December 28, 2020 Show with Dr. Joel Beeke on “Puritan Reformed Theology”

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

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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

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

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse 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 two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions, and now here's your host,

Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 28th day of December 2020, and I hope that you all had a very peaceful, refreshing, joyful, happy, healthy, and safe Christmas celebration, and I hope you have the same for New Year's to come.

We have a returning guest on the program who is one of my favorite guests, he's one of my favorite preachers,

I've seen him preach many times at conferences, he's one of my favorite authors.

His name is Dr. Joel R. Beeke, and he is founder, president, and professor of systematic theology and homiletics at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

He was also the host or co -host of a program that I developed way back in the 1990s on WMCA Radio when

I still worked there, an affiliate of Salem Media, the largest Christian radio network in the world, and that was called

The Voice of Sovereign Grace, a program I developed that featured initially five different Reformed pastors who each had their own night to have a sermon aired, and Dr.

Beeke was one of those five, and I thank God for that, and that program continued for quite a number of years.

But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Triple and Zion Radio, Dr. Joel Beeke. That's great to be with you,

Chris. Yeah, great to be with you. Amen. Well, we are going to be discussing, to start off with, your new book,

Puritan Reformed Theology, Historical, Experiential, and Practical Studies for the

Whole Life, but then we're going to also include in our discussion today other books you wanted to highlight.

Before we do that, if you could let our listeners know about Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Yes. The seminary here is going into its 26th year, so we just celebrated our 25th anniversary, and we started with four students.

We now have 226. Exactly 50 % of them come from the

United States and Canada, and the other 50 % come from 20 different countries around the world on every continent, and 31 different denominations.

And we're an international seminary run by board members that are thoroughly reformed and adhere to the

Three Forms of Unity and the Westminster Standards. And so, we aim to be a seminary that is thoroughly biblical, thoroughly reformed, thoroughly confessional, thoroughly experiential, which means how the

Holy Spirit takes the truths of the Bible and works them in the soul and the life of believers, and thoroughly practical.

And so, we're unabashedly conservative, and by conservative we mean conserving exactly what the

Bible says and believing it and practicing it, and we stress also preaching.

So, we have a lot of preaching courses. We're high on academics, but we're also high on the work of the

Spirit and the soul and preaching to the hearts of God's people. Amen.

In fact, one of my pastors at Grace Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, John Miller, he had a part of his education there at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary.

So, and I know that he thanks very highly of you. And for more information, if you'd like to investigate this seminary for yourself or someone that you love, go to prts .edu,

prts .edu, which stands for Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, prts .edu.

Well, as I've already mentioned, the first book that we want to start off with to promote and discuss is

Puritan Reformed Theology, Historical, Experiential, and Practical Studies for the

Whole of Life. Can you at least start with explaining what makes Puritan Reformed Theology stand out amongst the

Reformed Theology of the Reformers, the Reformed Theology of other periods in history?

And I know that the Puritans, obviously, judging from the name of your very seminary that you founded, the

Puritans obviously hold a very high part, very important role in your life as a

Christian. But tell us about what makes the Puritan Reformed Theology unique.

Yes, well, first of all, the Puritans follow behind the

Reformers, so they didn't have to reinvent the wheel. The Puritans are thoroughly Reformed, every step of the way.

But because they didn't have to spend all their time hammering out doctrines like how do we worship

God and justification by faith alone and that type of thing, they were taking the doctrines of the

Reformers and saying, how can we apply these to our daily lives? How can we be

God -fearing husbands and wives and God -fearing workers in the workplace?

So, a lot more application. Now, the Reformers were into application, but they were doing battles with some of the major doctrines, and the

Puritans had the time and the energy and the desire to talk about how the

Holy Spirit works out all these doctrines in the soul and in the Christian's daily life. So, the

Puritans are incredibly, incredibly practical. So, for example,

William Gouge wrote 800 big folio pages on the Christian family and gives you directions as a father, as a mother, as a husband, as a wife, on every detail of how to live biblically as a husband, father, or a wife or a mother.

And so, if you really want a robust Christian life, which is holy and solely centered upon God and sold out to Him completely, where you have, as the

Puritans would say, a single eye, thy name to glorify, you've got to read the

Puritans. They'll challenge you, they'll lure you. They were very, very sincere in all their teachings and extremely biblical.

Every page of Puritan writings usually contains at least 10 to 20 references to some scriptural text.

Everything is brought back to the Word of God. So, you might say they were very thorough

Reformers, very zealous. They defined zeal for God as a white -hot flame for the

Lord. They were just burning for the glory of God and the salvation of sinners and the maturation of saints.

That's what makes them special. If you really want to grow in grace, read the Puritans. Praise God.

Well, one of the things that you are known to be passionate about, and it has come up quite a number of times in your writings, the books that you have brought back into print, in your sermons, is experiential

Calvinism, and that's an aspect of this book. Can you please describe or explain that? Yes.

The simplest way for me to do that, Chris, is to use an example. The day

I left active duty in the Army, my boss said to me, There's three things you've got to remember if you're called back up to fighting a war.

First, you've got to remember how wars are supposed to go. You've been trained to fight, so remember what you're supposed to do.

The second thing is you've got to remember that wars never go the way they should go. So, you've got to be able to adjust to that.

Wars are bloody. Wars are messy. Wars have disappointments, struggles, trials.

You've got to be able to know how to respond to that. And then thirdly, remember the end goal, he said to me.

The end goal being that you're fighting for the well -being of this country. And later on I thought, you know, that's a pretty good definition of experiential

Christianity if you adapt it in biblical categories. So, the

Christian is in warfare here in this world. He's fighting a battle against Satan, against the world and its worldliness, and against his own indwelling sin.

And so he needs to remember how the Christian ought to battle. He needs to remember Romans 8,

We are more than conquerors through Christ who loved us, and nothing shall separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our

Lord. And there's no condemnation to us when we're in Christ Jesus by faith. Remember these things.

Remember to reckon yourself dead unto sin and alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So, the pastor must preach what a

Christian ought to be. And that's part of what the Christian ought to experience. Experiential, reflecting the word experience.

Your soul experience that the Holy Spirit works in you. But secondly, the

Christian life doesn't always go, in fact seldom goes, anywhere near the ideal. We still grapple with indwelling sin.

So, the warfare is bloody. It's a battle. It's intense.

And therefore, we must also preach as preachers Romans 7. The battle that Paul talks about when he says,

The good that I would if I myself not doing, and the evil that I would not do if I myself doing, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of death.

And then thirdly, we need to remember to preach Revelation 21.

The glories to come. We're fighting for a heavenly country. We're fighting for that rich inheritance of being with Christ forever in glory.

And so, a preacher must also preach about that. The Christian's future home and heaven and Revelation 20, 21.

What a blessing to know that I'm on my way to be married to Jesus Christ and sin free

Emmanuel's land forever and ever. So, that's the way I would define experiential preaching.

Experiential preaching teaches us how things ought to go, how things do go, and provides the end goal in the

Christian life. And I wanted to just further whet the appetite of our listeners for this book that we are beginning our discussion on.

First, we have someone who is one of my favorite authors and preachers,

Dr. Sinclair Ferguson. I'm sure well known to many of my listeners in the

Iron Sherpa Zion Radio audience. He is Chancellor's Professor of Systematic Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary and Teaching Fellow at Ligonier Ministries, the ministry founded by the late

R .C. Sproul. And Dr. Sinclair Ferguson says,

Puritan Reformed Theology is a title with a subtle double entendre. It certainly delivers what it promises, theology in a

Reformed tradition, mediated especially through the life and writings of the Puritans.

But it also celebrates the core sanitary of the Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan, by presenting in one volume the wonderful series of essays its founding president,

Dr. Joel Beakey, has contributed to the seminary journal. In these pages,

Professor Beakey handles a wide variety of subjects and turns them one by one into theological and pastoral gold.

The range is extraordinary and yet focused on the main things. The ease of readability pleases the ordinary reader, and yet there are footnotes in scholar -satisfying abundance.

The sheer size of the book may seem intimidating, yet like a great cathedral, it can be appreciated one stone at a time.

Here, then, is a thesaurus of theological and spiritual riches, a venerable Aladdin's cave of intellectual and spiritual pleasures.

I feel sure that readers will find themselves frequently returning to Puritan Reformed Theology to find in it both theological treasure and spiritual pleasure.

As I said, that was Dr. Sinclair Ferguson. And then another one of my favorite preachers and authors,

John MacArthur, who has been on this program and has written a glowing commendation for Iron Troupe and Zion Radio, and he said,

Puritan Reformed Theology is a treasure trove of articles and sermons that reflect godly piety and biblical orthodoxy.

Dr. Beakey has once again served us with a valuable work, which I highly recommend.

Well, I'm sure that that gave you a lot of pleasure to receive those very high endorsements from two very highly esteemed brothers in Christ.

We do have... First of all, let me give our email address out so that our listeners who have questions can join us on the air.

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

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

USA. And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Let's say you disagree with your own pastor about the theological positions you are developing.

Perhaps you are a pastor. You disagree with your own fellow elders, or perhaps your own denomination through your study and the journey that you're on theologically.

Well, I can understand that you would want to remain anonymous, but if it's just a basic general question on history and theology and doctrine, please give us at least your first name, city and state, and country of residence.

Do you have anything further to say about this volume before we move on to the other ones that you wanted to highlight? Well, what

I try to do in this volume, Chris, is I look at various 42 different aspects of different subjects, or 41 actually.

So I have six biblical studies articles, and then eight systematic theology articles, and then a handful of experiential theology articles, another handful of practical theology.

And then I look at pastoral theology admissions, a couple handfuls of articles there, and contemporary and cultural issues.

So what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to bring together for an interested reader who loves

Reformed theology to bring together a lot of practical subjects, and then looking at it through the eyes of Reformers, the

Puritans, and through contemporary eyes today. For example, how to use time today, or I've got an article here on the ministers' helpmeet, or what's the role of children in the church, how to evaluate sermons, learning from the

Puritans on being salt and light in the earth, Jim Bunyan on justification,

Lawrence Chatterton, he's a fascinating guy. He lived to be 104, by the way, and he trained more

Puritan men for ministry than anyone else, but he's not very well known because he didn't write very much.

His life in ecclesiology, Calvin as an experiential preacher, so just a wide variety of subjects.

The goal is, as Ferguson said, to make this be a book of theological treasure and spiritual pleasure.

Well, it is quite a massive volume, that is for sure, and knowing you and your thorough knowledge and research into the

Puritans, I am sure it is well worth anyone plunging into this book, whether you are a seminary student, a pastor, or even just the average

Christian who wants to learn more about what the Scriptures truly teach, and I happen to agree with Dr.

Beeke that the Puritans would be an accurate reflection on what the

Bible truly teaches. One thing, Chris, I want to mention, maybe, is

Article 8 in this book of 41 articles is a 35 -page article, it's called

Reading the Puritans, and I've been reading the Puritans since I was 9 years old, and reading them intensely since I was 14, so I've got well over half a century of reading them, and what

I've tried to do, and lots of people ask me this question, is how am

I to begin reading the Puritans, and what Puritans should I read, and what are your favorite Puritans, where do you get the most out of, and that's what this 35 -page article does, it gives you several, a few dozen

Puritans that you should read, and tells you why, and tells you how to read them, tells you where to begin, and I think a lot of people struggle at the beginning, because they think to get a style with John Owen or something is one of the hardest

Puritans to read, even though he's very rich, and so I point out here that one of the best ways to begin reading the

Puritans is to read something that we call Puritan Treasures for Today, that is published by my publishing house here,

Reformation Heritage Books, and what we do there is we take Puritan titles that are just very, very short, like 80, 90, 100 pages, and we edit every single sentence without taking away any meaning, so that the average 12 -year -old could read it and understand it, and once people start to read these little books, for six, seven dollars each, their eyes are open, and they just say,

I mean thousands of people read these, and they say, wow, this is incredible, this is so different than so much of the

Christian fluff I get at my local Christian bookstore today, this is really, really substantive, there's something special about the

Puritans, so for example, one of them is called Stop Loving the World, by William Greenhill, another one is called

Triumphing Over Sinful Fear, by John Flavel, well, the insight of these men, it's like they lived centuries after us, instead of before us, they sound so contemporary, and so you begin there, by reading these books that are very easy to read, and then you move into, they begin at one of the

Puritans that has rights with the shortest sentences, Thomas Watson, and then they move to John Flavel, John Bunyan, and finally you end up with Thomas Goodwin and John Owen, so I'm just encouraging your listener,

Chris, to get this book, and to read particularly this chapter, and to get going reading the

Puritans, because I always say it this way, every Christian wants to be more holy, and live more fully for God, and there's no group of writers in church history that even comes close to doing that for us than the

Puritans, and yet some people get frustrated reading the Puritans, they start reading the wrong way, so follow this advice, read the

Puritans the right way, grow in it, and you will be sure, I can assure you of that, if you do it conscientiously, by the grace of the

Holy Spirit, you will grow in the Christian life from reading the Puritans. Praise God. Well, we have to go to our first break right now, if anybody would like to join us again, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

if you have a question of your own for Dr. Beeke, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com,

we've already got a number of people online, as it were, waiting to have their questions asked and answered, and we'll try to get to as many of you as possible before the program is over, but if you want to get in line, chrisarnson at gmail .com

is the email address, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

Please, as always, give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence. Don't go away, we'll be right back with Dr.

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Thank you. Welcome back. This is Chris Armzen. And speaking of the coronavirus, my guest today,

Dr. Joel Arbeke, who is an author, founder, president, and professor of systematic theology and homiletics at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

He is a survivor of the coronavirus. And if you could just briefly,

I know that a lot of our listeners were concerned about you because apparently it hit you kind of hard.

There's all different ways people react to this COVID -19, and apparently you were not handling it well for a while.

But tell us about your experience with this very briefly before we return to our main subject. Yeah, thanks,

Chris. Yeah, I actually just thought I had a cold and that I was in church on a

Sunday morning listening to my colleague preach. I was to preach that evening. And just like I said to my wife,

I think I'm fainting. Don't follow me out. I don't want attention. So I walked out and as I was walking out, there was a table right by the door.

I was blacking out so I put my hand down on the table and just as I walked out the door, a whole bunch of people saw that I was surrounded by eight or nine men,

I think, within ten seconds. And laying on the floor and they took me to the hospital.

I fainted again on the way to the hospital. And when I woke up about a half hour later, someone in the emergency room was cutting my suit pants.

And my first thought was, well, this is a pretty new suit and I just spent a couple hundred dollars on this and why are they cutting my pants?

But my next thought was, whoa, they're cutting my pants? This must be serious. I must be, my life must be at risk.

But then about 20 minutes later, I was really fully came to and someone just walked in the room and announced to me, you've got

COVID. And we're 750 people in our church and no one had COVID.

I was laughing and I was thinking about our area was pretty COVID free. And I was just shocked.

And the first three or four days, I was plunged into, you know, what can

I say? The dark night of the soul, the medievals would call it. I couldn't pray well.

I couldn't feel connection with God. But I just felt like my life was over. Wow. My ministry was over.

I just was and I don't get depressed easy, Chris, you know me, my character is more upbeat and optimistic.

But I was really, I felt like I was going down into a vortex of quicksand and it was dark.

And my wife got COVID at the same time, but she didn't get it nearly as severe. So thank

God for that, she was able to do it on me and encourage me. But I just wouldn't be encouraged.

I don't know what it was. I've talked to probably close to 100 people that have had

COVID since those months and I talked to three or four men, one other minister of my own church who had something very similar.

And I actually said to his wife, I don't even know if I'm a Christian. I can't explain it.

It's gone. Communion with God is gone. And then it just slowly came back.

It's like the clouds lifted. And the interesting thing was the symptoms also began to lift and as both soul and body began to function more normally,

I just started feeling such an overwhelming love for God and love for people and love for ministry that as numb as I was before, so profoundly was the love

I felt now. And that has actually continued until today. I just have such an appreciation, such a gratitude to God for sparing me, for restoring me completely.

And I just want to use, well, I always wanted to use my full life for the Lord, but it's just really intense right now.

And so, you know, God is just really, really good and brought me through that, but it was scary for three, four days there.

Well, I am amongst quite a number of people, I'm sure, that are rejoicing that the

Lord delivered you from this and you are still with us to bless the body of Christ. We have a listener.

I usually only give the first name, city, and state, and country of the listener when they write in, but since this person happens to be a former guest of mine, and also who hosts his own podcast,

I figured I'd give his full name, Dwayne Atkinson. He is the host of the

Bar Podcast. That's B -A -R, and it's not referenced to a tavern.

It is the initials for Biblical and Reformed, and a lot of people automatically assume that it means black and reformed because my brother is black, but it is not a part of the title of his show.

And Dwayne asks, what would your response be to people criticizing

Puritans because of rumored connection or no response at all to slavery?

Wow. Yeah, that's a question that's very, very delicate, because slavery is absolutely, absolutely abominable, and there's no excuse for it.

And it's it's a blind spot in the very few

Puritans that did espouse it. Slavery in America, as I've studied it, is predominantly 18th century, 19th century phenomena, which, of course, the

Puritan movement was considered to be over with. Some scholars say in the 1680s, others allow it around 1700.

Some people, some people do allow, and I'm one of those at times,

Jonathan Edwards, to be like a Puritan born on a due time. So he was born in 1703, died in 1758.

He's one of the very, very few Puritans that had a few slaves. What most people don't realize is that the vast bulk of Puritans didn't have slaves.

Slavery wasn't very popular. It wasn't very common. They could have spoken out more against it for the few that did.

But, yeah, it was a blind spot, and I'm so sorry about that.

And I grieve that every group of forefathers in church history has had some serious blind spots.

I'm sure we do, too. A century from now, people could probably condemn nearly all

Reformed pastors for not speaking out much more against killing 60 million babies under law without preaching and writing about it regularly.

We get so used to it, we forget that every five minutes a baby is being murdered in America.

So we all have our blind spots. I'm not excusing the Puritans in any way. I'm just saying that in some ways we're no better.

And the other thing, and this is no excuse either, Duane, but the other thing we need to remember is that the whole concept of slavery for the

Puritans was, especially the few Puritan ministers that had slaves, like Jonathan Edwards, was a very loving concept.

I realize that that wasn't the case later on in America, but they would bring their slaves into family worship, they'd bring them to church, they would strive and pray for their conversion, and many were converted.

Jonathan Edwards considered them almost like his children, treated them very, very well. But yeah, the whole practice was, of course, totally wrong.

But it was their goal to have their slaves and their children live totally for the glory of God.

But the whole principle, of course, of having slaves, is ungodly and must be thoroughly, thoroughly condemned.

But I think, on the internet and the media today, you get the impression that, you know, this was a common phenomenon that Puritans had slaves, and people don't realize that the

Puritan era ended in 1689 or by 1700, with the possible exception of Jonathan Edwards, maybe being included in the 18th century.

And of course, in the 18th century, a lot more people had slaves, but they were not Puritans.

So, that mistake is huge on the internet today, when you read all these articles about, oh, the

Puritans had slaves. I really, I've studied Puritans all my life, and I'm not sure

I could even name one Puritan that had slaves prior to Edwards. I'm sure there were a few, but it was very rare.

Now, what do you make of the distinction that some historians make about confining the

Puritans to those that were nonconformists in the

Church of England, who left or were banished, et cetera, and that those folks that emigrated here to the

United States, or America, I should say, that those here in North America, although they may have carried with them much of the theology, teaching, and practice of the

Puritans, their forefathers in the faith from England, that those that were here should not be considered a part of the

Puritan movement? What do you think about that? Well, the

Puritan movement is not only England, it's also America, so we call them New England Puritans, so I think they were bona fide

Puritans. The Scottish and the Dutch are the parallel movements, Scottish Covenanters, for example, and the

Dutch Further Reformation. Sometimes they're also called Puritans because they're very much of the same ethos and pathos, but they had some unique elements about their respective movements that make them just enough different so that we really...

You can call them Puritans with a small P because they're Puritan -like, but you shouldn't call them Puritans with a capital

P because they weren't Puritans proper, but the New England Puritans were.

I should add to the comments I just made about the slavery issue. The major Puritans that wrote on...

I mean, well -known Puritans that did write on slavery, which wasn't many because, again, it was so few that had them, but Richard Baxter, by the way, is probably one of the main ones that did, and he thoroughly condemned it and advised all people not to take up this abominable practice.

Now, Richard Baxter was an exception to the rule with the Puritans, was he not?

When it came to theology, you said that the Puritans were thoroughly reformed, but was he not an exception to that?

Well, Richard Baxter was, if you read 95 % of his writing, it is thoroughly reformed, but on the area of justification, he was a neonomian, and so he was unsound there, that's true.

The good news is that everyone realized it at the time, and since then, his books on justification never get reprinted because they're very confusing, and so all the reprints that you read are all his practical theology, which is reformed and Puritan -minded, and just great, great stuff.

His book on Reformed Pastor, for example, is a fantastic book, every minister should be reading it.

Praise God. Well, by the way, Dwayne Atkinson, please make sure we have your full mailing address, because you have actually won a free copy of the book that we began the show discussing,

Puritan Reformed Theology, and we'll be getting into a discussion on other books that Dr.

Beeky has either written, co -authored, or brought back into print momentarily.

In fact, Dr. Beeky, why don't you now explain the next book that you wanted to highlight today?

Well, you asked me to talk about some books that I recently have written.

So, one thing that just came out two weeks ago is

Reformed Systematic Theology, Volume 2, that what's happening here is

I'm trying to leave behind my life's legacy of teaching systematic theology for three decades or so, and my teacher's assistant, my

TA, called Small A, is taking my notes, typing them out in full, finding footnotes, and polishing them up a bit, enough to deserve a co -authorship.

So, they're actually co -authored by him and me, and the first volume came out last

November, and that's called Revelation and God, more technically

Polygomena and Theology proper, but we're calling it by simpler names because we want these to be accessible to lay people as well, so that's like a twelve, thirteen hundred page volume, and then two weeks ago we came out with the second volume, which is on Man and Christ, or you could say more technically

Anthropology and Christology, and that's also about thirteen hundred pages, and then volume three is coming out,

God willing, this coming November, it's already done, it's already been edited by Crossway, who's the publisher, but they've sent it out to a number of scholars to look it over, see if they can find anything wrong with it, so it takes a long time, because they're very thorough and very careful, and then we're working right now on volume four, we're about a quarter of the way through, and volume four is on the

Church and the Last Things, more commonly called Ecclesiology and Eschatology, so probably in 15 months or so we should be done with that, and if God spares us both, and then yeah,

I think it's probably the most important thing I've done in my life, we're hoping it will be translated in all 15 major languages around the world, seminaries around the world, it's already being translated into five or six or seven,

I think now, probably seven languages, and a few copies of Ida Moore are out in different languages, but so it's very exciting, and it's also a way that I can wind down teaching systematic theology, and focus more on homiletics and practical theology, because once these books are out,

I'll actually stop teaching it and give it to another teacher, and they can use my textbooks, my books, as a textbook for the course here.

So each course that we teach in the seminary, we have about 600 pages of reading, and so that's what we have in these books, about 600 pages of reading for each area, of major area of doctrine.

So what we do, Chris, in these books, is we, the target audience is everyone from lay people, who have an interest in growing, in knowing

God's truth and God's doctrine, all the way up to theological students at the

THM or even PhD level, but they're written at a level that is like, I would say, the beginning seminary level, so that they're readable by people all over the world, and when they're translated to other languages also, the goal is that they will be used in seminaries and by elders and ministers and deacons and when they teach classes, but also the lay person in the pew to learn and to grow.

So the target audience is wide, and the goal in each book, each doctrine that we address is five -fold.

First, we tell you everything the Bible has to say about it. Then we tell you what church history has to say about it, the pro and con, and then we tell you, how do you experience this doctrine?

So this is your experiential theology part. For example, how do you experience the beauty of the intercession of Christ in your own soul, rather than just reading it on paper as a doctrine?

And then fourth, we try to usually come up with three to ten practical takeaways from this doctrine that can, if you really believe it and embrace it, that will move you to worship

God and move you to be a more godly Christian. So there's a lot of emphasis here on practical theology, vital living.

You might call it a section on how to walk in the King's Highway of Holiness. And then the fifth section is what we call doxology.

We end every chapter, every doctrine with either a poem or a hymn that makes you want to sing

God's praises. And then, well, the last section, I guess there's six sections, is a acute question section.

And we divide our questions into two sections. One is for lay people, that they can find the answers right back in the chapter.

And the other is for seminary students, where we challenge them to go a bit deeper.

We have to go to our midway break right now, actually. This is the longer -than -normal break in our show, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show, because they are required by the

FCC to localize this show to Lake City Public Service announcements and other local things in the middle of the show while we air our globally heard commercials.

Please use this time wisely. Write down the information that is provided by as many of our advertisers as possible so that you can more frequently and successfully patronize them, and therefore they will likely, more than likely, remain happy enough to remain our advertisers, which means that we,

God willing, subsequently will remain on the air for a longer future because we absolutely, positively depend upon our advertisers and the finances that come through them to exist.

So write down as much of the information from as many of our ads as possible, and also write down questions for Dr.

Joel Beeky and send them to chrisarmson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Dr.

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That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island that you heard about them from James White on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Chris Orensen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, announcing a new website with an exciting offer from World Baptist Church magazine.

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Wow, that's some compliment. How much do I owe you for that? You don't have to owe me anything.

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Tell your friends and loved ones about Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, airing live Monday through Friday, 4 to 6 p .m.

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This is a day of great spiritual compromise, and yet God has raised Chris up for just such a time.

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Call Lynnbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402. That's 516 -599 -9402.

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As host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, I frequently get requests from listeners for church recommendations.

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Tell Pastor Dunn that you heard about Grace Covenant Baptist Church on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Every day, at thousands of community centers, high schools, middle schools, juvenile institutions, coffee shops, and local hangouts,

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Always mention Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio when you make your purchases there. Before we return to Dr.

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Also, folks, if you are not a member of a local Bible -believing church, no matter where on the planet Earth you live,

I have lists of biblically faithful churches all over the world and I may be able to help you find a church no matter where you live.

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I need a church in the subject line. chrisarnson at gmail dot com That's also the email address to send in a question to Dr.

Joel Beakey and we are speaking of the Puritans in general but we are also highlighting a number of books that Dr.

Beakey has written and you can ask a question basically on anything in regard to Reformed Theology.

Our email address again is chrisarnson at gmail dot com chrisarnson at gmail dot com as always give us your first name at least your city and state of residence and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. We have an anonymous listener, Dr. Beakey who said amongst my close circle of friends who are

Fundamentalist Baptists there are some that really love the Puritans and promote them regularly but there are others who are vehemently opposed to the

Puritans because they say they were very cruel and harsh and hateful towards the

Baptists. What do I say to these folks about the Puritans because I believe that they are missing out on such a great wealth of beautiful theology and information.

Yeah, that's a very good question Chris and it's a confusing question for some

Baptists because there are Baptists that today say Reformed Baptists for example that think to identify with the

Baptists of the 16th, 17th century not realizing that the

Baptists of the 16th, 17th century were very, very far away from the

Reformed Baptists today. The major issue of course that Reformed Baptists today would disagree with Reformed Paedobaptists is on the issue of infant baptism.

But you need to understand that the Baptists the Anabaptists as they called them in the 16th, 17th century had very different views on government on taking an oath on fighting in a just war and Calvin for example was so opposed to the

Anabaptists because he said their views actually are a breakdown in society. Jeffrey Williams who's written the most sound, historically extensive book at a popular level on the

Anabaptists groups them in five different categories. They weren't all one stripe.

What they all had in common is they weren't Baptized infants but some of them were radical some of them were revolutionaries some of them were very peace loving and when fighting a war there was a lot of different viewpoints but Calvin's point that the

Puritans took over as well was that they abdicated themselves from essential societal functions.

So think of the Amish and the Hutterites and the Mennonites they were all coming from the Anabaptists as well and that kind of separation from the world by going off in separate enclaves the

Reformers and the Puritans would resist. They said we should be salt and light in the earth and so on.

So they viewed the Baptists of those days as being quite far away from the

Reformed faith and a lot of Reformed Baptists didn't realize that and I'm not justifying the persecution they put them through of course that was also a sign of the times and just like we talked about with slavery was a black mark that there were a few

Puritans that wrote against the Anabaptists in a way that really wasn't edifying it was over the top but again the vast majority of Puritan ministers and writers would not, if they lived today would not oppose the

Reformed Baptists except in the area of infant baptism. So although they would oppose the

Reformed Baptists over their rejection of infant baptism would they be on that issue as harsh as and of course we can't broad brush not only the

Reformers themselves or the Puritans but would they in your opinion from what you know about history would they have been as harsh if it was just that issue of a rejection of infant baptism?

Oh no, of course not. If they lived in our day and they looked across the aisle at the

Reformed Baptist brethren they'd probably feel exactly the same way I do and I feel they're brothers and sisters in Christ and actually if you ask me and I know

I'm going to get in trouble for saying this but I'm going to say it anyway if you ask me if I had two choices to make to be a presumptive regenerationist and just presume my children are in the covenant in the internal essence of the word and I don't need to tell them they must be born again or would

I choose to be a Baptist that wouldn't baptize my children hands down I would choose the latter.

The Reformed Baptists do a marvelous job at rearing their children in covenantal ways but just do not give them that covenantal mark of water baptism and they have their reasons for it and I think they're wrong on it but I have a lot in common with them

I preach in hundreds of Baptist churches around the world and I love these brothers because they have the

Reformed experiential emphasis that the Puritans held very dear and so just think of John Bunyan he was about there was a couple

Baptist preachers at the end of the Puritan movement Bunyan was the only one just about out of thousands of them earlier on in the movement there were a few but not very well known ones he's certainly the only well known one but they didn't reject

Bunyan Bunyan wasn't one of these radical Anabaptists who said you can't fight a just war and you can't take an oath before a judge no no

Bunyan took exception to infant baptism and the fellow

Puritans disagreed with him there but they didn't treat him harshly they recognized he was a brother in Christ and Calvin and the early

Puritans were concerned that the whole of society would break down if he had

Anabaptist views so for example Michael Hagen who's a very close friend of mine is a Reformed Baptist yes he was just on the program last week yeah yeah so he said to me one time he said it's a huge mistake being made by the

Baptists today when they think that the Anabaptist movement of the 16th, 17th century is anyway similar to the

Baptist movement today he said I don't I personally don't identify with those Anabaptists at all by the way folks if you want to hear an excellent interview with Dr.

Hagen it was actually on the 18th of December Friday the 18th of December and he did an absolutely fascinating interview with me on his book

The Mayflower Pilgrims actually the exact title is

Strangers and Pilgrims on the Earth Remembering the Mayflower Pilgrims from 1620 to 2020 and that was from December 18th on Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio I highly recommend you listen to it on the archive of the

Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio website We have another anonymous listener who says

I have a very close relative who is on the brink of death but it is uncertain how long that person has left here on earth

I believe that they could at least hear if being read to very clearly

Is there a book by a Puritan that you would recommend to a sick or dying person?

Is that person a believer? I don't know, the listener didn't say that In fact if you could,

Anonymous send us another email and we'll take that into consideration when it comes to the book

Let me do both Chris Let me do both So if the person is not a believer

I would do Joseph Aline an alarm to the unconverted or Richard Baxter a call to the unconverted

Those are very earnest books They called them tracts but they were tracts of about 150 pages

They are very urgent and compelling for sinners to flee to Christ If it's a believer

I'd probably read to them the abridged version of Richard Baxter's The Saints Everlasting Rest The Joys and Glory of Being with Christ in Heaven Now a wonderful booklet that I have given especially to believers on the issue of sickness itself those that are coping with sickness

It is a booklet titled Sickness by J .C. Ryle It was taken from a larger volume

I believe Ryle's Upper Room That would be good That would be good

But of course Ryle's 19th Century Anglican and the question was Yes, well I was going to ask you if there is something comparable from a

Puritan That's why I brought that up Oh I see, I see Not that good in abbreviated form

The Puritans have written a fair bit on sickness how to cope with affliction and they've got chapters in their books like A Lifting Up for the

Downcast by William Bridge but that extract from Ryle that one address on sickness is superlative so yeah, that would be that would be a great little booklet to read for someone being reconciled with sickness

I think though the questioner is asking that the time this person is pretty near the

Jordan so I think I'm going to stick with my answer still that if it's a believer

I would read to them about the joys of glory and try to get them to focus on heaven and there's nothing better than Baxter's Saints Everlasting Rest Well Anonymous please give us your full name and mailing address because you've also won a copy of Puritan Reform Theology and we will hopefully have many in our audience praying for you and your loved one and prayers not only for the loved one but for you and your ability to minister to that individual and also that your fellow family members would join with you in that effort and I know that I will be praying for you

Well I want to make sure also before we run out of time before we go to our next break what other books would you like to highlight today?

Okay, yeah so I did a book recently for Christian Focus called

The Pastors Pastors and Their Critics Oh yeah,

I have seen that at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service who is an advertiser on our show

Yeah, so this book I did with it together with a theological student in my denomination

I actually spoke on faithfulness in coping with criticism at John MacArthur's 50th anniversary celebration conference about a year ago now

Yeah and I think it was last spring or summer of 2019 when

I came down from the pulpit the Presbyterian Reformed Brother approached me and said would you turn this into a book and we did that and you know 85 % of ministers who leave the ministry leave because they couldn't cope with criticism and there's just not very much written that's good on this subject there's a few new books on it but if I would encourage those who are listening to buy a copy of that from Reformation Heritage Books you'll get the cheapest prices of course from us here and mail it to your pastor or give it to your pastor or your elders but also read it for yourself because 90 % of it also applies to just how to cope with criticism and how to constructively criticize others as well there's a lot of Christians today who don't know how to receive criticism and don't know how to give it biblically and I think this book would actually actually help them so the subtitle is a guide to coping with criticism in the ministry and then

I also wrote a book that just came out called The Christian Teacher as Office Bearer using the paradigm of prophet, priest, and king

Free Grace Press published this which is by the way a Reformed Baptist publishing house just to prove to you

I associate with Reformed Baptists a lot more than most people realize and he the publisher likes to publish smaller books, this is just a 64 page book

That's Jeff Johnson, correct? The publisher? And so we look in this book at how to teach whether you're a parent a homeschooling parent whether you're an office bearer in the church whether you're a

Christian school teacher in a Christian school how to teach your children as prophets and how to have a priestly role in their lives of intercession and then also how to serve in a kingly role of guidance in terms of discipline and so on and how to rule and lead them so it's just a small book but hopefully it will help a number of people and then finally

Christian Focus just brought out last week a book that Dr. Barrett and I did called

A Radical Comprehensive Call to Holiness and this is a 450 page book so it's fairly extensive which we divided into 8 sections

Holiness Defined 3 chapters on that and then Holiness Exegeted 6 chapters on that, looking at major passages on holiness in the

Bible and what these pericopes have to teach us about holiness directly then

Holiness Practiced 5 chapters on that how to put off the old man, how to put on the new man how to live in Christ and to die in Christ and so on and then a 4th section on Holiness Promoted emphasizing, it's important studying the word, putting on the whole arm of God, conducting family worship relishing the love of God etc.

and one chapter on what the Puritans have to teach us about holiness, which is a lot and then the 6th section is

Holiness Tested how can you examine yourself with regard to holiness 5 chapters on that Holiness Distorted, 7th section that's how people have had wrong views of holiness in church history 2 chapters and then

Holiness Consummated which is my favorite section 3 chapters on persevering in Christ to the end the utopian marriage of Christ in his church and the love of God in heaven so this is meant to be a call to holiness to be a corrective to the modern day even among the reformed minimization of the need for sanctification and holiness great and by the way all of these books

Chris are available at radically discounted prices from Reformation Heritage Books you can go to heritagebooks .org

the 2 systematic theology volumes for example right now we're doing a special 50 % off, they're $60 books for $60 and $65 books for $30 and $32 .50

each so heritagebooks .org heritagebooks .org and also folks

I have mentioned and you heard an ad earlier for cvbbs .com

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, they carry quite a number of Dr. Beeky's books and if they don't have what you're looking for you can also go to cvbbs .com

and they are the ones that actually ship out our winners in our audience the books and Bibles and DVDs and other things that they win for free here we feature every week on this program when we are interviewing an author or someone involved with a

DVD documentary or something like that so we want to thank cvbbs .com

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service for being faithful supporters of this program and we are going to our final break right now it's going to be a lot more brief than the other breaks if you have a question that you'd like to ask of your own send in your email as quickly as possible to chrisarnsen at gmail .com

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com give us your first name at least your city and state of residence and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter don't go away we'll be right back with Dr.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen, and if you just tuned us in, our guest for the entire program today is

Dr. Joel Beeky. He is author, founder, president, and professor of systematic theology and homiletics at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

We have been discussing Puritan Reformed theology, historical, experiential, and practical studies for the whole of life, in addition to other books that Dr.

Beeky has authored or co -authored that are new in print. And if you have a question, send it in quickly because we are rapidly running out of time.

Our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Always give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. And we have John in Bangor, Maine, who asks, are there books by Puritans that we should avoid because they are legalistic and may be too intimidating, discouraging, depressing, and even frightening for the new believer especially to plunge into?

Yeah, that's a good question, John. Again, like the other caricatures we've looked at about the

Puritans, these are usually assessments made in these kinds of words from people who haven't read the

Puritans. Are there any such books?

Well, it depends what you mean by legalistic. Puritans believed very strongly that we shouldn't set our hearts in this world, and so for them to partake of modern entertainment, for example, a two -hour movie where God's law is contradicted 144 times in two hours or whatever it is, some crazy number, and where adultery is glamorized and lying is not frowned upon and all kinds of commandments are contradicted, the

Puritans would look at that and say, how can you as a Christian watch that today?

Because when you silently watch it, you're participating in the sin, like the Heidelberg Catechism said, by our silence we show our sinfulness.

Did they have anything comparable? In the days of the Puritans, were there theatrical performances and so on?

Yeah, they were very much against the theater, because most theatrical performances included a number of sins against the

Ten Commandments. So we've just become so hardened in our consciences that we tend to look at their dance and say, oh, they were legalists.

But they were just saying, see, a legalist is trying to do something to please God out of a law motive apart from the

Gospel, and that's the furthest thing the Puritans were from. They just wanted to live holy lives, to reflect the

Ten Commandments of God, the gratitude to Him for His great Gospel. Now, having said all that, a new convert with a very, very tender conscience, who's longing for more assurance of faith,

I'm not sure I would probably give them Matthew Meade, the Almost Christian, or Thomas Shepard, the

Ten Virgins, because of their extremely searching nature. There are a few books like that.

But I would definitely give the Almost Christian by Matthew Meade to Christians that seem to think they're

Christians, but their lives don't reflect it at all. They need to be shaken up. So those books have their purposes.

But yes, there's a handful of books out of maybe, what, 5 ,000 written by the

Puritans that I would say, you know, be a little careful giving that to a tender newborn.

Yeah, and Ten Virgins would be one, Almost Christian would be another. But in general, 98 % of Puritan books are extremely comforting for those who are seeking

God, and alluring, and encouraging. The Puritans are famous for this, for those who've read them.

They're just constantly comforting the struggling believer. Well, thank you,

John, and make sure we get your full mailing address in Bangor, Maine, because you have won our final copy that we're giving away of Puritan Reformed Theology.

And we'll have CVBBS .com ship that out for you. So look for a package that has CVBBS in the return address area on the package.

CVBBS .com, Cumberland Valley Bible Books Service. Well, before we run out of time,

I want to make sure that you highlight all of the books that you are intending to. So what would be the next book? Um, I pretty well covered them, my brother.

So, yeah, I mean, I'll take a book that I did not like, but edited and did a forward to that just came out called

Ore From the Puritan's Mind by Dale Smith. He collected

Puritan quotations. It's by far the largest book of Puritan quotations.

It's a gem of a book, and it's about a 600 -page book, I believe.

And it's put out by Reformation Heritage Books so that the cover matches my

Meet the Puritans and my A Puritan Theology, co -authored with Mark Jones.

So Meet the Puritans deals with a life story of all the Puritans and a bibliography of all their books, reviewing all the books that have been printed by them.

A Puritan Theology gives you a systematic theology of what the Puritans taught. And then this book,

Ore From the Puritan's Mind, gives you several thousand quotations from the

Puritans. The one good thing about this book that no other Puritan quotation book has, it also gives you, after each quotation, the bibliographical title and page number and a full bibliography in the back.

So if you find a quotation that you really like, you can go back and look at it in its context and read that whole section by that author.

So this is a gem of a book. In my opinion, every Christian should have one.

Ore From the Puritan's Mind, edited by Dale Smith. Great. And we have

Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who asks, Was hyper -Calvinism a problem at all amongst the

Puritans in any significant way? And are there any treatises or books written in opposition to hyper -Calvinism by Puritans?

Very good question. Very few. Some people have argued that William Pemble leaned in a hyper -Calvinist direction a bit on his book on justification, but the few

Puritans that did mention eternal justification did not intend to say in any way that eternal justification was the decisive thing that happened, and that when you came to faith in time, you were just recognizing that you were eternally justified.

No, they said justification happens in time, even though God decreed it from eternity.

So I read Pemble, and I don't see much of a hyper -Calvinistic streak there.

There were a few that were a bit like the Puritans. Tobias Crisp, for example, who embraced a few tendencies to hyper -Calvinism, but he's not often considered to be a

Puritan. It's hard to know a person like that, whether you classify him as a

Puritan or not. So, for the most part, this is not a problem the

Puritans faced. And let's see, here we have

Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who says, I understand that you are a member of a denomination called the

Heritage Reformed Congregations. I was wondering if you could explain how they would be different from your former denomination, the

Netherlands Reformed Church, and also how they would be different from other three forms of unity, adherence, like the

United Reformed Church of North America and the Free Reformed Church of North America. Yeah, that's quite a question to answer.

How much time do I have left? You have about seven minutes. Okay, okay.

All right, good question. So the Heritage Reformed Churches, of which

I'm a pastor, we aim to be solidly reformed, and we embrace the three forms of unity and the three

Westminster Standards. Of all the denominations you mentioned, we're the only one that embraces all six doctrinal standards for the denomination.

We think that merging the Continental Tradition, the three forms of unity,

Heidelberg Catechism, Belgian Confession, Cairns of Dort, with the later written documents of the

Scottish English Tradition, the Westminster Standards, Westminster Confession of Faith, Larger Catechism, and Shorter Catechism, is a wonderful combination.

And that the Westminster Standards take us 80 years further in theology than the three forms of unity, or at least than the first two of those three forms.

And so, though the Heidelberg Catechism is primarily a preaching tool, and is very warm experientially, and excels in that, the

Westminster Standards have things in them that can help us address problems like the

New Perspectives of Paul, or New Perspective of Paul, the Federal Vision, errors like that, and also the

Westminster Standards include some doctrines that weren't fully developed by the 1560s when the

Catechism was written. So like a robust covenant theology, the doctrine of the adoption of God's people as sons, there's a whole chapter for the first time in the

Westminster Standards. So we think these standards complement the three forms of unity very well, and also develop certain doctrines a bit further down the road.

Now, we're very close to the Free Reformer on level Fellowship IV. We're both denominations that are solidly

Reformed, along the Puritan Tradition and the Dutch Reform Tradition, and we have very few differences with them.

We have unity committees meeting, so we don't know what the future will be there in terms of union yet, but there's a lot of work going into that.

In terms of the Netherlands Reform, from out of which I've come, I appreciate my background very much, and I grew up with very

God -fearing parents. In general, the HRC would be more optimistic with the

Gospel than the NRC, and would not have some rather hyper -Calvinistic tendencies that may exist in certain parts of the

NRC. We also stress a lot more than they do a high -level theological training, insisting on full education of the original languages and so on.

But they would have a stress on experiential theology, as we would.

It would be more in the area, though, of teaching man what he is before God, and we would follow the experiential emphasis more also in the area of deliverance and gratitude, if you're going to use the divisions of the

Heidelberg Catechism, that the whole of the Christian faith must be experienced.

So our preachers would preach much more in their sermons about the fullness of Christ and the beauties of knowing

Him and things like that, and the importance of living the lifestyle of holiness.

The URC, I preach in a lot of URC churches as well, do a lot of conferences for them,

United Reform Church. Some of their churches would lean a little bit more to presumptive regeneration that we would feel comfortable with, but the others wouldn't.

So they're a little bit across the board in that area, in my opinion. But we have a lot of fellowship with them.

I think we're at level two of fellowship with them as well. In general, we would probably have a more—I think it's safe to say we'd have a more experiential emphasis than most of their churches would, though not all.

So, yeah, we have different levels of brotherhood with these different churches, and they all have different—a little bit different ethos and pathos.

But thanks for your question. Great. Well, I want to make sure that our listeners have all of the contact information that they need to get a hold of you, your writings, and everything connected to your ministry.

First of all, we have joebeke .org, J -O -E -L,

B as in boy, E -E -K -E .org. We also have the

Puritan Reform Theological Seminary's website, again, prts .edu,

prts .edu. And Reformation Heritage Books, they can be found at heritagebooks .org,

heritagebooks .org. And as I mentioned earlier, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, who sponsors this program, cvbbs .com,

they carry Dr. Beeke's books as well, and we'll order them for you if they do not have what you're looking for exactly in stock.

That's cvbbs .com. And we thank them for shipping out all of our listeners the books and other things that they win when they submit questions to our show.

Do you have any other final thoughts that you'd like to share before we go off the air, brother? Well, I would just say that thank you,

Chris, for this interview. Thank you for listening to my details about various books.

I do believe strongly, I felt called since a teenager to write, that good reading.

Good reading. I heard your quote of Spurgeon. I fully agree with that. If you really want to grow in grace, you need something more than the three hours in church on Sunday.

Read, read, read good books that can feed your soul. And don't forget, we need to have something that's more than intellectual

Christianity, as important as that is. We need to, as our seminary motto is, we need to minister to head, heart, and hands.

And so, let's pray that every one of us would be fully sold out to the

Lord and want to honor Him with all that we are, that we would love Him with heart, soul, mind, and strength, and use this short life to do what we can to promote

His glory in this really sick and dark world. Amen.

And I want everybody listening to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater