September 21, 2020 Show with Mike Lindell, Michael A. Gaydosh, and William C. Nichols

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

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

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

Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 21st day of September 2020.

I'm absolutely thrilled to have as my first guest today none other than Mike Lindell, the

MyPillowGuy, and Mike and I have something very important in common.

We were both addicts rescued by the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ from our addictions.

Mine happened to be booze and a very seriously deadly level of consumption, and Mike Lindell's happened to be crack, and we're actually going to be discussing his autobiography,

What Are the Odds? From Crack Addict to CEO, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Mike Lindell.

Hey, thanks for having me on. Oh, thank you for having me on, I'm sorry, for being on,

I should say, brother. And I got to tell you, this book that you have written, this autobiography, has a very cool cover.

Would you call that a hologram, the technology that they use to print the cover where they have your face with a beaming smile after your salvation, switching back and forth to the hideous...

Right, that's not the salvation picture that's in there, but the first picture is when

I was up 14 days and my drug dealers did an intervention, so that's that picture.

And I guess the second picture would be, I was after my surrender days, so yeah. But yeah, it's a hologram, and then on the back is also a hologram when

I was seven years old when my parents divorced, back when divorces weren't common, and then that manifests into me speaking it in front of 20 ,000 people, which there's no way that I ever thought that I could speak in front of three people, much less that many.

Yeah, well, praise God that you have written this book. In fact, I think it is so admirable, not only that you wrote this book, because some

CEOs might be terrified at the notion of making something like your past a public, making a public knowledge because they would fear it might harm their business in some way.

In fact, even your Christian faith in your stance with the pro -life movement is putting that at risk to a degree.

But it's funny, my friend, I first started to wonder if you were a

Christian when the woman who led me to Christ, who watches Fox News regularly, as I do, she said to me, you know,

I think that guy, the MyPillow guy, Mike Lindell, is a Christian. I said, why do you say that? And she said, well, every one of his commercials, he's wearing a cross that's sticking out of his shirt.

And I said, that doesn't mean anything. I mean, even gang members have crosses around their neck, that doesn't mean a thing.

And she said, yeah, but a guy who runs a company and is advertising in the mainstream media with a cross dangling around his neck,

I think that he is trying to make the point that he's a Christian. And I said, okay, whatever you say. And then sure enough, I found out that you are indeed a brother in Christ, a born again believer.

And let's start with your childhood, what kind of upbringing you had, what kind of religious atmosphere you were surrounded by, if any.

And then, of course, we're going to hear about your tragic plunge into crack addiction. Yeah, you got a lot there.

By the way, here's a little teaser. When I wore my cross, it wasn't just on TV, I always wore it, but I wasn't completely saved yet.

I wanted to believe in God. I believed in God, but I hadn't done a full surrender.

I wasn't born again yet. And that comes on February 18th, 2017.

So anyway, we'll start back. When I wrote this book, finally

I figured out a lot of things. It took me seven years to write the book, but what it did, it goes back to when

I was I was the oldest of my siblings, and my parents divorced when I was seven years old.

Now, this is very key because divorces weren't common then. In fact, my mom moved us to a new school in the town

I still live in, and I was the only kid from a divorced family. So I was the only kid that did, you know, it was,

I felt unworthy. I felt like I didn't fit in. I felt, you know, all these lies the devil put into me then, as I would either not talk to people that I didn't know, very shy with girls especially, and or I would climb out, you know, do things to show off, like climb out of a moving bus window and jump to show off, you know, these, it was one or the other.

And then when I graduated from high school, now I started, you know, and I had my mom, you know, we did, you know, she remarried when

I was like nine or ten. And, you know, I had different churches, and I had some good roots planted, you know,

Bible study and stuff like that. And I'd go down on my, stay at my uncle's farm.

We'd go to church on Sundays. So there were some, there were some good, I guess, roots planted then. But they, but what happened then with this, when

I graduated from high school, I dropped out of college after the first quarter. And by the time our five -year reunion came along,

I got there, and I'll never forget this, everyone had been finishing college, and they were, they had their careers, or they were heavy into their careers at the same job they had had.

Or they started new, you know, started families. And I hadn't done anything. I was, I had worked at a drive -in movie theater and got fired at a grocery store.

And I, but I took over the reunion, and I started to tell them about all my experiences. I owed the

Mafia $20 ,000, and they came to break my legs for betting on football. Wow. I had fell asleep on a motorcycle on the day

I was going skydiving on my sixth or ninth jump. I crashed my motorcycle because I was so tired.

I fell asleep, crashed it, got back up, made it down to jump, did the jump, but my parachute didn't open.

And that was a streamer. And all in the same day, so I, you know, and so I'm telling all my classmates, so, you know, my, at that five -year reunion, all these things, they're going, wow, wow, you know.

And that was my self -worth, and that, that I had meant something. I just took, you know, took over the reunion.

But I got home that night, I laid in bed, and a deep sadness came over me that I, I wanted what they had.

And I want, I just felt empty that I wasn't where I should be in life. And I just, it was, and, you know, about the, about the 1983 or 84 then,

I got introduced to cocaine, where that gave me, boy, that gave me a false courage. It masked any pain

I had, the things that had manifested inside, you know, fear of rejection, where you, if you don't talk to people, you can't get rejected.

And so I was very much almost, if I wasn't high,

I would be almost a kind of introverted in a way. And if I didn't know you, well, that cocaine changed all that.

It masked the pain. It gave me false courage. It gave me all these, which, which

I do believe now that addictions all manifest, you know, most manifest from things that happened in childhood, like fatherlessness, like a divorce, that, you know, the families are all broken up nowadays.

And so you've, and they've taken God out of our schools. A lot of things have changed.

But, but those things and trauma will manifest into the devil's lying side. I'm not worthy.

I'm not good enough. And all these things and, and then addictions will mask that.

But I was a very functioning cocaine addict. So for all the way through the 1980s and 90s,

I was always an entrepreneur too. Very functioning addict. There's too many lies out there that addiction is only people in the street that are homeless.

Now addiction affects everybody, no matter how many forks you eat with. And I'm telling you that it's, it's very widespread and, and people are functioning, you know, they're functioning addicts.

And that's what I was. I got into me, this wife of my dreams and had four kids and, and I had this family and, but, but it's still,

I had this addiction and still I was missing something. Did they know it? Did your wife and children know that you had the addiction?

Oh, my wife was, she was an addict too, you know, but the kids did. We were very good at hiding. At least early on at hiding the, you know, functioning addicts.

We all, plus we owned a bar when you, you know, we owned a bar. So it was very out in the open. Every day, you know, and everybody in the merch circles were with everybody was what

I would say an addict and in one form or another. Well, but the neighbors would all send their kids over there.

My wife would say, you know, oh man, we all, you know, what did the neighbors think? You know, could we be, you know, and well,

I've been, I can't think too much where they send all their kids over and we're making tents in the backyard and I'm entertaining everybody and, and, um, and their appeal and their, their safety of, you know, but that was a different time, time and era too, where people, uh, um, but anyway, well they, then it all changed to crack cocaine, which is not the same as cocaine in, in around the year 2000 and there, uh, it can take, that takes you down faster.

It, um, uh, there were more things that happened that developed then that we couldn't handle, you know, different addictions.

You're being a functioning addict, but crack is, uh, is that it's a different, uh, it's a different type of drug where you get paranoid.

You get, um, all these different things that happen. That's not a social drug. You don't see any crack addicts hanging around bars.

They're, uh, they're usually at home peeking out windows and, um, so, but they, um, but it went and we ended up helping to sell the bar, you know, he had these bad time.

I thought it was devastating and I looked back now, of course it had to happen, but one of the things during that time when

I had the bar after the bars would close, we'd all go to my friend's house or somebody's house. And I'd be telling these guys about God and about the book of revelation, the end times

I read about when I was in jail. Every time I go in jail, I'd read the Bible. And, and, uh, so my, all my friends, a lot of them, you know,

I'd be saying, you guys, these drugs are bad and we should quit. And, and, and they would quit and find the Lord, some of them.

And I'd go, what did I say? I didn't even know what I said. I'm not a friend here. So it was, uh, and one of the things was, is

I would always, I still do it to this day. If I'm trying to convince myself of something,

I'm convincing others. And in fact, I'm convincing myself at the same time, this kind of manifested the years later when, uh,

I was the only person on the phones taking calls for my pillow. And I'd have some, some atheists or something on the phone going, you wear your cross on TV.

Uh, you know, how dare you trying to sell pills, but trying to get me to believe in God. And I would, and I would sit there and defend

God and go and tell him all this proof or whatever, and telling him about these miracles, miracles, whatever.

Well, they'd get saved. And I'd hang up the phone there, take that. And I'm still not. How do you like that?

You know, there, now you believe in Jesus, have a nice day. So, but they, uh, but anyway,

I got this pillow idea from God in around 2004. And I, I spent, um, about a year inventing and different ideas.

And I, even the name, my pillow came to me in a dream. And I got up, wrote my pillow all over the house. And he's, my daughter comes upstairs to get a glass of water.

She goes, what are you doing? I said, I'm going to get this pillow. It's going to be called my pillow. It's going to change the world. And she grabs her glass of water.

She says, that's pretty random. Dad went back down. So they, uh, but my kid, my one son and I, my youngest, we'd tear different poems every day and stuff flying around the neighborhoods.

And at the same time, I got a parallel track of being a crack addict and a gambler, you know, compulsive gambler.

I had it all alcoholic, all these different things, but I put everything I had into this pillow. And when it finally came to fruition,

I was turned down everywhere. Every box store everywhere is a complete shutout. And I ended up doing, uh, they said, why don't you do a kiosk?

Mike? I said, how do you spell that? If I do this kiosk and that, I remember I couldn't talk to people.

So I was very uncomfortable. I only worked the kiosk one day and my wife at the time worked at the other days.

We didn't hardly sell any pillows, but the one day I was there, this guy sold him a pillow and he asked me for a business card.

I said, well, I'm all out. And I didn't have a business card. I wrote my number on a piece of paper. Now that was the only day

I was there where I was doing the selling. And now the kiosk was a failure.

And we went, we had to borrow money for the Christmas presents for the kids. And we get into January and, and I, and I've been,

I was always an entrepreneur, so I didn't have a skill. So I couldn't get it. There's no way I could get a job to just go out and support a family.

Um, family of six, you know, basically we, we, uh, so, um, and all the money from the bar

I'd sold, all that was gone. It was penniless. Well, that guy called up and got that business card.

He said, are you the guy that invented this pillow here in Minnesota? I said, yeah. He said, well, that thing, that pillow changed my life.

And he said, wow, I brought the Minneapolis home and garden show. Would you like a spot in there? Wow. By the way,

Mike, we're going to have to go to a very quick station break and we're going to pick up your story right when we return. It's going to be very quick.

Okay. And hold on folks. And we're going to be right back with Mike Lindell right after this message.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnsen, and our guest today for the first half hour with about 10 minutes to go or so is

Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy, and we're discussing his autobiography, What Are the Odds? From crack addict to CEO.

Right before the break, Mike, you said you finally got the break that you needed with your pillow invention from a local entrepreneur in Minnesota.

If you could pick up where you left off there. Right. Well, he wasn't an entrepreneur. He ran the Minneapolis Home and Garden Show.

Oh, wow. And they do these home shows. So I went there then and said, okay,

I'm going to change my booth and I put a table in front of me so I wouldn't have to, like I say,

I had a hard time talking to people and you can't go to a, you can't do a trade show high.

So I would separate the two. I had this parallel track of an addict and then I never broke trust with the shows for all them years.

That was, that's one thing I always kept as an addict, I kept my integrity. And but anyway, I go to do this show and the first day, all these people bought my pillows and go, wow, they are selling.

Because I'm now the one selling them. And then one of the things that happened is the next day, everyone that had bought at that show, let's say it was like 12 that had bought the first day, they all came back and paid to get back into the show to come and tell me how it had changed their life, how the pillow had changed their life.

And it was amazing. Now what that did to me, it wasn't about the money. It made me feel good inside that I had done something good, that my self -worth was so bad,

I felt good about myself, that I was helping people. So I got kind of hooked on that.

That's why I did home shows and fairs for years. Now I went through it, but the parallel track of crack addiction,

I ended up with a 20 -year marriage gone, divorce in 2007. People were taking my company.

By the time 2008 came, it was just, my pillow was just a little, just a little heartbeat every once in a while,

I would do a show, because I would not do a show if I was high. Since I was always high, the shows got fewer and fewer.

Well, the drug dealers ended up doing an intervention on me in the spring of 2008.

I came out, I was downtown Minneapolis incidentally, right where all these riots were and all the stuff that got ruined.

I came out of the room, I go, what are you guys doing? There was three of the biggest dealers in town and they go, you've been up for 14 days, you're going to bed.

We're not selling you anymore. I said, what is this intervention?

They said, call it whatever you want, Mike. Now one of them left, the other one went down the street and got the word out.

Well, the other one finally, by the time, by that time, two hours later, I'm on a crack and I'm carpet farming.

Anyone that's a crack addict knows what that is. I'm on my knees looking for pieces I might have dropped and it's terrific.

Well, then the other guy finally went to sleep and I hit the streets of Minneapolis and I couldn't get crack anywhere.

Nobody would sell to me. I came back upstairs and here's what he said. He goes, how'd that work out for you?

It's like three in the morning now. He goes, I said, I was so upset. He goes, give me your phone. I'm going to take a picture and you're going to need that for that book you've been telling us about that you're going to write someday.

And he said, man, he said, you've been telling us for years, this MyPillow thing is just a platform for God and you're going to quit all your addiction someday and you're going to come back and help us all get out of this addiction lifestyle we live.

And he says, we're not going to let you die on us. Now, by the way, those dealers work, by the way, two of those dealers work for me and they're born again

Christians. And this whole network has come to fruition that I'm doing now, that whole platform.

But now I'm going to, I'm going to fast forward real quick. At the end of 2008, my friend came to me.

I call him my hope match. He came to me. He was my equal. He had both done cocaine at the same time, both started crack at the same time.

And he was both functioning addicts all our lives. I heard he had found the Lord four years earlier and I hadn't seen him in four years.

And I'm at the end of my rope. I had nothing going on. I mean, I'm nothing. I'm out of possessions. It's like I say,

MyPillow was just a little blip on the radar. I'm in this abandoned house staring at the ceiling.

He comes in, he goes, he goes, what's going on? I go, Dick, how are you doing? He goes, he goes,

I go, what are you doing here? He goes, the Lord led me here. He says, you tell me what's going on. I said, well, as long as you're here,

I said, I got some questions for you. My first question was, is it boring? He said, no, man, it ain't boring.

And I'm telling you, he answered questions for an hour that only he could answer. I call that a hope match.

And I'll tell you, I asked him about God. I asked him about, you know, being off a drug, everything.

You could imagine, because I respected his opinion, because he gave me hope, because he was my equal in every way.

Well, anyway, a month later, I actually quit. Overnight on January 16, 2009,

I had one prayer to God. I said, and I made sure I didn't have any possessions left or whatever. So it'd be, you know,

I knew it'd be the greatest comeback ever. With God, all things are possible, that type thing. But I prayed to God. I said, I want to wake up in the morning and never have this desire again.

And then I'll do this platform thing. So it was kind of like a deal. And I didn't get on my knees to surrender.

I just made that deal. I woke up the next day and the desires were gone. And I'm telling you, it was a miracle in itself.

That was a miracle. But two months later, I ended up going, I felt led to go to a faith -based treatment center at my church.

And in that center, it was something I'd never been to before. I've been to secular treatment all my life. But I said, in here, they asked about my father.

I said, well, I come from a divorced family. And they talked about these wounds from childhood.

And they tried to replace them with God, with Jesus, with restoring your heart, these wounds.

Well, it planted good seeds once again. And now I'll really fast forward for the sake of time.

But two years went by, and I'm getting my pillow back. And I'm just the shows back that have been taken from me.

Finally, I told my friends and family. I said, let's do an infomercial. Pool all our money. It's going to be the biggest one in the world ever.

And I didn't know infomercials don't work. It's just to get in the box stores, which had already turned us down.

Well, we pooled all our money. And they said, you're going to need an actor. And there was all these naysayers. This will never work.

And in fact, we went in to film it. So we'd do our reads the night before. And this producer from California texted the other guy.

And we were doing our reads. He said, this guy is the worst guy I've ever seen. He'll never make it on TV. The guy goes, he's paying you.

Just go with it. And the next day, I couldn't even talk with all these people. And I said, can we just take away the teleprompter and bring in a table?

And let's just do it like I did at the shows. We did that. And it aired October 7, 2011.

The middle of the night, I was living in my sister's basement. I had 10 employees. And 40 days later,

I had 500. It just exploded. But by the summer of 2014, we were within two days of going under.

I met a gal. That's Kendra. And we're still together to this day. But I met her. And she had something

I didn't have. She had a personal relationship with Jesus. And I said, well, I believe in God. And anyway, she said to pray for favor and all this.

And we did. And I ended up doing a one -minute commercial that failed. But then I went in it. And it exploded again.

And once again, my pillow just went huge, horizontal and vertical. And so then a bunch of miracles started happening to me that could only be

God. You know, my friends see me sitting next to the President of the United States on TV, going, what is this crack addict doing on TV with the

President? This could only be Jesus is real. Because there's no way that that's possible. I mean, things like this.

I thought you were going to say they said, who's that guy with Mike Lindell? Yeah, I know.

But it was crazy. These things. I got invited to the National Prayer Breakfast, not even saved yet.

And I get picked out of 12 people to pray with Ben Carson in a room. I was still running for president.

And in that room, a guy prophesied. He said, a couple of you in this room are going to become great friends and change the course of history.

And I'm thinking, well, one of them is me. And I didn't know the other one's Ben. We're like best friends now. And it did change. We are doing all these changes right now and be a part of this.

Make the biggest revival in history. Well, a month, two months later after that, I went to a thing called

Operation Restored Warrior. It was actually just for veterans, and I'm not a veteran. But I went in there with hope.

And I came on the second day on February 18, 2017. I did a full surrender to Jesus.

I got on my knees. He's the chairman of my board now. It was just a peaceful feeling I can't even describe.

All my anxiety, all my worries gone. But here's the thing. A month later, a month and a half later.

Here's the guy that couldn't talk to people and do it. And if you're public speaking, for sure, beyond anything you've ever seen.

I do. I'm at a US Bank stadium speaking to 50 ,000 millennials and do it for five to seven minutes.

Two weeks after that, me and my granddaughter at this amusement park and all these millennials kept coming up to me going, your talk saved my life.

I fell in Jesus and all this. But it was just like those people that came back to that booth. It confirmed that I was on the right path.

Now, in Proverbs 3, 5, 6, praise God with all your heart, lean out on your own understandings and always acknowledge him and he will guide your path.

Praise God. That's my story. Well, we do have a couple of questions that I'll try to squeeze in before you have to leave us today.

We have Bob in White Plains who says, how does God's word play a role in your daily life as a

CEO? It plays everything. It's like he's chairman of the board.

One of the things, too, we pray about everything I do, every big move I make, every move and all of my decisions are based on that.

I mean, I'm not shy about anything. I put it out there. And by the way, my best day ever, they say my pillow is always the day we're in.

God rewards me that I'm doing the right things. And one of the things, I went all in for the president in 2016 after I met him.

I didn't know anything about politics. I met him in a private meeting. I got back to Minnesota and I felt it was

God wanted me to do this. And I went and my board says, you're going to lose half our business. You can't get political.

And I walked out of that board meeting and my CMO came out and said, we didn't get all this way by you not listening to God.

I said, you're right. I went back in that board meeting and said, we didn't get all this way by me not listening to God. I'm going to do that press release.

And man, was I attacked. I get attacked all the time. But let me tell you, my busiest day,

God just rewards and I keep it. Everyone needs to stand up for what they believe.

And then you just kick stand up for their faith. And, you know, this is, uh, we're a spiritual warfare now beyond belief in this country.

And, and this is not a time to sit by and go, okay, I'm going to go to church on Sunday and clear my, uh, clear my conscience and the rest of the week.

Do not that. We all need to speak out now. Amen. Well, Bob, give us your full mailing address there in White Plains, New York, because you've won a free copy of Mike Lindell's autobiography.

We've also got Nick from St. Petersburg, Florida on the phone on the email here.

And he says, as an addict, what was the pivotal point in your way of thinking that you believe allowed you to become a successful business owner?

A pivotal point in your way of thinking, he says. Well, you know, I've always said that the entrepreneur, the, uh, the drive,

I think some of the addiction, let me tell you, all the addicts out there, they know, they know addictions, hard work is some of the hardest work there is.

So if you get set free from addiction, I mean, they say to me all the time, Mike, it's, uh, it, man, you work so hard.

I'm not working. I'm enjoying it. And it's addictions, hard work. This isn't hard work.

And a pivotal point I've always wanted to be, you know, I think success, you know, you want, it all comes down to, you know, your self -worth, how you feel inside.

And you got to do something you're passionate about, but you got to, when you match your calling, there's nothing better in life.

When you match your calling, what God has called you to do. If that's a match, it's just amazing.

I can't say enough about it. And I guess I always knew, you know, that I had a calling.

I didn't realize it would end up being this big, but I think my story, my story, that's the big thing having this platform.

Like I told those, those dealers back then, you know, I do now, I have the

Lindell Recovery Network. That's the whole thing. When that launches, it's set up by hope matches. When you see other successes, you go, how did they do it?

And, uh, how did they make it through? And, um, and then if you're an entrepreneur or anything out there that you,

I always talk about, you better look at them deviations because every deviation, if it's good or bad, if it's good, you better focus on it and duplicate it.

If it's bad, you better learn from it and fix it. And, and, uh, just don't let it sit idly by.

You got to learn from your mistakes and learn from the good things too. Okay. Nick, get us your full address because you've also won the book.

And we, lastly, we don't have time for any more than one more. Grady in Asheboro, North Carolina wants to know the hardest decision you had to make about your business.

Um, you know, the hardest decision when I make a decision, I make it and I'm all in. I don't,

I don't usually only have a plan A. I don't have a plan B. I'm going to succeed. Um, I'm going to,

I'm going to drive, you know, get through it. Um, you know, I don't really know the hardest decision

I ever had to make. Um, people would say, oh, it's when you went all in for the president or when you went all in for God, you know, it was hard decisions.

I just did it. Um, there's just, I guess one of the hardest decisions I ever had to make was the spring of 14.

I had made all kinds of mistakes. I'm not following God's lead in business. And I had to lay off hundreds of employees, some that had been here.

And I had made some critical errors and it was, and I was in tears watching them leave. And, um, that was the hardest one, bar none,

I guess that would have been the hardest thing I had to do was that spring of 2014, watching people carry their drawers out there with their, all their stuff in their drawers.

And I just, I can still put my back in that, in that spot. And, um, but I bowed that day too, to come roaring back and hire all back in that.

But anyone that wanted to hire back, I'd hire back. Wow. Happened a couple of times. Praise God. So that, you know, that all drew, that drove me to that too.

So it turned out, God uses bad for good too. Amen. Well, uh, by the way,

Grady, you also won a free book. So send us your full mailing address in Asheboro, North Carolina. Uh, I, uh, went to a recovery myself to Hebron Colony in Boone, North Carolina.

I sing their praises whenever I get the chance. Their website is hebroncolony .org.

How can people find out more about the Lindell Recovery Network that you're working on? Well, right now you can go to the return .org.

And we're going to, if you donate even $25 there, you get a free copy of my book, but you can go to the

Lindell Recovery Network or go to michaeljameslindell .com. Um, you can Google my name.

It's not up there yet, but it's going to be launching on the day of the return, which is this coming weekend.

I'm going to be speaking to 1 .1 billion with a B people, 200 ,000 people on the mall in Washington, D .C.

It's going to be the biggest day in history of the, it's the National Day of Repentance and Revival.

I mean, I mean the National Day of Prayer and Repentance, because then after that, we're going to have the revival. That's the day

I'm launching the Lindell Recovery Network. And it'll be the talk everywhere. And you, and I can tell you right now, until it's launched, everybody should be looking for your home match.

If you're an addict out there, you look at somebody that's made it through and you go to them and find out how they did it.

And you're going to find out that was Jesus. So that's the return .org or?

Org .org. Yeah. Yeah. You can be, you guys will be putting in for as little as $25. You get a free copy of my book.

I'm donating it all to them. It's going to be the biggest thing that this, this is the start of the greatest revival.

We're in the best times to live in history because we're all part of the greatest revival ever in biblical history.

And I'm telling you, people don't look for hope unless there's something that, you know, there's been something that's gone bad, like addiction, like this pandemic and that hope is

Jesus. It's going to be amazing. So the return .org. Great. Well, I'm so glad that you put the word repentance or whoever came up with the name of the event, but the word repentance in there, because so many of our national and global evangelical events and outreaches don't even believe in such a thing as repentance.

And I'm so delighted that you have that right in the name of the event. Absolutely. And you can't ever,

I don't believe you can have a Bible without repentance. Amen. Amen. And there's that repentance and we've even got it into the president.

I got, we got it into him and he, hopefully he declares it that we haven't had a day declared like that since Abraham Lincoln did it.

Wow. So we do this and I'll tell you, it's going to be, you can look it up at return .org.

You can see where to watch it, how to get involved. Every hundreds of thousands of churches are going to be involved.

Like I say, it's televised to 1 .1 billion people with a B. Now I'm going to be a little nervous talking up there.

So everybody pray for me. Well, Mike, I hope,

I hope that you return to Iron Trip and Zion Radio and I hope that we can get you on, if not for two hours, which was what

I originally hoped for, at least an hour, because as you can see, time went by too fast. Yeah, absolutely.

And, and we get past, we get past this election, which is the most important election of our lifetime.

It affects everything we do with our faith. And, and, and anyway, we get past that. I'll have all kinds of time and even sometime in October too,

I might have some good time, but we're, right now it's just a scheduling, scheduling, scheduling. But I love what

I'm doing, spreading the word and, and God bless you all. And I'm, and I'll come on anytime

I can. You know, it's interesting. I have interviewed some of the most world -renowned theologians and scholars and authors, and I don't think

I've gotten nearly as, my audience nearly as excited as when they learned you were coming on.

That the emails that I, I think it's the relatable thing. You know, I'm relatable.

I come from, I've been, I've been with no forks and foreforks and everything in between, you know?

And I think, I think people can relate to that. It's just, once again, it gives people hope.

My story and, and my story, I wouldn't change a thing in my life if I wasn't where I'm at right now to be able to tell that story, to tell it how it is now, how my heart be restored, how it is to be with Jesus.

And, and so we need, so. Yeah, well, I've been getting inundated with emails from people who were thrilled that you were going to be on today, and I just thank

God. Oh, that's awesome. Well, God bless them all, and I'm praying for all of you out there that we're going to get through this.

We get through all this, we're going to look back and say, wow, it had to happen because we had the repentance and then the greatest revival in history, so.

Amen. Well, thank you. Thank you so much, Mike Lindell, and don't forget, folks, it's thereturn .org,

thereturn .org to find out more about the event and about getting Mike Lindell's autobiography,

What Are the Odds? From Crack Addict to CEO. God bless you, Mike Lindell. God bless.

Thank you. God bless. Okay, folks, don't go away because we are going to be back momentarily after these words from our sponsors.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnsen. If you just tuned us in, our second guest today is

Mike Gaydosch. He is the founder of Solid Ground Christian Books, a primary, a premier, a vital sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

We're going to be talking about the best in Christian literature that is now available in print.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Mike Gaydosch. Hey, Chris.

How are you today? I am doing much better than I deserve, brother, as always. Amen. Did you get the pillows taken care of?

No, but I heard an excellent interview and was involved with an excellent interview with Mike Lindell.

Just to let you know, folks, Mike Lindell has provided many copies of his autographed autobiography to give away, and we were only able to give away three because he was so busy.

He had to cut his interview down to a half hour. So anybody that sends in a question today will receive a free copy of Mike's autobiography, even if it is obviously not going to be a question for Mike Lindell, since he's already off the air.

So your questions obviously will be for Mike Gaydosch, our guest now, and in the last half hour, we've got

Bill Nichols, who's going to be talking about his book on Judas Iscariot, and we'll be giving away that book as well to listeners.

I'm excited to hear about what you've got in store for your readers when it comes to new books in print, and when

I say new books in print, I don't necessarily mean that they were written recently. They could have been written centuries ago, but they are new in print with Solid Ground Christian Books.

Yeah, actually, I decided that I was going to start off by sharing a book that I don't know that I've talked about before.

It's actually, and this was in honor of Mike and his interview, even though he didn't talk about his pillows.

Everybody knows him as the Pillow Man. So I have published a book entitled Little Pillows and Morning Bells by Francis Ridley Havergal, and I wanted to share a little bit about that.

It's a book for children, but it is a book that anyone can read and benefit from.

Havergal was a lady that was born in England.

She was born in 1836, died in 1851, and she died at the age of 42.

In 1879, I actually got to stand outside her home in Swansea, Wales, when

I visited Wales and ministered in Wales some years ago. She was a remarkable woman, came to faith in Christ at the age of 14.

She was a brilliant woman. Her scholastic achievements included proficiency in several modern languages in addition to Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.

And she was thoroughly trained in linguistics and music, was a pianist and singer, and she was also a devoted Bible student.

She memorized the entire New Testament, as well as the Book of Psalms and the

Prophet Isaiah and the Minor Prophets. She wrote several books.

She wrote over 100 hymns, many hymns which are still sung to this day. Of course, sadly, in the modern church, there are not many hymns that are being sung.

But those churches that still sing hymns, I think many of them would sing hymns that were written by Frances Ridley Havergal.

And she wrote two books called Little Pillows and Morning Bells, and I combined them and put them in one volume.

It was one of the earlier books that I published, actually. And she wrote the book

Little Pillows to be a pillow upon which a child can rest before they go to bed at night.

And she would take a text of scripture, and then she would bring that to the child, and then would speak about that passage.

Would it be okay if I just read one of those? Oh, of course. The very first chapter in the book called

Little Pillows is entitled The Invitation. Come unto me,

Matthew 11, 28. And then she begins, What kind sweet words for your pillow tonight?

Jesus says them to you. How am I to know? Well, they are for everyone that is weary and heavy laden.

Do not you know what it is to be weary and tired sometimes? Perhaps you know what it is to feel almost tired of trying to be good, weary with wishing you could be better.

So you see, it is to you that he says come. And if you have not yet come, you are heavy laden too, even if you do not feel it.

Because the burden of sin is heavy enough to sink you down into hell, unless Jesus takes it from you.

So it is to you that he says come. Isn't that interesting that she would begin her book to little children by laying out the warning of sinking down into hell, unless you come to Jesus.

Unless you should think, he says it to grown up people only. Jesus said,

Suffer the little children to come unto me. Are you a little child? Then it is to you that he says come.

And if he were here, and if I could see him, I would come. He is here, as really and truly as you are.

Suppose your mother and you were in a dark room together and she said, come to me. You would not stop and say,

I would come if I could see you. You would say, I'm coming mother, and you would soon feel your way across the room and be safe by her side.

Not seeing her would not make any difference. Jesus calls you now this very night.

He is here in this very room. Now will you not say, I am coming Lord Jesus, and ask him to stretch out his hand and help you to come and draw you quite close to himself.

Yes, to himself, the blessed, beloved Lord Jesus who loved you and gave himself for you, who has waited so patiently, who calls you because he wants you to come and be his own little lamb and be taken up in his arms and be blessed.

Will you keep him waiting any longer? Will you not come? Will you not come to him for life?

Why will you die? Oh, why? He gave his life for you, for you. The gift is free.

The word is true. Will you not come? Oh, why will you die? There are 31 chapters, each with one verse that she urges the child to memorize, to meditate upon, and then gives a devotion.

And then she has a second book that's a companion called Morning Bells. And Morning Bells, it's a passage that she gives to help a child wake up.

In fact, she begins, she has a little preface in the second volume, quote, Morning Bells.

And she said, most of the readers of this little book will have already read Little Pillows. Those were given you to go to sleep upon night after night, sweet soothing texts that little hearts might rest upon.

But in the morning, we want something to arouse us, to help us to go brightly and bravely through the day.

So here are Morning Bells to waken up little hearts and to remind them that we must not only rest in Jesus, but walk in him.

If the motto of Little Pillows might be, come unto Jesus, the motto of Morning Bells might be, follow

Jesus. May he who loves the little ones bless this tiny effort to help them to follow him day by day.

Great. So those are two books. And there's also a third volume that she wrote.

In fact, it was a book that was intended to be another two volumes. And that book is called

Morning Stars. And the subtitle is Names of Christ for His Little Ones.

And what's interesting about this is that in the preparatory note written by her sister in September of 1879, this is what it says.

Just a week before my dear sister Frances died, I took her letters upstairs.

Her pretty kittens Trot and Dot were playing on her bed. She was too ill to care about her letters, but was so pleased to get the first page of this book.

She looked at it carefully and with her pencil corrected mistakes. Then she was anxious that every reader should have space to add the verses and asked me to write about it.

May I say that she hoped you would read one chapter each day. My dear sister intended writing another book for you,

Evening Stars or Promises for Little Ones. But though she is now gone, the promises are left.

Will you not search them out in your Bible every evening and just say as she often did, This promise is so bright, and it is for me.

Now what's interesting about this book is there are 31 chapters again, because they always would do 31, one for each day of the month.

And what she did in this book is she would give the chapter, like John Chapter 2, but then leave a blank space.

And the child was to look up the verse and write in the verse number. So it would cause them to have to spend a little bit more time going to their

Bibles and finding exactly what passage it was that she was referring to.

And some of the Morning Stars, which are the names of Christ that she lists here are things like Savior, Bright and Morning Star, Friend, Brother, Redeemer, Master, Physician, Substitute, Shepherd, Passover, Intercessor, Unspeakable Gift, Leader, Commander, Head, Light, Life, Rock, Righteousness, Captain, Apostle, High Priest, Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, Messiah, Judge, Hope, Himself.

It's always wonderful to have these old books that focus only and always and entirely on Christ.

That was the goal of the great writers. Always in the past was to write in such a way that Christ was the centerpiece of all that you would read.

I remember Spurgeon said of Robert Hawker, whose commentaries I have published, the poor man's commentary set, 10 volume set, he said of Hawker that there were times when

Brother Hawker might find Jesus where he was not, but there are worse faults in a commentator.

In other words, Hawker would tend to find Jesus in places, he would look for Jesus everywhere in the

Bible and sometimes he might claim to find him where he wasn't. But as Spurgeon said, that's not a bad fault to have as a commentator.

In fact, we've got to go to our midway break right now. Alrighty. And if anybody wants to join us with a question for Mike of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. This is our longer than normal break. So please be patient with us.

We have to have a longer break in the middle of the show because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida requires of us a longer break in the middle so that we can air public service announcements for Grace Life Radio that are local to Lake City, Florida.

And while they are airing those local public service announcements, we are airing our globally heard commercials.

So please use this time wisely. Write down as much of the information as you can for as many of our advertisers as you can so that you can more frequently and successfully patronize our advertisers.

Because remember folks, we depend upon our advertisers to exist. So the happier they are, since you will be responding to them, the more likely they're going to renew their contracts and remain on the air with us so that we can remain on the air.

But also send in questions to Mike Gaydosh, ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages with more of Mike Gaydosh. When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

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Tell your friends and loved ones about Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, airing live Monday through Friday, 4 to 6 p .m.

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

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

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

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

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Thank you. Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said,

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Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And Mike Gaydosh, the founder of Solid Ground Christian Books is our guest today, and we're going to be returning to his interview momentarily.

But first, we just have a couple of important announcements to make. If you love this show, folks, and you don't want it to disappear from the airwaves, please immediately go to ironsharpensironradio .com,

click support, then click click to donate now. We are in urgent need of your generosity and your donations because we lost our two largest financial supporters in the midst of the hysteria subsequent to the coronavirus pandemic.

Their businesses, the businesses owned by these two supporters were hit so hard financially that they had to at least temporarily back off from any further donations to our show.

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Go to ironsharpensironradio .com, click support, then click click to donate now and donate as frequently and as generously as you can.

Also folks, if you are in need of a church home, I have lists of biblically faithful churches all over the planet earth and I've helped many people find churches, sometimes just a couple of minutes from where they live that they didn't even know existed.

So send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put I need a church in the subject line.

That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Mike Gadosh of Solid Ground Christian Books.

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson gmail .com.

We have a mutual friend, and I'll give his full name since he also is a publisher.

We have Joe Bianchi, president of Calvary Press Publishing in Greenville, South Carolina, who asks, has the contemporary self -publishing movement destroyed traditional publishing?

And would you counsel most self -published authors to not quit their day job?

Well, Joe knows by experience that that's the case because it's been a challenge.

I think that the self -publishing, many, many publishers have gone out of business, as Joe would know.

And I think that it is a challenging time. I know that for a time, e -books was beginning to cause the printed page to take a big hit, but that seems to have kind of,

I wouldn't say it's completely passed by. But I think that there are still a multitude of people who prefer to read a book and to hold a book in their hands than to read something online or on their pad or whatever.

So I don't know that that part of it is a problem, but it is a challenge now, especially in the reformed community, because we're already a subset of a subset.

And so we're not expecting that our books are going to be selling in the hundreds of thousands.

I wish they would. Maybe one day they will, but right now, we would count our books more in the thousands that we sell from some.

Some don't even sell that much. But I've never published a book just because, in fact,

I've never published a book because I expected it to sell large amounts of books. I've always published books that I felt were needed for the time, faithful books.

Joe himself published a book that I recently republished for him, God Chose to Save, which is one of our newer titles.

And it's an excellent primer, you might call it, a primer on the doctrine of election and predestination.

It's a really nice companion volume with John Sampson's book,

The Twelve Whatabouts, having to do with the doctrine of election as well. And so if you're interested in looking into the subject of predestination and election,

Joe and John's books would be a nice combination to get.

And I've got actually a third volume that I've added to a trilogy on election by Warfield on predestination and election, thoughts on predestination and election.

And all three of those together at a very, very reasonable price. So you can look to that.

If I could just take a minute, I wanted to share a couple things, Chris. First of all, let me ask you this,

Chris. How are you doing physically? I know many of us have been praying for you and have been concerned ever since your episode.

How are you doing right now? Well, just so those that are unfamiliar with what happened to me don't have all kinds of nightmarish things going on in their head by the term episode.

Well, it was an episode. Yes, I know, but they might not know anything about it. They might think I was out in an alley,

OD 'ing on crack or something. I had congestive heart failure. And also had the double whammy of being diagnosed during the same emergency room examination with diabetes.

So not only do I have to give up high salt content in my food, but also high sugar and carb content.

So eating is not the joy that it once was for me. But the only thing I can say is, as far as how

I am doing, and I can only base this on how I feel and what the cardiologist said in my last visit, which was just about,

I guess, two weeks ago. I'm feeling much better than I felt before I went into the hospital because I can walk great lengths of distance without feeling any discomfort or fatigue at all.

That's great. Where the reason I went into the hospital is because I couldn't even climb the staircase to my apartment without having to stop and catch my breath, which was something that never happened before.

So that was during the three weeks before my friends, Susan, who led me to Christ, and her second oldest son,

Joe, were urging me and not taking no for an answer to go to get examined by a doctor immediately, which

I did, and which is the reason I wound up in the hospital. And I really owe them my life,

I think. But my cardiologist was very pleased with everything that he saw from the exam.

Now, keep in mind, he only took an EKG during this exam. He did not do a catheter examination that has full -blown close -up photographs of my heart, as they did in the emergency room.

But he was just very impressed. He looked like he was surprised with how impressed he was.

So that's the only thing I can base... How much weight did you lose? I lost 70 pounds. Yeah, wow. And a number of pant sizes.

I would hope, yeah. Wow, wow. Well, we're encouraged.

We're encouraged to see the progress. We're very thankful that your friends were true friends in forcing you to do what you needed to do.

And sadly, we sometimes let ourselves go and don't pay attention to the warning signs that the

Lord is giving us. So I'm glad that you're doing so much better. Let me take just a couple minutes.

I know I've only got a little bit, a few minutes left, but I just wanted to mention two things.

One of them is an incredible special deal that I'm offering right now.

I've actually got two of them that I'm going to highlight. One is, any Christian will recognize the importance of two books in the

Old Testament on a daily basis, and those would be the book of Psalms and the book of Proverbs.

And I have right now an opportunity to get, and I just found out just minutes ago that the special offer that I'm making is kind of short term because I won't be able to get these prices again.

I got a great, great deal on two books. One is called

Daily Wisdom from Proverbs, and it is a beautiful bonded leather true tone volume that takes the book of Proverbs and divides it into 365 readings so that you work through the book of Proverbs in a year.

And it's a very handy size, very comfortable little volume that can be used as a devotional tool, and it's just the text of Proverbs, but it's divided into daily readings in this beautiful volume that even comes in a slip case.

That lists for $20. I'm selling it for $8. And then also, I have a, this is done by Crossway, by the way.

And I also have the Journaling Psalter, which has the book of Psalms, the text is on the left hand page and the right hand page is a blank page with lines for you to be able to jot down notes for as you're studying through the book of Psalms.

So these two, they're both true tone bonded leather, beautiful soft leather volumes, and that one lists for $30 and I'm selling it for $12.

And if you get both of them together, if you get both of them, it actually is just $18.

They would list for $50 and you get them for $18, so it's over 60 % off. Wow. That's one thing.

The other is even more amazing, which is I have 22 volumes that I'm calling my overstock sale and these 22 volumes, the retail price for these 22 volumes is about $400 and you can get them for $40.

So it's 90 % off. It includes such things as our bonded leather, 1689 and Baptist Catechism, our bonded leather,

Three Forms of Unity, which is the Belgic Confession of Faith, the Heidelberg Catechism and the

Canons of Dort, as well as the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the

Athanasian Creed, and both of those books are listing for $30 each.

And then on top of that we have a $40 Pilgrim's Progress Illustrated Edition that's included.

We also have $25 lectures on Pilgrim's Progress, The Life and Times of Bunyan by George Cheever.

We have such things as the Pilgrim's Progress A Guided Tour by Derek Thomas. It's a

DVD set that lists for $60, so a polygoneer. It's 19 lessons of 23 minutes long on Pilgrim's Progress.

That's a $60 value. And then the Councils and Thoughts on the

Spiritual Life of Believers by Thomas Moore, which we have spoken about before. And many, many other titles,

Thoughts for Young Men and several others as well. But the total value of the package is $400 that we are offering for $40.

And we have sold dozens and dozens of these sets, as you can imagine. But we are beginning to run low on some of the titles, and so I don't know how much longer

I'm going to be able to do this. But those two are things that I would recommend people.

They can get it for a church library. There are books for children. There's a whole variety of books that are in that packet.

It's 22 books and booklets, 22 books and booklets.

And, again, the retail value is right around $400, and we're asking $40 plus 11 .95

shipping, standard shipping. And that's solid -ground -books .com, solid -ground -books .com.

We've got to go to a station break before we have our final guest on today, Bill Nichols of International Outreach, who's going to be discussing his book on Judas Iscariot, Traitor.

But before we go, we have Cynthia in Findlay, Ohio, who says, can you have,

Mike, please repeat the name of those children's books he was reciting from, because I want to read them to my grandchildren.

Oh, yes. The one is called Little Pillows and Morning Bells, and the other is

Morning Stars. Little Pillows and Morning Bells is the one book, and Morning Stars.

And they're both by Frances Havergal, and she can get those books at solid -ground -books .com.

Just type in Havergal or Little Pillows. If you can type in the word pillows, it'll probably come up.

Well, Mike, it's always a joy to have you on the show. I look forward to your frequent return as a guest. And I thank

God for your financial support of this program, as I have repeatedly stated on this program, that without your generosity, we would likely not exist, barring a miracle of God.

And we thank you for enabling us to remain on the air. Love you, Chris. Love you, too. Life's getting better.

Love you, too. Checks in the mail. And I thank you for that more than anything.

All right, buddy. Love you. Bye -bye. Love you, too. God bless. Well, folks, we're going to be returning momentarily after this final station break with Bill Nichols of International Outreach, and we're going to be discussing his book

Judas Iscariot, Traitor. So don't go away. Every day at thousands of community centers, high schools, middle schools, juvenile institutions, coffee shops, and local hangouts,

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Welcome back. This is Chris Armisen. If you just tuned us in, our final guest today is

William C. Nichols, the founder of International Outreach. And we are going to be discussing his book,

Judas Iscariot Traitor, Examining the Life and Death of Judas Iscariot.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, William C.

Nichols. Thank you very much. I'm pleased to be here and hope to answer some questions for people this half hour.

Great. If we could make this as brief as possible, because it is a tradition on my show that we have our first time guests give a summary of their salvation testimony.

If you could do that as well before we get into the heart of the book. Sure. I was raised in a liberal

Methodist church. When I was going to church in college, preached sermons mainly about the

Vietnam War, the morality of it. And so I didn't see a whole lot of use in going to church.

But I, in college, I was an athlete and got involved in some of the things that athletes get involved in.

And I'm part, again, teen and it led me, obviously, the wrong way.

And got used that really to show me how my heart really is.

And the more I saw the wick to my heart and my end became clearer and clearer,

I really fell under conviction.

And seemingly, this process of conviction probably lasted about a year in me.

And I really grew to despise myself and despise the life

I was living. And I just, I honestly hated myself.

And I didn't know how to get out of that.

But I remember one day when I was at a party, I made fun of one of the other rappers who was a

Christian. And I remember saying, I don't know what he's got, but I wish

I had it. And it was later, maybe a month or two later after that, or maybe even longer than that, that I was confronted with the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And I had been under conviction for about a year. And I embraced

Jesus Christ as Lord. And my life radically changed that day.

There wasn't a few weeks or months to be a little better, a little better.

My life radically changed that day. Praise God. We're gonna go to a break, folks.

And our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. If you have a question, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Welcome back and we have online with us

William C. Nichols, founder of International Outreach. We are going to begin our discussion now on his book

Judas Iscariot Traitor. Are you there, Brother Bill? Yes. Is this better? Oh yeah, much better.

100%. Okay. Now, what led you to even write this book on Judas Iscariot, the most infamous and wickedly notorious or notoriously wicked figure in the scriptures?

Well, to me, Judas is one of the most interesting people in the Bible because we have here a man who traveled with and lived with Jesus Christ for about three years.

He heard the parables and the teachings of Jesus, saw the miracles Jesus performed, saw the blind man see, the dead raised, feeding until 5 ,000.

Yet with all he witnessed, it had no impact on him spiritually. In fact, it had the opposite effect.

It drove him away from Jesus Christ to become a traitor. And to me, that fascinates me to delve into that.

There are many lessons, I believe, which can be learned from the life and death of Judas. There are practical things which we can learn and apply to our own lives.

And I really felt led to expose and say something about Judas to counter the growing trend in today's church, portray him in a sympathetic manner.

He's often portrayed as a revolutionary patriot or someone whose motives were supposedly good, but who made a mistake, or even as a dupe who was used and manipulated by the religious leaders.

And I really get, you know, in the Bible, he's called a traitor. And so I felt very much led to write about Judas and expose him as being the traitor that he was.

Yes. And as we have even discussed before this show, it is troubling to see how many people try to portray

Judas in a sympathetic manner, including in a play, a theatrical performance

I saw on the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ at a major Christian playhouse, where Judas was obviously being betrayed as an unwilling participant in the plan orchestrated by God himself.

So it was more than him just being in this story that they concocted. It was more than him being a dupe of the religious leaders.

He was the dupe of God in this performance on being reluctantly obeying

Christ all the way in the betrayal of Christ.

He was really betraying Christ by Christ's own orders and design. And we know it was by design by a sovereign

God, but he was not an unwilling participant as this play pictured him.

No, no, I would agree with you very much on that. Well, we do have some listeners who have some questions.

We have John in Bangor, Maine, who says,

Some have said, since the New Testament refers to Judas as having repented, that he will be with us in heaven one day.

I strongly disagree with them, but can you articulate in a more clear fashion on this issue?

Sure, I'll try. The Greek word in Matthew 27, 3 literally means regret.

And in the new American standard, it is felt remorse. It's not the same

Greek word metanoia, which is used primarily for genuine repentance.

When John the Baptist says repent, for instance, in Matthew 3, 2, the word is metanoia.

And so Judas regretted what he had done, but self -despair is not repentance.

Self -despair arises out of an extremely difficult situation where a person sees no way of escape.

And, you know, Judas, when he feels regret, he doesn't go to the apostles and confess his sins.

He doesn't go to God and cry out to God for help. He goes to the chief priest and he tries to return the money.

But I think that was more his own guilt than anything else.

But the words are not the same. And there's a significant difference between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow, which is spoken of in 2

Corinthians 7, 10. And, you know, I don't know whether you want me to go into that or not, but that would be a lengthy discussion.

But I would say selfish repentance is sorrow for sin on account of its consequences.

True repentance is sorrow for sin on account of its own evil nature. Amen. And there will be many people in hell who had great sorrow over what they did, but they never repented.

They never in any way truly paid the price in an earthly sense of what repentance costs many

Christians. And it's just a tragedy that people will uphold him as somebody who is a brother in Christ who we will see in eternity, if we are saved.

And in relation to that, too, you go and you look at the scriptures, what we need, what we learned about Judas, we need to learn from the scriptures.

In John 6, Jesus calls him a devil. In John 12,

John calls him thief. In John 17, he's called the son of perdition by Christ.

And it says he perished. Jesus says in Matthew 26, it would have been good for that man if he had not been born.

And in every list of the apostles, in three of the gospels that list the apostles,

Judas is mentioned last. He's called a traitor by Luke, by Mark, the one who betrayed him, and Matthew, the same thing, the one who betrayed him.

And those words of Christ that you cited, that it would have been better for him never to have been born, at least that's one of the versions that I have in front of me, that it would have been better for him never to have been born, that could never be spoken of about a person who will be in heaven.

That is, it can't be truthfully spoken, especially by Jesus Christ, who never uttered a lie in his life and was never wrong about anything.

He could never say that about a person who is going to be in heaven.

That's correct. We do. In fact, you just touched on something about everything that we should believe about Judas as far as taking it as inerrant truth as in the scriptures, but we do have a question from Grady in Asheboro, North Carolina, who says, do we know anything about Judas outside of the holy scriptures?

Well, there are traditions and there are ancient writings which are not reliable.

And I do go into those in the first chapter of the book, but they are not authoritative, nor are they reliable.

And some of them, some of the traditions I ran into border on the ridiculous. So what we know, we have to glean from the scriptures themselves.

And I would say we do know what the scriptures teach about the human heart.

We know what the scriptures teach about the depravity of man and how the human heart works, including the unconverted heart.

We published a book called Knowing the Heart, which had a large number of sermons by Jonathan Edwards about the heart of man.

And so we do know about the heart of man as revealed in the scriptures, and we can apply those to Judas because he was unconverted.

By the way, Grady, you have won a free copy of this book, Judas Iscariot Traitor. So give us your full mailing address so that CVBBS .com,

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, can ship you that free copy that you've just won. In fact,

I would just want to make sure I say this before we run out of time, that CVBBS .com,

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, is offering a 50 % discount to anyone purchasing this book.

So I'm sure that this is going to be a limited time offer. They did not tell me a time frame, but I would purchase that book as soon as you can to make sure you get the discount.

Oh, and also that goes for John in Bangor, Maine, who sent in a question earlier. You got a free copy as well coming to you.

So make sure we have your full mailing address. We have CJ from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who wants to know, is there any indication in the scriptures that the other apostles were wondering if Judas was the one who was going to betray

Christ, at least before his betrayal of Christ in the garden? No, I don't think they had a clue.

There's no indication in the scriptures at all when Jesus said, truly, truly,

I say unto you, one of you shall betray me. They didn't all point at Judas and say, he's a guy.

They did not know. So he was living in a way outwardly, I should say, publicly, that led the other disciples to believe that he was a bonafide

Christian. Sure, he certainly was. And by the way, everybody who is sending in questions in the limited time that we have left, you are going to receive a free copy of this book on Judas.

So make sure you send us your full mailing address if we read your question on the air, that is, because we're rapidly running out of time.

We have Richard in Lawrence, Kansas, who's also a first -time questioner. What can a study on Judas teach us about evangelism?

That's interesting. Well, I think it can teach us a lot about evangelism, because a lot of evangelism today is the repeat -the -words -of -this -prayer evangelism, or admit you are a sinner, and then admitting

I am a sinner is enough to, quote, repent.

That's a fallacy. Just because a person admits they're a sinner, that doesn't really mean anything.

The thief knows he's sinning, but he doesn't care because his goal is to enrich himself.

An adulterer or adulteress knows they're sinning, but their goal is self -serving pleasure, and that outweighs their guilt.

So a person, you know, a liar, when he lies, knows he's sinning, but that really doesn't mean that he regrets his sinning at all.

So admitting you're a sinner, which is the standard formula for most evangelistic tracts that I personally don't use and don't like, is not enough.

It's not repentance. It's just an acknowledgment that, hey,

I know I'm a sinner. Judas knew he was a sinner. Pharaoh knew he was a sinner.

Even Ahab knew he was a sinner, but they were all unconverted people. Well, thank you,

Richard. Make sure we get your address, because you've also won as a first -time questioner, not only the book on Judas, but you've also won a free

New American Standard Bible, and they will be shipped out to you by cvbbs .com if you give us your full mailing address.

We have Bobby in Hartsdale, New York, who says,

Some people have used the fact that the scriptures only speak of a limited number of people who have committed suicide, and they were wicked, unrepentant people, like King Saul, who fell on his sword, and Judas, who hung himself.

They use this as proof that no one who commits suicide will be in heaven.

I happen to disagree with that, because I believe the blood of Christ will cover the sins of his elect.

I'm not saying that those two aforementioned people were the elect, but I'm just saying their deaths do not rule out.

All deaths by suicide lead to hell. What is your opinion? There is a chapter in the book about that, on the suicide of Judas Iscariot.

I think in many cases, those who do commit suicide fall into self -despair, just as Judas did, and may not be

Christians at all. There are others who profess to be

Christians and may have followed the evangelistic outline that I just talked about a few minutes ago.

I'm not ruling that out entirely, that a person could commit suicide and be a true believer, but I think it's rare.

That's my own personal opinion, because in the Bible, those who committed suicide were obviously unbelievers.

Right, but as you said, it is possible, because we even have circumstances where people are on medications that have created the urge for suicide, or have led them to such despair because of the drugs they're taking, that they have done this, and they possibly would not have done this if they were not on these drugs.

I'm not saying this to condone or to refute the legitimacy of using any kind of medications for depression and other things, but I'm just saying that this does happen.

I'm not denying that the Puritans used the word except for the case of self -distraction.

That's how they described it, where someone was so messed up in their mind that they did something that normally they would not have done.

Well, we only have about four minutes left, and I'd like you to really have that time uninterrupted to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners about Judas Iscariot before we go off the air today.

Well, I think it's important that we acknowledge that the Scriptures clearly portray

Judas as a traitor, and that the literature, which has been the basis for a lot of what churches now teach, were primarily written in the 1800s, where the position switched from one of acknowledging this man as a traitor and a wicked, vile man to a sympathetic view of Judas.

I think, too, it's important to realize that there are people in the

Church today who are just like Judas. They don't know it, but they love money more than God, and they love things more than God, and I think we really need to be aware that Judas was an apostle.

Well, I think there are probably elders in churches who are in the same state as Judas.

I think Judas stands as a warning to all future generations that a man can be a

Church leader and be a hypocrite. And also, a person's environment, nor his religious privileges, were enough to change his heart.

Judas had the greatest religious privileges in the world, and it didn't change his heart.

And maybe to look at Judas's repentance, Judas's repentance, although it was false, surpasses many of the people who are in the

Church today, and that's a frightening thing. Yeah, well, go ahead.

No, no, go ahead and wrap up what you were going to say. Well, I think these are all are warning signs that a person can be unconverted, be in Church leadership, and yet not know it and go to hell.

Right, because just as you said earlier, we have no indication the apostles who labored alongside

Judas very closely. We have no indication that they had any hint that he was a false apostle and convert.

No. Well, I look forward to future returns to Iron Sharp and Zion Radio Bayou as a guest, and for hopefully a longer period of time, because we're already out of time.

But I want to make sure that our listeners have all of the contact information they need to take advantage of your ministry and the book.

First of all, International Outreach has a website, intoutreach .org,

intoutreach .org. You can also purchase the book if you have not had the privilege of winning one today, or even if you've won one and you want to buy an extra copy or more copies to give out to your family, friends, and loved ones.

You can purchase it for 50 % off retail at cvbbs .com,

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com. And please make sure that you tell them that you heard about this offer on Iron Sharp and Zion Radio with Chris Arnson.

Otherwise, you won't get the discount. So that's cvbbs .com. That is the website and also the phone number for cvbbs .com,

which you can only call Monday through Friday between 10 a .m.

and 4 .30 p .m. That's, you can only call it during those hours and days if you want to get a response, because they have no voicemail on that line, nor does anybody answer outside of those hours.

The phone number is 800 -656 -0231, 800 -656 -0231.

That's Monday through Friday, 10 a .m. to 4 .30 p .m. Eastern Time. And I want to thank you so much,

Bill Nichols, for being our guest today. I want to thank Mike Gaydosch for being the individual that actually urged me to interview

Bill on his book on Judas Iscariot. And Mike Gaydosch's website for Solid Ground Christian Books is solid -ground -books .com,

solid -ground -books .com. By the way, folks, especially those in my audience who are

Anglican or Episcopalian, you might be interested to know that tomorrow we have another first -time guest.

We have Peter Robinson, who is the Archbishop of the United Episcopal Church of North America, which is a biblically faithful denomination, adhering to the

Scriptures as their only inerrant authority. And they also are an

Episcopal denomination that adheres to the 39 Articles of Religion, which is a biblically faithful creed or confession that is in harmony with the other great confessions of the

Reformation. He will be our guest tomorrow, and our theme is going to be the

Fall of the Episcopal Church and the Rise of Biblically Faithful Episcopal Bodies, such as the

United Episcopal Church of North America. I want to thank everybody who has been on my program today. I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write.

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