September 30, 2016 Show with Mark G. Johnston on “The Reformation Is Not Over”

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Now here's our host Chris Arnson. Good afternoon

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Friday on this last day of September 30th, 2016 and I'm so delighted to have a guest on for the very first time today,

Mark Johnston, all the way from Cardiff, Wales. He's minister of Bethlehem Presbyterian Church in Cardiff, which is a congregation within the

Evangelical Presbyterian Church of England and Wales denomination and he is also a trustee of the

Banner of Truth Trust and the author of three commentaries in Banner of Truth's Let's Study series, including

John, Colossians and Philemon and 2nd Peter and Jude and he is also the author of Our Creed for Every Culture and for Every Generation, which is a

PNR publishing work and we are going to be discussing the theme, The Reformation is

Not Over and we'll also be discussing a Bible conference right here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania where Pastor Mark Johnston will be preaching

October 27th along with one of my favorite preachers on the planet Earth, Sinclair Ferguson, but it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron, Pastor Mark Johnston.

Good evening Chris, it's 11 o 'clock, well it's nine o 'clock at night here but it's good to be able to join you in the afternoon over there in Pennsylvania.

I'm looking forward to our conversation this evening. Yes, well I'd also like to right off the bat give our email address for any of our listeners that may want to join us with a question of their own.

It is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Before we even get into a little bit about your own background, your upbringing in Northern Ireland where you're originally from, let's hear something about Bethel Presbyterian Church and also about the

Evangelical Presbyterian Church of England and Wales denomination. Bethel Church is actually older, well almost older than the

Presbyterian Church in England and Wales. Bethel was was planted about 25 years ago and it was planted with a deliberate desire to reach a very needy part of Cardiff out in the western edge of the city.

There's an area around the church which is called the Ely Estate on the edge of Cardiff.

It consists of some 15 ,000 plus people and it's listed among one of the worst places to live in the country, believe it or not.

Yeah, that's made me think twice before coming to this part of the world. When I tell

Americans that my church is in Ely Cardiff, they say that's really exciting. When you say to somebody in Wales that you're working in Ely, they roll their eyes and groan.

So the church was planted in this estate with a very deliberate desire to try and reach out the people of this area.

So the estate falls into kind of two halves. Ours is sort of the aspiring middle class end of the estate where we've got quite a few people who are in white collar jobs, teaching, office jobs, that kind of thing.

We probably have a parish of around eight, nine thousand people in our locality. We're the only church within probably a mile, mile and a half radius of where the church is located.

And the vast majority of people around us are unchurched. So the church was established there 25 years ago with a view to reaching that community.

The founding fathers, it was a small group of about six or seven families that came across originally from another church, that they had a very clear vision.

First and foremost, they wanted to establish a church in the area. So they couldn't afford a building.

So they began to meet in local schools and halls initially until eventually they were able to get a property of their own.

But they also had the desire to establish some kind of Christian school in the area as well. And for a brief time, they did have a

Christian school going along with the church plant. But unlike the

US, it's often proved difficult to get meaningful and sustainable

Christian schooling established in the UK. And after several years of trying, they eventually closed the school down.

Again, part of their vision was to become part of the community. In other words, not just to come in as kind of outsiders and do

Blitzkrieg evangelism, hit and run evangelism, but they wanted to actually settle in the area and get to know their neighbors and become part of the local neighborhood.

And for the best part of those 25 years, they've poured heart and soul into that work.

When I arrived in the church two years ago, the church had grown somewhat from those early days, but not significantly,

I think, with the ups and downs of people moving on and people passing away over against those who come in, that the numbers had remained fairly static for the best part of that time.

So I inherited a congregation of 30 members and an average attendance of high 30s, low 40s on the

Lord's Day. So the past two years has been very much a challenge of seeking to build up and reach out with the gospel.

The fact that we're Presbyterian is somewhat unusual, believe it or not, in the UK, even though Scotland especially and Ireland also were regarded as the kind of cradle of British Presbyterianism, and it was the

Irish who exported Presbyterianism to the US under Francis McKimmy many years ago, when the first Presbytery was established in Philadelphia.

Nevertheless, Presbyterianism in the UK has largely dwindled in England and Wales by the mid -60s.

It had gone very liberal and Unitarian and eventually amalgamated with Congregational and Methodist churches to form the

United Reform Church, which was neither united nor reformed. That's right, and I know that the Calvinistic history of Wales is largely

Methodist, isn't it? The very rare Calvinist Methodist group. Yeah, Wales was interesting in that sense, in that what was called the

Presbyterian Church was also known as the Calvinistic Methodists. So they actually produced their own confession of faith back in the 19th century that reflected that.

They had a concern not only for Westminster theology, Westminster confession and catechism theology, but also for the blending of theology with experience, and so they would have carried on a

Methodist practice of experience meetings on a regular basis. Then Dr. Martin Lloyd -Jones was from that background, was he not?

He was, yeah, that was his formative background, and he carried very much of that into his life and work in ministry, first of all in Wales when he was the

Minister of Outreach Work with the Calvinistic Methodists, and then later when he went to London.

Yes, and by the way, I don't know if you know my old friend Peter Jeffrey, who was at least for many years in Port Talbot, Wales, but if you ever run across him

I would appreciate you extending to him my greetings. Peter Jeffrey, who actually at one time pastored

Sandfields, which was one of Dr. Martin Lloyd -Jones' original churches.

That was Martin Lloyd -Jones' first church, and where he saw so much blessing in terms of significant conversions.

Peter Jeffrey's carried on that desire to reach out. He's been a huge influence, not just in terms of his preaching ministry over here in the

UK, but also his very helpful evangelistic and discipling writing ministry that he's carried out here as well.

Yes, and I have the privilege of having Peter Jeffrey sit at my own mother's bedside when she was dying of pancreatic cancer in the 1990s, and Peter spent at least a half hour alone with her.

It was greatly encouraging to me when he emerged from that sick room, giving me nothing but reasons to be absolutely confident that my mother would be entering glory with Christ.

He was convinced that she believed in the gospel. I had already come to that conclusion, but it was very reassuring to have

Peter Jeffrey add weight to that testimony. So I was very, very blessed that he did that.

He happened to be visiting the United States preaching at the congregation where I was a member of at the time,

Calvary Baptist Church in Amityville, Long Island, which no longer exists. It merged with another church and is now

Grace Reform Baptist Church of Merrick, Long Island. But the church in Amityville is no stranger to Sinclair Ferguson, another friend of yours, because Sinclair traveled to America to preach there on a number of occasions.

That's where I first met him as well. And the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in England and Wales, the specific denomination which you said is younger than the congregation where you're pastor, why was that specific denomination formed to begin with?

I think it was formed out of a sense of dismay of what was happening, especially in England, but also in Wales, in that in the 1960s, partly as a result of just the growing influence of Mark Lloyd -Jones and those pastors who came under his mentorship, there was a lot of concern over what united them and how they would move forward together.

So the ecumenical movement was taking its toll upon the mainline denominations, Presbyterian Church we mentioned, but also within the

Episcopal Church in the UK. And Dr. Lloyd -Jones fostered the vision of trying to draw like -minded

Reformed Christians and Evangelical Churches together into a closer collaboration.

I'm not sure he had a clear plan of how that should work, but of course there was that well -known public confrontation that took place between Dr.

Lloyd -Jones and John Stott in Westminster Central Hall in 1966, where it appeared to some that the doctor was calling for Reformed Evangelical Churches to secede from the

Church of England or to secede from other mixed denominations. But it wasn't clear as to what they were to come into, so a lot of ministers and churches did leave but seceded into independency.

So here in Wales, a lot of churches came out of the Presbyterian Church of Wales and formed independent churches, but their doctrine began to drift in terms of their appreciation of worship.

So it was in the early 1980s that a conference was held in London called the

London Presbyterian Church. It was hosted by a congregation of the Free Church of Scotland in London, in the shadows of St.

Paul's Cathedral. Edmund Clyney from Westminster Seminary was invited to be one of the main speakers, and John Nicholls, the pastor of the church, also spoke, and Donald MacLeod came down from Edinburgh to speak.

And there was a group of about 75 turned up for that conference, and it was just the beginning of a rediscovery of what

Presbyterianism could be, a rediscovery of the theology that has underpinned historic

Presbyterianism, an appreciation of the meaningful use of the Westminster Confection of Faith and Catechisms.

So out of that, an association was formed of interested people and interested congregations, and it was really only in the early to mid -90s that it actually went on from that to become a fledgling denomination.

Yeah, and if I'm not mistaken, I think Dr. MacLeod was one of my pastor's seminary professors,

David Campbell. That's correct, he was. He had a huge influence on a lot of men and continues to do so even in his retirement.

Yes, and David Campbell is a precious man of God, and he's definitely going to be missed as he returns to the

UK, God willing, in November, and it's going to be hard to replace a man like that.

Now, I know that you were raised in Northern Ireland. I have some friends from Northern Ireland, some of them in the

Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, and I have other friends in different denominations and backgrounds there.

Tell us something about your specific upbringing there in Northern Ireland. Well, I was born as the son of an

Episcopalian rector, so he was a pastor in an Episcopalian church, which was not surprising in some ways, but I think what was surprising about our particular home was that the

Episcopalian church in Ireland at that time was largely liberal, sacramental in its theology, so there weren't many evangelicals, and there certainly weren't many evangelicals of Reform conviction.

My father had been a policeman for 11 years. He had sensed a call to the ministry early on after his conversion, but resisted it, but eventually was persuaded to pursue his call to the ministry, and so he went to London to train in a college with Reformed and evangelical convictions.

So he spent three years there, and during that time he worshipped with Dr. Lloyd Jones in Westminster Chapel and also with Ian Murray in Grove Chapel, the two of the key

Reform pulpits in London at that time. So he came under a very strong Reformed influence in his own ministry, so he came back.

He spent a brief time as an assistant in an Episcopal church on the mainland, but then he came back to Ireland into what was very barren spiritual territory in the denomination he came to.

So he came to a parish of about 120 families. It had never had an evangelical ministry before.

It had never had sermons longer than five minutes before. He reckoned there might be one born -again person in the congregation, so he came to this church, and he began to exercise a very strong Reformed expository ministry there.

So that gives you some idea about the kind of convictions that prevailed in my home, and being brought up as the son of the manse, being brought up in a home that had a library of probably 2 ,000 books at that stage.

It was probably about 4 ,000 or 5 ,000 books by the time I left home, but there was a strong theological, spiritual influence in my upbringing.

And looking back on my upbringing, I think you always look back on your childhood years differently as you get older, appreciate them in a different way.

I'm sure it was the ethos of the home to begin with. It was a very open home, a welcoming home for all kinds of people to come into.

It was shaped by strong convictions about how faith makes a difference to how family life is shaped and molded.

It was a home where there was clear, not only reading of the Scriptures, but instruction in what they taught.

And the great thing was, it wasn't just teaching, faithful teaching, but it was coupled with a faithful example from both my parents.

So all of that contributed to the kind of mix of ingredients that was affecting me.

And I think as well the fact that being brought up in the Episcopal Church and having the

Book of Common Prayer as the liturgy that shaped our worship week in and week out, at the time it probably felt somewhat stodgy and I wasn't entirely engaged, but it became so much part of me.

And the great words of Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer just seemed to get woven into your mindset and your way of thinking.

So all of that had an impact on the way in which I was shaped in those early years. Yes, Thomas Cramner is definitely a fascinating figure from church history.

I've interviewed Dr. Ashley Null. I don't know if you're familiar with him, but he is one of the foremost living experts on Thomas Cramner.

And what a story about after he recanted the Protestant faith out of fear for his very life, he later, out of guilt overwhelming him, recanted his recantation and as he was burned alive wanted his hand that signed his original recantation against Protestantism, he wanted the hand that signed that to be burned first.

And it was interesting that the impact of that martyrdom on the wider British public at that time was really quite profound because he was one of that first batch of martyrs for the

English Reformation that took place when the tides seemed to be turning against the

Protestant Reformation in England. But for the average person in the public watching what was happening, watching a man die so courageously, and even as he faced death to make such a strong statement that he had been wrong to recant his faith and to publicly retract that recantation, the very act of putting that man to death had the opposite effect than his persecutors expected.

It actually turned people towards the Reformed faith rather than against it. Yes, and of course the 39 articles of religion that he was involved in drafting are a series of teachings that most

Reformed Christians of any denomination could embrace, and very clearly in opposition to the heresies of Rome, which is another thing that is very rare today in the

Episcopal and Anglican churches to have such an outspoken position against Roman Catholic heresies.

Yes, and of course the 39 articles became a significant factor in the shaping of the

Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms, which in turn became the basis for the 1689 London Philadelphia Confessions for the

Baptist Churches and then the Savoy Declaration for the Congregational Churches. So the truth enshrined in those articles of faith actually have had a far -reaching impact upon the way in which confessions of other churches have been shaped since then.

And I had interviewed a number of months ago Philip DeCourcy, who is a fellow

Ulsterman. I don't know if you know Philip, he's now pastoring in California here in the States, but he was a police officer in Northern Ireland, a royal constable

I think is the phrase. Royal Ulster Constabulary. Yeah, that's right, and he had a very interesting conversion story himself.

What was the climate like in your home and your neighborhood in regard to that whole conflict with Catholics and Protestants and the

IRA and so on? Was that a much a part of your everyday life when you were growing up or is that so?

It was. I was nine years old when the Troubles as they came to be known broke out again.

I mean Ireland has had 800 years of conflict sadly and part of the problem with the

Irishman generally is that he's got too long a memory. He doesn't forget. Yes, so you'll well remember how quickly the

Troubles escalated from civil rights disturbances and protests right through to arms and bombs being used.

And it escalated so that within two years, 1971 was a bloody year in the

Troubles and I was 11 at that time. I remember at that particular year I was staying with grandparents in Belfast over the

New Year. I had a radio that could tune into the shortwave radio band of the police frequencies and in the space of I think 20 minutes over the turning of the year from 10 past 12, 10 bombs went off in Belfast and you could hear it being reported and being pursued through the police wave band.

So it was a huge loss of life. In the 30 years that ensued, you'll well remember late teens and through my 20s, you woke up in the morning turned on the radio and they'll give a question that was subliminally in your mind.

Who was killed last night? Where was the latest atrocity being committed? In terms of where my family home was, where my father's parish was, it was one of the unusual places in the north of Ireland which tends to be quite segregated into Catholic and Protestant communities.

Ours was actually quite an integrated community with Catholics and Protestants living in close proximity to each other.

The elementary school that I went to very unusually was a mixed

Protestant -Catholic educational institution. Normally Roman Catholics would be educated in the church schools and Protestants would have been educated in state schools but this was one of I'm sure less than five schools in the province where we were educated side by side.

So for the average Protestant or Catholic growing up in Ireland at that time, you would not have met somebody from the opposite faith until you went to university or college.

But I grew up with my best friends were Roman Catholics at that time and it was just interesting to be in that context.

From a gospel point of view, it was fascinating because under normal circumstances, a

Protestant would never go into a Roman Catholic church and vice versa except for funerals. But the practice was that if a funeral was held in the

Catholic church, the Catholics would go into the building for the service, the

Protestants would remain in the graveyard ready for the burial and vice versa. But in my father's church, he made a deliberate point of using funerals as an opportunity to proclaim the gospel.

He entered the ministry with the conviction that at funerals you don't speak of the dead, you speak to the living and he proclaimed the gospel.

The Catholics standing in the graveyard could overhear what was being preached inside and they began to realize that there's somebody in there saying that you can actually know where you're going after you die, even though their priests left them not knowing where they would go and speaking only of purgatory.

So they began to church to listen to the sermons at the funerals and the

Protestants became so incensed by what they were hearing they began to stand in the graveyard. But over his ministry, it got to the point where significant numbers of Roman Catholics on their deathbed would call for him instead of the priest to bring them

God's word. So it was actually a wonderful opportunity. Wow, that's something.

But at the same time, he knew the tragedy and I knew the tragedy of whenever I started in the ministry of having to officiate at the funerals of men who'd been murdered by terrorists and minister to families who had been devastated because fathers, brothers, sons had been murdered.

So the reality of the Troubles was real. I think it had an impact upon the spirituality of the province.

In a strange way, somebody observed, interestingly, after the Troubles officially ended in 1994, that in the subsequent years, the attendance of weekly prayer meetings in Protestant churches began to diminish significantly.

Whereas during the years of the Troubles, the prayer meetings have been strong and have been vibrant.

Now, a lot of people who are raised in Christian homes, such as you, especially with a pastor for a father and so on, they don't recall a time in their life when they were an enemy of the

Gospel, an unbeliever. As far back as they can remember, they believed in the things of Christ and in the

Bible and the Gospel. Did you have any kind of crisis experience growing up where you realized that you needed to be rescued from sin and you needed to repent and you needed to become something that you were not previously?

There certainly was a particular moment when I can look back to. It was February 1970.

I was not long after my 10th birthday, and there had been a week of outreach organized in the church again at that time in Ireland.

It wasn't uncommon for evangelical churches to have what they would call a week of mission or outreach when they would invite non -churchgoers and those who weren't professing

Christians to come along and hear the Gospel being proclaimed. At that particular time, you could easily fill a church with non -Christians who were at least willing to give the

Gospel a hearing. There was a week taking place at my father's church. He brought a preacher across from England as the main preacher that week, and he was staying in our home.

He was a wonderful man. He was very personable. He had a genuine interest in kids as well as in adults.

I just remember one afternoon he said, can we talk? We went into the lounge in our home and we talked.

He asked me about what I knew about the Gospel and why it was important and what salvation meant.

I think because of what I've been taught and because of what I knew from my upbringing, I had all the right answers about the reality of sin, the seriousness of sin, the consequences of sin, the fact that we couldn't save ourselves from sin.

But the whole reason why Jesus came into the world, and specifically the reason why Jesus went to the cross, was to save sinners.

If that is the Gospel, then the response that the Gospel calls for is that we believe in the

Lord Jesus Christ, that we don't just acknowledge him in some abstract way, but we respond to him in a personal way.

So with all the simplicity of a childlike faith, I prayed for forgiveness that day.

I asked that the Lord would accept me for Christ's sake. I've often looked back at that as the day of my conversion.

I think on later reflection, I certainly see it as the day when it all began to crystallize for me, when it began to make sense in a coherent way and gave me the basis for going on from that point.

Well, praise God. And we're going to a station break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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We look forward to hearing from you and your questions for our guest Mark Johnston after these messages.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Sorensen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours is

Mark Johnston. He is minister of Bethel Presbyterian Church in Cardiff, Wales, a trustee of the

Banner of Truth Trust, and the author of three commentaries in Banner of Truth's Let's Study series, one on John, one on Colossians and Philemon, and one on 2

Peter and Jude. He's also the author of Our Creed for Every Culture and for Every Generation, published by PNR Publishing.

If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrissorensen at gmail .com. chrissorensen at gmail .com.

I am very happy that Pastor Johnston is going to be speaking right here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania at the 2016

Reformation Conference at Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle. He will be speaking with Dr.

Sinclair Ferguson, who is certainly no stranger to most Iron Sharpens Iron listeners, since most of my listeners appear to be

Reformed, although not all of them are, but I'm sure that they are very familiar with Dr.

Ferguson. And for more details on this conference, which is being held Thursday, October 27th from 7 to 9 p .m.,

and it's absolutely free of charge, for more details go to gracebaptistcarlisle .org.

That's gracebaptistcarlisle .org,

and you can get directions and other details on this free Reformation conference featuring my guest

Mark Johnston and Dr. Sinclair Ferguson. And before the break,

Pastor Mark, we reached a point where you gave your testimony of coming to a vibrant and robust faith in Christ, coming to realize a need of repentance and trusting in Christ.

And now that you're a Christian in this period, did you pretty much flow right into the

Reformed faith, or did you go through any phases of being an

Arminian or a Charismatic or anything like that? Were there any doctrinal transformations that you went through?

There were certainly doctrinal challenges. Yes, I came to faith in February of 1980, sorry, 1970.

And in September of that year, six months later, I was sent off to boarding school at the age of 10 and a half.

And I just suddenly found myself in a very non -Christian environment, so away from the protection of a family home, trying to live out my faith with no

Christian friends at all. So that in itself was a challenge, and I began to think things through in terms of how you work out your faith under those circumstances.

I was just thrilled a year after going to boarding school to have three of my best friends became

Christians, and long story short, but we began to meet together to read the

Bible and pray together as 11, 12 -year -olds. And within a couple of years, the group of four of us became a group of 15, most of whom were professing faith, so it was just an unusual time.

But interestingly, as the numbers grew, so the theological challenges grew for us because of the different backgrounds that people were coming from, because of the different doctrinal winds that were blowing in the 1970s in Britain.

So the whole Charismatic issue became a major one, with a lot of new contemporary churches veering towards a

Charismatic style of worship and the Charismatic theology, so there was a lot of pressure on those young lads to go through some kind of secondary experience.

But it made all of us go back to the Bible and inquire of older, wiser

Christians about how to navigate this. So although numbers of that group broke away and went in a

Charismatic direction, most of the guys remained faithful to a more historic understanding of the faith.

And I think it was at that time, probably my mid to late teens, that I really came across, began to wrestle with the issue of free will and the one hand divine sovereignty and the other.

And I do remember rebelling against it, saying it just didn't seem to square with human logic that you have a

God who's absolutely sovereign, who wasn't a divine chess player who just predetermined what people did.

It had a nullified free will, or else you had to give serious place to free will, and I find it hard to reconcile the two.

I remember it was probably the first major theological argument I had with my father. I well remember in the lounge of our rectory, having the debate with him.

He wisely didn't. I'm sure he could have wiped the floor with me in terms of his ability to argue, but he didn't.

He gave me Charles Hodge on divine predestination, which was quite a challenge for a 16 -year -old to read.

But I remember reading it, and beginning to realize that the way that we understand the teaching of scripture is not trying to squeeze it into the confines of human logic, which is flawed, but rather to allow scripture to interpret itself.

And where there are seeming paradoxes, how do you reconcile divine sovereignty with human responsibility, that you live with that tension, and you don't allow yourself to try and make one override the other.

So that was helpful to go through that. So that was a charismatic controversy which concentrated my mind on the whole issue of divine sovereignty and human responsibility.

I remember a quote. Well, I don't have the quote in front of me, but it was something like, this is a quote by Charles Spurgeon, that all men by nature are a minion.

I think that there is great truth in that, because we, especially in the day and age which we live, or even the day and age which we were raised in, to believe that you were not in control over your own destiny and life, especially when you reached a teenage year and became more rebellious against your parents and so on.

This is something that we had to be shown in the scriptures was not true, that God was sovereignly in control over all things.

Do you think that most folks, I mean obviously I've heard of some people who the

Holy Spirit reveals these truths of the doctrines of grace nearly immediately when they are shown the scriptures, but I think that's rare,

I could be wrong, but do you think that most people are by nature, as Spurgeon said, are minion, and I'm not referring of course,

I don't want to give my Arminian friends and brethren the idea that I'm equating

Arminianism with being damned, I don't mean that, but as far as the desire to be the master of your own fate, if you will.

Yeah, I think it is because we're we're hardwired in our fallen nature to think that we are the captains of our soul, the masters of our destiny, and we import that with us into the

Christian life. I think it's interesting, and it's hard to quantify how quickly and how easily people will come to see that that isn't the case.

You'll well remember one, probably the most striking conversion

I've ever witnessed in my whole ministry of a man of 80 years of age coming to faith after he'd been brought up in a

Christian home, he rebelled at the age of 17, didn't darken the door of a church except for funerals and baptisms and weddings until he was converted, and having talked to him before his conversion, he just seemed the most unlikely candidate for conversion, for coming to faith that I could imagine.

But when he did come to faith, I remember the day he told me of his salvation, and it was almost like pages taken out of John Calvin, because he described his conversion not in terms of what he had decided, but what

God had done in his heart and mind. And here was an old man who was profoundly struck in his conversion that he had been brought to faith not by his own choice, but by divine intervention, and God fulfilling a plan that stretched back before the beginning of time.

Amen. Did a lot of the development of the spread of the charismatic movement in the 70s, did a lot of that have to do with Christians who were misunderstanding

Dr. Martin Lloyd -Jones' ideas of a second blessing of the Spirit in the

Christian life? I don't think that would have been true in Ireland so much. It may have been true in certain parts of Wales and a few parts of England as well.

I think it was more to do with the widespread influence of Arminianism generally in the

British evangelical world, but also the influence of the Keswick movement, which strongly promoted in those years as well, strongly promoted the idea of some kind of higher life that we could aspire to, some kind of second blessing that was available.

So already the seeds of that second crisis of spiritual experience have been sown in the hearts and minds of many churches and Christians.

So it was ripe for the charismatic teaching that grew out of Pentecostalism and came to mainstream

Christianity. And I want to also make it clear to my listeners that I have many dear friends and brethren who are charismatic and Pentecostal, many of whom have taught me much in my own life and my own walk with Christ, and some of which are even thoroughgoing

Five -Point Calvinists. But I just think that there is a unique element of danger that exists amongst those who are non -cessationists or continuous because of the easy access to fraudulent proclamations of new revelation.

I think that would be one of the most dangerous areas of the charismatic and Pentecostal movement that even the more theologically sound charismatics and Pentecostals I know are fully aware of, and they themselves speak against some of the more bizarre and heretical new revelations that are being claimed.

Would you agree with that? I think it's part of that, but also it's because in many

Pentecostal charismatic circles, expectations are raised to a level that can never be delivered.

So many people embrace this theology, these promises, hoping that they will experience this higher spiritual level, but with the passage of time they realize that it doesn't come, but they're still struggling with temptation, they're still falling into sin, they're still struggling with the mundane issues of life, they're still struggling with hearts that grow cold towards God.

So the promise of a higher plane of spiritual existence just never materializes.

So the real problem is that not only do they become disillusioned, but their children become disillusioned.

I remember Reverend Dick Lucas, who was the minister of St. Helens Bishops' Gate in London for many decades, he quoted what had happened in Malaysia, where there was a huge influence of the charismatic movement, especially in the late 1970s through into the 80s.

But by the time you got into the 90s, a significant proportion of the next generation simply turned their back on the faith completely.

They saw the disillusionment of their parents, they saw promises that were made by this teaching that weren't delivered, and it turned them off of faith completely.

And I'm sure you would agree, the opposite problem that exists in Christendom is just as unbiblical and heretical, the dry dead formalism where there is no vibrance or joy expressed or even experienced in the

Christian faith, at least the alleged Christian faith professed by those involved in this really dry, depressing, anticlimactic faith that they have.

And that probably is one of the main reasons that the charismatic movement could even rise up and spread, because this other form of dry dead

Christianity was bearing no fruit and demonstrated that there was no joy or realization what

Christ had even saved this from. Yeah, that was certainly a major catalyst in the way in which the charismatic movement developed in the

UK, that a lot of, not just a lot of Christianity generally, but a lot of evangelical

Christianity become dry, lifeless, joyless, and become almost anti -emotional.

As long as you confess the right truths and presented an appearance of orthodoxy, then that was fine, but there was no sense of it affecting the experience.

And yet the genius of the Gospel as it's presented by Paul, as it's traced through into Augustine, as it made its way right through to Calvin and to his successors, the

Puritans, was that the Gospel isn't just for our souls, it's for what we are in our totality as human beings.

And that includes our emotional life as well as every other aspect of what it means to be human.

So if we've experienced a salvation that's genuine, then as the

Bible says again and again, it leads to the joy of the Lord, the joy of his salvation, that it will spill over into a worship that is not just formal and cerebral, but heartfelt and filled with the pleasure of engaging with God.

Amen. We do have a listener, Linda in Hilltop, Texas. She says, my question is, how is the same -sex debate or decisions going on same -sex marriage in Wales or other countries in that part of the world?

It's a huge issue, and the same as it's a huge issue across in the USA at the moment. We're probably further down the road than would be the case in America.

It's very much entrenched in everyday life here in the UK. Our public school system is coming under more and more pressure to insist that public school teachers teach the normality of gay relationships and same -sex marriage, and laterally the rightness of an individual, even a child, being able to choose their gender and choose how they should be expressed.

That's a major issue. Sadly, most of the main political parties have simply jumped on the bandwagon without stopping and thinking about what this means, where it's going to lead long term, and the real issue for churches and for Christians in these various professions is being able to maintain the integrity of their moral convictions and yet not fall foul of the law.

Up until this point, there haven't been too many prosecutions, but there's a very genuine fear that as government policy and the implementation of that policy by local government begins to press home, then it will be inevitable that Christians in the professions and ministers who are speaking out faithfully from their pulpits may well face the sanction of the law for not being prepared to follow where the government is saying we should go.

Yes, that's definitely a frightening thought and a very unfortunately realistic one.

I think there are very real pastoral issues bound up with it as well, because I think more and more churches and church leadership bodies and elders and leaders in churches are wrestling with the issue on the one hand, how do we resist this teaching?

How do we try and correct this teaching in a way that is going to be heard? But also what do we do when these kind of people come into our churches?

Do we treat them as not welcome, or do we accept them at face value that the reason that they're in the church is not to make mischief but actually to find out what the

Bible is saying? How do we handle them pastorally? So that's a genuine challenge that we want to reach out to people in that community.

We don't want to just be heard as those who condemn those who have chosen these lifestyles for themselves, but how do we actually minister to them the words of life and the words of hope that are found in the gospel?

It was clear from the ministry of Christ that he deliberately went to those who were regarded as the moral and social outcasts because of their sexual track record, that he went to them and many of them welcomed his message and were ultimately brought into the church through his ministry.

And if that was the case for our Lord, and also for the Apostle Paul, because his ministry in Corinth certainly yielded that kind of fruit from that kind of community, that somehow in our churches we've got to see this not just as an argument to be made against the false claims of governments and so on, but how do we reach out to people who've embraced that lifestyle?

Well guess what Linda, you are getting absolutely free of charge a copy of one of our guest's books and this one happens to be

Let's Study John, and if you give us your full mailing address that will be shipped out to you as soon as possible by our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania who are sponsors of the

Iron Sharpens Iron program and we thank Todd and Patty Jennings for their faithful support of our program and for mailing out all of the free

Bibles and free books that our listeners win by submitting questions to our guests on Iron Sharpens Iron.

So keep an eye open for Let's Study John by Mark Johnston in the mail Linda and send us your mailing address.

Linda's question actually is a good way to segue into a question that I had before the program even started.

I wanted you to give your analysis of the state of Christianity, especially

Bible -believing evangelical Christianity in the 21st century in the

UK and also in the United States because I know that you had spent the time pastoring here in the

United States, in fact in the very state that I'm living in now, Pennsylvania, and you're also a graduate of Westminster, I believe,

Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. So if you could give us your assessment of what you see in Christianity in the 21st century in the

UK and then contrast it with America, perhaps even give pluses and minuses that you see and of course, in fact you know what

I'm going to do before you even do that, I'm going to go to a station break because I don't want to interrupt you mid -sentence. So we're nearly to the top of the hour at this point anyway, so I'm going to go to our station break and when

I return you could give your assessment, the spiritual assessment of the UK and the

United States when we return. And if anybody else would like to join us on the air, we do have a few of you still waiting to have your questions asked and I appreciate your patience.

We will get to your questions as soon as possible. But others of you, if you'd like to join them with your own questions, our email address again is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away, we will be right back after these messages.

Chris Arnson here and I can't wait to head down to Atlanta, Georgia, and here's my friend Dr. James White to tell you why.

Hi, I'm James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries. I hope you join me at the G3 Conference hosted by Pastor Josh Bice and Praise Mill Baptist Church at the

Georgia International Convention Center in Atlanta, January 19th through the 21st in celebration of the 500th anniversary of the

Protestant Reformation. I'll be joined by Paul Washer, Steve Lawson, D .A. Carson, Vody Balcom, Conrad Mbewe, Phil Johnson, Rosaria Butterfield, Todd Friel, and a host of other speakers who are dedicated to the pillars of what

G3 stands for, gospel, grace, and glory. For more details, go to g3conference .com.

That's g3conference .com. Thanks, James. Make sure you greet me at the

Iron Sharpens Iron exhibit booth while you're there. Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am

I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man,

I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, pastor of Providence Baptist Church. We are a

Reformed Baptist Church and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts.

We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things.

That's not the best recipe for popularity, but since that wasn't the apostles' priority, it must not be ours either.

We believe, by God's grace, that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man, and to be vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us, and to build up the body of Christ in truth and love.

If you live near Norfolk, Massachusetts, or plan to visit our area, please come and join us for worship and fellowship.

You can call us at 508 -528 -5750. That's 508 -528 -5750.

Or go to our website to email us, listen to past sermons, worship songs, or watch our

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That's providencebaptistchurchma .org or even on sermonaudio .com. Providence Baptist Church is delighted to sponsor

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Contact me, Mike Gallagher, Financial Consultant at 717 -254 -6433.

Again, 717 -254 -6433 to learn more about the

Thriving Difference. Lending faith, finances, and generosity.

That's the Thriving Story. Welcome back.

This is Chris Sarnes, and if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with one hour left to go is

Mark Johnston, Minister of Bethel Presbyterian Church in Cardiff, Wales, author of a number of books, and he is going to be one of two speakers at the

Reformation Conference at Carlisle, or I should say Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle.

That is October 27th from 7 to 9 p .m., and for more details on that conference that our guest is speaking at, along with Dr.

Sinclair Ferguson, go to gracebaptistcarlisle .org, gracebaptistcarlisle .org,

and please let them know that you heard about the conference from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Before the break, Pastor Mark, I had asked you about your personal assessment of the spiritual climate of both the

UK and the United States in the 21st century, and if you could just begin to feel free to speak, and you can be as critical of the

United States as you wish, and I'd like to hear that from you.

I'm hoping we can all learn something from your assessment of things. Yeah, it's certainly fascinating for me to try and answer that question as someone who's lived in both countries and who's pastored churches in both those countries.

I think there's a sense in which Christians on either side of the Atlantic suffer from the grass is always greener on the other man's field syndrome, so a lot of British Christians would tend to look across to certainly

Reformed Christianity in the U .S. with envy and think it must be wonderful to be pastoring out there, to be involved in church life out there, and when

I came over to the U .S. to pastor, some of those myths and illusions rapidly evaporated whenever I discovered the realities of church life on your side of the

Atlantic is much the same as being a pastor back in the UK, and one of the things that struck me was the way in which many

American Christians look across to the motherland and see it as the cradle of the

British Reformation, the exporter of much of the Christianity and theology that was so influential in the early days of the

USA. There are those unfair criticisms that are made by British Christians of what they perceive in the

USA, the old quip that in America the evangelical church is 3 ,000 miles wide and one inch deep.

I don't think that that's an inaccurate description. I think it's striking that both our countries have a huge privilege of a very significant

Christian heritage, that Britain can trace its Christian influence right back to late

Roman times, at least in terms of the earliest missionaries coming and the earliest influences of the gospel, probably coming in through Roman soldiers who had come to faith.

It was certainly being consolidated by Patrick and Columba and people like that who were sent out as missionaries by the church in those early days, so the history of the

Christian faith in Britain goes way back into the earliest centuries.

The influence of the Christian faith through the Pilgrim Fathers, as they made that journey from England and from the

Netherlands to the New World, it was with the real desire to establish a

Puritan colony, to see it being shaped with a love for scripture, biblical values, and a genuine

God -centered life in the New World. And of course that translated through into the

Finding Fathers with the Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution, that what lay behind that was certainly a significant

Christian element of the influence that shaped the thinking of those men and the documents that were produced.

So all of those things are something to be thankful for. I think what is so very striking also in both our countries is the speed at which the church has declined, the rate at which the influence has not simply gone into decline, but it's gone rapidly into reverse.

So we're both living in days when our governments are, in a very thinly veiled way, are anti -Christian.

So the church finds itself facing challenges, we've mentioned some of them already, in terms of the issues over human sexuality and how you define it, the issue even of how you define marriage, who on earth would have thought that we would be legislating in favor of a redefinition of marriage that is now not really acceptable, but a legal right for people of the same sex to marry each other.

Those days just seemed unimaginable even five years ago, ten years ago.

And that, as one of my elders in my church in Philadelphia pointed out, is not the fact of change that is surprising, but it's the rate of change that's so surprising.

So I think the church must bear some responsibility for that, if not significant responsibility, in terms of how it's conducted itself and how it's interacted with our respective cultures, with our respective communities and governments, where we find ourselves.

Let me come back to that in a moment. I don't think there's any simplistic explanation for that decline.

I think part of it is that both in the U .S. and the U .K., even evangelical and at times reformed

Christianity has slid in towards a kind of cultural

Christianity rather than a meaningful understanding of salvation and how salvation not just in our lives individually but corporately and collectively in our churches, and how that then translates into our engagement with the world around us.

We are not of the world, Jesus says, but we are in the world, so we're not detached from it.

I think also there's been the whole question of the influence, the grip -grip influence of liberal theology in the one hand, and the wrong kind of ecumenism on the other hand.

That was true very much in the latter part of the 19th century into the early 20th century, which led to a major decline of evangelical churches.

But the sad thing is that even with the resurgence of reformed and evangelical Christianity in both countries, a lot of the issues that are troubling reformed evangelical seminaries as well as churches are actually all liberalism in new clothing.

The same old issues regard for the authority and sufficiency of Scripture is one of them, understanding of the root of human sin and sinfulness as consequences, and of the nature of atonement.

All these things are under discussion and up for debate. The whole justification debate obviously has been raging in both sides of the

Atlantic, predated NT right but certainly popularized by NT right on both sides of the

Atlantic. And again, it's almost hard to imagine something like justification being so openly debated within our circles.

So those things have all had an impact. But I think personally speaking, just from observation,

I think one of the main reasons why evangelical Christianity and reformed

Christianity have lost their influence to such an extent in Britain and in America is because of what

I've often described as the evangelical monastery mentality. That for many

Christians, church is the place to which you retreat from the world. Your social life revolves around the church, the center of your life.

You disengage from the world in order to become involved in the church. And everything about your life becomes so wrapped up in church that you simply lose touch in a meaningful way.

It's almost like evangelical monasticism. Yeah, absolutely. The expression

I don't know if it's used in and around Carlisle, but certainly around Philadelphia, pastors used to talk about the church becoming the

Christian equivalent of the country club, the place you go to to get away from the pressures of life and the pressures of the world.

And if that is the case, then we've lost our calling to be salt and light. We've lost sight of the fact that Christ himself was in the world without being contaminated by the world.

He was there to influence. He was there to engage. He was there to reach out. He was there to be the friend of sinners.

And sadly, what was true of our Lord and what was true of the Apostle Paul and his fellow apostles has often not been true of us as Christians in the service that we render.

So that's part of my assessment of what lies behind the decline of Reformed and evangelical witness in the

UK and the US. I don't know if you want to pick up on any of those things, but that's my two cents worth on that one.

Yeah, I really appreciate that. One thing that I wanted to ask you is in America, you may remember this since you were here not that long ago, there seems to be a condition where a person is declared to be a

Christian merely by the fact that he read a prayer, recited a prayer or something.

And like, for instance, I had someone contact me recently assuring me that Donald Trump had become a

Christian because he accepted Christ into his heart or something like that. And is that something that is as widespread a notion in England and in the

UK in general and Wales and so on in It would be true in some circles in the

UK, not to the same extent as would be the case in the US. Back in the early 2000s,

I had a 10 week sabbatical and went to Mississippi of all places to spend my sabbatical and had 10 delightful weeks in Yazoo City, Mississippi.

And one of the words of advice that I got before I went there was that pastor, you got to realize this, that in Mississippi, everyone thinks they're born again.

And he said, the pastor's job is to teach them that they ain't. That's I don't know if you spoke to the same individual that I did.

But years ago, back in the 90s, I had a conversation with an elderly Presbyterian brother in Mississippi.

And when I told him, I was on the phone with him. And then I told him that I was from New York.

He said, Well, you got it easy in New York, because in New York, you've got to get people saved.

But here in Mississippi, we got to get them lost, then get them say. And in fact, he ran the

Mount Olivet tape library. I remember I don't know if that exists anymore. But we do have a listener in Indianapolis, Indiana, Aaron, who says, please pardon my ignorance on the subject, but how has or will

Brexit affect the churches in the UK, if at all? The whole issue of Brexit is fascinating.

Actually, there's been a rash of articles in the secular press comparing

Brexit and its implications with what happened 500 years ago with the Protestant Reformation.

And interesting that these are these are scholarly articles. And there's certainly a lot of fascinating parallels in terms of what led to the

Reformation politically, as much as ecclesiastically. And what is and what has led to Brexit here in the

UK breaking up, you wanted to leave formally disengaged from Europe. I think you write that even to the patterns.

So the Reformation was slower to take hold in Scotland for political reasons than it was in England and Wales.

And Brexit was rejected by Scotland, even though it was embraced by England and Wales.

So it's just fascinating to see some of the parallels there, that both were a major disengagement from Europe, and both were triggered to a significant degree by corruption in the corridors of power in European government, and also in a desire to reclaim national sovereignty.

So those were two of the factors that, from a political and social point of view, that were involved in the

Reformation, but also in Brexit. I don't think it's going to affect the churches here significantly,

I don't think. Political opinion within the churches is probably divided. I've spoken to Christians who were in favor of remaining in Europe.

I've spoken to Christians who are very much in favor of pulling out. I think probably most

Christians will simply, and most churches, will look for ways to make the most of this decision that our government with our country has made.

So, for example, on the immigration issue, which featured quite prominently in the Brexit debate, some groups in different parts of the country have used this as an excuse to ramp up nationalistic fervor and create the impression that immigrants are no longer welcome in our country.

That isn't universally true, but in certain parts of the country that has been the case. And I think churches in those situations will bend over backwards to say, no, you are welcome, and the church has opened doors regardless of your nationality.

The gospel is not just for certain nations, it's for all nations. So I think churches that are seeking to respond creatively to this situation will see it as a gospel opportunity, and an opportunity to witness to our fellow countrymen that narrow -minded, self -serving politics really do not advance the cause of a nation.

Well, thank you very much, Aaron in Indianapolis, Indiana, and please give us your full mailing address because you are also getting a free copy of Let's Study John, Compliments of the

Banner of Truth, which has its American headquarters about a five -minute drive from where I'm sitting.

And we thank them for their generosity in supplying these books for our listeners today.

I would like you to give a summary of the books that you have written for Banner of Truth.

You have Let's Study John, you have Let's Study Colossians and Philemon, and you have

Let's Study 2 Peter and Jude. If you could give us a brief summary, especially for our listeners who are either new in the faith, they may not be saved at all because we actually have on occasion

Muslims and other individuals who listen to this program. And perhaps if you could, obviously, in giving us a summary of each of those books, you'd be giving a summary of what the teachings are in those biblical books.

I will. Can I just offer a few more thoughts on the...

Oh yeah, definitely. Definitely speak freely. Yeah, what

I said on that point was sort of musing on what lies behind the general decline in both our countries.

I think in terms of things that are definite positives, I think the

U .S., despite Americans bemoaning the state of religion in your country,

I think there's an awful lot to be very thankful for, and an awful lot of things that are a huge contribution that American Christianity makes to the rest of the world.

I think it has to be acknowledged that if it weren't for American Reformed churches and American seminaries,

Reformed seminaries, we wouldn't have seen the impetus in a recovery for the

Reformed faith and a raising of the profile of Reformed Christianity around the world that has been taking place.

From a personal point of view, when I trained for the ministry, why did I cross the

Atlantic to go to Westminster Seminary? Because I genuinely believe, and many people advise me, that if you want a solid and integrated

Reformed theological education, then American seminaries have got so much more to offer.

And I look back on my days in Westminster with a very deep sense of gratitude for what I got there.

I think there's also significantly, and this is somewhat paradoxical actually, I think even though there's such a huge emphasis on individualism in an understanding of the

Christian faith, you know, me and my personal Savior, you know, me and my personal Bible, in American Christianity, certainly in the

Reformed expressions of American Christianity, there's been a real appreciation for the importance of the

Church and the creeds and confessions that underpin and define the

Church in terms of what it believes and how it's meant to function. And I think that's a very important thing because too often, certainly in broad evangelicalism,

Church is a kind of optional extra for people. You fit it in at your convenience, but in Reformed circles there's been a realization that actually

Christ came not to save a bunch of isolated individuals, he came to save a people for himself.

He came to build his Church, and the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church. So I think we owe a lot to that high view of the

Church that's presented in American Reformed Christianity, again, that spills over into an appreciation of worship.

You know, America has some of the worst examples of the worst excesses of the worship, but it also has some fine examples of sane,

God -honoring, rich, deep, uplifting appreciation of worship that often isn't found elsewhere in the world.

Again, just the investment that Americans make in theological education.

I mean, British Reformed seminaries struggled and survived making ends meet, but in America there's a willingness for Christians to put their money where their mouth is.

If they value Reformed Christianity, then they're going to invest in Reformed education, and there's many very high -quality

Reformed theological seminaries and colleges. And again, with the number of Reformed publishing houses,

Reformed magazines, online resources in the U .S., the number of conferences that are Reformed, you're spoiled for choice over there, whereas in the

U .K., you can cut them with the fingers of one hand. And there's a healthy interaction between the different groupings within the

Reformed churches. That Reformed Baptists and Presbyterians and Reformed Episcopalians are able to hold their particular convictions regarding churchmanship and views of the sacrament and so on, but you're not in a way that hides from the fact that you disagree, that you can debate those issues and discuss them in a way that will either change your mind or else it'll strengthen your conviction.

So those are all things, I think, that are major strengths in the U .S. Reformed church life.

I think in terms of what the U .K. has to offer, I think the heritage of expository preaching, and by that I mean preaching in such a way that allows the

Bible to speak for itself. So it's not the preacher imposing his thoughts, his ideas upon the text, but actually opening up the text so that as the people in the pew hear the sermon, they're hearing the

Bible speak today, and they're hearing it speak into their world. So it explains what the message is about, what the text is about, but also it earths it in their personal circumstances and in application.

And that, strikingly, I think is absent from many...this is a subjective opinion, and you might get a flurry of emails coming in from your listeners saying he's got it completely wrong.

But yeah, I've just often been struck by American preachers struggling to preach, if that's not unfair.

And I think that's why the likes of Martyn Lloyd -Jones and other people of his ilk have had such an attraction to Reformed Christians in America, and Reformed churches, in terms of the way they handle

Scripture and the way they're able to bring it home to the congregation. And again, I think, one thing I noticed in my years in Philadelphia, it's incredibly difficult to do pastoral visitation as a pastor, for all kinds of reasons, partly the busyness of life, partly the expectation of the people.

But I think a pastor is supposed to be just that. He's supposed to be a pastor. He's not just a preacher and an administrator.

He's meant to actually get among the flock, get to know the flock, care for the flock. And sadly,

I've often found in American churches that just doesn't happen. And added to that,

I think the way in which pastors themselves need to be pastored. The fallout rates amongst

American pastors, even Reformed pastors, is frightening. That the number of men who start in the ministry compared to the number of men who actually end in the ministry is staggeringly diminished, certainly by American statistics.

And I think part of the reason for that is that there's a lack of pastors who are actually able to pastor their fellow pastors, come alongside them, get to know them, be able to put their arm around them in crisis, advise them, counsel them.

I think the reason why, I'm not saying that doesn't happen, I'm not saying that there isn't fallout in the UK, but one thing is noticeable, that there's been some very striking men who aren't technically bishops in the non -conformist world, but they function like bishops.

They get alongside pastors, they get to know pastors, they build trust and are able to minister to them.

And I think why that happens, if you keep a pastor sane and functioning, it actually keeps the congregation sane and functioning.

So yeah, I think there's loads of strengths in the US, there's many strengths in the

UK that we should be thankful to God for. Amen. One of the things

I wanted to comment on as you were speaking about, and very rightly criticizing, the hyper -individualism that exists in evangelicalism.

But at the same time, I can tell you that when I came to embrace the Reformed faith, very early on after my conversion, because when

I came from Roman Catholicism to evangelical

Christianity, well actually, when I came to evangelical Christianity in a saving understanding of it by God's grace,

I was really somewhat of a rebellious pagan, not really a Roman Catholic. But the whole concept that really revolutionized my faith and gave me an exuberant joy that I never experienced before, was realizing how personal my salvation was.

In other words, when Christ died on Calvary, He was not dying for a mass of faceless, nameless humanity that He was hoping

He would atone for their sins. When He was dying on Calvary, He had my name written on His hands and on His heart.

He was specifically paying for my sins, and He accomplished that mission perfectly.

That really did a... I can't even describe in words adequately how that revolutionized my whole understanding of salvation.

Yeah, I think it's being able to keep that intention. You see it especially in the Apostle Paul. In Ephesians chapter 5, he said,

Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her. But in Galatians chapter 3, he says,

He loved me and gave Himself up for me. He died for me. So the Apostle Paul had both strands, and it was never one at the expense of the other.

And to be able to embrace that rich sense of of the personal engagement between me and my

Savior in conjunction with being part of His love for all His people, for His entire family throughout all of history, is a wonderful thing.

And we are going right now to our final break of the day. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

I apologize to those who are still waiting to have their questions asked. Hopefully we will get to you before the close of the program.

And our email address again is chrisarnsen at gmail .com for those of you who have not yet sent in a question for our guest

Mark Johnson. And don't go away because we're going to be back, God willing, right after these messages.

I'm James White of Alpha Omega Ministries. The New American Standard Bible is perfect for daily reading or in -depth study.

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That's nasbible .com. Tired of box store Christianity, of doing church in a warehouse with all the trappings of a rock concert?

Do you long for a more traditional and reverent style of worship? And how about the preaching? Perhaps you've begun to think that in -depth biblical exposition has vanished from Long Island.

Well, there's good news. Wedding River Baptist Church exists to provide believers with a meaningful and reverent worship experience featuring the systematic exposition of God's Word.

And this loving congregation looks forward to meeting you. Call them at 631 -929 -3512 for service times, 631 -929 -3512, or check out their website at wrbc .us.

That's wrbc .us. I'm Chris Arnson, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and here's one of my favorite guests,

Todd Friel, to tell you about a conference he and I are going to. Hello, this is Todd Friel, host of Wretched Radio and Wretched TV, and occasional guest on Chris's show

Iron Criticizing Iron. I think that's what it's called.

Hoping that you can join Chris and me at the G3 Conference in Atlanta, my new hometown.

It is going to be a bang -up conference called the G3 Conference celebrating the 500th anniversary of the

Protestant Reformation with Paul Washer, Steve Lawson, D .A. Carson, Votie Baucom, Conrad and Bayway, Phil Johnson, James White, and a bunch of other people.

We hope to see you there. Learn more at g3conference .com, g3conference .com.

Thanks, Todd, I think. See you at the Iron Sharpens Iron Exhibitor's booth.

Lynbrook Baptist Church on 225 Earl Avenue in Lynbrook, Long Island, is teaching God's timeless truths in the 21st century.

Our church is far more than a Sunday worship service. It's a place of learning where the scriptures are studied and the preaching of the gospel is clear and relevant.

It's like a gym where one can exercise their faith through community involvement. It's like a hospital for wounded souls where one can find compassionate people and healing.

We're a diverse family of all ages enthusiastically serving our Lord Jesus Christ in fellowship, play, and together.

Hi, I'm Pastor Bob Walderman, and I invite you to come and join us here at Lynbrook Baptist Church and see all that a church can be.

Call Lynbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402, that's 516 -599 -9402, or visit lynbrookbaptist .org,

that's lynbrookbaptist .org. Welcome back, this is Chris Arnsett. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the entire program with one half hour left is

Mark Johnston, Minister of Bethel Presbyterian Church in Cardiff, Wales. He's also a trustee of the

Banner of Truth Trust and the author of a number of books. He will be speaking, God willing, October 27th at Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania at their 2016

Reformation Conference from 7 to 9 p .m.,

that's on Thursday, October 27th. And if you'd like more details on this conference that is being held at the church where I happen to be a member, go to gracebaptistcarlisle .org,

gracebaptistcarlisle, C -A -R -L -I -S -L -E, dot org, and not only will

Pastor Mark Johnston be speaking, but also Dr. Sinclair Ferguson, who is indeed an extraordinary gifted man of God, whose writings and whose preaching have been of great, invaluable importance in my own life.

And we do have a listener, let's see, we have

Jack in Old Town, Maine, who says, I understand that you have written a commentary on the

Gospel of John. I just wanted to know if you shared my opinion that in all of Scripture, if you are speaking of one book, the

Gospel of John seems to make clear the doctrines of grace more frequently than any other area in the

New Testament. Certainly in terms of the four

Gospels, that is the case, and I think there are reasons for that in terms of how

John's Gospel is different from Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the Gospels who are sometimes called the Synoptic Gospels.

I think the actual spelling out of the mechanics of grace, the way that grace works, the mystery of grace, the wonder of grace, it's actually spelled out more fully by the

Apostle Paul in his letters. So although I certainly wouldn't disagree with you that grace very much comes out in John's Gospel in a multitude of ways,

I think in terms of an exposition of grace as well as a presentation of grace, we would find it probably more in Paul, more explicitly in Paul.

But having said that, I think when you begin to appreciate the nature of grace and the centrality of grace in salvation, that there's no part of the

Bible to which you can turn where you aren't brought face to face with the sheer wonder that the God of salvation is the

God of saving grace. Amen. Well, guess what, John, since you are a first -time questioner, not only are you getting the last copy of Let's Study John that we have available to give away, you're also getting a free copy of the

New American Standard Bible, compliments of the publishers of the NASB. It's a really beautiful edition with an engraved, or should

I say, an embossed cross in the cover, and it is a really perfect size to carry around in a coat pocket, not necessarily a sport jacket pocket or suit pocket, but a coat pocket or a woman could easily carry it in her purse.

And I hope that you enjoy that Bible. We need your full mailing address, however, to have that shipped out to you by Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com,

who ships out all of our winners, their free Bibles and books. And we thank

Todd and Patty Jennings for their faithful sponsorship of Iron Sharpens Iron. We do have a listener who just wants to say hello.

He's a friend of yours, so I'll give his last name. He says, Mike Iliff, formerly of England, now new resident of Aberystwyth, Wales, just wanted to send his greetings to you.

Well, I'll greet Mike as well. I'll say hi to him on Facebook afterwards. And we have another resident of the

UK. We have Murray in Kinross, Scotland, who says, would you see our

Lord's return as happening only when the gospel has been preached in all lands or when the church universal has been reformed totally or both?

The Lord himself said that no man knows the day nor the hour of his return. So far be it for me to try and point where that would happen.

Whatever Christ says in Matthew's gospel about the gospel going to all peoples, he is not talking,

I don't think, in terms of absolutely every nation under heaven, but in terms of the expansiveness of the gospel, that it does go around the world.

So that certainly is a condition that he puts in place as to when his return is likely to happen.

I agree. Again and again, the Bible tells us that we should concern ourselves with those things that we do know clearly from Scripture's teaching and from the commands that it sets before us, and devote ourselves to them.

And of course, that means that we ourselves are to be engaged in going to the ends of the earth with the gospel, making disciples of all nations.

And as we preoccupy ourselves with that great commission, we will be so enraptured by doing his work here in our own lifetime, that whether he returns before we die, or whether we're caught up in the resurrection of believers, we'll certainly be thrilled whenever that day comes.

And Murray in Kenrose, Scotland has a follow -up question. Your comments regarding preachers and preaching.

How then can we better make use of men like Jeff Thomas, Sinclair Ferguson, etc.,

while they are still with us for the benefit of the wider church? Is it more conferences, better use of the internet?

I think one of the ways in which we can best use them is not to overuse them. Yes, amen.

Both those men are men that I admire greatly and have the joy of knowing personally.

But also know that to be in the position with the gifts that they have, that they are under huge demand and are often under great pressure.

And it's simply impossible to spread them far enough and wide enough. I think they themselves would not want to be over -exalted in terms of their preaching ability and in terms of their usefulness, because sometimes inadvertently the effect of that is to reduce the importance of local pastors in the places where God has put them.

The reality is that the men like that are few and far between in terms of the level of their giftedness.

And we should all realize that God has given us the that we have, with all his foibles, with all his favors.

And yet the Lord has entrusted us to him and him to us. I think one of the best ways that Jeff and Sinclair could be used is in shaping a new generation of preachers, not simply through teaching them the principles of preaching, but rather modeling what good preaching is like.

Because an awful lot of what it means to be an effective preacher is learned not in the classroom, but it's learned by osmosis.

That the gift that God has given us as preachers is, as Paul says to Timothy, to be fanned into flame.

And it's fanned into flame by receiving good ministry in order that we might in turn become better ministers.

I remember Derek Thomas, who's a dear friend, used to be my pastor years ago when I was a student. Derek telling me when

I was going up to seminary, make sure you listen to as many good preachers as you can.

And he urged me to pick five or six high quality expositors, each of whom were different from the other, and listen to their sermons on a regular basis, not to copy them, but just to learn what are the ingredients of effective preaching.

And just by receiving that kind of ministry, it shapes you and helps you to become a better preacher yourself.

Well thank you very much Murray and Ken Ross Scotland. Please continue spreading the word about Iron Sharpens Iron there in Scotland and elsewhere in the

UK. We always appreciate hearing from you. We have a listener in Valley Stream, Long Island, New York, who's obviously using an alias,

Lam Lam. And Lam Lam says, please simply define in layman's terms what you mean by Reformation and Reformed.

In layman's terms, the language has obviously come from the

Protestant Reformation. Next year we'll be celebrating the 500th anniversary of what's often regarded as the beginning of the

Reformation. It wasn't technically the beginning, but it was the event when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg Chapel in Germany.

That was really an attempt to reform what was the Roman Catholic Church, then to bring it back to its biblical roots.

By that stage in history, the Roman Catholic Church was shaped more by tradition, human tradition, than it was by clear biblical teaching.

So all kinds of false ideas were coming in, wrong doctrines that had no roots in Scripture, but had been created by preachers and theologians.

And what the Reformers were trying to do was to bring the Church and its people back to the

Bible, to say that our theology, what we teach

Church, must come from Scripture. You know, it was what Paul was doing in Acts chapter 17 when he went to Berea and preached the

Word of God there. Luke tells us that the Berean people searched the

Scriptures to see if what Paul was teaching from the pulpit was actually faithful to what

God was saying in the Bible. So the idea of Reformed Christianity is a

Christianity that's brought on a Reformed theology. It's theology that comes, that's shaped by Scripture, shaped by the balance of the message of the

Bible, and is a clear expression not just of what the

Bible teaches about salvation, but about everything. There are certain particular doctrines that have often been described as the doctrines of grace.

It's helpful up to a point. I don't think it's fair to reduce the

Reformed Christianity to the doctrines of grace. The belief in human beings being totally depraved is the language that's often used, in other words, that sin has affected every part of us.

The only way that we can experience salvation is not because of anything we can do to earn it for ourselves, but the grace of salvation is unconditional.

It comes to us not through any obligation on God's part or any merit on our part.

It comes entirely because God freely chooses to extend the grace of salvation to us.

The atonement that Jesus made when he was on the cross was not some kind of vague general sacrifice that was indiscriminate, but rather it was very specifically dying for his people, those who had been chosen from before the beginning of time by God in his eternal decree.

Christ died for them. When it comes to the actual experience of that saving message of the gospel, that God himself doesn't force us, but he makes us willing to hear and to receive the message of Christ and his salvation.

And when that happens, then those who are believers, if they're genuine Christians, they will persevere until the end.

Jesus says that if he that perseveres to the end will be saved. So true faith is faith that will go the distance, and it will lead us ultimately all the way home to heaven.

Well, I'd like to use Lamb Lamb's question to launch into actually the theme that I had envisioned being our main topic.

We only have 15 minutes left, but is the Reformation over? There are many people who are pushing for ecumenism between evangelicals and Roman Catholics and even

Mormons because they see our world crumbling around us, being taken over by homosexual activists and socialists and people who are hell -bent to rob

Christians globally of every last right that they have to express their faith.

And they basically are saying that we will be stronger in numbers, our voice will be louder if we were to put these doctrinal issues aside, which they view as comparatively trivial, and let's link our arms with our

Roman Catholic brothers and even Mormons and others who share our moral values.

And they say, come on, the Protestant Reformation was a 16th century phenomenon, it's over, the

Catholic Church isn't burning people at the stake anymore, let's give it a rest, let's just move on. But this is really a fallacy, isn't it?

I mean, the Church is in need of Reformation today just as it needed it in the 16th century, isn't it?

Yeah, it is very much so. I think on the issue that you mentioned about how we respond to the moral decline and the serious moral issues that are facing our generation, there's a difference between what

Francis Schafe would have called co -belligerence, ethically, and the pursuit of some kind of ecumenical coming together of the different churches.

Like Abraham Kuyper, I believe, before him had that mindset. Yeah. So it was a very shrewd and wise argument that there are certain moral issues on which not just Protestants and Roman Catholics can agree, but wider other sects that always merit the description of being

Christian, that nevertheless the same moral aspirations are there and we can work together in a cultural and moral engagement to fight those battles without any compromise of our theology or our understanding of salvation or churchmanship.

I think it's different whenever it comes to ignoring the differences between the

Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant churches, the differences between the Church of the

Latter -day Saints, what they believe and what defines them, and Protestant churches, because there are fundamental differences in how we understand the core of the

Bible's message, what it says about salvation, and therefore what it says about our understanding of the

Church as the family of God, the people of God on earth. Those issues are too big to ignore and have not been significantly resolved in the way that the

Roman Catholic Church has developed in the 500 years since the Reformation. If you look at the latest

Roman Catholic catechism that's been published a number of years ago, there is significant continuity between what it is teaching and what was taught 500 years ago in the

Roman Catholic Church of the days of the Reformers, so we shouldn't ignore that. The reason why the

Reformation took place in the first place was not because the Protestant Reformers wanted to somehow fragment the

Church, they had a very high view of the Church, and their passionate desire was not to break from Rome but rather to reform the

Roman Catholic Church, and it was only the refusal of the Roman Catholic Church to modify its understanding of salvation, to modify its understanding of grace, to modify its understanding of how the sacraments functioned, that the

Reformers and those who followed their teaching were forced to leave the

Roman Catholic Church, and those issues have not gone away. And of course at the heart of that is the question of how does a person get right with God.

It wasn't the main issue, as contrary to what many people believe, behind the

Reformation, but it was certainly a key issue, that the whole understanding of justification by faith alone, through Christ alone, by grace alone, that if you get that understanding of salvation wrong, then everything else begins to fall apart, and your understanding of the

Church falls apart with it. So those issues are still there, and it's a mark of theological naivety on the part of many professing

Christians and even Church leaders to think that Rome has somehow shifted on those issues, and those debates don't need to continue today.

So yes, there is a need for continued Reformation on that front, but even the

Reformers themselves would have said there's a need for ongoing Reformation. You look at the progress from Martin Luther through to Philip MacMillanxon and John Calvin and Theodore Beza, there was a progression of development of standing on each other's shoulders, sharpening each other's understanding, as they developed more clearly a coherent theology of the

Reformation. And over the next hundred years, that was taken up by the English Puritans, by the

Second Reformation in the Netherlands. So there was a very clear understanding there that the work of the

Reformation wasn't a one -off event, but rather the beginning of a process that would continue down through the ages.

It was a Dutch pastor -theologian by the name of Gisbert Vesius, who coined the expression in the early 18th century, if my memory serves me correctly, that the church that is reformed must always be reforming, is the way he put it.

Semper Reformata, right? Sorry? Isn't that Semper Reformata, the Latin phrase?

Correct. The church that is reformed must always be reforming. And he meant it in two senses.

One in the sense of working out our salvation in fear and trembling, because it is

God who's at work, because we know that it's God who's at work within us. That when a person becomes a

Christian, when they're saved, it's not the end of the journey, if you know what

I mean. A person is born again, they're called then to grow in the faith, we're to grow in the knowledge and love of the

Lord Jesus Christ, that we'll only be perfected finally in our salvation when

God brings us home to glory. But so long as we are alive in this body, both as individuals and together as churches, we must be growing in our sanctification, growing to be more

Christ -like. Paul's prayer, Paul's burning desire for the Galatians was he labored among them like a woman in childbirth, and then his words were, till Christ be formed in you, that you individually and collectively are conformed to the image and likeness of Christ.

So that was the moral and spiritual progress that they had in mind.

But the other thought that was in Vesas' mind was the fact that we can never fully exhaust and capture what the

Bible is teaching, the truth that's presented us in Scripture. So as Jim Packer puts it with regard to theology, he says obviously

John Calvin was one of the giants of the theological world down through history in so many ways, but Packer says quite rightly, even a pygmy standing on the shoulders of John Calvin can see further than he can.

So no generation can claim we have all the theological knowledge that there is to be had.

Amen. And well, if you could just spend a moment to summarize the different books that Banner of Truth has published, the

Let's Study series. Gladly. It's a wonderful series, and I don't say that just because I'm one of the authors.

You know, it's intended to be a distillation of good theology presented in a very readable and accessible way as books of the

Bible are opened up for average readers to be able to read, to understand, and to benefit from.

So it's meant to be accessible, but at the same time, it's not meant to be simplistic.

So in terms of the ones that I've published, or I've written and Banner has published, the first one was on John's Gospel, Let's Study John.

I think in my introductory section, I say that there's two ways to look at an art gallery.

You can either skim around all the different display rooms and glance at all the pictures and get a rough idea of all the pictures that are in the gallery, or you can make frequent visits to the art gallery and spend maybe hours at a time just looking at particular pictures, looking at the detail, seeing what's being conveyed by the image, and that's very much what's happening in John's Gospel.

You only have to compare John's Gospel to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to realize that his style is very different.

He records much less in terms of detail of Jesus' ministry, but he looks at it in much more detail and with much more explanation than any of the other gospel writers do.

You look at the prologue to John's Gospel, and it launches at the deep end. You find yourself in some of the richest, deepest insight into who

Jesus is, who is this Jesus of Nazareth. He is none other than the eternal Son of God, the eternal

Logos, who has taken human flesh and come and pitched his tent among us.

And then John says, And we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

So it's an incredible beginning. It goes on then in this fascinating structure of how

John picks out seven miracles of Jesus and calls them signs, so therefore he's opening up the significance that's bound up with the miracles, and does so often by linking the discourses of Jesus that he preached in connection with the miracles.

So after the raising of Lazarus, you've got the resurrection, the life discourse. After the feeding of the 5 ,000, the bread of life discourse.

So it's a wonderful delving, digging deeper into who this Jesus is and why the gospel matters.

Colossians, the gospel being challenged, this was an early distortion of the Christian gospel from within in ways that I think in many ways correspond to the challenges that the

Church has faced in the late 20th, early 21st century in the Western world. And Paul really gets to grips with that in terms of the kind of mysticism that can creep into Christianity, and the longing for unusual experiences to try and validate and authenticate our

Christian experience. So it's a crucial one. I think the one on 2 Peter and Jude is significant because those were two letters that were written at a time when the

Church was facing a major crisis, such a serious crisis that Jude says, you know,

I wanted to write to you about the gospel, but I'm actually forced to write to you about the need to defend the faith once delivered to the saints.

The very gospel was at stake. So those are, again, wonderful examples both in terms of method as much as content of how we deal with false teaching that arises from within the

Church. Well, Shane in Birmingham, Alabama just wanted us to know that he is being so blessed by listening.

Shane has written to us in the past. He is a blind Christian in Birmingham.

He's also an attorney at law, got his law degree studying diligently with Braille and other ways.

And he has lamented in the past that many of the reformed jewels that we who are sighted can absorb and enjoy and learn from are not being made available in Braille.

So perhaps you could pray about the audio books and Braille versions of these great works of the reformed

Christians of the past and the present so that these brothers and sisters who happen to be sightless can enjoy them as well.

Or maybe there's a niche for reformed audio books that we can persuade. We can persuade somebody to set up a company that will start producing audio books for our blind and partially sighted community.

Yes, and so I just wanted to thank again Banner of Truth for providing our giveaways today.

BannerofTruth .org, BannerofTruth .org, Bethel Presbyterian Church in Cardiff, Wales, where our guest is the minister.

That website is BethelPCR .org .uk, BethelPCR .org

.uk. And don't forget about the Reformation Conference at Grace Baptist Church featuring our guest and also

Sinclair Ferguson on October 27th, Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Their website is gracebaptistcarlisle .org, gracebaptistcarlisle .org.

And if you could, Mark, if you could stay on the phone even after we go off the air so I can say a final goodbye to you.

But I thank you so much for being on the broadcast today. Thank you, Chris, for having me. It's been a pleasure to be with you. And I want everybody to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater