March 27, 2025 Show with Steve Matthews on “The Cults Most Dominant on Today’s College Campuses: ICOC, ICC, and RCW”

Iron Sharpens Iron

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:03

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer

00:10

George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend

00:16

Jim Thorpe. It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors and Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

00:31

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

00:38

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.

00:50

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.

00:58

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

01:09

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.

01:20

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 27th day of March 2025.

01:30

Today and tomorrow we are going to be discussing a very important issue because it happens to involve one of the most dominant cults that has invaded our college campuses.

01:52

We are talking about the International Churches of Christ, the

01:59

International Christian Church, and also one of its most recent offshoots, which is the

02:12

RCW, the Restored Church Worldwide. And to discuss this for the next two days, we have

02:20

Steve Matthews on the program for the very first time. Our guest Steve Matthews, of Exposing the

02:28

Cults, is a Christian countercult apologist who focuses not only on the older established cults but also on the newer emerging groups that are now attracting millions of new followers.

02:45

And we're going to be getting involved to a degree in summary form with Steve's own personal salvation testimony, which involves him almost joining the

03:01

Mormon Church, but after encountering a Christian who presented the biblical gospel to him by grace, he was able to turn to the true

03:12

Christ of the Bible. And he holds a master's in Christian apologetics from Trinity International University and lives in Southern California, and he is the senior content director of the forthcoming platform

03:28

ExposingtheCults .com, which is a part of a project that will provide apologetic resources on a number of cults and movements, and which will soon be announced on the

03:45

YouTube channel Exposing the Cults. But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Steve Matthews.

04:01

Great to be on here, Chris. I honor you for the years of wonderful broadcasting.

04:06

I've known your name out there in the Christian world for many a year, and heard of your work over the years, and it's an honor to be on here today.

04:15

Yes, well, this subject matter is near and dear to my heart, having many friends to this day in what we would call the mainline churches of Christ.

04:28

Of course, they never call themselves that. They just say that they're in the Church of Christ. But to distinguish them from the more cultic splinter groups, we usually refer to them as the mainline

04:45

Church of Christ. But that happens to be the first non -Roman

04:52

Catholic church that I regularly attended before my salvation as a teenager, and my brother

05:00

Bob was once a member of the Bethpage Church of Christ on Long Island, and I can remember the buzz that was going around when the

05:10

Boston Church of Christ was starting to make national and even global news, and they planted a church in New York City, the

05:22

New York Church of Christ, that I visited once with my brother, and I later would find out, especially after becoming a born -again believer,

05:34

I would later discover some of the dangerous implications of the

05:43

Boston Church, which would later become known as the International Churches of Christ.

05:49

But before we get into all of that, and even a bit of the history of the Restoration Movement, since you are a first -time guest,

06:00

Steve, we have a tradition here. We always have first -time guests give a summary of their own salvation testimony that would include any kind of religious atmosphere in which you were raised, and the providential circumstances our

06:14

Sovereign Lord raised up in your life that drew you to Himself and saved you. So I'd love to hear a summary of your story.

06:21

Amen. So excited. I'm passionate every day about waking up to serve

06:28

Jesus, but it wasn't always that way. Originally, as a child and as a young teen,

06:35

I was a pretty hardcore atheist, and I used to mock the Christian family across the street for me, telling them how there's no

06:42

God and everything they believed was false, and then one day the Mormon missionaries knocked on my door, and having no background at all, at that point

06:52

I was just starting to wonder, maybe there is a God after all. I gave them a listen, and after a few studies,

06:58

I had the infamous burning in the bosom that Mormons talk about. Mormons will tell you if you pray about the

07:05

Book of Mormon, God will show you the truth of it by manifesting the warmth of the

07:10

Holy Spirit, a physical feeling, and I sure as heck had it. Later to find out it's demonic, a counterfeit, pointing me to the wrong

07:19

Jesus, a false Jesus, a false gospel, a false spirit. But at that point, I've had the burning in the bosom a couple of times, and Mormonism was all

07:28

I knew, and I already knew who was going to baptize me in a couple weeks, and who was going to give me the gift of the

07:34

Holy Ghost laying at hands, which elders were going to do that, and by God's providence, one night

07:39

I met a Christian on the bus, and he told me he was going to Bible college in the fall, and I told him, well, that's great,

07:48

I'm studying with the Mormons right now myself, and he goes, the Mormons? You shouldn't be studying with these guys, you know. Joseph Smith had, you know, 47 wives.

07:56

I said, come on, cool it, he only had 27. So we had a, you know, we would see each other on the bus, and he went to the

08:03

Christian bookstore, bought me some literature refuting Mormonism and pointing the way to the

08:09

Scriptures, and by God's grace, my eyes were opened. He took me to his church, and it was a very confusing time for me, because on one hand,

08:17

I had this physical feeling thing from the Mormons, this demonic, you know, warmth, and the other side,

08:24

I couldn't even quote to John 3 16 at that point, but at this, then I had the feelings on one side, but then

08:29

I start to see that, you know, God will always be true to His Word no matter what physical experiences or whatever experience

08:36

I have, always gets trumped by the Word. So I did end up accepting

08:41

Christ, and then the more I researched, I saw the Mormons, what they really were. My mother shortly after that started dabbling in a cult that kind of made me learn a lot about them, and I started studying more and more about these groups, and, you know, want to serve the

08:57

Lord the rest of my life, and opening other people's eyes. So by God's grace, may you do that. Praise God.

09:05

Well, as I said before, I have never addressed, at least to this degree, this cult known as the

09:17

International Churches of Christ, which also spun off to the

09:22

International Christian Church, and the more recent spinoff or splinter group that has become dominant on the college campus scene, the

09:41

Restored Church Worldwide. That's right. Let me just say this,

09:48

I'm really glad that we're doing this today, because so many people are missing what's going on out there in the world of, you know, the cult world.

09:56

They still think it's about the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, which were years ago, but I have a real burden for many of these newer groups that are springing up, like Wildfire, and like you said earlier, they're attracting millions of people, and it's going on right under the nose of a lot of Christians.

10:11

They still think it's about the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, but the Witnesses haven't grown for hardly 20 years.

10:16

They've stayed around 8 million. Now you have a whole new group of cults that are springing up in spiritual movements, like the

10:23

World Mission Society Church of God, a very aggressive group of the millions that I suspect will pass the

10:29

Jehovah's Witnesses in a few years, the group that I'm the most worried about. You have groups like the

10:35

ICC, which we'll be talking about today, and Burning Man, and the Hebrew Israelites, so the whole landscape has changed a lot, and a lot of these groups are very high demand compared to these older groups.

10:47

Like if you're a Mormon, you'll be in there for five years and say, hey, I followed the wrong Jesus for a long time, but then if you're one of these, you know, part of these high -demand groups like Shin Chan Ji or any of these groups, you'll say,

10:59

I just lost 11 years of my life. It's like they never existed. So they really put you through a lot.

11:04

They create a PTSD in the people, and unfortunately a lot of them are creating bitter agnostics as they come out of these movements because the high -demand nature really burns them out and turns them against the

11:14

Lord. So definitely a burden I have to reach out to a lot of this new generation of groups.

11:20

I'm so glad we're able to cover these groups today. Well, if you could summarize, not take too long on this aspect of our discussion since it's not primarily why we're here today, but I'd like you to just to give some background to the listeners who may be totally ignorant of what has become known as the 19th century restoration movement that really began with Thomas and Alexander Campbell and Barton W.

11:51

Stone and some other figures that would eventually lead to the church most commonly known as the

12:02

Church of Christ, and of course there was a left -wing division known as the

12:11

Disciples of Christ, which is more like a mainline liberal Protestant denomination today, and you have the

12:20

Churches of Christ and Christian churches, which are predominantly the branch of the restoration movement that uses musical instruments as the

12:31

Church of Christ for the most part is an a cappella group.

12:37

And by the way, it may interest our listeners to know that that is not an unusual thing historically.

12:46

Charles Haddon Spurgeon did not use the musical instruments in his worship services, and in fact it was very rare amongst

12:54

Protestants until the 19th century to include musical instruments in the worship services, especially amongst

13:05

Baptists and Presbyterians. It was very new to the scene to use these instruments in the 19th century.

13:18

The Anglicans and Lutherans were the main Protestants that used the musical instruments.

13:26

So tell us something about the restoration movement, which eventually led to the

13:32

Church of Christ. Yeah, you covered a lot of that really well, because in the restoration movement, as you said, there was the mainline

13:40

Church of Christ, and you have the instrumentalists and the non -instrumentalists, and then you have the Christian Church and the

13:47

Disciples of Christ, the more liberal wing. But all of this started off in the 1800s as a kind of a unity movement.

13:55

The Campbells, Thomas and Alexander Campbell, came over from Ireland. They came to America, they saw a number of different denominations, and then they started saying, you know what?

14:05

No creed but Christ. We've got to, you know, unify the Christian body. But unfortunately, that kind of did end up taking a turn for the worse.

14:13

So in 1812, the Campbells were baptized by a Baptist minister,

14:19

Matthias Luce, and he was just there to baptize the normal way that a believer's baptism, not in the way that you find out later in the whole

14:28

Campbellite movement. It was in 1823, in preparation for a debate, that Thomas Campbell, he would go out and debate, you know, different ministers of different traditions and different topics.

14:39

He kind of came to this discovery, this idea that you had to be saved by water baptism.

14:46

And that's when he started to get this idea in his head. In 1827, one of the other four founding fathers was

14:53

Walter Scott. You did mention Martin W. Stone. He baptized a man,

15:00

William Amund, in New Lisbon, Ohio. And this is when he says he actually restored the ancient gospel, the ancient order of things, because he was doing it for the first time, kind of ushering this whole new era of baptism for the remission of sins.

15:15

So at this point now, finally, baptism for remission of sins happened, and there was, you know, the two

15:21

Campbells, Martin W. Stone. Martin W. Stone, incidentally, was not a Trinitarian. I do not consider him a

15:26

Christian. He thought that Christ was a created being. He denied the substitutionary atonement of Christ. He's the father of the

15:32

Christian Church. And it's kind of ironic that the Campbells were so into splitting hairs on so many doctrines, yet they would collaborate with someone who wasn't a believer, who denied the doctrine of God.

15:44

So that all was puzzled me, how do we do that? So this movement started to grow.

15:49

They started to teach baptism for salvation. At that point, they were basically teaching that if someone was a

15:56

Baptist or a Calvary chaplain being baptized by immersion, they could still get to heaven. But then the 1880s,

16:03

Austin McGarry came along, and he was the publisher of The Gospel Advocate, and that was one of the big publications within the movement.

16:13

And Austin McGarry started teaching that you were baptized not by, you're saved not by merely being baptized, but you have to understand that you have to consciously understand the meaning of baptism, that it's remission of sins, or else it's an invalid baptism.

16:30

So a lot of people in the mainline Church of Christ don't even know that. The people certainly in the ICC definitely know that.

16:37

But there's kind of two streams within the mainline Church of Christ, like David Lipscomb and Ferguson, a lot of the scholars will teach that you're saved by simply the act of baptism, but you don't have to necessarily believe that you're saved by consciously knowing baptism is actually saving you.

16:58

Unfortunately, that's what you have in these Kit McKean movements. That's why they're very exclusive and divisive and very elitist, that if you're not baptized with the conscious knowledge of being saved through baptism, then the baptism doesn't count.

17:11

And you do have those two streams, and it's kind of been babbled back and forth with the re -baptisms and everything within the mainline

17:18

Church of Christ, but that's kind of a quick nutshell pre -Kit McKean. Even the mainline

17:24

Church of Christ, as you well know, can be a very divisive movement, where they're challenging, you know, mainstream

17:31

Christians to debates and saying, hey, you're not really my brother in Christ because you're not baptized for remission of sins.

17:36

And, of course, they have for over a century debated amongst themselves.

17:44

Not everything. Yeah, there is a local Church of Christ here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, that had a creation conference that I attended, and while visiting my late brother in the nursing home,

18:02

I heard some a cappella hymn singing going on in the cafeteria, and I went in there, and there was a man who had just concluded his hymn singing service, and I asked him what church he was affiliated with, and he very abruptly and rudely said,

18:24

Shippensburg Church of Christ. And I said, okay, well, I just was curious if you're going to the same creationist

18:33

Bible conference that I'm going to at the Carlisle Church of Christ. And he said, I don't know anything about it.

18:39

So I asked the minister of the Carlisle Church of Christ, why was the guy from the

18:44

Shippensburg Church of Christ very rude to me and didn't know anything about your conference?

18:50

And he said, oh, they don't want anything to do with us. I said, why? Because we have a kitchen in our building. Exactly. You have the standarders and the sitters, the one cup, the multiple cups.

19:01

There's so many divisions. I mean, these guys start as a unity movement.

19:07

It's kind of ironic, but they're like literally the most divisive Christian group out there, like you just mentioned.

19:12

They also split over everything and anything, so absolutely. And I do want to make a quick correction on what

19:19

I said, gospel advocate. That is actually the premier, biggest publication in the mainline

19:24

Church of Christ. It's actually, Austin McGarry was the editor of the Firm Foundation, which is about way now, but it was for years and years a very, very influential movement for a publication for 100 years in the

19:35

Church. And like I said, he did have a terrible influence on the Church of Christ, which is really interesting because when you're talking to someone from that stream, then the

19:45

Campbells weren't even baptized according to this, the way McGarry said.

19:51

They weren't baptized. They were never re -baptized. They were baptized by a Baptist minister, all four of the founding fathers of the

19:56

Restoration Movement. None of them were baptized with that conscious knowledge of being saved through baptism for remission of sins.

20:03

So does that mean your Campbells are saved? You know, Walter Scott, Barton W. Stone, none of them, according to their own theology, were actually saved because they never got re -baptized.

20:12

Now, from my experience, although you cannot really approach the

20:21

Church of Christ in the 21st century as a cookie -cutter movement, because there are such a wide spectrum of folks within that movement today, some that would be barely distinguished from a

20:39

Baptist Church, that have more of a grace -centered understanding of salvation, some even believing in original sin, which is very rare among those folks, it seems.

20:55

Right, they're usually called Pelagians. Yeah, although I don't think that they would call themselves that.

21:02

They would just say that babies are born sinless.

21:09

And that you work a sin by watching other people sin. Right. So that's their view. It's like you're picking up kind of like a disease by watching others sin.

21:17

There's no inclination for sin. And because of their disdain for using words that are not in the

21:24

Bible, like the Trinity, you have some very muddied understandings of the

21:31

Triune Godhood amongst them. If you read some of the church bulletins of a local

21:38

Church of Christ congregation, you could see that that particular congregation had a modalist understanding or believed that the

21:48

Holy Spirit is a force rather than a person of the Godhead. And then you have others that have a traditional

21:56

Trinitarian understanding. Which should be the main—yeah, it's definitely a main belief.

22:02

It's kind of the exception that they wouldn't be Trinitarian. But the bad part, like you said, is they definitely deny original sin, and they add to the requirements of the gospel, faith, and baptism.

22:17

So there's a lot of people doing that. Some of the Charismatic groups say faith plus speaking in tongues, or, you know, the

22:22

Adventist groups, faith plus keeping the Sabbath. Well, these guys are all faith plus—always, like,

22:27

I call it Jesus plus. Jesus plus keeping the Sabbath, Jesus plus keeping the Passover, Jesus plus baptism in this case.

22:35

And going back to your Pelagian comments, some of them are just raw works, righteousness, salvation folks, which would put them outside of the body of Christ.

22:52

Well, I always tell them, you're saved by grace and you're kept by grace. A lot of them will have this thought that you're saved by grace but kept by works.

22:59

And it's all grace. It's all grace. Right. Well, tell us now about the emerging—I think this was in the 1980s, perhaps you could correct me if I'm wrong—but it seems to be that the first church that became known for being, for lack of a better term, the

23:23

Church of Christ on steroids, the Boston Church of Christ.

23:32

Let's go back a little further. Sure. Let's go back a little further to how it all started. So, Kit McKean, who is the founder of all these—he's kind of the father of these movements, it says, even though the

23:45

RCW today now is dissing himself from him, but he's kind of the big daddy.

23:51

You have the Boston Church of Christ movement, which became the International Churches of Christ, and then the

23:57

International Christian Church, which is now, as you mentioned correctly, they've split off now into the

24:02

RCW, which I'll explain may be more worrisome for us now because there's a whole new energy to get out there on campuses, but we'll get to that shortly.

24:13

So, the movement kind of started back in the early 70s. In 1972, Kit McKean was a student at the

24:21

University of Florida at Gainesville, and there was the first street church—the 14th

24:28

Street Church of Christ over there was run by a man called Chuck Lucas.

24:33

Chuck Lucas was a very controversial person with this kind of McGarryite background in the

24:39

Church of Christ, where he says you got to be baptized with the conscious knowledge of sins like that, and he had very aggressive evangelism methods.

24:50

Now, let's remember, all these movements we're talking about today, they're campus ministries, and they're the number one group out there on campuses pretty much across the country and a lot of places around the world.

25:02

They'll go into a new area, they'll get their Excel spreadsheets out of which colleges and universities around, they'll send out certain workers to get on those campuses to do evangelistic work, to study the

25:13

Bible, campus devotions—they call them campus devos—to get their message out there. And so it's definitely a campus ministry.

25:21

Well, Chuck Lucas had this campus ministry in the late 60s, early 70s, and Kit McKean got evangelized by Chuck Lucas and brought into the movement.

25:31

And he was basically mentored and taught that you should have a discipling partner, a lot of high -pressure kind of evangelism, and it became sometimes an issue with the media.

25:43

So Kip is definitely a byproduct of Chuck Lucas and the McGarriott Church of Christ movement.

25:50

Was that called the shepherding movement at that time? It was a shepherding movement, but it was called the

25:58

Crossroads Church of Christ. That's right, that's right. Yeah, but it definitely has similarities because they assigned you a discipling partner and they micromanaged all the different areas of your life, not just spiritually.

26:11

So it's definitely a well -intentioned discipling model where they say, hey, let's confess our sins to each other, let's identify those sins, let's try to, you know, work on those and pray them and hold you accountable.

26:23

So it's well -intentioned that way, but where it goes bad is—we'll cover that more later—is that the concept of discipling now, advice becomes permission, and then it becomes a control over the person.

26:39

This is where it really goes wrong. And Kip McKean, you know, he was very successful and he was growing churches really quickly.

26:47

He's a very dynamic preacher and a very charismatic person, probably the quintessential cult leader, maybe, in American history, a lot of people will say.

26:56

And it was in 1979 that he went to Lexington and he started what became the

27:02

Boston Church of Christ. So at that time, they're all individual churches of Christ and they would, you know, the

27:10

Lexington Church, the Boston Church, the New York Church, the Chicago Church was the second one planted. They would go out and plant these churches of Christ.

27:18

In 1980, Kip published a evangelism Bible study guide called First Principles, which is an absolute master class in deception.

27:28

It's worked for many, many years. It's still being used by the ICOC and the

27:34

ICC. And basically, by the time you get to the third lesson, the discipleship study, you can take someone who's been a

27:42

Christian for 20 years of whole life, and then in 30 minutes you can have them doubting their salvation, doubting that their parents are saved, that their church is saved, that they're actually going to hell, and that you need to actually follow this new movement who's doing the

27:56

Bible study, because it's such an incredible master class. That's why they haven't changed it.

28:01

They've used it for decades because it does an amazing job of total deception. You know, a lot of cult students, the

28:09

Mormons, have their missionary studies, you know, the five lessons. They come to your house, they do the lessons with you.

28:14

The World Mission Society Church of God has their 50 servant preaching lessons, and they're designed deliberately to take you down a certain path to undermine everything you believe as a

28:24

Christian, everything you were taught, and to replace it with this new false doctrine. This is what the cults do, and this is the the gem of all these cult books.

28:33

It's the master class in deception, Chris. And we have to go to our first commercial break. If anybody would like to join us on the air or the question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

28:45

Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, if you live outside the

28:50

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. For instance, perhaps you are in one of the groups that we are talking about, the

29:02

ICOC, the ICC, or the RCW, and you are starting to question whether you should remain in whatever group you're in, or you have a loved one in one of these groups that you are hoping to lead out of it.

29:20

Well, those are the kinds of questions that would obviously lend themselves for anonymous questions, but if you're just asking a general question, give us your first name at least, city and state of residence, and your country of residence.

29:34

And we are going to hear now from our sponsors, and the first of which is one of our latest sponsors, one is the

29:45

Lebanon Federal Credit Union in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. Don't go away, we'll be right back.

29:52

Daniel Wolford, CEO and President of Lebanon Federal Credit Union, and we're excited to be part of the

30:07

Iron Sharpens Iron radio family. At Lebanon Federal Credit Union, we're proud to serve the community with six convenient locations across Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, and we're growing.

30:18

We offer competitive rates on everything from loans to savings, and we're dedicated to providing top -notch member service.

30:25

We pride ourselves on the credit union movement of people helping people. We are deeply involved in our community, supporting local events and organizations that help make a difference.

30:34

When you join Lebanon Federal Credit Union, you'll immediately notice the difference. Our focus on meeting your financial needs with personal care and a friendly touch.

30:43

LFCU can also offer you better rates and lower fees than our competitors. To find out more, please visit us online at lebanonfcu .org.

30:53

Membership eligibility is required, federally insured by the National Credit Union Administration. Terms and conditions apply.

31:06

I'm Simon O'Mahony, pastor of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

31:12

Originally from Cork, Ireland, the Lord in his sovereign providence has called me to shepherd this new and growing congregation here in Cumberland County.

31:21

At TRBC, we joyfully uphold the Second London Baptist Confession, we embrace congregational church government, and we are committed to preaching the full counsel of God's Word for the edification of believers, the salvation of the lost, and the glory of our

31:36

Triune God. We are also devoted to living out the one another commands of Scripture, loving, encouraging, and serving each other as the body of Christ.

31:45

In our worship, we sing psalms and the great hymns of the faith, and we gather around the Lord's table every

31:50

Sunday. We would love for you to visit and worship with us. You can find our details at trbccarlisle .org.

31:58

That's trbccarlisle .org. God willing, we'll see you soon.

32:10

This program is sponsored by Hope TR Ministry. Hope TR Ministry is a podcast produced by Hope Protestant Reformed Church in Walker, Michigan.

32:22

We are dedicated to sharing Reformed biblical content every Wednesday and Friday. Tune in for sermons, lectures, and interviews exploring distinctive

32:32

Reformed doctrines. If you are looking for Christ -centered content, simply search

32:37

Hope TR Ministry on your favorite podcast platform to begin listening today.

32:43

Hope TR Ministry also offers Morning Meditations, a daily podcast featuring

32:49

Reformed devotionals designed to nourish your soul. Start your day with these spiritually enriching messages by tuning in to Morning Meditations, wherever you get your podcasts.

33:10

Greetings, this is

33:17

Brian McLaughlin, president of the Secure Comm Group and supporter of Chris Armisen's Iron Shopping Zion radio program.

33:26

Secure Comm provides the highest level of security systems for residential buildings, municipalities, churches, commercial properties, and much more.

33:37

We can be reached at securecommgroup .com. That's securecommgroup .com.

33:46

But today, I want to introduce you to my senior pastor, Doug McMasters of New High Park Baptist Church on Long Island.

33:59

Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur.

34:07

In the film Chariots of Fire, Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt

34:12

God's pleasure when he ran. He knew his efforts sprang from the gifts and calling of God.

34:18

He sensed that same God -given pleasure when ministering the word and helping others gain a deeper knowledge and love for God.

34:26

That love starts with the wonderful news that the Lord Jesus Christ is a Savior who died for sinners and that God forgives all who come to him in repentance, trusting solely in Christ to deliver them.

34:38

I would be delighted to have the honor and privilege of ministering to you if you live in the Long Island area or Queens or Brooklyn or the

34:46

Bronx in New York City. For details on New High Park Baptist Church, visit nhpbc .com.

34:55

That's nhpbc .com. You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672.

35:04

That's 516 -352 -9672. That's New High Park Baptist Church, a congregation in love with each other, passionate for Christ, committed to learning and being shaped by God's word and delighting in the gospel of God's sovereign grace.

35:32

I'm Pastor Bill Shishko of The Haven, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Comac, Long Island.

35:39

I hold the Iron Sharpens Iron radio program hosted by my longtime friend and brother

35:45

Chris Arnzen in the highest esteem and I'm thrilled that you're listening today.

35:50

I'm also delighted that Iron Sharpens Iron is partnering with one of my favorite resources for Reformed Christian literature for decades now,

35:59

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. Well, with the economic nightmare that we're all currently enduring, cvbbs .com,

36:11

I want to enable you to build a wonderful personal library of the best literature that the

36:17

Reformers, the Puritans, and the great Christian minds of today have to offer and at affordable prices.

36:25

Not only does cvbbs .com offer up to 50 % off retail prices, but you'll get an added 5 % off orders of $50 or more by using promo code

36:39

IRON, I -R -O -N, an added 5 % off all of your orders of $50 or more from Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

36:52

That's cvbbs .com, making the joy of reading the finest in Christian literature more affordable.

37:01

Oh, and make sure that you tell them you heard about them on Iron Sharpens Iron radio.

37:10

And don't forget, cvbbs .com is now shipping worldwide.

37:15

We are now back with Steve Matthews, and we are talking about three of the cults that are all connected to each other historically, that are dominating the college campuses of our day.

37:30

We are talking about the International Churches of Christ, which split off to the

37:36

International Christian Church, and also now the latest group, the

37:42

Restored Church Worldwide. If you have a question, our email is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

37:48

Give us your first name, at least city and state and country of residence. So tell us, first of all, at least briefly, how the

37:58

International Churches of Christ split and became, initially, when it was added to this movement, a group known as the

38:12

International Christian Church? Yeah, well Chris, so what happened is the

38:18

Boston Church of Christ started spreading around the country, and then eventually started spreading around the world.

38:25

They're a very ambitious group. They believe that they're the only true church who'd have to basically reach out to other countries.

38:31

You got to be baptized by them. So as the media started getting noticed, they started seeing that there was a lot of claims of heavy -handed discipleship, control, coercion, manipulation, all that kind of stuff you hear with the

38:45

Moody's and those other high -demand groups. A lot of that was happening in the early days of the Boston movement, and they did want to maybe change their image a bit, so they changed their name.

38:55

They did a formal break with the Mainline Church of Christ, and then 1993, they changed their name to the

39:01

International Churches of Christ. At that point, the founder, Kit McKean, by 1990, him and his wife, they moved over to Los Angeles, became the new hub of the movement, and they were going, you know, very full steam.

39:16

There's a saying, where there's smoke, there's fire, and on the campuses, they had started raising a lot of problems.

39:21

They started getting kicked off more and more campuses. Where there's smoke, there's fire, right? The three groups quickly that are on our campuses would be, number one, the

39:32

ICC and RCW. Those are the most dominant. RCW is still smaller than the ICC, but they're trying to play catch -up.

39:39

The World Mission Society Church of God would have to be second place, and they use a lot of front group names when they're on campus, and then the

39:47

Shunshanji would be the third group. They're also involved in campuses now, and they're definitely going after kids from 18 to 30 to try to get them pulled into their movements.

39:56

So, there was a lot of controversy surrounding the group, and then in 2002, the founder

40:04

Kip had to take a sabbatical, because he preached for years that if someone in ministry has a child who falls away, that person is no longer should do ministry.

40:15

Well, that came back to haunt Kip, and then the next year, 2003, a total bombshell landed on the whole

40:22

International Churches of Christ world, because the London evangelist Henry Crete released a letter, which is called the

40:31

Crete Letter nowadays, pointing out a lot of the problems in the movement, how they were very centered on numbers and their means of evangelism, discipleship, and the high control kind of ways they were doing things.

40:45

It caused a huge exodus of members, maybe half the movement left at that point, and the movement caused the elders and the members to do a lot of self -reflection in the group, and they basically—Kip was now on a sabbatical, he was out of ministry, and after a few more problems with Kip, they ended up giving him the boot from his own movement.

41:12

So, in 2005, Kip was removed from the movement he created. He moved to Portland, Oregon, where he got involved in the

41:20

Portland Church of Christ, and from there, he started the new

41:26

International Christian Church. So, in the whole worldview of people in these movements, they would say that the way of salvation was lost for 1 ,500 years.

41:37

I have a quote here from who used to be one of the world sector leaders,

41:44

Tim Kernan, and in their textbook of the church, their church history, it's called

41:50

The Chronicles of Modern -Day Christianity by Ron Harding. He says, one of the most shocking facts of Christianity is that the very way to become a

42:01

Christian was lost for the greater part of 1 ,500 years. For generations, the simple but powerful truths of how to become a

42:10

Christian had been carefully hidden and confused by Satan. So, in their worldview, they taught that for 1 ,500 years, the gospel disappeared from the earth.

42:21

Now, why that date? Because they don't even believe in a connection to the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century.

42:28

So, why 1 ,500 years? Well, you know how a lot of groups will try to say, you know, the

42:34

Council of Nicaea, things kind of like the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Seventh -day Baptist, so many groups will try to say, you know, the truth was around for a few hundred years and it fell away.

42:44

Well, they say the truth was around probably for the first four centuries, and then in the living room of Bob and Pat Gempel on June 1st, 1979,

42:54

Kip and the 30 would -be disciples restored the truth, the truth of the world. The fact that baptism is essential for salvation, that you have to be a disciple, and that you have to be completely committed.

43:07

That would have been in the 20th century, though. Correct, correct. This is true.

43:13

So, they probably think maybe the first four centuries or so, doing the math, right? The true church was around until it kind of fizzled away, and then

43:21

Kip had to restore the church. He was like another modern -day restorer. He had to come restore the church in 1979 so that, you know, the church was back again with these principles.

43:32

So, they did call for a complete commitment. Back in the days of the Boston Movement, they talked about being totally committed.

43:41

Now with the International Christian Church that Kip went to start in 2006, now they talk about being sold -out disciples.

43:47

That means you're holding nothing back, no sins at all. You're completely surrendered to God. If they told you tomorrow, go to the

43:54

Philippines or Thailand, the Planet Church, you're going to pack your bags and go. So, that's one of the great things about the movement, is that like a lot of our churches are lukewarm, and they know it, and they will point out that you denominations, you

44:07

Christians, you're Christians, you're lukewarm, you know, you're cussing and living with other people and sin.

44:13

But in our church, we are sold -out, totally committed. We don't tolerate sin, and we really strive to give it all, total surrender to God.

44:21

Now, of course, they're misguided in a lot of levels, but the idea that they really are calling for a complete obedience to surrender to God is a good thing that is attracting a lot of the young people into the movement, not all the wishy -washy churches.

44:35

And they don't even believe that they're, for lack of a better term, fathers of the faith in the mainline

44:44

Church of Christ. They don't even believe those folks are saved. They kind of look to it, you're right, because they kind of say that Kip came up with the magic formula in 1979 in Boston, but they do put him on the timeline as they were partial restorers of the truth that Kip finally got.

45:03

And when you read Kip's writings in the 80s, you'll talk about this discovery process where he studied the

45:09

Bible, he started to discover these truths that were missing and had to do that. The doctrines in the 80s did have some changes.

45:19

For example, they did teach originally that churches are to be autonomous, self -governed churches, but now they've moved to what they call essential leadership with a central leader.

45:32

And Kip, it's like a big pyramid now where the world mission evangelist, whether it's Kip, formerly in the

45:40

Boston movement, the International Church of Christ, the ICC, now Raul Moreno is a new world missions evangelist in the

45:47

International Christian Church, and Jason Dimitri is atop the pyramid in the RCW. And that's kind of the way, so they've had those changes, you know,

45:57

Kip did end up modifying his ideas. A disciple, someone before you baptize someone, they have to be a disciple.

46:04

What is a disciple? Someone who has a discipleship partner, who's a fisher of men. And this is where you see a bit of the works righteousness in this movement, because they'll say that if you're not really being a fisher of men, you're not a real

46:17

Christian. They're very huge about salvation. They talk all the time about evangelizing the world in one generation.

46:24

And if you're not a real fisher of men, if you're not a real disciple, they go to Luke 14, 33, unless you give all that you have to me, you cannot be my disciple.

46:33

So they do call for that complete commitment, not a lukewarmness. They really call it out hardcore, hard line, then you're not a real disciple.

46:43

So this has been the whole legacy of movement. So Kip couldn't leave good enough alone. What he wanted to do is in 2006, start another movement.

46:51

And this new movement would be called the International Christian Church. What they were trying to do is they had a group of 42 disciples this time, they went to Los Angeles to plant the church, the

47:00

City of Angels, International Christian Church. And Kip had to be back in power, because that's

47:06

Kip. The more you know about Kip. And he tried, he tried to go back to the glory days of the Boston movement, meanwhile, the

47:12

ICOC made some significant changes with it. They got rid of the discipleship pattern.

47:19

So they knew that was being abused. So they did some self -reflection, some introspection.

47:24

They said, we're not going to continue with this heavy -handed discipleship that was going on in the Boston movement in the

47:29

ICOC. So the elders got together, we're getting rid of it. It's an option. If you want to have a discipling partner, you can, but we're going to get rid of that as a mandatory practice with the heavy -handed, high -control, high -demand parts.

47:41

That went away. They got rid of the idea of central leadership to back to an autonomous church structure, which is more healthy because they would call

47:48

Kip the Pope of the ICOC or the Pope of the Boston movement as the de facto leader of the entire movement, an earthly living representative at the top of the pyramid that everyone else had to submit to.

47:59

So they did make the changes. And the new ICC said, no, we've got to get back to a central leadership.

48:06

We've got to get back to discipling, and we've got to get back to evangelizing the world of one generation, because the

48:11

ICC had lost this vision. They became lukewarm and not motivated to win the world for Christ's one generation.

48:17

So Kip wanted to get back to those glory days. Now what happened, let's go fast forward to the split again with the

48:26

RCW and the ICC. So in October of 2024, the evangelists—evangelists are basically pastors in these movements—the evangelist for the

48:38

City of Angels International Christian Church was Jason Demetri. On a Friday night in late October, he called a meeting for the whole church and said, hey, everybody, we're going to split.

48:48

You know, we're tired of the lack of transparency, the internal corruption in money, in tolerating sin in the movement.

48:55

We're going to do another restoration of the ICC. So we're going to call ourselves the

49:01

Restored Church Worldwide. So at that point, they took a number of the churches, a number of the leaders from the

49:06

ICC, including a lot of the big guys in the ICC, a lot of the members. And this was a serious traumatic issue for a lot of people, because sometimes you'd have splits within a family.

49:17

A husband might say, no, we've got to stay with the ICC and preserve the unity of the movement instead of this factions that you're trying to create.

49:25

And then the person in the RCW says, no, we've got to lead this lukewarm movement where there's a lack of transparency, a lack of evangelistic zeal.

49:33

We've got to start this new movement being re -energized with the role for Christ. So now you'll have brother and sister, husband and wife split between these two movements.

49:41

And what's really crazy now is that you'll actually go, Chris, onto campuses.

49:48

You might encounter someone from the ICC coming up to you and say, hey, you want to do a Bible study with us?

49:53

Ten minutes later, you might get to the other side of campus. Someone from the RCW might walk up to you and say, hey, you want to do a

50:00

Bible study with us? Because we're the good guys. Those are the bad guys. No, no, they're the bad guys.

50:05

So they're both pointing the finger at each other. They both work in the campus, right? And they're both teaching almost the same thing.

50:11

But now you got two different groups with two different central leaders. Now, when you say two different groups, does that mean that the

50:16

International Churches of Christ is no longer in existence? No, they're very much around.

50:22

They're in 150 countries. The ICC is in 40 some, but they do plan to go around the world.

50:29

The ICOC is a movement that's evolved a lot. As they said, they did excommunicate

50:36

Kip. They're still using his first principles. They're still teaching a lot of the same doctrines, but they really cooled it on the high demand, the heavy -handed discipleship, the central leadership.

50:47

They're very much in existence, but they're not as an aggressive group anymore. They're not tending to be on campus as much.

50:52

They're almost like a neo -evangelical movement with bad theology. So they're out there.

50:58

They're still hyper -Armenian. They're still very much, you know,

51:04

Pelagian, all that stuff. But the requirements for baptism, for salvation, they would still see themselves, the church is the kingdom of God, is one of their false teachings.

51:12

We can start to cover that one. But they're not as big on campus as the big guys on campuses now across the country, definitely.

51:19

Number one is ICC campuses. Number two is the RCW. Well, the ICC and RCW, there's not as many members yet in the

51:26

RCW, but they're planning churches by the month to grow and grow and grow. They're planning a church in Dallas, and they have churches down in the

51:34

Philippines and Mexico, and they're really trying to take their gospel worldwide. So they basically called that meeting in October, and they split, and then they started their own movement.

51:46

And then in January the 10th this year, Kit McKean was restored into the RCW. He was subsequently, in May, he was removed from ministry in the

51:59

ICC. And then in September, he was basically excommunicated from that church.

52:05

And then he was taken back in. It was kind of a, there's a big, the main battle is for the disciples.

52:12

They call the members of these churches disciples. You got to be a disciple. They'll point out to you, the word

52:17

Christian is only used three times in the New Testament, but it's used over 270 times in the

52:23

New Testament, and that's the biblical word. So you, first off, they try to get you and say, hey, you know, don't you even know, guys, that your church uses the wrong word?

52:33

It's not Christian. You should call yourself a disciple. They kind of get that little shock value to get you to try to think their way.

52:39

So they basically, the battle has been for the disciples, and that's what's going on right now. The ICC is trying to retain their membership.

52:46

The RCW is trying to pull that membership away from the ICC into their ranks. And you have a big split because many of the leading superstar figures have gone over the

52:56

RCW, and now they're on campus. Kit McKean now is actually in the RCW.

53:01

He's a disciple. He's not a leadership position. And they say he will not be promoted back to being a leader.

53:06

He's just going to be a regular rank and file disciple because he was involved with some terrible sins that got himself kicked out of the

53:12

ICC. Well, we have to go to our midway break right now. Once again, if you would like to join us with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

53:23

Give us your first name, at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, if you live outside the

53:31

USA. Now, don't go away. We're going to be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

53:40

Kingdom Building Devil Fighting Church. We're devoted to upholding the apostolic doctrine and practice preserved in scripture alone.

53:49

Puritan Reformed teaches men to rule and lead as image bearing prophets, priests, and kings.

53:56

We teach families to worship together as families. Puritan is committed to teaching the whole counsel of God so that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.

54:09

We sing the psalms, teach the law, proclaim the gospel, make disciples, maintain discipline, and exalt

54:15

Christ. This is Pastor David Reese of Puritan Reformed in Phoenix, Arizona.

54:21

Join us in the glorious cause of advancing Christ's crown and covenant over the kings of the earth.

54:29

Puritan Reformed Church. Believe. Build. Fight. Puritan phx .com.

54:47

It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners from all over the world.

54:53

Here's Joe Reilly, a listener in Ireland who wants you to know about a guest on the show he really loves hearing interviewed,

55:02

Dr. Joe Moorcraft. I'm Joe Reilly, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener here in Atai in County Kildare, Ireland.

55:09

Going back to 2005, one of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is

55:15

Dr. Joe Moorcraft. If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron radio, Dr. Moorcraft and Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia are largely to thank since they are one of the program's largest financial supporters.

55:28

Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming is in Forsyth County, a part of the Atlanta metropolitan area.

55:34

Heritage is a thoroughly biblical church, unwaveringly committed to Westminster standards, and Dr.

55:39

Joe Moorcraft is the author of an eight -volume commentary on the larger catechism. Heritage is a member of the

55:45

Hanover Presbytery, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, and tracing its roots and heritage back to the great

55:54

Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. Heritage maintains and follows the biblical truth and principles proclaimed by the reformers, scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone,

56:06

Christ alone, and God's glory alone. Their primary goal is the worship of the triune God that continues in eternity.

56:12

For more details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit heritagepresbyterianchurch .com.

56:18

That's heritagepresbyterianchurch .com, or call 678 -954 -7831.

56:25

That's 678 -954 -7831. If you visit, tell them

56:30

Joe O 'Reilly, an Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listener, from Attoy in County Kildare, Arlington, sent you.

56:47

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

56:52

New American Standard Bible were among my very first sponsors. It gives me joy knowing that many scholars and pastors in the

57:00

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio audience have been sticking with, or switching to, the

57:05

NASB. I'm Dr. Joseph Piper, President and Professor of Systematic and Homiletical Theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Taylors, South Carolina, and the

57:17

NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Chuck White of the

57:22

First Trinity Lutheran Church in Tonawanda, New York, and the NASB is my Bible of choice.

57:29

I'm Pastor Anthony Methenia of Christ Church in Radford, Virginia, and the NASB is my

57:34

Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Jesse Miller of Damascus Road Christian Church in Gardnerville, Nevada, and the

57:41

NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Bruce Bennett of Word of Truth Church in Farmerville, Long Island, New York, and the

57:50

NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Rodney Brown of Metro Bible Church in Southlake, Texas, and the

57:58

NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Jim Harrison of Red Mills Baptist Church in Mayapac Falls, New York, and the

58:06

NASB is my Bible of choice. Here's a great way for your church to help keep

58:12

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the air. Pastors, are your pew bibles tattered and falling apart?

58:18

Consider restocking your pews with the NASB, and tell the publishers you heard about them from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

58:27

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

58:43

Dr. Joseph Piper, President Emeritus and Professor of Systematic and Applied Theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

58:52

Every Christian who's serious about the Deformed Faith and the Westminster Standards should have and use the eight -volume commentary on the theology and ethics of the

59:02

Westminster Larger Catechism titled Authentic Christianity by Dr. Joseph Morecraft.

59:08

It is much more than an exposition of the Larger Catechism. It is a thoroughly researched work that utilizes biblical exegesis as well as historical and systematic theology.

59:20

Dr. Morecraft is pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, and I urge everyone looking for a biblically faithful church in that area to visit that fine congregation.

59:32

For details on the eight -volume commentary, go to westminstercommentary .com, westminstercommentary .com.

59:39

For details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit heritagepresbyterianchurch .com,

59:48

heritagepresbyterianchurch .com. Please tell Dr. Morecraft and the saints at Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia that Dr.

59:56

Joseph Piper of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary sends you. This is

01:00:11

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

01:00:17

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

01:00:26

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

01:00:38

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

01:00:44

If you live near Franklin, Tennessee, and Franklin is just south of Nashville, maybe 10 minutes, or you are visiting this area, or you have friends and loved ones nearby, we hope you will join us some

01:00:58

Lord's Day in worshiping our God and Savior. Please feel free to contact me if you have more questions about Grace Church at Franklin.

01:01:07

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

01:01:16

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

01:01:21

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

01:01:30

Hi, this is John Sampson, pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona, taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnson and the

01:01:41

Iron Sharpens Iron podcast. I consider Chris a true friend and a man of high integrity. He's a skilled interviewer who's not afraid to ask the big penetrating questions, while always defending the key doctrines of the

01:01:53

Christian faith. I've always been happy to point people to this podcast, knowing it's one of the very few safe places on the internet where folk won't be led astray.

01:02:02

I believe this podcast needs to be heard far and wide. This is a day of great spiritual compromise, and yet God has raised

01:02:09

Chris up for just such a time, and knowing this, it's up to us as members of the body of Christ to stand with such a ministry in prayer and in finances.

01:02:18

I'm pleased to do so, and would like to ask you to prayerfully consider joining me in supporting

01:02:23

Iron Sharpens Iron financially. Would you consider sending either a one -time gift or even becoming a regular monthly partner with this ministry?

01:02:32

I know it would be a huge encouragement to Chris if you would. All the details can be found at ironsharpensironradio .com,

01:02:39

where you can click support. That's ironsharpensironradio .com. Hello, my name is

01:02:47

Anthony Uvino, and I'm one of the pastors at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corum, New York, and also the host of the reformrookie .com

01:02:54

website. I want you to know that if you enjoy listening to the Iron Sharpens Iron radio show like I do, you can now find it on the

01:03:01

Apple's iTunes app by typing ironsharpensironradio in the search bar. You no longer have to worry about missing a show or a special guest because you're in your car or still at work.

01:03:11

Just subscribe on the iTunes app and listen to the Iron Sharpens Iron radio show at any time, day or night.

01:03:18

Please be sure to also give it a good review and pass it along to anyone who would benefit from the teaching and the many solidly reformed guests that Chris Arnzen has on the show.

01:03:28

Truth is so hard to come by these days, so don't waste your time with fluff or fake news. Subscribe to the

01:03:33

Iron Sharpens Iron radio podcast right now. And while you're at it, you can also sign up for the reformrookie .com

01:03:40

podcast and visit our website and the YouTube page. We're dedicated to teaching Christian theology from a reformed

01:03:46

Baptist perspective to beginners in the faith as well as seasoned believers. From Keech's Catechism and the

01:03:52

Doctrines of Grace to the Olivet Discourse and the Book of Leviticus, the Reform Rookie Podcast and YouTube channel is sure to have something to offer everyone seeking biblical truth.

01:04:02

And finally, if you're looking to worship in a reformed church that holds to the 1689

01:04:07

London Baptist Confession of Faith, please join us at Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Coram, New York.

01:04:13

Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Ovinio and thanks for listening. CVBBS has been a family owned book service since 1987 operating out of Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

01:04:50

They seek to bring you the best available Christian books and Bibles at the best possible prices.

01:04:56

And now they're also shipping worldwide. Browse the pages at ease, shop at your leisure and purchase with confidence at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

01:05:07

Order online worldwide at cvbbs .com. That's cvbbs .com.

01:05:15

Or you can order by phone at 717 -249 -0231.

01:05:21

That's 717 -249 -0231. For orders of $50 or more, use promo code

01:05:30

IRON for an extra 5 % off our already discounted prices. And please let our friends at CVBBS know that you heard about them on Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio.

01:05:45

Welcome back. Before I return to my guest, Steve Matthews and our discussion on the

01:05:51

International Churches of Christ, the International Christian Church, and the

01:05:57

Restored Church Worldwide, major cults dominating the campuses of colleges today.

01:06:05

Before we return to that conversation, I just want to remind you that Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio is in urgent need of your financial support.

01:06:15

If you really love this show and you don't want it to disappear from the airwaves, I'm urging you please go to ironsharpensironradio .com,

01:06:24

click support, then click, click to donate now. You could donate instantly with a debit or credit card in that fashion.

01:06:31

If you prefer snail mail, mailing a physical check to a physical address from your post office the old -fashioned way, there will also be a physical address that appears on your screen when you click support at ironsharpensironradio .com,

01:06:45

where you can mail your checks made payable to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. If you want to advertise with us, whether it's your church, parachurch, ministry, your business, your private professional practice, like a law firm or a medical firm, maybe it's just a special event you want to promote.

01:07:01

As long as whatever it is is compatible with my beliefs, I would love to help you launch an ad campaign as quickly as possible, because we're just as much in urgent need of your advertising dollars as we are in your donations.

01:07:13

So, if you are interested in advertising, send me an email to chrisharnson at gmail .com

01:07:20

and put advertising in the subject line. Always remember, I never want anybody in my audience giving less money to the church where you are a member in order to bless

01:07:31

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio with a financial gift. In other words, never cut into those financial resources you have set aside for your

01:07:41

Lord's Day giving to your own church in order to bless us with a financial gift. Please never do that.

01:07:47

And if you're really struggling to survive and make ends meet, wait until you're back on your feet and more financially stable before you bless us with a financial gift.

01:07:56

The Bible is very clear that we're primarily to use the money with which He blessed us, which is still His money.

01:08:02

We're primarily to use that money to provide for our church and our family, and providing for Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is obviously not a command of God.

01:08:10

But if you do love the show and you're blessed financially above and beyond your ability to provide for church and family, and you have extra money for benevolent, recreational, and trivial purposes, please share some of that money with us.

01:08:24

If you really want us to continue to exist, go to ironsharpensironradio .com, click support, then click to donate now.

01:08:32

Last but not least, if you're not a member of a biblically sound, doctrinally solid, Christ -honoring church, no matter where in the world you live,

01:08:41

I have extensive lists spanning the globe of biblically faithful churches and may be able to help you find a church near you, just as I have done with many churches, with many individuals,

01:08:53

I should say, all over the world, whom I have found churches for that are biblically solid, sometimes even within just a couple of minutes from where they live.

01:09:03

So if that's you, you don't have a church home, no matter where you live, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

01:09:10

and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you could send in a question to Steve Matthews about the

01:09:18

International Churches of Christ, the International Christian Church, and the Restored Church Worldwide.

01:09:25

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. And if you could now,

01:09:31

Steve, get more involved into the doctrine of these churches,

01:09:38

I don't know how, since the splits occurred over the years, how similar or different they are as far as doctrine is concerned, but tell us about this.

01:09:49

Yeah, they're pretty much all in the same kind of ream as far as what they believe.

01:09:55

I do want to mention one quick thing first. I think one of the weaknesses of people historically in the

01:10:02

Christian countercult movement is that they just don't look enough at the behavioral or psychological side, while too many people in secular world don't care enough about the doctrinal part.

01:10:14

And in exposing the cults, we're definitely trying to do a fair evaluation of the whole thing, because these cults definitely do cause people trauma, and they really destroy a lot of lives.

01:10:25

They exploit people, their time, hours and hours and hours a week, and their money, and they break up families, and that matters too.

01:10:33

So I just did want to put a note there. Like I did mention before, there's two kinds of groups.

01:10:40

There's not -so -high -demand groups, and there's very what you call high -demand, high -control groups. The more intense the group is, the more damage they do to the person.

01:10:49

This group is one of the more intense groups out there, so it's great that we're discussing this. I will say that when it comes to these high -control groups, what they love to do is they love to get you in through love -bombing.

01:11:04

And love -bombing is where you'll come in on a Sunday, or they'll meet you on campus, and they just bomb you with love, and compliments, and friendship, and they'll call you all the time.

01:11:15

As I say, they'll laugh too much at your jokes. They think you're the greatest person they ever met.

01:11:20

They'll try to make you feel that way, so they'll just hammer you with all this kind of conditional love.

01:11:27

It's not an authentic love like Christian, because if you're not falling in line, that love quickly disappears. And then once you're in, they control you by fear, guilt, and shame.

01:11:37

And they definitely keep you in the ranks to kind of behave the way they want you to fall in line. And then once you leave, a lot of these high -demand groups, what they'll do is they'll shun you.

01:11:45

And it's a pretty traumatic experience, because a lot of these newer high -demand groups like the

01:11:51

ICC, or the Luz del Mundo, Iglesia Ni Cristo, the

01:11:56

World Mission Society, Church of God, what they'll do is they'll quickly put out a memo, hey,

01:12:02

Chris is now weak, and he's caved into Satan, and he doesn't have faith anymore.

01:12:07

So they'll send out a group text. Nobody answers phone calls, and nobody acknowledges him anymore.

01:12:13

And they basically ghost you. You can walk down the street past one of your best friends in the movement for 10 years, and they won't make eye contact with you.

01:12:21

They'll just pass you right by, and they completely shun you. They won't take your phone calls. Your family members in the group will cut you off too.

01:12:28

And it causes PTSD for a lot of people, because when you're in the group, they push, push, push you all the time to get out there and evangelize and recruit for the group.

01:12:39

So you distance yourself from your old friends, your family, and your new family becomes the church, so you don't spend any time with the old group.

01:12:47

And then once they pull back, you got nobody else left. So you're just all alone, just having

01:12:52

PTSD and depression. It often takes years to get over this for the person. It's really sad.

01:12:57

So that's that part of the behavioral, but the theological part matters too. And the unbelievers, the secular cult analysts, they only care about the behavioral, but there's definitely what

01:13:07

I call a doctrinal flunk line. Now, the ICC are very different than the

01:13:13

Mormons, because we're the Mormons and Witnesses, and a lot of the groups, they'll definitely fill the flunk line.

01:13:19

ICC, they can say, and RCW, they can say, the apostles creed with us. They believe in the

01:13:25

Trinity. They believe in the deity of Christ, the personality of the Holy Spirit, the bodily resurrection of Jesus and his future and glorious second coming.

01:13:32

They can check all those boxes. It's just that they've corrupted certain aspects that we're going to start looking at their doctrines now, and they're not like the other groups.

01:13:41

So they're basically that Jesus plus, Jesus plus, you know, baptism. They're messed up on that doctrine, but they can basically check the boxes on a lot of the good stuff.

01:13:51

So where do they fall? Well, we've discussed at length about how they believe that you've got to be baptized with that conscious knowledge of being saved through the baptism for it to be valid.

01:14:01

They do teach at the Church of the Kingdom of God, so what that means for them, they have a bad understanding of the doctrine of the

01:14:07

Kingdom of God. That's probably my favorite doctrine in the Bible, Chris. It was preached, you know, by Christ, by John the

01:14:13

Baptist, and one great theological definition I've memorized from the great theologian,

01:14:19

George Elder Ladd, is the Kingdom of God is God's redemptive rule in Christ, destroying his enemies, and by implication, bringing to his people the blessings of his reign.

01:14:31

So it's basically God's reign. Wherever God reigns, that's where his kingdom is. Well, they don't have a concept of an invisible church.

01:14:38

They have very much a doctrine of the visible church. And for the ICC, if you're not part of that movement, you're not part of the

01:14:45

Kingdom of God. When they read Kingdom of God in the Bible, they're seeing their church. And that's the way they make themselves the only true church, and that's if you leave their church, now you're leaving the

01:14:56

Kingdom of God, and you're going to be under judgment. So that's a really bad misunderstood theological concept.

01:15:02

We can expose that from the Scriptures a little later on. They also teach that the

01:15:08

Church, as we said, has a central earthly leader, and that is the world mission evangelist who's atop the pyramid.

01:15:15

When the Bible knows nothing about that, the Bible clearly teaches that Christ is the chief shepherd over the churches, and the churches are all to be autonomously run.

01:15:25

We don't have an earthly pope, an earthly dictator of God's rules as they do in this movement.

01:15:32

They also have a view of discipleship that's off, where every

01:15:37

Christian has to have a discipleship partner. You have your D -times, they call it, your discipleship times.

01:15:43

A lot of them will speak to the discipler every day, at least once a week in person, and that's where you'll confess your innermost sins.

01:15:51

And they don't remain there, do they? Doesn't the discipler bring that information to leadership and not keep what you're saying in confidence?

01:16:03

You know what? That has been an issue. So I was about to say, in the first principles books, these studies that they've written by Kit McKean to undermine your faith, there's lesson number five is called

01:16:15

Light and Darkness. In that study, they do a thing called the sin list. It's been very controversial, especially among the non -Christian analyzers of cults.

01:16:27

And what that means is that you get this new potential recruit, and you have to write down each and every single sin you've ever done in your life that put

01:16:36

Christ on the cross. Now they're trying to get you broken through emotions to turn towards Christ, but now they have a footnote in the new versions of first principles saying this information is not supposed to be used against the person as kind of like leverage or pressure, because like Scientology would do that.

01:16:57

You'd go in there, you'd have your times of auditing, and then you tell all your innermost secrets, and then they could blackmail you with that later.

01:17:07

So they have been trying to clean that up. Absolutely, Chris, that was a thing. That's why

01:17:12

I guess they had to put that footnote in the book. So these sin lists were really, really controversial. And it's like, you just met these people two weeks ago on a campus.

01:17:21

They're not your friends or family or your pastor or anything. What business do they have in this group that's love -bombing you to know your struggles when this is for you and the

01:17:31

Holy Spirit and those in your family, the immediate body of Christ? It's a very unbiblical model.

01:17:37

So they deny original sin, and they also would teach that the church that Jesus established fell away.

01:17:45

Now the RCW is doing just like the ICOC tried to clean up a lot of the mistakes they were making after when they kicked out

01:17:55

KIPP, and now they've kind of done some fine -tuning. Well, the RCW is trying to do that too a bit now.

01:18:01

So they are trying to be, they're saying at this point, they're still trying to find their footing.

01:18:07

They're only a few months old, this RCW group, but they are saying they're trying to not be a hide -and -bang group like the

01:18:13

ICC was. They're trying to fix that part. They're also at this point saying they don't believe that the true church fell away, because that would make

01:18:23

Jesus a liar, because Jesus said in Matthew 16, 18, I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

01:18:30

Well, it's all the cults all saying the church fell away, and then they were all, it was good, the truth was gone, so we came along.

01:18:36

We have to restore it, whether you're Joseph Smith or Charles Hayes Russell or Mary Baker Eddy or Kip McKean, we have to restore the church.

01:18:43

That would make Jesus a liar, because the gates of hell did prevail, so it looks like the RCW is kind of changing that part.

01:18:49

But those are some of the main doctrinal problems—baptism of salvation, the kingdom, the church is the kingdom of God, you have to be a disciple, there's an earthly central leader in the church, denial of original sin, and outside of the

01:19:04

RCW at this point, that the church fell away and had to be restored by Kip. There's no continuity back from the apostolic early church.

01:19:11

Okay, we have Bernie in Utica, New York, who says,

01:19:17

Are there any issues in which a member of any of these groups has the freedom and, in fact, duty to be

01:19:27

Berean, where they may come to different conclusions about teachings of a secondary or tertiary matter, for instance, differences over eschatology and some things like that?

01:19:39

Are there any differences among them like that? That's a great question from Ernie.

01:19:48

Not so much, because basically what comes down from the top of the pyramid is disseminated through the whole structure like it is with a lot of other groups.

01:19:56

For example, in eschatology, they're all millennialists, just like the Campbellites are, and Kip took all of his teaching from them, and you basically have to fall in line with what they believe.

01:20:09

The weird thing is, if you're normally on a campus, if someone comes up to you and says, you want to study the

01:20:16

Bible with me, that means we're going to look at the Gospel of John or the

01:20:21

Book of Romans together. For these people, studying the Bible means first principles. That's what studying the

01:20:29

Bible means. You go through these carefully created lessons designed to lead you down that path to evangelism.

01:20:35

The RCW, this offshoot group, as I said, in the big picture of things, is going to be more of a threat because a lot of people left the

01:20:45

ICC for the RCW, and they're much more fired up—that's a

01:20:50

Kip term—much more fired up to get out there and evangelize the world. So they're going to be more something we're going to contend with,

01:20:56

I think, than the ICC coming. But they have abandoned first principles. That's an evolving movement.

01:21:02

There might be a little bit more on tertiary and secondary items to have a little more freedom, but definitely in the

01:21:10

ICC, as in other groups, you definitely want to fall in line and check all the boxes. If Kip says something, you're not supposed to question your leader.

01:21:18

They had a publication back in the Boston days. It was called Second Principles.

01:21:24

It wasn't a very well -known publication, but it was more of a study of the Old Testament, and they said to rebel against your leader is to rebel against God.

01:21:36

And that kind of shows the very unhealthy way that this group is very, very high control.

01:21:42

We talked about love bombing to get you in, fear, guilt, and shame to control you, and then shutting once you're gone.

01:21:49

Well, this definitely happened big time at ICC. It's really unfortunate, Chris, that of all the groups out there, this is one of the worst groups for creating bitter agnostics.

01:22:00

They're like a bitter agnostic creating factory, because when you come out of the ICC, it's heartbreaking that a lot of people will just not want to open up a

01:22:09

Bible, go to church, or pray again. So if you got loved ones in this movement, you have to point them back to Christ and say, look, this movement might have burned you, but there is a

01:22:19

God who loves you, and Christ is real, and you do need to get healing, but don't throw out the baby in the bathwater.

01:22:26

Stay faithful to God. That's why you got in the first place. You were looking for spiritual answers. You have to really meet the needs, understand that they've been deeply hurt by all this control, and that their tendency is when they sin, they want to sin big, and they just want to throw

01:22:43

God completely. And this is where we have to really encourage people to really stay faithful to God through this time of devastation.

01:22:54

Floyd in Sugar Hill, Georgia, asks, You seem to be repeating that the leaders of this movement have a high regard for the

01:23:03

Campbells, who were never re -baptized after they were baptized by a Baptist pastor.

01:23:09

Did any of these folks believe that the Campbells are damned? They don't talk that much about the

01:23:18

Campbells. They talk about the ICC, and the ICOC, and the

01:23:24

Boston movement. And even R .C. Delvin would call themselves, the expression they'd like to use is, this is God's modern -day movement.

01:23:30

This is, Kip would always say, this is the very movement of God. They more focus on what's been going on since 1979, in all honesty.

01:23:40

They once in a while in passing will mention the Restorationists, but they don't have that much connection to the mainline

01:23:48

Church of Christ anymore. They would look at them—that is, the

01:23:53

ICC calls the ICOC the former movement or the old movement, but they rarely, rarely mention the

01:24:00

Restorationists, even though that is their heritage and their lineage, their DNA. Okay, we have

01:24:08

Clem in Massapequa, Long Island, who says, in seeing some of your videos, it seems apparent that they have elevated women to a higher level of authority if they are the wives of ministers.

01:24:24

Is this true? They always have the couple standing up there as a couple.

01:24:29

So it'll be Kip and Elena McKean or, you know, whoever. They always have them as couples together.

01:24:38

They, women, they don't have a primary place to speak to the men in the congregation.

01:24:44

They'll more often lead the women's group. So they're not, they're not a

01:24:49

Rick Warren, we'll say. They kind of, they kind of try to keep it more biblical where the men over men, women over women, and that's not, they do present themselves as a team, probably in the sense of availability to be able to be—they are a very, very close -knit family in a way like churches, a lot of our churches aren't.

01:25:11

I mean, sad to say, you know, when you go to an ICC meeting, you know your love. Yeah, a lot of it's love bombing, but everybody knows each other's name.

01:25:19

If you were going to be moving on a Saturday, you can count that there's going to be 30 disciples with their cars there ready to help you move.

01:25:25

They're a close -knit family, and I think they present the man and the woman together so that the men can kind of be friends with the male leader and the women can be up there, you know, more connected to the female leader.

01:25:40

But they don't do it in a sense of a female pastor like you'll see in a lot of charismatic churches now. Jack in Toronto, Canada wants to know, is it permitted to read books by Christians outside of the group or to listen to music by recording artists outside of the group?

01:26:01

That's a wonderful and insightful question. It's amazing how many of the groups, like these groups, will use our

01:26:07

Bible translations, will sing our hymns and choruses, and listen to our Christian music.

01:26:13

It's just incredible. But at the same time, on the other side of the mouth, they'll say either we're Babylon or some false religion.

01:26:19

Not only talking ICC, we're talking the world of cults in general. This is what they love to do. This group will use an expression that's really unfortunate to control you.

01:26:31

It's called, they'll say, oh, don't go online because that's spiritual pornography. Don't read articles about us or listen to people speaking bad about us.

01:26:40

It's poison, or it's spiritual pornography. In the secular world, Steve Paston is a pretty well -known cult author.

01:26:49

He's a former Mooney, and he writes against cults. He has a thing called the BITE model, which is a very helpful acronym,

01:26:56

B -I -T -E, Behavior Control, Information Control, Thought Control, Emotion Control. For the

01:27:01

Information Control, you'll have a lot of groups telling you not to listen to critical literature, not to think for yourself.

01:27:10

The Jehovah's Witnesses had a very famous expression, avoid independent thinking. The World Mission Society, Church of God, and the

01:27:18

Xinjiang Ji cult both have the exact same expression that if you're reading critical material, you're eating the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

01:27:26

Well, Kit McKean's expression of choice is this is spiritual pornography. If you're listening to the show, if you're listening to critics, you're engaged in listening to spiritual pornography, whereas Christians, we don't have information control.

01:27:43

If we would say, bring on the atheists, bring on the secular philosophers, we're strong in our faith in Christ, we're not conditioned to have this information control.

01:27:52

We weigh it by Scripture, we take it before the Lord, but at the same time, we don't have to shut our brains off from looking at two sides of the story where the cults do.

01:28:01

So yeah, this is a bad tendency. Great question. Well, if it was discovered by a leader that you're sitting around in the living room or doing housework while you're listening to a well -known

01:28:18

Christian recording artist's music, is that something— That's fine. Oh, yeah? But if they were listening to this show, they would probably be rebuked by their recycling partner.

01:28:29

Yeah. So they wouldn't draw the line on that part. Like I said, they'll read our—they use the

01:28:35

NIV Bible primarily in these movements. They will sing our hymns.

01:28:40

They have a lot of their own—any cult, they'll have their own song, but they'll sing a lot of our hymns. You'll hear Amazing Grace and all their classic hymns over there.

01:28:46

So they won't be rebuked by that, but it's more the information control, exchange of ideas, the alternate explanations on biblical verses, just like discussion we're having today.

01:28:58

They would not like that. Well, move on to make sure you cover areas of doctrine that you may have overlooked to make sure that we have a well -rounded understanding of where they're coming from.

01:29:17

Well, the big ones are some of the ones I mentioned as far as, like, the kingdom of God, you know, the idea of baptism for salvation.

01:29:26

They would definitely be against the spiritual gifts for today. They're very anti -charismatic.

01:29:35

There's, you know, a lot of ways they're kind of like a neo -evangelical group. They don't go into a lot of the other things.

01:29:44

Those are my main doctrinal concerns. The ones I gave, you know, disciple partners, baptism for salvation, the exclusivity claims, those are the more bigger issues.

01:29:56

They have doctrinal distinctives, like I said. They're cessationists.

01:30:01

They're amillennial. But there's not that much else to be concerned by. They have orthodox views of a lot of things.

01:30:09

Do they openly and publicly oppose the doctrines of Reformed theology and Calvinism?

01:30:17

Oh yeah, absolutely, because they're, like we said, they're very hardcore minions, just like their

01:30:23

Fathers in Restoration movement. That's their lineage. And they, like, in First Principles, Chris, they actually have a little pet verse in Ezekiel chapter 18.

01:30:36

It says, you know, you're not going to be guilty for the sins of your parents and all that, the sins of the Father.

01:30:41

That is their one little proof text they like to whip out against the doctrine of original sin. So they're definitely, as far as, they will deny all the five points.

01:30:52

They're definitely Pelagian. They flat out deny the doctrine of original sin all day long, and they're critical of it.

01:31:02

Now, is there any kind of consensus about—I know that they believe, as even the mainline

01:31:12

Churches of Christ, or at least most of them, believes that a truly born -again individual can lose his or her salvation, but is there a consensus about how that can occur?

01:31:28

For instance, does it require somebody abandoning the faith and denying

01:31:34

Christ, or could it be somebody who just commits adultery, or they steal something, or they get drunk one night, or that kind of thing?

01:31:47

Yeah, they would definitely say leaving their Church, since they're the kingdom of God, they're the kingdom, you left the kingdom, that would be a big no -no.

01:31:57

They would say that, consciously, just going back to a carnal life, they have two things in the churches.

01:32:06

They have baptism when you get saved, and they have restorations. Kip McKean, when he was made a member of the

01:32:14

RCW in January this year, he was restored, because what had happened,

01:32:20

Kip got deeply involved with some very devious pornography that came out last year, and I mean devious, and it was exploitive of young women.

01:32:33

He didn't touch anyone, but it was some very foul stuff that went on, and that's why the

01:32:41

ICC thought he wasn't repentant, so they basically gave him the boot, the left foot of fellowship from the Church, and then the

01:32:47

RCW wanted to get him in pretty quickly, and they said, hey, you did do a good repentance, so they did do a restoration.

01:32:55

If you do certain sins, they would hopefully try to give you grace, like you should have in any

01:33:03

Christian Church, I believe, but they would at the same time, you know, you'd have to meet with your disciple, you'd have accountability for that sin, and they would try to work through those areas of your life that you've struggled with.

01:33:18

But if it's something where you blatantly turn away and lose your salvation, you would need to be restored into the

01:33:24

Church. They have a restoration process. But I'm assuming that does not involve getting re -baptized.

01:33:33

No. It did happen in the early Church a little bit, where they would re -baptize people from the mainline

01:33:43

Church of Christ when they would come over, because a lot of the, you know, they're definitely a campus ministry.

01:33:49

They are going after our kids on the campuses in colleges. That's the number one. But they do, in the early days, they're pulling people out of the mainline

01:33:57

Church of Christ, and they would do re -baptisms there. But generally, you just get restored.

01:34:03

Like, when Kip was brought into the Church, he wasn't re -baptized. His wife, she wasn't involved in the same sin, so she placed membership in Darcy W.,

01:34:11

while Kip was restored into the movement. Now, I remember years ago, back in the 90s,

01:34:20

I met someone who was involved in the New York City Church of Christ, and that person said that during a time of fellowship, they were gathered around somebody's home, having snacks and watching videos of baptismal services.

01:34:46

And during one of the videos, a woman that was getting baptized, when she was plunged backwards beneath the water, her foot came out of the water, and they said, uh -oh, this woman is not saved.

01:35:05

Her sins have not been remitted. We have to re -baptize her, because we believe in full immersion.

01:35:12

Is that like a commonly held extreme, where something—

01:35:18

Oh, yeah. You need complete water baptism by immersion.

01:35:24

But even if it's something like that, that's like on the border of lunacy, isn't it?

01:35:31

Well, baptism is their kind of idol, in a sense, so everything revolves around baptism for them.

01:35:38

This is the reason that they think that we're not true Christians. The sad irony here, Chris, is that we could call a lot of the people who are truly committed to Christ, trusting

01:35:48

Him, true believers within the movement, but pretty much most of them would say that we are not

01:35:54

Christians, because we don't have the right form of baptism. So they're shutting us out of the kingdom of heaven, and they talk about evangelizing the world to one generation, but they're just not having dialogue with us like they need to, and to work some of these things through.

01:36:09

And they're so inwardly focused that they don't really get what we have to bring to the table as believers who've been around for 200 ,000 years.

01:36:17

Like Christ said, the gates of hell wouldn't prevail. Hey, we've been around, guys. But they think church history started in 1979, so that's when the kingdom came.

01:36:28

Now, what are their views about Lord's Day observance?

01:36:34

Are they very loose and relaxed about how one observes the

01:36:40

Lord's Day after a worship service is over, or do they have more of a Sabbatarian understanding, a strict view of non -work -related activity, unless it's an act of mercy or necessity, as many

01:36:59

Christians who are Sabbatarians have those two exceptions who have a stricter view of the

01:37:07

Lord's Day. Yeah, not so much. I mean, I'll tell you what they aren't really strict about is you don't miss a meeting.

01:37:16

You don't miss a meeting. I mean, it's not like your regular Baptist church down the street where if you're not feeling good one day or you sprain your ankle, hey, you're gonna stay off that ankle and get better.

01:37:27

With them, you better be there. I mean, even with a broken leg or whatever. I wouldn't say that one, but they still might push it.

01:37:36

I'm telling you, a lot of these high -demand groups, if you miss a service, they will be at your door.

01:37:43

Where were you today, brother? Hey, bro, you didn't make it to the service today. They really, really watch your attendance.

01:37:51

Don't they even have any consideration of somebody who doesn't want to get everybody else sick? Yeah, somewhat.

01:37:59

I mean, they've got common sense. That's more Shincheonji, where they spread to half of Korea. You don't miss meetings either.

01:38:08

These people are a messed -up Christian group, a divisive, elitist group with a bunch of false doctrines, but they're not as bad as a lot of those other high -demand, especially a lot of these

01:38:20

Asian groups that are exploding now. That's the rise of the Asian culture is a big problem right now. But they will not want you to miss church.

01:38:28

So you definitely got to go to Sunday, absolutely. You got to go to midweek. If you have a campus devo, a campus devotional time, you got to be there.

01:38:37

Your deed times, your discipleship partner times, and then you might do what they call tagging, which is fundraising.

01:38:43

And then you might have a class where you're studying how to do first principles or how to teach that. And the more you go higher up in leadership, the more meetings you have through the week.

01:38:53

But they are absolutely a hard core. They're a hard -line group.

01:38:58

So they're hard -line about not missing any services whatsoever.

01:39:04

As I said, they will call you and show up. They want to make sure. They're hard -line about their singing.

01:39:10

They're hard -line about their giving. One of the leaders who I know, former leaders who

01:39:15

I know, he left the movement because they pushed so hard to give money.

01:39:21

You're giving under compulsion. And what does Paul tell us? He goes, give from a cheerful heart, not give under compulsion.

01:39:29

Everything in this movement is under compulsion. You have to be a fisherman and be out there evangelizing in the campuses.

01:39:35

Make your services, do your everything, your discipleship times, everything is push, push, push, push.

01:39:44

And it really will burn people up. The sad thing about this group, I'll tell you something really interesting.

01:39:50

Back years ago, Flavel Yately was a sociologist from the Mainline Church of Christ University.

01:39:57

And at the request of the Boston movement, he came and did a study, a personality type study of hundreds and hundreds of the members.

01:40:06

And it's a very well -known psychological study. It's a pretty legit good study. It's called the Meyer -Briggs

01:40:11

Type Indicator. It's a pretty mainstream study of personality types. And it's called the

01:40:16

MBTI, Meyer -Briggs Type Indicator. And they basically assess whether you tend to lean more to process your information to the external world as an introvert or an extrovert, or if you're a thinker, or if you're a feeler, a judge or perceiver.

01:40:31

They have all an intuitor or censor. They have these different categories. And they say everybody basically has a certain personality type.

01:40:39

You might be more emotional. You go more by your feelings, where this other guy is more of a thinker.

01:40:45

Well, Kit McKean is clearly an ESFJ in the personality type of the study they found out.

01:40:53

And he's an extrovert, a censor, a feeler, and a judger,

01:40:59

ESFJ. I would be the NTP personally. And when they did the study,

01:41:05

Chris, they found that the gross majority of members in the fossil group were all little

01:41:10

ESFJs because they're trying to remake you in the image of Kit. And people, it's incredible, you go to one of their churches, the people, they act like themselves.

01:41:20

So they get behind the pulpit, all of a sudden they turn to Kit McKean. And they start preaching with Kit. They use their tonations.

01:41:26

They say it's awesome and fired up and cranking and all the expressions that Kit uses. They have his mannerisms.

01:41:33

They would almost get their hair to be like Kit. And it's a very disturbing thing when they try to, you know,

01:41:39

God made you who you are with your own personality. It's a gift to you. Whether God created you as an introvert, extrovert, there's no right and wrong.

01:41:46

God made you who you are as a gift to you that you nurture and develop yourself throughout your lifetime with your hobbies and interests and your friendships to nurture and create yourself.

01:41:55

But they have this whole idea that they want you to be like little Kips. And they end up, that's the problem, the cults, they often change your personality type into the image of their leadership.

01:42:09

And then you start to have crises because you kind of snap, because if you're wired to be an introvert and they're trying to force you to be some outgoing, hey brother, hey sister extrovert and try to imitate

01:42:21

Kip, it's just not good for you. Eventually you crack and then the real you wants to come out again and then it leads to some psychological problems.

01:42:30

So yeah, there's a ton of pressure on these people, you know, pressure to give, pressure to attend, and pressure to be like a little

01:42:38

Kip. And to be that extrovert, they kind of judge you almost suddenly if you're not kind of being that kind of person.

01:42:45

So there's a lot of unhealthy tendencies in these movements that you don't have in a healthy church.

01:42:52

They are abusive churches and they definitely do a number on you, spiritually, theologically, all of it.

01:42:59

Well, we have to go to our final break. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages. I'm Pastor Keith Allen of Linbrook Baptist Church, a

01:43:23

Christ -centered, gospel -driven church looking to spread the gospel in the southwest portion of Long Island, New York, and play our role in fulfilling the

01:43:31

Great Commission, supporting and sending for the spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth. We're delighted to be a part of Chris Arnzen's Iron Sharpens Iron Radio advertising family.

01:43:42

At Linbrook Baptist Church, we believe the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the inspired

01:43:48

Word of God, inherent in the original writings, complete as the revelation of God's will for salvation and the supreme and final authority in all matters to which they speak.

01:43:59

We believe in salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. This salvation is based upon the sovereign grace of God, was purchased by Christ on the cross, and is received through faith alone, apart from any human merit, works, or ritual.

01:44:16

Salvation in Christ also results in righteous living, good works, and appropriate respect and concern to all who bear

01:44:24

God's image. If you live near Linbrook, Long Island, or if you're just passing through on the

01:44:29

Lord's Day, we'd love to have you come and join us in worship. For details, visit linbrookbaptist .org.

01:44:36

That's l -y -n -brookbaptist .org. This is Pastor Keith Allen of Linbrook Baptist Church reminding you that by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not a result of words, so that no one may boast of the

01:44:55

Lord's blessing and the knowledge of himself. I'm Dr.

01:45:05

Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary. I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love,

01:45:16

Hope Reform Baptist Church in Coram, Long Island, New York, pastored by Rich Jensen and Christopher McDowell.

01:45:23

It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God, like the dear saints at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Coram, who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in his

01:45:37

Holy Word, and to enthusiastically proclaim Christ Jesus the King and his doctrines of Sovereign Grace in Suffolk County, Long Island, and beyond.

01:45:47

I hope you also have the privilege of discovering this precious congregation and receive the blessing of being showered by their love, as I have.

01:45:56

For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net,

01:46:03

that's hopereformedli .net, or call 631 -696 -5711.

01:46:12

That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island, New York that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.

01:46:36

If you love Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, one of the best ways you can help keep the show on the air is by supporting our advertisers.

01:46:45

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

01:46:51

Daniel P. Patafuco, serious injury lawyer and Christian apologist.

01:46:57

Dan is the president and founder of the Historical Bible Society. Their mission?

01:47:03

To foster belief in the credibility of Scripture as the written Word of God. They go to various churches, schools, and institutions to publicly display a rare collection of biblical texts, along with a fascinating presentation by Mr.

01:47:18

Patafuco demonstrating the reliability of Scripture. To advance the cause of the

01:47:24

Gospel, they created a beautiful, perfect facsimile of the genealogy of Jesus Christ from the original engravings contained in a first edition 1611

01:47:35

King James Bible. This 17th century hand -engraved chart shows the family tree of Jesus Christ going back to Adam and Eve.

01:47:46

This book is complete with gorgeous full -size illustrations of Noah's Ark and the

01:47:51

Tower of Babel, and an explanation of why the genealogy of Jesus is so important for his claims to the throne of the universe.

01:48:00

Originals of this work are in museums, and nobody has ever made it accessible to the public in a large book form before.

01:48:09

You can have your own copy of this 44 -page genealogy book for a donation of $35 or more.

01:48:17

Visit historicalbiblesociety .org. That's historicalbiblesociety .org.

01:48:24

Thanks for helping to keep Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the air. When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

01:48:41

New American Standard Bible were among my very first sponsors. It gives me joy knowing that many scholars and pastors in the

01:48:49

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio audience have been sticking with or switching to the

01:48:54

NASB. I'm Dr. Joe Moorcraft, pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia, and the

01:49:02

NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Anthony Uvino, founder of thereformrookie .com

01:49:09

and co -founder of New York Apologetics, and the NASB is my Bible of choice.

01:49:15

I'm Pastor Tim Bushong of Syracuse Baptist Church in Syracuse, Indiana, and the NASB is my

01:49:21

Bible of choice. I'm Eli Ayala, founder of Revealed Apologetics and staff member with the

01:49:26

Historical Bible Society, and the NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Josh Miller of Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and the

01:49:35

NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Joe Bianchi, president of Calvary Press Publishing in Greenville, South Carolina, and the

01:49:45

NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Jake Korn of Switzerland Community Church in Switzerland, Florida, and the

01:49:55

NASB is my Bible of choice. Here's a great way for your church to help keep

01:50:00

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the air. Pastors, are your pew bibles tattered and falling apart?

01:50:06

Consider restocking your pews with the NASB, and tell the publishers you heard about them from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:50:16

Go to nasbible .com. That's nasbible .com to place your order.

01:50:42

This is Brian McLaughlin, president of the SecureComm Group and supporter of Chris Arnzen's Iron Sharpens Iron Radio program.

01:50:52

SecureComm provides the highest level of security systems for residential buildings, municipalities, churches, commercial properties, and much more.

01:51:03

We can be reached at securecommgroup .com. That's securecommgroup .com.

01:51:12

But today, I want to introduce you to my senior pastor, Doug McMasters of New High Park Baptist Church on Long Island.

01:51:25

Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur.

01:51:33

In the film Chariots of Fire, the Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt

01:51:38

God's pleasure when he ran. He knew his efforts sprang from the gifts and calling of God.

01:51:44

I sense that same God -given pleasure when ministering the word and helping others gain a deeper knowledge and love for God.

01:51:52

That love starts with the wonderful news that the Lord Jesus Christ is a savior who died for sinners, and that God forgives all who come to him in repentance, trusting solely in Christ to deliver them.

01:52:04

I would be delighted to have the honor and privilege of ministering to you if you live in the Long Island area or Queens or Brooklyn or the

01:52:11

Bronx in New York City. For details on New High Park Baptist Church, visit nhpbc .com.

01:52:20

That's nhpbc .com. You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672.

01:52:30

That's 516 -352 -9672. That's New High Park Baptist Church, a congregation in love with each other, passionate for Christ, committed to learning and being shaped by God's word, and delighting in the gospel of God's sovereign grace.

01:52:58

I'm Pastor Bill Shishko of The Haven, an Orthodox Presbyterian church in Comac, Long Island.

01:53:04

I hold the Iron Sharpens Iron radio program hosted by my longtime friend and brother

01:53:11

Chris Arnzen in the highest esteem, and I'm thrilled that you're listening today.

01:53:16

I'm also delighted that Iron Sharpens Iron is partnering with one of my favorite resources for Reformed Christian literature for decades now,

01:53:25

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. Well, with the economic nightmare that we're all currently enduring, cvbbs .com,

01:53:37

I want to enable you to build a wonderful personal library of the best literature that the

01:53:43

Reformers, the Puritans, and the great Christian minds of today have to offer, and at affordable prices.

01:53:50

Not only does cvbbs .com offer up to 50 % off retail prices, but you'll get an added 5 % off orders of $50 or more by using promo code

01:54:05

IRON, I -R -O -N, an added 5 % off all of your orders of $50 or more from Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

01:54:18

That's cvbbs .com, making the joy of reading the finest in Christian literature more affordable.

01:54:27

Oh, and make sure that you tell them you heard about them on Iron Sharpens Iron radio.

01:54:36

And don't forget, cvbbs .com is now shipping worldwide. Also, I want to remind you, never forget that this program is paid for in part by the law firm of Petofuco &

01:54:49

Associates. If you're the victim of a very serious personal injury or medical malpractice anywhere in the

01:54:56

United States, please call 1 -800 -NOW -HURT, 1 -800 -NOW -HURT, or visit 1 -800 -NOW -HURT .com,

01:55:04

1 -800 -NOW -HURT .com. Make sure you tell Daniel P. Petofuco, attorney at law, that you heard about his law firm,

01:55:12

Petofuco & Associates, from Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron radio. And don't forget, all men in ministry leadership, you are invited to the next free biannual

01:55:22

Iron Sharpens Iron radio pastor's luncheon, Thursday, May 1st, 11 a .m.

01:55:28

to 2 p .m. at Carlisle Reformed Presbyterian Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, featuring our guest speaker for the very first time,

01:55:38

Dr. Jason Lyle, who is a world -renowned young earth creationist and astrophysicist.

01:55:45

It's free of charge, and everyone gets a dozen or more free brand -new books in addition to everything else being free.

01:55:54

If you want to register, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put pastor's luncheon in the subject line, and we'll also be letting you know in the days and weeks and months ahead about the full pastor's luncheon featuring

01:56:10

Dr. James R. White this September. We're now back with the conclusion of Part 1 of our discussion with Steve Matthews on the

01:56:22

International Churches of Christ, the International Christian Church, and the

01:56:28

Restored Church Worldwide. If you could summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners for this half of our discussion, which we will continue tomorrow.

01:56:42

So these groups are the new generation of groups. It's not just like the

01:56:47

Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses knocking at your door. You know, they go after you. Satan's got a different way to get you every time.

01:56:54

They'll have those guys go to the door, the World Mission Society, Church of God will get you in Walmart. These guys will, you know, get you on campuses.

01:57:01

Shin Chan Ji will get you your own church. So Satan's very crafty like that, and they're going after the young people who are away from home.

01:57:12

They're in that time of transition. A lot of the kids in college campuses, they're lonely, and this friendly bunch of people come up to them and say, hey, why don't you do a

01:57:21

Bible study with us? And, you know, we have to be in communication with our families. You just don't join any old

01:57:27

Bible study for anybody who comes up to you. I have a saying, if someone came up to you on a really hot day with a glass of liquid, would you just want to drink it from a stranger?

01:57:36

Well, all the more if you want to study the Bible without anyone. You have to ask smart questions like, who are these guys?

01:57:42

Who started your group? You know, do a little bit of research. They don't want to tell you these things up front. They kind of want to wean you in eventually and then give you this perverted doctrine that pulls you away and also for your life.

01:57:54

So this is a group that is, you know, a pseudo -Christian group. We're going to, tomorrow, we're going to,

01:58:02

I guess, do a deep dive into some of the answers, the biblical responses, the verses they use on baptism, and some of those distortions.

01:58:11

We have to be on our guard in our churches. We have to not only know our Bible, we have to know good solid theology.

01:58:17

We have to know why we believe what we believe, the doctrine of salvation, the nuances of it. You know, no, we're not saved by baptism.

01:58:24

That is an act of obedience after you've come to a saving knowledge in Christ. And that has to be driven home in churches, in families.

01:58:33

You know, we have to be on guard against these movements. This is a group that's evolving right now. Who knows where the

01:58:40

RCW is going to land. They're trying to make some changes, but unfortunately they do teach the false teachings, the

01:58:46

ICC. ICOC is not as an aggressive group anymore, but there's still an issue, you know, with those guys and some of the false teachings they believe.

01:58:55

Some good biblical correctives we're going to go over tomorrow, hopefully will give us a better place to respond. We're building our platforms of exposingthecults .com.

01:59:04

That website will be coming soon. So for now, like and subscribe to us on our YouTube channel,

01:59:10

Exposing the Cults. Soon we'll be having platforms up on exposing Mormonism, exposing

01:59:16

Shin Chan Ji, exposing the ICC, exposing the New Age, and so many more.

01:59:21

But we'll get resources for people. But in the meantime, you know, follow us there tomorrow.

01:59:27

Come with your questions. Let's go through the verses and show what the Scriptures say in regards to their false teachings.

01:59:33

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