December 22, 2020 Show with John Samson on “Behold, the Virgin Will Conceive”

Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, 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 Arnzen. 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 Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 22nd day of December, 2020, and I'm always thrilled to have back as a returning guest on this program, my very dear friend,

John Sampson. He is a former Word of Faith Pentecostal pastor and TBN televangelist and talk show host who converted by the grace and mercy of God to Reformed Baptist theology and cessationist pneumatology.

He's also an author and pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona and blogger at AffectualGrace .com.

Today we are going to be addressing a theme, a very timely theme for the upcoming celebration of the conception and birth of Christ.

Behold, the Virgin will conceive, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor John Sampson.

Thank you, Chris. It's always a delight to ever talk to you and to be on your show as well, and hopefully we'll have some great things to talk about.

I'm sure we do. Amen. And if anybody wants to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is

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

Please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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

Let's say you are in a church or a religion that denies one of the pillar doctrines of Christendom, that is the virgin conception and birth of Jesus Christ, and perhaps you're being enlightened by biblical truth over this and you're not ready to make it public, so you'd rather remain anonymous right now.

If it's something like that, we understand that you'd want to remain anonymous, but if it's just a general question on theology, please give us at least your first name, your country of residence.

And before we go into our theme today, Behold the Virgin Will Conceive, if you could let our listeners know about King's Church in Peoria, Arizona.

Yeah, King's Church is really an ordinary church, we want to just be a biblical church holding to the central truths of the gospel, and it started in a home, and we're actually now meeting in a meeting place that is a

Seventh -day Adventist facility. They meet there on a Saturday, of course, and it's a beautiful facility, and we found out that we're not the first to kind of do that, especially on the

East Coast, for well over a hundred years there's been churches that have done that, and we're meeting there right now.

We're hoping to outgrow it, but COVID is affecting everybody just at the moment. Well, I just strongly advise you not to have pig roasts in the parking lot there, because the

Seventh -day Adventists are known for being vegetarian. And by the way... If you see a pig drawing a cartload of sausages, it's drawing its own conclusion.

But, you know, I can say firsthand that although I have my very strong theological differences with the

Seventh -day Adventists, I do believe that there are true believers among them. In fact, one of my favorite interviews that I have had was with a former

Seventh -day Adventist theologian, a very well -known

Seventh -day Adventist theologian, and he had been excommunicated, actually, by the main denominational headquarters because of his steadfast opposition to a doctrine called the investigative judgment.

And although he afterward, even after being excommunicated, he basically adhered to many of the other teachings of Seventh -day

Adventism. His name was Desmond Ford, Dr. Desmond Ford, who is now in heaven. He went home to be with the

Lord, I can't remember how long ago, but it wasn't that long ago, maybe about a year ago. But I have had firsthand experience, because I used to have a friend, a local friend, and perhaps he's even listening,

Mike Curzon, a Jewish believer who was a Seventh -day Adventist pastor on Long Island, and I had developed a friendship with him and used to visit his congregation from time to time when they had fellowship meals, and it was very hard for me to turn down a free meal anywhere.

And they made this extraordinary vegetarian food that sometimes you wouldn't even know it wasn't real meat they were using in their meatloaf and other things.

But anyway, that's not what we're talking about today. I just thought I'd throw that in there. So also tell us about Effectual Grace, your blog at effectualgrace .com.

Yeah, over the years I've tried to cover many subjects and make it hopefully a useful resource for people, either myself writing articles or linking to other articles.

And if you go on the right -hand side of the page, you'll see there's a lengthy list of subjects that are addressed there, and maybe 60%, maybe,

I don't know, I've never looked it up, but 60 % are my own material, but other times I'm just saying, this is a great article, go read it.

So hopefully it can be a good resource for people. Great. That's effectualgrace .com,

E -F -F -E -C -T -U -A -L, grace .com. And before we go into the theme also, you are a living reminder, because of your testimony, that we have to be very careful as believers who, especially perhaps if we are from a theologically reformed or even fundamentalist background, a strong cessationist background, we have to be very careful not to write off as unredeemable those folks that we hear about and meet and know who are in one of the worst heresies known to modern

Christendom, the Word of Faith Pentecostal movement. It is a very dangerous and damning movement.

But I think the two extreme errors that Christians can often fall into are, number one, the much more dangerous, infinitely more dangerous error of embracing that heresy, but the other end of the spectrum that is equally, well not equally dangerous, but it is dangerous and sad, is that we may all too often write off the folks that we know in that movement as,

I'm not even going to waste my breath evangelizing them, and I'm just going to ignore them or just angrily rebuke them for everything they say, teach, and believe.

Those are two opposite errors, but they're both unfortunate and serious errors, aren't they?

Absolutely, and you hit the nail on the head, and we need to be kind and gracious even as we stand for truth.

And sometimes, even oftentimes, there's a price to pay to stand for truth, but the

Bible says, buy the truth and sell it not. How much is the truth worth? It's worth our souls.

And these are vital, important doctrines that we're talking about when we're talking about those themes.

I've got as many people in there. I'm one of them, like you say. And it's sad when

I've had conversations with former friends who just write me off because they think

I've lost something, whereas I'm thanking God for deliverance from something. But I've also had people who've literally flown from another state just to attend on a

Sunday just to shake my hand and say, thank you, John. And with tears in their eyes, they said,

God used a broadcast you did, something you wrote, and that was the start of a journey.

It's usually not a three -minute journey or a three -week journey, but over time, God uses the truth to set people free, and it is a massive deception.

And so we need to be praying for them like we would for those in a lost state in any kind of religion.

Amen. And if anybody, after this live program is over, wants to hear

Pastor John Sampson's testimony of how he was delivered out of the

Word of Faith heresy, after even being a prominent figure in that heresy, not just your average member, but a pastor and a

TBN talk show host in that movement, you can go to www .IronSharpensIronRadio

.com and click on the Podcast Past Shows section.

And if you type in the search engine, S -A -M -S -O -N,

John's last name, S -A -M -S -O -N, you will get all of his interviews, including that interview where he gave his testimony of how he came to embrace the true biblical gospel of God's sovereign grace and has become...

One of those was a joint interview, although he spoke rightfully more than I did, of both he and myself,

Kosti Hinn, who came out of that. That was one of the things we did together.

Benny Hinn's nephew, who is now a Reformed Baptist pastor and a cessationist, and very boldly speaks out, unwaveringly, against his uncle's theology and against that whole movement as not only heretical, but even fraudulent in the sense that there are knowing deceivers, not just those folks that are deceived themselves, but knowing charlatans like his uncle in that movement.

I was one of the pastors who, just to show how deeply I was involved, I was one of the pastors who welcomed

Benny Hinn, shook his hand on stage, one of the pastors that you see at the crusade, he came to Phoenix, and I couldn't have been more involved than what

I was. Wow. Well, we are so glad that we may now count you among the truly biblically sound and faithful shepherds out there, having come, by God's grace and mercy, to renounce and denounce and repent from that wicked heresy and also to embrace the truths of biblical

Christianity and specifically Reformed theology. Obviously, I don't need to ask you why you chose

Matthew 1, verse 23 as your theme today, since we are very close to Christmas.

But behold, the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they shall name him

Immanuel, which translated means God with us. Now, just out of curiosity,

I'm wondering if you have ever heard the Jewish refutation of the prophecy of this in the

Old Testament in Isaiah, where you have rabbis and Jewish apologists write this off as not having the significance that Christians adhere to it.

The Jews, if they are those that reject Christianity, that is, because obviously there are

Jewish people who are Christians, but the Jews that reject Christianity will say, well, this prophecy in Isaiah really is just saying that a young girl will conceive.

But isn't that nonsensical? Even though I understand that in the Hebrew that is an option as far as the definition of the word used, but it is absurd to view this as a prophecy because teenage girls in that period of time routinely, in fact, most often were those that were conceiving and having babies and getting married.

Of course, not in that order. They were getting married first. Even Mary herself, the mother of Jesus, was likely a very young teenager when she was betrothed to Joseph and conceived by the

Holy Spirit. But isn't that a nonsensical way of trying to write that off by just saying that means a young woman?

Yeah, it wouldn't be much of a sign, would it, if a young maiden gave birth to a child.

It's interesting when Matthew, who is obviously Jewish, writing to a Jewish audience in his

Gospel, and he would have used the Septuagint, which scholars would point out is the

Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, and when he comes along in Matthew and relates the

Gospel, he puts it in early, he doesn't sneak it in at the end. This is definitional as a doctrine as to who

Christ is, and he's making the case for Jesus as Messiah. And he starts in the first chapter with this virgin birth, quoting

Isaiah 714, Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son. And the Hebrew word is

Alma. There's a semantic range, it could mean a number of things, and that's where there's a lot of debate.

But when Matthew comes along, he nails it and says, this is a virgin. And that is how we start

Matthew's Gospel. I'd also like you to say, I think a case could be made that the greatest interviewer of our generation, at least in terms of prominence, has been

Larry King. And I remember, he's obviously over the decades, his guests have been a who's who of famous people, modern history.

If you had a list, you'd be very impressed, which has made him famous for interviewing famous people.

But one day, it was as if the scenario was turned, and he was himself interviewed, and was asked this intriguing question.

It's kind of an amazing question, Chris. If you could have interviewed anyone in history, who would it be?

And his response was really surprising. He's a Jew, of course.

And he said, in an instant, it didn't take three seconds, in an instant, he said, Jesus of Nazareth. And the interviewer then said, now, what would you have asked him?

And again, very quickly, he said, I would like to ask him, if indeed he was born of a virgin.

Because the answer to that question would define history. Wow. Yeah, I was always impressed with Larry King's interviews with John MacArthur, and other key

Christian figures that were biblically sound, and even the challenging questions that he, on occasion, asked those that were heretical, like Joel Osteen.

And quite fascinating, to my knowledge. And fortunately,

I don't believe he has come to the Christian faith. In fact, he is married to a

Mormon. And unfortunately, when Larry King asked

Billy Graham, the late Billy Graham, what do you think of the Mormons?

Billy Graham said, I have no problem with those people. Now, that was an atrocious answer given by one of the key figures in the world in 20th century history that is viewed as the greatest spokesperson for the

Christian faith of the modern era. What a tragedy that he answered that way.

Yeah, by all accounts, I'm sure you know, there's a difference between universalism and inclusivism.

Universalism is the idea that everybody is going to be saved. Inclusivism is a form of that that says they're going to be saved by Jesus, even if they don't know it.

They might be worshipping Allah of Islam.

They might be caught up in some deceptive thing, but they'll be saved by Jesus. Christians get there quicker in the sense that they find out exactly who it is that saves.

And I say that because I think that is it. The evidence seems to lean towards that's where Billy Graham either ended up or was for a couple of decades before he died.

Yes, if anybody is doubting the validity of what John just said, all you need to do is go to YouTube and type in Billy Graham's interview with Robert Shuler and that will come up where Billy Graham is basically giving the definition, although he never called it inclusivism, he is defining his beliefs according to the way inclusivism is defined, that Jesus Christ is the only savior, but you don't have to know that to be saved.

And I think that there are inclusivists, and Billy Graham may have been one of them, that would not go to the extent of universalists that is saying everybody is saved.

I think that Billy Graham did believe that there was a hell of some kind, but some universalists, full -blown universalists even believe

Satan is going to be in heaven after being saved. Yes, it really tarnishes what was an amazing ministry.

And when you heard him preach as I did,

I went to meetings in England in the 80s, and you would not have picked up what we now pick up later on in his ministry.

Did he believe it all as he did in the end? Then I don't know, but he preached a strong gospel message.

So, yeah, it's a warning to us all even as we would want to give him amazing respect that would be this little asterisk of oh, gosh, where was he on this?

This is really sad and disappointing. Well, why is this truth such a vital pillar truth of Christianity?

There are people that are still upheld and revered as even among the greatest of Christians that have ever lived, including

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who, although there have been arguments made by his defenders that he, in their opinion, came to return to the biblical

Christianity of his childhood, his father was much more of a fundamentalist

Baptist pastor, apparently, and there are those among his defenders that believe that Dr.

King, after wallowing for years in an apostate, liberal, theological world, that he did return to the

God of his childhood, as it were, to biblical Christianity, and therefore a biblical understanding of Christ.

But he is very well known, well, actually he's not very well known in this regard, but he's well known amongst his critics,

I should say, as having written that he did not believe in the virgin birth of Christ, and there are some who know that, and likely these are people who either agree with that or are just lost, who have a veneer of Christianity, they are nominal

Christians, but there are those that revere him even knowing that as a great example of Christianity and a hero of the

Christian faith. Now, can you be both? Isn't this a much more vital issue than many have realized?

I believe so. It goes to the core of who Jesus is. It also goes to the core of what the

Bible teaches. Both Luke and Matthew start off their

Gospel with this affirmation of the virgin birth. I'm looking at Matthew 1 .18.

Now, the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. And he goes on to speak of the

Lord appearing to Joseph, and the virgin promise is made there, and Luke is similar in speaking of this.

But the stakes are high, because if Jesus wasn't born of a virgin, then he's just like us, but much worse than that.

He's born in illegitimacy. The horrible word that is used is bastard.

And that's the choice. Son of God or bastard. It's hard to say that out loud, but that's the choice.

If he's not born of a virgin, he's born of Larry or Henry or some

Jewish guy in the town where Mary was. And this is big, big stuff.

He's not suitable to be the divine Son of God as the innocent one if he's born as a result of sin on Mary's part, and whoever the father was.

Now, one thing... In fact, I'm going to go to our first break. I didn't realize how quickly time had vanished.

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

chrisarnson at gmail .com And again, please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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Thank you. Welcome back. This is Chris Arms, your host of Iron Carpenter Iron Radio.

If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with a little bit less than 90 minutes to go is

Pastor John Sampson of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona. He is also an author and one of my favorite guests to have on this program.

And we are discussing that vital pillar doctrine and historical event,

Behold, the Virgin Will Conceive. And obviously that is in reference to the conception of our

Lord, God, Savior, and King, Jesus Christ, in the womb of his mother, Mary, not by an earthly father, but by the

Holy Spirit himself. And if you have questions of your own, our email address is chrisarmson at gmail .com.

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

USA. First, I'd just like to read a commendation that we got for you by email.

Chris, you have a great guest in John Sampson whose passion for truth is one to emulate.

And this comes from none other than John Sampson. No, that's actually from Greg in Buckeye, Arizona.

I guess not only Ohioans are Buckeyes, but that's

Greg from Buckeye, Arizona. And as far as an actual question, we got

Grady, one of our faithful listeners, who's also a very faithful and generous financial supporter of this program.

Grady from Ashboro, North Carolina. Greetings, brothers. Does any of the prosperity false teachers use this or any of the other basic tenets of the faith to deceive their followers into believing they're preaching the truth?

If so, what other tenets of the faith do they use? I guess what he's asking, it seems, is do they believe in the virgin birth of Christ, and does that make it even more confusing when they have such a heretical view on other things?

That's a good question. I think in the main they do. It's the old adage, you know, if you're going to deceive someone with a hot dog, you give them the hot dog.

It's what else is in the hot dog that's the problem. And so there's many things they would affirm.

And my understanding is just about everybody in that realm would affirm the virgin birth, but it's other things that bring them into disrepute as to essential doctrines of the faith.

Well, thank you, Grady, and I hope you have a blessed Christmas with you and your loved ones in Ashboro, North Carolina.

Well, if you could continue why this is such a vital teaching.

Yeah, and there's a lot to say as to the why. You know, many churches, whatever the denomination, and that's the point of it, would affirm the historic creeds of the

Church, the Apostles' Creed, for example, the Nicene Creed. I have in front of me a quote from both of them.

In the Nicene Creed, it reads, Who for us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven and became incarnate by the

Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and was made man. That's from 325

A .D. The Apostles' Creed, which was not written by the apostles as such, but would be that which the apostles would affirm, written obviously after their time with the apostles, but only shortly, it reads this way,

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the

Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. So in both of those ancient creeds, there's this confession of the virgin birth.

And I wonder, do we really believe that? Because it's an amazing claim. It's a unique claim.

God became a man. The eternal Word became flesh. And if you and I think through the difference between the virgin birth of Christ and his resurrection, both are absolutely supernatural events.

It's not natural for a virgin to have a child. It's not natural for someone who's dead to come alive again.

And in both cases, we're claiming the supernatural. Christianity is spectacularly supernatural, or it's nothing.

There's nothing in between. And we can make a defense for the resurrection. There's many books out there that would speak of a historical defense.

Many eyewitnesses saw Jesus die and also saw him come back from the dead.

But no one's around. There's no eyewitnesses that can attest as to how exactly

Mary became pregnant. That's because it's a private event. And atheists obviously start off with saying it's impossible, biologically, for a virgin to become pregnant.

But that's the point of a miracle. If there's a God, or we would say since there's a

God who made everything, he can intervene in creation at any time.

The other thing we're dealing with is what I would call chronological snobbery.

We tend to look down on people from former generations. We think because we've got satellites and cell phones, we're more advanced than folk who came before.

And that's especially true as far back as 2 ,000 years from now. We tend to think that people were just backwards back then.

That people just didn't know what we knew. Well, they don't know. That's certainly true in some measure.

But people in the ancient world knew that you don't have conception without the physical relationship.

And that's what we read in our Bible about Joseph. He had to have an angel tell him what was going on because he was going to put her away privately.

He was betrothed to Mary and was learning of her pregnancy, realizing he wasn't the father and was not going to go through with the marriage.

And in that scenario in that century in Israel, it was the equivalent of divorce.

But he was not going to publicly berate her or shame her. And he took an angelic vision.

Again, do we believe that? Do we believe that God sent an angel to stop a divorce happening because he had intervened in the womb of Mary?

That's what we're claiming. We're claiming divine intervention and an angelic announcement.

Otherwise, Joseph's not going through with this wedding. And so there's a lot on the line.

And one of the things I want to just affirm, when we talk about these creeds, people say, well, that's not scripture.

Well, these are faithful, we believe, summaries of scriptural doctrine.

If someone comes to you and says, tell me what you believe as a Christian, you say, I believe what the

Bible reveals. Well, most people haven't got about 75 hours handy to just listen to the

Bible being read in Genesis to Revelation. They need a summary. And that's what these creeds do in a minute and a half, two minutes, three minutes.

Summarize the Christian faith. And these are what, historically, all

Christians, no matter what title is on the door of the church they might attend, they affirm these things.

I remember, Chris, one of the scariest moments of my life was driving a car, trying to navigate a very, very narrow road around a high mountain in the

Swiss Alps, you know, the high mountains of Switzerland. And there was this rickety white guardrail.

And that told all drivers where the edge of the roadway was. And it really had a function to tell us where solid ground ended and where beyond that little rickety guardrail, certain death awaited.

I'm sure if I stopped and looked over, I could see cars where people had been abandoned because they died there and no one could reach them.

But the guardrail, the point of this is the guardrail had no real power to stop a car. It was not reinforced.

There was no other material added to it to stop a vehicle if it was going to go over it.

That little thing couldn't stop it. Even this very moment, this today, as well as for decades, as rickety as that guardrail was, it continues to serve all those drivers maneuvering around the mountain there for the simple reason that's where the earth is that you can drive on, and the guardrail tells you where the end of that is.

And to dismiss that guardrail would mean certain death. I use that as an analogy to say these historic creeds and confessions of the church, while they're not infallible, they're not as lofty as the inspired

Word of God, they're immensely helpful. And because the Holy Spirit has been with His people as Jesus promised,

He would lead His people into all truth, it's very, very arrogant on our part to say,

I don't need to know what Christians have believed through the centuries. It means nothing. It's just me and my

Bible. There's an independent spirit with that, there's a haughtiness, a pride with that, and humility says, before I smash through that guardrail, let me try and find out why they thought this was what the

Bible taught. And that takes humility. And I would just caution our listeners, before you throw this out, because it's not normal to have virgin births, and that's why there aren't two of them, the claim of Christianity is that there was one of them.

And this Jesus is different, and everyone knew it. And one of the things that I think is just a powerful testimony in the early churches,

I'm sure that the half -brothers of Jesus, growing up, they had the same mother, different father, growing up around Jesus and Mary and Joseph, had heard the story of the conception, but not all the family believed it.

We're specifically told that in the Gospels. But they did after the resurrection.

And James became the leader of the church in Jerusalem, and wrote the book of James, and Jude became a believer also, and wrote the book of Jude.

Here's the thing, they knew whether the story was true or not. They might have heard it from their mother all their life, but they didn't believe it.

They weren't these gullible people in the first century, because they were from the first century.

But the resurrection changed everything. And if we believe Jesus rose from the dead, which again is an essential of a faith, this same

Jesus has the claim of being virgin -born from the very same source, the

Gospels. And there we go, it's that, it's at stake.

If we believe in a God who can do the miraculous and raise Jesus from the dead,

He can intervene in bringing life in the womb where there was no physical relationship.

He overshadowed in the person of the Holy Spirit the virgin's womb and life came by way of miracle.

We have, let's see, we have Christian in South Central Pennsylvania.

And Christian says that my Roman Catholic family and friends will most often seek to show and highlight

Mary's role in salvation that they claim is a very significant and high role by pointing to the visitation of the angel

Gabriel to Mary that we read in Luke chapter 1. They will say that salvation actually hinged on Mary's decision of agreeing to have

Jesus conceived in her womb. Because if she had rejected this, she would have had denied salvation to all whom would be saved.

And therefore, we owe a great deal of our salvation to Mary, because without her agreeing to this, all would be lost and doomed forever.

How do we respond to the Roman Catholic explanation of this that exalts Mary to a co -redemptrix, as it were, which is co -redeemer?

And we will have you answer that when we come back. In fact, when we come back from our midway break,

I'll even read the text. So if anybody else wants to join us with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com

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

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

And keep in mind, folks, this is the longer than normal break that we have 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 so that they can obey the

FCC by localizing this program to Lake City, Florida through their own public service announcements and other things that they air that are local.

And while they do that, we air our globally heard commercials. So please use this time wisely and write down as much of the information as you can provided by our advertisers so that you can more frequently and successfully patronize our advertisers.

And that will subsequently likely convince them to remain our advertisers, which will mean that we will remain on the air for a longer future,

God willing, because our advertisers are happy. So please do that for us.

Write down as much of the information as you can that our advertisers provide and then respond to our advertisers with that information.

And also send in your question to John Sampson on Behold the Virgin Will Conceive, chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away, God willing. We're going to be right back right after these messages from our sponsors.

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When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

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Hi, I'm Buzz Taylor, frequent co -host with Chris Ironson on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island, New York that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said Give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read.

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publishes at least two books by my guest today, John Sampson.

The first is Twelve Whatabouts Answering Common Objections Concerning God's Sovereignty and Election.

And the other is The Five Solas. And John, if you could, why don't you tell us first of all about the

Twelve Whatabouts. Yeah, the Twelve Whatabouts are basically the twelve most frequent common objections

I came across as now teaching Reformed faith and divine sovereignty in election.

What about John 3 .16? What about 2 Peter 3 .9? What about the love of God? What about loved lost ones?

All of these kind of questions that I had to work through in my own heart and really what was a series of answering questions that people started to ask me,

John Hendricks of Monogism .com said, you've got enough there to write a book.

And I said, really? He says, yeah, go work on it. So I did and he wrote the foreword for that.

Well, praise God. And the other one is The Five Solas, Standing Together Alone.

And there is also a Spanish version of this, in addition to an English version. Tell us about that.

Yeah, there's a lot of great material on the Five Solas of the Reformation, which really is the centerpiece of the

Gospel. God justifies us based on the sure foundation of Scripture alone, by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, all to the glory of God alone.

And what I was finding was I was giving some, what I thought was outstanding material, still do, still believe, outstanding material of people, two or three hundred page books on the

Five Solas. And for many that's all they needed. They were away.

They were grounded very, very quickly for this. It was too big of a read for them. We're not much of a reading generation.

Generations before read a lot more. So I thought, you know, it would be great if someone could summarize these

Five Solas in what would take just about an hour, an hour and a half to read. So I set about the task of summarizing the main points of those

Five Solas in that kind of time frame. And I was really encouraged by the reaction and one of the last commendations

Dr. R .C. Sproul gave was a personal letter to me thanking me for the book, saying you've really crystallized the

Five Solas. That was so good of me when I received this commendation like that. Yeah, it's in Spanish.

I'm told it's an accurate translation but I've no idea. And I would highly doubt that it is an accurate translation since I am the one that translated it.

He's using pure gibberish that is not actually the Spanish language. I just couldn't,

I couldn't, I couldn't There's one gentleman who came it's called Cinco Solas for Five Solas and there's a gentleman who came to the church and bought four of them and so I said so you want

Cuatro Cinco Solas? Well, the other funny thing

I wanted to mention is that and I know I've said this before but I just, I crack up to myself every time

I hear the Solid -Ground -Books .com

commercial because it features my guest today, John Sampson, as the voice of Charles Adams Spurgeon and I can never forget in this studio years ago when we first relaunched the program from Pennsylvania and I had a friend of mine a

South Carolinian in the studio, a pastor who was here right next to me in the studio and off the air when he heard that commercial he said that is the fakest

English accent I've ever heard in my life I said, this individual that you are mocking actually is a genuine authentic Englishman Yeah, there's a flurry of accents over in England, you can go 20 miles in one direction and hear completely different accents so my guess is he's been around some accents and not around where I'm from and it is the real thing except the

English think that I'm sounding a little bit way too much more American than English and the

Americans are sure I just got off the plane from England, so I call it myself as having a mid -Atlantic accent now since we relaunched in 2015 after relocating to Pennsylvania and we would not exist without their financial support barring a miracle from God they are that vital to our success and our existence so please try to patronize and purchase books as frequently as you can and as generously as you can from solid -ground -books .com

always mention that you heard about them and before we return to John I just want to remind you that we are in urgent need of your donations to continue existing here on this program in fact

I failed to do something in the beginning of the program that I wanted to say and I just slipped my mind but I want to thank my very dear friends

Pastor Bill Shishko of the Haven Orthodox Presbyterian Church currently meeting in Bohemia, Long Island, New York and also my dear friend of many years

Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries who filled in for me yesterday if you heard the program they hosted the program, they weren't guests they were hosting the program in my absence and they conducted a fundraiser throughout the program and I want to thank them from the depths of my heart for the very urgently needed money that they helped to raise during that broadcast and I want to thank you who are listening who may be among those generous supporters who pledged money to help

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.com From Luke Chapter 1, and we have, let me see where I should start here.

I'll start at verse 26. Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee called

Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the descendants of David.

And the virgin's name was Mary. And coming in, he said to her, Greetings, favored one, the

Lord is with you. But she was very perplexed at this statement, and kept pondering what kind of salutation this was.

The angel said to her, ìDo not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.

And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him

Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the

Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David. And he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will have no end.

Mary said to the angel, ìHow can this be, since I am a virgin ?î The angel answered and said to her, ìThe

Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you, and for that reason the holy child shall be called the

Son of God. And behold, even your relative Elizabeth has also conceived a son in her old age, and she who was called barren is now in her sixth month.

For nothing will be impossible with God. And Mary said, ìBehold, the bondslave of the

Lord may be done to me according to your word .î And the angel departed from her .î

Now the listener was saying, and the listener was very accurate, that Roman Catholics will point to this as a bolster to their belief, as a proof to their belief, that Mary is a co -redemptrix, because without her approval, without her giving permission, she would not have conceived

Jesus in her womb, and therefore the whole plan of salvation would have been thwarted.

But isnít it true, John, that thereís nowhere in this text that Mary gave permission to anything.

The angel was prophesying to her and declaring to her the absolute truth of this essential role she had in bringing the physical

Jesus into the world. Obviously Jesus Christ, not by that name, but Jesus, the second person of the

Trinity, had always existed as a part of the Godhead before his conception in Maryís womb, but she was definitely a central role, played a central role, in bringing

Jesus into the world as far as a human. But they will claim that the whole plan of salvation would have been thwarted without her approval.

But she didnít approve, or should I say, give her permission to do anything here, did she?

No. She was simply the humble servant of the Lord. The way

I would describe it, without taking 45 minutes to give a kind of thoroughly satisfactory answer is, you really have to have

Roman Catholic beliefs in your head, and basically have those kind of spectacles on to see all that in the text.

If you and I just remove Roman Catholic spectacles and just look at the text, we see a humble servant of the

Lord, we see someone who says, ìLet it be to me according to your word .î

The Roman Catholics take that as the divine fiat. God was waiting for her to say, ìLet it be to me .î

It was just as much a fiat, a spoken declaration of pronouncement there in Luke 1 as we have in Genesis 1, where God says, ìLet there be light .î

So that by her saying, ìLet there be according to your word, let it be to me according to your word, let it be ,î it was that kind of fiat, a spoken thing that caused the birth to take place.

All of that is reading into the text. Yeah, because there was never a question or a request being made of her.

Right. It was, ìI'm the servant of the Lord, let it be to me according to what you've said ,î and the angel departed.

You have to have those kind of spectacles on to see this massive skyscraper doctrine of Mary as a co -redeemer to see that in the text.

And the angel never said, ìWill you do this ?î Exactly. Exactly.

But she said, ìI'm all in, whatever the Lord wants of me .î

That's it. And later on, to skip down just a few verses, 46, Mary said, ìMy soul magnifies the

Lord, my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior .î She was someone who was in need of redemption herself.

She was not playing a role in redemption. Yes, and in fact, I'm sorry. Go ahead. No, no,

I don't want you to lose your place, so go ahead. Yeah, no, it's, we've got to walk a fine line because we should honor

Mary as the mother of our Lord. In fact, this might be new to many people.

I remember being floored when I first heard this in terms of history, but it's historically true.

The phrase ìMother of God ,î which is theotokos in Greek, was actually something that Protestants could affirm, because it means something regarding Christ.

It's a Christological, Christological title, that Mary is the one in whom, in her womb was

God. It was a title of Christ, that Mary is the mother of God, emphasis on the one in her womb was

God, rather than she's the mother of God, it's the mother of God. And so, she had this amazing role to play, we should honor her as the

Scriptures honor her, but after the early events of Acts, where she was a participant in the early church, was there on the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2, she's never mentioned, and in fact, the

Apostle Paul, who's given the revelation of the Gospel as no other Apostle, I would say, in the

New Testament, in terms of clarity, he never mentions her, not once. She's never brought into the

Book of Romans, she's never, you never read of her. In fact, Paul is explicit, 1

Timothy 2, 5, to say, there's one God, we're monotheists, there's one

God, and how many mediators? Not two, not thirty -two, one mediator between God and man, the man,

Christ Jesus. So Paul was very specific, not only not mentioning her, but saying, there's an exclusivity as to redeemers in the

New Testament, there's only one, Mary, while she is honored for her role as the mother of our

Lord, was never to be honored as a co -redeemer.

Yes, that is, as much as we should love and respect and honor

Mary as we should love, honor, and respect any great

Christian of the faith, it is absolute heresy, dangerous heresy, to exalt her to a co -redemptrix, or actually speak of her, as Roman Catholics do, as many do anyway, that salvation hinged upon her will, upon her free will to accept or reject this alleged request being made of her, and as we've already said, there was no request, it was a declaration, it was a prophecy.

Yes, very true, and certainly no one in the New Testament prays to her, no one.

In fact, I don't believe she hears those prayers, because she would be troubled by the events on earth, and she's in heavenly bliss, because she is saved by the one she carried, the

Lord himself, and her felicity, her blessedness in the heavens is not corrupted by 4 ,300 requests coming every hour.

She has not heard those prayers, she does not. There's one God and one mediator, we're to pray to the

Father in the name of Jesus, and it's actually an attack on the Lord himself to say,

God the Father is a bit harsh, Jesus, he's man, he's more like us than others, but he's

God too, better to go to Mary, and she'll have a word with him, because he can't resist his mother.

None of that is biblical, in fact, it's not only not biblical, it's anti -biblical, and it's an affront and blasphemy on the person of the

Lord Jesus Christ. Bobby in Hartsdale, New York asks, why was the

Incarnation actually required of God, who can do anything, in order to redeem his people from our sins?

Great question. I think the scripture is very clear that somehow, very mysteriously, but certainly truthfully, our

Lord Jesus was born as a descendant of Adam, without the sinful nature of Adam.

And exactly how that took place, we're not given specific scripture, but simply the declaration of the

Incarnation, the virgin birth, allowed God the amazing redemptive outworking of becoming flesh while not becoming sinful flesh.

He took on himself a human nature, and so it is vital in the scheme of things.

What is the scheme of things? The entire Gospel, which is the person and the work of Jesus.

That God, the second person of the Trinity, took on human flesh,

John 1, 14, the Word became flesh, even though he's remaining truly

God, he's now truly man, and he was born of a virgin, he lived an absolutely flawless, sinless life, went to the cross as an atoning substitute sacrifice for sinners, and died on the cross for us, took the penalty

God's people deserved, and three days later was raised from the dead, and is now at the place of all authority, and commands us to repent and believe the good news.

Not the good news that Jesus has come as a moral pet talk guy, the guru who will give us five ways to achieve nirvana, or success in life, or he's this life coach, no, he came as the

Savior, and anyone who calls on the Lord Jesus in true repentance and faith will be saved from the wrath that they deserve, that I deserve, that all people deserve.

He's a mighty Savior, able to save to the uttermost those who come to God by him, the only way that he could be a substitute for his people on Golgotha, on the cross, was for him to be fully

God and fully man, to be our substitute, he needed to be fully man, and yet to be an acceptable sacrifice, to be perfect and sinless, to be a spotless lamb, he also needed to be fully

God, and so therefore we owe our salvation to his humbling himself, and volunteering to become

God in the flesh, and that is a mystery that we'll never fully understand until we're in glory, and who knows, maybe we won't even fully understand it then,

I don't know, but... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's see here, let me go to another question here.

Well, this is interesting, we have... The capital of England, is that the one? I'm sorry?

What's the capital of England? Is that the one down there? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,

We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, does the

Samson family have anything unusual about the way you celebrate Christmas, or does

King's Church in Peoria, Arizona, have something that's a little different in the way they observe the conception and birth of our

Lord and Savior? That's a very good question, a very simple answer, no, nothing special, no, we celebrate it like I think most of the neighbors around our house, and no, we...

I like a few things, I don't always insist on them, but you know, I like English cups of tea, but that's an everyday thing, so would it be special on Christmas?

No, but there would be cups of English tea. PG Tips is my preferred brand, and those who are from England know how amazing the

PG Tips are, they were actually, I grew up with commercials of actual monkeys and apes, who were dressed up in clothes looking like they were elite in society, and they were around them for hours making them move in a certain way, and they looked like they were talking, and I grew up with 30 -second commercials of apes selling me

PG Tips, and even now it has an effect on me. Well, does your

Christmas involve figgy pudding? No, no, we don't even do that, no, we're quite boring,

I became an American citizen, you know, and so I actually stood and denounced the

Queen, which was, you have to stand and denounce every potentate, which was hard for me, because as a kid,

I wanted to be a god, and you didn't realize this before, a god, and I've got to say that with an emphasis on the word god, with an

R, because it sounds like god, G -O -D, I'm not saying that, I wanted to be a god, that would put me in Mormon categories,

I wanted to be a god, G -U -A -R -D, outside Buckingham Palace, and I had a shrunken down uniform of the real thing, and stood outside Buckingham Palace many days,

I'm the only guy I know who had that burning desire, there was no magazine you could get of god magazine, you know,

I think I was the only one, there may have been others, certainly that could have happened, but I saw the

Queen on numerous occasions at Trooping the Colour and public events, and to one day stand in a

Phoenix courtroom and denounce the Queen, it was a difficult thing to do, but I'm an

American citizen, so we have pizza. Well, what is unique about a

British celebration of Christmas? Even though you're saying that you don't carry those traditions on into your

American home... Yeah, I don't think it would be that unusual, because the

English had such an effect on at least the eastern side of America at the beginning, so that's why certain states were called

New England, and towns and cities became New York, we had a

York, we had an England, so a lot of the food choices on that side of the

United States would have English overtones, I don't think there's that much that would be different, we'd have turkey, we'd have the stuffing, we'd have the potatoes, there might be one or two things that the

Scots might do that would be different, they might throw in some haggis or something like that, there's things like black pudding, which again,

I never had growing up, but others make that part of their diet, but I think there's such a familiarity now between what was and what is, and what was over there and what's here, that that wouldn't be too different.

The only thing that's really different is, before I came to the United States, there was never any lights outside the house, it was always lights inside the house for Christmas decoration, that was the big thing

I noticed when I came here. Huh, that's interesting. And I have heard,

I don't know if it's true, because I didn't hunt down the sources and verify or confirm what

I had heard, but I had heard that the

Scots did not, other than perhaps a very tiny minority, but I heard that the

Scots, prior to World War II, did not celebrate Christmas, because it was so much associated with Roman Catholicism, and history,

I almost said heresy, it's Presbyterian history, and that it was the

English and the American GIs who were over there in Scotland in World War II that brought the

Christmas traditions to Scotland, but I don't know if you've ever heard that. I haven't, that's interesting, but certainly there's a tendency at least for the

Scots to do nothing that the English would want to do, and there used to be many wars, the way

I describe it, there used to be many wars between Scotland and England, and now they just have soccer matches.

Well, the rivalry is very, very intense, but that certainly could be the case, I wouldn't be able to affirm that.

My mom and dad, they lived 17 years in Scotland before I was born, but mercifully, by the grace of God, they moved to England, so I was born there.

By the way, knowing of your sense of humor, I don't even think I've ever told you this before, but there were a couple of times when

I had called you, and your late mom, or should I say mom, answered the phone,

Hello? Who's this? I thought it was you playing a practical joke on me.

Oh, that's great. No, that was really her, that's right. She thought that if everyone in America was exposed to the

English way of saying things, they'd all want to change and take on the

English way to say it, and I kept telling her, you know, they are Americans, and they like being

Americans, and so you don't have to tell them it's car park rather than parking lot.

They like parking lot. We have to change. We've moved to their country, mom. We've moved to their country.

Well, we have to go to our final break. It's going to be a lot more brief than the last two breaks. If you want to join us with a question of your own, do so quickly, because we're rapidly running out of time.

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com. chrisarnson at gmail dot com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, if you live outside the

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

That's chrisarnson at gmail dot com. chrisarnson at gmail dot com. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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or call them at 908 -996 -7654. That's 908 -996 -7654.

Tell Pastor Dunn that you heard about Grace Covenant Baptist Church on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. 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

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

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This is Pastor Bill Sousa, Grace Church at Franklin, here in the beautiful state of Tennessee.

Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support

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This is Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our

Sovereign Lord, God, Savior, and King Jesus Christ, today and always.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said, Give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read.

He who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves that he has no brains of his own.

You need to read. Solid Ground Christian Books is a publisher and book distributor who takes these words of the

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

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

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

Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And once again, don't forget that Solid -Ground -Books .com

are the publishers of my guest's two books. Not that those are his only two books, but they are publishers of two of his books,

The Twelve Whatabouts and The Five Solas. So make sure you go to Solid -Ground -Books .com

and order those books. And John, I want to make sure that you have at least five minutes of uninterrupted time to summarize why you think that this is such a vital doctrine and to etch those reasons in the hearts and minds of our listeners before we go off the air.

That is, of course, the virgin conception and birth of our Lord, God, Savior, and King Jesus Christ.

Yes, it goes to the heart of who Jesus is. As we started out talking about this, the choice before us is either a virgin birth or a birth of illegitimacy.

There's nothing in between. If he is the result of a union between Mary and, say,

Larry down the street or some other Jewish name in the village, he is tainted with sin.

He's not the one who is this virgin -born sinless one who came to save us.

And so we have a different Jesus. We have a Jesus who doesn't save. And at the heart of the Christian faith, there's historic creeds, but the creeds based on what the

Scripture teaches very explicitly state that he was born of a virgin.

Dr. J .I. Packer summed it up very, very well. Let me just quote him. The real difficulty of the supreme mystery with which the gospel confronts us does not lie here at all.

He's talking about the miracles of the Bible. He writes, it lies not in the

Good Friday message of atonement nor in the Easter message of resurrection, but in the Christmas message of incarnation.

The really staggering Christian claim is that Jesus of Nazareth was

God -made man, that the second person of the Godhead became the second man, 1

Corinthians 15, 47, determining human destiny, the second representative head of the race, and that he took humanity without loss of deity, so that Jesus of Nazareth was as truly and fully divine as he was human.

And he goes on and says this. Here are two mysteries for the price of one. The plurality of persons within the unity of God and the unity of Godhead and manhood in the person of Jesus.

Here's the line. It is here in the thing that happened at the first Christmas that the profoundest and most unfathomable depths of the

Christian revelation lie. The Word became flesh. God became man.

The divine Son became a Jew. The Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby unable to do more than lie and stare and wriggle and make noises, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child.

And there was no illusion or deception in this. The babyhood of the

Son of God was a reality. And the more you think about it, the more staggering it gets.

Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as is this truth of the

Incarnation. And I think what J .I. Packer has done there, I'd say a quote from his book,

Knowing God, classic. What he's done there is really encapsulate why this doctrine is important.

It's the message of Christ. You don't have the message of Christ without the virgin birth.

It's like the opposite would be in a restaurant, should you find one open these days.

You go to a restaurant and you ask for water, but you ask the waiter, can you hold the wet? No, no, no, no.

The wet comes with the water. And if we're going to have a biblical Jesus, we have to have the wet.

We have to have the message of the virgin birth. It's right up front in the

New Testament. It's on the first page of the New Testament, after the genealogy, right into the story of the virgin birth.

Same in the Gospel of Luke. And to speak of Jesus, the biblical Jesus, we have to speak of this.

Otherwise, he's an illegitimate son. It's interesting, the slur on Jesus regarding this, whether or not he was born of a virgin, continued through his ministry.

You read of it in John 8. The folk that were against Christ's religious authority, they said,

Abraham is our father. And who's your father?

And we know who our father is, they went on to say. And so this slur followed him through the ministry.

And yet, he was able to say to them, I know who my father is. And if God were your father, you'd love me.

For I came from God and I'm here. I came not on my own accord, but he sent me.

And said of them, your father is the devil. So, the stakes are high. And that's why we must affirm, not only the historic creeds of the church on this, but what the explicit teaching of the

New Testament is. Jesus was born of a virgin. And is the sinless one.

Who died on the cross for our sins. Rose again from the dead. And anyone who comes to him in repentance and faith, will be saved.

Because he's an absolutely ultimate perfect savior. And without the virgin birth, he's no longer perfect.

Well, praise God. And very quickly, we have CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who said, your suspicions about Christmas not being celebrated in Scotland until recent in history, until recently in history, can be proven at siliconglen .scot

a website about Scottish matters s -i -l -i -c -o -n -g -l -e -n .scot

Okay, that's interesting. I'll look that up. I want to thank you so much, John, for being such a great guest, as you always are.

And I want to make sure that our listeners, again, have your contact information.

First of all, if you want to find out more about King's Church in Peoria, Arizona, it's kingschurchaz and what's the rest of that?

dot com kingschurchaz kingschurcharizona .com and also the blog site.

What's the website for that? effectualgrace .com If folks are interested in the sermons

I've done, I've done something on Isaiah 7 going into the history of the first promise of the virgin birth.

You'll find a recent sermon. Go to kingschurchaz .com and look at sermons and you'll find a

YouTube channel there and you can not only watch but subscribe and then get hold of anything new that emerges regarding those sermons.

We'll go into more detail on specific texts about the virgin birth there. Great, and don't forget about John's books that were published by Solid Ground Christian Books.

You can find out more about that at solid -ground -books .com solid -ground -books .com

and if you go to podcast past shows and click on that and type in John Sampson S -A -M -S -O -N in the search engine you'll have all of John's past interviews on there and today's should be up by tomorrow if you want to share it with anybody.

I want to thank John for being my guest again. I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write in questions, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater