November 19, 2019 Show with Joseph M. Bianchi on “God Chose to Save: Why Man Cannot & Will Not Be Saved Apart From Election”

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

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

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

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

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

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions, and now here's your host,

Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 19th day of November, 2019.

And I am not exaggerating in the slightest bit, not that I ever do on this show, but I am so thrilled to have an old friend on this program, both old in his own age and old in the number of years

I have known him. His name is Joseph M. Bianchi. When I first met

Joe, it was back in the 1990s when he participated in a radio program, not mine, mine was only a thought in my head at that time.

I was working for WMCA Radio, 570 AM, an affiliate of the largest radio network in the world,

Salem Media, and I was working for them, and my friend Andy Anderson, who is now in heaven for eternity, he hosted his own show before I ever had mine, and it was called originally

Talk New York, then it became Andy Anderson Live, but I got a guest appearance,

I arranged a guest appearance for my guest today on Andy Anderson Live, and the comical thing is that I can remember now the long car ride that I had with Joe, where he was saying to me,

I'm a hardcore dispensationalist and you'll never convince me otherwise. And Joe, not only is no longer a dispensationalist, he was a

Calvinist at the time, but a dispensationalist, but he's no longer a dispensationalist.

He became amillennial, but from what I recently heard from him, he is now postmillennial, and much to my depression and sadness, and I don't know what else to say as far as the adjectives

I could come up with, but he is now a Presbyterian as well. And I exaggerated my dismay over that, but it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, after so many years,

Joseph M. Bianchi. Thank you, Chris. It's always great to be with you, as you know.

And Joe is also, would you call yourself the President or the Executive Director of Calvary Press?

Oh, the Grand Eminence, I think I would be.

Well, Calvary Press began as a ministry that Mike Gaydosh, my former pastor, started when the church where he pastored was called

Calvary Baptist Church of Amityville, Long Island, and that publishing ministry became a really thriving publishing ministry, starting out with just a few paper reprints that were stapled together by J .C.

Ryle and Charles Spurgeon and others, and now it's become a full -blown publishing company that rivals the largest of publishers that you can think of.

And Joe took over the helm at some point as running the operations for Calvary Press, and then later purchased

Calvary Press, which he now owns and operates on his own. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about Calvary Press?

Calvary Press is a ministry, as you mentioned, when Calvary Press first started, its goal was to bring back some of the writings from the

Puritans and other people, basically, I think, you have to be dead 300 years to qualify for that.

But what I did is I tried to, I sort of segued into living authors. So now we've, most of our authors are living, and we try to hit things that are important to the

Church. Some of it is pure theology, some of it is counseling, some of it has to do with marriage, and so forth.

So we try to keep it as contemporary as possible, but we're keeping with basic Reformed principles, or writers have to believe in the

Reformed faith, at least to some degree. And we try to address things that we think are really important to the

Church in a very serious manner. So these books are, they're very direct and serious, and we would not publish anything that we can't go back to Scripture and say, yes, what he's saying should be backed up by Scripture.

Yes, and I remember, before you actually purchased Calvary Press, I was a part -time employee there,

I worked full -time for the aforementioned WMCA radio. But worked part -time for Calvary Press, and I have very, very fond memories of both

Joe and I working in the same building at Calvary Baptist Church of Amityville, now purchased by a

Calvary Chapel congregation, after the merger between First Baptist Church of Merrick and the

Church became Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island, which still exists, pastored by Mark Romaldi and Doug Totter.

But I have so many fond memories of being able to share the same building with you as a workplace, because WMCA, actually, as you know, rented my offices as the

Long Island representative for that radio station in Calvary Baptist Church of Amityville. So I would come down there and annoy you and distract you from your job, and I just remember we would have a lot of fun and a lot of laughs and some serious theological discussions as well.

And so Joe is now living in South Carolina, where he is a member of Second Presbyterian Church of Greenville, South Carolina, pastored by Dr.

Richard D. Phillips, who has been a guest a number of times on this program. And I've known him for many years as well.

I think I may even know him longer than I know Joe. But Joe and I, obviously, sharing the same office space, became much more close friends and so on.

And, by the way, send my very warm greetings to your lovely bride, Monica, and also to your daughter,

Christina. Of course I will. And, by the way, is Christina married yet? No, she isn't married yet.

We're praying about that. We're praying that some good, reformed, handsome, and well -versed young man will take an interest in her.

She's a very beautiful girl. Yes, I remember that very well, and saw her, actually, unexpectedly, when

I was visiting our friends, the DeBella Barretts, in the

Orlando area. And they were also staying with the DeBella Barretts when

I was down there, so it was a nice time of visiting with them. Now we're going to do something that, since you haven't been on in ages, you probably haven't been on in a decade,

I'm going to do something with you that we may have already done, but it has become a tradition on this program, where we have, when we have first -time guests, typically,

I know you're not a first -time guest, but it's been so long, I don't even know if I ever had you give a summary of your salvation testimony on the show, because we have, since I've interviewed you last, developed that tradition where, whenever we have a first -time guest, we have them give a summary of the kind of religious atmosphere they were raised in, and what providential circumstances our

Sovereign Lord raised up in my guests' lives that drew them to himself and saved them, so I will have you do the same.

Okay. Tell us about your religious upbringing, if any, and how the Lord drew you to himself. Sure. I'll try to be as brief as possible, because it's kind of a long story, but I was raised in,

I'd say, a nominally Catholic home. I think my mother especially wanted me to have some kind of religious upbringing.

I was sent to Sunday school in a local Catholic church on Long Island, and I learned some very wonderful things there.

I honestly have a lot of terrible memories. I have good memories of the Catholic Church, at least at that time, and for a while, you know, things were, you know, growing up as a child, you did what your parents told you to do, and you had some sense of religious obligation, but like many kids reaching a pre -teen age,

I started to question things, and I went into a phase, I guess you would call it, what you ought to call it, at least an agnostic phase, maybe more atheistic, and it was just pure rebellion, and I sort of rebelled, and I think my parents, they tried to get me back on that religious track again to the

Catholic Church, and I think if they weren't nominally Catholic, and that wasn't versed in the

Bible, I think they sort of gave up, and so we just stopped attending church.

That sort of went by the wayside, and I was, I guess after that,

I became, I was still the all -American boy, I guess that's what you would call me. I was a Cub Scout, a

Marine cadet, I played sports, all these things, until about, oh, the late 60s.

I had friends who were a bit older than me, and they were involved in the whole 60s thing.

I don't have to elaborate what that means, but they were involved in the whole 60s thing, and I started to gravitate towards the music, the radical politics, and things of that nature, and so I became,

I was just enveloped with that whole 60s thing. I played guitar, I played in bands, you know, just the whole thing, and sort of religion was sort of always on the back burner,

I was an experimenter, I guess that would be the term, I belonged to this cult and that cult, and as I got older, then

I started to read some Marxist material, and I just sort of discarded all that, and felt that Marx had reached the, had grasped what really makes society tick, and so I became a

Marxist, basically, then everything shifted to politics and economics, and I became very involved in that, and this just continued.

I went to school, went to college, graduated New York University in 1978, then went into the business world,

I was just interested in working, and I guess on the weekends having a good time, but something started to grow in me, and I started, for some strange reason,

I felt attracted to the Bible, and I started to read Scripture, and be attracted to the things spiritual, and I wasn't converted yet, but something was, obviously the

Lord was drawing me to Him, and then I met my, the woman who would be my wife,

Monica, and she was also Catholic, in fact she was going to Catholic Mass every day, trying to,

I guess trying to satiate that forgiveness that she was looking for, but she was, I remember she approached me one day when we were dating, and she had a magazine,

I think it may have even been a charismatic magazine, but it had an ad in it for a Baptist church that was forming, or had been forming, a

Southern Baptist church, which I think is kind of odd to begin with, it's here in Connecticut, at that time

I was living in Connecticut, I had moved to Connecticut, and you know, I think the ad said something to the effect, there won't be any

Baptist in Heaven, or Methodist in Heaven, or Catholic in Heaven, I think the theme of it was, it's not your denomination, what you think you are, or what you were born in, it's a personal relationship with Christ.

So she said, why don't you, why don't we go to this church, and up until that time, when we started dating, one of the requirements she said, if you're going to date me, you have to come to church with me, and we had been going to Catholic church, but we knew that there was something, something wasn't quite right, our souls weren't being fed, weren't being fulfilled, and when she mentioned this

Baptist church, now I had no knowledge of Baptist churches, I was basically a pagan up until that time, to me,

I remember there was a Baptist church on the corner of my, near my high school, and it was a very charismatic type of Baptist church, and so I'm thinking, now she's drawing me to some kind of cult, to some kind of weird holy roller situation.

Make a little story short, we went, and we heard the Gospel preached, and people were loving the preaching was on target, scriptural, and a few months later, we confessed

Christ, and we were baptized together, actually we were baptized in a lake, Lake Mohegan in Connecticut. So I'm giving you the short version of it, but that's what happened.

Then I started to serve in that church, and things went from there.

So I hope that gives you a little understanding of where I'm coming from. Now let's hear about your 25 years in Swedenborgianism.

And you, I remember you had some connection with Heritage Baptist Church in Bayshore, I believe?

Yeah, we attended there, I mean... Bayshore, New York, for our listeners. Right, right, right, it's a long,

I think it's a long story. I'm trying to get my sequence of things correct. I had, after we had,

I was saved, I decided I wanted to go to ministry, and I, first I went to Gordon -Conwell in Massachusetts for a while, it's a seminary there, and I said

I wanted to be closer to my home church, and do my internship in my home church, and that I came back down, and I attended

Yale Divinity School, which is not exactly the fashion of fundamentalist or evangelical theology.

Nevertheless, I profited from some of the things I learned there, and I knew what I believed, so it didn't shake my faith any, and I profited from it.

But my theology was evolving. I used that term, but that's what it was.

I went to Heritage Baptist, and I hope

I'm getting my chronology correct. After I had my first pastor, that was, there's a lot of,

I'm leaving out a lot of details because we'll be here for nine hours, but after that I came back to my hometown, and I attended a fundamental church.

I then was called to an independent Baptist church in the middle of Long Island, Malvern, Long Island, and it's an interesting thing.

When the church committee interviewed me, they said, look, we know you're a

Calvinist, and we're a little uncomfortable with that, but we can live with that, but you've got to be a dispensationalist, and we want to ask you a question.

If your theology changed, would you leave? And I said yes, and the man next to me was making notes and notes and notes.

Made a long story short. I was there for about a year and a half, and as God would have it, He started to deal with me.

I started to see some inconsistencies in dispensationalism. It's something that always troubled me.

I remember hearing a series of sermons by D. James Kennedy saying that, you know, there's so much confusion about eschatology,

I'm going to preach three simple sermons. And he did, and it sort of rocked my world, because it was some of the things that I had been thinking about and dealing with, and it cut through all this confusion in dispensationalism.

As you know, dispensationalism leads to different dispensations, and God deals with man in different ways, and also teaches a pre -tribulational rapture, a seven -year tribulation period, people disappear off the earth, and everybody else who's got faith is where they go, and there's a sequence of very complicated events, the sacrifices are brought back temporarily, and so forth.

So I had to categorically reject all that, and I started sort of teaching that, and I tried to do it in a very gentle way in the church that I was in, but they weren't going for it.

A lot of these people had been brought up dispensational. I studied with some really very well -known dispensationalists, so I guess

I got the left foot of fellowship, and I had to leave that ministry, but I don't regret it, because the

Lord brought me, and I made many other friends in the Reformed world, and I really believe, even though there are nuances, that the

Reformed faith, the doctrine of election and the Reformed faith is scriptural.

It's what the Bible teaches. It's not something that John Calvin invented. In fact, the first time

I read Calvin, I said, hey, this guy believes what I believe. So the

Lord has been very good to me that way, and He's revealed Himself, and as I always say to people, it's like being born again a second time.

You become Reformed. You see God's Word for what it is. You see God's sovereignty. You see that, no,

I'm not in control of salvation. Yes, God did decide who He would save and who He would not save, and I know to evangelical ears, now those could be fighting words, and it's a very emotional subject, and that's one of the reasons why

I wrote God Chose to Save back in 2001, because I felt it was a very emotional issue, and that there were a lot of things that people didn't understand about the doctrines of grace, and I wanted to write something that was, you know, that everybody from a scholar to a soccer mom could read and get something out of it and at least begin the journey to understand

God's sovereignty and salvation class. So I hope that's a good synopsis.

Yes, it's excellent, and I remember a great portion of that whole testimony, especially the last third of it when

I knew you after arranging that interview with you, and that actually was at the urging of our mutual friend,

Pastor Bill Shishko. I remember him telling me, oh, you've got to meet this guy, Joe Bianchi.

He's an on -fire Calvinist. He is a dispensationalist, but he's a great guy, and that's how it led to that interview and to a decades -long friendship now, and many fond memories of fellowship with you,

Monica and Christina. And I'm going to give our listeners our email address if you would like to join us on the air with a question primarily about the book we are discussing, the newly revised edition of God Chose to Save, Why Man Cannot and Will Not Be Saved Apart from Election.

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com. And I think an interesting fact about this new edition of God Chose to Save is that although you own and operate

Calvary Press Publishing, Solid Ground Christian Books is the publisher that brought this back into print in a new edition.

Why don't you tell us about that? Yes, well, Mike Anosh, who owns Solid Ground Books, was a former pastor of mine, and we both ended up in the same, actually, profession of being a publisher, and this book was originally, as you remember, published by Evangelical Press in the

UK, and anybody who buys the book will see that it's anglicized the way it reads and so forth.

So it was originally published in Great Britain and distributed around the world, but by Evangelical Press.

Evangelical Press ran into some difficult waters and they stopped publishing a number of books, mine was one of them, and so it sort of went into cold storage for a while, but I still retained the rights.

And I just thought it would be something that perhaps, even though Mike and I sometimes work on different things together, that this would be a book maybe best suited for Mike to publish with the people that he knows and the circle of people that he knows.

So I don't know, it seems kind of odd, but we do work together in those ways, and I like to think that I publish, or I write,

I sort of seek out and see if other people would want to publish them. I think it adds more reliability to the whole thing,

I'm not just publishing things in my little laboratory. So that's how that happened, and I just felt very gratified that Mike was very enthusiastic about it, and I think the greatest thrill

I got was that even though James White gave a commendation to the original version, and now

Rich Phillips and Joel Beeke gave a commendation to it, and I was just, that's like a thrill, and I'm very honored and very humbled that they would give a commendation to the book.

Did they each receive their case of whiskey yet? I'm only kidding, folks.

Every fundamentalist that's listening is reaching for their dishing towels right now. Yes, in fact, that was one of the major things that I did for Calvary Press, was get commendations for books that were being brought into print, and I learned the hard way that that can be a risky thing to do, because sometimes you'll get a bunch of wonderful glowing commendations and then about five to ten years later you find out half of the people that you got commendations from became apostates.

I don't foresee that happening with the people who gave commendations to the book. They're very faithful men.

I mean, we don't know what God's will is and all these things, but these men have made great contributions to the church, and I'm just very honored they gave me a commendation.

Well, it is a well -deserved book, or should I say it's a book that well deserves commendations from men of high caliber like those men and others.

I read the original version, and I have not yet gotten the new version in my hands, but I look forward to reading the new version.

Let's start off with why you wrote the book to begin with, because as you know, there are many, there are scores of theological sound books coming from a

Reformed perspective from both men already in heaven and men who are still alive and well on the subject of election, on the subject of all the five points of Calvinism, on the subject of general themes, broader themes of Reformed theology.

Why did you say to yourself, you know, as great as many of these books are, there's something that is not really quite being addressed in the way

I want it to be addressed, so I'm going to write God Chose to Save. What would any of those things be, if you could, the reason for your writing this book?

Well, I think that there were books that just simply stated the five points of Calvinism in a very methodical way, and then on the other side of the spectrum, there was a very theologically deep book, and I felt that both of them, what was missing,

I thought, was a way of presenting the doctrines of grace that wasn't just stacking, a, stacking

Scripture together as proof text, and on the other hand, nothing that was that theological, that was out of the reach of somebody who would like to look into these things, or perhaps is even hostile to these doctrines of grace, who could read something and see it very well laid out in a very brief, and the book is brief, fashion to give a little bit of a history, a little bit of what the doctrines of grace are, a little bit of Scriptures that have been misinterpreted through the years, also how

Calvinists have been misinterpreted what they believe, and I felt that I could do it, and my training, my initial training in school was in journalism, and I figured

I'd use those skills to make it a boiled down version that is theologically sound, but palatable to everybody, so everybody could benefit from it.

And the book has been translated, not only in English, but also in Slavic, and I understand it's been translated to German and to Italian, I believe, although I haven't seen those versions.

I do have the Slavic version, and it was used in Eastern Europe to train Reformed pastors, and that meant we're just coming to know the

Reformed faith. So I was very honored to have that done, and I just pray the

Lord is using it in that way in Eastern Europe and other places that the book may be. So I felt that it needed to be brought back.

I didn't. Mike offered, being gracious, he said, would you like to update it and add things?

I said, no, it was effective the way it is, it's God's truth is the way it is, let's just let it the way it is, and put a different cover on it, different ISBN, and be introduced to people who've never read it before.

Oh great, so I've already read what we are presenting today, then. Yes, you've read it. So let's, you know something that I don't?

You've read the book, so anybody, I'm really hoping that there'll be people who, maybe people who have had the book and know how to order more, or people who are interested in the doctrines of grace, or if you're out there in your hospitals and the doctrines of grace,

I would at least say to you, give it a read, it's not a long book, and pray about it and see if God opens your heart to anything, to any truth.

Okay, and when we come back from the break, I can tell you're probably using a speaker phone, if you could move as close to that speaker as possible, because it does sound a little bit like you're in a giant auditorium all by yourself.

Well I am in a giant auditorium all by myself. That, what you just did, whatever it is, sounds 100 % better.

Okay, I'll move it, I have a headset on, so I don't have to hold the phone up to my face, so how's this sound? That's much better.

Okay, very good. All right, we're going to our first break right now, if anybody would like to join us, on the air with a question of your own, for Joseph M.

Bianchi, on God Chose to Save, Why Man Cannot and Will Not Be Saved Apart from Election.

Our email address is chrizarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence, if you live outside the USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter.

Let's say you disagree with our guest, and you don't want to draw attention to your identity, or perhaps you agree with our guest, and you disagree with your own pastor, you disagree with your own congregation, or perhaps you're a pastor, and you disagree with your own denomination, or your own fellow elders, or your own congregation.

We understand why you would want to remain anonymous. So, we will obviously grant you that request for personal matters.

But if it's just a general question on theology, please give us at least your first name, city and state, and country of residence. If you live outside the

USA, don't go away. We'll be right back with Joseph M. Bianchi, on God Chose to Save, Why Man Cannot and Will Not Be Saved Apart from Election.

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That's ptlbiblerebinding .com. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen, and our guest today on Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio is Joseph M. Bianchi, and he is the author of the book we are discussing,

God Chose to Save, Why Man Cannot and Will Not be Saved Apart from Election, and our email address if you want to join us is chrisarnzen at gmail .com,

c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. Please, as always, give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the

USA, and only remain anonymous if your question involves personal and private matter. Before we go to any listener questions,

Joe, I want to set some definitions, or have you summarize some definitions for us, because we do have not only new

Christians that listen to the show, but on occasion we know that we have non -Christians listening.

We have Muslims and atheists and so on. So, obviously the primary theme of this book is a doctrine known as Unconditional Election.

That's correct. If you are a Christian and you believe in the inerrancy of scripture, you have to believe in election.

The difference is how you exegete what that means from the scriptures, how you define that, and of course the majority of evangelicals today, and the majority of those within Christendom, because unfortunately

Calvinism, although growing, is a minority, having enjoyed a history that at one point

I think that we may have been in the majority, at least among Baptists we were at some point in the past, of course.

But most evangelicals, to my knowledge, who are not Reformed, would say that God does elect men and women and children, but he does so because he looks into the future.

He's omniscient, so he looks into the future and he goes, oh look, Joe Bianchi believed in me, and even though this hasn't happened yet, he hasn't even been born yet,

I know Joe Bianchi is going to believe in me, so therefore I'm going to elect him, which really makes Joe Bianchi electing

God, doesn't it? That's correct, and in fact, I believe in Matthew 11, 27,

Jesus says that he reveals the Father to whom he chooses. In other words, it's not something arbitrary.

And whenever an election is brought up, Chris, I don't study right away in my Bible to— and I do use the

New American Standard, too, I guess every fundamentalist is having another heart attack, but anyhow— Not me, it's music to my ears since they support this show.

Yeah. I don't study to my Bible to Ephesians 1 or to Romans 9,

I take people right back to the beginning, right back to Genesis. And I ask the question, how fallen is fallen?

Man, and with our first parents, Adam and Eve, we do believe they are historical, because Jesus believed they were historical.

When they fell, what happened? And I make the analogy in the book of two people.

One person is an amputee, and he's on crutches, and the other person is embalmed in a casket.

He's in bed, he's got a heart attack, he's been embalmed, and he's lying in a casket. Now, we ask the person who's the amputee to go over and touch the wall and come back to where we are standing.

Well, he gets his crutches, and he hobbles to the wall, he touches it, and he comes back. Now, we turn to the person in the casket, and we say, okay, it's your turn.

And we don't get much of a response. That's the difference between what most evangelicals believe, and the technical term,

I guess, would be Arminianism, or the free will, I like to use the term the free will gospel, and Calvinism.

Right, because many, many, many, many, especially our Fundamentalist Baptist friends, refuse to identify themselves as Arminian.

Right, I understand that. But you know what you call a full -point Calvinist? An Arminian. Yes, you pluck one petal off the tulip, and the whole flower dies.

But the point is that, in this analogy, the person, again, with the crutches, is the free will gospel.

He's still able, when presented with something, he's able to, quote, make a decision for Jesus.

The person in the casket is what the Calvinists believe, the Bible says you're dead and trespassed, you're dead, dead, dead.

And you cannot make that, you're not able to, insofar as you don't want to trust Jesus, you're not able to do that.

1 Corinthians 2 .14 says, the natural man cannot understand the things of the spirit.

And that's saying that, oh, that means that when you finally acknowledge

Christ, then you can understand. No, no, it says, the natural man cannot understand spiritual things, because they are spiritually disturbed.

So we have a state of man that he's totally fallen, we call it total depravity. It's not just a little bit, it's not just a little bit off the trail, and he needs to be told how to get back on the trail.

He can't do good works for his salvation. When he's presented with the gospel, the gospel's often thought of as, when it's presented that, people weigh, let's see,

Jesus, do I want to trust Jesus, or do I not want to trust Jesus? Let me weigh the evidence, and they sort of go back and forth on that, and by their own free will and their own cognizance, they're able to say, well,

I'm going to trust Jesus. Well, the Bible tells us that men and women cannot do that. All one has to do is read through Romans, I believe, 3 .10

and following, about what God says about the condition of man, that they're all got out of the way, no one does good, no, not one.

And it's not even a little bit of an argument that man is totally fallen, unable to come to God.

In fact, I love the— Go ahead, I'm sorry. No, I was going to say, the old chicken and— what came first, the chicken or the egg?

Do we have faith, and then we believe? Or does God regenerate us, and then we have faith, and then we believe?

What comes first? And that's sort of the ordo salutis, to use a technical term, the order of salvation.

And most evangelicals fall into this— the category of that faith comes first, that they hear the gospel, they can either accept or reject, based on their own wisdom, and then they choose to trust or not trust

Christ. When the Bible says, no, that cannot be, Jesus came, and Matthew 1 says, to save His people from their sins.

We don't live in— we don't have a God who is arbitrary. Christ came with a mission. The mission was to die for His people, for the elect, and to actually redeem them, and to actually purchase their salvation through assuaging the

Father's wrath through His death on the cross. The cross of Christ was 1 ,000 % effective.

Everybody that Jesus died for will come to faith. To say that Jesus died for everybody, and took everybody's sin, died for sin, but yet, your go to hell because you reject that, means that you're being put in some kind of double jeopardy.

Jesus has died for sin, but you go to hell for not accepting the fact that He died for your sin.

But if He paid the price for sin, the sin of unbelief, of not believing, of rebellion, would be broken, and you would come to believe.

So, I'm trying to boil this down. There's a lot of nuances, but I'm trying to boil it down and clarify what the two positions are.

And what I believe scripture clearly teaches. By the way, I think you did something different before the break with your headset or whatever, because you sounded a little bit clearer right before we went to the break.

I don't know if there's anything you could do, but right now you're sounding great.

Okay. Okay. All right. So, how's this? Yeah, that's fine. Okay. Well, I just wanted to say that what

I like to ask my non -Calvinist friends who do not believe in unconditional election,

I ask them, is believing in Jesus in a true and trusting and loving and saving way, is that pleasing to God?

And they'll say, of course it is. And then I'll read them Romans 8, starting at verse 5.

Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh. Those who live according to the spirit set their minds on the things of the spirit.

The mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the spirit is life and peace, because the mind of the flesh is hostile to God.

It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the flesh cannot please

God. Those who cannot, I'm sorry, those controlled by the flesh cannot please

God. So therefore, obviously a lost person cannot summon up a faith or do anything that pleases

God. Well, of course the free will believer, the Arminian, would say that, well, that's a person prior to conversion, but once they get it right and they get converted, now they can please

God, which of course is not the case. Well, that goes back to the question though, if your faith is your faith pleasing to God, and the situation is here, those controlled by the flesh cannot please

God. So those controlled by the flesh can't even possess a faith like that. And that's why it has to be given to us as a gift.

Well, that's why I always say to people, well, I always ask the question, I used to get very upset in these debates, but then

I just said, I'm just going to ask people questions. And one of the questions I asked is 1 Corinthians, I believe 12, 3 says, nobody can confess

Christ except through the Holy Spirit. And my question is to the

Arminian or free will believer, how can a person who does not have the Holy Spirit dwelling in them, say,

Jesus, won't you come into my life? I now accept you. It's impossible to do that according to scripture, unless your spirit has already been regenerated and made alive in Christ, and you're simply confessing it.

That you cannot confess a person, the Holy Spirit external to the person's heart, does not make a person confess it.

The person must be in possession of salvation already to be able to confess it, because he's unable to do that.

He does not have the spirit of Christ. And clearly, I believe that's pointed out very poignantly in scripture.

Okay, and we're going to be going to our longer than normal break in about three minutes.

And when we come back, I'd like you to really define election, because there is a lot of confusion about it.

We even have an element within hyper -Calvinism that misunderstands election.

I don't want to broad brush, but very prevalent among the primitive Baptists. There is a really gross error, very, very popular in perhaps even the majority of primitive

Baptists, where they would be considered rightfully hyper -Calvinist. And they seem to equate election with the entirety of salvation.

In other words, they don't even believe that anything we do as Christians, whether it be evangelism or loving acts of mercy and kindness, or anything that we do, is even a means by which the lost are drawn to salvation and saved.

They believe that that's Arminian teaching. And they call it the means doctrine.

And they basically say, if you're elect, you're saved. But that is not true. Obviously, you know that.

And it's just a major tenet of being saved. It's a facet on the diamond. In fact, when we come back from the break, you can perhaps even distinguish some of those facets on the diamond, like predestination, election, and adoption, and so on.

But we're going to our longer than normal break. And if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, again, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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

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

And we do have a number of folks waiting, hopefully patiently, to have their questions asked and answered by you.

So we will get to as many of you as possible before we run out of time. But please, those of you who want to ask a question, get in line now, as soon as you can, by sending in an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. So don't go away. We'll be back right after these messages with more of Joe Bianchi.

Hi, I'm Stephan Lindblad, Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at IRBS Theological Seminary in Mansfield, Texas.

I accepted this call to teach at the seminary because I'm firmly convinced that the people of God in the churches of our

Lord Jesus Christ need to be firmly grounded in the truth of Holy Scripture. I'm excited to be teaching such subjects as the nature of theology and the doctrine of Scripture, and even the doctrine of the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Our churches and our people need to be well grounded in these truths. Indeed, future ministers of the gospel need to understand these truths in order to proclaim them to all of God's people.

If you want to learn more about our program, visit us online at irbsseminary .org.

HBS is the preservation and public display of ancient Scripture, dissemination of Scripture, to provide tools equipping believers and Christian apologetics with evidence for the

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today. Thank you, Daniel P. Buttafuoco, attorney at law, for your faithful support of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

I'm James White of Alpha Omega Ministries, and my friend Chris Arnzen and I are excited to be attending another

G3 conference together in Atlanta, Georgia, Thursday, January 16th, through Saturday, January 18th, on a theme that is vitally important to all of us,

Worship Matters. I'll be on the speaking lineup with Eric Thomas, Joel Beeky, Paul Washer, Steve Lawson, Phil Johnson, Tom Askell, Voti Baltham, and the world -renowned preacher, teacher, and author,

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I'm Dr. Gary Kimbrough, pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Laurel, Mississippi. God tells us in James 127 that pure and undefiled religion is a visit to fatherless and widows and their affliction.

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Thank you. One sure way all

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That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said,

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Always mention that you heard about them from Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Before we return to our interview with Joe Bianchi, we just have two announcements to make with special events coming up.

The Foundations Conference is coming up right around the corner, Thursday and Friday, December 19th and 20th in New York City.

If you are a man in ministry leadership, you are eligible to register. Go to solid,

I'm sorry, go to thefoundationsconference .com, thefoundationsconference .com,

and you will find all the information that you need. I will be attending there myself, God willing.

I always love being in Manhattan during the Christmas season, and that's why it's perfect that December 19th and 20th are the dates of the

Foundation Conference, well within the heart of the Christmas season. And the speakers include

Dr. Steven J. Lawson, Paul Washer, Jeff Thomas. By the way, folks, Jeff Thomas, the renowned

Jeff Thomas, is going to be my guest this Thursday and Friday on Iron Truck and Zion Radio, discussing two new books published by Reformation Heritage Books by Reverend Jeff Thomas.

So make sure you mark your calendars for Thursday and Friday when we have Reverend Jeff Thomas on for both days.

Also speaking at the Foundation Conference is Reverend Armand Tomasian and also

Richard Corwell Jr. and Andrew Quigley. If you would like to join me there

Thursday and Friday, December 19th and 20th at the Foundations Conference, go to thefoundationsconference .com,

thefoundationsconference .com. And then coming up in January, Thursday, January 16th, through Saturday, January 18th, the

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

Atlanta airport. What a phenomenal, extraordinary, mind -blowing conference this is. This will be my fourth

G3 Conference where I have manned a, or should I say, an exhibitor's booth for Iron Truck and Zion Radio.

It always turns out to be a phenomenal blessing to Iron Truck and Zion Radio every time

I man an exhibitor's booth there, largely due to the sheer, vast numbers of people that attend this conference.

Every year they have over 5 ,000 people attend. And this January, the theme is

Worship Matters, and the speakers include such notable names as the aforementioned

Dr. Stephen J. Lawson, my dear friend since 1995, and also a mutual friend of our guest,

Joe Bianchi, Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, my friend Todd Friel of Wretched TV and Radio, whose ads you've been hearing on this show, my friend

Phil Johnson, the Executive Director of Grace to You, the Media Ministry of John MacArthur.

Phil Johnson has the dubious reputation of being my guest on Iron Truck and Zion Radio more than anyone else in the history of this program since we first launched in 2005.

And there are many other speakers on this roster, including the latest addition, John MacArthur himself.

I would go to this conference if it was only John MacArthur. And so I urge you, if you want to join me there,

Thursday, January 16th through Saturday, January 18th, go to g3conference .com, g3conference .com.

And also, if you have a business, a parachurch organization or anything else that you want to promote to the body of Christ, especially when people in very large numbers are there,

I urge you to also register for an exhibitor's booth, just like I will be manning for the fourth year in a row. So go to g3conference .com,

g3conference .com, and not only register to attend, but also, if it applies to you, register for an exhibitor's booth as well.

And I would do so quickly because they're going to run out of exhibitor's booth space a lot faster than they run out of room for attendance, because this is a massive hall.

This Georgia International Convention Center is humongous.

But they do only have a limited area for exhibitor's booths. So register soon if you want to have yours there.

And remember to tell them about Chris Arntz and Iron Trip and Zion Radio as your source for discovering the g3conference .com,

g3conference .com. Last but not least, if you love this show, you do not want it to disappear from the airwaves, you love the guests and topics, which very often are never heard anywhere else, you love sharing the free downloadable mp3s with your family, friends, and loved ones, well, please, if you love this show and you have extra money, you have money lying around collecting interest, you have money that you use for recreational purposes, you have money that you use to go to concerts, the theater, movies, athletic events, fast food, all kinds of things that you use your extra money for.

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ironsharpensironradio .com, click support, then click to donate. Now, if you want to advertise with us, send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com

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and put advertising in the subject line. Last but not least, if you are not a member of a local Bible -believing church and you're not even prayerfully looking for one, you are living in rebellion against God.

There are no lone wolves or maverick Christians in the Bible. You must be a member of a local

Bible -believing church in submission to the elders there. So, if you need help finding a church,

I have lists of biblically faithful churches all over the world and I have already helped quite a number of people find churches all over the world where they have joined and become members or where they have visited when they are on vacation or where they have recommended to their family and friends and loved ones who don't have churches.

So please, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put, I need a church in the subject line, if indeed you do.

I need a church and just give me all the information that I need,

I should say, for the exact location where you live or where you're vacationing or where your loved ones live.

And I should be able to help you find one. I've already helped many people, as I said. That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Joe Bianchi regarding his book

God Chose to Save, Why Man Cannot and Will Not Be Saved Apart from Election. That's chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And before we go into the definitions that I asked you to give, we've had a, we've had listeners holding on for quite a while.

So I want to take at least, I want to take at least one listener question and hopefully that will be, that will be a satisfying to our, to our person who's holding on here.

I have to enlarge this question because it is, the font is microscopic and I'm going blind.

Let's see here. And by the way, while I'm looking, while I'm enlarging this question, our email again is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Hi, Chris. Great show. Is this book written?

Let's see. I had to expand this because only half of his, his question was visible to me.

All right. Is this book written for young Christians to understand all five points of Calvinism?

Yes. I mean, one of the purposes I wrote the book for is no matter where you are in your spiritual walk, you could benefit from this book.

You could simply pick it up. It'll give a little bit of historical background, fill in some areas maybe you're not familiar with and then take you right into what the doctrine is and what

Scripture says about it. So yes, I think it's good for, you know, if a person is, has been a

Christian for quite a long time, they could use it as a reference. If you're a new Christian, it's a good introduction to get you on the path to do some more research.

So I would highly recommend it that way. Well, thanks, Grady in Asheboro, North Carolina.

And thank you also for your loyalty in listening to Iron Trump and Zion Radio and your frequency of submitting excellent questions and also supporting us financially with your generous donations.

God bless you, brother. Okay, let's go back to you before we go to any more questions. We need a definition of election because there's a lot of confusion, not only amongst non -reformed people, but even hyper -Calvinists.

Well, election is God's divine decision and eternity path to save some.

I guess that's the best way to put it. Based on His will, nothing that a person does or would do, but basically knowing to God alone why

He would choose this person. So that is a, I guess, a layman's way of putting the doctrine of election.

It's God in eternity past electing those who would be saved according to His will, not based on any foreseen faith in the person or any action on the person's part.

I hope that's clear enough. Now, some use the term predestination as a synonym for election and obviously closely related to the subject is adoption.

Are these just synonyms? Are there any facets on the same diamond, but do they have different meaning even if it is slightly?

Well, if you're elect, you have been predestined. In other words, God is not arbitrary.

You're elect and you're predestinated to be elect. You're predestinated in the past to be elected, to be adopted into the family of God.

All of it, as theologians use the term monergism. Those of us in our age group remember mono records, they only had one sound.

Well, monergism means there's only one active person working, and that's

God. It's not God did his part. Now you do your part.

It's totally God. It's totally his act of divine mercy to save whom he would save.

Not based on anything we did, not based on anything capricious, but based on what he did, divine election, his will.

Now, why is it that we who are reformed make such a big deal out of this?

Some people equate this kind of discussion as counting the number of angels who could dance on the head of a pen.

They think this is just ivory tower talk. This is for conversations by scholars and theologians and intellectuals in the closed doors of their libraries as they drink snifters of brandy and smoke cigars.

And it has really nothing of meaning in the life and faith of the average person or Christian in particular.

Now, I obviously adamantly and radically oppose that dismissive idea.

People think this is so complicated for our minds to grasp, we don't even need to bring it up. Even if they want to concede that it's true, which some folks will give us some kind of benefit of the doubt, they'll even say, well, you know, even if this is true, why do you have to talk about it?

Why do you have to preach and tell people about this? But go ahead. Yeah, I was going to say, let me put it this way.

Perhaps you have read the book or seen one of the versions of the movie Willy Wonka and the

Chocolate Factory. Yes, Gene Wilder's version, which was much better. Yes, of course it was.

It's a classic. Well, what did you need to have in order to get into the Chocolate Factory and visit

Willy Wonka? You needed a golden ticket. Well, to me, the

Doctrine of Election is the golden ticket to understanding God's word. You cannot read the

Bible from Genesis to Revelation without being smacked in the head directly with the

Doctrine of Election. It's pretty clear, all through scripture, Abraham and then on and David and on and on and on.

People were arbitrarily chosen. The people of Israel weren't chosen because they're the biggest people, the smartest people, the strongest people, but for God's own purposes.

And just as God had a people, God had a people in the Old Testament, the people of Israel. He had the people in the

New Testament, Jew and Gentile united in Christ, those of the elect. And so God is not arbitrary at all.

But that is one of the biggest, slanderous accusations that is hurled frequently towards those of us who are theologically reformed, is that they picture our understanding of God electing souls from before the foundation of the world as the classic phrase that will be used from the nursery rhyme or child's game, perhaps more adequately put, eeny, meeny, miny, moe.

Yes, no, it's not. We have a God who, you know, as scientists use the word entropy, meaning randomness.

God is not random. He has his purposes. We don't always understand his purposes. I don't understand why

God elected me to salvation, but doesn't elect my neighbor. I have no idea. That's God's business.

He is sovereign. We want to put God, we want to think in human terms and make

God think like we do. But he says, I am the Lord. I don't think as a man. God does not think as a man, so he's not arbitrary.

He has a reason, and we may not know that reason, but it doesn't mean that God is arbitrary.

I like to look at it this way. Let me give you this analogy. I've been thinking about this analogy for a while.

It's if I had a room, let's say the biggest room that ever existed, and in that room,

I put every person that has ever lived, and I gave them absolute free will, and in one side of the room,

I've had a little box, and in that box is all their sin, and on the other side of the room is the Lord Jesus with his nail -scarred hand holding out to them saying, come to me, come to me, come to me.

Well, here's the question. How many people would get saved? The answer is simple. Nobody, because nobody wants to get saved.

I remember hearing a fundamentalist pastor say a few weeks ago that Calvin, if you believe

Calvinism, a person wants to get saved, but they can't. Well, that's not true, because nobody wants to get saved unless the

Spirit of God, going back to what we said before, that men are rebellious, that men do not do good, that we cannot, the mind set on the flesh cannot please

God, that these things are spiritually discerned, and so God is not arbitrary, and people love their sin.

They're not going to come to Christ of their, quote, own free will. Now, speaking of that,

I do want to say, Calvinists do believe that man has volition and man has will, but he has a will in accordance with his nature, and our nature is, as holding creatures, is to sin and rebel against God.

It is not to acknowledge something as unfathomable as Christ did on Calvary.

So, I think that that, in a way, answers the question. Yes, it does.

And I'm going to go to another listener question. We have Johnny in Queens, New York, and he actually has more than one question.

God has sovereignly decided to reveal to us the work of His election in His Word, the

Bible. This profound concept of His, prerogative to save some fallen man, not others, poses some issues of fairness and partiality with God.

How would you answer, biblically, of the implication of this alleged unfairness?

Yeah, well, that's another one of the big charges. Well, again, in Romans it says,

I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I won't have mercy on whom I choose not to have mercy.

And that's, again, up to God. Fairness, that's a very, it's a sticky wicket, because we're thinking in terms of fairness.

Gee, everybody should get a shot at salvation. Everybody should get a shot at, quote, accepting Jesus. And again,

I just made the analogy that given complete free will, nobody would trust Jesus because nobody wants to get saved.

And I always say to people who are on the other side of this issue, Johnny and Sally go to an evangelical crusade.

Sally trusts Christ, and Johnny absolutely rejects it. Now, why is that?

Is Sally smarter? Is Sally more savvy theologically? Well, Sally softened her heart.

Well, why did Sally soften her heart to God's Word? See, the question begs the question, and it always comes back to how we get saved.

Sally got saved because, or Susie got saved because God regenerated her spirit.

Off comes the mask. She does run to Christ in her own free will because now her spirit's been regenerated, and she can and is able to do that, but not before God does the work first.

Just like Lydia, the Seller of Purple. When she was listening to the Word preached, the

Holy Spirit opened her heart so she could understand the Word spoken by Paul. Right, and you know, of course when we talk about the issue of a divine election, we can't escape the issue of evangelism, and of course people will always say, well, why do

Calvinists evangelize if people are elect? And I always make the analogy of a surgeon and his scalpel.

The surgeon's in complete control of the operation, but he's using an instrument, and God commands us to save, excuse me, to preach the gospel.

He does the saving, but he commands us to preach the gospel. I believe it was Spurgeon who said, if the unelect, in other words the reprobate, who would never be saved, had a bright yellow stripe down their back, he would still preach the gospel to them because we're commanded to do so.

But it's God's business for the elect and the unelect, and it provides, in fact, when people go into the mission field, it provides encouragement, because we know when we preach, we don't have to convince people in a worldly way and wear them down with our

Bibles. We preach the word, and God will work in their hearts. Whoever is the elect, he will apply that salvation in time and space, and apply it to their heart, regenerate their spirit, and they will come to faith.

They want to be elect. But we're commanded to preach the gospel to every living creature.

Paul Yes, and even when many of those who are not regenerate hear the gospel preached, even if they do not come to saving faith in Christ, there are many who do curtail or restrain their evil, which doesn't make them deserving of heaven, but it makes this world a better place for us to live, including his elect.

David Right, the scripture says that he's the savior of all men, but especially those that believe.

It doesn't mean he died for everybody. It means that even the unelect are getting benefits from salvation, in that the rain falls on the just and the unjust.

They're able to get food. They're able to have families. There's order in society. Why do we have laws that protect us?

Well, it comes from the Bible. It doesn't come from man's evolutionary past. It comes directly from the same commands in the Bible.

So he is the savior of all men in the sense that he preserves the world and keeps every atom in our creation from just splitting apart, and people get the benefit of that.

Even the unelect, the unfaith, the reprobate have jobs and families and money and food, and those who do believe are working to make things better by preaching the gospel.

So it all works together. So the unelect do get a benefit from the gospel in that sense.

And Johnny's second question is, what do you think is the practical application and response to this biblical teaching?

I think it's humbleness. I think just the opposite of what some critics say, that, oh, if you're elect, then you're arrogant.

How do you know if I'm elect, you're elect? It's humbleness. Because they must go deaf when we use the part of the phrase unconditional, because they act as if we are teaching a conditional election when it is they that are.

Right, exactly, exactly. And we just are in awe of God. We bow to Christ and say,

I don't know why you've elected me. I have no idea. There's nothing good in me. There's absolutely nothing

I did. I'm really loathsome. I would be loathsome in your sight if it wasn't for Christ, but you've elected me.

Whereas in the Armenian or free will gospel, the onus is on the person to, quote, make a decision, to weigh the evidence, to think about it, and then morally say, well, this is better than this, and then open the little door of their heart and let

Jesus come in, which we can't do. We can't open the door of our hearts. We're not able to do that.

So that's what I would say to those people. We're humbled. Our reaction is adoration, is humbleness.

We're all on it. Fix your humanity on a conveyor belt. We're all going to hell. God decides to save his people, save some and rescue them from the fires of hell.

It's a glorious doctrine that we should be celebrating that God indeed sweeps away man's will and replaces it with his will.

We should be glorifying him simply for that. It is the only system of theology, that is, the

Reformed faith possesses the only system of theology that, when held logically and consistently, gives 100 % of the praise, honor, and glory to God for our salvation and for every good thing.

There is no other theological system that can consistently and logically say that.

They all do say that. They all claim they give 100 % of the glory to God, but they either have amnesia about some of the things that they believe when they are answering that question, or they're just playing fast and loose with terminology, or they're just outright lying.

But you cannot say that a sinner who is dead in his sins can present to God a faith that pleases him so much that he saves that person without saying that you contributed to your salvation.

Exactly. And it also, all this points back to the atonement as Reformed people, we believe that Christ's death on Calvary was 1000 % effective.

He actually, everybody he died for will come to faith, whereas the free will gospel says that he died for everybody, and he made people savable.

He didn't, he died, he hung between heaven and earth, he said, it is finished, and bowed his head, but nobody, he didn't save anybody.

He just made you savable. I remember an incident where I was in a

Chinese restaurant with a good friend of mine, a very fine Christian man, and he doesn't, he's not

Reformed, and he was witnessing to the owner and doing a terrific job. She said, well,

I worship Buddha. And he said, well, Jesus is God, he made Buddha. And that sort of staggered her.

But then he blew it by, he started pleading with her and saying, don't you know that Jesus died for you?

Don't you know that Jesus died for you? And finally, I had to tell him, please stop it. First of all, you're talking to a woman who doesn't know anything about Christianity.

You saying that Jesus died for her means nothing to her. They don't understand. If a person doesn't understand atonement and what

Jesus did on the cross, they're not going to understand that. And secondly, to be crass about it, we don't know if Jesus died for her.

As a Calvinist, we don't know. We don't believe in universal atonement. Because then she would be freed from her sin.

It's possible that she's one of the elect, and who knows now if she's trusted in Christ. But to, we can't,

God is not arbitrary. The cross actually accomplished the salvation of all people who

God would save. And he applies that salvation in time and space. And it's at a particular time to our soul that he generates us.

It's not an arbitrary thing. It's not left up to man. Men in their natural state can't please

God, can't understand the gospel. It's a puzzlement to them. Yeah, and they also believe somehow, even if they were not to spell it out specifically in clear crystal words, they obviously either consciously or unconsciously believe that everyone deserves to have every benefit in order to come to an understanding and faith of the gospel and embrace it.

They seem to have this idea of fairness that doesn't even exist in an

Arminian paradigm. Obviously, you have universalists who are heretics, who are outside of the realm of biblical

Christianity who believe everybody's going to be saved. And that position seems to be more consistent with me.

Right, yeah, especially with the atonement. Because if you believe that Jesus died for everybody, well then the sin and the unbelief or rebellion is broken and you're going to believe in everybody's faith.

Even though that's a heretical belief, it's more consistent than a system that says

Jesus died for your sin, but you're going to go to hell for rejecting the fact that Jesus died for your sin.

It makes no sense. It falls apart, the whole argument. Right, but the more biblically faithful Arminian believes there is a hell, believes that that hell will be inhabited, most likely think that the majority of those who are ever born will be entering there.

And their idea that we have a system of theology that is less fair than theirs, how do you get the fact that there are great portions of the planet

Earth whose inhabitants never heard the gospel for centuries and lived and died?

Why is that fair that they go to hell? Or do you have an unbiblical concept of post -mortem evangelism or some other kind of way that they can be saved?

As some have developed other ways that they acted according to the light that they had, to the best of their ability and things like that, which really just boils down to a work salvation.

Well, the Catholic Church has a doctrine called the baptism of desire.

Which means that if you desire to know the true God, you desire to do what's right, even though you never heard the name of Christ, you can end up in heaven, because you have the right—your heart is heading in the right direction of a desire.

And we know that's false, because we have one who must confess. There's no name under heaven whereby we must be saved, the scripture says, but except through Christ, and we must confess

Christ. And His sovereignty, He's going to save who's going to save. He's going to—it's a thousand percent effective.

Yes, and my point being that that is—it's not a fair thing, not only to expect or to act as if the entire world, everybody in the world is acting on an equal playing field.

They all have this equal ability to hear the gospel, believe in it, and get saved. This is—the

Arminian understanding of salvation is, in fact, if you want to use the word fair, it's less fair.

Right. And you have people being it left up to themselves with their own willpower to battle the world, the flesh, and the devil, and come out winning in the end as a believer.

And also, when you think about—so you're saying that the person in the Bible belt who was raised by Christian parents has the same fair opportunity to understand and believe in Christ as the

Muslim in the Middle East who may be executed for this? I mean, none of it makes any sense.

Yet we have Muslims who come to Christ, but obviously they're

God's elect. They hear the gospel preached or something, or a verse or encounter a

Christian, and something stirs up in their soul. Now why is that? Why are the people in the Bible belt who go to fundamentalist churches who aren't really regenerated, yet a

Muslim who's really got a theological system that is anti -Christ suddenly sees the truth of God's word and believes?

That's God's electing grace dramatically working. And all right, we're—Johnny in Queens is really pushing it, but I'm going to give him one more question that he's asking, and then we're going to go to the station break.

In fact, we'll have you answer it when you return, when we return from the break. Third question, in light of election, what are the various orthodox views of God's reprobation of the lost, and should these affect our urgency and desire to evangelize the lost?

You already partially answered that because we're commanded to, but we're going to have you answer that when we return.

And this is our final break, folks. If you want to join us, please, right now, send us the question that you have to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com, because we are rapidly running out of time.

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Franklin, Tennessee, if you live there, or if you have family, friends, and loved ones who already live there. We are now back with the final segment of our interview today with Pastor Joe Bianchi, and we had basically a question from Johnny in Queens, New York, who wants to know the practical application of this teaching of election.

I think we answered that, that the practical application, I think he was talking about reprobation.

Oh that's right, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, you are absolutely right. Yeah, I think,

I was going to say that the two go hand in hand, the doctrine of election and reprobation go hand in hand. If you've got the elect, you have those who are not elect, and God's sovereignty.

And I think the practical application is that we just have to, we don't know who the elect and the unelect are, we just preach the gospel.

But God says he makes vessels in the house, there's vessels of honor and dishonor. You'll have mercy whom you'll have mercy.

And to the charge that that's unfair, no, because people go to hell because of sin.

You know, the great evangelical miscue is that people go to hell for rejecting

Christ. Well, yeah, that's true in a sense, but really it's sin that sends them to hell. And if God does not elect them, they're going to hell, not because God just decided to throw them into hell, but there's an issue called sin that must be dealt with that will send them to hell.

So one goes with the other, and again, a lot of these things are in the absolute sovereignty of God.

I can't answer why God does one thing and not another, why he saves one person and not another. That's his sovereign will, just as he elected

Israel over all the other nations. Why? Were they special in some way? Not really, he just decided to make them special.

So I think the practical application is that God is sovereign. He will do what he will do.

We have to bow the knee to his will, not only in things like this, but even in things in our lives.

When good things happen, we want to go, we want to praise God, and bad things happen, we scratch our heads, but it's all part of living in a fallen world.

And we should be happy that God, if we're Christians, that God is redeeming us out of this fallen world.

Yes, one of the misunderstandings that people have about double predestination, which you and I believe, and reprobation, is that they think that God is actively making morally neutral men evil.

But he is just, he is leaving evil men in their evil state while electing others of us out from among that same lump of evil clay, and rescuing us.

And he has no obligation to save even one of us out of all of the trillions of humanity that have ever lived and ever will live.

But it is his right to choose out of that sea of humanity.

And we cannot charge God with being cruel or what have you.

But anyway, thank you, Johnny, for being a participant today. And basically, I've got time for one more question, which

I have to answer quickly. Basically, the Bible says that there is no partiality with God, and in the

New International Version it says that God does not play favoritism. How do you explain that?

Well, it says that God does not play favoritism. That's exactly correct, and that just bolsters our position, because he's not looking down the corridor of time and saying,

Joe Bianchi, in the summer of 1984, trusted me as Savior, so I'm going to mark him out.

He elected me for his own purposes. As despicable a person as I was, he elected me to salvation.

So he's not saying, looking, going to and fro on the earth, saying, that person looks pretty good, I'll elect him. That person's not so good, and I won't elect him.

So he's not being partial in the sense that he's not saving people who look pretty good.

And also, in just his daily walk with people, he's not showing partiality, and we're told about that partiality in the church among people, whether we're black, white, rich, poor, it makes no difference to God.

He sees the elect and the unelected, and it's very clear that way. Yes, and the listener is obviously referring to Romans chapter 2 in verse 11, and obviously, it's ironic, it is the opponents of Reformed theology that actually, either consciously or unconsciously, are claiming that God does play partiality, because he's choosing people a part of something good on their behalf, namely faith.

They also believe that in this mythical future millennium, that there's going to be, once again, the

Jewish people will be at the head of humanity. That's showing partiality. Clearly, scripture shows it's now

Jew and Gentile united in Christ. Amen, and we're out of time, brother, and I know that the

Solid Ground Christian book website, for people to order your book, God Chose to Save, is solid -ground -books .com.

Solid -ground -books .com. What's the website for Calvary Press? www .calvarypress

.com. I recommend going to both those websites directly. That's www .calvarypress

.com. Thank you so much, Joe. I look forward to having you back on the show. We have to have you back more frequently. I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially those who took the time to write questions, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives,