August 7, 2023 Show with Ed Romine on “The Open Air Preaching of Charles Haddon Spurgeon”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of Founding Father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer

George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend

Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse 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 two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. 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 Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this seventh day of August, 2023.

I would appreciate the prayers of our listeners today because here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where my studio is located, we are receiving tornado warnings, so there is a possibility that this live program might be cut short due to a tornado passing through.

I might lose power. I may have to run to the basement of this home. So we will let you know if we hear any further updates on those warnings, and obviously you will know if we get cut off the air by hearing dead silence.

So please keep us in your prayers. I'm thrilled to have on the program today a first -time guest.

His name is Ed Romine, Pastor of Education and Evangelism at First Baptist Church of Provo, Utah, and today we're going to be discussing the open -air preaching of Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Ed Romine.

Thank you, dear brother. Thank you so much. Well, before we get into your personal testimony and before we get into the theme of our program today, tell our listeners something about First Baptist Church of Provo, Utah.

Yes, sir. Well, Provo, Utah is very significant in that Brigham Young University is located here, otherwise known as BYU, and if you know anything about BYU, it is the private university that is owned by the

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, more commonly called Mormons by the wider religious community and world, and so being the location of BYU, Provo is very much highly

LDS or Mormon. It is about 79 %

LDS here, and it is about 0 .49 %

Evangelical Christian. Wow. Yeah, so it's the most lost metro area of the

United States. Wow, and I'm assuming you folks have a vigorous outreach to the

Latter -day Saint community? We do, we do, and this dovetails well into our topic today.

My title, as you stated, Brother Chris, is the pastor of education and evangelism, and in particular, we're going to be talking about the evangelism aspect of my role today on your program,

Lord willing, and in so doing, I do a lot of street evangelism, passing out tracts, getting into conversations, doing open -air preaching, and the

Lord has just really, really blessed the ministry here. My goal as one of the pastors is to equip our people to want to go out and do street evangelism, to even be very intentional, as it were, to do gospel -centered relational evangelism in their workplace with those whom they can build relationships with, to where that relationship is founded upon being very forthright about the gospel rather than this idea that's commonly purported of, oh, well, you've got to earn the right to share the gospel with somebody through a friendship.

I don't think that's very good or biblical, but a good relational evangelism is just being very upfront about the gospel, because we are

Christians, and the gospel permeates everything we think about life and the world around us.

Amen. But I'm sure you would agree that whenever possible, it is a very wise and biblical thing to create friendships, friendships with the lost specifically, just as our

Lord Jesus did, and to use those as opportunities to evangelize and pour upon these folks the love of Christ, not only through evangelizing them, but through good deeds.

Amen. Do you have the FBI flying a helicopter over you right now? There is a plane flying over.

There's something flying over. Maybe it's a UFO. Those have been in the news a lot lately, right?

Yes, they have been. What is the primary theological basis of First Baptist Church of Provo?

Broadly speaking, we would consider ourselves Baptists who are

Calvinists, so our official statement of faith is the abstract principles, which is the first document of the

Southern Baptist Convention that is very Calvinistic. Personally, I affirm and confess the

London Baptist Confession of 1689, but we are not a 1689

Reformed Baptist Church. I understand. Yeah, we don't require for church membership for somebody to sign onto that document.

Right, and when I, by the grace and mercy of our

Lord Jesus Christ, was saved out of Roman Catholicism and entered into membership at a

Reformed Baptist Church, I was not required to agree with the confession, even though it was a confessional church, but they insisted that I pledge not to undermine those teachings and to recognize that the leadership of that church held to those positions, and I was to respect that and submit to their authority in those things.

But they recognized that sanctification is a process, and it may take years for some people to grasp the doctrines of grace and embrace them personally.

Thankfully, it only took a couple of months for our Lord to show mercy on me in that area and open my eyes to these teachings.

Right. So I just wanted to say that, because not all confessional churches—some may, but not all confessional churches—insist that a candidate for baptism and membership believe in its entirety the

London Baptist Confession of Faith, or even the Westminster if you're a Presbyterian, or the Three Forms of Unity if you are a

Continental Reformed brother or sister. Right. Go ahead.

Right. And we're much the same way in that we have members of our church who wouldn't even consider themselves

Calvinistic or adherents to the doctrines of grace, but when you live in Provo, Utah, you can't be too picky because it's not like the

Bible Belt in the South where there's a gospel -preaching church on every corner.

Yeah, and I'm originally from New York, and we're pretty much in the same boat in a different way. Not that we're saturated with Mormons—that would be a minority of the population there—but obviously we are notorious in New York for being saturated with leftists and also a very diverse religious makeup in New York.

Yeah, isn't the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses headquartered in New York?

Yes, it was in Brooklyn, and I'd have to check if it's still in Brooklyn. I know they moved their exact location in Brooklyn, but I don't know if they left

Brooklyn entirely. I'd have to look that up. They may still be in New York State, though. Okay, okay.

Oh, New York City, okay. Yeah, Brooklyn is one of the five boroughs of New York City, even though technically it's on Long Island, where I am from, because you don't cross a bridge to get from Long Island to Brooklyn.

It's part of the same thing. And so is Queens, for that matter. Yeah. I just wanted to make sure our listeners have your email address for First Baptist Church of Provo.

It's fbcprovo .org, F -B -C for First Baptist Church, Provo, P -R -O -V as in victory,

O, dot org, First Baptist Church of Provo, Utah. And now, as I hinted at earlier, we have a tradition here on Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio, whenever we have a first -time guest, we request of that guest to give a summary of their salvation testimony that would include any kind of religious atmosphere in which they were raised, and what kind of providential circumstances our

Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to Himself and saved them. So I'd love to hear your story.

Yes, sir. Well, it'd be a joy to share it. So I know you can see me.

The listeners cannot. But if you were to be able to watch our video, you could see, as Brother Chris can't hear, that I am in an electric wheelchair.

I was born with cerebral palsy. And if you've heard the name

Justin Peters... He has a good friend. Yes. I love

Justin. He's one of my best friends. We both have the same... Yes.

We both have the same disability, cerebral palsy. And I tell him every so often,

Brother, you're the good -looking version of me. And he just laughs. And, you know,

I, dear listener, was raised by my grandparents.

And what I tell people all the time is that they were C &E

Christians, C &E standing for Christmas and Easter.

So they would ship me off to vacation

Bible school sometimes during the summer when I was a little kid.

And I always personally hated vacation

Bible schools because all the activities, at least back in the 90s, presupposed that you could sing and dance and you wanted to be all happy clappy and things of that nature.

And in so doing, my experience at church was limited to those things, just the holidays and the vacation

Bible school. And you know how those can oftentimes be run.

Not all of them. A well -meaning Sunday school teacher, maybe even the pastor, will say, well, kids, you don't want to go to hell, do you?

And of course, no kid wants to go to hell. So there were a couple times

I can remember raising my hand to quote unquote accept Jesus into my heart.

So they would get a letter. My grandparents would get a letter saying that I did that.

You know, that didn't mean too much. I didn't know what I was doing. And as well -intentioned as those

VBS teachers were, I would say now that the methods that they were using were not the best.

And I don't think it's wise to do that sort of thing. But that being said,

I didn't really grow up in a Christian home. I wouldn't say that at all. But they taught me general truths about God that every

American, at least back in the 90s, would have agreed with, such as God is good.

God created. God is all -powerful. But they also taught me things that were not good at all, such as because I had several palsy, because I'm disabled,

I would die and go to heaven and become one of God's angels. Looking back on that now, that's got multiple theological problems with it.

But that's what they taught me. So I can remember as far back as six, seven years old, thinking,

God, if you're good, and if you created everything, and you're all -powerful, why in the world did you create me with a disability?

And I remember from a young age just resenting God because of that.

And I can also remember at a young age just having this inclination and fascination towards dark things, towards demonic things.

And I don't know exactly where that came from. We're all inclined to certain sins,

I think. And for me, mine was with a fascination towards dark things and demonic things.

I remember I would actually scare my grandpa because he would ask me sometimes, son, why are you fascinated with the devil?

Why are you fascinated with demonic things? When I was growing up,

Brother Chris, Christmas was not my favorite holiday, even though I enjoyed the gifts that I got and all that good stuff.

My favorite holiday was actually Halloween. And I didn't just enjoy it for like trick -or -treating and candy, but I enjoyed it for like all the blood, guts, and dark and demonic things.

And it got to the point to where they actually called in a local pastor to talk to me about it because they were so scared.

And that didn't really do anything for me. Fast forward to the age of 14.

Both of my grandparents who had raised me, my grandmother and my step -grandfather, they were like my mom and dad.

And they both died six months apart from each other from lung cancer.

So to kind of put this on a timeline, I was born in 1990.

By about 1996, 1997, I really began to not question

God's existence. I never struggled with that. I knew he existed,

I just hated him. Like I said, I was like, God, why did you make me with a disability?

Why did you do that? And so fast forward to 2004, about 13, 14 years old, depending on the month, my grandparents died from lung cancer.

Both of them diagnosed six months apart from each other. They were heavy smokers.

And, you know, I grew up with them smoking in the house and all that stuff.

And so they died around that time. And that just sent me off into a rage for the crisp.

So I decided to delve in more deeply into demonic things.

And I used to go into all the details of what that was like.

And I don't really do that anymore because I find that the Christian community has an unhealthy fascination with the occult.

And so all that to say a lot of weird, weird, spiritual, supernatural things happen to me.

Because as far back as I could remember, I always felt more spiritually sensitive to like dark and demonic things to begin with.

And so I delved into it more, just developing a fascination with all things dark.

That lasted for about two years. And then at the age of 16,

I at that time was getting very, very good on my musical instruments.

I had started playing the trombone and the euphonium at the age of 11, 12 years old in beginner band.

And by that time, 2006, I'd gotten pretty good at my instruments as an upperclassman in high school, good enough to where I could actually teach the lower class.

What is a euphonium? It is a small tuba.

So if you want to Google it real quick, it's E -U -P -H -O -N -I -U -M.

E -U -P -H -O -N -I -U -M.

Okay. And you'll see it looks like a miniature tuba. And it's got a very beautiful sound,

I think, if you know how to play it well. It's very mellow and just a wonderful, wonderful instrument.

So I played both those. I ended up majoring. My bachelor's degree is in music, and I majored in music and took lessons on both throughout college.

And so my bachelor's degree is actually in music. But going back to my junior year,

I met this freshman trombonist who my band director had said, I want you to teach him and prepare him for some competitions.

And so I ended up doing that. And this young man ended up both telling me about Jesus and inviting me to church.

He did. Yeah, he did both. And he kept nagging at me. And the way he invited me to church,

Chris, was it was like, hey, we have a church orchestra. We would love for you to come play in our church orchestra.

And so finally, he ended up letting me do that.

Looking back on it, I would never allow an unbeliever to participate in that way.

I agree with you. In our service, but hey, that's what the Lord uses. God uses the foolishness of men every day to bring his elect to himself.

That's right. So I ended up going and playing in the church orchestra.

And I had to sit there through the service, and we would always play the invitation hymn as well.

And I don't remember what the preacher preached on. His name is

Roy Ford. He's still pastoring and preaching. But I remember the gospel was clearly explained.

And the Lord used that preacher to open up my heart and save my soul about two weeks later.

Praise God. Now, were you going back to your occult days?

And I will not ask you for details or in -depth details, as you said you don't like to do.

But were you in any group, gathering, association of people involved in the occult, involved in Satanism, and so on?

Yeah. It was all private for me. Okay. So yeah. Which I'm glad I wasn't involved in a group.

I was telling a brother at our church the other day, I'm glad the Lord God got me out early.

I was simply a dabbler. If you know the name Doreen Virtue.

Yes. I was never into it as deeply as Ms.

Doreen was, especially with the hardcore Satan worship stuff.

Because as you may be aware, there's a lot of child sacrifice, a lot of homosexuality that goes on.

I'm so thankful the Lord only allowed me to do it privately.

Now, do you think that the child sacrifice was something that was really taking place?

I remember there was a lot of hype in the 80s, maybe before you were born.

You look like a young guy. Yeah. There was a lot of hype where there were charlatan

Christians making a ton of money by making all kinds of claims, such as that there was this very vast and wide and numerically large underground of Satanists, and they were sacrificing babies.

A lot of these people, or at least a significant number of them who were prominent, were proven to be charlatans even on that level.

Yeah. Are you talking about the Satanic Panic? Yes, exactly.

Things like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think they blew it out of proportion, but it does happen.

I can't go into details on this, but we have a brother in our church that can attest to such things.

Yes, and there was a very well -known Christian stand -up comic,

Michael Warnke, who made all kinds of claims about being a high priest in the church of Satan, and that was all disproven as being false.

Right, right. Yeah. Well, we are going to our first commercial break, and when we come back we are going to sink our teeth into the main theme, the open -air preaching of Charles Sadden Spurgeon.

And if you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Ed Romine, and I'm pronouncing that correctly, am

I not? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yeah. A lot of people say Romine, like the lettuce.

Right. There's no A in there, so you're exactly right. Right. Well, when we return we'll be discussing the open -air preaching of Charles Sadden Spurgeon, and this was a dissertation of yours, correct?

Correct. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. What was the degree that the dissertation was for? Yes, I have a

Ph .D. Oh, praise God. And so this was your doctoral dissertation? Yes, sir.

Yes, sir. Oh, praise God. Well, as I said, we would love to have your questions via e -mail at ChrisArnson at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter. Don't go away.

We'll be right back with Pastor Ed Romine after these messages from our sponsors. The Mid -Atlantic

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We are now back with our guest today, Pastor Ed Romine, who is

Pastor of Education and Evangelism at First Baptist Church of Provo, Utah. We are discussing his doctoral dissertation theme, which is the open -air preaching of Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

If you have a question of your own, please send it to ChrisAronson at gmail .com.

ChrisAronson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

Before I even start asking you questions about this theme, we do have

Ted in Moundville, Alabama, who has already submitted two questions.

The first is, Mr. Romine's bio on the church website states that he's been a preacher since 2007.

Having done the math, I deduced that this means that he was preaching at the age of 17, and he was preaching less than a year after he became a

Christian. How would he respond to the argument that a Christian shouldn't be preaching so soon after his conversion, and that perhaps no

Christian at the tender age of 17 should be preaching? Well, just guess what, Ted, that would rule out

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, for your information, who was a pastor when he was 16.

But anyway, if you want to respond, and I understand Ted's point, though, because we're not to hastily lay hands upon a new convert, as the

Bible says, and that's in reference to ordaining them. But go ahead. Yeah, so,

I think that's a very fair question. So, notice that it says

I was a preacher since 2007. I was not a pastor.

So, if I could delve into some of my post -salvation testimony, after I got saved, it was so radical for me, and my family, my mom, my brother, my mom and my brother,

I had a sister, too, but she's nine years younger than me, so she doesn't remember this.

They saw a radical change in me. I started carrying a

Bible with me to school, reading it during study hall period, and they noticed that my demeanor was completely changed.

I didn't struggle as much with angry outbursts at them, and I mean, honestly, even more so than dabbling into various parts of the old world.

I was really just an angry human being. I did not like other human beings.

And they saw a radical change in me that if my mom was still alive today, she would attest to.

My brother would tell you that our relationship is a thousand times better.

My preaching was under the very strict oversight of Pastor Roy Ford, and he's just the old -school

Southern Baptist type of the 50s and 60s where if he saw any potential in a preacher boy, he immediately took him under the wing, and he always thought

I was well -spoken ever since he got to know me. So he told me to consider the ministry, and he told me if I ever wanted to preach, all

I had to do was ask him for a Sunday night step away from the pulpit, and he would let me preach.

By the way, is Roy still alive? Yeah, he just turned 80, and he is still pastor.

Because I'm almost certain that name rang a loud bell.

I'm almost certain somebody urged me to interview him, and somehow along the way, that idea slipped through the cracks.

Well, now I'm even more committed and determined to try to find... In fact, you could give me off the air his contact information, and perhaps we can invite him on the show.

Yeah. Well, Roy... Roy is a common name.

Roy Ford is a common couple of names to put together. I wonder if it's even the same

Roy Ford. In fact, that's where I purchased my first car at 18 years old, at the Roy Ford. I'm only kidding.

But that directly answers the question. Tim is his name, right?

That's the question. No, Ted. Ted. Sorry. Sorry, Ted. So Ted, in general,

I agree with you that a teacher of the word should not be a recent convert.

So would I do it that way now? No, but that is what happened to me.

So you've got to understand that even that preaching, though,

I was not officially a teacher, and I was under the strict oversight of Pastor Roy Ford.

And he gave me a lot of tips. I tell people all the time, even though I've been to seminary,

Roy was the one that taught me how to preach. So that would be the answer.

Yes, I did start preaching very soon after conversion. Would I do that now?

No. That is what happened to me. But it wasn't even a Charles Spurgeon situation or an

H .P. Charles situation where I was thrust into the pastoral office.

I didn't know that happened with H .P. Charles. He started pastoring I believe at 16 years old.

Well, Ted has a second question. This would require a much more brief answer because it's totally off topic.

He is asking this from information he saw on your website. What is third wave coffee?

Now, obviously there's an old saying that's very true. You can't buy coffee.

You can only rent it. So I'm hoping and praying that third wave coffee has nothing to do with the third phase after the rental process.

What's funny, Ted, I was on Justin Peters YouTube channel talking about Spurgeon and Complementarianism.

Justin made the joke about how I hope

I wasn't getting into the third wave charismaticism. Third wave coffee though has to do with how you prepare the beans and all that good stuff.

It's a step above Starbucks or a random coffee shop.

It has nothing to do, I'm hoping, also with that coffee that comes out of a certain nasty orifice of a monkey.

Right. There are people that swear by that coffee. I'm not making that up.

That's a real thing. Yeah. Well, something you learn about people when you're in ministry is,

I'm sure you know, people can be very weird sometimes. Well, Ted, thanks for the question.

In spite of your shocking news that you're no fan of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, I'm very tempted to publicly announce

Ted's exact address in Moundville, Alabama, so that my

Reformed Baptist hitman can search him down and rough him up a bit in the parking lot, just as if he was under church discipline in a

Reformed Baptist church. That's right. But I really appreciate that honest question.

I could see how the preaching so soon would have done some bad stuff.

Folks, I just heard a very loud rumble outside. I hope this is not news that I've got to hit the basement.

As I mentioned earlier, there's a tornado warning here. But I will keep conducting the interview until I hear otherwise, or until the roof is torn off my studio here.

What made you say to yourself when it came time for you to write a doctoral dissertation?

I know that the goal of a doctoral dissertation is that you're supposed to write on something that nobody has ever written on before in regard to a doctoral dissertation.

I don't know how possible it is to always accomplish that because there are no doubt millions of people throughout these centuries who have written doctoral dissertations.

But tell us about that, the open air preaching of Charles Edmund Spurgeon. Yeah, so just real quickly, a lot of times the way people work around that is that they will present their doctoral dissertations for the

Ph .D. a different angle on somebody else's position.

So like you take for example all the different shades of nuance on limited atonement, for example, that can be a way that people write a

Ph .D. dissertation because it's still technically a contribution. They're just saying why somebody is wrong.

Does that make sense? Yes. Yeah, so for me, I already mentioned

I did my Bachelor's in Music on my instruments. I have a

Bachelor of Arts in Music, Trombone and Euphonium, and I had every intention of going to get a

Master's in Music after that. Providentially, God shut the doors on that for me.

God opened up the doors for me to go into ministry with a church's blessing.

So I ended up getting the Master of Divinity in Biblical Languages and a

Master of Theology in preaching from the

Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. While I was working on my

Master of Divinity, I ended up meeting a young man who was a freshman at the

College of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary at the time. He got to know me through talking theology.

We found out that we were theologically like -minded. He was very much influenced by the ministry of Ray Comfort.

He said to me, Why don't you come out and do evangelism with me? I responded to him,

Well, I don't think I'd be very good at that because I'm disabled. I just don't see how that would work.

Brother Taylor Callen, the young man, said to me, If you want to come,

I will help you get around. Brother Taylor introduced to me the idea of street evangelism and open air preaching.

I found out through doing it that I love street evangelism, all forms of it.

As I started digging into that world and finding the

Reformed wing of that world, the Calvinistic wing of that world.

No doubt a tiny wing. Unfortunately. Yeah, it's very niche, right?

I got involved in that world. I had already heard of Charles Spurgeon by this time, but somebody had mentioned,

I think it was at a Sports Fan Outreach International, that Bill Adams host.

I went to one of those, and I think somebody had mentioned there, you know,

Charles Spurgeon was an advocate of open air preaching. I remember thinking,

Oh, really? So I looked it up, and lo and behold, there it was.

There was two lectures there. And so I got to doing some digging, and, you know, this is near the coattail ends of what's called the

Young Restless Reformed Movement 2013 -2014. You know,

Mark Driscoll was still big at the time, but, you know, looking back on it, you know, the

YRR movement was coming to an end. So there was a lot of people that wanted to have a

Spurgeonic ministry, and then I started realizing that nobody had written about Spurgeon's open air preaching, but everybody wanted to have a

Spurgeonic ministry. And so I did research on it, and I found out like, wow, this is a big part of Spurgeon's thinking.

And so I ended up doing the MDiv and the THM through Midwestern, and then

I did another THM in pedagogy, which is the art of teaching through Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and then

I did the PhD proper, wrote the dissertation. So I have

Taylor Cowan to credit for getting me into open air preaching, and I think it might have been him that actually told me about Spurgeon too, but my memory fails me on that.

Well, it seems that you have at least five degrees less than I do. I'm only kidding.

I don't have any degrees other than an associate's degree for art in a community college that unfortunately where I was a student before I was saved, so I treated that really just like a three -year party.

It took me three years to get a two -year degree, but anyway. Well, brother,

I'll tell you, I don't think too much about the fact that I have a doctorate. You can see my bed because you can see where I'm at, and guess where my

PhD is? It's under my bed. So I don't think too much about it.

Not that I don't care about the work or anything, but I tell my church family, please don't call me doctor.

I'm just Ed. And then of course they do whenever I don't know something.

Yes. I have to constantly repeat to my audience I am not a doctor. I just play one in my spare time in my neighborhood.

There you go. I have to go to our midway break right now, and folks, the midway break is always longer than the other breaks in the show because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show because the FCC requires of them to localize this show geographically to Lake City, Florida, where they are located.

And they do that with their own public service announcements and other local things. While they do that, we simultaneously air our globally aired commercials.

Please use this time wisely. Write down as much of the contact information as you possibly can for as many of our advertisers as you can so that you can more successfully and frequently respond to our advertisers.

And hopefully, that will mean sometimes you'll buy their products and use their services. But when you can't do that, please at least contact our advertisers and thank them for sponsoring the show because we absolutely positively depend upon our advertisers to exist.

So if you love this show and are grateful that there are people who actually spend their hard earned money to keep us on the air, please thank them for that.

And also send in your questions to Ed Romine at chrisarnson at gmail .com chrisarnson at gmail .com

As always, give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. We'll be right back with Ed Romine. Do not go away.

The Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society presents The Future of Christendom 2023, The Gospel at War, September 15th to the 16th in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, featuring

Dr. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries. We are excited to be including a formal debate in this year's conference.

Dr. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries will be debating Dr. Gregory Coles, author of Single Gay Christian, A Personal Journey of Faith and Sexual Identity.

The debate topic, is gay Christian a biblically acceptable identity for a member of Christ's Church?

So come join us for the sixth Future of Christendom conference. The event will take place at Spooky Nook Sports in Mannheim, Pennsylvania and will run from Friday evening through all day

Saturday with an invitation to the Sunday morning worship service of the Independence Reformed Bible Church. This will be a weekend packed with practical teaching with a theme of the

Gospel at War in many areas of our culture, including government schools, the Supreme Court, missions, feminism, and even the church pulpits.

Head to futureofchristendom .org. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries here.

I'm very excited to announce that my longtime friend Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and I are heading down to Atlanta, Georgia again for the

G3 National Conference that's Thursday September 21st through Saturday the 23rd on a theme that I've been preaching, teaching, writing about and defending in live public debates for most of my life, the sovereignty of God.

I'll be joined on the speaking roster by Steve Lawson, Voti Baucom, Paul Washer, Virgil Walker, Scott Anuel, and Josh Bice, founder of G3 Ministries.

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Also, please do not forget that Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, my very dear friend since 1995, is coming here to Pennsylvania, Lancaster County, to be more specific.

He is being, he is one of the speakers, the keynote speaker at the Future of Christendom Conference, a conference that is being arranged by yours truly and also the

Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society. And not only is there going to be a three -day conference from September 15th through the 17th, that's

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, there is also going to be a debate on Saturday, September 16th, starting at 3 .30

p .m., between Dr. White and Dr. Gregory Coles, who identifies himself as a gay

Christian. The theme of that debate is, Is Gay Christian a Biblically Acceptable Identity for a

Member of Christ's Church? So please, if you would like to attend any of those events, the three -day conference and the debate, go to www .futureofchristendom

.org today, futureofchristendom .org to register. Finally, if you are not a member of a

Christ -honoring, biblically faithful, theologically sound, doctrinally solid church like First Baptist Church of Provo, Utah, no matter where you live on the planet

Earth, I have extensive lists of biblically faithful churches spanning the globe, and I've helped many people in our audience in all parts of the world find churches, sometimes just within a few minutes from where they live, that they didn't even know existed.

So, if you are in that predicament, you don't have a biblically faithful church home, or you are a member, send me an email, no matter where in the world you live, send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com

and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you can send in your questions to Ed Romine on the open -air preaching of Charles Sattin Spurgeon, chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

chrisarnsen at gmail .com. And one of the first things that comes to mind,

Pastor Ed, in regard to this theme of your doctoral dissertation, is that it is an excellent way of not only proving to Reformed people themselves, but especially those who are outside of the

Reformed faith, outside of the church that identifies itself as Calvinistic or believers in the doctrines of sovereign grace.

There is a stereotype that Calvinism would absolutely remove that kind of passion from Christians to not only present and declare and preach and teach the gospel within the four walls of a church, but to actually venture out into the public square and other places outside where many lost people are gathered in order to, in an open -air fashion, preach the gospel, knowing that a notable figure, a hero of the

Reformed faith, who is actually a hero of people outside of the Reformed faith as well, there are vehement anti -Calvinists who are fundamentalists who claim to love

Charles Sattin Spurgeon. I wonder sometimes if they've ever read what he wrote. But it is a good proof that this is not antithetical.

This open -air preaching is not antithetical to Calvinism. Am I right? That is correct.

That is correct. And given to the meat of our show today, my dissertation and the meat of it, the subtitle of my dissertation is called,

The Pedagogy and Practice of Charles Sattin Spurgeon's Open -Air

Preaching. By the way, I absolutely, at a local Polish restaurant,

I absolutely love pedagogy and sour cream. I'm sorry.

Pedagogy is a fancy five -dollar word that means the art of how to teach. The full title of my dissertation is actually,

The Booming Baritone Bell of England, The Pedagogy and Practice of Charles Sattin Spurgeon's Open -Air

Preaching. Pedagogy, as I said, deals with the art of how to teach.

I alluded before the break to the fact that Spurgeon has two lectures dedicated to open -air preaching.

Those lectures are found in volume two of Lectures to My Students. Normally, when you get a publication of Lectures to My Students nowadays, it's one big volume.

But originally it's two volumes. It's found in the second volume, two lectures.

The first lecture is called A Sketch of Its History, Open -Air

Preaching, A Sketch of Its History. The second lecture is called

Open -Air Preaching, Remarks Their Own. First off,

I just think it's significant that that's one of the very few topics that Spurgeon devotes two lectures on in his big ministry book called

Lectures to My Students. If you're not familiar with what

Lectures to My Students is, the first para -church ministry that Spurgeon founded and the one that was dearest to his heart was the

Pastor's College P -A -S -T -O -R -S apostrophe college.

What that was, it was an educational institution in order to train ministers who were too poor financially to go to an official

Church of England institution. He wanted to train men who were already doing the work of the ministry.

In fact, his first ever student, who was named

Medhurst, T .W. Medhurst, he found out on the streets doing open -air preaching.

He thought Mr. Medhurst had a wonderful zeal, but he lacked theological knowledge and precision in his preaching.

So Spurgeon, being young himself, took him under his wing and taught him how to do theology and how to be a good preacher both in the streets and in the pulpit.

Well, with the Pastor's College, every

Friday afternoon Spurgeon would give his own lectures to his students.

They were more casual in nature because it was the end of the week, Friday, and a lot of lectures to my students, if you've ever read it, there's a lot of humor within his lectures.

They're very laid -back, very casual, but it's still very Spurgeonic in the way that he lectures and the way that he outlines things.

The open -air preaching lectures are two of the lectures within the lectures to my students on Friday afternoon.

And the lecture entitled, A Sketch of Its History, is exactly what it sounds like.

So Spurgeon goes back to Old Testament times and traces open -air preaching from the

Old Testament, beginning with what he argues was Noah, who was a preacher of righteousness, according to the

New Testament. So he said Noah was the first open -air preacher that we know of.

Then he traces the Old Testament all the way through Noah, Moses, the prophets primarily.

Then he gets into the New Testament with our Lord Jesus, who in Mark 1 .15

says, Repent for the kingdom of heaven has been at hand. And a lot of people miss the fact, where did he start preaching that?

Well, the text says he was walking along the seashore. So technically that is an open -air preaching event.

An open -air preaching, broadly speaking, is any preaching that happens outside the four walls of a building.

So it can be in a field, it can be on the street proper, it can be on a college campus, it can be on the beach.

I know Ray Comfort does a lot of beach preaching. And the first ever sermon that we know of given by Jesus in Mark was the walking along the seashore saying,

Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And then Spurgeon traces through the

Book of Acts all the open -air preaching that happened in the Book of Acts, most famously

Morris Hill in Acts 17, I believe. And then once he's done with the

New Testament, he goes into the early church, he goes into the pre -Reformation or Reformation periods.

And then he goes into the Puritans, and then he traces his open -air preaching all the way up to his current day in the 19th century.

And what I find most interesting is that he even mentions closer to his present day, the old

Methodist circuit riders that would often preach in the open -air on horseback.

They would go from town to town and preach. And then another thing that's very interesting,

Spurgeon believed that the Reformation fires were stoked by actually

Catholic friars who preached in the open -air. If you want to know more about that, you can actually read the book itself, because I delve into some of the sources by men like J .H.

Merrill and Ogbegun, I don't know if I'm pronouncing that name right because it's

French. But he goes into a lot of sources that in the lecture are unsighted, so a lot of my doctoral work actually goes into giving academic citations to a lot of Spurgeon's references that weren't there in the publication as we have in lectures to my students.

Was Spurgeon referring to, in regard to those Catholic friars who, in his opinion, sparked the

Reformation? I'm assuming they sparked the Reformation because they were in the open -air declaring and preaching something that was contrary to the official dogma of Rome.

Yes. He did say that a lot of the old open -air preachers in the

Catholic Church were actually Dominican friars, who

Spurgeon and other 19th century preachers say actually went against the current

Pope of the day. Well, it's good to know that some of the Dominicans did that, contrary to Johann Tetzel, who was a

Dominican, and he did nothing of the sort, obviously. He was bilking the public financially to raise money to build

St. Peter's Cathedral and was scaring them using tactics of threats that if they did not give alms to the

Catholic Church, their loved ones would be trapped in purgatory. What's the old saying?

A coin in the coffer clings to a sofa in purgatory springs. By the way,

I have to say that when you mentioned that Ray Comfort does a lot of beach evangelism, the first thing that popped into my head was the church lady saying, oh, how convenient

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we have a couple of listeners that have questions for you.

Yeah. Let's see. The first question is,

I understand that the Wesleys and George Whitefield had confrontations with the established

Church of England who opposed their open -air preaching.

Did Spurgeon face the same thing over a century later? No, no, he did not.

The 19th century England under Queen Victoria was pretty free for things like that.

And there was even, I actually bring this up at the end of my dissertation for suggestions for further research.

There were actually clergy of the Church of England, the established Church of the day, that also did open -air preaching.

So some doctoral student ought to roll up their sleeves and take that on as a research project because I couldn't find any documentation of what the

Church of England preaching was like. But to answer your question, 19th century

England was much freer than what Whitefield and Wesley faced, at least what

I would say right now. I'm actually working on a second book on the preaching of George Whitefield.

And so I'll probably be able to delve into that more and give them a better comparative analysis in a year or two.

So just so you know, Brother Chris, because of my CP, I type with this finger.

I've never been able to do the home row keys just because my hands are too stiff.

And for those of you that are just listening, I'm holding up my right corner finger.

And so it takes me a little bit of time to type out anything, whether it's a text message or an article for a journal or whatnot.

You probably still type faster than I do using my two index fingers.

I don't know how to type like people use all ten fingers to type. I only use my two index fingers.

And when I'm texting back and forth with people, especially if they're young, they will return five texts before I even have a chance to respond to their first one.

Well, I'm right there with you. And I'm not as young as I used to be.

I'm in my 30s now. So the real young people of today, they think

I'm old. So I always tell people, age is relative to where you're at. Now the listener was asking about a comparison between the

Wesleys and Whitefields and Spurgeon a century later, where the

Wesleys and Whitefields had opposition to their open -air preaching from the Church of England. Do you know the primary reasons why the

Church of England opposed them? Was it primarily superstition, that there was something unique about the building of a church where they were expected to confine their proclamation of the gospel?

What was the deal with that? I can't remember who it was, but I remember hearing stories that might have been the

Wesleys, where members of the church actually unleashed or opened up the gates where there were herds of cattle and chased them into the areas where possibly the

Wesleys were preaching, just to disrupt the whole thing. I don't know if that's folklore. I don't know if that's folklore or not.

Yeah, yeah. I can't speak to the whole cattle thing. But what

I can say, and I'll be able to, Lord willing, give a more fleshed -out answer later, is that we've got to understand that for those who baptized infants back in the day, they were not baptized.

They were baptized to be a part of a non -conformist group, which this would have been the same.

So the Church of England was the established church of the day.

That meant that they were the state church. Right. And the Wesleys in Whitfield were members of that church.

Right, right. And what you essentially have is the established

Church of England, and you have Roman Catholicism, and then you have what's called the non -conformists.

The non -conformists were Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Methodists primarily.

There were others, like the Quakers, but primarily those groups.

And the reason why they were called non -conformists is because they didn't conform to the religion of the day, the

Book of Common Print, right? And so for them to not be a part of the

Church of England, this was true in Spurgeon's day, but more so in Whitfield and Wesley's day.

You're not only making a theological statement, you're also being a turd bucket politically.

You know what I mean? That is the first time that the phrase, turd bucket, has ever been uttered on this program.

Well, I just said the first thing that came to my mind, so maybe that's why.

It has been included in hate mail to me, personally. Oh, okay.

Well, that was not directed at you, so. Oh, goodness.

But, you know, essentially they would have seen those as going against the grain, being a troublemaker, right?

Right. And so it caused a lot of political pressure, especially for men that were a part of the church that got dejected and now saying, well, you won't let me preach in the established churches.

I'm going to go out because people still want to hear my message. So they were saying, you're going to not allow me to preach the gospel?

I'm going to go against you and I'm going to preach the gospel. And you know what? People still went and heard them preach.

Amen. Hallelujah. So, yes, sir. We have an anonymous listener who says,

I am having a struggle with the Reformed Church, where I am a member, to launch open air preaching events.

It's not that they are technically opposed to such a thing, but there just seems to be apathy and there seems to be a relegation of these things to a much lower level of importance than the preaching that occurs within the gathered assembly in the four walls of our church building.

What do you think are the primary reasons why churches today are not involved in open air preaching?

That's excellent. I think one of the things he already answered for himself, there's apathy, there's perhaps even laziness, or not to slander pastors that aren't involved in it.

Many pastors, especially if they are in growing congregations, they just don't have time themselves and they're waiting for somebody qualified to step up to do that kind of a thing.

But what do you think? In fact, especially in your own experience of having conversations with people, what do you think the most primary reasons churches aren't doing this?

Right. So I like how you gave them the benefit of the doubt to begin with.

I would want to know if this anonymous listener is a pastor or not.

So I'm going to answer this kind of a two -pronged approach. I think a lot of doctrines of grace affirming churches have a functional

Arminianism when it comes to being skittish about the validity of open air preaching.

You'll hear them say, well, it may not be effective, it may push people away.

And if we believe that God has an elect that are drawn by the preaching of the gospel, that ought to give us further emphasis to obey

Romans 10. How would they hear them unless there's a preacher? How would they preach unless they're a saint?

So it's my personal belief that preachers ought to be sent out, commissioned by their local churches to preach the gospel.

That's one thing I wanted to make sure of your opinion on, is that the best of the

Calvinists that I know that are heavily involved in open air preaching do not believe that mavericks should just be going out and doing it without the approval and the call of their own churches.

Right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. One of the things

I would say, if you're not a pastor,

Mr. Anonymous, I'm going to assume you're a man, is that one of the things you can do?

In fact, I think the best thing you can do is be the best church member in the church that's not a pastor.

Be there for every Bible study. Get there early. Get there early before the service.

Be at every prayer meeting. Love the church. Do the work of a pastor.

Then say, hey, brother pastor, I would really like to invite you to come watch me open air preach.

I want you to see where my heart is. You know I love the church.

I want you to see exactly what I want to do.

After seeing it with his own eyes, he or they, if you have a plurality of pastors, are much more likely to either bless your ministry outright and say, keep on doing this, or say to you, hey, brother, we know you love the church.

Here are some ways that we want to bless it, but we want to see these improvements.

Or they could say, hey, brother, we do not think you're called to this ministry as your pastors.

If they say that, because you love your pastors and your local church, accept it.

That doesn't mean you'll never be called to it, but you may not be called to it right now.

We have to go to our final break, brother, and you can pick up where you left off. If anybody has a question, I strongly urge you to send it in immediately, because we're rapidly running out of time.

ChrisArnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Pastor Ed Romine and the open air preaching of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, right after these messages from our sponsors.

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We're back with our guest today, Ed Romine. And Ed, I don't know if you were finished saying what you were saying before we had to interrupt you and go to the final break, but if not,

I'll go to another listener question. Yes, sir, I was for the most part, so we can go to another listener.

It's a good time. Okay, we have another anonymous listener who says, I believe one of the reasons why

Reformed churches may not be so frequently involved in such things as open -air preaching is that, unfortunately, many

Reformed... Yeah, really bad. Really? Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting.

I can hear you perfectly. It might have something to do with the storm. I don't know. Can you hear me now? Okay. Can you hear me?

I can. Yes, sir. Okay, and I just heard a loud thunder clap, so that could be it.

The anonymous person was saying that one of the reasons he or she believes that Reformed churches shy away from open -air preaching is that, unfortunately, many

Reformed churches and pastors do not want to be associated or in any way resemble

Charismatics, Pentecostals, and Arminians, and they are doing the bulk of this.

How do you respond to that? That's an excellent question, and obviously, just because people who disagree with us are dominating something, that shouldn't be a reason for us to retreat from it if it's biblical.

That's right. We should be even more concerned with being a dominant participant in those things.

Right, that's exactly, and that segues well into the second lecture, which is entitled

Remarks Their Own, which I spend a bunch of time in, in the pedagogy section, where Spurgeon just gives practical hints on how to do it, and one of the things that's very pertinent with this question that he says is don't scream your lungs out.

Nobody wants to listen to a raving lunatic, essentially. You want to project your voice and preach with power, but you don't want to be perceived as one who is just mad at the world and hates humanity, and it's like they use an example of a bad open -air preacher,

Jesse Morrell, who seems to delight in telling sinners that they are going to hell.

Just like the Westboro Baptist Church. Right, right. Who unfortunately are professing

Calvinists. Right, confessing 1689ers as well.

That's right. Right, and so in the second lecture,

Spurgeon just gives practical hints, right? Preach with the wind, not against the wind, so that the wind can carry your voice, and preach in a winsome way because you want sinners to come to the

Lord Jesus Christ, and when he says winsome, he's not saying downplay truths of sin and the truths of man's need for repentance and faith, but there was a lot of bad open -air preaching even in his day, and he was counteracting that.

By the way, brother, we've got to have you come back because we're out of time. I'd love to have you do a part two on this topic.

Oh, I would love to, because we didn't even get to the practice section. Sure, we'll have you back.

In fact, I will pick a date with you when I get off the air, and don't forget, folks, the website for my guest's church is fbcprovo .org.

F -B -C for First Baptist Church. Provo, P as in Peter, R -O -V as in directory,

O .org. First Baptist Church of Provo, Utah. Thank you so much, Pastor Ed, for doing such a remarkable job.

I'm excited about continuing this conversation with you. I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write in questions.

Please remember that we need your donations and advertising dollars as soon as possible, so go to ironsharpensironradio .com,

click support, then click click to donate now. I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

Savior than you are a sinner. I look forward to hearing from you and your questions for my guest tomorrow on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.