April 30, 2024 Show with Dr. Joseph C. Morecraft III on “A Biblical Response to Terrorism”

The Meaning of Iron Sharpens Iron and a Prayer Request for Dr. James White

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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 Tuesday on this last day of April, April 30th, 2024.

Before I introduce my guest and our topic for the day, I have a prayer request, as many of you have found out today, and many of you may be still unaware of the fact that my very long time, very dear friend, Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, went to the emergency room by ambulance earlier today, this morning, and requires emergency surgery.

It may have already happened, as far as the surgery is concerned. I don't know yet. I don't have any updates from Dr. White, and I don't even know the reason for the emergency surgery, but obviously it was serious enough that required this surgery to take place immediately.

So, I ask of you to lift up Dr. White to our great physician, the Lord Jesus Christ's throne of grace and prayer, that he may be healed of whatever is ailing him, and that the doctors whose care Dr. White is in will be guided by God to not make any errors in judgment or in their physical care that they are providing for Dr. White, and pray that we have wonderful praise reports to provide for you tomorrow during this program, or perhaps even today during this program.

I will let you know if I hear anything in the midst of our live interview. Today we have a returning guest, a dear friend of mine, who I love to interview, and I know he has become a favorite guest of many of our listeners on Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio.

His name is Dr. Joseph C. Moorcraft III. He is the pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, and the author of an eight-volume commentary in the Westminster Larger Catechism called Authentic Christianity.

Today we are going to be addressing the very timely topic, a biblical response to terrorism, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio, Dr. Joe Moorcraft.

It is always a privilege, Chris, always a privilege.

And right away I would like you to give an update on something that I've already last week begun, or maybe even the week before that, begun to announce, a prayer request I began to announce on your behalf to our listeners for that precious little baby who is your granddaughter, Rebecca Hope, who has a very serious, life-threatening heart condition and who was born at just a little over three pounds and has still not gained any weight since then.

And the praise report I know about this whole situation is that your granddaughter has already outlived the expectations of her physicians. But if you could pick up where I left off there.

Well, thank you for praying for her. We don't know. We don't know the outcome. It is life-threatening, difficulty breathing, and she has already lived longer than we expected. So all I can say is just continue to pray.

We definitely will. And that's Rebecca Hope, the granddaughter of my guest today, Dr. Joseph C. Moorcraft III and his wonderful wife, Becky. Well, also now, if you could explain with a brief description the Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia.

Cumming, Georgia is the county seat of a bedroom county just north of Atlanta, Georgia, Forsyth County. And we're a small congregation. We have been in existence for about 10 years, and our people come from all over the place.

They not only come from places locally, some people drive all the way from Knoxville, Tennessee, which is three and a half hours or so. And our church continues to grow. This past Sunday, we had a full house, and mostly this past Sunday, it was young adults.

We have people from every age, race, and we praise the Lord for them. We're committed to the Westminster Confession of Faith and catechisms. We're dedicated to the Great Commission. Everything we do, we do hopefully for the glory of God.

We try to teach our people to live for His glory and for the enjoyment of Him in their lives. We are taking some more people into the church next Sunday. So God continues to bless us. We have all kinds of evangelistic and missionary outreaches, and we praise the Lord for the way He has blessed us over the past 10 years from about 23 or 24 people to 75 or 80 people.

Well, praise God. If anybody has interest in finding out more about Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, go to HeritagePresbyterianChurch .com, HeritagePresbyterianChurch .com. And if you want to find out more about the eight-volume commentary that Dr. Moorcraft has written on the larger Westminster Catechism, you can go to WestminsterCommentary .com, WestminsterCommentary .com.

And by the way, I have a bit of good news. A Reformed Anglican who saw my promotion of our interview today with the description that you are the author of the eight-volume commentary, Authentic Christianity, he responded by wanting to order the commentaries and asking for how he would do that, and I gave him that website, WestminsterCommentary .com.

Well, that is great. I wish every Anglican would buy my commentary.

