April 18, 2018 Show with Michael Gaydosh on “Should Christians Only Read the Bible Since it is Our Only Inerrant, God-Breathed Rule of Faith?”

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.

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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, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth. We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 18th day of April 2018.

And unless it's a telemarketer on my line right now, I'm hoping it is

Michael A. Gaydosh, who is my very first pastor after becoming a born -again believer, after being delivered from the false religion of Roman Catholicism.

He's an ordained Baptist minister and founder of Solid Ground Christian Books, and today we are going to be addressing the theme,

Should Christians Only Read the Bible Since It Is Our Only Inerrant God -Breathed

Rule of Faith? And it's my honor and privilege, hopefully, to introduce you once again,

Michael A. Gaydosh. Well, hey, Chris. I'm glad to be able to relieve you. Thanks.

And yes, I have a throbbing migraine today, but I believe that with God's mercy and grace

I'll get through the two hours, even though you're my guest. No, Buzz is not with me.

In fact, he is headed to Buffalo tomorrow to spend a couple of weeks with his mother and brother up there.

But Buzz has actually not been on the program for a while. He's been very busy, but perhaps one day soon.

In fact, he is going to be, God willing, a guest of mine when I do a week's worth of programs on eschatology.

I'm going to be having a different view represented of all the major views every day for maybe even seven days, rather than just Monday through Friday, because especially with post -millennialism, you need to have at least three, because there are so many different kinds.

That's also true of pre -millennialism and non -millennialism, honestly. Yes, but I think there are even more post -mills.

At least they get more upset if you're misrepresenting them, or if they think you're misrepresenting them, because you're defining what somebody else believes rather than what they believe.

Yeah. But I am covering historic pre -mill and dispensational pre -trib pre -mill, so those will be covered with that.

But I've done this before. The last time I tried to do it on the all -new Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, we were having serious difficulties with our equipment back then, and thankfully for over a year,

I believe, it's been now that we haven't had any technical difficulties. Well, at least not serious ones, and so we're going to do that again,

God willing. But Buzz is in the process of writing a book on eschatology.

He is a post -millennialist partial preterist, and I am going to be getting him to discuss that at some point.

But before we go into the topic at hand, and obviously as soon as I remind our listeners that you are the founder of Solid Ground Christian Books, that's answering the question immediately that we are posing today, should

Christians only read the Bible since it is our only inerrant God -breathed rule of faith? Obviously you would say no to that question, but tell us about Solid Ground Christian Books.

Solid Ground began 17 years ago, and the purpose of Solid Ground is to seek to further the glory of God through books that will promote

Christ -centered, God -centered, and Scripture -saturated material.

The desire that every book we produce, our goal is to have people to be driven back to the

Scriptures and to be driven closer to Christ. And if the book that we produce doesn't do that, then it really isn't worthy of being produced by Solid Ground.

One of the purposes of the name Solid Ground is that we want people to have confidence that they are on solid ground when they pick up a book from our publishing house.

And so there is obviously a desire on our part to be able to help people to come to appreciate the fact that the

Bible is the only inerrant, inspired word. We have recently published the 1689

Confession of Faith and Catechism, and of course those are available.

It's available in many different forms, but we have it done in a hardcover leather edition, and we are desirous of being able to promote this

Confession of Faith because it actually begins with a lengthy ten -paragraph statement on the doctrine of Scripture.

And so we do not see it as a contradiction, nor did the Baptists who produced the

Confession of Faith, nor the Presbyterians who originally did the

Westminster Confession back in the 1640s, and began also with ten paragraphs on Scripture.

They obviously believed that the Confession that they were producing was not contradictory in any way to a high view of the

Scriptures. And so when a person makes a statement, and it's been made to me many times, usually on Facebook, honestly, rarely in person, face to face, but people will make statements.

Sometimes they're said in a pejorative fashion, and they'll just, in response to maybe an advertisement that I send out about a particular book, they'll make the statement that, well,

I only read the Bible, you know, I don't need another book. And I've bit my tongue a lot when

I make a statement like that, because obviously I have, you know, I have things that immediately come to my mind.

Even just today I've had a couple of people in response to the question that I posed respond by giving the impression, at least, that they believe that that's true, that we should only read the

Bible and the Bible alone. So I'm hoping that you responded, I'm sorry, did you say something, I can't read what you wrote?

Yes, now that would be another thing I suppose I could say. I usually will ask them,

I'll say, now, do you read a dictionary? Do you read anything that would be helpful to you in understanding the

Bible? And, you know, you could go even back as far as to say, well, when you say you read the Bible, I'm assuming you mean you studied

Hebrew and Greek, and so you go back and read the Bible in the original language.

And, of course, they're going to say no. They say, okay, well then you're reading a translation of the

Bible, and obviously the translation, we would hope, is an accurate translation, but it is a work that was produced, the translation, that is, is a work produced by fallible men, and so there is a sense in which even just in saying

I read the Bible only, you are acknowledging the fact that you are having to trust in what men have done in translating that Bible.

You can't go back to the original if you haven't studied Hebrew and Greek and studied it quite thoroughly to where you can actually go back and accurately translate and understand it.

Of course, you know, that generally falls on deaf ears when you make a statement like that, but I do then speak to them about Bible helps.

Do you not ever read a Bible dictionary to be able to understand the meaning of specific terms?

Have you never read or used a Bible atlas? Or even in your

Bible, you'll have maps at the back of the Bible. Well, those maps are not inspired, they're not infallible, but you use them to help you, whether it's looking at the journeys of Paul or looking at the kingdom, the twelve tribes of Israel, and where they were located.

All of those things are extra biblical in the sense that they're not inspired like the

Bible would be. And I think that when people, again, make a statement like that, that they only read the

Bible and the Bible alone, it's odd how many times you'll find a person who says that will have maybe a

Schofield reference Bible. And, you know, the Schofield reference Bible was one of the first, not necessarily the first, but one of the first Bible commentaries that actually inserted the comments into the very text of Scripture.

And it's odd that a person would say, well, I only read the Bible, and yet they have a study Bible in which the notes of one particular man dominate every page of that Bible.

And so, you know, if you can show a person that they're really not being consistent with making this statement,

I read the Bible only, you may be able to begin a dialogue and help them to understand that that really is an indefensible position.

Because in order to do that, you could then ask a question, well, do you go to church?

Most of the time, you would assume they would say yes. I said, well, does your pastor get up and just read the

Bible to you? And, of course, the answer would be no. So what does he do?

Well, he explains the Bible. Oh, okay.

So then you're listening to the fallible words of a man who is explaining to you what the

Bible teaches. And I think that's a good thing that you do. You go to a

Bible study. You go to a Sunday school class. And generally, people would say, yes, do you listen to sermons on the internet or on the radio?

Often they'll say yes. Well, again, those are very inconsistent with a person who says,

I only read the Bible. Because those sermons that they listen to, those

Bible studies that they attend, again, people don't just simply gather around and read the

Bible to each other. They have to explain it. And you can go to the case of the

Ethiopian eunuch. He was reading the Bible. He was reading Isaiah 53.

And you remember what Philip asked him, do you understand what you're reading?

You remember what his response was? How can I understand it unless someone teach me?

That's right. How can I understand unless someone guide me or unless someone explain it to me or unless someone teach me?

So even in the Bible itself, we have proof and examples of the fact that the

Bible was not the only book that could stand all by itself.

It needs to be explained. In fact, the Bible itself, the God -breathed, inerrant words of Scripture, give very strict qualifications for someone to be able to be a teacher or a shepherd in the church.

Now, if he only needed to be literate so he could read the Bible, then that's all that would have been needed.

But obviously he needed other qualifications because he was doing more than just reading the Bible. Exactly.

And I think that at the same time, you have the qualifications that are necessary.

You also have the fact that the Ascended Christ, according to Ephesians chapter 4, gave gifts to men.

And literally in that context of Ephesians 4, you have the

Ascended Christ giving gifted men to the church. Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers.

Well, why does Christ give pastors and teachers to the church if all the church needs to do is gather together and read the

Bible? The teachers are there for what purpose? To teach and explain the

Bible. Well, what are these books that we are producing? Well, they are books that were written by men who were trained, who were gifted, and who wrote books to help understand the

Bible. I mean, that is the purpose of every one of the books that Solid Ground does, is to help us to understand the

Bible better. In some cases it may be church history, it may be a matter of church history, the history of Protestantism, for instance, by Wiley, which technically you might say, well, that doesn't directly teach us

Scripture, but it does teach us about the hand of God in history. And in every case it speaks about how men taught the

Scriptures and how revival came through the Scriptures. I mean, what was it that happened in Martin Luther's life?

What caused him to attack the 95 Theses on the door of Wittenberg?

Well, it was his having read the Scriptures, his having studied the Scriptures. It was portions of the

Scriptures that he did not understand that almost drove him insane. And it wasn't until he began to search the

Scriptures that his eyes began to be opened to what those passages and what those terms, such as the righteousness of God, actually meant.

And when we read about that, when we read the story of Martin Luther, it helps us to understand better terms such as the righteousness of God.

And so when a person makes a statement, now, I always feel, and I posed this question on Facebook today, and I've gotten literally dozens and dozens and dozens of responses from people, and some have been very, very reasoned out and very, very helpful.

In other cases, people have just been, you know, basically said,

I don't even deal with such people because they're idiots. And, you know, while you might feel that a person is an idiot because they say this, that's not really the best way to deal with a person, because I always feel that you start off by giving the person the benefit of the doubt.

And assume that you're dealing with a person who possibly is ignorant, that is, and I just mean by that not in a pejorative way, but just saying a person who really hasn't thought through that kind of a statement.

And they might be a person who would be open to be instructed. In fact, some of those people

I have met who were in cults, and they are afraid of listening to the errant, fallible teachings of men, because they knew what it was like to be deceived by cult leaders, so they try to struggle through just reading the

Bible themselves, and very often those same people don't even want to join a church, unfortunately. No, you're right, and I think that, in fact, here you go,

I just had a person five minutes ago that responded to this question by saying, if you could only own one book in your life, which would you choose?

There you go, the Bible is all we need. Okay, now there you go, there you go, a person making the statement that if you could only own one book in your life, which would you choose?

Well, but that's not the situation that we're in, and here's a person who's making the fact that if we were forced to choose one book, what would it be?

Well, it would be the Bible if we were forced to choose that. But we've not been forced to choose that.

That's just setting up something that is somehow by saying that if we were forced to choose one book, and the

Bible is the book we choose, well then there you go, that answers the question why we only need the

Bible? No, that doesn't answer that question at all. That is just a silly way to try to defend the position that's indefensible.

The fact that the Bible is the only inspired and inerrant book doesn't mean it's the only book that we need.

And I think that, you know, whether you're dealing with issues of science or history or geography that are not really covered in the

Bible per se, you need these extra tools to be able to help you. The fact is you need translations, and oftentimes the people who hold to this position, although I don't know that you could prove it, but often, and people have made this comment on the

Internet today as I've posted this question and met several different sites, some have said the only people that have ever responded that way, that is they need the

Bible only, are usually people who are King James only people. They only hold to the

King James Bible. And they didn't discover that by that position of King James onlyism by reading the

Bible. They discovered that through King James only preachers, teachers, or advocates, or tracts like Chick tracts or some other...

You're right, that's a good point. I think that that position itself is not a position that you would come to sola scriptura, from the

Bible alone. You would have to come to that position by, like you said, somebody taught them that.

Even the King James itself has been, what's the term, modified many many times since 1611.

Right, they are not holding in their hand the actual 1611 King James Bible. Well they could, because they are available.

But I mean the predominant number of people who have a King James Bible or not. Don't have, no, you're right, and they don't know that, again, they're ignorant of that.

It's almost like, I don't want to go as far as saying it is exactly the same, but when you have a

Jehovah's Witness come to your door, and they make statements about the

Bible, you fully well know that they don't know that these things are so.

They're just repeating something that they've been taught. And when you, what

I've always tried to do with Jehovah's Witnesses is get them to understand that they're putting their trust in men, because they will say, oh no no we're trusting in the

Bible. I said, wait a minute, do you know who translated the Bible that you are depending on?

I said, you know, you can't find out who they are. They won't even tell you who they are, and they won't tell you what their qualifications are.

I said, all the translations that have been done from the very beginning, and say, just go back to the

Geneva, go back to the 1611 authorized version, we know who translated those.

And the same thing is true of the New American Standard, the English Standard Version, the ESV, the

NIV. We know who the men were, and in some cases women were, the qualifications that they had to translate these books of the

Bible the way they were translated. And the Jehovah's Witnesses can't do that. They don't know who translated their

Bible. So they're dependent on men. And so I think that what we try to encourage people to do is think.

To think through the things that they're saying. Don't make these kinds of grandiose statements like this man said, if you could only own one book in your life, which would you choose?

There you go, the Bible is all we need. I mean, that just doesn't, that doesn't address intelligently this issue.

Now let me just clarify something here though. In one sense, when it comes to our salvation, the bare minimum of what we need, and I emphasize the word need, is the

Bible. And even if you want to reduce what we need, it's the gospel being at least declared to us, being preached to us, being explained to us.

So in one sense, we don't even need as an essential a Bible, because there have been people saved throughout the centuries just by hearing the word declared.

But the issue is, is it a wise choice to only remain reading the

Bible and nothing else? Isn't that really what the issue that we're discussing is? Yeah, it is. It really is.

And I think that because you're dealing with, this is a, this really is a discussion, or it should be a discussion within the household, the faith.

This is a discussion that's going on between brothers in Christ, and the question is, as a

Christian, as somebody who has come to know the Lord Jesus Christ, who has received

Christ and has been saved by grace, do we need more than just the

Bible for us to grow in the grace and knowledge of the

Lord Jesus Christ? And really that's, the goal is that we become more like Christ.

And if we were shut up in a situation where all we had was the

Bible, would that be enough to bring us to salvation? And would it be enough to bring us to a relationship, a closer relationship with Christ?

Well, yeah, it would be. It would be. You know, just as if a person were shut up in prison and had no earthly teacher, and they were just by themselves, could

Christ, through his word and by his spirit, bring a person to grow in the grace and knowledge of the

Lord Jesus? Yes, he can do that for sure. But that isn't the situation most of us are in.

Most of us do have opportunities to go to church. We have an opportunity to sit under the ministry of a man who has spent his life, first of all, training by studying the

Scriptures, by studying the original languages, by pouring over the Scriptures in his own personal life, and therefore we have the privilege and the opportunity of being able to sit underneath godly people who

Christ gave to the Church so that we would become more and more like Christ.

I mean, that's what Ephesians chapter 4 is all about. The ascended Christ gave gifts to men that we might become more like Christ, that we would be unified together, and that we would also not be misled by false teachers.

In fact, one false teacher I can think of immediately, the late Harold Camping, would have the audacity to tell people, don't read commentaries, don't read books about the

Bible, just read the Bible alone. In fact, he used to wear a button on his lapel that said the

Bible alone or the Bible only, which was very odd for him because he was from a

Christian Reformed background and yet he rejected the use of the three forms of unity, the standards of the

Dutch Reformed branch of the Reformation. And his followers, in fact,

I will not mention the person's name, but let me just say that his last name literally means from bat dung.

But anyway, this person who you, if I tell you off the air, you'll immediately remember him.

He was a disciple of Harold Camping. He had a very cultic attachment to Harold Camping, and before Mr.

Camping declared the prohibition against going to churches or belonging to a church, obviously the

Campingites typically would usually bounce from church to church to church, usually just to announce some kind of declaration upon that church that it was heretical or insufficient or whatever, inadequate.

And this one person in the lobby after the church, after you had preached, I'm walking towards him and he's got this sour, angry look on his face, and I said what is it now?

And he said, you know what's wrong with your pastor's preaching? He's always quoting

Charles Spurgeon and Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield and Martin Luther.

Why doesn't he just stick to the Bible and Mr. Camping? I said what? I said stick to the

Bible and Mr. Camping? Do you think that Mr. Camping has written something that's a part of the canon?

What are you talking about? And it is really remarkable how his closest followers were so blind to the contradiction in that credo that he had read the

Bible alone and of course read the books that I write. Exactly. Yeah, his book 1994 and all the other books that he produced, those are the only books people were allowed to read.

And I remember the time that we had met with, Bob Cameron, Bill Shishko, and I met with him for about three hours.

This was actually in, I think it was December, November -December of 93, and it was before September of 94 had come and gone.

And we were just baffled by the fact that he did not see the inconsistencies of the things that he was doing and saying and the damage that he was causing to the

Church of Christ. And again, it's taking that view of the

Bible only. The Bible is sufficient, which we believe. We believe in the sufficiency of Scripture.

We believe in the completeness of the Scriptures and the finality of the Scriptures.

And our confessions of faith declare that very loudly. But to then draw from that conclusion that we should only read the

Bible alone without any helps whatsoever is just an error.

It's just wrong, and it's dangerous, and ultimately it's despising the gifts that Christ has given.

In fact, you remember how Paul addressed the issue of the division in the church at Corinth?

And what was it that they were saying? They were saying, I'm of Paul, I'm of Apollos, I'm of Cephas.

And then there was a fourth group, and you remember what they said? I'm of Jesus. I'm of Christ. Now, Paul doesn't rebuke the first three and commend the fourth.

He rebukes the fourth as well. And you'd think to yourself, now wait a minute, why would Paul be rebuking somebody who said they're only of Christ?

Because what those were doing, who were saying, I'm of Christ and I'm only of Christ, what they were really saying is, you can have

Paul, you can have Peter, and you can have Apollos, all we need is Jesus. And Paul said, no, that is also wrong, because what you are doing is ignoring the gifts that Christ has given.

In fact, Paul says at the end of chapter 4, I believe, when he concludes that first part of his argument, you know, he says, first of all, he says, who is

Paul? What is Paul? What is Apollos? We're nothing. We're just those who have been sent to plant and to water, but God is the one who brings the increase.

And in the end, he says, why are you arguing over these human teachers?

He said, we are all yours. Paul is yours. Peter is yours. Apollos is yours.

And in effect, again, what we're recognizing is that the gifts that Christ has given to the church are given so that we can grow in the grace and knowledge of the

Lord Jesus Christ. You can't ignore the gift when the giver is thus being ignored.

What did Jesus say to the disciples? If they will not receive you, neither they will receive me.

If they're rejecting you, just remember, they're really rejecting me. It's the same thing that happened in the

Old Testament when the people demanded a king, and Samuel was brokenhearted, and the

Lord just reminds him, they have not rejected you, they've rejected me. And that's ultimately what we're doing when we ignore the gifts that Christ has given to the church.

The gift, in this case, the gifts that are given to help us to understand the Scriptures. And that's the perfect place for us to go to our break.

If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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That's liyfc .org. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned into our show today, Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, we have as our guest

Michael A. Gaydosh, ordained Baptist minister and founder of Solid Ground Christian Books.

We are discussing, should Christians only read the Bible since it is our only inerrant God -breathed rule of faith?

And the answer to that question has already been revealed, no. And our email address, if you would like to ask a question, whether you agree or disagree, or you're just not certain with our guest

Michael A. Gaydosh and that question, would you please email us at ChrisArnzen at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

And please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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

And we have already a number of people waiting to have their questions asked and answered.

And let's see here, let me start with Gordy in Mechanicsburg.

And I just had a wonderful lunch today, in fact, with Gordy's new pastors at the

Bible Baptist Church of Shiremanstown, Pennsylvania. Pastor Brian Sanders and Pastor Brian Kreshman, the two

Bryans over there at Bible Baptist Church Shiremanstown. And it was truly a joy to meet these men for the first time and to see that our hearts beat as one when it came to the sovereignty of God and other things.

And I'm just so delighted that they are new undershepherds of the flock of Jesus Christ here in this area.

And I'm hoping to get them both on the show, actually, in the near future. And so keep your eyes and ears open for those dates when we have those two fine men on the program.

And by the way, let me give a shout out to their congregation by giving their website bbcpa .org.

BBC for Bible Baptist Church, PA for pennsylvania .org. bbcpa .org, that's the

Bible Baptist Church of Shiremanstown, Pennsylvania. But our listener Gordy has asked a question and I have to enlarge it because it's microscopic and I'm 56 years of age and going blind.

And let's see here, and while I'm enlarging it, if anybody else would like to get in line with a question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Thanks for your commitment to the publication and republication of so many excellent, biblically sound books.

Discernment is so important in the reading of scripture and extra biblical books. Please give your thoughts on how our traditions and presuppositions play a role in our discernment.

Oh, that's great. That's an excellent question. Yeah, why don't you answer it, Chris? Well, the only thing

I can think of immediately is that we have to be like the Bereans and question everything that somebody is teaching us according to the

Bible, no matter who the person is. Even an apostle, in the case in the scripture, the apostle

Paul didn't complain that people were questioning what he was saying by, you know...

As a matter of fact, Luke describes them as being more noble -minded than those in Thessalonica because they searched the scriptures daily.

They received the word with eagerness and searched the scriptures daily to see if these things were so.

And so I think that it's a matter of personal, it's a matter of a personal relationship with Christ that must be there, dependence on the

Holy Spirit, growing knowledge of the scriptures, because the only way we can discern whether the things that we're reading or hearing are sound is to be able to compare them with the scriptures.

And I think that all of us obviously come with presuppositions. We already come with an understanding of certain things about what the

Bible means by what it says. As an example, you look at John 3 .16

and many people will use John 3 .16 as a club that in the end of the day, there are some people who not only say that they only believe the

Bible, but there's some people that only believe John 3 .16. And their whole doctrine of salvation is based on their understanding of John 3 .16.

And I think that it's important for us to be able to go back and examine carefully passages like John 3 .16

within the context, within the context of the Gospel of John, within the context of John chapter three, in order for us to make sure that we are properly understanding and applying

John 3 .16 to the doctrine of salvation. Because with many people, they just read it and they just say, well, that settles it.

Christ died for everybody. God wants everybody to be saved. And obviously if they're not, it's because of themselves.

It has nothing to do with God because he's voted for them and Satan's voted against them and they have to break the tie and it's entirely in their hands.

And they'll just quote John 3 .16 as the end all of that discussion.

And I think it's only when we begin to look more carefully at the setting and the context of those words that we can really rightly understand the scriptures.

And in fact, wouldn't you say that that one of the reasons why people misunderstand, those are not

Calvinists or reformed Christians, misunderstand John 3 .16 and other passages that refer to the world and Christ's death for the world and love for the world, is that they are reading the

Bible as 21st century or even 20th century or even earlier than that Gentiles.

They're not reading the book, the Bible, as first century Jews who would find that shocking that he was, that Christ was including those from out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation as the chosen of God.

This was something that was horrifying and shocking to the Jew. And so the use of the word world is not supposed to mean every person who has ever lived or will ever live.

In fact, there is a movie and I'm not recommending the movie, I know I've mentioned it on the show a couple of times, it's promoting a very dangerous heresy, but it's called

Come Sunday. It's the biographical story of Carlton Pearson who was a very well -known

African American Pentecostal graduate of Oral Roberts University and pastor of a megachurch in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who became the first one who advocated the fact that those who were ignorant of the

Bible and of Christ and the gospel, like the poor innocent native quote -quote in Africa, that those people would certainly be in heaven.

Then he evolved or devolved, depending upon how you want to look at it, into a total universalist.

And then he later would include within the fellowship of true Christians, unrepentant homosexuals, where he is today.

And the interesting thing was, is he was reading those verses with the presupposition of an

Arminian, that all these people, everybody in the world, must be saved because Jesus died for them.

In fact, he actually, and universalists actually have a, I think, a better understanding of what the atonement of Christ or the redemption of Christ that was accomplished through his death, they have a better understanding that it was a total, complete, and final act.

Where they are totally wrong and dangerously wrong and damningly wrong is when they think that every single person was redeemed because of that.

Well, exactly. And I think that it's the power of the blood of Christ and the fact that he bore our sins in his body on the tree.

The challenge of understanding that properly is the necessity of being able, again, to compare

Scripture with Scripture. You gave, you did an excellent job, because you were well taught, of course, when you first began.

You were taught many years ago that when the word world is used in the

Gospel of John, we need to see how it's really defined more in the book of Revelation, and when our

Lord is described as being worthy because he purchased for God with his blood men out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation.

And really, that passage in Revelation chapter 5, which is repeated in almost the same language in chapter 7, the language of the every tribe, tongue, people, and nation, that really is what

John means by the word world in his Gospel.

And I've often looked at John 1 where John the Baptist says,

Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and said, okay, now, you will become a universalist if you don't in some way limit either the term take away or the word world.

Because if Christ takes away the sin of the entire world, meaning world as every single individual past, present, and future, including

Judas, then the world will be saved. And so you either have to weaken the word take away, and I've heard people do that.

They'll say, well, he doesn't mean, it just means lift it up, but it'll come back down upon them if they don't accept

Christ. Or some will say, well, yeah, Christ bore all the sins except for the sin of unbelief.

Well, where does it say that? Where does it say that Christ bore every sin but the sin of unbelief?

And on and on, there are all sorts of different arguments that are used. And in fact, the word or the phrase that John the

Baptist used is even more dramatic than that because it's takes away.

It's not just a provision of atonement. It's taking away. And I quoted you very recently, by the way, on the show, because I remembered vividly how you phrased it in a sermon on this issue, when you said people who are anti -Calvinists will very often say,

John the Baptist said, behold, the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world.

And you said, what about, he tooketh away the sin of the world.

He takes away the sins of the world. He said, what do you want to fiddle with? Do you want to fiddle with what

Christ accomplished on the cross? Or do you want to fiddle with what John the Baptist meant by world?

Yeah. And even John the Baptist, I think we would have to admit that John the

Baptist, if you had pressed him at the time and had interviewed him with your rapier -like intellect, if you had had to be able to interview

John the Baptist and had asked him, well, what do you mean by the world? I'm not sure that John the

Baptist would have been able to articulate exactly what the Lord meant when those words came from his mouth.

I mean, we're told that the prophets often didn't fully understand even the things that they were writing. And so I think that there is that understanding, there is an understanding that the writers of Scripture at times spoke in ways that even they didn't fully understand what they were saying.

Wasn't it Caiaphas who said that one must die for the nation? And he didn't, it says he was a high priest, but he didn't even understand what he was saying there.

And I think that you have, you just have so many things in the

Scriptures that show us how we have to go and search the Scriptures carefully and compare one

Scripture to another. And in that sense, you might say, well, then you're actually arguing for having the

Bible alone. Well, the Bible is indeed the best interpreter of the

Bible. There is no question about that. And we're not arguing about that. But the question is, has the

Holy Spirit continually given gifted teachers to the church to help us to understand the once for all revelation of Scripture?

And I believe he has. And I believe that there are some that are more gifted than others. And reading the sermons, as people have done for over a century, the sermons of Spurgeon, as an example, and many have read, of course, the sermons of Lloyd -Jones and many others, and have found them to be extremely helpful.

And I think that that's what we have to be able to do, is continually go back to the

Scriptures, which is the touchstone. Make sure that any book we read, any book that we study, is helping us to understand the

Scriptures more clearly for ourselves. That's really what the goal is of every book that we produce at Solid Ground, and I would hope every publisher that is really worth its weight.

Reformation Heritage books would be that way. They have a very high standard of what they will publish. And sadly, we've seen publishers through the years that have become less careful about the things that they publish.

And they will publish things that they publish, frankly, because it's going to sell, not necessarily because it's the truth, as it is in Jesus.

And there are many, many books that I could have sold and probably sold hundreds and even thousands of copies, but I would never do that.

By the way, we have to go to break right now, the midway break. If anybody wants to join us, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be back after this elongated break that we need because Grace Life Radio 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a 12 -minute break. So be patient, write down the information of our advertisers, and also write down questions for our guest

Mike Adash. Don't go away. We'll be back after these messages, God willing, from our sponsors. Hi, I'm Chris Arnson, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, here to tell you about an exciting offer from World Magazine, my trusted source for news from a

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Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Hi, I'm Buzz Taylor, frequent co -host with Chris Arnson on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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Yeah, $22. That's the retail price. Well, you'll get it absolutely free if you mention

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and both my sponsors will benefit by doing that. And of course there are certain things, there are certain offers, like pre -publication sales and so on, that you have to get directly from Solid Ground Christian Books.

But you can still, when ordering from cvbbs .com, get Solid Ground Christian Books titles. And before I return to our discussion with Mike Gadosh of Solid Ground Christian Books, I just have a couple more announcements to make.

First of all, I am going to be attending by God's grace and providence, once again, the

Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology. It is not being held in Philadelphia, that is just affectionately called the

Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology out of love, in loving memory of James Montgomery Boyce, the former pastor of 10th

Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who had these conferences for many years at the 10th

Presbyterian Church in Philly before he went home to the Lord, to the Lord for eternity.

And so they still name it that, but it is being held at the Proclamation Presbyterian Church now in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, not far from Philadelphia.

April 27th through the 29th, the theme of this year's

Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology is the Spirit of the Age and the Age of the Spirit.

Speakers include Daniel Aiken, Richard Gaffin, Daniel Hyde, Richard Phillips, Jonathan Master, David Murray, Scott Oliphant, and a man who

I believe is the most powerful preacher on the planet Earth alive today, Conrad M.

Bayway. And I have a feeling that my guest Mike Gaydosh would concur that Conrad M.

Bayway is certainly a extraordinarily powerful and gifted preacher of the

Gospel, is he not? Yes, and the thing about Conrad that's most impressive is that he is more impressive outside the pulpit than he is in, and that's saying something.

I'm glad you mentioned that, Chris, because that's a perfect lead -in to a book that I published.

It was one of the earlier books that I published at Solid Ground, and it's actually entitled, Our Sovereign God, Addresses from the

Philadelphia Conference of Reform Theology, 1974 to 1976.

It's the first... that was when it began, those are the addresses that were delivered in the very opening years of that conference.

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Son, the five points in God's sovereignty, the doctrines of grace in Jesus' teaching, God's sovereignty in the

Old Testament names of God, on knowing God, why we do not know God, why we must know

God, etc. But those addresses are available now.

Solid -Ground -Books .com, Solid -Ground -Books .com. I have a couple of other announcements before we return to our discussion.

Also, May 29th through the 31st, where I intend to be in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, the

Banner of Truth 2018 Ministers Conference is being held. The theme is

Ministers of Christ. The speakers are Alistair Begg, Johnny Gibson, Mark Johnston, Al Mohler, David Strain, and Craig Troxell.

If you would like to register for the Banner of Truth Ministers Conference, go to BannerofTruth .org,

BannerofTruth .org, click on Events, and then click on U .S. Ministers Conference.

As always, when you're registering for any of these events, or when you're patronizing any of my sponsors, please mention that you heard about them from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And last but not least, comes the awkward and uncomfortable and personally distasteful portion of my show is where I have to beg you for money.

For years, as many of you may remember, if you've listened to this program going back to 2005, when

I used to broadcast out of New York on WNYG and WGBB radio, for years

I never made public appeals for donations. But my advertisers, who do spend hard -earned money keeping this show on the air, have urged me for so long to make these public appeals because the need is urgent.

If Iron Sharpens Iron Radio can continue. I have finally broken down, or they broke me down, and I am making these public appeals daily for the last several months.

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click on support, and there's a new option now. When you do that, you can click click to donate now, and you can instantly donate through a debit or credit card.

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Just make the check out to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and mail it via snail mail. As I always try to remember to tell you, the caveat that I have here is never ever ever siphon money out of your regular giving to your local church where you're a member.

And if you're not a member of a local Bible -believing church, and you're not prayerfully seeking for one, you are living in disobedience to God.

Please rectify that situation and never siphon money away from your regular giving to your local church.

Never put your family in financial peril by giving to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Don't forego paying important bills and that kind of thing to pay to contribute to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio remain on the air by going to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, click support, and click to donate now.

If you'd like to advertise like our guest today does, Mike Adosh of Solid Grand Christian Books, just send us an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

and put advertising in the subject line. And no matter what it is that you want to promote, whether it's a church, a parachurch organization, a business, a professional practice like a doctor, a lawyer, a dentist, a chiropractor, a special event that you're having, as long as whatever it is is compatible with the theology we express on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, then we would love to help you launch an ad campaign because we certainly could use the advertising dollars.

Just send us an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put advertising in the subject line. And I would want the proof from the horse's mouth not to call you a horse,

Mike Adosh, but you have been reaping quite wonderful benefits and fruits from advertising with us, have you not?

Absolutely. Every week it seems that people will put in, when they place an order, they'll make note of the fact that they heard about us through Iron Sharpens Iron.

And many of these customers have now become very faithful long -term customers.

And I mean, I've gone back and clicked on just typing Iron Sharpens Iron into my search engine, and I can see the dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of people who have come through Iron Sharpens Iron, either directly or indirectly.

And I think it's usually directly. So yes, absolutely. It's worth doing.

And in my mind, it would be worth it, even if it didn't bring in orders, because I so strongly support what you're doing and what you're seeking to accomplish in addressing the burning issues of the day, addressing issues that others won't touch, and trying to get the people that will be able to address these things in the most biblically sound way possible.

So that's my advertisement for you. Well, I really appreciate that very much.

And before I leave Gordy's question that he asked before the break, because we do have a number of people waiting to have you answer questions.

He was talking about people who read the Bible with presuppositions, and we all do that.

I mean, we can't avoid reading things without having a presupposition in our mind. It's when we have to sort out what are things that we have falsely learned before, or what we have in our mind through our own traditions or upbringing or what have you.

But when I was mentioning before the story of Carlton Pearson, who became a universalist, a full -blown universalist, believing that hell would be forever empty, one of the key passages he uses in justifying this position is 1

John 2, verse 2. And that reads, he himself, meaning

Christ, is the propitiation, or the one who turns away wrath, for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for those in the whole world.

And the NIV reads that he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for the sins of the whole world.

Now, if you're reading that with an Arminian lens, or a 20th or 21st century

Gentile lens, you're going to think that Christ died not only to pay the price for our sins as believers, but everybody.

Because you're reading it with a presupposition. And going back to tie it in with our theme, a person who is only using the

Bible, I'm not saying that they couldn't get that information from the Bible, but it would be helpful, perhaps, if a book guided them into the context of where the

Bible was written, and who it was written to originally, to come to the conclusion that this is not speaking of a

Christian saying, or understanding that Christ died for our sins, and everybody else who doesn't believe.

It would be more of the fact that Christ is the atoning sacrifice for Jews who believe, and every other person that is of his elect from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.

If you could just comment on what I said. Yeah, I think that that's accurate. I think that, again, it's difficult for us to think back 20 centuries into the mindset of the first -century

Jewish person, and understanding, for instance, again, the term that was used when the angel spoke to Joseph and said, you shall call his name

Jesus. Why? For he shall save his people from their sins.

Amen. And that is, again, a case where, had you interviewed

Joseph afterwards and asked him, now, what was it the angel said? And Joseph would have precisely given those words, that he shall save his people from their sins.

Could Joseph have articulated a full -blown doctrine of the atonement, including the fact that Christ's death would be for all the world, that is, people out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation?

I think the answer would be no. Joseph would not have understood fully what that meant.

In fact, if you had pressed Joseph and asked him, well, who do you think he means by his people?

Most likely he would have thought that that means the Jews, or at least the

Jews of the Jews, that is, those who would have been truly children of Abraham by faith.

He might have been able to articulate it that way. I'd have a difficult time believing that Joseph would have been able to articulate a full -blown doctrine of the atonement drawn from those words.

But I think that when you look at the words that are found in Revelation chapter 5, and the prepositions become so important in Scripture, Revelation chapter 5, where the angels are speaking about the

Lamb of God, who the Lion is the Lamb, and they sang a new song, you are worthy to take the scroll to open its seals, for you were slain and have redeemed us to God by your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation.

It doesn't say you've redeemed us, you've redeemed every tribe, tongue, people, and nation, but you've redeemed us out of every tribe, tongue, people, and nation, meaning it's the people whom he chose out of the nations that are the ones he purchased with his blood, and therefore he is worthy to be praised because of that.

And so I think that as we continue to wrestle with the Scriptures, as we continue to wrestle with these matters, we will be able to come to a fuller understanding of exactly what

Scripture means by what it says. Now what was another question that you have?

You said that there were a bunch of them, actually. We have Joe in Slovenia, he is a

Southern Baptist missionary in Slovenia, and he says, this is an intriguing topic for me because it is inconceivable to me how anyone could answer the question in the affirmative.

Do you have specific examples of people or groups who actually affirm that we should only read the

Bible? Who are they? What do they claim as their reasoning for this notion?

Thanks so much for your faithfulness to our Savior. Well, we already talked about Harold Camping and those who were followers of her.

Do you have anybody else that you could share? Yeah, I don't know that I'm basically dealing with people who

I interact with, for instance, on Facebook. But that's more individual things.

It's not like a denomination. Although, again, I do think that people who tend to be the

King James -only types might use this kind of language.

But when they're pressed, I think they would acknowledge, well, certainly they do listen to their pastors and they do read books by others who agree with them about the

King James -only view. And so I don't know. I don't know that there's an answer that I could give.

You gave the example of Camping, and that clearly was. And in fact, anybody who continues to follow that ministry, and apparently it's still going, and there are those who still, you know,

I'm assuming some of his teaching is still being played on the station.

Is that true? Well, actually, there are things that I cannot mention. But let me just say that there are positive things that I am hearing about family radio, and I can't go any further than that.

Okay. All right. That's good. That's encouraging. How about the next question? Thanks, Joe, in Slovenia, and keep spreading the word in Slovenia and beyond about Iron Sherpa and his

Iron Radio. Oh, by the way, just to go another way to answer

Joe in Slovenia's question, you will very often find cults claiming that they only use the

Bible, but what they really are saying is that that cult's leader or leaders are the only ones whose interpretations are valid.

You know, like Herbert W. Armstrong would, you know, claim that everything that he taught was from the

Bible. But if you disagreed with him, you were damned. Of course, he was an annihilationist, so that didn't really mean that much.

But, but, you know, you do have cults like that, that claim, you know, that's true. Don't read any of the reformers.

Don't read any people like Charles Spurgeon, etc. They're all false. Just just read your

Bible, but understand it the way I insist you understand. Okay, we have

Charlie in Rome, New York. It seems to me that the all -I -need -is -Jesus -in -my -Bible attitude comes from a haughty spirit in which one thinks their interpretation is best.

How can a logical church combat this attitude while not becoming overly dogmatic?

How do you combat the attitude without becoming overly dogmatic? If somebody approaches you and, you know, basically is saying that their interpretation is the only one that matters, it kind of goes hand in hand with what

I just said about Armstrong. Well, you know what? I think that it's interesting. The priesthood of believers is one of the hallmarks of the

Baptist faith, correct? And the priesthood of all believers means what?

Well, it means that we have the ability to go to the Bible for ourselves, that we don't need to have the church or the priests interpret the

Bible for us. Of course, that would be in contradistinction to the

Roman view, which was very, very pronounced for centuries, that people were not even allowed to read the

Bible because the Bible was a sacred book that could only be understood by special trained people, and that was the responsibility of the layperson to simply believe whatever they were told the

Bible says. And so that's why, for centuries, the Roman Catholic Church forbade people from reading the

Bible. And what was the first thing that most of the Reformers did, Chris, do you remember? As far as regarding the

Bible, what did they do? Translated into the language of the people. That was one of the first things that they would do,

William Tyndale. That's what he did. And I think that understanding that the

Bible is to be understood, that is the priesthood of all believers. And so we don't want to undermine that.

At the same time, we do need to help people to understand that God has given teachers to the church to instruct us and to help us to understand and to grow.

And so I think it's going to the passages, like you had mentioned earlier, Acts 17, the

Bereans being more noble -minded because they received the Word readily, but then they searched the

Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. And I think that focusing upon the necessity of studying

God's Word and of embracing the teachers that God has given to the church is extremely important and helps to bring a biblical balance to us rather than having this, and I would agree with this, the question that many times it comes across as a haughty attitude that I don't need anything other than the

Bible and the Holy Spirit, when the Bible and the Holy Spirit teach us that we do need human teachers.

How can I understand unless someone explain it to me? Next caller, please.

Or next writer, you mean. Next emailer. Yes. Thank you, Charlie, by the way, and keep listening in Rome, New York and spreading the

Word in Rome, New York and beyond about Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We have PJ in Bridge City, Texas.

I am exceptionally enjoying this discussion. I have many similar discussions with others.

My general response is, what about all the times that unbiblical quotations are in the

Bible, such as Paul quoting Greek philosophers or Jude quoting the pseudepigrapha or apocryphal books?

Yeah, I think that you have examples, obviously, in the New Testament where the Apostle Paul, as he's preaching on Mars Hill, he quoted from the secular poets of the day and sought to apply that in a very specific way by the aid of the

Holy Spirit, and I think that those are examples. Paul in Titus 1, he quotes a philosopher that spoke about the

Cretans being lazy gluttons, and he quotes that and says they're right.

And so there are examples, even in the Bible itself, that show us that this position is not a position that is really a tenable position.

I think that you deal with people, first of all, you seek to deal with every individual, no matter what the position they hold.

You seek to deal with them with humility, with grace. You seek to deal with them by truly addressing the issue, trying to get it sorted out, and being able to say, well, help me understand what it is that you're saying when you make a statement like this.

Help me understand what you mean by that. And do you mean by that that you would never, you certainly wouldn't mean that you wouldn't use a dictionary if you came across the passage and a verse, a word is being used and you don't understand it.

Would you be averse to taking a dictionary to understand the meaning of that word? And again, you know,

I've mentioned this before about atlases and even concordances, although they probably would argue that, well, a concordance isn't anything other than the listing of the

Bible words. And so that wouldn't really, they would use something like that.

So you can say, okay, well, there is a book that was put together by men that you are willing to use that's not the

Bible. And they would have to say, well, yeah, I guess you're right about that. So I don't know.

I just think that dealing with people as individuals, I think that it's important that we always conduct ourselves with humility, always with kindness, always with grace, and to seek to deal with people and answer, in some ways, you're answering a fool according to his folly, and then answering a fool in the way that his folly deserves.

If you find out you're dealing with a fool, in the end of the day, you could say, with the words of the

Lord Jesus, don't cast your pearls before swine lest they turn and devour you. There are some people that just, they're always itching for a fight.

And I think we need to avoid that, having that kind of an attitude. Well, thank you so much for that excellent question,

PJ. And keep listening and spreading the word about Iron Sharp and Zion Radio in Bridge City, Texas and beyond.

And by the way, somewhat off topic, but since you brought up the Apocrypha, if you want to see a debate that I organized in 2014 between my friend, in fact, mutual friend of Mike Gadosh and myself,

Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, he debated Gary Machuta, M -I -C -H -U -T -A, on the

Apocrypha. The theme of the debate was, is the Apocrypha scripture? And if you type in YouTube, White versus Machuta, M -I -C -H -U -T -A, this will come up.

It's a two hour and 47 minute, two hour and 48 minute, actually, debate.

You can find that on YouTube. And I hope that you are blessed and edified about that.

James White versus the Roman Catholic apologist Gary Machuta on, is the Apocrypha scripture?

We have to go to our final break right now. And if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, you can get in line if you email me immediately, and hopefully we'll have time to bring up your question.

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away.

God willing, we'll be right back with more of Mike Gadosh, right after these messages from our sponsors.

Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, for 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.

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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 or present you can unearth from Solid Ground.

Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune into A Visit to the

Pastor's Study every Saturday from 12 noon to 1 pm Eastern Time on WLIE Radio, www .wlie540am

.com. We bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you, and we invite you to visit the

Pastor's Study by calling in with your questions. Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull.

Join us this Saturday at 12 noon Eastern Time for a visit to the Pastor's Study, because everyone needs a pastor.

And if you call in to A Visit to the Pastor's Study with a question for the host,

Pastor Bill Shishko, please make sure that you tell Pastor Bill that you heard about his radio program,

A Visit to the Pastor's Study, from Chris Arnzen on his radio program, Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And I know that my guest,

Mike Gaydosch, can attest to the fact that Pastor Bill Shishko, in spite of our differences with him on church polity and the subjects of baptism, he is a truly sound and reliable source of biblical truth, is he not?

Actually, Bill and I kind of grew up together in the ministry. We both began pastoring on Long Island the same year, back in 1981, and he lasted a little longer than I did.

I was there until 2000, and he was continuing on until, I think he just retired recently, but I'm sure he's still involved in ministry.

Oh yeah, he is he is heading the para -church organization Reformation Metro New York, which is a ministry of the

Orthodox Presbyterian denomination. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I love Bill. He's a dear man and a very trustworthy guide.

Amen. Well, we have a listener question from B .B.

in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who asks, since you are discussing how valuable it is to use reliable books outside of the

God -breathed words of Scripture, can you list the top three books that you would recommend for every

Christian to own that you publish? Does she work for you, Mike? She may be trying to put an application in, but no.

That's a very difficult question to answer. Whenever people ask me about the most important books that I've published, and I've published over 350 titles since 2001, in the last 17 years.

Of course, the first one that I always mention is Pastor's Sketches by Ichabod Spencer. I believe still it's the best book that I have published.

It is a book that addresses almost every possible pastoral issue that you can face with both unbelievers and believers, and it's a wonderful volume by Ichabod Spencer, Pastor's Sketches.

There's also a book, Stepping Heavenward by Elizabeth Prentice, that is one of the earlier books that we did.

Thoughts for Young Men by J .C. Ryle, again, is another book that we've done that has been extremely, greatly used of God.

It was the first book that I ever got involved in publishing back in 1991 when I was in Long Island at Calvary Press.

But it's a hard question to answer because of the fact that people are in such different places in their lives.

Jesus Loves the Church and So Should You by Earl Blackburn is a great book, especially for people who are wrestling with their responsibility to the local church.

I think it depends. The book I mentioned earlier, Our Sovereign God, was a very instrumental book in my own life.

In fact, I wrote the endorsement on that cover. I should probably read it. I did it 30 years ago as a young Christian.

This book came into my possession, and it had a profound impact upon my life. There's no way to know how much these addresses have helped shape my view of God and his grace, but I'm certain that my life, my family, and my ministry have been richer for having read them again and again.

I was thrilled to have the privilege of bringing these addresses back to a new generation of believers who wrestle with the very issues dealt with in this book.

May the Lord of Glory use these words to help his struggling children understand the value of these great and glorious doctrines.

So Our Sovereign God would be another book that a person who struggles with in that area in particular. Also, a book that has been very, very helpful to me was a book called

The Divine Purpose. The Divine Purpose by John Matthews. It was the divine purpose displayed in the works of providence and of grace.

Right alongside the book Our Sovereign God, John Matthews' book, which I published several years ago, is extremely helpful.

It was originally letters that were written answering questions regarding the sovereignty of God and the divine purpose and the divine decrees.

Archibald Alexander actually discovered this book back in the 1820s and he wrote a lengthy review about it.

He was absolutely astounded by this book and said he could not believe, he had never heard of John Matthews, knew nothing about him.

He started to read the book and he just said the thing that struck him the most was even though Matthews is dealing with a very, very difficult subject, this is what he said.

He said the chief excellency of these letters is that they present the subject of divine decrees without the forbidding aspect which is apt to assume in the view of many persons.

One thing the reader may be assured of, that whether he should coincide in opinion with the author or not, he will find nothing in the volume calculated to wound the most delicate feelings.

A spirit of meekness and kindness, eminently characteristic of the writer, pervades the whole.

When you're dealing with a subject like the subject of the divine decrees, it's so good to have a teacher who is very gentle, very careful, very cautious about everything they say.

And so that book, The Divine Purpose, would be another one. It really depends. I mean, I could give you a hundred books that I would put in the top three, but you said three, so I've just given you six.

And that was off the top of my head. Well, why don't we, before I go to any more listener questions, why don't we give you some time to talk about some of the new things that are going to be in print through Solid Ground Christian Books.

It doesn't mean that they are new writings, they could be very old writings, but they are new to your publishing ministry and maybe even new to the vast majority of people who are alive today.

Yeah, actually let me tell you about some of the new things we just published that have just come out.

One of them is a paperback edition of Pilgrim's Progress that was edited by George Ofer.

And what is particular about that book, which I really appreciate on Pilgrim's Progress, is that this book contains the marginal notes that Bunyan inserted to the early editions of Pilgrim's Progress.

And according to Bunyan himself, he said that these marginal notes are the key, along with the

Holy Spirit, to unlock his allegory. And we just recently at Solid Ground published this book and it's now available.

It's the George Ofer, O -F -F -O -R, edition of Pilgrim's Progress. It's a paperback and it's an outstanding book.

We also just received last week a hardcover, a beautiful hardcover edition, this is the first time we've published this,

Lectures on Pilgrim's Progress by George Cheever, C -H -E -E -V -E -R.

George Cheever's Lectures on Pilgrim's Progress. We just produced this book.

It's a beautiful book. It's hardcover smitesone and we are very excited about having it because this book not only has the lectures on Pilgrim's Progress, but it also has lectures on the life, the temptations, and the trials of John Bunyan.

So it both explains the context of John Bunyan writing the book, as well as explaining through the lectures of the book itself.

And that's also now available. We've also just recently published for our third printing of the 1689

Baptist Confession of Faith and Catechism in bonded leather hardcover.

And we are very excited about having it. It's a beautiful edition, and it's now available to purchase.

And we've also just recently done the paperback of that same volume, and also the

Three Forms of Unity. And Chris, what are the three forms of unity? The Heidelberg Catechism, the

Canons of Dort, and the Belgic Confession. Very good. Did I say them out of order, though? Well, that's not the exact order, but those are the three.

And our edition of it was actually, we were helped very much by Dr.

Joel Beakey of Reformation Heritage Books, and they are very, very supportive of what we have done.

And now that's available in paperback, but it's also going to soon be available in the leather bound hardcover that matches exactly the 1689 that we've just done.

And that's going to be available. I've just been informed by my printer that that's going to be shipping on May 16th.

So we're getting close. Right now it's available for 50 % off. It's $15. It's a great volume.

We have sold hundreds already, and we're hoping to be able to sell a lot more before it actually appears within about a month.

And so those are the ones that we have been doing. I'm also working on a book on the Second Amendment by Ron Gleeson.

Yeah, that actually came about through my interview with Ron Gleeson on that book. Absolutely. I will give you credit for that.

Hopefully none of your listeners are going to take shots at me when we start to promote that book on the

Second Amendment. Well, since I won't be able to take credit for anything on Judgment Day, I might as well get some of it now.

So we have several things. I'm also working on a couple of booklets done by Jerry Slate, a pastor in Georgia, that we're hoping to have done soon.

One is on William Carey. The other one's on Samuel Pierce. And they're both just outstanding articles.

In fact, several men who wrote the endorsement said when they saw that he had written on William Carey and it was just a chapter, basically it's a booklet, they wondered, well, what in the world is this going to do?

Is it really going to be worth even bothering to read? And when they read it, they were blown away.

And they just said, wow, this is really excellent. They said it would be an excellent introduction to somebody who doesn't know much about Carey, but it would also be a helpful reminder for those who do know about Carey, maybe even have read a biography of him.

So Jerry Slate's a dear brother, a pastor in Georgia, as I said, and he has put these two together and we're working on getting that done as well.

By the way, I'm interviewing, God willing, on Monday, the 23rd of April, one of your authors,

Thomas Garrett Isham, is going to be discussing the book Rock of Ages, Augustus Toplady, The Little Known Man Behind the

Well -Known Hymn. If you could tell us something about that. Yeah, Thomas, he's a gracious and humble man.

He's worked really diligently in putting together these, he's put together this book on Toplady, which is outstanding, on Rock of Ages.

And the other book he did was on Charles McElveen. Yeah, we did a program, not with brother

Isham, I did a program with my friend Reverend Jacob Smith at the parish of Calvary St.

George's in New York City. We discussed for the full two hours that book on McElveen, and it was a really great time.

In fact, every time I have a conversation with Pastor Jacob, especially on the program, he always brings up solid ground

Christian books. He seems to be quite enjoying the things that you are producing, especially by Anglicans.

Yeah, well, I think that Stephen Ting, we've published books by Stephen Ting. That's right, that's the church. Yeah, the church that Stephen Ting founded in New York City is the exact congregation where Jacob now pastors as a rector.

Wow, that's great. That book, The Law and the Gospel, Lectures on the Law and the Gospel by Stephen Ting, Ting is

T -Y -N -G. Earl Blackburn, a dear friend, has said that it's the best thing he has ever read on understanding the law and the gospel.

There are 10 lectures on the law, 10 lectures on the gospel, and it's just brilliantly done.

It was back in the 1830s, I believe, that those messages were preached. And that's

Stephen Ting. And McElveen, most people wouldn't know the McElveen was a chaplain at West Point, and a revival broke out under his ministry.

In fact, he is the one who instituted every single, it's either every student or graduate,

I don't remember which, receives a Bible, a personalized Bible. And that goes all the way back to the time when

McElveen was there back in the 1840s or early 1850s.

I don't remember the exact years he was there. But you know why they removed him as chaplain?

Why? Because a revival broke out. And they were afraid that the men wouldn't be real good fighters.

Because so many of them were becoming avowed Christians that they just, it was, in their minds, it was counter to what

West Point was supposed to be producing. Yeah, it's a stereotype of Christians that is totally slanderous.

Well, but there you go. And I think that, but there's McElveen was, he was an incredible man, absolutely incredible, gifted preacher.

And I've published a book of sermons called Truth and Life, Christ -centered sermons by McElveen as well.

But I, can I conclude, would I have about five minutes?

You have about eight minutes. Okay, I'd like to conclude by addressing the subject that I taught in, this past Sunday I had a chance of teaching

Sunday school here in our church in Florida. And the lesson that I brought was a lesson that began,

I began with the story of Jonah. And I asked the question, when you think of Jonah, what do you think of? And I knew nobody would come up with what

I was going to focus on. So we, I spent about a minute and had different people responding, different things about Jonah.

Of course, the great fish and his rebellion and his grumbling and all the things, the various things that people would think of.

And I said, well, you want to know what I think is the most important thing about the book of Jonah and about that whole story?

I said, do you know what the last thing he said before the fish vomited him out on shore?

Well, it's recorded in Jonah chapter two, verse nine, and it was his prayer. And the very last words that he spoke before he was vomited on shore was salvation is of the

Lord. Salvation is of the Lord. And then once those words were uttered, he was vomited on the shore.

And of course, the book itself is all about the fact that salvation is of the Lord. And the

Bible is about that same subject. The Bible can be summarized. The message of the

Bible can be summarized in three words. God saves sinners. God saves sinners.

And that's the glorious message of the gospel. And what I did is I went through and looked at first,

I looked at Paul's words in first Corinthians chapter one, verses 18 through 31 and said, you know,

God has chosen a way of salvation. And this is underlined by the words of verse 29.

He has chosen a way of salvation that will allow no man to boast before him.

That's the method of salvation that God has chosen. God chose the weak things of the world to shame the things that are strong.

God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God chose the despised things and the base things.

He chose the things that are not so to nullify the things that are. So that for this purpose, no man may boast before God.

Paul then says, but by his doing, or literally it says of him, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.

So that just as it is written, let him who boasts, boast in the

Lord. I then turned to three examples. I won't have time to look at all three, but three examples of that truth recorded in the ministry of Jesus.

The first one, the most familiar, although all three of them are very familiar. The first one was the example of Nicodemus.

And you may recall that Nicodemus, of course, is introduced in chapter three, but in chapter two,

John introduces Nicodemus. I believe he's introducing Nicodemus with these words. In John 2, 23 says now when he was in Jerusalem at the

Passover during the feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs which he did, but Jesus did not commit himself to them.

Now, what's interesting here, Chris, is that the word that's translated commit himself is exactly the same word that's translated believed in the previous verse.

So we might literally read this and say during the feast, many believed in his name, but Jesus did not believe in them because he knew all men had no need that anyone should testify of man for he knew what was in man.

And then chapter three, verse one begins. There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus. So clearly

Nicodemus becomes the example of the man that Jesus is describing, or that is described by John, actually, in that section, because why did they believe?

It says they believed in his name when they saw the signs he did. There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the

Jews. This man came to Jesus by night. What did he say? Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.

So Nicodemus is an example of the many who believed, but Jesus did not believe in him.

And so what does Jesus immediately say? Does he say, thank you, Nicodemus, I appreciate your support? No, he says, most assuredly,

I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Now, it's important for us to understand that the word that is given here in John chapter three was already addressed back in John chapter one.

And you remember in the prologue, it says he came unto his own. His own did not receive him, but as many as received him to them, he gave the power to become the children of God to those who believe on his name.

And these are those who were born not of the will of the flesh. They were not born of blood.

They were not born of the will of man, but they were born of God. That is what

Jesus is talking about in John chapter three. It's the new birth that is the birth from above.

Salvation is of the Lord. God has chosen to save sinners in such a way that sinners can never boast.

They can never take credit. They can never say, I am saved because I chose

God. No, Jesus said to his disciples, you did not choose me. I chose you.

And I've appointed you to go forth and to bear fruit. That's the message that I wanted to leave with your people today with your listeners.

Salvation is of the Lord. We rejoice in the fact that God chose sinners.

God saves sinners. And as Paul said in first Timothy one 15, it is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance.

Christ Jesus came into the world, sinners to save.

And thanks God that you and I, Chris, are both, we can rival the apostle

Paul by saying we are truly the chief of sinners. Praise God.

Well, we are out of time. And I want to make sure that our listeners remember, even though we repeat it throughout every program, the website for Solid Ground Christian Books is solid -ground -books .com.

Please always remember to tell Mike Gadosh when you order anything that you heard about Solid Ground Christian Books from Iron Sharp and Zion Radio.

And those of you who already have done that, keep doing it. And I hope that you remember

Solid Ground Christian Books for all the holiday shopping needs that you have. What better gift to give someone that you love than one that will either lead them to Christ and to eternal life, as God uses that book or books, plural, as tools in his hand to give that person the gift of faith or to encourage and strengthen the faith of true believers.

So put that on your refrigerator. Put that anywhere that you will always be reminded about Solid Ground Christian Books at solid -ground -books .com.

I want to thank you so much, Mike Gadosh, for being on the program today. I want to thank all of you who have written in emails today.

And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

Savior than you are a sinner. Thanks so much for listening, and we look forward to receiving your emails for our guests tomorrow on Iron Sharp and Zion Radio.