June 24, 2021 Show with Dr. Joe Morecraft on “Proper Heroes Put in Their Proper Place in the Lives of Christians” (Part 3)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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

Earth who are listening via live streaming at IronSharpensIronRadio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 24th day of June 2021, and I'm thrilled to have back on the program one of my favorite guests,

Dr. Joseph C. Moorcraft III, who is an author and a pastor at Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia.

Today we are going to be addressing part three of a subject that we began a couple of months ago, and that is proper heroes put in their proper place in the lives of Christians, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.

Joe Moorcraft. I always love being with you, Chris. The feeling is mutual, brother, and tell our listeners about Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia.

Heritage Presbyterian Church is about five years old. We are a member of the

Reformed Presbyterian Church, Hanover Presbytery, a small congregation that come from a variety of communities.

We are strict adherents to the original Westminster Confession of Faith and larger and shorter catechisms, and I love being the pastor of these people.

They're godly. They have a thirst for the Word of God. They want to carry out the Great Commission.

They believe in giving their money in the work of the Lord at all kinds of levels, and I just can't say enough good things about our little church.

Praise God. And if anybody wants to find out more about Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia, their website is heritagepresbyterianchurch .com,

heritagepresbyterianchurch .com, and tell us about what

I'm sure you might consider, or many who love and support your ministry might consider your magnum opus.

Tell us about authentic Christianity and exposition of the theology and ethics of the Westminster Larger Catechism.

For over twenty years, I've preached about four hundred sermons on the Westminster Larger Catechism.

For those of your listeners that aren't that familiar with historical doctrinal documents, this was written in the 1640s along with the

Westminster Confession of Faith and Shorter Catechism to set forth in detail the teaching of the

Word of God so as to end the Civil War and the tyranny in England, Scotland, and Ireland.

It is one of the very best expositions and applications of the doctrines and the laws of the

Bible that I know of, and whether a person was a Presbyterian or an

Episcopalian or a Baptist or whatever, the basic ingredients of the

Larger Catechism are believed historically by all those groups, and I highly recommend it to you.

Mine is an eight -volume set beautifully produced by a young man named

Kyle Shepard, and it can be purchased at westminstercommentary .com.

Let me read a commendation for this commentary by a name that will be very likely very familiar to many in our audience, spanning denominational lines in the

Reformed faith, Dr. Joseph A. Piper Jr., frequently known as Dr.

Joey Piper, president of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in South Carolina.

He says, Every Christian who is serious about the Reformed faith and the Westminster Standards should have and use this set.

It is much more than an exposition of the Larger Catechism. It is a thoroughly researched work that utilizes

Biblical exegesis as well as historical and systematic theology.

That's quite a powerful commendation from somebody of the caliber of Joey Piper, and I'm looking forward to getting him back on the program.

This is a good reminder to contact him. Yeah, he's great. Yes, he is. And also, tell us about comprehensivechristianity .com.

A couple years ago, an elder in our church said he's leaving his employment so he can spend his whole time scanning, editing, and publishing papers and manuscripts that I have, and so he has done that.

On comprehensivechristianity .com, there's an eight -volume set of books, either

Kindle, eBook, or paperback, eight volumes on comprehensive

Bible study, where I go through the Bible and preach a rather lengthy sermon on every book of the

Bible, and he puts that in print. We have a 600 -page commentary on the book of Genesis, some shorter books.

Some of the books are free, some of them aren't, but let me encourage you. And some videos, too.

So let me encourage you to go to comprehensivechristianity .com. The man that's in charge of it is named

Tim Rinchaw, and he's one of the elders in our church. Now, I am eagerly awaiting your radio commercials, because Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, happens to be one of our most recent sponsors of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and we're anxiously waiting to get the radio commercial promoting

Heritage Presbyterian Church so we can begin airing it. We'll get it to you next week, the

Lord willing. Great. Well, thank you very much for that. Yes, sir. Today, as I already stated, we are going to be addressing part three of proper heroes put in their proper place in the lives of Christians, and I understand that you would like to segue now into those great heroes of the faith known as the

Covenanters. I don't know of any period in history that's richer in heroes for men, women, and children than 1660 through 1688

Scotland, one of the greatest groups of people ever to live upon the face of this planet.

Of course, their history goes back before 1670. It goes back, in fact, 100 years earlier to the late 16th century.

John Knox, God used John Knox and later a man named Andrew Melville, John Knox to bring to Scotland by the power of the

Holy Spirit a reformation and revival of the church that was dramatic so that by the late 1500s, the

Church of Scotland was reformed and Presbyterian. Now, let me explain both those words.

The word reformed, it means somebody who has been reformed by the word of God, somebody who wants to get back past the medieval theology of Roman Catholicism to the

New Testament and the Old Testament, and we know such names as John Calvin, Martin Luther, and all those, but John Knox, under his preaching, the preaching of people with him,

God used these men to turn Scotland right side up and to reform the church.

Now, when I use the word Presbyterian, I don't mean it with a capital P. In other words,

I'm not talking about the domination. I'm talking about an idea, and the idea of Presbyterian, you know the word

Presbyterian comes from the Greek word presbyteros, which means elder, so every reformed

Baptist church I know is Presbyterian because they believe that the church should be governed by elders that are elected by the congregation to obey and enforce the word of the head of the church, who is the

Lord Jesus Christ, and by the late 1500s, the

Scottish church was both reformed in its doctrine and Presbyterian, or ecclesiastically

Republican. That is, it didn't believe in a one -man rule of the church.

It wasn't democratic. It didn't believe the majority rules of the church. It believed that the church is an ecclesiastical republic, that is, where it's governed by the word of God, administered by elders who are elected by the people and who represent the head of the church,

Jesus Christ. Now, that was so important because beginning in the 1600s with James I of England, who had previously been

James VI of Scotland, and throughout most of that century, the stewards were the monarchs, and they didn't believe that at all.

They believed that the king of England is the head of the church, that he's the head of the church of England, he's the head of the church of Scotland.

His will is law, both in church and in state.

And so beginning with James I in the early part of the 1600s, the steward monarchs persecuted the church of Scotland particularly.

So these were Anglicans that were persecuting the church of Scotland? These were Anglicans who weren't faithful to their own constitution, which was the 1939

Articles of the Church of England, which was in essence Reformed, I think written by Thomas Cranmer.

And so these were Anglicans that were committed to the king.

They were Arminian, that is, they believed the opposite of the

Reformed faith. They were Erastian, that is, they believed that the church is under the state and is accountable to the king, and so they weren't faithful to their own 1939

Articles of the Church of England. But they were a favor to the king, and so the king gave them great power and influence.

James I, the reason they didn't like the Scottish Presbyterians and the

Reformed people in Scotland, the church of Scotland I should say, is because they believed that Christ, not man, is the head of the church.

And they believed that in the church you should elect your rulers and your elders, and they shouldn't be appointed by some bishop or archbishop.

In fact, later on, one of the greatest Scottish preachers by the name of Sammy Rutherford wrote a book called

Lex Rex, The Law is King, in which he said that if God is going to bless

England, people must also be able to elect their kings and not just their elders.

So this was against everything the Stuarts believed that had bred into them.

James said, no bishop, no king. He understood that if you reject one man rule in the church, then eventually you're going to reject one man rule in the state.

So he did everything he could to try to bring the Scottish church into submission to his will.

He was Scottish himself, but he didn't like the

Calvinists in Scotland. Because they gave some of the most important witnesses that led to the beheading of his mother,

Mary, Queen of Scots. She was charged with murder and was found guilty of murder and attempting to overthrow

Elizabeth's reign. And he did not like the Calvinists. But also, he was a homosexual, a blatant homosexual.

And he believed with all of his heart in the divine right of kings, the absolute right of kings.

They're not only above the law, their will is law. His son, he died about 1625.

His son, Charles I, was even more stringent than his father in extending his tyranny over church and over state.

Charles was not a homosexual. He had a wife and several children. And from everything that I have read, he was a good family man, but he was a tyrant.

And he couldn't stand the Scottish church either and their refusal to bow before his will in everything.

So there were various laws that were put into effect in order to break the

Scottish church over a period of time. Charles was beheaded for murder.

And then he was replaced by Oliver Cromwell. And under Oliver Cromwell, even though at one point he had to go to war against the

Scots who wanted to set Charles II upon the throne, who was worse than his daddy and granddaddy.

And then James II, his brother, was even worse than he was. And they reigned from about 1660, that is

Charles II and James II, from 1660 to 1688.

Cromwell was the Lord Protector throughout the 50s. Then he died in 1658. And though he had to wage a war against Scotland and those who wanted to unseat him and place

Charles II on the throne, nevertheless a great spiritual rival took place. You don't read about this much in history books.

But the two nations that Cromwell had to go to war against and defeat,

Ireland and Scotland, both under, when Cromwell occupied and his armies occupied

Ireland and Scotland, they both earned a great revival and reformation. And Cromwell would love to go to Scottish, to reform

Presbyterian churches in Scotland because he loved to hear them preach the word of God, even though these old preachers, knowing they had

Cromwell before them in the pews, these old preachers in their pastoral prayer would pray against Cromwell and pray that God would curse him because he wasn't a

Presbyterian. But he would go to these churches nevertheless. And so, but then when

Cromwell died, there was nobody in the reform camp strong enough to hold things together.

The Scottish Presbyterians, well the Scots, not all the Presbyterians, but the

Scots wanted to set one of their boys back on the throne. And the

English, including Puritans, had monarchy on their genes. So between many of the

English Puritans and the Scottish people, they let their nationalism overcome their theology.

And Cromwell was always telling them, if you put a steward back on the throne, he will kill you.

And that happened almost immediately. So Charles II comes to the throne of England, Scotland, and Ireland and begins to establish order as he understood it.

He dismantled the Presbyterian government of the Church of Scotland.

He put it under his appointed bishops that control things in Scotland.

They required of, they declared, either he or his brother, declared that previous decisions by the

Scottish Church, null and void, and all Scottish people upon pain of punishment by the state, had to swear allegiance to the supreme authority of the

King of England over the church and state. Now, where did this word, covenanter, come from?

The Scots, all the way back to John Knox, believed in covenanting.

They believed that nationally, to bond themselves to the word of God and the headship of Christ and the theology of the

Bible, all the way back with Knox, there were covenants made that the people made with God to stand firm with the

Reformed faith. Then under James, things start changing very rapidly, and under Charles, and so then in 1638, the

Scottish people had written what's called the National Covenant. In the

National Covenant, they weren't treasonous. They declared their loyalty to the

King, and yet at the same time, they declared their loyalty to the Reformed faith, and protested against all the actions performed by the

Anglican Church against them to destroy the Reformed faith in Scotland.

1638 is a date in history that we must never forget. It was a movement by this time among the whole

Scottish people, so they had this document, the

National Covenant, written on lambskin. They had this large document swearing their loyalty to Christ and the

Reformed faith at a place called Greyfriars Church up in there in Scotland.

Greyfriars Church in Edinburgh, Scotland, and they had everything from nobles to peasants signed it.

Everybody wanted to sign it. It is said and estimated that some 60 ,000 people were in this little church in Churchyard packing the whole place so they can take their turn to sign it.

And after everybody there signed it, they took it all over Scotland, every city, every village. Thousands of people signed it.

Many of them signed after their name unto death, and some of them signed their name in their own blood.

So this was a securing of freedom for the

Scottish church by the Scottish people in 1638. And then in 1643, when

Charles II was carrying out his war against England to advance his tyranny over church and state, the

English parliament that was Puritan needed military help from Scotland.

So they signed an official agreement. The nation of Scotland, the parliament of England, the

General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and the Westminster Assembly of England signed this document called the

Solemn League and Covenant. And the Scottish people said, we'll help you in your war against Charles I.

Maybe I said Charles II, but I meant Charles I. We'll help you militarily in your war against Charles I.

If you defend the Reformed faith in Scotland, in its worship, its practice, its discipline, its government, and if you work toward the reformation of the

Church of England, according to the best churches in Europe, that is the Reformed churches, in its worship, doctrine, practice, discipline, and all the rest.

And so they signed that document, and that shaped the

Westminster Assembly. Westminster Assembly was called in 1643 to improve the

Thirty -Nine Articles of the Church of England, but once the Solemn League and Covenant was signed, Westminster Assembly realized their responsibility was to write a new document, the

Westminster Confession, in larger and shorter catechisms, to secure the reformation in Scotland and to advance the reformation in England.

So a covenanter is anybody that signed the National Covenant, 1638.

That was the law of the land in Scotland, until Charles II and James II declared them null and void and said they were criminal.

Also in 1638, right after they signed the National Covenant, remember there were bishops in charge, now appointed by the king, the churches of Scotland got together for a

General Assembly, which they were not allowed to do, sounds like COVID -19.

They were forbidden to have a General Assembly of all their churches. They were forbidden to have a

General Assembly of all their churches, but they met anyway, so 144, and not only preachers, there were about 144 preachers, and close to 100 ruling elders, and they set about to excommunicate six or eight bishops and depose several more who had been tyrannizing the

Church of Scotland. So the king of England had a representative there, a man named Hamilton, and Hamilton said that he knew that the king would be very displeased if the

General Assembly of the Church of Scotland deposed his bishops. So using the authority of the king,

Hamilton, this General Assembly was in Glasgow, Scotland. Hamilton declared the

General Assembly adjourned, and said everybody who did not live in Glasgow has to be out of town in 24 hours.

And so what did the General Assembly of Scotland do? Thanked him for coming, and proceeded to excommunicate the bishops.

Well, if you could pick up right where you left off when we return from our first break, and in fact,

I want to inform our listeners that one of our largest sponsors, Solid -Ground -Books .com,

has a plethora, I very rarely use that word, but I think it's fitting right now, they have a plethora of books on the

Scottish Covenanters. If you go to Solid -Ground -Books .com,

you'll see a search engine. If you type in Covenanter, C -O -V -E -N -A -N -T -E -R, you will see a very long list of books that will include books on the

Covenanters, including The History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland from the

Restoration to the Revolution by Robert Woodrow.

Also, The Life and Letters of James Renwick, The Last of the

Scottish Martyrs by William H. Carslaw. And we have in this list, let's see, there's a lot more here.

We have The Scottish Covenanters, Their Origins, History, and Distinctive Doctrines by Johannes G.

Voss. And there are a lot more there. Let's see,

I'm scrolling down. Martyrland, Perils of the

Persecution, The Tale of the Days of the Scottish Covenanters by Robert Simpson. Traditions of the

Scottish Covenanters, Gleanings Among the Mountains by Robert Simpson. And I could go on and on, there's a bunch of them in there.

There's Sermons and Times of Persecution in Scotland, Various Pastors with Original Preface by John Howey, and more.

So go to solid -groundedbooks .com, and in the search engine type in Covenanter, C -O -V -E -N -A -N -T -E -R, and you'll have this long list.

But don't go away, we'll be right back with Joe Moorcraft. If you have a question you'd like to ask

Dr. Moorcraft on The Scottish Covenanters, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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Please visit us at TruthLoveParent .com. Welcome back. If you just tuned in today, our guest for the entire two hours is

Dr. Joseph C. Moorcraft III. He is pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia.

And we are addressing part three of proper heroes put in their proper place in the lives of Christians.

And today we are highlighting the lives and legacy of the Covenanters.

If you'd like to join us on the air 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 the USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

And I think that lately some of my listeners have been stretching the definition of personal and private matter because I've been getting a lot of anonymous questions lately that puzzle me as to why they're anonymous.

But anyway, you left off, I believe, when the Church of England refused to agree to a pact that the

Scottish Covenanters were attempting to get them to agree to.

Yes, but let me say, first of all, there's another place where you can get a lot of information about the

Covenanters, and that's on sermonaudio .com. I have five or so lectures, our lectures on the

Covenanters, and of course they're free to download. So go to sermonaudio .com,

go to my name, and then look up a series of sermons called the

History of the Reformation. And in that series there are several tapes on the

Covenanters. But the Stuart Kings, now let me also say that I may get some of the dates a little bit off, not many of them, but understand

I'm sitting here in my recliner trying to remember all this stuff. And so I might get some of the dates wrong, but they won't be too wrong.

But anyway, as the later Stuart Kings became more and more determined in squelching the

Scottish Church, things started getting more tense.

If preachers were determined to preach the

Reformed faith and not preach what they were told to preach, they would be evicted from their pulpits.

And in one Sunday, some 400 preachers were evicted from their pulpits.

Somebody said that that Sabbath day when Scottish preachers preached their last sermon was probably the greatest

Sabbath in the history of Scotland. But then the

Stuart Kings, you had to use Archbishop William Laud's liturgy.

And of course the Scottish Church believed in worshiping according to the regulative principle of worship.

That is that we may only do in the worship of God what God has commanded us to do.

And they did not believe in the imposition of any kind of liturgy where a preacher has to say everything that a book of liturgies requires him to say.

And so the Scottish people quit going to these churches that were pastored by the bishops and that followed

Laud's liturgy. And so they left these churches.

The preachers were not allowed to preach. So they would have field meetings. They would meet in meadows and valleys and mountains.

Conventicles is what they were called. Where these preachers would preach the word of God.

And where people would not go to these tyrannical churches by the bishops in Scotland.

And some of these field meetings had just a handful of people and some of them had thousands of people.

And the king caught on so the king outlawed field meetings. He outlawed field preaching.

The Stuart kings determined to arrest field preachers and to arrest anybody that went to any of these conventical meetings, any of these field meetings.

And during that time between Charles II and James II, particularly during one 18 year period from 1670 to 1688, just in that period, 18 ,000

Scottish men, women, and children were martyred for one thing. And that is they believe that Christ, not man, is the head of the church.

18 ,000. Now that's just in an 18 year period. The whole persecution time was from about 1660 to 1688.

But the persecution accelerated in about 1670 because many of the

Covenanters started defending themselves. And started exercising their

Second Amendment rights. It's a joke. I was reading a question by a guest, a listener

I should say. They started defending themselves. I had my microphone on mute while I was reading.

That's right. And they started because when the king's soldiers would come up to try to arrest the crowd, they would be faced with armed

Christians. And I like one story where this lieutenant of the king's army came up to search out the situation and see how many people were at this one particular conventical.

And as he was about to ride off to get the rest of his soldiers as they were having a worship service, one of the

Scottish Presbyterians got his pistol and pointed that at him and said, I will kill you on the spot if you leave while our preacher is preaching the word of God.

And so the lieutenant had to wait until the sermon was over. They didn't preach short sermons.

Had to wait until the sermon was over because he couldn't leave. So they started defending themselves.

And so eventually mere attendance at these reform field meetings was a capital crime.

And soldiers were given the authority to be judge and jury and executioner for any reason.

You didn't have to go through legal process. If they even were suspicious that you were a rebel, they'd shoot you.

There was a famous archbishop by the name of James Sharp who was particularly bloodthirsty in Scotland in imposing the king's will.

And finally a very unwise, zealous but unwise Scottish man assassinated him.

And that of course intensified the whole battle. And so that the soldiers could go anywhere they wanted to in Scotland and ask anybody they wanted to, were you for the assassination of James Sharp?

Whether you were involved or not, even if you lived miles away, that was the question. And if you hesitated, they'd shoot you.

If you didn't answer the question, they'd shoot you. And some of these conscientious Scottish people weren't going to answer the question because they weren't there, they weren't involved, or they didn't want to turn in their friends.

And so you could be executed for being suspicious of thinking something that the king didn't want you to think.

Today we'd call that a hate crime I think. But anyway, so I got a feeling, just to add a little application here,

I got a feeling that if preachers are going to be faithful to the word of God and things go on like they're going on now, we will be charged with hate crimes about what we say about homosexuals or statism or things like that.

But anyway. Oh yeah, in fact, do you think you'll lose your train of thought if I ask a relevant question to what you just asked for Melissa?

No, I don't think so. Okay. Jay in Birmingham, Alabama says,

When having discussions with progressive Christians who hold to the view that an

LGBTQ plus person can be a Christian and enjoy that lifestyle with no desire to repent, but we

Christians claim a true believer in Christ will not live in an active sinful lifestyle and enjoy it without repenting, how do you answer them when they bring up heroes of the faith like Edwards and Whitfield who owned slaves or take a step further,

Dabney who defended slavery? The progressive Christians say they are actively enjoying a sinful lifestyle without any signs of repentance.

I'd love to hear your response to this, Jay. That is a very, very important question that Christians have got to have the courage to answer honestly without walking away in fear and intimidation.

The Bible clearly says that if somebody is a homosexual in action or in thought, he's somebody that God has given up on.

Now, a homosexual can be saved by repenting of his sins. First Corinthians 6 says no homosexual shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but you can repent of your sins and believe in Jesus and not be a homosexual anymore.

That's a very dangerous thing to say in this world, but we must not back down. We must not hesitate.

And when they bring up slavery, as white Christians believe in slavery, there's all kinds of slavery in this world.

And the slavery that particularly you find practiced by Abraham in the

Old Testament is not the same kind of slavery. It wasn't racial slavery.

It wasn't slavery based on race. And God's law regulated it very carefully and wisely.

In fact, if you kidnapped a man and sold him, you would be executed under the law of God. For kidnapping, that's exactly correct.

Now, after having said all that about slavery, understand that in the 1600s, many, many, many slaves in New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Barbados, and the

Caribbean were Scottish covenanters. So the kings would exile them, the ones they didn't kill, the ones they didn't drive into poverty and starvation.

Children, as well as adults, they would send to North America and sell them into slavery.

Or not sell them into slavery, put them into slavery. So slavery, Thomas Sowell said one time, and Thomas Sowell, you know, is a black man, about 90 years old, one of the greatest economists in America, said that by and large,

America did not enslave black people because they were black, but because they were accessible. And during the same period of time in which

Africans were being sold into slavery in North America, more white

Europeans were being sold into slavery in North Africa. So we mustn't back down from any of these questions, and I'm glad the listener asked all those questions.

Dabney, I have to bring up Dabney, Dabney said in one of his writings later in the 1800s that he thought that one of the reasons the

South, which he loved, lost the Civil War was because it did not reform slavery by the word of God.

Many of the preachers during the Civil War preached in the early days, the 1800s, preached that many of the practices by the slave owners were not biblical, and that slavery and its abuses needed to be reformed by God's word, and Dabney said, and they didn't do it.

So anyway, that's my two cents worth on slavery. And I'm not a racist. I have a lengthy paper on racism in my chapter in my book called

Liberty and Justice for All. And I know that your church will excommunicate an unrepentant racist.

It is an excommunicable offense if you're an impenitent, correct?

You may not distribute any racist material in our church.

As accurately defined, not as defined by the leftist community. Not defined by the real racists.

But anyway, so let's go back now to the Covenanters.

But I'm glad he asked that question, and it's an important one for Christians to have answers to, and I wish we could even talk more about it.

So once they started defending themselves, and once some of the more zealous young Covenanters started raising little militia to fight back, things got bloody.

And so the killing times, as I said, took place between 1670 and 1688, when during those days 18 ,000

Scottish Covenanters, men, women, and children, were tortured, brutally executed by beheading or by lynching or strangling or being burned at the stake.

Many families being driven into starvation and being exiled into slavery in North America.

It was a brutal time. In fact, we have to pick up where you left off there, because we have to go to our midway break right now.

Yes, sir. And please be patient with us, folks. The midway break, as always, is a little bit longer than the other breaks, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

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Dr. Joseph C. Moorcraft III. That email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com

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I hope you plan to join me and Chris Arnzen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio for the

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Wow, that's some compliment. How much do I owe you for that? You don't have to owe me anything.

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Covenanters which is the highlight of our discussion today on Christian heroes.

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Before we return to Joe Moorcraft and his discussion on Heroes of the

Faith in particular the Scottish Covenanters we just have some important announcements first of all please continue to pray for my oldest brother

John 76 years old who returned to the hospital sadly he has cancer he has critical stage emphysema and an inoperable aneurysm and he is not doing well according to his daughter my niece please pray for not only physical recovery but infinitely more important pray for his salvation and for the salvation of everyone in his family please pray for that also as I mentioned yesterday while I was doing the show

I got a text from my other brother Bob I mistakenly said he was 61 he is 64 my brother

Bob has a tumor that he is getting removed on June 30th from his bladder and he requested prayer please mark your calendars for tomorrow

David J. Engelsma will be my guest we are going to be discussing part 3 on the

Belgic Confession he has written a new two volume commentary on the

Belgic Confession and I know that there is a high degree of mutual admiration between my guest

Joe Morecraft and David J. Engelsma not that they agree on everything theologically they do have some important differences as do

I but you would hold him in high regard would you not yes sir

I would yes I know that you were both very pleased with each other on your opposition to the abysmal way not only governments all over the globe but the way churches responded to the

COVID hysteria yes sir so make sure you tune in tomorrow to David J.

Engelsma's discussion on the Belgic Confession also folks if you love this show and you do not want it to disappear from the airwaves please go to www .irontrapandzioneradio

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I believe and we would love to help you launch an ad campaign because we are in urgent need of your advertising dollars also if you are not a member of a local bible believing church that is theologically sound and biblically faithful such as Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia if you are not a member of a good church no matter where on the planet earth you live please let me know send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

and I may be able to help you find a church I have extensive lists spanning the globe of biblically faithful and theologically sound churches

I may be able to help find one for you in your own backyard you never know I have helped people all over the world find churches that were a very short drive from where they live and they didn't even know these churches existed or sometimes they passed these churches every day and didn't know that they were biblically faithful so if you are in that category of being in need of a biblically faithful church whether it is for a permanent church to call your home or a church that you are visiting while on vacation or a church for your family friends and loved ones without biblically sound churches send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

no matter where you live and put I need a church in the subject line that is also the email address where you can send in a question to Dr.

Joseph C. Moorcraft III chrisarnson at gmail .com chrisarnson at gmail .com always give us your first name at least your city and state and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA and would you like me to take another listener question or do you want to pick up where you left off I'll take another listener question that's always great ok

I have to enlarge this listener question because the font is microscopic oh we have a mutual friend well actually he's a close friend of yours

I've never met the brother I've only heard from him when he sends in questions to Iron Sharp and Zion Radio his name is

Pastor Gary Wagner and I know that you're a great man you're very fond of him and I'll provide his contact information for his church momentarily but he says greetings chris

I don't know if this question has been asked but I was wondering if Joe could recommend any books on the history of the reformation and the persecutions

I have several but I thought it might be good for your listeners to know of some of the better ones but before Joe answers remember to go to my client my advertiser's website solid -ground -books .com

and type in Covenanter into the search engine C O V as in victory E N A N T E R you'll get a whole list a long list of books on that specific subject but also they have a lot of books on the history of the reformation even outside of the

Covenanters at solid -ground -books .com but if you could Dr. Moorcraft give your own recommendation well besides all those great books by solid -ground there are three that I particularly have been influenced by the first book

I ever read on the Covenanters was a little banner of truth paperback called

Fair Sunshine by Jock Hurvis P U R V E S it's a great book to read it's a great book to read to your children it's just a short paperback then there was a great 19th century

Scottish scholar named Thomas McCree M C capital

C R I E and he wrote a biography of Knox and the history of the

Scottish Church both of them very readable both of them very thorough and those three books played a significant role in my life just encouraging me to stand for Christ in dark times and to talk about all these great heroes of course as you say there's a lot more but during this killing time the way by which men women and children were martyred was gory

I mean I have all kinds of notes on how they were killed but I'm not going to get into them because they're incredibly pure butchery and they were all killed murdered with the full approval of the state and many of the church leaders because they believe

Christ is the head of the church now what's interesting is even though these covenanters lived in the middle and late middle part of the 17th century the issues that they were willing to die for are the issues that we as Christians and reformed people in America today are having to face that we're backing away from there are many courageous pastors that have are standing for these great truths the covenanters including little children who are willing to die for them and I think we'll see a revival in our day if we're willing to die for these great truths the covenanters were persecuted for number one the tyranny versus liberty the covenanters hated tyranny they loved liberty they realized liberty was found only in Christ secondly they believed in the separation of the church and state as institutions they didn't believe of course they did not believe in the separation of Christianity and state of the bible and state of God and state but they did believe that as far as institutions are concerned the church and the state are two separate institutions and the state particularly has absolutely no authority to tell the church how to preach how to counsel how to worship thirdly the covenanters believed that God not man is the source of law that God is the law giver and the only just and righteous and perfect standard of justice and righteousness in the world is the law of God contained in holy scripture they were willing to die for that I think today that's probably the most important political issue in fact all these issues are political they're political as well as theological and that's why the father and the state understood that and they didn't want anybody believing these things or else it would upset their authority and their tyranny so you have tyranny versus liberty our people are not so much concerned with liberty as they are security secondly the fact that God alone is the source of law not man third the separation of church and state and fourth

Christ not man is the head of the church and in the church Christ's word is law that man's opinions carry no weight whatsoever in the church and little children were willing to be persecuted for believing that and they were willing to be persecuted rather than turning in people that believed in that so this liberating the men from the boys and the women from the girls and it's great to see people like John MacArthur change his opinion and stand for the headship of Christ over the church and telling people to get involved in politics for Christ's sake so I want to talk about before we go back to any listeners question

I want to talk about one of my favorite heroes now there's all kinds of them I can talk about Archibald let me just give some names

Archibald Campbell one of the most powerful men in all of Scotland the first martyr

Archibald Campbell and he well I can't go into all of them another was

James Guthrie he was the second great martyr his descendant is

Bill Potter there were two women named Margaret one an 18 year old girl another a 63 year old girl that would not bow before the supremacy of the king over the church so while the tide was out in a town called

Wigton as the tide was out they sunk stakes deeply in the sand of the coast and tied them to the stake but the older lady farther out the younger woman closer to shore the tide was out and the tide gradually came in until they drowned and the young woman watched the old woman die and then they kept trying to get the young woman to pledge her allegiance to the king as the head of the church she wouldn't do it so she drowned her name was

Margaret Wilson my favorite is a man named John Welch John Welch was the great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great

Wow. And he was a convergent. Praise God, wow.

Yeah. I just wanted to give a plug to our last listener who sent in the question.

Since you highly regard him and his church, Reformed Heritage Church of Los Gatos, California, if you live in that area or are visiting that area,

Pastor Gary Wagner and more information on his church,

Reformed Heritage Church, can be found at reformedheritage .org, reformedheritage .org.

We have Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County who asks,

What are your thoughts on the 17th century Scottish theologian

George Gillespie? I recall years ago reading a volume by him that impressed me greatly if my memory serves me correctly, especially because he was vehemently opposed to many of the

Romish intrusions into the Anglican Church. And the

Scottish Church mostly. Well, George Gillespie, that's a question I would love to talk about for a couple hours.

George Gillespie was the youngest man at the Westminster Assembly that met in the middle 1640s in London to write the

Westminster Confession of Faith. He was Scottish. He was one of the commissioners sent by Scotland to make sure that these

English Puritans would put the right doctrine in the Westminster Confession of Faith since he'd signed the

Solemn League and Covenant. George Gillespie's most famous book is called

Aaron's Raw Blossoming, and it's on Presbyterian with a small

P church government. It's against the tyranny of the state.

Great book. He wrote several books. My favorite story about George Gillespie, he didn't live to be long old.

Thirty -five years old. Yes, sir. This is a story, I don't know exactly how true it is, but I prefer to believe it is true.

He was at, there was a man that was debating at the Westminster Assembly named

Selden, and Selden was probably the most scholarly man there as far as Eastern studies and writings of the ancient

Eastern Church are concerned, and he was pleading

Erasmus. That is, he was pleading that the

Westminster Assembly would put in a paragraph that says that the king is the head of the church and the church is under the state, and Selden would quote all these ancient documents and was overwhelming everybody because nobody had the knowledge that he had.

So somebody whispered in Gillespie's ear and they said, you've got to answer this man.

There's nobody else in this room that could answer this man if you don't do it. The Westminster Confession of Faith, excuse me, the

Westminster Confession of Faith will make the king the head of the church. So Gillespie gets his notepad out and as Selden makes all these quotes of ancient literature and all his arguments,

Gillespie is writing furiously. Everybody presumes he's taking notes.

So after Selden sits down, Gillespie gets up and he refutes everything that Selden said.

He knew the documents, he refuted the documents, he refuted every point.

So that Selden himself said that Gillespie has destroyed 40 years of his scholarship.

So somebody looked at his notepad and instead of notes, page after page, line after line were simply the words, oh

Lord help me, oh Lord help me, oh Lord help me. Wow. Yeah.

We have, this is just a note of encouragement, we have

Cindy in Findlay, Ohio, who just says in regard to your story on John Welch, greatest story of a man

I've heard. Well great. He's a hero. Obviously it's quite obvious that you have a heartfelt belief in that.

Yes sir. Well we're gonna go to our final break right now. It's gonna be much more brief than the breaks.

If you do have a question, please use this opportunity to send it in now before we run out of time. Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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Or visit linbrookbaptist .org. That's linbrookbaptist .org. Welcome back. If you just tuned us in, our guest for the entire program has been and will continue to be for the next 15 minutes, my dear friend

Dr. Joseph C. Moorcraft III. We are discussing Part 3 of a theme that we began a couple of months ago,

Proper Heroes Put in Their Proper Place in the Lives of Christians. And we have been giving special focus today to the

Scottish Covenanters. If you have a question, send it in immediately because we're rapidly running out of time. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Always give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

And we have Bobby in Hartsdale, New York, who says, In our modern day, the

Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America and their sister denomination overseas in the

United Kingdom claim that they are the modern day heirs of the Covenanters. In fact, they frequently go by the nickname

Covenanters. How similar are these Covenanters today to those of their heroes of yesteryear?

Let me add, Dr. Moorcraft, if you're going to be critical, please be patient and merciful because I have many friends in that denomination.

So do I. Okay, good. In fact, I think Gary Wagner is too, isn't he? No, no sir.

There are many, many good men, people, good men and women, in the

Reformed Presbyterian Church, comma, Covenanter. And there are many good people that have faithfully maintained the heritage of these

Covenanters of the 17th century. Now what's interesting is that many, particularly

Presbyterian denominations, have their roots in Scottish Presbyterianism and Scottish Reformation.

And all of these denominations, many of them, have people that have been faithful.

But as a whole, most of them have left their roots. And my prayer is that they would return to their roots.

They say they believe the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms, and I pray that they would, and that they would preach them.

And so that's about all I'm going to say on that. But there are faithful people in the

Reformed Presbyterian Church, comma, Covenanter. But just like all other Presbyterian churches, not all of them are faithful to their past and their roots, and they've either neglected it or have betrayed it.

So the persecution of the Covenanters continued to 1688. James VI was on the throne.

He was a Roman Catholic. He was a wicked womanizer. And even the

Anglicans in England had all they could take of him. So they asked a

Dutch Calvinist by the name of William and his wife

Mary to come to England from Holland and to take over the throne and to expel

James II. What's interesting is that Mary was the daughter of James II.

And Mary, of William and Mary, was the godliest queen that England has ever had.

And William and Mary were both Calvinists. And they come to England, and cowardly

James II flees to Ireland. And he's put down and has to go to Europe.

And now William and Mary are the king and queen of England. A law is passed. No Roman Catholic shall ever be able to sit on the throne of England and Scotland.

And they stop the bloody persecution of the Covenanters. But the persecution of the

Covenanters went on until well into the 18th century.

Though there was no more killing of Covenanters, Covenanters were not allowed, preachers were not allowed to perform marriages, except by American rites, as long as they professed to be

Reformed and Presbyterian. They couldn't teach in the schools. They couldn't hold any public office.

And so that went on for a good amount of time. And so finally, these

Scottish Covenanters, many of them had moved to Northern Ireland to escape persecution.

But this persecution of the monarchs chased them all the way to Northern Ireland. So finally they had all they could take, and they came to America.

They first went to New England, but they were not well accepted in New England.

So they came to the South. And they came to the South over several generations in droves.

And everywhere they went, they took their religion of John Knox with them. They took their hatred of tyranny, their love for freedom, their belief that God is the source of law, that the separation of institutions and jurisdictions, church and state, that Christ alone is the head of the church.

Everywhere they went, they took their Westminster Confession and catechisms. They built schools.

They built churches. They went all over the South. And there's no immigration group in history that has the impact on the people where they settled than the

Scotch -Irish. Now that's not a racial statement, because God used them in spite of their being

Scotch -Irish. God used them because of their faith. And because of their religion.

And so when Unitarianism had eaten up the North and New England by 1830, it was mostly

Unitarian. Unitarian had hardly any inroads in the South at all because of the great impact of these

Scotch -Irish Calvinist Presbyterians. So that when the

Civil War came, one of the reasons that the North wanted to break the back of the

South, this is not as a partisan talking, this is as a historian talking, was the

South still had this influence on Washington of limited government.

And New England, with its Unitarianism, wanted a massive, socialistic government that controlled every area of life.

And so because many of the presidents, vice presidents, Supreme Court justices were of the

South, they had to break the back of the South and its influence on Washington, which is, in my opinion, the basic motivation for the war between the states.

So the back was broken and Scotch -Irish

Christianity dealt a serious blow.

Then through the days of Reconstruction, on up into the 20th century,

Woodrow Wilson, who was of Scotch -Irish background, but who had rejected his heritage, and on up to this very day, has by those who know what's going on, been a deliberate rejection of the religion of John Knox.

If you look at movies on John Knox, he's always some crazy, wild -eyed man.

And that's how they want to betray him. I have a book, one of my books on the Covenanters, which

I don't recommend, so I'm not even going to tell you the title, where the author refers to the

Covenanters as the PLO of the 17th century. PLO is

Palestinian Liberation Organization, that is a terrorist organization. And so they're trying to paint the

Covenanters to this day as a bunch of terrorists. Because our enemies know better than we do that they have to control history.

And so they revise history to make the bad guys good and the good guys bad.

And so as a result, John Calvin is a terrible person today when they studied

John Knox, the Covenanters, and on and on. So Christians must learn their history.

There's no period of history, in my opinion, that shaped the

American mind of 1776 as much as John Knox and the

Scottish Reformation and all that that followed in Scotland. Most people in the 1776 colony spoke with a

Scottish accent. So that when Samuel Rutherford's book was reprinted in the colonies in 1776, he wrote in the 1740s, called

Lex Rex, The Law is King rather than the King is Law. That book was a bestseller in 1776 in the colonies.

A bestseller. It wasn't looked at as extreme. It was looked at as mainstream historic

Christianity, politics, and theology. It taught that, Lex Rex taught that only

God can distinguish good from evil and God has done so in the Bible. Only God can define what a crime is, what's criminal, and he's done that in the

Bible. Only God can define how crime is to be punished justly and he's done that in the

Bible. That was the consensus of opinion in the colonies in 1776, even though that book was written over a hundred years prior.

There was another bestseller in the colonies in 1776. And that is the book by Prince Huguenot and the title in English is

A Vindication of Liberty Against Tyrants, Vindicii Contra Tyrannis.

And it was written by a French Calvinist to make many of the same points that Lex Rex made and they were both bestsellers in the colonies in 1776.

The only book people know today about 1776 is Thomas Paine's book. And Thomas Paine was an atheist and it was popular.

But you don't ever hear today in public schools or even in Christian schools because they don't know it. But the two bestsellers in 1776 represented

Protestant Reformation and one represented the Scottish Reformation and Covenant and Theology.

So history's on our side. It's not on their side. They like to point out to us that if you're not a

Marxist, if you're not a Socialist, if you're not a Communist, you're out of step with history.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Marxism, Communism, Socialism are new boys on the block and they have absolutely no future.

They're the ones that are out of step with history. The Bible teaches us that as we go on and as we continue to preach the gospel uncompromised, diluted, undiluted, you know how the

Covenanters could get from being killed? They could have kept from being martyred and tortured and driven into slavery and poverty if they just compromised.

That's the way Votibach said that once. That's the way to keep from being persecuted is compromise.

And so I'm calling upon everybody out there that's listening to your radio show, forget the compromise anymore.

Forget the negotiations. Truth is non -negotiable. We hate tyranny.

We love freedom. Death to all tyrants. We believe in the jurisdiction and institutional separation of church and state.

God alone is the source of all. Amen. And that Christ is head of the church.

Amen. And by the way, I see why I made that error to think that the

Reformed Heritage Church in Los Gatos, California, was a part of the

Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America. On the website they have the same banner that that denomination uses for Christ's crown and covenant.

That is a covenant banner, by the way. Right. We have time for one last listener question.

RJ in White Plains, New York, asks, I am no expert on church history, but the persecution of the

Covenanters is the only example that I personally can think of where Protestants gruesomely persecuted other

Protestants that believed in the same gospel, albeit had differences on other issues.

And also where a heretic may have disagreed with the

Godhead or something vital such as that. Were those in the Church of England who persecuted the

Covenanters admitting that these were their brothers in Christ and that they shared the same gospel?

No, sir. Really? That's the whole point.

The whole point is that the source of law, the source of salvation, was the will of the monarch, and that it wasn't

Protestants persecuting Protestants. That was not what was going on.

It was people who had rejected Protestantism persecuting true

Protestants. That the king of England and the archbishops and the bishops rejected historical

Christianity. I'm thinking particularly of Archbishop William Law that I could mention others. Archbishop James Sharp.

They had rejected the faith of the Protestant Reformation. They were

Arminians. They loved Catholic liturgy. And it's interesting how in history

Arminians have always sided with tyrants against Calvinists. Wow. I mean, always.

They've always been the favorites of the tyrant because they're easy to be manipulated since they believe in man.

And that's what happened in the 17th century. It wasn't Protestants versus Protestants.

It was those who had rejected Protestantism for the tyranny of the monarch against those who were true

Protestants calling the nation back to true Protestantism. But the Church of England was claiming on the surface to be

Protestant, though, right? Well, the doctrinal statement of the Church of England was the 39 articles of the

Church of England. Right. Very Protestant. But the Church of England was in shambles.

Right. The Puritan parliament had removed all officers from the

Church of England. It outlawed bishops and archbishops and all those things.

And so as a result, they were trying to impose them upon the stewards who were trying to get them back into England.

But the thing we're talking about tonight is the Scottish Church had rejected Episcopalian government since the 1560s.

Since John Knox, the Scottish Church had been reformed and Presbyterian small p. Ever since John Knox, 100 years before the whole, the

Killing Times. So it is false Protestantism seeking to destroy true

Protestantism. And we are out of time now. I want to make sure our listeners have your website again.

HeritagePresbyterianChurch .com HeritagePresbyterianChurch .com That's the website of Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia.

And also, don't forget about WestminsterCommentary .com to find out more about the eight -volume commentary in the

Westminster Larger Catechism by Joseph C. Moorcraft III. And last but not least, don't forget about ComprehensiveChristianity .com

ComprehensiveChristianity .com the website of Tim Renshaw, who is an elder at Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia.

I want to thank you so much, Dr. Moorcraft. I definitely want you to come back to continue this theme, because there's so many other heroes we can highlight, and I'm sure you know a lot of them.

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