April 21, 2017 Show with Tom Sullivan on “Puritan Helps for the Spiritually Depressed” AND “Have You Committed the Unpardonable Sin?”

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Now here's our host Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon

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

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 21st day of April 2017.

I'm very honored and delighted to have for the very first time on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio someone who is actually airing this program on Voice in the

Wilderness Radio. I was very delighted to hear that another internet network has picked us up and is playing our program regularly and the founder of Voice in the

Wilderness Radio is our guest today. His name is Tom Sullivan who is also the founder of Puritan Audiobooks and today we're discussing

Puritan Helps for the Spiritually Depressed and we're also going to be asking the question, have you committed the unpardonable sin?

But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Tom Sullivan. Well thank you

Chris. And also in studio with me is my co -host the Reverend Buzz Taylor.

Hello once again. Hello Pastor Taylor. And what I'd like to do is before we even go into our subject at hand, first I want you to tell our listeners about Voice in the

Wilderness Radio and Puritan Audiobooks, but then I'd like you to give our listeners some of your background, what religious upbringing you had if any, and what the

Lord, what our Sovereign Lord used in his providence to draw you to him to save you and how you eventually came to embrace

Reformed theology. Well let's start with Voice in the Wilderness Radio.

I'm technically not the founder, it was kind of tossed into my lap because I'm so familiar with our

Reformed Baptist speakers. It was founded by Jordan Hall out in Sydney, Montana who also runs

Reformation Montana and I wanted to get in on it really early on because I've been in the

Reformed Baptist circle since 1984 starting with Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey.

Now a little bit about puritanaudiobooks .net, that's just the website that I use presently to upload the narrations that I am doing.

But I did start in 1985 in this type of recording. As far as my own personal background,

I was raised Roman Catholic and started to be awakened to the truths of Christianity about the year 1981 and my last year of the

Air Force. Very quickly on, I was exposed to really good books.

Probably within a year I started out with things that I wouldn't recommend anybody to read, but I had a chaplain in the

Air Force who was a five -point Calvinist and I had good questions and he had good answers.

About the year 1983, I started to see that my profession probably wasn't genuine and I went through approximately three and a half years of what we would call that slew of despond

Puritan law work type awakening. And so during that time I read everything

I could on the subject. I was down in the Bible Belt, there weren't many people to talk to, so I had to find these things out on my own.

And I just dug and read and specifically soteriology and regeneration, the new birth, conversion and so on.

I went from the Air Force into the Coast Guard which took me to New York City.

And in the meantime I had heard about Trinity Baptist Church in Montville through a connection down in Louisiana when

I was stationed down in that area. So I began to look for a church like that.

When I discovered Trinity Baptist Church, I discovered the Trinity Book Service. And as I continually would be purchasing books down there, one thing that caught my eye was some really good works that I thought should be audiobooks.

I didn't have any way to put them in audiobook format, I didn't know if there was a market for it.

And I remember specifically looking at the works of John Owen and I thought, you know, somebody, there is an audience out there for this type of thing.

So I got out of the Coast Guard and I came back to my home state in Montana and a friend of mine who attended

Trinity Baptist Church sent me the materials for Chapel Library which was then in Venice, Florida.

The founders Lawrence and Amy Nelson were in their 80s so it was looking for somebody to take that ministry over.

But in the meantime I noticed that they had books on tapes for the blind and I said, well here is my connection.

So I got a cassette out and I started narrating four different things and I sent them a tape and they were pleased with what they heard.

And they would send me about 15 blank Number X 90 -minute tapes in those days and that's where it all started for me,

December 1985. And now coming up on 32 years, I'm still doing this.

But everything now is digital audio MP3s and put on the internet. Yeah, we certainly have come a long way in technology.

I can remember when I first started in radio, there were no such things as CDs and when we did editing for commercials and for programs, we used a razor blade and a reel.

Well that's interesting you bring that up because the problem with cassettes was when you're narrating a book and you make a mistake, you have to rewind to the sentence right before you made that mistake and you start recording again but there's no perfect editing.

If you listen to it, there's somewhat of an echo of the place where you started recording again.

So when I finally discovered digital audio, the narration quality went up quite a bit.

Well, I'm going to give our email address to our listeners right now, it's chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And oh, I think I forgot to mention or ask you

I should say before we go on with our topic today. Tell us about some of the programming that you have in addition to Iron Trap and Xyron that you have on Voice in the

Broadcasting. I think the goal behind it was that Jordan Hall was getting a lot of context of things to listen to, things that he could recommend and not everything that was on Sermon Audio was equal.

And so he wanted to take mostly a handful of Reformed Baptist preachers that nobody had ever heard of before and give them a new way to be heard.

And I didn't start from the first day, I didn't start from the ground up, but I know so many of our pastors within our churches going back to 1984 that it was just a natural change for me to take over.

And so a lot of the areas that we hear besides Ken Ham and a number of other things like Voice in the

Wilderness Radio, these type of broadcasts are just Reformed Baptist preachers that we find off of Sermon Audio that I'm putting in a 12 -hour format that gets duplicated twice a day.

Okay, great. What time do you air Iron Trap and Xyron Radio? Because I know you're not airing it live. We try to get it the first program in the morning, which our programming morning starts at 10 o 'clock

Eastern Time. I don't know how it works out that way, but we're being streamed out of England and that might have something to do with it.

So 10 o 'clock in the morning on Eastern Time at wildernessradio .com,

usually that's when Iron Trap and Xyron will air on our station. And then we have an iPhone app and we have an

Android app so people can listen to it on their smartphones. Wow, that's great. And you have been listening to Iron Trap and Xyron Radio all the way back to 2006, correct?

Yes, and I must say to your benefit, it's never been better broadcast.

You know, I went through a painful time when you were airing on a Spanish station and we'd hear a little bit of Spanish station materials before the program actually kicked in, but it's improved so much.

Hello brother, you disappeared. Are you there? I hear you, yes. Okay, yeah.

You were saying that when we were on the Spanish station, in fact when I was on that Spanish station, because it was a

Spanish network that bought out the English -speaking

Christian station, Radio Contico Nuevo purchased that station.

And I was the only English program on that station. And the reason why was because when the

Spanish network purchased that station, everybody left, including me, overnight.

We had no warning about this. Okay. And then about two weeks later, the general manager of the station, the new general manager, the

Spanish general manager, called me and he said, our phone is ringing off the hook from people who love your show and they want you back.

Would you be willing to come back? And you would be the only English program, but would you be interested in coming back?

So I went back and I was on that Spanish station for I think at least two years.

Now, were you still in Long Island in those days or had you already made the move to Carlisle? No, that was Long Island, New York.

I was living in Amityville, Long Island and the station was in West Babylon and probably still is,

West Babylon, Long Island, New York. And how long have you been in the Carlisle area then?

I moved here in 2012 and I relaunched the program in June of 2015.

Yeah, I just saw that, but I think it's airing better. It's clearer than it's ever been before.

Oh, that's good to know. Yeah, I really appreciate that. Well, our email address, if anybody would like to join us is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

If you have a question about our topic today and you can remain anonymous, if it's about a personal and private matter, especially since some of our show today does involve people who are crippled with fear, wondering if they have committed the unpardonable sin, so obviously some of you may want to remain anonymous.

And also because spiritual depression is a big part of our topic today, so obviously that would loan itself to or lend itself to a person perhaps wanting to remain anonymous.

But if it's not about a personal and private matter, please at least give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence, if you live outside of the

USA. And I know that today you wanted to really go through these main topics using

The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan through certain chapters and scenes within the story of The Pilgrim's Progress to convey the messages about a help for spiritual depression and the issue of the unpardonable sin.

Tell us, explain exactly why you wanted to do it that way. Well, I'm not, of course, fit to give counsel on spiritual depression.

What I am is kind of a walk -in encyclopedia of Puritan bibliographical materials. And so the way my mind works as I look at The Pilgrim's Progress, and let's take four parts of that book, starting with when

Christian had the burden on his back and he's under a great deal of conviction of sin until he gets to Wicked Gate, that would be the first part.

The House of the Interpreter specifically dealing with when the Interpreter took

Christian to the man in the iron cage. What did the Puritans say about this person who's in this cage?

Is he, in fact, really past hope? How would you counsel such a one? Thirdly, what were the

Puritan counsels? What works were written to help the Christian who's in the battle, who's in that path with Apollyon?

Which Puritan works are helpful in the whole realm of the Christian warfare, the

Christian soldier, and so on? And then finally, the Christian in the Castle of Giant Despair.

The technical term that they used, and we don't use it the same way, is religious melancholy, such as Timothy Rogers wrote, or Richard Baxter in a

Puritan morning exercise's discourse on melancholy and overmuch sorrow.

This is the way that they termed it. But the difference is, you know, now we understand that there can be medical problems that add to the whole area of spiritual depression.

But, you know, because certain constitutions are given to this, some people are very introspective, and it seems like they're always living in the

Castle of Giant Despair. The worst case scenario that we know in Christian history would, of course, be

William Cooper, who four times in his life went into a state of despair.

The last was so intense and so dark that for seven years he never set foot in a church again.

In fact, if you could, I'd like you to briefly, if you don't mind, tell the summary of the story of at least one of the suicide attempts of Brother Cooper.

And it's quite an amazing thing. I don't know if you know the story I'm talking about, where he intended to drown himself in the

River Thames, and he had his horse and buggy driver take him to the

Thames, and there was a fog. Do you know the story I'm talking about? No, I don't. I don't remember that specific one.

Oh, okay. Well, the story was that there was a heavy fog that night, and obviously the buggy driver did not know the intention of William Cooper to drown himself in the

Thames. And the fog got so thick that the buggy driver said that he would have to stop until the fog lifted.

So, this was after they had been riding for quite some time. And so they stopped, and the fog lifted, and he was right in front of his own house.

Wow, that's really interesting. And he took that as a providential sign from God that he was about to do something very evil in ending his own life because of this depression that he had.

But anyway, I'm sorry about that. Well, where it's interesting, though, is because of his introspective temperament and his proneness to melancholy.

A lot of people that are like that are very creative. They have very astute minds.

Newton and Cooper worked together on the Olney Hymnal, and we're very familiar with the hymns of John Newton, and yet John Newton himself said that I could not hold a candle to the poetic genius of Cooper.

And some of the things that Cooper would say in his poems, like behind a frowning providence he hides a smiling face, there's so much genius in Cooper's writings.

But in order to not get off track, let's draw this back to Pilgrim's Progress, since we are talking about that intense kind of depression.

In the House of Interpreter, what is so interesting is Christian and the

Interpreter walk up to this man in the iron cage, and Christian is asking for the meaning of this, and the

Interpreter says, why don't you ask him? And where that always has been interesting to me,

Chris, is um, because somehow people found out that I went through this in my own pilgrimage, and I get contacted by a number of people who fear that they've sinned a sin in which there is no forgiveness for them.

Now if I was bringing somebody with me to reflect upon what that person is going through, the last person

I think that I would ask to give me an accurate portrayal of what he's going through would be the man in the iron cage, because the specific nature of that fear is he's going to misrepresent how bad, in fact, it is for him.

He can't see things right, because he's clouded by the guilt and so on, so he needs assistance, he needs someone to analyze his condition.

Well, how did you get here, and are you in fact past hope? Because commonly anybody who's under this delusion that he's committed the unpardonable sin, the way to get them out of that is to say the very fact that you're under this intense fear, this agony, shows that you haven't committed it, because those that have committed it are in a state of abduracy.

The Holy Spirit has stopped striving with them. One work that has been very helpful to me in that regard is

Augustus Hopkins' Strong Systematic Theology. I've quoted it so many times that I remember that the page number is 651, and he deals with what's called the sin of final abduracy.

The reason that it becomes unpardonable is because the person is so hardened, so recalcitrant, and so angry that when the

Holy Spirit, in the general work of his administration of conviction, impresses things upon that person, he's throwing it off.

He doesn't want anything to do with it. You have this in the testimony of people that were professing

Christians that have become atheists. A good example of this is Dan Barker.

These people become very victimized of the Christian faith, very agitated at people that make this profession.

So when somebody is in a real state of agony, like the man in the iron cage is, we hold out hope for them, because the

Holy Spirit is still convicting them. Now, just to enlighten our audience a little bit about what you are even referring to when we are speaking on scenes from The Pilgrim's Progress, it is believed that this is actually autobiographical of John Bunyan himself and his

Christian pilgrimage. He uses allegories throughout the book demonstrating the different things that he and that many

Christians confront when they are being drawn to God.

Am I right about that? Is that an accurate statement? Yes. So when we get to the man in the iron cage, it could be two different people here.

If you read Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, John Bunyan himself was frightened for a considerable length of time by that verse in Hebrews, Esau selling his birthright for a morsel of meat, and when he sought repentance, it was not granted to him.

And Bunyan was under the delusion that he had committed that sin. But I am not sure that the man in the iron cage is autobiographical of him.

He may have been referring to the Italian lawyer Francis Spira, because he does mention that in Grace Abounding to the

Chief of Sinners, and that is one of the most remarkable and hard -to -explain cases I know in Church history.

I was referring more to Christian, the character Christian. Wasn't that supposed to be autobiographical of Bunyan?

Oh, for sure, especially when we talk about the Christian with a burden on his back, and he's looking for Wicket Gate and so on.

So much of that is autobiographical, and sometimes it seems like he's hinting about things that he learned sitting at the feet of his own pastor.

But what's interesting about that whole book is it just seems that in our day, you don't have cases of conscience, as we call them, of people that have gone through things that deeply.

We seem to be a lot more superficial. So the best way to understand these things is you have to compare them, to help people going through that, with some of the things that were written in that day.

For example, the slew of despond that Christian falls to before he enters into Wicket Gate.

And whole works were written to assist a person who is going through what the

Puritans would call the Law Work Conviction. A mistake that's often made, though, is somebody would say, well, the

Puritans insisted that you had to go through this prior to coming to Christ. But that whole idea is negated by the very fact that Christiana in the second part of the book never went through this intense

Law Work Conviction prior to her conversion. So Bunyan knew that the ways of God in dealing with sinners and bringing them to Christ were very various.

Some people go through some deep depths, such as David Brainerd, such as Asahel Nettleton went through 10 months of this type of awakening.

Spurgeon even talks about a great deal of awakening that he went through prior to coming to faith in Christ.

And some people know very little of this, in fact can't actually trace the time of their conversion.

They don't know at what time they actually pass from a state of being dead and trespasses and sins to being quick and into having life.

The only way they know it is by the fruits of it. Right, right. Because you have all different scenarios involved in each individual's journey to Christ, because although we are all saved in the same way, by the same gospel, by the same

Christ, there are different background circumstances where some are raised in godly homes with Christian parents, some are raised in homes that are very hostile to the gospel, and then you have others who have,

I have met people who have a black and white testimony where they are in utter darkness and they are saved and a light switch goes on and it's a radical discovery of truth that they quickly, immediately embrace when they have been regenerate, when they have become regenerate.

Then you have others where it appears to be a chipping away over years, sometimes decades, of false belief and pride and things like that where a person is very gradually brought to a point where they finally bow the knee to Christ.

So you do have, even though the gospel is the same and Christ is the same, and what is not seen to men outside, the things that are going on inside the heart of man and with the sovereignty of God, all may be the same in every case of salvation, but as far as the external things that we witness and experience, those things are different.

Well, and also I think that something that is left out of this equation is, because regeneration is a secret work that is done in the governing disposition, the heart has changed from being totally at enmity against God, Romans 8 -7, to now putting forth gracious exercises and love to God, since that's a secret work.

Sometimes when people say, that was the day of my new birth, it may have been the day of their assurance.

If I look back on the three and a half years when I was under such dark, dark frames, in fact the entire time that I was attending the ministry at Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey, it was not a comfortable time for me, until up until September 18, 1986,

I was actually assisted by reading the Trinity Hymnal, the hymns on the forgiveness of sin, especially this one by Samuel Stone.

That may be the day that I really got assurance, so I can't necessarily say that that was the day

I was born again, but what happens is sometimes some people are under such a state of bondage and fear, even though they are born again, that as Jonathan Edwards says in his narrative of surprise and conversions, they are like trees in winter, you don't see the leaves, you don't see the fruit, but there's still life in the tree, and sometimes it takes a pastor who's very knowledgeable about these things to draw that person out and say, as dark as you think your situation is, there are these marks that are the distinguishing characters of a child of God, and you do have those.

Assurance not being of the essence of faith, it says in the Westminster Roger Catechism, question 80, question 81, sometimes people may wait a while before they really have that assurance.

God's ways are so very various, and a lot of times it has to do with what He's going to use us for after we are converted, and I notice in the case of Asahel Nettleton, what he learned in those 10 months of that bondage and fear and that awakening prepared him to be such—

Tom? Pulling them and helping them on their way to Christ. You bet. By the way, Tom, we're going to be going to a station break soon, and I don't know if your phone battery is dying or something, but you can—

I have two phones here, Chris. If it dies, I just grab the other one. Okay, because it has been breaking up, so I'm not sure why.

I'm going to get the other phone then. Okay, and if anybody would like to join us, we do have a listener in Slovenia waiting to have his question asked for you.

In fact, I will read his question and then go to the break, and you can answer it when we return, okay? All right.

All right, this is Joe in Slovenia. He says, Thanks for having Brother Sullivan today.

In reading the biblical narratives, church history, and my own personal experience, it seems that one of the most common and depressing things that we as believers can face is betrayal by other believers or false confessors.

Amen to that, Joe. What are your thoughts and insights as it relates to our battle against oppression resulting from the deep pain we all occasionally experience at the hand of others in the visible church?

What teaching from the Puritans is specifically applicable for us in this area of sanctification?

Thanks so much for your encouraging ministry to the body of Christ. Okay, I will have you answer that when we return from the break,

Tom, and if anybody else would like to join us, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com. chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

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We hope that Iron Sharpens Iron Radio blesses you for many years to come. Welcome back.

This is Chris Orange, and if you just tuned us in, our guest today is Tom Sullivan. He is with The Voice in the

Wilderness Radio and also Puritan Audiobooks. We are discussing Puritan Helps for the

Spiritually Depressed and asking the question, Have you committed the unpardonable sin? Our email address for questions is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Before the break, Joe in Slovenia asked Tom, In reading the biblical narratives, church history, and my own personal experience, it seems that one of the most common and depressing things that we as believers can face is betrayal by other believers or false confessors.

What are your thoughts and insights as it relates to our battle against depression, resulting from the deep pain we all occasionally experience at the hand of others in the visible church?

What teaching from the Puritans is specifically applicable for us in this area of sanctification? Thanks so much for your encouraging ministry in the body of Christ.

And Tom, I'm sure that among those instances, I'm not talking about Joe in Slovenia, but other people who have experienced the pain of the betrayal of a

Christian brother or sister, or at least a professing Christian brother or sister is divorce when you have a spouse that has been unfaithful or has done something very horrible, has divorced you even though there was no biblical warrant for it, etc.

But anyway, if you could answer to the best of your ability what Joe has to say.

All right. Before I do that, I just wanted to preface something. One thing I really appreciate about you,

Chris, is that you get along with brethren of a number of different denominations.

When I mentioned Voice in the Wilderness Radio, I said it was a Reformed Baptist station. I love my

Presbyterian brethren and all my brethren, and I wanted to get that right out there because I actually know more about Presbyterian history than I do about Baptists.

And the reason why is because that's what Banner of Truth gave us. They gave us a number, you know,

I started with Archibald Alexander's thoughts on religious experience back in 1984. I devoured that.

And after I got through that book, I wanted to know all about Princeton's theology. And so that's always been really important for me to study all aspects of church history.

I didn't want to come across like I'm really jaded or, you know,

I don't read all aspects of Christian history, Christian biography, and so on.

And my Presbyterian co -host has something to say. I was just going to say, we can talk now because I feel much better. That's one of the reasons why

I wanted to get that out there. I said, I'm not hearing from your co -host. That's because Chris, he's in control of my mic.

Well, believe me, you definitely want me to keep him on mute until he has something important to say. But if you could, and of course—

To answer that brother's question, really, we've got to come down to what works were written on the

Sermon on the Mount, because without a example that we have to follow, is that of our

Lord Jesus Christ. And if anybody was wronged by his brethren or his enemies, it was him.

And I have here on my—I have so many different versions of the Amazon Kindle, and I also use the

Amazon Kindle PC app, which allows me to bring up all of these books. And one of them that's very helpful to me is the

Puritan Isaac Ambrose on looking unto Jesus. But the book that I really would recommend is

David Martin Lloyd -Jones' studies on the Sermon on the Mount, especially when he deals with the beatitude of meekness.

It's very humbling. It's very— Well, it's interesting that you bring him up, because he obviously has a classic on spiritual depression.

Yes. And in his treatment of the word meekness, he says we have to get to the place where—remember, our

Lord said, if somebody smites you on the cheek, turn to him the other cheek. That just means that you are in a disposition that is so averse to defending yourself.

God's honor is so much more important to you that you're just done defending yourself.

You don't get upset all of the time. You don't say to yourself, oh, everybody's doing me wrong.

I just— You know, these are very serious things, and they do hurt and so on.

But our example is the Lord Jesus Christ. And if anybody had wronged—done to him, it was him.

And so it helps us to really focus on the Sermon on the Mount, what it means to be meek, what it means to be a peacemaker, what it means to really understand being persecuted for righteousness' sake.

And one of the things that's really shocked me in over 30 years of being a

Reformed Baptist and being in our different churches is how many of the people that I thought

I was fellowshiping with 30 years ago who've totally defected from the faith, the person who preached at my wedding, totally defected, apostatized, have nothing to do with these things.

The pastor who founded our church here in Grand Rapids also fell away, fell into great sin and made shipwreck of the faith.

Those things will cut you deep. And the reflection I continually carry from that is, why am

I still in the way but for the grace of God? And it keeps you very humble. One of the reasons

I narrate so much, Chris, what's kept me going for over 30 years is not what's going to benefit others.

It's what's going to benefit me first to keep me in the way, keep me from defecting, keep my heart tender and so on.

And I know if I'm affected by it and I can communicate that in the ways that I narrate, it's going to help other people that are listening to that.

And we have, by the way, thank you Joe in Slovenia for your excellent question. We have a listener in White Plains, New York, RJ, who says, you mentioned before about people who were really saved at an earlier point, but when they gained full assurance later on, that is when they think they were saved wrongly.

What about the more common thing today because of the rampant state of easy -believism, where you have people thinking they're saved when they are 10, 11, or 12, because they raised their hand at Bible camp or went forward at an altar call, but lived like the devil for years and perhaps decades.

And then at some point when they think they really became sanctified or closer to God or dedicated their lives to Christ is when they were really saved.

Those other years before that where they claimed Christ or professed to be

Christian were only a delusion. He is probably right about that being the more common thing today,

I would think. Well, let me start by answering this question by stating that I have a group on Facebook that I specifically started myself called

Christian Experience and Assurance. I'm a moderator for another group called the Reform Study of Church History, but this group

I specifically started to answer questions like these. And what

I've noticed recently is in the last month or so is I'm getting people that are joining this group who used to be independent fundamental

Baptists, and they probably went forward in an altar call and so on, and now these people are more serious.

Now they see, I'm not sure I was really converted back then, but the counsel that I would give such in one is don't look back to a previous experience.

The things that the Puritans were good at in defining what are the things that should give you assurance is a present walking with God, a present believing on the

Lord Jesus Christ, a present continuing in the way. They call it activism.

It constitutes the 13th and 14th points of Jonathan Edwards' treatise on the religious affections, your

Christian practice now. And forget about those things that are behind.

We press forward from this point, and we don't have to answer the question specifically at what point was

I born again as long as we're bringing forth those fruits of repentance now.

But you know we are going to run across these people that did have these superficial conversions and so on, and to be able to assist them, especially if a person is a pastor in that, they should know what are the distinguishing traits of Christian character, to use the title of the book by Gardner Spring.

What are the main points of Jonathan Edwards' treatise on the religious affections, or what is the main point of John Flabel's Touchstone of Sincerity?

What are those things, the evidence, that a person has been brought from a state of death into a state of life, that there's been a change in the governing disposition of the soul?

The first thing, and the first thing I would point anyone to is private prayer, secret prayer, because if the heart has been changed from being an enmity against God, Romans 8 -7, to now there is a love to him, then it's going to manifest itself in praying to him.

If a person lives devoid of prayer, Jonathan Edwards says in his sermon, that's the blackest mark against him.

How can you have been brought from a state of death to a state of life, and there's no spirit that's enabling you to cry

Abba, Father? That's a black mark against a person. A delight to approach

God in prayer is one of the first and surest signs that you've been brought from death unto life.

And Reverend Buzz Taylor, my co -host, has something to say. Well yes, of course, a couple things here that just kind of enter my mind through what you just said.

I had a pastor, a former pastor, many years ago who used to always ask the question, where in the scriptures do you see where rededication makes a bigger change in a person's life than regeneration?

And even 1 John, everybody knows 5 .13, where it says, these things have been written to you who believe in the name of the

Son of God, that you may know you have eternal life. And everybody interprets that as just that one sentence, do you believe in the

Lord Jesus? But these things that are written are the whole book, and he talks there about walking in the light instead of in darkness, and that if we say we're in the light, walk in darkness, we're lying.

And if we don't love the brethren, we can't say that we love God, we're walking in darkness.

All these things that are throughout the book that tell us that just that mere professional assignment is the way the question's worded, and I understand exactly what our questioner was saying, because so many people, the basis of their faith is what

I did. Well, I've got it signed right here in my Bible, or I've got it signed here on the back of the tract, so I know

I'm born again. Well, that brings up another really important distinction, because there is the

Christian who, a professing Christian, we'll call him a professing Christian, who professes to be saved, but is walking in darkness.

That's a mark against him. And between that and what Thomas Goodwin was talking in his book called

A Child of Light, walking in darkness, there is such a thing as a spiritual black knight of the soul.

And so this is a different thing, because some people that are in fact Christians, but they have that little faith that Bunyan talks about, they need assistance with their assurance, but they interpret everything against themselves.

And there's a book that I want to mention to your listeners that I am so sorry is out of print, because it's unequaled in this area of Christian casuistry of anything

I've ever seen. It was written in 1755, and the authors were Samuel Pike and Samuel Hayward.

The last time I saw that it was republished into a paperback was 1967 by a

Presbyterian publishing company. But it deals with all of these areas where somebody is saying, well, can it be, as John Newton says in his hymn, there's a point

I long to know, oft it causes anxious thought. Do I love the

Lord or no? Am I his or am I not? This whole book, from beginning to end, deals with some of these questions.

How about my worship? How can I tell if a lot of the things I'm bringing forth in my worship are merely natural or are they spiritual?

We don't deal with Christian experience at that level anymore. And I'll also mention

Archibald Alexander's thoughts on religious experience. There were too few books written at that level in the history of the

Church. I'll have to let Mike Gaydosh of Solid Grand Christian Books know about that book, that if it's still out of print, he may want to bring that back into print.

I don't know if you're familiar with Solid Grand Christian Books. Oh yeah, I'm friends with Michael Gaydosh on Facebook. So a lot of times when he does mention things that are out there,

I try to supply a little bit more information. You know, one thing about living in Grand Rapids, I've had an unbelievable opportunity to find books that other people hadn't heard of.

For example, Michael Gaydosh republished that Pastor Sketches by Ichabod Spencer. Well, we were able to find those.

The Kregels used bookstores long before those were republished. And of course, those of us that had a hunger for this type of study, we just devoured books like that.

But the one thing I also want to mention is there's no hardly any such thing as a book out of print anymore because of the print -on -demand services that are offered through the internet.

I can bring up an old book at books .google .com, and on the left side of the margin, it'll say, get this book in print.

And it'll say Amazon, eBooks, but then it says print -on -demand. If I click on that link, there's about 15 to 20 places in the

United States that have a machine that they call the Espresso Book Machine. This machine, from the time that they start to this book, printing out the pages, cutting the pages and put a cover on it, five minutes, they call it the

Espresso Book Machine. So it's amazing what we are able to do with technology in our day that I, you know,

Chris, there's books I've looked 20 to 30 years for in the past and used bookstores. So now

I just, I print out a copy for myself. Yeah, we have to get a break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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Iron Sharpens Iron Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with a little less than an hour to go is

Tom Sullivan. He is with Voice in the Wilderness Radio and we have been discussing spiritual depression and the impartable sin, impardonable sin.

And if you would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com, chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

Before I return to our discussion, I have a couple of important announcements. First of all, the

Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology is having a conference coming up very soon.

In fact, this is the last day that you can register for this conference. This is being orchestrated by the

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals and I, God willing, am going to be manning a booth there, an exhibitor's booth, so I hope that if you attend you come up and greet me and help me pass out literature to promote

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. This is going to be held next week, the 28th of April through the 30th of April at Proclamation Presbyterian Church in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

The theme of the Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology this year is Recovering the Essence of the

Gospel, and speakers include Richard Phillips, Carl Truman, and Daniel Doriani.

For more details on this conference, go to alliancenet .org, alliancenet .org,

click on events, and then click on the Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology.

Today is the last day of registration, so if you intend to come and join me at this conference, please register today.

Also, our friends at the Banner of Truth, they are having a conference as well that I hope that you will join me at.

Now this is a pastor's conference, and I know that they do extend this beyond pastors to other leaders in church like deacons and so on, but it is known as the

U .S. Ministers' Conference that the Banner of Truth has. This is being held Tuesday, May 30th through Thursday, June 1st, and God willing,

I will be there as well. I am already registered myself. They are allowing me to come even though I am not an ordained minister.

I am doing a lot of promotion for their event, and they are giving me an admission to this event, and I am very grateful to them,

Pat Daly, and the folks at the United States Headquarters of the Banner of Truth. The theme of the conference this year is the

Living and Enduring Word. It is being held at the Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. Once again, that is

Tuesday, May 30th through Thursday, June 1st. Speakers include Joel Beakey, Jeff Thomas, William Vanderwaard, Mark Johnston, Jonathan Master, Carlton Winn, and Ian Hamilton.

For more information, go to banneroftruth .org, click on Events, and then click on U .S.

Ministers' Conference. For those of you in my listening audience in the United Kingdom, they also have

U .K. Ministers' Conferences. There are several of them that you can click on, and if it makes more sense for you to attend one of those conferences, click on U .K.

Ministers' Conference instead. But I will be, God willing, at the 2017

U .S. Ministers' Conference, so I hope to see you there. Go to banneroftruth .org, banneroftruth .org.

And finally, the Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio is in urgent need of new benefactors and advertisers.

If the Lord has financially blessed you above and beyond your ability to provide for your church and for your home, we would love to receive a donation of any amount from you.

Go to ironsherpanzironradio .com, click on Support at the top of the page. There will be an address given to you that you can use to mail in checks made out to Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio.

And as any of you will know who have listened to this program since 2006, and that would include our guest

Tom Sullivan, you know if you've listened to this program for years that I have gone many years without ever once giving a public appeal for donations or for advertising.

But we have reached a point where we are in a very urgent situation financially, and my advertisers, the advertisers that I currently have sponsoring

Iron Sherpa's Iron are indeed the ones that have urged me to go public with an appeal to you for donations or for new advertisers.

So please, if you'd like to advertise whatever you do, whether you are a business owner, a professional person like a doctor, dentist, lawyer, chiropractor, perhaps you're a pastor, perhaps you're a leader in a parachurch organization, or perhaps you are having a special event that you want to advertise, email me at chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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And of course go to ironsherpansironradio .com and click on support if you would like to donate to Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio.

We have returned to the program now and our discussion of spiritual depression and the...

Hello Tom, are you there? Tom, I think we lost our guest. Well, hopefully our guest will be calling us back very soon,

I don't know what happened there. But our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com

if you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. And please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the good old

USA. I may have to go to another station break unfortunately because we have lost our guest,

I'm not sure what happened there. But if you will be patient with us,

God willing we will be back very soon. So don't go away, we will be right back,

God willing, right after these messages. Charles Hedden Spurgeon once said, give yourself unto reading.

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Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Well I believe we may have

Tom Sullivan back online. I have no idea what happened. Okay well

Tom we have a listener in eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, Ronald who wants to know could you please, he says

I apologize if I've missed this already, but could you please give us a brief definition of what spiritual depression actually is?

Okay before I do that I'd like to just mention because a lot of the stuff that we're discussing today we can't discuss in a great depth, so I want to mention my website www .puritanaudiobooks

.net and it's now the largest collection of Reformed and Puritan works unique names in the world.

I've done all of John Owen's Grace and Duty of Being Spiritually Minded, a treatise on indwelling sin, the mortification of sin, of temptation, on and on.

So it's a good site to go to because I do deal with a lot of the things that make up spiritual depression, but you know to define spiritual depression is we have to start with what is the fruit of the spirit.

Love, joy, peace, long -suffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, and self -control.

So the moment that we are agitated, the moment that we're not bringing forth love, joy, and peace, we have to ask ourselves what is it that's clouding our walk because the fruit of the spirit isn't morbidity, introspection, servile fear, because that doesn't bring forth the proper fruit to God.

Amen, and I hope that many of our listeners take advantage of your resources in your audio books by the way, but is there anything else under the umbrella of spiritual depression that you could mention that we could include as signs, symptoms, and explanations?

Well, I would recommend the old authors if you feel that you're suffering from spiritual depression because of the depth that they get into these subjects, but certain temperaments lean themselves to spiritual depression.

Definitely melancholy. If you're the type of person who's very introspective, you have a tendency to look on the dark side of things.

I have friends that are just the opposite of that. They're sanguine. They're the life of the party. It just seems like they never really get down.

It seems like they're never really depressed, but I have other friends, and I personally tend to be able to fellowship with them easier.

It seems like they are always living in Romans 7, 14 to 25, that which

I would, I do not, but the evil that I hate, that I do. If then I do that which I would not, it is no longer

I that do it, but sin that dwells in me, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death.

That seems to be the valley that Christians that I fellowship with tend to find themselves in a lot, and we want to get to Romans 8 as a continual part of our experience.

There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, for I know whom

I have believed, and I am persuaded he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day. Being confident of this very thing that he that has begun a good work in me will perform it until the day of Christ Jesus.

Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

So in summary, spiritual depression would be very connected to a morbid introspection and constant fear that you are either never were saved to begin with, or that you wrongly believe that you have lost salvation, or perhaps you believe that you are reprobate or something like that.

I'm assuming that... Well, there's another whole aspect that we haven't even covered yet, and that's what the Puritans call spiritual desertion.

What spiritual desertion, it's a time, a protracted time when a

Christian is not enjoying the manifest presence of God. It seems like God has hid himself.

It seems like I'm praying to him, but the heavens seem like they're brass.

God doesn't seem to be hearing me. The expression of Job, though he slay me, yet will

I trust in him. Spiritual desertion are those times when, for a continued extensive time, a

Christian just feels like, I have no enjoyment in my Christian walk. And so they use the term the manifest presence of God.

For a while, it doesn't seem to be there. Thomas Goodwin talks about it in A Child of Light Walking in Darkness.

That's a different kind of spiritual depression. The person in that state may not lack assurance, and he may know it isn't because of, you know, he's examined his heart, so I'm not living in any sin.

But what that person has to understand is that God is training us not to rely upon our frames, not to rely upon our feelings.

Archibald Alexander says in Thoughts on Religious Experience, says a new convert is like a babe that's dandled upon his father's knee.

He's not exposed to any hardships. He doesn't have, it's a time of his first love.

He's really enjoying it. But ere long the scene changes, and that he sees that he's in a warfare.

He sees that he's in a battle. And those former frames that he was too dependent upon before are taken away, and he has to continue to serve

God even when it seems dark, when it seems like midnight to him. The best case you have of that in the scriptures is

Heman in Psalm 88. There's very little hope in that whole psalm.

And yet his hope is that he's still calling upon God. He knows that God is his father.

He's never stopped calling upon God. A bad sign would be if a person is in a state of spiritual desertion, and so he goes into a state of agnosticism or practical atheism.

That would not be a good sign. But the true Christian in that dark valley will continue to fight on.

His faith may be weak, but he knows you and you alone have the words of eternal life.

Where else can I go? Now we believe as theologically reformed Christians that a true

Christian cannot become an apostate. Our belief in the perseverance and preservation of the saints and in fact all of the five points of Calvinism would lead one to the conclusion that a true

Christian could not apostatize. But could a true

Christian have a very brief at least period of questioning the existence of God or questioning the gospel, questioning the veracity and reliability of the

New Testament and that kind of a thing? Well it certainly seems to be expressed in the testimony of people like John Bunyan and others that they go through a time when they wonder.

Well you know it's interesting that right now I happen to be doing a study for the life of Ann and Iram Judson, the first Baptist American missionaries that went overseas.

And Judson went through a time in his life. He had been in prison in Burma, and then it was so difficult for him to go through that and for his wife

Ann that after a while Ann's health just gave way and finally she passed away.

And then they had their baby, which by that time was about three years old, she passed away.

And Adam and Iram Judson went through a time when he locked everybody out of his life, went into the woods and dug a grave and he would lie down in it and just contemplate death.

And this is a professing Christian who is very godly and he was actually turning to things that I don't think would be helpful like the writings of Madam Guyon or Thomas Akempas and so on, some of the

Catholic mystics and so on. So it is definitely true that a professing

Christian can get into that low, low state. But also a

Christian can go through a time of serious spiritual declension. The only way that we know that he is a

Christian is God's not going to leave him there. And when God comes to visit him in that folly, sometimes it can be very, very painful.

We have a listener in Bebe in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, do you believe a true

Christian can commit suicide? I don't know that I want to weigh in on that necessarily.

I mean there's different people who've been on both sides of that. John Piper says yes, but I know that in the case of the story of John Flable, the

Puritan, he was in prayer, earnest prayer, and God impressed it upon him that he needed to go visit his neighbor.

So he went to his neighbor's house, opens the door and finds out that the guy had actually tried to take his life and he had actually cut his stomach open.

It was a mess. And Flable impressed him with the idea that self -murder will not allow you to go into heaven.

But I, you know, I just don't have enough like Chris to come down on either side of that.

Well I can tell Bebe that if you go to the archive of IronSharpensIronRadio .com and you type in the name

Shishko, S -H -I -S -H -K -O, that's S -S -M -S -M -H -I -S -S -M -S -M -H -K -O

Shishko. Bill Shishko or William Shishko is the pastor's name and he did a two -hour program with me,

I think it was two hours, if it wasn't two it was at least one, on the Christian and suicide.

And basically Pastor Shishko was saying that a Christian can commit any sin such as even self -murder, especially when you add into the mix the fact that there are all kinds of prescription drugs that have negative side effects that you can even see on the

TV, on the television commercials, that some of these side effects include desire to commit suicide or may induce suicide attempts or something like that.

If I could share another story from history, in the case of Jonathan Edwards and the

Great Awakening, one of the reasons why one of the revivals stopped in his church in Northampton is that he had an uncle there named

Joseph Hawley, H -A -W -L -E -Y, who actually went into such a state of melancholy and spiritual depression that he took his life.

And I would be very loath to say that he wasn't a

Christian. I would say that because of what was going on in this revival, the devil was provoked and he certainly, he certainly would take every opportunity that he could to drive people to despair and so on.

Why would it be unimaginable that the devil couldn't press a professing

Christian with such fears and agitations and so on that they just end their life?

I can't say that that's not possible. Right. We are left in a dilemma because on the one hand, you don't want to give people false hope, people that are in such physical or mental agony that they believe,

I will be in heaven in an instant if I kill myself, because that person may be a false convert.

They may have been deceived into believing that they are Christians. And so we don't know with infallible knowledge, with infallible certainty that a person is regenerate and such comfort should never be given to someone.

But at the same time, you want to comfort the surviving family members of someone who did commit suicide.

If they were a professing Christian, you don't want them to automatically think that person that they loved is certainly in hell for eternity in torment because there are so many different circumstances involved where, as I was even saying before, a person could be taking a prescription drug.

And in fact, some of the antidepressants are notorious. If you switch medications, that may lead to suicidal thoughts.

And there's all kinds of weird things going on there. And of course, some of us, most of us have never experienced excruciating pain and agony to the level of some people who just couldn't take it anymore.

And believe me, I'm not advocating their suicide at all. Because like I said, people may think that they're saved and they may open their eyes in hell.

But it's one of those dilemmas because you have such very little said about it in the scriptures. You have

Judas killing himself. And who fell on his sword?

Was that in the Old Testament? Saul. Right, right, right. So you don't have a lot of examples.

And you don't have any of a person that is believed to be regenerate doing it. Right. But anyway,

I'm going to read you another question before we go to our final break. And then we could have you answer it when we return from the break.

We have Christian in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who says,

I'm sorry if I tuned in too late, but I haven't heard yet a definition of the impardonable sin.

Can you please define that? And we will have Tom Sullivan answer your question when we return from our very last break here.

Once again, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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

USA, don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages. Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, for am

I now seeking the approval of man or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man,

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We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things.

That's not the best recipe for popularity, but since that wasn't the apostles priority, it must not be ours either.

We believe by God's grace that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man and to be vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us and to build up the body of Christ in truth and love.

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We hope that Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio blesses you for many years to come. Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune into A Visit to the

Pastor's Study every Saturday from 12 noon to 1 pm Eastern Time on WLIE Radio, www .wlie540am

.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.

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

Eastern Time for a visit to the pastor's study, because everyone needs a pastor. Welcome back, and that was indeed the very same

Bill Shishko that I was mentioning just a few moments ago before the break, who did an excellent interview with me on Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio on suicide and the

Christian. And so go to the archive if you're interested in hearing more about that at IronSharpen'sIronRadio .com,

IronSharpen'sIronRadio .com, and type in the search engine

SSN SAM HI, SSN SAM HKO, Shishko, and Pastor William Shishko or Pastor Bill Shishko's name will come up, and you can find the interview on suicide.

And before the break, Tom Sullivan, our listener Christian in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, asked you for a definition of the impardonable sin or unpardonable sin.

Okay, if this phone is breaking up, please let me know, because I'll grab the other handset. One of them is better than the other, so let me know if this is breaking up.

But I have open on my Amazon Kindle app

Augustus Hopkins Strong's section that I quote so often, and I'm going to read it, and then

I'm going to explain it. The sin against the Holy Spirit is not to be regarded simply as an isolated act.

In other words, it isn't just one sin that you've committed, and that's it. Pull the rug out from underneath that person, that person is as good as But also is the external symptom of a heart so radically and finally set against God that no power which

God can consistently use will ever save it. And I'll explain that in a minute. This sin therefore can be only the culmination of a long course of self -hardening and self -depraving.

He who has committed it must be either profoundly indifferent to his own condition or actively and bitterly hostile to God, so that anxiety or fear on account of one's condition is evidence that it has not been committed.

The sin against the Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven simply because the soul that has committed it has ceased to be receptive of divine influences, even when those influences are exerted in the utmost strength which

God has seen fit to employ in a spiritual administration. So this is where I have to explain.

The Puritans used a term called the common influences of the Holy Spirit. This is how they explain

Hebrews 6, 4 -6. There are the works of the Holy Spirit, conviction, enlightening, and so on, that fall short of the effectual goal.

And so what Strong is talking about is in the general administration of the Holy Spirit, upon this person who finally throws it all aside, tramples

Christ underfoot as it says in Hebrews 6, that person becomes unreceptive of those general influences of the

Holy Spirit, and God for whatever reason in his own divine sovereignty says, hitherto shall you come and no further.

And there is a line that can be crossed in this life where God says,

I will no longer strive with this person. And so we have to distinguish because the effectual call is always effectual.

The Holy Spirit reaches out, changes the governing disposition of the soul, regenerates the person, and he becomes a believer.

But there is a general administration of his Holy Spirit upon the non -elect, upon the reprobate, and some of those can commit the unpardonable sin in this life.

The warning that we learn from this is it's never safe to trifle with the

Holy Spirit when he is striving with you. When somebody says,

I don't want to hear this anymore, and he goes his own way. We don't know for each individual person when that point would be.

But the very fact, Strong is saying, that a person is worried about it and anxious about it would mean that the

Holy Spirit has not ceased striving with him. Yeah, one thing

I'm sure you would agree, any of our listeners can be certain of in this regard, is that if they love the

Lord, are following the Lord, are living a life of repentance, although nobody on this earth is living a perfectly sinless life, but when your sin grieves you, you cry out to the

Lord for forgiveness, and you cry out to the Lord for strength to press on in a repentant life, in a restored life.

Those people do not have to worry about waking up in eternity and be standing before the judge who will say to them, because of the sin that you committed years ago, you are not welcome here.

It doesn't matter how many times you cried out to me for mercy and how many times you repented, this thing that you've done was so wicked that you are going to be entering into the gates of hell, where there is no ceasing of weeping and gnashing of teeth and so on.

And there are people who think that, there are some people who don't even want to make an effort to visit a church, because they think in their heads, look

I've been a prostitute, I've been a crack addict, I have been a rapist, I have murdered people,

I have been a child molester, you could go on and on and on with the evil depravity of man and the things that men and women have done, and they think

God can never forgive me, so I'm not even going to show up at a church service. But this is clearly not the case at all.

In fact, as you know, Tom, I close my program every day with a quote from Christopher Love, that Jesus Christ is a far greater

Savior than you are a sinner. Jesus Christ, His death was so perfect that it will cleanse any sin, no matter how dark and sinister and satanic, if the person is covered by the blood of Christ.

Am I right? Right. I do want to mention, since we're talking about books that are out of print that should be in print, we were talking about William Cooper.

There was an author in the mid -1800s named George Beryl Cheever. He wrote a book on Lectures on Pilgrim's Progress, but he also wrote a book called

The Life, Genius, and Insanity of William Cooper. And there's something about the way, the command of the

English language, the way that authors wrote in the 1800s, that's really helpful.

But he goes through the life of Cooper and shows that, well, this here manifests that no matter how he concluded about his own case, these are the signs that he has been from death unto life.

And that's why I keep saying some of the old authors are a lot more helpful in this area, because it just seemed like sometimes when people were really, really serious spiritually, sometimes spiritual depression was a lot deeper and a bygone day.

So I hope that was helpful. Yeah, and I think one of those reasons, as I said before, is that the gospel of easy believism, the false gospel of easy believism and cheap grace, was not so rampant as it is today.

Well, that may be one of the reasons, but Buzz Taylor has a - Before we get too far away from your listener's question,

I feel compelled to share that one thing we can be assured that the blasphemy against the

Holy Spirit is not, it is not being critical of modern -day manifestations of the

Holy Spirit. Yeah, right, as some extreme Pentecostals might say. Yeah, because some people may hear it in that context, like, you know, if you don't believe that this is of God, well, you're committing the unpardonable sin, blaspheming the

Holy Spirit, you know, we do not need to worry about that. And one other thing, as it applies to Calvinism, Tom, I'm sure you have heard of either those who are

Arminian or outside of the orbit of Calvinism, and perhaps they are, have just begun to learn about election.

I can remember years ago when I worked for WMCA 570 AM radio in New York, and after our talk show host,

Andy Anderson, went home to be with the Lord, I was asked to be the temporary host of that program for at least two weeks before they found a permanent replacement.

And I can remember that a person in the listening audience who always went by the alias

E, the letter E as in Edward, I don't know why he always just went by E, but he used to call in, it was a call -in show, and almost every time he called in, or at least quite a number of times he called in, even during times that I filled in for Andy Anderson when he was on vacation or sick, he would ask the question,

I am very worried that I am not of the elect. I've heard about this teaching of unconditional election, and I am terrified that I am going to face

Christ as my judge, and he will tell me that I am not of the elect. And I would ask this person, do you love

Jesus Christ? Oh yes. Have you repented? Have you believed upon him? And do you believe in his sacrifice on Calvary as the only way for atonement or redemption for sinners?

Do you believe he was our substitute on that cross and that he arose again and ascended and is seated at the right hand of the

Father? And he would say yes to all these things, and he said he's a member of a church, but he just was terrified of this concept of election, and he viewed it almost as like a lottery system, that you could be a godly, repentant follower of Christ and then wind up standing before Christ as your judge, and he looks through his file and he says, wait a minute, you're not one of the elect.

I'm sorry, you're going to hell. I mean, this scenario will never happen, am I right? Right. Well, you know,

Charles Spurgeon had a sermon called the Doctrine of Election, No Discouragement to Seeking Sinners.

But one thing that I try to do to assist people that are going through that is, you have to embrace

Christ, understand his gospel, and embrace it as sincerely as if there were no doctrine of election and reprobation and so on.

Right. Because right now, you can't, in your mind, compartmentalize those things.

All you can do is think of God's eternal secret decree, and that's not your business right now to be focusing on this eternal decree.

Your business right now is to realize that this Savior is offered to you, and you need to run to him, embrace him, trust him, rely upon him, and cling to him, and put the doctrine of election out of your mind.

Right. In fact, Bill Shishko, who I brought up earlier, he, along with our co -host,

Reverend Buzz Taylor, was a student at Bob Jones University.

Bill was there in, I believe, the early 70s, and perhaps even late 60s, but early 70s for sure.

He said that there was a a controversial incident on the campus of Bob Jones University that caused the leadership at that time to strongly crack down and enforce restrictions against all students that claimed to be

Calvinist with the threat of expulsion if they publicly proselytized their views.

Because a student who was a professing Calvinist committed suicide for this very reason of fear that he was not of the elect, which is, when you think about it, it's very ironic.

I would think that you would want to stay alive at all costs, but this is not something that we who are

Reformed promote at all, this idea that you can't ever have any kind of assurance that you're one of the elect until you face

Christ on Judgment Day, and none of the great heroes of our faith ever taught this.

I mean, I want to make it clear to either the Arminian or the anti -Calvinist out there who thinks that is the logical fruit of a

Reformed soteriology, that nothing could be farther from the truth, am I right? Well, you know, let's take the manner of prayer as well.

When God gives us a spirit of grace and supplication, and we storm the gates of heaven, and we're crying to Him and so on, the thing that's not before our mind is, everything is a fixed decree and God is going to do what

He's going to do. The Holy Spirit stirs us up to pray as if our very prayers could change the mind of God.

We know theologically speaking they can't. But when we're wrestling and praying with God and so on,

God will give us that kind of urgency like, Lord, I will not let you go until you glorify your name in this manner, or you assist me in this manner, and so on.

And so God's eternal secret decree and that He has bringing to pass whatever comes to pass, that's not in our mind foremost when we're praying.

It's that God is a God who answers prayer, and He stirs us up to pray, which means that He stirs

Himself up to listen to our prayers. Amen. Well, I want to make sure that you have applied what we are discussing in every way that you intended to to the narrative of Pilgrim's Progress before we run out of time.

Is there anything further that you wanted to say? Yeah, let's talk about a couple of other things. You have the

Christian and the Castle of Giant Despair, and then you have the Christian in the case of Apollyon.

There's so many good Puritan works that are helpful, and most of the people that I have interacted with have been most helped probably by William Gurnall's Christian in Complete Armor.

In that book he has a section called, Satan's Wiles to Accuse and Trouble the

Saint. All of these individual sections that I'm mentioning to you I have narrated, and they are on my site puritanaudiobooks .net.

But it is amazing how many Puritan works deal with Christian warfare.

One of them that I just discovered was William Gogue who preached for 30 years at Blackfriars in London on Hebrews on Friday night.

30 years in one book. Also had a book on the Christian warfare that presently isn't in print.

But one thing I noticed about this book of over 600 pages, 60 to 70 pages of this work deals with what is the unpardonable sin.

Because I believe that this is such a wile of the devil that he continually likes to throw that in a

Christian's face to drive him to despair, or to drive him to be temporarily agnostic and so on.

Another one, a Puritan work, Richard Gilpin's treatise on Satan's Temptations.

And also John Downham has a whole work on the Christian warfare. So this is very forward in the

Puritan's mind. I don't know if it's sometimes to an unhealthy extent, because a lot of times we attribute that to the devil, which really is of our own naughty hearts.

But they took this very, very seriously, this whole thing with Christian and his war with Apollyon, or Christian and the

Castle of Giant Despair, those Puritan works that were very helpful in that regard.

I mentioned before Pike and Hayward's Cases of Conscience, but you have William Bridge lifting up of the downcast, and John Owen's work on Psalm 130, which is a masterpiece on the forgiveness of sin.

And he has a section in there, why is it that sometimes it's so hard to believe this offer of forgiveness of sin?

And he says, because the law of God militates against it, and your conscience militates against it, until the

Holy Spirit has to enlighten the eyes of your understanding, so that you understand it is not in you.

You have to look outside of yourself to receive it. And the Puritans really understood the difficulties that sometimes goes on in a

Christian about just laying hold of Christ. One person said,

I think it's easier to go through some of the trials God sends in our way, providentially, than sometimes just to believe his promises, and to cast your burden upon him.

Faith has to militate against so much unbelief, and the conscience crying against it.

And one book that I want to recommend to our listeners, which

I first learned of when I interviewed my co -hosts,

Reverend Buzz Taylor's co -pastor over at Carlisle Reformed Presbyterian Church, Deckard Stephens.

Deckard Stephens also has been a guest on my program when he discusses his trial and triumph over cancer, and he was very much blessed by the book

Conflict and Triumph, first published in 1874, that was written by William Henry Green.

And I don't know if you've ever done a voiceover for that book, but that is a banner of truth book that I strongly recommend.

In fact, you could go to ironsharpensironradio .com and type in D -E -C -H -E -R -D and then

Stephens, S -T -E -V -E -N -S, Deckard Stephens, and you'll find my interview with him on his trial with cancer, and how

William Henry Green's book Conflict and Triumph helped him through that trial.

And you could also go to banneroftruth .org and find the book if you'd like to purchase it, banneroftruth .org, or you could go to one of our sponsors' websites, that's

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, C -V for Cumberland Valley, B -B -S for Biblebookservice .com,

C -V -B -B -S .com. And we have another listener that we have time to ask his question.

We, let's see, we have Jim in Port Washington, Long Island, New York, who asks,

Do you think it is an unhealthy sign for a Christian to always leave church happy and uplifted?

Does that mean that perhaps he is not hearing the whole counsel of God or is not aware of his own sin?

You know, I can't say for sure. I'd have to draw that person out a lot more.

I mean, before I was married, I had a roommate that it just seemed like the guy was so joyful.

I used to kid people that I had to drive them home. I had to be his designated driver because he was joyful all the time.

But, you know, I will say that, you know, I'm personally glad that I'm not of that temperament, because I think the people that are somewhat introspective, and I don't recommend being melancholic, they have a tendency, to make sure to do self -examination, to order their accounts before God, to examine themselves whether they are in the faith, 2

Corinthians 13 .5. So, I've never been that person, and so I can't really, you know, pass any kind of a judgment on him, but I personally have trouble fellowshiping with people that don't know the experience.

They don't seem to know the experience of Romans 7 .14 to 25.

It seems like I live more in that old wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from the body of this death.

But, you know, I couldn't say for sure. Yeah, for some reason, you just reminded me of one of my high school friends who was a

Missouri Synod Lutheran, and this is not any kind of a disparaging remark about my Lutheran brethren, but when we were in our 20s, when he found out that I became a born -again believer, he said to me, now, you don't think

I'm a sinner or something, do you? And I said, well, that's your first problem.

If you don't think that you're a sinner, you're in bigger trouble than I may have imagined, because...

Well, yeah, I had a cousin down that, like that, in Louisiana, and they went to this free

Methodist church that believed that you could receive this second blessing of the

Holy Spirit to where you actually live above sin, where you don't sin anymore, and that's where I was first discovering

John Owen's mortification of sin and believers, and I thought, this guy's on another planet from me, and I was fearful for anybody that would get to the state where...

Well, you remember maybe the story of Spurgeon, that somebody came to him and said they had reached that state, so he reached forward with his foot, crushed their foot, and the person got really upset, and Spurgeon said, well, there it goes, you're a perfect living.

After he blurted out something unfortunate or something. Yeah, probably. The... Well, one thing that I think could be extracted from that last listener question comment is that if someone criticizes the congregation where you worship, if they visit you, visit where you're worshiping, and they say to you, well, you know,

I know that that's not a church I want to go to, because where I go to church, my pastor never says anything that makes us sad or brings us down.

We're always walking on a cloud when we leave that place. He always lifts our spirits and makes us happy.

That to me is a sign, you know, I mean, Joel Osteen is a perfect example. I don't think that you can preach the whole counsel of God if you have a beaming ear -to -ear toothy grin the entire time you're speaking.

I mean, that's impossible. You can't even get through the second beatitude, because blessed are they that mourn.

Right. And in your mourning, you're going to hunger and thirst after righteousness, and that should mark your demeanor as a

Christian. Right. Now, of course, I'm not advocating the other extreme either, where you may have a church that always has the atmosphere of a funeral service.

I mean, if we have been rescued from sin, death, and damnation, we have a lot to be rejoicing about and to be happy about.

But, I mean, it's really, emotions will be reflected accordingly, according to the full counsel, the whole counsel of God being preached.

Right. When I live in a city, you know, that's known for its Reformed history, and the old

Netherlands Reformed Church's assurance of salvation was suspect. Yes. And then

Dr. Beakey brought a breath of fresh air to that church. His doctrinal dissertation was on assurance of salvation in the

Second Dutch Reformation. Yes. And some people never forgave him for that, and the church split as a result.

They said, well, you know, that's not healthy for everyone to go around saying they have assurance of salvation, because they thought we should be in a state of morbidity, introspection, and self -examination.

So that's the other extreme that you're talking about. Yes, I've interviewed Dr. Beakey on his doctrinal dissertation. In fact, if you go to Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com,

cvbbs .com, you can order that book on assurance. Ask for Dr.

Joel Beakey, B as in boy, E -E -K -E, ask for his book on assurance, and they can either find it in their inventory or order it for you.

But we're out of time right now, and I know that A Voice in the Wilderness radio can be found at wildernessradio .com,

wildernessradio .com, and Puritan Audiobooks can be found at puritanaudiobooks .net,

puritanaudiobooks .net. Tom, it's been a great pleasure having you on the program today. I really enjoyed it.

It's a pleasure to get to know you a little bit more personally, Chris. Yes, you too, brother. And I want to thank my co -host,

Rev. Buzz Taylor, for being in studio. Thank you. And I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write in questions today.

And don't forget about today being the last day to register for the Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology at the

Proclamation Presbyterian Church in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Go to alliancenet .org,

alliancenet .org to register. I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater