April 12, 2022 Show with Matthew J. Trewhella & Matt Kenitzer on “A Proper Resistance to Tyranny”

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

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in 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 chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have a 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 two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions, and now here's your host,

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Chris Arnsin. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnsin, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 12th day of April, 2022, and I'm thrilled to have a first -time guest by popular demand.

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His name is Matthew J. Trujillo. He is pastor of Mercy Seat Christian Church, founded in 1989 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and he is the founder of the pro -life organization

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Missionaries to the Preborn. He is author of the book,

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The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates, A Proper Resistance to Tyranny and a Repudiation of Unlimited Obedience to Civil Government.

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He is my guest for the first hour, and for the second hour, we will be joined by a friend of his,

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Matt Kennitzer. He is pastor of St. John's Reform Church of Freidensburg, Pennsylvania, and he is going to be hosting a conference where my first guest will be speaking, the

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Freidensburg Biblical Institute's Conference on Pressing Issues of Today and Interposition, and that's going to be held this

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June. But first of all, let me warmly welcome for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, my first guest today,

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Matthew J. Trujillo. Hey, great to be here with you, Chris. Thank you. Oh, the pleasure is all mine, brother.

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So, tell our listeners about Mercy Seat Christian Church. Yeah, I pastor

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Mercy Seat Christian Church. Have been pastoring there for over 30 years now.

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Great congregation, about 300 people in the body, and seen the

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Lord do a great work over these many decades. How would you describe the theological makeup of Mercy Seat Christian Church?

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Well, if people are interested in seeing what our beliefs are, they can go to our website, which is mercyseat .net,

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and right at the bottom we have our catechism, and the very first question is, what is the chief end of man?

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And that, of course, is to glorify God, you know, and enjoy Him forever. That's right from the

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Westminster Shorter Catechism. Yes, exactly. And our catechism, we use questions from the

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Westminster, also from the Heidelberg, and then we place some of our own questions in it also.

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We made the catechism for our children in order to catechize them and teach them and instruct them in the faith.

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We view that as a massively important thing to do, and we have a lot of kids at Mercy Seat.

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Oh, great. Beating God. Yep. Great. Well, I think being a Reformed Baptist myself,

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Reformed Christians can never be reminded too often that we are supposed to be enjoying

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God forever, and sometimes, unfortunately, we who are Reformed live up to the stereotype of being frighteningly sour and down—what's the word

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I'm looking for ?—depressing in our character and our behavior. So when

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I latch on to somebody who's Reformed and has a good sense of humor, I'm always very happy about that.

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And once again, that website, which I'm sure we'll repeat later on in the program, is mercyseat .net—mercyseat

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.net. Before we get into the content of our discussion today, which is the content of your book,

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The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates, A Proper Resistance to Tyranny and a

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Repudiation of Unlimited Obedience to Civil Government, before we get into that discussion, I would like you to carry on the tradition of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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Whenever we have a first -time guest, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony, which would include the religious upbringing, if any, that they had, and the providential circumstances that our

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Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them, and that would include you.

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So let's hear an abbreviation of your story. Sure, yeah, well, I was raised

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Roman Catholic in a Roman Catholic home, went to Mass every Sunday, actually had family prayers when

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I was little—that all diminished, though, as I got older—seven, eight, nine years old—and then my parents ended up divorcing when

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I was 11, and I quit going to church at that point, because the only reason

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I was going before then—I viewed the Mass as the longest 45 minutes of the week, every week—was because of, you know, my dad, and take kindly to that, and you would be harmed if you didn't go.

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So once he was gone, I quit going and lived the life of a total pagan.

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I grew up on the east side of Detroit, where I grew up, I was a minority. Got involved at a young age, age 14, in gang activity there.

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So I used to sell drugs, rob people, steal cars, burn down houses, all those kinds of stuff, and I was in a white gang.

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We would fight black gangs regularly, and that was the life that I lived up until I was almost 18 years old, and that's when

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Christ, by the power of His Holy Spirit, radically transformed me. My mom had come to Christ first.

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She had had a mental breakdown when the divorce took place, and I actually lived with my grandparents for about four months, me and my sister and my three brothers.

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And she wasn't the same when she came back and was on drugs to keep her mood swing level and all that.

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She finally threw me out of the house at age 14. I went to live with my dad, and then he threw me out.

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Six months later, I was a total punk, rebel, and so I went back to see my mom.

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I hadn't seen her in six months. And I remember walking up to the door, thinking, I've got to put up with her mouth again, and finally knocked on the door, and she opened it, and she smiled, and she invited me in, and she shared with me how

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Jesus had transformed her life, how she threw all her pills down the toilet, how

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He had forgiven her of her sin. And I sat there, then

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I was 15 years old as a kid, and I just looked at my mom, and I knew she was a completely different person.

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Praise God. Yeah, amen, amen. And so it was a while after that, when

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I finally came to Christ, I was actually put into Teen Challenge, which is a

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Christian drug rehab program. Very familiar with it. Yep. I was tried for arson and placed in there.

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That was part of my sentence. The first year I had to stay inside there, and that's where I came to Christ.

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And it was a radical transformation. We went to a church on a Sunday morning. I walked in, people were shaking my hand, glad to see me.

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We went into the sanctuary. This is probably close to a thousand people in this church. And a lady came out, started playing the piano, and everyone got quiet and began to worship

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Him. And I began to feel odd inside, like I was going to weep, and I sat down on the pew and put my face and my hands, because I didn't want anyone to see that, and literally wept for an hour and a half through that whole service.

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Wow. They gave an altar call at the end. I didn't even go up. I knew Christ had already transformed my life.

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And there's so much I can say. Actually, I have a website where if people are interested, they can read my testimony.

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I got the website titled HowJesusChangedMyLife .com. I just got this about four years ago.

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I thought for sure that wouldn't be available, but it was. And so I got it for $2 .99,

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HowJesusChangedMyLife .com. I have little cards that I give out, because what I've noticed over my lifetime,

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I do a lot of ministry at universities, and regardless of how hostile the crowd may be, or the individual may be, when

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I share my testimony, they get quiet and they listen. And I think it de -goblinizes ourselves, because they think we're all self -righteous, and our professors have all told them we're terrible people, you know,

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Christians. And they get to see, no, you're just a person, and Christ radically transformed my life, and he can radically transform your life also.

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Praise God. And I understand that your testimony was actually turned into one of the radio plays on Unshackled.

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That is correct, yep. And at that website, HowJesusChangedMyLife .com, I have my testimony written out by about 25 pages, and also that episode of Unshackled that they did on my life is also there.

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People want to listen to that. Great. And once again, that is HowJesusChangedMyLife .com.

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Well, we are going to be discussing today something very controversial, which is your book, and the book, once again, is titled

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The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates, a Proper Resistance to Tyranny and a

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Repudiation of Unlimited Obedience to Civil Government. And obviously, that book probably caused quite a stir amongst the body of Christ, as during the whole

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COVID crisis, we all scratched our heads as we saw close friends and allies becoming,

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I don't want to exaggerate the opposition, but almost enemies, when we were disagreeing with one another on how we are to respond to the government when they are making unreasonable demands upon our lives and even the activities of our church.

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And it's so phenomenal to have a resource like this book.

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So, tell us exactly what you mean by The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates, and also, what prompted you to finally put pen to paper and write this book?

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Sure. Well, the doctrine simply is that when the higher -ranking civil authority makes unjust or immoral law, policy, or court opinion, the lower or lesser -ranking civil authority has both the

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God -given right and duty not to obey, and if necessary, to actively resist the superior authority.

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So the duty is not blithe compliance, which we see with almost all magistrates these days, as the churchmen in Christianity have failed in our mission to the magistrates and instructing them what their role, function, and limits are as revealed by Scripture.

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So this is something that the magistrates need to be taught, and the people, because most people know nothing about The Doctrine of the

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Lesser Magistrate. And what brought me to write the book was my love for the pre -born.

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I've done so much on behalf of the pre -born. Here in Wisconsin, we started a mission in 1990 called

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Missionaries to the Pre -born. And, you know, I've been arrested many times, spent about 16 months in jail for interposing on behalf of the pre -born.

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And what stunned me about the slaughter of the pre -born, Chris, is that, you know, we're talking about murder, and we didn't see one governor, not one legislature, not one mayor, not one city council anywhere in the country simply say, no, no murder is going to take place here.

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And so that was the number one thing that caused me to first get acquainted with this doctrine, and then the

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Lord used the time of prayer at our church back in 2007. Our church does a lot of ministry.

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Out on the streets, you know, at prisons, I'm down the line. And universities, you name it.

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Out at the death camps, everywhere. But what we saw with our country, it just kept seeming to slide downward into decadence, lawlessness, depravity.

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And so in 2007, we just gathered, and this went on for like a year and a half. We get together every two to three weeks.

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We were like in spiritual tank tops, nothing up our sleeve. We were just crying out to God to intervene.

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I love that line. I've never heard of spiritual tank tops before, nothing up our sleeves. Yes. And so at that time, one of those prayer meetings, when we were done,

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I gathered the people together. There was probably about 30 people there. And I told them, I said, God's really impressed on me that we need to establish a website where we teach the magistrates of our nation and the people, the doctor and the lesser magistrate, and he's impressed upon me.

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I need to write a book about that. So I started in 2007. I didn't publish my work until 2013.

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I pastor, have 11 children, lots of ministry, busy, life is what it is. So it took that long from 2007 to 2013.

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And in the midst of that, we also published the first English translation of the

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Magdeburg Confession. Wow. And so this was published first in 2012.

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So we have this work from antiquity, if you will, 1550, the Magdeburg Confession was written.

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And if you could get into a little bit of detail about the Magdeburg Confession. Oh, absolutely.

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Yeah, and by the way, this is very timely that I'm on your show, because tomorrow, April 13th, 1550, was when the confession was published.

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Wow, this is totally providential. I didn't know that. Yes. So 472 years ago tomorrow is the first time the doctrine was actually formalized.

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It was formalized in Magdeburg, Germany by Lutheran ministers. It was picked up by others who expanded the doctrine of the

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Lesser Magistrate and brought much more scripture into it also. I think the foremost treatise ever written on the doctrine of the

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Lesser Magistrate was by John Knox in his Appellation to the Nobles of Scotland, written in 1558.

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And he cited the Magdeburgers in his lifetime as being appreciative of them for what they first established there in 1550 in the

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Magdeburg Confession. But what had happened was Luther died in 1546, and Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, decided at that time to make his move in order to re -Romanize all the products and lands, to bring them back under Roman Catholic belief, practice, and rule.

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Some refused to go along with this and were actually killed. Others fled from the area geographically.

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But the vast majority all went along with it. Even Melanchthon, who was Luther's heir apparent, went along with it.

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But there was this one lone city, Magdeburg, which refused to go along with it.

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And the chief minister in Magdeburg was a man named Nicholas von Amstorf. And he is the first signer of the

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Magdeburg Confession. And understand, Nicholas von Amstorf, Philip Melanchthon, and Martin Luther were all good friends.

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Nicholas von Amstorf was with Luther when he pounded his 95 theses on the church door in Wittenberg, all those years earlier.

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Nicholas von Amstorf was with Martin Luther when he went to Worms to be tried as a heretic.

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He was with Luther when Frederick the Wise, the Elector of Saxony, feigned

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Luther's abduction and hid him in the Wartburg Castle there in Eisenach. Nicholas von

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Amstorf, in other words, had seen the inner position of a lesser magistrate way back in 1521 when that took place because the

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Emperor had ordered Luther's arrest. And instead of arresting him,

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Frederick the Wise, who was one of seven electors directly under the Emperor, instead feigned his abduction and hid him in the

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Wartburg Castle. People didn't know if Luther was alive or dead for nearly a year. And he translated the

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New Testament into German, giving the Germanic peoples their first unified language ever.

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From the Word of God it came. Because before that there were literally hundreds of dialects.

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So here it is, 1546, and here's Nicholas von Amstorf, everyone's going along with this.

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He's been preaching in Magdeburg since 1524. Magdeburg was the first city to embrace the

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Reformation. Luther said, we took the city without firing a shot, just by being faithful to the

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Word of God. And he thought so highly of Nicholas von Amstorf that he put him in the pulpit there.

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Now this was a small city, understand that. There's 30 ,000 people. Magdeburg had the biggest walls of any city in Germany.

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And their magistrates decided to defy the Emperor, regarding his

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Augsburg Interim of bringing everyone back under Roman Catholic rule, practice, and belief.

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And the minister sat down and penned this confession, we now call the Magdeburg Confession, in order to show the world that their magistrates were right, both from Scripture and history, to defy the

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Emperor. It's the story of a city that defied an empire of one. It was actually 13 months each there.

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Over 4 ,000 of Charles' men were killed. 468 Magdeburgers were killed.

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But in the end, Charles capitulated, and the

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Magdeburgers won. So understand this, Chris. If it had not been for the interposition of Magdeburg, the

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Reformation would have just been a blip on the radar screen of human history. That's how important their interposition was in that day.

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Wow. By the way, I thought I should mention that our guest today has been identified by one of my most frequently interviewed guests,

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Dr. Joseph C. Moorcraft III, who was my guest both Friday of last week and yesterday.

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Dr. Moorcraft, a brilliant historian and scholar and theologian and teacher, pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia.

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He has nicknamed my guest today, Matthew J. Trujillo, as the 21st century

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John Knox. And that's something to really be honored by, especially when somebody of the high caliber of Dr.

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Moorcraft makes such a statement. Absolutely. No, I couldn't agree more.

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And John Knox is a hero in the Chihuahua home here. And by the way, Dr. Moorcraft is what

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I refer to as part of my triumvirate. I met Francis Schaeffer back in 1983, shortly before he died, and he had a huge impact on my life.

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I met Rush Dooney in 1996, not too long before he died. He had a huge impact on my life.

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And I was then able to meet later Dr. Moorcraft, who also had a huge impact on my life.

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So hearing those kind of words, yeah. Tremendous. Praise the

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Lord. Yes, and Knox is probably the reformer most known for his defying tyranny, would you say?

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Oh, absolutely. What I love about Knox, and why he's big in our home, is because his application.

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He so wanted and worked for seeing God's law and word applied to every area of life.

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That's what I love about the man. Not to mention he was fearless. And the only reason any of us are fearless is because of our love for God.

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We fear Him, not man. And he was that type of an individual. And when you read about his life, it was just astounding.

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When you read his writings, they were tremendous. You read his debates before the magistrates. It's just tremendous, the life lived there.

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And I wanted to give our email address to our listeners, if you have a question for Matthew J.

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Trujillo, on the doctrine of the lesser magistrates, a proper resistance to tyranny, and a repudiation of unlimited obedience to civil government.

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Our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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

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

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Let's say you are uncomfortable about the way your own church has been responding to some of these mandates and things going on in our nation, or lack of response.

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And obviously we wouldn't want you to be mentioning your church by name or your pastors by name, or you might even be the pastor, and you're disappointed by your own congregation or your denomination.

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We would understand that that kind of a question would require you to remain anonymous, but if it's just a general question, please give us your first name, your city and state, and country of residence.

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We already have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania with a question. How does your book and the doctrine of the lesser magistrates apply to the mandates involving masks and vaccines?

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Sure. Well, first let me direct you to our website, which is defytyrants .com,

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defytyrants .com. And there we have many stories where we see the doctrine of the lesser magistrates actually fleshed out.

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And that's one of the beauties of this whole unleashing of the tyrants, if you will, with all their mandates and the evil that they've tried to proliferate in the land.

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We've actually had so many examples, living examples in our time of the magistrates interposing.

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And we documented over 500 of them. And, of course, it didn't come from the federal government by any means.

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In fact, it didn't come from any state governments either, virtually none. Most state governments, the governors and the legislatures, learned they loved to play the tyrant too.

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But where we did see all these hundreds of acts of interposition,

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Chris, were at the county and local level. And I'm talking about sheriffs, county boards, mayors, city councils, even school boards.

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Let me just share one story with you, if I could, because I think it crystallizes what's been going on here.

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I remember back in May of 2020, when these governors were giving new draconian decrees every 72 hours.

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Just south of me, where I live, I'm in Wisconsin, it's Illinois. Governor Pritzker is the governor of Illinois.

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He loves to play the tyrant. In May of 2020, he came out with his latest decree, and it was this.

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If any businessman opens their business before I say you can open your business, you will now be arrested and charged with an actual crime.

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Wow. So the very next day, in a state of 102 counties, only one county gathered their men together to respond.

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It's Madison County, which is right along the Mississippi River, directly across from St. Louis. They gathered their county board together, and they issued their own decree.

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And their decree stated that our businessmen are free to reopen their businesses now, and that we will use, they said, all of our power and authority to protect our businessmen.

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And then they cautioned the governor and the state not to interfere with their businessmen.

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Well, Governor Pritzker responded in good tyrant fashion the next day, held a press conference, talked about how he was going to take away all of Madison County's federal money, all their state money, and he had a whole list of bad things he was going to do with them if they didn't get in line.

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In fact, he did that for the next three days. But the men at the county board in Madison County held resolute, firm, didn't waver.

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And then seven days after Governor Pritzker had set forth his latest decree about the businessmen, the

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Illinois State Police published a press release declaring that they would not arrest any businessman who opened their business anywhere in the state before Governor Pritzker said they could open their business.

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They had decided to stand with Madison County. And the very next day after that,

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Governor Pritzker rescinded his order. Understand, if it had not been for the interposition of that one county in all of Illinois, the entire state would have remained under that draconian decree.

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That's how important interposition is. And just to note, the man who heads up that county board is a

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Christian brother, and he had read my book on the doctrine of lesser magistrates two years earlier, had taught it to the rest of the board.

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They knew exactly what their duty was in the face of that kind of evil. And so they did their duty and committed an act of interposition.

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So that's one story of so many where we see the lesser authorities standing in interposition against the tyranny or evil of the superior authority.

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Well, thank you, Arnie, in Perry County. By the way, I don't think I saw you at the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pastors Luncheon in Perry County, in Loisville, to be more specific.

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So try to make it to the next one on September 22nd featuring Dr. James R.

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White of Alpha and Omega Ministries. But please provide your mailing address, Arnie, because you have won a free copy of The Doctrine of the

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Lesser Magistrates by Matthew J. Trujillo, and it's also autographed by him. So make sure we get your shipping address, and we will have that shipped out to you by our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.

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They will ship it out to you. And we thank Matt Trujillo for providing us with a limited number of giveaway copies.

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We have Bobby in Hartsdale, New York, who says,

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How do you respond to people who say, Why are you whining and complaining like a baby every time someone insists you wear a mask at a public place?

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It seems to be a minor inconvenience, they will say. How should we respond to such people?

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Sure. Yeah, the way I respond is the way I've responded since the beginning. You have to understand that tyranny is built plank by plank.

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And I often use the example of the Jews during World War II because it's a well -known aspect of history.

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And, you know, it didn't start with the Jews being called down to the railroad station and told to jump on the boxcars.

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It actually started eight years before that. And the very first little law that they created was that if you were

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Jewish, you couldn't sit on a public park bench. And the Jews thought about it, and they were like,

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Well, it's just a public park bench. You know, kind of like, oh, it's just a mask.

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And they accommodated themselves to that law. And then there was another one passed, and they accommodated themselves to that, and another, and they accommodated themselves.

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Tyranny is built plank by plank. You have to understand that. And this matter of the mask isn't just, you know, whether you're going to wear a mask or not.

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It's tied to an evil narrative. It's tied to the tyrants who want to impose wickedness on the peoples of the entire planet.

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It's their design. And so there's no way we should go along with that.

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That's why I stood against it. I never wore a mask once here in Wisconsin, ever. And often me or my wife would be the only ones in the store without a mask on.

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Our church never shut down. We continued to meet, in spite of what they were saying and doing.

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And the Lord blessed us for it. Our church actually doubled in size. Wow. We did what we did in that regard.

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So I was only ever thrown out of four stores for not wearing it. The last one I was thrown out of,

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Chris, was a Best Buy, which is an electronics store. Yes. Up here in Wisconsin.

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We got them over here, too. Yeah, I walked in there with my 15 -year -old daughter last

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May, and that was the last one I was thrown out of. Two young guys were standing there, and they're like,

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Oh, sir, you have to have a mask to shop here. And I looked at them, and I said, Well, we don't wear masks.

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And he said, Oh, well, we have just the thing for you. And he points down to a cardboard table.

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Card table, I should say. And here are a bunch of face shields sitting on this card table.

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And I looked at that, and I looked up at the young man, and I said, If you think I'm going to put that on my face and walk around your store like JoJo the

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Circus Monkey, you're living in a fantasy land.

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The look on his face was priceless. We ended up having a good, interesting five -minute conversation, which ended with me letting him know,

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Yeah, make sure you tell your manager that Matchwell will never shop in your store. Like, they care, right?

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He'll never shop in your store again. Not just when you get rid of your dopey masking thing, ever.

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He'll never shop in your store again. Because you're aiding and abetting evil. And what's sad is, when you watch the churchmen, and I used what influence

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I could with my fellow churchmen, you know, we should not be going along with this. You should not be closing.

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You look at the history of the church, they would often bar the door of the church to keep the state out. Here you are, letting the state bar the door while you stay out.

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And in the midst of that, not only did they play the traitor to Christ, many, many of them also played the prostitute or the whore.

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Because they took over $12 billion, went to Christian churches and Christian organizations, from the tyrants.

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They were teaching Christians to obey the tyrant.

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They were aiding and abetting the tyrants and their evil. It's just an egregious, heartbreaking thing.

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I'll tell you, Chris, I've wept more for our nation and for the church over the last two years than I did in the first 20 years before that.

34:10

It's just heartbreaking to see what has taken place. And we need to see repentance.

34:18

And one of the good things I've seen of this too, let me say this, is I would estimate that about 15 % of people have left their churches over this.

34:27

Which is a goodness to see. Because many of the churches they left weren't good churches to begin with.

34:33

And it was kind of the final straw for them. And they went there eight years, they told me. Ten years.

34:39

Twenty years. And they couldn't believe how these people were behaving, how they were going along with all this.

34:45

And so we've seen a lot of those who love the Lord and want to be faithful to Him gather together in other churches.

34:54

So it's been encouraging to see that. By the way, I came up with a line early on when the mask mandates were being imposed in stores and restaurants.

35:04

When someone would say, do you have a mask? I would reply, no, this is my real face.

35:14

I had a thought. But we have to go to our first break right now. If you have a question for Matt Trujillo, send it in immediately because we are rapidly running out of time with his segment.

35:26

We will be joined by Matt Kinnitzer, who will be hosting a conference this June featuring

35:32

Matt Trujillo in the second hour. But Matt Trujillo will only be on for about 25 more minutes or so.

35:39

So if you have a question, send it to ChrisArnson at gmail .com. ChrisArnson at gmail .com.

35:44

Give us your first name, at least, your city and state, and your country of residence. And by the way, Bobby in Hartsdale, New York, you have also won a free copy of The Doctrine of the

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Lesser Magistrates, autographed by Matt Trujillo. So make sure we have your full mailing address in Hartsdale, New York.

36:01

We'll be right back. Don't go away. When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

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NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Matt Tarr, pastor of High Point Baptist Church in Larksville, Pennsylvania, and the

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Hello, my name is Anthony Uvino and I'm one of the pastors at Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Quorum, New York and also the host of the reformrookie .com

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website. I want you to know that if you enjoy listening to the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio show like I do, you can now find it on the

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40:25

Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Invinio, and thanks for listening. If you love

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, one of the best ways you can help keep the show on the air is by supporting our advertisers.

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One such faithful advertiser who really believes in what Chris Arnton is doing is

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Dan is the president and founder of the Historical Bible Society. Their mission?

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To foster belief in the credibility of scripture as the written word of God. They go to various churches, schools and institutions to publicly display a rare collection of biblical texts, along with a fascinating presentation by Mr.

41:14

Patafuco demonstrating the reliability of scripture. To advance the cause of the gospel, they created a beautiful, perfect facsimile of the genealogy of Jesus Christ from the original engravings contained in a first edition 1611

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King James Bible. This 17th century hand -engraved chart shows the family tree of Jesus Christ going back to Adam and Eve.

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Thanks for helping to keep Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio on the air. And we thank the

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And thanks so much, Dan. We love you. And we thank you also for doing such a magnificent job as our guest speaker at the

42:43

Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio pastors' luncheon last week. Matt Trujillo, one of the things that came to mind when we were discussing the masks and the response you gave to a listener in Hartsdale, New York, about how to respond to somebody who says, what's the big deal about masks?

43:06

Well, even as a Christian, if you even remove the political aspect from the scenario and bowing to tyranny and all that, even as a

43:16

Christian, to maintain integrity, since when is it a virtue of a

43:24

Christian to perpetuate a myth and a superstition like the wearing of masks to prevent the spread of a virus?

43:33

My doctor, Dr. Joel Yeager, who is the lead physician, along with his wife, at Heritage Family Health in Newmanstown, Pennsylvania, he says every medical student knows that a mask is absolutely worthless, especially the masks that people are wearing in public, to prevent the spread of a virus.

44:02

And it is really laughably ridiculous to continue to perpetuate this superstition.

44:10

And, in fact, I am just so outraged every time I see a so -called medical expert on even conservative, quote -unquote,

44:19

Fox News. I don't know of a single medical expert on Fox News that says that masks are worthless, and I am very convinced that they are by the scientists and the physicians that I have had conversations with.

44:34

So, if you want to reply to what I just said. Sure. No, I agree with you fully on that, Chris.

44:40

And, you know, I preach sermons dealing with this, you know, because people have to understand what they were doing was going against the law of God.

44:50

They were going against the creative order of God. I mean, they were going against his quarantine laws.

44:56

You don't quarantine the whole of society. You quarantine the sick, and you also have a means for them to adjudicate whether they actually have the thing or not, whereas this is just nuts what they did.

45:11

Also, the creative order of God regarding work. They were saying you can't work.

45:17

Only these certain people can work. That's an attack upon the very creative order of God for man.

45:23

We, you know, in part, take dominion through our work. And so, when it came to the mask,

45:30

I was saying in my sermons that it's really you're aiding and abetting a lie.

45:37

And, you know, based on God's law, you shall not bear false witness.

45:43

Exodus 23, verse 2 also, you don't join with those spreading a lie and so many other passages.

45:50

There's no way that we should be wearing a mask because we're aiding and abetting a lie.

45:57

And I know most of the churchmen were telling everybody, oh, no, this is how we show love. You know, we put a mask on, and that's how we show love to our neighbor.

46:06

And we don't, as Christians, show love to our neighbor by spreading lies, by joining in a lie.

46:13

Rather, we show love by telling them the truth, telling them what we, what they need to hear rather than what they want to hear.

46:21

The Apostle Paul, even in the love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, says that love rejoices in the truth.

46:31

And so, when I heard the churchmen hiding behind this idea that love is wearing a mask, then it turned into love is getting the vaccine.

46:44

I was appalled and bothered, and so I preached about these things.

46:50

People are interested in the sermons we have at two places. One is, we have a

46:56

YouTube channel, it's simply Matt Chuella, and they can look at sermons there, or they can go to sermonaudio .com.

47:05

YouTube, by the way, has censored a couple of my sermons, but we also have them at sermonaudio .com.

47:12

You just click on the speaker button and put in Matthew Chuella, and the sermons will come up there.

47:19

Well, we only have seven minutes left for you before we switch over to Pastor Matt Kinnitzer.

47:26

If you could, unburden your heart and summarize for us what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today before your segment is up.

47:36

Yeah, to live faithful to Christ, I think is massively important for us to do, both in our personal life, in our homes, as a church, and also in the community.

47:50

All of it. It's massively important for us to be faithful and true to Him in the midst of what's going on.

47:57

I'll tell you one thing I've noticed that I'd like to briefly address, Chris, is I've seen a lot of young people seem to have some kind of act.

48:06

I'm talking about Christian young people, and I pick up this on social networking places, see these threads where they're just attacking their

48:17

Christianity, and they particularly hate the fact that some people are standing against evil being done by government, and they're bothered by that.

48:31

And they think some of the things they proffer is the idea that you have sin in your own life, and therefore you want to focus on what the government's doing wrong in order to detract from the sin in your own life.

48:47

I'm always thinking to myself, then again, it might simply be that we see evil being done, and the

48:54

Word of God declares, you who love the Lord hate evil.

48:59

It should bother us when we see the Law, Word, or created Order of God being impugned by men, and especially when it's being impugned by the government's men.

49:10

As His ambassadors, as His witnesses, we should want to engage that, and speak as His people in response to it.

49:19

I think it's extremely important that the churchmen do this. Unfortunately, very little of it's being done, and that's why

49:27

I found that in all my efforts with the magistrates over the last several years, most

49:32

Christian magistrates think and govern no differently than their secular colleagues.

49:39

And that is because we haven't brought the Word of God to them regarding their office.

49:45

God does speak to all matters of life in His Word, including matters of civil government, and therefore, as His people, we have a duty to bring to them what their role, function, and limits are.

50:02

So we're in the midst of a state of hell at this point. All atheistic cultures lead to either statist societies or hedonistic societies, or both, and America is both.

50:14

It's the worst. Statism, hedonism. It's so important for us to bring

50:20

Christ to men, to get outside of our four walls, to go and present

50:25

Christ, His thinking, God's law, His Word, regarding all matters of life, out in the marketplace.

50:34

Busy intersections, large gatherings of people, universities, I don't care where it's at, prisons, kind of got a captive audience there, and instruct them in the things of the

50:45

Lord. This is massively important to do, as well as being faithful in your home, conducting family worship with your children when your grandchildren are over with them.

50:56

This is hugely important, something I learned as a father many of the early years of my oldest children.

51:03

We have 11 kids. We have 26 grandchildren now. Many of my older children, you know,

51:09

I was remiss in conducting family worship. They're in your home. You figure they know what you know. They don't.

51:15

You have to instruct them in the faith. And what a difference it makes in the home when you sit down just for 15 minutes, you know, do it three or four times a week.

51:25

Don't become a slave to it in the sense of, you know, we're going to do this no matter what. You know, sometimes you can't do it.

51:32

Life is what it is. But I'll tell you, if you go more than a week, you notice the difference in the tone of the home.

51:38

It's so important for us to sit down as families and talk about the things of God. So we go through a book at a time.

51:44

Might cover one verse. Might cover a whole chapter. And we have questions. And, of course, when you have kids scattered from ages, you know, 3 up to 18, you know, it gets interesting.

51:56

But have your older kids, you know, conduct family worship. It's a goodness to them, too, to be able to do that.

52:04

I think it's extremely important. We build businesses with our kids. That's massively important. The home is under attack by the state, and it's been done through design, through law, policy, court opinion, to destroy the home, to destroy the family.

52:24

Because every good statist knows, Chris, that in order to strengthen the state, you have to weaken the family.

52:32

And so I just encourage people, you know, look well to your homes. Do right by Christ in the midst of it.

52:38

Live radically for him. Our days are short on the earth. Amen. Amen. And once again, the website for Pastor Matt Trujillo's church is mercyseat .net.

52:49

Mercyseat .net. And you also have that Defy Tyrants website. What is that again? Defytyrants .com.

52:56

Defytyrants .com. Thank you so much, Pastor Matt Trujillo, for being such an extraordinary guest.

53:02

And the next time, let's try to do a two -hour discussion. I know that your own schedule prohibited that today, but we look forward to having you back on the program.

53:11

Thank you so much. God bless you, Chris. God bless you, brother. And don't go away, folks, because, as I said earlier, we are going to be entering into the second hour of the program with Pastor Matt Kennitzer, pastor of St.

53:25

John's Reformed Church of Freidensburg, Pennsylvania, who will be hosting a conference with Matthew J.

53:32

Trujillo this June, and you don't want to miss all of that information. If you have a question, submit it to ChrisArnsen at gmail .com,

53:42

ChrisArnsen at gmail .com. Please remember this is the longer than normal break in the middle of the show because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

53:49

FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break because the FCC requires of them to localize this program geographically to Lake City, Florida, and therefore they have to air their own public service announcements while we air our globally heard commercials simultaneously.

54:08

So please, use this time wisely. Write questions to Matt Kennitzer, and also write down the information provided by our advertisers so that you can more frequently and successfully respond to them.

54:21

Don't go away. We'll be right back with Matt Kennitzer right after these messages. We are excited to announce another new member of the

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If you love Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, one of the best ways you can help keep the show on the air is by supporting our advertisers.

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One such faithful advertiser who really believes in what Chris Hansen is doing is

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Daniel P. Patafuoco, serious injury lawyer and Christian apologist.

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Dan is the president and founder of the Historical Bible Society. Their mission?

56:02

To foster belief in the credibility of Scripture as the written word of God. They go to various churches, schools, and institutions to publicly display a rare collection of biblical texts along with a fascinating presentation by Mr.

56:17

Patafuoco demonstrating the reliability of Scripture. To advance the cause of the

56:22

Gospel, they created a beautiful, perfect facsimile of the genealogy of Jesus Christ from the original engravings contained in a first edition 1611

56:34

King James Bible. This 17th century hand -engraved chart shows the family tree of Jesus Christ going back to Adam and Eve.

56:44

This book is complete with gorgeous full -size illustrations of Noah's Ark and the

56:50

Tower of Babel and an explanation of why the genealogy of Jesus is so important for his claims to the throne of the universe.

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Originals of this work are in museums and nobody has ever made it accessible to the public in a large book form before.

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You can have your own copy of this 44 -page genealogy book for a donation of $35 or more.

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Visit historicalbiblesociety .org. That's historicalbiblesociety .org.

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Thanks for helping to keep Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the air. When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

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New American Standard Bible were among my very first sponsors. It gives me joy knowing that many scholars and pastors in the

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And the NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Chuck White of the

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And the NASB is my Bible of choice. Here's a great way for your church to help keep

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Oh, hail the power of Jesus' name.

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This is Pastor Bill Sousa of Grace Church at Franklin here in the beautiful state of Tennessee.

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Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio financially. Grace Church at Franklin is an independent, autonomous body of believers which strives to clearly declare the whole counsel of God as revealed in Scripture through the person and work of our

01:00:01

Lord Jesus Christ. And, of course, the end of which we strive is the glory of God.

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If you live near Franklin, Tennessee, and Franklin is just south of Nashville, maybe ten minutes, or you are visiting this area, or you have friends and loved ones nearby, we hope you will join us some

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Our website is gracechurchatfranklin .org. That's gracechurchatfranklin .org.

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This is Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our

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Sovereign Lord, God, Savior, and King Jesus Christ today and always.

01:00:57

Hi, I'm Buzz Taylor. Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio has had a long -time partnership with our friends at CVBBS, which stands for Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

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As host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, I frequently get requests from listeners for church recommendations.

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A church I've been strongly recommending as far back as the 1980s is Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey, pastored by Alan Dunn.

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Grace Covenant Baptist Church believes it's God's prerogative to determine how he shall be worshiped and how he shall be represented in the world.

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They believe churches need to turn to the Bible to discover what to include in worship and how to worship

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Discover more about Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey at gcbcnj .squarespace

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Or call them at 908 -996 -7654. That's 908 -996 -7654.

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Tell Pastor Dunn that you heard about Grace Covenant Baptist Church on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Hi, this is

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John Sampson, pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona. Taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnson and the

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Iron Sharpens Iron podcast. I consider Chris a true friend and a man of high integrity. He's a skilled interviewer who's not afraid to ask the big penetrating questions while always defending the key doctrines of the

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Christian faith. I've always been happy to point people to this podcast knowing it's one of the very few safe places on the internet where folk won't be led astray.

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I believe this podcast needs to be heard far and wide. This is a day of great spiritual compromise.

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And yet God has raised Chris up for just such a time. And knowing this, it's up to us as members of the body of Christ to stand with such a ministry in prayer and in finances.

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I'm pleased to do so and would like to ask you to prayerfully consider joining me in supporting

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Iron Sharpens Iron financially. Would you consider sending either a one -time gift or even becoming a regular monthly partner with this ministry?

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I know it would be a huge encouragement to Chris if you would. All the details can be found at ironsharpensironradio .com

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where you can click support. That's ironsharpensironradio .com. Here's what

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Gary DeMar, president of American Vision, had to say about Iron Sharpens Iron Radio recently.

01:05:24

Good to be back, Chris. I always enjoy our time here. I have to tell you, you're one of the better interviewers out there, and I've been doing this for more than 30 years.

01:05:34

Wow, that's some compliment. How much joy are you for that? You don't have to owe me anything.

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We're in good shape. I'm glad you said it on the air so I don't have to brag about myself.

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Tell your friends and loved ones about Iron Sharpens Iron Radio airing live Monday through Friday, 4 to 6 p .m.

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Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary. I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love,

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It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God like the dear saints at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in His Holy Word and to enthusiastically proclaim

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I hope you also have the privilege of discovering this precious congregation and receive the blessing of being showered by their love as I have.

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For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net.

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01:10:20

Before I introduce to you our second guest today, Matt Kennitzer of the

01:10:26

St. John's Reformed Church of Freidensburg, Pennsylvania, we have just a couple of announcements to make that are very important.

01:10:33

If you love this show, folks, and you don't want it to disappear from the airwaves, I'm urging you, please go to ironsharpensironradio .com

01:10:42

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01:10:48

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01:11:03

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01:11:10

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01:11:29

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01:11:42

So just remember, those two things are commands of God and Scripture providing for your church and your family.

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And obviously, providing for my radio show is not the command of God. But if you love this show, if you do not want this show to disappear, and if you are financially blessed above and beyond your ability to provide for your church and family, then please help us survive.

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Please help us remain in existence with a financial gift. We really need your help. Go to ironsharpensironradio .com,

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01:12:21

Christ -honoring, theologically sound, doctrinally solid church like St.

01:12:28

John's Reformed Church of Freidensburg, Pennsylvania, no matter where in the world you live,

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I have lists, extensive lists, of biblically faithful churches spanning the globe. And I've helped many people in our audience all over the planet

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And some of these listeners have joined these churches. So you may be in that category.

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You may be able to find a church home if you submit to me an e -mail simply stating in the subject line,

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I need a church. That's chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:13:10

and put I need a church in the subject line. That is also the e -mail address where you could send in a question to my second guest today,

01:13:19

Pastor Matt Kinnitzer, who is the pastor of St. John's Reformed Church of Freidensburg, Pennsylvania.

01:13:27

And he is also the founder of the Freidensburg Bible Institute, which is going to be conducting a conference this

01:13:34

June on the theme, Pressing Issues of Today and Interposition, featuring the guest speaker who was my first guest on Iron Triple and Zion Radio today,

01:13:44

Matthew J. Trujillo. It's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Triple and Zion Radio, Pastor Matt Kinnitzer.

01:13:53

Hey, thanks, Chris. Thanks. It's a great privilege to be here. Thanks for the invite. Oh, my pleasure, brother. And tell our listeners about St.

01:14:00

John's Reformed Church of Freidensburg, Pennsylvania. Yeah, so it's a pretty old congregation, and interestingly enough,

01:14:10

I listened to your broadcast about a week ago, and coincidentally, our church here, they got out of the

01:14:21

UCC about 2006. That would be the United Church of Christ, which is an extremely liberal denomination and, for the most part, apostate, and basically neck -and -neck with the

01:14:34

Unitarian Universalists in their abandonment of Scripture. And I'm not going to say every single church in that denomination is false, because I'm not aware of that personally, but the denomination as a whole is frighteningly heretical.

01:14:47

Yes, and coming from Oregon, I just moved out here in 2018 after I finished my

01:14:56

MDiv work out there, and I had no idea, really, anything about the

01:15:01

UCC, because we really had none over in Oregon, and I had no idea what

01:15:06

I was getting into with the trail end of just the

01:15:12

UCC baggage that came along with it. But they got out of the UCC about 2006 over the homosexuality issue primarily, and there was a time period where the previous pastor had retired, and the interim was helping the church really look for somebody who was solidly

01:15:32

Reformed in the doctrines of grace, and so providentially, it happened to be that I got called out here, and so we moved out here, and I've been here for almost four years, and the

01:15:46

Lord's doing a great work here, very gracious in opening hearts and minds to the

01:15:51

Gospel and to Scripture being for all of life, and it's just been amazing, and it's been a strengthening experience with where the church was beforehand and where we are now.

01:16:03

Praise God, and the website is sjrcpa .org,

01:16:10

that's S -J for St. John's, R -C for Reformed Church, P -A for Pennsylvania, .org,

01:16:18

and we will repeat that, hopefully, before the end of the program, and now tell us about this biblical institute that you have founded, the

01:16:27

Freidensburg Biblical Institute. Yeah, so through all the kind of COVID craziness and the fallout of that, during that time period,

01:16:36

I just got more and more grieved and more and more burdened that the church should be doing the exact opposite of what it was.

01:16:45

In large capacity, the church was retreating, and so we had the burden here to not retreat, but to open up even more and to really try to fill that void of feeding the people with the

01:17:00

Word of God, and so we developed an institute that's every

01:17:06

Sunday afternoon for nine months of the year and structuring it around different classes like systematic theology, church history, and some other pivotal ones, along with a preaching series, and I have a number of pastors and seminary students engaged in it, involved in it, teaching.

01:17:25

So we have four different topics every month, and so they kind of interchange every week, and it's just been a great time for the people around our community to really come together, and not just our church here, but churches around to come and just join together and to fellowship and to learn and to just really focus on what we ought to do and not retreating, but to gather even more.

01:17:52

Well, tell us about the Freidensburg Biblical Institute's conference that is coming up in June featuring my first guest today,

01:18:03

Matthew J. Truhella, a conference that I plan to attend. God sometimes has different plans than I do, but I am planning to be there, and I am hoping to be there, to Mann and Ironchirp and Zion Radio Exhibitor's booth.

01:18:19

So tell us about this conference. Yeah, so I had gotten to be friends with a pastor that you may know,

01:18:29

Joel Fink, down in Morgantown area. Yes, in fact, he just emailed me today,

01:18:35

I think for the first time, to thank me for having Matt Truhella on, and he is looking forward to being my guest at some point in the near future as well.

01:18:45

Good, good. Yeah, I had gotten to know him through a friend, a family who had actually started coming to this church when they were living in a different state,

01:18:57

I believe it was Maryland at the time, and they had started coming up, and now they are members here, they moved up here.

01:19:04

But I got connected to him and doing ministry with him here and there. He is one of our teachers at the

01:19:11

Institute, and really just kind of brainstorming and talking to him about some of what

01:19:17

I wanted to do with the Institute and bringing other outside speakers in.

01:19:23

And one that I really wanted to get was Matt Truhella, because I had providentially gotten his book,

01:19:33

I think shortly before the COVID stuff hit, and it was a huge, huge help for me, because I was still pretty new in the pastorate, and all of that happening was very overwhelming.

01:19:48

And that was just an amazing gift in reading that book a number of different times right in a row.

01:19:56

And so there was that connection that Joel knew him, so I was able to call

01:20:02

Matt and talk to him and kind of give him the idea of what I was wanting to do, and he was more than willing to come out and looking forward to it, so we kind of lined it up.

01:20:13

We try to do, when there's a fifth Sunday of the month, we try to do pressing issues for today, and whoever's speaking on it really kind of bears their burden of what they feel the

01:20:25

Church and the people of the Church need to hear, need to know. And so that was a main part of what

01:20:33

I wanted Matt to speak on, as well as the doctrine of interposition and the doctrine of lesser magistrates, and just teach the people even more the need for it.

01:20:44

And so really just opening it up to him, and so he's going to come and speak on that and just minister to us here, and I'm very grateful for him to be willing to come out, and I'm looking forward to ministering with him, so it's going to be a great time.

01:21:00

And what are the dates of that conference? It's June 5th. So every

01:21:05

Sunday we have our Biblical Institute in the afternoon, and so that'll be June 5th. I open doors around 330.

01:21:13

We start class about 4. I will have Rick Crump from Kinetic Faith Ministries.

01:21:20

He'll be teaching and kind of giving a little background of his ministry, him and Matt are friends, and then

01:21:28

Matt's going to come on after him and then give the main teaching, and so it'll probably be done around 530 -ish.

01:21:37

And how do our listeners register for this? They just come.

01:21:43

We will have a free open enrollment. There's really not any need to register.

01:21:49

We should be able to fit as many people as coming, so yeah, and if people want to drop me a line that they are coming to kind of give me an idea of numbers, they can just shoot us a contact through our website.

01:22:04

There's a contact form there, but it's just open enrollment basically. And once again, that is sjrcpa .org,

01:22:13

S -J for St. John's, R -C for Reformed Church, P -A for Pennsylvania .org,

01:22:20

sjrcpa .org. Well, just as Matt Trujillo did in the first hour, since you are also a first -time guest here on Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio, we would like you to continue our tradition here, our custom that we have.

01:22:37

You have first -time guests give an abbreviation or a summary of their salvation testimony that would include any kind of religious atmosphere you may have been raised in, and what kind of providential circumstances our

01:22:51

Sovereign Lord raised up in your life that drew you to himself and saved you. Sure, yeah.

01:22:58

So I grew up in Colorado, and I grew up in a pretty typical

01:23:04

American quote -unquote Christian home. Always thought I believed in Jesus.

01:23:10

Default that I would get into heaven somehow. Really had no foundation really of any understanding of what that really meant.

01:23:20

So it was an external profession in a lot of ways at a very young age. We moved away from Colorado to upstate

01:23:28

New York when I was about seven, so I really had no foundation to build on. Then we moved out to Oregon at the age of 12, and I dove right into middle school, high school, college, giving into every influence that was out there, and really that just kind of shaped the rest of my life from there and had no foundation whatsoever and lived a very wretched life, giving into a lot of passions of the flesh, desires of the flesh.

01:24:02

After college, I started my own business, a screen printing and graphic design business, and was going on different tours and stuff with a business partner and selling our clothing.

01:24:16

The lifestyle just was snowballing and everything that I was doing. I started to get really emptied out, and it was

01:24:25

God really working and showing me who I really was and that I was not His.

01:24:30

My life didn't look like it whatsoever in my beliefs for sure. So there was points where I got to really loathe in life, and He really emptied me out.

01:24:43

During that time, confidentially, me, my wife, and my oldest daughter, she was about half a year at that time, we started going to a church out in Oregon through a death of the family, and we were supporting a family, so we started going.

01:25:01

God started really working on me, and I still was not saved yet, but I started working for the youth ministry there and started to hear.

01:25:13

As I was in that, I started to study Scripture a lot, and what I was studying just did not line up with what

01:25:20

I was hearing, what I was seeing practiced and taught in that church, and that really was a major time in my life where I was searching the

01:25:31

Scriptures, praying and asking God to really show me what His truth was, and that's when

01:25:38

I came to life where He really showed me the truth of the Gospel and the truth of who

01:25:44

I was in the depth of my heart, and that was a great change in my life that changed a whole direction.

01:25:55

I ended up going to get an MDiv and really having a burden to pastor a church and never thought

01:26:03

I would even do anything like that, so that was a major, major change, and then we moved out here from Oregon, dropped everything and moved out here, so...

01:26:16

Praise God. And I am going to take our final break, which is a lot shorter than the other breaks, early, so I don't have to interrupt you mid -sentence later on, and if anybody has any questions for Pastor Matt, please send them as soon as you can to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:26:37

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

01:26:42

Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence. If you live outside of the

01:26:49

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

01:26:56

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We're going to be right back, right after these messages, with Pastor Matt Kinnitzer and the continuation of our discussion on the doctrine of the lesser magistrates.

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Or visit lynnbrookbaptist .org. That's lynnbrookbaptist .org. Welcome back. This is Chris Sorensen.

01:36:35

If you just tuned us in, the second half of our program today features Pastor Matt Kinnitzer.

01:36:42

By the way, am I pronouncing your name correctly? Yeah, actually, you did very good. He is pastor of St.

01:36:49

John's Reformed Church in Freidensburg, Pennsylvania, which is also going to be the host of an upcoming

01:36:56

Bible conference this June featuring Matt Shruhella. And if you'd like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrissorensen at gmail .com,

01:37:08

chrissorensen at gmail .com. We have an anonymous listener who says, my question is for both

01:37:14

Chris Sorensen and Pastor Matt. I'm wondering why you choose to believe a minority of doctors and scientists who are against mask mandates and vaccine mandates when it seems that the vast majority are echoing what the politicians are saying, that these are indeed very important tools to rid society of the coronavirus.

01:37:43

Well, I'll just quickly say one of the very reasons is built into the question that the anonymous listener has.

01:37:53

I always question very seriously what the vast majority of the world is saying and doing, in the 21st century especially.

01:38:01

And I have a much greater confidence in believing doctors and scientists who are actually risking their careers, they're risking their livelihoods, they're risking their medical licenses to oppose the superstitions and the outright lies that many doctors and scientists are perpetuating, including on Fox News, the majority on Fox News.

01:38:36

Even one of my political heroes, Tucker Carlson, will frequently have doctors and scientists on who perpetuate the mask and vaccine myths, which really disturbs me greatly.

01:38:50

But I think that people who are actually risking their livelihoods, one should pause for a moment and think, why are they doing that?

01:39:02

And do you have anything to add to that, your own reasoning behind this,

01:39:08

Pastor Matt? Yeah, I would just add to that the presuppositions that we stand on is that man is inherently wicked and depraved and confused beyond belief, and so the mass majority will run in that direction when it suits a narrative or whatever agenda it may be.

01:39:32

And so the prophets weren't listened to, but yet they had to release the burden that they had from the

01:39:42

Lord. And so in a lot of respects, it's the same in principle when you're laying your life on the line and in light of the truth that you have to risk whatever it is, your vocation, your life, to give that truth, you're willing to do it.

01:39:59

And that, as you said, is a major thing to really think about. And so there's a lot of the presuppositional pieces to that that we would stand on the total proudly of man and wanting to take those narratives and run in the direction that they want.

01:40:17

And so I would greatly honor those doctors who are standing up and risking their jobs to speak the truth.

01:40:28

So, yeah, that's a major part of it. Well, thank you,

01:40:33

Anonymous. If you give me by email your full name and mailing address, obviously we will not divulge that on the air since you remain anonymous.

01:40:43

You have won a free copy of The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates as well by Matthew J.

01:40:49

Trujillo. It's autographed, and we will have Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com,

01:40:56

ship that out to you at no charge to you or to Iron Trump and Zion Radio. Thank you for the excellent question.

01:41:03

Well, if you could pick up here, Pastor Matt, as to why you believe that Pastor Matt Trujillo's book is so important that you have actually arranged a conference featuring him on this very issue.

01:41:23

Yeah, it's just going through, walking through trying to pastor and shepherd a church during this time of COVID, and being, again, so new to the pastorate that just started to really see how unjust things were, how a lot of it just really didn't make sense in so many different ways, of how there was one narrative here, but then you have other things happening where stores,

01:41:57

Walmarts are wide open, but yet other places are supposed to be closed, and a lot of those things that just didn't really make sense really made me start to really ask these hard questions that I think a lot of us really haven't thought of in a lot of respects, of what's the nature of the church and state?

01:42:20

What is the role of the pastor? And stepping into that role myself of having that burden to shepherd people,

01:42:29

I really felt the burden that we could not go along with it any longer, and we had to do what we were called to do before God to be faithful and to follow

01:42:43

Him regardless, and that book really opened up a lot of just those realities that were historically proven throughout the church, and so you have a lot of these tendencies that I've seen where close churches that I know, every time the government or a governor is changing their mandates or changing it here and there, they're bowing down to that and changing along with it, and that's really a disturbing, grieving thing to witness that's got a state church mentality that is growing underneath a lot,

01:43:28

I think, and it's to really see how even in respect to our nation, we have what's the authority of our land.

01:43:38

It's not a person. It's a document, and that document really does honor

01:43:43

God in many different ways, and so there's a lot of pastors not following that and more so not following God in that respect, and so just going through it myself, we had to keep our doors open.

01:44:01

We had to open up. We had to just do what we felt called to do, and that book was really pivotal in helping, and I know providentially in a lot of other people's lives, it helped in a big way to really just solidify what the church needed to do.

01:44:19

It's grieving to see how that is so fought against even very deliberately, but it's what we need to do, and that's biblically based and historically proven.

01:44:36

One of the things or another thing that popped into my head as to why we should not believe the loudest voices in our nation and in our world pushing these mandates for masks and vaccines is because those who are in the highest places of authority who are the loudest in promoting these or insisting and demanding these mandates don't do these things themselves.

01:45:13

They don't wear the masks when they are in their private little parties. They are totally inconsistent about it.

01:45:21

You just had Nancy Pelosi kissing Barack Obama in public. You could go on and on and on with the insane inconsistency of these people, and when you think about even the insanity of going into a restaurant and somehow magic occurs when you sit down to eat and you remove your mask, somehow

01:45:45

I guess there's an invisible shield that surrounds you preventing the virus from affecting anybody when you're sitting there and eating.

01:45:54

I mean, it's laughably ridiculous. Future generations are going to sit around in their living rooms watching newsreels of this stuff, and they're going to laugh at us and say, man, our grandparents were really morons.

01:46:09

I mean, it's just self -evident, isn't it? Yeah, and it's utter hypocrisy and double standard all over the place, and it goes along with what we have been giving into gradually for so long, and I think of those high authorities, and especially now in some of the issues with the

01:46:32

Supreme Court and nominees and things like that, where it really seems like these elites and these high authorities are the high priestly family of our day, and people are just bowing to them, going along with what they say, without even critically thinking about what they're asking to do or demanding for us to do, and not thinking apologetically in any way, whether it's biblically or not, and critically thinking.

01:47:02

We just go along with this high priestly family, and that's very troubling, especially when it's coming from the

01:47:11

Church, and so you have all of these things that are happening, the syncretism, the spiritual adultery that is going on that we don't see by and large, and that is scary when it's continuing in more ways than one, and the judgment of God is very clear on our land right now, and the pulpits aren't saying anything by and large.

01:47:37

The pulpits are quiet, and I think that's one of the, that is America's number one problem is the pulpit, so.

01:47:45

And it's interesting how partisan politically the push for vaccines is.

01:47:52

One way to mark out an enemy of the leftist tyranny before Joe Biden won the presidential election was to see who were enthusiastically supporting the vaccines during President Trump's administration.

01:48:17

Now that he is no longer president, it's the reverse. The enemies of the state are seen by those who are refusing the vaccine.

01:48:26

Why should I trust a vaccine during an administration led by people who once themselves totally opposed the vaccine because they distrusted the main people promoting it, including and especially

01:48:43

President Trump? All of these things make the issue nonsensical.

01:48:49

Oh yeah, it's the double standard that's been happening for a while. You take the idea of pro -choice, but yet we don't have a choice in this.

01:49:00

It makes no sense when you see all of the craziness that's happening in so many other areas.

01:49:07

And yet we are supposedly supposed to bow down to these and stick something in our arm when we don't trust not only that, but the people who are injecting it.

01:49:19

And so there's a lot of problems that are going on with that that should be able to be recognized by critically thinking people.

01:49:27

And I think that's one of the reasons why it's been so easy to get under people is because we're not critically thinking people anymore.

01:49:39

We have lost that in so many ways. And we just want it quick. We want it fast.

01:49:44

We want it given to us. We don't want to ask questions. And that is a dangerous thing when it gets to these areas.

01:49:52

We have BB in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, do you think it is completely acceptable for an obedient Christian to remain neutral on these things?

01:50:11

Yeah, I really don't think there is a neutrality in anything. And so we try to deliberately kind of be in the middle when that really doesn't exist in the first place.

01:50:25

Even just the idea of trying to be neutral even kind of shows which way we're going.

01:50:35

I think it's really time for Christians to decide. And I think this is where it gets so important that it's all of Christ for all of life.

01:50:45

Scripture speaks to every area of life. We've missed that in so many different ways for many years.

01:50:53

And we need to understand the distinctions of the Law and the Gospel. How the authorities don't have overreach in the

01:51:04

Church. What are these incremental steps that they're trying to push as Matt spoke about earlier.

01:51:12

It's just one little blanket at a time. And so I think it's time that Christians need to decide on these issues and to stand up for them in the context that they're in.

01:51:28

And not try to play a neutral ground.

01:51:33

That doesn't mean that we are just abusive or anything like that.

01:51:42

But that we decide. We search the Scriptures. We come before God in our conscience and say, this is where I need to stand and I will stand there.

01:51:55

But we need to search the Scriptures for that because God has things to say on it. By the way, thank you

01:52:04

B .B. Give us your full mailing address in Cumberland County and you will receive, thanks to Matt Trujillo and also thanks to Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, you will receive a free copy of Matt Trujillo's book

01:52:19

The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates that CVBBS .com

01:52:24

will ship out to you. We have Susan in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania who asks, how do you respond to those who may be even in our own congregations and agree with us in almost every detail theologically and doctrinally who believe that we are doing a disservice to the

01:52:48

Gospel by using any of our time and efforts to take up space where the

01:52:55

Gospel should be present by discussing and being involved in these areas of politics and other things that are attached to what you are discussing today?

01:53:09

Yeah, I would say the Gospel speaks to all of life. You can't proclaim and describe, explain the

01:53:19

Gospel in a vacuum. It's always tied to life and whether you see those issues right directly or not.

01:53:30

And I think it's part of the retreatist mentality that the Church has given into to where we basically are silent in the public square.

01:53:41

We retreat in our churches and say, you know, it's just about our private, personal relationship with Jesus and of course that's foundational, that's core, but it feeds into all of life.

01:53:53

We've just been walking through the Gospel of John and we just were talking about Jesus washing

01:53:59

Peter's feet and the washing is signifying that process of sanctification and how

01:54:05

God sanctifies us in our life by His truth and that is, you know, we are to know how to live wisely in the world that He has placed us in in His sovereign grace, providentially, and we are to know

01:54:21

His will and His will talks about all of these things. And so the

01:54:28

Gospel is so much more, speaks to so much more of life than just our personal little bubble of salvation.

01:54:40

Again, that new life in Christ is foundational, but it doesn't stop there. It speaks into the rest of life and we need to look at all of these areas, no matter what they are, that are coming at us so fast and we have retreated for a long time into our churches when we need to be sought light in the world and we need to have confidence in the public square.

01:55:06

We need to speak up when these tyrants and these leaders and these elites are unjust in the things that they do.

01:55:18

I heard one pastor say during this COVID time that Christians should not be critical of the government.

01:55:27

And I'm just thinking to myself, and we need to throw out most of the Bible right at the beginning,

01:55:33

Jeremiah. God says you need to speak to every single person in the public square.

01:55:41

The authority is all down and you need to speak what I say to you to tell them.

01:55:49

And that is, a role of the Christian is to be critical when whatever part of society is going against God is being unjust.

01:55:59

And so that is, the Gospel is speaking into all of life and God is

01:56:04

Lord over all. Jesus is King. He reigns and rules over everything.

01:56:09

And, you know, that's how we ought to live. Yeah, and another reason to question the science, so -called, of the leftists who are pushing masks and vaccines is that these scientists, so -called, and these physicians are either silent publicly or they are actually participating in the murder of unborn children, believing that these unborn babies are not human beings and therefore not deserving of the protection by law which would prevent them from being ripped to pieces and murdered and burned alive in all kinds of grotesque and barbaric ways that selfishly women and the men who are the biological fathers of these children go about trying to get rid of an inconvenience in their lives.

01:57:22

But also, you have, in addition to those scientists that, who are in lockstep with the left, either being silent or affirming of transgenderism, people who are saying that we should completely accept a biological male as a female just because he thinks he is or wants to be and vice versa for the biological women who want to be men or think they are.

01:57:59

You could go on and on with the absolutely mind -blowing and insane things that people do to put a seal of approval on something medically or scientifically.

01:58:16

Yeah, and that's where I would go back to the man driving the thoughts and intentions of these people.

01:58:23

You know, you make a great point, and I've thought about that a number of times. If somebody is not going to, you know, if somebody is denying the very personhood and creation of man made in the image of God, whether it has to do with homosexuality or transgenderism or whether it's the murder of the pre -born where they're not even a person and other things of scientists believing in evolution, if they are missing the mark so badly on those pieces, why am

01:58:59

I going to listen to somebody about a mask? Why am I going to take their thoughts, their counsel when that is completely corrupt at the core?

01:59:11

And why am I going to listen to a person who is a man but is our health secretary who used to be who says that they are a woman and listen to them on health matters?

01:59:27

And we are out of time. We are out of time, brother, and I want to make sure our listeners have your website.

01:59:33

S -J -R -C -P -A dot org. S -J -R -C -P -A dot org.

01:59:40

Thank you so much for being another excellent guest today on the program. I look forward to your return and for even a longer segment, brother.

01:59:49

Thanks, Chris. And I want to thank everybody who listened today, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater