Interview with CHRIS ARNZEN of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio at Fight Laugh Feast 2022

And now back to your regularly scheduled program.

Radio Career and the Launch of Iron Sharpens Iron

With me. So how are you today, sir? I am great. I'm very glad to be alive. Enjoying this conference very much even more. In fact, a lot more than I expected I would. Is this your first fight.

Last piece? Yes, it is. Mine too. So we're we're in this together, I guess. But you of course, are you used to doing a lot of conferences, you do a lot of promoting you've been on the radio for years.

By the way, I wanted to read your bio so our audience will have just a bit greater knowledge of who you are just in case they don't know. You've been involved.

In radio it says here for over 30 years. Yes, not in hosting a radio program of my own that began in 2005. But I've been in the radio industry since the mid to late 80s as an account executive and airtime salesman.

And I worked for 15 years for WMCA radio 570 am in New York. It's a it's a very legendary station. It used to be in the 50s and 60s. New York's number one rock and roll station. They were known as the good guys.

And it became a Christian station in 1990. And I was I applied for a job there and was hired. And for 15 years was there. But while there, the the talk show that they had an in house talk show started out being called talk New York.

And then it became Andy Anderson live. Andy Anderson was the host. And Andy was not reformed as I was. And in fact, I was the only reformed person, theologically reformed person at the station. And so when I would hear the interviews on Andy's program, I loved Andy was a great guy, but I was very often very disappointed in the guests and the the agenda that was being promoted.

So I began to approach Andy with a reformed book by reformed author. And I would say, hey, Andy, why don't you introduce this guy? And Andy would say, I don't know anything about that subject. And I said, well, why don't I write the questions for you?

And all of a sudden he lit up like a Christmas tree. It was like an epiphany. And he said to himself, this is going to make my life a lot easier. So he began approaching me every week after that. Hey, Chris, you got any guests lined up for me?

And then when he was going on vacation, he would ask management, hey, can you have Chris Arnson fill in for me? And that's where I got the book. And then in 2005, when I left WMCA, which is an affiliate of Sala Media, the largest Christian radio network in the world, I started my own show in 2005.

And that was kind of a funny thing that happened. I started out with the intention of running my own ad agency. And I approached this general manager of a little tiny Christian music station, predominantly music, in Babylon, New York, WNYG.

And I asked the woman who was the general manager, Phyllis, I'd like to have your media kit because I want to include you in a packet that I approach advertising prospects with. And this way that I can include you in my sales pitch so that I could sell advertising for your station as well as other stations.

And within the first five minutes of the conversation, Phyllis said, you have a really nice voice. Did you ever host a talk show before? And I said, well, I used to fill in for Andy Anderson Live. And she said, well, the two o 'clock slot is open.

You want it? And that's how Iron Sharpens Iron started, 2005.

Reformed Books, Soteriology, and Why the Questions Were Written

Wow. So what was it, any particular reform book that you promoted to the folks at the radio station?

It would typically, especially starting out, it would typically be a reformed author writing on something that was universally interesting. It might be a book against abortion. It might be a book against homosexuality.

Anything that even a Narminian would say, wow, that subject is meaningful to me. I want to find out more about that. And then as time progressed, when Andy was just convinced that the authors I recommended to him were excellent guests, I began to give him things that were more deeply and specifically involved in reformed soteriology.

And because Andy had the questions in front of him, it didn't matter that he didn't really understand that theology because he was asking my question. Sometimes that would backfire, though, because sometimes people because the guests didn't necessarily know.

In fact, the vast majority of the time, they wouldn't have known that he had a list of questions. Because sometimes a person, you ask them one question, they're answering five questions. But Andy would still go to number two, even though it had already been answered five minutes ago.

They would spill over, right?

Yeah, right, right. And then sometimes you'd hear, well, as I said, Andy, about three minutes ago. Yeah. He's with the Lord now, Andy. He was a dear man. I loved him a lot. We became very close friends.

But he sadly had bladder cancer and went home to the Lord in the, I guess it was the early 2000s or so, somewhere in that neighborhood.

From Roman Catholicism and Rebellion to Reformed Baptist Conversion

Wow. Mr. Arntzen, have you always, have you always had, were you raised in reform?

Raised Roman Catholic.

Roman Catholic.

Yeah. Went to eight years of parochial school, St. Martin of Tours in Amityville, Long Island, New York. And my father was initially Episcopalian, and my mother was Roman Catholic, and they raised me Roman Catholic.

And my father converted to Catholicism, sadly, when I was about 17, thinking that that would be something to draw the family closer together was his excuse for that. And I had already long abandoned church attendance or affiliation.

That was a season of rebellion. I quickly, after graduating grammar school, Catholic grammar school, became a serious drunkard and pothead. I don't even know if kids use that term these days, but I was definitely smoking pot every day.

And thank God the Lord rescued me eventually when I was in my mid -20s. And also, thankfully, the very first church I began attending very seriously and weekly, where I was saved and baptized, was a Reformed Baptist church.

I had been visiting other churches, bouncing around for several years, including mainly Pentecostal and Charismatic churches, but I never believed what I was witnessing. I never believed it was genuine.

I kept thinking to myself, these people allegedly are speaking an angelic language, but if indeed it is any kind of a real language, it's only at best two or three words because they're repeating the same sounds over and over.

And wherever I go, it seems they're saying the same thing. And I remember even asking one of the pastors of a Pentecostal church where I was attending, I said to him, why is it that people every week go up for salvation and go up for healing?

And I mean, is it not sticking? You know, what's happening here? So thank God I was saved and baptized in a good, solid Reformed Baptist church. My dear friend, Mike Gaydosh was my very first pastor who immersed me in the waters of baptism.

And by the way, you and I got to stick together being a fight, a feast, being a minority, a tiny minority here. And I'm even more of a tiny minority, more of a minority than you because I'm clean shaven.

Although I have a five o 'clock shadow. Yeah, I see that. That's good.

I did want to mention this, but the guests have to at least have some whiskers to be in the booth. So you're OK, Mr. Arnson.

But yes, it's kind of funny how today the full beard and the long beard is a sign of Christian manhood when back in the 60s and 70s, according to George Carlin, it was a sign of being a communist. Another rabbit trail here that might be interesting to the listeners.

Robin Williams, Reformed Churches, and the Mystery of His Final State

And keep in mind, I'm not saying that I believe Robin Williams with great confidence was saved. But this goes to show you that you probably don't know a lot about the private lives of people and even famous people, perhaps especially famous people.

Because Robin Williams, during his standup routines and during his interviews, would never give any hint that he was seeking for God or at least trying to fulfill some kind of religious curiosity because he was for a number of years visiting Reformed churches all over the world when he was on movie sets and so forth where specifically Reformed because he was at a funeral and a man that was there who was a mutual friend of the deceased struck up a conversation with Robin.

Robin immediately began to like him. And the man was a Christian. And I found this out, Mike Gaydosh, my first pastor that I just mentioned, the founder and director of Solid Ground Christian Books. And if you don't know Solid Ground Christian Books, you've got to solid-ground-books .com.

You heard it, folks. They are a big sponsor of my program. But he noticed that this couple in California kept ordering two copies of everything they ordered. And one day he just said to the woman ordering the books, can I ask you a question?

Why do you always order two copies? And she said, well, I guess I might as well tell you. My husband and I are close friends with Robin Williams, the comedian. And she told the whole story about how her husband had met Robin at a funeral.

They drug and alcohol rehab. He put the man up in a hotel nearby the rehab facility so that they could have close regular contact and pray together and all that. And then when Robin got out of the rehab, he had visited Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, where John MacArthur's pastor.

He visited a very well-known Reformed Baptist church in the Toronto, Canada area. He visited Reformed churches in New York. So there was something happening. I don't know if it was genuinely the drawing of God, but he was definitely deeply interested in finding out more about what specifically Reformed Christians had to say.

And sadly, that couple that was ordering the books, oh, before I even say that, when Mike Gadosh found out that Robin was ordering these, that was receiving these books, he said to the couple, I'm going to give a book as a gift to Robin from myself, and I'm going to put a note in it, and I hope that you give it to him.

One day, Mike Gadosh is at his daughter's birthday party. His cell phone rings. It's Robin Williams thanking him for the book. And Mike said that Robin was very enthusiastically and gratefully and profusely thankful, talking a mile a minute to him.

And it was Mike Gadosh that had to eventually say, Robin, I would love to continue talking with you. It's been great, but I have to go back to my daughter's birthday party. And so Mike Gadosh had to end that conversation.

But as I was saying before, tragically, I don't know, it was probably a couple of years later that the couple that was buying Robin a book, every time they ordered a book, they started only ordering one copy of everything.

And Mike said, just out of curiosity, why are you back to ordering one copy of everything? And the wife said, well, tragically, Robin's wife said that if he continued remaining in close contact with us and maintaining a friendship with us, that she was going to leave him.

So he reluctantly ended the friendship. And so where he is now, I mean, people might automatically think, oh, he committed suicide. He must be in hell. But he had serious mental issues. He was facing a very crippling disease.

I can't remember exactly what it is called right now. And obviously nothing is ever an excuse for suicide. But I'm just saying that there are circumstances involving his life that may have driven him to that, that do not necessarily positively negate him being regenerate.

I'm not saying that he was, but I'm just saying that I hold out a hope for that. So I just thought that that would interest people, especially if they were fans of his humor at all, because it's virtually an unknown story.

Catholic Dogma, the Pope, and Protestant Authority

Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. And that's a very good subject for Christians to have discussions about, because I think more along the Catholic side, Catholics look at suicide as an.

Unforgivable sin. Well, they used to. Who knows what they believe now? The Pope, I'm sure, would not use that as a prohibition to enter heaven. Exactly. I mean, atheists are going to heaven, according to him now.

But of course, that's not Catholic dogma. Dogma can never be changed. What was set down in stone, and I obviously don't mean that literally, but the dogma that was declared at the Council of Trent, no matter how leftist a Pope may be, that has not changed.

It doesn't matter if he is saying that atheists are going to heaven, and even we who are Protestants are going to heaven, and Jews and Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists and homosexuals. It doesn't matter what he says.

If he's not declaring it ex cathedra and declaring it as dogma, it's really his personal opinion that, according to the most conservative Catholics I know, they still have to treat him with the utmost respect.

He is still in the chair of Peter, but what he says does not define.

The Catholic faith unless he is speaking ex cathedra. Right, right. Which makes me thankful as Protestants that we have the Word of God as our standard. Amen. The Latin phrase, uh, ecclesia reformata, uh, ecclesia reformata, uh, ecclesia reformata, oh my goodness, ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda, secundum verbum.

Once reformed, always reforming. According to the Word of God. That, yeah, that's actually where we draw our church name from, from that phrase. I just went blank because, again, I'm still nervous. So, but, uh.

Well, you know Latin better than I do. But I do it with a hillbilly accent. So, but you've, you've, uh. By the way,.

I have, I have learned as a native New Yorker not to ever judge the intelligence of someone because of their accent. Because I've discovered, especially through my friend David T. King, who was raised in the Florida panhandle and was a pastor for most of his pastoral life in Georgia, now pastoring in Texas.

David T. King is one of the most brilliant men I know, but a southern accent so deep he makes you sound like you're from Oxford, England.

Oh my. So, so one country preacher once, once told the story about how he talked and how people made fun of his language. And he told them, he said, everybody thinks because the way that I sound, that I'm not educated and that I've never been to school.

The problem is not my schooling. The.

Problem was that I learned how to talk before I went to school. So. And by the way, people say the same things about New Yorkers with the thick New York accent. They automatically very often think that we're ignorant.

And that may be true about me. Well, I'll be honest. Northerners sound.

Way more intelligent than us southerners. So you've had opportunities over the years, and I won't keep it a lot longer. I appreciate the time that you've given us so far, but you've had the opportunity over the years to, to interview, to talk with, and really to be good friends with a lot of prominent theologians of our day.

R .C. Sproul, John MacArthur, James White. So can you tell me some of maybe, maybe a memorable, a memorable encounter that you had with R .C. Sproul?

Encounters with R. C. Sproul and the Value of Deep Theology

Yes, I have had, and by the way, I don't want to exaggerate the facts. I don't know if I could ever, in fact, I know I could not ever truthfully claim that R .C. Sproul was a friend, but to start with, R .C. Sproul was somebody that, as soon as I saw him preach and heard him preach at the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology at 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia when Dr. James Montgomery Boyce was still alive, I cut my teeth on Reformed Theology going to those conferences as a new Christian.

As soon as I heard Sproul preach there, I was like, wow, I've got to find out more about this guy and follow him more carefully and listen to him more often and read him more often. And I began, first of all, before I even had my own radio show, I was working part-time for Calvary Press Publishing, which was also founded by Mike Adash.

It's owned by another friend of mine now, Joe Bianchi. Calvary Press brought back into print a booklet that is an excerpt from a larger work by Jonathan Edwards, and it's called Heaven, A World of Love.

In fact, other publishers, since it's public domain, were so impressed with this excerpt that they published their own versions. But Mike was the first one to take this as an isolated portion of a larger book and print it on its own.

And one of the things that I did for Calvary Press is, since I worked in Christian radio full-time and knew that I had perhaps better access to some of the more well-known Christians than they did, they asked me to approach people for endorsements.

And Ligonier Ministries at the time, they had a very thick brick wall that you could not surpass when trying to get in contact with somebody like Dr. Sproul. And obviously that's understandable, a person of that fame, the millions of people that no doubt want to get a hold of him, or at that time, anyway, when he was still with us.

So I began to be very frustrated by that, that they would say, no, we're not going to give Dr. Sproul the manuscript of the booklet because he has a rule now that he only gives endorsements to people he knows personally.

And my response would be, but he loves Jonathan Edwards. But still, he is so busy, we're not even going to approach him with that. So I am in Manhattan when Dr. Sproul is speaking at a conference at Calvary Baptist Church in New York City.

And when he finishes speaking and everybody gets up to sing a hymn, I notice him going out a back door behind the pulpit. And I said, he's going to the bathroom. To myself, I said that. So I ducked out another door and he's walking to the bathroom and I call out and I have a copy of Jonathan Edwards having a world of love with me.

And I'm calling out, Dr. Sproul, Dr. Sproul, can I ask you something, please, sir? Well, if you want to ask me something, you've got to come in here with me. We go into the men's room and R .C. Sproul at the urinal with his back towards me, but his head turned around.

What do you want to tell me? I said, this is a booklet by Jonathan Edwards. My pastor runs Calvary Press. He would go through the roof with joy if you were to write an endorsement for this booklet, knowing of your love for Jonathan Edwards.

And he said, well, give it to me. And I gave it to him. Didn't really have high hopes that I would hear from him. And two weeks later or so, he wrote an endorsement for that book. And then years later, when I was hosting my show, I was trying to get R .C. Sproul as a guest.

And, oh, Dr. Sproul doesn't do interviews with anybody unless he knows them personally, you know, on and on and on. Then one day after, I think, maybe four or five years of trying and giving up, I'm sitting there in the studio, WNYG in Babylon, New York.

I got a phone call on my cell phone. Hello, this is Dr. R .C. Sproul's secretary. And Dr. Sproul has learned that there are a growing number of people here at Ligonier who love your show and he would like to be a guest.

And I couldn't believe it. Really? I said, yeah, well, set him up. And originally she said, Dr. Sproul has some restrictions. He never does live shows. He never does call-in shows, which is what my show was.

And at that time, my show was only an hour. It's two hours now. And she said he will never do two hours, but will likely do 15 minutes. I said, well, whatever he can do, I will pre-record a show if he doesn't want to do it live.

So I will accommodate him on his wishes. Then I don't remember how long after that, after we scheduled the date, she called back and she said, by the way, good news, Dr. Sproul will do the live call-in show with you.

He won't do a full hour. He'll do a half hour, but it's better than 15 minutes. It just keeps getting better. And I was like, phenomenal. And he did the show. It was obvious he was having a great time.

I was getting him to laugh a lot and he was just profoundly deep as always, but not so deep that my ignorant brain could not understand after his explanations, what he was talking about, which he was a master at.

He would take very deep themes and start off perhaps using very high theological language, but he would break it down. For his listeners, viewers, readers, whatever the format might've been. So I had a great time interviewing him.

Then I said to the secretary, well, if Dr. Sproul enjoyed himself, would you ask him if he could write a little blurb for my radio program that my web master could put on the website? She said, I'll pass that on to him.

Thank you. And I, again, even though he wrote that endorsement for Calvary Press, I was just not overly optimistic he would do it for the show. And then one day I got a call from the secretary. Dr. Sproul has written an endorsement for your show.

And since he doesn't use the computer, I was wondering if you prefer that I mail you the hard copy of his endorsement, or if you want me to scan it and email it myself. And I said, scan and email it yourself because I wanted to see it immediately.

And I wish now that I had gotten a hard copy on a piece of paper to frame, but I do have the scan has the letterhead and all that and his signature. And the thing that's even cooler is that he used to play on words with the name of my show, Iron Sharpens Iron.

He used the word sharp, and he obviously in looking what he had typed, because it was a typewritten commendation, he wrote with ballpoint pen quotation marks before and after the word sharp. So it was something that he put deep thought into and then corrected himself or made it more to what he was trying to emphasize by writing in with his hand.

So that is something that I treasure. It is one of the best commendations that I've ever received. Oh, I would have to say the best. The bad side of it is that it's so glowing that there are some people I think view it with skepticism.

And my own former pastor that I mentioned, Mike Adosh, will to this day joke about it because R .C. Sproul says, I am an interviewer without peer in the commendation. So my former pastor will say sometimes out of nowhere, so how's the interviewer without peer with the sharp intellect doing today?

And he'll say things, I'm convinced that Dr. Sproul was on meds at that point when he wrote that about you. So that's the only downside is that it's so beyond anything I would ever expect him to write that I get jokes like that.

Closing Encouragement and the Booth Invitation

What a privilege and what a blessing. And we'll close with that because I would have to say that, sir, you I recently your most recent interview that I listened to because I would say I have to agree with what he said.

The most recent interview that I've watched that you have done with someone was with Mark, Dr. Mark Ward. Do you remember that? Yes, I do. And it was it was phenomenal or phenomenal. But I won't keep you any longer, sir.

I so appreciate I hope that I didn't speak.

Too much. No, no, that this is exactly what we wanted. Yes. I also when I'm interviewing somebody.

Hate pulling teeth. I hate short answers. Yeah. And that's. I appreciate that because I'm I'll be quite honest with you. I am not a good talker. I am not a good communicator many times, particularly when I'm as nervous as I am talking with you right now.

But the joy that you exude.

Makes must make all of your guests very comfortable because you have a wonderful demeanor and spirit about you that really exudes Christ. And I thank you for even inviting me to.

Be on your show. Thank you, sir. Thank you. So that being said, I can't let you go without number one, giving you this. You want to put that on your laptop or something? I am. That's kind of my catchphrase.

That's who I am. I'm the happy Calvin. There you go. That makes sense. Makes perfect sense. Folks will argue and say Calvinist can't be happy. I will fight them to prove that.

Different. Now, were you not recently on my friend Keith Foskey's podcast Coffee with the Calvinist?

Actually, not yet. We have we have got that in the works, but he just agreed to be on the Truth and Love Network with a gentleman from Robert named Robert Knapp in North Carolina, who actually on Thursday nights, if you get a chance on Facebook, Facebook Live every Thursday night, it's a group of of of young preachers and pastors that we just get together.

It's kind of a round table episode where we talk about doctrine. Thursday night, they started on the doctrine of pneumatology. And luckily next week I'll get to be on it because I won't be here. So but it's a fantastic it's a fantastic podcast.

It's called The Laborer's Podcast. But Keith Foskey was on there the first time last week. He's a great brother. I love him dearly. He really seems like a good man. Well, we will sign off with that again.

Thank you, sir. We'll be praying for you any way we can ever help or encourage you. You let us know. Well, you can help and.

Encourage me by being my guest whenever you're available today over at my booth. Thank you.

We'll be glad to do that. You just tell me when and I will make that happen. Well, we can do it now if you want. All right, let's go on to iron sharpen the irons radio booth.