February 6, 2017 Show with Interviews from the 2017 G3 Conference! Part 4: Frank Mullis, Cameron Buettel, Phil Sessa

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

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio

platform on which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues

facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron, so one

man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, 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.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear

from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County and Lake City, Florida, and the rest of

humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Monday on

this sixth day of February 2017, and if you're wondering why I

added Lake City, Florida in my opening announcement, that's because Grace Life Radio,

90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, has launched

Iron Sharpens Iron as a part of their lineup today.

Today was the debut of Iron Sharpens Iron on Grace Life Radio in Lake City, Florida,

and they are airing a pre -recorded version of the program, a 90 -minute pre -recorded version

that airs during prime morning drive time every day, Monday through Friday, from

8 .30 to 10 a .m., and then they also air it from 8 .30 to 10 p .m.,

two excellent times, especially that morning drive time.

I have been in the radio industry since the late 1980s,

and I know, and everybody in the radio industry knows, that that is prime real estate

on the radio day part calendar.

That is the the most prime time that you could possibly get.

It's not too early in the morning, it's not too late in the morning, it's just perfect, 8 .30 to 10 a .m., and we thank

Brandon and Justin Ellickson, the brothers, the Christian brothers that run Grace Life

Radio in Lake City, Florida, we thank them from the bottom of our hearts for welcoming

Iron Sharpens Iron to their lineup every day, Monday through Friday, and we hope that God bears much

fruit through this new partnership.

I ask of you to pray that many things are accomplished for the cause of Christ and his

gospel through this partnership between Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and Grace

Life Radio in Lake City, Florida.

As promised, I'm going to be resuming airing some of the

interviews that I conducted in Atlanta, Georgia between

January 19th and the 21st.

It just so happens providentially that I'm not feeling that well today, and

I had a guest scheduled to do a live interview today, but I thought it would be better that I postpone that

interview because of the fact that I am battling something like a severe cold or flu,

and it's not quite over yet.

In fact, I am holding back a cough right now with all the fiber of my being, but I

am going to use this time today to air as many of the remaining interviews

from the G3 conference in Atlanta, Georgia that I recorded as I can.

Any that I don't air today, if there are any left, will be aired at a future date, but I think I may

be able to air all of them today.

And if you're wondering why there is all this background noise,

once again, this has nothing to do with a problem with our equipment or your equipment or some kind of

atmospheric interference or what have you.

This is because we were conducting these interviews on site at the Georgia International Convention

Center at the G3 conference, which is a phenomenal conference

focusing on the doctrines of sovereign grace, and in fact this year it was in

particular in commemoration or in celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant

Reformation, with 19 speakers on the roster.

And I only unfortunately had the opportunity to interview a handful of them

due to the fact that everybody was very busy, but I also interviewed some guests that were there that proved to be

very fascinating in their own right, and some who were just your ordinary listener to

Iron Sharpens Iron, and those folks are perhaps the most blessing to me above all, because they are

the ones that are listening every day and encouraging me, and it was just a joy to meet many of

you there, some of whom I have never even heard from before, who have never even

submitted questions before.

One after another, every single day I was bumping into people who saw my name tag or recognized my face from

the internet and said that they have been listening to Iron Sharpens Iron for quite a while and have been

blessed by it.

But without further ado, I'm going to start the program today with a truly fascinating interview

with Frank Mullins.

Frank is a certified counselor with a specialized focus

in counseling sex offenders.

This is not the kind of interview that's going to necessarily brighten your day today, but it is

nonetheless, I think, a fascinating interview, and Frank is certainly filling a

niche in the counseling realm that needs to be filled, especially by

solid Bible -believing Christians, and I believe Frank is certainly in that category.

And so here is Frank Mullins, and I hope that you enjoy this interview or are

blessed by it, by it.

Perhaps someone in your life will need to hear this interview at some point,

and we're getting this interview ready right now.

So God bless you, and I hope that you are blessed by Frank Mullins' interview on Iron Sharpens Iron

live at the G3 Conference in Atlanta, Georgia.

Hi, this is Chris Arnson again, live from the G3 Conference

here in Atlanta, Georgia, and I am with Frank Mullins right now, who's

also attending the G3 Conference, and Frank has quite a

multifaceted ministry.

And first of all, welcome to Iron.

Sharpens Iron for the first time, Frank Mullins.

Oh, I'm excited to be here. Thank you so much.

And Frank, tell us something about your ministry and also about

your counseling ministry, which is something that you don't hear about a lot, especially

in the Reformed circles that I travel in.

I haven't heard or met a lot of those who counsel sex offenders, but we're going to get to

that in a minute.

Tell us something about your church and your theological background and so on.

Well, I am a graduate of Southeastern Seminary.

I have a Master of Divinity and Biblical Counseling from Southeastern and a Master of Theological Studies

from there, emphasizing historical theology there.

Toward the end, I really thought I was going to end up in counseling to start with, and then I really had a love for

theology.

I became a Calvinist in seminary, one of the rare Southern Baptist Calvinists

back in 96, my first semester there.

I found the Reformed faith and wasn't too popular in those circles back in 96.

As I say, I was a Calvinist before Calvinism was cool in the Southern Baptist Convention.

My love for theology led me to begin to teach.

I taught World Religion, New Testament, Old Testament in Butner Federal

Penitentiary.

And so it seems like God has moved me into an area to work in forensics

in the criminal background to teach theology, to do counseling.

And my first experience with dealing with sex offenders was through a couple of classes I was taking.

Eventually, my goal was to teach and so forth and so on.

Several things fell through at some Bible colleges that I was going to teach at, and I ended up having to move back to

Georgia.

And a friend that I had from several years ago had called me and said a company was needing

someone to work as a counselor, but I had to get my license.

And so I had to go and jump through a few hoops in Georgia to get my professional counseling license.

And so the company that I work for is a secular company.

We contract with the state of Georgia.

We work with the federal government.

We do federal probation and federal military parole.

And then we work with Georgia Department of Corrections.

We counsel convicted sex offenders on probation, and we

counsel anyone on parole who has had a past sex offense.

So they could be currently on parole for murder, aggravated assault, burglary.

And now they have also sometime in the past committed a sex crime.

So parole wants to protect themselves and make sure those guys get counseling.

So I am between two worlds, a world of light and a world of dark.

As I work with the state, I see myself as the sword.

And then on Sunday, I pastor a small church outside of Millersville, Georgia, Devereux Baptist.

We run about 30 members, and I've been pastoring for 20 years total at two churches.

And so that's.

A little bit of my background in those two areas.

Yeah.

If anyone needs to hear about the mercy and forgiveness of God, I'm

assuming it would be sex offenders.

Sex offenders are individuals who, even in prison, when you

have the most heinous of criminals wandering about,

from what I understand, the sex offenders, especially when they involve children, are

even viewed by murderers and all kinds of criminals as the lowest rung of

life in society.

And a sex offender's life, from what I understand, is very much in jeopardy when he

is walking through the doors of a prison.

In your experience working with sex offenders, and I'm sure just like anything else, there is a

mixture of people, but do you see much true, genuine

brokenness?

Those crying out for forgiveness or mercy, or is there a lot of.

Defiance, a mixture of both?

I would say if your audience, if you have people who've worked as prison chaplains

or do prison ministry, it's very similar to the same thing.

You have a mix, those who are quote -unquote jailhouse religion.

You have those who are just like normal people on the street.

The way they were on the outside is the way they are on the inside, and they come out the same way or worse a lot of times.

Then you have those who seek repentance.

They have a realization of the depths of their depravity, and they

have found in their life that their

family has turned against them, society has turned against them, and the

only place that they find shelter a lot of times is the church.

The church is a bastion.

I've done statistically about half of sex offenders go to some type of church.

Whether it's the true church, that's a question.

Over the years, I currently counsel about 300 sex offenders a week in group therapy.

Probably have evaluated close to 2 ,000 by now over the last 13 years.

It's a mixed bag of people from all walks of life.

I think I've dealt with close to 20 or 30 who offended within the church,

anywhere from pastors to youth ministers to Christian school

teachers to deacons, music ministers.

I had one guy who was in a gospel quartet and was at a church and offended while he was in singing at

a church.

It's a mixed group, several youth volunteers.

They come from a background where, and it's really interesting that

they, by all accounts, their church trusted them.

They believed that they were Christians.

They believed that they were born again.

Then they commit an atrocity against the church, against God, and

it changes people's views of them.

It changes their view of themselves to a degree because they have a realization

of, at once, maybe their depravity.

One of the things I emphasize, and people ask me this all the question, how in the world do you do that?

I can never do that.

I say, look, if Christ's

atonement cannot save a sex offender, it cannot save anyone.

I look at them as someone who's created in the image of God.

I start there.

Certainly, they're not children of God, but they're definitely created in the image of God.

They have dignity based on that fact.

Very few people treat them with dignity.

I treat them with dignity because they deserve that, because they have a creator just like I was created.

Except for the grace and providence of God, maybe they're Goliath a lot of times.

We want to, in a sense, present to them and show them that

there is a way of reconciliation.

Ultimately, and of course, being secular, I am the

sword more than I am their pastor, but I take opportunities and

share from a Christian worldview.

My background is in biblical counseling, so I share the Christian worldview and show the Christian

worldview is superior to a moralistic view, to a

psychological view of recovery.

Unfortunately, our scientific world is

moving toward a disease -based pedophilia.

In the same way the homosexual agenda has worked, the pedophiles are banding

together, and a lot of the therapists are moving to that model.

I will say that there is something different about a pedophile.

The average sex offenders—we have to separate that mentality

of pedophilia and a sex offender—is about 10 are

what we call true pedophiles.

They are attracted to children and children only.

There is something in their mindset that is different.

I think we might can go to Romans 1.

We deal with schizophrenia.

We deal with other mental illnesses, and there's just something there.

I don't understand it.

Even their brain, when they do the MRIs and the brain scans, there's something different about the brain of a

pedophile.

That's one of the things the research is.

There's something different about them.

They just are different.

Even when you talk to them, you can't understand the rationality of a person who is attracted to a

child.

I'm assuming, being a believer in the doctrines of sovereign grace, that

in spite of any proclivity toward a particular sin that any person may

have, he can never use anything as an excuse

to perhaps be looked upon with less severity,

not only by God, but by fellow humans.

He cannot use it as an excuse to continue in the sin.

Even if it's something different about the brain, that should not give any kind of.

License to...

Absolutely not.

I believe in the doctrine of total depravity.

I have no issue when somebody says, yes, we're sinners to the core.

I believe in our DNA is even affected by sin.

That's why we die.

Christ and his atonement transforms.

We're new creatures.

He renews the mind.

I have and deal with guys who I believe are born again, and we

talk.

Unfortunately, the health and wealth movement has moved into the prisons more so than Reformed Theology.

I know J .D. Hall. Jordan does prison ministry.

Very few sound theological guys go into the prisons.

We're ending up with charismatics that are finding their way in,

and they're going and reaching those people, and they're coming out.

From all walks of life, I'm dealing with bad theology.

As I said, the Christian worldview

that I present is oftentimes met with bad

theology.

What's wonderful is I enjoy when I counsel and do a class, one of the guys, he would say,

Mr. Mullis, I don't know if you know this or not, but that's in the Bible.

I said, really?

Tell me more about that.

It's a wonderful thing.

I have to trust the providence of God that God has placed me there in a unique,

almost like that Esther verse, for such a time as this.

There's no one that I know of, at least in the state of Georgia, that has a unique background like

me working with sex offenders.

And God has given me a special grace to reach them.

I really think that because of my reformed faith, that I

understand by grace alone, through faith alone, that God can reach

in and take a heart of stone that has done some of the most heinous things.

But again, our sin that we, quote unquote, non -sex offenders commit,

and Jesus made sexual sin quite clear, it's not just physical, it's mental,

that God can save anyone he chooses to, whether they have

committed a little sin or a big sin.

It was kind of the Martin Luther mindset.

Yeah, I'd like to have you give Christians

some words of counsel and

chastisement, advice, because

that sin is something that I believe.

Most Christians, including myself, find probably more

difficulty in extending any kind of attitude of forgiveness or even hope

for transformation when we hear about someone who has

committed those things, depending upon the circumstances, of course, because as we both know,

in this day and age, things can be truly trumped up or exaggerated and

so on.

But other than that, the real acts that are undeniably acts of

molestation, we tend to have an attitude that really can

be described as nothing other than hatred, and it boils up in us.

And very often we just look upon a person as a reprobate who has just no hope, and

the only thing that would be good for that person would.

Be an execution or something.

Well, I mean, I've heard that from Christians, why don't we just put a bullet in their head, Frank?

And I was like, you know, what manner you judge, you may be judged too.

And when I respond like that, they just kind of look at me.

One of the things I'll start with, and this is kind of how I respond to that question, is that

there is a hierarchy among even sex offenders.

I've heard a child pornographer say, I had no real victims.

They were just pictures.

I've had a gentleman who was a rapist who would say, well, at least my victim was an

adult.

The statutory rape, well, she consented.

Now, the pedophile, he's at the bottom of the list.

He suffers.

But what I notice is, and this is very important, I think, to

imputation of righteousness.

I feel really good about myself when I go counsel sex offenders, because I look around the room and I go,

Lord, thank you, I'm not the sinner like that.

We're like the Pharisee.

Thank you, I'm not like that sinner.

And if I compare my righteousness to other people, I'm always going to be self -righteous.

But when I look at Scripture and I see Jesus Christ, the God -man, who came to this

earth and lived and walked a perfect life, and I take and look at my sin and my

depravity and compare it to that righteousness, it's filthy rags.

And that I know I need a Savior who can atone, no matter what my sin is, that he can atone and

forgive.

And thank God, as I've said, that I have not gone down that

road.

And I have dealt with pastors who you would have thought day

one would have never done such a thing.

Youth ministers who would have never done that.

Your youth minister, your youth worker is a youth minister, and you

find out that he's been sleeping with one of your teenage girls in your youth group.

I have a youth minister who is having sex with the pastor's daughter.

I mean, all of these things, nobody thought these guys were going to end up like that.

I mean, the church trusted them, and they turned out to be wolves in shepherds' clothing.

And, you know, as I said, and this is the fear and the

question is, do they come to the church to molest kids, or is it a circumstance that

just ends up that way?

It's a little bit of both.

The church has to be careful.

But on the other end, to answer your question, is that if I compare myself to a sex

offender, I'm always going to be a good person.

The situation with especially pedophilia, you continually hear in the media that this is

something that has been described as incurable, that once

a pedophile, always a pedophile kind of a thing, even though that may not

necessarily be true.

In fact, I believe that obviously Jesus Christ can transform anyone.

At the same time, sin has consequences.

And would you advise churches, no matter how repentant an individual may be,

he should never be placed in a position of

authority or a position where he is going to be spending a lot of alone time with children.

And as much as that may break your heart to treat someone like that who has repented

for years and is a new person, don't you think that that's just wise activity?

You know, wise as serpents, right?

And understanding you are dealing with, and that's the problem, is when someone comes into treatment

with me, they generally have one sex offense that we know of.

Then we do a sexual history polygraph, and we find out that there's anywhere from three to 12 other

victims.

And so we don't know if this guy's coming to us, is a pedophile or not.

All we know that he is convicted of one, maybe two sex offenses.

When we do the evaluation, we do a polygraph and we find out.

So you don't really know a lot of times who shows up at your church unless

they've been in treatment or they are totally honest with you.

But who's totally honest about their past and even within the church?

You know, we don't do that with the average person who comes in the church and asks them, oh, so how many

people you killed in the past?

No, we don't do those things.

So we know very little about the past.

We know what we see, you know, and Jesus told us that the wheat and the tares

are there together.

And we don't know what the true motive of this gentleman is.

And I'll tell you this, one of the things that has saved the church more than anything is insurance companies not wanting to

pay out.

I met with our insurance company at my church this past week, and we went through a lot of this and I spent a lot of time

discussing.

Churches are now being required to do trainings in sex offenders.

And one of the things they want them to do is have training of not only how

to train your church to recognize sex offenders, but also how to deal with a sex

offender who comes to your church.

Now, I want to scare you just very quickly.

90 % of all sex offenses are first -time offenders.

So background checks are not going to be sufficient.

My insurance company, which is a fairly large insurance company, have five

sexual misconduct reports a week.

The national average is four.

Now, is this predominantly with children.

Are you speaking.

About?

Generally, it is going to be your children and teenagers.

I have consulted with several churches over the last years.

I've been helping them put together sex offender policies.

And, of course, insurance companies are forcing that.

And recently, I received a phone call from a church where they've had

two separate men.

One was making inappropriate texts that were

borderline flirtatious.

The other one is now being investigated by the police and more than likely

is going to end up in prison or probation at the least for what he was doing.

And that is a constant.

I deal with allegations even from my guys who go to church.

And we try to vet them in the churches they go to.

And the probation officers are required to go and speak to the pastors where they're going to these churches and make sure they are.

And, you know, I tell my guys, I said, look, we want to not only protect children, we want to protect you

from false allegations.

Because these guys are on.

If you have someone who is doesn't like sex offenders for whatever reason, and who really does, you know, and I make that, you know,

and I asked my guy says, Now, raise your hand.

How many of you like sex offenders before you came one?

You know, and, you know, it's in and there are I've had

instances where churches have purposely ran off sex offenders who were doing nothing but

wanting to worship and and be forgiven.

And so I found churches treat sex offenders.

One of most churches treat the ones either totally anathema or total

grace, a free grace where you have free reign to come in and worship wherever you want to,

which is which is very scary.

And that's one of the things that I caution churches about is don't be one of those to

find a middle ground where you can allow people to receive the grace of God, but you do it

in such a way.

That you're protecting your sheep.

There is a real phenomena that is quite disturbing, quite

frightening, because it could make any of us a victim.

And that is the victim.

That is the phenomenon, as you just alluded to, of false

accusations of molestation of children or what have you.

And this has, from what I understand, become something that is on the

rise, these false accusations, especially in areas of bitter divorces.

You might even have disgruntled church members who leave a church for

one reason or another and who wants to seek vengeance somehow.

The national average that this is a statistic is that false allegations are only

about four to eight percent, about four to eight percent.

And then matter of fact, that's most all crimes is about four to eight percent are false allegations.

It doesn't make sense for someone to accuse someone of a sex offense just

because of all the drama involved.

But what you did mention is child custody cases.

Anytime I have someone who comes in who has been involved in a serious

divorce, child custody dispute, all those things, and they're accused of that,

we do polygraphs, specific polygraphs.

And I dealt with a gentleman who I believe and the polygrapher believed

was falsely accused by his ex -wife.

He spent 20 years in prison.

Wow.

Because of that?

Yes.

Wow.

He came to me and I asked him, I said, why are you, if I were you, I'd be angry and bitter.

And I'm the first, you know, we were the first, the first one to believe his story.

And the polygrapher we use, I trust very much.

And I've only had him out of a couple thousand, only maybe three people out of a

couple of thousand that he believed were truly innocent.

And he said, I knew if I became angry and bitter, it would make it more believable.

He says, I knew that eventually, hopefully someone would believe my story.

You know, it's kind of, I don't know if I'm just speaking about myself here, but I would think

instinctively that the opposite would be true.

And that's, and to be honest, that's why I kind of believe the story to a

degree is, you know, and, and I don't want to, you know, I can't divulge really the

circumstances behind the case, but from what he was accused of, I believe the prosecutor had an agenda just

because of who he was in the community.

I believe there was an agenda they had.

And this is the sad part.

It's, prosecution sometimes is like a bulldog that latches on to something and refuses.

And then, of course, even if they know they're wrong, they can't go back because of lawsuits.

And, and so it's sad, 20 years of this man's life, the prime of, and really the prime of his

life.

When I do counseling, I said, you know, I said, if you're really young, when you get caught, you got time

to recover.

If you're really old and retired, it's not that big of a deal because you've lived, but when you get caught for a crime in

your thirties or forties, that's when, you know, and I tell them, that's when you make the most money financially.

That's when you raise and rear your children and you go to prison and you have

really the vast majority of your life.

And, and, you know, and that leads to the gospel to a degree is really, is this

it, that you were put on this earth to just commit a crime and go to prison and come out

and die?

You know, isn't there more, you know, to this, to this life?

And is there something more in the afterlife?

You know, that, that, that is what's, you know, and a

sad part is that most of these guys come from, you know, a lot of them are low income

families.

They, they were raised, they committed just another crime and that's all

they, all they knew.

And they don't, they don't know how to understand the God of the Bible

or even have an understanding of what true theology is because a lot of them were raised in

either not in church or they were raised in a church that.

Was a false gospel.

Have you developed a keen sense to

detect, I mean, obviously you wouldn't be infallible in regard to this, but have you,

are you confident that you developed a keen sense to be able to detect whether someone is being truthful or

lying about something like pedophilia?

Here's, here's, here's, here's my joke.

I often use one on that because I'm asked that question a good bit.

I said, I'm almost always right about the guys that are going to mess up,

but I'm more, I'm more, never more wrong when I think the guy is not going to mess up.

Hmm.

That's the ones who a lot of times, that's the reason we polygraph,

you know, you're, you're, you're a liar and you're a father of the devil, you know.

Um, so you, so you trust polygraphs, you think that they're reliable?

I trust a polygrapher more so than the polygraph and I deal with a very good

polygrapher who's been doing it since the eighties and he was a, he was a, an investigator.

Um, my, the owner of the company I worked for, he went to polygraph school, very sharp, very sharp.

And you know, he's a, he's a, uh, former Catholic agnostic quote unquote.

And, um, God has, God has placed me, um, very much in a

position where I am around certainly, um, a

reformed mindset, probably one of the only ones in the country with a reformed mindset who's

doing, uh, counseling with, with sex offenders.

Um, and I, I think that gives me a keen eye, uh, a keen eye and, and I, and I, I

use discernment, you know, I think charismatic would call it a prophecy, but I believe in discernment.

Um, I believe in being polemical.

I believe that there is a need to study and know the

behaviors of someone and understand that people are self

-centered, they're self -righteous.

They are, uh, in a, in a belief and I deal with a lot of narcissism, which is basically biblical

pride.

And they, they want to get over on me.

You know, they want to, a lot of, some of them know the game of the system.

Um, and you know, and it's no different than in the church.

There are people in the church who presented their pastor.

Oh, look, I'm this good Christian and, and I'm a good moral person.

And, and they believe that their works righteousness is going to get them into heaven.

Just like, you know, these guys believe that they're going to have a works righteous, you know,

conscience that is going to convince me that they're cured, quote unquote.

And, um, that's, that's where we are.

And, you know, you brought up, um, the question earlier, is there a cure?

Well, the cure obviously is Jesus Christ for their sins.

Now, whether it's something they're going to struggle with that, that sin that so easily entangles them.

I deal, I deal with this guy.

I believe he's converted.

He has an issue with homosexuality.

He refuses to be that way, but he falls

into it.

Well, once a year he engages in a, in a homosexual act.

And he comes to me crying, repentant.

And he tells me this before the polygraph.

And I believe is no different than someone in your congregation who said,

pastor, I've looked at porn this week.

Pastor had too much to drink this week.

You never hear one says pastor ate too much this week.

But we, we tend to pick and choose our sins that we want to look at.

And it's usually the sins that we don't struggle with that we point out in others.

Um, and, and that's, that's the scary part is that we condemn

instead of have compassion for someone.

And I see Jesus being compassionate towards centers.

Yes, he did judge them, but I believe he judged the ones who were not repentant, those who were not sorrowful for their

sins.

Um, the one who comes with, with true sorrow and true remorse

and are looking, I don't like being this way.

Um, that's who, that's who I believe is, um,

someone that is, is working through their salvation with fear and.

Trembling.

Now, having said what you said, do you, don't you think, or should I say, do you think, I don't want to

feed my own opinions into your head, but, um, uh, let me just tell you where I have some

difficulty in our day and age with modern evangelicalism is

that they seem to be buying too much

of the secular society's understanding and view of homosexuality.

And even many conservative evangelicals who would view it as a sin

will actually categorize a group of people as homosexual

and will, uh, deem them as homosexual

Christians who happen to be chaste or gay Christians.

And it appears as if it is buying too much into the

world's understanding of being homosexual or, or if it, if that is even a

category, because that's an activity, it's a sin.

And, uh, and, and I don't think that we should necessarily be defining ourselves by

sinful activities.

Um, but, uh, you don't hear people saying I'm a fornicating.

Christian, right?

I'm an adultery Christian.

You know, why, why is that the sexual sin that we, we want to say, Oh, you identify with that sexual sin.

Okay.

Well, I used to be a fornicator.

I used to be an adulterer or I still am.

I mean, cause that's what they're doing.

They're actually still participating in an unrepentant ongoing sin.

What I, what I find interesting and I deal, I deal with homosexuals in my, my group.

Um, I still treat them with respect and dignity as human beings.

Um, I'm very careful in my groups to guys who use

derogatory epitaphs to them.

Um, but I, I certainly, I don't condone it.

Um, and this is the issue of ethics within my field.

Um, my, as I said, I'm working on my doctorate now, my first class, uh, is dealing with the ethics of

that and, and counselors who are going to be forced within such a way, um, who are going to be

forced.

Some of the ethics now say that you cannot refuse to treat a

transsexual, someone who is homosexual.

And that's one of the ethics.

And that's why a lot of, uh, Christians are not getting licensed.

Now, professional counselors are like myself are not getting a license because of those new ethics.

But you know, what's funny, if a guy said, I refuse to treat sex offenders, they wouldn't

bat an eye because I know several who refuse to treat sex offenders.

And so it's almost this agenda that counselors are being forced into.

Um, I, I've spoken to several legals and, and, you know, worry that, you know,

I'm going to, maybe something I've said in a sermon is going to be used against me as a counselor.

Um, someone I refuse to counsel a certain way is going to be used against me.

Um, so there's definitely an agenda, uh, toward that sin.

Um, and look, if you're, if your only testimony is, I used to be a

homosexual or how is that any different?

I used to be a fornicator or adulterer.

I mean, to me, yes, God's grace, but God's grace didn't save a homosexual

any different than he saved anyone else.

It's the same grace.

His justification is equal.

His justification is equal.

So I don't, I don't understand

the church's desire to embrace it.

We don't embrace any other sin.

Like that.

It's as if, especially obviously you are baffled when you hear

evangelicals who embrace it as not necessarily embrace it as something good,

but they embrace it.

As something that God cannot change.

Myself personally, I'm about ready to disavow the term evangelical.

It doesn't, it doesn't, you know, I think R .C. Sproul says imputationist might be a better term.

Um, I look, I think there's a reason

that most as reformed, there's a reason that most of us have small churches

is because we don't cater to the mindset of the world.

We believe in the sufficiency of scripture.

Um, what's very scary to me is the same people who fought for inerrancy and believe in inerrancy don't trust the

sufficiency of scripture and even in the counseling of

the people within the church.

Now I do have, and I want to make sure I say this, um, understanding

is that the only thing that scripture is sufficient to counsel the lost is the gospel.

You can preach the gospel, but they cannot understand.

They can't see no matter what I try to counsel them from the Bible.

They may, they may have some mental assent to it,

but it becomes very difficult.

And so if you choose to be a Christian who counsels, you

have to see yourself as a sword of the state.

If it's in forensics, that your goal there is to protect society.

It is to, uh, to make sure that they don't reoffend, that they don't harm

anyone else, whether men, women, or children.

And if so, I, I testify as an expert witness in court and I have, and I've testified and

many to prison.

Um, and that sometimes

that Romans one, we do know that there are some who are reprobate and I,

now I don't know who they are.

Right.

Only God knows that, but we do know they exist.

And when someone presents signs that they do not care what happens

to society, totally hardened conscious.

Yes.

Those that, that are hard.

And I've come across those and, and I can't, we, we don't understand.

We can't fathom it.

And there's stories I could tell that would, you know, would, would, you know, just mess with your listeners,

minds that I've had to deal with.

I've seen and heard stuff that the depths of

depravity of man is almost like that old show, the shadow who knows God knows, right?

The, the hearts of hearts of men and is desperately wicked.

And don't, don't let us forget that is that we're desperately wicked.

And, and I come across men who are desperately wicked and have

their only desire is to harm and to hurt.

And, and, but yet the grace of God can, if he so chooses to reach down and save them.

I think a valuable way to come to the conclusion of our interview would be for you to

give practical advice to churches or perhaps anyone,

teachers and others who are involved in any kind of activities that

involve children, scout masters, whatever the case may be, coaches.

In fact, I know that you're involved in martial arts.

I think people who are training children in martial arts, so there's a whole, obviously countless things that

we could come up with.

But perhaps with a particular focus on churches, obviously, since this is a Christian radio program,

I would assume that the advice that you would give to churches on how to be

best on the alert and best prevent acts of

child molestation or other kinds of sexual assault would also be

simultaneously in very often ways to prevent false accusations of these things.

So if you could give us some practical counsel on that.

Those of, I have four children.

I love my daughters very much, but there's a

point where I'm glad when they go to bed.

I'm glad when they go visit my parents on occasion and me and my wife can have a break.

We understand that as parents.

So if you have someone who comes in your church, who all they want to do every

waking moment is to spend time in your nursery, in your children's

program, with your youth program, let your radar

antennas be up because nobody likes to be around children all the time.

Those are the ones that you have to be very, those who immediately try to get involved in your kid's program

without being vetted.

Anytime that they're alone with children, there seems to be some some quietness.

One of the things I will tell you is believe the children's stories, no matter how

off the wall it is.

If it seems strange to you, even though we give people the benefit of the doubt as Christians, remember,

we're all sinners.

And that once you, once you look back in retrospect, you go, man, how did I

not see that?

Well, the reason was you, you didn't want to see it because you didn't want to believe what you thought.

Trust your instincts to a degree.

Vet your people.

Your insurance company is making you get the background checks.

Sometimes those do do help.

Have your church do trainings with your children and nursery workers.

Follow your insurance policies.

I will say two things that I like to say.

If you have an accusation of your church, first three calls you should make, number one, to your

insurance company, number two, to your lawyer, and number three, to the proper officials to report

it.

Believe the victim first before you believe the perpetrator

and follow biblical principles of church discipline.

But again, I want to reiterate, call your insurance, call your lawyer, report it

to the authorities because you are mandated if a victim reports it in most every state.

The state of Georgia is one of them that now requires pastors to report if the victim tells it.

Now, if the perpetrator tells it in Georgia, you still have that confidence of the

priesthood here in Georgia.

But again, I work with

Striving for Eternity Ministries with Andrew Rappaport.

I'm on his board and I'm one of their speakers.

If your church would like me to come in and to do a talk on this, I

would gladly do that.

I do these talks on a regular basis.

You can reach us at Striving for Eternity and you can find us there through Google.

Thank you.

Great.

Just briefly, obviously, I couldn't just completely pass by your experience and your

skill involving Brazilian Jiu -Jitsu because it's obviously an unusual thing.

I've had programs on martial arts with a couple of folks who are black belts in

various martial arts.

And there is obviously some level of controversy in

that kind of a thing because there are Christians who think that anything that evokes

violence of any kind is improper, is sinful.

And obviously, I would believe that training oneself to better

protect not only themselves, but their wives, their children and others who are

less capable of defending themselves, I think is a very noble and good thing.

But tell us something about your view of the martial arts as a Christian, how you got involved in them and how

you specifically were drawn to this unique form of martial art.

Well, I guess I could talk about that as about.

As long as I deal with the sex offenders.

But in short, I was bullied as a child.

I was much smaller than I am now.

When I was 17, my youngest, my middle brother started

karate and I was like, no way he started karate, he's going to be able to beat me up too.

So we started karate and I progressed through that and eventually

ran into some people in seminary who were doing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

I played around with a little bit, but became involved in it pretty heavily in 1996 when I started seminary.

I helped start a program at Southeastern Seminary.

For those who talk about it, the seminary itself had a martial arts program.

I taught Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and I've been involved in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for about 20 years now.

And we actually have started a podcast on the Bible Thumping Wingnut Network.

Len Pettis and I are doing Grappling with Theology and we discuss many of the questions that you just

brought up.

We take martial arts, self -defense

and those aspects and we transition them to topics of theology and the gospel.

How can you transition what you do in the sports

world?

How can you do it in the martial arts world?

How do you transition that?

And we're going to talk about different topics that a lot of martial arts

enthusiasts who are Christians deal with and how they have to respond and act to those questions.

That mentality of martial arts is one that I deal with just about like the sex offenders.

It seems like I deal on the fringe of a lot of things that Christians like.

Really, can a Christian do that?

Can a Christian be involved in that?

And I would say yes, it's your right motive.

Don't let it be your idol.

I know people whose martial arts is their idol.

You know, we're idol factories, as Calvin said.

We're constantly trying to put something in place of God.

Don't let anything, you know, any sport.

I know Christians who let basketball in North Carolina during that time become their idol.

You know, Sundays is their football idol.

So, no different.

And obviously, Indianapolis would be a place where that would be from.

Indiana.

Before we go, I'd like you to give perhaps some advice to Christians who may have

an interest in pursuing or investigating being involved in martial arts.

I have interviewed, as I said, a couple of Christians pastors who have been

very prolific and skilled and they achieved very high levels of

expertise and success in the martial arts who have distinguished between

those martial arts that do not have as

innate aspects of them, pagan worship, pagan or

cultic philosophy, religion, worship, and those that

are basically neutral in regard to those things, activities in the martial arts,

forms of martial arts that do not require one actually do things that would be

involving occultic practices or pagan practices, whether one views them with a

religious ideology or not.

If you could give your own thoughts on.

That.

Well, I was drawn to Brazilian jiu -jitsu because

it was basically purely invented at the

time for a smaller guy to be able to defend himself against a larger person.

It was invented solely martial and no arts, even though

there is art.

It's a beautiful sport.

If you understand it and understand what these people are able to do

and see and how they're able to do these techniques you look at and you're going, no way he just did that.

That's the beauty of it.

I like the beautiful patterns that the blood splatter makes.

That's definitely one of the issues.

Again, Brazilian jiu -jitsu is definitely, and we interviewed

Wody Bachman.

He received his blue belt in Brazilian jiu -jitsu in competition and he talked about how you're

humbled by it.

I want to know how you achieved the miracle of interviewing Wody Bachman.

Jiu -jitsu.

He's passionate about jiu -jitsu.

As soon as I saw him light up I was like, he loves this sport.

Very much in the same way any parent who takes their children

to a martial arts school sit and watch and listen

and see how the kids respond, how they act that have been there for a while.

Talk to the parents.

Read what the reviews are.

We live in a modern age of Facebook.

That school is on Facebook.

You can see the reviews.

Yelp may have some reviews.

Get some ideas.

Make sure that they are legitimate instructors, that they're just something there to collect your money

month to month and your child never really achieves anything.

Most American martial arts today, very little of them are really Eastern

philosophies.

You may get some of that in the kung fu or things like that, but most, if you go to an average

Taekwondo school or Brazilian jiu -jitsu school, they're emphasizing

respect, confidence, how to treat one another, and it's

teaching them to deal with adversity and not be bullied.

That's a total different aspect today is that we have gone bully crazy

to a degree.

I'm not completely convinced that what everybody says is bullying is always bullying.

We use that term a lot.

I was talking to Jordan Hall about polemics and bullying, how people accuse him of being a bully when he's just telling people the truth.

Find a school that is going to fit your child and

listen to see what they're doing.

Are they teaching them transcendental meditation?

Again, your child is going to be getting secular worldview

and make sure that what they're learning

is conducive to Christianity and that you are following up with them and making sure

they understand that if they're learning something, make sure they're learning the biblical principle that is involved with that

and teach them to be analytical about understanding.

Are they teaching them to hurt others?

Martial arts can be very much used to defend or to harm.

That's my suggestion.

I'd like you to close with once.

Again repeating any kind of contact information you care to share.

Strivingforeternity .org.

That's.

Our website with Andrew Rappaport and we have Anthony Silvestro from Creation Revival.

The Bible Thumping Wingnut Network, you can find me on there.

Our podcast should be out within the first couple episodes out in the next month.

You can find us on there.

You can reach me if you want.

To through email rfmullisjr at gmail .com.

Great, well it's been

an honor and a privilege to.

Interview you today, brother.

Thank you.

It was wonderful.

Thank you so much.

God bless.

Well, we're going to a station break right now.

I truly enjoyed that fascinating interview with Frank Mullis and hope you did as well.

If you'd like to join us on the air, here I am announcing my email address for questions

when I am completely forgetting that we are not doing a live show but airing the G3

conference interviews.

I apologize for that false start there, but we're going to a break right now.

Don't go away.

We're coming right back after these messages.

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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.

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Welcome back, and I just heard some good news.

It actually had to do with an error I made at the beginning of the program.

I believe I said that the Morning Drive slot that Iron

Sharpens Iron's pre -recorded version is airing

during the lineup of Grace Life Radio in Lake City, Florida, 90

.1 FM.

I believe I erroneously said 8 .30 to 10 .30 am, but it's actually 8 to 10 am,

which I think is even better, because it keeps it more in that drive time

period when people are commuting to work and so on.

So it is the pre -recorded version of Iron Sharpens Iron airing

daily on WPGT

90 .1 FM Grace Life Radio in Lake City, Florida,

and also, of course, airing live every day Monday through Friday via live

streaming 4 to 6 pm Eastern on ironsharpensironradio .com.

And we are now returning to our pre -recorded interviews that we conducted

on site at the G3 Conference in Atlanta, Georgia between January 19th and the 21st,

and we are going now to an interview we had with Cameron Butell, and I hope that

you are blessed by this interview as well.

And please, as this prepares to play, keep praying for

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, as we need sponsors very urgently.

So here we are.

This is Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio here live at the G3 Conference in

Atlanta, Georgia, and I'm going about speaking to some of the folks who are here, and at the

exhibitors booth right next to mine, we have representing Grace to You

Ministries, which is the ministry of John MacArthur.

I'm sure most of the Iron Sharpens Iron listeners are fully aware of Dr. MacArthur and his ministry.

And we have Cameron Butell here, and I'd like to find out more about Cameron,

why he is here in the States all the way from his homeland in Australia, and what led him to

the Master's Seminary in Grace to You.

But it's an honor to have you on Iron Sharpens Iron today, Cameron.

Well, thanks for having me, Chris.

And as I said, you are from Australia, whereabouts in Australia?

A small western Queensland town called Chinchilla, but probably best say I spent most of my adult life in

the city of Brisbane, which is the third largest city.

And I'm assuming that's where the animal comes from, the chinchilla?

No, not actually.

No, it's a mistake.

The aboriginals, there's pine trees out there.

It's a very dry area, but there's pine trees.

And the aboriginals called them chinchilla.

And the people who heard them say it thought they said chinchilla.

So no connection to the animal.

And so what brought you from Australia all the way here to the United States and

specifically to Master's Seminary?

Well, actually, my wife is Danish, and we lived in Australia for

the first six years of our marriage.

When she was pregnant with our second child, she wanted to go back home to Denmark.

And I agreed to that.

So we lived in Denmark.

It was at that time when the internet was really coming alive with

information.

I was starting to hunt down good sources, good water holes to drink from, so to speak, and

getting a better understanding of the gospel, but also of ecclesiology and a church.

And we were naive in going to Denmark, because when we got there, as we really looked close and we hunted and

so forth, we found there was no gospel preaching.

Churches there.

Wow.

In the whole country?

We couldn't find any.

No, it's a country of 5 million people.

We really couldn't find anywhere that was faithful to the gospel.

Even it's very liberal Lutheran.

There's a few conservative Lutherans, but even the conservative Lutherans are really mainly big on

baptismal regeneration.

So it was really grim.

There was some prosperity.

The other vibrant churches, if you want to say that, were prosperity churches, but there was no faithful

gospel preaching, no one really

faithfully teaching the doctrine of man, a right understanding of man, a

right understanding of the gospel, the cross, our need to repent, our guilt before

God, the reality of judgment.

Just those things were completely absent from everywhere we looked.

You're talking about a very tiny population.

A lot of people token Lutherans through baptism.

I think 80 % of the population are baptized, but sprinkled as babies.

They'll go to church a few times in their life.

They'll go there for their baptism, for their confirmation, for their marriage and for their funeral, maybe some

Christmases and Easters.

But it's a very token, and even among the Lutheran churches, there's no

real belief in the Bible.

There's certainly no reflection on the life and teaching of Martin Luther whatsoever.

So obviously, if you went to Master's Seminary eventually, there must have been some belief

that you had a call from God placed upon your heart to pursue the ministry

in some.

Way.

Yeah, well, it's amazing how far a lot of anger can take you, I guess.

I was really ticked off.

I was really frustrated.

We found some other believers around the country.

I worked very hard through social media and other things to find other believers, but I was the one who was

sufficiently ticked off to make some trouble and try and make some

things happen.

We managed to get some believers together, and eventually, with the help of Paul Washer, who graciously came and visited us,

we were able to plant a church there.

And I took on the preaching responsibility.

Not that I was a trained preacher, but someone had to preach.

So I ended up preaching, working in a factory and preaching.

And by the grace of God, God graces us to do things beyond what we're capable of, especially in

desperate circumstances.

And so God has still prospered the work of the reformed churches that we planted in

Denmark, and we're very grateful for that.

But at the same time, not being Danish, it was very hard to really support

ourselves.

Also, I wanted to preach better.

You know, Martin Lloyd -Jones called Logic on Fire.

And when you hear, I think, sermon audio and through Wretched Radio and things like that, I really

started to hear just amazing preachers, just preaching that just made me sore.

And I really wanted to do that.

I really want to preach just great sermons, because

God is great.

I want to represent him in a great way.

His word deserves to be preached in a powerful, life

-changing, turning -your -world -upside -down kind of way.

Leave it to you from a land down under to use that reference.

Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

No truth to the rumor that the toilet water circles the other way.

There's no truth to that rumor.

But I wanted to go.

And the fact was, you know, listening to different people, there was a number of good preachers, but John MacArthur,

I saw his theology consistently applied in every sphere.

And were you exposed to that through TV, radio, literature?

Initially through Wretched, via the Master Radio that became Wretched.

They'd play sound bytes of him.

And I'd go and check out.

But my favorite stuff was things like when John MacArthur went on Larry King.

And I just thought, this is how it should be done.

He's not being a jerk, but he's not backing down.

And he's speaking clear propositional truth.

He's preaching profound truth simply and excessively, but he's not apologizing.

And I saw his theology, what he preached, consistently applied, whether he's talking to a church

member or an elder or a false teacher or in the

secular media or to politicians.

It was consistent all the way.

I always said he's one of the only preachers who could go on TV and lower my blood pressure at the same time.

And so when the theological bombs were dropping, I wanted to be in his trench.

So there was no question in my mind, I wanted to go to the Master's seminary

because he's president there.

That was the main reason.

And I was heavily influenced by his series on the doctrines of grace.

And so I wanted to go there.

How long ago was that?

Another reason was Master's seminary is the only seminary in America to have an In -N -Out burger on the same

street.

So that was the clincher, probably.

Yeah, I have not had the privilege of eating there yet.

So how long ago was that?

I started Master's seminary in January of 2012, and I recently graduated last summer.

So Grace Chew hired me during my time at Master's seminary.

They liked about me the things that most people hated.

So what would those things be?

I think a passion for the truth and a commitment to understanding Paul's expectation in Galatians

1 is that the gospel is knowable and easily differentiated

from a false gospel.

And people should be held to account for that.

We have a responsibility to get that right.

And so, yeah, I was

intensely disliked in Denmark by a lot of people.

People didn't really want me to, I guess, would rather I just go away.

You mean, are you talking about your average lost person or even brothers and sisters?

No, not actually professing believers, mainly church leaders.

That was a problem because I was what we were preaching.

We were really making waves, and they didn't like it.

They wanted us to go away.

These would be like mainstream evangelicals?

Hard to say.

You could say your run -of -the -mill

40 days of your best prayer of Jabez now kind of church, I guess.

They didn't like us, and that's understandable.

I don't expect them to like me.

I've always said they say you can judge a man by his friends.

I like to think you can also judge a man by his enemies, and I like to think I made the right kind of enemies.

I guess it's up to other people to judge that, but I like to think that.

They appreciated the work that I'd done over there, and they were keen to have me as part of their

research and writing there in the web department.

So I write on the blog now, Grace to You, and it's a real honor and privilege because I absolutely love the

ministry.

I love the people I work for.

It's not just that.

I understand the importance of the ministry for someone who's in a far -flung corner of the world.

Grace to You was like drinking from a fire hydrant for me.

I like to drink from a fire hydrant.

I think that's the best way to drink.

So I was very grateful that I was able to tap into that resource,

learn in a sense.

That's how I did the best I could to preach and learning about, I guess, a

blueprint for a church, blueprint for gospel preaching, to doing ministry.

They were just incredible blessing that the vault was thrown open at Grace to You, and

I was able to access their material and use that.

So I'm very grateful for that, and I'm acutely aware

there are other people in far -flung corners of the world who might be struggling to find a church, something, and need help, and that's

lifeblood for them.

So I count it a great honor to serve there, and I want to see

the ministry flourish because I think it's important that it reaches all those.

Obscure corners of the world.

And while you're there in California, are you still thinking,

contemplating about pursuing pastoral ministry anywhere?

Yeah, I mean, my greatest desire is to.

Preach.

Writing is my second outlet, and it is a wonderful outlet and a great blessing that I'm able to be employed and do

that.

I can't believe that.

I guess I feel like the kid who played Nintendo all his life, and then he gets hired by Nintendo to test

all the games out.

So there is a kid in the candy store, I guess, kind of experience

for me in a way.

But my greatest desire is to preach, and I do some preaching.

At the moment, I'm in a little bit of a visa limbo, just in a bit of an in -between holding pattern kind of

situation.

So we're just waiting to see what happens with opportunities and so forth.

But my greatest desire is to preach.

But certainly any opportunity I have to

contend for the once -for -all delivered faith, that

thrills me.

And I count it a great privilege, and I hope and pray that I do it in a way that.

Honors the God who saved me.

And obviously God's plans are often different than our own, but

what is the place that you envision, at least, eventually becoming a preacher?

Would you prefer to stay here in the States?

Do you have a longing to return to Australia, or perhaps even Denmark,

or someplace else?

People ask me about homesickness sometimes,.

And I say to them, you know, I felt homesick all my life, and then I came here.

So I love America, not for the reasons a lot of people might think.

I know America has many problems, but the thing I love about America is it's still the

heartland of good and bad theology, but everyone in

America is an evangelist for something, and it's alive.

And so I would take an atheist who hates me over a fellow believer who's

indifferent, because I like the contending

that it matters, and that we're alive, and it's on, and it's happening.

And I love that, at least in America, I guess, there are people who take these

things very seriously.

It's where the opportunity has been.

But I'm open to an opportunity anywhere, and I do preach now, but as a pastor,

we'll see what opportunities open up and what happens, I guess.

I'm waiting and seeing and just trying to work hard

with whatever doors open to me.

And by the way, you may not know this, but one of your superiors at Grace to You is supposed to be joining us

very soon.

Phil Johnson is going to be sitting down with us and having a little interview.

But before you go, I want to get your reflections.

I can guarantee the interview with Phil is going to be a whole lot better.

Never a dull moment with Phil Johnson.

Yes, I've had Phil on my program many times.

It's amazing to me how accessible he makes himself to me, and that's a

great honor and blessing.

And it's very humbling, actually, that he, even sometimes with very little notice, has

come on the show if a guest canceled or something.

I'm glad you say that because a lot of people don't know this.

Phil is an exceedingly kind man who is zealous about the truth.

And he's the man in James that talks about those who are respecters of

persons and the sin of partiality.

Phil is the opposite of that, as much as I can think of anyone being the opposite of that, just in terms of his

generosity with people who even he doesn't know of his time.

So, yes, it'll definitely be a better interview.

I think of Phil sometimes as a walking ground zero.

There's always something happening around him, but I'm sure that interview, there won't be a dull moment.

But before you go, I'd like to get some of your insights or reflections

on the differences between being in Australia

and anywhere else in the world where you have lived or visited in contrast to the United

States.

Yeah, I think I was kind of alluding to that.

Earlier when I was talking about what I liked about America.

The difference is many places in Australia and in Europe, there is an indifference.

There's just a cultural indifference to almost everything.

And people complain America's going that way, but it's still very different.

Americans aren't indifferent.

Americans energize and gather around things.

Even when it's wrong, they still will get worked up about it.

People are passionate about things.

People are not neutral about things.

And I like that.

I like that.

I think that's a great marketplace of ideas where things are thrashed out.

And I like to be there where that's happening.

I find it insufferable to be in a place of indifference where people don't care either way about anything.

And there is that.

In Australia, we say that she'll be right, mate.

It'll all work out.

It'll be okay.

No need to worry about it.

Because no one worries about anything because action often doesn't get taken when it needs to be.

So I encountered that with, I guess, things that mattered, relating to

Hillsong Church in Australia, which is a very problematic issue in

Australia on the evangelical scene.

They are a huge problem because of the false gospel they preach, their man

-centered gospel, which dominates everything.

But there's just widespread reluctance to really say anything about it.

And so, grace to you, we actually had an opportunity to write a series about that.

I hope it doesn't come across as self -promotion, but I would hope people would go to our website and check that out

because I think it's an important issue a lot of people don't know about.

And I would like that information to circulate.

In fact, I'd like you to give.

The URL or whatever way else that people can find that series of

articles because I have friends and brothers in Christ who routinely will

email me YouTube links for Hillsong Music and I just think the world of Hillsong.

And I became first aware that there was something seriously wrong, I believe it, when my

friend Dr. James R. White started to be critical of a softness on the sin of

homosexuality that seems to be prevalent amongst those involved in.

When you are a pragmatist, and this is something a really important thing I've learned,

that doctrinally we want to have good doctrine.

We want to have good doctrine, but a good doctrine statement can sometimes be a smokescreen.

And when you are a pragmatist, the thing you want to ask someone with a good doctrine statement still is, is your

allegiance to your doctrine statement greater than your allegiance to your pragmatism?

Because if not, then that can change depending on the circumstances.

And so with things like

Hillsong, people can read a doctrine statement, it

can sound right, but they're not preaching what they're saying.

They're saying what appeals to people, but also doctrine statement is just there for jerks like me

to back off, you know, and see that, hey, we're orthodox, we're sound.

And that's a really sneaky deception these days.

So what is the, I don't know if you know it by heart, but is there a certain link where.

Someone could find the article?

Yes, sorry.

The articles, we did an article, Hillsong in Worship, Hillsong's View of Worship, Hillsong's View of God, and

Hillsong's View of Man.

And we did a postscript based on a lot of the comments.

And I think the comment threads are very interesting to read.

Some senior pastors at Hillsong actually commented in the blog thread.

It's interesting to see what they said and how they were reacted to.

But if you go to gty .org forward slash blog,

then you'll find a list of our articles and go back into, I think, November and December of last year, and you're

going to see those articles.

Or you could just Google Hillsong and Man, Hillsong and God, Hillsong in

Worship, and you should find those articles at grace to you.

But I think it's important information.

I hope it circulates and spreads far and wide.

And did you say, so you just mentioned that someone from leadership in

Hillsong was responding to it on the blog?

Yeah, there was a comment by one of their executive pastor in Sydney, Joel Abel.

He posted a comment on there.

Again, not dealing with the substance of what we say.

I just don't.

Like what you're saying.

Oh, okay.

So he wasn't saying what you're saying is a misrepresentation?

Oh, yeah.

He said it was all false, but he didn't...

Yeah, but yeah, it's not true.

He called us, there's no grace in what we say, nor is there any truth either.

But he didn't...

Again, and that's typical of the way they do it.

Of course, he didn't engage with anything that was said or point out anything that was wrong.

He just said it was wrong.

And that's the way...

Yeah, you should be documenting that, right.

That's false teacher 101.

Right.

Yeah, to say that somebody's wrong and offer no documentation.

Just cry foul.

We saw it all through the Strange Fire Conference.

People crying foul.

This is no good.

We don't like it.

People need to differentiate.

There's a difference between factual error and just not liking.

I mean, there's a lot of facts we don't like, but that doesn't make them wrong.

By the way, I don't know if you've met a pastor who's right down the aisle from

me here.

He was affiliated with Grace Life Radio, but he is a pastor in the Church

of God denomination, which is a Pentecostal denomination.

And the Strange Fire Conference radically transformed his thinking

on the cessationist continuous debate.

He is now a cessationist as a result of witnessing the

Strange Fire Conference.

I don't know if he was physically there or sort on the internet or what have you.

Who didn't see it?

It's like the whole internet exploded the day John MacArthur preached the first sermon there.

I think a very important point about Strange Fire that got lost in all of the fighting that happened after it was

cessationism and continuationism were not the major issues.

They were issues.

It was part of the argument, but the real issues were even pleading with

conservative charismatic leaders to call out the wolves to

deal with it.

So even if you don't become a cessationist, the point is that please speak up.

Make a dividing line between yourself and the heretics because they get legitimacy.

I think the really unfortunate thing about John Piper, who I've learned a lot from appearing at passion

conferences, he doesn't really gain a lot from that.

They gain a lot from his credibility.

They keep doing what they're doing and they get a bit of theological credibility as well.

Some of these people, whether they mean to or not, become enablers.

It's a really unfortunate thing.

I maintain that Strange Fire conference should have initially been done years ago, decades ago,

by continuationists and charismatics who are sound on the

gospel and who care about biblical truth and are offended by the circus that is

going on, dominates social media and Christian television.

And at Strange Fire, I wrote an article and just Googled this, The Elephant in the Strange Fire, where

I raised 11 major questions that no one was answering after Strange Fire that

was put forth.

For example, the statistics that were brought out that 90 of charismatic churches, I

think in Asia and Africa, are prosperity gospel churches, preach the

prosperity heresy.

People were offended by that, but no one really made any effort to refute that.

And all people wanted to debate was cessationism.

And yet, if you're going to deny the truth of that, then come forward with some evidence or

agree with it.

I guess you expect that, but that can be a frustrating thing.

So that article, The Elephant in the Strange Fire, I think is an important article because it gets to what

many of the important issues were about Strange Fire.

And Michael Brown, who criticized it relentlessly, and he is supposed to be a clear -thinking,

one of the better clear -thinking charismatics.

He said, that's just the fringes.

Is the fringe the mainstream?

That's the question.

Just a few days later, he appeared on Benny Hinn's show, which was only reinforcing our

argument all along.

It was surreal.

Do you have a problem with that?

Do I have a problem with that?

I was just kidding.

Yeah, I know.

I think it's a self -fulfilling prophecy right there.

I don't know if I told you, but I was speaking to somebody earlier about how years ago when I was doing my show in New

York, I got a call from somebody involved with Benny Hinn's ministry,

who was setting up his speaking engagement at Madison Square Garden.

And they asked me, they must have just looked through some kind of an internet list or something for

Christian talk shows.

And he said, we would love to have Benny Hinn on your program.

And I said to the person who called me, I would too.

But I have to tell you that when he comes on, I'll be exposing him as a false teacher, because I believe

that he's one of the most dangerous professing Christians in the media, leading people

astray and to hell with a false message.

And he said, well, well, thank you anyway, and he hung up.

And sometimes I kick myself for being that blunt, even though I know a

Christian should never lie.

I'm not sure a information to somebody

when they're involved in a conversation, because I actually sometimes wish that I had had

Benny Hinn on to have an expose, if you will.

But I was following my instincts as a Christian just to be completely open about it.

It really is staggering that he's.

Had a ministry as long as he has.

Justin Peters pointed out to me, he can't find a prophecy he's got right.

You know, if I start, I could start a prophetic ministry.

And if I made 100 prophecies, you know, I'm not getting prophetic words, but if I made 100, I would

expect to maybe get, I expect to, you know, hit the bullseye on occasion.

You know, if you take me out to the three -point ring and I throw 20 balls, one will go through on pure luck.

So you'd think I'd hit it on occasion.

But Benny, it's always if God is telling us, making it so clear, Benny's a false prophet because he gets everything wrong.

He's got like 100 % success rate at getting it wrong.

That's it.

People, even Christians and even professing Christians seem to have

amnesia when it comes to that.

It's like he can make all the false prophecies that he cares to, and it

doesn't seem to affect anyone who still continues to follow him.

And of course, idolatry has a lot to do with it because there are people who uphold him as an

idol, and it doesn't really matter what he may do wrong.

Some people follow people right into their graves, just like with the classic

example would be Jonestown, Guyana.

It doesn't seem to matter what the person does or says.

They will follow that person.

But I am so blessed that you've come on Iron Sharpens Iron today here live at

the G3 conference, and I look forward to further communication with you and perhaps getting you on the

program sometime in the future to more fully address Hillsong or something.

Well, thank you for that, Chris.

It was great.

Being on the show.

Fortunately for me, the only amnesia I suffer from involves my car keys.

I think that's fairly universal.

It's a man thing, I think.

And this has been Cameron Buttel.

And by the way, how do you pronounce Cameron?

Cameron Buttel from Grace to You Ministries and originally from Australia.

And it's been an honor, and I look forward to speaking to you again at some point in the future, God willing.

That'd be great.

Thanks.

God bless.

Well, I hope you enjoyed that interview as well as much as I did.

And we are now going to conclude the program with our final interview of the day.

And this is an interview that I conducted with Philip Sessa.

So I hope it blesses you, and that that you are left with

something to help enable you to be a better soldier for Christ,

and a better evangelist, a better disciple, a better member of the body of

Christ.

And here is our interview with Philip Sessa.

Chris Arnzen here again, and now participating in perhaps my final

interview of the G3 conference in Atlanta, Georgia.

I have Philip Sessa, who is, I believe, the founder of Soul Fishing.

Yes, sir.

And it's a ministry that he is going to describe.

And it just so happens that providentially not only was Phil's booth, exhibitors booth, right next to the

Iron Sherpa's iron booth, but we've discovered that we have mutual friends in common,

including his pastor.

And Phil, if you could, before you even go into Soul Fishing, tell us about the church where you worship.

I go to Grace Baptist Church in Woodhaven, Queens.

Pastor Peter Nicotra, I help serve alongside him.

He's a very godly man.

And as we were searching for a local church, we wanted a healthy local church.

I was specifically looking for two main things.

One, a man that handles the Word of God very well, and one that lovingly shepherds

his people.

And everything else for us kind of.

Umbrellaed under those two things.

Amen.

And Pete has been a friend of mine for many years, as has his

former pastor and fellow colleague in ministry at North Shore Baptist Church.

I've known Pastor Ed for quite a long time, I believe going back to 1990, or whatever

the year was that Ed first became pastor at North Shore Baptist Church in Bayside, Queens.

I got to know Ed within weeks of him taking that post, and then

subsequently became friends with Pete Nicotra.

And I cherish many memories fellowshipping with those brethren, and I hope that

you extend my warm regards to them.

Amen.

I will do that and can do that.

So tell us about soul fishing, how the concept came up in your mind, and when you first launched it.

So when I was in Bible.

College, a friend of mine began to disciple me.

He asked me if I was going to get married and have children one day, and I said yes.

And he said, well, what are you going to do when you have a child?

Are you going to have somebody else raise that child?

I said, of course not.

And the reason he asked me that was because initially, prior to that, he asked me, what do you want to do for Christ?

What has God called you to do?

And I said, I believe God's called me to be an evangelist, go out and win the world for Jesus.

And then so he really put my feet to the fire and said, shouldn't you be able to raise kids spiritually

and not just point them to Christ, which is the greatest need that they have.

But when they do come to Christ, how are you going to help them to grow?

And so at that time, my response was, I will just introduce him to the pastor,

and that will be his job.

That will be his burden.

And he said, wrong.

That should be your job and your burden.

You should be able to spiritually raise people if God uses you, if you will, to birth them into the

kingdom.

You should be able to raise them in the kingdom too, shouldn't you?

And he began to disciple me, and he introduced me to Greg Bonson

in apologetics.

He also introduced me to John MacArthur's book, The Gospel According to Jesus.

And mind you, this was in a Pentecostal college before we were reformed.

And then, of course, he introduced me to Hell's Best Kept Secret.

How did you get exposed to those materials in a Pentecostal college?

The guy that discipled me, he kind of, I guess, went outside of the

Pentecostal circle, and he was discipled by the Navigators.

Was he just a fellow student?

He was a fellow student from Washington, D .C.

His name was C .J. Copeland Jackson, and inner city guy.

He was a guy from the Army.

And he said, I want you to listen to this tape.

It's called Hell's Best Kept Secret.

And I guess through the Navigators and the discipleship with them, he got exposed to some of these

other ministries.

And when I first heard Hell's Best Kept Secret, I didn't really hear it.

It didn't absorb.

Then again, it was 6 .30 in the morning, and I had just gotten out of bed.

But I started discipling somebody, and that student had the

whole 16 audio cassettes of Great Comfort.

And I was going on spring break, and I said, I need to borrow these.

I listened to every one of them.

And within like a week, my theological world was greatly

transformed.

And so many of the frustrations that I had began to be settled with good biblical answers.

I asked my theology professor, why does it seem that so many Christians get saved every week?

I said, it's like a yo -yo game.

And I said, this is like yo -yo Christianity.

How do they get saved and unsaved again and then saved again?

And I remember asking him, I said, professor, when does it stick and stay?

Because I've not walked away from Christ.

How does it get lost again?

How does the salvation get removed?

Why can't it just stay?

So I was very frustrated.

And I heard Hell's Best Kept Secret, I heard true and false conversions.

There's the answer, because people are not being converted.

That's why they're losing it.

They never had it.

So they really weren't losing it.

It wasn't there to begin with.

And the reason that I didn't lose it was because it was real.

It couldn't be lost, because God saved me and he was keeping me.

And I'm sure some people, I'm sure you would agree that there are some truly regenerate

people who go through that whole treadmill of going forward over and over again, because

they are judging their salvation by their own emotions at the time.

Correct. Absolutely.

Perhaps they know that they're sinners, and they perhaps are feeling some kind of

guilt, and they automatically think either they lost their salvation or weren't saved to begin with.

Sure.

Therefore, they're getting manipulated by that whole system.

Agreed. Agreed.

When I came out of an Assembly of God Bible College, I moved from a suburban area

called Mayapac, and the Lord brought me into New York City in the Bronx.

Oh, Mayapac.

Do you know Red Mills Baptist Church?

Yeah, James Harrison, great brother.

I grew up about five minutes away from that church.

And I went to a church about a mile away, a Pentecostal church near there.

I wish I would have went to Red Mills, but I guess God in His sovereignty, He's done what He's done, and He's gotten me to where He needs me

to be on this day.

But what had taken place was when I came out of Bible College, I went into the

Bronx.

I always worked and did ministry at the same time.

And I went from one church to another.

I was an assistant pastor, youth pastor, children's pastor, did everything in there.

Ended up in Harlem in New York City, assisted in a church plant, then took over the church

plant.

It was a hard work.

It was built on a really faulty foundation.

The way the church started off was if you came to church, you got a bag of groceries at the end of the service.

When that stopped, the attendance cut in half.

I came sometime after that, and then that pastor left, and I kept it going for a while.

But since it was built on a faulty foundation, I shut it down and just let the thing die eventually.

But one of the things that God did was I really cut my teeth in open -air preaching in Harlem.

Every Thursday night, I would preach on the streets.

There'd be drug dealers, a stone throwaway that were probably stoned as well,

threatening me.

I would stand on a steel chair and preach the gospel every Thursday night.

And so God knew what He was doing, of course, putting me into Harlem, and it didn't look

like I fit in.

And then we went back to another church, and we had started up Soul Fishing Ministries.

And I asked the pastor at this other church, it was called Pelham Bay Assembly of God, and he let us put it

under their church.

That pastor ended up being heretical.

He ended up holding to soul sleep, annihilationism, and all hosts of other things that

are unbiblical.

He wanted everything through there.

He break traditions.

Now they wear yarmulkes and prayer shawls.

I mean, it's just ridiculous.

And the Assemblies of God did nothing to discipline him when we brought it up to the Assemblies of God, because they cared

more about, I think, numbers than doctrine.

You would probably be more in jeopardy of believing in eternal security or Calvinism, I guess, than those

things.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

So tell us specifically how the ministry of Soul Fishing operates and how our listeners could

benefit from it.

So the way Soul Fishing Ministries operates, we do several things.

We come into local churches, we train in biblical evangelism, and I like to go from the classroom to the streets.

So once we do the training, we might do some role -playing, we take them out.

And we like to work through local churches, so we want to take the people of that local church not just the leadership, the

people in the pews, out into the streets of their community so that they see their

community as their mission field.

You know, when Jesus said, a city that is set on a hill should not be hidden, that local church is in that community

for a reason, to reach the people in that community.

So we need to equip and train them to do that and to make sure that they

see that.

So, you know, looking at it from a kingdom perspective, we train people in open -air

preaching, we're training young men in expository preaching.

So a lot of young men, they're not going to go to seminary, but some of them may be called to preach.

Paul Washer's called to preach, he's never been to seminary.

And so we're training young men and creating teachings and trainings, you know, at a basic level.

And we're seeing young men being faithful to the text and delivering good, simple,

but godly, impactful sermons that are.

Faithful to Scripture and life -changing.

So tell our listeners how they can get a hold of you and invite you to participate in something in their

congregation.

Sure, we have a website,.

Soulfishingministries .org.

You can also call my cell phone, 646 -773 -1221.

My email is fishdove, to fish in the ocean and the dove in the sky, 1122 at

gmail .com.

And we have a fishing, our acronym is FISHING, and that describes the strategy of

what we do.

So we do evangelism, intercession, shepherding, heralding.

We do interpreting, nurturing with our discipleship training.

I've written a discipleship book called Multiplying for the Master,.

And G is for Grappling, Dealing with Apologetics.

Well, it's been an honor to have you on, brother, and I'm looking forward to future conversations with you, getting to know you better in the future.

And please, once again, send my warmest greetings to Pastor Peter Nicotra and

also.

Ed Moore and all the folks at North Shore Baptist.

I will do that.

Thank you so much.

I thank God for you guys and pray that your ministry continues to be fruitful.

And that we all become more like Christ.

Amen.

Thank you.

God bless you.

Well, there you have it.

That wraps up all of the G3 conference interviews that I

conducted on site at the Georgia International Convention Center

in Atlanta from January 19th through the 21st.

Many thanks to my webmaster, Eric Nielsen, and his lovely wife, Sandy,

who brought the equipment with them that was necessary for doing these on

-site interviews.

And I hope that you all turn into the Iron Sharpens Iron tomorrow when we resume live

interviewing, and I hope that you send in good questions for our guests tomorrow.

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

Savior than you are a sinner.