April 11, 2016 Show with Mitch Pridgen on “An Arminian’s Journey into Sovereign Grace”

Iron Sharpens Iron

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July 27, 2016

00:01: Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister
00:06: George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,
00:16: Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.
00:23: Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
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00:46: It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.
00:57: Now here's our host Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon
01:05: Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and the rest of humanity who are living on the planet earth listening via live streaming.
01:12: This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 11th day of April 2016 and I am delighted after meeting this dear brother in Florida not long ago when
01:28: I traveled down south to be the emcee of a debate that was being held down in Florida, featuring my friend
01:40: Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries and his opponent Greg Strawbridge.
01:47: I was delighted to meet during Dr. White's travels to the two different churches in Florida where he spoke, our brother today who is our guest,
01:57: Pastor Mitch Prigden of the Crosswalk Church of Daytona Beach, Florida and I have kept in touch with this dear brother and have become more and more enthusiastic about not only him as a servant of God shepherding a flock of God's people there in Florida but also to get to know him as a brother in Christ and friend and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron, Mitch Prigden.
02:29: How are you my brother? I'm doing better than I deserve as always. How are you doing? Well, my last name throws people and you're not the only one.
02:37: My brother is Priggen. Okay, that's all right. Listen, I have friends that do that still to this day.
02:44: So that's all right. Okay, brother. Well, I will seek to do my best not to make the same mistake.
02:51: That's okay. That's all right. And yes, since I'm primarily calling you Pastor Mitch whenever I'm speaking.
02:57: That's exactly right. And let me, on the air at least, introduce you to my friend who is co -hosting again with me today, the
03:08: Reverend Buzz Taylor. Well, hello Mitch and welcome to the program. How are you, Buzz? Nice to meet you.
03:13: Nice to talk with you too. And today we are going to be discussing something that is very controversial in the body of Christ.
03:21: We are going to be hearing about an Arminian's journey into sovereign grace.
03:27: And that former Arminian that we're talking about is our guest Mitch Priggen, Pastor of Crosswalk Church of Daytona Beach, Florida.
03:36: And this is something that's controversial because this is an area that sadly still, and perhaps always will till Christ returns, divide the body of Christ theologically.
03:52: Although all of us involved in today's program would hold to Arminian brothers in Christ as brothers in Christ, we though disagree with them and they disagree with us on issues that we think are very serious and very important.
04:11: They're not trivial. They're not inconsequential or anything such as that.
04:17: But they still would not, the differences would not bar fellowship among brother in Christ.
04:23: Would you agree with that assessment, Pastor Mitch? Oh absolutely, I agree with that. I wish that I could say that the grace was mutually demonstrated.
04:32: Oftentimes I feel like we are, as Reformed believers, more willing to extend grace to those who do not agree with us than some who that do not agree with us are willing to extend to us.
04:44: I noticed that through the transition that the grace that I was willing to show my brothers that did not hold the same position as I had moved into, while they were not willing to show me and I was willing to show them, it was amazing.
05:00: Yeah, I've experienced that too because the church where I came to Christ, the Sunday school administrator told my sister -in -law that my family had joined a cult.
05:10: It's almost as if they say, well you've suddenly become one of those. And I'll tell you later an interesting story in regards to that when we were able a few years ago to purchase our existing building from another church.
05:23: So it's a great experience there as well. Well I'd also like you, before we even get into the topic at hand,
05:29: I'd like you to tell our listeners about Crosswalk Church in Daytona. And we'll start off there.
05:37: Tell us more about that. Okay, great. Crosswalk Church is actually a church plant.
05:43: It began as a Bible study in my home in January of 2003.
05:50: And the reason that that Bible study began in our home, I had served as a co -pastor with a local church just about 10 miles north of Daytona Beach for five years.
06:02: And at that time, Brother Chris, they embraced a model of ministry, primarily the purpose -driven model of ministry, and for all practical purposes began to abandon the preaching of the gospel.
06:16: And so I tried to remedy that for about five years and I realized that simply was not going to go anywhere.
06:24: We began to look for a solid biblical church in the area. And there were some 10 or 12 miles away from us, one or two in particular, but there was nothing in our area in the south part of Volusia County which is around Daytona Beach.
06:41: And so we decided that what I decided to do is I'd bring my family together and any friends who wanted to join us on a
06:47: Sunday morning and we would begin to teach gospel messages and preach the gospel.
06:54: And that's how Crosswalk Church actually began in 2003. And tell our listeners something about Daytona Beach, where your church is located.
07:03: Well, Daytona Beach is an interesting area, as is a lot of places in Florida. I mean, we're not unique to many other places here, but this is a resort -driven area.
07:13: I mean, not that there are not normal residents and occupations here, but it is a tourist resort -driven environment.
07:22: And so you have a lot of transient people that come through. I don't mean that in the sense of homeless transient people.
07:27: I'm talking about people that come in. We have a lot of that too, but people who will simply come in and then move out, come in and move out.
07:35: There's a constant flow of people in and out. So it has been a bit of a challenge to plant a church in that environment, and especially in regards to the transition that we went through very shortly after the planting of Crosswalk Church.
07:53: And you're the home of NASCAR, aren't you? We are the home of NASCAR. Well, we have a couple of things we have named to fame.
08:00: We actually bill ourselves as the world's most famous beach. If you go to the main entrance to Daytona Beach, it says with a large banner over it, the world's most famous beach.
08:12: So we've said that for years. And we have the home of NASCAR, obviously. We have Daytona International Speedway, which is here, which had just remodeled, spending about a half a billion dollars in remodeling.
08:24: Oh, wow. And we also are the home to Bike Week, which is just a few weeks ago passed, as well as Spring Breaks, which have minimized over the years as they've tightened the restrictions.
08:37: But this is a pretty active place, yes. Well, since we are talking about the doctrines of sovereign greats that are also nicknamed
08:47: Calvinism, and they're also nicknamed reform theology. They're also sometimes nicknamed the doctrines of free grace.
08:55: But unfortunately, there is a heretical group that has kind of kidnapped that name, the group that denies repentance as being necessary for salvation.
09:06: In fact, they would consider it damnable to teach that it is. So unfortunately, that title of free grace, although a beautiful title, it kind of muddies the waters since other people are using it.
09:20: But if you could summarize what that is, I sometimes take it for granted that all of my listeners are either themselves thoroughly reformed in their theology or know a lot about the subject, but that's not necessarily the case.
09:35: I do have new listeners that discover the program who are not even Christian on occasion.
09:41: So if you could define in a summary form what you mean by the doctrines of grace.
09:47: Oh yeah, I love the term sovereign grace. I think even though free grace, as you mentioned, is a beautiful term,
09:53: I think the word sovereign grace is so wonderful. I think many Christians, in fact most
09:59: Christians, will use loosely the term of sovereignty when they refer to God.
10:04: They're very willing to say that God is sovereign over a lot of different things.
10:11: Sovereign over creation, sovereign over this situation or that situation. However, when it comes to the doctrine of salvation, that's where they balk.
10:23: That's where they have their biggest problem. And if I were to define sovereign grace, if I were to find reformed theology, it is that belief, that doctrine that God alone is sovereign over man's salvation.
10:40: In regards to, for instance, the free will position, that man is in effect co -sovereign with God, that God is somehow restricted or limited by man's willingness to cooperate with him, which is called synergism in regards to theology.
11:00: But sovereign grace believes that even in the area of salvation, God is absolutely sovereign.
11:08: And that it is God's sovereign grace that regenerates a person. It is God's sovereign grace that effectually calls a person.
11:14: It is God's sovereign grace that preserves a person. Yeah, it's ironic that there are people who love the
11:24: Lord, who trust in the Lord, and believe that things will always work out better if God is in control of them, except for the salvation of individuals.
11:36: That somehow is going to be better off left in the hands of sinners who have the world, the flesh, and the devil tearing them the opposite direction.
11:48: And leaving salvation in the hands of unregenerate people somehow who they believe and somehow muster enough in themselves to cooperate with God in regards to their salvation and somehow make those choices or decisions themselves.
12:07: When that's simply not what the Bible teaches. At least from my perspective, it is not what the Bible teaches.
12:13: Yeah. And what do you think are the greatest accusations or most prevalent or most frequently made accusations against what we believe that really confuse the issue?
12:31: It's a revelation or an indication that many, if not most, people who despise the doctrines that we love, the doctrines of sovereign grace, they are really hating something that either does not exist at all as far as a systematic theology, or they're hating a caricature or distortion of it that unfortunately some who claim the name of Calvinist do adhere to and proclaim.
13:00: But I would say it is a small minority of those within the Reformed community, a tiny minority.
13:07: But if you could, what is the biggest complaint that you have experienced against these things?
13:13: Well, the biggest complaint that I have experienced personally is the fact of God's justice. They find it to be unjust for God to be in such a position.
13:25: In fact, I've been doing an exposition on Sunday mornings for over 16 months now in the book of Romans, verse by verse.
13:32: And we have just gotten into those very controversial chapters 9, 10, and 11. And I remember during our exposition of Romans chapter 9, when
13:43: Paul is giving a defense of his teaching, the first defense he has to give is in regards to the fact that there are those who are accusing him that the work of God has failed because his message is being rejected, in that particular instance, primarily by the
13:56: Jews. But secondly, and which I think is what we find most often, is that many will complain that there is somehow injustice on God's part, as chapter 9, verse 14 actually says in Romans, if sovereign election is true.
14:12: And so, in other words, we've termed that in this terminology, that's not fair.
14:18: Exactly, yes. That's not fair. That's the number one, if I were to say, this is the number one argument that I hear, that's not fair.
14:27: And you know, it's interesting that when you use the language of fairness and man's understanding of fairness,
14:34: I don't know how an Arminian or a non -reformed Christian could think it is any fairer for there to be a requirement of faith in Christ in order to be saved, and yet there are people, millions of them, who either never heard the gospel at all over the centuries, or if they were to hear it and believe in it, may be tortured and executed, that that is somehow a fair entrance into heaven, that litmus test of faith in Christ, and yet on the other side of the shore, where we're here in the
15:16: United States and other places, in Europe and other places, people freely embrace and follow
15:23: Jesus Christ and hear about him in abundance, they have perhaps even been raised in Christian homes with godly parents, maybe even raised by pastors, a pastor and his wife, and that is somehow fair, that some people are going to heaven and some going to hell without Christ, and yet we are not clearly on a level playing field globally or throughout the centuries.
15:56: Right, absolutely. And even if you were to say that you're a universalist, and that all people are going to heaven, how is that fair, that the godly person who lived a life of sacrifice and service is going to have the same reward as Hitler?
16:15: That is not fair either. So I mean, it seems that all this talk about fairness, no one really has an argument that holds water when you're trying to bring in a person going to heaven who doesn't deserve to be there to begin with.
16:37: Absolutely. You know, fairness, what happens when you're involved in a conversation with people that are arguing in regards to the injustice on God's part, if a sovereign election, for example, is actually true, are defining fairness from a human perspective, in human terms.
16:56: And my point when I have a conversation with people on this area is God does not do something because he deems it fair.
17:04: What God does is fair. What God does is, for example, people say,
17:10: God does good, but the good is what they interpret good to be, from their own perspective.
17:16: No, God doesn't really do something because it is good. God himself, by his actions, determines what is good.
17:22: Yeah, well, even as I've heard over and over again, it was that very argument that I had that led me to reform theology, because Paul called my bluff there in Romans 9, you know.
17:34: And the answer really had me stop and think. His answer wasn't to explain the deep things of God that we can't understand.
17:42: His answer was, who are you to answer back to God? Which told me, yes, I rightfully came to the human conclusion that it was unfair.
17:50: Otherwise, Paul would never have answered that way. Exactly. Well, let's hear something about your personal story.
17:57: What kind of a religious home, if any, were you raised in?
18:02: What was the environment of religion in your home, and how did you come to Christ? And then, obviously, how did you first discover and embrace the doctrines of sovereign grace?
18:12: Well, very early in my childhood, there was not very much of a religious influence,
18:18: I say very early in my childhood, probably prior to my grade school years. And then early in elementary school, my grandmother, who was a
18:28: Christian, even though she was a Pentecostal Christian, she was the real thing.
18:34: She really was. She loved the Lord Jesus. She read her Bible. She prayed. She was a prayer warrior.
18:39: She came into our home. And so, that was an ideal opportunity for my parents to get my brother and I out of the house on Sundays and have some time together.
18:49: And so, they sent us to church. And so, for the next eight years or so, we went to church with her when
18:56: I was 14 years old. And that was, by the way, in that Westland Pentecostal Church, the
19:01: Methodist Pentecostal Church. When I was 14 years old, my dad, who was not a
19:08: Christian, told me, you know, you're at a point now where you need to make this decision yourself whether you want to continue to go to church.
19:13: You don't have to. Well, you know what it's like to tell a 14 -year -old boy? He doesn't long have to get up on Sunday morning and go anywhere.
19:21: And so, from the age of 14 to the age of 25, I just had nothing to do with the church.
19:29: I had never really truly become a believer anyway as a child. And so, it was not that I turned away from the church.
19:35: I had really never turned to Christ. And then it wasn't until I was roughly 25 years,
19:42: I think it was 25 years old, January of 1979, when
19:47: I actually truly came to saving faith in Christ. And that itself is a, even though at that time
19:53: I did not recognize it, Chris, it was in itself the greatest and clearest demonstration of God's sovereign grace.
20:03: And especially in the doctrine of irresistible grace that, I mean, I should have seen it, it couldn't have been written any clearer had
20:10: God taken His finger and written on the wall the way that my regeneration and conversion happened in that January of 1979.
20:20: I wasn't seeking God. Well, no one can do that anyway, but I wasn't looking for Him. And God sovereignly broke in to my life personally and did a work that shocked not only me, but shocked everybody around me.
20:35: Totally unexpected. And so, after this miracle of God raising you from the dead spiritually, regenerating you, calling you to Himself, and you are a
20:49: Christian, how long were you an active Christian as a
20:54: Wesleyan Arminian Charismatic? Oh my goodness, from that time of 1979 when
21:00: I was born again, truly born again in 1979 until around 2000.
21:09: Even though the trek out of my Wesleyan Arminian Charismatic had progressed quite a bit from the time of my regeneration in 1979, when
21:24: I began to, I was beginning to see very clearly as God was, now I realize, opening my eyes and understanding more.
21:32: And people often ask me today, what led you from where you were to where you are?
21:39: And very clearly it was just simply a concerted effort on my part in giving myself to studying the
21:47: Scriptures. And as I studied the Word of God and studied the Scriptures, I found clearly that things did not measure up to how
21:57: I had been indoctrinated, how I had even been taught in a Wesleyan Arminian Bible College as well as an
22:03: Arminian Wesleyan Seminary. And so, going and giving myself to expositional preaching really began to do a complete transformation in my thinking theologically as well as practically my preaching.
22:23: And that's how that happened. So you had already entered the ministry before this transformation? Oh, absolutely.
22:30: I was born again in 1979. And in 1984, my wife was a
22:35: North Carolina school teacher. We had one daughter who was 18 months old at that time. We sold her home.
22:40: She left her tenured position as a North Carolina school teacher. And we left to go to Georgia to go to Bible College.
22:46: I'd been out of college since 1976 and now was going back in 84 as a husband and a father of a young child.
22:53: And so, in 1985, I entered Bible College in 1984.
23:00: And in 1985, I was my first pastor in rural Georgia of a small
23:06: Pentecostal church. So tell us about what the
23:11: Lord was using to chip away at your heart in regard to the doctrines of grace.
23:20: And by the way, the way that you've described your Christian testimony should also make it clear to our listeners, especially those who are
23:27: Arminian or non -reformed, because I know that not all non -reformed people care to be categorized as Arminians.
23:35: In fact, most probably don't. I don't know what it is, probably. Right. And they also say that they prefer to identify as Bible -believing
23:45: Christians, but then, of course, so do people who are in cults, and so do people in all kinds of backgrounds.
23:53: So I am not one of the people that avoids labels constantly for any season or occasion, because sometimes you need to clarify things.
24:04: But for those of our listeners who are not theologically believing in the sovereign grace of God, this is proof, your testimony, that you believe that you were a
24:19: Christian before believing in Calvinism or Reformed theology, because the frequent accusation that I hear, which obviously reveals a total misunderstanding, is that we believe that Arminians are lost until they come to see these things.
24:38: Right. And I would never make that accusation against anyone because of that particular theological position that they hold.
24:45: I think there may come a time in their experience if they simply reject and continue to refuse to accept the truth of the gospel that there might be some warrant of questioning that.
25:00: But I would never make that type of blanket accusation, because I'm fully persuaded, even now, knowing what the
25:08: Lord has brought me to and bringing me into, that my regeneration was genuine. I know in 1979
25:14: I was genuinely regenerated by the sovereign work of God. The process from that time until in the late 90s when
25:25: God began to really bring me out of that mindset theologically into the doctrines of grace and sovereign grace, that's a growth process for me.
25:37: But it still never calls me to question the genuine nature of my regeneration.
25:46: Well, the claim is often made by those who oppose what we believe that nobody would ever believe in Calvinism unless they were taught it by a
25:59: Calvinist or read a Calvinist book that reading the Bible is never going to bring you to the doctrines of sovereign grace or reformed theology.
26:09: Well, first of all, it's an interesting argument because most people who become a Christian of any theological background or denomination are hearing about it from a human being who is teaching them something, so it's hardly an argument at all.
26:23: But very few people are discovering a Bible on the ground in the woods reading it and becoming
26:29: Christians. But having said that, can a person without the tutelage of a reformed person come to see that these truths that we would call biblical truths, reformed teachings,
26:47: Calvinism, the doctrines of sovereign grace, are clearly the teaching of God?
26:53: Absolutely. And the reason that I say absolutely with such confidence is that we have the greatest teacher.
26:58: We have the Spirit of God who lives in us, who is the author of our scriptures. So as we give ourselves to diligently and faithfully committing ourselves to studying the scriptures and we have the instruction of the
27:11: Spirit as we've committed ourselves to truth, then certainly He is able and does teach us the truth from the truth of the
27:19: Word of God. I had absolutely no tutelage whatsoever from reformed teachers.
27:27: In fact, I'll give you an example of that, Chris. I remember while I was in Bible college, in my homiletics class my last year of Bible college, my homiletics professor was actually surprisingly, even though he was in a
27:40: Bible college, was in the process of getting his doctorate from Erskine Theological Seminary in due west,
27:46: South Carolina. And I remember preaching my message and I had just actually taken the
27:52: Bible and prepared for weeks my message for my homiletics class. It was a graded class and I preached from the scriptures.
28:00: And after it was over, when he handed me my grading sheet, he looked at me and smiled and said, you know, that would preach great in a reformed church.
28:09: Now, I didn't even know what that meant. I did not even really know what, of course he did, because he was at a
28:17: Presbyterian seminary. But that has really come home to me over the years, that that is absolutely the truth.
28:25: It was only as I look back, for example, my preaching notes over the years as I was going through this transition and this journey that God was bringing me through, as Belcher says, a journey in grace.
28:38: As he was bringing me through this journey of grace, I look back at my preaching notes and my exponential notes and I remember making particular notes and footnotes of things that were reformed doctrine before I really knew those were reformed doctrine.
28:54: Before we go to a break, I want to tell you a humorous story that some of our listeners may have heard me tell before.
29:01: So be patient with me if I'm repeating a story to you that you've already heard ad nauseam infinitum.
29:09: Oh, no, not that one. But anyway, I worked for a radio station for 15 years in New Jersey that primarily had a
29:19: New York City audience. And I got a call one day from an
29:24: Armenian fundamentalist Baptist pastor, although he would not call himself an Armenian, he would just say he was a
29:30: Bible -believing fundamentalist, but he was clearly opposed to Calvinism. He called me one day and he said, a
29:37: Orthodox Jewish journalist wants to pay for a two -hour block of time on the radio to debate me live on whether Jesus Christ is truly taught as being
29:55: God in the New Testament. He fancies himself as a student of the
30:00: New Testament, even though he rejects its teachings and rejects Christ as his
30:06: Messiah. But he has read the New Testament for many years, wants to debate me on the deity of Jesus Christ.
30:13: So I arranged this debate that this Jewish journalist paid for with his own money, this airtime.
30:22: And I was listening in utter fascination when I hear this elderly Jewish man say to his
30:30: Armenian Baptist opponent, now let me get this straight. Your Bible teaches that before the foundation of the world,
30:40: God chose a certain group of people to receive eternal life and go to heaven.
30:45: And he passes by all the others, which would probably be the majority of humanity. He passes them by and they will go to hell.
30:53: And the Baptist pastor says, oh, no, no, no, you got that wrong. You're talking about Calvinism.
30:59: And this elderly Jewish man says, I'm talking about what? He says, Calvinism, that's what you're talking about.
31:05: He goes, what's Calvinism? He goes, well, that's what you're talking about, Calvinism. But some people are chosen and some people are not.
31:12: That's not biblical Christianity. That's Calvinism. He goes, hey, look, I don't know what for this
31:17: Calvinism is, but I can tell you that what I am saying is in your Bible. And I called the radio station that I worked for and I said, you got to tell
31:30: Ira to wait after the show and speak to me on the phone because I have to speak with him immediately when this show is over because I want to tell him he is right in his understanding of the
31:42: New Testament. He's not right in his conclusion to reject it, but he was absolutely right in the way that he was reading it.
31:49: And that was an example of somebody who had never even heard of John Calvin, didn't know anything about Reformed theology, who just took it for granted by studying it that that's what we believe.
32:01: Because it is actually, it is the biblical gospel. It is the biblical gospel.
32:07: And that's really what came home to me, Chris and Bob, is that through God's grace and careful, diligent study of the scripture,
32:18: I saw it was the biblical gospel before I really even knew that there were all these debates and arguments.
32:25: Right. Yeah. We have to get a break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own for our guest,
32:32: Pastor Mitch Pridgen, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.
32:37: That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.
32:45: And please give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the
32:53: USA. If it makes you feel more comfortable to remain anonymous, perhaps you're in disagreement with the church that you're a member of or something to that effect.
33:03: In that kind of a case, we would actually prefer that you remain anonymous. We don't want you to identify your church by name and perhaps misrepresent what the pastor actually teaches, unintentionally, of course.
33:18: But you may remain anonymous if it makes you feel more comfortable, but if you can identify at least your first name, city, and state, and country, we would appreciate that.
33:26: We're going to be right back after these messages, so don't go away. I'm James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries.
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36:30: I'm sorry about that. I was reading an emailed question from a listener, so I got kind of thrown off track there.
36:39: And we are talking about an Armenian journey into sovereign grace. We are starting off with Pastor Mitch Pridgen's own personal journey into this theology, and then we're going to be more involved in the second hour in how the church where he pastors was transformed into a sovereign grace -believing church.
37:01: And if you'd like to join us on the air as well, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.
37:07: chrisarnson at gmail dot com. Might as well read that question I was looking at from Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.
37:17: Your guest failed to answer or inform us whether his church that he pastors is
37:24: Baptistic or Presbyterian in nature. Okay, that is an easy one to answer.
37:32: We are Baptistic. Amen. I know that my co -host doesn't like that too much. Hey, stop it, man. I know the buzz is on.
37:39: We believe in believer's baptism. That is our position. We are.
37:46: Yes, and it goes along very beautifully with the rest of your teachings, which are squarely biblical.
37:52: We'll have a discussion later, Chris. Anyway, going back to your personal journey, were there specific texts that you could not run away from any longer that really got a hold of you like a lasso from heaven and basically brought you to your knees in surrender?
38:16: Yes, this is true. For instance, in my own personal testimony, a person, a member of the church who is now with the
38:25: Lord, actually, Nigel Stone from England, when
38:30: I first started to attend the church that I eventually got baptized in and became a member of,
38:39: I was militating against these teachings that I heard about called Calvinism. I was sitting in a
38:44: Bible study and hearing about predestination, and it was the first time I had ever heard of it because I had been raised
38:51: Roman Catholic, never heard of it there, and in my early stages of searching for a church, when
38:58: I believe the Lord began to call me and draw me, I was visiting Arminian churches really predominantly, in fact, maybe exclusively, not purposely because I didn't know anything about the differences, but I was going to Pentecostal, Charismatic churches and the
39:16: Church of Christ congregation that my brother was a member of, and none of them were theologically reformed or none of them adhered to the doctrines of grace.
39:26: So I'm hearing this predestination for the first time. I thought it was like Hinduism or something.
39:32: I was like, what on earth are you talking about? And eventually, this
39:37: British brother, Nigel Stone, handed me a chapel library booklet,
39:44: George Whitfield's Letters to John Wesley on Election. I have read that one as well.
39:50: And I read that, and George Whitfield had every biblical defense against John Wesley's attacks of Calvinism, and John Wesley had every single argument that I could think of against Calvinism, and more so that George Whitfield beautifully refuted and graciously refuted through the scriptures, that my initial reaction after reading it was, this is true, but this is horrible.
40:33: And then within time, I began to realize this is true, but this is glorious and wonderful and beautiful.
40:41: And it made my redemption so much more of a personal thing between God and myself, whereas instead of Christ dying on the cross for a faceless, nameless sea of humans, he actually purchased my redemption specifically.
41:02: He had my name in mind and paid for my sins, every one of them, on the cross.
41:09: It just totally transformed my understanding of salvation. But if you could, what were the circumstances and perhaps
41:16: Bible verses that the Lord used to drive you to your knees? There are actually so many of them,
41:23: Chris, but you mentioned one very early in our conversation today in Ephesians chapter 1.
41:30: And Ephesians 1 where it talks about having been chosen in him before the foundation of the world, or the earth.
41:38: And then as you go to Paul's abbreviated order of salutus, order of salvation in Romans chapter 8 verses 49 and 30, which drives you to a more, it creates in you an insatiable hunger to research those things, not just the area of God's foreknowledge and predestination, but the things in between there.
42:00: For instance, coming to say what conversion and regeneration that he doesn't mention specifically, but you know are the parts of the teaching of the whole of scripture.
42:11: And so those verses among many others were those who drove me to this study of the
42:18: New Testament. Not only the New Testament, even going back to because just the doctrines of grace are not merely just New Testament teaching.
42:28: The preparation for the doctrines of grace are taught in all of the scripture before the
42:34: New Testament. And I looked, I just looked at the New Testament scriptures and just began to study each and every one of them and just became, early on in my
42:44: Christian life, for example, early on in my experience, which set me apart from many that where I was in Bible college or either seminary as an
42:54: Arminian, was my refusal to believe that a believer could not be secure in their salvation.
43:04: That that which Christ had procured for us through his atoning work would somehow, could somehow be lost.
43:13: And that very, so my embracing of the doctrine of perseverance or what I like to call the preservation of the saints, my embracing that, that alone calls me to backtrack.
43:27: If indeed my salvation, for example, was secure, eternally secure in Christ, then certainly if God preserves that till the end, then
43:41: God had more to do with it in the beginning than I was willing or had been able to admit. And so it began to take me back.
43:50: Amen. Well, just to give a clarifier here about my own testimony, some people might be listening and say, see, it took
44:00: George Whitefield to teach Chris Arns and Calvinism.
44:06: He never would have thought of that by reading the Bible. Well, the fact of the matter is, number one,
44:12: I didn't know who George Whitefield was. So you didn't know he was a Calvinist. I didn't,
44:17: I didn't even, didn't even know what those terms meant. Really. I didn't know. It wasn't as if George Whitefield would impress me in any way because I didn't know who he was.
44:28: I didn't know who John Wesley was, but it was the scriptures that George Whitefield was quoting and exegeting to Wesley.
44:39: That was the scriptures that I was pointed to by George Whitefield's writing were the things that the
44:46: Lord used to transform my understanding. So I just wanted to make that clear. It wasn't the cleverness of George Whitefield writing in some extra biblical fashion that led me to believe these things.
45:02: It was the scriptures themselves. Well, I think one of the most encouraging things to me after believing those things because of my own study and God's work in my heart by through the word and by the
45:17: Holy Spirit was to find that there were others. But I did not learn that until later that there were others and that there were many others who, that I did not know who held that position and had for hundreds of years.
45:38: I think probably one of the greatest influences in my experience has been reading
45:44: Charles Adams Spurgeon, which just amazes me that you'll often hear
45:51: Baptist pastors or pastors from around different denominations or even different independent churches and they will they'll be glad to quote
46:00: Spurgeon. I wonder how many of them actually know what Spurgeon believed and if he were here today many of them would not even allow him to preach in their churches.
46:11: Yeah, well the irony is I know personally fundamentalist pastors who hate
46:16: Calvinism and they will have on their own websites their heroes of the faith, Charles Spurgeon, Jonathan Edwards and all these people that obviously were clearly believers in these doctrines that we're discussing and cherishing and loving.
46:32: We do have a listener in Clinton Township, Michigan, Jeff who says,
46:39: I spent 14 years at a Calvary Chapel fellowship, a charismatic church that teaches through the
46:45: Bible in order. I guess he's speaking about expository preaching. I found through those years that God is fully sovereign and in not only electing us but in directing our steps all through life as well.
47:03: I recognize that we are responsible for our actions too. How do you give guys, how do you guys,
47:10: I'm sorry, explain the two truths of sovereign control and human responsibility to a lay person?
47:18: Okay, Pastor Mitch. I really, to be quite honest, I don't think we're called to explain them.
47:24: I think Spurgeon addressed that issue very clearly. In fact, just today I was reading something that Spurgeon had written during his ministry that if, and I'll have to paraphrase because I don't have the quote right in front of me at this moment, but he says, if I find the doctrine of sovereign grace clearly taught in the
47:44: Scripture, I have no problem accepting that. If I find clearly taught in the
47:49: Scripture the responsibility of men, I find no reason to not believe that and I certainly do not see them as contradictory to one another.
47:58: The reality is I don't think we're called, there's simply some things we're not going to be able to explain. Both the human responsibility and the sovereignty of God are both taught.
48:09: I'm not called to explain them. I'm called to believe them. And of course, there are people that usually wind up either being
48:19: Arminian or hyper -Calvinist when they try to remove tension that God, for some reason, purposely leaves in his own
48:29: God -breathed word. There is tension that exists throughout the Scriptures between God's sovereign control and human responsibility that we, on this side of heaven, will likely never understand.
48:42: Maybe not even on the other side of heaven. I don't think we'll leave a matter when we get to the other side. Right. But there are obviously biblical examples of both being taught simultaneously.
48:55: Like, for instance, a classic passage would be Genesis 50 -20 when
49:02: Joseph, after his brothers beat him and threw him in a pit and sold him into slavery, and then wind up meeting him again as a ruler over them and they're frightened that they're going to be tortured and executed,
49:18: Joseph puts them at ease by assuring them that that would not happen.
49:25: And he says to them, as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.
49:39: So you have there both things going on at the same time. People, sinners, meaning something for evil, and then
49:47: God simultaneously meaning it for good. Absolutely. So I hope that...
49:54: I think anytime that we attempt to branch out and to explain, I'm just reminded of God's words to Job when he begins to discipline
50:05: Job. And he opens by asking him, who is this that darkens counsel without knowledge?
50:15: And then he begins to ask Job those tremendously challenging questions, where were you when?
50:23: When God suddenly shows himself to be who he really is as God and shows
50:29: Job to be who he really is as man. And we can't be
50:36: God. Amen. And so the scriptures are, though, very much filled with examples of both the sovereignty of God and responsibility of man.
50:51: And those that are historically Calvinist, as opposed to being hyper -Calvinist, and as opposed to being
50:58: Arminian, we are the... we have the systematic theology that really does not seek to water down either of those truths.
51:09: Well, that's sort of what started the whole debate historically. You know, when Augustine said, grant what you will and then, or you know, command what you will and then grant what you command.
51:19: And you know, when you realize it's God who works and it's both the will and to do of his good pleasure,
51:25: I mean, wow, I mean. Absolutely. And we thank you very much,
51:31: Jeff, for that question. And we ask of you to keep listening and keep writing in for us.
51:39: Jeff is an illustration of what exactly what we're talking about, Chris and Buzz, as well. I mean, here you have,
51:45: I'm very familiar with Calvary Chapel. Calvary Chapel is a very strong anti -Calvinistic group.
51:51: They are, in a sense, a Pentecostal charismatic group, because they hold to certain
51:56: Pentecostal or charismatic teachings. But here's a young man, or I guess a middle -aged man, who has sat under the teaching of the word and has come to the conclusion through the teaching, and certainly he's not being taught
52:09: Calvinism from Calvary Chapel pulpits. And also,
52:15: I do also happen to know some very dear brethren in the Calvary Chapel movement who, although not
52:23: Calvinistic themselves, unless they're just hiding it, I know some that are not militant against it, either.
52:35: And so I do thank God for them. And it's interesting, though,
52:40: I don't know if you know who Peter Jeffery is, but he is a dear brother in Wales who used to visit the
52:46: United States quite frequently before he developed more serious heart problems.
52:52: But he had quite a ministry with Calvary Chapel congregations and was being invited back to many of them.
52:59: For some reason, a number of them fell in love with him and his preaching, and a number of those congregations did become
53:05: Reformed and had to leave Calvary Chapel as a result, which is unfortunate because they claim not to be a denomination and not to have a particular kind of confession of whether they are
53:20: Calvinist or Arminian, but they obviously refuse to permit people...
53:26: A lot more people draw the line here. Yeah, they refuse to permit people through their Berean activity to come to a conclusion on the doctrines of sovereign grace.
53:35: So now you were already, as you said, a pastor when you...
53:40: You were already an Arminian pastor when you came to embrace these doctrines.
53:48: What was the initial reaction to the people around you, not only your wife and family, but your congregation?
53:58: How did they receive this? It's very interesting that you would mention my wife because my wife was born and raised as a
54:06: United Methodist girl, and so that's all she ever knew.
54:12: Was she an evangelical United Methodist or a liberal? Well, her church was not an extremely liberal church.
54:20: It was pretty much an evangelical Methodist church. There was good teaching, but as the years went on and as the pastors aged,
54:31: I think the preaching of the gospel became less and less significant, more the social aspect of it.
54:38: So the latter years of her teenage and college years, it became more of a social gospel than really a biblical gospel.
54:48: So as I began to make this transition first with her to walk her through these things and show her and share with her what
54:56: I believed God was showing me through His Word, there was struggle on her part.
55:01: She was never, never hostile at all. That's just not the nature of our relationship, but there were those questions that certainly came up.
55:10: And so that was a bit of a process. But again, she's very committed to studying the Scriptures and to listening very carefully.
55:18: She takes notes when I preach. She's sitting on the front row taking notes all the time. And so that transition was gradual, but it was a complete and well transition with her.
55:33: And then the church was a little bit more of a struggle because in the church we had, not only those who probably would not have any idea what
55:42: Arminianism was, or even for that much, Wesleyan, they would have associated Wesleyan theology being
55:49: Methodist and they would have not said they were Methodist, but in regards to their theology, they were Wesleyan and Arminian as well as Pentecostal and Charismatic.
55:57: So God began to slowly, and I didn't run in like a bull in a china shop, as I began to slowly introduce carefully through expositional preaching these doctrines, some began to realize what was being said and began to resist.
56:16: Some could not remain after hearing those things. Are these things, is this what you believe?
56:23: And I said, yes, this is what I believe the Bible teaches. Well, I don't, so I can't be here. And so I wasn't, was just simply was not going to compromise the truth of the gospel to please people.
56:38: I appreciate that. It was a costly endeavor for us at first, but those who had confidence in my teaching, who themselves were like the
56:52: Bereans you mentioned a while ago, who gave themselves to studying the scriptures, they would take the things they were hearing and they would go home and they would commit themselves to studying those things and they would come back with their questions and they would come back with either comments and saying,
57:07: I believe that is absolutely true and this is why I believe it's true. And so while some did leave, many stayed and they formed what we call the foundational family part of Crosswalk Church today.
57:20: Yes. I just wanted to let you know that our listener in Clinton Township, Michigan, Jeff, has emailed us the, this
57:31: Charles Spurgeon quote that related to the tension on God's sovereignty and man's responsibility.
57:39: That God predestines and that man is responsible are two things that few can see. They are believed to be inconsistent and contradictory, but they are not.
57:49: It is just the fault of our weak judgment. Two truths cannot be contradictory to each other.
57:56: If then I find taught in one place that everything is foreordained, that is true.
58:02: And if I find in another place that man is responsible for all his actions, that is true.
58:08: And it is my folly that leads me to imagine that two truths can ever contradict each other.
58:16: That is the quote I read earlier today. That is exactly it. To Jeff, thank you for finding that these two truths
58:24: I do not believe can ever be welded into one upon any human anvil, but, but one, they shall be in eternity.
58:33: They are two lines that are so nearly parallel that the mind that shall pursue them farthest will never discover that they converge, but they do converge and they will meet somewhere in eternity, close to the throne of God whence all truth does spring.
58:52: That is a beautiful way of putting it. I do not think it could be said any clearer than that. That is the quote
58:58: I was reading earlier today, and I thank Jeff very much for finding it. Thank you, Jeff. We have to go to a break right now, and if any more of you would like to join us on the air with a question, whether you agree with our guest, perhaps you vehemently disagree with him, or whether you just do not know, send us an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com.
59:19: Chris Arnzen, I mispronounced my own name. Chris Arnzen. You complained about pridgin.
59:26: I just called myself Arnjen. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.
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01:03:38: Welcome back, this is Chris Orrins, and if you just tuned us in, our guest today is Pastor Mitch Pridgen of Crosswalk Church in Daytona Beach, Florida.
01:03:47: We are discussing his journey from Arminianism into the doctrines of sovereign grace, and also the transformation that subsequently occurred with his congregation where he pastors.
01:04:01: If you'd like to email us, our email address is chrisorrinsen at gmail .com.
01:04:07: If you have a question regarding this subject, whether you agree with our guest, you disagree with him, or you just don't know, that's chrisorrinsen at gmail .com.
01:04:15: We do have a listener, a Christian in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who says that the thing that I most often hear against the doctrines of grace from its opponents is that they make
01:04:30: God the author of evil. Do you have a response to that? Mitch, what do you say when people make that claim or that accusation against us?
01:04:41: Again, that's a frequent objection, and I think you addressed that a little bit earlier. In fact, I was going to say something, and I just didn't know whether we wanted to get on that subject or at that particular time.
01:04:51: I don't agree with the fact that the argument that indeed it makes God the author of sin or that he's responsible for sin.
01:05:00: I think the illustration that you gave in Genesis 50 while ago in regard to Joseph is that God being sovereign uses all things to accomplish his ultimate end and primarily his glory.
01:05:16: So while I do not believe at all that God is the author of sin, I would not hold that position and adamantly deny that position.
01:05:24: I believe that even that God can however use men's fallenness, their sin, our sin, to ultimately to accomplish his end and his glory, even if that is in judgment.
01:05:37: I think another excellent text that I've never heard an adequate answer from an anti -Calvinist regarding this text, especially one that makes the accusation of Calvinism teaches that God is author of evil, and we who deny these
01:05:59: Calvinist teachings are free from any kind of association with that notion.
01:06:05: Well, I don't know what they do with 2 Samuel 12, where you have the prophet
01:06:12: Nathan confronting David. This is David after he commits adultery with Bathsheba and sets up the assassination of Uriah the
01:06:23: Hittite to cover up the fact that he impregnated Uriah's wife. Nathan says to David, you are the man, thus says the
01:06:35: Lord God of Israel. This is speaking in the voice of God himself.
01:06:41: Nathan says, it is I who anointed you king over Israel, and it is
01:06:47: I who delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your care, and I gave you the house of Israel and Judah, and if that had been too little,
01:07:03: I would have added to you many more things like these. Why have you despised the word of the
01:07:10: Lord by doing evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the
01:07:15: Hittite with a sword, have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the sons of Ammon.
01:07:24: Now, therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the
01:07:32: Hittite to be your wife. Thus says the Lord, behold, I will raise up evil against you from your own household.
01:07:42: I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight.
01:07:54: Indeed, you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all
01:08:00: Israel and under the sun. Then David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the
01:08:06: Lord. But there you have clearly God in his sovereignty decreeing and ordaining that these wicked and abominable things would happen as his chastisement against David.
01:08:21: Exactly, yes. And he's using evil people to bring out his purpose, but he did not need to make neutral men, these so -called neutral men, evil or do evil deeds.
01:08:35: They were already evil. In fact, my friend, Dr. James R. White, who I believe you're familiar with, he has said that,
01:08:43: I think he very rightly has said that any time that we see human beings acting kindly and in a good neighborly way, respectful of the lives of other humans and so on, that's just God restraining the evil that exists within them.
01:09:03: And if he were to raise his finger of restraint just a little bit, those same people that we look upon as sweet and wonderful neighbors would be at our throats trying to murder us.
01:09:17: You know, that's just the mercy of God where he is restraining the evil on this earth, and it would be a lot worse if he were not.
01:09:26: And if God chooses in his sovereignty to lift his finger of restraint in any situation in order to accomplish his will and to bring himself glory, then he certainly can do that and has done that, as we see right here in your example in 2
01:09:43: Samuel. Now, so tell us about some of the experiences you had after this revelation to your wife and congregation that this is the direction you are going.
01:09:57: Were you on the verge of being tossed out? What was the ongoing circumstances?
01:10:04: Yes, how did you do it? That's an excellent question. I think we had one advantage in that when we planted cross -borders at that present time, and even today, we were not officially a denominational church.
01:10:20: Right, yeah. And so we did not have to argue with any type of denominational headquarters in regards to, for instance, had we been a
01:10:30: Methodist church or had we been even a Southern Baptist church for that matter, even though there are many
01:10:37: Southern Baptist churches, obviously, that do embrace the doctrines of grace and have solid
01:10:42: Reformed teachers in their pulpits and preachers. We did not have to do that.
01:10:48: So the consequences that we experienced were not consequences that came from above us.
01:10:53: They were generally the result of the consequences were things we experienced among us, as those who would hear these things and just simply would not accept them, refuse to accept them, were not sure about them, either were willing to sit and listen or were, as was most often the case, were up and gone.
01:11:18: Now, let me play devil's advocate here. Would it have been entirely wrong or wrong at all for a congregation that has come to a unified position on Wesleyan Arminianism to dismiss a man that changes his views that he shared with them prior to this, even though we would view them as being theologically in error, would the decision to depose a man, as long as it was done humbly and graciously and in a
01:11:59: Christ -like fashion, would that be inappropriate or sinful? Because obviously, we who are
01:12:04: Reformed would not think it would be inappropriate if the reverse were to happen. You follow what
01:12:09: I'm saying? That's not a devil's advocate. I think if you have a leadership structure that is set up to function in that way,
01:12:20: I think it certainly within the perimeters of the right of the leadership of a church. You have a pastor, for instance,
01:12:25: I know of a situation where this is kind of the case that has happened, and that congregation did in fact ask that pastor to step down because of that position, because that leadership, that organizational structure allowed for that type of recourse on the part of the people who were sitting there.
01:12:49: At a particular time, two things were working. Number one, I'm not so sure early on in the history of Crosswalk Church that we had a well -defined theological system.
01:13:02: We didn't have a well -defined, we didn't really clearly define ourselves as being a Wesleyan Arminian church.
01:13:09: We basically deemed ourselves as being an evangelical church, a non -denominational evangelical church, committed to preaching the gospel.
01:13:21: In fact, our purpose was to love God, love people, and faithfully preach
01:13:26: His word. That was pretty much what we were functioning as very early on. And so as I began to preach, as I began to teach and preach these things,
01:13:35: I was doing that through the venue of expositing God's word. I wasn't running in with a ramrod of Reformed theology.
01:13:47: Blasting people. I was clearly expositing the scriptures. You know, the irony, as you know fully well, about Southern Baptist congregations being furious that a pastor within their denomination has become
01:14:05: Calvinist and them wanting to get rid of him, they could hardly use their own denomination's history as the reason to depose a
01:14:14: Calvinist because their denomination was founded entirely by believers in the doctrines of sovereign grace.
01:14:20: Absolutely. The Founders group is obviously clear on that historical fact. You know, and the beautiful thing, not far from us, years ago we had a
01:14:29: Southern Baptist Reformed pastor at a very successful ministry. And when someone came to him and actually said to him, said, how dare you call yourself a
01:14:38: Baptist and preach these doctrines? And he just very calmly and very gently looked at this precious person and said, ma 'am, how dare you call yourself a
01:14:50: Baptist and not believe them? Yeah, just so I'm afraid the force of history is on your side.
01:14:57: In fact, exactly what he was saying. That's what he was saying. Do your homework, read your history.
01:15:04: Yeah. And a perfect book to recommend to any Baptist that you know, who is trying to make the case that Calvinism is anti -historical in regard to the
01:15:19: Baptist faith and practice. They don't know their history and the perfect gift to give them would be
01:15:27: Tom Nettle's book, By His Grace and For His Glory. Have you read that book? Yes. I'd just like to suggest that they get to read
01:15:34: Tom Nettle's work. Yeah, that book is filled with the proof that most of the men, that all
01:15:43: Baptists and many Christians outside of the Baptist faith uphold as heroes, that the vast majority of these people were strongly
01:15:56: Calvinist. I mean, Charles Spurgeon, as we've been mentioning, and John Bunyan, who, although perhaps not clearly a
01:16:05: Baptist, was Baptistic. He was a strong believer in the doctrines of sovereign grace.
01:16:12: And the list goes on and on and on in this book by Tom Nettle's.
01:16:19: So I strongly encourage anybody to get their hands on it. In fact, let me give a plug to Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.
01:16:31: If you go to that website, you can surely order that from them because they are one of the finest warehouses of sovereign grace literature that exists today.
01:16:47: And they are very graciously involved in keeping Iron Sharpens Iron on the air. So I just strongly recommend them.
01:16:55: I also strongly recommend one of our sponsors, Solid Ground Christian Books, where Mike Adosh runs the ministry there in Alabama.
01:17:06: Their website is solid -ground -books .com.
01:17:15: And you will find a wealth of information and literature there.
01:17:22: I'd like to give a plug for Michael as well. Not only myself, I have a personal friendship with Michael.
01:17:29: This is very dear. I love him very much as a brother. His ministry has been very, very instrumental in helping us as a church with his literature.
01:17:40: And we keep his literature out in our church all the time from Solid Ground Publishing. He's been here, as you know, he comes at least once a year to Crosswalk Church to teach a
01:17:51: Sunday school class for us as well as do our Sunday morning service. Our congregation loves him.
01:17:57: He loves being with us because he says very few places he goes as you find such acceptance and love among the body for him.
01:18:05: But we really do. I'm going to give another book that Tom Nettles wrote in regards to those who oftentimes will say, well,
01:18:12: I'm not so sure they want to argue against Spurgeon's Calvinism. You need to read a book written by Tom Nettles called
01:18:19: Living by Revealed Truth, The Life and Personal Theology of Charles Haddon Spurgeon.
01:18:24: What an outstanding resource. If you want to understand the theology, the personal theology of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, they need read that book,
01:18:34: Living by Revealed Truth. And it is an outstanding book. Yeah, I've interviewed
01:18:39: Tom on that book. And it is indeed a tremendous resource as everything that comes from his pen.
01:18:50: So anyway, Pastor Mitch, what you're telling us then is that your church did not have a solid enough theological position in any direction for which you could rebel.
01:19:01: Absolutely. I mean, that's the bottom line. I mean, it's almost embarrassing to say that, but that's no longer the case.
01:19:09: Well, you know, many times when you're training somebody to do something, you have to untrain them. And that kind of saved you a lot of difficulty.
01:19:18: It really did. And our position on Reformed Theology, on the doctrines of grace and sovereign grace have been costly for us.
01:19:25: In fact, I'm sitting at my desk in my office right now as I look to my left -hand drawer beside my computer,
01:19:32: I have a list of visitor's cards. In the last four and a half years that we've been in this present location, even though we have existed since 2003, we purchased our first real property in 2011.
01:19:48: I have a list, a stack of visitor's card that's probably about six inches high of people that have visited.
01:19:57: And overwhelmingly, we hear feedback that they thoroughly enjoyed the preaching, but it just was too
01:20:08: Reformed or too Calvinist. Basically, people naively are saying they really want man to take more of the credit for their salvation than the
01:20:24: Bible teaches they should ever dare claim for themselves. They would never say that, but that is really what the non -Reformed theological systems are really lowering man,
01:20:40: I'm sorry, lowering God to a lower level than he deserves to be placed on and truly is on and elevates man to a higher level than he ever can achieve to be on or ever dream of being on.
01:20:57: So, it's really a very important issue, even though we embrace our non -Reformed brothers as brothers, there is a serious issue here, isn't there?
01:21:11: It is. I had a brother ask me not too long ago, because he knew we'd been having discussions about the doctrines of grace, and he has been slowly but surely making that trek and journey himself, reading books by R .C.
01:21:22: Sproul and others. He's been able to get his hands on listening to Dr. MacArthur, for example. And he asked me, he said,
01:21:29: Mitch, if you were to give me one thing, if I were to ask you to give me one thing about Reformed theology, since you've come into Reformed theology, what has it changed the most in you?
01:21:41: What would you say? And I said, Dan, that's very simple. God has gotten much bigger.
01:21:50: God has gotten much bigger. Well, you know, if you just look at your own heart, and my own heart,
01:21:57: I'm talking about me, you know, I've said so many times that the biggest miracle of my conversion is that I still have it, because, you know,
01:22:07: I'm like, you know, the last verse of Come Thou Fount, you know, prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. And the very fact that I'm still here, you know, would
01:22:15: I dare to say that, well, if I'm going to keep in this thing, I have to trust me, I can't trust
01:22:20: God, you know, when in fact it was, you know, God who has kept me. If I could lose my salvation,
01:22:27: Chris, I wouldn't be a Christian today. Yeah, exactly. I probably would not have been a Christian 24 hours after I was so -called converted.
01:22:36: Yes, and it's interesting that there are
01:22:41: Christians who despise our concepts of predestination and unconditional election, and yet agree with us on the necessity of repentance, and also agree with us on the fact that a true
01:23:04: Christian cannot lose his or her salvation. Now, that doesn't really make sense if you believe in the freedom of the will as they do, libertarian free will.
01:23:15: There's no reason that they can hold to a Christianity where a man cannot just become instantly, after his conversion, a wicked, unrepentant, overtly anti -Christian individual until the day they die and still go to heaven.
01:23:35: They have no really, they have no grounds to hold to the concept that we do, that all true
01:23:44: Christians must and will repent. Because what happens to their understanding of free will after a person is regenerated?
01:23:51: If free will is so important, they would have to think that God somehow takes it away from them after they become
01:23:59: Christians. Do you follow what I'm saying? I wonder, that's the argument I often have, and exactly the argument that I use, is that the
01:24:07: Armenian, even those Armenians who, for instance, Southern Baptists and others who hold to the doctrine of eternal security, they're inconsistent.
01:24:18: There's a gross inconsistency, because how does eternal security, on what grounds, as you said a moment ago, do you argue the security of the believer and at the same time hold to the doctrine of libertarian free will?
01:24:35: Right, and unfortunately you have those like Charles Stanley and other Christians who teach that the eternal security is really only an irreversible one -way ticket to heaven, and it has nothing to do with their life on earth, and therefore they will say that there are elect people who are truly born again, who are living like the devil unrepentantly their entire life, and going to heaven nonetheless.
01:25:10: I mean, that's a really horrible teaching and heretical one, but that is your only option if you believe that free will is a true teaching in regard to unfettered libertarian free will, and that man possesses that even after their rebirth.
01:25:33: But what we've done is we've created the Evangelical Church, like that position you just stated from Dr.
01:25:39: Stanley, which is absolutely, by the way, the truth. The reality of that whole thing is we've created a category of quote
01:25:49: Christians, end of quote. We want to call them carnal Christians or worldly Christians, whatever you want to call them, that says exactly that, that there are people who can truly, they believe, who can be truly regenerate, truly born again, who will never live a day of their lives in a manner consistent with God's word.
01:26:10: Because they prayed a prayer, they made a confession of faith, they responded to some evangelical invitation to make a decision that they secured a salvation that from God's perspective is in fact eternally secure regardless of the way they conduct their lives from the moment they claim to have been saved.
01:26:32: I believe that's not Bible teaching. That's right, yeah. We're going to be going to our final break right now.
01:26:40: If you'd like to join us on the air, this is your last opportunity. If you would like to ask a question of our guest,
01:26:46: Pastor Mitch Pridgen, whether you agree with him, whether you disagree, or whether you're just not sure, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.
01:26:55: chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Pastor Mitch Pridgen of Crosswalk Church in Daytona, Florida right after these messages.
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01:30:05: This is Chris Arms, and if you just tuned us in for the last 90 minutes, our guest today has been Pastor Mitch Pridgen of Crosswalk Church in Daytona Beach, Florida, and we are discussing his personal journey from Arminianism into the doctrines of Sovereign Grace, and also the transformation that subsequently occurred with the congregation he pastors.
01:30:26: And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarmsn at gmail .com. We do have a couple of listeners waiting for their questions to be asked and answered, but before I go to them, our friends at P &R
01:30:40: Publishing, also known as Presbyterian and Reform Publishing, they have asked us to promote the fact that they are having the
01:30:47: Faithful Shepherd Conference, May 9th through 11th, 2016, at the
01:30:53: Harvey Cedars Retreat Center in New Jersey. It's a beautiful place. I've been there myself right on the shore, right on the
01:31:00: Jersey shore, and they have as their speakers Dan Doriani and David Powelson, both of whom have been guests on Iron Sharpens Iron, and the theme again is the
01:31:13: Faithful Shepherd. This is not only a conference, but a pastor's retreat, and if you'd like more information on this, go to the
01:31:21: Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals website. That's alliancenet .org.
01:31:27: That's alliancenet .org, and then click on Events at the top of the page, and you'll see a whole list of different events, and in particular, look up the
01:31:39: Faithful Shepherd. That is a pastor's retreat in Harvey Cedars, New Jersey, May 9th through 11th, and once again, it's alliancenet .org.
01:31:50: Click Events. I'd also like to remind you that the Iron Sharpens Iron Pastor's Luncheon is going to be held
01:31:58: Thursday, April 28th, at the beautiful, historic, and recently renovated
01:32:04: Thornwald Mansion. That is going to be absolutely free of charge for all men in ministry leadership.
01:32:14: You don't necessarily have to be a pastor, but we're asking that the men that attend be in some shape or form leadership, even in the parachurch organization, or perhaps they are leaders in their congregation, either pastors or deacons or some other position of leadership.
01:32:34: This, again, is Thursday, April 28th, and we have as our guest speaker this year
01:32:40: David Wood, who is a thoroughly knowledgeable expert on the subject of Islam.
01:32:47: He debates Muslims all over the world, Muslim apologists and clerics, and he is very familiar with their teachings and so on.
01:32:59: He is highly recommended by Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, and I strongly urge you that if you can make it to this luncheon, especially since it's free of charge, that you email me and register as quickly as possible at chrisarnson at gmail dot com.
01:33:19: It's well worth the trip from wherever you live, because each man in attendance is going to leave with a giant, heavy sack filled with books that have been donated by Christian publishers all over the
01:33:33: United States, including PNR Publishing and Baker and Solid Ground Christian Books and many other publishing houses,
01:33:44: B &H, and I could go on and on, Reformation Heritage Trust, Reformation Trust, the publishing wing of Ligonier Ministries, and many other publishers have donated for this event.
01:33:59: So email us at chrisarnson at gmail dot com. We're also going to have a word provided to the men in attendance by Pennsylvania State Representative Stephen Bloom, who is a godly man, a born -again
01:34:14: Bible -believing Christian who is the Pennsylvania State Representative. He's been a guest two times on this program, and the more
01:34:23: I get to know him, the more pleased I am and delighted that there is a man in a place of authority and government in the state where I live that is so unwaveringly dedicated to Jesus Christ and his teachings.
01:34:38: So he will have a word for the men in attendance as well. But going back to our discussion, we have an anonymous listener who says that I know of men who have become pastors in the churches where they served by secretively becoming elected as the pastors without informing the pulpit search committees of what they truly believe.
01:35:11: Do you think this is ever appropriate for a Calvinist who is looking for a pastoral position at a church?
01:35:18: Absolutely not. I would never, under any circumstances, advise anyone to ask their theological position, especially on the doctrine in regards to salvation.
01:35:35: I would never in any way suggest that anyone withhold what they truly believe, because it's just a lack of integrity on their part.
01:35:46: That's not what happened at Crosswalk Church. This was not a bait and switch at all.
01:35:53: This was a transition and a journey that we made together. In fact, they're just really inviting a nightmare into their lives by doing that.
01:36:03: That's what I was thinking. Why create a Frankenstein? Just be honest.
01:36:10: Well, don't you think that the way that you just phrased that you said, if asked, don't you think that men need to voluntarily inform?
01:36:18: I would even suggest that if they know specifically, most of them will know.
01:36:24: If I were, say, for example, going to a conventional Southern Baptist church,
01:36:29: I know what their position is. And so if I were to be sitting personally before an interview committee, pastoral selection committee,
01:36:37: I would tell them, gentlemen, I want you to realize that my position is not congruent with your position in regards to the doctrine of salvation.
01:36:50: And let them know. I mean, certainly I would not go,
01:36:55: I wouldn't come back and say, oh, you didn't ask me, so I didn't feel it was necessary to tell you. I would go beyond that.
01:37:01: I would let them know, especially if I knew that my belief system was not congruent with their established belief system.
01:37:13: Now, I know of at least one pastor, in fact, I actually know more than one now that I'm thinking about it.
01:37:21: Men who may have been in a sense of desperation, they had to provide for their families.
01:37:29: They wanted to use their ministerial gifts, their training to glorify
01:37:34: God, and they believed they had the calling to be pastors. But they accepted calls to Arminian churches, even though they told the pulpit search committees and whatever authorities might have been in place there, elders, deacons, they told them that they were
01:37:56: Calvinists, but they were told before being hired that you must remain silent about these things that you believe.
01:38:07: We obviously want you to preach the word of God, but when it comes to these unique, peculiar, specific things that fall in line uniquely and exclusively with Calvinism, we want you to just keep silent about those.
01:38:21: And I know men who have accepted those calls to churches like that, and they, in many respects, were miserable.
01:38:29: I don't know if anything has changed, but they have a stranglehold over them about not really preaching the whole counsel of God as they believe it to be.
01:38:38: There's like, obviously, there must be some kind of horrible things weighing upon their consciences over this, but do you...
01:38:47: Certainly, there should be some very serious things weighing heavily on their conscience, because what they're doing is compromising the biblical gospel for the sake of support or provision for their families.
01:39:03: And I don't take that lightly. I can only say that, Chris, because for almost 10 years,
01:39:10: I was bivocational because of that very reason. I taught school.
01:39:15: I'm a science teacher by my former education, and I taught school and was willing to do that.
01:39:23: I would not have taken a larger church simply because it would have been what I needed to provide for me at the expense of compromising the gospel.
01:39:34: I'm in a similar situation myself, even now, because I was in a denominational church at the time
01:39:44: I was coming into Reformed Theology, so I was changing, and I remember many times in my frustration saying,
01:39:52: I wonder if I'm ever going to get a chance to preach what I'm really studying from the scriptures.
01:39:57: And it can be rather nerve -wracking and very trying on a person, and when you think this could be my job and all that.
01:40:05: But you know, Pastor Mitch, you were telling me about, you were already in your church. You were already the pastor.
01:40:12: You started coming to the realization that Reformed Theology was indeed true theology, and you brought your church.
01:40:19: You said it was through the expository preaching. Could you just kind of share with us, what were some of the passages that you were preaching through that when you came to them, you realized, okay,
01:40:29: I'm going to have to tell this like it is. I mean, what did you see in the scriptures? How did you lead your church?
01:40:35: Oh my goodness. When you do an exposition of, say for example, as I referred to earlier, when you do an exposition of the book of Ephesians, when you do an exposition of the book of Romans, when you do an exposition of 1 and 2
01:40:48: Peter, and then as you do those books, and you go through Paul's epistles,
01:40:56: I mean, it's just, it's there. You cannot, you cannot get around it.
01:41:02: And so as I would be preaching those passages and those books expositionally,
01:41:08: I would be quite honest and tell the people, this is what this is saying.
01:41:14: This may not be comfortable for us. It may not be comfortable for you, but this is what the scripture is saying.
01:41:21: And I didn't say this is a Calvinistic view. I did approach it from perspective.
01:41:27: I clearly approached it from the honest perspective that this is what the word of God is teaching us.
01:41:35: We may not like it, but this is contextually. Well, how long did it,
01:41:41: I mean, you, you know, obviously you didn't preach quickly through any of those books that you just mentioned.
01:41:47: So how long would you say the transition was? I mean, you, at some point, you must've realized you were leading them away from what they had been previously taught.
01:41:55: How long did that take? I've never really stopped to think about an amount of time until right now, but if you were asking me that question,
01:42:03: I was thinking, I would say from the time that Crosswalk began in 2003,
01:42:11: I would say probably easy, easy within the next three to four years, five years, five years at the most, we had made such a transition that now people were becoming solid in their understanding of the biblical doctrine of grace, the biblical gospel, the doctrine of sovereign grace, and others were beginning to come into the church who did already hold those positions who had been looking for a place that were faithfully preaching them.
01:42:46: And so adding to the foundation right here with those who remained were those came understanding completely what we were teaching and saying, that's what
01:42:55: I want. And you did say you lost some. Oh yeah. We lost many. Okay.
01:43:01: Yeah. I mean, you hate to have that happen, but that's the way it is. I mean, it is the way it is.
01:43:07: And you love them. And my heart, my heart was broken and my heart oftentimes still thinks about them, but I, I'm simply,
01:43:15: I'm not able to compromise the biblical gospel for the sake of appeasing people to continue to have them here.
01:43:23: I love people. That's my heart. Pastorally is on people. It's not just merely on doctrine, even though I don't know that you can separate them.
01:43:32: There's no segregation between loving people and giving them sound teaching. I think they run hand in hand with each other, but I would not compromise sound teaching for the sake of preserving a person in our fellowship.
01:43:47: Now, what if the person who is being interviewed for a call to a church that is predominantly decidedly
01:43:58: Arminian or just Arminian of ignorance, but with a leadership that understands that the person they are interviewing is
01:44:07: Reformed and putting that restriction on them that I mentioned earlier. What if that person being interviewed has in his mind that I want to be used of God to bring transformation to this congregation.
01:44:21: And if I win them over just by being a faithful preacher and using some restraint in the areas of the doctrines of grace,
01:44:31: God -willing eventually they will allow me to preach the full counsel from the pulpit.
01:44:40: That's a thin line. I think if a person is going to do that, he must prepare himself for potential disappointment.
01:44:53: And probably not unpack his bags completely and put some stuff in storage and leave it packed up.
01:45:05: I'm not saying that God can't sovereignly work on a congregation, because there have been, you know, as well as I do
01:45:13: Chris, there are examples of congregations that have survived that. And I think there are fewer than there are ones that were successful.
01:45:23: And that's usually when the Lord is teaching the pastor something about tribulation. Yeah, absolutely. Regardless of the eschatological view,
01:45:30: I believe that's true. I really want you to give advice to perhaps the young man in the seminary who has a call, he believes from God to be a pastor, or the struggling pastor that is already in a pastoral office, in regard to facing the opposition of those who disagree with these precious truths, especially if they wind up providentially like you did, being in a congregation that did not believe these truths initially, and the pastors themselves were, you know, were like -minded with their congregation and being ignorant of these truths.
01:46:25: But then the pastor perhaps is a one of many in that group that discovers these truths.
01:46:32: Some advice, some counsel on how to appropriately handle this conflict that they must prepare for?
01:46:41: Well, I think it's relatively simple in one way. My first advice,
01:46:50: I've been a pastoral minister again for 31 years, and I think it could be summed up in this, it is to genuinely, genuinely commit yourself to loving the people and let the people know that you love them, absolutely.
01:47:07: I think because transition and change comes a lot easier from a heart that people know loves them, and people that know that their pastors love them, truly have their spiritual faith.
01:47:29: Pastor Mitch, Pastor Mitch, can you hear me? Yeah, we lost
01:47:34: Pastor Mitch. I had a feeling that was going to happen. I don't know if his cell phone battery was dying, but we're going to be going to a station break, and hopefully
01:47:42: Pastor Mitch will be able to call us back and be reconnected with us. We're going to go through one last station break, so please stay tuned with us.
01:47:51: And God willing, we will be back after these messages from our sponsors, so don't go away.
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01:49:27: That's wrbc .us. Welcome back. I'm hoping that we have Mitch Pridgen on the other line.
01:49:35: Mitch, are you there? Yeah, actually, I'm sorry, Chris. My phone died, so I had to change my receiver.
01:49:41: Yes, I had a feeling that's what it was. It sounded like you were going down with the Titanic. Yes. Right there.
01:49:46: I don't know how it got in my head. Where was I? Because I think I was saying something I really wanted to communicate. You were saying that you wanted to impress upon the pastor, perhaps the
01:49:56: Calvinist pastor in the Arminian Church, that he loves those people, that he loves that flock.
01:50:03: That he loves his people and he genuinely cares about their spiritual life, their spiritual growth, and then gently but faithfully commit himself to preaching the truth of God's Word.
01:50:19: And when that comes from a heart that the people know, love them, and that genuinely care for their spiritual welfare,
01:50:26: I believe there will be those who will receive the truth that is given to them in love.
01:50:34: And there are always going to be those who will not believe and who will not come. They're just simply not going to accept the truth of the biblical gospel.
01:50:43: And we know that. But I think to love the people and to remain faithful but yet gentle in preaching the truth of the gospel.
01:50:51: You know, there are those circumstances where you have the congregation that is predominantly made up of those who are unfamiliar with or not believing in the doctrines of sovereign grace.
01:51:09: Their pastor discovers it, embraces it, and they love this man and trust this man so much that they are willing to have him remain as their undershepherd.
01:51:22: And they are willing to hang in for the long haul, if you will, and just be re -educated as it were on the teachings of the
01:51:31: Bible. How do you have the pastor in this position convey to the congregation some things that may irritate or surprise them or that may seem to them as contradictions to the proclamation of the gospel indiscriminately to all men?
01:51:59: And the responsibility of men to repent and believe and respond to the gospel call.
01:52:05: Like, for instance, the most typical thing that an Arminian or a non -Calvinist or a non -believer in the doctrines of grace, he will be confronted with the fact that reformed churches, for the most part, there are some that do.
01:52:22: But for the most part, they do not have invitations to come forward to the pulpit. They do not have what has become known as altar calls.
01:52:31: And you have Christians who say, who wrongly think. Now, these men do not care about the souls of those listening.
01:52:40: They are not taking advantage of an ordained moment to call upon them to receive
01:52:47: Christ now at this very moment. They're squandering these opportunities. And of course, there are those who may rightly not have so -called altar calls for theological reasons, but there are also liberals and so on that don't have them because they don't even believe that men need to repent.
01:53:06: But if you could respond to that, that conflict that seems to be there.
01:53:12: Well, I think the conflict could be resolved this way. In the faithful preaching of the gospel, there should always be a call for men to repent and come to Christ.
01:53:25: It doesn't necessarily equate with an altar call. We do not do altar calls at Crosswalk Church.
01:53:32: We don't do that. That's just not. But we do, myself and our elders when they're preaching, in our presentation of the gospel is always a call for men to repent and to come to faith in Christ.
01:53:51: And I think by doing it, if men and women in your congregation hear that passionate call in your preaching for people to come to Christ, I'm not so sure that there may be those who are just so rooted in the tradition of the altar call that they still will have a problem with that.
01:54:12: But I have seen over the years, as the fact that we transitioned from that many years ago, that I don't have to say anything.
01:54:20: My people will tell others. But we preach, we call people to repentance and faith every time we gather through the preaching of the word.
01:54:30: Yeah, people erroneously equate a call to repent and believe upon Christ with that altar call, that they're inseparable to them.
01:54:42: They think, obviously naively or ignorantly think that this has always been the practice of Christ's church, and it's nowhere to be found in the
01:54:55: Bible, and it's nowhere to be found in the pages of history until Finney in the 19th century. Absolutely, that is true.
01:55:03: I mean, you think about Spurgeon, again, we've referred to him several times during our conversation today. But never had an invitational system in his church.
01:55:11: In fact, the architecture, I understand, prohibited such a thing. It would have been true. Yet every week following the
01:55:18: Sabbath day service, the Sunday service, his office was lined with people who, during the messages, had confessed
01:55:26: Christ and had come to repentance and faith. And of course, he was meeting with them. And yet, what did he do?
01:55:31: Through the faithful preaching of the gospel, he called men during every message to come to Christ.
01:55:39: Well, in the four minutes that we have left, I really want to make sure that you leave our listeners with what you most want etched in their hearts and minds before they leave the program today.
01:55:52: Well, that's kind of hard to sum up everything in just a couple minutes, but I just really want to encourage those, there may be those who are listening that are struggling in churches that perhaps the leadership does not believe the doctrines of grace and they're wondering what to do.
01:56:13: I just would commend them to stay strong in their belief and faith in the gospel, in the biblical gospel.
01:56:22: And for those men who may be listening who themselves are pastoring churches where the churches themselves are giving them a hard time in regards to these things, just remain faithful as well in preaching the gospel.
01:56:36: Remain faithful in preaching the biblical gospel. And do you have anything that you'd like to invite our listeners to other than obviously your weekly worship services there in Daytona Beach?
01:56:52: But anything coming up that you'd like them to be aware of? There's some activities coming on for the summer and we have our normal activities, the
01:57:01: Vacation Bible School, and then we'll probably do something in the fall in regards to having another guest in here.
01:57:06: But I would like to let your listeners know that we are live on the internet. We have a local radio program on WJLU, WJLU .org,
01:57:16: and they can listen at 8 o 'clock on Sunday morning Eastern time.
01:57:22: My radio program is on. We're actually a preaching service, 8 a .m.
01:57:27: in the morning Eastern time and 6 p .m. on WJLU .org. We also live stream every single one of our services, not video, but just audio.
01:57:39: So on Sunday mornings at 10 a .m. and on Wednesday evenings at 7 p .m. they can log on to CrosswalkDaytonaBeach .org
01:57:48: and listen to us live. And I really would love for you to just give a final word to those men who are in the past who have just discovered the doctrines of grace before we leave the program.
01:58:04: Well, bless them. I want to tremendously bless them and pray that God would continue to lead them into these truths and to give them the means whereby they can share these with the precious people that God has put them over in ministry.
01:58:18: I want to thank you so much for being on the program today, Pastor Mitch. I look forward to you returning often as a guest, and I look forward to also having the opportunity to share fellowship with you if God enables me to get down to Florida again or for you to come up here to Pennsylvania.
01:58:36: I would love for that to occur, and the Banner of Truth conferences and things like that are held up here.
01:58:42: So hopefully you will have the opportunity at some point to come up here. I do want to remind our listeners one more time about the
01:58:50: Faithful Shepherd Conference that is being held in Harvey Cedars, New Jersey. Our friends at PNR Publishing, also known as Presbyterian and Reform Publishing, want me to remind you of that.
01:59:02: May 9th through 11th with Dan Doriani and David Powelson as the speakers.
01:59:08: That's the Pastor's Retreat, May 9th through 11th in Harvey Cedars, New Jersey, on the theme of the Faithful Shepherd.
01:59:14: Go to AllianceNet .org for more details. I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater
01:59:24: Savior than you are a sinner. We look forward to hearing from all of you and your own questions for our guests tomorrow on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.