February 3, 2022 Show with Jeff Noblit on “The True Church Conference”

Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century Gospel Minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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

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

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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, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this third day of February 2022.

And I am thrilled to have a first -time guest today that a number of folks in my listening audience have urged me to interview who have been personally blessed in quite remarkable ways by the ministry of this man.

His name is Jeff Noblitt. He is Senior Pastor Teacher at Grace Life Church of the

Shoals in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and he is Founder and President of Anchored in Truth Ministries.

Today we are going to be discussing a very important event called the True Church Conference.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Jeff Noblitt.

Well, thank you, Chris. It's my joy to be with you today. It's my joy doubly, brother. And first of all, tell our listeners something about Grace Life Church of the

Shoals in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Well, we're a relatively new church, I guess you would say, as far as church history goes.

About 43 years old as a church, and I have been here for right at 41 of those years.

We began as actually, I was not here at the time, but it was a group that actually split off from another church, and I would say something of a mixed multitude.

A good percentage of them were really wanting to be centered on biblical truth, the true gospel, etc.

And one of the new churches in the Bible Belt where, as I think we would all probably who listen to your broadcast would agree, there's a plague of unhealthiness in even considered conservative evangelical churches.

But anyway, the church started, and I came, like I said, about 41 years ago as a part -time associate pastor as a college student, and somehow

I've been here ever since. Well, praise God for that. And Anchored in Truth Ministries, tell us about that organization.

Our listeners will be especially familiar with the name Anchored in Truth Ministries because there are frequently aired advertisements for your ministry on this program, so tell us about this ministry.

Well, Anchored in Truth originally was simply an effort to get the expositional preaching of the word out from our pulpit here.

God had his own plan, though, as the years went on and we began to preach various and different ways and places, and of course now primarily through the

Internet, a lot of missionaries and sometimes just groups of individuals were looking for a biblically, spiritually healthy local church and would say they could not find one in their area, and they would begin hearing about our church because in my expositions

I'm very weighty on local church life and what biblically healthy local church life should be.

And so we started to get a growing number of contacts from people who would say, we've studied your ministry, we've been listening to you on the air, over the

Internet, etc., for years, and could you help us plan a church? And I would speak with my elders and say, well, how do you turn down a request like that?

So it's grown from just the preaching ministry of Jeff Noblitt into a church -planting missions organization simply through the preaching of the word that we put out.

And I like to say this, Chris, that God's blessed us. We have a lot of neat things God has done over these decades in expanding our ministry, but about everything we've done we fell into backwards.

I can't say I had this great vision. We would just, like I said, get contacts. People would say, could you help us, guide us, mentor us in either reforming our church, replanting our church, or planting a brand -new church?

And I think we have about 35 of those now. Wow, praise

God for that. The True Church Conference is something that I am looking forward to attending.

I am trying to get all my ducks in order, as they say, to make the trip down to Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

And by the way, I happen to be a lover of R &B music, and I know that Muscle Shoals is the birthplace of the best of R &B.

In fact, many R &B fans may be quite shocked to discover that their most beloved

R &B music, coming out of famed studios originally in Muscle Shoals, although the premier artists involved were black men and women, the musical accompaniment was predominantly performed by white folk.

And they might be shocked to learn that, that all these R &B greats like Aretha Franklin and many others whose careers were launched in Muscle Shoals, they might be shocked to know that the background accompanying music was performed, as I just said, by middle -aged white guys.

Well, that's the truth, and it's got quite a history. It's really kind of a special thing for this area, and the history is very rich, very interesting.

Yeah, in fact, my one night that I ever spent in Birmingham, I ate dinner.

I thought that I was going to be eating dinner alone at a restaurant called Chez Fon Fon. And before I entered into the restaurant,

I prayed that the Lord would give me an opportunity to sit near someone who would be open to having a conversation and where I would have freedom to talk about my faith and talk about the gospel and talk about Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

As soon as I walked into that restaurant, and it was jam -packed, a couple waved me over near them.

I did not know this couple. I sat down with them and had dinner with them, and it turned out that the husband of the couple, it was a husband and wife, the husband is

Jay Johnson, the son of the world -renowned jazz musician

Jimmy Johnson from Muscle Shoals. He was one of the,

I think they called them the Mudders, the musicians from the famed studios there in Muscle Shoals.

That would be the Swappers. The Swappers, that's it, not the Mudders. The Swappers.

And I had a wonderful time. I remained in contact, and still do, with Jay Johnson and his lovely bride, and I'm hoping that if I make it down to Muscle Shoals that they will attend the conference as well.

But that's something to pray about. And if you're listening, Jay and Mrs. Johnson, if you're listening, my shout -out to you, and it was wonderful to meet you, and I hope to see you soon again.

The True Church Conference. Now, I love every theme that I'm aware of that you folks have focused upon at these annual conferences.

I know that I believe it was last year, unfortunately, was canceled over COVID issues, if I'm not mistaken.

But the themes have always been excellent, and your panel or your roster of speakers, extraordinary.

I have interviewed on my program already Darrell Bernard Harrison and Virgil Walker and David Miller, and I'm looking forward to,

God willing, having the opportunity to interview Richard Caldwell, Barry King, and Jonathan Sims, who

I have not yet interviewed. But tell us about this True Church Conference. Well, Chris, we are, shall

I say, rabidly local church -centered. We believe very strongly that in the sufficiency of Scripture, while it's certainly good to have the ministries we have in our world that are solid biblically, doctrinally, spiritually, but nevertheless the local church is the centerpiece of God's purposes and God's glory, both for time and eternity.

And so we put the conference together years ago, again, at the request of brothers who would say, can you tell us how you learned about church discipline?

Tell us how you got a meaningful membership role. How did you develop the active practice of biblical conflict resolution, church discipline?

How did you do personalized strategic world missions that's been so blessed? And so we got to thinking, how could we do a conference and teach these things when our calendar is already full?

Well, we had a very large and very blessed world missions conference every year. We actually called it the

World Impact Conference. And I thought, you know, really a Bible conference should be a missions conference, should be a church planting conference.

I'm not saying that folks are wrong to separate those, but I just think biblically speaking they almost have to be connected.

And so we took our missions conference and morphed it into a theologically sound, expeditiously preaching -based conference, but with a lot of practical hands -on instruction about how we reformed this church over the last 40 years.

So it's very different in that we do have, I think, strong, sound theology.

But I like to say it's sound theology with proven methodology for the local church, because that's the thing guys are asking.

It's not too hard today to find brothers who are sound in the doctrines of the

Reformed faith and who would be at least intellectually committed to biblically sound, spiritually healthy local church life.

But how to get there, now that is the issue. And that's where the blood starts being let, and that's where the warfare is, and that's where the opposite...

Look, Satan let us get up and yell about these things all the time, but you begin to actually change a church from what we might call as the status quo, typical

Baptist -slash -evangelical church, to become a truly glory -of -God -focused,

Christ -honoring, Bible -saturated church in both proclamation and methodologies. That's a tough thing.

So we found quite a few guys are very interested in the balance we're bringing of world missions, sound theology, but much in the way of application from our own experience of Reforming Grace -like

Church of the Shoals. Amen. Now, there may be people, in fact I'm nearly certain there will be people, who are very apprehensive and skittish and nervous and maybe even angry when they hear the name

True Church Conference. Now, obviously, we know, if we are truly regenerate and believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, we know that there is only one true church, but that is not a particular denomination, it's not a particular fellowship or brotherhood or association of churches, it's not even a single congregation.

There are cults that claim to be the one true church. The Roman Catholic Church for centuries did, but with the most liberal pope in their history,

I don't know if they would still at least publicly make that claim, although their dogma makes that claim, to alleviate the apprehension and fear of those listening.

This is not some kind of a cultic overstatement of your view of your particular group.

We know that there is only one true church, and that's the Church of Christ, but the Church of Jesus Christ spans denominations.

There are true believers in the Invisible Church who are from Baptist congregations,

Presbyterian congregations, Lutheran congregations, Independent Bible Church congregations,

Anglican congregations, and we could go on and on, but the one true church is in regard to all of those who have been placed in Christ's church through the

Holy Spirit, and it is not, as I was saying, one denomination, group, or congregation.

I even know of a landmark Baptist church on Long Island, New York, that believes literally that it is the only true church on Long Island, New York.

So you're not talking about that, I'm pretty confident to say. Well, probably it would help to give a little bit of context of where I came from when

I started to use that phrase. Shall I say maybe I stole a little bit from John MacArthur on this?

That's quite all right. That's a good person to steal from. Well, I don't know, 30, 35 years ago

I flew to Los Angeles as I was beginning the reforms of this church, and we're a very large church by our demographic, and have had quite a significant influence in our denomination in years past.

But saying all that to say, I began to change some things to be more true to Scripture.

That's what I mean by that, and literally, Chris, I'm not exaggerating, though some of the finest and godliest men

I know are Southern Baptists, and they're my friends, and I thank God for them. But as far as finding a large church that functioned in what, and I think

Mark Dever's book is very helpful on 9 Marks of a Healthy Church, that really functioned in those.

Not perfectly, we know that's impossible. It was hard to find a local church that could give me guidance.

And I literally flew to Los Angeles, and John MacArthur was very gracious to give me time and encouragement.

And I basically went up to him and said, John, am I crazy, or should I keep going? And John said, you're on the right track.

The church has just become so weak and unbiblical. Now there's some godly people in these churches, but as a whole, the local church systems have become very unhealthy, let's say.

So I thought, well, why don't we strive to build true churches? I don't mean that in any way, shape, or fashion in a cultic sense, as you've well described.

I mean, many of my heroes are ancient Methodists and Presbyterians and Anglicans, so obviously it's not that sense of a true church.

But I guess I would say to a person, well, if you're a pastor or a church leader, what are you striving to be if it's not a true church, according to Scripture?

Matter of fact, we're only dealing with the most foundational issues of the faith that are very systematically grounded in the

Word of God, not sideline issues about what women should wear and all of these legalistic things.

As I told somebody, we don't dress like the cast of Little House on the Prairie. But here's what,

I understand you're from the Northeast, but what we ran into over the last several decades, particularly in Baptist life in the

South, was as a young minister I would say things like, why do we have all these people in our church roles who don't even come to church and we know their lifestyles, they don't act anything like Christians.

And they would say, well, that's not right, but that's just the way it is. I would get that,

Chris, over and over. And honestly, I didn't grow up in church. I grew up in a quasi -agnostic household with no real affiliation to religion of any kind.

And so when I became converted at age 19, I just fell in love with the Scriptures. And I did two things,

I thoroughly searched the Scriptures and good sound theological texts, and thoroughly studied church history before I came to a resolution on, well, these things need to be established in a healthy local church.

And if they did it in church history, and it was solid in church history, and it's clear in the Scriptures from a good, thorough, systematic understanding, not one or two verses, okay, then why can't we do it today?

And you just cannot fathom the warfare and opposition we had.

Wow. From cleaning up our church roles, to biblical standards for elders and deacons, to true conversion, to the practice of biblical conflict resolution in church discipline,

I mean, it was vicious and wild for a long, long time. I know several pastors that were being voted out of their positions by deacon boards, and they were being voted out for non -biblical reasons.

These were fine men of God holding firmly to the truths of Scripture, and that was why they were being voted out.

It made people uncomfortable. And in every case of these men that I know personally who were voted out of their pastoral positions, they said on the day that the congregational vote was occurring, there were dozens, if not a hundred or more people that showed up that they had never even seen before.

These were people, just like you were talking about, who were on the membership roles, but never darkened the door of the church unless it was something like experiencing some kind of vindictive glee of voting a man out.

And so it was quite eerie to hear that he would be staring out at the pews, seeing all these faces that he had never seen before, voting him to be removed.

Now, wouldn't you say a healthy sign of a church, a biblically designed church, a biblically faithful church, a healthy sign of this is that there are more people in attendance on a

Sunday morning than there are members. Isn't that typically a healthy sign? Well, again, that was very true in church history.

And I'm Baptist, not denominationally speaking so much. It's just my core convictions are biblical and are

Baptistic. But saying all that to say, if you look in church history, for example, in I think it was 1875, the

Baptist of Georgia disciplined 75 ,000 church members. Now, that's 1875.

Now, was there abuses? Yeah, there were some abuses. But my point is that is radical today.

It's like today you would be disassociated with by your local

Baptist community if you did, in that day rather, you'd be excluded, blackballed, if you did not faithfully practice discipline in your church.

Today, it's right the opposite. We were blackballed from our area here, clearly, because we practiced biblical church discipline.

So I'm saying all that to say, yeah, and that's one of the reasons why we have these bloated membership roles is nobody's ever held an account.

Now, there's so much to be said, and I find through the years I'm radically misunderstood. They think when

I mean discipline, I mean a harsh, heavy -handed, dictatorial thing. We are very gracious, and we always say if any brother or sister is trying at all toward repentance, everything's kept extremely confidential.

We wrap our arms of love around them in a private setting, ladies with the ladies, men with men, and try to shepherd them back to full fellowship in the church.

Amen. And by the way, I know that some of my listeners might be tired of me constantly repeating this, but I think it's important.

If it were not for church discipline, there's a very strong likelihood I would not be sitting here today speaking with you, because I was put under church discipline over a decade ago at the former church, where I was a member before moving to Pennsylvania, and these brethren put me under church discipline because, sadly, during the illness and subsequent passing of my late wife,

I plunged back into the sin of habitual drunkenness.

And as I said, if my pastors, my elders, did not with love and a desire to see me restored to the body of Christ and a desire to see me rescued from the clutches of a damning activity, not only damning in an eternal sense, but a life -destroying activity, if they had not conducted church discipline,

I would likely have died, because the level and frequency of drunkenness that I was habitually participating in would have eventually killed me if I didn't quit.

And I hope that one of my former pastors, Mark Romaldi and Doug Totter, are listening.

I even interviewed Pastor Mark on the church discipline process after it happened to me by him and his fellow elders.

So I place a very high role of church discipline in the way that I view a biblically functioning church.

And as you were just saying, church discipline is not supposed to be some tyrannical, dictatorial, cultic, harsh punishment by church leaders toward a congregate.

Now, obviously, you and I know that that does happen, where elders overstep their bounds and discipline people for reasons that are unbiblical and in manners that the discipline itself is unbiblical, the level or extent of it.

But I would think that you would probably agree that in our day and age, the more frequent sin in the church is to avoid church discipline at all, especially when members are popular and perhaps even wealthy.

Well, and by the way, that's a wonderful testimony that gives glory to God because this is

His truth, not my truth. This is what builds to us in His word. But in my town, when

I first started here, we're talking about 8 ,000 proper in Muscle Shoals proper. Now, there's three other small cities connected.

So when we discipline someone, everybody knew about it and everybody was paying in some way.

You'd go to Walmart and see 12 people that hated you. But here's the cool thing about it, and all glory to God, is that I have and our church has a very high esteem in this community because we didn't change.

They learned we weren't dictatorial, we weren't harsh, we just believed some things. I mean, you can't be on the football team and not keep the rules.

So as time has gone on, God's let us have an immense respect from city council, the mayors, chief of police, etc.

And so if brothers who are pastors and leaders, as they're going through that warfare, would just hang in there, there's sweet blessedness and affirmation over the long haul.

You know, the Scripture says God will cause all men to be at peace with you. And as we obey what

God has told us to do and be in the church and trust me, we're never perfect. Oh my goodness, we're still repenting and learning at Grace Life Church in Shoals.

We have not arrived, but we'd like to say we're on the journey, we're on the track, striving toward being as true to the

Scriptures as we can. If you'll stay on that journey and stay on that track, God will give you... People might say something like this,

I wouldn't join your church, but I do respect you guys. And by the way, I don't want them to join my church if God hadn't regenerated them.

And if they don't have a heart for what we are and what we do, that means the Spirit of God hadn't done anything. We're not to add those,

God has not added, by the way. So, yeah, that's a journey we've been on for a long, long time, getting back to the conference and what we were talking about.

It all developed out of people seeing and observing the track we were on, and we survived.

I'll tell you this little brief illustration. I was on the phone with a church leader, and I get calls from a lot of guys, but he made a statement that I was sort of set back by.

He said, how did you keep the property? I said, what? He said, how did you keep the property?

Reformers like you usually have to take a small group and run off and start over, and you kept this great piece of real estate and property.

And I told him, you know, I've never thought about that. It is rather remarkable because, Chris, we had three major splits in my first 15 to 20 years as senior pastor.

And if any of the two splits had gotten together, they would have had enough votes to vote me out. And somehow we just survived, and we've been able to replace all those votes.

And actually today I'm in my 41st year here, and it's never been better in any way, shape, or fashion.

It's our best days by far. Praise God. And when we come back from our first break, I'd like you to, as our tradition on this program goes,

I would like you to give your salvation testimony. You already started to.

You alluded to it earlier. But we have a tradition here in our Interpreters on Radio, whenever we have a first -time guest that we've never interviewed before, we have them give at least an abbreviated version of their salvation testimony that would include the kind of religious atmosphere they were raised in, if any, and what were the providential circumstances that our sovereign

Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them.

And although there is only one gospel and one Christ that saves sinners, there are different ways that that manifests through providence and occurrences in the lives of humanity.

There are some that were raised in Christian homes and don't remember a day that they did not love

Christ. And there are others that were drug abusers or even people in prison who have murdered others.

And we could go on and on with the varying degrees of sin that individuals were enslaved by before they became

Christians. But I'd love to hear a fuller account of your testimony when we return.

And if anybody has any questions, our e -mail address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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

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

We will extend to you the courtesy of allowing you to remain anonymous if that is the case.

But if it's just a general question on anything we are discussing or any pastoral issue, since my guest today is a pastor, or on specific themes we are addressing, if these are general questions, please give us your first name at least, your city and state, and country of residence.

Don't go away. We'll be right back with Pastor Jeff Knoblet right after these messages. Church is one foundation.

It's Jesus Christ, her Lord. Since 2007,

Anchored in Truth Ministries has hosted the annual True Church Conference at Grace Life Church of the

Shoals in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. This conference began as a training conference for pastors and church leaders who are striving to build true, biblically healthy churches.

Conference themes have included church discipline, repentance, discipleship, conversion, hyper -Calvinism, the family, the doctrine of sin, and the pretenders.

Anchored in Truth Ministries would like to invite you to the 2022 True Church Conference, which will be held from February 17th through the 20th.

The theme of the conference will be healthy body life in the local church, specifically as it pertains to biblical church discipline, biblical counseling, biblical conflict resolution, and protecting the sheep from savage wolves.

The scheduled speakers for the conference are Darrell Harrison, Virgil Walker, Jeff Knoblet, Jonathan Sims, Richard Caldwell, David Miller, and Barry King.

For more information or to register for the conference, please visit anchoredintruth .org.

That's anchoredintruth .org. And click on the True Church Conference tab at the top of the page.

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Pastor Jeff Noblitt. This is the first time we have had the honor and privilege to have Pastor Jeff on the program today.

He is the senior pastor teacher at Grace Life Church of the Shoals in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and founder and president of Anchored in Truth Ministries.

We are talking about the True Church Conference. We're also talking about some of the distinctives of Grace Life Church of the

Shoals and also Anchored in Truth Ministries and what you should expect to hear at the

True Church Conferences. And if you have a question for Pastor Jeff, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Again, give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence. Only remain anonymous if your question is a personal and private one.

And just before the break, Pastor Jeff, I asked that you would please give us a summary of your salvation testimony.

You already really began to give that earlier on in the program. But this would involve the kind of religious atmosphere, if any, you were raised in and the kinds of providential circumstances our

Sovereign Lord raised up in your life that drew you to Himself and saved you. Well, thank you,

Chris. I'll be glad to do that. I grew up actually in Larkspur, Tennessee, which is about 30 miles north of where I presently pastor.

And again, we were not a religious family. Actually, as a young child, my mother did attend a

United Methodist Church. And praise the Lord, there's some wonderful and godly Methodists out there,

Methodist preachers. But unfortunately, this church had already started drifting into theological liberalism.

I don't remember a lot of strong Bible preaching or teaching. We weren't out there all that much.

But praise the Lord, there were some godly saints. I remember one lady in particular who had us memorize the 100th

Psalm. And as a small child, that stuck with me. And I guess growing up through junior high and high school,

I was the typical teenage kid, you know. Popularity and pleasure was sort of the centerpiece of my life.

And not in that direction. My parents were divorced when I was, I think, in the fifth grade. And so no real father figure present.

And I pretty much ran my own life. But I just remember the deep emptiness.

Excuse me. And the deep, even periods of depression. And I guess

I've always been something of a thinker. But why am I here? What is life all about?

Those kind of questions would haunt me as such. And I graduated high school and went to Middle Tennessee State University.

And just remember that continued emptiness I would try to fill with pleasures, etc.,

things of the world. And happened to turn on WSM radio out of Nashville, Tennessee one

Sunday night driving back to college. The college, again, was in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. And there was religious broadcasting on.

Had I known that, I wouldn't have turned it on. But it captured my attention. And of all things, there were these great choirs singing,

I'm sure, what were the great anthems of the faith. And for whatever reason, though I wasn't attracted to that,

I felt drawn to it. I was blessed by it. I felt a solace in listening to that singing.

And I'm not for sure, but the best research I've done, a program came on after that singing.

And it was M .R. Dahn, a Presbyterian minister, and his son. And Dr.

Dahn shared a little brief gospel message that the only way you can know joy and peace and love and contentment and have your sins forgiven is through Jesus Christ.

And I like to describe that it was as if a beam shone down to the top of that 72 -cutless

Oldsmobile and I was flooded with this love of this Christ who would die for me.

And he would forgive me. I was just overwhelmed by the love. And I went on to school and I was so changed.

I didn't know what had happened. But I knew I loved this Christ I'd just briefly heard about. And then over the next few weeks,

I became just very deeply convicted of my sin and unworthiness. And it was that beautiful balance that all true, regenerate people have of knowing that I'm a wretched and unworthy sinner and deserve only judgment.

But I know he's cleansed me. I know he's forgiven me. And so, having no real church background since I was a child,

I started visiting churches. And, of course, if you're in the southeast, if you visit churches, you're going to run into Baptist churches very fast.

And so... Yeah. Every time I've been to the south, there's several on every block.

Yes. Yes. And fortunately, I went into a church and they were still preaching the book,

Verse by Verse Exposition. I was drawn to that and I was baptized there at that Baptist church.

And immediately began preaching and teaching as I had opportunity. I don't think

I would have said I was called to preach. As a matter of fact, you just couldn't have been more ignorant, Chris, than I was.

I remember someone hearing me share at a youth service. It was an older lady and she said,

You're called to preach. I had no idea what that meant. I thought somebody might be calling me on the phone or something. I mean,

I had a lot more zeal than I had wisdom or common sense about things. But transferred to North Alabama, to the

University of North Alabama. And God let me lead a very successful college Bible study there at the university.

And I went across the river and found this little new church start. And walked in the door. And I wasn't there a few months.

And the pastor said, Would you like to come out and be an associate and work with our students? And I said, Well, I feel like God's led me to ministry.

I've never done this before. He said, Well, come on. We'll learn together. And so, like I said, that's been 41 years and I'm still here.

Praise God. Now, how did you come to discover and embrace the doctrines of sovereign grace?

Well, no pun intended, but through the providence of God. I mean, my first pastor at Lawrenceburg, Tennessee was a country preacher, but also a

Bible college teacher by the name of Charles Dinkins. And he was reformed in his faith.

And so the first Southern Baptist pastor I sat under was reformed. And then when I came to the church in North Alabama, the senior pastor at the time was reformed in his faith.

So, I thought all Southern Baptists were reformed. I thought that's what we were. And I did not know.

Matter of fact, I didn't know to call it reformed theology. It was just the Bible. And so, in my case, it was right out of the gate that I was taught these glorious doctrines.

And I can see now, looking back, why God ordained it to be that way. Because that's the core and the mainstay, of course, of my pulpit and our theology here.

So, it was just right in the very beginning. By the way, Chris, that would be very rare, especially in that day and time, to have a

Southern Baptist pastor who's reformed in theology. Yeah. Well, percentage -wise, it's still, in that denomination, the

Southern Baptist Convention, it's still very rare. A very tiny fragment, it seems, amongst the largest, what is called the largest

Protestant denomination in the world. Right. And that was not the case at the founding of the

Southern Baptist Convention. Every founder was a Calvinist, from what I understand. Oh, absolutely. And, once again, my modus operandi of always, as I've tried to reform the church here,

I would want to make sure that these things were thoroughly embraced in church history. Because we've been most arrogant to think we went to the

Bible and found something 2 ,000 years later that nobody had found. So, if you're a pastor out there and you want to change something in your church, you can find well -established examples in church history.

And so, as I studied Baptist history, I found, as you just said, these founders were overwhelmingly reformed in their theology.

Yes, I highly, highly, highly recommend a book by Dr. Tom Nettles, By His Grace and For His Glory, which will delight sovereign grace -believing

Baptists everywhere and will probably shock most non -Calvinist

Baptists or anti -Calvinist Baptists. Because I am sure that many of those whom you call your beloved heroes of the faith, that you will discover in this book, were thoroughgoing

Calvinists, will make you really shocked to your core.

Because there's no reason why somebody should remain anti -Calvinist and claim to love and highly regard

Charles Adams Spurgeon, for instance. Well, they seem to leave that out. We love

Spurgeon, but don't bring up that he was Calvinist. And some of them have adamantly said publicly, not only verbally, but in writing, that he was not, which is insane.

They obviously could not have read much of what Spurgeon wrote. You might find this funny.

I certainly did. Back in the 1990s, when I was working for the largest

Christian radio network in the world, Salem Media, the specific affiliate was

WMCA in New York City, and I was contacted by an elderly

Orthodox Jewish man who was a retired journalist. And he considered himself a student of the

New Testament. He didn't believe in the unique Christian teachings of the New Testament, other than those that were harmoniously present in the

Old Testament, in the Hebrew scriptures. But he said that he had read the New Testament at least 100 times, believed himself to be somewhat of an expert, as a non -Christian especially.

And he told me that he wanted to debate an independent fundamentalist Baptist who also resided in Brooklyn.

And he wanted to buy airtime from me. That was my job then.

I was not a talk show host myself at that time. I was selling airtime. And I sold this man a three hour block of time so he could debate this independent fundamentalist

Baptist pastor. And I was listening at home to the program because the program aired at night.

And I remember the Jewish man who had a very thick Brooklyn accent.

He said, now let me get this straight. You believe that before the world began, that God chose certain people to go to heaven and he bypassed other people and they would go to hell.

Isn't that what? And the Baptist pastor said, oh, no, Ira, Ira. No, no, no, no,

Ira. I am not a Calvinist. He said, you're not a what? I'm not a Calvinist.

What you're talking about is Calvinism. What? I've never even heard this word Calvinism. What's that? I don't know.

I'm talking about what I read in your Bible. I fell off my chair and I called the studio of the radio station.

I said, you've got to keep Ira in the studio after the show's over because I've got to talk to him. But he is rightly interpreting interpreting

New Testament. But he is wrong for rejecting what it's teaching. But we have to go to our midway break right now, folks.

The midway break, as those of you who listen to this program daily know, the midway break is a bit longer than the other breaks because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle because they are required by the

FCC to air their own public service announcements and other local things that geographically localize

Iron Sherpa and Iron Radio and all of their programming to Lake City, Florida. So while they do that, while they air their local announcements and things, we air our globally heard commercials.

So I'm asking you to use this time wisely. Please write down as much of the information as possible provided by our advertisers so that you can more frequently and successfully respond to them.

And on those cases when you cannot purchase their products, use their services, support their parachurch organizations, or visit their churches, when you can't do those things, please at least respond to our advertisers and say thank you for sponsoring

Iron Sherpa and Iron Radio. If indeed you do, thank them for that, if you do love this show.

Because keep in mind, folks, this show cannot continue to air without the support of our advertisers and generosity of our donors.

So please contact them, thank them, and also send in questions to Jeff Knoblet to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We're going to be right back after these messages with more of Jeff Knoblet.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

When Iron Sherpa and Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

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One such faithful advertiser who really believes in what Chris Arnton is doing is

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Thanks for helping to keep Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the air. As host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, I frequently get requests from listeners for church recommendations.

A church I've been strongly recommending as far back as the 1980s is Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey, pastored by Alan Dunn.

Grace Covenant Baptist Church is a non -profit organization Grace Covenant Baptist Church believes it's God's prerogative to determine how he shall be worshiped and how he shall be represented in the world.

They believe churches need to turn to the Bible to discover what to include in worship and how to worship

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Tell Pastor Dunn that you heard about Grace Covenant Baptist Church on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Church is one foundation It's Jesus Christ, her

Lord Since 2007, Anchored in Truth Ministries has hosted the annual

True Church Conference at Grace Life Church of the Shoals in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. This conference began as a training conference for pastors and church leaders who are striving to build true, biblically healthy churches.

Conference themes have included church discipline, repentance, discipleship, conversion, hyper -Calvinism, the family, the doctrine of sin, and the pretenders.

Anchored in Truth Ministries would like to invite you to the 2022 True Church Conference, which will be held from February 17th through the 20th.

The theme of the conference will be healthy body life in the local church, specifically as it pertains to biblical church discipline, biblical counseling, biblical conflict resolution, and protecting the sheep from savage wolves.

The scheduled speakers for the conference are Darrell Harrison, Virgil Walker, Jeff Knoblett, Jonathan Sims, Richard Caldwell, David Miller, and Barry King.

For more information or to register for the conference, please visit anchoredintruth .org.

That's anchoredintruth .org. And click on the True Church Conference tab at the top of the page.

Hope to see you there. As a mother,

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Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And please never forget, folks, how very, very important solid -ground -books .com

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We want to thank Mike Gaydosch, the founder of Solid Ground Christian Books, for increasing his advertising budget with us here on this program and for the constant flow of excited reports he gives us about how many of you are purchasing books and how many books you're purchasing and how many new customers he's getting from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio's audience.

And I thank God for you for supporting one of our most cherished and necessary advertisers.

Also, folks, if you love this program and you do not want it to disappear from the airwaves, I'm urging you, please, go to ironsharpensironradio .com,

click Support, then click Click to Donate Now. You could donate instantly with a debit or credit card in that fashion.

And if you prefer snail mail, there are people who are still paranoid about using the Internet for making financial transactions and donating and things.

Well, a physical address will appear on the screen where you can mail your checks made out to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio when you click

Support at ironsharpensironradio .com. And I always try to remember to remind you, please, don't ever cut money out of your regular giving that you're accustomed to to your local church in order to give to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

In other words, don't punish your church financially by blessing us financially. And do not put your family in further financial jeopardy.

If you are really struggling to survive and make ends meet, I don't want to take food off of anybody's dinner table.

But if you are financially blessed above and beyond your ability to provide for your church and your family, and you love this show and you don't want it to disappear, please help us.

We are in urgent need of your financial help more than ever before. Unfortunately, in the beginning of 2022, we reached an all -time low in our receiving gifts from our listeners.

So we really need your help. Go to ironsharpensironradio .com, click Support, then click Click to Donate Now. And also, folks, if you are not a member of a local, biblically faithful,

Christ -honoring church, no matter where you live on the planet

Earth, I have lists of very extensive lists of churches all over the planet

Earth that are biblically sound and honoring to Christ. And I may be able to help you find a church near where you live, no matter where that is.

I have helped people find churches in Africa, in Australia, in the

UK, in the Republic of Ireland, and in Northern Ireland, and all 50 states of the

United States. So I may be able to help you too. Send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put I need a church in the subject line. Whether you are personally in need of finding a church, a permanent church home, or maybe you're on vacation, you want to visit a biblically faithful church, or you have family, friends, and loved ones in all parts of the world that do not have biblically faithful churches that they call home.

Well, I may be able to help you and them, so send me that email today, chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com,

and put I need a church in the subject line. And I do want to thank one of our listeners who has already contacted me for a church recommendation.

And I will hopefully get that recommendation to you by this evening or tomorrow.

And I very rarely fail at doing this, and hopefully you will be no exception.

But I will try to get that list of churches, or at least a church recommendation for you as soon as possible.

I was just looking for that email and could not find it. I was going to announce the city and state of that listener.

But we are back now with our guest today, Jeff Noblitt. And if you just tuned us in,

Jeff Noblitt is the senior pastor and teacher at Grace Life Church of the Shoals in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

He is the founder and president of Anchored in Truth Ministries, and we are discussing the True Church Conference.

We're discussing distinctives of Grace Life Church of the Shoals. We are discussing distinctives of Anchored in Truth Ministries and things that you can expect at their annual

True Church conferences. Again, our email address if you have a question is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. We do have

Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who has a question for you, Pastor Jeff. He said,

I saw from your Anchored in Truth Ministries website in a description of the

True Church Conference that one of the things you are going to be discussing is the need of biblical counseling.

Don't we have to be very cautious and leery about even many organizations and ministries that tout themselves as Christian counselors and yet are actually counseling people using teaching and methodology that is totally foreign to the

Bible? Well, I couldn't agree more. We try to distinguish between what's been classically termed

Christian counseling by using the term biblical counseling. That we start with the inerrancy and authority of the scriptures and use only the scriptures, and basically rejecting human psychology in the church.

It comes to my mind that I think it's 1 Corinthians 6 where the apostle warns the church at Corinth about going to the public authorities or the secular courts to resolve their conflicts.

And in that context, he says something to the effect that do you not have the mind of Christ? Well, the point is if we have the truth, why are we going to those who only know error to fix ourselves or fix our needs?

And that's one of the key things that in my two hours, which I'll only be able to vaguely hit on this, is how biblical church discipline, biblical conflict resolution, and biblical counseling are one thing.

What happens in the academic world, even strong and solid schools that I support by the way, but nevertheless in their requirement to maintain accreditations, they have to have all these coarse descriptions and segregations of topics that the

Bible doesn't necessarily separate. And so we get really deep in an academic way in some of these studies, and we lose just the shoe leather of everyday counseling correction.

But getting back to this brother's statement, I think it was a brother, I don't know if it was a sister, but anyway, his statement that, yes,

I would say the great majority of what is out there is something of a syncretizing of the error of man -centered psychology with biblical truth.

We reject that categorically. I was a longtime friend of Jay Adams, and he's basically the person

I was discipled under. But basically biblical counseling, true Christian counseling, let's say, is just using the

Bible, and bringing the Biblical truth to bear on where a person is and what they're dealing with or struggling with at that time.

Amen, and I had the honor and privilege of interviewing a number of years ago, Jay Adams, before he went home to Christ.

I interviewed him on his excellent book, From Forgiven to Forgiving. I don't know if you're familiar with that one.

Oh yes, yes. Excellent book, and I agree with him wholeheartedly. He takes what

I believe is a biblical position on forgiveness that most in the body of Christ seem to reject.

Even strong conservative evangelicals seem to take the approach that we must forgive anybody and everyone, regardless of whether they even acknowledge guilt, whether they ask for forgiveness or not, that we are basically just to throw forgiveness out there.

And Dr. Adams says that repentance is a required biblical key element of extending true forgiveness.

And to quickly add to that, it does not mean that Christians are given the permission to hold grudges, to hate those that have done ill toward them, to do evil toward those who have done evil toward us.

We are not to withhold goodness and blessings from those that have done us wrong.

People confuse those things with forgiveness, and we are always to be open and willing and ready to forgive those who do ask for forgiveness, and be waiting with open arms.

Would you follow that train of thought and teaching that Dr. Adams taught? Oh, absolutely.

And here's where the local church is the center of all of this. If I'm sinning and I'm a member of a local church, and I come to the church leadership,

I may be just another brother and sister in my local congregation, and maybe they confront me, and I say, okay, well, will you forgive me?

No, it's required upon them or whoever's leading that council to say, well, is there evidence that you're striving toward repentance here?

I can't just give you a carte blanche, because then you can just kind of do anything you want, say anything you want, live in any immorality you want, and claim full fellowship in a local church.

Now, we're all repenting sinners. Now, that's true for all of us. But if there's not that humility to call it what it is and strive toward a level of accountability and repentance, then the church is required by scriptural authority, yes, be loving, yes, have compassion, but not show, let's say, the type of forgiveness that says, okay, that you and the sin you will not repent of is welcome in the church.

That we must not do. And like you were describing, this quasi pseudo -biblical concept of forgiveness that just puts a lot washing on everything without any evidence from the guilty party of striving toward correction and repentance is not biblical forgiveness.

That's right. In fact, it emboldens the sinner to harm other people. Little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough,

Paul would say. Amen. In that context. And that's the thing that has made the body life here at my church so immensely rich is over decades of loving and patient and,

I believe, very humble approaches to correcting one another, we've built a body of people who are, what

I call, there's a spirit of gospel humility so that we want correction and we want to sharpen one another.

Iron sharpens iron, one man sharpens another. I don't know if you've heard that verse or not, but it's a good one. But there's the community of humility and you don't come to a church like ours if you don't want your sin dealt with.

But that's what the Spirit of God does in regeneration. He brings us to fear sin more than we fear the pleasures of sin.

And so we want to help one another. But not, again, in a demeaning, dictatorial, brawl beating.

Matter of fact, if you want to get in trouble at Grace Life Church, deal with someone's sin in a public manner when it shouldn't be public.

We require, we love each other. Sin, the Bible says the wages of sin is death.

If there's sin in a brother's life, if you love them, you want them to overcome that and overcome the consequences that come to him through that.

So, you go to him, but it must be in the utmost confidentiality until it absolutely cannot be kept there anymore.

Now, I'm coming up on the questions, all this way rather from the question the brother gave us.

But all these things are connected. Amen. And let me ask you a question. Do you believe, as I do, and as many men whom

I highly regard, that there are even grievous sins that are committed by congregation members that should be kept private if they are following the biblical principles in the

Gospel of Matthew, if they are going along with those principles in humility, that they can be kept private?

And those same sins, however, may not be able to remain private if it is an elder of the church or even a deacon, an elected official of the church.

Yes. And each case is unique. Something we've learned again. We've got decades of experience in this and we haven't arrived.

We're still running into things that we scratch our heads and say, what's the right biblical balance here?

But I would agree totally with what you said. Our approach would be, and I think the biblical approach would be, if there's any way possible, it should not be made public.

Now, sometimes things are just scandalous and everybody knows it already. Then obviously you have to deal with it publicly.

But we do our very, very best. And our folks have learned that. I mean, folks were terrified when we first started talking about this.

And quite honestly, I was terrified as a pastor. I'd never seen that before, so I didn't know what to expect.

But as we've gone along, we've learned that it's just part of our everyday Christianity. I mean, husbands and wives and families and children and bathrooms, everybody has accountability and discipline and correction.

Everything that matters in life has accountability and discipline. And this should be primarily centered in local church life.

And it's a sweet, loving, joyous thing. People look at it as an austere, harsh thing, but it is not.

And God blesses it wonderfully. Amen.

And going back to there being a difference between the way certain sins are handled when they are sins committed by congregation members and sins committed by elders and deacons and officers of the church, don't you think that, like for instance, any sin that would bring a pastor to the point where he is no longer above reproach, a sin like adultery, that can never be kept quiet in the church?

That has to be dealt with publicly, does that not? Absolutely. Absolutely. We've had to do that actually here one time.

And it's unfortunate, but yeah, you do have a higher accountability if you hold an office of leadership in the church.

Okay. And by the way, I do want to say that I found that email from the listener looking for a church.

James in Miamisburg, Ohio. I've never heard of that city. But James, I will get to it right after the show is over and try to find you a biblically faithful church somewhere near Miamisburg.

We do have another listener, BB in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania.

And BB says, since you were talking about repentance,

I thought that I would bring up a controversy amongst believers that has even split churches and have had one end of the body of Christ calling the other end heretics and false converts.

The issue of repentance seems to be greatly misunderstood. There are those among us who reject the necessity of repentance for salvation.

It seems because they misunderstand what repentance means. They think that means that a person must add works to faith in order to acquire salvation.

I know this is not what those who hold to the lordship salvation position are teaching at all.

It is just that good works and a turning from sin and toward God are required evidences of true repentance and salvation.

What is your thought on this? Well, I agree. Biblical repentance is, we have to be very careful because we all come from this subjective viewpoint of where maybe the things that are easy for us to deal with and to quickly deal with in our lives.

We had a lady in our church some years ago who said her earliest memory as an infant, or just beyond infant ages, as a young child, waking up and seeing everyone in her house stoned out of their minds.

And so she comes from a context with certain temptations and struggles where she could be genuinely repentant, but maybe not have gained some of the victories and areas that those of us who perhaps grew up in a more wholesome and decent family life would have.

So you've got to be very careful when you start defining in a legalistic way where you've got to have these five things and don't have these six things in your life.

Now the point to us is, and I'm convinced the biblical point is, are you a repenter? Are you calling it what it is?

Are you in the fight? Are you striving? Do you welcome accountability in those areas you're struggling in?

If you read the New Testament, you know the apostle Paul is writing to the churches like Ephesus and Corinth, etc.,

churches that grew up out of deeply sensual, corrupt, immoral environments.

And I think it was actually Dr. MacArthur and his commentary said, you know, in the church at Corinth, it would have been hard to have the same kind of elder qualifications that you and I might think of today because the men had gotten saved out of such horrifically sinful lifestyles.

So what repentants looked like depends on what they're repenting out of.

So I'm just saying the cookie cutter model, now some things are cut and dried. You can't deny the deity of Christ or you can't live in open immoralities like an affair or shacking up.

I'm not saying that. But there are certain things that are unique to where a person is coming from.

And if they're humble and they're trying and they're striving toward a wholesome Christian life, but the evidence of that repentant spirit and attitude must be there.

Not necessarily an obtaining of a certain level that somebody arbitrarily establishes.

Okay, we have an anonymous listener who says, I'm remaining anonymous because there are things going on in not only my own local church, but in churches that have fellowship with it that have become quite disturbing to me in regard to a

Pharisaic spirit. I could not have agreed more wholeheartedly than I did when hearing our dear brother

Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries yesterday on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, who is lamenting over the fact that there are previously dear friends in the

Reform Baptist movement especially who have developed a new intolerance for areas of disagreement over secondary and tertiary issues.

They have made these secondary and tertiary issues primary issues when I don't believe they have the biblical warrant to.

And there is more division occurring and more hate speech it appears.

I hate to use that grossly abused term hate speech as the leftists throw around, but sometimes even those in the body of Christ are truly guilty of it towards their own brothers.

What is your guest's opinion on what is going on in the body of Christ? And I understand that we must be diligent to be truthful in what we believe and teach about the

Bible, and we must be making every effort to be meticulous about interpreting and exegeting the

Bible. But I think that there is a Pharisaic spirit that goes too far where people are drawing conclusions that are not even clear in the

Bible and judging others over them as to whether or not they agree with their conclusions.

Well, it's a pretty broad and vague statement. Obviously I would agree with the understanding that we cannot again somewhat arbitrarily with half a scripture here or there come up with hard and fast dogmas about either belief or conduct in the local church.

There are many, many things we can disagree on and many, many things we have different views on and we should all still be in good fellowship.

Now, this has always been a problem. The early churches as recorded in the New Testament had the

Judaizers and other pagan philosophies that would slip into the churches and bring their rules in with them.

And I think there are a few things the Apostle Paul taught and preached against more than bringing the legalisms of the

Jewish faith, along with other things, into the church. And so we've just got to...

Look, here's one of the things I think we can run into, Chris, is that there are some very clear things that the great majority of churches seem to overlook.

Well, I can't get all the really clear things settled. You know what I'm saying? To get to all these obscure secondary things that are barely even mentioned in Scripture.

So let's keep the main thing the main thing and let's not divide over things that are just not biblically founded or sound as far as a basis for division.

Now, there's some things, there's some mountains we dial, of course. But one little brief illustration from our past is movements that come through and say that any semblance of a structure in your church of a children's activity or a student ministry program has to be categorically wrong.

We ran into that some years ago. And I thought, well, where did that come from? What matters is the godliness of the parents and the people leading the organization, not that the structure itself exists.

So on and on we could go, and it seems like every, if you talk to pastors who've been pastoring very long, every five to eight years a new thing floats through.

And it's another one of these secondary, non -essential things that somebody's forming hard and fast rules on.

And I think, quite honestly, lead pastors need to be very clear at denouncing that kind of legalism and that kind of fair spirit when it rises up in the church.

Yes, especially when, on some occasions, especially when we're talking about current

Reformed Baptist controversies. Yes. There seems to be what

I would describe a sinful boldness into claiming completely accurate knowledge about the mind of God in areas that are not clearly divulged by God in his own

God -breathed word. Where there are claims being made by some to pristinely, it seems, describe the mind of God and claim to have a grasp on it when

I think that they're treading too far on the secret things of God.

Am I overstepping my bounds here or overreaching? Well, yes. And again, how long has

Gnosticism been around? And that's basically what you're describing, something of a neo -Gnostic that we have a special insight that others may not have had and needed to hear what we're saying.

Yes, that's to me is, if it's not cultic, it's borderline cultic.

Well, thank you, Anonymous. And by the way, if you are a first -time listener, let me know off the air, of course.

There will be no other way you could let me know anyway other than off the air since we're not taking phone calls these days.

But let me know by email if you are a first -time listener because we always have a tradition here, a first -time listener with a question.

It's actually a first -time questioner. You may have been listening since we launched in 2005, but you just asked a question for the first time.

Every first -time questioner receives a free New American Standard Bible, compliments of the publishers of the

NASB. So just let me know, and we'll be more than happy to have cvbbs .com,

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, ship you out a free copy of the New American Standard Bible.

Before we go to our final break, I want to make sure that you let our listeners know the things that are troubling you most as far as what you see as being serious error in the body of Christ, and especially coming from those where you perhaps once had greater affinity and harmony, folks who used to be nearly in lockstep with what you believe and teach, but who are now seemingly publicly departing from these things and causing you grief and more reasons to fall to your knees in prayer, that the

Lord would mend rifts in the body of Christ and bring those who have wandered perhaps even on the brink of apostasy to come back home.

Well, you know, we just experienced a lot of separation and pulling away from us.

It really has been some years ago. In recent years, the reverse has happened.

Folks begin to seek us out and want to connect to us, and thus Anchored in Truth Ministries is more or less this family of churches, pastors, church plants, and missionaries who said, you know, we want to strive to be biblically sound, and we need to connect to somebody.

Can we connect with y 'all? So I'm not in that much of a circle today.

We're really not in any kind of environment today where I'm being, for lack of a better word, shot at or criticized or scrutinized the way it was several decades ago.

But these things, they never end, and that's why the Bible is so, well, the

Bible is so accurate in giving us truth that applies to every generation. You know, the

Apostle Paul is in prison as he's writing 2 Timothy, and he talks about how all have deserted me.

No one stood with me as he made his appeal for himself. Now think about that. This is first century.

This is the Apostle Paul. And there was already a falling away from sound teachers, preachers, i .e.,

the Apostle Paul, and sound doctrine. And so what I would say to brothers is you need to accept the remnant truth.

No, we're not just two or three of us. There's thousands and thousands and thousands and many good pastors.

But there's going to be more of those who will follow the cultural trends, who will sell out to the false doctrines of the age, whatever the latest color is or the flavor of the day, let's say, and find you a fellowship of brothers in Christ in churches that have gone beyond that and are not chasing those things.

And I guess in one way, and Chris, I think God uses you in a great way to be on the front line, and that's very important.

But there has to be some of us who are going forward in lockstep with brothers who've been through those battles, and they're no longer really tempted in those areas.

I don't mean that they've arrived, but I mean those things are just not pulling at them like they did maybe when they were younger pastors.

And they need to fellowship together and go on for God, and that's pretty much what Anchored in Truth Ministries is.

Well, praise God for Anchored in Truth Ministries. And we're going to our final break right now. It's going to be a lot more brief than the previous breaks.

Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

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Hi, I'm Buzz Taylor. Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio has had a long -time partnership with our friends at CVBBS, which stands for Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

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

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

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Hope to see you there. Welcome back.

Pastor Jeff, we actually have a listener, Joseph in South Central Pennsylvania, who has a question about the ad for the

True Church Conference that just aired. Joseph asks,

I just heard the ad for the True Church Conference during your interview, and one of the past themes of your conferences has been hyper -Calvinism.

It seems that everyone who is not a Calvinist calls all true Calvinists hyper -Calvinists, but obviously that is not true.

Can you please distinguish between historic and biblically faithful Calvinism and that which is accurately labeled hyper -Calvinism?

Well, it's true in numerous, shall we say, denominations in history that there have been great men who held to the doctrines of grace but understood the balance that we are to appeal to all men everywhere to repent and believe.

Sometimes I tongue -in -cheek say that if you want to understand where my theology is, I'm a five -port

Spurgeonist. As Spurgeon explains the doctrines of grace,

I find myself saying amen and amen. I don't mean he's explained it verbally to me as I've read his stuff.

But yes, we do not believe that we are excused from the great commission to go everywhere and urge all men everywhere to repent and believe.

However, we do believe that those who are rolled upon by the Spirit, who are convicted to repent and believe, are those that God took the initiative after He predestined and elected them to become

His children. I can't explain that balance. I don't try to reconcile old friends because man's responsibility to repent and believe, but God's complete sovereignty and salvation are both true in Scripture.

And I don't know, I just don't have a problem. I've never struggled with that balance. I've always thought that's the way it ought to be because I think it's clearly taught in Scripture.

I know there's some groups that, for example, there was for many, many decades in church history an anti -missions movement, and it was a hyper -Calvinistic movement where God's going to save them if He's going to save them, we don't have to go.

Well, I don't find that in the ministry of Jesus or in the ministry of Apostle Paul. I do see the glorious teachings of the doctrines of sovereign grace, but we have that responsibility to urge all men everywhere to repent and believe and to tell them that the warrant of faith is the gospel.

If they will repent and believe, God will save them. Yeah, tragically, Hudson Taylor was one of those who was being dissuaded from believers to go into Asia over their hyper -Calvinistic understanding of things.

Correct. And speaking of hyper -Calvinism, although this is not an element of all hyper -Calvinism, in fact, although some hyper -Calvinists have a picture of the gates of heaven being a lot more narrow than they actually are, there are some who have an unbiblically broad gate that leads to heaven.

I'm speaking particularly, and I don't want to broad brush, but many in the primitive

Baptist movement believe that there are those who are elect, who will go to heaven, who never even embrace

Christ on this earth. They so separate faith and repentance and the preaching of the gospel from regeneration in their theology that they have even pagans going to heaven in their understanding.

And some of them even become universalists. I think that's still a minority of them. Right. But having said that, there is a group,

I mean, they may have been present a lot longer than I am aware, but there is a group that started raising their ugly heads in the 90s and early 2000s, at least in my awareness of them, where if you do not believe in what have been called the five points of Calvinism, you are damned.

And some of them don't even call themselves Calvinists anymore because they now believe

Calvin is damned because Calvin, in their understanding of him, believed that you can not understand and not embrace some of the teachings that are called

Calvinist or sovereign grace or reformed and still be saved. And this group considers that a sign of reprobation.

People like you and I who believe that there are non -Calvinists in heaven, they consider that an absolute heresy.

What do you have to say about that kind of abuse? And I believe it's still a tiny minority, but it's troubling, though.

They love the Internet, that's for sure. They love to rear their ugly heads in the Internet. Well, it's absurd.

I mean, we're all learning and growing. So there's going to be all kinds of true believers who are all over the map.

And let's face it, there's a great scarcity of faithful pulpits.

So many of these sheep are the victims of what they've been sitting under. So we have to embrace where a person is.

It wasn't Aquila and Priscilla who taught Paulus a more excellent way. They found him where he was, but they kept him growing on.

And we're clearly five -point Calvinists here in my church. But I say this kind of tongue -in -cheek that my lovely wife is a committed

Christian, who has wonderful Christian fruit, is a highly admired woman of the faith, but she's probably a five -point

Calvinist. And I'm a four -point Calvinist, and I'm a five -point. These are things we don't divide over.

Yes, I hold to those doctrines, and if you pin me down, I'll say I'm a five -point Calvinist. Of course, some days

I'm like John Piper. I may be a seven -point Calvinist, but nevertheless. I'll put it this way.

I know some brothers who have not been taught well, but they love Christ.

They believe God gets all the glory. They believe God does it all, but they could not articulate to you the doctrines of sovereign grace.

But as they learn them, they rejoice in them. Well, there's no way you can condemn a brother just because he's in the process of learning.

That's where we all are. It's amazing. I use the word a lot as I get older in the ministry, and that's balance.

You can be more Armenian -leaning and get way out of whack on things, or you can be more

Reform -leaning and still get out of balance on things. Now, I believe one's more biblical than the other, obviously, but we had a group of freewill

Baptist pastors who came to our conference for a while. And those brothers were loved and welcomed, and I asked them,

I said, Why would you come? I mean, you're welcome. We love having you here. He says, Because y 'all believe the gospel really changes people, and the church ought to be full of true converts, and that's what we believe.

So there's a lot of things we connect together. And getting back to one of your original statements to me about us saying the true church converts, you're not saying you're a cult or you're the only ones.

Absolutely not. There are so many faithful brothers and solid churches out there, and we rejoice with them.

We just think there ought to be still more. And that's why we exist, to encourage and mentor and challenge and disciple brothers who want to build true churches so God can get the most glory through those churches.

In fact, we may hate to admit it as Reformed folk, but there are men of God out there, men and women of God, who demonstrate more of the fruits of the

Spirit, more of the patience, compassion, tenderness, and loving care of Christ as shepherds who are

Arminian than some of our Reformed folk. Absolutely. Amen. I would agree. And why don't you close with a brief word of encouragement.

Let me first give the websites for your church and your conference. First of all, there's

GracelifeShoals .org, and Shoals is spelled S -H -O -A -L -S.

GracelifeShoals .org for the Gracelife Church in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. And then we have

AnchoredInTruth .org, the website for Anchored in Truth Ministries. AnchoredInTruth .org.

And if you want conference details, add to that website forward slash true -church -conference forward slash.

But if you could conclude with some encouraging words for our listeners. Well, what I would like to challenge everyone with is find a solid church and give your life there.

Jesus died for the church, and until the day of glorification in the eternal state, we're going to be organized in these small congregations everywhere.

And nothing is more important than the church being true, being the church that God's called it to be.

And that's quite a journey, and that's a lot of work. But it's work that you know is worth it.

So connect yourself to a godly pastor, a godly group of elders in a church.

And look, they might not be very far down the road. Don't be too critical of them, but if they're headed in the right direction and they're truly striving to be biblically sound in their theology and biblically sound in their methodologies or ecclesiology, use the word you want, then join in there and dive in there and let's build some true biblically spiritually healthy churches, local churches all over the globe because that's the centerpiece of God's purposes and God's glory for time and eternity.

Amen. If you could, Pastor Noblitt, just hold on the line for about 30 seconds after I close because I would like to give you a proper goodbye off the air.

And I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially those who took the time to write in questions. I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

Savior than you are a sinner. Amen. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, brother.