August 16, 2022 Show with Andy Woodard on “New York’s Spiritual Legacy”

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on the 16th day of August, 2022.

I have as a returning guest a very important pastor who is going to be talking about a very important topic and also promoting a very important conference.

His name is Andy Woodard, pastor of Providence Baptist Church of New York City, one of the very few churches in that great city of New York that has not been overcome by, infiltrated by, swayed by the horrible and cancerous heresies of critical race theory and the woke movement and all these other intrusions that have been eclipsing the gospel in churches and denominations that were formerly known to be biblically faithful and conservative, and Andy Woodard is remaining steadfast and unwavering in his declaration of biblical truth and his exposing and condemning of error such as those heresies that I mentioned.

Providence Baptist Church is indeed a shining jewel in a dark city, and I hope that you visit there if you haven't already.

Today we are going to be addressing New York's spiritual legacy, and we're also going to be announcing the

Nonconformist Ministries Conference later this month on the theme faithful, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Trump and Zion Radio, Pastor Andy Woodard.

Hey Chris, thanks for having me on. Tell our listeners in more detail something about Providence Baptist Church of New York City.

So Providence Baptist Church, their full name is Providence Reform Baptist Church, but that's a mouthful, so sometimes we just call it

PBC, and we are a reformed Baptist church that meets on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and we formally began two years ago in August of 2020, and we just passed our second anniversary this last

Sunday, and we are a reformed

Baptist church that right now we're averaging around 70 -75 people on a Sunday, and basically preaching the word and making disciples, baptizing believers, and just being a simple

Bible -focused, Bible -preaching church in Manhattan. And if anybody wants more details on Providence Baptist Church of New York City, go to pbc .nyc.

P -B -C for Providence Baptist Church dot N -Y -C, and I'm sure

I will be repeating that towards the end of the program. Well, tell us about this exciting conference that you have coming up, and I'm going to try to attend it the best that I can, coming up later this month, and I really am excited to hear about the speakers at this conference, including my old friend of many years,

Michael Fallon, who, in fact, will be on Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio this Thursday to continue a promotion of this conference.

But tell us about this conference, and also about the speakers. So, this is actually our second conference.

We did one last winter, back in December. And I was there. I was there and loved every minute of it.

You were. It was a great time, great turnout, great speakers, just everything about it was wonderful.

And in that conference, that was more of a, I would say, more culturally focused.

The idea was kind of putting our stake in the ground, hence the title of it, or the theme, was

A Line in the Sand. And basically having our, kind of our, like, looser moment to say, here we stand.

We can do no other, so help me God. And so, in that conference, we addressed issues like critical race theory and matters related to that.

But coming out of that, I felt as though we need to move the ball down the field, and not just, not get stuck talking about CRT forever.

Because CRT is not the only issue, and it's not the only threat to the church, and it's not the only thing that's invading the church, or distracting the church.

And so, if the first conference was kind of diagnosing a cancerous tumor in the church and society, the second conference is more geared towards being an encouragement of where to go, where to be, and where to head.

So that's why the theme of this conference is Faithful. So, the initial thought for that was that if you ask the average

Evangelical across America who is somewhat informed, like, they don't have to be an expert, but if they know anything about New York Evangelicalism, hey, what do you think of Christianity in New York?

Some of the most prominent things that would pop into their head in recent memory would be, well, examples like the governor preaching in a

Brooklyn church, Kathy Hochul, saying you need to be my apostles for a vaccine, and just completely taking over the church pulpit to advance political agendas.

So that's one example. Another would be Carl Lentz having an affair with a

Muslim woman, or denying Christ on Oprah, or Tim Keller's constant, repeated, really head -scratching statements in public, whether it be, you know, homosexuality doesn't send you to hell, or no one ever learned of their sin by being told about it, you know, just saying really weird things.

And these are the biggest churches, the biggest names, the most prominent

Evangelical influences in recent years in New York City. And so the term that would come to mind when you think of New York Christianity is not faithful, it is not biblical or courageous, instead it would be compromised.

So the thought that came to my mind was, well, what would it look like if in 30 years or 50 years the church in New York was known as a faithful church, citywide?

If you were going to New York, if you were moving to New York, you knew, hey, that's the city that has a strong biblical church on every block, all over the place, it is dominated by the gospel.

So that's an idea that popped into my head a few years ago, and kind of been thinking about it probably for four years, and so that's the title for this conference.

Now you have returning from the last conference that I was at,

Michael O 'Fallon, who I mentioned earlier, founder of Sovereign Nations. And you also have returning

Mike Abendroth, who I've had on this program as well several times, senior pastor of Bethlehem Bible Church, and that's in Massachusetts.

He's also the host of the daily broadcast No Compromise Radio, along with his co -pastor

Steve Cooley. But you have some new, oh actually, also John Benzinger, pastor of Redeemer Bible Church in Gilbert, Arizona, who will be returning, and he hosts the

Redeemer Bible Church podcast. So you now have coming men that you did not have speak last time, you had

Patrick Abendroth, I'm assuming he is a relation of Mike, because he in fact even looks a lot like Mike.

And David Lovey, very fascinating brother, who I had the privilege of meeting with you, well you already knew him, but he was with you, and I met him at the

G3 conference in Atlanta, perhaps that was a year ago or more.

And it was a joy to get to know David, and it was good to experience hearty laughter again, enjoying fellowship with David.

And a new face, a name, coming to the conference, speaking at your conference, is

Brian Ottinger, director of Expansion Love Life USA.

Tell us about some of these speakers in more depth, and why you invited them, and the themes on which they'll be speaking.

Do you want to talk about all of them, or just the new ones? You could go through all of them if you'd like, briefly.

Yes, okay. So Michael Fallon, good friend, as I said, founder of the

Sovereign Nations media website. In my opinion, he is the foremost leader on fighting against the woke movement, the

Great Reset, all of these things, particularly as they're infiltrating the church, but he's also got a voice outside the church in business and things like that.

So Mike is, he's the guy when

I've got any questions about, like, culture and politics and events, and understanding what's actually happening in the world around us today.

So he's going, he's also a very, very experienced travel and tour guide, and very knowledgeable about history.

And so I wanted someone to speak on issues related to history in the, an example of faithfulness in the past, and that, and how that would encourage us towards faithfulness in the present.

Something biographical, perhaps. So I'm not certain exactly what he settled on to speak, to speak on, other than something like that.

So whether it's going to be a biography of a historical figure, or telling a story of a historical controversy, and the battle for truth that took place, he's going to be speaking on something that falls under that umbrella.

John Benzinger, also a good friend who is a classmate of mine from the doctoral program out at PMS, and when our church was going through our split two years ago,

John reached out to me and said, hey Andy, I know exactly what you're going through. We had that same thing happen to us six years ago, and I want to help you.

And so his church had gone from 200 people down to 60, and then up to almost 2 ,000.

So their split was when they went from 200 down to 60, and then they rebuilt, and then restarted.

So he's been with me through thick and thin, providing friendship, and guidance, and encouragement, and we do monthly coaching calls, and he just helps me out with all kinds of things.

So then Mike Ebendroff, also a friend, but also a former professor of mine in the

DEMAN program, and he lives up in the

Northeast, and so we have a strong connection, resonance over the idea of pasturing in the

Northeast and reaching people in this part of the country. Sorry, backing up to John Benzinger, John is going to speak on the topic of the right paradigm for ministry.

Is it all about faithfulness, or is it all about fruitfulness? And the reason I asked him to speak on that is because Tim Keller wrote a book called

Center Church, and in that book he says that churches used to be focused on faithfulness, but that's the wrong paradigm, and instead you need to be focused on fruitfulness.

In other words, it's all about results. And John, in his church, his life, his ministry, he found that actually our focus needs to be faithfulness to Christ, and that if you pursue faithfulness and obedience to Christ, then let

God take care of the results and the outcome. So that's John and his message, and then

Mike, Mike is going to be speaking on the differences, distinctions, and connection between faith and faithfulness, and particularly justification.

There's a lot of theological controversies and debates over justification, and particularly related to issues like federal vision, and are we justified by faith, or are we justified by faithfulness?

And so Mike is going to be providing a very clear answer, a very clear voice on the doctrine of solicite, and he's one of the best on that topic, so I'm looking forward to hearing him on that.

His brother, Pat Avendroth, Patrick, Pat has a podcast that I love to listen to called

The Pactham Theology Podcast, and he pastors in Nebraska.

I've never met him before, but he's a brother and good friend of his brother,

Mike Avendroth, and I know that if Mike is a friend of mine, then I'll probably like Pat quite a bit, too.

I asked him to speak on a topic related to the subject of his dissertation.

He did his dissertation, his DEMIN, down at Ligonier, back when they still offered doctorates, and he did his

DEMIN on covenant of redemption, Trinitarianism, things related to that.

So I asked him to speak on the subject of God's faithfulness to himself, God's faithfulness to his covenant, and then the comfort that comes from that, the encouragement that comes from that.

And David Lobey is a former classmate of mine, also in the

DEMIN program at TMS, and he and I, just really good friends, hung out a lot back in the day during class, and he, when

I first floated this idea to him of coming to New York and speaking at the event, he said, oh,

I want to talk about God's faithfulness from generation to generation, and I thought, you know what, that'll be great, let's do that.

So a lot of these messages are on the more theological side, and then it will transition,

David is going to come early in the conference, and then there'll be sort of a hinge or transition in the middle of the conference where it goes from theology to practice, and then that's where John Benvinger's message will be at the end, faithfulness versus truthfulness in the paradigm of ministry.

And then Brian Oettinger, he is the Director of Expansion for Love Life. Love Life is a anti -abortion ministry that trains sidewalk counselors, and so our church partners with them.

We have probably six to ten church members from our church are out in front of Planned Parenthood here in Manhattan four or five days a week, and they get their training and support through Love Life as far as, like, hey, how do you actually do this?

And we see probably two to three babies saved a week. Praise God.

And it's been incredible. We used to go out on the sidewalks before we got connected with Love Life, and trying to minister to these abortion -minded mothers, and in a year or two of doing that,

I mean, we were out there four or five days a week, and we literally saw one turn around that entire time.

But now through, like, training with Love Life and just small things like, hey, don't talk over each other.

Like, when one person is speaking to the mom, let the one person who's talking to her talk and don't try to butt in, you know?

Just simple things like that to help train your sidewalk counselors. And so through that, we've seen this incredible increase in over 100 babies saved last year.

And these moms are then, like, partnered or paired up with more mature women who kind of mentor them, and they throw, like, baby showers for them and really walk alongside of them.

Because these women who are abortion -minded, you know, nine times out of ten, they're coming from really broken situations or, like, you know, they're not coming from, like, a stable two -parent home.

So Love Life helps mobilize the church and partner, get the church working together to help people and to reach these people.

Some pro -life ministries or abolitionist ministries are more geared towards, like, the legal side of things or politics or, you know, going to the courthouse and trying to lobby for bills and things.

I don't know if you know the stats here in New York, but New York is, like, 95 % liberal. And the idea of passing any kind of legislation that pushes back on this,

I just... I don't think that's going to happen anytime in the next number of years.

But what we can do right now is we can stand in front of Planned Parenthood and see babies saved from being murdered.

So that's the biggest reason why we partner with them. And Brian is a

Reformed Baptist pastor as well. And he lives in the Charlotte area. And again, same with everybody else on this list, he's a good friend and brother in Christ.

So let's see. And then I'm talking...

The title we've got right now is New York Spiritual Legacy. So the idea behind that is kind of kicking off the conference with some background, like, what we've gone through, what brought us up to this point today, why are things the way they are, and then a call to faithfulness and to be biblical in our church, in our way of thinking, in our ministry, in our lives.

So that's the quick rundown on the conference and the messages and the topics of them.

Great. Well, if anybody is interested in attending this conference, and if you live anywhere near Manhattan, that is, in New York, of course, there is at least one other

Manhattan in Kansas and there are a couple of other Manhattans, but this is the real Manhattan.

If you are interested, and you should be interested if you live near New York, New York, I would strongly urge you to go to the

Providence Baptist Church of New York City website, pbc .nyc,

and click on Conference Registration. That's pbc, for Providence Baptist Church, dot nyc, and click on Conference Registry.

You will not be disappointed. And we are going to be discussing today the theme that you are likely going to be addressing at the conference,

New York's spiritual legacy. What is it about New York that has such a heritage that you could even develop a conference around it?

New York has become so liberal and even leftist, and the population there, over and over and over again, amazingly keeps reelecting people that are destroying that city.

I don't even understand, it's mind -boggling how even the liberals there would want to see their phenomenal restaurants shut down and taken away from them as happened during the ridiculous and tyrannical season of mandates over COVID.

In fact, my late wife and I treasured a restaurant, a

Russian restaurant in Manhattan called Firebird that has forever closed its doors as a result, and I'm sure there are many others.

And also the theater, all these other things that, I mean, not only liberals love them,

I love those things, but liberals are known, they're identified in Manhattan with all those things.

They very often run these things. You can't go to a Broadway play without seeing noticeably homosexual staff working there.

And you wonder, how could they allow these things to be taken away from them? But people, because they see

New York for what it has become, they may not realize that there were some extraordinary revivals that began there by the grace of God.

There were extraordinary gospel ministers over the centuries that were there.

Why don't you tell us about some of this? Yeah, so it has been noted that in order to understand

New York, you have to understand the founding and the start of New York, and that is that it was founded by the

Dutch as a trading post. And so that is to say,

New York City, or what we call Manhattan today, was founded for the purpose of making money.

Unlike some of the other early settlements or colonies in the United States that, you religious liberty or, you know, by pilgrims fleeing persecution, well,

New York was founded to make money. And understanding that is really essential to understand everything else that you'll see.

The second thing that might be obvious for a New Yorker or for somebody who's from this area, but people who aren't from New York probably don't really think about it, and that is that Manhattan is an island.

And as an island, it's surrounded by water, and sure, it's got a bunch of bridges, but nevertheless, the fact that it's an island still influences a lot of things, because you don't have easy access to all of the surrounding areas.

You're going to have to get on a train. You're going to have to, you know, drive a car across a bridge or something, but you don't just have this easy, easy flow in and out of the city to surrounding areas the way, like, you know,

Atlanta is this massive metro complex. Now, New York still is. It's a massive area, but if Manhattan wasn't an island, and if Manhattan still existed without being an island, there would be far, far greater spread of the connections and the influence and the travel and transportation, but because Manhattan is an island, that has heavily influenced the architecture and the city blocks and the way buildings are built and the apartments and the height of skyscrapers and all of those things are influenced by that, because they're trying to maximize a limited amount of real estate, and all of that factors into the church scene.

So I'm not going to talk about this extensively right now, but one of the effects of that is there's only so much real estate on the island, which makes the real estate very, very valuable, which means churches that used to be here long ago sold their property, and the churches were torn down and turned into high rises.

So now going back to New York City's founding, being founded by the

Dutch as a trading post, there was a huge influence of Dutch Reformed churches that have been here for hundreds of years.

Some of the older ones, I think, are still in Brooklyn, churches that are dating back to the 1600s, but nevertheless, there was the

Revival of 1857, which you alluded to. The Revival of 1857, the

Fulton Street Revival, was a prayer meeting that started in a Dutch Reformed church in the financial district, which is downtown

Manhattan, Wall Street, lower Manhattan, different terms like that are used to describe it.

And tragically, now an apostate church in the RCA, Marble Collegiate Church.

Yeah, now, it wasn't started in Marble Collegiate, Marble Collegiate is in Midtown, but yeah, the

RCA is the Dutch Reformed denomination, which is almost exclusively apostate.

Like finding an RCA church that still believes in a bare, minimal orthodoxy is very rare.

It's very uncommon to find. Yeah, I know, personally, one of the very, very rare pastors who remains faithful to the

Scriptures is solidly conservative and Reformed and against egalitarianism,

Pastor Y .C. Tan in New Hyde Park, Long Island, but right now, he's the only name

I can think of. Yeah. Yeah, I believe, is that New Hope Community Church?

Exactly. Okay. Yeah, a friend of mine, Das Rendala, is going to that church.

I think he's going to be the successor, be the new pastor of that church. So, anyway,

I'll just say the RCA is very, very far left, and it has been for a long time.

When I first came to New York in 2014, I worked for a church in Chelsea called

Manor Community Church, and Manor was started in 1855 as the

Chelsea Manor Chapel, because the neighborhood we call Chelsea used to be farmland, and so this chapel was an outreach effort, a

Sunday school outreach effort of the RCA through Marble Collegiate Church in Midtown, and so they wanted to reach the youth of the area, so they started this

Sunday school outreach, which would then become Manor Chapel, which became Manor Community Church, and that church was two years old when the revival of 1857 came and started in RCA churches, but then soon spread through the entire city and all different types of churches, but that revival was a prayer meeting revival initiated by a businessman named

Jeremiah Lampere, so even that didn't come from the pulpit, it didn't come from pastors and clergy, but it came from a concerned businessman who looked around and saw empty churches and saw the decline of the state of Christianity, and then this revival of 1857 was then spread nationwide and they estimate that I think over a million people were saved in the

U .S. through it, and then the revival spread around the world, and so you have books like, there's a book published by Banner of Truth called

Revival Your Sermons by Spurgeon, and the date on that is 1858 -1859, and so then we also see here in the

U .S. what came shortly after that, well it was a civil war, and some historians believe that one of God's purposes in sending the revival of 1857 was to save a great number of these people that would then end up dying just a few years later in the war.

So anyway, this revival had, really had a global influence, the revival of 1857.

There have been many denominations that have had significant influence here or connection or started here.

Salvation Army, Christian Missionary Alliance, I believe they were both started here.

Sandy Crosby was also here in New York. Jonathan Edwards pastored here in New York City, and then on a darker note,

Charles Finney was here. In fact, pick up, reluctantly pick up on Charles Finney when we return from our first break because we've got to go into our first break right now, and if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Pastor Andy, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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We are talking about New York's spiritual legacy and promoting the Nonconformist Ministries Conference titled

Faithful. If you have a question, submit it to chrisarnson at gmail .com. We left off, you were listing noted

Christian and pseudo -Christian leaders, prominent names from history that were affiliated with New York City.

One of them, the last one that you named, was the false

Christian, the charlatan, the plagianist Charles Finney, and if you could pick up where you left off there.

Yeah, so Charles Finney, many have said he was

Billy Graham before Billy Graham was Billy Graham. He was born in 1792, died in 1857.

Well, in all fairness to Billy Graham, as much as he was riddled with theological problems, he wasn't as heretical as Finney.

I just wanted to insert that in there. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So Finney lived for most of the 1800s, born in 1792, died in 1875.

He grew up in upstate New York, up by, what is that, the

Great Lake there at the top of New York State. So he was raised there and trained as a lawyer and grew up in the

Presbyterian church and he became very disillusioned with Calvinism. Then his response to that was to basically change it.

Hey, we're going to just change your theology because I don't really like it. So some of his theological hot takes were he denied original sin and what we mean by that is that humanity has fallen in Adam or in Adam's fall we sinned all,

Adam sinned as our federal head, that sort of thing. He denied that and, as you referenced, had a much more

Pelagian view of the individual sin or perfection.

That connects with the next point is he believed that you not only could achieve sinless perfectionism but that you should or you must be sinlessly perfect.

He also denied penal substitutionary atonement and what we mean by that is the idea that Christ died for our sins.

He died as our substitute bearing the wrath of God in our place. So he takes our sin and gives us his righteousness in the great exchange.

Well, Finney denied that and instead he taught, really, moralism, behavior change, behavior modification, be a good person, that sort of thing.

He wrote a book called Lectures on Systematic Theology and so in that book you can find his beliefs outlined.

Finney is also noted or famous, most famous, for the Second Great Awakening.

He was involved in that. One article on this points out that the First Great Awakening was marked by Calvinistic preaching, so think of like George Whitefield, for example, but the

Second Great Awakening is marked by Finney's theology, Finneyism, and is very

Arminian, very Arminian post -millennial. So like, hey, we're here to fix society, we're here to transform society, and we can do that and we're here to do that through social activism, through even good things like abolishing the slave trade, but those became the hallmarks of his ministry.

So he was a social activist, community organizer type rather than true preacher of the word.

It was all about moralism and behavior, basically.

He was also very, very emotional, emotive, and pressing in on man's emotions, and that was his primary emphasis.

Then this ties in with his new measures. So new measures is another term that he coined.

New measures may not necessarily have been new per se, but it was that he popularized them and spread them, but the idea behind new measures is that revival can be manufactured and that you can schedule this.

If you follow these steps, then you can guarantee revival, and he's the father of revivalism.

Now in these new measures, a few of the more prominent tactics or measures involve things like the altar call.

It's kind of fallen out of favor in recent years, but it's very popular for well over 100 years.

The altar call was the idea that at the end of the message, you would have a specific time in which you're calling people to get up out of their seats, to walk to the front of the church, to kneel at what they would call the altar, even though there isn't really an altar.

It's more like just the steps or the communion table, and so there you're supposed to pray the sinner's prayer at the altar, and then if you pray the prayer, then you're safe.

So he popularized that, the altar call, but it wasn't just the altar call.

There was the anxious bench. So the anxious bench was a literal bench that they had at the front of the church, and if you came forward, you walked the sawdust trails, what they would call it.

The sawdust trail is literally the walkway in between in the aisles, and they would put sawdust in these walkways, because over the weeks and months of all these revival meetings, the aisles would get very muddy, so they would put sawdust in them to kind of absorb some of the mud and the moisture and the dirt.

So if you would walk the aisle, pray the prayer, well, you walk down, you come to the anxious bench if you're not crying enough, if you're not sorry enough, if you're not emotional enough, because conversion was primarily about an emotion, and so you'd come up and sit on the anxious bench if you wanted to get saved, but you weren't quite there yet in your

And so part of this, you know, would often even involve like physically hitting or striking the person on the back to kind of conjure up more tears, more sorrow and sadness.

And also part of that was highly emotive or manipulative music that would be played as part of the altar call.

So these points were all common practices in the new measures that Finney employed.

And he got results. He got people to come forward, he got people to pray the prayer, and it created quite a buzz.

And so through this influence, he is now known today as the

Father of Revivalism. If you're looking for a really good book on that, you can read Ian Murray's book,

Revival and Revivalism, the Making and Marring of American Evangelicalism. Finney is really, in many ways, the father of basically everything within evangelicalism, mainstream evangelical practice and thought and style and just a way of doing

Christianity. So from his influence, in his wake, you see the

Seekers develop, you see the church marketing movement develop because of him, which is then also tied directly into pragmatic

Christianity. And pragmatic Christianity basically says, if it works, we do it. If it doesn't work, it must be bad.

We shouldn't do it because we didn't get the results. So then through that, you see these megachurches, the megachurch movement like Willow Creek with Pastor Bill Hybels, and then

Saddleback Church. So those are two of the most prominent, seeker -sensitive church marketing movement flagship churches even in the world.

So that's Willow Creek and Saddleback with Pastors Bill Hybels and Rick Warren. I'm sure all of this is familiar to you.

Many of you also probably knew some people too. And it's a tragedy that Asahel Nettleton, who was a preacher during those same years as Finney rose to the height of popularity.

Finney is the one that is still lauded and praised by especially fundamentalists, which is very strange because fundamentalists typically rightfully declare the heresies of Roman Catholicism, and yet Finney was more of a

Pelagianist than Rome. So it's very bizarre, but it's a shame that Asahel Nettleton, who is the figure that Ian Murray contrasts against Finney in his book,

Revival and Revivalism. It's a shame that hardly anybody knows who Asahel Nettleton is. But we have to go to our first break right now.

I mean, I'm sorry, our midway break. And please be patient. It's the longer than normal break.

So please send in your questions to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com

and be patient with us because in the middle of the show, it's always longer than normal. We'll be right back with Andy Woodard.

Don't go away. Attention all men in ministry leadership.

You're all invited to my friend Chris Arnson's Iron Sharpens Iron radio free pastors luncheon,

Thursday, September 22nd, 11am to 2pm at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, featuring me,

James White of Alpha Omega Ministries, your keynote speaker. Not only will you enjoy a wonderful time of fellowship with your colleagues in ministry over a delicious meal, but you'll also receive dozens of free brand new books donated by Christian publishers all over the

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Thursday, September 22nd, 11am to 2pm at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, for Chris Arnson's Iron Sharpens Iron radio free pastors luncheon.

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Before I return to my guest, Andy Woodard of Providence Baptist Church, New York City, and our discussion of New York's spiritual legacy,

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Earth, I may be able to help you find a church, sometimes within minutes from where you live, as I have done with many people spanning the globe in our audience.

Just send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com and put I need a church in the subject line.

That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Andy Woodard of Providence Baptist Church of New York City on our discussion of New York's spiritual legacy, chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Pastor Andy, I want you to pick up where you left off if you haven't completed your thought, and I'm hoping that we also get to highlight more of the great men of God whose examples we want to follow and benefit from, whose legacy we want to introduce to a whole new audience, like the aforementioned

Ichabod Spencer, like great 18th century

Christian heroes like Gardner Spring, like other great 19th century heroes in New York City like Spencer Cone, and we could go on and on.

If you could pick up where you left off and let's continue. Yeah, so we're talking about the

Second Great Awakening and Charles Finney. He talks about new measures being the father of revivalism.

I think we're just about to get into the burned over district and then the cults that came out of that.

So Finney did all of his, a lot of his revivals out in western

New York, and then the result of that was a lot of false converts, spiritual fervor and spiritual excitement that came out of that, and then

I believe it's Phil Johnson uses the expression, he says it's as if every demon from the pit of hell and revelation was released and all of these cults began springing up in the wake of Charles Finney, the area known as the burned over district, which is roughly from about Syracuse on west.

It is also considered part of that. So some of the cults that came out of that include

Millerism through William Miller, the Seventh -day Adventist with Ellen G. White, who was connected to Millerism, and then the

Mormon church, Latter -day Saints, Joseph Smith. There were three

Fox sisters in 1848 that started new medium work and the

Shaker movement. They had what they called the era of Manifest Day in the 1850s.

So this is all taking place in the same period of time, in the same area of upstate

New York, and then as well the social gospel came out of this, was prominently spread by a guy named

Walter Rauschenbusch, and Walter Rauschenbusch was also Rauschenbusch neighborhood center,

I believe, and he's connected with the American Baptist denomination, which is the

Northern Baptist. So that's a big, big part of the results or outflowing of all of these like really, really far out religious movements and cults that were started.

Here in New York, so in New York City, in the Dutch Reformed background, there's also

Anglican influence, lots and lots of Episcopalian churches, and then

Anglican church would try to be much more conservative. Yeah, Stephen H.

Ting from the 19th century has written some treasures of literature published by Solid Ground Christian books, and he was a well -known, at the time, he was a well -known bulwark of biblical orthodoxy.

He's not tragically well -known or even known much at all today, but a great man of God for sure.

Yeah, and then even today, there are several

ACNA churches attempted here in New York. I haven't spoken with their pastors recently.

It was a surprise to me to see men wearing collars and then speak with them and find out that they actually believe the gospel and perform the things.

And just to interject here for the sake of giving our listeners caution,

I know a lot of conservative Reformed Anglicans, and some even within the

ACNA, and you have to approach each congregation individually with a bit of caution and skepticism because they are a very mixed bag.

I just thought I'd insert that in there. Yeah, and I fully agree with that, and that's been my observation as well.

But anyway, before I moved to New York, before I got in these circles, I didn't know a single

Anglican, Episcopal, whatever, that actually would believe the gospel and be relatively conservative.

But we do see here in New York that there is this heritage of Episcopal. Then there are some

Anglicans that are, and this in my upbringing was absolutely, like in the

South, there was none of that. So that background here in the influence, and a lot of the

Episcopalian churches in Manhattan still have their buildings. They haven't sold the way a lot of Baptists and Presbyterians that lost their churches died, and then they sold their buildings, and then their buildings are gone now.

But a lot of the Episcopal churches, even if they're as liberal as could be, a lot of them still have their buildings, and you could go there on a

Sunday and see eight people sitting in a building that seats 500, and see a

LGBT flag on the front next to a BLM flag, and a quote from Gandhi on the front sign, and a gay or transgender pastor in the pulpit.

So that's a strong part of New York's current religious climate, is you can walk around and see those types of churches that still exist.

And the irony of any liberal touting Gandhi as a hero, what many people, if not the vast majority of people, don't realize is that Gandhi was without question a racist.

You can hear an interview I did years ago called

Behind the Mask of Divinity, which is a biography of Gandhi exposing his racism.

People view him as a great hero of equal rights, but what they fail to realize is that he was only a champion for equal rights for the

Indian people to be treated equally with white British folk and white

South African folks. He hated black people, and it is very clear, it could be very easily verified in going to the internet, to the collected works of Mahatma Gandhi.

And until the day he died, he referred to black people as kafirs, which is the

South African slang term that would be equivalent to the N word here in the

United States and in most places. So these liberals have really got to start doing their homework because they're really absurd.

But anyway. Yeah, so that's kind of a common thing to very liberal churches.

There's also a strong Roman Catholic influence, estimated as Roman Catholic, and that's going to be all across the spectrum from devout people that show up every

Sunday to the most nominal but nevertheless huge percentage of New Yorkers are affiliated with Catholicism.

And then there's also a very large Jewish population. So some say that there's, and that would be, that's the 10 % figure out of roughly 8 million.

There's different types of Judaism. You've got orthodox, ultra orthodox.

You've got conservative. So reform Judaism is the most progressive Judaism, and then conservative is also pretty progressive.

And then orthodox is very conservative, and then ultra orthodox is like ultra, ultra conservative.

So the Jewish community is very strong in Brooklyn, neighborhoods in Manhattan as well, but not very strong in the

Bronx. But nevertheless, it's a big community.

And just to insert here also, a lot of people don't know that Chosen People Ministries, which began in the 19th century in Brooklyn, New York, was started through the evangelistic efforts of Calvinist Presbyterians who, in their evangelism efforts, led a rabbi to Christ who then sparked a great work of evangelism to the

Jewish people that still exists today. And Mitch Glazer, who continues to lead

Chosen People Ministries, although a dispensationalist, is a five -point Calvinist.

I just thought I'd throw that out there. Oh, wow. That's very... So beyond these large

Christian groups, Catholic, Jewish, there's also about 40 % of New York, New York City, or Manhattan, 40 % are nonreligious.

Just nonpracticing, like don't really give it much thought, don't really practice anything in particular.

And then according to Pew Research, 1 % of white

Manhattanites go to evangelical churches. So that's pretty low, white

Manhattan church. I think they estimate that it's white people, you walk around looking at them, you pass 99, and 99 out of 100 do not, are not involved with an evangelical church.

So it's not a real positive evangelical

Christianity in Manhattan. Manhattan is the least evangelical of the five boroughs.

And so the current setting, the current scene in Manhattan is as far as evangelical

Christianity goes. Lots of people these days are talking about the wonderful history and legacy of the

Black church or African American church, and there's a variety of books that have been written on that.

And a number of people are trying to push back against the

Black church not being as doctrinally conservative. I'm not really here to debate that or even necessarily discuss that.

I'm not an expert on that by any stretch of the imagination. But I will say that most

Black churches in Manhattan that are prominent are wildly progressive, very, very theologically liberal.

And even the ones that are so -called evangelical are still very far left towards matters of life and worldview.

Even if they might be as conservative as to say, Jesus is the only way to heaven and you must believe on him in order to be saved, they would be very much pro -choice and completely aligned with the

Democrat party. So trying to figure out a percentage of the

Black church is kind of a whole other conversation. But they do exist, and I was thrilled to meet at the

Banner of Truth conference, as were you, Pastor Otis Buckley. Yeah, Otis Buckley is a solid

Brother Reformed, but from what I understand, he's trying to bring

Reformed theology out of a more charismatic background.

And I'm finding that type of experience is actually somewhat common.

There's a lot of solid Black and Hispanic brothers and sisters all across New York City, but they would typically not really be comfortable being a part of what, let's say, someone like Anthony Bradley would refer to as the

Black church. Like that the Black church is not, it's a cultural movement, and it's not just, you have

Black skin, but yeah, they're definitely a rising

Reformed Black people in New York City, even to the extent

I would say probably more of them than white conservatives, white

Reformed folks. Now, all of this talk about skin color, I really don't care about that.

It's not a thing to me that I'm focused on or concerned about, but when you're looking at stats and demographics that they write on and talk about.

Now, as I said earlier, are there going to be at the conference highlighted any of the wonderful men of God whose legacy we are trying to revive in places like New York, like the aforementioned

Ichabod Spencer and Gardner Spring and Spencer Cone and other heroes of the faith that lived in centuries past in New York City?

Yeah, so I would like to do that. If you have more names that you can suggest as prominent, just very solid figures to research and discuss,

I'm all ears and always wanting to learn more. So if you have more names, feel free to tell me about them now.

Ichabod Spencer is the only one of these three that I'm familiar with, but Spencer being the nickname, the bunion of Brooklyn, and has the book,

Pasture Sketches. So in the conference, we have David Lovey speaking, and David is partnering with two other guys,

Tim Cannon and Tim Cannon is very, very interested in Ichabod Spencer's ministry, his book, his history.

So he's had this basically of making a film of the same type of film as these others that have been made, like Logic on Fire or the

Calvinist documentary. So Tim wants to do a film about or create a film about Ichabod Spencer, wants to shoot that in Brooklyn.

I'll be sure to tell Mike Gaydosh that, the founder of Solid Ground Christian Books, because of the fact, as I mentioned earlier, they have brought back into print a

Pasture Sketches. And once again, anybody listening who would like to get a hold of that book, go to solid -ground -books .com.

And that's a Pasture Sketches by Ichabod Spencer. A -C -H -A -B -O -D

Spencer. And of course, I think I've mentioned to you in the past that my friend,

John Thornberry, wrote the biography of Spencer Cone titled,

A Pasture in New York, The Life and Times of Spencer Cone, that is so remarkable that somebody who has the funding and the talent should create a movie about this guy's life, because it is absolutely amazing.

He was not only a lawyer and a teacher at one point, but he was a stage actor who left that career because he became convicted that it was not proper for a

Christian to be participating in that kind of activity. And keep in mind, this was the 19th century.

He was a War of 1812 hero, was a pastor involved in all kinds of theological conflicts that were going on in New York City of the day, and he was standing firm for biblical truth.

Just an utterly remarkable man. So I'm hoping that that happens one day. Yes. Yeah, that would be great to do that.

And I'll mention it to Tim and David and maybe even to Les, because they are quite a trio of skill and ambition.

So the funding for making these films, it costs a lot of money to make it happen, but what they've found is that they can raise the funding through Kickstarter and platforms like that.

So I think that financially, it could be done. It's just a matter of casting the vision.

So definitely talk to David if you can come to this conference.

Otherwise, I'll try to connect you with Tim. Do you know Tim Cannon? I met

Tim at the G3 conference. And in fact, it was intended that I would be interviewed for the cessationist documentary.

And the morning that they wanted to meet with me to film that interview, I was sick and wanted to make sure that I slept properly late to regain strength to be back at my exhibitors booth at the

G3 conference. But we're going to our final break right now.

And if anybody wants to submit a question to Andy Woodard, I would advise you do it very soon because we are rapidly running out of time.

And our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name, at least your city and state and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. And only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Andy Woodard and the spiritual legacy of New York City right after these messages.

I'll be speaking along with Stephen Lawson, Josh Bice, founder of G3 Ministries, and Darrell Bernard Harrison and Virgil Walker, co -hosts of the

Just Thinking podcast. To register, visit g3min .org. That's g3min .org

and click on events. Your registration will include a ticket to the Museum of the Bible nearby the conference venue in Washington, DC.

So join me and Chris Arnson, September 15th through the 17th in Washington, DC, to the

G3 Ministries regional conference. Register now before they run out of seats at g3min .org.

That's g3min .org. Stop by the Iron Sharpens Iron radio exhibitor booth and say hi to Chris Arnson while you're there.

As a mother, I was looking for a magazine that would include devotionals that I could quickly do before school and had theology and doctrine made very simple for children to understand that they could read themselves or I could walk them through.

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Call Linbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402. That's 516 -599 -9402 or visit linbrookbaptist .org.

That's linbrookbaptist .org. As host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, I frequently get requests from listeners for church recommendations.

A church I've been strongly recommending as far back as the 1980s is Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey, pastored by Alan Dunn.

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or call them at 908 -996 -7654. That's 908 -996 -7654.

Tell Pastor Dunn that you heard about Grace Covenant Baptist Church on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Oh this is

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

Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio financially. Grace Church at Franklin is an independent autonomous body of believers which strives to clearly declare the whole counsel of God as revealed in scripture through the person and work of our

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

If you live near Franklin Tennessee and Franklin is just south of Nashville maybe 10 minutes or you are visiting this area or you have friends and loved ones nearby we hope you will join us some

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

Lord God Savior and King Jesus Christ today and always.

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Thanks for helping to keep Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the air. Attention all men in ministry leadership.

You're all invited to my friend Chris Arnzen's Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Free Pastors Luncheon, Thursday, September 22nd, 11 a .m.

to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, featuring me,

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I'd like you now to summarize in several minutes uninterrupted what you most want our listeners to know, not only about your conference, but about what is burdening your heart about the city of New York where you serve as a shepherd of God's people.

Are you there, Pastor Randy? Pastor Randy, are you there? Hey, I'm here.

Sorry. Yeah, so the song that says,

We long to see that all the chosen race may with one heart and soul and voice sing thy redeeming grace.

That's my burden. My burden is to see vibrant, filled, preaching

Christ, singing in the glory of Christ. That's my desire. And it grieves me.

It's such a burden to see struggling churches that are dying or dead, and they think that the way of survival or the way to live or to thrive is by compromising or by bending to cultural and religious pressure.

And I get it. I understand the pressure. I understand the fear of being intimidated by, you know, hey, if I say a certain thing, then that wealthy church member is going to leave.

Having the financial pressures from donors or members who want you to bend a certain way in order to appease them.

But one of the takeaways from this conference is my desire is to encourage people that are there not to bend their knee, not to bow to the pressures of society and culture and either unsaved or just very worldly -minded church members who have these agendas that are trying to pull them away from sound doctrine, sound practice, and a courageous biblical stand in the face of the pressures of our society.

So the desire is for encouraging believers, brothers and sisters in Christ, and pastors to be faithful and to be faithful based on the faithfulness of God, because the

Bible says, if we are faithless, he cannot deny himself. So it's not just a muscle up and try harder, do better, but leaning wholly on Christ and finding our strength to stand, our strength to be faithful on the basis of Christ and his faithfulness, which is unchanging and unwavering.

So I believe our last conference was incredibly encouraging, and I think that this next one is also going to be very encouraging.

And so if we have listeners anywhere in the New York area and they would like to come, we'd love to have them come.

And if they want to come but they can't afford it or money is an issue, just contact us and they can come for free.

It's not a problem. And we want to see people come, we want to see people here and be encouraged and find a room full of like -minded brothers and sisters here at this conference.

Now, how hard is it for you as a pastor to keep an optimistic attitude in a very dark city like New York, spiritually dark, especially where it seems you could hardly find a faithful voice that is unwaveringly committed to the scriptures at all cost?

If people are not being overtaken by the woke movement and liberalism, they are being silent about these dangers.

Perhaps because of the astronomical cost of rent for facilities in New York City and other matters that involve finances, they are just terrified of people leaving and they are compromising what they are presenting from the and it's just one of the most leftist mission fields on the planet.

How do you keep motivated with an optimistic attitude about the ability of God to change things radically, which is within his power to do?

It might not be in his will to do that in New York City, but it is certainly within his power to do.

How do you keep motivated about this? It's a good question. So, for me, I'm not post -millennial.

I don't have an up and to the right attitude where I think, like, hey, we're just going to win. Like, I don't think that.

But nevertheless, I'm very optimistic, and I'm not sure if that's just because of my soteriology, like, my confidence in Christ's power to save, or if it's personality.

Like, just for whatever reason, God has given me a personality that I'm just not really that depressed. Like, I almost never get depressed or discouraged.

Like, there has to be significant cause or reason. It's not just with, like, the regular ebbs and flows of life.

Like, it's going to take a pretty significant actual event to get me down.

But the other thing is, like, I was told about a shoe salesman who went to Africa, and he was talking to someone, and they're like, well, why are you going there?

Nobody wears shoes here. And he's like, well, because nobody wears shoes here, that means everybody is eligible to buy what

I'm selling. So when I look around me in New York, and I see, like, nobody goes to church,

I'm not discouraged by that, because that means, like, everybody's eligible. Like, hey, everybody needs to go to church, and they need the gospel, they need

Christ, and they're not currently a follower of Jesus.

So that's a big part of it, is just realizing, like, hey, it's shooting fish in a barrel.

I don't know, like, there's all kinds of illustrations or explanations that you could use for it, but there's no place

I'd rather be than doing ministry right here. So on the one hand, like, the question almost doesn't even make sense to me, because I'm like, well, why wouldn't

I be encouraged? Such great need, and honestly, the people, the members and attendees of the

Church are such tremendous sources of encouragement to me, because they're coming in with a desire to hear the

Word, and to be in a faithful Church. So, like, what's not to love?

Like, why wouldn't I be encouraged getting to do ministry to these people? So that's my answer.

Well, don't forget, folks, if you want to attend the Nonconformist Ministries Conference on the theme

Faithful from August 25th through the 27th at Providence Baptist Church in New York City, go to pbc .nyc

and click on Conference Registration. Also, don't forget, if anybody wants to purchase a book by a faithful pastor in 19th century

New York City, Ichabod Spencer, A Pastor's Sketches is the title of the book, and go to solid -ground -books .com,

solid -ground -books .com, and there are many other books that will fascinate you in their catalog.

I want to thank you so much, Pastor Andy, for doing such a great job today. I want to thank everybody who listened, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater