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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.
Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.
It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. Now here's our host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon, Cumberland County,.
Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity who are living on the planet Earth, listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a Monday on this 11th day of January 2015.
I'm sorry, 11th day. I'm a couple of weeks behind, aren't I? A 25th day of January 2015. I think this being buried up to my eyeballs and snow for the past few days has made me have some kind of brain malfunction.
That's okay, and it would be 2016, Chris. 2016. January 25th, 2016, and in spite of our jovial atmosphere right now, we're talking about a couple of very serious issues today. We are going to be, first of all, for the first hour, discussing abortion, and in particular, we're going to be discussing our guest's novel or novella, Rescue Me, which is a pro-life novel, and our guest to discuss that for the first hour is Cindy Martin Morgan, who is the daughter of the late Walter Martin, who is a world-renowned apologist and author, most probably well-known for The Kingdom of the Cults and also his many appearances on the John Ankerberg broadcast back in the 80s and 90s.
And we also have, for our second guest, Steve Camp, who is no stranger to the Iron Sharpens Iron audience, especially the old Iron Sharpens Iron that ran from 2006 through 2011. Steve Camp is an award-winning Christian recording artist who actually won a Grammy Award for a song that he wrote, and he is now currently the pastor of Cross Church in Palm Harbor, Florida, and he is going to be discussing Christians and politics, living out Titus 3, 1 through 8, and Perilous Times, which I hope that you will all listen to in our second hour.
But first of all, let me first welcome our first guest to the broadcast, Cindy Martin Morgan. Hi, Chris, it's an honor to be here. Thanks for having me. And it's my pleasure to have you here, Cindy, and you were a delight to interview the last time, and I'm sure that we will have the same experience this time, and I'm so glad that you could make the time to be on the broadcast.
First of all, before we even go into the discussion of your new novella, your pro-life novella, Rescue Me, tell us something about Walter Martin Jude 3, which is an internet ministry that you operate with your husband.
Well, Walter Martin.
Jude 3 really was established to support the ministry that my dad found on staff. We just have such joy in being a part of all the support that ministry, and to my pro-life music, and now this.
New novella that I've got. Great. And the website for that ministry that you run with your husband?
That's www .WalterMartinJude3 .com. WalterMartinJude3 .com. And it's the number 3. Yes. WalterMartinJude3 .com, right.
Okay, great. And for anyone who is unfamiliar with Walter Martin, it's unlikely that there are too many listeners to Iron, Sharp, and Ziron who are totally unfamiliar with Walter Martin, but those of my listeners who are very young, I do have listeners in their teens, in their 20s, and 30s that may not remember Walter Martin.
But how long ago did your dad go home to glory with Christ? 1989. It was June of 1989. Oh, okay. So then those John Ankerberg programs were all in the 80s then. Yeah, quite some time ago, God took him.
Yeah, that was, time certainly does fly, because I could still remember being glued to my television set in the living room, watching John Ankerberg, and watching your father debate all different cult representatives, and Mitch Pacwa, the Jesuit priest, those were always the most entertaining of the debates.
Yeah. Because in spite of the very stark contrast in theology that often rose to the surface between your dad's debates with Father Mitch Pacwa, they were good friends, so there was no animosity or bitterness or hatred that developed because of this.
This was merely two men trying to bring the truth to light from their own perspective. Obviously, I believe your dad was the one that was on the side of truth in regard to the gospel and all those matters that divide Rome from biblical Christianity, but obviously your dad is sorely missed, but heaven is a richer place waiting for us all.
How young was he when he went home to glory again? He was 60. Wow, that is a lot younger than I thought. I remember being surprised the last time I interviewed you how young he was. That's only about six years older than me.
Amazing. Yeah, it is. Well, we all have a wonderful legacy that he left behind to be blessed from, and again, the masterpiece that he wrote that he is most well known for is Kingdom of the Cults. What else would he have written that our listeners should get a.
Hold of? Well, essential Christianity is heard a lot lately. Even the younger people, you know, 30-ish, 20s, but primarily, of course, the Kingdom of the Cults is, I think, the greatest resource.
And we did bring up in our last interview that you and your husband were on the opposite end of the Calvinist-Arminian debate with your dad. You and your husband are thoroughly reformed in your theology, and your dad was not, although we both agree that he is now.
Yes, he knows the truth. God bless him. Don't laugh if you heard me say that. But tell us, before we even go into the details, I mean, obviously, we can't give away too many details of your novella or your novel, because, you know, people don't want to have the ending or any kind of major part of it that would be better kept a surprise.
They don't want to have that spoiled before they read it. But tell us, first of all, when the pro-life movement became, or the issue of life before birth and the abortion issue, when all these things became a matter of intense importance to you and a matter that would become something that you would passionately be involved in.
In your life as a Christian woman? Sure. I, since I was old enough to become aware of it, but I really wasn't heartbroken over abortion and all of that, but I feel like, you know, in my, probably, I think it was like my late 20s or mid, he was just moving in my heart, where he brought a friend into my life at that time who was so passionate, and her love for the unborn, she was politically trying to fight for them and lawfully, and she really touched me and blessed me with that love and that concern for them.
And God really used it in my heart and in my life to awaken me, you might say, to his heartache and the horror that these people were really facing every single day. And I just, it was weird because, like, for the first, there were, like, weeks that went by where I felt just tremendous grief.
And I've said this many times, but it's really true. I almost feel like God let me just glimpse, just a brief glimpse of his pain in his heart, you know, that they're destroying his little ones. And I had this sense, you know, for weeks that God wanted me to do something, but I didn't know what.
And then one day, I just really felt the Lord pressing, I really felt the Holy Spirit just moving me to, you know, write down that time. And I literally, and I cried as I wrote it. And I just felt that brokenness inside of, you know, oh my goodness, you know, these people are being ripped from their mother's wombs.
And this has just flooded my soul. And that's when everything began to me, I think, where God, you know, once God awakens you, I think, to that horror, you can never turn back. And that's how I wrote, that's when I wrote Wonderfully Made.
Yeah, it's amazing how successful the left has been and the feminist movement and the pro-abortionist movement, how successful they have been in keeping the populace totally ignorant of the brutality of abortion.
There are, obviously, people, abortionists themselves would be the first among them who know full well what's happening during this grotesque and horrific and barbarous procedure. But it's amazing when you hear people, you know, you don't know if they're 100%, you don't know if they're lying, but I've seen people even in the media who are taken aback and are insistent that it can't be as graphic, as horrific, I should say, and as barbarous as it's being described.
One account that immediately comes to mind was, I can still remember when Ron Paul, the father of the current senator from Kentucky who is running in the Republican primary, at least I think he still might be running, Rand Paul, well his dad Ron Paul was a guest on The View.
And I remember Joy, whose last name escapes me, but she's a very left-wing stand-up comedian who was one of the Joy Behar hosts. Joy Behar, yeah, Behar. She was always there to mock and ridicule anything that was conservative.
And she refused to acknowledge some of the things that Ron Paul was saying. When he was describing partial birth abortion, she was acting as if it was the first time she'd ever heard of this. And she said, oh well that would be murder, but you know, that doesn't really happen too often, you know, that kind of a thing.
And I wonder if she immediately wished she could retract those words when she described it as murder. But those kinds of things, that kind of butchery, it's all butchery, but even the more disturbing case of it where there's actually a partially born infant being mutilated while it's still alive, that seems to be harder for people on the left to recognize or admit that those procedures actually occur.
You know, a lot of people are making so much money off of this. It's so profitable. And as we heard recently too, the selling of the baby's body parts. And I read an article about a woman who was doing, excuse me, one of these abortions.
And she was, the woman was on the table and she was about as pregnant as the woman that she was doing the ultrasound for. And right at the time that she was ready to rip one of these limbs. Wow. Yeah.
So the sadness of all of this is we live in a day and age where everybody knows what's going on. And they have an agenda, obviously, to keep people, you know, thinking that this is a matter of choice, not a matter of life and death.
You know, that's because there's just the people that are, you know, involved in all of this, they just are making a fortune. And they're exploiting mothers and they're just, it's, you know, you follow the money.
These people, they want to profit and they don't want to give up the kind of money that this has given them. So kind of incumbent.
Yeah. And I remember not long ago seeing the, another clip, a more recent clip of the Women on the View, mocking the statement that Planned Parenthood was involved in the harvesting of baby parts and saying that that is not what they were doing.
What else could you describe that to be? I mean, is there any other description you could possibly give that?
Well, you know, Satan doesn't have any new tricks to redefine the truth and dumb us down. And just like the New York Times recently about the March for Life in Washington, D .C. that just took place, they said hundreds attended.
Well, it was like about 700 ,000 people that attended. 700 ,000. So nearly a million people. Just, you know, just a little bit different of a number, you know, just detracting from the truth, redefining the truth.
And it's one of Satan's oldest tricks. He wants to redefine and cover the truth and he distorts the truth. You know, Satan likes to mix lies with truth, you know. So the truth was, yes, it was in Washington, D .C.
Yes, it was a March for Life, you know, but he wants to distort the rest of it. And he's just a master at that. And that's what we're seeing in our country is just that.
That satanic influence on our nation. Yeah. And the media has a purposeful design to give the impression that this is mainly white, middle-class Americans who are protesting the infanticide that is taking place through abortion.
And I know black Christian activists who are involved in the pro-life movement who have told me that they will be at pro-life fundraising banquets and things. And when the news media is there, the cameramen purposely, as they're spanning across the audience, they will stop filming when they come to the black tables or the tables that are dominated by black guests.
They will move away and then start filming again to the white audience. And of course, the NAACP refuses to acknowledge this infanticide and they refuse to give a platform to those African-Americans who are vehemently opposed to the butchering of unborn children, which actually began as a way to exterminate the black race from the face of the earth.
That's just so clearly documented. This is not some bizarre conspiracy theory. No, it's the truth. Yeah. In fact, you could even go to Margaret Sanger's writings on the internet. And I'm even talking about internet sites that aren't biased against her.
And you could just see in her own words the fact that she wanted to use sterilization and abortion to basically rid the human race of the black population. And it was almost looked upon as a mercy killing because they are too mentally incapable of taking care of themselves and so on, according to Margaret Sanger and her racist colleagues that still exist to this day.
But outrageous.
Yeah, it's a deplorable thing. In fact, I strongly recommend anybody listening to get a hold of a DVD. It's one of the best pro-life DVDs I've ever viewed. It's called MAFA 21, M as in Michael, A, A, F as in Frank, A, 21.
It is a DVD that thoroughly documents the history of Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry and exposes the racist agenda that was behind it all and the cooperation that Margaret Sanger and the eugenics, those who were involved in the eugenics movement here in the United States in the early 20th century, how they cooperated with the Nazis in Germany prior to America being involved in World War II.
And it's just amazing. Margaret Sanger actually had Nazi scientists writing for her magazine and so on. But it's just an amazing thing that we in a quote, quote, civilized, enlightened society can sit back as the millions of babies are ripped apart and no one is really making any progress in having this butchery outlawed it seems.
But anyway, you went from having a passion to defend the life of the unborn to wanting to write about it. There may be other novels or novellas written on the subject of abortion. Yours is the first that has ever come to my attention.
I don't know if you're aware of any other. But what made you decide to use a novel or novella as a vehicle to convey the story.
Of abortion to your readers? Well, it's interesting because the idea for the book, actually, I actually thought of the somewhat some of the storyline in my 20s, early 30s. I just I raising four daughters and homeschooling and life being as it was, we focus on those songs.
And of course, like I wanted to, in the late 90s, I actually wrote, but God, you know, God's timing is, is we know he and we can have confidence in knowing that his timing is indeed perfect. We're not but he is and his timing is perfect.
And I he was at this point in my life now, you know, Rick and I are empty nesters. And our lives have changed quite dramatically. We now have seven grandchildren. And but I'm a lot more freed up to, to work on the book, I was much more freed up to work on the book and to finish the book.
And just felt a real great joy in doing it, I really have a burden for the children who are, you know, in that age range, you know, between 1114 or so, because they're coming up in life where they have to make some serious decisions, some of them will be pregnant, or some of the boys will become, you know, they will, they will become a father, you know, sooner, and have to make a decision, you know, or at least weigh into a decision on whether or not to abort that child.
And I was hoping and praying the Lord would use this resource in mind or to help parents, because there's, of course, great, great godly Christian parents out there that are teaching their children, their value to our of life and life in the womb.
And I wanted it to be a support to them. And then to those who are not really aware of how significant we are to God, I wanted that them to find out and to hear, to hear how much their lives mean now and eternally, and that they want to, you know, just just in the hope that this could be something that would help to protect the children of the future, that they'd want to, they'd want to save their own children, that they'd want to value them and save them and protect them and love them and not abort them.
So that was what was on my heart and mind when I wrote it, to just create a resource that would really point them to life. And then another aspect of this, too, is that in the story, we're talking about a sibling who, she finds out that her, you know, she's got a sibling, and then the sibling is aborted, and she travels through time to try to, God gives her an opportunity to travel through time to try to stop that abortion.
And one thing that was really on my heart, too, is that we never really hear that much about the brothers and the sisters that find out that the parents aborted their sibling. And that's got to have some kind of psychological impact on their lives.
They may not even realize to what extent it affects them. But so I kind of touch on that in the book a lot, because it's so wrapped up in the story. And I just think they're kind of the forgotten, also, that this kind of thing doesn't just impact, you know, your sin has ripples, and it touches their lives as well.
And so I like, I like the fact that they're, you know, the story helps to center on them some and center on the loss that they really, they really do experience, whether they express it or not, there's loss for them as well.
So I wanted that aspect, of course, tied into the story. And of course, it is. And that's kind of what was behind my thinking and creating this resource.
Right. And it's available at amazon .com, correctly, currently on.
Currently on Kindle. Yeah.
And if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own regarding abortion or in, in particular, regarding Cindy Martin Morgan's novella, Rescue Me, which is a pro-life novella, please shoot us an email at chrisarnson at gmail .com.
C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. And please include your first name, at least your city, your state, and your country of residence, if you live outside of the USA. Of course, we recognize because of a sensitive issue like abortion, there may be a reason why you would prefer to remain anonymous.
If you email us a question, perhaps you've had an abortion, perhaps someone in your family has either had one or is contemplating having one, or there's some other reason that you would feel much more comfortable remaining anonymous, you may feel free to do so.
But please only remain completely anonymous if that is the case. There's something private and personal and sensitive that you do not want to publicly connect yourself to. Once again, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.
That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We're going to be right back after these messages with Cindy Martin Morgan and a discussion of her book, Rescue Me, a pro-life novella. Don't go away.
Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, pastor of Providence Baptist Church.
We are a Reformed Baptist Church, and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts. We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things.
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Welcome back. This is Chris Orens and your host of Iron Sharpens Iron. For the last half hour, we have been interviewing Cindy Martin Morgan, the daughter of Walter Martin, the world-renowned apologist who went home to be to glory with Christ for eternity back in the late 80s.
And Cindy has written a novella that is now available on Kindle. It's a pro-life novella called Rescue Me. And we are currently addressing not only the novella, but we are addressing the pro-life matter in general.
And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisorensen at gmail .com. Chrisorensen at gmail .com. We do have an anonymous listener from Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who says, most Christians I know, especially those who are conservative evangelicals and Roman Catholics, will be quick to tell everyone that abortion is murder.
But why is it that so very few of them will actually treat the issue in practical terms on the same par as the murder of a child who has already been born? It seems to be puzzling to me that people would be more than happy to have a dinner guest in their home who may believe in abortion and may have polite discussions with them and be very friendly and loving and even humorous with them in times of relaxing gatherings, but they would never do so with a neighbor of theirs who was a known murderer of children or adults.
Why does this paradox exist? Well, that's an interesting question. Do you care to comment on that, Cindy?
Well, you know, I think that, first of all, I think there are a lot of, you know, we're not the Holy Spirit agrees. I think the question was that the purpose...
Yes, the listener was wondering why does there seem to be a dichotomy or a contradiction in the way that pro-lifers will treat, let's say, a feminist, a neighbor of theirs or a family member who believes in abortion and somebody, you know, like, let's say, Jeffrey Dahmer or somebody who's a known murderer, they're not going to be treated in the same level of charity, friendship, hospitality as they would the neighbor or family member who may have had abortions and is very still actively promoting the legal right to have them.
Right. Well, there's a misunderstanding of evil, and there is some contradiction. I realize there is some contradiction there, and I really think, and I've seen it, too, where, you know, people who don't understand what they've been forgiven from, if you're a believer in Jesus Christ and you've been saved and forgiven of your sins, you recognize, you know, what God did for you on the cross and your wretchedness, and we are just as wretched as Jeffrey Dahmer.
We are just as wretched as each other. No one is better than each other. We're all in the same miserable condition before Jesus Christ saved us. Now, obviously, certain sins have different consequences, but the state of man, fallen man, is evil, and you're not any less evil than your neighbor before Christ saves you and the depravity of man.
That's, to me, there's a misunderstanding about that that exists amongst people, and they can categorize, you know, you'll sometimes hear people on the news, oh, that person is just so evil, and what they don't recognize is that apart from Jesus Christ, we can do nothing good, and it's only his death on the cross and his sacrifice, you know, when we come to the cross and we lay that sin down, you know, that's when we are washed clean, and that our sin really is, our righteousness is really, like I said before, like the scripture says, as filthy rags, but we tend to look at it from a human perspective, and that, of course,.
Is wrong. Right, and I think that another reason why we who are pro-life may treat the feminist neighbor or family member in a hospitable and loving and caring and welcoming way into our home or in discussions and gatherings and so on, where we would not a known murderer, escaped convict or something, or paroled convict or whatever the case may be, is the fact that the world, in spite of the fact that we who are pro-life people, in spite of the fact that we find it hard to believe that they don't recognize this as murder, the evil one has done a very good job at convincing and brainwashing great multitudes on this planet that it isn't, especially because you have medical professionals telling them that it isn't, and actually performing the dastardly deeds.
Now, I'm not saying that that makes it any less of a horrific deed or act, but I think that we do have to treat people somewhat differently who are deceived about the level of evil that is actually being committed.
I can remember back in the 80s, the woman that actually led me to Christ, she had a friend who was a crack addict, a recovering crack addict, who was pregnant. She didn't even know who the father was.
She was told by her doctor, she was recommended, strongly urged by her doctor to have an abortion because he was convinced that because of her crack use, the baby would have some kind of serious deformity or brain disorder or something very devastating was probably going to be the case with the child.
So she was seriously considering this. My friend who led me to Christ, she shared with her a book of photographs of all the stages of human life from conception to the ninth month of pregnancy through delivery.
And I think it might have even been a secular book that was published by a liberal publisher because it's interesting how for the purposes of advancement in photography and science, a liberal might even find something like that fascinating and promote a book like that.
But once you actually consistently and logically follow through and say, well, wait a minute, doesn't that mean that these are human beings and that if you believe in abortion, that's murder? They just totally reverse their opinion on it.
And I've even seen ABC television have specials on the development of human life in the womb, which is just ironic because they are so openly pro-abortion in many of their other broadcasts. But my point is that this woman, this struggling, recovering crack addict, when she saw this book, she was astonished and horrified that she was actually contemplating murdering this life inside of her.
She kept the baby and the baby was born completely healthy. So that was just my answer to also to join in with you to the listener, that there are people who are just totally deceived about what is occurring.
And the story you told, that's not uncommon, those kind of stories, too. A lot of times the doctors will tell them one thing and... Oh yeah, there was a couple who were members.
Of my church years ago, back in the 80s again, and they were told by the doctors that their first baby before it was born, they actually said, the doctor specifically was very detailed on this, he said the baby was going to be a dwarf, blind and mentally retarded hermaphrodite.
Excuse me for mispronouncing that, hermaphrodite. And he urged them to abort the child, and they refused to. They said that we believe in the sanctity of human life from conception, that we believe that would be murder, we refuse.
The baby was born completely normal and healthy. But anyway... That's amazing. Have you ever, other than I heard with my own ears, a listener call into the Hank Hanegraaff interview... Bible Answer Man program.
Bible Answer Man program, yes. I heard a woman call in who had had an abortion and her heart was broken over that. I don't know how often you've had that experience, but that was a very moving phone call that Hank received that you addressed.
I don't know if that's happened before. I have talked to others, yes. And this one, you know, they're told, they're lied to and harmed them in any way, and that's just that caller, really. And then you can go on to help others.
And, you know, I read this, one of my dear, dear cousins recently shared an article with me, actually a blog, the article she'd written in this blog was, I am the woman at the well. And it's a woman who had had an abortion.
And, you know, and that's what, that's what can happen for these women. They're shamed and washed clean by, and they can walk away from that sin and leave it like a garment they just took off that Jesus, you know.
You know, I'm going to be talking with Steve Camp.
In the second hour, specifically, one of the facets of the interview is going to be a Christian's role in politics. And there, there is a lot of disagreements among Christians, not even differences between those on the Christian right and those on the so-called Christian left.
But I'm talking about even amongst very conservative, Bible-believing Christians who are strong advocates of biblical inerrancy, and maybe even also strongly theologically reformed and Calvinistic, and maybe even sitting in the same pew at church, who disagree on how a Christian is to appropriately function in the public arena, in the realm of politics.
And abortion is a sin and a crime in and outside of politics, of course. But what is your personal view on the activism of Christians, most Christians that I have heard, in fact, probably all of them.
Uh, there are probably some Mennonites or others that I have not conversed with who believe that a Christian shouldn't have any voice in politics. But most Christians that I know would say individual Christians can be involved in politics in any way they are led to, even running for political office.
But they would say that the church as an institution is solely there as a function to proclaim the gospel, to disciple Christians and edify them and equip them and minister as agents of mercy to those who are suffering and in pain and so on.
But they are not to be there to support political candidates and do other things that individuals can do. What is your view on that, being somebody.
Who is a pro-life advocate? Well, my view is that by and large, by not strongly advocating, that's really a grief that we feel, that the body of Christ is supposed to be salt and light. Everywhere we go, not being salt and light, thinking that somehow they don't have to be salt and light when it comes to that person who is going to have their life ended any second.
Mind-blowing that you have Jesus as you have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me. So the indifference is to Jesus himself. It's huge. Just like, you know, it's important and there's many, many issues facing the church and many, many issues in life that we have to deal with, and this is one really important issue.
And I feel that a lot of churches, not all, because there are some great churches that are in this battle, and praise God for them, but so many churches obviously are not. And it's a tragedy. Yes, and when I was speaking about the.
Strange dichotomy that exists, or even the hypocrisy that exists amongst those who are pro-abortion, it's amazing how people will be very quick to want to see a young girl brought to justice, swift justice, if she has given birth to a baby and thrown it in a trash can.
And how those same people will give her a badge of courage, strength, and honor if she chooses to get an abortion and have a doctor rip the baby to pieces. It's a tremendous blindness. Yeah, it's just, it's amazing that somebody could have both views.
Well, God says, you know,.
If you don't repent of your sins, he can harden you in your sin. And that's what we're seeing, you know, that's the judgment of God. Yeah, because, I mean, and some of these.
Babies who are being murdered in sterile doctor's offices are being brutally murdered at the same ages of development, same stages of development, as those babies that are being born perhaps prematurely and thrown into a dumpster.
These are viable, as they call them, viable fetuses being murdered. Yeah. So it's just a horrific situation, and it's very hard for some of us to restrain our emotions and anger when we even talk about these issues.
It is, and I think that people, I think the biggest thing that you have to do is you have to speak to people, you have to speak the truth to people and love and let God, and be encouraged in knowing that God is in control.
Otherwise you would just working even when things look...
Yeah. In fact, even going back to the listener earlier, the anonymous listener who was bringing up the contradiction between a Christian having a feminist who is pro-abortion, perhaps over the house for Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas dinner, but you would never do so with somebody who was a known murderer.
Why is that the case? Well, first of all, as you said, we have to be salt and light to the world. We also have to show the love of Christ to the lost, and somebody who's deceived about the evil of abortion needs to be convinced of the truth.
They also need to be convinced of their own lost condition, and they have to be given the gospel in a way that is a demonstration that Christ has saved the worst of sinners, including us, but if I had the opportunity to sit down with a doctor who was performing abortions, I would not be sitting around having a...
I can't imagine myself having a warm, comfortable, and pleasant chat over dinner that had joy and hilarity involved in it and some kind of a celebration during the holidays. I would have a completely different mindset, I would think.
I've never had the situation where this has occurred, to my knowledge, where I've had a doctor in my presence over a meal, but I can imagine that I would want to think that I would be very stern to this person in a different way because this person knows what they're doing.
I don't think that there's any way a doctor, a physician, cannot know that they are murdering.
A child. Well, I was in that position with a doctor in my 20s, and he was my OB, you know, GYN, and I remember finding out during that, and I remember him walking in there, why are you doing that? And he looked at me, well, you know, and I didn't cut into him, I just showed some love to him, and by the look on his face, I could just see in that moment that his heart was just saying, you know, we're not the Holy Spirit, we just have to speak the truth in love, and God gives us opportunity to do it.
And, you know, I was thankful for the.
Opportunity. Amen. And I don't want to be mistaken, I don't want anybody to get the wrong idea that I would not present the gospel. I would present the gospel to an abortionist, a doctor who was performing these things, or a nurse who knew full well what was happening, but I can't imagine that I would have the warmth and hospitality and neighborly affection in my home or other setting with somebody like that, as opposed to somebody who's just totally blind to what this issue was.
Really involving. Well, right, and this was my doctor, I was eight months pregnant, so, you know, that was a very different story, and God gives you the words when you need them, and the Spirit, I know you, Chris, and I'm sure you wouldn't present anything without it being in love.
And just to let you know that for those of our listeners who think that witnessing to somebody who is staunchly feminist and pro-abortion and pro-homosexual and all these things, very often we forget that we were sinners saved by grace and we treat certain people like hopeless causes.
They're never going to believe, I'm not even going to bother presenting the gospel to them. You know, we have this mindset of really pride and arrogance about ourselves. Just to let our listeners know that on the 29th of January, which is a Friday, I've got the honor of interviewing Rosaria Butterfield, who was a feminist and pro-abortionist and lesbian, and the Lord brought her to salvation through the kindness and hospitality of a theologically reformed and very conservative pastor who invited her to have dinner with him and his wife in their home.
And the love and kindness and compassion that they showed him was used as an instrument to God to bring this woman to repentance and salvation. And she is now not only a born-again Christian and a pro-life believer and a theologically conservative woman, but she's also heterosexual and married to a pastor.
So it's just amazing what God can do. And so mark your calendars for Friday, January 29th. Oh, I know I will. Great, I appreciate that. Well, what are your final thoughts that you'd like to share with our listeners regarding Rescue Me and regarding the life of the unborn, the sanctity of human life, if you will, that you want most etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners before they leave this program?
Well, that I would hope that they would. And this is kind of an entertaining book.
And yeah, and a lot of people, even Christian parents, might want to be overly protective of their children and totally shelter them from things like abortion. But this is a bold step in that matter because children are going to be faced with these realities through their lost childhood friends and their lost parents.
And, you know, schoolyards, schoolroom,.
Classrooms, and so on. Well, yes, and Planned Parenthood wants their children. Yeah. And so you can't give them enough in the Lord in this way. Amen. So that's Rescue Me by.
Cindy Martin-Morgan. And Cindy is spelled C-I-N-D-E-E, not with a Y. And she is the author of Rescue Me on Amazon Kindle, correct? Correct. And the website that Cindy and her husband operate is WalterMartinJude3 .com.
Is it com? Yes, correct. W-W-L-A-T-E-C-M. WalterMartinJude3 .com. Well, thank you so much, Cindy Martin-Morgan. You've been a joy to interview again, and I look forward to you returning again in the near future.
Oh, Chris, a blessing to be with you. All right. Well, God bless you, sister. God bless you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. And we're going on to our second hour now. If you'd like to join us with questions of your own for Steve Camp, many of our listeners may be fully aware of Steve Camp, who's an award-winning Christian recording artist.
He is also currently the pastor of Cross Church. And I wrongly have been publicizing Cross Church as being in Palm Harbor, Florida, but it's actually in Palm City, Florida, so I apologize for that. But it's Palm City, Florida, Cross Church.
And we're going to be discussing after this break Christians and politics, living out Titus 3 verses 1 through 8 in perilous times. We're going to be discussing that with our second guest for the day, Steve Camp.
So don't go away. We're going to be right back.
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Radio. Welcome back, this is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in for the last hour, we had as a guest on our program Cindy Martin Morgan, who is the daughter of Walter Martin, the world-renowned Christian apologist who has been in eternity with Christ since the late 1980s, author of Kingdom of the Cults, and we were discussing with Cindy her novella Rescue Me, which is a pro-life novella, and we were discussing also the pro-life movement in general.
In our second hour, we're talking about Christian and politics living out Titus 3, one through eight in perilous times, with our guest Steve Camp, who is an award-winning Christian recording artist, a Grammy award-winning songwriter, and pastor of Cross Church in Palm City, Florida.
It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, Steve Camp.
Hey Chris, thank you, my friend. Great to be with you. I'm sorry you're snowed in, I hate to break it, it's about 68 degrees here in Palm City, Florida, so we're trying to suffer along with you, but I remember those days being in Chicago growing up, and all the snow and the wind and the ice, and oh man, I'll tell you, give me sand over snow any day, you know, but we're praying for you all.
I hope it's been at least a little bit of a respite for you. Yeah, well the.
Next time that God gives me the opportunity to go to Florida, I hope I actually have time to visit and fellowship with you. That'd be great. Yeah, and hopefully we'll also coincide with winter months.
The next time I'm down there. Yes, absolutely. Well, thank you for having me on the broadcast.
Today, always a real joy. Now tell our listeners, for those of them who either have never heard you interviewed on Iron Sharpens Iron at all, or perhaps they are very familiar with your music, but not familiar at all with the church that you now pastor, Cross Church, give us some updates.
On Cross Church in Palm City, Florida. Yeah, I would love to. We are a Reformed Baptist church, you know, London Baptist Confession of Faith, modified, update, but it's great. We're dedicated to expository preaching, the ministry of the word, you know, the great thing about the Reformed is that salvation is of the Lord.
When people ask me, what's really that all things come from the Lord, and that He has won our redemption. He has graced us with it by His enabling grace. We live to Him and look forward to that glorious day when we'll be with Him and we'll be glorified and have new bodies and giving honor and glory to Him.
So we have a high view of God's word, a high view of the Lord and His glory, and Sundays, you know, it's all about Christ. So we do that every Lord's day and we have guests that come, people that visit, and it's wonderful.
10 a .m. to 11 .30 a .m. Sunday morning. I've been here about six years, but on the deity of Christ, and then did a brief four months in the Sermon on the Mount, and then a book of Revelation, Glory, and Psalm. 170 are rooted in the Old Testament, and so it was a great opportunity for our people not only study Revelation, but that John refers to.
He doesn't quote them verbatim many of the times. You have to go to them. It's a lost coin in the field. Search them out, but we had just a wonderful study incorporating that. We did Summon Daniel 9 and 2 Thessalonians 2 and the Man of Lawlessness and Romans 9 to 11 on who is Israel, what is Israel, and then just completed last fall the book of Ephesians, and then did eight weeks in this reading prophetically the coming of Messiah, and then literally, Chris, just three weeks ago started the book.
We thought with all that's going on in our world today, that's under God's sovereign grace, but yet faith comes by hearing, hearing by the Word of Christ. Sovereign privileges in the Lord don't relieve us of our, you know, human responsibilities, and so what a wonderful joy.
I said, let's see our church grow by God's grace this year, not by other churches splitting, not by people leaving the church and coming over to this one and trying it, because you know, Chris, if they come easy, they go easy.
If you pick up 50 or 100 people due to a church split, man, they'll want to come, and it's not healthy, but if a congregation can grow, not through true salvation, a place in people's lives, and so, man, if you're praying for the cross church, that's how you can pray for us, that we would be a congregation dedicated to the great doctrines of wonderful Reformed faith as Scripture articulates it, but that we'd be what Paul would call that he would win some for the kingdom, and he understood that his chosen people in times past eternal who were given grace in times past eternal before anything that was made was made to come to Christ, but in real time, they must repent and confess Jesus as Lord and turn from their sin, and what a joy it is that God uses us to spread the seed of his gospel to them.
So that's where we are as a church, Cross Church, and the website, if I can be so bold, crosschurch .net, and they can listen to some of the messages and peruse many of the articles and things that we have on there, so thanks always for your support of our local.
Church. And at the risk of having people turn this program off immediately, what is your eschatological.
Position? Hey, well, you know what, that's a real loaded question. I'll do the people are still listening, we can maybe come back for another show on this. You know, I grew up in Wheaton, Illinois, the Holy City, the Vatican, too.
It had so many Christian organizations. I mean, Chris, on Sunday morning, we would sing, My Hope is Built on Nothing Less than Schofield's Notes and Moody Press. That was our theme song. And so I grew up in the standard left-behind, rapture, pre-mill, pre-trib, kind of Hal Lindsey mentality of eschatology.
You know, but I, throughout my young adult years and music, I would travel, and I, you know, eventually it got around to what do they think about the Word of God, and what's their church government like, and do they have pastors and elders and deacons, and do they do church restoration and these kind of things.
But ultimately, you would get around to what they believe about the Lord's return. And most of the churches out there were rapture oriented, pre-mill, pre-trib, but as I got to really study that meaning, except the Vulgate used the word raptura, the Latin, and so when a lot of the Reformed authors speak of the rapture, they mean it equally to the second coming of Christ.
They don't mean it as in the Hal Lindsey tradition of a mid-air touchdown and then, you know, and so forth. That really started with a young Scottish gal in the early 1800s, a dream that she had. It was a vision.
And a guy named Edwin Irving, he and his fellow, they called them Irvingites, Schofield imported it to the U .S., then it went to, you know, Lewis Perry. That we love and count as friends, and we are honored today in the church, but believe in this, it's really a fictitious, apocryphal doctrine.
People will ask me, Chris, questions like, Steve, do you think when we go that all of our clothes will stay here, and we kind of leave airplanes and taxi cabs, and we're walking down the street, and do we have glorified clothes, or how is it?
Will it be embarrassing? We'll literally, I've had people come up and say, will we be naked going up in the rapture because we've seen the movies and all the clothes? And it's this kind of silliness. It's the headline kind of news.
People ask me all the time, do you think President Obama is the Antichrist? I said, no, he's just a guess who the Antichrist is. It's some homeschool mom out there somewhere that's got a control issue with her kids and private education.
No, I'm just kidding. But anyway, it's one of those things that what we see in contemporary society, we wanted in our church, Chris, to have a biblical eschatology, not one driven by headlines, not one driven by current events, but one that was driven by scripture, and going through the Gospel of John and then Revelation, which occupied about four and a half years of study, and it's been several years of study for me in the Word.
So where we land is really a modified amillennialism in our church, and we take scripture for what it is and believe it. Modern day things, could you believe that justification was a doctrine that was invented in the mid -1800s?
I mean, no one would...to their disciples, and then on to the church fathers, gives us real merit and real blessing. And so this is a wonderful thing to know, that we can be expectant of the Lord's return, and the next great event on the eschatological calendar is the second coming of Christ.
But this idea of a secret rapture, our clothes are left behind, we have seven years of tribulation, there's a compact with the Antichrist, there's some politician out there growing horns, or a 666 underneath the hairline in the movie Omen, I mean, it's really just eschatology by Hollywood, it has no biblical merit whatsoever.
Now what do you mean by modified amillennialism though? Because it seems that whatever you said, as far as I can remember, it seems to be in keeping with amillennialism. Yeah, what I mean.
By that is that I know that there are slight variations. He will not like to say he's amill, but that's... He's a partial preterist. He's a partial preterist, similar to R .C. Sproul, and we would consider ourselves partial preterists.
Full-on preterism, as you know, is not in keeping with God's Word, that it's all been fulfilled, but a partial preterism. Where we come down is that the Gospel of John is really... or pardon me, that Revelation is John's Olivet Discourse, where Matthew and Luke and Mark contain that.
John, in his Gospel, did not place that. We would say for us that this was an earlier date of writing than a later date. We would say that these great themes, so forth, are initially speaking to the destruction of Jerusalem in A .D. 70.
I mean, think of it. The Jews lost not only their temple, but their land and their culture completely at that time, and the Lord put a close on that chapter. So then we have to ask ourselves what is or who is the real Israel of God, and that becomes more than just a nation.
And even the advent of, is there really a thousand-year physical millennial reign on earth? Our millennialism is really misnamed because we believe we're in the millennium now, but Revelation 20 has a heavenly context to it as opposed to an earthly one.
And to think that staunch guys that believe, wonderful guys, I won't name their names, but gifted men of God today believe in a physical millennial reign of Christ, really goes against so much scripture.
The key thing is the rebuilding of the temple so that all the Old Testament sacrifices are reconstituted. That denies the it-is-finished statement of our Lord on Calvary's tree that all of the works, all of the festivals, all of the feast days, all of the shadow and tithes, finishing that, as Hebrews 8 said, that old covenant is fading away, it's passed away, but we have a new covenant, and we know according to our Lord the kingdom of heaven is not an earthly kingdom, it's a heavenly one.
And so there are things like that that maybe not all millennialists will agree with, but that's our track, that's what we believe in. And again, we're just as excited about the second coming, without the advent of having to watch bad movies to understand their ethicality.
Yeah, it's fun. Yes, well, amen. And that was not obviously the main reason we're talking today.
So glad.
And perhaps we can have you back again to discuss that at greater depth. I happen to be on the same page with you, by the way.
Oh, tremendous.
But I'm going to go to Titus 3, verses 1 through 8. I'm going to read that for our audience, and then we can pick up from there. Remind them to be subject to rulers, to authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good deed, to malign no one, to be peaceable, gentle, showing every consideration for all men.
For we also were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another. But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds, which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace, we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
This is a trustworthy statement, and concerning these things, I want you to speak confidently so that those who have believed God will be careful to engage in good deeds. These things are good and profitable for men.
Well, we're going to be discussing that text in further depth. We'd like you to exegete that and also discuss what you, as a Christian and also as a pastor and as somebody who's been involved in the blogosphere and so on, has been writing on some themes that are very controversial, and you even at times have sparked public disagreement with brethren who may agree with you identically in most other things.
But as I was even saying to Cindy Martin Morgan at the beginning of our interview before, the last hour, the matter of politics and the Christian is a very splintered, divisive area where you have people who are even sitting in the same pew in the same church and may have nearly identical beliefs will disagree in part company on this one.
Yeah, absolutely. So maybe you could start up as to why you specifically chose this text and move on to the greater picture here. Yeah, you know, we're in the.
Middle of an election cycle. It's going to be an exciting one. Nothing boring about this year's election. This is really across the nation that it has been in previous elections. As you know, back in the days, Fallwell Sr. or even Dr. Doc's coalition, the Christian coalition, trying to unite the body of Christ only to sway by intimidation of the board.
However, it doesn't mean that the Christian should be absolute. Paul lays out by God's sovereign meaning of evil and social order. We're also told in 1 Timothy chapter people in authority over us that we have a duty to be excellent principally must apply unique to America or unique to Russia or unique to India.
The principle of scripture must apply. So in our scriptural context here in the United States, and we have a voice, many cultures don't have a voice in their government, but we have, as you know, what people call the grand experiment.
It's a wonderful constitution, a wonderful bill of rights. If you've never read it, read it. It's important for us to know the rule of law, which governs our country. That's a, that's a biblical mandate.
We want to honor the laws of the land and honor those in authority over us. That goes from everyone from police officers to congressional leaders to pro we want to honor within the home similar within the church of God treated.
Christians have retreated from bringing and speaking a biblical worldview. I'm not talking about organizing a church, uh, Christians around the country to demand people vote in a certain way. That's not scriptural, but what we are to do is to make our voice known legally.
We can, we can have peaceful demonstrations. We can write our congressional leaders. We can use fader means of social media to communicate these ideas. We can place phone calls to our leaders and even, uh, communicate through email and other ways.
And that's a good thing. Uh, we also are to pray for our leaders. And so we want our this injustice and what is good and love our neighbor. I want to make sure that on social, the aspect ordinance in turn, marriage between a man and a woman now to the definition of marriage for them, that it's two people in love, whether they be gay, gay, straight, or transgender absent, even if children like to do that, we'll know they don't.
Um, what about the issue of entity of human life? These are not political issues. These, and I want to encourage past counsel of God. They come across these approaching a pot that we can speak truthfully.
And again, it's not porn child. That's not a political issue, even though it has political ramifications. That's a biblical issue. Marriage is a biblical issue. The being beheaded by Islamic terrorists, the Muslim terrorists, those members of ISIS.
That's a biblical issue because we know biblical Islam is connected back to Genesis 16 with Ishmael. In fact, Muhammad considers himself a direct descendant of Ishmael. We know how this exists and why it exists.
Uh, and so these kinds of things we must proceed upon Chris with care, with love, but with boldness. And we must speak to them biblically. I think that sets the framework for where we are in our election cycle, where we must be as Christians in the culture and speaking to these things.
Again, the first amendment isn't to separate church from state. The first amendment was given to separate the state from the church. It didn't silence religious or biblical discussion in the marketplace, even in the political realm.
What it did was silence the state from governing the worship and the biblical convictions of any.
Local church. Now, I have to be very careful here because I don't want to misrepresent a mutual hero of both of ours, living hero. But John MacArthur, I don't think that I'm exaggerating.
When I call him a hero of the faith. No, that's right. John's a tremendous man of God. And man, I've been privileged to serve out there for a brief time. John's been, he has been a dear friend. We've walked through some tough water together.
He's been there. Yes. And John, although he.
Believes that individual Christians can participate in varying levels of activism in the political arena, even running for office, and he would even be excited and thrilled and strongly advocate a solid Christian man running for political office, and would hope to see him win if he is knowledgeable of all things that would be involved in governing a city, state, or country.
But he is very opposed to churches as, the church as an institution being involved in political activity. That's basically, in summary, what I have gathered from what John has taught, and from my interviews with Phil Johnson, the president of Grace to You Ministries.
How are you in alignment with that, or do you disagree with some of that, etc.?
No, you know what? I think, John, what he's recoiling, and we've talked about this before, what he's recoiling against is the moral majority Christian coalition, value voters, universal, and the whole theme, remember in November, remember in November.
And the whole church, politicians, Republican, Independent, and Democrats, to either succumb to friendly evangelicals, or we're going to vote you out of office. I think, I agree 100 with, that's what he's recoiling, is using the church, pardon me, Chris, as a weapon to, again, violate the tenor and character to live out our lives, to speak to the issues.
Recently, John preached, I believe, a series of messages exactly on this theme, and primarily it was out of Romans 1, and he was saying, just as we were talking here, Chris, that issues of gay marriage, abortion, other things, of what we see going on.
He's even done several parts on Islamic terror, and a big issue across college campuses, even Wheaton College, the sadness of what's going on there. Peter Ryken, I hope he can bring clarity to that, and stand of leading that great college back to biblical Christianity.
It is a liberal school now, sensitive to the Muslim faith, you know, supporting that teacher that was wearing the hajib in a kind of, for all Muslims, I think there was a Christian, pardon me, a bishop, even in England, Christian ministers, to grow long beards so that they could fit in better with Muslim clerics.
I mean, that's the. Does that include the female clerics? Yes. Well, why do you think they wear burkas? Anyway, you know what? No, I don't mean to be disparaging. They're beautiful, beautiful women in the Muslim faith, but yet tortured.
I mean, look at what's happening under the teachings of Muhammad, that wretched man, you know, obviously in creating this very idolatrous false religion. But the big issue there, even in Christian colleges, does Islam and Christianity worship the same God?
I can't even believe people are dialoguing. It's one of my main topics on Twitter these days, of talking to people that are Christian evangelists, Christian pastors and evangelical leaders that want to adopt out of social sentimentality.
One gentleman this morning, he's overseas, and he said, you know, Islam stands for peace. Christianity stands for love. I am praying to the same God of Allah and the God of Jehovah for peace and love to rule the planet.
Well, that is just stronger word would be heresy. I think that's what Dr. MacArthur speaks against, and I would be full on with him. But as John has preached very forcefully on the teachings of Islam and that how Allah is not the same God of the Bible, as John has stood up for the sanctity of the womb and the sanctity of all life, as John has preached on what occupies biblical marriage, and even though we would disagree with those in the gay community, we know the gay community is not our enemy.
The Muslim, as a Christian, as a church, I'm not speaking militarily now, is not our enemy. They are our mission field. The abortionist is not our enemy. They are our mission field. But yet, by rule of law, many are breaking the law.
ISIS needs to be defeated militarily. We should send them back to the dark ages. We should have a strong military front and not weaken that as a church, as a pastor, as Christians. We should stand for a just war biblical theory against that, and we can preach on that.
Those are biblical issues. Dr. MacArthur has been a champion, not only of the gospel, but of the biblical worldview on those kinds of issues. So, as we are talking here about Christians being in culture, in society, the issue is this, Chris, and you and I were laughing about it before the broadcast went on, is what happened this last Christmas.
What was the riveting issue that occupied so many evangelical pastors? It wasn't the beheading of Christians overseas by Muslims. It wasn't the reaching out to those that are struggling with the issue of abortion.
It wasn't talking to identity crisis issues in the transgender community, or maybe even within the gay community, whom we should love and go to and preach the gospel and see them come to Christ. It wasn't any of those things.
What was it? They were outraged en masse that Starbucks had the gall to print a red cup without saying Merry Christmas on it. I mean, really, this is the foolishness. Is it any wonder that a non-Christian society looks at us as evangelicals and says, these people are silly?
They're about what's going on in the culture, or most importantly, going on with the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, I've been dealing with issues involving Black Lives Matter, and not doing what some evangelical leaders do when they get on their radio shows, and they're saying, I'm meeting with a black pastor across town, and we're going to have such a vibrant discussion on race.
No, that's pride, and that's just arrogance, ad nauseum. What I'm talking about is dealing with the leaders of that movement.
By the way, can you pick that up right when we return from our station break?
Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. Thank you, brother.
We're going to be going to a station break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, it's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away, we'll be.
Right back with Steve Camp. I'm James White of Alpha Omega Ministries. The New American Standard Bible is perfect for daily reading or in-depth study. Used by pastors, scholars, and everyday readers, the NASB is widely embraced and trusted as a literal and readable Bible translation.
From compact to giant print Bibles, find an NASB that fits your needs very affordably at nasbible .com. Trust, discover, and enjoy the NASB for yourself today. Go to nasbible .com.
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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnge and if you just tuned us in for the last half hour, we have been addressing a Christian's role in politics with our guest Steve Camp who is no stranger to the Iron Sharpens Iron audience, especially those who listened to the old Iron Sharpens Iron between 2006 and 2011.
I think Steve was probably neck and neck with Phil Johnson and David Wood as being the most frequently interviewed people on my show. Once again, our email address, if you'd like to join us on the air with a question about this very controversial and divisive issue, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.
Right before the break, you were addressing how you met with some of the leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement and if you could continue that.
Yeah, you know what, I guess what I'm saying is this, and again I won't mention other evangelical leaders that have taken, I think, an easy path under the biblical world as about, you know, it's just a racist money-driven organization.
However, do all that were executed by Planned Parenthood in New York City alone. All Black Lives Matter. That includes Tyshawn Lee, the little nine-year-old boy who, in Chicago, lured into a galley then shot to death.
They weren't marching over that. All Black Lives Matter. Let's talk about Randolph Holder, the African-American police officer who was breaking up a robbery and was shot to death, an African-American policeman.
Let's honor that man. Blue Lives Matter. Yes, and all Black Lives Matter. Let's talk gunned down a seven-year-old in a Latino and African-American gangbangers down in Miami just a few weeks back and he was a little black child.
Why is it that we don't see Al Sharpton picketing that? Why is it that we for Tyshawn Lee? Why is it only when there's a white officer and guns, well, you know what? That officer should be tried. He should receive the full punishment.
And I was texting some of the people with, I'll show up and make it equal justice. Biblical worldview is that's black lives, yellow lives, red lives, white lives, you know, that's blue lives. That's anyone in our path and need.
That's a transgender life. That's an atheist life. That's an evangelical life. That's a reformed life. And that's one of the nut, nutty people out there that still believe in left behind life. All lives, all lives matter.
All, working on a new song about this. I can't divulge any more about this, but it's going to be the, we are the world for the 21st century. All lives matter. And the bottom line is this, we need as the people of God, not to be given out to selective outrage and not to determine who our neighbor is and who our neighbor is not.
If you read the gospel of Luke and the parable of the good Samaritan, the Samaritan was set in a racial context, as you know, but here it was not just Jesus telling us who is our neighbor. That's anyone in our path and need.
More importantly, he was addressing the fundamental issue through the example of a non-believer in the Samaritan of what it means to be a good neighbor. That's a whole nother question. So if I can appeal to the listeners on your show and to my evangelical brethren, if you really want to be taken seriously as a Christian biblical worldview, you know, ambassador for Christ in our day, whether you are famous or not, whether you have radio shows or not, whether you have studied Bibles or not, whether you have books or not, whether you are in Christian music or not, whatever it is, you can make a difference in your city, on your street, in your neighborhood.
How? Love your neighbor. It's the second of the two great commands. Now we risk, Chris, some people saying, oh, that's just a social gospel. No, it's not. The gospel is the gospel. Salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone.
That is the gospel. However, as the fruit of that gospel, we are to love our neighbor. And you know, it's a universal principle the Lord gave with that parable of the Good Samaritans. It wasn't just for believers.
It was for all people, just like marriage. It's a creation ordinance given to all people, not just believers. So we have to stop playing this we, they segregated aspect of our Christian beliefs and realize that, yes, we are to worship the Lord.
It's only for him. We are to come and we are to celebrate him. I like what Michael Horton says in Word and Sacrament. That is for the Christian. But yet we are Monday through Saturday, Sunday, the church gathered, Monday through Saturday, the church scattered.
We are to be in it, but not of it. We are to practice hospitality and invite people into our homes, not to surprise them with a little Ray Comfort track at the end of the meal, right? We don't want to do that.
We want to genuinely love them. Why? They're made in the image of a holy God for no other reason. They deserve our love and care and respect because they are made by a creator and that brings them dignity.
In fact, Peter says in 1 Peter 4, pardon me, 1 Peter 3, that even when we give a reason for the hope that's in us, we're to do it with reverence and respect and gentleness, reverence for God, but respect for our fellow man and gentleness.
We want to walk with them and care for them. We're not salesmen trying to close a deal with a little signing of a book or a sinner's prayer or raising of a hand. We're not here to carve little notches on our evangelical belts.
Man, we want to be in society, in the world, living for Christ, communicating his gospel. That's what Titus 3 is all about, honoring those in authority, being in the world, remembering our depravity, rejoicing our deliverance, but as you read in verse 8, rendering good works which are profitable for all people.
That's part of the gospel call of our lives. One of the problems I see with the church, especially as an institution, getting aggressively involved in the political arena, however, there are two things that immediately come to my mind.
One is turning conservative issues into another social gospel where you are replacing the gospel of Jesus Christ with all these very important and vital issues like abortion, like opposing the gay rights agenda, and all these other things that are going on in our sin-cursed society, but that is fighting those things and standing up for biblical marriage are very vital and wonderful and good things, but they are not the gospel.
The second thing is when we especially support as a church publicly and vociferously a specific candidate, a candidate that might not even be a believer, and they typically are not people that would share our biblical faith, even if they claim to be Christian, and this person may turn out to be a fraud.
We're side by side talking about the pure and inerrant word of God and the gospel that we are certain of and right within the same breath endorsing a human being that we really don't know personally to be leader of the free world or even leader of our local town.
And of course the other issue is that our role pastor is supposed to become political experts because there are more issues involved than the pro-life movement and the same-sex marriage issue and all these other things.
Is there one view that is harmonious with the Bible about immigration? Is there only one view that is harmonious with the Bible about the United States being involved in foreign wars and things like that?
Oh sure. Let me give some brief thoughts on that. Excellent thoughts, excellent questions. Number one, pastors do need to be, any American should have a working knowledge of it. It's interesting on the show Water's World through Fox, Jesse goes to these campuses, to Yale and Harvard, and you know they don't even know the First Amendment.
I mean these great institutions of learning, we want to be effective citizens of this earth and therefore it's incumbent upon us not to be authoritarians on it. None of us are going and getting a PhD, most of us in constitutional law know, but we are to read it, we are to understand it, we have a working knowledge of it.
As we are to be, you know, delving into the Word of God and go to a doctor, Chris, if I have a broken leg or need a kidney taken out or brain surgery, something more profound that way, you know, I don't ask that man, do you believe the five points of Calvinism?
You know, do you believe the doctrines of grace? What is your view on Theo Neustadt, on divine inspiration? And only then, if you can answer those questions, will I let you operate on me. No, you know what, I want to see that plaque, that they have giftedness in that area of service.
Today I was taking a pickup truck that was donated to our church. It's 16 years old, it's got some problems, it's got some dings, and I wanted a good mechanic. I didn't go to it because I didn't really like it.
He's become a friend and he doesn't know the Lord, but I'm.
By the way, our apologies to anyone running a shop called Icthus Motors that may be a completely.
Fine establishment. There you go. Yeah, I'm so sorry about that, if by coincidence that happened. But you know what, in the same realm of politics, Chris, I used to be of the mindset, and I'm no longer this mindset, that the first quality that president should have is that he should be a born-again Christian.
Listen, it was born-again Christians that led us in 1980 into the terrible travesty with Iraq, that almost ruined the economy, that had interest rates of 22%, speaking of Jimmy Carter. Look at some of the self-proclaimed born-again Christians that throughout the last several years have appointed the most liberal judges to the Supreme Court.
The acid-temp presidency is not private. I would love the Lord and pray to the and not for important that we would like a Christian there. Well, that would be wonderful. Yes, acid test for the presidency is not Christianity.
The acid test for the presidency is constitutionality. That's what they're hired to do. That's what they're running on. And so I think what we need to do is we've covered some abortion, the Islamic situation.
I thank the Lord for Franklin Graham and what he's doing to Samaritan through Samaritan's Purse. Do we want thousands of Syrian undocumented refugees coming to our country? No. Why? Because that breaks the rule of law.
But you can go to those create safe. We want to guard our borders. That's a good thing in terms of honoring the rule of law. As Christians, we don't make the gospel the acid test for Syrian refugees. That's a matter of political national security.
We as Christians want to be involved in the Great Commission, sharing the gospel, loving our neighbor, doing good deeds, serving our fellow man, pointing them to Christ. And at the same time, when it comes to the presidency, the first question mark that I have for anyone running these days, and I'm a conservative, but it's not, do they hold to the principles of conservatism?
I disagreed with the National Review article that was against Donald Trump. He's one of several candidates made their plumb line to all the candidates, not just to one. It was wrong for them to do that.
It's Marco Rubio, whether it's Donald Trump, whether it's whoever it may be, there are several running. God will have his way on who gets into office. But I would say to this, as a church, as Christians, we need to evaluate each of those candidates on their scriptures.
But yet in matters of are they qualified for the presidency, look to the constitution that sets the agenda. So the primary consideration is let's have someone that's going to honor the constitution in government this year.
I'm not going to tell you who I'm supporting currently, do your homework, look at the social issues and evaluate them. However, we do want to honor the rule of law. And then as a rule of faith, no matter who gets elected, I did not vote for our current president, but I pray for him daily that if he reads any of my tweets, but you know what?
I've tried to call him to repentance and he needs the gospel of Jesus Christ. However, apart from that, he's not a constitutional president. He doesn't honor the laws of this land. He has not honored the separation of powers that the framers had set up.
As a Christian, we can address that. We can speak constitutionally to those issues about minimizing the gospel of.
Jesus Christ. And we're out of time, Steve, and it's crosschurch .net, correct?
Crosschurch .net. And thank you, Chris, always. The time flies by. If we can pick this up again, it's such an important discussion. And I appreciate you greatly. God bless you.
And I want everybody to remember that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner. God bless. And we look forward to hearing from you on Iron Sharpens Iron tomorrow.