May 12, 2022 Show with Tom Ertl on “Retrieving the Forgotten Giants of the Reformation out of Obscurity”

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Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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

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

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

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

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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 12th day of May, 2022.

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And I have been urged very enthusiastically to get today's guest on the program.

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This is his first appearance on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and Dr. Joseph C. Moorcraft III, especially, has urged me to interview today's guest and his lovely wife,

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Becky. I'm speaking of Tom Erdl, and he is founder of Zurich Publishing.

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And today we're going to be addressing Retrieving the Forgotten Giants of the Reformation Out from Obscurity.

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And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Tom Erdl. Thank you,

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Chris. I'm sure I'll enjoy being on the program today. Yes, and I'm sure I will enjoy interviewing you.

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And tell us about Zurich Publishing. All right. Well, I guess maybe go back into its start.

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I think I should even really go back further. Years ago, Gary DeMar, American Vision, gave me a book by Meryl Dauvigny, The History of the

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Reformation. So as we all know, Dauvigny is the real historian of the Reformation, and he writes with such an experiential, lively, spiritual style.

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He's just not your normal historian. And, I mean, so I felt a burden for doing historical works and promoting the

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Reformation. First, kind of got into Luther, read everything I could on him. And then, you know, as life is, when you get older, you have to focus on something more specific.

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So being Reformed in the faith, I focused more on the

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Swiss Reformation. And so the initials, that's why I named it

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Zurich. Zurich is the first Reformed city. Ulrich Zwingli is the founder of the Reformed faith.

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His church was the Great Minster on the Lamont River in Zurich. And so that's why I named it Zurich Publishing.

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So we sought to do, since 2003, I think, when I established it, we sought to do books on Reformation history, specifically the

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Swiss Reformers. And that's why we went into Pierre Vire, which we could talk about today. And then also at Zurich, we're attempting and working on books dealing with biblical law, political theory, the role of the civil magistrate, and with an emphasis on the kingdom of God.

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So we're just focused kind of in those categories of our work.

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And I understand that you had quite a providential meeting years ago with a brother in Christ who really led you on a further path to have further passion for these

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Reformers whom you are attempting to retrieve from obscurity. And why don't you tell us about this meeting with this brother, which occurred in Switzerland during a trip that you went on to Switzerland and met

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Jean -Marc Berthoud. Yeah, I love telling the story because it's

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Jean -Marc Berthoud. Oh, sorry for the mispronunciation. Kevin, the

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French is tough. I never took a course in it, so... And you're an American, so we don't know other languages.

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Yeah, it was quite... I could go on length. I've got to shorten this testimony of my time with Jean -Marc.

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But the background on it, I went to Switzerland to really throughout mostly

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German Switzerland, which would have been Zurich, St. Gallen, Basel, Bern, the key cities of the Reformation of the

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Reformed faith there. And then at the end of the trip, went to Lausanne.

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Didn't have a chance to go to Neuchâtel or Geneva. But I went to German Switzerland with the...

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Well, and then obviously Lausanne, but with an effort to put a book together, a pictorial book on the

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Reformation. There was a Frenchman, oh, what was his name? Chenot, that did a similar book.

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And it was just well, extremely well done. I heard it's pronounced Chenot. I'm only kidding.

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I think we both have it right. So I wanted to do a pictorial book on the

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Reformation. So I went throughout German Switzerland mostly and took pictures, met people at the

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Minster, got connected to the gentleman that runs the rare book section of the

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Zurich Library, which is phenomenal. We can get into that if we talk about Bollinger et al. today.

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And so I went throughout. I went to all the homes that, well, not all of them, but because Zwingli lived in Basel and Vienna and other places.

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But the founder of the Reformed faith was Ulrich Zwingli. So I went to his home in Zurich, not

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Zurich, in Wild House in Togenberg up in the Alps. And his original home of like 550 years, the hut or the law cabin is still there.

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And that was really a fascinating trip there. And when you look at Zwingli's home and his surroundings, and his dad was a cattleman, you understand

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Zwingli's personality. He was alpha male. He was our Luther in the Reformed realm. But anyways, went through everything

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I could on Zwingli. Went to Bollinger's hometown of Bremgarten, just down the road from Zurich.

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Went to Bern, which is an extremely important city in Switzerland for the

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Reformation, because Bern, there was a lot of stories on Bern, but it was a critical city, really the capital of Switzerland today.

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Then went to Basel. Saw Erasmus' last residence, and fortunately it's a rare bookstore, so it would have to be that for Erasmus' home.

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And then his crypt was in the minster, the Basel minster. So anyways, went throughout there.

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Then took as many pictures as I could, developed contacts, and it was really excellent.

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Then on the way, my last visit was in Lausanne, because I had read of Pierre Vire, who was

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Calvin's closest associate and part of the great Swiss triumvirate in French Switzerland of Guillaume Farel, John Calvin, and Pierre Vire, the three.

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And so I read of him and knew of him and knew he was in Lausanne, so I had – there was a book that Calcedon published to honor

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R .J. Rushdoony, and this man I never heard of, but Jean -Marc Berthieu had a chapter in the book, and I saw

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Lausanne, Switzerland, knew that Vire was from there. So I got his phone number from Marc Rushdoony and called him one day.

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I said, Jean -Marc, I'm coming to Switzerland. I want to see – I'm interested in more information on Vire. I want to take some pictures.

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He says, come on over. So at the time he ran a bookstore just down from the cathedral called

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Le Preux. And so on the very end of the trip, the last – really the second -last day,

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I think I took an extra day. I just needed one more day of good food in Europe before I came back to Florida.

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And so my second -last day I was in Lausanne, and it was a very providential meeting. I went there early – well, mid -morning maybe.

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And so I laid down with Jean -Marc, and I knew he was a scholar from the article that I read, what

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I wanted to do on a pictorial book on the Protestant Reformation, specifically the

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Swiss Reformation. So he's looking at it. He's going over my ideas, and he kind of pushes it aside, and he said, listen, this is good, but if you really want to do something really important, you need to translate those two books over there.

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So he points on his table, on the table of the bookstore, and the book, the blue one is the first volume of Pierre Viret's Christian Instruction, which is

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I think three or four – I think it's three volumes, maybe four. And I think they just completed the fourth volume.

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So a man by the name of Louis Hofer, who was an associate of Jean -Marc at the time, I think he's passed away, had translated

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Viret's Christian Instruction, which was his magnum opus, which was parallel to,

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I think, really in many ways superior to Calvin's Institutes. And so he said, you need to translate that in English.

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And then he said, look at the little yellow book over there. That's Pierre Courtiol's two works,

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A New Day of Small Beginnings and Bible in the Bible. And if you really want to do something important, you need to translate those two books into English.

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And we can get into Courtiol later if you like. So from there, so he got me interested.

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From there, this was July of 2004, he took me up to the cathedral, up the Market Steps. And if you look in the book, the

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Viret book that Rebecca Sheets did, the biography, we have a picture of Jean -Marc, we have the

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Market Steps, all pictures in the book. So he took me up to the cathedral. So we entered the cathedral, and he said,

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Tom, over there in the altar area is where Viret held many of the classes.

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He told me, and I didn't know this at the time, that before there was the Geneva Academy of 1559, there was

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Viret's Lausanne Academy from 1536 to 1559. Actually, it went further.

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For 23 years, Viret oversaw the academy here, and the instruction was in the cathedral and the buildings associated with the cathedral, which we have in the

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Viret book. And then he said, this is what got me. And he said, he said, over there at the altar areas where Viret taught,

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Zacharias De Sinas and Caspar Olivianes, who penned the Heidelberg Catechism.

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And I just found out about Steve Schlissel from New York, a Jewish pastor turned me on to the Heidelberg years ago.

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And it's my favorite catechism. I interviewed Greg Bonson before I was even a talk show host.

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Steve Schlissel knew that I was going to be a talk show host. He had just a great confidence.

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He wasn't saying that as a prophetic declaration, but he proved to be right. But he said,

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I know you're going to be a talk show host one day, and I want you to interview Greg Bonson in my study. This was after the morning worship service when

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Dr. Bonson preached at Messiah's congregation in Brooklyn. Yeah.

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And I had the delight of interviewing Dr. Bonson, but the tragedy of losing the tape.

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Oh, no. Yeah. You have to interview Steve more times to make up for it.

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He's a great mind. I love him. He's really he helped me in a lot of ways theologically.

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But anyways, he turned me on to the Heidelberg. So I'm up there, and John Marks says, yeah, Hersinus and Olivianus had come here as young men and were taught by Vire.

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It's like, holy cow. Okay. Then he says Guido de Bray was here. And, you know, de

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Bray wrote, I think, in 1561, the Belgic Confession of Faith, later died as a martyr.

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The Catholics had killed him because of the confession. Yeah, I think William Bocastein wrote a biography of him.

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Chris, this is heresy for a PCA Presbyterian to say this, but my favorite confession of faith is the

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Belgic. It's not the Westminster. Don't tell Dr.

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Moorcraft that, because he just wrote an extensive work on the Westminster. But de

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Bray was taught by Vire. And I love his Belgic. It needs to be brought back to the church.

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It's very personal. It's short. It's a wonderful confession. So anyways, I said, you're kidding me.

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So all three of those great men were here in this church in the 1530s and 40s taught by Vire.

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And he says, yes. I said, John Mark, sign me up. What do you want me to do? I mean, right there at the spot.

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And so he's kind of been giving me instructions ever since. And he's a real mentor of mine.

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And John Mark, I don't know of anybody in the States that is anywhere near his level of theological and historical depth.

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I mean, it just astounds me all of what he knows. And I mean, there's just nobody we know in the

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Presbyterian realm anywhere near him. You know, one interesting little quick story.

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Recently I wrote him in. I said, John Mark, you must know who

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Jacques Ellul is. And I've got Jacques Ellul's book, I think 1964, on propaganda, the great book on propaganda.

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He did tremendous work. He's a French Christian. So I said, do you know anything about Jacques Ellul?

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Yeah. I said, stay away from him. He said, he's liberal.

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I said, but his book on propaganda was good. Yeah, that was his best work.

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And he knows all about all of his books. And he's had contact with them. And so just a little story to show you how well versed he is even politically.

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And, you know, not only the Swiss, but the Europeans, they're multilingual.

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And we can get into that on Courtyard. And they have a vast, more of a knowledge of all of what's going on in Europe.

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They know where Chicago is. I mean, they know everything about the states. And whereas we're, you know, we're across the pond.

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All we care about is America. We don't know anything, anything anywhere else. But so anyways, John Mark is quite the scholar.

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So from there on, for the last, what it's been now, 18 years,

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I've worked with him. We're in the process. We've translated and published one of his short little books.

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The first book we did was, let me see if I have it here, is Pierre Viret, The Forgotten Giant of the

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Reformation, the Apologetics, Ethics, and Economics of the Bible. And it's a short 100 -page book that we did.

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So we've been working with John Mark and the association

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Pierre Viret and Lausanne. They've got an association that promotes and publishes

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Viret's work in French. Well, now it is time to partake in our tradition here on Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio.

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Whenever we have a first -time guest, and that would include you, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony, which would include the kind of religious atmosphere they were raised in, if any, and what kind of providential circumstances our

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Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them.

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And I'd love to hear your story now. Holy man. So you want me to give my testimony here of how

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I came to the faith? Exactly. I don't know if we have time, but I will do it. It's very interesting.

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I'll do a short version of it. So I guess I would have to start is my grandmother on my mother's side came from Italy, immigrated in the early 1900s, which means

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I was raised Roman Catholic, correct? That's how that works. So I was the oldest of six.

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And dutiful Catholic, when I was 18, before my 19th birthday, wandered into with my buddy one

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Friday night after a Milwaukee Brewer game. We wandered into the

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Jesus Christ Powerhouse, which was a Jesus people ministry that was really run by a

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Pentecostal guy, if I remember right. So as a Catholic boy, for the first time in my life,

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I heard a gospel message about salvation and a basic one of soteriology about faith in Christ and redemption and the work of Christ on the cross, and with an experiential emphasis.

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And so I've never heard anything like that. And I made a profession of faith that night.

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And then the next night, my friend and I went again, and I made another profession of faith. We were

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Catholics. We didn't know you're only supposed to do that once. We did it twice. There's Catholicism for you on the treadmill of works righteousness.

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Oh, yeah. I never thought of that. We had to do it twice then. We should have been given an instruction book, a

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Protestant. I didn't know what a Protestant was. They never taught us. They only taught us in catechism class.

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I remember that we weren't allowed to go to a Lutheran church, and if you ever went, you had to get permission from the priest. I remember that.

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I was raised Catholic, and in my neighborhood in Amityville, Long Island, New York, the only thing

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I knew about Protestants is that since my friends in the neighborhood who were from mainline

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Protestant churches, they weren't evangelicals. But the only difference I knew was the Protestants don't go to church.

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Well, yeah, we're going to go to the bad place if we don't go to church. We were taught that they were bad.

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That's all we knew about it. That same weekend, and it was

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October, early October, I don't know if anybody remembers the

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Jesus movement in the late 60s and 70s. It was really a true renewal and a revival of the faith.

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Listen to this. I talked to Doug Kelly once, a great instructor at RTS in Charlotte, a great writer, and actually a friend of John Mark there too.

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Dr. Kelly told me, he says, Tom, that whole period that you came to Christ, I remember

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I was in England, and I was preaching, and before I could finish, people were coming up to the podium and wanting to be saved from their sin.

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I said, wow, that's just how that era happened. It was a five-, six -year era.

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So out of that time, I came to Christ. That weekend, they took us all. That weekend, there was like 19 of us that came to the faith, and we were instructed in a little prayer room, then we went out to Lake Mission to get baptized.

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My friend, they said from the podium, we went to Sunday services there, and a black minister from the inner city preached, and the leader says, well, listen, all you people that got saved this weekend, came to Christ, we're going to baptize you.

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My friend and I looked at each other. I said, is that what we do next? I don't know. We're Catholics. We don't know what happens next.

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And so we got baptized in Lake Michigan. I think somewhere in that process was probably my conversion, and then one little quick story on top of that is

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I got ahold of a Bible, which I never have seen before and never read, and went to a

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Christian bookstore and started reading it, and I sensed that within the first week that I needed to leave the

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Catholic Church. And so I went to confession that Saturday night, and you had to go

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Saturday night so you could be holy and not sin by Sunday morning, and you couldn't take communion, right?

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Remember that? So anyways, I went to one of the priests.

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I went to the easiest priest. We had a large church in the diocese. And I told the priest,

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I said, Father, I'm not here to give my confession. I just want to let you know I had a conversion experience.

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I was born again a week ago. I gave my life to Christ, and I just want to let you know

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I'm leaving the Catholic Church. And so he said, Son, whatever happened to you is good, but you can't leave the church.

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I want you to come and see me next weekend. And I got enough in me over the past that next week to know

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I was not going to go back to a priest to have him talk me out of what happened to me. So I just felt like I had to make my break.

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Yeah, when I converted as well, I wrote a letter to one of the parish priests at St.

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Martin of Tours in Amityville with whom I became most close. Really?

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Yeah, he actually was a high school student with my oldest brother

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John, and he performed the marriage ceremony of my sister Mary.

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And I wrote to him to tell him that I was being baptized, that I had left the Catholic Church, and I would love for him to attend the baptism.

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And he just wrote me back very politely saying, I hope that one day you will return to the

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Roman Catholic Church and discover what you were missing all those years of your youth.

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But he never came to the baptism. But anyway. Martin Luther would be proud of both of us.

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You know, it's interesting. I didn't know who Luther was hardly.

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I didn't know any of the Reformation. But I sensed within my spirit, and probably the same with you,

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Chris, I had to make my break. I had to leave. What they told me was not true. And I couldn't articulate it, but I sensed it.

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And I had to leave. And I knew I found the real thing. So that's kind of how. And then just quickly, just a quick point.

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What proceeded after that was, you know, for a good decade and a half,

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I was in the charismatic movement because it comes through the faith of Pentecostals. And I was in the charismatic movement.

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And eventually, I needed theology. I needed an historical bearing point.

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I needed some history. And I ended up going the Reformed route, you know, which is what a lot of people end up doing.

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And so how did you transform from charismatic to Reformed?

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I was in the wing of the better wing of the charismatic movement. It would have been

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Bob Mumford. I don't know if you know any of these names. I don't know that one. Charles Simpson, Derrick Prince.

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And that wing was associated somewhat with R .J.

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Rush Dooney. And they… Really? Out of the charismatic… Oh, Dominion Theology? Well, yeah.

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And here's the deal. There's a lot of good stuff that came out of the charismatic thing that some

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Presbyterians need to get a hold of. And that is they had a vision for the kingdom of God. And they had a vision to take the faith into the world instead of just hanging out in the church.

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And so there's an energy there. And that needs to be directed with right theology. But their ship does leave the harbor.

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It doesn't stay in the harbor all the time like the Presbyterians. But so they like aspects of Rush Dooney's preaching and teaching on the kingdom of God.

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And North, of course, did a lot on that. And so that was my first, through some people, some friends, first introduction to Rush Dooney and North.

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And I actually, oddly enough, became post -millennial, believed in the victory of the church in time and earth and history and theonomic before I knew what the doctrines of grace were.

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I mean, I came in the back side. Yeah, when you were speaking about the connection with the charismatics and Rush Dooney, I remembered that years ago

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I saw David Chilton preach in New Jersey at a

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Reformed Presbyterian church, a Covenanter church. And there were a lot of charismatics in the audience who loved

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David Chilton. And that's because they were in the branch of charismatic and Pentecostal Christians that was known for dominion theology, not the same as theonomy and reconstruction.

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Well, that would have been Dennis Peacock, Joe McAuliffe, and a lot of, yes, and Peacock was charismatic.

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I think Chilton had a charismatic background. Could be. I don't know. But even R .C. Sproul had that in Pennsylvania, had a background there.

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You mean a following? Because I don't think he was, I think he was raised Presbyterian, if I'm not mistaken. Oh, there was a charismatic influence there in his history.

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Oh, okay. I had heard. But you're right, there was some, they, you know,

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Rush Dooney was rejected by the Presbyterian establishment, but he was embraced by the charismatics that wanted more of their faith and wanted a deeper theology and wanted understanding of the kingdom of God and the dominion mandate and how to apply it.

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And Rush Dooney had the theology. They had the energy. He had the theology. So, in fact, let's go to our first break, and then you can wrap up how exactly the transformation finally took place from charismatic to Reformed, and we'll move on to the main theme of retrieving the forgotten giants of the

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Reformation from obscurity. If anybody wants to join us with a question for my guest today, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com, chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

27:44

As always, give us your first name, at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence.

27:50

If you live outside the USA, only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Don't go away.

27:56

We'll be right back with Tom Erdl of Zurich Publishing, right after these messages from our sponsors.

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Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here, excited to announce that my longtime friend

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Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and I are heading to Washington, D .C.

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for the G3 Ministries Regional Conference on the theme, Just Thinking About the Bible. The conference will be held

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

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So join me and Chris Arnzen September 15th through the 17th in Washington, D .C.

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for the G3 Ministries Regional Conference. Register now before they run out of seats at g3men .org.

34:28

That's g3men .org. Stop by the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Exhibitor booth and say hi to Chris Arnzen while you're there.

34:47

I'm Dr. Joseph Piper, President Emeritus and Professor of Systematic and Applied Theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

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Every Christian who's serious about the Deformed Faith and the Westminster Standards should have and use the eight -volume commentary on the theology and ethics of the

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It is much more than an exposition of the larger catechism. It is a thoroughly researched work that utilizes biblical exegesis as well as historical and systematic theology.

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Dr. Moorcraft is Pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, and I urge everyone looking for a biblically faithful church in that area to visit that fine congregation.

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For details on the eight -volume commentary, go to westminstercommentary .com, westminstercommentary .com.

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For details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit heritagepresbyterianchurch .com,

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heritagepresbyterianchurch .com. Please tell Dr. Moorcraft and the saints at Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia that Dr.

36:00

Joseph Piper of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary sends you. Welcome back.

36:07

If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the entire program is Tom Erdl, founder of Zurich Publishing.

36:13

If you have a question for Tom, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

36:19

Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. And, Tom, you are right in the middle of describing your journey from Roman Catholic to charismatic evangelical and then into Reformed theology.

36:34

And I'm just curious, have you retained anything from the charismatic movement, like a belief in the perpetuity of the sign gifts, or have you become a cessationist?

36:45

Tell us about all of that sort of thing. Yeah, that's kind of a trick question there, but I'll answer it anyway.

36:52

So I'll answer it with R .J. Rushton. His answer to that question is, I'm not about to tell

36:57

God what he can and cannot do. So, I mean, even the gift of redemption is a miracle, so do

37:06

I believe in miracles? Absolutely. In the charismatic sense, dripping off the fingers, no, but I do believe in miracles.

37:16

And there's a lot there. What we need, I mean, we could change the world if we could somehow mix a charismatic with a

37:25

Presbyterian. You would have a

37:30

Christian that would excommunicate himself. Yeah, well said.

37:36

But if you could get a mix of that, you could actually get that person out of the Church, into the world, to try and make an influence.

37:43

Oh, I definitely envy many of my evangelical charismatic and Protestant, I'm sorry, not

37:53

Protestant, Pentecostal friends for their zeal, for their excitement, their boldness, and their enthusiasm.

38:03

Do you know what? Let me give you a quote from an English missionary, the famous C .T.

38:11

Studd. Would you know who that is? I have heard of C .T. Studd. In fact, I read a tract by him on Calvinism.

38:18

Oh, you did? Yes. Yeah. He was a great cricket player in England, and his brother was, and he was a dedicated missionary to China, and I think maybe

38:29

India. He said this. He said, Some seek to set up a ministry close to the sound of church bells.

38:38

I seek to set up a salvation shop two yards from the gates of hell.

38:45

Or set up a shop. That's profound, very profound. You know, I thought that's your dichotomy between Presbyterian and Charismatic.

38:57

And, yeah, if you could somehow mix it. Just the last thing for me on my little journey. You know, everybody has to have, being a lover of history,

39:06

I had to have an historical identity in my faith. So if you're going to be Protestant, you're going to go one of three directions.

39:11

You're going to go Anabaptist, and all of what that is, which I was not interested in that realm. You're going to go

39:17

Lutheran or Reformed. And Reformed, you know, basically coming out of the

39:23

Charismatic thing, I would be anti -Reformed or anti -Calvinist. I don't like to use the word

39:28

Calvinist. But I couldn't figure out, I couldn't reconcile any of my folks in that Anabaptist, so -called

39:37

Charismatic realm had such influence on peoples and nations historically like the

39:44

Reformed did. So the historical work and progress of the

39:49

Reformed faith, of changing nations and countries and establishing constitutions and laws,

39:57

I couldn't overcome it. I had to look into it, and that ended up being my identity in the faith.

40:06

Alrighty, well, we already learned about the genesis of your passion for the

40:13

Swiss Reformers. Yeah. And why don't you highlight some of them?

40:19

In fact, you already mentioned briefly Pierre Viret.

40:26

And tell us about this forgotten giant of the Reformation. Yeah, I think there's, along with Viret, and I would put, and we'll obviously get into him in depth in a very few minutes, but I would even put the other forgotten giant ahead of Viret, and that would have been

40:44

Heinrich Bollinger. And I know we don't have a lot of time to talk about it, but we're actually,

40:50

I'm working with a pastor on a biography on Bollinger, Ron Gleason, South Carolina.

40:56

And Bollinger is totally forgotten, and he would be considered first generation.

41:02

He was right there with Zwingli. And he, I mean,

41:07

I could go on and on about Bollinger, and let me try and think of, he was, here's what Schaaf says about Bollinger.

41:14

He was running the English Reformation out of Zurich with letters going back and forth to Cramner, to Hooker, to Jewell, to Cox, all the great

41:26

Anglican conservative bishops, to Queen Elizabeth, to Edward VI, Somerset, his regent.

41:33

He was advising and counseling Cramner and Hooker on how to do the

41:39

Reformation in England. And then Schaaf says that when Bollinger died, it was a major calamity in England because they just leaned on him.

41:49

And they had his decades there, translated it. So, and then, so, but in our reform realm,

41:57

Presbyterians never, and even the Dutch, Dutch reform, they never get into Bollinger.

42:02

I mean, it's all Calvin. So they only went, seems like they only went, and I have a theory on that, they only went to the continent to get into Calvin and his biography, tons of biographies on Calvin, a lot of them very good, and his theological works, and totally missed

42:21

Bollinger. And Bollinger was the pastor of the Reformation, not Calvin. You have to remember, when

42:28

Zwingli brought the Reformation into Zurich, it was, the history's fascinating.

42:34

They brought him up from a, he was a renowned preacher at a monastery south of Zurich. I can't pronounce it, it's

42:40

German, Einsiedeln or something like that. And they brought him in, and they were so excited about him taking the pulpit that they brought him into the pulpit at the

42:50

Great Minster on Saturday night, January 1st, 1519.

42:56

And then, of course, he preached next Sunday. And so, the Reformation, the Reformed Reformation started at that date.

43:02

And by 1523, Zwingli, the magistrates in Zurich had declared for the

43:08

Reformation. But when Zwingli took the pulpit in 1519, Calvin was only nine years old.

43:14

So, and if you look at some of the OPC books and handbooks, unless the Book of Church Order is something

43:20

I read, they basically say Calvin was the founder of the Reformed faith, and that's not true, it was Zwingli and Bollinger.

43:26

And Bollinger had, after Zwingli died in Compel in 1531,

43:35

October, I think, Bollinger took the pulpit and for 40 -some -plus years had a peaceful pastorate in Zurich and just put out an unbelievable amount of literature and Christian books and had a primary influence.

43:52

So, that's my little thing on Bollinger. But I got off track here. We need to get into V -Ray, correct?

43:59

Well, that would be a great idea since your publishing ministry seems to focus on this great man of God that has been largely forgotten and ignored.

44:09

Yeah. And so, the work we're doing, because of my, John Mark's influence on me, actually when

44:16

I went there in 2004 and 2011, we're doing everything we can to publish books on Pierre V -Ray.

44:23

So, just on, before we get into his, well, let me get into who he is.

44:28

So, he was, Calvin was born in 09, in V -Ray 1511. They both went to the

44:35

Latin Quarter in Paris to study and I'm sure they knew each other at the same time there at the

44:41

School of Montague. I think it's called Montague. And Erasmus hated it.

44:47

He said the only thing good about Montague was the lice that you ended up getting when you slept there in the dorms.

44:55

But, so V -Ray was, went to the Latin school there and he was born in Orb.

45:02

I was at his home in Orb. And those pictures are in the biography that we did that we sent you.

45:08

So, he was trained after leaving, as a teenager leaving

45:13

Paris, he went back to his home. Pharrell got a hold of him. Now, we all know who

45:21

William Pharrell is. Yeah, he's the one that got a hold of Calvin and basically declared a curse on him if he didn't return to Geneva.

45:28

D 'Avigné's got a great, does a great job in his history of the time of Reformation, time of Calvin on that interchange in the summer of 1536 at the

45:38

Bear Inn, where Pharrell threatened Calvin that you better either stay here or God will curse your ministry.

45:44

So, he ended up staying. You know, Pharrell was very good at putting the curse on people. But here's the thing about Pharrell.

45:55

If there is no William Pharrell, there is no Reformed and Protestant Geneva, Neuchâtel, and Lausanne.

46:03

And it was the three cities, they're basically 30 or 40 miles apart from each other. Vire ended up in Lausanne for 23 years pastoring,

46:11

Calvin in Geneva, of course, and then Pharrell in Neuchâtel. But here's the thing about William Pharrell is that he was a true evangelist.

46:21

And it was appropriate he had red hair because he was a fireball. And he took no, he never took, he took, you know, no was not part of his vocabulary that it couldn't be done.

46:35

And he was given, John Mark told me this, and I found out later, that he was given letters of introduction by the

46:43

Bernice Lords. Remember we talked about earlier in the broadcast how important the city of Bern was? Yeah. And Zwingli brought the

46:51

Reformation to Bern in the winter of 1528, and then the Emagistrates embraced it.

46:57

That was probably one of the key dates in all of Reformation history was when the

47:02

Bernice Lords embraced the Protestant faith. So they gave Pharrell letters of introduction to go into French Switzerland and be allowed to preach.

47:13

So Pharrell would just, you know, give everybody these letters, and everybody was afraid of Bern because it was the biggest army and the most populous important city in all of Switzerland, and it really is to this day.

47:25

So Pharrell went in and with, I've got to shorten this story, but the

47:32

Reformation of Geneva, Daubigny goes into length on it, and it's just a beautiful story, does a great job, with the work of William Pharrell, Pierre Viret, and Antoine Fromeau.

47:43

Fromeau, nobody knows about, F -R -O -M -E -N -T, and they, all three of them,

47:49

Pharrell was kicked out of Geneva initially, and he sent Fromeau in, who started the school, and the kids were so excited about his religious teaching in the school that they brought the parents in, and that was really the start of the

48:04

Reformation, and he was a layman, a 22 -year -old layman who was a schoolteacher, but he was trained by Pharrell, and Viret also was trained by Pharrell.

48:12

So later, and I'm fast -forwarding a little, Viret and the magistrates eventually gave

48:19

Viret and Pharrell the monastery at Rive, R -I -V -E, to preach, and it was the

48:26

Great Hall at Rive, and it's no longer there, it's part of a community road there now in Geneva, and so it was the work of the three men,

48:39

Fromeau, Pharrell, and Viret, that the magistrates finally embraced the Reformation in Geneva, and then your story, when

48:46

Pharrell met Calvin on the way through, Calvin was on the way through to go to Basel, and Pharrell arrested him and made him stay, and that was after the

48:55

Reformation was already complete. So anyways, Viret was involved with that, and then the interesting thing,

49:01

Viret ended up taking, as a young man, I think he was 27, took the pastorate.

49:08

The magistrates obviously controlled the pastorates, and it was a Canton church, so they controlled who was going to be the pastor, and he was the second pastor of the new

49:17

Protestant church, and he stayed there for 23 years, and as I mentioned earlier, he had the academy there for 23 years, and you never guess who his principal was,

49:29

I think for nine of those years was Theodore Beza, who eventually, in 1558, went to Geneva to join

49:37

Calvin, because things were getting difficult in Lausanne, and Beza obviously was the successor of Calvin in Geneva, but he was

49:46

Viret's principal. So everybody knows who Beza is, but nobody knows who Viret is. So Viret was an author of some 55 books.

49:57

He was more of a popular author. Calvin would have been the technician, the deeper theologian technician, but Viret was more the popularist.

50:09

When he was in Geneva, he had better crowds than Calvin when he preached, and he was

50:15

Calvin's closest associate. So the biography we did that I sent you is the one that Rebecca Sheets did, titled

50:27

Viret, the Angel of the Reformation, and we need to get into Rebecca in a little while, but she brought out some tremendous letters that nobody really has ever seen in her research of the relationship between Viret and Calvin, and it was extremely close.

50:49

Viret and Calvin were peers. They were on the same level, and when Calvin was kicked out and Pharrell kicked out of Geneva by the libertines, the libertarians in 1538, he only was a pastor for two short years, and they kicked him out.

51:04

He went to Strasbourg to be with Bucer. Viret was working from Lausanne with the magistrates in Geneva after the elections started turning away from the libertarians.

51:17

He was working with the magistrates to get Calvin to come back, and Rebecca in her biography on Viret brought out all these tremendous letters where Viret is convincing

51:26

Calvin to come back to Geneva. Things are opening up. The elections turn. They're more open to you, and Calvin's response was, don't even mention

51:33

Geneva to me. Well, can you pick up right where you left off when we return from our midway break?

51:39

Yeah. We have to go to our midway break, and by the way, Rebecca Sheets is a name very near and dear to my heart because she and Psalm 78

51:51

Ministries a couple of years ago were generous enough when I had my pastor's luncheon, they were generous enough to donate 100 copies of Authority in the

52:03

Christian Life by Jean -Marc Berthoud, so every pastor in attendance was able to go home with a copy of that.

52:11

Excellent book. And we have to go to our midway break right now. As I mentioned, this is the longer than normal break, folks, so please be patient with us.

52:19

Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show because they are required by the

52:28

FCC to air their own public service announcements and other local things to localize

52:34

Iron Trump and Zion Radio geographically to Lake City, Florida, and while they do that, we air our globally heard commercials, so I'm asking you please to use this time wisely.

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I'm asking you to write down as much of the information as you possibly can that our advertisers provide in their commercials so that you can more frequently and successfully respond to our advertisers.

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That means, hopefully, as often as possible, buying their products, using their services, supporting their parachurch organizations and visiting their churches, but when you cannot do any of those things, there's one thing you definitely can do.

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You can contact them and thank them for sponsoring Iron Trump and Zion Radio. That is, if indeed you love the show and are grateful that there are people out there who desire to share the money that God has blessed them with with us on Iron Trump and Zion Radio so that we can continue to exist.

53:31

We need our advertisers to exist, folks. I know that some of you have complained that there's many of them, but we can't be on the air without them, so please, at least thank them for sponsoring the show.

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If you cannot patronize them, and also write down questions for Tom Erdl regarding the

53:52

Swiss reformers and other reformers that are forgotten at chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

53:58

chrisarnson at gmail dot com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the

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

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

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Sovereign Lord God, Savior and King Jesus Christ today and always.

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As host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio I frequently get requests from listeners for church recommendations.

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The 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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Before I return to Tom Erdl, who is our guest today and discussing not only

01:12:17

Zurich Publishing but retrieving the giants of the Reformation from obscurity including

01:12:25

Pierre V. Ray which is one of the names we'll be highlighting in the remainder of the program.

01:12:32

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01:15:06

Lastly, if you are not a member of a Christ -honoring theologically sound, doctrinally solid, biblically faithful church, such as Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia well, no matter where on the face of the earth you live

01:15:22

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01:15:53

I need a church in the subject line that's also the email address where you can send in a question for Tom Erdl and that's chrisarnson at gmail dot com give us your first name, at least city and state and country of residence.

01:16:04

Before I go to any of the listeners who are waiting for their questions to be asked and answered on the air, you were talking about Calvin's resistance to return to Geneva and what you were discussing was not the classic and fairly well known instance at least it's fairly well known by reformed historically literate people that Farrell was urging

01:16:34

Calvin to return to Geneva and he was refusing wanting the quiet life of academia, just studying and being at a relative level of peace without confrontation and controversy but Farrell threatened him with a curse if he didn't return and you were speaking about a different incident if you could pick up where you left off Yeah, we're talking about V -Ray's

01:16:59

Pierre V -Ray's influence, Calvin's very close associate who initiated and negotiated with the

01:17:07

Geneva magistrates Calvin's return and Calvin was resistant so V -Ray and Rebecca in the biography we did that she did on V -Ray brings out these letters of this communication that they have between Calvin and V -Ray so V -Ray's working on them and then

01:17:23

Calvin finally relents and I think if I have this right, if I remember V -Ray can't do what

01:17:32

Farrell did but he did a little mild curse on Calvin saying your ministry is not going to be successful if you come back to Geneva, so all those little curses worked on him and then he said alright,

01:17:44

I'll come back and I'm paraphrasing the letter in the exchange if you V -Ray will be with me for the first at least six months period of time,

01:17:54

I think it was six months so V -Ray had to get permission from the Lausanne magistrates really the

01:18:00

Bernice Lords and they granted it and so V -Ray stayed with Calvin for the first six months on his return and the elections changed and it became more of a better atmosphere for the reformers to continue to establish the church there and of course

01:18:16

Calvin stayed there for many years and the rest was history and then even Bollinger, I'm reading our research on Bollinger, he was involved encouraging

01:18:26

Calvin to return too, but V -Ray did most of the heavy lifting there. Okay, we have some listeners who are waiting anxiously to have their questions asked and answered.

01:18:39

We have Bobby in Hartsdale, New York who has a question and his question is did any of these reformers that you have been discussing that have

01:18:51

French ethnicity do more of evangelism and have a significant impact in their homeland of France as compared to Switzerland?

01:19:04

Well yes and no. Calvin, different than V -Ray, was obviously, everybody knows, born in France and never really returned.

01:19:14

He actually the biographies I read he did a return trip when the persecution started to clear up his dad's estate if I remember right and some benefits he got from the

01:19:26

Catholic Church and then he never returned. But now V -Ray and Pharrell that's a good question,

01:19:36

Pharrell who was from Gap if I pronounced that right near where the

01:19:42

Waldensians lived and he was trained under Jacques Etapel and the great reformer in France and he never returned to France.

01:19:54

Now V -Ray was the opposite. V -Ray was maybe I should get into this

01:20:00

V -Ray was born in Orb went to school in Paris and then what happened to him was in 1559 this is a very interesting story the

01:20:14

Bernice Lords in the Canton churches the magistrates ran the churches and they hired and fired the ministers and so forth so they,

01:20:23

V -Ray was fixing to have a communion service in Lausanne and Rebecca brings this out in the biography and the

01:20:29

Bernice Lords who had an office in Lausanne said no we're going to tell you when you're going to have the communion service and who's going to be able to attend and V -Ray totally rejected it he told his ministers we're going to have the communion service and we're going to fence the table the

01:20:46

Bernice Lords found out about it and locked him up because of his disobedience and so but V -Ray the great, the incident that I just talked about is

01:20:59

V -Ray is establishing in church history the line of jurisdiction between church and state.

01:21:05

The state has no right to tell the church when they're going to have communion and who's going to attend and who's going to partake so and it's interesting

01:21:14

Rebecca, I'm getting off the question here but I'm going to get to it in a minute Rebecca brings out in her book that V -Ray had taken 9 or 10 trips to Bern to handle disputes and issues between the church and the

01:21:28

Bernice Lords so they locked him up this is in 1559 and they exiled him he had to leave, they took his pastor away from him, 23 years and the

01:21:38

Lords of Bern took his pastor away and he ended up being in Geneva now

01:21:43

V -Ray to answer his question ended up going the last 10 years in his life ministering in France and as soon as he entered

01:21:54

French soil in whatever city he was in, he was the immediate leader of that church because of his reputation.

01:22:01

They read his books I mean he had 55 some books out not at that time but his total volume was that and so V -Ray was the

01:22:10

Swiss French that ended up ministering in France but but you know you have the persecution, the wars of religion the

01:22:18

St. Bartholomew's, they massacred in, what was that, 1572 and so you don't see the

01:22:29

French men going back to France you know, not like V -Ray did Well you at least in part

01:22:37

I think answered a next question Oh by the way before I move on to the next question

01:22:44

Audie in Hartsdale make sure you give us your full mailing address there in Hartsdale New York because you have won a free copy of the book

01:22:54

Pierre V -Ray or V -Ray, The Angel of the Reformation published by Zurich Publishing and I've got to just say something and my friend

01:23:04

Bill Hill formerly at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Center he did a great job interviewing you as well and he was absolutely right about the beauty and the quality physically of your books, they are,

01:23:20

I've never seen books of a superior binding to yours, even the paper of the pages that is used,

01:23:29

I mean such high quality you have spared no expense to make sure that these products are absolutely stunning and I'm sure which will add to the longevity of them surviving on somebody's bookshelf probably for generations

01:23:47

Well you know, thank you, that was a nice compliment I get a lot of compliments like that but you've got to remember I'm German and I've got to do it perfect Yeah we all know the

01:23:55

Germans have done everything perfect German Adsel, so it's German so we have to do it perfect but besides that we do want to thank the

01:24:05

Tom Erdl of Erdl Homes who helped fund the books and we can put the money into the quality printing

01:24:13

Now that's you isn't it? Yeah Two different creatures

01:24:19

Two different hats Well we definitely thank God for Tom Erdl the home builder layman but thanks a lot

01:24:31

Bobby and CVBBS .com Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service will be shipping that out to you compliments of Zurich Publishing and compliments of CVBBS .com

01:24:43

who are handling the postage so that we don't have to do that and our second listener who is

01:24:54

Tom in West Islet, New York Tom says you already partially answered this question

01:25:05

Tom in West Islet, New York says why is it that Switzerland was so much more of a fertile ground for evangelism and the spread of the gospel than France and why is it that all of these primary locations that gave birth to the

01:25:22

Reformation are for the most part today barren wastelands of theology Boy that's a good question the first one is my immediate reaction to why it was

01:25:35

Switzerland such a fertile place for the gospel and the Reformed faith and I would say it's because of the decentralized form of the

01:25:46

Canton system of government remember the Swiss Cantons go back to the

01:25:53

Forest Cantons I think in 1215 something like that as the years progressed it was

01:26:01

Grissons Schweiz, Zug I can't remember the

01:26:06

Cantons eventually Zurich way at the end Geneva joined but the system is very decentralized and so I would ask let me ask the listener the question name for me a

01:26:19

Swiss president and the reason you can't because in the Swiss constitutional system they have 7 heads of state so if you have

01:26:31

Joe Biden you have 6 others that can make up for the lack that can do the talking so no you don't they have 7 heads of state that are elected and then one is the spokesman so there's not a big centralized form of government as compared to Francis I in the time of the

01:26:51

Reformation in France who was able to persecute the Huguenots and make laws against them throughout all of France so the governmental system really helped the spread of the gospel so you have remember in the

01:27:09

Reformation especially in Switzerland we call it the Magisterial Reformation without the magistrates coming on board embracing the

01:27:17

Reformation none of this would have happened so you had Christian magistrates that made the difference so each canton determined its own religion so I hope does that answer part of that question well in my ears it did so the other the other the help to that there was people like Bollinger and Zwingli and Eckel and Patius and Viret and eventually

01:27:48

Calvin and Farrell that became Swiss so they had the giants there the other answer is off this question why is it such a wasteland and John Mark would tell me that at the

01:28:00

Great Cathedral where Viret preached in Lausanne there would be at times right now 17 people for Sunday services 20 and it's lost.

01:28:11

My contact in Zurich at the Central Library that I keep in contact with in Zurich he said that the the real church the life giving church left in Switzerland are the

01:28:28

Baptists. The Reformed church is just gone. I mean it has been liberal. When I came there in 2004

01:28:34

I got off the Delta plane went right to the service at the Great Minster and the minister's name was

01:28:40

Monica and Zwingli would have a conniption Yeah the church where Jonathan Edwards was a pastor is now open and affirming to unrepentant homosexuals.

01:28:51

Yeah oh yeah I don't doubt it so anyways what's going on in Switzerland with the apostasy of this great

01:29:00

Reformed church happens everywhere where if the next generation doesn't keep the faith and keep it lively then it's gone.

01:29:07

And of course these countries have been in existence far longer than the republic that we you and I live in the

01:29:18

United States of America Oh is it still a republic? I lost track That's a good observation there.

01:29:27

But who knows how many more years or how few years ahead of us where we'll be just as much of a barren wasteland as these other countries but thank you

01:29:41

Tom. I also know another Tom in West Islet, New York who's a member of Trinity Lutheran Church I don't know if you know him

01:29:47

Tom but say hello to him if you ever bump into him and by the way give us your full mailing address because you have also won

01:29:55

Pierre V. Ray The Angel of the Reformation gorgeous hardback book published by Zurich Publishing and it will be shipped out to you by cvbbs .com

01:30:05

Cumberland Valley Bible Books Service We have Susan Margaret in Dauphin County Pennsylvania who says you have used the phrase

01:30:16

Huguenot and I was wondering what was unique about this group of Christians that may have separated them from other

01:30:23

Reformed Christians Well it's another good question The Huguenots it comes from a word

01:30:32

I can't hardly pronounce it. The best we can do is Huguenot on it. It was the label for Protestant Reformed Christianity.

01:30:41

I mean there weren't Baptists, there weren't Lutherans in France. It was Reformed and what's interesting is that the when

01:30:51

V. Ray was in France for 10 years and it was in the middle of the wars of religion they say 20 to 25 percent of the population was

01:31:02

Protestant and Reformed and they had the central area for the

01:31:10

Reformed would have been the Rhone River Valley and we can even get into that a little if we have time because I took a trip there with the

01:31:19

President of the Association Pierre V. Ray Lausanne to get the pictures for the books.

01:31:25

But anyways the major movement of the Protestant Reformed community was in the

01:31:32

Rhone River Valley of Lyon which is the second biggest city in second to Paris in France Nîmes, Montpellier and Valence and I'm trying to think of it.

01:31:48

Oh then Avignon, Les Avignons. So down that whole valley and the

01:31:53

Huguenots tended to be the artisan class meaning more of the professional people, the doctors, the lawyers the

01:32:03

Catholics were the wealthy and the poor and in between were the

01:32:09

Protestant Huguenots and then of course even in Navarre, we'll talk about Navarre in southern

01:32:15

France where Ginny D 'Albrecq was strong Protestant Huguenot contingency and then in La Rochelle on the

01:32:24

Atlantic Ocean there was a strong contingency. Not so much in Paris but in the other communities and you know here's my final thought on that we talk about it all the time.

01:32:35

Here's the speculation historically what if one of the kings had embraced the

01:32:41

Protestant faith in France? Can you imagine what France would have been like? There would have been no

01:32:47

French Revolution there would have been no Napoleon I mean you know you talk about warm water ports on both the

01:32:56

Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Massive size of a country with a huge population base with their history.

01:33:04

Can you imagine if it was reformed? Thank you

01:33:10

Susan Margaret you've also won a free copy of the book that we have been giving away.

01:33:16

Pierre Viret, The Angel of the Reformation and please make sure we have your full mailing address.

01:33:22

Just out of curiosity if you could explain the subtitle that Rebecca Sheets came up with for this book that she wrote.

01:33:33

Which is? The Angel of the Reformation as opposed to some other adjective.

01:33:39

That's interesting because and I get into it when I did the introduction of the book and he was known for that because of his character.

01:33:48

You couldn't Oh I wish I had the quote. I can't find it in the book right now. But Pharrell did a great quote on R .V.

01:33:58

Ray and he said it was just he said he epitomized what a Christian should be like.

01:34:04

And he had such winnable character. He's so winsome. It's interesting you ask that because I don't know what city was it in?

01:34:11

No it was in Po where he was in Po where the authorities arrested him and the

01:34:17

Catholics appreciated him so much they asked for his release. So and he was the great negotiator so he was often negotiating between two opposing sides.

01:34:31

He just had a winsome Christian character. I mean he just Calvin was a little bit of the opposite I mean

01:34:37

I'm not demeaning him he just had his temper problems but R .V. Ray was just somewhat of the opposite.

01:34:42

So it was his great Christian character. And by the way before the grammar police start annoying me with emails

01:34:48

I know that angel is a noun and not an adjective. That was a slip of the tongue there.

01:34:54

We do have some annoying listeners out there. Well this is quite providential because I don't even think

01:35:04

I mentioned where you're from but Wade from Tallahassee, Florida wants to know if there are any churches you would recommend.

01:35:19

Well yes and I know Wade and I don't know why he's he's harassing me

01:35:26

I think through the podcast but yeah well it would be his church which would be

01:35:33

Trinity Community and then probably my church which is Westminster Presbyterian so I will say that. I'll give him two churches there.

01:35:39

Okay and you could give me that information off the air because we have listeners every day asking for church recommendations.

01:35:48

We're going to go to our final break. It's going to be a lot more brief than the other breaks and Grady from Asheboro, North Carolina if you could hold on and be patient with your question we'll get to you as soon as we come back.

01:36:01

But if anybody else wants to get in line behind Grady with a question for Tom Ertle before by the way

01:36:07

I am pronouncing that right am I? Yeah well if you're in Austria it's Atchell. Okay. We're going to go with Ertle.

01:36:14

Okay great. Well if you have any questions of your own that you'd like to ask send them quickly because we're rapidly running out of time.

01:36:22

It's chrisarnson at gmail .com chrisarnson at gmail .com give us your first name at least, your city and state and your country of residence and we'll be right back right after these messages with more of Tom Ertle.

01:36:39

When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005 the publishers of the

01:36:44

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We here at Iron Sharpens Iron radio are forever grateful for the generous financial support of Art Amundsen, Edward Jones financial advisor in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

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01:47:10

For details, call Long Island Youth for Christ at 631 -385 -8333.

01:47:17

That's 631 -385 -8333. Or visit l -i -y -f -c dot org.

01:47:26

That's l -i -y -f -c dot org. Lindbrook Baptist Church on 225

01:47:38

Earl Avenue in Lindbrook, Long Island is teaching God's timeless truths in the 21st century. Our church is far more than a

01:47:44

Sunday worship service. It's a place of learning where the scriptures are studied and the preaching of the gospel is clear and relevant.

01:47:50

It's like a gym where one can exercise their faith through community involvement. It's like a hospital for wounded souls where one can find compassionate people and healing.

01:47:58

We're a diverse family of all ages. Enthusiastically serving our Lord Jesus Christ. In fellowship, play, and together.

01:48:04

Hi, I'm Pastor Bob Walderman and I invite you to come and join us here at Lindbrook Baptist Church and see all that a church can be.

01:48:11

Call Lindbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402. That's 516 -599 -9402.

01:48:18

Or visit lindbrookbaptist .org. That's lindbrookbaptist .org. Attention all men in ministry leadership.

01:48:38

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

01:48:46

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

01:48:52

James White of Alpha and 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

01:49:06

United States and the United Kingdom, personally selected by Chris Arnzen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:49:13

So if you're a pastor, an elder, a deacon, a parachurch leader, or any other man in ministry leadership, please register for the

01:49:21

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Free Pastors Luncheon today by calling 631 -291 -7002, 631 -291 -7002, or by visiting ironsharpensironradio .com,

01:49:38

ironsharpensironradio .com. This is James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, hoping to see you

01:49:44

Thursday, September 22nd, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, for Chris Arnzen's Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Free Pastors Luncheon.

01:49:57

Welcome back, and we have Rady, a very loyal, long -time listener to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:50:06

He's also a very faithful and generous supporter of this program. Rady asks, greetings, brothers.

01:50:12

We have works from Luther and Calvin. Do we have any of the works from these unknown

01:50:18

Reformers, or just their biographies? Well, here, to answer that question, we're working on it.

01:50:26

Right now, we have, and I think I sent you this, Chris, is B. Ray's Catechism, pure B.

01:50:34

Ray's Catechism. Yeah, that's something that a church should buy a couple of cases of so they can make sure every member gets that.

01:50:42

Yeah, what's interesting on the Catechism I have in front of me is this was, now Rebecca Sheets, who's really probably a top three scholar on B.

01:50:51

Ray in the world, she has taken and made a Catechism for the first time ever in English out of his massive works of Christian instruction.

01:51:01

It's interesting, I don't know if you saw it, Chris, the first question in the Catechism, have you ever heard of this? This was done in 1564, and remember the

01:51:09

Westminster Shorter Catechism was penned in 1647. So here's his first question.

01:51:16

What is the chief purpose why God created man in his image and likeness? Answer, to be worshipped and honored by him.

01:51:22

So the title of it is The Chief End and Purpose in the Creation of Man. Have you ever heard that before?

01:51:28

Well, I've heard to know God and adore

01:51:34

God, worship God and enjoy him forever, which is the first question of the

01:51:39

Westminster Shorter Catechism. So what this means is that the Presbyterians who make fun of Reformed Baptists for plagiarizing their confession, it looks like the

01:51:50

Westminster divines did some plagiarizing of their own. Yeah, and this was 70 -some years before.

01:51:56

So V -Ray's talking about the chief end and purpose of the creation of man, the Westminster, what's the chief end of man.

01:52:03

Now Calvin, in his Catechism also, I think it was right before V -Ray talked about the chief end of man.

01:52:10

So Calvin and V -Ray both tended that the Westminster divines picked up, and it was great that they did.

01:52:17

So anyways, to answer his question, we have his Catechism out.

01:52:23

You can get it on Zerk's publishing site. We have the explanation of his Catechism.

01:52:29

Luther did the same thing where he had the Catechism. It's called The Simple Exposition of the Christian Faith, which

01:52:35

Rebecca Sheets put together. Then we are working on, we have it.

01:52:41

She's finished translating V -Ray's two volumes, 500 pages apiece, I think, on the

01:52:47

Ten Commandments, which Jean -Marc Berthoud says it was the greatest work on the Ten Commandments in the time of the

01:52:53

Reformation. And so I've read it, and so we're formatting it, we're putting an index together on it.

01:53:00

So hopefully we'll have that out this year. The other thing, the Reformers, the great work of Bullinger was his decades, was his key sermons.

01:53:13

And he wrote just a tremendous amount of volume of literature, but the decades were his key ones.

01:53:19

And those were translated by Joel Beakey in Grand Rapids, oh, 15 years ago.

01:53:26

So you can get that in the modern English. And to answer his question also, we're going to do more works on V -Ray.

01:53:34

We just need time and money. And then the great work of a very important Reformer would be

01:53:43

Martin Bucer. You've got to remember, when Calvin was in Strasbourg in 1538 because he was kicked out of Geneva, Bucer mentored him.

01:53:52

He was still a young man, and Bucer was older. Bucer was a more first -generation Reformer, saved under the ministry of Luther in Heidelberg.

01:54:01

And Bucer taught Calvin his Reformed liturgy. So Calvin took Bucer's liturgy back to the church in Geneva, which is what we use to this day.

01:54:12

And Hughes, Oliphant Olds, the great Presbyterian writer on worship, brought that out and did a great job of it.

01:54:19

So Bollinger's stuff is out, but not a lot of it.

01:54:26

Pharrell would not have been a theologian for him to write books. And obviously,

01:54:32

Calvin's works have been reprinted. So we're working on V -Ray. By the way, folks,

01:54:38

I know that the word that I should have used for the first question of the Shorter Catechism is glorify

01:54:44

God and enjoy Him forever. I just had one of those brain blackouts. We gave you a pass.

01:54:53

And Grady, we have your mailing address since you are one of the most loyal listeners to this program.

01:54:59

And we're going to have CVBBS .com, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, ship out to you the book that we have been mentioning,

01:55:09

Pierre V -Ray, The Angel of the Reformation by R .A. Sheets, compliments of Zurich Publishing and compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

01:55:19

We have Robert in Westchester, New York.

01:55:26

And Robert has a question. I had it right in front of me, and now it's disappeared. And I've got to quickly find it before we run out of time.

01:55:34

Oh, Robert says, Is it true that Zwingli was truly merely a memorialist with the

01:55:44

Lord's Supper? Or are those who oppose him trivializing what he believed and really minimizing what he believed and that it was not just a pure and nothing more than a memorial?

01:56:04

No, I'm not the theologian type. I've studied it a little, actually somewhat recently reading on Bullinger.

01:56:11

But you have to understand the times that the reformers lived in.

01:56:17

Zwingli, he brought the Swiss, especially in Zurich and Germany and Switzerland, out of the mysticism of Roman Catholicism and the sacrifice of the mass and the

01:56:28

Holy Eucharist and all of that. And to bring him out, he had to go, the practice of the

01:56:37

Lord's Supper was more, it was a memorial and it was more symbolic. You know, and the great, it's interesting, the great debate that Philipp of Hesse put together at Marburg in 1529, you know, so Zwingli took more of the reform position and Luther did his consubstantiation, what's the term again?

01:57:00

Consubstantiation. And Lutherans have told me that that was just a theory, but it has not been like a dogma there.

01:57:07

But to answer the gentleman's question, what's interesting on this is that in the 1550s somewhere,

01:57:15

I wish I had the date, I can't remember it, Calvin got together with Bullinger and to Calvin's credit, he came up with a more of an experiential approach to the taking of the

01:57:31

Lord's Supper. The Lord's presence was there and he worked together with Bullinger and they came up with the

01:57:38

Swiss consensus, there's a Latin term for it, that they both signed and it was

01:57:45

Calvin's credit that he initiated it. So we have that basically in the reformed churches today is the influence of Calvin and Bullinger coming together and formulating a more balanced view of the

01:57:56

Lord's Supper. And Robert, you've won the last copy of the book, Pierre V.

01:58:02

Ray, Angel of the Reformation. We have time for one more question. Graham in Bluffton, South Carolina wants to know who trained the men who wrote the

01:58:13

Heidelberg Catechism? Well, we talked about it a little. You have to understand when you read

01:58:19

Reformation history, both Ursinus and Olivianus traveled all throughout

01:58:25

Europe and were trained under many men. They were obviously in Heidelberg.

01:58:30

They were influenced by Melanchthon. They probably met Luther, I assume. I don't know that for sure. They were at the

01:58:36

Geneva Academy when Calvin and Beza were there.

01:58:42

They were at V. Ray's Academy in Lausanne. And then obviously they knew

01:58:47

Bucer. And they read all these works. So I don't think you can answer and say there was a single one person that mentored and trained them.

01:58:58

It was a multitude. Isn't Hillary, you have the book, It Takes a Village? It takes a village to do the

01:59:04

Heidelberg Catechism, right? Well, we are out of time, folks.

01:59:10

And I want to make sure that everybody has the website for Zurich Publishing. It is zurichpublishing .org.

01:59:18

Zurichpublishing .org. Thank you for doing such a masterful job today, Tom. I'm eagerly looking forward to your frequent return to Iron Trump and Zion Radio.

01:59:27

Well, thanks for the time. I hope it was beneficial to your listeners that we gave them some great information. I'm sure it was.

01:59:32

And I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater