February 10, 2017 Show with Chuck Vuolo & Ephraim Stoltzfus on “Understanding & Reaching Out to the Amish People with the Gospel of Grace”

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Good afternoon Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 10th

of February 2017.

We're going to have a fascinating interview today, I'm sure, with Chuck

Volo and Ephraim Stoltzfus.

Chuck Volo is pastor of New Life Community Church in Kingsville, Maryland, and he's an evangelist

to the Amish people.

We also have in studio Ephraim Stoltzfus, who himself is an Amish

convert to biblical Christianity, and we are addressing the theme, Understanding and Reaching Out

to the Amish People with the Gospel of Free Grace.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you both to Iron Sharpens Iron, Chuck Volo and Ephraim

Stoltzfus.

Thank you Chris, it's great to be with you.

And Chuck Volo has been on the program before, but unfortunately the last time he was on we had

technical difficulties which prevented the recording of the interview, so I'm so delighted that he is back in studio

today again to do this interview.

And Ephraim Stoltzfus, he is one of the key figures in a

BBC documentary that some of you may have seen, and if you haven't seen it I'm urging you to see it, called Trouble

in Amish Paradise.

It involves Ephraim and one other Amish individual's journey into

the biblical Christian faith, and some I know are scratching their heads wondering what on earth could be

different from the Amish and true Christianity, because some people think the Amish are just super Christians.

They're even more Christian than the average person in a Protestant congregation,

but we're going to be finding out that there's actually a stark contrast between the Amish

understanding of salvation and the biblical gospel.

But before we even go into those details, Pastor Chuck Volo, tell our listeners something about

New Life Community Church in Kingsville, Maryland.

New Life Community Church is, we're coming up on six and a half years old, a church plant,

and we meet at Beachmont Christian Camp, and we are Reformed and Baptistic,

and God has blessed us with some very healthy growth in recent years.

We have a full -time pastor, Paul Hamilton, who's been with us two years, and then I've been roughly

half -time because my other half of ministry is in Lancaster County, and then we have a third bivocational

elder.

A very healthy church, I think, with diverse in age and demographic, and

we're just grateful to serve.

The Lord in that part of Maryland.

And we will be giving, what is your website for that church?

You don't know?

Well, I'll look it up, and I'll find it.

NewlifeMaryland .org.

NewlifeMaryland .org?

Yes.

And is it the full word, Maryland, or MD?

MD.

NewlifeMD .org.

And you started at some point in your ministry reaching out with the

gospel of Jesus Christ to the Amish.

What led you to begin this activity, Bible studies, et cetera?

Well, it was an amazing providence of God.

I had pastored in Downingtown for 19 years, and in God's providence, that was coming to an

end.

And just about that time, a man who had been Amish in his youth came

looking for me.

He had heard some of my sermons on Sermon Audio, and we found each other, and he

wanted to start a Bible study at his business, which is still going on nearly 12 years later.

Every other Wednesday, he pulls workers off of his machines.

It's a laser -cutting business, and pays them to come to an hour -long Bible study.

But he was Amish in his youth, and in meeting him, he told me that he had heard that God was working in the Amish

community, that some 12 families had been converted, and a little while later, it was 15 families.

And I expressed an interest in getting to know them, and so I think it was August 5th, 2005, we

made a visit to a family in the southern part of the county, and they were having

a late -night prayer meeting.

And here was an Amish convert with several others, Amish, Mennonite, and they were

praying well into the night.

They had been converted, and they were just looking for truth.

And I began attending those late -night prayer meetings, and that's where it

began.

They realized that here was a man who knew something of the Bible, they were hungry for Bible

truth, and that opened up a door to minister among the Amish,.

Which has lasted these last 11 years.

And that's where you met our guest today in the studio, Ephraim

Stolzfus.

Ephraim Stolzfus, how did you hear about this Bible study?

One of my friends, who was also Amish at the time, we were discussing one day about

how can people decide what sin is

by saying that if you break one of our rules, then you're sinning.

And I said, well, surely God is more holy than that.

Surely God has a standard of what is sin and what is not sin.

So I was sharing with my friend about, you know, I really like some answers to life.

And he says, well, he met this man who says that the Bible is his rule book,

his standard book.

Whatever the Bible says, that's his rules.

And I said, I'd love to meet him.

So I was introduced to this Bible study.

Through that conversation.

And you were born and raised in the Amish community, correct?

Correct, I was.

And was that in Lancaster, Pennsylvania?

Yep, Lancaster County.

And how much awareness did you even have of the outside world,.

Outside of the community of the Amish?

As far as normal life in Pennsylvania, I would have been aware of outside life,

yes.

My community was much more open to the outside world than some communities are.

And I wouldn't have known much about across other

parts of the world, like Europe and other countries.

I didn't know, but I would have known about Pennsylvania.

And a lot of people, as I said in the beginning of the program,

are not educated about what the Amish really believe about salvation,

about what sin actually is.

And they don't know a lot of things about the scriptures, because as I learned

from the documentary that you were featured in, the Bible that the Amish must use

is written in classic German, and the majority of Amish do not even speak or

read classic German, but a dialect of that called Deutsch, Pennsylvania Deutsch.

Is that what it is?

Pennsylvania.

Deutsch, yeah.

Yeah.

And so I'd like our listeners to be educated today about some of the

primary things about Amish life and thought.

In fact, Pastor Chuck, you can also feel free to either assist in answering a

question or even asking one of your own, and you don't have to wait for me to signal you.

Just chime in at any time, because you'll find that throughout this interview, I may be looking at the computer

screen a lot and not even looking at you.

Well, growing up as an Amish person, you obviously heard something about Jesus

Christ.

You heard something about the Christian faith and so on.

What were the basic things you grew up understanding about who Jesus Christ is?

I believe that Jesus died for the sin of the world.

I believe he rose again.

I believe that, you know, as far as the biblical facts,.

I believe them.

You believe that he was God and man?

I don't know if I would have thought that far, but I knew that he died and he rose again,

but I didn't know how to be forgiven.

I was taught that Jesus died and God's grace will be extended to me if I'm a good

person.

So, basically, you live your life the best you can, and when you die, you'll find out whether or not you'll go to

heaven.

So, you can't even have any confidence prior to when you wake up, when you open your

eyes in eternity.

That's when you know where you're going to wind up.

Yep, that's when you find out.

Yeah, that's a very oppressive way of living.

Where can you have the peace that surpasses all understanding if you don't have that

confidence?

So, I'm assuming, though, that—and you could correct me if I'm wrong—I'm assuming that even though you didn't have a clear

understanding of the deity of Christ or the trinity in your mind, I'm assuming those are things that are

believed and taught to some extent, correct?

Yeah.

I remember one of the preachers saying one time that when you're traveling, people might ask you questions about, what do

you believe about God and about spiritual things?

And he said, the answer to tell them is that you believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And he said that'll satisfy most people.

And so, you are living this life.

What was your day -to -day life like?

I'm sure it involved a lot of hard work and waking up early, going to sleep early, and that kind of thing.

Just tell us about your everyday, day -to -day activities as an Amish person.

For my life growing up Amish, it was a great life.

Very secure, knowing you have a schedule, a routine.

You just did what you were taught, and you did it, and you did it with all your heart, and you had fun, you

worked hard.

But my typical day would have been probably at the age of

ten.

I would have been standing up in the morning around five o 'clock.

I remember one of my brothers telling me that if I'll do part of his chores for the whole

summer when school was out, because he was working for the carpenter crew, and he had a hard time getting

his farm work done before he left for the carpenter crew.

So, he told me for the whole summer, if I would do a certain two chores for him so he can

leave earlier, he would buy me a baseball glove.

So, I did that all summer long.

I got up, I think, maybe 4 .30 or 15 minutes earlier so I can get all the work done.

But yeah, you did all the barn chores.

Then 6 .15ish, we ate breakfast, and 30 minutes later, we're back

out in the barn.

And lunchtime for us was 11 o 'clock, not 12 o 'clock.

We usually had off about an hour for lunch, and then we worked until four, and we ate supper, or

dinner, as the English people would call it.

Anyone who's not Amish is English, in an Amish person's mind.

Four o 'clock, we ate supper, and went back to the chores, did all the milking and all the

animals, and then by.

7 .30, you're getting ready to go to bed.

And you wanted a baseball glove, so obviously, the Amish boys, perhaps even the girls,

I don't know, but you used to play baseball,.

I'm assuming.

Yep, yep.

So, baseball, volleyball, softball instead of baseball, but yeah, softball.

Softball, volleyball, pitch and quaits.

I don't even know what that means.

Okay, yeah, swimming.

What is pitch and quaits?

So, it's almost like horseshoes, but it's a round piece of metal that's like a big washer, but

it's very heavy, and you try to get on the peg.

Okay.

Ping pong in the wintertime, playing board games,.

A lot of family time, gathered together as a family.

Now, playing baseball, and so far, that was the only sport that I can think of

that the average American kid would be watching on TV or listening on the

radio, but primarily TV.

Since you didn't have television, I'm assuming, did you have any idea of Major League Baseball, and did you have any

heroes that were professional.

Athletes and so on?

Yes, I'd read the paper, and so I'd hear the news, and I'd watch who's.

Going to be in the World Series and things like that.

How would you get to watch the World Series?

You wouldn't.

Oh.

Just the news.

Did you ever attend a live baseball game?

Never.

Okay.

Would you be able to?

Would they permit you to do that?

No.

But they'd permit you to play, though,.

The games?

Yeah, because you're playing as a family or you and your friends, you know, so it's...

And from what I understood from listening to, or viewing, I should say,

the documentary Trouble in Amish Paradise, the Amish religious system

is very works -oriented.

There's not a real understanding of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone.

It's really what you can offer God that would be worthy enough to enable you

to enter into heaven.

Is that basically the way that you were living your everyday life?

Yeah, it would be more of.

You helping God.

So God did his part.

He died for you.

Now you need to become good so he'll accept.

You.

If I might say, at that point, if there's a chasm separating man and God,

as I've heard Amish explain it to me, you do the best you can to cross the chasm with

your good works and your obedience to the ordnung, or adening, as they say, and then the grace of God will

take you the rest of the way.

So it's definitely a co -pay system where your works are combined with

God's grace and, you know, very much a works -righteous system, similar to the

Catholic Church, which is my background, and very much like the first century Pharisees that Jesus wrangled with.

Amish are very much modern -day Pharisees.

And what was your relationship, if any, with Jesus Christ

prior to your rebirth?

When you were an Amish person, did you, other than perhaps corporate prayer where you're

expected to pray, where people are looking at you, listening to you, did you have any

kind of private devotional life?

Did you believe truly that Christ existed, and did you truly want to please him?

Was there any kind of a private prayer life, a private devotional life

that had some kind of a connection between you and Christ, at least in your mind?

Very minimum.

My religious life would have consisted of,.

As a family, my father would lead us in a verbal prayer, but it would have been

a written prayer that he would have read.

So I would have never heard my father pray an audible prayer from his heart.

So they would, when it was time for prayer, for mealtimes, it would be a silent prayer.

In the morning, it would be after breakfast, we would all kneel together, and my father would read the morning prayer for the

day.

And then in the evening, he would read the evening prayer.

At the close of the day.

Reading from some pre -prescribed prayer?

Mm -hmm, yeah.

And the prayers were, they're good prayers.

They were written by men of God, but yeah, to us, it was just something you did.

You'd read this prayer.

There was a few times where I would, when I was discouraged or really depressed or needed friends,

that I would pray to God quietly from my heart, longing for friendship, longing for

something.

I read the Gideons when we were, I think, in third grade, the Gideons came to our school.

And they do this to all the Amish schools, and they'll pass out New Testaments to the third graders

and up.

They come every other year, so you're always looking forward to when you're in third grade, you get your own little New Testament.

So I kept it in my room.

Maybe I read it a few times in my life, not a lot.

I would just read it when I was discouraged or needed or wanted something.

But basically, and my life went through phases.

There was times that I would have more, or I would pray more, try to pray more, try to read

more.

And then the church services were every other week.

So the Sunday we didn't have church meetings, we would, as a family,

gather together, and we would read the scriptures that were predestined for the next Sunday.

At the beginning of the year, we would know every Sunday which scriptures are going to be read and taught on.

So we would try to prepare ourselves for those scriptures, and we would read them as a family in German.

And my father would try to explain what they mean.

And then we'd sing some hymns in German.

And after that, on a Sunday morning, you'd do that.

And then after that, you'd just go read a book or relax the rest of the day and play some games.

And so just Sundays, basically, we were taught that

the things of God are to be discussed on.

Sunday.

You don't talk about God the rest of the week.

When you say you don't talk about God the rest of the week, is that by your individual choice, or is that something that they're.

Prohibiting you to do?

It's just accepted practice.

If someone starts talking about God, he's considered to be a little strange.

Paul Meyers.

Ha, ha, really?

Yeah.

Paul Meyers.

Huh, that is interesting.

There might be some comments that you hear that I would hear as, like, God

sent the rain.

But there was nothing talked about personal, you and God, how are you and God doing, what's

God doing in your life, or is the Lord teaching you anything, because it didn't exist.

Now, Chuck, the passion that started to well up in

you to want to evangelize these people, did that really

become a zeal and a passion after you started to meet these folks

and befriend them?

Is that when this deeper interest came into you to want to reach them with

the lost people?

Yeah, I believe so, Chris.

It's not as though I had this longstanding burden to reach the Amish.

We had lived in the community for, oh, 19 years, and

we're not far from the Amish, and we would see the horses and buggies in the schoolhouses.

I didn't know a lot about them and didn't have a particular burden for them.

But when I began attending these prayer meetings, and I saw the earnestness in their hearts, these

men knew the Lord, and they were hungry for truth.

I think I'm a pastor at heart, and my heart goes out to people to shepherd them.

When I realized the men were meeting, but then I realized they've got wives, and the average Amish family is seven

children, and I thought, well, you don't want to leave your wives in the dust.

You guys are growing and learning, praying together.

What about the wives?

And I suggested that we begin having Bible study with the wives, and of course, then you get the children.

And that's when it really burgeoned, and we began having Bible studies with 30, 40, 50, 60

people, sometimes a good number of those being children, so that the wives could be incorporated and

learn and grow along with the husbands.

But yeah, here were people that were coming to the Lord.

Others were searching, and I think my shepherd's heart just went out to them, as hopefully

something like Jesus.

We all need to be far more like Jesus, but when Jesus looked at the multitude as sheep without a shepherd, he was

moved with compassion, and he taught them, and he prayed the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers.

And I think something of a reflection of the great shepherd in me saw these people as unshepherded

sheep, in fact, abused sheep in many ways.

They had been abused by a system which was legalistic and oppressive, and was laying upon them the

burden of rules without teaching them the gospel of the grace of God.

And I think the truth of justification really became precious to me.

I mean, I'd always valued it, but I think in my pastorate previously, sanctification was a big

emphasis.

Okay, we assume justification.

We know where we stand in Christ.

Now let's get on with living a holy life.

And probably my appreciation for justification and adoption was a little weak.

But when I began to meet the Amish, I realized they don't need more moral duties laid upon them.

They need to understand that salvation is a free gift of God's grace.

They need to understand that it's the righteousness of Christ credited to them that gets them to heaven, and through

Christ they can become adopted sons and daughters of God.

And, you know, God was working in me a deeper appreciation for those

precious truths as I was seeking to impart them to others, realizing those are the truths

that these folks need to set them free.

You know, Jesus said, you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.

They needed in particular the truth of justification by faith to set them free.

And it is interesting that Ephraim said that he loved being Amish, had

a great life.

It's interesting that it wasn't until the Holy Spirit started to draw him and

bother his conscience about sin and things like that, that I'm assuming that's when you really

became, felt oppressed in some way, because you seemed to enjoy your Amish youth and

upbringing, but when you started to realize that they didn't have answers about eternity,

that's when you were starting to be troubled, I'm assuming.

I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it seemed to be what you were saying.

Yeah, so the Amish life was a great life.

For me, just because it was structured.

You knew what you're doing.

You knew that when you get a certain age, you're going to probably get married, and then you'll buy a farm, and

you'll have children, and you'll pay the farm off, and you'll buy them a farm, and that was life.

But there was the other side, and that was wanting to know what happens when I die.

So that question was in my mind since I was probably nine years old, hoping that, I was

assuming that when I'm 12, I would become accountable before God.

I didn't know if it would be when I'm 12 or it's when I'm 20, because the children of Israel, when they were in the wilderness,

God told the ones that were 20 and above, because they disobeyed Him, they're going to die in the wilderness.

If they were under 20, they would not die, and so we kind of thought maybe when you're 20, you're

accountable, and so you have to get baptized before you're 20.

So that you for sure make it to heaven.

So there was a teaching of some kind that baptism was a necessity to be saved or to go to

heaven?

Yes, yes, very much so.

So did they use phrases like baptismal regeneration, or was it much more of a simple

way of...

No, it was just more simple, just, he that believes and is baptized shall be saved, Mark 16, so they would use that.

And so they would say, if you're not baptized, God's grace will be given to you, but you need to get baptized, because at

baptism, your sins are washed away.

That's what.

They would teach.

And the terminology of even salvation, obviously that scripture

uses the phrase saved that you just quoted, but was that a part of the common vocabulary of the

Amish?

Saved, salvation, born again, were those kinds of...

No, the word saved was a word they.

Didn't use much.

They didn't know what it means, and they would say you can't know that you're saved because you might

sin again, you might...

I guess the only time you can know you're saved.

Is when you're standing up wet from the waters of baptism and you're...

And right after communion.

They'll teach that communion is just like baptism.

When you take communion, you can again refresh the vows that you made with God, and

you're going to be wiped clean again at communion.

You know, it's interesting that although on the surface,

visually, people would never think that there was any commonality between

the ornate and pomp and ceremony of

Rome and the simplicity of the Amish life who do not even have

pictures of Christ, let alone statues and all these things.

There's no fancy garb investments for the clergy and all these kinds of things, but there is

so much commonality between Rome and the Amish.

In fact, I think, Chuck, you were a former Roman Catholic just as I am, and in fact,

if you could touch on that when we return from the break.

If anybody would like to join us on the air, by the way, with a question for either Chuck Volo or Ephraim

Stolzfus, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S

-A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA.

Don't go away.

We will be right back after these messages with Trouble in Amish Paradise.

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Hi, I'm Christopher Stolzfus, and you're listening to my dad on the radio.

Great job.

Great job.

That was, as you heard him say himself, that was Christopher Stolzfus, the 10 -year -old son of

one of our guests today.

Ephraim Stolzfus, former member of the Amish community who was born from

above, received eternal life through the gospel of Jesus Christ and his

redemptive death on Calvary, and his coming to understand that that was the sole

reason he is now entering heaven, that Christ paid the penalty for his sins he

did not earn in any way through his meritorious works,

an entrance into the kingdom of heaven, that he has now come to believe that this is by

grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone.

And in studio also is the man who was very instrumental by

God's sovereign hand to lead him to Christ through Bible studies that he was conducting with

the Amish and those who had just recently left the Amish community, Chuck Volo,

who is the pastor of New Life Community Church in Kingsville,

Maryland.

And just so you folks can look up that church after the

program's over, you can go to newlifemd .org.

That's newlifemd .org, newlifemd, the abbreviation for Maryland,

dot org.

And before the break, Chuck Volo, we were talking about the remarkable similarities

between the old school Roman Catholicism, the Roman Catholicism that

is the Catholicism of the Council of Trent and even the Catholicism that was prevalent

in varying degrees up into the mid -20th century.

Even when my oldest brothers were in Catholic school and so on, they were told

that if they even set foot in a Protestant church, they were going to hell, that kind of thing.

It was a totally different Catholic church than we see today, and that's actually an overstatement.

It appears as if it's a totally different Catholic church, but the dogma is still the same.

The dogma that anathematizes all of us who believe in the gospel of free

and sovereign grace, that is still on the books as the main, true, unchangeable

dogma of Rome, even though we may have the most liberal pope that ever has

professed to sit in the seat of Peter.

But if you could tell us something about, in your own experience being a former Catholic, the remarkable similarities between

what you've heard from the Amish and your own experience.

Yeah, I think what you just said, Chris, about on the one hand, the disparity between the very ornate, elaborate

Roman Catholic system with its ornate cathedrals and the simplicity and plainness of the

Amish, who don't even believe in church buildings.

They meet in homes.

But I think it points to the reality that the default religion of the human heart, because of our pride,

is self -salvation, self -righteousness, because both systems are

fatally flawed in that they believe that there's something of our own righteousness that gets mixed in

with the grace of God to save us.

And as my wife and myself would share our testimonies with our Amish friends in earlier years,

she having gone to 12 years of Catholic school, they would resonate with our stories.

And they would say, well, that sounds a lot like the Amish.

And of course, we were aware that it is.

And we're trying to point them away from that self -salvation that is characteristic of

both systems.

It is man's default religion to trust at least partially in himself rather than

totally in the grace of God, as you said, faith, the grace of God through faith in Christ alone.

So yeah, our testimonies have definitely resonated with the Amish because of the similarities in the system, even

though the Amish are far removed.

It's interesting how it's come full circle.

We had the Reformation, you know, led by Luther.

We're in the 500th anniversary of that now.

And then you had the radical Reformation with the Anabaptists and the Amish being a

subdivision of the Anabaptists, and yet their religion is

basically the same in terms of its essential trust as the Roman Catholics.

That we're trusting in our own works.

Now, growing up Amish, Ephraim, did you ever hear any of the stories about the Reformation.

Or even Menno Simmons, who seems to be a hero amongst Anabaptists, did you know anything about him?

Yeah, we did.

We would have heard a lot about,.

Especially, we would have heard about Menno Simmons a little, but we would have heard a lot about the martyrs.

There's a book called The Martyr's Mirror, and that's a book that's in every Amish home, and it has stories of

all the martyrs from the apostles through the ages, ending probably around the

1800s.

Someone took an intensive amount of time and put together an amazing volume

of martyrs, and so we would have heard a lot about that and would have held high regards to our

forefathers that had been martyred for their faith.

Were these primarily martyrs that.

Were Anabaptists?

No.

Oh, okay.

These were like Protestants who were martyred by Rome, you mean?

It includes a lot of Anabaptists.

Yeah, it includes a lot of Anabaptists.

Unlike Fox's Book of Martyrs, it would be pretty heavy on Anabaptist martyrs, right?

But I'm assuming, though, the true message of what the Reformation stood for,

the pillars of the Reformation of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone,

according to the scriptures alone, for the glory of God alone, that was not something that was

conveyed, obviously, as a part of your religious life.

Would have never heard about that.

Okay.

And you said something earlier that did puzzle me.

When you were a child, the Gideons would, what was it, once a year?

Every other year.

Every other year, give you the New Testament.

It puzzled me because I thought from watching the documentary that you were featured in, Trouble in

Amish Paradise, that the English Bible was forbidden in the Amish community, and it had to be in classic

German.

And there are some varied opinions on that.

So, somehow, the Gideons got their foot in the door and gave out their Bibles.

In our home, my father was not against having an English Bible.

His own New Testament is German and English side by side, and he thought it was a good idea.

In my wife's family, they would have not allowed them to read the English Bible or

very, very limited English Bible reading.

So, it goes a lot by family or community.

And it would have to do with some misunderstanding that, or it would have to do with the understanding that when people start

reading the Bible in English, they typically leave the Amish.

And if you're Amish and you've been baptized, that's when you supposedly become a member

of the Amish Church.

And after that, you can't leave the Amish Church ever.

If you do, they consider you a heretic of the faith.

You would be shunned and excommunicated, and you would die.

If you were to die in that state, you would go to hell.

That's what they typically would believe.

Not all of them.

It varies, but that is what they believe.

And so, therefore, anything that will bring a person to leave the Amish is

frowned upon.

And in the past, when revival has come, people would start reading the Bible in English because it's a language they could

understand, and God would open their eyes, and they would get saved, and

eventually, they would leave the Amish.

And so, people associate reading the Bible, if you start reading the Bible a lot, and you're reading it in

English, you're going to probably leave the Amish.

And so, they don't want to do that because they don't want you to go to hell.

And it's interesting that you say that they don't want you to read the Bible because you'll actually discover what's in it.

Yeah.

Because most people do not speak authentic German.

It's.

A dialect that you speak.

Correct.

Our first language is Pennsylvania Dutch.

The second.

Language is English, and the third language is German.

And is there a word?

I kept using the phrase classic German.

Is there a better term to describe that?

Actually, the German that we speak,.

That we read in, and some people can speak a little bit, would be Lutheran German.

It's sometimes called High German or Hochdeutsch, and then the Bible that is used would

be the translation of Luther.

Luther's translation, yeah.

Which is interesting because Luther wrote it to put the Bible in the hands of the common German people.

Yes.

And now, it's used to shield the Amish people from the Bible they best

understand, the English.

It isn't that ironic.

And it goes all the way even back to the parallel with Rome insisting on Latin mass

for so many years until fairly recent history.

I think in Vatican II, the 1960s was when the English mass

became the acceptable common form of their public worship.

In fact, my older brothers who were altar boys, they had to know a little bit of Latin

when they were participating in the celebration of the mass.

By the time I was a young Catholic man, a young boy in the Catholic Church,

Vatican II had already come about, and so we were hearing it in English.

And I remember we were all given at some point, or either we were given or our parents had to buy them,

I can't remember, but we were given Good News for Modern Man Bible, English Bibles, that sat

in our desks and very rarely did the nuns who were our teachers ever have us study them or read them or

break them open for anything.

So, you said that you were troubled by really

understanding what sin was because you were being told a lot of things would have you

condemned, things that your average Christian outside of the Amish community would be

doing as a part of their normal way of life that would not be considered,

anyway, an offense to God because it's not prohibited in the Scriptures.

Just name some of those things.

So, for example, things that I would have struggled with would have been, oh, some

of the rules would have been you can't have cows that have registered, that have a certain bloodline

because they don't, their list of rules is almost

endless.

So, a better example might be listening to having a radio.

When I was a young man with a youth group, some of my friends had radios, and so I wanted to have a radio,

and they had a rule that said you cannot have a radio.

