December 13, 2016 Show with Jason Wallace on “After Mormonism–Atheism?” and “An Earnest Plea to ‘Gay Christians'”
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“AFTER MORMONISM…ATHEISM?” PLUS
“An Earnest Plea to ‘GAY CHRISTIANS'”
with guest
PASTOR JASON WALLACE
of Christ Presbyterian Church (OPC), Magna, UT
- 00:01
- 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 Arnson. Good afternoon,
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- Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming.
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- This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 13th day of December 2016.
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- And before I introduce my guest and our topic for the day, seeing that number 13 reminds me to remind you that just four weeks from now, on Friday, January 13th at the
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- Carlisle Theater in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, I am relaunching the
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- Great Debate series that became renowned worldwide. These debates were between Dr.
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- James R. White, an evangelical Protestant apologist and Catholics throughout the
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- United States who opposed him on various issues. We are having our first debate this time featuring
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- Dr. Tony Costa, a mutual friend of Dr. James White and mine, and this is going to be, as I said,
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- Friday, January 13th, 7 p .m. at the Carlisle Theater, a gorgeous, historic 900 -seat theater in the heart of historic
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- Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and the tickets are $5. The theme of the debate will be,
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- Mary, Sinless Queen of Heaven or Sinner Saved by Grace. For more details, email me at the new
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- Iron Sharpens Iron email address, chrisarnson at comcast .net.
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- That's chrisarnson at C -O -M -S -N -M -I -C -H -E -L -C -A -S -T -D -O -T -N -E -T.
- 02:52
- And I hope that you folks listening will get used to using that new email address because Gmail has me still suspended for sending out too many emails, so hopefully that will be resolved soon, but if not, you know, just keep using the new email address anyway.
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- And also, for those of you who are men in ministry leadership, whether you're a pastor or a man who is the leader in a parachurch organization, perhaps you're a deacon of a church, perhaps you're an elder, some folks
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- I know differentiate between pastor and elder, but I don't, but if you do, whatever position you may hold to, if you're a man in Christian leadership, you are invited to a free pastor's luncheon at the
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- Carlisle Vault one day before that debate, Thursday, January 12th, and the
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- Carlisle Vault is a gorgeous historic bank in Carlisle that was transformed into a catering hall, and they are being incredibly generous to me because they're only charging me for the cleaning crew after the event.
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- It's just absolutely amazing. It's an answer to prayer and a godsend because this is a very expensive, very breathtakingly beautiful catering hall.
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- And for more details on that as well, email me at chrisarnson at comcast .net,
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- that's chrisarnson at comcast .net, and the minister's luncheon or the pastor's luncheon, unlike the debate, is absolutely free of charge.
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- And we can serve up to 100 men this gourmet lunch, and all of the men attending will also get hundreds of dollars worth of free
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- Christian books, brand new books donated from publishers all over the United States and the
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- United Kingdom. Nearly every single major publisher in the USA and the
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- UK is donating books, as they have been for quite a number of years, for each and every man in attendance.
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- So I hope that you can make it to that. But without further ado, I want to introduce my good friend that I am so delighted that the
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- Lord sovereignly has caused our paths to cross, and we have developed by his grace a friendship, and we have been involved in different activities for the kingdom of God.
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- And I'm so delighted that he is back on the program. His name is Pastor Jason Wallace, and he's the pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in Magna, Utah.
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- And that is a congregation within the Orthodox Presbyterian denomination, right in the heart of Mormon territory.
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- And today we are discussing after Mormonism, atheism, and also an earnest plea to gay
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- Christians. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron, Sharp, and Zion, Pastor Jason Wallace.
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- Chris, it's my privilege to be back with you. And let me introduce a man who has returned as my co -host today, and you'll be hearing,
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- God willing, him co -hosting with me from time to time as I interview various folks.
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- And one of the reasons he's in studio with me today is he is, like Pastor Wallace, he is a member of the
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- Orthodox Presbyterian denomination. He is also founder of sixdaycreation .com,
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- and he's an author of a couple of books. And it's great to have you back in the studio to co -host with me today,
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- Charlie Liebert. Hi, Chris. Thank you very much for having me. And it's Liebert, right? It's not Liebert? Yes, it's
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- Liebert. Okay, great. And if anybody is listening and they would like to join us on the air with a question, the email address is chrisarnson at comcast .net.
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- That's chrisarnson at comcast .net. And I hope that we do have listeners who know how to, who are aware of the, who were aware of the new email address before the show started.
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- But at any rate, Pastor Wallace, before we even get into these very controversial topics that we have scheduled for today,
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- I'd like to know something about your own personal background, the religion of your youth, of your upbringing, if any, how you came to know the
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- Lord Jesus Christ, and how you came to become a pastor in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.
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- Well, I'll give you this short.
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- I was raised in the Bible Belt. I'm a native of Statesboro, Georgia. I really didn't attend church when
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- I was a kid very much. I went to a Seventh -day Adventist church school. I had a
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- Pentecostal grandmother who prayed for me every day, and I dabbled in the occult.
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- I started going to a Southern Baptist church when I was 14. I made a profession of faith. I was really basically a nominal
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- Christian until I was 23, when a young lady tried to recruit me into the Way International.
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- And I got embarrassed by my Bible and started actually studying instead of picking at it, and then realized it wasn't just the
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- Bible I didn't know, I didn't know God either. And the Lord opened my eyes to what it meant to be sinner.
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- I never really understood the holiness of God very deeply. I never understood the seriousness of sin, but the
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- Lord used that to awaken me and show me the real Jesus. He led me to a faithful Presbyterian church in Savannah, where I was working at the time, and He just kept opening doors and sort of showing me.
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- I was a number cruncher by profession. I was terribly, terribly afraid of speaking in public, but before I knew it,
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- I'd gone to seminary. I came here as a church planner. I started moderating debates for James White when he would come to town.
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- Yeah, I've seen a number of those. Yeah, we actually had St. Jenna's back then as well.
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- Oh, wow. It was Jerry Medetic. We'd do a Mormon debate on a
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- Friday night and an Atheist debate on a Saturday night. But anyway, that then led to,
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- I did some things on the radio, and then James could no longer come out, and I started doing some debates myself.
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- That led to seven and a half years of a live call -in show on a local
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- Christian television program called the Ancient Mass. The station was sold
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- August of last year, and so then we started doing these evangelistic videos.
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- We turned out early this year and earned us the Latter -day Saints, and we've turned out others so far for Mormons.
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- The God of Brigham Young, which deals with the fact that the modern church not only doesn't teach the
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- God of the Bible, but also doesn't teach the God of Brigham Young. The Vanishing Lamanite, and what is the burning in your bosom from God.
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- We're currently on the work one you mentioned after Mormonism, Atheism, with a question mark there.
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- Then we turned out one a couple months ago on a very different subject and earned us the
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- Gay Christian. And we're going to start with the first hour.
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- We're going to be discussing after Mormonism, Atheism, with a question mark, and that is the topic of a documentary that is not yet released, the one that you're working on right now.
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- And before I even ask you more about that, Charlie Liebert, what Orthodox Presbyterian Church did you belong to before coming here to Carlisle?
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- I belong to Providence in Greensboro, North Carolina under Pastor Ari. Okay, great.
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- Just wanted to say that in case our guest is familiar with that congregation.
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- And are you Pastor Wallace? Do you know that congregation? I've heard a little bit about them.
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- I'm not that here, unfortunately. Okay. Ari VanEck is a twin of another pastor that's a pastor in Florida.
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- They're both twin brothers. Yeah, I think I met one of them.
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- I can't remember which one. You wouldn't know which one if you met them. Well, how did you come up with this theme?
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- I know that, as I said, and as it's plain to assume that you are in the heart of Mormon territory because of the location of your church,
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- Magna, Utah, which is a suburb of Salt Lake City. Why did you come up with this specific theme after Mormonism, atheism?
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- That's a very obviously intriguing title. Well, the vast majority of the people who have been leaving the
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- Mormon Church have been leaving it for atheism. The Mormon Church has built into their minds that they are the only true living church on the face of the earth.
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- And when they realize that Mormons have been lying to them, then they basically just give up belief in much of anything.
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- And so, as a consequence, here in Salt Lake, Salt Lake City proper is one of the most liberal cities in the country.
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- It seems to be trying to out San Francisco. I would never have guessed that until I just heard some things recently going on there in the political arena.
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- Salt Lake was basically an Al Gore -type Democrat.
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- He was defeated and an open lesbian. And she just married another woman a month ago.
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- The Democratic nominee for the U .S. Senate in this election last month was a transvestite by the name of Misty Snow.
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- Wow, that is really astonishing. I'm sure most folks that are not from that area logically assume that the entire state of Utah, having such deeply rooted
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- Mormon history, would be in some fashion either very religiously
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- Mormon or nominally at least Mormon. I think they call them Jack Mormons. And you would think that that culture at least would have some kind of dominance there, but I guess
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- I'm wrong. Well, in Utah, Salt Lake City is very different.
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- You have the University of Utah there, and so it tends to be the extreme.
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- Once you get out of Salt Lake into Salt Lake County, the percentage of Mormons goes up dramatically.
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- But Salt Lake City proper has one of the largest gay pride parades in the country. One of the largest what parades?
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- Gay pride parade. Okay. Yeah, I guess sometimes for some reason you're dropping out from time to time.
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- Yeah, the city hall is buying a... Jason, are you on a cell phone just by any curiosity?
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- Landline. You're on a landline? Yeah, because for some reason you're cutting out. I don't know why. But if you could just continue, maybe your battery is starting to die.
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- I don't know if it's a wireless handset that you have. It's got a full battery. Okay.
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- All right. Well, I'm sorry. Just continue. I guess we'll just have to have you clarify things when you cut out.
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- Yeah, my apologies. Yeah, just out of curiosity, could we go to a station break and could you use any other phone?
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- Is there another phone? Yeah, I'll switch to it. Okay. We're going to go to a station break right now, because obviously that would be far too frustrating to have
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- Pastor Jason cutting out every other sentence or every other word. So we're going to be going to that station break now.
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- If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Pastor Jason Wallace, our email address is chrisarnson at comcast .net.
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- That's chrisarnson at comcast .net. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Pastor Jason Wallace.
- 16:18
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- Iron Sharpens today. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron.
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- If you just tuned us in, our guest today is Pastor Jason Wallace of Christ Presbyterian Church in Magna, Utah, a congregation within the
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- Orthodox Presbyterian Church denomination. And by the way, you just heard an ad for World magazine.
- 21:42
- Any of you who already have that magazine and the current issue on page 18, you will find the full page ad for Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.
- 21:52
- And by God's providence, this is bordering on the miraculous in my opinion, the subscription envelope for World magazine that they threaded through the binding of the magazine is right exactly where the
- 22:09
- Iron Sharpens Iron full page ad is. So that becomes a bookmark.
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- So when you cradle the magazine in your hands, it automatically flips open to that page where my head is.
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- So I just thank God for that. We are discussing for the first hour on this program after Mormonism atheism question mark.
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- And then the second hour we are going to be discussing the theme and earnest plea to gay
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- Christians. And we will explain that title as well later, because obviously many
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- Christians are scratching their heads thinking that that is an oxymoron. And I agree with the fact that that is an oxymoron, but I'm sure that Pastor Wallace has some kind of an explanation for the use of that phrase.
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- But anyway, our email address, if you'd like to join us on the air, is chrisarnson at comcast .net.
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- That's chrisarnson at comcast .net. C -O -M as in Michael, C -A -S -T .net.
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- And before the break, Pastor Wallace, you were talking about the astonishing liberalism in Salt Lake City, Utah, which was a very big surprise to me, not just today, but I mean,
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- I heard about it quite a while ago, but it was a surprise to me because I just assumed that Mormon culture would be dominating there, conservative, moral, social behavior and so on.
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- But if you could continue from where you left off. Sure. Can you hear me better now? I can hear you fine right now.
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- Okay. Yeah. Salt Lake City is the capital. It's where the
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- University of Utah is. It's one of, I think, 14 cities in the valley here within Salt Lake County.
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- So it is a bit of an exception to the rule. Two -thirds, nearly, of Utah are members of the
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- Mormon church, but even the members of the Mormon church in Salt Lake, it's very democratic, a lot of atheists.
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- The Mormons that are there tend to be more liberal, but a lot of former Mormons who are hostile to any kind of Christianity.
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- And part of that goes back to the whole nature of Mormonism. I mean, it's very much sentimentality, it's very controlling, and their view of God is not a
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- God as the Bible would define a God. I mean, their view of God is more like Thor or Superman.
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- They have no ultimate creator. Even faithful Mormons believe that matter is eternal, spirits are eternal.
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- And so when they give up Mormonism, when they figure out that the church has been lying to them for years, then they just assume they've been poisoned against everything else, and so they reject any kind of religion.
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- So basically, just like there was the burned -over district in upstate
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- New York, where it was very rare that fruits would be born from evangelistic efforts.
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- It was like hard, rocky soil there in regard to evangelizing.
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- You're saying that when it comes to Mormons, when they leave Mormonism, they typically are not becoming
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- Christians or members of other religions, they are becoming atheists? The vast majority. There's a man who has become well -known over the last number of years named
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- John DeLinn. He has a podcast called Mormon Stories, where he interviews people who have left the
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- Mormon church. He and others, it's clear that they really don't believe in any religion.
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- And so there have been people, Sandra Tanner, for example, she and her husband who's passed away, they're the pioneers on documenting a lot of the lies.
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- And the fact that she stands for biblical Christianity has been a bit of a bridge to some people, but it's a lot of...
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- They've drunk deep from the well of the new atheists, where they're just mad at religion in general.
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- They see it as the source of all evil. Well, I know that Charlie Liebert, my co -host has...
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- Liebert, I'm sorry, has some questions he has for you. Yeah, I have a son that lives in Murray, Utah.
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- And one of the things he talks about, he's not a believer, he's not a Christian, but he's not a Mormon either.
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- And he is at the moment living with a person who was also an ex -Mormon. And one of the things he talks about is the fact that he sees two kinds of people in terms of Mormons.
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- He sees real Mormons, and he always laughs at it and says, wear the underwear. And then he sees people that are cultural
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- Mormons. Can you differentiate between that and kind of get, what do the cultural
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- Mormons believe? Do they believe anything or are they part of that atheist group? Well, no,
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- I mean, it varies. There are some who are just going through the motions.
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- John DeLinn tried to stay within the Mormon Church to some extent, just the cultural aspects of it.
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- He didn't believe the truth of it, but he thought it was a good organization to be part of.
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- They eventually excommunicated him after lots of hand -wringing and soul -searching.
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- So there are people who don't believe anything, really, that are still active.
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- There are a lot of people who aren't active, who, they smoke, they drink, but they believe that Mormonism is true.
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- The pastor of our sister church up in Ogden was a, we laugh, he's a former
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- Mormon, former drug dealer. And people assume that that's sequential.
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- And the reality is, no, it was simultaneous. He was a drug dealer who was fully convinced that Mormonism was true.
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- Wow. He just wasn't practicing it. Now, was he doing this as something that he,
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- I'm trying to think of the word to describe this. Was he doing this secretively in a sense where he knew what he was doing was immoral and wrong, and even against Mormon principles?
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- Or was he doing this fully convinced this was compatible with his Mormonism? Like, for instance, you have, obviously, you know, there are many people who profess to be
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- Christian, who may be even active members of their churches, who are involved in all kinds of closeted behavior that they know is against the teachings of Christ, that they know is against the teachings of their own congregation.
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- But they continue to do so because of their own lust, greed, whatever the case may be.
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- But was this person doing it because he was convinced it was compatible with his faith? No. He realized he was being inconsistent, but he had been drenched in Mormonism from his birth, and so that was his default worldview.
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- He didn't see them as compatible. Now, there are people who do things, sometimes horrible, horrible things that they think are compatible.
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- But for him, there was no misunderstanding on his part or on the church's part that he was rebellious, yet he still was functioning from a
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- Mormon mindset. Right. The reason why I ask that is that even fundamentalist
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- Muslims, Muslim extremists, have been known to profit from the sale of drugs.
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- They raise the plants necessary to create the drugs, and they harvest them and so on, and cultivate them to fund, very often, their terrorist activities, and they justify it because they believe that the ends justify the means.
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- That's why I was asking that question about the Mormon you know. We do have a listener in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, Harrison, who wants to know, how do you explain those that appear to be fully faithful and actively involved in the
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- Mormon church and yet have liberal beliefs and ideologies that are the antithesis of what we know about Mormon morals and social values?
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- And Harry Reid is one example that comes to mind. Well, I think that there's been a loosening of things over the last 20 -25 years within Mormonism.
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- Mormonism back in the 80s, early 90s, was much shaped by, he wrote a book called
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- Mormon Doctrine, which drew very sharp lines in the sand. When he tried to move the church in a much more inclusive direction, not so much within the church as the public face of the church.
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- Before, Mormons had no problem drawing lines in the sand. Hinckley tried to use the accusations of Mormonism being a cult and things like this.
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- I mean, 30 -40 years ago, you would run into Mormons who would say, I'm not a Christian, I'm a
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- Mormon. The mindset that they have, the public face they've tried to put forward has been, we're
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- Christians too. Why would you ever say that we're not Christians? How can you be so mean? And there's been this schizophrenia where they've tried to maintain their distinctiveness within while keeping this public face.
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- But as the culture has become more liberal, this has given space to a lot of people to seek to redefine things.
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- I mean, it was only 1978 when the church backed up.
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- Pastor Jason, we're going to pick up on the 1978, but the breaking up is continuing.
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- I don't know if somebody's calling you on your line, but for some reason you cut out like every three minutes or less, your voice disappears, and I'm not sure why.
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- Perhaps you could call us back on a cell phone. That might even be better. Usually a cell phone is not better, but it might be better in this case.
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- I can see what I can do. My cell is actually dead, so I can plug it in to see if that'll work.
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- Okay. All right, I'm going to hang up. We're going to another station break, and we'll pick up on 1978 after these messages.
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- So don't go away. God willing, God willing, we will be right back with Pastor Jason Wallace.
- 34:34
- Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, for am I now seeking the approval of man or of God, or am
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- I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, pastor of Providence Baptist Church.
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- We are a Reformed Baptist Church, and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689.
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- We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts. We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how
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- 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.
- 35:11
- 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.
- 35:24
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- 35:30
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- 35:48
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- 35:55
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- 36:18
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- 36:27
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- 36:34
- Bayway, Phil Johnson, Rosaria Butterfield, Todd Friel, and a host of other speakers who are dedicated to the pillars of what
- 36:41
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- 36:49
- that's g3conference .com. Thanks, James. Make sure you greet me at the
- 36:54
- Iron Sharpens Iron exhibit booth while you're there. Thriving Financial is not your typical financial services provider.
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- 39:33
- Welcome back. This is Chris Arnsin. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours is
- 39:39
- Pastor Jason Wallace of Christ Presbyterian Church in Magna, Utah. We are discussing for the first hour after atheism,
- 39:49
- Mormonism, and then the second hour we are discussing an earnest plea to gay Christians, quote, quote.
- 39:56
- And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsin at gmail .com, chrisarnsin at gmail .com.
- 40:04
- And by the way, if you are listening, David in, I believe you're David in Ada, Ohio, your email with a question is completely blank.
- 40:14
- So you might want to resend your question. But if you could pick up where you left off,
- 40:21
- Pastor Jason, regarding 1978 and the Mormon Church. Yeah, can you hear me now?
- 40:28
- Yes, I can hear you. Okay. Yeah, you were asking about people who have become carnal liberal and their views, despite the fact that church's teachings haven't changed.
- 40:40
- In 1978, after years of accepting that they couldn't change it if they wanted to, because it was based on the direct revelation from God.
- 40:52
- All of a sudden, the Mormon Church started ordaining men of African descent for the first time since the days of Joseph Smith.
- 41:04
- Their scriptures had been very clear, their prophets had been very clear outside of their scriptures.
- 41:11
- They had repeatedly said that it was a matter of prophecy, they couldn't back up from it.
- 41:19
- But when the pressure came, they changed, just as they had changed on polygamy in 1890.
- 41:27
- And so when that happened, you add that to the new public face they've been trying to put forward, and it's given a lot of room for people.
- 41:41
- So you have individuals who gravitate towards the sort of universalism that fits with the public face.
- 41:54
- I've met a lot of bishops that they don't really believe in historic
- 41:59
- Mormonism. They believe the Church is true for them, it works for them, but there's no one in the family like there used to be.
- 42:08
- There's also organized movements like Ordain Women, where Kate Kelly and others have been pressing for women to receive the priesthood within Mormonism.
- 42:21
- Because they're compromised due to pressure from the culture and other things, so why not them?
- 42:28
- Now obviously, I'm assuming you would want to make it clear that you were not in favor of any kind of discrimination against black individuals.
- 42:39
- You're just saying the inconsistency of saying that something is prophecy, unchangeable prophecy from God himself one year, and then the next year you're changing it without really a valid explanation.
- 42:53
- That's really what you're talking about. Yeah, in their view, God can contradict himself, and that's a fundamental problem.
- 43:05
- You mentioned, I know we're not to that point yet, but you mentioned about the terms to Christians. I'm only using the term they use for themselves and showing them that you can't be gay and Christian.
- 43:15
- You can be one or the other, but you can't. There's an incompatibility there. Right, and we'll get to that when we complete this hour.
- 43:25
- Yeah, so I remember when you had me do the voiceover, I believe it was for Bruce McConkie, was it not?
- 43:32
- When he was saying in a speech, basically, it doesn't matter what
- 43:37
- I said. It doesn't matter what Brigham Young said. It doesn't matter what anybody else said. We are changing this rule, and of course
- 43:45
- I'm paraphrasing. We're changing this rule, and you got to accept it and just stop asking questions. It's basically a paraphrase of what he was saying.
- 43:53
- Am I right? Almost definitely. It's time for disbelieving people to fall in line and believe in a living prophet, and so Mormonism can change on a dime.
- 44:08
- They said that there was no achieving the celestial exaltation and polygamy until they threw that under the bus.
- 44:19
- They used to say that, I mean, they even used to say that Adam was the only God with whom we had anything to do, and they threw him under the bus on that.
- 44:31
- Brigham declared it to be the eternal law of God that if a white man mixed his seed with a black woman, that the penalty was death on the spot, and it would always be so.
- 44:46
- They threw that under the bus. They threw blacks in the police state under the bus, and the heart of Mormonism hasn't sinned, but the trappings of it have sinned radically.
- 45:04
- We have David in Ada, Ohio, who says, aren't all Mormons children of the devil as all others who are not born again?
- 45:14
- And if that is the case, why is anyone surprised by ungodly behavior by them?
- 45:20
- The same would apply to conversion to true biblical Christianity. If God is sovereign in salvation and saves whom he chooses, then all who are destined for salvation are saved.
- 45:32
- We have to be faithful to evangelize all and spread the gospel worldwide to everyone everywhere, knowing it's
- 45:40
- God who gives the increase. While I find Mormonism interesting, and I have befriended several missionaries,
- 45:46
- I always made sure they knew I disagreed with their teaching, and I did all
- 45:52
- I knew to witness the truth to them. So I guess his basic question is, if Mormons are children of the devil and are not born again, why are we expecting them to behave in a godly fashion?
- 46:13
- Well, I think part of the expectation is that the Mormons have cultivated a public image of morality, the
- 46:23
- Donny and Marie type of image. They don't drink. They don't smoke.
- 46:31
- Utah is the reddest of the red states.
- 46:39
- So I think people have an expectation of a certain outward morality, and there is some of that.
- 46:45
- Crime here is much lower than in other parts of the country.
- 46:53
- There's an ability in terms of, not so much in Salt Lake, but especially in Utah County, which is just south of us, most places are closed on Sundays.
- 47:09
- So I think that people have an expectation because of the Dale Murphys of the world and people like this that have this upright moral boy scout kind of appearance.
- 47:22
- Of course, the reality is that by nature, we're all children of the devil.
- 47:29
- And apart from receiving a new heart and being born in the
- 47:36
- Holy Spirit, we didn't expect morality. And underneath the facade, underneath the mask,
- 47:48
- Utah is a really dark place. I've seen more child molestation this year than I ever dreamed of anywhere else.
- 48:02
- I'm sorry, Jason, you're going to have to repeat what you just said, your last few words there.
- 48:13
- Yeah, you don't have to pick it from the mirror very much that this is a very dark place spiritually and that there's a lot of students in.
- 48:27
- And so it has a mask, but there's no reality to it.
- 48:34
- Right. And I'm assuming that you would agree that a part of an answer to David's question,
- 48:42
- David in Ada, Ohio, is that the elect and the unelect alike all come from the same lump of clay.
- 48:53
- And therefore, even though those who are not yet born again are children of the devil, we are to call upon them to repent.
- 49:04
- And a part of that would be pointing out inconsistencies, even that exists in their own belief system.
- 49:10
- Wouldn't that be a part of the way that you would in an apologetic sense, get
- 49:16
- Mormons to realize that they are adhering to a religion that is illogical and inconsistent and actually historically dishonest?
- 49:28
- Most definitely. This video that we're working on right now, it's aimed at people who already left the
- 49:35
- Mormon church. But it points to a larger video we did back in April called
- 49:41
- An Earnestly Gladly Thanked. And what we do there is we spend the first 45 minutes showing them that the church has elected them.
- 49:50
- And we're using their own resources to show what even faithful LDS wouldn't trust, wouldn't admit were lying.
- 50:00
- But we don't do that just to clear down. We do that because they've been conditioned not to listen to what the
- 50:07
- Bible says. And so we try to do all this with the explicit purpose of having them listen to what the
- 50:14
- Bible says clearly. And then we go through in the last hour and 15 minutes three lines from scripture.
- 50:25
- The first line is that God is an exalted man. Second one is the bottom sin that man might be.
- 50:31
- And the last is that the LDS church preaches the restored gospel. We try to show them the real God, the real nature of sin, and the real nature of salvation.
- 50:40
- And I view my ministries as all too often like Ezekiel 33 or like the ministry of Jeremiah.
- 50:51
- I pray for revival. I dig ditches waiting for water.
- 50:58
- But I realize that all too often I'm like a pleasant song to them.
- 51:04
- They like to hear me, but they won't do what I say. And if I do what
- 51:09
- I'm supposed to do, my hands are clean. But God has people here.
- 51:16
- We've seen people come out of Mormonism, and we hope there's the first fruits of a much greater harvest. I know that the
- 51:21
- God who saved me can save anybody. Praise God. Charlie, you have a question.
- 51:29
- Yeah, I want to pursue something a little bit. In the video, you talked about Mormonism and then atheism.
- 51:36
- One of the things I've often encountered is atheists. Atheists that come out of religious backgrounds, and Mormonism is being one of them, are usually the most vehement in terms of hating
- 51:47
- Christianity. That's both good and bad, because the person on the opposite side, if you can point out the contradictions, they'll come to a personal crisis.
- 51:58
- Have you seen anything like that in terms of dealing with the ex -Mormons that have become atheists? Some of them sort of go through the third stage, where they hate and condemn certain victims.
- 52:14
- And they're just... One of the guys who's been through a lot, people across the board, who've been victims of betrayal, of bitterness, and atheism sort of gashes on them.
- 52:31
- For some people, they realize it's not a sensible position, and so they then back off a bit, and they become more reasonable, and they listen to other things.
- 52:44
- What we're trying to do in this is to basically show the similarities between Mormonism and the new atheists.
- 52:56
- In the video, we show that the Mormons lie about their history. So do the atheists.
- 53:04
- And Mormons lie about the racism of the past. So do the atheists. And we show that we have quotes from Terrell Darwin and his cousin,
- 53:16
- Francis Dalton. We show that just the Mormons try to portray themselves as victims, when in reality, they've killed more people in the name of religion than Mormons have ever been killed in the name of religion.
- 53:31
- Then, you know, the atheists do the same thing. They try to portray themselves as victims, when in reality, they've killed over 100 million people in the last 100 years, all in the name of atheism.
- 53:46
- Yes, I understand. In my dealing with atheists, one of the things that I focus on is the contradiction in the basic belief system itself.
- 53:58
- You say there are no absolutes, and then you declare there is no God. That's inconsistent. And I tell them directly that the best you could be is agnostic, because atheist is contradictory in itself.
- 54:08
- And that usually gets them very angry. But I've also found that anger sometimes is a tool of evangelism.
- 54:16
- You can get someone angry, and then they begin to question. And if they begin to question, then maybe in fact, that'll draw them to the point where God's given them ears to hear.
- 54:28
- All right, I agree. What we're doing with the video is basically trying to shine some light and start a conversation.
- 54:39
- We don't try to initiate anything. One of the big things we do in the video is we point out that as long as we try to deal with atheism, the view of God is limited.
- 54:53
- Because the God of Mormonism is not the God of the Bible. That's clear.
- 55:02
- And so if they're trying to deal with the answer to atheism from the idea that there's an unlimited number of supermen out there, none of that's going to make sense.
- 55:17
- Well, to a certain extent, you could understand someone who's been brought up in a religious context all their life, and then suddenly they find out it's a lie.
- 55:26
- The obvious reaction is going to be to reject religion in general. That's going to be a first step.
- 55:32
- See, I was a hardcore atheist until I was converted. And I understand that belief.
- 55:39
- But on the other hand, it is inconsistent, and it doesn't bring anything satisfactory. I agree.
- 55:49
- One of the questions we ask is whether they really scrutinize dolphins and hippos any more than they really scrutinize
- 56:00
- Monson, Irene, and New York. I had a conversation once with a
- 56:07
- Mormon elder on an airplane, and one of the things he kept pushing and pushing was the fact that we're really just a little different Christians.
- 56:16
- And I finally told him that if you believe what you believe—and he was kind of surprised that I knew this—if you believe that God was once a man, then you're inconsistent with anything
- 56:27
- Scripture teaches, inconsistent with anything I believe about it. In Christianity, you can't even begin to call it Christian. And that offended him.
- 56:34
- He got rather angry about that. That's LDS .VIDEO.
- 57:03
- LDS for Latter -day Saints .VIDEO. And obviously, you have to differentiate when you talk about the false, even blasphemous understanding that God the
- 57:20
- Father was a man who basically earned his way to godhood.
- 57:27
- You have to differentiate between that and Jesus Christ becoming man and being fully
- 57:34
- God and fully man. People may—especially those who are not theologically educated or they're not even
- 57:43
- Christian at all—they may not think that there's too big of a leap between those two things, but there's a chasm of difference that never meet at any point.
- 57:52
- Am I right there, Pastor Jason? Most definitely. When you deal with Mormons, you mention
- 58:00
- God to them and they say, well, don't you believe Jesus is God? And you say, yes.
- 58:06
- And you say, don't you believe he's a man? And it's like, yes, but they're not understanding the difference between a man becoming a
- 58:16
- God versus God by defending to become a man. Okay.
- 58:54
- We're going to another break right now, and I hate to bug you again,
- 59:01
- Pastor Jason, but I don't know if anybody else in your household or office has a different cell phone or phone that you could use, because although this one's not breaking up, it's very muffled.
- 59:13
- I know that this is frustrating and I apologize, but for some reason, even though you're cutting out, like you were before, when your voice was clear, now your voice is very muffled, even though you're not cutting out.
- 59:28
- So I don't know if there's an alternative way you could call us. No, this is good. That's the only thing that you can use.
- 59:35
- Okay. I have one line in my phone. I'm sorry? I have one line in my cell phone.
- 59:42
- Okay. All right. Well, I guess we'll just have to deal with this line, and we're going to be going to a break right now.
- 59:49
- If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at comcast .net.
- 59:59
- That's chrisarnson at comcast .net, and please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence.
- 01:00:07
- If you live outside the USA, don't go away. We'll be right back. Chris Arnson here, and I can't wait to head down to Atlanta, Georgia, and here's my friend
- 01:00:19
- Dr. James White to tell you why. Hi, I'm James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries. I hope you join me at the
- 01:00:25
- G3 Conference hosted by Pastor Josh Bice and Praise Mill Baptist Church at the
- 01:00:30
- Georgia International Convention Center in Atlanta, January 19th through the 21st in celebration of the 500th anniversary of the
- 01:00:39
- Protestant Reformation. I'll be joined by Paul Washer, Steve Lawson, D .A. Carson, Votie Balcombe, Conrad M.
- 01:00:46
- Bayway, Phil Johnson, Rosaria Butterfield, Todd Friel, and a host of other speakers who are dedicated to the pillars of what
- 01:00:53
- G3 stands for, gospel, grace, and glory. For more details, go to g3conference .com.
- 01:01:00
- That's g3conference .com. Thanks, James. Make sure you greet me at the
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- Iron Sharpens Iron exhibit booth while you're there. Lynnbrook Baptist Church on 225
- 01:01:12
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- 01:01:45
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- 01:05:26
- Welcome back, this is Chris Arms, and if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with one hour to go is
- 01:05:31
- Pastor Jason Wallace of Christ Presbyterian Church in Magna, Utah, and we are now discussing an earnest plea to quote -quote gay
- 01:05:41
- Christians, which is the subject of a new documentary that is actually now available from the
- 01:05:49
- Christ Presbyterian Church of Magna, Utah, and if you'd like to join us on the air with a question about that subject, our email address is chrisarnson at comcast .net.
- 01:06:01
- That's our new email address, so please make note of it. chrisarnson at comcast .net,
- 01:06:07
- and before I return to our guest, a mutual friend of his and mine,
- 01:06:14
- Pastor Bill Shishko of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Franklin Square, where he did pastor for decades, now retiring from that post and entering into a field of being a home or domestic missionary, if you will.
- 01:06:33
- Pastor Bill Shishko is the host of a new program called A Visit to the
- 01:06:39
- Pastor's Study. You can hear that show every Saturday from 12 noon to 1 pm eastern time, and it's a live call -in show, so you could call in with your questions for pastoral counsel and advice, theological questions, etc.,
- 01:06:57
- and the way you listen to that program is either on the internet at wlie540am .com,
- 01:07:07
- where you can hear it anywhere in the world, wlie540am .com, or you can hear it on the
- 01:07:13
- AM dial on your radio if you live in the New York Tri -State area on 540
- 01:07:18
- AM on the dial. That's WLIE radio, named after the
- 01:07:23
- Long Island Expressway, not after deceit, not after lying, so quite an unfortunate quite unfortunate call letters for the program, but Pastor Bill Shishko is a dear friend, and he is a very gifted communicator, and very biblically sound, and not to mention brilliant, so I hope that you tune into that show regularly, and please mention to Pastor Shishko that you heard about a visit to the pastor's study on Iron Sharpens Iron radio.
- 01:07:58
- And Pastor Wallace, we are now discussing an earnest plea to gay
- 01:08:04
- Christians. What was the catalyst that brought about the creation of this new documentary that you have?
- 01:08:14
- Well, as I mentioned earlier, people who believe in rough Mormonism generally leave it for atheism, and so we have a huge gay population in Salt Lake City, proportional to our size.
- 01:08:30
- We have one of the larger gay pride parades. As I said, the mayor of Salt Lake is an open lesbian.
- 01:08:39
- The Democratic nominee for the United States Senate was a transvestite, and honestly,
- 01:08:46
- I see this issue as, to some extent, the litmus test issue of the day.
- 01:08:54
- I've been shocked to see purportedly conservative churches falling to the pressure to embrace homosexuality as acceptable.
- 01:09:09
- You know, all the men and women have basically accepted it, and now, I just found out that I work for an
- 01:09:18
- IFCA congregation, Independent Fundamentalist Church of America congregation, is saying that though they would not recommend it, this is not a salvation issue.
- 01:09:30
- And you're hearing it from a lot of very prominent, supposedly conservative pastors, that though this is not something they would recommend, this is not something that someone practicing would not question their salvation.
- 01:09:48
- Yes, and Matthew Vines is really paving the way to legitimize homosexuality in a way that is very much on its surface giving the appearance of evangelical
- 01:10:07
- Christianity, the setting, the style of worship, the use of the scripture, referencing the scripture, believing that the scripture is the word of God, etc.
- 01:10:22
- And it's interesting that he refuses to debate
- 01:10:28
- Dr. White. That is a shame. Dr. James R. White has challenged Matthew Vines to debate, and he refuses to do so because he thinks
- 01:10:38
- Dr. White is basically too mean -spirited and bigoted. But obviously, that is ridiculous and false.
- 01:10:47
- And this is coming from the idea that unless you are willing to accept homosexuality as valid in some sense, that you are a bigot and a hateful.
- 01:11:00
- What are your practical suggestions to Christians on overcoming that stereotype in the minds of those you are evangelizing?
- 01:11:14
- Well, that's the reason we made the video, and before I go too far here, it's available for free.
- 01:11:21
- It's on YouTube, but the easiest way to access it is www .thechristian
- 01:11:28
- .video. Video is a relatively new internet extension. We were able to purchase the
- 01:11:35
- LDS .video and thechristian .video. Yeah, you were really providential. It was really providential,
- 01:11:41
- I should say, that you got those those website URLs. Yeah, it gives you an idea where we're going next about creating that video.
- 01:11:52
- So, it's easy to give someone a card to point them to this.
- 01:12:01
- It's a whole lot easier than saying we have been a fool. Hello, Pastor Jason.
- 01:12:10
- I think Pastor Jason was disconnected. So, we're going to a break right now, and if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,
- 01:12:21
- chrisarnson at gmail. I'm sorry, not at gmail. I keep repeating that stupid disabled email address, the email address that Google disabled,
- 01:12:32
- I should say, but we're going to be right back, God willing, after these messages, so please do not go away.
- 01:12:40
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- 01:16:32
- Welcome back. This is Chris Arns, and if you just tuned us in, our guest is
- 01:16:37
- Pastor Jason Wallace of Christ Presbyterian Church in Magna, Utah. In studio with me co -hosting today's show is
- 01:16:44
- Charlie Liebert, also a member of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church denomination, and he is founder of sixdaycreation .com.
- 01:16:53
- And I assume that we have you back on the line, Pastor Wallace. Yeah, sorry about that. I was trying to use my cell, which was dead, and apparently it wasn't charging as fast as I was using it.
- 01:17:05
- Well, right now you sound crystal clear, better than before, so hopefully you won't be cutting out anymore. I'm not sure what was going on before, but it almost sounded like somebody was calling you on your line or something.
- 01:17:17
- But anyway, the whole matter of evangelizing homosexuality, or should
- 01:17:22
- I say evangelizing those who practice homosexuality, is the difficulty is magnified in this day and age because especially those who are in a younger age bracket than you and I, millennials especially, they have been raised from infancy, not that they have been raised if they were in Christian homes this way, but those that were not have been raised since infancy, typically believing from what they see and hear and read in the media that this is a completely acceptable alternative lifestyle, and that to disagree with that notion equates you with Hitler and the
- 01:18:11
- Ku Klux Klan. And there seems to be no middle ground between those two things.
- 01:18:19
- You either celebrate and rejoice that people are homosexuals and are enjoying that way of life, or you are a hate monger.
- 01:18:29
- And this is what makes this sin in some ways very unique because there is no other sin
- 01:18:40
- I can think of where those who practice it have achieved so much ground in the area of public acceptance and really have been able to elevate their status to that of heroes.
- 01:18:57
- I mean, we have even Bruce Jenner winning the ESPN award for bravery because he is going through gender altering, but even he hasn't had the actual operation, to my knowledge.
- 01:19:15
- He's just had hormones and is dressing in drag, but this is really a hurdle that we all have to overcome is this mindset that this is completely acceptable.
- 01:19:28
- Is it not one of the difficulties of evangelizing that? Most definitely. I think that this is the harvest that the church is receiving for basically trying to be popular for the last generation and a half, two generations.
- 01:19:50
- We have so defined down Christianity that the vast majority of evangelicals define
- 01:19:57
- Christianity as a personal relationship that is devoid of any biblical constraints.
- 01:20:05
- You know, it's a mystical, pietistic view rather than anything substantive. And very few churches emphasize actual rebirth anymore.
- 01:20:20
- Many churches, I mentioned the IFCA congregation. Thankfully, there are many IFCA congregations that don't do this, but some of the local
- 01:20:30
- IFCA congregations have basically said that if you practice homosexuality, that's not a salvation issue because if you have faith in Jesus, you're saved.
- 01:20:42
- They don't question what is biblical faith. They don't see the threefold nature of salvation, that there's more than just forgiveness of sins.
- 01:20:53
- There's justification, but the same spirit that brings faith also brings repentance.
- 01:21:01
- You know, we're not just given a new record, we're also given a new heart and the Holy Spirit indwelling us.
- 01:21:08
- And so we've defined Christianity down where it's a personalized, mystical experience.
- 01:21:17
- We've defined down the church to where very, very few churches practice any kind of discipline.
- 01:21:24
- And I think that this is the natural result. Yes, it's like a byproduct of it.
- 01:21:32
- But in this case, what has become worse is that there is nothing that is viewed as requiring repentance.
- 01:21:43
- It's not necessarily easy believism we're talking about here, where a person is thinking that he can sin and have nothing to fear because he has a one -way ticket to heaven.
- 01:21:57
- It's the idea that this isn't even sin at all. And it's a wonderful and beautiful and glorious thing and should be celebrated and should be viewed as heroic because of the fact that the church for two millennia has condemned it.
- 01:22:12
- And these heroes of the 21st century have finally revealed in their minds that the church was wrong for 2 ,000 years and that we are in grave error and we have slandered and mistreated these folks.
- 01:22:27
- And we are the ones that need to repent, not them. That's definitely the attitude.
- 01:22:33
- I mean, it's Gnosticism. God doesn't define love.
- 01:22:38
- God doesn't define good and evil. We define it for ourselves.
- 01:22:46
- And if we don't see that someone's being immediately hurt by it, then it must not be wrong.
- 01:22:53
- On the basis of that, then, what the church is saying is that as long as you have faith, you don't have to walk with the
- 01:23:01
- Lord, you don't have to repent, you don't have to look at your sin, you can just kind of go on. And that's heresy.
- 01:23:07
- Yeah. I mean, 1 John 2, by this we know that we know him. Right. Keep his commandments.
- 01:23:13
- If we don't keep his commandments, we're liars. Now, I'm going to say something that may upset folks.
- 01:23:22
- And I'm talking about Christians, evangelicals.
- 01:23:28
- And I would love to have these brothers on my show at some point to see what they have to say.
- 01:23:34
- But there is a well -known couple of brothers, two brothers who were on a major cable network that has to do with home and garden and all that kind of stuff.
- 01:23:54
- And I can't remember what field of employment they were in. I think it may have been real estate, but I'm not sure.
- 01:24:01
- But anyway, they were Christians, or they are Christians, I should say, and they were taken off the air because they were evangelicals.
- 01:24:11
- And their pastor was speaking out against homosexuality in a sermon.
- 01:24:19
- Now, the thing that I'm saying that's going to be controversial that may get that some of our evangelical listeners upset, and perhaps even these brothers, is that it was somewhat troublesome to me when they were defending themselves.
- 01:24:37
- They were saying, we're not against anything or anybody.
- 01:24:43
- We're pro -Jesus. We are in love with Jesus, and we are promoting
- 01:24:49
- Jesus. We're not opposing anything. Now, I think that the world can see through that.
- 01:24:57
- I mean, these guys, I want to give them credit where credit is due. They lost their careers over having some kind of a stance that upsets those who are promoting homosexuality.
- 01:25:09
- But at the same time, when we are being obedient to Christ and His Word, we are opposed to many things, aren't we?
- 01:25:17
- Yes, I mean, that's part of the issue in all this. Much of the modern church thinks that you can love
- 01:25:24
- Christ and love the world. And God makes clear in His Word that if you love the world, you don't love the
- 01:25:32
- Father. And there's an exclusivity that the love of Jesus drives out the love of sin.
- 01:25:41
- You know, we wrestle with sin. Romans 7 is describing the believer, but there's a difference between wrestling with sin and temptation, hating sin and loving
- 01:25:54
- Jesus, and embracing your sin and calling what God calls an abomination good.
- 01:26:03
- Yes, and we should not and must not cop out by saying we're only in favor of something and not opposing anything.
- 01:26:14
- Because if that were the case, the
- 01:26:20
- Christians in the first century, and even perhaps many throughout the world today, in the
- 01:26:25
- Sudan and other places, there would be no executions. There would be no martyrs if that was really the stance they were taking, am
- 01:26:33
- I right? If they were just saying, hey, we're not against anything around us in this world or in the religious systems of this world or in the ideologies of this world.
- 01:26:41
- We are merely in love with Jesus, and we are pro -Jesus and promoting that. Very few people would have lost their lives with that kind of a gospel, am
- 01:26:51
- I right? Yeah, I think that the vast majority of Christians are woefully ignorant of what
- 01:26:59
- Christianity has meant to generations before them. The issue of homosexual marriage is not a new one, but one that goes back to the first century.
- 01:27:11
- Nero, who declared war on the Christian Church in 64 AD and accused Christians of burning
- 01:27:17
- Rome, he married a boy named Sporus.
- 01:27:23
- Right, I read about that in The Beast of Revelation by Ken Gentry. People don't realize
- 01:27:34
- Nero was really popular with people, and he demonized
- 01:27:39
- Christians. And to be a
- 01:27:45
- Christian was to be very unpopular and accused of all kinds of horrific things. This isn't new.
- 01:27:53
- I think much of it goes back to trying to be popular, thinking that if we're just nice to everybody, everybody's going to be nice to us.
- 01:28:03
- Reality is, God says there are things that are sinful. And when
- 01:28:09
- I debated the pastor of First Baptist, he came out both barrels blazing and accused me several times of being a
- 01:28:20
- Pharisee and hurting people and focusing on minutia and this and that and the other. I prayed numerous times during his opening statement, and when it came my turn,
- 01:28:33
- I addressed everyone and said, I'm not here to address you as a Pharisee.
- 01:28:39
- I'm here to address you as a fellow sinner who deserves hell as much or more than any of you. Because I've had a glimpse into my heart,
- 01:28:46
- I haven't had a glimpse into yours. This is not an issue of minutia.
- 01:28:53
- This is what the Apostle Paul says is a matter of salvation.
- 01:28:59
- It's not that you lose your salvation because you do these things. It's a matter that if you live in these sins, and heterosexuals,
- 01:29:07
- I said, the answer to homosexuality is not strictly heterosexuality. Because heterosexuals can do everything else listed in 1
- 01:29:17
- Corinthians 6. But if you live in these sins, you show that your heart is unchanged.
- 01:29:24
- You show that you really don't love Jesus and really hate sin. The thing that I keep hearing in this is that the church has lost its sense of spiritual warfare.
- 01:29:39
- We want to be friends with the world rather than making war against the evil in the world. And that's a huge turn in terms of theology.
- 01:29:46
- That's impossible. We are in a spiritual war, and that war goes on all around us. I was told many years ago by one of the higher -ups in the
- 01:29:59
- United Methodist Church in North Carolina. He was reflecting back to the 1960s, and church membership in America in 1960 was 69 percent.
- 01:30:13
- Highest point ever in our history. It's estimated that after the
- 01:30:19
- Great Awakening it was only 14 percent. But church membership had shot up to 69 percent, and he described the time, he said, things were going so well we thought if we could get the world into the church we could change the world.
- 01:30:34
- We just never stopped to think what would happen if we didn't change them first. That's exactly right.
- 01:30:42
- And to perhaps clarify myself a bit about something
- 01:30:47
- I was saying about those brothers who were fired from a major network who were a part of some kind of a home and garden type of network because of their evangelical church which had in some fashion opposed homosexuality.
- 01:31:09
- I think that there is a difference between being anti -individuals and anti -behavior if you follow what
- 01:31:19
- I'm saying. One thing that really gets underneath my skin is when the
- 01:31:24
- Roman Catholic apologists, for instance, call folks like you and I and apologists like Dr.
- 01:31:33
- James White and Dr. Tony Costa and many others, they will call them anti -Catholic.
- 01:31:41
- And in that pejorative term you have conjured up images of the
- 01:31:47
- Klan and you have people who were treating people with bigotry that had nothing to do with evangelism or theology or what have you.
- 01:32:00
- There is a difference between being against Catholicism and being anti -Catholic, isn't there?
- 01:32:06
- Just in the same way, we don't have some deep -seated reason to have individuals who are involved in homosexual practice as our enemies, but we are very opposed to their behavior or the behavior that they are promoting.
- 01:32:26
- Am I right in that analogy there? Most definitely. I mean, you go through 1
- 01:32:32
- Corinthians 6. I don't hate drunkards.
- 01:32:41
- I pity them and I warn them. I hate drunkenness, but I tell them as a fellow sinner, if you're living in drunkenness, you're not a
- 01:32:53
- Christian. It's not that you've lost your salvation. You were never converted in the first place.
- 01:33:00
- We've had people who've walked an aisle, prayed a prayer, signed a card. They may have the card taped in the back of their
- 01:33:05
- Bible or they signed something in their Gideon Bible, and they're looking back to an experience.
- 01:33:16
- There are people who are truly converted that way, but unless that has been accompanied by real repentance, there was no true faith.
- 01:33:28
- That's what you see in 1 John 2. That's what you see over and over and over in Scripture, that we're not saved by our works, but we are new creatures in Christ.
- 01:33:40
- How can we continue in sin? I mean, that's the reason
- 01:33:50
- I see this as a dividing line kind of issue, because the pressure is so great and it's been packaged so manipulatively that I don't see most churches standing up to it.
- 01:34:07
- The vast majority of them are just ignoring it. They're saying, we don't really want to get into politics.
- 01:34:12
- We just want to preach Jesus. When we did the debate last year,
- 01:34:20
- I reached out to all the evangelical campus ministries to try to get them to come and to inform their students.
- 01:34:31
- I got no response. I pressed one of the campus ministries in particular because I had some connections with the guy there.
- 01:34:40
- Finally, he reluctantly contacted me and he said, we won't be informing our students of this event because we don't believe that it's profitable for them to see
- 01:34:50
- Christians arguing with one another. Maybe I shouldn't be laughing because it's so sad, but I couldn't help it.
- 01:34:59
- This was an evangelical campus ministry that has been kicked off university campuses because they don't allow homosexuals in their leadership, but they're not taking a stand on it.
- 01:35:15
- They won't even just make their students aware it's going on. Yeah, and one of the things that I've brought up on the program before is that it seems that many of our brethren in Christ, even many within our conservative and theologically
- 01:35:37
- Calvinistic circles, are adopting the phraseology and terminology of the world in regard to this issue.
- 01:35:46
- Now, you used the phrase gay Christians for a purpose to disprove that there is such a thing, but there are many among us that will use phrases like the gay community, and they're giving in to the world's perception that this is just a different group of humanity, just as there are men and women, there are white and black, there are
- 01:36:17
- Hispanic and Asian and Native American, and on and on and on.
- 01:36:24
- There's also homosexuals, there is lesbians, there is transgendered, there is transvestite, and the whole acronym of LBGQ, I can't even remember how many letters are in there, but the acquiescing to the wicked culture around us by borrowing their terminology, isn't that a dangerous thing?
- 01:36:50
- Yeah, most definitely. I think that when you frame the debate, you win. Let me give you a sense of what we're doing in the video.
- 01:37:00
- It's a 30 -minute video, it's free, gaychristian .video. We interact with Matthew Vines, we show his numerous errors, and we bring in 1
- 01:37:13
- Corinthians 5, where incest, marrying your father's wife, which is denounced in Leviticus 18, same chapter as homosexual behavior, is clearly still forbidden within the church.
- 01:37:33
- Leviticus 18, Matthew Vines tries to muddy the waters by saying, well, that's in Leviticus, and no one takes
- 01:37:41
- Leviticus as binding on us today, because we eat shellfish, we eat pork, we trim our beards, we wear clothes of mixed fire.
- 01:37:49
- The old West Wing argument of Martin Sheen. Oh, most definitely.
- 01:37:54
- And the reality is, you might as well say, well, that's in the Bible, so how can anything in the
- 01:38:00
- Bible still be binding? Leviticus 18 begins with a very clear statement, do not be like the
- 01:38:09
- Egyptians and the Canaanites. And it goes through and lists these things, and it says, for these sins,
- 01:38:17
- God is now judging the Canaanites and destroying them. And if Israel does these things, they will be destroyed too.
- 01:38:25
- And in Leviticus 20, you have the civil penalty prescribed that those who practice these things will be punished with death.
- 01:38:32
- This is all moral law. This is not just for the Israelites. It didn't start at Sinai.
- 01:38:37
- It doesn't end at Jerusalem Council. Mr. Vines mentions the
- 01:38:43
- Jerusalem Council. He completely omits that they prohibit porneia, sexual sin.
- 01:38:50
- And so we use that 1 Corinthians 5, where same chapter of Leviticus, same description as porneia, still forbidden.
- 01:39:00
- The church in Corinth had approved of this. And the conclusion of the video, we simply say, the church in Corinth thought they were being loving to this man and faithful to Jesus.
- 01:39:13
- They were wrong on both counts. Mr. Vines is also wrong. As sincere as he may be, he is sincerely wrong.
- 01:39:21
- Such conclusions are often labeled unloving. But Jesus, the incarnation of love, had no problem telling the
- 01:39:27
- Sadducees that they were wrong. Despite their religion, Jesus said they neither knew the scriptures nor the power of God.
- 01:39:33
- The Apostle Paul told the Corinthian church that they were wrong in celebrating what God calls an abomination and fornication.
- 01:39:41
- We implore you as fellow sinners to read the Bible for what it really says, rather than what others have told you it says.
- 01:39:47
- The truth is that according to the Bible, there are no gay Christians. Only former gays who have found freedom and forgiveness in the real
- 01:39:54
- Jesus and those who are deceived. So you have a choice. What will define you?
- 01:40:00
- Homosexuality or a love of Jesus? Will you be gay or Christian? You cannot be both. You have taken comfort that you are not like many other homosexuals, but unless let
- 01:40:09
- God define sin, you are as much a rebel as any of them. And we go through and we point out that the man in Corinth repented.
- 01:40:21
- And then we ask the question, what will you do? Very good. That sounds exciting.
- 01:40:27
- If you stop and think about this, the word gay is a euphemism now for homosexual behavior. Would we say that someone is a incestuous
- 01:40:35
- Christian or an adulterous Christian? I mean, it's naming a sin. I have a real problem with the concept of gay
- 01:40:44
- Christians. Now, I know a gay that has repented and is in the church, but he's given up that behavior and lifestyle, but he still has that temptation.
- 01:40:52
- Wouldn't you call him a former gay or a former practicer of homosexuality?
- 01:40:59
- I don't even think we should use the word gay to tell you the truth. Well, when I was young, gay meant happy. It didn't mean...
- 01:41:04
- Yeah, that's my point. When Fred and Barney were having a gay old time, that didn't mean...
- 01:41:13
- Yeah. In the film,
- 01:41:18
- Singing in the Rain, Fred Astaire says when he's out there dancing with that umbrella, I'm feeling gay tonight. And my grandchildren saw that and thought that was a terrible thing for him to say.
- 01:41:28
- And Dean Martin in When the Moon Hits Your Eye Like a Big Pizza Pie uses the phrase like a gay tarantella.
- 01:41:38
- But anyway, this is just an overreaction,
- 01:41:44
- I'm assuming, to folks that do have hatred toward those who are lost, especially if they are involved in a particular sin that they find offensive.
- 01:41:58
- Like the God Hates Fags group, people are trying to distance themselves so far away from them that they wind up just becoming
- 01:42:12
- Mr. Rogers when they evangelize, and they at all costs want to avoid any kind of language that is offensive in any way, shape, or form.
- 01:42:26
- And that's not what Jesus did, and it's certainly not what the Apostle Paul did either. Yeah, the
- 01:42:32
- Jesus of the Bible made a whip and drove the money changers from the temple. He called the
- 01:42:38
- Pharisees fools and blind, and he told the unbelieving
- 01:42:44
- Jews that if God were their father they'd believe him, but they were of their father the devil. Yes.
- 01:42:49
- And I can remember when I arranged the debate in the early 2000s between Dr.
- 01:42:58
- James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries and Barry Lynn, who is the president, at least he was at the time, of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
- 01:43:10
- They debated on the theme, is homosexuality compatible with biblical
- 01:43:16
- Christianity? And Barry Lynn is not only an attorney, a former
- 01:43:22
- ACLU attorney, he's also an ordained United Church of Christ minister.
- 01:43:28
- And United Church of Christ, for those of you unaware of that denomination, they are the most liberal denomination within mainline
- 01:43:38
- Protestantism. Unitarian Universalists may be neck and neck with them or even more liberal, but they're not really, well
- 01:43:46
- I guess you could, some of them identify themselves as Christian, but they are really outside the loop entirely of of even really mainline
- 01:43:57
- Protestantism. But he was so angry at the end of this debate that he forgo, he refused to even give a summation of his argument when he was supposed to have 10 minutes of summary at the end, closing statements, and he used that time just to scold the audience.
- 01:44:25
- And he said, how dare you call into question anyone's Christianity. And what
- 01:44:33
- I say to people who use that same rhetoric with me, when the issue of homosexual
- 01:44:40
- Christians quote -unquote comes up, I say, oh really, are we to question the
- 01:44:47
- Christianity of the Christian Identity Movement, which is a racist movement where the
- 01:44:54
- Aryan Nations cult came out of, the white racist folks who are
- 01:45:01
- American Nazis and skinheads and so on. And also there is a movement,
- 01:45:12
- I can't remember the exact phraseology, but you know what
- 01:45:17
- I'm talking about in reference to the kinners or the kin theology, do you know what
- 01:45:22
- I'm referring to? The kinners? Yes. Yeah, they are racist and don't even believe that blacks can be saved.
- 01:45:32
- So are we supposed to say, well, who are you to question their Christianity? I mean, is there an inconsistency there?
- 01:45:39
- Oh yeah, I mean, we see it here in spades. If people leave the
- 01:45:45
- Mormon Church, of course the number one thing they leave for is atheism. The number two thing is this radicalized spirituality where it's me, my
- 01:45:57
- Bible, and my personal relationship with Jesus, which is whatever I define it to be. And I offended a whole bunch of people in this state.
- 01:46:06
- I was challenged to go on Sean McCraney's podcast, internet broadcast, and I went there and Sean started out as, he's a former
- 01:46:23
- Mormon who was in the Calvary Chapel mold, and he ends up basically becoming a
- 01:46:30
- Gnostic heretic who says that he attacks the
- 01:46:36
- Bible. He says that the Trinity is unbiblical garbage rooted in polytheistic paganism.
- 01:46:43
- He says everybody gets out of hell eventually, and the second coming was 70 AD, and there's no future bodily resurrection of any of us.
- 01:46:51
- Now you would say that he is attacking the teaching of the Bible, but does he actually say that he's attacking the Bible? Oh yeah, he mocks the doctrine of Sola Scriptura.
- 01:47:08
- He's part of this whole, I mean, he's sort of the poster boy for this spirituality that's vaguely
- 01:47:15
- Christian. And when I challenged him about Paul excluding people, you know, telling the
- 01:47:25
- Galatians, if you're circumcised, Christ will promise you nothing. When I, you know, with the
- 01:47:32
- Judaizers or the Adoptivists in 1 and 2 John, where John calls them anti -Christ,
- 01:47:40
- I pressed him, was Paul wrong to exclude these people who were professing faith in Jesus, and he just danced all around it, and he said, well, you have to understand the church at that time was going through transitions, and it's like the water
- 01:47:57
- I learned to surf in. You know, the river's coming into the ocean, and it's all mixing there, and he just danced all around it.
- 01:48:05
- But when it came his time to ask me questions, his first question was, do you see me as a brother in Christ?
- 01:48:17
- And I think he fully expected I was going to say yes, and then he'd have me.
- 01:48:23
- Well, then none of this other stuff matters. And my answer was something that upset an awful lot of professing
- 01:48:31
- Christians in the state. I said, no, I don't consider you a brother in Christ.
- 01:48:39
- Jesus says, if someone will not hear the church, let them be to you as a heathen and a tax collector.
- 01:48:46
- I said, you're very, very clear. You don't listen to any church anywhere. So I have no choice but to obey
- 01:48:52
- Jesus. I can't be any more loving than him. I pray for you.
- 01:48:58
- I call you to repentance. But if you won't hear the church, you're not a Christian.
- 01:49:05
- You may be confused. Maybe the
- 01:49:10
- Lord will correct you, but you are outside of the visible church, and therefore I have absolutely no basis on which to treat you as a
- 01:49:18
- Christian brother. That's historic Protestantism, but that is diametrically opposed to most of what non -Catholics want to believe.
- 01:49:33
- Yeah, and when you are being attacked or accused of being hateful, and you are being told that you are twisting the true loving and compassionate intent of Christianity, these people who are accusing us of this fail to recognize that they are doing the same thing toward us, just for a different reason.
- 01:50:07
- So ultimately, the question is, who's right? Because obviously,
- 01:50:14
- Matthew Vines, when it comes to the homosexual movement, he thinks that we are distorting the true intention of Christ and his message and of the
- 01:50:26
- Christian faith itself and the Bible, and yet we are the ones who are bigoted because we say the same thing about him.
- 01:50:37
- You know, it goes back to the thing I mentioned earlier. The Catholic apologists will call us anti -Catholic, and yet for some reason, they don't call themselves anti -Protestant, if you follow what
- 01:50:48
- I'm saying. Oh yeah, they're defining the debate so they win from the outset. Right, and using explosive language like that so you are immediately dismissed by others before they even give you a fair hearing.
- 01:51:05
- If you hear the words racist and bigot and hate monger and all that kind of thing brought against you, people may be immediately, without investigating the claim, say, wait a minute,
- 01:51:16
- I got to stay away from this person. But it is alarming. I mentioned this earlier to you in the program, how today, when
- 01:51:26
- I speak to people in their 20s, they think, even if they are not homosexual or involved in homosexuality,
- 01:51:35
- I should say, and they're not, you know, marching in gay pride parades, they're not overtly, actively involved in any kind of promotion of homosexuality, they still think that we who are conservative
- 01:51:54
- Bible -believing Christians, they think that we're odd in our refutation and our condemnation of the activity of homosexuality.
- 01:52:06
- They think, why are you so upset about this? This is just another way of expressing love that these people have adopted for their lives, and perhaps they were born this way, this is what makes them happy.
- 01:52:21
- And this is not what you and I, in our age bracket, were raised with at all.
- 01:52:28
- And I'm not saying that everything that we did before Christ was correct, but, you know, the typical thing that a young man raised in the 60s and 70s would think about homosexuality, even if you're not a
- 01:52:48
- Christian, even if you have no regard for the Bible, is that that is abnormal. And, you know, sometimes people did harsh and horrible things to those involved in that activity, you know, physical violence and things like that.
- 01:53:03
- But, I mean, that is an abomination, that's atrocious. But at the same time, there seemed to be more of a universal understanding that this was completely out of the realm of normality.
- 01:53:21
- And now, that movement has very quickly and successfully brainwashed a whole generation.
- 01:53:32
- Everyone has been conditioned to emote rather than to think. And so there's this great competition, whether it's the
- 01:53:39
- Mormons or the homosexuals, or whoever you want to pick, all these different groups out there are trying to avoid substantive dialogue by portraying themselves as victims, and anyone who would criticize them as victimizers.
- 01:53:55
- Well, I want you to basically have the next five minutes to really summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today before we leave this program today.
- 01:54:08
- Long story short, the God who has sustained his church through the millennia hasn't changed.
- 01:54:17
- Truth hasn't changed. The Word of God is still sharper than any two -edged sword.
- 01:54:25
- We need to go back to what God described as the ancient paths, the old ways,
- 01:54:31
- Jeremiah 6, 16. Israel said, we will not walk in them. God says, it's in those that you will find rest for your soul.
- 01:54:41
- I think we need to go back and rediscover what true Catholicism looks like.
- 01:54:47
- Protestant Reformation wasn't about something new, it was about something old. It was about true Catholicism. It was the
- 01:54:53
- Roman church that had abandoned the historic biblical faith. They didn't see the
- 01:54:59
- Nicene Creed as infallible, but they saw it as theirs. They saw Augustine and Chrysostom teaching a different gospel than the
- 01:55:08
- Pope of Rome. Ninety -nine percent of Protestants don't even know what a
- 01:55:15
- Protestant was, other than they were not Catholic. Sola Scriptura, Sola Grazia, Sola Fide, Sola Christo, Soli Dei Gloria.
- 01:55:26
- These are things that are not well known anymore. And if they are known, they're generally not in the context of a church.
- 01:55:34
- Yeah, when I was raised Roman Catholic, and in my neighborhood, the difference between a
- 01:55:40
- Catholic and a Protestant kid is that a Catholic kid went to church. And very often, the
- 01:55:46
- Protestant kids would go to church Easter and Sunday at the Catholic church. Yeah, I mean, we've got to go back to the
- 01:55:55
- Bible. The answers are there. What we do in our video is nothing new, it's something very old.
- 01:56:03
- It's just we're responding to new articulations of old lies.
- 01:56:10
- And we need to get back to the gospel. That it's more than just mouthing words to a prayer.
- 01:56:19
- True faith is the gift of God's Spirit. And it is always, it's not that repentance is part of faith, but repentance always accompanies true faith.
- 01:56:31
- You can't love Jesus and love sin. You wrestle with sin, and you're tempted to the world, the flesh, and the devil, but he convicts you, and he chastises you.
- 01:56:44
- And this idea that we can be popular and faithful has to go out the window. We have to be faithful.
- 01:56:51
- Well, Pastor Jason Wallace, it's been a pleasure having you on the program. And whatever you did the last time you called back into the studio, keep doing that the next time you're on, because for some reason, the phone line has been completely crystal clear since you last called.
- 01:57:10
- So I'm not sure what the difference was. Same phone. Yeah, I don't know if it just got charged up more or what the case is, but a really clear connection.
- 01:57:21
- But anyway, please give our listeners all of the email address, or the websites, I should say, that you would like to provide so that they can get in contact with you and so that they can watch these videos.
- 01:57:32
- Sure. The church website is simplegospelutah .org. That's for Christ's Persevering Church here in Salt Lake.
- 01:57:40
- The LDS videos, there's four of them currently. We're working on two others. They're at lds .video.
- 01:57:48
- And the earnest plea, that includes an earnest plea to Latter -day Saints, and then an earnest plea to gay
- 01:57:55
- Christians is at gaychristian .video. All of them are on YouTube as well.
- 01:58:02
- And we're trying to put together some other evangelistic videos. But please keep us in your prayers.
- 01:58:08
- It's rocky soil here, but we have confidence God can break it up. Amen. And Charlie Lybert, if you could let our listeners know your websites.
- 01:58:18
- Yes, my website. Two of them. First is sixdaycreation .com, and the other, which is where my two books are available, is called yourchristiananswers .com.
- 01:58:28
- sixdaycreation .com and yourchristiananswers .com. yourchristiananswers .com.
- 01:58:34
- Answers with an S at the end. And the third book, which is going to publication the next couple of weeks, will be on there in about another, probably another month.
- 01:58:42
- And that is, it has a very colorful title. What is that? Yes, it does. Without Three Miracles, Darwin's Dead.
- 01:58:50
- Well, and you are going to be on tomorrow, I believe, as a co -host again. No, Thursday. Thursday, I'm sorry. And then you're also going to be my guest coming up soon.
- 01:58:57
- January 23rd, yeah. Well, I want all of you to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater
- 01:59:04
- Savior than you are a sinner. I look forward to hearing from you and your questions tomorrow on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.