October 26, 2018 Show with Fred Sloan on “Why is Prison Ministry Necessary?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is Chris Arnton, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 26th day of October 2018.

I'm delighted to have for the very first time ever on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio today,

Fred Sloan, I'm sorry, Fred Sloan, and he is an ordained minister in the

Presbyterian Church in America, the PCA, and director and evangelist for Prison Discipleship Ministry, which is a ministry of the

James River PCA Presbytery of Central Virginia, and today he is going to be addressing,

Why is Prison Ministry Necessary? We're also going to be announcing the upcoming conference at Knox Presbyterian Church in Mechanicsville, Virginia, but it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Fred Sloan.

Good afternoon, Chris. Thank you for having me. It's always a joy to talk about the Lord, and to talk about what

God has opened and has there for our folks and others around the world, really, to reach the lost.

Amen. Praise God. And so tell us about Prison Discipleship Ministry. Well, we've been going a little over two years.

I mean, it started 10 years ago. I felt a need. I had a friend who had been in prison, and we talked, and we had an interest in ministering in prison.

So I started reaching out, and I found an elder in one of our local churches that had been involved with a ministry, and I contacted them, and they set me up.

And once a month, for about eight to nine years, I would go on Sunday and hold two services in one of the local prisons here,

Henrico County Jail—not prison, jail—Henrico County Jail. And I was working a full -time job.

I was ordained, but working a full -time job. And you go in often so tired and weary, but it's something

I just couldn't quit, because I saw God working in the hearts of men, and I felt like it was vital.

About two years ago, a group of us, this friend and I and some other men had been involved in a

Bible study, and we were coming to the point in our lives where some things were changing.

The company I was working for was sold, and I kind of had to choose to—if I was going to retire, what was

I going to do? And one of my other friends was retiring, and some of the businesses were sold, so we decided to start this prison ministry.

And we went to the James River Presbytery and asked them to—I was already ordained in the presbytery, but I was serving without call—and

I asked them to ordain me as an evangelist in prisons and jails. And so they did, and we've been working, and we're in about four to five prisons or jails right now, and we're working on some other prisons.

So we go in there—personally, I go in three to four times a week and hold services, preach, teach with the men in the primarily jails right now.

We go into what's called the Richmond City Justice Center. It's a fancy name for the Richmond City Jail.

We continue to go into the Henrico County Jail, and I go into Deep Meadow Prison one night a week, and one of the other men involved, he goes into a juvenile detention center in the area.

And God's helped us to draw in a few other people, and one of our guys just this week was driving away from Richmond a little ways—not too far, 45 minutes—and through a little town called

Waverly, and he noticed a prison there, and he emailed me and said, what about that?

I said, well, I don't know. Why don't you call them? So he called them, and next week we've got an appointment with the chaplain.

So we're hoping that, as you think about us, pray for that this door would open. We're also working on another prison in Lawrenceville, down near the

North Carolina border, and that's been a little while taken to get in there, but you know, God is growing us and expanding us, and we're really excited and very grateful for what we see

Him doing. Praise God. Now tell us about this event that you are participating in, this conference at Knox Reform Presbyterian Church in Mechanicsville, Virginia, that features

Mr. Lowell Ivey speaking on the theme, From Prison to Pardoned, Mr.

Jeff Downs, who is speaking on From Drugs to Delivered, and you are going to be speaking on,

Why is Prison Ministry Necessary? That is going to be held November 3rd, 2018, from 9 a .m.

to 11 30 a .m., and November 3rd, if you're wondering, is a Saturday, and that's going to be held at the

Knox Reform Presbyterian Church in Mechanicsville, Virginia. Tell us about this conference. Well, Jeff Downs is the new pastor there at Knox Reform Presbyterian Church, and Jeff, both these men,

Lowell Ivey and Jeff Downs, are pastors, and they both are just a tremendous testimony to the glory and the wonder of God's grace.

Jeff was involved in drugs, and God delivered him from that, and he's since been to seminary and become a pastor.

Lowell Ivey is an ordained pastor in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. If people want a lot of details about him, you can go to Ligonier Ministries and just search for Lowell Ivey.

They have two Renewing Your Mind programs on him and also a short video, but I can give you a thumbnail sketch of what

God's done in Lowell's life. When Lowell was three years old, his father was in prison.

His mother was a drug addict. She abandoned him in a hotel room on a bed and said, if you get off this bed, bad things will happen to you.

He stayed on that bed for three days. He was found by a police officer. You can imagine the circumstances.

He was taken in by his grandparents, but in two or three years, they died, and so he was then adopted by a

Christian family, but as you can imagine, he had a pretty rough time as a teenager, and when he was 19, he was sentenced to 17 years in prison for I believe it was car theft.

Don't quote me on that one, but anyway, he was 17 years in prison.

Prison was a pretty scary thing for him. He joined a white supremacist gang. He got all the tattoos and marks and all those things.

About three or four years in there through ministry of a Christian, he became a Christian, and things changed dramatically, and he began to study and read and apply himself, and he actually spent nine years in solitary confinement.

Some of that was to protect him because he was an ex -gang member, but anyway, he spent his time studying.

He got a college degree. He got out. He ended up at Greenville Seminary, graduated.

He's now pastoring a church plant in Virginia Beach. It's doing quite well, and he's just a tremendous man, tremendous godly man, a great preacher, but a tremendous testimony to what

God can do in the lives of men who have been written off in many cases by our society.

Well, this sounds like a phenomenal event, and once again, that's going to be held on Saturday, November 3rd at Knox Reformed Presbyterian Church, Mechanicsville, Virginia.

For more information, you can call 804 -779 -7608.

That's 804 -779 -7608, or you can also email the pastor there at pastor at knoxvillereformedpres .org.

That's pastor at knoxreformedpres .org,

K -N -O -X, reformed, P -R -E -S .org. Well, now, since you are the

URA, I should say, first -time guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

What we typically do when we have a Christian guest, and that is 99 % of the time our guests are

Christian, we do have on occasion those that are not Christians for one reason or another, depending upon what the subject matter is.

But since you are a believer, you are a first -time guest, if you could give us a summary of your salvation story, the type of religious atmosphere you were raised in, if any, and the providential circumstances that the

Lord rose up in your life that drew you to Himself and saved you. Yes, I'd be happy to.

Laurel and Jeff both have pretty dramatic backgrounds. Mine is not very dramatic.

As a friend of mine used to say, I got saved from the life of Kool -Aid. I grew up in a

Christian family, and I really can't remember a time when I didn't know the Lord and when I didn't trust

Him. But yes, as a young adult, I began to wrestle with the depths of sin, and just to see that there are acts of sin, but there are issues of the heart.

And it's easy to, in some ways, it's fairly easy to clean up the outside of the cup, but the inside needs addressing.

And the Lord God's grace has helped me to grow in that. I felt, since I was a teenager, a call to ministry, and I've preached and done ministry all my life.

