June 4, 2015 Radio Show with Pastor John Samson discussing his journey out of the Word of Faith movement

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now here's our host, Chris Arnzen. I am

Chris Arnzen on the radio. I am Chris Arnzen on the radio.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of the planet earth.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Thursday, and I am so delighted to have as a guest today

Pastor John Sampson of the King's Church in Peoria, Arizona, and we are going to be discussing his fascinating exodus from the

Word of Faith movement heresy into sound biblical theology, which we both embrace, and it is commonly nicknamed

Reformed Theology, Calvinism, and the Doctrines of Sovereign Grace, but welcome for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron, Pastor John Sampson.

Well, thank you very much, Chris, for your wonderful invitation. It's a delight to be here with you. Yes, and first of all, tell us something a little about the

King's Church before you go into your testimony of the theological transformation that occurred in your life.

Give us something. Well, yeah, it's a fairly new church. We're getting established with just off the ground, really, a fledgling congregation, but really wanting to be biblical and preach through the books of the

Bible and equip God's people. The four key words we often use are reaching, teaching, training, and sending.

We want to reach people with the gospel, the true biblical gospel, then teach them what

God says, and then train them to go back to their homes, and then their families, and then the workplace, and even missions around the world to affect the world with that gospel, sending them out.

So reaching, teaching, training, sending. We're a young congregation. We would describe ourselves as Reformed Baptists, and delighted to have that opportunity here in the

Phoenix area to serve. Well, why don't you tell our listeners, first of all, about how you came to Christ.

Obviously, we can tell that you're not a native Arizonian or Arizonan.

I don't know how they say that over there. And not only that, but you're not even, obviously, from this country. Where are you from exactly in the

UK, and tell us something about your testimony. Yeah, I was born and raised in the city of Chester in England, about 21 miles away from Liverpool.

That's a historic Roman city built in the first century. We still have amphitheaters that you can walk in and realize and see the rocks that were there all those years before.

I grew up there. My father was a Reformed Evangelist, but he was very much a traveling minister.

He had pastored in Scotland and then in England, but was traveling quite a bit.

So although I was very much growing up in a Christian home, I wasn't really a child of the

Church in that sense. I didn't really go to church very often at all, even though there was a heavy

Christian influence there, which is unusual. But at age 14, my dad asked me to go with him to a specific service he knew of the

Evangelist to be preaching, and he preached on the second coming. Made it so real that it really rocked my world.

I didn't want to be there, didn't want to listen to the man at all, but halfway through his presentation, suddenly

I became interested to the point where I realized my desperate need of a

Savior. And what was just very, very boring to me at that point, religion and Christianity just became immensely attractive as Jesus stepped off the pages of history into a living reality for me.

And I realized I needed a Savior, and whatever they'd asked me to do, I'd do. So raised my hand, walked the aisle, signed the card, and there we have it.

But more than anything, I was just very, very convinced of my need for salvation.

I realized my sin, and that was back in 1980. And you obviously received the call to the ministry, and tell us about how you went from having a reformed, a theologically reformed or Calvinistic father in the ministry, to entering into the

Word of Faith theology. What was strange to me was that my dad, although very much reformed, never told me that's what his position was.

And it seems very strange on the ear when you hear that. He was an out -and -out Evangelist.

I'd walk up to the center of town and hear that familiar voice of my dad. He was preaching in the open air, had,

I think, the largest, most booming voice I think I've ever heard in my life. And an out -and -out

Evangelist. And I didn't know that he was Calvinistic until I became a

Calvinist myself, or was on the way to it. I went to a Bible college, as they call it.

It's more likely to be called a seminary over here in the States, but a Bible college in England. And that was 1985 through 87, just knowing.

Before that, before my conversion, I wanted to be a soccer player. I wanted to be a pro -soccer player.

But after conversion, that desire just decimated, didn't materialize.

And I wanted to be now a preacher and tell people of the gospel. Went for theological training, and what's interesting again was most of the professors and lecturers were reformed in their thinking.

But it didn't affect me. I was, at this point, now heavily into word -of -faith teaching, listening to people like Kenneth Hagen and Kenneth Copeland.

And although I would not agree with everything I heard, they had a vast influence on me.

And then after the training, I hooked up with a gentleman who, again, would not classify himself as a follower of Hagen or Copeland, but certainly some of the elements of the word of faith were certainly paramount of healing in the

Atonement, to the point where you can simply just claim that healing, and God has initiated the laws that allow us to receive those things.

So I had an Orthodox view of the Trinity. I had an Orthodox view even of repentance and faith, but I was very much a part of a movement now that was very apparent, very unorthodox in so many different areas, and certainly we can talk about that.

Yeah, well, if you could, because some of our listeners may be completely unaware of some of the terms we're using, and obviously we couldn't exhaustively define every term or we'd never move on to a second subject, but for those of you who want to find out more about the basics of Calvinism, there are other programs we've done, not only in the old archive of Iron Sharpens Iron, which should be up on the website fairly soon,

God willing, from 2006 through 2011, but also yesterday Pastor Joshua Fryman was on, discussing the misconceptions that non -Calvinists have about the doctrines of grace.

But as far as the word of movement, if you could give us some basic outline of what that theology is, and you named a couple of them already, but some of the prominent speakers that are affiliated with that theology that our listeners may recognize from television and perhaps radio, and books even.

In recent days it would be people like Kenneth Hagen, who's now passed away,

Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, Creslo Duller, Frederick K .C.

Price out in Los Angeles. These are the prominent spokesmen of that message, which is, as they understand it, they take

God's Word at face value and preach what they believe is the uncompromised

Word, and they would say that Jesus went to the cross not only for sin, but for sickness and disease, and for removing all of the curse to the point where we can have abundant prosperity in a financial sense even now.

And what was key in captivating my attention was there certainly were verses in the

Bible that seem to suggest all of that, but I would now look back and say that there were really, that the concept was to focus on certain verses at the exclusion of others, and the entirely missing was any kind of understanding of God's sovereignty.

That really would be how I would focus the thought on what it is Word of Faith is.

It's a man -centered idea of God sending Jesus to meet every one of our needs emotionally, physically, spiritually, temporarily, and eternally, but really the benefits are all ours now, we don't need to go to heaven to get them,

Jesus has come to the cross now, it's available, and that's where they're coming from.

Let me quickly give my email address if anybody has a question for Pastor John Sampson on the

Word of Faith movement and on his transformation from that heresy into what is nicknamed

Reformed Theology, Calvinism, the Doctrines of Sovereign Grace. My email is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

chrisarnsen at gmail .com. chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

I don't know if it is a universally held heresy amongst the Word of Faith movement, but I understand that at the very least

Kenneth Copeland believes that Jesus Christ actually became a demonic entity or a demon while on Calvary's cross.

Is that true, and how prevalent is that? Well, yeah, it's certainly there in writing, it's there on his audio recordings, and I look back, and here's what happened,

Chris. I would read of those statements of his, and because there's no central headquarters, no denominational headquarters for the

Word of Faith, there's actually no one to answer to, and so there's a wide spectrum of belief within the

Word of Faith movement, and now these men, people like Kenneth Copeland, are hugely influential, absolutely.

But I remember having a conversation with another pastor in the Word of Faith movement, and I raised that exact issue.

I said, where are you with regarding Kenneth Copeland on his view of Jesus on the cross? He made a statement, he said, out to lunch in that area, and what was amazing to me and what was intriguing to me was to hear someone who's part of the movement who's saying, you know,

I cannot go with him there, I cannot, but in other areas he's got wonderful stuff to say, and that actually influenced my own thinking to allow me to stay within that movement, because I just said, look,

I can't go with him there. I preach as I understand it, an understanding of the cross of Christ, that he remained a sinless, spotless

Lamb of God throughout the entire process of what they call from the cross to the throne, but certainly within the movement there's very much heresy regarding Christ and his work of atonement.

They don't believe oftentimes that Jesus finished his work on the cross, but finished it in hell.

He was the first man to be born again from spiritual death to spiritual life, which again is absolute heresy.

Yes, that's, I remember hearing that right out of Kenneth Copeland's mouth, that Jesus Christ was the first born -again man.

Yeah. And I believe they, at least Kenneth Copeland, teaches that God the

Father has a physical body, just as the Mormons believe. I don't know if it's exactly the same as the

Mormons believe, but they share in common that Jesus, that God the Father has a body and is about the same height and weight as Kenneth Copeland.

Yeah, yeah, I've heard that, and again, I would, I never embraced that, because again,

I thought you could have this wide spectrum within a movement and never went within there, but again, a phrase

I picked up along the way in life is deceived people deceive people, and I was deceived.

I was deceived to remain part of something that is absolutely abhorrent, and look back now and just thank

God for amazing mercy. I was seeking to be orthodox, and yet I would say the biggest issue that needed to change in my life, that started the process of changing everything, was understanding the basic concept of the sovereignty of God.

There's none of that in the Word of Faith movement. It's, God in His sovereignty has given us

His Word to believe. You believe it, you'll receive it, you confess it, you'll bring about the reality of it, but as you know,

Chris, sovereignty is almost on every page of our Bibles. God does what

He wants, when He wants, the way He wants, and never has to stop to ask permission, but that is a statement that would never be sanctioned in the

Word of Faith movement. And please explain specifically what they mean by the term

Word of Faith theology. Yeah, it's a phrase that comes from the

Book of Romans. Word of Faith would be the message of faith, the message of faith in God.

You take God at His Word, you don't dilute it. Again, my observation now is their favorite word, people.

They would say, by His stripes, we were healed from Isaiah 53, but they would never sanction an understanding of whatever the

Lord pleases He does in heaven and on earth, in the seas and the deeps. They would choose their scripture.

They would choose what would be in conformity with a big scripture, and their thinking would be

John chapter 10, verse 10, where Jesus said, the thief comes to kill, steal, and destroy, but I've come that they might have life and have it more abundantly.

And in their mind, if you can just picture that verse in your mind, they would divide up everything that happens in life as of the devil or of God.

If it's of the devil, it'll come to kill, steal, and destroy. If it's of God, it will come to bring you life, it will be a blessing to you, it will be helpful to you, it will be an encouragement to you, and that's the dividing line in that sense.

I would just point out that Jesus said, I've come to give you life, but He never said, I came to give you lifestyle, and that's a big difference.

Amen. And one of the things that I've heard about the

Word of Faith movement, and not only just heard about from people outside the movement, but from within, is that the

Christian has a power, a supernatural power, connected directly to his speech, and that he can speak things into existence, which is one of the reasons

I thought that they used that term, the Word of Faith, to describe themselves, that they could actually make things a reality, and even when in sin, unconsciously speak evil things into reality.

Yeah. They would go to scriptures in Proverbs that would say, death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat the fruit of it.

And they would say, death is in the tongue, life is in the tongue, you can speak death to your body by saying,

I'm getting sick, by saying I'm feeling bad, I'm feeling like a headache's coming on, and they would say, you are now allowing the devil to influence you, and you have now given him authority to work his work of darkness and curse and evil in your life, which will include sickness and disease.

On the other hand, if you start now, from this moment on, ask God for a crop failure of your words, you can now start speaking seeds of love and blessing and health, and you now need to confess with your mouth,

Jesus is healing me, Jesus has healed me, he went to the cross for it, and there you go.

They're very much, they don't realize it, but in a legalistic format, again, when we understand

God's sovereignty, as Luther said, even the devil is God's devil. And my own process, you asked me about that a couple of questions ago, was not done with any kind of love in my heart, except I wanted to know the truth.

I remember back in 2000, the year 2000, I was pastoring this church in Phoenix, we had around 250 people, which started it from scratch, and I thought

I had a pretty sound and good knowledge of the Bible. I'd heard R .C.

Sproul before on the holiness of God, and I guess I enjoyed that, and I wanted to hear him, knowing that he was coming to Scottsdale, Arizona, not too far from my home,

I wanted to hear him, but my heart sank when I heard what he was going to be speaking about. When I read the pamphlet that came in, it said he's going to be speaking about chosen by God, the doctrine of predestination, and I thought, oh, of all the things he could fly across the country to talk about, why would he talk about that?

That's something that's past, it's fell by day, we're now in a new millennium, let's forget this historic idea, this theological twisting of Scripture, that's what

I thought, but I wanted to hear him, I wanted to go see him, and now I look back again and just see that as God's grace to me.

I sat on the back row of this Friday night and Saturday morning seminar where R .C.

Sproul just started teaching from the Bible about what God says about his sovereignty in divine election, he chose a people for himself before time, and walked us through the

Scriptures, and one of the things they did there was to invite questions and answers, and I thought that's when the stack of cards are going to come down.

I was sitting on the back row simply because I knew, I thought, that he's going to go and wander off into deep theological prose and just start quoting

Mr. Calvin and some of these others, and at that point I can leave quietly without upsetting or disturbing anyone around me.

What was unexpected was he never did any of that, he just went to the

Bible, went to places like Romans 8 and Romans 9 and Ephesians 1, and just walked us through the passages, and I was sitting there just stewing because there was nothing

I could fault. I didn't want this to be true. I was not sitting there with a receptive heart.

In fact, if you could have seen me, my face was a little white, especially when he started to take questions and answers, and he even predicted what the questions might be, not because he's a prophet, but because he's dealt with the subject before and he knows what kind of objections are raised, and I thought, all right, this is where the rubber hits the road, and certain questions were asked like, what about John 3, 16, and he says, let's go there, let's go to our

Bibles, and he had not a jocularity about him, but there was a confidence about him.

He says, let's look at the text, and in four or five minutes he exposed my shallowness of understanding.

I thought, I don't need to even look at the text, I know what the text says. We can quote that, all of us can as Christians, but then he said, now here's the assumptions we bring to the text, and let's see what the text actually says, and what happened,

Chris, is I left that conference very disturbed. I wasn't convinced, such as my depravity.

I was not convinced, but it started a six or nine month study process where I ordered everything

I could of his and others. A gentleman by the name of Dr. James White became prominent in my life as well.

Some of his books, his book, Potter's Freedom, was now available, and again, with the arguments logically from Sproul and his attention to the text, and then the deep work of exegesis of looking at the scriptures with Dr.

White, between the two of them, over that nine month period I became fully reformed in my thinking, which was a shock to me, and I called my father in the

United Kingdom and said that I now embraced Reformed Theology, and he says, good. Now he says, forget it and go preach.

And that was his attitude all along, he never pushed Calvinism. I remember saying, you know,

I think I'm a three -point Calvinist now, that's five points as you know, and he says, well you believe the

Bible, don't you? I said, yes. He says, well, I'm a strong Calvinist.

I had no idea, Chris, I had no idea. And when I embraced it, he says, good, now get out and preach and share the gospel.

And that was his attitude, and what happened again was once I understood

God's sovereignty in election, it was then a ripple effect of, he's not just sovereign over in this little compartment of life and the universe, he's actually

Lord of everything. And again, over time it was a process. I began to see what the

Bible had said all along regarding meticulous providence, as the theologians would call it.

He's Lord of everything from the sparrow falling to the ground, that cannot happen,

Jesus said, apart from your father. Again, that would fly in the face of Word of Faith doctrine that says he's got nothing to do with death.

He's got nothing to do with the little things, you know. And again, this vast concept of sovereignty became not just this little roof over a little house in the village somewhere in my theological thought, it became the banner over everything, and that's really when things started to happen.

And I started preaching it at the church, I was pastoring, and in one service lost quite a few people.

And something you just said triggered a memory of Joel Osteen's father, John Osteen.

I don't know if he was specifically identified with the Word of Faith movement, but I remember him specifically blasting

Calvinism from the pulpit and mocking it, and saying that there are people that believe that if your little itty -bitty baby is hit by a car and killed, that God had something to do with it.

And he yelled at the top of his lungs, God had nothing to do with that, that was the devil. And he went on to mock

Jonathan Edwards' sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, and said, that's not good news, that's bad news.

Well, the fact of the matter is, you can't really appreciate what good news is until you hear the bad news, isn't that right?

Exactly right. And again, there's no concept that the devil is

God's devil, that the devil can only do what God allows, and they would see that as total unbelief, and they would just fire back with John chapter 10, verse 10.

The devil comes to kill, steal, and destroy, if the baby was killed, that was the devil.

And on a surface level, it seems that's what John 10, 10 says, but again,

God's sovereignty is even over that, and it is true the devil's intention is all of those things, but if it actually happens and that the devil is allowed to be doing that, it doesn't negate the fact that God is still sovereign over all of it.

Yes, Judas, the scriptures tell us that a devil entered Judas, and that was a requirement for Christ being betrayed and being crucified so that we may have eternal life.

Yeah, exactly. In fact, the scriptures even call Judas a devil himself.

Yes, and again, we have to ignore big portions of our

Bible to be word of faith, and they try to say that in the Old Testament there was less light than we get in the

New, and we interpret the Old by means of the New, but again, it's both in the

Old and the New we see the vast sovereignty of God. First Samuel 2, the Lord kills and brings to life.

Oh no, no, no, no, no, it's the devil that kills. But again, look at the scripture. The Lord kills and brings to life.

They would never look at God causing a death and see, and they would allow for that in their thinking.

It would be, okay, the devil got in, and in some sense

God was witness to the whole event, but his hands were tied because they'd obviously spoken negative words that have brought death, because death and life is in the power of the tongue.

And it's this cycle of thinking that has a diminished

God, and that's what I needed to repent of, Chris, when I began to see the sovereignty of God, was

I had understood and I had preached a lesser God.

The idea, I thought, was that God in its sovereignty had given man dominion. That's a key concept in that movement, and through his words now he can speak realities into existence, all by God's power.

And so I did not in any way think that I was making God do anything, but I was facilitating

God's will by speaking good and right things. And so it's a, as you know, you only need a little bit of poison in a hot dog to kill someone, and there's a good measure of truth in some of the things that were said, but all in all there's enough poison to kill.

And I had to repent and realize not only was this man -centeredness in the extreme, but it actually opposed the

God of the Bible who says whatever he does he accomplishes because he pleased to do it.

Whatever the Lord pleases he does in heaven and on earth. Psalm 135.

And so I've met people in the movement that says, I don't even believe God is sovereign, because their

Bible, I think the King James Version they were using, didn't have it or didn't use it.

Just said things like, the Lord God Almighty reigns, but it didn't have the word sovereignty in because the word wasn't there.

They didn't think the concept was either. They think God in its sovereignty, if he is sovereign, has given us dominion.

And we, we set the course of our life by our words. And what a terrifying theology is to think that the devil has as much power on this earth to have his will accomplished and that God is sitting back with his hands tied as the devil and sinful humans control the outcomes of the events of history.

And the most important thing in all of our lives is where we will spend eternity.

It's a frightening thought that they would think that's in the hands of man and the devil ultimately. But let me go to a break right now.

We're gonna pick up right where we left off. I'd love to hear about how the folks at Trinity Broadcasting Network, which is a haven for the

Word of Faith movement, how they reacted to your coming to the Doctrines of Sovereign Grace and other things about your journey.

We'll be right back. If you'd like to email John Sampson a question, please email it to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

This is a live broadcast, I'm reminding you. So if we get your question in time and if it's relevant and brief and to the point, we will read it on the air if we have enough time before the broadcast ends.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. We'll be right back with John Sampson and don't go away.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Zarnes of Iron Sharpens Iron. If you've just tuned us in, our guest today is

John Sampson, pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona.

He is a theologically Reformed pastor, a Reformed Baptist to be precise, and he is formally an adherent to and teacher of the

Word of Faith theology, which we would both now consider to be very seriously heretical.

You were, as I mentioned before the break, a local host of the

Trinity Broadcasting Network, which was founded by Paul Crouch, who is one of the key figures in the

Word of Faith movement. Tell us something about that, and of course he is no longer with us, he passed away just a few years ago, but tell us something about how you broke the news to these folks about your transformation theologically.

Well, I come from England and was starting the church here, which again would have been passed as a

Word of Faith church, no doubt about that, and was invited to the

Trinity Broadcasting Network to be a guest there, and in the discussions after the two -hour live show,

I was asked if I'd be interested in becoming one of the hosts, and they had six or eight different hosts, and there was a live two -hour show that reached just about all of Arizona, and I did that for three or four years, until one day

Jan Crouch apparently had watched one of the programs that I did and just didn't like my accent or something.

I don't know what the problem was, but in fact she basically made a call of about six of the eight different hosts, and I was one of them, and so that was that.

It was three years, though, that I was certainly part of all that, and interviewing guests, and then oftentimes in the last 20 minutes of a show, sometimes even the last 30 minutes of the show, they'd say, the final guest hasn't shown up, or he has, but we're just gonna have a short interview.

You preached for the last 20 minutes. It was just a, as I saw it, a marvelous opportunity to be part of something

I thought was wonderful, having come from England, and at the time there wasn't anything such as a

Christian television station, and I knew that there was weirdness in the extreme on the channel, and I also knew that there was some good stuff, too, and I thought in my deception that was part of the good stuff, and there we were.

It's interesting how you introduced me, Chris, because you made me sound worse than a drug pusher.

Well, wouldn't you say, though, in reality, that somebody who is a teacher of heresy, especially on a television network where there may be potentially hundreds of thousands of viewers, wouldn't that be worse than a drug pusher?

It is worse, it is, and I own that. I own my sin very, very clearly, and in my heart

I had, and my mind, I thought I had an Orthodox view of the Trinity, but I didn't have an

Orthodox view of God and His sovereignty, and you're absolutely right. So there was no official reaction later on, a few years on, when

I became a Word of Faith, but what was interesting, I didn't show much wisdom in transitioning the

Church through all this, because it had taken, as I said, a six to nine month process for me to unlearn many things and to relearn and look at familiar verses and now look at them in that context, look at the actual words, and it was a devastating process.

It was not a thrilling thing to realize not only had I embraced, but I had actually taught false doctrine, and now

I'm pastor of the Church, and I've got to undo not only false doctrine, but false doctrine that I preached, and I remember one sermon specifically,

I thought, right, it's time I started teaching them on this, and I didn't have much wisdom,

Chris, and I'm not sure I have much now, but back then I had even less, and started to teach on Ephesians 2 1.

The title of the sermon was, What is it about death do you not understand? And within ten minutes of the start of that, my secretary and her husband, who was the sound guy, and two members of the praise band, as we called it back then, the worship team, as we called it back then, they all left in the middle of the service shouting

John 316 on the way out. And I realized that now in hindsight it would be just better to just walk people through books of the

Bible than should the subject come up, you deal with it in the text, but I just took this thing on and expected them to turn on a dime, even though it had taken me six to nine months myself.

So, you know, we all learn, we all learn from our mistakes, but it was a heavy and hard process, because I lost very close friends when

I started to embrace this really now Biblical view of God.

We do have a listener who has emailed a question. Lou in Sharpsburg, Georgia wants to know if Joyce Meyer would be a part of the

Word of Faith movement. Yes, the short answer is yes, and there's documentation of her preaching the exact same thing or similar things to what

Kenneth Copeland said regarding Jesus and his nature on the cross. They're available online.

There's certain ministers who have written extensively on this subject and included in all of that are quotes from Joyce Meyer that, as far as I know, she has not repented of.

She seems to now focus more on ways to life and laws in the kingdom and doesn't seem to stress

Jesus' work on the cross so much and really identify some of the things we're talking about over and over and over again.

So you might be reading seven or eight of her books and you'd find it very hard to find anything on this issue listed there, but historically she said all of those things and as far as I know has not repented of it.

Yeah, it's quite a shame or tragedy when somebody is less noticeably heretical by speaking less about what

Christ did on the cross because of the fact that the Word of Faith movement has such a horrific and demonic view of what was accomplished on Calvary's cross.

That's an excellent insight and you've just nailed it, that's right. Well we thank you

Lou in Sharpsburg. If anybody else would like to email a question, chrisarnson at gmail .com

is the email address. chrisarnson at gmail .com. Now, were you a part of the

Charismatic movement or Pentecostal movement before coming into the Word of Faith?

I want to make it clear to our listeners, even though I am not Charismatic or Pentecostal, I have great admiration for many

Christian brethren who are. In fact, one of my closest friends who

I loved to have as a frequent co -host and guest on the

Iron Sharpens Iron program when it aired from 2006 through 11, was Pastor Al Stein of the

Neighborhood Assembly of God in Belmore, New York. He went home to be with Christ for eternity in January when he was involved in a fatal automobile accident, and Pastor Stein was really a...

you could barely discern any difference between what he believed and what I believe, and his heroes of the faith were men like Ferguson and George Whitfield and Jonathan Edwards and John MacArthur.

So men both living and dead of the Reformed faith were amongst his greatest heroes.

But were you a part of the Charismatic movement before the Word of Faith, and when you transformed into Reformed theology, did you become a cessationist, or are you a continuous today?

I would answer yes to both of your questions. By the way, a ministry

I would just point people to, especially with the last question about Joyce Meyer, is a gentleman by the name of Justin Peters, who really has gone to great lengths to expose everything

I'm saying in much more detail with actual quotes, you know, on the screen, and there's a video

I believe he's put together called, Clouds Without Water, and you can find his material at justinpeters .org.

I just thought if they wanted more information and documentation, they can go there for that. Yes, he was a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron probably about five or six years ago.

Oh, very good, very good. To answer your question, yes, I think Word of Faith is,

I would say, the most loud noise within Charismatic circles, and so certainly

I would have described myself as Charismatic, and as things progressed in my life, as theologically, as I began to, first of all, embrace

Reformed doctrines, is you begin to see the value of Scripture, that Scripture alone is

God -breathed and has the ability and right to bind the conscience in the sense of only that nature, only something of that nature being breathed out by God has authority like that, and certainly when we come to the

Charismatic so -called gifts of the Holy Spirit, they in no way rise to the level of Scripture, and over time, and I would say much time,

I became less and less enamored with the Charismatic element. I called myself

Reformed and Charismatic for a good many years, holding on to both, but then again just seeing the inconsistencies of the

Charismatic movement in my studies and in my viewing of what's going on out there, and I thought, you know, the only thing that is solid ground is the

Scripture, and now I would describe myself as a cessationist. I believe the

Holy Spirit is at work as as he was before in regenerating people, pointing people to the truth of the

Bible, but the big issue at the Reformation was not merely the necessity of the

Bible, but the sufficiency of the Bible, and so understanding that, you realize, the

Bible is God's Word. Let every other thought, let every other idea be challenged.

If it's not in line with Scripture, it needs to be thrown out, and again, the issue at the

Reformation was not whether grace was necessary, but whether it was sufficient.

People in Rome could say, we need grace, we need faith, but they would never sign on the line to say it's the

Bible alone, and grace alone, and faith alone, and Christ alone. And so, yeah, to answer your question, yes,

I was, and no longer do I hold to the Charismatic gifts.

We're going to be going to our final station break. If you'd like to email us a question for Pastor John Sampson, this is your last opportunity.

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. That's chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Don't go away, we'll be right back in a few minutes, or actually just in about a minute, with more of Pastor John Sampson and his journey from the

Word of Faith movement into the doctrines of Sovereign Grace. Don't go away, we'll be right back.

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Call Linbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402. That's 516 -599 -9402, or visit linbrookbaptist .org.

That's linbrookbaptist .org. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen, if you've just tuned us in.

This is Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and we have as our guest for the very first time ever, even when we had the program on from 2006 through 2011, we had never had

Pastor Sampson on even then because I didn't even know of his existence back then, and thankfully

I happened to see by God's providence him co - or should

I say guest hosting for Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries on his

Dividing Line program, and I contacted you immediately afterwards because I was so impressed with your topic, and thank you very much for responding immediately as well, brother.

Oh, I've admired your work from a distance for many years as well, Chris. I'm so thrilled you're back on the air.

It's wonderful. Yes, I was very humbled and honored to know that you were aware of Iron Sharpens Iron even back then before I had seen the

Dividing Line program. Yeah, I think before I'd met you I'd been on cardboard, Sharpens Cardboard, but that was...

Well, I have a Roman Catholic friend, very close friend, Pete Sheehan, who is a journalist, and one time he was a reporter for the

Long Island Catholic, and he used to get upset sometimes when I would have people expose the heresies of Roman Catholicism, and since I didn't have a

Roman Catholic present on the program, he would call my program Iron Sharpens Butter.

Well, let's whet the appetites of our listeners for your next appearance on Iron Sharpens Iron, because we're gonna have you back to further discuss this new faith.

Well, I'm not saying that it's new to you now, but chronologically, your new faith, the doctrines of Sovereign Grace, Reformed Theology, Calvinism.

You have a book that you've written called Twelve Whatabouts, and after you described your visit to an

R .C. Sproul conference, I think I understand now why you came up with that title. So if you could please describe that book,

Twelve Whatabouts, and what's the full title again? Twelve Whatabouts, Answering Common Objections Concerning God's Sovereignty in Election.

I was, after 2005, you might be aware of another website called monergism .com,

and it's a word that's very theological. It means one power working, and it's really speaking of God's activity in regenerating, bringing us to life by his almighty power alone.

And so there was a blog site that was linked to monergism called reformationtheology .com,

and John Hendricks, who runs both sites, I had written to him and said thank you for all that he'd put together on the monergism .com

site, and he was thrilled to hear that God had used Dr. Sproul, Dr.

James White, and then I think the third thing I would mention would be that monergism site, where I could ask questions or research a lot online, and there were historical articles and articles of our own day that were immediately available and so, so helpful.

And he invited me to be one of the writers at the reformationtheology .com

website in 2005, so that's quite some time ago now, and it allowed me to start writing and putting some of my thoughts on paper, or at least on the internet, answering the objections people had.

And a few years back he said, John, you've got enough material now to write a book. And I said, well

I'm not sure I want to do that. And he says, oh just a little bit of work. Well, it was quite a lot of work eventually, but again, you write something and then on the internet people can challenge you, and you've got to really know your stuff, and you've got to be able to research and defend the truth that you're proclaiming, because you're writing in a public forum like that.

And with his encouragement, I did set about writing this book, and it took quite some time to put it together.

But it's a short book written for someone who is just new to the subject, but says, well if that is true, if God is sovereign in election, what about John 3 .16?

What about 2 Peter 3 that says he desires all to be saved and all to come to repentance?

What do you do with that? If that's true, why would we pray? Why would we evangelize?

And so I put together twelve of the most common objections, and said, right, let's seek to answer that.

And God seems to be using that in helping people in understanding things.

And I really tried to walk people through who have not had any kind of theological education, but they can just grasp the concept.

And it's interesting, just a couple of weeks ago I was sent a copy of the book that I wrote in Italian.

Someone had been blessed by the book, and by their own doing had said,

I'm gonna translate it into Italian. And I remember the email I received, and two years later he says,

I finished the project. I've been busy with other things, but I finished it, and here's a copy now in Italian.

So then you have Italian listeners, but it's now available for anyone who speaks.

And John 3 .16 is Giovanni. And the title in Italian is, 12

What About It? Of course, that would be Italian American version. Italian New York, or New Jersey.

Have you maintained many friendships from the

Word of Faith days, especially in the pastorate, or at the very least, people from various congregations?

Do you remain in contact with many of them? No, from a distance.

I have a few folk that I still maintain some contact with, but they actually feel sorry for me.

They look it down and say, John's lost the anointing. He was once anointed by God, and he's now forsaken the faith.

And in their mind, I might as well have become a Universalist or some crazy heretic.

And yet, this that I'm embracing has been the historic view of Christians. It's the craziness of the

Word of Faith that's this modern novelty. But they would not understand that.

Their understanding of church history goes back as far as Billy Graham. Well, I'm going to reveal to my audience how totally disorganized

I am, because I don't have my calendar in front of me. But when are we going to do the follow -up interview next week?

I believe it's Monday, June the 15th. Yes, that's right. It's not this coming

Monday. It's the Monday after. Right. So if you want to mark your calendars down,

Monday the 15th, 4 to 5 p .m. Eastern Daylight Time, we're going to have John Sampson back again.

And this time he's going to be talking about his book, 12 Whatabouts? Answering Common Objections Concerning God's Sovereignty in Election.

And by the way, before I forget, you can get that book through our newest sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron, Solid Ground Christian Books.

And their website is Solid -Ground -Books .com. Solid -Ground -Books .com.

And we thank them for being our new paying sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron.

We also want to thank the folks at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Services, which not only carry books published by Solid Ground Christian Books, but many other

Reformed publishing houses. They are sharing our live feed for this radio program on their website and helping to promote what we're doing here in every way that they are capable of.

And their website is CVBBS .com. CV standing for Cumberland Valley.

BBS standing for Bible Book Services .com. So we want to thank them as well.

In a minute, John, if you could close our program with what you have most etched on your heart and mind that's burdening your soul that you want to be etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners before you go.

I would just point people back to the God of the Bible, the God who plays for keeps, who has a plan, and as Isaiah makes clear, he fulfills everything he desires, he accomplishes everything he sets out to do.

That's the God of the Bible. Don't fall for any imitation. Don't fall for any lesser

God. Believe what the Scripture says, not only as the highest standard, but believe all that Scripture says.

The God of the Bible is the God who reigns, who has been reigning for all eternity and will reign forever.

His dominion is forever. That's the God of the Bible, and embrace him and his gospel, which is that Jesus Christ is the only

Savior. Put your faith in him and he will save you from every calamity imaginable, the most being an audience with him, not being right with him, an audience with God.

Jesus saves by his work alone. Trust in him. Come to him.

Repent and put your full trust in Christ. He is able to save and he is perfect.

He is the perfect and only Savior. Amen, and please remind our listeners how they can get in touch with you and the

King's Church in Peoria, Arizona. My blog site is effectualgrace .com.

It's an old English word, effectual, E -double -F -E -C -T -U -A -L grace .com,

and I pass the King's Church in Peoria, Arizona, and again the website for the church is kingschurchaz .com.

I want to thank you so much for the wonderful time I had with you today, Pastor Samson.

I'm eagerly looking forward to two Mondays from now, having you back on the program to discuss your book,

Twelve Whatabouts, to help people think through these very important doctrines known as Calvinism, Reformed Theology, and the doctrines of grace, and I want all of our listeners to always remember for the rest of their lives an important truth from the

Puritan Christopher Love, that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater Savior than you or a sinner.

Good night, God bless, and look forward for you to tune in tomorrow on Iron Sharpens Iron.