August 1, 2016 Show with Paul Flynn on “Unbiblical Ecumenism at the ‘TOGETHER 2016’ Gathering in DC” PLUS “The Doctrines of Grace in Ireland Today”

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

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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

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

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

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

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

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Monday on this first day of August 2016.

I'm delighted to have my friend Paul Flynn back on the program direct from the

Republic of Ireland. He is founder of Megiddo Films, Megiddo Radio and Megiddo TV and we're going to be discussing a very controversial theme today, a theme that is no doubt going to get some folks listening angry with both of us and I have found doing this program over the years,

I have those both on the right and on the left of me getting angry with me. Some folks believe that I am far too soft on this program against the errors of others and some think that I am arrogant and bigoted and some kind of an exclusivist or isolationist or what have you, but there are things that we are to be exclusivist about though and that is the person and work of the

Trinity and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Those are obviously things that are to be held with great exclusivism and that is one of the reasons we are discussing this topic, the unbiblical ecumenism at the

Together 2016 gathering in Washington DC. And then during the second hour we hope to discuss the doctrines of sovereign grace and in particular the doctrines of sovereign grace today in the

Republic of Ireland where our guest Paul Flynn lives and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Shepherd's Iron, Paul Flynn.

Thank you so much Chris for having me on again. And let me give our email address to the listeners, it is chrisarnsen at gmail .com

that's c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com and if you would please give us at least your first name, your city and state of residence and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA and I understand that if you feel uncomfortable identifying yourself in regard to something that you're going to say perhaps you are unhappy with your own church's or own pastor's views of ecumenism or perhaps you are not even a

Christian and you feel uncomfortable identifying yourself because you don't want the public to know that you're listening to this program or anything that would involve you feeling more comfortable remaining anonymous we will honor your request so you may remain anonymous if you feel more comfortable doing so.

And again that email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com chrisarnsen at gmail .com

and as we always do Paul for those of our listeners who have discovered you for the first time today if you could please let our listeners know about Megiddo Films radio and television.

Sure, Megiddo Films has been going since November of 2010 just started off one movie project and it's kind of going from there and I had years of experience in promoting not

Christian topics at the time but just from my past involved in music and things like that and I kind of just continued it but the content gradually changed and promoting bands and promoting especially my own bands at the time began to share in the gospel with the same mailing lists

I often had and as time went on a Christian website emerged and it eventually became

Megiddo Films. There's a couple of movies online I think there's four at the moment on YouTube and they can be watched for free.

Megiddo Radio started when was it May of 2011 it's been going for five years yeah five years now time flies and it's just it's kind of like it feels like yesterday it all started and by the grace of God I'm still doing it and he's preserving me to keep going.

Amen and you did a remarkable job with your critique or expose of the book the very popular best -selling book

The Shack. Thank you praise the Lord yeah it's I did you hear about the not to change subject too much but the movie's coming out next year

March of 2017. You mean the actual movie by those who promote the book and who wrote it and so on okay yeah that movie's coming out so I'm trying to push

I'm trying to push the movie as much as possible so that hopefully the truth can get out there. You mean your movie?

Yeah there's two different movies there's one that Paul was involved in a documentary that exposes the heresies of The Shack and there is actually a movie version of The Shack coming out you know that is has the involvement of the author and those who support the book enthusiastically so we will have to do another program near near that event when that movie is released so those of our listeners who are planning to go to it will be advised as to the danger of it and obviously there are people who will go to it not because they agree with the the book or the movie but they want to speak intelligently when they try to dissuade their family friends and loved ones from going but anyway there was a there was an event on July 16th 2016 in Washington DC called

Together 2016 and I think it's also been called Reset 2016.

I first became aware of it when my friend Brian Richardson approached me at a barbecue and said to me very aggressively are you going to do a show on Together 2016 and I said

I don't even know what you're talking about he said you don't know about this ecumenical event that's happening and it's got people who you have respected and interviewed and and you know who have endorsed your show and they're going to be on to you know on a panel together with all different kinds of heretical individuals and even the pope is supposed to be somehow involved in this

I said really I didn't even haven't even heard of it and when I went on the the air

I'm sorry when I went on the internet looking up this event it was very cryptic they

I don't know why unless I was looking at their website and I could not find a lot of specific details at that time and there was no mention of the pope's involvement at that time but it did involve folks like Ravi Zacharias who

I've had on this program uh back around 2000 I don't know 2000 sometime between 2007 and 2010 uh someone

I've highly respected over the years uh Francis Chan who I do not know much about but from what

I understand in spite of his critics having problems with many of the things that he has written and said he at least is somebody that I from what

I know is known for believing in the gospel of the Jesus Christ of Jesus Christ and the inerrancy of the word of God and so on then

I heard that uh Hillsong was involved and I from my understanding they have some aberrant soft approach to the sin of homosexuality that perhaps my guest knows more about than I do and there were others that I don't really know too much about who they are but anyway tell us about this uh event that took place

Paul and I know that you knew about it in advance with enough time that you actually listened to it via live streaming at least a great portion of it yeah when yeah

I remember when I watched this when I'd already covered on the radio show a couple of days beforehand and I was just praying that hoping that you know that some of these men were going on who

I would have had quite a bit of respect for prior to this would have at least called out or made quite a big distinction um remember the first when it was live

I stuck it on and Nabil Qureshi was on and then followed by Ravi Zacharias and I didn't hear any kind of distinction it was oh it's fantastic to be here you know typical platitudes when people are speaking at a conference and I know you won't always agree with people who you go to a conference with but when the entire aim or goal of the event is and I better just quote

Nick Hall who's the organizer just to use his words he says it's the church from all backgrounds

Lutherans Catholics Pentecostals it's going to be worship it's going to be prayer it's going to be lifting up Jesus and praying that he changes our hearts individually so from the get -go

Nick Hall's own words he's the organizer very ecumenical tone and no distinction between biblical

Christianity and Roman Catholicism and I remember when

I saw some of the names I was kind of going maybe they made a mistake maybe they just accepted it a bit too early but too much of this has been out in the media for too long and it just takes a simple google search

I wasn't sure if the pope was really involved some of the websites that were reporting it initially let's just say you really have to do some fact checking before you take what they say at face value but I remember

I kept I checked it and then eventually the video went out from the pope but Nick Hall even he from his own

Facebook page he's the founder he's the founder of Pulse an organization

I didn't actually know anything prior to this event but he said that he had talked to the pope met him in the

Vatican was really excited and you could tell by the video he saw him as a brother in Christ I don't think there's any doubt about that so from the get -go there's problems and I've heard critics of people there's there's bad critiques on both sides there's been some bad hit pieces against some people have been there

I would urge some people to be accurate in the critiques if they can and take their time but then the other side is kind of a misunderstanding of when we should go to things as Christians I'm not saying that you can't go say for example

CNN asks you on and they'll go they're all leftists whenever talk to them but the platform has to be in some way not that it's going to be blaspheming

God or in any way that we're claiming that all the people there are Christians if we can go there and say

I disagree with these people this might be Jewish rabbi this might be a an imam beside it

I am representing the God of the Bible these men do not if you can set up a platform like that and do that respectively then

I have no problem with it but the problem is you're saying by joining hands and not rebuking in any way shape or form everybody's going to go away from this thinking

Roman Catholics are believers in Christ this is the major problem with it yeah and uh there there seems to be uh a pragmatic view among a lot of people who think that uh the the positives far outweigh the negatives whenever you have a massive crowd at anything and they've said the same things about the

Billy Graham crusades uh for instance when Billy Graham has had on his platform people who actually deny the gospel of Jesus Christ I have had friends say yeah but don't you understand then the people that follow that false person will more likely be in the audience to hear the gospel and my response typically has been but it's the gospel they're hearing is totally undermined if the people in the audience think that that enemy of the gospel up there with Billy Graham is in agreement with the gospel that's being presented and that Billy Graham is in agreement with the false teacher there's a difference between false

Christians or for people in false religions being in the audience at something but when they're a part of the actual presentation of the messages being given that's where the the real serious danger is

I mean am I coming from a right approach here absolutely no I agree um

I remember coming from when I was saved first I was in fundamentalist churches for a couple of years

I did not know where to draw the line I was like back and forth that was I saw massive inconsistency where where I was you know

I was kind of like okay well why can't we okay we appreciate these brothers books but we won't fellowship with them it kind of gets a bit so I didn't when

I think eventually I've kind of come to the position that the that's why the reform confessions are there they represent wonderful unity and also safeguards against falsehoods and not to get off on that tangent straight away because we'll be probably dealing with that later on but what we're dealing with here is the gospel how we're representing the gospel

I remember um a man who used to listen to a lot of years ago made this analogy if you're you can be presenting the gospel and presenting all the facts of the atonement and representing how people are sinful but if you're dressed in a clown suit you're going to undermine it the way you're representing it is going to kind of go okay he's not really taking it seriously right so it's not that what you're wearing is that important but try not to make it distracting now that's just an analogy for what

I mean it's just it's giving mixed messages you're saying that the Roman Catholic Church teaches the same gospel and in the same way

Billy Graham back in these crusades said go back to your churches be they liberal or you know like apostate churches or Roman Catholic churches he didn't really you know if people want to compare it to Billy Graham it is very comparative to Billy Graham it's like a modern version of what

Billy Graham was doing Billy Graham and Franklin have really praised

Pope John Paul II with the highest of accolades

I don't know what they may have said about the current pope but John Paul II they both said that he that Billy Graham and his son

Franklin both said that he was one of the greatest Christians if not the greatest Christian of the 20th century and Billy Graham was a close personal friend of John Paul II even before he became a pope and the very day that he became a pope

Billy Graham preached in his church in Poland obviously not to condemn the false teachings of the

Roman Catholic Church but to uphold the teachings as being completely consistent with Christianity and it might be helpful and believe me

I'm not going to go through all of the anathemas that the council of Trent has dogmatically declared against those who believe in the biblical gospel and of course those of us who are bible -believing

Christians who consider ourselves to be heirs of the reformation we are included as the targets of these anathemas just as the reformers were 500 years ago but I'm going to just go through some of the anathemas of the council of Trent and keep in mind that the 16th century council that declared anathemas against those who either rejected what the

Catholic Church affirms or taught things in contradiction to the

Catholic Church these anathemas were intended to say that these individuals were accursed by God and that they were cut off from God this was not some light thing that modern

Catholics even modern conservative Catholics try to make of the anathemas they basically say today well that just means that you can't be a

Roman Catholic in good standing it doesn't mean that you're accursed it doesn't mean that you're going to hell well obviously if the

Catholic Church was torturing people and setting them on fire while they were still alive and martyring them for being anathematized by the

Catholic Church if they did not repent they had a lot more serious definition of anathema than the modern

Catholic does let me just go through some of these just so our listeners know that it is not Paul and I here who are the the mean -spirited bigots or that we're just coming up with this understanding of the

Catholic Church having a different gospel out of our own opinion or something let me just read some of these if anyone shall say that since Adam's sin the free will of man is lost and extinguished or that it is a thing with a name only yea a title without a reality a figment in fine brought into the church by Satan let him be anathema if anyone say that by faith alone the impious is justified so as to mean nothing else is required to cooperate in order unto the obtaining of the grace or obtaining the grace of justification and that it is not in any respect necessary that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will let him be anathema if anyone shall say that men are justified either by the sole imputation of the righteousness of Christ or by the sole remission of sins to the exclusion of the grace and the charity which is shed abroad in their hearts by the

Holy Ghost and is inherent in them or even that the grace by which we are justified is only the favor of God let him be anathema if anyone shall say that justifying faith is not else but confidence in the divine mercy which results which remits sins for Christ's sake or that it is this confidence alone by which we are justified let him be anathema if anyone shall say that he will for certain for an absolute in infallible certainty have that great gift of perseverance unto the end unless that he have learnt this by a special revelation let him be anathema if anyone shall say that the grace of justification only befalleth those who are predestined unto life but that all others who are cold are cold indeed but receive not grace as being by the divine power predestined unto evil let him be anathema if anyone shall say that the commandments of God are even for a man that is justified and constituted in grace impossible to keep let him be anathema if anyone say that the justice received is not preserved and also increased in the sight of God through good works but the that the said works are merely the fruits and signs of justification received but not a cause of the increase thereof let him be anathema if anyone shall say there is no deadly sin but that of infidelity or that grace once received is not lost by any other sin however grievous and enormous save only by that of infidelity let him be anathema and if anyone shall say that after the grace of justification received unto every penitent sinner the guilt is so remitted and the penalty of eternal punishment so blotted out that there remains not any penalty of temporal punishment to be discharged in either in this world or the next in purgatory before the entrance to the kingdom of heaven can be laid open let him be anathema and that is just a fraction of the 63 anathemas against Protestants in the

Council of Trent and there's actually more anathemas against Protestants but to list them uh would be uh redundant i have created a list here that i will email anyone listening uh of these anathemas straight from a roman catholic website and uh i only listed 63 there are more that would be relevant but they would be redundant because they really involve the same teachings and beliefs and so on but so so to think that you when you considered how long it took me to read to read just a fraction of those anathemas and that there are about five times as many uh perhaps more uh that i did not read uh that condemn us to hell and that these anathemas are still in uh existence in the catholic dogma these are anathemas that cannot change because for them to be renounced would totally crumble the concept of papal infallibility because there is a difference in the catholic church between dogma and discipline and discipline can change over the years like not eating meat on friday and all these other kinds of things even uh syllabus in the priesthood that can change but dogma in the catholic church cannot ever change these are included within the dogma of rome and even as liberal as pope francis is the most liberal pope that has ever existed he has not overturned these anathemas he has not renounced these anathemas so doesn't that clearly teach here that they that the church of rome has a different gospel than we do who consider ourselves heirs of the reformation but sadly the message of together 2016 and just to remind myself a lot of it i went through i skipped through a lot of music but it was about six hours it was about seven hours in total before they had to shut it down with the heat exhaustion with a lot of people with the park police but the basic message was why are we why are we arguing about this kind of stuff why are we arguing about doctrine and things like that let's just get together big rally for jesus it was really like a pep rally the entire thing and i don't know a lot of it was about you know self -esteem and this one of the things we don't understand the reformation anymore and i think you know the and you were reading there from the succession of the i think it was all from the succession on justification you're reading from there that a modern evangelical could read this okay and kind of go okay canon one and two is a condemnation of pelagianism we would agree with that not everything in the council trend is necessarily wrong right but canon three and four you've got condemnation of calvinism that is would be a lot of evangelicals going you know what i actually agree with this and this is the thing and you know it's like as rome have we actually misunderstood rome and the problem is the evangelicals think that rome denies the necessity of grace it has never ever done that it actually in the first canon anybody who denies the necessity of grace it's the sufficiency of grace they have always exactly exactly and that's and that's the problem and it's like a goddess top lady said like it works as a fact that armenianism is a road to rome you see the people at this conference they are almost disarmed what they can say because they can't be clear on the doctrines of grace anymore they it's kind of like oh free will what's that and election who knows or if you saw the if you read you know fox's book of martyrs and the what the the martyrs were saying they were talking about elected for the foundation of the world i am persevering today because god has enabled me to do so they were thorough going calvinist to a man i can't find anybody any of these men who were born burnt at the cross not burned to the cross but burnt at the stake were were kind of going i'm i'm trusting in my free will i know armenians don't necessarily say that but they were all trusting in the free grace of god and that god showed mercy in them a sinner not that i made the right decision and you know thank god for that charismatic preacher yeah well we're going to be going to a break right now if you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own for paul flynn our email address is chris arnzen at gmail .com

chris arnzen at gmail .com don't go away we will be right back with more of our discussion with paul flynn on together 2016 in washington dc i am chris arnzen host of iron sharpens iron radio here to tell you about an exciting offer from world magazine my trust i am chris arnzen host of iron sharpens iron radio here to tell you about an exciting offer from world magazine my trusted source for news from a christian perspective try world at no charge for 90 days and get a free copy of rc sproles book relationship between church and state i rely on world because i trust the reporting i gain insight from the analysis and world provides clarity to the news stories that really matter i believe you also find world to be an invaluable resource to better understand critical topics with a depth that's simply not found in other media outlets armed with this coverage world can help you to be a voice of wisdom in your family and your community this trial includes bi -weekly issues of world magazine on -scene reporting from world radio and the fully shareable content of world digital simply visit wmg .org

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c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com and we thank those of you who listen to this program from all over the world and and participate in the broadcast with your questions and comments for those of you who just tuned us in or for those of you who lost the live feed through technical errors that we were unaware of we are discussing right now an event that took place in washington d .c

in july called together 2016. it was an ecumenical event that had as speakers and performers predominantly those from evangelical christianity but there was also a special message from pope francis on a jumbo screen and we are discussing whether or not such events are appropriate for bible -believing christians to participate in we also before the break were going through some of the council of trance anathemas against the the reformers and of course that would include the heirs of the reformers such as paul flynn and i and all of those who share the gospel of the reformation as being the gospel of the bible and the gospel of the apostles and especially the gospel of jesus christ these anathemas that rome declared in the century against the reformers are still binding today they are still dogma and even as liberal as pope francis is he has not overturned them or renounced them and he knows that to do so would cause the whole system of papal infallibility to crumble because dogma once it has been defined and declared by a pope cannot be changed that's one of the key teachings of the roman catholic church but um what i would like to do right now is i would like to play a play a clip that paul actually our guest paul flynn has provided that involves ravi zacharias at a i believe it's a university but it's some kind of a live event with a live audience whether texas a and m's veritas forum on march the 19th 2014 that's the details i have in it okay and someone in the audience asked a very good question on roman catholicism in regard to whether or not it should be listed as a cult and we will hear ravi zacharias's answer and we will comment on that when we are completed with the clip thank you very much let's take a question from this side good evening dr zacharias and dr nabil it's a great honor to have you here tonight with us uh for about six or seven years now me and my friends have been going out evangelizing in the streets and i'm sorry to change the gears here but i'm in desperate need of your help tonight um we encounter a lot of groups on the streets uh different uh religious groups uh mormons jehovah's witnesses things like that and um one group we have a particular problem with sometimes and answering is a roman catholicism and so i went but i went back to research uh dr i mean not dr but martin luther and uh charles spurgeon and things like that and call it a heresy but when i fast forward to now and i go and read uh the kingdom of the cults by walter martin uh it's not in there so my question to you is uh is roman catholicism another example of how unity does not equal uniformity within the christian community or is it a derivative or is it at its core a derivative from true christianity and the bill did say like saying do you just like saying do you want to be axed or do you want to be hanged you know i appreciate the question that you're raising you know it's interesting that uh whether you grew up in the land of india where there are 330 million deities you get a lot of questions like this as well so let me just be first let me issue a disclaimer here briefly we as christian apologists basically defend the biblical worldview as we understand it see it and find it represented we know there are many people who may have some doctrinal diversities and doctrinal differences to from us and we understand that so you've obviously heard me address this in some way because you use the very words i sometimes use unity does not have to be uniformity so something like that let me put it to you in these words without getting specific and near the answer and then issuing one or two comments after that number one it is this it doesn't really matter what label one puts on an empty bottle if the bottle is empty or the bottle is mislabeled then it is even very dangerous the bible reminds us who is a christian it is one who really confesses in his mouth and believes in his heart that jesus christ lord and that christ has raised him from the dead and so on when you get into this theological realm there are many other additions that come in so if you ask me what does it take to be a follower of jesus christ my answer may be very brief if you say to me what does it take to belong to a particular denomination we may make it longer because the denomination may add its distinctives to find uniformity in that group then you may say what does it take to teach in a theological institution now you have to be even more protracted in your answer because as an instructor you have to be theologically very correct crossing your t's and dotting your i's i know many people whether they are in protestantism or in roman catholicism who are truly followers of jesus christ there are many other aspects of their faith that they may not fully subscribe to that is an aggression across history that was added by the power of leadership or by the power of group or sectarianism the fascinating thing is prior to the reformation we were all sort of divided into eastern and western at that point and there were distinctives and hierarchy and then doctrinal distinctives emerged just as well so my answer to you is what is a cult let me define it for you in the simplest possible way a cult is generally i think walter i actually as you probably know went on and became the general editor of walter martin's book so in the last seven or eight years that book that really i the family asked me to bring the editing into it but i define a cult this way anything that deviates from the historic person and work of jesus christ or adds to his teaching and is generally at the instruction of one individual who dictates that belief it is almost certainly cultic at that time oftentimes groups can function as a hierarchy within themselves and an individual heteronomically dictating the laws if that happens then any one of us whether in protestantism or in catholicism can end up becoming cultic by following just one particular brand of teaching and deviating from the historic person and work of jesus christ my answer to you is very simple you follow christ as best you know how as revealed in the word of god and serve him and love him and honor him with your life in your heart and in your walk and that's what you preach to others as well god will be the ultimate judge of what groups went wrong in which direction i have a hard enough time dictating whether my family has been right in every way leave alone historic five six hundred years of denominations so i'm not dodging the question i'm just telling you it is wise to be careful and not tar everybody with the same brush in a particular group the faith that you have in christ is a personal one and sometimes i know people who stay within groups in order to bring changes within that group where they see doctrinally they have deviated or gone astray from other belief systems it is possible that a person may be a good christian and a bad roman catholic it easily happened to draw another question from the twitter stream we had several all right that was uh ravi zacharias asking a question from someone in the uh audience at a veritas public event uh on whether or not the catholic church should be included as a cult although i was hoping that ravi zacharias would be more specific and direct and clear he was very clear in my opinion i don't know what your thoughts are paul he is very clear if you dissect what he said that roman catholicism as a religion deserves to be under the heading of a cult uh obviously we are always to take individuals on a one -by -one basis because let's face it even many of the martyrs in the catholic church like john huss and others who were executed by rome itself they would have considered themselves catholic so we can't just say that somebody is with certainty lost or a false christian because he may happen to identify himself as a catholic the different the difference is what is he really trusting in for eternal life and is he really believing and trusting in a biblical christ and that christ and his sacrifice alone and so on but i think that what uh ravi zacharias said in his answer really would uh militate against his presence at this event but if you could give us your own thoughts paul yes and no i think you could argue it either way because i think he's kind of given kind of two -sided answer his definition of a cult is pretty much roman catholicism to a t being dictated by one man um things of that nature or even a hierarchical group of men which he also included because the roman catholic church might claim that the magisterium involved is more than one man but anyway yeah his his conclusion at the end was you know what could we do that's four or five hundred years of theology what should you know who am i to judge it's a little bit like that at the end while at the same time he's kind of like going well here's the definition of a cult but we're never going to actually apply it to anybody you know i i i kind of it kills me you know it's like he you know obviously he's gone through walter mark like personally i wouldn't call rome catholicism cult i used to call it a cult years ago right i call it apostate right um like i used the language of the westminster confession which was the synagogue of satan any former part of the visible church which is broken off and no longer confesses the true religion no longer confesses the gospel i mean a lot of people would see formally at least that the roman catholic church was cut off from the visible church at the council of trend well before there was heresies and there was lots of problems obviously but formally anathematized in the gospel officially and then you like pre -trend and after trend there's a big difference in the rome catholic church you had i do believe elements of true believers there wasn't as much control uh for example in northern italy for centuries i think i was reading jay wiley's book that the diocese of milan believed the true gospel up until about the 10th century so i don't want to say like the word catholic just means universal the protestants were very much like no we're the true catholics you know we're um christian we're catholics in terms of we believe uh you know we're part of the true church going back to the very beginning but the roman catholic church is something else entirely so this is where like people like dave huntry went really wrong when he read a lot of reformers are going oh boy these people are catholic because these were termed catholic a lot um you know it seemed like a dirty word and all this the word holy catholic church is referring to the true church in terms of the confessions and things like that so we have to make that distinction now the thing about ravi is yes if you're going with his definition of a cult and he shouldn't be there or if he is going to go there he should rebuke it he's two options you can either decline it and write a blog against it why i'm not going i think you should do that or he should go there and rebuke it and present the god i think i would i would hold my hat up to and i tried at times when i was doing the radio show on this i said maybe some of these people are going to shock me and they're going to come out and say this is false theology this is not a true church of christ but in the answer this is it's a different event obviously from march to 2014 ravi's not clear if he is and he isn't clear on it but he it's quite clear he he treats it like another denomination and it's not unusual if you look at william layne craig as well different different apologists but in that sphere william layne craig for example i think it was on cnn he said that pope benedict the 16th was a it was a bulwark of the christian faith on tv uh you can find that youtube uh video when he was talking there was the amazing atheist and a few other people on there but it's you know this kind of mere christianity of c .s

lewis that well as long as we have the ecumenical you know the ecumenical creeds for the first few centuries people who are presbyterian etc and so on don't want to say all the whole to westminster they want to say no no we want to be much more broad than that and you know certainly for a man right with that much theological training and that much time to dedicate it towards educating others he hasn't had the time to at least look into the reformation and to that if if he can't answer a question on the reformation why is anybody listening to him i it comes to that point i mean if you can't as a christian theologian and apologist talk on the most one of the most basic issues the reformation you know beggar's belief we're going as martin martin lloyd jones said we're going back to a free reformation society almost yeah the the irony here is that ravi zacharias's ministry seems to be almost entirely but not exclusively built on distinguishing false eastern religions from biblical christianity and yet he is appearing at an event where the pope is participating via a jumbotron or however they did that i don't know if they actually showed the video at the event but there was an invitation video okay yes i saw that i saw that video yeah but i couldn't find it actually been played at the event oh okay unless the video that i have which is about six or seven hours long i couldn't find it in there so i think they might have maybe dropped this at some stage maybe been too unpopular what um don't cut off but i just really want to make some people might be thinking oh maybe there's a couple of people they might have known it was really endorsed by the pope but at about the two hour mark i was playing today i discovered actually there was a man by the name of matteo calisi and he's a professor he worked in the vatican and he was presented on stage as working on the three popes and he prayed in italian of how wonderful i'm kind of paraphrasing now that catholics pentecostals etc worshipping together so um it was like on one side they were going okay it's wonderful we're all worshipping together and then another two seconds later nick hall would say well we're not talking we're not asking you to compromise we're just people have their differences and all this kind of thing um well it's but the thing that i was going to say is that the irony that even to participate in an event where the pope was clearly identifying himself in great sympathy with by by doing an advertisement for it and telling people to attend it is that that pope and the catholic church since vatican ii has claimed that those within the ravi zacharias has spent a lifetime or nearly a lifetime ever ever since becoming a christian has spent his his career exposing the deadly spiritual errors in these groups that the the church of rome has now put their seal of approval on uh that is the the irony here uh and uh uh nabil kareshi who was also there he actually spoke years ago at the church where i'm a member exposing the evils and the falsehoods of islam he was a muslim uh before coming to christ and yet you have a pope and and the church itself through their catechism since vatican ii saying that muslims adore the same one true god that the catholic church does so that's where the inconsistency really uh is i think dangerous because it confuses the masses and no pun intended on the masses there but uh uh it really uh even unwittingly even if you want to give the very best spin on it these folks are unconsciously giving their seal of approval on a religion that uh preaches and teaches another gospel than that of the apostle paul and that of jesus christ and and another thing as well with ravi it's not in a complete vacuum either back i think it was back in 2011 he was giving a question and answer session on homosexuality and during that time he was talking about people who have the um the predisposition towards homosexuality but refrain from doing it he gave the example of a man by the name of henry nowen henry nowen he called one of the greatest saints in modern memory or words that affect him he called him one of the greatest saints henry nowen was a roman catholic priest a mystic and also universalist so i don't know if ravi knew that about him but it certainly shouldn't have given them that accolade if he didn't know about yeah and he's openly a roman catholic priest right yes and the universalist and i mean it's again it might seem like it's in you see one of the things i was most surprised about was nabil koreshi being there but i think because ravi is such a major influence on him he actually works for ravi zechariah's ministries now oh yeah and he's a mentor towards him and i don't know if it's really we're seeing nabil kind of accept this or he's afraid i don't know like sometimes you look up to somebody so much and he trusts somebody's judgment so much and i guess i'm going to try and give him the benefit that he seems like a lovely guy however this is sending the wrong message i mean people bled and died for rejecting the roman catholic mass um and now we're kind of getting to a point where we're afraid of hurting somebody's feelings the the the martyrs weren't rounded up and saying you know they stood and they said okay we reject transubstantiation um it's it's in a lot of like nicholas ridley's works and things like that um but now we don't seem to care about the sacrament the things that were centrally important uh the nature of the mass the blasphemous nature of the mass we're kind of like well you know and there was even a kind of a bit of a joke during one part of uh together 2016 i think it was uh a man by the name of bishop roberts i haven't heard of him before but he was i think it was him anyway uh you know well some of us wear hats and some of us don't wear hats and he's given all these trivial examples but we're all united in jesus i'm like denominational differences are not just the clothing you know one person wears that i'm like you know maybe reference to head coverings i'm not too sure but this is the gospel of jesus christ we're making trivial light -hearted make it sound like you know we just we're separating over bigoted differences yeah and uh i don't want to uh dwell too much on folks like nabil and ravi right now because they're not here to defend themselves uh or even just give their own side of this issue but i can say that it was puzzling to say the least and um uh obviously we have to pray that men of such great intellect and who have been a gift to the body of christ for so long will use much greater discernment in the future perhaps if their peers will be more uh directly critiquing them you know where they can have actually personal access to these men there there might be uh some uh better outcome of that but uh i will definitely pray about that we do have several listeners waiting to ask questions from different parts of the country and world so we hope to get to them right after this break and if you'd like to join them with your own questions for paul flynn our email address is chris arnson at gmail .com

chris arnson at gmail .com we are going to switch gears as a main topic uh for the second hour we're going to be discussing the doctrines of sovereign grace and in particular uh their existence uh today in the republic of ireland and uh although we we can of course still receive questions from you on our our previous topic that's completely fine and we look forward to hearing from you chris arnson at gmail .com

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that's wrbc .us welcome back this is chris arnzen for the full two hours today our guest today is paul flynn and he is the founder and director of megiddo films megiddo radio and megiddo tv and we are discussing uh now the doctrines of sovereign grace and in particular how they are spreading and being embraced in the republic of ireland today the first hour we were discussing the event that recently took place in washington dc called together 2016 let's also go go on under the name reset 2016 and we were addressing the the unbiblical level of ecumenism that was uh being participated in by evangelicals at this event which had the blessing of pope francis on it publicly and as it turned out uh i may have misspoke because it seems that pope francis was advertising the event through a video but not necessarily teaching anything there at the event through a jumbo screen or anything of that nature uh one of the reasons why it's difficult to nail these things down is that the the websites are very have very limited detail on them it's almost like a cryptic kind of a thing and even when i was before the event was held i could not find anywhere on their website what a church or what participants especially what leaders and pastors must believe in order for them to participate there was no uh statement of faith anywhere or or anything like that that i could find and if there is something like that the average person i don't think is it's going to be evil was able to easily access that type of information but uh our email address if you'd like to join us on the air is chrisarnson at gmail .com

chrisarnson at gmail .com why don't we just take before we go into our discussion of the doctrines of grace paul let's take a few questions from listeners in the audience we have david in ada ohio who says or asks what do you think of the following list of books the cult of the virgin by elliott miller and kenneth samples mary another redeemer by james white the roman catholic controversy by james right uh the reformation's conflict with rome by robert raymond reasoning from the scriptures with catholics by ron roads and roman catholicism by lorraine bettner well before paul speaks i can say that i uh know of all of these individuals uh and i personally know as a friend both kenneth samples and james white i have read all of their books that are listed here and i believe that they should be widely read and they i believe are excellent books uh the cult of the virgin by elliot miller and kenneth samples is no longer in print to my knowledge you can get it uh used in various places it's an excellent book especially kenneth samples section on the apparitions of mary uh one one thing that's that's interesting is that a lot of people that when i a lot of roman catholics that i know when when i told them about that book they got very uh upset by saying that was cruel and mean -spirited of kenneth samples to write a book titled the cult of the virgin and the thing is that's actually a roman catholic phrase roman catholics themselves in the vatican and in scholastic uh arenas within rome use the phrase the cult of the virgin when they themselves describe the specific adoration and devotion that they give to mary but but it's a very good book and james white's mary another redeemer is excellent it's a very brief book that i believe just came out on kindle the roman catholic controversy is superb in my opinion uh i i highly respect robert raymond but i haven't read his book reformation's conflict with rome i know of ron rhodes and and have a lot of uh sympathy with his beliefs although he is not to my knowledge theologically reformed uh but it doesn't mean that he's wrong on everything and i i do i do remember enjoying his participation years ago on the bible answer man lorraine bettner of course is a great hero of uh of reformed history reformation history and lorraine bettner is a man just to let you know and uh i i had a joke one time at one when i was introducing james white at one of the uh debates i said don't listen to the false rumors that i'm a male chauvinist some of my greatest heroes of the faith are such great women as lorraine bettner and meredith klein and kim riddle barger and i said oh wait a minute those are guys with women's names but anyway um i got really confused one time when i was looking at a footnote and i said meredith was a client yes was any westminster theological seminary yes i got so confused that one time i was like that's the guy's name there well lorraine bettner is a great 20th century um teacher from princeton and uh wrote a classic work on roman catholicism uh and uh just went home to be with the lord in 1990 but um though that's my opinion on what on those books listed uh do you have your own thoughts on that paul um i'd have to go back i don't think i haven't read any of those books i don't think i have roman catholicism on my shelf but i haven't read yet i've read some of lorraine bettner already and i love what i've read so far so he seems to be excellent and like you might if you're looking for a book that's excellent roman catholicism one book i really if you want to add to that and another book to read is a book called uh just look at my shelf here it's called east uh catholicism east of eden by a but a name of richard dennis yes he's a very good friend of mine as well yeah i love the book it's kind of it's written a nice balance between scott being scholarly and not kind of completely losing you either i don't know he's got that kind of um because he was a roman catholic for so long and and a priest really well yeah yeah he was a priest and uh he has uh uh spoken uh i have i have arranged a number of speaking engagements for him when he was still a lot healthier and able to travel um and have interviewed him a number of times and i ask that those of you listening please pray for brother richard bennett because his health is very poor and uh we just pray that that the lord would uh continue to bless his ministry and and give him good health and strength while he is still among us but uh i know with certainty whatever the lord's will is with his case uh that that richard will will certainly be in glory with christ he is a he is a dear dear brother in the lord and i thank god for his friendship and uh bereanbeacon .org

is his website bereanbeacon .org b -e -r -e -a -n -b -e -a -c -o -n .org

so uh anybody listening who who wants to find out more about richard bennett can go to that website and um we hope that uh richard uh gets restored to good health so we could get him back on iron sharpens iron as a guest soon and we do have another listener tyler in mastic beach long island why is it that many reformed christians are quick to rebuke roman catholic theology when arminian teaching is almost identical model of synergistic soteriology the synod of dort were not accepting of the arminian view and declared it as heretical well uh if you'd like to start there paul um i think it depends on the arminian if it's an inconsistent highly inconsistent arminian but like there's a i know i would say right arminianism a road to rome but i wouldn't say it's identical to rome catholic they're both synergistic systems i i like if you take consistent arminianism i do believe it's the false gospel but i i stress to say consistent i suppose if you go far enough it becomes pelagianism if you're going to be really really consistent like with uh charles finney yeah if you believe that it depends on man's will and that is the deciding factor and you really get down to the nuts and bolts of it and you really believe that then you're believing a false gospel but if you talk to the average arminian they believe it's all of christ and but they don't really understand what the issue with free will is they say well i'm not a zombie i know this i'm not like some kind of robot being you know pulled around by strings so they reject this based off of more of a straw man than actually the actual information and maybe in a maybe an emotional uh straw man of what's really hyper calvinism that they've rejected so i think you know when the reform person takes a much harsher view of the roman catholic it's because the roman catholic is actively saying it my you know or if they properly understand roman catholic theology now if they're like an apologist or something that it's not all of grace clearly and that man after you know the the grace of baptism must maintain himself by his free will and that he needs enough righteousness that comes from hiself it's like basically the grace of god is not sufficient so it's an open attack on the gospel whereas the arminianism while consistently taken is uh at the very least the weakening of the gospel very much you could say like i was an arminian for years after i was saved and so you have to be you have to meet people where they're at and the difference is many of them are genuine believers in christ they haven't got all their ducks in a row yet maybe and if they're going in the right direction we should encourage them uh if at all possible if you're a roman catholic believing the roman catholic theology you don't know christ so you know we have to get things in proportion right and uh the great heroes of the reformed faith uh from uh charles spurgeon going all the way back to calvin himself they did not uh insist that all of these tenets of the reformed faith be believed in order for salvation to be present and charles spurgeon although sometimes charles spurgeon wrote with such a vehement disgust over arminian heresies you might think that he thought they were lost when you read other things that he wrote about arminians of history like john wesley and so on you see that he viewed him as a as a brother in christ so uh you know we have to be careful that our theology doesn't puff us up and make us arrogant and when it's when reformed theology is intended to do the exact opposite of that it's to humble us to dust and attribute all uh to god every grace every benefit uh in addition to not only our salvation which is the supreme gift but every other good and beautiful gift is from god and that he is sovereign control over everything including our understanding of of this theology so i think we have to be very careful when we dismiss brothers who have not yet come to understand these things and at the same time you may have an arminian brother in christ who understands another aspect of theology in a much deeper and more accurate way than you do uh you know because there are other things to be learned from the scriptures other than the five points of calvinism so i think there's a massive difference between wesley who railed against calvinism or well finney's even in a different category again or like a dave hunt or something near the end which was really sad i think right read a lot of his books and i liked a lot of his books and then studying a lot of his claims i was like whoa you know just way off there but i think he you know sincerely thought he was understanding it properly but went way off in a direction and uh but you know i think that's just a tragedy but i think we have to kind of realize that um we have to meet people where they're at which we should like the church is not where it was in the 17th century not that we detrude at all change but we should if you go back to calvin's writings there's a big difference calvin's writings because he's trying to reach a lot of um a lot of people who aren't really that well that will ground that's where he wrote the um institute of the christian religion so we have to kind of we have to get that grounding we should be patient with people realizing you know maybe we've been blessed in a certain way with different teaching books etc but i think there's a big massive difference between the honest sincere armenian who's going that direction might take some some time and the armenian who's actively railing against the doctrine of election to the point where he's blaspheming god that's i think we need to make a strong distinction between those two groups yes in fact um one difference might be even uh how how deep a knowledge someone has over the theology and yet still clings to it and declares it uh i don't know if you've ever seen the um the amazing grace dvd uh it's a documentary series on the doctrines of grace excellent amazing grace the history and theology of calvinism but uh there is a uh nazarene professor who actually went to the lengths of teaching that and he was basically saying this in anger with his fellow armenians for using the term substitutionary atonement and he was saying that you you cannot believe you cannot be an armenian and believe that because if christ died as your substitute that means you're saved and we who are armenian believe many for whom christ died will be in hell so therefore he can't be a substitute and he's right actually but he's on the wrong side of the the theological issue because he is right in saying that you can't claim christ as a substitute if he died for every single person and most are going to be damned but the the sad case is is that he believes that christ is not our substitute so that that's where you have a an example of somebody who's in serious damnable heresy who is an armenian because he actually knows the the the theology very well and he is logically consistent with it as opposed to and i i say like and i have to be like very careful about this you know when i think a lot of reformers are saying you know like armenians are not a gospel we're talking about consistent armenianism here and a lot of people we'll meet are inconsistent and how they apply it and often when you explain calvinism to them they go oh that's what it is oh that's not oh i can't believe that so you have to be just careful because often they've been given straw man false definitions of what free will is rather you know what you know the difference between free agency and free will and things like that that they mistake and one of the biggest mistakes is people think that a moral inability or moral um you know total depravity in a moral sense they take it as a natural inability uh jonathan edwards wrote about it that if you see the thing is if we think of uh total depravity is i can't obey the laws of god in a natural sense i think well how can i be held responsible for this but it's not a natural inability the doctor is talking about it's talking about a moral inability we don't want to do us an issue yes we're we it's like um the best analogy i can give is like a horrible stench maybe like a septic tank or something you won't go into it you're just railing against it it's the most disgusting thing um i i think what was it i think it was uh oh watson i think said um repentance is like the vomit of the soul you absolutely got wrenchingly hate something you either love your sin or you hate it well i actually love that line i never heard that line before repentance is the vomit of the soul that's uh that's pretty intense but very accurate yeah i i think it's in his book a little book on repentance well uh thank you very much uh let's see who was that that was uh that was david in ada ohio uh thank you very much for oh and that actually was the last uh question was from tyler in mastic beach thank you tyler for the question um well the the doctrines of sovereign grace something that unites both and i very clearly otherwise known as reform theology also known as calvinism also known as the doctrines of grace or the doctrines of free grace which is not to be confused with a more modern movement of christians who identify their theology as free grace who reject the necessity of repentance we're not talking about those christians we're talking about not only completely unmerited favor that god bestows upon his elect but also ill -merited favor it's not just that we didn't deserve to be rescued by god and he gave us this grace and rescued us anyway it's that we deserved the opposite of salvation we deserved hell because we have violated all of his commandments and have lived in rebellion against him until he by his mercy got a hold of us and rescued us from our sin and the penalty thereof but uh when did you in your journey uh come to finally embrace the the teachings we call calvinism and i know that you were raised in a roman catholic family as were most people in the republic of ireland and you've already given your testimony in detail but if you could give us a very abbreviated version of your testimony and bring us to the point where you came to embrace reform theology sure um i remember for the first couple of years i was in fundamentalist churches and i came across people who came to be calvus and kind of what i would call you know calvinistic in theory but very armenian uh in terms of how we live we can be we might have a theoretical understanding of it but to be a calvinist is so much more than oh i can talk about the tulip for a couple of minutes it's how do you apply it to your to your life um there's a very good book joe beake actually wrote on the issue called uh i think the subtitle is called an introduction to calvinism the camera the living for god's glory i think that's what the title is so but but anyway so i remember over the years it was finally i think about the end of 2012 when i finally went okay i agree with all of this but it was a very gradual process and i remember i had it was i think it was my second film at the time and i kind of came in contact with the writings of the reformers here and there the second film was i would call it chaos the confusion of modern church and a lot of it had to do with the charismatic movement in the history of it and i wanted to quote from everybody from every sort of background calvin i quoted from dispensationalists in the 19th century i wanted to show this was not my particular denomination saying this this is the entirety of church history up until about 100 years ago when everything kind of got turned on its head a you know looking at articles here and there i'm told the property and going yeah man is completely dead he's not sick he's dead but it took me a while before the dominoes started to hit other places um i didn't really fully i i saw okay the bible definitely talks about election but you know what i didn't really fully understand the debate and i kind of for a while thought it was like silly philosophy like i probably view now we know the debates about superlapsarian and infralapsarian i kind of leave those alone but uh i don't know if ever got involved in that it's kind of a fun topic and i you know i remember i had one view and then my pastor talked me around again but anyway um but i kind of i just kind of didn't see it as important as it was and now i do a you know when calvin when not calvin when spurgeon said calvinism calvinism is the gospel he didn't mean you know that you go up to a lost person say you believe in total poverty do you believe in sovereign election it wasn't that what he was saying was that the way you preach to a dead sinner you're not treating him like we're going to appeal to your will you know that will is the deciding factor we're going to use entertainment we're going to use the right source of means like charles finney or somebody like that we're going to try and tickle you know tickle your ears in order to get you to make the right decision so when he's saying there is you see because the sovereign election we don't know who the elect are we we're not going to go around saying to people unless we're hyper calvinist or something like that saying to people you're the elect you're not the elect we don't know this kind of thing we preach the gospel indiscriminately to all creatures and we let god this is all we have to do is share the message pray for them but it gradually was like dominoes i think the little by little i remember one of the doctrines in fundamentalism i really really despised was the carol christian doctrine this doctrine where you you can be a christian you make a decision and no fruit no change in your life i i to be honest it was one of the it was the doctrine that grieved me probably the most and led me to study more and more perseverance of the saints kind of kept up and the last domino the fall for me was um with the fourth point irresistible grace i read a confession that said oh effectual calling that makes more sense so that was the last domino that's interesting because that's usually that's usually not the order very gradually it probably took about two years my whole process yeah i uh went from being a roman catholic to an arminian without knowing i was an arminian i just knew that when i was hearing calvinism taught initially i hated it and thought it was insane and uh bristled against it declared i would never believe in it and then after reading uh a booklet titled george whitfield's letter to john wesley on election the lord took the the scripture that whitfield presented to wesley and he just opened up my eyes to it and i initially embraced it as truth but said it's horrible and i hate it but then within within about i don't know a month or two i loved the doctrines because it showed me the intensity of the love that god for had that god has for me and that his son's death on calvary was not some vain thing where he was saying i really hope i save everybody it was chris arnson i am redeeming you right now i'm receiving the father's wrath that you deserve and i am atoning for your sin with my blood and this is a done deal this is uh when he said it is finished he might as well have said mission accomplished and it was became my faith and my salvation became very intensely personal at that point when i when i realized how beautiful these teachings are and uh so in ireland everybody knows that the republic of ireland would be in its majority roman catholic although i couldn't tell you uh if that is mainly nominal what would be the in your opinion from what you've witnessed all your life living in the republic of ireland would you say that the majority of people seem to be purely nominal or is there a lot of deep deeply religious people there or is that just a minority there's a minority now there's been a massive change in like the last 20 30 years and i don't know if it's necessarily to do with a lot of scandals that have happened in the church but there's been swings and roundabouts like this in church history um they've kind of become a lot more atheistic agnostic but will go to christenings and they'll still do christenings they'll still do the weddings in the catholic church they'll still you know have the outward trimmings they'll still want the days out uh like you know first first communion and things like that the things that um i awkwardly have to say no to constantly in my family um because of lots of nieces and nephews who would love to see a lot more but it's a kind of um we yeah we don't really believe it i remember when i was growing up my my mother was a lot more religious and as time's gone on you know a little bit here a little bit there but that's a horror story is not unusual it's kind of like that all over the place um we would have went it would have would have been quite common for some of these parents to go to lent and go to mass every morning of lent and that would have been quite common i think about 20 30 years ago not that everybody did it but now it's kind of like it's seen you're seen as smarter if you don't go so it's taken a scene as well you're still believing in that silliness and we're kind of quite better than that it's uh we've um we've got a we've got an agent we've got a i want to educated we've got a university generation that has come out with a degree in ireland and thinks it's educated it's really not but that's another issue maybe all right we have to go to our final break this is the last commercial break that we are going to have and if you'd like to join us please send an email as soon as you can to chris arnzen at gmail .com

chris arnzen at gmail .com and whether you're roman catholic whether you are protestant whether you are neither whether you are jewish muslim atheist agnostic or sweden borgianist we would love to hear from you with a question and you can remain anonymous if you choose to don't go away we will be right back with paul flynn and our discussion of the doctrines of sovereign grace in ireland in the 21st century linbrook baptist church on 225 earl avenue in linbrook long island is teaching god's timeless truths in the 21st century our church is far more than a sunday worship service it's a place of learning where the scriptures are studied and the preaching of the gospel is clear and relevant it's like a gym where one can exercise their faith through community involvement it's like a hospital for wounded souls where one can find compassionate people in healing we're a diverse family of all ages enthusiastically serving our lord jesus christ in fellowship play and together hi i'm pastor bob waldeman and i invite you to come and join us here at linbrook baptist church and see all that a church can be call linbrook baptist at 516 -599 -9402 that's 516 -599 -9402 or visit linbrookbaptist .org

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charles haddon spurgeon once said give yourself unto reading the man who never reads will never be read he who never quotes will never be quoted he will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves he has no brains of his own you need to read solid ground christian books is a publisher and book distributor who takes these words of the prince of preachers to heart the mission of solid ground christian books is to bring back treasures of the past to minister to christians in the present and future and to publish new titles that address burning issues in the church and the world since it's beginning in 2001 solid ground has been committed to publish god -centered christ exalting books for all ages we invite you to go treasure hunting at solid -ground -books .com

that's solid -ground -books .com and see what priceless literary gems from the past or present you can unearth from solid ground solid ground christian books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of iron sharpens iron radio welcome back this is chris zarnes and before we return to our guest paul flynn one of our sponsors has an announcement that they want you to take advantage of if you live in maine or if you have the ability to get to maine by train plane or automobile this week august 4th through the 6th fellowship conference new england is having their conference at the deering center community church in portland maine and that's as i said august 4th through the 6th that starts this thursday and ends this saturday and the speakers include my friend pastor mac tomlinson who is the pastor of providence chapel in denton texas and he is one of the speakers and organizers of this event other speakers include charles lighter jesse barrington and michael durham and i can assure you that at this event you are going to hear the true gospel of sovereign grace proclaimed and there's going to be a joyous worship there and great fellowship and i hope that as i said if you live in maine or can get there that you visit fellowship conference new england dot com and you know make sure that you get all the information you need on how to attend this conference that's fellowship conference new england dot com and we also have had one of the one of the speakers there mac tomlinson has been a guest on iron sharpens iron a number of times and he is quite a precious brother in christ and gifted speaker you could also call 207 -423 -7652 207 -423 -7652 for more information on fellowship conference new england and now we are returning to our discussion with paul flynn of megiddo films megiddo radio and megiddo television on the doctrines of grace and as i have said before on this program the way that i summarize what those teachings are if you want to take it to its very core is that god alone saves sinners because sinners cannot even help save themselves and i don't know if you are comfortable with that definition or summary paul but it seems to me that arminians and roman catholics are at one level of disagreement with that that core definition of the doctrines of grace arminians believe that man certainly must help to save himself because he through his free will which he innately possesses at birth is able to make the choice which pleases god to believe upon christ and the roman catholic takes it further and says that man must actually through not only ritual rites ceremony and deeds but he he will uh must attain eternal life through that kind of cooperation that level of cooperation but he must continue in some fashion in cooperating with christ and his grace throughout his whole life in order to enter into heaven which of course the whole system of rome is muddied and made more baffling and confusing when their modern catechisms say that non -christians can go to heaven so it really makes little sense but if you could comment with your own thoughts on what i just said sure um that's one way to describe it another way is like we without the grace of christ or without the grace of god we are uh we're spiritual lazarus we are uh we're dead corpses morally and the way to picture that again is not again that we are physically enabled you know uh i was talking to somebody yesterday and you know natural inability would be i don't have legs if the command is for me to run across the room and i can't do it then it's not my fault that i can't do it i don't have legs um i'm somebody probably going to come up with a smart comment like maybe could use your hands but anyway it's always going to be one but anyway um so but the whole idea is you don't want to right it's like if you run across the room just say there's something horrible that you hated with all your might um again it's it's it's that idea that we are as soon as adam fell he was dead not physically he was dead later physically but date spiritually from the moment he sinned what did adam and eve do they hid from god they they blamed other people besides themselves and that showed the difference adam and eve were righteous before then they would you know they enjoyed god they worshipped god they uh and then it all changed as soon as they fell into sin they followed the particular patterns of a sinful person and it's you know like the way to see because one of the biggest issues is whether it's the hypercalvinist or the armenian they say well if they're not able to come to christ they're not responsible for their actions and this is and this is how they almost watered down the law in order to make this consistent because you would have to say well we're commanded to love the lord our god with all our heart mind soul and strength can we do that for a single second in a perfect way no we cannot we can never love god in the way christ during his life love god the father with a perfect love we can never do that we've never done that for even a single second uh like paul washer would say you know my greatest day would send me to hell um we never ever uh at that standard you know even our greatest deed but filthy rags as isaiah says so we're completely at even even our good works after salvation is accepted by by faith by the blood of jesus christ you know it's through the mediator in whom the father is well pleased the problem with when we're armenians we're really against this we don't see how sinful we are we don't see how truly depraved we are and when we grow in grace i don't want to be patronizing to armenian brothers i'm sure they could they know a lot of them probably know the bible a lot better than i do but the thing is it's and at if you look at them the martyrs i was i was reading there recently a top lady's works showing uh the foundation of the church of england you know there's a big battle whether the church of england was really armenian uh that's foundation or calvinist and he goes through not just the church of england but prior to that and people killed at the stake and if you see their testimonies they're talking about the elect they're talking about god's free grace they didn't shy away from this language it wasn't like oh that calvinistic language you better hide it they were very forthright and it was the roman catholics during the 16th centuries in particular where one of the doctrines they railed against was the doctrine of election one of the doctrines they railed against was the doctrine of free will and that would distinguish you whether you were a roman catholic or a protestant you go to the jansenists in the 16th century forced out of roman catholic church because they sided with augustine yeah and uh let me uh go to a classic text from the scriptures the apostle paul uh really annihilates any notion of men having a free will uh to in and of themselves without the aid of a regenerating work by the holy spirit in their hearts to come to christ freely in a saving fashion uh romans 3 starting at verse 10 and going through verse 18 the apostle paul says as it is written there is none righteous not even one there is none who understands there is none who seeks for god all have turned aside together they have become useless there is none who does good there is not even one their throat is an open grave with their tongues they keep deceiving the poison of asps is under their lips whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness their feet are swift to shed blood destruction and misery are in their paths and the path of peace they have not known there is no fear of god before their eyes that's obviously a description of man in his natural state in the fall after the fall of adam man who has inherited the sin of adam and we also have romans 8 another word from the apostle paul who teaches starting at verse 1 therefore is there is now no condemnation for those who are in christ jesus for the law of the spirit of life in christ jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death for what the law could not do weak as it was through the as weak as it was through the flesh god did sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin he condemned sin in the flesh so that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the spirit for those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh but those who are according to the spirit the things of the spirit for the mindset on the flesh is death but the mindset on the spirit is life and peace because the mindset on the flesh is hostile toward god for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please

God." So if you believe that a man from his birth has the innate ability to believe in Christ in a saving fashion, we're not talking about intellectual belief here, in a saving fashion, a genuine trust in Christ and love for Christ, then you're disagreeing with the

Apostle Paul because he says that those who are in the flesh cannot please

God, and therefore if believing in Christ pleases God, if repentance pleases

God, a man in his natural sinful state cannot do that, and therefore the

Reformers rescued these truths in the 16th century Reformation, and they were buried under a sea of works righteousness heresies that the

Church of Rome had accumulated, and those who were the Reformers were not inventing new things, they were bringing to light the truth of the

Scriptures. And in Ireland it is well known,

Paul, that there was such great conflict for so long between those who were defending

British rule over Ireland and those in Ireland desiring their freedom as a people, and the whole political aspect of this struggle and this conflict really was couched under the disguise of a religious issue, and the gospel really got clouded in this whole circumstance where people basically equated those

Roman Catholics who were Irish equated those who believed in the Protestant gospel as being just their political enemies, and therefore everything they believed must be wrong.

So how has the Republic of Ireland changed in its atmosphere in relation to Protestant theology as opposed to British politics?

In some ways yes, in some ways no. At its core, if you go back long enough, it is a religious issue.

Rome, you know, really just kind of the way I would describe it, and I don't know if I've picked this up from old history books, but used

Ireland historically as a battering ram against the British Empire, much like a kind of a

Poland of the West. So you had, you know,

Rome, and I think to this day, still sees London as the center of Protestantism, and then it falls in whatever way politically, because there's different safeguards that the

British crown has, that a Roman Catholic cannot ascend to the crown, and things like that. But if you go back long enough, back about a hundred years, you know, books written 1914 before Irish independence and things like that, you see a lot of writers, especially those who would be

Christians, saying the problem with Ireland was never kind of British, you know,

British oppression and things like that. It was a sin issue, and there was a lot of rebellion, there was a lot of trouble.

There's a lot of trouble, especially outside of Dublin, which was called the Pale for quite a long time.

The British pumped a lot of money into the Dublin area, trying to, I think, like what they're doing, trying to do in Northern Ireland at the moment, trying to pump a lot of money to solve these spiritual problems with kind of making people happy, giving people jobs, and hoping that that will make everything okay.

The fundamental issues are still there, but they're bubbling under the surface. There is peace, and it's probably been, you know, from a very human point of view, better than it has been in a long time, especially up in Northern Ireland.

But if you go back long enough, from what the Little Age studied of history, it's basically

Rome trying to foment, and it's been a lot of old documents can go back hundreds of years.

For example, Oliver Cromwell is seen as a sort of a Hitler figure in the

Republic of Ireland. You go anywhere else and study him, and he's seen as the defender of the Waldensian Christians.

So we've kind of got this, we've been kind of fed, through the system, through the school systems, we've been kind of fed a kind of a system of lies that, and I have to just call it out and that, so we've kind of, in the

South, we've developed a massive bigotry. I'm not saying the British have done everything perfect over the years, but from the person who's grown up in the

South, would have held some of these bigotries myself.

As I studied through these things, I remember one time I read an old document, going back to Oliver Cromwell's time, exposing some of what the

Jesuits were writing about, you know, rounding up Protestants and slaughtering them and things like that. Some hundred thousand to four hundred thousand were killed in the 1640s, for example, just rounded up and killed.

And history has been changed massively, you know, the numbers have been down to, you know, now they report 5 ,000 on national television.

So it is a religious thing, but the problem is, if you go back the last 30 -40 years, and I think that's what everybody knows about, most of the people fighting in the

UDF and all those guys, if you talked to enough people, they'd say they would have never darkened the door of a church.

The fighting was basically, their parents were probably Protestant, but never taught them into faith, and they were very much like a poking a bear, retaliating to years of antagonism.

Not justifying either side, but this goes back a long way, and you know, even the

South was shown that the Dublin government even funded a lot of terrorism going up north.

So this is, you know, a lot of it's been kind of, you know, people talk about it now, and it's like, ah, you know, that was back then, but I think for this country to heal, it needs the truth.

It needs the truth of the gospel, but I think it needs to also, as an island,

I think we really need to study our history, and I'm not saying I'm the source to go to that, but Ireland's problems, we, you know, sadly, even this happens in Christian circles, and these are nice Christians, I'm not trying to get in their case or anything, but, you know, if you can't, it kind of, you go down this path of kind of victimhood, like, you know, like in a

Democratic Party, if we're black, everybody hates those kind of things, it's just going to be very, very, if you think everybody's against you kind of thing, this kind of professional victimhood, kind of social justice warrior thing.

Just, I would just say, look, love your neighbor as yourself. Reach the gospel, whether they're

English or Scottish or whatever else, but, you know, I think we need to study our history.

I've broken down in tears reading about this stuff. I haven't done in quite a while, but a lot of my prejudices against the

British over the years have been wrong. Hmm. So today, is there still a lot of bristling and distrust when a

Christian in the Republic of Ireland actually specifically identifies himself as a Protestant?

I know years ago, when there was more conflict actually going on there, you,

I spoke with theologically Reformed Christians who lived in the

Republic of Ireland, who specifically chose not to describe themselves as Protestant, not because they were hiding from anything, but they just thought it added more heat than light to the discussion, and they didn't want the issues to be derailed, basically, by people thinking that this was a political issue.

What about today? Can you, do you identify yourself specifically as Protestant, and what kind of reaction are you getting in this day and age?

Yeah, I do say I'm Protestant, because I try, I understand, I'm not saying anything for people who choose not to use the title, but I kind of,

I won't run for the title, because it's a title that goes right back for hundreds and hundreds of years.

It's nothing to do with the Northern Irish and things like that. It's a, you know, it's a,

I mean, you know, I think if you go far enough, you could, you know, the Spires were Christian, you know, you could say, oh, well, the

Christians were involved in Crusades, and all this kind of stuff, so you could, you know, or, you know, the

Inquisition, and you explain what that means, and things like that. So, okay, I think we shouldn't, you know, kind of be proud about, oh,

I'm a Protestant, I come from Protestant heritage, and trust in that, but I won't run from the title, either.

But again, I'm not judging anybody who chooses not to use it, they have their own reasons. And I think there is a certain level of, we should be all things to all men, as in, if you're reaching a

Roman Catholic, individually now, I'm talking, and just say, you know, they're maybe a former IRA, they've got an

IRA family, just don't bring it up. There's no need to bring it up, I'm a Protestant, just give them the

Gospel. So there's times when we should be sensitive, and we should kind of go, well, this fact isn't needed.

You don't need to kind of go, there's an IRA poster on the wall, you don't need to get into a big political discussion, you need to talk about how to date and trespass and sin.

And, you know, as they grow in conviction, maybe they'll see that some of the things that they did were wrong. But there's a way to do it, if you know what

I mean. Amen. And for those of you listening who think that St.

Patrick was a Roman Catholic, you're being misled. He was a Christian in the 5th century, and in the 400s there was no truly

Roman Catholic Church. There was no papacy, there was no teaching of the propitiatory sacrifice of the

Mass, there was no full -blown, widespread worship of Mary, or even veneration as the

Catholic Church chooses to describe that. We know that it's worship, because it clearly contains all the elements of worship.

And you great hero of the Christian faith, and he lived prior to there being a

Church of Rome. But if you could conclude over the next three minutes with what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today.

I guess just a love for the Gospel. If nothing else, I don't want it to kind of get, kind of,

I think sometimes people can become Calvinist, or just kind of, you know, something clicks in the doctrines of grace, and they think, oh,

I've arrived. You're going to be studying the Gospel for the rest of your life, and if you stop studying the

Gospel, there's something wrong on your walk. We don't, like, kind of go, here's the Gospel, we're done, and then go on to deeper things like eschatology.

The Gospel isn't on every page, it's... we need to grow in the knowledge of that truth.

We need to grow in the knowledge of how sinful we are. That way we're more humble. That way we go to our lost co -workers, or wherever they are, and be broken -hearted, because we'd realize we'd be in exactly the same place they are, but for the grace of God.

By election, it should humble us. Election's not there to go, oh, I'm so wonderful,

God picked me. This is not the point of it. The whole point of it is, if God did not choose you, you would still be in your sin.

And if God didn't choose anybody, no one would come to the Gospel. If God did not pay...

if it was a potential atonement, that doesn't pay for anyone's sin. So the whole point of Calvinism and people talk, you know, like Spurgeon said,

Calvinism is the Gospel, is... I want people to take away a love for the

Gospel. Love... a full, deep appreciation for what God did.

When God, Jesus Christ, was God manifest in the flesh, came and bore the sin, all of his people upon a hill he created.

If we get our heads around that, we will be so full of joy, we'll be more full of joy of what he has done on our behalf.

You know, when we're first saved, we only get a tiny bit of it, we see a little bit of it. I want Christians to see more of it, and I want those who are not

Christians to be brought to their knees when they see how truly wretched they are, and how merciful our

God is. Amen. And obviously, since those who are Calvinists agree with our

Arminian brethren that there is a hell, we believe that the only conclusion that we can have is that God bestows his grace on a certain people that he has chosen before the foundations of the world, who he loved, and yet these people whom he loved were unlovable.

They did nothing to earn the love or grace of the Father, and therefore the

Son died for them, and them alone, which is why you have heaven being populated by sinners saved by grace, and hell being populated by sinners who do not have that grace bestowed upon them, sinners who died in their sin, and if you believe in a hell, you cannot believe that God is worthy of 100 % of the praise for salvation if you believe that there are people in hell.

That's the only way that can be logically and consistently deduced, and I thank

God for embracing the doctrines of grace and for his bringing them into my life.

Thank you so much, Paul Flynn, and I know that your website is Megiddofilms .org,

M -E -G -I -D -D -O -films .org. We look forward to your return to the program.

Thank you, Chris, for having me on. And I hope everybody remembers for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

Savior than you are a sinner. We look forward to hearing from you and your questions next time on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.