November 15, 2017 Show with Mike Gaydosh on “Holiday Gift Suggestions to Transform Lives”, Tim Challies on “Reasons for Optimism Over the Current State of Evangelicalism Today” AND Jenna & Shanna Strackbein on “Katharine von Bora: Morning Star of Wittenberg”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century Gospel Minister George Norcross in downtown

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

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

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

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 15th day of November 2017, and we have a jam -packed show today.

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Our first guest for the first half hour is Mike Gaydosch, the founder and director of Solid Ground Christian Books, one of the sponsors of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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Coming up at 4 30, God willing, we will be joined by Tim Challies, and he will be giving his opinion on the theological health of modern -day evangelicalism.

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And then coming up at 5 p .m., we're going to be having sisters who have co -authored an absolutely beautiful book on the wife of Martin Luther, Catherine von

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Bora. This is a gorgeous illustrated book, I believe especially for children, and the authors are

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Jenna and Shanna Strachbein, and they are going to be joining us at the final hour of the program.

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But first of all, it's my honor and privilege to welcome back to Iron Sharpens Iron one of my dearest friends and one of the primary sponsors of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Mike Gaydosch of Solid Ground Christian Books.

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Hey Chris, it's good to be with you again today. And before we even go into the interview, because I know that there are people joining the

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio audience, it seems, daily. I'm hearing from people from all over the world who have just discovered the program, who are falling in love with it, who are excited about it, and they may not have heard a detailed description of Solid Ground Christian Books other than the commercials that we've been airing, obviously.

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But tell our listeners who are discovering you for the first time especially something about Solid Ground Christian Books.

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Solid Ground actually began officially 17 years ago, and here it was in Birmingham, Alabama.

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My wife and I had just moved from Long Island, and but actually I began publishing Christian books when

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I was pastoring on Long Island, and Chris was involved in the early days at Calvary Press.

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The very first book that we published was Thoughts for Young Men by J .C. Ryle. That was back in 1991, and it was 10 years later that when

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I was in Birmingham that I began Solid Ground. And initially the goal was to bring back into print books that had been buried, forgotten, books that had been mightily used by God in the past but had been neglected or completely overlooked.

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And that was the main focus for the first several years, but in more recent years we've also been publishing new titles by new living authors.

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I've published four titles by James White, including Pulpit Crimes, which was the first one that we did with him, and several other volumes by living authors as well.

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We just recently published the book God's Gracious Gospel by Theodore Zachariades, and that is the most recent book we did, and we are planning on doing also soon a book by, is it

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Ron? It's Ron Gleeson, right? Yes, he is. In fact, that book on the

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Second Amendment came about, at least your publishing of it, came about through my interview with Ron on that subject.

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Exactly, and obviously the whole issue, especially because of the most recent shootings, and gun control is always the knee -jerk reaction of people whenever there is a shooting, and Ron has written an outstanding book.

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I have a lot of respect for Bill Downing, a pastor in California, and Bill has said it's the best book he's ever read from a

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Christian perspective, addressing the issue from a historical, theological, practical position on the importance of the

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Second Amendment and how a Christian should view that. So that's a book we hope to have out sometime within the next, well, certainly it will be available, well,

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I say certainly. In the publishing business, there's nothing that's certain except the uncertainty, but my hope and desire is that that will be available this year.

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Well, the certainty of uncertainty is not necessarily restricted to the publishing world because, as you know, you aren't even supposed to be on for the first half.

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I usually, that's how I usually get on. I usually get on when somebody else doesn't show up.

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I usually get a frantic call from Chris Arnson, out of breath, pleading and begging me, and many, many, many things that I know he can't possibly give me, but I'm very, very delighted to be able to be here today and to be able to interact with you over these next few minutes.

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What I wanted to share today in the time that I have is something that I know is close to your heart, something that is close to the hearts of many of your listeners, is the importance of preaching the

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Word of God. Preaching has fallen on bad times, it has for many years, and I am very excited about the fact that we have been able to publish literally dozens and dozens of volumes of some of the best sermons that have ever been preached by some of the greatest preachers who've ever walked the face of the earth.

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And, of course, the very issue of preaching and the importance of preaching is rooted in scripture.

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When John the Baptist went forth in his ministry, he went forth and he was preaching.

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And our Lord, in his ministry, that's what he did. He went and he was preaching. And the opening of the scriptures that we see in the

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Emmaus Road, where the Lord opened their eyes to see the scriptures, he opened the scriptures to them, and then he opened their hearts to receive the

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Word that he had opened. And I believe that Paul's words, his literal dying words to Timothy, having given at the end of chapter 3 of 2

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Timothy the utility and the origin of Holy Scripture, all scripture is

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God -breathed and profitable for doctrine, for reproof, correction, and training in righteousness, that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

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He then, of course, goes and admonishes him to preach the Word. And that is the main command that he has laid upon the ministers of the gospel, is to preach the

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Word, to be instant in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, and exhort with all patience and long -suffering.

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And, of course, then he says, as you know, what's going to happen in the latter days, men will not endure sound doctrine.

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They will accumulate for themselves teachers having itching ears, and they will turn aside from the truth, and they will turn to lies.

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And surely that has happened in our day. Churches that are filled many times, churches that are filled are many times sadly filled, not because of the preaching of the

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Word, but because of many, many other things. Sometimes it's because of the music, or because of whatever, but it's not because the

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Word is being preached without compromise. And that's what God has commissioned ministers of the gospel to do.

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And one of the books that we published in the past few years is called

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Precious Seed Discourses by Scottish Worthies, and it's a volume of sermons by about 20 of the greatest 19th century

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Scotsmen, and their best sermons. I had some endorsements, like Joel Beek, he said,

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Precious Seed contains sermons by the hall of fame of Scottish preachers on the most glorious themes of the gospel.

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Here is preaching at its apex, the best preachers presenting their best sermons on the best subjects.

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And my favorite endorsement is by Ligon Duncan, and you've interviewed Ligon, right? Yes, it's been a while, but he wrote a very, very nice endorsement for Iron Sharpens Iron Radio years ago that is currently on a banner that I have that I bring with me to different events, and he is one of many on that banner.

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Well, one of the things that he said about this book, Precious Seed, he said, in those days there were giants in the land.

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Thomas McCree, David Welsh, Thomas Chalmers, Robert Murray McShane, Robert Gordon, William Cunningham, Thomas Guthrie, R .S.

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Chandler, Patrick Fairbairn, John Rabbi Duncan, John MacDonald of Calcutta, are you kidding me?

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This pantheon of 19th century Scottish evangelicalism, take it and read.

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Nothing more needs to be said to commend the book than to mention the names of those whose sermons are included.

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Are you kidding me? I love that. It is, I remember reading the very first sermon, the very first sermon in the book was by a gentleman that I was not familiar with.

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I believe it's John McCladden. I'm not sure exactly if that's how you pronounce it, but it's M -N -C -L -A -U -R -I -N, and the sermon is entitled

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Glorying in the Cross of Christ, and I'll tell you, I read that sermon and I was just absolutely blown away, and I mentioned that to one of my

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Scottish friends. I don't remember if it was Sinclair or who it was, but it was somebody like that, and their response was, well, yes, that's the greatest sermon that was ever preached in Scotland.

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It was like, oh, you know, it's like everybody, and in fact, of all the sermons that are in the book, that was the very first one, and they said, well, yeah, that's because that is the most famous sermon that was preached in the 19th century, so Glorying in the

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Cross of Christ, but that is one of the books that we have available right now, and we're offering a 50 % discount, $16.

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It's just a beautiful, beautiful volume, and then also some of the volumes that I've published by Warfield, The Power of God Unto Salvation, The Person and Work of the

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Holy Spirit. I remember Sinclair Ferguson wrote the preface to,

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I believe it was the book on The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit, and it was in there. He just spoke about the sermons of Warfield, and he said, compared to Warfield's sermons, ours are ugly, and I thought, wow,

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Sinclair Ferguson says that. That is saying something, because Sinclair Ferguson's sermons are anything but ugly.

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Oh, I know. One of my all -time favorite modern -day heroes of the faith, and I so much enjoy reminiscing about those days when he used to come fairly often to preach at Calvary Baptist Church of Amityville, where you were once pastors.

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Yeah, I remember him telling the congregation one time when he came. He said, when

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I hear Mike Gadosh's voice on the other end of the line, I break into a cold sweat, because I know he's going to ask me to do something

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I've never done before. In fact, I remember him saying one time, he was driving over, and he was driving by LaGuardia Airport, or I guess it would have been

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JFK Airport, the one he was driven by. He said, my hands began to turn, and instinctively try to turn away from going to Amityville to get on a plane and head to Scotland.

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I'm thankful he never followed his instincts on that, but we did have some wonderful times with him, and the sermons that he preached for us in the times that he came were just incredible and memorable.

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One of the few good things that I did when I was pastoring there in New York was to bring to our congregation the best preachers that I could ever find.

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I always tried to find somebody that would speak to the hearts of God's people. Of course, we were blessed to be so close to Westminster and have

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Sinclair come, not just to preach a sermon, but he would often come and spend a whole weekend with us.

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And of course, Conrad Mbewe, the very first time he came, you well know what took place that weekend.

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Mark Solon told me that we had over 500 visitors over the three -day weekend, and that was not including anyone from our own congregation, which is amazing.

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I remember that Friday night, the very first message that I got a phone call, and I don't remember who it was from, but it was about an hour before the service started, and somebody said, you better get over here.

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They said, the church is already packed Friday night, and it was literally standing room only, and in our sanctuary, it seated over 400.

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So it was pretty incredible. We had an overflow room downstairs. But again, it was the preaching of the

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Word that brought the people. Yeah, they heard an excerpt of Conrad's preaching in the ad that I was running on the radio.

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And it was what was an amazing story. I'm sure you remember this, but we both listened.

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We decided we were going to listen to the sermon, a sermon that we had of his, over a weekend, and then we would kind of come up with what we thought might be a good section, like 30 seconds or 45 seconds, probably 30 seconds would be the max you could use.

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But we both listened to the sermon. It was probably a 45 -50 minute sermon, and independently, we both came up with the exact same 15 or 20 second section out of that sermon, and you then used that and put it together with the ad.

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And that was really the reason why so many people came, because of the radio advertisements that were done, and just people hearing this 15 or 20 second clip of this man who has become known as the

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Spurgeon of Africa. And again, the thing that draws people is the

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Word of God preached without compromise, where the Bible is being opened and applied to the hearts of the people.

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I remember having people visit us, or not visit us, there were some people that were driving all the way from New Jersey to come to church on a

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Sunday, and I would ask people, why in the world are you driving all that way to come?

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And their response was very simple. We want the Word of God, and we want it without compromise, and we know that we will receive that here.

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And that was, of course, one of the greatest compliments anybody could have ever given me. But I think that one of the sad things about today's church is that pastors are being sold a false bill of goods to think that people won't endure preaching.

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You know, not illustrations, but literal drama, or things that will keep people's attention, because their attention span is so short now.

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And I never bought into that. As you know, in the years that I pastored, I never bought into that.

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I always believed that what you do is you teach your people by just speaking and preaching the

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Word, and people develop the ability to be able to listen and pay attention. And in fact,

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I remember one of the greatest compliments I ever received was from Dr. Bruce Waltke, who you'll recall that he also came several times to preach to us.

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And I remember him pulling me aside one Sunday after he had completed his ministry with us, and he just said to me, he said,

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Michael, I've preached in churches all over the world. I've never preached in a place where the people love the

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Word like they do here. And he said, they just draw, they just pull it out of you.

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And I thought, you know, that's, again, what greater compliment could somebody give you than that your people love the

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Word? And I think that's what, you know, my desire is to encourage men to preach and to preach, to give people 16 ounces to the pound.

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And that's what these men did when Spurgeon preached. There was no fluff. He poured himself into every sermon, and people responded.

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And not only were lives changed, but whole communities were changed, and even countries were changed through faithful preaching of God's Word.

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And one of the books that I've published a few years back, which I've talked about before on this program, but you have new listeners, is a book called

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The Gospel for the People, and it's by Spurgeon. But it was published after his death, and it was his son,

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Thomas, who found out that people were reading his sermons for family worship, and even some churches that were without pastors would try to read a

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Spurgeon sermon, and many of them were finding that they were just too long to read at one time.

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And so what Thomas did is he went through the entire Metropolitan Tabernacle, and he called out the best of the short, or the shorter, shorter sermons of Spurgeon, and he gathered them together in one volume, and I think there are 60 sermons, and it's called

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The Gospel for the People. And it includes sermons, some of which are only four pages long, and when you read the preface to the sermon, it will say that this sermon was preached at a nursing home.

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And so, obviously, because it was preached at a nursing home, it was much shorter than Spurgeon's normal sermon would be.

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And so this volume had been published, as I said, right after his death, and it was never published again, and it had remained unpublished until I discovered it really by accident.

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I discovered that this volume existed, and it took me a long time to find a copy.

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There were no copies on the internet, and I don't remember exactly where it was that I ended up finding a copy.

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I have been able to get this reprinted and paginated. The pagination was, instead of them repaginating the sermons, all he did is he pulled these sermons out of the

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Metropolitan Tabernacle for all these different years, and so the pages didn't correspond. Like, you'd have one, he may have taken two sermons from this one volume, and it was pages 21 to 36, and then the next was a different volume, and it might be pages 220 to 230.

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And so there was no way to even really have a table of contents, because you wouldn't know how to turn to those pages.

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So I ended up by hand putting the new page numbers on these pages, and so this way now people can go to the table of contents and look and see where these particular sermons are found and what page they're on.

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It's called The Gospel for the People, 60 Short Sermons for Personal Family and Corporate Worship by Charles Spurgeon.

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So that's one of the books that I've fairly recently published as well. Well, you know,

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Christmas is going to be here before you know it. What would you most strongly recommend for our listeners to pick up as Christmas gifts?

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Obviously, they don't have to be related to the theme of Christmas, but something... One of the books, I think you know

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Ray Rhodes, right? Of course. I've interviewed Ray a number of times, and his co -pastor, Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Gerard, a

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United States Marine and also co -pastor there at the church where Ray Rhodes is, he was worshiping with us here in Carlisle for a year at Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, because he was doing some work with the local

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United States Army War College right here in town. So yes, I know Ray very well. Well, he has a book called

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Family Worship for the Christmas Season that I've published, and it's just an outstanding book, particularly to help heads of households to walk through just every day of...

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He's got a time of worship planned out for all 31 days of December, and it's really nicely done.

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He has, of course, scripture, then he gives some directions of family activity for that particular day, and it's the first of the series of family worship books that he's done for me.

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He did one on the Thanksgiving season, one on the Reformation season, and then one on the

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Christmas season. So it's really the months of October, November, December that are covered, and that would be one.

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I believe that Ferguson recently has published a book on the

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Incarnation. I think Banner of Truth maybe has published it. I don't have it, but I'm sure it's an amazing book, because I think it has the manger in it, something,

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The Mystery of the Manger, or something about the manger. And then there's also a book that Joe Beeke has done,

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Meditations on the Incarnation. I do carry that book, and I'll be getting a bunch of copies of that in soon as Christmas season is coming on.

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But those would be a few things that people could get.

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Of course, Christmas gifts, there's any number of books a person might get for Christmas.

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But Pilgrim's Progress, we have one of the most beautiful editions of Pilgrim's Progress, the 1891 edition, and we've sold hundreds of that book.

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And that's, of course, a phenomenal Christmas gift. And then a book like Stepping Heavenward would be a great gift.

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Stepping Heavenward by Elizabeth Prentiss would be another book that would be a great book for Christmas gifts.

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Elizabeth Prentiss was the daughter of Edward Payson, one of the great preachers in America, in the early years of America.

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And that book is phenomenal. A great book to get for your pastor, if you would like to give your pastor a

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Christmas gift, would be, of course, A Pastor's Sketches by Ichabod Spencer. It's the best book that I've ever published.

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I've published now over 350 titles in the last 17 years, and I still don't think

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I've published one better than the very first book I published, which was The Pastor's Sketches. That was the first full -length book.

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Well, no, at Solid Ground, it was the first book. The first book that we did, obviously, was

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Thoughts for Young Men. That was Calvary Press. But the first book that I published at Solid Ground was

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A Pastor's Sketches. When I first did it, it was a paperback. It was only volume one of the two -volume set.

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Now, of course, we have it in hardcover. It's the two volumes together in one volume, and we've got it right now for sale for, like, $18, which is ridiculous.

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It's a beautiful hardcover book. Yeah, in fact, that would be ideal for anybody wanting to purchase a

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Christmas present for their own pastor. Exactly, exactly. And it'd be something that would be out of the ordinary.

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They might not ever have heard of it. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. No question.

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I think that that's, you know, and pastors love books, but to have a book specifically or especially to have a book by a pastor for a pastor, it really doesn't get any better than that.

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And Pastor's Sketches, it's not only for pastors, obviously, as you well know, but it certainly is a book that would be extremely valuable for any pastor to read.

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And so, yeah, those are just some ideas that I would have for you.

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Now, we have been making a real effort lately to push Solid Ground Christian Books beyond the commercials that we air because we knew that you had temporarily experienced a lull.

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Has anything reversed in that area? To a degree. I mean, we've had more orders recently that have been on the larger side, which has been nice.

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We've had pastors ordering, you know, a quantity of books. In fact, one of my other sponsors,

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Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, said that they just placed a very large order from you. Oh, yeah.

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Yeah, that was a very large order. Well, it was actually an order of one book.

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And in fact, I'm glad you mentioned that. Thank you, Chris. The book that they ordered was for a company that purchased a significant number, over a thousand copies, of the book

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Heroes of the Early Church by Richard Newton. And I have now, I have,

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I'm really literally overstocked with those books because they ordered so many,

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I decided to kind of piggyback on it and get a huge quantity of them printed because I was able to get them at a better price.

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So I'm slashing the price on this. I'm going to be selling it now for $5 a piece.

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It's an $18 book, and Heroes of the Early Church by Richard Newton.

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Richard Newton was nicknamed the Prince of Preachers to the Young. I've spoken about him many times in the past.

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Was he the one that Charles Spurgeon gave him that nickname? Yes, Spurgeon gave that to him. Actually, he mentions that in Commenting on Commentaries, which you're familiar with that Spurgeon wrote.

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He mentioned the book The King's Highway, which was Richard Newton's sermons to children on the

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Ten Commandments. And it was his commendation of that book that he mentions that Newton was the

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Prince of Preachers to either the young or to children. I don't remember which. I have been honored as a radio broadcaster with the nickname the

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Prince of the Power of the Air, so I'm very proud of that. Hey, where's

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Buzz when we need him? Well, I want to make sure.

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I think I know who dubbed you that, and I don't think I would take that as a compliment. Well, I don't think anybody can say it as a compliment.

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Well, I want to make sure that all of our listeners have all of the contact information that they need for Solid Ground Christian Books.

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I know that the website is solid -ground -books .com. Anything else that you'd care to add to that?

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Yeah, they can call me. My cell phone is 205 -587 -4480.

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Some people prefer to order over the phone rather than putting their credit card information online.

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We've recently started to use PayPal. People can purchase books through PayPal as well.

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I feel that's a bit safer than using your credit card in another setting.

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My email address is mike .sgcb at gmail .com.

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And that's for Solid Ground Christian Books, mike .sgcb,

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Solid Ground Christian Books. And you figured that out all on your own. That's pretty good.

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I'm very proud of you. Well, I try to remind people of those kinds of things because I know that radio is a different medium than print medium, and when you hear certain letters, they sound like other letters.

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You're right. I appreciate that. Well, it has been a joy to have you on again. I look forward to your return to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, and I will be praying that the

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Lord blesses Solid Ground Christian Books in great and unexpected ways for the holiday season, especially.

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Thank you, Chris. I appreciate you very much. I love you, brother. Love you, too, brother. Take care. God bless you.

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And God willing, coming up next, we have Tim Chalies returning to Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

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Tim is going to give a rebuttal, as it were, to our interview yesterday with my friend

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Phil Johnson, who has a friendly disagreement with his brother,

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Tim Chalies, over the state of evangelicalism in America. And we are going to be joined by Tim Chalies momentarily.

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We're going to first go to a station break. It will be brief, but we'll be back right after these messages with Tim Chalies.

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God willing, so don't go away. Baby monitors, hearing aids, smoke detectors, credit card readers, digital cameras, electronic cigarettes,

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34:44

Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune in to A Visit to the Pastor's Study every

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Saturday from 12 noon to 1 p .m. Eastern Time on WLIE Radio, www .wlie540am

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.com. We bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you, and we invite you to visit the pastor's study by calling in with your questions.

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Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull. Join us this Saturday at 12 noon

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Eastern Time for A Visit to the Pastor's Study, because everyone needs a pastor. Welcome back.

35:19

This is Chris Arns. And if you just tuned us in for our second half hour of the program, we have

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Tim Challies joining us. He is a blogger, an author, and book reviewer.

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And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Lion, Shepherd, and Zion Radio, Tim Challies. Thanks for having me.

35:37

And Tim, we had an interview yesterday with Phil Johnson, who

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I know is a friend of yours, or at least an acquaintance. And I know that you both are actually going to be speaking on the same roster at the upcoming

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G3 conference in January, which I'll be explaining in more detail to our listeners.

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But Phil, he actually took a different spin on the state of evangelicalism in America today.

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He had a much more pessimistic view of modern -day evangelicalism.

36:17

But I could tell you that even after reading your article, The State of Evangelicalism in America, and all that blah blah blah, he spoke in the highest of complimentary terms about you.

36:30

And in fact, he thinks that if you two were actually sitting down and having a dialogue on this issue, that you would have more in agreement than in disagreement.

36:39

But if you could explain why you have such an optimistic view about evangelicalism today.

36:46

Well, I've got to be careful. I'm not saying that all of evangelicalism is rosy and fine. But what

36:52

I meant to say was we're very good at diagnosing the problems in evangelicalism, and by we,

36:57

I mean people towards the Reformed world and Calvinistic theology. We tend to look out at the evangelical world and see an awful lot of problems.

37:05

And absolutely, there are an awful lot of problems. But I was speaking specifically to evangelicalism within the

37:12

United States. I, of course, am Canadian, and so I'm looking from across an international border, and I'm seeing a lot of good in the

37:19

American Church and American evangelicalism. And I'm seeing a lot of that good as I travel around the world, as I'm seeing elsewhere, how

37:27

America is impacting the world. Well, you know, yesterday, I think it took Phil about 10 seconds to summarize what he thought was positive about the modern state of evangelicalism.

37:40

But let me start with you in the reverse from the way

37:45

I started with Phil. Give us some of the things about modern day evangelicalism that disturb you, first of all, and then we can move on to some specific details about what impresses you or what gives you hope.

37:57

Sure. Well, I'm thinking, again, I'm looking specifically from the aspect of someone looking across a border to what is essentially a foreign church, which is the

38:06

American Church, foreign to me being Canadian, and then looking at it from my world travels. I've been able to travel to many, many different countries over the last few years, and here

38:15

I am looking and seeing how the American Church is impacting the rest of the world. So I'm not talking broadly all that the evangelical church is.

38:23

I'm talking how it is impacting the world. So in terms of some of the issues, well, yeah,

38:29

I can go just about anywhere in the world and see what I think is America's worst export in all of history, which is the prosperity gospel.

38:38

Right? You can go to just about any country in the world and find lots of people giving away their money to ridiculous schemes and preaching the health and wealth and prosperity gospels.

38:47

So there's obvious issues there. You can go and find some of the worst of the American authors,

38:53

Christian or pseudo -Christian or supposedly Christian authors, find their books in foreign places. You can watch them on TV often.

39:00

So certainly there's lots of problems in evangelicalism, both at home and abroad. Yeah, one of the things that the word of faith or the prosperity gospel

39:10

I have noticed over the last at least decade, and perhaps a little less than that, but they are repackaging themselves to some degree in that they are making themselves more palatable to your average television viewer that might, if they were to look upon things like at Benny Hinn crusades where he's knocking over people, you might have a lot of viewers just mocking that and thinking that it's ridiculous and seeing right through the charlatanism of that.

39:47

Unfortunately, there are many professing Christians who don't see through that, but there seems to be a repackaging where, you know,

39:55

Joel Osteen, rather than somebody who is a faith healer and making all kinds of crazy claims and doing all kinds of bizarre things, he is seemingly someone more like a self -help guru.

40:12

And you even have somebody like Kenneth Copeland, who the last few times that I caught him channel surfing, he had more of a talk show host format where he was just having more reserved discussions he and his wife would have guests on talking about different topics, and it was almost like a

40:34

Christianized version of the old Merv Griffin show or something similar to that, as opposed to some of his more outlandish things that would be found in his sermons and so on.

40:49

Do you see this? And in fact, I think it's actually more dangerous since it's been repackaged, because it's more subtle.

40:55

Yeah, I think there's a lot of people trying to navigate into that space right now, into that prosperity gospel space, and there's a lot of people doing it in the absolute crassest way possible and just making great promises and not even being subtle about it, but then there's that other whole group who's trying to be very subtle about it and trying to dress it up in a morning show type format.

41:16

And I tell you what, somebody out there has confused me with a prosperity preacher, and I won't say which one because I prefer not to get sued, but this

41:25

Bishop So -and -So, somehow out there my email address has been confused with his, and so I get emails sent to him with people pleading for miracles and pleading for his help, and a lot of them saying,

41:38

I wish I could pay, but I can't, or I don't have any money, but could God still do this for me? And it just, it grieves me.

41:44

It's just so horrible to think all these people really do believe that the favor of God is contingent upon giving money to God, or even more giving money to this supposed man of God.

41:56

So, I mean, I see this, these emails come in, and it's just so vile to see it, to see what people are really believing out there, what people are really peddling.

42:06

So, you're actually receiving his emails of people mistaking you for him?

42:13

Right. They think they're sending an email to Bishop So -and -So, but they're actually sending it to me. I've got no idea how that happened.

42:18

I've never been able to track it down, but it happens at, you know, a fairly consistent rate. Wow, that is odd. Does he have a similar name to you?

42:25

He has, there are absolutely no similarities between he and I. Wow, that is bizarre, because I can't think of anybody farther from a word -of -faith healer than you.

42:38

But, well, now let's, well, actually, before we go to the positive stuff, what can you say?

42:45

Because I think it's appropriate that when we, especially we who are theologically Reformed, when we get on these tirades, looking outside of our own circles of influence and fellowship, and we're rightfully exposing things that are wrong in other theological camps,

43:07

I think that we have to remember to even investigate our own camp.

43:12

We have to be Berean about those who claim to be Reformed and Calvinistic and make sure that we are not just blindly following them.

43:21

Do you have anything, you don't have to mention names if you don't care to, but is there anything specifically you can mention that would be negative of things you see today within Reformed theology as far as sermons, books, and other things like that?

43:38

Yeah, I think there's a lot of critique that we can make of ourselves, and I think it does us well to consider where we may be weak, and there's actually a book coming out at the

43:49

G3 Conference, and my chapter in the book is, at least half of it is dedicated to that very thing, to just saying, where are we as this

43:58

New Calvinism, or this whatever it is, Reform movement, where are we weak? And I think there's a bunch of things we could point to, but certainly one of them would be pride, right?

44:06

We can be very proud of our theology, and we can look down on others, and let's be clear, you don't have to be

44:12

Reformed to hate the prosperity gospel and to see the absolute nonsense that's bound up in it, so that would be one.

44:20

I mean, we could go on. I think people who are part of a fad, they're not perhaps necessarily getting

44:28

Reformed theology and really adopting Reformed theology. They may just be, some of us may just be riding a fad, right?

44:35

When the fad is over, will we go to the next big thing? So yeah, I think there's a lot we have to do to examine ourselves and to ensure that we're fully consistent as far as we can with God's Word.

44:47

Well, one of the things that has troubled me in some, and it seems to be particularly in some

44:54

Presbyterian circles, but there is something that you would not automatically presume would exist amongst

45:02

Calvinists or professed Calvinists, is there is a version of,

45:07

I think, seeker -sensitive mentality going on in some Reformed churches where there seems to be a desperate attempt to grow numerically and things are patterned within the worship service and within the teaching ministry to be more accommodating to the tastes of the world and less threatening, less warning about sin and hell.

45:34

Have you experienced or witnessed this yourself? Sure, yeah, and I think part of the issue, if you will, is that there's no clear definition of what it means to be quote -unquote

45:43

Reformed, right? There's no gatekeeper out there saying, you're in and you're out. I am

45:49

Reformed. Well, there are gatekeepers, but they're not infallible. They're not infallible, right, and then we're not a movement of one concession, and so anyone can say,

46:00

I am Reformed, and the definition is sort of up for grabs. Certainly, it's moved on from where it used to be maybe 20 years ago, it's broadened, but so you can have people who are in this

46:12

Reformed world, who are holding to parts of Reformed theology, and really, what does it mean to be Reformed today?

46:17

It's to hold to some basic Calvinistic soteriology and to love John Piper, right? I mean, that's what it means to be

46:22

Reformed. And that's, you know, well and good, but attached to the movement, then, you have people who have maybe come out of the church growth movement or who still hold to some of its principles, and, you know, there's sort of this core of belief, you know, that Calvinistic soteriology, and then how far out can you go from that and still be

46:43

Reformed? So, you might think about complementarianism. There's people who say, I am Reformed, and I'm okay with having a woman preach at our church, and other people would say, well, no, those two things are incompatible.

46:54

You can't be both, and the other person might say, well, who says, right? So, I think we're in this interesting phase where the movement has this very hazy boundary, and over time, that will be kind of negotiated, right?

47:06

But that's going to take some time. Well, as far as the positive end, I know that you have been in different parts of the world.

47:14

You even mentioned that a little bit earlier, if you could be more specific about things that give you great optimism and hope about where evangelicalism is heading, and why you perhaps would disagree with something that is a very scary comment that I'm sure

47:34

Phil Johnson would have no problem me quoting him on, because he even brought it up at the last G3 conference.

47:40

But he thinks that the state of evangelicalism is actually worse, theologically, than medieval

47:46

Rome was. If you could comment on that comment. Sure, well,

47:52

I'll continue to be the optimistic Canadian here. 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, the first 12 verses have been absolutely life -shaping for me.

48:01

Here's Paul writing to this church. He's saying, now, concerning brotherly love, you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another.

48:10

And listen to this, for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia, but we urge your brothers to do this more and more.

48:17

So here's Paul saying, I can gauge the love of the believers within your church by the way that love is being expressed to people outside your church.

48:24

Your church is in a region, there's so much love between the brothers and sisters in this church, that it's overflowing to love, overflowing in love for people in other churches.

48:35

So I'm traveling around the world, and I go to Scotland, and I go to the schemes in Scotland, and what do

48:43

I see? I see Americans working there, people who have moved over, I see mission teams coming from America, I see people who are funded, perhaps in large part often, by American money.

48:55

Now, that tells me America loves, American believers love, they're expressing that love by giving and by sending.

49:03

I jump on a plane, I go to India, and I meet people there, and I meet people who have been brought to America to be trained, and trained up in American seminaries, and then mentored in American churches, and then sent back to their home country to minister, where they're largely being funded by American money.

49:20

That's not nothing, that's not meaningless. I think America, American Christians are generous, they love, they're some of the finest people you'll ever meet, is true believers under that banner of evangelicals.

49:33

We have a listener in White Plains, New York, RJ, who says, can

49:39

Tim share his personal view of eschatology, because I'm wondering if that has anything to do with his opinion.

49:48

Oh boy, yeah, I think, I'm not going to dive too deep into that, but let's just say Phil and I probably see things a little bit differently in that regard.

49:57

But I mean, it's eschatology, I think it's also just personality, and honestly, it's partly maybe just being

50:04

Canadian versus being American. That just means we have a different view of the world, right? It's a different outlook on the world.

50:10

Evangelicalism in Canada has always been very different from evangelicalism in the United States. It's a very different country.

50:17

Well obviously, I'm sure you're concerned about things that are going on in the legal system in Canada, where, perhaps you can correct me if I'm wrong, but there are people who are either being fined or being threatened with fines for being openly opposed to the sin of homosexuality, whether it be in billboards or magazine or newspaper ads or things like that.

50:46

Can you be more detailed on that? I am not aware of anyone who's run into that yet.

50:51

It sounds like the kind of thing that may be happening in Canada and in the U .S., but as I understand it, we continue to be legally protected as we speak about our religious beliefs.

51:02

So I'm not aware of anyone who suffered in any way, and I know lots of people who have spoken up on the subject.

51:09

So it seems like that's not far off. I know there's one person somewhere out west who's run into some legal problems.

51:15

I'm just not aware of the details, and I think it was kind of standing outside abortion clinics or something like that, and so I'm not too sure.

51:24

Yeah, I just remember hearing, and I don't know the details. I don't have them in front of me, but I remember hearing, and I thought it was

51:31

Canada that the news report was referring to, but it involved a billboard that merely had a scriptural verse.

51:41

It didn't even have the actual wording of the verse. It just had the location of the verse in the

51:47

Bible. Perhaps it was in Romans, and because of the fact that the verse dealt with the sin of homosexuality, that there was some kind of fine imposed against the pastor who had the billboard erected, but perhaps that was perhaps a mistake, and perhaps that was in Canada.

52:04

Yeah, I'm not aware of that situation. Well, one of the things that was brought up yesterday that I can't help but agree with Phil on is that, in fact,

52:16

I think I may be the one that brought it up during the conversation, is that there seems to be a larger umbrella of what would be considered evangelicalism today than would have ever been comprehended in such a fashion 20 -25 years ago, like, for instance, the inclusion of people who deny the

52:36

Trinity and people who really do not teach or proclaim a genuine gospel that seem to be included within the pale of evangelicalism today that really boggles the minds of some of us when we hear about major Christian events going on.

53:00

In fact, I was involved in a radio network years ago that had events including the music of Phillips, Craig, and Dean, who are anti -Trinitarian, or one is

53:11

Pentecostal. How do you respond to that kind of a thing, that it seems to be on the rise within evangelicalism, not on the decrease?

53:19

Sure. Well, I think labels come and go, right? So, evangelicalism, it was a label that was created for a specific purpose, and maybe it's time to revisit the label, right?

53:31

You think about the term, like, fundamentalist, the connotations it had originally and the connotations it's taken on now.

53:36

These labels do come and go. I wouldn't be surprised if someday the label reformed, no longer has a whole lot of meaning, and we found something else to describe it.

53:45

So, in that sense, I'm not too bothered, right? It's just a descriptor. What's more important is what we actually believe.

53:51

So, whether other people choose to come in under the banner is, in my sense, kind of immaterial. So, I mean, the same thing has happened with Christian, right?

53:59

A great term, and how wide is the banner now when you can say two billion or whatever people in the world are

54:05

Christians? Well, I think this world would look very different if there are two billion true believers in the world really living out the will of God in this world, right?

54:13

We know that the true number of believers who truly are honoring Jesus Christ and have received his forgiveness are far, far fewer than that.

54:22

So, you know, I don't want to get too hung up on the labels and who's in, who's out. I just don't know how much,

54:31

I don't know. In the media, you hear about evangelicals. So much of that is self -defined, right?

54:38

They're not saying, to be an evangelical, you must be this or this. They're just asking, are you an evangelical, or do you consider yourself one?

54:44

So, I think, in many ways, it really has become an unhelpful kind of banner, unless we can bring the term back, unless we can draw it back in.

54:53

I just don't know how helpful it even is in that sense. Well, I want to make sure that our listeners know, and I will be repeating this,

54:59

God willing, later, but Tim Challies is on a very long roster of very impressive speakers coming up at the

55:08

G3 conference this January from the 17th through the 20th. The 17th, actually, is going to be exclusively in a

55:15

Spanish -speaking edition of the conference, but the 18th through the 20th is an

55:21

English -speaking conference, and not only do we have Tim Challies on this roster, but we have

55:27

Stephen Lawson, Voti Baucom, the aforementioned Phil Johnson, maybe we can have a little debate there at the

55:32

G3 conference on our subject today, Keith Getty, H .P. Charles, Jr.,

55:38

Josh Bice, James White, Tom Askell, Anthony Mathenia, Michael Kruger, David Miller, Paul Tripp, Todd Friel, Derek Thomas, Martha Peace, and Justin Peters.

55:49

If you want to register for this conference, go to g3conference .com, g3conference .com,

55:55

and please make sure you mention that you heard about the G3 conference on Iron Trup and Zion Radio, and the theme this time around is

56:03

Knowing God, a Biblical Understanding of Discipleship. I don't know if you have been assigned or if you have chosen a subcategory under that major theme,

56:16

Knowing God, a Biblical Understanding of Discipleship. Do you know what you're speaking on yet, Tim? Yeah, I think

56:21

I know what I'm speaking on, and I believe it's going to be related to the theme of discipleship in diversity,

56:28

Toronto being, I believe it's now currently the most diverse city in the world. Wow.

56:33

Just a couple of weeks ago, visible majority and minority flipped, so and I think it's about 52 % of the people who live in Toronto have immigrated from a different country, so they were born in a different country than Canada, so it's the most diverse city in the world, so I was hoping just to bring some reflections on ministering and then being a local church in an ultra -ultra -diverse culture to some of what we've learned along the way.

56:59

I'm actually shocked that you are more diverse than Manhattan. Like I said,

57:05

I believe it is currently the most diverse city in the world, and like I said just last week, I believe visible majority and visible minority flipped, so now to be

57:15

Caucasian or to say I am Caucasian in Toronto is now the minority rather than the majority.

57:21

Wow. Well, I want to make sure that our listeners obviously know where they could reach your blog.

57:27

It's challies .com, C -H -A -L -L -I -E -S dot com.

57:33

Can you give us the title of this book that you contributed to that should be in print in January?

57:40

I wish I could. I can't remember the title. Calvinist or Calvinism in it, but you'd have to ask

57:45

Josh Bice that question. Oh, is he the editor of the book? He is, yep. Oh, wow. Well, praise

57:51

God for that. Well, I will certainly ask Josh about that, and if you folks want more updates, you could just send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

58:01

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and ask about it. Well, thank you so much,

58:07

Tim. I knew that the time would fly by, especially since we only had a little bit less than a half hour to talk, but God willing, we'll have you back on in the future.

58:15

I'm looking forward to your return to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, and perhaps, hopefully, we can have you on for a full hour or maybe miraculously a two -hour program because I think that we could have a lot to talk about.

58:27

All right. Sounds good. Thank you very much, Tim, and once again, the website for the blog of Tim Challies is challies .com,

58:36

C -H -A -L -L -I -E -S .com, and I hope that you make use of that blog because Tim has been praised by people that I have a very high regard for as being one of the most biblically faithful and fascinating bloggers in the

58:56

Christian media today. Well, we're going to our midway break right now, and hopefully, we are going to be joined for the second hour by our guests that were scheduled to be on.

59:10

Our guests that were scheduled are Jenna and Shanna Strachbein, who have co -authored a really beautiful, breathtaking, illustrated book on Martin Luther's wife,

59:26

Catherine von Bora. They are supposed to be joining us, so hopefully, that is the case, and if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

59:38

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Don't go away. God willing, we will be back after these messages from our sponsors.

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01:09:15

Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen, and I am going to check now to see if we have our guests today.

01:09:22

Do we have the Strachbein sisters on? Yes, sir. Oh, praise

01:09:27

God. Well, we're going to be returning to you in just a moment, because I just have a couple of important announcements to make in regard to special events that are coming up in the near future.

01:09:38

We have coming up, actually this weekend, the

01:09:45

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is having their annual

01:09:50

Quaker Town Conference on Reform Theology. I am going to be there,

01:09:55

God willing, manning an exhibitor's booth at this conference, and I hope as many of you as possible can attend and greet me at the

01:10:04

Iron Sharpens Iron exhibitor's booth there at the Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Quaker Town, Pennsylvania.

01:10:11

The speakers include Kent Hughes, Peter Jones, Tom Nettles, Dennis Cahill, and Scott Oliphant.

01:10:17

The theme is for Still Our Ancient Foe. Obviously a reference to Satan from that classic

01:10:23

Reformation hymn by Martin Luther, A Mighty Fortress. That's November 17th through the 18th.

01:10:29

That's this Friday and Saturday at the Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Quaker Town, Pennsylvania. If you would like to register, go to alliancenet .org,

01:10:37

alliancenet .org. And then coming up in January, we have the

01:10:43

G3 Conference. The G3 Conference returns to Atlanta, Georgia, and the

01:10:49

G3 stands for Grace, Gospel, and Glory. And as you heard me mention earlier, the theme of the conference this

01:10:57

January is Knowing God, a Biblical Understanding of Discipleship. And the speakers at this conference include such notable figures as Stephen Lawson, Votie Baucom, Phil Johnson, Keith Getty, H .B.

01:11:09

Charles, Jr., Tim Challies, Josh Bice, James White, Tom Askell, Anthony Mathenia, Michael Kruger, David Miller, Paul Tripp, Todd Friel, Derek Thomas, Martha Peace, and Justin Peters.

01:11:21

If you would like to attend this conference, which is January 18th through the 20th with a

01:11:27

Spanish edition on January 17th, go to g3conference .com, g3conference .com.

01:11:33

If you attend either of these events, please make sure you tell those organizing these events that you heard about those events from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:11:45

Well, now we are entering our discussion with our guests today, and I'm so delighted to have them for the first time ever on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:11:55

That's Jenna and Shanna Strachbein, and they are authors of this absolutely breathtaking book on Catherine von

01:12:04

Bora, the wife of Martin Luther, and the subtitle of this book is

01:12:10

The Morning Star of Wittenberg. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Jenna and Shanna Strachbein.

01:12:23

Hi. Haha, you even said that in harmony there. Now, first of all, tell us a bit about your own personal backgrounds.

01:12:33

Give us an abbreviated version of how the

01:12:38

Lord got a hold of you and brought you to himself and saved you. Perhaps if you could give us the religious atmosphere of your household when you were growing up as a child, if any, and what providential circumstances the

01:12:50

Lord used to draw you to himself and bring you to eternal life. Well, we're very thankful to have

01:12:59

Christian parents, and it was their teaching that brought us to God and his word and taught us the gospel, so we're very thankful for that.

01:13:17

So, praise God, you were raised in a Christian home, and when did this fascination begin with the wife of Martin Luther, Catherine von

01:13:28

Bora? Well, actually, not very many years ago.

01:13:34

We had never heard Catherine's story, and somebody was playing

01:13:41

Catherine at some sort of reenactment thing, and they were telling us her story, and we knew that Martin Luther had a wife, but we didn't know all of the exciting parts of her story.

01:13:55

She was a nun, and she escaped the convent and ended up marrying

01:14:00

Martin Luther, and they had this wonderful, vibrant household with all these guests, and she was a wonderful entrepreneur, and she helped

01:14:13

Martin Luther with his publishing, and she just had a really exciting story, and we have five nieces and a nephew who we're always trying to find good children's books for, and I guess we kind of got the idea that we would like to do children's books ourselves for them, and it's something we've kind of been wanting to do for several years, and Catherine's story was always at the top of the list of something that would make a wonderful children's book.

01:14:49

Well, if any love story from history that actually took place was perfectly designed by God for a movie or a book, it's the love story of both

01:15:03

Katie and Martin Luther, and some things that are just remarkable about the story.

01:15:10

First of all, most listeners probably know that Martin Luther himself was a monk.

01:15:16

He was an Augustinian monk before departing from the

01:15:22

Roman Catholic Church out of necessity because he had to flee for his life and go into hiding, but after the 95 theses were nailed to the

01:15:31

Wittenberg door, and then he was at the Diet of Worms and basically came to soon realize after that that his life was in risk by remaining around, but what a lot of people might not know, other than those who are very familiar with the life of Luther, is that his wife

01:15:50

Katie was a nun. Can you tell us more about that story? Yes, well she was sent to a convent when she was six actually, which was fairly common at the time.

01:16:04

It seems really weird to us now, but she was sent to her mother.

01:16:11

Her mother died and then her father remarried, and there may have been a little bit of a mean stepmother thing going on there.

01:16:20

We don't know for sure, but at any rate, she was sent to the convent when she was six years old, just a little bitty kid, and she spent her whole life up until she was 24 in a convent, and somehow some of Martin Luther's writings when she was probably about 18, somehow some of his writings got, were sneaked into the convent or somehow got in there, and she and several other nuns read his writings that it, there wasn't anything in the

01:17:00

Bible about being a nun or a monk, and it wasn't the way to salvation, and so she and 10 other nuns actually wrote to their families after they read this and asked if they could come home, and all their families said no, no they weren't, they couldn't come home, and so they actually ended up secretly somehow getting a letter to Martin Luther and asking him to help, and so he actually ended up organizing their escape, and they came to Wittenberg, and then he ended up marrying

01:17:40

Catherine. Now I remember years ago hearing that Katie was smuggled in a pickle barrel into safety where Luther was in hiding with other former priests and monks who had left

01:17:59

Rome, or the Church of Rome I should say, and then I heard on a recent documentary that it was in a wagon amongst pickled herring barrels.

01:18:11

What is the true story about that? Well you know that's something interesting that we did a lot of research because we wanted to be right in the book.

01:18:22

There's actually not any evidence that she was in the fish barrel. We were kind of attached to that, so we really wanted to put it, but it's very unlikely that she would have actually been in the barrels because it was a covered wagon, and so probably there may have been barrels in there, but if there were it's very unlikely they would actually have been in the barrels.

01:18:48

So one of the things we did with our illustrations is we show them escaping over the wall, then we show the wagon, then we show them getting out of the wagon, so we don't actually show they could have been in the barrels or they could have just been in beside the barrels.

01:19:04

And so with our illustrations we tried to be creative because I know a lot of people are kind of emotionally attached to the idea of her being in the barrels, but there isn't any evidence that they were in them, and so that's one of the things that we creatively did with the illustrations just to show, well they could have, but it's very unlikely that they would have been.

01:19:27

So yeah. Now from what I understand from my own research over the years of Martin Luther, that when the nuns who had left the

01:19:39

Church of Rome were being married off to priests or former priests and monks, that Katie was determined to wait for Luther to marry him, and Luther had no interest at first.

01:19:53

Am I correct in that recounting of the story? Well, that he was not interested in her at first, yes that's correct.

01:20:05

I don't think she was determined to marry him, and in fact there was another younger man who she and him wanted to get married, and he ended up going home to another city, and his parents said, no way you're not marrying her, because she was a former nun, and so she actually really wanted to marry this other guy.

01:20:24

That didn't work out, and then she was the last one. All of the other ten nuns that had come, they had all been married.

01:20:32

Martin Luther had helped find husbands for all of them, so he was very proactively trying to find a husband for her, and so there was this other guy that he was really encouraging her to marry, and she did not want to marry him.

01:20:44

He was an older man, and he had nicknames like the icicle, or grumpy, or things like that, and so it turned out later that he didn't have a very good character, and so we kind of think that she saw into him a little bit, because she was very adamant she was not going to marry him, and so she actually, and he was a professor, a doctor, and a pastor as well, so she actually goes to Martin Luther's good friend

01:21:18

Amsdorff, and we include this in the book, and so she goes to him and says, can you basically, can you stop, tell

01:21:27

Martin Luther, stop telling me to marry this guy, I do not want to marry him, and so he says to her, is it true a doctor, a professor, and a pastor isn't good enough for you, and she said, both you and Martin Luther are a doctor, a professor, and a pastor, and if one of you offer, want to marry me,

01:21:45

I'll marry you, but I'm not marrying this Dr. Glatt, so Amsdorff ends up going to Luther, and they both laugh about it, because Luther's not thinking about getting married.

01:21:54

He's still, he has a price on his head, and he, you know, it's very dangerous for him at this time, so he's not thinking about getting married, so he goes home to his parents, and he laughs, and he tells them, like he thinks it's a joke, and his dad says,

01:22:09

I don't think it's funny, you should marry her, I want grandchildren, and so that was kind of the thing that got him thinking, hmm, maybe

01:22:16

I should marry her, and then, so it was, it's a really fun story, and I don't think that she was determined to marry him, but she definitely was interested in him,

01:22:31

I think, before he was interested in her, so anyway. But they did, at least from what

01:22:37

I understand from a recent documentary, a PBS documentary, that I actually think was very, very well done, they did eventually fall deeply in love.

01:22:49

Very much so. This is after they were, after they were married, they eventually fell in love.

01:22:55

Yes, and you know what's funny is, when you read his different letters that he writes, and so it was, it was over the course of several months, he would, one letter would say, basically,

01:23:07

I'm, I don't, I'm not really attracted to her, because at this point, he had decided to marry her, or decided that he was thinking about marrying her, and then the next letter, he would be like, there are some things that are nice about her, and then the next letter, if this is to different people, he would say, well, she's actually, she's really beautiful, and there's all these things that are good about her, so it's funny, because you can actually see the course of how, and some of those would have been after they were engaged, and then maybe after they were married, but you can, you can see how he was falling in love with her over the course of a pretty short amount of time, and they had a beautiful, beautiful marriage, full of love and harmony, and they worked together really well, and they were a very, very good team.

01:23:55

And they had a full household of children, didn't they? Yes, they had six children, and they actually adopted 11 children, besides their own children, a lot of them were their own orphaned nieces and nephews, and then some other relations, so they had a house full of children, and a house full, they had lodgers, and there were constantly refugees coming to find protection from Martin Luther, so they had a full household.

01:24:35

Well, we're going to our final break right now, and if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question for the

01:24:42

Strachbine sisters in regard to this breathtakingly beautiful new illustrated book that they have not only co -authored, but two of the sisters actually also were involved in illustrating this book.

01:24:56

I mean, it is really remarkable, I happen to be an art major, and had the privilege of creating the book cover for one of Dr.

01:25:07

James R. White's books, Dangerous Airwaves, and I think that I have a pretty good eye, and this is really a stunning book, visually, and I just recently saw it from across a large room at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service on a bookshelf, and it was so striking and so attention -grabbing that I could see it from across quite a distance, but if you have any questions for your own, of your own, for the

01:25:37

Strachbine sisters, before we run out of time, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

01:25:43

chrisarnson at gmail dot com. Don't go away, God willing, we will be right back after these messages with the

01:25:49

Strachbine sisters and our discussion on Catherine von Bora. Are you a

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Hi, I'm Buzz Taylor, frequent co -host with Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio.

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I would like to introduce you to my good friends Todd and Patti Jennings at CVBBS, which stands for Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

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That means you can get to the stuff faster. It also means that you don't have to worry about being assaulted by the pornographic, heretical, and otherwise faith -insulting material promoted by the secular book vendors.

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Their website is CVBBS .com. Browse the pages at ease, shop at your leisure, and purchase with confidence as Todd and Patti work in service to you, the church, and to Christ.

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That's Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service at CVBBS .com.

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That's CVBBS .com. Let Todd and Patti know that you heard about them on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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And you can also call CVBBS .com toll free at 800 -656 -0231.

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And it's quite interesting that even some of the non -Calvinist world has embraced this book as being an excellent, transforming piece of literature that has changed their minds, not about necessarily the theology of John Calvin, but they have abandoned stereotypes of him, bigoted, nasty stereotypes that are just purely the products of the imaginations of those who hate the doctrines of sovereign grace.

01:33:04

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01:33:35

We are now back with our conversation with Jenna and Shanna Strachbein.

01:33:43

And if you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own for these sisters, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:33:51

chrisarnson at gmail .com. We are discussing their book that they not only co -authored but co -illustrated.

01:34:00

That is Jenna and another sister Emily co -illustrated this book.

01:34:07

And it is absolutely a work of art in itself, or should I say a number of works of art, because there's a beautiful illustration on nearly every page.

01:34:18

And can I ask you, Jenna, I know that you're one of the illustrators, what medium did you use for these beautiful portraits?

01:34:29

Well we used a combination of pencil, and then watercolor, and then digital.

01:34:37

So we would start with a pencil drawing, and then watercolor, and then scan it into the computer and do an opaque layer of digital paint in Photoshop.

01:34:50

So we were trying to go for the softness of a watercolor, but with the digital over it, you can get a lot more depth and vibrance in the colors than you can achieve with just watercolor.

01:35:05

Yeah there's also a crispness to the illustrations as well that you usually do not get with watercolor.

01:35:14

Yes, you can get that depth and everything with doing the digital over it, but with having the pencil and watercolor underneath, it doesn't look too digital.

01:35:30

Yeah I mean these, I don't know if you uh, the you folks who, now the publisher is

01:35:36

Unbroken Faith Ministries, the publisher? It's Unbroken Faith Productions, which is our family production company.

01:35:48

Because I don't know if you plan on making the artwork available for framing as well, but I think that might be an idea because it's really a beautiful book.

01:35:59

Well I guess we haven't thought about it yet. And we do have a listener in Perry County, Pennsylvania, Arnie, who says your guests sound very youthful.

01:36:12

I'm just curious how old they are because of the fact that this book that they have created is intended for a younger audience.

01:36:22

Well the four of us sisters did it together and Shanna and I are actually twins and we're 30.

01:36:31

And then we wrote the book and then Emily and I did the illustrations and Emily is 27.

01:36:39

And then Elizabeth did the map and illumination in the book and she's 25.

01:36:47

Yes. Now when you speak of the illumination in the book, exactly what do you mean? Well it's like a fancy word for like fancy letters.

01:36:57

A lot of medieval stuff, manuscripts, it's like a just like kind of a big fancy letter at the beginning of a word.

01:37:08

And we have CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who has a question for you.

01:37:15

CJ asks, is there anything that totally surprised you about Katie Von Bora after you did your research?

01:37:27

Well one of the things that we didn't know is we didn't know that she had red hair because some of the later paintings of her that were actually copies and not originals from the time, they kind of darken her hair where it looks brown.

01:37:46

But she did in fact have red hair so that was something that we didn't know going in and it was fun to find out.

01:37:53

And then it ended up working really well just from a storytelling perspective to have the main character have red hair and then when she is a nun you know we could have her have the red eyebrows and it's been fun to see the children be able to identify her by her red eyebrows.

01:38:11

So that's one thing that we didn't know that it was fun to find out when we were doing the research.

01:38:17

And we have BB in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who says,

01:38:22

I know that John Wycliffe has been nicknamed the Morning Star of the Reformation. Was it you that, meaning

01:38:31

I guess all of you sisters, that dubbed Katie the Morning Star of Wittenberg or is that actually a historic nickname for her?

01:38:42

Well actually it was Martin Luther that called her the Morning Star of Wittenberg because she got up so early every day she was like the morning star, early in the morning.

01:39:00

And so it was kind of a teasing thing that he called her that but also it was of an affectionate name because she got up so early every morning so it was actually

01:39:12

Martin Luther that called her that. Yeah and Martin Luther would have been familiar, I'm assuming, with the nickname that Tyndale had for that title there.

01:39:27

Or should I say John Wycliffe, I'm sorry, not Tyndale. And it is interesting that that this figure from history,

01:39:41

Martin Luther, has become accredited with such a high level of importance of world shaking and transformation globally, especially within Christendom.

01:40:01

Has anybody reacted in a negative way because of some of the unfortunate things about Martin Luther in his history?

01:40:10

For instance there are people who refuse to give any accolades to Luther because towards the end of his life he said some unfortunate things that were considered anti -semitic and so on.

01:40:21

Has there been any negative feedback at all for writing a book like this in tribute to his wife?

01:40:28

You know we have had all positive feedback so far which it's kind of surprising on one hand because on one hand it could be controversial, a figure to do

01:40:45

Martin Luther, but on the other hand we're not telling anything new. I mean

01:40:50

Martin Luther's story has been here for 500 years and so it's not as if we're doing research and coming up with something that people don't already know about.

01:41:02

And so far we have had an overwhelmingly positive response and we're just thankful to the

01:41:07

Lord. And it's been very, very fun to see how children respond and how adults respond to the book and it's just been really exciting.

01:41:20

We have John in Bangor, Maine who asks, I know that this is a book primarily for children, how deep do you go in regard to Christian theology so that young minds are capable of absorbing it?

01:41:38

Well one of the things that we really wanted to do is we really wanted to be able to capture the essence of the theology and the important themes that were happening at that time, but to be able to explain it in a way that a child can understand.

01:41:53

So that was our goal and what we actually did is we didn't want to dumb it down too much because you want the children to learn about something that maybe they've never heard about before, but you don't want it to be over their head at the same time.

01:42:08

And so what we did actually do is we tried to use words that were smaller but that were explaining some of the bigger themes.

01:42:15

And when we did have to go ahead and use a word like a convent or a nun or something that maybe a child wouldn't understand, we actually include a glossary in the back.

01:42:27

And so if there is a word that they don't understand, they can go to the back and they can look at what the definition is.

01:42:34

Maybe this would be something that a parent would help the children do. But we did try to explain it in a way that is easy for a child to understand, but then kind of back ourselves up with if there is something that's a little over their head, they can go to the glossary and see a further simplified explanation of what maybe that word means that they didn't understand.

01:43:01

Now since this is a tribute to Catherine Von Bora and not necessarily

01:43:06

Martin Luther particularly, how much of the book is really just focusing on things about her life and details about the history of this great woman as opposed to Martin Luther himself?

01:43:23

Well what we wanted to do with the book is we wanted it to be an introduction to the

01:43:29

Reformation at the same time that as we're telling Catherine's story. So it's telling

01:43:35

Catherine's story, but it's really telling Martin's story and the story of the beginning of the Reformation at the same time.

01:43:42

So what we would hope is that a child would read this book and that they would be excited and want to learn more about the

01:43:50

Reformation and the other men and women of the Reformation and the theology and the Bible and what was happening at that time so that they will actually as a child develop an appetite for these things in history.

01:44:05

Because so often people think that history is history so it's okay if it's dry and dusty, but we wanted to bring it to life to where these are real people in a real time and God is working in real places in real people's lives and just to bring that to life and encourage children to want to know more.

01:44:31

And it is refreshing in a male -dominated world of literature to see scores and scores of things in print by and about the leading male figures in history in regard to the

01:44:49

Reformation and in regard to Christianity in general. It is refreshing to see things that focus on the life of great sisters in Christ from the past and present.

01:45:01

Do you have any intentions to perhaps bring to light the lives of other women, other sisters in Christ from the past or present through these works that you are creating through the unbrokenfaith .org

01:45:18

ministry? We do have other ideas. There are so many stories from history that would make wonderful children's books and we do have other ideas kind of bobbing around out there that would make good children's books, but we haven't decided on any one particular as maybe something that we would do in the future.

01:45:48

But we would like to make this kind of be a series and we haven't decided yet.

01:45:54

We would like to do more about the lives of people, men in church history, but we've got a lot of ideas and we've got a lot of new ideas.

01:46:04

Since we've gotten the book we've had people come to us with ideas and maybe the people we haven't thought about yet and so that is something that we're definitely thinking about for the future.

01:46:17

And we have Harrison from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania who wants to know, are your guests

01:46:24

Lutheran and has the Lutheran community responded well to the book?

01:46:29

The Lutheran community has responded really well and we're really excited about how many people have in different churches and church leaders have gotten excited about it.

01:46:46

And we have a German background. Our German ancestors came over from Germany in the 1850s and so our family background was

01:46:58

Lutheran. We are in a Reformed Baptist church, our family is at this time, but we just so appreciate everything, our heritage and the church heritage and everything that has come from that and that's one of the reasons why we wanted to write something about Martin Luther's wife.

01:47:16

Amen, I happen to be a Reformed Baptist myself and I think that I have heard just as much praise and quotation from Martin Luther in my life as a

01:47:29

Reformed Baptist Christian as I have John Calvin. We are not one -string banjos, we are

01:47:36

Reformed Baptists. We highly appreciate Martin Luther as well, very much so and it is a delight to see this book in print and I was wondering if,

01:47:53

I mean just because of the spectacular artwork, I have to keep returning to that because of my own background in art.

01:47:59

As I said, I was an art major in college and I was wondering if, Jenna, you and your sister were trained, formally trained in art or is this, are you self -taught?

01:48:11

I mean it's just remarkable artwork that you've created. Well, we don't have any formal training so I guess we are pretty much self -taught.

01:48:21

There's probably a lot of things that a trained artist can look at and see of things that we didn't do right but one of the things that has been fun is our parents home -schooled us and so we are kind of used to being self -teaching ourselves things or learning on our own and so that's one of the things that Emily, she's drawn for years and Jenna has drawn too and so it's been fun and a lot of even like the digital art, we were kind of learning as we went along and so if anything turned out well, it's all to the glory and honor of the

01:49:00

Lord. Yes and Emily and I collaborated on the illustration and she actually drew all the people and I drew the animals and buildings and everything in the background so between the two of us,

01:49:22

Emily is definitely the superior artist. Well, I mean I can't see anything that jumps out at me as being incorrectly drawn or painted, anything at a proportion,

01:49:36

I mean I just think it's stunning. The use of color, even though I am colorblind, believe it or not, even though I was an art major, the vividness of the color really jumps out at you and even somebody with my colorblindness problem can really appreciate the contrast of dark and light and so on.

01:49:55

It's just really, I can't speak highly enough about it. What, as far as the division, obviously the historic great chasm that occurred during the

01:50:12

Reformation between the Church of Rome and the Reformers, what do you address in regard to that?

01:50:21

Do you get into any kind of detail? Because I know this is a children's book, I don't know how much you would have to say negatively about the

01:50:27

Roman Catholic Church, but do you get into that at all, that controversy? We do and we tried in the book just to really, just to say the way it was without being harsh or negative, but it does explain that the

01:50:48

Roman Catholic Church at that time were teaching things that were not in the Bible, and that Martin Luther went to the

01:50:53

Bible and started seeing the things that were true and the things that weren't true, and so I think we, our goal was also to not put anything in there that would misrepresent anything or, and we actually did a lot of research and read a lot of, but like, we read several books about the

01:51:13

Cistercian Order of Nuns, which is where she was from, and we wanted anybody who read the book to be able to look at it and say, yes, that is the way it is, and you know, not to over -dramatize or misrepresent something, but just to simply explain it the way that it was and in a way that's understandable for children.

01:51:37

Yeah, and this is, just to let our listeners know, this is a fairly large book.

01:51:42

I don't mean as in regard to its length, but it is to give justice to the artwork.

01:51:51

It's not a tiny book by any stretch of the imagination. Some might even call it a coffee table book because of the size, but it is really a perfect gift for any child in your life, whether they're your own children, whether they are the children of family and friends and loved ones, but I think that even adults will appreciate this anyway, just because of the fact that it is, you know, you have this sitting out in your living room, and it is a work of art or a collection of works of art.

01:52:27

What would you say that the primary audience, age -wise, this is intended for?

01:52:35

Well, we didn't put an age range on the book because all children learn at a different pace, and I think that a lot of times children aren't given enough credit for the things that they can understand, but probably the age range would be about 6 to 12 or so, but the younger children, if they have things read to them, you know, can listen along too.

01:53:10

I think it just depends on the child, but we have had an opportunity to read it to smaller children like 6, and even older, we had some teenagers like 13 to 15, and it was really fun to see how the different age ranges responded.

01:53:30

The younger they were, the more that they would look at the illustrations and listen at the same time, but really be engrossed in the pictures, and then the older, like probably 10 to 11, they would listen to the story, actually listen to the story more, and just look at the illustrations some.

01:53:49

So, I think you don't have to put the children so much in a box, but that they could all enjoy it, and we've had some people that told us that they had some smaller children that were 5 or 6, and they broke the book up into two to three readings.

01:54:05

So, anyway. We have Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, who asks, does your book address the death of either

01:54:18

Martin or Katie, and if so, how did one spouse react to the other spouse's departure into eternity?

01:54:28

I'm not sure who passed on into eternity first. Well, Martin Luther did die first, and then

01:54:39

Katherine died four or five years later. We actually ended the book before either of them died, and actually before their oldest daughter died, because she died when she was 13, and so we didn't, the book doesn't span their entire lives, and so we ended the book actually before any of them died, but Martin Luther did die first, and Katherine was very heartbroken, and yes, so.

01:55:15

But that's not addressed in the book. Well, if you could, if you could give us three minutes of uninterrupted time to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today about this tribute to Katherine Von Bora.

01:55:33

Well, one of the things, I would say two things that we really would want people to walk away with having read this book, and the first thing would be that, and this is true today as it was then, is we have to go to God's word to see what his truth is, and to know how to live our lives, and that's what

01:55:56

Martin Luther was doing, and it seems simple on one hand, but it's a timeless truth that where we're going to find

01:56:07

God's word and his truth is to go and read his word, and then just to see how

01:56:14

God has worked in just people, normal people's lives.

01:56:19

I mean, Martin Luther and Katherine were a little abnormal, but extraordinary, but just to see how

01:56:27

God can work, does work, and do wonderful things, and one of the things that we like about Katherine is

01:56:36

Martin Luther was doing these big and these great things, but Katherine was coming alongside, and she was doing the everyday things that were just as important, and they worked together, and God used them mightily.

01:56:49

So that would be two things that we really would want people to walk away with from the book.

01:56:56

Well that's great, and I want to make sure that our listeners have all of the information they need to get a hold of this book.

01:57:05

You can go to unbrokenfaith .org, unbrokenfaith .org,

01:57:12

and of course you can always order any book that you hear promoted on Iron Sherpins Iron Radio from one of our sponsors,

01:57:20

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. That's cvbbs .com,

01:57:25

cv for Cumberland Valley, bbs for BibleBookService .com. You can also call cvbbs at 800 -656 -0231, 800 -656 -0231.

01:57:38

Just out of curiosity, do any of you sisters ever get involved in live public speaking engagements, perhaps even events primarily geared towards children, or to sisters in Christ, or anything of that nature?

01:57:55

Well, we never have yet. Well, you never know what may come about through this program.

01:58:05

And is there any other things yet available from Unbroken Faith Ministries, as far as books and other material?

01:58:19

Well, we do have, if you go to our website, we do have some different things on there. Like the book, we have, there's a documentary that we made about our grandfather called

01:58:29

Anchor to Grandfather's Legacy. And we also have several other history lectures and sermons from our older brother

01:58:40

Wesley. These are also available on our website. And the book Catherine L 'Amour,

01:58:46

The Morning Star, Wittenberg, is also on Amazon, if you wanted to go get it off of there.

01:58:51

So there are a few other things that you could check out. Okay, well, make sure that you write this down, folks.

01:58:57

It's unbrokenfaith .org, unbrokenfaith .org. I hope that you please extend my warm greetings to your brother

01:59:06

Wesley. And if you could hold on so I can give you a proper goodbye off the air after the program is over.

01:59:16

But I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially those who took the time to write in to the program, of course.

01:59:25

And I want to thank the Strickbine sisters, obviously, my guests.

01:59:32

And please extend my greetings also to the, I should say

01:59:37

Strackbine, I'm sorry, mispronounced your name. Please send my greetings to Elizabeth and Emily as well, who were not on the program today.

01:59:46

And I hope that you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.