January 13, 2020 Show with Andrew Rappaport on “Andrew Interviews Chris Arnzen at the 2018 and 2019 G3 Conferences”

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

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron.

This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues

facing the Church and the world today.

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

another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse 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 two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with

your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, Champaign County, Illinois, and the

rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming to

ironsharpensironradio .com.

I would like to greet you on this something -th day of the month of something, 2020.

I can't get any more specific than that, because this is a prerecorded show, and I'm not sure

of the exact air date.

But Chris Arnzen and I, Eric Nielsen, are going to be going to the G3

Conference in the next few days.

And so today, we have a very special broadcast with two interviews that were done at the G3

Conference in 2018 and 2019 by Andrew Rappaport.

In 2018, Andrew attempted to turn the tables on Chris, and instead of

being interviewed by him, tried to get Chris to answer questions about his own

history, how he started Ironsharpensironradio.

And that didn't quite work.

But it's a good interview anyway, and it meshes well with the interview that Andrew did in

2019, where he let Chris know ahead of time what he was intending to do.

And so here is Andrew Rappaport interviewing Chris at the 2018 G3

Conference.

Chris Arnzen here again at the G3 Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, and I

have with me someone that I've known for quite a while.

If you've listened to Ironsharpensironradio for any considerable length of time, you may recognize the name

Andrew Rappaport, who has been a guest on the program.

Typically, he's been interviewed by phone, but we have another opportunity to have him interviewed face -to -face.

He is the founder of Striving for Eternity Ministries.

He's also a Jewish believer.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Ironsharpensironradio, Andrew Rappaport.

Well, Chris, thank you very much again.

It's always good to see you face -to -face as well.

Amen.

Praise God.

And why don't you let our listeners know, who have not heard you before on Ironsharpensironradio and may be unfamiliar

with you, but why don't you let our listeners know about Striving for Eternity Ministries?

Sure.

Striving for Eternity is really a teaching ministry.

And so we have courses online on systematic theology, hermeneutics, which is the science of interpretation,

interpreting the Bible, introduction to discipleship, world religions.

I have a book, What Do They Believe?, which is on systematic theology of the Western religions.

The majority of them, you know, Islam, Judaism, Catholicism, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, just came out with

a new book this week, What Do We Believe?, which is a systematic theology for Christians, keeping with the same way that I did the

other one, keeping it where it's concise and something that, for new believers, they can easily read it,

new people that are new to theology, but it's also something for believers.

I try to put lots of references in there so that it's a quick reference guide as well.

Tell us about the major emphasis of What Do We Believe?

Or is it What We Believe?

It's What Do We Believe?

What Do We Believe?

So, What Do They Believe?

And then What Do We Believe?

And so basically what I'm going to do is I'm going to look at the Christian authority.

The second chapter is one of the probably most important ones because I deal with biblical reliabilities.

What I'm trying to do is take a topic that is usually reserved for seminaries, textual criticism,

and break that down to a lay level because most people, the biggest thing that most people have to deal with,

especially like when they're evangelizing, is the question, well, the Bible was written by men, well, the Bible's been

edited, and a lot of Christians have no idea how to handle that.

Yeah, their pastor got that in seminary, but they don't continue studying that.

They don't teach that.

So, what I want to do is break that down to a lay level so that anybody can understand the issues

and understand how to defend that the Bible is very reliable.

In fact, I actually do some calculations to say that if you look at it, the Bible is about 99

.8 reliable.

I'll put those numbers up to CNN any day of the week.

Now why wouldn't you say 100 %?

Well, because we do have textual variances, so we do have some where we can't get back to the original meaning and

we can't get back to the original wording.

So, the meaning would have changed, even, I mean, there's the one that Bart Ehrman would refer to in

his book, you know, if you're going to write a New York Times bestseller, you've got to put your best argument forward, and so his best argument that we can't get back to

the original Bible is that Jesus, in some manuscripts, was called the son of a carpenter, and in

others, he was a carpenter.

I know, that just blew your listeners' minds, because there's so many doctrines based on.

That, right?

In fact, I heard, and I don't know if it's accurate or not, I heard in a documentary

recently from a Christian archaeologist that the term, the Greek term,

actually is a stonemason, but I don't know if that's accurate or not.

Yeah, I have not heard that.

Have not heard that.

But, you know, Chris, one of the things I always love about being on with your show is you have a unique

ability, when you interview people, to just, there's the gems you pull out of people that always

amazes me, because the way you go through a conversation, I mean,

so I'm kind of curious how you do this, because you've managed to pull out things from people in your interviews.

Well, I used to pull gems out of people as a pickpocket before I was a Christian.

Oh, we have that in common.

I'm only kidding, but, and the question was, I'm sorry, what was that?

No, but how is it that when you interview people, right, you seem to be able to deal with differences

of theological positions that people have, and be able to pull out of them clarity in your

questions to get people to really get to the heart of issues that need to be discussed.

Well, all I can tell you is that I have a philosophy of interviewing that is

nearly diametrically opposed or 180 degrees opposite from many

hosts who want to hog the microphone themselves.

Bill O 'Reilly would be an example, and of course, some people would say to me, how could you criticize somebody that,

until the recent unfortunate scandal, I mean, he was one of the most popular talk show hosts

in the media anywhere, but I think it's a different realm when you're

interviewing somebody about theology and about matters that involve one's eternal

destiny.

If I have someone that I would consider to be an expert or a specialist

or somebody well -versed who has some kind of an authority on a certain subject

or a variety of subjects, I am not going to waste my listeners' time by

constantly butting in and giving my two cents.

Perhaps I even do that now too often, but I have guests on for a reason,

so that they can share their knowledge and wisdom and experience with my listeners,

not so I can constantly stop them in the middle of a sentence.

But yet when you do, I mean, you do have a wealth of knowledge and wealth of experience, and I've always

noticed you do bring yourself into conversations and you do it in a way that always brings out of

the person you're interviewing different aspects of either their background or something about what they're

teaching.

It's just an amazing ability that you have.

I've just noticed over the years.

It may be just the length of time I've been doing this, since 2005.

Perhaps I'd have to listen to myself back then to see if I was horrible, but perhaps after a while,

I've just been able to get more of a

grasp on the art of interviewing, because it's really, in

my opinion, it should be letting the guest speak about what they know

and to try to draw that out of them as much as possible without stopping them in their tracks

too often.

Yeah, but the thing that's neat is the way when I listen to you interview

and you'll just guide a conversation.

I know from talking with you on previous interviews we had, there were certain things you'd want to discuss, and it's like we'd

go one way, and you just very casually bring back to something.

If we didn't finish up a topic, it's like, let's just bring that, and you do it so gracefully and so smoothly.

I don't know if your listeners realize you do that so well.

Oh, I appreciate that very much.

And if you started in 2005, so you started podcasting or radio when you were 10, right?

Well, I appreciate that because somebody that I interviewed during my

stay here at the conference was, I don't think it was an on -air discussion,

perhaps it was off -air.

Oh, it's actually a mutual friend of ours.

I might as well say his name because it's not derogatory against him, it's kind of amusing.

But our mutual friend Frank Mullis

was telling me about some unfortunate circumstances that you actually

made me aware of that he had to withdraw from fellowship with somebody who had

been rebuking me publicly or slandering me and mocking me

without warrants.

And he wasn't making a joke, he was dead

serious.

He said, don't you know that Chris is your elder brother?

I mean, he's a man of many years above you, and he's our

senior brother in Christ.

I'm thinking to myself, how old does he think I am?

Well, Frank just thinks he's very young.

Yeah, actually, he was saying, if you're going to call out someone like Chris Arnold,

that's it.

How do you do that?

I mean, here's a guy that doesn't pick fights with anyone, at least that's a believer.

Brian picked lots of fights over your years with unbelievers in different debates that you've been able to moderate.

Obviously, I never wanted them to be fights.

But unbelievers don't always want to get along with believers, do they?

Right.

And unfortunately, believers fall into that trap far too often of fighting and yelling and

making fools out of themselves.

In fact, that's usually the first sign that a so -called apologist or

debater knows he's lost, is when he starts to raise his voice and use

mockery and ad hominem to try to draw attention away from the actual content of the

theme, of the thesis, and to kind of

cast doubt in the audience's mind that his opponent knows what he's talking about, just by mocking him.

Yeah.

I saw a debate where there was going to be two things discussed.

So they have the opening, they have cross -examination, the close, and they were going to start the next one, next topic.

And it was very interesting because without even listening to the arguments made, I

said I concluded who lost.

And I concluded it because the guy who I said lost spent the entire opening of the next topic still

arguing the previous topic.

In other words, he wasn't convinced that he actually answered the question well enough and wasted his whole opening

still trying to argue the previous point.

And I went, yeah, he realized he lost that first part, and now that he never made his opening, he just lost the second.

But an interesting thing that I didn't know until recent was if you debate a Muslim,

you will see that reaction.

And within Islam, it's a very interesting thing when you debate Muslims is they believe that if you don't have that yelling,

the raising of the voice, you don't really believe what you're saying.

At least in the Middle Eastern Muslims, they believe that if you have to be emotional, you have to be yelling,

and they could say nonsense stuff, but that emotionalism ends up convincing the

audience that that person's right.

And of course, many of our fundamentalist brethren in Christ have that same philosophy.

And that's another thing that's interesting, what I wanted to ask you about earlier when you

mentioned the fact that the Bible, at least our English translation of it, is 98

reliable.

And you also describe yourself, at least in the past you have, as a fundamentalist.

Those two things definitely don't mix together.

Well, I'd be, you know, let's use bad words, I'm a fundamentalist, Baptist, dispensationalist, don't know.

But a believer in the doctrines of sovereign grace.

That's true.

So I really don't fit into any group well.

I don't.

I've never fit in perfectly to any theological group because I just, I'm a man of the word.

I study the scriptures, and I'm going to go where I think the scriptures teach, which fit with some

theologies in different areas.

But I just don't.

So people, you know, are you this?

Are you that?

Well, if you really want to know what I hold to, I'm a Rapportian.

And so that's what I believe, you know.

Wait, what's that?

Well, now I can define it.

And for those of you listening that went over your head, remember his name is Andrew Rappaport.

Yes.

And another thing that's interesting about you is that although you are a Jewish

believer, you appear, from what I know of you, to be

a Christian Jew rather than a Jewish Christian.

In other words, the emphasis is on the Christian.

You're a Christian who happens to be from an ethnically Jewish background.

Exactly.

Yeah, I got saved the same way every Roman Catholic that gets saved, every Muslim that gets saved.

There's nothing special.

I will have a privilege, hopefully, this May, there was a

rabbi 18, 19 years ago who tried to convert me back to Judaism.

And he gave me cassettes.

I don't know if any of your millennial audience understands what that is.

But that was this little device that you would put into a player and it would kind of act like a CD

does.

For people that even don't remember CDs, it's like a USB drive.

It plays audio.

I was shocked that a girl that worked in a store that sold

music, or at least in some kind of a department store, when I asked her where the CDs were, she didn't know

what I was talking about.

CDs are now?

Yeah, CDs are going out.

Well, the cassette, you remember the cassette, you'd stick a pencil in to wind it up and get the tension right.

When it got loose, yeah.

But I listened to about eight hours.

Of his name is Rabbi Tovia Singer.

Oh, yeah.

So you know of him.

I don't know him, but I know who he is.

You know of him, yeah.

And so I will be debating him hopefully in New York.

Really?

And so I had said on a podcast that I would love to debate him because he really doesn't know

Christianity.

Now to the other Jewish people in his audience that don't know anything about Christianity, he seems like an expert.

But the cassettes I had at least got, he was mixing up Mormonism and

Catholicism, but not describing Christianity.

You mean when he was describing, when he was attempting to describe Christianity, meaning

you and I.

Yeah.

He was using the descriptions that would be more appropriate for either

Mormonism or Catholicism.

Mormonism and Catholicism, yeah.

So I realized he really doesn't understand it.

So we're probably going to be debating the topic of is Jesus the Messiah, which is like, okay, yeah, let's share the

gospel.

But, you know, he did a, that came about because some atheists, professing atheists,

were commenting on a YouTube video that someone had and used Rabbi

Singer's videos to say, look, even the rabbis say that Jesus isn't the Messiah.

But, you know, what was interesting about the videos, he never dealt with any of the prophecies in the Old Testament

that we would look at and use for the New Testament.

Every one of the ones he wanted to look at were the Second Coming.

Now, the interesting one that he did deal with is in Isaiah, where it says that when the Messiah

comes, the knowledge of God will spread like water to the sea.

And he says that hasn't happened.

Really?

It hasn't happened?

I mean, it didn't happen within Judaism, but within Christianity, the word of

God, the knowledge of God has spread to every culture.

If you go to the Museum of the Bible in D .C., they actually have this one room that's just wild to look at.

It's just a room full of what's supposed to be volumes of books, all different colors.

And what those represent is all the languages that the Bible has been translated into.

The reason for the different colors, they have a color for where the Bible's been translated into both Old and New Testament in that language.

They have ones where it's just New Testament.

And then they have colors where the Bible is the first written book,

where they've introduced the written language into a culture because they wanted people to be

able to read the Bible.

So they created a written language for that culture and translated the Bible into that language.

It's the first thing that the first book or document that they would have in a written form.

I don't know where Rabbi Singer falls into this category.

But I have heard, and I don't know if these Orthodox

Jewish apologists or rabbis were being completely

honest, if they were just being politically correct, or what

their reason was for this approach.

But I have heard Orthodox Jews in public say that they

believe or have no problem with Jesus being a Messiah for the Gentiles.

They would never, of course, say that he's deity or that they would never claim any kind of

allowance for the Trinity or anything like that.

But obviously they are trying to

have a different approach to Jesus than some of the Talmudic

rabbis who said very harsh and horrible and horrific things about Jesus.

Well, I would find that a hard position to hold to.

Because there's no passages that I could even think of that would say that there's

two Messiahs.

A Messiah to Gentiles and a Messiah to the Jews.

So there's the Messiah.

That's it.

And there's certain things we see of who that Messiah would be.

So I'm not quite sure how someone would be able to say that there's a Messiah to Gentiles.

Unless they're saying it's a Messiah for Gentile people to come to a form of God.

But they can't use the Bible for that.

Because the Jewish Messiah described in the Old Testament is not going to be one to

Gentiles separate from the one to the Jews.

Right.

And they wouldn't view the New Testament as being a God -breathed document anyway.

Yeah.

It would not be part of their canon.

Now, I'm not sure if this is an area of your study.

But I have had some interaction with Roman Catholics

lately.

One in particular who is saying, as the old saying goes by Roman Catholics, that

Luther removed the Apocrypha or the Deuterocanonical books

from the canon.

And even as Jerome who compiled the Latin Vulgate

knew, the Jews have never embraced

in recorded history the Apocrypha or Deuterocanonical books as a part

of their Hebrew canon.

And he said that that was not true.

The earliest that we know of a list of books of the Old Testament was when the

rabbis met in 70 AD in Jamnia.

And the Council of Jamnia has really where the rabbis said what is part of their canon.

And those books are not included.

So this is before, long before, the Catholic Church added them in

the 1500s.

I mean the Catholic Church did not include them until Luther.

And the Council of Trent.

Yeah.

They didn't officially.

Officially.

So the question is, if they say that they're the ones that gave us the Bible in the 300s,

well, why did they leave them out?

Why did they say, oh, yeah, we forgot those for 1200 years.

Oops.

So I don't even need to go.

I mean the Jewish rabbis don't hold to those books.

But neither did the Catholic Church.

Right.

So was the Catholic Church wrong when they didn't include them?

Or are they right now?

Which is it?

Because it can't both be right.

Well, why don't you, before you go, give us a summary of your experience this year

at G3.

Anything that you care to say about it.

Well, I came this year to G3 for a very different reason.

I didn't come here to support Striving Fraternity.

I wasn't here to enjoy the conference because I actually only made it to a couple of sessions.

I came down because I have a friend, Justin Peters.

Oh, yeah.

And for folks who don't know Justin Peters Ministries, go to justinpetersministries .org.

He does a great job dealing with the Word of Faith movement.

But for folks who don't know who he is, he has cerebral palsy.

And so when he travels, it is difficult for him to get around.

He can't tie his own shoes.

So he needs help.

And I know he hates when I say this, but you know Justin.

Justin is the humblest man I have ever met.

He always thinks if you do something for him, it's like, oh, I don't want to burden you.

I don't want to burden you.

It is a pleasure to be able to help him out.

And so I came down here just for the fact of I knew he was speaking.

And so I flew down just to be able to take care of him, help him get dressed in the morning, help

him in what we brought striving for eternity.

People came just to, you know, we ran his table for him.

And so that's why we came down.

So it was a little bit different experience for me this year because I really wasn't, I didn't let anyone on social media know I was coming down until I

got down here because people wanted to get together with me once they saw I was here.

And I'm like, I'm here for one reason.

If it happens to work in Justin's schedule, hey, that's great.

We'll get together.

If not, I'm sorry.

I don't want to be rude.

I'm not, you know, but I'm here for Justin.

So people would, Justin would be talking to someone or getting a photo and someone would come talk to me as soon as he needed to go.

I said, I don't want to be rude, but, you know, I got to go.

And so that's why I came down.

So it was a little different for me this year.

I was very honored to interview Justin again here on site at G3.

And I have interviewed him by phone as well, but what a precious brother.

Yeah.

In Christ.

And perhaps now you could just leave a summary for our listeners of a several

-minute length of what you most want etched in their hearts and minds today.

Well, if you're going to say the one thing, I'll tell you what I'm starting to get known for, other than Bible hermeneutics and interpreting.

It's not a bad thing if you're known for interpreting the Bible rightly, right?

You know, one of the things that's been a real burden on my heart is for years I've been trying to display that as Christians we could

disagree even on theological matters and do it with love and charity.

I have a friend of mine, Matt Slick.

Don't agree with him on a whole lot of doctrines.

But you know what?

We've been going to conferences, apologetics conferences and things, and people are asking us to

come so we could disagree.

Because one of the things a lot of people are realizing is Matt and I, though we disagree and we both think each other is a brother in Christ,

we realize that there's a lot of people who don't know how to argue about theology, especially.

But people start getting, as you said, when they start losing or not being able to answer something, it gets to name -calling, the ad hominems and

all this stuff.

The reality is I think we as Christians need to learn how to disagree with one another with love and

charity.

We're going to spend eternity together.

We might as well get used to it now.

I mean, I understand that everyone will be a dispensational person in heaven.

No, but it's like we could joke like that.

We shouldn't hold to our theology and our positions on secondary things so

tightly that we're going to disassociate with people or start calling people out on something.

The question that we have to ask is how did they come to that conclusion?

I think that two men that wonderfully and beautifully demonstrated what you're talking about are John

MacArthur and our late R .C. Sproul.

Their baptism debate was really one that etched into my mind that this could be done.

And that's really what Matt and I almost try to model with it.

And we kind of have talked about some of those things.

Dispensationalism, covenant theology, baptism.

He's a continuationist.

I'm not.

So we have these differences, and they're big differences.

But, you know, all those differences, when we sit at the feet of Christ, they're all going to be straightened

out.

All of us, I think every one of us has problems in our theology.

We just don't know where they are.

I mean, if we're going to be honest, we would change it if we did.

But we have those things, and Christ is going to set us all straight.

I don't want to hold on to my theology so tightly that I'm going to disassociate with someone over

our differences.

And I think this is—the world is watching Christians on social media.

And I talk to tons of atheists, and they all are watching Christians fight it

out.

It's an amazing thing.

I went to a—Matt actually debated two atheists on two separate nights.

Insane.

Two different topics, two different guys.

Why you do that?

Because you've got to prepare for two.

They each prepare for one.

But you know what?

I got to talk to some of the same atheists two nights in a row.

There was an issue that was going on with an atheist community, and I talked to several atheists asking, hey, would you say this guy is wrong?

Some would say he's wrong.

Others wouldn't.

Those that said he's wrong, I said, would you call him out publicly?

No, no, no, no.

Why?

They wouldn't give reasons.

They'd give bogus reasons.

One guy was really honest with me.

He says, Andrew, I'll tell you why.

He said, whether I agree with that guy or not, he is doing damage to Christianity, and you are the enemy.

And he is destroying you.

I like you as a person, but I want Christianity to end.

He said, I will never publicly say anything about him because he is helping to destroy Christianity.

And I realized, I walked away from that and said, you know what?

Here's an atheist that understands what Christians should know, that we should be having a unified

front against the world and keeping our in -house discussions in -house, not

displaying them and really presenting them for the world to see because we not only put it on social media, but you

have whole ministries that just focus on attacking other people.

Right.

One thing before we go that occurred to me, if you could comment on this,

something that has been puzzling to me is that the majority of those

that I have encountered in the Messianic Jewish movement

are, and there are some exceptions, so I don't want to broad brush, but for the most part they are

vehemently anti -Calvinistic.

And the thing that puzzles me about that is the whole concept of the

people of Israel in the Old Covenant being chosen out from the

multitudes and elect people is not foreign to the Jewish mind.

And why would someone who has become a Christian seem to completely

throw that out, that mindset of God choosing whom he will

choose?

The Jews are supposed to know anyway that God did not choose them because they were better

than everybody else, that there was something innately more lovable about them.

And so unconditional election should be something that is completely logical and

consistent with them but most that I have encountered are

non -Calvinist and even anti -Calvinist.

Well, I think it comes to something that we've talked about on a previous episode and that is the fact that a majority of those who call themselves

Messianic Jews are also rabid charismatics.

Right.

Not all.

But you know what I find is that most of them are, most of those that stay within the Messianic

Jewish movement.

Now you do have lots of people who are Jewish of background and ethnicity but we don't identify

ourselves that way.

I don't think of myself as Jewish.

I mean I am but I'm Christian.

I'm a Christian first who just happens to come from a Jewish background.

And so the point being is I think you see the differences with people like that where people that get into the

Messianic Jewish movement get into all the feeling -based things.

So everything is based on not theology but feeling.

And so you're going to have them leaning more toward the, well, what I experienced.

I experienced choosing Christ.

And they don't want to think about the theological Christ chose me.

Right.

Well, I want to make sure that our listeners know how they can get in touch with you and striving for eternity ministries.

Well, first off I'll say that I was glad that I had a goal of being on here and trying to get to interview you a little

bit to bring some of you out because I….

I did notice that.

It is something that you do amazing.

I don't know that your listeners even always pick up on it.

But you do a great job with interviews.

One of the best.

I really appreciate that very much.

And so people can get a hold of Striving for Eternity at strivingforeternity .org.

Strivingforeternity .org.

Thank you so much, Andrew Rappaport.

I look forward to not only fellowshipping with you again but interviewing you again in the future.

Well, thanks for having me.

God bless.

I hope you enjoyed that interview from the 2018 G3 Conference.

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I'm Pastor Nate Pickowitz of Harvest Bible Church in Gilmanton Iron Works, New Hampshire and the NASB

is my Bible of choice.

I'm Pastor Rich Jensen of Hope Reform Baptist Church in Coram, New York and the NASB is my

Bible of choice.

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NASB is my Bible of choice.

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of choice.

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is my Bible of choice.

I'm Pastor Steve Herford of Eastport Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida and the NASB is

my Bible of choice.

I'm Pastor Roy Owens, Jr. of the Church in Friendship in Hockley, Texas and the NASB is

my Bible of choice.

Here's a great way for your church to help keep Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the air.

Pastors, are your pew Bibles tattered and falling apart?

Consider restocking your pews with the NASB and tell the publishers you heard about them

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Go to nasbible .com, that's nasbible .com to place your order.

Welcome back.

Today we are airing two interviews with Andrew Rapoport that Andrew and Chris did together at the G3

conferences in 2018 and 2019.

In this next interview, Andrew interviews Chris to find out a little bit about the history of

Chris's experience in radio and how Iron Sharpens Iron got started.

Chris Arnzen here, once again manning the exhibitors booth for Iron Sharpens Iron Radio at

the G3 conference, G3 2019.

This is the final day of the conference.

And I have with me an old friend, Andrew Rapoport, of Striving for Eternity Ministries and

something unique is going to happen now, something that you don't normally hear on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, but the

tables have been turned, as it were, and I am going to be interviewed by Andrew Rapoport.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Andrew Rapoport.

Well, thank you very much.

We tried this last year at G3 without letting you know.

Yeah, I think that was what was happening.

I tried, but you're the... the...

An interviewer that you are, you turn the tables on me over and over and over, no matter how much I...

I actually re -listened to it to try to figure out, how did he do this?

So, and we'll air this as well on my podcast, The Rap Report, but it's something I've wanted to do for a

long time because you are probably one of the best interviewers out there.

That's an honor to hear that.

I don't know anyone that does it better.

And so I've been wanting to get you on to interview you about your ministry, how God

has, you know, used your ministry literally around the world, and how you do what

you do.

So, first off for folks, even maybe some of your listeners may not know how long you've been doing this.

How long have you been in radio?

Well, working in radio, not to include...

Well, let me take that back.

Working in radio before I was an actual talk host, talk radio host.

I have been involved in the radio industry since the mid -1980s.

I started off selling commercial time as an account executive with

a small ad agency on Long Island, New York, selling airtime for a Golden

Oldies station, WGLI, in West Babylon, Long Island, which doesn't exist anymore.

The Mighty 1290, it was called.

And also a very small black gospel station on Long Island, which I

don't think exists anymore either, WTHE.

That was there for quite a long time.

Do we see a trend here?

Well, the trend is they went out of business after I stopped selling airtime.

Note to First Love Radio, they should make sure they never let you go.

And WRIV and Riverhead.

So this ad agency basically predominantly had their team selling

commercial time on a number of small Long Island local radio stations.

And then I had heard that WMCA Radio, which was known

at that time as a secular talk radio station in

New Jersey.

It originated in New York City, but at the time it was in Rutherford, New Jersey.

They had to make the big announcement that they had been purchased by Salem Media, which is the largest,

now is the largest Christian radio network in the world.

And so I, in fact, found out through a postcard I got from 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia,

Pennsylvania, is James Montgomery Boyce and his staff over there had

begun sending out postcards alerting the New York metropolitan area and tri

-state area that he was going to be broadcasting on WMCA.

I got excited about that.

I was a fairly new Christian, still working in secular radio, with the exception of the little black gospel

station that we were placing time for.

And so I called up WMCA and I said, I'd like to meet with you folks.

I've got some history in selling airtime.

They met with me.

And the first time they met with me, they said, we definitely want to stay in touch with you, but right

now we want everybody on the sales team to live locally to our New Jersey station.

And I was not prepared to move at that time.

But then, in about, I don't know, six months to a year, Joe Davis called me back, who was the

general manager to WMCA.

And this would have been in 1991.

He said, you know, Chris, we've rethought this with your history in selling airtime.

And I really like you personally.

I like the way you communicate.

You get a great voice and so on and so on.

We would like you to be the Long Island station representative for WMCA.

You could remain there on Long Island and just come in once a week for sales meetings.

So that's what I did.

I, very soon after that call, became a member of the WMCA radio sales team.

And I worked there for 15 years.

And during that time, I caught the radio bug to host.

And do you remember Andy Anderson of Talk New York on WMCA?

No.

Really?

And you live in New Jersey?

I live in Jersey.

I used to listen to family radio, and I actually thought that was the bomb.

But I didn't know any better, coming from a Jewish background, having no introduction to Christianity.

Family radio, at one point, for a considerable number of years, was the bomb.

They had the best preachers and teachers in the United States and in other parts of

the world.

I thought Harold Kemping was good.

That's where you were off.

He speaks so authoritatively.

Yes, and some people are immediately….

So the mid-'80s, that makes….

So you started when you were, what, five years old?

Into radio?

I knew I liked this guy for some reason.

And so it would have been 1991 that I started with WMCA.

And Andy Anderson, who was the talk show host, was interviewing

predominantly people that I had no interest in hearing.

And I would basically be frustrated listening to the guests that he had.

So I started strongly urging Andy, Why don't you get this author on?

And why don't you get this person?

And Andy would say to me, Well, I don't know anything about that subject.

I don't know this person.

I'd say, Well, I could write questions for you.

Oh, really?

Well, that sounds good.

So he fell in love with this, Andy Anderson, because it meant, obviously, less

labor for him.

He didn't have to really prepare.

And he was asking me more and more to do this for him.

And so I was getting a lot of guests on.

If you ever heard somebody was theologically reformed on Andy Anderson Live, which is eventually what they called the program.

Before that was Talk New York.

But Andy began because he began to trust my discernment and my ability to ask questions because of the questions I wrote for him.

He started to say to the management, You know, I'm going on vacation.

Why don't you let Chris Arnzen chill in for me?

I'm not feeling well.

I'm not going to come in tomorrow.

Why don't you call Chris Arnzen?

And they were beginning to do that.

And in fact, I can remember the first time I ever hosted as a fill -in host for

Andy Anderson.

I opened up the very first words out of my mouth after the theme music died down.

I said, The Calvinists have taken over the building.

Andy Anderson is tied and gagged under the studio council.

You will not hear a single word from him today.

We have control.

The Calvinists are here in the building and we have control.

And my guests, who were all reformed pastors, were dying.

They never expected in a million years that I would do that.

So I was actually shocked that they invited me back at the station.

But so I wound up hosting quite often and fell in love

with that, doing that.

And then when Andy sadly died of bladder cancer, I believe, for the first

two weeks after his death, I was the fill -in host.

My friend, the general manager, Joe Davis, put his hand on my shoulder and he said, You know, you really do a good job at

this.

But we could never have a five -point Calvinist regularly do the talk show here.

And I'm sorry, but you can't be the permanent replacement.

I just can't see somebody with your strong convictions on a certain area of theology being able to

host such a much more broad -type talk show with a lot more diverse

guests and so on.

And I disagreed with him at first because I said, Hey, I've been on for two weeks and Calvinism has hardly come up.

But he had his point.

I began to realize the wisdom in that decision because

I know that if they were to call upon me to promote a conference or

event of some kind or a show that they have just added, where I had vehement disagreement with the

person or people or church or ministry or organization or parachurch, I

would not have, just because this company or ministry or person had paid money to

advertise, I would not have given him an easy ride as a guest.

I would have had to have made my disagreements known.

So when I left there after 15 years and started my own ad agency,

I passed by a little tiny Christian radio station in West Babylon, Long Island,

WNYG, and asked for an appointment with the general manager,

Phyllis Rose.

And she came out to greet me in the lobby because I wanted to get

information on this station to add to my portfolio as an ad agent.

So when I would meet with clients, I would give WNYG just one option

to a client.

This is one station that you could advertise with.

So during that brief conversation in the lobby with Phyllis Rose, she said, Wow, you have a really

great radio voice.

Did you ever host a talk show?

And I said, Well, I used to fill in for Andy Anderson on WMCA.

She goes, Well, we have the 2 p .m. slot open.

You want it?

And I'm not exaggerating.

Within five minutes, you said that.

So I said, Well, let me pray about that and give me two weeks.

And I really already knew that I wanted it, but I just prayed for two weeks and got

advice and all this kind of thing.

And I finally said, Phyllis, I'm going to take you up on your offer.

And the first day that I was hosting the show during a commercial break, she burst through the door of the studio and she

says, What are you doing?

I said, I'm hosting a talk show.

She goes, Yeah, but you're not doing anything that I thought you'd be doing.

You're not giving weather reports or playing music.

I said, You want to DJ?

Is that what you want?

I'm not a DJ.

I thought you wanted a talk show host.

That's what I'm doing.

She goes, Yeah, but all you're doing is talking.

I said, Yeah, that's what a talk show host does.

She goes, I don't know if this is going to work out.

She was very upset.

And I actually was bold enough to say, And in fact, I hate the music, most of the music that you play on this

station.

That went over well.

So she left there very upset.

And for like a week, she never gave me a friendly greeting that I can remember.

She was very upset about this.

But things radically changed because this little tiny station, as small as it was,

live streamed.

When I was sitting there, I can still remember conducting a talk show.

It was a live call in show at that time.

And Wally, who was my producer and call screener

on the other side of the glass.

He's looking at me like he just got word that the United States was

invaded by a foreign country or something.

His eyes were as big as saucers.

He holds up a piece of paper.

You have a caller from Dublin, Ireland.

I said, Really?

So I said, Well, Joe in Dublin, Ireland.

And he gave a question to the guest.

And then I can't remember if it was the same day, but not long after that, he holds up another piece of paper.

You have a listener in Switzerland.

And we were getting calls from all over the United States and from other parts of the world and from Sweden and

from...

I can't even give you all the countries.

I know that by now we have at least 26 foreign countries where listeners of Iron Sherpins Iron

Radio reside.

But then they fell in love with the show because they couldn't believe it.

Nothing like that had ever happened because, obviously, before I was there, they were either playing

music or prerecorded programs or very poorly done

shows by local charismatic ministers, basically.

Very amateurish sounding.

And I'm not trying to boost myself up and be arrogant, but it was the guests that I had on that

were the kind of guests that they'd never had teaching, other than a couple of prerecorded

programs by national ministries and so on that they had.

So they fell in love with the show.

They felt like a real radio station.

We were on the map.

We were getting calls from all over the place.

So she left me alone after that and was very kind and sweet and nice to me.

Never gave me a hard time about anything after that.

How long were you there doing that show?

I did Iron Sherpins Iron Radio on Long Island, New York from WNYG and then

also WGBB, which was their sister station, from 2005

until 2011, when very sadly my wife of nearly 20 years passed away.

So I immediately, at least temporarily in my mind,

resigned from the Iron Sherpins Iron Radio program and put it on hiatus

for an undetermined period of time.

That undetermined period of time in 2011 turned out to be a four -year hiatus.

I was just not mentally or spiritually prepared to be

back on the show.

I had very sadly, tragically, drifted back into

very serious alcohol abuse.

When I first was saved in the 80s, I had left a life of habitual drunkenness

and was sober for 18 years and started drinking again.

When my wife first began getting ill and began to turn to

alcohol to self -medicate, just to get my mind off of

things, which a lot of people do when they use any kind of a mind -altering substance.

So that became a very serious problem to the point of scandalous

addiction and I was put under church discipline.

A lot of people are scared about that concept.

They want nothing to do with it.

If they find out they're under discipline, they will abandon the church.

Sometimes this is actually, I think, a litmus test whether somebody in the church is

truly one of the elect.

If they are being put under discipline and they say, No, that's not for me and they just abandon the church and either go to another

church where the elders don't know about their sin or don't care.

Some churches are just so starving for numbers and money that they don't care.

I know people in that circumstance.

But my being put under church discipline saved my life.

My pastors, Mark Romaldi and Doug Totter of Grace Reformed Aptist Church of Long

Island in Merrick, they very lovingly and at the same

time sternly got me under church discipline.

My plan and one of my requirements was to find a Christian

alcohol and drug recovery ministry to place myself under their authority

and get through this.

And I found, thanks be to God, Hebron Colony Ministries in

Boone, North Carolina.

Very fine Christian rehabilitation or recovery ministry

that is the oldest Christian drug and alcohol recovery

ministry that is still running in the United States.

We have to interrupt the interview at this point so that we can hear some messages from our sponsors who make Iron

Sharpens Iron possible.

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When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the New American

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

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

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Grace Church at Franklin is an independent, autonomous body of believers which strives to

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And of course, the end of which we strive is the glory of God.

If you live near Franklin, Tennessee, and Franklin is just south of Nashville, maybe 10 minutes,

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

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air, like the Historical Bible Society.

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Got to tell you, for my money, Chris Arnzen's radio program is just the best.

Iron.

Criticizing Iron.

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This is Todd Friel of Wretched Radio and TV with Phil Johnson of Grace To You, inviting

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And it is.

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And Chris Arnzen was there last year.

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It's great to see him there.

You and I actually did some recordings in the lobby at that place, which is a highlight for me.

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Welcome back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Andrew Rappaport interviewed Chris Arnzen at the 2019 G3 conference.

Let's listen in as the interview continues.

My being put under church discipline saved my life.

And my pastors very lovingly and at the same time sternly

got me under church discipline and one of my requirements was to find a

Christian alcohol and drug recovery ministry to place myself under their

authority and get through this.

And I found, thanks be to God, Hebron Colony Ministries in Boone, North Carolina

that is the oldest Christian drug and alcohol recovery

ministry that is still running in the United States.

It's absolutely free of charge other than a $300 deposit for

pharmaceutical needs that may arise and you are refunded that when you leave

if you don't use it.

And so I spent nearly three months in this ministry in the beautiful

mountains of Boone, North Carolina and the Lord just completely delivered me from this

addiction and I still to this day am amazed at the grace

and mercy and love and power of God.

And I'm not saying that God loves another brother or sister in

Christ any less if they don't have the same experience I have but I have absolutely no

temptation to drink at least at this point in my mind.

I know that I always have to remember he who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall

but at the same time I very frequently will be in the company of brothers in Christ who

enjoy their liberty to moderately consume alcohol and they will ask me brother is it okay if I have a beer with our meal today?

I'm totally fine and I am not in the slightest but tempted to, man I wish I

could have one of those.

Just never, I'll be at something, I'll be at a restaurant like Applebee's and sometimes the

seats will be all full and they'll say do you mind sitting at the bar if my friends want to do that while we eat?

I say no problem and I sit there at the bar eating and I never have the slightest

bit of temptation.

So that surprise, oh and after finding it unbearable after I

returned from North Carolina to Long Island I found it unbearable to live on Long Island

because I missed my wife so much, my late wife and I saw her face everywhere I looked, every restaurant

I went to, every place I traveled on Long Island she was there in my mind and it became

extremely heartbreaking and depressing to remain there.

So I had friends that already lived here, Christian friends who lived in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and

on a fluke I had a funny experience.

I found an apartment out in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island in a gorgeous

upper middle class neighborhood.

It was fairly inexpensive, it was the apartment in the pool

house near this elderly woman's swimming pool and I was moving my

furniture in there and had told her

a certain time that I was going to be moving in on Memorial Day and a deacon of a church

that was going to use his truck to help me move my furniture there he got

delayed for hours unexpectedly because his wife and family wanted to go to a

Memorial Day party that he was unaware of.

So I kept calling this woman every hour, I'm really sorry he's not here yet,

he's been delayed by a Memorial Day party and I really apologize, please forgive me

and when he finally arrived about five hours after he said he would be there even though it was broad daylight,

I moved my stuff in and the woman was very upset but she said okay, we'll just have to

live with this digression from the plans but okay, well thank you very much.

Seven o 'clock in the morning the very next day, knock at the door, I open the door, we're half asleep

and she says this isn't going to work, you're going to have to move out.

What you did to me yesterday was so horrifying, I had to leave a Memorial Day party in order to wait

for you and I said, ma 'am with all due respect, your Memorial Day party was across the

street.

You would have known that a big truck was pulling up and it was still broad daylight.

But I said okay, I realized that I had dodged a bullet, to have a landlord like that wouldn't have been a good thing.

So as a fluke I called my friend Buzz Taylor, who many people may recognize

that name because for the first couple of years of Iron Trip and Zion was nearly an everyday co

-host and Buzz may return now and again to co -host the show but he's been

very busy, in fact he's writing his own book on eschatology.

But I called my friend Buzz as a joke and I said,

hey down there Buzz, just out of curiosity, do you know of any apartments available in Carlisle because I just got thrown out of mine

after one night.

And he said, yeah actually I can't believe you said that.

The apartment right across the hall from me and this home that is formally

a Presbyterian manse or parsonage, a historic manse in Carlisle,

Pennsylvania, well the apartment across the hall from me is vacant.

And my landlord said if I get somebody to fill it, they will take $100 off my next month's rent.

So I said, let me go see this place.

So I took an Amtrak to Carlisle, saw the apartment, fell in love with it and

said I'm moving in.

And two weeks later I moved in there and I am still there to this day.

And that is the physical home of Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

I relaunched the program in 2015 because two of my

sponsors, Battery Depot .com and Wading River Baptist Church, they

advertised with me on my old show on Long Island and they said we want you to be back on the air.

And so don't wait around for a radio station to pick you up.

We're going to buy you the studio equipment that you need so you can launch the program and start off

internet based.

And hopefully you'll get radio stations to eventually pick you up.

And so that's the beginning of Iron Trip and Zion Radio 2, the Carlisle, Pennsylvania version of Iron Trip and

Zion Radio.

But you are getting picked up by radio stations now, right?

Yeah, well, since then we have Grace Life Radio, 90

.1 FM in Lake City, Florida, that has been airing my show.

How long, Eric, has it been.

One year, two years?

Two years.

They've been airing my show for two years every day.

And there are things that I can't mention right now that I have just discovered at G3 about new

opportunities for me on other radio stations.

But we'll keep quiet about that.

So you brought up something I wanted to get to later because many people think church discipline is

going to drive people away from church.

Many people think that churches shouldn't point out or what they'll say is police

people's sin.

And one of the things, as you've already said, but I want to go into more detail, is the fact of how church

discipline really was used in a great way by God and through the church in your life.

And I think a lot of people want to avoid that, but I think your testimony is one that many people need to hear because church discipline

does serve a purpose.

Yes.

And I think as hard and as harsh as this sounds

and as horrible as it is, it is also a good thing if it drives people away from the

church because those people who are being driven away under the threat or

the insistence is probably a better word, that they will be placed

under discipline.

The people who are being driven away, I think, as the good book says, that those

who left us were never truly one of us.

And so I don't think a church is helped in any way

when members, even if they've been beloved members for decades, I was a member of the church for quite a long

time when I was placed under discipline.

But I became a scandal.

In fact, you used the word policing of sins.

I don't think that elders should be busy bodies and police the private

lives of the members and like, you know, unannounced

visits to their home and to snoop around and all that.

I don't think that that should be done.

But my sin was was the news of my sin was dropped into the lap of my

elders because I was going to bars and became a public

publicly known drunkard.

And then the thing that made it worse is that it was very well known amongst many, not all,

but many people in the community that I was also a Christian and a member of a church.

So and people just thought that was hilarious.

But then word got back to my elders through people in the community who knew them or through the church or

even members of the police department locally.

Not that I was being arrested or anything like that, but I was just some of the police officers knew of

my public drunkenness.

And so they warned me, Chris, you are now under church discipline.

We are going to send a letter to the congregation, making them aware of this.

And they wrote a very correctly worded letter

that was not over the top or probing too deeply into anything personal.

But I didn't take any offense by it, which is interesting because I think that many, if not most people

would.

And I knew it was necessary.

It's not like I was unaware that I was rebelling against God.

So and I followed their instructions.

And as I said, one of them was to find a rehabilitation.

I'm very happy that they left the liberty to find that ministry up to me.

I'm glad that they didn't force me into something that I felt uncomfortable with the

strategy or ideology.

Like, for instance, one of the initial drug and alcohol rehab ministries

that they wanted me to place myself in was run predominantly by

Charismatics.

Some of those folks I know and I love them and they're wonderful people.

But there's something about the structure of the ministry and the emphasis on the Charismatic.

And my church, by the way, is not in any way, the one that I was a member of, is not in any way Charismatic.

But there's not many Christian rehabilitation ministries, especially

not locally to Long Island.

And they're typically also extremely expensive.

Hebron Colony, as I mentioned, was free other than the $300 deposit.

And I can't stop singing their praises.

One of the interesting things about Hebron Colony is that it does not utilize the 12 -step

philosophy.

You will never hear, other than when they have guest speakers, you will never hear the men.

And by the way, they have a woman's facility called Grace Home in Santee, South Carolina.

That's actually who told me about Hebron Colony.

It was a woman I know who's a dear sister in Christ who herself admitted

herself years earlier to the women's program in South Carolina.

But the philosophy there is basically,

if you go to Hebron Colony, it is a men's discipleship ministry with

the focus to, if there are lost men in that place, which the majority would be,

they are preached to and evangelized with the hopes of them repenting and

turning to Christ.

And if there are Christians in a backslidden state there, it's for them to repent and

to be restored.

And there is very little discussion of alcohol or drugs, other than when men

might be sitting around having a meal and talking to each other.

There's a lot of that.

But there was no, they didn't want people, like it occurs at a typical NA or AA meeting,

people standing up and giving their stories, their horror stories about life, which

happens at every NA or AA meeting.

They thought that that was detrimental.

It very often

glamorizes those kinds of addictions and so on.

People kind of want to one -up each other on who had the more horrible story.

Now, as I said, they would have guest speakers on occasion do that.

But I'm talking about, I think it's harmful when I say that guest speakers would give their testimonies, just like

I'm doing right now.

But to have a constant saturation and a dominance of that is what I'm talking about.

So they don't, to prevent that, they don't let anybody do that.

Yeah.

I used to work at a very similar sounding place in America's Keswick.

I used to do counseling there.

And similarly, they've, what, $250?

You don't get it back, but that's all they charge.

But you have a different scripture verse you have to memorize every day.

Oh, we had a whole….

And that's what everyone's focused on.

We had a workbook that had to be complete by the end of the

two -and -a -half month length of your time there, that you would not

graduate with a certificate that you've successfully completed the program without filling out

completely the workbook.

And the thing that was interesting is that there was no one on staff at Hebron that was

a five -point Calvinist, other than one sweet lady, Ruth Elliott, who is still a receptionist there.

But none of the pastors on staff were five -point Calvinists.

Although, or should I say however, the ministry itself, which began in the

early 1900s, actually the 1940s, I guess, after World War II, or it might have even

been during World War II, but a Presbyterian minister down south in North

Carolina was seeing the high rate of G .I

.s returning home that were alcoholics.

And it became such a burden to him that he,

providentially at the same time that he was witnessing this, he was pastoring

a Presbyterian church that was in the Southern Presbyterian denomination,

which had apostatized, become more and more liberal.

This is even back in the early 1900s.

And he insisted to the congregation that they had to leave that denomination.

The congregation did not stand by him.

They wanted to stay.

So he left, but God used his departure from that church, from pastoring that church, to start

Hebrew Oncology.

And so the thing that's interesting is he designed the program that they use, and it's

clearly reformed in its emphasis, although it doesn't use those words, like reform Calvinist.

So I've been reading this workbook and filling it out.

I'm like, don't these people realize this is Calvinist?

And I don't mean to say anything bad about any of the folks working there, but

they just saw that what was developed by the founder was very biblical, and they kept

the program.

And it's not like they were anti -Calvinist.

They just were not Calvinist.

There's more people that are Calvinist and they don't know it.

I did this with a guy who, he's an evangelist, wrote a book.

He condemns Calvinism.

I sat down with him once.

I think you and I privately, I told you a story, but I sat down with him, and I gave the definitions of the five points without

using the terminology.

He agreed across the board.

And I said, so you're a five -point Calvinist?

No, I don't believe it!

And he starts his misrepresentation of it.

Well, the thing I'd like to do is, I think that it would be encouraging, especially for

pastors, because we were talking about church discipline earlier, and church discipline is something that

pastors want to avoid.

Right.

I think it's the reason when we look at Matthew 18, he's saying, Assuredly, assuredly, I say to you, where two or three gather

in my name, because they need the insurance.

Right.

And of course, I think that there may be a serious problem if a group of

elders or pastors are very eager and excited and enthusiastic about

conducting church discipline.

That's a sick mind of a man who wants to do that.

Yeah, and of course, the abuses are on both ends.

I think it's more predominantly the abuse of a church in this regard to not

conduct church discipline, to avoid it, especially if those that need to be underdisciplined are

somehow contributing much to the congregation, whether financially or in some other

capacity.

I have seen that happen with people that have gotten away with all kinds of wicked behavior

because of the status they may have for some reason or other.

It might even just be because of the longevity of the membership.

And they think as if they're doing these folks a favor, and they're not.

Yeah, and that's what I wanted to get into, because I have been on the receiving end of having to counsel many pastors who

call me up when they're going through a church discipline situation.

How's the right way to handle this?

How do we bring reconciliation with the church?

They're all trying to almost avoid it if they can at all possible.

And yet, a big part of the thing that I say to them, and I think you bring up when you give your

account what happened with you, is the fact that the best thing you could do for a sinning brother is to bring them under

discipline.

I think it does no good to the sinning brother or sister to let them continue in their sin.

And so many people think if you bring their sin up or you put them under church discipline, you're going to chase them away.

But I think you brought out for the genuine believer that should bring them back under

repentance.

So for a pastor who may be going through this or knowing that they're going to have to go through this,

what encouragement can you give to a pastor who's having to discipline someone out of their church or

start that process where they have that fear that they might chase the person

away or things like that to encourage them that what they're doing is actually the best thing they could do for that individual

spiritually?

First thing I'd like to say is if there is a pastor, or pastors plural, who want that

kind of counsel and advice, they can email me and I would put them in touch with their peers, with

pastors that I know that have conducted church discipline who could give both

the praise reports and the very sad reports about their conducting church

discipline depending upon how those that were being disciplined reacted to it.

Because I obviously don't necessarily feel myself to be in a position where I'm comfortable

giving pastors advice about too many things.

But having said that, I think as I've already said that they should not

be more fearful of offending or losing a member than they are over that person losing their

own soul.

They should recognize that what they are doing is a ministry of love and they should

behave that way because there are horror stories about churches

that have abused their authority.

I think this is in a minority today.

I don't think that that is the predominant problem in evangelicalism.

But I think that there are.

In fact, sadly, these horror stories very often come out of

theological circles that I am in.

You know, Reformed churches, Reformed Baptist churches and so on that may have

been overly harsh about things sometimes that are debatable whether they're truly

sinful or they may be sins but the level of

severity did not require the hard actions by the

elders.

But having said that, if you believe that a person is committing a sin

that needs to certainly be

drawn to the attention of all the elders at first.

Obviously I don't think every sin a member of a church commits needs to be brought to the attention of the entire congregation.

Especially if the sin is not a publicly known thing.

Like for instance, I think that a pastor or an elder or a deacon,

I think they are clearly revealed in the scriptures as being people who need to be above

reproach and they have a higher calling to purity.

Not that regular congregation members are having some kind of license to sin.

I don't mean that.

But the pastor or the elder or the deacon, and I believe by the way pastors and elders are in the same office.

I do too.

But they have to go the extra mile to give the public

appearance of purity.

But if a person is not an office holder in a church, I think that more leniency

about public rebuke should be in place.

I don't think that every time elders find out about a sin that a member commits, that they have to immediately rush

to tell the whole congregation.

I think that that time is only reached, of course it depends on the severity of the sin and so

on.

And how public it is.

Exactly.

But it also, if the person doesn't demonstrate

any interest in repenting, that's one issue.

That's another.

So I think that pastors should be letting whoever in their congregation

that they want to place under discipline, letting that person know immediately, we want you to know

that we're doing this because we love you.

And demonstrate that even in the tone of voice and body language and all

that.

The constant reminder of this is what God has ordained to bring you back

into a place of restoration.

A place of peace with God and peace with the church.

And sometimes it may involve a sin.

This sin is such a grievous sin that you have been involved in.

That if you remain involved in this sin, we are to

tragically regard you as an unbeliever.

Even if in the mind of God, if he who is omniscient knows that you are

regenerate, that is aside the point, if you're not acting like you're regenerate, we as fallible

people who don't know all things, don't know the heart, we have to treat you as an unbeliever.

And if you don't repent.

And drunkenness, my sin, not that that was my only

sin.

I sin every day still.

But drunkenness is among those sins where we are warned, you have no eternal life if you

continue in these things.

But some of you once were these things.

I mean drunkenness is listed among the most heinous sins

that human beings can commit, including murder.

So it's something that should be taken very seriously.

And by the way, a word of rebuke in love to all of my

reformed brethren who flaunt their liberty to imbibe an alcohol.

I believe that a Christian does have a liberty to moderately drink

as long as they stop long before the point of drunkenness.

I don't want anybody to mistake me in thinking that I am pushing total abstinence on others.

I believe that I must be totally abstinent from alcohol because of the

temptation that I know it would bring to me to possibly go back

full bore and to surrender to the sin of drunkenness.

But also, since others know, many others know of my history of abuse, I

don't want to give anybody a reason to think that I am back on the

bottle.

It's kind of funny, maybe not, I don't know.

But there are occasions, even recently, where I've been walking down the street into

a store or something and the sidewalk will be icy and I'll be like moving around and thinking, oh great, now people who've

seen Chris Orenson think he's drunk again.

But pastors should know, obviously, and they know this if they are biblically

literate, that they must be first and foremost

in fear of God.

They should be in fear of disobeying God than they are of displeasing men.

They cannot be more consumed with people liking them and being happy with them and even

giving them money than they are over what God views

to be the right thing to do.

And God is the one that ordained in his God -breathed words that we are to discipline those

among us who are involved in sin in an unrepentant fashion.

I'm thankful to God that he instilled within me, through his Holy Spirit, a

determination to obey the instructions and requirements of my elders

to prove my repentance to be true and to go to an alcohol

rehab ministry and do all those things.

So I think a person who is following the instructions of the elders

should be treated in a different way.

I think that a person like that should be treated as a brother.

It's only when the person storms out of the office, the study, or even

just blatantly says, Well, who are you?

Who are you to talk?

You're a sinner too.

How dare you bring this up in my life.

Or what about that guy?

What about that?

Pointing to other people who are involved in some kind of sin.

Those are the people that you have to say, Well, I'm sorry.

We cannot regard you as a brother.

Even if you are, and we are unaware of this, even if you are just a backslidden, regenerate

person, we cannot treat you that way.

And by the way, that's for your good too.

So I think pastors have to be reminded.

Also, to avoid discipline is not going to do not only the

disciplinee any favors if you don't discipline him, the congregation at large is not going to be blessed

by tolerating unrepentant sin of that level of

severity that discipline would be required.

Now, somebody might be thinking, Why are you saying that there are only certain sins that

should require discipline?

Well, let's face it.

We all sin.

And I don't agree at all with the logic or the

teaching of many Christians today that I've encountered and had conversations with who will say, Sin

is sin is sin is sin.

And I've known when pastors have been caught in adultery, when people

have voiced their opinion that that man, even if he's restored to the fellowship of

the church, we can use his gifts in many different ways, but he cannot be a leader in the

church anymore.

He will no longer be above reproach.

How dare you say that?

You're a sinner too.

And a sin is a sin is a sin.

And it's not.

Some people in perhaps an overreaction to Roman Catholicism's venial and mortal sins and all that.

There is a clear distinction in the Bible about the severity of sins.

For instance, obviously, in the Old Testament, not every sin required a death penalty.

And, you know, we're not going to treat the adulterer in the same way as the brother who loses his temper.

Now, obviously, even a brother who loses his temper habitually and keeps doing it, that

person even needs to be put under discipline.

But there is obviously different approaches that you've got to take.

You're going to put a brother under church discipline if at a church picnic he becomes a glutton that day.

Now, obviously, if this is a habitual thing where it's getting out of control, it's ruining the person's life.

So I can't think of much else that I, who is not a person in a church office, can

say that I can think of right now.

Well, I think you brought up some things.

Paul encouraged and said that, you know, to Timothy, if the pastor sins, you warn publicly.

That's speaking of a pastor, but it is true that, as you brought up, the whole congregation realizes we take sin

serious here.

It's the purity of the church.

The other thing I think it was good you brought up is this is about love.

And I know at Striving for Eternity we have a quick reference card called the Process of Reconciliation.

One of the things that we do in it is it's a flow chart.

Why?

Because so many times when people are talking about sin, oh, that person sinned against me, they're all emotional.

And really, you need to take a step back and think through things.

We have a whole thing of, actually, is it even a sin?

Some people, as you brought up, they make issues that aren't really sin into sin because they want to judge.

And you have maybe I'm the one in sin, not the other person.

You know, I've seen that happen where they get to the second step of church discipline and suddenly realize, no, actually, you were the

offender, not the offendee.

And so we have a chart to, like, walk through all these steps before you even get to going

to the person one -on -one.

And so that's something we carry in our store because it's so important for people to—I actually

jokingly say it's my rules for Facebook.

You know, because Facebook can learn—they need to learn—Christians on Facebook need to learn how to reconcile biblically.

We have to take a moment to hear some messages from our sponsors who make Iron Sharpens Iron possible.

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Welcome back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

We are listening to an interview that Andrew Rappaport did with Chris Arnson at the 2019 G3

Conference.

Let me ask you in this, in the last segment it would be this,.

You do interviews.

I know on my Rappaport podcast it's more, I'm just giving biblical interpretations, applications, whether it's my

two -minute daily, it's just quick stuff.

That's because you're smarter than me.

See, I know that I'm only smart enough to ask good questions, not answer them.

Well, I don't know, you're doing very good here.

But see, for me, the asking of questions the way you do, to me

it's easier to sit down with the text of Scripture or to deal with an issue in public that we have either in the

news or whatever and add biblical principles to how we should view these things.

But when interviewing people, one of the things I notice is you have an ability to bring out from people

things that I don't hear, I can hear the same person interviewed on other broadcasts, but there's a way you have of bringing things

out from people that I don't hear in others, make it more personal, make it where they share things

sort of differently, not just here's what I say on every broadcast.

Do you think through your questions in such a way to bring that out of people or is that something that just comes naturally to you?

Whether or not it originally came naturally, I don't know because for some reason I can't really

remember, but it eventually has become, just through habit and repetition,

more of a natural thing for me to consider my discussions, just like I am with you, as

very little different from sitting around a coffee table in a living room and having a conversation rather

than be consumed with the fact that it is a broadcast.

Now of course there are differences in that you might

not want to bring out personal things that should not be broadcast to an

audience outside that room that would separate a coffee table conversation from a radio broadcast,

because that would actually be wrong, especially if you might, during a face -to -face

time of fellowship, have to bring people's names up for some reason or another.

You'd obviously be guilty of sin by broadcasting other people's problems on

the radio.

But that is my goal, and it's not even necessarily a conscious goal,

because I'm not thinking in my head.

I'm going to act like I'm sitting at a coffee table with this person.

It's just something that I do when I'm interviewing them, and it is interesting for me to see

that those men and sometimes women who are terrified to

be interviewed, when I finally push them long enough and hard enough

to give it a shot, they're 9 out of 10 times, I mean it might even be

10 out of 10 times that I'm aware of, they always say, wow, this is great.

Can I come back?

Because this was a lot easier than I thought.

You put me at ease.

I wasn't intimidated.

I had that experience myself the first time I was on with you.

And even though I have gotten complaints that my laughter actually physically hurts the eardrums of

some of my listeners, and Eric, my webmaster, knows that that's true.

It's not as bad when you listen to it at double and triple speed, just so you know.

That's how I listen to it when I listen on podcast.

But I think the fact that I enjoy humor and I spontaneously find

things funny, I hope not too often when they shouldn't be found funny.

But I think that also I have been told actually that my laughter has put people at

ease.

Sometimes when others have conducted interviews, they have been overly

polished with a desperate attempt to sound professional.

And I think that could put people out of ease, make people feel uncomfortable, because it's

almost like they feel like they're in a job interview or something or an interrogation.

But I am trying to be as real and as natural and just be myself as I can.

In fact, I just was speaking to somebody today

about an opportunity I may have, well, an opportunity I do have, I should say, for a

different program other than Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

Not that Iron Trip and Zion Radio would go off the air.

That's absolutely not the intention at all.

It's not going to happen.

Bless God, it has other plans I don't know about.

But this other program, it's designed more to be about encouraging

brothers and sisters in Christ, not necessarily a polemics -type program, which very often,

not all the time, but Iron Trip and Zion Radio very often does involve polemics.

And polemics is very important and is necessary.

But for this particular program, it's going to be more about encouragement.

And one thing that I have to recognize is, and I hope this never

happens to me, but sometimes I hear, well, let me take that back, frequently I hear

Christian radio programs that are intended to be those kinds of encouraging programs, they sound completely artificial.

Everybody sounds like Mr. or Mrs. Rogers, if you know what I'm saying.

Yes, I do.

And it annoys me.

I feel like I'm getting diabetes listening to them because of the sweetness and

the fakeness.

And in fact, I've heard unbelievers, when they visit churches,

one of the things they have said is, man, I just can't get over that saccharine, phony, sweet

attitude that many people have that greet you in a church.

I think you just described how now from Evermore, we're going to be describing Joel Osteen.

You're getting diabetes just listening to him.

Yeah, one of the things that is clear to me that he cannot be a true teacher of

God is that you cannot have a permanent smile

affixed to your face if you're teaching the whole counsel of God.

It just is totally inappropriate.

There are many areas of the scriptures where a preacher should have a very stern look on his

face, a look that clearly sends the signal of rebuke

and an urgency and so on.

Not that it should always be that way.

I think that there should be many occasions also where a pastor is beaming with smiles.

But when you only adopt one of those two extremes, that's a bad case for,

I think, improper homiletics.

Yes.

Well, I appreciate being on your show interviewing you.

And we're going to air this on my podcast, Wrap Report.

So for my listeners, for Wrap Report listeners, my encouragement is if you are not listening to Iron Sharpening

Iron, you just got a little bit of a taste of the man behind the radio, behind the microphone,

which we don't often get to see.

And by the way, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, not Iron Sharpening.

Sorry.

That was my stern rebuke for the day.

So listen to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, either live or on

podcast because it's available both.

IronSharpensIronRadio .com.

There you go.

And so I appreciate being able to come on finally and interviewing you.

There was a point earlier where you were starting to turn it.

Really?

Yeah, you started asking me questions about, do I know Andy?

And I was like, wait, he's asking, oh.

I was unconscious of that because I actually kept thinking, man, I think I'm mic hogging right now.

By the way, just not to interrupt you, but did I complete an answer to a question just then when I was

concluding?

Okay, good.

Obviously, people might tell in my tone of voice that I'm coming down with a cold again.

You do that every G3 is you get a cold.

I think it's the combination of travel, weather, talking a lot.

Lack of sleep.

Lack of sleep.

But I just want to say as a listener, I really appreciate what you do, the interviews you

provide, the informative questions you end up asking because it brings a lot out and is helpful to

listeners like me on a wide variety of topics that I often don't think

about thinking of.

But because you bring that out with your guests, I start thinking about things.

And so I think that Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is something that is really essential

for many Christians, most Christians, if not all, to be listening to.

I'm glad that you're on Traditional Radio, that you're maybe even, that that hopefully could expand

even larger because I think that as you and I both would be in the same camp, right,

we need to get people thinking biblically about things of God.

And that's something that you really help bring out from people.

So I appreciate all the work that you've done on the radio and the encouragement you've been to me and to many others.

And I appreciate you because Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is really guest

-driven.

Obviously, if people listen to the show long enough, they recognize that I don't hog

the mic.

Then if I do, it's unintentional.

But I really want to give my guests a platform when they are being interviewed.

If I have an expert on an issue as a guest on my program, why

would I want to interrupt him constantly?

If he is indeed the expert and knows a lot more than I do about an issue, I'd be foolish.

It's one of the things that used to drive me up a wall with Bill O 'Reilly.

And people might think, well, who are you to insult Bill O 'Reilly?

Before his scandal, he was like the most listened -to talk show host in the United States.

Well, and I'm not taking away anything from his talents or abilities or gifts

or success.

But I just can say that personally when listening to him, I used to be upset when he would have an important

guest on and constantly interrupt the person.

And act as if he knew more about the subject than the expert.

I'm sorry, Mr. O 'Reilly, if you're listening.

He probably does listen.

Doesn't everyone listen to Iron Sharpens Iron?

I'm sure Bill O 'Reilly doesn't even know I exist.

For people who may be listening for the first time that profess to be Christian, you may not have to listen regularly

to Iron Sharpens Iron radio to be saved, but why take the chance?

That's great.

I think I'm going to put that on the banner.

I stole it from Erwin Lutzer, but it still works for me.

Did he actually say that about his broadcast?

He said that about his church.

He'd always say, you may not have to come to be saved, but why take the chance?

I'm hoping Erwin was saying that in a jovial way.

Oh, yes.

Because I know that he's a Calvinist.

I actually got him to endorse James R. White's book, The Potter's Freedom, which he loved.

He was very upset with Norman Geisler's horrible attack of Calvinism.

Erwin Lutzer, in fact, I've never interviewed Erwin Lutzer.

I've got to get him on the show, but I have always been impressed with Erwin.

He was so excited to get his endorsement on it.

He was the last one, and he kept emailing me.

Did I make the cut before the print?

Yes, you got in there.

For him, maybe we'll hold the print for a second.

I appreciate being able to be on your radio show, my podcast, to be able to interview you.

I appreciate that.

I encourage folks to go out.

You can search for it on podcast.

You can look just for Iron Sharpens Iron.

IronSharpensIronRadio .com.

Because if you just type in IronSharpensIron .com, you're going to get a golf website.

IronSharpensIronRadio .com.

That's how I found it on podcast, so if they do that.

It's always a pleasure being with you.

Good to talk with you every year when we're down here.

You are such a blessing to me personally, but also to the body of Christ.

One of the things before we go that I so appreciate about you

is that one of the similarities that we have is it seems that our circle of friends extend

far beyond the specific, precise

theological expression or confession that we might have personally or

in our congregations.

I'm not saying that we are loosely ecumenical with heretics or apostates, but it seems

that the arms of friendship are broader than many people might have.

I see that in you.

Even though you have very serious and strict convictions about many things,

it doesn't create a judgmental spirit in you.

Unnecessarily judgmental.

People beat up the word judgmental too much.

They do. I appreciate that.

For those of our listeners who are listening to this interview on Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio, now let's

get the Striving for Eternity Ministries information.

Sure.

Strivingforeternities .org is our website.

We just started up a Christian podcast community.

We have a crazy idea.

I know you'll agree with this idea, but it's a crazy idea.

Getting Christians to promote others and serve others rather than self.

It's crazy in Christianity.

We kind of think it's biblical.

I have a podcast, The Wrap Report, which can be found on anywhere people listen to podcasts.

They can search for The Wrap Report daily, which is that two -minute Monday to Friday one for people who like shorter stuff.

If they go to christianpodcastcommunity .org, they can get the whole bunch that we have.

After G3, we're going to be opening up applications to other podcasters.

We're really glad to see what God's doing in podcasting.

Here's a crazy thing for you, statistics -wise.

There's over 600 ,000 podcasts right now.

200 ,000 of them started last year.

Wow.

Think about how long podcasting has been out.

Now you consider the fact that when you look at the categories, religion and

spirituality is the number one category, twice the size of the next leading category.

When you look in that, Christianity is the largest section.

But if you look in religion and spirituality, who do you think is number one?

Religion and spirituality is the number one Christian podcast?

Yeah.

Oh, is it something that would make me smile or frown?

Actually, smile, and we mentioned him.

A dividing line?

No, no.

Smile, and we mentioned him.

Oh!

Joelstein.

Joyce Meyer is usually number two.

Wow.

You have to go down like five or six before you get to Grace to You, Ligonier, or someone like that.

So there's like so much growth in podcasting, and yet within

Christianity, so much garbage.

And I have a guess that the garbage is so successful because you have multitudes of

unregenerate people having their consciences salved about their sin when they hear people

like Joelstein and others.

It's like they may have a prick of conscience that something that they're doing or the way that they're living is

not correct.

And then when they listen to Joelstein, wow, I feel better now.

And I don't even have to repent or anything.

Yeah, so what we're looking to do, I mean, as you know, Striving Fraternity is a discipleship ministry, right?

So we have our academy online for people to take free courses, and we

come into churches and do seminars and preaching and things like that.

But this is another way of discipling.

We're discipling podcasters to produce better podcasts.

And that's one of the things why I'm always trying to learn from you on how to interview, so I could help people when they're doing interviews.

But it really is a privilege to be always to be with you.

You're such a blessing.

You, too, brother.

So thank you.

And I'm so sorry that I took so long to actually sit down with you.

And that was nothing intentional.

And it just has to do with unforeseen things or events.

I realized I wasn't going to be able to be sly with getting an interview in without you knowing it.

That I learned.

God bless you, brother.

It's always great to share a fellowship with you.

Same to you.

God bless.

Bye.

I hope that you've enjoyed this unique opportunity to hear an interview with Chris Arnzen.

And as Chris would say, I hope that you remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a

far, far greater Savior than you are a sinner.