January 16, 2026 Show with Lou Veiga AND Dr. Eric Patterson on “The Forgotten Victims of Communism”
No description available
Transcript
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 Arnzen. Good afternoon,
Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.
This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 16th day of January 2026.
I'm thrilled to have both a returning guest and a first -time guest who will together discuss a very important organization and a very important theme.
I have returning to the program Pastor Lou Vega of Covenant Presbyterian Church, which is a congregation in the
Presbyterian Church in America, also known as the PCA, in Houston, Texas.
And Lou Vega's family fled to the United States from Cuba in the 1950s, shortly before the fall of Cuba to Fidel Castro and the
Communists. And first of all, it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Lou Vega.
Well, it's all my pleasure and privilege. Why don't you give a brief description of the church where you pastor,
Covenant Presbyterian Church of Houston, Texas? Well, I think the best way to describe the church is that it's a lively congregation in the name of the
Lord Jesus here in Houston. We're in West Houston, and we are,
I like to say, we're mostly a plain vanilla Presbyterian church and nothing up our sleeves and nothing very distinctive or unique about us.
If you like the Reformed faith and if you're a Presbyterian, you'll recognize us probably within five minutes of the start of worship.
And I don't know what else I can say about that. I'm very happy to have come and discovered this godly heritage from the
Protestant Reformation, and it's the expression of the Christian faith, as it is stated in Westminster.
I know that, you know, Christy, you are a Reformed Baptist, but we're really very, very close together.
I love all the Reformed Baptists of the London Confession there. And I will say that our unique situation is that since Houston is very much an international city, our congregation pretty much mirrors our neighborhood.
At one time, I think we had like 18 different countries represented in our congregation of 174, with probably about 24 dialects spoken, because several of our
African members speak multiple dialects. And of course, I'm the pastor, and so I speak, my first language is
Spanish, and I've taken up English nicely, I think. So that's about it.
I used to be an engineer, and the church is located in West Houston, which is in the, it's called the
Energy Corridor, the Oil and Gas Corridor of Houston, which means we get a lot of techie types, you know, engineers and then financial people.
But then again, the neighborhood is very, very much mixed. And so all kinds of people here.
And we have this one thing in common, that the Lord, being lifted up, He has drawn us to Himself, and we enjoy that communion very much.
And that's what we are all about. And if anyone wants to do more research on Covenant Presbyterian Church in Houston, Texas, go to covenantpca .org,
covenantpca .org. And also joining us for the very first time is
Dr. Eric Patterson. He is president and CEO of Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and Museum.
And today, both of these men are going to be addressing the forgotten victims of communism and the devastating results of the mass ignorance of their persecution.
And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Dr. Eric Patterson.
Chris, it's a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me and for highlighting the important work that the
Victims of Communism Foundation has been doing for the past 30 years. And we have our work cut out for us in the days ahead.
Amen. And we have a tradition here on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, whenever we have a first -time guest, unlike Pastor Lou Vega, who has been on this program before, but you are the first -time guest on the broadcast today, we always have first -time guests give a summary of their salvation testimony, which would include any kind of religious atmosphere in which they were raised, if any, and the kinds of providential circumstances our
Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to Himself and saved them.
So I would love to hear a summary of your story. Well, Chris, I love the way that you just said that, because what you had to say about the providential drawing of Christ, us to Himself, and the role that our families can play is exactly right.
In my own case, I was blessed to have Christian, godly parents—I still have them,
I swept them just last night—and grew up in a faithful household that was a
God home, went to Evangel University in Springfield, Missouri, thinking that I was going to be working in the church, and felt really
God's hand leading me in that direction. About halfway through college, I felt as if the
Lord said in my heart, not in audible voice, but in my heart, you know,
Patterson, you finally have surrendered yourself, and now you're useful for service. And after a lot of prayer and things,
I did finish those degrees, but didn't go to work in full -time clergy type of ministry in the church, but instead have been on a path, trying to be salt and light in the primary line where education and international affairs and government service come together.
Again, I can't underscore enough how I was blessed to be raised in a Bible -believing church with great role models and mentors in my home church growing up, and my grandparents and my parents.
So I'm so thankful for that, and for the saving work of Christ in my own life.
I have a godly wife, Jennifer Patterson, she's well known with her involvement at Reform Theological Seminary in the
D .C. campus, and is the Director of Theology and Public Life there, and for other work that she's done over the years.
So I feel very blessed in just many ways. My last job was as president of the
Religious Freedom Institute. I felt like God was using our work there to provide opportunities for everyone to live out their religious faith, but in particular, as a
Christian witness, as an opportunity for Christians to be authentically Christian in what they say and do at home and abroad.
And in my current role with the Victims of Communism Foundation, I feel very, very blessed that the work that we do, first and foremost, is to protect the inherent dignity, the fact that every male, every female is created in God's image, and that everyone has that type of worth.
Communism crushes that. Communism crushes the family, it crushes religious faith, it crushes religious authority, and it smashes every institution outside of the communist state.
So I feel very thankful for the work that we do here, and I look forward to the conversation. Amen. And Lou, how did you become acquainted with Dr.
Patterson, so much so that you visited the museum and have developed a friendship with him?
Well, in the Lord's Providence, I was visiting my sister in Jacksonville, and she mentioned that our cousin
Rita had several articles, the personal articles that she was displaying in the
Victims of Communism Museum as it was hosting the
Operation Pedro Pan exhibit. That was a touring exhibit regarding an organization that was helpful in removing young people, children, and getting them out of Cuba at a time when they were really being snatched and they were being taken by the
Cuban government away from their family, away from their parents. And Operation Pedro Pan, they flew in, and they were relocated here through sponsor families.
But when I heard that Rita had those articles contributing to the
Operation Pedro Pan exhibit in the Victims of Communism Museum, and that she herself had been participant in the
Pedro Pan operation, I thought, well, this is something new.
I did not know that someone who was related to us actually was brought into safety to the
United States through Operation Pedro Pan. And the Victims of Communism Museum, very keen to host this exhibit and to give expression to this.
Now, the reason that was just, that would have been merely a point of curiosity with me regarding my cousin.
But the reason I really wanted to at least get a couple of words in with Dr. Patterson was that I was an engineer with IBM in Kentucky, and one evening after work,
I was driving home and I was listening to National Public Radio. And I heard the announcer say that this matter of Operation Pedro Pan, all of that, that is not historically true.
It never happened. There was never such thing, that's a misunderstanding. And I honestly,
I was driving on Highway 68, which is a hazardous road, it's in the country, lots of curves and hills,
I'm in horse country. I nearly killed a horse at that point. I nearly flew off the road and crashed through a horse fence and landed on top of somebody's pony because I knew
I had gone to school with at least seven people, five of whom
I interacted with all the time and three of whom I played football with in high school.
I knew this was the case, why it was National Public Radio flatly denouncing a plain historical truth.
So I had to express myself. I had to just, I had to run to somebody and say, look, what do you know about this?
And when I did, Dr. Patterson was very gracious to acknowledge me as not a crazy person.
He looked at me right in the eye and he said, yeah, not only that, but we still fight this very unconventional wisdom in America because they'll fight us on the number of people that actually came over and participated and that there was an organization.
In other words, Dr. Patterson's organization has very well documented everything, all manner of testimony, all manner of receipts, as we like to call things today.
So nothing new to him, but I was moved more than just by curiosity.
I was moved with a bit of rage. How is it that we, how is it that in America, a place that we came to flee is now covering up the atrocities that we fled from in Cuba?
So anyway, a sane voice in the victims of communism organization. And that's how we paired up.
And it would probably be good to, before we get too far ahead of ourselves in this interview,
Dr. Patterson, it would probably be very wise for us to have you give an accurate working definition of communism and even compare and contrast that with socialism.
There seems to be a great deal of ignorance on what both of those terms really mean.
And if you could lay that out for us. Yes, yes.
Let me start with this just to say something about what we do at the Victims of Communism Foundation and Museum.
Our mission is to educate all generations about the terrible history, ideology, and legacy of communism.
That is what we do. And we do it really in four areas.
One is through the VOC Museum, which we opened in 2022 here in Washington, D .C., which is a schoolhouse that tells the story of communism kind of around the world.
The second thing that we do is we have a set of educational academic programs.
We have a whole set of books and curriculum available on our Amazon bookshop. It's literally Amazon Bookshop slash
Victims of Communism. We do teacher trainings. We do things for professors and high school teachers.
And we have curriculum that's tied to the kind of state standards about teaching the Cold War and whatnot for across the
United States. And then the third thing we do is we put policy -relevant research into the hands of legislators, policymakers, people at the
State Department, the British Ministry of Defense, the United Nations, the U .S.
National Security Council, to equip them about what's really going on in places like Cuba and Nicaragua and Venezuela and China and North Korea and elsewhere today.
And of course, we have a convening role bringing people together from the dissident communities, freedom champions from around the world here in Washington, D .C.
So that's kind of the core of our mission. We really have an educational mission when it comes to these types of things.
Now, you asked the question about thinking about definitions. And since we're kind of in this long -form situation, let me say this, that Karl Marx, you know, going back to Greek times, to Plato, there have been people who have theorized that some sort of elite could run the state in a way to maximize efficiency and equality.
We see that in Plato's Republic. And obviously, the questions are, well, what about individual differences?
What about pluralism? What about individual freedom? What about private property? What about choices that people make?
And of course, these types of systems and the best explication of this type of status totalitarianism comes from Karl Marx.
And remember, Marx believed that he was a prophet of the future and that capitalism was on its way out and that there would be two phases.
The first would be socialism, a system of political economic organization in which major industries and all of the financial economic sectors of life are owned or controlled by government, not by individuals, not by families, not by companies.
And Marx and his co -author Engels believed that socialism, where government takes control essentially of all of the economic sphere, was only the first of two steps, and that the second step is what they called communism.
So communism is a centralized system of political power in which a single -party dictatorship abolishes private property and controls what they call the means of production and distribution of goods.
In other words, all sectors of political, social, and economic life. Now under the pretense of a classless, egalitarian society, what communist regimes do in practice is use force, brutality, and repression that steals private property and represses the kind of fundamental liberties that we think about in the
U .S. that are rooted in the individual, speech, religion, assembly, and others.
That's how we think about socialism and communism at VOC. Yes, and I'm assuming that you are as disturbed, if not more, as I am, knowing that, especially among the young, perhaps
Generation Z and those that are somewhat a little older than that, but of course there are even elderly people who seem to become enamored with the idea of socialism.
We just witnessed the openly socialist mayor of New York City become elected to that position and obviously there was an overwhelming support for him.
This is truly mystifying because it would seem to betray gross ignorance and mass ignorance on the part of the population as to what socialism is, how it has led to full -blown communism, that there's really not that much of a difference in those two ideologies.
In fact, I have heard it often said that the only difference between socialism and communism is that socialism is usually an idea that becomes imposed upon a population through votes and through clever persuasion and communism by the threat of death or the actual conquering of a people through death and torture and so on.
But what do you have to say about this amazing lack of understanding and it seems that the knowledge of church history, which is not that difficult to delve into, would make any sane person want to flee from the very notion of socialism or communism?
I'm with you 100 % that any knowledgeable person who has their head on straight would want to flee socialism.
Let me tell you how I see the moment that we're in and it's exactly right that a recent poll from last summer said that 62 % of younger adults and young adults have a favorable view of socialism, 62%.
Let me suggest how we got there and there's three things I think that get us there.
The first one is because you noted, well, every communist regime has come through the imposition of brute force.
Martin Luther King Jr. said that communism always is imposed and maintained in power by violence, lies, and murder.
So that's true. But it is possible, as you were suggesting, for a society to sort of voluntarily slide into socialism.
And here's how it happens. Three things. First, you rewrite your own history.
You let the hard left revisionists rewrite American history, not as a story of expanding freedom from the
Mayflower Compact onward, warts, scars, and all. Instead, you rewrite it as oppressors versus oppressed, white patriarchy,
Christians dominating everybody else. And that critical lens, that neo -Marxist lens, is actually the way we've been teaching
American history for the past 20 or 30 years in our universities. So rewrite your history so your young people think it's a history of oppression and actually come to hate your country.
Second, the loss of religious faith. George Washington reminded us that religion and religious morality is at the heart of what it means to be a democracy.
As de Tocqueville reminded us, you want to have individuals who voluntarily obey what is moral and right.
That's the role of the church. That's the role of Christianity. And we have seen the benefits of that, not just for Christians, but for Jews and for others in our diverse, religiously free society.
But if you get rid of that, if you ban religion from the public square, if you deride it as superstitious, as part of this critical complex of the old patriarchy, so get rid of it, it's unjust, it's implicated in racism and evil, you've lost the basis for morality.
And the only then basis for morality is raw power. Whosoever in power gets to decide what's right and wrong.
So rewrite history, get rid of religion. And then third is increasing dependency on the state.
And the young people who voted for Mondani, I think most of them are probably not ideologues, but they're in their early 20s to mid -20s.
They've never had a real job. Their K -12 education was free. Their college was largely free.
Maybe they now have a debt for college, but they didn't really pay for it. They have had their food subsidized their whole life.
They've had free rent or subsidized rent their whole life. Their transportation has largely been free.
Their phone, which is quite expensive these days, has been largely free. And so they're 22, 25, 27.
And they're wondering, you know, how dare you throw all these huge costs on me? I'm entitled to live in New York.
I'm entitled to have a job. Someone should provide these things for me.
Rewrite history, get rid of the religious basis of morality, and create a sense of dependency on the state.
I think that's how we get to this moment. And Pastor Lou Vega, you, as I said earlier, when you were a child, you and your family successfully fled from Cuba before the complete collapse of Cuba to Fidel Castro and the communists.
What can you say about what's going on in communist
Cuba since then? So our listeners get a vivid picture and understanding of why no one should be desiring the rise of socialism and communism in their own nations, such as the
United States. It's quite fascinating and quite telling that countries under communist rule are keeping their citizens fenced in without the freedom to leave there.
And you don't have millions of immigrants trying to get into these countries.
Whereas you do see that happening here in the United States, of course, so much so that our current president had to be much more militant in sealing off our borders.
But tell us about Cuba and the life you were spared from, by God's mercy, because you and your family fled.
Well, Chris, let me just say right off, I am not the expert on Cuba as it currently sits.
Because to me, my primary vocation is to serve the
Lord's people here as a pastor in Houston, in America.
And if I get too Cuban on these people,
I might lose some of our Russians and some of our Chinese people. I try to stay away from a great amount of interest.
But I will say this, that regarding the oppression and the plight of the
Cuban people, primarily, my knowledge of that has been first growing up by personal anecdote of people that I knew that experienced these things.
Relatives, friends, many of whom were clearheaded, not fanatical people.
They did well in business here in America. They owned businesses that were professional people.
My father was controller of a lumber company in Cuba. I remember him telling me the stories where he handed off the keys to the guard that was posted there at the lumber yard.
He said, look, you can have my lumber, you can have my pistol. And where I'm going, said my father,
I won't need this pistol. Of course, that was 1959, 1960.
So anyway, the anecdotes are plentiful. In fact, one of the things that I found there, as I get to know the staff at the
Victims of Communism Museum, was they have a select bookstore, very choice.
In the traveling exhibit, I found, and it was on sale for me at very, very good price.
I think it was like $30. I couldn't believe it. A 700 -page book and then a hardback anthology of anecdotes of people that came out of Cuba, their experiences with the repression, with the intrigue, with the persecution, with the atrocities.
I couldn't, I, that kind of book just doesn't circulate too well on the
New York Times bestseller list. So I, I went ahead and bought it and I bought it for my family.
I said, and I gave it to my brother. I said, you read it first when you're done or pass it on.
I want this to be a family heirloom of sorts. But we have the writings of many people.
We have stories of our own families. And then, you know, every once in a while,
I'll meet a new Cuban who's a recent emigre. And such, and you know my, you've already met
Chetaniel Perez. You interviewed him on January 6th on your program here. And he and I got together last, this past Tuesday.
And again, he affirmed to me the dire situation, but you can't, look, you don't need to, you don't need to base your opinions on the
Cuban American voice here. Many, many, for, for 40 years, I've been, I've been humming these tunes everywhere
I go. In IBM, and that was a multicultural organization, and I was a professional there.
I even worked in human resources. It's very interesting over the years how the complexion of corporate
America changed with regard to socialism and these factors. So I wasn't always a welcome voice.
I became increasingly unwelcome as I talked about the dangers.
Why are we offshoring our manufacturing and engineering to China? I once asked our
VP of human resources, why do we have $350 million offshore in a
Chinese account? Why don't we bring that money back? It turns out, you know, that was good bait for the company that I worked for, not
IBM, but a subsequent company there, an offshoot of IBM. I won't mention it.
I don't feel like getting sued today. But anyway, it's nice bait when you have that kind of money and you're teaching people your technology.
And they'll gladly take all of your patents and exploit those.
But it's very convenient for them to offer China a great incentive for them to buy you out, which they did.
They eventually bought out the company that I was working for. And just before that happened,
I got a nice bridge to retirement, which allowed me to go to seminary at 50. And that's fine with me.
And the Lord's providence that it all worked out nicely. But what I'm saying is if you don't trust if you don't trust all of these testimonies of many, many, many points of objective points, voice and concerns.
You can look online, YouTube, and here's an exercise. Just look at just look up Cuban fishermen,
Havana fishermen. These guys cannot make their ends meet on the nine dollars a month that they receive a salary from the state.
They are electricians. There are plumbers. They cannot. Besides, they can't get enough protein even with the nine dollars.
So they go fishing. Look at YouTube. Look at the fishermen from Havana and see how they have to supplement both their income and their protein because they don't have enough food.
And see how they get along. By the way, what they do is illegal. And the fine imposed on them,
I think, is fourteen hundred pesos, which is an outrageous, outrageous punishment for somebody who owns who gets nine pesos a month.
All right. But they do it anyway, because if they didn't do that, they would face starvation.
That film is not a Cuban production. That film is not a Cuban American production. It's not a it is a
European production. So I don't know who it was. Some German guy went in there. I think a Canadian. I don't know. But he just started.
He just started annotating and documenting the lives of Cuban fishermen from Havana and how they live and how they make ends meet.
Now, I probably mentioned the Cuban fishermen because my grandfather was a Cuban fisherman. And I want to let everybody know it's all right to be a
Cuban fisherman. There you go. Hey, could I just say one thing? Sure. You said that is we interview people who are survivors of communism.
We call them witnesses. And so your listeners, we'd love for them to go to our Web site or go to our
YouTube channel. If you just type in, for instance, victims of communism witness project are the witness project will pop up with these interviews.
People from Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, other places, Eastern Europe who fled communism.
And they tell their own stories. Yes. Dr. Patterson is right now.
Chris, if I would add a caution with that. Not that no concern at all with with the victims of communist website, by all means, do that.
But you will get within the United States other witnesses that are false.
And this has always been the case. Beginning in South Florida. Well, we've heard we've got we've had
Cubans, Cuban expats, you know, serving in state functions, purportedly perfecting our borders here to the south in Mexico and doing a very, very devilish job of it.
We've got even Cuban immigrants here who should know better who have gone over to the dark side.
I know this to be the case. And the commotion in South Florida, the confusion down there is that that has been infiltrated by any number of moles for many, many, many years.
So you're always going to get a naysayer say, no, it's not that bad. And then you're going to get some Canadian friends who said we had a lovely time with Havana.
Look, keep that in mind. You're going to get any number of spokespeople.
But I'm telling you, we've had doctors related to our family who were who were sick because they could not get sufficient nutrition.
I'm talking about medical doctors who could not get sufficient nutrition and they were dying of diseases related to malnutrition because they could not find enough food.
And they are medical doctors in Cuba. And that's the story that we get from our relatives.
Well, we have to go to our first commercial break. And if anybody would like to join us with a question of your own, our email address is
Chris Arnzen at Gmail dot com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N 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, please only remain anonymous if your question is a personal and private one.
Let's say you have a question that involves family members that are still living in lands under communist rule and you don't want to identify yourself.
Those kinds of things are obvious reasons to remain anonymous. But if it's a general question, please send us your first name, at least city and state and country of residence.
Please don't go away. We are going to be right back right after these messages from our sponsors.
I'm Simon O'Mahony, pastor of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
Originally from Cork, Ireland, the Lord in his sovereign providence has called me to shepherd this new and growing congregation here in Cumberland County.
At TRBC, we joyfully uphold the Second London Baptist Confession. We embrace congregational church government.
And we are committed to preaching the full counsel of God's word for the edification of believers, the salvation of the lost and the glory of our triune
God. We are also devoted to living out the one another commands of scripture, loving, encouraging and serving each other as the body of Christ.
In our worship, we sing psalms and the great hymns of the faith. And we gather around the Lord's table every
Sunday. We would love for you to visit and worship with us. You can find our details at trbccarlisle .org.
That's trbccarlisle .org. God willing, we'll see you soon.
This program is sponsored by Hope TR Ministry. Hope TR Ministry is a podcast produced by Hope Protestant Reformed Church in Walker, Michigan.
We are dedicated to sharing Reformed biblical content every Wednesday and Friday.
Tune in for sermons, lectures and interviews exploring distinctive Reformed doctrines.
If you are looking for Christ -centered content, simply search Hope TR Ministry on your favorite podcast platform to begin listening today.
Hope TR Ministry also offers Morning Meditations, a daily podcast featuring
Reformed devotionals designed to nourish your soul. Start your day with these spiritually enriching messages by tuning in to Morning Meditations, wherever you get your podcasts.
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 Gilmanton Ironworks, New Hampshire, and the
NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Rich Jensen of Hope Reformed 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 Samson 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 Eastport Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida, and the
NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Roy Owens Jr. of the
Church of 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.
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 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 sent you. Iron Sharpen's 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 Vanderwercker, 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, Valentine's Day will be here before you know it.
Why not buy that special loved one in your life, a head -turning, breathtaking, mind -blowing, gorgeous, breathtaking piece of jewelry from my friends at royaldiadem .com.
And in doing so, you'll be buying and giving a
Valentine's Day gift to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And by the way, folks, that happens to be my birthday.
But the reason why you'll be giving us a Valentine's Day gift simultaneously when you purchase jewelry from royaldiadem .com
is because they, in addition to giving us financial support automatically every single month, royaldiadem .com
gives us 100 % of the profits from any sale of jewelry to an
Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listener simply by that listener saying, I heard about royaldiadem .com
on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. That's all you need to do when you purchase jewelry from royaldiadem .com, and we get 100 % of the profits from that sale.
So whether you're buying jewelry for yourself or someone you love, whether you are buying jewelry they already have in stock, or whether you're having a one -of -a -kind customized piece of jewelry designed and created, like an engagement ring, or maybe even taking your loved one's church logo or parachurch ministry logo or business logo or seminary logo and turning it into a pendant for a necklace or a ring, or anything else your imagination can conjure up, whatever your choice is when you purchase your jewelry, if you mention
Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, we get 100 % of the profits from that sale. So please go to royaldiadem .com
today and make your loved ones very happy on Valentine's Day.
And we are now back with my guests Lou Vega and Dr. Eric Patterson.
We are discussing and promoting the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and Museum, and if you have questions of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.
chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.
We do have a question from Andrew in what he calls the
Democratic People's Republic of New York City. Andrew says, what's the best way to biblically refute the brutal cult of communism?
What are the go -to verses and passages? Well, that's quite an interesting question because communism did not arrive on the scene until the 20th century.
But before I ask my guests for their thoughts, if you go to Isaiah 10 verses 1 and 2, we basically have prohibitions to political tyranny.
Woe to those who enact unjust statutes and to those who constantly record harmful decisions so as to deprive the needy of justice and rob the poor among my people of their rights so that widows may be their spoil and that they may plunder the orphans.
And of course, there are other verses that are connected with tyranny and that being against God's will and His commands in the
Scripture. But Dr. Patterson, do you have any idea of any other verses that he could go to?
Well, perhaps I could start with a sermon by Martin Luther King Jr. from 1953 about why communism is incompatible with Christianity.
It's actually a really good summary coming from a theologically astute, fairly young pastor.
Remember, he was born in 29, so he was just 24 years old in 1953. But he said this,
Communism is incompatible with Christianity for three reasons. First, terrible ideas.
The ideas of communism are atheistic, secular, and materialistic.
And so what does that mean, that little summary? What it means, King goes on to say, is that our view of the inherent dignity of the person rooted in the
Imago Dei, so Genesis 2 and 3, is violated by communism that just sees people as a collection of atoms, as malleable, as just tools of government to be used however they're wanted.
And, of course, communism says that religion is the opium of the masses in the Communist Manifesto, so it's anti -God, it's atheistic, and, of course, we don't need to go further than the first of the
Ten Commandments about understanding how different Christianity is from communism.
So, terrible ideas. Atheistic, secular, and materialistic. Second, of course,
King said that communism is always imposed and maintains power through violence, lies, and murder.
And, of course, the historical evidence is true. Now, if we look in the Psalms, if we look in the prophetic literature, if we look, for instance, at the end of Ezekiel, over and over throughout the
Bible, leaders are enjoined, political leaders are enjoined to provide order and justice, not this kind of grotesque tyranny.
And then King says, third, that communism is incompatible with Christianity because the state becomes an end to itself.
And, of course, we know that we should have no other gods before me, meaning God our
Heavenly Father. And so the practical idolatry that the great leader, the
Communist Party, the state is all -knowing, all -wise, should have our total obeisance flies in direct commands, frankly, not just to the
First Commandment, but to the first five commandments of the Decalogue. Amen.
Any thoughts, Lew? Oh, yeah. I mean, Dr. Patterson could write a book on that, and I could write the appendix,
I guess. But no, I would frame it as I like to frame things in terms of the broader view of the
Scripture. First of all, Marxism and communism do not have an adequate view, have a false view of our origins and what happened briefly after our creation in the image of God in the fall.
Marxism, Marx would have failed our most elementary catechism classes because he does not understand the doctrine, not of sins.
He seems to be able to highlight, you know, greed nicely and all manner of injustice and all that.
But sin, he doesn't have any understanding of the biblical doctrine of sin.
So therefore, not understanding the doctrine of our fall from our original glory in the image of Christ, he doesn't understand the real reasons why we have misery, why there is a tendency, difficulty in labor, why human beings are estranged from one another, why even marriage is difficult, why we cheat.
And the whole question, in fact, the way to address Marxism is really how in the world do we get so familiar with covetousness and lust?
You know, Dr. Patterson mentioned the first five commandments. Let's go back and reverse that from the 10th up.
We've got here a situation where we've got an ideology promoting covetousness and envy.
And there's a difference between envy and jealousy. You might be jealous you don't have something that another person has, but envy would like to take that which is not yours from the other person for spite.
And it's hateful and it's wrong. It's theft. It's murderously wrong.
So the doctrine of the fall is foregone. And with that, of course, not in mind, the recovery from misery has completely inadequate prescriptions.
The doctor is out of his mind. He is no way able to address how to modify and not only how to modify, but how to change evil into good, which requires quite literally a new spiritual direction, a new spiritual creation.
Now, Marx has no idea of the noumenal world. He doesn't understand the kingdom of God.
And neither does Engel. And of course, Plato thought he was sailing in those orbits, but he was not.
And so what you have here is an entirely ineffectual recovery from the plagues that he's addressing.
The prescription is wrong. You've got a prescription for fentanyl where you really need just a little bit of Tylenol.
I know Tylenol is programmatic too, but we've got the wrong prescriptions here. And so the recovery is not going to link you back to the source of life.
God is our life. Christ is the vine of every living thing, not only in the church, but he was the mediator of the creation initially.
Look at Hebrews 1, verses 1 and 2. All things were created through him and all things are created for him.
And he is the life of the world, says John 1. There is no life in the world except through Christ.
And if you're separated from him by sin, you are in the realm of death.
And there is no escape from that by merely positing new theories or philosophies or new economic principles.
That is absolutely failing. All right. Not only is the fall and the recovery completely off base, but the view of the final, let's just call it the beatific view, because a lot of people don't know this big word, eschatology.
Where is this all headed? In the utopia of the Marxist, we find an egalitarianism that is in contradiction, really in contradiction to the greatest mystery of all, and that is
God himself. Because Marxism would impose a very strange, let me just say this, in pure communism, there is a complete leveling and a complete egalitarian of all things, so much so that individualism and by way of personality and expression, possession of particular attributes is not celebrated, but is squashed.
Because, of course, again, it stirs up jealousy. What we have here is a completely anti -Trinitarian system, because the
Godhead being one and the essence being one, there are three persons and each one has particular, the attributes are all holy and all the same, equal in substance and glory, and yet each one is distinguished and each one has apparently a unique act to do in creation, redemption, sanctification, teaching, guiding, all of that.
So our distinctions in the image of God, as man initially respected that, our eschatology is a complete restoration of the individual.
That's why in the book of Revelation you're going to see mention of nations coming to Christ and still maintaining some kind of a national identity.
I don't know if Guatemalans are going to be dressed in their native garbs. I don't know if the Chinese dynasties of old are going to be in their individual, their soup kitchens are going to feature noodles.
I don't know what's going to happen there. But I do know that individuality, the many and the one, and the mystery of the one and the many is kept in the
Christian dogma, and Marxism hates that in its utopian and eschatological view.
It completely squashes the glory of God in his three persons,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and everyone partaking of that humanity.
It is an annihilation of creation. It is antimatter.
It is absolutely the void of the abyss. Is that an answer for you?
Oh, yeah, very thorough. I have often said that socialism desired is covetousness, socialism realized is theft.
And I think that you articulated why that is biblically true. Well, I hope that that satisfies your question.
Very good question, Andrew. And I often pray for the citizens of my former homeland,
New York. I was a native Long Islander or am a native Long Islander living in Pennsylvania now.
And I just can't imagine what you folks who are true
Christians are thinking about in this day and age where you now officially have a socialist as a mayor.
Quite spooky. And, of course, the very fact that every communist nation has not only denied the existence of God, but in many cases has brutally enforced atheism upon its people through torture, threat of death, and death itself, murder itself.
We merely have to go to Psalm 14, verse 1. The fool says in his heart there is no
God. So, obviously, any government designed and operated by those who have that worldview and ideology of God not existing and them being basically taking the place of God should be immediately rejected.
Chris, may I say a very short anecdote? I don't want to take time from Dr. Patterson at all, but something that was told to me last year.
My uncle, who is now quite elderly, by the way, his wife just died last week, but he really greatly loved a young lady as a young man during his college years in Cuba.
And she came from good parentage, and she was a very good student, lovely, beautiful, feminine.
She stayed behind. My uncle, after graduating from the University of Miami, went to a job fair in New York City, of all places, and then from there he landed a job in Venezuela, of all places.
And he lost contact with this young lady. Meanwhile, he fell in love with a beautiful Italian woman in Venezuela.
They had a nice family, but lost track of his first love there on the island.
And he met up with a friend not long ago, and he said, well, what about so -and -so? Oh, you should know.
She became a communist, and she was brought up in the military, and she had reportedly been cited as storming one of the hills during one of the army rehearsals because she was in there with men in the infantry as a soldier.
She was trained as a soldier in military outfit, except that being a woman, the government wanted to especially emphasize the equality of sexes, so she charged the hill with her machine gun and all that, bayonet, without her blouse on.
In other words, the indoctrination was absolute and complete. You take a lovely woman who was a
Roman Catholic, who was well -educated, comes from a strong family, beautiful in every way, a picture of etiquette and grace, because my uncle had exquisite taste, still has.
And then you turn her into this beast, a blouseless woman, charging up a hill, ready to kill anybody in her path.
That's what I mean by the great leveling and indistinction of person, of creation, of identity.
It is absolutist, and the reason it's absolutist is not only did Castro study
Leninism, and he started Marxism, but he went to a Jesuit school who understood what it was like to have a completely
Jesuit worldview, uniform worldview, just like we in the Reformed faith have a uniform worldview that meshes, that makes sense.
He understood that the Jesuit worldview was very comprehensive, and he wanted to flip that on its head and have a completely comprehensive
Leninist and Marxist worldview in Cuba, and that's what he got. I think this is what you have.
And this is what you have, a beautiful woman charging up the hills. There you have it.
I don't want to get too graphic. Well, we have to go to our midway break right now. And once again, if you have a question, send it to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.
ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.
Please don't go away. We're going to be right back after these messages. I'm Brian McLaughlin, president of the
SecureComm Group and an enthusiastic supporter of Chris Arnzen'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.
It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners from all over the world.
Here's Joe Reilly, a listener in Ireland, who wants you to know about a guest on the show he really loves hearing interviewed,
Dr. Joe Moorcraft. I'm Joe Reilly, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener 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 toy in County Kildare, Arlington, sent you.
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
I'm still praising
God for the addition of Gold Wealth Management to the Iron Sharpens Iron radio family of advertisers.
They are veteran -owned and operated and built on the values of honor, courage, commitment, and service to others, the same values that were instilled in the owner during his eight years in the
Marine Corps. Gold Wealth Management is offering free reports on current market conditions, the threat of BRICS, which stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, the coming digital currency, and how to protect your savings and retirement accounts with real assets like physical gold and silver.
There is absolutely no pressure and no obligation. Request your free reports today.
Call 623 -640 -5911. That's 623 -640 -5911.
Or visit GoldWealthManagement .com slash iron.
That's GoldWealthManagement .com slash iron. And tell them
Chris from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio sent you. Don't wait. Be informed. Be prepared.
With Gold Wealth Management. My name is
Anthony Uvinio, and I'm one of the pastors at Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Quorum, New York, and also the host of the
ReformRookie .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 Arnzen 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
ReformRookie .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 Keech'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 Reform Baptist Church in Corham, New York.
Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Invinio, and thanks for listening. Hi, this is John Sampson, pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona.
Taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnson and the Iron Sharpens Iron podcast. I consider
Chris a true friend and a man of high integrity. He's a skilled interviewer who's not afraid to ask the big penetrating questions while always defending the key doctrines of the
Christian faith. I've always been happy to point people to this podcast, knowing it's one of the very few safe places on the
Internet where folk won't be led astray. I believe this podcast needs to be heard far and wide.
This is a day of great spiritual compromise, and yet God has raised Chris up for just such a time.
And knowing this, it's up to us as members of the body of Christ to stand with such a ministry in prayer and in finances.
I'm pleased to do so, and would like to ask you to prayerfully consider joining me in supporting
Iron Sharpens Iron financially. Would you consider sending either a one -time gift or even becoming a regular monthly partner with this ministry?
I know it would be a huge encouragement to Chris, if you would. All the details can be found at ironsharpensironradio .com,
where you can click support. That's ironsharpensironradio .com. Welcome back, and folks, before I return to my fascinating guests,
Pastor Lou Vega and Dr. Eric Patterson, I want to remind you that Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is in urgent need of your financial help.
As many of you know who listen to this program regularly, we lost two of our largest financial supporters, one of which was a
Christian bookstore that was serving the Christian community globally for 50 years.
And they were one of our largest financial supporters. And just a couple of months ago, they sadly had to permanently close their doors.
So we lost a very valuable source of income. And as I said, we lost the second advertiser, and there may be a third that we're losing on its way.
On top of that, an annual advertiser is not certain whether they can renew their sponsorship of the program.
And we will not know until the end of March. So we really need your help.
We need your help to replenish and replace that lost income. So if you really love this show,
I'm asking you, 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. And if you prefer snail mail, mailing a physical check at your post office to a physical mailing address, there will also be a physical mailing address that appears on your screen when you click support at IronSharpensIronRadio .com,
where you can mail your checks made payable to IronSharpensIronRadio .com. If you want to advertise with us, whether it is your church, your parachurch ministry, your business, your private professional practice, like a law firm or a medical firm, or maybe it's just a special event, whatever it is, if it's compatible with my beliefs,
I would love to help you launch an ad campaign because we're just as much in urgent need of your advertising dollars as your donations.
So, if you'd like to advertise or find out more about advertising, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com
and put advertising in the subject line. Also, folks,
I want to remind you, as urgently as we need your financial support, I never want anybody in my audience to give their own church, where they're a member, less money than you normally give your church on a
Lord's Day in order to bless IronSharpensIronRadio with a financial gift. Please never do that.
Never cut into the finances that you specifically have set aside for your Lord's Day giving to your own church in order to bless us.
Also, if you're really struggling to survive and make ends meet, please wait until you're back on your feet and more financially stable before you send us a gift.
But, however, if you are financially blessed above and beyond your ability to provide for church and family, and you love the show and don't want it to go off the air, please go to ironsharpensironradio .com,
click support, then click click to donate now. Last but not least, if you are not a member of a
Christ -honoring, biblically faithful, theologically sound, doctrinally solid church like Covenant Presbyterian Church in Houston, Texas, I have lists of biblically faithful churches spanning the entire globe, and I've helped many people all over the planet
Earth find churches that are biblically faithful in my audience, sometimes even just a couple of minutes from where they live.
So that may be you too, no matter where you live in the world. If you're without a biblically faithful church home, please send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,
chrisarnson at gmail .com, but I need a church in the subject line.
And that's also the email address where you can send in a question to my guests,
Pastor Lou Vega and Dr. Eric Patterson, about the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and Museum.
chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.
Let's see here. We have a question from Marcus in Binghamton, New York.
And by the way, before I forget, Marcus, I know that Binghamton's just about 90 minutes from Syracuse.
I am going to be moderating a live, public, moderated debate in Syracuse, New York, between a former
Oriental Orthodox brother in Christ who is now a
Reformed Baptist pastor, Samuel Farag, who I've had on this program. He's going to be debating somebody with the reverse situation, a former
Reformed Baptist who converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, and they are going to be debating on Mary.
I'm not sure what specific areas of Mary they're debating. That's all I know so far.
But God willing, I will be hosting and moderating that debate in Syracuse, New York, and it will likely be in an
Eastern Orthodox monastery, believe it or not. But we haven't found out 100 % for sure, but I will provide more details as I get them.
But Marcus asks, do you have any idea of the estimates of people who have been murdered over the decades by communist regimes?
And my second question is, why is it that we seem to only hear constantly and rightfully about the victims of fascism and Nazism, but we hardly ever hear about the victims of communism?
And we hardly ever see movies depicting the persecution of people by communist regimes and so on.
Why do you think that is? And we'll start with Dr. Patterson. Well, that first question about what are the numbers?
Harvard University Press over 20 years ago published really the definitive study. It's called the
Black Book of Communism, and it's a research team that went through at the end of the Cold War.
Many of the national files and registries in places like Moscow and Prague, these were open at the time.
And they came to the conclusion, and they started actually in the 80s in some other places, compiling news reports and whatnot.
Long story short, 100 million people murdered by communism in the 20th century.
And of course, that number continues upward to this day in places like China and North Korea. And those are quite rigorous academic studies.
That second question is a very important one as well. Why is it that we have done such a good job of telling the story of the
Holocaust and telling the story of the evils of the Nazis and such a poor job on telling about the depredations of communism?
You know, it's worth pausing for a moment and saying it is a good news story that we beat the violent, racist ideologies of the
Empire of Japan and the national socialism, in other words, a race -based, nationalistic socialism of the
Nazis. It's a good story that we beat them. It's good that we transmit to future generations the sense of just how horrific the genocide of the
Jews and others was, the evil ideology, the statism. It was a totalitarian regime, but nationalist rather than economic or class -based form of socialism.
So good on all of that. And so we ought to take that as a lesson for us. What do we need to be doing differently when it comes to teaching about communism?
Well, of course, we beat the Nazis. We have their footage. We took footage of the camps, etc.
We have their records. They were so good at filming things, sadly, with their black uniforms and the swastika and things.
I mean, they're just made for Hollywood. In contrast, the Cold War ended with a victorious
West, the liberation of Europe. But at the same time, without that same kind of triumphalism, in part because we sought to integrate countries that had been former foes into a new world order.
We did it well, by the way. Look at the close relationship between the United States and Poland, between the
United States and the Baltic states, between the United States and Romania, between the United States and the Czech Republic. So we did that well.
What we didn't do, though, was to truly capture the imagery, the photos of the prisons, of the concentration camps, of the gulags.
And sadly, in some of those countries, such as in Moscow today, the former communists or the children of the communists are actually in power.
The old prisons are actually still open. And those totalitarian mechanisms of fear and repression actually are still part of life in places like Belarus and whatnot.
So I'm not discounting, by the way, that the academic and elite left have tried to powder over all the way back to the 1920s just how terrible communism is.
But we just didn't end the Cold War on a smashing note.
We didn't send film crews in to film the gulags and things. And in a sense, to try to get
Eastern Europe to join the world community, which was successful in some places, we documented, but we did not really tell the story in the same way that we did at the end of World War II.
And, of course, I'm sure something has to do with it, that some may have romanticized the
Soviet Union because of the fact that they were our allies in World War II and assisted in defeating the
Nazis. Go ahead. Now, you know, you bring up a point that's very important for our listeners.
And that's simply that when we think about who started World War II and the crimes of World War II, our allies in the second half of the war were our enemies at the beginning.
And then they were enemies at the beginning. And I'm specifically speaking about the Soviet Union. How did World War II kind of really start in Europe?
It really started in August of 1939 when the
Soviet foreign minister and the German foreign minister signed a non -aggression treaty.
We call it the Molotov -Ribbentrop Pact. What they said then was, we are agreeing, even though we hate each other, communists and Nazis, Germans and Russians, even though we hate each other, we're agreeing not to go to war.
And in a secret annex, they essentially cut Poland in half and divided up Eastern Europe with spheres of influence for the
Soviets and for the Germans. Just about a week later, then Germany, with this pact protecting its eastern flank, invades
Poland and then invades Western Europe. That's the beginning of World War II.
And how did it end? It ended with the Soviet Union raping, pillaging, plundering, and murdering its way across Eastern Europe.
And Western Europe was liberated by the U .S. and the U .K. Eastern Europe was decimated by the
Soviets. Those crimes of communism, the way the war started, the way the war ended, the death squads, et cetera, they've never been held accountable.
Is it true that communism or communists, especially those in political authority, were not racists?
I know that one of the distinctions of communism and fascism or Nazism was that communism, at least on its surface, was against individual national pride and had more of a global mindset, which is why individual countries within the
Soviet Union seemed to have their national identities diminished.
But were they really devoid of what we call racism and ethnic hatred?
No. The answer is absolutely not. Sometimes it masqueraded as anti -religious prejudice. So in the first decade of the
Soviet Union, 90 % of all the mosques in the greater Soviet Union, the greater
Russian area, and that includes all of Central Asia, were destroyed. There was an animus towards religion, but these were also seen as third -class citizens, you know,
Tartars, Cossacks, et cetera. The closing of most of the synagogues throughout the
Soviet Union, the purge, there was a clear anti -Semitism that's rooted in older Eastern European and Russian pogroms and things.
That cultural anti -Semitism didn't go away. There were many intellectual leaders in the socialist and the communist movement who were ethnic
Jews, non -practicing secular Jews, but of Jewish ethnicity. After about the first 10 years, they're all purged out of the leadership.
Only a single one survives. Racism is older than Karl Marx and things, and those types of attitudes, although communism is claimed to be colorblind, culture blind, et cetera, it's just simply not the case.
There's a more complicated story about ID cards and race and ethnicity and things in the region, but racism did not go away in these places.
It was never trumped by some sort of egalitarian national consciousness. Go ahead.
In the more recent studies that I've done on the history of Cuba, I've learned that the early settlement of the island by Spain, they had a great interest.
The Spanish gave a lot of land to Spaniards if they would settle in the
New World, on the island of Cuba. Of course, being
Spaniards, they were not used to the rigor of a tropical climate, the sun and the humidity is quite intense there.
And the Spanish quickly did away with Taino, Indian, indigenous people, and that's well recorded in history.
You can read that on your own. By the way, I'm about 1 % Taino -Cuban, Indian, indigenous.
But then we got into a situation with the importation of slaves mostly from Africa, but there were white slaves too.
They were indentured Spaniards that were under contract to serve for a time on the land, mostly for sugar, and they had tobacco eventually as well.
But that was a limited contract. I'll have you know that the white
Spaniards that went over there, if they survived the three years, the king had promised them land.
But the problem is the current landowners didn't want to parse out any more land of Cuba. They wanted it themselves.
So they gave the hardest labor not to their black slaves, but to their white Spaniards that were indentured, and they died at a very high rate of mortality.
But this is to say that the eastern part of Cuba around the
Sierra Maestra was intensively, and it remembered this long history of exploitation of race.
And it is no coincidence at all that that's where Fidel Castro began to get acclaim through demonstration and revolt and revolutionary activities.
And that's where he set up his, that's where he set up his camp, first in the mountains of the
Sierra Maestra in Cuba, to the far east. Now, the mountains there in eastern
Cuba are so imposing, the bluffs there are a very unique limestone.
And I forget the name of the rock that's of a coral that's related to aragonite,
I think is the name of the rock. Anyway, it was such an imposing barrier between eastern
Cuba and Havana, the rest of the island, that very little exchange of ideas ever came about. In other words, that region became very insular, and there was still a hot pocket of political past differences.
Now, Castro's, Fidel Castro's father was Galician, northern
Spanish, and he, although he lived somewhat modestly there, he was a man of comparatively good wealth.
And Fidel is not the son of the wife of his father.
Fidel is the son of the maid of the father. That set up a tension in a hotspot in eastern
Cuba that never resolved its angst between the severe cruelty of the
Spaniards and their treatment first of Indians and then of the blacks. Now, by the way,
I'm not woke in any sense, but I have a severe allergy to injustice, okay?
As Christians, we all should have severe allergies to injustice. Okay. So what
I'm saying is that does give impetus to this class warfare and this ideology that was felt very, very much.
And if we do not live justly and really become very, very abusive, whether we are capitalist or,
I don't care if we're Zionist, I don't care if we're socialist, whatever we are, that's going to be extremely corrosive to any societies.
People are going to be looking for solutions. They're very angry and we all feel the inhumanity of the case.
So the Marxist ideology addresses that on an almost universal, moralistic plane that the socialism of nationalism under Fidel and Mussolini can never approach.
It doesn't rise to the level of something that is truly universal and as human, or at least in appearance.
And so the hope, the hope of the Marxist seems to be very noble. But you get to that hope by evil, wicked means of slaughter and injustice.
And it is a message not of true hope, but of deception. In other words, we can only go in that direction first by buying into a fierce, a fierce lie, a very stubborn lie that appears to be a very noble and plausible solution to long, long term societal problems as it was manifested, especially in the
Eastern Oriental, the Eastern district of the Sierra Maestras in Cuba.
That's where Castro the monster was spawned. OK, we have
Dean in Woodinville, Washington. And Dean says.
Earlier, Chris started describing differences that existed between Nazism and communism.
Can you be more detailed in the contrast between the two? I have heard that they are much more similar than people have grown to think.
I think that's an excellent question. If you could, Dr. Patterson.
Yeah, happy to talk about this. So, first of all, one way to think about this is to think about national versus international socialism.
And here's what I mean by that. What Karl Marx and the communists, what we call communism, the
Soviet Union, the Communist Party of China, et cetera, what they claim is an international movement towards equality, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And it's based on economic class. That's at the heart of the theory, that the worker class, the proletariat, the underprivileged are essentially the same everywhere.
And so that there should be revolutionary violence to impose a freer, more equal socialist than communist regime.
National socialism, what the Nazis are, the Germans in this specific instance, and those who tried to emulate them.
You know, Hitler was a socialist. You read Mein Kampf, he talks about socialism. But he talks about a national, in other words, a cultural, linguistic, historical, cultural hyper nationalism.
That's what national socialism, that's what the Nazis are. So what they're saying is there is a superiority not based on class.
There's a superiority in a hierarchy based on race. Now, here's what they both have in common.
Both are statist. In other words, both emphasize sublimating the individual to this bigger consciousness.
Both are totalitarian. These are ideologies that have a political theory of totalitarianism.
And let me just kind of explain what I mean by that. Totalitarianism is the idea, and there are scholars such as Carl Friedrich and Hannah Arendt have written about this.
A totalitarian regime, whether it's a national socialist or a international socialist, a communist regime, they have common characteristics.
They have an official ideology. They are a one -party state, the communists or the
Nazis. The state has a monopoly on violence. In fact, they try to make sure that they take all the weapons away from the public.
And they use violence to terrorize their own people. They control all access and dissemination of information.
So they control mass media, books, radio, education, television, movies. The government controls a centrally planned economy.
And all of these have a party -controlled terroristic sort of security service. The Gestapo, for instance, the
KGB. Hannah Arendt, the great scholar, said that totalitarian regimes also classify one group as the objective enemy.
And what she meant by that was whether it's the Nazis talking about the Jews or the communists talking about the bourgeoisie, for instance, owners, that they choose a category of people to make them the common enemy.
And they say our society would be better with the elimination of that pest, that disease.
There's a human disease in the body, politic, and it has to be eliminated. And so there is a witch hunt, a scapegoating of a social or cultural class,
Jews, business owners, whatever it is. So in practice,
Nazism or Soviet or Chinese or North Korean communism has much in common.
And we see that, of course, in places like Cuba and elsewhere as well. Yes. I like to think of it when people get the wrong idea that these two ideologies of Nazism and communism are just holes apart, opposite ends of the spectrum.
That is such historical dishonesty. And just because Hitler hated communism and communists, there are mafia crime families that hate other crime families and do violence to them, even though their ideologies are very similar, if not identical.
And they're competitors. And, of course, the Nazis and the communists were competitors during the rise of Nazism in Germany.
And so, in fact, there was even a Nazi -Soviet pact, also called the
Molotov -Ribbentrop pact, correct? Yes. The Treaty of Non -Aggression.
So, I mean, these ideologies, and in fact,
I have to constantly remind people that Nazism is really left -wing.
It's not really a right -wing ideology. That's the way most people refer to it, as right -wing, trying to perhaps either consciously or unconsciously producing more similarities in the mind of the populace between conservative
Christians, for instance, and Nazism, trying to make the false accusation that we are closer to that.
But we are not at all. Chris, if I may just interject this one observation.
The reason that people may be that people think fascism is a conservative movement is that Hitler himself, in his eschatology, was actually looking back to the glories of previous epochs and what they had lost.
And I think he did that because he was a brilliant manipulator. And there were plenty of people that were alive that remembered that before World War I, Germany was really something glorious.
There was something very glorious there. And they had lost it. They had lost much.
In fact, Germany, the culture, the people, its institutions, it's all gone.
Now, it's a completely different place than it was before World War I. And the people remember the past glory, and Hitler directed the people to the past, whereas the
Marxist will always look to the future. And so they look progressive.
It combines with Darwinian evolutionary theory very nicely. Christians are more likely to be labeled fascist.
Of course, there are strains of Christian liberation theology that are fully Marxist, and I don't speak about aberration at all.
But what I speak about is your normal, everyday evangelical Christian is one that would look back to the early church as a model, perhaps the
Reformation as a model. And since we're a backward -looking people, we may be given that attribute of being more fascist -loving.
But that's stupid because we are all seeking the city that has foundations, which is unshakeable, and we are pilgrims marching forward.
Of all the people in the world, the pious Jew was the most forward -looking person people in the world.
The Christians ought to do that exponentially. That's just my thinking, my commentary.
Could you pick it up when we return? We have to go to our final break. Please don't forget where you were going, though, if you want to make a little note or something.
All right, great. Don't go away, folks. We're going to be right back. I'm Dr.
Tony Costa, professor of apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary. I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love,
Hope Reform Baptist Church in Coram, Long Island, New York, pastored by Rich Jansen and Christopher McDowell.
It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God, like the dear saints at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Coram, who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in His Holy Word, and to enthusiastically proclaim
Christ Jesus the King and His doctrines of sovereign grace in Suffolk County, Long Island, and beyond.
I hope you also have the privilege of discovering this precious congregation and receive the blessing of being showered by their love, as I have.
For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net.
That's hopereformedli .net. Or call 631 -696 -5711.
That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island, New York, that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.
This is
Pastor Bill Sousa, Grace Church at Franklin, here in the beautiful state of Tennessee.
Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support Iron Sharpens Iron Radio financially.
Grace Church at Franklin is an independent, autonomous body of believers which strives to clearly declare the whole counsel of God as revealed in Scripture through the person and work of our
Lord Jesus Christ. And, of course, the end of which we strive is the glory of God.
If you live near Franklin, Tennessee, and Franklin is just south of Nashville, maybe 10 minutes, or you are visiting this area, or you have friends and loved ones nearby, we hope you will join us some
Lord's Day in worshiping our God and Savior. Please feel free to contact me if you have more questions about Grace Church at Franklin.
Our website is gracechurchatfranklin .org. That's gracechurchatfranklin .org.
This is Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our
Sovereign Lord, God, Savior, and King, Jesus Christ, today and always.
I'm truly grateful for many things that the Trump administration has ushered in. But here's something that seriously concerns me.
On July 18th, President Donald Trump signed the Genius Act into law.
This new law allows financial institutions to convert your hard -earned dollars into stable coins, a digital token backed by $37 trillion in national debt.
They will not need your approval. You hand over your dollars, and they give you a trackable, programmable, freezable token.
This sounds like something out of a science fiction movie. They get control, and you get surveillance.
Stable coins are not freedom. They're a digital leash. This is one step away from a full -blown digital currency.
How stable is a stable coin? If your account is hacked or if the power grid goes down for a period of time, you can instantly be locked out.
It is time to get some of your hard -earned money outside of the traditional banking system and the
U .S. dollar. If you want to have a better understanding of stable coins and the future of money, then please call my friends at Gold Wealth Management and request your free report.
This report is a must -read. Call or text Gold Wealth Management today at 623 -640 -5911.
That's 623 -640 -5911. The report is free, and there's no obligation.
Again, call or text 623 -640 -5911.
Tell them Chris from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio sent you. I'm Pastor Keith Allen of Lindbrook Baptist Church, a
Christ -centered, gospel -driven church looking to spread the gospel in the southwest portion of Long Island, New York, and play our role in fulfilling the
Great Commission, supporting and sending for the spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth. We're delighted to be a part of Chris Arnzen's Iron Sharpens Iron Radio advertising family.
At Lindbrook Baptist Church, we believe the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the inspired
Word of God, 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 for all who bear
God's image. If you live near Lindbrook, Long Island, or if you're just passing through on the
Lord's Day, we'd love to have you come and join us in worship. For details, visit LindbrookBaptist .org.
That's L -Y -N -BrookBaptist .org. This is Pastor Keith Allen of Lindbrook Baptist Church, reminding you that by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves.
It is the gift of God, not a result of words, so that no one may boast of the
Lord's blessing in the knowledge of himself. 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 Dr. Joe Morecraft, pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia, and the
NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Anthony Uvino, founder of TheReformRookie .com
and co -founder of New York Apologetics, and the NASB is my Bible of choice.
I'm Pastor Tim Bushong of Syracuse Baptist Church in Syracuse, Indiana, and the NASB is my
Bible of choice. I'm Eli Ayala, founder of Revealed Apologetics and staff member with the
Historical Bible Society, and the NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Josh Miller of Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and the
NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Joe Bianchi, president of Calvi Press Publishing in Greenville, South Carolina, and the
NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Jake Korn of Switzerland Community Church in Switzerland, Florida, 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.
And don't forget, folks, this program is also paid for in part by the law firm of Buttafuoco &
Associates. If you're the victim of a very serious personal injury or medical malpractice anywhere in the
United States, call my longtime friend and brother in Christ, Daniel P. Buttafuoco, attorney at law, at 1 -800 -NOW -HURT, 1 -800 -NOW -HURT, or visit
Dan's website at 1 -800 -NOW -HURT .com. And please tell Daniel P.
Buttafuoco, attorney at law, that you heard about his law firm, Buttafuoco & Associates, from Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.
Also, if you're a man in ministry leadership, you are invited to the next Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Free Pastors Luncheon on Thursday, March the 5th, at the
Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, featuring for the second time my keynote speaker,
Dr. Conrad Mbewe, pastor of Kobata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, Africa, and also founding chancellor of African Christian University and Reformed Baptist Church planter on the
African continent. If you would like to join us there for free, and everything's free, folks, including every attendee receiving a heavy sack and possibly two heavy sacks of free brand -new books, personally selected by me and donated by Christian publishers all over the
United States and United Kingdom. If you'd like to register, send me an email to chrisarnzen at gmail .com
and put Pastors Luncheon in the subject line. We are now back with Lou Vega and Dr.
Eric Patterson. And we are talking about the victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.
And Dr. Patterson, you had a point you wanted to make. You know, if we had another question,
Chris, I'm quite happy to defer to your audience. Actually, the question that somebody sent in was already asked by somebody else.
So let's go to you. You know, as we were wrapping up that last segment and we were talking about the
Nazis and this term nationalism came up, and Lou made the right, this appropriate observation that figures in the media and things have been labeling
Christians as fascists and as so -called what
I'd call chauvinistic nationalists almost for 20 years now. And I think it's worth pausing for a moment and just because this is in the headlines on a regular basis, pointing out this problem.
As early as 2006, an academic cottage industry developed in the
United States. And it's kind of the lawfare approach. Write an op -ed, make an accusation, make a presentation at an event.
Not deep scholarship, no evidence, but claim basically that Bible -believing
Christians are in this tradition because they hold to a higher authority outside of the state, because they don't always fall in line on radically progressive issues at the time when it comes to the dissolution of the family, sexuality, these types of things, that there's some sort of regressive people.
And so the academic left, since some articles in 2006, have been labeling
Bible -believing Christians as fascists or as so -called Christian nationalists.
And I can tell you that this has become books and journal articles and presentations in academic journals at a very high level over the past decade.
Separate from that, interestingly, there has been a — and I think all of us reject this attempt by media elites and by the hard left to label
Bible -believing Christians, who believe in the sanctity of life and marriage and things like that, with this label as if we were fascists.
Second, separately from that, there has been over the past decade the rise of a very small, narrow group who claim to be part of the theological retrieval process.
And I am very critical of that movement. As you may know, there is a study group on it in the
PCA this year. What I would say is that we're celebrating
America's 250th. We think about the Baptist tradition of religious freedom. We think about the importance of an independent set of religious institutions outside state control.
We think about that we never want to give too much power to any one person or any one small group because we know how evil, even well -meaning people can be when they have absolute power.
All of these things remind us that in contrast to communism or any form of hypernationalism, that an emphasis on the individual, the family, the independent church, independent civil society, and limitations on state power, it's not just the
American way, it's the way to have the widest opportunity for human flourishing.
And we are out of time. And by the way, I want to let you know that Lowell Ivey, who is a
PCA minister, you may know him. He is director of Metanoia Prison Ministries.
He's going to be addressing on February 6th on this program, about the rise of racist ideology amongst professing evangelicals.
And we are out of time. As I mentioned, I want to make sure that our listeners have both of the relative websites.
Go to covenantpca .org for Covenant Presbyterian Church in Houston, Texas. And for Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, go to victimsofcommunism .org.
Thank you both so very much for doing such an exquisite job on my show. I look forward to having you back. I want everybody listening to have a safe, happy, and healthy and Christ -honoring weekend and Lord's Day.
And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater