April 26, 2022 Show with Doran Wray on “Introducing ‘Sola Scriptura’ to Mennonites”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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

Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is

Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 26th day of April, 2022, and I'm thrilled to have a first -time guest today who

I have grown to know and really highly value as a minister of the gospel locally here in the

Cumberland County, Perry County, Pennsylvania area. His name is

Doran Ray. He is senior pastor of Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania.

That's a church you've been hearing about a lot lately on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio because it was the hosting church of my most recent

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pastors Luncheon featuring Dan Budofuco of the

Historical Bible Society as my guest speaker, and we had a terrific turnout at this event, and also we have been promoting on the show the 2022

Reason for Belief Apologetics Conference that will also be held at Church of the

Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania. We'll be hearing more about that again today, and today

Doran Ray's main theme is going to be introducing Sola Scriptura to a region dominated by Mennonite presuppositions, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Doran Ray.

Good afternoon, Chris. Thank you for having me on. Well, it's my pleasure, and I have to keep commending you for the wonderful time

I had at my own pastor's luncheon at your church. I was just blown away by the facility itself, and also even more blown away by the hospitality shown by members of your congregation who volunteered, including teenagers and younger people who were busing tables and serving, and really a wonderful rallying of support in regards to labor by members of your congregation, including the ladies of your congregation.

And I want to really thank you again for extending that invitation to me to host the

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pastor's Luncheon at your church facility. It was remarkable, and I look forward to many events in the future,

God willing. Yeah, we do too. I have wanted to connect with you for years, and it's just been great that God has so arranged for us to get to know each other this last year, and it was a real pleasure to do that for you.

And actually, part of the organization for that day was Heritage Christian School, which is a

Christian school that is based here at the church and mostly ministers to Perry County, and they provided help that day as well, which some of those teens you saw.

Amen. Amen. And I can't wait for September 22nd when, God willing, we're going to have

Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries speaking at your church for the next

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pastor's Luncheon, and also at the following Sunday service,

God willing, at your congregation. That's the great hope. Yes. And anybody listening, first of all, if you're a man in ministry leadership, pastor, elder, and by the way,

I think that's the same office, deacon, parachurch leader, if you're a man in ministry leadership, you are invited to this free pastor's luncheon on Thursday, September 22nd, 11 a .m.

to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ, featuring Dr. James R.

White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, and Church of the Living Christ is located in Loisville in Perry County, Pennsylvania, and I hope that as many of you as possible will attend.

And if you are interested in attending, send me an email to chrisarmsen at gmail .com. chrisarmsen at gmail .com

and put pastor's luncheon in the subject line. Why don't you also tell us about your upcoming

Reason for Belief Apologetics Conference. Yeah, absolutely.

So that's the weekend of May the 20th through the 22nd. We have Dr. Joe Green and David Swartz, who's also an elder here at the church, who will be giving that section of teaching through the weekend at various meetings, and of course you can go to churchoflivingchrist .cc

to see an agenda there and the listing for the meetings as well as subjects.

And so we are excited for that, and really, in a sense, critical race theory is the topic, but it's a part of a general milieu of Marxist religious systems that have popped up in the last 20th century and now in the 21st century.

And so we see it more as, yes, this is a training for dealing with this particular one, but it should have a cross -training to deal with all of these other things, the

LGBT, queer theory, of course various socialistic movements that teach a false salvation, a false theology, all of these kinds of things.

Amen, and if you want to hear the two interviews I did with the two speakers at the upcoming

Reason for Belief Apologetics Conference, David Swartz, an elder at Church of the

Living Christ in Loisville, and Dr. Joe Green, who is pastor of St.

Paul's Missionary Baptist Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, you can go to the Iron Sharpens Iron website archive, ironsharpensironradio .com,

click on Past Shows Podcast, and you will see those interviews right near the top.

You can also type in Swartz, S -W -A -R -T -Z, and David Swartz's interview will come up, and you can type in Green for Dr.

Joe Green, and his interview will come up. And I thought they both did excellent jobs.

Yeah, I would agree. And tell us a little bit more about Church of the Living Christ in Loisville.

Okay, so Church of the Living Christ is a Bible church, independent Bible church, of a baptistic nature, probably most in common with Reformed Baptist in the way that we approach things.

Of course, having Church of the Living Christ an independent Bible church, that we are all about the

Bible, so it's expository, exegetical preaching. Just a real preponderance on the whole of Scripture, and it's been a pleasure to be here for 16 years, and we have just a great leadership team, great group of people.

Amen, and once again, that website is churchofthelivingchrist .cc, churchofthelivingchrist .cc,

and we will be announcing that later on in the program. Well, we have a tradition here at Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Doran, where whenever we have a first -time guest on the program, that guest gives a summary of their salvation testimony that would include the type of religious atmosphere, if any, they were raised in, and what kind of providential circumstances our

Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them. So I would love to hear your story.

Yeah, so I grew up in a Southern Baptist church in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and so I was exposed to the

Gospel almost weekly. A church, really, in the Southern Baptist churches of that era were much more focused on evangelism from the pulpit as the primary reason the saints gathered every

Sunday, which actually I disagree with. I think the purpose of church service is to feed the sheep, to educate the body, to grow believers, and that the

Gospel preaching to the lost is an aside or a part of the service, but not the primary focus.

And so we gather for worship on Sunday, and almost every one of those services ended with a

Gospel call, and so I responded at some point along the way when I was about eight years old to that Gospel message and made a profession of faith and received

Christ. But then, like many growing up in that era, beyond the basics of salvation, there was almost no teaching and almost no equipping of the believer, and I languished that way from the time

I was eight until I was about 15. At 15 years old, we actually switched over, went to a

Bible -believing Bible church, and it was the first time I had ever heard the term Victorious Christian Living.

And so that's where I really started to grow in my faith and become sanctified and understand that God had a plan for my life beyond simply fire insurance, as we used to say.

And it was about 16 years old that I believe that I was called to ministry.

And from that sense, my life got very dull in that I have been preparing for ministry or in ministry since I was 16 years old and have not really had a time where I walked away and investigated the world, but I've just been at this business for a very long time.

Of course, now I'm 52 years old, and every year with the Lord gets better, every moment gets more exciting, and I have loved every bit of it.

God saved me from a mediocre, lackluster life and put me squarely into His Kingdom of Light, and I've just loved it every minute of it.

Well, you've got to tell me what were the circumstances, even in more detail, that a 16 -year -old boy realized he had a call to the pastoral ministry.

You don't hear about that too often. In fact, the only time that has quickly, instantly entered into my mind where I have heard that was with the 19th century

Prince of Preachers, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who actually it must have been earlier than that because he was a pastor already when he was 16.

Right. But tell us about what was it that made you really believe that you had the calling of God to stand behind that sacred desk, declare the

Word of God publicly to a congregation, a flock of Christ's sheep, and also to be an undershepherd for one of Christ's flocks.

Well, you know, Chris, I have always considered that the dullest part of the story, but to hear you recount it there makes me so excited.

It's sort of special. But no, it was just the result of discipleship.

I had a very good assistant pastor named Randy Hamrick who put time in with me. I had a very consistent youth leader named

Jim Winters who put time into me. And they, over time, just believed that I was called to ministry and encouraged me to explore that.

I spent about six months in study of God's Word and prayer and doing ministry and studying with those guys.

And suddenly one day, after a lot of soul -searching and prayer with tears,

I had to face the fact that God was working in my life to put a heart there for ministry.

And that was counterproductive to my own plan. I had actually planned on being a doctor and was headed in that direction because, you know,

I was from a home that was a bit poor and I had wanted to be wealthy.

And I thought the best way to be wealthy and still of use to people was to be a doctor.

And I was headed in that direction with gusto and then God brought me to a left turn and I was sort of dragged kicking and screaming into ministry.

But I have loved every minute of it. It's been a pretty exciting ride. Praise God.

We, one other question I have for you, because I usually ask this, if indeed the man

I am interviewing or woman I'm interviewing has come to embrace and cherish and declare and proclaim the doctrines known as the doctrines of sovereign grace, aka reformed theology, aka

Calvinism, aka the doctrines of free grace. We could go on and on with labels and nicknames, but how did you come to discover these truths and embrace them and make a conscious effort to make it a focal point in your exposition of the scriptures and your proclamation of the gospel?

Yeah, so at the risk of sucking up to the radio host and playing right into his hands,

I came from a more Arminian background and was really sort of committed in that direction, but simply put, if you study the

Bible long enough, you wind up with some version of Calvinism.

And so I have actually always referred to myself as a pre -Dordian Calvinist, that I believe in the five points of Calvinism to the degree that they are scriptural.

However, the system of Calvinism, sometimes I feel like I want to redefine some of the terms that are associated with it, in the same way that R .C.

Sproul sort of wanted to redefine TULIP. I find myself sometimes kind of hinting in that direction, but if you study the scriptures for what they say, some version of Calvinism comes to the fore.

And my people here always refer to election as my favorite doctrine, and they are exactly right.

I love the doctrine of election. I think it's the most beautiful thing about God. And that's just sort of the way

I came to that. Just rigorous study puts you in the world of Calvinism. Yes, and I fell in love with that doctrine too, and I'm not going to repeat all the details because I don't want too many of my listeners to roll their eyes thinking in their minds, here he goes again, because I've repeated this so many times.

But I came to embrace the doctrines of grace when a

British member of the congregation where I was saved, when he found out that I was having great difficulty embracing

Calvinism, and was actually quite opposed to the key doctrines that separate it from other theological systems, he gave me a booklet reprinted by Chapel Library called

George Whitfield's Letter to John Wesleyan Election. And I read that, and my first reaction was, oh no, this is true, but I still hate it.

And then came to, in about a month's time or so, fall madly in love with the teachings because it revolutionized my understanding of the intimacy involved in God's love for me specifically, and his dying for me specifically, rather than a nameless faceless sea of humans that he died hoping to save, he died for me and finished and accomplished his mission.

God does not work with collectives, he works with individuals. That message is all over scripture, but you know, truthfully, if you're raised in an

Arminian background, you find the same dynamic that is very often the case when you find a drunk who has come to sobriety, that it makes them devilishly against drink.

And so once you've tasted of that intoxicant of Arminianism, when you come to the truth, it makes you doubly committed to it.

And I would say that's just where I am. Well we have an interesting subject today that may have left those who saw the promotion of it scratching their heads.

Introducing sola scriptura to a region dominated by Mennonite presuppositions, and there may be people saying, wait a minute, the sola scriptura is a pillar, a watchword, a battle cry of the

Protestant Reformation, and Mennonites are heirs of the

Reformation. In fact, they refer to themselves and others refer to them as radical reformers.

Why did you want to address this issue specifically in regard to the

Mennonites? And I know that it has something to do with one of your dissertations that you wrote, and perhaps you could share with our listeners the exact theme of that dissertation, which, as you know, when you first told me made me chuckle, because it seems like a contradiction in terms, but if you could share with us.

Well, yeah, so the title of the dissertation was the Amish as an

Example of Hyper -Conservative Religious Liberalism, and so the term that I used there in central theme is that of a conservative liberal, and so these are people who ostensibly are quite conservative in their theology, in their lifestyle, as you can imagine

Mennonites and Amish are correctly identified as conservative in their lifestyle and conservative in most aspects.

However, however, that doesn't matter, you see. What it always comes back to is

Scripture, and so if in your epistemology and your hermeneutic, if you're liberal there, you are in fact to be identified as a religious liberal.

Now, my first ministry, or the ministry I was at preceding here, was in northern

Virginia. I was ministering outside Washington, D .C. in northern Virginia, and so I was battling religious liberalism there, and religious liberalism in the

Christian circle is identified by four distinctives in epistemology and hermeneutic.

The first of those is that the Bible cannot be understood ordinarily, that it can't be read for what it says, but you need something to intervene, and so you need the church to tell you what it means, or you need, as Karl Barth said, the

Holy Spirit to come and sort of correct the errors that the Bible just cannot be on its own objectively the

Word of God. The second distinctive is that there's an emphasis on certain portions of Scripture rather than the whole

Bible, and so you tend to hobby horse on certain sections of Scripture rather than the whole council of Scripture.

And then related to that is those who are religiously liberal emphasize works, and it's always a works -based religion.

Once you leave the Scriptures, all you're left with really is a preponderance upon work.

And then the fourth distinctive of liberalism was a de -emphasis on the

Bible as a meaningful tool of the Christian life. Well, that's religious liberalism.

I think most people can point to any church that they know, whether it's the PCUSA or Evangelical Lutherans, those kinds of churches where simply the

Bible is not regarded as the Word of God, and you'll find all four of those things there on easy display.

However, in Amish culture, which I love Amish people, it's never a slam on them, they're doing the best they can, they're trying, right?

And so Amish and Mennonite people, actually when it comes to the Scripture, they don't believe that they can understand the

Bible on their own, but they need the church to tell them what it means. They tend to emphasize only certain portions of Scripture rather than the whole, and actually what's interesting is, you know, liberal

Christian churches emphasize the book of Matthew, they ignore the writings of Paul, they pick selectively from the

Old Testament, and actually, you know, so when you go to a church with a female pastor or all of these kinds of things, they tend to focus on Matthew, they tend to focus on certain sections of the

Old Testament, but especially they stay away from the writings of Paul. Well, actually,

Amish and Mennonites do exactly the same thing, they pick exactly the same Scriptures to emphasize.

And then, of course, there is this emphasis on works, and it's the belief in the Amish community that by obeying the church and by dissociating from the world, you might be in a fair way to receive salvation, or what they would call grace, but it's only if you work hard enough and long enough.

And then, as a result, liberal people don't read their Bibles. I mean, what's the point?

You know, you're sitting there with a book that's filled with errors. Well, Amish people, Mennonite people, they believe that the

Bible is true, but what's the point of reading it if you need the church to tell you what it means?

And so, they are actually discouraged from reading Scripture. In fact, I know from interviewing former

Amish men who have come to Christ and the true gospel, I have discovered that adults in the

Amish world are forbidden to own and read English Bibles.

They have to own a German Bible. I believe it's

Martin Luther's translation, if I'm not mistaken. And the irony is that the

Amish don't speak German. They have a dialect of German that is not readable in authentic, classic

German. And so, therefore, you have people owning Bibles that they can't even read.

Right. Well, and what you wind up with there is the same dynamic that Martin Luther battled, where the average

German could not read and understand the Scriptures for themselves because they did not understand Latin.

And so, the Reformers were busy putting the Scriptures in the language of the people, but now you have

Amish people who cannot read the language and are not permitted to read it in the language that they understand.

And so, the Scriptures are kept out of touch from them by simply the policy of the church.

They gave up one pope and exchanged it for 3 ,000. That's really where they are.

I was going to ask you to differentiate between Amish and Mennonite, but if you don't want to break a train of thought that you just had, because you were about to say something.

No, I can distinguish between them. And really, it's your right, and I actually have the risk of sucking up to the host again.

You and I had a very brief discussion over what the title of this program would be, and you went with the

Mennonite angle, and you were right to do so because, truthfully,

Amish and Mennonites are really a derivation of the same thing. So, the Amish are simply an offshoot of the

Mennonite church in Alsace, Germany, and that happened in the late 1600s.

In the 1600s, Mino -Semens started the Mennonites, and then you have them break off from the

Mennonites in the 1600s, and that was as a result of a schism where, in essence,

Jacob Ammon excommunicated all of the pastors in his area because they would not agree with the

Dortric Confession. And so, the Amish are an offshoot of the Mennonites. However, in the 1800s in Europe, all of the

Amish and the Mennonites came back together under the name Mennonite, and so there aren't any

Amish left in Europe. The only place that Amish exist are in the U .S.

and the places where they have emigrated to from the U .S. I've even heard that there is a community of Amish in Japan.

Yes, they have all emigrated from the U .S. to certain areas, and so you'll find

Amish in Peru, you'll find them in Belize. Belize is kind of a popular new spot because of the favorable business climate.

Canada is a very large recipient of Amish people now. So, yeah, but you just won't find them in Europe ordinarily.

But yeah, so when you look at Amish and Mennonite, and that's the thing, is that Mennonites have continued to produce their own theology, but what you find is that epistemology and that hermeneutic has led to a further watering down of Mennonite culture so that you will find

Mennonite churches now which no longer hold that the Bible is true or authoritative or inerrant, and that's happened more and more in the last 10 to 15 years than ever before.

The Amish have still held to an orthodox view that scripture is authoritative and inerrant, but they still don't read it.

They still, you know, are in essence kept from it. But what I found in my research project working with Amish people all over Pennsylvania, I drove everywhere to interview

Amish people, anybody who would talk, and what I found from Amish people is that there are a number of born -again believers within the

Amish Church, people who have a real understanding of salvation by grace through faith, and that in 100 % of the cases

I have found was as a result of an Amish person reading an English Bible, a

Bible they could understand, coming to faith and recognizing that what they were told by the church just simply wasn't biblical.

And I have heard, and perhaps I have heard incorrectly, that there are

Mennonites, you described them as conservative in regard to the moral and social aspects of conservativism, but I have heard that there are

Amish, I'm sorry, not Amish, Mennonites, that have become completely left -wing.

Is that true? Oh, that's absolutely true, absolutely true, and Amish and Mennonites will tell you that.

You know, Amish and Mennonite people are very agreeable, and they like to get along, and they will swallow a lot of bile to get along, and so they won't say anything to each other most of the time,

I've found, but they will allow abject heresies to exist, and they'll all sort of get along with heretics, because you don't want to be unagreeable or disagreeable, and so that oftentimes is the case.

So they recognize the problem within their communities increasingly towards liberalization, but there isn't a whole lot of oomph to do anything about that, because that would cause schisms, that would cause divisions, and they are radically opposed to that.

They hate division. Well, we have to go to our first break right now, if you have a question for Doren Ray on our theme, anything involving the

Amish, the Mennonites, Anabaptists, and specifically in regard why they are in practice, perhaps not in a spelled -out definition in a confessional way, but in practice are really opposed to sola scriptura, which basically is a

Reformation cry in Latin, a watchword that meant that the scriptures alone are the infallible inerrant authority over the church, not that they contain all information, and not even that they contain all important information, but they contain, the scriptures contain all that we need to know for godly living and for salvation.

So this is a, I think, a very fascinating concept that we are going to be addressing today, and if you have a question of your own, submit it to Chris Arnsett at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence, and we're going to be right back after these messages, so do not go away.

I'm Dr. Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary.

I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love,

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio pastor's luncheon at Church of the Living Christ in Louisville. Oh yeah,

I love Dan. He was great. I would highly recommend his ministry. Very relatable, very practical, good equipper of the saints for that work.

Fantastic. One of the pastors who attended, Jeremy Brandenburg of the

Redeemer Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, said that he really needed a shot of New York in his arm.

He was thrilled with Dan's presentation as well. Sure. And by the way,

I absolutely love the name of your church, Church of the Living Christ. Perhaps my favorite name of any church

I've ever heard of. Oh, well, that's a good thing to hear. Usually when people hear it, they think that we must be a charismatic fellowship.

I have no idea why they would make that assumption. They just do. That's interesting. Right. Well, we are discussing introducing

Sola Scriptura to a region dominated by Mennonite presuppositions. And something that you have said already triggered a memory that I had when you were talking about how even if you were to ask an

Amish person or a Mennonite if everything they believe is based on the Bible and they may say yes in the affirmative, they really have to go to a higher earthly authority to have the scriptures explained and defined by them.

And it reminded me of an individual whose name

I forget, but he is the host of a Roman Catholic program called

Coming Home, I believe, or perhaps that's the name of the network, the

Coming Home Network. And maybe the program is the Journey Home. But anyway, he interviews former

Protestants who have become Roman Catholic. In many sense, they are returning from Protestantism.

They're returning from the religion of their childhood, which was

Roman Catholicism before they were Protestants. In many cases, not all. But the host said something very moronic.

He said, Sola Scriptura is the reason that we have cults in the world.

And I laughed, and I think I also simultaneously got furious. But none of the cults believe in Sola Scriptura, which is why his statement was so foolish.

The cults have a hierarchical structure that more closely resembles that of Rome, because they have their own versions of an infallible magisterium that have to define what the scriptures teach.

You cannot have a Berean attitude and approach towards the scriptures where you're studying everything in the scriptures to make sure that what your teacher is saying is true.

That is not a cult mindset. Well, that's a true point.

However, Alistair McGrath in his book, Luther's Dangerous Idea, you may have read it, but he was talking about really the dangerous idea that Luther was inculcating into this movement, was the belief that the simple shepherd could sit down with the scriptures and on the basis of the scriptures could say to the

Pope, you're wrong. It's not without point to say, well, this is why you have cults, is because you don't have a gatekeeper or a clearinghouse for the assertions of shepherds armed with the

Bible. And so, yeah, they have a point there, is that the

Reformation did in fact spring a great many cults because we said sola scriptura, and so anybody was free to interpret the scriptures for what they said, but also therefore every shepherd was also allowed to twist the scriptures if he so chose to.

And so in a sense, the authoritarianism, the totalitarianism of the

Catholic Church was a purist movement. It was just false is the problem, you know?

It's the falsehood, is that then the whole head actually got sick. It turned out that the

Catholic leadership and Popes, in fact, did the work of the cult by twisting the true meanings of scripture themselves, that actually having such an authoritarian structure was no guarantee that they would stay true.

Yes, I mean, liberty always has a negative side. The fact that we have freedom of speech and freedom of religion guaranteed to us in the

Constitution of the United States is a wonderful and glorious thing, but that is why we have

Black Lives Matter, and that is why we have LGBTQ activists, and on and on we could go spewing damning falsehoods, is because when you have freedom, that means that you're going to have differences of opinion combating with each other.

But my point about the sola scriptura comment was I believe that religious liberty is a reason we have cults, but sola scriptura is really at odds with the whole cultic blueprint.

Yeah, and there's no question of that, because, I mean, after all, you know, I believe that Black Lives Matter, Black liberation theology, queer theory, any number of critical theory movements are actually false religions with a false theology, with a false soteriology, with a false or martiology.

And the problem there is that where they're getting their data isn't scripture, and you're exactly right there.

It depends on your source, and really these movements have been, for the most part, especially if you look at critical theory coming out of the

Frankfurt School, it's a self -certifying, non -analytical approach.

It doesn't analyze to deduction. It begins with the central assumption that there are oppressors and there are the oppressed, and our job is to just identify which one is which, and then develop innocence and guilt based on that, and just pure assertion of self -certification.

And that's where you wind up there. Actually, these movements come out of no scripture at all except for Marxist theological frameworks.

Yes, they cannot get around the imaginary box that they claim they are in that is a self -identified ideology of non -religious belief.

All beliefs are religious. They're either true or false. And when you have leftists saying that they don't want religion in the public schools, and I, for one, don't believe that specific religion should be in the public schools either because the odds are your evangelical children, if you have them in a government school,

I should say, which I am strongly opposed to, but if you have them there, the odds of them having evangelical teachers that are teaching them the scriptures correctly are very slim, and you're going to have all kinds of weird religious things being taught.

Sure. But when the leftist says that, they're hypocritical because when you say in a classroom that it is completely fine and even celebratory to be a homosexual, you are saying the

Bible is wrong. You're making a religious statement. You're making a theological and doctrinal statement.

Whether you call it that or not is of no importance. It's just the reality of the situation that all of the leftist propaganda are confessions and creeds of leftism and catechisms of the

Antichrist. Oh, yeah, there's no doubt about it, you know, and that's sort of where that comes from.

But at the same time, you can turn around and you can look at sort of ostensibly

Christian cults which place the American Constitution and founding documents on a similar level with scripture.

I've even heard people who call themselves Christians who view the Constitution as an inspired document.

Yes, in fact, the Mormons have come close to that, if not... They don't come close to it.

I think they are guilty of it in spades. In fact, I want to pick up where you left off there because we have to go to our midway break right now, believe it or not.

It's here already. If anybody has a question for Doren Ray, please send it to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. This is the longer than normal break in the show. Please be patient with us because Grace Life Radio 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show because the FCC requires of them to localize all of their programming, including

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Write down as much of the information as you can provided by our advertisers so that you can more frequently and successfully reply to them, even if it just means thanking them for sponsoring the show.

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chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages. If you're near retirement or thinking about retiring, you probably have questions.

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Hello, my name is Anthony Uvinio, and I'm one of the pastors at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Quorum, New York, and also the host of the reformrookie .com

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Before I return to Dorn Ray, Senior Pastor at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, as we continue the discussion of our theme,

Introducing Sola Scriptura to a Region Dominated by Mennonite Presuppositions, we just have a couple more announcements to make.

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and put advertising in the subject line. Last but not least, if you are not a member of a

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Send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put I need a church in the subject line. chrisarnson at gmail .com,

and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address of where you are to send questions to Pastor Doran Ray, senior pastor at Church of the

Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, another God -honoring, Christ -loving, doctrinally sound, theologically solid, biblically faithful church in Perry County, Pennsylvania.

And if you have any question for him, send it to chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name, at least your city and state of residence, and your country of residence.

When you arrived on the scene in Loisville, Pennsylvania, answering the call as the undershepherd there, the senior pastor at Church of the

Living Christ, was there any culture shock involved and that made you realize you had some hurdles to overcome regarding the region's

Mennonite presuppositions that dominated the area? Yeah, I would say to some degree.

Now, when I arrived here, the leadership team of the church was really solid.

The elder board has always been leaning somewhat Reformed. The pastor before me was

Reformed Baptist from Scotland. And so the church and the work to the reception of the doctrines of grace was really done.

However, what you wind up with here is people from various Anabaptist backgrounds,

Mennonite, Brethren, Brethren in Christ, who are coming with more Arminian bent, and it's not only

Arminianism, but it's really an approach to the scriptures which violates the tenets that we discussed earlier, those four distinctives.

of liberal theology. And so very often the consequent attachments come with those doctrines.

And specifically, if they aren't sure about their scriptures and how to approach them and don't have a proper hermeneutic, then what you wind up with are people who, as a result, struggle with the security of their salvation, with the assurance of faith, with an understanding of God's election that is in any way orthodox.

And you wind up with sort of born -again believers who hold ideas that are absolutely antagonistic to scripture.

And so some of that has been the case. And of course, you're dealing with Christians here who, for the most part, have a great affinity or a great respect for Amish and Mennonite people and would see no difference between themselves and those people because, you know, politically, culturally, they're conservative.

But they've really missed the point that the Bible teaches clearly over and over again in both epistemology and hermeneutic.

And so, yeah, those were some of the challenges there. But it's also something we see in scriptures.

And if we have time, I'd love to go through that. I'd love to approach the Bible with your permission. Oh, yeah, of course. No, you can't speak about the

Bible here. Right, right, right. Just to clarify something you said, though, you referred to the

Amish as politically conservative. They're not politically involved at all, are they? Well, actually, but that's the thing.

There are Amish people who vote. And when they vote, they tend to vote in a more

Republican action. Really? I didn't even know that they voted. Now, they keep that under wraps.

They don't talk about it in their churches. But Amish people do a great deal that they don't talk about in their churches.

Oh, you know, it just dawned on me. I remember at one of the Trump rallies seeing people that at least dressed

Amish in the background sitting there. And I remember wondering, what are they doing there?

They're not supposed to be voting. But anyway. They are politically conservative. But I did want to correct something just super quick.

I didn't want to offend your French audience, your vast French audience. I referred to the Alsace region as German before.

And it traditionally was German and German speaking. But it is technically a part of France. But I'll move on.

So what we see in Matthew 15 is the Pharisees approach Jesus because his disciples do not wash their hands according to the tradition of the elders.

This is an indication here that it's not Old Testament law that's pushing this, but by the clarifications that Talmudic teaching brought to the

Old Testament. So when you look at the Old Testament, God's laws are not particularly specific and are not particularly rigorous in detail.

And so there was constant question, because we're all naturally legalists, we say, okay, well, what does keeping the

Sabbath mean? What does ritualistic cleansing mean? And the

Old Testament leaves so much of that up to the individual conscience of the Old Testament saint.

And so well intentioned Pharisees, and we can get into this a different day, but I actually view the

Pharisees as heroes on balance. They are heroes of the intertestamental period.

However, by the time Christ comes along, they've gotten terribly off space. That being said, the

Talmud seeks to clarify all of the detail that the Old Testament leaves out.

So they were constantly adding rules to God's word. And so Jesus pushes them on this.

And we pick up in Matthew 15, verse three, and I'll be reading from the NASB, my Bible of choice.

Why? You've got to record an ad for me then. There you go. He said, why do you yourselves transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?

For God said, honor your father and mother, and he who speaks evil of father and mother is to be put to death. But you say whoever says to his father or mother, whatever you have that would help you, whatever

I have that would help you has been given to God. Is he not to honor his father or his mother?

And by this, you invalidate the word of God for the sake of your tradition.

You hypocrites rightly that Isaiah prophesied of you as people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

And so we move down a little bit. He says, you teach the doctrines. You teach as doctrines the precepts of men.

And then he says, it is not what enters the mouth that follows man, but what proceeds. And his disciples come to him and say,

Jesus, you know, you just offended these Pharisees. But the point that that Jesus, in fact, is pushing is you have taken your traditions and perhaps well -intentioned documents of Talmudic teaching, and you have elevated them to the equal of Scripture.

And in so doing, they have surpassed in proximate value. And that's what people do.

That's what people do. They take their traditions and they put them alongside Scripture. And pretty soon,

Scripture has faded into the background. And what you have are the precepts of men replacing it.

Now that can look as conservative and rule -based and moral and moralistic all you wish.

But at the end of the day, if you have invalidated Scripture, you've done the same thing that liberal people do.

And there's the point. There's the point. And actually, I look at the

Amish and the Mennonites and I say, yes, they're guilty of this. And then I turn this around on us because if you bring analysis to a person and say,

I've got to look at this, these people over there, you then need to sort of test that same standard up against yourself.

And what you find in Bible -believing ostensibly Orthodox churches is that their doctrines, their creeds, their church teachings have been placed on an equal footing with Scripture.

I even came across a church recently that, you know, for the most part, it would come off as reformed.

They are people who love the reformers and they say to themselves and they say in their websites, we love the

Bible, but we are creedally informed.

And so what you realize is that some of these ostensibly conservative churches have created creeds and doctrines extra -biblical and they have, in fact, relegated the

Scriptures to the backside. And what they quote and appeal to most often is their own church teachings, their historical creeds.

And that's where Jacob Ammon got in trouble. Jacob Ammon wasn't appealing to the Bible. He was appealing to the

Dortrek Confession because of its rigorousness. He loved it. And there you have it is that you can find ostensibly conservative people, conservative

Bible people, churchmen of a reformed background, and yet, what are they quoting first and what are they quoting most often?

Is it the Scriptures? Are we going to be sola scriptura people or not? Well, I think that that's a lesson of warning to those, including myself.

I am, unashamedly, a confessional Reformed Baptist. I believe in the beauty and great value and importance of confessions and creeds, but they are subordinate to the

Bible and we can never forget that. And we do, don't we? Yes, yes.

And there are some that do that more than others. And in fact, some of the conflicts that I've seen rising up dividing

Reformed Baptists, I believe it's because there are some who are unconsciously elevating the confession to a higher level than they intend, but than they consciously intend.

Now, that's a very valuable exercise to go through, isn't it? When you do that, when you do that, that's a very valuable exercise to say, all right, what are we putting on an equal par with Scripture?

Because we use, we use these solas. We have these four solas, but you could say five.

These solas that we appeal to that are absolutely biblical, but if not rigorously examined, if not rigorously lived by, then they, in essence, become little more than sloganizing.

And what you can wind up doing is a church saying sola scriptura, but in essence, placing the

Westminster Confession before the Bible. And I really appreciate, I was looking at a

PCA church recently, their website, and I was really impressed because they said in very clear terms, we love the

Westminster Confession, but the Bible is the Bible. It's just that we believe the

Westminster Confession is a good framework to examine the Bible. And I go, that's it. That's right. That's where you ought to be, is that if you're a confessional

Christian who's using these tools of creeds and confessions as a framework by which you are staying true to Scripture, then you've done it rightly.

Yes, I mean, a true confession like the 1689

London Baptist Confession is lifting up the

Scriptures. In fact, the chapter one of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith says in its very first words, the

Holy Scriptures are the only sufficient, certain, and infallible standard of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience.

So, those that can abuse and do abuse this are violating that very first statement that when they exalt a confession to an equal or higher level than the

Scriptures, and I believe that everyone, whether they identify themselves this way or not, is confessional and creedal.

Like, for instance, I can remember being at a Church of Christ Bible conference, and the minister was saying, we in the

Church of Christ do not believe in confessions and creeds. We only believe in the

Bible. And I raised my hand and I said, can I read the church bulletin that you had in your lobby that I picked up?

I just want to read a brief portion of it. I said, you have in your church bulletin, we in the

Church of Christ believe that a minister must be a man. He does not wear clerical robes, but a business suit.

And we believe in baptism by immersion only of a believer for the remission of sins.

And we participate in the Lord's table every week. I said, do you know that this is a confession of faith?

It's something that you believe you have gleaned from the Bible as a list of primary identifying marks of your people.

I said, it's a confession. In fact, to say there is no creed, but the

Bible is a creedal statement. It is a creedal statement. Absolutely. Yeah, it is the doctrines and the creeds, right?

But there's the point is that we make sure that whatever we do, we do intentionally.

We look at the thing intentionally and we don't just swallow up, as we see with the

Pharisees, that in essence, they took the Old Testament law and they melded it over time with the

Talmud. And the Talmud was in place long enough that they could see no dividing line between those things.

Now that I believe is simply a danger for us all. And so it really serves as a healthy exercise, especially when you look across at Anabaptist folks and many of them have come to Christ.

And I've met these Amish believers and what's made the difference is not that they came across a creed or a confession, but rather that they came across an

English Bible that they could understand and saw that what they're taught in their church doesn't match with what the

Scriptures say. And so it always comes back to the Bible. We've just got to be very faithful to that or we wind up in essence duplicating the sin of the

Pharisees. Now there's a follow -up if I can have another moment to talk about it here in Matthew. Definitely, definitely.

Now, following up with that, the disciples say to Jesus, you know, these Pharisees were offended.

And of course, you know, they're afraid of offending the Pharisees as we all are.

We have this fear of man. It's just crazy. But Jesus answers them by saying, he said, every plant which my heavenly father did not plant shall be uprooted.

Let them alone. They are blind gods of the blind. And if blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into the pit.

And in essence, what Jesus is saying is when you look at some of these people and what they do with these statements that they create and then put alongside

Scripture, you're talking about plants that my father did not plant, right?

And there's the real issue. And so why would I bother watering plants that God's going to uproot someday?

And what we find ourselves doing very often, and we do this with heresy, especially now in the church, is that we try to eat the meat and spit out the bones as they say, hey, we have a lot in common.

You know, this philosophy of man has something to bring along to the table. And this philosophy has something to contribute.

And there's something valuable in this perspective. And what we wind up doing is going into partnerships over the appeal of truth that, well, these guys have some true things in them.

And so we're going to get along with them. And what you wind up doing there is watering plants that God promises to uproot.

Why in the world would we do that? You know, when you talk about where you want to put the focus of your time.

And so I just keep coming back to this thing of when the Bible is not clear, you need to leave people in the liberty of their faith to make a decision.

And the church is prone to make rules where the Bible has not, and we're to clarify where the

Holy Spirit has left blank. And I think there's a danger in that, that we just simply must be very cautious when we start operating that way, if that makes sense to you.

Yeah, and if you could walk us through, I know that every conversation with a unique individual has unique elements to it.

But if you could walk us through what might be a typical conversation with somebody who has perhaps even unconsciously adopted

Mennonite presuppositions, when you are trying to communicate to them truths that you believe that contradict with their theology, life and practice.

Right. No, go ahead. No, I was just going to say that would reveal that they are unconsciously violating the concept of Sola Scriptura, because I'm sure that you're not going to find, unless I'm totally wrong here, a person of that background saying, oh, we don't believe in the

Bible alone. You know, many people that violate Sola Scriptura, in fact, many people that violate all of the

Solas of the Reformation often claim they are not doing so. Roman Catholics they believe, they say, they claim they believe in Sola Gratia.

They definitely, if they are knowledgeable about their own history, would openly oppose

Sola Fide, but they claim they believe Sola Gratia and Soli Deo Gloria at the very least.

And of course, they would also openly oppose Sola Scriptura.

But even their claim of adhering to Sola Gratia and Soli Deo Gloria are not consistent and logically true.

But if you could just tell us about an example of a conversation.

Sure. Can I give you a silly and extreme Of course. real life story that acts as a symbol?

In fact, people very often describe me as silly and extreme. So you can So what we we sort of aim to do here at Church of Living Christ is to create

Christians who, as a friend of ours named Simon Brace, a good apologist, he says, drop a pebble in someone's shoe.

Right? And so one of our dear ladies here, she's talking to an Amish man and she there's a large industry here of driving

Amish people places. They have to hire drivers. And so she was one of these drivers and she is a very clever

Christian lady. And so one day she's talking to an Amish man and not surprisingly, his name was

Samuel. And she said, Samuel, I was wondering why do you fellows have beards?

And Samuel responded. He said, because the Bible instructs us that we should have beards. And she said,

Samuel, I have I have read the Bible cover to cover many times and I I I don't remember reading that anywhere in the scriptures.

And so the Amish fellow said, well, let me check with my bishop. And so he went away and he he talked to his bishop and and a couple of weeks came by and he didn't say anything to her.

And so finally, she said, Samuel, I was wondering did you ever ask your bishop about the beards?

And and he said in a rather sheepish voice, yes, I did. I I asked him and and he told me that it's not in the

Bible, but it's our tradition. And she said, oh, it's your tradition.

He said, yeah. And then what was interesting was he still looked a bit disturbed.

And he paused for a couple of seconds. He said, and the question that I have now is why do

I have this beard? And that that really illustrated the point is that once you come up against the limitations that your your doctrine isn't really from the scripture, you yourself ought to start asking the question, then why is it

I believe what I believe? And that's not an uncommon experience when you talk to Amish or Mennonite people is that the verses that they oftentimes appeal to when read in context are completely out of context.

And very often, what underlies a belief and a very core belief, a very important belief is not what the scripture says, but it's simply what they were taught by their church.

And if you're told in your church, we believe the Bible, and then you find that a great many of those things aren't in the

Bible, you start asking very important questions about, well, why am

I doing this? Because this thing chews up an awful lot of my time and a preponderance of my energy and a lot of my my

Christian faith is sort of based around it. And that's sort of the way that those conversations go.

Very often, you wind up with those. And we get those in here very often, people from more

Armenian backgrounds. And when you start teaching doctrines like election, their whole world starts to collapse because they've been told something by their church over and over and over again, only to find that those beliefs are based in a misunderstanding, a misapplication of scripture, or aren't in the

Bible at all but simply appeal to what man loves. And what man loves more than anything is that he's in control, that God does what he says, and all of those kinds of things.

As I said, very often at the root of it. Yes. And in fact, I can clearly remember when

I was arranging one of my debates on Roman Catholicism with Dr.

James R. White, a gentleman that I knew came to my church building where my own office was while working for WMCA radio at the time.

And he said to me when he was coming to pick up posters to help promote the debate, he said, oh boy,

I love Dr. James White. He is magnificent. There's only one thing I hate about him and it's his Calvinism.

And I said, that's interesting. And I said, I was wondering if you could just explain what this means.

I picked up a Bible. I opened the Romans 9. I read Romans 9. And he said, you know who believes that stuff?

The biggest cult in the world, the Islamic religion. And I said, well, you know, but you saw me just pick up a

Bible and read from Romans 9. He said, yeah, but it's what you read into it.

I said, I didn't read anything into it. I just read it. I didn't exegete it. I didn't explain it.

I just read it. And that in and of itself got you very hot under the collar. You really got to examine if you are really defending the scriptures in your animosity towards these teachings or if you are defending an unbiblical tradition that you have that's blinding you to the truth.

Right, right. And there you have it, right? That's because his church from when he came constructed a creedal statement, a doctrinal stance.

And he didn't read the Bible anymore. What he read was the doctrinal stance of his church.

And that misshaped his understanding of scripture. But once again,

I'd like to just say, I mean, we're all in danger of that. We need to make sure that we are very quick to, and it's one of the things

I love about the teachings on conscience, for instance, in Romans 14, 1

Corinthians 8, is that when the Bible is not clear, we leave one another alone.

And you let those things shake out. And that's a really wonderful thing about scripture is that where the scriptures are very clear, then they are very clear.

And where they're not, we have the freedom, really a wonderful liberty, to let people believe differently in opinion on those matters.

And that doesn't create disunity. It creates a tremendous diversity and order.

And that's a remarkable thing. I remember I was talking to an Amish woman at one point, and she said, so you really only just deal with things using the

Bible. I said, yes, that's what we're always aiming to do. And it's a very difficult standard to hold to, because we're all prone to try to create answers where the

Bible has not created answers. And she said, well, how do you keep order?

She seemed so terribly concerned about that. She said, it's one of the reasons I love that they have requirements for how we ought to dress because it creates order.

And you realize what's going on there, that in essence, I believe I can answer all of these questions with a new rule, with a new legal standard, with a new made -up answer.

And if I get everybody on board to do that, then we'll have order rather than just uniting around the

Word of God and trusting in the work of the Holy Spirit. And that's the tremendous mechanism that God has put in the

Scriptures. I just love it. I want to go to at least one of our listener questions before I go to the final break.

Sure. We have Ted in Moundville, Alabama.

And he says, Gut Novit. That's Pennsylvania Dutch. When I first heard the topic of today's program,

I thought of an experience I had shortly after becoming a Christian in 1987.

I had seen a church featured on a national Christian talk show, and I realized it was quite close to my home in Pennsylvania.

I decided to visit that church and was appalled when the pastor, who was esteemed and revered in this region of Pennsylvania and praised to high heaven on the

Christian talk show, gave a sermon that basically boiled down to, as Christians, we have to really try hard, otherwise we won't make it.

Despite having been a Christian just... Hold on a second. I lost my place in his email.

Despite having been a Christian just a few weeks, I knew that this wasn't consistent with the gospel.

And I never visited that church again. Mind you, this was 35 years ago. But my question is, how common was that type of exegesis among the

Mennonites back then, and is it any more or less common today? Well, actually, that has always been the distinctive of Mennonites as far as I can tell, and that is speaking from two people coming out of Mennonite churches.

And actually, it's interesting, because I talked to a lady, her father, and so this lady is in her 60s or 70s, and her father, back in the day, had been excommunicated from a

Mennonite church for taking a correspondence course in the

Bible from Moody Institute, Moody Bible Institute. Excommunicated from the church for taking a

Bible course. Wow. And so I have talked to Amish and Mennonite believers who are trying to stay in their churches, who secretly have to order materials and read them on the fly so that the church doesn't find out, because you can find yourself very quickly, very quickly excommunicated if you come across a true gospel, a gospel that really focuses on Christ's efficiency on the cross.

Yes, in fact, in my interviews with former Amish, I discovered that it is anathema amongst the

Amish to even be involved in public evangelism, to stand on a street corner, for instance, and pass out tracts, or to have an outdoor evangelism meeting, a revival meeting, whatever you want to call it.

That is anathema because they view that as prideful. Yes. And I was told that it differs from community to community, some of the specific rules, but there are communities where you can very commonly be told you are going to hell for wearing the wrong kind of suspenders.

That is not a joke. That is real. But the reason given is not really because you're wearing the wrong kind of suspenders.

It's because you're defying your bishop. Right. But before we go to the final break, which is going to be much shorter than the others,

I just want to remind our listeners that if you have interest in learning more about some of the things we're discussing, you could go to the

Iron Trip and Zion Radio archive, irontripandzionradio .com, and type in the search engine

Chuck Volo. That's V as in victory, U -O -L -O. He has led a number of Amish men to Christ, and I have interviewed

Chuck and a number of the Amish men, at least two, perhaps three of the

Amish men, who have come to Christ out of the Amish on the program, and you can find those interviews if you go to past shows podcast and type in V as in victory,

U -O -L -O in the search engine. Pastor Chuck was once the pastor of New Life Community Church in Kingsville, Maryland.

Now he is pastoring Gospel of Grace Community Church in Kinzer, Pennsylvania.

And also, you could find a free documentary on the internet called Trouble in Amish Paradise, Trouble in Amish Paradise, and two of the men involved in that documentary who came to Christ and were excommunicated.

They are also men that I have interviewed on I Am Trouble in Zion. We have to go to our final break.

It's going to be much more brief. If you have a question, send it in immediately. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages.

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Welcome back. And Pastor Doran, we have a question from Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania.

And he says, well, I know that there are individuals in false religions that are saved in spite of the false teachings of that religion because they embrace the true gospel.

Do you categorize the Amish and the Mennonites as false religions? Are those that are true to the actual teachings of these religions damned or at the very least, should

I say, lost at this moment? Right, I don't tend to categorize people in broad strokes like that.

That being said, it's hard to be a good Amish person and a

Christian at the same time. In the same way, it's hard to be a good Catholic and a

Christian at the same time. And so I do believe that there are people in any number of religious faiths which actually hold to a true gospel and are there for a lot of different reasons.

And so what you'll find and what my research discovered is that there are a couple of different kinds of Amish people, some who because of connections, vows made to the church, family, all of those reasons have stayed inside the

Amish church and are seeking to reform it from the inside out. So you might say that they are Erasmus.

And then there are others who simply their conscience cannot bear the continued legalism and they can't hold those two things at the same time.

And so they find themselves resigning their commitment to the church and getting out and joining other churches.

And truthfully, if I could take just a moment to say, increasingly, the

Amish people who are leaving the Amish church, it used to be about half and half would leave for no religion at all or they would leave for Bible -believing churches.

Increasingly, they are leaving for Bible -believing churches. And so I believe that God is doing a work among the

Amish people to bring many of them to faith. And I believe there's going to be a massive reformation that occurs inside the

Amish community. I am actually less hopeful about that among Mennonites who are increasingly just sort of taking up a liberal stance on scripture and everything attached to it.

So if that answers the question. Excellent answer. In fact, it reminds me of one of the debates that I organized between Dr.

James R. White of Alpha May Ministries and Mitch Pacwa, who is a

Jesuit priest and scholar, brilliant man, a wonderful man in regard to his personality.

But he asked James during one of their debates, James, do you view me as your brother in Christ?

I think he was trying to get some sympathy from the audience by making James look like the bad guy.

But I thought James answered in a wonderful and brilliant way.

He merely said to Mitch Pacwa, do you believe that the

Council of Trent accurately defines justification? And he said, yes,

I do. And James answered, there is no hope in that gospel. So I thought that was the best way to answer that specific question.

That's exactly right. We have Grady in Asheboro, North Carolina. Greetings, brothers.

You said the Mennonites could not have a Bible for personal reading. Do they use the

Bible in corporate worship? Actually, that's only half right, Grady, as far as the way my guest stated it.

And I stated it as well. They can't have an English Bible as an adult.

For some reason, they allow children to have English Bibles. But the adults cannot have an English Bible. They have to have a

German Bible. And since most Amish people do not have German, I'm sorry, since most

Amish people don't speak and read German, they don't really have a

Bible for personal reading. But as far as the question on corporate worship, Doran, if you could explain.

Yeah, so as Chris alluded to earlier, their German Bible is translated into a version of German that they no longer speak.

It is not extant. It's 16th century German. The Pennsylvania Deutsch or Pennsylvania German that they speak is actually a dialect that causes a great deal of miscommunication between the text in German and what they're used to speaking.

So the Bible is virtually unintelligible to them. However, even though they're not allowed technically to have

English Bibles in their homes, the vast majority of them in my research now do.

They, in fact, do have English Bibles. And they read those Bibles.

And that is what's, it is simply, the scripture is the power of God and the salvation.

I'm telling you, simply coming into contact with the Bible changes people.

Hallelujah. Read it, and they are absolutely transformed by the word, which brings us back to another thing.

That is something that the Westminster Confession does not have attached to it. The Holy Spirit uses the scripture.

And that's really the case. And we can trust the Bible. We really can. And, you know, years ago

I was in a debate with a charismatic and liberal pastor in African -American community.

And so he was neo -orthodox in his belief system, probably very similar to what Martin Luther King believed.

And the fellow said to me, yeah, we don't believe the scripture is inerrant and authoritative in and of itself.

It needs something. I said, well, based on that logic, the Holy Spirit could use a cookbook as much as he could use the scripture.

And he looked at me without blinking and said, yes, that's true. Well, we're out of time.

And I want to make sure that I repeat the website of Church of the Living Christ in Boysville, Pennsylvania.

It's churchofthelivingchrist .cc And please do not forget about the upcoming

Bible conference being held May 20th through the 22nd

Reason for Belief Apologetics Conference. And you could go to churchofthelivingchrist .cc

for more details. Thank you so much, Pastor Doran. You were an excellent guest as I believed you would be.

And I'm looking forward to your frequent return to our program. I want to thank everybody who listened. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater