January 29, 2018 Show with Ron L. Kohl on “When Your Doctor Says ‘You Have Cancer'”

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.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arns, I'm your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio wishing you all a happy Monday on this 29th day of January 2017 and I heard some bittersweet news today.

A dear old friend, a senior saint who was a crucial friend of mine when I first became a born-again believer in Christ. She and her husband, although decades my senior, really latched on to me and occupied a lot of my free time as a single young man with much fellowship and just laughter and Bible study and all kinds of Christian activities where if I was left to my own state as a young single man, I don't know what I might have been drawn to do if it were not for this couple, Nigel and Barbara Stone.

Well, Nigel had already departed into glory a number of years ago but Barbara Stone, who I don't know for certain how old she was because Nigel and Barbara never would reveal their ages to anybody, but they were certainly or I believe Barbara was certainly in her 90s and she went home to be with the Lord today, I have just learned from my former pastor and this is a bittersweet day because while it's always sad when you hear about the death of a Christian loved one, it is filled with simultaneously joy especially when you know that the person lived a full and rich and godly and God-fearing life and when you are certain where that person is and we know that Barbara Stone is now in eternity with Christ along with her husband Nigel and I ask of you to pray for the surviving Stone family in particular, their son, their only child Jonathan who I believe is in his 40s, perhaps he's even in his 50s by now, but Jonathan and his wife and children and so on and the rest of the Stone family and I just wanted to give that that message for all of you today who might even know Barbara who was a member before relocating to Tennessee, was a member of Calvary Baptist Church in Amityville and in fact was a member of the very first church that I began attending on a weekly basis, I'm not even, I don't even think I was a born-again believer at the time but I was searching, they were members of the Evangelical Church of God in Lindenhurst and then when I wound up getting baptized at Calvary Baptist Church in Amityville, a Reformed Baptist Church on Long Island, they were there when I got there so we both moved there by the providence of God and it was such a joy to know them and be such close friends with Barbara and Nigel Stone.

Cancer Survivor Pastor Ron L. Cole and the Quakertown Conference on Reformed Theology

But today we have a very important guest, in fact I want you right now to call or text or email anyone that you know that either is suffering with cancer or perhaps they themselves have a loved one who is battling this very serious illness because today we have a survivor of cancer on the program, Pastor Ron L. Cole.

He is former youth pastor at Cedar Crest Bible Fellowship Church in Allentown, Pennsylvania, a former camp counselor at Victory Valley Camp in Zionsville, Pennsylvania, former full-time sports editor for a weekly newspaper, editor of the PNR publishing book The Triune God, and chairman of the Quakertown Conference on Reformed Theology and we'll be finding out more about the Quakertown Conference in just a bit.

He's also senior pastor of Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Quakertown, Pennsylvania. Today we are going to be addressing the when your doctor says you have cancer and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Shepherd's Iron Radio, Pastor Ron L. Cole.

Chris, it's good to be with you my friend. And in fact, I found out that my guest had cancer the day after he did. I was at the Quakertown Conference on Reformed Theology in 2016. That's, I believe that was correct, in November of 2016?

That is correct. And the very next day that after you had been diagnosed with cancer, that was the first day of the Quakertown Conference on Reformed Theology, and you just happened to sit down with me for a cup of coffee or a snack or something and you had told me that you had this tumor, but we will get into that in a moment.

First, I want for you to let our listeners know something about Quakertown Conference on Reformed Theology.

We are a partnered event with the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, the ministry that the late Dr. James Montgomery Boy started many years ago to call the evangelical church to reformation. Many of you are probably aware of the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology, the longest continually running reform conference in our country.

I've been an attendee for many, many years, and many years ago I heard someone from the pulpit, it was probably Rick Phillips, say, you know, we have this conference in Philadelphia, but we are open to having it in other places.

And the lightbulb went on, and I thought even though we are just a medium-sized church in Quakertown, Upper Bucks County, Pennsylvania, the lightbulb went on and said, well, why not? And within two years, 2008, we hosted our first...

Here we are over a decade later, and I'm already fully planned for 2018 in terms of speaker and theme, and we're working on.

2019. Praise God, and God willing, I will be there at the 2019 Quakertown Conference on Reformed Theology as well, unless God has plans, I'm unaware of. And now let us hear something about Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Quakertown, Pennsylvania.

A lot of people, when they hear that name, they may think that is just the name of some independent church, but Bible Fellowship Church is actually a denomination, or at least a fellowship of churches, is it not?

It is a denomination, but I run into that problem all the time whenever someone tries to sell me advertisements for the phone book. The Bible Fellowship Church, you're an independent church, no, we're a denomination.

You're something else, no, we're not. There are about 65 Bible Fellowship Churches, most of them are in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, although we have branched out into... Oh, in fact, our church in Mexico is already in the process of planning daughter churches.

So we are a little unique in the sense that we came from a Mennonite background, and we are the only denomination I know of that actually did a bit of a flip-flop from an Arminian position. That was back, oh, going on 50 years ago,.

But that's who we are. And you cannot get more Arminian than the Mennonites.

Yes, that's pretty much... But it's often said that we weren't really good Mennonites. We weren't always as pacifistic as some other Mennonites, and it actually started over 150 years ago, as I understand it.

The Evangelical Mennonite Society, which eventually became the Mennonite Brethren in Christ, and then we set in at one point with the understanding that formal desire. Well, some of them went off to Bible colleges and seminaries, and at that point discovered Reformed Theology.

And we finally decided that we couldn't stay with the Brethren in Christ. They're my brothers, but we just had too many differences, and we...

Yeah, next to the Church of God, Findlay, Ohio, and perhaps the United Methodist Church, I think that the Brethren in Christ are the largest denomination where I am in Carlisle. I mean, there are, I think in this one town alone, there's several Brethren in Christ congregations.

There's a lot of them around here, that's for sure.

But there are more Bible Fellowship churches than people might think, especially if you're trying to call and sell me an ad on the phone book.

And I was honored to be in attendance at a pastor's fellowship that the Grace Bible Fellowship, or should I say the Bible Fellowship denomination, had in the Poconos not long ago with Phil Johnson. I was invited to be present there, and it was a real joy to be there, and I really enjoyed myself thoroughly at that conference and look forward to future opportunities.

What I usually do when I have a first-time guest is I have them give an abbreviated version of their testimony of salvation. I'd like to get an idea of what kind of religious atmosphere you were raised in, if any, and what providential circumstances our Lord used to draw you to Himself and then finally save you, and then of course how you realized you had the call upon your life to become a minister.

Providence is the word that always comes to mind because the circumstances surrounding my salvation were absolutely amazing. It was the death of my brother that brought first me and then the other members of my family to saving faith in Christ.

My parents were raised Lutheran, I guess you would say, but living in Center City, Allentown, someone, if I'm tracing it back, someone placed a door hanger on my parents' door in Center City for Vacation Bible School at Bethel Bible Fellowship Church in Center City, Allentown, and my brother David went off to VBS and immediately fell in love with the church, heard the gospel, and responded to it, even as a small child.

As he got close to his eighth birthday, he became sick. By the time they figured out that he had the Lutheran pastor that my parents were familiar with, he did nothing to minister. He reached out to them, loved them, and you can see where God moved all the way through.

And the wonderful thing is that I've had a long-time friendship with the pastor of my childhood, I just remember him.

Praise God. And of course, that does not mean to say that there aren't many Lutheran pastors that would not have reached out with you with the authority of Christ.

That's right. I don't want to cast aspersions on a denomination. It was just in this one instance what my parents needed as they moved through the mourning process was exactly what they received.

Amen. In fact, I can openly say that during a dark period in my life when I was a backslidden Christian and had returned to the sin of drunkenness that I had abandoned for 18 years, a local Missouri Synod Lutheran pastor was really a primary source of encouragement and comfort to me when I was awaiting entrance into a Christian rehab ministry in North Carolina.

So my shout-out to Pastor David Anglin of St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Amityville, Long Island, just so we know that there are some very Christ-like Lutheran ministers out there. And so when did you realize, you know, I really believe God wants me to be a pastor?

Some people just need a little nudge, and they have a sense of God's calling. I'm more of a two-by-four kind of guy. I went to Moravian College as a journalism major, had a full understanding that God had given me a talent to write, but was always thinking it from a worldly perspective.

If I had followed through on my own plans, I might be heading to Minneapolis right now to cover the Philadelphia Eagles in the Super Bowl. I was always a sports guy, and I had the privilege, it seems like a past lifetime, to get down and cover a few Eagles games, 76ers games, Phillies games, but I was a journalism major.

And it was interesting that between my freshman and sophomore years, I had the director of Victory Valley Camp come to me and say, you know, we need a counselor. And my first question, man of the worldly mind, how much does it pay?

He said $300. And I thought $300 a week is a very nice job. It was $300 for the whole summer. I think I got 23 cents an hour. But it was there that I learned that God had gifted me, well, essentially to preach because they kept giving me campfire talks, and people kept responding to them, and this shy kid came out of his shell and never went back in.

So it was at that point that I began to think there's something there. And I immediately got involved in junior high Sunday school teaching and taught for a quarter century. But all the while through, I got my degree in journalism from Ravion and got involved in the newspaper.

Even up until a year and a half or two ago, I simply started grabbing my heart. And even while going down and covering at age 39, I left newspaper. Thirty-nine-year-old youth pastor of the industry.

But I loved every bit of it. And when I got engaged, that's when churches started saying, we're interested in considering you as a senior pastor. So my wife and I, my dear wife Kendra and I, we got married in September 2003.

And in June 1st, 2004, we came to Quakertown as the senior pastor. Great. I love our mission.

I praise God. Now, why did you choose a Moravian college? There's only two things I know about the Moravians. Number one, Andy Griffith went to seminary at a Moravian seminary, and I can't remember if he was fully ordained or not.

But also the Moravians were the ones who led John Wesley.

To a saving knowledge of Christ. I know that. Your memory is good, but there were no spiritual considerations to it at all. Growing up in Allentown, Moravian College was in Bethlehem. So it was in some ways because I laughingly refer to myself as a ghetto youth.

We were a fairly low middle class, and I'm the first person in my family ever to go to college. And I didn't have my driver's license, but my dad worked two blocks away from the campus so he could drive me to school every day.

So those are the not very exciting parameters to my ending up a Moravian.

Okay, great. Well, we are going to be discussing, as I already said, when your doctor says you have cancer. And in fact, I'd like to give our listeners our email address if you have a question of your own.

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

Please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter. I can obviously understand a theme like this would readily lend itself to people perhaps having personal private questions. So feel free, and we will not identify you if you would rather not call attention to your true identity.

But other than that, please give us your first name, at least your city and state, and your country of residence. Well, as I said in introducing you in November of 2016, when I had met you at the Quakertown Conference on Reform Theology, you had told me that you had discovered, I believe it was like a golf ball-sized tumor or growth somewhere in your armpit perhaps?

No, in my throat. In your throat, that's right. So tell us about that experience starting from the beginning of your symptoms and what your emotions were when you were not only discovering something was wrong that compelled you to see a doctor, but also waiting for his diagnosis and so on.

Because all I could tell you is the day that you told me that you were diagnosed with cancer, you were very calm, you didn't seem to be troubled by it, but of course people don't necessarily wear their emotions on their sleeve.

Some do, but many don't. So if.

You could tell us about that. Maybe perhaps because I was serving, I do, one of the freshest memories I have of that particular year was trying to make announcements and introduce speakers. A large B-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma growing in my throat that had about two-thirds of my vocal cords blocked.

And I'm trying to make it now myself being so frustrated that I could hardly speak. I am a high tenor, Chris. I was a low bass being to get the words out. If anyone were to go on sermons I preached before going into the hospital and being treated for it, I can pull it out and listen to it and I think it was someone else.

It just was not me. It did not sound like me. It was not who I am. So here I was wrestling with all the emotions, but at the same time knowing that I was receiving a theology conference with speakers coming from all over the country and trying to make sure that everyone's needs were met.

But that was a trying time in my life, for I had only found out, I remember meeting with an ear, nose, and throat specialist and it was Halloween day, you know, a day of dark things. And he got the results of the biopsy, but I've been doing medicine for over 20 years and that sure looks like cancer.

Wow. So how did that hit you? What was your emotional response to that? I know there's a sense in some circles that my wife and I wept for about three days, prayed to die, and yet I look at my life and I have so many things that I know the hope of glory, Christ in you, the hope of glory, and yet the idea that I wouldn't be able to do some of the things that, and I'm not just talking big goals, but just I love my life.

I love being a pastor, I love my flock, and the idea that that was threatened was hard to take, and I just don't think of myself as a courageous person, and yet God, he supplies strength. His grace really learned that, and there's a big difference between theory and practice.

Amen. Yes,.

There are Christians who unfortunately behave like Job's friends, and I put friends in quotes, who are fine until they actually open their mouths. That's right, exactly. They did the right thing when they were silent, and Christians can say the most remarkably stupid things, very often very well intended, but those that think that a Christian, if his faith is strong and real, that they should never go through periods of fear, I don't think that they ever.

Read the account of Gethsemane in the Scriptures. No, agree, I agree, but it's almost as if, but I don't regret the trauma of it. You know, your life is going along. The older I get, the more I like my routines, and those routines, it seemed like everything was about to go out the window.

It did. By the way, what did the doctor tell you about this specific kind of cancer,.

About if it was malignant, if the test results were positive before you knew they were, did he give you any idea of life expectancy and all that kind of a thing? He didn't go that far,.

And a lot of medical personnel, a lot of oncologists are very careful about those things. He did suggest, and let me see if I can remember his words almost exactly, he said there are bases that deal with your area, which is, you know, I don't know how I can, you know, I'm sitting there going, oh, that's very interesting, but there's another type of cancer that deals a lot of times with the area that I was in that actually was a survival rate, which my wife made the mistake of going on the internet, trying to find as much as she could, and some of the internet are like a house of horrors, and so I determined very quickly I was.

Not going to do that. Yeah, that is probably a good step. I can unfortunately remember vividly, as if it were yesterday, the horrible, the horrific bedside manner that my mother's doctor had, not toward her necessarily, but towards me.

My mother went home to be with the Lord at 70 after a bout with pancreatic cancer, and the doctors were dishonest with my mother. They told her that she had gallstones, and one day I went to visit her, totally relieved.

I visited her in the hospital, and I was sitting at her bedside. I was just, the weight of the world was off my shoulders. We were chatting up a storm, and then the doctor walked in, and I said, just out of curiosity, doctor, is there any kind of diet or anything that my mother should be on while she's recovering from this?

He just said, can you come with me, please? I said, okay, and we walked down the hall, and he turned around. He was in front of me, and as we were walking, he stopped and turned around, and with absolutely no emotion, he just said, your mother has pancreatic cancer.

She'll be dead in six months, and I almost fell to the floor, and I began bawling hysterically, and I had to compose myself and dry my eyes, splash cold water on my face, and then dry my eyes before returning to my mother's room, because she did not yet know this.

She was such an example to me, an amazing example, and to the rest of my family, of courage and confidence in Christ, because eventually, when we went to Sloan Kettering for a second opinion, she knew that she had an inoperable pancreatic tumor, and that it was terminal, and it was amazing to see my mother not buckle at all under this, and I remember one day when she came to visit my church, before the church service started, she started weeping uncontrollably in the narthex of the church, and I was asking her what was the matter, and you know what was the matter?

It wasn't the fact that she had pancreatic cancer. It was that she was angry at her doctors for not diagnosing the problem sooner, and she.

Felt guilty over that anger. Yeah, that sounds like a mature Christian believer, and my immediate reaction, Chris, is, you know, if you can't do compassion, you should not be in the medical. But it works the same way even with a pastor.

If you can't be compassionate, should you be shepherding a flock? That's right. I deal with people all the time. Sometimes I just want to weep with them. Well, I know that you have made some notes throughout this whole process of.

The trial you have gone through, but before we go to a break, which we're going to in a obviously, because some of our listeners may be on the edges of their seats wondering what the update is on your condition, so if you could let us know where you are at now in regard to your.

Health and in regard to the cancer. This is a matter of terminology, Chris, because I heard my oncologist say certain words that I immediately drew the connection, I am cancer-free, and he immediately said, no, you are in remission, and then he said that it's highly unlikely you'll ever have to deal with us again.

So I said, oh, that means I'm cancer-free. No, you're in remission. But the simple fact is that I have been in remission since May, and I saw my oncologist back in, I believe, November, and he graduated me from every three months to every six months, so I don't have to see him again until, and I feel absolutely fine.

Praise God. Well, we're.

Going to go to our first break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Pastor Ron Cole, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, city and state and country of residence. If you live outside the USA and only remain anonymous, if your question involves a personal and private matter, don't go away. We'll be right back with Pastor Ron Cole and our theme, When the Doctor Says You Have Cancer, right after these messages from our sponsors.

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Needs a pastor. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours is cancer survivor Pastor Ron L. Cole, who is the chairman of the Quaker Town Conference on Reform Theology and senior pastor of Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Quaker Town, Pennsylvania.

We are discussing when your doctor says you have cancer. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com if you have a question. And Pastor Ron, I'm going to go to our first questioner right away because he's actually asking a question off topic, but it has something to do with what you were describing in your own call to ministry.

Ted in Tuscaloosa, Alabama says, does it bother you that churches did not express an interest in you as a potential pastor until you were engaged? The implication seems to be that single men have no place in the pastorate.

Surveying the evangelical horizon.

Does nothing to dispel that implication. I appreciate the question because, trust me, it is one that I've thought about quite a great deal over the course of my life. I didn't get married until I was 43, so I jokingly mentioned that whenever I've gone through, one of my wife, they don't want.

My wife really interviewed probably better than I did, but I've often had that feeling as a single guy that, why is it? My thinking was even, you know, Paul was, the apostle Paul was even saying, you know, if you have to get married, do so, but better to remain single because you can be single-mindedly focused on serving the Lord.

So I understand that I do think some churches are a bit ten-eared when it comes to considering single men. Now, I can look at it from the other side, the other perspective of things, and my wife is such a valuable asset.

I have the job description, she does not, but she ministers to me in such a necessary way. I come home so many times with the other half of what is one flesh for me, is such a benefit. So I wish churches didn't candidate just because when it comes to pastoral care, when it comes to, and when it comes to...

Is she from a Scandinavian background? Because I.

Only know of one other woman named Kendra, and she is of a Norwegian descent, I believe.

I think she would probably say she is a Heinz 57. She has a little bit of everything. So I can't confess to, she is not Norwegian, I do not think.

Well, thank you, Ted. And I know that there are even some, not only denominations, but even just specific congregations that believe that Paul requires that a man be married because of the charge that he must be the husband of one wife if he is called to the office of a bishop, which of course we, most of us in the Reformed faith believe there are only two offices in the church, the pastor and the deacon, and the passages that refer to elder and bishop, most of us would say are the same office, but obviously there is disagreement on that.

Thank you very much, Ted. And if you also have a question later on on the actual subject, that would be also helpful as well. Well, let us hear some of your counsel in regard to the initial way those of us who may one day hear from the doctor the same terrifying words you heard, you have cancer, what would you counsel our first thoughts be?

Because our initial reaction may guide, for better or for worse, the remainder of this trial that we may have to endure ourselves.

Just a few things come immediately to mind. One is to steer yourself away from people you love and respect of whatever degree some people subscribe to, and I know it's a purely secular thing, but you go through denial and anger.

Don't do it alone. Help others, and I would call them, they would call me. That's what I was going through, and for me it was such an incredible please do not suffer. Iron really does sharpen iron. That sounds like a good radius.

So that was valuable to me, certainly to be in the Scriptures. The Psalms were very helpful to me. I came to understand different passages of Scripture in a different way because of what I was dealing with.

So the idea of, you know, the psalmist writes and covers every emotion of life, not understanding why God was... I must admit, I was always saying, I know that Romans 8 .28 is, God causes all things to work together for those who love Him and are looking for purpose.

Now, that does not mean that God does not reserve the right to not tell you why He's doing everything He's doing with you. He is God, and I am not. But one of the things He quickly showed me is that I was going to come out of this if God saw I understand my people in it, because when they.

Suffer... Amen. Yes, and I can recall that the sovereignty of God, or the belief in the sovereignty of God, was such an anchor to me after my mother had gone home to glory. Yeah. Because I was battling with anger because I had learned of some physicians that were doing experimental treatment of pancreatic cancer and having some success, and one of the doctors involved in this experimental area of treatment told me that Sloan Kettering had known about him for years, and they refused to let their patients know about him.

And I had a lot of anger and bitterness toward them, especially in developing weeks when my mother was on her deathbed, the way that her physician treated me over the phone. He actually basically says, stop calling me, your mother's dying, let her die.

You're annoying me, basically, is what he was saying. I've got patients to deal with. And I think I may have said some unfortunate things like, you're going to need a physician if I ever get my hands on you, or something like that.

But really having the notion, more than the notion, the solid truth of God being in control of all things, when it really settled and took hold of my mind and heart, I knew that my mother had a specific day and hour when she was going to be called home to glory, and that nothing that I may have discovered would have changed that decreed day and hour.

Does that have any meaning to you as far as your own personal.

Journey? Absolutely, it does. The sovereignty of God is the best. I'm actually looking over a few of the things to go back to things. When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons.

And a lot of times we look at that passage and it reminds us, you know, God's sending his son at Christmas time. But it reminds me that God is always on time. Early, never late. He does all things in the fullness of time.

And that was such a comfort for me, knowing that, you know, there's not something out there that's being withheld from you that, oh, this is going to catch God by surprise, and what a great misfortune it is.

No, I knew my life, my days, my moments were in his hands. And so in the midst of even all the trials, I did not have that. Now, did you have to go on any kind of a hiatus as a pastor while you were going through this journey?

You talk about God's, you know, grace takes many forms, and God knew. He knows how I'm geared. I am, if not a social butterfly, I need to be around. And he so arranged my chemotherapy treatment schedule that the type of chemo I had, and I understand the rarities of it, but I would have to be in pretty much total isolation for 10 or 11 days, and then I could come out of my hole and spend time around people.