July 26, 2016 Show with Dennis Gundersen on “Your Child’s Profession of Faith”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister

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George Norcross in downtown 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, quote, 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 and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming.

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 26th day of July 2016 and we are thankful that the server, the overseas server for Leading Edge Radio Network finally kicked in and allowed us to connect on the air.

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We do not know why this has been happening a few days lately and even the folks at Leading Edge Radio Network don't seem to know exactly why this is happening.

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It may be an atmospheric thing. I don't know. I'm very, very untechnical as anybody who knows me personally is fully aware but I'm just delighted that for now anyway

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God has saw fit to get us on the air and I hope that you are still listening, those of you who began listening at 4 o 'clock.

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And I'm delighted to have on the program today Dennis Gunderson. I've been trying to get him on the air for quite some time and the

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Lord has providentially opened up the opportunity today to discuss a very important book of his titled

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Your Child's Profession of Faith. The Apostle Paul in his first letter to the church at Corinth, chapter 13 verse 11, he wrote,

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When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child.

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When I became a man, I did away with childish things. I think this is one of the key reasons why this discussion today is extremely important on Your Child's Profession of Faith.

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So I'd like to welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron, Dennis Gunderson.

02:59

Yes, thanks Chris. It's a real delight to finally be here. We've talked about this, as you say, for some time now and it seems like when we tried to connect in the past there was usually an obstacle on my end of some kind, traveling or something, but I'm glad to finally be on the program.

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And Dennis has been a pastor for a number of years. He is now retired and dedicating the time that the

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Lord has allotted him to writing and running Grace and Truth books.

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And why don't you tell us something about Grace and Truth books? Well, we began a number of years ago, kind of in a very inauspicious small way.

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We had a missionary, some of your listeners may be familiar with David Sitton, who spent some 20 -some years in Papua New Guinea.

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Perhaps you've interviewed him on the program. I have interviewed David at least two, maybe three times. I even interviewed his brother at one time.

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Okay, yes, yes. David and I are good friends. We go way back to when he only had three or four supporting churches.

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And you know, he was originally a church planter sent out by the Church of Christ. And then while he was in Papua New Guinea, he forsook their doctrinal stance and became

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Reformed. And a lot changed for him very quickly. And anyway, he ended up with a new group of supportive churches.

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And yeah, I always tell people I knew David when he had hair. In fact, it was really long. You actually taught me something new about him.

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I did not know that he at one time was a part of the Restorationist or Campbellite churches, however you want to phrase it.

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That's interesting. I do have many friends in that movement. But I happen to be, as you know, theologically

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Reformed and see that as a much more biblical system of theology.

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And that exalts God to his rightful place and reveals to man the lowliness that he, the lowly state that he possesses and being totally depraved and completely helpless without the grace of God.

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Yes, the same here. That's our doctrinal stance as well. So we published a book about one of David's missionary journeys when he asked me if I would help him break into the world of publishing.

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And from that point on, we ended up, we've published about 80 books now. Most of our books are actually children's books from the 1800s that deal with godly character or some facet of evangelizing children, gospel -centered children's books that are very, very different from the children's books that you find in Christian bookstores today, much more challenging and rather direct about getting to the gospel and faith and repentance and the claims of Christ.

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So we've been around for 23 years now. Great. Well, the ministry or the publishing ministry,

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Grace and Truth Books, just so our listeners can write this down, I will hopefully repeat this several times during the program, but it is graceandtruthbooks .com.

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Grace and, and that's the full word A -N -D, not just the symbol, graceandtruthbooks .com.

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And we hope that you visit that site and are blessed by what they offer there.

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Now you were a pastor for quite some time before you wrote your first book, which is the book we're discussing today,

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Your Child's Profession of Faith. How long were you a pastor? I did serve for 26 years in pastoring, and by the way, it's very likely

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I'll be back in that role again, probably in a short time, but for the past seven years,

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I've been focusing either on writing, on the book ministry. A lot of missions work in Mexico, numerous trips to a

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Bible college in Mexico to be nearly an adjunct visiting professor there, I go so often, but yeah, served as pastor from, let's see, 93 through 2009.

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In a way, two different churches. In a way, three, you could say, and the reason I put it that way is because the second church existed for five years and then merged into another church, which you could say technically became the third church, although quite a few of those people who were in the second church are still with us.

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So there's been continuity between those two, rather than a split, we had a church merger, thank the

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Lord. And all these churches that you have pastored, were you always

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Baptistic, or a Credo Baptist, someone who believes that the ordinance of baptism is restricted to those who are old enough to believe?

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Yes, that's right. We've always been a Credo Baptist church, each of the churches that I've served and been a member of as well as pastoring.

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Well, before we even go on, I'm going to announce our email address for our listeners, in the event that they would like to join us on the air with a question.

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It is Chris Arnzen at gmail .com.

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Chris Arnzen at gmail .com. And please give us your first name, your city and state, your country of residence, if you live outside of the

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USA. And we look forward to hearing from you and your questions. And this book, what was occurring in your life pastorally that you really said to yourself,

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I've really got to write this book, Your Child's Profession of Faith. It must have obviously had something to do with parents questioning you on, how am

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I to trust the validity of my little child who is saying that he loves

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Jesus and maybe singing the song, Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.

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And maybe praying with you, maybe even asking mommy and daddy to take him to church to be baptized.

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I'm assuming that had something to do with writing this book. Providentially, it was a really interesting period in our church life.

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I was pastoring Tanglewood Baptist Church at the time. Tanglewood is a little neighborhood west of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

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And we had a sudden influx due to a church closing not far from us.

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There was a Southern Baptist Church near us, whose pastor held more or less the same views as we doctrinally, with some slight exceptions.

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But that church closed, the pastor passed on, and numerous families from there, as well as other

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Southern Baptist churches then began to be attracted to our church. They came largely because they felt the quality of the teaching was helping their families and the love of the brethren, the fellowship and family life of our church was close.

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And we began to observe an interesting phenomenon. Numerous children who had been baptized when they were very young, who had made professions of faith in that church, when they were five, six, seven years old, were starting to become teenagers.

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And one after another was demonstrating clearly from their lifestyle choices that they had not been converted.

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And this led a large number of parents to question, did we do the right thing back then?

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Were we misled? Was that just wishful thinking on our parts that we chose to have our children baptized when they made a profession of faith?

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And I began to examine this topic, but I need to help these families. And then we also had camps.

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Youth camps we would send our kids off to, a good quality one that we knew of in Missouri.

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And a number of kids we found, there was a high likelihood, not due to any particular pressures that were exerted, there weren't at this camp, but during a week of intensive focus on spiritual things, a lot of conversations about spiritual things, a lot of conversations between youth and counselors, and, you know, eight or ten messages in the course of one week directed at youth.

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It was a climate in which it was very much to be expected that a number of kids would feel very challenged and would think about making a profession of faith.

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And we noticed kind of a domino effect. If one or two youth made a profession, then there'd be a dozen more that would start leaning that way and talking about it.

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And it just was very evident that not all of these were converted, but they were feeling, they were kind of riding a wave of peer pressure almost towards making a profession.

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And so I sensed that I really needed to help parents sort out, how do you know which of these is genuine?

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You don't want to discourage somebody that really has come to the Lord, but you don't want to be encouraging a mob that's saying all at once that they're coming to faith in Christ, when there's a good bit of evidence in many of their cases that that's not really what's taking place.

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So I brought a sermon on the subject. That was how the book was birthed. I didn't really intend it to be a book at the time.

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It first was a sermon, and Jim Ellis and I got in touch from Christian Communicators Worldwide.

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Oh yeah, that did very well. Yeah, and he said, let's take that sermon and publish it into a booklet.

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We did that, and then the booklet grew to a larger book that Calvary Press published, and then Calvary Press turned it over to me a few years ago, and I enlarged it again.

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So it's gone from a single sermon to about a 36 -page booklet, to a 70 -page book, to about a 130 -page book now as it keeps growing.

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Yeah, I was working part -time for Calvary Press when this first was published, and it definitely looked thinner back then.

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Yeah, yeah. You remember the little version with the little girl on the front? Yes, exactly, right. Yes, I've been asked many times if that was my daughter.

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No, we have no daughters, but I've added a couple of chapters since then in areas that some contributed to me, thoughts that would improve the book.

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There's a new chapter on what the teacher told about baptism when you conclude that he is ready. There's even a section about some questions for pastors to ask during interviews with children, to be welcoming and non -intimidating, and to help children open up and talk to their pastors.

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That's a little scary when you're 10 years old, and even if you have come to the Lord and your pastor wants to talk to you, to tell me what's really happened in your life, it's kind of tough on the kid to express himself in that environment, so I've tried to make the for the child to speak.

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Well, this issue of a child's faith is obviously one of a parent's greatest concerns, and if not the greatest concern of a parent, because a

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Christian parent obviously wants to have the peace of mind and heart that their children are going to be in glory with Christ for eternity, no matter what may happen to them, and so it is obviously a crucial issue on how we are to view their profession.

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That's right, yeah, and that yearning of every Christian parent is one of the reasons that really any careful -thinking

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Christian parent will realize the need for such a study, because we all know that when you want something so badly come to pass, you're going to be very likely to either try to produce it, or do something to force it to come to pass, or perhaps even convince yourself that it has happened when it hasn't necessarily taken place, and many honest parents have told me that they know that all those emotions and desires get mingled up in the matter, and that they perhaps are going to be liable to be too likely to accept a profession of faith from a child as valid, which when they pondered in, they realized, well, if a co -worker of mine said those exact same words, say somebody that I work with at the factory or office,

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I would not at all necessarily conclude that he had come to faith in Christ. I would just say, well, you've said what you said, and I hope so, but our children, there's a great deal more involved emotionally for us, we have a higher stake in the matter, and so it's easier for us to be faked out, if you will, very unintentionally.

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Yeah, because parents are often blinded, well, even not just parents, people in general may be blinded by their love for someone, and that has multiplied many, many times over with a parent and a child who may just see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear because they are so anxious about the spiritual state of their child, and so I'm sure that a parent, even more than anyone, could be deceived, just as men or women who are looking for a spouse and they begin courting someone, and they can be very often blinded to all the things that they do not want to see and hear, especially if their desire to be married is overwhelming everything else that they should be concerned about in their

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Christian life. But, by the way, I want to let our listeners know that my frequent co -host, my

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Presbyterian co -host, Buzz Taylor, he is bound and gagged now in the studio.

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He's not being permitted to say a word in the broadcast today because of his views of infant baptism.

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No, I am just kidding. Buzz could not make it today for other reasons, and he will likely be back at least from time to time to co -host with me, and I'm looking forward to that.

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But this book, even though it's primarily for Baptists or Baptistic Christians, Credo Baptist Christians, I do know that there are

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Paedo -Baptists like my friend Dr. Joel Beakey and others who are very concerned about the flippant way or the misguided way which many

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Paedo -Baptist pastors and parents view the necessity to see true conversion in the hearts and minds of their children.

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The presumptive regeneration is something that not all

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Paedo -Baptists agree with, and many are very concerned about the very thing that you're writing here, even though there may be different applications here.

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But this is a universal thing in the body of Christ, is it not? Yes, I've had a number of Paedo -Baptists tell me they appreciate the themes of the book, they're glad that it's been written.

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And you know, sometimes I've even heard kidding things. We've kidded your friend Buzz a bit, and I've heard some kidding from Paedo -Baptists towards us

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Baptist friends. I said, well, you say that we shouldn't baptize our infants, and say, you just wait a couple of years later than us, and then you go ahead and baptize them anyway.

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You don't do it at birth, but you don't wait very long afterwards, and then you go ahead and do it, and you still end up with the same fruit.

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You know, and you say that, well, our practice tends to lead to a church, perhaps, with many adults who have never experienced genuine conversion.

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Well, unfortunately, we all know that's all too common in Baptist churches as well. It's for a different set of reasons.

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Yes, Jim Ellef, our mutual friend that you just mentioned, he happens to be a Southern Baptist, and he has spoken a lot about, and regrettably had to speak in public about, the rampant nominalism in the

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Southern Baptist Convention, and other evangelical and Baptist groups, particularly in the

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Bible Belt, where people are assumed that they are

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Christians just because they were raised in a Christian home, and many children, when they turn the age of 12 or 13, they're just told by their parents, well, it's time for you to be baptized, so they're really functioning just like paedo -baptists in many senses, aren't they?

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Yes, yes. And we have to ask, you know, what's the remedy to this? And the remedy to this is careful shepherding that, not only on the pastoral level, but careful shepherding that gets involved with the parents, and teaches parents how to shepherd their children, and say, well, don't just take a statement that, you know, hey,

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I believe in God now, I've decided I believe in Christ for my child, but get to know your children well, observe them the way that you would observe a neighbor, another relative, a co -worker, and, you know, it's not that it's not a matter of sitting in judgment of other people and their profession of faith, but the fact is we all make assessments of others as to whether something they say is really reflective of what's taking place in their heart or not, and I do want to encourage both pastors and parents to carefully shepherd children with thoughtfulness, and say, is there really anything about the life now that's matching up to the profession?

20:32

And you spend close to 20 pages in the book discussing the intellectual immaturity of children.

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If you could, we already read from 1 Corinthians 13 11, which the

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Apostle Paul addresses that, but if you could add on to that. Yes, yeah, well, one of the key points of the book is that matter of the intellectual immaturity of children, that children are on a different level, even the most mature child is still on a different level intellectually than an adult.

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They often don't necessarily understand the ramifications of choices that they say they wish to make.

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I bring up the point that, you know, conversion is compared in Scripture by the

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Lord Jesus to a matter of committing to a project or going to war, things of this sort, building a tower, and we recognize that children might say that they would want to participate in something like that, but don't know, don't have a mature grasp of the costs of these things, and would be very likely to perhaps begin and not finish, and so we, likewise, you know,

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Paul compares conversion to being married to Christ, and we know that, I bring that up in the book at one point, that a very young child might say in an immature moment that,

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I think I want to marry this or that person, and we recognize this is a humorous thing, something we might smile at, but we understand that they don't have any grasp of what the implications of marriage would be, and how much this would demand of their lives, and so on, and so there's a long way to go in thinking.

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Probably the key point I bring out on that matter is simply that, just because a child says something, we don't have the basis to assume that he means by that what we would mean or understand is the full meaning of his own words.

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Yes, I mean, as much as we all love children, and if we don't love children, there's something wrong with us, but we don't take their word with such concrete certainty at very young ages that we would permit them even to be voting members of a church, or to make important decisions in other areas of life, other areas of life that are even infinitely less significant than the choice to follow

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Christ. Now, obviously, there are some of our Calvinist friends who bristle at the term choosing

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Christ, but even though we are thoroughly reformed in our understanding of the ordo salutis, we do believe that men choose

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Christ, don't we? It's just that the Holy Spirit is the first to enable us to, and we need the new hearts to do this.

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Absolutely, yes. Men are called upon, you know, man, woman, and child are called upon to make that choice to repent, believe the gospel, believe on Christ, turn from trust in their own works.

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So, absolutely. Now, what do you mean by the changeableness and instability of children?

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Yeah, in that section of the book, I try to bring out, going into Ephesians chapter 4, where Paul there speaks about how we are no longer to be like children, he says, tossed here and there by waves carried about by every wind of doctrine.

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It's more than interesting that he chooses children as his illustration there.

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Likewise, you know, the Lord Jesus chooses children as his illustration when he talks to the crowd, and he says, you're like this generation that if I were to sing a song or dance or have a funeral dirge, you know, we want to do this, we want to do that, we change our minds constantly as to what we want to do.

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There's just an indefiniteness about children's direction and choices that the ability to sustain a decision of a certain kind and carry that all the way through is not there.

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Generally, the resolve, maybe would be the right word to use for this, and so we can expect that this is part of that immaturity.

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It's not just the intellectual side of the immaturity, perhaps a lack of long -term vision and ability to make choices that really last.

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That's why sometimes the prophets refer to children as capricious. There's a curse in one of the prophets that I'm going to make mere lads, they're princes, and capricious children will rule over them.

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The idea that children are going to be changeable in this way, they may not follow through on things, but for that reason alone, it's wise to at least wait a bit, and, you know, how long that bit is is up to a lot of different factors.

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No one can lay down a specific biblical law and say when a child professes faith in Christ, you should wait three months, six months, a year.

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I would be the last to say exactly how long, but I simply encourage parents, don't react quickly to this and feel like we just must very hastily go to baptism when children are very prone to change.

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Yeah, I mean, aren't children, as they're growing up, especially in the younger years or months, aren't they very often just parenting their parents and those around them, and they see that they get rewarded when they say words and make statements and phrases and things like that, and they're applauded, and they're hugged, and they're kissed, and they're, you know, all kinds of things that let the child know that the parent or whoever is around them is very pleased with what they said, so obviously when they start saying that they love

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Jesus and parents are clapping and praising the child for that, that's just going to, and I'm not saying that that's a wrong thing to do, but I'm just saying that that is a, it makes it all the more difficult to discern whether those statements are coming from a genuine belief and understanding, even if it's a very limited understanding, it's very difficult to discern whether it's real.

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That's right, yes, you know, we all like approval, and children are certainly no different than that, if anything more prone to desire approval from their parents, because certainly in a godly

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Christian home, they sense that they are under the direction of their parents, the leadership of their parents, and so there's even a natural goodness about wanting the approval of their parents to recognize that I'm apparently doing the right things, and one of the points that I like to bring out is that children in a

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Christian home, it would actually be positively abnormal and perhaps even indicative of something seriously wrong with the home if the children in a

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Christian home did not desire to imitate their parents. You know, you think that they're growing up in a climate where their parents take them to church and they sing joyfully about the gospel of Christ and its great fruits and results and the works of God, and they see other people singing about that.

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They hear sermons about it, they hear exhortations about it, they see fellowship over it, and their family's world revolves around the gospel to a large extent.

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Unless they detected just bona fide, plain hypocrisy in the home that betrayed that none of this was real, it would be very normal for children in that planet to want to replicate that and in some way to say, yeah, that's what we believe, that's what

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I want to follow after. So, only really, you know, that's not to say that any

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Christian home in which children rebel is a hypocritical home, not at all, but a home in which children rebel when they were five, six, seven years old, it would be very unusual for that to take place where there was honorable

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Christianity being practiced in front of them. Later on, you know, when a child is 16, if he still just really has not believed those things, it's very possible that even if his parents are very godly people in a genuine way, that he still might say, you know,

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I just don't believe that. Well, that would just be absence of regeneration in that case. But in the very early years, it'd be quite normal for a child to want to imitate his parents' faith.

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Yeah, I mean, in fact, it would be shockingly bizarre if a very young child were to say,

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I don't believe in Jesus or something like that. I mean, the only sign that you might have that would be normal of a child's unbelief would be his resistance of wanting to get up, get dressed, and go to church or something like that.

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Yeah, you know, just a normal kind of level of, you know, laziness or disinterest, perhaps.

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And of course, there are many Christian adults who go through the same problems sometimes. Yeah, go through that struggle.

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We have to get their heart in shape to want to go, you know? Right. But we're going to a break right now, and if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Dennis Gunderson on your child's profession of faith, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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

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That's the Thrivent story. Welcome back.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron. If you just tuned us in for the entire two hours today, we are interviewing

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Dennis Gunderson on his book, Your Child's Profession of Faith. And if you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com,

34:34

chrisarnzen at gmail .com. We have Robert in New York City who asks,

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Would you ever baptize a child who was not yet in his teen years?

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And if so, what kind of evidences would be required before you would do so?

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Yeah, that is exactly the question that I really had to wrestle with in pastoral years, and thankful to be here at any time.

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I have baptized a number of children under 10. I think the youngest child

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I ever baptized was a young man named Micah, and seven years old. The striking thing about Micah in particular, and then in general the others whom

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I did choose to go ahead and baptize there was more than merely a verbal profession that I have believed in Jesus Christ.

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One of the key things was that there was what I would call a passionate initiative on the part of the child, and not just the parent, to be baptized, and the child wanting to do so as a real act of obedience to Christ his

35:49

Savior. It wasn't so much that the parents were saying, I think my kid's insane, I want to bring him in, and you talk to him.

35:56

And then I've had a few of these interviews where there was a real, it was almost like pulling teeth to get the child to say anything about God at all.

36:05

In those cases you recognize that I don't really think anything has happened here, or if something has, he's so frightened to be with the pastor now that he can't speak up about it.

36:15

And if that's the case, then well, for whatever reason someone cannot articulate a verbal profession of faith, we can't baptize someone who is unable to make a verbal profession of faith, even if they're just flat out scared to talk.

36:28

We need to at least wait. But with these children, they had a yearning desire to please

36:35

Christ with this act. There was interest in spiritual things, there was evident attention to the sermons, to the preaching, there was conversation about the messages afterwards, a desire to apply them.

36:53

I remember this one boy speaking about how he had pretty much ignored the

36:58

Lord's Supper during the time when the Lord's Supper would go on, which happened frequently at our church, it's weekly at our church now, but at that time it was frequent but not weekly.

37:07

He said that used to be just kind of a time when he would tune out, phase out, and say, well, you know, the adults are going to do this thing and I'll just kind of be bored for a little while.

37:15

He said it began to sink into me what this means and what's being pictured and symbolized here.

37:23

And he said, Pastor Dennis, I began to weep and just was crying over how my sins had a role in this and that he died for me.

37:34

When I see that kind of desire to please Christ and interest in the things of God, desire to share the gospel of Christ with others, that's very, very different than a child who just comes and with perhaps some backing or even drawing from his parents just saying, you know,

37:56

I'm saved, I want to be baptized. There's such a dramatic, evidential difference between the two that it was not hard to make that decision.

38:06

And thankfully those cases in which I have that, I know many of those children as adults now and they're still pressing on with the

38:12

Lord. Hmm. And by the way, Robert, we've got a surprise for you. You are getting absolutely free of charge a copy of your child's

38:20

Profession of Faith, compliments of our guest and Grace and Truth books, and it will be shipped out to you, compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com,

38:34

cvbbs .com. And we thank Todd and Patty Jennings for their faithful support of Iron Sharpens Iron and for shipping out all of our winner's books absolutely free of charge to us at Iron Sharpens Iron and free of charge to you as well.

38:51

So we thank them for that. And Todd and Patty a long time, they're great folks over there at Cumberland Valley that are very

38:57

Christ -honoring business for decades now. Yep, they do. They're great folks. And we have an anonymous listener in Michigan who says,

39:08

I have a daughter that professed Christ at 14, lived as a practicing believer until her late 20s and then, when her husband cheated on her, has abandoned

39:23

Christ. She explained to me that the Lord didn't answer her prayers by saving her marriage.

39:30

Is my daughter backslidden or unconverted, and how does one determine the difference between these two categories?

39:40

That's very painful to hear about. Yeah, yeah. And she is certainly not at all an uncommon experience.

39:48

If this is real apostasy, and if it is, that would be indicated by it being a lasting decision and not just a flash of bitterness.

39:58

But if it is a real apostasy, I've seen often where some real tragic incident of this sort, where someone has had experienced an enormous disappointment concerning their prayers, what they've sought the

40:17

Lord for, and seeking the Lord for something that would be very God -honoring to save their marriage. Probably the only answer

40:26

I can give at this point, and it would be irresponsible for me to answer in too much depth, not knowing the daughter, not knowing this individual, but I would say that in time you will know whether she has genuinely turned from the

40:39

Lord and was never converted, or if this is a reactive period of bitterness and anger at God.

40:49

Any disciple that says he's never experienced vexation with God or disappointment with God or annoyance with God on some level has probably just misled himself about his own feelings or is just lying to himself.

41:04

We've all been there at some point or other on some level, and it's going to be a matter of will she choose to remain in that posture and say, this is it,

41:13

I'm done with Christ, he's a disappointment, he didn't do what I hoped for and so I'm done with him, or if this is a temporary reaction.

41:22

And I've seen people go through periods of rebellion for sometimes some length of time and then come back.

41:30

What's going on in their hearts during those periods of time we often do not know.

41:36

They may even use some of the most strong rejecting statements about Christ in our presence when that may not even be exactly what they're thinking and feeling in their hearts, but they're wanting to lash out.

41:49

And I pray that she still knows the Lord or will come to know the

41:54

Lord. I wish I had more to say other than time will tell which one it is in her case.

42:03

Probably one of the best things those parents and others can do for her is, it's not easy to swallow, but to try to be persuasive on the point that God does remarkable, mysterious things even when we do not understand them and when we don't see any way in which the current situation could possibly honor him.

42:28

He has a remarkable way of bringing glory and honor to himself and good for a larger number of people out of events that look completely pain -filled, worthless, and as though there's no possibility of good coming out of them.

42:40

I grabbed the incident of Joseph in the book of Genesis as evidence of that.

42:46

How many times he could have said, why should I serve the Lord when look at all this that is happening?

42:52

What possible good could come out of this? How could this be good? And he's the one who recognizes later,

42:58

God, even what you meant for evil towards me, you thought about killing me, you decided against it, you sold me into slavery, and God meant all of this for good, even though you meant it for evil.

43:11

That is something which is extremely difficult to bear with when it's my life and it's happening to me and my family.

43:20

I pray she will accept that providence and humble herself before the Lord and that those parents will have grace to help her get there.

43:29

Well, anonymous listener, you are going to get a free copy of this book by Dennis Cunderson, Your Child's Profession of Faith.

43:37

If you give us your full name and address, which will obviously not be announced on the air, so your anonymity will remain concealed, and we will look forward to sending that out to you as soon as possible thanks to our friends at Grace and Truth Books and also at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, so get that to us as soon as possible.

44:06

I just heard recently from a friend of mine who will also remain anonymous, who is a pastor who raised his children in the faith, obviously, and this is a very faithful pastor, a very wise, intelligent pastor, and this pastor's daughter unfortunately met a man in a cult, fell in love with this man in the cult, and converted to this cult's religion, and was just last week married in this cult, and the pastor, the man

44:52

I'm speaking of, could not even bring himself to go to the wedding or participate in it because he warned his daughter and her groom that they were in the synagogue of Satan, and he could not put his blessing upon this, so I would appreciate you to pray not only for our anonymous listener, but my anonymous friend as well, as they seek the

45:23

Lord's wisdom at this time in their lives on how to relate to their children. This brings up an interesting question that I hear quite often from those who are paedo -baptists, or for those of our listeners who don't know what that term means, it's basically someone who believes in baptizing infants, although the word actually,

45:45

I believe, means little children, but it's commonly used by people who baptize infants, and they will say to us who are baptists or baptistic or credo -baptists that we have no argument that holds water, no pun intended, when we say that we insist upon repentance and faith as litmus tests for someone who is a proper candidate for baptism, because we do not know the heart of that person, and that we frequently, as baptists or credo -baptist

46:25

Christians, we frequently baptize people that are in reality unregenerate, and then we find out later, wow, we made a mistake there, that person's not regenerate, and this person has lived many decades after this baptism as a rebel against Christ and His Word.

46:44

Now, isn't the difference between certainly baptizing someone that you have no clue whether they're a believer or whether they're regenerate, and knowingly, or should

46:58

I say, with good intentions, baptizing somebody that you believe has demonstrated biblical repentance and faith, and you are just going by the only clues that a human being can judge a person's profession on?

47:17

I mean, it's not like we're just haphazardly as baptists baptizing anyone that just says words, and of course there are baptists that do that, but we as Reformed Baptists tend not to take a very flippant attitude towards somebody's profession when we have them baptized.

47:38

That's right, yeah, and when the credo -baptists can point to baptistic churches that do that, well then, guilty as charged, unfortunately that does take place far too often, but there really is no one that would have any basis to say, well, you're wrong to withhold baptism because you want to wait for a clear profession of faith, and that you don't know for sure.

48:05

The fact is, every believer is on a regular basis assessing the people around him.

48:12

We all just make judgment calls. We have our opinion as to whether this person that we know is converted, and this person that we know is not, and we may or may not have any judgmental intentions in doing so, we simply come to sensible conclusions based on the evidence we see, and the individual members of churches who think that, well, we shouldn't make that judgment regarding baptism, they just really have not thought through what it is like to bear the responsibilities of church leadership, and the fact is, well,

48:43

I'm sorry, I don't have the luxury to not make that decision. I've got to assess that and decide whether to baptize someone or not.

48:49

It's part of my calling as to who I'm going to believe is, who

48:56

I deem as prepared biblically by the Spirit of God for church membership. Now, what do you mean in your book when you refer to the likelihood of deception in children?

49:10

I don't know if you would agree with the term, vipers in diapers. I think even a paedo -baptist,

49:19

John Gerstner, the late John Gerstner, I think he even described children that way, which is unusual for a

49:25

Presbyterian, but tell us about that, the likelihood of deception in children.

49:32

Yeah, I think, based, you know, for starters, on a proverb such as Proverbs 22, that foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, and the whole theme of the book of Proverbs is that young children are in need of wisdom and instruction.

49:50

They are, by nature, the simple -minded, and so it would be very easy, predictable, and to be expected that a child could be easily misled.

50:02

They are not doctrinally astute. They don't have the tools and experience to think through the variations of how things could be presented, you know, in a subtle way to mislead them.

50:17

I remember hearing one Baptist pastor in Arizona one time, and I came to see from doing some door -to -door visitation with him that I had to agree.

50:26

He said, you know, he said, I think I could walk down the street in any neighborhood in this town, and he said,

50:32

I could knock on a door. He said, if I meet a child 10 or under, he said, I could lead that child to make a profession of faith in Jesus in less than 30 minutes, no matter who he is, no matter what kind of home he's in, and I thought,

50:44

I think you're probably right, and he wasn't meaning that he intended to do that. It wasn't the nature or kind of his ministry to do that, but he said,

50:52

I think it's doable, and then he even compared it. Likewise, he said, you're even younger age.

50:59

He said, in fact, if you have a child five, six years old, he said, if his parents told him, he said, we no longer believe in Jesus.

51:05

We've become Muslims, and we're going to follow Allah. He says, there would come a point somewhere in that child's development at later years where he would probably whistle at that and resist and say, that is not what you've taught me all these years.

51:19

I'm not going to follow you down that path, but the younger the child, the more likelihood

51:25

I think there would be that the child would follow and say, well, it's okay. You're the parents, and you're right, and I'm going where you go and doing what you do.

51:38

So there is, I think, a definite propensity towards gullibility and an easy persuadability, and thus, those are factors that would contribute in anyone's life to deception.

51:53

Tell us about the childhood being a time for patient cultivation.

52:03

Yes, certainly parents need to not be in a rush about this, to take their time to realize that, you know, they've got many years with their children to form sound beliefs on a basis for understanding the gospel with them, and there just is not a reason to hurry with children when the fact is, you know, that portion of the book really is, in many ways, it's the natural outgrowth of all the preceding portions.

52:42

Because a child is easily deceived, because he's intellectually immature, that implies that there's going to be a maturing process, but it's gradually developing.

52:52

The constantly nourishing and passing on more of the faith once delivered to the saints to your children, you know, in a clear effort to see and gradually comprehend the gospel and its claims on his life.

53:11

We have a listener, Joseph, in Suffolk County, Long Island, and Joseph says, judging from what you have said, is it dangerous to parade children around in church at all different types of performances and cantatas and celebrations where they are on stage leading the congregation in worship and doing other things that would give them further confidence that they are truly

53:51

Christian, when in fact they may be just deceived little children? Very interesting.

53:59

I have not been asked that particular question before. I've been asked some nuances that bear on it in some similar ways.

54:08

This has some similarity to the question I'm asked on occasion about, well, you know, if a child is unconverted, is it even right, for instance, to teach him to pray when we know that God does not hear the prayers of unbelievers?

54:20

But this is on a deeper level that I'm being asked here now, or a different level, let's say, not necessarily deeper, participation in the activities of church life and even in what perhaps the child could perceive as participation in ministry in church life.

54:38

You know, would we have an unconverted child be the church pianist? We certainly wouldn't have an unconverted child lead the congregation in worship.

54:46

Well, then what is happening with a cantata and a group of children? My thought would be that this is not something

54:53

I think the Scriptures speak explicitly to concerning church life and give us intensive detail.

55:00

I would say my judgment call would be that I think it would be permissible to allow young children to participate in some sort of psalm service with the congregation or even with a group of children on occasion.

55:18

I would not make a, I think there'd be a serious lack of judgment possibly in making it a regular thing.

55:25

If it was habitual, if it was fairly common on a week -by -week basis for a group of children, for instance, to be called upon to minister in song to the church,

55:35

I think it would send a misleading message and perhaps convey to the child's heart exactly what the listener is concerned about, that is this child going to sense, hey,

55:44

I'm really part of this thing. I'm part of the ministry here in a way, and that gives me confidence that I am a member of this.

55:53

I'm not merely a participant in what takes place publicly, but that there's a significance to this as to my status here.

56:00

You don't want to send that message no more than you would purposefully call upon unconverted people to preach the word or lead in prayer or anything of that sort.

56:13

You would not, even if they were adults. So I think making this a rarity perhaps on holiday occasions or something would be one thing.

56:25

Making it a regular practice would certainly be in danger of sending the wrong message to the child's mind.

56:32

Yeah, you just reminded me of something that I found very humorous, but in reality it's not really very humorous at all.

56:40

It's disturbing, but years ago someone had told me that the church that they had grown up in, the elder board and the deacons got together to vote on a man that was being presented as a candidate for the deaconate, and they voted him into the deaconate so he would start going to church.

57:08

It was the request of the wife to get him accepted into the deaconate so that he would begin to go to church.

57:19

Give him a formal role so he'll come to church. He'll have a reason to come. Yeah, if he doesn't have an internal reason in his heart to come, you better not give him a different one.

57:29

Exactly. That would actually make the Apostle Paul's qualifications for a deacon totally reversed.

57:36

But anyway, now what we were just talking about, you were answering

57:44

Joseph's question on Long Island. By the way, Joseph, you're getting a free copy of Dennis Gunderson's book,

57:52

Your Child's Profession of Faith, as well. So give us your full mailing address, and this is

57:57

Compliments of Grace and Truth Books, and also is being shipped out to you by our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

58:05

So we thank both of them for providing these books today. But you were speaking about the children being used in all kinds of celebrations and special events at a church.

58:20

Do you think that there's also a danger of demeaning what worship is by making it a time for fun, and it's viewed as just another game, and so on?

58:37

There's something very serious, although worship should involve joy, that's without question, and there are a lot of us who are

58:45

Calvinists who seem to be devoid of it in their worship. But at the same time, there's a difference between joyful adoration of our sovereign

58:55

God and having fun during a worship service, isn't it? Yes, yeah, for sure.

59:01

We most certainly should be joyful. I once led our congregation in a study through the

59:07

Psalms to recognize that I think there was only one or two Psalms that brought up worship with fear or reverence, and something like 33 of them that brought up worship with joy, or singing with joy.

59:19

That clearly seems to be the dominant emotion, if you will, associated with how we ought to be presenting worship.

59:26

That ought to be something that we take delight and pleasure in. But there's an enormous difference between that and simply making something purposefully fun, because fun does not really have to do with joy.

59:41

In fact, most of us know enough unconverted people to know that many of the people who are lost that we know who are pursuing fun the hardest is precisely because they have no joy.

59:53

And they compensate for a lack of joy by constantly trying to make life fun, surrounding themselves with events that please them in some way or other, when there's nothing internally that pleases them.

01:00:06

And a worship service is no time for something like that. We should not create moments to be purely entertaining, but rather we want to see worshipers who come and present the sacrifice of praise to God in all of its forms, because they delight in God himself.

01:00:27

Amen. We have to go to another break right now. And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is

01:00:32

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. That's C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

01:00:40

Don't go away. We'll be right back with Dennis Gunderson as we continue our discussion on your child's profession of faith.

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That's wrbc .us. Welcome back.

01:04:03

This is Chris Arnsin. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with one hour to go is

01:04:10

Dennis Gunderson, and we are talking about his book, Your Child's Profession of Faith.

01:04:15

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsin at gmail .com,

01:04:22

chrisarnsin at gmail .com. And you may remain anonymous, just like one of our listeners did, if it makes you feel more comfortable due to the private, personal, and intimate nature of your question.

01:04:36

That's chrisarnsin at gmail .com. Well, Dennis, what are the manifestations that a parent should be looking for, or even a pastor, when a parent is requesting baptism for a child, what are the manifestations of faith that they are supposed to be looking for?

01:04:57

Right. Well, the things that I think we ought to look for are not complicated.

01:05:05

They are only hard to observe at times for us, simply because I think we complicate it for ourselves by looking for other things, or that we're not thoughtful about how to look for these things appropriately, but I think they really consist in a sound and truthful embrace of the gospel, a belief of the real facts of the gospel.

01:05:33

In other words, not just a statement that I believe in God, or that I believe in Jesus, but that, in fact,

01:05:39

I understand what Jesus Christ has done, and I trust in that. I entrust myself to Him.

01:05:47

I trust His work rather than my works. That is one of the areas that will very much, in a precise way, distinguish a lacking profession of faith from a sound and real profession of faith, and that is the difference between a child who will say merely that I believe in Jesus, and a child who says, no,

01:06:11

I understand what Christ has done, and that justifies me before God, rather than my own works.

01:06:21

Even if he doesn't know how to say the word justification or something of that sort, there needs to be a basic grasp that no, what he did is why

01:06:31

I have favor with God, not what I do. And then moving on from there, in addition to that,

01:06:37

I look for just what I would call a delight in it, a joy in Christ, a desire to follow

01:06:46

Him, a grateful desire to follow Him and obey Him as a result of that, and that coupled with a decisive rejection of sin in my life.

01:06:57

As imperfect as it is, just as it's imperfect in my life, nonetheless, a clear -cut resolve that because I trust in Him, I know

01:07:06

I owe my life to Him, and therefore no other idols are entitled to any portion of my life, and I want to fight and resist those things.

01:07:16

When I hear those kinds of things come from a child, even in the most immature verbal form, there's little question in my mind that I have all the basis to go ahead and proceed with baptism that I could possibly ask for.

01:07:30

Would you say that what you are looking for in many regards is nearly identical to what you're looking for in an adult, but the younger a child is, the profession has to have more unusual circumstances surrounding it.

01:07:48

Would you say that there needs to be something more extraordinary in a young child that would set the child apart from somebody who's just parroting phrases or wanting to please his parents?

01:08:02

Yes. You know, for instance, I mentioned a while ago when I think the first questioner who sent in an email question asked about whether I would ever baptize children in pre -teen years, and I mentioned that boy,

01:08:15

Micah. In his case, there was a really striking realization of something. He said to me at one point during our interview towards, you know, in view of baptism, he said to me that he now had a desire to treat his sister better, and he said,

01:08:32

I used to be really rough on my little sister, and he said, and I repented of that. That was wrong. I need to treat her with kindness.

01:08:39

So I asked him, I said, do you think then, I said, Micah, I said, is

01:08:45

God saving you now because you are treating your sister with kindness?

01:08:52

Is that why God's pleased with you? And you could almost see the little gears turning in his brain and the smoke come out of his ears, you know?

01:08:59

And he was absorbing that and taking that in, and he said, not exactly.

01:09:05

He said, I, he said, I want to treat my sister better because Jesus saved me.

01:09:10

He said, but that's not why I'm saved. I thought, oh my goodness, like you just drawn the line in the sand between, you know, imputed righteousness and imparted righteousness.

01:09:20

He understood the difference between Protestant and Roman Catholic justification, basically. He said, well, my works have proceeded from my faith, but they are not the reason that I'm converted.

01:09:31

That's not what makes me right with God. That's what, it's what follows my being right with God. Right. And in a seven -year -old's words, he mailed that.

01:09:43

Well, praise God. Well, we do have a listener in Perry County, Pennsylvania, Arnie, who says, have you heard of Ted Christman's book,

01:09:54

Forbid Them Not, Rethinking the Baptism and Church Membership of Children and Young People?

01:10:00

And if you have, how different is his approach than yours, if at all? Right. You know,

01:10:08

I read that, I read that a number of years ago. We're not very different.

01:10:13

There's not really much difference at all. Ted and I had a couple of conversations about that, but it had been probably 10 to 15 years since I read that and conversed with him.

01:10:24

It was very brief. It's much briefer than my treatment. And not to insinuate by that that it's not as deep or in any way shallow.

01:10:34

It was well thought out. But I found that our thoughts on it were very close.

01:10:40

Perhaps on a minor level, Ted might have advocated in this,

01:10:46

I'm just going from memory now, he might have advocated that perhaps in some cases we ask for too much depth of doctrinal understanding and maturity from children before we will baptize them.

01:10:57

And if you knew of churches that were prone to that, then I would have to heartily agree and say we mustn't ask for detailed theological statements as a basis for salvation.

01:11:13

I've known many full -fledged adults who were converted who couldn't give you detailed theological statements yet.

01:11:18

They hadn't been taught enough doctrine yet. You know, it's part of why the Church exists. We make disciples of all nations, then you baptize them, and then the third bit, then you teach them to observe all things without a command to do.

01:11:30

Well, that implies that when they became disciples and they were baptized, they didn't know all that yet. And so that's the role of the

01:11:36

Church, to deepen their faith. I believe that Ted's book was a response to some

01:11:45

Reformed churches that were probably calling upon not only children, but many people for what

01:11:54

I would call extensive confessional agreement before they would allow membership. And any churches that have a confession of faith sometimes will require that there be great detail in terms of confessional agreement before someone is even baptized.

01:12:11

I would advocate that those doctrinal areas of instruction and prayer take place after baptism rather than before.

01:12:18

Yeah, and don't you think that there's a difference between what you would expect from a person who is a baptismal candidate as opposed to a church member,

01:12:32

I mean, or somebody joining a church? Don't you think the two things, being a member of a church, might require a more thorough explanation of theology?

01:12:45

And so on. Because it seems to me that there are people whose baptisms have been delayed by their pastors and elders and congregations for far too long because they even have to go through like a test,

01:13:00

I mean a lengthy test, written test. It just seems to me very unbiblical because you have the jailer that was baptized the very night that he professed faith, you know, after he had already had the

01:13:17

Apostle Paul chained to a wall that very day. Yeah, not a lot of time for fruit there to be observed, you know.

01:13:26

We have to admit to the possibility of, you know, sudden radical conversion that makes evidence that someone that was unsaved moments ago is now saved, you know, and there's not really a basis for delay in their baptism.

01:13:40

So now different churches will have different practices as regards membership. You know, my church is the church that I have served.

01:13:49

When you are baptized, you become a member of the church. There may be other churches that would say, well, in our case, you can be baptized and then you may enter a class of instructions to prepare for membership in the church.

01:14:06

At this point, I don't see a dividing line between the moment of baptism and the moment of being part of Christ's church.

01:14:12

It seems to me that those that were baptized are added to the church immediately, and so that is what we've done. Let me just repeat our email address.

01:14:20

For those of you who may have tuned in late, it's chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com

01:14:27

if you'd like to join us on the air with a question. We do have

01:14:36

Bibi in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who asked, have you ever heard that the

01:14:42

Puritans, although they were Pato Baptists, did have more restrictions from children's participation in acts of worship than is common amongst evangelicals today, even though they baptized their children as infants?

01:15:05

I have actually heard that from Don Kistler, who does a phenomenal job putting on a conference on the

01:15:13

Puritans, and even Don, as a Presbyterian, thought that Christians allowed their children to participate in too many things involving worship.

01:15:24

But what's your thought on that? This kind of ties in with what we were talking about earlier about children being paraded around in church and perhaps adding to the deception that they have that they're really saved, and also demeaning the seriousness of worship.

01:15:43

Yes, probably the area in which I think the Puritans most, you know, knowing that they had relatively simple worship services, the realm that is primarily in mind in this case was restrictions or limitations on participation in the

01:15:59

Lord's Supper. And I would, if I recall right, there are, it was fairly common in Puritan church worship services that even some of those who are baptized were not necessarily welcomed to the

01:16:15

Lord's table yet. And you have a section in the book, a chapter, on when your child is ready for baptism, if you could discuss that a little bit.

01:16:28

Yeah, I think it's important that obviously pastors should be well -versed in this, but I saw it from them that this section of the book is primarily designed to talk to the parents about, once you see that your child is ready for baptism, then you need to have a clear enough understanding of what the meaning of baptism is to convey that to them.

01:16:58

And that requires something of the parents for them to do their own Bible study, particularly, you know, obviously if some of our listeners are in churches perhaps where the

01:17:10

Word of God is not studied as carefully as they would like it to be, or taught as thoroughly as they would like it to be, then you may have to do some of that work yourself.

01:17:19

But I would encourage a family to grab a good systematic theology. Wayne Grudens is probably the one that I think is the clearest on this.

01:17:27

There's a 21 -page section in Grudens' systematic theology, I think it's in the 900s somewhere, that deals with the meaning of baptism, and it's understandable to anyone.

01:17:39

You could sit down and read that section aloud with a child that was 10 years old. You could probably read it aloud with a younger child if you were prepared to explain some of it, and make very clear the symbolism of what this conveys about being united with Christ in his death and his resurrection, what the meaning of the entire ritual is, and what he is picturing.

01:18:05

Help your child prepare a testimony. In our case, you know, again, I'm not going to make a rule for others, but I think it's very appropriate that if baptism is to be based on a profession of faith, then

01:18:15

I view it as necessary for someone to be baptized. They need to be able to publicly express their faith.

01:18:23

Well, a parent may need to help a child prepare that statement, and there's nothing hypocritical or wrong about that.

01:18:30

I've known husbands and wives who have talked to one another with their own statement of profession to make sure that they were stating clearly what they thought, and none of us are perfect with our words, especially at times when we're wanting to present something that we want to be very well thought out, and that's very important.

01:18:49

So, those are some of the steps that I think we can take. Reading with your children passages in Scripture about baptism, and a parent doesn't have to be prepared to give a sermonic exposition of those passages, but you have to be familiar with them and the basics of what they mean.

01:19:08

You have a very important section in your book that provides helpful, suggested questions for pastoral interviews with children about baptism, if you could provide some of those questions.

01:19:24

Yes, sure thing. Well, in this case, it's interesting, I'm going to have to look at the book to provide those questions, as they're not right at the tip of my tongue.

01:19:36

I haven't baptized a child in our church for some time. While you're looking it up,

01:19:42

I'll announce our email address again, it's chrisarnsen at gmail .com, that's

01:19:48

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com, and we do have a couple of listeners patiently waiting to have their questions asked and answered, and we'll get to you as soon as possible.

01:20:00

Yeah, a couple of those that come to mind is, you might ask the child, the pastor might ask the child, which of your friends are

01:20:06

Christians? And you'll get a feel from him based on that, or what he thinks a

01:20:11

Christian is. He will indicate from his own words some of those that he thinks give demonstrable evidence that they are

01:20:21

Christians. You can ask the child, what are new things that you sense the

01:20:27

Lord has taught you since you've been saved? Things you didn't understand or know before that you know now.

01:20:35

What do you like most about church? That's very revealing. You know, if your child says what he likes most about church is the playground afterwards, or something like that.

01:20:46

That's very different than saying, well, I just love to sing hymns like, and can it be, to the

01:20:52

Lord. I like when our pastor teaches the Word, because I love growing and understanding the Word. I've asked children, when our church is having the

01:21:01

Lord's Supper, what are you usually thinking about? And that's been very challenging to children, and I've got some very forthright and honest answers from them at those moments, where the questions need to be straightforward in that style, and not the kind of things that require great doctrinal astuteness to answer, but that just probe into very simple areas of one's heart.

01:21:25

What are you thinking? What are you feeling about these things? I can clearly recall that kind of dovetails to what you're talking about.

01:21:38

The woman that led me to Christ, she was in a church that used to allow children to have the

01:21:50

Lord's Supper, and when she was visiting my congregation, the congregation where I was a member,

01:21:59

I told her that we did not do that, that you had to be baptized as a believer and so on before the

01:22:08

Lord's Supper was permitted to be given to you. And so when the elements were being passed, and the little child, who was probably about eight or so, was reaching for them, the mother said, no, you can't have those.

01:22:29

And later on, the child said, why didn't you let me have the bread and juice?

01:22:36

And the mother said to the child, well, in Chris's church, when you're having communion, you have to really understand what it's all about before you can have that.

01:22:51

And the little child said, that's communion? My friend Sally had her first communion and she got a bike!

01:23:00

So he was upset that he wasn't able to have this because he would have gotten a bicycle for it, and obviously this child revealed that this child was not ready to have communion or baptism.

01:23:16

And then on the other side of the coin, I can tell you that I, as an adult in my mid -20s, when

01:23:25

I was first under the conviction of the Holy Spirit and believe I was born again,

01:23:31

I still dressed in a very worldly way. Now I know that there are people who have differences of opinion on what is the appropriate way for a

01:23:42

Christian to appear, especially at worship service and so on, but I used to have very long hair and wore motorcycle jackets and wore t -shirts that had my favorite heavy metal groups' insignias on them and all that kind of thing and basically had the appearance of a tough guy, a heavy metal rock fan and so on.

01:24:08

And I was in a 7 -Eleven convenience store and there was a woman there who was with her little niece who was probably three or four, and perhaps even younger, and the woman said to the little girl, this is

01:24:25

Chris and he goes to my church, he attends the church that I go to.

01:24:33

And the little girl said, he doesn't go to church. And then the woman said, oh yes he does.

01:24:41

The little girl said, no he doesn't, he doesn't go to church. And the woman was getting a little angry and embarrassed and she said, stop saying that, he does go to church, why do you say that?

01:24:51

And the little kid said, he doesn't look like he goes to church. And the

01:24:56

Lord actually used that child to convict me to get my hair cut, and not that it was like something required of me for salvation or anything, but I said to myself, if a little kid is going to question whether or not

01:25:14

I am a Christian just because of the way I'm looking, I'm not gonna hold onto this idol anymore, it's not worth it.

01:25:22

So I got my hair cut and so on. Go ahead,

01:25:28

I'm sorry. Yeah, if I'm sending the wrong message, it doesn't even seem credible that I could be a believer in Christ.

01:25:36

If I need to reconsider this, that was wise of you to be responsive to that rather than to protest that.

01:25:42

Yeah, and I know that I probably got some of our brothers who have long hair and dress exactly the way

01:25:48

I described, maybe even pastors who are upset with me now, but I'm just relating to you my story.

01:25:57

But we are going to go to our final break and if anybody would like to join us on the air, you've only got about a half hour left to send us an email at chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:26:10

chrisarnson at gmail .com. So don't go away, we're going to be right back with Dennis Gunderson and more of our discussion on your child's profession of faith.

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Fellowshipconferencenewengland .com. And I want to thank Pastor Mack Tomlinson and the brothers and sisters in Christ at Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas, for sponsoring

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And I think, if I'm not mistaken, isn't Pastor Mack Tomlinson a mutual friend of yours as well, brother?

01:32:31

He is. Mack is a good, dear friend. I generally see him about at least two or three times a year, and we always stop to have lunch when

01:32:39

I pass through the Dallas area and we get time together there. We carry all his books, including his excellent biographies of Leonard Grabenhill and Conrad Murrell.

01:32:50

Yeah, in fact, I interviewed him on both of those biographies not that long ago, and also interviewed him on the difference between biblical and false ecumenism.

01:33:02

So he's a great brother. He really is. Well, we went through some helpful suggested questions for pastoral interviews with children about baptism.

01:33:12

How about common questions parents may ask regarding the baptism of their children? Yes, it's, parents are, thoughtful parents are going to be loaded with questions about whether their children should be baptized, how to know when the timing is right, and so on.

01:33:32

They're going to ask, are we being a hindrance to his obedience to the Lord if we exhort him to wait on baptism?

01:33:44

They're going to ask questions such as, you know, what exactly are the differences between the children of Christians and the children of unbelievers, even while they are still both unconverted, that is, our children and the children of unbelievers?

01:33:59

So they'll commonly ask that question that in a forum was asked a while ago about, is it hypocritical for our children, while they have not yet come to faith in Christ, to be singing hymns that in themselves profess faith in Christ, for instance, or profess a resolve to follow

01:34:17

Jesus? And so it's going to be necessary to help parents with questions like that.

01:34:23

Now, one thing that you've demonstrated, that you have the same spirit of our mutual friend

01:34:32

Mack Tomlinson, and that you find truth in those men of God that are not normally associated with the

01:34:41

Reformed Christians of yesterday or today, and you have found some gems from Andrew Murray that help in this area.

01:34:53

Yes, Andrew Murray was certainly an honorable minister of Christ, and while there would be points where his ministry would not resemble ours, he has probably one of the best books ever written about evangelizing children, which, while not decisively

01:35:16

Calvinist by any means, certainly his book, The Children for Christ, and some of his other writings and preaching would be of no resemblance to the idea of hastily decisioning children or attempting to manipulate them into some sort of quick profession of faith at an altar call or something of that sort.

01:35:36

That would have been unheard of in his thinking, and he would have been all for very thoughtful and careful evangelism of children.

01:35:45

So I was very pleased to quote his book. We actually at one point considered publishing his book,

01:35:50

The Children for Christ, and decided rather at the time that it would be more sensible to take what we thought were some of the best excerpts from it and include them in the existing book.

01:36:02

And we do have a listener from New Jersey.

01:36:10

Robert, he asks, you were speaking about earlier how it can be dangerous to give children a false impression that they are saved.

01:36:27

I was wondering if you thought that it would be best not to have children even lead in saying grace and things of that nature.

01:36:39

And my follow -up question is, are parents putting their children in spiritual danger by having in their midst, while having holiday celebrations and other things, people who are overtly against the gospel of Jesus Christ?

01:37:00

It's two different questions there, but they're both good, I think. Yeah, yeah, they are, sure.

01:37:07

I would say, you know, if we have our children, for instance, as we did give thanks at times, you know,

01:37:18

I would not always be the one who would lead in a prayer of thanksgiving over food. Sometimes my wife would, sometimes an older converted child would, and then sometimes one of the other children would.

01:37:30

I think it's valid that we view some of these occasions as what

01:37:37

I would call training or instruction in prayer, even if we recognize that you are not at a status before the

01:37:45

Lord in which your prayers are even heard by the Lord. Rather, we're not so much encouraging prayer as a gesture of your walk with God, but I think there is some training taking place that hopefully can benefit the later.

01:38:01

Probably the best way I've heard it explained is a pastor from years ago said to me something about, well, you know, we want these things to sink down into their hearts, but sometimes something just has to be practiced for a time and worked out in the head before it actually is affectionately embraced.

01:38:18

We have to understand something before we affectionately embrace it, just as we have to know someone before we can love them. So there are things that begin in the mind or begin in the habits and then begin to affect the affections afterwards.

01:38:31

For that reason, that has bearing on why I think it's perfectly appropriate to encourage and even insist that your children worship

01:38:38

God with you and sing hymns of praise with you. It's not because their worship is acceptable to God if they are not converted, but it's because you...

01:38:46

Another way I might put it is, yes, an unconverted person's worship is not received by God in the manner in which a believer's is.

01:38:55

However, far better to worship God than to simply choose, fine,

01:39:00

I will not worship God at all then. I will not even participate in giving thanks on any level. That would be a greater wrong,

01:39:08

I think, to encourage that or to hinder expressions of thanks of any kind, so we encouraged it.

01:39:15

And the other part of the question, which actually came up in another interview not long ago, when we were actually discussing the issue of homosexuality, the other part of the question that Robert in Wayne, New Jersey asked was...

01:39:30

That's my hometown, that's where I grew up. Really? Oh, wow. He was asking if you should have people who are openly enemies of the gospel in your home when your children are present and that kind of a thing.

01:39:45

I guess you can't isolate them from too much because you're not going to know how to behave at all when they finally are out in the public.

01:39:56

I mean, you don't have them locked in a cage or something, but I guess you have to use some discernment, though, and so on.

01:40:04

But what is your opinion on that? Yeah, that's right. There needs to be discretion exercised. There's a great deal of difference between having, say, unconverted people in your home who you are ministering to, your children are going to have some of their best opportunity to observe that the gospel really is impacting an unbelieving, unwelcoming world by you choosing to bring unbelievers into your home, and even people whose habits are quite contrary to yours, different than yours.

01:40:31

There's a difference between that and, say, bringing people in who will actively disrespect those things and cause conflict and be aggressively seeking to persuade them of otherwise.

01:40:45

That's a very different matter, so parents should have the good judgment to distinguish between those two. I know when each of our children did come to faith in Christ, there came a point where they began to express with enormous gratitude.

01:41:01

I remember one of my sons, when he went off to a Christian college, he had already been converted, but he was only converted at age 16, and then within a year and a half was at the

01:41:10

Master's College in California. And he said, you know, I'm realizing that I find it very natural to minister to unbelievers and to my neighbors here and to kids at the school who

01:41:22

I sense aren't really with it. He said, I'm realizing that this is natural to me because our home was a revolving door of needy people.

01:41:30

We had everybody through, all kinds of neighbors and single moms and broken homes and families and people of all races and missionaries traveling through, and then, you know, just people of every kind who didn't know the

01:41:46

Lord as well. He said, just the house was a revolving door. We had so many people who lived with us over the years. It was just staggering, and many of them unbelievers.

01:41:54

And he said, I acclimated to that. And he said, that's very natural for me now to reach out to all sorts of folks.

01:42:00

And he said, I just discovered that now that I'm here and making those decisions on my own. So that can be a very healthy thing.

01:42:07

It's going to be very difficult, you know, to turn the question around another way. It's going to be very difficult for children to really accept what the gospel and its power has in reality.

01:42:15

If the only way that we feel that people can be protected is, is to keep them away from unbelievers, you know?

01:42:22

So that doesn't betray that we have a message with power. That betrays that we have a world kingdom that we need to build up electric fences around to keep everybody out of.

01:42:34

And that's not what the gospel is all about. Yeah. I, you just reminded me of a remarkable story that I have to abbreviate, obviously, but I have supported over the years, a ministry out in Riverhead, Long Island called

01:42:50

Timothy Hill Children's Ranch. And Timothy Hill was a young boy who was in some respects a remarkable child that demonstrated a more vibrant Christian faith than is typical for a preteen child.

01:43:09

And he actually would teach children younger than he was in Bible studies and all kinds of things.

01:43:16

He was a remarkable kid and he would witness the love and compassion that his parents demonstrated towards foster children that were frequently invited in and out of the house.

01:43:32

His parents were regularly taking in foster children until they moved on to permanent homes and so on.

01:43:40

And Timothy started to wander around the town where they lived and getting prices for property because his parents,

01:43:55

Jerry and Fern Hill, were getting phone calls from real estate agents saying, you know that your son, your 12 -year -old son is pricing property because he wants to build a ranch for homeless children?

01:44:08

And this boy said that since he liked riding a horse, which he actually bought with his own paper route money, and he loves to be around farm animals, he had envisioned a place on a ranch, a working ranch, where homeless children could find refuge.

01:44:28

And that young boy, Timothy Hill, was killed in an accident, a tragic accident.

01:44:34

He was hit by a truck while riding his bicycle to school. And his parents, very quickly after Timothy's death, said we have to make

01:44:45

Timothy's vision come true. And they started the Timothy Hill Children's Ranch in tribute to their son.

01:44:52

And it's been in operation for over 30 years, I believe. And the website, just for our listeners to know, is timothyhill .org.

01:45:01

I highly recommend the Timothy Hill Children's Ranch. But you reminded me of it when you were saying that the impression, the wonderful impression of the gospel being demonstrated and the love and compassion of Christ being demonstrated to others can be seen and imitated by children who witness their parents inviting all sorts of people into their home and showing them love and compassion.

01:45:30

We do have Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, and it's not far from Riverhead, where I was just talking about.

01:45:38

Tyler says, Should a Christian parent take their child through the book of 1 John to encourage reflection on true conversion and saving faith?

01:45:49

No, Tyler, you should never do that. I'm only kidding. No, don't use that book.

01:45:57

Yeah, I cannot think of any reason why not. It sounds like a very sensible and useful thing to do.

01:46:05

In fact, you know, some of the points that are made in 1 John indicate they're right up the alley of answering the question that was asked maybe 30 or 40 minutes ago about what evidences do we look for?

01:46:14

Well, you know, does your child love the people of God? Now, is there an earnest desire to obey the commandments of Christ?

01:46:22

Does he trust in Christ alone and not his own works? Does he demonstrate a greater love for the world and its things than any evidence of love for the kingdom of God?

01:46:34

Things of this sort, very basic matters. John is always, you know, John is the apostle who just brings us back to such simple matters, you know, do you love

01:46:43

God? Do you love his people? Do you want to obey him? I mean, how much more basic could you get? And that's John and the nature of how he writes and a very, very worthwhile study.

01:46:54

Yeah, I think one of the benefits of taking a job through a letter like 1 John too is that you want to avoid and you can avoid the danger of using it just as though it was some sort of searchlight as if the whole purpose of the letter was merely to, you know, raise questions about people about their conversion.

01:47:13

Are you really saved? Well, let's see, you know, let's read 1 John and find out if you are. The letter has a context to it and each of those points that speak of evidences of spiritual life are becoming a context of a great deal of explanation of the love of God in sending his son and what he did in accomplishing that for sinners.

01:47:38

And so make sure to read it all and don't just look for those, you know, if we say that we are his, don't just look for those statements.

01:47:47

Read the whole letter and survey all of it carefully so that those points arise in their natural meaning and not just as snippets as though they were designed to be little individual tests of our faith.

01:48:02

Now, since Baptists and Baptistic Evangelicals do not believe in baptismal regeneration, they do not believe that baptism is required for salvation, is there any harm that is done by delaying baptism until the child is older?

01:48:26

I think really the only harm that could be done is if it's genuinely demonstrable that we are making someone wait on baptism when there just simply is no evident good reason for doing so at all.

01:48:48

And for that reason I would say, you know, to turn the whole purpose and point of the book around a bit, we have to be willing to admit our lack of omniscience and the possibility that I may in fact someday baptize someone who led me to believe they had faith in Christ and who was not a believer.

01:49:14

Oh, that even happened to the Apostles. We have instances in the book of Acts where it's clear that someone who was assumed to have come to faith in Christ was not a disciple, and so we must ensure that we've got to insulate ourselves from that in some loctite way where it's simply impossible for us to err.

01:49:36

And when we do that, we're always in danger of just making too many rules. So we don't want to do that.

01:49:43

For that reason, again, I like to stress that the problem is not a matter of whether or not

01:49:49

Christ can save children if he can. The difficulty is how much harder it is to discern whether someone is professing the faith when the terms in which they express it are so much simpler and their comprehension of it is so much simpler.

01:50:05

And however, if they can express, even in simple terms, a genuine grasp of the gospel and demonstrate real repentance in faith, however simply that is expressed,

01:50:17

I think we should go ahead and baptize. Yeah, those who believe in paedo -baptism, sometimes—not all of them,

01:50:29

I don't want to broad brush—but some of them misrepresent the

01:50:34

Baptist view because they will say, we believe in adult baptism, and as if the majority of Baptists will never baptize a child under any circumstances.

01:50:49

But that is not the position that you hold. Now, there may be Baptist churches that do do that, and I know that there are cults, like I remember

01:50:58

Herbert W. Armstrong would not baptize anyone until they were in their 20s or some strange level of age, which makes me scratch my head because it was very prevalent in years gone by for people to be married when they were teenagers.

01:51:17

I don't know where he got the 21 or 23 -year -old, perhaps even older than that, he had some age that he insisted upon.

01:51:26

But there is a difference between adult -only baptism and believer -only baptism.

01:51:34

I think that in fact, you know, to go back to—what was the book we referred to a while ago?

01:51:40

Oh, Ted, yeah, Ted Chrisman's book. I do think there were elements of Ted's book that were reacting to the fact that there are a few—I would call them a small minority—of

01:51:53

Reformed Baptist churches, but there have been a few that have decided on adult -only baptism.

01:51:59

I think they would have committed themselves constitutionally in their bylaws to baptizing only those that were 18 years and up, but I have not heard of a church of that sort in Reformed circles for quite a number of years, so I think that's an extreme rarity at this point.

01:52:19

Well, I really want to make sure that you say what you most want to have etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners before they leave this program today, to make sure that that is spoken, and if, when you're finished, we have time for any more listener questions, we'll take them, but I just wanted to make sure that the time didn't slip away from us without you giving the primary things that you want my listeners to remember today.

01:52:52

Yeah, thank you for that. Well, you know, we haven't touched on this explicitly in this way, but I would say it now, given that opening.

01:53:01

Parents, just really get involved in discipling your children, and do more than take your children to church.

01:53:12

I have known so many fathers that feel inadequate for the practice of family worship, for instance, and say,

01:53:20

I'm not a Bible expositor, I don't know how to teach the word, I get nervous when

01:53:26

I try, and I tell those families, you know, all you need to do is sit down with your family and read the scriptures aloud with them, and you will find, if you get in the habit of doing that, there will be comments that will naturally come to mind.

01:53:40

You may not be capable of commenting on the whole passage, but you will edify your family if you merely grasp something out of it and say, you know, look at that,

01:53:48

I just noticed that, what a wonderful observation this point is, or I see something here

01:53:54

I have not seen before, or I see something here that I think our family needs to take heed to. It doesn't always have to be a challenge, you know, not every passage of scripture is meant to rebuke us.

01:54:05

Some of them are meant to instruct us, some of them are just meant to warm our hearts and bring us joy and elevate

01:54:11

God in our sight and make us exalt Him from the heart more. So just to spend time reading the scriptures with your children, and you will find the scriptures, the

01:54:22

Spirit of God will apply them Himself. You'll have plenty to talk about if you're reading them together, and then make an intentional effort to disciple your children.

01:54:32

That will involve spending individual time with them. I encourage parents always to don't just spend time with them in groups, in the family context.

01:54:40

Take children aside one at a time for periods together, just you and one, even one older, you know, father's taking their daughter on some sort of a date out, and take that time to really disciple them, and you will be gratified at how the

01:55:03

Lord works in that. Amen, and I would like you now to whet the appetites of our listeners for another interview that I would like to do with you on courtship and dating, so what's the difference?

01:55:15

Another book that you have written. Yes, yeah, when did we schedule that for? Actually we haven't yet, and I was going to have you hold on after we get off the air so I can schedule you on the calendar here.

01:55:30

Yeah, we'll come down in time for that, good. Well, as soon as some of your viewers hear that, you know, there will probably be people right away that will react with like, oh brother, you know, one of these.

01:55:40

There's a lot of bizarre teaching about the idea of courtship out there these days, and I like to classify myself as, you know, in the non -bizarre category.

01:55:53

I think it's very clear that the dating tradition has produced some seriously bad fruits.

01:56:00

The practice of dating, and that is, you know, two young people just going off on their own without adult supervision, really emerged about in the 1920s.

01:56:11

No one can say it never happened before then. We're just saying that as a normal way of building romantic relationships, that is that's more or less the time period in which that began to be the norm, and honestly, dating was never designed to help young people build strong relationships that resulted in marriage.

01:56:31

It was always designed from the beginning to give us the entertainment and fun and a break that we want right now.

01:56:37

That's all it was intended to do, and so it can't be expected to be a helpful pattern for building strong marriages, because that's not what its purpose was anyway.

01:56:47

Its purpose was to get us away on our own, away from adult supervision, to have the fun that we want to have, and that in itself can make it very poor preparation for marriage.

01:56:57

Well, how did generations before this, and even some other cultures to this day, what did they practice as their way of preparing young people for marriage?

01:57:05

And I think there are elements of the courtship tradition which, while some can be overly strenuously applied in ways that become preposterous, the fact is there are elements about it that are that contribute very much to an excellent outlook on how to prepare for marriage that are worth looking into, and so I'd like to take us back and examine that and see how

01:57:29

Christians might apply some of the wisdom of previous generations to this subject.

01:57:36

Amen. Well, mark your calendars. Well, actually, we can't tell you to mark your calendars yet, because we don't know the date, but we'll find out after the program is over when our conversation on courtship and dating, so what's the difference, will be taking place, and I'll announce that at some point later this week, so you can mark your calendars then for that, because I think it's a very controversial issue.

01:58:03

It's an issue that people disagree on strongly, but it's a very important issue, and I think that it will be greatly edifying to all of the listeners of Iron Sharpens Iron, and I think it actually has a lot in common with what we were even discussing today about a child's profession of faith is also the discernment used in a child's mind on when they should even begin entertaining the idea of envisioning a future romantic involvement with somebody of the opposite sex and so on, so this is a very important issue, obviously, especially in a day and age when women are becoming pregnant in skyrocketing numbers out of wedlock, and young men are totally showing a lack of concern or responsibility for these pregnancies, and it's just a tragedy to see how this even has led to widespread crime and all kinds of things with children being raised in atmospheres like that, but we thank you so much,

01:59:21

Dennis Gunderson, for being on the program. I want to repeat your website. It's graceandtruthbooks .com,

01:59:28

very easy to remember, graceandtruthbooks .com. We look forward to you coming back on the program, brother.

01:59:36

Yes, thanks. It's been a real joy to be on, and I appreciate the questions that have been asked.

01:59:42

You've got some thoughtful listeners, evidently. Yeah, and I want everybody listening to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater