June 12, 2019 Show with R. C. Sproul Jr. on “Growing Up (with ) R. C.” Truths I Learned About Grace, Redemption & the Holiness of God

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Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century Gospel Minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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

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

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have a view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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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.

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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth. We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 12th day of June 2019.

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On December 14th, 2017, many of us lost a modern -day

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Christian hero, and that hero was R .C. Sproul, the founder of Ligonier Ministries.

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Well, my guest today not only lost a hero of his own, but he also lost his own father, R .C.

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Sproul. And our guest today, if you haven't guessed already, is R .C. Sproul Jr. And this is the first time he's been on the program since 2010, almost to the day.

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And it is my honor and privilege to welcome you back after nine years to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, R .C.

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Sproul Jr. Thank you, Chris. It's good to be with you. And today we are going to be discussing R .C.

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Sproul Jr.'s book, Growing Up With R .C., Truths I Learned About Grace, Redemption, and the

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Holiness of God. Before I even go into the book, R .C., I know that it's already been two years, but people differ in the way and the length of time that they grieve and the intensity with which they grieve.

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So I just want you to let us know how you are doing after the passing of your father and how the rest of your family are coping with this enormous loss.

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Well, I think overall we're doing quite well. We have the blessing of knowing that he's in a better place and the blessing of the memories and all the things that he's poured into us.

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And honestly, writing the book was very powerful in helping me to deal with that loss and to sort of focus in on the blessing rather than the loss.

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And that's sort of an approach that I like to take, that as long as we remember that we're due only

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God's wrath, then even when we lose a blessing, our calling is to remember that we had a blessing that we weren't owed.

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And that's how I look at the loss of my father. I'm glad that I had him and glad that I have the memories of him and glad, of course, that I'm going to be going to him one day.

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Amen. And, you know, that phrase is an often repeated phrase, he or she is in a better place now.

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And it's such a reason for great rejoicing, knowing that when it's said about your dad, there is just no question.

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I mean, you're talking about a saint of God that has been used incalculably to not only bring the lost to salvation through his audio and video and writing, the preaching and teaching of the

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Word of God, but also even to draw Christians into deeper truth, more biblically orthodox truth.

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And it is just staggering. None of us, I don't think, on this planet, in fact,

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I know, and none of us will know while we are here, the extent of the powerful impact your dad has had upon the body of Christ and upon the world.

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Well, I'm blessed to hear that often. You know, people are not able to speak those kinds of words to him.

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And so they tell me, oh, your father had such a powerful impact on me. He really shaped who I am. He really formed my theology.

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And I have the privilege of being able to respond, me too. Amen. It is a blessing.

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And one of the things that I wanted to do in the book was sort of connect that common blessing that so many people have had from him with the more specific blessing

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I have as a son and to show how the two are profoundly related. If you listen to my dad, read my dad, watch him, you can tell there's a level of genuineness in him, a level of sort of grasping these biblical truths in a more visceral, tangible way.

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You know, for him, theology was never an academic exercise. It doesn't mean he wasn't incredibly smart.

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He certainly was, but it wasn't, you know, God wasn't someone that he put under his microscope.

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God was someone that he clung to, and I got to watch that in real time my whole life.

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Amen. Yes, one of the great gifts he had, which people like me, who have very few brain molecules left in their skull, he had this gift of taking very deep and profound and mysterious truths.

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He might have started off a lecture or a sermon that you might start to get a little worried at first because he is using very large words and quoting from people that you don't really know who they were.

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But then all of a sudden, he gradually is breaking this down. So your average person like me could understand what he's saying and then fall in love with what he's saying.

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Yes, yes, and that's very, very much so. You know, one of the stories that I tell in the book, and really the basic format of the book, is that each chapter is an account of a particular conversation that I had with my father, many of them me growing up, a few of them after I was grown.

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But sort of highlighting the context of the conversation and how what he said to me reflected his character and ultimately reflected the character of our

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Heavenly Father. But in telling these stories, I mentioned how so many people think that the key to my father's ability that you described was that he must have had this massive file cabinet full of illustrations.

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Like, you know, he spent all his days reading old issues of Pulpit Helps magazine and sort of almost connected these stories that he collected to particular theological points, and that's how he taught this book.

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Not true at all. Not true at all. What my dad did, it wasn't that he thought in the abstract and then said, okay, what can

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I find concrete to illustrate this abstract thought, but instead he lived in the concrete theologically.

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So that in the moment that whatever event that he uses the story about, in that moment he was thinking of these theological truths because that's always what he's thinking about.

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So it's almost an inside -out or an inverse kind of relationship between the illustration and the point illustrated that I think made it so powerful.

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In fact, I want to remind our listeners that after this program is over, if you want to look up a memorial broadcast or a tribute broadcast to the late

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R .C. Sproul that I conducted on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, where I aired an interview, the only interview that I ever had the opportunity to have with him, and then

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I had conversations with friends of his and also those who were powerfully and incalculably blessed by him, go to the

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Iron Trip and Zion Radio website and go to the past shows podcast and in the search engine just type in Sproul, S -P -R -O -U -L, and that will come up among other things, but that should be one of the primary links that you will find.

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And it was such an honor, such a deep and profound and amazing honor for me to interview your father.

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And in fact, one of the things that is a precious gift that your dad gave me was an endorsement for this radio program.

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I worked years ago part -time for Calvary Press Publishing and one of the tasks they gave me was to get commendations for books that they either had newly in print or that they brought back into print.

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And Ligonier Ministries was very careful and strict in guarding your dad from just haphazardly and too freely writing these things, these endorsements.

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So after I interviewed your dad, I was not all that confident that I would get an endorsement or a commendation, and I asked his secretary, do you think you could ask

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Dr. Sproul if he would write a commendation for my show if he truly enjoyed his time?

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And after I got off the phone with her, I just forgot about it, never really thought that I was going to hear back, and then all of a sudden

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I get a phone call from your dad's secretary and she said, Dr.

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Sproul has written your commendation, but he doesn't use a computer. Do you want me to mail it to you, or do you want me to scan it and email it to you?

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And I said, scan it and email it to me! Because I didn't want that thing getting lost in the mail. And it's one of those commendations that I proudly adorn my website with, and I am just blown away.

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Well, Chris, I've got to tell you something that you may not know, a little peek behind the curtain. Whoever you spoke to, if it was my father's assistant

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Maureen, she also does not have a computer and does not have email. When she offered to do that, she had to pass it on to someone a little bit younger and a little bit less friendly in technology to get that sent to you.

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And one of the other, just very quickly, funny moment in my life with your dad,

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I had been given the task of getting your dad to endorse a booklet that Calvary Press brought into print called

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Heaven, a World of Love by Jonathan Edwards. It was a chapter out of a larger volume by Edwards.

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And I once again was having a little bit of difficulty going through the main course of folks there at Ligonier.

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So one day when I was in Manhattan, where your dad was speaking at Calvary Baptist Church in Manhattan, when everybody got up to sing,

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I noticed that your dad, after he had finished speaking, ducked out the back, and I'm saying, he's going to the men's room.

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So I ran into the hallway, and I was chasing your dad in the hallway, Dr. Sproul, Dr.

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Sproul! And he said, if you want to talk to me, you've got to come in here. And he went into the bathroom, and I actually spoke to him about the booklet while he was standing at the urinal.

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Hopefully without his mic on. No, he did not. And about two weeks later, we got in the mail his endorsement for Heaven, a

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World of Love. So just a brief little comedy relief there. But you, in the beginning of your book, you start the book with an admission of your recent transgressions, and you don't gloss over them, you don't make excuses for them.

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And I would like you to, at least in this initial part of the program, say whatever you would like to say about that.

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So this isn't the primary thing looming around in the minds of the listeners. And then we can go on to more of the meat of the book, about your relationship with your father.

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Sure. Well, I'm happy to do that. Of course, I was happy to not just include that story, but lead with it.

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And there are a couple of reasons for that. One, you sort of alluded to, and it seemed kind of silly to me to not do so, to hope that no one else noticed this elephant in the room would just be plain foolish and useless.

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I actually had someone give me that counsel. They said, oh, I don't think you should include this.

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Anybody who knows about what happened either won't forgive you, despite you telling about it, or has already forgiven you.

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And anybody who doesn't know about it doesn't need to know about it. Well, my perspective was,

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I need everybody to know about it, because it's a story about God's grace. Amen.

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If I learned anything from this event, or in case anybody doesn't know what the event is, the chapter begins with this real historical scene where I'm being led into a courtroom.

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My hands are in shackles, and I'm about to be arraigned for drunken driving from the night before.

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I have no memory whatsoever still to this day of that night, which is a pretty good indication that I was pretty good and guilty.

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I don't remember what happened that night, but I know enough to know

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I failed all my tests, and like I said, I was guilty. So it begins with me walking into this courtroom and deals with where my head was at that day, what was

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I thinking about, and what I kept coming back to was what I've always said before this happened, that the answer to every problem is repent and believe the gospel.

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And that's what I needed to be doing. I needed to repent, and I needed to be believing the gospel. But I also realized that day that so many people have this perspective that God's grace is great and powerful and sweeping and absolutely covers all of our great sins that we committed before we come to faith.

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And we recognize that sanctification is not complete until we die, but our expectation is that our sins after our conversion will be relatively small and minor ones.

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And I said in the chapter, and the reason we think that is because we're so unfamiliar with the Bible. Because the

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Bible is just chock full of stories of people who have been regenerated, people who are indwelled by the

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Holy Spirit, people who have confessed their dependence on the finished work of Christ alone, falling into some very grievous sins.

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Now, none of this, of course, justifies the sins. Paul says, should we sin all the more that grace might abound?

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And he says, of course not, or by no means, or may it never be. And he's absolutely right.

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But the reality is, you know, the difference between my sin and so many others is that mine is public.

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And because of that, it's not that I'm bitter about that. Rather, it's an opportunity for me to go and say to the world, hey,

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Jesus died for sinners like me. My sins were atoned for, even those that I have yet to commit.

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Who knows? I may have more coming up. I don't know. You know, that are big and famous.

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I know I have more small ones. I may have more big ones. I don't know. But I do know this. I do know that Jesus died for me.

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And I want everybody who's reading this book and who's listening to our conversation,

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Chris, I want them, I want the people who are afraid, who are under the oppression of the devil, who's telling them, you're not good enough to be forgiven.

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I want to tell them, hey, none of us are, which is the whole point.

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Grace is not something we earn. Grace is something we give despite us not earning it, doing the very opposite.

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And so if you're under the weight, please come out, confess, come open, let it be, brought out into the open, and rejoice in the grace of God.

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So, you know, I look back at this. It's a shameful thing. It's an embarrassing thing. It's difficult to measure all the things that I've lost because of this sin.

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But what I have gained is a deeper appreciation for the grace of God and my need for it.

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And I'm grateful for that. And, you know, the second point about why this story is in here is because it's so part and parcel of the whole book.

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I describe it this way. I want this book to begin with grace. I want it to end with grace.

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I want it to be grace all the way through because that's who my dad was. That's who my dad was.

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And this is what I mean by theology being real. I actually have a, and I don't want to, you know, mess up your schedule.

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No, no. I want you to speak as freely and at any length that you choose when you're responding to my questions.

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Okay. Well, you know, before my introductory chapter, there's a foreword.

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And I have a foreword written by my friend, Tolian Javidian, who has also had a very public scandal.

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And I've had multiple people just shocked and aghast that I chose

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Tolian to do this. And my response to them is, I couldn't have chosen a better person to do it.

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And he wrote what may be the best part of the book in writing this foreword, because what he talked about is this very point, that we think that sinners are, or we think of sin as a doctrine that we understand.

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We're all willing to admit that we're depraved. We're just not willing to admit anything that our depravity has encouraged us to do and that we've done.

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We're sinners, but we never sin, basically, in the church, which is just terrible. So I wanted to be able to emphasize this truth.

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And it goes to what you said, Chris, about my father. It's not just that his gift was explaining difficult things.

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There's a lot of that in what he did, and there's a danger there. I think there's a lot of people who love my father because, in a manner of speaking, he could be you.

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This was never his intention nor his goal, but he could be used to tickle ears, not like some soft, weak preacher that just says, hey, happy days, happy days.

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But in this sense, the nature of that temptation is connected to Paul's warning about knowledge popping up.

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When you listen to R .C. Sproul and you learn those new words and you learn the interconnectedness of the ideas, the doctrines of grace, and you learn the history that your neighbors in the pew don't know, the devil's right there telling you, aren't you something?

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You are so clever. You are so smart. You're so much better than those ignorant Christians over there.

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And it puffs us up. But what he wanted and what he labored for was, again, that this would affect not just our brains but our hearts, that we would come to understand not just the doctrine of total depravity, but that we would understand that we are sinners in need of grace, that we would understand that we weren't dead in our trespasses and sins, that we would understand that we're still in the midst of a great battle between the old man and the new man, between the flesh and the spirit.

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So that's why that's there, and I'm really glad for the decision and grateful to have the opportunity to say it.

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Amen. I want to also give a plug to a ministry that helped me enormously.

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I share with you a past of sin that became quite scandalous in my church and in my town.

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I was rescued from the sin of drunkenness, habitual drunkenness, to a very serious and extreme level.

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And thanks be to God, I was put under church discipline, and that actually saved my life.

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And I enrolled myself into a ministry in Boone, North Carolina, called

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Hebron Colony Ministries. And I just want to shout the praises of Hebron Colony Ministries to people listening.

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I always do whenever I get the opportunity to. That's hebroncolony .org.

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That's H -E -B -R -O -N colony .org. I know that some people pronounce that Hebron. But I hope that any of you listening who are struggling with enslavement to drunkenness, whether you are a man or a woman,

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Hebron Colony is for men only, but they do have a sister ministry in Santee, South Carolina, called

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Grace Home. In fact, a member of the former church where I belonged recently graduated from the sister ministry,

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Grace Home. And I was so thrilled to find out that she is rejoicing as someone freed from that addiction and that enslavement.

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But hebroncolony .org is the website. I just wanted to throw that in there because I am so,

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I still, every time I think about that ministry,

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I thank them for, in part, saving my life. Well, absolutely, and obviously we all need to stop and thank our

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Lord for saving our eternal souls. I mean, I'm reading your story and just praising God for His grace in your life.

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It's wonderful. Amen. I want to also now give our email address for anybody listening who would like to ask a question of R .C.

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Sproul Jr. regarding his life growing up with the world -renowned

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R .C. Sproul. And the book specifically, again, is Growing Up With R .C., Truths I Learned About Grace, Redemption, and Holiness, and the

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Holiness of God. Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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And please, 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

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USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. One thing that I want to ask you about,

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I believe I have an idea of why you titled the book this way, but I'd like you to explain it in your own words.

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Growing up, in parentheses, with R .C. And I know that must have something to do with the fact that you share your dad's name.

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Yes. I'm one of those guys, Chris, that tries to be far too creative and ends up fuzzing things up.

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I think myself far too clever, and that's the gist of it, that it's both a story of growing up with my father, but it's also the story of growing up as an

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R .C. So it's growing up R .C., and it's also growing up with R .C. So that's what the parentheses are there for.

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Part of what that means is there's some discussion, not a lot, but there's some discussion in the book because I get this question a lot about what it's like to have my dad for a father or the whole fishbowl thing, or the pastor's kid problem, and I address some of that and try to do so again openly and honestly.

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So that's part of how that title came together. And one thing I want to do, because I view a couple of these people extremely highly, not that everybody who wrote an endorsement also should not be thought of very highly,

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I just don't know them, but Johnny Erickson Tata, who I had the pleasure of meeting, and I'm looking forward to hopefully interviewing her one day.

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She's one of the people on my list that I have not yet interviewed that I would love to interview.

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I have, though, had a wonderful meeting with her years ago, and she has also written commendations for the aforementioned

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Calvary Press Publishing, where I work part -time. But she says, Johnny Erickson Tata, founder and CEO of Johnny and Friends, she says,

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Christians are a work in progress. We are all broken and require redemption, and not just when we first believe.

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Stories like R .C. Jr.'s show us the path to healing and restoration, and often how that path guides us along so that we understand

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God's truth as it really is, especially when shared with compassion through the touch of a loved one like R .C.

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Jr.'s father. There's an amazing story of a wise father and a searching son who both understand the power of grace to change and heal.

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I highly recommend this wonderful book. And then one of my favorite guests, who I have had the privilege to interview on a number of occasions,

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Dr. George Grant, pastor of Parish Presbyterian Church in Franklin, Tennessee. And if you're listening,

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Dr. Grant, I am, God willing, going to be in Franklin, Tennessee at the end of this month, if things go according to my plans.

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I don't know if they're going to go according to God's plans or not. But Dr. Grant says,

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R .C. Jr. has long been my friend and yoke fellow. His father has long been my mentor and hero.

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Reading the story of their lives together made me laugh and cry, rejoice and repent. Somehow, R .C.

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Jr. writes, with an exceedingly rare combination of gospel humility and gospel boldness, this book is not to be missed.

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Coram Deo. And I'm not going to announce your email address on the air, but that phrase is obviously very important to you, as it should be to all

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Christians. But if you want to share what that means to our listeners. Oh, it's a phrase from Martin Luther Coram Deo, which means before the face of God.

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It was part and parcel of a magazine table talk that I served as the editor for and a columnist for for 20 or 25 years.

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But the concept is that we're to live our lives mindful of the fact that we're under the gaze of God, under his care, under his protection, and under his love.

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Amen. And we have several of our listeners already waiting to have their questions asked and answered by you.

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I'm going to read one and then I'm going to have you answer it when we return from the break. OK. We have

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Osinachi from Lagos, Nigeria, who says, please ask your guest if he feels under any pressure to match up to his father's profile and image.

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And you could answer that when we return. And just a reminder, our email address for anybody else who wants to get in line with your question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com, chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

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And always please give us your first name, your city and state and your country of residence if you live outside the USA and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

28:57

Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages with more of R .C. Sproul, Jr. As host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, I frequently get requests from listeners for church recommendations.

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A church I've been strongly recommending as far back as the 1980s is Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey, pastored by Alan Dunn.

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Grace Covenant Baptist Church believes it's God's prerogative to determine how he shall be worshipped and how he shall be represented in the world.

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They believe churches need to turn to the Bible to discover what to include in worship and how to worship

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God in spirit and truth. Grace Covenant Baptist Church endeavors to maintain a

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God -centered focus. Reading, preaching and hearing the word of God, singing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, baptism and communion are the scriptural elements of their corporate worship, performed with faith, joy and sobriety.

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Discover more about Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey at gcbcnj .squarespace

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.com. That's gcbcnj .squarespace .com.

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Or call them at 908 -996 -7654. That's 908 -996 -7654.

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Tell Pastor Dunn that you heard about Grace Covenant Baptist Church on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

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Did you know that all believers are priests? In 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 9, the

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you're helping to further ensure a longer life for Iron Sharpens Iron Radio because we cannot remain on the air without the advertising dollars of folks like Mike Gadosh of Solid Ground Christian Books and our other advertisers.

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So please remember for the holidays or any other special event where you want to give a gift or even just to add to your own library, never forget

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Solid -Ground -Books .com, Solid -Ground -Books .com. We are now back with my guest today,

38:45

R .C. Sproul, Jr. We are discussing his new book, Growing Up With R .C., Truths I Learned About Grace, Redemption, and the

38:51

Holiness of God. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com,

38:57

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

39:05

USA and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter. And we do have, as I said before,

39:12

Osinachi from Lagos, Nigeria, who asked, please ask your guest if he feels under any pressure to match up to his father's profile and image.

39:25

That's a perfectly legitimate question, and I would say, I'd answer it this way.

39:31

When I'm sensible and sane, no, of course I don't. But I'm not always sensible and sane.

39:41

It's actually in the book talk about that issue, and I mentioned something probably not a lot of people know, and that's that Michael Jordan had two sons who both received full rides to play basketball at the

40:00

University of Central Florida. Now, the University of Central Florida is a Division I school, but it's not the

40:06

University of North Carolina, and it's not, as far as I know, no one's ever been drafted out of UCF to play in the

40:13

NBA. So here you've got these guys who are good enough basketball players, rare thing indeed, to secure a full ride to a

40:20

Division I school. But everybody knows, nobody has any expectation that they would be the new

40:27

Michael Jordans, because you just can't. He's a Michael Jordan, and in the very same way,

40:33

I would tell people, hey, my father and I do the same thing, in the same way that the space shuttle and a paper airplane are both man -made flying machines.

40:49

Now, what I'm not saying, here's what I mean by that. There's a sense in which your only example of manhood is your father, your first example of manhood is your father.

41:07

Then when you don't measure up to him, it can make you feel like you have failed as a man.

41:17

But again, what I'm saying, I remember this, that God didn't put me on this earth and say,

41:23

I want you to measure up to your dad. He put me on the earth and said, you're going to fail, and that when you do, what

41:29

I want you to do is throw yourself on my mercy and follow my son. Again, another way that I put that is whenever I'm asked what it's like to be in my father's shadow,

41:38

I say it's perfectly comfortable, because we're both in Jesus' shadow. Psychologically, and in terms of my own sin nature, yeah, it's a battle that I still struggle with, but certainly

41:51

I have the sense to know that it's not a sensible battle. Well, Osinachi, we are giving away, thanks to our friends at Ikthus Press or the

42:02

Ikthus Publications, we are giving away copies, a limited number of copies, to listeners who email questions during our live broadcast.

42:13

Unfortunately, we do not send these books on the show to overseas guests, because CVBBS .com,

42:22

our sponsor that mails those books out to our listeners, they would be put out of business if all the people who are overseas won books and they had to ship them overseas.

42:32

So, if you have a friend or a loved one in the

42:38

United States, we would love to ship that to that individual on your behalf, and perhaps they could get it to you, or they could just view it as a gift from you, either way.

42:48

But give us a mailing address where we could send that, and we will be happy to get that out to that person as soon as possible.

42:57

Thank you very much for listening, and keep spreading the word about Iron Trip and Zion Radio in Nigeria and beyond.

43:03

Before I go to any other listener questions, I do want to hear more about your earliest memories of growing up with your father, things that you perhaps highlight in your book, things that are of utmost meaning and importance in your mind.

43:21

I have a feeling that your dad—well, in fact, I don't even have a feeling. I know that your dad had a wonderful sense of humor.

43:29

Not that I was hanging around your home with him, but even in public, he demonstrated that. In fact,

43:35

I made your dad roar with laughter in the basement of Calvary Baptist Church of Manhattan during a refreshment break when

43:42

I imitated John Gerstner for him. But tell us something about your earliest memories.

43:51

Well, as I mentioned, each chapter being a discussion of a particular conversation or event,

43:57

I try to go through them chronologically, and I talk about the different memories that I have.

44:06

I do confess in one of the earliest chapters that for many of the babies, it was the day that I was born.

44:13

But I mentioned in that that the day that I was born, my parents were planning to give me a different name than R .C.

44:21

By the way, brother, sometimes you get a little muffled, so if you could make sure that your mouth is always near the microphone or the phone receiver or whatever you're using.

44:31

I'm sorry. Okay, that's okay. You're much better right now. Good. Well, when

44:37

I was born, my father had an aunt who was very sick at the hospital and dying, the same hospital

44:43

I was born in, St. Francis Hospital there in Pittsburgh. And when he went to visit her after I was born and tell her about my birth, he told her what they planned to name me, and she said,

44:58

Oh, no, no, no, no, you've got to be Robert C. like you and like your father, like your grandfather.

45:04

And because she was on her deathbed, they granted her that deathbed name to make me R .C.

45:10

But on that night, well, let me go back a minute or two.

45:17

My father's father died when my father was 17, and his mother, who finished the job of raising him, she had two great desires in her life.

45:27

One, that there would be a male heir in the family, and two, that my dad would be ordained to gospel ministry.

45:35

Well, the day that I was born is the day that the invitations for my father's ordination ceremony and the dress that my grandmother had ordered for his ordination both arrived in the mail.

45:51

The same day the stork brought me to St. Francis Hospital. And that night, either out of contentment or excitement, my dad's mother passed away.

46:02

So the very day that he had, my dad had his first son, he lost his last parent as well.

46:07

That was a very hard day that, of course, I don't remember. My first memory that I write about in the book, though,

46:14

I talk about how sort of my view of my father evolved over time. That as a baby, all

46:22

I knew was that he provided for us. As I came to appreciate theology as I grew older,

46:29

I recognized his great gift as a theologian. In between, there was a time when I discovered this literal footlocker filled with memorabilia for my father's youth.

46:43

Letter jackets and trophies and newspaper articles from his various and sundry exploits in the sports field, and how my father was a hero to me because of that.

46:53

But he was first a hero to me because he rescued me. I was about, I don't know, two or three,

46:59

I'm not sure which. Somehow, we were going somewhere. My parents had started the car and put me in the car and gone back in the house.

47:10

While they were back in the house, this was back in the day, way back in the Dark Ages, when they didn't have you strapped in bubble wrap any time you left the house.

47:19

I put the car in reverse. It started rolling down the driveway.

47:28

I got scared enough to jump in the back seat. I'm looking over the back seat. I look at the front of the house and the screen door just swung open.

47:36

My father leapt over the hedges like Superman and raced around the car.

47:44

He hit the brakes just as our tail end got in the street before anything terrible happened.

47:49

I just thought, oh wow, this is the guy who keeps me safe. I also tell the story about how my father was very zealous to keep me involved in his life and in his interests.

48:01

When I was five years old, he took me golfing for the first time. Not for me to golf, but just to ride along with him.

48:09

This was at Clover Nook's Country Club there in Cincinnati. That's where we lived at the time.

48:15

My father took a practice swing and I watched that. He took a second practice swing and I watched that.

48:21

He stepped a few inches forward and addressed the ball and began his backswing.

48:27

Just as he was coming forward towards the ball, I cried out to him, one more strike and you're out,

48:32

Daddy. As I said, he fouled that one off, so he managed to survive.

48:44

He was able to take me again, which is pretty amazing. We actually have a question that involves your dad's golfing.

48:54

We have a question from Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York.

49:02

He said, I don't know if this is an urban legend, but was your father really a friend of Alice Cooper who he met while golfing?

49:11

Well, I would say it's not an urban legend, but that might be a little bit of a slight exaggeration of the reality of the relationship.

49:21

Back in those days, this was early 90s probably, and every year Ligonier not only had a conference in Orlando, but for three or four years every year we had one in San Diego as well.

49:34

This particular year, as was our habit, we had the staff go there early and we would set up the bookstore and be in a cavernous room, usually a gym or something like that, and just be wall -to -wall with books and tapes.

49:48

We're there just having finished final set -up, and a few early attendees are sort of milling around through the books, and I start hearing all this whispering going on from other staff people.

50:01

Finally, the message got to me, and I said, turn around and look over there, do you see that guy in the ponytail?

50:06

I said, yes, I do, and they said, that's Alice Cooper. You're kidding me.

50:15

Go surreptitiously walk by him and sneak a peek. Sure enough, it was Alice Cooper in a golf shirt with his hair pulled, and no eye makeup, and he had his name tag on, which is

50:27

Vince Vernier, his real name. So that was the beginning part of the story.

50:33

Well, the conference ended like normal on a Saturday afternoon, and later that afternoon my father and a dear friend of his who was on the staff at Ligonier, they both went out to hit some golf balls, and while they were out on the course, they ran into Vince and finished their round together and enjoyed each other.

50:57

Vince does make reference in telling the story of his conversion and another connection with golf, but before they met face -to -face.

51:06

My dad had a close friend named Wally Armstrong who had been for a time a touring pro and then became a teacher, and he created,

51:17

Wally did this teaching video thing called

51:22

Gator Golf, and he sold it on late night television infomercials.

51:28

He made his own infomercials, and in those infomercials he included a clip of my dad talking about how

51:35

Wally had helped him with his game, and so supposedly,

51:42

I'm not sure whether it was before he was converted or after, but at some point Alice Cooper was at home with his wife.

51:48

His wife was the daughter of a pastor, and they're watching late night television, and this thing comes on, and there's my dad, and Alice says to his wife, hey, isn't that the guy who wrote all those books?

52:05

Your parents may have done it. And sure enough, it was.

52:13

You actually informed me of something that I wasn't certain about. I knew that Alice Cooper, and by the way, for our listeners who are millennials or younger, you have no clue who we're talking about.

52:25

Alice Cooper is a man. That's a stage name. He was very big in the 1970s, especially as a rock star known for the macabre.

52:36

He had theatrical productions during his concerts that were very much like a Halloween event, and you are informing me of something

52:44

I did not know. You're saying that he was converted. Yes, absolutely. Oh, I didn't know that for certain anyway.

52:50

I had like a question mark over my head about it because I heard him once in an interview talking about his wife's faith.

52:58

But is he theologically sound? Is he going to a good church? I believe so. It's at least an evangelical church.

53:05

It might be Baptist, but we can hope for him getting there. Yeah, I remember you and I having a little bit of tension over my

53:15

Reformed Baptist background. I'm very happy to hear that, being somebody who used to love, as a teenager, listening to Alice Cooper.

53:25

It's good to hear that. We have... In fact, I'm going to do this again. I'm going to read a question, and then since we have to go to our midway break,

53:33

I'll have you answer it when we return from the break. David in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who

53:41

I believe is a first -time questioner. I don't know if he's a first -time listener, but he's a first -time questioner. Let's see.

53:49

Is there another favorite series of your father that we might be surprised by?

53:55

That's part one of his question. Part two is, is there a topic your father wanted to cover, but he never had enough time?

54:04

I'm not sure what he means by series, if it's a lecture series or a written series.

54:10

I'm not sure which he means. Maybe both. If you remember those two questions, about is there a favorite series of your father that we might be surprised by?

54:20

Also, is there a topic he wanted to cover, but never had enough time? Thank you, David, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

54:26

By the way, you have won also a free copy of the book, Growing Up with R .C.

54:32

You've also won as a first -time questioner a brand new New American Standard Bible, thanks to our friends who publish the

54:39

New American Standard Bible. We'll be back after this elongated break. We have an elongated break every day on Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

54:49

FM, in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break, because they have to localize

54:55

Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio to the Lake City, Florida area, which is an FCC regulation for all radio stations.

55:01

They have to localize their programming. And while they air their own public service announcements during this middle break, we air our globally heard commercials.

55:11

So, use this time wisely. Please write questions, of course, to our guest, R .C.

55:16

Sproul Jr., to chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N, gmail .com.

55:21

But also write down the information provided by our advertisers, so that you can more frequently and successfully patronize them.

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Remember, we cannot continue to exist without the financial support of our advertisers.

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So, obviously, the more often you patronize them, the more likely they will remain our advertisers, and that means the more likely we're going to remain on the air for a longer period of time in the future.

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So, write down that information, patronize our advertisers, and also send us an email to rcsprouljr to chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Don't go away, God willing, we will be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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Tired of box store Christianity? Of doing church in a warehouse with all the trappings of a rock concert?

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I'm Dr. Gary Kimbrough, pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Laurel, Mississippi. God tells us in James 127 that pure and undefiled religion is a visit to fatherless and widows and their affliction.

58:58

In the providence of God, three years ago, I discovered a poor, small church outside Lusaka, Zambia in a township called

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Kabanana who are taking care of 24 orphans. I found them just at the time when they had lost all their funding.

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What was I to do? Could I just say, God bless you and walk away? The situation of the children set heavily upon me.

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As I was praying concerning this need, it came to me, I trust from the Lord, to tell the orphans' plight to a broader audience.

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The entire need for their clothing, food, education, and some medical services is $73 per month per child.

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If just 50 of us would give $35 a month, we could meet the need. Bethlehem Baptist Church will pay the fee to get the funds there, so if you give a dollar, a dollar will get to the orphans.

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In this season of hope and giving, will you consider giving hope to 24 orphans? Please send your gift of any amount to Bethlehem Baptist Church, 838

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Reed Road, Laurel, Mississippi 39443 or donate through our website, bbclaurel .com.

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Again, the address is Bethlehem Baptist Church, 838 Reed Road, Laurel, Mississippi 39443 or bbclaurel .com.

01:00:02

Thank you. Chris Orensen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio here.

01:00:09

I want to tell you about a man I have personally known for many years. His name is Dan Buttafuoco.

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Dan is a personal injury and medical malpractice lawyer, but not the type that typically comes to mind.

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Dan cares about people and is a theologian himself. Recently, he wrote a book titled

01:00:26

Consider the Evidence for the Bible. Ravi Zacharias wrote the foreword.

01:00:31

Dan also has a master's degree in theology. Dan handles serious injury and medical malpractice cases in all 50 states.

01:00:39

He represents many Christians in serious injury matters all over the country. Dan is an exceptional trial lawyer.

01:00:47

He wrote the test for the National Board of Trial Advocacy, and currently his firm has over 100 cases that have settled for $1 million or more, and in approximately 10 different states.

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In Illinois, his lawyers had the fourth largest settlement in the state's history. In New York, his case involving a paralyzed police officer made the front page of the

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Law Journal. If you have a serious personal injury or medical malpractice claim in any state,

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I recommend that you call Dan. Consultations are free. There is no fee unless you win.

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Dan Buttafuoco's number is 1 -800 -669 -4878. 1 -800 -669 -4878

01:01:31

Or email me for Dan's contact information at chrisarnson at gmail .com

01:01:37

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com My name is

01:01:44

Steve Lawson, founder and president of One Passion Ministries, as well as teaching fellow for Ligonier Ministries.

01:01:51

I serve as professor of preaching and oversee the Doctor of Ministry program at the Master's Seminary in Los Angeles.

01:01:56

I would like to recommend the church where one of my preaching students, Andy Woodard, serves as the pastor.

01:02:03

It's called New Covenant Church, NYC. They are a Reformed Baptist church that meets in midtown

01:02:08

Manhattan. You can find their service times and location on their website, which is www .ncc

01:02:16

.nyc. They believe in a sovereign God who commands all men everywhere to repent and believe the gospel.

01:02:23

If you're looking for a church that believes in expository preaching, which is simply biblical preaching, in New York City, I'd like to recommend that you visit

01:02:33

New Covenant Church, NYC. Again, their information can be found at www .ncc

01:02:40

.nyc. Have a great day. One sure way all

01:02:48

Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners can help keep my show on the air is to support my advertisers. I know you all use batteries every day, so I'm urging you all from now on to exclusively use

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Or go to BatteryDepot .com. That's BatteryDepot .com. Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Have you been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron Radio?

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We remain on the air because of our faithful sponsors and because of listeners like you. There are four ways you can help.

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First, do you know potential sponsors who may wish to advertise their goods or services on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio?

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Second, whenever possible, purchase the products or use the services that our sponsors advertise and then let them know that you heard about them on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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Thirdly, you can also donate to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio by going to our website at IronSharpensIronRadio .com

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and click support at the top of the page. But most importantly, keep Iron Sharpens Iron Radio in your prayers.

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We hope that Iron Sharpens Iron Radio blesses you for many years to come. As host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, I frequently get requests from listeners for church recommendations.

01:05:38

A church I've been strongly recommending as far back as the 1980s is Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey, pastored by Alan Dunn.

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Grace Covenant Baptist Church believes it's God's prerogative to determine how he shall be worshipped and how he shall be represented in the world.

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They believe churches need to turn to the Bible to discover what to include in worship and how to worship

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God in spirit and truth. Grace Covenant Baptist Church endeavors to maintain a

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God -centered focus. Reading, preaching, and hearing the Word of God, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, baptism, and communion are the scriptural elements of their corporate worship, performed with faith, joy, and sobriety.

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Discover more about Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey at gcbcnj .squarespace

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.com That's gcbcnj .squarespace .com

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Or call them at 908 -996 -7654 That's 908 -996 -7654

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Tell Pastor Dunn that you heard about Grace Covenant Baptist Church on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:07:00

Hi, I'm Buzz Taylor, frequent co -host with Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:07:07

I would like to introduce you to my good friends Todd and Patty Jennings at CVBBS, which stands for Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

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Todd and Patty specialize in supplying Reformed and Puritan books and Bibles at discount prices that make them affordable to everyone.

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That's cvbbs .com Let Todd and Patty know that you heard about them on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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And don't forget, you can also call cvbbs .com at their toll -free number, which they man typically

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Monday through Friday between 10 a .m. and 4 .30 p .m. Eastern Time. That's 800 -656 -0231 800 -656 -0231

01:08:37

They have two wonderful offers for you that you will get for free if you purchase something from cvbbs .com

01:08:47

The first, if you purchase any amount of books for any dollar amount, you will receive for free

01:08:54

True Love, Understanding the Real Meaning of Christian Love by Dr. James M. Renahan, President of IRBS Theological Seminary, one of our sponsors.

01:09:04

And don't forget, if you are interested in entering into the ministry, go to irbsseminary .org irbsseminary .org

01:09:13

But Dr. Renahan's book is yours free for the purchase of any amount at cvbbs .com

01:09:20

And for a larger book, another book by Evangelical Press, also a hardback but much larger, is my favorite of all time biographies,

01:09:33

A Pastor in New York, The Life and Times of Spencer Cohn. This is such a phenomenal and fascinating biography that I have repeated this many times on this show that I think it should be a major motion picture, at the very least, somebody should film a documentary about this great man of God, Spencer Cohn, from the 19th century, who is almost entirely forgotten, tragically, in our day and age.

01:10:00

He was a Reformed Baptist pastor in the 19th century in Manhattan. Back then, they called themselves Particular Baptists, and he was a school teacher, he was a lawyer, he was a stage actor, he was a war hero in the

01:10:14

War of 1812, and then he became a pastor at the First Baptist Church of New York City. Actually, I had a major event a couple of years ago in that very building with Dr.

01:10:27

Tony Costa of Toronto Baptist Seminary. But I love this book, this biography, and it's yours for free with a minimum purchase of $50, unlike the other book where you could purchase any amount and get the book for free.

01:10:39

If you purchase a minimum of $50 worth of merchandise, you'll get both books. And what you need to do is you need to add

01:10:47

A Pastor in New York, The Life and Times of Spencer Cohn by John Thornberry, my dear friend who is a brilliant Christian historian.

01:10:56

You have to add that book in the cart, and then enter the coupon code IRONSHARPENSIREN all capital letters.

01:11:03

And you will get the price of that book deducted from your order. Remember, you have to put that book in the cart along with $50 worth of additional merchandise, and then you will get that deducted from the total when you enter

01:11:20

IRONSHARPENSIREN all capitals. And if you just want the True Love book, which you get for free for any amount, all you have to do is enter

01:11:31

True Love book for free or something like that in the comments section at CVBBS .com.

01:11:37

Of course, you can make this all a lot easier by verbally telling them this over the phone, 800 -656 -0231, 800 -656 -0231, and you have to call, as I said before,

01:11:47

Monday through Friday between 10 a .m. and 4 .30 p .m. Eastern Time to get somebody on the phone at that number.

01:11:54

I just have a couple of important announcements to make regarding special events before I return to our guest,

01:12:02

R .C. Sproul, Jr. This December, the 19th and 20th, I will be heading back to my old stomping grounds in Manhattan to the

01:12:10

Foundations Conference, a conference of sermonaudio .com. I love this conference, and I believe that if you love this show, you will love this conference as well.

01:12:22

The roster of speakers is phenomenal, as it always is. Dr. Stephen J. Lawson is on the roster, whose voice you hear every day on this show, promoting

01:12:31

New Covenant Church NYC, one of our sponsors, a congregation, a Reformed Baptist congregation in Manhattan.

01:12:38

Dr. Stephen J. Lawson, who is not only on the staff at Ligonier Ministries, he is the founder of One Passion Ministries and one of the most powerful preachers on the planet

01:12:47

Earth, in my opinion. Paul Washer is on the roster, who is also one of the most powerful preachers alive today, in my opinion.

01:12:54

Rev. Jeff Thomas, another one of the most powerful preachers alive today. Rev. Armin Tomasian, many of you may not be familiar with that name unless you listen to this show, but Rev.

01:13:05

Armin Tomasian, he is an extraordinary man of God, a young man, who

01:13:12

I believe is going to be a household name over the next decade amongst Reformed Christians, because he is that extraordinary, that powerful, and that gifted, with gifts far beyond his youth.

01:13:24

I am looking forward to hearing him preach again. Richard Caldwell Jr. and Andrew Quigley are both also on the roster.

01:13:33

I have not yet heard these two brothers, but since Sermon Audio selected them, I'm sure they are magnificent. And what a great time of year to go to Manhattan during the

01:13:41

Christmas season. This is Thursday and Friday, December 19th and 20th. Go to www .thefoundationsconference

01:13:47

.com to register. www .thefoundationsconference .com You will have all the information that you need.

01:13:54

I will be there. I hope to see you there. If you intend to go, please register quickly because they can only handle a little less than 200 people at this venue in Manhattan.

01:14:06

You don't want to register too late when they are already filled. So, go to www .thefoundationsconference

01:14:12

.com and register today. Also, in January, from Thursday, January 16th through Saturday, January 18th,

01:14:22

I will be returning to Atlanta, Georgia, College Park, Georgia, to be more exact, at the

01:14:28

Georgia International Convention Center, where I will be manning my exhibitor's booth for Iron Shepard's Iron Radio, once again, at the

01:14:36

G3 Conference. That stands for Gospel, Grace, and Glory. And this

01:14:42

January's theme is Worship Matters. And, as always, they have an extraordinary lineup of speakers that you don't want to miss.

01:14:54

These are really profound men of God, including Kosti Hinn.

01:15:00

Kosti Hinn, if that name sounds familiar, Hinn, it's probably because of a very horrible reason.

01:15:07

Kosti's uncle is, believe it or not, Benny Hinn, the notorious charlatan, faith healer, and word -of -faith heretic.

01:15:13

And his nephew, Kosti, makes no bones about that. He has repented of the word -of -faith heresy that he was raised in.

01:15:21

He is now a Reformed Baptist pastor in California, and he's also a cessationist. He is on this roster of speakers,

01:15:28

Kosti Hinn, who I've had on this program, and I look forward to him returning. David Miller, a really phenomenal preacher and gifted brother in Christ.

01:15:39

A man that is, no doubt, very familiar to most of my listeners, if they are

01:15:44

Reformed especially, Derek Thomas is on the roster. My dear friend for many years, Dr. James R.

01:15:50

White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, he is on the roster.

01:15:56

Dr. Joel Beeke, who I've also known going all the way back to the 1990s, he is on the roster.

01:16:02

Josh Bice, who is the founder of the G3 Conference. Once again, Stephen J. Lawson and Paul Washer, they are on the roster at this conference as well.

01:16:11

Dr. Tom Askell, my friend for many years, who is the executive director of Founders Ministries, the

01:16:17

Calvinistic ministry within the Southern Baptist Convention. And Vodie Baucom, another really profound and extraordinary preacher.

01:16:24

They are all on this roster. That's Thursday, January 16th, through Saturday, January 18th.

01:16:30

I would also recommend that you not only register to attend this conference, but if you have a business or parachurch ministry that you want to promote, they have over 5 ,000 people attend this conference every year.

01:16:42

So, why don't you join me in manning an exhibitor's booth and do so before they run out of room.

01:16:48

Go to g3conference .com, g3conference .com, and you can register not only to attend, but also, if you want, you can register for an exhibitor's booth.

01:16:56

And please tell them that you heard about the conference from Chris Arns and on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Last but not least, please remember, if you love this show and you don't want it to disappear, go to ironsharpensironradio .com,

01:17:06

click support, then click, click to donate now. You can donate instantly with a debit or credit card by going to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and then click support, then click, click to donate now.

01:17:18

You can also mail in a check via snail mail to the address that appears on your screen. Make that check out to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:17:25

And I have those two caveats that I try to remember to warn you about every day. Never siphon money away from your regular giving to your local church that you're accustomed to in order to give to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:17:37

Never deprive your church because you want to support this program. Also, never put your family in financial jeopardy by giving to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:17:45

Those two things are commands of God providing for your church and providing for your family. Providing for my show, while it is not a command of God, obviously, if you are financially blessed above and beyond your ability to obey those two commands and you love this show and you don't want it to disappear, please, if you have that extra money that God has blessed you with for benevolent purposes and you want us to remain on the air, go to IronSharpensIronRadio .com

01:18:13

click support, then click, click to donate now. We are in urgent need of your donations, especially for January.

01:18:19

We thank God for all of you who have answered the call of my

01:18:24

SOS for help that has gotten me through the month of June.

01:18:30

July is a very scary month. I don't even know how I'm paying my rent in July. Please, if you love the show, you don't want it to disappear, go to IronSharpensIronRadio .com

01:18:39

click support, then click, click to donate now. Also, if you want to advertise with us, as long as whatever it is you are promoting is compatible with what we believe, you don't have to believe exactly as I do, but you need to be promoting something that is at least compatible with what

01:18:53

I believe, then send an email to ChrisAronson at gmail .com and put advertising in the subject line.

01:18:59

If you are not a member of a Bible -believing church and you are not prayerfully looking for one, you are living in rebellion against God, rectify that situation immediately.

01:19:07

If you need help finding a church near you that is biblically sound, I have lists of biblical churches all over the world, and I've already helped many people in our audience find churches not only near where they live, but also where they are going on vacation, and for family, friends, and loved ones that live in all parts of the world.

01:19:24

I can help you too, God willing, so send me an email to ChrisAronson at gmail .com and put I need a church in the subject line or something like that.

01:19:32

That's also the email address where you can send in a question to R .C. Sproul Jr. That is

01:19:37

ChrisAronson at gmail .com ChrisAronson at gmail .com And please, as always, give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the

01:19:45

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. And once again,

01:19:52

R .C., David in Albuquerque, New Mexico, he actually further clarified his question.

01:19:59

He wants to know, is there another favorite series you or your father have been involved in that we might be surprised by?

01:20:09

And also, is there a topic your dad wanted to cover but he never had enough time? Well, I've had some time to think about that, and I've got a couple of responses to it.

01:20:21

One, in terms of sort of lesser known works of my father's that I'm a big fan of,

01:20:30

I had the privilege of being able to work on an update of one of my father's earliest books.

01:20:38

It was originally published as The Psychology of Atheism, but its current title is

01:20:46

If There's a God, Why Are There Atheists? This book was originally written in the mid -70s, and it sort of almost like reading the holiness of God in what's the word?

01:21:03

Like a, you know, before it was born. In embryonic form. This is, you can see the ideas that end up coming out in the holiness of God very powerfully there.

01:21:14

I think it's a wonderful tool for apologetics and helping to understand those who are outside the kingdom.

01:21:22

So I really would commend that to people who probably aren't too familiar with. And then in terms of teaching series,

01:21:31

I'd also, and this, I may sound like I'm on an apologetics kick here, but I had the pleasure of planning a kind of unusual series that we did called

01:21:46

Silencing the Devil. And what we did with this particular series is we addressed a number of important apologetic issues, the authority of scripture, the existence of God, the resurrection of Jesus, and we created a mock debate.

01:22:02

It wasn't a real debate because both of the fellows involved believed the same things, and the fellows were my father and John Gerstner.

01:22:10

John Gerstner, yeah. So you can find out what Chris was sounding like when he was two.

01:22:17

In fact, the older your dad got, the more he sounded like John Gerstner. Yeah, you know,

01:22:22

I used to sit in the pew listening to him preach and just, every now and again, just one word would just, you'd get that growl going.

01:22:32

But I commend that to you. Now, in terms of my dad's disappointments, I don't know that I would say that he did.

01:22:38

I would say this, that the last 20 years of his life, roughly, he was so grateful to be able to minister as the pastor of St.

01:22:49

Andrew's Church there in Sanford, Florida. So grateful to have his own pulpit to preach in every

01:22:54

Sunday. This was, obviously, well after I was grown and out of the house. It wasn't part of my experience day in and day out.

01:23:02

But he just loved it and loved being able to preach through whole books of the Bible. Another project that I've worked on since his passing has been putting some of these sermons that he gave together into sort of expository commentaries for future publications.

01:23:21

So they're out there. He was glad to make it through Luke. It took him a good long time to make it through Luke, but he did it.

01:23:28

In fact, I remember he was not particularly well when he finished Luke, and I thought it might be one of those markers, you know, that people don't let themselves die until they make it to Christmas or a birthday or some such like that, and thought, oh, he might just finish that sermon and roll over and die, but he actually,

01:23:48

I think, went through Ephesians after that. So I think he's really grateful that he had at least 20 years to preach week in and week out.

01:23:57

I think he probably would wish without trying to denigrate God's sovereign plan that he could have done that sooner.

01:24:05

Amen. Now, as far as something, part of the question that David was asking was something that would be surprising.

01:24:13

I mean, did he did he ever either want to publish or have published something that most of his faithful followers were like, wow,

01:24:25

I didn't know R .C. believed that, or something of that nature? I don't know that there would be anything on the, you know, on the belief side.

01:24:32

You know, he wasn't shy about the things that he believed. And again, it's not a series, but I would say that there's probably a whole lot of people that are utterly unfamiliar with his book

01:24:42

Johnny Come Home, which was also called My Brother's Keeper, which was actually a novel.

01:24:51

And it was a novel that was, you know, contained like every novel does, a disclaimer at the front end saying, hey, this is just a fictional story, nobody's real, but, you know, you begin to recognize, well, gosh, no one may be real, but this thing that's happening in the story,

01:25:10

I happen to know that happened to my dad. And, gosh, this woman that's being described here, that sounds an awful lot like my mom.

01:25:19

And so that, you know, you realize that there's a lot of drawing on his personal experience in that novel.

01:25:25

You don't want to conclude anything definitively if you don't know his real life. But that's something

01:25:30

I think that many people aren't aware that he did. I know that there was some controversy, some small amount of controversy when it came out because, you know, in the story, the character, the hero, sinned.

01:25:44

And that kind of bothers some people. There's a lot of folks in the Christian world who think, you know, a good

01:25:50

Christian story is a story about good people doing good things. I can remember something that I think surprised folks when he wrote his book on eschatology.

01:26:04

I think that he had changed a long -held view and became a partial preterist. Am I right on that? Yeah, yes, you are right.

01:26:12

But even that, I mean, I think he went to his grave believing in partial preterism. But, you know, underneath that subheading there's still room for different views on the millennium and I think that was still pretty fuzzy in his head.

01:26:26

And the premillennial perspective he had before the partial preterism wasn't something he held on to tightly at the time either.

01:26:36

So, you know, he was kind of a last thing's last guy and so maybe the bigger surprise was just that he took the time and energy to address the issue.

01:26:46

But he did it less out of a concern to solve the, you know, millennial debate and more out of an apologetic concern.

01:26:56

He did it to deal with the timeframe references and the gospel accounts and all the discourse, noting that Albert Schweitzer as a representative of theological liberalism made a great deal of hay out of the fact that from his perspective

01:27:13

Jesus said, I'm coming back soon. And he didn't. And so, you know, how do you deal with that apologetically?

01:27:19

And I think that the partial preterist response is the right one. Amen. I agree.

01:27:25

And I've been a partial preterist ever since I think I read the

01:27:31

Beast of Revelation by Ken Gentry. I think that's when the Lord convinced me of that view. Although I'm not convinced of partial preterism.

01:27:41

We have a question regarding one of your books. We have R .J. in White Plains, New York, who says,

01:27:49

I loved your book, Believing God, 12 Biblical Promises, Christians Struggle to Accept.

01:27:55

Is that book still in print? I'd like to give it to friends because I loved it so much. Yes, it's still in print and I'm sure you can get it through Amazon.

01:28:07

This is one of my favorite books that I wrote. But let's remember

01:28:15

Paper Airplane and Space Shuttle. I tell people all the time, they say,

01:28:25

I'm not familiar with you. The world's full of good people, good godly people who never heard of me and never read any of my books.

01:28:34

In fact, I encourage people, you know, you should buy my books because they're so rare. Well, that's actually the book that I interviewed you on last in 2010.

01:28:46

Okay. And I remember when I interviewed your father, I remember a listener calling in because they used to have a call -in show and he was raving about your book as well.

01:29:00

And your dad was overflowing with joy in describing how much that book meant to him as well, your book.

01:29:11

So that should be encouraging to you to know that. Yes, it is. And he definitely had the gift of encouragement.

01:29:20

In fact, one of the stories that I tell in the book is how he tricked me into writing my first book.

01:29:28

I was a student in college and had developed a deep and profound interest in a biblical view of economics.

01:29:38

I had read all sorts of stuff. I mean, I was a weird kid. My peers were out hopping up their cars and I was sitting down and reading

01:29:49

Von Mises. And my father, when I was a freshman in college, he called me up in the dorm and he said, son, could you write a 15 -page paper on a biblical view of prophets?

01:30:02

And he meant P -R -O -F -I -P -S, not P -R -O -F -I -P -S. That reminded me of a hilarious episode of Sanford and Son when

01:30:13

Fred Sanford started his own church to get tax write -off or to be tax exempt.

01:30:20

And he called it the Church of the Mighty Prophet, with the F -I -T, not P -H -E -T.

01:30:26

Yes. Well, sorry about that. Sorry.

01:30:32

I, you know, he went through a list of several other things that, you know, could you write one on inflation, could you write one on where wealth comes from, et cetera, et cetera.

01:30:47

And eventually he said, could you do ten of these 15 -page papers? And I said, yeah,

01:30:53

I can, but what

01:30:59

I don't know is, you know, why I would. He said, well, if you did ten of these, he said, then you'd have a book. And so, you know, he got me to the place where I believed

01:31:07

I could do it, and that's how, and actually I did that that summer.

01:31:15

Well, praise God. By the way, David and Albuquerque, I think I already told you that you've won a free copy of the book

01:31:23

Growing Up with R .C. as well. Thanks for your questions, and keep listening to Orange Shrub and Zion Radio and spreading the word in Albuquerque, New Mexico about the program, and you've also won a free

01:31:34

New American Standard Bible since you're a first -time questioner. And I forgot to tell

01:31:40

Ronald in eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, that you've also won a free book, and we need your mailing address so that we can have

01:31:46

CVBBS ship out that book to you. Once again, I just want to, before I forget,

01:31:52

I want to quickly thank again Icthus Publications for providing us with these free giveaway copies, and if you want more details on everything they publish, go to Icthus Publications dot com.

01:32:05

Icthus Publications dot com. We have a listener in Santa Rosa, California, Hugh, and Hugh says,

01:32:17

Greetings to our dear brother R .C. Jr. So glad to hear your voice again. When are you coming to preach and teach again on the

01:32:23

West Coast? Blessings galore, Hugh. This is, what is the person's name again?

01:32:33

H -U -G -H from Santa Rosa, California. Oh, I know that. That's Hugh McCann. Yes, it is.

01:32:40

I usually don't give out a full name, but yes. Oh, sorry about that. No, that's all right. I'm sure Hugh doesn't care.

01:32:45

I just typically, unless somebody is a pastor or something, I typically don't give the full name. But that's quite all right. I'm sure

01:32:51

Hugh is thrilled that you gave his full name. Yes. Well, yes, he's an old, old friend.

01:32:58

Actually, he brought me out to Northern California years ago to come and to speak there.

01:33:06

I don't remember the trip well. It was a blessed trip. I don't have any plans to come out there. I don't have any plans to preach.

01:33:13

In fact, it's interesting that when Hugh had me come out there, I gave us an address for a

01:33:19

Reformation Day celebration. This was in 1996, I believe. And it happened in God's Providence that the fellow who drove me back to the airport to fly home was

01:33:35

Charles McElhaney. Charles McElhaney. Oh, yeah. I know Chuck, and I've interviewed him on his book

01:33:40

When the Wicked Seize the City. Exactly, yeah. That's the guy. And so, here's this guy who's just been so faithful for all of these years, and he's like a hero to me, and he's driving me to the airport, and he says,

01:33:52

R .C., that was a good talk you gave. I said, well, thank you, sir, that's really encouraging.

01:33:58

He said, you know, the only thing it lacked was authority, because you're not ordained. Oh, man,

01:34:07

I mean, that was direct. That was an iron sharpening iron moment, but instead of fighting back,

01:34:13

I just wilted and said, I guess you're right. The day I got ordained, the first thing I did was call him and tell him

01:34:18

I'd gotten it done. But I am not currently ordained. I don't have any current plans to be ordained.

01:34:24

I don't have any quarrel with teaching as such, or even speaking.

01:34:30

I'm always happy to tell my story, always happy to talk about the grace of God, but I am not ordained in gospel ministry at the moment, although I should.

01:34:40

I don't think it matters, but I'm not, so I don't know when I'll be there, but I'd love to go back.

01:34:47

Well, Hugh, you have also won a free copy of Growing Up with R .C., and you've also, since you're a first -time questioner, you've won a

01:34:55

New American Standard Bible, compliments of our friends who published the NASB. And by the way, just a quick reminder to our listeners, if you are a member of a church where your pew

01:35:06

Bibles, if you have them, are falling apart, they're filled with children's graffiti, or perhaps your church is outgrowing the translation that you've been using for years, you want a translation that is a more faithful translation of the original languages into the

01:35:24

English language, then please consider the New American Standard Bible as far as ordering them for your entire church building in the pews.

01:35:33

And in fact, if you don't have pew Bibles already, that's a very, I think, wise move to make so that people who visit your congregation who might not even be

01:35:43

Christians will be able to reach for a Bible right in front of them. Please go to nasbible .com, nasbible .com,

01:35:50

and order those from there. They have been supporting Iron Trip and Zion Radio ever since we first launched in 2005, and they have been supporting financially every event, major event that I have been personally involved in, including debates with my friend

01:36:05

Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries. The NASB publishers have always been by my side helping me, so please return that blessing to them by ordering from them as much as possible at nasbible .com,

01:36:22

nasbible .com. We have, let's see, we have

01:36:29

Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, who asks, did you ever develop a different theological position than one held by your father, and if you did, did it create any kind of conflict between the two of you?

01:36:46

Well, there's a personal question. There is, but it's a good one, and the answer is pretty simple and undramatic.

01:36:54

Yes, I did have differences with my father, but all of those differences were really, sort of, you have to drill down deep to get to the issue, or to put it, to reverse it, it was way up on the 20th floor.

01:37:15

On the foundational issues in the first floor and the second floor, all the way up to the 19th floor, we were agreeing all the time, and in fact,

01:37:23

I used to tell him, he handled it perfectly fine, and I handled it reasonably well, I think, but when

01:37:29

I did disagree with him, I would remind him, I would say, look, you could be right, and I could be wrong, and it wouldn't be the first time, but I want you to understand that I believe what

01:37:42

I believe, because I believe it's the consistent position with this point over here that we are in agreement on.

01:37:52

So I'm not, I don't look at it like I'm being unfaithful to you or even disagreeing with you,

01:37:58

I'm just thinking that the more foundational thing we agree on, the necessary consequence of that is this place where we ended up disagreeing.

01:38:08

Now, could you mention any of those disagreements? If you don't want to, you don't have to.

01:38:16

Yeah, you know, I mean, it's a public thing, and I certainly don't want to be in a place where I need to try to defend my own position, but the common, most classic one was interlapsarianism and superlapsarianism.

01:38:31

And, you know, just like he encouraged me about my writing and the nice things he said about my book, he had been known to say from time to time, you know,

01:38:41

Dr. Sproul, what's your view on that particular issue? And he would say, well, it depends on who's in the room.

01:38:52

If Dr. Gershner's in the room, I'm interlapsarian. If my son's in the room, I'm superlapsarian. So, you know, when we would have those debates, it was always very enjoyable and pleasant, and we both realized how ultimately these were not critical issues.

01:39:11

These were not secondary, not certainly not primary, not secondary. They were secondary, not tertiary. They were way down the line.

01:39:17

Yeah, and I think if you make them of primary importance, there's something wrong with you. And I've heard a couple of people,

01:39:24

I mean, there are people who accuse all superlapsarians of being hyper -Calvinist and all that, and that's way off base.

01:39:32

We are going to our final break right now. It's much shorter than the last one, but if you intend to write in a question to R .C.

01:39:38

Sproul Jr. on his life with his dad, the late R .C. Sproul, and this, if you just tuned us in, is chronicled in a book, a new book, published by ICTHUS Publications, Growing Up With R .C.,

01:39:53

Truths I Learned About Grace, Redemption and the Holiness of God. Send in the email now or forever hold your peace because we're rapidly running out of time.

01:40:01

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com. And as always, please give us your first name, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

01:40:12

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Don't go away. We'll be right back with R .C.

01:40:18

Sproul Jr. right after these messages from our sponsors. Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am

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01:53:42

I have BB in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania who asks, I love the children's books that your father wrote.

01:53:50

Did he read such stories to you that he made up when you were a child? No, actually he didn't.

01:54:01

I don't remember him telling any stories to my sister and me when we were children.

01:54:08

I did tell the story in the book about that time when my father, he,

01:54:17

I'm not sure why, but he was motivated to take my sister and I together through the

01:54:25

Bethel Bible Series. Now, Chris, you're probably old enough to remember the Bethel Bible Series. It's still out there, it's still being taught, but it was a curriculum designed to give people an overview of the

01:54:36

Bible, and each lesson came with a beautiful painting picture that illustrated all the points.

01:54:43

And I remember like it was yesterday, sitting down at my dad's study with my sister and him showing me this first picture from Lesson 1, and there's

01:54:51

Adam and Eve in the garden, and on the other side of the picture is After the Fall, and there's this broken musical note to demonstrate that harmony's been destroyed.

01:54:59

And I remember that so clearly because I never had my mind clogged with any of the pictures afterwards, because he only did it once.

01:55:11

But one of the great lessons in the book is how, again, organically my father taught me the things that he taught me.

01:55:23

That we didn't have a program, we didn't have a system, we didn't have a class, but rather we had conversation.

01:55:31

And I talk about how I really think he embodied what Moses is talking about in Deuteronomy chapter 6, about talking with your children about these things when you lie down and when you rise up.

01:55:44

And that's what he did, constant conversation, whether we were having a catch in the backyard, whether we were at the dinner table, whether we were at the movies, there was just constant conversation.

01:56:00

And you couldn't help but get the theology. Another thing that I mentioned in the book is how simply my father's theology sort of came to me because of the way that he shaped my brain.

01:56:17

It's like, you know, I was designed by him so that when the information came into me it just fit perfectly where it was supposed to go.

01:56:26

And so I have this worldview and this systematic theology with, like, a wall with every brick in place because that's what he gave to me.

01:56:36

And that also, again, is part of that organic everyday life. It wasn't because he thought, well, now

01:56:41

I've got to teach question 27 from the Westminster Shorakadikism. Instead, it was just, here's what's going on in your life right now,

01:56:50

R .C., let's talk about this. And that's how I learned things. Well, I want to make sure that you have at least two minutes just to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today regarding your life with your precious late dad.

01:57:05

Well, again, I mentioned it already. I don't know that I could ever be tired of saying this.

01:57:12

I want the people who read this book and people who look back at my father's life not to think, wow, what a great big overgrown, throbbing brain

01:57:26

R .C. Sproul had, or even what a great gift he had for communication. I want them to look at him as a man deeply committed, not just to a right understanding in terms of laying out the process of salvation, but to look at him as a man who understood the reality of God's grace, the reality of Christ's atoning work for us.

01:57:49

You know, it's just like there's a difference between affirming the doctrine of total depravity and beating your breast and saying,

01:57:57

Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner. So there's a difference between being able to articulate justification by faith alone and being able to rejoice that your

01:58:06

Heavenly Father loves you because your sins have been removed from you as far as the East is from the

01:58:11

West. That's who my dad was. My dad was the guy who believed it. And the reason that he taught it was not to tickle ears, not to inculcate pride, but to get other people to believe it down to their toes.

01:58:24

And that's my hope for my own life again, especially post -scandal.

01:58:31

I want to be able to steward my own failure by reminding those who are in Christ, you are beloved of your

01:58:42

Father. You're beloved of your Heavenly Father immutably and infinitely because Jesus died for you and because Jesus lived for you.

01:58:52

I want the Reformed faith not to be a toy that we play with by having conversations and arguments.

01:58:59

I want it to be a glorious, joy, fruit -producing truth that drives us and directs us to the cross and into the kingdom of God.

01:59:12

Amen. And, folks, if you want to find out more about Growing Up with R .C., the book by our guest

01:59:18

R .C. Sproul Jr., go to ichthuspublications .com, ichthuspublications .com,

01:59:24

that's I -C -H -T -H -U -S -publications .com. And remember, you can also get all of R .C.

01:59:30

Sproul's and R .C. Sproul Jr.'s books at cvbbs .com, our sponsor,

01:59:36

C -V, standing for Cumberland Valley, BBS for Bible Book Service, .com. I want to thank you so much,

01:59:43

R .C., Jr., for being our guest today again after so many years. I look forward to your return to our program.

01:59:49

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