December 12, 2023 Show with Steve Schultz on “A Call to Christian Parents to Repent from Idolatry Concerning Their Children’s Education”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 12th day of December 2023, and I'm thrilled to have back on the program a returning guest, an old friend of mine,

Steve Schultz, who is headmaster at Grace Christian Academy of Long Island, which is a classical

Christian school affiliated with Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, New York.

And today, we're going to be addressing the controversial theme, a call to repent from idolatry to Christian parents who cling to idols when making decisions on their children's education.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Steve Schultz. And Steve, are you on mute?

I can't hear you. No, I'm sorry. I was waiting for a question or something.

It's good to have you back on the show. And tell our listeners about Grace Christian Academy of Long Island.

Okay. Grace Christian Academy is kindergarten through 12th grade.

It is classical and it is Christian. We used to be the only classical

Christian K -12 in all of New York City and Long Island, but we just picked up some brethren further out in Suffolk County.

Yes. Their school is transitioning into classical, and we're excited about that.

And we need more family out here. But anyway, I don't know.

Do I need to explain what classical Christian is? I would think that would be a wise thing for the sake of our listeners who have not heard you or Pete Hegseth on the program before, because I believe the only times that I've discussed classical

Christian education specifically was when I had you and Pete Hegseth on the show.

So if they'd missed those shows, they probably—or should I say, they very likely may not even know what classical

Christian education is. So please explain. Okay. I'm going to start to ramble. You can tell me to shut up when it's time.

Classical—the term classical comes from the classical period of the ancient Greeks and Romans. And the reason that we do that is because their idea of education and their idea of what can be known was radically different than what we hold to today in our culture.

What predominates the academic landscape in America today is progressivism. And at the heart of that is the idea that either

God doesn't exist or he doesn't function with man the way that we believe that he does.

But the progressive system has pretty much dispensed with any notion of God. The ancients of Greece and Rome believed that before you can rightly discern what you detect with your five senses, you must first have a set of virtue in place.

The progressives believe that you can only know things if they're tangible to the five senses. And what that does is it instantly puts to death any discussion of morality, of right and wrong, of theology, of things that we as Christians would argue are more important and must be known first.

So again, back to the ancients of Greece and Rome, they believed that you needed a set of virtue before you can even rightly discern what you're detecting with your five senses.

So when the Christians came along, they said, well, we know what that virtue is. It's knowing God and knowing his word.

So the classical Christian school is going to begin with a right presentation of God, of Christ, of God's word, and is going to found everything on top of that.

So when we are taking into consideration what to teach, how to teach it, what clubs to form, pretty much everything that we do here, it must fit through a scriptural screen.

And if the Bible doesn't support it, then we will not have it here.

So that's kind of the beginning point. As a classical school, the structure that we follow is called the

Trivium. It's a three stage approach that addresses how children receive and then retain information.

The first part of the Trivium is the grammar school. In the grammar school, because the way their brains function biologically, children of that age are capable of consuming huge amounts of data and storing it.

So kindergarten through sixth grade is the grammar school. It's a lot of memorization. It's heavy focus.

It's on the concrete things of learning, the who, what, where, when. Things that can be memorized.

You get to be my age and the brain doesn't work that way anymore. Might not even work.

But when they get to the seventh and eighth grade, their brain is starting to biologically change and they become much more capable of handling the abstract.

So we then move them from our grammar school into the school of logic. And that is where we train them how to think.

Not what to think, you know, to say pass a state math test, but how to think, how to reason.

And that's where they take formal logic in the seventh and in the eighth grade. And we teach them how to think rightly using the laws of logic.

And that's where they transition from the concrete who, what, where, when into the more abstract why and how.

Our instruction becomes much more Socratic at that time. We replace a lot of telling students things with asking them questions that elicit thought.

And then we move them on to our school of rhetoric. That's the third stage of the trivium.

And that is where we train them how to eloquently articulate and intelligently defend their ideas.

And it's basically learning all the subject matter that you would learn somewhere else that isn't hostile to scriptural truth.

You know, so they're taking AP calculus, they're taking history, they're taking literature, they're taking rhetoric, they're studying forensics.

But at the same time, they're learning how to effectively communicate, how to eloquently articulate it, how to argue in the context of debate.

And really, what we want to do here is provide a superior education for our kids. It'll earn them platforms out in their culture by which to then engage their culture in its battle for ideas, hopefully from a biblical worldview.

We still have 100 percent graduation. We've got 100 percent college or military acceptance.

Brown, NYU, Penn State, Syracuse, UMass, Ohio State, go

Buckeyes. Locals like Stony Brook, Hunter, Baruch, NYT, Hofstra, Christian schools like Gordon, Liberty, Cedarville.

And most of our kids are getting in with some kind of scholarship. So we're doing well, and we're defending the gospel, and we're teaching our kids how to engage their culture and effectively do it.

And forgive me if you mention this, but the grades are K through 12? 12, yes.

K through 12. And which grade do you insist that the students take the blood oath?

I'm only kidding. Kindergarten. And something that you said needs to be clarified.

I know that a motto of classical Christian education that you just cited moments ago, and I'm doing this from memory, so I don't have it verbatim, perhaps.

But we don't teach children what to know, but how to think.

We don't teach children what to know, but how to think. But having said that, in regard to the first half of that, we don't teach children what to know.

You do teach them vital things that they should know, correct? I mean, you just mentioned the fact that you have the standard classes of history and mathematics and so on.

Right, absolutely. And when we shy away from that, teaching them what to think, it's not what to know, it's what to think.

And where that difference is, is yes, you need to equip the student with the basic building blocks of knowledge.

They need to know that 2 plus 2 is 4. They need to know that they're ABCs. Now, wait a minute.

I thought 2 plus 2 equals 4 was racist. Well, if it is, then so be it.

You know, we even investigate issues like racism from a biblical worldview, though.

So we're teaching kids how to think from a biblical worldview about the things that they learn.

Yes, we have to teach them the basics of math and English and letter sounds and physics and biology and chemistry and all those things.

But the difference between teaching them what to think and how to think...

I spent 11 years in the government schools teaching kids what to think. Basically, in September, I start training them how to take the state math exam.

And then in May or whenever, I forget when they took it, once that thing's over, they forget everything because in their heads, they don't need to know it.

There's no value to it other than doing well on that state test that they took. Teaching a kid how to think is different.

You're teaching them reason. You're teaching them why the Pythagorean theorem works the way that it works.

You're teaching them that math is not from the pit of hell, that it is a language by which

God created the universe. And when you can start to present the subjects with that kind of awe, the kids start to enjoy learning.

They no longer see it as a tedious chore in order to take this state math test that they don't understand why they've got to pass that thing to begin with.

But they become interested in the universe and therefore interested in God's creation.

And if you go back to Romans 1, it explains how

God has made himself evident through that which is created. And if we properly handle the subjects, what we are doing is we are magnifying and we are unfolding what that Romans 1 statement means by teaching them and exposing them to the things that God has made.

What is biology? Well, it's the study of life that God has made.

What is chemistry? It's the study of atomic particles that God has made. What is algebra?

What is calculus? What is physical education? All these things, if we study them properly, we are going to study them in alignment with Romans 1, where each one of these things is to draw attention to the creator and develop an awe of the creator.

Unfortunately, in the government schools, because they've banned

God, the way they teach the subjects is they take the things that were designed to make

God known to us and they excuse it away. And they say, no, you're really not seeing what you think you're seeing.

What you're seeing here is a cosmic accident that has no origin, that has no divine orchestrator.

We are going to provide, you know, basically Romans goes on to call it vain speculation.

Once you remove the divine creator and the divine placer of the planets and the stars and all the scientific laws and things that govern the universe, once you remove the divine orchestrator of all of that, you then have to explain how that stuff got there and why it works the way that it does.

But you have to do it without an author. And that leads us to vain speculation.

But what it does is it takes away what

God intended from his creation. And that was to cause us to know him, at least know that he's there.

Now, one of the things that is fascinating about Grace Christian Academy and classical

Christian schools in general is that they universally,

I believe, teach Latin. And I was raised

Roman Catholic. I went to a Roman Catholic elementary school on Long Island, New York, and I was a post

Vatican II child. So we were not taught Latin at all, even in a

Roman Catholic school. I was an altar boy. We didn't use Latin. We didn't have to learn

Latin. My older brothers did, who were from a different era, 15 and 16 years older than I.

But so tell us, why is it that classical Christian education and or should

I say classical Christian educators believe that Latin is a very important thing for children to be taught?

OK, there's actually a whole slew of reasons, and I'm not going to remember all of them right now.

But. You know, the basic mechanics of language, at least in English language, the way that we begin teaching our kids

English and reading is by the use of phonics. Where they systematically study

English letters in their sounds and then what happens when you put those things together,

Latin is actually the next step after phonics. It's a very logical language.

So it basically takes the basic building blocks of phonics and sophisticated.

Then. You have to take into consideration that more than half of our

English vocabulary is made up of Latin words and roots. So, you know, you take a word like democracy.

You've got Dimas, you've got cratic, and, you know, a kid can walk into, say, a book or an

SAT test, for example, because we do very well in those and run across words that he's never seen before.

But he can peel it apart and knows the pieces and can figure out from the pieces what the words actually saying.

Other languages that we study don't give us that. Now, we do study a lot in America.

We study Spanish, Italian, French, which are. They come from Latin.

They are the Latin languages, but even though they're kind of like the modern version, but if you go back to the original

Latin. The Latin sets you up well to learn those languages to learn English, to be able to read things that are above your comfortable reading level and.

You know, basically decode it. So that's another reason why

Latin is popular. Latin is valued by us.

We also value it because it is the language of the ancient Romans, and it was the

Romans and the Greeks who gave us Western culture. So if you know Greek or, you know,

Latin, it helps you in the other subjects. My licensure area academically is math.

You know, we have gotten a lot from the Greeks and the Latins, and a lot of times in my just basically teaching math.

What I'm able to teach the kids becomes enhanced if I know. The words that we're talking about.

Or the language that we're using. Latin is heavily used in American law and government.

It's used in logic. It's used in theology. You know, it's it is very helpful in learning

American or sorry in in learning English grammar. Because it's foundational to it.

And it's also helpful in memory loss, I think. Yes.

It's helpful in keeping memory because I don't know Latin. I probably benefit if I did.

Well, thankfully, you're not. Thankfully, you're not the Latin teacher. By the way, we do in the government schools.

I didn't learn Latin. By the way, we do have a listener who was seeking to correct you that the word democracy has a

Greek root and not Latin. But I have just found that it's both. Right.

So democratia for Latin. And it also has a very similar

Greek origin. So I just thought I'd. There's a lot of overlap.

And if you are a classical school, you are required to teach either Greek or Latin. Mm hmm.

And the other the other thing that may give evangelical

Christian parents a reason for pause because they misunderstand why you would do this that I'm about to reveal.

The classical Christian schools typically arm the students by explaining what the enemies of the gospel and the enemies of the church and the enemies of Christ teach as a part of their worldview.

Like, for instance, you do teach Darwinian evolution, from what

I understand, not as truth, but you equip the students with enough information so that they can when they are in the public square, when they are involved in exchange, communication with non -Christian children.

And even adults, when they are in college, they may have professors who are atheists and so on, or just liberals.

You you equip them to be able to respond to claims of the non -Christian with with knowledge and authority.

Correct. Correct. And so that's one of the reasons why

I said that it warranted explanation, because, you know, the moment that an evangelical

Christian hears that they teach the background and the the the tenets and even the worldview of Darwinianism, they may.

What what's going on here? Well, you got to know why they're doing that. Yeah.

You know, give me a Christian who knows nothing about Darwinianism teaching me about creationism versus a

Christian who knows everything there is know about Darwinianism and teaches wants to teach me about creationism.

I'm going to listen to the latter guy because he understands the importance. To a much.

Greater level. Now. I'm not understanding, though, the connection to.

Being classical. Is it because people are afraid that we're teaching about Greek and Roman gods or what is it?

Oh, that you're when people hear that there are Christians. Let's face it.

Perhaps perhaps especially when you're talking about. A more fundamentalist wing of evangelicalism.

Right. So far, fundamentalist that they don't even want to use the term evangelical. And I can't necessarily say that I blame them in this day and age.

It's getting harder and harder to even define what that means. But you have almost a monastic practice of isolationism, overprotectionism, where you don't even want children exposed to falsehoods at all.

And when you do so, you're going to wind up leaving them unable to give a response when they're older and they are faced with the arguments of their peers and also their teachers and anyone who's an authority over them in any sphere of life when they start to make unbiblical worldview claims.

Right. But we are going to go to our first break right now.

And when we return, we're going to enter into our actual theme for the day, a call to repent from idolatry to Christian parents who claim to idols when making decisions on their children's education.

And our email address is Chris Arnzen at Gmail dot com. Chris Arnzen at Gmail dot com.

As always, give us your first name, at least your city and state of residence and your country of residence.

If you live outside the USA, don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

I'm Pastor Keith Allen of Limbrook Baptist Church, a Christ centered gospel driven church looking to spread the gospel in the southwest portion of Long Island, New York, and play our role in fulfilling the

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

At Limbrook Baptist Church, we believe the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the inspired word of God inherent in the original writings, complete as the revelation of God's will for salvation and the supreme and final authority in all matters to which they speak.

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

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

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

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

That's l -y -n -brookbaptist .org. This is Pastor Keith Allen of Limbrook Baptist Church reminding you that by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves.

It is the gift of God, not a result of words, so that no one may boast of the

Lord's blessing and the knowledge of himself. Hello, I'm Phil Johnson, Executive Director of Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I've been a frequent guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and I highly recommend this show. But today

I want to tell you about one of its advertisers, Rare Document Traders, far and away my favorite source for quality

Charles Spurgeon memorabilia. Are you looking for that special, unique Christmas gift for your pastor or missionary friend or a loved one?

Why not purchase a piece of church history that any believer would cherish? Rare Document Traders is your one -step source for Spurgeon's handwritten manuscripts and letters, as well as other rare books and collectible items from church history.

In 15 years that they've been in business, they've earned a stellar reputation in the Reformed community with thousands of satisfied customers all around the world, including me.

Visit RareDocTraders .com today. That's RareDocTraders .com.

And look for their upcoming Cyber Monday sales. Don't forget to mention you heard about them on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

That's RareDocTraders .com. I'm Brian McLaughlin, President of the

SecureComm Group and an enthusiastic supporter of Chris Arnson's Iron Sharpens Iron radio program.

The SecureComm Group provides the highest level of security, close -circuit television, access control, and communication systems for Manhattan's top residential buildings, as well as churches, commercial properties, municipalities, and more.

We custom install exactly what you need to protect yourself, including digital recording, off -site viewing, and connectivity from most smart devices.

From simple code -activated systems to the latest technology using facial recognition, the

SecureComm Group has it. We also provide the latest in intercom and IP telephone systems.

In addition, we provide superior networking platforms. We'll create, maintain, and secure your local network.

Whether it's a Wi -Fi or hardwire network, we'll implement the latest secured firewall, endpoint solutions, and cloud backup.

I would love to have the honor and privilege of helping protect the lives and property of Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners and their associates.

For more details on how the SecureComm Group may be of service to you with the very latest in security innovations, call 718 -353 -3355.

That's 718 -353 -3355. Or visit securecommgroup .com.

That's securecommgroup .com. This is Brian McLaughlin of the SecureComm Group, joining

Chris Arnzen's family of advertisers to keep Iron Sharpens Iron radio on the air.

Puritan Reformed is a Bible -believing, kingdom -building, devil -fighting church. We are devoted to upholding the apostolic doctrine and practice preserved in Scripture alone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

We here at Iron Sharpens Iron Radio praise

God for the generous monthly financial support of Royal Diadem Jewelers. Educated by and affiliated with the

American Gem Society, Jewelers of America, and the Gemological Institute of America.

For the perfect custom -designed engagement ring, or any one -of -a -kind piece of jewelry created exactly according to your imagination and specifications,

Royal Diadem Jewelers has you covered. No matter where you live in the world, Royal Diadem will walk you step -by -step through every stage of the process, and even hold a high -tech internet virtual visit using state -of -the -art jewelry design technology to serve you.

They start by listening carefully to determine your needs. They're interested in making what you want, not what they want to sell you.

From rough design to digital model, to photorealistic image, to wax prototype model, to the finished product, they're continually listening to your input, likes and dislikes, making any changes necessary along the way.

This will ensure that your custom jewelry will turn out exactly as you dreamed, and well beyond your expectations.

Visit royaldiadem .com. That's royaldiadem .com today.

Sterling Vandewerker, owner of Royal Diadem Jewelers, his wife Bronnie, his business partner and manager

Brian Wilson, and the entire family, thank you all for listening to, praying for, and supporting the work of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And don't forget folks, royaldiadem .com is still offering

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio this mind -blowing opportunity. They are giving us 100 % of the profits from any sale of jewelry to an

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listener simply by that listener mentioning that they heard about royaldiadem .com

from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. That's all you need to do and we will get 100 % of the profits from your purchase.

Whether you are purchasing a piece of jewelry that's already in stock at royaldiadem .com, or whether you're having something custom designed like an engagement ring, or perhaps you are so thrilled with the work of Grace Christian Academy of Long Island that you want to give its headmaster

Steve Schultz a piece of jewelry that has been customized with the logo of Grace Christian Academy, or anything else that your imagination and creativity can conjure up.

Perhaps it's your own church logo, para -church ministry logo, seminary logo, denomination logo, whatever else your imagination can conjure up, they will take what's in your brain and turn it into a physical piece of jewelry that will blow your mind.

If you have any intention on purchasing jewelry for yourself or someone you love, please go to royaldiadem .com

to make your purchase so that we can also benefit from that purchase. As I said, we will get 100 % of the profits if you mention

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. But please, if you have any intention to purchase jewelry, do it soon, because we have no idea when royaldiadem .com

will pull the plug on this amazing offer to us. That's royaldiadem .com. Mention Chris Orensen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

We're now back with Steve Schultz, headmaster of Grace Christian Academy of Long Island, located in Merrick, New York.

And the theme is very provocative that we are addressing today. As I mentioned earlier, a call to repent from idolatry to Christian parents who cling to idols when making decisions on their children's education.

I think we should probably give a caveat or perhaps dispel some presuppositions, preconceived notions that are getting some of our listeners angry already.

You are not trying to be malicious or even insensitive towards parents who may be a whole host of reasons why they can't send their child to a classical

Christian school. There might not even be one in existence for hundreds of miles from where these particular listeners live.

And there could be a number of reasons why this is unlikely or impossible to them.

If you want to just comment on that before we go into the heart of the theme today. Yeah, first of all, let me say

I didn't come up with that title. Oh, I did. I just came up with it just from details that you said you wanted to discuss today.

No. I hate I have great sympathy for families who just don't have the resources, whether it be a school in their vicinity or it be the money to do so.

I get it. I understand. You know, I've been. Except for a stint of teaching in the public system for 11 years,

I've been a missionary outside of that ever since I graduated from college, so I know what it's like to not have money.

And that's not what I'm addressing. I know there are plenty of families who are stuck.

Where. Where I'm having a problem. Is when we elevate.

Things of this world. Above. Solid, godly, biblical thinking.

If you don't have the money to send your kid to a private school. That's got nothing to do with your priorities.

It's got nothing to do with your reasoning. But when

I decide to basically, you know, sacrifice my kid on the altar because I'd rather them pursue an

NFL career that they're most likely not going to get. You know, by sending them to a school that has a great football team rather than sending them to a school that has a great theological program.

I've got problems with that. Of course. And I stand. Yeah, I stand by that and I practice what

I preach. I've got my own three kids. And every one of them came through my school.

You know, was the temptation there at times to, you know, or the desire for me to send any one of them to a school that had a better sports program?

Absolutely. But what we did was we improvised and we found other ways to do it. So, you know, we met the athletic need outside the school.

But what I didn't want to do was compromise their their their doctrine, their beliefs, their walk with the

Lord, or even before they were saved. I didn't want to compromise what

I was teaching them or having them taught. Right.

And so I'm sorry you could finish what you were saying. No, go ahead. Go ahead. I was going to say that one of the first idols that comes to my mind is children themselves.

Parents turn very often their children into idols and they bow to the whims and wishes and even demands, depending upon how spoiled the child is, in order to appease them, to keep them happy, even if temporarily.

At the expense of what is actually not only best for them, but also most honoring and glorifying and obedient to Christ.

And it transcends the subject that we are discussing today, education.

It even involves, and I've experienced this many times, where people who share my reformed theology, my reformed faith, they will join a church that might even be heretical in its theology or at best extremely shallow and weak on their theology.

Because that church, typically, which is a larger church, more numerically large, they have so many things that keep the kids occupied, entertained, and happy.

So many programs, and they have a musical program that might rival

Broadway. They have all kinds of, they have an enormous gym.

You know, we could go on and on and on with the things that appeal to parents, that they put on a much higher level of importance than what is actually being preached, teached, proclaimed, and taught in that church.

And I'm sure you've experienced that. Absolutely. I don't even know where to start with that.

I mean, the first thing I've got to start with, though, is I don't want to get on a high horse and pretend like I haven't made mistakes in this arena.

A lot of what I know and a lot of what I'm convicted about is because, you know, through trial and error and through making bad decisions,

I've made them. I think, in the end, God has really blessed me and has enabled me to bring all three of my kids through, strictly through Christian schooling.

And that's, you know, I have a lot of things that I regret. That's not one of them. But, yeah, a few years ago, you know, it was when the pandemic hit,

I saw Christians. And I think

I, at times, was tempted to do so myself until I saw how foolish it looked.

Many of us were running around with the pandemic going, I need the president to save us.

I need the medicine to save us. I need, you know, the inoculations to save us.

I need money to save us. And I'm going, you know, we owe the ancient

Israelites who went through this in Egypt a huge apology because we tend to come down on them because they escaped from Egypt.

You know, the plagues were assigned to take out systematically each one of the Egyptian gods one by one.

And I believe that God did that to convince the Israelites, these gods are not reliable.

And once I get you out of here and I stick you in the desert and things start getting tough, I don't want you turning back to them.

You need to see that they're worthless. And I think what the pandemic did was it pointed out to us that all those things that we put our trust in were worthless.

We still had the pandemic. Well, what we've got to do is learn how to trust

God, and we don't do that. And we think, you know, basically,

I like to refer to it as the American pantheon. We've got our own pantheon.

We've got our own series of gods that we worship. We don't call them gods because they don't come in the form of, you know, stone or wood.

But we give them our time, our talent and our treasures. And we're willing to, you know, sell our souls to them very quickly.

And, you know, because I want my kid to have, you know, an education that's going to get him into Harvard or Yale or Brown or whatever.

You know, I've become convinced by my culture that I have to send them to this multimillion -dollar tuition school, or I've got to send them to the local public school that's got this huge, you know, computer lab.

Those are all lies, by the way. And I personally don't want any of my kids going to Harvard or Yale because the ideology, the worldview that they teach there is directly oppositional to sound biblical theology.

Why would I want to send my kids there? Well, the argument is made that if they go there, they then have all the connections that they need.

They then have the degree that they need. They'll be able to write their ticket anywhere they want to go. Not if God takes a back seat and the

God who shares his glory with no one says, I don't care what degree you've got, this isn't going to help you.

On the other hand, you know, you take my kids. They're going through respectable colleges.

We haven't compromised. And doors just keep opening. And it really comes back to it's not the degree.

It's not the name on the diploma. It's not the program that you got involved with.

It comes back to what does God want? And if I'm trusting God, he will get me.

He will get my kids where he wants them to go. But we're so afraid to trust

God with that. And we start to manipulate the system. And we start to worship these false gods.

And we have this fear that if we apply a biblical worldview to education, it may cost us something more than we're willing to pay.

And not just financially. You know, it'll cost me money.

Yeah. It'll cost me that seat in Harvard. Maybe. Maybe not.

You know, my daughter applied to 21 colleges and was accepted to 20 of them.

Wow. It'll cost me a future in STEM. My son was scholarshiped into Stony Brook for mechanical engineering.

Talk about a STEM field. He's finishing off his master's right now. You know, it'll deprive my child of glorious athletic achievements.

Hey, I have trouble walking now because of my glorious athletic achievements. Right. You know, and I don't have an

NFL salary. You know, it'll deprive my child of extensive social opportunities.

I've heard that one a lot. You know, I want my kids in a bigger school where they will have more friends.

Okay. Think about that. Who do you want socializing your kid? Right. You know,

I would even speak in support of homeschool on that one. You know, a lot of people go against homeschooling for that very reason.

And I'm going, I would rather have parents socialize their kids than have, you know, some kid who doesn't know his head from a doorknob socialize my kid.

It's just insane. The reasoning that we use. So we've got to let go of those idols and we've got to ask

God, God, what is the best? Yes.

As for as for me in my house, we will serve the Lord. We will worship the Lord. We will be

Christianly educated. As my kids are learning calculus, as they're learning forensics, as they're learning physics, they will also be learning theology and they will be learning solid doctrine and they will be learning.

They will be not just learning those things with their heads, but they will also be in an environment where.

Discipleship takes place and they actually live it out and they learn compassion for people and.

You know, and they learn biblically what's wrong with racism, as we talked about a little bit ago.

And I mean, the list goes on. What they learn is a biblical worldview. And when you mentioned

Harvard just moments ago, one of the idols that many parents may have in their aspirations for where their child will be educated, ultimately hoping and praying that they get accepted into an

Ivy League school with such a reputation that Harvard had.

It reminded me immediately of your friend Pete Hegseth, who is a graduate of Harvard.

And I admire him for his Princeton. Are you sure it wasn't? Well, let me think.

It's both. He's got degrees from both. Yes, because he actually returned his diploma to Harvard and crossed out the word

Harvard and wrote over it. Critical theory and then wrote return to center across the central body of the diploma and sent it back to Harvard.

So that just gives you an example of of what that means today, that that that institution that was founded by Christians has become an enemy of Christ.

But we have to go to our midway break right now. And I just would ask of our listeners to please be patient with us, because the midway break is longer than the other breaks, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show. Because the FCC requires of them to air their public service announcements and other things that localize this program geographically to Lake City, Florida.

Please use this time wisely and respond to as many of our advertisers as you can. Please write down the information they provide to contact them, because we depend on our advertisers to exist.

Also send in your questions to Steve Schultz, to ChrisArnson at gmail .com, ChrisArnson at gmail .com.

We'll be right back after these messages. So please do not go away. It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners from all over the world.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, and God's glory alone. Their primary goal is the worship of the

Triune God that continues in eternity. For more details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit heritagepresbyterianchurch .com.

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

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

Joe O 'Reilly, an Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener, from a tie in County Kildare, Ireland, sends you.

Have you noticed the gap that exists between the Sunday morning sermon and the Sunday school classroom or the small group study?

So often we experience great preaching from the pulpit, but when it comes time to study God's Word in those smaller settings, well, let's be honest, it leaves a lot to be desired.

It seems like it is nearly impossible to find good curriculum out there today that is true to the

Word of God and is built upon sound doctrine. Much less, it's hard to find curriculum that will actually teach people how to study the

Bible. Hi there, my name is Jordan Tew, and I am the Executive Director of the Baptist Publishing House.

Our ministry is dedicated to providing local churches with sound Bible study resources.

Our quarterly curriculum is titled The Baptist Expositor, and for good reason. We are

Baptist, and we exegete the scriptures. If you want to have a curriculum that teaches your people how to study the

Word of God, I invite you to go to our website, download a free study, BaptistPublishingHouse .com.

May God bless you. This is

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It gives me joy knowing that many scholars and pastors in the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio audience have been sticking with or switching to the

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Getting a driver's license, running a cash register, flipping burgers, passing sixth grade.

Do you know what they all have in common? They all require training, assessments, and certifications. But do you know what requires no training at all?

Becoming a parent. My name is A .M. Brewster. I'm the president of Truth, Love, Parent, and host of its award -winning podcast.

I've been a biblical family counselor since the early 2000s, and what I've discovered is that the majority of Christian parents have never been biblically equipped to do the work of the ministry in their homes.

That's why Truth, Love, Parent exists. We serve God by equipping dads and moms to be the ambassador parents

God called and created them to be. We produce free parenting resources, train church leaders, and offer biblical counseling so that the next generation of dads and moms can use the scriptures to parent their children for life and godliness.

Please visit us at truthloveparent .com. Every day at thousands of community centers, high schools, middle schools, juvenile institutions, coffee shops, and local hangouts,

Long Island Youth for Christ staff and volunteers meet with young people who need Jesus. We are rural and urban, and we are always about the message of Jesus.

Our mission is to have a noticeable spiritual impact on Long Island, New York by engaging young people in the lifelong journey of following Christ.

Long Island Youth for Christ has been a stalwart bedrock ministry since 1959. We have a world -class staff and a proven track record of bringing consistent love and encouragement to youths in need all over the country and around the world.

Help honor our history by becoming a part of our future. Volunteer, donate, pray, or all of the above.

For details, call Long Island Youth for Christ at 631 -385 -8333.

That's 631 -385 -8333. Or visit liyfc .org.

That's liyfc .org. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

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

And besides that, they feel so good. I'm so delighted I discovered Post Tenebrous Lux Bible rebinding.

No radio ad will be long enough to sing their praises sufficiently, but I'll give it a shot. Jeffrey Rice of Post Tenebrous Lux is a remarkably gifted craftsman and artisan.

All his work is done by hand, from the cutting to the pleating of corners to the perimeter stitching.

Jeffrey uses the finest in buttery soft imported leathers in a wide variety of gorgeous colors, like the turquoise goatskin tanned in Italy used for my

Nestle All in 28th edition, with a navy blue goatskin inside liner and the electric blue goatskin from a

French tannery used to rebind a Reformation study Bible I used as a gift. The silver gilding he added on the page edges has a stunning mirror finish resembling highly polished chrome.

Jeffrey will customize your rebinding to your specifications and even emboss your logo into the leather, making whatever he rebinds a one -of -a -kind work of art.

For more details on Post Tenebrous Lux Bible rebinding, go to PTLBibleRebinding .com.

That's PTLBibleRebinding .com. If you love

Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio, one of the best ways you can help keep the show on the air is by supporting our advertisers.

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

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

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

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

Patafuco demonstrating the reliability of Scripture. To advance the cause of the gospel, they created a beautiful, perfect facsimile of the genealogy of Jesus Christ from the original engravings contained in a first edition 1611

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for helping to keep Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio on the air. Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said,

Give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read.

He who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves that he has no brains of his own.

You need to read. Solid Ground Christian Books is a publisher and book distributor who takes these words of the

Prince of Preachers to heart. The mission of Solid Ground Christian Books is to bring back treasures of the past to minister to Christians in the present and future, and to publish new titles that address burning issues in the church and the world.

Since its beginning in 2001, Solid Ground has been committed to publish God -centered, Christ -exalting books for all ages.

We invite you to go treasure hunting at solid -ground -books .com. That's solid -ground -books .com

and see what priceless literary gems from the past to present you can unearth from Solid Ground.

Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And please do not forget, folks, what

I've been telling you for weeks now. Solid -Ground -Books .com is experiencing a serious sales slump in regard to books.

So please, if you love Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, please extend your thanks to those who keep this show in existence through their financial support by supporting them.

And that would include purchasing books from solid -ground -books .com. And please remember, you're not only going to be doing solid -ground -books .com

a favor by buying books from them, and you're not only going to be doing Iron Sharpens Iron Radio a favor by keeping one of our most important advertisers happy, you're going to be doing anyone for whom you purchase books, including yourself, an enormous favor of incalculable value.

Because solid -ground -books .com brings back into print lost treasures of literary history back into print that have been basically lost and forgotten for centuries, some of these works.

And also, they publish books that are written by current modern authors, like Dr.

James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries. They bring back into print and publish nothing but the very finest in Christian literature.

So please go to solid -ground -books .com today. Purchase Christmas gifts for your loved ones and for any other occasion, even if just as a way to tell someone you love,

I love you. And also to replenish your own library and for your own self -edification.

Go to solid -ground -books .com frequently, purchase generously, and always mention that you heard about them from Chris Orenson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

If you've never purchased from solid -ground -books .com before, please make today your very first purchase.

And if you are even a regular customer, please make today your largest purchase ever if you can afford to do so.

That's solid -ground -books .com. Don't forget to mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We will return to our conversation with Steve Schultz, Headmaster of Grace Christian Academy of Long Island in Merrick, New York, momentarily, but I just have a couple of very important announcements to make.

If you love this show and you do not want it to disappear, please go to ironsharpensironradio .com,

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

If you prefer snail mail, sending in a physical check to a physical address the old -fashioned way at your post office, there will also be a physical address on your screen where you can mail your checks made payable to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

If you want to advertise with us, whether it's your church, parachurch, ministry, business, private practice like a medical firm, a law firm, or perhaps it's just a special event that you want to promote, whatever it is, as long as it's compatible with my beliefs,

I would love to help you launch an ad campaign as quickly as possible because we're just as much in urgent need of your advertising dollars as we are in your donations.

So send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com and put advertising in the subject line. Also, please remember,

I never want any Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listener to cut into the finances that you have reserved to give to your own church where you are a member on the

Lord's Day in order to bless us financially. Never do that. In other words, never give your own church less money than you normally give them in order to bless us.

Also, if you're really struggling to survive financially, wait until you are back on your feet and more stable before you send us a financial gift.

The Bible is clear that our finances that He has blessed us with are primarily to be used to support our church and our family.

Supporting my radio show is not a command, obviously. But if you love the show and you don't want it to disappear, you have extra money above and beyond your ability to provide for church and family.

You have extra money to use for trivial purposes, benevolent purposes, recreational purposes.

Please share some of that money with us so that we can continue to exist if you really love the show. Go to ironsharpensironradio .com,

click support, then click click to donate now. Last but not least, if you are not a member of a biblically faithful,

Christ -honoring, theologically accurate, and doctrinally solid church like Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, New York, which is the church that operates

Grace Christian Academy of Long Island, well, I have extensive lists spanning the globe, including many churches that are biblically faithful.

In fact, all the churches that I have on my lists are faithful. So wherever you live, if you are without a church home that's biblically faithful, send me an email to chrisarenson at gmail .com

and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address that you can use to send in a question to our guest,

Steve Schultz, headmaster of Grace Christian Academy of Long Island. That's chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And before I forget, I want to make sure that I mention, especially for those who live on or near Long Island, that Grace Christian Academy is having their next fundraising gala on Long Island, New York.

That will be March 15th, 2024. And believe it or not,

I am once again going to be their master of ceremonies. So you have to call into question their discernment and their ability to properly teach anyone anything.

Tell us more about this gala, Steve. Our keynote speaker is going to be

Dr. Ernie Zara. Author of 15 books on education.

Yeah, just the slouch. Now, it was actually through you that I was introduced to him.

You asked me to review a manuscript for a book that he was writing. And the book that he was writing,

I found to be brilliant and thought it should be in the hands of every parent and every teacher because it addresses the cultural sludge that is creeping its way, has crept its way into the academic system.

And it really, in my eyes, functions as an encyclopedia so that we can identify these things and identify what's so wrong with them.

But he will be our keynote speaker. I will give a brief presentation.

We'll have a parent testimony, an alumni testimony, some demonstrations by our kids as to how classical

Christian education manifests itself. And a great opportunity to fellowship with other believers and eat some good food.

And that's going to be out at the Coral House in Baldwin. In fact, it's going to be in the very room that my wife and I had our wedding reception in.

So it will be a reunion for us. I wonder if it's also the same room where I began what eventually turned out to be over a decade -long series of debates on Long Island known as the

Great Debates, where Dr. James R. White debated Roman Catholic apologists.

The very first few of those debates, until we outgrew the facility, were held at the

Coral House. And I can still remember calling the debate in memory of some of Muhammad Ali's boxing matches that had hilarious nicknames to them, like the

Thrilla in Manila. I called at least one of the debates at the Coral House the Quarrel at the

Coral. But I'm looking forward to being your

Master of Ceremonies again. I hope I don't let anybody down. And if anybody wants to learn more about this, you can go to Grace Christian Academy's website, which is

GCALI .com. G -C -A -L -I .com.

And G -C for Grace Christian, A for Academy, L -I for LongIsland .com.

G -C -A -L -I .com. If you want to find out more about the keynote speaker, Dr. Ernie Zara, prolific writer about the collapse of the

American education system, go to DrErnieZara .com.

And doctor is abbreviated D -R -ErnieZara .com.

Well, we do have a listener question. We have actually a number of them, but I'll go to one before you continue anything you'd like to say.

We have Ted in Moundville, Alabama, who says,

Chris mentioned your school's practice of teaching the scientific arguments in favor of evolutionary theories so that your students can be more effective to refute it, or so that your students can more effectively refute it.

Does your school have a particular position on the controversy between young Earth creationism and old

Earth creationism? If so, do you similarly teach the students the arguments from both sides of that controversy?

As a former educator who specialized in argumentation, I applaud you on your practice with regards to evolutionary arguments.

All right. Thank you. Yeah, the position that we hold, because it's the position that the

Bible holds, is we are sixth -day creationists. We are young Earthers. But we do present, we want our kids to understand

Darwinism. We want them to understand all the sub -theories that shot out of that.

We even want our kids to understand different versions of theological evolution, which we do not agree with, but we want them to understand it so that they know how to debate with it.

And it also forces them to consider facets of the biblical account of creationism so that they understand what they believe even more deeply.

So, I don't know if that answers the question. No, I think it did. And thanks for the question,

Ted. Yeah. And let's see. We have

Mallory in Watermill, Long Island, New York.

And Mallory asks, I know that some Christian schools have more of a missionary approach where they will permit students to be accepted who are from families where there is no evangelical

Christian present. Some will insist on two

Christian parents. Some will insist on at least one. What is the practice of Grace Christian Academy?

Okay. Basically, what you're referring to is the difference between a school that is evangelistic and a school that is covenantal.

And GCA is covenantal. The requirement that we have is that at least one parent has to be a member in good standing in a

Bible -believing church. And, you know,

I applaud the schools who take a more evangelical approach.

That's not us. There has to be the, you know, missional schools.

There has to be the covenantal schools. Just like there has to be evangelists and there has to be disciples.

We would put ourselves more in the discipleship category. And I'm assuming that you do not require that the parents be theologically reformed and in that much agreement with the doctrines that are adhered to confessionally by Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island or GCA.

Correct. So you permit children who have Arminian parents and perhaps even a somewhat broader scope of theological understanding within the framework of evangelicalism.

Certainly. Great. Well, thanks a lot. And it was a great question.

We'll continue on with some of the idols before I go to any more listener questions.

Some of the idols that there might be parents listening who are oblivious to the fact that something they are clinging to that is preventing their children to be properly educated with a biblical worldview.

They might not even recognize it as an idol. Perhaps go through some more of those things that you would consider to be idols that are perhaps even quite prevalent even amongst

Christian parents. Right. Well, let me start broadly.

And first of all, just discuss what

I mean by an idol before we start to point any of them out. And regardless of whether it applies to education or any other field of interest, the

Lord is worthy of demands and should receive our time, our talents, and our treasures.

And when there is a healthy level of time, treasure, or talent that should be devoted to the

Lord, and I divert that to a different receiver, that receiver has been elevated to status vital.

You know, Sunday morning, first day of the week has been designated by the

Lord according to the scriptures as the day that the believers are to come together and to meet and fellowship and bring their spiritual gifts to bless each other.

And when I would rather sit home and watch a football game or, you know, this one always killed me.

Is that I wanted my son to play football, but the local football league in our town only met on Sundays.

And immediately I was met with this decision, you know, do we during football season, you know, just not go to church or go to church online or, you know, not meet with the saints.

Not the New Orleans saints. No, not at all.

Certainly not the New Orleans saints. But, you know, really what made making the decision easy wasn't my emotions, but it was

I had already determined to operate with a biblical worldview. So before I could even give in to what my flesh was saying,

I knew, my wife knew, we knew together we are going to think biblically and biblically we cannot do this.

And what we're going to have to do is either completely forego, you know, this luxury in his life or meet it some other way.

But, you know, we will not compromise our church membership and our commitment, our covenant thing with the saints in our church.

So, you know, the idols that we have, again, once I start to give to anything, something that should be given to God, I have now elevated that thing above God and it is now an idol by biblical definition.

And now how does that relate to education? What we've got to do is think through why is it that I'm so okay with sending my child off to learn from Caesar?

Because Caesar hates my God. Caesar is not teaching a neutral body of academics.

Caesar is teaching my child things that are antithetical to God in His Word and will not be happy until my child exhibits his success in my child's life.

And what I can't get over is why we're so okay with that. And I've thought through why is it that we're okay with that?

And, you know, one, this is the one where we already talked about this.

I really sympathize with the families who struggle with this financially, but I do think that there's even an answer there.

And I certainly don't want to lay it on the financially struggling family as a guilt trip at all.

I think this comes back to the churches and what the churches need to do is join together.

You know, Philippians 2, Paul says, if there's any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind.

Having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Imagine if the churches, regardless of their doctrinal particulars,

I'm talking about those who are orthodox in their primary issues. If they all got together and said, we are going to, first of all, steal our kids back away from Caesar, and we're going to work together to provide for them an education that is

Christ -centered. They will still learn their other subjects, and they'll learn them excellently.

But they will also learn it in a context in which it was designed, and that is to bring glory to the

Lord. If the churches did that, it would drive down the expense.

It would drive down the cost of Christian education. It would enable the church to pursue

Christ -centered education. But we're so independent of each other in our thinking in this area that we just won't do it.

Now, use this as a model if you want. I'm one of the pastors in my church at Levittown Baptist, and the two other pastors, the three of us have been talking about how we can direct some of the money that we've got in order to help families pursue a

Christ -centered education. We're taking a lot of that, or at least some of that burden on ourselves as church leadership.

So for the families who are financially struggling to do that and can't do it because of finances, you have my complete sympathy.

I'm working to fix that problem in my setting. Everybody else, we've got some things to worry about.

What is more important to me that my kid pursue a field of study that is admirable or that I predict will give them a greater chance, a better shot at a certain college or at a certain level of paycheck?

Nowhere in that thinking am I thinking biblically, right?

Nowhere am I going, okay, what would God have me do? What would God want for my child to do?

Do we want Christians in Harvard? Do we want them in Princeton? Do we want them in Yale?

Absolutely, we want Christians in every area that we can get them to function as missionaries with a biblical worldview.

Unfortunately, that's not what we're doing. We're sending them in there so that they can get an impressive diploma and make us look good and get a bigger income, and maybe they will.

But my Bible says, what has a man gained if he gains the world but loses his soul?

As for me and my kids, we're going to educate Christianly. But then what we've got to do if we're – see, here's the other thing.

There are those in your audience right now who, I mean, as I did, heard the title that you gave our meeting today.

Wait a minute. Them's fighting words. And they cannot afford it.

I understand that again. Total sympathy right there. But then there are those who go, wait a minute.

I need to find some way to shoot this argument down because I don't want them touching my idols.

Right. Now nobody's saying that, but I think what each one of us, and I include myself in this, we need to stop for a moment and think through.

Is there an idol here that this call to educating my child

Christianly encroaches upon? Right.

Will this keep my kid from being on the basketball team in my local public school where there are state champions?

Will this keep my kid from socializing with 1 ,000 kids rather than just 140?

The list goes on. My child wants to be on the swim team.

Well, we don't have a pool. We don't have anywhere to put a pool. But the local, you know, a closer school that has absolutely no gospel does have a pool.

OK, so now there's a decision being made. What's more important to me, that my child be raised with sound doctrine or that my child get his desires met with swimming?

Well, I mean, if they're mutually exclusive and it's one or the other, it's better that a man, you know, not lose his soul rather than gain the world.

Amen. Do you think a part of the problem is that Christian parents all too often have an overabundant confidence and perhaps or even wrongly, 100 percent convinced, convinced that their children are regenerate just because they were raised in a

Christian home and have been parroting the beliefs that have been proclaimed and taught in that household and in the church where the parents are members.

And therefore the the parents have no fear of where their children are going to go to church.

Hey, my kids have been baptized. Hey, my kids are Christian.

I don't have to worry about them. I don't believe you can lose your salvation. So therefore,

I have nothing to fear. And perhaps these kids will even be missionaries wherever they go. How do you respond to that kind of thinking, which

I know is prevalent? It's very prevalent. And sadly to say,

I think that's the way that we as Christian parents tend to coddle ourselves. You know, if if my child tells me that he has studied electrical engineering and knows everything there is to know about the flow of electricity and safety and everything else.

And he says, I'm going out to climb the pole in the front yard and fix the the wire that just blew.

I'm not going to let him do that. There's too much at stake. You understand what

I mean? Yes. And it is. Epidemic proportions that children raised in Christian households go off to secular colleges and come back agnostic, atheist or heretics.

Yeah. And as Votie Baucom said, and I'm paraphrasing, if you send your children to Caesars schools, don't be shocked when they return home little

Romans. Absolutely. I went off to college. I was a brand new believer.

So I was in the cage stage. I was really fired up. And I was meeting kids who came out of Christian homes.

They've been Christians, allegedly most of their life. And I can't tell you how many times

I would run into them on the weekends and they're smashed and they're sleeping around in the fraternity houses.

And, you know, they've completely reneged their their belief system.

And, you know, that's that that terrifies me because I bond with my students here and I know

I've got to I got to graduate them. And it terrifies me that they're going to go off and I didn't or we didn't effectively do our job in building into them a resistance to that.

So, you know, that's why we're we're pretty aggressive with that. You know, we're we're teaching our students about false teachers.

We're teaching them about false teachings and what makes those things false and why they're dangerous and why people hold to them and how to combat them.

We teach them a lot of apologetics. But, you know,

I've got my own biological kids. I've got my I've got more. GCA kids and I kind of feel like a dad to all of them.

And it scares me to death when I got to send them off. But I'm hoping that we've equipped them. Amen. We have let's see here,

Percy in New Castle, New York. And Percy says, you mentioned earlier that you accept children into the student body who are from households where there is at least one

Christian parent. And that parent does not necessarily have to agree to the reformed faith.

However, I was curious if the reformed faith and the teachings of the doctrines of sovereign grace are specifically taught nonetheless at GCA.

OK, good question. Let me answer it this way.

The students, the parents, they know very clearly where we stand on those issues. So.

As we teach much of our teaching, because it's

Socratic, because it's, you know, because it's classical, our objective is to engage in dialogue.

It's not for us to stand up there and tell them, you know, everything they learn here.

It's not because we've told it to them. It's because we've had dialogues. And it's through those dialogues that it becomes very clear where we stand.

It's very clear where I stand. Interestingly enough, you're asking that question.

I just had a student come into my office and a great kid.

And, you know, he's really starting to deal with a lot of this stuff and he's thinking through.

I was really proud of him because he said, what I'm learning to do is go right back to the

Bible and evaluate what everybody tells me. And I said, man, you you're dead on.

You need to do that with everything I say. You need to do that with everything anybody says. He says, well, in doing that, what

I what I've realized is that there are holes in what I'm being taught in my church. And my pastor said, go to GCA, you know, learn your math and your

English, get your academics right. But don't listen to what they have to say doctrinally.

But I think we've trained him well enough. We've discipled him well enough that he's doing it on his own.

He's now looking into the word and he's concluding on his own that there's some problems with some of these things that he's been taught.

Well, we have to go to our final break. If anybody wants to get in line and ask a question of Steve Schultz on classical

Christian education, please do so now because we're rapidly running out of time. Chris Arnsen at Gmail dot com.

Give us your first name at least city and state and country of residence. Don't go away. We'll be right back. Hello, my name is

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

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

Apple's iTunes app by typing Iron Sharpens Iron radio in the search bar.

You no longer have to worry about missing a show or a special guest because you're in your car or still at work.

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

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

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

Iron Sharpens Iron radio podcast right now. And while you're at it, you can also sign up for the Reform Rookie dot com podcast and visit our website and the

YouTube page. We're dedicated to teaching Christian theology from a reformed Baptist perspective to beginners in the faith as well as seasoned believers.

From Keacher's Catechism and the doctrines of grace to the Olivet Discourse and the Book of Leviticus, the

Reform Rookie podcast and YouTube channel is sure to have something to offer everyone seeking biblical truth.

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

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

Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Avino, and thanks for listening. I'm Dr.

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

Every Christian who's serious about the reformed faith and the Westminster standards should have and use the eight volume commentary on the theology and ethics of the

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

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

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

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

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

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

Joseph Piper of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary sends you. When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

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

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

I'm Pastor Nate Pickowitz of Harvest Bible Church in Gilmont and Ironworks, New Hampshire, and the

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

NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Sule Prince of Oakwood Wesleyan Church in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and the

NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor John Sampson of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona, and the

NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Chuck Volo of New Life Community Church in Kingsville, Maryland, and the

NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Steve Herford of East Fort Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida, and the

NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Roy Owens, Jr. of the

Church in Friendship in Hockley, Texas, and the NASB is my Bible of choice.

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

Bibles tattered and falling apart? Consider restocking your pews with the NASB and tell the publishers you heard about them from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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

Hi, I'm Buzz Taylor.

Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio has had a long time partnership with our friends at CVBBS, which stands for Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

They specialize in supplying Reformed and Puritan books and Bibles at discount prices that make them affordable for everyone.

CVBBS has been a family -owned book service since 1987, operating out of Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

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

Unlike other book sites, they make no effort to provide every book that is available or popular because, frankly, much of what is being printed is not worth your time.

That means you can get to the good stuff faster. It also means you don't have to worry about being assaulted by the pornographic, heretical, and otherwise faith -insulting materials promoted by the secular book vendors.

Browse the pages at ease, shop at your leisure, and purchase with confidence at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

Order online at cvbbs .com, that's cvbbs .com,

or you can order by phone at 1 -800 -656 -0231.

That's 1 -800 -656 -0231. Please let our friends at CVBBS know that you heard about them on Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First Edition 1611 King James Bible. This 17th century hand -engraved chart shows the family tree of Jesus Christ going back to Adam and Eve.

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for helping to keep Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the air. I'm Brian McLachlan, president of the

SecureCom Group, and an enthusiastic supporter of Chris Arnson's Iron Sharpens Iron radio program.

The SecureCom Group provides the highest level of security, close -circuit television, access control, and communication systems for Manhattan's top residential buildings, as well as churches, commercial properties, municipalities, and more.

We custom install exactly what you need to protect yourself, including digital recording, off -site viewing, and connectivity from most smart devices.

From simple code -activated systems to the latest technology using facial recognition, the

SecureCom Group has it. We also provide the latest in intercom and IP telephone systems.

In addition, we provide superior networking platforms. We'll create, maintain, and secure your local network.

Whether it's a Wi -Fi or hardwire network, we'll implement the latest secured firewall, endpoint solutions, and cloud backup.

I would love to have the honor and privilege of helping protect the lives and property of Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners and their associates.

For more details on how the SecureCom Group may be of service to you with the very latest in security innovations, call 718 -353 -3355.

That's 718 -353 -3355. Or visit securecomgroup .com.

That's securecomgroup .com. This is Brian McLaughlin of the SecureCom Group, joining

Chris Arnzen's family of advertisers to keep Iron Sharpens Iron radio on the air.

Puritan Reformed is a Bible -believing, kingdom -building, devil -fighting church. We are devoted to upholding the apostolic doctrine and practice preserved in Scripture alone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Welcome back. I want to remind our listeners that you've been hearing for years the commercials for the

Historical Bible Society. Please don't forget that that fine ministry is founded by its president,

Daniel P. Buttafuoco, attorney at law. So if you are the victim of a serious injury or medical malpractice anywhere in the

United States in all 50 states, please call 1 -800 -NOW -HURT, 1 -800 -NOW -HURT, or visit the website 1 -800 -NOW -HURT .com,

1 -800 -NOW -HURT .com, the website of Buttafuoco and Associates. Please always mention

Chris Arnzen of Iron Trip and Zion Radio. We are now back with our guest, Steve Schultz.

And we do have a listener in Crystal, North Dakota.

And this is Darlene. And Darlene in Crystal, North Dakota, says,

How do you respond to the objection of many Christians who think that it is wrong and perhaps even sinful to send a child to an

Ivy League school such as Princeton, which although has a rich history in Christian theology and even

Reformed theology, today is an absolutely antichrist, abhorrent institution that even has the, as a professor,

Peter Singer, who advocates the murder of children even up to 28 days after the child is born.

Okay. That was a long question. Let me back that one up a little bit.

Okay. First of all, what I would strongly advocate for is Christian schooling

K -12. Once we start to get into college, we are now dealing more with independent young adults.

They are adults. They're young, but they're adults. And what we are doing, everything that we can to do, is prepare them to enter into what is often a very hostile environment.

Now, when it comes to sending my children off to a university, the thinking that we went through, because out of my three, two of them are college age, we thought through, okay, do they have what we observe to be sound doctrine?

Do they have conviction behind that doctrine? Are they able to go into their environment with at least a degree of mission -mindedness?

Because if they're not ready to go into a secular environment in college, they're not ready to go into a secular environment anywhere.

But I think what makes them ready, if anything is ready, is they're going into it mission -minded.

I'm going to this university to change it. And when it comes to sending off to college,

I think that's a discussion that the parents and the student have to have together.

And the parents do certainly need to use their judgment and give their input.

But they're the ones paying for it. So they, in my opinion, should have the final say.

But where my expertise is more so is in the K -12. And I would say

I would not, if it's at all possible, not send my child off to a government school.

I would not send them off to any school that is teaching hostility towards the gospel.

Could be a religious school. I'm not going to send them off to even a

Christian school that poorly portrays what a

Christian is. We have adopted such easy believism in our Christian community in America that I think sometimes it's even more detrimental for a child to walk into that because it's harder to identify the enemy.

Well, we have time for one more question. We have

Irving from Midnight, Mississippi. I love the name of that city. And Irving asks,

Are there any classical Christian schools that you are aware of that should be avoided by Christians?

Oh boy. Okay. First of all, no.

That just means you're not aware of them. That means I'm not aware of them. I'm going to be very discerning wherever I send my kids.

That is a responsibility that the parent has, and they need to take that seriously.

I'm very proactive in the kids

I send my kids off with, what home I'm sending them into, what group

I'm sending them off with. I watch my kids like a hawk because I know that in the end,

I'm going to answer for that. And they're going to answer for that. And I don't want them to answer for my mistakes.

Now, as far as being discerning, my school belongs to the

Association of Classical Christian Schools, ACCS. And anybody who's interested in learning more about classicism and classical

Christian schools, I would highly recommend that you go there first because one of the things that's great about ACCS is that they're very involved with the schools that are members.

And there's very little that I can do to drive our school away from what

ACCS would consider acceptable before they would intervene. And that's one of the reasons we became a member of ACCS.

Number one is I'm a man. I can go astray.

I don't trust me. I trust the Lord. And I know that accountability is a necessity.

And ACCS gives my school that accountability. It also supplies us with an endless array of resources and encouragement.

And we've got a big family all over the country that is ACCS. So I'd go there.

If you run across a classical Christian school, I'd type it in there and see if it belongs to ACCS. If it doesn't and it's independent, they may be outstanding.

They may not be. You'll have to find some other way to evaluate them. But I don't know of any.

All right. We're out of time. I want to make sure I give the website again. This is for Grace Christian Academy.

G -C -A for Grace Christian Academy. L -I for longisland .com. G -C -A -L -I .com.

I also want to plug Levittown Baptist Church where my guest serves as one of the pastors on Long Island.

Levittownbaptist .com. Levittownbaptist .com. I want to thank Brother Steve, Pastor Steve as well, for being such a superb guest.

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