December 26, 2025 Show with Jatniel Pérez on “Bringing the Gospel of God’s Sovereign Grace to Cuba”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe.

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

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, 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 Friday on this 26th day of December 2025.

I hope that you all had a wonderful and refreshing and joyful and safe and meaningful and Christ-centered Christmas, and I want to give a special word of thanks to Katie and Corey Mowry, the daughter and son-in-law of my longtime friend Susan, who led me to Christ in the 1980s.

I want to thank them for inviting me over to spend Christmas with them, and it was a pleasure to be in their company. And today, I am thrilled to have a first-time guest that I've been wanting to interview for quite some time, and I'm sure that we will all be fascinated by his story and his.

William Carey Seminary and the Reformed Baptist Work in Cuba

Cuba.

I'm speaking of Jotny L. Perez, who is director of William Carey Seminary in Cuba. He is also the national coordinator of the Association of Reformed Baptist Churches of Cuba, also known as Berean Mission, and a church planter with over 19 years of experience in pastoral ministry and a missionary sent out by Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Kirkland, Washington.

Today, we're going to be addressing bringing the gospel of God's sovereign grace to Cuba, victories, and challenges, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Jotny L. Perez.

Thank you, Lord. It's a big privilege for me to be with you, and thank you for the invitation.

Well, first of all, tell us about William Carey Seminary in Cuba.

Well, for many years, my dad tried to start a seminary since 1997, when he first met David Straub and Jim Allen. He tried to start the seminary since that time, 1997. So then after that, the government closed it, and in 2006, we started again to recover the seminary, and we just started with that, made some connections with William Carey in Argentina, some masters, and then with Carey in Canada, Bob Penhero, Tim Beavis.

And then from there, we just started, and we started contacting pastors, and people were trying to come to study with us because of the Reformed theology. And up to today, we have around, I don't know, like 300 students all over the island.

Wow, that's something. I was not expecting that amazing description and detail about how many students you have. And also, please tell us about the Association of Reformed Baptist Churches of Cuba.

The same in 1997, my dad, he was, you know, he had to leave Los Pinos Nuevos Convention, where he was a pastor since the 1980s, and then he just started planting the Reformed Baptist Association. He met in Jamaica, David Straub, and then he met Jim Allen, and they just, you know, started training my dad and helping him to start that in Cuba.

In 1997, he got in a region, Las Tunas, he started just planting churches, and some pastors came to join him in that effort, and he just started all of that. And since that period, you know, the Cuban government has been trying to stop the association in 1999 with the effort of many of the American churches.

My dad had like 15 churches with 15 different pastors, and the government confiscated 14 houses, and the government put all the pastors outside of the buildings of the church, and then, you know, it was reduced to just only three churches.

And then from there, we started all over again planting churches, and God has been opening more doors. And up to today, we are 12 churches and like three planting church plants that we're just working on.

So that's just God's grace.

Amen. And by the way, is the Jim Adams that you're referring to, is he the same James Adams who wrote a really phenomenal tract, a booklet called Decisional Regeneration? Yes, yes, yes.

James Adams from Arizona, Mesa, Arizona.

And I have met him at at least one conference, and I also had the privilege of meeting and hearing the late David Straub preach, and he had a fascinating story to tell. I don't know if you heard about this yourself, but when he was bringing thousands of dollars, really smuggling it to Romania, he was warned that the corrupt police would stop buses and other vehicles at checkpoints, and they would get onto the bus and question people that look suspicious to them, and if they had money, they would steal it.

And so David was very nervous about being questioned and searched with all this money he had under his coat. And a man that was sitting next to him started to erupt in an uncontrollable coughing fit, and it distracted the police on the bus, and they just ignored David.

And David said that he always wondered if that was actually an angel sent from God. He obviously didn't know that for a fact, but it was quite a fascinating story. And what a wonderful brother in Christ he was, such a gentle, humble man, and very bold in his proclamation of the gospel, albeit his humble and gracious nature.

But, well, I am really looking forward to this discussion today. I also want to thank the brethren at Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Kirkland, Washington, for being the primary church that has sent you out as a missionary.

And, by the way, folks, if anybody wants to find out how you can financially support the mission work of my guest, you can go to the website of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Kirkland, Washington, which is trbcwa .org, trbcwa .org.

Well, we have a tradition here. Jotniel, by the way, is that first name of yours—because you are the very first person I've ever heard of with that name—is that a common Spanish name, Cuban name, or is it rare?

Because I've never heard of it before.

Well, in many of the countries, like in Latin America, South America, Spain, those countries, they're always trying to name the people after, or the Roman Catholic, you know, like the year, day by day, they have saints in every day.

And then for the Christians, they try to find the name on the Bible. So my name is, I think it's 1 Chronicles 26, is one of the Psalms there. So my name comes from the Bible.

Oh, great. Praise God. Well, as I was saying, we have a tradition here. Whenever we have a first-time guest, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony, including the kind of religious atmosphere, if any, in which they were raised.

And you already hinted that your father was a friend of David Straub, so I'm assuming you were raised in a Reformed Baptist home. Maybe you could even tell us about his own upbringing and how he came to Christ.

But please tell us a summary of your story.

Well, I grew up in a Christian family. When I was born, my dad was a little bit like a broad evangelical fundamentalist denomination. So I grew up a little bit there, where all the kids of all the pastors, you know, they are saved and they are like small angels.

So you mean in their mind, they viewed them as all saved.

So they just, you know, I grew up like thinking that I was a believer because I was born in a Christian family. So then later, when I started to grow up, when first I met David Straub and James Tavon, they started to put something in my head, like, are you a Christian just because of being born in a Christian family?

So those words came into my heart really, really strong. And I started to think about that. And, you know, then I started to realize that, you know, to be saved is not just because of being born in a Christian family, but because of believing in Christ.

One night James Tavon was preaching and he was talking about that. And then that came to my head, you know, that start questioning a lot. After that, I got into a corner with him and he was start to explain it to me, like everything about salvation, all of that.

And I cannot tell you on a specific date, but if that could be the time, it was through the preaching of James Tavon that I started to get to know the purpose of my life. And to believe in Christ, it was more than just being born in a Christian family.

So that was really good. And since then, then I started to find comfort and rest in Christ for salvation. But that's my story.

And were you born in Cuba?

Yes, I was born in Cuba, 1995, May 29th.

And tell us how your father, because you already said that you were raised in a broadly evangelical, fundamentalist Baptist home. How did your father discover the Reformed faith? Was it through James Adams or some other source that he initially discovered and embraced Reformed theology?

So my dad studied at Los Pinos Novo Seminary and in 1988, he went to Jamaica to study a master's degree. So when he was in Jamaica, some of the teachers that came down there to teach, they were referring to books that they were Calvinistic and Reformed.

So whenever my dad had to start studying them and reading them, he started to see that the theology that he knew was not the same that he started to learn now in Jamaica. So then, you know, he started to write letters to the publishers of those books, and one of them, it was Banner of Truth.

And the one who received the letters, it was from Carl Ioffe. Eshleman was the one who started receiving all the letters. And that was amazing, yes. And so it was through Eshleman. Eshleman passed the letters of my dad to David Straub, and then they started to meet by letters.

And then after that, they put in connection my dad and closer in Jamaica, who was a missionary.

In Jamaica.

So that has been the way how my dad came to the Reformed theology. And then that was a big, big change for my dad. And when he returned back to Cuba, he started to preach all of that, and he couldn't just close the mouth and don't speak it.

So, and that brought many problems for him. And then that's why he had in 1997 to leave the denomination and just go to plant a Reformed Baptist church and association. But that has been the story.

By the way, folks, since I mentioned this earlier, I thought I'd let you know, if you'd like to get an excellent tract by the aforementioned Jim Adams, also known as James E. Adams, you could go to the website of Chapel Library, and that is chapellibrary .org, chapellibrary .org.

If you type in the search engine, decisional regeneration, that will come up. And also, the church where Jim Adams is serving as an elder, you can go to seastonemesa .org, seastonemesa .org. And that is Cornerstone Church of Mesa, Arizona.

So, I hope you will be blessed by exploring both of those websites. Well, it is somewhat surprising, knowing the brutal anti-Christian communist past of Cuba, a more correctly pronounced Cuba, I guess.

And of course, it is still a communist country. How is it that you are able to have such an open and public ministry there, including being director of an established seminary, William Carey Seminary in Cuba, without being shut down, without being persecuted?

It's actually quite amazing.

Persecution, Survival, and the Public Ministry in Communist Cuba

Well, that's a funny story. Well, yes, it's persecuted, and we face all the time a lot of police questioning, and we receive a lot of those. So, the big thing about Cuba is that, yes, we continue under all of that oppression.

People are suffering. The government just go and close places, and they come and try to stop us. Why we continue doing all of that? Well, it's because, and I will be really careful how to say this without sounding really bad, but I learned from my dad.

He's still in Cuba. So, my dad and my mom, they're in Cuba. I'm here in the States. I had to flee Cuba because they were going to try to get our kids out of us. And so, we had to get out of Cuba, and I'm just going back and forth.

But it's really, you know, they're threatening me a lot, but I just continue doing everything that we can, because I always say this to my friends, if somebody needs to die, well, I will be open to do it for Christ.

So, I'm just open to continue doing all of this until God let me do it, and I just want to continue doing this. I think that God placed me in Cuba to do it, and I have been following the example of my grandfather who died just doing the same thing.

My dad is there in Cuba. He's a pastor there. He continues preaching the gospel, and I will just continue to do the same. So, yes, it's a communist country. It continues being like that. It goes against the churches and tries to stop the gospel in Cuba, but we just need to continue being brave and just preaching the gospel until God let us do it.

Yeah, and just out of curiosity, why is it that you were bold enough to come on my show using your real name? I've interviewed missionaries in dangerous countries, and they typically have insisted that I use an alias or a fake name, but you have made no such request.

Just out of curiosity, why?

Well, my name is known by the Cuban government, and they know everything that I do and every word that I speak. My dad and I have been in many places, in human rights organizations and everywhere. I have been interviewed when I was in Cuba by many organizations here in the States and all of that, so I'm not going to hide.

If they just want to stop me, they know where I am and everything that we do. And again, if I need to go to jail or whatever, I'm open to do it.

Now, other than the grace and good providence of our sovereign God, why is it that it seems that they are threatening your father and you, but they haven't done anything more than threats to this point?

I don't know.

It's just God's grace, but because of the big influence in other countries. So, like, in July the 11th, 2021, we had two pastors from our association that they were in jail, and I don't know, so God just opened the door and like 19 countries wrote letters to the Cuban embassies in those countries, and they start to see that, you know, those letters will say, free the pastors and don't touch Daniel Perez.

So, that has been something really good. So, I'm just using my name and that's all, and if they don't let me come in, God will open more doors and the gospel will never be stopped.

Hallelujah. Now, how frequently do you go back and forth to and from the United States and to Cuba and back?

Well, the same stories that you were saying about David Straub and, you know, bringing the money with him and all of that, in Cuba it's the same. The only way to bring money in is hand-delivered, so you need to bring everything with you.

So, I need to come every month. I need to bring the support for the pastors. We need to bring all the money for the seminary. We need to bring everything down to Cuba hand-delivered. There is no other way how to do it.

So, I'm coming every month down to Cuba to continue the work.

Wow, every month, wow. And you mentioned, I believe, and listen, my poor memory is not working correctly, but you mentioned 300 students at the seminary. How are they hearing about this seminary?

Well, what we do is we bring the pastors into Havana. So, we don't have, you know, because of all the pressure and all that, we can only have a certain amount of students. So, we have, like, pastors who come to our seminary in Havana from, like, 40 pastors.

So, then they come to Havana, they get the courses, and then we bring those courses, and they bring with them all the materials to the local churches, and then at the local churches, then they have the other students.

So, we train men, and then they go and they train others. So, in that way, we can have this platform where we train some, and then they continue the training to others.

And, or tell us something about Cuba itself. Is it less oppressive or equally as oppressive as it was under the leadership of the late Fidel Castro? And I know that his brother rose to power for a while.

I don't know if he still is. The dictator of Cuba. Perhaps you could give us updates on that. But how, if at all, has the climate of religious freedom changed over there?

Well, I always use a joke with this. I always say the problem is that what they try to do is, you know, to try to bring people into Cuba so they can see how beautiful Cuba is and how good communism is, and then they can bring that good communism here into the States.

So, I always tell everybody, whenever you come to Cuba and you see everything that we're doing and all of that, always know that behind all of that, there's persecution, there's suffering, there's everything.

Don't try to come down to the States and bring how beautiful Cuba is.

Yeah. And I'm assuming that you are perhaps bewildered. I don't know if you are as frustrated as other Americans are who have witnessed the rise in popularity of socialism, even communism here, perhaps especially with young people.

It is mystifying how ignorant these people must be about the track record of socialism and communism in other parts of the world. It has never succeeded wherever it has existed and thrived. And the people there have never, in any of these socialistic or communistic countries, have never flourished nearly as much as people in free societies like the United States.

Tell us about that. When you witness things in American television and other media of this rise of appreciation, admiration of socialism and communism, so much so that New York City recently elected an openly socialist mayor.

Well, the way that I can describe that is that the American people, they like to try things.

So...

Try it, you'll like it.

And so, you know, they have the iPhone 16 Pro Max, really good. They had paid for the phone. But then the 17 comes up and then they just want to switch to the new phone just to try, just to see the new thing.

And what happened is that with political things, I will say it's not good to try something else. So it's better just to learn from others and to see how it has been going for others. So that's why I always encourage people just go travel, check before you just make a decision.

But that's how I think all of that is just coming into here. Because the problem is that people just like to try things and they just want to see, OK, now we have this person, he's really bad and I don't like it.

Let's try somebody else. Well, then what you get is that the other person ends up like what you have now in New York and all of that. So that's my perception on why some people just make those kind of decisions.

Now, how did you learn how to speak English so well?

Well, if I would be a Pentecostal, I will say I have a gift of speaking Pentecostal.

I don't know.

It just came from God. I went with my father to Jamaica and then I learned there for a couple of years that I was there. And now look at my kids, how fast they have been learning English here. I can tell you that things can be in your head.

You can never use it later, but it will be inside of your head. And then whenever you start using that again, it will come up. So that's what I think. I don't know. It's just God's grace.

Amen. And so going back to how oppressed are those that live in Cuba still, how openly do people preach whatever they believe the Bible compels them to preach? Are there puppet churches, as it were, as there have been?

And going back even to the rise of communism, there have been churches in different areas of the world. And back in the days of the Soviet Union, there were puppet churches where some Americans, perhaps especially famous ones like Billy Graham, were taken on tours of puppet churches that were really just under the thumb of the Soviet Union.

And Billy Graham really angered people who had been persecuted in the Soviet Union and had been imprisoned in the gulags and so forth. When he came back to the United States after a trip to the Soviet Union and declared that there was no religious persecution there, and they were like, is he out of his mind or something?

So tell us about that.

Well, in Cuba it's like the same. Yes, the church is open to speak and to preach, and they let people to go to the streets and give away crack and all of that. But everything is restricted. They use that in a way that whenever you don't get into political sense, then they let you do it.

For example, in my case and everything that we do, I never try to be silent against things that is going really bad. I will always protest and do whatever, if they just go to close the church or something.

But the problem is that they will never do things to me. They will do the things to the pastors. So then the pastors are the ones who will call me and say, hey, please don't speak anymore. Try just to focus on this and this and this, because they call me and they try to make me stop everything that I'm doing.

Would this be reformed? Baptist pastors? Oh, yes.

This is normal to everybody.

Wow. Yes.

So they will come to the people. They will try to make the people to stop. We have many pastors that just because of preaching reformed theology in churches, the government just called the nominations and they get them.

And then they come to us, hey, you know, I just want to plant a church. I just want to study at your seminary. Just for coming to study in our seminary, we have pastors that they have been ejected or, you know, like taken out of their churches just because of coming to study with us.

Because in Cuba, reformed theology, reformed theology, you know, 1689, is like a little bit prohibited because of all the stories between Spurgeon and Marx and Engels.

Huh.

Well, we're going to go to our first commercial break. If anybody has a question for Jotny L. Perez about the gospel of sovereign grace in Cuba and how it is progressing and victories that have occurred there, as well as challenges that continue to exist and anything else that comes to your mind, please send us an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .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, you may feel free to remain anonymous if your subject involves a personal and private matter.

Don't go away. We'll be right back with Jotny L. Perez after these messages from our sponsors.

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Welcome back. If you just tuned us in, my guest today is pastor, church planter, seminary director, and missionary to Cuba, Jotny L. Perez. He is a Reformed Baptist, and we are discussing the gospel of sovereign grace in Cuba and the victories and the challenges in spreading that precious gospel in that communist country.

If you have questions, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. And we do have Thaddeus in Carmel, however they pronounce it there in Carmel, Indiana, and he says, has anyone close to your family ever been murdered by the communist.

Government of Cuba? No, we have not have anybody yet murdered, but what we have is because of the oppression. My niece, Noemi, she had, I don't know how to say it, but mental issues. She couldn't continue.

She had big fears, so she started to think that always the government was persecuting her and all of that. So she had a lot of periods in her life that she didn't want to get out of the house because she thought that they were going to kill her because of all the oppression to all the family.

So the same to my uncle, David Perez, and I'm really grateful for all the, everything that my dad has been just facing, but never had been getting sick because of that. So, but no murder, but a lot of oppression and my niece, Noemi Perez, she had been really.

Affected by that. And why don't you tell us about the day-to-day life of your average resident in Cuba as far as the ability to eat what they want to eat, purchase food and clothing in any way that they choose to.

Just the average, ordinary, run-of-the-mill things that people in free societies take for granted. And I just came back before doing this program to Cole's department store. It was easy to find everything that I wanted to buy and that kind of a thing.

How different, if at all, is life in Cuba in that regard?

Well, number one, the first thing is that everybody in Cuba spend, the day has 24 hours. So they spend 25 hours a day just finding what they need to eat. So that means like they spend the whole day in line just to try to find what they need for the house.

Then the second big problem is whenever they find it, then a lot of things are just available in US dollars and that's American dollars are not available. It's something that the government do not pay with that.

So now a lot of things that are available in Cuba, the stores like Primera Setenta, that's a big store in Havana and all of that, you need to go there to buy with American dollars. The gas for the cars is in American dollars and that's something that the government do not pay people with that currency.