July 2, 2021 Show with Marvin Olasky on “Lament for a Father: The Journey to Understanding & Forgiveness”

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

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

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

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

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

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours and we hope to hear from you the listener with your own questions and now here's your host

Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon

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

This is Chris Arnzen your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio wishing you all a happy Friday July 2nd 2021 right at the beginning of the 4th of July weekend.

I am so thrilled to have a first time guest today that I have been wanting to interview for many years and now

I finally have the opportunity he is a brother in Christ whose name will not be unfamiliar or should

I say not be yes not be unfamiliar to most of our listeners his name is

Marvin Olasky he's the author of over 20 books an elder in the Presbyterian Church in America an editor -in -chief of World Magazine a dean of World Journalism Institute and he's also a

Jewish believer in our Lord Jesus Christ today he's going to be addressing his latest book Lament for a

Father the Journey to Understanding and Forgiveness and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Marvin Olasky.

Hey Chris thanks very much. Hey my pleasure brother well tell us first of all something about I know it might be amazing if there were anyone listening that was not familiar with World Magazine but there may be some because actually we do have not only new

Christians on occasion listening we even have non -Christians listening we even have Muslims on occasion and atheists and others so why don't you give a brief description of World Magazine where you serve as editor -in -chief.

Sure World is a bi -weekly news magazine it's sometimes been called the the

Christian Time Magazine or perhaps like the Atlantic we try to cover all kinds of things not just church news but politics, economics, sports, movies, books, music, all kinds of developments in American culture and we've been doing it for 35 years we have a staff of people located all across the country and also in Africa and Asia and Europe and our goal is to try to present a

Christian worldview on all these topics what we call biblical objectivity since God created the world

God knows the nature of the world we learn about the world by reading the Bible and we try to apply that and thinking through the news and issues of the day.

Well I happen to highly value World Magazine and my relationship with World they have been an advertiser on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio for several years and I always look forward to having my full page print ad in World Magazine the next one will be this

September and I am going to be getting a ton of that issue to give away at the upcoming

G3 conference in Atlanta Georgia which is quite a spectacular conference if anybody listening has never been there

I urge you to go and you'll be hearing ads for the G3 conference and for World Magazine coming up in the program.

Well we have a uh oh but actually before I go to uh your testimony which we always have our first time guests give a summary of their salvation testimony but before we do that I forgot to mention or ask you to describe and explain

World Journalism Institute. Well World Journalism Institute is our training mechanism for people who are going to come to at work come to work at World and also go on to write in secular publications or ministry publications we have several parts of it the part that's been going the longest since 1999 is for college students and recent graduates it's a two -week super intensive training course now at Doerr University in Iowa where we teach juniors and seniors in college and folks up to age 30 about how to be a journalist in print in radio and now in on video also so that's that's been our main function all these years we also have which my wife and I particularly enjoy we have a mid -career course for people typically in their 40s who have had good careers in law or teaching or all kinds of professions and they'd like to come to do some writing for World or improve their writing skills generally so we've been doing that since 2011 in our living room here in Austin and that's lots of fun we have along with people from those those occupations we have people people coming out of the military, jet pilots, sheriffs, ex -CIA,

FBI people, and we all learn about journalism and spend a very intensive week doing that so those are the two major components we have internships my wife and I now have our 33rd and 34th interns living with us here in Austin we spend two months of teaching and those are the future staff members of World we've done things in China and would like to do more but that's pretty closed down now we have a

WGI coming up in Europe next year so a lot of variety of things all dedicated to trying to teach people how to be biblically objective journalists well that's great and if anybody wants more information on the

World Journalism Institute go to worldji .com worldji .com

and even though you'll be hearing the ads for World Magazine let me plug their website

WNG which stands for World News Group wng .org

well as I said just moments ago Marvin we have a tradition on Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio whenever we have a first -time guest for them to give a summary of their salvation testimony

I know that there will be a lot of overlap with our main theme today because your book

Lament for a Father actually details a lot of what went on in your life growing up in a

Jewish family but if you could before we discuss the heart of the book let our audience know something about your upbringing and what providential circumstances our sovereign lord raised up in your life that drew you to himself and brought you to saving faith in Jesus Christ as your messiah well it's a story that's all too typical in Judaism now bar mitzvah 13 atheists of 14

I read I read Sigmund Freud I read HG Wells history of the world which was a straight materialist

Darwinian history and I believed it all so it became an atheist all through high school

I continued to scoff at God went to college at Yale University and kept being affirmed in my atheism kept moving to the left these were the

Vietnam War days so I was involved in lots of demonstrations became a Marxist by the time

I was in my last year at Yale bicycled across the country to Oregon worked on a newspaper there and joined the

Communist Party USA wow this is back in yeah back in 1972 I actually was a was a card -carrying communist and wow pretty content in that traveled across the

Pacific on a Soviet freighter went on the Trans -Siberian Railroad all the way across the Soviet Union to talk with my big brothers in Moscow came back worked in the

Boston Globe as a as a communist and then went to graduate school at the University of Michigan and much to my surprise actually astonishment

God in his kindness and mercy let me know about himself on November 1st 1973 there was nothing spectacular or unusual about that day until three o 'clock in the afternoon

I was sitting in my room just off the campus at University of Michigan was reading an article by my hero

Vladimir Lenin called socialism and religion where he talks about atheism is the basis of socialism and for whatever reason started having thoughts coming into my head at that point well what if there really is a god of some kind what if I'm not right in this atheism that I've affirmed for 10 years now just about what if what if what if and then that led me into thinking well why exactly am

I a communist what exactly has America done to alienate me so my grandfather left

Russia to escape from the czars and why am I pledging allegiance to czar

Leonid Brezhnev back in 1970 fall of 1973 eight hours

I sat in that chair wasn't wasn't doing drugs wasn't hallucinating just there sitting in that chair hour after hour thinking well what if I'm wrong got up at 11 o 'clock wandered around the cold and dark

University of Michigan campus for a couple of hours just thinking what have I done why am

I doing this and at one o 'clock in the morning decided hey I'm not an atheist and if I'm not an atheist then

I'm not a communist anymore and resigned from the communist party several days later

I won't go through the whole convoluted next three years because it wasn't

I believed in a god of some kind but what kind of god I didn't know but all along I was trying to run from this and one of the reasons

I think I became a reformed Christian along with reading the Bible is just that I did nothing at all to move towards God it was always

God and his majesty and mercy moving towards me I in order to get a

PhD you have to have a good reading knowledge of a foreign language and the language I had I had forgotten my childhood

Hebrew I never really learned all that much of high school French so my language was

Russian which I had learned to be able to speak to other communists I had to keep working at Russian even though I was no longer a communist because that was my the language

I needed to get in order to get a PhD I had to have a good reading knowledge of something while it was

Russian I had a book a little book that had been given to me in Oregon a couple years before I just held on to it as a souvenir a copy of the

New Testament in Russian and I started reading that just for reading practice and reading very slowly and having to puzzle over the words that basically made me think that there's something really from God in this whole

Christian thing that I had always scoffed at before I thought that Christians were kind of stupid people who worship

Christmas trees and this was really something I mean the uh yeah the

New Testament by the time I got to the Sermon on the Mount I thought wow uh as a communist

I I didn't believe in an eye for an eye I believed in two eyes for an eye revenge and hit back and here the

Sermon on the Mount was saying turn the other cheek where did this come from I thought this is something special from God um but again

I wasn't doing anything I was just doing I was reading it to get a good reading knowledge of Russian uh the fall of 1974 the professors of the

University of Michigan in their wisdom assigned me to teach a course in early American literature because they didn't want to teach it they wanted to teach

Polynesian literature or LGBT literature or stuff I had to teach early

American literature and never studied it what's really American literature Puritan sermons uh and they quickly made me understand that this idea

I had that Christians were stupid was totally wrong you can love the Puritans you can hate the

Puritans but they worked things out very logically they they looked at the Bible they applied it how did this all work out

I was really impressed with all these dead white males from three centuries ago so that led me also towards becoming a

Christian but I wasn't I was very resistant to it uh I knew it was suicidal in academic terms uh given the way universities are these days um got a job teaching at uh the

California University at San Diego um and started going to well

I started thinking should I go to a church should I find out I know now what the Puritans believe but they've been dead for a long time should

I find out what Christians today believe and so looked in the yellow pages uh looked under a conservative because I was no longer a

Marxist I didn't want to deal with Marxist Christians I thought okay conservative stuff I saw a conservative

Baptist I knew conservative I knew Baptists were Christians I had read about John the Baptist that's about how much

I knew about contemporary Christianity so started going to this church and it was a church that the preacher had the same sermon every week you must be born again that's what

I needed to hear and one day a minister of visitation an old guy named

Earl Atnip came over to my apartment he didn't he didn't feel he had to give me any exciting intellectual arguments he just said well you believe this stuff don't you and I said reluctantly well

I guess I do he said you better join up which meant professing faith in Christ and being baptized and that's what

I did amen uh and that was 45 years ago and I am very thankful for that uh a year later

I won't go through the whole story but a year later there was a reformed pastor in Indianapolis uh where I was giving a lecture on Marxism and he had mercy on me he saw my theology was not very well developed

I stayed with him and for four days he talked me through Romans and we studied

Romans together and then we went over a bookstore and he gave me a copy of two volumes of Calvin's Institutes and then he said you better get this and get this and get this and so I wasted my budget

I thought it might have been a waste but actually it turned out to be hugely profitable reading uh systematic theology by Berkhoff reading some commentaries reading more reformed stuff and reading

Calvin's Institutes turned me into that his analysis his exegesis of scripture along with my own personal experience of not moving a muscle to become a

Christian all God all the time and came out of that realizing that a reformed understanding made a lot of sense and was true to the

Bible um so eventually joined uh Presbyterian Orthodox Presbyterian Church and then

Presbyterian Church in America uh became an elder a couple of decades ago and um yeah that's been my my slow continued learning.

Just out of curiosity since you're only the second Marxist or should

I say former Marxist uh that I've ever met that has become a reformed elder

I'm sure there are many more out there and sadly there are many that are still Marxists but there are only two of you that I've met personally and the other

I was wondering if you knew him is my dear friend of several decades going back to the 1980s

Bill Shishko of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church of was no I've heard the name but I've never

I don't think I've ever met him he was in Franklin Square Long Island and now he's uh pastoring an

OPC church plant uh called the Haven a very unusual name for an

Orthodox Presbyterian uh church but uh I know he has a high regard for you and uh

I'm glad uh to uh know that uh people who are or people who are

Marxist aren't necessarily going to remain that way he I don't know if he was ever a card carrying communist but he was he describes himself as a former uh

Marxist beatnik in the 60s got saved I believe somewhere in the 70s went to Bob Jones University then became a

Calvinist at Bob Jones University of all places after reading Walt Chantry's book uh

Today's Gospel Authentic or Synthetic and uh has been a reformed

Christian ever since but hopefully I'll be able to introduce you to you guys at some point in the future um well now please please no please do

I'd like to I'd like to hear his story oh I definitely will and uh just before I go into our discussion on the book uh have you gotten much feedback from fellow

Jewish believers who it seems the majority really have a great distaste and greatly disdain reformed or Calvinistic theology have you have you gotten much negative pushback from your fellow

Jewish believers on that um as I'm thinking about it haven't haven't gotten much um either positive or negative from Jewish believers it's the book's been out about three weeks and I've gotten lots of feedback from Christians but um not much not much from Jewish Christians not much from from Orthodox Jews some of whom are friends some of whom tend to be uh you know very critical of me thinking of me as a traitor uh but uh but no

I'd be I'd be interested in in responses I would love to see by God's providence if there could ever be a meeting arranged between you and Ben Shapiro and uh

Michael Levin well you know I knew I knew Ben a long time ago

I don't think we ever actually met in person but uh we were both columnists with Creator Syndicate uh back um 20 years or so ago he was just a young guy just just just uh coming out of Harvard Law or in Harvard Law so yeah we haven't had communication since then but he's he's done great things and uh

I like I like his writing a lot um but no I haven't uh haven't had much much discussion with uh with with Jewish believers recently there are there are a few

I know um just the uh this morning I was just being asked about about contacts with uh with with my

Jewish brethren and he reminded me of a fellow named Irving Kristol who was very significant in neoconservative circles back at towards the end of the uh of the last century and he was a a

Jewish guy who welcomed me saying uh we need a smart

Jew who's a Christian so uh yeah that attitude I am perfectly happy with uh but yeah sometimes there's there's been some uh animosity

I hope not coming from me but coming from Orthodox Jews who don't like the idea of someone growing up in a

Jewish family and becoming um a Christian so yeah

I'm interested in Jewish contacts I would I would like to be a bridge between my people from heritage and and my people in theology amen and I uh asked the apologies uh or the forgiveness

I should say uh from Mark Levin I called him Michael Levin Mark Levin is who

I was referring to as the second person I would love to see you in in a dialogue with uh he seems to be very open to speaking with Christians unfortunately uh one of them in particular who has a very heretical understanding of the

Jewish people John Hagee uh believes that Jews do not need to come to Christ to be saved so that was an unfortunate uh an unfortunate encounter uh that he had uh in my opinion

I'm sure Mark enjoyed it but uh as a Christian witness to the conversation

I was very dismayed but uh thank

God that he is in control and can bring to Mark Levin and Ben Shapiro and all of the folks that uh that God chooses to call to himself and it's not all up to us praise be to God yes well is this book uh

Lament for a Father the journey to understanding and forgiveness the first time that you've written something that is this deeply personal yes yeah well why don't you uh in fact

I'm going to go to the first break right now because I don't want to interrupt you I'm going to go to the first break right now and we'll plunge right into the contents of the book and the reasons that compelled you to write the book and I want to remind our listeners that if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com

c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com as always give us your first name at least your city and state and your country of residence don't go away we'll be right back with Marvin after these messages from our sponsors

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that's gracechurchatfranklin .org this is pastor bill sasa wishing you all the richest blessings of our sovereign lord god savior and king jesus christ today and always welcome back this is chris arnzen if you just tuned us in we have a wonderful guest today on iron sharpens iron radio for the very first time marvin olaski and we are discussing his book lament for a father the journey to understanding and forgiveness if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own for marvin our email address is chris arnzen at gmail .com

c -h -r -i -s a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com as always give us your first name at least your city and state of residence and your country of residence if you live outside the usa and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter that's chris arnzen at gmail .com

i also just remembered somebody else i'd love to see you have a in -depth meeting with that's dennis prager uh to share your faith with dennis i know that dennis has had a number of interactions with christians and i would love to see uh someone really boldly address the issue of salvation but i want to just read a couple of endorsements for this book of yours published by pnr publishing lament for a father the journey to understanding and forgiveness first of all the world -renowned syndicated columnist cal thomas says as a brilliant writer and thinker marvin consoles those who have had difficult parents and shows through his own experience they do not have to determine the course of the lives of their children and wayne grudem distinguished research professor of theology and biblical studies at phoenix seminary says anyone who has experienced a difficult parent -child relationship will appreciate the wisdom in this book and there are many more who have provided accolades for this book so uh tell us uh marvin what made you think at this point in your life after being in journalism for so many years and being a bible -believing christian for so many years that you had to sit down and share with the public so something so personal private and intimate about a year and a half ago i wrote a column in world where i just told the story from my childhood the uh i started out referring to and i and i and i suspect lots of listeners here have seen the movie at some point uh field of dreams which is in one sense a baseball movie but basically it's a movie about father -son relationships or that develops as an important theme of the movie and uh in the movie the main character um really yearns to have a catch with his dad just throwing a ball back and forth and so i told a story about the one uh bit of a catch i had with my father he wasn't interested in baseball at all and i was when i was 11 years old still am um the uh we went outside and we lived in in urban greater boston so didn't have a backyard so we were out on the street and i really wanted to become a decent fielder this was my first season at 11 years old my first season of little league baseball and so i've been begging him give me some practice with ground balls and so he threw a ground ball to me i mean it took a couple bounces i should have stopped it uh i didn't it went by me uh my error and so i went chasing it down the street caught up to it kept running kept rolling and rolling turned back and there he was walking indoors walking back up the steps into our into our apartment and that was the end of our playing catch uh and i wrote that i wrote that in a in a column just because in in the column i sometimes get personal with readers i've been editing world for 29 years now and and of a lot of them have written me letters over the years and i sometimes write about family stuff and so forth the uh outpouring of mail in response to that column was the biggest as far as personal letters people describing their own experience that i had ever gotten before in all these years sometimes when we've written something that was unpopular politically i'd get a lot of mail but it wasn't like this it was kind of raw emotional personal mail and i saw that a lot of people had experiences like that uh difficulties with with dads in particular so i had been over the years occasionally thinking about this trying to understand more about my father and my mother and how they got along or did not get along uh i had talked with a lot of my cousins for their memories uh because my father died of cancer in 1984 and my mother died at age 90 in in 2008 but over the years since then i had been taking some notes occasionally uh but once i once i saw uh the reaction here then i figured okay there are a lot of people who who would find this interesting and could possibly be helped by it um so that's when i got to work actually writing this and uh communicated with one of my favorite publishers pnr and those folks were interested in doing it so got to work wrote it and uh it came out um early uh well about a month ago actually in time for father's day and there's been a lot of interest so um i'm glad to see that this could actually be helpful to some people so interesting for me just to write about it and think about it but i don't write books the way the way i might write a diary if i ever got into that it's the purpose is to communicate with other people and i think i've seen that there's an interest in this because there are there are a lot of people who have had jagged relationships with with their parents and fathers in particular well i actually want to thank uh emily etherton and bryce craig from pnr publishing for bringing this book to my attention and requesting that i interview marvin on it they've been a good friend the pnr publishing has been a good friend to iron sharpens iron radio since our inception in 2005 and have always been very supportive of all the events associated with this program as well as our interviews but if you could now get into some of the most life -forming experiences and memories from your upbringing in your childhood that you care to share we don't want to give away the whole store and leave no surprises that are going to be hopefully awaiting our listeners in your book but if you could share as much as you care to as as far as some of these crucial experiences not only perhaps ones that left scars but even ones that are cherished memories uh no matter how few they may be right well um certainly what i remember the most because it was pretty much a a weekly constant in our apartment over the years was my mother's disappointment in my father um he was always he was he was faithful to her he was kind to her but she had married him back in 1946 with the hope and probably the expectation that he would get a phd become a professor become a famous anthropologist uh she had had a very dismal and sometimes brutal childhood and she had thought that he would whisk her away from all that and she'd be able to travel around the world and and in a sense have reflected glory from his academic accomplishments he'd write books he'd give lectures it would be dr and mrs olasky and she would rejoice in that after years of sadness that she had that she had had and and that he disappointed her um for a whole lot of reasons he never he never uh achieved academically what she thought he would did not get a phd uh did not become a professor uh did not travel uh and she resented that uh until until they were old they never owned they never owned a house or when they were old they bought a condominium in florida but they never owned a house she had my mother had sisters and brothers who were economically successful and had nice houses so her regular um once a week for a while as she would just make her disappointment known now by the way just not to interrupt you but yeah were these personal goals and aspirations of your father himself to be an academic and actually in specifically in anthropology were these some things that things that he was studying for and striving for yes up to up to a certain point in his life and then and then there was a decided change um so she was disappointed i mean she uh she called him lazy uh she called him he never he never tried to make her happy by giving her these things and so forth uh so yeah she didn't have a whole lot of respect for him and and she showed that and that i think had an effect on on my older brother and myself uh but he hadn't been lazy uh he was very ambitious he grew up in malden massachusetts a working -class suburb of boston uh went to malden high school did well there not spectacularly but well but applied to harvard when he graduated from high school in 1935 he applied to harvard and was turned down um a great disappointment to him but it shouldn't have been a surprise uh malden was not at all a feeder school for harvard it wasn't like a prep school like uh exeter and over or those which send regularly a lot of their graduates to harvard it was malden high school kind of a a dumpy high school and i don't know if any people regularly from malden high school got into harvard uh and then his recommendations um i was able after a lot of pushing and shoving i was able to get his full file from harvard which included his applications included a lot of correspondence between the harvard administrators and him and professors and so forth and it was a revelation because uh when he applied to harvard he had no idea whatsoever how to get into harvard harvard was anti -semitic officially there were lots of smart jewish kids and harvard had a cap on jewish kids sometimes 10 sometimes certainly no more than 15 of their entering class even though academically these kids were for the most part very very good and so uh his grades were weren't my father's grades weren't all that outstanding um and his recommendations were from neighbors writing things like he has all the wisdom of the rabbis uh and and what a what a fine jewish boy he is a credit a credit to to the bible and everything and this was exactly the wrong thing to write to get into harvard and my father had not a clue about that um so it was funny it was funny to read that but here's what happened and i'm still not exactly sure how he did it he somehow managed to go to boston latin which was the elite public school of boston and had a year a postgraduate year at boston latin i don't know how he did it there may have been one particular guy from a foundation who helped him do it but it was very unusual at the time but he remade himself uh boston latin was a feeder school for harvard it was the elite public school but he wasn't him he didn't live in boston he lived in malden how he did it i still don't know but he did it and then the recommendations he got that year were totally different from what he had had before uh their recommendations from the headmaster at boston latin saying what a what a fine manly fellow uh my father was uh and what a a gentleman and a scholar i mean these were all these were all dog whistles as we might say these were all clues saying uh he is not he is not one of these jews you don't like uh he fits in well in this in this uh elite uh protestant largely some catholics this this environment here in boston latin and thus he'll fit in well at harvard and my father's interests my father's interests when he applied the first time were he was interested in in the hebrew scriptures he was interested in this uh when when he applied from boston latin suddenly he was interested in football and astronomy uh and other things never of which i saw him being interested in later but he knew how to apply he had learned how to apply to to harvard and he got in wow so um he was a he had enormous ambition uh he uh his father at that point uh his father was an immigrant from russia his father's aspirations for him were to become uh a hebrew school teacher which was a good white collar application my father my grandfather was a metal worker and this was a this was a fine aspiration for a son and then perhaps his sons could go on to other things become lawyers and doctors and so forth once my father got into harvard my grandfather's aspirations grew and he wanted my father to become a doctor which meant taking courses in chemistry and biology and so forth which my father wasn't interested in so he almost flunked out of harvard after working very hard to get into harvard he almost flunked out but pleaded i think with his father to let him change his major he did so he changed it to anthropology and then his grades improved he managed to eventually graduate with honors and be accepted into harvard graduate school in anthropology so to get back to your question yes he wanted to become an anthropologist he wanted to get a master's degree and then a phd in anthropology he was ambitious in that way um and that that's where that's where he stood in in 1941 now you mentioned your father's growing interest in the hebrew scriptures but how much of that was born of personal faith and uh just out of curiosity what was the personal faith of your mom in that jewish household and how uh deeply authentically religious were they or nominal well let me let me clarify here my father did not have a growing interest in judaism he actually had a declining interest in judaism oh his father my grandfather uh was was orthodox with with some he came from ukraine probably some hasidic overtones but not being a hasidic as such i mean he was he was traditional orthodox but he would uh he would pray several times a day he would he would uh uh go to go to synagogue all the time and my father went with him and he had my father then going to hebrew teachers college in boston which was orthodox in its theology uh shifting in some ways but orthodox in theology so he was he my father grew up orthodox jewish and that's what he was learning more of at hebrew teachers college but he was doing that largely at that point because that's what his father really wanted him to do now in the harvard anthropology department he he had a total challenge to that uh there was a famous um uh anthropology professor uh hooten who was a straight darwinian materialist and instead of believing that god created uh the world and human beings and everything else uh harvard anthropology definitely believed in evolution and that whole process that whole darwinian process so this was a direct challenge to everything my father had grown up with and in fact what he was studying starting in his junior year in high school uh he started going to hebrew teachers college and he continued that during his first couple of years at harvard so a total challenge and he had to decide at that point as a junior and a senior at harvard what do i believe he was no longer going to hebrew teachers college do i believe in the faith of my father do i believe in in orthodox judaism or do i believe in darwinian evolution and materialism um and it may have been a question of belief but it also i think was a question of what am i going to do for career success uh if he was going to get accepted into harvard graduate school in anthropology uh he was going to get accepted because he affirmed what the professors there believed so in order to have success he had to change around his theology and i didn't know that he had done this my mother by the way grew up in a area her father was jewish but but not interested in synagogue stuff interested in making money interested in in taking revenge on people who had been brutal to him in a way so my mother grew up without any without any jewish education or home life at all but she didn't know she wasn't against it she wasn't for it she was just just there and so she was very happy to be marrying someone who knew what judaism was about but she did not realize that my father had really changed so um to to go quickly through this part of the story um my father the harvard graduate school anthropology department kicked him out after a year um in some ways because he was not socially proficient the goal of harvard anthropology was to was to build anthropology departments in other schools lesser schools including university of massachusetts and schools all over the place so they were looking for people professors who who knew the basic anthropology but were also socially proficient and could could be evangelists for harvard anthropology and setting up programs across the country it was also a particular type of anthropology program that believed very much in measuring people's skulls it was anthropology based on a total humanistic materialist belief that maybe even we don't have common parents i mean certainly not adam and eve but maybe there have been five different evolutions and so there are superior races there are inferior races uh it was all mixed up in in evolution and um in a sense eugenics trying to build better people through through genetics and heredity and getting the right people to marry and have children and getting the wrong people not to have children suppose so -called so you know i think there were differences philosophically there were certain differences socially my father was not was not particularly socially adept harvard kicks him out uh he goes to work with my grandfather uh as world war one excuse me as world war ii begins he goes to work making boilers for submarines uh he learns he gets a sense of what's going on in eastern europe with hitler and and the holocaust uh he could have set out the war but he didn't he joined up uh eventually went to went to basic training not very pleasant uh eating pork all the time this was the basic army army food went across the atlantic uh served first in britain and then in france italy packing parachutes for flyers and when the war ends he spends another six months as best i can tell with 90 say certainty uh he was used by the army as a translator to go into uh the remains of concentration camps displaced persons refugees because my father from growing up with yiddish and then studying at a had a was fluent in german so he was useful as a translator and he would never talk about this uh and the army records burned up about 20 years ago so i can't be precise as to where he was which camps he went to but with 90 uncertainty uh i think that's what he saw and that changed him wow that's i think out of harvard had an effect on his ambitions he he he did not like being turned down by after he had changed he had changed his philosophy in order to conform and then they kick him out but then seeing the results of the holocaust seeing seeing six million i mean learning that six million jews have been killed um he became less interested in anthropology or getting a phd and more interested actually in what his father had wanted him to do in fact he's become a teacher in hebrew schools can we pick up right where you left off there because we have to get our mid we have to go to our midway break and all right please be patient with us folks the midway break is always a little longer than the other breaks in the show because grace life radio 90 .1

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that's g the number three conference .com please join chris arnzen and me september 30th through october the 2nd at g3 2021 this is justin peters reminding you that christ is supreme over all when iron sharpens iron radio first launched in 2005 the publishers of the new american standard bible were among my very first sponsors it gives me joy knowing that many scholars and pastors in the iron sharpens iron radio audience have been sticking with or switching to the nasb i'm pastor nate pickowitz of harvest bible church in gilminton ironworks new hampshire and the nasb is my bible of choice i'm pastor rich jensen of hope reform baptist church in quorum new york and the nasb is my bible of choice i'm pastor sule prince of oakwood wesleyan church in toronto ontario canada and the nasb is my bible of choice i'm pastor john sampson of king's church in peoria arizona and the nasb is my bible of choice i'm pastor chuck volo of new life community church in kingsville maryland and the nasb is my bible of choice i'm pastor steve herford of eastport baptist church in jacksonville florida and the nasb is my bible of choice i'm pastor roy owens jr of the church in friendship in hockley texas and the nasb is my bible of choice here's a great way for your church to help keep iron sharpens iron radio on the air pastors are your pew bibles tattered and falling apart consider restocking your pews with the nasb and tell the publishers you heard about them from chris arnson on iron sharpens iron radio go to nasbible .com

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that's l -e -e -s drugs rx .com don't forget to ask about their discount generic drug program greetings in the matchless name of our lord jesus christ my name is banu gadi i'm a pharmacist in which is the epicenter of the latest crisis the world is going through in psalm 139 verse 14 the psalmist offers praise to the lord like this i praise you because i'm fearfully and wonderfully made and wondrous are your works that my soul knows very well he saw god's goodness and mercy kindness and the beauty in what god has designed and he has erupted into praise in any crisis or problem brothers and sisters our only fallback position is to trust god's design and once we do there is nothing for us to do but to erupt in praise to him when the whole world is searching for a solution god in his infinite mercy has given us what we need to address this illness which can be pretty serious such is the beauty of his design knowing that design how can we not add up in praise to our great god like the psalmist did may god bless you and give all of us wisdom to see greater things in his design thank you charles head and spurgeon once said give yourself unto reading the man who never reads will never be read he who never quotes will never be quoted he will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves he has no brains of his own you need to read solid ground christian books is a publisher and book distributor who takes these words of the prince of preachers to heart the mission of solid ground christian books is to bring back treasures of the past to minister to christians in the present and future and to publish new titles that address burning issues in the church and the world since it's beginning in 2001 solid ground has been committed to publish god -centered christ exalting books for all ages we invite you to go treasure hunting at solid -ground -books .com

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has brought into print i don't know if my guest marvin alasky remembers this book but it was one of his favorites in i believe 2007 it is called yearning to breathe free thoughts on immigration islam and freedom by dave dykstra dear friend of mine going back to the 80s and marvin said in promotion of this book since july 1st of 2000 i've been telling world readers every few months about my treadmill reading books that exercise my mind while exercising my body normally i note only books worth reading and 400 during those seven years here are 100 all -time treadmill favorites and yearning to breathe free by david dykstra was one of them and if anybody wants to read a fascinating article that world magazine published back in october of 2008 i'm sorry 2006 october of 2006 titled cougars among the flock this was an actual print interview with marvin alasky and pastor dave dykstra on a biblical approach to a generous but wisely selective immigration policy if anybody wants to read that article in world magazine i can email you the link that features that article so if you want that book or any other book published by solid -ground -books .com

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give us the first name at least city and state of residence and country of residence before the break marvin you likely remember you reached a point where your dad had started to participate in absolutely remarkable activities involving the the death camps uh after world war ii uh working as a translator and working on providing documents what had occurred at these camps if you could pick up where you left off there well the effect i had on him was was dramatic on the on the one hand i think that um you know psychologically took took a lot out of him he some people who uh saw things close up and have written about their experiences have said they had a form of uh ptsd post post -traumatic syndrome they stayed with them uh read one thing by a by a one of the soldier 50 years later uh every spring all the nightmarish visions came back to him so i don't know if that was true about my father he just would never would never talk about it um and in a sense his not talking about it was a great mercy towards my my mother towards my brother towards myself i can speak about my own sense here that if he had talked about the horrible things that he had that he had seen there was certainly a tendency uh among among jewish people to associate uh wrongly but to i mean fairly wrongly but to associate nazis with christians so uh nazis hate jews christians hate jews um if he had told me those stories i may i might have internalized some of that uh some of that anti -semitism but um but i grew up without any experience any experience of anti -semitism i never really studied the holocaust or paid a whole lot of attention to it and that was really a blessing i think if i had internalized that sense that oh this is the christian world and the christian world is against jews and so forth that might have been a real stumbling block to me uh and as as through god's providence i i learned about him so i'm very grateful to my father in one sense that he didn't talk about any of that um and i think my mother would have you know she would have had nightmares also so it made it made the writing of this book more difficult because he just wouldn't talk about these things that obviously that had such an effect on him but it makes me appreciate him it's kind of like in detective shows the um you know the detectives the police folks they they don't go home with their stories of the grotesque things they've seen and that is psychologically difficult for them they have no one to talk with about and i think it was psychologically difficult for my father but he was self -sacrificial in that way uh towards my mother and towards um towards his two sons that he did not give us all those horror stories now uh before we go into those scars that left you with a difficult journey of of understanding and forgiveness uh can you tell us any of the things that you remember from growing up that might be cherished memories things that you love remembering you've spoken a lot uh about your your mom's negative treatment towards your dad but what about their treatment uh to you toward you and your brother and and some things that might be uh things you fondly remember well um i i remember that uh certainly we weren't we weren't rich or or even thoroughly middle class but we also weren't poor we never never went hungry there there wasn't a day in my life that there wasn't food uh had a had a bed to sleep in my mother uh apparently uh had never had a bed of her own to sleep in uh she always had to share with someone uh um we i had a uh i had clothes to wear i had a car to drive i was able to go to yale partly paid by scholarships but also they they pitched in some money even though they didn't have a whole lot so in all the material things they were they were very kind and within within limited earnings they were they were generous um intellectual things we had lots of books in our house the i grew up with classics illustrated comic books uh and so when i was a small kid i was learning uh at least the the plots of these great works of literature um and and not just not just reading uh kind of fantasy or or crime comics i i think that had a good a good effect on me as far as teaching me about some things that were honorable uh rather than rather than grotesque i learned how to play chess because my father taught my older brother and he basically taught me so that was good um i learned and this is as a journalist uh i learned the importance of accuracy um the probably the first report i ever wrote was in the third grade uh so this is 1957 there just been a war uh between israel and egypt and i had written in my report because i i somehow already knew that that fighting a defensive war was okay but it wasn't good to go attacking other people and so i wrote in my report again this is this is a third grade third grade report but i wrote in my report that egypt had attacked israel and actually no israel uh with great provocation and knowing the egyptians were ready to attack had actually attacked egypt and my father corrected me on that as big a fan as he was of of israel and zionism and so forth he corrected me factually on that and that's a useful thing very early in the third grade for a future journalist to know you got to be factually accurate uh even even if if it's uh if it's not uh the the greatest propaganda for your side uh that's what you got to do so yeah i think i owe a lot to him materially i uh i owe a lot to him intellectually and they stayed together they were married for 37 years until my father died i think with today's culture and given the given the uh the the lack of compatibility they had in lots of ways they would have gotten a divorce and that would have been that would have been uh worse much worse for my brother and myself so uh he put up with a lot uh he sacrificed a lot uh even with uh a wife who did not respect him uh i think he was he was kind to her now what were the the uh elements of your upbringing that you can at least uh guess uh can trace where you could trace your interest in becoming a journalist too um that's a really good question you know having having a lot of books in the house made me made me uh uh early on literate and interested in reading and studying and learning things so that i think is is uh i was always i was always curious wanting to find out stuff and that's important for a journalist that was probably it um although i should say also that uh that um we we subscribed to uh newsweek at a certain point when i was a child and so i was reading a weekly news magazine and interested in that so i was learning a lot about what was going on in the in the world uh beyond that i i can't i can't see a whole lot but i i can't stress enough that they that they contributed intellectually uh just having books around and we watched the news on television so we weren't isolated in that way and that went that was that was useful now obviously a main theme of your book is found in the subtitle the journey to understanding and forgiveness uh tell us about these things that you are no doubt having a hard time letting go of things that developed in you a spirit of resentment and bitterness and an unforgiving attitude and how the lord brought you to the place of conquering those negative feelings and thoughts well in in general um when i was when i was growing up um my my mother had had a dislike of and envy of rich people and so i i think i got a certain uh not racism but classism from her that um yeah that the that rich people were bad people so there was there was resentment there there was envy there was covetousness um that that i left behind when becoming a christian uh god worked on me uh right away on that as far as um particularly my my parents are concerned that that was a a journey of understanding and then the understanding led to well forgiveness of my mother i mean in many ways she wasn't a good wife uh she she nagged him i think embarrassed him sometimes humiliated him in front of in front of kids which is a really bad thing to do but i could understand more her frustrations uh her father had been had been in the russian army which he deserted from uh was caught uh punished really brutalized and i think he absorbed my my grandfather absorbed from that you know do it to them before they can do it to you um and he was not a kind father to his children i've gotten that from uh from my cousins and from what their parents said uh so i i have more understanding of my mother and her frustration because coming from a very miserable childhood she said she never had a teddy bear never had any love never had any affection never went anywhere um she listened to the metropolitan opera on saturday afternoons on i think it was cbs radio and wanted to do that wanted to have go to the opera learn things and she never had an opportunity to do that so i can understand her sadness her resentment and then and then my father with um um you know three strikes basically uh to use a baseball analogy getting kicked out of harvard getting getting a huge um just a huge kick in the rear uh from just what he saw at the end of world war ii and and how awful that was uh and then instead of having a loving wife having a nagging wife i mean these are these are three strikes that i think took away left left him with sadness um really he had his ambition had uh had not helped him get anywhere uh his marriage was unhappy in lots of ways uh but he stuck with it so i think i understand my father better and understand why he in a sense escaped into reading mysteries and science fiction and didn't want to go places didn't want to didn't want to uh do do things sometimes which other dads did like playing catch uh i can i can understand his sadness and his weariness and his his turning inward uh at that point with with three strikes against him so yeah out of that understanding comes forgiveness um that's uh there's there's as as as we know certainly from the bible and certainly from calvin there's uh there's plenty of sin to go around there's plenty of misery to go around um you know i am i am grateful that that as sad in some ways as their lives were they provided much better opportunities for for their so yeah how can i not forgive them especially when god has forgiven me so much i mean i went around as a communist um engaged in character assassination against god and mocking him and attacking him and hating him and god's forgiven me that how how can i not forgive my parents much lesser things when despite all the difficulties they faced and all the sadnesses in their life they still provided well for me and gave me gave me uh what i needed intellectually and materially not spiritually but you know god and his and his mercy took care of that we have uh an email from grady in ashborough north carolina one of our faithful uh listeners and generous supporters he says greetings brothers chris and marv i have been a longtime subscriber to world magazine and in fact and in fact found out about iron sharpens iron radio from an ad in world a few years back you did a series of articles on your life and i found god's providence in your life a lot like mine where you mentioned your dad it reminded me of my dad when i was younger my dad is now 91 and later in his life our lord chose him and became less hardened and cold from what he says his father was very standoffish and i'm thinking that may have been a generational trait my grandfather fought in world war one and was gassed in france and passed away when my dad was in the eighth grade dad had to quit school to take care of his mom and sister do you think that their attitude towards their family was because of the toughness of life during that period and it caused them to be cold and distant yeah good that's a good question certainly a generational thing uh so many people have written to me and said that their their parents never never talked with them much about their experiences um so yeah that was there now did that experience uh create the tendency to be cold and distant it created the the tendency was not to talk about yourself and not to talk about the problems you would had and the things you had seen as far as the coldness and distance uh i think that varied a lot from person to person all i can do is based is based that that assessment on what uh what people have told me written to me and so forth but you know some had very warm parents uh some didn't i think that varied a lot from person to person the common thing though is that they would they would not talk about their experiences their hardships uh they wanted to spare their children that that knowledge thank you grady guess what you have won a copy of marvin alasky's book lament for a father the journey to understanding and forgiveness uh compliments of pnr publishing and compliments of cumberland valley bible book service cvbbs .com

who will be shipping this book out to you at no charge to you or to i interpret zion radio make sure we have your full mailing address in ashborough north carolina we have uh an anonymous listener i am the victim of a very brutal and sadistic and hateful ex -husband who actually did things in our marriage like threaten me physically even to the point of pointing a loaded gun at my head forgiveness has become a very difficult thing for me over the years and i was wondering and forgive me if you've already said this was your coming to the point of forgiveness a gradual thing even as a christian or was it more like a light switch that god had instant mercy upon you taking that burden away from you all right well yeah um um um yeah i'm sorry to hear that about this this listener's experience and that's uh that's that's uh gruesome and i did not encounter anything like that so i did i did not have as much to forgive in my case i think the the answer is is both for forgiveness as far as um in a in a macro sense that is not losing losing my resentment against let's say rich people for example uh or you know others who had offended me in in minor ways that was that was a that was a rapid thing that was a switch from on to off um as far as other stuff i mean the things that were more personal uh including my parents i mean that was that was more of a gradual thing but um i don't think i was ever i don't think i was ever angry with them in the sense of just being really outright mad at them it was more it was more frustration and a certain a certain sadness uh that you know other people had had good relationships with their parents and i hadn't you know partly perhaps because of my parents but also probably because of me i was certainly a very selfish kid uh and thinking about myself never never really about my parents and the and the problems they had they had gone through so i bear a lot of responsibility uh for that distance that occurred that was a more gradual thing as i'd learn more about them and learn more what they went through and develop more appreciation for what they gave me even though they didn't give me some things they i appreciate what they had done that that um that that changed the um i mean i think i was i was asked this on on one interview uh you know do you at this point love your father and i think and i think i can say yes which i would not have been able to say while he was alive um the uh i said it at one point when he was dying i said it to him but i so yeah there has been a journey to understanding and that journey of understanding has also brought forgiveness but again i i hasten to say i didn't have as much to forgive as as this listener did but um you know think of what god forgives in us and all the ways all the ways that we we abuse him and neglect his love and turn from him so um yeah i think it's i think with god's love it is doable to to forgive even even people who've been brutal um i mean i know i've talked with a concentration camp survivor who was able to say and i think honestly that that she forgives even the the the concentration camp guards uh some of whom are sadistic wow that she's you know she is now overflowing with love for god and that she's able to to forgive people who are very bad to her so yeah with god all things are possible amen well thank you anonymous and if you provide for me via email of course we would never expose this information over the air but if you give me by email your name and your mailing address you have also won a free copy of lament for a father by marvin olaski compliments of pnr publishing and compliments of our friends at cumberland bible book service cvbbs .com

we'll be shipping it out to you if you give us your address thank you very much uh we have bobby in hartsdale new york bobby in hartsdale new york says please excuse me if i did not hear this before because i just started listening due to other previous engagements but i was wondering if your parents saw you come to faith in christ how they responded to it and did they get saved to your knowledge by the mercy and grace of god well sadly to my knowledge not not saved um for my mother who in a sense i mean who had not grown up with any religious teaching and it was still really foreign to her and she thought this was all very strange in other words i had belonged to the mickey mouse club but i decided for some reason to join the donald duck club and so you know wasn't the mickey mouse club good enough for you or things like that and um she always was curious i mean she would come to church with us oh wow and uh you know when you that you know not all the time but sometimes she came to church with us uh she didn't like one particular pastor because he was too loud and she wanted to sleep and he kept waking her up which is what pastors need to do basically uh but as far as i know she was never awakened spiritually um the uh uh when i was writing books that that showed i was writing from uh from a christian understanding uh she kept those books under her bed and wouldn't tell her brothers or sisters about them until back in the 1990s i i was involved in some things by which i was on television a lot and some political stuff and giving talks and at that point uh my mother brought out the books and so forth maybe she figured uh if if my uncles or aunts her brother and sisters were listening they they had understood that i'd become a christian but if not getting on television and speaking on television trumped in her view any embarrassment about my moving from from the mickey mouse club to the donald duck club that is moving from judaism to christianity in her understanding um uh my my father uh understood what i was doing and did not like it uh when i tried to talk with him about it and probably not as not very effectively uh uh he just he just would not listen at all and uh i think i could have done better but um uh yeah he he just was not interested and uh and he uh he thought i and i tried to explain that i uh that actually um my my children his grandchildren would now grow up learning as they did about abraham and isaac and jacob and moses and david and the others which would not have happened had i remained uh secular had i been a uh and i i have uh enormous respect of course for the hebrew scriptures it's uh uh it's coming it comes from god so you know and so i i feel in becoming a christian i am much closer to judaism than i certainly was as an atheist as a marxist so i tried to explain that to my father but uh i don't think he ever accepted that uh yeah that seems to be the case uh in probably most if not all uh jews who come to embrace jesus as the messiah especially if they come from nominal jewish backgrounds that may celebrate passover in a nominal way and things like that they wind up becoming more appreciative and knowledgeable about their jewish roots than they ever did when they were in nominal jewish homes right yeah and and uh yeah i i wish i wish more uh more jewish people my my brothers and sisters would understand exactly that it's it's coming closer it's not moving away bobby by the way uh bobby and hartsdale you've also won a free copy of lament for a father so please give us your full mailing address in hartsdale new york so that cvbbs .com

cumberland valley bible book service can ship that out to you and once again we thank pnr publishing for their generosity in providing these books we have to go to our final break right now it's a lot more brief than the last breaks uh we'll be right back so please if you have a question you'd like to get in line and ask a question of your own uh please uh send your email quickly to chris arnzen at gmail .com

c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com as always give us your first name at least your city and state of residence and your country of residence if you live outside the usa we'll be right back with marvin olaski so don't go away chris arnzen host of iron sharpens iron radio announcing a new website with an exciting offer from world magazine my trusted source for news from a christian perspective try world now at no charge for 90 days by going to get world now .com

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forward slash podcast hi i'm buzz taylor chris arnzen of iron sharpens iron radio has had a long time partnership with at cv bbs which stands for cumberland valley bible book service they specialize in supplying reformed and puritan books and bibles at discount prices that make them affordable for everyone cv bbs has been a family -owned book service since 1987 operating out of carlisle pennsylvania they seek to bring you the best available christian books and bibles at the best possible prices unlike other book sites they make no effort to provide every book that is available or popular because frankly much of what is being printed is not worth your time that means you can get to the good stuff faster it also means you don't have to worry about being assaulted by the pornographic heretical and otherwise faith insulting materials promoted by the secular book vendors browse the pages at ease shop at your leisure and purchase with confidence at cumberland valley bible book service order online at cv bbs .com

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that's l -e -e -s drugs rx .com don't forget to ask about their discount generic drug program anchored in truth ministries is the mission arm of grace life church of the shoals based in alabama it supports missionaries in over 13 countries around the world truth is in partnership with 36 church plants as well as radio stations theological seminaries and various programs for unreached people glorify gods and reach so many different contexts globally as well as locally vital work written truth dot org welcome back and we have arnie in perry county pennsylvania who wants to know how far do we take the biblical command to honor their father and mother there isn't a lot of detail in the scripture regarding how that is done when you have a parent that is evil and you're trying to protect your children and grandchildren from the hazardous behavior of your parents whether it is physical threat or even just emotional and mental threat can you hear me brother yes um i'm thinking about that because it's a really good question the honor does not mean spend time with necessarily although that can be one way of honoring parents if the if the the person is is a danger to grandchildren then yeah you do want to you do want to keep them away um honor honor means always always hoping the best always caring always wanting to to try to help when a person is doing evil things how can you honoring means never never giving up basically uh realizing that this person even having done evil is still uh created in the image of god and deserves honor for that alone plus you exist because of that person so if if your uh existence is something that you value you should be thankful for that person and then and thank thank that person i mean what i've seen i've just seen some remarkable examples of god changing lives and part of honoring is seeing what god enjoys doing at various times the way he does change lives but really working particularly hard as best you can for that particular parent rather than giving up on the parent and that means praying asking for god's mercy asking god to to change that person and just just praying fervently and consistently and and keeping it up i think that's a large part of honoring but again it doesn't mean spending time with it doesn't necessarily mean liking uh it means really praying to god in a case like this that the person will change because god is capable of changing anyone excellent answer and arnie give us your full mailing address in perry county pennsylvania so that we can have cvbbs .com

ship out a copy of lament for a father to you i want you to have approximately four minutes of uninterrupted time where you could really summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today about lament for a father and the journey to understanding and forgiveness what should be etched is uh what jr packer brilliantly summarized in three words god saves sinners and god saves us when we become christians it's not because of our own efforts or goodness or brilliance or anything it's complete mercy from god and in thinking about our parents there's a natural tendency i think to if if if we have bad memories there's a tendency to blame them to scapegoat them often to excuse ourselves that we have to fight with all the power god gives us and this is the nature of sin i i tell in the book the uh the what a lot of people including uh um the late chief the late justice antonin scalia would say uh a joke in a sense but a serious joke that uh a person is explaining her particular theology uh and and uh i suppose geology you know the earth is on the back of a turtle and then if you ask well what's that turtle in the back off well another turtle and so how far do you go and she says turtles all the way down huh so i think of sin in that way it's sin all the way down uh i can trace it back for several generations the the cossacks in the russian army were brutal to my grandfather so i can blame the cossacks but the czars authorities were brutal to the cossacks and who is brutal to them he traced it back and back and back and back this is what's called original sin and the way it affects all of us so j .i

packard god saves sinners amen we're all sinners god is the one who does it we don't save and save means saving spiritually saving for eternally really changing a life and my own experience moving from communism to a faith in christ my own experience to moving from a distance to my parents while while loving them now uh changing my thinking about them um yeah that's i think what i want readers to take away don't blame parents um you know perhaps in one sense i mean think think of think of your own sin your own responsibility and you can think of theirs but then it goes back to grandparents and great -grandparents and all the way back it goes back to to governments to this to that to all sorts of things and rather just blaming and saying uh oh this person or this institution or whatever is is the the center of evil um let's let's think about how god transforms how god changes how god saves sinners amen we've got time for one more question uh ronald in eastern suffolk county wants to know what can you say perhaps is the most precious thing to you about reform theology as a jewish believer i know the gospel is the same for every tribe and tongue and people and nation but at the same time there may be something uniquely precious to you as a jew about the doctrines of sovereign grace can you mention something well yeah very good question can mention a couple of things number one um it explains so much that it explains the the wellsprings of history it explains why there's evil in the world um it it it deals with the question of evil uh much better than any other uh aspect of christian theology of which i'm aware so that's precious to me that things that are otherwise confusing or confounding are now explained uh the and this in this this i suppose in one sense is more christian generally but i was always puzzled by it's what chapter 22 of the almost sacrifice of isaac um the new testament explains that you see how this prefigures christ and and teaches us about that and there's so many other things so i'm grateful to to christianity generally christian theology generally for explaining things and i'm grateful to reform theology what's precious is that here's someone like me who was a sinner i mean i didn't i didn't kill anyone physically but i certainly wished harm on people um you know uh and in 45 years of marriage i've been through god's grace faithful to my wonderful wife but before that you know i i was committing adultery whenever i had the opportunity uh i stole uh i bore false witness and what's what's good about reform theology i mean many things but the one thing is that is that um god takes that away in a way that doesn't expand my ego because i could say i could say oh i am smart i am good i am wonderful i did these things but then i turned away i found it uh i i i and yeah reform theology takes out the eye so it keeps us from on the one hand either either thinking that we are we are just rats and mice and vermin the other hand it keeps us thinking from that we are from from thinking that we are gods unto ourselves and able ourselves to to turn bad stuff into good stuff no it's all god all the time and that's a very a very precious thing um be just one other moment being the pastor who taught me many years ago really illuminated me brought me to to a reformed understanding or at least put the right books in my hand to be able to do that he would he would tell me about what do you say to a mother let's say who has had her who whose son died in a car accident and she's thinking oh if i hadn't engaged in that conversation with him and thus kept him in my house 10 minutes longer than he otherwise would have been and if i hadn't if i hadn't done that then he wouldn't have been at that intersection where a drunk driver drove and rammed him and killed him or if only this if only that if only this and this pastor said reformed theology is really wonderful in taking away that sense of guilt that sense of responsibility that sense of oh what if what if what if because if in fact all these things are god's plan from before the beginning of creation well that's the way it is now we don't know why it happened we do know that god loves to love those who love him and more than that he loves those who don't love him why he doesn't do that to everyone i don't know but he does that to lots of people and i'm very grateful for that so you know it takes away reformed theology takes away the sense of you know if only this if only that uh it's it's a it's a great comfort in that way uh to know that in fact you know this is god's mysterious providence rather than my doing that is that has done bad things and it's a great help to us in avoiding egotism to realize that it's god who changed us we we are naturally sinful and we depend entirely on god amen well thank you so much for being such a spectacular superb guest brother marvin i look forward to many frequent returns by you as a guest if you are willing and if god of course is willing my apologies to ken and tulsa oklahoma and others that are waiting to have their questions asked that we ran out of time i want to remind you that if you are interested in getting this book that we have been discussing and giving away today lament for a father the journey to understanding and forgiveness it's published by p and r publishing and you can get it from our sponsors cvbbs .com

cumberland valley bible books service so we want to thank pnr for providing these books and cvbbs .com

for shipping them out hey chris could i also i just want to also thank pnr uh they've really been terrific i've i've worked with a with a bunch of publishers and uh and pnr has been has been the best so far really like those folks and they do a good job amen and yet bryce craig has been a friend for years and has always been supportive of iron trip and zion radio and i thank god for him also folks don't forget about world magazine wng .org