April 22, 2016 Show with Norman Horn on “Christian Libertarianism”

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Well, today we're going to be talking about something different than the normal theologically driven type of program that we typically do on Iron Sharpens Iron, but as with everything in life,

I think it does reflect to a degree on Christian theology. But we're going to be talking about Christian libertarianism.

Perhaps some of you who used to listen to the old Iron Sharpens Iron years ago used to remember that I would have quite frequently on the program my good friend

William Norman Grigg, who is a Christian and a libertarian as well and an author, a former

Mormon who converted to biblical Christianity. And today we have a new gentleman on the program, a new guest

I should say, who's never been on the program before, Norman Horn, who is the president and editor -in -chief at the

Libertarian Christian Institute, and he is the founder and editor of LibertarianChristians .com,

the premier website exploring libertarian theory from a Christian point of view and the main organizer of the

Christians for Liberty Conference. Norman holds a Ph .D. in chemical engineering from the

University of Texas at Austin and a Master of Arts in theological studies from the

Austin Graduate School of Theology. He also has earned an M .S. in chemical engineering, a

B .S. in chemical engineering, and a B .S. in chemistry. He has won numerous awards for his writings and research in both engineering and theology.

Norman is the author of multiple peer -reviewed publications in science, economics, and political theory, and he has been published in many popular venues, including

Young American Revolution, Students for Liberty, the LewRockwell .com,

and the Washington Post websites. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron, Norman Horn.

Hey, thanks Chris for letting me be here. It's really a pleasure to join you on the program. Yeah, one of the reasons

I like to get a Christian libertarian point of view on occasion on this program,

I am not personally a fully committed libertarian, but I am very intrigued by libertarianism, and I'm not saying that I would totally continue to reject libertarianism either.

Who knows? He may be speaking to a future libertarian. It's one of those things where I am still investigating and studying through the issue, and I definitely see positives, many positives on the side of libertarianism, especially when you consider the history of the

United States and what the founders really were trying to achieve as a government of this country and so on.

So it's good to have you on this program since the vast majority of time during a presidential race like we are going through.

We are not hearing too much of a libertarian point of view, especially since the one libertarian candidate who

I guess even in his own words describes himself as libertarian -ish,

Rand Paul. I think his father was more outspoken about being a libertarian, Ron Paul, or should

I say I think is, I should say rather than was, he's still with us. He just wasn't running for president this time around.

But I wanted to talk to you about this, but first let me also introduce to you my friend and co -host as of late,

Reverend Buzz Taylor. Hello, Norm. Hey, Buzz. It's good to be with you too. Thank you. I always start out like the nut, okay?

I'm here for the comic relief and I can ask the really stupid questions, okay? But I try to think from the standpoint of listeners around the world that aren't as versed in everything as Chris is.

So if you could first give us a definition, what do you mean by libertarianism?

So libertarianism is simply a political philosophy that says that we should not initiate aggression against other people.

Now aggression is essentially defined as the initiation of force against other people.

So when we say we abhor aggression and we don't want to have that in our society, what we're suggesting is for the most part we are living and let living what other people want to do with their own lives.

So what that means for Christians especially is that it actually follows very much along the lines of the golden rule, and you might say it's kind of the other half of that coin in a sense.

That whereas we want to treat others in the way we'd like to be treated, as the golden rule says, the other side of that is that we don't treat others in the way we don't want to have ourselves treated as well.

And so that is the prime political value that we espouse. And we think that as Christian libertarians that coincides very much with the biblical principles of how society should operate.

Now that may come across to some people as being a little weird, because we're typically, as more than likely all of us here on this program, are fairly theologically conservative individuals.

And we're used to as well kind of meshing that with politically conservative values as well.

But in many respects, when we try to mesh with those political conservative values, we end up in situations where we have to force people to adhere to our exact moral code.

And what we're suggesting here is that maybe this isn't the right way of accomplishing building a good and just society.

Yes, there's going to be people who are bad, who are going to do evil, violent things, and we have to deal with that.

But when it comes to a lot of the other things in our society, how should we take care of the poor? How should we take care of economic issues and health issues and all of these things regarding business and just day -to -day life?

We don't need to use a government to accomplish those sorts of things. We don't need to have regulation upon regulation, rule upon rule, in order to deal with those sorts of things.

We don't even need them to make sure that people are moral either. And so that's the basis of basic libertarian thought and why

Christians ought to probably take a look at it very closely and think about it in terms of whether or not maybe this is the better way of thinking than, say, typical conservatism.

And obviously there are different kinds of libertarians. We have the notorious atheist

Penn Jillette of the magician comedy team Penn &

Jillette. Well, actually, no, it's Penn & Teller, I'm sorry. That's right.

And quite a brilliant individual, but one who does not believe in Christ.

Although I saw a very amazing, I don't know if you have seen it, but did you see the video of him taking a totally different view from the point of view of somebody who is known for liberalism when it comes to social and moral values and from being an atheist as well.

But he actually highly respected a Christian man who gave him a

Bible after one of his Vegas acts. Did you see that video?

I don't believe I've seen the video, but I've heard of that incident that you speak of.

Yeah, you can see that right on YouTube. Sure. But he is an example of a libertarian who might have a lot of views that would reflect yours fiscally when it comes to government spending and all that, and perhaps even involving the

United States' role in conflicts overseas and things like that.

But he is a man who has moral and social values that we would abhor because we think that God abhors them.

He believes in basically there should be little or no rules at all with one's sexual conduct.

I'm assuming perhaps he would draw the line with anything involving children or anything of that nature.

But he has said pretty much that he believes that libertarianism is the perfect choice for someone who wants total sexual freedom in his life.

But other than that, there would be some similarities, obviously, because there is a libertarian root here.

But tell us about the different philosophies of libertarianism. What would make a

Christian libertarian different from a Penn Jillette? Well, the thing is about libertarianism is that it doesn't require a comprehensive worldview in order to be a libertarian per se.

It actually can have a lot of different types of value systems that would work alongside it.

What it does say is that with respect to how we organize society, that there ought not to be force placed upon other people in order to get them to do what you want.

And that has a limitation, though, as well. Obviously, if someone is initiating force against you, you can respond to that.

But that's a different story. I am not to lift a hand to force you to do what I want.

That's impermissible. But there are Christian libertarians. There are non -Christian libertarians. Just as there are

Christians who are conservative and there are Christians who are not conservative. And there are Christians who are liberals and Christians who are not liberals.

Or non -Christians who are liberals, I mean. And so there are lots of ways in which you can imagine people of different types of backgrounds being involved in the libertarian movement.

And in fact, there's plenty of other religions, in fact, who have organizations in place to try and promote libertarianism amongst their adherents.

Now, as much as I disagree with those religions, obviously, I'm not going to be a fan of Mormonism just because there's a

Mormon libertarian group or something like that. But insofar as they're libertarians, we're going to at least agree upon that.

That's just an interesting thing about a philosophy such as this, that you can have differing values and yet agree that we need to let each other alone with respect to how we want to live our lives.

As long as we're not initiating force against others, we should be permitted to engage in peaceful activity.

Well, now it seems like there has to be some kind of boundaries to that, though. I mean, you say not initiating force.

That sounds like, well, do we need a police department? How far do you take that? Well, so there's a difference between initiatory force and responsorial force.

So if I walk up to you and say, give me your wallet or I'm going to shoot you in the face,

I'm initiating force against you, right? And I have the right to respond to that in accordance to that threat.

However, what's interesting about the way that a lot of conservatives and a lot of liberals think overall is that, well, as long as it's the government saying that through taxation or something, well, then that's fine.

They can do that because that's what the government's there for. But that's the difference, though, is that in the libertarian conception of society, we say that you should not be allowed to initiate aggression consistently.

We say that that applies to everyone equally. There is no special moral position, whether or not you're involved in the state.

There's no special moral position just because you wear a uniform. But you're not to initiate aggression at all, no matter who you are.

Now, responding to force is a different story, as we noted. And so there may be organizations that arise in order to help protect people's rights in this regard.

But it's not necessarily the case that you have to have something that looks even akin to what we would say is a modern police department or a modern state, for that matter.

So that would be the key dividing point between that libertarian philosophy and a pacifist.

Correct. You would not be pacifist because you would believe in appropriate retaliation and also appropriate measures for defense using weaponry or whatever else you might find necessary.

That's entirely possible. And as a Christian, I think we can justify that as well.

But we also, you know, maybe we have to take a slightly different approach on certain things and be very careful in how we apply that, even responsorily.

So it seems that there are a lot of people who are professing conservatives, who they have never really been acquainted with libertarianism.

And they've become accustomed to dividing things between conservative and liberal and adopting certain ideological concepts that they think historically have always been held by conservatives.

But sometimes they naively or through ignorance are adopting things that were never a part of a conservative -minded, politically active

Christian in earlier years. One of those things would be political conflict and military conflict overseas, the involvement of the

United States in foreign wars and things like that. Right.

And people who are more towards a typical Republican or conservative bent today would view that as liberalism.

You would very frequently have that equated with being liberal, if you could comment on that.

Well, sure. And I think we need to point out here as well that what we call libertarianism now was very much considered the liberalism of old and classical liberalism, not the neoliberalism that we see today that's characterized by the

Democratic Party, per se. So I think that's a worthy distinction to make. They absconded with the word liberalism because someone who is liberal is one who is supposed to love liberty.

That's the core of what that word originally meant. The classical liberals were those who tried to enhance human liberty across the board.

And so when the modern liberals of the Democratic Party in particular kind of absconded away with that, we lost something great.

Conservatives, in many respects, what we're talking about here were kind of like that in the past.

The old school conservatives, the old right, if you will, people like Albert J. Knock or someone like J.

Gresham Machen might be considered part of that old right even on the religious side.

And so, yeah, we would definitely say that that old school thinking of conservatism or old classical liberalism was very against the idea of going abroad in order to export

American values that way militarily. On the contrary, we believe that if we're going to export our values, we should do it diplomatically and we should do it via trade and we should do it via mission.

The last being, of course, the Christian way of thinking about such things. Instead of exporting bombs as our primary way of getting our values out there, we export

Bibles. And obviously the founding fathers, one of the core principles of the founders of our nation was a vehement opposition to imperialism.

Absolutely. So that's a very poignant point from today.

We watched even as the British Empire dissolved amongst itself in the ensuing 200 years following the

American Revolution. And we should have taken that to heart, that you can't build an empire and expect that to not tear your country apart in the meantime.

And I think we're kind of seeing that even now in so far as foreign adventurism is bankrupting us.

Now, another one of the things that a typical conservative may get upset or may think that a libertarian is just another name for a classic left -winger or liberal today is the fact that libertarians typically are against the quote -unquote war on drugs.

They are, in fact, typically in favor of the legalization of drugs, not because, especially if you're talking about a

Christian libertarian, you're not talking about because you are advocating the use of recreational drugs or drug abuse of any kind.

It's just the fact that you believe people should have individual liberties even to make stupid mistakes, and you don't believe the government should be wasting time and our money in that battle.

Am I correct, or do you have a better way of describing that? Absolutely correct. Yeah, and the war on drugs is something we are categorically 100 % against, and I would explain it just very slightly differently than the way you said it.

All the things you said are true, but primarily the reason we oppose the war on drugs is that it is an absolute abrogation of personal liberty, and that in order to enforce those sorts of rules and regulations, you are required to initiate aggression against other people to do it.

And if we abhor aggression, if we believe you should not be allowed to initiate force against the peaceful action of other people, then we obviously must reject the war on drugs.

And we should reject the war on all sorts of things that the government says we ought to be at war against in that respect, whether it's the war on large soft drinks like New York tried to do for a little while, or other things that might be rather benign.

But we also have to say liberty needs to be equal for all in this respect.

We don't have the right to tell people just because I believe it's immoral means that I have the right to stop you from doing it.

And so when you see other types of moral, busybody laws like this, we have to reject those things.

And the war on drugs, because of how destructive it is to people's lives overall, we make sure that that is absolutely clear that we oppose it.

So would the terms just and unjust laws then be in your vocabulary? Absolutely, yeah.

And could you give me some examples? Well, sure. I mean, unjust laws would be something like laws against the recreational use of marijuana, for instance.

Or even in this case, one of my favorites is the imposition of the

TSA, you know, that basically restricts your right to travel unencumbered by government regulation.

And that's another one that would be considered unjust laws. I think a lot of immigration laws are very unjust in how that they prevent people from traveling, either from getting in or getting out, for that matter.

I believe all taxation is unjust law, whether it's the income tax or a corporate tax or a property tax or a consumption tax, for that matter.

And so basically anything that requires a forceful action against someone else that is initiated by the government,

I believe is an unjust law. And let's have some just laws. Well, I mean, certainly we would say that a prohibition against murder is a just law.

It's pretty obvious. Prohibitions against aggression are just fine.

We don't have any problem with that. But those laws that are contrary to that, that's what we believe are unjust.

This is actually where a lot of Christians became angry with Rand Paul, because obviously

I'm hoping that as a Christian you believe abortion is murder. And he believed that that should be a issue left up to each state to decide on whether a woman should have the freedom of having an abortion.

And as we were saying, Rand Paul is a self -described libertarian -ish conservative, as opposed to his father, who is more perhaps fully libertarian in his ideology and political views.

Whereas most conservative Christians in the pro -life movement see this as something, one of the few areas where the federal government should be outlawing abortion as murder, because it's murder.

And we wouldn't have states deciding individually whether a husband can murder his wife or a wife can murder her husband or anything like that.

We would consider murder murder, or in fact murder their children after they're born. We wouldn't have states choosing individually whether that should be legal.

Why would we want that to be chosen or legalized that way on a state -by -state issue if we consider it just as much murder as those other things

I mentioned? So if you could comment on your view on that. Sure. I think there's a lot of nuance that needs to go into that, and who knows if we'll have the time to hit every little part of it.

But first off, I think that Rand and Ron Paul, for that matter, are correct insofar as that it's not within the purview of authority of the federal government to regulate that.

And here's the reason why. You don't have all sorts of various laws like that that trickle up into the federal purview.

Murder is essentially dealt with by the states as are battery and assault and whatnot.

Those types of laws are dealt with by the states and they're not under the purview of the federal government. It literally would need to take a constitutional amendment in order to deal with that.

And if that came to pass, then you would hear them comment upon it. But insofar as there is no constitutional amendment for it, they would argue that that is not within the purview of the federal government's powers and therefore should not be ruled upon.

They'd also oppose Roe v. Wade for the same reason, because that's an incursion and doesn't need to exist as a ruling.

And so that's why Rand and Ron have said that in the past, even though both of them are very much pro -life.

They're categorically against abortion. In fact, I know that Ron is a gynecologist.

I'm not sure what kind of abortion Rand is, but they both never have ever been involved in abortions.

Yes, that's correct. And Ron was a gynecologist at OBGYN.

Rand is an ophthalmologist, so he deals with eye care and all that.

Both of them have been involved in the medical field for quite a while, obviously. So my understanding is that you're talking primarily about the limiting of federal government.

That's correct, in that respect, yes. Not states. Yeah, and so with respect to what the federal government is empowered to do, it is not within the federal government's power.

Well, how do you think this abuse, when do you think this abuse started from the federal government?

Well, pretty much from about the Constitutional Convention. The original

Constitutional Convention you're talking about. Well, tell me a little bit about that.

In fact, if you could tell him more about that when we come back from the break, because we're going to be looking for a commercial right now.

And if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Norman Horne on Christian libertarianism, our number is, our number.

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USA. You may remain anonymous if it makes you feel more comfortable. But we do look forward to hearing from you after this message as we continue our discussion on Christian libertarianism.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arns. And if you just tuned us in, our guest today is

Norman Horn. He is the founder of the Libertarian Christian Institute.

And we are discussing libertarianism and, more specifically, Christian libertarianism.

And we're going to be getting his assessment very soon on the current presidential races, both involving the

GOP and the Democrat Party. But before we go back to Buzz's question that he had before the break,

I just want to remind you of PNR Publishing, Presbyterian and Reform Publishing, our newest sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron, and the

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals wanted me to remind you of the Faithful Shepherd Pastors' Retreat, May 9th through 11th, at the

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forward slash the -faithful -shepherd. That's alliancenet .org

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And please let them know that Iron Sharpens Iron radio sent you if you go to the retreat.

And, Buzz, before the break, you were asking our guest Norman Horner a question, and we had to break for a statement.

Well, I was expecting his answer about ever since the Constitutional Convention.

That's when the problem started. My guess is that what I'm going to hear from you then, with a little bit more detail perhaps, is that the legacy we have today is, their legacy is what we have today, in an ever -encroaching, top -heavy messianic government.

And you're saying this basically was the result of the first Constitutional Convention. Well, I think what's really interesting about the

Constitutional Convention and the way that we've instilled the virtues of limited government.

Yes. You're breaking up really bad, Norman. I don't know if you can go to a different place with your cell phone, but it's -

You're total - No, you're getting really bad. I don't know if you're in a car or where you are, but you're really breaking up.

Can you hear me now? Yeah, I can hear you. Now I can. Good. Okay, I'm very sorry about that. I'm trying to move to a different area of the room.

All right, let me start that over. The thing I find very interesting about the Constitutional Convention and the way that conservatives often view it, because we want to instill the virtues of limited government, is that the

Constitutional Convention was, in many respects, a means of trying to consolidate power and expand the power of a centralized state.

You know, the American government initially was formed under the Articles of the

Confederation. And what's really funny is that the rationale, even what was considered to be standard in accepted history textbooks, is that it wasn't doing enough.

That the government wasn't doing enough and didn't have enough power. And so they had to do something different in order to get more power.

So ironically enough, it's just strange to think that, well, we instill the virtue of a document that essentially expanded the power of a government.

As proponents of limited government, maybe we should really take a look at that. And the thing is, it didn't take very long after that Constitutional Convention for things to get haywire.

In fact, even with George Washington, the famed Whiskey Rebellion was essentially a rebellion against what?

A tax that was imposed by the government. And what was the whole revolution kind of purported to be about?

Taxation! And so the irony here is that we sort of extol the virtues of presidents and politicians and the events that took place under them, the things that they did in order to consolidate and expand the powers of the federal government itself.

And so from the very early days of the American experiment, in many respects, we could argue that it was not nearly as successful as we might want to believe.

Now, I'm not saying per se that our founding fathers were all terrible people or something like that, although we can admit that they certainly had their problems, and we can admit their successes as well, and the things that they did do well.

But we can continue to expand that experiment, and we can do better, and we can actually go to our

Christian faith and say, maybe we need to rethink the way we consider government in the first place and realize that when we ask for a key, what happens is first they emulate, you know?

And then we're going to do all of those things. So we went from—am I coming across okay there?

Yes. I'm not hearing myself in my headphones, so I don't know. Yeah, you're coming across loud and clear.

So just again, like I said, I'm the nut trying to get perspective on all of this. That was when we went from being these

United States to being the United States. That's right. Okay, I'm getting the picture now.

Okay, we do have a question from a listener in Mastic Beach, New York, Tyler.

His question is, since libertarians believe in personal and individual liberty, would you as a

Christian libertarian say it's not the government's job to enforce biblical morality on the issue of homosexuality?

I would agree with that. That is not part of our mandate as Christians to go off and be that type of enforcer.

As much as I disagree with people who've practiced that lifestyle, I can't go off and do that.

Now here's what I have been saying to people about these kinds of issues lately, especially on the intrusion of same -sex marriage into the

American scene and globally. The issue is not to me so much that people of the same sex want to be married, and even though that's an abomination in my personal religious belief, which

I believe to be the truth, and I believe it to be unescapable biblical truth,

I think that the main issue is here that homosexuality is a sin that is embraced by leftist totalitarians that are gaining more and more control of our government, and they are forcing everyone, as much as they can, to celebrate their wickedness.

For instance, most conservative Christians I know don't believe the police should be busting down people's doors and arresting them if they're involved in homosexuality or adultery or anything like that.

But the homosexual activists have achieved super rights in this country, not equal rights, they have in many ways superior rights to us.

And, for instance, a homosexual in almost any sphere of employment can get away with a lot more disparaging remarks or opposing attitudes or actions against Christianity than a person of any religion or lack thereof could regarding his opposition to homosexuality.

I mean, you are literally walking on eggshells in most places where people are employed today, even in Christian -run corporations and non -for -profit organizations, when it comes to the issue of homosexuality.

People getting fired, people getting fined, people getting sued, and so on.

And so, going back to the marriage issue, first of all, it's not marriage when two men or two women are involved in a ceremony that declares them married.

No matter what they call it, it's not marriage. And do I believe that a person shouldn't have a legal right to gather with a group of people in their backyard and have somebody wave a magic wand over them and say that they're married or something?

Should they have the legal right to do that? Yeah, I think that they probably should.

But when that marriage is forced upon me, where I have to accept it as a marriage, that's where I am totally opposed, vehemently opposed to this whole concept.

If you could comment on that, and maybe you disagree with what I just said, or maybe you agree in portions of it.

Yeah, I think that there's certainly very much convergent ideas in what you're saying and what I would put forward.

I've been writing about this probably since, I think, oh goodness, probably about 2010 or 2011 or so.

And our position at the Libertarian Christian Institute has simply been that the government needs to get out of marriage entirely.

As a recognition of a contract, from a civil point of view, that's potentially acceptable.

But it's not within the government's power, and ought not to be, to be able to regulate marriage. In fact, it's fairly well established that a major reason why government started getting involved in marriage was actually kind of racist in many respects.

Sometimes there was desire to prevent interracial marriages and to enforce those types of values upon people.

That is absolutely, categorically wrong, and insofar as the history of marriage in the

United States is predicated and involved in that part of history, we should totally reject that.

And the fact is that when you have a government that's able to define things the way that you want, that means that the same government, when it gets under somebody else's power, is able to define it another way.

And so we have to be careful about that. And the more power that we give to the government to make those types of classification decisions, the more we're going to hurt.

And like you said, if people want to go and wave the magic wand in their backyard and establish a legal contract, that's their prerogative.

And they can call it whatever they want. But yeah, when it comes to recognition of that insofar as it affects me, whether that is on the job side or whatever, and I have legal recourse that I'm then forced to undergo in order to do something that involves that, that's another story.

Yeah, like these folks, these Christian folks that lost their bakery and lost their whole life savings over this.

To me, it's utter insanity. Absolutely. And whenever the government gets involved with this, that's when you know that things are going to go haywire.

I mean, culturally, we Christians are supposed to expect to be persecuted.

And whether that means sometimes we have businesses that fail because a bunch of people don't like it, that's entirely possible.

And that's something that we can't rule that out as being part of our experience as Christians.

But when it comes to legal action, aggressive action that is taken against me because of that sort of stuff, that's where we need to be categorically opposed from that very libertarian point of view.

And you'll find that many libertarians who do support same -sex marriage, that is, it is not a settled issue to many libertarians, that they still oppose the enforcement of those things by the government.

For instance, the Reason magazine has historically been pro -gay marriage, but totally for freedom of association.

So if that baker doesn't want to bake a cake, hey, that's fine. They can do that. They have that right to freedom of association.

And that's what we promote. We promote the liberty to make those decisions for ourselves and not have the government dictate to us what we can and cannot do with our lives and our businesses.

Well, going to any government involvement with marriage, wasn't one of the reasons that government became involved was because of bigamy, for instance?

I'm not talking about polygamy necessarily. But bigamy where a man secretly has more than one spouse in different states and so on and is basically defrauding one spouse by having a separate life and that kind of a thing.

What is your comment on any kind of government restriction, I'm sure that there's a lot of pedophiles who want there to be no government involvement in marriage.

Well, when it comes to consensualness, any type of contract cannot be engaged in if it is not consensual.

And a lot of underage kids are unable to consent to that type of contract.

And a church would be able to prevent that very well. Otherwise, for the filing of a contract like that with some type of other entity, government or not, those entities should be able to understand when those contracts are going to be legal or not based on whether or not they were able to consent.

So I think that kind of solves the problem, right? With regard to bigamy and that type of situation, there are ways in which we don't have to have the government involved, and yet those problems can be solved.

You mean like the wife's brothers bringing baseball bats to the guy's house or something?

As rare as it is, maybe that's the solution, I don't know. By the way,

I have to ask you a question, because I had a second guest lined up that had to postpone the interview, which gave me little time to find a replacement.

Can you stay on for the second hour? I can stay on for a little while, but I do have some other things that are coming up here.

I'm actually still at work, so I'm going to have to... I can stay on for another 15 minutes or so.

Yeah, well, that's when you were supposed to be off the air anyway. Okay, well, you got to do what you have to do.

Because I want to make sure, obviously, you said that you have some events coming up that you wanted to plug.

Yeah, absolutely. One of the things I definitely wanted to talk to you guys about is that we have an event coming up in August in Austin, Texas.

We call it the Christians for Liberty Conference. And if you go to libertarianchristians .com, you can find out about it very quickly.

And the subpage for that would be libertarianchristians .com slash CFL. It's a single -day conference, like I said, in Austin, Texas at St.

Edward's University. It's basically a time where we get to, as Christian libertarians, come together and learn, fellowship, talk, and experience.

A great time of learning and fellowship together. We're going to be joined by Dr. Bob Murphy.

Hello. For some reason, our guest just completely vanished.

Hello? Yes, can you hear me? Oh, gosh, I keep... I don't know. I must be just a storm coming up here in Austin.

Oh, craziness. I was saying, I don't know where you lost me, but I was saying, you know, you can go to libertarianchristians .com,

find out about our conference, which is just a great time of fellowship for Christians of all characterizations, but particularly for Christian libertarians.

And it's a great time for ecumenical fellowship. It's really cool to be at a place such as this, where it's a

Catholic university hosted by an Orthodox professor with a whole bunch of Protestant speakers, and it's a good time to learn from a lot of different people.

We'll have professional economist and thinker Bob Murphy. Dr. Bob Murphy is going to be joining us as our keynote speaker, as well as a number of other folks from the board of the

Libertarian Christian Institute, and more speakers will be announced very soon. Great, and before you go, we'll have you repeat that one more time.

We do have CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who wants to know, what are your thoughts on the

John Birch Society? Because I understand they are strongly libertarian. You know,

I don't have a lot of interactions with the John Birch Society. They're not folks that I've just had a lot of interactions with, to be quite honest.

And so far as they support personal liberty and personal responsibility, then we'll be totally on their side.

And going back to the issue of American involvement overseas, one of the areas, it seems that this is probably the first issue that will come up when speaking with a conservative

Republican, or just a typical conservative that you would find in this day and age who is politically interested or involved or active, is that they think that in this day and age, to be an isolationist, to be like the

America firsters used to be, where we shouldn't be getting involved with overseas conflict at all, unless we're being invaded or something, that that is naive today, because you can't just let

Islamic terrorists and things, and people like that grow in their strength more and more to the point where we here will be sitting ducks eventually if we are just waiting for them to invade our soil before we do anything.

How do you respond to that? Well, the first thing I would suggest is that if they're concerned about the growing nature of Islamic terrorism and whatnot, then probably the first thing we should do is stop letting arms be shipped over from America over to those countries.

Yeah, that would be a good way to start. Yeah, I mean, it's absolutely well known and a categorically true fact that ISIS, for instance, is using

American arms in what they're doing. So how are they getting that? Well, it's because we've shipped over so much over there that of course it's going to get into their hands.

So our involvement over there is affecting ISIS even now. But moreover, I think it's really, really, really important to take heed to the criticism that, for instance,

Ron Paul has been saying for the last 15 years regarding 9 -11, for instance, is that the reason that they were over here is because we were over there.

And there is a huge history, long history of American involvement since the 40s, since just after World War II in how the

Middle East has been run. And whether you're talking about the overthrow of the Shah in Iran in 1953 or interventions in Syria or Lebanon or Libya in the ensuing years after that, and the fact that we keep flip -flopping sides from where Saddam Hussein was once our friend, but then we decided we didn't want to go with him anymore, so we decided to side with Iran, but now

Iran is now our enemy, and who are we anymore? We keep bouncing around supporting different sides for different reasons, and it doesn't have any sense whatsoever.

And this is what drives people to become radical -type terrorist organizations.

And we have to be aware that that type of interventionism is far worse than just letting people be alone.

Now, that doesn't mean if we're going to leave them alone that we're going to be isolationist. That's silly. I mean, of course we're going to be involved, because we value trade.

We value diplomacy. We're going to be involved by virtue of that type of interaction. But when you don't have goods and services crossing borders, armies eventually will.

And so what we want to do is we want to export our values via trade, via diplomacy, via missions, and those sorts of activities, not via armies crossing the borders and taking over bases and whatnot.

So I think this is a very rational perspective to take. Why not think that if we just act peacefully with others, that in general they're going to act peacefully with us?

If we want to be strong when they decide to be aggressive against us, okay, fine. That's a whole other situation, but we don't need to start it.

So what would be, in your opinion, the only reason the

United States should be involved in a war with a foreign enemy? The only reason we should be involved is if they come here first.

I mean, basically they have to be the ones who are throwing bombs. And that's, for instance, why I would say that our involvement in World War I was a bad idea.

We didn't need to. It was at a standstill, and it was only American involvement that actually brought it to a conclusion.

And that ultimately ended up being a bad thing, because in the end that was kind of what fueled the drive to get

Hitler involved, and that's what led to World War II, which is really just a continuation of World War I.

When you say we have to wait until they come here, do you mean actually literally start flying over United States airspace and so on?

I think we're smart enough to know when there's an ensuing attack and when there's not. That's the threat of force.

You don't have to wait until somebody points a gun at you and pulls the trigger in order to know that you need to respond.

So likewise. I know I would love to have heard your debate with Al Mohler.

Al Mohler has been a guest on our program. Tell us something about that debate before you leave.

Sure, no problem. Of course I have great respect for Al Mohler as a theologian, and so I had a really great opportunity to essentially do a little debate on the

Up for Debate radio program. You can find out more information and actually listen to it if you go on our website, again, libertarianchristians .com,

and you can search for that and it's no problem to find. So I was invited to participate in that debate, and I would say it was very interesting.

By listening to it, you'd see that I think Al Mohler has a very flawed understanding of libertarianism kind of from the outset.

He views it very much as just an extension of Ayn Rand's philosophy of objectivism, which is just categorically not true, and I tried to explain that.

He didn't really seem to get it. But, you know, that's the way things go sometimes. And I think we made some interesting discoveries about each other and about our philosophies, and we had a good discussion.

But I think that he's got a long ways to go before he really understands how nuanced a lot of libertarian ideas really are with respect to how we, as Christians, apply them.

I find it interesting that your graphics for the Libertarian Christian Institute website, you're using the exact same graphics that my webmaster used for my headmast on my...

This is where the anvil, the metal is being hammered on the anvil for the conservative and libertarian

Christians' worldview allies or enemies. Yeah. Probably some similar ideas there.

Well, I really appreciate you coming on the program today after you and I have been playing phone tag for quite a long time.

Yeah. And I would love to have you back on, and I really wanted to get more of your views on the current race that's raging on right now, both the

GOP and the Democratic Party race. Well, let's talk about that for a minute, because when you asked me how much time

I had, I really did mean about 5 .15. Oh, okay. I can talk for a few more minutes here if you want to talk.

Oh, yeah, sure, sure. Yeah, so you asked me earlier, you know, my thoughts on the sort of Republican presidential campaigns and also, you know, the

Democratic one as well, and where do we come down as Christian libertarians on this? The first thing

I would point out, though, is that insofar as the Libertarian Christian Institute is concerned, we are a 501c3 nonprofit, and therefore the organization itself doesn't have, you know, we don't support anyone, whether they're from the

Democratic side, the Republican side, or the Libertarian Party, for that matter. We're independent in that regard.

Personally, of course, you know, each one of us on the board will have our own view on that. And so what I'll say here is entirely located to me and doesn't characterize

LCI by any means. Okay? Yeah, sure. The first thing

I would mention, of course, is that, you know, my preference from the beginning was Rand Paul, if I had a preference at all.

I'm not a big fan of presidents in general, as you might imagine. I think they pretty much always screw things up. But overall, if I was anybody who

I thought had a chance of promoting liberty in the best way possible, it probably would have been Rand Paul.

Insofar as what we got now, there's not much to be commendable about pretty much anybody.

And so I'm not a big fan of pretty much anybody who, you know, who has left.

I'm pretty much disgusted, in a sense, by every candidate in different ways. But then also, you know, from some point of view, you could argue that there are merits, in a very limited sense, to almost any given candidate.

And so you could, with some nuance, point out that, you know, for instance, some of the most ridiculous things, for instance, that Donald Trump has talked about, he probably wouldn't even be able to pull it off.

I don't think his, you know, for instance, I think it's absolutely morally abhorrent, some of the things he said about the deportation of individuals who are

Hispanic or Muslims or whatnot. I think that's absolutely insane and just wrong.

But I don't think he could pull it off either. Whereas some of the things he said that aren't decent, in fact, he's not as hawkish in many respects as others, that that's, you know, okay, well, he might actually have an effect on that.

But likewise, I could say, you know, well, Bernie Sanders is absolutely abhorrent from an economic point of view, and it's absolutely insane some of the things he thinks he could try to accomplish.

But I also don't think he could accomplish them, because it just wouldn't happen. You know, he's not going to be able to just turn, you know, he won't be able to pull off most of what he wants to do in that respect.

But he also is a little less hawkish. So, okay, I could be at least nominally accepting of that.

As opposed to, you know, there's virtues in that respect of any of the candidates who are left.

And even when it comes to the Libertarian Party candidates, I'm not a big fan necessarily of any of them per se.

I do kind of, I actually, you know, I've met Gary Johnson in the Libertarian Party before, and I think he's a good guy.

I know that a lot of people are not, a lot of Christians aren't thrilled with him because he is personally pro -choice, he's pro -abortion, which

I don't like. But presidents don't really have much power to affect it either. So is that something

I should take into account there? Maybe. You know, likewise, I think John McAfee is kind of the same way.

And I think McAfee is kind of an interesting character. And if you haven't looked him up, look him up.

He's kind of crazy and kind of fun. But there's some interesting things about all of them there. What are your views?

I don't think I've heard you say anything about Ted Cruz. Oh, yeah. So Ted, you know,

Ted's an interesting guy. I mean, he's obviously from my home state of Texas. I was living in Texas when he was elected.

And I was very skeptical of him from the outset because he played the game kind of like a little snake.

And I was not real thrilled watching his rhetoric and whatnot. He tried to play the nice constitutional card game.

But, you know, I think ultimately he's got a lot of problems as well. But on the other hand, you know, he's made some good overtures with respect to respecting religious liberty.

And so I think that's commendable of him. And so we might see some good things if that were the case from him.

I think he's still moderately hawkish. I think he's trying to play it up to the sort of establishment

Republicans overall regarding his views on interventionism overseas. I think he's actually become more hawkish over time in his rhetoric.

And I think he's been, you know, probably not very good on a lot of these important topics that to libertarians we consider, you know, really significant.

Now, what would you say that specifically he was snakeish about? Well, I just don't think he was being very truthful about a lot of the things he would say about the

Constitution and whatnot in many respects. Here's the thing. You know, he kind of came on board during the heyday of the

Tea Party, right? And so a lot of the rhetoric that was flying around was very much, you know, as long as you could talk the right talk, you could probably get some support.

And I think that's in many respects how he got a lot of the support that he got in Texas. But I'm not real thrilled with how he's, you know, proceeded since then.

You know, he seems to talk, but I'm not real thrilled with a lot of the very important things.

You know, if you're going to talk that talk, you better consistently be on the side of things like non -interventionism, for instance.

If you're a true constitutional conservative, then you ought to be on the side of non -interventionism. But he doesn't seem to be like that.

And so that concerns me a lot. And interventionism to me is perhaps one of the most important things that a president should be judged upon, because they have so much power in that respect.

You know, so that's very much where I kind of come down on Ted, at least. Well, one of the things that I can say as a

Christian who is listening and watching from the outside of the discussions on libertarianism, although someone who's intrigued and drawn in many respects to it, one of the things that I do have a problem with may boil down to semantics, but I think it's very important semantics.

When someone says, I don't have a problem with gay marriage or things like that,

I think that a Christian has to be very clear that they are vehemently opposed to the concept as damnable and evil, whether or not they believe a government should be controlling that aspect of a person's life is a different issue.

But I think that when somebody, in their fervor for their political view to be put across, may come across as being actually in favor of a person, even before the eyes of God, having a same -sex union such as that.

And so that's why I think the terms need to be very clear and used with caution in regard to a matter.

And another issue would be, do I want necessarily a government that gets involved in every area of somebody's personal life like that?

No, I don't. But I think that there are things that God will bring greater judgment upon a nation if they were to have a leader.

Like for instance, you were saying that there was a member of the Libertarian Party who was pro -abortion, and you said that a president doesn't have much involvement on those laws anyway.

Well, the very fact that a person who is the leader of the free world, as they call him, is in favor of a woman murdering her child in the womb,

I think that in and of itself is something that we should be terrified of because of God's judgment over our nation.

And of course, I'm speaking theologically, not politically, but they overlap here in this case.

I mean, do you have any kind of response to that? Yeah, sure. I mean, the thing is that the political and theological overlap is significant here.

That is true. But with respect to where we are with respect to what is possible for a president to deal with, what sorts of things are they empowered to do?

Like, if you knew the entire personal philosophy of George W. Bush, and if I knew at the time when

I was in support of him, when I supported him back in the early 2000s, my political views changed since then,

I still probably, if I had known his entire personal philosophy, would have found things that I'd probably find abhorrent. Because, you know, we're sinful people, and we often have very categorically bad things in our personal philosophies.

The question is, does that overlap mean that we shouldn't, you know, that we can't possibly support a person insofar as the power that they do have in that position?

And I don't really want to support anybody in that position whatsoever, because I don't really believe in that system very strongly in the first place.

But I don't think that it's the worst thing in the world to say, like, well, okay, just because Gary Johnson, for instance, is pro -choice, that I just can't interact with him whatsoever.

I don't know if that's... I just don't think that that's necessarily the position we have to hold.

There's a limitation to the power of any particular individual. I mean, if the railroad commissioner of Texas happens to be pro -choice, that person can't do anything about that.

So does their view on that mean that they can't be a good railroad commissioner? Probably not. You know,

I think that's sort of the point, is that, you know, they have to be judged with respect to the powers that they have and what they can and cannot do.

So insofar as the president is able to just do tremendous, expansive things, well then, yeah, we have to be concerned with their philosophies on, like, every little jot and tittle of what they can do.

But they can't. So I think we can be a little more... a little circumspect about that.

Are you familiar with the Constitution Party that was, I believe, founded by Howard Phillips?

I was just curious of you. Yeah, yeah, and I know Chuck Baldwin and some of those guys. I actually have had some conversations with his son,

Timothy, and whatnot. Yeah, and they're good people too. I appreciate them. Do you have any differences of ideology?

Because I know that they appear to be very libertarian. Yeah, they have some issues with respect to their platform and with regard to, like, free trade and certain aspects of taxation that I would not agree with.

So I have not historically been, you know, tremendously in support of the party itself, but I don't oppose them per se.

And, well, basically I want you to make sure that you say what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today before you leave the program.

So if you could spend a few minutes just to unburden your heart. Oh, sure. I'd love to do that.

Thank you very much. I think it's really important to realize as Christians that, you know, every once in a while we need to go back on our theologies, and we need to reevaluate the way we think.

The way that so many of us, and I grew up, most of your listeners who are theologically conservative, you know,

I'm very similar to you in that I probably grew up very similar with those beliefs about politics as well.

But over time I think it's worthwhile to take a look at that philosophy and kind of evaluate it from a new point of view.

And what I found is that by examining libertarianism and realizing how much it converged with natural law and natural ethics, that it also then converged with my

Christian theology very, very well. And that led me to reevaluate the way

I thought about government in general. And I think that's something that allowed me to do, and it behooves us as thinking, as reflective

Christians, to really go back and take a look at the scriptures. Things like the Tower of Babel, 1

Samuel 8, Matthew chapter 4, and the temptation of Jesus for power, and all of the great scriptures in the

Bible that reference the use of power and its abuse. To go back and really think about, does that apply to the government that I claim to support?

And I think that if we go back and we think about that for a while, we realize that maybe the way that we've thought about the use of power in society is just incorrect.

That maybe God really is on the side of the oppressed, God is on the side of the people who want to be truly free, and that the use of power to try and restrict people's activities and restrict people's ability to live their life maybe is not such a good idea.

And there's a lot of ways we can take a look at that. We go to libertarianchristians .com on a regular basis, and I invite everyone to come and check us out and examine what we've written about things like Romans 13, about personal philosophy, about the war on drugs, about economics, about personal liberty, and take that to heart and come visit us.

We invite you to come chat with us and come see us at the Christians for Liberty conference in August. Great, and I'd like you to basically now sum up everything that you think a government should be responsible for.

And since we only have like two minutes, I thought you could easily do that. It's actually really, really simple.

If government has any purpose at all, it is to protect the natural rights of individuals.

And that's it. And that is the right to life and liberty and property. And if government can't do that very well, and maybe they can't, maybe we should evaluate that too, maybe we should consider that we don't need it at all.

And there's good arguments on those sides. And I invite people to come take a look at what we say and evaluate it for themselves and see what they think.

Great, well, it's been a pleasure having you on the program, Norman, and I definitely would like to have you back on perhaps to comment on the elections after they take place.

And if you happen to bump into William Norman Grigg in your travels, please mention to him that I send my greetings.

And the phone number that I've had for him for years is no longer active.

Well, email me and I'll send you his email address. Okay, I believe I do have that actually. Oh, there you go then.

Well, God bless you, and we hope to have you return at some point in the near future.

Thanks so much, Chris and Buzz. Really appreciate being on the program. God bless you both, and I look forward to talking with you again.

Great. Well, Buzz and I are going to be remaining on the air for a little bit while longer.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. And if you've just tuned us in, we just completed an hour and 15 -minute interview with our guest

Norman Horn, who is the founder of the Libertarian Christian Institute.

And he was basically giving us an explanation of what it means to be a libertarian politically from a

Christian perspective. And there are very important differences than someone who might be purely libertarian and have a secular world view in other regards.

But we hope that you enjoyed that program. And right now

I'm going to just have a little casual conversation with my co -host because a lot of people who listened to the

Iron Sharpens Iron program for years and then just recently when it was relaunched, knew that I was doing the program solo, and then emerged a co -host who's a friend named

Reverend Buzz Taylor. And I know that he has given some of his background to you before, but I'd like just so you can get a little bit more of an understanding of who he is to learn more about his pilgrimage and so on.

Buzz, if you could, first of all, before you came to Christ, what was the theological climate or lack thereof in the home where you were raised?

And where was that? That was Buffalo, wasn't it? Yes, it was. And you mentioned in the show today a term that I haven't heard in many years.

What was that? John Birch Society. Okay. Yeah. But when

I was a youngster in grade school, my parents were very much involved with politics. And for political reasons, they did not like—we were in the

Episcopal Church, and because of the political associations of the

National Council of Churches, my mother and my dad didn't see why fight communism on one front and support them on another through the church and all that.

So they decided that we weren't going to go anywhere to church. But we always, when

I say believed in Christian values, I mean that as the real definition of the word values, because we didn't understand

Christianity. We didn't know the difference between values and ethics and so forth.

We did not understand the truth of Christ dying for our sins. And so for a long time, we just went camping on weekends and had good times doing that, all the time saying, oh, yeah, we're

Christians, but really not understanding until we heard the gospel preached by going to a

Baptist church, an independent Baptist church in Tonawanda, New York, Grace Baptist Church.

And that was the first time I'd heard that I was a sinner. Of course, as soon as I was told

I was a sinner, I knew. I mean, I didn't even fight it. It was like, yeah,

I know that. But I had not heard that the solution to my sin was

Jesus. I had heard of Jesus, obviously, because, well, I mean, we had pictures of him in the house, and we celebrated his birthday every year.

So, of course, we heard of Jesus, but I did not understand how he was related to being the Savior, that the

Savior was to save us from sins. And when I learned the gospel, this was when I was actually 17 years old.

So who was the first in the family that actually became born from above? It would be my brother.

Actually, I believe it was the Assemblies of God that used to come pick him up on a bus ministry. And he told me recently that he was kind of scared a little bit of their church, but he did hear the gospel.

And he came to Christ first. And everybody's still waiting for you, right?

Well, I was not the second one. My dad and I came to Christ the same night, unbeknownst to each other.

But my mother was a little bit before us. And the last one to come in was my sister, but the whole family, the immediate family, both parents and my siblings all came to Christ.

And what do you mean by unbeknownst to each other, you and your father? I did not know he came to Christ that night. He did not know that I did. I know, but was it the same church?

Oh, yeah. It was the same service. And it's interesting because I'm leaving out a lot of important names in all of this simply because a lot of the people that had a lot to do with my salvation

I don't agree with theologically anymore. Well, you can still mention them. Well, I tease my mother, and I'm not sure if she finally figured out the

Internet and she's listening now. She was having trouble getting the show. But I tease her a lot about the fact that she got saved under a hairdryer reading

Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth. Well, the thing is I know a lot of people, many, many people that share our theological views.

In fact, you and I even disagree theologically on some things. But I know a lot of theologically reformed people who do not at all today share

Hal Lindsey's eschatology or much of his soteriology, but who came to Christ.

Oh, yeah. Well, you know, the gospel is the gospel. And wherever the gospel is presented, it's the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes.

In fact, the night that I came to Christ, the speaker was Jimmy DeYoung. I don't know if you've heard him through Songtime USA.

He's the guy over in Israel that always gives us the updates on everything that's happening over there.

In fact, one time when he was speaking at our church, he came over to our house and did a luncheon thing with all these ladies and gave an invitation and all that stuff.

But he was the speaker the night that I came to Christ. And my dad, too. Like I said, we didn't really know that at the time.

But then within a year, I was off to Bible college. Of course, everybody, you've already told everybody on the air that I went to Bob Jones University.

But I got to tell you, when I went to Bob Jones, I was put in what they called the dummy New Testament survey class.

And I was looking for the dummier New Testament survey class because I didn't know anything about anything when

I went there. And so it was quite a learning experience to go from nothing to Bible college.

But I graduated, and within a couple years of that, I started as an assistant pastor in Depew, New York, outside of Buffalo.

And then I took my first full -time pastorate, which was in a little town called

Sandusky, New York, south of Arcade, New York. I was there for about four years.

And I've pastored now two other churches, one in Pennsylvania, not too far – well, about an hour's drive from where we are right now.

And the other was up in Maine. So it was a good experience. I learned more from the

Word by being a pastor. I got the most out of my messages than anybody, being the one that was actually preparing them.

But I most enjoyed it, and I'm certainly not close to someday going back into the pastorate.

So when you were a Fundamentalist Baptist, independent Fundamentalist Baptist, how was it that you were, at least for a season of your life, drawn into the charismatic movement?

What was appealing to it? Well, I've got to tell you, I received what I have affectionately referred to as the left foot of fellowship from the

Baptist church. And at that time, of course, when that happens to you, you not only lose your job, you lose your housing and everything.

Can you mention on the air why that happened? There were definite theological differences.

So it was just theological differences. Yeah, there were a number of differences.

And I didn't realize at the time, but I was more Reformed in the making than I thought

I was. So it's kind of odd that you would become a charismatic then. Well, yes, it was. In fact, that was one of the problems

I had as a charismatic, was the fact that before I ended up charismatic, I was known in the area as the pastor who was preaching against those things, and we had a lot of charismatic friends.

And they were really good friends, and I'm not going to say they weren't believers in Christ or anything like that.

They were wonderful friends, good Christian fellows. One guy used to come down to my study twice a week before he went to work, 6 o 'clock in the morning, and we would just pray for the community.

So we're talking about wonderful people, good, solid Christian people. Well, when

I left the Baptist Church, it was the charismatic church in town that, well, not in my town, but actually,

I'll tell you, it was Full Gospel Tabernacle in Orchard Park, New York, that reached out to us. And having been the pastor that was known to be preaching against those things, they accepted us and helped us financially and in many ways.

And I was impressed with that. I got to hang around with their elders quite a bit because coming in with pastoral experience,

I got to go to the elder training sessions and all. And it was, at that time, a good experience, but I continued to study the scriptures and at some point just kind of grew out of, if you will, my belief in the charismatic things.

But it was really their Christian behavior, their

Christian brotherhood, that led me into it in the first place. Now, I mean, there are all different kinds, as you know, all different kinds of charismatics, ranging from those that would be old -school,

Pentecostal, denominational charismatics all the way over to...

Right, yeah. I mean, there are charismatics today that even the old -school

Pentecostals would be very quick to condemn and ostracize and distance themselves from.

Well, I'll tell you, as a result of my preaching against the charismatic movement, there were a few things that I kept reminding myself that I believed.

And so, technically speaking, I was never that good of a charismatic, I guess you might say, simply because I never came to the belief that, first of all, tongues was for everybody, even though I would have believed in the continuation of spiritual gifts.

I did not believe it was for everybody. I did not believe that tongues was a sign that you had received the baptism of the

Holy Spirit. I did not believe that... Well, again,

I thought it was primarily a prayer language. So, yes, I believed in the perpetuity of spiritual gifts, but not in a revelatory way.

And I believe that all believers have received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, but they wouldn't be believers.

Now, did you actually practice the gift of tongues? Oh, yes, many, many times. So, what is your view of that now?

You know, really, I'll tell you, a lot of the problem that people have going into the charismatic movement with speaking in tongues is the overcoming of the inhibition to do that kind of thing in public, really.

And I've seen people go through all kinds of antics. There was a lot of things I did not agree with, and some of the gyrations and spastic things going on, trying to get people to receive the baptism of the

Holy Spirit used to really bother me. But it was trying to get them to overcome the inhibitions, and that's what it was with me.

And once you learn to do it, it's like riding a bicycle. You can do it any time you want to, and you don't have to go three shades of the wind.

You don't have to have any spirit move on you. I view it as just something that just happened. Now, do you think that you were consciously and intentionally faking it, or was this something...

No, no, at that time, again, remember, I thought it was more of a prayer language than a revelatory thing anyway.

So, you know, I would basically pray alone in tongues, and even in the circles

I was in, you rarely heard it in public anyway. So, yeah,

I had a different view of it right from the beginning. But I was starting to tell you, the thing that bothered me the most, though, was because of my former reputation as the pastor who preached against it,

I was the Baptist pastor that finally got the zap, you know? Whatever that zap was, you know, as they would term it, the baptism of the

Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues, you know? But because of that reputation, when

I would go to visit churches, and I got to visit a lot of churches because I played trumpet and I did a lot of concerts and people knew that I was a pastor, and so I got a lot of speaking opportunities, and what they wanted me to share was my experience, how

I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues and all this stuff, and it was like, I really, you know, I felt like a toy.

Like, I really don't want to talk about that. I want to preach the Word. You were a token former cessationist.

Yeah, I was a favorite of theirs because here's the Baptist that got it, you know? And, like, I didn't care if I was the

Baptist that got it, you know? I wanted to teach the Word, you know? Were you one of those people that used to tell the joke that I used to hear from when

I was searching during a period in my life when many of the churches

I was visiting were Charismatic and Pentecostal? I can still remember a Church of God pastor saying to me,

You know why Baptists are going to Heaven before Pentecostals are? I said, Why? Because the

Bible says that dead in Christ shall rise first. Yeah. Well, some of the Charismatics are already halfway there.

Right. They're already at the ceiling. So, but have you, were you one of those people that used to tell that joke, or no?

No, no, not really. But anyway, I'm sorry I interrupted you. But anyway, yeah, so the idea was

I was tired of being the toy, you know? And, of course, I did take a pastorate as a

Charismatic. I did work also, by the way, for Teen Challenge for almost a year directing one of their choirs.

It was called the Eternal Connection Singers. And that was a good job because I got to preach all over Eastern United States.

I got to play my trumpet, which I really enjoyed doing. And I got to direct this choir and listen to these boys give their testimonies about getting off of drugs and all that.

That was a good experience also. But I ultimately ended up back in the pastorate.

And even as a Baptist, excuse me, in my second church, it was a Church of God, which was the non -Charismatic variety of the church.

Finley, Ohio Church of God. Finley, Ohio. They're very big in this area. They're like Wesleyan Baptists, right?

They are decidedly Arminian in their theology. One of the things that really helped, though, it was kind of a funny experience because I had gone to the church with Teen Challenge, and they came up and approached me after the service and asked me to candidate to be the pastor.

So I did, and they voted me in, and then I heard from the denomination that they didn't have the right to do that.

I had to go through Harrisburg first, the council in Harrisburg. So I appeared before them and said, you know, guys, we've got a little bit of a problem here.

See, I've resigned from my job for this, and I didn't know your polity, you know. But they questioned me on a few things, and one of the things they questioned me on was my eschatology.

And at that time, I was just starting to question a lot of what

I had learned, and I didn't know where I was going to go with it. And I thought, well, I'm going to go for broke. So I told them,

I said, I'll tell you, I think I know what you want me to say, but I have to tell you, I just don't know.

One guy got a funny look on his face, and I'm trying to read this, like, what did I say, you know?

He says, well, that's kind of the position we take on eschatology. And he's like, oh, good, I found a home. It didn't matter a whole lot there.

So while I was there, I was able to continue my study. And of course, I preached the

Word. While I was there, I was preaching through the book of 1 Corinthians, and, you know, preaching verse by verse.

And just being involved with the Word kept reshaping my theology.

And it was during that time that I was reading a lot of, well, authors on eschatology that I started to realize there was a pattern emerging that a lot of the authors

I was reading were Reformed. So I got to thinking, I need to look into this Reformed, what is this

Reformed theology? And I'd known some people who were Reformed before that, but they didn't tell me a whole lot about it.

But I was kind of under the impression that it's probably a good thing. Maybe I should look into it.

And the result, of course, is now for the last, I don't know, 15 years or so, more than even that, probably closer to 20 years if I were to think about it,

I've been a Presbyterian, Reformed Presbyterian. And that's when I moved to Carlisle, I was a

Presbyterian. So that's kind of my journey, you know, around the blocks, if you will. But it was just by preaching through the

Word and continuing to study that I've developed the theology that I believe today. Now how many churches,

I know that at least one church that you pastored was Presbyterian. Was that the only one?

Yeah, the only Presbyterian church. And a lot of the reason was because when

I left the Assemblies of God, we were attending an Assembly of God church up in Maine.

And again, good friends and all, but that's when I started to really pull out. And I feel so sorry for my former pastor there because, you know, he was probably never wondering, was always wondering what was going to come next from me.

Imagine going up to an Assembly of God pastor and saying, would you baptize my children? I would never say that to anybody.

That's one of the differences we have, but can you imagine asking an Assembly of God pastor to do that?

And he was like, oh, I don't know what's next. He was a good friend of mine, fortunately, but he said he had to check with his district supervisor first.

He would be glad to do it for me, but he had to check with his district supervisor. Yeah, he would have as a friend, knowing that that was my conviction.

But he came back and said, well, he said no, so I really can't do it. And he baptized down to a certain level.

You mean to an age level? An age level, right. Like my one daughter could say, do you love

Jesus? Yes. Okay, I baptize you. She could make some kind of a profession like that, so therefore he went down that low for me.

But I still had two remaining that were not baptized. To make a long story short, that pastor ended up leaving the church.

And a new pastor was coming in, and I felt that this was a natural exit on the road of life.

While he's gone, it's a good chance for us to leave there also and start pursuing more of the directions that I've been studying, which was reformed theology.

So we were starting a church in my living room. And I can't remember exactly how long we did that, but we started getting a few people in there.

And it turns out some of them were there because they wanted to correct me about my

Calvinism. So they didn't last too long there because they didn't convince me.

Then I saw a thing in the paper from one of the confessions.

I can't remember which one it was. I think it was from the Belgic Confession. And there was a church in Auburn, Maine, Emanuel Reformed Presbyterian Church.

They posted this, and I'm like, well, who are they? I didn't know they were there. So I met up with them, and Don Miller, the pastor of the church, became a good friend of mine.

We attended that church for a while. And then we moved away. And, of course, that church does not exist anymore either.

But that was a good experience for me to attend that church. Well, while we were going there, there was a couple who was very conversant in reformed theology.

And I just asked them. He wasn't in ministry. I said, how do you know so much? He said, well, we go to a lot of Ligonier conferences and things like that.

I'm impressed. Well, unbeknownst to us, he went back and told his father, who was pastoring a church seven miles from my home that I didn't know existed, he said, hey, come hear this guy tonight.

Come out and meet this guy. Well, after the evening service, we all went out to dinner, and we talked and talked and talked.

And he had taken over a community church that was closed for like 20 years.

And when they approached him to open the church, he said to them, if it's a reformed

Presbyterian church, and they went along with it. So it's like, oh, yeah, OK, sure. So they reopened the church,

North Road Reformed Presbyterian Church. But then he hadn't had any formal training. So he was going to be going off to seminary.

And he asked me the night I met him if I would be interested in taking his church when he left.

And I said, sure, call me up. And he said, well, sometime in the fall, I'll be ready. And I'm like, OK, great. Well, he calls me up in July and says, you ready?

Well, it's not fall yet. He says, well, yeah, but I'm leaving. So I slam. I was in there.

And I was there for two years before I actually ended up moving out of state and all. But, well, one of the biggest problems was that was not a full -time pastorate.

And I was also and am also involved now in the trucking industry. And I just couldn't do both.

And something had to give. And it was, of course, the pastorate that wasn't supporting me. So I had to take care of my family.

So that's basically how I ended up out of the pastorate there and then shortly after I moved down here.

But yeah, that was the Presbyterian Church. But I kind of put it under the umbrella of the church

I was attending in Auburn. And Don Miller was my mentor in ministry at that time.

So if I had any questions, I'd go to him. But it was a wonderful opportunity to get to preach what

I had become convinced of from the scriptures. And I made a bunch of tapes and things like that. And it was a very good time of my life to be there.

Well, we do have a listener, same listener who actually emailed a question to our first guest before.

I don't know if I can answer our first guest's questions. No, no, that has nothing to do with the topic. Oh, OK. He's appropriately switched the topic.

Oh, OK. Wonderful. Tyler in Mastic Beach, New York says, hi, Buzz. As a

Reformed Christian, how would I explain the error in the second baptism of the

Holy Spirit in charismatic theology since the Bible clearly teaches that we are baptized in the spirit at salvation, 1

Corinthians 12 .13? Well, you've just about answered the question.

Yeah, I was kind of. By one spirit, we were all baptized into one body. And nobody is left out.

So I think the burden of proof is on them to prove that it is a second work that some received and some haven't.

I just don't see that in the scriptures. And by the way, I want to make something clear, and you can give your own opinions on this.

I want to make it clear that we do have the occasion to be critical of charismatic and Pentecostal Christians in churches, but I firmly believe that there are wonderful Christians and pastors who are under the umbrella of charismatic movement, because that's a wide spectrum when you say charismatic.

Yes, yes. There are things that are absolutely deplorable and wicked that even some of my close friends who one of them is in heaven now, but he was an assembly of God pastor and even a presbyter, which in their denomination he had oversight over other congregations.

Right, over the congregations. He was a five -point Calvinist. He eventually became that. Yeah, yeah. And my friend, dear friend, who used to frequently be on the program as a guest and co -host when

I broadcasted from Long Island, Pastor Jim Capo of the Massapequa Church of God, you could barely distinguish him from a

Reformed Baptist, really. But they abhor the word of faith movement.

Yes. And a lot of this absolute insanity that goes on. But that just shows you that there are men who are very theologically sound within that movement, even if we disagree with some of the teachings.

Well, you know, I don't remember where this is being quoted from, and it's not even an exact quote, but I remember

Francis Schaeffer saying years ago, you know, while he was alive, that…

You'd be really charismatic if you… Yeah, right. Well, I don't know if Benny Hinn can get the anointing from Kathryn Kuhlman's bones.

You never know anymore, you know? But Francis Schaeffer said, you know, watch out.

You know, what you're seeing now, wait till the next generation. And I think the word of faith movement is that next generation.

I contend that there never would have been a word of faith movement if there weren't first a charismatic movement.

But again, the word of faith movement is… I think more of a cult than a branch of even charismatic

Christianity, because they have left the essential teachings of the gospel, of the word of God.

And, you know, again, they've gone so far beyond. At least the charismatics that I have been associated with believe that they were saved because of Christ alone, you know, through faith alone.

They were genuine believers. But I do not endorse the…

Well, I should say it this way. I don't endorse the charismatic movement, even though I'm saying I had good friends in it, and I believe they are believers.

But the next phase of it, the word of faith movement, I believe really has gone into heresy. And some of the things that I've noticed, that I actually appreciate about charismatic and Pentecostal Christians, and I'm not…

Well, I'm trying not to broad brush here, but they tend to be involved in a lot of the outreaches and ministries in the inner cities…

Oh, yes. …that reform people. You very rarely find them in those places.

I mean, you do find them if you look long enough and hard enough. Yeah, yeah.

But you do… I'm talking about the nitty -gritty evangelism of people like drug addicts, prostitutes, homosexuals, you know, in the inner city…

Oh, yeah. …with the homeless and things like that. You very often will find that those people doing the very necessary work of the gospel are, in fact, charismatic and Pentecostal.

Yes, I should at least make a differentiation here that there is a difference between Pentecostal and charismatic.

Yeah, why don't you define them? Pentecostal is more denominational. The Pentecostal movement started with the belief that there was a restoration of the first century gifts, specifically tongues and prophecy and all those.

That's a denominational thing. In fact, the Pentecostals initially were more against the

Charismatics than anybody else because you didn't have to leave your church anymore. Right. Well, what happened is, of course, that ideology jumped the denominational borders and started leaking into all the others, and that was the

Charismatic movement. So they were losing members. Damus Sicarian and others leading that kind of…

The Pentecostals were either losing members from the Charismatics who realized they could go back to the

Catholic church or the Baptist church or wherever they were from, or they were having a harder time recruiting members.

Well, you know, again, it's like you said before. We're not talking about a monolithic group.

There are so many varieties. When you say charismatic, you might as well say Baptist. I was an independent

Baptist. I was not reformed Baptist when I was a Baptist. So, I mean, you just don't know.

When I tell people I'm a Presbyterian now, I'm reminded of Presbyterian churches that I'm aware of that bless people's pets and things like that.

Well, you know, we're not talking about that either. We're talking about Reformed Bible -believing Presbyterians. So, I mean, you're going to get this.

One of the things I've noticed in Charismatics, when I try not to, as you said, broad -brush them,

I don't want to give the impression that they're evil because they're Charismatic or they're heretics or anything like that because there's a lot of good brothers and sisters in Christ.

But there is a lot of weird stuff and antics and heresies and stuff that do circulate around in the movement that it's unfortunate.

And would you say, I mean, you have a lot of heretical things going on in all denominations, even, dare

I say, Baptist, Presbyterian, and Calvinistic circles. You have some weirdness arising or some heretical things.

But the difference is that weirdness usually gets really weird with Charismatics and Pentecostals because of the fact that it involves supernatural things.

Right, right. I think we need to be very careful with that. And I'm not against things being contemporary, but when it starts getting into the weird, yeah,

I'm a little more reserved on that. But I don't think that it's part of our worship to go through seizures and things like that.

And, you know, I saw a lot too that, you know, from the inside that convinced me that it wasn't all that I had originally thought it was.

And that was things like, you know, when a guy is slain in the spirit, but when he realized there was nobody catching him, he was able to turn around and guide himself down.

You know, he was conscious enough for things like that, you know. There were a lot of things where I just,

I had questions like, I don't know. I heard a lot about healing, but there was also a lot about pains that weren't healed.

And I've come to really, really appreciate in the Presbyterian church the whole concept of the sovereignty of God.

It has nothing to do with whether I had faith to be healed. It's whether God wanted to heal me. Because at some point he wants to take me home too.

And probably it's going to be some ill effect that's going to get me there. Whether it's cancer, heart disease, you know, it's going to be something in old age, you know.

And don't we who are theologically Reformed, I, a

Reformed Baptist, you, a Presbyterian, don't we, even though we find ourselves failing and sinning in this area constantly, don't we have to be very careful not to violate the very tenets of our

Reformed theology by becoming arrogant or proud and thinking that we are more innately intelligent and brilliant and wise than those who haven't come to these.

There is, thank you for bringing that up, because one of the accusations I've heard a lot that I just don't understand, maybe it's just I haven't been around enough in Reformed circles to see it,

I don't know. But there is that thinking that we are arrogant, we know everything.

Becoming a Calvinist has been the most humbling thing in my whole Christian experience. I needed that.

I was proud when I thought I knew everything. And now that I do know everything, you know, I'm not proud anymore.

That's a joke. Chris, you're supposed to laugh. I just know it's tragically true.

Or your view of yourself. But seriously, you know, when I realized that I couldn't even want to be saved apart from the work of the

Holy Spirit, you know, God working in my heart to draw me, as the scripture says he does, to initiate the whole thing from beginning to end, when

I realized that, I was a sitting duck. The only part I played in my salvation was to run from God as hard and fast as I could and sin as much as I could.

He did the rest to bring me to himself. And when I realized that, it's like I have absolutely nothing to be proud over.

And as far as knowledge is concerned, I have posted, I sometimes put

Bible verses up on my wall. I've got a little calligraphy,

I cheated, that was on the computer. But a Bible verse reminding me that we received,

Paul asked the Corinthians, what do you have that you did not receive? And if you did not receive it, why do you act as though you had not received it?

In other words, anything I know is the result of the grace of God, whether it was through talking to certain individuals, whether coming across certain books, whatever.

Everything I know is the result of God continuing to work in my life. So I can't claim credit and say,

I was so smart, I figured all this out. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time and learned a lot.

So if it came from God, it is certainly nothing to be proud about.

It's something that is a responsibility to use instead of something to be proud of possessing.

Right, but it is true that because of the fact that all

Calvinists, just like all Arminians and all Roman Catholics and all

Jews were all sinners, you do have this arrogance raising its ugly head.

But I can say, since I have been involved with Christian radio for so long,

I have been frequently in the company of people of all different types of theological perspectives.

And Reformed people definitely do not corner the market on arrogance.

I think one of the reasons it comes off that way is because academically and historically it just so happens that the higher trained theologians of history have typically been theologically

Reformed. If you're talking about within the realm of Protestantism. And so therefore it may come across that way that Reformed people are more arrogant because of the scholastic and academic attachment.

I don't know if that is the definite answer. Well, you know, conversely, realizing that we only have what

God has given us, I'm not going to apologize because I know something. If we're told to study the scriptures and to become a workman that needs not to be ashamed,

I'm not going to be ashamed in front of people because I'm knowledgeable. You know, the

Apostle Paul said, you know, we're not to think more highly of ourselves than we ought but to think soberly. And I think that is really good advice because there are a lot of people who are a lot smarter than me.

They know a whole lot more than I know. You know, when I get around some of these guys, I feel like, you know, where's that dummy class

I was looking for back in college? You know, because I just don't know as much, I mean, especially when it comes to Reformed. I do not,

I still don't know all the who's who's and what's what's in Reformed circles. I'm still learning a lot of that.

But I understand what I believe from the scriptures. I believe, you know, that God has convinced me of these things.

And I certainly make no apology when I'm in discussions with other people. No, you know, on the other hand, if we're obedient and we do study the scriptures, we are going to become very knowledgeable.

If we don't, something's wrong. Well, I'd like you to just summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners in about a minute and a half because we're running out of time.

Well, I certainly had a long time to think this through. But just, that's a tough one.

But I think that's pretty much what I've been saying all along, you know. I have friends who

I've talked to about theology and they don't agree with me. And I used to get into arguments with them.

You know, I don't know, shouting matches and everything, you know. And I realize now that that doesn't accomplish anything.

Now, if you don't agree with me, all I'm going to say is keep studying. You know, if it's that important, if you keep studying, you're going to see it.

If not, it's not a personal offense against me, you know. Well, Buzz, we're out of time.

Thank you so much for not only being my co -host but my guest today without any notice.

Surprise, yeah. And I want to thank everybody who listened, especially the two of you who wrote in questions or three of you.

And I want you all to have a safe and wonderful and blessed weekend. And I hope you always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

Savior than you are a sinner. God bless you. And we hope to see many of you at the pastor's luncheon next

Thursday. And we look forward to hearing from you with your questions for our guests next week on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.