So, that would have been one example.

Wearing certain clothes, like we were, our shoes, we had dress codes.

Our shoes are supposed to be brown or black.

You weren't allowed to have white on your shoes.

It depends how lenient your family was.

You'd be okay to have a shoe that would have a white maybe strip on the side, but you would never

wear white shoes, or if you would, everyone.

Would frown upon you, and many

numerous things.

And in the documentary, there was even a comment, I don't know if you made it or one of the other

primary Amish folks who left the community who were being featured in the documentary,

but one of you said that even wearing the wrong kind of suspenders would have a

condemnation from God over you.

And the reason that you would be condemned for wearing those suspenders is not because God necessarily says it's right or wrong,

but because the church said that in order to be in this church, you have to wear your suspenders the way that we

say you will have to wear them.

And if you don't, then you're rebellious in their eyes, and therefore you're a rebel.

And if you're rebellious against the church, then you're rebellious against God as well, because they believe the church has the right to make

rules.

They would take Matthew 18, where it says that two or three agree, then God will honor it.

But I believe the Bible says that what we bind on earth

has to be already been bound in heaven.

We can't make rules that God hasn't enforced.

And so it's not as much as, yeah, that's right.

So if you break one of the rules, then you're rebellious toward the church and God won't honor you.

God won't bless you.

And the other one would be, we were discussing over lunch, the Amish man is

supposed to have a beard but not a mustache.

And now you do.

You have both a beard and a mustache.

But if you had a mustache, you would be under some kind of discipline, wouldn't you?

Yeah, because they would first say.

You should take the mustache off.

Like my uncle, I met with him.

He left the Lancaster County Amish, and he told me he didn't want to shave his beard,

his mustache.

The reason he didn't want to shave his mustache was because he saw when he bought his razor blade, this would have been back in the 40s

probably or 50s, he saw they were charging sales tax or luxury tax or something on the razor blade.

He was like, I don't want to pay that tax, so I'm not going to buy a razor blade.

So he just used a scissors and cut off his mustache instead of the blade.

And he was like, well, this is so silly.

And so he just decided to move out of Lancaster County, and he moved to another area that they didn't have to, they could

have a short mustache.

So there you go, folks.

The strictest fundamentalist that you know, the most judgmental of

fundamentalists that you could have possibly met or heard of now sounds like a hippie in

comparison, a rebellious commie hippie.

But anyway, speaking of commie, the Amish live in a very

communal fashion.

What is that communal life about?

I mean, are you living in

the same function as the world around you where the blacksmith

gets paid for everything he does, the carpenter gets paid for everything he does, the

grocer gets paid, or is there any kind of barter system going on.

There?

Mm -hmm.

In our community, most everything is paid for.

There would be, under the farming community, you would perhaps keep track of the hours that you worked because you would

help each other.

Like when it was time to harvest the crops, the neighbors that lived closest together would all help each other.

So one day you'd be at my farm, the next day we'd be at your farm, and we'd just help each other get the crops in.

So we might keep track of the hours.

Maybe I work 10 hours, maybe you work 20.

And at the end of the harvest season, we sit together and maybe do some kind of money exchange to even that out

or some kind of rental on the equipment.

But for the most part, it's I have some of my property, you have some of yours.

We'll share it as needed, but there's expected that you would pay for it, and if it broke when you

had it, you'd fix it.

And perhaps.

We could clear up some of the false assumptions that many of us outside of the

Amish community have had.

What is the deal with the Amish and electricity?

Why don't you straighten that issue.

Out?

So electricity is just one of the many rules that they have chosen to, for whatever the reason may be, to say,

we don't want to have this.

And for electric, I don't know what the rule was, but the Amish try to stay away from, they'll say, well, we

don't want to be like the world.

They say Romans, the Bible says, Romans 12 says that we shouldn't be conformed to this world.

And so they say, we don't want to be like the world.

We want to, we have to be different.

We have to be separate from the world.

And so I'm not sure how they made this rule that you shouldn't have electricity.

My assumption would be that first the English people, the people that weren't Amish had electricity, but back in the early 1900s,

everyone drove horse and buggy.

So somewhere, somebody came in with this, we don't want to have electricity, and they established a rule.

And so to this day, in my home growing up, my father's house, we didn't have any electricity.

There was, we had a refrigerator and our cook stove would have ran off of propane gas.

So the laundry machine ran off of air and pneumatic air pressure.

The well pump was off of air, pneumatic air.

So we had a lot of the modern conveniences that you would have enjoyed growing up as well.

We just didn't have a microwave.

And that's probably about the only thing that we didn't have as far as technology goes, other than TV and

radio and things like that.

The Amish have started using solar and they'll charge a big battery pack.

And then off the battery pack, they'll use an inverter that takes it from 12 volt DC into 110.

And then they'll run some stuff.

They might have electric sewing machines now, fans, they might have some electric fans,

not many lights yet.

So it's starting to change a little bit.

There's, if you would have power coming off the main line into your house, you'd probably be get a visit from the,

somewhere from the church and saying this shouldn't be.

So the rules will change as people, as people start, like, let's

say there's a rule that says you shouldn't have electricity.

So they've figured now a way out to make their own electricity.

And so it's not frowned upon as much because -.

Because it's not reliance upon.

The city or government or -.

Well, not about the city or government.

It's just, it's not,.

No one ever done it like that.

And so if you can make it your own way and you're not becoming like the world, you can kind of do it because no one

else has it.

And so you're not really like.

Of this world.

I think part of, part of the rationale too is, I've often, well over the last 10

years, come to see the Amish as a cult of culture.

They want to propagate the culture, which means they want to keep the culture cloistered from the

world.

So to be connected to the main power grid opens them up to the society, opens them up to

telephones, for example.

And it seems like a lot of the rationale is to promote community and

promote cloistered community.

For example, they, in the early days and perhaps even today, they would allow a

phone if it's a, in a phone shanty, so that it's a shared

phone so that it promotes community.

But if everybody has their own phone, and of course cell phones, you know, are, are important because it

very much individualizes you and cuts you off from the community.

So there is kind of an underlying philosophical rationale behind a lot of the rules.

And it is what promotes community and protects the Amish from too much

exposure to the outside world to guard against what Eve is saying, the worldliness.

So there is kind of a method to their madness in some of those rules.

And it's what promotes community and what undermines community.

And as you were relating over the, over lunch, there are differences of

laws, rules, from community to community, you have different levels of strictness and so on, if you could

comment on that.

Community will have their own set of rules.

In some communities, they'll be written, some communities, it's just a verbal rules that

have been memorized from generations.

Each community has the freedom to make their own rules, unless they would be like a, like a

daughter or a daughter church from an established settlement like Lancaster County.

As the county fills up with people, the farms get expensive, they look to other states and they move

there.

And then they'll be considered a daughter settlement from Lancaster County.

And that settlement will stay under the leadership of Lancaster County.

So most settlements around have some relationship to some other settlement somewhere.

And they'll go by those rules from that, that they grew up with, or that that settlement had be

passed over to that new settlement.

And they could vary as much as the Amish have a lot of standards that are the same all across

America and Canada that you'll find.

If it's an Amish community, you're going to find these certain things.

They'll all be dressed with usually black or gray pants.

Some might have a bluish, but that's very different.

They'll make their own clothes.

They'll have certain dress patterns that have been passed down from generation to generation that they'll follow.

So there's a lot of similarities when you move around to different communities, but there's also a lot of variations as far as the

typical life.

Do you ride a bike or do you ride a scooter?

Do you drive a bogey with a steel wheel or does it have a little bit of

rubber on it?

Is your bogey this certain shape or does it have a little different style?

It all varies by what their father had or their grandfather had and what the elders decide.

Now, I've noticed that some of the bogeys, since I live in Pennsylvania now and I've been in areas where there are

Amish, in fact, there are some Amish who come right here down the road on

North Hanover Street or right at the intersection of South and North Hanover Street

and High Street.

There's a farmer's market and you have Amish there.

I've noticed that some of the Amish bogeys have the battery -operated lights over the

license plate, but we're going to get back to that in a moment.

We have to go to station break right now.

If you'd like to join us, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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Welcome back.

This is Chris Arns.

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Well, we are back now with our discussion with Chuck Volo, pastor of New Life

Community Church in Kingsville, Maryland, and by the way, I'll repeat that

URL for those of you who want to investigate this church, learn more about it, perhaps even visit it if you

live in Maryland or happen to be visiting there, newlifemd .org,

newlifemd, the abbreviation for maryland .org, and we have also

Ephraim Stolzfus, the former Amish individual who

has come to Christ, saving faith in Christ, who has left the works righteous

treadmill of Pelagianism and has discovered the true gospel of free grace

and has embraced it, and we praise God for that, and our guest Chuck Volo was

instrumental through Bible studies he was conducting in leading Ephraim to Christ as well as

some other Amish folks, and you can learn more about Ephraim's story in a

documentary called Trouble in Amish Paradise, which you could google and find it somewhere on

the internet, but you could also find it on YouTube in its entirety, that's Trouble in Amish Paradise,

and Ephraim, before the break we were talking about some of the

strict regulations about the Amish, that they vary from community to

community, they may be more severe in some communities, more lenient in others, and

one community may have a more strict view on one thing but have a more lenient view on another where the other

community has a reverse attitude towards those two different issues.

If you could also let us, our listeners, know about the differences between Mennonites and the Amish and also some of the

splinter groups like the German Baptists, the Dunkards, the ones that believe in

triune immersion, and so on.

Do you know anything about those other groups?

Some.

Primarily the Mennonite and Amish, doctrinally they're basically the same.

I do believe that in the Mennonite community there are horse and bogey Mennonites, called Old

Order Mennonites.

They would believe similar to what the Amish do doctrinally.

Then you would have other Mennonites that drive cars and some of them might even have more saving faith in their

congregations than what the Old Orders do, or they do a lot more.

There's the big difference between the Old Order Mennonites and the Old Order Amish.

They both drive horse and bogey, so that's similar, but the Mennonites have electricity, the Amish don't.

The Mennonites use tractors in their fields, the Amish don't, and the list goes on and

on.

It was just, again, a matter of preference or a matter of culture or a matter of something that was established years ago, and so there's still that

distinction.

Even the ones that drive cars, don't they have certain colors that they're restricted to?

Certain groups.

There are certain groups that they want to stay away from the world as well, then as you move up the ladder in progression

as far as culture goes, somebody all of a sudden got the idea that, wait, what this verse means is,

well, they got the true understanding of what the world is.

In 1 John we read that the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life,

that those things are what we're supposed to stay away from, and not so much a different

culture.

C .J. in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York wants to know, if you're married, and if so, how did you meet your

wife?

Good question, C .J.

Yes, I'm married.

I have seven children, and we met by, when you turn around the age of 16,

you're expected to join the youth group in your church or the different districts, and our youth group I joined

had a large, usually like 100, 150 youth in that youth group,

and my wife was part of that youth group, as same as I was, and so we would meet, the youth group would meet on a

Sunday, and you would play some games together, play volleyball, play softball, and then in the evening you would sing

hymns, and always there was a big meal, and that was kind of the extent of the youth group, other than some workbees when you had to do

some work to help people out.

And so when I was 18, I first kind of really took an interest in Amanda, who's my wife now, and we started a courtship,

and we were married when we were 20.

And was this something that was coerced, or did you really love this young woman when you met her?

No, yeah, I chose to ask her to start a courtship,

unlike some cultures where the parents are more involved in making that

decision.

In some Amish cultures?

No, not Amish cultures, other cultures of the world, yeah.

Chuck, you wanted to say something?

It's an interesting irony that as controlling as the Amish are in their system about

every detail of life, as Eve was saying, the width of the brim on your hat and your

suspenders, they're very loose when it comes to the relationship between young man and young woman.

They're very hands -off.

In an area where they could use to have more oversight and control and

guidance, isn't it fairly loose, Eve?

It's kind of an irony, real strict over here, but real loose over here.

Maybe you could speak a little bit about the Amish courtship system.

It might surprise people that with all the control in other areas, there's very little control.

You would almost think, Chris, that it would be an arranged marriage.

They're arranging everything else in your life.

Why wouldn't they arrange your marriage?

Maybe you could speak to that.

Well, I just thought of it now.

So they're very concerned about the things that really don't matter in God's

eyes.

But the things that do matter in God's eyes, there's less concern, and that's alarming.

Maybe you could even explain what you mean by that, the detail, actually.

OK, so Colossians says that, OK, so if we're dead to the rudiment of this

world, why then are we subject to the things like touch, not taste, not handle, not?

Well, an Amish person doesn't know that that verse is in the Bible.

And so they are subject to these things.

They're subject to most things.

But when it comes to courtship, there's no teaching

on courtship.

What is a biblical courtship?

I remember when my older brothers were in their courtship, we wouldn't even meet

their girlfriend.

They would come in the back door and go into the living room, and there they would visit.

That's changed now to where my nephews and nieces, when their

girlfriends or boyfriends are around, they're actually maybe part of the family.

But prior to 20 years ago, 25 years ago, you might not even meet

that girl that's going to become your son -in -law or your daughter -in -law until maybe just a couple months before the wedding.

And so there's very little direction given to courtship, you know, how to have a pure courtship,

those things.

Arnie in Perry County wants to know about, what is your guest's opinion on the

reality programs that involve Amish families, including one about a so -called Amish Mafia?

I have never watched Amish Mafia.

It's so radical and so off the wall, it's pathetic.

You think it's even real?

I know some of the actors, and no, it was all a show, all put on.

Really?

Yeah.

So you know personally, you call them actors, are they actually Amish people?

Some of them were, some of them were not.

Really?

Yeah.

See, there goes reality for you folks.

I have told some of my friends who are addicted to reality shows that they should really second

guess what they think is reality on a lot of these programs.

But you would think that, that actually brings me to another question.

Perhaps you could clarify the whole concept of photography and

not only taking still photographs of people, but filming them.

Is that truly something that's forbidden?

That is, that is true.

And they would take it from the second commandment, where you're not supposed to have any graven images of

God, or have any graven images.

And so they would say, if you take a picture, that could become a graven image.

And so that's the reason they don't have pictures.

So if you want to take a picture of an Amish person, he doesn't mind as long as he doesn't see it.

So.

Oh, okay.

As long as he doesn't see it.

As long as he doesn't see it, it's okay.

But if he's looking at you, you shouldn't take his photo.

But if he's out in the field working and he doesn't notice it, or he can't do anything about it, that's different.

But he would view you as an idolater for doing that.

No, he wouldn't.

No.

No, he would just say, that's the way you want to do it.

And the Amish are very generous, very, they'll allow you to do what you think is

right.

But they want to do what they think is right.

So, yeah, there has been superstition about the reasoning that I've heard over

the years, like they think that you're capturing their soul or some nonsense.

No, no, no.

That has nothing to do with it.

Never crosses your mind, no.

So the commandment about graven images would not be solely

involving attempts at making images of God or deities to be adored and

worshipped and bowed down to.

It's any kind of an image.

Yes, on an Amish person's mind, I don't know why.

Pictures, that's just what they stand on and say, that's why we shouldn't do pictures.

And there is a rule, I don't know if it's universal amongst the Amish, but

little girls can have dolls up to a certain age, but the dolls can never have faces on them, is that?

Maybe in some communities.

Years ago, it might have been so.

It was not so in our community.

Okay.

So they could have dolls at any age?

Yeah, as long as they wanted to, yeah.

Why wasn't that considered an image?

Probably never crossed their mind.

Or if it did, they would have said, well, our forefathers saw it to be okay, so it must be okay.

Well, was your wife following right along with you when you were being drawn to the Lord?

Was she also having the same curiosity or even hunger for truth and

a burden as to how she could be made right with God, knowing that every day

there was sin in her life?

I mean, was she going through the same kinds of things as you were?

Yes, she was.

I think most people are at that place.

Most Amish people are at that place where they long to know that they can be right with God.

There is a high rate of antidepressants used by Amish people.

In Lancaster County, I don't know what the rate would be, maybe 15 -20 of Amish people would be on

antidepressants.

They view that as acceptable?

Yeah, they do.

They've been on it for years and years.

A lot of the oppression, in my opinion, comes from not knowing where you stand with

God.

Most Amish people would long to have that question answered.

My wife, of course, was seeking, just as I was seeking.

So she was very supportive of me going to Bible study.

I told her, I'm going to go to Bible study.

It was on a Saturday morning.

I was invited by Amos Kaufman to go to Bible study.

So I told her, I'm going to go to Bible study.

So I was getting ready to go because the driver was coming to pick us up.

And the driver, meaning like someone who had a car, because I didn't have a car, so we'd have to ride with someone so we could get there in decent

time.

And she said, are you going to take your Bible?

And I was like, well, I guess I should.

It's a Bible study, but which Bible, what Bible do I take along?

So she went and got her Gideon's.

She had a Gideon's Bible in English because she was a school teacher.

And the Gideon's would give the teacher the Bible in English and the students in New Testament.

And then the teacher would read every morning a chapter from the English Bible at school.

So she gave me her Gideon's Bible to take along the Bible study.

Otherwise, I would have just had my German Bible.

Hmm.

And going back to specific views religiously of the Amish,

were you taught to view all other, even Christian denominations or professedly Christian,

all other Protestants even as people who were damned, who were going to hell or?

No.

Again, the Amish are very generous.

And so they would say, as long as you stay in whatever your parents taught you,

you're fine.

And you'll make it, you'll go to heaven.

A lot of it is whether you're obeying what your parents did.

Yeah, exactly.

Because you would wonder, then why wouldn't it be acceptable for you to leave that community and become a

Baptist or something?

But that is because you are violating the tradition of your parents.

Yep.

And honoring your father and mother, they would take the word honor as obey.

So they hold a lot of respect to that commandment.

Bebe in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, wants to know about the time of the

season when young people are expected to sow their wild oats.

Again, it's a misconception.

When you turn 16, that's when you're expected to join the youth group.

And everyone looks forward to that time.

And what happens is you get together on a Sunday, usually, and you play some games, you play some, do some hymn singing.

And that's when you get introduced to other young people and eventually meet your spouse.

It is at that time that if, depends which youth group you join, that there might be a wild youth

group where they might have alcohol and drugs and cars.

And so most young people choose to go with a more conservative youth group, unless they really want that kind of life.

But most of them don't want.

They know, they understand the fear of God.

They are afraid of God.

And they don't want to go to hell.

And so they want to try to live a good life.

But what happens is they join this, maybe I joined a youth group that was kind of conservative.

But our youth group had lots, because we all have large families, you all

have older brothers.

And they might have started a conservative group, but their group progressed within four or five years, they can become pretty

wild.

And because there's just lots of peer pressure and unconverted people together without

supervision, and things go crazy.

And so now you have older brothers in your house who they might have radios, and they might be drinking, but you don't want to do that.

So you go join a group that doesn't do that.

But because you all have older brothers, and there's peer pressure, and you're not converted, in a couple years, you're doing what you didn't want to do.

And then your group is no longer conservative, but it's liberal.

And so it's that time when you turn 16, you say, okay, you don't, they don't expect you to go and

sow your wild oats.

But it does happen.

And then you say, well, wait a minute, this is not what I want to do.

I don't want this the rest of my life.

And so you say, well, how do I change?

Well, I guess I'll get baptized.

And so they hope that that fixes the problem.

And a lot of people who are wild in their youth, when they choose to settle down, they usually

become very religious and very strict and orthodox Amish.

Now, what is this concept I've heard of?

I mean, I'm probably going to mispronounce it, but rumspringa?

Rumspringa, that's the period that they're talking about.

So, is it a totally false idea that I've been led to believe that where

the adults and the church leaders turn a blind eye to drunkenness and experimentation to let them

actually make a conscious decision to remain in the Amish or to follow the world?

Again, yeah, it's a misconception.

There's an Amish boy who doesn't grow up thinking, am I going to stay Amish or am I not going to stay Amish?

Amish is his life.

It's his community.

It's all he ever knew.

And he doesn't want anything else, normally, because they have a good life, for the most part.

And so you do have to make a conscious choice

to join the Amish church.

You have to make that choice.

And if you choose not to, no one is angry at you.

You can choose not to be joining the Amish church and you can get a car and be happy with your family.

There's no problems there.

If you don't, I mean, I shouldn't say there's no problems.

Some people might say, oh, why isn't your son joining the church?

Why is he still driving his car?

But it's not like there's going to be discipline or anything like that.

If he's living a wildlife, drinking, things like that, yeah, they'll frown upon that because they do have regard for the

Bible and they know that drinking is wrong.

But they know that driving a car isn't wrong.

They know it's not wrong to drive a car.

But if you join the church and then you go against the rules of the church, then it becomes wrong in their eyes.

So if I would have decided to get a car, my parents wouldn't have rejected me and threw me out.

They would have been sad because they wanted me to be Amish, but it wouldn't have been as bad as it is today.

But Chuck, you had something you wanted to say?

Yeah, like we were talking earlier about how the Amish are very strict and controlling in areas that

aren't really that spiritually consequential, but with areas that matter where parental

oversight, advice, counsel would be helpful.

They're kind of hands off.

And isn't it true with the Roma Springa that even though when the children do things that are

wild, the parents don't endorse it, but their hands are kind of tied because of the system.

So they do have to endure it, right?

Rather than stepping in and...

Well, there's a lot of stepping in that happens though.

Okay.

If my father would have found my radio, he would have destroyed it.

Okay.

Yeah.

I mean, I remember one night I wanted to go away and I wanted to wear my white shoes.

And so I had to hide my shoes in the barn or in the shop so that they wouldn't destroy them.

And yeah, he saw me getting ready to leave with my white shoes and he was disappointed.

And my heart hurt that I disappointed my father and yet I wanted to be cool.

So I wore my white shoes.

But so there'll be some discipline done.

Does that vary from family to family?

Yes, it varies from family to family.

RJ in White Plains, New York wants to know if it's in any way

an existing thing among the Amish in regard to

fornication amongst the young people and drug use, heavier drug use, such as

heroin and crack and things like that.

Obviously, you're talking about lost people.

So lost people, when exposed to any kind of temptation, may yield to

it.

And even Christians can yield to it, unfortunately, because we are not yet perfect on this earth.

But the sheltering from these things,

has that made it nearly non -existent or perhaps even non -existent, those kinds of extreme

levels of openly wicked behavior?

Or are they things that you are aware of happening there?

I never was introduced to drugs at all.

My youth group was conservative.

So it wasn't until maybe a few years after we got married that our youth group would have got into drugs.

So I was spared from that, praise God.

As far as fornication, that's really rare.

And again, it would be because it would be unacceptable.

And so only someone who's really discouraged or really depressed and is longing for

some other form of love would he go to that means, because it would not be

accepted.

If somebody would find out that they had a relationship, it would be very frowned upon and the person would be

ashamed of himself.

Christopher in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York wants to know, are the rumors true that child abuse is rampant

among the Amish community because they are sheltered from the outside world?

Well, the rumors are definitely true.

Sexual abuse is very rampant.

And that's one of the great sins of the Amish community.

Sexual abuse.

And this would be primarily just your typical older man or they would be in the clergy

or?

No, it would be anyone.

Siblings.

Siblings.

Yeah, a lot of fathers.

Yeah.

Siblings.

Fathers molesting their own children.

Yeah. Wow. Wow.

Yeah, it's something that's not taught against.

And it's hidden when it happens.

People don't acknowledge it.

If they do acknowledge it, you know, it's very shameful.

But it happens all the time.

How about are women known to do these things as well?

No, I would have never heard that.

Yeah. Wow.

We're going to our final break right now.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own over the remaining half hour, our email address is

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Welcome back.

If you just tuned us in for the last 90 minutes, we have been interviewing Ephraim Stolzfus,

who is a former member of the Amish community who is now a born -again believer in Christ.

Jesus.

And with him in studio is my friend, Pastor Chuck Volo of New Life

Community Church in Kingsville, Maryland, and their website is newlifemd, short for

Maryland, newlifemd .org.

If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at

gmail .com.

We have Joe from Slovenia who says, Brother Chris, sorry that I didn't

hear the first half of the broadcast.

Please ask about Amish who convert to Christianity who stay in the community.

Are there Amish who come to true faith in Christ who stay in the Amish community as evangelists?

What is it like for a genuine Christian to share the true gospel among and within

the Amish community?

Excellent questions.

Oh, I'd be glad to answer that one.

It's a very good question.

We have to separate Amish, the community, and

it is possible to, it's a hard question because in Lancaster County where I grew up,

there's probably about 25 of the people are Amish.

The rest of the people are non -Amish people.

Which you call English.

English, or yeah, English or Mennonite or other groups.

And so when I became a Christian, my burden was and still is today to reach the Amish.

People.

And I tried to stay within the church, the Amish church, so that I could reach the people but it's

impossible to stay within the church because twice a year you have to verbally agree to their list of rules.

Which as a Christian, I didn't, I never agreed to the rules and so I just would lie every time council church would come,

before I was a Christian, I would lie, say that I do agree because if you don't agree, then you're considered a rebel and

you'll be excommunicated.

And it's very, very seldom that an unconverted person will stand up and go

against the flow because the pressure is tremendous.

And separation from family is almost impossible without Christ.

There are exceptions, but it's very few.

And so when I became a Christian, I said, well, I can't, I can't lie.

I'm not in agreement with these rules and I can't be in agreement.

They're just impossible.

And I wanted to be Amish, so I just made an open confession, said I'm sorry I lied for all these

years.

I have never been in agreement with these rules.

I want to do my best to follow them, but I want to be honest.

I want to be open.

And so that and then other things, my evangelistic zeal, and I evangelize greatly among the Amish

people, I took their confession of faith and I took their doctrinal statements and

I taught on them and especially on faith, on the new birth and what it means to

be enlightened, to be born again.

And I took their articles and I taught on them and I published these articles via voicemail,

postcards.

People would be able to receive a postcard and then call in and listen to a message that had been preached and taught on.

And that was great trouble for me because

that brought a lot of persecution.

So we did evangelize in those areas and we evangelize in many other areas like we would go to

where there's maybe a large gathering and we would try to put some gospel literature into their bogeys.

You don't want to go up to an Amish person and give him a gospel tract.

Most times he won't accept it unless he's all by himself and you kind of know him, it would be okay.

But if he's among other Amish people, he'll reject it because he doesn't want to be considered different or strange

by his peers.

And so we would have to do everything secret, everything where no one would see us.

And so we have done lots of evangelistic efforts and it is paying off in Lancaster County.

There are more and more people getting saved in Lancaster County because of people having a burden to reach the

Amish.

However, I am not Amish today.

When I was born again, I became a Christian and my culture, I stayed in the culture for about a

year and a half.

And when I knew that it's impossible for the Amish church to reform, I knew I'm not changing.

I'm not going to believe what the Amish believe because it's wrong and I will never recant of my faith.

And when I realized that the church isn't going to be reformed, I knew that I can't continue.

I have to raise my family in some kind of church community.

And so we had no other option but choose an American church,

good churches to choose from.

But then that brings that separation, that cultural separation between you and the people because now you have a

car and they have a horse.

And so when they're at the horse auction, you're at the car dealership trying to buy a car and so you don't interact like you

used to.

And so if it's possible to keep the culture, yes, I think it would be a good way to reach them.

And there are people that try it and it just takes a lot of effort to do it.

But there are other ways to reach the Amish people.

You can be an English person, a non -Amish person, and be very effective in reaching the Amish.

Maybe Chuck, do you want to share on that?

Well, I was going to ask you because most of the work I've done was with Bible studies where there were either converted

Amish or the Amish themselves were bringing their seeking friends.

Like Nicodemus, I'm assuming.

Yeah, coming at night.

Because this would have been viewed as something wrong, sinful, right?

Secretive, yeah.

At night, secretive, kind of underground Bible studies.

So I've done very little of cold turkey and that's where I thought you could answer.

That better.

I could do some of that.

We did some evangelistic efforts in our local community.

We have our fire companies have a fundraiser in the springtime and it's a very large

event.

Maybe 5 ,000 to 10 ,000 Amish people will be at this event.

And so we did for a number of years in the public restrooms at these

events, we would go in and we'd put gospel literature inside the restroom and then we would have teams that would go

around and keep filling up these little gospel literatures and they were targeted to the Amish very much.

You could see that this was written for Amish people and that was effective.

We also did a lot of just trying to meet people, sharing with them one -on -one and that has been effective

as well.

And a thing, oh, I'm sorry, Chuck, go ahead.

Yeah, I was just going to ask, sometimes it's harder for an excommunicated Amish to minister

because he's marked, he's shunned, but that's where there's an open door for outsiders.

Correct.

And I would ask you, Eve, for somebody who's in an Amish community, maybe they're driving

Amish, but more likely they're just going to an Amish market where they've got some social

interaction with Amish.

What would you advise as the way to begin to, what are some do's and don'ts to

broach the, you know, begin a friendship with an Amish to reach them?

So we're talking about do's and don'ts to try to reach an Amish person to Christ.

Some of the do's would be become friends with them, learn about their life, learn who they

are, learn what they like, be available as a taxi driver.

If they need to go somewhere, an emergency, maybe even offer, say, look, I hear, you know, sometimes, well, I know that, you know, you don't drive

cars, so if there's an emergency and you need to get to the hospital, you call me, I'll come right away.

Or you have a sick child, I'll take you to the doctor, I won't charge you.

You say that, you'll get a lot of Amish people to be your friends because they like free rides.

So become their friend, be available as a, you know, driving them around if necessary.

And then look for opportunities to share.

Talk about your personal relationship with the Lord, how God speaks to you when you're reading the Bible, and ask

good questions like, you know, what do they believe?

I would stay away from words like saved.

I'd stay away from words eternal security because they're taught very strongly.

You can never know that you're saved.

You can't even know if you're born again.

The question I would ask, I would say, are your sins forgiven?

And most of them will say, well, they hope.

They don't really know.

And so then you might say the story about the man that had, he was sick, and they let Jesus, his four friends let him down through

the roof, and Jesus looked at him and said, your sins are forgiven.

And say, how do you think it felt for that man to hear those words of Jesus?

And they would say, oh, wow, that was great.

I wish I could hear those words.

And then you use, you know, you just start sharing.

So I would target those things.

I was surprised when I was watching the documentary, Trouble in Amish Paradise, that you are featured in,

that they really looked down upon, with great disdain, any kind

of public evangelism, the passing out of tracts and things like that, and even open

air preaching gatherings and so on.

That surprised me.

It would just, they would never know of their forefathers ever doing that.

And so why would we have to do that?

That was for the apostles, they would say.

It's also, they have this idea of pride, chokhmut.

And, you know, for some, we understand that salvation is by grace.

And when we say, I know I'm saved, I know I'm going to heaven, that's not a boastful

pride, that's a confidence in God.

But because of the works -righteous system, when they hear somebody say that, they say that's chokhmut, that's pride.

And if you're going around telling other people, and I've heard people accuse Eve of that.

Eve has been a very zealous evangelist.

I know he's doing it because he loves their souls.

But Amish will interpret that as, well, who does he think he is?

And it's rooted in the works -righteous system.

And that actually goes back again to the commonality with Rome that we were talking about, the Church of Rome.

They call it the sin of presumption.

If you have a confidence that you are certainly born again and you are going to heaven,

if you have that kind of confidence, you are viewed as being sinful and being guilty of the sin of presumption.

And what about the, going back to some of the unique elements of what it means to be

Amish, the passivism aspect.

I don't know how much Hollywood has distorted it.

There's a very famous movie with Harrison Ford, I think it's called Witness, where he goes in hiding in the

Amish community and pretends to be Amish.

But there's a scene where one of the local hoodlums in the community,

one of the local rednecks or whatever he was, started slapping an Amish man and he wasn't retaliating because

he is taught that he is not to return violence with violence.

Is that even real?

Is that, that would be a real concept?

That's reality.

One of my favorite stories is an Amish leader in my community, he had a big hardware store

and people, sometimes people would stop by and they would steal from him.

And so one night he hears them and he goes out and they're loading up tools, brand new tools,

onto their truck.

And he just kind of grabbed the ladder and he helped them and he put the ladder on the pickup truck and they looked at

him and they left and they never came back.

Hmm, and as far as things that, believe it or not, we who are born

-again believers, we who are evangelical Protestants, however way you want to describe it, that we could learn

from the Amish.

Like there was something moving about the way the community, the Amish community, even though you were shunned

when your daughter had been diagnosed with cancer, there was a great outpouring of love from the

community.

Yes, that's another great blessing of being raised Amish.

It's just part of you, of this is what you know to do.

If somebody is in need, it doesn't matter who they are, it doesn't matter what they've done, you go and help them.

We had a little tornado that went through our community years ago.

And I remember as a young boy, we went out and the next couple of days, that's all you.

Did.

You'd go help people clean up and you would go fix their roofs for them.

I remember one house in a development and we're like, we'd like to fix that guy's roof, but

we couldn't because the insurance company hadn't yet assessed the damage and given their approval to it.

And so there it sat for a long time, untouched, whereas if they would have allowed us to, it would have been fixed in

maybe a day, day and a half.

What about this thing that you hear about the barn raising, like the whole community

building somebody's barn?

I mean, are these people being paid for this?

So for example, last week down in York County, there was an Amish man that has a very large business and he had a fire

and basically burnt this very large building 500 feet down to the ground.

And within hours, they've got maybe hundreds of Amish people there and non

-Amish people cleaning up this mess.

And this barn was 500 feet long and probably 60 feet wide and very tall

and different sections, different buildings.

And I suspect that building was back up within a week.

Wow. Wow.

And were these folks paid?

Oh, no, no, no.

It was all volunteer.

Let's see.

That's amazing.

Go ahead, Chuck.

Yeah, I had a question for Eve, interested in his perspective.

Many have heard about the tragedy of Nickel Mines when the 10 Amish girls were shot and at

least five or six died.

And much was made nationally about Amish forgiveness.

In fact, there was even a book come out, Amish Bishop wrote it, Amish Grace.

Now, we know as Christians that we can only truly forgive if we've been forgiven.

One man, Jay Adams, wrote a helpful book, From Forgiven to Forgiving.

Yes.

We cannot really forgive in the biblical sense, imitating God, unless we've been forgiven.

And yet, there is a lot of grace that is shown to the offender, to the man's

wife.

And what would be your perspective on that, Eve?

What is the extent of and reality of Amish forgiveness in a situation like that?

Well, when I think of forgiveness now as a Christian, it's something that has happened and you forgot about it.

When I think of things that happened in my past before I was a Christian, I would have said I forgive, but I

didn't forget.

And to me, that's the dividing line.

If you still remember and you have hard feelings, it's not forgiven.

I would echo that.

Only as Christians can we truly forgive in the way God forgives.

And yet, the people are trained culturally.

Yes, very much.

Away from a vindictiveness and a vengeance.

And by common grace.

I would say there's a lot more common grace in the community than in society in general, because they're trained not to be

vengeful, not to be vindictive, even though it may not be special grace.

There is a lot of what we call common grace that they display in those situations.

Does that make sense to you?

Yes, I agree with that 100%.

Christian in Cumberland County asked, what is your relationship like with your Amish relatives today?

Depends on their personality.

So I have some that would think that I'm going to deceive them and they want nothing to

do with me.

Others, we can visit with them and talk about how's their life, how's their horses, how are their cows, what's

going on with their business.

We can talk about those things.

And then I have a few that I can actually talk spiritual conversations with.

And how about your nephew Merv?

Yes, I just had a nephew who just got converted about almost a year ago.

Praise God.

Yeah, and he's an evangelist.

Yeah, his wife as well.

Wow.

Yeah, even if I'm remembering correctly, because it has been a while since I saw Trouble in Amish Paradise, the

documentary.

But aren't there some groups of former Amish who are specifically having

gatherings like open air preaching in certain areas out there in the

Lancaster area and other Amish areas?

Well, I think what happens a lot is you have Amish people that get converted.

And while they're still Amish, they really have a heart to reach out.

And so they'll reach out and they'll try to teach others as well.

And then they'll have their own Christian meeting.

And then the time will come where they get excommunicated.

And then they'll usually just join another established church somewhere.

And you are currently worshiping in a house church.

Correct.

And we like it because it's what the Amish did.

You meet in a house.

You don't have the expensive building to maintain.

You don't have a large staff to pay.

So we meet in a house church and we do support one of the leaders there.

But we like it.

How would it be different in regard to the ordinances?

Like, do you have believer -only baptism or credo baptism where you're immersed in water?

Or are you still doing a fusion?

I think the Amish do a fusion, right?

Where they pour.

Right.

No, baptism, the Greek word would be baptizo, which means to immerse.

So that is not the practice of the Amish?

No. Yeah.

Well, effusion is.

Yeah.

That's what I meant.

But as a biblical Christian, if you're now convinced that immersion is...

Immersion is baptism.

Proper mode.

Right, right.

And he was immersed and his wife was immersed.

Yeah.

A true Anabaptist.

Now, the ones that I mentioned earlier, the Dunkards who do the triple immersion, are they not Amish or are they some kind of

offshoot?

I don't know where their origin came from.

No, I don't know much about them.

Okay.

There are many different groups in our communities and they all have different sets of

rules and understandings.

Their basic principles are the same as far as God and Jesus, and some have more saving

faith than others.

Well, I want to make sure that before we run out of time, that you give our listeners all of the contact information you want to give.

And Chuck, I also want you to, just for at least a minute or so, tell our listeners about

your wife's wonderful organization that I interviewed her on, perhaps two years ago, the

Swan group.

Anyway, first you, Ephraim, if you could let our listeners know how they can contact you.

Sure.

If you're living in an Amish community or you really have a heart to reach out to the Amish, I want you

to contact me personally.

You're welcome to do that.

My email address is Eph, it's E -P -H,

then the word and, and my wife's name, Amanda, at gmail .com.

So, again, it's E -P -H, the word and, and then Amanda at gmail .com.

If you can't find the email address, you can Google one of the business I'm part of.

It's called Kingdom Biofuel.

If you just Google Kingdom Biofuel, it'll come up.

B -I -O -F -U -E -L,.

Kingdom Biofuel.

Correct.

Also, if you're, another contact to remember is called Mission to Amish

People.

It's a ministry called MAP.

They focus on reaching out to Amish people.

And so I would encourage you to reach out to them as well.

And they do seminars to teach you, which also I would be glad to help with that.

I want to encourage you to reach out.

You can make a difference to your Amish neighbors.

They are reachable.

And God gives grace to preach the gospel.

Jesus says, before he went to heaven, he says, go and preach the gospel to every creature.

He says, all power in heaven and in earth has been given unto me.

Go ye therefore.

Because Jesus received all the power, we are supposed to go and make disciples and teach them.

And he says, I'll be with you to the end of the world.

And I have that website right in front of me.

It's KingdomBiofuel .com.

Correct.

Your business.

KingdomBiofuel .com.

And Chuck Volo, your wife, spent a wonderful time

with her in the studio here.

And you were also present.

And we were talking about Swan.

Tell us about Swan and how our listeners can get in touch with your wife about that.

Okay.

My wife is a professionally trained violinist.

And six years ago, the Lord put on her heart to start a non -profit organization to

teach free music lessons and to give mentoring to children whose parents

have a history of incarceration.

They are 70 % more likely to end up in prison themselves.

And the ministry or the work began in Lancaster County.

But it's something that she hopes would be replicated throughout the nation.

And the organization is Swan, S -W -A -N, scaling walls a

note at a time.

And the website is www .swan4kids

.org, www .swan4kids .org.

And she utilizes college students as well as professionals to teach the children of the incarcerated music,

which is a wonderful means of helping children get free from their

bondages.

But of course, although it's not a Christian organization per se, she's a Christian,

the board is Christian, and she exerts as much gospel influence as possible because we

know that ultimately it's Christ who sets people free.

That's Swan, S -W -A -N, the number for kids, K -I -D -S dot org.

And of course, don't forget about newlifemd .org, the website for

the church where Pastor Chuck Volo is the pastor, New Life Community Church in Kingsville,

Maryland, newlifemd .org.

I'd like you each to close out the program with a couple of minutes each with

what you most want to leave upon the hearts and minds of our listeners before they leave this program.

We'll start with you, Chuck, and we'll finish with Ephraim.

Well, you know, the Lord Jesus Christ gave us the Great Commission.

As Ephraim said, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth, going therefore make disciples of all the

nations.

It is a privilege to bring the gospel to any culture, any people, because God

has purpose to save from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation

a people purchased by the blood of his Son.

The Amish community is a fairly closed community and fairly unreachable because of

their own cloistered community and the way they've cut

themselves off from society.

But it is a community that has been penetrated by the gospel, and we're grateful that God has

taken and will continue to take a people from among the Amish for his own possession.

So as Eve said, we urge you to, if you have Amish contacts, to pray for them,

build a relationship with them, and ask the Lord to open up doors for you to share the saving gospel

with them.

Eve and many others are evidence that God is saving Amish people.

It's been my privilege to work with them for 11 years, and we have seen scores of

Amish, not merely through my efforts, come to Christ, come to the saving gospel of

Jesus Christ.

So don't hesitate to bring the good news to them.

Yes, it should not be assumed that these are saved individuals.

They should be viewed as a mission field.

Absolutely, they need the gospel.

And Ephraim, if you could also close now the program with your final thoughts.

So if you're listening today and you are wondering how you can have a relationship with God,

just start praying to God.

Ask him to give you faith.

Ask him to teach you what it means to become his child.

If you're listening today and you're a Christian, I'd like to just share a couple verses from Ephesians chapter 5,

verse 10 and following.

Well, 9.

For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth, proving what is acceptable unto the Lord, and

have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.

For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret, but all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light,

for whatsoever does make manifest is light.

And the Bible says that if we see a brother go in error and we help him back, we save a soul from

death.

And so I just want to encourage you, if you're a Christian today, to be diligent, do the work of the Lord, and

let's live and prepare for the coming of our Lord.

Amen.

Well, thank you so much.

I also want to direct you to a website, the website of Chuck Volo's son,

Jeremy Volo, who some of you may have heard an interview with on Iron Sharpens Iron.

Jeremy is a former professional soccer player with the San Antonio Scorpions,

and he is currently a pastor in Texas.

What's the name of that church?

Grace Community Church of Laredo, Texas.

That's right.

Grace Community Church of Laredo, Texas, which is a Reformed Baptist congregation.

He recently got married to one of the Duggar girls, and her name is Ginger,

spelt with a J, very unusual spelling of ginger.

If you go to gingerandjeremy .com,

gingerandjeremy .com, that's J -I -N -G -E -R -A -N -D -J -E -R -E -M

-Y .com, you will learn more about Chuck's son, his ministry,

and of course his wife, Ginger.

And I look forward to getting Jeremy and perhaps even Ginger

with him on the program in the very near future, so you can let him know that, and I'm looking forward to having him back.

I want to thank everybody who listened to the program today.

I want to thank all of you who are praying for Iron Sharpens Iron, that it remains on the air.

I want to thank all of you who are praying about giving to Iron Sharpens Iron or becoming an

advertiser.

But I hope that you all have a safe and blessed and joyful weekend, and especially a Lord's

Day that truly honors our Savior and King, Christ Jesus.

And I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

Savior than you are a sinner.

We look forward to hearing from you next week with your questions for our guest on Iron Sharpens Iron

Radio.