And today we are addressing something very timely, something very important, a biblical response to terrorism. And right away I'm going to give our audience our email address. If you have any questions of your own, send them to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

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

Outside of the USA.

And if you could, provide for us a true definition of the word terrorism because, as you know, in our day and age, Christians handing out tracts against the sin of homosexuality would be considered by many an act of terrorism, or open-air preaching would be considered an act of terrorism by many.

And that kind of nonsense and slander, what does terrorism, in your opinion, really mean?

If people want a good explanation of it, get Rush Denny's book, Institutes of Biblical Law. He has a long essay in there on the subject that's very, very useful because people are not aware of exactly what terrorism is.

Terrorism is not just a deadly thing. Terrorism is not just when people kill other people mercilessly. Terrorism is a philosophical thing that we must not lose sight of its goal. It is revolutionary. It's not just killing people for the sake of killing people.

Terrorism intimidates and kills in order to subdue people so as to bring about a revolutionary change in society. So that terrorism is revolutionary, and it is something that must be opposed wherever we see it raise its ugly head, terrorism or the spirit of terrorism.

I've been studying the whole subject of terrorism from a biblical perspective since the 70s when Congressman Larry McDonald was going to write a series of books on all the terroristic organizations in the world at that time.

And he wanted me to write an introduction to each of those books on what the Bible says about terrorism. So I've been studying that subject ever since then. In the Bible, the first terrorists were Amalekites, and Amalek was the grandson of Esau.

And don't forget, God hated Esau, and Esau was an enemy of the people of God. Amalek was his grandson. There was all kinds of sibling rivalry in those early days of God's covenant people. Many times they were reconciled, like Jacob and Esau.

But there was one rivalry that was never reconciled, and that was hated the people of God. Jacob stole his grandfather's birthright and blessing. He never could get over that. And so his life was dominated by revenge for the people of God.

Terrorism is not only a political thing. It not only is revolutionary, but terrorism is also religious. Because the ultimate motive behind terrorism is it is a war against God and His moral order. You want to sing a good psalm on Sunday about terrorism?

Sing Psalm 2.

Oh, yeah.

Where it talks about the kings of the earth taking counsel against the Lord and His anointed, trying to break free from His moral order, which they interpret as chains, inhibitors to freedom. So Psalm 2 gives us a great description of terrorism and God's response to it and what our response should be.

One of the greatest stories in the Bible is about how the wars between Amalek and Israel, they were always at war with each other. Sometimes Israel lost. Most of the time Israel won. But Amalek hated Israel and was seeking to destroy it.

And one of the best stories is in Exodus chapter 17, verses 14 through 16. There you have the Amalekites attacking the Israelites who were weary, couldn't find any water, been traveling through the desert.

And the Amalekites took advantage of that situation and sought to destroy them. I want to read two verses from the Bible on what God says should be the attitude of God's people and everybody. Exodus 17, 14 through 16.

Then the Lord said to Moses, write this on a scroll as something to be remembered and make sure that Joshua hears it. Now, what's important about that sentence? That's the first time in the Bible God ever told anybody to write a book.

And, of course, we see the development of the Bible. This is one of those places where we can see the Bible beginning to grow. And what God told Moses to write was about how the Amalekites treated the people of God so the world would never forget what they did.

So let me read it again. Write this on a scroll as something to be remembered and make sure that Joshua hears it. God talking now. Completely erase the memory of the Amalekites from under heaven. Moses built an altar and called it the Lord is my victory banner.

He said, for hands were lifted up to the throne of God. The Lord will be against the Amalekites from generation to generation. So the Amalekites must have done something terrible to the Hebrew church of the Old Testament, the covenant people of God.

For God to be so vigorously so that God said, I'm from under heaven. And he said, because of what they've done to my people, the Lord will wage war against the Amalekites from generation to generation.

And I understand this is not a racist thing. This is not an issue of genocide. This is not a an issue of destroying a people simply because they are of a different race or a different group than your particular ethnic group.

That's what the liberal media is trying to make of the war in Israel today. And Christians sometimes are so ignorant of what's going on in the world that it's easy for the liberals to influence them. Understand that the war in Israel today is not an ethnic war between the Palestinians and the Israelites.

The war in Israel today is a sovereign nation fighting to defend itself against a vicious terrorist group called Hamas. Christians must make sure that 20, 30 years ago, Netanyahu wrote a great book on terrorism.

But anyway, so the war is not against Israel and the Palestinians.

Go ahead. I'm sorry. You can complete your thought.

The war is not between Israel and Palestinians. It's a war between a nation and a terrorist group that is out to destroy that nation.

Amen. And what makes your view on this even more interesting than perhaps your average evangelicals position is that you are saying this. You are saying this in defense of the state of Israel today, even though you do not believe that the present day state of Israel is a fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

Nor do you believe that it's the same nation that existed in the Hebrew Scriptures.

I believe that's exactly what I believe. That when the United Nations made Israel a nation in 1948, that was not the fulfillment of prophecy. That was the cause of all the wars that have been going on in the Middle East ever since.

But a nation has the right to defend itself.

Yes. And in fact, it may surprise many people, but the conservative Jews and especially the Hasidic Jews were extremely vociferously adamantly opposed to the forming of the nation of Israel in the mid 20th century.

And the Hasidic Jews, not all of them, but a good deal of them, a good percentage of them, still are opposed to the nation claiming...

Israel's the only nation that I know of that's had to fight to defend its right to protect itself. And this is the second time Israel had to fight for her right to protect herself. You know when the first time was?

When?

Esther.

Huh.

Haman, the prime minister of the king, was an Amalekite. In fact, he was an Agagite, which means he was a member of the Amalekite royal family. And so that gives a whole different perspective on Esther.

But let me read another passage. Deuteronomy chapter 25, verses 17 through 19. This is the Lord. Remember what the Amalekites did to you along the way when you came out of Egypt. When you were weary and worn out, they met you on your journey and cut off all who were lagging behind.

They had no fear of God. When the Lord your God gives you rest from all the enemies around you in the land, he is giving you to possess as an inheritance. You shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.

Do not forget.

Wow.

And so what Amalek and his descendants did was when the people of God were coming out of Egypt after having been in slavery for several hundred years, walking through a hot desert for 40 more, the Amalekites would attack them on the edges of these people.

The Hebrew people, the Hebrew church had about 3 million people marching through the wilderness. And so it was always on the edges of those people that the old men and the old women, the pregnant women, the little children, the sick, the weary, always attacked by the Amalekites.

They didn't attack the men, the soldiers of the Hebrew people. It was always the weak and the vulnerable that they attacked. And God said because of the way they treated my people like that. And remember in the Bible, the church is called the apple of God's eye.

Amen.

And anybody that mistreats God's people has God himself to deal with.

Amen.

So what do Christians think today? Oh, let me tell you the other side of the coin. Terrorism, the motivation is they are at war with God, our God, not just any God, not the God of the Hindus, not the God of the Buddhists, but Jehovah is the God they're at war with.

So there is a perpetual war between all terrorists and the living and true God because the terrorists are trying always to overturn his sovereignty. They hate his moral orders. Because we live in a humanistic world, the use of terrorism, said Rush Dooney, is a routine political fact in this modern world of humanism.

And we have to go to our first commercial break. So we'll pick up where you left off after you quoted Rush Dooney. And if anybody, again, would like to join us with questions of your own, our email address is ChrisOrenson at gmail .com.

As always, give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Dr. Joseph C. Moorcraft III right after these messages from our sponsors.

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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 Deformed Faith and the Westminster Standards should have and use the 8-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 8-volume commentary, go to westminstercommentary .com westminstercommentary .com. For details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit heritagepresbyterianchurch .com heritagepresbyterianchurch .com.

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We are discussing a biblical response to terrorism, and our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com, if you have a question, give us your first name, at least city and state and country of residence.

Before I go to any listener questions, I want you to pick up where you left off. You were recommending a book by R .J. Rushdooney that ties in with our subject today.

One of the most important books of the 20th century, called Institutes of Biblical Law, Volume 1, and showing how the details of the law of God in the Bible relate to all of the political and religious and economic and social issues of the 20th century.

And in that book is an essay on terrorism, explaining very carefully and wisely what it is, and what God's attitude is toward it, and what a Christian's attitude toward it, and how a Christian is to respond to the spirit of Amalek that's still very much alive in the 21st century.

Christians have got to keep in their mind the heart of what terrorism is. Terrorism is a religious war by those who hate Jehovah and who cannot stand or will refuse to tolerate his moral or social order until they'll do whatever they have to do, including suicide bombers, to break free from that order.

I get very weary when there's a suicide bomber killing people, and people say concerning that suicide bomber that he's crazy. He's not crazy. He's not crazy at all. The reason that Americans think he's crazy is because they cannot imagine a man being so dedicated to his God that he's willing to sacrifice his life for him.

And so we must understand that these are religious people, and that they hate America, they hate Christian America, and God's attitude toward them is they must be eradicated, that civil magistrates cannot be neutral.

They cannot be mild in their response to them. They must be definite and severe in their response to terrorists because if you deal with terrorism with a salt pan, they'll only become more violent, and their violence will become more perverted.

So when civil magistrates deal with terrorists, it must be completely just and not with a velvet hand. People have asked me on more than one occasion why God is so severe in the Bible of the Amalekites.

I mean, he's just... There's another verse I didn't even read, 1 Samuel 15, verses 2 and 3. Samuel said to King Saul, I am the one the Lord sent to anoint you king over his people Israel. So listen now to the message from the Lord.

This is what the Lord Almighty says. I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go attack the Amalekites. Totally destroy everything that belongs to them.

Do not spare them, but the deaf men, women, and children, and infants, and cattle, and sheep, and camels, and doggies. Now why in the world would a God of love and a God of mercy be so severe and so harsh on the Amalekites that he wants to wipe them out, the very memory, out of existence?

God is never unjust. God is a righteous judge who judges rightly, and he would never mistreat somebody. He never would treat anybody unjustly. God loves his people. He doesn't love the Amalekites. God loves his people, and by his people I mean his covenant people.

And who are his covenant people? Galatians 3 .29 says, Those who belong to Jesus Christ by faith, regardless of ethnic origin, are the heirs of the covenant promises of God and the seed of Abraham. So the true seed of Abraham from a Christian perspective is not an unbelieving Jewish person.

It is those that believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, whether they are Jew or Gentile, regardless of their ethnic origin. And anybody that mistreats the children of Abraham, that is, those who belong to Christ by faith, anybody that mistreats them, they have God to deal with.

And so God fully intends to defend his people. And when he says these harsh things, seemingly harsh things, about how they are to be treated, that they are to be waged war against from generation to generation, and all that, there's nothing unjust about it at all.

What is justice from God's perspective? The average Christian doesn't even understand what justice is, just because they think it's an economic thing, because they're committed to social justice, where there should be an equal distribution of wealth.

But that's not justice. Justice, as defined by God, means that the heinousness of a crime determines the severity of the punishment, because the punishment must always fit the crime. Let me say that again.

Justice, as defined by God, means that the heinousness, the wickedness, determines how severe that criminal is to be punished by the state, because the punishment must fit the crime. Our people, Christians today, are so ignorant.

There's a verse they hate. There's a verse that they say, we're glad we're not under the Old Testament anymore. And yet this verse defines the essence of justice from God's perspective. And that is this.

When a person is committed, somebody is injured or deprived, they must be punished according to the Bible. That's why we believe abortion is murder. That's why we believe that anybody that participates in or contributes to the abortion of an unborn baby is a criminal and should be punished as a criminal.

Because the principle of justice is an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and life for life. If somebody drives down the road and kills deliberately, kills somebody by running them over, he should die life for life.

If somebody drives down the road and kills a butterfly, he should not die. That would be completely unjust for killing somebody for killing a butterfly. But it is perfect justice to demand the life of someone who has deliberately and wickedly taken the life of another person.

Now you'll immediately hear some evangelicals have Matthew 5 38 through 48 pop into their heads and they'll say, wait a minute, Pastor Joe, Jesus said you have heard it. You have heard it, that it was said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

But I say to you, do not resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him to give to him who asks and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you.

So how do you how do you XG?

That passage has been quoted to me many times. And if they see a conflict between what I'm saying in that passage, it's because they don't understand the context of what it's saying. If a Jesus is addressing ordinary people in their ordinary life, he says also in the Sermon on the Mount, I don't take oaths.

Let your yes be yes and your no be no. But he's not talking about judges, political officials. He's already told them to be faithful every oath they take. He's just telling his disciples, be honest, be truthful, so that when you say yes or no and you promise things, you don't need to add an oath to it in everyday life.

And the same thing with taking the idea of lap you on one cheek, turn your head and let him slap you on another cheek. Or if they take your clothes, let them take your coat too. That contradicts what God has taught elsewhere in the Bible.

The Bible clearly teaches that we have the right of self-defense. That when somebody seeks to do us harm or any member of our family harm, we have the God-given, not the right, but the God-given duty to defend ourselves and defend our families.

And so somebody slapping you on the face and you turning the other cheek, that's not a life-threatening situation. That's insulting. That does not involve self-defense. It's somebody slapping you on one side and now you are insulted.

They take your coat, you give them your cloak. Now who in the world would do something like that? Somebody with a sword in his hand. A Roman soldier. So if a Roman soldier comes up to you and insults you, don't stand there and plead your rights.

Turn the cheek because he has a sword and you don't. And when somebody takes your coat and says, I want you to carry this a mile down the road, and that's probably a Roman soldier, you'd carry it two miles because that means you got him at least two further miles away from your family.

So Jesus was very wise in the counsel he gave to his disciples there. I'd hate to live in a world where Christians, some reformed Christians and evangelical Christians, interpret the Bible in the way they do now.

That we have the right of self-defense, just like a nation has the right of self-defense. And, uh, but if you're dealing with somebody that has the power to kill you, and you do not have the equivalent power to defend yourself, if he asked you to do something like carrying his coat or slapping you on the face, don't argue with him.

Get him away from your house. Get him away from your family and pray that God would continue to defend you. Now you have the right of self-defense. Yeah.

I was just going to say that, um, during the height of the COVID crisis, I had different sides of, uh, the, the question on how far do Christians go to obey the government. And there was one of my guests who was taking the side, uh, against my own views, uh, was using this passage, uh, to, uh, basically instruct us in his opinion to, uh, if the government says wear a mask, no matter how stupid you think it is, you go even further than that.

You wear two masks. If they say wear the mask inside, during a gathering of a lot of people, you go even further, you wear that mask outside or those masks outside. And if the government says you got to stay six feet away from somebody while online at the department of motor vehicles, you stay 12 feet away, you know, and on and on and on, we could go, how, how is this person misrepresenting the text?

It's amazing how many ignorant Christians we have and how many slaves we have. There, there are more slaves. I hope I don't offend anybody, but there are more slaves in the United States today. They were in 1861.

And these slaves and these slaves are slaves to the federal government. God to render to Caesar while longs to Caesar. And what this Caesar, what we do, we owe him. 13 says nothing. Except love, which is obedience to the law of God.

So the only thing we owe the federal government of the United States is obedience to God's law. And people have been so brainwashed. I mean, one mask is, is very unhealthy. I mean, they, they assume the government knows what it's talking about when it says that masks are healthy, preventative of COVID.