I grew up as a teenager in an independent Baptist background.

I attended Tennessee Temple College, and then I went to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and got a

Master of Divinity from there in 1974. And I worked in churches.

I worked as a lay elder. I worked as a pastor or a youth pastor. But when

I was in seminary, I did something. There was a lot of debate about theology, and I just said, well,

I'm not going to make any decisions about theology. I had a firm commitment to the Bible as the

Word of God. So I said, I'm going to wait until I'm 40 years old, and then I'm going to really work on theology. I wouldn't recommend this to anybody, but this is what

I did. But over those years, I began to develop some opinions, and I began to look around and ask myself, well, what do

I believe, and where am I? And I've been exposed to Dr. Sproul and other Reformed thinkers, and I just realized this is who

I am. About that time, I read a book by one of our professors, David Wells, who in the early 90s wrote

No Place for Truth.

I realized how important theology was, and I began to study it and work on it.

I moved my ordination into the PCA, and we had a small church, but it wasn't really working well, so we decided to close it down.

I've been working in the James River Presbytery as a pastor without call.

I do a lot of preaching. I help churches where the small churches where the pastor's gone to administer the

Lord's Supper and things like that. So that's kind of where I've been. The last, as I said, two years ago, we got full time into this prison ministry.

Well, praise God. And by the way, I'm going to give our listeners the email address where you can ask your own questions of our guests today.

It's 6 -3 - I was actually just about to give my phone number. My email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, at least, as always, your city and state, 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.

Obviously, I can see a subject like this, why is prison ministry necessary?

I can see people, automatically, having personal and private matters they want to ask about if they are former prison inmates themselves, if they have dear, close family members who are still in prison, or a number of circumstances that could be surrounding this topic.

I can understand why someone might want to remain anonymous. But other than that, please give us at least your first name, city and state, and country of residence.

Well, you have actually titled the theme of your message at the upcoming conference on November 3rd the same exact theme that we are discussing today on the show.

That is, why is prison ministry necessary? There might be people who don't have that view.

They might have a view that, well, it might be a nice thing to do. This is obviously a good and kind and compassionate thing to have as a part of your church.

They might think, well, wait a minute, this is kind of a strong term being used here. Why is prison ministry necessary?

So tell us why you believe it's actually a necessary ministry. Well, I agree with you.

A lot of people look at prison ministry, they're intimidated by it. And a lot of television movies have sensationalized life in these places.

There's a certain degree, I guess, of truth there. But the men we work with and the places we go, nobody comes to any of our meetings who doesn't want to be there.

Nobody's forced to come listen to us. And in Jesus' command to go into all the world, preach the gospel to every creature.

He talks in one of the parables about how people are invited and they wouldn't come. He said, go out on the highways and the hedges, go look for the weak and the poor and the broken.

And that's who these people are. I once heard Francis Schaeffer say that if he had an hour with a man, he'd spend 45 minutes convincing him that he's a sinner, that he has a need.

The people we work with, we don't have to spend a lot of time convincing them of that.

We teach them, we teach a lot of theology. And in that theology, I mean, it talks about the fall and the lostness of man.

And it begins to make sense of them, of their life, what their life has been like and what the culture has been like.

A lot of these guys are, they've been in prison. This is the third and the fourth or fifth time. And they're tired of that life.

They don't like being there. And they want to make a break with the past. And when we come with the gospel, the gospel is sweet to them.

And as a friend of mine said, he said, I never leave prison without being on a high. And I have to say that is true because the people there are so hungry.

They're so receptive. And it's just a lot of fun to see somebody who's brought into the meeting by one of the other men.

And that's one of the things you see happening. It's such a joy. I say a lot of times, we're just a catalyst there, that the real ministry goes on by the inmates with the other inmates.

And the inmates that we minister to go out and find other people, and they talk to them in the pods.

And they bring them in, and you see them kind of sitting in the back and kind of half asleep, or maybe still coming off the drugs.

And they're kind of skeptical and whatever. And the next week, their face is a little brighter, and they've got a

Bible. And the next week, when you ask somebody to read a scripture, that guy reads the scripture.

And before long, he's sitting on the front, and he's asking all kinds of questions. And it's just a joy.

It's a thrill. It shows the wonder of God's grace.

Our culture, in many ways, you go out on the street, and people are very hardened and very callous.

But these guys that we minister to, they're not hardened, and they're not callous in that sense.

They're hungry. They're looking for answers. And the gospel is so beautiful to them.

We live in a culture that says that we came from nothing. We're a product of time and chance and evolution.

And when we die, we go back to nothing. And so in the culture we live in, what happens in the meantime?

What do we do in the middle? Well, in the middle, nothing really matters. If we came from nothing, we're going to nothing.

Nothing matters. And that's the way we live, and that's the way we teach people to live.

And we teach people that way down deep, He's a good guy. And we tell them, we didn't come from nothing.

We were created in the image of God, and we're going to answer before God. And there's a way that you can be right with God and answer to Him.

And your parents may reject you. Your wife may hate you. Your children may not speak to you. But you can be right with God.

You can have the very righteousness of Jesus Christ. It can be applied to you.

And sorry, I can't talk about it. I'm tearing up a little bit. Praise God. And it's so sweet to them.

It's a wonderful thing to them to hear that news. It's good news. And when you tell them that, you explain to them, look, way down deep, you're not basically good.

That's what people have told you, but you're not good. But you can be right with God. You can have the very righteousness of Jesus Christ.

And we just work with them. We preach the gospel. The pastor at our local church that I go to,

Dennis Bullock, he says a lot of times, he says, you know, I only have one sermon, and that's the gospel.

That's not true. I mean, every week he's studied a passage, and he's detailed it, and he's a wonderful teacher.

He's working through Romans. But over and over again, we just keep coming back to the gospel and helping people.

Because every day out there in life, it's a basic understanding of what the gospel is and how to apply it to your life that is so critical.

And that's what we do with these men. We had a new man at our meeting this morning, and he was just peppering us with all kinds of questions.

And those were good questions, and I told my partner as we left, I said, when you read the book of Acts, what you read so often, you know,

Paul went here and he reasoned with them. He went there and he reasoned with them, and he went here and reasoned with them.

And that's really what we do. We go in there and we reason with them about righteousness and judgment and those kinds of things.

And it's such a privilege to see men, you know, get their lives on track with Christ and begin to grow.

Well, I am so thankful to God that there are men dedicated like you, men and women who are involved in prison ministries.

And I am so honored and privileged to have you on today to discuss this. We don't discuss this very often on the show, but we do from time to time.

In fact, one of my favorite interviews was quite a while ago on Iron Shelf and Zion Radio, where we interviewed a woman who was tragically sentenced to life in prison for the accidental death of her adopted son, which the charges were being laid against her that it was not accidental, and it was a horrible circumstance that I am so glad that the

Lord saw fit to exonerate her and she was released from prison.

And by the way, if anybody wants to look up that interview that we have done on Iron Shelf and Zion Radio in the past,

I will at some point during this program give you the exact wording to put into the search engine, because right at the second

I can't remember the young lady's name, it was a couple of years ago that I did the interview, but I will definitely get you that information.

But you said something before, you said something that was interesting to me.

You said that when you are speaking to prison inmates, you do not typically have to convince them that they are sinners, that's something that they are already aware of.

I find that interesting not only because I have heard in the past, and this may be too much of a generalization or it might not even be true to your experience, but I have heard over and over again that many, if not the majority of prison inmates, who when asked do you belong in here or are you guilty of the charges, you would hear the answer no.

Now has that been your experience? Do people actually say that they are not worthy of being imprisoned and that they are being overly punished, they are being treated too harshly in their sentences and so on, and there seems to be some kind of a defense of their own character and positioning even before God himself.

What can you say about that? Well, I would say that in general that's probably true, but the people we run into and the people we work with,

I wouldn't say that we don't have to convince them. I would say we don't have to spend, you know,

Schaefer was talking about spending 45 minutes out of an hour. We spend more time explaining to them, you know, what's going on with them and an understanding of that.

And I'm not saying that everybody we work with becomes a believer, everybody buys into it, but in general the people that we work with, they know they have issues, they know they have problems, and when you've been in and out of prison several times and you know you have this recurring drug problem, you have this recurring

DUI, drunken type issue, I mean nobody has to really convince you that you've got a problem.

You know, you have a fairly good sense of that. And, you know, when we come in we try to help them understand what's the nature of this problem.

Why is this going on? What are the idols in your heart? You know, where do you put your hope?

You know, you go to work and you have a bad day at work, and so you go to 7 -Eleven on the way home and you buy a six -pack of beer and you go home and get drunk because you think,

I don't deserve this, I can make myself happy and I'll use this alcohol to make myself happy.

I mean, that's an idol. And idols almost always in the short term work, but in the long term they destroy you.

And these guys have been there, you know, they, as an example, in the, in RICO jail where I first started nine or so years ago, last

December the sheriff had 1 ,400 inmates. He did a survey and he asked a number of questions and he got responses from a thousand of them.

And he, one of the questions was, are you in here either directly or indirectly because of drugs?

The response was yes from 87 % of the men. So drugs, drugs is a huge issue in our culture.

It's a huge issue in the prisons. And, you know, these guys have, they've been around, they've been, they've been through this, they've, they've been arrested and they've gotten out and gotten arrested again.

And, you know, the prisons are talking to them too, through Narcotics Anonymous or AA and those kinds of things.

And those groups are pretty straightforward about, you know, you've got a problem. And they do realize they have a problem and they, they, the prisons are in many ways not as, not bad in this sense, but it's not a fun place to be no matter the conditions.

And they want to do something different. And so when we began to talk to them about the depth of sin and the fall and those kinds of things, it makes sense to them.

We don't get a lot of pushback on that. We don't get resistance of people who, you know, are going to argue with us about that kind of thing.

Like we might in the culture, you go out and you talk to the average guy on the street and you say, well, you know, you, you were born a sinner.

You were born a rebel. Oh no, no, no. Down deep. I'm good. I mean, that's what they're told.

That's what people, that's what our culture believes about sin, that down deep, we're good.

And these guys are in a position, and when we say, well, you know, you've been told wrong all your life.

They want to hear that. They believe it. It's much easier to convince them of that than it is the typical guy out on the street.

Well, we have to go to our first radio break, our station break. If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please, as always, give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence.

If you live outside the USA, please only remain anonymous. If your question involves a personal and private matter, that's chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Fred Sloan and why prison ministry is necessary right after these messages from our sponsors.

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We are now back with our guest Fred Sloan and Fred Sloan is discussing the theme today,

Why is Prison Ministry Necessary? He is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America known as the

PCA and he is the director and evangelist for prison disciple ministry, I'm sorry prison discipleship ministry, a ministry of the

James River PCA Presbytery of Central Virginia and if you'd like to join us on the air our email address is

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, ChrisArnzen at gmail .com and also don't forget about the upcoming conference where Fred Sloan will be speaking at Knox Presbyterian Church in Mechanicsville, Virginia and we intend to repeat that information later on how you could register for that conference.

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There are obviously different kinds of people in prison just like there are different kinds of people outside of the walls of a prison, not everybody is an identical cookie cutter of others just because they are in prison.

Can you tell us about some of the different personality types that you have encountered ministering in prisons and also perhaps some specific stories about specific inmates and how they have either embraced the gospel after a time of ministering to them or perhaps continue to reject the gospel?

Yeah, I don't know that I'm an expert on personality types, I mean you see all types of people, some are very quiet, some are very talkative,

I mean they come in all different types and sizes. Right, I'm not speaking about a clinical description,

I'm just talking about from your personal experience the different kinds of people you've met. Well, I think of one man in particular, he became a

Christian in his early late teens, early 20s. He's in a very legalistic fundamentalist type of church that really focuses on the outside of the cup and he's now 52 and he's been in jail over and over and when he first came in, he came in because of drugs.

The last time he got out of prison he told me, he was quite open with this, he said,

I got into a relationship with a woman and I was sinning and I knew

I was sinning and he got high and they tried to rob a pharmacy, got arrested and he's back in jail.

And I remember him the first time, he was very depressed and for a few weeks he was out of the pod completely,

I think he was in the psychiatric unit just to be under care for suicide.

But he came back and over six, eight months there, we just talked with him.

We said, sir, you know, God has a purpose for you here. We know you failed to deal with this in a biblical way, but we talked about what that looks like.

And your life is not meaningless. God has a plan and a purpose for you here and he can take you here and he can use you here.

And he began to do that. He just began to, he just became an evangelist, a pastor there to the other guys.

And there are guys now, he's gone on into the prison system. He's looking at a 15 year sentence and we're trying to follow him, but it takes a while to get into a different prison or jail.

But we've seen the guys that he discipled and helped us teach and discipled. They're coming along now.

In fact, today, the class, the young guy that I mentioned, he was new and covered us with a lot of questions.

The guy that, the first guy discipled, he was answering those questions. And I remember him when he first came in, he was hazy and, you know, he was new age and had all kinds of philosophies and ideas.

And he's been reading the word of God. He's been listening to programs,

Bible programs on the radio, good preaching. And he's just growing by leaps and bounds in the word of God.

So, you know, it's again, it's a joy to see these guys get their lives on track.

Some of them, this is the first time. They didn't know Christ at all. Others have floundered for a while, but now they're getting their feet on solid ground and growing and reaching out and ministering to other people.

And you say, why is it necessary? We're a source of teaching and encouragement for these guys.

There's a lot of evil, a lot of all kinds of ideas that are put forth there in these prisons.

But to have a godly man or a woman to go in there week after week, you don't have to be a rocket scientist with theology to be a minister.

I mean, kind of my ideal guy or woman is a guy who's taught

Sunday school and knows the shorter catechism and those kinds of things and can go in there and just be a friend and begin to teach these guys, to ground them, you know, in the truth, work through the catechism, teach them the theology of the church, teach them how to study the

Bible. And that's just a slow week -by -week process of encouragement.

I think where we would be if we didn't have the church, these guys are in there, they don't have the church, but they can and they can grow.

And you know, there's some amazing things. There are a number of prisons around the country.

I know Angola State Prison in Louisiana, they run a seminary and they have various churches in the prison.

And they have ordained ministers within the penitentiary. This used to be one of the wildest, notorious prisons in the country.

And the grace of God and the church has come in there and changed dramatically the face of that place.

And you know, that's kind of our goal, long -term, but would the Lord help us to, we want to set up some real teaching, training, and see guys who will, long -term, they'll become, we want another

Lowell Ivey and another Jeff Downs coming out of these ministries. Praise God.

We have a listener in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, B .B., who asks, there is a classic passage that I know that you have heard recited many times from Matthew 25, and it involves the

Lord Jesus Christ himself saying to the sheep, I was naked and you clothed me,

I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me. And then the righteous will answer him saying,

Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you in a stranger and welcome you or naked and clothe you?

And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you? And the king will answer them, truly,

I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these, my brothers, you did it to me.

And of course, he says the opposite to the goats, those that are the damned.

Do you think that this passage is teaching that it is the responsibility of each and every Christian to visit people in prison?

Well, I don't know that I would say each and every one, but I think I would love to see every church take on that kind of a ministry.

Uh, you know, we have 24, uh, prisons and jails here in central

Virginia around Richmond. And we're right now we're in about five of them.

So we got, we got an open field. We've got an open ministry there. And, um, what we're trying to do is to put a taste and a hunger in people's heart to begin to reach out.

I think people have, uh, again, I said earlier that people are threatened by these stereotypes that they get from movies and television and whatever about what goes on in there.

And I find the reality to be quite different that these guys are very humble. They're very teachable.

They want somebody that has the truth that can explain where they are and what's going on with them.

Uh, one of my favorite passages, Luke five, where Jesus said, I didn't come to call the righteous to repentance.

I came to call sinners. You know, he said, I'm the great physician that those that are well don't need a doctor.

And I say, you know, we don't wake up every morning and say, boy, I feel so good. I need a doctor. And the guys usually laugh when we say that.

We say, you know, I'm sick. I need a doctor today. And that, that making that argument with these men is not an hard argument, uh, because they've, they, they are the least they've been rejected.

They've been put aside. Uh, they're, they're, they're there away from their families. A lot of them, their families won't have anything to do with them.

Their friends won't have anything to do with them. They're really alone. And where do they go? And to have a godly man or woman who will come in there week after week and love them and help them and answer their questions.

And even if you don't know the answer, which, you know, if you say, well, I don't know, I'm not sure about that.

I'll, I'll get back with you next week. And you come back next week with an answer, you know, to have that kind of faithfulness, that kind of modeling, uh, it's, it's ministry to these men.

It gives them hope. Uh, and it, it brings them to Christ and it grows them in the faith.

And it's just a magnificent opportunity to reach out to, uh, you know, to real people with needs.

Thank you, BB. And keep listening in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and beyond. We have John in Bangor, Maine, uh, who says,

Chris, could the interview that you had in the past with a former prison inmate be

Hannah Overton's interview? And she is founder of Cindeo Ministries.

You're absolutely right, John. Thank you for, for looking that up in the Iron Trip and Zion Radio archive.

Yes. If anybody wants to hear an interview that I did with Hannah Overton, she is the woman wrongly accused and also wrongly convicted of murdering her, uh, adopted child, uh, and has been released from prison.

Thanks be to the mercy and grace of Christ because the charges were overturned. Uh, she was interviewed on July 27th, 2015 here on Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

And she has a wonderful ministry of her own called Cindeo Ministries, S -Y -N -D -E -O

Ministries. And you can find out more about her at cindeoministries .com,

cindeoministries .com. And you could find her, uh, interview on the Iron Trip and Zion Red, uh,

Iron Trip and Zion Radio website, irontripandzionradio .com. Go to the search engine and you could type in S -Y -N -D -E -O, or you could also type in her last name,

Overton, O -V -E -R -T -O -N, and you will find the audio link to that interview.

Thanks a lot, John and Bangor Mayne, uh, for helping us out there. Uh, let's see, we have

CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who says, I have heard from Christians in prison and also from Christians ministering in prison that it is an abysmal situation, very often, with the chaplains that are working there, because many of them, at least in the areas where I know friends who are prison inmates and who are active ministry workers in prisons, there is a tendency towards real extreme liberalism and apostasy amongst the chaplains, uh, ecumenical with people who are not even

Christians, and allowing homosexuals and people outside of the

Christian faith to actively participate in the leadership of worship. What can your guests say about this phenomenon?

Um, I would say in general that that's true. Um, we don't, but we don't, nobody tells us what to say.

We don't have any constraints on what we say and what we do. Um, in fact, in general, they're very, very happy to have us there.

In fact, and I would say, for anybody contemplating on getting in, we like to go in with teams, and the reason for teams is that we like to go, we want to be sure one of us is there every single week, and most of the time, both of us are there, but nobody really constrains us.

Nobody, um, tells us what we can or can't preach. Uh, our, we call ourselves a discipleship ministry.

We're not in the chaplaincy ministry. Uh, we don't want to be, uh, and this is for us, we don't want to be the chaplain.

We, we don't want to spend a lot of time arranging for Jehovah's Witnesses and Muslims and Roman Catholics to come in.

Uh, we want to go in there and teach the truth. We want to spend our time on teaching the truth.

You know, even if it's two or three or four men, uh, every week, we want to be able to teach the truth.

And, uh, you know, we look and we, we search until we find a place where, uh, they'll have us and let us do that.

And, uh, then we're able to go and, you know, and God blesses it, uh, that the, um, the people in prisons respect us.

Uh, they, they help us, uh, you know, they support us. I mean, we have run into, I have run into one situation in the prison that I work in, um, where there is some antagonism at the top of the administration, but God's protecting us.

God is, uh, you know, again, it's like a lot of the antagonism that's in the culture toward Christianity.

And we've seen some of that, but God has placed a man above the administration that says, no, you guys are going to stay here.

And so, you know, God's protected us. We can only go there as long as God helps us and protects us, but that protection is still there.

And that's something we can be thankful for. You know, political correctness, there is an element of it there, but, uh, we, we have not found it to be a major issue for us.

Well, what you have said, uh, and what the, the listener was asking about actually is more proof of the urgent need for ministries like yours.

And if, if the prison system, and of course we can't say everywhere, but if the prison system seems to be saturated with chaplains that are liberal or apostate, even though they may be delighted to have your assistance, just because it lightens the burdens that they have, uh, there is a need for the true gospel to be preached and declared and for true biblical counsel to be provided and just true

Christian love to be extended to inmates that would be in contradiction to the false message and the false

Christians that, uh, saturate our mainline denominations and so on. So this is actually proves a greater need for what you're doing.

Absolutely. And it's not hard. I mean, all you need to do, if there's a prison around you, uh, start praying for it and, uh, make a call and see if you can speak to the chaplain.

And sometimes it's hard to get them to call you back, but, uh, keep trying. And if that, if that door doesn't open, try another one, keep trying.

And God will open a door somewhere with a chaplain who will say, yeah, I could use some help. He could be, you know, most, most

PC liberal, whatever, but pragmatically he needs some help.

Just people coming in, uh, you know, and he may, he may view you as, yeah, well, you're just a friend coming in to help these people, but you know, you, you're there to give the gospel and, uh, that that's an open door and, uh, in all likelihood, he won't sit in on what you do.

He won't care what you do, as long as you show up every week. And I mean, you're not inciting riots.

I mean, you're just there teaching the Bible and, uh, you know, and let God work and use you.

It's not hard. You just have to pursue it a while because the doors don't always open immediately.

Sometimes they do. And sometimes they don't, but, uh, just keep looking. I mean, there, I would guess anywhere anyone's within, you know, easy driving distance of several jails or prisons.

And I might, I might, uh, make a distinction here that in Virginia, where I work, the distinction between a jail and a prison, a jail is where jails are run by local sheriffs here in Virginia.

And they are for people once they're arrested. And if their sentence is a year or less in general, they would serve that time in the local jail.

But once the sentence goes over a year, they're handed over to the Department of Corrections for the prison system.

So the guys in the prison, you're going to have two kinds of ministry, one in the jail and one in the prison.

The prison, you can really have a more long -term consistent, you can really work your way through the shorter catechism because you're probably going to have most of the guys who come in for a year or two or three or more.

But in the jail, there's a lot of turnover. And if you're going in there every week, there could be consistency, but you have to be prepared for new people, new people coming in.

And we almost every single time we are there, we try to give the gospel at least once.

And one way or another, we're giving the gospel over and over to them. And there are always new guys coming in.

So we're trying to reach out to those guys with what the gospel is and what it means.

Great. Well, we have to go to our Midway station break, which is the longer than normal break because Grace Life Radio in Lake City, Florida requires of us a longer

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We have just a few announcements to make before we return to our guest Fred Sloan on prison ministry.

First of all, I am going to be heading over to Quakertown, Pennsylvania next month on November 9th and the 10th.

I'll be there manning an Iron Shepard's Iron Radio exhibitors booth at the annual

Quakertown Conference on Reform Theology being held once again at Grace Bible Fellowship Church of Quakertown, Pennsylvania.

This is an event of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals and the theme this year is the glory of the cross.

The speakers include David Garner, Ray Ortland, Richard Phillips, Timothy Gibson, and Carlton Wynn. If you'd like to join me there at the

Quakertown Conference on Reform Theology, go to alliancenet .org, alliancenet .org,

click on events and then scroll down to Quakertown Conference on Reform Theology to register.

Then coming up in January from the 17th through the 19th, that's

Thursday January 17th through Saturday January 19th, I am going to be once again manning an exhibitors booth at the

G3 Conference which is once again being held at the Georgia International Convention Center in College Park, Georgia which is a suburb of Atlanta right near the

Atlanta airport. They are expecting between four and five thousand people there this year or should

I say this January. So I would strongly recommend that you not only register to attend as an individual or as a group but also register for an exhibitors booth.

If you have a church, a parachurch, ministry, or business that you want to promote, go to g3conference .com,

g3conference .com to register and the conference once again has an enormous lineup of phenomenal speakers.

Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, John Piper, Stephen J. Lawson, Votie Baucom, Mark Dever, Conrad M.

Bayway, Tim Challies, Phil Johnson, we have Todd Friel of Wretched TV and Wretched Radio, Stephen J.

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

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

We have Bobby in Hartsdale, New York who asks, are you able to send a prisoner through the mail any kind of Christian literature you care to?

I have heard people from different parts of the United States disagree over this issue. What is the case to your knowledge?

Well part of the reason is that every prison in jail operates, they are run by say the prisons in Virginia, they are run by the

Department of Corrections. But that local warden, he sets his own rules and he controls things.

The prisons, you have to understand what they are up against. They have tremendous problems with drugs, smuggling, all kinds of things, everything imaginable gets in there.

And they are constantly on the vigil for any kind of thing being taken in there secretly.

Some of the problems are the corrections officers.

We recently, I mean one of the things you run into in prison is they will talk to you, when you go in for training, you have to be trained by them.

And one of the things that they will hit hard is the, it's called PREA, it's the

Prison Rape Elimination Act. They'll talk to you very hard and long about any kind of contact, sexual contact.

One of the things that's very important is to go in and listen to those things, take good notes and don't waver from what they say.

But just to show you the kinds of problems they're up against, in one of the places we go, when we first went in, there was a chaplain there who would come in and escort us.

He was really outgoing and just seemed like the most wonderful guy. And then within a few months, he's arrested because of improper sexual contact with the prisoners.

So I mean, that's the kind of environment that they're up against. And it depends.

In most places, prisons especially, it's hard to take things in. I would never take anything in without permission.

The easiest way in general to get things in would be to order it from a publisher and have them mail it in.

Then it would be searched. It would usually come in in a sealed package, and they have reasonable assurance that you're not hiding anything in it, trying to sneak it in.

And I would put a little commercial out for Ligonier Ministries. They have a tremendous support for prison ministry and prisoners.

The resources that they make available at really low cost. If a prisoner writes them and requests a

Reformation Study Bible, they will send it to them for free, which is an amazing thing.

They have a special edition of the Study Bible. It has a paper cover.

You can't take hardcover books in. It has to be a paperback book. Again, because people hide things in it, like shanks.

A shank, if you don't know, is a knife that people make. But the

Ligonier version is designed for jails and prisons. It's sealed in plastic, and Ligonier will send it to them free.

They make it available to us at an extremely low price. But if you contact

Ligonier and ask them about their prison ministry, you can get those resources and you can have things mailed in.

Again, it depends on where you are. I find in general that jails are a little easier for us to take things in than the prisons.

But like the one prison I go in, I walk on eggshells there. I don't want to even take a handout to give to men that isn't approved, just because, as I mentioned earlier, there's some of that animosity against Christian religious groups.

That's not without reason. There are all kinds of groups coming in, and that's one of the things you'll face.

They will go to hear you on Tuesday, and they'll go hear a health and wealth guy on Wednesday, and they'll go to the

Roman Catholic service on Thursday. As you go along and as you teach, they'll begin to discern things, and that's part of the joy of seeing that kind of thing.

One of the things that makes you believable and commends you to them, again, is your faithfulness.

You're there every week. There are a lot of people, there are a lot of churches that are in prisons and jails, but they take a very haphazard approach to it, and if something comes up, they're not there.

That's not a good thing. We want to be there every week. It just shows

God's faithfulness. We're a testimony of His faithfulness to us, and we want to be that to them.

Praise God. Well, yeah, I happen to know from, it was probably close to 18 years ago, it was probably like in 2000 or the early 2000s,

I was regularly corresponding with a prison inmate who discovered my church through a radio ministry that we had, and he was in several prisons in upstate

New York, including Sing Sing, including Mohawk, and another one that I can't remember off the top of my head, but I remember

I was allowed at that time to ship him Bibles, and they were actually very expensive, leather -bound

Bibles. I don't know if that is still the case, where they would allow that.

It might have been because of the specific prisoner I was sending those things to, and it could have been just because, it may have been just because of the fact that it was nearly 18 years ago that that was permitted.

I don't know. Yeah, things are getting much more tighter, getting tighter and tighter.

I mean, since I started, we can't carry any kind of a handout with a staple in it, no staples.

Wow. Part of that is they use staples to jam locks on doors. I mean, there's just all kinds of things that happen, and there's an ever -expanding list of things you can and can't do.

It's just helpful. You're not there to fight the administration. They know much, much more about the problems and the needs, so you want to follow what they say to the letter.

Something else I would commend, the PCA has a national prison ministry.

It's run by a man named Mark Cassin, and Mark Cassin has a very similar testimony to Lowell Ivey.

I can't remember exactly, but he spent roughly 15 years in the penitentiary in California, I believe, and he became a

Christian. He's out, and he has a very strong, active correspondence ministry.

You can go to what's called the MNA, Mission to North America, website, and you can find a link to Mark.

The correspondence ministry is for men in prisons. They don't send the correspondence to jails, because jails are so temporary, but they're for men who are in one place or in a prison for a long term.

Mark has a very solid, biblical, reformed correspondence course that these men can get.

Something else that Mark is doing, that I'm involved here, not with Mark, but another ministry for the church is mentoring these men.

They're men who get out and who've known Christ. I'm mentoring a man right now.

He spent 23 years in prison, and he's out. He came to know Christ, and he got a

Bible college degree, and he's out. He's just a fireball for helping and working.

We have lunch every couple weeks. I'm not there to run his life, but I'm just there to listen and to encourage and direct him.

Some of the contacts that I have with people around town, I'm able to refer them, and we're able to work and to go with people.

Mark has a very active and they're pioneering within his ministry a mentoring program, which is a very important thing.

We had the question earlier, is this something the whole church could do? In a sense, yes.

In a sense, no. I think it needs to start in a church with an individual who has a vision.

He's probably an evangelist. He has a passion to reach out to see people come to know Christ. If he can go in and begin to come back.

I know that my local church, over the years, they love to hear me. We have a prayer meeting. They love to hear me talk about the things that have happened even that day.

Like last week when I was in RICO jail, we meet in a small classroom. We had 28 guys in that room.

It was packed out. They delight to hear that. They delight to hear the stories that happen.

It begins to create the whole church. As you begin, I think it begins with a man with a calling, and God will bring along and raise up another man or woman again with a calling to these people.

But then there are all kinds of things that the church can do. Like at the Richmond City Justice Center, the jail, they need hygiene packets.

The inmates there are responsible for their basic items of hygiene like soap, toothpaste, toothbrush, deodorant.

They have a canteen where they can buy them, but most of the men are indigent. They don't have any money.

So the chaplain there has put out a request, and our church is getting involved with that.

We're going to start collecting bars of soap and all of these items. You go to the dollar store and get 20 bars of soap for $10 or something.

We're going to start collecting those things, put those packets together, and carry them in for him to give out.

He said he gives out at least 100 of these every week. We're going to be a part of helping to meet that need.

It just says to the chaplain, it says to the prison, and it says to the men, we care about what's going on in there.

We really do care about you, and we want to help you. And that's something the whole church can be involved with.

There are things like Angel Tree where you can help sponsor a prisoner with gifts and things for their children to help try to restore that relationship between the prisoner and his family.

So there's all kinds of things that somebody might not have a calling to actually go in and to be in that prison, but there's all kinds of things that if a vision is set out for the church, the church will get involved.

The church will help, and the church will be blessed for that. I think a cup of cold water that you gave to Jesus, they talk about, you know, he said, what did

I do? Well, he said, you remember that bar of soap you gave? You put a bar of soap in that box, and that guy needed that, and that guy came to Christ, and that was to me.

And, you know, to catch the vision of, you don't necessarily have to be right there inside the bars talking to guys, but you can send a cup of cold water inside with the people that are there to help them.

Praise God. Let's see, we have, we have here,

I just had it in front of me, it's gone. Oh, here it is.

We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, and Arnie asks,

Do you think that all too often even Christians are guilty of the sin of pride, and they don't get involved in ministries like prison ministries because they wrongfully view themselves as superior to those behind bars, even though they have never committed crimes that perhaps are worthy of putting them behind bars?

They should always remember that we are all worthy of sins that should send us to hell apart from the blood of Christ.

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, we have a great need to understand ourselves, even the gospel.

One of the things we tell the men, you don't find hope by looking inside, you look outside yourself. Hope is found in Christ, and looking to Him, and looking at the cross.

And often, just today, we ask Him, you know, what is the great sin? What does sin look like?

And we think sin looks like drugs or alcohol, and I mean, and certainly those are sins, but what was the greatest sin of all in the garden?

It was a lady went over to a tree and took a piece of fruit and ate it, and she turned to her husband and said,

Here, honey, have a bite. I mean, that's the source of everything that's going on. It doesn't look like sin, you know.

I sometimes use the illustration if you, you know, if I worked for a local

TV station, and I had a time machine, and I gave you a TV camera, and I sent you back there, and you filmed it.

I mean, this is the source of wars, and the source of divorce, and the source of murder, and you know, everything imaginable, and you're, and I want to put this on the six o 'clock news tonight, and I want you to film it.

What do you see? And more often than not, they're just stumped, you know, and this isn't just guys,

I've said this to groups that are not in prison. They're just stumped, and it just doesn't, you know, it takes a bit for it to dawn on them.

Again, it's just, what do you see there? It's a lady going over to a tree and taking a bite and saying,

Here, honey, and what's the root of that? Well, the root of that is rebellion against the

Word of God. You know, she rebelled against what God had said. He said you could eat of every tree but one, and you know, she wanted to be

God. It was her lust to be God, that she thought that she followed Satan. You can be

God by taking this piece of fruit, and you know, one of the things we have to get to is to understand that real sin, the depth of sin, doesn't necessarily look like a drug deal on the corner.

It doesn't look like a drug deal gone bad, and that's one of the problems.

You know, Jesus said, I didn't come to call the righteous, because they don't think they have a problem. You know, they're good.

They've got, their kids are making straight A's in school, and they got a good job, and they got a house at the lake, and you know, things are going well, and I'm a good man.

God's blessed me because I'm good. They don't need Jesus. They don't need God, but these men are, they're down, they're out, and they know that something's wrong.

They're sick. They need a physician. They need a doctor, and Jesus said, I didn't come to call the guy who's got it all together.

I came to call the guy that needs the help. I came to call the center, and you know, if you have a passion for evangelism and for reaching centers,

I mean, this is the place. It's just a wonderful place to go, and it's a wonderful thing to see that the gospel,

I mean, the gospel is quick. It's powerful. It's alive. It's a two -edged sword, and it pierces and divides the soul and the spirit, and it brings change.

Men are born again. They are strengthened. They are increased in the faith, and it's such a blessing.

It's such an opportunity for us. I mean, we live in such a hardened culture, but this is one place within that culture where that's not so.

There's tremendous need there, and there are guys there that God has prepared for us to hear us, and to go in there and see

God work, to me, it's a thrilling thing. As I said earlier, I never leave there that I'm not on a high, because I see the power of the gospel working in the hearts of people.

Praise God, and we are going to our final break right now. It's shorter than the last one. If you have any questions, please submit them now or forever hold your peace, because we're rapidly running out of time.

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We will be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

I love it, and Chris Arnson was there last year. He's been there, I think, every year. It's great to see him there.

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Spread the word about firstloveradio .org. Welcome back.

We are now in our final 15 minutes or so with our guest today, Fred Sloan. As you know, if you've been listening, we have been discussing prison ministry.

The specific theme is why is prison ministry necessary? Fred Sloan is an ordained minister in the

Presbyterian Church in America, which is known as the PCA, and he's a director, the director, and evangelist for prison discipleship ministry and ministry of the

James River PCA Presbytery of Central Virginia. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence.

If you live outside the USA, we have Ronald in eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who says, could you give us a few practical steps on how we can begin a prison ministry through our own church where we are a member?

Great, that's a great question. As we were at the break, I was just thinking of those kinds of things. First of all,

I'd start praying and look around. Is there anybody in your church that works in the prison system, works for the sheriff?

I don't know how the system is set up. I don't know if you have sheriffs in New York, but who runs the jails there?

Maybe it's the police department. Do you know anybody in those departments? The first break that we got once we started expanding was after a pastor came up to me and said, there's a lady in our church that works at the

Richmond City Jail. You ought to get to know her. I went down and talked to her. She had tears in her eyes. She said,

I've been praying for this for two weeks. Look around and see, there are probably people around you somewhere who are involved.

They work in the system. They're a deputy. They're a police officer. They're a prison director, a program director, those kinds of things.

Find out. The way to get in is to have a friend who can look after you, who will help you.

They'll kind of teach you the ropes. They'll introduce you to people. They will get you inside.

Again, I would get a list of prisons and jails around me and just start calling, try to talk to the chaplain.

The chaplains may be theologically way off base, but they're looking for help in general.

They would love to have somebody like that. There are even some federal programs that pay people to work.

I have a friend that works in a federal prison south of here.

He's working under some kind of a grant from the government. He's basically going in there and teaching some of the basic principles.

If you're familiar with Christian Counseling and Education Foundation, he has those men that want to be a part of it involved in studying these classes, taking these classes, studying the

Bible. There's just all kinds of ways I would look around as I've been involved with this.

We're kind of the faith for the Presbytery, but as I've been involved, it's been very encouraging.

There are lots of people in churches who are involved. There's some amazing stories of people who are involved.

So I would look around. There's nobody in your church that's already involved. Maybe a sister church.

Maybe another pastor. Somebody knows something about it. There's a gentleman here.

He's an accountant. He works downtown Richmond. He works maybe 10 minutes away from the Richmond City Jail.

He goes in there on his lunch hour every day, five days a week, and he's been doing it for over 25 years.

I can't imagine that. Wow. But I mean, that is a faithful, just a faithful, quiet servant.

And I know a lady that's been going to the Henrico Jail for 20 years or more.

She just is faithful, faithful, faithful. And if you can find some of those people and connect with them and learn from them, or again, just strike out on your own.

I told this story earlier. My friend, he was driving. He was on some business, and he passed this prison.

And he said, man, we ought to check on that. And he called, and sometimes it can take months to get into a place.

He called him within two days or so. We have an appointment to meet with the chaplain to see what we can do to get involved there.

So, you know, you never know. You just, you know, what is it? Nehemiah said,

I being in the way, the Lord led me. Just get out there and begin to, you know, make calls, look for people.

The Lord will put you where he wants you. He will open the doors. Praise God.

We've got Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. Harrison says, if you were going to give an inmate three books other than the

Bible, what would those three books be? That's a good question.

I have to think about that a little bit. Probably the Confession, the Confession with the Catechisms, and maybe a good commentary on that.

A good theology. I don't know off the top of my head.

You kind of caught me flat -footed there. I would also include in those books.

They're not specifically written about prison inmates or for them, but it would certainly go hand -in -hand with the subject matter,

I think. One is the late Jerry Bridges book, Trusting God Even When Life Hurts.

I think it's a phenomenal book. I've given that to many people who have been mourning the loss of loved ones.

In fact, every time that I hear about a close friend or family member who has lost someone in death that they loved,

I make it a practice to give them that book. R .C. Sproul, the late R .C. Sproul, also wrote a book called

Surprised by Suffering. Obviously, that is not specifically involving incarceration in a prison.

It's predominantly involving those suffering from either physical illness or the death of a loved one, that kind of a thing.

But I think it still applies. The content of these books are perfectly suited for that.

Thank you for the excellent question. Of course, the catechisms are great, especially for new believers or even unbelievers that you're evangelizing, so that they can know the primary tenets of the

Christian faith, because that's what the catechisms are for, to instruct people on the things that are vital in the faith in summary form.

Well, I want you, before we run out of time, to have about five minutes, just uninterrupted, where you could summarize the things that you most want etched on the hearts and minds of our listeners before we go off the air today.

Well, I think the question that the person put out about a cup of cold water,

I mean, God puts a great emphasis on ministry, reaching out to the poor. The ministry of Christ was most effective with the sinners.

It's people who knew they didn't have it together. They knew that their lives had been a mess.

I think of Luke 7 and Simon's house, and the lady who comes in, it was

Jesus's ministry, you know, to her. The theme in the book of Luke, one of the themes anyway, is that in the beginning,

Simeon says that this child is given for the rising and the falling of many in Israel, and you see that in Luke, you see it at Simeon's house.

Simeon's the guy, he's got it all together, he's the religious, he's the good guy, and this woman who's probably a prostitute whose life is a mess.

And what happens over the course of that event is that Simeon is brought low and she goes away, her sins are forgiven.

And we just see that over and over again, and I encourage and challenge people to go into these places.

Again, don't let fear of what might or could happen. In general,

I've had school teachers who teach in the jails, they say, I used to teach in the public schools, but I'd rather be in here, because it's much more orderly, people are much more well -behaved.

And in general, these places, they run a tight ship. They're not going to put up for a lot of wildness and a lot of smart -aleckness.

And you've got people that when they do come, they want to be told the truth. And you don't have to sugarcoat it, you don't have to talk down to them.

You can just lay it out there just the way it is, and that's good news to them.

Because they've been told all these things all their lives that are not true. They're false.

You didn't come from nothing, and you're not going to go to nothing, and what you do right now matters.

And the way to make it count is the way you can be right with God. You don't find hope by looking at yourself.

You don't find hope by trying to tell yourself how good you are. You find hope by looking to Christ and looking to the

Gospel. And it is God who you can be right with, the God of eternity, the

God of all creation. You can be right with Him through Jesus Christ, through faith in Jesus Christ.

And that is a very sweet, a very kind, and a wonderful message to them, that God loves sinners.

We quote that verse from Isaiah 57 a lot to the folks.

I'm the high and the holy one. I live in a high and a holy place, but also with the man who's of a humble heart to help the humble, to lift them up, and to fill them.

And that's the key. That's the whole key right there. God wants people to come to Him in humility, and we're all full of pride.

And God has ordained the circumstances of these men's lives to bring them to a very humble place.

And if they will simply look outside of themselves, God will change them. He will use them.

I mean, look at Lowell Ivey and Jeff Downs. Look what God has done with them. These are ordained pastors, and there's a lot of other stories like that out there.

And my hunger is just to say, Lord, raise up some more Lowell Iveys, and raise up some more

Jeff Downs, and just raise up some men who are going to work and love their wives and care for their children.

Lord, we live in a society where, you know, what's the percentage of children born out of wedlock?

It's huge. You know, it's 60 -70 percent. We live in a society, if it weren't for all the money we have, we would have anarchy.

And we almost have that now anyway. And it's because we're full of pride and arrogance.

We're rich. We're increasing goods. We don't think we have need of anything. And yet,

God out of that society has put His finger on some people, and He's pressed hard on them.

And they're in prison, and they've had drug addictions, and they've had whatever, pornography, whatever it is.

They've had these things, alcohol, whatever. You know, they're thieves.

They've done all these kinds of things, and yet God has put them in a place.

It can be the greatest moment, the greatest day of their life, because God has given them something that most people in this culture don't have.

He's given them, He's put them in a place of humility, and if they will just simply own that. They don't have to do anything.

Just say, Lord, this is who I am. I'm a mess. I've made a mess out of my life, and I need some help.

I need some help outside of me. Hope is not in me. It's in you, and I look to you and help me.

And just day by day. I had a wonderful thing happen three or four months ago. I was at the

Henrico jail. I only go there once a month. There's a lot of turnover, but I was talking about 2

Timothy 3, 16. All scripture is profitable for doctrine, for correction, for reproof, for instruction in righteousness, and I use a simple little story.

I think it came from J. Adams. He said, you know, it's good for doctrine.

He used the analogy of a train. You know, doctrine tells us this is the train track, and then it said it's good for reproof, and reproof is, you know, there are trains in our culture that say, well,

I don't want to take the train track. I'm going to cut across the cornfield, and I'm mired up to mud and up to my wheels in the middle of the cornfield, and that's where these guys are.

They're mired up to mud, and so I said to them, you know, it's reproof says, you know, you're a train.

You're meant to run on tracks, but you're out there trying to cross the cornfield. No wonder you're in a mess, so it tells you it comes to you, and it's a cup of cold water in the face.

It's a rebuke, but then it's for correction, and correction says, okay, here's how you get out of the cornfield and back on the track, and that's what the

Bible does. It teaches you how to get back on the track, and then it's instruction in righteousness.

That's how you stay on the track, and I told that story. I took longer.

I went through it in a little more detail, and one of the men, he raised his hand, and I'd never seen him before.

He said, he said, thank you. He said, I'm back in prison.

He said, the best years of my life were when I was in prison before, because I came to know the

Lord, and I got out of prison, and I got away from it, and I see now what you're saying.

I see the way back. I see what I need to do, and I mean, I just melted right there.

You know, how can you not, because, you know, the Word of God, the Word of God showed him where he was, what he needed to do, how he needed to get back on track, and, you know,

I don't know where he went, and I don't know that I've ever seen him again, because they come and go pretty quickly, so we just have to trust.

We're the sower that sows the seed, and trust God for the, to bring forth the fruit on the ground.

Praise God. We have, let's see here, we have

Christopher in Amityville, Long Island, New York. That's actually the town that I was born and raised in, and spent many years in.

Christopher says, do you think that a common thing that goes through the minds of many prison inmates is that they have an entirely too small concept of God?

They think that the crimes that they have committed are unforgivable, and therefore, they don't even bother reaching out to Christ for forgiveness at all.

Yeah, I think, I mean, I think they're hopeless. You know, there's a lot of hopelessness there, and when you can come and show them that it's not by your righteousness, you don't stand before God in your own righteousness.

You know, I tell them, I think it comes from James Kennedy. If you stand before God, and God said, why should

I let you in heaven, what would you say? And I'll tell you the wrong answer. Don't say this.

It's because I've been better. I got out of prison, and I made a lot of changes, and I'm doing better. I'm being good to my mother, and I'm kind to my wife.

That's the wrong answer. The right answer is Christ. I'm only here for one reason, and that's

Christ, and Christ isn't found in you. You look outside to him. You look to God.

You look to Christ and the work of the cross outside of you. Now, when that happens, Christ comes into your heart.

He makes changes. He fills you with hope. You know, He makes changes, but that hope is always found by looking out, looking outward, looking to see who

God is and what He's doing and what He can do in my heart, because, again,

Christ loves sinners, and if you're willing to say, God, this is the real me, look,

I'm not going to kid you. The real me is a mess, and I need your help. Amen.

Well, just don't forget, folks, that November 3rd, I'm sorry, 9 a .m. to 11 30 a .m.,

November 3rd at Knox Reform Presbyterian Church, the conference is being held featuring our guest

Fred Sloan and also Mr. Lowell Ivey and the soon -to -be -installed pastor at Knox Reform Presbyterian Church, Jeff Downs, and if you want more details on this conference, you can go to Prison Discipleship Ministry, pdmin .com,

pdmin .com, and you can also go to the website of Knox Presbyterian Church there in Mechanicsville, Virginia, at KnoxReformedPres .org,

KnoxReformedPres .org. Thank you so much, Fred, for being our guest today.

Thank you, everyone who listened and wrote in questions. I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives, and perhaps even this is especially for those in prison right now,

I hope you all remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.

That's right. Amen. Thank you for having me today. If anybody wants to contact me, they can go to the website and send me an email and be glad to help them in any way.