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

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

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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. There's 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, 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? 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 the end.

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. 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, brought it up to date.

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

So 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 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, and 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 80s 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 you'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?

I believe, if I'm not mistaken, Chris, I think this year is the 100th 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 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. 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. 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. 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 were 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.

You know, 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 of Reformed ghetto, which we have to stop that mentality of Reformed ghettos.

And well, the theme that we have today, as you already 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.

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 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 and women the same.

And then he says, and receiving in themselves the due penalty of their 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, 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 at the very end of each message,

I had a key word, 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. I mean, 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. I've never even experienced that kind of phenomenon before where we're supposed to instantly believe it.

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 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 chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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Don't go away. We'll be right back with Bill Shishko after these messages from our sponsors. Again, yeah.

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We are now back with my dear friend Pastor Bill Szysko 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, 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? Right. 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 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.

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 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? What are specific elements of orthodoxy that you developed in the message?

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 a

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

Orthodox Presbyterian Church. And my 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 called him 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 shouldn't 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, 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? Are they ignoring the church? 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 it 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 is, was the impact of the late Dr. Tim Keller. He had, 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 to 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 I am, 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 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.

Love it. 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 the phrase, because I used it in it, but actually,

Dr. Schaefer did it as well. One thing I don't agree with Dr.

Schaefer, but when he would use the language revolutionary Christianity, 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. 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? Yeah, I'm just getting going.

Yes, 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

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Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Quorum, Long Island, New York that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron I've been a biblical family counselor since the early 2000s and what

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

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Keep abreast of updates on this. We do not yet have a venue in Lancaster for this.

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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 counter -cultural 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 more of 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 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. 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 a 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 for Christians to say, 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've wrestled 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. When we open up our church facility for blood drives, for 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 a suicide and being 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.

And 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, and 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 in our worship service, 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, you know, the froth on a 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 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 megachurch mentality.

Chris, if you'll 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

Haven. You have the people that were converted on the day of Pentecost, and they gather for the breaking of bread, 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 were being saved.

And I am deeply convinced that in community, megachurches 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 has 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. 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.

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.

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. 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, the good and pleasing and perfect, which actually means mature, will of God.

And it gives 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.

Do you have any comments on that? Am I off base? 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, and I say this as a man who's married,

I had to get to the point, Chris, I've been married 47 years now, but I had to get to the point about 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 ward 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. As I said in the conference,

I would like somebody to open up that more 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, thanks, Chris. 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 the way 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 Don't go away. We'll be back with Bill Shishko right after these messages.

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

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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 it 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.

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. Schaeffer was talking about alliances with unbelief and infidelity, but when we're dealing with other believers in Christ, there seems to be 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. Schaeffer'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. Schaeffer'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, it's the Haven OPC, or I think you just put in the 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.

Pastor Bill, I look forward to many more opportunities, as many more as our Lord will allow in His good providence for you to return to Iron Trip and Zion 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 14, as my guest will be Joel St., pastor of Independence Reformed 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 is 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