February 24, 2017 Show with Kevin P. Swanson on “Freedom: The Exciting Story of the Development of Western Liberties over 2,000 Years”

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

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, 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 Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth listening via live streaming.

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron wishing you all a happy Friday on this 24th day of February 2017.

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I'm delighted to have back on Iron Sharpens Iron for the first hour pastor

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Kevin Swanson. He is director of Generations, a ministry he founded to strengthen homeschool families around the country.

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He's host of the daily radio program Generations Radio, the world's largest homeschooling and biblical worldview program that reaches families across the

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U .S. and in over 100 countries. He's also the executive director of Christian Home Educators of Colorado.

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He's the author of Apostate, Upgrade, 10 Secrets to the Best Education for Your Child, the

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Family Bible Study Guide Series and others. He's also a teaching elder at Reformation Church which is a congregation in the

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Orthodox Presbyterian denomination in Elizabeth, Colorado and we are going to be addressing with him for the first hour his book

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Freedom, the exciting story of the development of western liberties over 2 ,000 years including the

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Battle for the Magna Carta, the Scottish War for Independence, the Dutch War for Independence, the

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Battle for Religious Liberties in the 17th century, and America's War for Independence and the Bill of Rights.

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

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Our second hour is going to feature my old friend Mike Gadosh, the founder and director of Solid Ground Christian Books and we are going to be addressing books that he has in print both from the past and present that focus today, we're going to be primarily focusing on his books that deal with preaching and the importance of preaching in the pastoral ministry.

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But first of all for our first hour I'd like to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, Kevin Swanson.

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Thanks Chris, it's great to be back with you on air. Great and I'd like to welcome back in the studio my co -host

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Reverend Buzz Taylor. It's good to be here as usual. And first of all Pastor Swanson, this book that we are addressing today,

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Freedom, what was the catalyst behind you writing this book? Well I have a desire to see freedom restored in the western world and I think our freedoms are being threatened at the very least.

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Christians may very well lose their religious liberties here within the next few years. There's a shot at salvaging the

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Supreme Court in four years but we'll see what happens there. The Obergefell decision

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I think was one of the strongest catalysts to bringing this thing together. According to John Roberts, the

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Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Obergefell leaves no comfort for religious peoples in this country.

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So that means that religious persecution is coming. So you think that those conservative leaning people, which would include many

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Christians who voted for Donald Trump, do you think that their relaxed atmosphere and having an abundance of confidence in his presidency, do you think that's really a lot of exaggerated hopes perhaps?

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At this point Chris, it seems to me that there's not a lot of hope for restoring religious liberty under Trump.

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He has maintained the executive order that Barack Obama instituted to persecute

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Christian companies that want to do business with the federal government.

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Anybody that takes the wrong position on homosexuality is going to be persecuted by the

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Trump administration as well as the Obama administration. So I think the initial indications are that Trump will not do much for the cause of religious liberty.

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Yes, well I think that Christians should really be boldly speaking out because they may be naive to this.

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They may be thinking because of certain things that he has done, like in regard to the unisex bathrooms and the public school systems and so on, they may think that he is completely on our side.

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But that may have been just a bone that he threw and he does owe his presidency to the

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Christian vote. So Christians should be speaking out much more boldly and loudly and clearly.

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Well, this book that you have addressed, you wrote it with the catalyst, as you said, of the fact that we have been and still are and will continue to be likely losing our religious liberties one after another.

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But you have hearkened back to the past in this book to address some significant eras in history that dealt with people fighting for freedom.

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And you start with, in a list here, at least in your publicity, you start with the battle for the

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Magna Carta. Explain. Well, there's been a great battle for liberties in the

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Western world on the part of Christians. And I think the reason why we have the Bill of Rights is because of a

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Christian influence that goes all the way back to Patrick and Augustine and others who fought for manumission for slaves in the fourth and fifth centuries.

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So Christians have had a great heritage of fighting for liberty. You don't see that in the pagan nations around the world until Christianity shows up in history.

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And then in terms of the right to own property, the right to be free, to express ourselves and so forth, these are rights that have been fought for hard in places like the

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Netherlands, in Switzerland, and in England, Scotland, and America as well.

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So the fact that we enjoy the Bill of Rights goes back 800 years. The 800th anniversary of the

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Magna Carta was in 2015 and occurred in, of course, 1215.

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And that's just an exciting development in the history of Christian freedoms. And I think as Christians, we need to know that heritage and pass that heritage on to our children.

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Not many enjoy freedom or at least appreciate it and would be willing to fight for it.

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Certainly what we've seen in the modern socialist states is a rise of government control of every single aspect of our just over the last, say, 80 years.

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And hardly anybody has made anything of an argument against that. Certainly Christians haven't made much of an argument against it.

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And I think we have a good, solid argument from biblical history and from our own

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Christian history to argue for freedom. So I think Christians are the ones that are going to defend freedom.

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And I'm hoping that someday they'll gain something of a vision for it and maybe restore some freedoms in the

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Western world. We already have a listener in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, Christopher, who says, what do you make of the argument of some

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Christians who would tell us that we are sojourners in a foreign land here on this planet, and we should not be overly concerned with oppressive governments because this is not our home, our home is yet in the future.

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And they have even said that the founding fathers who waged war against the

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British in the War of Independence were in sin because they were seeking to overthrow the authorities that had been ordained over them.

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Well, I think God calls us to engage God's word, God's law incorporated into life.

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And the idea that somehow we will never impress God's will or God's law in the marketplace of ideas or in politics is ridiculous.

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God has raised up the civil magistrate to be a minister for God, a minister for righteousness, to be a discourager and a punisher of those who do evil.

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And those who do evil, that has to be defined biblically. God did not raise up Hitler to do evil per se.

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He requires Hitler to do that, which is right, yet Hitler violated his law and then became a tyrant.

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So as Christians, we have a great heritage of theologians and great

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Christian leaders who have defined liberty according to God's laws. And that's really been the basis of Western liberties.

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Without that, we'd all be living gulags. So I encourage people to require the magistrates that they subscribe to the laws laid out in God's word, and they submit themselves to it.

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Of course, many don't. Many oppose God's law. They say, let us break their bands of thunder, let us cast our cords from us, because they don't want to be bound by the laws of God.

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But nevertheless, we need to encourage the judges of the earth to kiss the sun, lest they be angry and they perish from the way.

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The apostles used that psalm to apply to the rulers in their day. And I think we have good reason to use that for our magistrates as well.

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Now, I find it interesting the way you're discussing this is many people today, especially having come through the government schools, haven't even learned our

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American heritage correctly. And and even when I came through,

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I would have figured that the Bill of Rights was due to the genius of our founding fathers. And now you're saying no, it goes back 800 years.

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Could you please explain that? Well, you know, you don't get the Bill of Rights out of nothing. Everything sort of bases itself in something.

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And if you trace it back, you'll find a lot of what you find in our Declaration of Independence in the

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Netherlands Declaration of Independence, the Scottish Declaration of Independence, which came like three, four hundred years earlier.

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And then a lot of the content of the Bill of Rights are found in the Magna Carta, especially those referring to trials and and rights to heritage inheritance and property and so forth.

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So, you know, that that all goes back to the Magna Carta. And I think to know that heritage is so, so absolutely crucial for those who appreciate the freedoms that we've had here in this country.

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So, yeah. What was the year of the Magna Carta? What's that? What was the year of the Magna Carta?

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It was 1215. Exactly. A hundred years ago in 2015. Okay. Yeah. So what can we learn now heading into the

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Scottish War for Independence? What can we in the 21st century learn from that? Well, I think what you see all the way through the 1300s, 1400s, 1500s was a desire on the part of these rather small countries to develop large, centralized nations and sort of a

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Babel instinct. And I bring that out in the book. The idea that man could go to, let's make a name for ourself, is an inclination towards establishing the state of God on earth.

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It's a violation of the first command, essentially. And that's what man wants to do. Instead of binding himself by the laws of God, instead of seeking more of a decentralized approach to things, he is constantly urged on by his natural instinct to build a tower of Babel.

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And this is the sort of thing you see in the development of modern empires from about the 13th century onwards. Of course, with the

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Holy Roman Empire, which is a disaster, produced so much of the inquisitions and so much persecution of the saints.

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And the same thing you see with the Spanish Empire. And then onto the French Empire and its horrible persecutions of the

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Huguenots. And then onto the English Empire. The English Empire treated people just a little bit better.

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And yet, that's where the modern slavery system was formed, right around those empires. And then we had to fight those wars.

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And then we began to see the empires, of course, decentralize and fall apart as well. So inevitably, these big empires develop their strength.

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They find ways to tyrannize and to gain control of as much territory as possible.

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And then they wind up disintegrating eventually. But, you know, you find instances in history, like the

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Scottish in 1300 under Robert the Bruce and William Wallace, were able to fight back the imperialistic tendencies of the

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English. And then the same thing happened with the American War for Independence as well. And it is an argument to be made that the

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American War for Independence was an attempt to hold the king to the covenant he made with his colonies.

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And as a parliament, that was beginning to institute things like taxation without representation, which our nation saw to be a violation of the original covenants made with our nation.

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So the violators of the covenant was not our colonies, but it was really the mother country.

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And that's why they went to war. And by God's grace, they won. And that was sort of a setback for the modern tyrannies for a short time.

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And then, of course, America becomes a tyranny after the Civil War. And that's how America turns into a nation where about 50 % of the gross national income is taxed and spent by our governments.

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And that's up from, you know, 5 % prior to the Civil War. So, you know, America is about 10 times the tyranny she was in the 1860s, 1870s.

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Today, if you look at the government expenditure divided by the gross national income. But that's what's happened in most of the nation, national governments in the present day.

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And I think Christians need to be aware of that. There's been this instinct on the part of modern governments to turn themselves into a god, to tax the people at much, much higher rates than God would tithe us and develop tyrannies.

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But, of course, the average person is just not aware of that. They don't really think about that because they've been sort of frogs in the boiling water for, you know, 80, 90 years.

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It's hard to know what's happening when your tyranny is rising about a degree Fahrenheit a year.

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But it's good to sometimes look at the graphs and say, well, this place has turned into an incredible tyranny over a period of 90 to 100 years.

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And that's what I try to lay out in the book. We have Ronald in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who says,

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I heard you mention William Wallace. How accurate was the movie Braveheart in your opinion to the historical figure?

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Braveheart, the movie was not accurate at all. Actually, it turns out that William Wallace was studying for the ministry.

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He had two uncles that were pastors in the Chaldean church at the time that had somewhat of a separation with Rome.

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In fact, most of the bishops had huge arguments with the Pope, and the Pope excommunicated the bishops.

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This was the typical thing that happened at the Magna Carta, and then again with the Scottish War for Independence. Inevitably, the

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Pope would take the side of tyrants. The church, the local church in England or Scotland, wherever the battle for liberty occurred, the local pastors would always take issue with the

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Pope. The Pope would excommunicate them and excommunicate all the guys like William Wallace and others who were fighting for the freedom of Scotland.

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And then the local bishops or the local pastors say, don't worry about the Pope, just ignore him. He doesn't know what he's talking about. And so they just ignore the

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Pope and act more or less independent of Rome for a period of time. So inevitably, the

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Pope was a big centrist. He was a big tyrant. He was a tyrant of all tyrants.

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In fact, it's interesting, John Calvin has instituted a study of the word tyrant in the institutes.

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And it turns out John Calvin refers to tyranny about as many times as he refers to the word predestination.

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So it's really interesting that Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, Samuel Rutherford took the issue of freedom from tyranny as one of the most important elements of the

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Protestant Reformation, something that I think many of us forget today. Yes, and it's such a tragedy that many people have slandered and maligned

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Calvin himself as being a tyrant. Yeah, it's funny that they do so, you know, and they do so in the

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Servetus case. But, you know, he fought fairly hard against the city council for them proceeding the way they did with Servetus.

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Of course, it was the decision of the city council to do what they did. But Calvin's main concern was the tyranny of the absolute control that Rome had over not just the church, but the local magistrates as well.

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And he did his best to separate, you know, family, church, and state, and develop something of jurisdictional boundaries for these spheres of government that God has established.

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So John Calvin is one of the most important characters in the development of modern liberties.

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I've got a lot of quotes from his institutes, as well as Samuel Rutherford and Lex Rex. These guys were really the minds behind developing something of a battle for liberty in the modern world.

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Of course, what happens is after about the 18th century, you get into the 19th century, and there's just this modern enlightenment that creates the modern nation states that are absolutely humanistic and have cast off all of the

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Christian boundaries placed upon the state, and then you develop the absolute tyrannies in the

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East and the West in the 20th century. So, you know, we as Christians, I think, need to get back to the standards of God's Word and do as much as we can to, you know, say, hey, we need to reestablish a concept of freedom in the modern world.

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What happened in terms of tyranny is, initially, it was the pope that had almost absolute control over Europe.

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He handed that off effectively to the princes, not willingly, but he just had to hand it off to the princes when

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Henry VIII broke from the church. So then you have the absolute right of kings, and the prince tries to become the absolute tyrant for a period of time, and then after the

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French Revolution, that power is handed off from the prince to the people. So tyranny went from the pope to the prince to the people, and now it's the democratic vote that establishes the major tyrannies in most of the

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Western world, as well as many of the communist countries, as well. Well, by the way,

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Christopher and Ronald in Suffolk County, Long Island, you have both won a free copy of the book we are discussing today,

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Freedom, by Kevin Swanson. So please give us your full mailing addresses so you can get those shipped to you as soon as possible.

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Tell us something about the Dutch War for Independence. Not something you hear a lot about amongst

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American Christians. Well, I think every Christian in the world needs to hear something about the Dutch Battle for Independence, because here we have probably the most severe persecution a

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Christian people have ever suffered, at least in the last 600 to 700 years, and it came through the

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Spanish Inquisition, which was imposed upon the Dutch by Philip II. Philip had committed that this

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Inquisition would be twice as bad as the Spanish Inquisition. Indeed, that's pretty much what happened. Tens of thousands of people were stretched on racks.

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They were thrown in fires. They were persecuted, tortured, and martyred during the 1550s and 1560s.

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But there was one man who stood against it, and that was William the Silent. One of the things I do in the book is just talk about these great heroes, unbelievable stories where men, effectively all alone, stood against these major tyrants, and by the grace of God, God opened up some amazing doors for them, and they were able to secure liberty for their people over a period of time.

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That's what happened with William the Silent. He gave up everything. As far as I know, the only political leader in the world who's given up as much as he did for the cause of liberty.

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He gave up his three or four brothers, all of his possessions. He gave up all of his lands, all of his honors, a couple of his wives.

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He left them or died during the conflict. Finally, he gave up his life. Philip II put a contract out on his life, and the second assassination attempt took his life in 1581.

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But he gave up everything. He gave up his entire life in order to salvage something of his

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Dutch people from the fires of the Inquisition. Thanks be to God, he developed liberty there for the

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Dutch and helped form the Netherlands Declaration of Independence, and then eventually, of course, became the grandfather of William Mary Fame that brought back some measure of freedom in England from the tyranny of the

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Stuarts. So it was really the line of William the Silent that brought liberty back to the

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Western world and reestablished some level of religious liberty. William the Silent was even kind to the

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Catholics. He was very careful not to persecute the Catholics. He was a man of great care and love for others, and didn't want the state to be persecuting people on the basis of conscience issues.

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So just a tremendous hero in the history of the battle for liberty. And if you're a

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Christian out there, you absolutely need to do the research or read my book on the history of the

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Dutch battle for independence and the incredible legacy left by William the Silent. That's William the

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S -I -L -E -N -T, the Silent. Yeah. How did he get that name, do you know? Well, it's a fantastic story.

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He was almost like an Esther or a Joseph. He wound up in the king's court, or a

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Moses. He wound up in the king's court as a young man. He was raised as a Lutheran, eventually became

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Reformed, but he was raised in the king's court with Philip II. And Philip II had him as the governor of the

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Netherlands for a period of time. He fought some of the empire's wars. He's a great man of battle, but he had such a love for God and a love for God's people.

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He began to see the fires of the Inquisitions around the Netherlands, and his heart was stirred. And around that time, he was on a hunting trip with the king of France.

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The king of France had a discussion with the emperor of Spain, and he happened to share with William the

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Silent that the emperor had committed that he was going to wipe out all

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Protestantism out of the Netherlands, and he was going to bring an Inquisition twice as bad into the

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Netherlands as Spain had encountered. And so William heard it, and said that William was silent.

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And he burned in his heart at that point that he would give his life to save his people, the

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Dutch, and wipe the Spanish vermin out of the land, if God would so help him.

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So it's just a tremendous story of a man who had a huge amount of political wisdom, and he held back.

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He didn't show his cards immediately, but eventually, of course, became the leader of the resistance and brought about peace and freedom for his people.

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We have Susan in Newville, Pennsylvania, who says, Do you have any idea how it was that a country like the

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Netherlands, so rich in the Reformed faith and so dedicated to the three forms of unity, could possibly devolve into the atheistic, agnostic, and leftist country that it is today, where the church is only a molecule of a remnant there?

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Today, it may be, the Netherlands may be the most apostate nation in all of Europe, and she's right on that.

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It's one of the saddest stories of the last century. But we live in a century of apostasy.

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The entire Western world is in apostasy. If you want to read the story about it, go back to the interview we did on apostate, the men who destroyed the

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Christian West. But yes, we have a very sad, sad story that's worked its way out. But I think it's a Psalm 78 issue where apparently nobody told the sons and grandsons the great story of the

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Reformation. We have not carried on the responsibility of sharing the mighty deeds of God in history, and the laws of God, the commandments of God from one generation to the next.

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And because somebody dropped the ball, because there has not been a family discipleship from one generation to the next, at some point there's major apostasy that occurs, and then you see the disintegration of entire nations, and the destruction, or the slow and steady destruction of the

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Christian faith in places like the Netherlands, England, Scotland, and America as well. Now, here in the

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Ivy League schools in the United States, it seems, and correct me if I'm wrong, that the

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Puritan heritage of these schools seem to crumble when

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Unitarianism and Universalism crept into these institutions, into the people that were on the faculty, and that seemed to be the death knell for these schools.

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Is there something similar that took place in Holland? I think that's the story. I mean, I think the story everywhere.

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Certainly it was the idea, men, the ideologues, the philosophers that we talk about, apostate, that brought about this change.

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But those ideas were taught and inculcated in the public universities. And I think the public universities separating out an autonomous knowledge based on human reason from sacred knowledge, this separation of sacred knowledge and humanistic form of knowledge in the

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Christian universities of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, and so forth, is really the beginning of the end of the influence of the gospel in these nations.

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So it is the seminaries, the universities that corrupt, and eventually destroy the faith in these various countries.

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We have a question from Slovenia that I will ask you before we go to the break, and then you could answer it when we return from the break.

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Joe in Slovenia says, Please ask Kevin Swanson to address the issue about why our forefathers, who were far more knowledgeable in the

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Bible, and were willing to initiate the Boston Tea Party over a mere three pence per pound tax on tea, while we are taxed as astronomical rates and sit by saying nothing.

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Thank you for your work. And obviously Joe in Slovenia is revealing that he is an

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American in Slovenia through his discussion of our forefathers. But we will get your answer on that when we return from the break.

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If anybody else would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, c h r i s a r n z e n at gmail .com.

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And please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside of the USA. And by the way,

28:38

Susan in Newville, Pennsylvania, you have won a free copy of the book Freedom by Kevin Swanson as well, so thank you for your question.

28:45

We'll be right back, God willing, after these messages, so don't go away. Hi, I'm Chris Arnzen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, here to tell you about an exciting offer from World Magazine, my trusted source for news from a

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Welcome back, this is Chris Arnzen, if you just tuned us in. Our guest today for the first hour with a half hour to go is

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Kevin Swanson. We are discussing his book Freedom. If you'd like to join us on the air,

32:50

I would do so immediately because we only have less than a half hour left if you'd like to have your questions asked and answered.

32:57

Chris Arnzen at gmail .com, chrisarnzen at gmail .com. Before the break, I ask you a question by our listener in Slovenia, Joe, who wants to know why our forefathers who were far more knowledgeable in the

33:11

Bible and were willing to initiate the Boston Tea Party over a mere 3 pence per pound tax on tea, while we are taxed at astronomical rates and sit by and say nothing.

33:23

It boils down to a materialism and a security in the state that has pretty much enveloped the entire nation.

33:31

It's hard to find people with the sort of feeling that Samuel Adams had when he said, if you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom.

33:40

Depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel near your arms. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.

33:52

There's a guy where freedom is running in the bloodstream. You don't see that much anymore, and I think it's because we live in a materialistic age where people just want that personal peace and affluence that Francis Schaeffer would talk about.

34:05

That becomes the highest value, and when that becomes the highest value, nobody's going to put their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor on this side of liberty.

34:16

So our forefathers would sacrifice everything for the cause of liberty and hopefully righteousness, and it is important to define liberty rightly.

34:24

We haven't done that yet, but if you define freedom, in the ultimate sense, it is ultimately freedom from sin.

34:31

Jesus said, if the Son will set you free, you will be free indeed. So the free indeed -ness that Jesus gives us is a freedom from sin.

34:39

So we've got to remember that as Christians, and really that comes about primarily by the preaching of the gospel and by the regenerating work of the

34:46

Holy Spirit in our lives. But socially, what happens is as people are regenerated, and there's something of a revival that happens in a nation, eventually people start living lives that are more moral and responsible.

35:00

They begin to be more self -governed, and they don't need tyrants anymore to govern them. So ultimately, freedom is going to come by the gospel and by the preaching of the gospel.

35:12

So political freedom becomes a byproduct of the freedom that comes through the regenerating work of the

35:19

Holy Spirit of God, and freedom from sin. Our forefathers actually had a right when they said, either you be governed by God, or by God you'll be governed.

35:28

That was Benjamin Franklin. And what he meant was, either you'll be governed by God's laws and sort of self -governed in a moral sense, or by God's providence or sovereignty, you're going to wind up being really, really tyrannized by the state.

35:44

Either there will be a self -government in which the family's strong, there's not a lot of killing of babies, there's not a lot of immorality going on in the masses, or you're going to wind up with a tyrannical government.

35:59

So what's happened in the last hundred years, of course, is the dissolution of the family, and of course the rise of the welfare state.

36:05

So voila! You know, the breakdown of morality? And yes, you're going to have a rise in tyranny. So in a sense, we're not going to have freedom unless there's a revival.

36:17

So these things come together. That's why we take a different tact than libertarians.

36:23

Libertarians don't define liberty as liberty from sin. And yet, as Christians, we must do that.

36:30

Otherwise, we're going to see the inevitable rise of tyranny. Libertarians cannot solve the problem, because they think that man can live in sin and somehow survive in a free nation.

36:44

But that's just not possible. Our founders understood that. It really comes from the Proverbs, where it says, for the transgression of the land, many are the princes thereof.

36:52

So where there is much, much transgression, there will be an increase in the bureaucrats, in the tyrants, that will attempt to control every aspect of our lives.

37:02

And that's really the history of the last hundred years. Wouldn't you agree, not to take the discussion too far afield of what we are intending to discuss?

37:11

Don't you think, though, that there are Christian and constitutionalist libertarians who are fully aware of the necessity for us to bow our allegiance to Christ, and their libertarian aspect is exclusively in regard to their desire to see a very small government?

37:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree with that. And as long as they understand that we've got to define freedom still, we've got to define civil freedoms still by the laws of God.

37:47

How do you define harm? The libertarian doesn't really know how to define harm.

37:53

So eventually, you can do whatever you want, they say, as long as you don't do anybody harm.

37:59

But then they define harm in different ways. So before you know it, they allow for abortion.

38:05

Before you know it, they will allow for homosexuality or for pedophilia. Because they'll say at the end, it doesn't really harm them.

38:12

It's actually rather good for them. So yeah, that's what the Greeks did with the gymnasiums in their training of the young men, they introduced pedophilia, because they didn't feel it harmed anybody.

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So the libertarians, those that are, you know, free from God's law and interpreting law autonomously are going to wind up moving that line from generation to generation.

38:32

And we certainly have seen that in the last 30 -40 years. By the way, our friend in Slovenia, Joe, has one follow -up question.

38:39

He says, Are there connections between public education and the woeful lack of awareness regarding our loss of liberties today as compared to what our forefathers enjoyed at the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century?

38:54

If so, why are they? How is public education affecting our knowledge in inalienable human rights?

39:01

Well, you know, you got to believe that government controls the schools. And this is really the assumption of guys like Jean -Jacques

39:08

Rousseau and Karl Marx, who insisted on public education for all as the 10th platform or plank on the

39:14

Communist Manifesto. And so, you know, it was absolutely essential that they wean children away from the families, and they plug them into the state as early as possible, the state would provide for them, their upbringing, their teaching, their education, their food, even, and so forth, so that the individual would no longer feel as if the family is responsible for this, or that the family was a viable unit anymore.

39:40

And so it was absolutely essential for the communists and socialists to de -relevantize the family, which indeed it's done.

39:46

And the state has replaced the family, at least in the area of education and welfare. So that was absolutely essential to develop the slave state of a modern world.

39:57

So was it was it the most important catalyst? I guess I think probably up there, it's probably one of the most significant means by which modern nation states enslave an entire nation.

40:10

And that's one reason why I'm so much in favor of Christian education, private education, home education.

40:16

And I've been involved in Christian home educators in Colorado now for about 20 years, leading the homeschooling movement in Colorado and around the

40:23

United States. So my feeling is that freedom will return if we begin to encourage families to take responsibility for their children's education.

40:33

And if they take the responsibility and the funding of the children's education, then they will hopefully seek the freedom and the right to do just that.

40:41

So that may be the most important reintroduction of freedom into modern society is to hopefully get parents to desire the freedom to raise their own children without the imposition of the state to tell them how they're going to educate their children, and what they're going to feed them and how they're going to give them shots and so forth and so on.

41:00

Thank you, Joe, for providing us with an American address to send your free copy of Freedom.

41:06

And we will have that shipped out to your daughter in Georgia on your behalf in the near future,

41:12

God willing. Thank you very much for the excellent questions. We have Pastor Sterling Vanderwerker of Shepherds Fellowship in Greensboro, North Carolina, who says, is your guest familiar with the

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Magdenburg Confession, that's M -A -G -D -E -N -B -E -R -G

41:32

Confession, and its influence on federalism and the power of the local sheriff for the good and safety of God's people?

41:41

I believe I have some reference to it in my book. I talk about interposition a great deal because the idea of interposition is really the means by which liberty was sustained in every single case.

41:55

So I had to conclude after my study of 800 years of battles for freedom on the part of the

42:00

Netherlands, Scotland, England, and America, I had to conclude that it was never the

42:05

Supreme Court of any nation, it was never a president of a nation that did anything for the cause of liberty.

42:11

It was always the lower magistrates, it was always the local sheriffs, it was always the local lords that fought tooth and nail to retain some level of freedom.

42:22

So we cannot count on the Supreme Court of the United States, and I encourage people, please don't count on the

42:27

President of the United States to reverse the trends of tyranny across this country. It's never happened, as far as I know, in hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.

42:35

It's always the lower magistrates, it will be governors, it will be state legislatures that will push back against Washington if freedom has a shot anywhere in America, and I argue that case in the book

42:46

Freedom. And Pastor Sterling also recommends to you a booklet by Pastor Matt Trujillo in Wisconsin that provides an

42:56

English translation and a good exposition on how that confession establishes the biblical model of the power of the local sheriff.

43:03

Yeah, another great example of the Reformed churches and Reformed leaders that did a lot.

43:10

John Knox and of course Amber Rutherford referred to interposition a great deal as well.

43:17

Thank you, Sterling. You'll be getting a free copy of Freedom as well for submitting your question today.

43:23

Thank you very much, Pastor, and God bless. And we have Erin in Indianapolis, Indiana, who says, Hi Chris, I've learned more history in these 20 minutes than my entire high school career.

43:40

She says, Please ask Pastor Kevin whether he might be planning a possible workbook for homeschoolers to accompany his new resource on freedom.

43:51

Oh, come on, that's got to be softball. I just finished it, and it's going to press in about two weeks.

43:57

So I don't know if somebody's out there planning for me, but no, no, we're doing a workbook for this too, because I think it's critical for homeschools and Christian schools.

44:06

So yeah, let's get it out there, and they'll be able to purchase it through Generations .org or even Master's Books.

44:12

We're working with Master's Books and Answers in Genesis to get some of this stuff out. So Master's Books and Generations .org

44:19

are both handling this book and the workbook as well. I recommend it for 10th, 11th, 12th grade students.

44:27

Great. Well, thank you, Erin, in Indianapolis, Indiana, and thank you for being a plant for our guest.

44:33

And you're getting a free copy of Freedom as well, so make sure we have your mailing address. Well, we come again, we've already touched on the

44:43

American Revolution, but since we are close to the end of our discussion today with you, the

44:50

American Revolution, one of the things that was hinted at by an earlier questioner was the concept that if we are to submit to the governing authorities that God has ordained over us, that the patriots were acting out of order and in sin in the mind of some to rebel against the

45:16

British. What is your opinion on that? Because that is something that I know Christians have divided over that very subject, and I know that probably there would be a lot of our brothers and sisters in the

45:27

UK that might agree that we were incorrect in that. But what do you think about that? It's a great question.

45:33

I think what we need to ask first and foremost is, are we a nation primarily governed by tyrants, or are we a nation primarily governed by law?

45:41

Are tyrants to submit to the Magna Carta, are tyrants to submit to the

45:47

Constitution of the United States, are tyrants to submit to the covenants made between the king and the colonies?

45:57

And what we would argue is we're actually, we believe that we ought to be a nation of law, and a nation that submits ourselves to a written constitution or a written law.

46:07

And so if the tyrants refuse to submit themselves to the covenant, then they have broken the covenant, and we therefore have right to declare independence of that tyrant.

46:19

And that's the sort of thing, that sort of argumentation that was used by our founders.

46:24

I deal with that somewhat in our book. But I think also, read John Calvin, read

46:30

Sam Rutherford's Lex Rex, and read the quotes I have in the book relating to the responsibility on the part of lower magistrates to defend their people from the higher magistrates who tyrannize.

46:41

And they reference a lot of biblical passages in Jeremiah, and of course,

46:47

Genesis with Abraham, and so forth. There's references to how our freedoms, our people's freedoms have been defended by lower magistrates in the history of Scripture.

47:00

In fact, a great deal of the first two or three chapters of the book deal with what the Bible says about freedom, and what

47:07

God did through some courageous men and women, including Esther, for the freedom of God's people in the history of biblical revelation.

47:17

And so we start with biblical revelation, move on to the teachings of the Reformers and other great

47:24

Christians who have written on the issue of liberty and freedom, and then we go through history in the book, and take each individual story up through our

47:31

Declaration of Independence. And of course, God's providential dealings with this nation through the

47:37

War for Independence, and the submission of our Continental Congress and others to God's laws, and the calling of days of fasting and repentance during that war, and the acknowledgment of the

47:51

Christian faith, and the purpose of government to submit themselves to God's Word.

47:56

All of these things we find in the as well.

48:05

So this is our history, and I really encourage families to teach their children, their grandchildren, the great story of liberty, because inevitably, tyrants will rise up.

48:14

Inevitably, we will be tyrannized. It will not surprise me if there'll be pastors in jail within about maybe six or seven years from now.

48:21

So we're going to see. I think liberty is increasingly abridged for a while. Tyrants will do their thing, but then eventually, by the grace of God, we'll see a move towards freedom.

48:32

We'll see some people with great courage and faith rise up and defend freedom for the cause of the innocents.

48:39

And so we hope that will continue. Certainly, the pro -life movement is the instance of that. We're fighting for the rights of the innocents to live, and of course, those are the ones who can't help themselves.

48:50

And so the freedom battle goes on in our generation. In the last entire section of the book, challenges our present generation to enter the age -old battle for freedom and to defend freedoms for others, as well as for ourselves and for our posterity.

49:06

We have RJ in White Plains, New York, who says, you mentioned the death of Michael Servetus before at the hands of the

49:16

Genevan authorities in the 16th century, where John Calvin was teaching.

49:21

I have heard different stories in regard to John Calvin's opposition to the execution of Michael Servetus, the

49:30

Unitarian. One is that he merely pled for a more humane execution that did not involve burning to death.

49:38

The other is that he actually tried to get the government to stop the execution altogether.

49:46

To your knowledge, what is the truth behind this? Well, at the very least, he intervened in order to lessen the punishment for Servetus.

49:55

I don't think he was involved in making the call as to the guilty innocent plea.

50:02

In the case of Servetus, the challenge with him is that he was a radical of the day.

50:10

He was disturbing the public peace. He was not submitting to the local magistrate and their instructions for him.

50:18

And so I think the state at that point saw him more as a revolutionary than anything else.

50:24

And he kept returning after being warned. He kept coming back over and over again. Yeah, and so the magistrates said, well, here's a guy that won't submit to a judge.

50:32

If a judge tells him to do this or that, he's not going to submit to it. He's disrupting church services and this sort of thing.

50:39

And so I think the magistrates acted the way the magistrates would act at that time.

50:48

Nowadays, there'd be penalties and fines and fees and this sort of thing. Back then, about all they did was they had one approach to handling crime, and that was execution.

50:59

And I don't think any of us would approve of that particular punishment.

51:11

But I would say that we need to understand the times and realize that in those days, people were doing that sort of thing on a regular basis.

51:22

Same thing with the witch hunts and things of that nature. There was so much of that going on that it eventually affected our colonies as well.

51:30

And it was actually the Puritans caught Mather and increased Mather that stopped the

51:36

Salem witch trials because they were entirely mishandled. And so thankfully, there are some

51:44

Christians who make the right choices and fight for the cause of religious liberties.

51:49

And that's what we find with Oliver Cromwell as well. So you see it with the Mathers, you see it with Cromwell. There are good guys in this battle as we're trying to work out the boundaries of religious liberty.

52:01

And I would put Oliver Cromwell in that category. Are these people perfect? Did Cromwell do everything he should have done with Ireland?

52:09

No, I don't think so. He was also involved in the execution of Christopher Love, correct?

52:17

The other Puritan. It seemed to me that was under Elizabeth, if I'm not mistaken. But I do know that Oliver Cromwell was probably one of the men who was working pioneering elements for the cause of religious liberty in the 1650s.

52:38

John Fox, a good friend of his. He was a Quaker. Of course, the Quakers were the heavy duty left wing.

52:44

It was hard for anybody to swallow the Quakers at that time. But it was Oliver Cromwell that met with him three, four, five times and fought for religious liberty for the

52:51

Quakers in the 1650s. Of course, with the reestablishment of Charles II and James II in the 1660s, great, great persecutions returned for a period of about 25 years until William and Mary was brought in with the glorious revolution of the 1680s, 1690s.

53:12

So, you know, I think it was Oliver Cromwell that set a good direction. Eventually, religious liberty was returned to England in the 1690s.

53:23

So anyway, that's the way history goes. There are some heroes that I think set good trajectories, not to say they're perfect, but, you know, did they take it in a better direction?

53:33

And I would say men like Oliver Cromwell did so, as well as, say, the Mathers who were fighting off the

53:40

Salem witch trials around the same period of time, around the 1690s. Well, we've got to go now, and I want to make sure that our listeners have your websites, generations .org,

53:50

that's generations .org, and also reformationchurch .com, reformationchurch .com.

53:57

I want to thank you so much for being our guest today again on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Kevin, and we look forward to having you back very soon and very often.

54:06

Thank you, Chris. It's been a joy. I appreciate it. Keep up the good work, man. All right, thank you, brother, and you keep up the good work, as well.

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And we are going to be coming up very soon with our second guest, Michael Gaydosh, the founder of Solid Ground Christian Books, so don't go away.

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So I just ask of you to please pray about this situation, and please give whenever you can and how much you can give without taking away from your gifts to the church where you are a member, and hopefully you are a member of a local church, or without depriving your family of any needed income.

01:07:50

Obviously you are commanded in the scriptures to provide for your church and your family, you're not commanded in the scriptures to provide for Iron Sharpens Iron, but if you are so abundantly blessed, we would be honored and grateful to you for sending anything that the

01:08:05

Lord has gifted you with above and beyond what you need to adequately provide for your church and your family.

01:08:12

Thanks again for putting up with me and for your patience with me in regard to these frequent recent appeals for donations and for advertising.

01:08:25

But we welcome back to the program for the second hour of Iron Sharpens Iron my very first pastor after being born again,

01:08:36

Mike Gaydosh, who is the founder and director of Solid Ground Christian Books, solid -ground -books .com.

01:08:44

He's also one of the primary sponsors of this program, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back on Iron Sharpens Iron, Mike Gaydosh.

01:08:52

Thanks Chris, can you hear me okay? Yes I can. All righty, great. And in studio with me is my co -host, the

01:08:58

Reverend Buzz Taylor. Still here, yes. Oh, thank God. Somebody's got to keep

01:09:05

Chris in line, so between the two of us, you were his pastor, you know what I'm talking about. Yeah, I'm gonna stay away now.

01:09:12

Yeah, and you might want to raise your voice a little bit, Mike, in order to keep Reverend Buzz Taylor awake during the broadcast.

01:09:22

In fact, you know, before we even get into our discussion, Mike, we already have a listener question for you.

01:09:30

Okay. We have Pastor Sterling Vanderwerker, and he is with Shepherds Fellowship in Greensboro, North Carolina.

01:09:40

And I'm enlarging his questions because the font on his email is so tiny that I can't read it.

01:09:48

He says, does Solid Ground Christian Books sell electronic copies of current published works, like the new systematic theology edited by Grace to You and the

01:10:00

Master's Seminary? I don't have access to those things right now.

01:10:06

I'm working on trying to get some of my own titles in an e -book form. I actually do have a few of them already, but no,

01:10:15

I would suggest for such items as that, the place to go is right directly to the publisher themselves.

01:10:24

You don't need to go to a middleman. I think you'd get a better deal if you went directly to them. Are you right now being interviewed in the confines of a nuclear power plant, or what is that noise that I hear in the background?

01:10:39

Oh, that's probably my computer. Okay, because I've never heard that before during our interviews for some reason.

01:10:46

Well, for our listeners who are just discovering you for the first time, because especially with our being added to the lineup of Grace Life Radio in Lake City, Florida, we are getting contacted nearly weekly, and perhaps even more frequently than weekly, by people who are discovering

01:11:07

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio for the first time. So therefore, I'm assuming many of those people will be discovering

01:11:14

Solid Ground Christian Books for the first time. So why don't you explain to our listeners, especially because of the fact that many of them may be new, exactly what is

01:11:24

Solid Ground Christian Books? Well, Solid Ground began... Are you able to hear me okay?

01:11:30

Much better now. Much better, yeah. Solid Ground began in 2001, and it was really the

01:11:38

Lord who opened a door for me to begin publishing. I had begun 10 years earlier while pastoring in Long Island.

01:11:45

Chris was actually involved in the opening days and early days of Calvary Press. And that was when

01:11:52

I began to recognize that there are some buried gems that have been overlooked for years and need an opportunity to be given a fresh chance to minister to modern man.

01:12:07

And the very first book I did was Thoughts for Young Men by J .C. Ryle, which has now become such a well -known book that it's hard for people to believe that it had been really unavailable until we brought it out in 1991.

01:12:20

It had been unavailable for almost 100 years as a single item. And ever since then, we've not only did

01:12:28

Calvary Press do several editions of it, but now there are several other publishers that are doing it as well.

01:12:35

And Joe Bianchi, who now owns Calvary Press, was gracious enough to allow me to begin doing it as a separate publication here at Solid Ground Christian Books as well.

01:12:47

Our most recent edition of that book actually has a picture of three Marines on the front, because we were asked by a chaplain who was serving in Afghanistan.

01:12:56

He had 200 copies that somebody had donated to be able to give out to Marines in Afghanistan.

01:13:03

And my son had served in Afghanistan, and so I had a picture that was a perfect picture to put on the cover.

01:13:11

And we did a new edition, and that is we've sold again, as we always have, hundreds and hundreds and even thousands of copies that have gone all over the world, touching the hearts of men.

01:13:22

So Solid Ground began that way through the publishing of Thoughts for Young Men and then the second book that was a very popular one that I continue to publish is

01:13:33

Stepping Heavenward by Elizabeth Prentice. And I've now done over 350 titles in the last 15 years at Solid Ground.

01:13:44

And I don't only do reprints of old works. I also have begun to publish brand new books by new authors as well.

01:13:54

And so we're doing both. It's probably still a two -to -one ratio in terms of the reprints as opposed to the brand new titles, but more recently it has become almost 50 -50.

01:14:09

And today you wanted to address specifically the books that you have brought into print that involve preaching and the necessity of preaching and that important element of a pastoral role.

01:14:25

Yeah, I've had a burden for many, many years regarding God -centered,

01:14:32

Christ -glorifying preaching. And I just had the opportunity, actually, this past Lord's Day to preach in my local church here.

01:14:41

And when I was given the opportunity to preach, the passage that came to my mind and my heart that I had been mulling over for several weeks was

01:14:50

Paul's words to the church in Corinth when he said, When I came to you, brethren,

01:14:55

I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God.

01:15:00

For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

01:15:06

And I focused my attention upon that single -minded passion of the apostle

01:15:13

Paul and looked at the reason for it. What exactly did he mean when he said that?

01:15:19

And what did he not mean? And then, also, I concluded by looking at the perpetual challenge that those words are to us as individuals, and especially those who preach and teach the

01:15:33

Word of God. It's important for us to make sure that we keep the main thing, the main thing, that we understand that it's the gospel that is that which brings salvation to the lost.

01:15:44

And it's the primary calling that everyone has who brings the ministry of the Word is to preach

01:15:50

Christ and him crucified. One of the passages that I looked at briefly was

01:15:57

Paul's initial call to go to Philippi, to Macedonia more generally, but to Philippi specifically.

01:16:04

In Acts 16 is that Macedonian vision, as it's called. We're told, A vision appeared to Paul in the night.

01:16:10

A man of Macedonia was standing and appealing to him and saying, Come over to Macedonia and help us.

01:16:16

And the word help there is a very, very generic term. It's a word that is very nonspecific.

01:16:25

If it were a modern -day person that received that vision, they probably would want to go over there and begin a ministry to help the poor or a ministry to many, many things that would be very, very vibrant and very significant ministries that would be legitimate ministries, in fact.

01:16:45

But we are told when he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go into Macedonia, Luke says.

01:16:53

We sought to go into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.

01:17:00

Well, that passage has really struck a chord in my heart for many years now, that the greatest help that we can bring to any community is preaching the gospel to them.

01:17:13

And that's what Paul did. When Paul went to Macedonia, when he went to Philippi, he goes to the riverside where the ladies were gathered for a time of prayer, and God opened the heart of Lydia to respond and receive the things that Paul was preaching.

01:17:28

He set free a woman who was demon -possessed. And of course, we know he also was used to bring salvation to the

01:17:34

Philippian jailer and his whole household as he preached the gospel to them. And they believed and they were baptized.

01:17:40

So there was the beginning of the Church of Christ in Europe, and it all came about as a result of the response to that simple request to come over and help us.

01:17:54

Well, I know that Solid Ground Christian Books has a lot of things in print, things that you've brought back into print from great preachers of the past and present.

01:18:09

And tell us about some of the specific things that you have available from Solid Ground Christian Books.

01:18:14

We have a good number of them. If somebody goes to our website and does a search on the categories of books and they just flip down, they're going to see about halfway down, maybe a little further than halfway down, they're going to see preaching and pastoral theology.

01:18:32

If they click on that, they will see a couple dozen different titles that we have published that focus on gospel preaching and ministry.

01:18:45

The one that I always go to first, the one that I have the greatest fondness for, is a book entitled

01:18:52

Thoughts on Preaching. It's a very simple title, Thoughts on Preaching. James Alexander.

01:18:57

James W. Alexander. That's exactly right. I'm impressed, Chris. I'm very impressed. I'm also shocked, but I'm impressed.

01:19:09

James Alexander was the son of Archibald Alexander, who was the founding professor and the president of Princeton Seminary, which was founded in 1812.

01:19:26

And J .W. Alexander was an incredibly gifted pastor and preacher. He was both a professor at Princeton and he was also a pastor in New York City.

01:19:39

And his book really is a compilation of a variety of things that were put together after he died, including the first almost 100 pages of the book is made up of little pieces of paper that he had stuck in his desk and his children took them out and put them together and laid them out and opened the book with these, what are called homiletical paragraphs.

01:20:08

And some of them are only a matter of a few sentences, a couple sentences, and others are maybe a half a page.

01:20:17

And what I've always appreciated about him, you can turn anywhere and find some valuable material.

01:20:24

Joel Beeky actually wrote regarding this book, he said it's the best daily devotional on preaching ever written.

01:20:34

To read a section or two of his poignant and savvy thoughts contained in homiletical paragraphs every day would greatly instruct, convict, encourage, and re -energize any true gospel minister.

01:20:46

And his Letters to Young Ministers is a masterpiece in itself, particularly the sections on maintaining devotion and happiness in the ministry.

01:20:56

The Letters to Young Ministers, there are 10 of them, and again, just brilliantly done, simply done.

01:21:04

He was a scholar, but he was a pastor, and he combines the two together in a very, very precious way.

01:21:13

At the end of the book, he has some outstanding, lengthier, what we might call essays that he did.

01:21:20

One is on the matter of preaching, and the matter of preaching has to do, of course, with the subject of what should the pastor preach.

01:21:30

And his focus there is just, again, just brilliant.

01:21:36

And I found it to be extremely helpful when I was pastoring, and even now as I have opportunities to preach,

01:21:43

I still find his words to be so helpful. He has, the matter of preaching is one of them.

01:21:51

He has another one entitled Expository Preaching, in which he lays out what it is, what it isn't, and the value of it.

01:21:58

He gives some biographical information on some preachers in the French pulpit and others as well.

01:22:05

But it's subtitled Classic Contributions to Homiletics, Thoughts on Preaching by J .W.

01:22:11

Alexander. I had one man, as soon as I sent out a notice about this today, I had one man from Washington immediately order five copies.

01:22:18

So I was quite encouraged about that. Another book that has been a very popular one is by James Stalker, and his book is entitled

01:22:30

The Preacher and His Models. And it consists of nine lectures delivered in 1891 at the

01:22:36

Yale Lectures on Preaching. And he did just a phenomenal job in laying out these lectures.

01:22:43

He has The Preacher as a Christian, The Preacher as a Man, The Preacher as a

01:22:51

False Prophet, The Preacher as a Man of the Word, The Preacher as a

01:22:57

Patriot, The Preacher as a Man of God, and I think he concludes with The Preacher as a

01:23:06

Thinker. And sadly, many times those two words don't seem to go together with today's pastors as being a thinker.

01:23:17

And that's a book that's been very, very popular. It's an excellent, excellent book.

01:23:23

Scottish man, James Stalker. Another one is The Power of the Pulpit by Gardner Spring, Thoughts Addressed to Christian Ministers and Those Who Hear Them.

01:23:33

He has some excellent material that is addressed first to the pastor.

01:23:39

The first two -thirds is focused on the pastor himself, the divine authority of the

01:23:45

Christian ministry, ministerial diligence, things of that nature. But then he has the last portion, it's maybe not even a third, it may be more like a fourth.

01:23:55

He has several articles, fairly brief ones, on the role of the listener.

01:24:04

And one of the chapters is entitled The Pecuniary Support of Ministers, and it speaks about the importance of maintaining pastors having a proper salary for the work that they do.

01:24:17

And it's a very, very helpful little chapter. He also has one entitled Prayer for Ministers.

01:24:24

And Chris, you know that I published that. I pulled that chapter out many years ago and put it out all by itself, entitled

01:24:32

The Plea to Pray for Pastors. Yes. And that's by Gardner Spring. Gardner Spring pastored the same church in New York City, right?

01:24:42

In New York City. He pastored the same church for 63 years.

01:24:49

Wasn't it called, like, The Brick Church or something like that? That's exactly right. It was The Brick Church. I tell you,

01:24:55

Chris, you're very impressive. It must be you're hanging around with Buzz a lot.

01:25:00

That's it. That's it, yes. No, you know what it is, is that in comparison to Buzz, I seem impressive.

01:25:08

Oh, very nice, Chris. This will be Buzz's last time with you,

01:25:14

I guess. One can only hope. Oh, wow. I'm only kidding.

01:25:20

The two of you are starting to sound alike. I'm not too sure which one I'm talking to anymore. We've heard that already from others, yeah.

01:25:27

In fact, one of my listeners said that Buzz sounds nearly exactly like Richard Phillips.

01:25:34

Not in content, only in the sound of his voice. Somebody a few days ago mistook my comment for being

01:25:43

Chris, and I thought, well, that's good. I'm making Chris sound good now. No, I actually told him that he better make sure to distinguish our voices.

01:25:50

That was actually Greg Nichols, because if Buzz says something colossally stupid, I don't want to be charged with the guilt of it.

01:25:57

But anyway, speaking of Archibald Alexander, I know that you offer these books, but I'm not 100 % sure that you're publishing them.

01:26:05

You have Evangelical Truth, Practical Sermons for the Christian Family. Yeah, that's one of my titles, and I have that.

01:26:12

And Brief Compendium of Biblical Truth, and The Log College. Yes, I've also published that as well,

01:26:20

The Log College, correct? And that's by Archibald Alexander. And I've also done the two volumes of sermons of J .A.

01:26:28

Alexander. That's the brother of J .W. Alexander. And I've told the story many times before about J .A.

01:26:37

Alexander's preaching, and it was a pastor from New York City that said that his most famous sermon was

01:26:47

Remember Lot's Wife. And in fact, it got to be every church that would invite

01:26:54

J .A. Alexander to preach for them, the first sermon that they would ask him to preach was always the same sermon,

01:27:00

Remember Lot's Wife. And finally, it was one weekend, he was just preparing to go away to preach, and his brother,

01:27:10

J .W. Alexander, asked him, he said, so where are you preaching tomorrow? And he told him, he said, what are you preaching on? And he said, what do you think?

01:27:16

And then he responded and said, that woman will be the death of me yet.

01:27:25

But anyway, I remember reading that sermon myself and just being so impressed with just the way that he brought that truth home over and over again.

01:27:36

It was a very, very powerful sermon. It's found in the first volume of his sermons, which

01:27:41

I've entitled, originally they were just, you know, there was no real title. It was just the sermons of J .A. Alexander.

01:27:47

I titled it Theology on Fire, sort of taking it from the

01:27:52

Lloyd -Jones definition of preaching, which he calls logic on fire. And so I, you know, having read the sermons of J .A.

01:28:01

Alexander, I felt that was an appropriate title to use, Theology on Fire, sermons from the heart of J .A.

01:28:08

Alexander. And I've got those available in two volumes. I've also got sermons of J .W.

01:28:14

Alexander, entitled The Shepherd's Heart, sermons from the pastoral ministry of J .W.

01:28:20

Alexander. Charles Hodge said of him, no minister in our church was a more accomplished scholar, but the pope, it was his appropriate sphere.

01:28:28

While he was not the first of all orators to hear on rare occasions, he was the first of preachers to sit under month after month and year after year.

01:28:40

And so that tells you the value of the man's ministry, that he wasn't a startling orator that would just thrill the audience, but he was the kind of man you'd want to sit under week after week, month after month, year after year.

01:28:56

Well, we're going to our final break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:29:04

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

01:29:11

USA. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Mike Gadosh of Solid Ground Christian Books after these messages.

01:29:18

Charles Hedden Spurgeon once said, Give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read.

01:29:26

He who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves that he has no brains of his own.

01:29:34

You need to read. Solid Ground Christian Books is a publisher and book distributor who takes these words of the

01:29:41

Prince of Preachers to heart. The mission of Solid Ground Christian Books is to bring back treasures of the past to minister to Christians in the present and future, and to publish new titles that address burning issues in the church and the world.

01:29:54

Since its beginning in 2001, Solid Ground has been committed to publish God -centered, Christ -exalting books for all ages.

01:30:01

We invite you to go treasure hunting at solid -ground -books .com.

01:30:06

That's solid -ground -books .com and see what priceless literary gems from the past to present you can unearth from Solid Ground.

01:30:15

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01:33:01

That's nasbible .com. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, the last hour of our program is featuring

01:33:09

Mike Adosh, founder of Solid Ground Christian Books, solid -ground -books .com,

01:33:16

solid -ground -books .com. And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com,

01:33:24

chrisarnzen at gmail .com. We have a question from Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, does

01:33:33

Mike Adosh, under any circumstances, ever publish a work by an Arminian author?

01:33:41

Not knowingly. Would you ever consider it if the topic was so compelling, and if it was something that you and Reform people universally agreed upon?

01:33:54

Yeah, I would suppose I would. Obviously, not everybody that I have published, even books that I've published, are all five -point

01:34:03

Calvinists. There are some Amoraldians that I've published, but in most cases, it wouldn't be covering the subject that I would be concerned about.

01:34:14

So I suppose I'd have to know what it was that we're talking about.

01:34:20

And also, it would be kind of challenging, I think, in some ways for me to publish a book if somebody was a known

01:34:29

Arminian who, I give an example like Dave Hunt, for instance. I could never publish a book by David Hunt.

01:34:37

I just couldn't. Even if he was addressing a subject that we agreed on, because he is so well known as being an anti -Calvinist, that it would just,

01:34:50

I couldn't do it. By putting my name, attaching my name to it,

01:34:57

I'm lending credibility. And I wouldn't want to have to publish a book and be making a bunch of warning statements about it.

01:35:09

I just think it would just be awkward. And I think, you know,

01:35:14

I'm only one publisher out of many, and I would think that a person would probably be better to go with a publishing group that has, that would agree theologically in that area in terms of soteriology, because it's not exactly like soteriology is an unimportant subject.

01:35:34

And to not agree in that area would be a pretty significant area to disagree in. Well, obviously, if you were intending to publish something by Dave Hunt, you would either be bringing something back into print or receiving a manuscript from heaven.

01:35:48

And if you received the manuscript from heaven, it might be actually worthy of publishing now since he's got all his problems straightened out.

01:35:57

I trust it's a given by now with your listeners that we are Calvinists.

01:36:03

Yeah, I'm pretty certain that they know about that. In fact, I've had complaints from people that I talk about it too much, but that's quite all right with me.

01:36:13

Well, you know, I heard a missionary who once said in a different vein, you know, there's only one thing I would be other than a

01:36:18

Calvinist, and that's ashamed. I tell you,

01:36:25

I'm very thankful for the opportunity that God has given to you, Chris, and the opportunity that he has given you to be able to not just help me with solid ground, but to just help promote a bunch of books.

01:36:39

I know that you just had Greg Nichols on yesterday. Yes. And Greg's new book, his first volume on lectures on theology, of course, is going to be coming out, and I just got word that my order is going to be shipping next week, so I'll be offering—I'm already offering it.

01:36:58

It's on my website. I'm selling the book, but of course I don't have it in stock yet because it's brand new, and it's just coming off the presses.

01:37:05

But I have published Greg's book on covenant theology from a Baptist perspective, and that has been a very, very good book that's been challenging.

01:37:15

You know, he comes at it from a little different perspective than Pascal Deneau in his book on covenant theology that I've done, and also

01:37:22

Earl Blackburn, who has done a book on covenant theology, and so there's little different nuances in the way that they approach the subject.

01:37:30

Even Jeff Johnson has a different spin on Baptist covenant theology. Jeff Johnson is another one whose books

01:37:38

I sell. I've sold his book, The Kingdom of God, is one that he's done on, and Richard Barcellas, I do sell several of the books that Richard Barcellas at RBAP, Reform Baptist Academic Press, has done.

01:37:51

And you've interviewed Richard, right? Oh, of course. And I—yeah, that was a silly question.

01:38:00

Chris has interviewed everybody. Have you? Yeah, who have you not? Well, Donald Trump hasn't come on yet. He's got an appointment,

01:38:07

I'm sure. Although I can tell you that one of—I don't know if she's still one of his secretaries, but one of Donald Trump's secretaries back in the 1990s came to at least one of the debates that I arranged with James White.

01:38:21

Oh, wow. In fact, I know that she was being honest when she called because she had me mail her flyers to his office, to her name, so I mean,

01:38:31

I know that the connection was authentic. But anyway, she said that she was frequently evangelizing him without success, but she was still persevering.

01:38:41

Wow. Wow. That's great for the boldness. Well, a few other titles that I could mention that we've published that I think would be of interest to some of your listeners would be

01:38:53

Homiletics and Pastoral Theology by W .G .T. Shedd. Shedd was a professor at Union Seminary in New York, back in the days when

01:39:05

Union still believed the Bible to be the Word of God. Hello, Mike, are you there?

01:39:12

Valuable work. I've also— Hey, Mike, are you getting a phone call or something?

01:39:18

You keep cutting out. No. That's weird. Sorry about that. The Pastor in the

01:39:26

Sick Room by John Wells is a book ministering the Gospel to those on the brink of eternity, and while it's not a book particularly

01:39:35

I'm preaching, he does—there were three lectures that he delivered at Princeton Seminary in the mid -1890s, and he did just a phenomenal job of talking about bringing the

01:39:46

Gospel to those on their sick bed and their deathbed, and gives many examples of the power of the

01:39:53

Gospel as it comes to those who are sick and dying. And he actually takes to task

01:39:59

Ichabod Spencer, the pastor who wrote the book Pastor's Sketches, which

01:40:05

I've also published, and he felt that Spencer went a little too far in questioning deathbed conversions, and gives his reason in the book itself, in the lecture that he gives.

01:40:18

He quotes Spencer and actually mentions him very, very favorably, speaks of his book as the phenomenal book that it was, but he did feel that that was an area that he did not agree with him on, and I just—that book is just an amazing little book, the

01:40:35

Pastor in the Sick Room ministering the Gospel to those on the brink of eternity. I think that one of the things that pastors need to do is be continually reading books on pastoring and preaching.

01:40:48

The two go hand -in -hand together. There are some men who are called, well, he's a great pastor, but he's a terrible preacher, and others will say, well, he was a wonderful preacher, but he was an awful pastor.

01:41:02

And really, both of those—neither of those is necessary.

01:41:08

Every great preacher should be a good pastor, and every great pastor can be at least an adequate preacher.

01:41:16

A lot of times men fall into bad habits early in their ministries, and they never break out of them, and I think that a man needs to be always seeking to improve whatever he does.

01:41:27

He needs to be seeking to become better and not just be satisfied with what he does. I know that you,

01:41:32

Chris, try to do better each time that you're on the radio, and every interview you do, you're not satisfied just because you've done it before, and I know it's easy for us to fall into patterns as pastors, and I just think that one of the things that has helped me is

01:41:49

J .W. Alexander's book. He just continually drives us on to become the best that we can possibly be.

01:42:00

I'll never be a Spurgeon, but I need to make sure that I'm the best that I can be, make sure that I'm always working to improve the ability that I have to minister.

01:42:10

And sometimes having little things pointed out. My wife recently, when I was preaching at a mission downtown, she shared with me afterwards, she said, you realize that you spent probably three -quarters of the time focusing on the men on the left and much, much less time looking at the men on the right, and I didn't.

01:42:28

I didn't realize that I had done that. And little things like that pointed out that you can be more conscious of going forward to make sure that even a little thing can be distracting to the message.

01:42:44

And so whatever a man does, no matter how long he's been doing it, the idea that you can't teach an old dog new tricks is just nonsense.

01:42:55

I think that we always need to be seeking to improve. We always need to work on improving the way we express things and avoid falling into the trap of just, well, this is the way

01:43:07

I've always done it, and I'm satisfied. I know that I'll never get any better than I am right now.

01:43:14

I am what I am, and that's all that I am. Who's that, Popeye? That may work for a cartoon character, but it better not be the attitude that a pastor has, because if that's the attitude he has, then he never will improve.

01:43:29

You'll never improve if you're satisfied with where you are. Now, as somebody who sells books and publishes books, what would you say a practical guideline might be?

01:43:42

Obviously, there would be differences of opinion and differences of approach with individuals in their lives who might have different advice or counsel, but there has been complaint on two opposite extremes when it comes to Christians and extra -biblical books.

01:44:05

You have those on the fundamentalist right, if you will, who have a distorted understanding of Sola Scriptura.

01:44:16

Of course, not even using that Latin phrase, but would be just hammering away at the Bible alone is all we need.

01:44:22

We just need the Bible. What they really mean to their congregation is, you don't need any other teacher other than me.

01:44:29

That's what they really mean. Then you have those on the other extreme who may be saturating their minds with books at the expense of the

01:44:41

Scriptures. The way you've stated it is exactly right.

01:44:48

There has to be a balance. Whenever people say, well, I don't read anything but the Bible, then

01:44:54

I just say, okay, so when you go to church, does your pastor just stand up and read for 45 minutes?

01:45:00

Does he just read the Bible to you? They'll, of course, say, well, no. I say, well, what does he do?

01:45:05

Well, he explains the Bible. Okay, well, what do you think a commentary is? What do you think other sermons?

01:45:12

Why would you think that sitting under your pastor is okay, but reading the sermons of somebody like Spurgeon or other men whose ministries

01:45:22

God has blessed through the years, that that wouldn't be okay? In fact, your pastor may be not wanting you to read books because he's been plagiarizing those books and doesn't want you to find out.

01:45:33

That could be as well. You'd hope that's not the reason, but I just think that so many times those kinds of silly statements that are made,

01:45:44

I read nothing but the Bible, it doesn't take very long to prove that the person doesn't simply just read the

01:45:50

Bible. And Mr. Camping was one who was notorious for telling people that they should read no book but the

01:45:56

Bible, and then he would say, oh, by the way, get my book. Well, what is your book,

01:46:02

Mr. Camping? Is it just the Bible? Well, no, it's me explaining what I believe the

01:46:07

Bible says. And, Rand, if you may remember the camping night that used to frequently visit both

01:46:13

Calvary Baptist and Grace Reform Baptist, where you pastored, before Harold Camping forbid people from going to church, one of the camping nights that would frequently visit us said to me, referring to you, complaining about quoting

01:46:32

Spurgeon and so on, why doesn't he just stick to the Bible and Mr. Camping? Oh, wow.

01:46:38

Well, there you go. There you go. That's exactly the situation. Let me say one thing also about preaching that I think is important for our day.

01:46:50

I have a particular concern, and I'd say this for young ministers of the

01:46:56

Gospel, beware of preaching too long. Some men seem to think that if they don't preach an hour, then they're not really preaching.

01:47:05

Especially from our circles. Yeah, well, yeah, exactly. That's what I'm saying. Reformed men seem to have a really difficult time with brevity.

01:47:17

And one of the greatest things that's happened in my life in ministry is for the last 12 years, on Friday nights,

01:47:23

I preached at the Brother Brian Mission in downtown Birmingham. And my time limit was 30 minutes.

01:47:35

So for the last 12 years, pretty much 45 to 50 times a year on a

01:47:42

Friday night. And then I also preach there on Sunday night. And that same limit is given on Sunday night to preach for 30 minutes.

01:47:50

Well, I've learned you can say an awful lot in 30 minutes. When you're careful about what you're saying.

01:47:58

And that is something that I have a real burden for. I joke with some of my pastor friends who tend to be a little long -winded.

01:48:06

And I'll ask them, I'll just say, brother, did you bring it down? I mean, did you land it in time?

01:48:12

Or did you circle the runway a few times before you actually landed the plane? We always appreciate when

01:48:20

I say that. But when a man is preaching for an hour and 10 minutes, an hour and 15 minutes, unless he is absolutely, incredibly gifted and unique, he's preaching far too long.

01:48:34

One of the best things that happened to me years ago when I was pastoring was I went to get some tapes and they didn't have 90 -minute tapes.

01:48:42

They only had 78 -minute tapes. So I had to cut from about 45 minutes back to 35. And it was better.

01:48:49

It really was. What it does is, in fact, it's been amazing how there are times when

01:48:56

I'll preach and I'll feel as if I went too long. And I'll look up and realize I only preached like 28 minutes.

01:49:01

And there is a sense in which you want people to say, why did you stop rather than why don't you?

01:49:13

Well, you know, I recall some preachers that would stop after an hour and a half and we'd be saying that. But those are especially gifted men.

01:49:21

Well, yeah. Again, I do understand that there are unique situations, for instance, when you have...

01:49:27

I notice this especially when you go to conferences. Yes, yes. ...and when a man maybe only has one message that he's been asked to preach and he's been given a humongous topic on maybe the doctrine of creation or whatever.

01:49:42

I'm not saying that he needs to do that in 30 minutes. And if they're allotting you 25 or 50 minutes to the sermon, well,

01:49:49

I believe that when you look at the schedule, so many times what you'll end up, you go to a conference and everything gets knocked off schedule because the guy goes too long.

01:50:01

For an hour and 10 minutes, he took up 15 minutes of the other guy's message, which basically he's stealing from the other guy.

01:50:10

And not only that, but in many of those conferences, men like me who are making our livelihood and selling our books, what ends up happening is they'll say, well, we don't have time for a break.

01:50:23

So we're just going to have to go right into the next section. Right, yeah. That 15 or 20 minutes was supposed to be spent going to the book room and kind of looking through the book room.

01:50:35

And so, you know, there's just maybe, maybe I'm a little more sensitive because of that. But I think that there isn't a point that if a man has been given a certain amount of time, he needs to stick to that.

01:50:48

And what I've always found is men have a lack of discipline. Because that's what it always is.

01:50:54

When you ramble and you go on and on and on and on and on, it's as a result of a lack of discipline.

01:50:59

And another thing that I've noticed with certain men, and I won't name any of them, but I could name one in particular.

01:51:08

And this is a person who believes in the sovereignty of God, who is very outspoken about his belief in the doctrines of grace.

01:51:16

And yet he goes on and on and on, appealing to people to come to Christ.

01:51:21

When I'm thinking, if you trust the Holy Spirit, and if you trust the word of God and the gospel, why do you continue to feel as if you need to give just one more example, one more emotional appeal, rather than just preach the message?

01:51:37

And not that you don't appeal to people to come to Christ, because you do do that. But there were times in which

01:51:43

I've listened to one man in particular, who I feel like he just preached two sermons. And if he had stopped after the first one,

01:51:50

I think it would have been much more effective. That's one of the things that Ichabod Spencer had learned, was learn when to shut up.

01:51:57

Yeah, well, even at dinners and things like that, you know, if somebody's given 20 minutes and he goes on for 40, you know, there's a problem.

01:52:05

And I think a lot of it is they're just thinking that, well, what I have is so important that I'm above the rules here.

01:52:10

And obviously the human brain was only designed to absorb so much information at one time.

01:52:16

Well, and that's, yeah, exactly. And I just think that, again, one of the things that I learned from Stott is less is more.

01:52:27

I'll give you an example. This past, I know we're about out of time, but this past Sunday when I was preaching, when I was preparing for the sermon,

01:52:35

I was looking at 1 Corinthians 2, as I mentioned. And when

01:52:42

Paul went to Corinth, well, it led me, when I did that, I went to Acts 18 and I looked at chapter 18, which is when he, in the book of Acts, when

01:52:52

Paul first arrived in Corinth. And so the words of 1 Corinthians 2, 2 would apply to those opening lines.

01:52:58

Well, if you go and look at the passage, you'll see that about eight or 10 verses down, the

01:53:05

Lord appeared to Paul at night in a vision and spoke to him and gave him some very pointed encouragement in his preaching.

01:53:14

Well, I was tempted to include that in the sermon, but then I started thinking, you know, that's not really appropriate because that happened later in his ministry at Corinth.

01:53:25

That didn't happen. It didn't happen when he first arrived there. And so I felt, you know, even though that would have been, you know,

01:53:31

I could have said some very helpful things there and encouraging things. And I just said, you know, that'll be for another time.

01:53:38

That's not for this sermon. And so it helped me to keep within the allotted time that I had.

01:53:45

Now, our church is not quite like Brother Brian. I didn't have to be done in 30 minutes, but, you know, now for me to go long, it's like 38, 37 minutes.

01:53:56

Right. Could you give us, okay, for those of us who are planning to buy some books now, so you should have an upsurge in your sales.

01:54:06

What would you, you've mentioned a whole bunch of authors and books. Could you narrow down to like three that you think that we should really, we need to read?

01:54:15

Well, I think the first one is thoughts on preaching, as I mentioned by J .W. Alexander. Okay, J .W.

01:54:20

Alexander. That's the, yeah, that's the one that has had the biggest impact on me personally and many, many others that I've spoken with as well.

01:54:31

And the Pastor in the Sick Room by John Wells is another one that I think is invaluable.

01:54:40

Again, it's bringing the gospel to those who are on the brink of eternity. It's a unique book, three lectures delivered at Princeton Seminary in the mid 1890s.

01:54:51

And B .B. Warfield was one of the professors who sat under him when he did that and did those lectures.

01:54:57

And then the other one would be either Preacher and His Models by Stalker or The Power of the

01:55:03

Pulpit by Gardner Spring. And any of those would be particularly helpful,

01:55:10

I think, for anybody who has an interest in ministering the Word of God. But if it was limited to one, it would clearly be

01:55:18

J .W. Alexander's thoughts on preaching. Okay, thank you. And I'm assuming that not necessarily exclusively or directly on the mark of preaching, but the classic that you don't necessarily publish but offer would be

01:55:36

The Reformed Pastor by Baxter, correct? Yeah, The Reformed Pastor, that doesn't deal with the preaching part.

01:55:43

I think that probably the one that I would do that I would recommend higher than that would be Lectures to My Students by Charles Spurgeon, which

01:55:51

I do have copies of that, and I have it at a very reduced price right now. Yeah, and it's not nice to get people to read

01:55:59

Baxter. It's just very, very convicting. Yeah, well, yeah, exactly.

01:56:05

Yeah, he's challenging to read, and Baxter's a mixed bag, too. I mean, theologically, there were some things that he believed that we have problems with.

01:56:13

Yeah, in fact, Don Kistler thinks that that's the only thing that is really worthy of reading by Baxter.

01:56:20

Yeah, that may be going a little too far. I think some of his meditations on heaven, his dying thoughts,

01:56:29

I mean, I understand what Don's saying, and there clearly are several things that Baxter wrote that are not as valuable, but I don't think

01:56:41

I'd quite go as far as saying that The Reformed Pastor is the only thing that you could say. Well, maybe perhaps I exaggerated what

01:56:46

Don Kistler said. That's likely. I don't want Don Kistler getting mad at me. I know, he's calling you right now.

01:56:53

But he was clear that Baxter was aberrant on a number of theological points that were pretty serious.

01:57:01

Yeah, yeah. But I want you, now, in two minutes, to just summarize what you most etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today.

01:57:08

Mike? Well, the most important thing is the centrality of Christ and the cross, and what

01:57:16

I, with the burden that the Lord put upon my heart this past Sunday is the same burden that I still have.

01:57:23

And I would say that the three things that I focused on at the very end are the things that I would want to conclude with.

01:57:32

The first has to do with the necessity of embracing Christ ourselves.

01:57:39

That that's the number one thing, that we make sure that we have come to know

01:57:45

Him, whom to know is life eternal. That that's the challenge. We're challenged to make sure we've embraced

01:57:52

Christ, crucified ourselves. Paul was able to give testimony of the grace of God that appeared to him on the

01:57:58

Damascus Road. What about you? Second, we're challenged to examine its application to our personal calling.

01:58:05

Paul gave testimony to how the Lord called and commissioned him to serve in his kingdom. What about you?

01:58:11

Has Christ crucified, called, and commissioned you? You are not called to be an apostle and perhaps not even a teacher.

01:58:17

You are called in whatever you do to keep Christ crucified at the center. Wherever you serve, you're called to keep

01:58:24

Him at the center of your life. And then finally, we're challenged to be certain that we are being faithful to this message.

01:58:31

Paul sought always to keep Christ crucified at the center of his message. What about us? We who teach in Sunday school, we who teach anywhere that God has placed us, do we seek continually to make sure this is the theme that moves us as we seek to minister to our children and grandchildren?

01:58:48

Is Christ crucified our theme? Amen. And by the way, can anybody get a hold of a recording of that message that you preached?

01:58:57

Yeah, I believe it's going to be on our website, the Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.

01:59:04

Grace Covenant Baptist Church. The sermon will be on there. I do have extensive notes that I sent you,

01:59:11

Chris. And if anybody wanted to get them, they could either ask you or ask me, and I'd be happy to send the notes that I made up for that particular sermon.

01:59:22

And that would be helpful to have, even if they wanted to listen to the message. But it was

01:59:27

Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. They usually have the sermons up within a week or two.

01:59:33

Okay, we are out of time, and your website is solid -ground -books .com.

01:59:39

Solid -ground -books .com. I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially those who wrote in questions.

01:59:44

I hope you have a safe and blessed and joyous weekend and Lord's Day, and I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater