June 30, 2025 Show with Levi Secord on “Bringing All of Christ to All of Life”

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July 1, 2025

June 30, 2025 LEVI SECORD,founding pastor of Christ Bible Churchof Roseville, MN, who has contributedcontent on numerous occasions to theFront Porch Republic, the SouthernBaptist Journal of Theology, Christ OverAll & WORLD Opinions, wrote chaptersfor several books & hosts the WorldviewMinute Podcast, who will address: “BRINGING ALL of CHRIST toALL of LIFE” Subscribe: Listen:

00:03: Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer
00:11: George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend
00:16: Jim Thorpe. It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,
00:23: Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.
00:31: Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
00:38: Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.
00:50: It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.
00:58: And now, here's your host, Chris Arnson. Good afternoon,
01:10: Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet
01:15: Earth, who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.
01:21: This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday.
01:27: No, wait a minute. What is today? Today's Monday on this 30th day of June 2025, and I'm very excited to have back on the program a returning guest.
01:40: I've interviewed him several times, and I believe this is the first time I'm interviewing him solo.
01:47: He always had another guest on with him on the previous occasions.
01:52: Oh, wait a minute. No, we did interview him once alone on the radical leftism of Governor Tim Walz.
02:00: That was before the presidential election, but his name is
02:08: Levi Secord, and he is founding pastor of Christ Bible Church of Roseville, Minnesota, who has contributed content on numerous occasions to the
02:20: Front Porch Republic, the Southern Baptist Journal, and Journal of Theology, Christ Over All, and World Opinions.
02:30: He has written chapters for several books and hosts the Worldview Minute podcast.
02:36: Today we're going to be addressing bringing all of Christ to all of life, and we're also going to be announcing a couple of conferences where Pastor Levi Secord is speaking.
02:48: It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Pastor Levi Secord. Thanks for having me,
02:56: Chris. And let me ask you once again, am I pronouncing your last name correctly? You actually are.
03:02: Most people don't. Mostly I get Secord, but it is Secord. I actually have one elder who still calls me
03:08: Secord, but we're working on it. Well, tell us something about Christ Bible Church there in Roseville, Minnesota.
03:21: Well, we launched in February of 2021. While the world was still largely going mad over COVID and Biden had just become president and all of the turmoil we lived through in the
03:33: Twin Cities and then also the nation throughout all that time, the Lord has been incredibly kind to us.
03:40: We have a thriving and vibrant congregation now, four and a half years later. Last year we hired our first full -time associate pastor, which has been a great blessing to the congregation, and he's been a great blessing to me as I have someone rowing with me in the same direction.
03:57: And yeah, I mean, I'm sure we'll unpack more of this as we go throughout, but we're Well, if anybody wants more information about Christ Bible Church in Roseville, Minnesota, go to ChristBible .net,
04:19: ChristBible .net. And also now tell our audience about these two conferences where you're speaking and where and when.
04:29: Well, our first conference we have, or that I'm speaking at, is September 12th and 13th at Riverview Baptist Church in West St.
04:38: Paul in Minnesota here. And that church is on the covenantal nature of the universe.
04:45: So last year, Riverview, which is our ascending church and Christ Bible Church put on a conference that we talked about on your radio program, looking at how
04:53: Christians should think politically. And we're planning on, Lord willing, to continue to do conferences every fall addressing different foundations of the
05:02: Christian worldview. And this time we're going to be focusing in on covenant and how that shapes even us as Baptists.
05:08: How does that shape how we view the world? And so we have Steve Wellum from Southern Seminary coming up to speak again,
05:14: Andy Naselli from Bethlehem College and Seminary, who also planted the church this year, Christ the
05:20: King Church in Stillwater. He's going to be speaking as well as Pastor Alex Tibbitt, who's got his
05:25: PhD from Southern Seminary. He's the pastor of Riverview Baptist, and then I will be speaking as well. And the dates again and the location.
05:37: That conference is September 12th through 13th at Riverview Baptist Church in West St.
05:42: Paul. Great. And the second conference is the Central Valley Baptists, which is a
05:48: Southern Baptist group out in the Modesto area of California on October 3rd and 4th.
05:54: And me and Andrew Sandlin will be talking about the topic of Christ or chaos, and we'll be looking at kind of some
06:01: Kuyperian ideas of severe sovereignty and cultural engagement as Christians.
06:08: And you want to give again the dates and location. Yeah, October 3rd and 4th in Modesto, California, that area.
06:17: Great. Well, we will be giving you contact information about both of those locations as well at the end of the program.
06:29: This is an intriguing theme, I think, that we have today, all of Christ for all of life or bringing all of Christ to all of life.
06:42: And that sounds on its surface like something that every single
06:49: Christian of every denomination and every fellowship and every congregation would say, sure,
06:55: I agree with that. But that isn't the case, is it? Oh, it's definitely not the case.
07:00: And of course, that phrasing of it was popularized by Canon Press and Doug Wilson out in Moscow, Idaho.
07:08: And I benefited greatly from Doug's work and his reading, particularly cultural engagement type stuff.
07:15: Obviously, as a Baptist, I have some sharp disagreements with him on various issues. But I think what we sometimes miss as we get into turf wars in American evangelicalism that I think fuel a lot of our disagreements is that that thinking didn't originate with Doug.
07:32: It's really a Protestant way of looking at life. It's come down specifically through the Dutch Reformed movement of people like Bovinck and Kuyper and Dewey Ward and Schaeffer and then
07:43: Peercy and others. So it's just basically the idea that Christ is Lord over absolutely everything and there is no part of the universe that is not
07:52: His. And this is clearly taught in the New Testament in Colossians 1, 15 through 20, Ephesians 1, 20 through 23, and of course, the
07:59: Great Commission, the whole basis of the mission of the church is upon the foundation that Christ has all authority in heaven and on earth.
08:06: Not some authority, not authority only in heaven, but in heaven and on earth right now.
08:12: And if that's not true, the church doesn't exist, the church doesn't have a mission, and anything we do is doomed to fail.
08:19: Now, how would bringing all of Christ to all of life differ from merely saying, well, everything that I do,
08:30: I do it to the praise, honor, and glory of God, and I try my best in everything that I do not to be participating in anything that is sinful, that would displease
08:46: God. Now, of course, you believe in both of those things, but is that the fullness of what you're talking about?
08:54: I think it gets at, I think if you define that rightly, it's the same thing, but I think the all of Christ for all of life really hits on the tension point of what life in the
09:06: West is like today, with the rule of secular thought, as you see your other statement, like,
09:12: I'm just going to live my life to the glory of God and not sin, could keep the Christian faith completely privatized.
09:20: It's all private, and that it makes no public demand in public square outside of church and family life, whereas the
09:28: Bible holds a much larger view of Christ's authority, again, all authority in heaven and earth, he's the name above every name, not only in the age to come, but also this age,
09:36: Paul says in Ephesians 1, where he's the ruler of the kings on the earth right now, present tense,
09:41: Revelation chapter 1, Joe Boot has done a lot of great work on explaining that verse, and so the all of Christ for all of life captures that it's not just that I should be doing everything for the glory of God, of course you should, but so should everyone else, so should every sphere of life, so should every molecule should bend the knee, and will eventually bend the knee to Christ, I mean, that's some of the glorious revelations we see in the book of Revelation, is that at some point every creature is going to confess that reality.
10:10: We're not there yet, but every creature in heaven, in the sea, and on the earth is going to confess
10:18: Christ is Lord. Now, I don't know what your position is, you may have told me in a previous interview,
10:25: I don't know what your position is on the regulative principle of worship, but there are some who would say that every single thing we do is an act of worship, and therefore they broaden the sphere of what is acceptable to do in a worship service.
10:47: They think that people who use or believe in and practice the regulative principle of worship where the
10:56: Bible has to give a clear command or example for something, specifically the
11:02: New Testament, for us to include it in a corporate worship service, and therefore they do all kinds of other things in worship services that we wouldn't do.
11:14: And of course, they're not all the same. Some might burn incense, some might dance, some might have a specific time of liturgical dance, some might have a flag -waving performance, which is apparently popular in a lot of charismatic and Pentecostal churches.
11:37: But what's your view on everything as an act of worship?
11:45: Well, I think with a lot of things, we often end up talking past each other because we use different definitions for words, right?
11:52: And so, of course, there is a broad sense that everything is worship. And so you have, whether you eat or drink, to everything for the glory of God, and you have
12:01: Romans 12, 1 and 2, to offer yourself as a living sacrifice that this is your spiritual act of worship.
12:09: And so there's a sense in which that's true. But in most modern parlance, when we're talking, we're using a narrow definition of worship for the corporate gathering of the church.
12:18: And I do think for the corporate gathering of the church, we need to have some foundation in Scripture as to why we're doing what we're doing.
12:26: And that needs to be worked out across the covenants in light of what Christ accomplished. So we don't do everything that Israel did in her worship because, well,
12:35: Israel was looking forward to Christ, and we have now seen that revelation. So what is your personal grievance as a pastor and having your view of bringing all of Christ to all of life?
12:52: What is your grievance of how, in your opinion, many churches, perhaps even most churches, even evangelical, are missing the mark on that?
13:07: How much time you got? Well, right now we've got an hour and 45 minutes.
13:14: Yeah. I mean, so I think most
13:20: American Christians—and I think this is starting to change—are, at heart, have bought into the secular -sacred divide and are thus just religious secularists, if I can coin a phrase here.
13:33: Nancy Peercy does wonderful work outlining this in her book, Total Truth. But secularism, again, divides life into the sacred and the secular.
13:41: And God's only allowed in the sacred, private spheres of life. And he's not allowed in the public, which is most clearly seen in government and politics.
13:50: He's not allowed in those parts of life. And you can buy into that division and still be a
13:59: Christian, but you just spend most of your life in what Schaeffer calls the upper sphere of the sacred. That upper sphere, if you spend all your time up there, like you're a pastor—and many pastors do this,
14:09: I know them, I talk to them, and they look at me with shock when I say things like this—but you can just spend all of your time in the sacred sphere and just then believe that it's inappropriate for pastors or churches or ministries to touch that lower sphere of secularism, like God doesn't belong there, we shouldn't talk about that issue in church, we shouldn't do that.
14:26: And I think that has been the predominant view in the American church for decades.
14:32: And I think it's one of the reasons why Moscow's ministry is so appealing. I think it's also one of the reasons why we're now having some, what
14:40: I would call, overcorrections in the other direction with various online personalities, because for so long the
14:47: American church has been starved and told you can't talk about that. And Moeller said something along the lines years ago that whether or not you care about the culture war, the culture war cares about you.
14:57: We're at a point now where you can't ignore it anymore, and there are still churches who are pretending like you can, and we normally call that pietism, where you reduce the
15:04: Christian faith to only a personal, private, religious experience. And certainly the Christian faith is not less than that.
15:11: If you don't have that, you're not a Christian. But I think the biblical Christian faith is also more than that.
15:17: It makes demands, again, upon everything, including governors, kings, presidents and senates and judiciaries.
15:27: Well, we have a listener named Christopher in Middletown, Pennsylvania.
15:34: And Christopher says, when you say bring all of Christ to all of life, is there room in your life, in your opinion for others as well, where we enjoy things that are completely non -religious?
15:49: Things such as sporting activities or even music that does not specifically worship
15:55: Christ. It may be just an entertaining song, etc. Or is
16:01: Christ being in everything, meaning that everything has to be in some way a religious act?
16:10: That's actually a wonderful question. I'm really glad he asked that question, because sometimes that's an often misunderstanding of what we're getting at here, that if I'm not consciously thinking of Jesus when
16:20: I do it, I don't say Jesus' name when I do it, then it's not a religious act or it's not Christian. And I just would like to point out that this is
16:26: Christ's world. All of it is religious. All of it is for him, to him, and upheld by him.
16:32: He holds all things together. So all of it is religious. But that doesn't mean I'm thinking about consciously praying to God every time
16:40: I'm out shooting a basketball with my kids. And so I think when you think about these things, like Ecclesiastes, I think is a wonderful book that gets at this, is that man tends to idolize the things of earth and make them the source of his gain, as the preacher puts it.
16:56: What gain is there under the sun? There's no gain. It's all vanity. But then when he gets around to giving you the solution in the book, it's kind of a sucker punch, because you would think that he would say, well, you should just ignore all the things of earth.
17:08: But rather, he says, what you need to do is to receive those good things and enjoy the wife of your youth as gifts, gifts from God.
17:16: So the good things of this earth are not the problem, and they're not non -religious, but they're meant to be seen as gifts that point to the gift giver of God.
17:24: And so whether that's sports or music that's quote unquote secular, as long as it's not vulgar in encouraging sin and promoting sin, then yeah,
17:32: I think the Christians can enjoy that as humans are made in God's image and are sub creators, and we produce good works of art that ultimately, whether the author intends it or not, points to God.
17:43: And so all of Christ for all of life does not mean I'm walking around like a monk, always saying Jesus's name everywhere
17:49: I go. It's living as a Christian in God's good world as it is being redeemed by Christ.
17:56: TBT Yeah, even Christ forbids vain repetition, and I'm assuming that would mean his name as well.
18:03: And an excellent resource to that end is Joe Rigney's book, The Things of Earth. He offers a really balanced corrective to what he identifies in the book as some abuses of Piper's Christian hedonism, and Piper heartily endorses the book as well.
18:19: So Rigney gives a really good explanation as to how do we enjoy the things of earth without turning them into idols or not falling into the other ditch of asceticism and denying the goodness of God's creation.
18:29: So I highly recommend that book. It's one of the better Christian books I've ever read. TBT Well, this question is an interesting sequel because Doris in West Palm Beach, Florida wants to know who are your favorite authors, and in particular, anyone other than Doug Wilson, who's inspired you over this topic?
18:51: TBT Well, like I said at the beginning, I think my inspiration for this topic was not Doug, but actually when
18:57: I said that church is Schaeferian, I think it's Francis Schaefer. I read Francis Schaefer well before I even knew who Doug Wilson was, and I just think that Doug has been one of the more vocal proponents of picking up that same ideology.
19:09: Now, he does it very differently. He has much more satiric bite than Schaefer did, but Francis Schaefer has tremendously shaped my thinking on this view of the total lordship of Christ over all of life.
19:23: A couple of his students have also been very formational to me on that. So Nancy Piercy's work,
19:29: Total Truth, or any of her books advances. I think Piercy's Total Truth is the best summation of Schaefer's life work, and she puts it in more understandable words than Schaefer often did.
19:40: So it's a great place to start. David Wells's work for cultural engagement, Beginning with No Place for Truth.
19:47: I think there's six or seven books in that series. I've read them all. Fantastic author that has helped me understand where we are in our cultural moment.
19:55: If you want theology in a particularly Baptist blend that brings us all together, my doctoral supervisor and professor and friend mentor,
20:04: Steve Wellam's Systematic Theology. That just came out, part one, just came out last year. I can't remember when part two is coming out, but his
20:11: Systematic Theology, the first two or three chapters are on how theology leads to worldview formation, and then he's going to work through a
20:17: Baptist view of all of this. Steve's also been tremendously beneficial to my thought on this. Well, praise
20:23: God. And we're going to our first commercial break. If you have a question of your own, please submit it to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.
20:31: ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, if you live outside the
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31:44: Iron Sharpens Iron Radio so we can get 100 % of the profits from that sale. We are now back with Pastor Levi Secord of Christ Bible Church of Roseville, Minnesota, and we are talking about bringing all of Christ to all of life.
32:05: And if you have a question, give us an email at chrisarnson at gmail .com,
32:12: chrisarnson at gmail .com. And as always, give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.
32:19: Is there any point in your pastorate when you didn't really have the view of this bringing all of Christ to all of life that you do now?
32:32: Was this something that developed in your thinking as a pastor, or was this something that you had discovered by the grace of God before you were a pastor?
32:44: Well, I encountered Francis Schaeffer's work in a Christian thought class at the
32:50: University of Northwestern here in St. Paul in undergrad, so I had the foundation there.
32:58: I encountered more of that at seminary, at Southern Seminary in Louisville, but I think it really came to a head in my early years of ministry.
33:11: And I credit Doug for, obviously, the verbiage here. We're borrowing from him and sharpening that the need of the moment really was that.
33:24: And so it's definitely deepened. I think it was there before I got in ministry, but ministry really made clear how evident it was really needed.
33:34: And as the older I got growing up in the church and watching some friends walk away from the faith, whether they were in undergrad or just growing up, the reoccurring theme happened again and again that in the
33:49: West, people don't walk away from the Christian faith to join a traditional rival religion.
33:54: What they join is the leftist worldview. They abandon the faith for the leftist worldview. That is largely a politicized worldview, and the church has been told not to say anything about that, which just furthers that worldview and furthers that anti -Christ spirit, because we're not allowed to talk about that because of buying into the secular -sacred divide.
34:16: And that, of course, is a bad shepherd. If there's a wolf out there devouring a bunch of sheep, and you say you're not going to touch it on principle, you should get out of ministry.
34:26: That's just my take. Tom, how have you seen this in specific ways benefit your life and the lives of those in your congregation in ways that they would likely be missing out on those benefits otherwise?
34:45: I think one of the bigger things you see—well, I want to go two directions with this—is the first question we were asked, that you don't feel guilty living your life not as a monk.
35:01: Again, this was at the heart of the Protestant Reformation, the priesthood of all believers and the return of dignity to all vocation, that Luther, even the shoemaker, serves
35:14: God. Yeah, he does, and we've forgotten that. You don't have to be—as much as it pains me to say this as a pastor—you don't have to be a pastor or a missionary to serve
35:23: God in this life. And that was a distinctly Protestant idea. And this buying into the secular idea and buying into a pietistic idea is actually
35:32: Protestants slouching back towards a Roman Catholic view of life and the world, where there is a holy order, where you can serve
35:39: God, and then the rest of life kind of matters, but not really. And I think that has really impacted my people at Christ's Bible Church, that they realize that everything they do matters.
35:50: It has meaning, it has purpose beyond just this life, because Christ created this world,
35:55: Christ upholds this world, Christ died for all things, right? Colossians 1 .20, he's redeeming everything by the blood of his cross, whether seen or unseen.
36:03: He's not just redeeming sinners—he has to redeem sinners—but he's redeeming all things. He's reconciling all things to himself.
36:09: And I think those are the things we see, that your life has meaning beyond that.
36:18: And then it also equips them to deal with the challenges that people who've grown up in church their whole life have just never heard the
36:27: Bible talk about the very things they're wrestling with in their workplace, that they're wrestling with raising their children.
36:33: Because we've been, again, trained in secularism to not talk about those things. And so our people were not biblically literate on these issues.
36:42: And I have said to many people in many settings that I don't think the pietistic brand of Christianity is going to survive the next couple of generations.
36:53: And it's not going to, because it doesn't equip people to face the real -world challenges that they meet on a day -to -day basis.
37:02: Tom Doyle a little bit more about pietism. I know that there are a lot of Reformed and even
37:08: Lutheran pastors and theologians who bring that subject up critically often.
37:16: You could tell us more about that in detail. Tom Doyle Yeah. So pietism, again, is that idea that the
37:23: Christian faith is either completely or mostly or primarily a personal religious experience.
37:32: Again, we are seeing some people on the more fringe side of Presbyterian thought who are now almost denying any type of personal element to faith in some of the more extreme federal vision camps, which is, again, in my opinion, very much an overcorrection, an overreaction.
37:50: But pietism just reduces it. That's it. The majority of the Christian faith is your personal piety, which we need more piety in the
37:58: American church. We need to be holier, but it's your devotional life, it's your prayer life, and it's going to church on Sunday, Wednesday night, and then maybe doing family devotions.
38:07: That's the totality of being a good Christian. Well, if we train people that that's it, but they spend 40 to 60 hours a week not doing those things, we've unintentionally created disjointed living.
38:22: I mean, how many times have we heard pastors say, well, there's a separation between Sunday and Monday, my parishioner's lives?
38:28: And you're like, well, why is that? I want to tell them because your preaching reinforces that division between Sunday and Monday.
38:36: And again, I think Schaeffer was prophetic in seeing this. I think Wilson has pressed the point even more, and I think more and more,
38:43: I know more of the younger Christians in their 20s don't want that type of Christianity anymore.
38:49: They're starving and craving for instruction, practical instruction in all of life based on the Bible. And the churches and the ministries that do that,
38:58: I think, are going to lead this next generation forward. Amen.
39:04: And going back to what you said about some of the federal vision elements over -correcting the personal aspect of our relationship with Christ, and I think that that is a danger, because I can tell you personally that when
39:30: I finally had my eyes open to the doctrine of limited atonement or definite atonement or particular redemption or substitutionary atonement, that just revolutionized my whole understanding of Christ's death, because it personalized it.
39:55: Whereas before that, I viewed Christ dying on the cross for a nameless, faceless sea of humans hoping to save them.
40:09: Whereas I found out He died for me, and He died to save me, and mission accomplished.
40:17: He redeemed me on Calvary, and that just revolutionized that personal aspect, and I understand what you're talking about.
40:24: That can be abused where everything is personal, as you said, with the pietas, but I think that, like you said, we can't go too far in either direction.
40:35: Amen. We can't lose sight of that. And I feel that, and this is what social media promotes, but so much of the extremism—I hate using that term—but so much of the overreactions we are seeing online are done in response to real problems in the
40:55: American church, whether it's the pietism or real cultural problems that the church has chosen to ignore, and you often have these movements that are touching on those and acknowledge those problems, and there are hungry people in the church who are like, oh, look, here's some answers.
41:10: And I do think we need to consider that as day -to -day ministers in local congregations, that if you won't address this topic, somebody on YouTube will do it for you.
41:22: Now, let's see here. We have Ralph in Cuttshaw, Long Island, who wants to know, do you have some practical examples for the average
41:33: Christian to follow where this can be reinforced in their lives? That's a very broad question.
41:45: What is the this? Yeah, I think that's what he's talking about, the bringing people.
41:50: Okay. So, when I raise my—I'm raising—I have four children, three boys and a girl, and as I raise them, and I know it's baseball season, you don't know me,
42:04: I'm very tall, so basketball's my sport, baseball's not, but two of my sons are playing baseball, and we walk this tightrope between, like, sports are not ultimate.
42:17: We're not going to be a family that is going to idolize sports and sacrifice church attendance and whatnot to be on a traveling team every weekend out of town and not going to church, right?
42:29: But then I also don't want to go to the other side of that, well, sports are just meaningless and purposeless, and they're just stupid and a waste of time.
42:38: No, we use sports to develop character, to reveal character, and to teach our sons about life, and we don't guilt them for enjoying it.
42:45: Because again, I think in some more pietistic circles, there's a real guilt we place on people for enjoying any of the things on earth.
42:54: And that's—our God is not a miser. He is not someone who gave us something bad and said, here's something bad, or gave us something good and then shames us for enjoying it.
43:03: If we enjoy it rightly to the glory of God, I think that that has real practical significance, that this life matters, even your sports days, and that we can talk about those things in light of the lordship of Christ and find joy in them as gifts, not as ultimate things.
43:20: And so, as I raise my children, I want them to see this world as gripping with meaning and significance, and that they should enjoy it and look forward to the hope of this being even better in the new creation in Christ.
43:33: Now, would you say that fundamentalists who do that lay the guilt trip on enjoying the things of this earth, would they be acting as pietists in that realm?
43:48: Oh, for sure. So, I just wrote a lesson for a Sunday school I'm going to be teaching in my church this fall on a lot of these questions of what makes
43:56: CBC, our church, Christ Bible Church, unique. And one of the things I lay out there is, well, the fundamentalist -modernist split, and then the evangelical and fundamentalist split.
44:08: And the difference between the fundamentalists in the mid of the 1900s and the evangelicals is that the fundamentalists wanted to withdraw from culture and were mostly known as their lists of don'ts, and the evangelicals wanted to engage and transform culture.
44:22: And what's funny is that most evangelicals now, in that sense of cultural engagement, view it with an eye of suspicion towards it.
44:30: And so, they're actually really creeping back to fundamentalists, but they often lob it at the cultural engagement people, telling them that they're fundamentalists, but it's actually the exact opposite.
44:39: You guys are the ones who don't want to engage culture. Well, that has always been indistinctive of what it meant to be an evangelical. Did dispensationalism have anything to do with that change?
44:51: Everybody wants to poke and punch the dispensator. I'm sure it contributes.
44:58: Dispensationalism, I think, doesn't have to be that way, but because of the way the system is set up, it's more vulnerable to that.
45:05: So, I don't think it's inherent to the system, but it was more easily adopted by the system, if that makes sense.
45:12: Yes. And how do you remind people who are either in your congregation or they're just loved ones, friends, but they are
45:26: Christian, and you see them lapsing in that way of bringing all of Christ to all of life?
45:34: Do you have any specific ways in which you remind them and lovingly correct them?
45:44: I haven't really run into it. I mean, we're only four and a half years old. The closest thing I've run into that is, again, someone feeling some guilt or shame because they're like, well,
45:53: I watched the movie and maybe I should have been praying instead. And it's like, well, in general, you probably could pray more.
45:59: We all could. But I don't think that feeling shame because you went to a movie is the
46:06: Christian way to live life. And of course, it depends on what one thing. Yeah. Obviously, if they're seeing something in a movie that is offensive to the
46:19: Lord, that's a different story. Yeah. Right. Assuming that it's a righteous movie, which is a big assumption.
46:30: Let's see. We have Mark in Utica, New York.
46:43: Can you explain what 1 Thessalonians 5 is speaking of when it refers to pray without ceasing?
46:56: I think the general answer to that question is that not ceasing means it marks your life in general.
47:03: You have to live a prayerful life. It's not the monkish way that you were... Yeah. It's not that you never...
47:08: Paul gives us lots of commands that we should be doing. If that means I've never once stopped praying, then
47:15: I can't fulfill the other commands that he gave. So it's that your life is marked as you don't have these long periods of prayerlessness.
47:26: Yeah. And when you go to that verse, which is 1 Thessalonians 5, 16 through 18, rejoice always as well.
47:38: Obviously, Paul does not want you to tell someone after they inform you of the death of a loved one, praise
47:49: God. He doesn't want you... Yeah. Right. Weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice and rejoice always.
47:56: Yeah. And Jesus Christ himself wept at the death of his friend Lazarus. And not everybody agrees on exactly why that was.
48:08: He, being omniscient, knew that he was going to raise
48:14: Lazarus. But that's an interesting scene from the
48:20: Scripture. I believe that's the shortest verse in the Scripture too, Jesus wept. This aspect,
48:31: I think, is so distressing when you realize that churches think that they are going to reach the lost with greater success and numerically larger numbers if they...
48:59: Of course, they would never say this, but in practical terms, they are actually making
49:10: Christ less even in their worship and in their sermons.
49:16: He may be tacked on at the end of a sermon for an altar call or something.
49:23: But in order for it to become more palatable to those who are lost, it seems as if they think that the right move to make is to dechristianize the sermons and the declaration of the gospel.
49:43: Am I making sense there? Yeah. I think it's fascinating to watch what
49:50: God's doing here in the West in particular. You can read articles about it in Britain, Europe, and here, that there's a mass turning back to the church right now.
50:01: And a lot of what we're seeing in people returning to the church is that they have come to the realization that Western society cannot exist without Christianity and that the public elements of Christianity are absolutely good for society and good for even non -Christians who live in that society and are necessary.
50:20: And then my point is always to add on to that. They are good for society and they work for society because they are true.
50:27: They're not true because they work, but they work because they are true. And so I have on my bookshelf here a book by Tom Holland, not the
50:36: Spider -Man actor, but Tom Holland, the British atheist historian, and the book is called
50:42: Dominion. And he lays out as an atheist how Christianity remade the West for the better, culturally and politically.
50:51: And we've lost sight of that because we've had a lot of historical revisionism who have told us that Christianity is an oppressive cultural force.
51:00: And unfortunately, there's a lot of pastors and Christians who have bought into that critical theory retelling of history.
51:06: But now that the atheists like Dawkins and Holland here, and then now even these reports about Joe Rogan going back to church, that they realize that actually no,
51:17: Christianity is good and that leftism is insane. Tom Holland There's actually a contemporary atheist that recently has said things in that regard, and I can't remember which one.
51:33: I don't know if it was Sam Harris or one of the other more well -known atheists who basically said he was glad to be in a nation that is
51:45: Christianized because of the very benefits that come with that. I think it was
51:50: Dawkins. Richard Dawkins said he's glad, he goes, I'm glad I live in a Christian culture.
51:56: I don't believe a word of it, but I'm glad to live in a Christian culture. And you're like, well, that's interesting.
52:03: I'm glad to live in a world with gravity, but I don't believe in it. Okay. Well, there are people who like to leech onto things for the benefits of it.
52:16: There are people who join churches and deceive the pastors and the flock that they are
52:24: Christians just because they enjoy reaping the benefits of being a
52:30: Christian, even though they're not. They've never really repented. They don't really trust in and love
52:35: Christ. There are a lot of wonderful things about going to church, even for lost people, the way that they are often greeted and treated and loved and taken care of and stuff.
52:54: Of course, there are horrible stories of churches that haven't done that. But yeah, so I could kind of understand
53:03: Dawkins' comments. That's the point that goes back to the earlier point that the personal aspect is absolutely necessary too.
53:14: Well, we're going to our midway break right now. And when we come back, we're going to hear
53:20: Seth from Hummelstown, Pennsylvania's question. And in fact,
53:26: I'll ask it now and answer it when we come back, Levi.
53:32: Are there any Puritan authors you can recommend that speak directly about this topic?
53:39: And we'll have Levi answer your questions, Seth, when we return from these messages. If anybody else out there would like to join the conversation, send an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com.
53:50: Chrisarnsen at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. Don't go away.
53:56: We'll be right back. First, at 1 .30
54:36: p .m. I'm speaking at Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle on the theme, Can We Trust the
54:42: Bible Is the Authentic and Inerrant Word of God? I hope you can join Chris and me for both events.
54:48: For more details on the free pastor's luncheon, visit ironsharpensironradio .com.
54:54: That's ironsharpensironradio .com. For more details on Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle, visit trbccarlisle .org.
55:04: That's trbccarlisle .org. God willing, I'll see you in September in Pennsylvania for these exciting events.
55:21: I'm Dr. Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary.
55:27: I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love,
55:33: Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Coram, Long Island, New York, pastored by Rich Jansen and Christopher McDowell.
55:40: It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God, like the dear saints at Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Coram, who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in His Holy Word, and to enthusiastically proclaim
55:58: Christ Jesus the King and His doctrines of sovereign grace in Suffolk County, Long Island, and beyond.
56:05: I hope you also have the privilege of discovering this precious congregation and receive the blessing of being showered by their love, as I have.
56:14: For more information on Hope Reformed Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net.
56:20: That's hopereformedli .net. Or call 631 -696 -5711.
56:30: That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island, New York, that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.
56:43: It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners from all over the world.
57:05: Here's Joe Reilly, a listener in Ireland, who wants you to know about a guest on the show he really loves hearing interviewed,
57:14: Dr. Joe Moorcraft. I'm Joe Reilly, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener here in Atai in County Kildare, Ireland.
57:22: Going back to 2005, one of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is
57:27: Dr. Joe Moorcraft. If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron radio, Dr. Moorcraft and Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia are largely to thank, since they are one of the program's largest financial supporters.
57:40: Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming is in Forsyth County, a part of the Atlanta metropolitan area.
57:46: Heritage is a thoroughly biblical church, unwaveringly committed to Westminster standards, and Dr.
57:52: Joe Moorcraft is the author of an eight -volume commentary on the larger catechism. Heritage is a member of the
57:57: Hanover Presbytery, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, and tracing its roots and heritage back to the great protestant reformation of the 16th century.
58:10: Heritage maintains and follows the biblical truth and principles proclaimed by the reformers, scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone,
58:18: Christ alone, and God's glory alone. Their primary goal is the worship of the triune God that continues in eternity.
58:24: For more details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit HeritagePresbyterianChurch .com,
58:30: that's HeritagePresbyterianChurch .com, or call 678 -954 -7831, that's 678 -954 -7831.
58:41: If you visit, tell them Joe O 'Reilly, Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener from a tie in County Kildare, Ireland, sent you.
58:54: I'm Simon O'Mahony, pastor of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
58:59: Originally from Cork, Ireland, the Lord in his sovereign providence has called me to shepherd this new and growing congregation here in Cumberland County.
59:08: At TRBC, we joyfully uphold the Second London Baptist Confession, we embrace congregational church government, and we are committed to preaching the full counsel of God's word for the edification of believers, the salvation of the lost, and the glory of our triune
59:24: God. We are also devoted to living out the one another commands of scripture, loving, encouraging, and serving each other as the body of Christ.
59:32: In our worship, we sing psalms and the great hymns of the faith, and we gather around the Lord's table every
59:38: Sunday. We would love for you to visit and worship with us. You can find our details at trbccarlisle .org.
59:46: That's trbccarlisle .org. God willing, we'll see you soon.
59:54: Hello, my name is Anthony Uvinio, and I'm one of the pastors at Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Cornwall, New York, and also the host of the reformrookie .com
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01:12:13: And Pastor Levi, are you there? Oh, wait a minute, I have
01:12:19: Pastor Levi on mute. Pastor Levi, are you there? Yes. Thank God.
01:12:26: As you may remember, before the break, Seth in Hummelstown, Pennsylvania, asked, are there any
01:12:35: Puritan authors you can recommend that speak directly about this topic? So, I guess
01:12:42: God and His providence gave me some time to think about that one. I admit
01:12:48: I am not a great Puritan mind or Puritan reader. I would encourage you to read
01:12:56: Samuel Rutherford, the Puritan. Samuel Rutherford, as Schaefer points to, wrote the great book,
01:13:03: Lex Rex, The Law is King. That really is the foundation of so much of classical liberalism.
01:13:11: And then there's an article in World Magazine today on whether or not classical liberalism is going to continue.
01:13:17: And there's some fringe, again, fringe elements on the right here who want to see classical liberalism end. And if they understand their definition of what classical liberalism is,
01:13:27: I would agree with them, but I don't think they actually understand what it is. And so, classical liberalism is not
01:13:33: Locke and Kant and all these other people. It really starts with the Magna Carta and Protestant political thought.
01:13:40: And John Locke really, as Schaefer points out, borrows from and somewhat secularizes the work of Samuel Rutherford.
01:13:47: So, that's one guy. The other guy I would point to is you could read The Mission of God by Joe Boot, and he just is constantly citing the
01:13:54: Puritans. And so, if you're looking for Puritans to read, I would start with Joe Boot's The Mission of God, and he will lay out some guys that you would benefit from.
01:14:05: Great, Seth. And by the way, I want to thank Seth publicly. He and his wife
01:14:11: Carrie are faithful, loyal, regular, generous financial supporters of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.
01:14:23: And I can never thank you enough, my dear brother. And please send my regards to your lovely wife,
01:14:31: Carrie. I want to get into in greater depth the topic of one of your conferences on the covenant, and if you could give us a broader discussion on that.
01:14:49: Yeah, so the conference here in St. Paul, we're going to be looking at the foundations of a
01:14:55: Christian world and the covenantal structure of the universe. So, I run in a lot of Presbyterian circles, even though I'm Baptist, and so one of the things us
01:15:03: Baptists often get hit on is that we don't view the covenant, we don't view the world as covenantal outside of the covenant of redemption.
01:15:15: And that critique, I think, is true of a lot of Baptists, but again, I don't think it's inherent to actual
01:15:21: Baptist thought. I mean, the 1689 Confession is really just a reworking of the
01:15:26: Westminster Confession with some Baptist distinctives in it. I think Baptists in their best have always had a strong view of covenant.
01:15:34: I think a lot of us have forgotten that. And so kind of the goal of this conference is to show the covenantal structure of all of life, we can't make sense of any of life without covenantal relationships.
01:15:47: And so we're going to be looking, I'm going to do a session on the covenant of creation, and that is how we should view the whole world in covenantal relationship with God, and then what that means for life.
01:15:59: And we're also going to look at how covenant functions as you move from Old Testament to New, and really this is
01:16:04: Steve Wellam's baby. He wrote a big book, Kingdom Through Covenant, kind of laying out how as Baptists we make sense of the covenants across Scripture.
01:16:14: We're going to look at the family as a covenantal reality. How do we as Baptists look at the covenant as family without going into baptizing infants?
01:16:25: And then how the church functions as a covenant community. And then finally, I believe Dr. Wellam's going to speak on the covenantal nature of the state.
01:16:33: So how does the state function in covenant with God and with its people? And I know
01:16:39: Joe Booth's spoken and written on that a bunch. I have a book coming out in the fall on the government, and I have spent a chapter talking about that reality as well as how covenant shapes government.
01:16:52: And so that's what we're going to be covering in the fall. Great. And what is it that you think most
01:17:05: Christians get wrong? And we won't get into the Pato Baptist divide, but what is it that most
01:17:14: Christians get wrong about covenant? I don't know if I can put my finger on that, because again, there's those big camps.
01:17:25: So whether you're talking about a dispensational Christian or a covenant theologian, I think the problems are going to be different.
01:17:33: I think obviously the covenant theologians, I think, see too much one -for -one continuity between the old and the new, that they don't give enough newness to the new covenant in the work of Christ.
01:17:44: And I think dispensationals put way too much discontinuity between the old and the new.
01:17:50: And I think even some of my progressive covenantal friends do that as well.
01:17:56: I mean, I've been dealing with this in some different online chat groups, where there are certain camps even within progressive covenantalism who are trying to distance themselves from the
01:18:05: Old Testament and the law too much, I think, and I don't think that's helpful at all. And so I really think it depends on what type of Christian you're dealing with as to where their covenantal issues are.
01:18:16: I think the average Christian on the street, the biggest problem they probably do is that they don't actually understand what a covenant is, and that they don't think about anything outside of salvation as being covenantal.
01:18:29: Tom. Okay. We have Rudy in Stanford, Connecticut, who says, can you repeat once again what you were talking about, classic liberalism?
01:18:43: Tom. Yeah. So, I mean, there's this big debate online, and how big is it actually?
01:18:50: I mean, it's happening outside of the church and inside of the church, like classical liberalism. So that's not leftism today.
01:18:56: It's not what we would call a liberal today. But classical liberalism, that is really the dominant
01:19:01: Western political philosophy and the idea of limited government, personal rights, and I would argue a proper understanding of separation of church and state.
01:19:12: Not what leftists mean by it today. Those types of individual liberties, individual rights, balance of powers, checks and balances.
01:19:23: That's the heartbeat of classical liberalism, constitutionalism, all those things. And constitutionalism is really built on the
01:19:31: Puritan idea of covenant, as Booth points out in his book. And so I don't think...
01:19:36: So there's this debate going on in the church and whatnot that classical liberalism is failing. And I agree that classical liberalism is failing, but I believe it's because it's been corrupted and it's abandoned its founding principles and that the problem isn't principles, but how critical theory and cultural
01:19:54: Marxism have come in and perverted all of it and corrupted it. And what we need to do is return to first principles.
01:20:00: Well, there's a group now arguing of conservatives and of Christians who are arguing that classical liberalism is the problem and we need to replace it with something else.
01:20:09: And my always question is, well, which one of those tenets of classical liberalism do you want to get rid of? Limited government?
01:20:14: You want a big government? You want to get rid of personal rights? Do you want to have the church over the state or the state over the church?
01:20:21: Because again, I recognize the current problems with secularism right now, but go read a history book.
01:20:27: Which one of these things? You want a more powerful government? You want more centralized power? You don't want checks and balances?
01:20:33: You don't want these things? Do you realize the consequences of life in a government like that?
01:20:39: And so I think there's a real need to recover first principles. And I think part of that is going to be giving a more prominent place to Christianity in political life.
01:20:50: Because I don't think separation of church and state is separation of God and state. I think that's where the experiment has gone wrong.
01:20:57: Our founders did not want to remove religion from politics. That was not their goal. They wanted to protect the church from the state.
01:21:06: And that's different. Yeah, there seems to be a lot of similarities, at least in my opinion, between classic liberalism and libertarianism.
01:21:19: And of course, libertarianism is not monolithic. You have some libertarians that are endorsing the liberty to engage in wicked activities.
01:21:35: But you have some Christian libertarians that are closer to the mark, and even they are not all in agreement.
01:21:43: I still can't understand the Christian libertarians that believe that anyone should be able to immigrate to America with no questions asked.
01:21:53: That's just crazy if you ask me. But as far as classic liberalism is, the three men that I'm thinking of that have been well -known advocates of that system,
01:22:09: I believe, coincidentally, all three of them are black men.
01:22:15: Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, and Walter Williams. Aren't they all classical liberals?
01:22:22: I would think so. And I was just actually thinking of a Thomas Sowell quote because, again, I think a lot of these people, particularly in the church, who are ragging on classical liberalism, have identified real problems with the current state of affairs.
01:22:35: And I would tell you, well, we're not really a classically liberal country anymore because no one follows the Constitution. No one does those things.
01:22:41: But Sowell pointed this out, that liberals think in, so not classical liberals, but leftists, so liberals think in terms of solutions and conservatives think in terms of trade -offs.
01:22:54: And so the conservatives, we realize that whenever we try to solve a problem, there's going to be the law of unintended consequences, that we're going to pay for it somewhere else.
01:23:02: We saw this come to a head during the COVID pandemic. Liberals thought that they could wipe out the virus. That's the solution.
01:23:08: If everyone just stays home, we're going to fix the problem. And conservatives come in and say, well, do you realize that if you shut down the whole world, that we're going to have all of these consequences that are going to happen?
01:23:18: So we think in trade -offs, if you want to do that, you're going to pay for it over here. And I think, sadly, some people who identify themselves now as conservatives are like, well, classical liberalism is the problem, are not thinking about the trade -off.
01:23:30: If you centralize power, if you get rid of rights of individuals and weaken those things, what is the trade -off that you're going to see?
01:23:41: And is that really a price you want to pay? So there are people out there who recognize that leftism is intentionally destroying the
01:23:49: West, and their solution seems to be to help bury the West, which is a really dumb idea. Yeah.
01:23:56: And let's see here. We have Benjamin, who is listening over there in Hartford, Connecticut.
01:24:16: And Benjamin says, give us both sides, in your opinion, of mingling politics with Christianity too much and then too little.
01:24:33: That's a great question. I would be very slow, and I have been very slow, to endorse candidates from the pulpit.
01:24:48: I think that there is a time and a place when you can do that as a pastor, and you think about the rise of the
01:24:53: Third Reich, and what should the confessing church do at that time? Well, you can't vote for Hitler.
01:25:00: That's controversial. Well, I'm not sure that you're in touch with reality. So I think that if every time an election comes up, you have to endorse someone from the pulpit, and let's be honest, this happens in African -American churches that are left -leaning all throughout this country.
01:25:18: That is politicizing the church beyond what it should be.
01:25:24: I think not doing enough politics—that's probably not the right way to phrase it—is ignoring that the
01:25:34: Bible speaks to the political realm, and that all throughout church history, the faithful church, when there have been wicked rulers, from Jesus, Paul, to the prophets before that church history, they look the wicked rulers in the eyes and say,
01:25:46: God says you can't do that. That you are, Romans 13, a servant of God who are supposed to execute
01:25:53: God's justice, not your own. My small group has been walking through the book of Daniel, and one of the striking things of the book of Daniel is again and again, and especially the first half, is getting these pagan rulers to confess
01:26:07: Yahweh as the Lord. After they do something evil, they confess, and the people stand up, they confess that Yahweh is
01:26:13: Lord, and that's a continual point of the book. And then the pointing of the Son of Man, as prophesied later in Daniel 7, is going to lead to the beasts, which are these great nation states, being smashed to pieces by the
01:26:25: Son of Man, who we know to be Jesus, is that eventually everyone is going to confess that Yahweh is indeed
01:26:32: Lord and God. And so I think if we out of hand say the church and the
01:26:37: Bible has nothing to say about this, you either don't know church history, or you don't know the Bible, or you're trying to sell me something.
01:26:43: Tom, it's a difficult balance to walk, right?
01:26:54: I want the primary message to remain the primary message in the church, and that is Jesus Christ is
01:26:59: Lord. Amen. Let's see here.
01:27:07: We have Tony in Massapequa, Long Island, New York, and Tony says,
01:27:15: I have heard that some Reformed pastors do not believe that it is their duty or job to evangelize the lost.
01:27:26: They're only there to edify and equip the saints, who are then to go out into the world and evangelize the lost themselves.
01:27:35: I find this distasteful and unbiblical. What is your belief in this regard?
01:27:44: Well, I don't think they're mutually exclusive, right? Evangelism and discipleship, great commission, go make disciples of every nation.
01:27:54: And so a specific pastor and his role at the church might have more of an emphasis on evangelism or on discipleship.
01:28:00: I do think that Sunday morning worship is not primarily based towards the seeker.
01:28:08: It is based towards the flock or aimed towards the flock to encourage and equip them.
01:28:13: But there's more hours in the week than just Sunday morning. Yeah, it's not primarily to evangelize the lost.
01:28:26: But for us to avoid challenging people in the pew about their never -dying souls when there are likely, especially if a church is large, there are likely going to be people in that building that are lost who think they're saved.
01:28:50: And I think for us to overlook that is a big mistake. Of course.
01:28:59: And let's see here. We have Nancy, who is located in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York.
01:29:12: I lived there for 10 years. And she wants to know, are there any resources for women in this regard over this subject?
01:29:25: I don't think the subject has to be divided between men and women. Any of the resources I listed would work.
01:29:32: If you're looking for a female author, again, I don't think you can beat Nancy Peercy's total truth on the subject.
01:29:41: Sounds like a good resource. Well, at the end of the road here, what is the most dangerous result in pastors and even individual
01:29:59: Christians drifting from the mark of what you're talking about? I think the most dangerous result is exactly what we've been dealing with in the
01:30:12: Reformed camp here the last, I don't know, 6 or 10, 12 years, is that if you don't have the lordship of Christ over everything, not just in name only, but if you're not working all of life through His authority and through the authority of His Word, you have false teachings creep into the church.
01:30:32: Like, we had that whole blow up in the SBC over whether or not we could use critical theory or critical race theory as analytical tools or not.
01:30:43: And that only happens when you're partitioning off certain areas of life as outside of the authority of God.
01:30:52: Like, critical race theory, cultural Marxism made inroads into the church because the church did not have a robust cultural view of Scripture or applying
01:31:03: Scripture to and over culture. And so if you don't disciple someone in a certain area of life, the world will disciple them in that area.
01:31:11: And then they will try to bring a synthesis between an alien worldview and the Christian worldview, and that's how we get syncretism.
01:31:17: It'll eventually lead to unbelief, and that's what we see. Churches go woke, they go broke, and they start denying more and more.
01:31:23: If you start interpreting all of life through the oppressor schema of critical theory, then you eventually end up with women pastors.
01:31:33: We just saw this this week with Jason Meyer, formerly pastor of Bethlehem Baptist, now ordaining a women minister and having her preach in his church.
01:31:40: Used to be complimentary and not so much anymore. Oh, so that's the church that was once pastored by John Piper?
01:31:48: Yeah. So he's now in a different church. He left a few years ago, and his whole thing is, if you listen to his words, he's explaining how these things are happening or how women are oppressed, and he's interpreting everything through the same oppressed schema.
01:32:05: And if you keep going down that path, you will get to sexual sins eventually. You will get to anything.
01:32:13: Yes. And by the way, that reminds me, I have a debate coming up on my show, a two -day debate that's going to be held next month, which next month starts tomorrow.
01:32:33: And Jeremiah Nortier, who is a
01:32:38: Reformed Baptist, is going to be debating a
01:32:44: Nazarene pastor, and they're debating twice. Each debate is a two -day debate.
01:32:53: And the first debate is, can women be ordained into ministry where they have authority over men?
01:33:07: And the second debate is going to be on, can
01:33:15: Christians achieve total freedom from known sin in this life?
01:33:26: And I can't find my calendar right now, so you're going to have to keep tuning in for me to give you the dates, the specific dates of these two debates.
01:33:46: Each debate is two days. And I actually think that the first one is next week.
01:33:53: They're both Thursday and Friday. And I know that there's a gap between them, where there's a week between the two debates where we don't have a debate.
01:34:07: But I'll get you that information as soon as possible. I've been wanting to have somebody debate an egalitarian for decades and have never found the right people to do that.
01:34:25: There was at one time a very well -known egalitarian woman, I can't remember her name right now, but she had created a whole
01:34:35: DVD series. And it was a dangerous series because she was a very gifted orator, and she twisted things.
01:34:50: And she was a very nice woman, but her information was very dangerous.
01:34:56: But never got around to getting that debate off the ground. So I'm looking forward to these debates. And tomorrow,
01:35:03: I will make sure that I have right at the tip of my fingers these two debate dates.
01:35:13: Well, we have to go to our final break right now. And once again, if you have a question, please submit it to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.
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01:42:21: Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest has been Levi Secord, pastor of Christ Bible Church of Roseville, Minnesota.
01:42:33: And if you would like to join us on the air with a question, please do so now so we can make sure we fit it into the broadcast before we run out of time.
01:42:43: ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the
01:42:54: USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.
01:43:03: Actually, we do have an anonymous question. An anonymous listener says,
01:43:11: I was wondering if I should leave a church because the pastor is teaching
01:43:17: Two Kingdoms theology. Well, first of all, Levi, before you even answer that question, why don't you define that?
01:43:29: That was going to be my first point is, well, what do you mean by that? Because there is a more Reformed type of Two Kingdoms theology that I would be in large agreement with because it was largely just seeing a difference between—there's some of this, of course, in Augustine, the
01:43:48: City of God and the City of Man—that there is a distinction between the kingdoms of this age and the kingdom of God.
01:43:58: And I would agree with that in principle. But I also would want to stress then that there's also an underlying unity.
01:44:05: You get that in 1 Corinthians 5. There's both unity and newness to the new creation, unity between the old and the new, and newness there.
01:44:15: So, if your pastor is teaching that, sure, stay there.
01:44:22: If your pastor is teaching a radical Two Kingdoms that has taken root in some—we had this at our last conference.
01:44:31: Brad Green, he taught on Two Kingdom theology and how we should look at that.
01:44:37: So, Brad Green from Christ Overall Ministry and Southern Seminary and Union. He taught on—I can't remember the theologian's name—a
01:44:44: Presbyterian guy. But his whole point is with the radical Two Kingdoms was he was nervous even if a school called itself
01:44:52: Christian and had a chapel service. So, if you're a Christian and you don't think a Christian school should have a chapel service,
01:44:58: I think something is seriously misfired in your theology. That shouldn't even be controversial, especially if you're a
01:45:06: Presbyterian, for goodness sakes, and if you're Reformed or Protestant at all.
01:45:13: And so, if we're to a point where someone is denying Christ's authority or Scripture's authority in whole swaths of life, it might be,
01:45:23: I want to stress, might be a reason to find a more faithful local congregation, maybe. But you want to make sure you're actually understanding your pastor and not just imputing onto him a belief that he doesn't actually believe.
01:45:36: And so, that would require careful, slow -to -speak conversations with him, seeking to understand what he means and what he doesn't mean.
01:45:44: And then there would actually have to be a more faithful option around. Yes, I've had both proponents and opponents of Two -Kingdom theology on the program, and I've been blessed by both kinds of guests.
01:46:07: And even though I'm not a New Kingdom advocate myself, I don't go ballistic over it like some of my friends do.
01:46:17: And there's another thing that we got to remember is a lot of these issues that we may disagree with if our leaders or denomination holds a view that we don't agree with.
01:46:32: It depends on how much that issue dominates the preaching and teaching and life of the church.
01:46:39: I mean, that might be a side issue. I remember somebody asking me if I would ever join a dispensationalist church, and I said, yes,
01:46:54: I would, especially if the church that ideally fits the description of where I'd want to be doesn't exist nearby an area
01:47:07: I might be moving to. And the other issue is how much do they harp on eschatology?
01:47:17: Is eschatology the subject of every single sermon like some of the televangelists who are dispensationalists?
01:47:24: It seems like every time they're preaching, they're preaching about the end times. Anyway, yeah, we don't want to be overly harsh on good men of God.
01:47:39: I would think most people who are to kingdom, I think, are probably fine.
01:47:45: There are a few extremes. Again, like you said with dispensationalism, then you'd be like, yeah, probably not.
01:47:53: And I really want you to drive home today some of the primary reasons or primary ways that Christ Bible Church of Roseville, Minnesota may stand out amongst other churches in that area.
01:48:13: What makes that church one that should be seriously considered by those either visiting or living in that area?
01:48:26: Or what is it primarily that stands out that would make someone recommend your church to someone, a loved one who lives in that area or who is visiting that area or moving to that area?
01:48:40: Perhaps like five or six of the pillar reasons that makes your church stand out.
01:48:48: Well, the main one is the one we've been talking about, and that's this holistic, comprehensive view of the lordship of Christ.
01:48:56: And so I do want to stress that importance because the New Testament is crystal clear on the universal lordship of Jesus over every sphere of life, and that it is right now.
01:49:09: And so again, Great Commission, Matthew 28, Colossians 1, 15 -20, Ephesians 1, 20 -23,
01:49:16: Revelation 1, Hebrews 2. Though this is non -negotiable, this is the earliest confession of the church is
01:49:24: Christ is Lord. And that's at the center of the gospel, who
01:49:31: Jesus is and what he's accomplished through his work. And so we are trying to work that out in a very
01:49:38: Protestant way, again, bringing all of life under the authority of God in his word. And so my preaching, people have told me that I'm very blunt, and they're probably right.
01:49:50: And my preaching intentionally engages worldview and cultural issues all the time so that our people are equipped.
01:49:57: I find that that is not as common in Reformed circles or Protestant evangelical circles today, so that would stand us out as well.
01:50:06: I think what would also distinguish us would be the care our elders have for our people.
01:50:13: My elders are fantastic at welcoming people, caring for those who are convalescing.
01:50:18: I hear that again and again from people who visit and people who have made this their home church, is that the elders do a wonderful job keeping track of everyone, ministering to them, helping out.
01:50:30: And I'm very, very grateful for that legacy. So we are not just a cultural church that's trying to engage cultural issues.
01:50:41: We do that because I think it's important for my sheep to know what the threats are that they're going to face and their children are going to face so they can raise their children well.
01:50:49: We aren't just outward looking that, oh, the world's bad. We're caring for one another. We're loving one another.
01:50:54: We're trying to do all those one another's of the Bible as well. And so within that, we're also, you know, we're
01:51:01: Reformed, we're Baptistic. We're a little bit more liturgical than other churches in our stream would be.
01:51:10: We use hymnals and modern hymns we sing at church on a Sunday. Sorry, I had myself on mute.
01:51:24: And describe in more detail what you mean by liturgical, how you act that out, because that can mean different things to different people.
01:51:35: Yeah, I mean, every church has liturgy, right? So I guess I grew up in the
01:51:40: EV Free Church, and I was very low church, and I still have some affinity towards low church tradition.
01:51:47: But we are definitely more formal. I mean, I don't wear a robe, but we have a time of confession.
01:51:56: We have the Lord's Supper every week. And again, we sing old hymns and modern hymns together, mostly with a piano and some string instruments behind.
01:52:07: And so we don't have light shows or smoke machines, if that's what you're looking for.
01:52:14: I mean, would it be a lot of responsive reading and things like that? We have responsive reading from time to time, but it's not every week.
01:52:23: This week we're gonna, in celebrating of the 1700 years for the Nicene Creed, we're gonna do the
01:52:29: Nicene Creed as a church. So we do mix in some of that as well. Yeah, my church, actually,
01:52:36: Trinity Reformed Baptist Church, Coral, Pennsylvania, we're going through the Apostles' Creed. And it has been a real blessing to hear my pastor,
01:52:47: Simon O'Maney, who is originally from Cork, Ireland, deliver those messages and break that down and explain some of the more difficult to understand parts of the
01:53:02: Apostles' Creed that have been the subject of debate amongst Christians, especially,
01:53:08: I think, He Descended Into Hell. That's a big area of debate amongst
01:53:13: Christians about what that exactly means. But, well, give, before we run out of time, give a heartfelt pitch for these two conferences again and explain in more detail the locations and dates.
01:53:34: Yeah, so September 12th and 13th at Riverview Baptist Church in West St. Paul, we'll be having the
01:53:40: Covenantal Universe Conference of the Foundations of the Biblical World. We'll be looking at the covenantal nature of all of life.
01:53:46: We'll be having Andy Nacelli, Steve Wellum, myself, and Alex Tibbitt speaking at that.
01:53:54: And that's just kind of a local conference here in the Twin Cities. And then October 3rd and 4th, the
01:54:00: Central Valley Baptist, which is an SBC group out in the Modesto area of California, we're having a
01:54:07: Christ or Chaos conference with me speaking and Andrew Sandlin looking at cultural engagement,
01:54:15: Christian worldview, sphere of sovereignty as Christians. What does that look like in today's age and why it's so desperately needed?
01:54:24: Well, I do have the website for Riverview Baptist Church, where your first conference is going to be held.
01:54:35: It's riverviewbaptist .net, riverviewbaptist .net.
01:54:41: And do you have a website for Central Valley Baptist Church in Modesto, California? You know,
01:54:47: I had a website, and then I went to the link and it's broken now. So it was up. I got sent it, but now it's down.
01:54:53: So unfortunately, I can't give you a link. But if you look up the Central Valley Baptist, yeah, it'll be there.
01:55:02: Or you can find me on Facebook and I'll post it there. And it's in Modesto, California. Yeah. All right, great.
01:55:11: Well, I want to invite our listeners tomorrow to listen to another interview with Dr.
01:55:20: Tom Nettles, a brilliant Baptist historian who was—
01:55:26: I love Tom. Yeah, he's a great man. He's a humble man and brilliant man. He was for quite a long time a professor of church history at the
01:55:38: Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, author of a number of very helpful books.
01:55:46: And he tomorrow is going to be providing a defense of John Gill against the charges of hyper -Calvinism.
01:55:58: It seems that a great number of Baptists, including ones that I highly respect, great number of Christians in general who are
01:56:09: Calvinists, who are Reformed, who love the Doctrines of Grace, nonetheless think that John Gill went too far and could be accurately categorized as a hyper -Calvinist.
01:56:22: And Tom Nettles does not agree with his esteemed colleagues on that.
01:56:29: And so I'm really excited to hear Tom provide that defense of John Gill tomorrow.
01:56:39: And I also hope that you folks keep praying for Iron Trump and Zion Radio.
01:56:47: We are really in urgent need of your financial help, as I said, during the midway break.
01:56:55: And we have lost a lot of regular donors ever since the horrible and unconstitutional mandates during the coronavirus crisis, the mandates that were enforced upon the populace, both locally and federally.
01:57:21: And I'm just assuming that many of these folks that were donating regularly had some kind of financial hit, bad hit in their lives, whether they lost their jobs or just got pay cuts or whatever the case was.
01:57:39: But ever since COVID, we have lost so many donors, and the giving has never bounced back to that heyday period we were enjoying before the coronavirus crisis.
01:57:54: So if you can, we would love to hear from you at irontrumpandzionradio .com. Click support, then click, click to donate now, and you could donate instantly with a debit or credit card.
01:58:09: And I also wanted to give a shout out to my friend Virgil Walker. Many of you may have been surprised to hear the news that Virgil has moved on from G3 Ministries.
01:58:23: He has departed his role and his employment with them on good terms and wrote a very gracious blog article about his gratefulness to all those folks at G3, including
01:58:48: Josh Bice. He's not happy with what developed with Josh, but Josh was the one that gave him the opportunity to work at G3, and he believed in Virgil, and Virgil was very kind about that.
01:59:03: But that came as somewhat of a shock to me that Virgil left because I just did an interview with him
01:59:08: I think a week ago, and I don't even know if he knew at that time that he was leaving.
01:59:14: I don't think he did because he had nothing but optimism over the future of G3 in that interview.
01:59:20: So I just want to give a shout out to Virgil and his lovely wife, T. Diane, and I hope that you all listening will pray for Virgil as he seeks how to best use the gifts that God has given him wherever he may lead
01:59:37: Virgil and his family. I want to thank you, Levi, for being a guest today.
01:59:44: I look forward to your return. I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater