June 13, 2023 Show with Bill Shishko on “The Church Before the Modern, Watching World”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson,

19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports

legend Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron.

This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning

issues facing the church and the world today.

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

another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to

have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener,

with your own questions.

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

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living

on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this

13th day of June 2023.

And I am so thrilled to have back on the program a dear

old friend, one of my most favorite guests to interview,

someone whom I have known since the infancy stages of my new

birth in Christ in the 1980s.

His name is Bill Shishko, and he is the pastor of the Haven Orthodox Presbyterian

Church in Comac, Long Island, New York.

And today we're going to be addressing the theme, The Church Before the Modern Watching.

World.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Bill Shishko.

Hey, Chris, good to be with you again.

Oh, I am thrilled to be interviewing you again.

And I was so thrilled to visit for the very first time

the Haven in Comac, Long Island, New York, during my most recent visit to Long

Island.

I have many, many, many times over the years joined you for worship

at the church where you formerly pastored, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church of Franklin Square, is actually a

place that God used to help me cut my teeth on Reformed theology as a

new babe in Christ.

And I continued to visit there for decades and was thrilled to hear that

after your retirement from the OPC in Franklin Square congregation, that you have

returned to the pastoral ministry and have planted the Haven.

And what I can't even formulate the words to

describe how blessed I was and how the

moving of my heart.

I love the way that you worship there.

It is sort of a liturgical worship, but it is in no way

dry and robotic and dull.

It is filled with passion and the enthusiasm with which the

congregation responds sorely is involved in that

liturgy, which is not just one brief segment of the service, like many

even Reformed Baptist churches have on occasion, they usually don't do this every Lord's Day, but on

occasion they'll have a responsive psalm or something like that.

But you have that throughout, a thread throughout the service.

And I just, it was a wonderful experience.

Praise the Lord.

It was wonderful to have you there with us.

My boys say, Dad, you're counterintuitive.

Right now I'm 71 years old, involved in a church plant.

I'm busier than I ever have been in my life, but we're having a wonderful time at the Haven.

God has been so good to us there.

Amen.

It was so great also to see people that I have known since the 1980s who were actually members of the

church where I was saved in the 1980s.

And so glad to see that they are now at the Haven.

What a great time of rekindling friendships.

Why don't you just give our listeners a little bit more of a description of the Haven?

Yeah, the Haven is located at 16 Oak Lawn Drive in Comac, New York.

What a blessing.

Last year we were, this is a small mission church.

We're still in our early stage, earliest stages, but we were able to purchase a building that had

been owned by a brethren group called Cleft of the Rock Bible Chapel.

The story of how that worked out is quite remarkable, but we found when

our officers met with their remaining elders, that was in, let me think, my, my, my,

it was October about a year and a half ago, that in most things we were in total agreement.

And as a result, they were going to give us the church and almost two acres of

land right on Veterans Highway.

But we'd agreed in advance that we wanted them to be able to continue their support of their missionaries.

So they agreed on a price.

I mean, remarkable was it was $425 ,000 for the building, the apartment that's

above the church facility, two acres of land.

We were able to get a loan from the Orthodox Presbyterian Church loan fund that worked on the

facility.

And it was actually a man, you know, Joe Matone, who was a contractor.

He and his crew took that building on like a baby and over six months just

transformed it and brought it up to date.

And we've just finished actually renovating the apartment because we have an intern with.

Us.

So that's, that's, that's the sort of structural thing.

And you're right about the worship language, like dry, robotic, formalistic.

Those are no, no words for us.

We, we take seriously that worship engages the whole person and our worship services are

organized, but they're delightful.

We really enjoy what it is as a body to be hearing the word of God and then to be

responding as a body.

You see the liberating, in the right sense of the word, the liberating benefit of the regulative

principle where your whole worship is governed by the word of God.

So it was a delight to have you there, Chris.

You have so many brothers and sisters that know you and love you.

Well, I really appreciate it being there.

And what a beautiful area of Comac that is as well.

In fact, I visited the Cleft of the Rock Bible Church many years ago.

It was probably in the eighties when I visited there for some event that they had.

But I am so glad that that building is being continued to be used for the glory of God.

If anybody wants more information about the Haven in Comac, Long Island, go to

thehavenli .com, thehavenli .com, and hopefully I'll remember to

repeat that before the program is over.

Now, I know that our subject today, The Church Before the Modern Watching

World, came about because of material

that you used for lectures that you gave at the Machen Singles

Conference Center in McDowell, Virginia, on Memorial Day weekend, Machen being, obviously,

for those of you who know anything about the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, the founder of that

fine denomination, J. Gresham Machen, who has become an actual hero

to many people in and out of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

But why don't you tell us about how that event came to be and why this material

is such a part of your passion that you wanted to discuss it today?

Yeah, well, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, Chris, I think this year is the hundredth anniversary

of the publication of Dr. Machen's volume, Christianity and Liberalism, which

was quite incendiary, actually.

When it came out, Dr. Machen said that liberalism, which is kind of

mainstream Protestantism that denies the authority of the scripture and so

on, he was bold enough to say what is true, that liberalism and theology

is not a different form of Christianity, it's not Christianity at all,

because it denies the supernatural at every point, whether it's the denial of the inspiration

and inerrancy of the scriptures or the miracles of Christ or the miracle of Christ himself, born of a

virgin, and that book actually is what

launched, so to speak, the fundamentalist modernist controversy of the 20th century that didn't

just impact Presbyterians, but every mainline denomination.

So that is really a classic book.

It's such an honor to be part of the denomination that the Lord used

Dr. Machen to found in 1936.

The Machen, it's technically called the Machen Retreat and Conference Center,

but brash New Yorker that I am, I began the conference by saying, I don't believe Christians

retreat.

A strategic withdrawal, that's fine, Jesus was withdrawing himself regularly, but I don't believe

Christians retreat, so I called it the Machen Conference Center, but it's nestled in this beautiful area

to the west of the Shenandoah Mountains in McDowell, Virginia, and

they had 42 singles for that conference and some adults that they were allowed to tag along,

and I was burdened for that, Chris.

I am, at this stage in my life, I'm deeply concerned that Reformed churches

not get in a Reformed ghetto and that they really get out there and

bring the word of God to people, and even as Dr. Schaeffer was concerned in 1970 when he

gave these original, I believe they were addresses, I mean, I read them as books, the church before the

watching world and the church at the end of the 20th century.

He was also very burdened that the Evangelical church of his day and the Reformed

church of his day be reaching out, especially to young people who are asking questions.

That drove me.

It's interesting, last week you had Dr. Reynolds on.

That's right.

Who got the privilege of living at La Brie.

I had the opportunity to go there, but the Lord just wasn't able to work that out financially

and in other ways, but Dr. Reynolds' pilgrimage, so to speak,

and mine are remarkably parallel, and we're just both so thankful to Dr. Schaeffer.

But anyway, I wanted to build, especially on his work, the church at the end of the

20th century, although that's in tandem with the church before the watching

world, and that's what I did at the conference in five messages.

In fact, I want to let our listeners know that after this live broadcast is over, if you want to hear the

interview I conducted with Dr. Gregory Reynolds on your father's La Brie, Reflections on the

Ministry of Francis Schaeffer, which is his new book, just type in to the

ironsharpensironradio .com search engine, Reynolds, R -E -Y -N -O -L

-D -S, and all of Dr. Reynolds' interviews will come up, and that would be at the very top.

It was conducted on June 7th, and I hope that you enjoy it.

When you just mentioned a reformed ghetto, it reminded me of a conversation I

had yesterday, last night.

In fact, someone that you know, who was

my pastor at Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania for the last

six years, John Miller, he just preached his final message for us because he accepted a call

to Redeemer Baptist Church in Macon, Georgia, and he had his final sermon last night,

and we had a time of refreshment and a farewell fellowship for him, and I don't

know if you know Jim Eshelman.

Oh, I do.

I've known Jim for many years.

Yes, in fact, I was actually confusing Jim with somebody else.

Leon Blosser was who I had the conversation with last night.

Leon Blosser has been a figure amongst Reformed Baptists going back to the 60s.

He knows Arabic.

He actually taught Arabic at Dickinson College, but he

said to me, in reference to my pastor's luncheons that I have twice a year, where

you have spoke, he said, you know, you're one of the only

Reformed Baptists that I know that has an event like your luncheons where you are

introducing the doctrines of grace to pastors from all different theological

perspectives, and you're breaking out of this

isolationism of Reformed people, and you're being used of God to

introduce these men to books that never would have otherwise bought the books because they get them for

free, and also to hear men of God like you, Bill, preach at these events.

So that just came to my mind because he used the term a Reformed ghetto, which we have to

stop that mentality of Reformed ghettos.

Right.

And, well, the theme that we have today, as we

already mentioned, is the church before the modern watching world, and

your messages built on Romans chapter 12 verses 1

to 2.

The first message was on not being conformed to this age.

You were quite blunt that we are living and seeking to minister to a culture under God's wrath.

Can you develop that.

For us a little bit?

Yeah, and I'm just building on what Dr. Schaefer said.

These, the material that, well, I went through a lot of Dr. Schaefer's material, but the two things in

particular that were somewhat foundational for what I did, Dr. Schaefer said exactly the same

thing, because that's exactly what Romans chapter 1 says.

If you want a commentary on our culture, it is Romans chapter 1, people

worshiping and serving the creature more than the creator, and God giving them up.

But that section in Romans 1 and verse 19 begins with the wrath of

God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of

those who suppress the truth and unrighteousness.

And the point Dr. Schaefer made, as I made, it's so important, is if we are

light about that truth, then we cut off what is a main portal

to dealing with our culture.

A wrath of God, there is God giving people up.

It's not speaking of the wrath of God at the last day.

We're still in a period in which there's God's mercy in the midst of His wrath.

But we are given up, and all of those horrible things that you read in Romans chapter 1

are exactly the things that we see in our culture.

It's interesting that in Romans 1, Paul particularly singles out

sexual perversion, men with men doing with one another that which is

unseemly in women the same.

And then he says, and receiving in themselves the due penalty of error.

And I think, Chris, it's part of the soft peddling of the power of

that chapter when people say that the sexually transmitted diseases

that proliferate wherever there is sexual perversion, let alone

the psychological confusion and emotional upset and so on, these are things that are the

direct consequence of that sexual perversion.

But even that is because God has given up our culture to idolatry.

That's why as that first message went on, I dealt with iconoclasm, is that

over against the idols of our age, Christians must be those who see certain things

as idols and call that out.

Some of the ones, I mean, so many that come to mind, one is scientism

in which legitimate science, legitimate science is basically the best

theory that you have given the data that's before you.

Scientism takes that and turns it into a religion in which you

believe these things as faith commitments.

That would be an example.

An idol is something that you look to to make you happy or to bless you or to give you security or whatever.

And there's any number of these, that first message dealt with that.

And I, at the very end of each message, I had a keyword and that was iconoclasm.

You have to stand at all the points that I make with young people, especially one of the

challenges in this age, we're dealing with insanity in our culture.

I mean, I don't have to delineate it.

You've discussed it on your program.

And when a person so assumes to himself, supposedly, the right of

deity, that he or she can self -identify in a way that is

definitive in a culture, that's insanity.

And we have to learn to be able to say that in our culture without sounding

arrogant and haughty.

Some Christians can be quite frankly, very non -Christian in the way they

communicate those things.

And then others will dance around these things and capitulate to them.

We cannot and we must not, we must declare this is a culture that is experiencing

various aspects of God's wrath.

And there's where the gospel comes in because God's wrath against his people is taken.

By Christ on the cross.

Amen.

And when you were mentioning the insanity of those that

identify as a female, if they are biological men and vice versa,

it's the only thing I can think of right now.

The only phenomenon that ever in my life, we are being told to

immediately without any kind of investigation or probing,

take these people at their word and believe them.

So we're to let biological males who think they're women into

women's public restrooms, into locker rooms and all these things.

Oh, if they say that they're a woman, we got to believe it.

And I've never even experienced that kind of phenomenon before,.

Where I believe.

Yeah.

I mean, here's where fidelity to the scriptures is so important.

The language it's used in Romans 1, professing themselves to be wise, they

became fools.

God gave them over to a debased mind.

Those are powerful words.

A debased mind is a mind in which if you think of the mind as currency,

it's lost its value.

And that is what we see.

And again, without being haughty, I mean, as people who know that we're saved and

kept by grace, the last thing we should be is proud.

But without sounding proud and haughty, we've got to say these things in our culture.

And especially for young people today, if they're not taught how to do that,

and there's not some opening up of what that means, and Romans 1 gives us the data for that, not

to be conformed to this age, we're losing.

We're losing a tremendous opportunity to bring.

Light into darkness.

Well, we are going to go to our first commercial break right now.

And if you do have a question for Pastor Bill Shishko on our theme, The Church Before

the Modern Watching World, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA.

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Don't go away.

We'll be right back with.

Bill Shishko after these messages from our sponsors.

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We are now back with my dear friend Pastor Bill Shishko of The Haven in Comac, Long Island, New

York, and we are discussing the church before the modern watching world.

I think that I will read the first two verses of Romans chapter 12 because you will be

involved in that for most of the remainder of our discussion.

Romans chapter 12 verses 1 and 2,.

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy

sacrifice acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so

that you may prove that what the will of God is, that which is good and

acceptable and perfect.

So that is what we are going to be, this is at the core of what we are addressing for

the remainder of the program.

And I don't know if you have finished in your description of the

first message that you gave, and if you are complete, I will move on to the.

Second message.

Yeah.

Yeah, the only thing I'd add, Chris, to what I said, it's a very important word for Christians, and it's the word

antithesis.

I wouldn't throw it around, but it's an important thing that at every point between

believers and unbelievers, there is a radical difference of understanding, of

interpretation in every way, and that we must maintain.

Interestingly enough, if we're really going to communicate with the world, then we need

to demonstrate how diametrically opposite of the world the Christian faith

is.

What we'll deal with now as we go on, these would be messages 2, 3, and 4 and 5,

shows that it is precisely this difference, when it's communicated

properly, that enables us to really minister to the world.

But that's.

Where we're going to go with this, I'm sure.

Now, before I move on to the second message that you gave, you used

the word, before the break, iconoclasts.

And from my recollection of church history, that was a group of

Protestants during the Reformation that, even in opposition to Luther,

began to smash icons and statues and wanted to purge the church of that

kind of thing.

But what do you mean by that?

Isn't that a bit strong?

C .L.

Yeah.

Now, I'm not talking about it like that, but I'm talking about when the

Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10, casting down every

high thought and imagination that lifts itself up against the Lord Jesus Christ,

that's what I'm dealing with.

That's the kind of root idea of iconoclasts.

Let me give an example, Chris.

I know you've addressed it on your program, this whole issue of

our nation.

Is it a Christian nation?

Are we part of Christendom?

What about Christian nationalism?

And I don't want to get into all those debates because, frankly, there's nuances to them.

But when Christians, for example, put their nation above the kingdom of

God, that needs to be stood against.

It doesn't mean we don't love America and appreciate America and so on, but there's always that

idolatrous tendency, and there's where iconoclast, icon, would basically mean an idol.

There's always that tendency to worship and serve the creature more than the Creator.

Another one, and we could go on and on.

You could do a whole program just in this.

Our culture, Chris, I don't need to convince you of this, the idol of our culture, even

within the broader evangelical community, the idolatry is the

idolatry of self.

How can I feel happy?

How can I grow in grace?

How can I be prosperous?

I don't know what it is, but God has really displaced, has been displaced by

man.

It's that kind of icon or idol that needs to be

opposed and brought down in the way we think and the way we act.

I mean, some of the other ones I mentioned, the technology,

come on.

I mean, we're looking at AI as basically an equivalent of God.

AI is an interesting thing because we live in a culture that can't understand its own story,

and AI, artificial intelligence, is fascinating.

There's no two ways about it, but it becomes a God replacement in that this

technology is used to give the story that really only God can give.

But yeah, all of these messages are important, but a holy

iconoclasm in that sense, standing against those things

that would be God replacements in our culture, that's what I'm.

Getting at.

Well, in the second message, you spoke about being transformed by the renewing of your mind, as our

text even says in Romans 12, and your key word was orthodoxy.

What does orthodoxy mean?

I'm constantly finding myself when I mention a congregation like yours, the Haven, which

is a congregation in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

People automatically think, what is this, a Scottish version of Eastern Orthodoxy?

What's an Orthodox Presbyterian Church?

Well, what are specific elements of orthodoxy that you developed in the message?

The orthodoxy simply means straight teaching, and that's been kind of an issue

for the Orthodox Presbyterian Church right from the time it adopted the name, and I get that,

especially coming from Greek Orthodox background.

In fact, when I was converted, about the only thing that was good about that later was that I became part of the

Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and the Greek Orthodox family figured there's some hope for me, but it's a good

word, and we ought to preserve it.

What I was getting at, Chris, in the being transformed by the renewing of your mind, now you're looking at things positively,

and over against the idols of our culture,

we need to hold truths that really stand

against that culture in specific ways.

One, I just adopted the title of Dr. Schaeffer's book, God is There, and He is Not Silent.

Having a robust view of what we call general revelation, and the

heavens declaring the glory of God, and the firmament showing its handiwork, that's not going to tell us

about salvation, but we need to stand against the atheism and agnosticism of our

culture with a robust view of general revelation, and certainly special revelation.

For that, Chris, I always begin with Christ, what we call the great elephant in

the room of human history.

This is the Word made flesh, and for a culture that is saying, how can we

even know God rather than being on the defensive?

In fact, very interesting, when Paul says in Romans 1 that the

unbeliever is without excuse, the word he uses in the original is

the unbeliever is without an apologetic.

The unbeliever is without a defense of his position, and that's just the

opposite of the way we think.

We feel we're on the defensive with different things, doesn't mean we should be mean and hateful and aggressive, but

holding out the ones, the doctrines that I presented, being transformed by the renewing of your mind,

God is there and He's not silent.

The second, which is so crucial, what Dr. Schaeffer called the manishness of man

for the humanity of humans, the fact that you're dealing with people who are

not machines, they're not robots, they're not artificial intelligence, we're not

somehow bits and bytes in a matrix, we're dealing with the image of God.

That gives us a tremendous inroad in our culture where people don't even

know how to define themselves.

How interesting it is, they'll want to define, as it were,

their gender, they don't even know what it is to define themselves as humans.

So that community was the third one I developed, although we'll deal with that more in the third message.

And then the importance of the end of all things.

I love to tell people, Chris, that kind of the metaphor for our culture is the

airline pilot that comes on and he tells the passengers, well, I've got good news and I've got bad

news.

The good news is we are making tremendous time.

The bad news is I have no idea where we are.

Really, and pitifully, that is our culture.

Where did you come from?

Why are you here?

Where are you going?

Those would be the basic things.

The God is there and He's not silent.

The humanity of human beings, the fact that God has made us for community, and the fact

that there's a purpose in all things, those are things we must put front and center

if we're going to really intersect with our culture and not be defensive about them.

Now, these elements of orthodoxy, why are they important for the church

before the modern watching world, as your title implies?

And is the modern world watching the church, or are they ignoring the church?

How are they watching?

Oh, definitely.

On that last point, absolutely.

You think that the world doesn't—and by the world, again, we're talking about a world system that's

against God.

We're not talking about Washington, D .C. or New York City or Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

We're talking about a mindset that is against God and that infiltrates itself

into the way people think and speak.

And you think the world is not paying attention to the church, but let scandals

come in the church, and my, the world is quick to point it out.

So yes, the world is watching, and I believe, Chris, that

my personal opinion is we are on the cusp of the world watching for a different reason.

This—our world system does not have ultimate answers.

It can posit certain things that are opinions, but it really has no

GPS to connect itself with unchanging

things, above all else, God himself.

And because of that, I strongly believe the world—I don't know if they'll call me the world system, but people in the

world are going to be looking to the church for honest answers to things.

I think that this was the impact of the late Dr. Tim Keller.

He was seeking to address issues, particularly that New Yorkers were wrestling

with, from the perspective of the Word of God.

And regardless of what people might think of specifics about the late Dr. Keller's ministry, by

God's grace, he succeeded in that.

What I want to see is that done by all churches, by all ministers,

and above all, by Christians as they speak in the world.

And you can't do that apart from orthodoxy, which is straight teaching.

Now, your third message in the series was on community.

You mentioned that just moments ago.

How did you get that from Romans chapter 12, verses 1 and 2?

Yeah, that's a great question, Chris.

It's very interesting that the original in Romans 12, 1 and 2, I

beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies,

plural, a living sacrifice.

And that's where I get community from this.

Paul is saying what is kind of a commonplace in the

New Testament, and also in the Old Testament, but for our purposes, in the New Testament, where there's a toggling

between the individual and the body.

You see that in 1 Corinthians chapters 12 to 14, where Paul is

certainly speaking about individuals and the use of their gifts, but he just very

naturally starts speaking about the body.

And that's what Paul is doing in Romans 12.

He is, certainly as individuals, we're to be presenting ourselves to the Lord, but we

do that in community.

And what I did in that message, again, building in many ways on Dr. Schaeffer, in his book,

The Church at the End of the 20th Century, I dealt with what to me is kind of the heart and

soul of this whole thing, form and freedom.

There are certain things that the scriptures give to describe,

I'll put it this way, a healthy church, final authority of the Word of God,

the kingship of the Lord Jesus Christ.

God gathers together, we would say, as Presbyterians, as families or individuals,

he gathers people together.

There's a government of them.

That government is a plurality of elders.

There's a concern for temporal needs, the deacons in the church.

There's accountability in one way or the other.

These are some of the basic things that the New Testament lays out as essential

to the form of the church.

Now, freedom is where I think in many ways, Chris, especially Reformed

churches, we're so concerned to do everything right, and I'm not taking any of that away, but in our

desire to do right, sometimes we forget that God gives a good measure of freedom in

the scriptures so that we might by all means win some.

I'll give you an example.

The Lord's Day, the Lord's Day Sabbath, and I'm not taking away two worship services on the Lord's

Day.

I have to say, I'm not convinced biblically, you can use morning and evening sacrifice, I guess, as an

example, but I'm not convinced that the New Testament teaches the need of two

worship services on the Lord's Day.

Again, if you have it, that's wonderful.

The whole day is to be spent in the public and private exercises of God's

worship, especially what is to be taken up in works of necessity and mercy.

And as far as rest, quite frankly, in our frantic

culture, where we're destroying ourselves by not honoring the Lord's Day

by getting some rest, that, it seems to me, needs to be emphasized, but it's mercy.

In the UK, in the United Kingdom, if you went back 50 years, for

example, Dr. Martin Lloyd -Jones was a leader in this.

Their evening services, they were worship, but they were specifically

geared toward evangelism.

That was a way of reaching out to others, and I'm very, very sympathetic to that.

I'm wondering in our culture how that can be done in churches by perhaps a less

formal service and allowing time for people

to ask questions.

That, I think, is, in my opinion, 1 Corinthians 14, I think clearly in the gatherings of

God's people, there were questions that were being asked.

I think another one, I don't want to blather on, but hospitality, to open our homes

on the Lord's Day, not just to other brothers and sisters in Christ, but to invite unbelievers

into our homes and minister to them.

Those are the kinds of things I was getting at when I was dealing with freedom in church life.

Where the Word of God does not speak specifically to something and order something, we have freedom,

and that freedom is to the end, we might be, the Bible says this, saving

some.

I happen to think, personally, when Paul says we are not,

to those without law, we became as those who are without law, and yet not without law,

ultimately, but under the law of Christ, I think that's part of what Paul's getting at.

Christ came into the world to save sinners, and part of being under law to

Christ is how do I give myself in Christ's name to see others won?

And if I'm deeply burdened for any of this, it's particularly that, that

churches, so they don't become think tanks, are those that are geared toward reaching out to others.

I think the movie, The Jesus Revolution, and I think that kind of gave an

example of it where a pastor and pastors were willing to change the way they looked

and the way they did things so they could reach out to people.

Now, we could say they went too far at certain points, we're not gonna get into that, but the burden I appreciate,

they went the extra mile to reach out to people who are asking good

questions.

That's what I want to see done, especially in Reformed churches in our day.

Amen, and you have a key phrase in your third message,

counter -cultural community.

We are definitely living in a day and age when the church could be called counter -cultural,.

But if you could explain.

Yeah, I love, well, I love the phrase because I used it in it, but actually, Dr.

Schaffer did it as well.

He loved, one thing I don't agree with Dr. Schaffer's many things, but

when he would use the language revolutionary Christianity, I

have a, that's jarring to me.

The Reformers were not revolutionaries.

The Protestant Reformers wanted to reform everything according to the Word of God.

Counter -cultural community is essentially saying the same thing.

Counter -culture is over against a culture that has given up, that is under God's

wrath, that suppresses the truth of God in unrighteousness.

How do we let that truth show in all of the world?

The Haven is an example of that.

One of the reasons that the people who were the core group for that chose that name is because

in many cases, they had been in church situations that were very hurtful and harmful.

Some of them had come from backgrounds where they frankly weren't welcome in particular churches.

They came from, I don't want to go into all the specifics, but sinful backgrounds that

didn't fit with the kind of,

what's the word I want, the culture of a particular

church.

I don't want to develop that even more, but they came with needs.

They came with problems.

The people have had problems with drug addiction, with alcoholism, with pornography.

They're having serious marriage problems.

That doesn't fit with a nice evangelical church.

In fact, can you pick up where you left off there.

When we return from our midway break?

I'm just getting going.

We can't forget where you left off there because it's very important.

Please keep in mind, folks, this is the longer break in the middle of the show because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake

City, Florida requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show because the FCC requires of them

to air their own public service announcements in order to localize geographically this program

to Lake City, Florida.

While they do that, we simultaneously air our globally heard commercials.

Please write down as much of the contact information as you possibly can for as many of our advertisers as you can

so that you can more frequently and successfully respond to our advertisers.

And so I hope that you will be patient with us and don't go away.

We are going to be right back with more of Bill Shishko.

James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

I'm very excited to announce that my longtime friend Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and I

are heading down to Atlanta, Georgia again for the G3 National Conference.

That's Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd on a theme that I have been preaching,

teaching, writing about, and defending in live public debates for most of my life, the sovereignty of God.

I'll be joined on the speaking roster by Steve Lawson, Voti Baucom, Paul Washer, Virgil Walker, Scott

Anuel, and Josh Bice, founder of G3

Ministries.

And there's more great news.

Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio can get you a 30 discount off the registration

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Go to g3min .org, that's g3min .org, and enter promo code

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Chris Arnzen and I look forward to seeing you all Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd for the G3

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Make sure you stop by the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Exhibitor booth and say hi to Chris Arnzen while

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Go to g3min .org and enter promo code G3ISIR for your

30 discount off the registration.

Fee.

It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listeners from all over the.

World.

Here's Joe Reilly, a listener in Ireland who wants you to know about a guest on the show.

He really loves hearing interviewed, Dr. Joe Moorcraft.

I'm Joe Reilly, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listener here in Atai in County Kildare, Ireland.

Going back to 2005, one of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe

Moorcraft.

If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Moorcraft and Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming,

Georgia are largely to thank since they are one of the program's largest financial supporters.

Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming is in Forsyth County, a part of the Atlanta metropolitan area.

Heritage is a thoroughly biblical church unwaveringly committed to Westminster standards and Dr. Joe

Moorcraft is the author of an eight -volume commentary on the larger catechism.

Heritage is a member of the Hanover Presbytery built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets,

Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone and tracing its roots and heritage back to the great protestant

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Heritage maintains and follows the biblical truth and principles proclaimed by the reformers, scripture alone,

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Their primary goal is the worship of the triune God that continues in eternity.

For more details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia visit heritagepresbyterianchurch

.com.

That's heritagepresbyterianchurch .com or

call 678 -954 -7831.

That's 678 -954 -7831.

If you visit, have them Joe O 'Reilly, Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listener and a toy in County Kildare,

Ireland sent

you.

If you love Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, one of the.

Best ways you can help keep the show on the air is by supporting our advertisers.

One such faithful advertiser who really believes in what Chris Arnton is doing is

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Thanks for helping to keep Iron Sharpens Iron radio on the air.

Hi, this is John Sampson, pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona.

Taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnson and the Iron Sharpens Iron podcast.

I consider Chris a true friend and a man of high integrity.

He's a skilled interviewer who's not afraid to ask the big penetrating questions while always defending the key

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I've always been happy to point people to this podcast knowing it's one of the very few safe places on the internet

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I believe this podcast needs to be heard far and wide.

This is a day of great spiritual compromise and yet God has raised Chris up for just such a time

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I'm pleased to do so and would like to ask you to prayerfully consider joining me in supporting Iron

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Would you consider sending either a one -time gift or even becoming a regular monthly partner with this ministry?

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I'm Dr. Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary.

I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love,

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It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God like the dear saints at Hope Reform Baptist

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Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Quorum, Long Island, New York that you heard about them from

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Early 2000s and what I've discovered is that the majority of Christian parents have never been biblically equipped to do

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James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

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Visit that site frequently, purchase generously, and always mention that you heard about them from Chris Orensen of Iron Sharpens

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And by the way, I am now looking at a plug, a commendation by my

guest today, Pastor Bill Shishko, for this book, Notes on Galatians, by J. Gresham Machen.

And Pastor Shishko says, Dr. Machen was a master at crystal -clear teaching and his work

on Galatians is a good model of this gift.

In a day of confused and confusing teaching on this book, Dr. Machen reminds us of the

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Before I return to Pastor Bill Shishko, I just have a couple of very important announcements to make.

First of all, folks, if you love this show and you don't want it to disappear from the airwaves, I'm urging you, please, to go to

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You can donate instantly with a debit or credit card in that fashion.

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If you want to advertise with us, whether it's your church, your parachurch ministry, your business, your private practice,

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is compatible with what I believe, you don't have to believe identically with me, but you need to be promoting something that's compatible with what I

believe, I would love to help you launch an ad campaign because we are just as much in urgent need of your advertising

dollars as we are in your donations.

So send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com and put advertising in the subject line.

Also, folks, please remember, I never want my listeners to give their own church where they are a member

less money than you're accustomed to giving that church on the Lord's Day in order to bless us with a

financial gift.

In other words, don't cut into the money that you have set aside for your own church on the Lord's Day in

order to bless us with a check.

Don't do that.

And if you're also struggling to survive and make ends meet, I don't want to add to a mountain of

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There's two things that are crystal clear in the Bible about our responsibility and stewardship over our

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Providing for this radio show is obviously not a command, but if you do love this show, you don't want it to disappear, and you

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Go to ironsherponsirenradio .com, click support, then click, click to donate now.

I also want to remind our listeners that my dear friend of many years, Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries will

be conducting a three -day conference in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and it is

on the theme, The Gospel at War, and we hope that you will not only attend, but

bring family, friends, and loved ones with you.

Keep abreast of updates on this.

We do not yet have a venue in Lancaster for this.

This is being conducted by my brand new latest advertiser, the Mid -Atlantic

Reformation Society, so if you want more details on this three -day event, March

15th, 16th, and 17th, go to midatlanticreformation .org,

midatlanticreformation .org, and you can also go to futureofchristendom .org,

futureofchristendom .org.

Last but not least, if you are not a member of a Christ -honoring, biblically faithful, theologically sound, doctrinally solid

church, no matter where on the planet Earth you live, I may be able to help you find a church that is biblically

faithful, like the Haven Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Comac, Long Island, New York, and I have helped people

in all parts of the world find churches, sometimes within just a couple of minutes from where they live.

That may be you, too, if you are without a church home, so please send me an email if that is the case to

chrisarnson at gmail .com and put, I need a church in the subject line.

That's also the email address you can send in a question to Pastor Bill Shishko today on our theme, The Church Before the

Modern Watching World, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Give us a first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

Before I go to any of those listeners who have already submitted questions, before the break, we

were talking about countercultural community, and you were specifically explaining or describing a

blueprint that you had for the Haven in Comac, Long Island,.

When you first planted this congregation.

Yeah, I don't know, Chris.

It was a blueprint.

It's a concept, but if the

church is a hospital for sinners, come on, let's just deal with it.

We come with all kinds of messes, and the church needs to demonstrate itself.

Let me give an example.

We mentioned in the antithesis and when God gives a

culture up in Romans 1, the Lord especially singles out after

saying that we're given up to worship and serve the creature more than the creator.

He deals with the issue of sexual perversion.

It's very clear in Romans chapter 1, and there's a reason for that coming right after idolatry,

and it is because we are most prone to make idols of ourselves.

Okay, so we emphasize that, but we're not pointing the finger

at people who are caught up in sexual sin, there but for the grace

of God go I, but we can't stop there.

Do we, for example, open our church facilities or our homes to minister to people?

And here's where the example comes in.

People who are converted out of a homosexual or lesbian lifestyle, they have

been part of a very closely knit community, and if

there's not a replacement community for them, beginning with families, it

will be very, very difficult for them to escape because we're made for

community.

We are made to be living sacrifices.

We're made to be a living sacrifice of individuals who present their bodies.

So our home, you know, for Christians to say my home, we open our

home to people who struggle with sexual sins.

Now you've got to be careful watching out for children.

I get that, but we in one way or another need to be opening up homes and church

facilities for alternative community.

That, Chris, is not a blueprint, but that would be an example of what we're talking about.

Using the church facility for ways to reach out in the community, it

used to be that I would say, well, a church facility should only

have in it that which is in accord with its doctrinal standard, and as I wrestle

with that, I really think that's unbiblically narrow.

I think your approach to your program, you don't want something that's explicitly contrary to what you

believe, but your advertisers don't have to agree with you about everything.

You promote books that you don't agree with, but you don't want something that is contrary to your doctrinal

standard.

Same thing with the church facility.

We open up our church facility for blood drives.

I don't know that people would even allow them to be places for voting, but there would be an example

of it to reach out to the police in your community, EMS workers in your community.

One of the opportunities that we've got that we're working on now is the church

facility at the Haven.

We're wrestling with these things, and we've only had the facility for a few months, but for people who are

in families where there's been suicide, and be real open about that.

Now, that kind of work is difficult work, but that's what the gospel

does.

The gospel comes into the areas of our deepest hurts and pain and messiness

and cleans things up.

Church before the watching world, we need to demonstrate that to others.

By the way, I do want to plug an interview that I conducted with my guest today, Pastor Bill

Shishko, a number of years ago that has been helpful to many in the Iron, Sharp,

and Zion radio audience who have contacted me over the years to let me know just how

blessed they were by Pastor Bill's interview.

That took place, well, actually, it was originally February 13th, the day

before my birthday, in 2008, and that's when you were still pastoring at the

Orthodox Presbyterian Church of Franklin Square.

So, if you type in suicide in the search engine of ironsharpandzionradio .com, you will hear

or you will see the link for the audio for that interview with Pastor Bill Shishko on suicide, and you'll also see

an interview I conducted with Dr. Ron Gleason on suicide, a Christian's response.

So, I hope that you are benefited by listening to those.

Before I go to any more of your messages that were recently

delivered at this Machen Conference Center in Virginia,

I do have Andrew from Dalton, Georgia, who has a question.

Greetings, brothers Chris and Bill.

As I consider the matter at hand today, I am concerned to remark that the town

in which I live has been growing exponentially over the last decade.

We have a few confessionally Reformed churches in the area, of which my family are members of

one.

There seems to be a resurgence of biblical orthodoxy in the area, such that we are seeing

regular growth in these churches.

We Reformed folk even managed to get a Christ is Lord billboard placed here at

the city square that Doug Wilson and company erected for buying so many of his

new book, so many copies of his new book.

And members of our church regularly go to public events to evangelize.

This is all encouraging, and yet the biggest numbers of people seem to still flock

to the mega seeker sensitive church in our area, the name of which sounds more like a gym than

a church equipped with a fully furnished concession stand.

Brother Bill, do you think that our commitment to regular faithfulness in the confessionally Reformed church and our witness

to those around us will cause these types of mega churches to diminish.

In their appeal?

Wow.

Well, I appreciate the question.

I'm thrilled you've got all these New Yorkers that are flocking out of the state of New York and

moving to Georgia and North Carolina, so I'm thrilled with what's going on there and your billboard and

so on.

That's a difficult question to answer, and I have to admit for myself as a pastor, I think one of

the things that I struggle with personally so much and others do is you try hard to

be faithful to the Word of God, to reach out, to minister to people, to show the love of Christ and our worship service

that, as you put it before, to have life and so on.

And yet you always want to do what the Lord says, and it seems that these mega

churches are just attracting droves.

So I guess I give a number of responses.

You can't compete with entertainment.

Let's be honest, in most of the mega churches, it really is a way of entertaining people, and that is

one of the idols of our culture, and we don't try to compete with it.

You can't.

That's one thing.

Number two is, and I know this from a pastor friend of mine who's a good friend with a

mega church pastor here in the island, and this man is very honest and says, yeah, we get a

lot of people that come in the front door.

We get just as many going out the back.

Where are they going?

Well, if they have a hunger for the Word of God, then hopefully they'll find a

faithful Reformed church and do it, and I think that will affect some.

So I think that's something to keep in mind.

The third is this, and this is more my speculation.

I believe, Chris, we're coming to a point in our culture where people are fed up with being

entertained.

Entertainment is a little bit like the froth on the ginger ale or

something.

It doesn't go very far.

Now our culture is facing some really, really difficult issues,

especially with this gender dysphoria thing, with issues with drugs, what has happened as a

result of the pandemic.

This is bringing some serious issues that are not going to be dealt with by warm, fuzzy

music and a motivational gospel message of 15 minutes or a message of some sort.

So I think that we are looking ahead to a time where churches, if

they are reaching out to people, they're trying to become all things to all people that by all means they might save

some.

I think we're on the cusp of a time that churches like that are going to have their hands full

with that kind of ministry.

So I'm not sure that's really answering the brother's good question, but those are at least some of my thoughts about it.

I'd like to offer some words of encouragement, and I know that I've repeated this on this

program before, so please forgive me those of you who have heard this, but I remember

a number of years ago I heard a man at a Reformed conference who had a

college campus ministry evangelizing college students, and he said, although I'm

not speaking for everyone, I'm not broad brushing here, but he said, it may surprise you to know

that young people, millennials, Generation X, Generation Z,

people who are starting to crave church life either

return to the stability of some kind of regular church attendance that

they remember as a youth, or they realize that the

world around them does not have the answers they crave.

Very often these young people do not want to attend a worship service that looks like a concert or

feels and sounds like a concert, that looks like a bait and switch where people

are pretending to provide for a congregation the world's

music and in an effort to lure them, and

the oldest daughter of the woman who led me to Christ about two years ago, when she

was living in Florida, she asked me for a recommendation of a church within 15 minutes from where she

lived because her husband, who is not a believer, did not want to drive more than 15 minutes to church.

I found through her zip code a Reformed church that I recommended to her.

She called me back about a week later and said, I hope you're not mad at me, Chris, but I'm not going back to that church because I

felt like I was at a concert.

I did not feel the awe and reverence of worship there.

And that woman, that young woman who now lives in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where I live, she is now saved, she was

baptized, and she is a very dynamic young woman, zealously professing and

declaring the gospel of sovereign grace.

So I'm thrilled to say that, but I just wanted to let our listener know that there is that hope that not

everybody and a growing number of young people are not happy or

satisfied or drawn to that whole.

Mega -church mentality.

Chris, if you let me just for a moment add to that, and I appreciate that.

You read Acts chapter 2 has been a center of gravity to me in

church life, especially at the.

You have the people that were converted on the day of Pentecost, and they gather for the

Apostles' Doctrine, which is the Word of God focused on Christ, the breaking of bread, which was the

Lord's Supper and the meal that accompanied it, the

fellowship, interestingly, and the prayers.

And it was that fellowship that was a testimony before the modern

world of that day.

People saw that, and the text continues with, and God added to their numbers,

those who are being saved.

And I am deeply convinced that in community, mega -churches don't have

community.

If they do, they do it in small groups, and I don't want to paint with too broad a brush, but people come, they

listen to the music, they get the 15 -minute devotional message, they go, that's not community.

There is no substitute for community, and I think coming off of the

compulsory lockdown where community was torpedoed, if

churches now are developing a truly inviting community, oh, I think that is a powerful

testimony apropos of what you just said to the watching world.

I think one thing that is included in this, we do need to be careful with our

music.

And here again, I don't want us to be iconoclasts in this.

The old hymns, the singing of psalms, we must have that in worship.

It's part of our history.

But when words can be changed so that they communicate to people, I mean,

here I raise mine Ebenezer.

Somebody comes in, and what on earth are you talking about?

And I have to admit, it just bothers me no end when in, I don't know about your circles,

Chris, but at least ours, you use music that's done by the Gettys, or by

Sovereign Grace Music, or by Church Works Media.

These folks have done some tremendous contemporary hymns.

And when you have people in a kind of a spastic way, so we don't do that, we only use the

Trinity Hymnal, or we only use the Trinity Psalter Hymnal.

And I say, well, wait a minute, where do you get that as the standard for what you do?

That's an example of.

Where freedom is so important.

In fact, nearly every Sunday in our church bulletin at Grace Baptist

Church of Carlisle, where we have both the Trinity Hymnal and a Psalter, but in the bulletin

nearly every Sunday, we have a Gettys song.

And sometimes I have to glance down at the bottom, because I'm thinking while I'm singing it, that this is

a treasured old hymn.

And I have to look down, oh, this is a Gettys song.

So that is interesting.

Before I go to any more listener questions, let me just say in your fourth message you spoke about the

ugliness that marks our modern culture, and that Christians must demonstrate holy and heavenly beauty.

Can you give us some examples?

Why do you believe this is so important for the church before the modern watching world?

Yeah, thank you, Chris.

That is so important.

This is not just Christians saying this.

The even in the secular world, people have drawn

attention to the ugliness of music,

that it can be so destructive and hateful.

The loss of meaning in television programs and in movies,

the ugliness of the way social media, which in many ways is anti -social media,

the way, quote -unquote, social media can be used, the lack of manners in our

culture, the treatment of human beings.

Those are some of the examples of the ugliness of culture.

The point I make there in that fourth message, when Paul says in Romans

12, he says that you might—literally, he

says that you might, by testing, approve the will of God,

that which is good and pleasing and perfect.

The will of God there is not God's decree.

The will of God is God's revealed will.

What God has revealed in the scriptures for the way we are to live is a powerful

testimony of beauty in the midst of an ugly culture.

And I used examples in there.

Basically, you can develop the Ten Commandments, not as negatives, but as positives.

But marriage, a marriage to the glory of God, is a beautiful

thing in our culture.

Just got to show it to others, singleness to the glory of God.

And I think Reformed churches and evangelical churches, I think, maybe we've made too

much of an idol of marriage.

The Apostle Paul talks about singleness, for those who can be single, as a state in which you're freer to

serve the Lord.

And the examples of that that we have in history and in the modern day are beautiful things.

The commandments, to have respect for authority, is a beautiful thing in our culture.

Respect for life is a beautiful thing.

Respect for property.

That's the whole point over against the ugliness of a culture that has ditched

God's commandments and shows its marks in that way.

As Christians, we need to be showing, again, what the good and pleasing and perfect, which actually

means mature, will of God.

And it is an example of it.

We have a very immature culture.

People think in immature ways and act in immature ways, whereas godly

standards do bring not only a beauty, but a maturity.

That's the.

Burden of that fourth message.

Now, when you mentioned the idolatry of marriage, I have to admit that even though I obviously

firmly believe in the God -breathed words of the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 7 -9, it

is better to marry than to burn with lust.

But I have seen a trend amongst Reformed pastors and churches

lately, especially, where there seems to be an unbalanced pressure

declared to young people to quickly get married.

And it seems that there is a push for them to rush into this.

And it actually concerns me a great deal.

Well, do you have any comments on.

That?

Am I off course?

Well, I have two on that, Chris.

Number one, personally, I believe if a couple's mature, I am in favor of

younger marriage.

That's a big if, because we live in an immature culture.

But it is better to marry than to burn.

But the larger point about pushing marriage, I, and I say

this as a man who's married, I mean, I had to get to the point, Chris, years, I've been married 47 years now, but I had

to get to the point about a half a century ago, where I said, Lord, I'm willing to be single to your glory,

but you're going to have to change my wiring.

And then the Lord brought Margaret along.

But Paul is so clear in there.

And it's interesting, he says, in light of the present distress, and there's all kinds of understanding of what that

is.

But clearly, this was a situation, a cultural situation that made it very

difficult for people to function in a married state.

And then he says, a person who's single is freer to serve the Lord.

I, as I said in the conference, I would like somebody to open up that

more as a single, as a married person, we can't do it.

But a single person who could say, these are ways in which I am freer to serve the

Lord, and I revel in it.

But yeah, that's an example, though, Chris, of what I just mentioned about the idolatry of marriage.

That can be what that is.

If people are gifted with singleness, cultivate it.

And your last message, which opened up some of the meaning of the mercies of God in Romans 12 .1, you gave a

pattern for speaking the gospel to our modern culture.

What's the pattern?

Do you use that in your evangelism, and how?

Yeah, yeah, thanks, Chris.

That's in my, it's not original to me.

The pattern is basically, people have a story.

I began by talking about the meaninglessness of our culture.

An example of that is the song Lost in the Universe by Jeremy Shane that I quoted.

And it's pitiful, because here's a fellow that his idea of meaning is to be on a

stage, to be esteemed as an actor, and yet he's not good enough.

And so he ends up going out, getting another job, and paying his bills is where the song goes.

But it depicts meaninglessness.

And in that culture of meaninglessness, Christians have the great

story.

It's been called the real true story.

And what is it?

It's creation.

God made all things and made them good and wonderful.

We're not basically evolved hydrogen.

We're people made in God's image, in a world that's good.

But here's the second part of the story.

There's the fall.

And developing, honestly, what the fall brought into the world.

And then there's redemption.

And that grand plan of redemption promised and accomplished in Christ and

worked out in individuals like you and me, when you, as I'm so thankful, Chris, you

extol the grace of God in your life.

That's part of the grand story of redemption.

And then, of course, there's not just redemption, but there's consummation.

But I think for practical purposes, because redemption is basically, we get a foretaste of what

eternity will be by the work of the Spirit.

I guess if I were to do it again, I just would have focused on creation, the fall, and redemption.

But that's the story that we tell people.

And again, you go back to the gospel to say, if you're going to make sense of the world,

you have to come to grips with this thing we call Christmas, the birth of Christ.

This thing we call Good Friday, the death of Christ.

This thing that we call Easter, the resurrection of Christ, and the ascension of Christ.

We've got to go back to that because human history revolves

around that.

Post -fall.

Well, we're going to our final break.

It's going to be a lot more brief than the last one.

Please, if you have questions, if you want to get in line, we do have a couple of people ahead of you.

But send in the question to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Don't go away.

We'll be back with.

Bill Shishko right after these messages.

James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

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We're now back with my guest Bill Shishko, and before I go to any of the

final listener questions, the key phrase for your last message was reality and bringing others

into it.

Can you talk about that?

Yeah, which is interesting.

Because for the last message we were kind of running out of time.

I didn't even get to what there, but it is important.

As Christians, we are dealing with reality.

The world is an Alice in Wonderland world, and we must not be

condescending.

We must not be proud.

We must not be arrogant, but we do need to be honest.

Now, the real world is a world in which people live and move and have their very being in God.

That's reality, but the latter part is important.

We are to bring others into it.

That's what evangelism is all about.

We have used whatever godly means we can to see people brought from unreality and

destruction to reality and life in Christ.

And what do you believe was the most important of your messages in the series,.

The Church Before the Modern Watching World?

Yeah, the form and freedom material, it's all important, but form and freedom is so important.

We must stick to, in our doctrine, in our practice, what the Word of

God explicitly says.

Where the Word of God does not explicitly command something and we're given

freedom, use it to reach out to others.

Again, the key text is that by all means, we

might save some.

This is a reference.

I didn't have time to read it, and I won't read it on here because I don't have time either, but if you read Charles Spurgeon's

morning and evening devotions, the morning that he has where he deals with

Mark 2 and verse 4, when they came near to him for the press,

they uncovered the roof where Jesus was, and when they'd broken it up, they let down the bed in which the

sick of the palsy, the one sick of the palsy lay.

Spurgeon has tremendous comments in there about reaching out to others, and he ends by saying, oh

Lord, make us quick to suggest methods of reaching your poor,

sin -sick ones and bold to carry them out at all hazards.

That's my.

Burden.

We have an anonymous listener who says, aren't we very often guilty of

the sin of making our churches islands unto themselves?

Not only do they sometimes have very little, if any, fellowship with churches that

share their theological convictions and confessions, but even beyond that, there seems to be a

total avoidance of those that might have some theological differences.

I'm obviously not promoting ecumenism with Roman Catholics or Eastern Orthodox or cults, but at the same

time, there are evangelicals that may be doing very important work in the kingdom, and

we should be letting them know that we support them and love them in their efforts.

With a broken.

Heart, I say yes to what the brother or sister wrote, and that's tragic

because the Lord has made us one people.

We're not talking about any more than Dr. Schaefer was talking about alliances

with unbelief and infidelity, but when we're dealing with other believers in Christ, maybe

different levels of fellowship, but yeah, we should not be islands unto ourselves.

And of course, the listener who mentioned an exception of having ecumenical

relationships with Roman Catholic churches and Eastern Orthodox churches, I'm assuming

that he is arriving at that opinion that I share with him because of the gospel.

When a church denies the gospel, we may love them.

In fact, we're called to love them, and we can have friendly relationships with those that are in

those congregations, but to actually have an ecumenical relationship is a very.

Dangerous thing.

That's the burden of Dr. Schaefer's book, The Church Before the Watching World, is that on the

one hand, we have to have observable love, but we have what he called absolute limits, and the final

authority of scripture, he's spot on with that.

And I would also, apropos of the brother or sister's question, Dr. Schaefer's little

book, The Mark of the Christian, deals with this.

It should be required reading for all Christians.

And we have somebody who actually beat me to the punch of asking you this very same question.

We have Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, who asks, I'm assuming these messages that

you've been speaking of throughout this two -hour interview are recorded somewhere.

How can we hear them?

Yeah, they're all available at the Haven site on sermonaudio

.com.

So you go to sermonaudio .com, you search for, I don't know if it's the Haven OPC, or I think you just put in

Haven, and there you're going to get the messages from the Haven at COMAC.

And if you look for this, there's actually six messages.

One is introductory, but after the introduction, those five messages develop what

you asked here.

So that would be at sermonaudio .com, look for the Haven,.

And look for Machen Conference messages.

Well, I also want to repeat your website for anybody who is interested in paying a visit

to the Haven in COMAC Long Island, or perhaps you want to refer that congregation to somebody

that you know and love who does live in the COMAC area.

It's thehavenli .com, thehavenli .com.

Do you have about a minute of summary that you could provide.

For our listeners today?

We've got to stick to biblical orthodoxy.

We have to stick with it adamantly in our culture and not resist.

At the same time, we've got to be able to take those truths that we hold and hold dear and must

never give up and do every single thing we can to cause those truths to

intersect with a culture that must hear them if it's going to be delivered from the.

Wrath to come.

Amen.

Pastor Bill, I look forward to many more opportunities, as many more as our will allow in his

good providence, for you to return to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and I really love you, brother.

I can't say that enough, and please extend my love to your lovely bride, Margaret, and thank her

again for me for the wonderful, warm hospitality I've received.

Visiting the Haven in COMAC.

Thanks, Chris.

You're a very special brother.

We love you,.

And we're so thankful for Iron Sharpens Iron.

Press on.

Thank you, and I want to remind our listeners to listen tomorrow.

That's Wednesday, June 14th, as my guest will be Joel Saint, pastor of Independence Reform Bible

Church of Morgantown, Pennsylvania, and chairman of our new sponsors on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Mid

-Atlantic Reformation Society.

He's going to be dealing with the theme, Calling Homosexuals to Repentance as an Act of Love, and I want to thank

everybody who listened today, especially those who took the time to write in questions.

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.