August 15, 2016 Show with Todd Friel on “Stressed Out: A Practical, Biblical Approach to Anxiety” PLUS Ron Elkin on “Evangelizing Our Jewish Neighbors”

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

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host, Chris Arnton. Good afternoon,

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

This is Chris Arnton, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you a happy Monday on this 15th day of August 2016 and I am delighted to have back on the program

Todd Friel who is host of Wretched TV and Wretched Radio.

He's a prolific writer and we're going to be discussing his brand new book Hot Off The Press.

If there is ever a book that I needed to read and interview Todd about, it is this one because it is a sin that I am personally plagued with and the title of the book is

Stressed Out, A Practical Biblical Approach to Anxiety and the guest that we have today, as I mentioned, is the author of that book,

Todd Friel, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, Todd Friel. That's clearly some sort of clerical error.

And I have to admit that this issue where Jesus's command to be anxious for nothing is a command that I violate probably more than any of his other commands that I can think of, but I was even filled with anxiety and stress before you called in worrying that you were going to be calling your own phone number again for 10 minutes and not hooking up to the program like you did last time.

Okay, you didn't need to bring that up. But in studio with me co -hosting for the second day in a row is my friend and webmaster, what's your name again?

Eric P. Nielsen. And Eric P. Nielsen is an elder at the Community Evangelical Free Church in Champaign -Urbana,

Illinois. He is, as I said, my webmaster, and he is visiting

Carlisle with his family, so he has been helping me out with the studio here and co -hosting for the last couple of days, and it's great to have you back in the studio,

Eric. Thanks, Chris. And let me announce right away our email address if anybody listening would like to send in their questions for Todd about stress, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Now, Todd, this may sound like a silly question, but if you could define what you mean by stress and what you're specifically referring to in the book, because people might use the term stress to define different things that are going on in their mind and heart and soul and life that may not be specifically what you're talking about, so perhaps you could...

Yeah, that's very important because we throw a lot of terms around when it comes to anxiety.

We're stressed, we're worried, we're concerned, we're depressed, so a definition of terms is the place to start, and I'm going to start with perhaps the most contentious position in evangelical

Christianity, and I'm going to say there are indeed some people who can have a physiological reason, a true biological reason for being depressed.

There could be something inside of them that is causing that. Now we need to figure out what that thing is and what we do with it.

We need to start by recognizing there is no scientific test to identify what we typically call depression.

That is not to say, though, that a genuine depression cannot be physiological, but it could come from many different sources.

It could be simply a vitamin deficiency, a chemical imbalance, a thyroid, it could be low testosterone, it could be menopause.

All of those things should be checked out to see if there's a connection between your anxiety, your depression, and your body.

Now, should you conclude, there is definitely something about my emotions that goes beyond sinful anxiety, a

Christian should not be condemned to take medication to help them get that under control.

There's no sin in that any more than there is in taking a kidney pill or a Tylenol for your headache.

Having said that, according to Dr. Charles Hodges, who's a medical doctor and also a biblical counselor, those instances that I'm describing that clinical psychologists typically diagnose as depression, about 5 % of the cases.

So be very, very slow to be diagnosed with genuine depression, because you might not have it, only 5 % of the people who are diagnosed with depression actually do.

So how do we define depression? I'm going to define it as the black dog that howls.

That was Winston Churchill's term. It was a description of a dog sitting on his chest, just baying at the moon, debilitating,

I can't get out of bed, my limbs weigh a thousand pounds, woe is me, thoughts of blackness.

That is a depression, and that should be checked out as scientifically as we can, but that isn't what this book addresses.

This book addresses what each and every one of us, including the truly organically depressed person, struggles with, and that is sinful anxiety.

Sinful anxiety, and that is when you say the word sinful, or did you say simple?

Let's go with simple. Because I was going to say, would you say then that the root of all anxiety is sin, because we are not trusting in God?

Is that really why it's a sin? Yes, ultimately our sins tend to have a cord connected to idolatry, and that's very true with anxiety.

Chris, check out what Jesus said. This begins with a stellar picture of our sympathetic high priest.

It is the night he is going to be betrayed with a kiss. He's going to be arrested, spat upon, mothed, stripped, beaten, a crown of thorns smashed on his head.

He's then going to be brought out to a hill to be crucified, gasped for breath, and die.

And that's the beginning of John chapter 14, and Jesus, out of the 12 that were probably listening at that point, he's the one who should have been anxious.

Instead, he spends three chapters helping us with our anxiety, and the first thing that he says is very unpredictable.

He said, do not be troubled. So there's the command. So that means if we're going to be anxious, we're sinning.

And then he says something so radical, it still shocks me to this day.

Instead of saying, don't worry, get a weapon. Don't worry, get a good financial investor.

Don't worry, you've still got fishing skills. You'll be able to get a job. Don't worry, your family will finally forgive you.

You'll be welcome back home. None of that. Instead, he says, believe in God, believe also in me.

And I think what he was saying with that is connected with do not be troubled. When we are troubled, we are having a faith issue.

We are not believing rightly in the moment. Not to say that we're not believers, we're just not believing rightly in the moment.

And we have what he described about people who are anxious about what they're going to wear or what they're going to eat as having a little faith.

That is the core of anxiety. It is a faith issue. And the whole thing about whether or not we should express real serious concern or worry.

Some might say that there would be something sinful or weird about you if you were, like, for instance, you're sitting home in your living room with your wife and you've given strict curfews for your children to be home by 10 p .m.

or something, and it's already midnight and that kind of thing, and you're starting to get worried. And perhaps the other spouse is sitting there with his hands behind his head in the recliner just watching

TV without a care in the world, and the spouse might think, what's wrong with you? You don't even care about your child.

If you could perhaps let us know about any proper level of worry or expression of worry that a

Christian should be exhibiting. Excellent distinction that needs to be made.

In John 14, 1, Jesus said, do not be troubled. But John 11, at the death of his friend

Lazarus, Jesus troubled himself. That's the

Greek language indicates. It was a troubling of himself. He wasn't being troubled.

He troubled himself. So now we've got something we need to harmonize. In John 14,

Jesus said, don't be troubled. In John 11, Jesus was troubled. What this instructs us is that God is not emotional, but he has emotions.

And God rightly with predetermined emotions to situations that are very genuine.

That's what Jesus was doing at the death of his friend. He was sad. He was troubled by that because death is an intruder.

It's a bummer. And he was right and not sinning to be sad. So what

Jesus is warning against the type of sinful anxiety is not that you're never bummed about something, that you're not disappointed in something, that you aren't feeling the grief of a loss.

It doesn't mean that a bit of a correct fear of, oh, something dangerous.

I'm hydroplaning. I'm sliding on the ice here. I better do something. All of those emotions are correct.

What Jesus is warning against is a worrisome anxiety, a hopeless anxiety.

It's an anxiety that says, yikes, I don't know what's going to happen. I think this is out of control.

I need to get in control of this. I've got to do something. I've got to use my skills, my money, my personality. I've got to do something.

Otherwise, this is going to be a catastrophe. That is the type of anxiety that Jesus is saying is sinful.

Now, I have personally been told that I've been recommended or suggested because of prolonged grief.

I am a widower. My wife passed away in 2011. And I have had people, just when

I mentioned the fact that when they say, how are you doing? I say, well, I still struggle with depression over the loss of my wife, even though it's been five years now.

And immediately, some brethren in Christ say, have you thought of any kind of prescription for that?

And I have resisted that. And as you were saying, that there's nothing wrong with that. But I have personally resisted it because it has not immobilized me.

I'm not in a fetal position in the corner of the room every day.

It's not something that has made my life a wreck, or I haven't become an introvert or a hermit.

But it's something that in the quiet of my own privacy, I have these struggles.

But do you think that brethren in Christ are really too quick with the trigger finger to say, hey,

I think you should get something prescribed for that? Well, first of all, I'm sorry.

Second of all, if you're willing to, transparent, which clearly you are, which

I'm sure helps people, let's ask what you were experiencing.

I would suggest to you, what you experienced is totally normal. You weren't freakish.

You lost your soulmate. You lost your pride. To not grieve over that,

I would be more inclined to call it grief than depression. We can identify that that's what caused it, that is what precipitated it.

There was a mechanism that made you feel really heavy -hearted.

Now, prior to 1984, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual would recognize a cause for somebody feeling poorly, and they would then say, you don't need medication.

We need to work through it and grieve and have time and counseling. But after 1984, they threw that out the window, and today, a widower, a woman who lost her husband of 50 years, they say if she's grieving after two weeks, she has depression.

Now, wait a second. How is it that somebody is feeling... Now, in your situation, you lost your wife, and you started to feel grief.

Okay, what caused the grief? Is it something chemical? Did your brain suddenly get rewired?

No, you experienced a trauma, and it's grievous, and what you're experiencing is normal, and without having a medical reason to say, that's where your grief or your depression came from,

I see no reason to give medication for that. So, going back to my original question, then, you would say that many

Christians are, then, too quick to suggest that you take medication.

Obviously, not every Christian, but as a rule, yes. We do have a listener, and...

Go ahead, I'm sorry. Well, I would say, Chris, what this medicine that you would be putting into your mouth, what is that supposed to...

What is that going to do? Now, we need to remember that psychotropic drugs are a bit of a mystery. We don't really know how they work.

So, what is it going into your body to fix that is going to make your depression go away?

We can't point to a physiological reason, but we can point to a reason, and that is your traumatic loss, and that is where grief, that is where sadness comes from.

When it's an external event that happens to us, that is the normal human response, and this medication might mask it, medication might dull us, but it certainly will not cure us.

Right, and we do have Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York, who says, "...ultimately

is the root of an anxiety a realization to a lack of control which can lead a

Christian only to trust in the sovereign triune God of the Bible." If I understood that correctly, you can correct me,

Chris, that he's saying that God puts us through things in order to get us to rely on Him.

You know, in all of this talk, Tyler, about anxiety being sin, I want to turn this a little bit, if you don't mind, because we make it sound like, oh,

I've got sinful anxiety. Oh, no, I'm a terrible person. What kind of a Christian am

I? Well, frankly, you're a normal Christian, but if we do not label things biblically, we're not going to find hope.

You won't find transformation if you don't identify what is the Bible, and when we have the courage to say, my worry warts are sinful, then there's great news.

God spectalizes in mortifying sin. He died for sin.

He sanctifies sinners. He's going to glorify sinners. There is humongous hope in recognizing my sinful anxiety is just that simple, but I've got a

Savior who's a sympathetic high priest who's willing to jump in with me and say, I'll help, but He's going to do more than just bibbidi -bobbidi -boo and magic wand you and make you not anxious anymore.

He's going to transform you, and that's what Hebrews 12, 4, 7 -11 talks about.

Our loving Father will discipline us so that we yield the peaceable fruit of holiness, of righteousness.

God is desiring to make us holy. He will do difficult things, not to us, but for us, so that we can grow and be conformed into the image of His Son.

So anxiety should not be seen as a mountain. You should say, wow, this is a huge opportunity for God to go to work in my life and make me like Himself.

That should be exciting. And Tyler, guess what? You are getting a free copy of Todd Friel's book,

Stressed Out. And if you give us your full mailing address, it's going to be mailed out to you, compliments of not only the publishers,

New Leaf Publishing, but you'll also be getting that shipped to you by our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service right here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, who ship out all of our winner's free books.

And we thank both the publishers and CVBBS .com for providing these books and shipping them out.

And Susan in Newville, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, is it sinful to be filled with stress regarding the eternal state of your children?

Great question, isn't it? And it's probably the most important question for every parent.

Now that's a specific question about a specific area of life. But let me focus on the word stress.

What do you mean by that? Is it, wow, I want my kids, I want them to go to heaven.

I really, really want that, Lord. I want my kids to be with You. I want them to love Jesus. That's normal.

That's right. But when that crosses the line into,

Lord, my kids, what's going to happen? They're out of control. And I think I've got myself a prodigal.

They're in the pigsty right now. Wait a second. You've crossed the line into thinking there is no hope, that God isn't on His throne, that He isn't sovereign, and that He isn't under control.

That type of stress, if you will, is to not trust God. It is to be sinning.

Yeah, and I guess it would be a fairly normal response, though, for parents to, at times of sleepless nights, worrying and, you know...

But let me help everybody, because it sits near and dear to all of our hearts.

I would ask you a question. How does somebody get saved? Well, clearly,

God must regenerate a person. You cannot get your child saved.

You cannot keep your child from losing his salvation. I don't think there is such a thing. And you cannot get your child glorified.

You're off the hook with your child's salvation. You can't get them saved, keep them saved, or get them glorified.

So stop taking the mantle of, I failed, on top of yourself, and your child is going to hell because of you.

Now, having said that, that doesn't mean you don't blow it as a parent. It doesn't mean maybe you weren't unfaithful.

Repent of that. Recognize that you have an advocate, Jesus the righteous, and get back to parenting.

Amen. And in fact, that goes way beyond parenting, because people are very often filled with anxiety about the eternal state of their parents, their siblings, their friends, their spouses.

And isn't it true that the doctrines of God's sovereignty and His grace are really the only system of theology that we have on this planet that truly, when consistently and logically held to, will give a

Christian true peace? Because if you believe that it's somehow up to your abilities to shift the free will of the listener and to convince them of truths that they don't currently believe, and through your own clever articulation of facts or your own persistence or your own loving compassion manner through which you evangelize, if you're putting all of this on the human, both the evangelizer and the one being evangelized, that is where a lot of stress would come, especially if the person dies without Christ.

Then you'd—I don't know how those that reject the doctrines of God's sovereignty can have a sleepful night, because the only reason

I think they do is God has mercy upon them and lets them rest in things that are not consistent with their own theology.

You know, there's something inside of human beings when a tragic thing happens.

Think about the death of a loved one. How many of us thought to ourselves, oh, if I had just called, if I had just visited, if I had just sent the card, there's a bent that we have to take it upon ourselves.

Mom and Dad, I'm telling you, take it off of yourself when it comes to your child's salvation. You can't do it.

How many times have we seen the pastor? He's got nine kids who love to sing Jesus Loves Me, and then he gives birth to a

Tasmanian devil, completely apostate, and everybody goes, what in the world happened?

Because the pastor doesn't get kids saved. The pastor needs to be faithful. You need to be faithful,

Mom and Dad, and leave salvation up to God and rest in that. Amen.

And by the way, I've got good news for our listeners, especially those who live near Atlanta or are in Atlanta or are able to get to Atlanta this

January. Todd Freel is one of the speakers at the upcoming

G3 conference, and my friend Dr. James R. White, who we mentioned earlier, is a speaker, and D .A.

Carson, and Voti Balcom, and my friend Conrad Mbewe of Kabwatha Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, Africa, who is probably the most powerful preacher alive on the planet

Earth, and many other speakers are going to be at this conference. And guess what,

Todd? I'm going to be there too, so I'm going to be stuck to you like glue. We're going to stay up all night smoking cigars and playing poker, and we're going to have a great time.

Wow, you must be Presbyterian. I didn't know that.

No, actually, I don't smoke cigars. That was just a joke. And I am a Reformed Baptist. The lineup at G3, the reason that I was invited to be there is clearly they needed a theologian, so what am

I doing among that panoply of greats? I have no idea. That is an amazing lineup, even the number of them.

It's just amazing. And it's all about the Protestant Reformation, which is very exciting. Yes, the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing the 95 theses up to the door of the

Castle Church in Wittenberg, and I could go on and on with the speakers there.

Most of them have been guests on Iron Sharpens Iron, and I'm looking forward to getting those that haven't been on this broadcast.

And my friend Phil Johnson, who's probably been on the program more than anybody, is going to be there, the

Executive Director of John MacArthur's ministry. And Rosaria Butterfield, who we have had on this program, in fact, she's going to be our guest again next

Monday, August 22nd. She is a former, as she describes it, a former leftist lesbian who came to Christ and has been totally transformed by His grace, and is now married to a pastor.

And she's going to be on next Monday, God willing, to discuss her second book that she has written.

But Todd, I know that you could only stay with us for a half hour. I hope one day that you could stay with us for two hours.

But I hope that you can now really give our listeners what you most want etched in their hearts and minds regarding this subject today before we run out of time.

All right. Tell me how much time we do have. We have right now, well, if you really stick to the half hour restriction, we have two minutes and 45 seconds.

I would have had three minutes, but you kept going through the math there. All right. Here's several things that I'd like for you to remember.

Let's start with God's face toward you. It is not shielded, it is not furious.

If you have been taken out of Adam and put into Christ, God is for you. So everything that happens in your life is for your good.

Even difficult things, even the sinful things that he permits, they are for you. So never think that God is punishing you for your sins or taking out a pound of flesh because he's really torched at you.

If you're in Christ, he loves you as much as his own son. Second, if you are feeling heavy because something wicked happened to you, perhaps the child, maybe recently, and you are filled with vengeance and anger, you need to remember that you have an avenger,

Jesus Christ, who is going to go on a seek and destroy mission for everybody who has sinned against you, and he will grind them to powder.

His judgment will be thorough, and now you can release it, knowing that your God is going to take care of the person who sinned against you, and that person will be punished with eternal conscious torment.

Or if that person repents, Jesus will have been punished for their sin. Either way, your sin will be redressed.

And finally this, the last thing that Jesus said in the three -chapter discourse in John 14 through 16 is

God loves you. Do not forget the love of God just because a bunch of charlatan hacks overuse it.

Don't be robbed of the joy of knowing that God loves you. Thank you very much, and if you could,

Todd, we have a listener from Scotland who has a question. If you could just answer that before you leave, that would be,

I'm sure, make his day, since he's writing all the way from Scotland here. Would you be able to do that?

Scotland? I'm so glad to hear that. Yes, we have listeners all over the world because we do live stream.

But Scotland, the home of John Knox, it is, it is, wow, the Church of Scotland, what they're up to these days.

It's really bleak in Scotland, so it's always a joy to hear about Christians. There are Christians in Scotland.

Oh yes, his name is Murray, and he's from Kinross, Scotland, and he says, first of all, he says,

Hi Chris, really helpful show tonight. Having done plenty of bereavement counseling, I would agree with everything

Todd Friel has said on the matter, and his question is, as I understand it, Gaius Davies and others see stress as being one of several sources of anxiety, although in normal talk, we seem to have lost the distinction between the two.

In the light of what Todd Friel has already shared, would it be fair to say that stress can be sinful, but anxiety, the state that stress brings us to, is not sinful in itself?

Where would you place our Lord in Gethsemane, exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death?

Is that anxiety or something different? Well, you did kind of address that, but if you could. That's a great question, and because there is so much confusion about the definition of terms,

I'm going to give principles, if you will. Whatever you want to call the emotion, if it is a normal human response to a tragic or difficult situation, one that has happened or one that is going to happen, it is right, it is normal, it is godlike to feel those things.

But when you cross the line into thinking there is no hope, and that you need to take control, and you better get this under control because God doesn't have it in his purview, then you need to recognize that's the line that you've crossed over.

So let's make sure we understand we're not automatons, we're not robots, we're humans with real emotions, we just have to guard against the faithless, hopeless type of feeling that we're describing.

Well, thank you so much, Murray and Kunroth Scotland, and I just want to remind our listeners of Todd Friel's website, it is wretchedradio .com,

that's wretchedradio .com, and the website, if you want to learn more about the book we have been discussing,

Stressed Out, New Leaf Publishing Group, is nlpg .com,

nlpg .com, and if you want to attend the G3 conference, where Todd Friel will be one of the speakers, and if you could, please remember if you come to that, look me up at the exhibitor booth along with the

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, I'm sharing an exhibitor booth with them, and thanks to their graciousness and also to Josh Bice and all the folks at the

G3 conference who are welcoming me to this event free of charge. The G3 conference is g3conference .com,

and that's g3conference .com. Well, thank you so much,

Todd, I look forward to having you back again and very soon, and I hope you can spend a little bit more time with us.

You know, a complete joy, just totally, totally dig being with you, Chris, you do a great job, and your listeners,

I trust they are grateful that they have somebody like you to talk to every single day.

Well, I really appreciate that, that made my day, I'll tell you that, that alleviated a lot of anxiety and stress.

I can't wait to see you at G3, and if anybody can get there, it is going to be a conference in Atlanta, Georgia.

Oh yeah, I know it will be, by God's grace, and I hope that many of our listeners can come so I can meet them face -to -face for the first time.

Well, God bless you, brother, say hello to Josh Gravitt and all those other folks over there at Wretched. Oh, great,

I will, I definitely will, all right. All right, God bless you, brother, see you later. Bye -bye, and we have coming up after our break,

Ron Elkin is going to be joining us, and Ron Elkin is the founder and director of AMI Ministries.

He is a Presbyterian brother in Christ who is also Jewish, and he has a heart for the Jewish people, and AMI Ministries was founded specifically to form an outreach from a theologically reformed perspective to the

Jewish community, so I hope that you could join us as we get some valuable advice from Ron Elkin on evangelizing the

Jewish people, and our email address if you'd like to join us with a question for Ron is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away, we'll be right back after these messages.

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Chris Arms, and if you just tuned us in, our first guest earlier was Todd Friel of Wretched TV and Wretched Radio, and now our second guest on the program for the next 90 minutes is

Ron Elkin. He is returning to the program. We had so much to say and so little time to say it last time in regard to evangelizing the

Jews that we wanted to have Ron back. In fact, he's not only going to be on for the remaining 90 minutes, but God willing, he is going to be returning on the second half of the program on this

Wednesday, the 17th of August, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, Ron Elkin of AMI Ministries.

It is wonderful to be here again, Chris, and talk with you and hopefully encourage people to witness to their

Jewish friends or at least learn more about some of the things that are hard for them to accept about Jesus, why that is.

And if you could, before we even have another brief description of AMI Ministries, if you could greet my co -host,

Eric Nielsen, who is an elder at the Community Evangelical Free Church in Urbana, Illinois, and he is also my webmaster here at Iron Sharpens Iron in town visiting the area with his family while they're on vacation.

But if you could, Eric, greet Ron, and Ron, greet Eric. Hi, Ron, good to talk with you.

Good to talk with you. One of my largest supporting churches is the Lancaster Evangelical Free Church of Lititz, Pennsylvania.

Oh, well, that's great. That is great. And our mission chairman is coming tomorrow to visit our field and see what's going on, so it's kind of a nice connection.

Well, praise God. Yes, I know quite a number of wonderful folks in the Evangelical Free denomination, and a number of them are strongly theologically in harmony with me, and they're sharing the doctrines of sovereign grace, as does

Eric Nielsen in the congregation where he is an elder at the Community Evangelical Free Church there in Urbana.

But if you could, Ron, if you could let our listeners know something about AMI. Obviously, you've been on the program a couple of times already, but there are always new listeners tuning in to Iron Sharpens Iron for the first time, so I want them to become introduced to your ministry.

Sure, thank you. The vision for AMI began at 10th

Presbyterian Church under Dr. James Montgomery Boyce. Central City, Philadelphia has a huge population of Jewish people.

The church is at 17th and Spruce, right in the heart of that community. And the city, as a matter of fact, one block away from Spruce Street, 18th and Spruce.

And they had a very large mission budget, and we began to look at that and saw that there wasn't any money set aside to reach the

Jewish community. And so a group of fellow members at 10th and myself, including a couple of Jewish believers like myself, got together and worked towards forming the ministry.

And then the ministry was adopted by 10th, came under their wings, and we were a mission work of 10th for about eight years.

And then we moved into being separate from 10th, became a part of more of a larger area to cover, and became a 513Z and moved up into the northeast area because of the large

Russian -speaking Jewish community that was there. We got involved with ESL classes and concerts and door -to -door evangelism, and I went to Russia and Ukraine to visit some of these people's family and learn more about their background and did everything

I could to connect with that community who were coming out of the communists and had very little understanding about God, and this gave them an opportunity to be curious and open.

So we found a very good mission field, and we got next to them by assisting them.

The ministry was started with three main purposes. One is to bring the gospel to Jewish people, and we do that through street evangelism, through door -to -door, through friends letting us know about Jewish people that are open, and I hope some of you out there will contact us with some

Jewish people that might want to hear more from us directly, or we might coach you in how to further share your faith.

The second purpose is to train believers how to witness the Jewish people, how to understand their culture, history, and there's a lot of misunderstanding about the

Jewish people within the body of Christ, and tragically even prejudice. And so part of our job is to help people understand who

Jewish people are, what their wants and desires are, what their background is, that would help them to believe in a

God, but also to reject Jesus. And then there's a whole other non -religious group of Jewish people, so we need to talk about that.

And the third part has developed lately, which is to try to stir up in the hearts of believers,

Christians, a burden to pray for God to draw more

Jewish people to salvation, but also to fight against, as a Christian, to fight against the evil of anti -Semitism, which is now on the rise in a very dramatic way around the world, and particularly in Europe, where it's dangerous, literally dangerous, for Jewish people to go out and be identified as a

Jew. And in England and in France and in Germany, there's been many instances of people being physically attacked and even killed, simply because they're

Jewish. Now who are predominantly the perpetrators of this, or perhaps it's a variety of different people?

You know, with the influx of Muslims, who want to be saved as much as anyone, unfortunately, because it goes with the territory of their hostility to Israel, that they localize it against that individual

Jew who's walking down the street. They've been taught that, literally taught, that Jews are descendants of monkeys and apes, and are incarnate of evil.

And so unfortunately, it's sort of like a repetition of the Nazis' doctrines, and so it's just one of those tragic things, and it's a difficult situation.

One of the largest groups that have influxed, come into Israel recently over the last couple years, are

French Jews. The French had a very large population of Jewish people, and they have more and more realized how dangerous this is for them to exist there.

So they're leaving, coming into communities. There's whole communities in Israel now that are French -based language.

So that's the third part of our ministry, and we function in different ways.

We just finished the Democratic National Convention Outreach, where we had a table set up near the

Lowe's Hotel, where a lot of the conventions took place. We were over by the convention center and different places, and wound up witnessing to an awful lot of people.

We had around 24 people involved with that outreach. We plan to be in Center City this weekend, matter of fact.

So that's another part of our work. So we believe very much in public proclamation of the gospel, including street preaching, but not with a spirit of hatred.

You know, when people think of a typical street preacher, they're thinking of somebody who's going to be, you know, spittle coming out of their mouth and fuming angry.

And what we do is we share gospel soundbites. We do urge people to realize that they will be under the judgment of God, but we pray for a spirit of love and mercy as we do that.

And so that's our approach to that. Well, obviously, in this day and age of political correctness, there are going to be people who are accusing you of hate speech just by telling them that they need

Christ for salvation. Well, I'm waiting for some, hopefully this won't happen, but I'm waiting for some federal judge to say, because we're stirring up trouble, that we can do this in the church, but we can't take it to the street.

You know, it sounds far fetched, but once so lately, you don't know how far it's going to go with the oppression of believers.

Well, let me announce our email address if anybody would like to join us with a question for Ron Elkin about evangelizing our

Jewish neighbors. It's chrisarnson at gmail .com. And some of you are hearing some background noises.

Our webmaster happens to be in town this week. He's taking valuable time out of his vacation to do some work with the studio to improve things.

And some of this is due to experimentation with our equipment and trying to fine -tune things.

And so, unfortunately, you're going to hear occasionally some things that you may not expect to hear, but that's just in an effort to make the program free from problems for as many as possible in the future.

So, by the way, Eric, you're from Illinois, and the area from Illinois that you are from, where your congregation community,

Evangelical Free Church, is in Urbana, is there a heavy Jewish population there?

There is not a heavy Jewish population there, but of course there is at least one local synagogue, and in the past we've had interaction with them.

A former pastor took a conversational Hebrew with one of the young men there.

Really? Oh, wow. And of course, when I think of Illinois and the conversation about the

Jewish people comes up, I immediately think of Skokie, which had been in the headlines back,

I think it was in the 1980s, perhaps, Ron, you can correct me, but when the American Nazi party was trying to get the right to have a rally or a parade in Skokie, Illinois, because of the fact that there were the highest number of,

I believe, Holocaust survivors living there, or perhaps even the highest population of Jews in the United States, but perhaps you could tell us more about that area if you know anything about it,

Ron. Well, I know that I remember very much the incidents of the Nazis. I don't remember if they successfully got a permit or not.

Yeah, I just know that there was something that was not quite as grandiose in the outcome of the Skokie event.

Right, yes, it's a very heavily populated area with Jewish people, and so of course they did the maximum to get publicity by being as gross as possible, but there is a sickness in this world, and Satan uses it very heavily to make people very, people who may be very logical or fair -minded, all of a sudden with the

Jews they become very irrational, and I guess a simple example is the fact that after receiving seven or eight thousand rockets from Gaza that Israel fought back.

Oh my God, why would they do such a horrible thing? Why don't they let themselves be pounded? People get a little bit irrational and unhinged when it comes to the

Jewish people, particularly in Europe, and so that's typical of one of the things that we're trying to make people be sensitive to, and certainly not stop them from witnessing the

Jewish people. They need the gospel, but to understand some of this irrational behavior in the world and to really pray and to even speak out against it when they see evidence of it.

Well, let's get some advice from you as a Jewish believer, as a

Jewish Christian who is not only a Christian but who is theologically reformed, and of course as you know, perhaps more than anybody, there are many

Christians, especially those from a dispensationalist background or messianic background, who think that that's an oxymoron to be a

Calvinist Jew. But if you could tell us about developing friendships with Jewish people.

You know, we just had Todd Freelon talking about his book, Stressed Out, and I admit that there is a certain level of stress that I may feel or anxiety when

I'm speaking with a Jewish person about the gospel because I am concerned that they are going to feel that the motivation of my wanting them to come to Christ has something to do with anti -Semitism, has something to do with bigotry, hatred, so there is all that lingering in the back of my mind, especially in a day and age when political correctness is at its height and the speech police are wandering all around us waiting to pounce when we say something that offends their sensibilities.

But as far as a Jewish person in the neighborhood, perhaps this

Jewish person is a colleague at work or perhaps they are married into the family of a

Gentile home and you know you want to get to know this person so you have basically a level of familiarity with them where when you present the gospel to them they can be convinced that you are really saying these things about the need of Christ because you love that person and you care about them and also you love

Christ above all else. Of course, yes. Well, a couple of practical things, you know, when you become aware of the

Passover coming are Rosh Hashanah, which the Jewish people consider to be the head of the year and it'd be appropriate to build some relationship to, you know, as a minimum wish them a happy Passover, happy Rosh Hashanah.

There are, in most areas where there's some Jewish people, you can get a holiday card that's appropriate for that holiday and, you know, send that to them and that's a way to, like, you know, help people send each other

Christmas cards, you know, and so on. It's appropriate. Another thing you could do is, particularly as Bible -believing

Christians out there, to ask if you could go to synagogue with the person, if they attend.

There's a lot of Jewish people who really don't. As a matter of fact, by asking them if you could go to synagogue with them, even if they're not going, they might raise their curiosity as to why you'd want to do that.

And one of the ways to respond to that is because I'm very much a believer in the

God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I'd like to learn more about how the

Jewish community worships God. And part of what we'll be looking at a little later is what happens at a worship service, and I'd say 99 % of it is very

God -honoring. The difference is, ultimately, who is

Jesus, and are we brought into God's presence through grace and faith or through works?

That's the fundamental difference. But the services itself are quoting from scriptures, and the prayers that were written over the centuries are beautifully exalting

God. And a believer can go to the synagogue, and even though he can bring the

Kingdom of God into that building and be praying for the people, but he also, if he went to a conservative synagogue where it's in Hebrew and English, as far as the prayer book, would be edified, and could easily be worshiping

God, but understand the people around them are not part of God's eternal

Kingdom yet, until and unless they believe in Jesus. So there are a couple ideas.

You know, let's say you hear Passover is coming up, and you could talk to your Jewish friend about, well, how do you celebrate

Passover? What happens at a Passover meal? And if they're secular

Jewish, they may say, well, we get together, remember Moses delivering the people, we see it as a celebration of freedom.

And at that point, if you're acquainted with the Passover story and how it points to Jesus, you could even say, well, you know,

I learned something interesting about the Passover, and, you know, I don't want to offend you in anything, but there's some remarkable coincidences between the death of Jesus and the

Passover story. And at that point, you could share some information, which

I will be looking at a little later. And so they're just some of the ideas of relating and starting a discussion.

If they're not hostile, if they're willing, raise some theological questions of what happens to a person after they die.

Don't be shocked if they say, well, that's the end of it. There's nothing more. Not a lot of Jewish people.

Like, I remember going to a Reformed synagogue. Basically, the rabbi was saying, you know, there is no life after death.

So that was shocking. We had actually, we had done a service where we honored, was a

Kristallnacht memorial service. Our local church, Calvary Presbyterian Church up in Willow Grove, under my instigation there, we did a

Kristallnacht memorial service. And one of our members is a Gentile, but she's married to a

Jewish man who's not a believer in Jesus. And he invited many of the people at the congregation, the synagogue, to come and visit.

And they were, you know, outstandingly blessed by the love and concern that this church showed towards the well -being of the

Jewish community. And in no way compromised in the gospel, but it was an expression of recognition.

A Kristallnacht is a celebration, not a celebration, but a recognition. 1938, yet far from a celebration.

A recognition of how the Nazis began the physical attack against the night of the broken glass is what it actually means.

Exactly. Yes, it does. And they burnt 200 synagogues and about 35 ,000

Jewish people were arrested. There were killings. And it was all done on a pretext.

So we then in turn were invited to come to the synagogue. And so a lot of the church members went to the synagogue.

And that's when we heard this rabbi say something to the effect that there's no life after death, but we need to make the best life we can now and to leave a legacy to our family of righteousness and so on.

And then I clarified it by directly asking the rabbi, did I understand what you said, that you believe there's no life after death?

And we didn't get into a theological argument at that point, because it wasn't set up for that.

Because certainly we could have quoted a lot of Old Testament that points to the fact that the soul does go on beyond this body.

And we do have a listener again from Mastic Beach, Long Island. We have Tyler, who says, since the scripture teaches that God is a respecter of no person, do we as Christians often forget that the true

Jew is one inwardly of the spirit and not just the flesh? Romans 2, 28 through 29 being a reference.

Well, yes and no. The reality is that God is in history.

There's a history on this world. There's groups of people. There's things happening. The people who inherit the kingdom of God are

Jews and Gentiles who have believed in Jesus. And I always appreciate

Ephesians 2, where Paul teaches that the mystery was that the Jew and Gentile become one new man.

And yes, so in that sense, we're, you know, those who have believed, we are part of, you know,

God is no respecter of a person. It's true. But so theologically, we become united in the body, and we are eternal.

But same time, we happen to live in history. And there happens to be an ethnic group called the

Jewish people. And they are, whether, however your theology is about their continued unique situation, it's obvious that the world will not let them forget that they're

Jews. And, you know, and I see it as part of God's continued promise to, that the

Jewish people remained before him physically. As it says at the end of Jeremiah 31, as long as there's a physical moon and stars, and as long as the depths of the waters cannot be searched out.

Don't forget this was written at a time when there were no submarines during the time of Jeremiah.

So that would be like something fantastically impossible at that time. And he says they're going to remain a people before him in spite of all they have done.

And over in Jeremiah 32, the next chapter, he tells Jeremiah to buy a field.

And here's Jeremiah preaching the destruction of Jerusalem and the captivity of the people.

And he is puzzled. And now it's a little unclear in scripture who is speaking after it's told to buy the field, whether it's

God declaring or Jeremiah or a combination of both, but he goes on. Are you there,

Ron? We lost your sound. Okay. Can you hear me now? Yes, we can. Okay.

Well, he goes on to list all the evildoes that the Jewish people have done, even sacrificing their children to idols.

And God himself says that such an evil thought never entered into my mind that you do such a thing.

But then the whole tone changes in Jeremiah 32, 36, where he starts talking about that he is going to restore them back to this place from which he will cast them out.

And as he has allowed this evil to come upon him, as judgments come upon him, so he shall do good to them and their children.

He will turn their hearts to them. There's the reform perspective. He will turn their hearts to them and bring them to faith.

And this is a line that people have to wrestle with that want to wipe out

God's continued connection in some way with the Jewish people. And that is where he says,

God himself says, I will plant them in this land with all my heart and soul and nothing shall uproot them.

So that's a pretty profound statement. So I'm not here to argue that theological point, but I'm just trying to say, we shouldn't be so quick.

God is able to do many things at once. And this issue is complex.

And so yes, there's ethnic Jews, and then there's spiritual Jews that, as Paul says, the

Gentiles have been grafted into Israel. So that's about the best way

I can answer that. And I'm going to give you a question of my own and let you think about it while we go to a break, and then you can answer it when we return.

But one of the things that obviously concerns me if I start requesting a Jewish neighbor or friend or family member, if I can accompany them to the synagogue is the wrong impression

I may be giving that I am some kind of a modern ecumenist who believes all religions lead to God, that they do not need to embrace

Christ. They do not need to leave the religion that they are currently in and that kind of thing.

And if you could respond to that when we return, because obviously that kind of thinking is rampant today in the modern ecumenical movement.

And we even have some evangelicals who are teaching that Jews do not need to embrace

Christ and that they, by virtue of being the chosen people, are basically guaranteed heaven, or perhaps if they keep the law to their best ability or whatever the case may be, which we obviously as Christians know the reason why

Christ died for us is that keeping the law is impossible. But we will be returning after this break and we'll have

Ron respond to that. And if you'd like to join us on the air as well with your own questions, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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

USA. And of course, if you want to remain anonymous, perhaps you're Jewish and you really don't feel like identifying yourself on the air because you are being drawn by God.

Perhaps you have questions in your mind about Christianity and you just don't want anyone to know at this point in your life, or whatever the reason, that you may feel more comfortable being anonymous, you may do so.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen, if you just tuned us in. Our guest currently is

Ron Elkin, and he will be our guest for the remaining hour as well. He is the founder and director of AMI Ministry, and that is a ministry bringing the gospel to the

Jewish people. Their website is amiministry .org, and that's spelt

A -M -I, as in Michael, I, Ministry, dot

O -R -G, and we hope that you look to that as a great resource for information regarding evangelizing the

Jewish people with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Ron also happens to be theologically Reformed.

He is a Presbyterian, and a Calvinist, and a believer in the doctrines of grace, and in the

Westminster Standards as a summary of biblical faith. So that does make

AMI Ministry somewhat unique in our theological spectrum today.

And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

And Ron, before the break, I asked you about giving the wrong impression by saying to a

Jewish friend, or loved one, or neighbor, hey, can I come to synagogue with you? How do we go about doing that without giving a false impression that we think that's just neat that you go to this place, and God just is thrilled with this kind of worship that does not involve

Christ, and that kind of a thing? No, I understand. You don't want to be deceptive in any way, or give a false impression.

I could appreciate that. I think that can be handled by being very upfront with the person, and letting them know that, you know, where your faith is, that you believe it's necessary for people to believe, but at the same time, in Jesus, you believe that's a necessity.

But as a person who goes to church, and hears both the

Old and New Testament, and also hears a lot about Jewish people, and their backgrounds, and so on, that you would be interested in seeing what a service was, or is.

And you can be very legitimate about that. I think it's a... if you can be patient with the fact that this person you're trying to build bridges with is not a believer, but by also making it an honest learning experience to further understand, and maybe in the process being there, pray your heart out for the people that you're seeing who do not know the

Lord. It may, it may not, it may open a cross -exchange, where if you have an interesting program going on at your fellowship, your church, that you might, he might be, or she might be more inclined to give it a try.

Not because they're looking for Jesus at that point, but as an exchange, a cultural exchange, it's a way to touch them.

At the same time, you know, no compromise. When we, at Tent, we did a

Kristallnacht presentation remembrance. We had a wonderful service.

We had probably 100 Jewish people come in, and we, when Dr. Boyce prayed, he prayed, you know, that we pray in the name of the

Messiah who we believe has come, and in the name of the

Messiah who the Jewish community believes will come. And so that was one of the ways he handled that little tricky aspect, you know?

It's very interesting. I mean, we have to be relaxed to some degree. We don't want to compromise our faith.

We have to let God show us. If it turns out to be fruitless as far as helping that person become a believer, well, at least we've learned something, and so on.

I did mention about one of the ways the bridge is, when it comes to be the

Passover, to ask them how they celebrate and what they do, and then to mention about the way in the prophecy of Jesus.

And if you don't mind, I could just take a couple minutes to give the details here. And there will be an

MP3, of course, up on our website, as well as available on your archive. And then we have this on our website, actually me presenting this at churches, and in verbal and audio.

But the nut of it is this. He died on the same day. Jesus died on the same day and the same hour as the

Passover Lamb. One other feature is, when it came time to come towards Passover at the time of Jesus, the

Jewish priests would go out into Bethlehem, and Palm Sunday, by Palm Sunday, they were actually bringing a lamb or two, or many lambs, actually, that they were going to use for the

Passover remembrance at the temple. And so the very town that Jesus was born was the place where they raised the lambs that were to be slaughtered.

And so Jesus, of course, entered in on the donkey, and it was different. He wasn't, he was going to be that Passover Lamb, the same day as they're bringing in the ones in the field.

But he died on the same day and the same hour as the Passover Lamb. And then God instructed the

Hebrews not to break a bone of a lamb's body, but he didn't give any explanation. Well, when

Jesus was being crucified, they saw he was dead already, and they did not break his legs as did the other people being crucified.

They did this because what would happen is you get a condition called pulmonary edema.

As your body was hanging, they put a little platform under your feet where you could lift yourself up.

And so in order to keep on breathing, pulmonary edema brings fluid into your lungs, but in order to keep on breathing, they would lift themselves up.

So in order to hasten their death, those being crucified, the soldiers would break their legs, and then they would suffocate quickly.

Well, with Jesus, he was left alone just like that original Passover Lamb 1 ,500 years before.

And the blood of the lamb was to be put on the top and the sides of the doorframe. And this could be seen as a cross, the same design that Jesus died on.

And if an Israelite believed Moses and followed his command to kill a lamb and place the blood on the doorpost, when the angel of death passed into Egypt, he passed over the homes with the blood.

When we believe in Jesus, God's wrath passes over us, and we're forgiven our sins. So the same effect, the same day, the same hour, not a bone broken, on the same symbol of protection, and the same result,

God's wrath passes over us, and we're forgiven our sins. So it's an amazing testimony, and mathematically, for all these things to happen on the same day, the same hour, it would be mathematically impossible for it to be an accident.

And do you bring up, I'm assuming you bring up the fact that, and this may be a lot more sensitive a discussion, but the fact that the

Jews do not do this anymore, because the temple was destroyed in AD 70, and now the

Jews do not have a sacrifice. Do you use that truth to lead them into the necessity of...

Yeah, one of the things that I witness the Jewish people about is the theme of blood in the scriptures, the trail of blood,

I call it. And starting with Adam, where God killed an animal to cover Adam's nakedness, and then with Noah being given the sacrifices that were made, and even with Cain and Abel, where Abel's sacrifice of an animal was acceptable to God.

You know? And so we go through that trail of blood and say, you know, all through Leviticus 17, 11, or 10 and 11, where God says, forbid the

Israelites from eating blood, because it's to be used on the altar as an atonement for your sins.

Today, the many of the Jewish people, I remember meeting a lawyer on the streets of Philadelphia while I was handing out tracts, talking to people, and he, and I'm wearing a t -shirt that has a

Jewish symbol on it, and the name Jesus, and so he can, you know, he starts saying, well, you know, how can you believe in that nonsense about Jesus?

And he says, and I mentioned about the temple and the sacrifices, and he didn't know, he actually did not know that that was part of the contemporary time of Jesus.

He didn't know that that had gone on for many centuries. He thought it kind of ended with the death of Moses.

So it shows you the lack of knowledge, the lack of understanding, and this is where we have to be gentle and patient with what, you know, some very lack of knowledge that exists in the

Jewish community. Many do not read the scriptures. Now, there's such a difference.

There's two different worlds out there. There's the religious Jewish people, and they are, have a significant influence.

At the same time, the larger number of Jewish people in America, and even in Israel, are somewhat secular, are very moderately religious, versus the religious people who try to keep as many of the 613 laws that you can with the destruction of the temple.

I do bring up to Jewish people that it's very interesting that under the

Maccabees, when the Syrians, when Epiphany had desecrated the temple with the statue of Zeus, and he actually sacrificed a pig on the altar to try to dissuade the

Jewish people from being involved with Judaism. He wanted them to move towards Greek understanding, and Greek gods, and so on.

And then the Maccabees came. They were a priest family that led a rebellion, and God also intervened in ways of calling

Antiochus back to his homeland, where he was assassinated, to recapture the temple and to cleanse it.

And that's what Hanukkah is, to remember of the recleansing of the temple and the resumption of the blood atonement sacrifices.

And so it's interesting that after the death of Jesus, after God went through all that trouble to preserve under the

Maccabees, that he allowed the temple to be destroyed in 70 AD by the Romans. And so the question to the

Jewish person is, why did that happen? You know, why, since the temple was the core of the practice of Mosaic sacrificial laws, and it couldn't be done anywhere else, why did that happen?

And my answer to them is because God completed the sacrifices through the atonement of Jesus.

That was once and for all. That was done. And of course,

Jewish people who don't believe, they're coming up with ideas that Jews were disobedient and other areas like that, coming up with excuses.

And they believe, those that are religious, believe that God will restore the temple one day, and there will be the sacrifices.

And in Israel, there's a group who has made all the priest's clothes and all the articles of worship as described in the

Torah, the five books of Moses, and is waiting for God to allow that to happen.

Now, you as a Presbyterian and a theologically Reformed Christian, not being dispensational, what is your view on that?

Because I know that there are varying understandings of eschatology amongst the Reformed, but typically they would not involve a restoration of a temple as a positive thing because of the sacrificial system in that understanding being restored, and many

Christians would even view that as a mockery of what happened on Calvary. So, how do you view that?

Well, I don't take a hard stand either way. It's an area where I see the

Scripture is describing something that's going to happen. You can theologically do something with it, or you can take it more literally.

I don't judge either person, because in time we'll find out, but if there is a restoration of the temple, it will not be for atonement.

It would not be to take away what Jesus did. The only thing I could see it as is a memorial, a physical memorial, and of course that's pretty hard to pull off without people misunderstanding it.

So, I can understand why many people reject the idea of there being another temple, and the only thing

I could think of, again, is a memorial where it would be clearly pointed out that this is what Jesus did for us, but I could see the difficulty of that.

I believe Jesus did it once and for all, and there's no need for another blood atonement, and so that's my dear brothers and sisters who believe that there could be a restoration of the temple.

In no way do they want to insult Jesus or take away from what he did, but I can understand how that could be taken that way.

Do you care to identify your eschatological position with a label like Amillennial, Postmillennial, Historic Premillennial, or what have you, or would you?

I prefer not to, but honestly, because my focus is to help the

Reform world, and I am Reform. If it wasn't Reform, I would have probably been out of this work a long time ago, because of so few

Jewish people believing. But because it's kind of like a hard thing for people to accept the other points,

I've become very empathetic towards both folks.

I do see some of the credible problems with the dispensational position, and I also see some problems with Amill position, and there's wiping out of certain scriptures, and I think you have people on both sides that are scholars who disagree with each other.

Right. I was actually very surprised recently to find out that Michael Brown, who is an

Arminian Messianic Jew, he is not dispensationalist. He's Historic Premillennial, but he's not dispensationalist.

I did not know that prior to maybe four or five months ago. If I had to fit in the category,

I would be in Michael Brown's camp there. Eschatologically.

Yeah, Historic Premillennial. I know that that's what Donald Gray Barnhouse, the predecessor of James Montgomery Boyce, I believe, was in that category.

Yep. And even James Boyce, they had a conference once where Moish Rosen from the

Church of Jesus came and reformed theology conference on the issue of Israel, and Boyce himself said in the pulpit during that conference that there are scriptures, promises that God makes to Israel, that if you apply them to the

Church and wipe out that he's speaking to ethnic Jews and that there's some still connection with that, that you're harming scripture.

You're not really following a correct understanding of what scripture is teaching. So now, it's a tough field, and my primary purpose is to help people understand some of the things they can do to help overcome some of the natural obstacles that Jewish people have when it comes to hearing about Jesus.

In fact, I want you to go through obstacles that we need to overcome when we return from our final break that we're going to take right now.

Sure. And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. If you have a question for our guest Ron Elkin of AMI ministry, and for those of you who just tuned in,

Ron is a theologically reformed Christian. In fact, he's a Presbyterian, a part of the

Presbyterian Church in America denomination, also known as the PCA. And he has this ministry, which is an outreach to the

Jewish people called AMI, A -M -M -I, and their website is amiministry .org,

A -M -M, as in Michael, I, ministry .org. So you can find out information about that ministry after this program is over.

And we look forward to hearing from you and your questions at chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, city and state and country of residence if you live outside the USA, but you may remain anonymous if it makes you feel more comfortable.

We'll be right back after these messages. So Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, for am I now seeking the approval of man or of God, or am

I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukins, pastor of Providence Baptist Church.

We are a Reformed Baptist Church and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts.

We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things.

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We believe by God's grace that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man, and to be vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us, and to build up the body of Christ in truth and love.

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You can call us at 508 -528 -5750. That's 508 -528 -5750.

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That's linbrookbaptist .org. Welcome back, this is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the remaining half hour on today's program is

Ron Elkin, founder and director of Ami Ministry. He is our second guest for today.

We started off with Todd Friel of Wretched Radio and Wretched TV who was talking about his book,

Stressed Out. Now we have Ron on for the remainder of the show and he is discussing evangelizing our

Jewish neighbors. And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

Chrisarnzen at gmail .com in studio with me is my friend and my webmaster

Eric Nielsen. Without Eric, I would likely be speaking to myself in a hairbrush right now with an audience of one and probably taken away to a sanctuary for the mentally disturbed or something.

But anyway, we thank Eric from the bottom of our hearts for his work behind the scenes for Iron Sharpens Iron and he is an elder at the

Community Evangelical Free Church in Champaign -Urbana, Illinois. And let me give another plug to their website, it's communityefc .org,

communityefc, which stands for evangelicalfreechurch .org. And Ami Ministry, for those of you who would like to investigate more about Ron Elkin, our guest, that's amiministry .org,

amiministry .org, A -M -M as in Michael, I, ministry .org.

Before the break, Ron, I asked you to give us some of the obstacles for Jewish people to be open to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Sure. Well, one of the strong points that our creator makes in the

Jewish scriptures is a hostility, and rightly so, towards idolatry.

And as Israel got involved with that at different stages, the anger of God expressed with the exile and the destruction eventually of the temple and chastisement of the

Jewish people, that is a big barrier, because what they see us doing by believing in Jesus is pure idolatry, making a man into God, and that's a big stumbling stone.

And one has to be gentle but yet firm and show scriptures that point to the fact, like in Daniel chapter 7, starting in verse 10 through 13, where God talks, the description of God is given there, he's sitting on a throne of fire, and there's a multitude before him worshiping him, and then it talks about a son of man coming on a cloud, and that God commissions that the world worship and serve this son of man.

And this was the title that Jesus used the most about himself in the

New Covenant. And so that's something that can be shared directly from the

Jewish scriptures to talk about this and make it more of a conversation, you know, what could be meant here, for example.

So that's one of the major things. But then another issue that raises is anything impossible for God?

Could God not have taken on a body if he chose to? There's nothing impossible for God.

The other thing is that it's a theological thing that the rabbis constructed, because certainly not in scripture, that a soul is born pure, because it was created in God's image.

And that is very much, if you read through the rabbinical literature, that is very much brought out.

And that's interesting, because that defies what David said. That's exactly, exactly what I was going to say.

You got it. You took it away from me. That's right, you hit it right on the head.

Behold, I was born forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Psalm 51. And then there's other verses, because then, of course,

Isaiah talked about living among a sinful people, but this one deals with the birth. This is like a

Reformed perspective. Dave was one of the first Reformed theologians, you know, talking about this whole being born in sin.

And so that's another one to answer. And I did mention before, another obstacle is the fact that according to Jeremiah chapter 31, verses 35 to 37, that God would maintain a visible community that was self -aware of being

Jews, as long as there's a testimony to who he is, not to themselves, but who he is, and keeping his word.

And in spite of, as long as there's a physical earth, in spite of all they've done until he ends that section.

And so I believe, as a result of that promise of God, that there's built in the

Jewish people, even if they're not religious, a certain level of loyalty to the

Jewishness. Now, in this modern day and age, when secularism has had a greater and greater impact, it's hard to find every

Jewish person exhibiting this. A large number of Jewish people sense their

Jewishness, even if they're not practicing the religion, and they feel loyalty to it.

And they know, according to, for example, the Israel Supreme Court, that if one believes in Jesus, they're no longer considered

Jewish, and they don't have the right of return to Israel. Anyone who's one -quarter

Jewish, and are married to a Jewish person, can come to Israel and automatically become a citizen.

And there was a case where there were Messianic Jewish people who practiced and lived a Jewish Orthodox lifestyle, kept the holidays, kept kosher, and so on.

And the case came before the Supreme Court, and sort of like our Supreme Court, they did a socially -correct -to -politically -correct thing, and all of a sudden said that they're not

Jewish. And it's because of the next obstacle, which is persecution that happened in the name of Jesus by the, quote -unquote,

Church, that harmed the Jewish community in Europe and in the

Middle East and other places. And so, I think their ruling was not based on the reality, because you can have

Buddhists, you can have agnostics there, you can have atheists, and they, you know, they're not considered non -Jewish.

You could have a Messianic Jew or a Christian who is Jewish, who has infinitely more in common than an

Orthodox Jew, than an atheist or an agnostic, or a Jewish person that's practicing

Zen Buddhist meditation or some nonsense, and they will be considered

Jews, and yet the Christian will not. Yeah, I know, it's really sad. And you know what, my wife and I visited

Israel recently, and we met with a number of Messianic Jewish people who, they were urging us to make

Aliyah, which means to go up, and so to go up, when they talked about going up to Jerusalem, it was

Aliyah, to worship God. They urged us to make Aliyah, to come there, to help, you know, be involved with the community there, the

Messianic community. But they did warn us that it would probably come up, particularly

Jewish people coming from America, they would out and out ask us to open Jesus. That it's become a question that wasn't considered before, but now with the growing

Messianic movement, they have brought that into the idea of, you know, of immigrating or coming into Israel.

So it is a trouble. So that's another obstacle that even the somewhat moderately religious or irreligious or secular still has this sense of loyalty to their

Jewishness. So one of the things you want to assure a Jewish person who shows any openness to discuss the

Gospel is to let them know that when they believe in Jesus, they don't become non -Jew.

That this is not reality. Now the community may call them non -Jews, but the reality before God, who's the ultimate judge, is that they're just who they were born.

They didn't become Italians or Greeks or some other ethnic group. Well, they could be a

Jewish Italian or Jewish Greek. Yeah, that would be a good combination. All the way around.

Well, my wife's Italian, so I've got a real, in my heart, a love for Italians too. But Ron, is the sense when somebody becomes a

Christian, having been an ethnic Jew, that they are then joining the persecutors, essentially?

Yes, they are called traitors. There's a political aspect to this as well, and it's historical, which is a real problem.

And so one of the things that you want to do when you're sharing, it's true, they're called traitors. Some Orthodox families, if I was part of an

Orthodox family and I believed in Jesus, which I do, but if I was part of that family and all of a sudden believed, they would have a funeral for me, and they would no longer consider me their child, and I'd be literally be cut off from having any connection with them.

Yeah, I have a friend who, ironically, before becoming a Christian, before accepting

Yeshua Messiah as his own Messiah, he was a nominal

Jewish individual. His family is nominally Jewish. They do not go to synagogue regularly.

They only, in a cultural way, celebrate the holy days. And yet, before he became a

Christian, he was embraced by the family as if there was nothing wrong with him when he was a male stripper.

And when he became a Christian, they sat shiva for him and wrote him off as dead.

And that's kind of rare for a non -practicing religious family to do something that extreme.

That usually happens more with the very Orthodox, but it's very possible, yeah. Yeah, well, this was a very strange situation.

In fact, his mother, when he attended a funeral with his Gentile Christian wife, his mother physically attacked the wife and caused a great scene in the place.

But it is a disturbing thing. One thing that I wanted to backtrack a little bit to, the

Messianic Jews that you mentioned who are living as Orthodox Jews, what is the line of demarcation between that and someone becoming a full -blown

Judaizer, where they're doing what Paul actually condemned in the book of Galatia when he was writing to the

Church of Galatia, the Judaizers who were insisting on the

Gentiles being circumcised? I agree with you. Just keep in mind that among the

Jewish believers in Jesus, you have a variety of perceptions on that.

Many of them are Protestant with a Jewish approach to the worship and understanding remembrance of the feast that many times

Jewish regular Gentile -focused churches do not have, but they're just as thoroughly clear in their doctrines that you would be very accepting of where they're coming from.

Then you go all the way over to the other extreme, where it started out as a missiological approach that if we become more

Jewish, that we will then draw more Jewish people, that we will then de -strange the

Church, so to speak, de -Gentilize the Church, and make it a more welcoming place to Jewish people by becoming more

Jewish or, you know, practicing our Judaism, with Jesus being lifted up in the middle of that.

The problem is that somewhere along the line it crossed over theologically, and Jews for Jesus has a very good book, a little pamphlet actually, called

A Theological Guide to Messianic Judaism, and I urge, you know, people to read it.

So the extreme is they passed over to where they began to really move into the idea that Jewish people have a special call from Jewish Christians now, that is, they have a special call from God to maintain and enter into a more

Jewish lifestyle, and it becomes more of an obligation on Jewish believers, rather than a choice.

You know, Hudson Taylor put on pigtails, and you know, he dressed like the

Chinese, and so that was sort of like the original, but then it passed over theology, and then it's one of the weaknesses with some wing of the

Messianic movement. Again, I don't want to typify everyone. There's solid believers within that culture, and actually there's no reason they can't worship

God in a thoroughly Jewish manner. I mean, the kind of worship we have in our local church is chosen by that community.

It's not a God -given situation that you have to have hymns from the 17th century or 18th century, or...

You know, I mean, to be honest, you know, I mean, and there's no, there's, you know, again, so we have to be careful here, but one of the most tragic things is when a

Jewish person goes into a community that's teaching that a Jewish person who doesn't publicly confess faith in Jesus can kind of be saved if they believe in the coming of the

Messiah. I mean, it just is out of love for the Jewish people, out of hope for Jewish people, they've gone over theologically the deep end, and it's very sad to see that happen.

It's so hard for a Jew to come to the Lord, and then to be influenced by the wrong theology is a great tragedy.

Oh, I have even heard from not only non -Christian

Jewish individuals, but even some who are Jewish believers in Christ who are from more of a similar theological background than you and I are embraced, who are upset by some of the messianic movement because they think that, for instance,

Rabbi Patrick O 'Reilly or Rabbi Patricia O 'Reilly is something that infuriates a serious

Orthodox Jew because the in -depth study and the long process of of study and education and so on that an

Orthodox rabbi, for instance, goes through, or a person, Orthodox Jewish person, but before becoming a rabbi, and they look at these people who just, you know, put on these costumes and wear these labels of rabbi and so on.

It's almost like a charade. It's something that's insulting to them. Do you have any comment on that?

Yeah, I agree. First of all, there are now credible institutions, training institutions, that are conferring degrees from a messianic perspective.

Some of them are not moving towards this extreme Orthodox approach, so they're trying to move into more of a legitimate training of learning the history of prayer and synagogal worship and yet also preach the gospel, and so there's an attempt to move, but there's many who just chose the name rabbi, and I think that is really not a good witness to the

Jewish community because the rabbis go through all kind of theological training to be approved and become credible academically, and to take that title on, you know,

I don't want to insult anyone out there, but it's like all of a sudden someone calling themselves Apostle Ron Elkin.

Right, and I'm glad you stopped doing that. I gave it up for Lent.

And I was forced by legal reasons to stop calling myself Dr. Chris Ornson, but anyway, that's another story.

Well, some of the other obstacles are the fact of, again, one of the big ones, if somebody is witnessing to a

Jewish person who's moving more and more, particularly if they're witnessing to somebody in college or somebody who's a younger person, and they're moving more in that direction, and their

Jewish family is going to disown them, or at least to one extreme or another, stop paying for their college or, you know, kick them out of the house or whatever,

I believe it's the duty of the believers to be ready to get behind that person, at least in a very practical way, at least to help them, you know, whatever is necessary to weather that, to become established in the community of God.

Of course, you know, people are going to go their own way and make their work and such on, but there needs to be an understanding of the price that some

Jewish people would pay, but not, we must not let that stop us from witnessing and sharing the gospel, because God is the one that they have to be accountable to.

I remember witnessing to a Jewish doctor, and I have a testimony, oh, this is also ties in with helping

Jewish person, is there are testimony books of different Jewish people who have become believers, and this one was called

Jewish doctors who meet, quote, the great physician, and it's a testimony of very credible

Jewish doctors who, through one way or another, God has brought to a place where they believed in Jesus, and I happen to be preaching in a church in a suburb of Philadelphia, and this

Jewish doctor came, I have mentioned the book, Jewish doctor came up to me and said that he was talking about the gospel with his

Jewish, with the Gentile neighbor, and he had brought him to see the Passover, and which

I was teaching on, and he said, you know, I would like to read that book, and I happen to have it providentially in my stack of things that I brought with me to display at the church, and I gave it to him, and then

I met with him. I remember him saying that he really did believe in Jesus, but he was afraid of what his family would say, you know, and what

I did to help him actually get past that is to say, you know, in the end, your family is not going to be your judge.

Your family is not going to be able to intercede between you and God. It's between you and God, and ultimately you're accountable.

If you know this is true, then you need to submit to God and embrace the truth that God's shown you, and it enabled him to get to the point where he could open his heart to the

Lord, or at least make a profession of faith, and it turned out later that he was a true believer.

So I'm thankful for that, but this is what we're dealing with. We do pray for more

Jewish people that God will open their hearts up to the gospel. By the way, you mentioned doctors,

Jewish doctors coming to Christ. Have you ever heard of the booklet or read it that Chapel Library publishes called

Charlie Kalson, the Drummer Boy by M .L. Rosvely, who was a respected military surgeon in the

Civil War who was led to Christ by the testimony of a young boy who was dying after receiving mortal wounds on the battlefield?

I don't know if you've ever read that story, but it's quite remarkable. I have heard of it, and I really do need to read it.

That would be good. Yeah, the website for Chapel Library is chapellibrary .org, and you can look up Charlie Kalson, that's

C -O -U -L -S -O -N, Charlie Kalson, the Drummer Boy by M .L.

Rosvely, R -O -S -S -V -A -L -L -Y, who lived from 1828 to 1892, and his whole family abandoned him, his wife and children abandoned him when he came to Christ, but I don't want to blow the ending of the booklet, but there is a wonderful end to that story.

And I actually brought that story up when I was asked to speak at a Christmas banquet, because I tied in the fact that everyone has heard the song,

The Little Drummer Boy, but let's hear about a true drummer boy, not one of fairytale and legend, but a real drummer boy who had a profound impact for the cause of Christ upon the heart of a

Jewish physician, and I went on to tell the whole story that is found in this booklet. We are going to have our guest

Ron Elkin back on the program, God willing, this Wednesday during the second hour of our program.

Tom Askell is the guest for the first hour. He's well known amongst

Reformed Baptists. He is the current director of the Founders Ministries, which is a

Southern Baptist ministry that is trying to bring Southern Baptists to return to the doctrines of sovereign grace or Calvinism, which all of the founders of the

Southern Baptist denomination embraced, which is why they call this the Founders Ministry.

All of them embraced this theology in the 19th century, and yet today those who are theologically

Reformed are a tiny minority in that giant denomination. But Tom Askell will be our guest for the first hour, and Ron Elkin will be our guest again from 5 to 6 p .m.

Eastern time the second hour, but if you could now, Ron, wrap up with what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners before we leave the program today.

One thing, I hope you will listen this Wednesday, because I will then be giving scriptural ways to respond to the objections that I raised that you can show to your

Jewish friends that help dispel some of the theological obstacles and even cultural obstacles.

So that's one, but the key that would be for you is to pray for God to bring into your life

Jewish people who you might be able to share the gospel with and pray for God to help your own heart be cleansed of any prejudice that you may have been inoculated with in this world that we live in.

There's a strong tendency to view Jewish people in different ways that's inappropriate and sometimes becomes part of our clothing without even realizing it, so I'd ask

God for you to ask God to cleanse you of anything you may have absorbed or believed that is inappropriate, and then to use the opportunity of learning to find ways to witness those

Jewish people around you, and pray for the work of all the

Jewish ministries that are out there. We happen to be called Ami, which means my people, comfort, comfort my people, and pray for the different works.

It's a work that takes a lot of boldness and courage to be public about this, but I believe very much that we need to do that.

We need to disturb people's peace in a loving way, and so pray for what we're doing this weekend.

We'll be out there in Center City, Philadelphia with a prayer table and with literature. Pray that we can also use our battery -powered megaphone to do some street preaching.

Praise God. And just so our listeners have that website again, it's amiministry .org,

A -M -M as in Michael, I -ministry .org, and I hope that you visit that website often, and I hope that it further equips you to go to your

Jewish family, friends, loved ones, neighbors, and bring them the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And I know that in a day of political correctness, people are wrongly thinking that to present a

Jewish person with this kind of message is a message of hate and bigotry and prejudice and all that kind of a thing, but there could be no greater act of love than to bring somebody the gospel of Jesus Christ, even when it may mean being alienated from them and cut off from them.

And of course, even we have brothers and sisters in Islamic lands that are risking and losing their lives to do this.

So obviously, bringing the gospel to your Jewish neighbor is not likely to have that kind of an outcome, so you should have the boldness as a

Christian to, out of love, bring them the gospel, and we pray that you do.

And I pray that I even am more motivated to be more aggressive in that. I want to thank you,

Ron. I look forward to having you back Wednesday. I look forward to having my friend Eric Nielsen back in studio whenever he is able, and the website for his church where he is an elder is

Community Evangelical Free Church in Urbana, Illinois. That's communityefc .org,

communityefc .org. I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater