Aug 24, 2026 Show with Joseph Jacowitz & Owen Alford on “The Smoke Machine Gospel: How Entertainment Replaced Reverent Worship”

Aug 24, 2026 Show with Joseph Jacowitz & Owen Alford on “The Smoke Machine Gospel: How Entertainment Replaced Reverent Worship”

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, 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 Monday on this 24th day of August, 2026.

I am thrilled to have not only a returning guest to the program today, but also a first-time guest. The returning guest is my dear friend, who also happens to be the very reason you're listening to my program today, because the ministry he founded live streams Iron Sharpens Iron Radio every day, Monday through Friday.

And I'm speaking of Joe Jackowitz, who is the founder and chairman of the board of First Love Ministries. And First Love Ministries is the umbrella organization that also operates First Love Radio that you are using to listen to this program today, and also First Love Missions and First Love Publications.

And Joe is also the pastor of Christ Bible Church, a confessional Reformed Baptist church in Pleasanton, California. It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Joe Jackowitz.

I'm great to be back with you, Chris. Thank you very much.

And why don't you tell our listeners something about First Love Ministries.

First Love Ministries has been around about 30 years. Like you said, there are four organizations underneath the umbrella organization of First Love Ministries. First Love Publications publishes books.

We have about 100 on our catalog, and we distribute them worldwide free of charge. We especially bring them to our pastors' conferences at different places throughout the world, and we give stacks of them away to pastors who can't afford their own libraries or their own reference books.

And so we have First Love Publications, and our catalog is online. We have First Love Missions where we, three or four times a year, go to various countries where we have branches of missions, our missions organization, First Love Missions, in countries like Nigeria, Nepal, Kenya, India.

And so we have branch leaders there, and we host conferences there. We go on the radio, and we preach the gospel. We equip pastors with basic disciplines of the pastoral ministry over a week or two weeks of seminars, just giving them the basics of the pastoral ministry of the various disciplines like preaching and counseling and the systematic theology and homiletics, hermeneutics, apologetics.

And then we send them away with a stack of books to start a library with. That's First Love Missions. And then we have First Love Radio, which you're listening to, a worldwide live-streaming radio ministry, which iron sharpens iron, anchors our entire 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week radio ministry.

We have a combination of Christian music, very fine, solid Christian teaching coming from pastors, theologians, and Christian teachers from around the world. We are Reformed Baptists in our theological and doctrinal persuasion and confession.

And also, we have a brand-new—if I might take this opportunity to mention it—we have a brand-new two-hour block of programming that airs in the United States until midnight and 3 a .m., depending on your time zone.

We call it the African Hour. We now have programming that targets our brothers and sisters in Africa. In other words, it goes all around the world, but we've created four half-hour programs. Two of the programs are produced by Zambian pastors like Conrad Mbewe, who is your favorite preacher, of course, and Ronald Palafungwa, who is one of his best friends, who's a pastor as well in Zambia.

And we have a half-hour program each of those two brethren. And then we have a program in Kenya produced by a Reformed Baptist church there, and then a program in Nigeria produced by Osinachi Nkwovo and Pastor Tony Okoro.

And each program has a little bit of a local flavor, where we introduce the program with local music and just a flavor of each country. And I know this is going to be very popular with countries and churches in Africa because they get, you know, almost 10 percent of our airtime dedicated to programs that come from very capable, qualified, and gifted African pastors and preachers in these countries.

So I know 2 o 'clock in the morning is very early for guys like you and me who are getting older and like to push that reset button on the alarm clock. But if you're up around 2 o 'clock in the morning, you may want to tune in to First Love Radio and hear these African programs, which they may be listening to right now.

Greetings to our friends in Africa. And so that's First Love Radio, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, different genres of radio. You can go on our website at firstloveministries .org and click on First Love Radio, and you can get it right there.

We do have an iPhone app for First Love Radio. If you go to your iPhone app and type in firstloveradio .org or thereabouts, you will have the app come up and you can download it free of charge. And you can get First Love Radio wherever you go around the world.

It's, of course, everything's free that we do, including our publications, and we've never charged for anything. And that's First Love Radio. And then we have Grace Bible University, where we've prepared correspondence courses, Bible study courses, where people can take working towards an Associate's Degree in Bible, free tuition completely.

And we will send you the books and the textbooks free of charge. You just go to firstloveministries .org and click on Grace Bible University, we'll send you an application to fill out. And for those of you who are in the third world listening and you're struggling financially and you don't have anywhere to go to school or to study for the ministry, or you just as a believer want to study the structured teaching of God's Word free of charge, go to Christ Bible Church—I'm sorry, go to firstloveministries .org and click on Grace Bible University and you'll get all the information.

So that's First Love Ministries. Also, you can get Christian books free of charge, over 100 books in our catalog by going to firstloveministries .org. Click on the link to First Love Publications and you'll have our catalog come up.

And there's all kinds of books on different categories, from doctrine to apologetics to devotional, pastoral, on many, many different topics.

That's First Love Ministries. And it is always a joy every time I have one of my biannual free Iron Trip and Zion Radio Pastors luncheons to see the First Love Publications booth there giving away free copies of your literature.

It's always a joy. And typically we have, on other than rare occasions when he is providentially hindered, we have Tom Smith, president of First Love Ministries, there at the luncheons. And I understand that you and Tom will be there at my next one on October 1st.

Yes, you're not going to be able to get away from me this time, Chris. By God's grace, my wife and I will be there, and Tom will be there in Carlisle. Looking forward to seeing you and the brethren there, the pastors.

We'll be having quite a few more books to give away. We'll have to start shipping them to you right away for pastors. So if you're a pastor and you want a great time of fellowship, you want some free books that will sharpen you in the pastoral ministry, come to Chris's Pastors Luncheon on October 1st, I believe it is?

Yes. At Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, which is Perry County, Pennsylvania. And Dr. David A. Harrell is our keynote speaker for the very first time. He is the pastor of Calvary Bible Church in Jolton, Tennessee.

And he is also the author of a number of books, and one of them is the book from which he is bringing his keynote address, Why America Hates Biblical Christianity. And I'm looking forward to meeting Dr. Harrell face to face.

I've had him on the program several times, but I've never met him face to face before, and I'm looking forward to having that opportunity to meet him face to face. Everything is free of charge, including the books.

So send a free registration to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put Pastors Luncheon in the subject line, and give us the full name of your church or parachurch ministry, its location, and the number of men who will be joining you.

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put Pastors Luncheon in the subject line. And we also have joining us for the very first time today, Owen Alford, who is one of the co-pastors alongside of Joe Jakowitz at Christ Bible Church in Pleasanton, California.

Owen Alford is also on the board of directors of First Love Ministries, and he has been involved in prison ministry for 20 years. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Trip and to Design Radio, Pastor Owen Alford.

Thank you, Chris. I appreciate the opportunity to share this time with you and Pastor Joe.

Why don't you tell our listeners something about Christ Bible Church of Pleasanton, California?

Christ Bible Church started early 1990s. I think this is going to be coming up on our 37th year anniversary. As Pastor Joe said earlier, we are a Reformed Baptist church in theology and practice, but we reach out to other churches for like-minded fellowship, preaching conferences, anything associated with the gospel ministry.

The Lord has seen fit to, through many dangers, trials, toils and snares, keep us together and build us up. This coming Sunday, under the blessing of God, we'll be admitting five new members to the church.

So we are in the Tri-Valley area, which is adjacent to the San Francisco Bay Area. And Joe will need to correct me, but I think the population of the Bay Area, including the Tri-Valley area, is I think seven million people.

And so we're a lighthouse, a spiritual hospital, and a gospel church there in the midst of that many people.

Praise God. And if anybody wants to visit Christ Bible Church, if you live in the Pleasanton, California area or are passing through, perhaps on vacation or business, or you have family, friends and loved ones who live in that area, go to ChristBibleChurch .org, ChristBibleChurch .org, and all of the information that you need will be there.

The Smoke Machine Gospel and Entertainment-Driven Worship

Well, we have an interesting theme today on the program, The Smoke Machine Gospel, How Entertainment Replaced Reverent Worship. If you do have a question about worship, please send us an email to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com, and as always, give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

End Times Watchfulness and the Coming of Christ

Before we even go into the theme of The Smoke Machine Gospel, I know that Pastor Joe is very eager and excited to announce the next First Love Bible Conference. This is actually the second annual First Love West Coast Bible Conference, September 17 -19, on the theme End Times Watchfulness, and if you could tell us more about this conference, Joe.

Yes, we've had conferences for four years now on the East Coast in Florida, then the South, coming up on our fourth annual conference in February, the end of February. But last year, we started one on the West Coast.

We didn't want to neglect our West Coast brothers and sisters, so we started a West Coast version of our First Love Ministries Conference last year, and that was better than we expected in terms of the turnout.

And this year, we're going to repeat that, God willing, coming up on September 17 -19. That's a Thursday, Friday, Saturday, September 17 -19, just under a month away, theme is End Times Watchfulness, living godly in the present age while looking for the glorious appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And I know our listeners are very sensitive to the Second Coming of Christ, because we see the signs of the times taking place all around us. And the return of our Lord is not really a doctrine to be debated from a distance, because it's really a divine certainty that every living soul is going to stand before God.

And God has told us in Scripture, prophetically, that His return will be preceded by certain signs of the times. Regardless of the eschatological school of thought you subscribe to, we all agree that there will be signs preceding His return, and the heavens will be opened.

But before that, the world's going to be seduced. And of course, they're already blind, but the church will be deceived. The majority of the church, the professing church, that is deceived and apostate.

And every life will be exposed in the blazing light of the Lord's presence when He comes. And in that moment, it won't be a matter of how accurately we interpret prophetic charts, if we were asleep in our souls, clinging to the world, tolerating secret sin, or wasting the life of Christ purchased with His blood.

And everything we see right now going on in the world, in terms of the signs of the times, is moving towards fire, towards the world being destroyed and remade by the Lord, as we read about in Scripture.

Everything we can't see is moving towards eternity. And so the apostle Peter presses the coming dissolution of all things directly against the conscience when he says, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness?

And so this idea of end times watchfulness is a summons to awaken the church before the trumpet sounds. I don't know about you, but if you're a professing Christian, this is not the time to be sitting on the fence.

And we need to hear what the Lord is saying, not audibly, not verbally, but we need to listen and observe these signs that the Lord mercifully and graciously is sending to us before His second coming, and that our hearts will be torn away from the passing pleasures of this age and put secret sins to death.

And redeem the vanishing hours that are frittering away and live with our eyes fixed upon the approaching Lord Jesus Christ. And so this conference is not intended to satisfy curiosity about the last days.

It's not about date setting. It's not about getting sidetracked into numbers and all of that, but it's to prepare a people of God to stand before the Lord of creation on the last day, awake, holy, obedient, faithful, and longing for His appearing, to be confident before Him at His appearing.

And when He does, the only life we will not regret is the life that was wholly lived for Him. So if you're concerned about what's going on in the world and being properly prepared, we encourage you to come out to California, visit us between September 17th and 19th, Thursday, Friday, Saturday at the West Coast First Love Conference.

We'll be giving away thousands of books free of charge. That's right. You heard me, Chris. Thousands of Christian books free of charge, particularly the book Watchfulness by Brian Hedges. We'll be giving that book away to everyone who comes.

I just wrote my first little booklet. I'm very, very happy about it. It's called End Times Watchfulness. Oh, that's a coincidence. End Times Watchfulness, the very theme of the conference, that will be printed and distributed as well.

Plus there'll be thousands of other books to be given away free of charge. And so come out to the conference, meet other brothers and sisters who are concerned about staying faithful to the Lord and using every means available to be ignored, admonished, to be awake when our Lord comes.

You can find out all the information, all of the speakers. Let me just give you a short rundown on the speakers. Myself, Pastor Owen Alford, who was on the other line, will be speaking. All of the messages will be related to being watchful in the end times.

We'll have Dr. Paul Nelson, Dr. Edward Dalkor, Pastor Max Donor, who will be giving away his two-volume commentary set on the book of Revelation free of charge. We will have Pastor Glenn Nicholas, a pastor in the Bay Area.

And Pastor Tom Smith, the president of First Blood Ministries, will be there. And Pastor Jim Billings, co-pastor of a church in Morgan Hill, California. Pastor Conley Owens, pastor at the Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church.

Pastor Ted Mendoza. And I think you already agreed, didn't you not, that you will be here as well?

That is being worked out, if possible, because of my busy schedule before my pastor's luncheon. I have not yet been able to be 100 positive about that yet, but hopefully we'll be able to.

Well, we need you here, Chris, because we're going to put you to work and do your interviewing out there. So, God willing, Chris will be here with us, God willing, in California. So, we invite you to bring friends, invite others, tell people who live on the West Coast, get out to the conference.

They won't regret it. Everything is free—the food, the books, everything. No registration fees. You say, how can you do it? It's called Freely You Are Received, Freely Therefore Give.

Amen. And you go to firstloveministries .org to find out all of that information by clicking on Events. Then you click on Upcoming Events, and then you just scroll down to the second event listed, and that will be this conference.

When the Sanctuary Becomes a Stage

And we'll be repeating that during the course of this program. Well, this, as I said, is a very provocative theme that you have come up with, Joe—the smoke machine gospel, how entertainment replaced reverent worship.

And one of the initial things you wanted to address is when the sanctuary becomes a stage, if you could please pick up right there.

Well, I don't know if many professing Christians have their eyes open, but modern churches are committing abominable violations of biblical worship by turning sanctuaries into stages and theaters, and they've transformed pulpits into platforms.

And pastors are not pastors anymore, many of them. They're performers. They're entertainers. And it's so grievous to the believer who has the Holy Spirit inside of him or her and needs to be fed with the Word of God.

And congregations are now audiences that need to receive performances. It's sickening. And so few professing Christians are sickened by it. And Scripture exposition and the regulative principle, which is worship regulated by the Word of God, has been displaced by motivational storytelling.

And prayer is shortened to preserve the production schedule that the entertainers are glued to. And majestic, Christ-centered praise is really exchanged for this repetitive, self-absorbed anthem, these praise songs.

There's nothing wrong with praise songs, but they just repeat the same phrase over and over again and stirring themselves up into some, you know, psychological brains. I don't know what you want to call it, but Christ-centered praise really is being exchanged for repetitive, self-absorbed anthems.

And the fear of God is really smothered beneath the flashing lights, the neon signs, the synthetic fog, the fog machines. Can you imagine the Apostle Paul wheeling in a fog machine and one of the evangelists and says, okay, folks, close your eyes, we've got to fill….

No! Can you imagine in the Temple, in the Old Testament, that smoke that filled the Temple from the glory of God was replaced by a fog machine? No, we can't. And so, when we talk about the end times watchfulness, and when we talk about the fog machine gospel, we're talking about a violation of the sacred sanctuary becoming a stage.

And it's really catastrophic corruption that is hollowing out our modern worship. And in thousands of sanctuaries, trembling reverence before the Creator has been exchanged for this dark concert-style theater environment.

And with flashing lights and with synthetic fog, like I said, and emotional soundtracks engineered to produce this artificial high whipping people up emotionally, biblical exposition has been replaced by motivational storytelling.

I don't need to hear a five-minute sermonette and two and a half minutes of which are a story about my Uncle Tom who cracked his toenail. I don't need to hear any of that garbage. And I need to be singing majestic hymns instead of repetitive, self-absorbed anthems.

I want to be in the presence of the Holy Spirit and not confuse the Holy Spirit with some physiological response to lighting and bass frequencies. And so this is a deadly spiritual fraud.

Tom, would you not agree that churches, even if it's unconscious—it could be very conscious or they could be unconscious of their motive—they realize that they do not have the depth of understanding of the Scriptures and of the gospel to adequately present it.

So therefore, they need to add a whole ton of stuff to it to keep their audiences, to keep them coming back, to keep their attention focused, because what they actually have to say in the realm of exegesis is very wanting, if you could pick up there.

Yes, and it's very sad. It's very sad because there's hungry sheep that need to be fed spiritual manna from above. And if you want to entertain—forgive me for saying this—if you want to entertain Philistines, you can't preach the blood of Christ.

You can't preach about the gospel. As Pastor Joe said, you have to entertain. And the people, Chris, as you said, they're not used to solid, line-up-on-line, faithful exposition of God's Word, the whole counsel of God, but rather need to be entertained.

If I could give you one brief anecdote, a family member's church—not a mega church, but a very big church, probably a thousand or so members, sanctuary probably holds 750—when they received a new pastor, he wanted to make an impact on the people.

And you would think he would be on his knees preparing a message that would just speak to the heart of the people. But what he did was he had arranged a zip line from the second story floor firelock down to the pulpit, and he ziplined down to the pulpit.

And that was his grand entrance. That was the reaction? Laughter? Yes, of course. It was laughter, and it was amazement. Oh, what a trip. He took this great chance to be suspended up on the second or third floor to come down.

And is that what God's people need? Is that what God needs? The people in the pews are not the audience of our worship. Our worship should be directed to God himself. And we have lost a high view of God.

I can remember years ago when a friend of mine who was a member of a seeker-sensitive church on Long Island, New York, where I'm originally from, they actually openly and enthusiastically described themselves as a seeker-sensitive church, meaning that they are designing their worship services and their sermons to appeal to the lost and their appetites and their preferences, their tastes.

And this person was dead serious and very moved and choked up describing how wonderful his pastor was. And he said last Sunday he so moved us at the church when he preached his sermon pretending to be an angel, and he actually was dressed in a unitard with angel wings.

And this man did not find this humorous or disgusting. He found it profound and moving. And I sat there with my jaw hanging open, and I can't even remember how I responded. I may have been too fearful of hurting his feelings or something.

I don't know. It was years ago. I don't think I would react with silence if it happened again. If this individual told me this story. But that's just pure insanity. But we have to go to our first commercial break.

And what I'm going to do is I'm going to read a question from a listener and have you guys think about it, and then you'll be able to perhaps more adequately respond to it after having time to think about it.

We have Seth in Hummelstown, Pennsylvania. What is the best way to approach friends and loved ones who attend churches that lean heavily in the worship-tainment direction when you're concerned they've drifted too far in that direction?

So you guys can think about that. We'll have you respond to Seth in Hummelstown after we come back. If anybody else would like to join Seth with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. Don't go away. We're going to be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries and the Dividing Line webcast here. Although God has brought me all over the globe for many years to teach, preach, and debate at numerous venues, some of my very fondest memories are from those precious times of fellowship with Pastor Rich Jensen and the brethren at Hope Reform Baptist Church, now located at their new, beautiful facilities in Corham, Long Island, New York.

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We're delighted to be a part of Chris Arnzen's Iron Sharpens Iron radio advertising family. At Linbrook Baptist Church, we believe the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the inspired Word of God, inerrant in the original writings, complete as the revelation of God's will for salvation and the supreme and final authority in all matters to which they speak.

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It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. May the Lord bless you in the knowledge of Himself.

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That's linbrookbaptist .org. We're now back with Pastor Joe Jackiewicz, who is the pastor of Christ Bible Church in Pleasanton, California, and also the founder and chairman of the board of First Love Ministries.

And we have with him his co-pastor at Christ Bible Church, Owen Alford, and he is also on the board of First Love Ministries. We are promoting the exciting event that they have coming up, the second annual First Love West Coast Bible Conference, September 17th, 18th, and 19th, on the theme, End Times Watchfulness.

You can find out more details on that at firstloveministries .org and click on events. And today, our theme, our specific theme of our interview, is The Smoke Machine Gospel, How Entertainment Replaced Reverend Worship.

Counseling Those Drawn to Worshiptainment

Before we went to the break, I read a question from Seth in Hummlestown, Pennsylvania. What is the best way to approach friends and loved ones who attend churches that lean heavily in the worship-tainment direction when you're concerned they've drifted too far in that direction?

Any thoughts on that, Pastor Joe?

Well, I think, first of all, we need to realize that any kind of understanding in any depth of doctrinal or spiritual understanding comes from the Holy Spirit. So, there's only so much you can do in trying to explain the proper interpretation and accurate meaning of the Word of God.

It requires spiritual illumination, as the Bible talks about. The Spirit searches the deep things of God. So, first thing I would suggest is you pray. Pray that God would open the eyes of such a person to deeper teaching of theology and accurate interpretation.

Secondly, don't get angry because you don't understand, because God doesn't reveal the very depths of Scripture to us overnight. Little by little, He does. I remember the first year I got saved, I understood maybe 10 -20 percent of what I read in the Bible.

But it took some years, so that after many years went by, I understood maybe 60 -70 -80 percent of what I read. So, God doesn't feed us with meat and steak that you like very quickly. He feeds us with milk and with baby food at first, so that until our spiritual and doctrinal digestive system can handle the meat.

So, be patient, keep reading, but encourage. Thirdly, those folks to have an open mind. Be nice about it. Don't be confrontational at all, because you're not going to twist their arm or coerce them into believing.

What I like to do is I like to get paperback books out there that interpret the cessationist position faithfully, and I would have some of those books handy in case you run into a word-of-faith or a charismatic person.

And just hand them the book instead of getting into an argument. Say, look, do me a favor, read this book and tell me what you think, and let's get back and talk about it. And we'll get back together.

If they still disagree, say, okay, well, agree to disagree and move on. Don't argue with them about it, because you can't change their mind. Nobody can change anybody else's mind unless the Holy Spirit does.

So, I will continue to pray for them at that point.

Any answer of your own, Owen?

Yeah, I think we can trace—I would offer just a couple things. And Seth, I appreciate the term worship atonement. I had not heard that before. That's a very apt description. I think historically, if you look at how this happened in the Christian church, it was really right after the Jesus movement.