December 20, 2017 Show with C. Matthew McMahon on “The Christian’s Combat Against the Devil”

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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 Arntzen. 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 Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 20th day of December 2017, and today our topic will be a very, very valuable one for everyone listening.

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The theme of today's show is the Christians' combat against the devil.

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I just had to throw in some wishbone ash today in salute to my brother Andrew, who is in a nursing home, suffering still from the results of a stroke, and he turned me on when

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I was a teenager to wishbone ash, and that has always been one of my favorite songs from the 70s,

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Warrior, and I thought it applied for today's theme, the Christians' combat against the devil, and we are going to be discussing that today with Dr.

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C. Matthew McMahon of A Puritan's Mind, and he is a lover of the

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Puritans, obviously, hence the name of his ministry, and this particular theme is also the title of a book by Christopher Love, a 17th century

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Puritan that, if you don't know who he is already, today is the day you're going to be getting a wonderful introduction to him, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.

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C. Matthew McMahon. My pleasure to be here, Chris. Looking forward to discussing this very important topic.

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Amen, and if anybody wants to join us on the air, by the way, on this topic, our email address is ChrisArntzen at gmail .com,

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

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USA, and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter, and obviously, a subject like this could easily lend itself to somebody having a personal and private question in regard to their own combat with the devil, something going on in their lives that needs urgent prayer, as perhaps they feel like they are about to surrender to the devil in some area of temptation in their lives.

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But Dr. McMahon, before we go into the subject of the

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Christian's combat against the devil, for those of our listeners who are perhaps joining the

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Iron Sharpens Iron audience after you have already been on the program, and they are unfamiliar with you and A Puritan's Mind, why don't you tell our listeners about A Puritan's Mind?

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Well, APM started in 1997 as my desire to take some of the

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Puritans and make them more accessible in this newfangled area called the internet, and there just wasn't anything online at the time, and so my favorites happened to be at that time reading some things like Jeremiah Burroughs, and William Ames, and Christopher Love, and Francis Turretin, and so I thought, well,

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I'm going to take little portions of these and we'll see if we can get some other Christians to have

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A Puritan's Mind just like they did, and so I started posting that, and those then in turn started to amass a giant snowball, and Puritan after Puritan, and then books, and then articles, and all sorts of things, and it's grown into this gigantic monstrous site that houses dozens and dozens and dozens of Puritans.

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We actually just put out Richard Elistry and his bio. We're working on some of his works right now, and so APM ultimately turned into Puritan publications where we decided, boy, not only is there good stuff out there that we should know about, but with the recent trend of sort of toning down publishing the

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Puritans, we decided, hey, we're going to grab some of these and start publishing more of them that we find to be important, so we've hit about 200 works as it stands right now at PuritanPublications .com,

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and we do e -books, we do hardback books, we do paperback books, and we actually just took the first 40 books that we ever did, which was 11, 12 years ago, and we just turned, they were all hardback when we started.

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We thought, you know, maybe we should just do them in hardback because they'll last a really long time, but the distributor, the print distributor, which is

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Print on Demand, they make such a good paperback book that we thought, well, anything that's under 200 pages, we're going to republish it as a paperback, so in the first quarter of this coming new year,

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Lord willing, we're going to have all of those books out there in paperback form, which is basically about half the price of what they actually cost right now, so that saves people lots of money and gets those books out there into more hands, but our desire is not only to take and publish the

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Puritans, but actually to take and update the books in modern English so that they're easily readable, so we do that with all of our books.

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I think there's just maybe two or three from the very beginning that we hadn't done that with, and they're kind of on the list to do that, but all of the other books past that are all updated in modern

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English and make it a lot easier for people to read because it wasn't that I just wanted to be able to read it myself, but I wanted the teens and the moms and the people who just haven't had time to, you know, pick up or read the

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Puritans to be able to read something that was not only deep but pleasant, and I'll tell you what, you know, we're just dealing with some of this today.

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We've got a new Jeremiah Burroughs book that we're working on concerning rules for walking with God, and his language can be so thick and heavy and verbose, and it's just really a task to be able to take those and update them and make them easily readable, but that's what

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Puritan publications decided to do. So between the two sites, you know, we've put out quite a bit of material in that way, and our desire is that Christians would be armed with what they need to walk the

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Christian walk and live the Christian life in the way that God requires them to do so, and so who are you going to turn to?

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You're going to turn to some of the best exegetes ever in the history of the Christian church, which are the Reformers and the

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Puritans, and so that's where our desire lies. And we already have a listener question that I thought

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I would take right away because it kind of sets the stage for our discussion even before we get into specifically discussing

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Christopher Love or his book on the Christians' combat against the devil.

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We have a first -time listener, or at least a first -time questioner, and her name reminds me of Thumbelina, but I believe it may be pronounced, and sorry if I'm mispronouncing this,

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Thembalani from Cape Town, South Africa, and she asks, and I'm sorry,

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I'm assuming this is a woman, but I don't know that for a fact either, but it sounds like a woman's name. My question, when did the

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Puritan movement start, and who was the leading figure in the Puritanism movement?

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Good question. The answer to the second part of that question is God. The answer...

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Yeah, it's definitely God. The answer to the first question, really when you talk about the

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Puritans, you're talking about just about a hundred -year span where we go late 1560s to late 1660s, and in that course of time, you have notable figures like Thomas Cartwright, John Cooper, they were some early

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Puritans, Nicholas Byfield was an early Puritan, Henry Smith was an early Puritan, and William Perkins is a very well -known and voluminous writer of Puritan works.

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We've published about 12 of his books, but then you get to a watershed time for Puritanism, which was during the

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Westminster Assembly, which was in the 1640s, just about the middle, early middle, to the latter part of the 40s for them, where they spent a number of years putting together not only a confession of faith, but the larger and shorter catechism, a form of church government, a directory for public and private worship.

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All of that was a team effort for England, Ireland, and Scotland to come together and set down what they called the standards of the

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Westminster Assembly, in which they covenanted together to agree that the

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Reformed churches would hold to these particular standards as a

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Reformed church, and so that's really the watershed time in Puritanism. But it's really hard to put your finger down and say, it's just this one guy, or just these two guys, really, or just these 80 guys, and you just can't do that.

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There are too many of them. And what happens is, is you begin to read one, and then that one sparks you to read another, and then you find out, oh, there's another, and then another, and then it just keeps going, and then you get ruined by the

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Puritans in that way, because you don't want to read anything else. And so Puritanism really is in that hundred -year stretch.

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A lot of times, sometimes people will say, well, the Puritans came over to New England, and that's why we live in the

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United States with what we have in our heritage as the Puritans, but that is incorrect.

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The Puritans were those guys who stayed in England to purify the Church of England, and the ones who came over to America were the

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Pilgrims, and the Pilgrims actually first transferred themselves over to the

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Netherlands, and then from there, they wound up coming over to America and founding the colonies here.

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But you want to make a distinction between the Pilgrims and the Puritans. The Pilgrims had certain ideas that were different than the

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Puritans, but much of their theology was very close and of great kin to the

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Puritans. But strictly speaking, Puritans were in England, and they were in that hundred -year stretch or so, and looked to purify the

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Church and bring it back to the soundness of doctrine. Yeah, you were the first guest I've ever had who would not use the label

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Puritan towards that movement, which some historians label as the American Puritan movement. Yes, they sometimes do that.

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But the idea of the Puritan—I mean, if you adopted the idea of Precisionist, then yeah,

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I mean, there were a lot of really great Precisionists in early colonial America.

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But when you talk about the Puritans, they were the ones who were specifically writing against the Church of England and were labeled such as those who were precise in their theology and wanted to purify the

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Church. The Pilgrims were separatists. They wanted to separate from it and didn't think that the monster machine of the

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Church of England could be changed. So they left for religious freedom in that particular way.

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And the term Puritan, wasn't that originally a derogatory term that was hurled against these folks who eventually perhaps adopted it as a description of themselves?

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Yes. Actually, both terms, the Precisionist and the Puritan, both were derogatory against them, who were these guys that were too precise on their theology.

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And so both of those terms were used in a derogatory manner by the people that didn't like them, and as a result, it stuck.

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We like the terms now because we understand what was going on at the time they used it as a derogatory term.

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Yeah, I think, if I'm not mistaken, the term Calvinist is the same thing, because if I'm not—unless

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I'm wrong, I have this foggy memory of reading that in, for lack of a better term, and I apologize for this, but Puritan New England, there was a time when you would be fined for calling someone a

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Calvinist, even though, if we were to look at their theology today, they would be accurately described as Calvinists.

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So anyway, that's interesting how the language changes over years. But thank you,

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Thembalani. I hope you keep listening to Iron Trip and Zion Radio and continue to spread the word about it in Cape Town, South Africa.

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I usually never do this. This is a very rare thing, since you are overseas. But since this book by Christopher Love is a reasonably short book, and therefore light in weight,

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I am going to make sure that you get a copy of the book we are discussing today,

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The Christian's Combat Against the Devil by Christopher Love. I'm going to make sure that that is shipped out to you.

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And those of you overseas who are listening, this is a rare thing that I'm doing for Thembalani, since she's a first -time listener, or at least a first -time questioner, and because of the fact that the book is a very, very light book.

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So thank you very much, Thembalani, and continue to listen to Iron Trip and Zion Radio. We hope to hear more questions from you in the future.

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So Christopher Love, many of my listeners may remember that the way that I close my program every day, that Jesus Christ is a far greater

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Savior than you are a sinner, it's actually a paraphrase or a very close quote to a

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Christopher Love quote. I first heard it from Don Kistler during a conference when a part of that conference involved

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Christopher Love, and for some reason, when he, just simply by quoting

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Christopher Love about Jesus Christ being a far greater Savior than we are sinners, it uncorked a river of tears in my eyes, and I just couldn't stop bawling.

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So as soon as I began my own talk show, I've concluded my show every day with that quote.

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But tell us about this fascinating figure. I know that you've addressed him in a more brief fashion in the past, but tell us about Christopher Love.

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Well, Mr. Love was a Puritan, the old Welsh Puritan, and he was a very astute preacher, a very astute theologian.

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He preached or desired to preach quite often, and yet he went through a little bit of difficulty in obtaining his ordination at first.

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Some of that is not necessarily super important, but he was generally accustomed to preach for at least an hour whenever he got up to preach, and he was not a subscriptionist to any of Love's canons, which caused him a great deal of difficulty because Bishop Love was going around making sure everybody was doing what the

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Church of England and such wanted him to do, and so he was expelled from his congregation that he was a short -time pastor of, and he wound up becoming a chaplain to Mr.

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Warner, a Sheriff Warner, and his family, and that's where he met his wife,

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Mary, who was the daughter of Matthew Stone, who was formerly a merchant in London, and then he became a little later a lecturer at St.

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Anne's in Aldergate, but then he got a little bit in trouble there because in his transfer he was not ordained at the time, and he declined being ordained as an

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Episcopal, so instead he went to Scotland, and he was seeking ordination at the presbytery there, and yet he was disappointed again because the

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Scottish Church had decided only to ordain those people who settled among them, and so he was sort of coming in, wanted to be ordained, wanted to come back, so there were a number of very large offers that were given to him while he was in Scotland, but he refused them because he knew that the

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Lord wanted him, for whatever reason, to be in England, and ultimately he, at the outbreak of the

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Civil War, he began preaching as a lecturer in Kent, and that then caused him to reside there for a time at Windsor Castle, and he became the chaplain there, and then soon after that,

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Presbyterianism was established in England during the result of the Westminster Assembly, and so he was then ordained in the

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Aldermanbury Church. I think that was in like 1644, 1645, somewhere in there, but he had a turn, and the turn, not turn in terms of doctrine and such, but a turn, and he had a run -in with the authorities.

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He was accused of plotting against the Commonwealth during the

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Civil War. The actual historical affair is known as Love's Plot, and he was charged with corresponding with Charles Stewart and with the

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Prince's mother between 1649 and 1651, and it seems that there was this colonel that had been commissioned by some

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Presbyterians to carry several letters to the Queen Mother in France, and the Queen's replies were conveyed by the colonel, and they were read in Christopher Love's house in London, and at that particular point, he was ordered to be arrested and was committed as a prisoner to the

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Tower for high treason against the Commonwealth, and then he was tried before the

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High Court in June, and he was condemned to be executed

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July 16th. He had a reprieve for a month and then again for another week, but he was finally executed on Tower Hill on August 23rd, 1651, and he wasn't the only one.

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Other people were arrested, people like Thomas Watson, but everybody else was released for whatever

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God's providence in that was, Love wasn't, and in his work, the

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Vindication of Christopher Love, which we've published, he outlines all the charges made against him at trial, he refutes all of those still, they didn't let him go, and as a result, he was beheaded.

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And Oliver Cromwell had something to do with that, correct? Yes, Oliver Cromwell did have something to do with that.

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That was his sin against the Commonwealth and, you know, convorting with the

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Stuarts and such. So as a result, he was put to death, and a few works of his were published while he was alive, including his clear and necessary Vindication of the

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Principles and Practices of Mr. Christopher Love, that's where his executive, after he died, his executors

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Edmund Calamey, Simeon Ash, Jeremiah Whitaker, William Taylor, and Alan Gere published his works after his death, and he has quite a few.

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The Grace, The Truth, Growth, and Different Degrees, fabulous book. We published his book

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Heaven's Glory. We've published his book on Scriptural Rules to be

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Observed in Buying and Selling. The Hearer's Duties, excellent work.

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The Christian's Directory, excellent work. Boy, what else?

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He did the Penitent Pardon, which is an excellent one. We did also a

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Discourse of Christ's Ascension and Coming to Judgment, which is fabulous, about the return of Christ.

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Also, one of his most famous works, which is Hell's Terror, and then this book,

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The Christian's Combat, or His True Spiritual Warfare, and in thinking about, if anybody goes in and they read anything by Christopher Love, all of his works are exceedingly fabulous.

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Jonathan Edwards had Love's works, or as many as he could muster, one of which was his favorite, along with Peter Van Maastricht's works, which was

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Love on Hell's Terror. So we've got Heaven's Glory and Hell's Terror, both of which he's published, because they're just so incredibly excellent from beginning to end, and that gives you,

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I mean, it's a sad thing, because in the short time that Love actually lived, I mean, he was born in 1618, died in 1651, but he wasn't very old at all.

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He wrote some of the best works that a Christian could read by a

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Puritan or Reformed writer in that way, and they are deep and specific, and what makes them so good is they're practically helpful in every way.

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I've never read anything by Christopher Love that I sat down and went, oh, I really didn't like that book, that wasn't so good, or it's just mediocre.

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It's what your experience was in not being able to contain yourself when you read his stuff.

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So I believe that all of his works are eminently helpful, and he is definitely one of the top ones to read, if one, you can find his works, which is one of the reasons why we're going through and trying to update what he has available out there.

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There's a couple that we can't even find and can't even get our hands on, which is a sad thing, because I'm sure a couple of those would be quite good, but unfortunately they just don't seem to exist anywhere, and so we're limited by what we can actually obtain.

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But this is the last book on the Christians' combat against the devil.

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This is our last book that we did this year, and even though it's a short one, short doesn't matter.

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It only matters that when you hit the end of the book, you wish it was another 500 pages longer. Well, I think another wise thing for us to do is, since one of the central figures in our discussion is none other than the

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Prince of Darkness, the devil, I'd like to hear what your comments are about combat with the devil himself, because there are differences of opinion on exactly who the devil is.

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Unfortunately, we have people, even coming from professedly Reformed backgrounds, equating this with nothing more than a struggle against the desires of one's own flesh.

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They basically rule out, or at least avoid discussing an actual entity, a historic and biblical and true entity called the devil.

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And in fact, there's even disagreement between some scholars and theologians on whether or not

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Lucifer, the fallen angel, is the same entity as Satan, but we don't have time to go into that.

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But who is the devil, and what is Christopher Love talking about in reference to combating with him, or it?

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Right from the very beginning, let's just talk a moment about, just from the very beginning of the

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Christian walk, in terms of the canon is closed, Jesus has ascended to heaven, the early church fathers start talking about what a

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Christian should do or not, you're going to find all of them talking about the devil, and not talking about the devil in some, you know, not just supernatural ideas about him, but not superstitious ideas about him.

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And not just allegorical. Yes, exactly, or allegorical. So, Tarleon said, to be at war with the devil is to be at peace with our own conscience, and that holds a lot of truth to it, especially in the way that Christopher Love talks about this, because that's true, but that only applies to the

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Christian. You know, why is that? Because to be dead set in the spiritual warfare required to win the day for a

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Christian is to be constantly combating against that foul flow of the world, the flesh, and the devil.

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It is all -out war with the kingdom of darkness by the kingdom of God, or at least it should be.

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And only true Christians are able to do that, because they do that in the power of Christ's Spirit. Only they are spiritually equipped, because the natural man receiveth not the things of the

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Spirit of God for their foolishness to him. So, people think, oh, you become a

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Christian, and life is a bed of roses. No, that's not how it goes. You know,

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God is not a butler. He's not a cosmic bellhop. They think, oh, if I accept Jesus, I'll have the good life.

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God will attend to me in whatever way that I need, and life will be grand. Now, it is true that the

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Christian walk is the good life. It is. It is eternal life, but it's not a walk in the park.

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So, it is a tumultuous battlefield, and it's of a kind that no earthly, seasoned soldier could ever imagine.

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You know, people, know people that have, you know, fought in wars in Dutch. Have you ever thought about what a real battlefield looks like?

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You know, there are some movies and such that give you a taste of that battlefield. The soldiers that come back from battle, that are physically and emotionally traumatized, they come back with PTSD and such.

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Some are handicapped as a result. They are amputees as a result. Many are physically deformed as a result of battle.

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Many displayed the scars of battle their whole lives, and a lot of soldiers, as we know, die in battle.

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But the Christian's warfare is so much more than the physical, because it contrasts physical battle wounds with spiritual and eternal wounds.

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Now, that's not to discount the amazing service of any of the armed forces that keep our country safe and secure from, you know, worldly terror and moral evil and such, but what it does do is it heightens the level of the spiritual battle to such a measure that it's far beyond the physical, and that's where we start talking about being at war with the devil.

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So when Christians have peace with God, it's on the condition that they will be at war with the devil, and there's no getting around that.

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So when soldiers, you know, for example, when they sign up for the armed forces, they're well aware that they're going to go to battle somewhere, you know, for the security of the country.

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But when Christians are converted, they must understand that they are going to encounter a battle unlike anything that they've ever encountered in this world.

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So if you enter into Christ's army, you have the devil's blitz as promised reward for doing that.

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You know, which is why Paul says in Ephesians 4 .27, do not give place to the devil.

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The devil is for all -out war against every

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Christian. Why? Well, he's taken the insane, it's an insane position, that he will attack the omnipotent, immutable, all -powerful

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God of the universe, Christ, his very creator, in some kind of fantastical attempt to subdue, you know, in whatever impractical, stupid, and senseless manner he thinks that it's going to occur, the destruction of God's kingdom and people.

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Now, the devil doesn't have even a fraction of a chance to do that, but that is for all intents and purposes for him utterly idiotic on his part.

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But Satan, being not only sinful before God, he's a supernatural, demonic sinner.

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And you have to consider, sin makes you stupid, and Satan, being the epitome of this, in that light, is exceptionally asinine in that way.

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And the analogy fails in comparison, but imagine, you know, Luther called the devil

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God's barking dog on a chain. So the devil is nothing more than a barking junkyard bulldog, chained up to his doghouse, barking relentlessly, so to speak, thinking that he can overpower, if you want to use the analogy this way, like an incoming nuclear missile as he spies its approach overhead, thinks that his barking in some way is going to do something in that way.

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You know, the devil in that particular way is daft to attack God and his kingdom.

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But here's the thing. He does this with all the malice bound up that he has in his heart, in his soul, in his strength, in his might, and considered, in its essence, that he's not just a barking dog, and that's not the way that Scripture simply gives an explanation of him.

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You know, he is out to deal unrighteously against God, against Christ and his people, and one of the things that he wants to do in doing all of this is to drag as many people to hell as he possibly can.

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The question is whether or not professing Christians are ready for such an all -out spiritual war, or if they even realize how much damage that Satan can actually do to them if they allow it.

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Yeah, in fact, that's a perfect place for us to pick up when we return. We have to go to our first break, and I know that I might be annoying to you, brother, but let's try, when we are going through the station break, try your other headset again, because when your voice raises a little, there's some scratchy over -modulation, so perhaps we'll try the other pair of headphones after all.

34:27

And if anybody wants to join us, we already have a line of people waiting to have their questions asked and answered, but anybody else who would like to get in line, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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If you have a question, chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence.

34:44

If you live outside the USA and only remain anonymous, if the question involves a personal and private matter, don't go away.

34:50

God willing, we'll be right back with Dr. C. Matthew McMahon. Tired of box store

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This is Chris Arnsin. We're having difficulties with our ads today for some reason out of the blue, and I apologize for that, but we're going to move on.

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We are interviewing today our guest, Dr. C. Matthew McMahon.

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He is founder of A Puritan's Mind, and A Puritan's Mind has also brought into print many

39:12

Puritan works in modern English language that is much more easy to read, and one of them that we are highlighting today is

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The Christian's Combat Against the Devil by Christopher Love, a 17th century

39:28

Puritan, and that is made possible today by puritanpublications .com,

39:35

and Christopher Love was quite a young man when he went home to be with the

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Lord in his 30s, correct? He was. He was a young man, unfortunately. Well, pick up right where you left off before the break, brother.

39:52

Well, I was going to say that, you know, as Luther called

39:57

Satan a barking dog, Satan is not a dog in Scripture, as much as we might like that particular ideal.

40:05

Satan is a lion who brings war. Now, your adversary the devil is a roaring lion walking about seeking whom you may defile,

40:13

Peter says in 1 Peter 5a. So the devil was very bold. He came before God to accuse

40:19

Job to God's face, and the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? And Satan answered the

40:24

Lord and said, From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down in it. He also came when

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Joshua the high priest was there, and he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him.

40:37

So Satan engages in incessant war against the

40:43

Church, and he's always on the prowl, he's always looking for opportunity, he never gives up, he will never tire, he will constantly look for battle, even being patient, being patient for the opportune time.

40:55

And what does he want to do? He wants to pull you down into hell with him.

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And if he's so foolish to attack Jesus Christ himself, as you can read for yourself in Matthew 4, do you think that people in Christ's church are without incident in that way?

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Or maybe they're just easier prey? You know, basically the Christian provides this devil with sport in that life.

41:22

And, you know, it may be that he knew trying to attempt to destroy Jesus Christ's something he could never actually fulfill, but he still went through with the motion, you know, and he can't help doing it.

41:35

It's built into his fallen and depraved nature in that way. And so when he leads the

41:42

Christian into sin, when he does some type of malevolent, twisted kind of temptation to drag the

41:51

Christian away from God, if he can do this, don't you think he's going to make the most of every opportunity to hinder

41:58

God's people in God's kingdom? Well, of course he is. So a lot of times, you have people that fall on two sides of the fence.

42:06

On one side, the devil is under every rock, and that's a bad place to be.

42:12

Yet at the same time, on the opposite end of the spectrum, you have the Christians who said, the devil is nothing.

42:18

He has no power. You know, I have Jesus. I'll be safe and sound. Well, let's see what the

42:25

Bible says about that. Biblically, scripture calls him a badden, calls him the accuser of the brethren, calls him the adversary, calls him the angel of the bottomless pit, calls him a

42:39

Paul Young, Beelzebub, Belial, the devil, our enemy, calls him an evil spirit, the father of lies, a formidable foe who shakes the gates of hell.

42:51

He's personified as a great red dragon. He's a murderer. He's the original spawn of evil in the garden of Eden, and he's dubbed the very power of darkness.

43:06

Jesus called him the prince of the world. He's the epitome of the devil. He's the ruler of the darkness of the world, the god of this world in that way, the one in which scripture calls

43:19

Satan the unclean spirit, the one who works in the children of disobedience, the one who tempts, and as a result, he's known as the wicked one.

43:30

I mean, that's just a literal survey, and from just those scriptures, does the devil sound like a pushover?

43:37

I hope that you don't think that he does. In fact, what you're saying reminds me of a horrific spectacle

43:45

I was witness to when Rodney Howard Brown was performing, for lack of a better term,

43:52

I would never call it preaching, at a charismatic church on Long Island where I used to live, and the general manager of the radio station where I worked wanted me to accompany him to see

44:04

Rodney Howard Brown, and see and hear him with his own eyes and ears, because this was when he was first becoming world famous, and he wanted to know if the rumors about his bizarre behavior and teaching were accurate, and so I accompanied him, and Rodney Howard Brown did something very different than you hear from a lot of charismatics and Pentecostals.

44:30

He was actually mocking his fellow charismatics and Pentecostals, and he said, a lot of you

44:37

Pentecostals and charismatics are always praying demons out the room. They're always performing exorcisms in rooms and whatnot, and he said, when

44:46

I was preaching at a church one time, the elders of the church wanted to gather around me and pray the demons out, and I said to them, you don't need to do that.

44:54

I walk into a room and the demons scatter. So he was trying to identify himself as somebody who so terrified the demons that they would flee from him, and I actually believe that this was either a conscious or unconscious effort on Mr.

45:13

Brown's part to have Christians, or even just individuals, because there was a massive sea of people there that I'm sure many of them were lost, for people to put their guards down for any kind of demonic activity that may rise up amongst them.

45:29

But anyway, I digress, I just thought that would be a relevant incident that I had witnessed.

45:37

Yeah, yeah, no, I'm just, you know, I'll tell you this. I'm never user -friendly, sorry, but only demons talk that way.

45:49

Jesus doesn't talk that way, the Apostles don't talk that way, Christians don't talk that way. That's the way demons talk.

45:55

So, you know, think through it in that particular light. In thinking about the

46:03

Kingdom of Darkness, though, it's like, when we are enlisted in Christ's army, you know, and this is what

46:13

Christopher Love is going to show, there's no turning back, there's no running away. The Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence, and the violent has to take it by force.

46:20

So, there has to be a measure of force for the Kingdom of God and against the

46:26

Kingdom of Darkness. And so, you know, what Love does is, he's basically saying, it's not that, are you up for the challenge kind of idea, what he's saying is that, if you're a

46:38

Christian, you're going to be violent for God in spiritual warfare, and the only way that you can do that is if you know the weapons of your warfare, which are not earthly but spiritual, and who it is that you're fighting against, and why it is that you're doing that.

46:58

So, his main text is Ephesians 6, dealing with the armor of God, and he covers, you know, a main exhortation overall, arguments that engage the

47:10

Christian in the battle, the nature of what a spiritual war is, motives for Christians to wage war, and the heavenly disposition that they ought to have to press them into that war, right?

47:29

And Paul says in 2 Corinthians 2, we cannot be ignorant of his devices.

47:35

So, that means that Christians have to have a strategy. You know, walk into any church, just any church, that even if you feel it is the most godly group of people, walk into any church and say, what is your strategy in waging war, in the spiritual war that the

47:59

Christian is in against the dominion of darkness? And a lot of people are like, I'm just going to put on Jesus, and Christopher Love is like, listen, you're going to get hammered if that's your attitude, because the very way that Paul sets up again,

48:21

Christopher Love is expounding on Ephesians, so he's walking in the path of what the

48:26

Apostle Paul is explaining in the book, showing that for the confirmation of our faith, in the first three chapters of the book, he's showing the mystery of salvation, how it happens, confirming our faith, and then he sets down various duties that generally belong to all

48:49

Christians. And he particularly shows how men in various conditions might be moved to repentance and newness of life in all of their various fears.

49:02

But then, he expounds what it means to be an imitator of God, and then the

49:10

Lord's soldier. And he warns the church about the enemy of God's kingdom, and that in this,

49:21

Christians have to be willing to arm themselves at all points under the standard of Christ to be ready to encounter warfare.

49:31

And so, what Love does is he explains that we should never be ever surprised at what is happening when temptation comes against us, when the devil comes against us.

49:47

And now, I'm going to use that term as Love does very generally. The devil comes against us. It means more than specifically just that.

49:54

We'll talk about that in a bit, but we shouldn't be surprised, because the reason is that the spiritual enemies of our salvation arm themselves against us as soon as we have given our names to God.

50:06

So, the moment that we make a profession of faith, and we say, okay, we are, as a result of being born again, we are giving ourselves wholly and completely to the practice of Christianity and to King Jesus, the devil's going to come against us.

50:21

So, it's like, no sooner had Abel offered up a sweet sacrifice, smelling sweet before God, but Satan stirs up Cain to become his butcher,

50:30

Love said. While Moses was counted to be reputed the son of Pharaoh's daughter, he enjoyed all prosperity, but as soon as he joined himself to God's people in the church,

50:39

Pharaoh seeks his life. While Saul was persecuting the church of God, Satan didn't trouble him, either outwardly or in his body or inwardly in his mind, but no sooner was he truly converted to the faith and preached the gospel, well, the demons come against him, and they try to take away his life and persecute him.

51:00

He's being whipped, he's being stoned, and not content with these outward afflictions, he sends his messengers to bust at him, that he might be no less vexed inwardly in mind than outwardly in the body, so he basically, he's saying,

51:13

Paul gets hammered, you know? So, even the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus wasn't spared himself, but as soon as he began to show himself to be the son of God and the

51:24

Redeemer in performing all the duties of his calling, Satan comes against him.

51:30

In fact, pick up where you left off there, and then I'm going to read you also right now a question from a listener and have you address that after we return from the break, after you complete your thought on that with Jesus Christ.

51:48

John in Chandler, Arizona said, what did the Puritans describe as the weapons in the

51:53

Christian warfare, and what would you say is the sweetest gem from Christopher Love's work?

51:59

And you can answer that after you finish your thought on Jesus Christ and the devil's assault upon him.

52:06

When we return from our break, this is an elongated break because of the requirements of Grace Life Radio in Lake City, Florida, 90 .1

52:15

FM. In Lake City, they require a 12 -minute break between our two hours, so please be patient as we take a long break.

52:21

Take this opportunity also to write your questions and get in line behind those who are already waiting to have their questions asked and answered.

52:30

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back,

52:35

God willing, with more of Dr. C. Matthew McMahon and the Christian's combat against the devil.

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hcbible .org. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen, and we are back to our live interview.

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We are still battling with some technical difficulties for some reason with our advertising, and we apologize for that.

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Before we return to our discussion, I have some important announcements to make.

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The G3 conference is coming up just in about four weeks or so in Atlanta, Georgia.

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The G3 is standing for Grace, Gospel, and Glory, and that is going to be held from the 17th through the 20th in January at the

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Georgia International Convention Center. And the 17th begins with a

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Spanish -speaking edition of the conference in the daytime, and then the English -speaking portion of the event launches at 7 p .m.

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Wednesday night with Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries debating a Muslim apologist.

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And then the actual conference begins on the 18th in English, and the featured speakers are

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Stephen Lawson, Votie Baucom, Phil Johnson, Keith Getty, H .B. Charles Jr., Tim Chalies, Josh Bice, James White, Tom Askell, Anthony Mathenia, Michael Kruger, David Miller, Paul Tripp, Todd Friel, Derek Thomas, Martha Peace, Justin Peters, and Stephen Nichols.

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If you would like to register for this conference, go to G3conference .com, G3conference .com, and please make sure that you mention that you heard about the conference from Chris Arnzen on Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

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And that reminds me, please, if you're ordering any books from CVBBS .com, CVBBS .com,

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one of our advertisers, please mention to them that you heard about them from Chris Arnzen on Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

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And the way that you do that, if you are ordering on the internet, you click on instructions after you place your order.

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And after you click on instructions, you would mention that you heard about them from Chris Arnzen on Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

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The reason I'm saying this is that they have had an enormous turnaround for the better in their sales that coincided exactly with a major push on advertising that we have been doing for them, including sales that they are running.

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But very few of you have been mentioning that you heard about those sales and about them on Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

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And I have to believe that this has to do with you, the listener, not telling them that.

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And it's perhaps also because of the fact that it was more complicated than perhaps I thought to tell them, because you have to click on instructions in order to do that.

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But please make sure you tell all of our advertisers, whenever you respond to advertisements, that you heard about them from Chris Arnzen on Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

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And by the way, they are having a sale, CVBBS .com is having a sale, where if you purchase $50 or more worth of merchandise, you will receive a copy of a book called

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The Proverbs Driven Life by Anthony Salvaggio. Not to be confused with Rick Warren's book, which

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I would never promote on this program. This is Anthony Salvaggio, who is a fellow Reformed believer.

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And this book is a publication of Shepherd Press, The Proverbs Driven Life. It's a $14 value.

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You will get that absolutely free of charge if you purchase $50 or more from CVBBS .com.

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and order them from CVBBS .com. You could kill two birds with one stone that way and make both of our sponsors happy.

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CVBBS .com is not a publisher, they are only a distributor, whereas Solid Ground Christian Books is also a publisher.

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So you can make them both happy by ordering Solid Ground Christian Books from CVBBS .com.

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And as I said before, you could also call CVBBS .com

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at their toll -free number, and just to let you know, it's typically only manned from 10 a .m.

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to 4 .30 p .m., so if nobody answers, call back the next day, 800 -656 -0231, 800 -656 -0231.

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Last but not least, something very important is that we are in genuine jeopardy of going off the air if we do not receive some more donations from you, the listeners, and more advertisers.

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As you know, my advertisers have compelled me to make these public appeals for donations because I have gone years without doing so, but we have reached such a financially difficult stage in our history here at Iron Trip and Siren Radio that it is necessary for me to do something that is not easy for me to do.

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I'm very uncomfortable making these public appeals, especially since there are so many charlatans and heretical televangelists and radio evangelists who make public appeals for money every day.

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I always wanted to stand out as not ever doing that at all, but we've reached a point where we have to, and I thank all of you who have been donating, and we have seen a steady small stream of donations coming in again, and some of those donations have been quite large.

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I don't mean by a small stream that the donations are all small. I mean by that that there are a good handful of people that are being faithful in donating every month.

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In fact, we probably would not be on the air right now if Leading Edge Radio Network in Weatherford, Texas had not forgiven an $800 bill that they were so gracious to forego, and we thank

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Now we are back to our discussion on The Christian's Combat Against the

01:10:14

Devil, which is the title of a book by 17th century Puritan Christopher Love, and that is a book that has been published by Puritan Publications, which is the publishing arm of A Puritan's Mind, which has been founded by our guest

01:10:29

Dr. C. Matthew McMahon. And if you could begin where you left off about Christ's own personal attacks by Satan, how he responded to them, and then we will move on to our listener's question, which

01:10:44

I will re -read after you finish your thought. Okay, great. Well, you know, the devil came against him for 40 days altogether, and the

01:10:54

Lord utilized scripture, and utilized the scripture to combat the devil.

01:11:01

Now, obviously the Lord Jesus is a unique character in that particular manner.

01:11:07

He's not us. He's tempted in every way that we were, but we are not God. And one of the things, one of the sides, you know, side

01:11:18

A, side B, side A, the whole charismatic kind of idea, the whole, hey, when you pray, you should also address the devil kind of nonsense, all of that kind of stuff is a no according to scripture.

01:11:33

You know, Jude even records for the Church as a general epistle and says, even the archangel

01:11:38

Michael, who was disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, did not dare to bring a slanderous accusation against him, but that the

01:11:45

Lord abused him. That's the Lord's job. The Lord is the one who does that with the devil.

01:11:52

But the closer we are to Christ, and the closer that we are to God, there are certain ideas that revolve around us coming into battle that way.

01:12:03

But let's pause there and go to your question that you have. Oh, yeah, that's John in Chandler, Arizona, once again, who says, what did the

01:12:13

Puritans describe as the weapons in the Christian warfare? And what would you say is the sweetest gem from Christopher Love's work?

01:12:21

Let's talk about the sweetest gem, because the first part of his question is exactly what we're going to talk about momentarily.

01:12:28

But the sweetest part of his work, his work is not that long. It's a book that's less than 100 pages.

01:12:34

It's like 80 pages or so. But the meat that he gives you, the gem that he gives you, is that you must have a strategy.

01:12:46

You have to have a strategy for combat with no one goes into war without having a plan.

01:12:56

It's not, I'm a Christian, Jesus will be with me. That's not the plan.

01:13:02

That's your entrance into the kingdom of God. Once you get in there, now you have to be a soldier and you need to know how to act like a soldier and function like a soldier and be spiritually moved to battle like a spiritual soldier should.

01:13:21

So that's the gem, because when you hit the end of the book, what he does is he gives you tools. And that doesn't mean that he's given you a house.

01:13:29

It means he's given you tools to build a house. And now you have to take those tools and you have to be able to put them into the perspective of your particular situation, your particular temptations that you are being slaughtered by the devil by in some way or another.

01:13:47

And there are many things that you might not even know that is happening.

01:13:53

You know, secret sins, presumptuous sins, besetting sins, there's all sorts of things that not only do we allow ourselves to fall into, not only do we have besetting sins that we fall into, not only do we have secret faults, we don't even know some of the things that we do, and yes, we have the onslaught of the power of darkness coming against us.

01:14:15

So you have to have a strategy. And what Love's gem is, is that by the end of the book you go, okay,

01:14:20

I understand all the tools now that I have at my disposal. How do

01:14:27

I put those into practice? What am I going to do specifically for me to do that? And that's the gem of the book.

01:14:34

But what he does is he explains not only the spiritual war that you're in, but also the spiritual armor that you must have and that you must use in order to have that strategy.

01:14:50

Because without it, you're not going to be able to battle effectively, which is why, you know,

01:14:57

Christians generally in that way will basically not have the spiritual power that they need to deal with temptation in that way, which is a big part of his book and dealing with it.

01:15:11

And right before he explains spiritual warfare and the spiritual armor, you know, he says,

01:15:19

I need to really give you a couple of arguments that you at least have to think through that will encourage you to get into the battle and to fight against the spiritual enemies of our salvation.

01:15:32

And one of the ones that he gives, he says, the war is just. The war is just.

01:15:39

We can proceed with boldness, being soldiers and furnished with what it is that we have, because the war is just.

01:15:46

Our cause is just. Our war is lawful. God, who is justice itself, as proclaimed by his herald, finally, my brethren, be strong in the

01:16:00

Lord and the power of his might. So we go into battle and that way resist the devil and he will flee from you.

01:16:06

Well, how do you resist the devil? Does that mean that you pause in the middle of your prayers and you start talking to him?

01:16:12

It's not prayer anymore when you do that. No, that's not what resisting the devil is. James tells you, submit yourselves to God, resist the devil and he will free from you.

01:16:20

And Peter tells us to be sober, vigilant because your adversary, the devil walks around like a roaring lion.

01:16:27

So we have to resist that fact in the faith. So in thinking about that, we have to be thinking that Satan is laboring to destroy us and he's tempting us and he's a liar.

01:16:44

And he was a liar from the beginning, as the Lord says. And we have to undertake the fight in the most profitable manner that we can so that we can fight with a strategy against the entire kingdom of darkness that comes against us.

01:17:00

So we do that because we want to honor God. That's one of his reasons that he gives.

01:17:06

We want to honor the Lord. We want to undertake this combat. We don't want to be cowards.

01:17:12

We don't want to run away. We want to fight. And so he gets into what then is this combat, the spiritual war itself?

01:17:26

Well, it's against the great malice of the devil against the church. And he wants us to consider who he calls the grand enemy, the devil.

01:17:39

And if we consider him in the right way, then we find that he is very malicious against us.

01:17:45

So his malice to mankind is endless. And all of those who love and favor

01:17:55

God are going to be in an endless battle with him until they die and go to heaven.

01:18:02

And so the malice of Satan is deadly in that way. And he's not satisfied just to take away a few of our goods.

01:18:09

And he's not satisfied just to take away our good name. He's not satisfied with just afflicting us a little bit with sickness.

01:18:17

He's not satisfied by pushing down our defenses, chipping away our defenses.

01:18:24

Nothing satisfies the devil but the destruction of the soul and the body in hell.

01:18:30

The place where he knows he's going, he wants everybody else there as well.

01:18:36

So that's why scripture labels him a murderer and a manslayer. And that's why the

01:18:42

Lord Jesus said, ye are of your father the devil and the lust of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning and abode not in truth because there is no truth in him.

01:18:52

When he speaks, he lies. He speaketh of his own for he is a liar and the father of it.

01:18:57

By the way, I don't know if you're doing anything different, brother, but you sound perfect the last five or so minutes.

01:19:04

There's no over modulation or anything. So let's try to keep whatever it is you're doing. I'm going to throw in one more listener question because we have so many of them.

01:19:15

Abraham in Meridian, Idaho says, what are general safeguards we can have in our lives to prevent an overemphasis or underemphasis on the works and schemes of the devil?

01:19:29

That's very interesting because as you probably know, the charismatics and Pentecostals may tend to overemphasize the works and schemes of the devil.

01:19:38

And unfortunately, we who are reformed in our camps, we tend to, I believe,

01:19:44

I don't know if it's the case in your experience, but I think that the devil is underemphasized in our own circles because we already are highlighting the depravity of man and so many things that men do don't even require the devil.

01:20:01

But the devil is still a real enemy that we should not take lightly or sweep under the rug.

01:20:10

That's a great question. And that goes right into the previous question and what we're going to talk about right now.

01:20:17

What it is, what we need is to have a good understanding of the spiritual armor that has been given to us so that we know what we need to know concerning the power and strengths of the devil as an enemy so that we can come against him in the right way.

01:20:36

So the Apostle Paul describes the quality, the metal, so to speak, of the armor, and he tells us first that we have to put the armor of God on, which is spiritual.

01:20:53

That's an interesting thing. And that the weapons that we have, that we fight with, they can't be carnal because our enemy is a spiritual enemy.

01:21:03

So we wrestle against principality and we wrestle against power. And it's not enough that we put on one piece of armor, like remember

01:21:15

David was going to fight against Goliath and he put on all of that armor and he felt like he couldn't move in it.

01:21:22

Well, we can't be like young soldiers in that way and leave off some of our armor just because it might seem to us a little heavy.

01:21:31

We need all of the armor on and we have to put on the helmet of salvation.

01:21:37

We have to put on the breastplate of righteousness. We have to put on the girdle of truth.

01:21:42

We can't just say, all I need today is the helmet and I don't need the breastplate. Or I'm just going to put the girdle on and I'm going to take my shield with me, but I'm going to throw away the sword and spear.

01:21:52

We really don't need that. No, no. Paul says that we are to put on the whole armor of God, like valiant soldiers who mean to stand in it with resolve.

01:22:06

So we are to arm ourselves in all points in complete armor, which will keep us not only from fleeing, but will also keep our enemies from overcoming us.

01:22:19

So first question that kind of pops up, would pop into my mind, would be, okay, listen, this is spiritual armor.

01:22:28

He's just using this as sort of an example. I don't get up in the morning and actually put something on physically.

01:22:36

That's true. Neither is Satan physically sitting next to you in that particular manner or a demon in that particular way.

01:22:46

When temptations come, we're dealing with powers and principalities and things in high places, and those things cannot possibly be resisted by our own strength and means.

01:22:56

It's not a physical battle. So he presses us, Paul presses us on the whole armor of God so that we can resist, and this is a very important phrase, in the evil day.

01:23:08

And the translation of the evil day, if you look at that throughout scripture, what love does, he talks about it, is the time of temptation.

01:23:16

The time of temptation is called the evil day, partly because in it, Satan tempts us to evil, and partly because it's a time of trouble, adversity, and affliction.

01:23:25

And so Satan wants to sift us with temptation when the evil day is on us.

01:23:31

Psalm 41, 1 says, the Lord will deliver him in the evil day. That's the time of trouble. It's also used that way in Ephesians 5, 16, redeeming the time because the days are evil, that is, that they're full of troubles and afflictions and at the time of adversity.

01:23:44

So we need to really think about what are these parts of the armor? This is where your questions are coming in.

01:23:51

What is this? What is it that we use? Well, the first thing that Paul talks about is the girdles. And the girdle was a broad studded belt that was used in wars in ancient times where the joints of the breastplate and the armor which defended the belly, the loins, and the thighs were covered.

01:24:14

And what he's talking about, what Paul is talking about, is truth by which we understand the truth of the gospel, the truth of religion, the doctrine which we profess.

01:24:28

There are some interpreters that want to look at it as also uprightness of heart, or the integrity of a good conscience, but I think we could take it actually in both senses because they complement one another.

01:24:41

So there is required the truth of our profession and the doctrine behind it.

01:24:50

And if we profess it truly, and we do it with upright and a simple heart, then it's grounded on God's truth, which is the foundation on which every single duty that you will ever do as a

01:25:02

Christian is to be built on. Because if you don't know what God's truth is, you're never going to be able to please

01:25:09

Him. So if they're not grounded on God's truth, then in some way or another, love explains that they're devised by man.

01:25:20

And if they're devised by man and they're not grounded on God's truth, then they just are simply human traditions and the

01:25:26

Lord won't accept those things. So it has to be agreeable to God's holy word.

01:25:32

And you say, well, what does that actually mean? What that actually means is that you've got to know your

01:25:38

Bible. It was said of John Bunyan, if you cut him, he would bleed the Bible. And for, you know, the

01:25:46

Puritans in general were that way. They overflowed with Scripture in that particular manner, you know, and it's not just that we profess the truth.

01:25:55

It's not just about, like, for example, memorizing a catechism or something like that. Everything that we do in the simplicity of our worship before Him, in our daily lives, in our devotions, everything has to be done in truth.

01:26:09

So no matter, it doesn't matter how big our profession might be before men when we profess that we're a

01:26:17

Christian or this, that, or the other, if it's not in truth, if it's not from an upright heart, God does not mind that.

01:26:23

He does not care about that. Joshua 24, 14, love quote, now therefore fear the

01:26:31

Lord and serve Him in sincerity and in truth. And he says, if we perform this in serving

01:26:38

God in this way, it will be acceptable in His sight. But if we don't, it won't.

01:26:44

So the first thing is that everything that we do has to be done in truth. Here's the second thing, which is the second part of the armor, it's the breastplate of righteousness.

01:26:55

And love says we're to understand it as a good conscience, true sanctification, a godly life, which also we are to put on according to the example of our

01:27:07

Grand Captain Christ Jesus. Jesus put on righteousness as a breastplate, and He had the helmet of salvation on His head, so to speak, and only then will

01:27:19

Satan's darts not pierce us. So we have to be armed with a good conscience and a godly and innocent life.

01:27:27

So if our hearts and our breasts are armed with righteousness in that way, though love explains,

01:27:35

He's like, even if other parts fall into sin, the wounds that we have will never be mortal wounds that will never kill us.

01:27:43

Because He says, it's true that saints, you know, we're going to receive wounds and we're going to get pierced by swords when

01:27:49

Satan has drawn them and helped us to commit sin in that way. But they're not wounding us through our heart because we don't sin with a full consent of the will and allowability in doing that.

01:28:04

So the breastplate hides our heart, covers our heart, and instead we delight in the law of God and the inner man, even when the flesh leads us captive to the law of sin, which is

01:28:16

Romans 7. What I want to do, I do not do, and that which I hate, this I keep on doing. But it's not a mortal blow, which is different.

01:28:25

For the wicked, it's a mortal blow. They die and in their sins they go to hell.

01:28:31

For the Christian, we sin, we don't go to hell. Yet it's here that Paul says that what this does is it shows him the sanctifying process because sin continues to dwell in him, and we are supposed to be thinking, as the

01:28:50

Apostle John tells us in 1 John 3 and 9, they who are born of God do not sin, meaning that they don't habitually do this.

01:28:57

It's not an allowability to them. And he says, the

01:29:03

Apostle John says in 1 John 3 and verse 6 and verse 8, they who are in Christ sin not, and that whosoever sinneth is of the devil.

01:29:15

So not that God's children are ever exempted from all sin, but there is a difference because they don't sin with the full consent and swing of their will.

01:29:25

And when they do fall, their hearts are defended with the breastplate of Christ's righteousness, that holy desire and endeavor to serve

01:29:34

God. I mean, just think about David. My oh my, how do you go from David in the cave who cut off a little piece of Saul's robe and his heart sang for doing that because this was the

01:29:45

Lord's anointed, to David on the rooftop and he's looking at Bathsheba and decides, hmm, not only do

01:29:51

I want her, but I'm going to kill her husband to get her. How do you go from one to the other? Right. In fact, we have to go to our final break right now, and I'm going to read another listener question right now and you get to answer it when we return.

01:30:05

And we have Pastor Jerry Schumann. I don't typically give people's full names, but since he is a pastor,

01:30:12

I like to give plugs to pastors who listen to the show and submit questions.

01:30:18

Pastor Jerry Schumann of Ludlow Baptist Church in Ludlow, Vermont. He says, it has become ubiquitous in many

01:30:26

Christian circles for spiritual warfare to consist of rebuking and binding the devil rather than wielding the sword of the

01:30:34

Spirit, the Word of God. What is dangerous with this modern approach to spiritual warfare and what does

01:30:40

Scripture's admonitions for wielding the sword of the Spirit reveal about the sufficiency of God's Word?

01:30:47

Excellent question, and we're going to have you answer that when we return from our final break. And if anybody else wants to join us on the air, you better do so now or forever hold your peace because we're running out of time.

01:30:55

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Dr.

01:31:01

C. Matthew McMahon right after these messages with more on the battle against Satan.

01:31:16

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We are now back to our discussion with Dr. C. Matthew McMahon. And as I read to you before the break,

01:35:23

Pastor Jerry Schumann of the Ludlow Baptist Church in Ludlow, Vermont said, it has become ubiquitous in many

01:35:32

Christian circles for spiritual warfare to consist of rebuking and binding the devil rather than wielding the sword of the

01:35:38

Spirit, the Word of God. What is dangerous with this modern approach to spiritual warfare and what does

01:35:46

Scripture's admonitions for wielding the sword of the Spirit reveal about the sufficiency of God's Word?

01:35:53

Well, let's talk about the abuse first. I mean, I myself had grown up in charismatic circles and such, and it was taught to us that we have the power to bind the devil or loose power in that particular way.

01:36:09

And where did we get that from? Well, Scripture in Matthew 18, you know, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

01:36:17

That's why you have all these books out there, you know, Woman Thou Art Loosed and all of that kind of nonsense. It's all nonsense.

01:36:23

It's just a completely and totally bad exegetical work on Matthew 18, because it has absolutely nothing to do with any of that.

01:36:33

And it has everything to do with reproving another brother who sins. Moreover, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him it's all between you and him alone.

01:36:40

It talks about church discipline and how it works. And so when you get up to the point where he's talking about binding and loosing, he then says after that, again,

01:36:49

I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it'll be not just anything that they ask, it's anything in relationship to reproving another who sins.

01:36:59

And it goes back to the Mosaic Law, which is talking about, you know, whoever is deserving of death shall be put to death on the testimony of two or three witnesses.

01:37:10

And so you have to have a certain kind of judicial procedure for things to occur.

01:37:17

And in the eldership of the church, so to speak, in that way, when they come together and they bind or lose, they're talking about discipline in the church.

01:37:27

They're not talking about fighting the devil. There's nothing in the Bible that talks about your personal mouth -to -ear exhortation or rebuke to the devil anywhere, or to a demon, or to a spiritual power, or anything like that.

01:37:47

What Paul does is he specifically says that we do fight against these things, but we fight with what we're talking about here, the spiritual armor of the

01:37:59

Christian. So we have what we've just talked about, truth.

01:38:05

That's one thing we need to have, closer that we are to truth, the further way that we are to bad doctrine or heretical doctrine.

01:38:12

We talk about righteousness, and that's our breastplate. And then we talk about, he had asked about the sword of the

01:38:19

Spirit. That's in there, but let's just go in order. We come to the third part, and that's our feet shot with the preparation of the gospel of peace.

01:38:28

So that means that we have to be entertained with the knowledge of the gospel of peace. It's called the gospel of peace because it brings peace to our soul.

01:38:36

So that's how we're reconciled to God. And so if we're armed with it, we'll have the final victory over all of our enemies, because everlasting peace is ours.

01:38:47

So it's not just enough or sufficient that we know about the gospel and believe the gospel, unless we're always prepared to make confession and profession of it.

01:38:56

So we want to confess it, we want to profess it in that particular way, and when we do that, we incur worldly shame, we incur loss, we incur affliction, we incur persecution, and yet still the apostle

01:39:11

Paul tells us that our feet have to be shot with the preparation of the gospel of peace. And if our feet are prepared, then we are ready to go through rough and unpleasant ways.

01:39:25

We walk in that particular way. So those people that are endued with the knowledge of the gospel have to always be ready to make profession of it, even in the midst of any kind of affliction or persecution.

01:39:38

So the idea is that if we lay that particular part of the armor aside, we're unfit even to travel in an afflicted way, because affliction leads to God's kingdom.

01:39:50

It's one of God's promises, you know, in this life you will have tribulation in that way. And can you imagine soldiers walking in the battle?

01:39:58

I mean, we know, you know, Civil War and certain stories and such about these guys who didn't have shoes. You can't walk barefoot and be fit to march in places that are full of thorns and briars and such.

01:40:10

You can't do it. So you have to have the gospel in that particular way. Then the fourth piece, Christian armor, is the shield of faith.

01:40:19

Quite necessary. You know, however weak we are in and of ourselves, it defends and protects us against all the temptations of the devil.

01:40:28

And he that puts on faith, what are we putting on? We're putting on the Lord Jesus Christ in that way.

01:40:34

So it's a property that's inseparable of faith. You have to have faith to apply to us the

01:40:41

Lord Jesus and all of its benefits. So all of its merits, all of its righteousness, and the everlasting life in and of itself.

01:40:48

So we have to take up the shield of faith. Romans 13, 14 says, "...but put ye on the

01:40:55

Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh to fulfill the lust thereof." You know, we have Him, and we lack nothing that we need to defend ourselves or to offend our enemies in that particular way.

01:41:08

And go ahead, something else. I just wanted to thank Pastor Jerry for the excellent question, and I wanted to plug his ludlowbaptist .org,

01:41:18

that's L -U -D -L -O -W -Baptist .org, and that's Ludlow Baptist Church in Ludlow, Vermont.

01:41:24

Thank you very much, Pastor Jerry, for excellent questions. And I don't know if you're finished your stream of thought there, your thread, but I have one more listener that I wanted to get to before we ran out of time.

01:41:35

Sure, go ahead, go ahead. Well, this is a listener that is formerly from the UK, who has just joined us here in the

01:41:43

States. Kofi, now in Medford, Oregon. And Kofi says, "...what

01:41:51

role does the Church play in our spiritual warfare? One of my great concerns about the modern view of spiritual warfare is how individualistic it is, and your thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated."

01:42:04

Excellent. A question about the Church's role in our spiritual warfare. Yes, it is.

01:42:12

You want to think about, even if we were just to go back and say, okay,

01:42:18

I've had this question asked to me in a different way concerning discipleship and certain other ideas.

01:42:23

What did they do, what did the Church do in Christopher Love's time to have a strategy to educate the people of the

01:42:35

Church in this way to be able to fight their warfare? What did they do? They would have Sunday services, and they would pray together, and then the minister would catechize from house to house.

01:42:51

That's what they did. So in thinking about the Church's role, the Church's role in Ephesians, which is where we are in chapter 6, but just previous to this, the role of the minister is to equip the body to do the work of the ministry.

01:43:11

And in order to do that, they have to be taught. So the role of the

01:43:17

Church is to teach Christians all of these things. This is one of the reasons why we publish books in and of themselves, is because we want to take things that are helpful to individual

01:43:30

Christians, because if you have strong individual Christians in the Church, each one of them is going to act as a finger, or an arm, or a forearm, or an elbow, or an eye, or a foot.

01:43:43

They're all part of the body. Imagine if everybody in your Church had a succinct and precise strategy to combat the onslaught of temptation that comes against them, how the mortification of sin would change in that particular congregation, how sanctification would change, how worship then would change, how encouraging one another would change.

01:44:10

So the role of the Church is to first equip so that they are equipped to be able to do these things, which is one of the reasons why we're even talking about this armor, like Christopher Love and him talking about this, because he's saying you've got to have a strategy to do battle.

01:44:27

And it's not just you against the world, it's the Church against the world. Even when we pray the Lord's Prayer, it's not my

01:44:33

Father, it's our Father. And we're thinking about it as a community of believers. Paul has already discussed that in chapter 4 and chapter 5, in dealing with different kinds of people and things that are going on with the

01:44:45

Ephesians in that way, husbands and wives and masters and slaves and children and all sorts. All of these people are part of the body, yet they have to be educated.

01:44:53

So the Church isn't like setting up the exorcism ministry in the offshoot room here after the services.

01:45:04

That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about giving individuals biblical information that's true, right?

01:45:13

That was the first part of the armor. That's true, that they have the ability to fight temptation in the evil day.

01:45:20

And they do that together, not only as individuals, they do that together as a Church. And then, because if they're not going to be effective as an individual, it's going to be impossible overall if the

01:45:31

Church is going to be effective together. And I don't mean the Church in the world as a whole. I'm talking about your particular

01:45:37

Church. If everybody's doing their own individual thing, and they're not coming together as a body, and they don't know one another, and you're not, as the

01:45:44

Apostle tells us, confessing sins to one another and encouraging one another, and all of those things that Christians are supposed to do, then you're not going to be effective in your community together.

01:45:53

It's going to be a bunch of individuals coming together on Sunday, hearing a sermon, they go home, and you know, nothing is happening.

01:45:59

In terms of, like, when the Apostles came, and they said, oh look, those who have turned the world upside down have come here also.

01:46:07

Is your Church turning the world upside down? Are they doing that? Are you doing that?

01:46:12

Is that what is happening? But just say, because I live in America, is that what's happening in America right now?

01:46:19

We have a billion churches all over the place. Might even have a billion churches all over the place in the

01:46:25

United States alone. Where's the ripple? Where's the ripple that goes completely against the tide of worldliness and debauchery and all of that?

01:46:34

Where is that ripple that's happening? We don't see that revival. It's because people are not prepared, and they're getting hammered, and they don't even know they're getting hammered.

01:46:43

That's the gem, going back to that other question that Christopher Love is bringing out here. By the way,

01:46:50

Kofi, we need your mailing address because you've also won a free copy of the book that we are discussing today,

01:46:56

The Christians' Combat Against the Devil by Christopher Love, a publication of Puritan Publications, which is an arm of a

01:47:05

Puritan's mind. And I want to thank everybody who sent in questions. You've all won a copy of this book, so if you haven't given me your full mailing addresses yet, please send them as soon as possible.

01:47:18

And I'll give you one more chance, if you want to ask a question before we run out of time, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:47:24

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And just dovetailing on what you were just talking about, the church and its role in combating the devil, accountability is a huge thing, and discipline is a huge thing in that area, because lone wolf or maverick

01:47:44

Christians, which is not a biblical concept, are very susceptible to just being swallowed up by Satan.

01:47:51

I see it over and over and over again. It almost happened to me. I was put under church discipline years ago for abuse of alcohol, and I would probably be dead if that didn't happen.

01:48:04

And I can even remember not only the elders putting me under discipline, but I can remember brethren in Christ who were friends and brethren and sisters in the congregation telling me, hey brother, you are really going overboard with those cocktails, and so on.

01:48:21

We really need this accountability, don't we? We definitely do. We definitely do, because what happens is that we tend to get tender.

01:48:31

The pastoral ministry over the church is getting tender, and their focus is in we have to keep the people in the church.

01:48:41

If we get a little harsh, a little too tough, a little too disciplinary, we're going to lose people, because people are just going to walk out the door, and they're going to go down the church that's on the corner, instead of coming to our church.

01:48:53

We've got a big building, you know, we've got a building we've got to pay for, million dollar building, not, you know, money's going to come in somehow, so we don't want to be too...

01:49:01

All of that kind of stuff is the exact opposite of what Paul was doing with the

01:49:08

Ephesians, because if the relational aspects of the church aren't set down in the right way, and then pastoral ministry in and of itself over the church is not effective in the right way, all of the stuff that even what we're talking about is never going to happen, and it's going to do exactly what it's doing now, which is having no effect on the community, no effect on the town, no effect in the country or in the state, you know, as that grows.

01:49:37

The devil loves it when it's that way, because his assault is to pull people as far away from Christ as they possibly can, so that they are not affected in any way in their community, or in their family, or in their job.

01:49:53

They're not effective at all, and they're just getting hammered, and they don't even know it, and we didn't, unfortunately, we didn't even get to talk about the helmet of salvation.

01:50:04

We didn't get to talk about the sword of the Spirit, or even the heavenly -mindedness that we're supposed to have as a result of entering into this battle with the right mindset.

01:50:15

Love spends another two chapters after even about what we're talking about here, with motives for us to do battle in this way, and utilize the sword of the

01:50:24

Spirit, which is a spiritual weapon that we have.

01:50:30

You know, it's like, how well do we know the Word, and all of the different facets that we need to know that, or the helmet of salvation in and of itself.

01:50:41

What soldier is going to go into battle and raise his head up behind the bunker that he's dug into without something on his head?

01:50:50

He's not going to do that. And so, we are exhorted to have all of these different parts of the armor, and understand what they mean, so that we can have a strategy in dealing with all of the temptations that come against us, because without really dealing with them, and I'm going to say it this way, when you confess your sins,

01:51:14

He is faithful and just to forgive them, but it's not just about confessing your sin. It's not just about, for a

01:51:21

Christian, every day saying, oh Lord, I blew it today, I'm going to confess my sin again, forgive me, and you go about on your way.

01:51:29

You have to have a precise strategy to deal, not only with the individual sins that are secret, presumptuous, besetting, and such, but you want to mortify all of your sins, every bit of it, and you've got to have a strategy for that, because we're constantly assaulted.

01:51:46

One of my favorite sections in Pilgrim's Progress, in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, is when

01:51:53

Christian is walking through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and he has the quagmire on one side, and the mouth of hell on the other side, and Bunyan says, and he started having these foul thoughts, and he couldn't discern whether they were his thoughts, or they were the demons, so to speak, whispering in his ear, and he was saddened that he had these thoughts against God.

01:52:19

See, we can't be ignorant of the wiles and devices of the devil, and you've got a lot of Christians out there, you've got a lot of Reformed Christians out there who are like, oh, you know, the devil doesn't whisper in your ear, he doesn't do that stuff, he only has enough power, you know, that you give him, any power that he has, it's you being enticed by your sins.

01:52:37

I mean, if that's the case, all of the scriptures that deal with the devil are just a bunch of poppycock, that's complete.

01:52:45

The devil is a roaring lion who is out to devour you, and one of the best things that he could do to get you to sleep cozily in your bed is to make you think he has no power.

01:52:59

You know, we know that he's God's barking dog, and we know that he can't do anything out of God's will, but the

01:53:05

Lord uses him, and the Lord uses him to do things with us. Now, here's another note that goes back to the pastor's question about how the craziness occurs all over the world today concerning binding and loosing and all of this stuff, is that everyone is not necessarily, and I don't want people to get the wrong idea when

01:53:27

I say this, everyone isn't necessarily being visited by the devil every day. The devil is an individual created being, he can only be in one place at one time, he's not omniscient, he's not omnipresent, he's not

01:53:41

God, which means that the likelihood of him actually showing up at your house tonight is probably pretty slim.

01:53:49

He can only be in one place at one time, where would he do the most hurt? That's up to him.

01:53:58

But we also know that a third of heaven fell with him, and so there's all sorts of aspects of demonic activity that we're fighting against, which is why

01:54:10

Paul says in Ephesians that we're fighting against powers and principalities and thrones and authorities and all of those things in high places.

01:54:16

So we also want to not have that movie mentality that we happen to be so important that the devil is visiting us every day as if he is in some way omniscient or omnipresent to affect me in particular.

01:54:34

But that doesn't mean that the forces of darkness, or as Christopher Love would call him, the devil's imps, will not come and cause us some havoc in our day.

01:54:45

Certainly, that's the entire point of having this spiritual war wage on and us having the need to have spiritual armor against them.

01:54:56

And yet, it all comes down to Love's last chapter, which is, listen, even in this war, you have to be heavenly -minded.

01:55:03

Set your mind on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. That's when you set your mind. You set your mind there, and you understand these different parts of the armor, you'll have the beginnings of a good strategy against them.

01:55:14

Generally, when we talk, Chris, you always ask me at the end, you say, what's the one thing you want to sign out on, if this is what the one thing is?

01:55:23

One, I'm going to plug the book. I'm going to say, this is a really valuable short book, and everyone should get this book.

01:55:33

It's not expensive. It's like one of the cheapest books that we have. It's like $10. And if you get it for an e -book,

01:55:40

I think it's $4 or $5. In either case, get it. Go through it, because what

01:55:47

Love is going to do is He's going to give you the need, the awakening to the need of having to set down a specific strategy in your particular temptation.

01:56:02

And could it even be just saying that? That's not enough for me just to say that. You really need to think through what it means to battle, what these parts of the armor mean for you personally, how you are engaged in this spiritual war, and how you're to have a heavenly mind about honoring

01:56:23

Christ and mortifying your sin and being sanctified. So that would be my plug, not just simply for the book, but the idea that individually as a

01:56:33

Christian, you will be able to then set up a strategy. You'll have the hammer, you'll have the screwdrivers, you'll have the tape measures, you'll have the lumber, all the stuff to build your particular strategy that you individually need to deal with the evil day that comes against you.

01:56:54

Because it comes against us every single day, even when we don't realize it, and we need to be aware of how to do that.

01:57:02

And that, I think, is the biggest gem that Christopher Love in this book utilizes for us, because he wakes us up to the fact that, hey, listen, you got to sit down, you got to think through stuff, because it's not just about saying,

01:57:16

I'm a Christian and everything's going to be okay. I have Jesus. No, no, no. The devil wants you to say that, and he wants you to rest easy in that, having no strategy.

01:57:26

Well, Joe in Slovenia, I'm sorry we don't have time to ask your question, but perhaps when we have

01:57:33

Dr. Matt McMahon, C. Matthew McMahon, back on the program, you could resubmit this question.

01:57:40

I want to thank you so much, brother, for being on the program again, and I want to make sure our listeners have your websites.

01:57:46

They are apuritansmind .com. That's apuritansmind .com,

01:57:53

and also puritanpublications .com, puritanpublications .com.

01:57:58

And remember, for those of you wanting to order the book that we've been discussing today, it's

01:58:04

The Christian's Combat Against the Devil by Christopher Love. And everybody who submitted a question today, in fact,

01:58:12

I will include you too, Joe, in Slovenia, since you did take the time to write in today. I'm going to mail your daughter in Georgia, whose address you've already given me,

01:58:21

I will mail her a copy of The Christian's Combat Against the

01:58:27

Devil. Look forward to having you back, brother, and I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially all those who wrote in.

01:58:35

Please keep praying for Iron Sherpins Iron Radio. Please keep sending in those checks whenever you can afford to do so.

01:58:42

And I want you all, as Christopher Love once said, I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

01:58:50

Savior than you are a sinner. Tune in tomorrow and send us your questions for Iron Sherpins Iron Radio.