February 16, 2018 Show with Stefan Bomberger on “A Christian Outreach to the Survivors & Community of Parkland, FL, in the Wake of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Massacre”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. 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 Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 16th day of February 2018, just two days after the horrific nightmarish massacre that took place at the

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where 17 individuals were murdered in cold blood, three being on the faculty there and 14 being students.

And today we have to discuss a Christian outreach to the survivors and community of Parkland, Florida, in the wake of the massacre.

Today we have Stephan Bomberger, who is Outreach Pastor at Riverside Church in Broward County, Florida.

He's a county director for First Priority, which supports evangelistic

Christian clubs in the public schools of South Florida. He's an overseer of 88

First Priority campus clubs, including the one at Stoneman Douglas High School, the site of the

Parkland, Florida, massacre on February 14th. And he's the operator of the

Reformed Evangelist website, which can be found at StephanBomberger .com.

And it is my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Stephan Bomberger.

Thank you, Chris. And I wish it could be under better circumstances, obviously. But before we go into any of the details of why we are having this conversation today,

I want you to tell our listeners something, first of all, about Riverside Church of Broward County, Florida.

Sure. Well, thank you for having me on the show. And as you said, under sad circumstances, but I'm happy to share to the larger church what's going on here in South Florida.

And Riverside Church is in North Lauderdale, which is south of Parkland. It's kind of right there north of Fort Lauderdale.

And the beautiful church, it was a more affluent area in Coral Springs.

It actually sold its building about 20 years ago to move into a poor community, and so it's very multi -ethnic, and right there in the lower -income community, actually, in North Lauderdale.

So some special things about the church is just multi -ethnic and also socioeconomically stratified.

So we are a diverse body there, and preaching the

Gospel faithfully in North Lauderdale. Now tell us something about First Priority. Sure.

Well, First Priority is what I do full -time now. I moved here seven years ago, actually, from Pennsylvania, where you're from, to be an evangelist at the church, and then found this ministry, which is pretty incredible down here.

We are on 218 public middle and high school campuses, and we work through the local church.

So we mobilize primarily youth pastors to go into the public schools through the

Equal Access Act of 1984, and we start Evangelistic Christian Clubs.

It needs to be a student -led, student -initiated club, and they invite the church onto the campus as a guest.

And so we have youth pastors at 218 schools across seven counties in Southeast Florida, from Miami -Dade up to the

Treasure Coast there. And so I'm the Broward County Director. I oversee 88 of those schools, which is where First Priority South Florida started, in Broward County, right outside of Fort Lauderdale.

Is there, or are there, any restrictions on what those involved in this outreach can say or do in the public school system?

We have a lot of freedom, actually. The Equal Access Act, like I mentioned earlier, was passed by the federal government in 1984, and so it needs to be during non -curricular hours, meaning it's not during a normal class.

It's before or after school, or often sometimes also lunch breaks, and the students start a club.

A teacher sponsor has to host the club. Somebody that works for the school, and then the youth pastor is the invited guest.

But within the context of the classroom, as students self -select into that club, we really are not restricted in preaching the gospel, giving out

Bibles. We're seeing many students come to faith, literally thousands of youth every year make a profession of faith for the first time in Christ inside of the public schools.

Yeah, so we're, last year over 5 ,000 students made a first -time decision for Jesus Christ, and our goal really is to connect them back to the local church.

So our vision is to connect the church to reach the campus for Christ, and when students get connected to us, we connect to bring back to the church.

So we're not really trying to build a second kind of youth ministry outside of the church, but really mobilize the church as a network, which is what we are, to work together in the region to make sure that there's outreach happening in every public school in the region.

And in Broward County, we largely are in every public school, except for maybe a charter school here or there that pops up, and then just takes us a little bit to get there.

So I know, as I already said in my introduction, that the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is one of the schools where you have your 88 campus clubs, and I understand that at least one of the students that attended the club at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High was murdered at this event?

That's right. We just found out last night that Helena Ramsey, one of our students there, was one of the victims.

So we're definitely grieving with her and her family and seeking to reach out and find out how we can care for them more.

So I'm reaching out to our teachers there and our youth leaders as well. We have a number of volunteers from Coastal Community Church, which is one of the only churches in Parklands, and it's not there yet, but they're breaking ground in Parklands.

So one of the things as we talked today, there's really not a strong evangelical or church presence in that affluent community, and this is the one church that is breaking ground, and it's a church plant that's now moving in there.

So they're faithfully serving on that campus, building relationship both with the city and with the school, and they've been incredible running point for the larger

Broward Church to help us know how to care for the families of the community, and kind of running as a liaison between the other churches and the leaders of the city.

Well I want to give our listeners our email address if any of them care to join the discussion with a question.

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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

And so this young person that attended your club at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, did you get to know this person very well?

I personally did not know Helena. The last time I was actually on the campus was in December, so I was preaching the gospel back in December, met a lot of the students, but I don't remember specifically meeting her.

As you could imagine being an overseer of all these clubs, I'm trying to get to all of them as much as I can, but the model that we have is very volunteer driven through the local church, so my role is a little bit more global.

But this school in particular I am closer to because I live very close to it. I live right down the street from it.

My children go to school just a few miles east of it, so I was literally trapped in a car line that was shut down.

My own kids schools were shut down during the moment when the shooting happened and everyone was texting.

So it's a school that's very close to us. It's a school that nobody thought this would ever happen.

It's the kind of neighborhood that everybody moved into or wishes they could move into if they could afford it. And it's viewed as one of the safest communities in Broward County and really the best public school in Broward County.

And so we're just in shock here that this would happen at Stoneman Douglas.

And so no, I don't know her personally and I will in glory for sure.

Amen. Is this Helena Ramsey the name? Helena. Helena Ramsey.

Yeah, I don't know her personally. Yes. Well, the reason I was asking is I just wanted to read something about Helena.

She was 17 when she lost her life on Wednesday. My family lost an absolutely beautiful member today due to a senseless school shooting.

Mrs. Curtis Page Jr. said in a Facebook post about Helena who would have started college next year.

Helena was a smart, kind -hearted and thoughtful person. She was deeply loved and loved others even more.

Though she was somewhat reserved, she had a relentless motivation towards her academic studies and her soft, warm demeanor brought the best out in all who knew her.

She was so brilliant and witty and I'm still wrestling with the idea that she is actually gone.

And again, that was from Curtis Page Jr. This occurred about approximately 20 minutes before 3 p .m.

on Wednesday. How did you find out about this and what were the initial thoughts that entered into your mind?

Sure. So, I was literally in Coral Springs, which is just south of Parkland.

In fact, if you follow the news, the shooter Nicholas Cruz had actually jumped across the border into Coral Springs into the

Walmart there. And I literally was at that Walmart in the morning getting flowers for my wife and buying some breakfast items to cook for the kids in the morning.

And so, it's very close to my home. And every month,

I do seven network lunches in Broward County, which is where I pull all our youth pastors together across the county.

And so, I was in Coral Springs that day, just a little bit south of there with the volunteers that were going to go to that campus club as well as many others, about 15 to 20 youth pastors with me.

We do lunch together, feed them and just resource them, get them Bibles, pray with them, inspire them, and just network together.

And so, Susie Hamilton and Melissa Lane, Kyle LaForge, Olivia Rose Paul, and Felipe Soares were there.

And they're the volunteers from the church that go to that campus. And so, they were literally leaving that to go to a store to pick up some supplies for an outreach they were going to do at the school and got caught basically trying to get into the campus, but then everything got locked down.

So, they were sort of caught in the middle where they couldn't leave, but they couldn't get in. And so, that was happening while I was actually driving, running some errands in Coral Springs and then running towards the school.

It's on the way to my kid's school. All the various vehicles were, the police cars, the ambulance, the fire, everything was running past me and my phone started lighting up.

In fact, one of our volunteers is a mom and her son goes to that school. And so, I was texting her about something differently.

And she wrote me back and just told me that her son was hiding under her desk and that there was a shooting at the school.

And then I got another text to pray for the school because there was a shooting. Once I started seeing all these texts flying around, because we get a number of threats.

And initially, I pray, but assume it's just a threat. Once I got that text from this club,

Karen, I just realized that this was the real deal. And then I got trapped in a car line essentially and started texting all the churches that I know in Northwest Broward to start to get us talking about how we were going to respond to this and how we were going to seek to minister to the families and what we could do.

So, I spent pretty much the next two hours trapped in my car, sitting in a line, just trying to pull all the pastors together, including the church where we did the vigil the following day, which was at Park Ridge Church.

They're one of our ministry partners as well. And I was able to pull together all the ministry leaders of the county just to pray for the community and for those who lost their lives.

So, that was where I was just calling people, texting. Church United is also a ministry down here.

So, there's First Priority. We network the youth pastors. Church United networks all the senior pastors.

And so, I reached out to my friend who's the head of Church United when he had not been aware of what was going on, quickly pulled him in.

And the beautiful thing down here, I've never seen it around the country. Now, I'm sure it is happening, but it's unique is that the churches really do work well together across denominational lines and those relationships in this time really pulled together to jump on this and try to mobilize, to cooperate together, to care for everybody who's hurting.

Now, since you oversee 88 schools or clubs in 88 schools,

I'm assuming there have been a wide range of things that you had to focus on when reaching out to the various campuses.

Anything that even came close to this magnitude of a tragedy that you had to console and counsel and comfort students in the aftermath of the event?

Nothing like this. I mean, I've been doing this just for a few years because, as I shared, I moved here seven years ago and was switched over full -time a few years ago to First Priority.

I mean, this is one of the worst shootings, as you know, in our nation, so this is a very unique situation that none of us were ready for, none of us expected.

I mean, as a pastor, the closest thing I've come to is a parent losing their child suddenly or unexpectedly or someone losing their spouse, but this kind of mass carnage out of the blue is certainly a first for me in full -time ministry.

What have been the typical things that you would usually be focusing your attention on when you are involved in the outreach to all of these 88 schools?

Sure, sure. So we have a four -week strategy that we use, and every week's a little different and it loops back around, but essentially we have a strategy that includes teaching the students to pray for their campus, to share testimonials of what

God's doing in their life, and we equip every student to share their faith using a Gospel presentation that we wrote, and then finally we build up to bringing a guest speaker or preacher onto the campus every fourth week, and we order pizzas or doughnuts if it's the morning club, we pay for everything, everyone brings their friends out that they've been praying for and evangelizing, and the guest preacher just clearly, succinctly preaches,

Christ crucified, risen again for the forgiveness of sins, calls students to repentance, to faith in Jesus, and working with all the churches.

So it's a pretty straightforward, narrow focus, preaching the Gospel, teaching students to preach the

Gospel and share their faith and pray for their campus, and then we also have a New Believer Bible study that we've written that they could follow up, which really the goal is to get them into God's Word and then into God's church.

And at that point, everything else we want to happen inside the local church, so we're not really trying to connect them directly to us long term, but into churches.

So that's our strategy, and every once a month we're ordering pizzas or doughnuts, and then we're getting

Bibles, we have a partner. Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko. Sorry about that, that was an accidental premature launching of a commercial,

I apologize about that. That's okay, I'm happy. We have a partnership with the American Bible Society, and so we get

Bibles for a dollar apiece from them, which are customized with our Bible studying in the front and the back and a few other resources, and so we've handed out 6 ,000

Bibles before Christmas, and we just ordered 4 ,000 more that were on par to hand out before the end of the school year.

So we're handing out lots of Bibles to the kids and getting God's Word into the schools and into the hands of the students.

So I was at a middle school about a month ago, and one student made a profession of faith, and the teacher pulled me aside and said, that student there, his parents are atheists, and he took one of our

Bibles, and the parents complained, and went to me and said, why are the teachers giving out

Bibles to our kids? So while I'm not just walking around giving out Bibles, he came to the

First Priority Club, which is a Christian club, and he asked for a Bible, and so I gave it to him. So she was fine, the principal was okay with that, and the student came back to her later and said,

I still have the Bible, I just keep it in my backpack so I don't bother my mom and dad. And so he's reading his

Bible, he's growing in his faith, and he's continuing to come faithfully to the club. And as you know, as well as most

Americans, more and more people are unchurched, they're not exposed to the Gospel and the rise of the nuns, and we believe that reaching people before the age of 18, anytime is important, but it's very strategic and important if you study the demographics and statistics of how many professing evangelicals said they were saved prior to that age, and they're all in the public school, and they're lost, and the schools are dark and dying, as the

Douglas shooting shows, and so we're just trying to get into the front lines there and reach these students with the

Gospel as early as possible, so they can have a long life following Jesus and serving Him, and spared from a lot of the foolishness and sin that we all would give ourselves to apart from the

Holy Spirit regenerating us and giving us a new heart. So that's really our zeal, our passion as a ministry and as a movement, and what we do and how we seek to do it.

What would you say is the percentage, I mean obviously only God knows the heart, but what you can see as genuine repentant

Christian faith among those that are attending the clubs and those that are just curious who might be lost and just wondering what you're all about?

Sure, sure, yeah. Well, I think that the average club spans anywhere from, you know, 10 to 20 students upwards to 100 or larger, even some down in Miami, and certainly the pizza is a draw, for example, you know.

That's a draw for adults who have been born -again Christians for 50 years. Yeah, yeah, so that gets a lot of people out.

I take comfort in knowing that Jesus had multiplied the bread, and He said, you just follow me because I fed you, and then, you know,

He didn't offend them with His words later on where He said, I'm the bread of life, you have to eat me, and some stayed and some didn't, but so we use that as a way to make it easier to invite your friends, but I think the sign of perseverance is when the kids stick around, and our biggest goal to be transparent is really to connect students back to the church, and so even next year we're reconfiguring our strategy where there's going to be an entire week devoted to just church connections, sharing stories about local churches, so it's not just the testimony about salvation, but testimony to what's going on in people's local churches, and then starting to do more direct discipleship and Bible studies as it relates to the importance of the local church and getting baptized, and things that which we won't baptize, we want the church to do that, and so we're trying to lay in those values that the students see they need to go and take that next step.

So I can't give you a percentage of, you know, our movement's about probably 6 ,000 students actively attending all those clubs year -round, and we certainly anecdotally once they hit the church, but we can't track all of those as effectively as what's happening on campus, and you know as well as I do that perseverance is the greatest sign of true repentance and faith.

There's plenty of people I've seen who receive the word with gladness, and then you would think it's for sure legit, and then the cares of this life choke that word.

So I take a lot of comfort in the parable of the soil and the sower, where, you know, we're called to scatter the word broadly, and I know that there's going to be some that receive the word with joy according to the second two soils and middle two soils and don't make it, but that's, you know,

I know this is a reformed thought, yes, that's not my, I can't control regeneration, but I can control scattering the seed.

Amen. And that's what I do, and that's what we do, and we want to see them receive the word with joy, and we hope that it's the fourth soil, but time always is the true determiner of that, not just weeks, but months and years.

Yes, in fact, why don't you tell us a little bit more about the Reformed Evangelists? You brought up Reformed theology, something that is a great love of mine.

Sure, sure. Well, I grew up in more of an Anabaptist -Pietist tradition that didn't have as much theology or doctrine, and it was more about following the

Sermon on the Mount, I guess is what I'd say, and I got saved towards the end of high school, where I came into exposure to more of an evangelical presentation of the

Gospel. I was in a rock band with my twin brother Matthew, and long and short, came to faith in Christ, but started sorting through theology and doctrine along the way.

Went to college and got involved in Campus Crusade and was doing a lot of evangelism right away, but as I studied theology and doctrine, increasingly became more and more persuaded in the

Reformed perspective of Protestantism. And at first,

I wrestled with the implications of that in evangelism, as I think most Calvinists do, and certainly read some of the classics of evangelism and sovereignty of God.

There's always a helpful primer, starter by Packer, and then I started getting exposed to guys like Spurgeon, who were very inspiring, and read

Ian Murray's Spurgeon vs. Hyper -Calvinism, and that was very helpful.

I think as an early Calvinist, like many, you start to preach the Gospel in such a way that... Oh yeah, that's an excellent book, by the way, the

Banner of Truth book. Yes, yeah, no, it's very helpful. And of course, The Forgotten Spurgeon is an excellent companion, both by Ian Murray.

Yes, yeah, and so Spurgeon quickly became... I started to realize there's different flavors of Calvinism, I guess you could say, and I was wrestling with probably, like many, whether sliding into more of a hyper...

whether I could freely offer the Gospel openly to all, and just, you know, in the Four Spiritual Laws approach, and like many people, got exposed to different methods, and Ray Comfort and Law and Gospel approach, and then wrote some evangelism courses at a

Reformed church that I was a part of. I actually wrote a Gospel tract called the How Good Are You that was inspired by some of Ray Comfort's resources, but always actively doing evangelism while wrestling through the theological implications and staying faithful to my conviction.

And also later on got exposed to Whitfield, and Dally Moore's two -part volume on him, and he has really inspired me in evangelistic preaching.

I would say I was kind of schooled, like, a lot in personal evangelism, and then I think after realizing some of the

Great Awakenings, especially the First Great Awakening, and how thoroughly Protestant and Reformed it was, and yet largely just this great outpouring of the

Spirit through powerful preaching, that made me have a desire to grow in evangelistic preaching as well as personal evangelism.

So that sent me on another journey as a pastor of seeking to be more evangelistic in the pulpit.

And so I kind of looked to Spurgeon and Whitfield as two dead guys that I really want to be like, as it relates to free

Gospels, passionate preaching to all people, calling them to Christ, without any novelty in my theology or doctrine.

You know, that they weren't trying to, you know, I think Spurgeon was the one, give me old Calvinism, you know, he just wasn't interested in innovating when it came to our theology or doctrine, but he was incredibly effective at it.

So I could go into more of the nuance. Certainly biblical theology is influencing me a lot, so how the whole

Bible points forward to Jesus, and I've made the connection because that's true, and I believe it to be true, that I can preach

Christ responsibly anywhere in my Bible, therefore I can preach evangelistically anywhere in my

Bible, with the connection between biblical theology and my, obviously, systematics.

And finally, I think the area that's influencing me the most is preaching evangelism, which would be the power of narrative.

As I'm preaching to students especially, I realize that I go into the doctoral bench, a lot of eyes gloss over, especially with kids, but even adults, if we're honest, and I took a class in seminary in the parables, and it just started to get me thinking more about the nature of what preaching is, and how it comes out of the prophetic tradition, and how much of our

Bible, three -quarters of our Bible is narrative, and Jesus often taught in narrative form, and that God condescended to us in his words to speak to us on our level, and he did it primarily through story, so that I'm often preaching more and more in a narrative form while letting my doctrine be the borders to the boundaries and guide my preaching.

So those are some of the things. I'm getting reformed and always reforming, but I want to, for the glory of God, just go out there and win the loss, as many as I can, while staying true to biblical teaching and theology.

So that's a little overview of my journey, and I'm still on it.

Yes, and we all are. And I have a question from West Peoria, Illinois.

John says, would you categorize the bulk of this population as unchurched?

And he's obviously referring to either specifically Parkland, Florida or Broward County. Yeah, so we would say in Broward County that evangelicals probably comprise about three percent of the population.

Now if you go into more of the mainline and even Catholic and others, then the Christian community gets larger, but when you talk about those who profess kind of a born -again

Christianity, evangelicals, it's very small, about three percent. Parkland would be even smaller.

It's largely liberal and Jewish, and there's more synagogues there. Like I shared earlier, there's really no evangelical churches except for the one that's breaking ground right now,

Coastal Community Church. So sadly, there's not much of an evangelical presence there.

Now that said, there are evangelicals that live there, but they drive to church outside of Parkland.

So they'll go to the Calvary Chapel or some of the bigger churches. Church by the

Glades in Coral Springs, we have some bigger churches. So I'm sure there are many believers in the city, there's just not many churches in the city.

But there's also not much besides big houses in the city either. I just forwarded you an email that I got from Slovenia.

Since our listener Joe in Slovenia has written a rather lengthy comment slash question,

I thought that it might be a good idea for you to have that in front of you during our station break so you could look it over, and we'll have you answer it when we return from the break.

And if anybody else would like to join us on the air, we do still have several of you waiting to have your questions asked and answered, and we'll get to as many of you as possible.

But if you'd like to get in line, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Always remember to give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence if you live outside the

USA, and you may remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Don't go away, God willing, we'll be right back with Stephan Bomberger and more about his outreach in the aftermath of the massacre in Parkland, Florida, right after these messages from our sponsors.

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Orthodox Presbyterian denomination, and he is a thoroughly sound, biblically faithful brother in Christ, as well as the compassion and love and gentleness of a shepherd's heart.

And I really love this brother more than I can say. We are back now with our program, our interview with Stephen Bomberger, Outreach Pastor at Riverside Church in Broward County, Florida, County Director for First Priority and operator of the

Reformed Evangelist website. We are discussing a Christian outreach to the survivors and community of Parkland, Florida, in the wake of the

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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

Please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence, if you live outside the USA. Only remain anonymous if the question involves a personal or private matter.

And Stephen, I don't know if you have that email in front of you, but I will read it out loud for the benefit of our listeners.

Joe in Slovenia says, Dear Brothers Chris and Stephen, Tragically, we are here again.

It has only been a very short time since the last massacre of a crazed killer. These travesties are coming with such speed and frequency.

It seems that there is no time to properly grieve, mourn, recover, heal, and move on until the next atrocity is visited on an unexpected group in a public gathering.

Is it becoming unavoidable that this is just one sign of the times? Are we reaping the inevitable consequences to be expected in a society given over to godlessness?

Then they will deliver you to tribulation and will kill you, and you will be hated by all nations because of my name.

At that time, many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. Many false prophets will arise and will mislead many.

Because lawlessness is increased, most people's love will grow cold, but the one who endures to the end will be saved.

Matthew chapter 24, 9 through 13. I will let you respond to that before I read anything else that our friend in Slovenia has written.

I mean, as you alluded, it's pretty dense and it has some pretty heavy questions asking things like, is this unavoidable and, you know, inevitable?

And I can't pretend to be God and know what is or isn't avoidable or inevitable as far as the future is laid out.

And I think, honestly, probably the answer to some of this is based on your eschatology.

That's right, a post -millennial wouldn't agree with that. Yeah, if you're a pre -millennialist, absolutely.

You know, if you're a post -millennialist, absolutely not. And I'm not super dogmatic on those things.

I would say, I would hope post -millennialism is true, but, you know, the way that the future looks, you know, we often build our eschatology around our circumstances.

So when things are getting better, everyone starts to become post -millennialist. Everything gets worse, everyone becomes pre -millennialist.

So I wish we wouldn't, we'd become a little reactionary. I lean on millennial, just to be a true, you know, disclose where I'm at.

But I think that these prophecies and scriptures will be repeated throughout church history before Jesus comes out, almost like child pangs or labor pangs, where there's recurrence of them until it gets worse and worse, and there will be one final manifestation of them.

And certainly, these are those types of things so that Jesus could come back at any time. But, I mean, just to get very practical,

I'm just gonna, it goes, which we do about preaching the gospel to testimonies of nations.

I'm sorry, Chris, I'm stealing your thunder. I'm shredding the rest of it. It says, the gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.

And I think that's what I can control, right? Humanly speaking, I can go out and preach the gospel to the whole world as a testimony to the nations.

I often believe that the gospel, as we all do, is the power of God for salvation, and that it redeems us from all lawlessness, which is, he has that in bold, lawlessness is increased.

So where lawlessness increases, grace abounds even more, that there's more grace in Christ than there is evil in me and in this world.

And so I'm going to, I'm not going to fall into an unavoidability, inevitability, even if for some reason it is fixed in the hidden purposes of God, I'm going to fight like everything

I do will make a difference and that the world is still redeemable because Jesus died to redeem the world. And, you know, sometimes we can have a small view of the elect, or we can look at the stars and we can't even count them.

And, you know, the promise given to Abraham is, there'll be like the sea, you know, the sand of the shore.

And so I view the mercy of God as great, as we all do, as a great ocean and that God's not done just yet.

And so, so no, I personally wouldn't turn into this is unavoidable and we can't do anything, and that the church has to continually rise up and unite together and become one so that the world will know that we're

His disciples and the way that we love each other and love the world and boldly preach the gospel, you know, that we're doing war against not flesh and blood, but against the powers and principalities.

And so that's a long -winded answer, but I personally won't settle at there's no, there's nothing that we can do.

It's not avoidable. It's not inevitable. We at the church right now, we're not settling for that in South Florida.

We're saying, what can we do? What should we do? What must we do to push back the evil with the light of Christ?

And that's what we've been called and entrusted to do. Right, the error or even the sin of trying to guess the secret purposes of God falls at the feet of not only the

Calvinists, but the Arminians as well. There are many Christians on both sides of the aisle in regard to those doctrines that will attribute reasons that only

God knows to events like this. You will have both Calvinists and Arminians saying,

God specifically did this to punish this county because of its wealth and the fact that there are very few evangelical churches there.

And you're going to have a long list of reasons why these folks will claim to be able to read

God's mind and know the secret things of God and declare them as fact as something that is certain.

But this is something to be avoided at all costs. And if you're hearing somebody say it, you should be ignoring it at all costs because we as Christians have no business making such declarations about the secret will of God, do we?

That's right. That's right. So we do know what his revealed will is, and it's to overcome evil with good and to shine a light in the darkness where the light of the world and so that's what we're called to do.

And that's who we're called to be. And we're going to, by the grace of God, go into the lion's den and with faith overcome in triumph through the blood of the lamb.

And Joe in Slovenia says, What should that tell us about Jesus's conclusions to this reality?

This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached to the whole world as a testimony to all nations.

And then the end will come. Matthew 24, 14. I think perhaps you already answered that in some of your statements, but if you have anything further to say.

I mean, typically, missiologists believe that every people group needs to receive the gospel and Jesus isn't coming back until that.

I, again, would be reluctant to say that definitively because then you say that Jesus can't come back at any time or any moment, which he says he can.

And so there's a tension there of what constitutes all the nations and have we accomplished that yet or not.

The people groups is that, you know. But yeah, we got to preach the gospel to the whole nation, you know, every nation, tribe, and tongue.

And listen, we got to re -evangelize our own nation because missionaries are going to start coming back here if we don't wake up as a church.

And so, yeah, we got to preach the gospel in season, out of season, whether our nation is doing well or whether it's doing poorly.

That's just what we have to be faithful as a church, is preaching the gospel and sending laborers out to the harvest, both nationally and internationally, to do so.

Before I go on to any other listener questions, from what you have been able to gather,

I mean, it's still very, very soon in the aftermath of this, but what has been the reaction of most of the children or young men and women that you have been conversing with Is it still utter shock?

Is it anger and fury? Is it rage and vengeance? Is it just being, for at least the time, totally overwhelmed with grief?

What can you tell us about some of the reactions and responses that you have experienced? Yeah, all of the above, and even us who are a little one or two degree removed, we're in a state of shock ourselves, a bit numb.

I'm grieving, even as a father, just imagining this were my children and what these parents are going through.

I was at the vigil last night and hearing parents just from the stage crying out in pain and anguish.

Yesterday afternoon, I was walking around, everybody staged up in Pines Trail Park, where they're having counselors and grief counselors.

And so a bunch of the ministers and pastors just out there walking around, looking for those who are crying and asking if we could pray for them.

And everybody was very responsive and receptive to prayer. And I would say mostly grief right now would be the biggest connection for everybody.

There's just a corporate grief and a personal grief and a suffering and a sense of anguish. We had two different vigils, one put on by the church yesterday at noon, and then one put on by the city in the evening.

And great things were said at both, but the one at noon was full of hope and pointing us to Christ and to God.

And the one in the evening, there was definitely a lot more hopelessness and our hope, if anything, was in gun control or whatever we could rally around.

But it was the hope and hope. It was having faith and faith, a lot more of believing in the goodness of man kind of approach.

And it was just a stark contrast between the church's message and the community and what we can look to and hope to.

There's certainly some civil religion, God bless America and God bless Parklands, but it was very, very otherwise benign and lacking any tangible hope in God or in Christ.

So that's what we as a church are seeking to do is to bring the real hope, the reality of hope in Jesus Christ and the light that shines into the darkness and even to acknowledge that this was an attack of not only human evil, but we believe spiritual evil, as I quoted earlier, powers and principalities.

And sometimes in our view, a strong sovereignty of God that we miss the fact that, yes, God can turn evil to good and use the devil in our sin, but there really is, this is evil.

This was atrocious. And we're praying against the work of Satan down here because he's alive and well and wreaking havoc in these families and in this community.

And so we're going in there and just seeking to unleash the power of the gospel whenever and wherever we can into this brokenness.

And certainly that sensitivity to try to offer hope while realizing that many of these people don't truly have hope.

And so you're walking that fragile line of praying the gospel over people, and God that if through faith in Jesus to turn to him that your light would come into the situations that are alive forward.

So we're not hiding the gospel, but also we're trying to be sensitive to that these people just lost loved ones and we don't know their stories and we don't know where they all are spiritually.

And we want to be gentle as we go into those circumstances as well.

So I would say also, just to cover some things the church is doing in addition to what

I've shared, we did the vigil yesterday. We're very grateful that Billy Graham Organization has brought a response unit.

We've been able to connect them with the city of Parkland. And so they're able to do some counseling with the other secular counselors up there.

And so there's evangelicals and believers helping there. Crystal Miller is flying in and she's a survivor from Columbine and she's the public speaker that shares her testimony of hope.

And so we're trying to get her into the schools to share her stories in the schools. And then also a large church is hosting her on Tuesday night.

And so first priority with our network and working with Church United and the churches in Northwest Broward and all the churches in Broward are really working together.

We started a group main chat and we're just talking constantly to one another, trying to coordinate resources and prayer needs and where people are and make sure that we're working as a unit as one in this trial and tragedy.

We have Gary from Na 'alehu, South Point, Hawaii.

He says, as you talk with students from the school, what are you finding to be their thoughts about what happens to their friends after their deaths?

And of course, these could have been conversations long before Wednesday, the

Wednesday massacre. That could be coming up in any kind of an ordinary gathering that you have in your closet.

And I'm just curious, in those 88 schools? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And we're very clear that there's a heaven and there's a hell and you have to believe in Jesus to go to heaven.

And I mean, we aren't only reformed. I wanna be clear, first priority works with all the evangelical churches, but there's no question with everybody that we're working with that.

Jesus is the way, the truth and the life and no one comes to the father, but through him. So all of our clubs are very clear on that.

And as you could imagine, most unchurched kids and most Americans, I would say, they believe in God.

A lot of Americans do. And surprisingly, most believe in heaven, less believe in hell except in times like this, where probably people hope the shooter or Hitler or others will go to hell.

So I think that what you'd find in Hawaii is what you'd find in South Florida. Probably what you'd find in their parents what you'd see in their kids is a lot of people believe in hell, but think very few people go there and they don't understand that we all deserve hell.

And that's why Jesus died to absorb the wrath of God so that we could go to heaven. So our preachers, our pastors, everyone's super clear, crystal clear on the gospel.

And just like most of America, the kids that we're talking to, that is the sticking point of coming to believe in Christ is believing that you are a sinner and need salvation.

And the implication is not only for me, but then if I believe that, that's true of everyone. And so I don't think

South Florida is much different than the nation there and that our teenagers are much different than our adults and parents there.

It seems pretty homogenous, at least where I go around the nation. I don't know if Chris, what's your thoughts on that?

I think that just as Jesus did with the

Tower of Siloam and a much smaller number of people died at that collapsing of the tower than many of the tragedies that we hear about today across the globe and here in this country.

Jesus really focused the subject matter to the souls of those asking him about the tragedy, whether or not those people who perished were more sinful than others and that kind of a thing.

He really avoided even going into that issue and basically just said, unless you repent, you will likewise perish.

And I think that these kinds of events are reminders that no matter how young and vibrant and healthy and strong and athletic we are and no matter what kind of wonderful services we are providing to the community around us and no matter how freely and wonderfully we share and utilize our talents and so forth,

God can snuff us out in an instance through any kind of a tragedy that may arise in our midst.

And we will be called to be before him.

And we have to be prepared to have him extend open arms of love to us and not be looking at us with the harshness of a condemning judge who is going to sentence us to an eternity of damnation.

And I think that young people especially, although not only young people, but especially young people think that they are going to live forever, especially if they are healthy.

And these kinds of things, do you use these kinds of things to remind kids about the fact that they could be taken off this earth at any given second?

I mean, it is so fresh and so raw right now. I mean, I would say this, that what we're seeing in Palm Beach County, in Miami -Dade, there is a bit of revival happening in the schools and we're thanking

God for that, meaning the clubs are really blowing up and kids are coming and there's questions. I'm so close to ground zero here right now that I mean, literally just most of what

I've been doing is praying for people and not going into like, hey, they died, do you think you're going to die right now too?

Yeah, I just think probably I need to give it more time. Oh, sure, I understand it.

I was actually saying that in response to what our listener was asking, when children ask you about the afterlife of those who pray, that's really what

I was... Yes, absolutely. Yeah, we would absolutely at any moment, our life is a vapor, it's like grass a few days thrown in the oven and yeah, all our days are numbered.

All of that is absolutely true and I'm sure all of our churches would be preaching that and telling the students that and that's why we do what we do in First Priority because time is short and these kids are lost and going to hell and they are hope without hope and a lot of them, even their parents are somewhat disengaged, not across the board, but I mean, these kids, they just, they need

Christ, they need the church and a lot of them come from broken families that's growing across America and so we as a church are just running into the schools seeking to snatch them from the flames and pull them into the arms of the

Father and bring the gospel to them. So that's, if anything, this fortifies our resolve, events like this to say what we are doing is incredibly important and we're not gonna just play church here, like we have a mission to accomplish which is spreading the gospel to everyone and anyone who's breathing, you know, until they meet

Jesus. How they respond, that's up to the Lord, but our job is to preach the gospel. Amen, and we have to go to our...

Oh, I think people do. Amen, we have to go to our midway station break right now. It's longer than our normal station breaks because Grace Life Radio 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida requires a 12 -minute break between our two segments for the program.

So please be patient and please take this time to write questions to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com

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So please be patient with that and we'll get to as many of you as possible. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages.

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Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with just about an hour to go is

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We are discussing a Christian outreach to the survivors and community of Parkland, Florida, in the wake of the

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

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Now we are back with our guest today, Stephan Bomberger, and we are discussing a

Christian outreach to the survivors and community of Parkland, Florida, in the wake of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre.

And our email address for questions is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

We have B .B. in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who asked you,

Stephan, before I ask this question, I want to make a few clarifications about myself.

I am a staunch believer in the death penalty. I also do not believe we should be going overboard making a victim out of the criminal who perpetrated this crime and those others who have perpetrated similar crimes.

But at the same time, being Christians, we are to have compassion for the never -dying souls of even the worst among us.

How do you go about instilling within the minds of the children that you have an outreach to that we are to take seriously the crimes that have been committed by wicked individuals and we are to seek justice through the legal system.

But at the same time, we must have compassion over where they will spend eternity and we must have compassion and grace and charity to those who are in their family and possibly their parents.

If you could respond to that question. It's a great question.

It's probably well beyond the scope of what we typically cover in First Priority. To be clear, we really try to keep it focused on equipping students to share their faith, pray for their campus, preaching the gospel, and cover things like this question.

We would hope that would happen in the context of the local church. And so when things...

I wouldn't say that this is a rabbit trail. It's very relevant in light of what just happened on Wednesday.

And it might come up on a case -by -case basis. And because we are so, what

I would say, is decentralized by lots of different churches and different youth pastors, it might get different answers.

So if you're asking how I would answer that, I'll happily share that. But there's not an official

First Priority position on how to answer such a nuanced question. And in fact,

I think you should take it for granted that all of our questions are really to you specifically today.

Okay, good, good, good, good. Yeah, because I was like, how will I speak to... How are we going to address this to all the students?

I think it's important, and we all would affirm this, that there's a division of authority, and there is civil authority, and that God has given the state the sword.

And so that we would entrust, and if we believe that our society is just as it relates to laws, in this instance,

I believe that they will be and are, that God's verdict and justice will be executed upon this man in an appropriate way, and that we as believers certainly can both extend forgiveness personally while still believing in the death penalty.

I think everyone listening here would affirm that. So that would be my answer, is that we would want to pray for Nicholas's salvation, that God would have mercy on his soul, that he would come to the light.

And even if he is saved, that doesn't necessarily mean that he won't experience the civil consequences of his decisions, and that the state, therefore, needs to pardon completely and forgive him so that in the courtroom of heaven, he can be justified and covered by the blood of Jesus, and we hope to meet him in heaven if his sins are covered through Christ, but that in the civil courts, this will be rendered what it needs to be rendered.

So that's how I would have to speak to it on sixth grade level, seventh grade level, going into a school, but being clear that if we could find it in our hearts to forgive somebody for the great evil they've done while acknowledging that it is terrible and evil and trusting that God's justice will be done through our courts because God has given the state the sword to execute justice.

AMEN. Yeah, one of the reasons why I believe that is a helpful question is because, in fact, you will even hear this rhetoric on the left sometimes.

It's not exclusively something you hear from those on the right, whether politically or theologically or socially.

But when something like this happens, the one thing that communities very often agree on, while they may disagree on gun control and all kinds of other things, they agree on how this person is a monster and deserves to be executed.

Now, we agree that he does deserve to be executed if we are Bible -believing Christians.

That seems to be without dispute. But at the same time, don't we need to put the brakes on on the vengeful way that we think?

And I'm even speaking of myself. Sometimes when I hear about these things, I say to myself,

I just wish that I had a semi -automatic weapon that day and was in range of this student so I could have quickly stopped this.

And, of course, that would have been a completely just act. I'm not even saying that there would be anything wrong. In fact, it would be very admirable and commendable if a local citizen were to be able to do that.

What I'm saying is the bloodlust that sometimes rises up within us and the vengeance.

Sure. Yeah, and, you know, as it relates to evangelism and apologetics, I think that this impulse of wrath against injustice is actually a powerful argument for the justice of God and the image -bearers of God, even when fallen, unregenerate man.

Now, I think you're right, Chris, to point out that our impulse of being sinful to judge others and not see our own sin, all those types of things, and we don't desire mercy.

You know, we desire wrath at times, and we should. But there is a righteous indignation that rises up, even in the unbeliever.

This is wrong, and this must be judged. And that becomes the wedge argument for the doctrine of hell and for understanding retribution, because it's very distasteful to people in the benign, just walking around.

Yeah, there's a hell, and you'll suffer for that forever. But then in the instances here, we see that, actually, that feels like the only right thing for justice to be done.

So just kind of musing there a little bit. But that response, there is some sin in it, but there's also righteous indignation that is 100 % accurate and can help people understand the gospel.

It becomes more... It overcomes that defeater, I guess, in those who don't want to accept the doctrine of hell.

We have Ted in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, who says, I want to commend your guest on what I believe is a measured and prudent ministerial response to Wednesday's shooting.

As Chris knows, I have a Tower of Siloam stopwatch that I activate every time there is a tragedy such as this to see how long it takes before some believer often ham -handedly introduces

Luke 13 into the discussion, as I did earlier. I truly admit.

In fact, I don't have to admit it. You will hear it. As if to say, hey, if you think this is bad, we should all be dead in hell yesterday.

I wonder if your guest could speak to the role of discernment for those of us further removed from this tragedy, given that friends, family members, and coworkers do occasionally ask us questions about how we process such events in light of our

Christian commitment. Yeah, so this actually brings the discussion obviously outside of the parameters of Broward County and into the entire world as Christians around the water cooler and over lunch and over family meals and barbecues and picnics.

We are going to be hearing these things discussed. So, very good question. It is a good question.

And, you know, I've been trying to process this. I'm an evangelist, but I'm a pastor, you know.

And I've been in pastoral mode as much or more than evangelism right now, just like grieving with those who grieve.

And I can't even distinguish between the sheep and the goats. And at this point, I'm not even trying. You know, I don't know.

This isn't in one sense my flock, but then the heart of the shepherd leads the 99 to go after the one.

And so I think we need to lean into these incidents with a pastoral heart that weeps over Jerusalem, if you will, or looks out at the lostness and is broken and grieving for what we're seeing all around us.

And I think that needs to be our first impulse. And honestly, when we quickly come with those types of responses, we start to sound a little bit like Job's friends, the miserable comforters who are trying to explain or understand, you know.

And it's just, we're now dabbling in things that we have no business dabbling in to explain.

It's not to say that our sin doesn't deserve God's wrath, but to connect this incident. Jesus, absolutely.

He can say that. But for me, I'm just much more hesitant to look at the global circumstances, except in the broadest sense of, yes, all sin and all justice.

But this instance, I just see a lot of neighbors and friends who are crying and hurting. And we as a church need to run to them and just weep with them right now and show the compassion of Christ.

There's a severity of Christ that we can share with them, but I think we need to know what tool in our tool belt and God has to give us wisdom.

So I don't know if that answers that question. And of course, wouldn't you say that there is a difference between how you would personally reach out to the close friends of victims or perhaps even survivors who were in those rooms where bullets were flying over their head and the family members of those victims?

There's a difference the way you reach out to them now. Not that their gospel is any different, but a different methodology, a different approach of how you reach out to them just with perhaps silence and hugs and weeping with them and offers to provide them with any kind of food or comfort or babysitting or whatever they need to get through these kinds of things more comfortably.

There is a difference between that and when you speak to the nation of the world, when you have been given an opportunity through some kind of medium to have a pulpit where everyone hears you.

Far too often, in fact, every time when globally known tragedies and horrific, nightmarish occurrences and acts of evil are brought to the attention of people around the world,

Christians are very quick to run to cameras and microphones to, in their attempts to defend

God, they speak falsely. They will say things like,

God had nothing to do with this. God is only one who brings us wonderful blessings and kindness and graciousness.

He is never in any way involved in horrific tragedies. And that leads people to wonder, is he omnipotent then?

Is he really all powerful? Is he almighty? Because even the person who is not reformed, who tries to defend

God's character in that way, they are left with the question, then why didn't he do anything? If he is almighty and all powerful, he just chose to sit there and watch as a spectator?

Yeah. I mean, I would think most of your listeners are familiar with the concept of compatibilism.

Right. Well, I don't know if most of them are, but I am. Okay, well let me articulate it because that might help people.

So that the evil acts of men or the evil deeds of Satan himself in no way negate

God's sovereignty and what they meant for evil, God could use for good. The classic examples would be

Joseph with his brothers. They sold him to slavery at the end of his life. What you meant for evil,

God meant for good. And God was in no way indicted with evil. He didn't have evil intent.

In fact, he had gracious intent for the salvation of God's people through that.

And yet their evil deed of selling their brother into slavery was no less evil. And obviously the greatest example, that is the cross of Christ, where,

I mean, Satan entered Judas Iscariot to betray Jesus and nailed him to a cross.

It was horrific. Jesus said of Eustace, it would have been better that he had never been born, that he was a son of perdition.

Everything that he did was completely wicked and the disciples prayed in Acts 4, why did the nations rage and plot in vain?

And then they ended up, you know, to do whatever your hand had predestined to take place. You look at that and scratch your head and say, holy smokes, how could the greatest act of evil bring about the greatest good in the world?

And that is the mystery of the sovereignty of God and human responsibility. And we're not going to necessarily be able to figure out how that works.

I almost like in human responsibility and sovereignty, the 100%, 100 % like we do

Jesus is fully God and fully man, you know, or the Bible is fully human and fully divine.

You know, I don't know how that works, but I do know that it does. And that if I use one to negate the other, but that I wouldn't want to speak in an evil event and say,

God is evil. None of us would. Nor would I want to say that God can't use this and doesn't have a great, you know, so that's the

Romans 8, you know, God works all things together for good of those who love him are called according to his purpose. It's not good for every person, of course, but that what

God is able to do through evil, whether it's in the short or the long term, which is also where we need to be quick not to give an answer as though we know how,

I mean, I don't know how this will work out for good. I don't pretend to know how this will work out for good.

Job didn't, when he lost all his family, he didn't feel like it was good.

We get a divine perspective in Job's book that he didn't have. We may never know on this earth the reasons for God's decree.

That's right. And we might not even know in heaven because when we're in heaven, we might not care. I don't know.

But in that moment, I think we can easily say that this was a great act of evil and that Satan is at work and he's the author of lies and deceit and death, that this young man was certainly influenced by his sin and by the enemy and in no way compromise our view of the sovereignty of God.

And in no way say that God doesn't have a purpose in this. I'm just not necessarily going to run to that quickly.

I'm going to lean more heavily on that this was a great evil deed knowing that God is going to,

God's got an ace up his sleeve every time. And I believe that. God's going to do something incredible and he's going to bring about great renewal and salvation through this.

Um, but, you know, pastorally, again, where we lean on in our accents of scripture.

So it's not like we're hiding this. It's just, you know, there's a kind of the ecclesiastes.

There's a time to weep, a time to rejoice, a time to, you know, like what season are we in here now? And I'm not sure as Christians we're always good to discern that.

And we're so quick to systematize everything. And I have strong systematics, but that it sort of flattens out the way

I think at all times. And I'm not not as good to be able to detect appropriate, inappropriate things to say.

I don't know if that helps, but that's so, uh, study compatibilism or think through, think through that as it relates to.

Especially because there is a rising breed of hyper -Calvinists that denies compatibilism.

That, in my opinion, if you deny compatibilism, you are blaming

God in truth for all acts of evil because men are not acting according to their the desires of their will, which historic

Calvinism clearly teaches that men have a free will, but it's bound to their nature.

It's bound to their their sin and they cannot please God in the flesh by offering him a faith that saves them.

Faith has to be a gift. Because those dead in their trespasses, their will is only free as far as their nature.

We do what we want. Exactly. That's Calvinism's simple plain. And I don't want

God, so I don't follow God. And God has to give me a new heart. That's why we pray for people.

Open their eyes, Lord. Give them a new heart, because that's exactly what they need. I'm going to ask a question that you can mull over in your mind during the last station break.

But we have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who says, very often during tragedies like this, well -intentioned people say very false and ignorant things.

There were people, even those that professed to be Christian, that were claiming that all of the victims at the

World Trade Center were in heaven because of the fact merely that they were innocent victims of a horrific crime.

Don't we as Christians have to be careful not to fall into that pit on the opposite spectrum of those who claim to know the secret will of God and assign reasons why these things happen?

Don't we also have to be careful not to act as if one is going to heaven because he has been a victim?

And we are going to our, you can think about that, and we are going to our final break. And don't go away,

God willing, we'll be right back with the conclusion of our discussion with Stephan Bomberger right after these messages from our sponsors.

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p .m. Eastern Time. 800 -656 -0231. Well, we are now back to the final 25 minutes or so of our discussion with Stephan Bomberger in regard to a

Christian outreach to the survivors and community of Parkland, Florida, in the wake of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre.

If you'd like to get in line and ask a question before we run out of time, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. If you could respond to Arnie and Perry County's question about should not

Christians be very careful? Basically, when we comfort people, sometimes we might be prone to exaggerate or lie, telling people things that we have no way of knowing.

In fact, as you probably know, ministers are notorious at funerals to declare that a person is in heaven when many of those who knew that person have no knowledge of this person, even making any kind of a profession of faith.

Sometimes a minister will gather together a handful of facts about the good deeds and wonderful person this was in a human perspective, and they'll declare the person being in heaven.

I would hope that would not be typical amongst conservative Bible -believing evangelicals, but it's probably more common than you and I would care to believe.

But if you could comment on that, because there's two sides of that. You also don't want to be quick to speak with certainty that somebody's in hell when you were not even with them when they died, and you have no idea what might have been going on through their mind.

I mean, the Lord might have rescued them salvifically moments before or seconds before they lost their lives.

That's right. So, yeah, like a deathbed conversion. I, yeah, absolutely.

Is every person tempted to want to preach the gospel in a universalistic way when somebody's suffering?

You know, like, Jesus died for us, so we're good to go. That's going to be your temptation, and you must resist that because it's a false gospel.

We know that it's conditioned on repentance and faith and believing in Jesus. So I would always be clear if I'm extending the hope of the gospel, making sure that I buffer it with conditionalities in there.

Like, Jesus died for our sins, so that if you trusted Him, you can know that you have the gift of eternal life, that He paid for all of your sins on the cross, and all who trust in Jesus Christ will have their sins forgiven and His righteousness given as a free gift.

And that is how you can pray for somebody who's suffering and grieving, you know, with the uncertainty, leaving the conditionality in there without saying, we're so glad so -and -so is in a better place.

And, I mean, that at the civil religion levels where heaven always goes, where everybody's in a better place, and that's what we as ministers must be faithful to tie the better place to Jesus, and faith in Jesus, and what

Jesus has done for us, and never let it slide away from that.

So yeah, absolutely, when we pray, when we preach at a funeral where there's uncertainty, you can certainly honor the good things that person has done, but speak confidently that all those who trust in Jesus will have the gift of eternal life and forgiven.

And then I would also say on a personal evangelism note, I have seen that people are resistant to believe in the gospel sometimes because of a loved one that has died that they know did not believe in Jesus, and so they feel like by accepting the gospel that they're now consigning their loved one to hell, and implied in that is by not believing it, somehow they're freeing that person from hell, which is, obviously, it's absurd, but you get what

I'm wrestling there. Yeah. And so I tell people a couple things. One, what you believe does not create reality, meaning if what

I'm telling you is not true, then it doesn't matter, but if it is true, if you're not believing it, it doesn't change the destination of that person at all.

So what you believe about heaven and hell won't change their destiny. And secondly, I appeal to the parable of Jesus where he talks about rich man and Lazarus in hell, and the man who was condemned cries out, please send somebody back to tell my family members then so that they won't end up in this great torment with me.

And in that moment, I appeal that if that person is suffering right now, the last thing they would want for you to do is follow them, and the very reason

I'm speaking to you might be because they're pleading that someone would come so that you wouldn't end up with them, and that the, you know, so I think there's enough, it's kind of parabolic, but there's enough warrant there to say that, hey, hell's not a party, and if your loved ones are there, you hope to end up with them.

That's very clear from that story that Jesus is saying that, man, I hope none of my family ends up with me.

And so that it gives the person a way emotionally to honor their loved one. And again, that's a hard saying, but I could show them the scripture and just reason with them on that level.

So I've used that story sometimes in personal evangelism as it relates to hell and them wrestling with the implications for loved ones.

Christopher in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, wants to know what exactly have you experienced during the recent memorial services, prayer vigils, funeral services, and other events that you can express to our listeners?

Sure. Well, the one yesterday at 12 noon, it was done at Park Ridge Church, the Baptist church right up the street from my house.

I have great friends. I know all the pastors there. They were part of the texting group that I texted when

I was caught in a car line that I shared. So that event was very much a

Broward Church United. We have, I shared earlier, Church United, if you want to Google it or the web

URL is churchunited .city. And that's a coalition of the evangelical churches.

So that event at 12 noon was very gospel -centered, Bible -believing.

The worship leader was the worship leader from my own local church playing the guitar. Chris Lane, my executive director for First Priority, was up there praying for the schools.

So I was good friends with half the men up on that stage. The evening event was done by the city of Parkland.

And that event much more highly attended and at the candle lighting service.

And that one was more of the experience of the victims themselves. So family members were sharing who lost their children.

The policemen were sharing who were there responding and what they're going to appeal to to change with gun control and so forth.

And so it had much more of a civil but also those that were closer to ground zero at that event.

And so they're very different. I wish, you know, we had an evangelical helping drive the city event and get that one going.

And the longer, closer it got to the event, the less and less of Jesus. It was, he was stripped out piece by piece.

Their worship band was going to play music. That got cut. And by the end, you know, Psalm 23 was read by a rabbi.

And, you know, I think a Catholic priest was able to share, but the evangelicals were largely marginalized in that event.

So it's very different. The church was still at the evening event ministering to those.

And like I said, I was walking around praying with people and we were there. We were the ones stuffing all the candles. And so the church was doing whatever we could to be a presence there.

But there are big contrasts between the two vigils. And another,

Christopher in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, asks, how can we pray and what can we do to assist you in your outreach activities there in Parkland, Florida?

Oh, that's a great question. I'm glad somebody asked a question like that. Well, if you'd like to give, the way that we're collecting funds is through Church United.

So if you go to churchunited .city, all the funds that go there will get distributed to the greatest needs as we discern them.

So just go to churchunited .city. That's a great way just to give resources that we can then distribute as we see the needs.

Certainly the ways that you can pray, one of the things I would really love prayer for is that we as the church would be able to discern where the needs are and be able to meet the people at this point of needs.

So one of my small disappointments was how few of Parkland came to the Christian event, you know, the noon one.

And then, so it's a classic example where sometimes we're speaking to ourselves. Now, I'm glad that it was on the

TV and the whole nation was watching, but the hurting people were up in Parkland.

And so how do we get the resources and the ministers and the church there, especially in light of how few churches are there?

So pray that God will give us wisdom on how to be a welcomed asset to that community while still being faithful to the gospel.

Pray that God would plant more churches, that we would see more churches in Parkland so that we wouldn't be outsiders coming in, but that there would be indigenous churches in that area preaching the gospel.

Pray for the students who are suffering, that they would come to the first priority club and that they would look for answers in the right places and not in the wrong places.

Pray for the Billy Graham Response Unit. We were able to get them into the counseling area with the secular counselors.

So they're there providing spiritual counsel. Pray that they have opportunities to pray with folks and preach the gospel there.

Pray for this next week with Crystal Miller, that she's visiting. I shared she's a Columbine survivor, and pray that the school board gives us access into the schools that she can share her story and that students would then come out

Tuesday night to the more explicit evangelistic event at the church. I'm assuming she's a born -again believer?

That's absolutely right. So Crystal Miller is a Columbine survivor and a born -again Christian, and so she shares her message of how it's transformed her life in a positive way, and in the schools, as you could imagine, if you do an assembly, it's got to be somewhat censored, but then you can drive from that event to the church event.

So that's what we're seeking to do, to minister to the schools and have her share her story, her testimony, but also get students to come out to the events where we can share more about the hope of Christ.

So again, in first priority, we have Free Reign because it's an explicitly Christian club and kids can self -select in, but if we speak over the entire school, as you can imagine there, you have to be more careful.

So she's coming out. And just pray that God would bring renewal through the schools. As I shared earlier, and we're already seeing in Miami -Dade and Palm Beach County, where we also have a first priority movement going, that there's, you can imagine, great interest again, you know, in the things of God and people praying and coming to our clubs, and so it snaps people out of their apathy in a sense, as Chris, you were sharing earlier, of the fragility of life and how

I could be dead at any moment. And so some of those are the immediate good fruit of events like this, where people realize that that could have been me.

And yeah, so we're just praying that the Lord will use us and just pray for unity in the church through this whole thing that we would be a united voice of the gospel and work as a unit that there wouldn't be any power struggles because there's a lot of interest and a lot of money flowing into South Florida.

We just want to steward that well. You mean as a result of this event, you're saying? Exactly, exactly.

I'm not normally talking on radio stations, let's put it that way, but I've been talking a lot. So there's a lot of resources and help and people flying in, and we just need to be able to coordinate it well and work together.

And since we are different churches in different denominations, it's just getting those power structures to all work together voluntarily.

So, and I'd say in South Florida, it's incredible how well the church does do that, but we just want to make sure that, for example, where the need is, is an area where we don't have a lot of strong churches, but we have a lot of strong churches in Broward who want to help, but don't necessarily know where the need is.

And so we just have to be able to communicate from the point of need out to those churches so the smaller churches take lead in this crisis while the larger churches key off and support that.

And so that's some of what we're trying to facilitate right now. We have

RJ in White Plains, New York, who says, please don't misunderstand what

I am about to say. I do not play into this victimization of the ones who perpetrate these horrible crimes and assassinations and murders and massacres.

Many of these young men are from a background where they have been bullied.

My question is, without playing into the victimhood of these people, is there something that you can instill in the minds of the young Christian people that you know to reach out to those being bullied in a greater way, protect them, and show them compassion and love that perhaps they might not eventually become these evil murderers that seem to be popping up every year?

Sure, yeah. I mean, one of the things I just posted on our website today, because I do a lot of the curriculum, two years ago, a movie came out called

I Am Not Ashamed. And it was based on the Columbine shooting. And we helped

First Priority write some Bible studies that relates to that. One of the themes was that of providing a family for the outsider.

And so I've posted that on our website with some video links and clips if you want to go to firstpriority .cc.

But we're already ready, employees, to provide resources for our clubs, to wrestle with things like evil and where's

God in the midst of my suffering. But one of the lessons is very much on reaching out to the outcast.

And so that is certainly one of the things we are thinking about and wanting to speak to, that the church would be a place for broken people and the outsider, and that our clubs would be as well.

And so that we make our clubs a place that we're pulling in the least of these.

And so I think it's an insightful question, and I didn't judge the person who asked it.

I think that there is something to be said of spotting people at risk and running to them.

– With the gospel. – Running from them. – With the gospel, of course, because that is what is going to transform them, not some psychobabble or merely befriending people such as that.

– Well, my assumption, my answer in that way, is that our churches, our gospel churches in these clubs, our gospel clubs, so that the moment they get in there, they're just saturated with gospel people.

So if that's not the truth of your church or your group, then obviously it's not going to change anybody.

But I would say our kids are very evangelistic and very gospel -centered.

And so if kids come into that club, they're just going to be week after week exposed to the gospel, which is really laser -focused on that.

So, absolutely. – Well, I want you to have five minutes of uninterrupted time just to unburden your heart and share with our listeners that which you most want to be etched in their hearts and minds before we leave this program.

– Well, thank you, Chris. I've shared a lot of it. I mean, we're still in the whirlwind. We're still in the thick of this.

We do covet your prayers and that God would give us grace by His Spirit just to know what to do and how to do it and how to care for people in this time of need when to insert ourselves.

And I think the nation can relate somewhat to what it would feel like to lose a child and just imagining,

I'm closer to it, but I'm just suffering as a father imagining my kids are just a mile or two down the road and you're getting texts saying that he's on the loose and he's running and he's off to school and just the panic that that creates as my wife has pulled her kids into the house and locking the doors.

And so I don't know exactly what I'm saying other than just to, you know, like we've said earlier, before we run to answering things and saying, this is why this happened, no, it's just to feel, feel the experience of the church down here and feel what people are feeling and pray for us in mind with those truths, how would you want to be prayed for if you were going through what we're going through?

And, you know, the next week is going to be really critical and there's a lot of funerals going on and then how we respond to that.

So just covet your prayers that you would continue to pray for us, that we would use this open opportunity as well.

Well, there is an opportunity for the gospel in ways that there hasn't always been, and people are looking to churches and the church in this time.

I'm sure our Sunday churches will be filled, but we'll see a spike in attendance for a few weeks.

And so just pray for our pulpits and that our ministers would be faithful to use this as an opportunity to exalt

Christ and lift up Christ and see him draw all men to himself. And so that's our heart down here.

Like you, we love Jesus. We want to share Jesus. We love good doctrine too.

And the Reformed Church is all of us. But we're all working together, and we're all just trying to do what we can do to bring the gospel to those who are hurting right now.

So I don't know. I kind of like just to maybe pray for a little bit, Chris, and have your listeners pray with me all across the nation, all across the world, so that our prayers could be united in seeking the

Father. So let's go to the Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, we come to you in this time of need,

Lord. And we acknowledge that we even don't know at this moment what to pray for.

But Lord, we take comfort in knowing that that Spirit of God, that you help us when we don't know what to pray for.

Lord, and that Jesus, you're at the right hand to the Father even now, interceding for us so that when we don't know what to pray, you do.

And Lord, we thank you that you're a sympathetic High Priest, that, Lord Jesus, you know what it's like to suffer unjustly.

Lord, you know what it's like to be a victim, even though you're fully innocent.

None of us are fully innocent, but Lord, you were. And so, God, we thank you that even in this moment of crisis and trial, that you're not removed from our suffering, but you suffered for us.

And Lord Jesus, that through your death, you even conquered death. And through your resurrection, that you declare victory over death.

And through your light, Lord Jesus, that you shine light into this darkness. And so, Lord, we look at South Florida, we look at our nation, and Lord, we see darkness everywhere.

But Lord, we believe that there's more light in you than darkness in us, that there's more grace in you than there's sin in us, and that,

Lord, in a moment, that you can overcome this great evil with great good. And so, Father, we cry out to you,

Lord, and we ask that your gospel of grace would wash over the lands in South Florida and wash over the hearts of those who are cold towards you, that,

Lord, that you would take out their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh, Lord, that you'd pour out your spirit on South Florida and pour out your spirit to the souls of men and women and cause them to walk in your ways,

Lord. And I just pray, we pray as a nation, and we pray as a global community of all those listening right now on this radio station, that,

Father, that you would move in South Florida and that you would use this in some mysterious way for a greater good that we don't even see yet,

Lord. We pray that there would be renewal and revival and that there would be an awakening in the

Church of South Florida that the 3 % evangelical would be 5, then 6, then 8, then 10, then 15, then 20,

Lord. We just pray for a great movement here that there would be more churches in Parklands, Lord.

We pray that there would be churches planted across Parklands that are preaching your gospel.

And we pray for Stoneman Douglas and for all those who are suffering and weeping and overwhelmed with grief right now,

Lord, we pray for parents who are burying their children. And, Lord, we pray that you would have mercy on them.

Lord, the great grief that they're walking through right now. And, Lord, that you would draw their eyes to you, the

God of all grace, and that they would come to you and flee from their sin and find the

Savior. Lord, that they would repent and believe in Jesus even now. And so,

God, we pray, Lord, you tell us that you're our rock and our defense, our strong tower, Lord, that we can run to you in our time of trouble.

And so, Father, we run to you right now. And we run to you as a nation, Lord, because we as a nation are broken,

Lord, that this is happening. As questioners have asked, more and more and faster and faster, Lord, we are descending into our own sins deeper and deeper.

And, Lord, I just pray for a corporate repentance, Lord. Yes, we pray for greater laws that will protect our children.

But, Lord, we pray even more for renewed hearts, Lord, that there would be moral restraint by your grace in our souls,

Lord, that we would be a moral people, Lord, that you bring about great repentance, Lord, not only in violence,

Lord, but in sexual purity, Lord. We pray against pornography in your church and all the sexual perversion in the nation right now that's being exposed,

Lord. We pray, God, that we as your people would rise up and stand as a holy people and proclaim your excellencies as a holy nation,

Lord, as the chosen people and declare your excellencies, Lord, and that we wouldn't do it in self -righteousness,

Lord, but we would do it as those who have been rescued and redeemed despite who we are.

Lord, if our Calvinism is worth anything, it says that we're worthless. And, Lord, that we don't deserve anything good from you.

And so, Lord, I pray that we would be the most humble Christians on the planet, Lord.

And so I just pray for a great renewal in your people, Lord, that we would seek you in humility and look to those who are lost and weep over them and weep for them and long for the salvation of their souls like Paul said, that he would give up even his own salvation if he could for them as he cried over Israel, Lord.

Give us that kind of compassion, Lord Jesus. And so, Lord, we just ask, I ask,

Lord, that you would move your people, move your church, Lord, to the needs of greatest suffering,

Lord, that we long to alleviate especially people's eternal suffering through the gospel of Jesus Christ, Lord.

So, Lord, I thank you for Chris. I thank you for this radio program. I thank you for his listeners.

I thank you for their passion for Orthodox theology and doctrine,

Lord, and I pray that you would stir them up at the conferences I've heard promoted the Gospel Coalition together for the gospel and all these groups within evangelicalism that are seeking to be faithful to the

Reformed tradition that we embrace, Lord. And I just pray to God that you'll bless their churches and grow their churches through conversion,

Lord. And use us as iron sharpens iron so one brother would sharpen another,

Lord, that this ministry would be used by you to sharpen the body of Christ. And I do pray for Chris that you would provide financially.

I know he shared earlier he doesn't like to ask for money, so I will do it for him, Lord. I ask for money for his ministry,

Lord, that you'll bless him so that it could grow, so that his message could go to more listeners so that more people would hear the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ.

We pray in his name, amen. Amen. Thank you so much, brother. And I want our listeners to know that the website for Riverside Church in Broward County, Florida is 954church .com,

954church .com. The website for First Priority is firstpriority .cc,

firstpriority .cc. And also Stephen's blog is stephenbomberger .com,

S -T -E -F -A -N -B -O -M -B -E -R -G -E -R .com.

And I want you all to know that there are interviews that are archived on the

Iron Trip and Zion Radio website that deal with the subject of evil and suffering in a sovereign God's world, including one, actually, including two on that very subject, evil and suffering in a sovereign

God's world. That is the title of a book by my former pastor, Mark Grimaldi. If you type in G -R -I -M -A -L -D -I in the search engine of the archive on irontripandzionradio .com,

you will see all of his interviews, including at least two on evil and suffering in a sovereign

God's world. That's G -R -I -M -A -L -D -I. I want to thank

Stephen for being my guest today. I want to thank all of our listeners, especially those who wrote in.

I hope you have a blessed and safe and glorious weekend and Lord's Day, and I hope you all remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater