Aug. 5, 2015 ISI Radio Show with Dr. Bill Webster on “The Gospel of the Reformation”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century Gospel Minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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

Our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this fifth day of August 2015, and I'm very excited about today's guest because he's a dear friend who's been with me through thick and thin and been with me and supported me and encouraged me and comforted me during some very serious and dark trials in my life, and he is also a brilliant theologian and historian, a prolific writer, and a phenomenal speaker that I highly recommend that you not only purchase his books and his recordings of messages but also I eagerly urge you to invite him to speak at your church, power church ministry, or other venue.

His name is Dr. William Webster, apologist, pastor, author, and founder of Christian Resources, and the website for that ministry is christiantruth .com, and he has written a number of books which include Behold Your King, Prophetic Proofs that Jesus is the Messiah, Holy Scripture, the Ground and Pillar of Our Faith, which is a monumental, groundbreaking three-volume set that he co-authored with our mutual friend David King on the historicity of sola scriptura in the patristic age before the Reformation, proof that the church fathers, many of them, believed in the principle of sola scriptura, that scripture is the sole infallible and inerrant rule of the faith, but before the Reformation ever occurred.

He's also the author of Saving Faith, How Does Rome Define It?, The Christian Following Jesus as Lord, Must Jesus be Lord to be Savior?, The Matthew 16 Controversy, Peter and the Rock, The Old Testament Canon and the Apocrypha, The Church of Rome at the Bar of History, and also the book that we are discussing today, The Gospel of the Reformation, Salvation from the Guilt and Power of Sin, and that's a keyword that we're going to find out why in a little bit, Salvation from the Guilt and Power of Sin.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, but for the first time.

On the all-new Iron Sharpens Iron, Dr. William Webster. Hi Chris, thanks for having me on.

And since you have been awarded your doctorate from Whitfield Theological Seminary, am I the.

Very first person to publicly announce you as Dr. William Webster? Yeah, yeah you are.

Is that anticlimactic that I am the one that was the first? Tell us something before we even go into this very deep and weighty discussion for the next two hours. Give us some information about the church where you pastor in Battleground, Washington, and also about your ministry.

Christian Resources.

Well, I have a church here in Battleground, Washington. Battleground, Oregon, the people, it was out of a commitment and a desire, and now a committed way back then ecumenically for evangelicals to move back into the Roman Catholic Church.

And the problem that I had with that is that it studied the Word of God, that the mission was an absolute essential, it was a necessity, came out of the teaching of that foundation. And as I studied, I thought it would be audiotapes into church history and demonstrating that that's not all negative,.

And then how to live it. Well, I know that this is not the subject of your book, but I did want you to just touch briefly on perhaps a little bit more deep description of your three-volume monumental groundbreaking work that you co-authored with our dear friend David King, Holy Scripture, the Ground and Pillar of Our Faith, which, as I mentioned earlier, shows patristic evidence that the church believed in the doctrine of sola scriptura, even if not by that name, long prior to the Protestant Reformation.

This was not an invention of Martin Luther and the Reformers. And I understand that this three-volume set, one of the reasons why it's such a groundbreaking work is that much of it was translated into English for the first time.

And the thing that I found interesting is that at least for the first several years after it was in print, I don't recall any Roman Catholic apologists having any meaningful response to it. So if you could just touch on that before we go.

Into our main subject today. Well, the book, if you deal with these issues from an historical standpoint, you realize that when one is the issue of authority, the other is the issue of both taking place.

And the foundation to that revival was incredibly bold and brave men standing up to proclaim the truth of the word of God and the ultimate of that word over men, over every institution, that there is no organization, there is no individual who was in that day of the truth.

And these men proclaim with great boldness and the ultimate authority of the word of God. But what's interesting is as you go back into the history of the Church, what you find is that that is precisely the view.

It's a universal view. Sola Scriptura is the universal patristic view of the Church Fathers throughout their history. Development of tradition from a Roman Catholic perspective is really Gnostic in origin in terms of its view of oral tradition as a second vehicle of revelation, with authority equal to the written word of God.

And it is out of that that you find so much error within Roman Catholicism. But what I wanted to do was to look at this from an historical standpoint to show the continuity between what the Reformation teaches, what the Reformation taught, and what those who are true to the history of the Reformation in our own day, why we stand upon the ultimate authority of the word of God, because you go back in a continuity right into the ultimate writing of those scriptures.

That is the foundation to everything. It is the ultimate authority over us, over every institution. It's the foundation for every ministry, revelation of the true and living God to us. And that is how the Church began, and that is how the Church lived for centuries.

Now, of course, Roman Catholics may be listening and chuckling and saying,.

This guy claims to believe in scripture alone as his inherent authority, and yet the title of his book is flawed because the Bible says that the Church is the ground and pillar of our faith. And here he's saying that scripture is.

Now, where did that title come from?

That title comes from a quote from Irenaeus, Church father in the second century.

Yeah, that's why I wanted you to say it.

He basically states that the truth of the gospel is complete. That is oral.

Yeah, and since this is the primary issue that Rome attacks, especially when you're coming from the apologetic realm, obviously your average Catholics don't necessarily do that, but that is the key issue.

Sola Scriptura, probably even more so than Sola Fide in many ways, that they go on the attack with, against, because of the fact that they claim that there's zero evidence from history that Christians believed in Sola Scriptura, or that scripture alone is the sole infallible authority of the Church, and that the Bible clearly doesn't teach it in their minds, and you certainly believe that they are very wrong on both points.

Oh, totally wrong. Thomas Aquinas makes the statement, Sola Canonica Scriptura es Regula Fide, that's Latin for canonical scripture alone, and that's the 13th century.

Wow, wow, that's something. Well, that is not our subject today, but I do want to urge everybody who is listening to order that at christiantruth .com, christiantruth .com. You can also order all of William's books from Cumberland Valley Bible Book Services, which is one of our sponsors.

Their website is cvbbs .com, that's C-V for Cumberland Valley, B-B-S for biblebookservice .com. They already have a number of Bill's books in stock, and they can easily order them, and I'm sure Bill doesn't mind when people order your books from other sources because they still have to order from you to get the books, right?

Right. And of course, C-V-B-B-S is one of our sponsors, as is Solid Ground Christian Books, which is solid-ground-books .com, solid-ground-books .com, and I want to announce that the founder of Solid Ground Christian Books is my guest on Friday.

But I am very enthusiastic about today's subject, which is the Gospel of the Reformation, and perhaps you Roman Catholic listeners who are tired of hearing Iron Sharpens Iron beat up on Roman Catholics, which we don't actually do that, but many have caricatured this program that way, and me that way, which is why it was ironic that I got some complaint about my interview with Robertson Janis.

But anyway, today's subject is the Gospel of the Reformation, Salvation from the Guilt and Power of Sin, and before I even go into the questioning specifically about this book, I just have to read John MacArthur, a quote from the foreword that John MacArthur wrote for the book.

I recommend this book to anyone, Catholic and Protestant alike, who wants to have a clearer understanding of Gospel truth. As you read this work, may your spiritual eyes be opened as never before to the bright light of the Gospel of God's grace.

That's some powerful endorsement by a very prominent figure and highly respected brother in Christ like John MacArthur, and that is just one sentence out of his foreword to the Gospel of the Reformation, Salvation from the Guilt and Power of Sin, and the reason why I told our Roman Catholic friends listening that they need not worry that we're going to necessarily focus on them and their heresies.

This book was largely written, was it not, to correct the departure of the evangelical church from our own history.

And from our Reformed forefathers in the faith. It is. I have, obviously, a great desire. That's my heresy. It's historical truth and biblical truth. But I am equally as concerned for the Gospel that is represented by present-day evangelicalism, and I do believe with all my heart that one of the greatest needs today in the church is for a new Reformation.

Only this time it needs to be to the evangelical church, because I believe in a proclamation not only from the New Testament, but from the teaching.

Of Jesus Christ in the Gospels. And I understand that you've already written a couple of books that may touch on the subject of the Gospel of the Reformation. You have written, The Christian Following Jesus as Lord, and Must Jesus be Lord to be Savior?

How is the Gospel of the Reformation different from those books which touch on some of the same issues?

What is the Christian life? And obviously, the church, you know Christ, and to salvation, lack of understanding of what real salvation means. Justification, and that gets into the whole issue then of and the sufficiency of that work to deal with the loss of Calvary, with Him as Lord.

And what I'm trying to demonstrate is that the teaching of Jesus to men to enter into a radical, transformational, commitment relationship with Him as Lord. And as you get into the exegesis of those passages where He deals with a call to men to become a disciple, that's the ending of what He's calling men to.

You understand why there is such a difference between what He teaches and what is taught in the evangelical church today, because what the evangelical church today has done is redefine what Jesus teaches.

So that becoming a disciple and submitting to Him as Lord is a secondary issue. It is not a primary issue for entering the kingdom. That has not taken place. A man does not know Him, and not a disciple, where your life has been submitted to Him as Lord.

It is as Lord that He saves, and it is that issue you were mentioning a minute ago with the subtitle of the book, from the Gospel of the Reformation. He not only saves from the guilt of sin, and that's worthy to define in terms of the application of salvation and the understanding of what saving faith means in relationship to repentance, and then also demonstrating that the Reformers never taught by simply believing and not have a transformation of heart and life, and be a sanctified man or woman.

And I want to give our email address if you have a question for Dr. William Webster. Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

And I have some good news for you, if you're listening. The first four people who email us a question that is good enough to be read on air, that is actually related to the subject we're speaking about, you'll receive compliments of The Banner of Truth, the Carlisle, Pennsylvania office.

You'll receive a free copy of one of Dr. Webster's other books, The Church of Rome at the Bar of History, which is a book I mentioned earlier in my announcements. It is a powerful book. It is a book that you need to own and read and reread and give away, especially if you have Roman Catholic family, friends, neighbors, and loved ones.

And this is a mind-blowing book that will, I'm sure, even educate not only Roman Catholics, but evangelicals who don't even realize how truly evangelical the Catholic Church with a small c was in its ancient history, and that many of the practices of Rome for the last five, six, seven centuries, many of them are manufactured inventions of men that have no place not only in the Bible, but even in church history.

And so, if you have a question that is relative to our subject and it's good enough to be read on air, you'll receive a free copy of that book, Compliments of Banner of Truth, and please so include your mailing address if you're sending in a question on today's subject, which is The Gospel of the Reformation.

And since the word gospel is the first word in the title, it's the second word if you include the, if you could define the gospel for us, I think that that would be an excellent way to set the pace for the rest of the interview.

Well, the gospel,.

The word gospel means the message. The gospel is, and the issue then has to do where you will be in eternity. That's why this is such an incredibly important issue. There's nothing than getting this right and understanding this, because ultimately the only thing that matters when a man dies, and we're all going to die unless Christ returns and we are then translated by him to be with him in eternity.

The only thing that matters in that day is whether a person knows Christ. In all of life, everything that we're engaged in in this life, and not that there are other things that are not important, but nothing, absolutely nothing can begin to approach this in importance because this is dealing with eternity.

And it's basically the truth of who God is, the law of God that he has given to reveal to us the purpose for our existence, the reality of our state of being. We need reconciliation with him, and that he has provided that way of reconciliation of salvation in his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who is God and man, through his person and his work that he has accomplished to deal with our sin, to deliver us from that sin and from the eternal consequences of that sin, and to bring us in to truly know him.

We become one with the true and living God in Jesus Christ, and our lives are transformed by his grace. The scriptures represent the incredible miracle of salvation as being nothing less than a man being raised from the dead, his blind eyes being opened, and receiving an entirely new life in the Lord Jesus Christ, and having the hope, the absolute certainty of eternity, eternal life, in the age that is to come when Jesus Christ comes to inaugurate that eternal age.

But that gospel is a message from God, it's authoritative, it is given by him in his word, and it needs it because it is the gospel by which men are saved. And if that is distorted in any way, it will result in false assurance given to men that they know God, that they know Christ, that they have salvation when they do not.

And that's why this is so important to clarify and to understand.

We're going to be going to a break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,. Chrisarnsen at gmail .com, c-h-r-i-s-a-r-n-z-e-n at gmail .com.

Please include your address, and by the way, I have to make another disclaimer here as far as the free books. I'm sorry to my overseas listeners and Canadian listeners that this offer is only being made to residents of the United States because of our sponsor who is shipping these books out at no cost to Iron Sharpens Iron.

They cannot accumulate a gigantic overseas shipping bill because we are more and more frequently giving away free books. But we do encourage anybody from overseas to send in a question anyway. We've been enjoying getting questions from you from all over the world, and we look forward to getting those and our Canadian friends as well.

Chrisarnsen at gmail .com. And remember, the first four that we read on the air that are related to our topic will receive a free copy of William Webster's book, The Church of Rome at the Bar of History.

We're going to be right back after these messages with more on our discussion on the Gospel of the Reformation, and so we urge you not to go away. Tell your family,.

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Tired of bop store Christianity? Of doing church in a warehouse with all the trappings of a rock concert? Do you long for a more traditional and reverent style of worship? And how about the preaching?

Perhaps you've begun to think that in-depth biblical exposition has vanished from Long Island. Well, there's good news. Wedding River Baptist Church exists to provide believers with a meaningful and reverent worship experience featuring the systematic exposition of God's Word.

And this loving congregation looks forward to meeting you. Call them at 631 -929 -3512 for service times. 631 -929 -3512. Or check out their website at wrbc .us. That's wrbc .us. Welcome back. This is Chris Arns.

And if you've just tuned us in, my guest today is Dr. William Webster, the founder of Christian Resources. His website is christiantruth .com, christiantruth .com. Dr. Webster is an apologist, pastor, author, and he is our guest today speaking about his book, The Gospel of the Reformation, Salvation from the Guilt and Power of Sin.

And it's that word power that seems to be the most missing aspect of the evangelical gospel in our modern age. And if you have a question, we've already got a couple of questions waiting for us. But if you have a question regarding the topic that we are discussing, email that to chrisarnsen at gmail .com, chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

And before I move on to some of our audience questions, Bill, if you could, one of the things that confuses the issue is that it seems to me that both the Church of Rome and the modern evangelical church, they both blur things involved that are under the umbrella of salvation, if you will.

The Catholic Church blurs things together in their own way involving faith and works, and the evangelicals blur things in their own way in regard to regeneration and salvation and so on, where they don't adequately or rightly separate these terms that are under the umbrella of salvation.

Maybe you could go into that for a little bit. First of all, am I correct in that.

Analysis? You are. As you go through, I don't know how many people have actually read the Council of Trent and that extremely important Roman Catholic document. The council in the 16th century that was the definitive answer to the Reformation.

You will find theologically, as you go through that, as they define what the issues of salvation are and what salvation means, theological distinctives, specifically with respect to justification and sanctification, for example, and regeneration.

In Roman Catholic prejudice, actual teaching of the Word of God with respect to justification, Roman Catholicism has declared anathema. It has condemned us with respect to justification, meaning that we are not justified formally, it says in Canon 10 on justification.

We are not formally justified by the righteousness of Christ himself. That the righteousness whereby we are justified is actually the believer, where the believer cooperates with grace that has been infused within him through the church and its sacraments and priesthood, and that the individual then is given the ability to do works of sanctification, which become the basis of justification.

It is all related to merit, that it is by grace that a man works in order to merit his eternal life. Jesus did not accomplish a full and finished eternal work, a sufficient work at the cross of Calvary.

What he did was he purchased for us the grace of salvation, which is then channeled to the individual through the church and her sacraments, and then it is by that grace that an individual cooperates with that grace in order to save himself, is what it comes down to.

So that it is under the rubric of grace, what you're bringing in the back door is legalism. Salvation ultimately is all about you and your works. Uh, Jesus helps you save yourself. That is a very much a blurring of the distinctive of what justification means in the New Testament and the Old Testament, because justification is not equated to sanctification.

The two, the Catholic theology justification is equal to sanctification. It is not a separate, distinct work accomplished by Jesus Christ that is sufficient and complete righteousness through his fulfilling of the law on our behalf.

That is a work that is done independent of anything we could ever do. There is absolutely nothing that any man can do to justify himself outside of Christ, or even in Christ. We could never justify ourselves before God because God demands perfection, absolute perfection in obedience to the law of God.

And if you don't have absolute perfection, all you can look forward to is the judgment of God. The soul that sins shall die. Therefore, that's why it is salvation is by faith alone, by grace alone, in Christ alone.

He alone has accomplished that work of justification on our behalf. That's why justification is a gift of God. It is not a process. It is not based on our works. It's based on the work of Christ. He alone merits that justification.

But because of that blurring where the term justification is equated with sanctification, and there's a denial, a condemnation even, of the truth of imputed righteousness, that in Christ, we are given as a gift a righteousness that is perfect, that justifies us for all eternity.

Instantly, the moment a man is in union with Christ, he is instantaneously, and for all eternity, justified, involved in that at all. There are no works, because obviously, as we'll talk about here in a little bit, sanctification is the fruit of that relationship with Christ.

You cannot be justified and not be sanctified, because the same Christ who justifies also sanctifies. And if I'm not sanctified, I've never known him. I'm not justified. So these truths go together, but they need to be distinguished, because they are separate works of the work of salvation accomplished by Jesus Christ.

But that work of justification is not equated to sanctification. They are two separate works. The evangelical church has blurred the true meaning of the gospel as well in a different way. Rome, the Roman Catholic Church, basically is legalistic in its approach.

On the other side, the other extreme, you have the evangelical church, where you have the problem of antinomianism. One point that I would make is if you have a legalistic system, such as you have with Rome, wherever you have a promotion of legalism, you will always end up with antinomianism.

Even though you have men who are religious and moral, they are still antinomian, because the only way to be delivered from an antinomian state, which is what we are in sin, is to truly know Christ. And if I have not repudiated legalism, and I am somehow holding on to the hope that I can somehow merit, even by the grace of God, my salvation, and it's not Christ alone, then I cannot know him.

And therefore, I will be an antinomian, even with the legalism. The other side of that is that you have the evangelical church coming out of the Reformation with sola fide, and the understanding of justification is not by works.

But what happens here is a diminishing of the understanding that Christ is not only a deliverer from guilt and the consequences of sin, from an eternal hell, that our justification before God is based upon his person, his work, and the righteousness imputed to us as a gift.

But that he not only will deal with the guilt of sin, but he also deals with the power and the dominion and the state of sin, so that a man in salvation is not only justified in coming to Christ and knowing him, he is also regenerated.

He has a new heart and life, and he is sanctified. He is set apart to God. He has repented of sin, and he has come into a relationship with the living, risen Lord of glory. He transforms that life. That's what Romans 6 is all about.

How should we who have died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized death? If we've been baptized into his death, we've been raised up with him in the likeness of his resurrection, that we would walk in newness of life to be slaves of righteousness.

Knowing Christ, this is the major issue within evangelicalism. So much of what we've done is we have taken his teachings on discipleship, and we have completely distorted what he teaches, so that it's not necessary that an individual in coming to him be a disciple.

Saving faith has nothing to do with that kind of commitment. I would say within evangelicalism today, that is the absolute dominant view that discipleship is a separate work that applies only. He commanded that we go into all the world and make disciples, and to say that making a disciple means you baptize, you know, make a disciple of all nations, baptizing them, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you in the Gospels, and the one who was at the end, that he is Lord, that he is God, and that when he calls men, and just for example in Mark 8, if any man wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.

So that is a call to conversion. Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, so we'll save it, which is in the context of us and follow him. That word lose is the Greek word apollon, from the authentic self is at the center of their life, so turning from that rebellion against God, person does not know Christ, he will perish.

And that's where in the evangelical church, we've got justification, not by works, and that radical was sin, in my rebellion against God, so that I understand unto the Lord Jesus Christ, I am turning from a lawless antinomian, give him my heart, and my life.

And as John Calvin says, if you want to know, possess Christ, and you cannot possess Christ, vocation. And that's what this is all about, it's all about trip with God, and in my relationship to his will and my behavior, to submit my life to Christ as Lord, to be his disciple, and to become his slave.

One of the other ways that many evangelicals.

Today blur things together, when it comes to the whole issue of the umbrella issue of salvation, is they'll equate election with regeneration, or being born again. And the non-Calvinist will say, you know, you're elect by believing, that's what makes you elect, and they therefore are putting the whole issue of being one of the elect of God, in the power of the will of man.

Am I right on.

That? Well, you've got two issues here, you've got, it's very clear from the word of God, you cannot read Romans 9, and come to any other conclusion, than the fact that God is a sovereign God. That man is dead in sin, there is absolutely no hope for any man, apart from the sovereign grace of God, to open his eyes to see, and his ears to hear, and to give him that grace, because faith and repentance are gifts of God.

The power of God, of God, to salvation. And Ephesians talks about man dead in sin, hopeless and helpless, he says, but God being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in sin, raised us up with Christ, and united us with him, raised us up from the dead.

Well, you know, you could speak to Lazarus in the grave, from here to eternity. Lazarus isn't coming out of that grave, Christ calls him forth, and he will then be brought forth, so yes, election is an absolute certainty, but you always have to keep that in balance, because you have the two truths that go together, as you read in Romans 9, election, Romans 10, has to do with human responsibility, so that where God uses his gospel, he is sovereign in saving men, he saves men by the power of that, of his power, mediated through the proclamation of that gospel, but men are responsible to respond in faith and repentance to the call of that gospel, and that's a mystery.

So where I think, I think where some in the reform camp tend to get into an extreme is where they put all the emphasis on election, and they fail to call men appropriately to human responsibility, to turn from sin, and to turn to Christ in faith.

There's not a real preaching of the gospel to men. On the other hand, you have those within the Armenian camp who put all the emphasis on man, and quite honestly, what they do is they dilute the truth of what that response to God is to be, and in both cases, you can end up with men who profess, who have a form of Christianity, but who do not truly know the Lord.

You've got to keep these things in balance. Men who think that they can save themselves by their faith, they are terribly misguided. You come to Christ with empty hands. You do come in faith, but you come in the realization of utter poverty of spirit.

You have absolutely no ability, you have nothing that you can do to save yourself. It is Christ alone who can save. So the focus is on Christ, and the promise of God of what He will do to the man, for the man or the woman who truly comes to Him in repentance and faith.

Yeah, they are putting their faith in their faith, not in the source of salvation who is Jesus.

Christ. That is a problem. It can be a problem. I would say that, I don't know that, you can't broad brush this. I mean, there are Armenians who would put their faith in their faith. You can't say that would never take place, but on the other side of that, who are genuinely in their faith at all, they realize that their faith is not meritorious in any way.

I know them, and they are genuinely converted. I know, obviously, people in the Reported, they know, and you've always got to have the balance. Your faith is in Christ. If you come to Christ in the way that He has said to come to Christ, you will know eternal salvation.

Yeah, and there are even, even though.

It would be a minority, a tiny minority in the church today, but there are even hyper-Calvinists among the primitive Baptists, for instance, and I don't want to broad brush them either, but who equate or blur the distinction between election and regeneration to such the point where they don't believe that all whom God has elected will come to saving faith, and that's just absolutely heresy and is even, perhaps even more dangerous than any Armenian heresy, correct?

Yeah, I mean, the hyper-Calvinist is just blatantly... Yeah, they're really hypo-Calvinist.

In some ways, because they're really teaching less. They don't seem to believe, at least this segment of hyper-Calvinists, because there are differences between some of them, but they are denying the perseverance of the saints, or even the effectual call in their lack of completing.

The story about what God will certainly do to all He elects. Yeah, but just to remember, I mean, there's a mystery in all of this. We are told what to preach to men, and what we preach to men is the gospel.

You hold Christ teaching up before men, the New Testament teaching before men of what it means to know the Lord Jesus Christ and to call men into that relationship with Him. God will use His Word. As you preach the Word of God, as you teach the Word of God, your confidence, if you truly understand the Word of God, is not in men to respond.

Your confidence... God told Ezekiel that valley of vision, the valley of dry bones, and the question he asked him, can these bones live? Well, from a human perspective, no. I mean, they're dead. They're bones.

And he's just preaching the living God and the love and the life relationship with and that is our hope. We have to go to a break right now, and we will get to all of you who.

Have been patiently waiting, who have sent in emails with questions. I believe that we have room for at least one more winner. If you want to send in an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com, and please include your address so we can ship you out a free copy of The Gospel of the Reformation, Salvation from the Guilt and Power of Sin.