April 15, 2021 Show with Dr. Joe Morecraft on “Proper Heroes Put in their Proper Place in the Lives of Christians”

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Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon

Cumberland County Pennsylvania Lake City Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth we're listening via live streaming at IronSharpensIronRadio .com

this is Chris Arnzen your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio we're wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 15th day of April 2021 and I'm thrilled as always to have back on the program one of my favorite guests and it's very obvious he's one of my favorite guests because he's on the program so frequently his name is

Dr. Joe Moorcraft he's an author and pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming Georgia and today he is going to address proper heroes put in their proper place in the lives of Christians and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Dr.

Joe Moorcraft always a blessing be with you Chris let me give our listeners our email address right away for a question if you'd like to join us on the air with your own question

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USA well before we go into our topic at hand why don't you let our listeners know again especially for the sake of those who have not yet heard you on this program let them know about Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming Georgia well we are a small little congregation in the north part of metropolitan

Atlanta and we're called Heritage Reformed Presbyterian Church Hanover Presbytery Hanover Presbytery was the presbytery in which

Patrick Henry was a member many years ago and in the 1740s through the early 1800s

Hanover Presbytery started churches all over the old west and the south and then when the denomination it became a part of it was a part of was liberal became liberal it removed the name in the 80s 1980s and in the 1990s a group of conservative

Presbyterian preachers took the name back over so it is a small denomination our congregation believes in the inerrancy of scripture we believe in the original

Westminster Confession of Faith and larger and shorter catechisms we believe the responsibility of the church is the carrying out of the

Great Commission which is to bring the discipline of the word of God to bear upon the nations baptizing them in the name of the

Father Son and Holy Spirit and teaching them to observe everything that Christ has commanded us and he'll be with us to the end of the age well let me apologize for leaving out accidentally the word reformed from Heritage Reformed Presbyterian Church well it's not the name of our congregation but it's the name of the denomination oh okay so I wasn't wrong

Heritage Presbyterian I remember the Reformed Presbyterian Church ah yes that's why your website is heritagepresbyterianchurch .com

heritagepresbyterianchurch .com and also one of the things that I'm probably correct in assuming this is your magnum opus but you have written a multi -volume commentary on the larger

Westminster Catechism if you could explain a bit more about this commentary series well it's eight beautifully bound volumes the larger the

Westminster Confession of Faith was written in the 1640s

Parliament wanted it to be written to try to unite England in the truth so as to end the

Civil War there and so the larger catechism is an attempt in terms of questions and answers to help people understand not only the heart and soul but the distinctives of the

Reformed Faith and it is to me it is biblical

Christianity in its purest human expression great well

I want to thank you and the Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming Georgia and Tim Renshaw for sponsoring what will be a quarter page ad and my full page ad in the in an upcoming issue of World Magazine I want to thank you so much for that and I hope that our listeners look out for that ad we're not sure exactly what issue it will be but God willing it will be before the

September 30th start date of the G3 conference because we plan on giving away thousands of copies of that issue while I am manning an exhibitors booth at the

G3 conference in Atlanta Georgia from September 30th through October 2nd so we are shooting for an issue either in September before the 30th or even perhaps in August but thank you so much for sponsoring a quarter page of that full page ad and by the way if anybody wants to find out more about this commentary series this eight volume commentary go to Westminster commentary calm

Westminster commentary calm well we are now going to discuss

I think a very important issue proper heroes put in their proper place in the lives of Christians I think it's an important subject because whoever our heroes are we tend to gravitate towards their thought process what they believed the things that were most important to them now obviously you and I are dedicated to biblical theology we believe in the

Sola Scriptura and we believe strongly in that watchword of the

Protestant Reformation so we don't just well at least we pray and we try not to just mimic and follow our heroes who no matter who they may be by just trying to be identical in everything we think and do to to them because the best of our heroes were sinners and had failures and were not in perfect obedience to the scriptures not that they were intentionally teaching things that were contrary to the scriptures but they were human and they were not in error and infallible as the scriptures are so I believe as I know you do it is good and healthy for Christians to develop good solid biblically faithful heroes while not turning them into idols but if you could tell us about your own thoughts here on the importance of proper heroes put in their proper place in the lives of Christians I think this is a far more important subject than we often realize human beings were created to have heroes that's what it means to be made in the image of God in the resemblance of God as a mirror of God we were to reflect

God's character in our own thoughts and behavior he is the par excellence Hebrew hero and model for our lives and we were made to model him to be influenced by him to be inspired by to resemble him and then man fell into sin and he no longer wanted

God as his hero and his model but he could not escape being made in the image of God he could not escape the desire to have heroes now his heroes were anti God they were

Satan and evil people and even today we have everybody has a hero everybody whether you're conscious of it or not somebody that you imitate to some degree or another somebody who inspires you to one degree or another and of course unbelievers their heroes are always on the dark side but even among Christians you have

Christians with heroes that they ought not to have and why is that that is because of this massive ignorance that characterizes

Christians today in the United States around the world for many times heroes are athletes or movie stars or some politician and there are

Christian athletes that profess to be Christian but they all play their sport on the

Lord's Day that's not a good model there are some actors well Eric Little didn't yeah that was a long time ago though he's one of the heroes in fact

I had lunch with his daughter one time and held in my own hand the medals that he won at that Olympic Wow James if our listeners are unfamiliar with Eric Little he was the

America actually was an American he was a an Olympian athlete in was it the 20s or 30s 20s

I think from Scotland yes and he refused to run on the Sabbath on Sunday yeah great movie about his life all culture it's a fire that yes

I recommend you watch four or five times yes and what a tragedy what a tragedy that the actor that played him who's who really superbly played him turned out to be a homosexual that was a devastating blow but I don't even

I don't even want to think about that but anyway there are movie stars that profess to be

Christians too but then when they act they might blaspheme and that's not a good model so I think it's important for Christians to re -evaluate who their models and heroes are who inspires them who they want to imitate that's not just for young people that's also for adults and I when

I say it's ignorance that has caused many modern Christians to have as their heroes popular icons today ignorance of two things abysmal ignorance of the

Bible and abysmal ignorance of history that there are all kinds of course a

Christian is somebody who's had the image of God renewed in him and so as a result his ultimate hero the one he wants to resemble is the

God man Jesus Christ in fact he's the only perfect man that ever lived and he's the only man person that we should worship this

God man so he is our hero number one everything else is second everything else everybody else falls short of Jesus there's nothing about Christ's humanity that we ought not to use as a model in our lives he was a perfect human being in thought in expression in emotions in behavior in the way he expressed himself and he is the perfect model for all men and women and young people after Jesus comes a variety of great men and women from various races and cultures that we can that can inspire us if we only knew about them if we only knew about these heroes in the

Bible like Moses for example or like David or as many of many of those or like John the

Apostle John or Paul we don't know much today most

Christians don't know much about the historical people in the scriptures and the events their lives their characters and as a result they are deficient because of it but church history and the history of Christianity is a tremendous source of heroes

I have I have about five six thousand books down in my office library there's just these books are full of heroes of mine

I mean I look at the books having read them I look at the books and I'm inspired just by looking at the biographies of the books written by my heroes and of course

Christians are just beginning to appreciate history our enemies the

Antichrist have always appreciated history that's why they tried to rewrite it and and make the bad people look good the good people look bad so history will be on their side so they can say to Christians that we're out of step with history and it's all lies it's all simply rewriting of the things the

Bible's history is full of great heroes and in the show today

I want to tell a couple stories about a couple of my heroes but I have all kinds of them and besides his biblical heroes and besides historical heroes

I have contemporary heroes most of whom your audience would never heard of because they're not famous they're just great men and women who are faithful the

Lord and stand for him persevere in advancing the purposes of God's kingdom regardless of the persecution of the hardship and I was thinking their names

I want to be like some of these people well you actually made me sigh with relief when you said my audience wouldn't know who these people are necessarily because I thought you were going to embarrass me and mention me well

I'm honored I was kidding of course but was not because of how God is using you literally all over the world but there are various eras in history where there's more heroes than other times you have in the early church after the days of the

Apostles the first two or three or four hundred years of the early church you have some great men and great women and their stories are told in various history books and on various cassettes and in various sermons for instance one of my favorite heroes in the early church was a man by the name of Telemachus.

Telemachus was a little obscure monk never preached anything magnificent just an obscure little monk

I think for North Africa and he heard about all these gladiators and they're bloody fighting in Coliseums in Italy so he decided he was going to cross over the

Mediterranean and go to Italy and stop gladiator games. Wow.

Modern evaluation of the first century he was nobody just a little country monk so he goes to one

Coliseum and it's packed with people and the gladiators are there butchering each other so Telemachus leaps over the wall into the arena and says in the name of the

Lord Jesus Christ I demand that these games end. Wow. At which point one of the gladiators everybody laughed at him at which point one of the gladiators killed him and then the crowd started cheering

Telemachus, Telemachus, Telemachus and that was the last gladiator game that ever took place in that particular

Coliseum. Wow I never heard that story. And so I often tell people what wall do you need to leap over in your life and make yourself out to be a fool in order to accomplish the purposes of Christ so these stories can be duplicated over and over women who were martyred for Christ and their story in the first centuries also in those early centuries there was

Patrick we have st. Patrick's Day but we don't know anything about Patrick except for the fact that Patrick was a proto -Calvinist you might say that he was not a

Roman Catholic and he went to Ireland he was sold into slavery was

British he escaped as Irish pirates stole him and he escaped and then he decided to go back to Ireland and preach the gospel so he preaches the gospel all over Ireland starts churches all over Ireland Ireland and if you read some of his stories they sound like you're reading a

Protestant yeah and as a result of Patrick and his influence in Ireland hundred years later was a man named

Columbo Columbo on the Isle of Iona which is a little island three miles long one mile wide between Scotland and Ireland and he was from a family of a prince in fact he was a prince himself but a great warrior in Ireland and he was converted and he plagiarized by hand a book of Psalms that he wanted and got embarrassed when he was found out so he exiled himself to this little island and did that island became a center of Christian education and a center of world evangelism and was one of the most important places in the world in 600

AD and others and for a good time thereafter they sent missionaries all over the world even the southern

West Virginia where I'm born was born raised there are petroglyphics there's hymns of praise to the incarnation of Christ written in ancient

Irish in southern West Virginia the very county I was born and they went everywhere preaching the gospel they know where were you born sir where were you born southern

West Virginia oh I'm sorry I thought you said Ireland I'm sorry no and so Columbo was the head of this group of people they were elders they weren't monks they weren't under the

Roman Catholic Church there was a New York Times bestseller on that by the name of how the

Irish saved civilization I think written by a man named Paheel I'm not sure but anyway how the

Irish saved civilization and the

Columbo went to Scotland in those early days and led to pick people and to stop people to Christ and the

Pope couldn't stand it that this group of Celtic Christians on a little remote island didn't bow to his supremacy so they said a missionary in quotes at the

Council of Whitby in the middle 600s to lead all these

Celtic Christians to the Pope so some of them went to the Council of Whitby and the old man that didn't go that stayed on the island said here's the way you're going to trust this bishop his name was

Augustine but not the famous one here's how you can trust him if he is humble trust him if he's not don't trust him and the way you can tell he's humble is if he stands to greet you when you walk in the room but if you remain seated on his bishops throne don't believe a thing he said so this was a very arrogant man and he could not get these

Iona Christians and disciples of Columbo to come under the supremacy of your

Pope so in cahoots with the Anglo -Saxon king many of them are killed and then the

Vikings raid Iona and so they hide out in the mountains of Scotland and they're called coldies,

Celtic worshippers of God and hundreds of years later these people that originated on the island of Iona under Columbo's influence who was under Patrick's influence that hundreds of years later when

John Wickliffe in the 13th century had his group of evangelists called Lollards they found their greatest reception among these coldies in the mountains of Scotland and it was these followers of the

Lollards and of Wickliffe that were the basis of John Knox's reformation in the 16th century so that's just a just two three great illustrations of people that making their name saying these things again after all these years inspires me in fact this is not a commercial because it's free on sermonaudio .com

I have two series a lot of other things but I have two series one is called the history of the reformation that goes from the first century through the early part of the 18th century and I particularly emphasize all of my favorite eras through all those years and there are countless number of heroes during that time and then there's another that's called the history of the reformation and then on sermonaudio .com

there's another series I think it's entitled John Calvin man of the millennium but there's about 25 lectures in that and it's about the other reformers during Calvin's lifetime many of whom we have forgotten or we never knew about so all through history there have been these great heroes that and teachers we learn from their strengths we learn from their victories we learn from their mistakes and a lot of the mistakes we make today are things we could have avoided if we only knew the bible and knew history and so in the early church you have a lot of great illustrations of people heroes and some of the books that I would recommend that you can find heroes in besides the biography of the great are anything by merle daubigny by the way can you pick it can you pick up where you left off on merle daubigny we have to go to our first break right now sure if anybody else wants to join us with a question of your own our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com

chrisarnson at gmail .com as always give us your first name at least your city and state of residence and your country of residence if you live outside the usa don't go away we'll be right back with dr joe morecraft after these messages i'm james white of alpha and omega ministries my friend chris arnson host of iron sharpens iron radio and i are headed down to atlanta georgia once again for the g3 conference this year's g3 will be held thursday september 30th through saturday october 2nd on the theme christ is supreme over all i'll be joined by over 20 other speakers and musicians to lead in the worship of god through preaching teaching and singing including john macarthur phil johnson conrad and bayway daryl bernard harrison and virgil walker for details visit g3 conference .com

that's g3 conference .com chris arnson and i hope to see you september 30th through october 2nd at g3 21.

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hello my name is anthony venio and i'm one of the pastors at hope reform baptist church in quorum new york and also the host of the reform rookie .com

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c h r i s a r n z e n at gmail .com give us your first name city and state and country of residence and you were uh mentioning merle d 'amoni as a good source for developing uh heroes proper heroes in your life uh yes sir he he's one of our greatest historians and he's easy to read he's got all kinds of books on various ages of the christian church particularly reformation and i would recommend you buy merle daubigny and read him also when it comes to early church there's some good books there is i've already recommended how the irish saved civilization but there's also a great book by ff bruce it's part of a series and i can't remember the title but the word flame is in the title and it's a very readable book on the early church there's another book on all of church history but it has a lot on the early church and that's written by a man named williston walker williston walker and if any of your hearers would like for me to recommend the book on anybody i'll do my best because i've read many of these biographies so after you have after the early church you've got the early middle ages you've got the beginning and about the fifth century with augustine augustine was a great man and uh i can't say enough i decided one time i was going to spend two years just reading augustine and he won't let you loose that i think there's i don't know anybody else in church history since the new testament that was able as profoundly and beautifully to express the glory and the greatness and the majesty of god like augustine he uh his two main books he wrote a lot of books but our confessions every christian ought to read the confessions of augustine and another way to discipline yourself is to read the city of god augustine that changed everything in church history the greeks didn't have any love for history uh they didn't believe it was heading anywhere they believed that everything was just going in circles repeating itself and augustine wrote this book the city of god that not only emphasized the value of the individual which the greeks didn't uh value but also the importance of history it's a and exhausting and king charlemagne of the frankish kingdom had it read to his family every night after supper it is something you will not accomplish quickly but it is also a tremendous way to know we talk about the trinity now in terms of augustine and the people that preceded him and we don't even know it we think the terms that we have that we use to speak of the trinity or something that was created in america in the 20th century goes all the way back to the early church in augustine and when people leave the definitions and the words that the early church and augustine and others used to describe and define the trinity and when they try to find new terms it wounds up being heretical let me give you it winds up being heretical let me give you an example one example is a famous ostensibly pristine preacher in new york city said that uh the trinity is an eternal dance between the father son and holy spirit now what what in the world does that mean i have a feeling i know who you're talking about it means absolutely nothing and so when we try to redefine or the trinity or get it into terms that are more easily understood in our century we have a diminished view of the trinity uh we should use words that people don't understand in the 20th century and then explain them to them i mean that that's the whole point of preaching the whole point of preaching is defining god's words and explaining them sanctification glorification predestination regeneration those aren't words that our culture knows anything about so we explain it to them until they do and the same thing about about god in the early middle ages uh the two men stand out a lot of men but two one is constantine who was an emperor of rome he was born in britain and uh he he he was really admired by christians as a hero up until voltaire who was the atheistic philosopher behind the french revolution and uh the french revolution took place in 1789 voltaire was earlier and he was an atheist referred to jesus as that scoundrel and voltaire started giving constantine a bad press and he's had a bad press ever since until the publishing about five years ago of a book that i've read twice called defending constantine by peter lightheart i don't agree with everything peter writes on other things but on this book it defends constantine from all of the slander that he's been receiving through the years huh i've heard a lot of it myself and i've often wondered how much of it was accurate yeah voltaire is the one that created the slander constantine was a christian and he stopped the persecution of christians he couldn't stop the toleration of worship of gods because that's been in rome for centuries but he did go around the roman empire and preach sermons against idolatry and against worshiping false gods he uh one of my favorite statues in the world is the statue of constantine in york england york was the uppermost northernmost limits of roman empire and that's where constantine was crowned emperor of rome because he wanted the world to see you're just as safe in the edges of rome as you are in uh the roman empire as you are in rome itself and what i like about this statue to communicate that is the great constantine is sitting on a throne but he's not sitting there in some kind of stiff fashion he's draping himself over like a man would drape himself over his easy chair watching a football game to give to the world this idea that constantine was secure in york england he uh but this book by lightheart defending constantine is a book well worth reading it's not that long a book it's well written it's an easy read and constantine is often accused of worshiping the sun and the christian god which is a myth uh if you go to rome right beside the coliseum is this magnificent arch called constantine's arch and on it are the words i worship the god who made the sun not i worship the sun as god but i worship the god who made the sun and uh so constantine is well worth somebody he's a great hero another none of these men are perfect of course and then even greater than constantine is my hero alfred the great to show you how empty modern education is my daughter went to a major university in georgia and uh she made a comment about the english king in the ninth century called alfred the great and the phd professor of the class said uh miss morecraft you're mistaken there never was a king of england named alfred the great you're thinking of alexander the great she said well he he was never king of england and so and so some of the people in the class started looking on their computers and they saw all kinds of sites about alfred the great and in class they respectfully showed them to the professor he just went on as if nothing had ever happened but anyway alfred the great there are books about him all kinds of books there is a book by a man i can't remember his name you can buy this book a biography of him uh it's secular bookstores but they don't have it christian bookstores on alfred the great alfred the great was the first king of the anglo -saxons and he also was a professed christian and he protected southern western england from the vikings and in one particular battle he whipped the vikings and their chief named guthrum and then he had one of his ministers baptize him in the name of the triune god he was converted wow and and as a result uh alfred's kingdom had no further trouble from him wow his life my father's side of the family he goes all the way back to the vikings well they the vikings plagued england for a long time and sometimes they whipped uh alfred sometime they didn't but also alfred uh wanted people to learn and so he brought some of the greatest preachers from europe to southern and western england and eastern england to preach the gospel and to teach people the truth he created the first english navy he uh educated the people he uh he himself translated some of augustine into out of latin into english anglo -saxon himself in fact his translations of augustine were about three times longer than augustine's actual books because in those days they didn't always distinguish between the translation and your comment on the translation and he's the only king in english history that had the title the great and in my opinion is the only one that that deserved it alfred the great also codified was the first to codify the laws of the anglo -saxons which book is still available as a paperback in secular bookstores but not in christian bookstores mostly and you read this book he put down in writing the laws governing the anglo -saxons and in the book you find they are from exodus leviticus numbers deuteronomy and some from old germanic traditions which aren't worth anything but nevertheless most of them were biblical laws themselves and he was the one that began a thousand years of common law we wonder why common law for the for a thousand years uh is so close to the bible and it is because alfred the great codified those laws put them in writing out of exodus leviticus numbers deuteronomy and some germanic traditions so we have a great deal we owe a great deal to alfred the great who sought really to use a modern term thought to be a christian reconstructionist of the anglo -saxon kingdom and uh i love reading books about every now and then i read another book about alfred the great and there are several out there by the way uh just to clarify you brought up a book by fff bruce that you were recommending uh a listener uh emailed us to let us know that the book is titled the spreading flame that's it that's exactly right thank your listener for that and so that's the early middle ages you have people like constantine augustine uh alfred the great and then there were great people throughout the middle ages we uh we we there there shouldn't be called the middle ages that's a that's a socialist unbiblical attitude toward history you read uh modern historians and they talk about the medieval age which is middle the middle ages between the great greek period with its intellectualism and even greater renaissance in the 15th century and the like and in between was the dark ages the middle ages not much happened during those days but you you speak christian historians are starting to reread medieval history and realize they weren't dark ages and realize there was a lot going on and it's one of the reasons modern historians view them as dark is because in the middle ages they sought to build christendom they wanted to build a culture and a civilization that was had christ as king it was based on the bible they didn't do it well it's not a good model but nevertheless they didn't have this view that jesus could come any day and take everybody out of here and burn everything up start all over again they understood that their christ came not to discard history but to renew it and to save it and that's why even though we wouldn't agree with uh roman catholic scholasticism that's why some of these cathedrals in europe took 300 years to build i mean for generation after generation of carpenters and sculptors the like built churches they knew they would never see they would they built these churches to last throughout history so that at least architecturally if not in other areas architecturally they had a post -millennial architectural view you had to work that in there didn't you they had a view to the future they wanted to build a christian civilization we've lost that whole idea today because we're so eaten up with the rapture and christ coming and snatching everybody up and there's no hope for the future to change at all in fact we have to pick up right where you left off there because we have to go to our midway break right now all right and uh the midway break please be patient with us folks because as you know if you listen regularly it's a bit 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chris arnson at gmail .com give us a first name city and state and country of residence we'll be right back with dr joe moorcraft right after these messages from our sponsors hi i'm phil johnson host and executive director of grace to you the media ministry of john mccarthy i hope you plan to join me and chris arnson host of iron sharpens iron radio for the g3 conference in atlanta georgia thursday september 30th through saturday october 2nd the theme this year is christ is supreme over all my friend chris arnson and i will be joined by several of our other friends including voddie balcom justin peters daryl bernard harrison virgil walker and james white more than 20 other speakers will be joining us and the lineup this includes my pastor john mccarthur for details visit g3 conference .com

that's g3 conference .com chris arnson and i hope to see you september 30th through october 2nd at g3 2021 this is phil johnson reminding you that christ is supreme overall when iron sharpens iron radio first launched in 2005 the publishers of the new american standard bible were among my very first sponsors it gives me joy knowing that many scholars and pastors in the iron sharpens iron radio audience have been sticking with or switching to the nasb i'm dr joe moorcraft pastor of heritage presbyterian church in cumming georgia and the nasb is my bible of choice i'm anthony uvinio founder of the reform rookie .com

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forward slash podcast i'm dr tony costa professor of apologetics and islam at toronto baptist seminary i'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where i've been invited to speak and have grown to love hope reform baptist church in quorum long island new york pastored by rich janson and chris mcdowell it's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of god like the dear saints at hope reform baptist church in quorum who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of christ in his holy word and to enthusiastically proclaim christ jesus the king and his doctrines of sovereign grace in suffolk county long island and beyond i hope you also have the privilege of discovering this precious congregation and receive the blessing of being showered by their love as i have for more information on hope reform baptist church go to hope reform li .net

that's hope reformed li .net or call 631 -696 -5711 that's 631 -696 -5711 tell the folks at hope reform baptist church of quorum long island new york that you heard about them from tony costa on iron sharpens iron so hi i'm buzz taylor chris arnzen of iron sharpens iron radio has had a long -time partnership with our friends at cvbbs which stands for cumberland valley bible book service they specialize in supplying reformed and puritan books and bibles at discount prices that make them affordable for everyone cvbbs has been a family -owned book service since 1987 operating out of carlisle pennsylvania they seek to bring you the best available christian books and bibles at the best possible prices unlike other book sites they make no effort to provide every book that is available or popular because frankly much of what is being printed is not worth your time that means you can get to the good stuff faster it also means you don't have to worry about being assaulted by the pornographic heretical and otherwise faith insulting materials promoted by the secular book vendors browse the pages at ease shop at your leisure and purchase with confidence at cumberland valley bible book service order online at cvbbs .com

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before we return to dr joe moorcraft and our subject today if you just tuned in dr moorcraft is speaking on proper heroes put in their proper place in the lives of christians before we return to that discussion i just have a couple of very important announcements to make first of all please continue praying for vody balkan you've been hearing his name announced every day in the show because he is featured on the roster at the 2021 g3 conference where i am going to be manning an exhibitors booth for iron trump and zion radio for the fourth year in a row at september 30th through october 2nd in atlanta georgia he is among over 20 speakers on the roster well uh there has become uh if you haven't heard uh development in his health that may and i emphasize that word may uh prohibit him from speaking at the conference uh he recently had quadruple bypass surgery and uh he's still has a long road of recovery in front of him so let's let's keep praying that uh he is well enough and strong enough to participate as planned at the g3 conference and also that the planet earth is blessed by his presence for many more years to come and especially obviously his family uh so keep praying for vody balkan one of the brightest uh minds of christianity in the 21st century and i believe you have a very high regard for vody balkan as well don't you dr morecraft i most certainly do his daughter was at my daughter's wedding oh wow and he uh i think is the most important black preacher alive today amen well uh keep my heroes amen and a good one at that one of keep praying for him and uh we will keep you updated as we receive the updates also folks if you love iron sharpens iron radio and you don't want it to disappear from the airwaves please go to iron sharpens iron radio dot com click support then click click to donate now you can donate instantly with a debit or credit card in that fashion we want to thank again heritage presbyterian of coming georgia for being so faithful in donating to us and helping us keep on the air and please spread the word to your own pastors unless you're a pastor yourself you could spread the word to your fellow elders and your deacons that if you love the show uh that we might be a good addition to your monthly spending you could even consider us as one church has uh put us on their monthly missionary budget they consider this program as a domestic missionary outlet so please help us we are in urgent need of your help go to iron sharpens iron radio dot com click support then click click to donate now you can donate instantly with a debit or credit card also if you prefer snail mail an address will appear on your screen when you click support at iron sharpens iron radio dot com where you can mail a check if you prefer snail mail via the united states postal service or the postal service wherever you are you may be overseas and you want to mail in a check that's fine but please help us out in any way you feel most comfortable and remember folks i don't want anybody siphoning money away from their regular giving that they're accustomed to their own local church where they are a member in order to give to us in other words do not punish your own church financially by blessing us financially especially if you're in a smaller church and also please do not put your family in further financial jeopardy or financial peril if you are really struggling to survive and make ends meet those two things are commands of god and scripture providing for your church and family providing for my radio show is obviously not a command of god but if you're financially blessed above and beyond your ability to obey those two commands and you love this show and you enjoy it every day or at least frequently and you benefit from it frequently then please help us out uh go to iron trip design radio dot com click support then click click to donate now we want to thank all of you who have been so faithful at giving and also the new contributors we are seeing who are donating for the very first time i am so grateful beyond words to you and uh i hope uh to meet many of you at one of these conferences perhaps where you can visit me at my exhibitors booth and i could shake your hand or give you a big hug even in this day and age of coronavirus hysteria and uh love to meet you also if you want to advertise with us folks send me an email chris arnzen at gmail .com

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chris arnzen at gmail .com and put i need a church in the subject line that's also the email address to send in a question to dr joe moorcraft on our theme today proper heroes put in their proper place in the lives of christians and uh dr moorcraft you can pick up where you left off when we went into the middle middle way break uh one more middle uh middle age hero is john wickliffe john wickliffe w -y -c -l -i -f -f -e in the 13th century was an englishman who translated the bible out of latin into english and uh they tried to kill him time after time after time but god protected him over and over and sometimes in extraordinary ways so that he died a natural death as an old man so he was not only interested in getting the bible into english and and the kings uh didn't like him for that because they were roman catholic back in those days and so uh he wrote the translated the bible and then he wanted to evangelize england so he started an evangelistic organization called the lollards l -o -l -l -a -r -d -s and they went all over uh scotland and england preaching the gospel which was different than the gospel that they were getting in the medieval church then when we come to the 16th and 17th century we've got a gold mine of heroes i mean i i want to get maybe the next time i want to talk about heroes in 1800s 21st century of various races there are there are many many but the 16th century and the 17th century are where most of my historical heroes are to be found because those were the centuries of the great protestant reformation the greatest spirit produced revival of the church and of culture since apostolic times and we could go all day and probably will go the rest of time just talking about the heroes men and women in those days and of course at the top of the list is martin luther and john calvin martin luther was a fiery uh great preacher prone to exaggeration uh but we needed a sledgehammer to start the reformation and martin luther was the man and so read a biography there are several biographies of martin luther out there i'm trying to think of one as i i speak and it'll be roland beyton's book roland beyton i met him one time uh yeah really on here i stand uh martin luther was magnificent in fact there is a movie that was about 10 years ago it made it to the movie theaters but i knew when i saw it it wouldn't stay in the movie theaters long i thought it was excellent myself oh it was magnificent you could become a christian by reading listening to that movie watching it joseph fines played martin luther uh yes and it was historically correct except for one thing okay in the movie luther was skinny and handsome i mean i think everybody was saying to themselves who has seen the woodcut of luther what is going on it doesn't look like luther yeah but i mean it was a really a great movie i heard one other thing uh by my friend dr william webster who is a historian i read his book on roman catholicism yes he's actually he's he's written several books on roman catholicism and but he said uh the only thing that he could detect that was wrong except for that obvious one that you mentioned was uh there's a scene with luther preaching and people are sitting in pews and he said that they would have been standing the pew sitting was a later development at least according to william uh that's what he said that's probably true yeah about the other man because it was john calvin now uh calvin has not gotten a good press in the 20th century either of 21st century and uh i praise the lord that god raised up john calvin because he put the reformation and the great truths of the reformation in print instead of luther luther ssa was prone to exaggeration calvin was not and uh john calvin uh was a tremendous instrument of god he uh most people today believe when they talk about calvin they talk about somebody doesn't believe in evangelism and all those things i was preaching one time on the green in boston massachusetts and uh there was a lot of hundred or so people around and people walking by and some people that were walking by heard me mention john calvin and they called the police somebody called the police this man is mentioning john calvin in public and uh so calvin well you gotta follow up you gotta tell us what happened all right nothing nothing happened that's funny yeah i know it well anyway the uh there is another book i have in my library called the history of evangelism it's about 600 year uh 600 pages and it goes from the first century to the 20th century and it talks about all of the uh evangelists and schools of evangelism in those years but it never mentions one calvin i mean calvin's not even mentioned in bibliography because they assume that calvin believing in predestination did not believe in evangelism and yet john calvin was one of the greatest evangelists of all time calvin not only was an evangelist uh in france he oversaw other evangelists and in his lifetime the evangelists under his oversight built hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of churches and not only that but calvin sent missionaries as far away as brazil in the 16th century now that's quite a fit feat and so in talking about calvin he only needed to be 52 early 50s but was a great man and preacher and writer and scholar and evangelist and pastor and all those things there was a man among the people in france that were under the influence of calvin they were called huguenots or huguenots and they were french calvinists and a lot of them were royalty and they found themselves at odds with the roman catholic government and the roman catholic government was afraid of them and they were slandered and thought to be terrorists and uh divisive which they weren't and so they were persecuted and many of them were killed and then god raised up a man named admiral colony i have his picture my office c -o -l -i -g -n -y c -o -l -i -g -n -y admiral colony he was the second most powerful man in france and sometimes the most powerful powerful became and god converted him and he became a french calvinist and a godly christian and so he used his influence and his power to protect the huguenots from the persecution of the government and uh the that they had to kill him so finally they do kill him at the beginning of saint bartholomew's day and in that week the catholic government slaughtered over 16 000 french calvinists and france has never recovered from that since it's one of the most secular countries in the world and so the uh the colony was killed but not before colony tried to accomplish his vision of a reformed culture so he got with calvin and he said i'll get the ships and i'll get the french huguenots and you send me the preachers and we'll build a huguenot civilization in brazil and so several hundred french calvinists within ships that colony had arranged with some preachers that calvin had sent went to brazil and started this reformed civilization near what is now called rio de janeiro there was a cannibalistic tribe near there and so they wanted to evangelize this tribe so they sent their young men to live in that tribe to learn the language so they could preach the gospel to them and they were well on their way until the man who was the appointed governor betrayed them he told colony that he was a protestant but in fact he was not he was a closet catholic and so after getting to brazil this uh this governor started putting the calvinists into prison persecuting them sending them back to europe and caused the whole thing to go under but not until and you can look at this on google not until the first confession of first reformed confession of faith in the new world was written at that colony in brazil just look up uh the first confession of faith in brazil on google and you can read it and you'll love it and what's written it's interesting is written by some blue collar workers and potterers and plumbers and they were arrested by the governor and the governor said tell me what you believe well these men bless their hearts naive and godly thought well if we can write down what we believe maybe we can convert the governor when as a matter of fact the governor was just looking for evidence against them so these men just plumbers potterers spent the whole night writing a confession of faith that was reformed the first one in the new world wow and so the next morning they take it to the governor and the governor says this is all the evidence i need to find you guilty of heresy and he marked that they became the first martyrs too wow and he kills them the next day so that great work there with calvin and colony didn't survive so calling you decided maybe he needs to start a reformed civilization in florida so he sends french huguenots to florida to start a new reformed civilization but the spanish catholics were in control of florida so when the french huguenot ship arrived the spanish had all the passengers line up in two lines they would ask the question are you a catholic or you're protestant and you get one of the two lines and then when they formed the two lines they killed all the protestants so that was the end of that effort uh calling you they hated calling you so much that they decided they wanted to make sure that his descendants would always be catholic so they took his children and raised them up in strict catholic schools they took his grandchildren and raised them up in strict strict catholic schools but they failed the catholics failed because one of the direct descendants of colony was william of william and mary that uh threw the stewarts out of england and his one of his descendants was william of orange a great calvinist freedom fighter in holland so admiral colony in fact there in the early part of the 20th century there were several commemorative half dollars currency silver half dollars that were minted by the by the reserve to commemorate various things and one of them commemorates calling ye and his bust is on an american half dollar wow by the way so is the geneva bible 1921 there was another half dollar and on one side the mayflower and on the other side is william blad bradford of plymouth colony holding the geneva bible and uh another half dollar is of columbus christopher columbus so if you want to make some investments for your children i bought some of those for all of my children cost me a fortune but uh buy those for your children so they can have a tangible memento of these great heroes so you have calvin and uh one of my favorite stories about calvin is there was a big ruckus in geneva switzerland and calvin was always a sick man probably had stomach cancer and tuberculosis and who knows what all and he heard a big ruckus in this room of catholics and they were persecuting the protestants so calvin comes down stands in the midst of them and tears open his shirt and he said he's gonna fight there's a little blood here left and offered himself he didn't die of course but ended that ruckus wow praise god 1536 a man he was in his 20s and he wrote a book called the institutes which means the fundamentals of the christian religion it was just one volume most important book written in the past 500 years in western civilization in fact it is not it has been said and not incorrectly the western civilization was born in the study of john calvin by the time that he died in the 16 uh as a man in his early 50s he uh that that volume had grown to two massive volumes and there if you want to read uh the best of christian literature produced by man and the best particularly of reformed literature get the institutes of the christian religion by john calvin battles edition battles is the name of the translator battles b -a -t -t -l -e -s edition it's two volumes and then read them and reread them over and over and if you want the best commentary on calvin's institutes go to the bonson project and and listen to greg bonson's 30 or so lectures on every paragraph of the uh institutes of the christian religion so um if you want the best one of the best uh biographies of calvin it'll be hard to get because it's out of print get the man called the man of the millennium i wrote a bunch of it about a half of it and uh so it's not in print but if you can find that in used bookstores it's very readable it was written to encourage fathers to read it to their families after dinner at night wow just out of curiosity have you ever heard of a book that i read many years ago when i was a brand new christian that i really enjoyed there's less than 200 pages and it's out of print also called calvin a life by emmanuel stickleberger and i just i just loved it and uh perhaps somebody of your scholarship could if you had read it would be able to tell me how accurate it was but it was a a very favorable biography about calvin i have never read it well uh i hope that you can get your hands on it and let me know what you think of it i would love to yes sir it was first published in in 1961 i believe uh -huh there's another biography of calvin that published by university press that had a great impact on me by i called the man god mastered the man god mastered um i can't remember the author's name but it had a great impact on me there's one thing about calvin that i we should talk about because people somebody said to me one time they said why is calvin your hero when he burned all these baptists as a stake and i said not only did he not burn any baptists to stake he didn't burn anybody to stake and so if somebody knows a little more they'll say well what about cervidus and there was a man named cervidus who was brilliant he was one of the first men to diagram the arterial venal system of the body uh he was an outlaw to the protestants and the roman catholics everybody wanted him arrested because he mocked the doctor of the trinity he was a real heretic and he'd go around europe preaching and writing against the trinity and the basic fundamentals of christian faith and so finally he goes to geneva switzerland where calvin preached and by the way calvin there's two other heroes to preach with calvin either one of them are gray one of them is called pierre beret v -i -r -e -t and his biography and many of his books have been written by a young woman named rebecca sheets r -a sheets s -h -e -a -t -s and she wrote the biography of beret and translated many of his works he was a young man who drew bigger crowds but even calvin drew at geneva and then there was an older man and she may be writing a biography of him his name is william farrell f -a -r -e -l he's a great man he's the man that got calvin to come to geneva practically dragged him there against his will yeah okay he said to calvin calvin didn't want to go and said if you don't come to geneva you're going to go to hell so and that shook calvin so much that he went to geneva well anyway so they're preaching the gospel there in geneva and cervidis comes arrogantly stupidly comes to the center of reformed faith in europe and uh i guess to try to debate somebody or something years before calvin wrote him a letter and said and of course he was on the lab he was running from the magistrate being a heretic all over europe calvin said well you can come and live with me in my apartment if you want to you can hide out in my apartment and cervidis agreed to come but he never showed up that's one of the great what ifs of history so anyway the civil magistrates of geneva arrest cervidis and they find him guilty of a capital crime of teaching idolatrous heresy and they sit and seem to be burned to the stake calvin was the one man in geneva that pled with him not to burn him at the stake and the story goes but he was a minority opinion he didn't burn him to the stake but he pled with him not to burn him at the stake but he would his his view lost out but he did consent to the execution did he not sir did he not consent however to the execution even though he was well he believed deuteronomy 15 and he believed that idolatrous heresy was a capital crime preaching it that is but he didn't want him to be so terribly killed right uh so story goes from the book the man god mastered by gene cod yay c -a -d -i -e -r i thought of it c -a -d -i -e -r he followed uh cervidis all the way to the stake witnessing to him trying to get him to believe that jesus is god all cervidis would ever say is that jesus is the son of the eternal god but he would never say that jesus is the eternal son of god because he did not believe that jesus was equal to god so all the way to the stake calvin was witnessing to him and then they tied him to the stake and as the fires were licking around his body killing him according to cadillac the last thing anybody ever heard cervidis say was oh eternal son of god have mercy on me wow i don't know how i missed that in that story so we may we may see cervidis in heaven wow uh well calvin also was greatly influenced by german and this german is one of my favorite uh heroes his name is martin butzer b -u -c -e -r yeah i did an interview on him i can't remember the guest it may have been bill shishko your our mutual friend probably but butzer was great calvin said he was one of the most important contemporary influences on his life i have a lecture on sermonaudio .com

and of course all these are free downloads called the martin butzer the forgotten reformer and he also is one of my very very favorite people along with cap butzer there was a man named theodore beza b -e -z -a beza wrote a short biography of calvin that you can still get today and interesting thing about beza the last time the french government catholic government wanted to meet with the reformers to try to come to some type of reconciliation was before they started killing all of the fugitives and so they wanted uh calvin to come and defend the protestant cause calvin was sick so he sent theodore beza beza was a french nobleman uh aristocrat and uh godly knowledgeable so the catholic government the catholic church are meeting in this room with all their pomp and circumstance king and all of his finery cardinals and archbishops with all of their finery and all their banners and all their many armies i mean the room was filled with flash and color and in walks theodore beza i think there was an italian with him by the name of vermigli who was one of my heroes too but beza walks into the room has a black hat on black coat black suit nothing fancy and as he walks into the room the cardinals and the archbishops start mocking him and they said here comes the dogs from geneva and beza looked at this room full of powerful people and he said every block of sheep need dogs to protect them from the wolves wow by the way we have to go to our final break and you can pick up where you left off it's going to be a much shorter break than the other breaks if you have a question send it in immediately to chris arnzen at gmail .com

chris arnzen at gmail .com we do have a few people waiting to have their questions asked and answered so please be patient with us we'll get to as many of you as possible don't go away we'll be right back with dr joe moorcraft hello dear ones my name is justin peters and my friend chris arnzen host of iron sharpens iron radio and i are frequently blessed to share great times of fellowship with one another at conferences all over the united states we'll both be enjoying more fellowship together at the conference in atlanta georgia thursday september 30th through saturday october the 2nd on the theme christ is supreme over all i'll be speaking there along with over 20 other speakers including john mccarthur phil johnson vody balkan joel beakey and james white for details visit g3 conference .com

that's g the number three conference .com please join chris arnzen and me september 30th through october the 2nd at g3 2021 this is justin peters reminding you that christ is supreme over all when iron sharpens iron radio first launched in 2005 the publishers of the new american standard bible were among my very first sponsors it gives me joy knowing that many scholars and pastors in the iron sharpens iron radio audience have been sticking with or switching to the nasb i'm dr joseph piper president and professor of systematic and homiletical theology at greenville presbyterian theological seminary in taylor south carolina and the nasb is my bible of choice i'm pastor chuck white at the first trinity lutheran church in tonawanda new york and the nasb is my bible of choice i'm pastor anthony methenia of christ church in radford virginia and the nasb is my bible of choice i'm pastor jesse miller of damascus road christian church in gardenville nevada and the nasb is my bible of choice i'm pastor bruce bennett of word of truth church in farmerville long island new york and the nasb is my bible of choice i'm pastor rodney brown of metro bible church in south lake texas and the nasb is my bible of choice i'm pastor jim harrison of redmills baptist church in mayapac falls new york and the nasb is my bible of choice here's a great way for your church to help keep iron sharpens iron radio on the air pastors are your pew bibles tattered and falling apart consider restocking your pews with the nasb and tell the publishers you heard about them from chris arnson on iron sharpens iron radio go to nasbible .com

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that's linbrookbaptist .org Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said give yourself unto reading the man who never reads will never be read he who never quotes will never be quoted he will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves he has no brains of his own you need to read solid ground christian books is a publisher and book distributor who takes these words of the prince of creatures to heart the mission of solid christian books is to bring back treasures of the past to minister to christians in the present and future and to publish new titles that address burning issues in the church and the world since it's beginning in 2001 solid ground has been committed to publish god -centered christ exalting books for all ages we invite you to go treasure hunting at solid -ground -books .com

that's solid - ground -books .com and see what priceless literary gems from the past or present you can unearth from solid ground solid ground christian books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of iron sharpens iron radio welcome back and by the way dr moorcraft i looked up in the archives of iron sharpens iron radio and sure enough my interview about martin bootser was indeed with our mutual friend pastor bill shishko who is currently pastoring at the haven on long island new york uh formerly pastor of the orthodox presbyterian church in franklin square long island new york and the actual title was martin bootser richard baxter and the reformed pastor today a call to return to the roots of reformational pastoral theology i'll have to listen to that amen uh well we do have a a few listener questions for you uh let's see we have arnie in perry county pennsylvania who said how do you respond to the accusation that we who are reformed only believe what we believe because we are hero worshipers they say that we could never come up with the stuff calvin and other great reformed heroes taught out of the bible alone well i would say it's not true of course and i would say that however i'm sure there are some calvinists who believe what they believe because calvin believed it or because the westminster confession says it or something like that but as i preach over and over again we must base our faith entirely upon the word of god not on the word of men that uh there was a man one time i was preaching in his church and never heard anything about the reformed faith and i was preaching in our predestination and this man said i always thought that was in the bible uh in other words uh we must get what we believe from the scriptures now there's nothing wrong with using god's own books or god's own sermons to help us understand the scriptures that's what preaching is all about whether preaching is by the voice or by the written page we always use uh god has always used the preachers of the gospel to help people understand the scriptures but we must always like the bereans evaluate what we get from men with the word of god so that our faith rests upon the word of god and not on the word of men so number one we don't despise the word of men we believe that god uses creatures through the years to teach us and to help us and to guide us but we believe also that our faith must rest squarely upon the word of god and to say that by simply reading the bible you could not get out of the bible what you get from calvin one time i gave a copy of matthew henry's commentary on the bible and he was a great calvinist 18th century i gave a copy of matthew henry to this man who was a coal miner and i went back to see him about six months later and i said well brother errington uh how'd you like matthew henry he said oh it was great i've just had i'm glad i had the bible to help me understand it so it is not true that calvinism is based upon the word of man and when it's just based upon the word of man it's not going to make any difference in a person's life amen if it's not if it's not the word of god don't believe it if it is the word of god believe it amen in fact i came to the doctrines of grace when someone gave me a booklet called george whitfield's letter to john wesley on election oh yeah and i did not know i was a new christian i did not know who george whitfield was i did not know who john wesley was and at that time could care could not care less but it was the biblical argumentation of george whitfield that drove me to believe in these things and of course the enlightenment of the holy spirit and even at first i hated those teachings especially predestination uh and i said wow this is true but i hate it but within a month or two i fell in love madly in love with those teachings that's about the same thing it happened to me too uh let's see here we have uh we have rj in white plains new york and rj says should christians ever have heroes that are not bible -believing christians like for instance some reformed folks i know have as heroes roman catholics uh like gk chesterton or we were even hearing on chris's show the other day that rc sproll had a sports hero from the pittsburgh pirates roberto clemente uh is that a proper thing well i heard the same show and love dr nichols uh biography of rc and you know it's perfectly proper to have heroes in quotations on various levels uh we can have sports people basketball players i mean uh michael jordan etc of the various low levels that do not inspire lives do not shape our disposition nor our behavior but which we do appreciate the skills and abilities that god's common grace has given to them so that is a good question and i'm glad he asked us so as to distinguish heroes from heroes that my heroes are people who number one love the lord people i admire are and i love to watch or listen to are people who have skills and abilities that god has given them far superior to anything that i even think about having so right it is not good to have as our primary heroes non -christians but it's also all right to appreciate the superiority of people in various fields to because of god's common grace so that's a good question yes and roberto clemente i don't know if he was a christian or not but he died doing a noble cause he was bringing aid to i believe it was nicaraguans after an earthquake died in the plane crashed in 1972 yeah but uh anyway well thanks for the excellent question uh we have time for one more question uh we have uh susan margaret in dauphin county pennsylvania who wants to know are there any very popular heroes in the christian church today that you would say christians should stop idolizing as heroes i can immediately think of one charles finney yeah i mean yes answer to a question there's a lot and i hope we continue this subject the next time we're on because we haven't even gotten to the 18th 19th 20th and 21st centuries yet yeah let's do that that's uh when you get off the uh when the program goes off the air let's uh schedule another interview but there are some people today that are so i call them celebrity preachers that uh but that ought not to be heroes because they're smooth talkers they confuse people because they mix truth with error and as i always say there's something more dangerous than wolves and that is wolves in sheep's clothing so there's a lot of people in that category and god usually exposes them and brings them down or silences them and maybe we can get to that next time but before you go on there's one thing i want to say to fathers and mothers and that is you be your children's primary heroes under christ by your godly life by your faithfulness by your willingness to stand against this culture by your willingness to steadfastly stand for the truth no matter what the cost so that when your children think of heroes they think of you jesus and they think of you their mother and their father and one of the ways fathers and mothers can be heroes to their children is tell war stories tell stories about your involvement in the battle for culture and the battle for the kingdom of christ in america so that they admire you they they love you and stand in all of your courage and your bravery and your steadfastness problem is most mothers and fathers don't have any war stories and so the children don't even think of their parents in terms of hero but you be their secondary hero by involving yourself in the battle for truth and righteousness without compromise without negotiation inflexibly and you will be a hero to your children amen and we're out of time and folks remember the website for heritage presbyterian church of cumming georgia is heritage presbyterian church .com