May 2, 2024 Show with Dr. George Grant on “An Experiment in Liberty: America’s Path to Independence”

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

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

Jim Thorpe. It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this second day of May 2024.

Before I introduce our returning guest for the day and our topic,

I have a praise report and a request for further prayer.

This is in regard to the little precious granddaughter of my very dear friend for many years,

Dr. Joseph C. Moorcraft III, the pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia.

Just very recently, a couple of weeks ago, the Lord brought into the world

Joe and Becky's granddaughter, Rebecca Hope. And Rebecca Hope, the doctors knew this beforehand, has a life -threatening heart condition.

The baby was born at just over three pounds, and although has been in the hospital for a couple of weeks, apparently has not yet gained any weight.

The baby has already outlived the doctor's expectations. But the praise report is that the baby came home yesterday.

So the baby is now in the home of the daughter and son -in -law of my friend

Pastor Joe and Becky Moorcraft. So please continue to keep Rebecca Hope in your prayers.

Astonish the doctors further and all those that know the Moorcrafts by this child being rescued from this condition and growing up to be a strong Christian woman.

But in any event, whatever the Lord's will be in this circumstance, we ask of you to enable the

Moorcrafts to give praise, honor, and glory to Christ, no matter what the providence that unveils in the upcoming days, weeks, and months.

And I will keep you updated as often as I get updates from the Moorcrafts. Well, today

I'm very excited to have a returning guest. He's one of my favorite guests to interview, and I know according to the responses of some of my listeners, knowing that he was going to be on today, he's a favorite guest of a considerable portion of my audience.

His name is Dr. George Grant, the author of numerous books, a leading pioneer in the classical

Christian education movement, and pastor of Parish Presbyterian Church in Franklin, Tennessee, which is a congregation in the

Presbyterian Church in America denomination. Today we're going to be addressing his book, An Experiment in Liberty, America's Path to Independence.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Dr. George Grant. Well, it is my great delight,

Chris. Good to talk with you again. And I must say, I was richly blessed recently watching a video of an interview you conducted with our mutual friend,

Rosaria Butterfield. What a blessing that was. Oh, she's one of my favorite people in the world, and what a woman of courage and conviction and absolutely brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

So that was a highlight of last summer, and so I'm glad you got a chance to see that interview.

Yeah, I try to watch as many of the videos or listen to as many of the messages she delivers at various places, and I had the honor of having breakfast in their home,

Kent Butterfield and Rosaria's home, the morning before I attended worship services at their

Reformed Presbyterian congregation in North Carolina, so it was a blessing to be fellowshipping and sharing a meal with them in their own house.

Yeah, it's genuinely true in the Butterfield household that the gospel comes with a house key, so I'm glad you had that wonderful chance to be with them.

Amen. What a delightful family. Amen. Well, I'd like you to introduce to our audience, for the sake of those who have not yet become familiar with you—that would probably be a tiny percentage of my audience—but tell them about Parish Presbyterian Church in Franklin, Tennessee.

Parish is a congregation of the PCA, as you mentioned, the

Presbyterian Church in America. We're evangelical and Reformed, and we planted the first iteration of Parish in 2006.

We brought in one of my former students to be our next church planter, and in 2011, we did kind of a reverse church plant, where we left the vast majority of the congregation with him, and that became a new congregation,

Cornerstone Presbyterian Church, and we moved about 12, 15 miles to the east and planted a new congregation there, but kept the old name, and we are in the process of getting ready to do our third church plant.

We're building a building at long last. The building we've been in has been sorely outmoded.

It's more than 120 years old, and we have completely outgrown it.

We have to have three consecutive Sunday morning worship services, and even those are spilling out the door.

So the Lord has been very gracious to us, very kind, and we're just delighted.

Amen. And if anybody is traveling through Franklin, Tennessee—and by the way,

I love Franklin, Tennessee. I was there once, and I look forward to heading back that way. Yeah, we need to have you back.

It's a great place to visit. Fabulous outdoors, beautiful hills, and of course, great southern hospitality, southern food, southern gospel music, and country music.

It's just a great place to live. Amen. Well, if anybody's traveling through there, or if you already live there, or have family, friends, and loved ones who live in or near Franklin, Tennessee, the website for Parish Presbyterian Church is parishpres .org.

Now if you could tell us about Franklin Classical School and the

King's Meadow Study Center. Franklin Classical School was founded 32 years ago, largely out of the concern of a number of us here who had been homeschooling, who were desirous of taking our junior high and high school age students a little further than some of us as moms and dads could take our kids.

And so we developed a pretty thoroughgoing classical model based on the things that we had learned from C .S.

Lewis, J .R. Tolkien, and Dorothy Sayers. Much later, about three years later, we became aware that there were others who were pioneering that same sort of vision for classical education and got connected with them, and I now serve as one of the two ex officio board members of the

National Association for the Classical Schools, ACCS. And we've been just really blessed to see a host of young Christian leaders emerge as they go back to those foundational disciplines that gave rise to the great flowering of Western civilization, reading great books and wrestling with the big ideas, learning basic principles of etymology with Greek and Latin and Hebrew and understanding the whole of history and science and literature through the lens of a biblical worldview.

And what we have found is that we're not only raising up a lot of really well -equipped young men and women, but it's reshaping our families.

Moms and dads, little ones are all learning to think in a new way and to relish the beauty, goodness, and truth that is our inheritance in Western civilization.

So it's been really rich. King's Meadow is really the umbrella organization for all of our various ministries.

We do some publishing. We have created curriculum for first our school and now a host of schools all around the world.

We have a missions arm that does missionary work in the

Middle East, planting classical Christian schools in places like Iraq and Indonesia.

We have 27 schools in Indonesia. So we've got all of these different sort of outreaches, and all of those are sort of under the hub or the protective accountability of King's Meadow.

Great. Well, if anybody wants more details on the

Franklin Classical School, and that would be even if you just want to find out about classical

Christian education, you can go to their website, and that is franklinclassical .org.

I was just looking at it. Oh, there it is, dot com, franklinclassical .com. And that's

F -R -A -N -K -L -I -N, franklinclassical .com. And if you want more details on the

King's Meadow Study Center, go to kingsmeadow .com, kingsmeadow .com. Or georgegrant .net,

georgegrant .net is probably the best and quickest way to King's Meadow stuff.

Oh, great. georgegrant .net. And, well, I'd like to give our listeners our email address right away in the event that they have questions for you regarding our topic of the day, which is your book,

An Experiment in Liberty, America's Path to Independence. Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name, at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. Well, first of all, let me start off with a question as to what compelled you to write this specific book, because as you know, we could fill an entire library with books about the foundation of America, about the heroes that we consider, the great patriots that not only risked their lives but gave their lives for independence of this nation that we sadly take for granted far too often, and also the nation whose liberties are at stake at this moment in the 21st century.

We, who are conservative Bible -believing Christians, wonder how long is this great experiment going to exist, but what was it that planted the idea in your mind, you know,

I've got to add something of my own to this vast selection that we already have at our fingertips?

Well, the book actually began as a series of lectures that I gave at Franklin Classical School and at Bannockburn College, another one of our ministries that has been since renamed

New College Franklin. But I gave a series of lectures, and back in those days, cassette tapes were made of the lectures, and they wound up, you know, circulating among a number of folks, and both as I taught at Bannockburn and at Franklin Classical, and then later as the tapes started to circulate, people said over and over and over again,

I have never heard any of this before.

And sometimes someone will say, I was a history major, or I've got a master's degree in American political theory, and half of this

I've never heard before. So I kept getting those requests, so we kind of sat down and hammered out a little bit of an outline, and Gary DeMar at American Vision encouraged me to turn it into a book.

And I was hesitant at first, just exactly because of what you just said,

Chris. We, you know, I have, you know, bookshelves full of books on American history, but there is no doubt that in our day and time, a lot of our story is being obscured by modern scholarship and new diversity standards and reactions and so forth, 1619 projects.

So I finally relented, and we created a small version of the book, and it got just a huge reaction.

And so we revised it, a second edition went out a little bit larger, a little bit more expanded, and then

Canon Press contacted me and said that they would like to have a new edition of it, and so we revised it yet again and enlarged it, and that's the book that we've got now.

And, you know, some of the material in it is fairly familiar to Christians who have studied providential history, but parts of it, even for many

Christians who have a Christian perspective of the

American founding era, are unaware of, you know, huge swathes of the story.

For instance, most people are unaware that George Washington was the 16th, not the first, president of the

United States. The United States has actually had three compacts, or constitutions, two of them readily recognizable are the current

Constitution and its immediate predecessor, the Articles of Confederation.

And then prior to that, there was a compact that bound together Continental Congress prior to the

Declaration of Independence between 1774 and 1776. But the details of that, and the fact that we had presidents, starting with Peyton Randolph and then going through men like Elias Boudinot, and John Hansen, and John Jay, and Richard Henry Lee, this is just a blank for most

Christians, for most Americans. And yet, it's on those foundations that the great experiment in liberty was originally built.

So I felt like it was needful for us to remember some of these things, to understand how we got to where we are, so that we can either recover some of the things that we have lost, or begin to rebuild and reform the

American experiment in liberty, lest we lose it all. Yes, and there has been a view of the

Founding Fathers that has not only been perpetuated by liberals and leftists, but even there's disagreement amongst those within our conservative and even reformed theological camp as to whether the

Founding Fathers were deists, or whether they could be rightly viewed as Christians.

And of course, there would be extremes on both sides. I've seen evangelical

Christians try to portray Thomas Jefferson as some kind of an evangelical, and I am fully aware that he is, in comparison to today's leftists, he was an independent fundamentalist

Baptist. But for his day, I don't believe, from my understanding of Jefferson, he would be considered an evangelical

Christian. But tell us about your understanding of the theological makeup of those that we revere as our

Founding Fathers. Well, the vast majority of the Founding Fathers, if you count the signers of the

Declaration or the signers of the Constitution, the vast majority of them were churchgoing, practicing believers, many of them engaged in their local congregations, many of them holding very orthodox views.

There were some, and a number of the prominent Founding Fathers, who held what today we would consider sort of evangelical progressive views.

And I'm convinced, Chris, that if we look far down in the future, our great -grandchildren are going to look back on our day and wonder if many of us were actually practicing orthodox

Christians, given the aberrant views that abound in the evangelical world today, and even in the

Reformed world. So I certainly would not be one to try and make the argument that every one of the

Founding Fathers were orthodox, Bible -believing, redeemed Christians.

However, all of them lived in a world shaped by a biblical worldview.

So if their doctrine of the Trinity was askew, they were still operating with a

Trinitarian perspective. If their understanding of personal redemption was lacking, they nevertheless lived in a world where the ideas of personal redemption in Christ were the dominant cultural ideas of the day, and it shaped their thinking, it shaped the way they approached their work, and it shaped the documents that they created.

You can't read things like the Northwest Ordinance, the Constitution of the

United States, and the Declaration of Independence without seeing the fingerprints of a

Christian legacy at every turn. The Declaration of Independence, for instance, is modeled on the minor prophets and their covenant lawsuit sequences against tyrants and oppressors.

The structure of the Declaration of Independence, even the language of the

Declaration of Independence, is taken directly from the minor prophets. In the

Constitution, we have this extraordinary biblical vision of the separation of powers and of this jurisdictional separation between branches of government that's exceedingly covenantal and is drawn from a biblical perspective.

So were all of the Founders redeemed? Well, probably not, but we don't know.

Were all of the Founding Fathers biblically orthodox? The vast majority of them were, but some of them weren't, but that does not negate the fact that they were operating out of a

Christian worldview perspective. Were they perfect in that? Absolutely not.

Can we quibble about some of the perspectives in the constitutional debates? Of course.

But, the fact remains, they were seeking to build a city on a hill.

They were seeking to walk in the richness of Christendom's legacy, and that was what made the great

American experiment in liberty so great. Amen.

Amen. And we are going to our first commercial break right now, and we have some listeners waiting to have their questions asked and answered, but if you'd like to join them and get online, our email address again is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter. Let's say you are having a serious disagreement with your own pastor over something that we're saying today.

Well, things like that, we can understand you remaining anonymous, but please, if it's a general question, give us your first name at least.

City and state and country of residence, don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors. Greetings.

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

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

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

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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

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

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

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.

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

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Before I go to any of our listener questions I wanted to ask you about some of the key figures from history that you contribute in your book to America's path to independence.

The first I'll bring up is somebody who has been sadly vilified by historical revisionists and that's

Cotton Mather. What was so important about Cotton Mather's contribution to the foundation of America?

Well Cotton Mather was one of the men that George Washington called the father of the founding fathers.

He was a pastor, an intellectual. He wrote more than 400 books on a wide range of subjects.

This great classic entitled Magnalia Christi Americana traced the story of the gospel in the early days of colonial settlements and came with this warning that prosperity might well be the undoing of the extraordinary experiment in faith and liberty that America represented.

He has been vilified because of the Salem witch trials despite the fact that he lived in Boston, not in Salem, despite the fact that he actually condemned the proceedings of the trials because of irregularities in procedure and despite the fact that afterwards he called for repentance on the part of those who had participated and advocated.

But facts rarely get in the way of ideologues and he has been vilified nevertheless.

He was just one of the most remarkable intellects that America has ever produced and ought to be upheld as one of the bright lights of that early founding period.

In fact, I'd like to highly recommend an interview I conducted on January 23rd of 2024 with Paul Jaly on the theme,

A Critique of Bill O 'Reilly's Book, Killing the Witches. Dr. Paul Jaly is a historian expert on the

Salem witch trials and senior pastor of the New Testament Church of Cedarville in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and he did a remarkable job setting the record straight on this history of the

Salem witch trials and really reveals the inaccuracies, to say the least, in Bill O 'Reilly's book.

So I highly recommend that. Just type in to the ironsherpensirenradio .com search engine

Jaly, J -E -H -L -E, and that interview will come up.

We do have a listener with a question. I didn't even know there was a

Birmingham in Michigan, but we have Scotty in Birmingham, Michigan, who says,

I have heard that John Calvin, the great reformer, and his

Calvin's Institutes were used by the founding fathers in the establishment of America.

Is this true? The Institutes were oftentimes quoted during the constitutional debates, so we know that a number of the founding fathers were not only conversant in Calvin, but used

Calvin as a part of their political thinking. They also quoted Calvin's best friend and one of the men who served with him first in Lausanne, then later in the city of Geneva, Pierre Viret.

Pierre Viret was very, very instrumental in thinking through a reformational view of polity, submission to rulers, but also the principles of liberty.

And Viret, although almost unknown, even in reform circles today, was one of the men that the founders looked back to alongside

Calvin. Viret was really instrumental in Calvin's thinking, as was

Butzer, but the founding fathers were widely read, and they were serious students.

So how much of Calvin influenced those founding documents, we don't know, but we do know just from the constitutional debates that he was regularly quoted.

Well, I want to give a plug to Zurich Publishing, founded by my friend

Tom Erdl. ZurichPublishing .org has books that they have brought back into print by Pierre Viret, and as I said,

I'm sorry, as Dr. Grant said, he is sadly widely unknown today, even by well -read

Calvinists, and I urge you all to go to ZurichPublishing .org.

In fact, Zurich Publishing has been extremely generous to Iron Sharp and Zion Radio when we have our pastor's luncheons.

For three years in a row so far, they have donated 100 copies of the books that they have brought back into print by Pierre Viret, and we're looking forward to receiving more for this year's next pastor's luncheon.

So ZurichPublishing .org. And by the way— Yeah, I really highly recommend

R. H. Sheets' biography of Viret. It's really absolutely an incredible, incredible eye -opening look at the

Reformation, the Magisterial Reformation. And then Zurich has also published a simple exposition of the

Christian faith. You read that and you start to realize, oh my goodness, so this is where the

Heidelberg and the Westminster got so much of their wording and structure.

So good. Yes. In fact, since you mentioned Rebecca Sheets, she's also donated books by Pierre Viret to the

Iron Sharp and Zion Radio pastor's luncheon, and to plug her website, it's psalm78ministries .com.

psalm78ministries .com. Well, we notice from your book that you do highlight some other heroes of the

Christian faith, like George Whitefield. Most of our listeners should be very familiar with George Whitefield, one of my personal heroes.

But tell us about George Whitefield's contribution to America's path to independence. Well, Whitefield, as probably most will know, was the spark that, along with Jonathan Edwards, led to the great fires of revival and reform that we now call the

Great Awakening. He was ordained initially as an

Anglican, was a pioneer of what came to be known as the Methodist movement, and was instrumental in helping to shape his friend

John and Charles Wesley's faith, although they had a theological sort of departure in later years.

Whitefield was a remarkable preacher. Benjamin Franklin once said that standing in a pulpit, all

Whitefield had to do was to say, Mesopotamia, and men would be redeemed.

He was probably America's first celebrity. In each of his tours of preaching up and down the coast, he became the uniting force between the various colonial settlements.

And as a result, Whitefield was, in many ways, the precipitating factor that led to the really rich and robust vision of liberty that the

Founding Fathers had. In fact, let me give another plug to chapellibrary .org,

because I was brought to the Reformed faith through reading

George Whitefield's letter to John Wesley on election. Not long after I was baptized in a

Reformed Baptist church, while I was still anti -Calvinist, someone gave me that booklet,

George Whitefield's letter to John Wesley, and I didn't know who either of those men were, and George Whitefield just blew my mind with the biblical evidence for the

Calvinistic understanding of election. And my first reaction was, oh no, this is true, but I still hate it.

But within a couple of months, though, I absolutely fell in love with the

Doctrines of Grace, and it revolutionized my understanding of the cross. So I highly recommend that booklet that you can get very inexpensively from chapellibrary .org.

And I would recommend the big two -volume biography of George Whitefield by Arnold Dallimore.

Yes, that's the most famous one. He also wrote a fabulous little biography of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, but a massive biography on Whitefield.

It's published now by A Banner of Truth. There is a single -volume condensed, abridged version of it that Crossway has done, but I really much prefer the big two -volume.

It's just so inspiring, and it was life -altering for me when

I first read it. Amen. Well, you mentioned Jonathan Edwards briefly, but if you could be more detailed on his contribution to the founding of this country.

Well, Jonathan Edwards has been widely acknowledged as perhaps the greatest genius that the

American soil has ever produced. He was absolutely stunningly brilliant.

He served as an assistant pastor to his grandfather,

Solomon Stoddard, and then became the pastor at Northampton, Massachusetts, and was used by God for an incredible outpouring of renewal and revival, both there and throughout the region.

His sermons to this day are held up as classics of the

Puritan form. If you go to the Norton Anthology, for instance, his great sermon,

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, has a prominent place. I almost laugh every time

I think about the Norton editors, including that, knowing that they recoil at the whole idea, but they can't get past its genius, both rhetorically, theologically, and in its literary form.

He was incredibly courageous, so courageous, in fact, that eventually a theological controversy regarding what's known as the halfway covenant was his undoing, and he was removed as the pastor at Northampton.

In a fit of frenzy, the congregation failed to realize that they'd just gotten rid of their pastor, and they had no one to preach the next

Sunday, and so very graciously, despite the brouhaha,

Jonathan Edwards stood back up in the pulpit the very next Sunday, took up where he left off the previous

Sunday, and didn't mention the controversy once. Eventually, he made his way to the frontier and became a missionary pastor to the

Native Americans, and on his way to become the new president of what became

Princeton, the log college that became the College of New Jersey, he contracted smallpox and succumbed, but he was just one of the most remarkable men in the

American founding era. An interesting way, he became, in generations afterwards, he became the means by which

God drew to himself any number of other men. One of my theological heroes,

Thomas Chalmers, was a schoolboy at St. Andrews University in Scotland a full generation later, and read

Jonathan Edwards, and his life was forever changed. You know, before I move on with other questions about your current, or should

I say the current subject, An Experiment in Liberty, you have written new volumes or edited them regarding Thomas Chalmers, have you not?

I have, I have. I've taken his discipleship method. He was a remarkable discipler of young men and helped to launch the modern missions movement, the modern

Bible society movement. He sent out men like Robert Murray McShane, the Bonar brothers,

Robert Chalmers Burns, and a host of others, and so I became really curious, how did he disciple them?

And I was able to sort of historical scavenger hunt, pull together his discipleship method.

It's a way of reading the scriptures and memorizing key verses.

It's called the Keystones, and so there are three volumes of Keystones that I have put out.

I've done a little volume of his perhaps most famous single sermon that was preached while he was a pastor in Glasgow, Scotland, and this little sermon has for many, many generations been a means of life transformation for many.

The title of it is The Expulsive Power of a New Affection, and then

I just got through editing his Seven Discourses on Modern Astronomy.

He, in 1816 and 17, he began a series of lectures for businessmen at lunchtime and then collected the lectures together into a volume, and that volume became the best -selling book in the

English -speaking language for the next five years, outselling Sir Walter Scott and Jane Austen combined the first two years.

Just really remarkable. Now, how can our listeners get a hold of this work? Well, they're all available at various bookstores,

Amazon. You can go to georgegrant .net. They're out there in the wild.

Great. And by the way, it might interest my listeners, when we were speaking about Jonathan Edwards before, a friend of mine,

Pastor Ed Moore of North Shore Baptist Church of Bayside, Queens, New York, he was born and raised in an

Armenian evangelical home, and he came to be introduced to the doctrines of sovereign grace in a secular college by an atheist professor who said during one of his classes on American history, you cannot understand

American history without knowing who Jonathan Edwards was, and he began to give details on Edwards' life and theology and belief and legacy, and the

Lord used that to bring Pastor Ed to the doctrines of sovereign grace. So I just thought that that might... Isn't that amazing?

Yeah. Just amazing. I love stories like that. So do I. We have to go to our midway break right now, and once again, if you have a question for Dr.

George Grant, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.

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Before I return to my guest today Dr. George Grant and our conversation on his book

I'm sorry, An Experiment in Liberty, America's Path to Independence, I just have a couple of very important announcements to make.

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and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Dr.

George Grant on his book, An Experiment in Liberty, America's Path to Independence, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

By the way, I want to remind, I don't think I told Scotty from Birmingham, Michigan this, you have won a free copy of An Experiment in Liberty, compliments of our friends at canonpress .com,

and compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com,

who will ship that book out to you at no charge to you or to Ironsharpensiron Radio.

Let's see here, we have another listener question, and I was just looking at it.

Oh, here it is. We have Vicki in Queensborough, Mississippi, and Vicki says,

I heard you recently interviewing Dr. Joe Moorcraft, and you were talking about how some

Christians actually vilify the War of Independence in the 18th century, saying that it was a violation of Romans 13.

I was wondering what your guest today, Dr. Grant, has to say about that. Well, that's a great question, and it's a question that has been often raised.

It was raised during the debates of the Continental Congress during the, between June the 9th and July the 8th of 1776, as they were finally formulating the covenant lawsuit sequence that is the

Declaration of Independence. And so it's not a question that they skirted easily, and I don't think it's a question that we should skirt easily, but what essentially the

Founding Fathers came to was an understanding that the king is not above the law.

The law is the king. And if, therefore, over an extended period of time, exhausting all appeals and all options, the people have the responsibility to protect those who are in their care from the tyranny of government.

It's a simple principle. It's the idea of magistratal interposition.

The lower magistrates are to stand as guards of liberty against the encroachments of the higher magistrates in order to protect the people, to protect families, to protect our children.

So from that perspective, I think that the Founding Fathers arrived at the correct conclusion, which was that they were biblically warranted to protect their people from tyranny.

Well, thank you, Vicki. You've also won a free copy of An Experiment in Liberty by Dr. Grant, so please make sure we have your full mailing address so that CVBBS .com

can ship that book out to you. Let's see here. We have

Auburn in Brooklyn, Ohio, another city I've never heard of. And Auburn says, what books do you recommend the most that set the record straight on the foundation of America?

Well, there are a number of really, really good books that do different things.

One of the things that I really love to do is to turn to biography.

And there was a set of biographies that was created at the end of the 19th century by a group of scholars around Harvard University led by John T.

Morse. And they did about 30 different biographies of various Founding Fathers.

Among my favorites in the series is the two -volume biography of George Washington by Henry Cabot Lodge.

Henry Cabot Lodge, of course, was the dear close friend of Theodore Roosevelt.

And this two -volume biography, which is still in print,

I've done an edition of it and done a forward for it, and it can be obtained in bookstores anywhere.

But what Lodge does is he doesn't just tell the story of George Washington, he tells the story of the principles that drove

George Washington. And so I really, really like the way that biographies open things up for us.

I think Paul Johnson, the great British historian, did a good job with his history of the

American people. And that's a good one to return to regularly.

Also, there are a number of really good foundational works that have recently been produced.

Kevin Swanson has produced some great curricula for students in his curriculum series, including a massive volume on American history from a covenantal and biblical perspective.

Russ Walton's great work on the American Covenant is also incredibly helpful.

You mentioned earlier, Chris, Paul Jaley, he's done remarkable work outlining the vision of the founders, and his material is incredibly helpful.

So there's a lot of good material out there. Great. And, well, there's great material in the book we're talking about today,

An Experiment in Liberty. And guess what, Walburn, you are getting a free copy of it as long as you give us your full mailing address.

And CVBBS .com will ship that out to you at no cost to you or to Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

And for everybody listening who is unable to receive a free copy today, don't forget that you can purchase the book at canonpress .com.

Before I go to any more listener questions, I want to address something that you highlight in the book.

How does John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress relate to the pathway to independence?

And I just interviewed my friend Pastor Jacob Tanner yesterday, who wrote a biography of Bunyan, The Tinker's Progress.

But tell us about what relationship this classic work that, for a number of years, and it may still be true, has only been second place in book sales to the

Bible worldwide. But tell us about what the relationship is. Well, it was one of the books that was held precious by virtually all

Americans. If a family had books, they would most assuredly have a

Bible and they would have Pilgrim's Progress. If they had no other books, they would at least have those two in their home.

As a result, the story of Pilgrim, Christian, and his journey to the

Celestial City was familiar. Its literary tropes, its images, things like the

Slough of Despond and the Hill of Difficulty, Vanity Fair, these were a part of the common motif, the literary backdrop for the founding fathers.

But of course, the work is profoundly theological, and so along with this sort of literary backdrop, there was the theological backdrop and the understanding of the vanity of worldly affairs, the allure of deceivers and false teachers, and the power of the gospel for redemption.

All of this would have been very familiar to virtually every

American. And then after the Great Awakening, it became almost the bedtime story hour for a whole new generation of Americans that would have included all of the founding fathers.

So Bunyan is incredibly important. It would be along the lines of, you know, the greatest cultural phenomenon beside Whitefield and the revivals of the

Great Awakening. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress was among the most influential thought -shaping tools of a kingdom during the founding period.

Great. And we do have Zane in Glenpool, Oklahoma, who has a question.

And Zane says, our founding father,

John Adams, was famous for saying, our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.

It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. Do conservative

Christians put too much stock in the United States Constitution for the preservation of wholesome and biblical worldviews in this country?

Do we put too much stock in the Constitution? Probably yes, but probably no.

I am sort of on both sides of the fence here. The problem is that politics is always downstream from culture.

And so culture is where all of the battles are. Right now in modern

America, we're not really fighting a battle over the Bible any longer. We're fighting a battle over the dictionary.

And that's right. We're way downstream when it comes to politics today.

And so if we rely solely on the Constitution to win the cultural battle, we will always lose.

We'll always lose. But the Constitution was never intended to do that.

The Constitution is simply a seatbelt. It's a restraint. It's intended to provide, in a sense, our magistrates with their job descriptions.

And so in that regard, it's an incredibly helpful tool. For as long as the

Constitution stands, it's a tool that we can use. Is it the tool that we use to win back our culture?

Absolutely not. It is the Scriptures and the Scriptures alone, by the power of the

Spirit and the proclamation of the word and Bible -believing churches all across the nation that are responsible for that.

But the Constitution is not irrelevant. It's not perfect. Anyone could have quibbles with it and take exceptions to it.

But it is still a remarkable tool, one of the most remarkable governmental compacts that the world has ever seen.

And the fruits of this compact are evident, as America's great experiment in liberty gave flower to one of the most remarkable nations and civilizations the world has ever seen.

You know, interestingly, a nice segue here to the

American Constitution, the United States Constitution, is a discussion of Patrick Henry, because I know that there's even a division on Henry amongst conservative

Christians. Probably a minority of Christians, conservative Christians, are very critical of Patrick Henry because they claim he was against the

U .S. Constitution. But perhaps you have your own thoughts on that, and tell us why he is included as an integral part of the path to independence.

Well, Patrick Henry was a great orator. He was a fine lawyer. He took a lead in the fight against the

Stamp Acts in the lead -up to the great conflict of the

War of Independence. It was his speech, give me liberty or give me death, that really catalyzed the

Virginia delegates. And he was a leader in helping to shape the future of the nation as governor of the state of Virginia during the war itself.

And it is true that he had doubts about the

Constitution. He was fearful that it entrusted too much centralizing power to the federal government.

And so he opposed the ratification of the Constitution at first.

He essentially argued that it needed a whole series of protections of rights.

And it seems that his influence helped to shape the ratification debates in a number of other states, to the point that eventually the

Founding Fathers realized that their initial draft of the

Constitution was indeed insufficient. And so they immediately wrote 12 amendments, 10 of which were passed and became what we know of as the

Bill of Rights. So once the Bill of Rights was drafted,

Patrick Henry shifted. He was never disloyal to the cause of independence, but he believed that as flawed as the

Articles of Confederation might have been, that the dangers of an ever -growing, ever -encroaching, all -enveloping federal government was intolerable and altogether at odds with the

American founding vision. So he became satisfied after the

Bill of Rights. He still had concerns that unchecked, the federal government could become looming and large, which is part of the reason why he and so many

Southerners yearned for the westward expansion of the territory of the

United States. They felt like that if there was enough distance between the powers of the federal government in Washington and the rest of the states, that that would ameliorate the problems.

Of course, we now know that because of the speed of communication and technology and all of the rest, that's no longer an impediment.

And Patrick Henry was right about the concern of an ever -growing, all -powerful federal government.

But you, since you include him in this book as a hero that is integral to America's path to independence,

I'm assuming that Henry's contributions to the founding of this nation far outweigh anything that we should be critical of him for.

Oh, absolutely. And I am not the least bit critical of him. I think that his concerns about the

Constitution were warranted. And were the Constitution not to have the

Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments, I'm not sure that the

American experiment in liberty would have lasted 250 years. Now, I don't want to bring us on a rabbit trail, but a thought popped into my head, and if you care to comment on it, less than 100 years later, we have

Abraham Lincoln, who was sovereignly used of God and his providence to bring liberation to the slaves, and is considered a great hero by the majority of Americans.

But there is a segment of Christianity, maybe even especially

Reformed Christianity, and it's probably still a minority within the Reformed faith, but there are people who know something about history and Lincoln that do not view him as a hero, not because he freed or was used of God to free the slaves, but they view him as a tyrant who grossly abused the federal government power.

If you could comment on your own thoughts regarding this. Yeah, what I would say first is that Lincoln was indeed sovereignly used by God to end the horrors of chattel slavery, and for all of any other political disagreements that we might have with him, we need to celebrate that reality.

God used him. God used him powerfully. Secondly, I think it's important to realize that Lincoln himself was on a spiritual journey.

Stephen Mansfield traces this in his wonderful book on Lincoln's tortured relationship with God.

Lincoln was converted late in his life, and was slated to be baptized the

Sunday following his attendance at a particular play in Ford's Theater.

He never made it that Sunday, but the truth is that Lincoln was, you know, you can see it beginning at Gettysburg and then proceeding to the end of the war, him wrestling with the question of redemption and the sovereignty of God and so on.

So having said those two things, what I would say about Lincoln's approach to federal power and authority is that he was a precursor to modern political machinations in the

White House. He sort of pioneered, he sort of took some of the liberties that Andrew Jackson had taken and vastly expanded them, and he gave us that sort of authority that we now see applied in executive orders from the

White House. I would hesitate to call it tyranny, but there were a number of exceedingly irregular, forceful steps that Lincoln took.

Again, we have to consider the context, it's wartime, and he's holding together a fractious sort of coalition in the

North. He has extreme radicals in his cabinet, so, you know, holding the reins on all of that was no easy task.

Doris Goodwin has profiled this in her book about the rivals within his cabinet.

But bottom line, Lincoln did take great liberties with the law and with the exercise of authority and power, no question.

Well, I'm delighted to hear, because I never heard, at least to my memory, I never heard that he was preparing to be baptized the

Sunday after he tragically was murdered. Yeah, you should really get

Stephen Mansfield's book on Lincoln. It's incredibly helpful, and it traces the story of his on -again, off -again struggles with God in his marriage, in his heart, with depression.

I mean, it's a really, really helpful and insightful work. Great. We have

Aaron, which I not long ago found out actually means Ireland in Gaelic.

Aaron in Indianapolis, Indiana, says, I wonder if Dr.

Grant could share how he suggests we can currently attempt to preserve our liberties these days, particularly if there are no biblically faithful representatives for whom we can vote in our area.

Obviously, we pray. Yeah, today, as we speak, today is the

National Day of Prayer. Christians ought to be gathering together, crying out to God.

We need to be a faithful, praying people. But we also need to take one further step, and that is we need to be involved in our local communities.

We may not be able to make a difference in Washington. We may not even be able to make much of a difference in our state capital.

But in our neighborhood, in our village or town, our community, we can make a difference.

If Christians are engaged, we make ourselves, as Booker T. Washington used to say, indispensable to our community, then we will see our voice and our influence rise with the favor of those around us, those that we serve.

This is the age -old strategy of evangelism that Christians have used forever.

Step in during the times of plague. Step in during the times of economic downturns and care for those who are around us.

Work hard to make our communities better. The real future of the restoration of our republic is going to be a grassroots -up movement rather than a top -down movement.

The most important election in November may not be at the top of the ballot.

It may be all of those often neglected bottom -of -the -ballot positions.

And if we get engaged with good people in good campaigns or in good caring movements in our neighborhoods, organizations that are making a difference, crisis pregnancy centers, food banks, outreaches to the poor, we can begin to make a real difference.

It starts at the bottom, not at the top. Well, thank you, Aaron, and thanks for providing your mailing address in Indianapolis, Indiana, because you have won a free copy of An Experiment in Liberty and CVBBS .com

will ship that out to you. Thank you so much. We have Garrison in Orient Point, New York, and Garrison says,

I finally was able to complete the very large biography of George Washington by Peter Lilback of Westminster Theological Seminary, and he is quite certain that George Washington should not only be considered an

American hero but a Christian hero. On the other hand, I have heard that there is a professor at a major Calvinist seminary who believes that the evidence proves that George Washington was no

Christian at all. Do you have any opinions on this? Yeah, Peter Lilback is a friend of mine, and I think that his book is exhaustive and incredibly helpful.

I also think that going back in history and trying to determine, you know, who's redeemed and who's not is an exercise in futility.

We can't know men's hearts who are standing right next to us, much less those who have been, you know, in the grave for 200 and some odd years.

So my perspective is that there were flaws in Washington's theology.

There were flaws in relation to his engagement with Freemasonry.

However, his life and his faith commitment is evident at every turn.

I don't think that there is much of a doubt that he was redeemed. Was he altogether theologically sound?

No. But thank goodness for all of us, that is not a prerequisite in the redemption of Christ.

That's right. Amen. Well, thank you, Garrison, and please give us your full mailing address in Orient Point, New York, as you've also won a copy of An Experiment in Liberty.

We're going to our final break right now. If anybody would like to join those still waiting to have their questions asked and answered, hopefully we'll have time to read your questions.

Send in your email immediately to chrisarnsen at gmail .com. We'll be right back. Please do not go away. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

If you've watched my Dividing Line webcast often enough, you know I have a great love for getting Bibles and other documents vital to my ministry rebound to preserve and ensure their longevity.

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That's ptlbiblerebinding .com. Every day at thousands of community centers, high schools, middle schools, juvenile institutions, coffee shops, and local hangouts,

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That's liyfc .org. Oh, hail the power of Jesus' name.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm Pastor Keith Allen of Lindbrook Baptist Church, a

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

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.

At Lindbrook Baptist Church, we believe the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the inspired word of God, inerrant 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.

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.

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

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

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

Lindbrookbaptist .org. That's L -Y -N -Brookbaptist .org.

This is Pastor Keith Allen of Lindbrook 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 works, so that no one may boast.

The Lord bless you in the knowledge of himself. It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners from all over the world.

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

Dr. Joe Moorcraft. I'm Joe Reilly, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener here in Atai, in County Kildare, Ireland, going back to 2005.

One of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is 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.

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

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

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

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

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,

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

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

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

If you visit, tell them Joe O 'Reilly, an Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener, from a tie in County Kildare, Ireland, sent you.

Greetings, this is Brian McLaughlin, president of the SecureComm Group, and supporter of Chris Arnzen's Iron Sharpens Iron radio program.

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

We can be reached at securecommgroup .com, that's securecommgroup .com.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Chris Arnzen here. I am forever grateful to Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service for their generous financial support of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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Now shipping worldwide. Welcome back, Dr. Grant.

We have Braxton in Falk, Arkansas, who wants to know, from your study of church history and American history, are you aware if there were any loyalists to the

British throne that later turned around for patriotism and are now to be considered heroes?

There were a number of the early grandfathers who really wrestled with the whole question of when to confront the crown.

And as a result, many really hesitated. Congress actually took up the question of the possibility of declaring independence early on in the spring of 1776.

Then after Patrick Murray's rousing speech before the

Virginia delegates at Bruton Parish Church, he basically was able to convince many that they needed to proceed at least with a covenant lawsuit against king and parliament.

But there was a lot of hesitation. So when five of the men were selected to draft that, beginning with the resolution on June the 9th, 1776, there were still tons of debates.

And the founding fathers were not resolved. They were still very loyal.

I often call them reluctant revolutionaries. And so the first draft of this covenant lawsuit sequence that we know of as the

Declaration of Independence came back and it did not pass. It went back for a revision.

It was brought before the delegates again on July the 2nd.

It eventually passed, although there were still all kinds of questions that the founders had as a result that they did not announce to anyone that they had drafted it until July the 8th.

And the first public readings were not until the end of July and the beginning of August.

All of this was hesitation due to the fact that they were loyalists at heart.

There were a number of firebrands who were ready to declare independence, but most of the founders were loyalists at heart.

There were a number of people who changed their minds during the course of the war.

But after Lexington and Concord, after the Boston Massacre, the loyalists were far fewer and further between.

And as the war progressed, public opinion continued to swing toward the patriots.

What really sealed the deal for virtually all of the

Americans were the pulpits of America. Men like Nathaniel West and a host of others just really zeroed in on the

Bible's Declaration of Liberty and the necessity to protect our children, our grandchildren, and future generations from the possibility of tyranny.

So there aren't great examples of someone who was a

Tory at the beginning and then later switched sides. Obviously, you have a few notorious examples like Benedict Arnold who went the other way,

Benjamin Franklin's son, William, went the other way. But virtually all of the founders were reluctant and were loyalists at heart.

Yes, in fact, I live about a three -minute walk from a place where Major Andre was imprisoned, who was the spy of British and French descent whom

Benedict Arnold, I believe, gave the maps where our soldiers were located.

And he was imprisoned temporarily in this building near my house and later executed in Philadelphia.

But I just thought that was an interesting bit of information there. And about—

You have lots of history in Carlisle. Oh, yeah. If you could, in 90 seconds or so, summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners about this book.

Well, first and foremost, the struggles that the founding fathers had in their day are struggles that we continue to have.

The encroachments of power over freedom are constant.

Great battles don't stay won. So part of the reason why it's important for us to study our history is so that we can not only know from whence we have come, but to understand from here, where do we go and how do we learn lessons?

What did they do right? What did they do wrong? And how do we confront the difficulties of our day?

That's really what this book is about. Well, I want to remind our listeners, if you want to purchase this book, go to canonpress .com,

canonpress .com. We thank them again for providing the copies that we gave away to our listeners who submitted questions today.

Also, don't forget about Parish Presbyterian Church in Franklin, Tennessee. Their website is parishpres .org,

parishpres .org. And don't forget about Dr. George Grant's personal website, georgegrant .net,

georgegrant .net. It has been such an honor and privilege to have you on the show today. I look forward to many returns from you in the future.

And I want to quickly remind our listeners, if you're a man in ministry leadership, you're invited to the

Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio free pastor's luncheon on Thursday, June 6th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m.

in Perry County, Pennsylvania, featuring Dr. Joel Beakey as our keynote speaker. Everything is free of charge, including a heavy sack of free brand new books that have been donated by Christian publishers all over the

United States and United Kingdom. Everything is free. Send in your registration to chrisarmson at gmail .com.

Thursday, June 6th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. is the date and time. I want to remind everybody listening that Jesus Christ is a far greater