Aug. 11, 2015 ISI Radio Show with Geoff Robinson & Ron Elkin on “Evangelism to Roman Catholics @ 2015 Papal Visit”

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Now here's our host Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 11th day of August 2015 and I'm very excited about my program today because it's going to be promoting a very important event that will be taking place in the fall in regard to the papal visit to Philadelphia and my guests today are

Jeff Robinson and also Ron Elkin who are both involved in a theologically reformed evangelical outreach to Roman Catholics who will be gathering in mass, not meaning their ceremony, but in their great numbers in the

Philadelphia area because of Pope Francis's visit here coming up in September.

But first of all, let me for the very first time welcome to Iron Sharpens Iron as my guest

Jeff Robinson. Hello, I'm in studio. Yes you are, it's great to have you in studio and before we go to my second guest let's hear something about your own testimony of conversion to Christ and let's hear also why you have such a passion to reach

Roman Catholics with the gospel. Well, I was raised Roman Catholic.

I grew up in the suburbs of South Jersey which is where I live right now, the suburbs of Philadelphia and I was alienated, you know, a child of wrath like the rest of humanity and my mom was raised

Catholic and my grandparents were devout and what happened was

I guess the nuns beat a few too many people so I wasn't raised

Catholic right away but right around age five or so I was kind of brought back to the

Catholic church or my family was brought back. My mom had married, well my dad, and he was, he

I guess was nominally Protestant so he was okay with me doing the

Catholic thing I guess with my mom. I hated going to church. I was baptized when

I was seven. I always hated going to church because I guess I could remember before time and when

I didn't have to go and got confirmed. So baptized at seven was different, then took communion, confirmed at 13, went very rarely in between 13 and 16.

Through the influence of a friend at my public high school I became a Christian when

I was 16. Started reading the book of Acts, came under conviction by the time

I hit Acts chapter 8. I just want to know why do the people, why did the apostles die for what they believed and by the time

I got to I guess around Saul's conversion I had become a Christian. And then

I stayed going to the Catholic church for maybe a year and then as soon as I could drive, by the time about a year was over and it kind of coincided with the time where I got my own driver's license,

I was ready to not be a Catholic anymore. I don't know if I was as clear.

I knew that there was stuff wrong with the Catholic church. I maybe didn't know how much was wrong vis -a -vis the gospel or that sort of thing.

So I just kind of progressed and then through the influence of R .C. Sproul and James White, I became

Calvinist in conviction and currently I'm married with three little boys and I'm in a

PCA church in South Jersey. And what church is that? Covenant Presbyterian. You have to disambiguate because there's about, as I've learned in this outreach, there's about 50 billion

Covenant Presbyterians. And so I go to a church in the suburbs of South Jersey.

Okay. And going back to your childhood as a

Catholic, obviously hating to go to church as a child is pretty universal.

I'm sure that that has no exclusivity connected to the Catholic church because even born -again believers often who are parents fight with their children about church, especially if the parents have come to faith later in life and perhaps the children weren't weaned from infancy.

So when I had become a Christian, my mother thought I had joined a cult. Because you actually enjoyed going to church.

Because I actually wanted to go to a church. But when you were confirmed, were you putting on an act for the church that you believed?

I don't know. It's so much of an act or that I disbelieved a lot of stuff.

It was just, you just kind of go through the motions. It's not genuine.

You're not alive on the inside. I guess it's different.

I don't know how to explain it to someone who maybe converted at a young age, but it always felt like I was carrying a weight around.

And then after post -conversion, there was just,

I wouldn't say a spring in my step. There was definitely a change in terms of it just...

You're like Pilgrim in Pilgrim's Progress. Yeah. In my inner man, it was definitely like a weight had been lifted.

And where there was a power to reject sin, where before, even if I wanted to reject sin, not to say

I'm perfect now, but there was just no power there to do anything. And I wouldn't say about my

Catholic upbringing, and I think this is true from everybody I've talked to, especially in the last year, is it's not so much that day -to -day the

Catholic church is denying, say, justification by faith alone. Which, I mean, they do technically deny it.

But what the problem is, is that the gospel, they just assume if you're there, if you're taking the sacraments, you're okay.

And you're in the system, you're okay. I remember the bishop coming when I was for confirmation, and he was telling everybody, today is when you get the

Holy Spirit, or something along those lines. And I was just kind of like, I didn't feel any different pre and post -confirmation.

I did feel different when I said 16 came to Christ, I felt a lot different.

I could feel the Spirit's influence very clearly inside.

But so I think it's just that is the problem for our Catholic family and neighbors, is that the gospel is not so much denied practically, but just not given.

So you just don't, they're not given the gospel. Right, right. And this would be true in even nominal

Protestant homes. Yeah, absolutely. And let's go to my guest,

Ron Elkin, who I have had on this broadcast before. We were specifically discussing

Jewish evangelism from a theologically reformed or Calvinist perspective.

And I forgot to mention on the air, it just dawned on me after our program was over,

Ron, that I had met you years ago at the John Bunyan Conference. I believe it may have been in Louisburg, Pennsylvania at the time.

And I remember you getting up to the podium and giving a little presentation about your work in Jewish evangelism coming from a

Calvinist perspective. And I remember being utterly fascinated by that. But welcome back to the program. Well, thank you.

Thank you, Chris. And obviously, you have quite a different background than Jeff Robinson, your colleague and brother who is involved in the upcoming papal outreach.

We've already heard a lengthy version of your conversion. Why don't you give us an abbreviated one for this program, for those of our listeners who didn't hear it?

Okay. I grew up in a religious Jewish home. So I went to public school, but also

I went three days a week to Hebrew school, where I learned the tenets of Judaism and learned how to read the

Torah in Hebrew. And then, of course, attended synagogue service on a regular basis.

And the big problem for me is, as I grew older, I just couldn't see the reality of God in that situation.

Matter of fact, all the religions I kind of rejected in a way because there was so much trouble in the world around me.

And even in my own life, we did not have the happiest home life. And so I began to be either like border between agnostic and atheism.

And then later, I got involved with Eastern religion and astrology and meditation and became convinced there's a higher power, but didn't know exactly which way to go as far as religiously.

I just wanted to be more universal believer in a higher power. And of course, that left me free not to worry about sin or anything.

I could do whatever I wanted in a sense, because there was no real clear standards other than what

I've been raised with. I mean, there was a certain amount of true knowledge in Judaism when it comes to understanding the

God of the of the gospel. I mean, the God of the Torah. I mean, it's very clearly

God that we worship as Christians. So there's the Ten Commandments. And so there's definitely was some planning of siege through that that led to me feeling guilty about my sins.

But I didn't have the power nor the understanding of how serious that was.

And then I got introduced to the gospel in a variety of different ways. Somebody left a track on my windshield when

I was living in West Philadelphia. Different Christians when I was living in California would share the gospel with me.

And I did give them a hard time because I grew up in a household that saw Christianity as a enemy.

The fact that many Jews have been killed in World War II by a supposedly Christian nation.

Germany and others that joined in, like Poland and so on. And so the idea of Christianity was that it was a bunch of people that were worshiping a man, whereas we worship the true

God. And so it was very hard for me to consider anything about the gospel. And then as time went on,

God began to convict me deeper and deeper about my sins. And the

Spirit of God, which I found later in the Word of God, was working on me and beating me up and getting me to understand that I really needed to find some peace with God.

And I began to pursue good works. I set up some community organizations in northern

California that got funded by the government. I purposely did that to the sense of the need to make atonement before God.

And I thought, well, by doing these good efforts, helping people, that I would be accepted. And it turned out that the pressure of the

Holy Spirit kept on going on me. And that even when these works were accomplished and thousands of people in the end have been helped by them, it was not sufficient to give me peace.

And so I began to search out more and cried out to God for understanding. And the

Lord in his wisdom brought different people in my life to share the gospel more. And I became attracted to the person of Jesus and saw that his teachings were wholesome and good.

There was nothing wrong in them. And yet I rejected the idea that I had to believe in him in order to be in touch with God.

And then also there was a fear of what would I be as a Jew if I believe in Jesus? So I will be betraying my people, but often been persecuted in the name of Jesus.

And so there's a Jewish word called kiskis, which means my guts, my inner feelings were in turmoil about this.

But you know, God is very merciful. If you know, Jesus said, if you want to know the truth of who

I am, then you have to be willing to obey God. And I was willing, I was seeking.

And so God eventually brought me to a point in my search for spiritual truth that I realized that I had to believe in Jesus in order to be in a right relationship with God.

And so that we may have an interference is another call coming through. So that once I acknowledge

God through Jesus publicly, he revolutionized my life. And I experienced what is called being born of God's spirit, being born again, and truly a refreshing life came into me that has continued to change me.

And I'm very grateful to God to bring me to that point where I could believe in Jesus. Well, praise

God for that. And it is interesting. There is a similarity, and perhaps it exists even with other religions, but there's a similarity between people that I have met who leave the

Jewish upbringing of their family, of their upbringing, of their youth, even if it's nominal, even if it's purely cultural, and become

Christian. Well, there is a direct parallel I have witnessed amongst folks, many folks, not all, who leave the

Roman Catholic Church and become, born again, evangelical Christians. It's kind of interesting how sometimes you will even hear

Roman Catholics say, he left the Catholic Church and became Christian. It's kind of interesting how sometimes they even describe it that way.

Well, there is an interesting thing here. The family of the gentleman who helped lead me to Christ, his family was very

Catholic. His parents were the ones who converted to Protestantism.

And his extended family, for whatever reason, because they attended like a messianic congregation in Philly, they were more okay with that than they were if they were just attending a straight -up

Protestant. I don't know what the Jewish connection made that okay in like a more traditional

Catholic mind. It might be like a family -by -family situation because there are, I know, messianic

Jews who have faced quite nasty reactions from their own family, and they even view the messianic works as being more involved in charlatanism because they're pretending to be

Jews in the minds of the cultural or conservative or orthodox

Jew. But the thing I was going to say is that some of these families actually will disown the member that becomes a

Christian, whether it is from a Roman Catholic or Jewish background. Did you actually experience, like my friend

Steve Sherman, who is a Christian and evangelist and writer, the thing that's fascinating about his story is that he was a male stripper when he was a young adult and was a nominal

Jew, and his Jewish family had zero problem with it. And when he became a

Christian, his mother sat shiva for him and wrote him off for dead, and his family basically disowned them.

They viewed that as more of a serious break from their

Jewishness than him being involved in something as vulgar and distasteful and wicked as being involved in a male stripping club and so on.

But what was your family's reaction, and has it changed at all?

Well, for me, my mom and dad did not disown me.

We maintained a relationship, and they weren't happy with the situation.

But my extended family, my other relatives, particularly my cousins, we would gather together for some religious

Passover, and they would be there. But once my mother and father had passed away,

I was basically dead to them, just basically cut off. And so, of course, that's hurtful.

But there's a parallel between Catholics and Jewish people in this way, that the religion is part of it, but it's also a culture.

It's also a sense of identity. Yes, it's wrapped up in the ethnicity very often.

Oh, yeah. So that's it. So when you step out of that, you're seen as being a traitor to your background and your people, so to speak.

There's many intermarriages between nominal Catholics and nominal Jews, because there's a similar value of family and traditions in some ways, and yet there's that sense of alienation or stepping out, and yet they're able to have these couples that are kind of a mixture of both.

And it's a very interesting ministry, actually, that was developed by Chosen People to particularly reach out to the mixed marriage couple and try to help them understand that in the

Messiah, Yeshua, Jesus, that there can be real unity because he makes us one.

And I want to make it clear that there are many Roman Catholic families also, and I'm sure

Jewish families, although I'm not as familiar with those situations, but I know that there are many

Roman Catholic families who are very happy when they see a loved one turn to Christ merely because they see a radical improvement in the person's life, or they're just perhaps happy if their loved one is happy or something as trivial as that.

But in my case, my Roman Catholic family was very happy when I turned to Christ, coming out of very serious alcoholism.

Unfortunately, after remaining sober for 18 years, thankfully after my parents passed away and were not alive to witness me return to alcoholism,

I did return to the sin of drunkenness for a number of years, but thankfully went to a

Christian ministry to once again let go of the shackles of that wickedness and repent and so on, and was restored fully to the church and so on.

But my family, because they saw such a radical change for the better in my life, they were nothing but pleased, and they would visit my church on occasion.

In fact, my father started visiting my church every Sunday night. After he would go to his own church in the morning, he would come to my church for years every

Sunday night, even if he knew I wasn't there. So you do have these different situations. I didn't want to broad -brush.

Oh no, Mike, just to clarify, that was kind of like an initial reaction from my mother, that, you know,

I was like, whoa, what's going on with Jeff? But yeah, by and large, my extended

Catholic family could care less. Like, there's a lot of nominalism, even the people who, at least in my circles, in my neck of the woods,

I would say white Anglo -ish Catholics in the suburbs of Philadelphia.

Even those who are going to church regularly, they're, you wouldn't consider them, say, the

Catholic answers crowd, by and large. Yeah, in fact, I have one funny story, very quick.

When I was a new believer, and there was an Italian -American couple in the church who had left the

Catholic church, and they were hosting a Bible study in the

Baptist church that I was a member of. They were hosting a Bible study in their basement that our pastor led.

And the mother of the wife, who was still Roman Catholic, used to, on occasion, visit the

Bible study. And I remember my pastor bringing up the fact that Jesus was a

Jew. And this very sweet old Italian lady said,

Jesus was Jewish? And the pastor said, yes, he was. And she said, and I always thought he was

Catholic. But anyway, you folks,

I think it was you, Jeff, who spearheaded this outreach. Yeah, well, the

Jewish angle comes in where I've been involved in Jewish ministry for years.

I was the founder of Jews for Jesus' intern one summer. And I went to a messianic congregation in North Jersey for a couple years when

I was in college. And so I've always had an interest in Jewish outreach.

And for whatever reason, probably Ron would probably have a better history of it than I, Philadelphia has had

Jewish reformed outreach to Jews for years and years and years. And you mean reformed in the

Christian aspect of Calvinism, not reform without the ED, which is the liberal Judaism.

Not the liberal Judaism, but the Calvinistic, especially like in Presbyterian circles in Philadelphia.

So in 2005, I teamed up with Jews for Jesus as they did a street campaign, evangelistic campaign, and then that's where I kind of came into contact with Ron.

And then I was doing an evangelistic outreach with Ron last year around the 4th of July.

And one of my hobbies is to like scan news media and other stuff and see who's coming to Philly and see if I can, you know, spring the gospel on them kind of thing.

And I started hearing rumbles that the Pope might be coming to Philly, but nothing really loud, nothing confirmed.

So I mentioned it to Ron. Ron was like, you know, I'm a Jewish ministry, but we'll, you know, see what we can do.

And so I had called Dr. James White early August of last year, because I'm just a lay person.

I was just thinking, I have experience doing evangelism through work with Ron and with Jews for Jesus.

So I was thinking to myself, maybe there's like a Catholic version of Jews for Jesus.

Some evangelistic outreach group that is geared towards Catholics, and we would invite them into Philly, and then maybe we'd do stuff with them.

Couldn't find anybody. Dr. White told me to call you. So I was in contact.

There he goes passing the buck again. So I essentially started cold calling a bunch of Reformed churches in the area.

And I don't know whether the response has been good or bad or in between. And I'm kind of surprised anybody kind of returned my call.

I was just kind of like, hey, I'm a random person who's doing evangelistic outreach. If you're interested, come contact me.

And I got a few churches that were pretty interested in helping.

And so far, we have some volunteers especially coming in for the weekend.

What the itinerary is, just to kind of let everybody know. So every three years, I don't know if that's tri -annual or whatever that's called.

But every three years, there's the world meeting of families. Believe it was, maybe that was in Denver a while back in the 90s or something like that.

And this year, it will be in Philadelphia. So there's going to be a conference from Tuesday, September 22nd through the

Friday, the 25th. And then during that time, the Pope will be in Washington, D .C.

and New York. And we're not doing anything with him there. But we'll be evangelizing during the conference in Center City proper in Philadelphia.

And then on the weekends, we will be doing our best to evangelize. And that's when the

Pope will be arriving from New York, the Saturday morning, the 26th. And he'll be holding mass on the

Benjamin Franklin Parkway. They're expecting a million plus people for that. A million and a half,

I think, is what they're expecting. And we're going to try to reach people as they're going to that event with the gospel.

We've created our own tracts that are kind of law gospel -based. We're not using the terminology because we don't want to talk over people's head.

But our tracts are going to be about justification by faith alone.

Essentially, we're telling people you need to trust in Christ alone. But we're also using a law gospel paradigm, using the law to convict of sin, and then giving them the gospel that if they trust in Christ alone, they can have peace and forgiveness of sin.

And we're going to be going to a break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question about evangelizing

Roman Catholics, perhaps you even have a question about evangelizing Jews, since one of our guests today is

Ron Elkin, a Jewish believer in Jesus Christ, please feel free to email us.

Even if you disagree with what's being spoken of, what's taking place, even if you're a

Roman Catholic or perhaps a Jewish person that is opposed to evangelizing Jews, whatever you may believe or perhaps you don't know for certain what to believe, perhaps you're puzzled by all this, send us an email at chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

That's chrisarnsen, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

And hopefully our guests will be able to answer your questions to the best of their ability. Please include your first name, at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Jeff Robinson and Ron Elkin and their evangelical outreach to Catholics during the 2015 papal visit to Philadelphia.

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That's wrbc .us. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arns. And if you've just tuned us in, my guests today are Jeff Robinson and Ron Elkin.

And they are both involved in an evangelical outreach to Roman Catholics who will be visiting or perhaps even coming from their own locations in the

Philadelphia area to visit the festivities that are going on with Pope Francis and his visit to Philadelphia.

One of my guests, Jeff Robinson, is a former Roman Catholic who is currently a member of a conservative

Presbyterian church which is in the Presbyterian Church in America denomination. And the other guest is

Ron Elkin, a Jewish believer who runs Ami Ministry. And the website for Ami Ministry is amiministry .org.

A -M -M, as in Michael, I, ministry .org. And you can find out more about Ami Ministry there.

And eventually, we're going to have a previous interview that Ron and I conducted on Jewish evangelism from a

Reformed perspective that should be posted on the website ironsharpensironradio .com

within a week or two. And we hope you enjoy that as well. Our email address here, if you have a question for our guests, whether you agree with what they're saying, whether you disagree, or you're just not certain, chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. One of the things I wanted to bring up is that many

Roman Catholics hearing this or hearing about this, and even, ironically, many evangelicals, will look at this and say, this is nothing but a demonstration of bigotry and hate, hatred towards Catholics.

Why don't you just leave them alone? Let them enjoy the visit of their pope, and so on and so on.

First of all, it is ironic that even evangelicals are participating in this, because I think a lot of it stems from a lack of understanding about what the gospel is.

And even Roman Catholics who would be more ecumenical and view this as bigotry on the part of evangelicals or fundamentalists, they don't really understand the seriousness of heresy that we would be involved in if the

Roman Catholic Church's dogma on the gospel is true. In fact, the Council of Trent in the 16th century, which is still a binding document, the declarations of the

Council of Trent are still binding today as dogma, they declared that we who have a gospel that is uniquely evangelical, the things about the way that we present the gospel and believe in the good news, in regard to it, salvation being by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone, we have been accursed, officially, by the

Catholic Church. So this is nothing to do with bigotry, it's out of love to see people believe in the genuine gospel, isn't it,

Jeff? It's all about the gospel. One thing I would also mention is that Ron and I have been doing

Jewish evangelism for so long that you've got to come at a better insult with us than that, because,

I mean, there are so many people groups, whether it's evangelizing

Muslims or Jews or Catholics, you're going to run into flack if you're sharing the gospel.

And the problem, I guess, that people have when we share the gospel with Catholics, is that there are,

I think, a few Catholics who are not paying attention to their church. So there may be, even,

I guess, the Westminster Confessions would say, after I was converted,

I was a genuine Christian, but still in the Catholic Church for a year or so. Right, and there were martyrs in the

Catholic Church centuries ago that were in the Catholic Church but didn't believe in their gospel. To me, it's all about the gospel.

That is all I have, okay? If I have to rely on my works,

I'm done and I'm going to hell, right? And, of course, they would say that they're not

Pelagian. Well, it's not the ghost of Pelagius I'm worried about, it's the ghost of semi -Pelagius.

And something that Dr. White said on his dividing line,

I think it was maybe a year and a half or more ago now, might be two years, where the central issue in the

Reformation was not the necessity of grace but the sufficiency of grace.

Amen, amen. And as long as the Book of Galatians is in my

Bible, I have to make this an issue. Now, I read, someone forwarded me an article a couple days ago from a

Catholic newspaper in the United Kingdom that's saying basically

Pope Francis is readying a document for the 500th anniversary of the Reformation and basically say everything's cool.

Well, even if they don't condemn us anymore, even if they overturn Trent, they're still not preaching the gospel, right?

They could not overturn Trent without denying papal infallibility because those have been declared as dogma.

Well, I've seen, I'll mention this, the Unum Sanctum by Pope Boniface is a papal bull from like 1301 or something which says that anyone who's not in submission to the

Pope is not a sheep of Christ. And it specifically mentions the

Greeks, hence the Eastern Orthodox. Well, now today you have Eastern Orthodox in the catechism being referred to as brothers and sisters in Christ.

So I've seen all sorts of sort of Roman Catholic apologists bending themselves into pretzels to try to explain this.

So I'm not, I think once it comes down, eventually

I think Rome is going to move this way. It, where Trent will be denied and I don't know how

Catholics are going to, like conservative Catholics are going to react to it. I think the only sane position would be to be a satyvacantus or however you pronounce that.

And then once you're that, you might as well be, but you know, people don't act rationally. So you're talking about like 30 people.

Right, so, so. That's an exaggeration of course. I guess what I'm trying to say is people don't act completely rationally where they say, they'll just say, oh, you know, that was,

I know my Catholic friends and neighbors. That was 500 years ago.

Whatever the Pope says, you live in the moment, right? My, I, in the living memory of my family, that basically

Protestants were going to hell, say in the 1920s. Uh, and then my,

I remember, I think my, my grandfather wouldn't, they weren't allowed to go to Boy Scouts because, or something like that because it was in a

Protestant church. So you go from that to today where, uh, the, if not the official position of Trent, but the essentially you'd be hard pressed to find a bishop or a

Cardinal or even our Pope who wouldn't tell you that Protestants are going to heaven or at least some of them or most of them.

Yeah, of course the, their catechism, their current catechism teaches that Muslims adore the same one true

God as they do. And that is obviously totally false because they don't, the

Muslims do not worship a Trinitarian God and Muslims do not believe they are worshiping the same God.

I guess if I can, uh, kind of, this is a long way around the barn to say this is that it's not so much that they condemn us, it's that they are not preaching the gospel to their, their flock.

Right. And so if it was a liberal Protestant group and there was a million and a half coming them to Philadelphia, I hope

I would still be organizing an evangelistic outreach. Right. And for you to accuse, uh,

Jeff and Ron Elkin and all these folks who are participating in this outreach to Catholics, for you to accuse them of hatred and bigotry just because they are doing that, obviously there, there may be fundamentalist groups showing up that are hateful and nasty and bigoted and who may not even be truly born again themselves.

But, um, but the, the, the very fact that they are evangelizing Catholics and, and urging them to repent and convert, uh, the, that is viewed in and of itself as bigotry.

And for you to legitimately and consistently and logically, uh, accuse these folks for bigotry, you would have to accuse the apostle

Paul of hatred and bigotry. Because just as Jeff brought up in the book of Galatians, Paul's letter to the church in Galatia, the only thing that we know of about the

Judaizers is that they were insisting that converts to Christianity also be circumcised.

The faith alone was not enough. They had to be circumcised. That's all we know for certain about the differences they had.

They, uh, most likely, since Paul never mentions any other difference, they most likely believed in the deity of Christ.

They most likely believed in the resurrection. They most likely believed in most of the tenets of Christianity.

But they added that. And that was enough for Paul to say they have another gospel, which is no gospel at all, and that they should be accursed.

So in order for you to legitimately call men like Jeff Robinson and Ron Elkin and others who are evangelizing

Catholics, you would have to call the apostle Paul a hateful bigot as well. I'm going to talk over Ron a little bit more.

Sorry, Ron. One of the reasons why I got into Jewish evangelism was because I was grateful that through the

Jewish people, I got the Messiah and I wanted to return the favor. And to me, it's also someone was kind enough in my life to give me the gospel and then say, well, he's

Catholic, he's okay. So I would be completely ungrateful to God if I received the gospel as a former

Catholic and didn't return the favor. That's just how I view it. And before I go to a listener question,

Ron Elkin, you are a Jew and a Christian. What is your experience been with Jews who have become

Roman Catholic? And I find it interesting that on a rare occasion, you will see on a

Roman Catholic program like the Journey Home, which is exclusively about people converting to Catholicism, whether they are

Protestants, which is the dominant makeup of their guests who convert to Rome or return to Rome, but they can on occasion be

Muslims and atheists and even Jews.

And it is rare that a Jew becomes a Roman Catholic, but you've experienced that in your travels, haven't you?

Yes, actually, in the 30 some years of ministry,

I have met some people who have become Catholics who come out of a Jewish background.

There's a lot of similarities in the sense that there's a hierarchical form of religious life.

The synagogue center is the rabbi and the council that works with the rabbi, but somewhat hierarchical, similar in Judaism, similar in Catholicism.

And there's also the formal liturgy worship that is kind of duplicated in both to some degree.

There's a familiarity. And then, you know, Jewish people are like any other group of people.

There's a variety of backgrounds and thinking. And as they come to the

Lord, they bring some of that with them. And as it may be that they are drawn to the

Catholic Church and they are a minority within among Jewish believers in Jesus. But nevertheless, there seems to be a variety of Jewish people spread out throughout the church world.

And so you have Jewish people in Baptist churches, which I happen to be part of a

PCA church in Willow Grove, PA, Calvary PCA. And you have

Baptists and so on and Methodists. So the key thing is, we don't know, you know, how much when a

Jewish person becomes a Catholic, you would have to talk with them to see providentially if God has brought them to a saving knowledge of Jesus.

And of course, it's hard to know. But I wanted to add one more thing. When we, this whole thing about bigotry is really a political, correct idea to oppress the truth.

It's like all of a sudden people claim that you're a bigot if you're trying to speak of an issue that's controversial.

And what we do, I've been involved with street evangelism now for probably about 35 years.

And we always pray for a spirit of love and recognize what we're doing.

Our motivation to go out in the highways and byways and bid people to come is to love our neighbor as ourselves.

And we find that public proclamation, which are conversational evangelism in public areas, is a way to reach many people that would not normally discuss the gospel.

It's a neutral area that allows us to plant seeds and water seeds that have been planted by other

Christians, and occasionally harvest the soul that God has prepared to truly repent at that point.

And it's a lost art. It's unfortunate because I am not sure how much longer legally we're going to be able to go out on the streets and proclaim the truth.

You could just see the tendency of where things are going, that it could be considered hate speech because it condemns homosexuality in the scriptures.

And that could be brought up before a judge who's a secularist and says, well, you can keep that in your building, but it's caused too much division among people.

So you really shouldn't do that in the public realm. Even though we have the Constitution, it's certainly being ignored by many of these rulings.

So while we have the daylight, people like Jeff and myself and others, we want to love our neighbors enough to tell them the truth in a loving way.

And we're not out there to argue with anybody or condemn anybody. When I speak to Catholics, I simply say, you can remain a

Catholic all you want, but understand who Jesus is and what he did for you, and rest in his work and not yours.

And that's part of the literature that's being passed out this time around is exactly focused in that way.

Well, perhaps I disagree with you on a philosophical issue there. I don't believe that a

Catholic who becomes born again should continue partaking in an idolatrous and blasphemous ceremony like the mass where the elements of the

Eucharist are worshipped. I think what Ron's saying and kind of what our focus is on this is

I would definitely encourage anyone in the Catholic Church to get out who is a genuine believer.

However, the main thing, especially as we're on the front lines of evangelism, is talking to them about the gospel.

And then the other stuff... Yes, you don't become born again by becoming

Presbyterian or Baptist. Right. So there's a lot going on. There's a lot of layers.

So to say I want to talk to someone about the gospel, about whether they're trusting in Jesus alone, and if they're committed to Jesus.

If I found someone who says, you know, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, then I would say, okay, do you know that Rome officially teaches the opposite of that?

And if they said no, I would say, well, yeah, so maybe you should go somewhere else. If they said, you know, yes,

I do know, and then I would say, you know, you should really think about your position there.

Yeah, a lot of people are Catholic, and just like they are a lot of other religions and nominal

Protestant, and dare I say, even Baptists, if they've been raised, especially in a

Baptist or evangelical home that has a lineage of Baptists for generations, and they really know nothing about the

Bible or the gospel. My neighbor across the street, he's currently Catholic, and he's an

English teacher. So I gave him our tracts to read, to comment on, and say, how's this read to you?

He read some of them, and he said, I think I'm Protestant. And I said, okay, that's good.

Now, where I left that was, I encouraged him to get out. Now, he's definitely going to have issues,

I think, with his wife or his family, his extended family. So my encouragement to him is to get out.

And I think he understands what the situation is, and you could definitely be praying for him.

So I think that's kind of where we leave it, is we give the gospel, and we let

God's word do the work. There is just a fact of history and theology that the

Church of Rome has defined their gospel in a different way than Bible -believing evangelicals define the gospel.

So therefore, we have two different gospels, and when you compassionately and passionately want to see someone come to what you believe the true gospel is, so that they may inherit eternal life, that is not hatred.

Now, there are, as I said earlier, there are idiots that show up at different types of ceremonies that one group or another may be having to disrupt these festivities or ceremonies.

One could think of even the God Hates Fags group, or even Dr. White, Dr.

James R. White, who you mentioned earlier. He used to have an ongoing, for many years, an ongoing evangelistic outreach at the different Mormon special events, both in the

Mesa, Arizona area and in Salt Lake City, Utah. And then after years of having these respectful, loving, and biblically -based outreaches, all these independent, fundamentalist,

King James -only people showed up with nothing but hate and venom in their speech, burning effigies of Joseph Smith, and many of them don't even belong to local churches.

I definitely have found through many of the churches I've contacted, well, not many, but there's been a number of churches that are wary of street evangelism, and I think one of the things that's in their mind, and Ron can probably comment on this much more intelligently than me, but when we say, hey, we're doing street evangelism, they think that I'm going to go around calling people papists and just bad -mouthing the

Catholic Church for no reason instead of keeping it gospel -focused, or just being,

I don't know exactly what's in their head, but you can tell that there's a fear that street evangelism is like a nuclear bomb or something.

So there is definitely a fear within our churches about doing street evangelism, and I think it's from a lot of those people who do it poorly.

Yeah, Chris, I can understand your sense of loyalty to the gospel and the affront that the false teachings of the

Catholic Church promote. I understand that. When we're on a street corner talking to somebody who has not understood or accepted the gospel of grace and understanding what

Jesus actually accomplished for them, at that point, we're trying to get them in a loving way to see who

Jesus really is and what they can really have through him. So our focus is that, and of course, if they become born of God's Spirit and we're able to stay in touch with them, they would also, either the

Holy Spirit would show them the error of where they are, or as we have further discipleship of this particular person, they come to see the need to leave.

I have met what I would call born -again people who are consciously aware of the false teaching in the

Catholic Church, but have purposely chosen to stay there to continue to try to witness to their family and friends and community about the true gospel.

And they, you know, whether that choice is correct or not, they really have to be led.

They know it's false teaching, but they have chosen to stay. One particular person in Pittsburgh enabled me to come into the educational classes that they have in the

Catholic Church for young people, and I was able to present at four or five different Catholic churches

Christ in the Passover, which is an incredibly thorough evangelistic message with no holds barred preaching the gospel of grace and what the blood of Jesus accomplished.

And there I had nuns and sisters, you know, I mean, priest and sisters sitting there along with the students, and some of the parents were there, and you could see tears rolling down their eyes.

And so that particular person who I'm thinking of who stayed in the Catholic Church enabled that to happen.

Now, whether they should, you know, eventually, you know, pull out, God has to wrestle with them on that.

But, and see, God's a big God. He's a very big God, and I'm thankful for that. But we do want to see people come to understand the basics of the gospel.

And then there's discipleship, which would eventually lead to some of them leaving the Catholic Church. Yes, I agree.

I mean, obviously, God and his providence that had that person there at that time, but I cannot imagine a spirit -filled born -again believer who really knows what is going on in things like the mass, where the

Eucharist is being worshipped, just as if it was a pagan idol, and partaking of that mass, which is believed to be a propitiatory sacrifice, and on and on, and all the other things that they do, the bowing to idols, and the seeking forgiveness from a priest in the sacrament of penance, and on and on and on.

Obviously, I cannot imagine a truly born -again Christian going along with all of that for the sake of evangelism.

But obviously, perhaps they're just remaining there as spectators and evangelizing people.

I'm not really certain. We have to go to a break right now, and we will get to our first listener question.

Mike from Fort Myers, Florida, has a question that we will go to when we return. If you do have questions, our email address is chrisorenzen at gmail .com,

c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com, and whether you agree with our guests, whether you disagree, whether you disagree with anything

I said, or you're just not certain, we would love to hear from you. And please give us your first name, city and state, and country if you're outside of the

USA, and please only remain anonymous if this involves a personal and private matter where you feel uncomfortable making your name publicly known.

We'll be right back after these messages, so we hope you keep listening to Iron Sharpens Iron, and our guests

Jeff Robinson and Ron Elkin on the papal outreach to Catholics in Philadelphia during the papal visit in September.

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Lynnbrook Baptist Church on 225 Earl Avenue in Lynnbrook, Long Island is teaching God's timeless truths in the 21st century.

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

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

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

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

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

Or visit Lynnbrookbaptist .org. That's Lynnbrookbaptist .org. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen.

If you've just tuned in to Iron Sharpens Iron, our guests today are Jeff Robinson and Ron Elkin.

They are theologically reformed Christians who are spearheading an outreach, an evangelistic outreach to Roman Catholics as they gather to celebrate

Pope Francis's visit to the United States and in particular to Philadelphia this

September. And if you'd like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

That's chrisarnzen at gmail .com. Please include your first name, city and state, and country if outside of the

USA. Before I return to our discussion, I just have a couple of announcements. First of all, since Jeff Robinson had mentioned

Dr. James R. White earlier, I just want to let you know that right after this program at 6 p .m.

Eastern time, Dr. White will be conducting his own broadcast, The Dividing Line, which is not always on the same day or same time, but today it just happens to be immediately following Iron Sharpens Iron, 6 p .m.

Eastern time, and Dr. White always has something extremely valuable to say on his broadcast. That's at aomin .org,

A -O for Alpha and Omega, M -I -N standing for ministry .org,

A -O -M -I -N .org, which is the website of Alpha and Omega Ministries. I also want to alert you about an upcoming conference that starts this

Thursday in Portland, Maine, at the Stroudwater Baptist Church.

I hope I am pronouncing that correctly. It's actually starting on Thursday at the

Stroudwater Baptist Church, and on Friday and Saturday, it's at the Deering Center Community Church in Portland, Maine, and this is a theologically reformed conference that I hope that you all who are living in that area, or who are able to travel to that area, for the

Fellowship Conference New England with Pastor Michael Morrow, Mack Tomlinson, who many of you heard as a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron, Jesse Barrington, and Tim Conway.

No, not the Tim Conway of The Carol Burnett Show, but a different Tim Conway, and they are speaking on the goal, fellowship, preaching, and singing that center on the glory of God.

That's fellowship, preaching, and singing that center on the glory of God. For more details, visit illbehonest .com,

I -L -L -B -E -HONEST .com, and if you click around to special events, you'll eventually find the specific advertisement for this conference, which starts this

Thursday and continues through Saturday in Portland, Maine. And I also want to welcome a new sponsor to Iron Sharpens Iron that we thank

God for, Providence Baptist Church in Norfolk, Massachusetts. Their website is

ProvidenceBaptistChurchMA, standing for Massachusetts, dot org.

ProvidenceBaptistChurchMA .org. We thank Pastor Mark Lukens and the congregation for expressing how much they enjoy and love and value

Iron Sharpens Iron through their monthly sponsorship for one year they've committed to, to start with anyway, and we thank them from the bottom of our hearts for helping us remain on the air, and we look forward to having

Mark Lukens back on this broadcast in the future. And I also want to repeat one more time, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question, chrisarnson at gmail dot com. And we do have a listener in Fort Myers, Florida.

Mike says, Greetings, gentlemen. I very much appreciate your evangelistic outreach ministries.

Where I reside in Florida is ripe for outreach in the respective areas that both of you are involved in, and sad to say, very neglected.

Are there certain tracks that either of you could recommend for either Roman Catholics or for those in the

Jewish community? Very good questions. And let's start with Jeff. Well, I guess what

I would say is that eventually we're going to put our tracks online for free, so anybody can print them.

They're bilingual. They'll be in English and Spanish. And it's kind of fortuitous that you have

Ron on, because Ron is, I think, looking in that part of the country on doing some stuff.

Maybe, Ron, you want to talk about that, I don't know if you were in the Fort Myers area, Ron, last winter, but where were you?

Yes, I'm actually about 46 miles north of Fort Myers, where we live in the wintertime.

And I am developing and working on developing outreach to the Jewish community. I would encourage, if the gentleman could just write to us on our emails listed on the website, which is our ami .ministry

at hotmail .com. That's A -M -M -I

Alpha Mary Mary Ice dot ministry at hotmail .com.

And I would be glad to help him with articles that I've written, as well as a lot of other material that's available.

Great. And once again, I just urge everybody listening who's sending in questions, please include your first name, at least, in the city and state where you live, or the country where you live, if outside of the

USA. And that's chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

I just want to put my two cents in about tracts. chapellibrary .org chapellibrary .org

is a theologically reformed publishing ministry that has many things that are reprints of the gems of old, people like Charles Haddon Spurgeon and a multitude of other theologically reformed

Christian writers. These tracts are very inexpensive.

You would be amazed at the thousands of tracts you could purchase for a very reasonable and affordable price, including,

I know for certain, that they have tracts specifically meant for Roman Catholics. And I believe

I do recall at least one tract version that they had for Jewish evangelism, but I'm not an expert on their

Jewish tracts that they may or may not have. But chapellibrary .org is their website, so you can feel free to browse them as well.

They are a wonderful group of folks. Pastor Jeff Pollard is the director of Chapel Library, who succeeded the late

Leroy Shelton, who is now in heaven, and we just thank them for their ministry.

We do have another listener from Tacoma, Washington. David says,

I would think that your guest is correct that the focus should be on the gospel and not on leaving the

Catholic Church. If they are truly convicted, the Spirit of God will drive them out.

If I found that someone was already converted but still remained for different reasons, then

I might address the issue of their position. The Spirit of God does use the ordinary means of prompting from our fellow brothers and sisters to convict us sometimes.

I mean, that's our basic strategy. The main thing is the gospel. Going back to the previous call, our website's not completely up.

Well, it's up, but it's not completely ready for prime time yet. It will be, hopefully.

It's jesusplusnothing .info,

I believe, is our website. We actually have a name, which we don't have to use too often.

We're calling our campaign Operation St. Cyprian because St. Cyprian was a bishop in Carthage, I believe, who pushed back a little bit against the

Bishop of Rome. So that's why we came up with that name. Great. And once again, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Very quickly, just because it came up earlier, and I like to define terms that might not be common terms to our listeners.

Jeff Robinson brought up the term sativacantist before, because of the fact that there are a very small minority of Catholics who believe that the current pope, in fact, the pope going back through prior to Vatican II, the popes have all been false popes.

They do not deny or reject the office of the papacy, but they do reject that there have been legitimate popes since Vatican II.

And they get around that because of the fact that since when a pope dies or when a pope resigns, as Benedict did, there is a

Catholic church that exists without a pope, but usually very, very briefly, the sativacantist said, well, it doesn't have to be briefly.

If there are people who are raised to the office of pope that don't belong there, they should not be recognized.

But I still don't know how that could function. I find them completely fascinating.

Yes, they are fascinating. It's fascinating from like a presuppositional and philosophical level where they see the same historical problems that, say,

Protestants in this area see. We see how Rome has changed their views over time, even within the...

I was mentioning that my grandparents' Roman Catholic theology, the church at that time is not the same as today.

They see this change. And instead of saying to themselves, oh, the claims of Rome are incorrect, they say they go the other way.

So it's something I think that we need to keep bear in mind, especially as the

Roman Catholic church gets more and more liberal, which I believe it will over time, is that without God's spirit, the pope could come out and condemn the

Council of Trent tomorrow. And the conservative Roman Catholics in there, that does not mean they will embrace the gospel if they are not led by the spirit of God.

It won't mean that they might become Eastern Orthodox, and who knows what's going to happen. Or they may just say, hey, we're going to roll with the punches.

But without the spirit of God, that does not mean... Just showing the errors of Rome, it's helpful apologetically to help clear the way so that they can hear the gospel.

But even... So you have a group of Catholics here who see the historical errors, but didn't go for the gospel.

So I think it's good to keep in mind, we need to pray. This outreach, if it's just based on our own striving, we're not going to convert a single person.

If the Holy Spirit is not convicting of sin and of the word of God, if the word of God does not go out, we're not going to accomplish anything.

And just to put a well -known face to that group, Sedevacantists, for a time,

Mel Gibson, the famous actor and producer and director, he was raised in Sedevacantism.

His father, I'm not sure his father is still alive, but his father never renounced it. And Mel, I don't know where he is at all in the religious realm because he doesn't seem to be doing anything overtly in public that would connect with his

Roman Catholic heritage. But when he was creating the film,

The Passion of the Christ, he was a Sedevacantist and, in fact, used considerable monies to build a

Sedevacantist group in California. A new church building.

But anyway, that's just so people put a face on this group. And as far as in the theological or apologetic realm,

Gerry Matiticks, who is a very well -known person amongst those who are involved in theological debate and apologetics and so on, or who enjoy viewing the debates and so on, they'll know

Gerry Matiticks, who for years was a traditional Catholic and then converted to Sedevacantism after he debated as Sedevacantist.

Anyway, the thing is that many people, if not most, who are not born of the

Spirit of God and who have some concept that there is a heaven and there is a hell, whether they are

Roman Catholic or whether they're nominal Protestant or whether they are Jewish, they believe that good people go to heaven and bad people go to hell.

And, of course, how they define what that even means, because there's a lot of gray areas there, could make each man his own definer of his own destiny in his mind anyway.

But, Ron Elkin, was your mindset growing up in a

Jewish home that if you were just good enough, you will go to heaven one day?

And isn't that indeed a very false and damning hope for anyone to believe?

Yes, you're absolutely right. We call it doing a mitzvah. Mitzvah is a

Hebrew word that comes from the word commandment. And it's an idea within Judaism that there's major things that are necessary to please

God. One is to be charitable. One is to follow his commandments, particularly observing the laws that you can't observe outside of the temple worship.

And the other one is to prayer and devotion to God and through religious community.

So these are kind of the pillars, and they're all based on doing good deeds.

They're all based on work. So I consider traditional Judaism, along with many other religions in the world, to be an essentially works -oriented outreach.

I remember when I was in New York City working with Jews for Jesus in a month -long witnessing campaign.

The religious Jewish community was passing out a pamphlet which had a picture of a guy selling ice cream sandwiches and having all kinds of delicious type of offerings and boasting that you could eat this without any calories.

And that's how they were saying, that's what is being offered to you through the Jewish believers in Jesus.

They're saying this is foolishness, you know, without these good deeds that God will not accept you.

So it's a lot like the Council of Trent's idea that anyone who claims you can be saved apart from good deeds is anathema.

And so, yeah, we've got to struggle with that. And that's one of the issues we try to point out. And I quote often from like Isaiah chapter 6, where Isaiah said, woe is me a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.

And David, when he said, I was conceived in sin. And we've tried to bring out the holiness of God, the incredible perfection of God, and that our mere puny efforts will never meet

God's standards. Yeah, I mean, if I had a conversation online,

I've been preparing online in Facebook forums with a Catholic kind of debate group,

Catholic -Protestant debate group. And one thing that came up recently was about mortal venial sin.

So we kind of just, me and this other Protestant gentleman just mentioned, like, has there ever been a time that you have loved the

Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself?

This is the greatest. These are the two greatest commandments. Now, I mean, maybe, I mean, by a stretch, you could say you've done that, like, in brief moments.

But I don't think so. And to me, you have to use the law of God to convict of sin.

And I think that is our primary evangelistic method, is that I can't go around showing, giving people the good news.

The good news does not make sense if I don't bring the bad news. And so I have to show the law, say, you actually, if you think you can be good enough, and that's kind of where Galatians comes in.

There are no half measures. There's no, like, there's almost like, and sometimes in Catholicism, it's kind of like, there's like a law that's just a little easier to do, right?

It's like law and gospel is kind of smushed together a little bit. Or say, if you are going to add works, you got to go the whole way and you got to be perfect.

And that's why you're under a condemnation. And that's the basic message of Galatians, is that there is no half measures.

There's either perfection or there's Jesus alone. And it's when you are saying that your good deeds are helping you to earn eternal life, you are speaking a mockery of what

Christ has perfectly completed on the cross at Calvary. Right, right.

And you're saying that wasn't good enough. But on the other hand, I'm sure since you are both theologically reformed and believe in the perseverance and preservation of the saints, and I'm not talking about the saints that Catholics venerate.

I'm talking about Christians, true Christians. You believe that a truly converted, a truly born -again individual will, with certainty, produce good fruit.

Do you not? I mean, we both subscribe to the Westminster Confession. We're both in the

PCA. So we would both, you know, we are, as Ephesians says, we are, you know, saved by grace.

So we, no boasting, but we're saved unto good works. And basically the true gospel, the main elements are that we are trusting in the finished work of Christ for the salvation of sinners.

And he is the only way that we have to eternal life. And nothing that we could ever do could even add anything to that.

I would have to say my Catholic friends can't wrap their heads around, at least the ones

I've talked to. So if we believe in faith plus works, and you believe in faith alone, but that it produces works, like what's the big deal?

I mean, that is a good question. Ask the Apostle Paul. And that was basically my answer.

It was just like, it was very important to the Apostle Paul. I don't know what else to tell you. And again,

I have to repeat, I think it's an affront to Christ's work on the cross, to say that you have added to that.

Well, if you're trusting in yourself, the way I've meditated on it, and my answer is generally it mattered to Paul, so I must, it's true.

But if I'm trying to think about it hard, the thing that I've kind of come up with is that if you're trusting in yourself, it's saying, it is kind of the long lines of what you said.

It's like you're saying, we need the cross plus a dunghill, right?

Right. Right. And then that's what you're, that's not... A righteousness is filthy rags as the scriptures describe them.

Like the cross couldn't, either the cross paid for sin or it didn't, you know, so anyway.

Right, right. And we do have a listener. Did you have something to add to that, Ron? Yeah, just one of the hard things for us believers who have been really shown the light by God, who understand and are walking in that, in submission to God and submission to his word.

One of the hard things is to be patient with the unsaved because the logic of the gospel and the unity between the covenants, between the old covenant and the new covenant and all the scriptural evidence and prophecies, it's all there, but the big problem, and this is where we as believers need to spend a lot of time in prayer for those around us who do not see the truth, is that God has to make them willing.

God has to open their hearts up to where they're beginning to hear. And the fear factor of leaving community, the fear factor of God himself as a cringer, back like Adam cringed in the

Garden of Eden, it's powerful. And there needs to be a breaking of that and a liberation from that.

So along with us, you know, sharing the truth verbally, there's got to be a lot of prayer.

So for this particular outreach that's coming, we do covenant people's prayers, that they get serious about this, and not only with this outreach, but any outreach they're aware of.

Yeah, Jeremiah Crime Ministries will be there too, just not working with us, but please lift both us and them in prayer.

I mean, there's going to be a million to two million people there. So as far as I'm concerned, it's all hands on deck.

There's probably churches that'll be there that we don't even know about. So please, and I'm also, there's going to be a lot of Hispanics.

That's why our tracks are going to be bilingual, especially because he comes from Argentina. And I think there's more of that old school kind of cultural bondage, even in a way, that I didn't experience as like, essentially, like a white kid from a mixed, you know,

Anglo, Welsh, Scottish, you know, German sort of background that I didn't experience as a white

American. So please, we need a lot of prayers. The people we're talking to need a lot of prayers.

And our ministry and other ministries need a lot of prayers. And also the other thing

I've kind of noticed is that before running an outreach, you know,

I was not really as sensitive enough as that. There are so many ministries out there that need support, evangelistic or otherwise.

So as Ron and I are on the same page that as the society grows darker, and we're not allowed, you know, who knows what we'll be allowed to do in 10 or 20 years.

Let's strike while the iron's hot. No pun intended for your show's name. But yeah.

Would you share a bit about the training coming up on the 22nd of August? Yeah, Covenant Fellowship Church in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania, is holding a

Connecting with Catholics seminar. So any and Ron is teaching a breakout session about how to do street evangelism.

So there's going to be kind of three sections, and there will be a few other breakout sections. So anybody in the greater

Philadelphia area who would like to join us or even people who don't want to join us, but want to learn about how to share the gospel of Catholics or how to do street evangelism in general, because street evangelism, especially if you haven't done it, is scary.

We've done it. Ron and I have done it enough, especially Ron way more than I have, that we don't have quite the butterflies that we used to.

But especially when you're new at street evangelism, you might as it produces a lot of fear in people.

And the training, we hope, will help people to get over that fear and to talk with your neighbors.

Without the contact information here, I would just say look up Covenant Fellowship in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania, and call them.

It's on the morning of Saturday, August 22nd. And come on out and come to the seminar.

It'll be between 9 a .m. and 12 noon. And you'll become equipped in a lot of different ways.

So we urge you to come out if you're able to. I wanted to add one more thing, Chris, that during the conference week, we're going to actually start on the 21st, though the conference starts on the 22nd.

That's the World Family Conference. We are a light on people to be on the community with us to start conversations with people and pass out the literature that we've created.

We do have some people. I have a lady coming from St. Louis and some other people will be coming from the

Lancaster County area. But we are relatively light during the week. So if you would like to learn how to do this and be in a way used by God, please get in touch with us through our website.

And so it would be very, very helpful because we have a lot of people more on the weekend, but we have more chance for conversations during the week.

And since the official website is not really complete yet, I'll give Ron's website.

It's omniministry .org. You can get the information on how to contact

Ron Elkin and Jeff Robinson and those who are involved in this outreach to Roman Catholics during the papal visit.

We are going to our final break right now. And please, if you have an email, send it in now because we're running out of time.

And our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages. Thriving Financial is not your typical financial services provider.

As a membership organization, we help Christians be wise with money and live generously every day.

And for the fourth year in a row, we were named one of the world's most ethical companies by the

Ethisphere Institute, a leading international think tank dedicated to the creation, advancement, and sharing of best practices in business ethics.

Contact me, Mike Gallagher, financial consultant at 717 -254 -6433.

Again, 717 -254 -6433 to learn more about the

Thriving Difference. We were made to thrive.

Welcome back. This is Chris Arnsen from Iron Sharpens Iron. If you have just tuned us in for the last 90 minutes or so, we have been interviewing

Jeff Robinson and Ron Elkin, who are spearheading an evangelical outreach to Roman Catholics in the

Philadelphia area during the visit of Pope Francis this September to that area.

And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

We do have an email from Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who writes that we have come a long way since the days of the

Spanish Inquisition, where the Church of Rome is taking the opposite view of the

Jewish people as being one with them and venerating and worshiping the same true

God. And the fact is that the Roman Catholic Church is viewed in the minds of many as a more loving group of Christians because of this and do not require one to believe in Jesus to inherit eternal life and to be spared from eternal hell.

My question is, especially to Ron Elkin, but both men can answer, how do you overcome that type of bias where even the unbelieving

Jew may view Roman Catholics as more loving, kind, tender, and compassionate?

Well, my kids don't like it when I make them eat vegetables. You know, people don't like it when you, you know, the most loving thing you can do is not share the gospel, right?

No. In Romans 10, where it says, like, Paul's chain of logic is, to me, inescapable, is that you believe with your heart and you're justified.

And then, you know, so someone needs to be sent, someone needs to hear, someone needs to believe.

I mean, it cuts off all the, you know, Roman Catholic anonymous Christianity sort of positions.

And to me, there is a huge irony here. If it wasn't involving people's souls, it would be really funny, which is that they claim the

Pope is the successor of Peter and that they inhabit this office.

Well, what is Peter's role that we see in the New Testament? He was the apostle to the

Jews. And what is the one thing the Roman Catholic Church is not doing today? Evangelizing Jews.

So, and we're the Jewish outreach, we're, you know, essentially, Ron and I have a Jewish evangelism background, so we're the

Jewish outreach to Catholics. It's very funny. In my mind, it's ironic.

God has a sense of humor, I think. So anyway, Ron can definitely speak more on it than me, but that's kind of my position.

Well, first of all, the standard for understanding truth is Jesus himself, who said,

I'm the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me. And that is my basic line for understanding the reality.

It's so amazing. Part of the Catholic Church's teaching is leading towards universalism, and you're finding that in some other theological thoughts.

And the idea is that we all have a way to get to God, and it all leads to God. And so Jesus is very controversial and divisive, because Jesus said he's the only way to God.

And that seems so arrogant, and as a Jewish person, as I heard Christians tell me about Jesus being the only way,

I thought, man, these people are really arrogant. Look at all these other religions around, and how can they feel that they've got the only truth?

Well, the fact is, whether we like it or not, Jesus is divisive. Jesus is the truth, and because he's the truth, he's going to divide people from people who want to stay in darkness, or people who have not been opened up by God.

They're going to be offended. And so the gospel is offensive, and there's no way around that except to speak the truth in love.

The love part's very important, is pray for a spirit of mercy and love to those that we speak to, and how we speak to them, and to present the information.

We're educators, that's all we are. We're presenting facts and truth, and then we pray for the

God, and through the Holy Spirit, to plant that in the hearts of people. So it is a hard thing for people to...

The way of the world right now is to condemn us because we're saying that Jesus is the only way.

And we're finding among young college students, particularly they've been taught relativism, and this is getting to be true in the

Catholic Church and the mainline liberal Protestant churches, and within Reformed Judaism.

This is all conversing into one point where everyone's going to sing Kumbaya together and say how wonderful they are that they love each other, whereas folks that say, hey, you've got to believe in Jesus, that we're hateful.

Well, I would have to add that the Reformed world and the evangelical world in general needs to be on guard too.

Because the general way the society is telling, not just our young people, but us, is that to be nice and not to share the gospel.

And people are trying to outnice God, and that is not good for a bold proclamation of the gospel.

Yeah, nobody complains when people very seriously and passionately disagree on health and nutrition and exercise.

They don't complain when people seriously and passionately disagree on politics.

But for some reason, when matters that are infinitely more important than that, that involve eternal life are disagreed upon, all of a sudden you're a hate monger and a mean -spirited bigot.

They just want you to shut down though. Yes. That's really what it is. That they're looking for an emotional...

It's kind of like when they're complaining about pro -lifers, like, oh, what are you doing with the baby after they're born?

That sort of stuff. The real strategy is to just get you to be quiet and to be shamed.

If you really love your neighbor, not to guilt -trip people, but you have to speak up.

I know there's been times where I do not speak up because I don't want to be perceived as mean or that sort of thing.

I often feel like, even just in defending the gospel and in defending the necessity of justification by faith alone, that I feel like I farted in the room, but everybody's looking at me.

It's just like previously, where I'm saying Galatians is still in the

New Testament, people. So there are certain things, and then Ron will get it so much with Jewish evangelism, where the pressures about Catholic evangelism pale in comparison to doing

Jewish evangelism. Because of the history of... Anti -Semitism in the church and the

Holocaust. And anybody who had identified with a Christian church, even if they weren't truly a

Christian, they are broad -brushed as being within the pale of Christendom and Christianity.

Right. Like, so Hitler was a Christian. Right, right, right. But even, you know, not to derail the show onto that topic, but if you're going to be serious about committed...

Now, it's one thing you have to share the gospel. Now, it's one thing though is like, if I present the gospel to you and you tell me like, stop,

I'm going to stop. That's just what I did my duty. I, you know, shake the dust off my, you know, and move along.

So, but anyway, that's... And of course, there is a smoke screen going on here with the

Church of Rome. They can call us separated brethren all they want. Right. But if you are not a communicant member of the

Roman Catholic Church, you are in a false church in their mind. And there's a lot of smoke and mirrors with this whole humanism thing.

They have a show called The Journey Home. They want us as Protestants to return to Rome or become

Catholic for the first time, because that is the safe place where you're more likely to go to heaven.

Well, the lie is, especially for people who convert to Rome, is that Rome makes everything clearer.

But when you actually look at the stuff, the bishops, the bishops at large are not on the same page as the conservative

Catholics who are doing the apologetic work. And as my recent interview with Robert Syngenis, that got some flack from, for me, or against me from some of my listeners...

Join the club, man. But I think Robert made it clear that there is no less confusion or disagreement amongst

Catholics than there is amongst evangelicals, because they may claim to have an infallible interpreter of the

Bible, but they don't have an infallible interpreter for the infallible interpreter. Right.

They have no way of defining without error what he says about the

Bible, so therefore they are in no safer place than Christians who are trying to understand what the

Bible teaches. It's very mushy. Like, the modern Roman Catholic Church is not the

Roman Catholic Church of the quote -unquote good old days, as I mentioned before, 100 years ago or 400 years ago or 500 years ago, where, you know, if you're outside of Rome, you're going to hell.

Outside the church, there's no salvation. Clearly meant, like, what that sounds like to them.

Now it's very mushy, and I think it's going to get mushier over time. But as I said, is that whether they're condemning us or not, if they're not preaching the gospel, we need to preach the gospel to them.

Yes, and whereas some people say that even if they're not Catholic, that Vatican II was such a blessing because it made the

Catholic Church more welcoming to Protestants and has defined us as separated brethren.

It actually confused the issue a lot more about what the difference is regarding the gospel.

Well, that's what I was saying before was that you don't know how people are going to react.

You would think, like, okay, if Rome does something really insane, then the conservative

Roman Catholics will come to their senses. It might not work that way.

As I said, you need the Holy Spirit. Again, and I think your point that you just made is very telling, is that if the mushiness might just mean they're more comfortable.

And if they see also the mushy Protestants say, it doesn't really matter.

You do your thing. I do my thing. Whether Rick Warren's going to be at the world.

Maybe I can get a sit down with the Protestant Pope while he's in Philly or whatever.

He's certainly not my Pope. Yeah, no. And it's interesting how he identifies

Pope Francis as our Pope, even though he's a Southern Baptist. I'm going to tell you this,

Chris. I'm not going to mention names, but I have run into people, even in our conservative reform circles, they know that our confessions kind of say, they know our confessions would say, hey, this is a defining issue.

But I honestly think, and again, I'm not going to mention names, and I'm not going to say it's like a high percentage of people, but there are a number of people, especially,

I think, people who didn't convert from Catholicism to the reform world, which in my area of the world in South Jersey, almost everybody who's an evangelical came from a

Roman Catholic background just due to demographics. But there are a lot of people who were raised reformed.

I don't think they kind of feel it. I think to them, there's a certain number who do kind of think

Rome isn't as bad as kind of we say. Right, I agree. I agree with you a hundred percent. And as a reform

Baptist, I think that, not to pat my own group on the back, but I think that we have a little bit more clearly defined borders because, as you may well know, there is a difference amongst the

Presbyterian and reform groups on how to view Rome, and many would call Rome a part of the visible church or a true church with false beliefs, rather than a false church with some true beliefs.

Right, I would go more the R .C. Sproul, John MacArthur route, which is that, no,

I don't believe they're a true church. Other people have different, like, is their baptism valid?

And then, so to me, the debate over whether they're part of the visible church that is in need of reformation or whether they're no longer a church, to me,

I don't really have time to figure that out. What I do have time to know is that if they're not preaching the gospel,

I need to preach the gospel to their members. Jeff raised a very important point.

We know that the unsaved need to understand the gospel, but both

Jeff and organizing this particular outreach under working together with me and myself over the years have often run into the problem, particularly among reformed churches, of a real hostility to public proclamation of the gospel.

That is true. They have really, and this is not to knock my brothers and sisters, but they have convinced themselves, and I think it's more of a fear factor of offending, as was raised earlier, that somehow friendship evangelism is really the way to do it, and to somehow earn the respect of people to the point where you can share the gospel.

With a certain level of truth in friendship evangelism, and of course being a reputable person and credible person helps, but in the end, to keep quiet and not share the gospel in public ways, where you meet people that you could never meet in any other way, and God can use you to further that person along, and to not that and not understand the power of God, particularly among reformed people who believe in the providence of God and the power of God.

It's amazing to me they don't see the power and the validity of going out and proclaiming the truth.

I don't think it's due to their, sorry for interrupting you Ron, I don't think it's due to their Calvinism so much, as that it's,

I've met, I've talked to a few people who are into doing evangelism in the reformed world, or at least in my local area, and a lot of them, or at least the few that I've talked to, some of them are kind of frustrated, and I don't think it's due to the

Calvinism that's holding them back. I think it's, there is an aversion to doing street evangelism for whatever reason.

I attribute it to that they're from a Scottish background and don't like talking to people or something like that.

You misunderstood, it isn't so much that I believe the cause of Calvinism. No, no, I just wanted to clarify that, that I don't think it, yeah, it might exist in some

Arminian circles too. Try to understand what I'm saying, it's not because of Calvinism that they're not interested in it, it's like, in spite of Calvinism, because Calvinism, or let's say the providential understanding that God is sovereign over salvation, should motivate them to go out, and like George Whitefield was very reformed in his understanding, and he was the public preacher, and others, they should motivate them in faith of God's power through the proclamation of the word, or the interaction with people in public places, like, you know, the brother of the

Baptist, the prince of preachers in England, I'm trying to think, Charles Spurgeon, he said, he prayed every day,

Lord, give me a chance to share the gospel with somebody, as he went about his business, and so there's a, there's a,

I think it's true of the church, that there's not enough training and encouragement from the pulpit.

They don't know what, they don't have any tools in the toolbox, so they're scared. Yep, that's it, and it's sad, because our time is short.

Yeah, and these minutes that we have left, Jeff and Ron, describe exactly what will be taking place,

I know that you've already mentioned a lot of what will be happening, but if you could just really systematize what you're actually doing there in Philadelphia.

Okay, so a few things are still up in the air, but basically the conference is between the 22nd and 25th, people are going to start arriving on the 21st of September, which is a

Monday, so between Monday and Friday, we are going to be in the city. Now, doing street evangelism geared mainly towards people attending the conference, and also areas around Center City.

Can I just intervene there for one second? Yeah. What that consists of, besides just handing out tracts, is having some engagement questions to ask permission of the people to speak to them.

Like, we'll say, can I ask you a question? And the question is, they say yes, they say, well, who do you believe

Jesus is? Or what do you believe that you have a place in heaven? Or anything that begins the gospel conversation, and then we interact with that person and ultimately share the complete gospel with them, and then we try to get their contact information.

Well, if you could also give a more full description of this conference. Well, it's the

World Meeting of Families. The conference is focused on, I guess, just kind of family issues and how the church life relates to the family.

And it's every three years. It's a major international conference that the church has.

I think it was in Milan previously or whatever. And there's going to be a few hundred thousand just attending the conference.

Oh, so you're speaking about the Roman Catholic Church is having a conference. Yes, the Roman Catholic Church is having a conference, and the

Pope is coming to speak. Essentially, he's coming because of the conference. So he will be there on the

Saturday and Sunday. Now the logistics, please everybody on the radio or podcast or whatever, keep this in prayer.

Logistics for when the Pope is there is going to be a nightmare. There's going to be so... So we've developed a strategy where we're going to actually try to get people as they're on the way in, as opposed to actually being in.

Because there's not going to be allowed to have any cars or there's not that many subway stops.

We could send evangelists in, but then they would kind of be stranded. So we're going to do from when the

Pope's there, we're going to have a separate strategy of going to the transportation hubs.

So we definitely need prayer for interaction with any police, transit police. There are so many things you can pray about, but definitely keep that in mind.

And I know I keep repeating a quote by Penn Teller or Penn Jillette, I should say, on my program.

Penn Jillette, who is a part of the Penn and Teller Magic Act, Comedy Act, etc. Penn Jillette is an atheist.

And he can be quite vulgar and can say some very anti -Christian things.

But he recognizes, and I'm saying this for those who believe that what

Jeff and Ron are doing is motivated by hatred and bigotry or something. Penn Jillette said that after a man watching his act in Vegas gave him a

Bible, Penn Jillette so appreciated this man's compassion for him and his desire for him to go to heaven, that he recognized that even though he rejects the existence of God and is an atheist, he recognizes that that had nothing to do with hate or bigotry.

It had to do with love and a concern for his own soul. And therefore, he said, if you believe that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven, and I am paraphrasing here, but this is the basic elements of what he was saying.

This is exactly what he said here. How much do you have to hate someone not to tell them this?

And I think that that is something that we all should remember. This has nothing to do with hatred and bigotry. It's about love and compassion for souls.

And I would also, if I could add a shameless plug, if anybody wants to help financially, just send some money over to AMI ministry for this.

And also next year, we're going to do the really hard thing. The Democratic National Convention is coming to Philly.

So in next July, I believe. So July 25th. So in that outreach, you're bringing exorcists with you?

That outreach, Catholics are going to be easy, man, compared to that, in my estimation.

But anybody who wants to be involved in that should start talking to Ron as well.

And Ron Elkin's website for AMI ministry is amiministry .org.

And in one minute, if each of you could just say goodbye to our listeners, and please don't go over a minute each, because we are running out of time.

I would just say that as you have opportunities to, while we still have the light, share your faith with people.

And if you're not understanding how to do that, please contact us. There's some bibliography of books that we encourage you that you could read, and so you could become a walking epistle and ready to share the life of Jesus with people.

And Jeff? I couldn't say it better. I would just say, please pray. There are so many things, not just our outreach.

Again, Jeremiah Cry Ministries is doing stuff too. Just pray for the people, the

Catholics that are coming, our evangelists. And pray for God to use us and to move through us.

We are definitely earthen vessels who are weak. But we definitely need prayers for the

Spirit of God to move through us. Well, I want to thank you, Jeff Robinson, not only for spearheading this outreach, but for being my guest today for the very first time on Iron Sherpa Zion, for your diligence in remaining in contact with me.

I very much appreciate it, and I look forward to having you back on the program. I'm not sure what about, but I guess,

I mean, in the beginning thing, it's like, I'm just a layperson. But maybe for the

Democratic National Convention next year, maybe we'll do it again. Sure. And Ron Elkin, it's such a pleasure to have you back on the program, and I also eagerly look forward to your return to speak on Jewish evangelism.

Thank you, Chris. And once again, the website for AMI Ministries is a .emmismichaeli

.org amiministry .org. I want to give a prayer request for a very dear friend of mine, a

Jewish believer who has heavily been involved in Jewish evangelism for about 50 or 60 years,

Marty, who is recovering from brain surgery. Please pray for him to rapidly return to good health, so that he may continue in his very vital ministry for years to come in the future.

And pray for Iron Sharpens Iron, that this radio program may continue as well, and that we may be faithful to the

Word of God. I want to thank all of you for listening, especially those who wrote questions, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

Savior than you are a sinner. God bless, and we hope you join us tomorrow and the rest of the week on Iron Sharpens Iron.