November 2, 2018 Show with Dr. Cary G. Kimbrell on “A Christian Perspective on Choosing a Political Party”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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

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

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

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

Now here's our host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at IronSharpensIronRadio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this second day of November 2018.

I want to give you all a sad update and more requests for prayer.

Some of you who heard the program yesterday will remember that my friend

Lou Brancadora, just about four days ago now, had a massive stroke.

He is in a coma. The MRI detected very severe brain damage and the latest update that I have is that his eyes are not even responding to light.

So it appears as though the Brancadora family is now just making funeral arrangements and they are going to be apparently disconnecting life support, which is the only thing keeping him alive at this time.

So please pray for the Brancadora family. Lou was such a gregarious, zealous Christian at Reformed Baptist.

He was known to be a Bible conference traveler. He loved to be at Reformed Bible conferences and he urged me to go to many of them with him and I am so sad that I turned him down on more occasions than I accepted his invitations, especially the most recent one he invited me to in Ocean City, New Jersey.

But please, as I said, pray for the Brancadora family and give them the peace of mind and joy of heart knowing that Lou is certainly going to be in the presence of his

Savior very soon and of course it would be a it would it would warrant a miracle of biblical proportions at this point for the outcome to be anything different than Lou passing on to eternity.

So just give that family most of all the the joy of knowing that he is finally going to be very soon at the place where he has longed to be ever since he has been a

Christian and that is in paradise with our Lord God Savior and King Christ Jesus. And I will also continue to give you updates as that as I have them.

But today we have on the program someone who I am thrilled to be interviewing, Dr. Cary G.

Kimbrough. He is senior pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church of Laurel, Mississippi and host of the

Deep South Founders Conference. Today we are going to be addressing a Christian perspective on choosing a political party and we'll also be announcing details about how you can attend the

Deep South Founders Conference where God willing I will be attending and it's my very first trip not only to this conference but to the state of Mississippi.

But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the first time ever to Orange Sherpa and Zion Radio, Dr. Cary G.

Kimbrough. Thank you for having me Chris I appreciate the opportunity.

And let me get a clarification is it Kimbrough or Kimbrell? We pronounce it

Kimbrell. It probably should be pronounced Kimbrell. We get Kimball, Kimbro, so anyway so we started really kind of accenting the

Braille, so Kimbrell, so that's the way we pronounce it. Okay then that's the way

I will pronounce it from now on, God willing, unless I just have a worse memory than I thought I did and revert back to the other.

Well before I go into our conversation today, which will begin by the way with you giving a summary of your salvation testimony.

We always have first -time guests on Orange Sherpa and Zion Radio, when they're Christians of course, give a testimony of their salvation.

And before we do that and before we move on to the main topic, a Christian perspective on choosing a political party, I want you to tell us something about Bethlehem Baptist Church of Laurel, Mississippi and then also something about Deep South Founders Conference.

Bethlehem Baptist Church began in 1870, in fact the church is ten years older than the city.

It began under the name of Dry Swamp Baptist Church. Dry Swamp Baptist Church.

I thought that those would be mutually exclusive terms, but anyway it's kind of an oxymoron, but it started there.

And it has been a primitive Baptist Church, it has been an independent

Baptist Church. I think it was even at one time a missionary Baptist Church, if I'm not mistaken.

But now we are affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention and have been for, oh,

I would say much of the 20th century into the 21st century.

And so that's where we are. When I came here about 20 years ago, it was what we would call a typical

Southern Baptist Church. And so I began to open the Bible and preach the

Word. I basically started with this is the Bible, it is

God's Word, and we will hear what he says to us. And I quoted in my first, probably four or five years more than anything, the verse out of Daniel 4, that the

Lord does whatsoever he wills in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay his hand or say unto him what doest thou.

And so that's to try to drive home the point of what the Bible is and who

God is and his sovereignty. And then just opened the Bible and preached, you know, just preached from the

Word. I started with basically telling them what they should expect of me as a pastor.

I said, well, you know, for the rest of my time here I will be telling you what God expects of you, so I'm going to begin telling you what

God expects of me. And then we moved to, I knew

I was going to begin to preach through the Ten Commandments, and so before I do that, or did that, because I know that sometime when you preach through the

Ten Commandments, it can really shake people up who've never gone through a systematic preaching of the law of God.

So before I did that, I went to First John and talked to them about assurance. So I wanted to give them an opportunity to, you know, to hear some sermons on assurance, and then we went to there, and then it began, you know.

Ups and downs, people getting upset, and people, some people loving it.

It reminds me of an old pastor that told me one time when you preach the gospel, there are a few reactions.

Some people get sad under conviction, some people get mad or angry at you, and some people get glad in salvation.

So sad, glad, or mad is the gospel. And we went, and the Lord has been very pleased to bring us along in those areas, and we are thankful to him for doing that.

Amen. Well, obviously when the church was originally named Dry Swamp Baptist Church, it wasn't operating under the ideology of the

Seeker Sensitive Movement. Probably not.

And it's interesting, the theological changes over the years. I know that the

Primitive Baptists, and I don't want to broad brush them, because they are not exactly a monolith, but many of them are known for hyper -Calvinism.

In fact, some are even known for hypo -Calvinism or sub -Calvinism when it comes to the providence of God, interestingly enough.

That's right, which is kind of unusual. Right. First time I discovered that, I was just frankly shocked by it, to be honest with you.

Right, in other words, for our folks who are a little confused by what I'm saying, they have, some of them, or if not many of them, have a hyper -Calvinistic understanding of soteriology.

But, for instance, if a man dies at 34 from cancer due to smoking cigarettes,

God had nothing to do with that day and hour that that man died. Right.

And, in fact, those that believe what

I just said in the Primitive Baptist movement would call those who believe that God is in sovereign control over everything, in every act and event in heaven and on earth that will ever come to pass, they will call them absoluters, as a phrase of derision towards those that they would, in a sense, be calling hyper -Calvinist.

But then you have the time as an independent and missionary Baptist Church.

Was the congregation still professing the doctrines of grace in any way then, or had it become Arminian?

I think it was Arminian, though they had a pastor, at least one that they told me about, that served here two different times, that some of the older members were saying that he did preach the same theological understanding as I did.

So I think that they had a little bit of a taste of it, but by and large, typical Arminian, committee -led, you know,

Southern Baptist Church, and programmatic, and so that's where I found, in fact, my whole ministry has been in these kind of churches.

I surely would not have chosen that for myself, but it seems like that's where, in the providence of God, hypo -Calvinist notwithstanding, that that's where God has placed me.

And so that's kind of been my ministry all along in these, oh

I guess, 40 years of ministry. Now, was the congregation Bethlehem Baptist Church theologically reformed when, already, before you became the pastor there, or were you used by...

No, no. Okay, so the Lord used you to bring the church into... That's right, that's right, that's right.

Okay, well praise God for that. And well now, let us, as I said already, hear a summary of your salvation testimony, something about the religion of your youth, how you were raised, if religion had any place at all, and the providential circumstances that the

Lord rose up in your life through his sovereign grace that providentially drew you to himself and saved you.

Well, when I was very young, my parents didn't attend church, for whatever reasons.

My father came out of a family, my grandfather really,

I never actually knew my grandfather on the Kimbrel side to ever go to church.

My grandmother was a Methodist, really loved the

Lord and was one, you know, and embraced the

Scripture, and so she was a Methodist, and actually my dad told me that she actually would really kind of lean toward almost a holiness understanding of that.

She kind of liked that expression in religion. Well, in fact, he told me that there was many days that he hooked up the horse to the wagon, and they'd go all over the county up North Mississippi to these holiness meetings.

Well, of course, when I, you know, when I woke up and began to see who my relatives were,

I always knew her to be very, very godly. But my dad wasn't, my mother not so much either, though, you know, there was being in the

South, there was a Christian -esque kind of attitude, you know, but it wasn't, they didn't worship.

So there was a couple named Robert and Maddie Middleton that would come by and pick us up and took us to a church,

Emanuel Baptist Church on North Boulevard in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where I was born and raised.

And the church, the church is no longer there, but, you know, it was just a

Southern Baptist typical church, but they did preach and teach. I was in friendship class and taught the gospel.

So I wasn't extremely encouraged to go, but then there was a lady in the church,

Leonie Rice, that came and talked to my mother one day and was pretty frank with her about her children and her responsibilities.

So my mother began to attend, and if I'm not mistaken,

I think my mother professed Christ in that church. I would have been young, but I believe that's what happened.

Well, I remember I was eight years old, maybe a little, maybe almost nine, and I was sitting in an association class and they were teaching.

I remember specifically, I don't remember the day or the year, but I remember specifically the lesson that they were teaching on the baptism of Jesus.

And for some reason that struck me, and from there

I did what, you know, what they expected.

I mean, if you felt like the Lord had worked in your heart, then you walk down this aisle and you tell us that.

And so I remember going down the aisle and my brother, my brother

David, who's a little older than I am, he, I'm not sure we went down together, but we were baptized together.

But I do remember when I walked down there to be, I was just really overcome as a young man, just really overcome with a lot of emotion, and couldn't really speak very well to the pastor, but I was able to choke out that I believed the

Lord had opened my heart. Now, being where I am now and being a pastor all these years,

I would be a little bit, just to be honest with you, a little bit suspect of an eight, nine -year -old boy confessing

Christ, because I would just be, you know, concerned about maybe he was manipulated.

In fact, Dennis Gunderson, you may know that Dennis Gunderson wrote an excellent book called

Your Child's Profession of Faith that relates to that. And of course, the thing about mine is that it's lasted,

I'm 63 now, and it's lasted these years, and I grew in the grace and knowledge of the

Lord. And so, not to say that I was perfect all along, but I did have an upward trajectory in Christ, and so looking back on it, and because now

I know so much more than then, I don't know how much I remembered that I knew back then, or how much

I'm reading into what I knew back then. But anyway, from that point on, and really of all my family,

I'm one of five of all my family, really the only one that has continued in a serious devotion for Christ and worship, and so it's kind of one of those unusual things.

And then I was called to preach, and my mother, I'll never forget what my mother told me, she said,

I think I'd rather you be a moonshiner than a preacher. Now why on earth would that be her preference?

Well I don't know, I guess maybe she came from a family that had moonshiners in it.

Maybe she just thought it was more lucrative. Well, or she was really concerned about it, you know, about...

she knew enough to know that a pastor's life sometimes is not very, you know, peaceful.

That there's always, you know, some conflict or something, you know, and I think maybe she was trying to protect me from that, and she was so nervous.

I began to preach at 16, and I don't think she ever came and heard a sermon, because she said she was just too nervous to listen to me.

And so I think I was in my 40s before she ever came and heard me preach. So anyway, just to make a point, there's no way that I could have been mama called to the ministry, as we would say in the

South. I never heard that phrase before. You've never heard mama called? No, because I'm a Yankee, so...

Well, I'm sorry about that. By the way,

I have to quickly tell you a story. Years ago, back in the 90s,

I had a conversation with an elderly Presbyterian brother from Mississippi, and he was a pastor, a retired pastor, and when he found out that I was from New York, he said, you folks from New York got it easy.

All you got to do is get people saved. We've got to get them lost and then get them saved.

That is right, that is right.

There's a lot of social religion or social Christianity down here, for sure.

And you know, it's just like, when I moved from Baton Rouge, I lived in Baton Rouge most of my life, moved to Laurel, and the thing that really struck me, you know, being a smaller town, you're 20 minutes from anywhere, and everywhere you go, you see people you know.

And thirdly, most people, before they eat, you know, thank the

Lord for the food, which is kind of unusual. And so there's a real social

Christianity which can inoculate you from the real thing.

He's right. I would have to agree with him. So that is quite a testimony, and we did accidentally skip over something that I wanted you to discuss before your testimony, but God knows better than we do on how to organize these things.

The Deep South Founders Conference, tell us in detail about this conference that I will be attending for the first time,

God willing, in January. Yeah, I believe it was in 1983, if I'm not mistaken, that there was some

Southern Baptists who had come to a historical understanding of our faith that got together and started a

Founders Conference. I remember, you know,

Tom Nettles was part of that, and Bill and Tom Askell, and I think also

R .F. Gates was a part of that. But anyway, and Ernie Riesinger, I never, you know,

Ernie was there. Ernie was the gentleman who founded the church where I am now a member,

Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Well, I mean, you know, it's a small world, isn't it?

Yeah. So we, well anyway, they started the Founders Conference. Well, then some years later, and they've started some other organizations under it, like Founders Ministries and Founders Journal, and but under, they began to pop up regional, so they call them

Southern Baptist Regional Founders Conference. Well, about 10 years, 11 years ago now,

I think, we began one here in the Deep South, started it and tried to have it in Jackson, but our

Jackson, Mississippi, and our venue there just was not really suited.

So I think it was about four years ago, we moved it here to Laurel and to host it at Bethlehem Baptist Church, and it's really been a good move.

People are a lot more comfortable, and our attendance is somewhat better having moved it here, and we were a little concerned that Laurel might have been a little bit too much out of the way, but it looks like that has been a good move.

And so what we're doing at the Deep South Founders Conference, we're actually preaching through, as a part of our bylaws, we're preaching through the 1689

Confessions. So every subject of each subsequent

Founders Conference, or each year's Founders Conference, is a chapter or maybe two of the 1689

Confessions. So we started with the Scripture, and we've been moving the, I think, the

Scripture, we started with David Miller, who came from Arkansas and was the keynote speaker then.

Then we began to move through. James White has been here on the Trinity. Dearest friend,

I've known James since 1995, became a close friend of his by 96, and have organized many debates for him, probably 25 or so, and many more speaking engagements than that.

Yeah, and we had him, the first time he came, we had him debate a

Presbyterian, I'm sorry, a Methodist professor from Jackson, and it was brutal.

I mean, this guy didn't know what hit him. He was, and we told him now, before he came, we said, now look, you know,

James White is a professional debater, he can, oh, I think I can defend myself. Well, well, he couldn't.

Anyway, that was... James, I had arranged years ago a radio debate between Dr.

James R. White and a United Methodist seminary professor, and believe it or not, the

United Methodist seminary professor was the professor of medical ethics, and he was pro -abortion.

And that was the debate, what the debate was on. The debate probably lasted 20 minutes because the

United Methodist, keep in mind folks, he's a faculty member at a United Methodist seminary. He was furious that James White asked him the simple question, do you believe in God?

And the man told James it was none of his business, even though the whole debate was on, is abortion an acceptable practice within Christianity?

So obviously God had to be a part of the theme, and he told

James White to go to hell, and he hung up about 20 minutes into the debate.

That was a long time ago. I don't think I could find a tape of it these days, but if I ever find one,

I'll let you know. Well, well, James, you know, acquitted himself well that night, as he always does, at least in my presence, and then we had him a few years ago.

He came back, we were trying to set up a debate with the Muslim, but it just didn't work out.

And so we didn't get a debate, but he did come, and you know, again, so we've had him again.

We also had Conrad in Bayway earlier, but we're bringing him back, and this year our theme is sanctification.

Praise God. And so, and then what we do, we have a keynote speaker that we bring in, someone that would be fairly well known, and then underneath that, because we have two sermons on Thursday night, two sermons on Friday morning, two sermons on Friday evening, and two sermons on Saturday morning, so we have these number of sermons, and we give the keynote a spot in every.

So Conrad in Bayway will preach Thursday night, Friday morning,

Friday night, and Saturday morning, but underneath them, in the other slot of preaching, we have what we, in our bylaws, call for those who actually come to the conference, because we wanted it not to be a conference of a certain board putting it together, but we wanted it to be the attendees conference, and so we choose out of those attendees people who are out there actually doing the work of the ministry, may not be well known, but are out there in the churches doing this

Reformed and Gospel work. So we usually get them underneath the keynote.

Well, so this year we will have my fellow elder here with me,

Gerald Henderson, who's been with me 15 years, and then and also we will have a missionary

Baptist pastor who is in our town here in Laurel, Jason Goodwin, and he's pastor of a local church here, and he will be preaching.

Gerald will be preaching on the practice of all true holiness, and Jason Goodwin will be practicing, or will be preaching,

I'm sorry, on spiritual war, the spirit against the flesh. Then we'll have a member at Grace Baptist Church in Jackson, Thomas Wynn's the pastor of that church, and so Bobby Crenshaw will be preaching on the remnants of corruption in the believer, and then we'll have a man that's coming out of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Rusty Reed, who will be preaching on evangelical obedience.

In fact, Rusty Reed is going to be my guest on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Wednesday the 28th of November, so if you folks want to mark your calendars down for 4 to 6 p .m.,

Rusty Reed on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Wednesday, November 28th. I just received word of that while this program was in process today.

Great, well I appreciate that, and appreciate what you're doing. Well I am so excited about being there, especially because of my enormous undying love for Conrad M.

Bayway. Conrad has been a friend of mine since 1995 after he preached at the church where I was a member at that time,

Grace Reform Baptist Church of Long Island, which is located in Merrick, New York, and Conrad preached there during his very first trip to the

United States, and we hit it off and have been remaining in contact ever since.

I was working for WMCA radio at the time, and Grace Reform Baptist Church aired commercials for Conrad's conference, and we took a clip of Conrad preaching his guts out about the atonement that Christ provided on Calvary, and our phones would not stop ringing off the hook, and we had over the three -day period that the conference was held, 500 visitors that did not include our own members in attendance, and that may not sound like anything to folks in these huge churches down south or in megachurches, but for a

Reform Baptist Church on Long Island, New York, that's a big deal. Well that'd be a big deal for a church in Laurel, Mississippi too, let me tell you that.

That's wonderful. I appreciate that testimony. Conrad, I have been associated with African Pastors Conferences.

Actually, that was started by Errol Hulse before Brother Errol passed away, but the

African Pastors Conference Sub -Saharan Africa, the nations, they're doing, I think they do something like 30 or 40 of those conferences down there, where we actually go in and preach to kind of a

Pentecostal element that's down there, and put good books in their hands, subsidize, so the pastors down there that don't have a lot of money can get them.

So we've scattered books, Reform books, all over Sub -Saharan Africa over these years, and well, they invited me to go, and I've been preaching for four years in Zambia, in the conference in Zambia, in Lusaka, and in Dola, and then this year we did one in Kampimta, which is a little area near Kitwe.

Well, every year I've been over there, Conrad has asked me to preach in his church there,

Kwabata Baptist Church, and so I've been able to do that, and this time he asked me to come and preach on a marriage conference, or a marriage service concerning biblical and Christian marriage.

He said, and then he told me, but the punchline must be, you can't have a good marriage until the

Lord saves you. So I wanted to be kind of an even evangelistic marriage seminar.

So anyway, and so I, and he said, and when I went to talk to him before the service, he said, well, you know, we should have a good crowd, because I've instructed my congregation to invite their friends.

And I said, well, they always do what you tell them, and he laughed with that infectious laugh he has, and but it was full, it surely was full, and so Conrad has become a dear friend of mine over these years, and we really appreciate him being able to be here.

I never cease to announce on this program that I think that he is the most powerful preacher alive on the planet

Earth today. Amen. Well, they call him the Spurgeon of Africa. Yes, that's right.

And when I tell him that, he just laughs, he's very awful about that, he's just, but, and he's always constant.

I mean, he is just, I've never heard him not do well.

Yeah, I agree. And for our listeners, we will be repeating this, but the Deep South Founders Conference, the next one, will be held

January 24th through the 26th at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Laurel, Mississippi, and for more details on that conference, you could go to DeepSouthFounders .com,

DeepSouthFounders .com. I hope that many of our listeners, especially those who can easily travel to Laurel, Mississippi, I hope you'll be there, and greet me while I am manning an

Iron Trump and Ziron exhibitors booth there. That's DeepSouthFounders .com. We're going to our very first break right now today.

If you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com,

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

USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Don't go away. We'll be right back with Dr. Cary Kimbrell right after these messages from our sponsors.

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That's PTLBibleRebinding .com. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen, if you just tuned us in. Our guest today for the full two hours is

Dr. Carrie G. Kimbrell, senior pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church of Laurel, Mississippi and host of the

Deep South Founders Conference, where I will be attending, God willing, for the very first time this

January. And once again, if you are interested in attending the

Deep South Founders Conference, you can go to DeepSouthFounders .com.

DeepSouthFounders .com. The conference is January 24th through the 26th at the Bethlehem Baptist Church of Laurel, Mississippi, and I hope to see you there.

Today, Dr. Kimbrell and I are discussing a very timely theme, obviously, with elections coming up just in a matter of days.

We are discussing a Christian perspective on choosing a political party. Our email address is

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, if you have a question regarding this.

First of all, Dr. Kimbrell, what was the catalyst in your mind, other than perhaps the timeliness of Election Day fastly approaching, but were there any motivations for you wanting to discuss a

Christian perspective on choosing a political party? Are you aware or familiar with perhaps many professing

Christians or even Christians that you suspect are truly born again, that are true Christians, that are really going about this theme in an unbiblical manner?

Well, I began considering this, I actually wrote an article a number of years ago around the

Tea Party movement, and so I think they began around 2010, so sometime shortly after that,

I was invited to speak to the executive committee of the

Jones County Republicans, and a man had asked me to bring a topic.

He was really concerned about one particular topic, but instead of just writing that in particular,

I just kind of sat down and wrote a more of a full -orbed understanding about what we should do as Christians, and surely

Christians must be involved in the process, because if they're not, then someone else is going to choose the leaders of this nation, and so I really believe that we must be engaged in that, and I've had varying opinions over the years about how much we should be or shouldn't be engaged in this thing, but it seems as if now, because of the critical nature of politics, because it's involved in every area of our life, there's not one thing that we do or say, and even in the church, they can talk about separation of church and state all they want, but politics, and you know, in civil government politics, because there's surely politics in the church too, but civil government politics is so vital because of basically the encroachment upon the church, and the encroachment upon the sphere of the church, where the government's trying to block us out and take over our legitimate functions in the

United States and in the world, and so we must be involved, and so we have to be involved at a right level and for the right reasons.

Well, it's interesting that you are a native Southerner, and throughout the majority of American history, since the

Democratic Party has been in existence, the South was permeated with Democrats.

If you were a Republican, you were certainly a minority for quite a long time.

I think it wasn't until Ronald Reagan, if I'm not mistaken, that that switch or transformation or that flip -flop began in the

South, where the Republican Party began to gain in its footing there and perhaps even dominate, not everywhere, because you do have elected officials in major positions of authority who are

Democrat, but tell us about that. Well, I was born and raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and I can tell you

I never met a Republican, a real live, living, breathing

Republican, until I was an adult. Wow. Yeah, in fact, if you were a

Republican in Louisiana, they could have had their convention in a phone booth. I'm not even sure today with cell phones, that even translates or makes sense.

I'm sure there are Millennials who have no idea what you're talking about. But the thing about it is that, you know, you voted in the presidential election in Louisiana if you were not a

Democrat, because, I mean, they were all, you know, it was all Democrats. In fact, I remember going the first time to vote.

In a vote, we had the little booth, and you turn the little switch up at the top, and the curtain closes, and there was one big lever.

Now, you could, you know, do the individual ones if you wanted to, but there was one big one that you could pull, and it went straight

Democrat. And so that's the way we grew up.

And then, you know, that comes out, you know, obviously out of the

Civil War, and the Reconstruction, and the radical Republicans that, you know, came to the

South. You are the first Southerner that I've ever heard use the phrase

Civil War. My friends from the South call it the War of Northern Aggression. Well, I'd use

Civil War because that's the term that most people understand. And, of course, we could get into that discussion, but the point is that there was a great resemblance, and it actually lasted 150 years.

Not until the 60s did the softening against Republicans happen in the

South, and, of course, it didn't fully happen, like, say, to Ronald Reagan. That's when I became a

Republican. My first vote, this is why young people shouldn't have a vote, my first vote for President of the

United States was Jimmy Carter, because I, you know, being a young devoted Christian, and this was before I understood the doctrines of grace, but being a young devoted Christian, I, you know, the guy was born again, so I mean, why wouldn't we vote for somebody born again?

But I remember distinctly when, right before 1980, with the

Equal Rights Amendment. I don't know if you remember that, you know, that big war, and it didn't pass.

Remember, they extended it. Remember, they even violated the Constitution to extend the time, because they really wanted this

Equal Rights Amendment. And I remember Jimmy Carter saying, I will do everything in my power, and I'll put all my political power and all my political capital to be sure to get this thing passed.

And I remember asking myself, why am I a Democrat? Because I don't believe one thing they, you know, that they stand for.

And so that's when I changed, and I have not voted for a

Democrat since 1980, at any level.

Okay, now, obviously, you and I would have to admit that there is nothing sacred and holy about the

Republican Party. There are many people who constantly let us down in the Republican Party when they're elected to office.

Sometimes we, as Christians, feel like that we have been utterly, just very plainly used as tools to increase votes for some of our

Republican candidates. In fact, there are even Republicans, as you know, who are pro -abortion.

The state of New York had a Republican governor,

George Pataki, that was notorious for his pro -abortion positions. It's kind of interesting how people are painting

Rudy Giuliani these days, since he is closely allied with President Trump.

They're painting him with a conservative brush, but he was pro -abortion when he ran for and won the election for mayor of New York City.

Accomplished some good things there, but he was very emphatically in favor of gay rights and so many things that are affiliated with a

Democratic Party platform. But if you could tell us what are

Christians, in your opinion, and as a pastor, what are we to be looking for in a party that we associate with and where we place our votes?

Because there is sometimes a mixed bag of things. Sometimes there are things that a

Democratic candidate, perhaps, might believe in that you also agree with him on, that might even be closely more aligned with a

Christian principle from the scriptures. But then again, you have today, in this day and age, it's rare to find a

Democrat that does not believe, at least, who does not give lip service to his belief or her belief in the murder of unborn children, if that is the whim of the mother for any reason at all.

Well, as a Christian, we have to really go back and, you know, first of all, we are salt and light.

We are to live by every word that proceeded from the mouth of God.

And, you know, Christ said, men shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeded forth from the mouth of God, in Matthew 4 .4.

So it's very interesting that the Soviet Union, in 1917, tried to become a bread -alone state.

And in 80 years, by 1987, they couldn't even make bread. And so the issue is that Christianity has always been a bane for overarching big government, you know, state for the state.

You know, it's a... we've always been, all the way back to the Roman Empire.

The Roman Empire was not against Christianity because of its, per se, religion, because they tolerate all religion.

I mean, they tolerate all kind of religion. But the thing that caused the

Roman Empire to be very antagonistic against Christianity was the simple statement,

Jesus Christ is Lord. Now, if Jesus Christ is Lord, then

Caesar can't be Lord. And, of course, that's the primary concern of the Roman Empire, that Jesus Christ was

Lord. And you see, in politics and religion back then, they were one and the same.

Caesar, you know, was the political leader, but he was also worshiped. Well, I don't think that's...

I don't really think that's changed. I remember reading

Henry Van Teel. He said that culture is nothing but religion externalized, which is very important to this discussion, you see.

Because culture just doesn't fall out of the sky. Culture is something that is developed, and it's really a religious understanding.

In fact, we have to pick up on that exact point. That's an excellent point on culture.

We have to pick up on that when we return from our elongated break. This is where Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

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

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio to Lake City, Florida, by airing their own public service announcements and commercials.

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Because the more you patronize our advertisers, the more likely they will remain our advertisers, which means the more likely we will remain on the air, because we depend upon their advertising dollars.

So please write down the information for our advertisers, given by our advertisers, and also write down questions for our guest,

Dr. Carrie G Kimbrell, on a Christian's choice or a

Christian's perspective on choosing a political party, and send those questions to Chris Arnzen at gmail .com,

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

USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Don't go away,

God willing, we will be right back after these messages with Dr. Carrie G Kimbrell, and more of our discussion on a

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

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S's in the middle. I hope to hear from you soon. God bless you. James White here, co -founder of Alpha and Omega Ministries and occasional guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

I'm so delighted that my friend Chris Arnson will be heading down to Atlanta for the next G3 Conference from January 17th to the 19th, 2019, where I'll be joining a very impressive lineup of speakers on the theme,

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Chris Arnzen of Iron Shepard's Iron Radio. Before we return to our guest today, Dr. Kari G.

Kimbrell, Senior Pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church of Laurel, Mississippi, and founder of the

Deep South Founders Conference, and our discussion on a Christian perspective on choosing a political party, we just have a few special events that we want you to be aware of before we return to the discussion.

First of all, next week I will be, once again, God willing, manning an Iron Shepard's Iron Exhibitor's booth at the

Quakertown Conference on Reform Theology. That's being held once again at the Grace Bible Fellowship Church of Quakertown, Pennsylvania, November 9th and the 10th, which is a

Friday and Saturday. The theme is The Glory of the Cross, and the speakers include

David Garner, Ray Ortlund, Richard Phillips, Timothy Gibson, and Carlton Nguyen. That's Friday and Saturday, November 9th and the 10th at the

Grace Bible Fellowship Church of Quakertown, Pennsylvania. For more details, go to Alliancenet .org,

Alliancenet .org, click on events, and then scroll down to Quakertown Conference on Reform Theology.

Then coming up in January, the G3 Conference once again returns to the

Georgia International Convention Center in College Park, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta.

They are expecting between four and five thousand people there this year, or should I say this

January, so if you have a business or a parachurch organization or a church that you would like to promote amongst that enormous crowd of between four and five thousand people,

I would strongly recommend that you not only register to attend personally, but also register for an exhibitor's booth just like I will be manning there from Thursday, January 17th through Saturday, January 19th.

The roster is, as always, huge and very impressive, featuring Dr. James R.

White of Alpha Omega Ministries, John Piper, Stephen J. Lawson, Voti Baucom, Mark Dever, Conrad M.

Bayway, who we've been mentioning in this program, who's also speaking at the Deep South Founders Conference, Tim Challies, Phil Johnson, the

Executive Director of John MacArthur's Ministry, grace to you, Todd Friel of Wretched TV and Wretched Radio, and Stephen J.

Nichols, the president of the college founded by the late R .C. Sproul and Ligonier Ministries, Reformation Bible College, and many more are on that roster.

If you'd like to register to attend and or to register for an exhibitor's booth, go to g3conference .com,

g3conference .com. And then, once again, coming up not long after that,

January 24th through the 26th, the Deep South Founders Conference will be held in Laurel, Mississippi at the

Bethlehem Baptist Church there in Laurel. I intend to be there as well, God willing, manning an

Iron, Sharp, and Zion exhibitor's booth and the speakers include Dr. Conrad M.

Bayway, Rusty Reed, Gerald Henderson, Jason Goodwin, and Bobby Crenshaw.

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That is Dr. Cary G Kimbrell, the senior pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Laurel, Mississippi, and also the host of the

Deep South Founders Conference. That's chrisarnsen at gmail .com, chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

And if you could, Dr. Kimbrell, before the break you were discussing the connection between culture and religion.

If you could continue on that thread. Yeah, the religious or the political understandings that we hold, again, do not just, you know, fall out of the sky.

They come from some source. Now, what I find is a lot of Christians say, well, you know, the

Bible is not a political book. And so maybe, you know, we shouldn't be in that area talking about it.

But the thing is that if you accept something like that, then what you say and what

I hear you saying is that you can get your political theory anywhere but the

Bible. You can get it from Hobbes, you can get it from Locke, or you can get it from Machiavelli, but you can't get it from the

Bible. Well, I don't believe that that's true. I think that the

Bible speaks either directly to or by necessary inference, it speaks to all the matters of life.

And so therefore, when we consider culture or when we consider political involvement, it has to be

Christian in the sense that it derives from the word of God. And when we talk about people, when we say, well, a

Christian needs to do or would never do, what we're talking about is those people who have vowed to the lordship of Christ and who accept the authority of the word.

And so surely we don't forget we're

Christians when we walk into a voting booth. We don't. So it is, and the cultural things that we are concerned about.

Now, of course, the Republican Party, you mentioned earlier that, you know, sometimes they want us to vote every four years or whenever for them and then shut up.

And so it's the social issues that bring us to that party, and it really makes them uncomfortable with us, these social issues.

And yet, we must address these social issues, and we must address them from the position we do, or we are betraying the

Bible and being unfaithful to our Christ. And so that's in every area of culture for us, because it's our

Christianity externalized. Okay, we have a question from Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.

He says, what should you do when you are faced with a dilemma when you have two political candidates running against each other for any particular office, where you may have, for instance, a conservative

Republican who is only conservative on issues outside of abortion, he may be fiscally conservative, he may believe in the death penalty, and he may be against same sex marriage, but his

Democratic opponent is ironically pro -life, or something like that. How do you vote in such circumstances?

Well, I guess we could sit around and make up a scenario where it would be almost impossible to sort out.

Again, I think that when we're talking about this, in really broad terms now, if we start talking about the morality,

I mean, both parties have problems with morality. You know, what we say down here, and you may have heard this, but what we say in the

South is that you can tell when a politician is lying because his lips are moving.

Yeah, we've heard that up here, too. So the point is, I mean, the morality, but when we look at parties now, and of course, there's candidates, there's certain candidates that we, no matter what party label they have, we couldn't vote for them either way.

Because we can't make a compromise on abortion. I mean, what are we going to say? You know, you can have every third child to abort, you know, or these issues.

Well, because a child happens to be conceived in a way that we think is horrific, that a woman would have to go through that, do we kill a child or say it's okay to kill a child because of the way the child was conceived?

I mean, so these are issues that, as Christians, you know, we, in fact,

I would never, I would never, I would never vote for anyone that believes it's okay to kill babies.

I mean, everything, everything beyond that is just, I mean, tax cuts, fiscal,

I mean, that's negotiable stuff. Killing babies? No way. That is so joltingly satanic and horrifying that it amazes me that we have become so desensitized as a culture that you could have a political candidate who almost won the presidency of the

United States, Hillary Clinton, who during the debates has a smile on her face as she is defending a woman's right to murder a baby up until the ninth month.

Right. And you would think, okay, then everybody who's even considering voting for her, unless they are members of the church of or they're serial killers, they're not going to vote for her.

Well, no, she almost won. In fact, she did win the popular vote numerically. That's right.

So it's a really dark and sinister time that we are living in when this seems to be a debatable issue where even on an outlet like Fox News that is known for conservativism, you can have friendly discussions with people who believe you can murder your baby up until the ninth month.

And during those discussions, there'll be nothing but warmth and perhaps even chuckles here and there.

It's not viewed the way that it rightly should be viewed. Well, I remember that debate and I remember that night and I remember what

Donald Trump said that night when he said that he would protect those children from abortion.

And I came back to my pulpit and said to them, listen, they've said to us the lesser of two evils, but let me tell you this,

Donald Trump's stand against abortion and that debate that night, that was not the lesser of two evils.

That was a holy stand when he protected those babies. Now, and so that brings us back to the party.

You see, oh, how can you vote for someone who's in a party that believes it's okay to kill babies?

Now, I know that there are some Republicans that believe it's okay to kill babies, but at least the party, the platform has not roved itself in that garb yet.

You see, so, and then it's the greater issue. You see, the great political enemy of Christianity is a totalitarian, overreaching state.

That's the great political enemy of Christianity. They've always attacked Christianity from the

Roman Empire through the French Revolution to the

Democratic Party now. The Democratic Party now is, you know, when it's said that it's against these candidates who are conservative and who hold these positions of pro -life, they war against them.

They castigate them. Well, they're castigating us. That's us as Christians. And then again, just incidental to this, the great religious enemy of Christianity is relativism, see, this idea that we can, that there are some truths and, you know, maybe the

Bible just speaks, you know, you can believe some, you don't have to believe them all, that kind of thing. And of course, then the scientific enemy against Christianity is evolution.

And then the historic enemy against Christianity, and a very historic, I mean, in the sense of of propagating history, is revisionism.

Well, I mean, I just described the Democratic Party. Right. And even if you believe that somehow, fiscally, the

Democratic Party is superior, if you have these other views, I don't know how that could be more important than the legalization of the murder, the slaughter, the infanticide of millions of unborn children.

We have another... But on top of that, but on top of that, they're not, they're not fiscally conservative either.

I mean... Right, I'm just saying, even if you were convinced that the liberal understanding of fiscalism is more biblical, because there are people who are convinced that the welfare system and the way that millions and billions are dumped into the tax system to allegedly take care of the poor, they think that is what

Jesus would do. I'm not saying that they're correct. I'm saying that that is what Jesus would support.

That's what they say, because he was out for the poor, and the downtrodden, and the underdog, and those who are hungry and homeless.

So therefore, the Democrats have done a very good job at convincing into duping millions of people that they are more like Christ.

But if you, but if you have discernment, you see, you would know that even the

Democratic Party, being for the poor, welfare, whatever we may call it, that's a usurpation of the

Church's function in the nation, you see. And see, the

Church does it in a warm way, in a human way, in a loving way.

We're not going to subsidize sin, because we know that sin is the reason that you're in the position you're in often.

So we're going to help you, you see. But the machine of the state, it can only be a machine, you see.

It can only swing out mechanically. And the problem is, if you get too close to a mechanical arm, it's going to knock your head off.

You see, and that's exactly what's happening. They usurp. And the reason that they won't, you see, all of it, welfare, you know, taking care of the poor, or the medical, the reason they want that is because they know that they can put people in an enslavement situation, you see, and they will continue to vote for them, you see.

Whereas these things are for the Church, and if it's done outside the Church, it's legitimate.

Jesus was for the poor, for the Church to take care of the poor. Jesus was for the downtrodden, for the

Church to take care. Because, you see, then it's done in righteousness rather than in an enslavement, rather than, you know, doing it in such a way that, you know, brings money to you, you know, brings wealth to you, or power to you.

And so, you know, it's socialistic. And every socialistic, you know, every socialistic government that leads to communism, all of that has always been the enemy of the

Church of Jesus Christ. That's what they do in the Soviet Union. The first thing they did was to destroy the

Church. They arrested them, put them in, and, you know, I'm reading now Gulag Archipelago, and these, you know, that's what they did.

They arrested these people for the Church, and it was very interesting. In that book, what's interesting is that they said that the women were the ones that would never, you know, hardly ever say that they denounced

Christianity. The men would, but the women wouldn't. Many women were in jail for not denouncing.

Well, that's true, you see. So why would we as Christians hack at our own foundation by supporting a party that is socialistic or, you know, has a tendency to lean that way?

In fact, we have to go to our final break, and you can pick up where you left off. This is a shorter than the last break, but please send in your question immediately if you intend to write one at chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and by the way, Dr. Kimbrell, I have a question for you that I will read to you, and you could respond to it when we return from the break.

Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania says, How do you respond to the person that one -issue voting is dangerous and your guest appears to be a one -issue voter?

How do you respond to that? And we will have you answer when we return from the break. Don't go away, God willing, we will be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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Spread the word about firstloveradio .org. Welcome back.

If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with about 20 minutes to go is Dr. Kari G.

Kimbrell, a senior pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church of Laurel, Mississippi, and host of the Deep South Founders Conference, which,

God willing, I will be attending. It's coming up, before you know it, January 24th through the 26th in Laurel, Mississippi, at the

Bethlehem Baptist Church. And if you want more details on that conference, go to deepsouthfounders .com,

deepsouthfounders .com. Also, I want to remind you, with Christmas coming up, please do much of your

Christmas shopping at solid -ground -books .com, the website of Solid Ground Christian Books.

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Mike Gadosh, who happens to be my very first pastor, he underwent very serious and dangerous and complicated open -heart surgery.

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for Christmas and every other reason you would buy gifts and books. Even if you're going to be buying books from my other sponsor,

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because CVBBS .com is not a publisher, they are a book distributor, and they cover many titles, if not all titles, published by Solid Ground Christian Books.

So you could kill two birds with one stone that way. We are now back with our discussion with Dr.

Carrie G. Kimbrell on a Christian perspective on choosing a political party. Before the break,

Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, wanted to know how we as Christians are to overcome the objection by some who think because of our pro -life position, being first and foremost when we vote for someone, that we are one -issue voters, and according to many people, that's dangerous.

Now, just before you answer that, Dr. Kimbrell, you might find this interesting, you might even find it amusing, but years ago when

I was broadcasting out of New York, IronTroopensIronRadio, a black brother,

I believe he is my brother, he was not a total leftist or apostate, but he was a minister in the community, and he requested equal time to come on my program when

I ran a rerun of an interview I did with the founder of Black Genocide, which is a pro -life group headed by a black minister in New Jersey who points out to anybody who will give him an ear to listen that the abortion movement began in the

United States through the wickedness of the eugenics philosophy that was trying to preserve a pure white master race and eventually annihilate through sterilization and abortion all other people of various darker skin colors, and this minister was upset that I aired this rerun right after Barack Obama was elected into the presidency, and he said that I was assisting in dividing

Long Island, New York racially and contributing to the racial hostility, which was absolutely a nonsensical protest because my guest was black, and here you had a white

Christian and a black Christian agreeing that abortion is murder, so how that is dividing people racially,

I don't know, but he said during this interview, I gave him that equal opportunity to be on, and he said

I don't like how conservative evangelicals have become one -issue voters and abortion trumps everything else, they don't pay attention to everything else, now of course that was an exaggeration, but I said to him if there was a member of the

Ku Klux Klan voting for a particular office where you lived or perhaps even the presidency, and that man, that Klansman, agreed with nearly every single political issue that you can even dream of that you held to, he agreed with you on everything except he was in the

Ku Klux Klan, would you vote for him, he said of course not, I said why not, well he's in the Klan for crying out loud, and I said well that's your one issue then,

I mean I said you are a one -issue voter too, there is something, one thing, and there might be a number of things that if a political candidate held to that one thing or opposed that one thing, however you want to look at it, if that person believed in or was a part of something that you found grotesque that was strong enough in your belief system, you would not vote for that person, you just proved it so you're a one -issue voter, but anyway

I just thought I'd throw that out there before you answered the question. Well that's great, because what that proves is that we are not one -issue voters, we've never been one -issue voters, they try to put us, to label us, but there are other things that we are very interested in, and that we see them not quite as deadly of course as abortion, because I mean that's murder, but we see them as bad as other things, and again would you vote for a guy who's great in every way but a murderer?

Right. I mean there's just no way, I mean, and it's dangerous for us to stand against murder, you know, no matter what they call it, we understand what it is, they can name it whatever they want to, but we know, and science is on our side, and more and more as science continues to develop, it's more and more on our side, and again a black man, a black pastor, a black

Christian, a black person should be against abortion, it's devastating the black community.

I mean they are killing, I mean in the sense of, you know, of the percentage of the living population of blacks since Roe v.

Wade 1973, over one -third of the living black population, the number, they have been killed by abortion.

It's devastating them, and it would be the love of Christ that would cause us to say, stop this, you're killing these people, and this is dwarfing what

Hitler did, dwarfing what Hitler did, and so it's not one issue, and I refuse to be put in that box.

I'm not a one -issue voter. The Bible speaks to an array of things, you see, and I mean there's ten commandments, you know, any one of those ten commandments we can say, well, it doesn't matter, you can do all these other commandments, you know, but no, they're all what we should be doing, everything what we should be doing, and so that, as far as I'm concerned, is really them trying to frame the debate to say that we are dangerous.

No, I tell you what's dangerous, what's dangerous for a child is to be in the womb of a woman in the

United States of America. Right, and in fact, it is not even debatable that multitudes of abortions are murder, even if you want to take the lesser or the less severe view of abortion, that the fetus doesn't become human life until later in the development, obviously that's a lie, but even if you take that view, there is no question, it's just a fact that everyone knows that babies have been born prematurely and lived at an earlier stage of development than babies that have been aborted in the womb and murdered and ripped to pieces.

That's right. Why don't you give it a shot? That's just one issue, you see, one issue, but again, this issue of socialism and the fact that socialism will never rest easy, it will never be with Christianity in the same society peaceably, because Christianity is a threat to it, and it will always attack it.

And so that's an issue too, you see. Socialism is based on coveting your neighbor's goods, and if you are successful in establishing laws or voting people in who establish laws, you are also guilty of stealing, and I would even throw in there vengeance, because there is a vengeful spirit with many socialists who say, since you folks have had it so good for so long, we are going to take revenge on you and take that away from you.

That's right. But you see, it will never stop at us, just personally, and I'm not even talking about personally with me, what

I'm talking about is Christianity, the Church of Jesus Christ. What is going to be in the world?

See, the Roman Empire tried to attack us, Christianity, and tried to destroy it. Well, they lost 300 years later,

Caesar vowed to Christ. And again, the French Revolution tried to do it, but they couldn't do it.

They never learned the lesson. I mean, you're not going to throw the bands of God off, because he that sits in the heavens is going to laugh.

He's going to have you in derision. But we are responsible. It is our turn. We are in the world.

We are in the United States today. It is our turn to defend the Church of Jesus Christ.

And this is just not, you know, local parts. I was listening to a commercial today, you know, and it says,

I'm voting for so -and -so candidate, because he did such -and -such for me. And I said, no, where's the commercials?

I'm voting for such -and -such candidate, because he stands for what's right, and constitutional government, and limited government, and on and on and on.

It has nothing to do with what he's given me, or what he's doing for me. And too many

Christians are in that, you know, are in that mode. We must do what's right, because it's right.

Well, what are some of the major things, before we run out of time, some more of the major things that you believe identify a party that a

Christian should affiliate with? First of all, I think we ought to affiliate with a party that is not antagonistic against Christianity.

I think that we ought to side with a party that does not bring destructive policies in, you see, to a society.

And I'm not talking about destructive in the sense of, you know, any kind of physical thing, but spiritually destructive, in the sense that, you know, the nation that embraces homosexuality is going to be destroyed of God.

He's going to turn it over to a reprobate mind. You know that, I know that. Yes, but the Apostle Paul did not only condemn the physical act of homosexuality, he condemned those that give it hearty approval.

That's right. And so that's an issue, you know. And really, maybe even, you know, in the

South, I remember a story about a woman, you know, it was Amen and everything the preacher said until he started talking about dipping snuff.

And then she said, hey, now preachers, you've gone to meddling. Let me go to meddling a little bit here.

You know, even the role of women in politics, you see, that's addressed biblically.

We must address that biblically. And yet, I find myself now, because, you know, if the

Democrats take over Congress, what a mess is that going to be? Well, I find myself saying, well, you know,

I hope Marsha Blackburn wins in Tennessee against the man. But those are issues that we surely must address too.

So in the Bible, occasionally the Lord did bring a woman to power, but it's usually to judge the men, you know, like, you know, like it says in the third chapter of Isaiah, that, you know, you're not going to have mighty men and the men of war, but, you know, you're going to, you know, women are going to rule over you and children shall be your oppressors.

Well, that's not something that seems to be approved of the

Lord. Now, we have a question that I think is very relevant and very interesting.

We have CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who says, isn't there a danger in choosing any political party or making yourself officially aligned with a political party, because that is putting a party above an individual running for office that may be reflecting a more biblical position that might be an independent or a member of the opposite party that you usually vote with in an unusual circumstance?

Well, when we're talking about a party, you know, in the broad look, when the second decade of the, you know, the 20th century, of the 21st century, and they're two parties.

I mean, they might occasionally be on a local election, a guy but they're two parties. And if you're going to be relevant, and I do think we must be relevant, we're going to have to align with one of those parties.

But we surely can't align with the Democratic Party. Now, we do that.

I believe that I'm a member of the Republican Party, and I think maybe other people are members of by default.

But a person who's a member of a party by default is the less loyal.

I mean, he's not very loyal. Because, I mean, he's almost waiting to be offended, to be honest with you.

And politics is so worldly, and we are so otherworldly, we're going to be offended.

I mean, we're kind of looking to be offended, to be honest with you. But we're talking about in general, you surely can't align with the

Democrats. Now, you don't want relevancy at the expense of your core values.

So there may be a day when we won't be able to vote for either because of the hideousness of their stands.

But at least today, in this hour, Christians still have a choice, though a choice that seems to be everyday kind of slipping from us a little bit.

But why not get into the parties, and why not change them?

And let me just say one other thing. I know we have to hurry. But one other thing is this, that if we will have our children as Christians, if we will raise them in the nurture and admonition of the

Lord, then we will one day, in a generation or two, because the humanists, they are waiting to have their children until almost too late, and the ones they conceive, they're aborting.

But if we don't, in two generations, we'll elect every president, appoint every

Supreme Court justice, we'll elect every Congress, and every, you know, because we will bring these truths to this party.

We must not join these parties without bringing our truth. We can't leave our truth behind.

We must bring our truth into these parties. And then, may the

Lord bless us and give us one of them to His glory. Well, I want you to spend the next two minutes, uninterrupted, to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners before we go off the air.

Well, what I would say is that we have an opportunity, in the

Republican Party, like Cotevilla wrote concerning, there's really two parties in America.

There's an elite party and a country party. And the country party is made up of people that are not in the inner circle.

And really, the elite party's what's against us, the one that sets himself over us.

So what we must do is bring our Christianity, our theological understandings, into these parties, and we must pay the price that we have to pay in time and in effort to try to make this world a better place than we found it.

When we leave it, that it might be a better place. By the glory of God, understanding this, that we can do nothing without Christ, but the thing that motivates us as Christians is that the

Spirit may change the hearts of people, may empower us to do what needs to be done, not for our own comfort and not for our own wealth and not for our own satisfaction, but for the glory of our

God and the glory of our Christ. And that's what we must do and give ourselves to it.

Amen. And I want to remind our listeners that if you would like to attend the Deep South Founders Conference, well,

I will be manning an exhibitor's booth January 24th through the 26th at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Laurel, Mississippi.

Go to deepsouthfounders .com, deepsouthfounders .com. If you're interested in finding more about Bethlehem Baptist Church in Laurel, Mississippi, the host of the

Deep South Founders Conference, you can go to bbclaurel .com,

b -b -c -l -a -u -r -e -l .com. And please don't forget that Rusty Reed, one of the speakers at the

Deep South Founders Conference, is going to be our guest, God willing, on Wednesday, November 28th, 4 to 6 p .m.

here on Iron Trip and Zion Radio. Please continue to pray for the family of my friend Lou Brancadora, who is in a coma and is unlikely to come out of that coma.

It will likely be entering into the arms of Christ in paradise any day now. Pray for the family as they are preparing themselves for this and as they will be mourning.

I ask of you to continue to pray for Iron Trip and Zion Radio and continue to support us with your donations and advertising.

I hope you all have a blessed and safe and happy and God -glorifying weekend and Lord's Day. And I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater