July 14, 2017 Show with Thaddeus Williams on “Reflect: Becoming Yourself by Mirroring the Greatest Person in History (Part 2)” PLUS “Love, Freedom & Evil”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister

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George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 14th day of July 2017.

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I'm delighted to have back on the program Theodosius Williams, who is assistant professor of theology at Biola University in La Mirada, California, a former teacher of literature at Saddleback College, jurisprudence at Trinity Law School, philosophy at Labrie Fellowship in Switzerland and Holland, and ethics for Blackstone Legal Fellowship and Federalist Society in Washington, D .C.,

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and author of Love, Freedom, and Evil, Does Authentic Love Require Free Will?, and frequent speaker at churches and conferences.

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Today we are discussing part two of a topic we began weeks ago with Thaddeus, Reflect, Becoming Yourself by Mirroring the

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Greatest Person in History, and that is the most recent book by Thaddeus Williams, and we may be entering into in the second hour if we have time,

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Love, Freedom, and Evil, but it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, Thaddeus Williams.

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Hey, it's a joy to be back with you, Chris. Let me give our listeners our email address right away if you have any questions that you'd like to ask

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Thaddeus. Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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and this book that you have written, Reflect, you basically go through seven ways that we reflect, and we have, let's start with Reason, Mirroring the

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Profound Thinking of Jesus. If you could give us in summary form what you mean by that. Sure, so the premise of the book, we talked a little bit about last time, that it's not a question of the theists out there who worship

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God and the atheists who don't. According to Paul in Romans 1 and 2, we're all worshipers, and according to Psalm 115, everybody's in the process of becoming like what we worship, for better or worse.

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And so I'm asking the question, if we worship Jesus, how can we expect to become like him?

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And so that first chapter is digging into our intellectual lives, and I get into about nine facets of the mind of Christ, and I doubt we're going to have time to get into all nine, but just a little appetizer.

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The mind of Christ, if you look at Jesus giving the great commandment, he doesn't just say, love

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God with all your mind. He's not only the giver of the great commandment, he's history's greatest keeper of the great commandment.

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So I think the best way to exegete that text, what does it mean to love God with our mind, is to look at Jesus himself.

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And so when we see Jesus in that relationship moment by moment with the Father loving

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God intellectually, you see that he had a really, really high biblical IQ. He was able to cite scripture off the top of his head, he was able to build complex theological arguments based off the verb tense of a single

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Hebrew word, and so as we get to know scripture better, it's not just, hey, we're getting to know scripture better, it's we're learning to love the

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Father with our minds the way Jesus does. He's also logical. He's able to, when challenged by the

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Sadducees with a very complex philosophical argument against an afterlife, Jesus doesn't say, hey, what's that over there, and run and hide in the cave.

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He doesn't bully them, he doesn't give them a little condescending pat on the forehead and say, just believe because I say so.

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He gives them a logically brilliant argument, and I'm trained as a philosopher in my master's degree, and when

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I read Jesus in the Gospels, I see just a first -rate, world -class, clear thinker.

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So a mind that fully loves the Father is biblical, it's logical, and it's also something

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I dive into. Jesus was worldview -aware, is maybe one way of putting it.

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He was able to tap into common points with the Sadducees and find things they agreed on.

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In Matthew 22, they agreed on the authority of the penitent, and he's able to use that point of contact to build a really compelling argument for an afterlife.

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So follow us from that, if we're worshiping Jesus and becoming like him, we'll think more biblically, we'll think more logically, and we'll be more worldview -aware.

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Let me just ask you something, and I hope it's not too far off -topic, but it just popped into my head when you mentioned that you were trained in philosophy, and I'm assuming that you notice the same thing that I do from time to time, is that you, on occasion, see a clashing of heads between philosophers and theologians.

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Sometimes it is a friendly, brotherly clashing, and then sometimes it can develop into more heated debate.

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But it seems that sometimes you'll have a theologian saying that the philosopher is using human reasoning to the point where they are teaching things that are not found in the scriptures.

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Am I off -base here, or am I seeing something that's not there, or what? No, I think you're spot -on, and I think it happens in a really subtle way.

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In my Love, Freedom, and Evil book, which is a few years old now, I document the way exactly what you're describing happens in the free will debate, where we take something the

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Bible's clear about, that we make choices, right? In Deuteronomy 30, it talks about, you know, choose you this day whom you will serve, choose life is

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God's plea through Moses to the Israelites. And so we take a clearly biblical premise, and then we draw some philosophical conclusion, like, well, therefore,

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I must have autonomous choice -making power, I must have this power inside myself to go this way or that way, and then we draw all kinds of big theological conclusions.

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But what's really happening is we're smuggling all kinds of presuppositions, all kinds of assumptions about how free will must work into the text, that then becomes a set of goggles that we wear in ways that cause us to see less of the sovereignty of God.

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And so I lay that out in a lot of depth in my Love, Freedom, and Evil book, how exactly what you're describing happens.

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Philosophers with great intentions can smuggle in extra -biblical premises that lead them to patently unbiblical conclusions.

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Yes, sometimes philosophers will use the ordinary thinking of 21st century humans and try to superimpose that upon the text of scripture and just come to a conclusion that God did not attend, nor did his inspired writers of millennia ago intend to convey.

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Yeah, let me just give one quick example of that, Chris. Take the question that I'm asking in my first book,

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Love, Freedom, and Evil. Can somebody force love on another and have it still be genuine love?

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As a human, if I'm just sitting around philosophizing and I'm thinking, can

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I get Chris, as the host of the superb Chris Arzen show, to love me as a human, because I'm finite, the only ways

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I could do that would be to violate your personhood. So I could, you know, coerce you and say, love me or else with a gun in your back, or I could sneak into your house and implant some computer chip in your brain that when you wake up in the morning, you're like, whoa,

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I love that. So that was you! That was me. I'll own that.

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You know, my bad. Won't happen again. I could resort to all these means to guarantee your love response, but in every scenario, every creepy scenario we could lay out,

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I'm violating you, and what results is something less than love.

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And so we start there philosophically with ourselves as the starting point, and then we project that into the sky and say, well,

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God must be limited by the same constraints that I am as a finite creature. And we overlook things that you read in Scripture, like Deuteronomy 30, where God says, you know,

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I'll circumcise your heart so that you will love me. Or Ezekiel 36, where God says he's going to do this heart surgery and pull the rock out of our chest and replace it with a heart that obeys his commandments and loves him.

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Or the God of Jeremiah 30 and 31, who can actually write his law in our hearts so that we love him.

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So to me, that's one of the big problems with starting autonomously with our own fallen reason, is we often project our own limitations onto God and end up with a way too small view of God, versus starting with Scripture, which is clear from Genesis to Revelation, God isn't limited by the same limitations that are on us as creatures.

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Yeah, you will have philosophers, or those attempting to be philosophers, coming up with these placards, if you will, that have no biblical basis at all.

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Like, for instance, the one that I hear a lot, just one of many, is a gift cannot truly be a gift unless the one receiving it willingly accepts it.

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And I'm like, where does that, where does it say that in the Bible? They're making that point of faith, for instance, being a gift from God.

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And I have retorted, oh really, so if you are unconscious on an operating table, and you are given the gift of blood, or the gift of an organ, do you have to be conscious and awake and say, okay, yeah,

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I'll take that? No, you don't, do you? I mean, so that... Or putting it in New Testament categories, when

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Lazarus is flatlined in the tomb, and Jesus sovereignly decides to jolt life into his corpse, just because he didn't have the freedom to reject it doesn't make his new life any less of a gift, right?

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Exactly. So unless you have anything else you want to say right now, we can move on to emote, mirroring the just sentiments of Jesus.

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Sure. My big point in that chapter, I begin by exposing something strange about 21st century

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Western people, that we tend to make our emotions unquestionable, the sacred standard and authority on all reality.

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And let me just give a kind of controversial example of what I'm getting at here. If you were to time warp back 100 years, or any time prior in virtually any civilization in human history, and somebody maybe felt like born into the wrong body, you know,

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I'm a man trapped in a woman's body, or vice versa, one of the questions you would wrestle with is, well, how do

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I take my emotions, how I feel, and make them correspond to objective reality, to the external world?

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And if you look at the state of things today in the 21st century, that's not even a live question.

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If this is the way I feel, my feelings are supreme, my feelings are unquestionable, my feelings are sacred, my feelings are sacrosanct and authoritative, so it's not even a question how do

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I conform my emotions to anything objective beyond them. The question in our day is how do

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I make the external world bow to my feelings? How do I change the exterior to match with what

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I feel? And part of my argument in chapter two is if you start there, that makes progress impossible, because wherever I am,

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I'm supreme. Wherever I am, whatever I feel, that given moment is sacred and unquestionable.

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And that worldview has a way of just flattening out the whole world. There's no way to move upward from broken emotions to more noble or more sanctified feelings.

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And so once I do some of the work of exposing how confused our culture has become about feelings,

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I show that Jesus, when he says, love God with your hearts, he's the greatest keeper of that commandment.

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And so after real emotional progress, we want to ask ourselves the question, am

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I feeling what Jesus feels? Am I enjoying what Jesus enjoys? Am I outraged by what outraged

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Jesus? Do I feel compassion? Do my guts twist towards what got Jesus's guts twisting?

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And then where the chapter lands is to say, look, we can't generate these feelings inside of ourselves by just trying harder.

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I can't make myself have the heart of Jesus, but God is sovereign enough to do that.

