July 18, 2016 Show with Ron Elkin on “Jewish Evangelism at the Democratic National Convention in PA”

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Good afternoon Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and the rest of humanity who

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all happy Monday on this

18th day of July 2016.

I am really off timing today and I'm so happy

to have back on the program a man that we have interviewed before on Iron Sharpens Iron who

has a very valuable ministry, Ron Elkin, who is with AMI

ministry and this is a ministry dedicated to Jewish evangelism,

but obviously they bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to all men and women and children no matter

what their race, creed, color, ethnicity, etc.

Well, not necessarily whatever their creed is, but if they're Bible -believing Christians,

they will work alongside them to present the gospel, but

those who are lost no matter what they may be, Jew or Gentile, they

reach out to those folks as they should, but the primary focus of AMI ministry is

evangelism of the Jewish people and they are going to be involved in a Jewish

evangelism effort at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,

which is coming up very shortly.

And without further ado, let me welcome you back to.

Iron Sharpens Iron

Radio, Ron

Elkin.

Yes, in fact, some of our listeners may have been expecting.

Terry Burlingame to be back on the program today as he was originally scheduled, but Terry has

laryngitis, so he had to postpone his interview and Ron was kind enough with very

little notice to jump in that slot and it's very providential because the

Democratic National Convention is going to be just in a short number of days,

July 25th through the 28th, and I

urge all of you, if you can't actually be there collaborating with Ron Elkin,

that you at the very least pray for that effort there, which is a very important one.

Before we even go into that specific endeavor of yours, Ron, we do this every

time we have you or any of our guests on the program, although they may have repeated

their background information many times in the past and explained their ministries, there are new

listeners every single day, it seems, on Iron Sharpens Iron because of the emails I get

from places and people I have never heard from before, especially now that we have a

full page ad in World Magazine, it seems to have attracted a lot of new listeners, but

tell us something about yourself, obviously an abbreviated version of your conversion to

Christ and your, not only that, but obviously your AMI

ministry that brings the gospel primarily to the Jewish people.

Point.

Big

time

in the

Jewish

community

for

one

of

their

boys, been

a very

thorough

kind

of

problem,

welfare,

and

towards

that,

and

people

have

witnessed

him

as

a

businessman.

Oh

yeah.

Third,

it's

the

fight

by

educating.

Amen.

Well, I assume, since you are regularly evangelizing the

Jewish individuals in the community who do not yet know Christ, I assume there is

also some of that education in

regard to the reverse situation where you have Jewish people who may have

preconceived, slanderous,.

Caricatured notions of who Christians are.

Absolutely.

I mean, in

fact, not only just Christians,

the Goyim

in general, right?

The Gentiles.

Oh, absolutely.

Obviously he made a

difference

in

Israel.

Amen.

One

thing

that

I

don't recall

you

saying

when you

were

giving

your testimony, were you from an

Orthodox

Jewish

background?

I think

Reverend Buzz

does

that

every.

Sunday.

I'm only kidding.

And the other thing, I don't know if I ever asked you, and if I did, I don't remember your answer to it.

What does Ami mean?

A -M -M -I.

That's A, M as in Michael,.

M as in Michael, I.

Yeah, an idea of what the church in

center city, Philadelphia, which is

me, we take her from

us.

And I just want to

remind our listeners, I'm

going to

try to remember to.

Announce it several times throughout the broadcast, but in the event that I forget, I will

do it now.

The website for Ami Ministry is amiministry .org, A, M as in Michael, M as in

Michael, I, ministry .org.

And you said that you were a part of picking the name.

So I'm assuming you were either the founder or one of the very founders of this ministry in 10th

Presbyterian.

Church.

Yes, I became

the

instigator.

The

church

had a

very

large

mission.

And you are

a

living.

Testimony and your ministry is a living testimony that Reformed

theology is not synonymous with anti -Semitism as some of our

dispensationalist brethren involved in Messianic ministry, unfortunately, have the

mindset that that is true.

Now, obviously, I am quite convinced that there are theologically

Reformed people who are anti -Semitic.

And I'm pretty convinced also that there are dispensationalists who are anti -Semitic, Armenians who are anti

-Semitic, there are whites and blacks who are anti -Semitic, there are Jews who are anti -Semitic

against other kinds of Jews.

I mean, some of the most anti -Semitic folks that I've actually met are Jewish people who are ultra

-conservative in their political viewpoints.

Well, either that or.

Ultra -liberal.

Right, right.

It's true.

It's really a tragedy.

You can't get into a deal

with people.

Yeah, I was actually very surprised in becoming more acquainted with some

extremely conservative Jewish individuals who are

politically active and so on, actually using the phrase kike and things like that when speaking

about liberal and leftist Jewish individuals.

I was taken aback by that.

I didn't think that kind of thing would necessarily be, uh, obviously I know the heart of

man is exceedingly wicked, but I just didn't think.

That term specifically would come up.

You know, it's funny because I personally have known

about how they use the n -word against each other, you know, or just in describing each other.

You know, he's not only proving that we're not anti -Semitic, he's also proving that we're not.

Anti -evangelism.

Right, that's right.

That's two birds with one stone.

Well,

we know

that

mostly Jewish...

By

the

way, it

might

surprise

some

of our

listeners

to.

Discover in regard to theologically reformed

ministries reaching out with the gospel to the Jewish community.

It may surprise some of our listeners that Chosen People Ministries began as a

Presbyterian outreach in New York City to the Jews, and

our friend Mitch Glaser, who's currently the president there, is not a covenant theologian.

He's a dispensationalist, but he is a thoroughgoing five -point Calvinist.

That we don't...

Yeah, because

you say

something.

...be thankful, and yet, you know, it's sad

that many people will just never see this.

No, I don't understand why.

There's nothing that he does that...

But as God, who gives the increase, you just plant and water.

The number of people who come to Christ is entirely up to God, as you yourself being

a theologically reformed Christian would readily understand.

Well, let me ask you this.

Do you find a lot of the rejection by Jewish people...

Well, my experience has been with...

I haven't, you know, really encountered too many, but the ones I have, most of their rejection wasn't

so much due to their being Jewish as it was they just didn't want to leave their sin.

You know, they were your typical sinner, and their Jewishness was sometimes just an excuse to say, I

can't accept Christ because I'm Jew.

You know, in other words, shut up, I want to sin, you know?

So I think

absolutely...

Yeah, I

would

like

you to,

in fact,.

When we return from the break, I'd like you to go through those, at least some of those, and because we have to go to

break right now, and if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at

gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

We've already got at least three or four people waiting to have their questions asked from different parts of the country,

and if you prefer to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of this topic,

perhaps you're Jewish, or you're married to somebody who's Jewish, and you just don't want to identify yourself

in regard to this question that you have, you may feel free to do so, but if

you are open about identifying yourself, please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your

country of residence if you live outside of the good old USA.

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

Don't go away, we'll be right back with Ron Elkin and his Jewish evangelism.

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Welcome back, this is Chris Arns, and if you just tuned us in, for the full two hours today,

we have Ron Elkin as our guest, one of the founders of AMI Ministry, which

is a theologically reformed evangelical outreach to the Jewish community, which was

originally born out of the 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, where the late James

Montgomery Boyce was the beloved pastor for many years, and Donald

Gray Barnhouse before him, but this ministry continues to live on and

evangelize the Jewish people, and they are actually going to be involved in some evangelistic outreach to

the Jewish people, but I'm sure others as well, at the 2016

Democratic National Convention, and we're going to be getting into more details about that.

That convention is the 25th through the 28th of July, so I'd appreciate

all of you praying for Ron Elkin and his efforts there for the cause of Christ and his

gospel, and our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

Before the break, you are going to go into some legitimate reasons

for apprehension or resistance by Jewish people

when they are confronted with the gospel, but before we even have you do that, I wanted to have you clarify a couple of

things.

I said something at the very beginning of the program that I'm sure may have had some

of my more dispensational

Christian friends involved in Messianic ministry, or Jewish believers involved in that, who

they may have jolted in their seats when I used the word convert.

I know that there are some people in the Messianic movement who

say that that is a very serious error of mine, because I basically use that term for all

men, all men, women, and children who are sinners who come to Christ, and when I was

using it in reference to you, I did not mean that you ceased to be Jewish.

