May 22, 2007 Show with Dr. John MacArthur on “The Truth War” PLUS Phil Johnson

Welcome to Iron Sharpens Iron, the only daily live broadcast in the New York Metropolitan and Greater Long Island area, on which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians have a platform to address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with questions. And next, Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Long Island, New York, Connecticut, and those listening internationally over the internet. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, and today my co-host in the studio with me is Pastor Jim Capo of the Massapequa Church of God.

We have the rare privilege and honor today to interview Dr. John MacArthur. Dr. John MacArthur is a world-renowned radio Bible teacher and author. We're going to be discussing his brand new book, hot off the press, a very provocative and controversial new book, The Truth War, Fighting for Certainty in an Age of Deception.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Dr. John MacArthur of Grace to You Ministries, the number is 631 -321-WNYG, 631 -321-WNYG. If you have family, friends, and loved ones that you'd like to inform about today's program, have them tune in to 1440 AM on the dial if they live in New York or Connecticut, but they can listen anywhere in the entire world over the Internet at www .wnygspiritofny .com.

That's www .wnygspiritofny .com. And this is going to be our only station break coming up right now during this half hour, the first half hour. So take your opportunity now to call your family and friends and tell them about John MacArthur being on today's Iron Sharpens Iron program.

And we'll be right back after these messages, so don't go away. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnsen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron. And as I announced earlier, I'm excited to announce that today we have the rare privilege and honor to have as our guest today Dr. John MacArthur of Grace to You Ministries.

The War Over Truth as a Battle Between God and Satan

Today we are loudly declaring a call to arms. Right now, truth is under attack and much is at stake. Perhaps no one in America is more passionate than John MacArthur about exposing those who are mounting this attack, especially those bringing the assault right into the church.

John MacArthur is the author of over 150 books, including many bestsellers. He is a pastor teacher at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, and president of the Master's College and Master's Seminary.

He is also president of Grace to You, the ministry that produces the internationally syndicated radio program Grace to You, and a host of print, audio, and Internet resources. He authored the notes in the gold medallion award-winning MacArthur Study Bible.

And it is such a great pleasure, Dr. John MacArthur, to have you as our guest for the first time on Iron Sharpens Iron.

Well, thank you, Chris. It's my joy to be with you.

And as I announced earlier, my co-host today on Iron Sharpens Iron is my dear friend, no stranger to our listeners, Pastor Jim Capo of the Massapequa Church of God in Massapequa, Long Island. Good afternoon, Jim.

Good afternoon, Chris.

Dr. MacArthur, tell us who are involved in this war over truth.

Well, you know, I think it's a long war. It's the age-old war. It's the war between the people of God and the people of Satan. It goes back to the garden originally where you've got Satan coming to Eve and saying, You won't die.

God said you'd die. I'm telling you, you won't die. God didn't tell you the truth. I'm telling you the truth. So Satan, who is a liar from the beginning and a deceiver, has always plied his deception and his lies through both demonic and human agents.

And in every generation, every time, in every situation, the faces change, but the powers behind the battle for the truth are always the same. And throughout all history, the people of God have to defend the truth because Satan is going to attack it.

You say in your book, Dr. MacArthur, that a biblical perspective of truth necessarily entails the recognition that ultimate truth is an objective reality. Truth exists outside of us and remains the same regardless of how we may perceive it.

Truth, by definition, is as fixed and constant as God is immutable. That is because real truth, what Francis Schaeffer called true truth, is the unchanged and unchanging expression of who God is. It is not our own personal and arbitrary interpretation of reality.

And you mentioned that some today would say things like that Christians in our generation need to be reminded of these things. Truth is never determined by looking at God's word and asking, what does this mean to me?

That is what many in our day Christians would say when they read the scripture. And you ask, what did the Bible mean before you existed? If you could comment further on that.

What does the Bible mean if I don't exist? What does the Bible mean if I've never been born? What does the Bible mean if I don't bring any of my own experience to it? What does the Bible mean in the sense that what did God intend to say when he gave his word?

This is so basic and yet so lost. When you have a Bible study today, a lot of times it is a pooling of ignorance. What do you think this means? What do you think that means? That is never the way to interpret scripture.

What did God intend scripture to say? To back that up a little bit Chris, you hear so many people talk today about how important it is to understand your culture. We've got to communicate the message in the culture of our day.

Whether it is a grunge culture or whether it is a sophisticated kind of upscale psychologically oriented culture. We've got to find all the cultural cues. And I've always said this, look, there is only one culture that a communicator of scripture needs to master.

And that is the biblical culture. Because understanding the context of the Bible is how you interpret the Bible accurately. We want to master the biblical culture. If I master the biblical culture, then the meaning of the scripture becomes crystal clear to me.

And I can take that meaning anywhere on the planet. I suppose now, we were talking about this yesterday, my books have been translated into 50 different languages. Everywhere from Tagalog in the Philippines to Croatian and Romanian and Finnish and Dutch and on and on it goes.

And I've preached from one end of the world to the other the same biblical messages. I'm no expert on any of those cultures. But I'll tell you this, if I understand rightly the biblical culture, then the word of God becomes crystal clear.

And it transcends all time and all cultures and all nations and all languages. So I think to get at the truth, you've got to get into the discipline of biblical history, biblical context to get a good understanding of what the Bible really means.

That should be the great passion of everyone who teaches and preaches the word of God. And you can always figure out how to get that message across. Because we know enough about the cultures that we live in to find accessible means.

And we have Pastor Capo here in the studio who would like to ask you a question, Dr. MacArthur.

The Clarity of Scripture and the Emergent Church

Pastor John, in your book, and I've read your book, it's a wonderful book, you warn against the attack on the clarity of scripture. It's taking place today within the emerging church movement. Why don't you tell us about that?

Well, tell us about the book and why you wrote it and about this attack on the clarity of scripture and why that's so important.

Well, the modern movement called the emergent or emerging church basically says this. And you're not going to see the first emergent church of New York City. So it's not going to be on the label. But the philosophy behind the emerging church is the scripture is not clear.

It's an attack on what theologians have always called the perspicuity or the clarity of scripture. That is to say that God gave us a Bible so that we could understand. He didn't give it to us to obscure, but he gave it to us to reveal.

So these people in this movement say, well, you know, we're not really sure what the Bible means. This is an accommodation to postmodernism. This is accommodation, accommodating relativism. Everybody's got his own truth.

Everybody's got his own idea. Let's not offend anybody. Let's not be arrogant. We're too humble to say we know what the Bible means. So let's just love Jesus in very vague terms. Let's light a few candles.

Light some incense. Lower the lights. You know, sing a few songs. Open our laptops. Have somebody kind of give us some mild direction in a kind of conversational way. But no preaching of the Bible. No preaching of theology because the Bible's really not clear.

Now, what's really convenient about that, if the Bible's not clear, then really the Bible has nothing specific that you're responsible for in your life. So you can kind of believe what you want. You can live the way you want.

It brings nothing to bear upon what you believe other than very vague things. It brings nothing to bear on how you live. And that's why the emerging church takes no position on homosexuality, no position on premarital sex, no position on other issues that are clearly indicated in Scripture.

So it's a convenient kind of pseudo-Christianity that is no different than old-fashioned liberalism where they got caught up in social issues while denying the gospel.

Now, don't some of the adherents to what is called the emerging church claim to be evangelical?

Yeah, they all do. And that's the subtlety of it. That's the danger of it because this is back to wolves in sheep's clothing, right? That's what makes it effective. Satan always disguises himself as an angel of light.

His ministers are disguised as angels of light. That's the point. And this is what Jude warned us about. Earnestly contend for the faith because these people are going to come in to the church. They're going to creep in unnoticed, Jude says.

They're going to wear all the evangelical labels. And that's the subtlety of it. And, of course, I think, you know, this would be my studied opinion based on looking at church history. There's never been a time since the Reformation when it seemed to me that the bulk of people who call themselves Christians were less interested in the truth.

There's just no... This is part of the legacy of the market-driven church, the seeker church, where everything is minimalized, where everything is oversimplified, where the gospel is reduced down to sort of super simplistic, non-saving terminology.

But I think you have a whole group of people who don't know enough to be discerning. You know, being able to discern truth is simply a function of knowing what the Bible teaches. And if you have an illiterate church, people who don't really know Scripture and they don't know doctrine, they can't discern.

Secondly, they'll have no will to battle for the truth. So it's not an issue. The truth is not important to them. What's important to them is the man-centered approach of ministry, fixing their life, fixing their marriage, bumping them up a few notches on the success scale in this world, making them feel good, telling them they're going to go to heaven, getting rid of their neuroses, you know, going to 12-step programs to get over the things that hold them back.

But if they don't really understand the great profound truths of Scripture that exalt and glorify the gospel and God himself, they're not going to be able to discern the truth, and nor are they going to have a will to defend it.

It's a kind of Christianity that is so self-centered that it has little interest in defending the truth of God. And I think that's the kind of Christianity that's really rapidly expanding in the West.

The Gospel, Discernment, and the Responsibility to Know Truth

Now, this war over truth, then, obviously, this is not an in-house debate on peripheral issues. This is really a war with the enemies of Christ and his cross, isn't it?

Yeah, well, when you have probably the most vocal and most well-known writer in the emerging churches is Brian McLaren, who says nobody's ever gotten the gospel right, we don't have the gospel right now.

So here we are, a church this far from the life of Christ, still he says nobody's gotten it right. The bottom line there is it doesn't matter. If nobody's gotten it right and we don't have it right, then let's be comfortable with never getting it right.

Well, it seems absurd to me to take that position. If they have a Bible that they interpret literally, the apostle Paul obviously believed that people should know what the gospel is, and he warned those with the anathema that brought to the disciples a different gospel other than the one he had preached.

That's absolutely correct. It is such an aberrant idea that the Bible is unclear about everything. My conclusion is the only person who could think that is a person who is without the Holy Spirit and therefore, like a natural man, cannot understand the things of God that are clear to the one who is regenerate and possesses the Holy Spirit.

Or that this person doesn't want the Bible to be clear because if they acknowledge that the Bible is clear, then they're going to have to change their life. I think it's a perfect scenario. You can go to an emerging church, you can smell the incense and see the candles and mill around and have kind of an experience that's very vague with Jesus and then go out and live any way you want to live.

We do have a caller on the line. We have Don in Lindenhurst, Long Island. Welcome to Iron Sharpens Iron, Don. I'm sorry, I cannot hear Don. Yes, now I can hear you, Don.

You're very faint.

Yeah, well now I can hear you, Don.

Okay.

I subscribe to the journal and I love it, and I just wonder in the whole concept of the perspicacity of Scripture, that why do, in your view, why do we have so many denominations? Like even the broadest ones, the Catholic, the Orthodox, Evangelical, and then within Evangelicalism we get down to the different particular denominations.

And certainly I have my own convictions as I know you do. But I would love to hear you address that if you wouldn't mind. I'll go off the phone.

Well, thank you for the call, Don. By the way, Don, for calling in today, you're going to be receiving a free copy of The Truth War by Dr. John MacArthur, compliments of Thomas Nelson Publishers. You're also going to be receiving a free leather-bound copy of the MacArthur Study Bible for calling in today.

But Dr. MacArthur, did you hear Don's question about it?

Yeah, I sure did, and it's a very good question. And I think the simple way to answer that question is there are a lot of quote-unquote so-called denominations that aren't truly Christian to start with.

They've got the gospel wrong, and that disqualifies them. But among those that are true to the gospel, there is not that much variation. There is a traditional reformational doctrinal strain that you can take all the way back to the apostles.

You can follow it all through church history. It moves all the way through church history, even through the Dark Ages. It explodes in a blazing light through the Reformation, and it continues to today.

I don't believe anything different than the apostles believed, than the early church fathers believed, who were understanding scripture rightly, than the reformers believed and the Puritans believed. Denominations typically come out of very often ethnic roots or special movements.

The Methodists come from a unique movement led by John Wesley in England. Presbyterians come from the Scottish-Irish reform tradition. They all land in America, so we have those kind of diverse things and so forth.

And Baptists have their origin, as we well know, Roger Williams and others here in America. But many of them tended to be sort of ethnic. Others tended to be distinct. Obviously, the Baptists were distinct because of baptism, immersion being the form that they believed was a biblical form.

But in their pure form, those denominations started out with an accurate understanding of the gospel. And they simply came from various historic points, various locations. They all kind of landed here.

Through the years, however, many of them have virtually abandoned the gospel, which originally gave them their start.

Well, in fact, if every Christian on the planet perfectly understood all that was in scripture and perfectly agreed with one another, it would actually disprove what the scripture says about men being fallible and sinful and so forth.

Yeah, but I do think that the true gospel is believed by all Christians. And that would include the Trinity, the deity of Jesus Christ, his virgin birth, sinless life, substitutionary death, literal bodily resurrection, ascension, intercession in heaven, and second coming in full glory.

And most of scripture is pointing to those very factors. So on the issues that matter, there is unity. It has to be unity on gospel issues among true Christians.

Yes, agreed 100%. And Pastor Capo has another question for you.

The Sufficiency of Scripture and the Limits of Human Knowledge

Yes, on page 22 of the book, along the lines of what we're speaking about now, you said, this is not to suggest, of course, that we have exhaustive knowledge, but we do have infallible knowledge of what scripture reveals as the spirit of God teaches us through the word of God.

Would you comment on that?

Yeah, what I mean by that is the Bible is not exhaustive in the sense that God's knowledge is infinite. That is, it knows no limit. The Bible is limited to 66 books. We don't have exhaustive knowledge.

We don't have revealed to us everything that God knows. There are a lot of things that maybe we think, boy, I wish God had said more about this or more about that. It's not exhaustive knowledge, but it is accurate knowledge.

It is inerrant, infallible knowledge. What the Bible says is true, and it is all the truth that God desired to reveal to us, sort of like having all things that pertain to life and godliness. It is sufficient to save.

It is sufficient to sanctify. It is sufficient to comfort. It is sufficient to instruct in the matters of holiness. It is sufficient to give the hope of glory. It is all we need. And as evangelicals and, of course, as true Christians, it's all that anybody needs.

And so when we talk about the truth, that's all we've got. That is all we have. We have nothing but the Bible, nothing else. And to get that right and to be faithful to that and to defend it and to proclaim it is what it means to be a Christian.

Now, you sum up the message coming from the postmodernized evangelicals and the emergent church in your book. You say this is their viewpoint. Certainty is overrated. Assurance is arrogant. Better to keep changing your mind and keep your theology in a constant state of flux.

Now, how does that square with what the Bible says about our ability to know the truth? I mean, you just stated how the Bible is sufficient for all things pertaining to life and godliness. Does the Bible, in fact, indicate that we can know with certainty what it teaches and what it means?

Not only can you know, you are responsible to know. And you are held accountable for what the Bible teaches. The idea that this is all vague and that you need to embrace uncertainty counter to the intention of God in his revelation as to be non-Christian.

It is, I guess you could say, a foundational heresy to say that God has spoken but he mumbled. We have no idea what he is talking about here. So let's not draw any rigid conclusions. It is to say that God did a terrible job of communicating his message to us.

And we are not really responsible for it. When the truth of the matter is, God holds us accountable even for what is manifestly obvious about him in creation. But when you have the word of God, you become far more accountable for the knowledge of the word of God which you reject.

Amen.

Wasn't it ironic, Dr. MacArthur, that some within the so-called intellectual intelligentsia of modern evangelicalism would revel in glory in having less factual knowledge about anything?

It's really amazing. In the book I begin with an illustration of Robert Christen Bell in Chicago who said we used to think we knew what the Bible meant and the whole world was black and white. And now since we are not sure what it means, everything is in living color.

It's like they were all of a sudden liberated by ignorance.

This seems to be a very serious war. It seems to be really undervalued downplayed, if you will, by many looking on at this war. Even within evangelicalism, they look at those who are seriously criticizing this movement, the emerging church in particular, as being nitpicking and so forth.

Nothing can be farther from the truth.

Correct?

No, I think what's interesting from my standpoint is because I want to defend the truth, I'm looked at as the enemy. Right. That's how deep-seated this indifference to the truth is.

Yeah, agreed. Dr. MacArthur, if you could also, I want to make sure that our listeners, when they leave today's broadcast, I know you could only be with us for the first half hour, unfortunately, and we eagerly look forward to having you back on the program as soon as possible, but I really want you to leave our listeners with what you want most engraved in their hearts and minds when they leave today's broadcast.

Contending for the Faith and Defending God's Word

Well, I think what the message of this book is, Jude 3, earnestly contend for the truth, the faith delivered to the saints. That's all we have. All we have is the Word of God. We have to defend it. We have to stand up for the truth, the truth written, the truth incarnate.

The honor and glory of Christ is at stake. Psalm 138 .2, God has exalted His Word above His name. We must become lovers of the truth, defenders of the truth in every sense. And I just, you can't let Christian people think that there's anything more important than God's truth, God's Word rightly understood, rightly proclaimed, and rightly lived.

That's all we've got, as I said. That's it. God only gave us His Word, His scripture, and to defend that Word and to proclaim that Word is our calling.

Yes, and then Jude's words that you quoted would be absolutely meaningless if these scriptures were as ambiguous and cloudy as those waging war against us in this truth war claim.

Yeah, great point, Chris. Why would we be called to defend something that wasn't clear? Great.

In fact, we're going to be taking one more caller before you go off the air, Dr. MacArthur. If you could just hold on one second. We have a caller on the line, and the name is Lou in Lindenhurst. Oh, Farmingdale, Long Island.

I'm sorry, Lou in Farmingdale, Long Island. Welcome to Iron Sharpens Iron. Do you have a quick question for Dr. MacArthur?

Yes, very quick. How are you doing, Dr. MacArthur?

Good, Lou.

Question.

I work with a Catholic lady, and she started reading. I've witnessed her before and everything, trying to encourage her to get to the scriptures, because the Catholic Church has encouraged it. She's been reading Eugene Peterson's The Message.

Now, is that distorted completely, or is it something I should encourage her to read, even if she doesn't want to read the Bible?

Well, you know, you could probably get the gospel if you read that, but it is distorted in so many places. It is a caricature. It is his spin on what the Bible means, not the Bible. Right. And so it's got a lot of problems.

I saw an endorsement covered by J .I. Packer.

Pardon?

I saw an endorsement, and I looked through the contents.

Yeah, yeah. I don't know why anybody would endorse it. It's Eugene Peterson's personal, private paraphrase and interpretation of scripture, and there are a lot of very serious problems. But as I said, if you're reading John 3 .16 or Romans 3, the truth might come through.

It's a bad place, in one sense, to send somebody who needs the truth, though, because if they become Christians through that means, it's going to be hard for them to let go of that, and they're going to be exposed to things that aren't accurate.

Well, thank you so much, Dr. John MacArthur. We eagerly look forward to having you back on the Iron, Sharp, and Zion program in the near future.

Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Jim.

Well, God bless you. Thank you for joining us. And if you're on the line, you can hold on because we do have...

Thank you for using print.

We have the executive director of Grace to You Ministries, Dr. John MacArthur's ministry, Phil Johnson, is going to be our guest during the second half of today's program to continue the discussion on The Truth War, Fighting for Certainty in an Age of Deception.

The number to join us on the air is 631 -321-WNYG. 631 -321-WNYG. Don't go away. We'll be right back. Those of you who are listening now, the first half of our program featured world-renowned radio Bible teacher and author, Dr. John MacArthur, who was addressing his brand new book, The Truth War.

And it's hot off the press, this book, The Truth War, Fighting for Certainty. Certainty in an Age of Deception. And right now, we are also honored and privileged to have with us the executive director of Grace to You Ministries, Dr. MacArthur's radio and tape ministry, Phil Johnson.

And Phil Johnson, it is a rich joy to have you on the program today.

Thank you, Chris. Good to be here.

And this is your second time as a guest here on Iron Sharp Desire, and we look forward to many more opportunities to interview you. And we're continuing the topic of The Truth War with Phil Johnson, and also co-hosting this half of the broadcast as well.

In the studio with me is Pastor Jim Capo of the Massapequa Church of God. Tell us something. I want to comment about one of the callers that called in earlier, Phil, who brought up the fact that if we really can believe in the perspicuity of Scripture, which seems to be the central theme of The Truth War, the clarity of Scripture, why do we have so many different views of what truth is in what is called Christianity?

As Dr. MacArthur very correctly said, that within authentic biblical Christianity, there is comparatively little difference. We all believe in the same gospel, especially. But why do you think there is still, though, within even conservative evangelical orthodox denominations within our faith, we still have very radical different opinions on things like the Calvinist-Arminian debate, eschatology, and...

Baptism.

Baptism, and the sacraments, and so forth, the ordinances. If you could just comment on that, Phil.

Yeah, there are several reasons for that, I think, Chris. One, you named already, is our own fallenness makes us... It affects our minds, it affects our understanding, and it also affects our willingness to receive the truth.

And so there are some things that people don't believe simply because they don't want to. It's not always that the Scripture isn't clear, but simply that they don't believe it. Also, when we say we believe in the perspicuity of Scripture, that doesn't mean every single detail of Scripture is equally clear, right?

In fact, I think in the first chapter of the Westminster Confession of the Faith, it says that... it acknowledges that not everything in Scripture is equally plain in and of itself. Scripture itself acknowledges that, in 2 Peter 3 .16, that there are some things that are hard to be understood.

But the perspicuity of Scripture says that everything that is essential for us to know in order to be redeemed, in order to go to heaven, everything is so clearly set forth in Scripture that not only learned people, but even unlearned people, just by using ordinary means, can attain to a sufficient understanding of the truth.

And that's really the point we're making. No one is saying that everything in Scripture is absolutely crystal clear. There are areas where we disagree. There are things that are not quite so clear. But everything that's essential, everything that's vital to the gospel message, is absolutely clear, or sufficiently clear.

Amen, I agree. And Dr. MacArthur earlier was saying that this emerging or emergent church is really just another name for liberalism. Do most of those who are in the forefront of this emerging church, do they at the very least believe in the exclusive claims of Christ and Christianity?

Or are they basically opening up eternal life for all in any religion?

You know, it would be hard to quantify, because trying to pin down the emerging church movement is very difficult. There are guys who were at the forefront of founding the movement who now say, look, we don't want to wear that label.

We don't want to be known as emerging. And so it's really, it would be impossible to really do any kind of numerical survey to find out what people in the emerging church movement commonly believe, or even whether a majority of them would believe in the exclusivity of Christ.

The problem is, within the movement itself, there's a very large and noisy group who are arguing against the exclusivity of Christ and other issues like that. And what you end up with is this muddled perspective of truth that sort of gives everyone the impression that, you know, ultimately these things don't matter too much, because after all, it's just not all that clear to us.

Phil, the emerging people, they refer to themselves as evangelicals, so they want to be considered part of evangelicalism. We would dispute that. But my question is, how much of an impact are they actually having on evangelicalism?

Are they making inroads?

I think they are. I mean, just from the people I rub shoulders with and seminary students I meet, I don't know of a single seminary-age guy who's not at least intrigued by the movement and interested in what they're saying and doing and asking themselves, you know, is there something here we need to pay attention to, something we need to adopt and adapt?

So, yes, they will have an influence. I think the comparison with liberalism, liberal theology, and the modernist movement that infused liberalism into the evangelicalism of 150 years ago is an apt comparison.

The kind of thinking behind the emerging church movement is usually referred to as post-modernism. But I would argue that really it has more in common with modernism than it does with Christianity, and it's not really the opposite of modernism.

It's just the next step after modernism. I often refer to it as modernism. 2 .0.

Yes, well, I just interviewed last week a local pastor here on Long Island, Pastor Ron Glass of Wading River Baptist Church, and he was doing a program on the emerging church as well, and he was lamenting that the college, a very well-known evangelical Bible college in Pennsylvania, which will remain nameless, which has its roots in fundamental Baptist circles, he was saying that this college where his children go, at least one of his children go, the professors, at least a couple of them, were strongly recommending to their students, leave whatever church you may be in locally and go to these emerging churches.

Yeah, I'm afraid that's a common problem. In some ways, you know, what they're doing in the emerging church is not really all that foreign to what some of the leading fundamentalists in the fundamentalist movement were doing just 20 and 30 years ago.

There's a pragmatism at its core. You know, the idea is that you do whatever is necessary to reach people at the level where they are, and it's more concerned with methodology, oftentimes, than it is with the actual message.

And it's really the fruit of, you know, probably several decades of fundamentalist and evangelical compromise on some very important issues.

And we're going to be going to a break. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Phil Johnson regarding the new book by Dr. John MacArthur, The Truth War, a book which was edited by Phil Johnson, Phil Johnson, the director of Grace to You Ministries and also the editor of most of Dr. MacArthur's books, is our guest.

And you can join us by calling at 631 -321-WNYG, 631 -321-WNYG. And I want to remind Lou and Farmingdale who called during the first half hour, I think I forgot to tell you, Lou, you are also going to be getting a free copy of the book, The Truth War, compliments of our friends at Thomas Nelson Publishers, and a free copy of a genuine leather MacArthur study Bible, thanks to the publishers of the New American Standard Edition, the Laughlin Foundation, and also to our premier sponsor, Dan Buttafuoco of Buttafuoco Associates.

We'll be right back after these messages. Join us on the air at 631 -321-WNYG. Welcome back. This is Chris Arms, and your host of Iron Sharpens Iron. And we are continuing our theme today on The Truth War, Fighting for Certainty in an Age of Deception.

During the first half of today's broadcast, we had John MacArthur, the author of that book, and during the second half of today's broadcast, we have with us Phil Johnson, the executive director of Grace TV Ministries.

We do have a caller on the line for you, Phil. We have Anna Hilda in Bayshore, Long Island.

Dear God, and I always, I hear your program every day. Oh, thank you. And I thank the Lord, you know, because there's so much, and I always pray that the Lord, you know, rebuild through His word, you know, everything, because, you know, I know that there's a lot of things, you know, going on, even with the Da Vinci Code, and, you know, and I'd rather go through the Bible, and I ask always the Lord to bless the program, because, you know, everything comes real clear through the word.

And may God bless brother MacArthur and everything. I have a study Bible, which is very good.