April 23, 2020 Show with Ron McKinney on “One PASTOR’s FAMILY’s EXODUS From ARMINIAN PENTECOSTALISM Into SOVEREIGN GRACE!”

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I've been wanting to interview my guest today for quite a long time, and I'm so thrilled that I finally have the opportunity.

His name is Ron McKinney, and I first heard about Ron McKinney a number of years ago, probably back in the late 1980s or early 1990s, when

I heard about his dad, Don McKinney. I believe it was John Riesinger, who many folks know as being one of the pioneers of the mid -20th century resurgence of Calvinism amongst

Baptists in the United States and around the world. And John had told me about Don McKinney, my guest's father, who was an

Assemblies of God pastor, who was forced out of that congregation where he ministered after coming to believe in the doctrines of Sovereign Grace that have been nicknamed

Calvinism, Reform Theology, Sovereign Grace Theology, New Covenant Theology.

There's all different kinds of labels, and there's all different kinds of facets within the movement known as the

Sovereign Grace movement. But I heard the farewell sermon on tape that Don McKinney gave, the last sermon he gave at that Assemblies of God congregation before leaving there permanently, and I'm delighted to get to know his son,

Ron, who's our guest today, and he is pastor of Kinsey Drive Baptist Church in Dalton, Georgia, and today we are going to be addressing one pastor's family's exodus from Arminian Pentecostalism into Sovereign Grace, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Trumpets Iron Radio, Pastor Ron McKinney.

Thank you very much, Chris. I'm pleased to be with you today. If I may,

I'd like to give a little history, background of my father.

Of course. And give you an idea of what, in fact, he comes from Pennsylvania, or he was born in Lebanon, Pennsylvania.

Yes, I've heard of it. I've visited there several times. I've always liked

Lebanon bologna. Yeah, they sell that even here in Carlisle in the local

Walmart. Well, I've been to Carlisle also. I preached up there at Grace Baptist Church where Walt Chantry was pastor.

That's where I'm a member. Is that right? And I stayed with George Marisotis, who had a little sub shop downtown in Carlisle, and it was a terrific experience for me.

But I want to mention about my dad and his conversion in 1938. We're going back a long ways,

I know, but 1938, when my dad graduated from high school at Lebanon High, his family then migrated to California.

That was towards the end of the Depression, or it was the ending of maybe one phase of it, but they were desperate and they sold everything they had or gave it away.

My grandfather was in the business of a restaurant, and that was not a good business to be in, so they ended up in California.

And my dad shared a room with his father.

There were several family members there. And there was a man that was next door in a duplex, and his name was

Brother Combs. And I don't even know his first name. I wish I had remembered it, but Brother Combs was a man of prayer, and he used to pray in his room, and my dad could hear him through the wall.

And my dad was 17, finished high school. There he was in Los Angeles, and he met this man and he began to ask him, he said, what are you doing?

What's going on? He said, well, I'm praying. I'm calling upon God. I'm calling upon God to help me and give me knowledge and everything.

So he began to share the scriptures with my dad. Well, my dad had never been a church attender.

Probably the only thing he ever did spiritually was he would read to his grandmother occasionally.

But this brother shared with him the gospel, just talked to him several days for several weeks, and finally invited him to go to a meeting.

It was a tent meeting. It was called a revival, of course, and Dad went to that meeting, and he heard a message for the first time.

He heard a message about the second coming of Jesus Christ. And he said,

I was so stunned because I hardly even knew that he came the first time, much less that he was coming again.

And so I was drawn, and of course, in this meeting, they asked people to come forward to an altar.

And so I went down to pray, and people gathered around me, and they like to tear me to death, and they were praying with me.

He said, after about 45 minutes, I got up, and I sat down on a bench, and I just was sitting there, and I was contemplating what

I'd heard. And he said, the Holy Spirit came upon me, and I just felt broken.

I saw my sin. I saw my need of a Savior, and I called out to God to have mercy upon my soul.

And I just sought the Lord. He said, it was an amazing experience for me. He said, we stayed there and prayed for probably several hours, and I found such peace and joy.

He said, that night when I was going home, I was walking home, and it was a pretty good way.

He said, I felt such joy in my heart. I thought, you know, this is the way it's going to be the rest of my life.

Little did he know that there were many trials and tests that would be coming his way, but he went home, and he went into the house, and he was laid, and everyone else was in bed.

And he got in bed with his father, and he was lying there, and he said, the joy of the

Lord began to flood my soul, and I was so thrilled with what

God had done. He said, immediately I felt the release of the burden of my sin.

He said, I began to praise God while I was in bed there. My dad woke up, and he said,

Oh, son, what's wrong? What's wrong? He told his dad, he said, I'm just thanking

God. I've been saved. Well, of course, his dad said, just go to sleep. He just, he didn't want to hear anymore.

And what happened was that the family began to persecute him, and they really did persecute him.

I mean, my grandfather had taken him into the bathroom one time and hit him in the face as hard as he could and knocked him down.

Wow. He said, I don't want to hear anymore about this religion in this house.

Don't you speak of it. He said, even his mother one time attempted what he thought was a suicide, but it was probably more just to get him to think more about what he was doing.

They were so upset that he found grace, and he found

God. He found Jesus. Hallelujah. And he loved the Lord so much he read the

Bible all of the time. And he would have to get up in the middle of the night and go into the closet, turn on the light to be able to read, because they would not let him read in the house.

And it was just persecution. He began to, in Skid Row in Los Angeles, he began to preach.

I say preach, probably give his testimony. But that had an unusual gift as far as his ability to remember.

He memorized the scriptures. I want you to know he was a man.

I saw him often. He could quote chapters out of the

Old Testament. Now, he could quote chapters out of the New Testament. He knew the

Bible, in terms of the English Bible, better than anyone that I've ever known.

I could ask him, where is this found at? He said, well, I think that's such and such and it would be there.

He was like John Bunyan. You prick him and he reads Bible. He loved the scriptures so much.

Well, he decided to go and minister. That's another story in and of itself. He met my mom.

She was converted in one of his meetings they had in Jackson, Mississippi. She came with her sister.

Her sister had been saved. During the meeting, she made a profession of faith and it seemed to be genuine and real.

They met. This was during the war, 1942. A lot of people were getting married.

Dad met her and came back a few months later and started meeting with her.

Then they determined to get married. We always said about my mom, she not only got the message, she got the messenger.

They began to have meetings and he traveled. He became a very,

I think, what I would call a man, a popular evangelist because he had a very enthusiastic message.

He was very biblical in what he did. He did not know grace at this point, but he knew

God was the one that did the work. They settled down and he pastored in a couple of places in Mississippi and then in Alexander, Louisiana.

Then he went to Lake Charles. While he was in Lake Charles, of course, he was there for 18 years at the

Glad Tidings Assembly of God Church. Dad had great influence,

I think, in some areas as far as that denomination was concerned. He spoke at some of their general councils and things of that nature.

But one day, and this would have been in 1956, and this is very important to the story.

I was in the church auditorium with my dad and I saw he was troubled.

I was 12. I said, Dad, what's wrong?

He said, well, I've just gotten a message from my mother. His mother lived in Inglewood, California, and my uncle, whose name is

Lamar, Lamar was a younger brother.

In fact, he was 14 years younger than my dad. So when my dad left home, he really didn't get to know this younger brother.

But what happened was that his mother told him that Lamar had been arrested and he was in jail.

Well, we didn't know at the time, but he was a third -time offender. It was narcotics, and I don't know all the details about it, but I do know that back in 1956, they threw the book at you.

I mean, you were put away. And so Dad asked that he could get off for a few weeks to go out there to try to help.

Went out to California, and this is all part of the story. I hope you don't mind me telling all of this, but it is very, very, very important to the story.

When we went to the courthouse in Los Angeles, a great big courthouse, and my uncle was brought in by the man that was bringing him in there.

And the judge said this. He says, Son, I see you haven't learned your lesson. Well, he'd already had two offenses and spent a year in jail, which we didn't know.

But when that happened, my dad and my mother and my grandmother were sitting in the gallery.

She said to my dad, she said, Oh, Don, do something. Do something. So Dad stood up in the gallery.

Now, this is a big Los Angeles courthouse, one they have on television all the time.

And you don't stand up in a gallery and speak to the judge. That's contempt of court.

And they take you out. And he said, Your Honor, I'm the defendant's brother, and I'm from Louisiana.

May I speak to you? And the judge says, Well, this is highly unusual.

I don't know. He said, come back here. So they went back into the chamber and Lamar and Dad went back.

My dad said to the judge, He said, Sir, he is guilty. He's not innocent.

I know that. And my uncle said, He said, Well, I was thinking,

Don, you come here to help me? What kind of brother are you?

Yes, sir. Well, anyway, after he plead with the judge about the fact that his mother was older when he was born, she was something like 44 or 45, and the fact that his dad died when he was young, he didn't have any help.

Well, the judge said this, and this is what's interesting to me. He said,

I don't know why I'm going to do this. I don't know why.

And you know, all I can think about is how

God works His will and how He worked in that situation because the man that was before him, that was brought up before the judge, he got seven years in San Quentin.

He was a two -time offender. Lamar is a three -time offender. Well, the judge's heart was changed, and he said,

You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to put you in the custody of your brother.

And he said, He said, I'm going to give you a try. And he said,

You listen to your brother's servants. Well, Lamar hadn't been in church in all of his life.

So we took home this man from Los Angeles, California, convicted criminal, to our home in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

And we had a very simple life. In fact, we went to bed 8 .30

and 9 o 'clock at night, that sort of thing. We didn't listen to, we had no television, nothing.

It was a very simple life. And Lamar was miserable. He was with us.

He'd go outside to smoke, and he was just, he said, Man, I'd rather be in the tank than to be here.

He was just uncomfortable. That's what the people of the church, he said to the people of the church, he said,

Don't bother him. He did say this. He said, If God's going to save him, he's going to do the work.

And this is the amazing thing. Here's a man who had no knowledge whatsoever of the scriptures.

I mean, he didn't know, Now lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul could keep. He didn't know anything.

But he kept, Dad said to him, he had two things that he said to him. Number one, you must go to church.

Number two, you can't touch my wife. He didn't know him.

This man's 21 years old, and he's a rounder. Man, he'd been around.

He'd been in street gangs and things of that nature. So who knew what would happen?

But anyway, he said, You've got to go to church. And 11 days from the day he came to St.

Charles, on a Wednesday night, a simple Bible study,

I was there. And he was in the back pew. And he began to shake.

And I'm not, I'm not trying to be melodramatic. This is the truth.

He shook, physically. And he came under such great conviction.

And he ran down the side of the aisle there and there were altars. And he flung himself on this altar.

And he began to groan and moan and say, Oh, God. Oh, God.

And I mean, he prayed like that for an hour or more. And finally, there was release.

And he began to praise and thank God. And Dad was talking to him about Jesus and praising

Jesus and giving him the glory of salvation. Well, my uncle took my dad's

Bible and he placed it in his hands, in my dad's hands, and he says, Don, teach me.

And they stayed up all night long, Chris. All night long.

And Dad just poured out to him the joy of knowing Jesus and having this, our sins forgiven.

That Jesus took our place. He was our substitute. Oh, it was tremendous.

And Lamar began to study and read. Well, he couldn't get a job because he's a convicted criminal.

So Dad had him mow the lawn at the church and do things like that. But the rest of the time he studied.

And he began to memorize the Bible. And Lamar has a tremendous mind or had a tremendous mind.

And what he would do is he'd take the scriptures and he'd have me sit down. I was 12. And he'd say,

Listen to me, Ron, Ronnie. And he'd quote God is a hundred times in diverse manners, spake in times past, son of the father, father of prophets, hath in these last days spoken to us through his blood, whom he's appointed heir of all things.

He memorized the entire book of Hebrews and he'd only been converted for about three or four months.

He loved the scriptures. And he studied constantly.

Well, he studied dispensationalism. And he drew charts and all of that sort of thing.

You understand what I'm saying? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And all of that gave him a background and, well, he wanted to go to school.

And so this is what happened. They pled to the judge.

And, of course, the judge thought he had done a great rehabilitation job. This is about three years later.

And so he gave him permission to come back to Los Angeles. He stayed with his mom.

And he went to a Bible school. And I must tell you this because this is funny to me, but it's

Lamar. He went there and he said, I want to study Greek. Well, he said, you're going to have to take religious

English. You're starting from the bottom. And he said, well, if I take the course

Greek and if I pass the test, can I go into the next semester? And, of course, they laughed.

Well, at the end of the semester, he had all A's, including the Greek. And so they thought he may have cheated.

So they brought him in and said, well, how did you do it? He said, well, I just memorized the first 10 chapters of the

Greek text. I got all the endings, if you will, and so forth, you know. He knew the endings.

He knew how to put them down, but he didn't know exactly how all of it put together. But that's what started.

Then he went to school and he studied Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic.

He was a linguist. And I'm going to tell you what, but while he was at school, there was a professor he had.

In fact, it was his Greek professor who said, now, if you want to know who is the best in this, you need to go see

Augustine. You need to see Auguste de Strauss or, you know,

Charles Hodge. Charles Hodge is supposed to be the best in this. Well, he would go and get those books and he would read them.

And he stumbled, and I say stumbled, with the grace of God and it's providential, on the subject of God's electing love.

And God chose us before the foundation of the world. And when he saw that, it was like a light went off, you know.

And he was just amazed. He began to study. So he began to write to my dad back in Lake Charles telling him what's going on.

Now, when Mark graduated, top of his class, summa cum laude, he was brilliant.

And he studied. In fact, he was so good in Greek that some of his professors were afraid of him in their class because he would correct them.

But he was just, he was so diligent that he always wanted to know what does the scriptures say.

So he came back to Lake Charles. After graduation, he met a lady, a poet, a son, so that I actually introduced them.

I feel good about it because it was a great marriage. And it ended up, my uncle died just two months after my dad in 09.

And he was teaching and he had a business, but he also taught in the church and then he did some in a seminary that was close by in Texas.

But it was that time, 1970, Chris, I just went back to Lake Charles to Heritage Baptist Church for their 50th anniversary because on March the 3rd, 1970, my dad preached a message.

And it was found in 2 Thessalonians 2, 13 and 14 that he's chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the spirit and belief in the truth.

And there was an uprising in the church. It started earlier because Lamar had been teaching in the evenings to some of the men and then he taught a youth class.

And all of these people were beginning to see election and predestination.

Of course, predestination was a word that in assemblies of God you just didn't mention. You didn't, that was not even, they didn't find it in the

Bible. But what happened was my dad was then taken and they interviewed him by the presbyters.

And all he did that day as they interviewed him, he preached to them about the sovereign grace of God.

And at the end, these men, these presbyters said, we don't know how to refute you.

You know more Bible than we do. And so they didn't have any answer.

All they would say was, the Baptists believe this and the Presbyterians believe this and the assembly of Gods believe this.

And that's a poor, poor way of presenting what you believe.

Listen, you've got to know what you believe. And dad, he was so full of the truth.

Well, the next day, they had a service in the church.

And the church had grown immensely. Dad had been on television for several years.

They had this beautiful rending of a church they were going to build on new property they'd gotten.

In fact, that church became one of the largest in the city. I think they had five or six thousand members in attendance.

Wow. I mean, it was a big work, you know. And he loved truth.

And as he said in that message that you mentioned, Chris, his last message to Glad Tidings, which is still in Sermon Audio, and it's worth listening to.

But he says, if I have to push a fruit cart down the streets of Lake Charles, I'm going to believe this truth.

Hallelujah. He was committed. It was kind of a...

Now, you have to understand this. There was no one that we knew.

Brother, not one person we knew in the world who believed in grace.

Not one. Wow. God certainly didn't believe in it. No. And the

Presbyterians in the city didn't believe in it. And the Baptists didn't believe it. Not even the

Presbyterians? No, no. They were as liberal as they could be. Okay. And here we were.

We didn't have anybody. And it took six months later, they started to work.

What happened was is that there were about 80, 90 people who came out of the church when

Dad left. And they started a new work down at the city hall.

And you talk about difficult, because Dad was on television showing this beautiful rendering of a big church they were going to be building.

And the next Sunday he's on and says, I'm starting a new work. I mean,

I mean... When I was going up the steps of that city hall where we were meeting, the devil said to me, you're a fool.

You're a fool. Look what you've given up. And you know, I honor my dad and his commitment.

He loved truth more than anything else in the world. It affected his children, his family, his income.

I've always said about him, you know, he gave up everything. And for the next two years he had no salary.

I mean, he was just, he loved God and he loved the truth. And Lamar, they were seen together,

I guess you would say, in the establishing of a new work. And of course, now in Lake Charles there's a fine church, a

Baptist church that holds to grace. Praise God. And it's...

I was there and they had over 200 people there in attendance. And it's solid.

It's solid. It's not a lot of fluff. The pastor there, Shane Castler, he preaches the gospel.

He's very faithful to preach the gospel. So, I was in Memphis at this time in 1970.

I was in one of the largest churches in the Assemblies of God. We had 3 ,500 members.

I was pastoring there. And what happened was, of course, all of this stirred up interest in what

I believed. And if I may, I don't know how much time

I've got, brother, but... In fact, you know what I think we should do, since we should have already done it, so I don't have to interrupt you in mid -sentence,

I'm going to go to my first commercial break and we'll pick up right where you left off there.

And if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. And as always, please at least give us your first name, 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.

Let's say you are a Pentecostal and you are starting to rethink some of the things that you've taught and believed.

You have a searching heart to hear more and learn more about the doctrines of grace, and you'd rather not draw attention to yourself.

You don't want to be at odds with your pastor or the congregation or the denomination.

Perhaps you're even a pastor yourself, and you're having these same questions arising in your mind and heart that are making you doubt some of what you're experiencing in life and in the church.

Well, obviously those are reasons why you might want to remain anonymous, and there may be others as well.

But if it's just a general question about Ron McKinney's story, about theology, then please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence.

And don't go away. We're going to be right back with Ron McKinney of Kinsey Drive Baptist Church in Dalton, Georgia, right after these messages from our sponsors.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with a little less than 90 minutes to go is

Pastor Ron McKinney of Kinsey Drive Baptist Church in Dalton, Georgia.

And we are discussing one pastor's family's exodus from Arminian Pentecostalism into sovereign grace.

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

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

USA and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. And by the way, folks,

I want to make it clear that my reasons for doing today's program is because I love the doctrines of sovereign grace.

I love them with a passion and I want to shout these things from the rooftops.

It has nothing to do with my hatred or my looking down upon my

Pentecostal and charismatic brothers and sisters in Christ. I have learned a great deal from Pentecostal and charismatic friends.

And on many occasions they have proven themselves to be far superior to me in their godliness and their walk with Christ and just a very impressive way of being so bold about their faith and so on.

Now, obviously, I believe that there are many under that term, Pentecostalism, that are false professors.

Some of them are wolves in sheep's clothing like those that are in the Word of Faith movement, especially the leaders and the media personalities in that movement.

But there are multitudes of fine, outstanding Pentecostals and charismatics.

And in fact, one of the major financial supporters of this radio program is an Assemblies of God elder, but he also has come to believe in the doctrines of sovereign grace.

Another friend of mine who was an overseer on Long Island, New York, he was a bishop in the

Assemblies of God, Al Stein, he came to believe in the doctrines of sovereign grace.

All five points of Calvinism and beyond that, he was a precious dear brother in Christ and tragically, a number of years ago, perished in an automobile accident.

So, I do know folks from these backgrounds that have come to believe in these truths.

Some have remained non -cessationists or continuous, and some have left the belief in the signed gifts being present today altogether.

But I just wanted to make that clear that this is not being done out of arrogance or snobbery or sectarian spirit, but this is being done because I and my guests love the doctrines of sovereign grace and I am never going to be embarrassed by them.

I'm never going to subdue or dilute my enthusiasm over them.

And if you could, Ron, pick up where you left off in your testimony. Well, I think what

I was beginning to tell a little bit about my own journey, which...

Yes, you were being challenged by folks because they had heard about your dad's transformation. Well, that was part...

I'm going to go back just a little bit further because while we were in Lake Charles, my uncle was there teaching in the church and he was in business and my dad was pastor and my brother was an evangelist.

And I was the youth pastor there and, of course, when we would sit down,

I'm talking about the four of us, my dad, my uncle, my brother, and myself, we would discuss the scriptures and this is all before anything had happened.

And it was kind of an amazing thing how we would sit there and we would study as much as a day, all day long.

Just so... Every time we'd read through the book of John and we would come to something, it was just...

God would open up for us something new. Now, remember, we didn't know anything.

We knew very little, but we were coming to the knowledge of it. And it was just like...

I was as excited about it as if people get excited about ballgames or whatever.

That was how excited we were about studying the scriptures. And in John, no one can come to me except the

Father, we should certainly draw Him. And all of a sudden, that meant something to us.

You know, we were just learning. And so I left and I went to the largest church at that time in the

Assemblies of God in Memphis, Tennessee. First Assembly. 3 ,500 members.

And so I was in a position of being able to move up, as they would say, to the ladder.

You get opportunities, you know, as you move up. But I was there and it was during that time that I began studying.

I read books like The Forgotten Spurgeon by Ian Murray. Oh, yeah.

Excellent. I read A .W. Pinker's book On the Sovereignty of God.

It just blew my mind. That has blown a lot of people's minds. Yeah. And I had gotten, while I was in college,

I had, let's see, his name, Ed Smith was his last name.

He was the stated clerk of the PCA for 17 years.

Was it Frank Smith? No, it wasn't Frank. It wasn't

Frank. I'm trying to remember. I want to say Milton, but it's not Milton. But anyway, what happened was

I was in his OTBT class, Old Testament class. And he had some books for sale and he had one entitled

The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination by Wayne Bettner. Oh, yeah.

That was one. I bought that for a dollar. For a dollar. Wow, that's a big book.

I'm telling you, and I got it, and I didn't have much in my shelves in my room, but I got that and I took it home and my dad read it.

And this is part of all this coming together before he left the denomination.

It was something that, you know, it was reading and studying. Well, we were getting all of this and it just, it was just, it was becoming so real to us that we couldn't keep it to ourselves.

So, I was in this church in Memphis and one time I was going into the class.

I was teaching a college career class. They had about 200 in the class. And it was, they had a president who was in the class who was going to do a devotional.

And he gets up and he reads from Matthew chapter 10, I believe it was, and he says, you know, where Jesus said, it's not given unto you to know the mysteries, but it's given to us.

And he says, Vaughn, it sounds like they're not supposed to know. And I was in the back of the room getting ready to do a study and as I was walking to the front of the class,

I remembered very distinctly, I said, Lord, you don't want me to keep this to myself.

You don't want me... And I went up there and you know what I did? I had someone,

I had someone to read the scriptures in Romans chapter 9.

Well, this young lady that read it and then she read it, it was kind of a modern translation.

When it gets to the point that Jacob, Jacob, I love, but he thought I hated it. And she said, but that's not fair.

And I said, well, read what the scripture says. And the very next verse in her modern translation said, that's not fair.

I've never heard it rendered that way, but that's interesting. Exactly, exactly the way she said it was in the scripture that way.

I said, see you've got the same argument. And of course, even when it went further, you know, she said it just like that in Ezekiel.

Now, how can God hold a man responsible? Well, that's exactly what that scripture said.

So, all of a sudden, I was just reading the scriptures or having them read them.

And they were, and I began to... Well, now this is probably been 50 years ago.

It probably has been close to that anyway. That there were two men in that classroom.

Now, this is in Memphis, First Assembly. And one of them has now gone to be with the

Lord. I was speaking, preaching in South Lake, Dallas, Texas.

There's a Saddleback Bible Church It's actually, the pastor there is a very close friend with John MacArthur.

Anyway, I'd come over there and I spoke and found out that one of the elders in that church was a former youth that was in my youth group in Memphis, Tennessee all those years.

And he was the president that said to me that day, he said, Ron, it sounds like they're not supposed to hear.

I was so pleased to see that God had opened his eyes. And I ran into another one of them a few years ago and he's become part of a

Reformed Baptist Church and I was just, I was so amazed that these, that was not what happened because when

I did that I was called on the carpet and even though I was engaged to get married at that point,

I was told I had to leave and I was dismissed.

And that kind of started, well I went to a little church in Crooker, Mississippi.

I was going back to Reformed Theological Seminary to get my Masters of Divinity.

And what happened in that is a little independent, listen to this,

Methodist church that was there. The beautiful little church. These people were independent.

They had left the United Methodist Church because of racial sort of things for the most part.

Really? Not because of liberalism? Well, it was, there was, that was probably some of it but it was a lot more of the other.

So anyway, here's what happened was I went there and I had someone that invited me to come.

So I went and preached at this little bitty church in the country. But it was God's working.

And in fact, I just spoke to one of the members. He's now close to 70 years old and God has richly blessed him and saved him back in those days.

But anyway, I was at this little country church in Kruger and I didn't have anything to do but study because I was getting ready to go back or go to seminary.

And I had to take a course in the summer in Greek to kind of get prepared.

And so I began to teach these Methodists. Now, of course, the thing that was good is that they didn't know much at all.

In fact, brother, I'm sorry, but we have to go to another commercial break so we're going to pick up right where you were teaching the

Methodists. And folks, please be patient with us because this is a longer than normal break that we have in the middle of the show every day because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, always requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show. So please be patient with us and God willing, we'll be right back with Ron McKinney right after these messages from our sponsors.

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Before we return to our guest today, Ron McKinney, who is pastor of the

Kinsey Drive Baptist Church in Dalton, Georgia, and we are discussing one pastor's family's exodus from Arminian Pentecostalism into sovereign grace,

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That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Ron McKinney, the pastor of Kinsey Drive Baptist Church in Dalton, Georgia, as we continue our discussion on one pastor's family's exodus from Arminian Pentecostalism into sovereign grace.

That's chrisarnson at gmail dot com. chrisarnson at gmail dot com. And Pastor Ron, where you left off, you were teaching a

Methodist church that had left the United Methodist denomination, and you were a believer in sovereign grace at this time.

So pick up the story where you left off. Well, I had been in this larger church in Memphis, and I left there, and I was defrocked,

I guess you would say, because I believed in eternal security. One of the tenets of the denomination was they do not believe in eternal security, that you could lose your salvation.

Right, and that seems to be the biggest issue they have with all of Calvinism. That was the biggest issue, because they didn't even have any idea of what

I was talking about when I was talking about elections. It was really, it was an interesting thing.

I had to fill out a form every year if my belief had changed. I was honest, and I told them, yes,

I did have a change, and of course then I was scrutinized and brought in before some of the presbyters to talk with them, and I just simply told them what

I believed, and it was not sufficient, so I was defrocked, and you know, in one way it was fine, but another way,

I was losing everything that I had had up until that time, and I say this in the sense of my security, the people that I knew,

I had been in this denomination all of my life for 27 years, and now

I was all on my own. What am I going to do? What am I going to do?

And I'm going to tell you it was an amazing thing, within a week of my resignation, and of course

I told you that I was engaged to be married, and that kind of fell apart because of this, so what happened was is that I had a friend that invited me to go down and speak in this little town in Krupa, Mississippi, and preach for him.

He was a substitute preacher there, and he just said, you can take my place, so I went down there and spoke, and it was the most interesting thing.

It was a congregation of probably 40 at the most, 45, and I preached, and you know what?

It was just, it was so thrilling to be able to have a freedom just to preach the gospel.

Well, after it was over with, I had two of the men take me in the back room and say, now, we'd like to know if you would like to be our pastor, and I said, they had no idea what,

I said, well, I'm getting ready to go back to the seminary in Jackson, which is about 45 minutes away, and my thought was, you know,

I'm not a Methodist, and I just, I said, I like to preach the Bible. They said, well, that's what we want to hear.

We want to hear Christ. They really had no idea what they were saying to me.

So I said, you know, Lord, you've opened up a door here that I can't run from.

I felt like Jonah, man. I better go to them. I had something to do that, you know, to preach the gospel.

So I loaded up my things and I went down there to this little town. It's in the delta of Mississippi.

It's not too far from another little town called Tula and another little town called

Yazoo City, and then you have Jackson, Mississippi. And, uh, but this is all delta.

This is where they grow the cotton. And these people in this church, most of them were what they call planters.

They had, they had hundreds of acres. Some of them had thousands of acres of cotton.

It was interesting that in the 1970s, they were paying the farmers there not to grow cotton because of surplus and all kinds of things.

And so they didn't have to work as hard. They had time off, particularly in the winter.

So when I came in as pastor and I just,

I was so thrilled to have an opportunity, you know, to preach to them.

And they seemed to be receptive of me, but they'd look at me like, what are you doing?

Well, I started off, I started off by preaching on the attributes of God, which is the best place

I could have gone. Because what I was doing is I was reading books on the attributes of God.

What's the big volume that I'm trying to think of his name? I have a three volume of the attributes of God by this author.

You're not talking about A .W. Pink? No, it wasn't Pink. It wasn't

Chedd. It was, oh my, I just, my memory's slipping me.

But what happened was I was learning all week long and I would just get full.

And I would get up and I would preach and I would preach. And these people had never had true preaching.

Brother, I want you to know there are people out there that are starving to death. They have nothing.

And men, you know, are in these churches that they don't, they don't do anything.

And they were so hungry. By the way, there is a non -Calvinist book by A .W.

Tozer, if that's the one you were thinking of. But it wasn't Tozer. Shoot, I can't,

I can't believe I'm forgetting this. But anyway, what happened was that at one time, after about three or four or five weeks preaching on the attributes of God, I had this one lady, and she was in her 70s, and she may be 75,

I don't know, but she came up to the pulpit when I finished preaching. And she stood there and she looked at me and tears were flowing down her face.

She said, Preacher, that's what they call you in the country. She said, Preacher, she said,

I've never known who God was before. I've never known who

God was. I'm telling you, it was the most wonderful news.

God was penetrating their hearts. And you know, I was there for three years with my seminary, and we had a revival.

I'm telling you, there was a revival. I had another friend of mine, Joey Piper. Oh yeah, the president of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

He and I went to college together and went to seminary, and I've known

Joey for a long, long time. And he was in the little town of Chula just down the road from me.

And man, and then we had another situation that happened in Yazoo City, and a man by the name of Sonny Piester was there, and there was a genuine revival that was taking place of the grace of God.

And I'm going to tell you, it was amazing. And so I began to preach, and I saw people.

One Sunday, this is several weeks later, one of the men came. He hadn't been in church in 11 years.

His grandfather, his grandfather was the pastor of First Presbyterian in Jackson, Mississippi.

Large, the largest church in the city. But he, he didn't go to church.

And he came, and one Sunday, he took me in the back. Big, robust guy, probably 6 '3", and thorough chest kind of fellow.

And he came to me and said, Preacher, I got to talk to you. He took me in the back room, and as he was there, he said,

Preacher, he said, this week, I was out on my tractor, and all of a sudden,

God came and made Himself real to me. I saw myself as a sinner, and I asked

God for His forgiveness and for salvation. I'm dating, and this big old, burning guy, tears were running down his face.

I could just see him now. What a, what a thrill it was for me to see him.

He's now, he went to be with the Lord a few years ago. But, I had,

I had conversions like that. Now, I didn't, I didn't do any invitation system, none.

I said, I'm not going to do that. If God's going to do it, He must do it. And then,

I could begin to see what, then this one young lady, she, she's, became a

Christian, and she learned about grace, and she ended up going to the mission field, and she's still in Japan in the mission field.

She was, and this is out of a, a Methodist church, and another young lady who was in college, she came home on the weekends, and, bless her heart, she, she was so, when she sat down, and I talked to her about the sovereign work of God, she was the first person

I ever had to simply say, oh, I see it. I see it.

And she believed. She was a godly young lady, but now she, well, all of a sudden, she gets a burden for the people in the community.

Now, let me tell you a little bit about what the Delta of Mississippi is like. the county that we were in,

Holmes County, was considered the darkest county in the state, and I mean by that, there were

African Americans, or blacks, who were there, and they, they were probably 95 % of the county.

I miss the kind of situation that there was. There were people who had their plantations, and they had people that worked for them.

They lived in houses that were built for them. It was an unusual situation.

Now, this young lady got conviction, and she came to me, she says, pastor, she said,

I want to have a kind of a

Bible study for some of the black children in the community.

Well, I knew her father, and that's not something he would have been happy about.

I said, well, I said, let's do it.

She was willing to do it, and I'm telling you, it started a ruckus in that little community.

Wow. And I'm going to tell you what. Now, she had it. She did it.

In spite of her dad being angry, she loved her dad. Loved him dearly.

But she went in, and you know, I remember, well, we had

John Riesinger came to preach for me there in this little town while I was in seminary, and he did a great job preaching, and at that time, they had pretty much come to believe in grace.

I had taken time during the winter, which they were, they didn't have to do anything in the fields.

They were mostly working on equipment, so on Sunday night, I would have them come, and we'd do a study, and we'd be there two hours, and I'd take them through the book of Romans.

I'll never forget writing on the board for whom did Christ die, with a question mark.

Put it on a big chalkboard, and then I gave them verses of scripture, and they would read them and say for his people or for his church.

Hallelujah. I mean, amazing. These people who didn't know much of anything as far as scripture's concerned, they began to embrace it, and they knew something about election before we even

I won't tell you what. It was amazing to me to see what took place, but this young lady, she really got a hold of it.

When John Riesinger was there speaking, one of the men had been converted.

He was a farmer. He and his brother were farmers, and he said, you know, I'd like for us to bring some of my workers in here to hear

John Riesinger because I think they would understand him. But the thing was, they wouldn't come.

The black community would not come into the building. So what we decided to do, listen to this.

So we decided we would have a service in the barn. They had a great big barn, and John Riesinger was preaching the gospel in the barn, and these black men were there.

And I'll tell you, it was glorious. It was good. And I know that some of them believed and trusted in Jesus.

That, to me, is such an amazing thing to see what God... Joy Piper knows about this.

He knows about it because he was in Tula, and he had the same thing happen around his church and also in Yazoo City.

John Riesinger, of course, is one of the men that was so influential in our lives.

I say my family. When we talked about my family, all of us coming out, and I've got story after story of how

God just worked in different people in our family. And I'll give you one.

Lamar is married to Paulette, who's now gone to be with the

Lord. Paulette is in Highland, Texas.

She's a marvelous musician. She plays for a church there that's Sovereign Grace, and she loves the truth.

And when Lamar died, she kind of just carried on holding to the truth. She teaches a ladies' class, and her children is what is amazing to me.

At one time, her brother and her sisters all opposed

Lamar. They just, because he was wanting them to know the truth.

One of those things, sometimes it's the hardest people to talk to is your family. The prophet is without honor in his own hometown.

Yeah. And then, you know, and then it's just hard. They just, and so, but you know what?

God, over the years, He changed the hearts of them.

And I'm telling you, it was amazing how each one of them came.

And when Lamar died, the testimony of her family, there were five of them altogether, and the other siblings, all of them talked about how

Lamar had taught them the truth. Nothing's more important than the truth about God, about Christ.

Christ is our everything. He's our salvation. He's our justification.

He's our sanctification. He's our all in all. If you don't see that, all these other things don't match, you've got to know

Christ. And that's what I, I was emphasizing when I was there in Kruger.

And I finished my studies there at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson.

And when I did, I started working with John Riesinger.

Are you aware of this, Chris? Aware of which part? That I was working with John and I knew that there was an affiliation because that's why

John, years ago, had recommended that I get in contact with your dad and you. Yeah, well, see,

John had a paper, a publication called The Sword and the Trial. Right, right. And at that time, they had about 500 or so, and we moved everything to Jackson, or to Clinton, which is just outside of Jackson, and we had the publication of The Sword and the

Trial, and in that, we would have articles of Charles of Hattens, Spurgeon's sermons, and then

John was writing articles, and we'd have other articles, all dealing with the doctrines of grace.

And we did that for several, several years. John had an automobile accident in which he almost died.

Wow. I don't remember hearing about that part. Well, he was in an automobile accident in Greenwood, Mississippi, and he stayed with this,

I think it was a dentist, and what happened was he was bleeding internally, and he flew home to be back in,

I guess, Mechanicsburg, wherever he was living at the time. The town next over from me.

Yeah, that's close to Carlisle, isn't it? Well, he ended up going directly to the hospital when he flew in, because he was bleeding internally.

It was really a touch and go for a little bit, and God spared him, and I'm grateful.

He lived to be 93. Yeah, praise God. He only went home to be with the Lord just not that long ago.

Yeah. Last year. That was last year. You know, I remember one time someone tried to say something about him, and said,

Oh, John Reesing, you're not going to live to be 65 years old. I won't tell you who it was.

You probably know the man, too, but God just used that man.

He could teach in such a way that people responded. They could understand.

He just, as my uncle used to say about him, you put the cookies on the lower shelf.

You know, where the cookie stands. And it's true. Well, anyway,

I did work with John for a while. We tried to do some television programs.

We did some radio programs, and I became editor of The Sword and Trial during the time he was sick or had this accident.

And we published. We ended up having about 20 ,000 people that we sent

The Sword and Trial to at the end. I mean, it was over a period of about 13 years.

We mailed out The Sword and Trial a lot to Basie. And you talk about a tough job.

That's a tough job. But we sent it to all of the states and 43 foreign countries.

Let me tell you about what's really interesting, probably, since you're there in Carlisle.

Ernie Reisinger was a friend of mine as well, and he spent time in our home. Right. He's the founder of Grace Baptist Church in Carlisle, where I'm a member.

I know that. He was a dear brother. I always talk about his conversion because that story of Elmer, you're familiar with it, aren't you?

I may not be. Go right ahead. This, to me, is the thrill of all of this.

Ernie had this man that worked for him in the construction company. Ernie had this large construction company and had a man named

Elmer that worked for him who was a Christian. And I don't know much about him, but he was just a...

He's one of these guys that he would always ask you to go to church. Always ask you to go to church.

So has this been the day when Ernie was the ballroom brawler? Yes, sir.

Yes, sir. It sure was. You know, he was a ruffian and he was a tough guy.

But this guy, Elmer, just a simple man who would ask him, why don't you come to church,

Ernie? I'd love to have you come to church. And he said he did it for years. And so finally, he'd always give an excuse.

You know, I don't have good shoes for it or whatever. But anyway, he gave him a flimsy excuse.

And so finally, he said, I'm going to come. And so he got up that Sunday morning and went to this church.

And outside of the church was Elmer. I'm trying to think it's

Whitney. Elmer. But anyway, he was outside the church. And when he saw

Ernie coming, he began to weep. Wow. And he was so thrilled to see him come.

So he took him into the church and of course, Ernie became a believer. And what happened was is that Elmer's wife said to Ernie, you were either going to get saved or I was going to kill you.

Because... Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. When Elmer came home from the work, he would go into the bedroom and he'd be crying out to God to save Ernie Riesinger.

He did it week after week after week after week. And I thought to myself, here's the persistence of prayer.

This man who loved his soul. He cared about him and his soul.

And he prayed for him and then God saved him and used him in such a marvelous way.

Ernie was with me one time and we went over to Southwestern Seminary in Fort Worth.

And we sat down with him and we talked to him about getting the mailing list of their graduates so that we could send them literature.

I was going to send them The Sword and the Trial, a free subscription to it.

And Ernie was going to send them the book, James Pettigrew Boy, Abstract Theology.

When that was back, we're talking about in probably 79, probably 78, 79.

And then those books began to get out to these graduates. He sent them out free.

And here's something that's really interesting. One of the men working with us named

Dan Bates was a deacon in Ernie's church in North Pompano Beach.

And Dan tells the story he was one of the deacons that he helped pack up the books and prepare them to send out.

And one of the books got into the hands of a man by the name of Moeller.

And he was the father of Albert Moeller, Jr.

Wow. He gave the book to his son while he was a teenager.

Wow. He went to Sanford University, as you know. And, of course, later went to Southern Seminary.

Where he is now president. Where he's now president. I used to have Albert Moore come to Dalton to speak for us.

I've had him at three or four conferences where I had Al Moeller to come here. By the way, brother, we're going to have to get to our final break.

I'm sorry to interrupt you. I hate interrupting you. But this will be a very quick break. And if anybody...

I have a feeling we're going to have to wait until another interview to have questions from listeners. But we're going to be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen and this is the last segment of today's interview with Pastor Ron McKinney of Kinsey Drive Baptist Church in Dalton, Georgia.

I know without question that after the show, I'm going to invite Pastor Ron back on because the time has just flown by like a bullet.

I wanted to reassure those of you who have written in questions, including

Andrew in Dalton, Georgia, I want you all to be rest assured that we will have

Ron back at some point in the future. Hopefully not too long. We have a lot of dates booked already, but we will have him back to continue on this theme.

If you could pick up where you left off, I'm sorry I had to interrupt you, Ron. That's quite all right.

I was mentioning something about Al Mohler Jr. having gotten a hold of a book about boys and that was one of the influences.

J. Pettigrew Boys. Yes, James Pettigrew Boys. And I got acquainted with him while he was down in Georgia here.

He was editor of the Christian magazine that the

Georgia SBC produced. But he came and he preached for several different times and nobody knew who he was.

Nobody. I didn't write and I'd have three or four that might show up.

He came back and spoke at our conference in 2010 and we had it at the convention center here.

Anyway, God has done amazing things, brother. I want to mention this in closing that when we came to the grace of God, we felt like we had something that nobody else had.

I mean, we felt like we were alone. We felt like we were the children of Israel.

You know, they were like they were alone in all this and I remember going to a

Together for the Gospel conference. And they had 7 ,000 people that were there that year.

And I did something rather foolishly, I guess, but for me, I didn't care.

I knelt down right there when I saw all of these men. And I just praised

God. I said, at least there's not 7 ,000 that have bowed to the knee of free will.

And you know, it's just it was so glorious to see and to hear the singing and the praising of God.

When we came to the Doctrine of Grace, Chris, we didn't know anyone and there was no one on the radio.

There was no one on television. It was foreign to most everybody that we would speak to.

And then God introduced us to John Reese here. And what a blessing to take.

John told me, he said, when my dad called him, he said, I couldn't believe that this group had come out of the series of God and believed what they believed.

But God prepared us in such a way that, you know, we were we loved what we had learned from the

Lord and we wanted to teach and preach that. And the rest of my dad's life

I mean, he preached 70 years, Chris. Praise God. He died preaching.

I mean, that's how he went. And my uncle was the same way. He was so in love with Christ and he died just a few weeks or months after my dad, a couple of months later.

And my brother died a year and a half later, so I'm the only one left of the men.

But I'm preaching the gospel and I'm going to do it till I die, the

Lord willing. Praise God. Well, it turns out I guess we do have time for a couple of questions.

And by the way, Andrew, in Dalton, Georgia, obviously we're going to wait till the next time to have your request responded to because Andrew wanted you to tell the story on the formation of Kinsley Drive Baptist Church, but we only have about six minutes, so we'll wait till next time.

I would love to do that. But we do have let's see, we have an anonymous listener who asks, when you transformed from Pentecostalism into the doctrines of sovereign grace, did you immediately become a cessationist, or did you ever become a cessationist, or was it a gradual transition?

This is referring to the sign gifts, obviously, tongues and healing by laying on of hands and that kind of thing.

You have to remember this has been over 50 years ago, and I would have to say those are questions that I've dealt with over and over again.

You know, I know this. I know that God is sovereign in what He does.

I don't think there's anything that we can manipulate that we can cause to happen.

Does God give extraordinary things at times? I think

He can. I know that in the scriptures, I know that there were extraordinary things that happened.

I'm very skeptical, and I'm very careful about when

I talk to people who have had experiences of tongues without interpretation.

I would be very guarded about that. But can it happen?

God can do whatever He wants to do, and I know that God is, you know, the Holy Spirit is free to do as He wills, and I'm not expecting that, but at the same time,

I know that the God that I serve gives grace to us to do many, many things, and one of them is to worship and to praise

Him and to give Him glory. And I've had some personal experience that I can't deny, but it doesn't have to do particularly about tongues or interpretation.

It has to do with the fact that just the glory of God seems so magnificent.

I was overwhelmed by it. I don't know if you've ever had that experience, but I tell you what,

God has come and showered me with His grace in such a way that I've had times that I just,

I had nothing to do but just simply throw up my hands in praise and worship Him.

Oh, amen. I mean, I don't think becoming a believer in the doctrines of grace means you start denying supernatural experience.

No, sir. But in your own life, did you ever come to a place where you ceased speaking in tongues?

I haven't done that in a great, I mean, it's been a long time, and I don't say that because that means that I don't believe.

I just, I have some difficulty because so much is false that I see.

There's so much humanism that is brought into it, and it's dealing with people in such a way, you know, it's manipulating.

Right. I just don't, if God is going to move and work, you don't have to do all of that.

Right. Let me give you, if I've got a moment. Yes, you have about two minutes. I had this experience when

I went to Orlando, and I happened to know the pastor, this is the

Calvary Assembly of God Church in Orlando, a huge church, and R .C.

Sproul, they had their conference there this particular year. I think it might have been 93.

And I knew somebody in Orlando that was a member of that church,

Calvary Assembly of God Church. So I called him and said, could I stay with you? I'm going to this conference.

And I went in, stayed with him, and I went there early, so I went on Wednesday night, which was the night that the local church was meeting.

And I was sitting down front of this church, and it's probably, they probably had four or five hundred there.

They began to sing, and what I would say is they were trying to get everybody kind of whipped up into a frenzy of some kind.

Now, I was knowledgeable enough of that to know what was going on. I'd seen it all my life.

Emotional manipulation. It was an emotional manipulation, and I was, my spirit was quenched.

Some people would say, well, you just don't know the working of the Holy Spirit. Listen, I'm not afraid of the working of the

Holy Spirit, but I didn't feel it. The very next morning, I went back and I sat in the front row again.

There were probably three or four thousand people there for R .C. Sproul's meeting. John Gershner.

Yeah, yeah. You know, he was R .C.'s mentor.

Yes, he was, and they both almost had identical voices, too. Boy, let me tell you,

John Gershner was speaking on the ontological godhead, and man,

I was sitting there, and brother, in me, my head was full, and my heart was full, and I wanted to come out of that chair, and I wanted to praise

God and lift my hands and shout. I didn't, because my Presbyterian friends would have looked at me like I was crazy.

I'm going to tell you what, it was that glorious that God, God, oh my, and you know, we just, some of us have a little different feeling about certain things than others.

And brother, I hate to tell you this, but we're going to have to continue this the next time you're on the air, because we're out of time.

I'm so sorry. I'd love to. I could listen to you for many, many hours, and I'm looking forward to the next two hours with you.

If anybody wants to get a hold of Kinsey Drive Baptist Church in Dalton, Georgia, go to kinseydrivebaptistchurch .com

That's K -I -N -S -E -Y drivebaptistchurch .com

Thank you so much, brother. I look forward to your return to the program, and please stay on the phone, because I'd like to reschedule your next interview.

Thank you, brother. And I want everybody to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.