You are ethnically a Jewish person until you die, and in

fact, I think that Jesus Christ, the God -man ruling and reigning in heaven as

our intercessor, is Jewish, in that regard, and if you could

let me know your opinions on.

That.

Perhaps you disagree with me.

Perhaps you also think...

Oh, I noticed it.

I've been

talking

to

a lot

of Christian people.

So, in

your

opinion,

it's an

unwise,

perhaps,

word

to.

Unnecessarily use, but technically, though, isn't it really, if you're referring specifically to

somebody's heart, a man having a heart of

stone that is removed by God's sovereign grace and.

Replaced with a heart of flesh...

I would say it was circumcised.

Amen.

So, it's worth thinking about.

What does your shirt exactly say?

Well,

our

shirt actually

says, we

stand

out,

like, we're gathering together.

There's a couple

different

ministries

helping

us, coming up

from

New York

City.

Then

we have some

peop -cations.

We had to fill out a form called a Shem

Permit.

We'd be parading, and I helped them understand that we're not

demonstrating against anything.

We're actually going

to be...

By the way, Ron, I was going to dedicate the whole last hour to this event that you're having.

Oh, sorry.

But, you know, I figured I'd let you have your way, because, you know, the Jews always have to have their way.

Well, now...

Just kidding there, Ron.

Of course, you know that.

That's just the way I was doing it.

Now, when you've got all these groups coming together to work with you, are you all going to be wearing those same t -shirts?

Yes.

So it's going to be a rather large group of you, then?

Obviously, it'll be a visual united front.

That's what's happening.

And you mentioned a bunch of different organizations, because that's one of the questions I was going to ask you, is if you team with other groups.

Yeah, sure.

Now, why do you think it is, since we are talking about your work there at the convention,

why do you think it is that Jews seem to be gravitated so heavily

toward the Democratic Party when they, number one, are

less likely to be supportive of the nation of Israel politically, and they are

also known for being vehemently opposed

to the uh, the basic moral principles that

Jews and Christians hold in common?

And of course, I don't mean to broad brush, there are exceptions, but I'm talking about the very platform of the

Democratic National Convention, is one of pro -death, pro -abortion,

you know, the pro -homosexual marriage issue, and you could go on and on and on.

Well, a lot of that, you think about Joe Lieberman,

you know, the Jewish senator.

Yes, yes.

Joe Lieberman, though, I must say that I was very disturbed years ago,

when he said that he was in favor of even late -term abortion, even though he was

personally bothered by it.

He didn't want to prevent the woman from legally doing it, which actually, in my opinion, makes it worse, because you're

recognizing there's something evil and wrong about it, and still wanting women to continue to have the

freedom to do it.

But anyway, I digress.

No, you're

absolutely

right.

At least he was when he was running for vice president.

Oh, there you go.

Well, the bottom line is that the reason that many Jewish people...

Well, you know, I was actually thinking, it seems like I'm the only one that thinks this is a good idea,

but I was thinking of, from now on, when I am involved in a discussion

with liberals on these issues, like abortion and homosexuality

and other things, when they start to get in my face with

frustration, anger, hostility, and radically oppose what I'm saying, I have been

thinking of starting to say in response, you know, how anti -Semitic of you, just to stop them in their tracks.

And as they look at me with baffled looks on their face and they say, wait a minute, you're not Jewish?

What are you talking about?

I could bring up the fact that the very things that they are in favor of are a violation of the laws

that the Jews have cherished as a part of their holy scriptures for centuries.

And if you think that they're idiotic, moronic, or evil, that would mean that you're anti -Semitic, in my opinion.

And I think that that might be a better strategy, because in this day and age, no one cares if you're

anti -Christian.

That's a good idea.

All right, so there's two of us now.

I think the thing is trying to talk to people.

Right, right.

Keep

on

bringing

people

protection.

We pray for spirit.

Wow.

Well, that brings up another question, though.

Now, since Chris has wanted to devote most of the second hour to the—.

Well, now it's basically going to be a mixture of everything.

Before we get too much into the convention and what's coming up there, though, in the second hour, I want to know more about—.

You've answered this somewhat already, but your daily practices, okay, your ministry, I mean, you

don't just open your door and hope Jews are going to come walking through the door to learn about Christ.

You said you're out on the streets.

Can you give us an idea?

You said that it seems like God is providentially bringing Jews your way

quite a bit, but what is your daily routine like?

What do you do as a ministry to reach the Jews?

How do you find them?

How do they find you?

I need

to

remind

people of Jewish

context

through card

and so on.

A neighbor,

maybe that

would open a door for them to be—.

That's interesting.

Obviously, you would have to be very careful not to give the false impression that you believe all roads lead to

God or something of that effect.

Yeah, yeah.

No, no.

And in fact, that is a good segue because I'd like to ask

Jeremy from Glendale, Texas's

question—Texas's—Jeremy from Glendale, Texas has a question that I'm going to ask before we go to the break,

and perhaps you can answer it or begin to answer it when we return because it may be

requiring a fairly in -depth answer.

And I think it's very relevant to our discussion today, even though it's not specifically on

Jewish evangelism or the Jews.

I think it's very relevant to our discussion.

Jeremy in Glendale, Texas asks, I was brought into this world for a purpose,

a purpose that is unknown to me.

I do know because of my free will, however, that I am capable to make choices.

I also know that if I believe in God and live my life as He would want me to,

I will eventually be rewarded by sharing with Him in life

everlasting.

Many, many religions and belief systems subscribe to these or similar tenets.

In that regard, therefore, I assume that I was brought into this world for the purpose of giving

glory to God.

Won't all religions provide the form for me to glorify God, thereby

leading me to the true God and life everlasting?

And if not, why not?

Very good question, Jeremy in Glendale, Texas.

And we are going to answer that to the best of our abilities, or at least our guest,

Ron Elkin will, when we return from this break.

If anybody else would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com.

And we already have several people waiting.

So thank you for your patience, and we'll get to you as soon as we can when we return from the break.

And after, Ron addresses Jeremy in Glendale, Texas's question.

Don't go away.

We're going to be right back after these messages.

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Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen.

Let me just remind you that if you ever are hearing Iron Sharpens Iron and you miss

the website or contact information for a sponsor, just go to the website that you are

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But Ron, are you with us?

I sure am.

Okay, I guess that there's another call coming in, and the last time that happened it was my guest who got disconnected and I

didn't know it.

But I'm glad that you're still with us.

We are, for those of you who just tuned us in, we are interviewing today for the full two

hours Ron Elkin, founder of AMI Ministry, and their website is

amizonmichael .com.

And Ron and AMI Ministry are going to be at the 2016 Democratic

National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 25th through the 28th,

evangelizing all who are willing to listen to them about the gospel of Jesus Christ, but they have

a specific intention to evangelize the Jewish individuals there, since the

majority of Jewish individuals happen to be in the Democratic Party

in the United States.

So we would love for you to pray for them and support them in any way you can.

And before the break, Ron, as you know, Jeremy in Glendale, Texas,

basically is asking a couple of things.

First of all, he is convinced that he will be with God for eternity

because of the fact, as he puts it, that I know that if

I believe in God and live my life as He would want me to, I will eventually be

rewarded by sharing with Him in life everlasting.

Now, I believe that that does have an element of a very strong truth in

it, but the issue is what does that mean?

Because living your life the way God would want you to has a different

understanding depending upon who you're talking to, because there are a lot of people who have a wrong understanding

about what God wants them to do, and they have a wrong understanding or an ignorance of who God is

and what the gospel is and so on.

So basically he is asking, is that true?

Or he's assuming that that's true.

And he's asking, don't all religions provide the form for him to glorify God thereby

leading him to the true God and life everlasting?

Fundamental problem

with

this,

right?

Yes.

Okay.

What is God and

beyond our ability

through prayer and through looking,

what is God's standards?

And is He actually living up to

it?

And we find that, and

that's where

we need to have something else

against many different religious ideas

in the

world,

despite

Kenneth's

response

to the long

chapter on

Holy God.

And as

you

look

at

these

other religions, and

that's why

I recommend

Kenneth's

career so

dear God, Jesus speaks of himself or from...

Yes.

And obviously, Jeremy,

all religions could not provide the form for him to glorify God or for you to glorify God,

because one basic fact is that many of these religions are in

180 degree direct polar opposite to one another in regard

to what they believe.

And for instance, I mean, you even have the Christian Identity Movement,

which is a neo -Nazi.

Religion.

Would you believe, Jeremy, that you can find the way to God through that religion?

I mean, there are all kinds of religions.

There's the Nation of Islam, which is basically the black counterpart of what I just

said.

And there are black Israelites who believe that white people cannot go to heaven.

There are all kinds of religions that have a false hope for

men.

But even in the true religion, the one true religion of Jesus

Christ, he has made it clear that there's nothing that men can do

to earn their way to heaven.

That we are all sinners, and the only thing that could pay the price for that sin is

his atoning death, his redemptive work on the cross, where he took upon

the sins of his people upon himself, and Jesus Christ had the wrath of

his own father poured on him, so that those very sinners for whom he died would not

have to receive that wrath.

So, obviously, nothing that you could do, being a good

neighbor to your neighbors, being a good parent to your children, being a good spouse to

your wife, giving to the poor, none of these things

are good enough.

They're all good things, but they're not good enough to earn heaven.

And, Ron, does not Jesus Christ make it very specifically clear in the Scriptures that

no man comes to the Father but through him?

R.

Yes, that they want to be...

J.

Yeah, and the fact of the matter is, when we are looking at our own

deeds, when we are trying to salve our

consciences, thinking that we are going to be entering into eternity with God when

we depart from this earth, and we're trying to measure our good deeds against our

bad, we are usually comparing ourselves to other people who are

worse as far as overtly involved in sinful activity than we are.

We can compare ourselves with people who are in prison.

We can compare ourselves to people that are just mean and nasty and stingy people.

Or even in prison, people compare themselves to each other.

They say, well, at least I didn't murder anybody.

I'm here for armed robbery, but at least I didn't kill anybody.

And then the murderer can say, yeah, well, at least I didn't kill my own wife and children.

And then the person who did that can say, yeah, I might have killed my own wife and children, but

at least I didn't kill the people in an entire apartment building by setting it on fire.

I mean, you could just go on and on and on with that kind of comparison.

And in the long run, nothing that you do

is good enough to please God to enable you

to enter heaven by virtue of those deeds.

That's why, isn't it true, Ron, that when Jesus himself was giving the story of the

Pharisee in the temple praying, and he was bragging about all those things, those wonderful

things that he did do, and all those nasty, sinful things that he did not do,

and when the tax collector was in the temple at the same time praying, he

merely beat his breast and said, Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.

And Jesus said it was that tax collector who went home justified, that he was the one who

was saved, not the man who had some outwardly righteous life.

Am I right, Ron?

Yes,

and

I would

encourage you to

contemplate.

So thank God that Jesus has done him.

In fact, isn't the book of Galatians a very primary source to look

to for proof that not all religions lead men to heaven?

Because here you have the Apostle Paul rebuking a church in Galatia that he

planted because they had been seduced by a group of Christians, or at least they were

professing Christians, known as the Judaizers.

And from what we know in the Scriptures, the Judaizers believed in everything that Paul believed except

the Judaizers said that you had to be circumcised.

And because of that one thing, Paul said that they were accursed.

He said that their gospel was a false gospel and no gospel at all.

And he didn't say, well, they were almost right, so that's good enough.

He condemned them as false teachers.

Am I right?

Yeah.

I would like to address the part of the question where he said that he has a free will.

And Jeremy, yes, we have a free will as far as

we can decide, you know, in so many decisions throughout the day, whether I want to wear the blue shirt or the red

shirt, except for Chris, who's colorblind.

But our will is part of our nature.

And as fallen people, as people who are born in sin,

by the damage that we inherit from our ultimate father, Adam, our will is also

subject to that fallenness.

And God has given certain commands to us.

And the apostle Paul very clearly in the book of Acts says that God has commanded all men

to repent.

And if our free will leads us to do anything but other than repent and believe the

gospel, which is the requirements that God puts on us, then it's

leading us the wrong direction.

If by any chance, well, the way I put it is this.

I couldn't have even wanted to please God by repenting and believe in the gospel if God had not first

regenerated my heart to do so.

If I were to follow my free will, the only thing I would choose is whether I wanted to be an adulterer, a murderer, or a thief.

But to want to do what God commands and repent of my sin and believe in

the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, that's something that has to be given to me.

That's what my will needs to bring me to, what God's real commands are.

Right.

And a part of his question is, I also know that if I believe in God

and live my life as he would want me to, well, we as Christians believe he wants you to believe upon his

son, Jesus Christ as your only hope of salvation and not trust in anything that you do

for eternal life, but only upon his sacrifice.

But you know, there's a part of his statement there that is true.

If he were to lead his life like God wanted him to, he would be saved, but the fact is he hasn't.

Nobody has.

Right, right.

So we...

And living life in obedience, although never perfectly, is only a,

what's the word I'm looking for?

It's a fruit.

It's an evidence of the person saved.

It's not the cause.

It's not the causing factor of somebody being saved.

The only righteousness we can have before God is a foreign righteousness that's imputed to us.

And that's what happens in conversion, is the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us, and that's what God sees

as the righteousness of Christ.

Well, by the way, Jeremy, you are going to be receiving, since you're a first -time

questioner today, you are going to receive a free New American Standard

Bible complements of the publishers of the NASB.

So we need your full mailing address to ship that out to you, ASAP, and we hope that you

give us your address and that you read that Bible.

It's a very beautiful version of the NASB with an embossed

cross on the leather text cover.

It really, really...

It's a beautiful Bible.

Yeah, it is.

And we hope that you are blessed by that.

Do you have anything further to say to Jeremy before we go on to a couple of other listeners?

Ron?

Okay, and we have another listener in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Ken,

and he says, I knew Joe Finkelstein as a Messianic Jew in

West Philadelphia in the early 70s when I was on the faculty at Dickinson.

Oh, I guess he means Dickinson College, which is a three -minute walk from where I'm sitting.

Does Ron know him, and is he still alive in ministry?

I'm sorry, is he still active in ministry?

I'm laughing.

Wow,

great.

Ken, we need your full mailing address because since you are a first -time questioner, I don't know if you're a

first -time listener, but since you are a first -time questioner, first time

you've ever sent in a question, we ask of you to give us your full mailing address because you've also

won a free New American Standard Bible.

So we look forward to getting that from you and shipping that Bible out to you, Ken.

We have Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York, who has become

a regular listener to Iron Sharpens Iron, and we always appreciate Tyler's questions.

He asks, is one of the classical passages to evangelizing the Jewish people Isaiah

53, or commonly known as the Suffering Servant?

He was born.

You know, it's interesting that something that Jeremy asked,

Jeremy in Glendale, Texas, asked that popped this question into

my mind.

It's interesting that among the Jewish people, it seems to

be, unless, of course, you are in a really hardcore Orthodox or Hasidic

community, it seems to me that you could be almost anything except a

Christian, and your family, friends, and loved ones will be fine

with that.

And let me give you an example.

We have some famous Jewish actors and people in

Hollywood that dabble in Buddhism and all kinds of meditative

religious practices that are not Jewish, and there doesn't seem to be any outcry about that.

There are Jewish people who are atheists, where they're not outcasts because of that.

I know a friend of mine, a Jewish believer now living in Florida,

who before he became a Christian was a male stripper.

And he had no backlash from his Jewish family

for this, and his Jewish family was nominal, did not keep a kosher home, did not

regularly go to synagogue, and yet when he became a Christian, they set Shiva for him,

wrote him off as dead, an enemy of theirs, and it made it worse when he

married a Gentile girl.

And this Jewish man's mother physically attacked his wife

at a funeral when they showed up there for a member of the family's funeral

who had died.

And so it's really amazing that—what is it about Christianity,

other than the obvious that it's the one true faith in the planet?

But what is it that—.

Leave me back, yes.

Excuse me?

Yes,

this

will

lead

me back

to

when

we were

talking

about

some

of

the

conventions

of previous pre

-Christianity.

It began to

become

very

intolerant

and

began to

insist

that if

a Jewish

person's

synagogue

is a house of

Christ, and then

there

was—.

And of course you have the erroneous

lie that the—that's a redundancy there, the erroneous lie—the common

spread lie that the Nazis were in reality Christian or

actually believing in the theology of Christianity when they were not.

There were nominal Lutherans and Catholics in the Nazi party,

but these men, especially in the hierarchy, were not Christian by any stretch of the imagination.

In fact, Hitler hated Christianity and was into the occult, and their

religion was more resembling of Norse theology, of Norse pagan

idolatry, am I right?

Nazis in the hierarchy.

Uh -huh.

And we have to go to our final break right now.

This is your last opportunity to write to us, and it is

chrisarnson at gmail .com is the email address.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Don't go away.

We're going to be right back with Ron Elkin.

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Welcome back.

This is Chris Sarnes, and if you just tuned us in for the last 90 minutes, we have been interviewing Ron Elkin

of AMI Ministries.

Ministry, singular.

They choose that phrasing of the ministry.

And we are discussing not only Jewish evangelism in general, but

also the fact that Ron and AMI Ministries is going to be present, God willing, at

the 2016 Democratic National Convention to evangelize primarily the

Jews who are there, but obviously they will evangelize anyone willing to listen to them

at this convention, which is being held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 25th through the

28th.

So please pray for Ron and his team there.

Before I return to our discussion, one of our sponsors has a special event coming up.

Fellowship Conference New England is going to be having their next conference in

Reverend Buzz Taylor's old stomping grounds, Portland, Maine.

That's August 4th through the 6th.

And my friend, Pastor Mac Tomlinson of Providence Chapel in Denton,

Texas, is one of the speakers.

Mac Tomlinson is a dear brother in Christ, and I am so delighted that he, in his

sovereignty, has guided our paths to cross, Mac's and mine, and he has

become a friend and one of my favorite guests to be interviewed here on Iron Sharpens Iron.

Mac is not only one of the orchestrators of this conference, but he is one of the speakers,

and those other speakers include Jesse Barrington, Charles Leiter, and Michael

Dorham.

And there's going to be fellowship and great preaching and great food and all kinds of things there, and

we hope that you, especially if you live in Maine or nearby Maine, and I know that we do have listeners

in and close to Maine, I hope that especially you folks take advantage of this conference

and attend, but even if you don't live anywhere near there but have the means by which to

purchase airfare there or hop in an Amtrak or however else you want to get there, we hope that you

go to this conference, and for more details, go to fellowshipconferencenewengland .com,

fellowshipconferencenewengland .com.

And once again, if you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Ron Elkin, our email address is

chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com, and we look

forward to hearing from you with your own questions for Ron.

And when you were talking about Chrysostom before, John Chrysostom,

obviously there are heroes of the faith that many of us have,

that when we discover more about their lives and things that they said and wrote,

we realize that they are merely sinners saved by grace like we are, even though if they may be

gifted men in many ways and may have been very heroic men, even some of them

who gave their very lives for their faith or at the

very least risked their lives for their faith, like Martin Luther, and then we discover,

wait a minute, he believed that, he said that, and are we to

just totally disregard and denounce and renounce any affiliation

and association or affection or appreciation for these men

like Luther and others who have said vehemently anti -Semitic things,

or are we to say these were sinners saved by grace, but what

they did contribute to the church is so valuable I cannot cease

revering them in some sense as a hero of the faith, obviously not to the extent

that our Roman Catholic friends actually worship their heroes of the faith, even though they would vehemently deny that

they're worshiping them, they still are, but that's a question that

I have for any of my Jewish friends who happen to be of the Reformed faith, because obviously we

look to these great.

Heroes for sources of truth

through their

writings and

so on.

Yeah, I

agree

with you,

it's

something

that

they

need to,

it's

not

really

in a loving

way,

I pray

that

some

of you will

not be

disgusted by

who Jesus was

representing, and

it's a way

to kind of...

Yeah, John Hagee I

think.

Was one of the primary people teaching that dual covenant heresy, am I right?

Yeah, it's the same.

I know personally a Jewish man who's a very dear friend of mine actually, I've known

him since 1991 I think, and he has been

very much in admiration of

Christianity and Christians that he knows, it's interesting because he is very actively involved in

very conservative political activity.

The Lord has constantly brought people into his life that were Christians, including very

famous athletes, professional athletes, baseball players especially,

and they have relentlessly evangelized him, and

unfortunately John Hagee was somebody that salved his conscience

and was just another reason why he was able to say to me, yeah, but even though I love

all these Christian friends of mine, I don't really have to become a Christian because John Hagee says that

the Jews kind of get a pass on this, and obviously he would have found another excuse if it wasn't John Hagee,

but this is showing you how dangerous this is, this is not some

subtle difference in theology, this is in essence leading

Jewish people.

To

hell,

isn't it?

Yes, and

I have it

united,

it's the

ultimate.

Reverend

Buzz

has a

question.

Before we, this is sort of a two -parter, the first one's I think kind of quick, but

do you know the reference for the quote that you gave us from John Chrysostom?

Yeah, so I can look it up and check the context.

And while you're looking it up, I'll let our listeners know that they can email me, but do it very quickly because we're

running out of time.

Yeah, that's chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

I'm sorry,.

Go ahead.

We'll have to get back to you on the phone.

Okay, well, I was leading up to this with that question.

The shoe used to be on the other foot.

I heard a, you may be familiar with this, and I, of course, I do not remember the name, it's been years since I heard this, but I heard a

very interesting testimony on, it was actually on focus on the family, I believe, that, about

a Jewish man who was converted to Christ by reading, well, hearing in a Bible study that in the early

church, the problem was the Christian Jews accepting the

Gentile Christians into the church.

That was something that they did not see, that the two bodies would become one, and the two flocks become one,

as the New Testament teaches, and there, a problem, a

very predominant theme in the New Testament was the gospel going to the Gentiles as

well, and it seems like it was a great strain for the early church to accept that fact that, yes,

God is now bringing Gentiles into the fold, just like he did the Jews at first, and

a lot of the persecution of the church, of course, in the first century came from the Jews,.

And so forth.

Yes, it did.

Yes, it did.

Oh, you know, I thought of the...

Okay, all right,

good, thanks.

We have a listener in Lindenhurst, Long Island, CJ,.

Who asks, I understand from some of your previous programs that

some of your guests were very opposed to the Let the Lion Roar movie

because it was an unfair treatment of the

reformers and an exaggeration of their anti -Semitism.

What does your guest today think of that movie,.

If he has ever seen it?

Well, and

I'm glad I haven't.

And

this was,

just to let you

know,.

And others know, this was a movie that apparently was created by evangelical Christians.

Oh, yeah?

Oh, yeah.

This was about basically trying to educate the church

to cease being anti -Semitic and

that they have to depart from the the mindset of a lot of the heroes of the

faith, like Calvin and Martin Luther and Augustine, and some of these

pillars of the Christian faith and the Reformation.

And I'd never saw it either, but I had heard from those who have seen it,

who do acknowledge that these men had, being

sinners, said regrettable things about the Jews and so on, but the

movie itself was really entered into slander and was

very much distorting those things.

You know,

on this

earth,

you know...

And of

course the

reverse,

the reverse

is

definitely

true too.

Yeah, yeah, no, I understand, I understand.

And it's like, I do want to ask

people,

remind them

of times and eating.

If

you don't

mind, I give my

phone number.

Oh, of

course.

And of

course,

the website of

AMI ministry, as I said earlier, is amiministry .org,.

A -M -M -I ministry .org.

We have Harrison in Kennexburg, Pennsylvania, that wants to know,

you've had in the past two different guests that had a knowledgeable

expertise on Martin Luther, and they seem to disagree on whether

his alleged anti -Semitism was truly anti

-Semitism as in those who hate the Jewish people ethnically,

or whether his opposition to the Jews, even if

even if at times coarse and sinful, was toward their religion and

not towards them as people and their ethnicity.

Does your guest have any comment on that?

Well, unfortunately, I

agree.

And didn't he not start out with very high hopes?

He did.

Of the Jewish people coming to Christ?

He did.

He had a great hope.

On

that

issue,

on that

issue.

Of course, you have a full -bodied human being who believes in Jesus.

And we're out of time, Ron, and I know that your website is amiministry .org, amiministry

.org, and I want everybody who always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far

greater Savior than you are a sinner.

We look forward to hearing from you and your questions tomorrow on Iron Trepans, Iron Radio.