January 30, 2024 Show with M. D. Perkins on “A Response & Loving Rebuke to Alistair Begg”

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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 Tuesday on this 30th day of January 2024.

We basically arranged an emergency broadcast today. I had to reschedule somebody that was already scheduled to be my guest today because we wanted to bring to the public's attention something that just recently happened.

We didn't want too much time to elapse. In fact, some people are already accusing me of rehashing old news, even though I think this just happened about a week ago or so. But we are going to be addressing some very unfortunate and dangerous statements by a globally renowned figure, much beloved both inside the Reformed faith and outside.

The figure of whom I speak is Alistair Begg, and he gave advice to a grandmother during a podcast to attend a so-called transgendered wedding of this woman's grandson. The stipulation was that the young man know where the grandmother stood in regard to her view of this marriage not being a legitimate marriage and the actual behavior of her grandson with this so-called transgendered individual being sin,.

Etc.

But he still recommended that the grandmother attend the wedding and purchase a gift for the couple. We are responding to that today. My guest and I were both shocked as were many, perhaps especially in the Reformed community, but all of those who greatly love Alistair Begg— well, I shouldn't say all of those who love Alistair Begg—there are many defending his statements, but many who love Alistair Begg were equally shocked by his amazingly bad advice and counsel and his dangerous advice and counsel.

And we wanted to go over this subject today with a spirit of graciousness, with the motivation of love, in hopes that not only Alistair Begg would come to repentance and openly recant and publicly recant his statements, but also that those who agree with him would recognize that this is very unbiblical and dangerous counsel and that they would repent of agreeing with Brother Begg and would never give this advice to anyone.

But my guest today to conduct this interview is very appropriate. Actually couldn't think of a better person. His name is MD Perkins. He's been a guest on the program before. He is the author of Dangerous Affirmation, the Danger of Gay Christianity, and MD is also on staff at the American Family Association, whose radio network made the painful decision to remove Alistair Begg from their lineup, making my guest today even more appropriate.

But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Trump and Zion Radio, MD Perkins. Thank you, Chris. It's good to be with you. And before we move on in more detail with this situation, let's hear about the American Family Association.

Sure. Yeah, the American Family Association is a pro-family ministry that began in 1977 under the under the inspiration of Reverend Donald Wildman, who is a Methodist pastor who was concerned about television and just the content material that was on there and his activism in response to that issue and raising awareness about that grew into confronting the the selling of pornography in the 1980s, the rise of the homosexual agenda in the 90s, public Christian public activism in a lot of these different areas, as well as dealing with the marriage battles that were happening in the States in the late 90s, early 2000s.

And so AFA's had their hands in quite a few different culture war battlefronts, you could say, over the years. And, you know, we were saddened by the recent loss of Brother Don. He went home to the Lord just a couple of weeks ago.

But the ministry here is continuing on. I mean, it wasn't, you know, it was started by one man, but the mission and the vision of AFA continues on through the leadership here and many of the things that they've that have been set in place over the years, including the American Family Radio Network, which is a piece of what we do.

Brother Don started that. And in 1991, after learning of some new regulations among the FCC that allowed for translator stations so that you could you could basically branch these together through satellite technology and create a network.

And he took advantage of that opportunity while it was there and was able to create a network that, you know, at its peak probably had as many as 200 stations or so before the FCC kind of got in and and reconfigured the regulations on that.

But currently, I think we have about 168 stations, 168 stations nationwide. And we carry a lot of our own content. We create a lot of our own productions here in-house, but we do carry some some additional programs that that people would be familiar with.

Dr. James Dobson, you know, recently let go of the Alistair Begg. That's a connection point to this, but other things like that.

And if anybody wants more information about the American Family Association, go to AFA .net. AFA .net. And please pardon my speech as I am still struggling with Bell's palsy. So I may mispronounce things today.

You may detect a lisp. But I can thank God that the Bell's palsy seems to be diminishing. So thank you all for your prayers. Well, Alistair Begg has been a modern-day hero of mine for many years. I can clearly remember first discovering who he was when the radio station that I worked for, WMCA 570 AM in New York City, where I served as an account executive for 15 years before I had my own radio program, we would very often have what we called radio rallies.

And that would mean when a new program launched on the program on the station, we would very often invite the host of that program to New York City to speak at some church and introduce this person to our audience.

And one such person was Alistair Begg. And I remember immediately when I was in attendance at this event being really extremely impressed by him. And I began to listen to his program regularly, interviewed him at least twice on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and loved every minute of those interviews.

And.

I.

Have biannual free pastors luncheons where I treat pastors to a free lunch and a guest speaker and provide free books that are donated by Christian publishers all over the United States in the United Kingdom.

And on several occasions gave away books written by Alistair Begg and with no hesitation. But I was totally shocked when people began to contact me last week asking me if I had heard about the comments of Pastor Begg.

And when I did hear them, I was in a state of shock. Well, just to give you some background information, for those of you who are unfamiliar with Alistair Begg, it seems unlikely that somebody listening to my show would be unfamiliar with him because he is a theologically Reformed, world-renowned pastor, conference speaker, and radio host of the Truth for Life program.

But he also is the senior pastor at Parkside Church near Cleveland, Ohio, and has been so since 1983. But he is one of the rare people who is unabashedly Reformed in his understanding of the scriptures, aka Calvinistic, and yet has a very wide audience of people who hold him in extremely high esteem outside of the Reformed faith, probably especially amongst Calvary Chapel congregations and radio and television networks and so on.

Alistair is one of the very few people, along with Jason Lyle,.

The.

Reformed Christian astrophysicist, that the Calvary Chapel folks give a pass on his on their Calvinism and openly and excitedly promote Alistair and you know, feature him in their their networks and so on.

I don't know what has happened since these statements if the Calvary Chapel networks have done anything, but he is, like I said, one of the few within Reformed theology that seems to have a much broader audience of enthusiastic support than merely those who are Reformed.

But I'm going to play a clip of the things that started this whole controversy during a podcast that Alistair participated in, and here we go.

...titted in another direction and learning to say, but I have no basis upon which I could argue that I myself would not be where they are, were it not for the amazing grace of God, were it not for his compassion towards me.

And in very specific areas this comes across. I mean, you and I know that we field questions all the time that go along the lines of my grandson is about to be married to a transgender person and I don't know what to do about this and I'm calling to ask you to tell me what to do, which is a huge responsibility.

And in a conversation like that just a few days ago, and people may not like this answer, but I asked the grandmother, does your grandson understand your belief in Jesus? Yes. Does your grandson understand that your belief in Jesus makes it such that you can't countenance in any affirming way the choices that he has made in life?

Yes. I said, well then, okay, as long as he knows that, then I suggest that you do go to the ceremony and I suggest that you buy them a gift. Oh, she said, what? She was caught off guard. I said, well, here's the thing, you're not going to, your love for them may catch them off guard, but your absence will simply reinforce the fact that they said these people are, what I always thought, judgmental, critical, unprepared to countenance anything.

And it is a fancy, it is a fine line, isn't it? It really is. And people need to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling. But I think we're going to take that risk. We're going to have to take that risk a lot more if we want to build bridges into the hearts and lives of those who don't understand Jesus and don't understand that he is a king.

Well, I think that's enough of that clip. And if you could, M .D., give us your initial reactions to everything that was just said.

The Duty to Rebuke an Older Minister Carefully

Yeah, let me first just start with 1 Timothy chapter 5. Do not rebuke an older man, but exhort him as a father, younger men as brothers. And I just want to hold that in my mind as I'm, you know, addressing a man, like you said, who who's deeply respected, a man that I've come to deeply admire and appreciate his his teaching and his heart for for Christ and the way that that's come through in his ministry over the years.

And, you know, like you, I had the opportunity to interview him as well as part of a documentary film project we had called The God Who Speaks that AFA produced in 2018. So, yeah, I mean Alistair Begg is somebody that I approached this tenderly in one sense, but also I couldn't help but feel that same knot in my stomach when I was hearing the reports and starting to hear what he actually said there because that is not sound counsel as a pastor to a woman seeking seeking to have confidence that she is making the right decision.

You know, we can talk about kind of pastoral counsel and all of those kinds of things, but, you know, his statements when I first heard them, I thought he's clear, he knows exactly what he's saying. This is something that he has considered, he's measured, he is planning to say it and he recognizes also, you know, he makes the comment that some people may not like the answer, you know, acknowledging that he realizes that what he's about to say will be controversial to some, perhaps many, in his listening audience and and even perhaps to the grandmother who was asking about it.

So, you know, I hear that in the answer. I hear, you know, this false dichotomy that he talks about that your love might catch them off guard, but your absence would only reinforce, you know, their feeling of isolation and bigotry and all of these kind of negative things that they've associated with the church and, you know, I just, I would strongly disagree with that statement, that the only way that you show love in this situation is by being at this wedding.

Now, I know that Pastor Begg has already walked back, not fully walked back his comments, but he tried to add some additional context and quite frankly, just convoluted things with his Sunday message that tried to speak more about this and kind of acted like there was, you know, some situations where he might say something different than he said to this woman, as if there's this, you know, array of various answers he might give, but when he gives this, he gives this answer as emblematic of how Christians should respond in this situation.

So, I would push back against his attempt to try and nuance this as somehow representative of a piece of pastoral counseling rather than representative, because he really does seem to place it as you can be on the side of Jesus or you can be on the side of the Pharisees.

This is his later, his later comments that he did this past Sunday in his sermon. And so, he places it in those two categories, that you're being pharisaical if you have a problem with his advice, but Jesus is the way of going to the wedding, bringing a gift, celebrating this to some degree, even though, you know, in your heart, you're kind of torn up about it, but as long as you made it, as long as you said that you were a Christian and that you are committed to following Jesus and this isn't a good lifestyle to pursue, then you're okay to follow this and, you know, he hedges it with, it's a fine line.

Well, what is so fine about what? You're going to have to expand that out, you know, Pastor, because the fine line here seems to be that you are, as a grandmother, as a family member, as a friend, that you are endorsing this, these choices and this lifestyle and this commitment and this religious ceremony that is taking place and, you know, that's just not that's not how Christians should respond.

I mean, I thought we had a better view of marriage than that. I thought we respected the sanctity of marriage more than that to lend credence, and there's a number of points of objections that critics have given.

I'd like to work through those, you know, perhaps at some point in this time, but, you know, that's my initial, you know, just hearing the audio again and thinking through, you know, his response. I mean, I will say this.

I don't think that Pastor Begg is coming from a point of deep theological error in the sense that he has embraced the affirming church or he is speaking, you know, trying to affirm that homosexuality is right and good.

I mean, he's been very clear on his statements regarding that. He even had a very recent, I mean, within the past year, I feel like, series on Romans 1 that talked about in very clear and helpful terms, I thought, the issues regarding homosexuality, which makes this all the more baffling.

Yes. Frankly, Chris, that he would say these things and take that good theology that seems to be clearly and carefully understood and then to apply it pastorally in this way. That just seems, it just seems to miss it.

It just seems to to act like.

You,.

You as a Christian, you have to endorse this to some degree in order to show the person that you love them. And this is part of why Christians stood against the push for gay marriage, you know, in the 90s and 2000s.

This is part of the warning, is that once you open up this door, you create a new category and then it creates all kinds of confusion and turmoil in the hearts and lives of people as Christians come to these issues.

And then they're faced with these kinds of questions that they wouldn't have been faced with, you know, 20 years ago.

So when did this actually happen? When did he say these things?

I believe the podcast was actually back in September and then someone recognized that these things had happened and then it started to come around and find some circulation on social media last week.

That's when I first heard about it.

Middle of January, yeah.

And.

It's just utterly remarkable because he is a very biblically literate person and theologically astute. And it seems to me, now I have not kept up with Alistair on everything that he has said or written over the years, but one of the things that I remembered clearly about him when I first heard him speak at that radio rally back in, I believe it was the 1990s, might have been the early 2000s, and also having him on my show, is he struck me as a straight shooter.

He struck me as someone who was not so overly concerned about people's feelings that he would water down and dilute whatever message he was presenting in order to appease them. In fact, I remember how impressed I was, and this may offend some folks listening who are Pentecostal or charismatic, and I don't intend to offend you, offend you, but during that radio rally when I first encountered Alistair, there was a Q &A session and somebody asked what his views were on tongues.

And Alistair didn't know who was in that room, and he just spoke from the heart, from what he knew and believed about what the Scriptures teach, and he very strongly denounced the modern-day tongues movement, and he wasn't going to allow the hurt feelings of anybody in the audience to stop him from doing that.

And even on my show, I can remember a couple of occasions. The first time I interviewed him, it was a live call-in show that I had conducted back in starting in 2005. My show was a live call-in show.

Since relocating from New York to Pennsylvania, it's an email-in-question program, but WNYG radio and WGBB radio in Babylon, we had live calls, and I remember him unintentionally, I don't think he intended to insult callers, but he was very clear and firm in his answers to their questions that they did not like.

So, this is just something that seems to be out of character for him all around, unless he has changed in his manner in a way that I didn't know. Are you aware of anything about him becoming a more intentionally soft and kind and accommodating to people, regardless of what the message may be?

No, in fact, that's part of what was so surprising about this. I alluded to hearing him speak about homosexuality just within the last 12 to 18 months, whenever that series was up on Truth for Life. It was a two-part sermon about God giving them over, and I've listened to a lot of Christian leaders speak about homosexuality.

I wrote the book Dangerous Affirmation, which deals with the threat of gay Christianity within the church and the little subtle inroads that have been made with language, with accommodations, and different ways that people try and present things in ways that doesn't step on certain people's toes, but also shows affinities to different group dynamics within the room.

Oftentimes, very subtle, very nuanced things that the average listener doesn't catch. Listening to him speak, I was really edified, actually, by the way that he treated the subject, the way that he brought in some of the scientific data on it and talked about causality, which is something that, quite frankly, many people within not just the Reform world, but within Southern Baptists, within other Wesleyan circles and different things, people don't want to talk about the causality behind homosexuality, but he was willing to address that and at least include that as a part of the conversation.

So, you know, I wouldn't even put him in the Side B, Revoice, Preston Sprinkle kind of camp, because he wasn't speaking in that way. He wasn't making any nods or allusions that would make me think, well, that kind of sounds like Side B thinking, until this most recent thing, and those are some of the things that I'm hearing.

I'm not saying that he's given himself over to Side B ideology, because there's other ways that he frames things that are very distinct from how Side B people would do it. But I think there's just this, I think a lot of Christians and a lot of Christian leaders are struck by just how hostile the climate is regarding sexuality and how marginalized Christians are and are increasingly becoming and speaking about this.

And so a lot of people are tempted to find small ways where they wouldn't have felt comfortable talking about this or doing this, you know, two or three years ago, but now they feel a little more comfortable doing it because they feel like it's already a bit of a lost cause, so to speak.

You know, presenting Christ and speaking about these things is, it almost feels like an effort that people aren't really going to listen. You've got to find a way to make the little inroad, and so you've got to do something uncomfortable before they'll be willing to hear something uncomfortable, that kind of thing.

I think maybe that's at work here in kind of the pastoral thinking, but like I said, I mean, I believe that's dangerous, and it also presents a false way of viewing it, as if the opportunity comes by attending the wedding, but is it not attending the wedding also creating an opportunity to share Christ and present a clear Christian witness on this?

And doesn't that actually open up the conversation? Yes. In a very clear context where you aren't, where it's clear you're not in any way affirming. I mean, everyone who's there at the wedding, they don't know the personal convictions that you hold.

They don't see the inner life and the struggles and the conversations that have happened behind closed doors. They just see you there clapping, watching, smiling, being happy with the thing that's taking place there as two people commit to perpetual abomination together, and there's really no outlet for life there.

That's only a dead-end street. That's only something that is going to create greater and greater condemnation on them spiritually, even as they find greater and greater affirmation within the eyes of the world and the eyes of friends and family and loved ones, and yet you standing there distinctly as a Christian on the outside, that's the clearer witness for Christ, and we obviously, you know, the challenging part of that is that we don't get to control how people see that.

You know, we don't get to control how somebody responds to our efforts either to show love or to show a commitment to a Christian cause. We don't control that. I mean, you even being there, there's no guarantee that this person actually sees that as loving.

You know, and his updated message that he did on Sunday, he talked about the woman, the grandmother, showing up with a Bible, and that's the gift that she's giving. She's giving a Bible to her grandson or granddaughter,.

And you know,.

How is that going to be received? You know, I mean, we can extrapolate all kinds of scenarios there, but really, I mean, you have to have a clear commitment to biblical truth. You have to be willing to take a hard stand sometimes, even if it puts you in opposition to friends and family members, and you have to be willing to endure ridicule and scorn that comes along with that, and you have to be willing to have the conversation and the boldness to speak a word for Christ in that circumstance, because, you know, I would wager that in most situations, you know, when he says, does your grandchild understand that you are committed to Jesus?

And she says yes. Well, you know, in what way? You know, how clear have you been on that? Is it just like they've seen.

A.

Stitched Bible verse on the door of the house, you know, or have you really engaged in deep spiritual conversations trying to point your children and grandchildren toward Christ, praying for them? You know, you're committed in a local church.

All those things are clear and evident. So, of course, you know, there's the expectation that you would be opposed to whatever they would present, but then there is that additional step of, see, when we get these, when we get these questions from friends and family members, they are always, it's a test.

There's always a test element that's part of it, whether that's purely spiritual or whether it's the individual trying to test our commitment and see, really, where is this person? But if our love for them has been clear up to this point, and our commitment to Christ has been clear to this point, then you can say, I'm not going to that gay wedding.

I'm not going to promote this. I'm not going to offer my participation in this in a way that would appear to everybody else as congratulatory, because I'm going to trust that I've built enough in the relationship there to withstand something like this, and I trust the God who has laid this on my heart to say and do these things, that He is able to sustain this relationship through whatever the difficulty of what this person's response might be, and open additional opportunities for the gospel to be clearly brought out, to be considered, because the bottom line of it is, Chris, this grandson in this scenario, what is the sin that in his mind, he knows he doesn't want to deal with when it comes to the claims of Christ and what it means to be a follower?

It's got to be the, all of this identity stuff, you know, the transgenderism or the homosexuality, whatever the case may be. Those things are first and foremost in his mind as he's thinking about how he will respond to a Christian and what his participation in church is going to be, and so for Christians to kind of back out and cower and act like, well, we're not going to make a big deal about that, or we're not even going to address it, is to to actually go against the thing that is the roadblock in the way,.

And.

And that just seems like it's negligent of what Christ would call us to do and what, how we should bear a clearer witness in this world for Him.

Amen, and we have to go to our first commercial break. If anybody would like to join us with a question of your own, 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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So go to royaldiadem .com today. Mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We're now back with MB Perkins, and we are talking about the controversy surrounding Alistair Begg and his recommendation during a podcast to a grandmother to attend her grandson's transgendered wedding or wedding to a so-called transgendered person in order to demonstrate to that person her love for him and to dismantle stereotypes of Christians being hateful and bigoted.

And of course, he did include the caveat that the grandmother makes certain that her position, her biblical position against this behavior was made clear. But it seems to me, MD, that at the heart of this issue is the question, what is truly an act of Christian love?

There seems to be, I mean, I was actually stunned by the avalanche of Christians who were upset by our interview today when I was promoting it in social media because they are of this mindset that kindness, politeness, and affirmation are always acts of Christian love, even when you're facing something that is an abomination, dare I say, even satanic.

And it's mind-boggling because I don't think that these people who are reacting this way, in fact, I don't even think Pastor Begg, if you were to examine everything he said and did, I don't think that you would find anybody who is a professing Christian, especially if they believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, to logically and consistently maintain this mindset in all areas.

There's definitely going to be areas where they're inconsistent. But what do you think about that comment about the very definition of what is an act of love, Christian love? It seems to be at the very heart of this.

Yeah, I think that's a good point to bring up. When we talk about Christian love, I mean, we typically begin by thinking, by talking about our love for others. But what does Christian love, first of all, entails love for Christ.

And so loving Christ, what does it mean if you love Christ? It means you keep his commandments. It means that you are aware of what God is like, who he is, what he's commanded, and that you want to live consistently with that.

So then that's the first order. The first table of the commandments is love for God. And then from that comes our love for others, which includes our neighbor, which includes our fellow church member, which includes the lost and dying world out there that we're trying to reach for Christ, or just show compassion to, show compassionate mercy toward.

But all of that has to be rooted in a clarity regarding what our first love is. And our first love has to be front and center. It has to be central. It has to be foundational. And for us to compromise the love for Christ by our acts of somehow kindness or affirmation or politeness or whatever, is that's the problem here, is there's a misdefinition, I guess, at work here or misdiagnosis of what the real problem is that is the problem that the person hasn't.