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God can do a miracle. He can do something supernatural. He has access to the human heart in a way that nobody else does.

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And he can actually infuse in us just sentiments, the feelings that reflect reality, the way

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Jesus's feelings reflect reality. So there's a very short version of about a 25 -page argument for you.

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Well, I might as well start taking some of our listener questions. Let's see here.

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We have Jenny in Ben Salem, Pennsylvania.

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And Jenny asks, she actually has two questions. The secular worldview of love incorporates free will as a necessity as evidenced by books, movies, et cetera.

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However, biblical free will differs in many aspects. Can you provide a 1428?

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And if you like, I can read that for our listeners, that text. Great.

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Yeah. And let me just look up the text while I'm sitting here. And while I'm looking it up, our email address, if anybody would like to join us is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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chrisarnson at gmail .com. And please give us your first name, city and state and country of residence, unless you're asking about a personal and private matter.

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Acts 428 says to do whatever your hand and your purpose predestined to occur.

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And if you hold on a minute, I will read the context of what that is from.

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I will read. In fact, let me read the verses before that.

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Um, let's see. Uh, I will, uh, start at, uh, 23 on their release.

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Peter and John went back to hear their own people and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said to them.

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When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God, sovereign Lord. They said, you made the ants, you made the heavens and the earth and the sea and everything in them.

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You spoke by the Holy spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father, David, why did the nations rage and the people plot in vain?

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The Kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against his anointed one.

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And by the way, that's an excellent song by a, uh, a group by my soul among lions.

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They do a musical version of that. That's absolutely superb. But anyway, if you could comment. Sure. So the context acts for Peter and John have just been arrested and there's this legal ruling that comes down, that basically comes down to shut up about Jesus or we will shut you up.

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That's what the, the political powers that be in Jerusalem, that's their verdict. And that's a pretty scary verdict coming from, you know,

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Luke is writing acts. He's very careful to list the same people giving that verdict is the same people in his gospel that executed

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Jesus. So it's a very credible death threat, uh, coming from Jerusalem powers.

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Now what does the church do? They, you know, freak out and have a chicken little complex. The sky is falling.

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This is the end. Now they pray, Peter and John deliver that bad news and they get together and they pray.

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And to me, what's so insightful is the opening line of their prayer in Greek.

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It's despotase where we get the English word despot from it's they address God as sovereign, as a supreme, unchallengeable power and authority.

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And so they remind themselves that, Hey, these human powers are aligned against us.

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They're basically giving us a gag order from preaching the gospel, but let's remind ourselves who's despotate, who's sovereign

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Lord, who's really on the throne of the universe. Uh, and then by the time they end the prayer, which is what

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Jennifer's asking about in verse versus 28, they're talking about the crucifixion of Jesus.

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And they don't say, how did that happen on God's watch?

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How did Jesus get executed? Where was God that day? They say that Herod Pontius Pilate, certain

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Jews, certain non -Jews, uh, did exactly what your hand and your will predetermined to take place.

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And what, what Luke is doing there, he's stacking power terms, the hand of God, the chair

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Taufeo in Greek. Every time Luke uses that language, it's the unstoppable sovereign hand of God.

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And he follows it with the bullae Taufeo, the will or purpose or plan of God. Again, every time

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Luke uses that, it's the unstoppable plan, purpose, and will of God. You have the hand of God, you have the will of God, pro a reason, which is a good translation.

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That would be predetermined, um, the execution of Jesus. And so when you think of it in that, in those categories, it's not like evil is happening willy nilly.

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Uh, their answer to the question, where was God when Jesus was executed is right where he's always been on the throne.

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Their answer to where is God when they're facing these legal threats to shut up about Jesus or be shut up the way they encourage themselves is to say, where's

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God? Oh yeah, that's right. Right. Where he's always been on the throne. And I think there's a huge lesson for us as Christians in the

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Western world in the 21st century. There's a lot of legal rulings that are a lot less harsh than act four, shut up about Jesus or face execution.

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And I've seen a lot of the church world around the country have that chicken little complex of this is the end.

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And, um, you know, where's the future of Christendom and, and where's God? And the answer is right where he was in act four, right where he was at the end of the gospel accounts with the crucifixion.

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He's just as sovereign as he's ever been. Uh, and so from that comes a fearlessness, a kind of unflinching, bring it on universe.

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God is always on the throne and it's impossible to dethrone him. And I think when you have that mentality, um, it's incompatible with fear.

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And if you're not it makes it a heck of a lot easier to love people. Well, thank you,

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Jenny. And I'm sorry, we gave away all of Thaddeus's books the last time he was on.

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So we don't have any free books to give away, but thank you for your excellent question. And in fact,

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I'll, uh, I'll wait to the second half of the program to ask your, your second question that you have here, but thank you very much for contributing to the program and, uh, continue to spread the word about Ian Sharpen's iron and Ben Salem, Pennsylvania and beyond.

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And, uh, let's see here. We have, uh,

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William Skinner and Greensboro, North Carolina. And, uh, let's see here.

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Didn't intend to give William's last name out. Sorry about that. If you, if you, uh, didn't want me to do that,

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William, actually he goes by the name Seth. Uh, I don't know why, but, uh, uh, his question is concerning Jesus's love and how he manifested that love toward the lost.

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How do most Christians compare? What areas would you see us lacking as a whole?

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Yeah, that, that is a great question. I think the biggest area where the way Jesus loved the father with his mind is out of sync with how most

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Christians think about loving God with their minds, uh, is just in the level of biblical

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IQ. Um, Jesus just had a command of scripture. He loved the word of God.

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Uh, in fact, in, uh, Matthew 22, which is my primary passage in chapter one, showing what a mind that fully loved the father looks like in action, uh, the

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Sadducees challenged Jesus on the question of the afterlife, and his opening line to them is, you're wrong because you don't know the scriptures.

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And I think that indictment right there, aimed against first century Sadducees, rings every bit as true to most

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Christians in the 21st century. And let me back that up, because I know that's not a very, um, encouraging thing to say.

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Uh, but George Gallup, after decades of gathering data, he says, and this is a direct quote from Gallup, he says that Americans revere the

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Bible, but by and large, they don't read it. Because they don't read it, we've become a nation of biblical illiterates.

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Uh, and if you look at George Barna, who's been doing similar research for decades, he reaches the exact same conclusion that, uh, in his words,

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America is immersed in a crisis of biblical illiteracy. And that's not

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Christlike. Uh, not only does it make us ignorant of God's authoritative word, um, but it makes us un -Christlike because he knew the scriptures so well.

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And so, just quickly here, some of the statistics that show the vast chasm between Jesus' mind and the way most of us approach scripture, uh, in 2014, the

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American Bible Society did a State of the Bible report, found that half of Americans, half of the entire country, quote, strongly agrees that the

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Bible contains everything a person needs to know to live a meaningful life. So that half of Americans think the

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Bible is where you find meaning in life. But for all that lofty regard for the Bible, 50 % of graduating high school seniors think that Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife.

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That's wrong for many reasons. One of my favorites, 12 % of Americans, 12 % of Americans think that Joan of Arc was

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Noah's wife. Oh, that's, that's hilarious.

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Just four percent of Christians polled believe that poverty is an issue that the church should care about, four out of a hundred.

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Uh, and many respondents credited the Sermon on the Mount to none other than Billy Graham.

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Now, the one that surprises me, well, actually, they all kind of surprised me because those are really unbelievable, unbelievably bad mistakes.

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But you said that there was a very low percentage of professing Christians that thought poverty was an issue we should be concerned about?

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Four percent. That strikes me as odd only because, uh, and I'm not,

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I'm not saying this is a liberal, exclusively liberal notion, but that kind of idea permeates society today, which would include those outside of Christianity, i .e.

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the liberals as well. The liberals have a, I think, a wrong way of going about caring for the poor. But that seems to be something that you would think that every person at least would think, even if they were going to be dishonest in a poll, you would think that that would be something they would say, oh, of course, yeah, sure, we're supposed to take care of the poor.

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Yeah, you would think even if you disagree with far -left strategies for answering poverty, namely, you know, government redistribution of wealth, you would still think that Christians have a solid biblical foundation to stand on to say we ought to love the poor.

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But the statistics, sadly, say otherwise, that four out of a hundred poverty should be the primary driving concern of the

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Church, and that ought to just make our stomachs turn. I mean, what Bible are we reading, if any at all?

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It's hard to get through a page of Scripture without seeing God's profound love for the poor and the call of the

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Church to do something about it. Yeah, in answer to Seth's question,

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I'd say that's the biggest area of the nine attributes of the mind of Christ I get into in that chapter. That, to me, is the most embarrassing difference between his mind and ours, just the scriptural literacy that Jesus had that we so often lack.

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Yeah, well, thank you very much. I guess that was Seth that asked the last question in Greensboro, North Carolina.

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Now, Jenny is saying it's Acts 4, verse 28, not

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Acts 14. I read from Acts 4, didn't I? Yes, you did. I'm not sure why Jenny is saying that we made an error here.

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Perhaps you could clarify what you mean, Jenny. Maybe you meant Acts 14. Anyway, thank you very much anyway,

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Jenny. And, in fact, we have to go to a break right now. In our email address, if anybody else would like to join us, we do have some still waiting to have their questions asked and answered by you.

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But if anybody else would like to join us, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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

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USA. And don't go away. We are coming right back after these messages,

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God willing, with more of Thaddeus Williams and more of our discussion on Reflect.

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And we look forward to hearing from you as well, the listeners, so don't go away.

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Pastor's Study by calling in with your questions. Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull.

34:10

Join us this Saturday at 12 noon Eastern Time for a visit to the Pastor's Study, because everyone needs a pastor.

34:17

Welcome back. This is Chris Orrinson, your host of Iron Trip and Zion, and our guest today for the full two hours with about 90 minutes to go is

34:24

Thaddeus Williams, and we are discussing his book, Reflect, Becoming Yourself by Mirroring the

34:30

Greatest Person in History. And as I said in our last interview, that is not a book by Joel Osteen, although it might immediately sound like that.

34:41

In fact, I think that you were sort of being tongue -in -cheek there, weren't you? Yeah, absolutely.

34:47

It was intended to be subversive, to hopefully corral in some of those Osteen readers, to become a little more theological substance.

34:57

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

35:07

And my friend David Murray wrote a book with a similar title that escapes me right now.

35:13

It was something like The Be Happy Christians or something like that.

35:19

But it was a very excellent book. Flip, mirroring the upside -down action of Jesus, that sounds like a very compelling chapter heading there.

35:31

Yeah, so if chapter one, the reason is about, you know, developing the intellectual virtues of Jesus, and the

35:38

E in Reflect is about emoting like Jesus feels when he feels, then chapter three moves from thinking and feeling to doing.

35:45

What are we doing with ourselves? And the argument in that chapter basically goes like this, that whether we're trying to or not, there's three core drives behind everything we do.

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We're all seeking pleasure, we're all seeking power, and we're all seeking purity.

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We're all seeking pleasure, we're all seeking power, we're all seeking purity, and the secular mind gives us ways to do that.

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If I'm going to gain power, then I gain power by taking power from others.

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Power is kind of a zero -sum game. If I'm seeking pleasure, then I get pleasure by seeking to make my three best friends, me, myself, and I happy.

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I make my happiness my primary goal from the time I roll out of bed to the time my head hits the pillow.

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And if I'm seeking purity, then I justify myself. I go into self -defense mode and make myself seem really, really good and make myself feel better than others.

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And I argue that Jesus flips all that upside down. He says, behind what you do, if you want real power, you don't get powerful by taking it from others, you get powerful by empowering the people around you.

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If you want pleasure, you don't get it by always seeking your own pleasure first. You do that, you're going to end up miserable.

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If you seek the quest for the good of others and the glory of God, you end up happy as a byproduct, oftentimes without even trying to be happy.

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If you want purity and try to justify yourself, you're going to become more and more corrupt. If you receive the purity that Jesus offers through his crossword, then you become actually pure.

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And so that whole chapter is about how Jesus flips upside down all the world's ways of pursuing power, pleasure, and purity.

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And the whole thing is really a 20 -page exegesis of John 13, where he's washing the disciples' feet and showing us what real power, what real pleasure, and what real purity look like.

37:53

And we have a Christian in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who says,

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I know that John Piper agrees with much of the theology of Chris Ornson and his guest today, but I was wondering if you agreed with John Piper on the notion of Christian hedonism.

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Yes, I do, for the most part. I'm not entirely sure that hedonism, in a very technical sense, is the right word for what

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Piper's trying to do, because hedonism, just in a technical, if you're reading a philosophy textbook sense of the word, means the only good that exists is pleasure.

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And so I have to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, and I don't think that's what Piper's trying to say.

38:44

I think he's using it less in a technical way, more as a provocative tagline for his theology, which

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I think is exactly right. Yeah, the first question of the Shorter Catechism is, what is the chief end of man?

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And it's to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, right? Yeah, and Piper famously changes one word, right, that you glorify

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God not and enjoy Him forever, but you glorify God by enjoying Him forever.

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And I think that's exactly right. If you look at scriptural support for that, if you look at Psalm 1, as a case in point, the psalmist says,

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I delight in the law of God. Now notice it's not this cold -hearted duty.

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There's a delight, there's an enjoyment of God. And the reason I think

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Piper's so helpful on that point is, you know, in my experience, a lot of people think of Christianity as,

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I say no to sin's pleasure by saying no to pleasure. And what

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Piper's doing, which is tied into Psalm 1, is Biblical Christianity doesn't say no to sin's pleasure by saying no to pleasure.

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It says no to sin's pleasure by saying yes to superior pleasure. By saying yes to pleasure in the infinite

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God, that's how I say no to sin's pleasure. You know, it's C .S. Lewis's point in his

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Weight of Glory essay when he says, you know, we're splashing around in the puddles making mud pies because we can't even fathom the offer of a holiday at sea.

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We mess around with sex and ambition and alcohol because we can't even ponder what's being offered by the infinite

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God who's the source of all satisfaction. And I think Piper's exactly right about that, and I think that's a compelling vision of a

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Christian life that, until Piper really brought that front and center, had been largely lost from a lot of the

40:45

American Christian world. So yes, amen to the enjoyment of God. And if he wants to call that Christian hedonism, then more power to him.

40:54

And by the way, I do want to make it clear, and I don't mean any disrespect towards John Piper, but I don't agree with everything that John Piper has said or done, especially involving those whom he invites to speak at his conferences and so on.

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I have a very big problem with Rick Warren these days, in fact probably ever since I've ever heard of him.

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So I wouldn't want to have somebody think that I enjoy or approve of everything that John Piper has to say.

41:25

And again, I don't mean any disrespect for him because I think much of what he has written is a wonderful gift to the body of Christ.

41:35

And Tyler at Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York says, is the problem with the modern church that it has adopted a social gospel rather than the ordinary but powerful means of preaching the gospel?

41:53

I'm not sure if it's exactly on topic, but good question anyway. And in fact,

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I think it is interesting, and I wonder if you would agree with me, that the social gospel of decades ago was exclusively the backyard or the neighborhood of the liberals.

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And today you have professedly conservative Christians just preaching a different social gospel in many cases, where they will take very true and good and vital things like opposing abortion and opposing same -sex marriage and things like that, but they will make that the primary mission in this life, is to overturn things like that.

42:39

And that becomes the gospel in essence. Sure. Yeah, I think the questioner is onto something.

42:49

I don't know that I would make that the problem in the Church in the 21st century.

42:55

If I had to narrow it down to the problem, I'd say it's a small view of God. And from a small view of God, that's kind of the source of all the other headaches in 21st century

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Christianity. So yeah, I certainly think it's a major problem and one that flows from a small view of God.

43:12

Now if you look at just the history of Western Christianity in the last 100 years or so, you had...

43:20

Chris, you're exactly right. The more liberalizing denominations tended to adopt social gospel motifs that denied depravity, denied sin nature, they tended to blame everything outside of broken institutions.

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If we can just fix those institutions, then we could, you know, usher in the Kingdom of God. I think that error is still very much with us, whether it's coming from the far left with, you know,

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Christians who would identify themselves as progressives. If we just had a socialist society and redistributed wealth and achieved

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Marx's vision of economic equality, we would be bringing the

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Kingdom of God. You find a lot of that, and increasingly so, in the last few years. But there's kind of an opposite version of the same heresy, as you're pointing out from the far right, that if we can just affect social change for the rights policies, then we've established the

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Kingdom of God on earth. And they're both problematic for a lot of the same reasons and some different reasons.

44:25

But if you look at the fundamentalists in the early 20th century, they were oftentimes so committed to the theological fundamentals.

44:32

We don't want to budge on the inerrancy of scripture, we don't want to budge on substitutionary crosswork of Jesus, we don't want to budge on a bodily resurrection, things that they shouldn't have budged an inch on.

44:44

But what tended to happen was they ended up in their little enclaves, their little holy huddles, and were oftentimes indifferent to the plight of the poor.

44:53

And so you have this kind of radical split where some people had really lousy doctrines, but cared about the plight of the disenfranchised, and other people who had really solid doctrine but slowly got cold to the plight of the oppressed.

45:10

I think biblical Christianity kicks the field goal through those uprights. It has us not only cherish good doctrine, the essential gospel of the death and bodily resurrection of Jesus, but it takes that gospel and says, now what are the implications of this for how we engage society?

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And let me just briefly give one example of what that looked like for the early church, our ancient brothers and sisters in Christ.

45:35

You had in Ephesians 1, Paul, in what is the longest run -on sentence in the entire

45:42

Bible, Ephesians 1, it's about 214 words in the original Greek before Paul just pauses to take a breath, and what

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Paul is doing in chapter 1 of Ephesians is explaining the gospel. And at one point he says, you know, praise be to the

45:57

God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, he's blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, he's called us holy, and then he uses this word that most of our

46:07

Bibles would render blameless. Some Bibles are a little closer by saying unblemished, and we can read that in the 21st century context and just gloss over the deeper meaning here.

46:20

When Paul is writing to Ephesus, and it was a circular letter, so it went to a lot of different communities in the first century, you had human dumps in the

46:29

Roman Empire. And when I say human dump, I mean that literally. They would get rid of what they viewed as human trash.

46:37

This instance has a deformity, it has Down syndrome, it's financially burdensome, it's more often than not in the first century if it was female that was viewed as, you know, not worthy of raising.

46:52

And so you had this horrible dehumanizing system in first century Rome that tossed image bearers of God on the literal trash heap.

47:01

And many of those people that were tossed aside, they were called the blemished, that was society's name for them, it's a

47:08

Greek word nomos, which would mean you're blemished, you're unwanted. And so when

47:13

Paul's writing to Ephesians, a lot of his first century audience would have been the blemished, would have been the unwanted that had been picked up and made

47:24

Ephesian slaves, that was the state of a lot of the nomos, they would be turned into slaves.

47:30

And so here you have an audience, many of whom had been unwanted by their fathers, and here's

47:37

God the Father with a capital F, the creator of the entire universe, and he's renaming them from the blemished to the unblemished, from momos to amomos.

47:48

And then the next line in Paul's argument is, now we've been adopted as cherished sons and daughters.

47:54

And so there's one way that Paul, one way of many, that Paul explains the gospel. Now when the early church believed that, they didn't say, well that's just the spiritual reality between me and Jesus.

48:06

They went out to the literal human dumps outside their cities, and they did for others what

48:11

God had just done for them. They went and called societies unwanted, they're wanted, and adopted them as cherished sons and daughters.

48:19

And so I think it's a false dichotomy to think we either have to have good doctrine, or orthodoxy, or orthopraxy.

48:27

We either have to care about social issues or care about spiritual issues. If you care about the actual gospel, that vertical reality of I've been saved by grace is going to spill out horizontally into showing grace to the watching world.

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That's what the early church did, and I think that's what we need to do again in the 21st century.

48:46

So much so, just a final thought on that, that within two generations, the early church believing the gospel had abolished the system of the human dumps.

48:59

And it didn't happen through legislation, it happened through people being transformed, regenerated by the gospel, and then living out the social implications of that gospel.

49:08

And there were no more human dumps within just two generations of Christians practicing what they preached.

49:14

Wow, that's something. In fact, just to show you how much of the conservative wing of Christendom has fallen into their own trap of their own brand of social gospel,

49:30

I have, I don't know if you have, but I've had a number of professing Bible -believing evangelicals express their opinion to me that Mitt Romney and Glenn Beck are our brothers in Christ, in spite of some of those unimportant secondary differences that we have with Mormons.

49:51

And I say that tongue -in -cheek there. Obviously, the Mormon religion, you cannot get farther away from Christianity, from biblical

50:01

Christianity, than Mormonism. I mean, they're... The good news and the bad news is that I have to save myself by keeping a mile -long list of do's and don'ts.

50:10

That's not a secondary issue. And of course, that you can become god of your own planet, and that kind of thing.

50:20

Jesus is the spirit brother of Lucifer, and you could go on and on. That our god evolved from a man into being a god through his obedience, and on and on and on you could go.

50:40

Love mirroring the radical relationality of Jesus, if you could explain.

50:49

Sure. The short version of that is, I start the chapter with a few compelling stories from Johnny Cash, the man in black, one of my favorite all -time musicians.

51:04

A little -known story about him was, I think it was 1967, and he crawled into a cave out in the

51:14

Tennessee countryside. It was a little cave called Nickajack, and he was just done. It was his attempt, yeah, it was the fall of 1967, crawled into Nickajack Cave in the

51:24

Tennessee country, and he just laid down in the dark to commit suicide. He was just gonna die alone in this cave.

51:32

He says in his autobiography, he says, the absolute lack of light in that cave was appropriate.

51:38

For at that moment, I was as far from God as I've ever been. My separation from him, the deepest, most ravaging, various kinds of loneliness that I felt over the years seemed finally complete.

51:49

And so you have Johnny Cash all by himself, and by the grace of God, he ended up getting saved from Nickajack Cave.

51:56

And then I get into John Lennon, you know, the lead singer, one of the lead singers of the Beatles, how he had what he called his lost weekends when he was separated from Yoko.

52:07

And it was during that period, he wrote his song, the song is called Scared.

52:13

And the first verse just says, I'm scared, I'm scared, I'm scared, I'm scared, eight times.

52:18

And then in verse two, he adds one letter to make I'm scared, I'm scarred, he sings that eight times.

52:24

And then the final verse, he echoes, you know, I'm tired of being alone.

52:30

And so I start with a few examples of people all by themselves. In fact, if you could pick right, if you could pick up, if you could pick up right where you left off there after the

52:40

John Lennon story, we'll pick up on that when we return from the break, because I don't want to,

52:46

I don't want to interrupt you in the middle of a an important sentence here. So if anybody else would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

52:57

C h r i s a r n z e n at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state and your country of residence.

53:03

If you live outside of the good old USA. And please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter.

53:10

Don't go away. We are God willing coming back right after these messages with more of Thaddeus Williams and reflect.

53:20

And I'm looking forward to hearing from your questions at chrisarnsen at gmail .com. chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

53:29

We'll be right back. I'm James White of Alpha Omega Ministries.

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Every day at thousands of community centers, high schools, middle schools, juvenile institutions, coffee shops, and local hangouts,

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Our mission is to have a noticeable spiritual impact on Long Island, New York by engaging young people in the lifelong journey of following Christ.

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Long Island Youth for Christ has been a stalwart bedrock ministry since 1959. We have a world -class staff and a proven track record of bringing consistent love and encouragement to youths in need all over the country and around the world.

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Help honor our history by becoming a part of our future. Volunteer, donate, pray, or all of the above.

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For details, call Long Island Youth for Christ at 631 -385 -8333.

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That's 631 -385 -8333. Or visit liyfc .org.

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That's liyfc .org. Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am

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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,

57:59

I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, pastor of Providence Baptist Church. We are a

58:05

Reformed Baptist Church and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts.

58:12

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.

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

58:27

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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If you live near Norfolk, Massachusetts or plan to visit our area, please come and join us for worship and fellowship.

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You can call us at 508 -528 -5750, that's 508 -528 -5750, or go to our website to email us, listen to past sermons, worship songs, or watch our

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TV program entitled, Resting in Grace. You can find us at providencebaptistchurchma .org,

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that's providencebaptistchurchma .org, or even on sermonaudio .com. Providence Baptist Church is delighted to sponsor

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Iron Shop and Zion Radio. Chef Exclusive Catering is in South Central Pennsylvania.

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that's chefexclusive .com. Lynbrook Baptist Church on 225

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Earl Avenue in Lynbrook, Long Island is teaching God's timeless truths in the 21st century. Our church is far more than a

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Sunday worship service. It's a place of learning where the scriptures are studied and the preaching of the gospel is clear and relevant.

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It's like a gym where one can exercise their faith through community involvement. It's like a hospital for wounded souls where one can find compassionate people in healing.

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We're a diverse family of all ages, enthusiastically serving our Lord Jesus Christ in fellowship, play, and together.

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Hi, I'm Pastor Bob Walderman, and I invite you to come and join us here at Lynbrook Baptist Church and see all that a church can be.

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Call Lynbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402, that's 516 -599 -9402, or visit lynbrookbaptist .org,

01:00:59

that's lynbrookbaptist .org. Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune in to a visit to the pastor's study every

01:01:13

Saturday from 12 noon to 1 pm eastern time on WLIE radio, www .wlie540am

01:01:23

.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.

01:01:32

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.

01:01:42

Yes, don't forget about the visit to the pastor's study, or a visit to the pastor's study, I should say, hosted by my dear friend of over 30 years,

01:01:51

Pastor Bill Shishko, formerly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church of Franklin Square.

01:01:57

He is now retired from the pastoral ministry there and is a domestic missionary with Reformation Metro New York, and his program is on tomorrow from 12 noon to 1 pm eastern time, heard everywhere in the world via live streaming at www .wlie540am

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.com, or if you live in the New York tri -state area and parts of Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, you can hear the program on the

01:02:30

AM dial on 540 AM WLIE radio. Very unfortunate call letters for that station,

01:02:37

WLIE. It's not referring to lying, it's referring to the Long Island Expressway.

01:02:43

But anyway, we thank Pastor Bill for all he contributes to the body of Christ through that wonderful program and through many other ways that he uses his gifts.

01:02:54

Before I return to my guest today, who is Thaddeus Williams, and before we continue our discussion on Reflect, Becoming Yourself by Mirroring the

01:03:04

Greatest Person in History, we have some important announcements to make from some of our sponsors.

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We have the Word of Truth Church of Farmingville, New York is pleased to announce that the

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Word of Truth Bible Institute will be offering two free classes this summer, the Book of Romans and an

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Old Testament Survey. Romans will meet on July 19th and 26th from 7 to 9

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PM, and the Old Testament Survey course will meet next week, Monday through Friday, July 17th through the 21st from 7 to 9

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that's W -O -T for Word of Truth, church .com, W -O -T church .com.

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Then coming up in August from the 3rd through the 5th, the Fellowship Conference New England is being held at the

01:04:27

Deering Center Community Church in Portland, Maine, featuring such speakers as Pastor Don Curran, who is the

01:04:36

Eastern European Coordinator with HeartCry Missionary Society, the organization founded by Paul Washer, my dear friend

01:04:43

Pastor Mack Tomlinson, who is an author and pastor of Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas, and Pastor Jesse Barrington, who is the pastor of Grace Life Church in Dallas, Texas, which is the sister church of Grace Life Church in Lake City, Florida, who has a radio station that airs

01:05:04

Iron Trumpets Iron Radio every day in a pre -recorded form. Pastor Nate Pikowitz is also speaking, who's an author and the pastor of Harvest Bible Church in Gilmonton Ironworks, New Hampshire.

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If you'd like to attend that conference, go to fellowshipconferencenewengland .com, fellowshipconferencenewengland .com,

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and then in November from the 17th through the 18th, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is having their

01:05:29

Quaker Town Conference on Reform Theology. That's being held at the Grace Bible Fellowship Church of Quaker Town, Pennsylvania.

01:05:37

Speakers include Kent Hughes, Peter Jones, Tom Nettles, Dennis Cahill, and Scott Oliphant, and I'm going to be mentioning

01:05:45

Peter Jones to our guest Thaddeus Williams in a moment on an interesting connection with John Lennon.

01:05:55

But if you would like to attend this conference, which by the way is on the theme for Still Our Ancient Foe, a famous line from the classic

01:06:05

Reformation hymn by Martin Luther, A Mighty Fortress, obviously referring to Satan for Still Our Ancient Foe.

01:06:13

If you would like to attend that conference, go to alliancenet .org, alliancenet .org, and then click on events, and then click on Quaker Town Conference on Reformed Theology.

01:06:25

And then we have coming up in January from the 17th through the 20th, the

01:06:30

G3 Conference. On the 17th, it will be exclusively a Spanish -speaking conference, and then from the 18th through the 20th, it will be an

01:06:39

English -speaking conference. The theme is Knowing God, a Biblical Understanding of Discipleship.

01:06:47

The English -speaking conference includes such speakers as Stephen Lawson, Brody Balcom, H .B.

01:06:54

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

01:07:05

If you would like to register for the G3 Conference, go to g3conference .com, g3conference .com.

01:07:12

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That's also the mailing or the email address, I should say, for your questions for our guest right now,

01:09:17

Thaddeus Williams, if you have a question for him. Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com

01:09:22

and I will get to those of you who are patiently waiting to have your questions asked and answered.

01:09:28

I will get to you as soon as possible. But before the break, you were mentioning, Thaddeus, about Johnny Cash being rescued from a cave and also the very last thing you were talking about was

01:09:41

John Lennon being scared, scarred, and alone. If you could pick up right where you left off.

01:09:48

Sure, so you've got two of these brilliant rock stars each experiencing in their own ways the utter desolation of being alone.

01:09:59

And I tell their stories in the book, and then tie it all back to Genesis 2, where the whole

01:10:06

Bible opens with a series of benedictions. God creates, and at the end of that day, it is good.

01:10:14

He creates some more, at the end of that day, it is good. And so our whole scripture is open with this series of benedictions until you get to chapter 2, and you get the very first malediction in all of scripture.

01:10:25

The very first thing that God looks at and says, it's not good. And that is, it's not good for man to be alone.

01:10:32

The first bad word, the first malediction in scripture. And so I argue that, you know, scripture has been telling us for millennia that we're created for relationship.

01:10:45

And by the time you get to the New Testament, we go a lot deeper into why that is. Why do we need relationship to thrive?

01:10:53

And in John 17, Jesus gives us a lot of insight. He says, towards the end of the chapter, he says,

01:11:00

Father, you loved me before the foundation of the world, before anything existed, before there were butterflies, before there were atoms and electrons, before there was war, strife, loneliness, before any of that, you have a triune

01:11:13

God who has always been engaged in interpersonal relationship. And so that sheds a lot of light on why it's not good for Johnny Cash to be alone in Nick Jack Cave in the

01:11:24

Tennessee countryside. It sheds a lot of light on why it wasn't good for John Lennon to be alone in an

01:11:31

LA bar recording studio on his last weekend. It explains why we feel less ourselves when we're all by ourselves for extended periods of time, why too much introspection and too much aloneness makes us crazy, because we're created by God of relationship for relationship.

01:11:51

So in the chapter on love, I go deeper into that and show that because Jesus is always in relationship, and if we're mirroring him and becoming like him, we find ourselves in relationship, um, there's something that a relationship with Jesus offers that you really don't find in any other relationship.

01:12:10

And I get into a few facets of that, but one we're talking about now is in John 17,

01:12:17

Jesus prays, Father, those that you have given me, would they be with me to see me in my glory?

01:12:25

And so in the context here, he even says in John 17, he says, I'm not praying for the whole world. I'm praying for those who believe in me through the disciples' words, which means you,

01:12:36

Chris, that means me, it means your listeners who trust Jesus. We are love gifts given from the

01:12:43

Father to the Son as an expression of his eternal, infinite, intra -trinitarian affection.

01:12:50

We are living, breathing, I love you that the Father speaks to the Son. And that's what's going on in John 17, where Jesus is praying, you know, that us, his love gifts, would be able to see him in his glory.

01:13:03

Well, when you flip forward a few chapters and get to John 6, Jesus is again talking about the believers through all the echelons of history, including us right now, and he says, all that the

01:13:16

Father gives me will come to me. So if you're listening right now and you've come to Jesus, you didn't start that process.

01:13:24

You came to Jesus, you trusted him, you have faith in him, because before that decision, the

01:13:29

Father had already given you to the Son as an expression of his intra -trinitarian affection.

01:13:35

And he says in John 6, the Father's will is that I would lose none of all that he has given me.

01:13:43

I would lose none of all that he's given me. And so the Father's will is that the Son wouldn't lose us.

01:13:49

The Son's will in John 17 is that the Father would hold on to us.

01:13:54

And when you get to John 10, both of those come together, and Jesus is talking about his love gift there, his sheep.

01:13:59

And he says, you know, my sheep, they know the sound of my voice, they come to me, no one can pluck them from my hand.

01:14:06

And if you think about that, the omnipotent Jesus holds us secure in the hollow of his hand.

01:14:12

That would be security enough. But Jesus goes further and says, no one can pluck them from my Father's hand.

01:14:19

So you have the omnipotent, sovereign Father wrapping us up in his fingers, holding tight.

01:14:25

And then in Ephesians 1, it says the Holy Spirit is a deposit, a guarantee of our salvation. So our core identity as Christians is as love gifts, held securely in this intra -trinitarian love grip of the

01:14:38

Father, Son, and Spirit who refuse to let go. So we could no more lose our identity, we could no more lose our salvation, than the

01:14:47

Father, Son, and Spirit could fail to love each other and fail to be who they are. And so I argue in that chapter that on the basis of the

01:14:54

Trinity, we are securely loved, and that actually frees us up to love others.

01:15:00

I'm not loving other people now because I need validation, because I'm insecure and just need other people to accept me.

01:15:08

I am unshakably secure in the Triune God, and so now I can love other people for their own sake without some kind of neediness or insecurity being behind that love.

01:15:19

So there's the short version of what I'm up to in the 20 pages of chapter 4.

01:15:25

You know, and before I forget why I was going to mention Peter Jones to you, Peter Jones, who's the director of Christian Witness to a

01:15:34

Pagan Planet. Yeah, a good friend of mine. Oh really? Yeah. Well, I don't know if... In any of his conferences, we're good pals.

01:15:41

Yeah, and professor at Westminster Theological Seminary in California.

01:15:47

I don't know if Peter's ever mentioned this to you, but during my several interviews with him, he said that he has a friend who he believes is being accurate to, he has a lot of faith in his discernment and so on, who told him that he believes that John Lennon got saved before he perished.

01:16:06

I don't know if you heard that from Peter. I hadn't heard that. I know that Peter and John went to school together.

01:16:11

Yes. But I never heard that there was a possibility of conversion. That'd be great.

01:16:17

Yeah, he said that... If he's not singing, imagine there's no heaven anymore. Exactly. I'm utterly amazed when

01:16:24

I hear about people using that song at funerals. Just totally flabbergasted by that.

01:16:30

Utter nihilistic despair is somehow supposed to get us through. Yeah, right. But Peter has a friend who is an evangelist who apparently...

01:16:42

And of course, Peter would not be caught up in the easy -believe -ism scenario of evangelism where just because somebody recites a prayer, they're going to heaven.

01:16:50

And he seemed to have a lot of confidence that this friend of his had the discernment to recognize a genuine conversion.

01:16:59

Not that he would infallibly know that, of course. So that is an interesting bit of information from our friend

01:17:08

Peter Jones, who I've got to get back on the program again. He's a fascinating guest.

01:17:17

And going back to what you were just saying also, our mutual friend

01:17:23

James R. White has been taking a lot of heat lately. And this is...

01:17:28

I'm bringing this up in relationship to what you were just saying about our ability as Christians to love others.

01:17:37

There are people who are furious with him because of the way that he is demonstrating his love for Muslims in recent dialogues that he is having with Muslims.

01:17:49

And imams. And the fact that he is not just saying harsh words of warning to them and rebuke, as Jesus himself did to the

01:18:04

Pharisees. They think that that should be the sole way that James functions as an apologist, by telling

01:18:11

Muslims that they're dead wrong, that they are headed for hell, and that we do not need to have any kind of a respectful dialogue or discussion with them, especially in public.

01:18:24

And I think that those folks who are only looking at Jesus talking to the vitriolic

01:18:30

Pharisees, who were openly condemning Christ and his disciples, they seem to overlook

01:18:35

Jesus's conversation with Nicodemus. And the different tone that he had.

01:18:40

Not that he had a different attitude towards disbelief, or he wasn't schizophrenic,

01:18:47

Jesus, but there was a different way that he treated Nicodemus, because Nicodemus was earnestly seeking truth from him.

01:18:55

And you may have an imam that really wants to know what Christians believe about eternal life.

01:19:00

Isn't this a completely unacceptable thing, if not a commendable thing for someone, as long as they are not sweeping truth or differences under the rug, or as long as they're not giving the impression that there is a faith that is in agreement with a false religion in regard to eternal life and so on.

01:19:24

If you are making it clear that there are eternal differences, that we have a chasm of differences, isn't it completely acceptable to have conversations like this with members of false religions, as long as there is no impression of an ecumenism being presented?

01:19:46

Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's not only acceptable to use your word, it's biblical, to take it further.

01:19:53

I mean, when Peter's saying, be ready with a ready defense for anybody who asks you for the reasons of the hope within, he also says do it with gentleness and respect.

01:20:03

And I've known James for, I don't know, nearly 20 years, and you've known him a long time.

01:20:09

He knows how to be respectful, how to engage people lovingly, but James isn't the kind of guy to budge one centimeter on the gospel.

01:20:20

He's got a crystal clear understanding of justification. He wrote The God Who Justifies, like a 400 -page tome on the doctrine of justification.

01:20:29

He's written The Potter's Freedom. You're not budging on the sovereignty of God. You're talking about a man who has a deep, deep understanding of the sovereign grace of God, who, for the sake of the relationship, isn't willing to budge an inch on that.

01:20:43

But because he's so deeply committed to the gospel, he's willing to engage that community with a heck of a lot of respect.

01:20:49

So I, you know, shout out and well done to James White for doing what he's doing.

01:20:55

Amen. Basically, I even recently posted on Facebook that I could hardly believe any

01:21:03

Christian would disagree with a private dialogue with a Muslim or a leader in a false religion.

01:21:12

And really, it must boil down to they just don't want this to be available for public viewing and public hearing. And the onus is on their end to prove that having a public viewing of that is unbiblical.

01:21:25

And of course, you had Paul on Mars Hill. I mean, how more public could you get than that?

01:21:31

Yeah, I think the public facet to that makes it even better. It models for the next generation of apologists, the next generation of evangelists, how to have a respectful dialogue without budging an inch on the essentials of the historic

01:21:46

Christian faith. I think it's all the better that it's out there in the public eye. Well, your next chapter is

01:21:53

Elevate, mirroring the saving grace of Jesus, if you could. Sure.

01:21:59

So I begin that chapter with a conversation I had with a man

01:22:06

I met a few years ago. I was in a restaurant, and I could overhear him ordering from the bar shot after shot of 151, which, just in case your listeners aren't aware, that's a brand of rum where 151 also stands for the proof of the alcohol.

01:22:23

So it's 75 .5 % pure alcohol. And it's not your typical drink order.

01:22:28

And so it caught my ear. And I watched this guy just taking shot after shot after shot.

01:22:36

And as I looked over at him, I could see on his forearm, he had in big Gothic capital letters, the phrase going to hell.

01:22:45

And I thought, man, I need to talk to this guy. What is happening over there? And so I struck up a conversation, and it turns out he'd been raised.

01:22:53

His name was in the book. I call him Richard. And Richard was raised in a very strict

01:22:59

Roman Catholic home under the crushing weight of rules and legalism.

01:23:07

And here's a thousand rules you got to keep if you're going to merit not only God's love, but if you're going to merit your mom and dad's love.

01:23:16

And so he had tried to do that whole works -based, earn love, earn salvation thing for a few decades before he just gave up and decided to get the tattoo.

01:23:29

I'm just going to hell. I might as well embrace it. I'll never, ever measure up. And so when

01:23:35

I was talking to Richard, we ended up outside the restaurant on a pretty clear night here in Southern California.

01:23:42

And you could see the moon hanging in the sky above us. And so I challenged

01:23:47

Richard to a little game. I said, all right, Richard, first one to touch the moon wins. And he looked at me like I'm crazy.

01:23:54

What are you talking about, touching the moon? And so I gave him this scenario. I'm not the most athletic guy in the world.

01:24:00

I run and jump two inches off the ground. And Richard was a smart guy. Imagine you jump off a car hood, and you get five feet in the air.

01:24:09

Let's say somebody jumps off the roof of a restaurant. They get 30 feet higher than us.

01:24:14

Who wins the game? And Richard's response was, well, nobody wins. Nobody touched the moon.

01:24:21

And I said, that's exactly right. Some people might be more, quote, religious than others.

01:24:26

Some people might keep more rules than others. But at the end of the day, if a holy

01:24:32

God's standard is perfection, then we all fall drastically short.

01:24:37

And so we all need grace. We all need the gospel. We all need the crosswork of Jesus. And so I was able to explain to Richard that's what

01:24:46

Jesus is about. It is God traversing all the space we could never cross by our moon jumping, by our rule keeping, and lifting us up to himself as a free, utterly undeserved gift.

01:25:01

And so that's really the foundation of that chapter, is because you're saved by grace, that sets a

01:25:08

Christian worldview apart from every other system, whether it's Islam, like you were talking about with James White engaging the

01:25:14

Muslim community. I think in James's experience, he would tell you that in a lot of one -on -one conversations with Muslims, and I've had this experience, there's a kind of exhaustion that sets in of,

01:25:27

I'm trying to keep these five pillars. I'm trying to measure up. And I never quite know if I've done enough.

01:25:35

Even Muhammad, the founder of Islam, there's a hadith, some of the Muslim scriptures outside the

01:25:41

Quran, there's a hadith where Muhammad witnessed an eclipse and thought it was the wrath of Allah coming to strike him dead for his sins.

01:25:50

And I find that same kind of fear, that same kind of panic, that same lack of assurance in a lot of my

01:25:56

Mormon friends and a lot of my Jehovah's Witness friends, there's this deep sense of how do I ever know if I've done enough?

01:26:02

And so in chapter five, I'm getting into the good news, the heart of the gospel, is that you haven't done enough.

01:26:10

Let's clear that up. You haven't, but Jesus has, and he's your great substitute.

01:26:15

He stands in your place. And so now you can have not just, I hope, but I know that I know that I know that I'm saved because of the finished crosswork of Christ.

01:26:25

And so towards the tail end of that chapter, I talk about how that will change us, how being saved by grace helps us to be more gracious.

01:26:33

We've been helped when we couldn't help ourselves. And so that vertical gospel is going to spill over horizontally into helping the people around us who are having a hard time.

01:26:43

We're going to our final break right now, and if you'd like to join us, now is the time to do it because we're running out of time.

01:26:49

Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. If you have a question for Thaddeus Williams, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

01:26:58

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01:32:25

This is Chris Arnzen, and this is the last 25 minutes of our program featuring Thaddeus Williams, and if you'd like to join us on the air with a question, do so quickly before we run out of time.

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01:32:42

And now, Thaddeus, we come to a very controversial issue. Create mirroring the artistic genius of Jesus, and you have some people, unfortunately, perhaps well -meaning, but some people in Christendom go far beyond,

01:33:01

I think, the boundaries of what Scripture would allow in this category and do some very shockingly foolish and,

01:33:07

I think, unbiblical things. But if you could, comment about what you mean. Sure. So, part of this chapter is coming out of a conversation

01:33:17

I had years ago. I was in a Pastoral church out here in Southern California doing a series on the creativity of God, and I had a skeptic in the congregation who pulled me aside after one of the sermons and said he had serious objections to the idea of Christian art, and his objections were twofold.

01:33:40

Number one, he felt like he didn't have an artistic bone in his body. He felt like the kind of guy who couldn't draw a stick figure to save his life.

01:33:47

And number two, he had seen a lot of Christian art that was just lousy.

01:33:54

He saw Christian movies, Christian paintings, listened to Christian music that seemed so just bad that it dishonored

01:34:00

God. And so he brought a lot of skepticism about the very concept of creativity and Christianity going together.

01:34:09

And so what I did with him is really what I do in the chapter. In chapter 6,

01:34:15

I get into a theology of creativity, and I show that in that opening line of Scripture that all of your listeners should be familiar with.

01:34:24

What's the first line of the Bible? In the beginning, God created. And so the first time we meet

01:34:31

God in the pages of divine revelation, we meet God as creative.

01:34:38

And God thinking up ladybugs, God thinking up sunsets, God thinking up the flavor of watermelon, the flavor of coffee beans.

01:34:48

And so that's... Two of my very favorite flavors, by the way. Right? That's just good theology.

01:34:54

God thought up the flavor of coffee beans. And watermelon. And some of your listeners might struggle with this, but God thought up the flavor of broccoli.

01:35:05

And so if they're struggling with the problem of evil because of that, I highly recommend my first book, which is all about the problem of evil, and how to reconcile the existence of a good

01:35:15

God with the flavor of broccoli. But what's interesting to me is at the end of each creation day, when

01:35:21

God is thinking up all this new, beautiful, tasty stuff, He says it's good.

01:35:28

Now, there again is that benediction. God speaking His good word over what

01:35:33

He just made. What does that word good mean there? Does it mean, is it morally good?

01:35:41

Well, that doesn't seem to make much sense to say that the flavor of watermelons is morally good, or the sight of a peacock or chameleon or sunset is morally good.

01:35:53

So I'm arguing that God is actually making an aesthetic declaration. It's less like saying, you know, little

01:36:01

Johnny was good because he listened to mommy and ate his vegetables, ate his broccoli at dinner.

01:36:07

And it's more like going to a symphony and somebody asks you, how was it?

01:36:13

It was good. Or beholding a sunset, how was it? It was good.

01:36:18

It's an aesthetic declaration. And God is saying those benedictions.

01:36:24

He's making those aesthetic declarations even before He's created Adam and Eve.

01:36:30

And it follows from that that there's real beauty in the universe that predates us.

01:36:37

Things are beautiful whether we recognize them or not. And so that changes everything.

01:36:44

Now we approach the world, I mean, in the 21st century postmodern mindset, we're just kind of in this big accident, or accidents in an accidental universe.

01:36:53

And so whatever beauty we find has to be in the eye of the beholder. We have to impose beauty on a void.

01:36:59

But that's not a biblical worldview. In a biblical worldview, beauty is already there because the creation is the handiwork of an artistic genius, a

01:37:10

God who calls things good and beautiful even before we were around. Then I argue that by the time you get to the

01:37:17

New Testament, if you look at Colossians 1, Jesus is the creator and sustainer of the entire universe.

01:37:26

And so if you've enjoyed a rainbow lately, if you've enjoyed a sunset lately, if you've enjoyed a child lately and looking into their eyes and seeing this ingenuity of this beautiful little person

01:37:39

God thought up, you are enjoying the work of Jesus. Jesus as creative.

01:37:45

Jesus as creator and sustainer of the universe. If you look at John 1, nothing that has been made has been made without him.

01:37:53

If you look at Hebrews 1, Jesus is the one laying the foundations of the earth. And so I think there's a lot there, theologically, that's been untapped by a lot of the contemporary church.

01:38:04

We've failed to see Jesus correctly and biblically if we fail to think of Jesus as artist.

01:38:11

And then when you look at his earthly ministry after the incarnation, before he launches his official ministry, he spends the majority of his earthly life building stuff.

01:38:23

He's a craftsman. You know, we think of Jesus as a carpenter, which is kind of true, but the

01:38:28

Greek word there, tekton, is a little more than a carpenter. It was basically a craftsman.

01:38:35

Jesus could do masonry. Jesus could work with metal. Jesus could work with wood. And that's how

01:38:41

God incarnate, the Theanthropos, the Godman, spends most of his adult life was making stuff.

01:38:50

And so if we take Christlikeness seriously, then we take making stuff seriously.

01:38:57

We take building things in God's universe seriously. It's part of God's original culture mandate back in Genesis 2.

01:39:05

He just made the world. Now it's on us to make something of the world. And so I think there's just a whole lot of untapped work to be done in the contemporary church for recovering creativity as part of what it means to live out the lordship of Jesus over the whole person.

01:39:23

I think that we should have you back. I get into a lot of Francis Schaeffer and Hans Fruchmacher, two of my biggest theological heroes who did work in the arts.

01:39:32

And both of them had this very robust vision that Jesus isn't just Lord over some spiritual realm to get us to float off to a cloud to strum a harp, but he's

01:39:41

Lord over the whole person. He wants us to love. God wants us to love him with our whole selves, which includes our imaginations and our creativity.

01:39:49

And I think we should have you back to discuss that one topic for the entire two hours, because there's a lot.

01:39:54

And you just said something that lends us to the last chapter, which is really a summary,

01:40:00

I believe, of everything that you've said, transform, mirroring Jesus in all of life.

01:40:06

Sure. So I start off that chapter with a quote from Hans Fruchmacher, the great

01:40:13

Dutch theologian who inspired Francis Schaeffer in many ways. Fruchmacher, I was just at his home actually last week in the

01:40:21

Dutch countryside and had the opportunity to visit his grave. In one of Fruchmacher's most insightful statements, he says this.

01:40:29

He says, we're saved not just in order that we might become spiritual ghosts in heaven.

01:40:34

No, Christ came in order to make us human in the fullest sense, to renew our lives at all levels, from our thoughts, our feelings, sex and artworks to our marriages, our holidays and the food we eat.

01:40:48

He makes it possible for the totality of a person to be renewed. That's Christianity, says

01:40:54

Fruchmacher. And so that's really where the whole book ends. You know, to try to reason like Jesus, to try to emote like Jesus, to try to flip things like Jesus in our actions, to try to love like him, to try to elevate people and live out his grace, to try to be creative like him, that touches all of life.

01:41:13

But in the last chapter, I argue if you really try to do that, it's almost a recipe for depression because it's impossible.

01:41:23

Jesus is just that good. He's just that awesome. He's just that perfect that if we try to be all those things in and through our own power, we will find ourselves spiritually burnt out.

01:41:35

We'll find ourselves exhausted, fraying at the edges. Our spiritual life will not be a source of joy, but a source of burnout and exhaustion.

01:41:45

And so in the final chapter, I say, how do you actually become all those things? It's not by your power.

01:41:50

It's not by your free will saying, let me try harder. It is by the

01:41:56

Holy Spirit and his gracious work inside of us that helps us to develop the mind of Christ.

01:42:02

It is the gracious work of the Holy Spirit inside of us that infuses the emotions of Jesus.

01:42:08

It is the gracious work of the Holy Spirit that causes us to love in ways that reflect the way

01:42:13

Jesus loves. It's the Holy Spirit inside of us that causes us to live out horizontally the gospel of grace that we've received vertically.

01:42:21

It's the Holy Spirit who's the primary inspiration in our creative lives. And so the final chapter is what really keeps

01:42:28

Reflect from being a self -help book. It's the opposite of a self -help book. It's a spirit -help book.

01:42:33

You don't become any of this stuff by your own power. It's by the sovereign grace of God through the person of the Holy Spirit doing this transforming work in the heart of a believer.

01:42:41

And that is a perfect place to segue into the other book you've written, Love, Freedom, and Evil.

01:42:47

Does authentic love require free will? If you could give us a summary of that book. Yeah, let's see if I can do justice to that one in the short time that we have.

01:42:59

So Reflect is very popular. It's intended for a broad audience. Love, Freedom, and Evil is a few years old.

01:43:07

It's a bit more academic. It was originally my

01:43:13

PhD dissertation at the Frija Universiteit of Amsterdam. It's for the University of Amsterdam.

01:43:19

And what I'm up to in that book is addressing what has become an unquestioned, almost essential

01:43:29

Christian doctrine in 21st century Christianity. And that's the idea that if I'm going to love authentically, that love has to originate in my willpower.

01:43:40

I have to have the free will, the libertarian free will is the technical term to say yes or no to a love relationship.

01:43:48

And so in the book, I show that that concept, my free will is a source of love. It's in the academic literature.

01:43:54

It's in the popular Christian books. It's made its way into mainstream

01:44:00

Hollywood movies. You find it in movies like Bruce Almighty with Jim Carrey. You find it in movies like The Adjustment Bureau with Matt Damon.

01:44:09

It's just become this mainstream concept. And it's probably the most common way that Christians try to solve the problem of evil.

01:44:18

Why is the universe so messed up? Well, because God wants loving relationships with us, and love requires free will.

01:44:26

He gives us that free will. When we abuse that good gift, we mess everything up.

01:44:31

Therefore, God gets off the hook for evil. And so in the book, I'm challenging what has become conventional wisdom in the

01:44:39

American church. And I'm saying, if that's the case, if love requires free will, then we're all kind of doomed, if you think about it.

01:44:51

And I mean, I know myself well enough to know that if it was 99 % up to God and 1 % up to me,

01:44:58

I'd find a way to screw up that 1%. I'd find a way to be a selfish jerk with that 1%. And so what

01:45:05

I'm arguing in the book is that God has a unique capacity as God, being sovereign, being king, being enthroned over the universe.

01:45:15

He has access to our hearts so that he can cause us to love. He can actually cause us to love in a way that doesn't violate our personhood, in a way that doesn't reduce us to robots, you know, in a way that doesn't make us those chatty caffeine dolls that were around in the 60s.

01:45:33

Remember, it was a little doll, and you pull a string, and it would say this little pre -programmed, I love you,

01:45:39

I love you. God can cause us to love without reducing us to dolls. And I'm arguing in the book that's part of what makes

01:45:46

God God, is his unique ability to do that. And we have a first -time questioner,

01:45:54

Taylor, in Orange County, California, who says, Dalad, Dalad, Dallas Willard has said grace is not opposite to effort but to earning.

01:46:06

How does this effort reconcile with your views of love, freedom, and evil? Yeah, so in part three of the book,

01:46:14

I get into a biblical tension between what I call divine act promised and the human act commanded.

01:46:24

And I trace this tension all the way from the Old Testament through the New. And so just an example of this tension, in Deuteronomy it says, circumcise your hearts.

01:46:36

So do something to your heart so that you actually love better. But then by the time you get to Deuteronomy 30, verse 6, it says,

01:46:44

God will circumcise your heart so that you love. If you look at Ezekiel, early in Ezekiel, it says, get yourselves new hearts.

01:46:54

But by the time you get further into Ezekiel, by the time you get to chapter 36, it says,

01:47:01

God will do that. He's the heart surgeon. He will take the stone out of your chest and replace it with a heart of flesh that beats for his glory, that keeps his commands.

01:47:10

And so this is a tension that runs all the way through the text. And I argue in the book that the

01:47:18

Arminian concept of free will can't do justice to that tension, because it denies

01:47:24

God as heart circumciser. God can't do something definitively that changes us from the inside out that causes us to love.

01:47:32

Arminian theology, libertarian free will, denies God as heart surgeon. God can't do something.

01:47:39

He can't perform this heart surgery so that I love him or it's a violation of my free will. And so I argue that at the end of the day, it's the

01:47:47

Reformed theology, Calvinist view of human freedom that is able to best account for this biblical tension between us as meaningful choice makers and God as the sovereign heart surgeon, as the sovereign heart circumciser who can cause us to increase and abound in love.

01:48:06

And let me just bring that down to earth a little bit more, because this was really one of my primary reasons for writing the book, is that I had been in ministry for years, and one of the issues that kept popping up in ministry was young men battling pornography.

01:48:26

And for years and years, my advice to them was, you know, get an internet filter, start an accountability group, try harder, stop sinning.

01:48:38

It was some version of self -help. And when I was working on Love, Freedom, and Evil, it dawned on me reading

01:48:46

Paul's letter to the Thessalonians, his first letter. This is a church that was immersed in sexual immorality or pornea as the

01:48:54

Greek word. So it's a church struggling with pornea. And Paul writes to them, and in chapter 2, he says,

01:49:01

May God cause you to increase and abound in love. May God cause you to increase and abound in love.

01:49:09

And that was just a lightbulb moment for me, that he doesn't say, go try harder, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.

01:49:17

He does a few things there. He acknowledges pornea for what it is, a failure to love.

01:49:23

It's, in our day, it's flattening an image bearer of God. It's flattening them into just two dimensions and not respecting or loving them as an image bearer of God, just using them as the means to the end of a selfish rush.

01:49:36

And so he's diagnosing pornea as a failure to love. And then he's saying,

01:49:42

May God cause you to increase and abound in love. Now, the premise of that prayer is that God is actually sovereign enough to answer it.

01:49:49

God actually has the ability to cause us to love in ways that, left to our own willpower, we wouldn't love.

01:49:56

And so when I was doing the research and writing the book, it was a game changer in my ministry.

01:50:02

So when people were coming through my office with pornography addiction, instead of the standard try harder, start an accountability group, get an internet filter kind of self -help strategies,

01:50:13

I began to do what Paul did. And I said, let's just pray. And let's pray as if our theology is true, because it is.

01:50:23

Let's ask the sovereign God to reorient your heart, to recalibrate the taste buds of your heart so that sin and pornea taste as disgusting to you as it actually is.

01:50:35

And so that Jesus tastes as irresistible and as sweet as he actually is.

01:50:41

And let's ask God for that internal miracle and see what he does. And the first student

01:50:47

I tried that with at Biola University, I was astounded when he came back to me a week later, and he was like a different person.

01:50:55

He looked different. His countenance in an old King James Bible, what the old King James Bible would call his countenance, the outward look of his soul's interstate was different.

01:51:07

There was just a glow about him, and I asked him, you know, what happened? And the way he described it,

01:51:13

Chris, was so beautiful. He said, you know, I'm so filled up with the Holy Spirit that there's just no room left for the pornography.

01:51:20

There's just no room left for it. And this is a deep part of a

01:51:25

Reformed tradition. If you go back to Thomas Chalmers, the expulsatory power of a new affection, there's this rich theology that God can change our heart, and he doesn't just get rid of sin, he replaces our sin addictions with a deeper affection for his glory that becomes so full and so satisfying that sin loses its favor.

01:51:50

It becomes as disgusting as it really is. So for me, behind this book, there's really that kind of pastoral drive, not just to give people a clearer theology of God's ability to cause us to love, but to help them to live that in a way that will break anti -love patterns in their hearts and in their lives.

01:52:07

Taylor, since you are a first -time questioner, please give us your full name and mailing address in Orange County, California, because you have just won a free

01:52:16

New American Standard Bible, compliments of the publishers of the NASB and compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, who will be shipping that out to you at no charge to you or to Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

01:52:29

That's cvbbs .com. That will be on the return address on the shipping label, so keep your eye out for that.

01:52:35

But we need your full mailing address to receive the new NAS Bible. And we have

01:52:42

Daniel in San Jose, California, who says, though I have not had an in -depth discussion with someone who claims the libertarian free will position, my question is, if humans are slaves to sin and cannot accept spiritual things, how does the libertarian free will view explain this seemingly obvious problem of not being able to act outside of our nature?

01:53:07

Why do they feel the need to choose freely for themselves without attributing their salvation to God's sovereign hand?

01:53:16

Wow, that's a great question. And there's a range of answers that you could get from people who espouse libertarian free will.

01:53:28

And many of them would include my brothers and sisters in Christ here. And what

01:53:33

I've heard many of them say is, yes, you're dead in sin. Yes, you're a slave to sin by your very nature.

01:53:43

But God extends grace, and that grace restores your freedom that was lost back in Genesis 3, when

01:53:53

Adam blew it, you lost your libertarian free will. But God extends, in Arminian theology, a provenient grace that now restores your two -way power to say yes or no to the gospel.

01:54:04

And so that's the version I've heard, is it's only by grace that you have the libertarian free will to choose this way or that way.

01:54:14

Now, let me just respond to that in a couple ways where I see some problems. Number one is, on a libertarian account of free will,

01:54:25

I'm only praiseworthy for something if I could have done otherwise, and I'm only blameworthy for something if I could have done otherwise.

01:54:33

If I have to do it, there's no moral responsibility, there's no praise or blame. Now, just think this through with me for a second.

01:54:41

If I'm born in sin by Arminian theology, and I can't,

01:54:46

I don't have the libertarian free will to choose God, then by Arminian standards,

01:54:52

I can't be held morally blameworthy for not choosing God, because I don't have the free will to choose otherwise.

01:54:58

And so if God didn't want anybody to perish, which is true of Arminian theology, all he had to do was never extend provenient grace to give us libertarian free will, because if he hadn't, nobody could have chosen good, and therefore nobody could be blameworthy for choosing evil.

01:55:18

And so it's the moment God extends provenient grace in Arminian theology that now you have two -way choosing power, now all of a sudden blame kicks in.

01:55:28

And so you have this, we're left in this really strange situation where God extends grace, and that grace actually increases our damnation, that grace actually increases the amount of people who are morally culpable, eternally, for now rejecting the gospel.

01:55:44

And that to me just sounds not only strange, but a far cry from grace as we need it in Scripture.

01:55:50

Every time God extends grace in Scripture, it seems to be redemptive. It seems to have saving power, not the damning power that it ends up having in an

01:55:59

Arminian or a libertarian system. So that's one problem. The second problem, and there's a whole slew of them that I get into in the book in But I think the second problem would be if I can choose to follow

01:56:17

God and go against my fallen nature, if I'm not enslaved by sin or dead in sin, then

01:56:24

I can actually give myself a little pat on the back for the fact that I'm saved and somebody else isn't.

01:56:31

And let me just close with a quick illustration of this. If you picture humanity in the bottom of a pit, you know, at the bottom of this well, we can't claw ourselves out, we can't climb out, then

01:56:43

Arminian theology is going to say God lowers the rope because you can't climb out by yourself, but now it's on you.

01:56:50

You can say yes or no to the offer of the rope. If you take hold and climb, you can get out of the well, you can be, quote, saved.

01:56:58

Well, in my view, I think what Scripture is teaching is yeah, we're in the bottom of a well, but if God threw a rope down, it wouldn't do us any good because we're dead in the bottom of that well.

01:57:10

So in a biblical view, God not only throws the rope down, he climbs down the rope, and then with like divine defibrillators jolts spiritual life into our corpses, throws us on his back, and climbs out of the well.

01:57:24

So in that view, salvation beginning, middle, and end is grace, grace, and grace.

01:57:31

It's the sovereign grace of God from beginning, middle, and end. In the Arminian picture, if I end up out of the well and somebody else doesn't, then

01:57:40

I have to question why am I out and they aren't? The only possible answer is I use my free will to say yes, they use their free will to reject the rope.

01:57:50

They rejected God's offer of salvation, and if that's the case, I can give myself a little pat on the back that I'm saved and somebody else isn't.

01:57:58

And to me, that's just incompatible with the good news as I read it in Scripture. Amen. In fact, believe it or not,

01:58:05

I read an excellent article on that very thing years ago by a minister in the

01:58:10

Church of Christ who had come to a sovereign grace understanding of salvation, and he wrote an article called

01:58:17

Dead Men Don't Climb Ladders. Which is exactly what you were just mentioning.

01:58:24

I am sorry to Joe in Slovenia. We don't have time for your question, and we don't have time for Jenny in Ben Salem, Pennsylvania's second question, and we don't have time for Rose in Harrisburg's question, but maybe the next time,

01:58:37

God willing, when Thaddeus comes back on, we can ask your questions to him. And I want to thank you,

01:58:43

Thaddeus, for being our guest today. If anybody wants to learn more about Thaddeus' book,

01:58:49

Reflect, go to weaverbookcompany .com. Any other contact information you care to give?

01:58:57

If you just go to thaddeuswilliams .com, that would work too. T -H -A -D -D -E -U -S,

01:59:04

Williams, thaddeuswilliams .com. That'll help get you to the books. Or you could just Amazon either book,

01:59:11

Reflect, by Thaddeus Williams, or Love, Freedom, and Evil by Thaddeus Williams, and I hope they're a big blessing to you, to your listeners.

01:59:19

And, of course, cvbbs .com is always a website you could go to to order any book you hear about on Iron Sharp and Zion Radio, and if they don't have it in stock, they will order it.

01:59:28

C -V for Cumberland Valley, B -B -S for BibleBookService .com. Thank you again, Thaddeus. I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write in.

01:59:36

I hope you all have a safe, blessed, and joyful weekend, and a wonderful God -honoring

01:59:43

Lord's Day, and I look forward to hearing from you next week with your questions for our guests on Iron Sharp and Zion Radio, and I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater