March 22, 2017 Show with Frank Turek PLUS Anthony Uvenio & Nick Mitchell on “Will You Survive the Culture?”

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

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on 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, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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

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

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

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Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 22nd day of March 2017.

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Will you survive the culture? Well, that's the theme of a conference we are going to be discussing today.

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We have three guests to discuss this. The first hour, we are going to have Frank Turek of Cross Examined on the program to discuss that theme, and then later for the second hour, we are going to have

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Anthony Uvinio and Nick Mitchell, the founders of New York Apologetics, discussing that same concept because they are the founders of New York Apologetics that are hosting the

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Will You Survive the Culture conference on Long Island, New York, and you'll hear more about that during our interviews.

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But Frank Turek, my first guest, is an award -winning author or co -author of four books,

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Stealing from God, Why Atheists Need God to Make Their Case, I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an

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Atheist, Correct, Not Politically Correct, and Legislating Morality.

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He's a debater of prominent atheists, including Christopher Hitchens and David Silverman. He's host of the weekly

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TV show, I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist, and the weekly radio program, Cross Examined with Frank Turek.

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He's a featured guest in the media as a leading apologetic expert, and he's a guest on hundreds of radio programs and many top

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TV programs, including The O 'Reilly Factor, Hannity and Combs, Faith Under Fire, and Politically Incorrect, and he's also a columnist for Town Hall and the president of CrossExamined .org,

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and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, Frank Turek. And with that,

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Chris, we're out of time. And in studio with me is my co -host, the

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Rev. Buzz Taylor. Why don't you greet Frank Turek. Yes, so good to meet you. Hey, Buzz, how you doing?

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Great, thanks. Well, first of all, this is obviously an intention -getter, this theme here, will you survive the culture?

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What exactly is it that we who are Christians are, must be prepared to survive?

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What is going on in the culture specifically that you think that we need to be further equipped to survive?

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Well, I think one thing that we need to survive, especially for our young people, is that many of them leave the home, about three out of four leave the home, and they turn away from the church.

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I'm talking about young people who are brought up in the church their entire lives, I don't care what denomination, they just walk away from the three out of four, 75%.

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And one of the major reasons for that, Chris, is intellectually, they don't know why Christianity is true. And that's because we've never really told them why it's true.

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We simply say, go out there and believe. And we never give them any evidence. In fact,

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I always ask audiences, what's the easiest way to get picked off in a war? And the answer is, is to not know you're in one.

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And I think it's pretty obvious that the world out there isn't neutral, that the world in many cases is decidedly anti -Christian.

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And if you're not prepared intellectually to deal with their counter -arguments, and even the ridicule that often will come for being a

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Christian, then chances are you might not survive college, or you might not survive just being out in the world.

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Now, that is the main theme, will you survive the culture of the conference. What are some of the subcategories of that umbrella theme that you'll be addressing?

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Well, I'm going to be talking about issues related to the evidence for Christianity from our book, I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an

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Atheist. So that covers, does truth exist? Does God exist? Are miracles possible?

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Did the resurrection really occur? Is the New Testament really reliable?

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And if so, then is the whole Bible reliable? And we're going to have other speakers as well. It's not just me,

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J. Warner Wallace. He's a cold case homicide detective. It'll be Greg Kokel, who is the president of Stand to Reason, who has written several great books, including a new one called, oh gee, what's the new one called?

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I just had him on my program. It has to do with, I got it here on my shelf.

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It has to do the story of reality. I don't even have it on my shelf. I have it in my other office. It's called

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The Story of Reality. And it really is about the big picture as to what reality is all about, and why we're here, and what the purpose of life is.

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And also, Mary Jo Sharp will be there, who is a apologist and author herself.

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So it'll be quite a lineup. And then of course, you've got Nick and Antony, who are heading this whole thing up from New York Apologetics.

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So it's going to be a great program, I think. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. And I already have

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Greg Kokel. He is already lined up for our April 7th

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Iron Sharpens Iron radio. So we're looking forward to have Greg on April 7th, so everybody listening can mark their calendars.

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And I would love to get Mary Jo Sharp and Jay Warner Wallace on the show too. I've never interviewed either one of them.

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I had the privilege of interviewing Greg years ago, but I'd love to have all of you guys on, and hopefully that will happen.

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The thing that the liberals laugh at when we make claims like we are making right now, that there is a culture war, that Christians must survive, that we are considered the enemy by the majority of the population, including especially the government, and all these things.

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They laugh at this. They still will view Christians as the majority and as the oppressor and as the ones who are trying to infiltrate every sphere of life against the will of the population by imposing our morality on them all.

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But how do you react to this concept that the liberal left doesn't seem to admit that we are the ones losing our freedoms and rights as Christians, one after another?

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Well, one thing I might say is that the only worldview that's going to respect everyone's rights is the

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Christian worldview. Certainly the Muslim worldview isn't going to respect it, not when it gets into power, at least that's not what history shows.

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Normally Sharia law is put into place. The Hindu worldview isn't going to respect individual rights because they have a caste system, they have a hierarchy.

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The atheistic worldview doesn't generally respect individual rights. Normally the person in power decides what rights there are, and quite frequently it's just the people in power that have the rights.

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Only the Christian worldview will recognize that every individual human being has certain rights, the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and happiness meant virtue in those days, the pursuit to become a person of virtue for the community.

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And that's what the Christian worldview will respect, and give people the freedom of religion, the freedom of speech.

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You notice, Chris and Buzz, that it seems like the folks on the left who say they're fighting for tolerance are often the most intolerant people out there.

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They don't even want to have a debate, they want to cancel the debate, they just want to shut people down.

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They didn't want to let people speak at universities, they want to riot.

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And this obviously isn't true of everyone on the left, I'm not trying to paint too broad a brush, but when's the last time you heard a conservative group trying to shout down somebody and stop somebody from speaking at a university?

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All I hear is crickets, right? It's the left that wants to shut down the debate, they don't want to have a debate, they want to rule by power, not by reason.

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Now, how do you respond though to conservative evangelicals, and perhaps we could even add into that mix conservative

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Roman Catholics who have been historically at times a part of these boycotts, where perhaps right now it's not so prevalent, but I can remember especially in the 80s and perhaps the 90s, whenever a movie would come out that was offensive to Christianity, it was mocking in some way or slanderous in some way to the historic

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Christian faith, to the Bible or to Jesus Christ himself, you would have hundreds, perhaps even depending upon the circumstances, thousands of conservative evangelicals and or Roman Catholics marching outside with picket signs and so forth at movie theaters.

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Do you think that that's an appropriate approach? Yeah, I suppose it depends on what the issue is.

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I mean, people have a right to protest and people have a right not to buy products with which they don't agree, especially companies that support products they disagree.

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I mean, the left does that all the time. The left, if you just saw in the Drudge Report the other day, there's some people in California, some

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Democrats in California who are in the legislature who are warning companies who are bidding to build aspects of the wall on the border.

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Those Democrats are warning those companies that we may divest our investments from the state of California if you do that.

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And not only that, as you know, there are several people who have been run out of business by the left because they refuse to engage themselves in a same -sex ceremony.

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They'll serve people who identify as LGBT. They just won't be a part of that same -sex ceremony.

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And the folks on the left who say, no, you must be a part of my same -sex ceremony, they will shut those places down.

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You look at the Kleins, Aaron and Melissa Klein up there in Oregon, their bakery was shut down by the left because they said, look, in good conscience, we can't be a part of a same -sex ceremony.

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So the sword cuts both ways. People have the right to boycott things if they want to.

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But it seems to me that the folks that are doing that in a more sort of aggressive way are the folks on the left.

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Now, obviously, I believe that we should all have a legal right to do those kinds of things.

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I was mainly speaking of, do you think that it is the best strategy as an evangelist of the gospel to do those kinds of things?

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Well, I don't think it's an either -or situation. You know, you either preach the gospel or you boycott.

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I mean, if you really have a strong opinion, like, for example, if somebody's supporting

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Planned Parenthood and you don't want your money going to pay to abort babies, then, look, there are places

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I avoid. I avoid Target, I'm just telling you, right? I don't go to Target. Target, you know, wants to have transgendered bathrooms, which isn't a problem for transgendered folks.

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It's a problem for everybody else because it allows people who could be heterosexual predators to use that rule as a ruse to gain access to the bathroom where women and children are.

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And I'm not going there. If that's how much you value my daughter's safety,

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I'm not going. Mm -hmm. And, of course, I wholeheartedly support my friends,

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I have a number of them, who have boycotts in front of Planned Parenthood locations where they are reaching out with the gospel to women who are about to have their babies murdered.

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Now, something like that, I obviously wholeheartedly support. But, Reverend Buzz Mykohos... That's what I wanted to bring up.

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I wanted to bring up, basically, the idea that you were talking about. We have the right to boycott and all, but what about things like Operation Rescue with, you know, like Chris just mentioned, you know, a woman wants to go get an abortion and we're going to demonstrate at the abortion clinic.

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What do you think about that? And there were actually, Operation Rescue, if I'm not mistaken, even did more radical things like chaining themselves to doors of abortion clinics and things like that.

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Yeah, right, and actually the Supreme Court ruled against them in a way that said they couldn't get within so many feet of the abortion clinic or whatever.

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I don't know the exact details, something under RICO laws. But, you know, in any event, we can debate the merits of certain tactics, but I agree that they're trying to stop an evil.

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And to be complicit in an evil is something I don't want to be complicit in. Let me make one other point about this, because so many people confuse religion and morality on this point,

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Chris. It is true that the left fears that the right is going to impose their morality.

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The problem is the left is imposing their morality. See, this isn't a matter of religion.

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This has nothing to do with the separation of church and state or any of that. Nobody is trying to impose a particular religious viewpoint on anybody else except some who are jihadists.

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They do want to want Sharia law imposed on everybody. But really, very few people in the

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Christian world want to force people to be a part of a church or to engage in certain rites and rituals or to say they're part of a church.

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We're not trying to impose religion. But everybody, hear me on this because it's so often misunderstood, everybody's trying to legislate morality.

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You always hear you can't legislate morality? Newsflash, that's the only thing you can legislate. Every law tries to impose a moral point of view.

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And when people say don't impose your morality, first of all, I say why not? Would that be immoral? I mean, here you are trying to impose your morality on me telling me

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I can't impose my moral point of view. Everybody's trying to impose morality. But I think the better answer is this.

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Look, this isn't my morality. I didn't make up the fact that murder is wrong, that rape is wrong, that theft is wrong, that abortion is wrong, that men were made for women and women were made for men.

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And the only way to reliably perpetuate and stabilize society is to value one sexual relationship over every other sexual relationship.

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I didn't make any of this up. This isn't my morality. This is the morality.

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The one Thomas Jefferson said was self -evident. I didn't make it up. You didn't make it up.

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I don't want to impose my morality. You shouldn't impose your morality. We ought to impose the morality, the basic morality we all understand but some of us suppress.

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Yes, in fact, the civil rights movement of the 60s, that was entirely based on imposing morality upon the culture that was trying to fight against the moral concept of integration and treating people according to the content of their character and not the color of their skin.

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Exactly, and what's going on now is the LGBT community has co -opted that and said we're the same thing.

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And the answer is, well, everybody's equal. LGBT people are just as equal as everybody else, but not every behavior is equal.

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You see, the issue with the civil rights movement regarding race is race is irrelevant to behavior.

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Race has no impact on your behavior. But LGBT issues are often about behavior.

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So there's a difference between race, which has nothing to do with behavior, and LGBT issues, which often have to do with behavior.

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And all laws discriminate against behavior, but they don't discriminate against persons.

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Every law says one behavior is right and the opposite behavior is wrong. For example, marriage is a behavior.

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Natural marriage is a The question is, which behavior should we promote?

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Should we promote natural marriage or should we promote same -sex marriage? And if you promote both, what you're saying is that marriage has nothing to do with gender.

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And if marriage has nothing to do with gender, then it has absolutely nothing to do with children. And if it has nothing to do with children, why should the government care?

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You see, the reason the government's involved in marriage is not to recognize that John loves

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Mary or that Bill loves Steve. That's not the reason the government's involved in marriage.

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The government shouldn't care what romantic relationships are about. The government cares when two people come together to perpetuate and stabilize society because it can do something that the government can't do, and that is perpetuate and stabilize society.

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So I talk about this a lot in the book, Correct, Not Politically Correct. But the point is, as you pointed out,

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Chris, every position is a moral position. The only question is, is it the right moral position, and should it be imposed?

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We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know,

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I agree that Christians must treat sinners with love and we must pray for them and do good for them.

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But I do have a problem that many modern evangelicals are caving into political correctness by treating homosexuals or those involved in that activity as though they are a part of an ethnic or national group, by using phrases like the gay community, by apologizing publicly for harm that has been done to them when genuine

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Christians have not historically been known to do these things. Do you agree that modern evangelicals are going too far in the opposite extreme of the

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God hates fag heresy? Well, some might, but I think to refer to a group of people as a community doesn't mean you necessarily agree with it, but it is a community, however you want to call it.

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And secondly, the second part of the question was what, Chris? How did he put it again?

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He was basically saying that are many modern evangelicals going too far in the opposite direction from the

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God hates fags heresy. He's saying obviously that is wrong, that we shouldn't be we shouldn't be hateful.

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In fact, I don't even believe those people, I don't believe Fred Felp was saved, nor do I believe that that cult is saved because they delight in the death of the wicked.

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They don't want homosexuals to come to repentance. They just love talking about how they're going to hell and they take great joy in it.

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But I can see what the listener is saying because I think that there can be a candy coating of this sin in order to be more comforting and kind and sweet to those who are involved in that activity.

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And you just mentioned a second ago that you say that they are a community. Why don't we use phrases like the adulterer community then or the pedophile community?

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Because well, the issue, of course, with that, Chris, is that there is no real lobby for those communities.

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There's nobody who's saying I'm part of the adulterer community. There are people who say they're part of the LGBT community, though.

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It's a reference that we make. Now, if people are thinking, well, you're going too far by referring to it that way,

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I don't necessarily think so. But the point that I want to make about it is that these are behaviorally related communities.

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They are not racially related communities. They are not communities that have no impact on behavior.

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They're all about behavior. The question is, is it a behavior that the government ought to promote?

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You see, the government can do one of three things with any behavior. It can prohibit a behavior, it can permit a behavior, or it can promote a behavior.

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And homosexuality is already permitted in this country. It's been permitted for several years. And even when it was prohibited by state law, it wasn't enforced.

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But the question is, should the government go from permitting behavior to promoting behavior? And in my view, that's a tragic mistake to go from permitting to promoting.

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Because now we're saying it's actually a good thing. When in fact, from a medical perspective, we know it isn't.

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And to equate same -sex relationships with opposite -sex relationships is to say there's no difference between them.

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Well, there are differences. They're not differences between the people. Remember, all people are equal. But not everything they do are equal.

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And in fact, if you're going to say that those two relationships are the same, as I mentioned earlier, you're saying, well, there's no differences between men and women.

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There's no differences between where children come from or how children are brought up best.

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There are differences. We all know what those differences are. So to equate the two types of relationships is really to put a falsehood out and say that they are the same.

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They're not the same. The people are the same, but the behaviors aren't the same. Yes. And what the government or any other entity does when they promote homosexuality, even though they would never admit this, what they are saying is

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Christianity is wrong. And don't you think that those that say we have to keep religion out of politics, we have to keep religion out of the classroom and all of this, aren't they really injecting their own religious views?

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Whenever they make statements like homosexuality is a completely acceptable expression of sexuality, once they inject that idea into any sphere of influence, whether they want to call it a religion or not, or a religious view or not, they are injecting a religious teaching into the sphere that they say religion should be absent.

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Well, they're certainly interjecting a transcendent teaching. They're right to say same -sex marriage.

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The problem is, as I point out in the book, Stealing from God, and I'll talk about this at the New York Apologetics Conference, which is coming up next month,

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NewYorkApologetics .com. They can check out it there. It's up in Smithtown, New York. The problem is there are no rights if there is no

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God. Everything's just a matter of opinion if there is no God. Because if God does not exist, if there is not a standard of goodness, and that's what we mean by God, his nature is perfect.

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It's what we mean by good. And he confers rights, as our

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Declaration of Independence says, on people. If there is no God to confer rights, everything's a matter of opinion, which means there's not only no right to same -sex marriage, there's no right to natural marriage.

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There's not only no right to abortion, there's no right to life. There's no right to anything if there is no

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God. So the very people who say we've got to get religion, we've got to get God out of things, are taking the very foundation of rights out of the equation in our country, and yet they're asserting they have certain rights.

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So they're stealing from God while they argue against him. We have CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who says that, although I agree that Christian students should have the right to have

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Bible clubs and Christian clubs and have the right to silently pray, I actually think it backfires on evangelical

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Christians when they want things like prayer and Christian teaching in the public schools, because most of these teachers are likely to be non -Christians.

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Why on earth would you want non -Christians to lead your child in prayer or to teach them anything about religion in a public school setting?

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Well, I don't know if that's really the point. The point is, does the Constitution prohibit school prayer? And the answer is no, because for the first 180 or so years of our country, we had it, and it wasn't considered an establishment of religion.

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We weren't forcing young people to be a part of a religion or to say they had to be a part of a church.

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We were just acknowledging our history, and we were acknowledging the fact that our country is founded on at least theism, that there is a

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God beyond the world who created, he sustains the world, and he grants us certain rights. And ever since the

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Supreme Court illegitimately threw school prayer out of school in the early 60s, what's happened to our schools?

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I mean, it's uncanny when you look at what's happened. We've revolted against the traditional moral point of view founded in our

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Declaration of Independence and in all major religious viewpoints, major religious religions, and now we have anarchy in our schools, basically.

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I mean, think about the problems in schools, say, in the 50s, Chris. What were the big problems?

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Cutting in line, talking, chewing gum, you know, these kind of things.

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What kind of problems do you have now, 50 years later, 60 years later? You've got rape, you've got abortion, you've got gangs, you've got murder.

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I mean, anyone see a little bit of a difference here? What's the reason? At least part of the reason is you're pulling the moral influence out of the schools and you're letting kids just run wild, and that's pretty much what's happened.

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Yeah, I am a graduate of Amityville High School on Long Island, New York, and when

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I went to Amityville High School in the 80s, it was an interracial school, predominantly black students.

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I would say it was a 60 -40 ratio, and yet there were rarely ever any interracial fights or anything like that.

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And today, I understand there are metal detectors that you have to pass through when you go into the school. Yeah, and we're our own worst enemy.

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We think that we can make it without God, without acknowledging that there is a God. In fact, right on the ceiling of the rotunda of the

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Thomas Jefferson Memorial, I can't quote it, but it says something like this. It says, can a nation be thought secure when we've given up the idea that our rights are a gift from God?

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And you know, Jefferson was probably a deist or a quasi -deist anyway, but he realized that without acknowledging that God is the source of rights, our nation won't long survive.

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And we keep sliding down this moral abyss because... and it's interesting that as we slide down the moral abyss,

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Chris, these people who want to get God out are asserting that it's the right thing to do, and we have certain rights.

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So again, they're arguing for rights without a right giver. They're stealing from God while they argue against him.

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And as I say, I'll talk about this in the New York Apologetics Conference, newyorkapologetics .com for information. It's coming up at the end of April up there in Smithtown, New York.

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Yes, and it is interesting that many liberals and probably should be more appropriately described as leftists, they want

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Christians, evangelical Bible -believing Christians, out of every sphere of politics and influence, and yet they want

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Muslims in those same spheres of influence, and yet the Muslims would pose a far greater threat to them, the liberals, if they were ever to gain political weight and power in this country.

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It's kind of an odd marriage, isn't it? Yeah, very odd marriage.

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I don't quite get it, but it does seem that for some reason the leftists are all protective of Muslims, who by history and by their own admission, at least the folks who are jihadists, and there's a significant minority of people who are, they're saying that if we ever take over, we want

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Sharia law in place, and we want to get rid of the United States Constitution. In fact, a friend of mine runs an organization called

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Understanding the Threat. He's a former FBI agent and United States Marine, and he tracks all this very closely.

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People should check out Understanding the Threat because it's quite interesting. In fact, according to him, one of the guys, the plaintiff who brought the lawsuit against Trump's second executive order, was a member of the

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Muslim Brotherhood. I'm going to read you a question right now before we go to a break, so that's just where you have time to mull it over and you can answer it when we return.

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This is from Joe in Slovenia. Joe in Slovenia says, That was

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Joe in Slovenia, and you can answer that when we return from the break.

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If anybody else would like to join Joe in Slovenia with a question of your own for Frank Turek, our email address is

30:59

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This is Chris Arnzin, and we are 37 days away from the New York Apologetics Long Island Conference, and that is going to be held the 28th and 29th of April at Smithtown Christian School.

36:03

The theme is, Will You Survive the Culture? And featured on the panel of speakers that weekend or those two days are

36:13

Frank Turek, who is our guest right now, Mary Jo Sharp, Greg Kuckel, who will be our guest coming up on the 7th of April, and Jay Warner Wallace.

36:24

For more details, go to NewYorkApologetics .com, NewYorkApologetics .com, and click on Conference, and you'll have all the information that you need.

36:34

Right now, our guest, as I was saying, is Frank Turek, and we are discussing that theme, that very theme of the conference,

36:43

Will You Survive the Culture? If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is ChrisArnzin at gmail .com.

36:49

ChrisArnzin at gmail .com. And before the break, Frank, I asked you the question of our listener in Slovenia, Joe, who says,

36:58

Please ask Brother Frank to address the position that some promote that biblical Christianity does not involve engagement in politics, social issues, etc.

37:07

Rather, we are to preach the gospel, make disciples, and plant churches. There are many prominent

37:13

Christian leaders who promote this view from the scriptures. Are they wrong? Yes. Yes, they're wrong.

37:22

Let me give you my reasons. First of all, a real practical reason, and that is, if you don't think that politics is important, then you don't think the gospel is important.

37:33

You go, Whoa, what do you mean? Well, let me ask you a question, Chris. Can you do what we're doing right here on the radio in some of the places

37:43

I've been to? I've been to Iran, Saudi Arabia, China. Can you preach the gospel legally in those countries?

37:51

It would be the world's shortest broadcast. That's right. Can you have a church, an open church in those countries?

37:59

No. Why? Because politically, they've ruled it out. So if you want to ensure that you have the freedom to preach the gospel and live out the gospel, as some on the left now won't let us do, then you have to be involved in politics.

38:17

Because politics, the rules that are set in Washington, the rules that are set in your state and local governments, affect almost everything you do, including your ability to preach and live out the gospel.

38:29

The politicians set the rules. Now, we take it for granted in this country.

38:35

Oh, yeah, we got a freedom of religion. Yeah, we can preach the gospel. We can start churches and all that. That's eroding. And if we don't stop the erosion and get engaged, it's going to go away completely.

38:45

The second reason, I think, or at least partially, it's going to go away. The second reason I think it's important is because biblically, that's what the biblical characters did.

38:53

In fact, Jesus himself got involved in politics. You say, How did he? Where? What do you mean? Who did he go after most vociferously?

39:00

The Pharisees. Who were the Pharisees? They were the religious and political leaders of Israel.

39:07

They partially ran Israel. They were on the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council. And Jesus excoriated them for neglecting the weightier matters of the law.

39:17

And in our country, we are neglecting the weightier matters of the law. Back then, they were tithing their spices, as Jesus said, but they neglected the weightier matters of the law, mercy, justice, the big issues.

39:28

In our country, we're doing the same thing. Chris, we're telling people what light bulbs they have to use, but we won't tell people, don't kill your children in the womb.

39:38

We are neglecting the weightier matters of the law as well. So yes, Christians have to be involved in politics.

39:44

In fact, one way I do this, if I'm in person with somebody, is I ask them to take out their phone and to Google Korea Satellite Night, Korea Satellite Night.

39:57

You've probably seen the satellite picture of the Korean peninsula at night. It's shocking.

40:03

You look at South Korea, it's filled with light and productivity and the gospel. It's one of the more Christianized countries in the world.

40:10

You look at North Korea, it's virtually completely black. Why? South Korea has political freedom.

40:18

North Korea does not. South Korea has the gospel. North Korea is a concentration camp, and the reason for it is politics.

40:28

In fact, our country wouldn't exist unless Christians got involved in politics. Just about all of our founding fathers were

40:34

Christians, and they were trying to get religious freedom. So if you just think you can go through life without getting involved in politics, you can, but eventually your freedom to even be involved in the gospel, at least in a legal way, is going to go away.

40:50

Yeah, people entirely misunderstand what the separation of church and state was all about.

40:56

That was Thomas Jefferson's promise, primarily to Baptists, that the government would not interfere in their

41:02

Christian life. That's right. And the only thing that the Constitution protects the citizens from is the establishing of a religion by the government.

41:11

That's right. To say you have to be part of a national church, and it even allowed state churches, because five out of the thirteen colonies, when they signed the

41:20

Constitution, had their own state churches. So the Constitution didn't prevent them from establishing their own state churches.

41:28

It just prevented the establishment of a national church. Now, the states eventually got rid of their state churches.

41:36

The last one to get rid of their state church, believe it or not, was Massachusetts in 1833. But to say that the

41:43

Constitution prohibits even a state church is wrong. It prohibits a national church, but not a state church.

41:51

Yes. And we have RJ in White Plains, New York, who wants to know, do you think, though, however, even if all you said is true, that there should be a distinction made between how a church is involved in politics and how individual

42:07

Christians are? Do you not think it is dangerous for a church to endorse a specific candidate or party when it could backfire on the gospel later on if that person or party turns out to be fraudulent or involved in something scandalous that brings a great ruin to our nation?

42:28

Yeah, it could. That's one thing you need to consider. But you run the same risk by having people in your congregation who may bring disrepute on the gospel.

42:38

So yeah, look, I'm not for churches running around endorsing candidates. However, pastors certainly have that right to do so.

42:47

In fact, the Johnson Amendment, which was passed by a voice vote many years ago, got churches scared to in any way mention politics in the pulpit.

43:00

And one of the things that President Trump has agreed to do is get rid of that amendment, because churches ought to be able to make their voices known on these issues.

43:08

I'm not saying that ought to be their central role, it isn't. But to ignore it completely is a dereliction of duty.

43:17

We have Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, who says, I know that this is not the topic you are addressing, but I know that Frank Turek has debated the late

43:28

Christopher Hitchens. Did he ever develop a friendship with Christopher like Larry Taunton did and like Doug Wilson did?

43:37

No, not to the same extent. I only saw Christopher twice at both of the debates. We got along fine, but we didn't really maintain a relationship afterwards.

43:47

Larry did and Doug Wilson did. I did email him on occasion, you know, just to see how he was doing.

43:53

In fact, about two and a half weeks before he died, I emailed him and I said, hey Christopher, I know some people in New York who at Sloan Kettering Hospital who might be able to help you.

44:03

And all he said was, hey, thanks, but can we renew our debates? And I said, yeah, sure, let's set one up. And I said, are you ready?

44:10

You want me to try and set it up? He goes, no, I'm not quite there yet. And then I learned two and a half weeks later, he died. I didn't know if he thought he was recovering or what he was thinking.

44:18

But no, I didn't have the same kind of relationship. By the way, that book that Larry wrote,

44:23

Larry Taunton wrote is great, The Faith of Christopher Hitchens. Yes, I interviewed him on it. Yeah, and spoiler alert, right now,

44:31

I mean, he's not saying Christopher became a Christian, but he was investigating Christianity as he was dealing with his illness.

44:38

Right, yeah, I did interview Larry on that. And some liberals and atheists have, without even reading the book, accused

44:45

Larry of making some kind of a claim that Christopher converted. And the point was that atheism is a faith, it's just a wrong one.

44:53

Sure, yeah, everybody has a belief in something. I know atheists are running around trying to say, well,

44:59

I lack a belief and all this. Well, look, a rock lacks a belief in God, that doesn't make it an atheist, okay?

45:06

And if you're just saying you lack a belief in something, then you're not really saying anything about reality, you're just saying something about your psychological state.

45:15

So if you want to say as an atheist, you lack a belief in God, you can say that, but that's not telling me, that's not giving me any evidence that the universe could exist without God.

45:23

Or that's not giving me any evidence that God doesn't exist. That's just a statement of your psychological state.

45:30

If I lack a belief in materialism, which is what atheists, many atheists believe in, that's not giving any evidence for or against materialism, it's just stating my psychological state.

45:40

So this idea that somebody just lacks a belief really isn't saying much. You need to try and explain reality from your worldview.

45:49

And we had a debate that you moderated, Chris, back almost two years ago now up there at Stony Brook, between me and Michael Shermer on the issue of morality, what better explains morality,

46:03

God, or science? And he tried to take the science route, and I, of course, took the God route. People can see that debate online, and our friends at New York Apologetics had it filmed, and you can see it if you search for it.

46:16

And just to reiterate, I'm going to be up there at Smithtown, New York, for a New York Apologetics conference at the end of April, and if people go to NewYorkApologetics .com,

46:25

you can join us. I'll be there with Jay Warner Wallace and Greg Kokel and Mary Jo Sharp and the boys from New York Apologetics, Nick and Antony.

46:35

Yes, that was an interesting debate to moderate, because it really revealed that your atheist opponent had no intention of ever following any kind of rules that were set down in that debate at all.

46:48

Yeah, no, we kind of had a pretty good—I actually enjoyed the give and take. I prefer debates where the two debaters talk to one another rather than just give their speeches, and so we had the opportunity to do that, but it was a little bit of cross -talk going on.

47:04

Oh yeah, I don't believe a debate is a debate without a cross -examination, as even your ministry's name would lead to.

47:12

But if it becomes a shouting match, then the winner is the guy with louder voice who can overpower the other person, you know.

47:19

Well, I'm from New Jersey, so I have a louder voice. Is that video available on the debate?

47:27

I guess you could find it perhaps on YouTube. Yeah, you could find it. NewYorkApologetics .com has it, and I know

47:34

Michael has it on his website, Michael Shermer, or his YouTube channel. What is the name of the debate?

47:41

If they Google Turek -Shermer morality debate, they'll probably find it.

47:47

Okay, because I know that Stony Brook University was trying to suppress it. Yeah, they were trying to stifle it, yeah.

47:54

In the name of inclusion, tolerance, and diversity, they wanted to exclude any talk of the debate because we happened to discuss same -sex marriage on there, and in fact, there was a group on campus, a homosexual group, that was so upset that we talked about it that they wanted the whole thing spiked, and literally

48:14

Michael and I, my opponent in the debate, got together and said, this is ridiculous, and we wrote an op -ed on the

48:22

Huffington Post to say, who's trying to shut up debate? Even Michael Shermer agreed, no, you can't shut down debate on any of these issues.

48:32

Right, and he's more of a politically libertarian, isn't he? Yeah, well, he's right on that. We ought to have free speech, and we ought to be able to discuss these issues, if anywhere, at the university.

48:42

Come on. Right, and so Michael and I wrote an op -ed, you can search for it on Huffington Post, it's probably 18 months or so ago now, where we came together and said that these people who are leftists on this

48:54

Stony Brook campus, and Stony Brook University itself pretty much came out in support of them, said, you know, we can't, we don't want to show this debate even now, now that you discussed this, and we said, are you out of your mind?

49:08

I mean, we're having a debate, both sides are being represented, and to say that you want to censor the debate because we talked about a topic you think we ought not be, that we ought not have spoken of,

49:21

I mean, it's just, it's lunacy, but that's the leftists for you today. I don't want to call all liberals that way,

49:27

Chris, as you said earlier, they're more leftists, they're more totalitarians that want to shut down debate, cancel the debate, rather than discuss the issue.

49:35

Yeah, in fact, I, years ago, in the early 2000s, I arranged a debate between my friend

49:42

Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries and Barry Lynn, the president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and they debated on homosexuality, and Barry Lynn, who is an

49:52

ACLU attorney, after the debate, he realized he lost so badly that he threatened a lawsuit against James White if he distributed the video, so the

50:04

Alliance Defense Fund, which is now Alliance Defending Freedom, they picked up James White's case, and Barry Lynn was so shocked that a suit was filed against him for freedom to distribute the video that he didn't even show up at the hearing, so the judge granted full freedom to James White and Alpha Omega Ministries.

50:25

Oh, so is it on YouTube right now? Yes, you can see it on YouTube, and you could probably also see it at AOMIN .org.

50:32

That was a debate that took place in the either late 90s or early 2000s. Yeah, well, when the left starts losing, they just want to shut everything down, don't they?

50:41

Yep. Well, I want to make sure that our listeners, before we run out of time, know that your website is crossexamined .org,

50:50

crossexamined .org, and of course, the conference information is available at newyorkapologetics .com,

50:58

and by the way, folks, you have to spell out New York, it's not N -Y, it's newyorkapologetics .com.

51:07

Yeah, it's N -E -W -Y -A -R -K. It's Y -A -W -K.

51:14

Oh boy. But no, it's actually the right spelling, N -E -W -Y -O -R -K -apologetics .com,

51:21

and you could click on conference to get all of that information. I would like you to close out your segment of the program with a summary of what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today.

51:30

Well, I want people to know that Christianity is true, that Jesus really, there is a God, Jesus really did rise from the dead, which shows that his claim to be

51:39

God is true, and I think the evidence for that is quite strong, and our book, I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an

51:44

Atheist, lays that out if they're interested in that. Also, you mentioned our website, crossexamined .org.

51:50

There's an app, Chris, that people can download for free. We've had about 125 ,000 people download it already because they're finding it very helpful.

51:57

It not only has our podcast that we do once a week on there, it also has our TV program streaming live on there on Wednesday nights, and it has a quick answer section.

52:08

So you might be having lunch with somebody and they come up with an objection you're not quite sure how to answer from a

52:13

Christian point of view, you can take out your iPhone, your Droid, or if you're one of the seven people in the world with a

52:20

Windows phone, it works on that too, and you can get an answer to the objection that they're bringing up right there on the cross -examined app.

52:27

So if you go to the app store, it's two words, cross -examined, two words, cross -examined, you'll find the app, download it, it's free.

52:35

It's also got the calendar on there, so you can see the New York Apologetics Conference coming up, which is coming up at the end of April.

52:43

It's actually April 28th, a Friday night, and then April 29th, all day Saturday. So once again, my friend

52:50

Greg Kokel, Jay Warner Wallace, Mary Jo Sharp will join me, Frank Turek there, along with Nick and Anthony.

52:56

Great. Well, it's always a pleasure to have you on the program, Frank. I look forward to your return to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and I'm sorry that I will not be able to be at your conference, because I'm already scheduled to have an exhibitor's booth at a different conference, but hopefully sometimes our calendar, hopefully sometime our calendar will be matching up in the near future.

53:17

Well, Chris, according to Nick and Anthony, you're not even saved if you don't go to the conference. No, you better show up, buddy.

53:26

You better be there. Oh boy. Well, hopefully I will have a double there.

53:36

I appreciate being on, and Pastor Buzz there, thanks for having me, and don't forget NewYorkApologetics .com,

53:42

end of April. That's right, NewYorkApologetics .com, and also crossexamined .org.

53:48

That's crossexamined with an ed at the end, dot org. That's right. All right. Well, God bless you, and I look forward to your return to Iron Sharpens Iron.

53:55

Thanks, Chris. Great program. Appreciate it. All right. God bless you. Bye -bye. And coming up next,

54:00

I hope you don't go away, because coming up next is two people that was just mentioned or were just mentioned by Frank Turek.

54:09

That's Anthony and Nick. Anthony Uvinio and Nick Mitchell, founders of NewYorkApologetics, will be joining us at any moment after our station break.

54:18

If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question on the same theme that we have been discussing, will you survive the culture, our email address is

54:27

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

54:33

and please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

54:40

USA. And you may remain anonymous if it makes you feel more comfortable, because we understand that sometimes you may be bringing up something that's personal and sensitive and something that would compel you not to identify yourself.

54:55

And also, I have just been sent an email of the YouTube video between Michael Shermer and Frank Turek, Michael Shermer being the atheist.

55:11

You can, if you email me at ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com,

55:19

I will email you the YouTube link to that debate so you can see that debate and listen to it.

55:28

But we are going to a break right now, so I hope to hear from you with your questions for Anthony Uvinio and Nick Mitchell after these messages at ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

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01:07:30

Welcome back. This is Chris Arns, and if you just tuned us in, our guests for the second hour today are

01:07:37

Anthony Uvinio and Nick Mitchell. They are founders of New York Apologetics, and we are going to be talking about their upcoming conference just in a matter of days,

01:07:48

Will You Survive the Culture? in Smithtown, Long Island, New York. Before I go to our guests and introduce them formally and open up our discussion,

01:07:57

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01:09:20

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Well, I am now delighted to introduce to you

01:09:26

Anthony Uvinio and Nick Mitchell, founders of New York Apologetics. They have been on this program before.

01:09:32

And in fact, Anthony Uvinio, that name may sound familiar to many of my listeners who watched the recent debate

01:09:40

I organized in Carlisle, Pennsylvania between Dr. Tony Costa of Toronto Baptist Seminary and my other friend,

01:09:49

Robert St. Genes, who's a Roman Catholic, founder of Catholic Apologetics International, who debated on Mary, a sinless queen of heaven or a sinner saved by grace.

01:10:00

Well, Anthony Uvinio was our moderator that evening and did quite an outstanding job, if I do say so.

01:10:08

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome Anthony Uvinio and Nick Mitchell back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:10:15

Thanks for having us on, Chris. We really appreciate it. Yeah, it's a pleasure, Chris. And I'd like to introduce both of you to my co -host, the

01:10:21

Reverend Buzz Taylor. And it's good to meet both of you. Hi, Buzz. Hey, Buzz.

01:10:28

And well, tell our listeners something about New York Apologetics. We'll start with Anthony and then perhaps,

01:10:34

Nick, if you could add some additional information. Sure. New York Apologetics is a teaching organization designed to help the churches and college kids and high school kids learn the arguments for the existence of God so that when they go to college, they don't get derailed from their faith, and to just equip them and make them a little bit more confident to open their mouth when they're in a situation where the existence of God may come up or somebody may be blaspheming in the name of God and they can stand up for their convictions with logical, reasonable answers.

01:11:10

And Nick, do you have anything to add? Yeah, I just want to build on that. I just want to say that we view the culture kind of like sending your kids to a tropical island where there's malaria.

01:11:22

You know, and you send them over there. If you could get them a vaccination, you would, so that they wouldn't catch malaria.

01:11:28

But if you wouldn't, it'd be kind of like sending them out there without any protection. You'd be a terrible parent, and we feel that at New York Apologetics that what we're doing is we're helping the church, we're helping

01:11:40

Christians sort of inoculate their young people from what's going to happen to them in the school system.

01:11:46

By the time they get into grade school, they're taught that they can't pray, they can't read their Bible, and they get a little, you know, further along and they start to study science.

01:11:54

The idea of creation and the things that are contained in the Bible about our origin are kind of benched and pushed to the side by the time they're in college.

01:12:02

It's just absolute fantasy. So we really feel that this ministry is important. Yeah, this is a grassroots ministry, and it's quite interesting.

01:12:11

It's probably very unusual because the two of you actually come from different backgrounds theologically, but at the same time have so much in common in regard to the

01:12:22

Christian faith that you can still conduct and maintain an Apologetics ministry.

01:12:28

I know that Anthony, you, for the last number of months anyway, have been attending

01:12:34

Hope Reform Baptist Church where my dear friend Pastor Rich Jensen is the pastor, and I know

01:12:39

Nick, you are from a Pentecostal background, so why don't you two explain those differences and how you still can maintain harmony in an

01:12:47

Apologetics ministry? Well we center everything on the Gospel and pizza, Chris, so it makes sense.

01:12:54

We both have a love for Jesus and we have a love for pizza. Life is good. I can't really say any more than that.

01:13:03

Have you got any vacancies in your ministry? There's always room for one more, bud.

01:13:10

Although we rarely have a slice left over, we'd have to get another five. Yeah, they have added a sola to the solos of the

01:13:19

Reformation. Sola pepperoni. We're actually collaborating with Lee Strobel right now on his new book,

01:13:29

The Case of Calzone, with a special envoy to that particular book.

01:13:39

And of course, if it was a Lutheran apologist, it would be a case of cores. Anyway, Anthony, tell us something about your background for those of our listeners who did not hear you interviewed last time.

01:13:57

Something about how you came to Christ, what the religious background of your upbringing was, and then we could have Nick do the same when you're finished.

01:14:04

Sure. I was raised Roman Catholic on Long Island. I went to Catholic my whole life.

01:14:10

Catholic Gram School, Catholic High School. After high school,

01:14:16

I was a non -practicing Catholic, although I considered myself spiritual. I always prayed every night and thought

01:14:22

I was a good person. In the course of meeting my wife and starting to attend the church that she went to,

01:14:29

I wasn't married at the time, and you know what happens. I'm starting to like this girl, and I said, you know what? I'd better check out to see if she's a nut before I get deeply involved.

01:14:39

And I go to her church, and I end up becoming one of those nuts, you know? I started to hear things from the pastor, and I felt like he really was speaking directly to me.

01:14:51

And at the same time, a friend of mine became a Christian, and he started witnessing to me. And lo and behold,

01:14:57

I was brought to somebody's house to discuss spiritual matters, and that night in a friend of mine's basement who

01:15:05

I still meet with regularly, I was saved. God saved me.

01:15:11

He opened up my heart. One of the guys had me read Psalm 51, and at the end of that Psalm, it says, and young bulls will be slaughtered on your altar.

01:15:21

And it was just the way that God conveyed to me a message that I could do it my way and be slaughtered, or I could do it

01:15:27

His way and survive. And what the guys in that room that night didn't realize was that at the time, not that I was big into the

01:15:35

Zodiac or anything like that, but I always read my horoscope, and I was a Taurus, and I identified with the bull.

01:15:42

You know, I'm stable, I'm stubborn. Everything that you could think about the bull, that would be me.

01:15:48

I just idolized bulls. And God basically cut my heart wide open when I heard that young bulls will be slaughtered on His altar if I didn't submit to Him.

01:15:57

So it was at that moment that I bent the knee, and it's been fast forward ever since.

01:16:04

God's just doing amazing things in my life. He hooked me up with great guys like Nick Mitchell, who's helped me in honing in my theology and our study for apologetics.

01:16:14

So I'm grateful to God for apologetics and meeting you, Chris. And, you know, through the debates with James White, that was real instrumental in when

01:16:22

I came out of Catholicism, how to understand what they actually believed in contrast to what

01:16:29

Protestants believed. It was very instrumental, and that's how I came to actually recognize you.

01:16:34

And then when I started doing the debate, Nick coached me, and I mean, we just kindled a friendship, and that's how actually

01:16:40

New York Apologetics got started. But I'll let Nick tell you his half of the story. Yeah, Nick?

01:16:47

Yeah, okay. So I guess my story starts when I was about seven years old.

01:16:53

I was laying out in a field. I come from eastern Long Island, and me and a bunch of my buddies were out there in the woods.

01:16:59

We were laying down, looking up at the stars, and I started to get the question in my mind, how does space just go on forever?

01:17:08

And if it doesn't, what stops it, and what's behind that? And we got to this point where we just started realizing that there was something more than us out there, and it really impacted me in my heart of hearts at seven years old.

01:17:23

Now, I wasn't churched. I wasn't brought up in any religion. I was just sort of left to myself.

01:17:30

My mom had talked to us about God sometimes, and she had some faith, but really we were kind of left to ourselves.

01:17:36

So from that point forward, something happened in my heart. It was almost as if God was drawing me.

01:17:43

Now, I know that's not possible in your theology, but it was almost like a drawing of God on me at that young age.

01:17:54

But fast forward, I was in business at 17 years old. I had done okay, and by 20 years old,

01:18:02

I had become frustrated with the business world. God again began to draw on my heart.

01:18:09

I asked Him to get me out of the business if He was real, and to give me a business.

01:18:15

And with that, I got a phone call, and somebody gave me a business. I walked out.

01:18:21

I picked up a Bible. I started reading the Bible, and within a week, the church that I attend now came and sort of tried to witness to me, but I had more questions than they had answers at that time.

01:18:32

And it just snowballed. I've been pastoring there since 1994. I was an associate pastor.

01:18:37

He went on Life, Church, or God and the whole book. And from there, it just progressively got better and better.

01:18:44

I met my wife just a year or two before that. Actually, three years before that, she was a

01:18:51

Jewish person. Again, not really religious, but we kind of got in at the same time.

01:18:57

I actually really turned over to Christ during our relationship, and she thought I had a mental breakdown, actually.

01:19:04

She thought I went crazy, because I was so into money at that point and business that to turn around and just walk away from it and move towards God was so extreme.

01:19:14

She thought I seriously needed therapy. It wasn't until about six months later that she got saved. That was even tougher for her, being that her family was

01:19:21

Jewish, and she had to explain all that. It just snowballed, and here we are. Like Anthony said, back a few years ago, he had the debate.

01:19:30

I got an opportunity to go alongside him and sort of tag along with that debate, and we became friends.

01:19:36

And here we are, trying to impact the area, the region. Well, I am quite confident that 99 .9999

01:19:43

% of all wives think their husbands need therapy. Chris, I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with that.

01:19:55

I'm just going to stay out of that. By the way, that was a good career move. Your congregation is that Church of God, Cleveland, Tennessee, the nomination?

01:20:08

Yeah, Church of God, Cleveland, Tennessee. Yeah, one of my dearest friends on the planet earth is Pastor Jim Capo of the

01:20:14

Massapequa Church of God of that same denomination. Oh, great. And he is a five -point Calvinist, Nick, so there is hope for you.

01:20:23

Well, you guys got to keep praying for us. But actually,

01:20:31

I would strongly urge you both to get to know Pastor Capo there on Long Island. He is a phenomenal brother in Christ, and I owe a lot to him, and miss him greatly ever since moving here to Carlisle.

01:20:44

But this conference that you have developed, Will You Survive the

01:20:50

Culture? How did you come up with that theme, other than watching the news every day? Well, I changed it.

01:20:59

It was, Will You Survive the Conference? We, I don't know, we just collaborated.

01:21:08

We're looking at so many areas. Both Anthony and I kind of deal with the cultural conditioning that's going on, same -sex attraction, transgenderism, the marriage issue, the abortion issue.

01:21:19

There are just so many things that are going on. By the way, I would be careful how you phrase Anthony and I are dealing with same -sex attraction.

01:21:26

People might misunderstand that. All right, actually, a funny story.

01:21:32

We were up at a church in New Rochelle. Oh, no, where is this? This is up in Nyack, and we were presenting the gospel.

01:21:39

And the pastor there was a boxer. And at the end, Anthony got a little excited and went to give him a kiss, a holy kiss.

01:21:47

And he just was like, oh, I don't do man kisses. Not used to you

01:21:56

Italian New Yorkers, I guess, huh, Anthony? Yeah, this is terrific that this will be recorded for all posterity's sake.

01:22:03

This is eternally embarrassing. That's all right. That's all right. Well, did you ever try to give James White a hug?

01:22:09

I mean, he has his hands at his sides and looks like he's terrified every time. I know. I'm dying to actually get to meet him on a different level one of these days.

01:22:18

Maybe we'll be able to interview him. But yeah, we'd convert him. Don't worry. Well, actually, the last time

01:22:24

I saw him, he actually extended his arms to me for a hug. I couldn't believe it. Wow. But anyway, he's not known for that.

01:22:31

But on Long Island, this is quite a leftist -influenced area of the country.

01:22:42

Obviously, everybody knows that New York is. People pretty much who are conservative don't even think that their vote counts, other than local elections, because of the liberalism of New York.

01:22:56

Tell us something about some of the unique things you guys are facing out there that some of our listeners globally may be unaware of.

01:23:05

Well, down here on Long Island, it's a very affluent area. Most of the people, especially on the

01:23:12

North Shore, have money. I think Long Island in particular, when you have money, you think you're okay.

01:23:20

As long as you're keeping up with the Joneses, and you have your new car every three years, and you have your pool in your backyard, and you're able to go to the theater and see sports events, there's really no need for God.

01:23:33

They're not concerned about their sin, because, look, they're comfortable.

01:23:41

That's the problem. They're comfortable. They suffer from, one pastor said, affluenza.

01:23:46

They don't recognize their own need for a Savior, because they're comforted with the things of this world.

01:23:53

So one of the obstacles that we have to overcome is to show them their sinfulness in light of a holy

01:23:59

God, and get them to understand that they really do lack what they need most, when in reality, they've bowed down and worshipped mammon, and because they have it, and it's positively affecting their lives, they think that they're just fine.

01:24:17

So that's kind of one of the things that we have to overcome. In fact, what

01:24:22

I'm going to do is to prevent having to interrupt you mid -sentence, I'm going to go to our final advertising break right now.

01:24:29

It's going to be shorter one. Anybody who would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:24:35

chrisarnson at gmail .com. We already have several people waiting to have their questions asked and answered, and we'll get to you as soon as possible after the break.

01:24:43

So don't go away. We'll be right back, God willing, with Anthony Uvinio and Nick Mitchell of New York Apologetics, right after these messages.

01:24:53

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Or go to BatteryDepot .com. That's BatteryDepot .com. Welcome back.

01:30:46

This is Chris Arnson. If you just tuned in to Iron Sharpens Iron, our guests for the second hour are

01:30:52

Anthony Uvinio and Nick Mitchell, founders of NewYork Apologetics .com.

01:30:58

That's NewYorkApologetics .com with the words New York spelled out. And we are talking about their upcoming conference, which is going to be held

01:31:07

Friday, the 28th of April, 7 to 9 p .m. Eastern Time, and Saturday, the 29th of April, 9 a .m.

01:31:15

to 4 p .m. Eastern Time, in Smithtown, Long Island. The featured speakers are

01:31:21

Mary Jo Sharp, Greg Kokel, who will be on this program on April 7th for the full two hours,

01:31:28

I believe, 4 to 6 p .m. And we have also Jay Warner Wallace is going to be speaking at this conference.

01:31:37

And for more details, again, go to NewYorkApologetics .com, NewYorkApologetics .com.

01:31:44

And please click on the conference tab to get all the information about this.

01:31:51

If you could, either one of you or both of you, tell us more about the guest speakers other than Frank Turek, since we just had him on for an hour.

01:31:59

Tell us something more about Mary Jo Sharp, about Greg Kokel, and about Jay Warner Wallace. Well, sure.

01:32:05

I just want to let everybody know that this is the first time that all four of these presenters are going to be on Long Island doing a conference.

01:32:12

Wow. This is, yeah, this is together. Together, yes. Frank Turek has been on Long Island.

01:32:19

Yes, he's been out. And I think the closest to Long Island Greg Kokel's ever been is New Jersey and maybe a little bit upstate

01:32:26

New York. But I don't necessarily know that he's been on Long Island, especially all four of them together. This is kind of a once -in -a -lifetime event.

01:32:35

It's the first time it's happened on Long Island. So we're just trying to drum up some interest in apologetics, because we have to turn

01:32:41

Long Island right side up for the Lord. I'm done sitting back and waiting for it to happen. Me and Nick are now engaged in the fight, making it happen.

01:32:49

We have to do this. It's so important, especially considering the culture that we live in and the encroachment that we have on the church at this point in time.

01:32:59

But as far as the speakers go, Mary Jo Sharp, she's a professor at Houston Baptist University.

01:33:06

She's wrote several books. She tours the country also, as well as teaching at the university.

01:33:12

Her specialty is talking, having conversations with atheists, and presenting

01:33:18

Jesus as truth as compared to a pagan myth. And Nick, do you want to tell them about Kokel and Jay Warner?

01:33:27

Yeah, I think that Jay Warner, of course, is the author of God's Crime Scene.

01:33:34

And I don't know if you've ever seen the movie God's Not Dead 2? Yes. All right.

01:33:39

So he obviously was in that movie. He basically played himself in that movie.

01:33:46

But he's a great presenter, a great teacher, and a great apologist. I'm really looking forward to seeing him up here.

01:33:56

Mary Jo, as you know, Greg Kokel. When I actually presented him down in the

01:34:04

CIA, I had to make a presentation to him on apologetics. I had to critique it. And I quickly found that he is one of the wisest individuals you could ever have a conversation.

01:34:15

He's a very, very intelligent person. And he has a very unique way of handling adversity.

01:34:22

I think he's going to bring that to the table with his talk on tactics and sort of credo the way he explains reality from a

01:34:31

Christian worldview perspective. Really looking forward to this. And we're really excited about this.

01:34:37

By the way, to get Mary Jo to decide more quickly whether she's going to be on my program or not, you might want to tell her that I've interviewed at least three times

01:34:48

Diana Lynn Severance, who is the director of the Dunham Bible Museum at Houston Baptist University.

01:34:57

Oh, okay. So I'm sure she's familiar with Diana Lynn Severance, so let her know about that because I'd love to have her on.

01:35:02

Now, of course, in this day and age, you're going to have some people recoiling with fear, thinking that this may be some kind of a feminist inclusion in your lineup there, but that's not true at all, is it?

01:35:16

Oh no, not at all. I mean, look, women are called to defend the gospel just as much as men are, and I think women tend to maybe look at this as a male -dominated enterprise, and Mary Jo Sharp is just a breath of fresh air.

01:35:31

She's intelligent, witty, funny. She's a terrific presenter, so I'm hoping that this encourages women to dig in and get trained in the argument for the existence of God.

01:35:45

Think about this. As families, it's our job to sow into our children. Now, for the most part, you know, in my family,

01:35:53

I'm out at work most of the day. When my kids come home from school, my wife's there. It's my wife's responsibility to sow into them and answer the questions that they may have.

01:36:06

You know, I think too often people just want to toss it to the other spouse, whichever one is more gifted in that area, but we're both called to give answers to our children for the reasons that we hope we have.

01:36:21

By the way, before the interview, you and I had discussed what might be a good idea today to at least, for at least a part of our discussion, to give an overview of the debate that you moderated here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania between two friends of mine,

01:36:38

Dr. Tony Costa, who's professor of apologetics at Toronto Baptist Seminary, who debated

01:36:44

Roman Catholic apologist Robert St. Genes at Catholic Apologetics International. They debated on the very vital theme,

01:36:52

Mary, sinless queen of heaven or sinner saved by grace. I think it's a vital theme because who you worship and who you give credit for the graces that we receive from God is a very important issue.

01:37:05

And of course, the Roman Catholic Church insists that it does not worship Mary, but you can hardly gather that conclusion from hearing a description of what they mean by adoration.

01:37:18

I mean, there is really no meaningful difference between their adoration or veneration that they provide for Mary than the worship they give to God, other than perhaps different attributes they may grant to God, but it's still indistinguishable in my opinion.

01:37:37

But let me hear your take on what occurred that night.

01:37:43

Well, I think we kind of knew ahead of time where the debate was going to go. As Protestants, we hold to sola scriptura.

01:37:50

Scripture is the sole infallible rule for the Christian faith. Robert St.

01:37:57

Genes, who's a Catholic, holds to sola ecclesia. In other words, I shouldn't say he holds to that.

01:38:04

Well, he does hold to it, unconsciously. They don't call it that. Right. That's why I don't want to misrepresent him.

01:38:10

He's a very, very nice guy. I really enjoyed, you know, talking with him. In fact, his real last name is

01:38:17

St. Genes. Right. It's not St. Genes. And I said, you should go back to St. Genes. I love it.

01:38:22

His wife agreed. She's like, I would love that. Bob, if you're listening, go back to St. Genes.

01:38:27

I love it. Well, it could be some kind of police investigation that prevents that. I'm only kidding,

01:38:34

Bob, you know that. But anyway. I'm from New York, apologetics, I get it. Don't worry. So, Roman Catholics hold to four pieces of authority.

01:38:47

One would be Scripture, one's holy tradition, one is the Roman Catholic Church, and then the infallibility of the

01:38:53

Pope. So they have four sources of authority, whereas Protestants, we have one. So he said, basically, the

01:39:01

Bible does not have to explicitly teach the Immaculate Conception in Scripture for it to be true.

01:39:10

Because Scripture never claims to be the only source of divine truth. So he relied back on his source of authority, which would be the

01:39:18

Church and the Popes, and we relied on our source of authority, which is Scripture. So that's really, you know, what was the crux of the debate.

01:39:27

He leans on the authority of the Church, we lean on the authority of Scripture.

01:39:33

And the most startling thing that I heard throughout the debate, because I had never heard a

01:39:44

Catholic so honestly boil down the Catholic arguments of Mary in this precise way, but he said, without Mary there is no salvation.

01:39:58

Now that's pretty frightening to us who are, to we, to we who are

01:40:04

Bible -believing Christians. But that really is an honest summation of Catholic piety when it is in regard to their veneration of Mary.

01:40:16

It doesn't really make logical sense because you could say, well, how about without Judas there would be no salvation?

01:40:27

Because Judas is the one that betrayed Christ, which led to his crucifixion, without which we could have no salvation.

01:40:36

And therefore, you know, you could equally say that Judas is responsible for our salvation if you're attributing it to a human being.

01:40:47

But that has reached, clearly, a blasphemous and heretical level of veneration when you have said that Mary, without her, we have no salvation.

01:41:00

That's pretty startling, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, look, he was very consistent with his

01:41:08

Church's teaching. In wrote it down. He said, without a sinless Mary, we'd have no

01:41:13

Savior. He says it's absolutely essential for Mary to be immaculate to procure our salvation.

01:41:21

If Mary said no to God, in other words, if she said, no, I won't bear Jesus, we'd be in big trouble.

01:41:31

And I think what that does is put salvation contingent upon man and not

01:41:38

God. And what Tony Costa did, rightly so, is to point out, in that view, the potter is subject to the clay.

01:41:48

The clay is not subject to the potter at that point. And Tony went on to ask him, said, well, what if Joseph decided not to be betrothed to Mary?

01:41:58

You know, at that point, Mary would have been found pregnant, and in that culture they probably would have stoned her and the child to death, and we'd have no

01:42:07

Savior. So without Joseph, if Joseph didn't say yes, we'd have no Savior. And then he went back and said, well, what about Moses?

01:42:14

What if Moses said no? You know, and the chain goes on and on and on, and ultimately what we have to rely on is

01:42:23

Scripture, and you read Jonah 2 -9, it says, salvation is of the Lord. This is not a work of man.

01:42:29

This is not because man decided to get involved in God's plan that we have a

01:42:35

Savior. Jesus existed prior to His Incarnation, and His will was to do the will of the

01:42:43

Father. And the will of the Father always gets accomplished in the divine decree that He's issued for the earth, such that we have a perfect Savior.

01:42:54

If we didn't have a perfect Savior, as decreed before the foundation of the earth, it would be left up to us.

01:43:01

And I like the way John MacArthur says it the best. He says, if I could lose my salvation, I would.

01:43:09

Yeah, and the interesting thing that Catholics always bring up when this discussion of the importance of Mary's role is, and of course it is important, that a virgin conceive and give birth to the

01:43:24

Messiah. That was prophesied. That is a crucial element of the Messianic prophecies.

01:43:31

It's also a crucial element that the Messiah was conceived of the

01:43:36

Holy Spirit, which is why Jesus being the God -man is sinless, not because of any inherited sinlessness from Mary's earthly body.

01:43:48

But they always bring up that Mary is owed a great debt for our salvation, because she could have said no.

01:44:00

Nowhere in the Scriptures, when the angel confronts

01:44:05

Mary or meets Mary, appears to Mary, with the declaration that she is going to give birth to the

01:44:12

Messiah, conceive and give birth to the Messiah, nowhere does that angel ask her permission for this.

01:44:18

He's declaring to Mary a prophecy that is going to happen.

01:44:24

Because even Mary's response was, how can this be, because I've never known a man. It's not, well let me think about this, or yes,

01:44:32

I accept your offer, or anything like that. She's not asked a question, and yet the

01:44:38

Catholics always say Mary could have said no. Oh really? So when God himself sends an angel to declare to Mary a prophecy that's going to occur, she could have changed the course of all history by actually proving

01:44:53

God to be a liar, or proving that God didn't know the future, let alone ordain it.

01:45:00

Yeah, that would lead to open theism, and we certainly don't want to go down that road. Yeah, so I mean, it's absurd.

01:45:06

And then on top of that, without Mary there is no salvation. Even if you wanted to take the man -centered understanding of Mary's role, or in this case

01:45:21

I guess you could say the woman -centered understanding of Mary's role in the conception and birth of Jesus, suppose she did say no.

01:45:34

Suppose that was within the realm of possibility that the angel was wrong, and that Mary could have said, nah, you know something,

01:45:43

I'm really not into this. Thanks, but no thanks. So that would have been the end of the story.

01:45:50

There was no hope for the salvation of men. You mean they couldn't have gone on to Sarah at the house next door, or whoever, and made sure that that person conceived a sinless daughter?

01:46:05

I mean, it doesn't even make any sense. I got a thought for you. Go ahead. How about if Mary was already the second person?

01:46:15

Oh, I see what you're saying. In other words, that the angel already appeared to somebody else's house.

01:46:22

He appeared to Stephanie first. Oh, Veronica. Veronica was the one.

01:46:29

You know, this may be how Trick -or -Treat started. Well, now you're really going to get

01:46:36

Catholics picketing out in front of you. But I mean, that's a joke. I mean, it is absurd though to think that Mary, through her will, could have proven

01:46:50

God wrong, that he was mistaken about what was happening, because it wasn't the angel's idea that this was happening.

01:46:57

The angel was just a messenger. Yeah, I think, you know, one of the things that I did was

01:47:03

I looked up Acts chapter 15, because that was a big part of Robert's son

01:47:08

Genesis' argument, and the fact that Peter stood up and, you know, he made the decision on that day that Gentiles didn't need to be circumcised, and they were part of the faith, and he started going, explaining, you know, the story of what happened to him.

01:47:25

But then what happened, and he made a point of saying, and all the assembly fell silent, as if Peter spoke and everybody listened.

01:47:36

At that point, they become silent. But if you read that verse, starting in Acts chapter 15, verse 12, it says, and all the assembly fell silent, and they listened to Barnabas and Paul, as they related what signs and wonders

01:47:50

God had done through them among the Gentiles. After they finished speaking, James replied, brothers, listen to me.

01:47:58

And then he accounts, he does his accounting, and in verse 19, he says, therefore, this is

01:48:04

James speaking, therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols, from sexual morality, and from what has been strangled from the blood.

01:48:16

So James is the one who stands up and concludes that series by saying, my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the

01:48:25

Gentiles. And I wish that was brought out, because that doesn't mean that Peter's the

01:48:31

Pope. At that point, it looks like James has the authority, because he's ruling based on his judgment.

01:48:39

Well, and one of the obvious questions that Roberts and Genes could not answer with a dogmatically defined

01:48:50

Catholic answer is, well, why is a sinless

01:48:55

Mary required to conceive a sinless Jesus when Mary's mother was not sinless?

01:49:02

If Mary's mother could have conceived her without sin, why couldn't

01:49:08

Jesus have conceived Jesus without sin? They seem to think, or it's not they seem, they do think that Mary's sinlessness is required for Jesus to be sinless, but it doesn't make sense.

01:49:21

And the only answer that Roberts and Genes could come up with was a theory that Mary had to pass on the ability to die to Jesus.

01:49:38

But even that was a speculation that Roman Catholics do not give as an answer in their official teachings.

01:49:46

It was weird, because again, I re -listened to it, just to go over that point.

01:49:53

She must have been able to convey the curse of death to Christ, to Christ's human nature, so that he would be able to die on the cross and be our sinless sacrifice.

01:50:03

But it's not... she doesn't convey sin to him so that he dies?

01:50:12

In other words, Christ is going to die, and he said that she needed to convey the human nature to him such that he could die.

01:50:21

And Tony Costa rightly said, no, Jesus... no one took Jesus's life.

01:50:26

Jesus says, I willingly take it, lay it down, and I'll willingly raise it up again.

01:50:32

So that wasn't conferred by Mary to Jesus. Jesus was truly

01:50:38

God, and had the ability to willingly die and raise himself up from the dead again.

01:50:45

Yes, and also, even if you wanted to say that there had to be something required of Mary's genetics for Jesus to physically die, even if he gave up his own life, because only sin can lead to death,

01:51:04

Jesus became sin on the cross. Our sin was imputed to him. It didn't need anything else into the mix to bring about a death, a physical death of Christ.

01:51:19

But I'd like you both now to each summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today, and especially to give a last appeal to them to come to your conference.

01:51:32

Sure. Go ahead, Nick. Well, first I want to say before I do that, you had some questions you said before the break.

01:51:40

Do you want to deal with those or no? Oh, you mean the listener questions?

01:51:46

Yeah. Well, they were involved... we don't have time, actually. They were involving the Puritans and other things that I have a feeling might not lend themselves to what we are talking about.

01:51:58

Okay, and the second thought I had for you before I get off is that maybe you could put a

01:52:03

PayPal donation button on the bottom of your page. Yeah, I appreciate that.

01:52:09

In fact, I have a listener in Australia who just recently told me to do the same thing, as well as other folks.

01:52:17

If you want to try it out, if you want to see how it works, just take out your credit card now and go on newyorkapologetics .com.

01:52:35

Wow, just kidding. Just try it. That was slick. We're from New York.

01:52:42

I think in your last show you said Y -A -W -K, New York. I guess

01:52:49

I'll leave you with this. First of all, thank you for having us on. We really appreciate it. I hope to see as many people as possible come to this conference, support the changing of our culture on this island and in New York.

01:53:04

If you want to make a difference in New York, come out, get educated, get trained so that you can talk to people intelligently with regard to the

01:53:15

Gospel, and let's make an impact on this island. I would just piggyback on that and say, the

01:53:25

Marines have a saying, the more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in battle. Our culture is beating us up because I don't think we were giving the correct answers.

01:53:35

I think on Long Island, that might be just part of an apathetic affluenza type of issue, because we're so comfortable.

01:53:43

We like to say, well, it's not happening in my backyard. We don't have to worry. Well, now it's in our backyard. It's all over the country.

01:53:50

And listen, Jesus died for my sins. He laid his life down for me. He says, deny yourself, pick up your cross, and follow me.

01:53:58

If I don't do that, I don't necessarily know that I can consider myself a Christian, nor can

01:54:04

I really consider myself living a life that says thank you to Jesus for what he's done for me.

01:54:11

So Nick and I have kind of resolved in our have to contend for the faith that was once and for all delivered to the saints.

01:54:19

You know, we were born and raised in New York. We're not leaving New York. We're going to fight. We're going to turn this island upside down for the

01:54:26

Lord. So one of our favorite verses is, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the

01:54:32

Lord, knowing that in the Lord, your labor is not in vain. So we're going to look to make an impact at this conference.

01:54:40

I'm hoping and praying that many, many, many people show up and this ignites in them a passion or a desire to start opening your mouth to defend the faith.

01:54:51

We're the ones who have the truth on our side. We're the only ones who have a God willing to die for us, willing to defeat evil.

01:54:58

No other God has done that. And I don't think we have the luxury of sitting on our rear watching

01:55:05

TV while the culture is swallowing us. We have to fight. We have to stand up for what we believe.

01:55:12

And you know what? Lives are going to be saved for all eternity when we do that. When we open our mouth and proclaim the gospel,

01:55:19

Jesus says, I will be with you until the end of the age, wherever you go. And the Holy Spirit will, it's our job to shut up arguments.

01:55:28

And it's the Holy Spirit's job to open up hearts. And that's what he'll do if we're, we have enough to proclaim the gospel boldly.

01:55:37

I do have two questions now from listeners in the audience that are very applicable to what we're talking about.

01:55:43

So I'll try to get them in right now. I have Christopher in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who says,

01:55:49

I agree with Frank Turek, that Christians must be involved in the political arena as well as other things that have a great impact upon our society.

01:56:00

But don't you think that spreading of the gospel is vital and the most important that makes all else pale into insignificance?

01:56:09

Because after all, a converted soul is the one who is going to be voting more appropriately, and a converted politician is the one who is going to be governing over us in a more godly fashion.

01:56:21

It's more of a comment than a question there, but perhaps you could just... I'll just, yeah, it's not really, it's not a question, but I did hear

01:56:27

Frank on the other broadcast, and I want to say that I do agree with Frank. He gave a very balanced approach to that answer, but I do agree with Chris.

01:56:37

I think the gospel is the most important thing that we can talk about while we're here on this earth.

01:56:46

Yeah, I would agree and say that there's no laws that we can issue as Americans that are going to change people's hearts.

01:56:54

Now, that's not to say that we shouldn't enter into the political arena. I think we need the freedoms to proclaim the gospel boldly, and I would encourage anybody who has a heart for it and a desire to do it to get into politics.

01:57:08

We can shape the culture politically. However, that is not a substitute for doing what the

01:57:15

Church's job is, which is to proclaim the gospel. You know, every Saturday morning with my church, we're standing in front of an abortion mill on Route 111 from 6 to 8, and then from 8 to 10 in front of a

01:57:28

Planned Parenthood on Maple Avenue in Smittown. We'd love people to join us. As the Church, we need to be proclaiming the gospel to men and women who are bringing their children into this place to be murdered.

01:57:40

Now, last week, thankfully, a couple decided to change their minds because we were standing there and encouraging them to leave that place.

01:57:49

We gave them information for Soundview Pregnancy Center, which is an organization that we work closely with that would get them the supplies and the things they need to raise the child or possibly give it up for adoption.

01:58:01

Either way, the baby was saved and will now live because of people proclaiming the gospel and doing what the

01:58:08

Church is supposed to do. Well, quickly, we have Joseph in Riverhead, Long Island, New York, who says, in the 1980s, when

01:58:18

I frequented Pentecostal churches, there was one thing that you could have counted on is that most

01:58:25

Pentecostal pastors would have made it clear that Rome has a false gospel. Has the

01:58:31

Pentecostal churches at large, in general, caved into the ecumenical nonsense that Rome's gospel is the same as the modern evangelical gospel?

01:58:43

I'll defer to Nick on that one. I'm going to say it this way. I'm going to look at it more from a

01:58:50

Long Island standpoint. I think that in the 70s, there was a movement from Rome, if you will, where the

01:58:57

Holy Spirit moved on the churches, and they birthed most of the

01:59:03

Protestant churches that are out there. And these pastors, who've been pastoring now for 30 years plus, came from a movement not knowing anything, not really understanding their scriptures, but all of a sudden being just touched by God in this place, they birthed these churches.

01:59:20

These churches became sort of beacons of light for the gospel of Jesus Christ, but the next generations are rising up, and they don't necessarily have the fervor of the first generation.

01:59:35

And I think what we're dealing with now is the churches have been set, they're planted, they're all over the place, and now it's time for the sort of Joshua ministry to go forth, if you will, and take cadence.

01:59:48

Time to go forward. We're out of time, actually. We're out of time, brother, and I know that your website is newyorkapologetics .com,

01:59:54

newyorkapologetics .com. I want to thank you both for being on the program, and I look forward to you returning.

02:00:01

And remember that the conference is April 28th and 29th. Go to newyorkapologetics .com,

02:00:07

and New York is spelled out New York, apologetics .com. I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater