August 9, 2016 Show with Josh Buice on “Andy Stanley’s Problem with the Bible”

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.

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

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

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

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

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you a happy Tuesday. On this ninth day of August 2016,

I'm so delighted to have as my guest today, for the very first time ever on Iron Sharpens Iron, Pastor Josh Bice.

And he is the senior pastor of Praise Mill Baptist Church in Douglasville, Georgia, not spelled the way that you might think it would be spelled.

It's spelled P -R -A -Y apostrophe S and we'll find out more about that. And he is host of the blog

DeliveredByGrace .com and the director of the G3 Conference, which we'll be talking about as a part of our discussion today and a conference that I'm hoping to get to,

God willing, myself next year as we celebrate the 500th anniversary of the

Protestant Reformation. So today we're going to be discussing not only that conference, but we're also going to be discussing a controversial issue, but one that I think will have great benefit to those who are seeking truth.

That is the theme, Andy Stanley's problem with the Bible. And we will be discussing that and we'll even be discussing why it is very appropriate and legitimate for Christians to openly critique in public those who are public figures and who are representing the

Church of Jesus Christ and the Scriptures in public, and especially if they are media personalities like Andy Stanley, who also is the author of best -selling books and so on.

So we're going to be getting into that eventually in our discussion today, but it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron, Pastor Josh Bice.

It's a delight to be with you, Chris, thank you for having me. And let me immediately right off the bat give our email address for listeners who care to join us on the air with a question for Pastor Josh Bice, and that email address is chrizarnsen at gmail .com,

that's C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

And when you write, we ask of you to please give us your first name, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. If you have a pressing reason why you care to remain anonymous, if that's your preference, we will accommodate your request.

Perhaps you go to a church that views Andy Stanley as a very trustworthy teacher and you don't really want to identify yourself or whatever the reason is, we will honor your request but we would prefer it if you could at least give us your first name and your city and state and country of residence if you live outside the

USA. But anyway, let's start off, before we even get into the theme of Andy Stanley or even the theme of the

G3 conference, I want to hear more about Praise Mill Baptist Church in Douglasville, Georgia.

Absolutely, Chris. Well, so I serve as a pastor, one of the pastors here of the church, and interestingly enough,

I grew up here as a boy in the church, and so in God's providence, he called me back home after pastoring out of state and after attending the

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary to serve the people where I had grown up as a boy, and so it's been a delight to come home.

I've been back now for six years, but the church itself is a 175 -year -old

Baptist church. Wow. And so, yeah, so the interesting thing is, when

I travel places or speak in different locations, people ask me, so what does

Praise Mill mean? Is it like praying to God or is it praising God? And I say, well, it's neither one of those, actually.

What it is, is it's the apostrophe in there means something. So there was a man years ago who settled here in this region, and his name was

Ephraim Pray, and there was no local church in this region, so he decided to donate land and labor from a mill that he owned, and with inheritance money after traveling here and settling here, he, in essence, planted this church, and so they wanted to name the church initially after him, but he insisted that they not do that, so instead they named it after his mill, so it was called

Praise Mill Baptist Church, and so that's the back story on the church.

Again, 175 years old, and I grew up here, and my wife grew up here, both of us as children, and so it's been a joy to come home and serve the people where we grew up.

Can you tell us something about the theological stance of Praise Mill Baptist? Absolutely.

So we predate the Southern Baptist Convention, but we are associated with the

Southern Baptist Convention. We would be more along the lines of those within the

Founders Ministries, so we align with more of a Reformed group of people.

We, as far as the pastors go here, we are an elder -led congregation, so we have a plurality of deacons serving, a plurality of elders leading, and the overall doctrinal position of the church is that we as pastors are preaching and teaching from a

Reformed perspective. We do have some people within our church who are not as Reformed as the pastoral staff.

We're not fighting over these things. We're not in any controversy over these things, but so we just try to be patient with people.

We don't expect everyone who joins this church or everyone who is a present member of this church to just automatically, overnight, understand all of the intricate details of theology.

So we want to be patient as pastors and teach effectively, but that's the perspective from which we teach and where we stand as a congregation.

You mean you never drag these folks out into the parking lot and work them over a little bit? No, contrary to rumors directed towards those of us who are

Reformed Baptists, we don't do that. Yeah, and it's kind of interesting because if you were to insist immediately on people to understand these doctrines of grace, it would almost be a contradiction to the doctrines themselves.

Correct, yeah. But what we want to do, Chris, is we as pastors want to preach each week from the

Scriptures. We teach and preach in an expository fashion, so verse by verse, and it's our goal to just lift up before the people a sovereign

God, a big God, and so this God that we preach from the Scriptures not only created the whole world, not only is

He ruling and reigning over the entire universe, but He's interested in the lives of the individuals sitting in the sanctuary each week, and that's the message that we want to drive home to the

Church week by week, and then we also want to make sure that we're lifting up a sufficient

Savior, Jesus Christ, to save sinners, and so that's our message and that's our method and that's what we're seeking to accomplish here.

Great, and the website, just for our listeners' information, is PraiseMill .com,

P -R -A -Y -S Mill dot com, and is that really you and your family or is that a bunch of actors that you have in that photograph?

I very rarely see such a stunning family in the pastor's photo as he's sitting there with his wife and kids.

Yeah, my wife makes me look a whole lot better, to be honest. We have four children, ranging from 11 to 2, and so the

Lord's been extremely gracious to us. Well, as I said before, we are approaching, before you know it, we will have arrived at the year of the 500th anniversary of the

Protestant Reformation, and that will be 2017, which 500 years earlier, in 1517, those of you who even have a cursory knowledge of the

Reformation will know that Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the

Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, to protest the selling of indulgences, and that was just a normal thing that they did back then in the academic realm.

They wanted to get hot topics discussed and debated, and Martin Luther did that, and he had no idea of the firestorm it would create and how those 95 theses that he had nailed up there would be reprinted and spread around Germany, which eventually the whole

Reformation obviously traveled around Western Europe, and we thank

God for the Reformers for reviving these precious truths that we call the doctrines of grace that were buried beneath a mountain of superstition and ritual and works righteousness heresies that the

Church of Rome had accumulated over the centuries. And, as you know,

Pastor Josh, a lot of people who are Baptists themselves, as we are, scratch their heads and they say, what on earth are you celebrating the

Protestant Reformation for? You're a Baptist, that has nothing to do with the Reformation, in fact, the

Reformers were quite harsh against the Baptists, some of them even persecuted Baptists, why on earth are those at Praise Mill Baptist Church celebrating this

Reformation with the G3 Conference, which we'll be hearing about very shortly? Yeah, so I would respond by just simply stating that what happened in the

Protestant Reformation affects all of us who call ourselves

Protestants. I think we fail to remember that we're protesting something, so Martin Luther actually, you know, stood against a system, he stood against a church, he stood against the

Roman Catholic Church, and all of the perversion that was taking place in his day.

He was protesting something, he was protesting the sale of indulgences, this perversion of a works -based

Gospel, or a works -based salvation. And so we fail to remember that when

Martin Luther stood against the Roman Catholic Church, he wasn't just standing against something, or a system so to speak, but he was also standing for something.

He was standing for the Gospel, he was standing for the, you know, the purity of the

Gospel of Jesus Christ, which, again, is that we come to God by faith alone, in Christ alone, for the remission of sins.

And so we don't add to it works, we don't add to it the traditions of the Church. We can't purchase friends' or family members' salvation, or our own salvation.

And so it's extremely important for us to celebrate in this upcoming year, 500 years ago, a man who was willing to literally put his neck on the line to stand up to a system that said, this is, you know, our system of salvation, we want you to just adhere to it.

And he said, no, that's not what we're doing. We're going to stand firm, and we're going to stand against this perversion of the

Gospel. So that's why it is that we're having this conference, and that's why it is, quite honestly, that all of us as Protestants should celebrate what happened 500 years ago.

Now, there are people, there are quite a number of Christians today, not only ecumenical

Catholics, but ecumenical evangelicals, who look upon the sale of indulgences, or the issue of purgatory, and they say, come on, guys, why are you nitpicking over this stuff?

We all love Jesus. Why don't we just stop bickering and arguing over this nonsense, this trivia, we're trying to count the number of angels who can fit on the head of a pin, we're straining out gnats and swallowing camels, and we're making mountains out of molehills here.

But this really is an assault, this understanding of not only indulgences, by the way, which are still practiced, the sale of indulgences is still practiced by Rome.

The whole concept of purgatory is really an assault on Christ's finished work on the cross, isn't it?

Absolutely. In fact, it's not only purgatory, but it's the Mass every single week that is absolutely blasphemous against the

Gospel of Jesus Christ. And if you read the actual doctrinal statements and the catechisms of the

Roman Catholic Church, you will see works that's literally interwoven through the entire document.

And so what we are aiming to do is to say, if we're Protestants, what are we protesting?

And so that would bring us to another question, is the Reformation over? And I would say absolutely not.

The Reformation is not over. What Luther was protesting in his day, we continue to protest in our present day.

And that's any perversion of the pure Gospel of grace. And so as we look at the issues that are before us today, and you have people that would, you know, criticize us and say, look, guys, can't we just all get along?

I mean, we're all the same, right? Well, we're not all the same. And so we need to make sure that we understand that there is a clear division between a works -based salvation and people who come to God by faith alone in Christ alone.

So it's, in essence, it's nothing in our hands we bring, simply to the cross we cling.

That's what we're aiming to teach. And we're teaching that not from, you know, years of tradition or a document that we've written, but we're teaching it from the sufficient

Word of God. Amen. And for those of our listeners who think this is just arrogance on our part, this is mean -spiritedness, this is bigotry, this is hatred.

But aren't we supposed to be more concerned not only about God's Word than we are over hurting people's feelings?

But aren't we supposed to be more concerned over the never -dying souls of men than we are over hurting their feelings?

Yeah, I mean, you know, Chris, when you think about this whole emotionalism that creeps into, you know, our doctrinal positions, we can't, we cannot form our doctrinal positions based on emotional feelings.

I would agree, you know, we can speak the truth in love, and I do think that we should practice that.

However, we should preach the truth. And so, when we have people, you know, that would say, well, you know, you need to be nice to people, or you need to have, you know, the compassion of Jesus, or whatever else,

I think that they really need to read the New Testament and find out exactly how it was that Jesus opposed the false teaching in His day.

Amen. Amen. And when I get the backlash from either

Roman Catholic friends of mine or ecumenical evangelicals that this is all about hatred and bigotry,

I really always have to go back to the Apostle Paul and his treatment of the

Judaizers in the book of Galatians. Absolutely. Because these folks, perhaps naively and unconsciously, are really trying to be nicer than the

Apostle Paul, and they're expecting all of us to be nicer than the Apostle Paul when faced with dangerous teaching.

And when you look at the Judaizers, it seems as though they may have even agreed with Bible -believing

Christians on a lot more issues than the Roman Catholic Church does. From what we know, isn't it just that they were insisting upon circumcision for the

Gentiles to become Christians, and from what we have read from the

Apostle Paul, we really don't know of any other differences that he had with these folks. That's exactly right,

Chris. And when you look at that statement in chapter 1 of Galatians, you see the sternness in which

Paul responds, and when he uses that word, let him be accursed, who's teaching any other gospel than the gospel that has been preached to you, when he's using that language to the church there,

Galatia, he's using a term that literally means, let that one who preaches a perverted gospel be anathema, to be damned to hell.

And so, when we think about this idea of, let's just all be nice Christians, think about Jesus, for instance, let's go back to Jesus.

Jesus was actually, he was actually identified by Herod as John the

Baptist, raised from the dead. Now, we must remember how it was that John the Baptist preached.

He was a blazing prophet who was calling out Herod for his horrific sin of having his brother's wife.

And so it ended up costing him his life, his head was on a platter because of that, but it was later, when trying to identify who

Jesus was, that Herod said that Jesus was John the

Baptist, raised from the dead. Now, that puts things into perspective a bit as to how it was that Jesus actually preached.

And then, coming from that vein of preaching, we see the apostolic preaching, we see the

Apostle Paul, for instance, who is preaching with that type of fire and zeal, not willing to compromise the gospel in the slightest degree.

And he basically said that if anybody preaches another gospel than the one he preached, if anybody adds anything to faith alone in the gospel proclamation, they are to be accursed.

And if Paul said that, how can we say anything else? Absolutely, and that's what we're seeking to say in our present day, is not that we're cursing someone, but that they will receive the curse of God if they pervert the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So this is a really big issue. This is not some trivial thing, this is not some, you know, shallow, opinionated issue that we can just agree to disagree on, this is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Amen. And why don't you let our listeners know why this

Reformation is still in the third millennium, the 21st century, why is it important specifically for the local church?

Well, once again, piggybacking on what we had talked about just a moment ago, is that I believe that the church today needs to understand that we stand upon the shoulders of men who have gone before us.

So when we think about the Reformation, oftentimes we just think about a category of church history, but we miss the fact that there were children, there were women, there were families who were burned at the stake simply for possessing the

Lord's Prayer in English. When we think about how the Reformation started with Luther, he nailed the 95

Theses to the castle door in Wittenberg, and then it wasn't until just a few years later in 1521 when he stood before the

Diet of Worms in the city of Worms, and it was there that he was asked to recant.

So Luther rode into Worms in a covered wagon, and the city was pulsating with just a desire to see this

Augustinian monk who was standing against the Roman Catholic Church. And so he's taken to his quarters.

Later the next day, he's brought before the entire, in essence, the leaders of the world.

So you have the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church, you have the leadership of all of Europe, it seems, that are just there at this

Diet. And so here is this Augustinian monk that has to be led through a back alley to evade the large crowds, and when he assembles before this ruling body, all of his writings were there on the table.

And they said, will you recant of everything that you have written? Well, you know, this is a big deal, so he stops and he pauses and he asks for additional time to consider his answer.

He understood the depth and the, you know, he understood the severity of what was about to take place.

And so he had to come to this very point, to Worms, with the desire to stand for the

Gospel, and he was not willing to compromise, but he wanted to make sure that he understood what he would say and make sure he said it properly.

So they gave him to the very next day, they brought him back in, as he stands before this ruling body, they once again pose this question, will you recant of everything?

And that's when he gave his famous speech. And he responds, and he said, I am bound by the

Scriptures I have quoted, and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. He said, I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience.

And then he said this, I cannot do otherwise. Here I stand, may God help me, amen.

In essence, it was at that very moment, it's where the lines were drawn in the sand regarding the

Reformation. You have the ruling body saying, you will obey the teachings of the

Roman Catholic Church, and you have Luther who's saying, I'm standing on the Word of God, the sufficient and the authoritative

Word of God. And so that, in essence, is where the climactic collision between Luther and the

Roman Catholic Church took place in 1521. Now, from that point onward, we have the

Reformation that continues to move forward. And so then you end up with a Tyndale who just wants to get the

Word of God translated and printed in English. And so now you have people who are being burned at the stake by the

Roman Catholic Church or possessing the Lord's Prayer in English.

You have, under the rule of Bloody Mary, you have, you know, you have

John Rogers who is led to the stake. You know, this is, again, after Tyndale had already been burned at the stake, you have

John Rogers who completed the Old Testament work that Tyndale had started, and then you end up seeing him burned at the stake.

Why? Because of this idea that they wanted to get the Gospel out in the common man's language to the whole world.

And who was it that was standing against these people? It was the Roman Catholic Church. And so the

Reformation is vital for the local church today, and I think that we need to realize that we stand on the shoulders of these men who have gone before us, and the

Word of God that we hold in our hands today, whether it's in the form of an iPad or an iPhone or whether it's a letter -bound

Bible, the Bible that we have printed in English for us today, the authoritative, the inerrant

Word of God came to us on a sea of blood. Amen. And there are accusations that those of us who cherish these great heroes of the faith from the 16th century and even some prior, the proto -reformers and some subsequent to the

Reformation, but they accuse us of idolatry, that we are really worshipping these men and blindly following what they teach.

Well, first of all, obviously, since you and I are Reformed Baptists, we don't follow everything they teach because most of them were paedo -Baptists, or those who believed in infant baptism, and they even had, at times, quite harsh things to say against the

Anabaptists, who believed that baptism was an ordinance for believers only, like you and I believe.

So obviously, even though there may be some of our brethren who do sin in the area of idol worship when it comes to the way they view these great men, there is a

Berean spirit that many of us seek to have, where we don't just buy everything hook, line, and sinker that they ever said or wrote, because there were even disagreements amongst the

Reformers themselves. But the Baptists can even cherish the

Reformation because, soteriologically, they were there even as a correction to many of the theological abuses of the

Anabaptists, even though we agree with them on the ordinance of baptism in regard to who are the appropriate candidates for that ordinance, we have more in common in the area of doctrine and soteriology with the

Reformers. So, isn't that a good way of setting forth the fact that we who are

Baptists can still join other heirs of the Reformation in celebrating this great era of history?

Oh, absolutely. I don't think that you can put, you know, say, ten men in a room and have them agree on every single, you know, jot and tittle of Scripture.

There are going to be differences, varying differences on various different things. But as we think about that, you know, we must be completely aligned on the

Gospel. And so that's what we're seeking to accomplish with, say, a conference, for instance. You know, any conference you go to, you're going to have people there, even speakers, who aren't going to agree on every single thing.

But the fact is, we're aligned on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Amen. In fact, we're going to...

In fact, let's... Go ahead. I was just going to say, let's pick up on the conference right after our station break, the G3 conference, because we have to go to a break right now.

And I'm sorry that I interrupted you there. If you could perhaps remember where you were going to, what you were going to say, and we'll pick up right where you left off there.

And if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com, chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

We already have a number of you waiting patiently to have your questions asked and answered, and we will get to you as soon as we can when we return from the break.

So don't go away. We will be right back with Pastor Josh Bice. And eventually we're going to be discussing the theme,

Andy Stanley's problem with the Bible. So don't go away. Hi, I'm Chris Arnzen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, here to tell you about an exciting offer from World Magazine, my trusted source for news from a

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That's wrbc .us. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron. If you just tuned in, our guest today for the full two hours today is

Pastor Josh Bice. He is Senior Pastor of Praise Mill Baptist Church in Douglasville, Georgia.

He is host of the blog DeliveredByGrace .com and Director of the

G3 Conference. And just to let you know something about this conference, we're going to be going in greater depth about the conference very shortly,

God willing. But this is going to be held January 19th through the 21st of 2017 to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the

Protestant Reformation. This is going to be held in Georgia. And the speakers include

Paul Washer, Steven J. Lawson, D .A. Carson, Votie Baucom, James White, Tim Challies, Conrad M.

Bayway, Phil Johnson, Josh Bice, who is our guest today, David Miller, Rosaria Butterfield, David Hall, Todd Friel, John Kratz, Nathan Bucenitz, Chip Thornton, Chris King, Anthony Mathenia, and Scott Klusendorf.

And for more details, go to g3conference .com. That's g3conference .com,

and we hope that you can attend. I hope that I can attend, and I would love to meet many of you there, and praying that the

Lord brings that about. And just to also let our listeners know that we've got several interviews already lined up with some of those speakers.

Todd Friel returns to Iron Sharpens Iron. He's become one of my very favorite guests. He's going to be on Monday, August 15th,

God willing, and he's going to be discussing his brand new book, Hot Off The Press, Stressed Out, A Biblical Approach To Anxiety.

Then on Monday, August 22nd, Rosaria Butterfield returns to Iron Sharpens Iron.

Many of you perhaps remember her recent interview with us, where she gave her testimony about being a leftist lesbian who came to Christ and renounced those sinful ideologies and is now even the wife of a

Presbyterian pastor. She is going to be on this time to discuss her second book,

Openness Unhinged. That's Monday, August 22nd. And on Friday, September 2nd,

Tim Challies is going to be our guest on Iron Sharpens Iron for the very first time. Tim and I have been trying to arrange an interview for quite a long time and something always arose in our schedules that conflicted, but thanks be to God, we have that date scheduled for now, unless God has other plans.

But we trust that he will be on with us Friday, September 2nd. These are just three of the speakers and we hope to get as many more as we can on the program again.

And I've already interviewed over half of these speakers, so I'm delighted to meet many of them again.

And some of them I've only spoken with over the phone, so I'm looking forward to, God willing, meeting them in person for the first time, those that I have not yet met.

But let me repeat our email address. It's chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com if you'd like to join us with a question. And I haven't forgotten you folks who are already waiting patiently.

At least I hope you're waiting patiently. I know you're waiting anyway. If your questions are asked and answered, we will get to you shortly,

God willing. But if you could now, Josh, tell us something about the

G3 conference. Tell us about what that actually means, G3, the history of the conference, and so on.

Absolutely, Chris. The G3 conference is a theology conference. And so what we wanted to do in the first year, this upcoming year, 2017, will be the fifth year of the conference.

What we sought to establish in the beginning was to let everyone know that it's an unashamed theology conference.

And so for three days, we will gather and worship God together from His Word.

And through the Word of God, we will seek to know God in a better way. And so this is not a pep rally.

This is not some let's just get together conference. We're seeking to take seriously the study of God's Word, the proclamation of God's Word.

So we have breakout sessions. We have a good lengthy lineup of plenary sessions of worship and singing the gospel of Christ together.

So in the beginning, what we were praying and hoping to accomplish was that this would be a conference that would help pastors and church leaders and fellow

Christians in the Atlanta area. And so the very first year, we were shocked when we had people from all across the country and outside of the country come to the conference.

And so it sold out the first four years. Year after year, it would just sell out.

And so here we are in year number five, and we're moving away from our church campus to facilitate the numbers.

And so we're going to be at the Georgia International Convention Center over by the airport in Atlanta, Georgia. And G3, the actual title of the conference, stands for Gospel, Grace, and Glory.

And this was our idea to just say we want to communicate something. We want everyone to know that this is a theology conference.

And so we just want to educate, to encourage, and to equip.

And we try to do that through singing the gospel, preaching the gospel, teaching the gospel, and putting good resources and connecting people to good, solid ministry for three days every

January. Well, you have quite an extraordinary lineup of folks here. It's just absolutely amazing.

Nineteen speakers, and I've interviewed, I believe, eleven of them.

And gotten to know them and really have become, come to cherish knowing them.

And some of them have actually become dear friends. But this is, I've never been to a conference that has quite this long of a roster and this, quite this impressive of a roster at this length.

This is really extraordinary. And I'm thanking God that you are doing this and that the

Lord has really put it upon your hearts to provide something of this caliber.

I'm looking forward to seeing my dear friend Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries there who has become a precious brother to me since 1995.

I've known him and orchestrated quite a number of debates and speaking engagements for him.

My friend Conrad Mbewe from the Kibwata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, Africa.

I've known also since about 1995 when he preached at the church where I used to be a member on Long Island, New York, Race Reform Baptist Church.

He is perhaps the most powerful preacher I have ever heard in my life. And I'm looking forward to meeting all of those who

I've not yet met and sharing fellowship with them if God enables me to get there.

So G3conference .com is the website. G as in George 3.

That's the number three, conference .com and we'll be hopefully repeating that throughout the broadcast today.

Well, if you think that we've adequately addressed the conference for now, if you'd like to move on to our main theme,

Andy Stanley's problem with the Bible. Well, first of all, for our listeners who don't know who

Andy Stanley is, as probably most of them do, but he is the very popular host of the television broadcast

Your Move with Andy Stanley. I believe it airs right after Saturday Night Live in many states.

He is quite a popular speaker. He is the senior pastor of North Point Community Church, Buckhead Church, and Browns Bridge Community Church.

He is also the founder of the worldwide Christian organization North Point Ministries.

He is the son of Charles Stanley, world -renowned pastor, author, and television evangelist.

InTouch Ministries is the ministry that Charles Stanley, his father, founded.

When I worked for WMCA Radio in New Jersey, it's now in New York City, for the 15 years that I worked there,

I think that every year Charles Stanley's program was the number one program, the most listened to program on that station.

So we are here to give a critique of Andy Stanley, and many people might be scratching their heads and saying, what on earth is there to critique?

I love this guy. This guy has revolutionized my Christian walk, etc.

Tell us about Andy Stanley and what it is that makes you think that he has a problem with the inerrant

Word of God. Well, you know, it may seem strange to people that aren't aware of some of the trajectory issues of Andy Stanley's ministry in recent years, but I would have to say, and I want to preface this,

I read an article back in May, at the end of May, titled, Andy Stanley's Problem with the

Bible, and it did get quite a bit of attention and cause some controversy.

I receive emails even daily about it. But the point I'm making is this, and I want to preface what

I'm going to say in this segment, and I want to be very clear. I'm not accusing

Andy Stanley of being a heretic. I'm not accusing Andy Stanley of being someone who is not a brother in Christ.

At this point, I don't have sufficient evidence to say that. So I still embrace him as a brother.

We're going to be on different planets when it comes to our philosophy of ministry, when it comes to our doctrine of the church, and how the church should function, preaching styles, and various things.

So we're going to be on different planets when it comes to those specific issues. But at this point, I still have to embrace him as a brother, although I'm extremely concerned about where he stands on some of these issues that are very important.

So when I wrote the article, the article was simply a critique of some of the things that he's been saying.

So it's not that I'm over here on the west side of Atlanta, Georgia, trying to just throw a rock at someone who's very popular on the other side of Atlanta.

The issue is simply this. Andy Stanley is bringing controversy upon himself by the things that he continues to say.

So when he makes statements about expository preaching, stating that to do exposition is cheating, when he says

Really? That's interesting. When he makes statements like that, he's actually bringing the controversy to him.

So all I did was actually give a response to what he's been saying in the public eye.

Yeah, and as I said earlier in the program, if somebody is a global figure in the media, and in bookstores everywhere, they are open for critique by brethren in Christ.

They're not untouchable. In fact, it would be a disservice not only to the church but to all of humanity if Christians allowed those who have the loudest voices in the media and elsewhere if we let them get away with saying anything without challenging even them and of course their followers about these departures from orthodoxy, we would be in sin ourselves, wouldn't we?

Correct. And that's one of the challenges and pushbacks that I've received in this article is that I should follow

Matthew chapter 18 when dealing with people like Andy Stanley. Well, that's just an incorrect interpretation of Matthew 18.

We do actually understand and practice church discipline within our own church context but Andy Stanley is not a member of our church, so I don't have the privilege to go to him as a brother in private and nor will he have to give an account to our church context, our local church, because he's not a member here.

It's not sinful to make a rebuttal statement against someone who has published something or preached something in the public eye.

It's not sinful to respond to them publicly. So I think that that's just an incorrect view of what

Matthew 18 is actually teaching. Alright, let me start to go to some of our listener questions.

We have Susan in Covington, Tennessee and she is originally, she says, from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, which is just about five minutes from where I'm sitting and she says,

Andy Stanley's father, Charles, seems to be a solid Bible preacher. I have seen advertisements for the

InTouch crews, including Andy in their speaker lineup. Why would someone like Charles want a man such as his son,

Andy, whose preaching and teaching is going off the deep end speaking on this cruise?

There are fewer Christians every day that can be trusted, very sad. That's Susan in Covington, Tennessee and that is an interesting comment and question.

The only thing that I know that was dangerously aberrant about Charles Stanley, the father of Andy, is that he militated against the doctrine of lordship salvation.

I know, I mean, I had other disagreements with him. He is not theologically reformed. He rejects the doctrines of sovereign grace.

In fact, I had a friend who used to pastor on Long Island who was a member of Charles' church and he was a missionary and he was a five -point

Calvinist and one day when Charles was on vacation he actually had the opportunity to preach in Charles Stanley's church and he chose the subject of election and he was told by the lady who ran the tape room as they were called back then because there were no

CDs or MP3s or anything that more tapes of his sermon had been ordered than any of Charles' sermons in decades and he was banned from the pulpit ever since then.

But I do obviously, as you do, have brethren in Christ who aren't reformed and we although we seriously disagree with those things, there is something very serious about his departure from lordship salvation but anything else that you would say about Charles before we move on to Andy which is all packed in together with this listener's question?

No, I mean as far as Charles Stanley is concerned he's been a well -respected pastor in the Atlanta area for many years you know the lordship controversy but also the doctrines of grace controversy he was very much involved with allowing the

John 316 conference and supporting that type of conference against the doctrines of grace but as far as Andy Stanley's involvement with his father's ministry on a cruise

I mean look, Charles Stanley as far as I know is very much proud of his son so I don't know

I don't have any information as far as the interworkings of their family life or anything of that nature but I wouldn't see where it would be that Charles Stanley would not want to associate with his son even if they differ on methodology and certain other issues,

I mean he's still his father, Andy's his son and I'm sure that he loves his son and is very much proud of his son

Well it is interesting one thing I forgot to mention obviously is that there was a time when they parted company because Charles Stanley refused to even temporarily step down from his post as senior pastor when his marriage was falling apart and the main reason apparently was that his wife had said that he was married to his job and that was made public so I'm not going to go any further than that but there seems to be a healing of wounds there because there was a rift at one time wasn't there?

Yes there was but a number of years ago Charles Stanley and Andy Stanley appeared together on the same platform at the

Southern Baptist Convention and it just seems that in recent years there has been a healing of those wounds and they've come back together so to speak

Well guess what Susan in Covington, Tennessee since you are a first time questioner,

I don't know if you're a first time listener or not but since you're a first time questioner you're getting a free

New American Standard Bible compliments of the publishers of the New American Standard Bible who sponsor

Iron Sharpens Iron if you give us your full mailing address we will have that shipped out to you as soon as possible and that will be shipped out to you compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania CVBBS .com

CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for BibleBookService .com

So we hope that you are blessed by that, just get us your full mailing address as soon as possible

We have another first time questioner also from Tennessee this one from Memphis, Tennessee Johnny and he asks where did

Andy get his ideas of unbelief in the word of God well I don't think that he would claim that he doesn't believe in the word of God but perhaps you could even just further unpack where he is aberrant and perhaps you may know of some influence on him that led him to these views

Yes, so my answer to that question would be simply this I don't believe that Andy Stanley doesn't believe the

Bible I think that he actually does believe the Bible but the problems that I have with Andy Stanley is his approach to the scriptures so he's approaching the scriptures with a very superficial, topical methodology his entire ministry is ran through a pragmatic system so what you see with Andy Stanley is he's coming to the scriptures and he's using the scriptures as a proof text often times out of context to further his sermon series or his sermon title so it's not that he doesn't believe the

Bible it's just that he goes about his teaching and preaching of the Bible from a very superficial and topical methodology which

I believe to be insufficient and if you look and listen to what he's actually saying for instance earlier this year it was at Easter he was talking about the

Bible and when he was addressing in his opening statement those who were listening to his sermon he was basically saying if I were going to convince you to be a follower of Jesus I would not start with the

Bible he said he would go on to start with the resurrection but my point in my article that I addressed was simply this how can you actually preach the resurrection of Jesus Christ apart from the

Bible so it's through the scriptures that we have this sufficient revelation of who

God is and the hope that we have in his son Jesus Christ and you can't come to God except you come to him through the right revelation that's been given to us in the word of God so to diminish the idea of the

Bible says for instance because here sometime back at a conference Andy Stanley was standing on the conference platforms teaching other pastors that when they're teaching they should refrain from using the language the

Bible says he said you should say Paul says or you should say that John says but don't say the

Bible says because skeptics don't like to hear that type of language again that's buying into a pragmatic post modern idea that the

Bible is not trustworthy I think that we need to as pastors to ratchet it up a notch and to let people know that we can trust the sufficiency of scripture what you just said reminds me of a talk show host that he was a nationally syndicated

Christian talk show host on one of the stations I used to work for and a very prominent network and this man actually had as a part of his rules that if he had a guest or if a listener called in to his show they could not quote from the

Bible because his thrust of ministry was that Christians can think for themselves and they don't need to just parrot the

Bible they can use logic and intellect and so on to me that's nothing more than trying to appeal to the goats in the world who hate the

Bible and he is embarrassed that the pseudo -intellectual anti -Christians think that relying upon this relic known as the

Bible is a joke and to me it's just denying your allegiance to the very word of God and to God himself yeah absolutely either the

Bible is the word of God or it's not and if it's the word of God then let's not be ashamed of it let's not blush about it let's just preach the word of God thus says the

Lord God and then let the chips fall where they may let's build our churches and our ministries our children's ministries let's build them upon the sufficient foundation of an inerrant and authoritative word the word of God and just to tie this in with something that our listener in Memphis, Tennessee asked

Johnny, where did Andy get these ideas? Do you have any idea of who

Andy Stanley's heroes may be that may have influenced him into thinking this way? Yeah, to be quite honest

I don't I know that he grew up in a pastor's home and I'm sure he's, you know he's had access to an awful lot of people you know, scholars and authors and pastors through the years but when

I listen to Andy talk, I hear an awful lot of pragmatism whatever works best do that and that's going to make your church ministry successful I was at the

Southern Baptist Convention a number of years ago and Andy Stanley was on the platform and he was I thought supposed to be preaching the

Bible but he was actually just talking about you know, pragmatic schemes and methods to grow your church and the line that he continued to revisit and to repeat continuously through that entire talk was if you make your church better, they will come and make your church bigger and he was quoting from you know, corporations like Chip Fillet and Intel and various other corporations and leaders and he was taking the business world and he was saying if we can mimic what they're doing and do our church ministries well, then they the world will come and make your church bigger.

Well, there's one massive problem with that if we're attracting goats to come into the church because they like how we do things that's a false gospel we need to come into the church when they bow their knee to Jesus Christ, not because they're impressed with how slick our ministries are

Amen Well, we're going to get to those of you who are still waiting to have your questions asked and answered after the break,

God willing and for anybody else who would like to join them with a question of your own on the air our email address is

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

please give us your first name, city and state and country of residence if you live outside the USA don't go away, we're going to be right back after these messages

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnsen and if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours we've already had him on for an hour and we have an hour yet to go is

Pastor Josh Buis Senior Pastor of Praise Mill Baptist Church in Douglasville, Georgia.

He's host of the blog DeliveredByGrace .com and director of the

G3 Conference which is taking place in January of next year. We are discussing as our main theme

Andy Stanley's problem with the Bible. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. By the way

Pastor Josh, I just remembered something interesting that pastor that I mentioned before who was a member of Charles Stanley's church who was banned from the pulpit because of his sermon on election.

When he was pastoring on Long Island that was the very first place that James White, our mutual friend of Alpha and Omega Ministries debated a

Muslim. I orchestrated that debate with Hamza Abdul Malik back in the late 1990s or early 2000s.

I don't remember the exact date but it was interesting. James doesn't include that debate as his first Muslim debate because at that time he knew very little about Islam and was defending the deity of Christ in the debate and it's amazing how things have changed when he's one of the foremost debaters on the issue of Islam in the world and has read the

Quran many times over now and I have also orchestrated debates with Dr.

White and Muslims where it was clear in the debate that he knew more about the Quran than they did and quite an embarrassment for them and quite a victory for the gospel for Dr.

White but he is definitely a gifted brother in Christ, that's for certain.

Yes he is. In fact, while we're talking about James White, let me mention this just to give your listeners a heads up.

We will be making an announcement over the next couple of weeks, Lord willing, but we are actually trying to orchestrate a formal debate between James White and someone within the

Roman Catholic Church on the subjects of the Reformation so that the key central issues related to justification by faith alone and things of that nature.

So those who might be listening could again connect with us through social media and we will be making that announcement very soon.

Great, so you already have a Roman Catholic who's agreed to do it? Well, we have been in talks with several people who were trying to get to come and what we're seeking to do is put this debate, this formal debate on the

Wednesday evening right before the G3 conference in January. Well, now

I'm even more excited about the possibility of going there. For a decade

I arranged debates on Long Island with Dr.

White and Roman Catholic apologists and that became known as the Great Debate series and they were quite a remarkable series of debates and actually got to know and become friends with Roman Catholics as a result of those debates because they realized that this was not anything to do with hate, this was about both sides seeking truth.

Now obviously only one side could be right since the issues debated were in polar opposite to each other as far as the views adhered to, but it is good to see when anybody has a

Berean spirit and are interested in finding out more about truth and I hope that the

Lord blesses that conference and that debate mightily. I know that many Roman Catholics shy away from debating

James these days because they know his track record so hopefully something will come about in a positive fashion with that.

We have a listener from Kinross, Scotland, Murray who asks, how would you counsel any coming to Praise Mill Baptist Church from one of Andy Stanley's churches?

I mean this both from the point of view of helping those who come and protecting from error those already with you in membership.

A little leaven leavens the whole lump. That's Murray in Kinross, Scotland. So the question

Chris is, how would I counsel my church as far as Andy Stanley's teaching, his public teaching ministry, is that the question?

Well let me read it again, he says, how would you counsel any coming to Praise Mill Baptist Church from one of Andy Stanley's churches?

So he's actually saying how would you counsel these people who are leaving one of Andy Stanley's congregations that he founded and they're coming over to Praise Mill.

Well first of all, in order to obtain membership within our local church we have a membership class that's required.

So you would have to go through that class, you would have to understand as we go through that membership class we seek to communicate what it is we believe doctrinally, how we teach as far as our methodology and our philosophy of ministry.

And we allow for prospect to our church and those seeking membership to ask us questions and to just try to understand who we are, the context of our church, what we officially believe, and how we go about ministry.

And then following that class we also have interviews with the elders of our church.

So what we do is we ask people who want to obtain membership here to share with us their testimony of conversion and their belief in the gospel of Jesus Christ and where they stand doctrinally.

And so if it, you know, through that process of membership, if there was someone coming from one of his campuses or one of his churches, then what we would simply ask is, you know, do you understand that we're going to be worlds apart not only on theology but on ecclesiology.

So we're a single church model. We don't believe in having, you know, multi -site campuses and various things.

So we would just seek to be truthful and honest with those people and then find out if it's going to be a good match for them.

And if it's not, then we would just communicate that, you know, up front rather than going through the process of having them come into the church and then having to see them unfortunately leave when they disagreed with us.

Thank you very much, Murray, and keep spreading the word about Iron Sharpens Iron in Scotland and beyond.

I always love it when I have overseas listeners contacting us with a question. We have

Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York, who asks, I was once at a young adult

Bible study and Andy Stanley was the teacher. He barely made reference to Scripture and used worldly principles.

Is he infamously known for this? Well, yes.

In fact, as I was stating before in the conference where I was listening to him preach, he was quoting from Chick -fil -A, he was quoting from, you know,

Intel and other corporations. So he definitely has a pattern that goes this direction.

And so, you know, that's my major critique of Andy Stanley. His problem with the

Bible is that he's using the Bible in a very topical and superficial manner rather than just, you know, getting down to business and teaching what the, you know, the

Bible says. You know, when Paul calls the church, or the elders of the church in Ephesus together, and we see that in the book of Acts, he mentions to them that in his time there with them that he had actually taught them the full counsel of God's Word.

And so, I'm very concerned with preaching today, as I listen to a lot of different preachers preach.

I think there's going to be a lot of pastors that when they stand before the judgment seat of Christ, they have to apologize for not teaching the full counsel of God's Word.

What was the controversy fairly recently where Andy Stanley was rebuking

Christians for remaining in small congregations? Yeah, so there was a video that surfaced and spread around on the internet where Andy Stanley was preaching in a conference, and he went on a rant about, you know, if you,

I think it was, if you don't go to a large church, then you're basically selfish.

In fact, he said it this way, he said, if you don't go to a large church, you are so stinking selfish, and you don't care about your kids.

And what he was trying to communicate was that large churches have large youth groups, and they have various different tiers of ministries, and if you're going to stay in a small church, or a smaller church, with your family, with your children, then you're just selfish, and you're neglecting the needs of your children.

That's what he was seeking to communicate, and I just think that that type of belief is just wrong.

I mean, there are an awful lot of smaller churches that are doing a fantastic job of discipling families, discipling children, so to suggest that all smaller churches need to just close their doors and go join

Andy's church is just beyond ridiculous. Well, did he ever recant that?

He actually did. He tried to crawfish when he received a lot of pushback, and he came out as stating that he didn't actually mean that, he was meaning something quite different.

But if you listen to what he said in his explanation, and then you go back and listen to what he actually said when he was preaching, his rant wasn't a short little statement.

It was a lengthy rant, and you can't just go on a lengthy rant like he did, and not really mean what you were saying.

I mean, so I'm not buying it, to be quite honest with you, so it's just one more of the problems that we're seeing with Andy Stanley's ministry.

I think you just taught me a new southern slang term that I've never heard before, crawfish.

I've never heard that used in the way that you just used it. I love crawfish, by the way.

I miss a Cajun restaurant. Actually, two Cajun restaurants that used to be near my neighborhood on Long Island.

But anyway, yeah, well, first of all, it's really, there's a height of arrogance for someone who is the son of a world -renowned, best -selling author, televangelist, to be able to leave that church and immediately start a church with a packed house.

You know, I mean, to compare that with a church plant by a normal, unknown but faithful man of God, where it may start with just a handful of people and so on,

I mean, that's really absurd and arrogant on his part to even make such a statement.

I mean, those who don't have the benefit of having famous parents, where you just have a built -in advertising or public relations campaign that would flood your auditorium, you know, obviously even some of the best of large churches that are biblically sound started out with a handful of people.

Yes, Chris, you know, I'm fully convinced that an awful lot of faithful pastors, perhaps many of the most faithful pastors in most faithful churches, are those that we don't know their names.

You know, I think that we can be very guilty of what you mentioned earlier is idolatry.

We can idolize the large church, the large church pastor, the ministry that seems to be very successful.

We can go to conferences and we can miss the true meaning of going to a conference because we idolize, you know, the people that might be speaking in that conference, and I think that we need to refrain from, you know, lifting people up to a level of idolatry.

I think that there's an awful lot of very faithful pastors and very faithful churches that God will one day reward for their faithfulness that we might never know their name.

Right, and of course the reason why a lot of faithful churches are small is because they're preaching truths that are unpopular in the 21st century.

How do you think? I mean, Dr. James White, I keep name dropping here, but he is a close friend, but his church

I don't think has ever exceeded 200 people, and I don't even think those 200 would be members. You know, you have people, and he is in a land in Arizona, a land of megachurches.

Right. So anyway, that's quite a tragedy when that kind of numbers game is being used as a sign of orthodoxy or faithfulness or something.

It's just ridiculous. Correct. And I even know some solid men who think that the larger churches, it could be come very dangerous because you cannot properly shepherd churches when they become overwhelmingly large.

Well, you can actually do that. It's going to take a biblical approach.

If you look at the early church, you know, when Peter preaches at Pentecost and you see that overnight there's, you know, over 3 ,000 people that are saved, and then you start to see the church growing.

Very soon there were more than 20 ,000 believers. And so you saw that there had to be deacons set up to serve, there had to be the apostles working together, in essence, as the elders who are overseeing and leading the church.

It can be done effectively, it just has to be done biblically. Amen. And one of the things that is a hallmark of a lot of even evangelical churches today, and I'm not going to presume this upon Andy Stanley because I don't really know that much about him in regard to this issue that I'm going to bring up, but there are a lot of professed evangelical leaders who are very soft on this sin of homosexuality which actually is so soft that it actually puts those unrepentant men and women involved in that activity in great spiritual peril because they're really not being told of the necessity of repentance from that activity.

Obviously you and I, I'm sure, would be in agreement that we're not supposed to be overtly cruel and mean -spirited and hateful to anybody, let alone those involved in homosexual behavior.

And of course we have these evil individuals in the God Hates Fags group, the

Westboro Baptist Church, who have such exuberant joy over the thought of people going to hell, you have to question whether they're regenerate.

But the opposite problem seems to be obviously the more widespread thing where people tiptoe around that sin as if they are, as the liberals want us to believe, just another community of people like blacks, hispanics, asians, and native americans, and so on.

I mean it's really become really troubling. And where is

Andy Stanley, if you know, on the issue of preaching against that sin? Well, the only thing that we can say as far as, you know, evidence on where he stands on these issues is what he's actually said, or you might say the troubling thing is what he has not said.

So back in 2012, Andy Stanley was once again the center of controversy when he talked about homosexuality without talking about homosexuality.

So he actually preached a sermon, and the sermon title was, When Gracie Met Truthie.

And he described a couple in his church in great detail that had been asked to step down from their leadership positions.

These were two men who were engaged in a homosexual relationship, and they were also married and had families.

And so when Stanley, in his sermon, talked about this scenario, he described what he said to them in his counseling session, and he said verbatim, you're just, he said, what you're doing is just good old fashion adultery.

Well, basically, you know, when you think about the severity of what was taking place there, it was adultery.

But it was two men who were engaged in homosexuality also committing the sin of adultery, but he never named the sin of homosexuality.

He only named the sin of adultery. Now again, you just have to step back from that sermon and say, why is it that a pastor would call out someone for committing adultery?

So now you're left to scratch your head and think, what if the men had both been single men, and they had been engaged in this homosexual relationship?

Would it have been condoned then? And so you're left with filling in the blank spaces or reading between the lines, if you will, but the problem is he just never addressed it.

He was called out by people like Albert Moeller and others, but once again, the center of homosexuality.

So in this present culture, now that was 2012. Here we are, 2016, on the other side of the

Supreme Court ruling in the United States of America, and we have to ask ourselves this question, as you mentioned it a moment ago and as you framed it, are they, they being homosexuals, should they be welcomed into the

Church as just another segment of the Church, such as, you know, someone that's of a certain skin color or nationality?

Should we just bring them in as a different type of group within the Evangelical Church? And that's obviously going against the grain of the

New Testament. When we look at 1 Corinthians chapter 6, for instance, we see the Apostle Paul who is writing to a church, and he's saying, he's describing people in the

Church, and he's describing their previous condition. Again, he talks about the fact that he's giving them a command, don't be deceived, and then he talks about, and he warns them about the sin of sexual immorality.

He talks about the sin of idolatry and adultery, and he talks about the sin of homosexuality.

But in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, in that very passage, the key verse is verse 11, because he comes down and he says,

And such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the

Lord Jesus Christ, and by the Spirit of our God. So the point, Chris, is this.

We don't look at African -Americans that join the Church, or we don't look at Hispanics that join the

Church, or we don't look at any other nationality that joins the Church and tell them that they were once, you

No, we look at them and we embrace them as brothers and sisters in Christ. They have a different skin color than we do, but praise

God, we have the same Savior, Jesus Christ. Paul uses the language of, Such were some of you.

So talking to the sexually immoral, or the adulterer, or the idolater, or the homosexual, you have repented of your sin.

Now you are changed by Jesus Christ. You are not remaining in your sin, and that's the key, and that's what we must understand as we continue to stand firm on these issues in our present culture.

Don't you think that many well -meaning Christians, and even pastors, and preachers, and evangelists, in trying so desperately to only offend with the gospel and not offend in other ways, they go overboard in the way that they treat those who are homosexual, or those involved in homosexual activity,

I should say, to spare their feelings, and will even buy into much of the vocabulary of the world, like referring to people as being a part of the homosexual or gay community, and using that kind of language.

I mean, we don't say, for those of you in the adulterer community, or the thief community, or the drunkard community, why are we using that kind of language when we're referring to those involved in homosexuality and that kind of activity?

Yeah, I think the answer to that is because we've completely capitulated on the issue of the sin of homosexuality.

So our culture, although very much secular and very much postmodern in view, our culture has normalized and has legalized a particular sin, therefore now we have this new category, so to speak.

So although our culture is very much secular and sinful, it still, at some degree, looks down upon adultery.

It still looks down upon the drunkard, but not down upon the homosexual anymore, because now we have this legalization of this lifestyle, and so we've been, you know, preaching and warning about what this is going to mean for our culture moving forward, and there's so many different things we could discuss related to that, but that there is a tsunami that's coming towards America when it comes to what next.

Now, if anyone claims to be oriented in one way or the other, such as, you know, with pedophilia or anything else, now we're going to have to normalize that, right?

Well, that's the people, and those are the types of people that are going to be knocking on the door of the Supreme Court in the future.

So I would just simply say the reason that we have that type of mindset in the Church today, and many people are swaying and changing their position and becoming very much condoning or affirming of the homosexuals, that's because they see the legalization in our culture, and if our culture says it's legal, then now we have to move over and make room on the pew for those people as well.

Now, don't you think there's also an improper broad brushing of sin, where yes, it is true that any and all sin that is not covered with the blood of Christ will send a man or woman to hell?

And we are not to be Pharisees and look upon our sins as unimportant or minuscule or acceptable, and we point to other people and say, look at these horrible humans, just like the

Pharisee in the parable in the temple, where you have the Pharisee contrasted with the prayer of the tax collector,

Lord be merciful to me a sinner, while the Pharisee was just bragging about the things that he did do and did not do.

But at the same time, don't you think there is too much of a, perhaps even an overreaction to Roman Catholicism's mortal and venial sin distinctions and so on?

We have evangelicals making it just as serious to be a glutton at a barbecue or to lose your temper with your child, that's just as serious as being an actively involved unrepentant homosexual.

I mean, these things are getting to be absurd when we broad brush sin like that, if you follow what

I'm saying. Oh, absolutely. I mean, if you look at the implications of sin itself,

I mean, we could say that if you continue to persevere in unrepentant sin, it doesn't matter what sin you choose, you can go ahead and mark it down.

You're not a child of God, you're going to hell. But this idea of just trying to level the playing field across the board between all sin and sin, that type of language is not very helpful when you think about what it means to be engaging in, you know, unrepentant pattern of homosexuality.

I mean, if you're breaking the speed limit, or if you're, you know, murdering somebody, those are two different types of laws you're breaking.

There are different effects, effects to individuals, effects to an entire culture, and so the ripple effect is going to be different in a pond, depending on what size of stone you throw into that pond.

And so it is with sin, it's the same way. So you're going to have different types of sins that are going to affect and have a lasting effect upon a culture and family and church as a whole, depending on what that sin might be.

So yeah, I think that we need to refrain from that type of language of just saying, well, all sin is sin. Well, you know, that still doesn't answer the question.

I mean, if it's sin, it's sin, and it must be dealt with. So we have to be honest and truthful with the word of God.

And nobody really consistently behaves that way, no matter what they say, if they're trying to make all sin equal.

They're not going to treat the child that steals his little brother's toy the same way as if he cut his little brother's hand off.

You know, I mean, nobody behaves that way. But actually, we have to go to our final break right now, and we have a few more people still waiting to have their questions asked, and we will be with you as soon as we can.

But our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com, if you'd like to join them and have your own question asked and answered on the air if we have time before we run out at the six o 'clock eastern time mark.

We're going to be right back with Josh Bice after these messages, so don't go away.

Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am I now seeking the approval of man or of God, or am

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We are a Reformed Baptist Church, and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689.

We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts. We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how

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If you live near Norfolk, Massachusetts or plan to visit our area, please come and join us for worship and fellowship.

You can call us at 508 -528 -5750, that's 508 -528 -5750, or go to our website to email us, listen to past sermons, worship songs, or watch our

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that's providencebaptistchurchma .org, or even on sermonaudio .com. Providence Baptist Church is delighted to sponsor

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Linbrook Baptist Church on 225 Earl Avenue in Linbrook, Long Island, is teaching God's timeless truths in the 21st century.

Our church is far more than a Sunday worship service. It's a place of learning where the scriptures are studied and the preaching of the gospel is clear and relevant.

It's like a gym where one can exercise their faith through community involvement. It's like a hospital for wounded souls where one can find compassionate people in healing.

We're a diverse family of all ages. Enthusiastically serving our Lord Jesus Christ. In fellowship, play, and together.

Hi, I'm Pastor Bob Waldeman, and I invite you to come and join us here at Linbrook Baptist Church and see all that a church can be.

Call Linbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402. That's 516 -599 -9402.

Or visit linbrookbaptist .org. That's linbrookbaptist .org. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen.

If you just tuned us in for the last 90 minutes and the next half hour to come, we have been and will be interviewing

Josh Bice, senior pastor of Praise Mill Baptist Church in Douglasville, Georgia, host of the blog deliveredbygrace .com.

That's deliveredbygrace .com. And director of the G3 Conference, which is being held in January of 2017.

And we hope that you can join us there at this conference. And for more details on it, the website is g3conference .com.

And that's G as in Gospel 3, and that's a number 3, conference .com.

And we hope to see you there and appreciate your prayers for that conference.

And once again, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com if you'd like to join us before we run out of time on today's program.

We do have a listener who has a question that is so good, even though it's off topic,

I will ask it. And this is from Seth in Randleman, North Carolina.

What three books would you recommend for a new convert, obviously besides the

Bible? Wow, that's a very good question.

I would recommend a few different books.

Our Best Life Now would be number one. That would not...

Sorry about that. Yeah, no. So I think that Knowing God by J .I.

Packer would be a really good book to recommend to someone who's a new convert.

I would also recommend someone to read

The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan in the classic. And it's about the

Christian journey. And I think that a lot of times people come to faith, and they think that this whole thing of Christianity is supposed to be just an easy journey through life, and if Christ is our

Savior, then, you know, it's just pie in the sky. It's all just a wonderful, glorious road of just roses, and it's, you know, an easy life.

And I think that John Bunyan was writing from a very broken road, you know, a very difficult time period in church history.

And so that particular book is a great allegory of the

Christian journey, the Christian life, and it helps us understand that we're going to face difficulties, trials, temptations, and just an awful lot of problems along the journey.

And that, you know, along the way, we have to focus on, you know, the

Word of God as being our sufficient guide to get us to the celestial city, so to speak. So I think that, you know, that's of vast importance.

So I would recommend those two books. I'm just thinking off the top of my head, just, you know, things that I could recommend to people.

I think that there are good biographies to read that would be helpful.

So I would recommend, you know, reading good biographies on those who have gone before us in the faith.

So find some good short biographies on people in church history, such as Martin Luther, such as missionaries like Jim Elliott and William Carey and people like that.

I think it's important to understand that there have been people before us who have gone before us and experienced a lot of hardships, but also the mission of the gospel is of great importance.

And then as far as it is related to the doctrines of grace, there is a very short book called

A Journey in Grace by Richard Belcher. Yeah, I interviewed Richard years ago.

Yeah, that short book is very helpful to introduce people to the doctrines of grace and help them to start to grapple with those issues.

So I think a new convert needs to be discipled in the truths of the word of God from a very early point.

Yes, and obviously, if there are people coming out of different backgrounds, the book might be important to reflect the background from which that person has departed.

For instance, a former Roman Catholic who has come to Christ might want to read Dr. James R. White's The Roman Catholic Controversy, which is a phenomenal book.

And he also wrote an excellent book on the doctrines of grace called

The Potter's Freedom, which is really an extraordinary book.

And I obviously could recommend everything that he wrote. And also going back over 100 years in the 19th century, we have

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who you couldn't go wrong with anything that he wrote. Not that he is infallible or was infallible, but pretty much his published works, there's very little in there that you would need to worry about.

Um, I'm sure you would agree with that as well. Absolutely. Uh, we have, uh, somebody who is obviously using a nickname, uh,

Lam Lam, uh, from New York, who says, a

Christ -centered gospel -centered is the theme of the Bible and thus of the church preaching and ministry goal, in which emphasize, it is that mankind are sinners and only by the grace of God, through the salvation of Jesus Christ by faith alone, in Jesus alone, we are helpless in doing good.

While emphasizing grace alone in Christ alone to salvation, how are you going to help the children of God after committed sin, great or small, to honestly distinguish a part, if it was the result of weakness or just an excuse for abusing the grace?

Or how would you suggest practical, uh, information for self -examination?

Okay, well, yeah. Go ahead, I'm sorry. No, I was saying that's a fantastic question.

If, if we're talking about the issue of, you know, sin and self -examination,

I think it's important to, to note a couple of things. First of all, this idea of antinomianism is a plague in the church today.

And this is the idea that everything's, you know, covered under grace, under the umbrella of grace.

And so where sin abounds, grace does much more abound. Well, that's, that's true.

But the problem is you can't, you can't stop there. You must continue to read and hear what the apostle

Paul says. And he also says that we're not allowed to use grace as a license to sin.

So we need to have a good balancing act between the law and the gospel.

So Jesus did not come to abolish the law. He came to be a fulfillment of it.

He came to, to uphold the law, something that we were unable to do. But he did not teach us to refrain from the law.

So we need to live balanced, godly lives that are under submission.

When we read the New Testament and we see words such as, you know, I, Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ.

When we read the New Testament and see how these letters, these epistles often begin, we need to define what that word servant is.

That word doulos, that word means slave. We are under the ownership of God.

And so therefore we must submit to God. Jesus said, if you love me, keep my commandments.

Well, Jesus said, if you love me, keep my commandments, then we're obviously expected to obey the law of God.

And so when we start thinking about self -examination, I would just challenge people and people that I, you know, pastor here within our own church context, if they are living lives of unrepentant sin and their conscience is not harmed in any way because of their continuous pattern of sin,

I just encourage people that say, pastor, I'm struggling with my salvation. How do I have the assurance of salvation?

First of all, we can have assurance, but I point them, instead of pointing them to Spurgeon or Calvin or someone else,

I try to point them to 1 John. So read 1

John paragraph by paragraph and ask this question. Is this me? Am I the person in the mirror of scripture here?

Someone who is just lawless, someone who is seeking to, you know, fulfill the desires of the flesh and of the mind, or am

I someone who is striving to uphold the law of Christ and to be under submission and someone who is, you know, mourning over sin and has broken this because of sin.

And so I think 1 John is very helpful for us to do self -examination and an ongoing self -examination to see if we indeed are in the faith.

There's an awful lot of people, Chris, who have made professions of faith, have been baptized, but unfortunately right now as we're, you know, going through this radio program, they're in hell today.

And so we need to understand that the importance of self -examination to make sure that we're not, you know, an unconverted church member.

What a horrific place to be in. You know, before we go to a couple more listener questions,

I would like you to talk about some of the topics that will be addressed at the next

G3 conference, Reformation 500. Well, sure.

We don't have all of the topics and all of the texts that will be preached assigned to the speakers at this point, but some of the things that people can expect to hear would be issues related to the history of the

Reformation. We will definitely hear passages preached on justification by faith alone in Christ alone.

And we're also going to have some very, you might say, of practical topics that will be addressed as well.

So we're going to have breakout sessions where people can, in essence, they can create their own conference experience in ways that you might not be able to in years past.

And what I mean by that is they can choose what breakout sessions that they need to hear or that they would like to go to.

And so Rosaria Butterfield, for instance, will be there and she'll be leading basically a session where she will be sharing her testimony of conversion and then helping us think through the complicated web related to homosexuality in our present culture and how we reach unbelievers in that particular sin.

But also, you know, there are going to be pastors who are going to be leading breakout sessions related to the local church and the health of the local church and preaching and various different things.

So there's going to be a wide range of topics covered and anyone who's listening can expect a great deal of focus on issues related to faith alone, the

Solos, the five Solos, and various other issues related to the historic

Reformation. Great. And we do have a listener, actually, you mentioned a name that involves our next listener's question.

CJ from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York says,

I really enjoyed your last interview with Rosaria Butterfield very much.

And please understand, I am not accusing your guest of violating the scriptures, but I was wondering if he could just explain something.

I know that you, Mr. Arnzen, and most of your guests are very opposed to a modern trend in evangelicalism called egalitarianism, where there are no gender roles distinguished from one another in the church.

Therefore, since the Apostle Paul says that he forbids a woman to teach or have authority over a man, how do you explain to those bringing up that prohibition when you announce someone like Rosaria Butterfield speaking at your conference?

I understand that she does not have any authority over those in attendance, but she is teaching men who are there.

Well, that's a very good question. Well, first of all, I stand against the idea of a leveling of gender roles within the church.

I don't think that that's helpful language, so I'm certainly not within that camp. I did recently write an article on Beth Moore and why it is,

I think, that we should refrain from supporting her ministry, because I think that she's overstepped her bounds in regards to these very issues that this brother brings to our attention.

So yeah, we're not in any way asking Rosaria Butterfield to come to the

G3 Conference and preach. She will not be, according to the

Scriptures, we don't elevate women to a level of teaching and holding authority with the

Word of God over men, whether it be in a conference context or a local church context.

So rest assured, that's not what's taking place. She is coming to share her testimony of conversion and to talk about what she's written in her book.

She's not going to be teaching, she's not going to be preaching, and she will be answering a lot of questions for those that perhaps have questions about how we could reach people like her who are very much entrapped and entangled in the complicated web of homosexuality.

Yeah, and just because men may learn from something that she says doesn't mean she is in the role of a teacher of men.

Right. You know, if you were to listen to Beth Moore, when she teaches or preaches at conferences of a mixed audience, she does so oftentimes stating,

I'm coming here not holding authority over you, blah, blah, blah. And then she goes on to do just that, to hold authority over men because it's impossible to teach and preach the

Bible without doing so with authority, okay? But that is not what

Rosaria Butterfield will be doing at the G3 Conference. She's not going to stand up and ask for us to turn to a passage of Scripture and then start to teach the

Word of God. That's not what's going to happen. She will be talking about her conversion, how she came to faith in Christ, and talk about what she's written in her book or her books for that matter, and then also talk about how it is that we could perhaps think through reaching people that are entrapped into this false lifestyle.

Yeah, and I know our friend and modern -day hero of mine,

Dr. John MacArthur, is no fan of egalitarianism, and yet he will have

Johnny Erickson Tada do much the same as Rosaria is doing at your conference.

Johnny Erickson Tada. Johnny, by the way, is a woman, for those of you unfamiliar with her. She is a quadriplegic and a very gifted woman, a very gifted sister in Christ, not only in her writing and speaking, but she's a gifted artist and so on.

But she is also a member of Grace Community Church where Dr. John MacArthur pastors, and he has her speak there in the same fashion or capacity that you are having

Rosaria. Obviously different topics, but he would not obviously ever dream of violating biblical gender roles in doing so.

Right, absolutely. Well, I want to make sure that you have at least five minutes now to unburden your heart, to leave our listeners with what you most want etched in their hearts and minds before we leave the program today.

And if we have time for one or two more questions from listeners, we'll take them. But I really want to make sure that you leave our listeners with what you have on your mind as being of the utmost importance today.

Chris, if you give me that opportunity, I would just simply state that as we've talked about the

G3 Conference and as we've talked about this upcoming theme on the Reformation, as we think about the gospel,

I think it's extremely important for us to understand what the true gospel is. And so as we think about Jesus Christ, the son of the living

God, coming from heaven's throne through a virgin's womb to the sinful sod of planet

Earth to live a sinless life, a life that we were incapable of living and to go through the totality of the human life and experience without sinning, upholding the complete full law of God, pleasing

God in all points. And yet being accused of blasphemy, being accused of sin, being accused of being an imposter of the true

Messiah of Israel and to be betrayed and sold off and falsely accused in a kangaroo court and then to be whipped and to be despised and to be crucified on a

Roman cross and hanging there, dying there on the cross. Jesus made a very important statement.

He said, it is finished. To tell us to die, it is finished. And what he was saying was that all of the justice of God has been completely satisfied for every person who would ever bow their knee to Jesus Christ.

And so the complete and full atonement for all of God's elect has been completely paid for in Jesus's sacrifice.

And therefore I would simply state to anyone who has any concern about the

Reformation, perhaps if there's a Roman Catholic who's listening, I would just simply state that the reason that we continue to protest against the

Roman Catholic Church today is because when Jesus said, it is finished, Jesus did not need any help from any person or any church or any organization or any conference or any pastor.

He doesn't need any help from us as individuals to cooperate with him to bring about the salvation of unbelievers.

So what must be done to save sinners has been done in Jesus Christ. And what we must do is we must repent and trust by faith

Jesus Christ's complete and sufficient sacrifice on the cross for our sins, and then we will be saved.

So if there's anyone listening to this program who perhaps is confused about the gospel, they need to realize that Jesus Christ validated the fact that he is the son of God, not just by his death, but by his resurrection.

And so when he said, it is finished, to anyone who would argue that Jesus Christ alone is capable of saving sinners, they need to see that that truth has been validated in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

So we know now that we can trust Christ alone for salvation. And so we have the ability to come to him.

We come to God through the mediator, Jesus Christ, not through popes and priests, not through, you know, an ecclesiastical system called the

Roman Catholic Church. We come to God through Jesus Christ alone. And so that would be my parting statement to anyone who might be listening to the program today.

Praise God. Well, thank you for that. And we have time for one more listener, Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who asks,

I tuned in late, but I understand that your main theme was some of the wrong views of Andy Stanley.

Can you tell us at least two of the most serious before you go off the air? You know,

Chris, we've covered several of these topics. I just think that in our present culture, if pragmatism replaces theology,

I think that you're going to be left with a very superficial and shallow church. So I don't know an awful lot about Andy Stanley's church.

I'm not going to speak to that, but I'm just going to say that I know that that is a very dangerous formula.

So if you have superficial theology, you're going to end up with a very shallow church.

You might have a mile wide, but it's only going to be an inch deep. And so we don't want that.

We want to teach the full counsel of God's word. So if that's your approach to the Bible, then you're obviously going to avoid the controversial issues in our culture.

So if you're not teaching the full counsel of God's word, it's going to be very easy to just bypass the issues related to, say, the sin of homosexuality or other sins in our present culture.

So teach verse by verse, teach through an expository fashion, and then the pastor is held accountable because he must deal with every verse, the easy verse and the difficult verse at the very same time.

Amen. Well, I just want to repeat the G3 Conference website is g3conference .com.

That's G as in gospel, three. That's the number, threeconference .com.

And Praise Mill Baptist Church website is praisemill .com, p -r -a -y -s -mill .com.

It has been such a joy, Pastor Bice, to have you on the program. I look forward to having you back.

In fact, if you wouldn't mind staying on the phone when we go off the air so I could see if I could schedule you for our next interview, perhaps we could go more into depth with Beth Moore.

Absolutely. Chris, it's been an honor to be with you today. Thank you for the invitation. And I want to just let everybody know that I want you to remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater savior than you are a sinner.

We hope you tune in tomorrow to Iron Sharpens Iron for our guest, world -renowned author, Dr. George Grant.