May 11, 2022 Show with Dr. Tom Ascol on “Dr. Tom Ascol’s Candidacy for SBC President” PLUS Keith Foskey on “Depression in the Lives of Christians”

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

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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

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

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

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions, and now here's your host,

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Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensirenradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 11th day of May, 2022.

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In fact, it is, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, the day after my guest's wedding anniversary.

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I think it was his 42nd, but I'll have him clarify that in a minute. We have two guests on today.

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The first hour, we will have Dr. Tom Askell, who is not only president of Founders Ministries, but he's also running for president of the

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Southern Baptist Convention, and he is senior pastor of Grace Baptist Church of Cape Coral, Florida.

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The second hour will be joined by Keith Foskey, one of three pastors of Sovereign Grace Family Church of Jacksonville, Florida, who will be addressing the theme,

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Depression in the Lives of Christians. But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio with such an important announcement,

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Dr. Tom Askell. Thank you so much, Chris. It's always a joy to be with you. It's always a joy to have you on the program.

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And why don't you tell our listeners, first of all, about Founders Ministries. Yeah, well, Founders is a ministry that began 40 years ago next year, actually, and we are committed to the recovery of the gospel of Reformation of local churches.

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We have a weekly podcast, The Sword in the Trowel, that drops every Tuesday afternoon, and we publish books.

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We have a conference, a national conference, every January down here in Southwest Florida. We're engaged in trying to help pastors and churches to think more carefully about things like law and gospel and confessionalism and pastoral theology.

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So God has given us lots of opportunities to do that through our quarterly journal, Bible studies, just various ways that we can resource churches and pastors.

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It's our desire to do so. Now tell us about Grace Baptist Church of Cape Coral, Florida. Yeah, Cape Coral is down here in Southwest Florida, and the church is a wonderful church.

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We're also going to celebrate our 40th anniversary as a church next year. I've been here 36 of those years.

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Being in South Florida, we've got a wide variety of races, ethnicities in our church, backgrounds, and it's a wonderful congregation.

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God's been so good to us here. Of course, any church you could put up with me for 36 years you know deserves the name of Grace because it takes a lot of grace to do that.

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I find that hard to believe you're such a likable, or should I even say lovable, individual. But I know that the church where I am a member is forever connected to Grace Baptist Church of Cape Coral, Florida, because the founder of Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle was the late

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Ernie Reisinger, and well -known amongst Reformed Baptists especially, and even some of our

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Presbyterian brethren. He was, I know, an elder at one time at Grace Baptist Church of Cape Coral.

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Who was the founder of Grace Baptist Church of Cape Coral? There was a pastor before Ernie got here.

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The church was very brand new. I think maybe a year old when Ernie started attending. Then he'd been here maybe six or eight months attending, and it split.

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They had a couple of splits by the time I got here. Ernie became the interim pastor I think in the church's second year, and I got here in the church's third year if I remember the timeline right.

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So yeah, Ernie served here as an elder for several years after I got here, and we miss him.

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We're grateful for his faithfulness and his legacy that he's left to us.

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Well, I intend to repeat this information later, but for those of you who are interested in finding out more about Founders Ministries, go to founders .org,

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founders .org, and for those of you who are interested in finding out more about Grace Baptist Church of Cape Coral, Florida, go to truegraceofgod .org,

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truegraceofgod .org. Now, we are already announced today that you are running for candidacy of the president of the

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Southern Baptist Convention. You're already the president of Founders Ministries.

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What, do you want to be president of everything now? Yeah, it's a strange kind of providence,

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Chris. Yeah, there's some people I really love and trust whose counsel

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I esteem prevailed upon me a few months ago to really seriously consider this, and my wife said that she was open to it.

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People have asked me over the years, you know, hey, why don't you run for the SBC president? And I just have plenty to do as a pastor.

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I love what I do, and I'm busy. But those conversations grew increasingly serious, and so the elders here initially said no.

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They didn't think it was the right time. We have a lot going on in the church, and praise God for his blessings, but those blessings bring challenges, and we just need all hands on deck.

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But we took extra time to think and pray about it after considering it more seriously, and they said, okay, well, you know, we said no ten days ago or seven days ago.

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Let's come back next week and see. And they all came back and said, you know what? Every one of them, one by one, had a change of heart, and that was just like an indication to me that, okay,

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God's in this. I don't know if he wants me to be president or not of the SBC, but I feel very confident in allowing myself to be nominated.

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So that's where we are in this, and if God does that, that'll be wonderful and do the best we can, and if not,

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I've got plenty to do as a pastor. Now, how has the original or initial,

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I should say, reaction been to Southern Baptists nationwide, worldwide hearing of your candidacy?

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And obviously you know better than I do that the Southern Baptist Convention is known for not being monolithic.

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There are debates and divisions, very strong and passionate and serious ones, that have existed not only over the doctrines of sovereign grace, which is why your ministry is called

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Founders Ministries because all of the founders of the Southern Baptist Convention were in fact Calvinist, although a minority in that convention today.

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And then you have differences of opinion over critical race theory and the social justice and all kinds of things that continue to create tension and even, might

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I add, hostility in some cases between Southern Baptists. So what has been the reaction to the word of your candidacy?

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Well, it's, as you could imagine, been a wide variety across the whole spectrum of everything from people screaming to say

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Southern Baptists must be out of their mind to consider a guy like this, to people that seem to be appreciative of the fact that I'd be willing to let myself be nominated.

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You know, I think what's happening, and of course we all live in our own echo chambers, and so the people that really don't want me to be president aren't talking to me, but I'm hearing from a lot of pastors and churches that say that they're showing up, they're going to go to Anaheim in California for our two -day business meeting and vote, having never gone before.

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I mean, I talked to another guy today, got an email from another fellow today, and that's just happening regularly. It seems like churches are getting engaged that haven't been engaged, that have been frustrated and maybe felt like their voices weren't being heard.

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And so my hope is that I can represent a large portion of the churches in the

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SBC that perhaps have not been heard or not been as engaged in years past as they want to be now.

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And so I've received a lot of encouragement, and it's been humbling and gratifying. Again, I don't know what

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God will do, but I'm grateful for the opportunity to at least have these few months or leading up to Anaheim next month to try to talk about things that are very important that I think

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Southern Baptists, as well as all evangelicals in America, must give attention to. Now, how often do they have a presidential election in the

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Southern Baptist Convention? Yeah, there's an election every year, and so we elect a president every year.

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Typically, if that person wants a second year, he's not opposed, though he can be opposed, and that's not uncommon for him to be opposed.

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But in recent years, if a man wants a second term, he allows himself to be nominated, and that's granted to him.

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So last year, Ed Litton was elected. Because of all the controversy surrounding his service with preaching other people's sermons and other things, he decided not to seek a second year, and that opened it up for people to say, okay, we think we'll be nominated.

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Yeah, but didn't Lyndon Baines Johnson already say that? I'm sorry, I couldn't resist that. I don't know.

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You're better at that than I am. But anyway, that's how I got into it. Whoever gets elected this year, most likely, if they would like to, will be given the opportunity to serve a second year, too.

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And I understand there's exciting news about Votie Balcom as well running for an office.

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That's right. Votie is also going to be nominated for the presidency of the

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Southern Baptist Pastors Conference. That's an annual assignment, and each year on Sunday night and Monday before the annual business meeting for Southern Baptist begins on a

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Tuesday, the Pastors Conference is held. And so different people are invited in to preach, and we've had some not stellar lineups at our

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Pastors Conference in recent years. The year where we didn't get to meet because of COVID, 2020, there was a woman pastor lined up.

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There was a pastor whose church has employed the theme of Game of Thrones and Victoria's Secret.

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Wow. His worship that was invited to preach. And there was a lot of controversy surrounding that one.

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And so you might say that Southern Baptist dodged a bullet by the convention being canceled and the

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Pastors Conference not being held. But you know Votie. I mean, Votie's a wonderful expositor. He's one of the best expositors of our generation.

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And so if God puts him in that position of being the Pastors Conference president, you can very well anticipate that next year's

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Pastors Conference will give high, high priority to the simple, clear, faithful exposition of the inerrant word of God.

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Yeah, amen. Well, what would exactly what would be the role and the function and the duties of a president of the

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Southern Baptist Convention? Yeah, well, it's actually pretty limited in its official capacities and authority.

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The president gets to appoint three committees, and those committees function in a very limited way.

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The Tellers Committee, which is involved in getting people situated at the convention, the annual meeting.

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The Resolutions Committee that receives resolution submissions and then brings out resolutions to the annual meeting to say these are things we think we ought to adopt.

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And, of course, that has been pretty fractious the last few years over different resolutions that have not come out and have come out.

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And then the most important one is the Committee on Committees. The Southern Baptist polity is designed to allow for change but not to allow for change quickly, and there's wisdom in that.

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So the Committee on Committees functions for just a few weeks, and they appoint a Committee on Nominations.

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That Committee on Nominations then looks at our boards, the boards of all the entities and agencies and institutions of the

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Southern Baptist Convention, there are 12 of them, and fills the vacancies or nominates people to fill the vacancies of those rotating boards of trustees.

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And then the next year, those nominees get voted on by the messengers that come for that annual meeting.

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So it's an important process. If you get the right president elected for a series of years, the right kind of president, they can make some substantive changes over time.

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That's what happened in the conservative resurgence in the late 1970s and 80s into the 90s, is there was a string of conservative presidents elected who made those appointments, that committee made their appointments, that committee made their recommendations, and it took about 10 to 12 years to see a complete reversal of the direction of the

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SBC back then. And there are, as you know,

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Baptists who are autonomy purists, if you will.

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They are strong believers that one of the key pillars of Baptist polity, ecclesiology, is that congregations who are

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Baptists historically, and of course they would argue biblically, should be self -governing, independent, autonomous congregations that have no other higher authority outside of the local eldership other than Christ himself and his inerrant work.

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How does the Southern Baptist convention function? Is it truly a denomination that would violate those principles that many

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Baptists cherish and hold to tenaciously as a key tenet of Baptist polity, or is there something unique about the structure that enables them to be a denomination without violating those things?

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Yeah, well no, every Southern Baptist church is independent and autonomous. In our church, there's a little saying that gets bantied around in the

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SBC that headquarters is the local church, and that really is true. Sometimes churches don't recognize that, and they don't act like that, and sometimes certain denominational leaders or entities may not act like that, but it genuinely is true.

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There's nobody that dictates to Grace Baptist Church from any denominational entity or location what we've got to do.

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We voluntarily cooperate, and that's true of every Southern Baptist church. Now, some churches lose sight of that, and so they begin to function almost like, well, we've got to do this because this is what the convention leadership say we have to do.

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We have to recognize this particular Sunday as this emphasis, or we have to follow this calendar or do this program, but that's not true.

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We are independent and autonomous, and so the best Southern Baptist church is the church that recognizes that and says, okay, we're going to cooperate together to do things together that we can do better together that we can't do individually, and that has resulted over the years in like six seminaries that we own and missionary agencies.

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We have the largest missionary sending agencies in the world right now, but they belong to the Southern Baptist churches, and what has to happen is accountability needs to be maintained over those entities and institutions by the churches, and sometimes because of our polity as being as complex as I just described, that can get lost, and churches can feel like that rather than the institutions being accountable to us, the institutions and agencies may try to persuade or coerce even local churches to do things, but that can't happen if a church just remembers its biblical foundations and Baptist ecclesiology, so it really is a wonderful and ingenious structure.

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It just needs to be carefully maintained with proper accountability. Now I mentioned moments ago some of the issues of debate and tension amongst

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Southern Baptist leaders and congregations and individuals. You have the really sharp contrast between those that are thoroughgoing

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Calvinists, also known as Reformed Baptists, and Sovereign Grace Christians, and there are many nicknames and labels for those of us that are

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Reformed and confessionally Reformed in our soteriology and other matters involving the faith, and there is a majority of those that, in one level of hostility or another, oppose those things.

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There are some that have more of an ironic spirit over those things, but there are those that actually think it's rank heresy to believe what you and I believe.

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In addition to that divide, as I said earlier, you've got those that seem to be, have warmed up at the very least to critical race theory and social justice, and I don't know how much things have changed since the 80s, but are there rank liberals still in the ranks of the

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Southern Baptist Convention? No, I don't think so, and some people have cast the struggles that we are going through right now as conservative and liberal, and I don't think that's the best way to cast the debate, because you don't find anybody in the

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SBC today that would flinch about saying that they are an inerratist and that they believe the

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Baptist faith and message, and so the issues are more complex and maybe more subtle than that.

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But one of the interesting things that's happened, Chris, is, yeah, I mean, everybody that knows me or has been around me knows that I am the way you describe me to be, and yet the challenges that we're facing, not just in the

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SBC, but we're facing in all of our evangelical circles right now in America, and in the broader culture, even the secular culture, these challenges are so great that we need to unite around the common commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord and address these challenges.

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And so I've got non -Calvinist friends who I've crossed swords with, you know, debating the doctrines of grace or soteriology in years past, and I have to confess

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I haven't always done that in the most honorable way. You know,

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I've let my temper get the best of me at times. I've had to repent. But there are people that are just radically opposed to my understanding of how salvation works, but we do agree on the lordship of Christ.

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We do agree on justification by grace through faith in Christ alone, plus nothing, and we're shoulder to shoulder in this battle against these godless ideologies that are acting like an acid and destroying the foundations on which we stand.

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And I've told some of my buddies, you know, my new friends, and some I've had long friendships with, we just disagreed, look, if God enables us to be successful in pushing back these new threats that are upon us right now, that in four or five years,

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I'll buy you a cup of coffee, we'll sit down, and we'll start debating Calvinism again. And we'll do it, hopefully, chastened as brothers, knowing that we are brothers, but we will do it with thanksgiving in our hearts because God has helped us to unite around the things we do agree upon in order to try to defend against this onslaught that's just coming in like a flood from our culture with all of these horrific philosophies and ideologies.

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We're going to pick up right where you left off when we return from our first break. If anybody has a question for Dr.

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Tom Askell about his candidacy for president of the Southern Baptist Convention or any question involving the

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Southern Baptist Convention in general or theological issues, please feel free to email us at ChrisArnzen at gmail .com,

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C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name at least, your city and state and country of residence if you live outside the

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USA. If you do have a question for Dr. Askell, please try to send it in quickly because he's only on for the first hour due to his very busy schedule, as would be expected especially these days running for the

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SBC president. So if you have a question for Dr. Askell, please send it in as quickly as possible.

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We do have a second guest speaking on depression, Keith Foskey, and you may feel free to send in questions for him as well, but if you have a question for Dr.

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Askell, please send it in quickly. Don't go away. We're going to be right back right after these messages from our sponsors.

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Alpha and Omega Ministries James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries here.

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Excited to announce that my longtime friend Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and I are heading to Washington D .C.

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Just Thinking podcast. To register, visit g3min .org, that's g3min .org,

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and click on events. Your registration will include a ticket to the Museum of the Bible nearby the conference venue in Washington, D .C.

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So join me and Chris Arnzen September 15th through the 17th in Washington, D .C. for the

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G3 Ministries regional conference. Register now before they run out of seats at g3min .org,

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that's g3min .org. Stop by the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Exhibitor booth and say hi to Chris Arnzen while you're there.

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We here at Iron Sharpens Iron Radio are forever grateful for the generous financial support of Art Amundsen, Edward Jones Financial Advisor in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

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Call 717 -258 -4688 today. Why can't we see

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O hail the power of Jesus' name.

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

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If you live near Franklin, Tennessee, and Franklin is just south of Nashville, maybe 10 minutes, or you are visiting this area, or you have friends and loved ones nearby, we hope you will join us on Lord's Day in worshiping our

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

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

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

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

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That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island, New York that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.

32:35

Welcome back. This is Chris Sorensen. Our guest is Dr. Tom Askell, who is running for president of the

32:41

Southern Baptist Convention. And we do have an anonymous listener. The anonymous listener says,

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I'm remaining anonymous because I have a lot of tension with my own church over being favorable to the

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Southern Baptist Convention, and they are extremely opposed to it. But my question is, how do

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I respond to my fellow members of my church when they say to be president of an organization like that, that is so filled with division, it would require a president to compromise on very serious doctrinal matters?

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Well, I mean, that's a prejudgment. Of course, everybody can make prejudgments the way that they want to. But, you know,

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I mean, I believe in God. And I don't know why Christians who believe in the God who raises the dead do not believe that God can do something in a wonderful way to bring about serious change in any organization.

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And I want to see the Southern Baptist Convention become healthy, get on a good road.

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It's the largest Protestant denomination in North America. And so what happens in the

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SBC matters way beyond the SBC. The SBC educates in our six seminaries one -third of all seminary students.

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So you think about the pastors in the future, where they're going to come from. It's a good possibility that many of those that would be pastoring the children of those in your church will have been trained in a

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Southern Baptist institution. Shouldn't we then try to make those institutions as healthy as possible?

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And there's a way to do it, and it begins with the election of a president. So, you know, I don't try to convince people too long about these things, but I am convinced in my own mind, and I'm happy to have conversations about them.

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And I would just ask people, don't prejudge a matter, look into it. And I say if you're going to be a

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Southern Baptist, be the best you can be. Be the best Southern Baptist you can be, which means you need to work for spiritual health, maintain the accountability that the institutions owe to the churches who pay for them, who built them, and who pray for them.

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And that's what I want to see happen if God were to put me in the position of being the president of the SBC. Well, thank you,

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Anonymous. If you are a first -time questioner, send me your full name and mailing address.

35:03

Obviously, that will be kept confidential since you requested to be anonymous. But we will send you, as we always do with first -time questioners, a brand -new

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New American Standard Bible, compliments of the publishers of the NASB, and also compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com,

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who will be shipping that Bible out to you at no charge to you or to Iron, Sharp, and Zion Radio.

35:28

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

35:36

And Joseph asks, Are there any people who are so far off the mark of Christian theology and what is truly biblically orthodox that you believe they should not remain in the pastorate in the

35:53

Southern Baptist Convention? I believe that we've got serious problems in some of those places.

36:03

Now, the reason I'm hedging a little bit is because we have boundaries as Southern Baptist Convention.

36:10

We have a Baptist faith and message. That Baptist faith and message says that the office of pastor is limited to qualified men.

36:18

Well, we have churches that have recently said, you know, we're ordaining women to be pastors.

36:24

No, they shouldn't be in the SBC. Does that mean they're not orthodox? Does that mean they're not Christian? Well, no, they could be

36:30

Christian. They could believe the orthodox tenets of the faith. But they don't agree enough with who we say we're going to be to be a part of this convention of churches.

36:40

So we have established boundaries. And what we need to do is make sure those boundaries are understood and that churches that want to wander outside of them no longer stay a part of us.

36:54

And they're independent, they're autonomous, they're Baptist churches. They can do that if they want to, but they can't do that and stay a part of the

37:01

SBC because the Southern Baptist Convention is also autonomous. And though we cannot, as a convention, dictate what any one church does, we can say to that church, you are not a part of who we are.

37:16

You cannot remain in friendly cooperation with us because you have chosen a path that is contrary to who we say we are.

37:25

Yes, very well said. People might have an initial gut reaction if they're very conservative and they're very strong proponents of complementarianism.

37:40

They may have an initial gut reaction of anger towards any softness on the ordination of women.

37:48

But I have learned over the years, even though I am unwaveringly complementarian in my understanding of leadership in the church and in the home,

38:00

I do not believe in the ordination of women in the church. I don't believe that they should teach or have authority over men and I don't believe they should be ruling their households either.

38:10

But I've come to learn and have become close friends with Brothers in Christ who are members of conservative evangelical denominations that have historically ordained women going back centuries, largely that have some kind of an affiliation with the

38:26

Wesleyan holiness movement. So I don't think that people should initially, without taking a deep breath and finding out more, initially think that it's always because of a leftist decline that a church believes in the ordination of women.

38:43

And I know that I'll probably get hate mail for saying that. Once again, I don't believe in the ordination of women, but I think that we have to sometimes be less hostile and make sure we understand why a certain congregation or denomination is doing that.

38:57

No, that's exactly right, Chris. There's a difference between denying the deity of Christ and saying that we think women can be pastors.

39:06

I mean, there's a difference. I disagree with both, obviously, but I'm going to disagree far more vociferously with those that deny the deity of Christ than I am with those who say we believe women can be pastors.

39:19

I'm not going to be in a church with them, but they can be genuine Christians and be erroneous in that understanding of the

39:28

New Testament, whereas the person that denies the deity of Christ cannot be a Christian. Yeah, it might surprise a lot of our

39:35

Reformed listeners, but Roger Nicole was an egalitarian when it came to leadership.

39:40

He believed in the ordination of women, which was a shock to me when I found out about that. Yeah, I talked to Roger about that, you know, and I told him,

39:50

I said, man, it just seems to me that you're so rigorous and biblical and you're debating on all of these issues that we might otherwise talk about.

39:57

When we get to women, it just seems to me you go experiential about stories of people you know.

40:04

I mean, goodness, he could put me in his pocket. I mean, he was a great theologian and a brilliant mind and a humble man, but we disagreed on that point, and we had lively debates about it.

40:14

Yep, as we have with our Paedo -Baptist brethren. That's right.

40:20

Some, I'm not saying all, but some are driven to the Paedo -Baptist position because they cannot stand the possibility of thinking that their children should be viewed as a mission field and not as a part of the

40:34

Regenerate Church. They just find that incomprehensible, that they are to view their children as lost until they give convincing evidence otherwise.

40:45

No, that's right. I've seen that very emotional argument up close and personal, and it's sad.

40:51

Yes, and remember my Paedo -Baptist friends, many of whom are on this show. I said some of the

40:58

Paedo -Baptists I've met I think have an emotional roots in their converting over to that position.

41:05

No, that's right. You know, you and I both, we've got wonderful friends that are Paedo -Baptists. In fact, our upcoming conference

41:12

January 2023 is going to be What is Man? The Doctrine of Man, which is so crucial right now.

41:18

And one of our keynote speakers is Joe Beeky. He's Joe's old friend, my long -time friend, and he's the best kind of Presbyterian in my book.

41:26

Yes, he actually does believe children are a mission field in the home. He does not believe that we should automatically assume that the children of Christian parents are among the elect until they prove they're not.

41:42

He believes the reverse, just like Baptists do. Yes, that's right. His writings about children and child evangelism we use and appreciate very much.

41:53

We have B .B. in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know,

41:59

What are the major accomplishments that you would hope and pray would come to fruition after your year as president, if God ordains that you win?

42:11

Yeah, well, I think perhaps my greatest goal, our greatest desire would be for something to happen that is not a part of the official responsibility of the president.

42:21

I would love to have the opportunity to try to create conversations about spiritual matters.

42:28

I mean, Chris, this is my number one concern. I think that by and large, Southern Baptists have lost the fear of God and that we must recover that.

42:38

And we need to be humbled before God. We need to come to terms with realities of who we are, what we are, what we've done, our deficiencies, and just look to God for mercy and grace and ask him to pour his

42:51

Spirit out upon us. There's not one problem that evangelicals or the SBC faces today that would not be solved by a genuine, heartfelt return to the fear of God.

43:05

And that's a desire. I want to sound that drum. Of course, there's nothing official about that that I can affect.

43:11

But if I can get pastors to start thinking about that, studying that, seeking

43:17

God together, I'll die a happy man if the Lord puts me in that position. Amen.

43:23

And then we have another anonymous listener who says,

43:29

My pastor thinks that one cannot be a Reformed Baptist in the

43:35

Southern Baptist Convention without being unevenly yoked. How should I respond to him? Yeah, well,

43:41

I get that, and I understand that. The Southern Baptist Convention, as I said before, it's a voluntary organization.

43:49

Churches voluntarily cooperate as they see fit in common cause.

43:55

And so I've not given up one of my convictions at all, and our church has not at all to participate in this.

44:01

And I understand there's some people dispositionally that just can't do that. I get it, and I don't argue with them at all.

44:07

But we're not compromising in anything. The people who want to argue we are compromising tend to not understand our polity, and they tend to think that we are somehow being dictated to, and we have to cooperate in everything that goes on in the

44:22

SPC. And they just don't understand the nature of the association. And so I would say that the polity is, if this was a

44:31

Presbyterian denomination, Methodist denomination, well, of course, yes, I would say that's true.

44:37

But it's not. There is no The Southern Baptist Church in America. There are Southern Baptist churches, independent, autonomous churches, and we voluntarily cooperate in the

44:48

SPC the way we cooperate sometimes with other organizations too in doing things that we believe are worth doing together.

44:56

So that's my response, but I know it doesn't convince everybody. But if you look at the polity, I think the polity vindicates the argument that I've just made.

45:07

Yes. I even said during an interview with one of my own pastors recently,

45:14

Pastor Simon O'Maney, who I had the privilege of interviewing on my show not long ago,

45:22

I was saying that although I strongly not only believe but cherish the doctrines of sovereign grace, if I was in an area where I had a choice between a

45:37

Reformed Baptist church that was violating the concepts of appropriate governing by elders, and they were tyrannical, and they were bordering on being cultic in the way that they abused their authority, and I had another church that was

45:57

Arminian, but I knew that the men pastoring that church were godly shepherds, and they were not hostile to the doctrines that I love, just not in agreement with them,

46:09

I would likely prefer to join the Arminian church. And I don't think that that would make me unevenly yoked.

46:16

In fact, I even know a man who is a thoroughgoing Reformed Baptist who joined a

46:23

Calvary Chapel congregation not long ago because the professedly Reformed church he was in had adopted critical race theory and social justice and so forth.

46:34

Yeah, I've seen that similar type of thing happen, Chris, especially over the last couple of years. And church history helps us a lot here too.

46:43

The story of William Carey going to India where the original people with him, there was a boat captain who was a

46:50

Presbyterian, and they welcomed him at the Lord's Table as they began to meet and have a church, and when the news of that got back in England, Andrew Fuller blew a gasket.

47:00

He said, you can't do this. You're going to destroy the mission. And Carey said, look, we're the only Christians in the continent.

47:05

I'm not going to divide over this. It's touching. Those letters back and forth are touching.

47:12

And both of the men had a point. Both men had very good points. But we just have to think beyond our little typical world sometimes to recognize that some of our arguments aren't as ironclad as we might think them to be because they've not been challenged by real -life circumstances like you just described.

47:32

And you do have those that might disagree with you and me on the specific doctrines known as Calvinism, the tulip.

47:43

They may disagree with us on those things, but they may have a deeper insight and stronger hold on other areas of Scripture and theology.

47:52

Oh, absolutely. One of the questions I've got from some of my non -Calvinist friends, or they've been sent to me by non -Calvinists

47:59

I don't know, is, hey, Tom, if you become president of the SBC, are you only going to appoint

48:04

Calvinists to your committees? And my response is no. In fact, there are some Calvinists I will not appoint because I don't think they're straight.

48:11

They're not thinking clearly on these key issues that we've got to address today. So it goes back to what do we agree on that are essentials, non -negotiables, and what do we agree on that are vitally important that we need to cling to, and what do we have room to disagree on, like eschatology details and things like that.

48:33

I want to be able to hold very tightly those doctrines that are the closest to what is absolutely essential for orthodox

48:43

Christian belief, and then the further away from that we get, the looser my grip is going to get in terms of how

48:52

I cooperate or fellowship with people. Well, we are almost out of time. We've got to cut to our midway break in about six minutes, so I want to make sure that you summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today in regard to your candidacy for president of the

49:11

SBC, and we'll be obviously having to cut our interview to only the first half at your request because of your busy schedule.

49:22

So why don't you summarize what you most want to leave our listeners with today? Yeah, well,

49:27

I would say if you're a Christian, then please pray for me. Pray for the Southern Baptist Convention because, as I said earlier, it matters.

49:35

It matters in the evangelical world in North America, and not just North America, it matters in the work of the gospel around the world.

49:45

So as God brings it to mind, please pray for Him to grant to us a renewed humility and a renewed commitment to the genuine fear of the living

49:55

God. I mean, Chris, I'm doing this not because I need something else to do, but I want

50:01

Jesus Christ to be made known. He is the only Savior this world has, and everyone needs

50:07

Him as Savior. Without turning from sin, without trusting in the provision

50:13

God has made for us in Christ, there is no salvation. There's no forgiveness. But in Christ, we can be reconciled to God.

50:19

In Christ, we can have everlasting life, and that's the message that every Christian believes, that every

50:25

Christian church has been commissioned to proclaim as we go and make disciples. And this organization known as the

50:32

Southern Baptist Convention consists of 47 ,000 plus churches that say we're going to cooperate in trying to carry out that mission in a way that we can do together far better than we could do individually.

50:46

And it's been greatly used by God throughout history. There have been wonderful things accomplished in the kingdom of God.

50:52

It's not been perfect, and we've got our problems, but if God would be pleased to grant us a genuine reformation and revival, a genuine return to holiness and a turn to fear

51:05

Him and to want to honor Him, to believe His book and follow it, regardless of cost or consequences, it will do wonderful things for other churches that have nothing to do with the

51:16

SBC as well. It's that principle that a rising tide will raise all ships, and God's positioned the

51:23

SBC the way He has perhaps for a moment like this. As our culture is growing darker and we see more and more hostility to basic realities, not even

51:34

Christian realities, but creational realities, like what is a man and what is a woman? What is justice and what is love?

51:42

If God's people don't stand up and begin to recommit ourselves and proclaim the lordship of Christ over every area of life and send forth

51:52

His gospel of salvation to those who are in desperate need, then this world will continue to increase in its hostility and we'll be the poor for it.

52:02

But if God is pleased to ignite in us fresh passion, fresh desire, fresh humility, fresh devotion to the

52:10

Lord Jesus Christ, then who knows what He might be pleased to do in our generation. And that's my prayer, and I would just ask others who know the

52:17

Lord Jesus Christ with me to pray to that end. Well, thank you so much,

52:23

Dr. Raskel. As always, you are an extraordinary guest, and I eagerly look forward to having you back on.

52:30

I hope that the next time you return, you're on for the full two hours as you see how fast our time went.

52:37

Yeah. Well, I appreciate you having me on, Chris. I wish I could stay longer, but I've got another appointment that I've got to get to, and I'm glad that we could work it out to have at least this much time together.

52:47

So thanks a lot. Amen. And I want to repeat your websites for Founders Ministries. Go to founders .org

52:54

and for Grace Baptist Church of Cape Coral, Florida, go to truegraceofgod .org.

53:01

truegraceofgod .org. Thanks so much, Dr. Raskel. We'll talk to you soon, God willing. Thank you, brother. Bye -bye.

53:07

Bye -bye now. And don't go away, folks, because we do have, during the second hour, my good friend

53:14

Pastor Keith Foskey, one of three pastors at Sovereign Grace Family Church of Jacksonville, Florida, who will be addressing depression in the lives of Christians.

53:24

And this is the longer -than -normal break. Please be patient with us because we need this longer break.

53:30

So Grace Life Radio in Lake City, Florida can air their own public service announcements and other things that localize this program to Lake City, Florida, which is a requirement of the

53:41

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Respond to as many of our advertisers as you can by purchasing their products, using their services, visiting their churches.

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So if you're thankful for that, if you love the show, please thank them. And don't go away. We're going to be right back with Keith Foskey right after these messages.

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01:11:42

That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Pastor Keith Foskey of Sovereign Grace Family Church of Jacksonville, Florida, and we are discussing a very important theme, depression in the lives of Christians, something that is very near and dear to my heart because I have battled depression for most of my life in various degrees of intensity and in various seasons of frequency.

01:12:10

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to discuss this important topic. Pastor Keith Foskey.

01:12:16

Hi, Chris. Thank you for having me today. I appreciate it, and I do look forward to talking about this.

01:12:22

This is close to my heart as well. And if you could also, just as you did last time, give our audience who is unfamiliar with Sovereign Grace Family Church of Jacksonville, Florida, a brief introduction to that church.

01:12:36

Okay. Well, my name is Keith Foskey. I'm the pastor of Sovereign Grace, and we are on the north side of Jacksonville, Florida.

01:12:44

Jacksonville is a very big city, so we are in what's called the Ocean Way area. We are right near the airport, so if you are visiting

01:12:51

Jacksonville, you're probably near us because that's where most of the big hotels are, right near the airport.

01:12:57

And we'd love to have you visit with us. We are a 1646

01:13:04

London Baptist Confession, which is the first confession. That is the confession we hold to as a church.

01:13:10

And we have three elders, myself, Andy Montoro, who you know, who is a former pastor in your life, and Brother Mike Collier.

01:13:18

We serve together in this church. It's a small church, but it's a great group of people. We'd love to have people visit with us.

01:13:24

Yes. Andy was one of my precious late wife's pastors while she was still with us on Long Island, New York, and that would be

01:13:36

First Baptist Church of Lindenhurst, Long Island. And I have many, very fond memories of dear brother,

01:13:42

Pastor Andy Montoro. Sorry for the mispronunciation. And his lovely bride,

01:13:49

Candy. And so I'm always glad to bring them to my memory. Yeah, he always says that because, you know, he's from up north and we're from down here.

01:13:59

He always says he's from the south too, but it's the South Bronx. Well, if anybody wants more information about Sovereign Grace Family Church in Jacksonville, Florida, go to sgfcjacks, that's

01:14:15

J -A -X, dot org, S -G for Sovereign Grace, F -C for Family Church, J -A -X, which is an abbreviation for Jacksonville, J -A -X, dot org.

01:14:29

And we will, God willing, repeat that later on in the program. So Pastor Keith, why is it that you specifically chose this very, not only important topic, but a topic that is likely much more common amongst

01:14:48

Bible -believing Christians globally than we even know about?

01:14:53

Because it's the kind of thing where many people do not make this a matter of public knowledge.

01:15:01

They don't share their depression with their family, friends, and loved ones because they don't want to bring their own mood down.

01:15:11

They don't want to disturb people they care about by making them depressed, perhaps. There's all kinds of reasons why people do not share this intimate detail with others, but tell us why you selected this topic.

01:15:28

Well, recently, I had a very dear friend, another pastor, who was counseling a person in his church, and he reached out to me on this subject, and we began to discuss it.

01:15:42

He was unaware that I had dealt with depression and anxiety myself, and so in the midst of my discussion with him,

01:15:52

I was able to give him sort of a first -person perspective rather than saying, you know,

01:15:58

I've counseled people in this condition. I was able to sort of share my own issues and my own sufferings, and I think it gave him a little different perspective because going in,

01:16:11

I think that he may have considered it almost a sinful thing, and I'm not,

01:16:19

I certainly don't want to misrepresent his position. He's a wonderful, wonderful pastor and friend, but we were discussing the idea of anxiety as coming from sin, and it certainly can.

01:16:31

We are told to not worry about anything, and yet we do, and I kind of compared it when

01:16:37

I was talking to him. I talked about how we are called to be holy, as I am holy, Jesus said that, and yet at the same time, holiness is a daily struggle.

01:16:48

So, in the same way we're told not to worry, we still struggle with that, and therefore it's, until we reach our glorified condition in the new heavens and the new earth, we are going to, at times, struggle with these things, and I, as a person who has struggled with it maybe more than others, feel like I can maybe share some insights as to what has helped me, and also how

01:17:18

I recognized when those seasons were coming on, and that's sort of the term that I use, is the term season, because I really do feel like there have been seasons of depression in my life that come on almost like you feel winter coming, and you feel the crisp air, and you feel the, you see the leaves changing, and you know things are happening, and you can kind of almost feel that in your soul, that you feel the sort of darkness that's coming, and you have to deal with it.

01:17:50

And so that's really the reason why I want to talk about today, is that this young man, this friend, brought it to my attention again, and I thought, how many others out there are sort of struggling with it?

01:18:02

And that was the reason. Well, I have for years, before I knew this was a common saying by a very well -known

01:18:19

Christian financial advisor, I have for years, when people have asked me, so how you doing?

01:18:27

For years, I have responded, better than I deserve, and the reason

01:18:33

I began saying that is because, number one, I don't want to lie and say, oh, everything's just great, fantastic, like most people do.

01:18:45

I also, on the other end of the spectrum, didn't want to be a Debbie Downer, and say, all right, can you pull up a chair and let me tell you how

01:18:54

I am, really? I don't want to, just as I was saying in the outset of the program, I don't want to bring people down, either.

01:19:01

I don't want to ruin their mood. They might be having a great day. I don't want to ruin a holiday, a special occasion that people are celebrating, by bringing up any kind of trial or struggle that I'm going through.

01:19:14

But in your experience, especially as a pastor, what are the common root reasons why people are depressed, and give us also, obviously you're not a psychologist or a psychiatrist, but I would not go to either of those individuals for biblical advice and counsel on this issue.

01:19:37

But what, in your knowledge and experience, have been the most frequent root causes of depression, and also the different ways it manifests itself?

01:19:51

Well, the best way I can answer that is to describe my own situation, because in the last 20 years,

01:20:00

I have experienced several bouts of depression, but two that stand out the most, and one was before I got saved.

01:20:10

I got saved when I was 19, so, well, I guess it's been more than 20 years. I'm older than I thought. So, one was right before I got saved, and it was actually part of how

01:20:20

God led me to salvation, was putting me through this time of absolute brokenness, and to the point where I almost, you know,

01:20:33

I grew up, I never drank, I never did drugs, it was the only time in my life that I felt like I wanted to get drunk, because I wanted the pain to go away.

01:20:40

That's how overwhelmingly dark it was.

01:20:46

And that was an existential dread. I can, that's the only way I can describe it, was this idea that I had grown up in church, but I wasn't saved, and I was doubting, at that moment, doubting the existence of God, doubting the existence of eternity, other than just nothingness.

01:21:08

And it really, this overwhelming existential dread drove me to an anxiety that was just just completely gut -wrenching.

01:21:21

And that was the first season, and like I said, that was God's, I can only say

01:21:28

God was bringing me to the end of myself, because He was showing me just how desperate

01:21:35

I am without Him. Because if there is no God, then all of this is meaningless, and all of this is just, you know, we're just stardust, we're just a big sack of meat, and there's no purpose, and there's no reason, and there's no rhyme, and that was really what

01:21:53

God was showing me, but He did it in such a powerful and hurtful way, and when I say hurtful,

01:21:59

I say it's a gracious hurt, because it led me to the end of myself, and it caused me to look to Him, it caused me to look to Scripture, it caused me to look to those around me who

01:22:09

I knew knew the Lord, and to go to them and say, please, share your faith with me again, tell me why you trust in the

01:22:18

Lord, and give me hope, and it really was through that, that God helped me in that first instance to come away, and to do so by going to the

01:22:31

Word, not by going to alcohol or drugs or anything else, but going to the

01:22:36

Word and going to Christ, and finding in Him hope and comfort and encouragement.

01:22:43

Now, that was the first time. The second time that I, and I said, it's been more than that, but two times that I remember specifically was about ten years ago.

01:22:52

I was a pastor, I had been a Christian for, you know, ten years at that point, and that time was much different, because now

01:23:02

I'm a person who is a Christian, who has faith, who believes in God, who trusts in the Lord, and yet I feel this season coming on, and it was,

01:23:12

Christ was dreadful, it was awful, it was, but it wasn't the same as the first time.

01:23:19

It was, this time, what brought it on was, it wasn't a season of struggle with my faith, but it wasn't the same as the first time, but for me it always comes back to the more

01:23:36

I am trusting in the Lord, the more I am looking to the Word, the more

01:23:42

I am able to manage this feeling, and the further I am away from the

01:23:47

Lord, I know this may seem so simplistic to some people, but the further I am away from the Lord, and the further I am away from the

01:23:52

Word, the more it overwhelms me, and it's just, that's been for me the marking post, and again,

01:24:05

I know other people suffer from different things, whether it's loss, and I do know a lot of people who suffer because of loss, maybe loss of a spouse, loss of a child, loss of a parent, but for me it was fear and anxiety that drove it.

01:24:22

And I know that there is a term, and as I said before, I much infinitely prefer seeking advice and counsel from seasoned pastors over these issues than those who are either labeled psychologists or psychiatrists, but having said that,

01:24:45

I'm not completely opposed in all instances and in all areas to seeking the help of those individuals, but from what

01:24:54

I understand, the phrase clinical depression usually means that somebody is depressed for no logical reason.

01:25:06

You know, if you're speaking to a widow, there's a logical reason. If you're speaking to a widower, there's a logical reason.

01:25:12

If you're speaking to people who have lost children, there's a logical reason. If you're speaking to unemployed people, people who are going through a divorce, you could go on and on and on with things like that, but have you encountered people that tell you,

01:25:28

I'm depressed all the time or frequently, and I don't even know why? Yes, and I want to state this, and I know there may be some who disagree with me, and that would be totally fine.

01:25:40

I do believe that there is chemical depression where people can be depressed because of imbalances.

01:25:48

I do think that that's a thing, but I think we have to be very careful with it. I know that I have never wanted myself to seek a chemical solution because I was always afraid.

01:26:00

I had a relative once who, as a child, was by his parents forced to take medicine for his behavior, and every time he took the medicine, he was never himself.

01:26:20

It was almost like he was stealing his soul, and I know that sounds, maybe I'm overstating the case, and perhaps

01:26:25

I am, but I always said to myself, I don't want to try to solve this with medicine, but I am not saying that that's always the case.

01:26:34

There are people who I do think have chemical issues, but the issue is how do you get that analyzed, because often it's not with a blood test or something.

01:26:46

Often it's with a cognitive test or something else, and that's the scary part is if somebody tells you you need medicine, and you take it, and it affects your personality and drives you into almost a state where you're not yourself.

01:27:01

So I'm careful when people come to me and they say that they are depressed for no reason at all.

01:27:07

I try to dig a little deeper and see if that's actually the case, or are they experiencing the results of some kind of guilt or shame or anxiety, and I believe anxiety is a big thing that we don't address enough, and that is fear.

01:27:21

People have a fear that they don't realize that is manifesting in this depression, so I try to dig down before I say, okay, we need to look at this from a medical position.

01:27:34

And again, I'm not doubting medicine, I'm just saying I think we have to be careful. Now there is an issue that is also an issue of debate amongst even

01:27:44

Reformed people and Christians in general. There is a debate as to how to approach the situation.

01:27:54

You have already mentioned it in regard to anxiety, but the issue of sin being a root cause of depression.

01:28:02

Now obviously we are all sinners. Before regeneration we're totally depraved, and after regeneration we have a new, we are new creations.

01:28:19

We have the Holy Spirit within us, but we are still plagued with the reality that we are in this body of flesh, and we still are sinners and always will be until the day we depart from this earth in death, or if Christ were to return before that.

01:28:37

But how much and how quickly should a person who approaches you about depression, should the sin problem be introduced into the conversation?

01:28:52

And of course, maybe this doesn't even involve cookie cutter ways of approaching it, but obviously sin is a part of this.

01:29:03

I think that from what I have heard, there are some, I've got to be careful here, but there are some involved in euthetic counseling who will really, almost on the brink of interrogation, try to get somebody to confess to an unconfessed sin, because they are certain that's the reason the person is depressed.

01:29:26

Then the person winds up leaving the church. They don't want to be accused of something falsely, or what have you.

01:29:34

And then you might have people who are on the opposite end of the spectrum. Somebody like Joel Osteen would never tell a person that sin is the root of anything involved in a change of mood or behavior.

01:29:48

So, why don't you give us your own pastoral advice about that?

01:29:54

Well, you mentioned euthetical counseling, and just for those who are listening who may not know what that is, that is sort of a fancy word for biblical counseling.

01:30:05

The euthetical counseling is now ACBC, which is the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors.

01:30:12

Yes, and I've had some of those folks on the show, and I have a very high regard for them and to the ideology.

01:30:20

I'm just saying that there are some in that movement. Yeah, absolutely, and we have a lady in our church who is an euthetical counselor or certified through them.

01:30:31

So, yeah, we do as well. We think that much of what they teach is very, very good.

01:30:39

So, you and I both are in agreement on that. So, I would simply add, when we're talking about the subject of, does sin cause depression?

01:30:52

Well, it can, but there are times where people are struggling with a particular season of depression, and they don't know what the reason is, and putting them into an interrogation to find the reason may not be the best answer.

01:31:12

As you said, it may cause them to push further away. Rather than that, I think the approach that I would prefer to take is rather to point them to Christ rather than try to investigate and investigate their sin, because at some point, whether it's a sin or not, it's going to come down to, are we or are we not resting in Christ?

01:31:37

Are we having our living Sabbath in our ward? I had a lady who

01:31:44

I loved dearly who was struggling with depression, and every time we met, and we met for years, well, months,

01:31:55

I think it went over a year, so I guess for a year, and every time we met,

01:32:01

I was constantly trying to help her to find her rest in the Lord, because hers was brought on by anxiety.

01:32:10

It was fear, and she could very easily define what the fear was, but it wasn't a fear that was a founded fear.

01:32:20

It was an unfounded fear, and that was what I kept trying to help her understand was finding the answer.

01:32:27

You've identified the problem, now let's look at the solution, and so even if a person doesn't know what's bringing it on, the solution is always going to be trying to find the rest in Christ.

01:32:37

We have a listener named Ted from Moundville, Alabama, and he says,

01:32:44

I think that we stole his thunder a little bit, but he says,

01:32:49

I must confess to waiting to pounce on your guest as I fully expected to hear the all -depression -is -rooted -in -personal -sin position, from which, to my pleasant surprise, he quickly distanced himself.

01:33:04

Yet, if I'm not mistaken, is this not the philosophy undergirding much of J.

01:33:12

Adams' tradition of biblical counseling, as well as the New Thetic school? Perhaps your guest might correct me if I'm wrong, if I'm not wrong.

01:33:19

What is his attitude towards those counseling traditions and those who practice them? Well, I can say this.

01:33:30

I am probably less familiar than he would want me to be with all that has been written on this, and so my only answer is

01:33:39

I could say where I stand right now, I would not agree that it's all rooted in unconfessed sin.

01:33:45

I would say that there can be other contributing factors, and as I said, I think one of the factors that's often not really discussed is the anxiety manifesting in fear, manifesting in depression, and you might say, well, anxiety is a sin.

01:34:05

Well, is it? Is anxiety a sin, or is anxiety rooted in a fear of something that you need to trust the

01:34:12

Lord in, and so it's pushing you to trust the Lord more. So there's a lot to it that I wouldn't automatically just give a blanket answer and say, well, there's an unconfessed sin here that we have to dig down deep to find.

01:34:30

Yeah, like I said, I do apologize to the listener for not being more well -read in those areas, but as far as where I stand right now, that's where I would be.

01:34:43

And just like not every pastor who professes a certain school of theology or has a certain confession of faith is not an identical cookie cutter of everyone who identifies himself with that school of theology and confession of faith, so you're going to have a variety of people who are involved in euthetic counseling who identify themselves that way, who may have somewhat different understandings, interpretations, and approaches to that.

01:35:23

I mean, I even know a man who is a vehement anti -Calvinist who calls himself a euthetic counselor and claims to love

01:35:32

Jay Adams, and I had to remind him on another occasion, don't you know that Jay Adams was a thoroughgoing

01:35:37

Reformed Christian and Presbyterian? But so not everybody is alike just because they may use the same identifying labels.

01:35:48

What do you, well, what should our listeners perhaps even look for, not that they should be looking for something that doesn't exist or playing private detective or something with the ones they love, but perhaps a better way of phrasing it is what might be evidences and signs that somebody that we know and love is struggling with depression even though they never tell us that.

01:36:15

And even if they may publicly have, as the

01:36:20

British call it, a stiff upper lip, and you know, they may put on the classic evangelical smile and they may tell people when they're asked, how are you doing?

01:36:33

Wonderful, how are you? But what might be making itself evident in the life of somebody, in the personality of somebody that shows they may have depression, which would be a good way to tenderly, compassionately, and privately approach them on it?

01:36:51

It's funny that you ask that because this is one of the things that I've shared with a lot of people sort of privately.

01:36:59

I don't know if I've ever shared this publicly. I know where I was standing when

01:37:05

I heard that Robin Williams died. I was standing at a

01:37:10

Walmart. I was on a trip with my family. We were buying food for the week because we had rented a cabin.

01:37:19

I was on vacation. And the reason why I bring up Robin Williams' death is because Robin Williams, even though he wasn't a

01:37:26

Christian, he is a textbook example of someone who no one would have thought was depressed, because he was always the life, the happy, the joy, his face, and that's why

01:37:39

I tell people the face of depression is not always the frowny face of the crying clown.

01:37:45

The face of depression is the mask that people wear that you don't know it until they're found hanging from their rafter.

01:37:55

And that's the scary part, is people who really have depression. When I have gone through my times of depression, the only person who knew it was my wife, and that's because she would find me crying in our bedroom, and no one else knew it.

01:38:10

And I'm even right now getting a little emotional about it because we feel like we have to hide, and we feel like we have to make, you mentioned the smiling face.

01:38:23

There's a song about shiny plastic people. It's a song years ago.

01:38:29

It was a contemporary Christian song, and it talks about shiny plastic people and their shiny glass steeples, you know, putting on a show for one another.

01:38:42

And so I'm going to say, Chris, it's the hardest thing, because people who are really depressed, you never know.

01:38:47

It's the people who walk around and say, oh, I'm depressed, I'm depressed. A lot of times, they're just looking for attention.

01:38:54

The people who are always, oh, I'm going to hurt myself, blah, blah, blah. And I'm not saying we shouldn't listen to them, but the people who often do hurt themselves are the people who never knew there was a problem because they become so used to hiding it.

01:39:08

And I don't mean to say there's no way, but I'm just saying, if I'm speaking to the person right now, if you are listening to this and you are hiding it, you need to reach out to someone, your pastor, your elders, your deacons, somebody in the church that loves you, and open your heart to them, and be willing to say that passage in Scripture that says,

01:39:30

I believe, help my unbelief. That's one of the verses that helps my soul so much, is when that man came to Jesus with his sick son, and Jesus said, you know, what do you want me to do?

01:39:40

He said, I want you to heal him. You know, I will if you believe it. And he says, I believe, help my unbelief.

01:39:47

And so having people in your life to help you in your seasons of struggle, having people in your life to help you in your seasons of doubt are so important.

01:39:56

And it's hard. It's hard to know, Chris, because the people who are so good at hiding it are the people who are usually the most depressed.

01:40:03

And we're going to our final break of the show today. It's going to be more brief than the other ones, but if you have a question for Pastor Keith Foskey on depression,

01:40:11

I'm urging you to send it in immediately because we're rapidly running out of time. Go to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:40:17

Chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name, at least your city and state and country of residence, and please only be anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

01:40:27

Don't go away. We'll be right back. Keith Foskey. Hi, this is John Sampson, pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona, taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnson and the

01:40:39

Iron Sharpens Iron podcast. I consider Chris a true friend and a man of high integrity. He's a skilled interviewer who's not afraid to ask the big penetrating questions while always defending the key doctrines of the

01:40:50

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I believe this podcast needs to be heard far and wide. This is a day of great spiritual compromise, and yet God has raised

01:41:06

Chris up for just such a time. And knowing this, it's up to us as members of the body of Christ to stand with such a ministry in prayer and in finances.

01:41:16

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

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

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01:51:14

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Or visit lynnbrookbaptist .org. That's lynnbrookbaptist .org. Pastor Keith Foskey, we were discussing right before the break how people often disguise their depression, and one of my questions was, in your experience as a pastor, how is this sometimes manifest where you can sense that this may be the case with someone, even though if they never tell you, for instance, loss of appetite, weight gain or loss, isolating themselves, not coming to worship services.

01:52:04

It could be a number of different things, and nobody is an identical replica of another human being, but what have you experienced and witnessed?

01:52:13

Yeah, and I think all those things are true. I think right away, people who distance themselves from the assembly, believers who distance themselves from the assembly, even if they're not depressed, they're going through something.

01:52:26

There's a reason why they're not there, and being cognizant of that and having good deacons and good elders who are willing to reach out to people and not just say, hey, how you doing, but actually speak into their lives and to really invest in them is a blessing.

01:52:43

If you have a church that has good elders and good deacons, then you need to thank the Lord for that because that's part of what their job is, is to care for the body and to care for souls.

01:52:54

But yeah, I mean, if you look around and you start recognizing people are less frequent in the body or they are less frequent in the fellowship of the body, you know, they come in, they sit down, they leave, and there's no desire to have conversations.

01:53:08

There's a lot of reasons that that could be, but certainly one of them is that they are in a season of depression, for sure.

01:53:15

And I know that we as Christians, whenever we are seeking to bless anyone, we should be using the scriptures, and I'd like you to perhaps highlight some of those scriptures that you would use for a depressed person, but I think that we also,

01:53:33

I'm sure you would agree, have to be very careful not to just hurl placards at people with a big smile on our face, quoting scripture as if we're lecturing and rebuking someone.

01:53:47

And sometimes, I know it actually should require silence and listening and just perhaps hugging a person when that's an appropriate thing.

01:53:57

We have to be very careful about hugging somebody of the opposite gender, obviously, but you know, that kind of thing.

01:54:05

Tell us how you approach this. Well, it's interesting because last year, I was a speaker at a conference, and the conference was on ministering to hurting faith.

01:54:17

That was the subject of the conference, and I was preaching on specifically that subject because I preach

01:54:26

Romans 8 .28, that the Bible says God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.

01:54:34

I said, this particular passage can be a sledgehammer to someone who is really going through a time of loss or brokenness or depression.

01:54:45

I said, so please wield this passage with care. Do not just walk into the room of a person who just lost their child and say, hey, you know,

01:54:53

God causes all things to work together for good. You might as well just hit him in the face with a tack hammer because that's what it's going to feel like.

01:55:00

And even though it's true, even though the truth of Scripture is comforting, sometimes we need to take care with how we deploy that text or any text.

01:55:12

You know, God is our refuge and our strength, the very present help in times of trouble. Psalm 46 is my go -to passage.

01:55:19

Pastor Dean Olive preached a wonderful sermon on Psalm 46, and it helps me to this day.

01:55:26

And so those are, you know, those are some of the points people do, but at the same time, again,

01:55:34

I would do so in such a way that is not intended to be flippant or as if it's, hey, you know this, but rather as a gentle reminder that God is sovereign and there is nothing that can touch us if we be in his hand, save he ordains it.

01:56:00

And whatever he ordained is ultimately for his glory and our good.

01:56:08

And so coming to terms with that is difficult sometimes, but it's nevertheless true.

01:56:15

Having battled depression myself nearly all my adult life, and I'm not saying

01:56:23

I'm in a constant state of depression, but I have frequently done my bouts with this.

01:56:30

The times that I have been most blessed and alleviated, at least temporarily, from the smothering emotion that depression can create, where you sometimes can't even breathe correctly physically, is when a brother or sister in Christ says, you know, let's let's take a drive and let me treat you to a meal.

01:56:55

And they're not sitting there as an expert counselor, and they're not heaping what they think is a mountain of wisdom on you.

01:57:05

They're treating you with love, kindness, and compassion, and just pouring love over you.

01:57:11

Isn't that something we very strongly need to remember? Absolutely, and you know what's funny is there's a comedian who says, what

01:57:23

I should have said was nothing. That's his line, you know, what I should have said was nothing. And he's talking about it from a comic perspective.

01:57:31

It goes along with his little stick, but I use that sometimes when I'm talking to people about how do you counsel somebody in the midst of loss or depression.

01:57:42

Sometimes the best thing to say is nothing. And Job's friends should have remembered that, or knew that.

01:57:49

Exactly, exactly. So, you know, what I should have said was nothing, is sometimes, yeah,

01:57:55

I've walked in the room, I've been in the room several times when people have died, and I've seen people try to put words in that moment, and there are no words.

01:58:06

When you see the person's soul leave the body, when you see that body take its last breath, and that person's, you know, becomes, you know, steps into eternity, there are no words.

01:58:19

And when people try to fill that silence with words, the words are often the worst and least meaningful.

01:58:28

Well, we are out of time, and this is a very deep subject that we only had less than an hour to cover.

01:58:36

And if anybody wants to get ahold of you, because they'd like to talk to you about their own depression or the depression of a loved one, how do they get ahold of you?

01:58:45

Well, they're welcome to email me. My email address is mkfoskey at yahoo .com,

01:58:52

and if we begin a conversation that way, perhaps we'll be able to talk over the phone, but I think that's the best way for introduction, is be through an email.

01:58:59

And the website for the church is sgfcjacks .org, S -G for Sovereign Grace, F -C for Family Church, J -A -X, the abbreviation for Jacksonville, Florida, dot org, sgfcjacks .org.

01:59:14

Thank you so much, Pastor Keith Foskey, for being an excellent guest today. I look forward to your return to the program.

01:59:21

Yes, sir. Thank you, Chris. And I want everybody to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater