March 23, 2018 Show with Steve Martin on “The Pastors We Need & Preparation & Training for the Gospel Ministry”

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

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on 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 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 whom we converse with and directed to have in 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 hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arnson. 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 ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 23rd day of March 2018, and I find it hard to believe that in all the years

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I have known about my guest, I have never had him on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio until today.

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In fact, I wanted to boost the ratings of my program and tell the world that Steve Martin is my guest today, just to see how many people would listen in and log in to the website to listen, and the

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Steve Martin I am referring to is not the wild and crazy guy, but he is the coordinator of the

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Association of Reformed Baptist Churches of America, very commonly known as ARPCA, and he is the

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Dean of Students at the new IRBS Theological Seminary, IRBS standing for the

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Institute for Reformed Baptist Studies, IRBS Theological Seminary in Texas, with classes beginning,

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God willing, in September of 2018, and today Steve is going to be speaking on the theme,

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The Pastors We Need and Preparation and Training for the Gospel Ministry, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Steve Martin.

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Chris, thank you. I've heard about you for years and heard great things, and I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get my act together to finally be with you.

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And you are actually not only heavily and highly recommended to be my guest for quite a while from Mike Gaydosh, my very first pastor, after being reborn that is, and other

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Reformed Baptists whose names you'd be familiar with, but also the owners of one of my sponsors here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, the

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Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS, Todd and Patty Jennings have been urging me to interview for quite some time as well.

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Well, they're very kind. I think they owe me money, that's probably why. And well, before we go into the testimony, because as you know,

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I like to have my first time guests give a summary of their testimony of salvation, the providential circumstances the

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Lord used in their lives to bring them to salvation, and also what kind of religious upbringing you had, if any, and not only how you were led to Christ and saved, but how you came to the doctrines of grace.

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But before we go to the testimony, let our listeners know something about the Association of Reformed Baptist Churches of America.

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The Association of Reformed Baptist Churches of America is a nationwide association, which also includes provinces in Canada, of churches that hold to the

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Second Lenten Baptist Confession of Faith and hold mutual communion together. We formed in 1997 and formally met in Arizona for our first General Assembly.

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It's an offshoot of really what used to be called Reformed Baptist Mission Services, RBMS, which existed from 1985 until 1996 when several of us who were attending the

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Banner of Truth Conference said, you know, we need more than just cooperation and missions, because a small number of churches can only produce a finite number of missionaries and support them, so let's go beyond just generating missions.

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Let's do home missions or church planting. Let's do theological education. Let's do publications of helpful materials.

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So we met. I invited the members of this group to come to Atlanta, and we sent out a notification that pastors who want to form a new

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National Association based on the Second Lenten Confession should gather in Atlanta in November of 96, and 26 men,

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I believe, showed up, and in three days we hammered out a rough constitution, and we made an ad hoc committee responsible for cleaning it up, and then was sent to the churches, and they were to vote on what they wanted to do, and then we met in Mesa, Arizona in March of 97 to formally ratify the new association to come forward and sign our belief in the inerrancy of the 66 books of the and our confidence in the

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Second Lenten Confession. So in short form, that's where ARPCA came into being, and that's where it is today.

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Yes, you just brought me back in time when I recall our dear brother who's now in eternity with Christ, David Straub, from the former

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Reformed Baptist Mission Services. I can remember him very clearly of visiting the church where I was a member, where I was saved,

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Calvary Baptist Church of Amityville at that time, which later became Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, New York, but I can still remember that dear brother visiting from time to time to give us updates on what was going on in the mission field in regard to the doctrines of grace, and also preaching.

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Very, very powerful and gifted preacher he was. Yes, he was, and he was a great representative.

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He was our second coordinator. Our first one was a missionary who was home on furlough, and Leon Bossert was our first coordinator, but he did it briefly and went back to the mission field, and we brought

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David Straub on. And sadly, the Lord took him home earlier than we all wished back in 99, and I'm now the fifth—one, two, three, four—fifth coordinator in the history of the ministry, and had the privilege to get paid to spend time with my brothers.

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And then, by the way, I don't know if you're aware of this, so you probably are, Leon Bossert is now back here in the States and is a member here at Grace Baptist Church in Carlisle.

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He is. He's a dear man, and he's helped us write some biographies of some of the older missionaries who've been around Reformed Baptist, like men in Columbia, South America, and Stan Line and his wife,

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Bev. He wrote a brief bio for them for our national journal, and wrote one also about the missionary

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Baptist pastor in Jamaica, Oscar Boyes, but he was too humble to write one about himself, and we're trying to find someone who can get the goods on Leon Bossert so we can write an appropriate bio of him.

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Well, that'd be great. In fact, his granddaughter and her husband and children live right across the hallway from where I'm sitting right now in the

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Iron Sherpins Iron Radio studio. Well, that's great. My hat's off to Leon and Margaret.

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They're a great couple. And now, before also we go into the testimony, tell us something about the

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IRBS Theological Seminary, which is a very exciting new institution that will be established officially,

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God willing, in September of 2018, or officially launching and starting this semester.

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If you could, tell us about that. Sure. In the history of Reformed Baptist, there has not been a seminary based on the 1689

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Second London Confession. There have been several seminaries that were vaguely Calvinistic in some sense, or perhaps held to a

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Calvinistic soteriology, but whether it be in England, which briefly had a couple of associations that were

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Calvinistic, but they did not have a seminary that was committed to the confession. And if you read the book,

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The History of the English Particular Baptist by Robert Oliver, published by the Banner of Truth, it's a history of what he says,

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English Calvinistic Baptist. But what's sad to read is they were all over the map for a couple of hundred years.

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And finally, when Charles Spurgeon came along and became pastor in London, he had the confession republished and said, we don't need to rewrite everything all the time.

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We have a confession. Let's be faithful to hold to it. And so the confession came back on the table in the mid -19th century through Spurgeon's efforts.

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But here in the States, the early associations in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and the

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South and Charleston were all based on the Second London Confession. But things deteriorated.

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I know in the state of Georgia where I ministered for 31 years, the question came up at an association in 1855, could a pastor be considered

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Orthodox who said he believed in the doctrines of grace, but never preached them? And the unanimous decision of that association was, no, that man is not

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Orthodox. He merely claims to believe that the doctrines of grace, but does not preach them.

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That same association today would not let you in if you were a Calvinist. And things have deteriorated that far that in a lot of Baptist churches in the

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South, there's not much holding to truth. There's not much holding to doctrine. And so we need to rebuild the wall, so to speak, or unstop the well that most seems to have plugged up.

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Amen. Well, we will be continuing to give our listeners updates on IRB's Theological Seminary, and hopefully

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I will, God willing, have every one of the faculty members as guests on the program, and I look forward to that.

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We've already had Dr. Jim Renahan on the program a number of times, and we hope to have him back again.

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But I am very excited about this project, and I received an invitation from Judy Rogers on behalf of IRB's Seminary to conduct a live broadcast on the campus on the inaugural celebration of the

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Seminary. So I hope, God willing, to be able to get down there to Texas to do that.

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And exactly where in Texas is it? Okay, well, we're in the Dallas -Fort Worth Metroplex.

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We're south of Fort Worth in the town of Mansfield. You've been given five acres in the nearby town of Earlison, which is also a commuter suburb of Fort Worth.

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But Heritage Baptist Church here in Mansfield has given us the top floor of their educational building with classrooms, a library, offices, a restroom, eating areas, and they're refurbishing it so we can have a first -class place to move into to begin the

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Seminary. Then once we get enough money to build physical buildings in Earlison, we plan to have our own campus there.

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Terrific. Well, for you folks who are interested in investigating the

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IRB's Theological Seminary and finding out more about it, you can go to irbsseminary .org.

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Don't forget to put two S's there back -to -back. And also, if you want to find out more about the

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Association of Reformed Baptist Churches of America, ARBGA, especially if you are looking for a church home, because they do have a directory of churches all over the

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United States that belong to ARBGA. But you can go to that website, which is arbca .com.

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ARBCA .com. Well, now let's hear your own personal testimony of how you came to faith in Christ and what kind of religious atmosphere, if any, you were raised in, and the providence of God in your life and how he brought these things to be.

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And then, of course, even on top of that, how you eventually came to discover and embrace the doctrines of sovereign grace.

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Chris, thank you. I was born in 1948. For my listeners, the earth's crust had just hardened.

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You could walk on it. We were fending off dinosaurs and things like that as a child.

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But I speak in churches today, people go, 1948? I've heard about that in history books.

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But I was actually born in that year. My parents were natives of Chicago down on the south side near Comiskey Park.

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My dad worked in the meatpacking business. My parents were nominal mainline denomination.

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I won't say the names, but they each came from a liturgical denominational background.

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We were married after the war. I was born in a small town on the Illinois, Wisconsin border.

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My parents, my dad, in the mindset of the 50s and 60s, he took the corporate transfers to move up the ladder.

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So we moved to Fargo, North Dakota, St. Paul, Minnesota, back to Chicago, Atlanta, Georgia, near Raleigh, North Carolina, Omaha, Nebraska.

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And I finished up high school on the Ohio River in Evansville, Indiana. So all this time with my parents,

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I'm going to church. If my dad liked the minister or the priest, we went.

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If he didn't like them, he wanted to stay home. I would lie in bed and root that he would win the argument and we could stay home.

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I had to go through catechism class in sixth grade because I had been baptized as an infant and had to affirm that I believed certain things, which at the time,

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I don't think I was dishonest, but I don't think I had thought anything but superficially about what

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I was professing to believe. The bishop came and laid hands on me and I was now good to go and could receive communion.

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Mickey Mantle was my favorite baseball player and Dwight Eisenhower was the president. None of these things really made a hell of a difference to my life.

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And then as a church kid, so to speak, and coming from a very moral home, but a sinner's heart,

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I go off to college. It's surprising for people today, but at one time, the

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Ivy League schools and many other colleges in America were all -male. So I went to an all -male college in Indiana and it was 75 % fraternity or Greek -oriented.

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You pledged a fraternity and you moved in day one. There were no house parents, there were just the seniors.

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It was kind of like the inmates were running the institution, actually. So as a freshman,

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I moved in and they proceeded to have a kegger and show what used to be called blue movies.

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I was grossed out practically my first day in college. It was an academically good school, but morally it was swirling the drain.

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We'd have keggers on weekends. So anyway, for my freshman, sophomore, junior year,

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I'm away from home. I'm out in the world. And what moral restraints

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I had at home were loosened and I was still considered a good guy, but I was losing my morals.

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And by the time of 1968, which was a pivotal year for people who were alive then, it was a very tumultuous year.

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Martin Luther King was assassinated. Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. There were riots at the

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Democratic National Convention in Chicago. There were riots on campuses all the time.

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Inner cities in Los Angeles and Chicago were burning. Students took over the streets of downtown

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Paris and threatened revolution and things were very dicey. There was an induction of free love.

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Drugs came out of nowhere to be a big deal. When I was in high school, if you drank or smoked, that made you a wild kid, but now there's all kinds of drugs all over the place and orgies.

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And I'm watching all this happen and I'm reading books in school and I'm trying to figure out which end is up in life.

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And it dawned on me one day, you know, the world is a messed up place. Now, I know that sounds kind of naive and foolish, but when you've not been thinking too deeply about things, it was a signal event for me to go, this world is really messed up.

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And then a few weeks later, the even worse understanding was, well, whatever's wrong with the world, it's in me too.

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And I knew no way of fixing it. The spring of 68, I went door to door for Eugene McCarthy, trying to get people to vote for him.

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A lot of naive students went door to door for Bernie Sanders, trying to get people to vote for him. If you were asking me why you should vote for Eugene McCarthy, he's a nice guy.

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He says nice things and has a nice platform. And it was just kind of the thing to do. And that fall, my conviction level kept getting deeper and deeper and deeper.

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I was doing things that really made my conscience sting. It didn't make me stop doing them, but my conscience was really bothering me.

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And in the kind providence of God, after almost a year of seeing the world's sins, seeing my sins, seeing no hope, taking college courses and reading about philosophers and writers and quote -unquote great men who wanted to tell us how to run the world, but then at the introductory page before you read their pronouncements, this is what their life was like.

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This man died of syphilis at 29. This man was a drunk. This man went crazy at 45.

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This man was this. This man was that. And I go, who can I listen to? Who knows which end is up and whose life backs up what he says?

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And about that time, my sister, who went to a co -ed campus, introduced me to a girl in her sorority for a blind date and said that she's a nice girl and all that, but she's a really committed

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Christian. And I was thinking, well, I'm not a Buddhist or an atheist or something. I mean, I would have called myself a

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Christian, but I wouldn't have called myself a really committed Christian like this girl did.

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And so we had the date and she was attractive and fun to be with. But as I like to tell people, if you're an adult, and I was about 21 at the time, if you're an adult, when you meet

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Christians, there's something indefinable about them that you can't quite put your finger on what it is, but they're not quite like other people.

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They're not wacky different. They're just different. And so I asked her at the end of the day, what makes you tick?

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You seem to be a little bit different. You seem to have a different quality of life about you. And she said, well,

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I'm a Christian. Jesus Christ is my Savior and Lord. I serve him. I live for him and his word organizes my life.

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And I sat there kind of stunned because I had no small talk for religious girls. So I had to go back to the drawing board to think of what to say.

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And then on the next date, I had some handy dandy questions I was going to ask her.

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And they were actually rinky dinky questions and I could answer some of them. And most of them she could answer, but even if she couldn't, it didn't blow her away, so to speak.

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But I asked her out for a third date and she goes, I don't do evangelistic dating.

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It's like standing on the street corner and a bullet goes by your head and you hear it go by. I had no idea what that was.

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She said, look, there's going to be this big conference at the Marriott Hotel at O 'Hare

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Airport in Chicago. They're going to expect a thousand college students between Christmas and New Year's.

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Why don't you come? I go, what do they do at these conferences? And she said, well, they have

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Bible teaching and seminars. And she goes, witnessing. I said, what's that?

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And she told me, I go, gross, that's like the Hare Krishnas. No way I'm going to do that.

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And then she explained, she said, well, they have a talent show the last night. I go, well,

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I could probably do a talent show. So I lived on the Ohio River. She lived up on Lake Michigan.

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I drove 300 miles on a snowstorm to pick her up. We drove around the southern tip of Lake Michigan and Chicago.

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There was a thousand college students, just like she said. Since this was just after Christmas of 1968, there were guys with afros out eight inches from their head.

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There were other guys with plastic pocket protectors and five pencils in there. There's all kinds of subgroups you could think of, but so many of them had this indefinable quality.

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And I was really fascinated by this. And then they had the talent show and we stood around for a while and talked.

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And then I told her parents I'd bring her home that night. So we drove back to Indiana across the border and got her home about one in the morning.

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And then in God's providence, the temperature dropped to 35 below zero. And that's fine.

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But if your car is at antifreeze for that, it's frozen solid. So the next morning, my car, which was antifreeze for 300 miles south, was solidly frozen and I couldn't do anything.

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And this was New Year's Eve, 1968. And you can't get a car fix on New Year's Eve.

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So I was stuck and she was stuck with me. In fact, that night she even had a date with another guy. And I had to go answer the door for her and he goes,

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Who are you? I go, I was yesterday's date. The old running out of antifreeze trick.

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She had some explaining to do, as they say. And then her parents had gone to a party and I was left with her 10 -year -old brother.

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So we watched Marx Brothers movies to usher into the new year. I went to bed and woke up the next morning.

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It's January 1st, 1969. And she still stuck with me. You're not going to get a car fixed on a

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Sunday on January 1st. So in the afternoon, she took me in the front room and she said,

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Here, I've got this message I'd like you to listen to. Tell me what you think. And it was

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Bill Bright, the president of Campus Crusade for Christ, giving what

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I consider now an excellent message about the uniqueness of Christ. His uniqueness as to his person and his uniqueness as to his work.

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And then he closed with, Here's four things Christ can do for you that nobody else can.

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He can give you pardon, purpose, peace, and power. Like I said,

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I'm a junior in college. I've been to all kinds of parties and situations. And by this time in my life,

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I know I need pardon. And I understood perfectly how Christ could be my substitute on the cross.

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And that's all explained how he took the wrath that I deserved, and he could give me pardon.

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And then he could give me purpose for living. Prior to this, one of my concerns was, What am

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I going to do when I graduate from college? Because while it may seem noble to search for truth when you're in college, it's kind of funky if you're 40 and still haven't figured out what's going on.

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And I didn't know what to do with my life. I had literally no meaning or purpose other than to graduate and get a job and make money.

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That didn't seem enough to fill up your soul. And if God was indeed my God, and he was the master of the universe, and he was the grand designer, and Christ was the master builder, and the

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Bible was the architect, and I had not consulted all of them, it was no wonder that my life was not going anywhere, and I needed to have

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Christ to direct what he wanted me to do with my life. Pardon, purpose, peace. Peace with God primarily.

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If you talk to the average non -Christian, they're not comfortable talking about God because they know that he's their judge, and they will have to stay before him one day.

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So God was more of something to be feared, more like a mouse doesn't spend time with a cat, and a thief doesn't spend time with a policeman.

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And I didn't spend time with the Lord, and I needed peace with God.

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And I understood how Christ could give me peace. And then the last piece of the puzzle was the power to be different.

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I had gone to some religious functions growing up of various kinds, and they may be fine for the moment.

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You may feel a little exhilarated, but nothing ever stuck. And I was concerned that I didn't want to become a hypocrite, say that I was buying into something when

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I couldn't really live it. And as he explained how Christ gives you the power to be different by sending the

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Holy Spirit to live within you, this girl interrupted the tape and said, you know, you're an

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English major, Steve. Can you write like William Shakespeare? I go, no way. And she said, well, just for the sake of argumentation, as a weak illustration, suppose

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William Shakespeare didn't stay dead, but came back alive, and he could give you a portion of his spirit.

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Do you think you could be more Shakespearean in your writing? I said, well, theoretically, if all that could happen, then

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I suppose I could be more Shakespearean. She said, well, it's a crude illustration, but Christ didn't say to stay dead.

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He was raised from the dead by the Father, and he and the Father sent the Holy Spirit to make people be different, to give them the new birth, to help them to live a different life.

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I got that. And then as a typical campus crusade vehicle,

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Bill Bright closes with, this is what you might want to pray if you're sincere and become a Christian. So he explained the prayer.

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I bowed my head. I prayed the prayer. And she looked at me like, really? You want to do this? I go, yeah. And I can remember as he's describing this whole thing, time had stood still.

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Eternity was in this little front parlor of this home in northern Indiana. And I could see the great chasm between God and man, between God and me, and that only

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Christ could bridge that chasm. But if I didn't trust Christ, I was history's biggest fool, because I needed to be saved, and I would have to stand before God.

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And Christ was the only mediator, the only one who could bridge that gap. And by the grace of God, I repented as best

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I could tell and believed. And even that night when I went to bed, I laid in bed and thought it through again.

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I said, Lord, if I wasn't sincere this afternoon, I'm really sincere tonight, and I really want this. And I can remember the next day,

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January 2nd, 1969. I wake up. My head clears. I open my eyes.

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And for the first day in my life, I knew that God was in my life. I had to live for Christ, and all bets were off.

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And we fellowshiped. I talked about this new relationship with Christ, and she was elated that I had come to Christ.

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And she gave me a little Good News for Modern Man, New Testament, which was just being published at the time with little line drawings and things like that, and a little booklet,

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My Heart, Christ's Home, about living the Christian life, and got my car fixed and sent me off back to my college.

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And my life was never the same. I got back to college, and she gave me that tape of that message, and I played it for our fraternity brothers, and some of them trusted

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Christ, and we started going to meetings. My school was 30 miles away from two big state universities in Indiana, so we went 30 miles north to Purdue University, where there was a large

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Campus Crusade Christian fellowship with those saints until I graduated, a year and a half.

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And my life was so radically changed, I can remember being amazed at how

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I was changing, and I wasn't trying to change, but the new birth is a real event.

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God really does cause a whole new person to be born. And I was changing, and I was so elated.

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And just out of the joy of my salvation, I would witness to my fraternity brothers and guys on campus.

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The word was out. Martin was different. As time came to graduate, well, what do you want to do with your life?

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Well, I was teaching Bible studies and witnessing and taking guys to events, and boy, if I could be paid to do this, this would be wonderful.

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And at the time, Campus Crusade for Christ accepted me on staff to do that with students, and I was elated that I could do it for a living.

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And so from when I graduated in 1970 to 1977,

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I was on staff at Campus Crusade for Christ, two years in Southern California in Orange County and five years in Indianapolis.

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Well, as a young Christian, I became a reader and a voracious reader and read my

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Bible, tried to memorize significant passages of my Bible, tried to grow, tried to figure out more of the

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Christian life. And in reading, I happened to come across Donald Barnhouse's exposition of Romans.

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And like Martin Lloyd -Jones is the great exposition of Romans today, 45 years ago,

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Barnhouse was the main way to listen to someone preach Romans to you. And having him take me through Romans, I realized

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I had not understood this book. And by the grace of God, I came to see the doctrines of grace, though at the time

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I wouldn't have known what to call them, but God's sovereign. You know, there is a

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God, Steve, and you're not it. And God has an eternal plan, but it's not about you.

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It's about His Son and what He's planning to do to save a people for His Son's glory. And I saw these things, and I saw it wasn't quite compatible with what we were teaching in Campus Crusade and the doctrine of sanctification, the struggle of the

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Christian life, the perpetual struggle of Romans 7, I saw that wasn't what we were teaching either.

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And so I didn't become a Campus Crusade basher. I've cherished the good things

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I learned when I was on Campus Crusade staff, but in those days, you couldn't be a Calvinist and be on Campus Crusade staff.

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So I didn't want to bury what the Lord was teaching me. So I had to say, I love you guys, but so long, I need to follow what the

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Lord's teaching me. So I left Campus Crusade in 1977 over the doctrines of grace, because they were so precious, and the

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Christian life was so much larger, so much bigger, so much more dynamic, so much more beautiful. Salvation was incredible.

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And I couldn't turn my back on that. So in 25 ,000 words or less, that's how

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I came to Christ, and that's how I came to the doctrines of grace. Praise God. Yes, a very dear friend of mine,

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Pastor Josh Fryman, who is currently pastoring on Long Island, New York, Community Baptist Church of Riverhead, but he has just accepted a call to North Dakota to pastor.

32:55

He, when I first met him, not that long ago, maybe six or seven years ago, was an

33:04

Arminian, although he never would have used that phrase or that term, Arminian.

33:09

He was at least a four -point Arminian, and he was a King James only fundamentalist.

33:16

And now he is a full -blown five -point Calvinist, a thoroughgoing believer in the doctrines of sovereign grace.

33:23

And one of the key instruments that God used was someone who

33:30

Dr. Barnhouse mentored, that's James Montgomery Boyce, his own series on Romans I think it may have been either a tape series or a written series on the book of Romans that the late

33:44

Dr. Boyce did, but that was what God used to lead him to the doctrines of grace. That's a great series.

33:50

If a listener doesn't have a four -volume exposition, it's worth the investment.

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It's a chunk of change, but it'd be a great way you could read those sermons out loud as a family or read them to your wife or your husband.

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And it's a great exposition of Romans, and I can see why Pastor Freiman found them so helpful.

34:10

Yeah, and just out of curiosity, I have an old friend, although I haven't seen or spoke with him in a number of years, but he is a

34:18

Reformed minister who came out of Campus Crusade for Christ as well.

34:23

Bill Malick, does that name sound familiar to you? It does vaguely. It's hard to imagine when

34:30

I joined Campus Crusade in 1970, they went from having 1 ,400 staff members to 2 ,100 in one summer, and now they're up about 16 ,000, and there's so many members.

34:45

After a while, I could barely keep up with my friends, let alone all the new strangers who were coming on board.

34:51

So I don't remember Mr. Malick. I might have met him. He's almost seven feet tall, and I'm not even exaggerating.

34:58

Well, I would hope I would remember that. They did have a basketball team that toured the country and gave exhibitions of former college players who were

35:08

Christians, and was he ever a part of that? That I don't know. I just know that his history was with Campus Crusade for Christ, and he then at some point, although he was a

35:20

Reformed Baptist, he went to seminary at the Covenanter Seminary in Pittsburgh, the

35:27

Reformed Presbyterian Seminary. Sure, sure. That's a good school. We have to go to our first break right now, and when we return,

35:35

I have been asked by one of my sponsors, who's also a friend of yours, Mike Gaydosh, founder of Solid Ground Christian Books, who is one of the key sponsors of Onion Sharpens Iron Radio.

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When we come back, I have to have you recount this story that Mike wants you to tell.

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He says, please ask Steve to tell the story of his speaking at a young people's rally,

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Youth for Christ or Campus Crusade, when he shortened C .S. Lewis options about Jesus from three to two.

36:06

It is a hilarious story, especially the way he tells it, so if you could tell that when we come back, that'd be great.

36:12

I'll do it, and then I'll shoot Mike. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Steve Martin right after these messages from our sponsors.

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solid -ground -books .com, and please make sure you tell

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Mike Gaydosch and the folks at Solid Ground Christian Books that you heard about this offer from Chris Aronson on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and I also want to thank all of you who have made 2018 a great year for Solid Ground Christian Books.

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Mike Gaydosch has been informing me about the many, many, many orders coming to him from our listeners from all over the

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United States, people that I have never even heard from before, who have never even submitted questions to our guests, and it is absolutely a wonderful thing to hear, and it encourages me, it warms my heart, and it also gives

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Mike Gaydosch more of a reason to keep advertising on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We are now back to our discussion with Steve Martin, Coordinator of the

43:40

Association of Reform Baptist Churches of America, and also the Dean of Students at the new

43:46

IRBS Theological Seminary, which will be starting their semester,

43:52

God willing, in September 2018. We are discussing the pastors we need in preparation and training for the gospel ministry.

44:00

Our email address, if you'd like to join us, is ChrisAronson at gmail .com. ChrisAronson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

44:10

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

44:17

And speaking of Mike Gaydosch, as I said before the break, he wanted you to tell this story about C .S.

44:24

Lewis, so if you could continue with that. Well, Mike has a good memory, particularly for my foibles, but I tell this story to keep myself humble, and it begins in 1971.

44:38

I was still living in California, still ministering to students. It was a different place and time in terms of what was happening in the culture, and we had a ministry up in San Luis Obispo, which was halfway up the

44:50

California coast, and the high school and college ministries of Campus Crusade had a big rally, and they had a march through downtown

44:59

San Luis Obispo, and carrying signs like the Easter Bunny's dead, but Jesus isn't, you know, really big time stuff like that.

45:07

Anyway, and we met at a park, and then there was one of the first Christian rock groups was there supposedly playing a short gig, kind of a warm -up, and then

45:19

I was to be the speaker. My boss had asked me, my director had asked me to give a message, a salvation message there that would be relevant.

45:29

So this group was supposed to play only for 15 minutes. Well, they kept going and going and going, and they went 30 minutes, they went 45 minutes, and my director said, the crowd's getting edgy.

45:40

You need to shorten your message down to 10 minutes. And he's been shorted to five minutes, and then he said, well, just give them a three -minute challenge, and maybe the

45:49

Christians in the audience can divide and conquer and go talk to their friends. So they got through playing finally.

45:56

I got up on the platform. They handed me the mic. Oh, excuse me.

46:01

I got up on the platform, and just then, a very naive girl out in the crowd go, let's sing We're One in the

46:07

Spirit. If you think about it, it's really not good in an evangelistic rally. But anyway, and so the lead singer goes, hey man, we don't know the words, but we know the music here.

46:18

And he handed the mic to me, and I'm supposed to lead We're One in the Spirit. And I'll do a lot of things in front of people, but singing isn't one.

46:26

And that mic could have been a snake for all, you know. And we started playing the music, and we sang

46:35

We're One in the Spirit. By the time we got through that, I was so discombobulated. I said, okay, now what would

46:41

C .S. Lewis or Josh McDowell or the heavy hitters of the day, how would they put it?

46:46

And I said, well, you folks, this is Easter Sunday, 1971. And you've heard what this band's been playing about.

46:52

You know what Easter's about. And you must make a decision. Jesus is either a liar, a lunatic, or a legend.

47:05

I forgot the Lord. My director said, well, your diction was good.

47:13

Your delivery was good. But you idiot, you left out the most important thing. I was so embarrassed and so humiliated.

47:22

Of course, your buddies never let you forget that that happened. So if ever I get too big for my britches,

47:28

I just remember that speaking engagement, and it brings me back to reality. Well, I wish I could remember every foible that Mike Gaydosh preached, because I used to edit his sermons for a radio broadcast, and there were quite a number of times when

47:44

I didn't even realize what he had said until I was editing the recording. As professional communicators, we can say things that we don't know we say, and then we go, really, did

47:54

I say that? Well, now we have reached the point where you are a reformed

48:04

Christian, and you obviously had a call that you believe

48:09

God placed on your heart to enter into the ministry, which I think is something valuable for us to hear, since the primary subject matter that we are going to be addressing with you is the pastors we need in the preparation and training for the gospel ministry.

48:23

Tell us about the circumstances involving you knowing that God had put that call on your life. Not long after I came to see the

48:30

Doctrines of Grace in 1976, I was out fishing, and fishing had become kind of an avocation of distraction.

48:39

I could kind of let the world and its pressures fade away, and my little bobber and my worm and myself would be out on the lake trying to catch fish, and I'd become so enamored with fishing.

48:50

It was February in Indiana, which is cold. I'm wearing a parka. It was a gray, leaden day with 30 -degree temperatures, and I'm trying to catch a fish, and even the fish that swam by were wearing parkas.

49:02

I mean, it was a cold day, and I'm standing there just doing nothing but watching my bobber, and suddenly, and I don't hear voices.

49:13

I don't have trances and all that, but suddenly a voice behind me very loudly said, feed my sheep, and I jumped and turned around, and there was no one there.

49:23

I said, okay, well, this is

49:28

God. I'll be over here running my own business. Now, as I thought about it, I said, well, I said it could have been a hallucination.

49:34

It could have been anything, but I said, I know the scripture context. Jesus told Peter, feed my sheep, tend my lambs, feed my sheep, and it was a call for Peter to be a shepherd, to shepherd the flock of God that he was given responsibility for, and ministry

49:54

I had exerted in Campus Crusade was really more of a pastoral meeting, excuse me, pastoral ministry.

50:00

I had a large meeting once a week. We sang three hymns, and I preached, and then we discipled students and distributed literature, and it was much like a church might be, and I was their shepherd.

50:12

I defended the students from bad doctrine and cults that came by, and the Lord was really putting on my heart to become a pastor, and then these verses coming with such clarity from who knows where, but they were biblical verses, and I went to my church, and my church was recognizing my pastoral gifts, and they said, well, we'd like you to go to seminary, and when you graduate, we'd like you to come back and be the assistant minister, and so the church confirmed objectively my inward subjective call.

50:45

One of the things about the ministry is America's a land of entrepreneurs, and so anybody with half an idea and who has the will to promote it, he can be somebody, so to speak, but there's a lot of guys who think they have the gift of being a minister or a teacher, but people don't have the gift of listening to them, and so they're not really called, so you have to have the ability to preach, but you have to have the character to back it up, and most of the biblical qualifications in 1

51:15

Timothy and Titus are character qualifications. You have to be apt to teach, but your character is going to be your credibility, and thankfully, my church saw that my maturity level now,

51:26

I was about 29. I had two children. I've been married since 1972, so I've been married seven years by this point, and my church said, we'd like to see you go to seminary, so they paid my tuition, and I went to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Chicago and studied there for two years, and then...

51:50

That's where D .A. Carson is, correct? Yes, we would carpool sometimes, or Doug Moo was a professor that we'd carpool.

51:59

Other professors, I got to know now, I was nine years older than the average student.

52:10

Most of the age of Carson and Moo and those guys. In fact, Doug Moo didn't know me, but I knew who he was because he played for the archrival college, for my small college, and he was the big, tall, slow center who would jog up and down the court for their basketball team.

52:29

Doug was about 6 '7 and played center for DePaul University, and so he was my

52:35

Greek professor, and I was back in Chicago living in the north suburbs and going to school and just learning a ton and being very humbled.

52:46

I thought I was pretty smart, but I was just kind of a smarty pants when I went to seminary, and because I thought

52:52

I'd read a lot, but once I got to seminary, I found out how much I didn't know and how much I needed to know, so seminary was a very much of a growing time, but I also saw that seminary can be a very scary time because you started off loving it and studying your

53:07

Bible, but after a couple semesters, you find yourself reading pericopes, which is the technical term for little bits of scripture, and then for some people, it can become

53:19

Christian graduate school where you have Christian content, but you're really not living for the

53:25

Lord, and I knew men who got divorced in seminary, men whose marriages deteriorated, men whose mental health deteriorated.

53:33

A friend of mine went to Dallas Seminary, and he told me that one day before Hebrew class, the student in front of him turned around and said, you know,

53:42

I found a great way to use my time twice for my quiet time now. I just do my Hebrew vocabulary cards, and he thought the guy was joking, but he was dead serious.

53:52

Well, the problem is this will really stultify your growth. This will really do harm to your soul if you become a professional

53:59

Christian or an academic whose mere concern is to get the details right, and so I found myself in that battle, and so I read

54:09

John Owen's Temptation and Sin, a big fat volume, and underlined it and outlined it and tried to understand better.

54:20

Jerry Bridges had written the book The Pursuit of Holiness, which I read before I went to seminary, and he put in a book what

54:28

I had kind of cobbled together on my own was the Reformed Doctrine of Sanctification, but Jerry put it together and packaged it very well, and so John Owen was mentioned, and I read

54:39

John Owen, and he was helpful. I was still a real sinner, but John Owen was showing me the path to move on.

54:46

In fact, we're going to have you pick up right where you left off there with John Owen when we return from our midway break.

54:52

This is a longer than normal break because Grace Life Radio 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida requires a 12 -minute break between our two major segments, so I hope everybody is patient and they take advantage of this time not only to write down information from our advertisers, but also write questions, and we have a number of you still waiting to have your questions asked.

55:12

If you'd like to get in line and join them and have a question of your own answered by our guest

55:17

Steve Martin, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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Don't go away, God willing, we'll be right back with more of Steve Martin after these messages. Iron Sharpens Iron welcomes

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and click support at the top of the page. But most importantly, keep Iron Sharpens Iron Radio in your prayers.

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We hope that Iron Sharpens Iron Radio blesses you for many years to come. One sure way all

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When we interview authors and those authors have guests or should

01:06:04

I say have listeners who submit questions, whenever they win a book by those authors or some other bit of merchandise, we thank

01:06:14

Todd and Patty Jennings for sending those out free of charge, not only to our listeners but to Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio.

01:06:22

We also thank Todd and Patty Jennings for being among the others who have highly recommended our guest today,

01:06:28

Steve Martin of ARPCA, the Association of Reformed Baptist Churches of America, and also the

01:06:34

Institute for Reformed Baptist Studies, which is interesting because Todd and Patty are Presbyterian, so that's always good to have those from outside the

01:06:43

Reformed Baptist community encouraging us and recommending us and so on.

01:06:49

Before I return to our discussion with Steve Martin, just have a couple of more quick announcements.

01:06:55

The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is once again sponsoring and hosting the

01:07:02

Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology, which is named affectionately

01:07:08

Philadelphia Conference because it is no longer held in Philadelphia. It is now being held at two different locations, the first in Byron Center, Michigan at the

01:07:22

First Christian Reformed Church, April 13th through the 15th, and the second a lot closer to Philadelphia in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

01:07:32

The conference will be held April 27th through the 29th at Proclamation Presbyterian Church, and I plan to attend the

01:07:39

Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania event. The theme this year is Spirit of the

01:07:44

Age and Age of the Spirit, and the speakers include Daniel Aiken, Richard Gaffin, Daniel Hyde.

01:07:51

My favorite preacher of all time, I think he is a one of the most powerful preachers alive on the planet

01:07:57

Earth, if not the most powerful preacher, Conrad M. Bayway, of course second to Mike Adosh as far as his preaching is concerned.

01:08:06

Richard Phillips, another friend of mine, pastor of Second Presbyterian Church in Greenville, South Carolina. Jonathan Master, who's been a guest here on this program.

01:08:15

David Murray, who's been a guest here. And Scott Oliphant, who we would love to have on the program soon from Westminster Theological Seminary.

01:08:24

We have not yet had Scott on, and we hope to have him as a guest. And if you would like to register for either or both the

01:08:32

Byron Center, Michigan event or the Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania event for the

01:08:38

Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology, go to alliancenet .org, alliancenet .org,

01:08:44

click on events, and then click on Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology, the

01:08:50

Spirit of the Age and the Age of the Spirit. Please tell the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals that you heard about these events from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:08:59

And last but not least, it is my least comfortable or most uncomfortable time of the program where I have to ask you for donations.

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01:09:28

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01:11:22

If you'd like to advertise with us, send me an email to chrisorensen at gmail .com chrisorensen at gmail .com

01:11:28

and put advertising in the subject line. Whether it's your church, your parachurch ministry, your business, your professional practice, if you're a doctor, a lawyer, a dentist, a chiropractor, whether it is a special event you're having or whatever it is that you want to promote, just send us an email to chrisorensen at gmail .com

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01:11:54

That's also the email address you could send a question to our guest Steve Martin, who is the coordinator of the

01:12:01

Association of Reformed Baptist Churches of America and also the dean of students at the all -new IRBS Theological Seminary in Texas.

01:12:08

That's chrisorensen at gmail .com chrisorensen at gmail .com. Give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the

01:12:15

USA. Before the break, as you may remember Steve, you were at the point when you were having an inward battle over whether or not to enter into the pastoral ministry or enter into the academic realm,

01:12:28

I believe, and you were reading Jerry Bridges and you were reading John Owen.

01:12:34

That's correct and I think after I went to seminary,

01:12:40

I was in seminary, I loved learning and boy what a place if you're hungry for the word of God, seminary can be a place where you can just drown yourself in the best stuff imaginable, but I couldn't stay forever.

01:12:54

I got out. I actually wrote a master's thesis combined with my classwork on the

01:13:00

Princeton theologian Charles Hodge, but I came back to Atlanta, Georgia to be an associate pastor in a church and I was really struggling with a pride issue and what really ministered to me was

01:13:15

Martin Lloyd -Jones. I came to understand him as a great leader and a much -used man of the 20th century.

01:13:22

Charles Spurgeon was the great preacher of England in the 19th century. Martin Lloyd -Jones was of the 20th century and he wrote a little book called

01:13:30

Authority, The Authority of Christ, chapter one, The Authority of the Scriptures, chapter two, and The Authority of the

01:13:36

Holy Spirit, chapter three, and I had never read a book like this and he in the third chapter discusses you and he says now you can go get a

01:13:46

PhD and that's fine if you're called to be a professor because that's your union card to gain entry, but if you're not called to be a professor, why do you need a

01:13:54

PhD? Are you going to stack up your PhD against Worling's PhDs and then you can have the battle of the

01:14:02

PhDs and if you win you'll get the glory, but the Holy Spirit can trump all the authorities of this world with his own supreme authority and there's so many ministers who have advanced degrees but they don't have the authority of the

01:14:17

Holy Spirit when they preach and when they minister. I was deeply convicted that I wanted the authority of a

01:14:22

PhD but I was kind of ignorant about the sense of authority of the Holy Spirit and I repented of my pride and wanted to be someone and never went on to pursue any other advanced degrees but I did want to cultivate an intimacy with the

01:14:37

Lord and pledged with him that he wouldn't set me aside but the authority of the

01:14:43

Holy Spirit would accompany my preaching and my leadership and so I did not go to pursue a doctorate.

01:14:49

I stayed in the local pastorate for 31 years until I retired in 2012 but I came to see so many important things during those years of ministry.

01:15:01

I was in the local pastorate for 31 years in Atlanta and got a chance to be involved in two churches.

01:15:09

My first church went through a split over the doctrines of grace We started another church and that went on for a number of years.

01:15:19

I saw the need to train men. First of all, pastors create an environment and young men thinking about the ministry take their local churches normative and so when they go to seminary that's what they're thinking of replicating or maybe they're thinking of improving upon their local pastor and what he did but if you come from a sad church or a sick church your view of the ministry, your view of the pastorate, your view of what is preaching can be really twisted by growing up in a bad environment and so many young men go off to different seminaries with really distorted views of what it means to be a minister, what it means to preach, what is the gospel and so I was very cognizant of the importance of me keeping the gospel clear, me relying upon the

01:16:08

Holy Spirit, me not using gimmicks and tricks to try to attract a crowd but to ask the

01:16:15

Holy Spirit to draw those whom he would, to ask the Holy Spirit to change lives rather than beginning a puppet ministry or something foolish and I tried to stick to that.

01:16:26

In the third chapter of that book by Martyn Lloyd -Jones he recounts the attempts of evangelicals the last 250 years whenever the church wanes and churches don't have authority and the preaching is dry and dead and the services are dry and dead so what's the solution?

01:16:45

He said well because I've set it up for you it has to do with the Holy Spirit but most evangelicals aren't that sharp and so they go our church is dead what should we do?

01:16:54

Now I could jokingly say puppets but actually there have been churches that have tried things like that but he he goes back 250 years and goes through some of the waves of things that evangelicals have tried to jazz up their churches of everything from well we'll have learned lectures at Oxford University to make thinking non -Christians know the gospel is true and who wants to go to hear a learned lecture and so that didn't come to anything or smart evangelicals write big fat books of apologetics and I could name the books and the men but the point is how many non -Christians want to read big fat books of apologetics?

01:17:32

Practically none and so evangelicals come up with their substitutes for the power and authority of God himself being in the service being in the preaching being in the gospel.

01:17:43

I know Martin Luther is one of my heroes I mentioned before but he went to Wales which is uh functions in Great Britain like Appalachia does in the

01:17:52

United States and he went to a place where there's a 40 % unemployment rate the people were coal miners steel workers and dock workers the hobbies were prostitution and drunkenness and he said

01:18:07

I want to go to a place where there's no explanation there's no sociological explanation why the gospel should succeed other than the fact that God is in the preaching of the gospel of his son so he left his job as a doctor he was engaged to be married to a doctor she left her job they got married they lived on the tiny pittance that this church plant in this troubled little community could pay them and he began to preach the gospel and within six months they saw a couple of conversions and two years in they saw a revival what was so stunning about reading about this was that the people who were converted were not nice little girls in Sunday school who had been homeschooled and primped and prepared the people who were converted in this town was the town drunk uh the lady who ran the seances and had a a fortune -telling business the man whose hobby in his 50s was baron uncle fighting at fairs folks

01:19:07

I submit to you that if you're baron uncle fighting at fairs in your 50s you're already taking too many shots to the head um and uh these are the people who get converted these are the people who become like little children supernaturally transformed and I say it's the only book

01:19:24

I've read 10 times but Martin Lloyd -Jones biography um by Ian Murray volume one

01:19:30

I read 10 times because it showed me what a church can be under God it showed me what the importance of preaching the gospel of relying on the holy spirit um

01:19:39

Martin Lloyd -Jones was a leader without a party Martin Lloyd -Jones preaching wasn't like everybody else's preaching he didn't assume you were a

01:19:46

Christian he preached the gospel asked you questions and and made you think and um it was a tremendous time of learning about what's involved in really having a faithful gospel ministry and not relying upon human tricks and psychological manipulation but relying upon God the holy spirit to honor the preaching of the word of his son amen we have a listener with a question who is actually a mutual friend of both of ours

01:20:14

I'm getting a lot of friends here writing in today here it seems uh Marcus McKnight also known as Mike McKnight who is actually my attorney here in Carlisle Pennsylvania and a dear brother yes he says

01:20:27

I consider Steve a good friend who taught pastors in log cabin Georgia to training men for the ministry in Texas how does the current opportunity strengthen men for the challenges of the ministry in our diverse country and I'm assuming he is emphasizing the fact that our country is diverse okay um

01:20:50

Mike thank you that's a good question um the name of our little school in Georgia was called the log college not the log cabin and the interesting quick history of that is during the first great awakening there was a great preacher named

01:21:04

William Tennant and his sons were old enough to be pastors and wanted to be trained so he said

01:21:11

I'll train you and then their friends wanted to be trained so they cut down a bunch of trees and built a log cabin and he started a school there for them and the detractors snidely called it the log college and it kind of stuck uh banner of truth is published uh

01:21:28

March of old Alexander's volume about the log college but all the men who went to that little school became great preacher preachers in the first great awakening and so I wanted to choose a name for our little school that you wouldn't put on your diploma and say

01:21:42

I went to the log college like it was Princeton or Yale although and ironically the log college did morph over time and became

01:21:50

Princeton so that that is an interesting side to it but we called the log college and we trained men in the

01:21:56

Atlanta area who couldn't afford to go back to seminary who had never had a reformed education and I put together books and tapes and we pressed buttons and we discussed and we trained a number of men for 16 years in the life of the log college but I took this opportunity that was offered to me to come to Texas because at 69 which is what

01:22:20

I was when I came here last summer I'll be 70 in a couple of weeks well

01:22:25

I should be looking to do shuffleboard in Florida or something like that I don't like shuffleboard and I don't want to waste the rest of my life and I'm healthy by the grace of God my wife is healthy and we want to train young men for the gospel ministry and involved in training young men is several things first of all for example seemingly small thing but President Jim Renahan approached me and said

01:22:49

Steve I'd like you to team teach a course with me first course that every seminary student will take here of being a man of God on the priority of godliness and holiness we both noticed the number of guys who go to reformed seminaries who graduate and say behold

01:23:05

I am smart but they're not really godly men they don't really pursue a holy life

01:23:12

God the Holy Spirit doesn't accompany their life and ministry with anything significant Mark Devere and Capitol Hill Baptist of Washington was interviewing

01:23:21

Ian Murray the founder of Banner of Truth books and a co -worker of Martin Lloyd Jones and he asked

01:23:29

Ian Murray what would you say is the number one defect of young ministers today and Ian Murray thought for a minute he said well

01:23:36

I would guess the number one thing would be there are very few young men who can pray down the

01:23:41

Holy Spirit meaning that God the Holy Spirit accompanies them because they walk with God and when they plead for the power of the

01:23:49

Spirit to preach he does it well that's just not the case and so we wanted to see that as a priority so your first class you may be taking other things too but your very first class your first semester of your first year will be really a becoming a man of God becoming pursuing holiness your whole life and looking to the

01:24:08

Lord it's we don't want men to become casualties but neither do we want them to be mere technicians who fill pulpits and are technically accurate but spiritually cold and kind of empty so we would like to emphasize that from the get -go the importance of being godly men and then if you take a godly man and you give him great truth to preach that's an exciting possibility

01:24:36

I think the greatest preachers of the last 200 years have been men like Charles Spurgeon or Conrad of Bayway or Martin Lloyd Jones or Donald Barnhouse or James Montgomery Boyce R .C.

01:24:50

Sproul John MacArthur Steve Lawson men who have something to say and they say it in the power of the

01:24:56

Holy Spirit so now having to do with diversity Texas is a good place to do diversity

01:25:04

I when we moved here from Atlanta having lived in the south for 30 some years we saw that Texas was still the south but it was a southern accent with a different kind of twang um

01:25:15

Texas is a vibrant place it's of course it's very big and has a very much of a can -do mentality when

01:25:25

Hurricane Harvey hit down in Houston and swamped the city with 52 inches of rain and people were being plucked off the roofs of their home by people in bathboats a national national reporter asked one of the bathboat drivers why are you doing this why are you bothering to get out and help these people and the guy looked at him incredulously and said this is the

01:25:46

Republic of Texas we take care of our own now a little bit of jauntyness yes but um there is a sense of personal responsibility and there's all kinds of cultures here not just the typical

01:26:01

American culture but there's a large Latino culture the Dallas -Fort Worth metroplex has seven million people and people from all over the world all the nations of the world are here somewhere um and we feel like you know the um one man described the migration of people all over the world as the empire strikes back the places that used to have far -flung empires the people who lived on the empires immigrate back to the home country so England's flooded with immigrants and different other nations are flooded with immigrants and America has immigrants from all over the world and rather than thinking how we can get the gospel back to their culture each of them while they're in the states is also a very good way of taking the gospel back into their culture but um we we believe that we're training men not to do a lot of things but we're training men to be pastors or missionaries or church planters that the great crying need is for faithful men who can preach the gospel and the power of the holy spirit who can handle the scriptures responsibly and not come up with howlers or weird interpretations but um the importance of a holy life and God accompanying your life and ministry with his presence and we believe that trends up transcends cultures that um

01:27:27

I can think of in Las Cruces near Las Cruces, New Mexico in Santa Teresa is a pastor named

01:27:35

Dave Hendricks and Dave's maybe pushing 70 tall thin man with blonde hair or some white hair now and he has a small church of 40 people but then he goes across the border from El Paso into Juarez and has hundreds of Latinos hundreds of Mexicans who are coming to the doctrines of grace and think of him as kind of the

01:27:56

Johnny Appleseed of bringing the doctrines of grace across the border and he's not flashy he's not exciting he's just a faithful teacher of the word but God's honoring it and the church he has in Mexico is far larger than the church he has in the states and Santa Teresa so um we think there's a hunger worldwide for the truth and as nations deteriorate and as our nation at times seems to be swirling around the ball of utter destruction and self -destruction that a clear profound heralding of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the truths of the scripture is what every culture needs to hear and so to that degree we think it will always be culturally relevant.

01:28:43

Well thank you very much Mike otherwise known as Marcus McKnight there in Carlisle or should

01:28:50

I say here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and since this is the first time you've ever written in a question for a guest on Iron Trump and Zion Radio you are getting a free

01:28:58

New American Standard Bible so you could just pop by Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service right up the road from where your law firm is and pick up that free

01:29:08

Bible between 10 a .m and 4 30 p .m Monday through Friday. Thank you once again for joining us on the program with a question.

01:29:16

We're going to our final break it's going to be very very brief and Steve I've already forwarded to you a question from a listener in Slovenia.

01:29:27

Joe in Slovenia has sent in a question and you can mill that over when we go to our break and I'll bring it up to you when we return with our final 25 minutes or so of content of the interview.

01:29:42

So don't go away everybody we're going to be right back God willing with more of Pastor Steve Martin right after these messages from our sponsors.

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01:32:00

that's liyfc .org Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko inviting you to tune in to A Visit to the

01:32:11

Pastors Study every Saturday from 12 noon to 1 p .m. Eastern Time on WLIE Radio www .wlie540am

01:32:23

.com. We bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you and we invite you to visit the

01:32:29

Pastors Study by calling in with your questions. Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you never dull.

01:32:35

Join us this Saturday at 12 noon Eastern Time for a visit to the Pastors Study because everyone needs a pastor.

01:32:42

And when you call in to A Visit to the Pastors Study please tell Pastor Bill Shishko that you heard about his program from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:32:51

I'm very excited to announce that A Visit to the Pastors Study is also going to be joining the lineup of First Love Radio, the new network, reformed network in Dublin, California that has welcomed

01:33:05

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio onto their roster as well. And I am so delighted to know that they are inviting me on their lineup or have invited me on their lineup

01:33:17

I should say several weeks ago as their anchor program on First Love Radio. So I'm excited and very enthusiastic anticipating what the

01:33:27

Lord is going to bring about through this new radio network First Love Radio and I'm excited that Bill Shishko, my dear friend since the 1980s, has joined the lineup as well with A Visit to the

01:33:39

Pastors Study. We are now back to our final 25 minutes or so with Steve Martin, Coordinator of the

01:33:46

Association of Reformed Baptist Churches of America and the Dean of Students at the new IRBS Theological Seminary in Texas.

01:33:54

We are discussing the pastors we need in preparation and training for the gospel ministry and we have

01:33:59

Joe in Slovenia who says, Dear Brothers Chris and Steve, for the at least the past two decades we have seen a dramatic decrease in the level of theological training and practical ministry experience among international missionaries prior to arriving on the foreign field.

01:34:18

The results have been catastrophic. The churches, and he puts that in quotes, they plant or replete with heresy and heterodoxy.

01:34:28

They are unable to articulate or teach sound doctrine nor refute those who introduce error.

01:34:35

What is your commitment to correct the situation through the pastors we need in preparation and training for the gospel ministry?

01:34:42

Will the pastors you intend to train be able to minister in such a way that their churches will produce doctrinally sound and spiritually fit missionaries for the global mission fields?

01:34:52

Thank you both for your dedicated ministry in our Lord's Kingdom. Joe, that is a very important question and a very astute observation.

01:35:02

I share your grief for at least 20 years. I've been grieved about the status of theological training for so -called ministers and so -called churches they plant.

01:35:13

You know back in the 60s there was a song that became popular and it reappears with different artists singing it over the years.

01:35:20

Kind of the driving thing was, don't know much about geography, history, and then the guy goes on to say he loves a squirrel.

01:35:29

And I used that song actually during when I'm speaking about marriage seminars. I said, if an ignoramus says he loves you, is that a big deal?

01:35:39

If the guy has a total nincompoop, do you really want to date him let alone marry him? No offense to Paul Simon.

01:35:48

Right. And only in America could you get away with, I don't know nothing, I just love Jesus, as if that was a badge of honor.

01:35:56

To have an ignoramus claim that he loves the Lord when the Lord is so great he doesn't have the energy or the wherewithal to study the scriptures, to know his

01:36:04

Lord at a greater depth, this is a travesty. And we export American garbage all over the world and I can understand in Slovenia why you would be so grieved by this because I've people who've gone to Europe.

01:36:18

I know recently of a missionary who went to Germany to study German and he wasn't, he was theologically untrained, couldn't articulate the gospel, was really a gospel ignoramus.

01:36:28

And his view of ministry was, I'm going to go there to Germany and learn German and hang out and be friends with Germans.

01:36:34

And what good is that going to do? I mean, it's incredible. And it reflects his denomination, which is a know -nothing denomination, but we plan to have men who theologically are well -trained and also men who have had good apprenticeships, good internships where they've served and had opportunities to preach and be in the hospital with somebody who's dying and counsel someone about their wayward teenager and to be involved with real ministry opportunities before they graduate so that they're not hitting the ground cold.

01:37:14

I was in ministry for 10 years before I went to seminary, so I've had all kinds, I've had hundreds and hundreds of opportunities to meet with people, deal with all kinds of situations, but I was theologically untrained.

01:37:27

We'd like to combine a very robust theological training and you can go online to irbsseminary .org

01:37:34

and you can see the classes that are being offered. There's video vignettes by different professors, including the president and myself, explaining about the school.

01:37:43

You can see the curriculum. You can see what we want to do. But, Joe, I share your concern.

01:37:49

I don't want to export garbage overseas. I don't want to export men who are ignorant.

01:37:57

Let me give you some quick statistics, but when I was in seminary from 79 to 81, two men that I worked closely with in God's providence were the senior librarian and the research librarian of the seminary, and the senior librarian had done his doctoral research on the reading habits of all the ministers of a city of a quarter of a million,

01:38:23

Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The research librarian had done his master's level library studies on the reading habits of his small

01:38:33

Midwestern denomination of maybe a hundred churches, and the two studies came together and were incredibly close.

01:38:43

Men were asked to keep a record of every bit of reading they did during the week, these ministers, reading for sermon preparation, personal devotions, theological journals, books, magazines, newspapers, every bit of reading you did during the week, and they were to keep a track of that and then report it, and both of their results came very close together, and the results were stunning, and to show you that I'm not making this up,

01:39:10

I've tracked down the assistant librarian who's now a senior librarian in the Caribbean at a small seminary, and I said, this is my memory from our discussions back in the late 70s, early 80s, because your memory is really good.

01:39:23

That's exactly right. You're off by a couple minutes, but the total reading of ministers of all the different groups was two hours and 24 minutes a week, total, everything.

01:39:36

In other words, it is a faithful lament if you read your Bible 30 minutes a day, but couldn't get out the door

01:39:41

Sunday to go to church with reading, and so you just read 30 minutes a day for six days, that's three hours.

01:39:47

You're reading more than the average pastor's reading, and what Christianity today said about liberals in the 1950s is what evangelicals have become.

01:39:58

Christianity today in the 1950s accused liberals of being pop psychologists in the pulpits and managers of programs during the week, and I think that really that describes far too many broad evangelical churches.

01:40:12

In 1987, James Davidson Hunter, who's a sociologist at the

01:40:18

University of Virginia, is also a Reformed man. He's an elder at a PCA church there, and he wrote a book called

01:40:25

Evangelicalism, the Coming Generation, and after interviewing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of students at evangelical

01:40:33

Bible colleges and seminaries, and he names the schools where he went to interview students, he said, this is what evangelicalism is going to be down the road, because this is what these young men are believing and being taught now, and what we're seeing now and the degradation of doctrine and holiness in our churches is what he was saying among the students who would become pastors in 1987.

01:40:58

A few years later, Mark Noll wrote The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, but another man wrote

01:41:05

The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience, because he says, as far as I can tell, there is no conscience.

01:41:11

The sins of the culture are the sins of evangelicalism. We've not really elevated our game such that we're any different from the culture.

01:41:20

And I was speaking at a church about a month ago, and I was speaking two messages on holiness,

01:41:26

God's call to holiness on our lives, be holy as I am holy, and all the teachings on holiness in the

01:41:32

Bible. It's God's will that you be holy, for example. Anyway, I said, many of you could have grown up and have never heard a message on holiness, never read a book on holiness, your pastor never did a series on holiness, it was just kind of a word of the

01:41:46

Bible that you were never taught about. After the service, a couple reported that they were visiting the church, they were moving to that town, and they compared notes and they had never heard a message on holiness in their entire life.

01:42:01

They had only vague understandings of what holiness was, and realized that everything I said as a lead -up into the sermon was exactly their experience.

01:42:09

Holiness was just a forgotten commodity. We have ungodly men teaching who knows what.

01:42:19

So many seminaries have degraded what they teach. Many seminaries don't require original languages.

01:42:26

Our seminary requires both. Most seminaries don't teach theology, much of any theology, and they don't teach the history of doctrine.

01:42:36

And we don't live in a vacuum. We're not the first generation of Christians. Paul didn't drive a Buick. I mean, things have changed over the years, and we need to be connected with the past.

01:42:47

That Jesus said, I will build my church. He said, I will give you the Holy Spirit. He will never leave you nor forsake you.

01:42:55

Now, at times the gospel's been darkened, the gospel's been obscured, but Christ wasn't absent for thousands of years.

01:43:02

There's men whose shoulders we stand upon. If we had not had some of the greats of church history, we ourselves would be very impoverished.

01:43:10

And so we expect men to learn the history of Christian doctrine. The big movement now in many good seminaries is the retrieval of doctrine.

01:43:19

The retrieval of doctrines that have become passe, not because they were disproved, but because people just didn't teach them anymore.

01:43:26

And so we're going to be teaching things that some men haven't heard about in their churches from their pastors, but are nevertheless historic

01:43:33

Christianity. And we want to see to it that men are well -trained, but like I said also that they have good opportunities for internships so they can get practical experience, hands -on experience in applying truth to life.

01:43:49

Praise God. Yes, something that you said reminded me of something that a friend of mine who is also a mutual friend of Dr.

01:43:58

Jim Renahan, Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, who I actually just yesterday heard him refer a caller on the dividing line.

01:44:09

He has his own program twice a week, The Dividing Line, and he referred a caller to Jim Renahan in regard to a question about the 1689

01:44:18

London Baptist Confession and said very wisely that Dr. Renahan is probably the most knowledgeable person alive right now in regard to the

01:44:27

Second London Confession. But Dr. White had said, if you really love your wife, wouldn't it shock someone or wouldn't it shock everyone that knows you if you didn't know a lot about her, if you didn't know what color her eyes were, if you didn't know what her favorite foods were and what her least favorite foods were and what her favorite hobbies were and activities and on and on and on you could go if you just had a very surface -level knowledge of your own wife, her name and some rudimentary things about her, wouldn't it be a sign that you really didn't love her?

01:45:10

And the same thing goes along with Christ. If you just have a very basic simplistic understanding of him and have no interest in digging deeper, that is a sign you don't really love him.

01:45:23

Wouldn't you agree with that? Oh, 100 percent. You hit the nail on the head. Yes, and we have

01:45:31

RJ in White Plains, New York, who says, I think

01:45:37

I may have misunderstood something your guest said when he was contemplating entering into the

01:45:44

Christian ministry. I thought I heard him say that he heard an audible voice saying, feed my sheep.

01:45:50

Do Reformed Baptists hear audible voices? Yeah, you better clarify that before Joy Behar starts mocking you on The View.

01:46:01

Yeah, there we go. I'm an experiential

01:46:07

Calvinist. By that, I mean that the truth needs to be understood and believed and experienced, that I'm not a hothouse plant, that I don't simply have as my goal to fix

01:46:19

Rubik's cubes and do geometrical puzzles. But I really want to understand the truth and apply it.

01:46:28

Now, I don't tell people when I heard a voice, was it the voice of God?

01:46:33

Was it something inside my head? I don't know. I just know that suddenly, feed my sheep was very audibly clear to me.

01:46:40

Now, it's a Bible verse. I know what the Bible verse means, I believe. If it had been gobbledygook, or if it said,

01:46:47

Steve, move to outer Slavovia, I wouldn't move to outer

01:46:53

Slavovia because there's no correlation to that. But feed my sheep is a scripture.

01:46:58

I can get that. So I appreciate the caller's concern that you don't want Reformed Baptists to be people who are hearing voices.

01:47:06

But at the same time, I don't discount the fact that God can bring verses to mind in a very powerful way.

01:47:15

And again, if it hadn't been a Bible verse, I think I would have just let it alone. But it was confirmed by my church, and I don't hear voices on a regular basis.

01:47:25

It's not like something, okay, it's for Friday, time for my weekly voice from God. That's not who

01:47:33

I am or who we are. And I appreciate the man for asking for the clarification.

01:47:41

Do we know for certain, in regard to Augustine, when he heard pick up and read, are we certain that it was children saying that?

01:47:51

Or is that just a possibility of how he heard that? Well, that's a good illustration.

01:47:59

He heard someone say pick up and read. Some kids were playing a form of hopscotch or something over the fence in the yard next to him.

01:48:07

Is that something they were saying, and that the Spirit applied it to his own heart, his own situation? It's not clear to me.

01:48:14

But for him, he went and picked up the Bible, and the rest was history. But we are not continuationists.

01:48:24

We are cessationists. As Reformed Baptists, there's no new revelation. I don't pray that God would give me a hot flash to know what to do next week.

01:48:35

We are not mystics. But like Martin Lloyd -Jones said, either we're not hothouse plants, we're not technicians.

01:48:43

He said he went to a conference once in Holland where men were standing around drinking claret, smoking cigars, discussing theology.

01:48:50

And he said he was disgusted. There was no humility. There was no reverence. It was just a bunch of academics with a certain amount of income level.

01:48:59

They could do certain things. And theology was just kind of a hobby. But it wasn't something that was thought out and lived out before God.

01:49:07

It was just kind of an academic exercise. And Packer says that knowing

01:49:13

God at one time in the 18th century, theology was every man's hobby if you had some money and free time.

01:49:19

I believe that the truth is important. It should shape our lives. It will change the world.

01:49:26

And I want to experience the power of that truth. But I'm not a mystic, and I hold to the cessation of Scripture.

01:49:34

So I hope I didn't mislead anyone with my hearing feed my sheep. I'm sure you didn't.

01:49:41

And we have, let's see here, CJ from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who says, excuse me, who says,

01:49:52

I'm sure you join me in rejoicing when we see Christians and especially perhaps pastors from denominations outside our own orbit of fellowship that have come to embrace the doctrines of grace.

01:50:09

But the thing that I have noticed is that even though this is a cause for celebration, it is often introducing new challenges to we who are in confessionally reformed churches when you have different churches and denominations and fellowships who believe in the doctrines of grace but have other baggage that they have brought with them that would be something outside the realm of what we are used to or what we believe is biblically true.

01:50:39

How do you address this interesting phenomenon in our day and age? That's a very good question because I've noticed the same thing myself.

01:50:47

I think that there's a difference, the big difference between, for instance, a reformed

01:50:52

Baptist who becomes a charismatic. There's a big difference between that and a charismatic who discovers the doctrines of grace and maybe in a certain stage in his life and his sanctification where he has not let go of the charismatic beliefs and maybe he never will.

01:51:10

But how do you address that and how do you deal with it and so on? That is a very good question.

01:51:16

I was going to make a snide remark about the Hindenburg crashing in Lyndonhurst, New Jersey, but I decided not to go there.

01:51:22

Okay, that's a different city anyway. That's right, sorry. Cumberland Valley Book Service and Solid Ground Christian Books are two of the very best book purveyors in the country.

01:51:37

I buy all my books, if I can, from Cumberland Valley or from my gate, I should, Solid Ground Christian Books.

01:51:43

I've bought books from them since they were first opened. I've bought thousands of dollars of books from my churches from them and I encourage people to pick up a copy of Calvin for today, edited by Joel Beeky, which

01:51:56

I believe both of these guys would carry. But there's a chapter at the end of the book, it's an edited book from a couple of years ago on Calvin's impact and the president of RTS, Ligon Duncan, wrote an article on where did all these

01:52:09

Calvinists come from and he does a great job analyzing the growth of Calvinism since World War II and the men and institutions that God's raised up to spread it.

01:52:19

But at the very end of this he says, well, you know, there's a lot of people coming to so -called the doctrines of grace and they're soteriologically or according to the doctrine of salvation, they're

01:52:30

Calvinist, they believe in the so -called five points, but they have all this other baggage, what should we be doing with them?

01:52:37

Now, he was speaking in Grand Rapids to a very well -heeled

01:52:42

Dutch congregation and people who were very committed to the three forms of unity that the

01:52:48

Dutch churches hold to and he was trying to explain to them how should you treat these people who are coming to the doctrines of grace, but they haven't arrived like you guys have, so to speak.

01:52:58

And he was very gracious and he said, now, we can be really foolish and start criticizing these men and lobbing grenades at them and telling them all the ways they've failed.

01:53:08

He said, but that's like so many fathers of our generation who turn their kids off and these young people here, us be nothing but critical and they'll lump us in with their fathers and turn us off.

01:53:20

He said, I suggest a better strategy of coming alongside them, put your arm around them and say, I'm excited to see what you've come to see about the doctrines of grace and it warms my heart and certainly changed my life, too, and I'm excited.

01:53:33

But you know, the Lord's taught us some other things over the years. Would you mind if I taught you some of these other things?

01:53:39

In other words, take them farther than they currently are and not just let them say, okay, I've come to the doctrines of grace and I hold to continuationism and whatever.

01:53:49

Well, no, let us show you why there's other things besides the doctrines of grace that make up full -fledged

01:53:54

Reformed theology. Amen. Yes, I have two friends, one who is still with us on this earth and one who is spending eternity with Christ now.

01:54:07

My friend Jim Capo, who's the pastor of the Massapequa Church of God, who is a pastor in a

01:54:13

Pentecostal denomination, but he is a full -blown five -point Calvinist and there is really hardly anything that he would disagree with us on.

01:54:24

He is really a Reformed Baptist who believes in theory it is possible for the sign gifts to exist.

01:54:32

My other friend Al Stein, when I first met him, he was Arminian. He was a pastor in assemblies of God and not only a pastor, but he was a bishop, an overseer, and when

01:54:47

I first met him, as I said, he was Arminian and the last, I would say, seven years at least of his life before he tragically died in a car accident, he was a full -blown

01:54:59

Calvinist as well and the Pentecostal or charismatic side of his life became very minimal and almost non -existent and he actually told me, not long before he went home to be with the

01:55:14

Lord, he told me that he hardly disagreed with anything that was said at the strange fire conference that John MacArthur orchestrated there in California at Grace Community Church.

01:55:27

He said that the only thing he disagreed with, he said that he thought that there was a little bit too much broad brushing, but he said, other than that,

01:55:34

I agreed with about 99 % of everything said. So you never know what the Lord's going to do with people regardless of what denomination they're in.

01:55:43

Well, I can remember back in my campus crusade days, I had friends who became Calvinists and for me it was like they became

01:55:49

Jehovah's Witnesses. They're the lost of the kingdom, we'll never see them again and little did

01:55:55

I know that I would become one of those dreaded people. And God's been patient with me, he's not slapped me up the hot side of the head for all my slowness.

01:56:05

He's been so patient and gracious and taken me by the hand. If you read Jerry Bridge's autobiography, which most people don't know he wrote, called

01:56:14

God Took Me by the Hand and Jerry talks about the ups and downs of his life and I can think of the

01:56:20

Lord's graciousness to me. Martin Lloyd -Jones said, it's a Romanian way of thinking to think you have to get your doctrinal ducks in a row before God can save you or use you.

01:56:31

God's a God of grace and he saves people and straightens out their lives. I can be patient with other people,

01:56:38

I don't have to agree with them on other things, everything, but I can work with them as best I can. I suppose we'll have men who come to our seminary who aren't there doctrinally or confessionally, but we want to work with them and help them see more than they saw when they came in.

01:56:56

Amen. In fact, I guess you just answered this question, but Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania said, do you welcome students that are not

01:57:06

Baptist or Reformed? Yes, I mean they need to realize what they're going to hear.

01:57:11

I don't think they'd spend the money and drive this far simply be argumentative. I know Westminster's had students over the years that were

01:57:18

Methodists and Baptists who weren't confessional Presbyterians, but they knew that Westminster gave a good education.

01:57:25

Back in the day, Princeton Seminary had Baptists and Episcopalians go to school there because it was the best place to get a good theological education.

01:57:35

So I think that we would like to say that we'll be gracious to people who aren't Reformed Baptists, but who are willing to learn and let us teach them and we'll work together to be more advanced by the time they graduate.

01:57:48

Well, if you could, Steve, in about a minute's time, just summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today.

01:57:55

I ask you to pray for the new seminary that we believe that if God stops raising up ministers, then the day of grace is over.

01:58:02

The door is going to be closed soon because if he's not raising up ministers to preach the gospel, then how are men going to hear

01:58:08

Romans 10? So we want to train young men who are well -trained, who know the

01:58:13

Lord, who know the scriptures, who know the theology of the Bible, and can preach it with power and grace and shepherd the souls of those who hear them.

01:58:24

And besides praying for us, if you want to give, if you have an extra hundred thousand sitting around, go, what do we do with it this year?

01:58:30

Ah, we'll give it to the seminary. Give half of it to Iron, Sharp, but we would love your prayers.

01:58:42

We need your prayers. We're but men, and if God's to get the glory, then there has to be a supernatural edge to this ministry that shows that God's in it and he's making himself glorious in people's eyes.

01:58:55

So pray for us that God would have the preeminence in all things. Well, Steve, I definitely want to have you back on the program very soon.

01:59:02

So if you could hang on the line, I want to invite you back for another interview. So we can even plunge back into the same subject, which we only scratched the surface of, and perhaps even explore other topics.

01:59:16

So if you could hang on, I'll be with you in a second after we go off the air. I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially those who wrote in questions.

01:59:26

Don't forget that the Institute for Reformed Baptist Studies Seminary or IRBS Seminary can be found at IRBSSeminary .org,

01:59:36

IRBSSeminary .org, and the Association of Reformed Baptist Churches of America website is

01:59:42

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