinely converted, then he should only be married to one wife.

And so those are debates that go on, and again, when people talk about applying biblical truth in missionary context like that, it's just one that many

Americans haven't had to wrestle with because we haven't really struggled with polygamy much in a long, long time.

Well, I think that's going to be reversing very quickly because of the Supreme Court decision on homosexual marriage.

Obviously polygamy is going to be sure to follow, and who knows what other kinds of aberrant understandings and redefinitions of marriage that's going to be taking place.

And of course I would assume that any Christian man would be obligated and would be told by his pastors and church that he is obligated to care for spouses and children resulting of a polygamous relationship, even if he were to divorce the other wives.

If that's the understanding, then I'm sure that would be required. I'm just saying those are the debates that happen.

Is divorce warranted in these situations? Are the marriages legitimate or not?

In the eyes of God, some of those questions have to be wrestled with. If you could, in about four minutes, really just unburden your heart with what you and our listeners to most have etched in their hearts and minds when they leave this program.

Really, my desire is for people to understand that God is at work throughout the globe, and we rejoice in that, we praise

God for that. So I would just encourage your listeners to continue to be informed of the way

God is at work through the world. But that also leads us to commit as believers in Christ to be aware, to have a responsibility of the ways that the kingdom of God is advancing throughout the world.

And so I would say that whether it's Africa or elsewhere, let's continue to keep before us the global church, the global body of Christ with every tribe and tongue and people and nation that we realize that need.

And so my hope is that as we move forward in African Pastors Conferences, that frankly, many will not see themselves as sitting on the sidelines, but they'll join with us, that they'll go to the website, they'll sign up for email updates so that they can pray for us.

I'm zealous for prayer. I mean, my heart matches the Apostle Paul when the

Apostle Paul wrote to the Roman church and basically said there at the end of his letter,

I appeal to you brothers by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit to strive together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf.

I mean, this ministry will not be successful apart from godly brothers and sisters joining with my family to make a difference in Africa.

And obviously, second, we're looking for people to come in and partner with us in supporting us so that my family can move over to South Africa, so that my family can live over there and help organize these conferences with the help of others.

And so I would really say that is my heart, to see Christ glorified in Africa, His Gospel proclaimed,

His churches with godly, mature leadership who can rightly defend and articulate and proclaim the

Word of Truth. Amen. And I know your website again is AfricanPastors .MissionsPlace

.com AfricanPastors .MissionsPlace .com

Do you have any other contact information you care to share? Well, they can be, feel free to email me.

My first initial, last name, so J -D -I -V -I -T -O

So J -D -I -V -I -T -O at H -B -C -O -W -N -S -B -U -R -O -D -O -R -G And I would be more than happy to answer any questions that people have there.

And so I'd welcome any opportunity to talk to people about this more, to learn of ways we can work together, to continue to help people understand.

Obviously, I've been speaking at a number of local churches, but welcome additional opportunities to preach and speak and let more people know about this wonderful opportunity to proclaim

Christ in Africa. Amen. Well, thank you so much for being a part of our broadcast today, and I hope you come back soon with a good report about what's going on there in Africa.