December 17, 2020 Show with Ryan Denton & Joe Jacowitz on “Even if None: Reclaiming Biblical Evangelism”

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

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

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

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions, and now here's your host,

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Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on the 17th day of December, 2020, and I'm thrilled to have back on the program two guests that have been interviewed on this program before, the second of which is joining us in the second hour.

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That will be Pastor Joe Jakowitz of Christ Bible Church in Pleasanton, California.

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He is also the founder of First Love Radio that live streams this program every day, and also the founder of First Love Missions and First Love Publications.

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So stick around so that you can hear Joe's participation with us in the second hour, but joining me right now for the entire program is

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Ryan Denton, who was a pastor on the Navajo Reservation before starting

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Christ in the Wild Ministries, which he has directed since 2016, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome

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Ryan Denton back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. It's great to be back on,

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Chris. And our topic today is going to be Ryan's latest book, Even if None, Reclaiming Biblical Evangelism, and if you could, first of all,

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Ryan, let our listeners know about Christ in the Wild Ministries. Yeah, so like you said,

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I started it while I was actually pastoring on the reservation, and I was doing a lot of evangelism while I was pastoring, and I started realizing

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I'm more gifted as an evangelist, certainly more burdened about that kind of ministry than pastoral ministry, and so my wife and I, we prayed about and sought the

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Lord, and I sought the counsel of a lot of guys who had similar ministries as far as what

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I had in mind for Christ in the Wild Ministries, and we stepped out in faith and started telling people kind of what we're going to do as far as what's

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God burdening us with, and that was to go to people outside of the church walls with the gospel, and of course that's what every

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Christian should do, but for me, the primary emphasis was on open air preaching and really taking it to areas where it's usually overlooked, like places like jails and prisons and homeless shelters and, you know, college campuses, farmers markets, downtowns, and just really wherever you can find a group of people who are presumably lost, and take the gospel to them and preach it, you know, bring the gospel tracts out and try to connect them to local churches.

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You know, we try to keep our ministry underneath local churches.

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For instance, I'm still an elder at a church in El Paso, Texas called

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Old Pass Christian Church, and they sent me out to Central Texas back in August to preach and to evangelize in certain areas around Austin, Houston, San Antonio is not too far, but really just right in the middle of Texas.

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We're taking the gospel to certain areas in that neck of the woods, but even there we're under a church there as far as just accountability and fellowship and things like that.

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So, you know, the goal again is to help equip churches to get out and preach the gospel, preach the gospel ourselves, and you know, by God's grace we see people converted, getting them into local churches and discipled and things like that.

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So that's kind of the gist of our ministry. And that website is ChristInTheWild .com?

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That's correct. ChristInTheWild .com. And before we go into a discussion on your new book,

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Even If None, Reclaiming Biblical Evangelism, I think we should let our listeners know about another book that you co -authored with Scott Smith that I interviewed you on.

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I can't even remember how long ago. It was at least a year ago, I believe, but perhaps even longer ago.

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A Certain Sound, a Primer on Open Air Preaching. Why don't you tell our listeners about that so that their appetites will be wet, not only to get a hold of that book, but also to listen to our interview on that subject.

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Right, yeah, I think it was probably 2000, when was that, 2019, I think, around April or May, when the book was published.

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And yeah, Scott Smith and I, Scott's another open -air preacher out in Raleigh, North Carolina. And yeah, he and I, we co -authored a book, and really our desire for that was the fact that there are so many people who are open -air preaching now, and there's really not a whole lot of material on that.

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And so, for instance, when I started open -air preaching, I really had no idea where to turn or where to go.

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And like most people, you know, you go to YouTube and you start watching videos, and the problem with that is most of the guys on YouTube are

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Pelagians or, you know, far left of even Arminianism, and so there's not a whole lot of quality content.

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And so Scott and I got together and pitched an idea to ourselves, as far as teaming up to write a practical, and we sent that off to, first it was

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Rob Ventura, and then he kicked it out to RHB, and Joe Beek, he actually wrote the forwards to that book, and so they ended up publishing that, and so yeah, you can find that at RHB, their website,

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Reformation Heritage Books. Yes, and that actual website is heritagebooks .org,

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heritagebooks .org for Reformation Heritage Books. You could also get it from CVBBS .com,

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who sponsors my program, that's Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com, and if you want to, after this program's over, if you want to look up in the archive of Iron Troupe and Zion Radio the previous interview that Ryan Denton and I had on his book,

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A Certain Sound, a Primer on Open -Air Preaching, just go to irontroupeandzionradio .com,

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click on Podcast Past Shows, and then type in the search engine

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Ryan Denton, R -Y -A -N -D -E -N -T -O -N, and that interview will come up, the archived recording of that interview will come up.

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But our discussion today is your new book, as I said, Even If None, Reclaiming Biblical Evangelism, and first of all, the title, the main title of the book is quite interesting,

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Even If None, and I have a very strong feeling where you're coming from with that title.

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I'm assuming it has to be in regard to, this is something especially believed by Reformed Christians, those that believe in the doctrines of sovereign grace, that we are to proclaim the gospel to every creature, even if none come to us with a profession of faith, and within our witnessing, get saved.

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I don't know if that's what you meant by that, but why don't you tell us? Sure, and really, that's definitely part of it, and also, what happens if no one gets saved, in the sense of, how do we, really, the point of the book is to ask the question, what does it mean to be successful in evangelism?

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And, you know, to clarify right off the bat, the book is not saying that the one is not important, you know, as far as people being saved.

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I think, you know, for all of us, we want people to be saved. We would love for good biblical churches to explode with growth, and you know, every time we go out and share the gospel, we see people converted.

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We would love that, but in reality, we live in a culture that's very gospel -hardened, and you know, when you take the gospel to the lost, by and large, there's not a lot of conversions taking place.

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And even, you know, healthy, good biblical churches are not seeing this huge explosion of growth, and so the difficulty becomes, if we're evangelizing, or let's say we're pastoring, or whatever kind of ministry we're in, if we're doing these things for the sake of seeing people saved primarily, then what happens if that doesn't happen?

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And I think for most of American Christianity, the consequence becomes, well, we have to try something else other than what

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God tells us to do as far as how we see people saved, which is just declaring the gospel. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the

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Word of God. And so, you know, in our culture today, even if, you know, we hear the saying, even if one.

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So, in other words, you go out and you share the gospel, and it's not to say that people who say this have bad motives, or even unbiblical motives, it's not to say that, but it is to say that even the phrase, even if one, indicates that our view of evangelism is, it's focused more on the results rather than on whether or not it's biblical as far as what we're doing.

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And if it's biblical, regardless if someone gets saved or not, like you mentioned earlier, it's still going, you know, the gospel's still glorifying

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God, people are still hearing the things of Christ, and we're still being faithful to the gospel. And one last thing, it's not to say that we should just check a box when we go and evangelize, and we say, okay, we do our duty, and, you know, we did it, and that's it.

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You know, it should be motivated by our love for Christ and by our love for people. But it is to say that anything other than a biblical view of evangelism, which is simply sharing the gospel, calling people to believe it, is going to wind up in the area of pragmatism.

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And that's not biblical. Right. And God is glorified when His truth is declared and when error is exposed and refuted.

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And also, we must never forget, as has been the case in history, when missionaries went out on a very dangerous mission field that was practically, if not completely, void of any presence of Christianity, the fact that no one comes to Christ while that missionary is evangelizing and proclaiming the gospel and just being obedient to Christ, if he never sees a soul while he is there or while he is alive, receive the gospel, embrace it, and become a

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Christian. That does not mean that his labors were in vain, even in an earthly sense, because there have been circumstances when very little, if any, fruit had been borne by the labors of a particular missionary in a particular foreign field.

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But after that missionary had passed on, the crop where the seeds had been planted and watered sprung up, and there have been great revivals that took place in the areas that are now, even today, thriving with Christianity, even though the first missionary efforts, in an earthly sense and according to human beings, may have been viewed as a complete failure.

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A lot of the book focuses on William Carey, and that's exactly what happened to him. He was a guy who was in England, and he was a burden for the people in India.

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He was trying to get people motivated and get people behind him to support him to get out there and to do it, and he couldn't find hardly anybody until,

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I think it was Fuller who actually, Andrew Fuller, came around and really helped him out to get out to India.

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But the point is, when he got to India, he was there for like five or six years before he saw a single person saved.

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Now, if you could imagine being William Carey, and nobody really believes that what you're doing is biblical in the first place.

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This was in the late 1700s, a lot of hyper -Calvinism going on, and nobody really was motivated that what

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William Carey was doing, you know, other than a few people, nobody was really motivated that what

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William Carey was doing was correct, and they weren't convinced of that. But when he goes out there, you can imagine how eager he would have been to send back some kind of report or letter saying, yes, people are being saved left and right, but he didn't have that.

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And so, there's a lot of good quotes from Carey about how, you know, during that time that he's out there, he has nothing to rest on except the attributes of God he's there.

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And that's his only motivation. Now, of course, you know, we know that a revival actually does break out, but it took five or six years and just unimaginable difficulties.

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His wife's going insane, you know, their kids are dead, and he just keeps plowing on, even if he's not seeing anything.

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So for him, that's a great example of somebody who would be considered a very unsuccessful missionary in the eyes of the world, in the eyes of the

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American church, but in reality, God is doing things behind the scenes that we can't see. And another example to hit on this is,

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I've heard Michael Bacon actually say that he believed that, you know, and he admits that you can't gauge this tangibly, but he believes that the revivals in the 1700s were a result of the prayers of the

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Puritans in the 1600s when they're praying for this revival that they never saw. And yet, you know, later on, a hundred years later or whatever, in the same areas where they're praying for revival,

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God actually does bring revival. And so, you know, even when it comes to prayer, there's a lot of encouragement there, because we know that even if we're not seeing things take place tangibly right in front of us, we don't know what

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God is doing behind the scenes. And so, you know, if we're faithful to the Gospel, faithful to what

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Scripture says to do as far as how we're to go about these things, evangelism, missions, things like that, we can trust that God's going to do a work, and we can trust that that's successful.

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By the way, tomorrow, my guest on Iron Trouper and Zion Radio will be Dr. Michael Hagen, and we're going to be discussing his book,

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Strangers and Pilgrims on the Earth, Remembering the Mayflower Pilgrims from 1620 to 2020.

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Right. Glad I could give a little plug there. Yeah, I love interviewing you. Yeah, I took a class from him at Puritan Seminary back in the summer, and it was terrific.

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It was on revivals in the Reformed tradition. Praise God. And going back to what we were just talking about, the mission field, it's tragedy when you hear about these non -Reformed denominations, and a very large one.

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Well, I'll just say it, because I know that my friends who are in the Southern Baptist Convention who are theologically

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Reformed would readily admit this and speak about it publicly often, but it's sad that denominations like the

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Southern Baptist Convention, the element in it that is not Reformed, which is the majority these days, even though it was founded in the 19th century completely by Calvinists, but the mission boards will be very quick to yank people off the mission field if they don't produce numbers.

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It's almost like a sales representative for a paper company or some other manufacturer.

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If the sales rep is failing miserably making sales, then the company will either yank him out of that area and put him in another area or fire him, whatever the case is, but the gospel of Jesus Christ is an entirely different matter than selling paper or other products.

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It's funny you mention that. I went to the North American mission board for the

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Southern Baptist Convention a year ago or so, and I don't know if it's still up there, but I wrote down the quote in the book.

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But I went to their website, and this is not to just blindly knock the

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SBC. I'm an ordained minister in the SBC. I was a pastor on the SBC Church.

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I'm no longer part of the SBC, but in a sense, I don't want to just blindside them with this, but this is the reality.

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When you go to their website, it said, so if you go to the Go page under their website, as far as like, if I wanted to go

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Planet Church, and this is in North America, if I wanted to Planet Church, I go to their website,

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I click the Go tab, and it was really disappointing to find that under that tab it says something like, we want to help you connect people to your story, and something like, give us the chance to, or you know, tell us how to reach people with your story.

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And it was all about the missionary or whoever, you know, the church planter, I guess. It was all about reaching people with you and with your background and with your testimony and with, you know, and the emphasis was on the person and not

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Christ. And to me, that was, that's a huge example of, it's just the epitome of what's going on right there, not just in the

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SBC, but really in any of these denominations, when they start to go left, and they start to drift into Arminianism, this is always the practical result of it.

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It's just the outworking of that theology is, I have to do everything I can to make the person decide for Jesus Christ, and if the gospel's not working,

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I've got to find something else. And so, you know, in our culture today, it's a gospel -hardened area, gospel -ignorant, of course, too, but in reality, again, you're not seeing a lot of people say, so if I'm a church planter, and I'm going out there and I want to start a church, but I'm not seeing anybody say, but I know, just like you said, a certain denomination that I'm under requires, let's say, 20 people in three years, and I'm not seeing that happen.

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Well, necessarily, I'm going to water down the gospel, I'm going to make it easier. In other words, I'm not going to tell them about counting the cost,

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I'm not going to, I'm going to give everything just plain and simple, I'm going to cater to the fancies of, you know, majority of times lost human beings, and, you know, it's sad that that's the way these denominations work, but that's just how it is, and that's why

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I think, you know, it's tragic, really, because if you're part of the

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SBC, what do you do? And, you know, I mean, you know better than I do, having interviewed all the guys that you do, it's not a pretty situation right now, but it is the outworking to me, in my mind, of what happens when you become unbiblical in your theology.

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Well, speaking of people who I interview, one of my favorite guests that I've ever interviewed, and, in fact, he is one of my favorite preachers of all time, if not my very favorite preacher of all time,

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Dr. Conrad M. Bewe, pastor of Kabrata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, Africa, whom

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I have had the privilege and honor to call my friend since 1995, and I'm looking forward to him returning to the states, as he has promised in 2021, at some point he will be my speaker for my biannual

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Iron Shepherd Zion Radio Pastors Luncheon, and I'm really looking forward to that. But Dr.

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M. Bewe, who wrote the foreword to your book, I want to read just one chapter, not one chapter, one paragraph of his foreword for our listeners.

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A person who reads Ryan Denton's book should not simply read it for the purpose of increasing head knowledge, but rather for the purpose of joining the growing number of God's children who take the work of evangelism seriously.

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We have done enough talking. Let us fold our sleeves and get to work.

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We have the true gospel. Let us ensure that it is communicated collectively and individually to those who need to hear it.

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Let us proceed to pray that the Lord will own our labors, so that with the help of the

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Holy Spirit, we may see more spiritual babies being born and nurtured in our churches.

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Also, I'd like to read the commendations for this book by three other men who

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I know personally very well and love, and who I've interviewed on this program.

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First of all, Dr. Tom Nettles, Senior Professor of Historical Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

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Ryan Denton has given us an essential handbook on evangelism. It is like eating frozen, concentrated orange juice straight from the cylinder.

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Then, Justin Peters, who actually was very recently one of my Iron Trip and Zion Radio Pastor's Luncheon speakers,

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Justin Peters of Justin Peters Ministry, says, I really, really loved this book.

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Ryan Denton gives both a sobering assessment of modern evangelical methods, as well as a motivating challenge for believers to do evangelism as God has prescribed it to be done.

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And then finally, Sai Ten Brugenkait, another dear friend, says, The authority of this book is scripture.

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The wealth of biblical references and exhaustive quotes from evangelists of old are alone worth getting this book.

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Well, those are just some of the folks that have written endorsements for this book, and we will be talking more about that when we return from our first station break.

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

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

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

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Let's say you are in disagreement with something that you're asking about.

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You're in disagreement with your own pastors, for instance. Or you're a pastor, and you've come to a conclusion about a matter that puts you at odds with your own fellow elders or your denomination.

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then please, for general questions, give us at least your first name, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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USA. Don't go away. We're going to be right back with Brian Denton and more of our discussion on Even If None, Reclaiming Biblical Evangelism, right after these messages from our sponsors.

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Lord Jesus Christ. And of course the end of which we strive is the glory of God.

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If you live near Franklin, Tennessee, and Franklin is just south of Nashville, maybe 10 minutes, or you are visiting this area, or you have friends and loved ones nearby, we hope you will join us some

35:26

Lord's Day in worshiping our God and Savior. Please feel free to contact me if you have more questions about Grace Church at Franklin.

35:36

Our website is gracechurchatfranklin .org. That's gracechurchatfranklin .org.

35:44

This is Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our

35:49

Sovereign Lord God, Savior, and King Jesus Christ today and always.

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We are excited to announce another new member of the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio advertising family,

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In Psalm 139 verse 14, the psalmist offers praise to the Lord like this,

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He saw God's goodness and mercy, kindness, and the beauty in what

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God has designed, and he has erupted into praise. In any crisis or problem, brothers and sisters, our only fallback position is to trust

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God's design. And once we do, there is nothing for us to do but to erupt in praise to him.

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When the whole world is searching for a solution, God, in his infinite mercy, has given us what we need to address this illness, which can be pretty serious.

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Such is the beauty of his design. Knowing that design, how can we not erupt in praise to our great

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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 and healing.

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Call 1 -800 -669 -4870. Welcome back, this is

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Chris Sarnes, and if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours is

41:21

Ryan Denton, who is founder of Christ in the Wild Ministries, and we are discussing his book,

41:28

Even if None, Reclaiming Biblical Evangelism. Joining us during the second hour, in about a half hour from now, will be

41:36

Joe Jakowitz, the founder of First Love Radio and First Love Publications. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

41:47

chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Please give us at least your first name, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, if you live outside the

41:58

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

42:04

And Ryan, perhaps we should make sure that you define evangelism.

42:13

Some folks have even used that as an adjective for many years, that only means that you're talking about anything aggressively and passionately that you want to share with others.

42:28

But people even have been using it for secular reasons as an adjective these days.

42:35

But if you could tell us, what is evangelism? So if you look to...

42:41

I'm going to open up right here. By the way, your voice sounds completely different than it did before. You're really muffled now.

42:47

Yeah, I know. I was opening up the... I've got a Bible here. I was opening it up. But Acts chapter 4...

42:54

I mean, excuse me, Acts chapter 8. What you have there is... So most of the time, when people define evangelism, they define it in terms of results.

43:02

In other words, if you go out and you share the gospel and people get saved, that's evangelism. And in fact,

43:08

I have a few quotes in my book from a guy named Darius Salter and another guy named

43:13

Peter Wagner. And they're Arminians, and they took guys like Martin Luther and J .I.

43:21

Packer who define evangelism as simply sharing the gospel, setting forth the things of Christ.

43:27

And again, you see that... What I was going to say is you see that in Acts chapter 8, especially I think it's verse 4.

43:33

But they're going around, and the word that the Bible uses there is gospelizing, and that's whenever the disciples are scattered from Jerusalem and they're going around and they're gospelizing.

43:42

And that's the word that... That's where we get the word evangelism from. And that's all they're doing.

43:48

And so whenever, let's say, Luther or J .I. Packer, they define evangelism, the

43:54

Puritans define evangelism as sharing the gospel. Well, what happens is people who are more

44:02

Arminian -minded, whether or not they know it, they come in and they'll say, okay, well, that's actually...

44:07

The Darius Salter guy, he said that Packer's and Luther's definition of evangelism is deficient.

44:15

And the reason is because, and these are his words more or less, is that they left no room for the results.

44:21

And so in other words, he's saying that you can only define evangelism if you see results. And to me, this is so ironic, because Christ, a lot of his parables, and a lot of the things that Christ says, is for this...

44:36

He says it to guard against appearances. For instance, the parable of the sower, you know, the soils, where the sower goes out and he sows seed on certain soils, and three of the...

44:49

Well, actually, two of the four soils, looks like this is genuine conversion taking place.

44:54

You know, the parable, where when the seed falls on the shallow soil and the plant springs up and the sun hits it, but then it withers.

45:04

Whenever persecution and trials come, and then the other is when it comes up and it's choked out by the weeds, and he says this is people, you know, who get bogged down by the cares of this world and by the deceitfulness of riches.

45:16

And his point there is, is that if I go out and I evangelize, and it looks like somebody is saved, well, that might very well be the case, and I hope it is, and I think we should give it the benefit of the doubt.

45:30

However, we should also know that how many times has it looked like somebody has been saved, and they turn out not to be saved?

45:36

Or how many times... I've had this happen several times. One time we were preaching in Scotland, and we had a tour out there with Jeremiah Cry Ministries, and I met a guy out there, and he would come out and listen to us preach, and he was clearly lost.

45:52

He was saying he was lost, and we exchanged contact information for, I think it was on Facebook, and so two years later, two years later, he comes out and he sends me a message on Facebook, and he says, when you guys came out and you preached the gospel with me, to me, he says it's stuck with me ever since, and he said that he's basically pricked in his soul, and, you know, now he's looking for a church to go to.

46:20

He said he had a Bible, and he's been reading it, and things like that, and this is two years later, and this happens very frequently, actually, where you get these emails from people who said, hey, you know, so -and -so evangelized or said something to me, you know, a week ago or a month ago, and in the moment you didn't see anything, but you don't know how that arrow's going to stick, and so, you know,

46:42

Christ made it very clear in a lot of things she says that if you go by appearances only, you'll be deceived, and I think the same thing happens in evangelism all the time, and so I think that's why it's so fallacious for guys like Darius Seltzer and these other guys who actually come out and say these things, because only

47:02

God knows the heart, and God is the one who knows whether or not a person's truly converted, so if we base our evangelism on whether or not someone's truly converted, how do we ever know, you know?

47:13

And so, again, that's to me why evangelism, once the Scripture shows that it's simply to set forth the things of Christ, and the results are up to God, and we're not the ones who cause the results.

47:25

Now, I would say that evangelism includes calling people to believe, calling people to turn to Christ, calling people to repent, and things like that, but it is to say that if that takes place, it's

47:35

God's doing who does it, and not ours. Yes, we must never forget that some plant seeds, some water them, but it is

47:45

God who brings the increase, and we can't manufacture that, and unfortunately, many people do for the sake of reporting numbers, and very often, or very often, that is to boast about how successful they are because of their own gifts, and their own zeal and aggressiveness, and on and on.

48:12

We have a listener, who happens to be a very faithful listener, and a very generous supporter, financially, of this program.

48:20

His name is Grady, from Asheboro, North Carolina. Hello, brothers. For about 30 years now, our

48:27

Heavenly Father has allowed me the privilege of sharing the gospel to truckers in our country. As a professional truck driver, out stop time, as a professional truck driver, out stop time is limited.

48:43

Maybe he meant hour. Hour stop time is limited, so I hand out

48:48

New Testaments with Psalms and Proverbs, a pole washer tract, The Gospel of Jesus Christ, and a booklet by either

48:55

John Blanchard or Todd Friel. I pray that our Lord will use these to reach truckers, because the fields are certainly white unto harvest.

49:07

How do you handle evangelism when you're limited on time with someone? I like that he does that.

49:15

One of my earliest ministries was actually a truck stop ministry.

49:23

At these truck stops, they would set up one of the trailers, and they had it set up like a chapel, so you go in there and you preach to truckers.

49:30

So that's pretty cool that he does that. But yeah, that's a great question. Tracks are great. I mean, you know, because the thing is, it goes kind of, to me, for me, you know, it goes back to what you asked earlier about what is evangelism.

49:43

And so, you know, the Scripture says faith comes by hearing, hearing by the Word of God, the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation, things like that.

49:51

But that does not necessarily mean that it's only verbally done. So any time the content of the

49:58

Gospel is being conveyed to somebody, that to me is evangelism.

50:03

And so Gospel tracks are great, especially in that context. I mean, that's why, you know, when we go out and evangelize, let's say in an open -air preaching setting or, you know, just some intentional public square evangelism, a lot of the people that we see, we see them for like five seconds, and that's all we have.

50:21

And so that's where Gospel tracks are terrific. In fact, I just, the elder at the church where we're attending now in Central Texas, he was telling me a story about a guy who actually went into the bathroom and somebody had left the

50:33

Gospel track in the bathroom. And so while he's using the bathroom, he's reading the Gospel track. And he had heard the Gospel several times before this, but he said for whatever reason, when he was in the bathroom reading this

50:44

Gospel track, it just, it clicked. Everything just clicked and he was converted. And, you know, so I mean, especially nowadays with COVID, you know,

50:53

I think we're all having to be more or less a little creative in the ways that we do it.

50:59

And I think there's room for that. I think Scripture gives room for that, as long as we're staying within the parameters of sharing the

51:07

Gospel. And so it sounds like he's doing exactly what I would suggest doing, you know, as far as the

51:14

Gospel tracks and the New Testaments. And again, I think the beauty of it is we trust in a sovereign

51:21

God who His sheep are going to hear His voice, and He's going to use these means to save the lost, period.

51:28

That's how He's always done it. He uses means. He uses human beings to do it. So that's the beauty of being a

51:34

Biblical Reformed Christian, is that we trust a God who's mighty enough to save, and He uses these endeavors that might look like they're trivial, you know, handing out a

51:45

Gospel track or laying it in a toilet or on top of a toilet, something like that. You know, these things might not look like anything, but I mean, this is how

51:52

God saves people. This is how God builds His Church. And so I think that's great what the guy's doing. Yes, and I remember at a

52:00

Jeremiah Cry conference that I attended in Pensacola, Florida, years ago, where I actually met

52:07

Si Ten Bruggencate and some other folks. I met Jeff Durbin there and some others for the first time.

52:15

But I remember Jeff Pollard, the current Executive Director of Chapel Library, who mainly produces tracks and very affordable brief booklets, some of them which are excerpts of the writings of men like Charles Spurgeon and some of the greatest preachers and teachers that have ever lived.

52:38

And some of them are more contemporary, but I think most of them are from brethren of old who are now in heaven.

52:44

But he coined a phrase, at least I think he coined it, during a message that he was giving there at the conference.

52:51

He called tracks paper missionaries. And I love that. But we have to go to our break right now, our midway break.

52:59

This is a longer than normal break, folks. I hope that you will be patient with us. But in the middle of the show every day, we take a longer than normal break because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

53:09

FM, in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break because the FCC requires them to localize this program to Lake City, Florida, so they have to air their own public service announcements and other local things that connect us to Lake City, Florida.

53:25

While they do that, we air our own globally heard commercials. So please use this time wisely.

53:32

Write down as much of the information as you can for as many of our advertisers as you can so that you can more frequently and successfully patronize our advertisers to keep them happy so that they will continue sponsoring this program because we need their finances to exist.

53:46

We cannot exist without their financial support, without the financial support of our advertisers. But also use this time to send in a question for Ryan Denton on evangelism to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com,

53:59

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

54:10

USA. And don't go away. We'll be right back with Ryan Denton after these messages. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries and the

54:19

Dividing Line webcast here. Although God has brought me all over the globe for many years to teach, preach, and debate at numerous venues, some of my very fondest memories are from those precious times of fellowship with Pastor Rich Jensen and the brethren at Hope Reform Baptist Church, now located at their new, beautiful facilities in Corham, Long Island, New York.

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I've had the privilege of opening God's Word from their pulpit on many occasions, have led youth retreats for them, and have always been thrilled to see their members filling many seats at my

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I also want to congratulate Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham for their recent appointment of Pastor Rich Jensen's co -elder,

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Pastor Christopher McDowell. For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net.

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That's hopereformedli .net or call 631 -696 -5711.

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That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island that you heard about them from James White on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is sponsored by Harvey Cedars, a year -round Bible conference and retreat center nestled on the

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For generations, Christians have enjoyed gathering and growing at Harvey Cedars. Each year, thousands of high school and college students come and learn more about God's Word.

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This is Pastor Bill Sousa, Grace Church at Franklin, here in the beautiful state of Tennessee.

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Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support Iron Sharpens Iron Radio financially.

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Grace Church at Franklin is an independent, autonomous body of believers which strives to clearly declare the whole counsel of God as revealed in Scripture through the person and work of our

57:46

Lord Jesus Christ. And, of course, the end for which we strive is the glory of God.

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If you live near Franklin, Tennessee, and Franklin is just south of Nashville, maybe 10 minutes, or you are visiting this area, or you have friends and loved ones nearby, we hope you will join us some

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Lord's Day in worshiping our God and Savior. Please feel free to contact me if you have more questions about Grace Church at Franklin.

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Our website is gracechurchatfranklin .org. That's gracechurchatfranklin .org.

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This is Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our

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Sovereign Lord, God, Savior, and King Jesus Christ today and always.

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Hi, I'm Buzz Taylor, frequent co -host with Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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01:00:07

Every day at thousands of community centers, high schools, middle schools, juvenile institutions, coffee shops, and local hangouts,

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Call 1 -800 -669 -4870. Hi, this is

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John Sampson, pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona. Taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnson and the

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Iron Sharpens Iron podcast. I consider Chris a true friend and a man of high integrity. He's a skilled interviewer who's not afraid to ask the big penetrating questions.

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While always defending the key doctrines of the Christian faith, I've always been happy to point people to this podcast, knowing it's one of the very few safe places on the internet where folk won't be led astray.

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I believe this podcast needs to be heard far and wide. This is a day of great spiritual compromise, and yet God has raised

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I'm pleased to do so, and would like to ask you to prayerfully consider joining me in supporting

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I know it would be a huge encouragement to Chris if you would. All the details can be found at ironsharpensironradio .com,

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Greetings in the matchless name of our Lord Jesus Christ. My name is Bhanu Gadi. I'm a pharmacist in New York, which is the epicenter of the latest crisis the world is going through.

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In Psalm 139, verse 14, the psalmist offers praise to the Lord like this,

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I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made, and wondrous are your works that my soul knows very well.

01:06:15

He saw God's goodness and mercy, kindness, and the beauty in what

01:06:20

God has designed, and he has erupted into praise. In any crisis or problem, brothers and sisters, our only fallback position is to trust

01:06:29

God's design. And once we do, there is nothing for us to do but to erupt in praise to him.

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When the whole world is searching for a solution, God in his infinite mercy has given us what we need to address this illness, which can be pretty serious.

01:06:46

Such is the beauty of his design. Knowing that design, how can we not erupt in praise to our great

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God like the psalmist did? May God bless you and give all of us wisdom to see greater things in his design.

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Thank you. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

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If you've watched my Dividing Line webcast often enough, you know I have a great love for getting Bibles and other documents vital to my ministry rebound to preserve and ensure their longevity.

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01:12:00

Before we return to our guest today, Ryan Denton, who is discussing his book,

01:12:07

Even If None, Reclaiming Biblical Evangelism. He's also going to be joined by my dear friend

01:12:12

Joe Jackowitz, pastor of Christ Bible Church in Pleasanton, California, in the

01:12:19

Dublin, California area, who is also founder of First Love Radio, who live -streams this program, and First Love Publications, who published this book by Ryan Denton, Even If None.

01:12:32

We'll be returning to that discussion momentarily, but first, I have some important announcements to make.

01:12:39

Tomorrow, as I said earlier, we are going to be joined once again by my dear friend Dr. Michael A .G.

01:12:45

Haken, and he is going to be discussing his new book that he edited and contributed to,

01:12:52

Strangers and Pilgrims on Earth, Remembering the Mayflower Pilgrims, from 1620 to 2020.

01:13:00

I'm looking forward with bated breath to that interview tomorrow. Can't wait. I always love interviewing

01:13:06

Dr. Michael Haken. Then on Monday, we have, for the first time ever, well, for the second time ever in the history of this show, there are going to be guests, or should

01:13:20

I say guest hosts, filling in for me. I have only done that once before, early on in the show, when we were broadcasting out of WNYG and WGBB in Babylon, Long Island, New York, when my friend

01:13:33

Pastor Jim Capo and Christian recording artist Steve Camp hosted my show in my absence.

01:13:41

Well, this is going to be the second time that I'm having fill -in hosts on Monday, but it will be the first time that Dr.

01:13:50

James R. White has ever filled in as a host. He has been a guest on this program many times.

01:13:56

In fact, he was my very first guest ever on the show, and he was also my first guest when

01:14:01

I relaunched the program from Pennsylvania in 2015. But he has never hosted the show before, and he's going to be joined by his co -host,

01:14:13

Pastor Bill Shishko of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Deer Park, Long Island, New York, known as The Haven.

01:14:23

And they, interestingly enough, debated each other on infant baptism a number of years ago.

01:14:30

Many of you may have seen the now -infamous stand -up comedy routine that I did at the beginning of that debate.

01:14:37

I orchestrated and emceed that debate between Dr. White and Pastor Shishko on infant baptism.

01:14:43

But even though they were taking opposite ends, representing opposite sides of that issue, infant baptism, in that debate, they have always been and remain very good friends and highly regard each other as brothers in Christ and as apologists and biblically knowledgeable servants of God.

01:15:06

But they're going to be hosting the show together, and I hope you tune in to that. I can't wait to hear what they have to say myself.

01:15:14

And also, folks, if you love this show and you don't want it to disappear from the airwaves, please go to www .IanTruppAndZionRadio .com,

01:15:21

click Support, then click Click to Donate Now. You can donate instantly with a debit or credit card by doing that.

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01:16:03

Folks, we have been hit very hard financially during this coronavirus pandemic because of the hysteria involved in it.

01:16:11

People's businesses have been seriously damaged financially as a result of this hysteria, and that includes business owners that are in our audience who have been forced to cut back, if not eliminate their donating, at least for the time being, hopefully.

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01:16:39

Go to www .IanTruppAndZionRadio .com, click Support, then click Click to Donate Now. Please don't ever siphon money away from your regular giving that you are accustomed to to your own local church in order to give to www .IanTruppAndZionRadio

01:16:51

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01:17:08

.com. Those two things are commands of God providing for your church and your family. Providing for my radio show is not a command of God, obviously.

01:17:15

But if you are blessed financially above and beyond your ability to obey those two commands, you do have extra money to use for benevolent purposes and recreational purposes and other things, then please help us out if you really don't want us to go away.

01:17:29

Please go to www .IanTruppAndZionRadio .com, click Support, then click Click to Donate Now. Also, folks, if you are not a member of a local

01:17:37

Bible -believing church, no matter where on the planet Earth you live, I may be able to help you find a church that is biblically faithful.

01:17:43

I have extensive lists of churches all over the globe, and I have helped people find churches in our audience from all parts of the world, churches sometimes that are in a minute's drive from their own home.

01:17:55

That they didn't even know existed, or they didn't know were biblically faithful. So, if you need help finding a church, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

01:18:04

and put I need a church in the subject line. That's chrisarnson at gmail .com, I need a church in the subject line.

01:18:10

And that's also the email address to send in a question to our guest Ryan Denton. And again, the theme is his book,

01:18:18

Even If None, Reforming Biblical Evangelism. And our email address again is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:18:26

chrisarnson at gmail .com, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

01:18:31

USA. And I believe we have been joined also by Pastor Joe Jackowitz of Christ Bible Church in Pleasanton, California.

01:18:40

Are you not there, Joe? I am here. Great, praise God, brother. And since your publishing ministry that you founded,

01:18:49

First Love Publishing, in addition to First Love Radio, which live streams this program, and First Love Missions, why don't you tell us about First Love Publishing, since you are the ones that brought

01:19:01

Even If None by Ryan Denton into print. Well, greetings,

01:19:07

Chris, and hello to your audience, and to my good friend, Ryan Denton. Hey, Joe, good to hear from you, brother.

01:19:14

Same to you, it's the first time we've said greetings on the radio together. That's right. It's kind of like greeting each other just on a regular phone call.

01:19:23

Indeed, Chris is a bystander, he's a spectator. Right. Anyway, thank you for asking,

01:19:31

Chris. First Love Publications was founded in 2006 with the publishing of a book on missions written by Cliff Heller, missionary to Papua New Guinea for 55 years, a

01:19:45

New Testament missionary. Since then, we have about 60 publications, books, booklets, and tracts, mostly books, and we distribute them free of charge all around the world at pastors' conferences,

01:20:00

Bible conferences, and we also receive orders online at firstlovepublications .org,

01:20:10

firstlovepublications .org, all one word, and you can order your free book online. And I would like to make a special offer today to our listeners.

01:20:21

If you want the book that's been spoken of over the last hour and a half,

01:20:28

No Uncertain Sound by Ryan Denton, or I'm sorry, Even If None, that's the book we're talking about.

01:20:35

His other book is A Certain Sound. But if you want Even If None, the book we publish, go to firstlovepublications .org,

01:20:44

and on page 2 of the list of books, you'll see Even If None. Click on it and put it in the cart and order it, and we'll get that out to you in the mail as soon as possible.

01:20:57

And that's free of charge? Yes. Well, praise God. Yes, and so that's firstlovepublications, of course.

01:21:08

First Love Radio is a 24 -7 radio station online. You're listening to Iron Sharpens Iron right now through First Love Radio, and we are so blessed to have

01:21:21

Chris's program on our station. It actually anchors our station, and it's growing in listenership and in popularity.

01:21:30

And so we're so blessed to be partners with you, Chris, in this ministry of sharing God's Word through your radio program.

01:21:39

And then we have First Love Missions, which is a missions organization where we, again, bring the gospel into many different countries.

01:21:49

We accompany our gospel preaching and teaching seminars and conferences with free book distribution.

01:21:56

We've given away over $300 ,000 worth of books, booklets, and tracts to pastors, to believers at these conferences for over 25 years.

01:22:08

And right now our missions ministry is a little restricted because of the lack of being able to fly to certain countries because of the

01:22:18

COVID -19 virus, but we're still able to distribute books overseas in spite of the lack of travel.

01:22:26

And then our newest venture is Grace Bible University, which we hope to offer a Bachelor of Theology degree through two formats, online and hard copies of the courses free of charge, free of charge.

01:22:41

And that's in the works right now. We just published our first course, a book along with a student study guide and a leader study guide on the sovereignty of God.

01:22:53

And so those are the four ministries of First Love Ministries. You can find a lot more information about them by going to two different websites.

01:23:02

First, you can go to firstloveministries .org. That's firstloveministries .org.

01:23:09

And you'll have three of the four organizations right there on one website. Or you can go directly, if you want the book, even if none, you can go directly to firstlovepublications .org,

01:23:21

firstlovepublications .org. And as far as the church, Christ Bible Church, we have our own website, christbiblechurch .org.

01:23:30

We're located in Northern California, about 30 miles east of San Francisco in the

01:23:36

Bay Area. We have a congregation here in the East Bay, and we'd love to have you join us.

01:23:44

Praise God. That website is christbiblechurch .org. Praise God. Now, one quick question. I know that a part of this ministry,

01:23:51

First Love Publications, is that you never charge for books, which is absolutely amazing.

01:23:57

Now, is any individual eligible to receive any of your books for free, or do you have to be a part of a church?

01:24:04

Do you have to use it as a missionary endeavor? How do they get these books for free, and who is offered these books for free?

01:24:13

No, anybody can order the books. We have a limit of one a month, of course, because we don't have an unending supply.

01:24:21

We do have a limit in our inventory. But one a month, if there's a special need, just send us an e -mail, and we'll consider that on a case -by -case basis, like if you have a conference.

01:24:34

We just sent, as a matter of fact, Ryan, what, 100 copies of Even If None for your conference in Texas?

01:24:41

Yes, I, Tim Brudenkait, and I did a series on evangelism and apologetics, and we had 100 books from First Love Publications.

01:24:51

Well, I'm assuming you must be a presuppositionalist, Ryan, if you're preaching with Tim Brudenkait. Yes, sir, yes, totally.

01:25:00

In fact, in this book, Even If None, there's a chapter, about 12 or 13 pages, devoted to the necessity of presuppositional apologetics when you're doing evangelism.

01:25:10

Now, could you just briefly summarize what that means, for the sake of our listeners who don't know? Well, it's an apologetic that is distinctively

01:25:22

Reformed, and it goes back, really, all the way to Augustine, but even to the

01:25:27

Apostle Paul. And it starts with the presupposition that what God's Word says is true, and that God's Word itself is truth, and that is what we argue from.

01:25:39

And so we don't try to bring in, necessarily, as far as making an ultimate argument.

01:25:45

We're not depending upon appealing to man's reason. We're appealing to God's Word as our standard, and that's what we stick with, and that's what we use as our weapon when we're doing apologetics, which is why it's so great for evangelism, because that's how evangelism should work also.

01:26:01

By the way, I want to add something here about First Love publications. Unfortunately, most of us have a mindset that goes along with the slogan, you get what you pay for, and very often, maybe even most often, that's true.

01:26:18

And what that usually means is if you are getting something for free, or if you're hardly paying anything for it, it is either garbage or looks like garbage.

01:26:32

You could have an excellent Christian book. You might have a book that was authored by Charles Adams Spurgeon, but it might be on really cheap paper that's going to fall apart in a few years, and it might have a horrible cover, etc.

01:26:49

First Love publications' books rank up there as far as the visual quality and the actual physical binding quality.

01:27:01

They rank up there with the top publishing houses. I mean, this book by Ryan Denton, even if none, you would never believe that they're giving this away for free.

01:27:11

This is a beautiful book. In fact, let me ask you, is this depicting the martyrdom of Stephen on the cover?

01:27:19

Yes. Okay. That's what I assumed, because there's somebody being stoned to death, and I just assumed it was

01:27:26

Stephen. But it is beautiful, if you could call stoning somebody beautiful. It's magnificent artwork on the cover, and it's a really sturdy book.

01:27:37

The typing is excellent. The typeface, it's large enough that you don't strain your eyes when you're reading it.

01:27:43

My kudos to you, Joe Jakowicz, for the fine job that you and the folks at First Love Publications are doing.

01:27:53

Well, let me just say also that for people who want to know about it, we do accept donations, and we frequently do have donations, but we don't ask for them.

01:28:04

Also, we have one of the best book designers and formatters in the entire

01:28:12

Christian publishing industry. He's a Reformed Baptist pastor, Jerry Doris, in Kentucky.

01:28:19

He's our ministry partner at First Love Publications, and his ministry, Authorsupport .com,

01:28:27

I believe it is. It's either that or Authorsupport .org. He does a fantastic job, and our printer is

01:28:35

Chapel Library, and so they do an awesome job. And so the combination of Chapel Library, ourselves at First Love Publishing, and Jerry Doris at Authorsupport .com,

01:28:49

we're able to produce these book designs and presentations with the great, great appearance of the typesetting and the headings.

01:29:03

It's just very pleasing to the eye and easy to read. The entire design is really good, quality printing.

01:29:11

Everything we do is top quality, but we get the cheapest price, of course. Yeah, and providentially,

01:29:17

I just mentioned Jeff Pollard of Chapel Library moments ago. In fact, they have really improved the aesthetic quality of their publications because they were typically, in the past, and they still might carry some of these booklets that were far less attractive, not really printed on the greatest stock, but now they've really increased the beauty aesthetically of what they do.

01:29:51

They have. That's chapellibrary .org, chapellibrary .org for anybody who's interested. If you could,

01:29:57

Ryan, going back to your book, you have a section in your book titled

01:30:03

The Hope of Reformed Evangelism. We've already really gotten into some of the elements that make

01:30:11

Reformed Evangelism unique, but if you could be more descriptive, if you will, and also tell us about the hope that you mentioned that is attached to Reformed Evangelism.

01:30:23

Well, yeah, so especially in our circumstance in America, and this, you know, the book was written obviously before COVID -19, but specifically if you take our circumstance in, let's say,

01:30:38

Western Europe, America, Canada, these are the places where, you know, there used to be these great flourishing of just gospel activity, and we don't see that much today.

01:30:51

You know, most cities are, even in the Bible Belt, let's take, you know, most cities are filled with bad churches, pragmatic evangelism, false conversions, and a whole lot of unbelievers.

01:31:07

And if you're looking at it from appearance alone, it's a bleak situation.

01:31:15

And, you know, the hope of Reformed Evangelism, in a sense, goes hand -in -hand with what a person's eschatology is.

01:31:26

And so, you know, without going too much into that direction, it is to say this.

01:31:32

What we see today is we see a lot of unbelief. We see a hardness of ground when we go out and we cast the gospel.

01:31:40

But we know that God is sovereign, and God is going to build His church, and that Christ reigns today, and that Christ has given us the mandate to go into all the world and preach the gospel and to make disciples and things like that.

01:31:54

But in Matthew 28, remember, he says that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him.

01:31:59

And so he is the one who has all the authority. And so even if you can't see it, we have the hope that when we go out and we share the gospel, we know that God is going to do things.

01:32:08

And even if people are not saved by our gospel proclamation, like I said earlier,

01:32:14

God is still glorified by that proclamation. And also, you know, there's always a result.

01:32:20

I was reading one book when I was studying for Even If None, and the author pointed out that, you know, even if somebody does not believe, that is still a result, and it'll result in their greater condemnation on the

01:32:34

Day of Judgment. And so, in other words, evangelism is always 100 % successful if you do it in the way that God has prescribed.

01:32:43

But we know that God is going to do a mighty and remarkable work. And even in our country, even if we can't see that, he's still doing a work.

01:32:52

And, you know, Pastor Joe could tell you the same thing. As far as, you know, there are churches out there that are sound, that are biblical, that are feeding the flock, and people are being saved out there.

01:33:04

I saw one guy at the campus, one of the campuses we ministered to this semester.

01:33:09

He was an atheist at the very beginning of the semester. And he would come out there, and he'd yell and scream and do all kinds of things.

01:33:16

And as the semester went along, you know, you could tell he was changing.

01:33:22

And by the end of the semester, he cried out to the Lord and was baptized and things like that. And so, in other words, you know, it's a time where the world might look at, and they're looking at the circumstances and saying, man, this is bleak.

01:33:35

The Church is not looking good for the Church. But that's not the case at all. And we have to believe that.

01:33:41

We have to trust in God's sovereignty. And that's the hope of Reformed evangelism. The Arminian can't say that.

01:33:46

The Arminian, his view of evangelism is, well, I don't know. I don't know. I hope that God's going to do a great work, but I just don't know.

01:33:54

And, of course, if you're of a particular flavor of eschatology, then your hope is, well, I do know, and it's not going to go good for the

01:34:01

Church. Well, I guess it would, you know, if you're raptured out, but, you know, in other words, I mean, there's a beauty of being a biblically

01:34:07

Reformed Christian, and especially when we're doing evangelism in a hardened context like what we're seeing today.

01:34:14

Yes, and isn't it—you had a go ahead, Jim. Chris, if I might add to what

01:34:21

Ryan was saying, I think the difference between Reformed evangelism and other types of evangelism, other approaches, is

01:34:29

Reformed evangelism is God -centered, and Arminian approaches to evangelism are man -centered.

01:34:36

And I think a God -centered evangelistic theology is biblical. As a matter of fact, you don't have to worry about using gimmicks and pragmatic methods to persuade people to put their trust in the

01:34:50

Lord Jesus Christ, because you believe that God will save his people. He has chosen for himself a people.

01:34:56

He will save them. It doesn't mean that we, as Reformed Christians, do not do diligence on our part to share the gospel in every way we can, as energetically as we can.

01:35:10

We do that. But we believe, since we're God -centered in our evangelism, that God's word will not return void, but will accomplish the purpose for which it is sent.

01:35:21

So whether we get immediate results from his word or a response from our hearers right away or not, we believe that God's word will become a saver of life unto life and a saver of death unto death.

01:35:35

In other words, he'll use his word. It will never be wasted as a means of drawing sinners to Christ and salvation, or he'll use his word in other ways, such as proof of their condemnation on Judgment Day.

01:35:49

And we need to evangelize more than ever before, because people today are listening.

01:35:55

I'm sure Ryan will agree that more than ever before, people are receptive to the gospel who never used to be receptive.

01:36:06

And so for a time such as this, with lawlessness and economic hardship and the

01:36:14

COVID -19 virus, with all of its problems and all the fear and anxiety, depression, even an increase in suicide,

01:36:24

I've never seen it as bad. But on the other hand, I've never seen more opportunities to share the gospel than today.

01:36:32

And I think there's a dearth of teaching in churches and among believers on a

01:36:37

God -centered biblical evangelism. And I think this book on Even If None, it is the best book on evangelism

01:36:46

I've ever read or I've ever seen. When Ryan sent it to me and I read it,

01:36:51

I said, I have to publish this book. It is, even though it's only 215 pages, and the appearance and presentation of the text is very, very excellent, it is comprehensive.

01:37:05

It addresses every single issue, the underlying issues, the key issues connected with evangelism in this book.

01:37:14

And it's also an excellent teaching tool for churches, for seminars. And I know

01:37:20

Ryan is available, but he's only one person. If you're a pastor, you can get 20 or 30 copies of this book and teach an adult

01:37:27

Sunday school class on evangelism. As a matter of fact, the church has to reclaim biblical evangelism.

01:37:35

Not only do we need to make a major adjustment in the way we evangelize, but also we need a resetting of our theology of evangelism, because there's so many unbiblical approaches to evangelism by most churches and pastors, and it's causing so much multiplication of chaff, unsaved people filling our churches, as Ryan suggested earlier.

01:38:01

And we rarely see evangelism ministries in the church.

01:38:07

Even so many prayer meetings are dying out, which is a necessary partner in the local church to our evangelism efforts.

01:38:16

We need to pray that God would bless and use our efforts unto the conversion of the lost.

01:38:22

So we're in a situation today where we have great opportunities to share the gospel.

01:38:29

People are listening, but on the other hand, we need the Holy Spirit's power and grace and courage and boldness and inspiration to move believers off of the pews and out into their daily lives at work and elsewhere in sharing the gospel.

01:38:50

Well, we have to go to our final break right now. It's going to be a lot more brief than the other breaks. If you have a question that you'd like to ask, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

01:39:03

chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence.

01:39:12

If you live outside the USA, only remain anonymous. If your question involves a personal and private matter, don't go away.

01:39:19

We'll be right back after these messages. When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

01:39:26

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. And we do have a questioner for both our guests today,

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Ryan Denton and Pastor Joe Jakiewicz, on biblical evangelism and more specifically on the book we have been addressing,

01:48:08

Even If None, Reclaiming Biblical Evangelism. We have

01:48:14

CJ from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York. And CJ asks,

01:48:19

How do you overcome the objection of non -reformed people who say that they know that our beliefs are unbiblical and non -Christian in their origin because of the fact that they rob one of a passion and desire to evangelize the lost?

01:48:42

Well, that's a good question. And I definitely understand hearing that objection from people.

01:48:53

But to me, I mean, the easiest way to refute that is there's two ways. Number one, a great passage in Scripture for this is

01:49:03

Romans 9 -11, which of course is the prototype reformed passage.

01:49:09

You know, that's where you find God saying, Jacob, I love you, so I hated that he hardened

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Pharaoh's heart for his own purposes. But it's also, Romans 9 -11, the reason

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Paul is writing that is because he is burdened for the

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Israelites. He's burdened for the ethnic Jewish community. And in other words, and this is the same passage where he says,

01:49:34

I wish I was cut off. I wish I was accursed if it meant that my people could be saved. And so here you have the greatest reformed passage in the

01:49:43

Bible. And the reason it's there is because you have Paul coming out with a,

01:49:50

I mean, I would argue it's also one of the greatest missionary or evangelistic passages in the

01:49:55

Bible. And they go side by side. So that's the number, that's the first part. I mean, there's plenty of places in Scripture to show that this is biblical and it drives people to evangelize.

01:50:05

But number two, the historical argument is very, that's a great argument also. Because when you go throughout history and you look at George Whitefield, you look at Jonathan Edwards, you look at William Carey.

01:50:17

In fact, the reason William Carey went to India was his reformed view of theology.

01:50:23

And so, and of course, even the Puritans, the reason they're coming to America. You know, what's neat about the

01:50:30

Puritans is, in part, one of the primary reasons for them coming was so that they could evangelize the Indians once they get here.

01:50:36

And John Ellie and David Brainerd. And so there's a legacy of reformed Christians who are out there giving up their lives for the sake of the

01:50:44

Gospel when they're evangelizing. And also you have passages in the Bible to back that up. Yeah, typically, and Pastor Joe, you could jump in here after I have something clarified.

01:50:55

Typically, people are using not only their ignorance of reformed theology.

01:51:01

They're having only heard or read the enemies of reformed theology, never having read the reformed

01:51:09

Christians themselves. Or they may have read highly edited versions of some of the reformed heroes of history like Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

01:51:18

There are actually some publishing ministries who have literally edited out anything that sounds too

01:51:26

Calvinistic from Spurgeon's writings. But they use their logic very often in that they would say, well, if God has predestined before the foundation of the world, those who would be saved and those who would be lost, rescuing those who are his elect out from the same lump of clay that both the elect and the reprobate are made from, are both from the same lump of sinful clay, that God rescues some of us that he chooses to for no goodness or nothing desirable on our own, but only for his reasons and his love and his grace and mercy.

01:52:08

And the rest he leaves to remain in their own sin. If he has predetermined who will be his people, they will say, then why do we even evangelize?

01:52:19

Why do we even need to do this? God's got this all programmed. This is all a part of his robot system.

01:52:28

They will go on and on with things like that. So perhaps, Pastor Joe, if you want to start with responding to that, and then

01:52:34

Ryan, you could add to it. Sure. You almost took the wind out of my sails, Chris. That's what

01:52:40

I was going to say. You know, in my almost 40 years of being a pastor, I never heard a

01:52:45

Christian from a Reform perspective rationalize and use logic like this.

01:52:51

Well, if God's going to save all the elect, he's going to do it. Why do I need to go out and evangelize?

01:52:56

Never heard that before, and I've counseled thousands of people. You see, it's the bad press that Reform believers have gotten from Arminians, Charismatics, Word of Faith people, and that they've received from their pastors who tell them that Reform Christians don't believe in evangelism.

01:53:13

I think the problem with Reform Christians, yes, they are kind of complacent and lukewarm when it comes to evangelism, but it's not so much because they're using rationalism and logic to justify their inactivity.

01:53:29

I think it's more of a lack of teaching on the Holy Spirit in Reform churches. The Holy Spirit is our motivation.

01:53:36

In Him, we have the grace and the quickening power and the rejuvenating effect of the love of God, of the joy of the

01:53:44

Lord, of the grace, courage, and wisdom of God to renew us each day to go out as evangelists, as believers with the gospel.

01:53:54

And so I think it's more of a lack of teaching and exhortation on the need to be filled with the

01:54:00

Holy Spirit every day among Reform Christians. I think that the perfect examples of the 19th century are

01:54:08

George Mueller and Charles Spurgeon. George Mueller founded the Scripture Knowledge Institution, which distributed millions of Bibles and evangelistic tracts and books all over the world free of charge.

01:54:22

And also his missions, his giving to missions to men like Hudson Taylor in the

01:54:32

China Inland Mission. But Reform Christians usually are very, very zealous.

01:54:39

And we have the biggest motivation of all, the sovereignty of God. We who believe that God is going to save for Himself a people also believe that Christians are the instrument, the

01:54:51

God -ordained, designed instrument for the sharing of the gospel.

01:54:57

So we're not passive at all in our approach to evangelism if we are truly

01:55:02

Reformed, because we have all the motivation in the world. We don't have to worry. We don't have to use gimmicks and tricks that many

01:55:08

Arminian preachers use to try to persuade people to choose

01:55:14

God with their free will, which, of course, we don't believe. We just preach the gospel indiscriminately to everyone and anyone who will hear, and we leave the rest to God.

01:55:25

Some sow, some water, but God gives the increase. And in that verse in 1 Corinthians 3, we see the divine side and the human side of evangelism.

01:55:34

God does the saving, but He's chosen us as believers as His mouthpiece to share the gospel.

01:55:41

And Ryan, I already know that I want to have you come back on this program to do a

01:55:47

Part 2 of Even If None, and even Joe could join us if he'd like for another program on this.

01:55:54

But I'd like you to close the program with a couple of minutes of summary of what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today about this subject before we go off the air.

01:56:03

Yeah, it actually deals with the, going back to the question, the problem in part with that question is that the primary motive for evangelism, according to the person who asked that, would be the salvation of souls.

01:56:19

In other words, they're saying, why would you go out and evangelize if you know that God's already going to save who He wants to save?

01:56:25

And that right there is the fundamental problem that most people have when it comes to evangelism, because they're thinking in terms of,

01:56:32

I have to see something from my evangelism if I'm going to do it. And so, in a sense, you could turn the tables on the

01:56:39

Arminian and say, listen, you're assuming that if no one gets saved, then somehow it's not worth going out and evangelizing.

01:56:47

And see, that's the beauty right there of being a Reformed Christian, because it's all going to glorify

01:56:53

God. And evangelism is a great, in a sense, it's a great privilege that God uses means. God uses fallible, mistake -prone, sinful, bought by Christ, yes, but very ignorant human beings to go and to share the most glorious message in the entire universe.

01:57:14

Really, the only glorious message and the only hopeful message out there. And in God's wisdom,

01:57:20

He has decided and decreed that He's going to use people just like us.

01:57:25

You know, the moms out there, the guys at the construction site, the university professors, just all of us in our everyday spheres,

01:57:36

He uses us sharing the gospel in order to glorify His name, first of all, and yes, add to His church, but we can trust that regardless of our circumstance or what we see, whatever we evangelize, we can trust that God's going to use it.

01:57:50

And so, you know, my encouragement is to go out and do it. Amen. I want to make sure that I give our listeners

01:57:56

Brian's website for Christ in the Wild Ministries, Christinthewild .com,

01:58:02

Christinthewild .com. And Pastor Joe Jakowitz, if you could give our listeners again all of your contact information.

01:58:09

Yes, it's FirstLoveRadio .org. Next week, Chris, three days of Christmas programming, special Christmas programming,

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You'll need to go to the website to see the times and schedule of the special programming. That's FirstLoveRadio .org.

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If you want the free book, even if none, go to FirstLovePublications .org

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and order your free book, FirstLovePublications .org. Praise God.

01:58:44

Well, I want to thank both of you for being such wonderful guests as always. I look forward to having you both back on the program.

01:58:52

In fact, if you could stay on the line after we go off the air and let me get a hold of a calendar and get you guys booked to continue this conversation.

01:59:02

I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially those who took the time to write in questions. And don't forget about tomorrow.

01:59:09

We've got Dr. Michael Haken on tomorrow to talk about strangers and pilgrims on the earth, remembering the

01:59:17

Mayflower Pilgrims from 1620 to 2020. I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater