April 15, 2016 Show with John Cardwell on “To Be a Pilgrim: A Modern Christian Allegory Inspired by John Bunyan’s ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress'”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister

George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 15th day of April 2016.

And I'm very happy that after a long absence, we have, returning to the

Iron Sharpens Iron program, John Cardwell, a very talented brother in Christ and a man who loves and has a passion for spreading and defending and proclaiming the gospel of sovereign grace.

And we are going to be discussing a very brave undertaking he has ventured into.

He has written a new book called To Be a Pilgrim, a modern Christian allegory inspired by John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron after a very long time and welcome you for the first time to the all -new

Iron Sharpens Iron, John Cardwell. Thank you, Brother Chris. It's great to be back.

It has been a couple years since I've been on. In fact, it was from John Bunyan's Christian book, his treatise,

Christian Behavior, that I was on last time, I believe. Yeah, well, we were on a hiatus for about four years and then we finally relaunched, by God's grace, in June of last year.

And I'm glad that I'm getting reconnected with old friends that were wonderful guests in the past.

And please give our listeners an update on what you're doing before we even get into the subject of your book.

Yes, sir. Glad to. Yeah, I've come a long way.

The Lord has brought me on my own progress, my own Pilgrim's Progress. I was a former Navy deep -sea diver and the

Lord saved me while I was in the Navy and called me into ministry after many years in the

Navy. And that took us to the Philippines, to the mission field in the Philippines and to remote

Bush, Alaska, where I ended up getting sick. And the last time I was actually on,

I was sick with what they thought was Lou Gehrig's disease. But it turns out it was Long's disease.

And my wife wouldn't give up. Not only was the church praying for us as we left

Alaska, I got called out to pastor while I was still ambulatory. I could still walk around.

In 2009 at Sovereign Grace Baptist Church in Anniston, Alabama. And I said, well, you know,

I only got possibly two to five years to live if I've got ALS. And they said, well, we believe you're supposed to be here.

So through prayer of the congregation and diligence from my wife, she believed that the

Lord wasn't ready to call me home at that time. And so searching out on the internet and so forth, it turns out where I got a diagnosis with the

VA, it was rescinded. And it turns out it was Lyme's disease anyway. And through a series of aggressive antibiotics,

I'm now walking and continuing to minister for the last three years.

Well, for anybody who might think that this is not that serious of an issue, or they're just totally ignorant about Lyme disease, because I think it's predominantly people on the

East Coast that have gotten that. But a very close friend of mine's daughter passed away from that.

So this was some serious matter that should not be underestimated that the

Lord delivered John from. And we thank the Lord that he has left you with us for a while longer.

Thank you. And so, by the way, I want to introduce you for the first time on the air anyway, to my co -host who's been with us for quite a number of weeks now, probably what is it, about two months now, two and a half months,

Reverend Buzz Taylor. And why don't you introduce yourself to our guest,

John Cardwell? Well, John, it's good to meet you on the air, finally. Hey, Reverend Buzz, good to hear from you too, sir.

Yes, and forgive me if I go back and forth mispronouncing your very easily pronounced name with only two syllables.

For some reason, I keep saying Cardwall, and it's not Cardwall, it's Cardwell. But people butcher my name all the time, and it's only got two syllables as well.

So anyway, well, this book that you've written, this either proves that you are very confident of your writing ability, or you are a stark raving lunatic to be actually taking a priceless, cherished, beloved book, an allegory as it's called,

The Pilgrim's Progress, and doing anything with it at all. And what led you to want to even venture into these waters here?

A lot, a lot, a lot of prayer, brother. I thought you were going to end that sentence with tequila, but a lot of prayer, okay.

And what was the catalyst that said, you know, I've got to make

The Pilgrim's Progress something that has a version of it or a story that is inspired by it that is more contemporary?

What was the catalyst behind that? Yes, sir. Actually, a few years back, somebody very well here in Alabama in the southeast, folks that know me, and actually wherever we administer, folks know that Spurgeon and Bunyan have been basically my two greatest teachers.

And Bunyan in particular, I've read all of his works. The Pilgrim's Progress, I probably have read since the

Lord saved me in 1985. I've read it at least, the part one, I've read at least once a year, sometimes twice a year for the last 30 -plus years.

And I just love the book. It is priceless, as you say. It is a gem, it is a treasure. And I think it's possibly the latter,

I'm a stark raving lunatic. They should enter something like that.

But after several years of prayer, when it was prompted, actually it was somebody here in Birmingham, they're about an hour west of us, and a friend and his wife, they asked, knowing my passion for Bunyan, they homeschooled their children and they said, can we get a more accessible version of the

Pilgrim's Progress? And I just laughed. I said, you know what, it's probably easier for you to teach your children at least

BCM or Commonwealth English. And personally,

I've never really liked modern versions. I've read some modern, today's

English versions, some modernized versions, I've read children's versions of the Pilgrim's Progress, and I will always come back to the original.

Yeah, in fact, there have been Arminianized versions and even a Roman Catholic version.

Really? Oh, how could you get, I mean, you can't get a few pages into it before you realize that that's an oxymoron to do such a thing.

However, as I prayed about it, I actually, after I got well from my sickness,

I became susceptible, while I was sick, I became susceptible to pneumonia, having had several bouts.

To give you an idea, really, you mentioned the young lady who passed away from Lyme's disease.

It mimics many of the types of, because of the type of virus it is, it's in the bloodstream, it attacks the tissues, and it mimics like Lou Gehrig's disease or Parkinson's disease,

Huntington's, Korea, and so forth. And so I actually developed, after my first bout with pneumonia, having the sickness, my lungs have been susceptible to getting pneumonia, and I got really sick.

Had pneumonia, I was 104, 105 fever, and I was delirious, and I actually dreamed my favorite book, apart from the

Bible, is the Pilgrim's Progress, and I actually dreamt I was in the Bedford jail, and having bunion for the week that I was sick,

I don't know the time frame or anything, but just hearing, as if I were hearing the

Pilgrim's Progress, and certainly I was delirious, I just, it was very subconscious and so forth, and I realized that.

And then it got me thinking about the prompting for, well, let's, can we make a book more modern, more updated, more contemporary?

And then I cast that aside, because I said there's no way. And as I've been, over the next few years after that,

I started talking with folks who have never read the original, and one of the problems was that the

English was just too difficult. Some of the illustrations, though historical, they didn't relate as well.

And you and I, who have, you know, studied church history, and recognize how those things from Bunion's Day still exist today, but in several different forms, the more that I thought about it, the more that it started eating at me, and then

I prayed, Lord, are you really, are you putting this in front of me every time I turn it around, maybe that it needs to be done?

And I said that if I do it, I know that I'm going to get just as much criticism for doing it.

For having done so. Well, even more, maybe even more criticism, actually.

And perhaps it would be good for, I mean, sometimes we take things for granted when we do a show like this, and we think that everybody listening has got to be familiar with the

Pilgrim's Progress. But obviously, there are not only new Christians that I discover who listen to Iron Sharpens Iron, but there are even non -Christians and even people who are

Muslim and people of all types of backgrounds who do listen to this program on occasion.

So, we should probably first let our listeners know something about the original, the

Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunion. He should be an inspiration to everyone, no matter what walk of life you come from, because John Bunion was what they called back in the 16th century a tinker, or was he, he was actually the 17th century, correct?

Correct. Yeah, 17th century, he was a tinker, and that is a mender of pots and pans.

He had very little education of any kind, formal education, and yet the man was even recognized for his brilliance in his day, and at some point was welcomed into the pulpit of John Owen, who was recognized universally in his day as one of the most brilliant living scholars of his time.

And so, this is a fascinating man who writes this book, The Pilgrim's Progress, while in prison, and he was arrested and thrown in prison for preaching the gospel without an

Anglican minister's license, and if you could just continue from there and let our listeners know something about it. Oh, yes sir, yeah, absolutely.

His life was very interesting as a Puritan, born in 1628, died in 1688, and he was a tinker, he was actually even in the army, and he related as one who had been converted to Christianity.

In his own testimony, he also wrote an autobiography, if you will, called

Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, and this somewhat parallels it in the sense that much of what

Bunyan writes is not just in an allegorical form of Biblical truths concerning Christianity and salvation, but much of it is personal, it is what they call experiential, this is what he's experienced for the most part.

In fact, one part towards the end of The Pilgrim's Progress, as the main character

Christian, who is on his pilgrimage speaking with hopeful, talks about just before they get to the

Celestial City, they speak of a person called Little Faith, and many of the scholars believe that Little Faith was

John Bunyan speaking of himself when he was in prison. After Oliver Cromwell died, who was

Lord Protector of England, stating that we have no king but Jesus Christ, when he died, the line of kings resumed, and Charles II came to the throne, and they instituted, as he was the king and Lord Protector of the

Church of England, they instituted what was called the Claremont Code, and it had many citations, one of which was that if you were a non -conformist, you weren't a part of the

Church of England, and you were preaching within five miles of an Anglican church, you would be arrested, and John Bunyan, when he was called to preach by the

Lord, he would preach wherever the Lord would invite him to preach, and so consequently he was arrested in 1660, spent 12 years in prison at the

Bedford Jail, and it was a time where he was able to read and write, read the

Bible consistently, and also write to help not only spread the word, but also to grow his faith, and he got a little bit from publications.

Most of his publications, though he wrote in prison, most of them came after his release in 1672, but he had to pay for his family a while in prison.

It's not like the prison system we have here in the United States today, or a few other countries, where they'll feed you and all.

He had to pay for basically his cabbage water and sleep on his chick -infested, louse -infested, moldy straw cots.

That's exactly where Reverend Buzz is sitting right now. Yes, yes. Sorry about that.

He had to support his ministry. He was still in jail. He had to support his family, he had to support his livelihood, and even pay for the food that he was eating, such as it was a week, or watered -down cabbage water, basically.

For the most part, if he ended up getting a bit of potato in there, he was doing well.

The critics of John Bunyan today even will say, well, here he was preaching the

Gospel, and he left his family. This is your more liberal Christian saying, well, he left his family for nothing.

Why didn't he just stop preaching? Apparently they don't know the passage of Scripture that says, if I preach not the

Gospel of Jesus Christ, if you're called of the Lord, that's what you're to do. If you're called of man, well, certainly you can give up easily.

That's Bunyan's life story. He saw himself being considered today, and even of his contemporaries in the 1600s, being considered one of the great

Christian, great Puritan authors, right alongside men like William Defoe, or William Blake, right alongside his contemporaries.

You mentioned John Owen. John Owen allowed him to preach in his pulpit, because Bunyan preached from the heart to the people.

He was a common man who served uncommon and extraordinary God. Yeah, that also says,

I think, a lot about John Owen, because here is a man who had quite a prestigious position in the church and in the minds of many, and still does, and yet he would let this lowly tinker sit behind or stand behind the sacred desk in his church, the place where John Owen himself preached and taught.

I think that that says a lot about him. Unfortunately, there are many men of God today, or many pastors today, who don't like to share their pulpit with anybody.

Here you have a brilliant man like John Owen, who never needed to share his pulpit with anybody, but saw in Bunyan a man of great gifts that needed to be witnessed and experienced by the church and the lost who came to hear the gospel.

Now, I'm just out of curiosity. One thing I failed to mention in my introduction of you is that you are the pastor of Sovereign Grace Baptist Church in Anniston, Alabama.

When you are writing something like this new book of yours, and you've written other things as well, do you have to go into a sabbatical to do this, or are you able to, amongst your other pastorly duties, put your mind to these things in your study, or wherever else you may do them, and roll up your sleeves and get to work on these books?

Yes, sir. Being in Anniston, we're not a town that is absolutely really well known.

In fact, I think that when somebody mentions Anniston, if you don't put Alabama there, they think you're talking about the movie actress or the

TV actress. Or the headache pills. Yeah, we're halfway in between Birmingham and Atlanta, so it's like John Bunyan and Bedford, and I'm humbled.

Even saying that, coming out of my mouth, Chris, it's weird to say, like John Bunyan and Bedford, Bedford was not a well -known place, and here

I'm comparing myself with Bunyan, and I find myself, I need to bite my tongue. But whenever Bunyan would have been the first to say, don't compare yourself with me, you compare yourself with the

Lord, see yourself for the sinner that you are, and then repent with all speed. So, now that we know something of the background, oh, and in addition to what you've already said about The Pilgrim's Progress, and we're about John Bunyan himself, the book is basically, isn't it, taking the experiences that most human beings go through from the unbelieving, lost, and unregenerate stage through, they leave this earth and enter into heaven.

Oh, absolutely. And even with that, there are certain things that maybe not everyone would experience exactly like that, and this is why

I believe that it takes the form of Bunyan's own personal experience.

Charles Spurgeon had written in his pictures of The Pilgrim's Progress, in his introduction to it, and has preached about it, that Bunyan's not infallible, and spoke of, and gave an illustration of someone not going through the wicked gate, or through the slew of despond prior to the wicked gate that he had gone through.

And why didn't he just go to the cross? Well, having been a student of Bunyan, so to speak, just in his writings and understanding his life,

I recognized many things that he had to go through.

He had to have the burden of sin, the main character within The Pilgrim's Progress, that has this pack on his back which represents the guilt and shame of sin.

He amplified that as something that is, even in Bunyan's day, we see it today as being, well, a lot of preaching goes on like that, where people don't even talk about sin.

But it was going on even in Bunyan's day, and I believe he wanted to amplify it, and that was his experience.

And that was one of the things that actually brought me to a love of it, of the book.

I read it for the first time, The Lord Saved Me in 85, in a very

Calvinistic way, to put it that way,

I suppose. I was in the guilt of sin and the shame of sin that I even called out to the

Lord. I said, I can't do anything to be saved, so you might as well strike me down now and send me to hell if I cannot be saved, if I cannot repent.

And I believe that Bunyan felt that way as well.

So he, even prior to his coming to the cross, he expresses it in several pages of the turmoil that he must go through in being able for the

Lord to bring such a man as he to the cross. And sometimes it happens more instantaneously with others, so they might not relate.

And there'll be some places in the book The Pilgrim's Progress, the original one, where people relate to certain places more than others.

When I first read it, I was so taken with it, oh, this is my story. This really not just speaks to my heart, but I believe

I've experienced it in a very similar way. And so I was so taken with it that The Pilgrim's Progress became my very favorite book.

If I wasn't reading the scriptures, this is the book that I was reading. By the way, you describe your own conversion experience as being a

Calvinistic conversion experience as well. I might dare to say that everyone's conversion experience is a

Calvinist conversion experience. I'm not saying that only... You're absolutely right, they all are.

And I'm not intending to mean by that that Armenians aren't converted. What I mean by that, whether they recognize it or not, their conversion experience is a

Calvinistic one. Exactly. Too shame, brother.

Shame on me. But so give us...

Obviously, we don't want you to give away the store, I think is the phrase.

We don't want you to reveal everything about the book, or it wouldn't be possible anyway in the half hour time that we have left.

But let our listeners know something about how you transform the classic characters from The Pilgrim's Progress, like Christian and others, and some of the enemies of the gospel that he confronts.

How do you transform that into the modern day? Um, with great care and fear and trembling.

That's the short answer. But really, and it's not really giving away the story either, because folks that are,

I think that folks, my heart is that folks who love The Pilgrim's Progress will see this from a different perspective.

It's like, you know, friends of ours, friends of yours and mine, men we know who are great expositors of the

Bible, yet the same passage of scripture may be preached differently from different pulpits and from different men.

And that is one of the things that I think that this lends to it.

Where I start off with, to give you, our listeners here, an example is that Bunyan starts off with an apology.

He knew that he would be criticized by writing such a thing.

And I did as well. So I started it off kind of with an apology. I didn't want to write this, but finally

I was compelled to. And there it is, such as it is. I don't mean to be comparing myself with Bunyan, and I hope that it's conveyed that I'm not.

And in fact, I take the whole storyline and utilize the whole thing. So anyone familiar with The Pilgrim's Progress, it starts off with an unsaved person seeking salvation, because the

Lord is convicting them through the Word of God, and takes them right into the Celestial City.

Some of the names stay the same. I mean, I couldn't change the name of the Celestial City without actually transforming the book.

But others, for example, he's called the Man in Rags, and this may or may not relate to folks reading it, but it gives it a different dimension.

I took from my own experience, whereas the Lord saved me while I was a

Navy deep -sea diver. I took it from a shipboard experience, using somewhat nautical terms, but not getting over -labored with it.

The ship itself, instead of the Pilgrim being in the wilderness, he is dressed in rags, and when he tries to iron his uniform, it stays more wrinkled.

The book is in novel form so that it can flow a little bit, more for a contemporary audience.

But the ship that he's on travels in a less standard rudder, all engines ahead standard.

It actually goes in a circle, and all the people that are on board, this would be the cruiser, the

USS Destruction. So as opposed to the City of Destruction, everybody's on the port side of the ship, the left side of the ship, and it travels in a circle, and the only way that it can even change course is at high command.

The three in command at the high command actually send a pilot or the master of a ship, helicopter them in, put them on the pilot house, put them in a pilot house, and actually change the course from orders from high command.

That's kind of, I suppose, a sovereignty of God looking at the life that we lead.

It's just going in one direction unless God changes our course. And so that is one aspect of it.

I've changed some of the names, whereas, for example, two of the characters that the main character meets at the beginning of the story,

Obstinate and Pliable, are not names that are readily translated over to today's

English, especially among the young people, and certainly not among people here in the

South. When I say pliable, I say, what do you think of when

I say pliable? Paper towels. And I've gone through some of the last five years,

I've gone through an interview process, informal interview process, and I would ask somebody every once in a while, what do you think of this?

What do you think of that? Well, now, due to the recent Republican primary debates, we might think of Donald Trump as being pliable.

Or is that flexible? I'm sorry. That's an allegory in itself.

But yeah, so I've changed some of the names, like, well, pliable, he's called

Ben B. Ben B is his name, and let's see, oh,

Obstinate is Adam Ant. And even with that,

I deviated from the original Pilgrim's Progress, whereas, you know, he used terms that were quite, which we find archaic, they're quite familiar in that day, so changing them around to after Christian is,

Christian Newman is his name, he's known as the man of rags, but I call him Newman, as in 2

Corinthians chapter 5, verse 17, if any man is a new creature, a new creation.

And I use the ESV in it, too, as far as, you know, when scripture's quoted,

I use a little bit of the King James, but mostly the ESV, it seems it translated over well.

Well, I'll have you back when you do one in the NASB, since they sponsor my show! Oh, excuse me, did

I say the, did I say, yeah, I meant the NASB, really. In fact, we're having a good on,

I need to change now, I need to change it. In fact, that's where we actually have to take a break right now, and if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question for John about his new allegory, his new version of the

Pilgrim's Progress, to be a pilgrim, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com, don't go away, we're going to be right back with John Cardwell.

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Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Welcome back.

This is Chris Orensen. If you just tuned us in, our guest for the first hour of the program is

John Cardwell, who is the pastor of Sovereign Grace Baptist Church in Anniston, Alabama.

He has been a missionary pastor in Alaska, a missionary in the Philippines, and a former

Navy deep -sea diver. Today we are discussing his book,

To Be a Pilgrim, a modern Christian allegory inspired by John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress.

If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisorensen at gmail .com, chrisorensen at gmail .com.

We do have a listener in Lindenhurst, Long Island, CJ, who asks,

I have heard that The Pilgrim's Progress was the only book that came near to the sales globally of the

Bible. Is it still in the ranking that high? I'm not aware of if it's lost its position there, but do you know,

John, it was at one time for many years, if not centuries, it was the second bestseller book compared to the actual

Bible? Yes, sir. I tried to research that to see if there were still any covered statistics, but I think because of its longevity, it's been around for nearly 350 years,

I don't think it's been toppled. It was the second most purchased book and the second most read book in the

English language, second to the King James Version of the Bible for years.

And even with the advent of self -publishing being so easy, you know, this is a self -published book, because the market has been so flooded with so many other books, the availability of so many other books would actually somewhat, seems to me, would preclude anyone from toppling it from that position.

That could change, but I doubt it.

I think that the last couple hundred years in its sales and in its readability allows it to stay right at the top.

So if you could pick up where you left off before the break, letting our listeners know about the allegory that you've transformed for modern use.

Yes, sir. Well, I realized, too, while we were on break, that I didn't really fully answer the question as a pastor.

I just have to take time or find time or carve out time in order to write. And a lot of that, sometimes it flows from the supernatural aspect of presenting sermons making up my sermon outlines.

And that's what actually convinced me that an allegory is a good thing, continuing to write. Because I got to a period of my life where I thought, why should

I waste time writing? I have so few hours in the day to spend with my family, to minister to the congregation.

Why don't I just do it one -on -one? But I realized that this gives me a platform to be able to minister unto others.

And also, as far as the allegory, that's where some of the critiques came in Bunyan's day.

They still come today by those who look at a very skewed view of the regulated principle of worship, saying, well, you can only sing these psalms and so forth.

And I said, well, if you carry that out to its logical conclusion, I reckon I wouldn't be able to preach at all.

Right. Right. That is a point that I don't know how the, as much as I love my brethren who are exclusive psalm singers,

I don't know how they get around that. Yeah. Now, you mentioned at the beginning that you had seen, well, it kind of got tossed around that there were other versions of Pilgrim's Progress that were about on the landscape.

I'm wondering if there's any other attempts to do what you have done I'm familiar.

I'm not sure if you're familiar with them. I guess this is a question also. Are you familiar with what

Nathaniel Hawthorne did with the Celestial Railroad? I am familiar with it.

I actually probably should have read this. I probably should have read it before I embarked upon it.

But had I, I think I perused it some years ago. But I'm glad that I didn't, because I think it might have influenced me to go in a completely other way.

I know that I didn't want, at first I thought, well, maybe if I just write like a commentary version of this and only change some words slightly, that would help readers out, or write a workbook.

And I know that there are those here. And finally, I came to the point, well, why don't

I just, as this was Bunyan's story, as I've come over the last 30 years reading

Bunyan, I've come to realize, well, this really is his story. So why don't I write it, use the same flow, and make it my story?

There are things that I've experienced at the time that Bunyan was experiencing it, or writing about it.

He didn't quite experience it in the way that he had written about it. For example, towards the end, when

Christian and Hopeful were crossing the River of Death prior to the

Celestial City, and Hopeful's trying to encourage the

Christian, the Pilgrim, that he's thinking in the River of Death. He's thinking that I'm not worthy to go across.

His faith is floundering, and that's the picture that John Bunyan presents.

And like I said, he did call himself Little Faith, because he said that his faith was small at one point in the conversation.

I got to a point in my sickness prior to ever writing this, where I was with my wife on a

Wednesday afternoon. I had to be propped up. I had a neck brace on. I had to be pulled out of the wheelchair, stuffed into the couch with pillows all around me, because I couldn't lay down, because I couldn't breathe.

And my wife had to call up all our deacons and the ministers and let them know that they had to handle the prayer meeting, because I was dying.

And during that night, I was in and out, losing consciousness, and I somewhat experienced it.

In fact, that scene from the Pilgrim's Progress came to mind, and I felt, am I ready?

Am I? Because as you see yourself close, as the

Lord has drawn us closer than He has, as our salvation is nearer than when we believed, and we see the glory of the

Lord, and we see ourselves and our insignificance, even at that point, at the brink of death,

I felt, I'm not worthy to enter the Celestial City. And as it turns out, it wasn't my time, but immediately

I was drawn to that particular scene in the Pilgrim's Progress.

And that's what I did, getting back to point, it was to create it in such a way that it was really my story.

And Hopeful's Testimony has some of the elements, many of the elements, I actually did change them around, where the whole feel of Hopeful's Testimony, in fact that was one of the things that really endeared me to the book the first time

I read it in 1985 -86, was that Hopeful's Testimony was very similar to mine.

I did experience those things, and I changed a little bit too, because I think Hopeful was a little bit, he was a stouter

Christian than I was, so I actually gave up prayer for the nine months that the

Lord surrounded me with Christians. I mean, to find a Navy diver, Navy SEAL, you know,

Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician back in those days, Navy divers, to say that there was a

Christian Navy diver was, to me, was an oxymoron. It didn't exist.

And then I found myself in 1984, I was surrounded by Christians, and several of them were divers.

Wow. In fact, I've got to introduce you, if you don't already know him, to a brother in Christ who loves the doctrines of Sovereign Grace, who is a missionary in Italy, and he was a

Navy SEAL. I think, what is his, I don't know if you can say his name on the air, but...

He told me that he preferred not to be publicly identified as a Navy SEAL for some reason.

Oh, okay. But he is a Navy SEAL, and I think somebody complained when he was on my program that I should not have included that on his bio on my website, even though he was a

Navy SEAL, there was some kind of, there was some kind of a tradition or something about not...

Yeah, they don't exist. Right. I could tell you I was, but I'd have to kill you.

People ask me that all the time. Were you a Navy SEAL? Because I actually joined the Navy to be a SEAL. I wanted to be a

Navy Frogman since I was seven years old, and I got to do it for the first couple decades of my, first decade and a half of my life.

But with people asking, so were you a Navy SEAL? I said, no, I was a Garden Variety Diver.

I was a Christmas SEAL. And one of the things that we should probably do some damage control on, just because of the fact that, as you know, most of our fellow sovereign grace believers or Calvinists or Reformed Christians, whoever you want to describe it, most of them are cessationists.

Maybe you should clarify this story you told about the dream that you had regarding this book.

Oh, yeah. We all have dreams, and I'm a cessationist myself. The normal operation of God.

Thank you, brother. I really don't want to come on your program and not get labeled. That guy, that guy's a charismatic.

No, Chris, as you know, I am a true charismatic. I believe the preaching of the gospel is the greatest miracle that changes men's lives, to raise them from the darkness of sin and the depth of despair into a newness of life in Jesus Christ, greater than raising a dead person physically into life and so forth.

But it was just a dream because it was in my subconscious for so long.

It's like scripture. I mean, I just actually edited, and it wasn't an edit for a modern translation.

I just posted that. It should be on Amazon very soon. John Bunyan's treatise,

Light for Them That Sit in Darkness. And that thing is, as Charles Spurgeon said, prick him anywhere, you'll find his blood is, you know, his blood is babling.

Scripture's poor fort, the man's a living Bible, as Spurgeon says, and he is. And that's one of the treatises that is, it's almost nothing but scripture to present a discourse of who

Jesus Christ is and his person and work. And it's just scripture after scripture after scripture.

And that becomes a part of us as we grow. And the Pilgrim's Progress, just in its allegorical tale, it's not the allegory itself, but it's the principles of truth behind it.

That's became so much a part of my life that when I was sick, those are the things that came to mind.

I could readily, my mind readily grasps the principles of those truths.

And so in a dream state, because I was delirious, it wasn't, it had nothing to do with charismata or charisma or charismatic gifts.

And in fact, I'll go so far as to say that when I was a missionary to the

Philippines and when I went to Alaska, to Bush, Alaska, I had to learn those languages.

They didn't come automatically. You know, something occurred to me about how appropriate a story like Pilgrim's Progress is for today, because unlike Bunyan's Day, with modern technology and people hearing all kinds of different voices in alternative ways to find peace, truth, heaven, et cetera, bombarding the average individual, multiplied by many times over than when

Bunyan was alive and wrote the original Pilgrim's Progress. I would think that this would be a very applicable story for today, because of all the different, not only kinds of theology that are claiming to be

Christian, that are facing the average person who is searching for truth, but all the alternatives to Christianity.

You know, I mean, it's just, obviously there were many religions and false Christianities in Bunyan's Day too, but the fact that the media has just not only been a blessing for the gospel, but it's also been an aid to Satan's cause and all the false voices that are confronting each of us every day through the media.

Absolutely, absolutely. As you said, it's a blessing and a curse, but this is a, by being able to update it, here are a couple of examples, and I don't think, you know,

I'm not giving away the farm, I think it'll add to its interest, is there are things that, from Bunyan's Day, where he cuts it down to those things that were from his day.

For example, just before he gets to the Palace of the Beautiful, there are two lions, they represent papal power and Anglican authority.

Again, he presents that with two giants after he gets through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. I actually added a giant at the end of the

Valley of the Shadow of Death, where he had Pope and Pagan, I added Purpose in there.

I added one of the flatterers, I added a flatterer to the book. So you mean you've actually included

Rick Warren in your version? Not by name, and he's got one of the giants, the giant is called

Purpose, and it ended up going into a cave, but where there were the flatterers,

I actually did have something that was very similar, because there was a drive -in theater and a crystal cathedral on a path leading off the right way, and the barker, he was called

Barker, it's actually, it's his whole, it's its own chapter in there, the Barker, and his name is

Mark Edding. Mark Edding. Mark Edding, I love that.

So somebody who's been in advertising most of my life, I get a kick out of that. But yeah, and the funny thing is, is one of the ways that I've actually been able to try to supplement my income, because Anniston is a small town, and when you're preaching grace, preaching

Christ and Him crucified, that tends to separate a lot of folks from coming.

In fact, the joke is that when somebody visits our church, I say, well, how did you find us? Well, we heard you on Sermon Audio.

I said, and you still came? And so yeah, we're not a large congregation, and so I supplement my income through that.

But one of the ways that I supplement my income is I actually learned from writing.

I became a copywriter, and I started marketing to local businesses. And I know how to, knowing the principles of marketing, and having studied that for several, the last several years, you know, while I'm praying about writing this book, making some income, knowing actually how to sell,

I realized that it's diametrically opposed to the gospel. I mean, I knew that before, but now

I know the reasons why. In fact, the lions that are chained to the walls, where the pilgrim must go through,

Christian must go through before he gets to the Palace of the Beautiful, I added lions, because the offshoot of the two lions,

Anglican Authority or Papal Power, the bunion experience, there are a lot more lions that are chained to the walls that frighten us.

When we examine our own Christianity, I even wrote in a little bit more detail, it's the porter, who by goodwill, that, excuse me, not goodwill, but the porter, the caretaker,

I call them the caretaker, but he's called the porter, and says, hey, just walk through the middle and the lions won't get you.

He actually has to explain some of the lions, because one lion towards the end, he said, well, this lion here, they believe that you must be baptized in order to be saved, and this lion over here, that believes that Jesus is the spirit brother of Lucifer, and this lion over here believes that, oh, and then he finally comes to a lion that says, this thing has a huge head and a scrawny body, and it came and jumped out at me, and it roared like a lion, but I didn't recognize it as any animal

I've ever seen, and that was kind of my plug at the Emergent Church. Well, that's great.

So it's got those kind of elements in order to kind of update it, and even tie in, because it's written somewhat in novel form, it gives me the latitude to be able to try to tie some of those things in, as well as provide a little bit of commentary, and hopefully, in fact, at the end of the book,

I provide a link, you know, thank you for reading, and at the end of the book, here, if you want a free copy of the original

Pilgrim's Progress, I have it in e -book form for you, and so I've edited a copy of it.

I didn't just grab somebody else's. I went through and put it in a form that's readable and legible, and so folks can, after reading this, have an idea of the overview of the

Pilgrim's Progress, and that's one of my desires, too. I wish that folks could fall in love with the original, just as I have.

Have you ever been in touch with Barry Horner? I'm sorry? Have you ever been in contact with Dr.

Barry Horner? No, I haven't. I'd like to get him a copy.

Yeah, I'll put you in touch with him. I'll tell you, Chris, I'll switch you over to NASB if I could get a copy out to James White.

Oh, sure, sure. I'll make sure you get a copy, definitely. Yeah, it has been enjoyable to just go through it, and any time that I can go through the

Pilgrim's Progress, I still love reading it to this very day.

The reason why, just for our listeners who have no idea why I brought up Dr. Barry Horner, is that he is probably one of the foremost experts living on John Bunyan and the

Pilgrim's Progress, and he does a masterful job doing a public presentation that he tailors according to what your church has time for, like between one and three hours or four hours long.

But he really can go into some exhaustive details about Pilgrim's Progress, and I've seen him do it, the presentation, probably four times, and I was never bored.

And there was always something new I learned every time I saw it, so I just highly recommend him for those types of things.

But I want to make sure that you, John, give our listeners what you most want etched in their hearts and minds before we run out of time.

I know that you could only be on with us for an hour, and so we've got about three and a half minutes left for you, so if you could just leave our listeners with what you most want them to remember.

What I most want you to remember is that whether you pick up a copy of To Be a Pilgrim or even

The Pilgrim's Progress, the Word of God is that which tied up Bunyan's life, and the

Word of God for him is the same as it was for me. I didn't think that I should be called the pastor.

What a responsibility that was. But the key, I think, to the faithfulness to the ministry that the

Lord has given me was the same as what was given to Bunyan or Spurgeon or any of them, is that the pages from Genesis 1 -1 to Revelation 22 -21 is

Jesus Christ and him crucified, who Christ is and what he has done, and that our faith flows from the gospel.

Our good works are nothing unless it comes from the truth of a regenerated life through the person of Jesus Christ, and if you get nothing else, then if you stay on that, everything will fall into place.

Well, definitely let our listeners know how they can get in touch with the church that you pastor, and obviously also how they can order your book.

Oh, yes, sir. Actually, it is available on Amazon .com because it has been edited.

It's been proofread, and rather than wait through the whole marketing thing, rather than do that,

I wanted to make it available. I could have waited to get the endorsements like I've done for a few other books, and even for people that I've helped to publish books, but if folks wanted to get the book,

I wanted to make it available for them. It's on Amazon .com. Just type in,

To Be a Pilgrim, or my name, John Cardwell, and To Be a Pilgrim, or even The Pilgrim's Progress, and it should come up.

It's both in Kindle and in trade paperback. I've tried to keep the price down so that it's affordable.

I think it's $12 .95 in paperback and $3 .99 in e -book, and please, if you read it, please leave a review about it.

Let folks know how you've been blessed by it. And your website is johnjcardwell .com?

That's one of them, and then I have a ministry site, preachingchristcrucified .com.

preachingchristcrucified .com and johnjcardwell .com, and John, by the way, is spelled J -O -N -J -Cardwell .com.

Well, it's been a great pleasure having you on the program, John, and I definitely want to have you back on to address another subject with you, and please keep praying for Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and spreading the word about it.

Yes, sir, I'm glad to know that you're back up on the air, Chris, and it was great talking with you.

Yeah, it's great talking to you as always, and it brings back some memories of the old show, and I'm looking forward to having you back many more times in the future.

Thank you, brother, and Reverend Buzz, great meeting you. Thank you very much. All right, well,

God bless you, brother. God bless. Bye -bye. And I hope our listeners stay tuned because we're going to be joined any moment now with our second guest today,

Bill Johnson. Bill Johnson is the Senior Director of New York Gospel Ministries.

I had the pleasure of meeting him a few months ago when I was visiting New York City for a sermon audio conference that was actually titled the

Foundations Conference, and it was being led by Sermon Audio, and Pastor Bill Jones happened to be there and gave a brief presentation about New York Gospel Ministries, and I'm excited to have him on the program today about all the things that he is doing there in New York City along with his co -director there,

Director of Ministry Development, Andy Woodard, who I also met at the conference.

But if you'd like to join us on the air for the question for Pastor Bill Jones, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We're going to be right back after these messages.

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Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am I now seeking the approval of man or of God?

Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.

Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, pastor of Providence Baptist Church. We are a Reformed Baptist Church, and we hold to the

London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts. We strive to reflect

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Or even on sermonaudio .com. Providence Baptist Church is delighted to sponsor Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen. Our second guest for today is Pastor Bill Jones and he is the

Senior Director of New York Gospel Ministries. Dr.

William Jones and his family moved to New York City shortly after the terror attacks of September 11th.

Prior to coming to the city, he established churches in Hendersonville, North Carolina and Brookfield, Wisconsin.

Pastor Bill is a preacher of righteousness and desires that all people would come to personally experience the imputed righteousness of Christ through the new birth.

Some of the unique focuses of his ministry are sharing the gospel through the Hebrew and New Covenant scriptures and ministry to the poor and widows.

And I believe that the Bible has something to say that that's a pure religion undefiled, correct?

To reach out to the... Sounds like a biblical thing to do. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron, Pastor Bill Jones.

Well, thank you so much, Chris. It's a joy to be able to be with you folks today and have an opportunity to get to know your audience and share the work the

Lord's doing here in the city. So thank you very much for this opportunity. Well, first of all, kind of give us some history about New York Gospel Ministries.

Well, I tell you, when I was pastoring the church in Hendersonville, North Carolina, I had a gentleman from the

New York Mission to the Jews, an older gentleman contact me and say, Bill, I want to come and give a report of what the

Lord is doing in New York City. Now, people in our church have been supporting him and the mission for a number of years, but I've never met him personally.

So he came to Hendersonville, North Carolina and the Sunday that he was with us, he looked at me when we were having lunch and he said,

Bill, I believe you're my replacement in New York City. And I kind of laughed.

I had a friend that had pastored in New York City contact me a few months earlier and he had wanted me to come take a church he planted in Brooklyn.

He wanted to plant another church in Manhattan. I was on the phone about five minutes with him. I said, there's no way that I'm gonna leave

Western North Carolina and come to New York City. Well, I've learned in my life, I should have said, there's no way

I'm gonna leave North Carolina and go to the Bahamas. But the

Lord has a way of taking you where he wants you to be.

That's right. And it was from that initial conversation that we made a trip, my new pastor and I made a trip to New York City and spent a week, first time

I'd ever been in the city, spent a week just on a survey trip.

Spent some days at the mission and then I went all over New York and I was moved the first time

I saw the city. I actually thought I was in a foreign country because all the diversity and the languages on the subway.

And so that was my first introduction to New York City. And the following summer, we made a mission trip.

Brought a group of young people and adults from our church and held open air meetings in the parks around the city for five days.

And when we got back to North Carolina, one of the adults that was with us went up to my wife and said, you folks are moving to New York City.

And so that's where our journey with New York began. And it was shortly after that that we formed the

New York Gospel Ministries to become the vehicle to help me be accountable to a board of men.

And they worked with me to help raise the funds to go to New York City and start our ministry.

Great. And I want to also introduce you, Pastor Jones, to my co -host,

Reverend Buzz Taylor. Hello, Pastor Jones. Well, nice to meet you, my friend. We have similar roots.

I worked the summer in Hendersonville. This is going way back to the summer of 1979, to give you some idea.

OK. What did you do there? I worked in a Lowe's warehouse. I was actually working in a church and living in Mountain Home.

And it was just waiting to go back for the last year in college. Well, I do love that beautiful state of North Carolina.

I spent several months there myself, not for the best of reasons. I went to a

Christian ministry that specializes in drug and alcohol rehabilitation. But I fell in love with North Carolina while being there and got used to that ministry there,

Hebron Colony Ministries, in a very powerful way in my life. And I thank

God for it. Well, I understand both your reluctance to leave that area of North Carolina and your reluctance to go to New York City.

I once said I'd never go to New York City and I can't count how many times I've been there now. That's because you were a

Jonah. You were a modern day Jonah. Like you said, next time I'll say the

Bahamas also. Well, you know, we thought we were going to be in Hendersonville really all of our life.

It's a retirement home. It was a nice place. I was all set to stake down and I hadn't even begun life yet. Well, it's interesting.

We just built a 3 ,600 square foot home, three doors up from the church. And our immediate neighbors, three of our four immediate neighbors were

New Yorkers. And so we had a flavor of New Yorking before God started working our heart to come here.

Now, I met you at the Foundations Conference that was being run by Sermon Audio.

And that conference was held at the Manor Community Church in New York City. Tell us something about that.

You gave us a very fascinating history of that church. Yes, I tell you, it's been here in this community for a hundred, better than 150 years.

And in the second decade of the 19th century, this part of Manhattan was the

Clement Moore family estate and they called it Chelsea. And it was crisscrossed with streets and avenues and then divided up into building sites.

And everything above 23rd Street on the west side of Manhattan was a developing neighborhood called

Chelsea Manor. So that name Manor comes from it being a part of a community of Chelsea Manor.

But in the 1850s, this part of Manhattan was a very destitute field.

They say it was one of the most neglected of any upon the island of Manhattan. And it was known for its sin, dance halls and gambling halls and drinking saloons.

And they say there's a reason why this side of town was called

Hell's Kitchen, you know, above us here in Chelsea. But in 1854, a man by the name of R .G.

Pardy had a burden to start a Sunday school and start to rescue the children from this community.

And so he appealed to a church in 1854 to establish a mission in this

Chelsea Manor area. And so on April 8th of 1855, they started a

Sunday school that had 14 students in it. And it was located right around the corner from us on 9th

Avenue and 25th Street. And in an old building that was sagging below was a pool hall, but yet this

Sunday school was on the second floor. And that's where this mission and Sunday school began.

And it just continued to grow. And in 1880, they actually had a thousand students enrolled in this

Sunday school. But as that old building that they first started began to sink and fall apart, they started looking for new property and they came right around the corner on 26th

Street where we are today and purchased a piece of property and built a beautiful little chapel with the help of the

South Reformed Church who then took over this mission and dedicated this new chapel.

Matter of fact, you can actually read about some of this in the New York Times that spoke about this little chapel.

And so it began as a Sunday school mission. And grew, like I said, to over a thousand students.

And it had Dutch roots, of course, there with the South Reformed Church. And you look at our building and it's a

Flemish Revival style. You know, it looks very Dutch. I was told that all the bricks in this building actually came over from Holland.

But so it began as a Sunday school. Now it seemed, I don't know if it was how different the building was back then, but it seems that you could hardly fit a thousand students in there.

That was a fairly small building. Well, they had multiple classes for them. Okay. Yeah, multiple classes.

And I've read some of the history that they had, you know, 50 at a time of these children attending these classes.

And they held all week long. And not just on Sunday, but they even had some after school programs for children.

And so that's how it started. And then grew into a church. And then in the 1940s, they were preaching here in the church, it must be born again.

And the denomination came to them and said, listen, we don't preach that. You can't preach that. Well, they decided that rather than compromising the gospel, they were going to pull out of the denomination.

So they pulled out and became independent. And the denomination said, we own your building.

And the congregation didn't have the means to purchase the building. And so a man by the name of Thomas Little, with his organization, he started the

American Protestant Defense League, purchased this building and rescued it in the 1940s from being sold to a utility company here in New York City.

And had that happened, this footprint for the gospel right here in the middle of Manhattan would have disappeared.

You know, real estate in Manhattan is expensive. And just to maintain ministry.

And so many churches are selling their facilities to developers for millions of dollars.

But the only problem with that is once that footprint's lost, it's gone forever. But the

Lord rescued this in the 40s from being sold to a utility company. And as you continue to go through the history of this place, 50 years ago, this section of Chelsea in this manor area was so run down that the city took a lot of property through eminent domain and working with the

Jewish Ladies' Garment Union built the Penn South housing.

And matter of fact, the city tried to take the church through eminent domain. And Thomas Little fought the city of New York and won.

Too often. But he was a man of faith and a man of vision. And he was convinced that the

Lord wanted this space here for the cause of the gospel. And he had had a very active ministry in the community.

They continued boys and girls after school clubs, Bible clubs. They had ministries to the women here in the community, teaching them how to sew and cook.

Matter of fact, during World War II, I'm told as I read the history of this place, they had over 11 ,000

World War II soldiers sleep in the basement of this building. And not all 11 ,000 at a time, but they had beds for 100 a night.

And these soldiers would come in and they would get a hot breakfast in the morning and then be invited to come to the services.

And so it's had a very community, an impact in the community during its history.

I'm wondering how much of the New York City Revival of the 19th century involved that church.

The revival that is written about in that book, The Power of Prayer that Banner of Truth publishes.

Yes. Well, you know, down in the basement of this building are boxes and boxes of records that we haven't even had the opportunity to sort and go through.

But I believe that we're going to find some incredible information when we have the time to do that. Because I know that that revival actually began through that denomination, the

Dutch Reformed Church, which is now the Reformed Church in America.

And sadly, in many ways, not the denomination that it used to be. But I know that that was connected to that denomination.

Yes, and Lampierre was actually a missionary to this side of Manhattan, a little further north of us.

And so his heart was burdened for this section of the city as well.

And that revival, you know, the Lord began that revival not too long after this

Sunday school mission was begun. And so the mission and the church ministry began on people's knees, seeking the

Lord to rescue the children from this side of the city. And then Lampierre, being a missionary to really the

Hell's Kitchen area, was burdened as well in prayer. There is a rich history here in this part of the city.

Now, I know that the history was kind of reinvented and some of it even falsified.

But in that classic movie, well, movie that is now a classic,

The Gangs of New York, weren't a lot of the things that were going on in that movie that actually happened in New York City history right around your corner?

Well, you know, I've not seen that movie, so I can't speak to it. Oh, OK. These are basically the wars between the

Native Americans, which were not, quote, quote, Indians.

They were white Anglo -Saxon Protestants that were fighting the Irish immigrants in New York City during the 19th century when there was a lot of conflict between the two.

But the thing that I've found fascinating, and I'm not certain that you know the same story that Andy Woodard told me, the director of ministry development over there at the

New York Gospel Ministries, but he told me a fascinating story about a homosexual who was led to Christ through a transgendered homeless person that referred him to that church because of the soup kitchen.

And when the person went here, the gospel was led to Christ and when later on the transgendered individual asked him about, did you check out the food buffet over there at the church?

He said, well, yeah, I got more than that. I got salvation. I'm saved now. Do you know the story that I'm talking about?

Oh, I certainly do. I certainly do. And this individual was actually invited. We have, during the week, we have three, what we call, evangelistic services that are connected with a food distribution

The Trader Joe's grocery stores here in Manhattan have been so gracious to use their donations to help the poor.

And we've had a relationship with them for, oh, better than four years. And as a matter of fact, last year, one of the stores had donated to our organization over $2 million worth of food.

And so we have a food distribution in our building on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday at three o 'clock, but it's connected to a service.

It's an evangelistic service. There's expository preaching and singing and the gospel is shared.

And this individual was actually invited to one of those services by a witch.

He tells us the story. It was by a witch. Yeah, yeah, he's a Wiccan witch and a transgendered person.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, very much so. And he came and heard the gospel of Christ and has come to Christ and is just growing in the

Lord and it's a beautiful thing to see. Our doors are open to everyone. The gospel is for all of us and it's with great joy that we can share.

One of the things I love about New York City is the diversity. Ethnic diversity is a beautiful thing.

And you come to one of our services, we do have a Sunday afternoon at one o 'clock and then the evangelistic services during the week.

And you look on the people that are seated there and it's beautiful to see the diversity.

And we're thankful for that and thankful that God's gospel rescues all of us.

And it's a joy to preach it. Yeah, that's the picture that we have in Revelation of those worshiping the

Lamb, right? From out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation. Yes. And that's always a beautiful thing to see that right in front of you manifest physically here on earth before we're even in heaven.

And now I believe, if I'm not mistaken, that that area, according to what

Andy was telling me when I was there for the conference, isn't that area got one of the largest homosexual populations of anywhere in the

United States? Like per capita, there's more? That's my understanding.

A lot of our neighbors are. And what's beautiful that we're seeing is that we are welcoming anybody and everybody to the services to hear the gospel of God.

And we have had transgender and those that are gay come into our services.

And they're greeted and treated with a kindness and a love that goes to everyone, regardless of all of us are sinners.

We walk through the door, all of us are sinners. We struggle with different things. But what with great joy we have the opportunity to share the gospel of God with them and everyone who comes.

But there is a larger population in this section of the city, yes. Well, I'm assuming there's probably a mixed reaction.

I'm sure that not all of them are happy to hear a gospel presentation. Well, what's been interesting to me is that the gospel has been well received here.

We've had over the course of the number of years we've been preaching the gospel, at this location, we've had individuals, not too many that have stood up and in service and walked out screaming something.

That used to happen when Reverend Buzz preached all the time. Yeah, that's my spiritual gift.

Backdoor revival. I'm sorry I interrupted you. But you know, that's the joy of preaching the gospel.

Yes. The gospel is for everyone and the gospel rescues, the Lord uses this gospel to rescue his people from every ethnicity and every struggle.

And so it's with great joy that we preach it and then watch it do its work. Yeah, I saw a great meme, as they're called.

I'm getting being introduced and educated to the lingo of the internet and technology because I'm very far from being savvy in that area.

But I saw a meme that I had to share on my own Facebook page that said, and I'm paraphrasing it because I don't have it right in front of me, but good works of charity without the gospel make this world a more wonderful place to go to hell from.

And that's why I'm so delighted when I hear about an organization like yours that not only feeds people and clothes people and provides the physical needs like many other organizations do and which are very important and wonderful things, but you do the even more important thing of feeding people with the gospel and the word of God.

You know, there's a verse in Deuteronomy chapter 10 that really is the foundation of what we do and why we do it here.

Where God says there in that chapter that he shows his love by giving food and clothes.

And he tells the nation of Israel, show your love in that way too. And I think that's why Jesus in the gospel said, don't be anxious about what you will eat or wear.

Your heavenly father knows you have need of these things. And then you look at James and that great text that talks about the works that follow true

Bible faith. And he says your faith's worthless if you'll tell someone to be warmed and be filled. And so we share with the people that our reaching out with beneficial deeds is a manifestation of the love of God for you and our love for you.

And then I remind them that the same book of the Bible, the book of Deuteronomy says that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

And so we're here to give you the gospel of God and then to demonstrate the love of God in meeting your pressing needs.

You know, many years ago, I was in circles where any effort to help your neighbor or love your neighbor was the social gospel.

And so it was just all about preaching the gospel without any manifested beneficial deeds.

And then I started reading different places in the Bible and probably the book that rebuked me the most was that little letter that Paul sent to Titus.

And over and over again in that book, he talks about the church leadership and the church congregation needs to learn to meet people's pressing needs.

And that started to speak in my heart. I said, you know, Lord, I certainly understand here that our greatest goal is to love you with all of our heart, but it's also to love our neighbor.

And as you reach out to your neighbor with the love of God, you start appreciating verses like, you know, we all memorize that Ephesians 2, 2, 8, you know, by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves the gift of God.

Not of works, lest any man should boast, but we need to teach people to memorize the next one.

But we're his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto beneficial deeds.

And we've just seen the Lord has used the beneficial deed ministry here to open up,

I really believe, hearts and ears to his gospel. Just to give you an illustration, when we started 2015, we had 1 ,200 visits a month to our evangelistic services with the food distribution.

We ended 2015 in the month of December with 2 ,000 visits a month to these evangelistic services.

And the third month into this year, nearly 2 ,300 people are visiting these evangelistic services a month.

And so it's just a beautiful way to see them, the poor, the elderly, we have a lot of elderly people on fixed incomes that are coming, a single parents, people without work, the working poor, and they're hearing the gospel of God and receiving the love of God.

And it's a beautiful thing. We have to go to a break right now. This is our final break. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Bill Jones, our email address is

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in for the last half hour, we have had on the program our guest

Pastor Bill Jones of Manor Community Church in New York City and he's the

Senior Director of New York Gospel Ministries. And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com

chrisarnzen at gmail .com We do have an anonymous listener from New York City who asks, are the liberal politicians in New York City making things more difficult for a

Christian ministry such as yours that not only does things that they would gladly approve of like ministering to the poor with physical needs, but because of your adherence, their strong adherence to the gospel of Jesus Christ and call to repentance of sinners involved in homosexuality?

Well, let me say this. One of the beautiful things about being in the kingdom of God is that our agenda is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and we're operating in a different kingdom.

And so there are the kingdoms of men and they have their laws and rules and that sort of thing.

And those things don't have to discourage a believer or frustrate a believer.

We've not had any persecution directed toward us from any of the governmental officials here in the city.

We've faced opposition, you know, from neighbors for ministry, but we've not faced any of that type of opposition.

In fact, yeah, one of your neighbors was the reason I had to stay in a hotel that was about a half hour drive from your church because of the complaints that she made to the nearby hotel that you were some kind of a homosexual hate group or anti -homosexual hate group,

I should say. Yeah, and that's not us at all. Of course not. Yeah, we've showed love to all of our neighbors and we welcome them.

And you know, I'm not the type of person that tries to categorize sin and say this is worse than other sin in heaven because the gospel of God is we all need it.

We all need the gospel of God and if you show the love of God and the love of Christ with a solid gospel message, not compromising the message of the righteousness of Christ.

I mean, that's the best news a person could ever hear. And you focus on that. I like to tell people it's not what we're against.

We're pro -gospel. We're pro -righteousness of Christ. And I think that that's how you win in some of these cities is you define who you are and you don't let other people define who you are.

And I think that that's very important. And so now we haven't faced that opposition here.

Now this is a ministry that is an outreach to the most ethnically, racially, religiously, and ideologically diverse places in the

United States and possibly on the planet Earth. And Christians who want to put their money, of course, we would never say don't support foreign missions, but we do have, in a sense, a foreign mission field right here on American soil in New York City in a way that those who have not visited

New York have no comprehension of. But if we have listeners that either are hearing this live or maybe hearing it down the road on the archive through the recording, they may be thinking of, hey, this sounds like a possible place to be putting some of my income towards in regard to charity.

Tell our listeners what exactly they should expect New York Gospel Ministries to be doing with these funds, these donations, as you labor to not only care for souls physically, but more importantly, with the gospel.

Well, I tell you, there are several aspects to New York Gospel Ministries. We have a training, a gospel training center where local churches from across the

United States come and give us a week of mission outreach. And we train them in the theology of the gospel.

The classic lecture everyone gets is that the story of the Bible is the story of two men and the people they represent.

The imputed righteousness of Christ, the covenant work of Christ. And so they're trained in that theology, and then we get them on the street corners of New York.

We get sound permits from the police department. You can get a sound permit and stand on the corner with amplified sound and preach the gospel of Christ in New York City.

There are cities across the matter you can't do that in. You can do that here in New York City. I mean, you can go into Times Square and preach the gospel of Christ with a sound permit.

And so there is training in evangelism. There is mission outreach on the street that NYGM does.

About 50 million people, tourists, came to New York City in the year 2014.

We're waiting for the numbers to come out for 2015. 40 million of them were from the continental

United States, and 10 million from foreign countries. So the whole world,

I tell people, the whole world lives in New York, and the whole world visits New York. And so investment in gospel ministry in a city like New York takes the gospel all around the world.

And so we provide the training to the local churches with the theology of the gospel. We get them out on the street.

And then we have a very vibrant intern ministry.

And we have interns that come every summer, and they get this hands -on training in the theology of the gospel and in practical gospel outreach.

And so individuals that are interested in spreading the gospel globally and spreading the gospel in New York and seeing the ministry that trains people for pastoral ministry in the urban settings.

You can catch a vision for what we're doing with the New York Gospel Ministries. And we're also, we encourage and help church planning.

Matter of fact, the New York Gospel Ministries has been used to revitalize

Manor Community Church. And even this building that we're meeting in has needed a lot of work over the years.

And so the resources have been poured into the repair of this building.

And you were here for the conference, and so you know what the chapel looked like, but you also can testify that there's a lot more work needs to be done on this building.

And so funds to help us there, and then also to help us fund our staff.

You mentioned Annie Woodard there, and we have another staff pastor, Galen Belinsky. And we're in need of additional support for them.

And then we have a fellow that was an intern with us last summer. He's coming back this

June, and he's making a two -year commitment to serve the

Lord here in this local church and help the New York Gospel Ministries in his evangelism. And we've just begun to raise support for him.

And we're trying, our initial goal is to raise $1 ,000 a month for him. And so people's gifts will go toward the support of staff.

People's gifts will go toward the support of this facility, which is,

I think, very strategic here in New York. And we do have another listener. We have BB in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who asks, is

New York Gospel Ministries a representative of one denomination, or is it multi -denominational?

It's multi -denominational. We have independent Baptists. We have

Southern Baptists. We have Presbyterians. We have Bible churches that support the ministry and send mission teams.

So it's really open to gospel -believing, gospel -loving churches and denominations.

And I would like to personally, I don't know if this is too late notice, but I am conducting the

Iron Sharpens Iron Pastors Luncheon Thursday, April 28th, here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, at the

Thornwald Mansion, which is a historic, a beautiful old mansion that was erected in the 19th century.

And the owner of that mansion used it to entertain national politicians, celebrities, and society's elite back then.

And it was burned down, but restored to its original beauty. And that is the location of my

Iron Sharpens Iron Pastors Luncheon, which is absolutely free of charge on Thursday, April 28th, from 11 a .m.

to 3 p .m. And we're going to have a guest speaker, David Wood, who is an expert on Islam.

He travels the globe debating Muslim clerics and apologists.

And he has, I'm not saying he says this about himself, but when I look at him,

I describe him as having a photographic memory when it comes to not only the Bible, but the Quran.

And he should be a fascinating guest. And there have been

Christian publishers all over the United States who have donated a ton of books.

Buzz is laughing because he sees the stacks of them. Stacks. We're sitting around the boxes. Yeah. And each pastor's going to leave with, they're probably going to need to bring their own wheelbarrow because of the number of books they're getting for free.

But this is all free of charge from beginning to end. And if you can make it out to that luncheon, Pastor, I would love for you to give a brief presentation.

Another individual giving a presentation is Pennsylvania State Representative Stephen Bloom, who is a dedicated

Christian. It's always good to see a true Christian in politics, not somebody that just gives lip service to it and fakes a

Christian identity just to gain some support from a conservative voting base or something. But he is the real deal.

The real deal, yes. But anyway, if you can make it, I'm not asking you to make a decision now, but I'd love for you to come out, if not to this one, perhaps in the future, whenever your schedule permits.

It's worth it for the books alone. Well, you know, Chris, you sent that email out.

I was planning on coming to this conference, this pastor's luncheon, and to ask, to have you ask me today whether or not

I'd give a short presentation. I'd love to do that. We have been praying and asking the Lord to just give us opportunities.

And when you open up this opportunity to share the ministry with your listeners, we've been asking the Lord to open up more opportunities because we are really in need of, we're starting our fundraising up again just to meet the expenses of having this ministry in the heart of Manhattan.

And we would love to come, and thank you so much for extending an invitation to share a little bit at that time.

In fact, you can bring all the men on staff at your ministry or any man, because it is a men's luncheon.

And any of the literature that you'd like to have available there for New York Gospel Ministries, please feel free to bring boxes of it.

There may be between 75 and 100 men there, God willing. So thank you so much.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. And that's also an invitation to our listeners. If you want to be, if you want to attend this luncheon, we still have room for about 25 men.

So if you'd like to come, you have to be a man in leadership in some capacity, not necessarily a pastor, but involved in a power church organization, or perhaps you're a deacon in your church.

Email me at chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com. And I just want to remember before we run out of time, before we return to the conclusion of our interview with Pastor Bill, PNR Publishing and the

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals asked me to announce that the Faithful Shepherd Pastors Retreat is

May 9th through 11th at Harvey Cedars Conference Center in New Jersey on the beautiful Jersey Shore.

I've been there myself once, and it is really breathtaking there. And if you'd like more information about this, go to alliancenet .org,

alliancenet .org. David Powelson and Dan Doriani, both men who have been guests on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, are speaking at this pastor's retreat, and the theme is the

Faithful Shepherd. So once again, it's May 9th through 11th at the

Harvey Cedars Retreat Center on the Jersey Shore in New Jersey. And go to alliancenet .org,

alliancenet .org. The ministry that you are undertaking, it takes,

I think, a gifted person or somebody that might not have gone into such a ministry with a raw gift or an innate talent, but I think

God has to give it to you if you don't already have it, to have patience with people because you know that a lot of people, just like they did in Jesus's day, are going to be clamoring around you only for the physical blessings that they're getting, and they have absolutely no interest in what you have to say about the

Word of God and so on. And of course, the Lord does raise up from among his elect people that embrace the gospel and rejoice and become transformed, as you've already spoken about.

But tell us something about that challenge where you may be tempted to lose your patience or your temper even with people that are blatantly just trying to be fed and clothed and take advantage of a situation, that they know that Christians are well -known for their hospitality, their charity, their benevolence, kindness.

If you could respond to that. Well, I tell you, I don't think we've ever gotten angry here about that.

We certainly, our hearts are moved. We want people to respond to the gospel of God with our constant prayer to the

Lord, even in our services, is, Lord, give them a heart to know you, that you're the Lord. Open up their hearts, like you opened up the heart of Lydia.

Spirit of the Lord, bring them life. And that's our prayer. But what is very unusual here, that all the pastors, and you mentioned

Pastor Andy, he preaches Tuesday, Galen preaches Thursday, I preach this Saturday, and then the

Sunday services. But one of the things we've noted is certainly as you're preaching there, you'll see people kind of sleeping here and there around.

But there has been an attentiveness to the preaching of the word and these services that we've had even visiting pastors comment on.

We've had people that have been in Catholic churches all their life that are coming to these services and telling us that, you know, we've just never heard the

Bible taught like this. And so they're growing in that understanding of the word of God.

And Andy asked a few weeks ago, how many of you have come to put your faith and trust in Christ after attending these services?

And quite a number of people raised their hand in that service that they put their faith in Christ. And so that is what you're,

I think of that verse, the Lord has many people in this city. And as you cast that gospel net out, the

Lord is going to save his people. And he's chosen to do it through the preaching of his gospel.

And so that's really what motivates us. And then also just loving our neighbor.

And I think of the ministry of Christ who in his ministry, he was constantly meeting the physical needs of people in his teaching ministry.

The word and works, doctrine and deeds, that was the Lord's ministry.

And then you look at his heart and what he did. And then I think, but we don't hesitate to say some of the things he said too.

You know, the Lord said, don't labor for the food that perishes. And so we tell these dear people, you know, we're showing you the love of God.

Well, even Jesus said many followed him just because of the loaves and fishes, but they still got ministered to.

Yeah, I think that one of the sins that we who are Christians, because Christians are sinners, even though we've been rescued from the world of flesh and the devil and death and Satan, we are going to be sinners until we enter heaven.

I'm not talking about unrepentant, habitual, scandalous sinners, but I'm talking about the sins that every human deals with on an everyday basis, doubt and losing temper and all kinds of things, lust.

Christians are guilty of these things. And one of the things that we struggle with as Christians is the sin of pride,

I believe. And we sometimes forget the gospel itself, what the gospel is about.

And the fact that it is meant for, as Jesus said, those who are sick, the healthy don't need a physician.

He's not come to save the righteous, but the lost. And sometimes we expect unregenerate people to behave as if they are born -again believers, don't we?

Yeah, that's so true. And that's what gives us the patience, because we remind ourselves how patient the

Lord has been with us and still is with us. And I think what causes us to glory in the gospel is we realize that,

Paul said he was the chiefest of sinners, but we look at our own lives and like you said, we see our own sinfulness.

And that makes us cling to the righteousness of Christ in an even greater way.

And as the Lord knows us intimately, He knows our sin and our failures. Some of the things that are hidden from the eyes of men are not hidden from His sight.

And so it's hard to get real proud in the presence of the Lord. Do you have any stories about specific incidents or individuals you'd like to share briefly before we leave?

Oh, wow. You have about eight minutes. Okay. Well, you know, we've had a lot of experience.

Let me share a little story from one of our outreaches. There's a place in Midtown Manhattan called

Golden Year Plaza. It has a statue to the first female

Prime Minister of Israel. But it's a wide open plaza and we've had a lot of open air meetings in there.

Some with sound and then some, I have a display, a third scale model of tabernacle furniture.

You've got an Ark of the Covenant and a table of showbread and an altar of incense and a menorah.

And we'll set these things up. And it's a magnet. It draws Jews and Gentiles alike to come and ask questions.

And so sometimes we'll set that up. And on one occasion, we were set up there at Golden Year Plaza and one of the men and wives who were with us a few years ago, he now pastors in upstate

New York. He was part of our staff. His wife, beautiful voice, Mark and Tricia Muncy.

And she was singing right there in the open air some incredible songs. One song she sung,

I love to hear her sing, was Holy is He. Another one is the Almighty Unchangeable God.

And she's got a voice that stops foot traffic. One of those types of voices in the city.

And she was just singing for the glory of the Lord. And a man came up to her five, six inches from her face and tried to distract her.

Visibly upset hearing the sound of the gospel and Christian music flowing down the streets of Manhattan.

You don't hear that too often. But he got so agitated that he ran over to where we had a rack of our tracks and picked up a whole handful of those tracks and started to walk away.

And I followed him. He walked faster and he started to run. He took that whole stack of tracks and threw it in the trash can.

And I went over there and picked them out. Now I had to leave some of them in there. I had ketchup. But we brought those tracks back and put them in the track rack.

And in a matter of moments, we had two people come up and want one of those booklets.

That's a little gospel track entitled God's Free Gift to the Nations. And it's the gift of righteousness in Christ.

And we've had a lot of stories like that opposition in the open air. We were down in the

Brighton Beach area and set up our display down here. And we had a group of college students some men and women.

And here was a young college lady. She had never done anything like this in her life. And she was out by the display.

And she had a man come up and spit at her feet. Wow. And just cuss her out.

And it moved her. She was in tears. But you saw those tears turn to joy when some of the other believers came up and told her,

A blessed are you and men shall revile you and persecute you and say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake and the gospel.

And she heard that and her heart warmed back up again.

And I guess what I'm trying to say that when you take the light into the darkness, there's always going to be opposition.

Yes. But we remember that we don't wrestle against flesh and blood but against spiritual authorities.

Amen. So you have to see a love for people. You have to love people.

And then understand that there's going to be suffering. There's going to be persecution. And yet you have to just move forward.

And there's just so many of those stories from the open air. We go up into the Bronx from time to time in a place called

The Hub. And very poor, poor area. And you do an outreach and attract distribution.

And nine out of 10 people will take a gospel booklet from you up in The Hub. But you go downtown to a financial district, stand on a street corner and maybe one in every 15 people take the gospel booklet.

That is an interesting thing that the self -righteousness of those who are more monetarily blessed gives them very often, other than a miracle from God, it gives them in their minds reason to look down upon those that would dare think that they need help in any way.

And not to sound racist, even if it's in a good way, but I can't help but say that in my experience, especially when

I was single and was more prone to, before my wife went home to the Lord in 2011, but prior to that, prior to being married, when

I was out passing out tracks and things like that, I would be much more likely to receive a smile and somebody eagerly taking a track who is

African American than a white individual. That was just a fact of life when

I was living on Long Island, New York. Yes, yes. And I think the least of these, you look at those who are hurting and in Palo Alto City you'll have the poor with you always.

And I think one of the things that is messianic about the Lord, the Bible says in the poor that the gospel preached to them.

And we have a lot of people that come to our services and yet the income isn't coming from them.

They don't have anything to give. And so help is coming from the outside to help us give the gospel to the poor here in our community and here in the city.

And we were discussing this the other day as pastors. You know, Lord, we don't have a rich congregation.

Around the corner is a church that is smaller than our ministry and they have three quarters of a million dollars worth of income every year.

And I have other pastor friends in the area that have $350 ,000 income every year.

Our income as a church last year was $67 ,000. But yet we're ministering to the poor and we remind ourselves that those who give to the poor lend to the

Lord. Amen. And I'm sorry we're out of time and I know that your two websites, the first for the

Manor Church, that website is manorchurch .info, M -A -N -O -R church .info.

And the New York City Gospel Ministries website is nygm .info,

N -Y -G -M .info. Thank you so much for being a part of the broadcast. We look forward to you returning very soon.

Well, Chris, thank you so much. And I hope everybody has a safe and blessed weekend. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater savior than you are a sinner.