Aug 19, 2026 Show with Joe Jacowitz AND Tom Smith on “End Times Watchfulness”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron.

The Program’s Mission and the Biblical Motto

This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth, who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 19th day of August, 2026.

I'm absolutely thrilled to have two guests on today who have been on the program before, and they are two very crucial individuals to the existence and live streaming of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, because I have on the program today the founder and chairman of the board and the president of First Love Ministries, the ministry that oversees First Love Radio and a number of other wonderful ministries under the umbrella of First Love Ministries.

First of all, we have the founder and chairman of the board of First Love Ministries and pastor of Christ Bible Church in Pleasanton, California, Pastor Joe Jakowicz. It's a joy to have you back on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Joe.

And Joe has himself muted. Joe, you're muted, brother. You're muted.

We cannot hear you, Joe. The joy is mine. Oh, now. The joy is mine. And now the smile is mine, too. Great.

Thank you, Chris, for having us. And just to let you know, Joe, you are a little fuzzy now. I'm not sure why. Your voice doesn't sound crystal clear like it did earlier when we tested our connection. So I'm not sure what's going on with that.

Is that better? No, it's not, actually. Do you agree with me, Tom? Is he a little fuzzy? Yeah, it's a little fuzzy. I don't know. I don't remember you wearing headphones before. I don't know if that has anything to do with it.

Okay. How's that? That's much better. That's much better. Tell our listeners something, first of all, about Christ Bible Church of Pleasanton, California.

Christ Bible Church and First Love Ministries’ Global Work

Christ Bible Church has been around since 1990. At its founding, it was founded in 1922. It's been a joy and a privilege to minister to Northern California. We are located in Pleasanton, California, which is in the East Bay, directly across from San Francisco, about 30 miles east of San Francisco.

And we have our hands full here in the People's Republic of California. And so, you guys, we're doing double duty out here in California, representing the cause of Christ and the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But it's a joy. It's a joy to be able to reach out to souls who are hungry and thirsty for the Word of God. We have a growing church, and we have a multi-ethnic church. And we are Reformed Baptist in our theology, polity, and our confession.

And so we have been here for quite a while. And Christ Bible Church is supportive of First Love Ministries. We started First Love about 35 years ago, and with just one ministry, a literature ministry, and three other ministries have been added since then.

A radio ministry, which you folks are enjoying right now, and a missions ministry, in which we have five branches of missions ministry throughout the world, a few of which are in Nigeria, Nepal, the Philippines, Kenya, and India.

And we have missionaries there, and we go there about three times a year overseas and conduct pastors' conferences. Our specialty is pastors' conferences. We give out free literature. Everything is free at First Love.

And we have Grace Bible University, where we teach and train pastors and believers in the Word of God. We have an associate's degree we offer through Grace Bible University. You can get all the detailed information if you go to firstloveministries .org.

I would suggest our listeners grab a pencil and paper, because we're going to be giving that website address out quite a bit through the show, right, Chris? Yes. And firstloveministries .org.

And let me also let you know of the website for Christ Bible Church in Pleasanton, California. That's christbiblechurch .church. Christ Bible Church. Well, that's what it says right on my screen. Well, your screen's wrong.

Well, what do you—I didn't even type that in. I just—.

Well, somebody made a mistake, but it's christbiblechurch .org. Christbiblechurch .org. If you're looking for a church—.

Go ahead. Go ahead. I'm just saying that your webmaster, perhaps unbeknownst to you, has also included christbiblechurch .church, because when I typed in .org, it automatically switches to christbiblechurch .church.

Yes.

Houston, we have a problem. So we'll check up on that after the show.

Well, as long as you got to the website. It works. It works. Either one might work.

But anyway, one thing that Joe did not say—we have discussed this on the program before— Joe is not only a Jewish believer in Christ Jesus, but he is also a confessional Reformed Baptist, which makes him rarer than a Bigfoot sighting.

So I just thought I'd remind our listeners about that. And we also have the honor and privilege of having the president of First Love Ministries with us today, Tom Smith. It's a joy to have you back on the show as well.

Thank you, Chris.

It's a joy being here. And I've enjoyed working with Pastor Joe these almost 15, 20 years with First Love Ministries. And thank you for hosting us. Thank you for having us today.

Well, it is always a joy twice a year, with few exceptions, to see Tom attending my biannual free Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pastors luncheons in Perry County, Pennsylvania, specifically most often at Church of the Living Christ in Alloysville, Pennsylvania.

And Tom makes the long drive from Virginia to Perry County, Pennsylvania, to set up a booth for free books of First Love Publishing. And perhaps you might want to inform our listeners a little bit about First Love Publishing.

Yeah, thank you, Chris. First Love Publishing is one of the arms of First Love Ministry. It's like a four-peg stool, I call it. And we currently print books. And as Joe mentioned, we distribute our books for free.

Our current warehouse in the United States is in Milton, Florida. And you can go online again at firstloveministry .org, click on publications, and you can order up to two books per month, and we will send them to you free at no cost.

We also are printing books. As Joe mentioned, we go overseas. So we printed books in the Philippines. We printed books in Kenya. We printed books in Nigeria. And what we do there when we go for these conferences and pastors' conferences, we will print books there.

We find it more cost effective to print them there and distribute them at these locations. Recently, I just got back from Nigeria, and we printed a couple books there and distributed several hundred copies to the attendees of these conferences.

So it's a blessing to give away this literature at no charge.

Amen. And just so our listeners are fully aware of the quality, not only of the contents, which is the most important thing, the quality of the theological presentations of biblical truth by some of the greatest minds within the Christian church, not only from centuries past, but even some modern living authors that are faithful to the Scriptures.

But the actual quality of the binding, the covers, the typesetting, this is all very high level. So people might think you get what you pay for when they hear about free books. These are outstanding, high-quality publications in every way.

And we thank you for making sure that some of the greatest literature of the Christian faith is being preserved in a manner worthy of its contents. So I just wanted to make sure our listeners know that this isn't just some horrible-looking stuff that they're getting.

The End Times Watchfulness Conference

Well, the main reason that we not only have you two on today, but we're also going to be, God willing, having all of your speakers for an upcoming conference on the program over the next few weeks, most of the days, actually, with the exception of those dates that have already been booked by other guests, we're going to be featuring different speakers from the next First Love conference that's going to be held September 17th through the 19th in Pleasanton, California, I believe, at Christ Bible Church.

This is the second annual First Love West Coast Bible Conference. So, Joe, why don't you tell us all about this conference?

Well, the conference this year has the theme of end times watchfulness, end times watchfulness. I'm sure most of your listeners are very concerned with the growth of evil, immorality, perversions on every level, corruption.

It's incredible the amount of wickedness and evil that is taking foothold in our nation, especially in our churches, with the apostasy of the church. I'm not a date setter, but I can tell you right now with dogmatism that we're in an apostasy.

The church is apostate. You know, I'm not one who likes to point fingers and condemn and to discourage, but when you look at every angle of the church in terms of its Great Commission, its so-called holiness, its responsibility to be faithful spiritually, we look at primarily an apostate church.

Not every church, thank God.

Obviously, you're the pastor of one, so you better clarify that.

Yeah, it's a rare occasion, like in the case of our church or Tom's church or your church, Chris, where a church is not apostate. But I would say most churches, I'm not going to put a percentage on it, I would say over 50 of the church is apostate.

The evangelical church, we're not talking about high churches, the large, large denominations that just go through the motions. The clerical, formulaic church, I'm talking about evangelical churches that are supposed to be stewards of the gospel, the good news of salvation.

You can't hardly find a Christian today that can recite what the gospel is, that can define the gospel. We're living in such a famine of the Word of God in the land. And so the conference is designed to wake people up to a place of watchfulness.

We are commissioned to be watchmen on the walls and protect the gospel and protect a lifestyle of holiness and to warn believers to walk with God in righteousness and godliness and to be ready for His soon appearing, to have confidence before Him at His coming.

And so this conference is designed to be a wake-up call to believers of all denominations, especially to pastors. We want to focus on pastors, and this conference is going to take place beginning on Thursday, the 17th of September, Friday the 18th, and Saturday the 19th.

Now, on the Friday portion of the conference, beginning at 12 noon, we're going to have a two or three-hour pastors' little retreat where pastors will gather and have a pastor's time at the conference.

We'll be giving away several thousand books, Chris, on topics related to holiness, the perseverance of the saints, the importance of maintaining oneness with God, fellowship with God, to maintaining a faithful relationship with the local church, and high activity in evangelism, personal evangelism, all of the areas of body life, church life, church government, evangelism, holiness, learning the scriptures, representing God's claims and interests in the world.

We're going to be exhorting, encouraging, and teaching every church member that comes, every Christian that comes, to be watchful until the end of the world or until the Lord takes them home. I'm especially concerned about pastors because I want to know who's watching them.

You know, we have pastors preparing sermons and counseling people and visiting hospitals, answering phone calls, carrying burdens of people. But when was the last time a pastor got alone with God? Not to prepare a sermon, but to seek His face for the sake of his own soul.

I'm very concerned about the spiritual life of pastors because how can they feed the sheep unless they're getting fed? And that's why the scripture says, Take heed, therefore, to yourselves and to all the flock of God.

And we need to listen to that order. First, we need to take heed to ourselves and then the flock. And so I ask the pastors that I'm, you know, with my Jewish background, I like to use Yiddish once in a while, Yiddish expressions.

I like to weave it into my sermons. It at least helps me keep people awake. You know, where is the chutzpah of the pastors? The boldness, the temerity, the risk, the faith of pastors that are required to keep their own heart alive and well so that their heart doesn't grow cold.

You know, we can defend sound doctrine while we lose the tenderness of Christ. We can warn others about sin while we're secretly tolerating sin ourselves. That can't happen if you're a pastor. That cannot happen.

And so before you watch the flock, you need to watch your own soul. Pastor, when was the last time you watched your own soul? I've been a pastor for 43 years, and there's never a time that we become journeymen.

We're always apprentices in the school of first watching our own soul. So if you're backslidden in the ministry, pastor, you need to return to the Lord. You need to watch your own soul first and therefore watch your flock.

You need to return to Christ. You need to confess your coldness. You need to recover the secret place. The church doesn't merely need your sermons. They need a shepherd who walks with God. So return to your first love.

Come on now, we need to be watchful until the end of the world. If you're not going to do it now, just before Christ returns, when are you going to do it? On your deathbed or 10 minutes before Christ comes, which we don't know about?

Come on, pastors, let's get with it.

The Conference Speakers and Their Ministries

All right, I'm going to have Tom now explain or describe some of the—or actually, all of the speakers that will be featured at this upcoming conference. First of all, Glenn Nicholas is an individual that I have yet to interview on Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

I'm looking forward to having him on the program, if you deem him so highly that you would feature him at a First Love Ministries conference, he must be good. But tell us, Tom, about Glenn Nicholas.

Yeah, let me just point out again on the schedule, the actual time with the pastors is going to be on Friday, Friday at noon. And I would encourage everyone to go to our website again, firstloveministries .org, and right on the front page, you can click on the schedule, the flyer, you can register for the conference.

So, it's a very important subject, as we've already talked about. Christ is coming. Are we ready? I don't know Pastor Nichols personally. A lot of these pastors that are coming are from the California area.

I'm from Virginia, Brother Chris, as you know. And so, I'm one of the outsiders coming from the East Coast. But I don't recall meeting Glenn, Joe, last year, but he might be one of our speakers. I know you know him, being from California.

Several of our speakers, in fact, the majority of our speakers are from the California area who partner and work with Pastor Joe there. Okay, Joe. I'm looking forward to meeting some of these myself.

Joe, perhaps you should... We made an effort this year to...

Most of our pastors and speakers are from the local area. We really want to build up the local fellowship of pastors and our local churches here in Northern California, which are under assault or under attack all the time with false teaching, false Gospels, and temptations and pressures to live a lukewarm, complacent life.

So, we're trying to do two things, encourage the church at large across the world, but also local pastors in the greater San Francisco Bay area. Glenn Nichols is a good friend of mine. He's a Reformed Baptist pastor that has a church about 15 miles away from where we are located in Quezantin.

For 20 years, he's pastored there in the East Bay town of San Lorenzo, which is a few miles away from Oakland and about 20 miles east of San Francisco. He's been a faithful pastor, married, has a child, and he is helping us in Northern California hold the fort down until the Lord comes.

Okay. How about Jim Billings? Another local pastor, Jim Billings, he's the co-pastor of Grace Bible Church, which used to be called Sovereign Grace Baptist Church. I think it's Grace Baptist Church now.

Pastor W .R. Downing retired from being the pastor of that church for over 20 years. And Pastor Jim Billings and Pastor Stephen Lewis now co-pastor Grace Baptist Church there in Morgan Hill, which is about an hour, about 60 miles south of Quezantin, California.

They're very faithful brethren. That church has been around for about 30 years or so. They're a very good church, Grace Baptist Church in Morgan Hill, California.

And by the way, I just wanted to slip in a wonderful personal commendation for William Downing, the previous pastor of that church. He is one of the most—what's the word I'm looking for? He is one of the most underrated, brilliant men of God alive today.

And many more people should be aware of him. They should look for his sermons wherever they may be found, perhaps in Sermon Audio. William Downing, D-O-W-N-I-N-G. And I know that he has written a number of books, including Baptist Catechisms and other things, for First Love Publications.

And you can get those books from our website, Chris. Yes, we have several of his books we've printed.

Dr. Bill Downing is a very—he's very humble. He doesn't try to make a name for himself. He doesn't promote his ministry or his name, but God has used him mightily. He's one of my mentors. He officiated at my ordination in 1985, and he has written over 20 books.

Three or four of those books we've already published, like Systematic Theology and a How to Interpret the Bible, which is the best book on hermeneutics I've ever seen, even in comparison with the classic books written by Bernard Ramm and Verkler, some of these hermeneutics books that they use in Bible College and Seminary.

He's written an over 500-page book on hermeneutics that covers everything from A to Z. A hundred of those pages are on the history of Bible interpretation, which is worth its weight in gold by itself.

We published that book. We published another book, Introduction to Theology, which is a shorter book than the Systematic Theology book, about 100 pages, and just covering the basics of Christian doctrine.

He's written a book that I hope we can publish, Tom, someday, on the life and ministry of the Apostle Paul, a biography about the Apostle Paul. Unbelievably powerful book, which isn't even published yet anywhere.

We're basically at first love his publisher. He's given us not exclusive rights, but we have a very close relationship with Dr. Downing. He is, like you said, an underrated man of God as a writer, as a preacher.

You need to hear Dr. Bill Downing. I invited him to the conference, so don't shoot the messenger. I invited him, and he just couldn't make it this year. He's 85 years old. His health is going down, but he's still pastoring.

He's still preaching, and you can't keep this brother down. He himself would say, Well, Brother Joe, I'm just an old German pushing on. And he certainly has a strong constitution, that's for sure. But hopefully, God willing, next year, he'll be back on our speakers list.

And if anybody wants to hear interviews that I've conducted with Pastor William Downing, also known as Bill Downing, just type in D-O-W-N-I-N-G in the search engine at ironsharpensironradio .com, and you will hear previous interviews I've conducted with William Downing.

That's D-O-W-N-I-N-G. And he is no longer doing this because of his age, but he was an avid wild boar hunter and used to hunt wild boar by hiding in a tree, waiting for a boar to pass beneath him, leaping out of the tree onto its back and stabbing it to death.

So, just to let you know, that's why he had a nickname for decades, Wild Man Bill. Or was it Mountain Man Bill? Was it Mountain Man Bill, I think? I think it was Mountain Man. Right, right. You wouldn't think that a brilliant theologian would have that as a pastime, but he certainly did.

Well, anyway, how about Conley Owens, Pastor Joe?

Conley Owens, another good friend. He's pastor of the Silicon Valley and Reformed Baptist Church in Sunnyvale, California, which is about 30 miles south of Pleasanton. Again, it would be in Silicon Valley, the computer capital of the United States, and in what we call the South Bay area, but it's smack dab in the middle of Silicon Valley.

And he pastors a growing Reformed Baptist congregation there. And Conley Owens is an engineer, a software engineer by trade, but he's full-time in the ministry now. He has nine children, and he's a dear brother.

He is one of the leaders of a ministry called Selling Jesus that exposes the shame and the sinfulness of the commercialization of marketing all things Jesus for a price. And he does the great work. So if you want to get familiar with his work, just look up Conley Owens and Selling Jesus, and he will be one of our speakers.

And finally, you have Ted Mendoza on the roster.

Ted Mendoza is the pastor of the church that is going to host our conference this year. We're going to be meeting in his church in Pleasanton.

Oh, so I was wrong. It's not Christ Bible Church then. I'm sorry.

It is. We rent from them. Oh, okay. So technically you're right, brother. You got 100 on the test so far. But he is the pastor of that church. He's a Reformed Baptist along with his co-pastor, Mike Wilson.

They do a good work there, and we're working closer and closer together, hosting meetings and conferences and events. But he preached last year at our first annual West Coast First Love Conference, and we've asked him to come back.

He does a great job, is an excellent speaker. And Ted, Brother Ted, yes.

And we have one of your speakers. The last one is actually one of our guests today, Tom Smith. I'm surprised I don't see you on the roster, Joe.

Joe's on the first page. Go up one page, Chris. Oh, okay. I can vouch for a couple of these people. Oh, now I see it. I'm sorry. Paul Nelson will be speaking. Paul is our current president of Grace Bible University.

He actually was trained and mentored by Dr. Bill Downing. So you got a little Bill in Paul. And Paul is an excellent speaker. If you haven't heard Paul preach, you've missed a blefting. He's very active.

I've gone on mission trips with him, particularly in Nepal. He's worked very hard to get books translated and train men in Nepal. But we're looking forward to seeing Paul. And he's a wonderful Christian and a wonderful preacher and teacher of God's word.

And the next one I know very well is Dr. Edward Dalkor. I think you've had both of these on your show previously. Dr. Dalkor, of course, I call him the walking Bible man, the walking Bible answer man.

He's president and director of the Department of Christian Defense, a great apologetist. He's the vice president of our Grace Bible University. And he currently is right now in Nepal teaching pastors there from Dr. Downing's book on the catechism of Bible doctrine.

So I've been with him many times on the mission field. He was in Nigeria teaching apologetics, some of the false religions there. So you will be blessed by hearing and coming and hearing Dr. Dalkor as well.

Those are two I can vouch for as well as Pastor Joe, but he can speak for himself.

I've also had Max Donor, one of your speakers on my program, way back in 2015.

Yes, Max is an old friend going back 35 plus years. He will be with us, God willing. He wrote a two-volume commentary from an Amil perspective on the book of Revelation. It's an excellent commentary.

He will be there to give out free copies of his two-volume book on Revelation. It's a high-quality production physically, but he spent many, many years writing this book and painstakingly putting together the exposition and the application of this commentary.

He's given out hundreds and hundreds of these books at his expense. If you want to get a free copy of that two-volume commentary on Revelation and talk with Max and his wife, be there at the conference.

He'll set up a table. He'll be one of the speakers. Also, by the way, First Love Ministries will be giving away, for the first time in our 30-plus-year history, thousands of books. Thousands. We're going to give away triple the amount we gave away at last year's conference.

For this radio show, which we only have an hour and a half left, so you need to get your email out ready to go, we're giving away a classic book written by J .C. Ryle, and both of you brethren know him very well, titled Holiness.

If there's any time in the history of the world that the message on holiness needs to be communicated and needs to be spread far and wide, it's in our day and age. Our church needs to hear the message on holiness.

If you will write in today, and that's just for people who I get an email where it has today's date on it, I will give you two copies of the book Holiness by J .C. Ryle. And with today's book prices, you know what that costs.

Just go to any Christian publisher and try to buy that book for less than $15 -20, a copy. If you will write an email to us, write to Chris' email address. He'll give it out in a second. We will send you two copies, free and postage paid, of the book Holiness, so that when you come to our conference, you can share testimonies.

I gave out those two books, and we have backslidden Christians reading them.

And you can share that with us. By the way, we do have one more speaker that we haven't addressed. Owen Alford, why don't you tell us about Owen.

Owen is our co-pastor at Christ Bible Church. He and I have been co-pastoring here for almost 30 years. He's been here 28 years, I've been here, it'll be 37 years. So we've been together 60 years, combined a wonderful labor of love together as pastors of Christ Bible Church.

Owen is, he, what can I say about Owen? He's my best friend. I'll just put it to you that way. The man is very knowledgeable in the Word of God, very humble. He is just a sheer delight to fellowship with.

He really knows the Word. He's one of the finest men I have ever known.

Conference Logistics and the First Commercial Break

Well, we have to go to our first commercial break right now. And if you would like to join us with a question of your own, our email address is ChrisArnzen, at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N, at gmail .com.

As always, give us your first name, at least your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA. And only remain anonymous if your question is involving a personal and private matter.

Let's say you disagree with your own church about eschatology or the end times or last things, and you don't want to publicly identify yourself. I can understand reasons like that may compel you to remain anonymous.

But if it's a general question, give us your first name, at least, city and state and country of residence. Don't go away. We're going to be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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Why End Times Watchfulness Matters

Welcome back. If you just tuned us in, this is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and our guests today, our two guests, are the founder and chairman of the board of First Love Ministries and First Love Radio, Joe Jakowicz, who also happens to be pastor of Christ Bible Church in Pleasanton, California.

And we are also joined by the president of First Love Ministries and First Love Radio, Tom Smith, who always, at least 99 of the time, mans a free book table for First Love publications at the biannual free Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pastors Luncheon, which is most often held in Perry County, Pennsylvania, at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania.

And we are discussing today the very provocative theme, End Times Readiness. And that is also the theme of their upcoming 2026 First Love Ministries Bible Conference on September 17th, 18th, and 19th in Pleasanton, California.

And once again, to find out more details on this conference, go to FirstLoveMinistries .org. FirstLoveMinistries .org. But Pastor Joe, as you know full well, discussions on the end times, the last things, eschatology, very often create more heat than light in the body of Christ because they very often spark vehement disagreements, arguments, and so on.

It is one of the most, sadly, one of the most divisive issues in the body of Christ, next to music, I think. And so tell us about why this is such an important issue for you, and so much so that you have focused a very important conference on this major theme.