July 6, 2016 Show with Dr. George Grant on “The Church Amidst a Culture During Revolutionary Change”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister

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George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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

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

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, 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.

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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.

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

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

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Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arnton, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this sixth day of July, 2016.

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And I'm very excited about today's show. I know that I keep saying that about nearly every show,

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I'm sorry, but this is really multiplied over many, many times over because I've been wanting to interview

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Dr. George Grant for many years, and this is the very first opportunity that I have, thanks be to God and his providence.

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Dr. George Grant, who is pastor of Parish Presbyterian Church and founder of New College Franklin and president of the

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King's Meadows Study Center and founder of Franklin Classical School in Franklin, Tennessee.

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He is the author of dozens of books in the areas of history, biography, politics, literature, and social criticism, and today we are discussing the theme,

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The Church Amidst a Culture During Revolutionary Change, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron for the very first time,

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Dr. George Grant. Well, thank you, it's a great delight to finally be able to be on the show with you,

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Chris. I'm so grateful for the work that you're doing. Amen. Well, I really appreciate that, and let me, on air, introduce you to my co -host, the

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Reverend Buzz Taylor. Well, hello. It's about time we got to talk to each other. It is.

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So great to talk with you, Buzz. Thanks. I'm going to steal a line from one of my elders at Grace Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, who actually said this about the groom at a wedding reception that he was emceeing, but Buzz today is grinning like the butcher's dog.

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He's very delighted that you are on. I'm delighted as well. Well, let me explain a little bit about why that is, though.

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Okay, sure. Go ahead. But I'm going to start off with a question to explain why. So Dr.

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Grant, who was the first president of the United States? Well, the first president of the

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United States was most assuredly not George Washington. But George Washington was still in the field when the

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Second Continental Congress put together what would, for the next 15 years, be the governing structure of the

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U .S. It was codified, finally, in the Articles of Confederation, but even before the

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Articles were codified, they had presidents that served one -year terms.

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And the first president of the United States who served two terms was

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Virginia's Peyton Randolph. Peyton Randolph, well,

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I've got to remember that one. Well, now you know how I know about you. I'm missing from the curriculum.

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Right, that was the Association of Classical and Christian Schools. When was that?

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Was that the 90s or the 2000s? I can't remember. But anyway, that particular message called dumb and dumber, well, you know how they call sinners in the hands of an angry god our national sermon?

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Well, your dumb and dumber was my family sermon, okay? It was the hit with my homeschool children.

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We listened to that thing over and over again. We really liked it because we did not want to, as you said, you were in that message.

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We did not want to feel robbed ourselves. And I also, just for the record, I also read

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Bringing in the Sheaves. Wonderful. Well, in fact, didn't you write hilarious about Hillary Clinton?

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I did. Yes. I actually did. At the behest of the Bush, Bush number one campaign, although it was published privately.

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Back in those days, there was a book that was floating around called Bushisms. And it was a book sort of mocking

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George Bush for all of the ways that he mangled the English language.

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And so a couple of the senior guys at the White House came to me and said, would you be willing to do something that is similar about Hillary?

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Not necessarily intended to be altogether funny, like the

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Bushisms book. But we tried to make it as humorous as possible.

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But at any rate, it's called Hilarious. And it was about Hillary, published in, this really dates me here, in 1992.

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Yeah, I remember that. And I hope that you come out with a newly updated version of it.

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It would be a lot thicker. Yeah. I don't think there's much funny about it anymore. Right.

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This will actually be a massive tome now. But as I said, our topic today is the church amidst a culture during revolutionary change.

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And our email address is chrizarnsen at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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And please give us your first name, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, if you are listening outside of the

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U .S .A. Before we get into that topic, Dr. Grant, tell us something about Parish Presbyterian Church, first of all.

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Well, it's a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America, which is the evangelical

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Bible -believing Presbyterian denomination, of which I have been a part for almost 30 years now.

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And we are in Franklin, Tennessee, and we've actually, we're part of a church planting network.

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So this is the second of a series of plants that I've been a part of.

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And so we've been in our current location for just not quite five years, and the

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Lord is just really blessed. We have seen just an extraordinary amount of growth, and we're very grateful for it.

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And the vision of the congregation is that we would be, as the name suggests, a parish church, meaning we are deliberately aimed at knowing each other, being connected to each other carefully, caring for the community in which we are planted.

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My job is to pastor not just my congregation, but the whole neighborhood. And so it's been really rich and really good.

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Well, one of the reasons why Rev. Buzz Taylor, my host, is smiling so much is because, once again, the

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Presbyterians outnumber the Baptists on the program. Yes. In fact, the PCAs. That's right, yeah.

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I happen to be a Reformed Baptist, 1689 London Confession man. Buzz, to be fair, both of us passed through those things at one time or another.

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Well, actually, Buzz never passed through the Reformed Baptist waters. Yeah, I was a Fundamental Baptist once upon a time.

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And he was an Armenian then as well. Yeah. I was a

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Spurgeon -type Baptist. Really? Okay. And then our eyes were opened.

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Your eyes are going to be shut in about five minutes. And you're also founder of New College Franklin.

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Why don't you tell our listeners about that? New College is a classical college along the lines of the kinds of colleges and universities that were common in the 18th and 19th centuries.

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So a great books -type curriculum. And, again, intended to be small enough so that every student can know every professor.

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And really be mentored, rather than simply, you know, force -fed facts and figures.

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It's really a discipleship model. And the same thing is true of Franklin Classical School on the elementary and secondary level.

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It's intended to be very personal. And modeled on, really, the

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Old Testament pattern of covenantal discipleship.

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My former church, before moving to Pennsylvania, my former church, Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island, New York, has a classical

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Christian school, Grace Christian Academy. And I know that their motto was, and I may be butchering it because I don't have it in front of me, but it was not just teaching children what to know, but to teach them how to think.

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And they use, in addition to Christian literature, they want the children to be aware of secular literature, especially classic secular literature, so that they can communicate and engage in the culture around them without coming off like they are just ignorant individuals and living in a bubble or something.

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And they teach Latin there and so on. Right. And that really is something we, as Christians, need to know the world that we are in.

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We are not to be absorbed by the world, but we are sent to the world, to minister to the world, to work in the world, to be ambassadors to the world, to be witnesses to the world.

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And we can't do that if we don't know the world. And last but not least, tell us about the

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King's Meadows Study Center. The King's Meadows Study Center is the missional and educational arm of our ministry.

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We have a number of different initiatives. We help start schools, particularly in the

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Muslim world, that will teach a Christian worldview. So we have three regular schools in northern

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Iraq, and then we have a couple of new schools that are in the refugee camps.

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We have 27 schools in Indonesia. We have a network of schools that we're trying to plant throughout

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China and Vietnam. And we've got a brand new school up and going just this year in the

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Philippines. So we do educational, missional work. We also have a curriculum, a sort of integrated humanities curriculum, for high school and college students here in the

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U .S. that homeschoolers and even a lot of classical Christian schools use as the base for their history, teaching of worldview, culture, philosophy, etc.

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So we have an endowed scholarship program that we started called the

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Chalmers Fund. We have an emergency medical relief fund that we've created as well.

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And then we've got a relief fund for persecuted brothers and sisters, particularly in the

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Middle East, called the Noon Fund. So a number of different things.

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And the website is kingsmeadow .com, for those of you listening who would like to investigate more about that. kingsmeadow .com,

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and obviously the URL does not have an apostrophe after king. It's just k -i -n -g -s -meadow .com.

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We hope that you investigate more about that organization. And for those of you living in Franklin, Tennessee or visiting there, you can look up Parish Presbyterian Church at parishprez .org.

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parishprez .org Well, the subject that you actually chose today, The Church Amidst the

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Culture During Revolutionary Change, obviously a very timely subject.

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In fact, it could be the subject of any discussion during any era since time began,

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I guess. But we are really, many of us are just amazed at how quickly the culture around us is changing for the worse in many ways.

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Obviously, there are things simultaneously going on in the Kingdom of God that are absolutely wonderful.

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The spread of the Gospel globally and so on. But when you think about the fact that when

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Barack Hussein Obama was running for president, he was opposed to same -sex marriage.

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And now, not only does he heartily endorse it, we are living in a time, in that short time span, where you might lose your job if you're opposed to same -sex marriage.

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You could be fired if you were to say anything against that from your biblical convictions.

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But tell us something about why this specific topic came to mind, other than many things that are obvious.

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Yeah, I think it's obvious. A lot of Christians right now are reeling for all of the reasons that you stated and a host of others.

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They look at the upcoming election and they see dismal choices, and yet there's never been a more critical time.

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They look at the Supreme Court and the perilous place that we are with the

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Court. We look at the wider culture, the sudden embrace of wickedness, where wickedness is now declared to be the new fundamentalist orthodoxy.

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And anyone who holds to any ideas that have been normative for the last 3 ,500 years is instantly labeled a bigot.

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So there's no question that we're living in revolutionary times.

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I think it's really important for us as Christians to be able to acknowledge that this is not a temporary thing.

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This is a full -on moral revolution, as Al Mohler would say. And at the same time, it's not entirely unique.

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As you mentioned, Chris, we've faced this kind of thing in virtually every generation.

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And the Church, which in the wonderful phrase of Hubert Belloc, is a perpetually defeated thing that always survives for conquerors, has constantly been able to find ways to reach the broken, fallen world in which we live with the liberating news of the

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Gospel of Christ. That hasn't changed. And in fact, in some ways, this radical clarity that has come because of the moral revolution sets us apart so much more distinctly from the culture that we're actually freer to preach a unique Gospel than we were when there were so many floating assumptions about civil religion and broad morality in America.

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So in some ways, I think we're in a new day where we have great advantages over what we faced just a few years ago.

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I wrote a book 20 years ago that addressed the whole question of what

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I thought was the coming moral revolution. It was entitled Legislating Immorality.

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And the subtitle was The Homosexual Movement Comes Out of the

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Closet. Now, when I wrote this 20 years ago, it was published by Moody Press. The Moody editors kept having conniptions over what they thought was perhaps hyperbole or overreach or alarmism, and yet,

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I have to say, looking back, I underestimated how dramatic the achievements might be of this revolutionary movement in overturning 3 ,500 years of standard operating assumptions in Western civilization.

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So these are revolutionary times, and we need to think in terms of the approach that we're going to now take that has to be entirely different from the approach that we've had leading up to this point.

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Well, we do have a listener already from Rugby England, Mike.

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And he is in the Midlands in the county of Warwickshire. I hope I didn't butcher that pronunciation,

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Mike. And he asks, over here in the UK, things like the adult

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Bible class are quite rare. Because of that, I'm not sure our leaders are preparing their people to face up to the challenges to truth the culture – he may have misworded that – is constantly assaulting us with.

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Oh, I see. Face up to the challenges to truth the culture is constantly assaulting us with.

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I guess he means really falsehood. I absolutely believe in the preaching of the gospel.

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If I can use the phrase, just doing that, isn't completely equipping believers to confidently stand firm.

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For example, what Dr. James R. White does in his church ought to be happening more than it does, perhaps, all over there as well.

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Would Dr. Grant agree with that, or could he comment on that? Yeah, I think that we have got to completely rethink how we equip and train disciples.

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We've got to be much more vigilant in training our disciples to deal with the challenges of the present.

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We've got to find ways to equip them so that they can exercise courage, because it takes great courage in this day of immediate intimidation and bullying.

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But we also, I think, we've got to realize that this is something that the church has always done.

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This is not new. What's new for us is the fact that at one time we enjoyed a widely assumed sort of cultural basis that was friendly to Christianity.

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That's a rarity in the history of the church. And so in some ways we're being brought back to our roots where we're going to have to think creatively and we're going to have to exercise courage and boldness.

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I just got through rereading for about the third time a wonderful book first published about the time of the

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American Civil War. But it was published in Dutch by Guillaume Groen van

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Prinsteren, who was the mentor to Abraham Kuyper.

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The book is entitled Christian Political Action in an Age of Revolution.

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And one of the things that he talks about is the need for us to understand history, understand the scriptures, be bold and courageous in the equipping of the saints, and then being flexible enough to allow certain past privileges to evaporate so that new opportunities are made more potent.

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So for instance, right now it's very likely that churches will see the tax -exempt status removed in the next five to ten years.

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I think that that's a very real possibility. Is that a terrible thing?

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Well, it's going to be inconvenient financially. It's going to shake the church in some ways.

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But it's also going to change the way we approach stewardship.

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Are we really giving to God for God, for the kingdom?

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Or is this some sort of convenient sort of way to exercise self -righteousness, etc.?

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Those kinds of questions purify the church and purge the church.

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Thank you very much, by the way, Michael, over there in Rugby UK. We also have, from this side of the pond, we have

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Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York. Why do you think America has lost its focus on its rich Puritan and Calvinistic roots, such as William Bradford, the writer of The History of Plymouth Plantation?

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Well, that's a great question, Tyler. I think that we've been drifting for a very, very, very long time.

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And so the loss of that perspective is not new. I think the battle over marriage was lost not when gay marriage was made legal, but really and truly when we started hedging the completeness and the fullness of marriage with no -fault divorce laws, easy divorce mindsets.

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We started to erode that notion a long time before.

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So, bottom line, I think we lost that emphasis long before we ever noticed it.

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The truth is that the revolutionaries have been hard at work for more than a century, and they have laid out a very, very clear strategy.

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One revolutionary, Will Durant, described it as the strategy of the robes.

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Capture the robes of society, and you eventually win the society.

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So the judicial robes, the clerical robes, the white lab coat robes of our scientists, etc.,

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the academic robes of the university. Once you capture the robes, then it's a quick and easy step to capture the rest of the culture.

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So this has been going on a very, very, very long time. I will say this, though.

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The Bible makes it plain that judgment begins at the house of God. Our culture is crumbling because a long, long time ago our churches ceased to proclaim the whole counsel of God with boldness and clarity, and we ceased to do the hard work of discipling the generations.

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Yes, yes. Well, we're going to go to a break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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chrisarnson at gmail .com. If you have a question for Dr. Grant, please, again, please leave your first name, your city and state or country of residence.

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If you live out the side of the USA, we thank you both, Mike from Rugby England and Tyler from Mastic Beach, Long Island, for being the first two who have written in today, and we look forward to more of you joining us after this station break.

25:47

Don't go away. We're going to be right back with Dr. George Grant of the

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King's Meadows Study Center right after these messages from our sponsors. Hi, I'm Chris Arnson, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, here to tell you about an exciting offer from World Magazine, my trusted source for news from a

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Tired of box store Christianity? Of doing church in a warehouse with all the trappings of a rock concert?

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That's wrbc .us. Welcome back.

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This is Chris Zarnes. And if you just tuned in, our guest for the two hours today is Dr. George Grant of the

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King's Meadows Study Center in Franklin, Tennessee. Before we return to our topic,

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The Church Amidst the Culture During Revolutionary Change, I just have a couple of special announcements from some of those who support

29:15

Iron Sharpens Iron. Christ Presbyterian Church, which is an Orthodox Presbyterian congregation in Salt Lake City, Utah, has a conference weekend after next from July 15th through the 18th featuring

29:31

Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries. The theme of the conference is Who is Jesus?

29:37

And this conference includes a dialogue between Dr. White and a

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Mormon college professor. And also, on the next day, on the 15th, or on the 16th,

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I should say, he is having a dialogue with a Muslim imam. And some of the topics in this conference include

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Is the Jesus of Mormonism the Jesus of the Bible? Who is Jesus? The Forgotten Trinity?

30:06

And a topic that is very much like our own topic today in today's program, Proclaiming Jesus in a

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Hostile Culture. And if you'd like more information about this conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, you can call 801 -969 -7948 801 -969 -7948 801 -969 -7948 or go to their website for Christ Presbyterian Church in Salt Lake City, Utah.

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That's gospelutah .org That's gospelutah .org

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That's gospelutah .org And last but not least, the Fellowship Conference New England is being held

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August 4th through the 6th in our co -host, Rev. Buzz Taylor's old stomping grounds in Maine, in Portland, Maine to be specific, at the

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Deering Center Community Church. I'm sorry, Deering Center Community Church in Portland, Maine.

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And among the many speakers at this event is my dear friend,

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Pastor Mack Tomlinson of Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas. And if you'd like more information about this conference, that I am going to make an effort to be there myself and I hope

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Rev. Buzz Taylor can come with me. But that will be August 4th through the 6th. And for more information, go to fellowshipconferencenewengland .com

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That's fellowshipconferencenewengland .com And if you'd like to join us on the air today with a question of your own regarding our topic today, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com

31:41

That's chrisarnson at gmail dot com And our subject with Dr. Grant is the Church Amidst the

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Culture During Revolutionary Change. Obviously, since our guest is a theologically reformed scholar, you can ask questions about reform theology or other matters connected to that.

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Just basic questions on the Christian faith. In fact, one thing I failed to mention is that Dr. George Grant was a participant in the wonderful, really powerful

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DVD series called Amazing Grace, The History and the Theology of Calvinism and we have interviewed

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Eric Holmberg and Jerry Johnson on this program and I think that that is one of the most powerful teaching series on the subject of Calvinism that I have ever seen or heard in my entire life and that's not an exaggeration.

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And I thank you Dr. Grant for participating in that. Well, it was a great joy. It's a really, really good tool to introduce folks.

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I have seen folks use that as sort of an introduction in home fellowship groups to help folks realize the beauty of the doctrines of grace.

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Amen. Well, you know, obviously, Dr. Grant, one of the greatest difficulties that Christians face is being on one side of the spectrum

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Pharisaic, self -righteous, viewing themselves as so holy and clean that they don't want to dirty their hands by going near the sinners in the community around them who reject

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Christ and basically they gather in their own evangelical or fundamentalist monasteries, and I'm not using that as a literal term, obviously, but they're cloistered together with people who agree with them and do the same kinds of things that they do and eat in the same kind of places and so on.

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And then you have on the other extreme those who have succumbed to the temptation not only to be in the world but to become of the world.

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You could barely distinguish them between anyone that may be in a nightclub or any other gathering where lost people may frequent, and the language they use and the hobbies they have and the things that they do and the way they dress, you can't distinguish them from those folks.

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And there's got to be that balance that we as Christians tend to either fall on one side of that fine line or the other, but we have to really maintain that balance in order to be an effective witness, don't we?

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Well, yeah, it's not only a balance, it's a kind of integration. It's not really detente between the spiritual realm and the world.

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It's actually going to the world with the hope of the redemption of Christ.

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Part of the problem is that the biblical worldview, our view of the world, is fraught with paradox because we know, on the one hand, that the world is only a temporary dwelling place, it's passing away, we're here but for a little while as aliens, sojourners, and strangers, and because we're a part of God's household, our true citizenship is in Heaven, and our affections are naturally set on things above, at the same time, this world is filled with, to use the prophet

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Jeremiah's phrase, it is filled with dangerous toils and snares. In tandem with the flesh and the devil, it makes war on the saints.

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All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and pride of life, is not of the Father, 1

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John says. Now, Christ overcame the world, and then chose us out of the world, so we're not to be conformed to this world, neither are we to love the world, because Christ gave himself for us that he might deliver us from this present evil world.

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So we get this sort of emphasis in the scriptures, warning us against worldliness, carnal mindedness, and earthly attachments, but at the same time, we're left in the world.

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And not just left in the world, we're called to work in it, serve in it, minister in it, we've been appointed ambassadors to it, and we even have to go to the othermost parts of it, offering a good confession of the eternal life to which we are called.

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So, in a sense, there's this great paradox, and so we tend to have a kind of binary approach to the world, when in fact, what we have in the scriptures is an integration point.

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It's beautifully described by a powerful picture in Genesis chapter 12, when

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Abraham was on his long journey, he came into the land of promise, and we're told in Genesis 12 verse 8, that he pitched his tent between Bethel and Ai.

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Bethel is kind of a picture of communion with God.

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It's a place where there's an altar, it's a place of fellowship with God.

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Ai, on the other hand, is a symbol of the world and of worldliness. So, a genuinely integrated

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Christian world has to be cognizant of both perspectives of the world, and treat them with equal integrated weight.

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We must be engaged in the world, but unengaged in worldliness. We must somehow correlate spiritual concerns with temporal concerns.

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We have to coalesce heavenly hope and landed life. We have to coordinate heartfelt faith and down -to -earth practice.

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In other words, we've got to be in the world, but not of it.

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To be in the world means that we've got to actually engage the world. We're to go forth.

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We're to be unafraid to muck it up in the midst of this poor, fallen world.

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We have to have a vision of life that really does enable us to pitch our tents between Bethel and AI.

38:27

So that we're fully invested in our daily callings, yet with our eyes firmly fixed on the prize of eternity.

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We fulfill our responsibilities here without ever being altogether home until we're all the way home.

38:51

It's a really powerful way of looking at the world, and unfortunately because we don't think about these things biblically, we opt for an either -or kind of mentality.

39:05

And so we have some Christians who just opt out of the world as separatists. Or we have others who opt into the world as sort of cooperators with the world system.

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And we're not to be either. We're sent as ambassadors, so we have to go, but we have our citizenship elsewhere, and therefore we can never be all the way home until we go all the way home.

39:39

Amen. Well, when we are spending a lot of time in the midst of this worldly culture, don't we need our spiritual hazmat suits on, or better put, the armor of God?

39:53

I know personally how I really discovered how seared my conscience was like a frog in a kettle who didn't realize he was being boiled alive.

40:06

I can remember my dear late wife, who was much more sensitive to things such as dirty scenes in movies or profanity or what have you, and I can still remember on two occasions going to the movies with her, and then realizing when

40:23

I looked next to me that I was sitting in that dark theater alone. And not that there weren't other people in other seats, but my wife was missing.

40:32

And thinking that she was in the bathroom when time went on and on and on,

40:37

I can still remember on two occasions walking out into the lobby and there's my wife leaning against the pinball machine with her arms folded, looking at me and saying,

40:46

You stayed in there? You stayed in there! You actually stayed in there! And you know,

40:53

I have to admit, just like a lot of Christians, we don't even realize that we are enjoying things that Christians 50, 60, 70, 80 years ago, let alone a couple hundred years ago, they would have been horrified if you were viewing and enjoying something like we are today.

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Do you have any comment on that? Yeah. You know, I think one of the things that we have to do is we have to adjust ourselves to the notion that we're not supposed to be a part of this world system.

41:31

So, a lot of Christians think it's just normal to go to movies and watch TV and take part in things.

41:38

The Bible makes it very plain that we need to guard our eye gates and guard our ears and guard our hearts so that we don't become feared by the flames of perdition that are flaring up all around us in this fallen culture.

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But the way we do that is not radical separation. The way that we do that is by the exercise of real godly discipline.

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And so one of the things that I advocate is that Christians start to recover the old Puritan patterns of self -examination.

42:19

Another great Puritan exercise, one that's described beautifully by Thomas Boston, is the idea of silence.

42:31

We don't do quiet very well in American culture.

42:38

If we're outside walking or out for a run first thing in the morning, we plug our iPods into our heads.

42:47

If we're in the car driving, we've got the radio on. If we're at home, the

42:52

TV is on. We've just got constant noise. And one of the things that we have to learn how to do again is to let the earth be silent before him.

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The call to quiet, thoughtfulness, to meditation is almost altogether lost.

43:19

But it is one of the key tools to enable us to well evaluate and discern what's healthy and unhealthy in the world around us.

43:29

It will reshape us in ways that we can hardly imagine. The exercise of self -examination, just sitting down, we know that when you have a business plan, you've got to have a well -executed plan, then you've got to go back and you've got to evaluate, okay, how do we do?

43:46

Where do we do things right? Where do we do things wrong? It's something that my staff and I do every single

43:54

Monday after the Lord's Day. We say, okay, what hymns worked? What arrangements didn't click?

44:01

What was good? What was not so good about the sermon? Was sermon one or sermon two better?

44:06

You know, all of those kinds of things. We do that in life and we do that in business, but we oftentimes don't do it with our own hearts, our marriages, our parenting, our walk with Jesus, and so to recover those kinds of things

44:24

I think will enable us to be in the world but not of it. We do have

44:30

Aaron in Indianapolis, Indiana. Aaron writes, just wondering

44:37

Dr. Grant's thoughts in light of this cultural revolution, how he might counsel someone regarding the upcoming presidential election.

44:47

Better to refrain from voting at all or choosing the lesser of two evils? If one can figure that out,

44:54

Spurgeon said choose neither, in reference to the lesser of two evils. A conundrum.

45:02

So, I know that there are people who may not only be in the same denomination but not only in the same church, but even in the same pew who disagree over that issue.

45:15

Those that would view both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump as equally reprehensible and horrible choices for the future of our nation and those who would choose the lesser of two evils route, where do you stand on that in the least with this election?

45:35

Well, I think that the first thing that we have to say is that the conundrum that we are in does not take

45:41

God by surprise, even if it does take all of us by surprise. Second thing that we have to be able to say is that how we resolve this conundrum is not simplistic.

45:58

And that means that we should not resort to bombast when another believer chooses another direction.

46:07

There aren't great choices for us. And so for us to get our 90s in a knot over our brothers and sisters simply because they've chosen a different way to solve this horrid problem than we have is really the height of pomposity.

46:32

So I think we've got to be humbled in this circumstance, and as Christians, we ought to be more vigilant than ever before in praying for our nation.

46:48

Because we have before us two awful choices.

46:54

There are lots and lots of small, you know, non -major party candidates who will be on the ballot, and I know lots of my friends are looking at the possibility of voting for one of them.

47:10

Part of the problem is that the libertarian candidate is pro -abortion. So that's not an option.

47:18

Then you have lots of smaller parties or independent candidacies. Many of those candidates are not on the ballot in all 50 states.

47:27

Like the Constitution Party, for instance. The Constitution Party, which, you know, I was one of the founders of the

47:33

Constitution Party. Oh, wow. I have great affection for Howard Phillips and that movement.

47:41

But I also know that there's just not an easy answer here.

47:48

I believe that Hillary Clinton may be one of the most corrupt people ever to head a major party ticket in the history of the

47:58

United States, and that is saying a lot. You start thinking back to Martin Van Buren or Zachary Taylor, and you know, to top that list is quite a feat.

48:09

But she is, as Robert Carro, the biographer of Lyndon Baines Johnson, has said, she is

48:16

LBJ in a pantsuit. Donald Trump is laughably incompetent when it comes to major matters of the state.

48:33

He is loose with his tongue to a brazen degree, and his character can be questioned at every level, from his business practices across the board to the character and nature of his family.

48:55

So, you know, we're really facing a really wretched choice.

49:02

It is a little bit like asking Christians, which would you rather vote for,

49:08

Caligula or Nero? That is hilarious.

49:19

No pun intended regarding your book that is now out of print. I love the,

49:26

I brought this up before, but there's a meme on the internet with a little boy crouched toward an electrical socket in the wall and he's holding a fork and the title on the meme, or the caption on the meme says,

49:41

Hillary or Trump? Obviously, either choice is going to bring great harm to the child.

49:50

Great harm. And the thing is, you know, people are saying, you know, no matter which one of these two candidates, and one of these two, unless an indictment comes down, if an indictment does come down, it's going to come down on Trump, not on Hillary.

50:07

But if an indictment were to come down, then it changes the game. But otherwise, one of these two for the next four years is going to be in the

50:16

White House. And so Christians are saying at that point, we'll be able to say that we are officially under God's judgment.

50:25

My response to that is, are you kidding me? We have been under God's judgment for quite some time.

50:32

Just look at your pay stubs. Yeah. Now, would you agree that obviously, as you said, we should not be bombastic or self -righteous when criticizing those that disagree with us on how to respond to the upcoming election, whether to refrain or to vote for the lesser of two evils?

50:58

At the same time, would you not caution our brethren in Christ who are voting for Trump not to be among those who are dancing around throwing confetti and as if they are in a parade with Nebuchadnezzar, being very excited about the prospect of Donald Trump winning?

51:24

It's almost as if the driving force to it is nothing more than wanting to be vindictive against Hillary Clinton and like releasing a rabid pit bull on her.

51:41

You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I think one of the things that we're seeing right now is extremism across the board.

51:49

So, I think the best response to these sort of extreme tactics, particularly in social media, is to ignore it.

52:01

Ignore it. When people are whipped up into a frenzy and they're frothing, to completely ignore it is actually more difficult for them to handle than for me to argue with them.

52:16

They want us to argue. They want us to say, ah, no, no, no. They want us and then they'll come back.

52:23

I mean, honestly, most people have never, ever in their lives seen an argument won on social media.

52:32

We don't win arguments on social media. And very likely those who are all whipped up and waving the banners of one candidate or another in this election are not going to be swayed by logic or reason or perhaps even scripture at this point.

52:52

And so one of the things that we can do is just not give them airtime.

52:58

Airtime in our lives, airtime in our memes, airtime in our churches.

53:06

It's just, it's actually pretty irrelevant to our task.

53:13

Hmm. And how do you, I know the, I don't want the thrust or the focus of our program to be political necessarily, but it is a, it is a part of our lives.

53:28

And, and the, how do you respond to the person that it's, let's say you're voting for the presidential candidate for the

53:41

Constitution Party and unless, yes, who I'm actually working on trying to interview him.

53:48

But barring any kind of modern day miracle, that man is not going to win the election.

53:57

And so someone who is voting for him, our brethren in Christ may look at them and they may even say this to me for even airing such an interview if I, if I managed to arrange it.

54:11

How dare you? You are, all's you're doing, you might as well just be pulling the lever for Hillary Clinton.

54:17

You are, there's no difference in you not voting for Trump and voting for Hillary Clinton.

54:24

They're the same thing. And how dare you detract people from voting for Trump, who is more of a sure winner than somebody as noble and as Christlike and as godly and honorable as they may be, they're not going to win.

54:37

So what are you, some kind of a nut? Just, just stop your detracting people from doing what their, their duty is as an

54:44

American citizen to get us freed from the shackles of this leftist government that we're currently enslaved by, you know, that kind of thing.

54:52

How do you, how do you respond? Well that, that, that is the argument that you'll see over and over and over again on Facebook, in Twitter, in conversations with folks.

55:01

I would say, first of all, it's, it's not a logical argument to not vote for someone is to not vote for someone.

55:13

It's not to vote for someone else. Um, and so, you know, but you can't use logic to argue against an illogical argument.

55:26

And so it's probably not worth our breath trying to convince someone of, of that.

55:34

What I would say is it is not our duty to, um, to vote one way or another.

55:43

It's our duty to, as Christians, follow our Savior and to follow his commands and to follow our conscience.

55:54

If I, in good conscience, simply cannot vote for someone as ill -prepared as Donald Trump, does not mean that I am supporting

56:07

Hillary Clinton. It means that I cannot pull that lever and therefore

56:16

I have to find an alternative. I have to find something that I can do. That, that, that is an honorable, uh, thing to do.

56:24

I would say to my friends who are going to vote for Donald Trump, I understand the argument.

56:30

I understand the argument about the perilous position of our Supreme Court. I understand the argument of the immigration madness that, that we have faced.

56:39

I don't like any of the solutions that appear to be

56:45

Donald Trump's solutions. Truth be told, he's not made a single policy pronouncement that's clear or in a grammatically correct

56:54

English paragraph. So it's difficult to say, but, you know,

57:01

I understand the arguments. But what I would simply ask is allow us to follow our conscience.

57:11

Some of us will, in the end, I'm sure, vote for Trump. Some of us will simply, by conscience, not be able to do that.

57:22

And that's understandable given the circumstances. Again, it's the case between Nero and Caligula.

57:29

It's not much of a choice. Well, now when you have people that are asking questions, well, uh,

57:36

I've had discussions where, uh, I hear over and over again, well, nobody's doing anything about this.

57:43

Uh, how would you address brothers and sisters in Christ that want to do something about all of this, but we feel totally helpless because it's, it's like all the decisions are already made.

57:55

You know, they probably already know who's going to be president. And I mean, uh, and let me ask along with that, uh, related question.

58:03

And since I'm talking primarily about Christians wanting to engage the culture, how much do you blame the church for what has happened in our culture?

58:14

Well, I'll take the, that last question first. I believe that the responsibility is all ours.

58:25

Now that's not to say that we've done the wickedness, but we've left a vacuum.

58:31

Uh, it was our shoddy approach to art, music, literature, and ideas that, uh, that paved the way for, uh, their substitute, uh, for art, music, literature, and ideas, uh, to gain preeminence in our culture.

58:49

We've not been doing our jobs. And so the responsibility is ours, even if the overt acts of rebellion were not ours.

59:00

Um, and in terms of what we should be doing, uh, when, when we start to feel helpless, that is the moment when

59:07

I say, well, then roll up your sleeves and go to work.

59:12

There are a thousand different ways that we can go to work making our world better, right in our own neighborhoods.

59:20

Uh, if we're really concerned about the direction that our world was going, then it's time for us to volunteer at the crisis pregnancy center.

59:29

It's time for us to launch an initiative to care for the homeless poor and equip them for productivity in the days ahead.

59:39

It's, it's time for us to make a difference in our communities.

59:44

Go to city council meetings, uh, be a part of planning commission meetings, engage with the wider culture, get to know store owners, uh, befriend them so that when something objectionable appears on their shelves, uh, you can go through to them as a friend, not as an adversary and lobby for a better direction, a better business decision.

01:00:10

In other words, it's time for us to go to work and do our jobs.

01:00:17

Amen. And we're going to have to go to a break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsonatgmail .com

01:00:26

chrisarnsonatgmail .com. We do have several people patiently waiting to have their questions asked and answered by Dr.

01:00:33

Grant. And we will get to you as soon as possible when we return from the station break. Once again, our email address is chrisarnsonatgmail .com

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01:04:23

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

01:04:29

Dr. George Grant, an author of numerous books, and he is also the founder of the

01:04:36

King's Meadows Study Center. Today we are discussing the church amidst a culture during a great, disturbing, and dark revolution that is going on.

01:04:49

And we do have another listener in the audience waiting for a question.

01:04:55

Actually, it is a comment more than a question that he would like Dr. Grant to respond to.

01:05:02

John in Peoria, Illinois, who is in charge of membership development for Samaritan Ministries International, he writes, number one,

01:05:15

A cannot be non -A, so voting for Castle isn't voting for Hillary.

01:05:21

That would be Darryl Castle of the Constitution Party that we mentioned earlier. And number two, a large group of Christians speaking out against the circus and for a mature

01:05:32

Christian candidate will at least send the message that Christians are not going to participate in that system anymore.

01:05:40

Your comment, if you'd like, Dr. Grant. I think that's a very, very wise comment.

01:05:49

That's the exercise of good logic and good theology simultaneously.

01:05:55

Our call really is to bring the message of a biblical worldview and of the hope of redemption to the world.

01:06:05

How on earth can we do that if we constantly accommodate ourselves to the worst of the worst in the world?

01:06:12

So I totally agree. Christians need to be speaking clearly on all of the issues of our day and of our culture, not just politics.

01:06:23

Politics is important, but it is not all important. The truth is that where people live their lives is pretty remote from all that goes on in Washington, D .C.

01:06:37

And while Washington, D .C. profoundly affects us more and more with every passing day, the truth is that we, as Christians, need to be much more invested in what happens in our neighborhoods and in our communities than what happens in Washington.

01:06:59

Now, don't you think one of the dangers behind being a public and giddy participant in the candidacy of somebody like Donald Trump or even another political candidate, especially when the faith of that person is clearly nominal at best, the consequences when someone is presenting the gospel of Jesus Christ to the lost world around them, especially their family, their friends, their colleagues, their neighbors, and they, with the equal fervency of their gospel presentation, are telling people, vote for Trump.

01:07:48

He's going to change this nation. He's going to make America great again. And if he were to be elected and he turns out to be an enormous embarrassment to this nation, and even that might be even putting it mildly, he may bring about some horrific consequences and events in this nation that we don't even fathom right now.

01:08:13

And everyone that heard you preaching the gospel all those years is now saying, why should we believe you about the gospel when you are all excited about Donald Trump?

01:08:23

Now, again, I'm not speaking about the person who quietly behind a curtain pulls the lever for him. I'm talking about the person who is publicly very excited and aggressively promoting his candidacy.

01:08:35

That's what I'm really referring to. Yeah, you know, this is a question that Martin Lundmuller raised following World War II about the

01:08:45

Germans who were giddily, giddily supportive of Adolf Hitler and his nationalist movement in the 1920s and 30s as the

01:08:58

Nazi Party grew in those, you know, years between World War I and World War II.

01:09:04

The truth is, is that we have seen Christians supporting really wretched causes in the past, setting back the agenda of the

01:09:17

Church years and years and years because of our naivete and our foolishness. Here's the thing.

01:09:23

Regardless of who the candidate is, our hope needs to be in the Lord. Not in some candidate, not in some platform.

01:09:32

Our hope is in the Lord. And when we start to confuse where our hope or the hope of our nation really lies, we have compromised our gospel prerogative at that point.

01:09:49

So I think we have to be really careful about this. And again, I would say to anybody, look, the choices before us are incredibly complex.

01:09:59

Don't oversimplify them. Don't resort to hyperbole. And, you know, don't use glittering generalities and all of those other rhetorical fallacies to try and make this, you know, simplistic and easy.

01:10:16

There's so much sarcasm right now that is floating about as people flippantly write each other off or use

01:10:24

Trump -like tactics to denigrate those who have a different perspective.

01:10:30

This is complicated. And some of us are going to simply say one thing, and some of us are going to say another.

01:10:39

And truth be told, I understand the reasonings for people who will vote for Trump, and I certainly understand the reasonings of the people who will not.

01:10:51

I can tell you right now, I cannot and will not vote for Hillary Clinton.

01:10:58

And it's very, very likely that I'll be able to say I cannot and will not vote for Donald Trump.

01:11:07

I've tried not to be too dogmatic about that because I know that that can have a lot of sway with a lot of people.

01:11:15

I want people to wrestle with this. I know Darrell Castle. I've known him for years.

01:11:22

I have a great deal of admiration for him. I don't think he has a chance in the world to win, but I'm not voting to win.

01:11:30

I'm voting my conscience. Amen. Amen. Well, John in Peoria, Illinois, I believe you're the first time writer today, so you are getting free of charge a

01:11:43

New American Standard Bible, a beautiful new edition of it in a leather text cover, a really beautiful leather text cover with an embossed cross design on it.

01:11:56

And it's a really gorgeous Bible, compliments of the publishers of the New American Standard Bible who sponsor

01:12:03

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. So if you give us your actual full mailing address, John in Peoria, Illinois, you'll receive that free of charge,

01:12:11

God willing, very shortly. I'm going to have to be a first time writer. That's a good deal.

01:12:19

Oh yeah. Well, you might want to listen and write in a question on Monday. We have Rosaria Butterfield on.

01:12:26

Do you know Rosaria Butterfield? I do. What a great hero of the faith. Yeah, so she is going to be on our program

01:12:31

Monday. And for those of you who do not know who she is, she's a former liberal and lesbian university professor who hated most of the things that Christians cherish in regard to biblical morality at one time.

01:12:45

And she has been transformed by the gospel of Jesus Christ and the blood of the lamb.

01:12:51

And she is now not only a godly Christian woman and heterosexual, but a wife of a

01:13:00

Presbyterian pastor, a conservative Presbyterian Bible -believing pastor. And she is going to be on the program

01:13:07

Monday, God willing, to discuss her testimony. So Dr. George Grant, you can write in a question and say, not only will you get her book for free, but you'll get a free

01:13:16

New American Standard Bible. But we also have right now

01:13:23

Nancy in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, who says, judgment begins in the house of the

01:13:30

Lord. How do we get back to the biblical view? I agree this is about marriage, culture, or divorce.

01:13:39

How do we get back to the biblical view? I agree we lost it with easy divorce, but I experienced either two camps, permanence view, even in adultery and or abandonment, or anything goes, all divorced can remarry.

01:13:57

So many divorces. So obviously she's talking about the two extremes. You have those who say you can never, as a

01:14:03

Christian, get married again after being married, no matter what the circumstances behind that divorce was.

01:14:10

You could have a spouse who was an unrepentant adulterer, scandalous adulterer, who not only committed adultery on the other spouse numerous times, but maybe even just left, abandoned that person.

01:14:24

And then you have the churches that will remarry people, no matter what reason. They may have even been the key party in causing the divorce.

01:14:35

Right. One of the things about revolutionary times is that we wind up going to extremes.

01:14:42

And both of those extremes are understandable in the context of our cultural breakdown.

01:14:52

But the answer to Nancy's question is simply this. It's time for the pulpits of America to be alive and aflame with righteousness once again.

01:15:05

We've got to teach the whole counsel of God. We've got to wrestle with the truths of Scripture.

01:15:12

We've got to exercise proper pastoral care, including disciplinary care in the case of broken relationships, and discipling care in the case of broken relationships.

01:15:27

No divorce in the Church should go unattended.

01:15:33

In other words, if a divorce occurs, the Church's elders, the pastors, have to be engaged in the process of healing, reconciliation, restoration, in whatever ways are possible.

01:15:48

And there has to be real disciplinary rulings on these things, so that a covenantal widow, let's say, a woman who was abused or who suffered from infidelity from her spouse, is now covered by the

01:16:08

Church and is cared for by the local

01:16:13

Church. These are just basic Biblical truths that only can come alive in the

01:16:20

Church if and when we teach the whole counsel of God. Amen.

01:16:28

Going back, I already said that I didn't want this to be the focus of politics today, our subject, but I can't help but wonder what your view of Christian libertarianism is, because of the fact that I believe the

01:16:46

Constitutional Party was very influenced by Christian libertarianism, very small government.

01:16:54

There are Christians, and of course not all libertarians are the same. You have morally liberal libertarians, who are basically libertines, and who are pro -abortion and all that kind of thing.

01:17:08

But you have solid, conservative, Bible -believing Christians, and they may not use the term conservative in this case, because they're libertarian, but they are definitely

01:17:19

Biblically based in their morality and so on. But they would say, for instance, you know,

01:17:28

I'm not in favor of the government stopping two homosexuals from marrying each other, because the government shouldn't even be involved in marriage in the first place.

01:17:40

I'm not in favor of homosexuals marrying people of the same gender at all.

01:17:46

I think it's a damnable sin, but that's not the role of government to be involved in any of our marriages.

01:17:52

That kind of a thing, as you know, the libertarian line would be, I'm not in favor of drug abuse and so on.

01:18:02

I believe that it's sinful to use narcotics in a recreational way, but it's not the job of the government to be babysitting us and preventing us from self -destruction, that kind of thing.

01:18:18

That seems to be where the dominant numbers of evangelical

01:18:23

Christians would be frightened about libertarianism, because they just see that as another form of liberalism.

01:18:32

And also libertarians are less likely to be in favor of being involved in foreign military conflicts overseas that don't have a direct threat upon American soil, that kind of a thing.

01:18:47

Yeah, I think the first thing that we have to say is that, again, we are sadly the heirs of the

01:18:55

French Revolution and all of the revolutionary movements, the ideological movements that came in the remainder of the 19th and the 20th centuries.

01:19:06

And so we tend to think in ideological terms, in terms of systems.

01:19:13

And so we talk about things like conservative, liberal, libertarian, libertine.

01:19:24

We use those labels, and we tend to use them fairly loosely. You've been pretty careful,

01:19:29

Chris, in trying to narrow it and define it, but we're still using the language of the

01:19:35

French Revolution when we use those terms. And so what

01:19:41

I would say is it's time for us, as Christians, to think in biblical terms.

01:19:47

Issues are incredibly complex. We might have some sympathy with the libertarians on some areas where we say, you know, the government should not even be in this.

01:19:59

Why are there marriage licenses? Well, marriage licenses go back to, actually, the

01:20:06

New England Puritans, and we could talk about the history there, but I think a good case could be made that this is just not an area that the government should be involved in at all.

01:20:19

However, once you sort of conceive that, now you're into inheritance law, tort law, all kinds of other, you know, second and third order consequences that you may not have thought about initially.

01:20:35

That's what we're facing right now with gay marriage. We have upended the entire insurance industry.

01:20:42

We've upended the whole of the inheritance and tort law industries, so that we really don't know, from day to day, what the rule of law looks like anymore in the

01:20:59

United States. So what I would say is we've got to go back to every issue and examine it from a biblical perspective rather than from a political one, even if it has political ramifications.

01:21:16

And we're going to have to sort of separate things out. I've been around long enough to have been involved in the

01:21:25

Reagan administration, and there were a lot of things, a lot of issues in the

01:21:32

Reagan administration where I had strong, principled differences of opinion, based upon my understanding of the scriptures.

01:21:42

But that did not mean that I could not engage in a kind of a co -belligerency project with the

01:21:50

Reagan administration. I think we're just going to have to parse this out carefully and realize that our job as Christians is to proclaim the counsel of God and then engage in reformation.

01:22:05

The answer to revolution is always reformation. It's the hard work of rebuilding from the ground up every single institution in accord with the scriptures.

01:22:21

Amen. And you mentioned Abraham Kuyper earlier, who

01:22:27

I believe may have coined the phrase co -belligerence, where you have conservative

01:22:35

Bible -believing Christians linking arms in public political activism and social activism with people who have a false gospel or no gospel at all, may even be in a religion that is overtly an enemy of the

01:22:52

Christian religion, but they view the moral battle as worthy of one where we can link arms publicly but never dilute the faith that we believe.

01:23:05

How do you view that whole arena of public activism, arm -in -arm with people who reject the gospel of Jesus Christ?

01:23:15

Yeah, well, you know, one of the things that Kuyper made plain was that you can do that on an issue -by -issue basis, you can't do that long -term across the board.

01:23:23

So you can't build a political movement on co -belligerency, but on a particular issue, you can be co -belligerent with others.

01:23:34

It's like filing an amicus brief with a lawsuit.

01:23:41

You may not actually be able to link arms across the board with everyone that files those briefs, but on this particular issue, you stand united.

01:23:56

And I think that's the key. We tend to want these sort of permanent alliances, again, because we're thinking like French revolutionaries, we're thinking in terms of permanent parties and permanent structures and permanent ideologies, and the truth is that we live in a complicated world, and unless we are confessionally bound together by the scriptures, we're not going to agree on everything with any of our political allies.

01:24:25

So we work as hard as we can on various causes, we link arms with who we can in those causes, but we don't try and imagine that this is going to be some sort of permanent political alliance.

01:24:42

Now, one of the things that I have a lot of evangelical friends that get all goosebumpily, that's a phrase.

01:24:52

It is now. Goosebumpy. Goosebumpy. They really love these national days of prayer and these gatherings of people in major cities who they're all praying together to God to bring about great change and revival in this country, but I do not participate in these things because I just can't understand how they don't see the improperness of the impropriety of people linking arms and praying to a different deity than the one that you are praying with, if you follow what

01:25:34

I'm saying. It just seems to me that it is not something that goes hand in hand with the way the

01:25:41

Christian church behaved in the scriptures. It's hard to imagine

01:25:46

Elijah and Jezebel appearing on the same dais together. Or Paul and the leader of the

01:25:52

Judaizers in Galatia. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we've got to be really, really careful about those kinds of things.

01:25:59

So I guess you would agree with me, I'm not being... Yes, I totally agree with you.

01:26:05

At the same time, I think we are called into this world and we, you know, on certain critical issues, we may stand side by side with people that we most assuredly do not agree with, but we don't necessarily appear at each other's rallies or pray to one another, you know, have some ecumenical service or something like that.

01:26:32

We, you know, we can exercise real discretion and, at the same time, find ways to make a real difference in the world that we live in.

01:26:44

Amen. We have to go to our final break right now. If you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, we have about a half hour left for you to do so.

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01:33:22

Dr. George Grant our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com chrisarnson at gmail .com

01:33:30

oh in your opinion Dr. Grant what is the the most disturbing ways in the third millennium in the 21st century that the church at large and i'm not even talking about mainline liberal churches i'm talking about those that profess to be born again from all different denominational backgrounds and theological views how they are compromising biblical truth in this day and age what would you say are the most significant ways that the church at large is doing that well there are a host of different things as as you intimate to pick the the single most disturbing thing i would say that it is our lack of attention to the scriptures to the teaching of the word of god yes it is our willingness to be dragged along by either cultural trends or emotions or cultural anti -trends to be sucked into the pattern of of the brokenness of this world without the proper moorings of the scriptures and so i think to me the lack of attentiveness the lack of time the lack of memory the lack of uh rooting our our arguments and our conversations in the scriptures themselves is the most disturbing of all of the trends of the modern church now you have talked a lot about education of course most of my familiarity with your your speaking has been at the classical in christian schools association of classical christian schools uh and you've said a lot about reading and um about different subjects and so forth so address the idea of of education here for a moment because uh uh well you had mentioned uh early in our conversation about getting a classical education and you refer to it as a great books education could you address that and talk about for example uh christians and sending their children to the public schools and so forth well first i would say that one of the great tasks that every parent has is not just the raising of children uh but the uh nurturing and admonishing of children in the ways of the lord we are commissioned as our primary task as parents uh to disciple our children so that they can know the way that they should go all the days of their life we can't trade that responsibility off we can't somehow excuse our inactivity in that arena simply because we've hired good tutors or have great curriculum or anything else as parents we are called to disciple our children and the most important thing that we fit them for is is eternity it's not their future financial portfolio um as as fruitful and as helpful as that may be we're fitting our children for eternity and so when we're not doing that uh we're uh we're abandoning our primary responsibility and we are ensuring uh an ongoing pattern of sinfulness in our children where we pass our sins onto them and they pass them on to our grandchildren uh etc so i would say you know first and foremost it is vital for us to understand that all of us are in the task of discipling our children and there are a lot of ways that we can do that discipling um i i don't believe that we should look at the bad options as our only options uh there are a lot of bad options out there and it's not just in the government -run schools which have now you know just in the last 10 years gone far far beyond anything that we could ever have imagined both in terms of competency just sheer educational competency but uh the the moral pollution now is is beyond bearing but there are also a lot of really poor uh options in the in the realm of private education and even in home education uh so what we've got to do is we've got to be vigilant and careful and undertake this task uh with uh soberness and a sense of righteousness that God calls us to yeah and one thing that uh some of our listeners may be unaware of when it comes to parochial schools or private schools if you're considering sending your children to one uh i know i know of evangelical parents who send their children to roman catholic parochial schools now i can't say this for every roman catholic parochial school but i went to one as a grammar school student from the first through the eighth grade and way back then in the late 60s and early 70s when i was in parochial school private grammar school i was taught that evolution was a scientific fact and i was taught that these stories of adam and eve and noah's ark and things such as that in the old testament were fairy tales uh now the nuns didn't teach us that but the uh the secular science uh teachers uh did in the catholic school so uh you're not necessarily safe in sending your kid to a parochial school just because it's a private school and that and when you when you consider that that evolutionary notion was being taught as fact uh back in the uh you know 45 years ago uh back in the late 60s and early 70s what are they doing now i have no idea yeah and you know the same thing i think chris could be said about a lot of protestant christian schools we have to be really really careful and we have to uh if we're going to entrust the stewardship of our children's education to uh to others in our community we better be really really careful about what it is that our children are consuming eight to ten hours a day every single day for uh 18 years of their lives it's uh it's really really critical that we be aware of that now one thing that also puzzles me as kind of a uh a dovetail off of what i had spoken about earlier the national days of prayer and other similar events where evangelicals are giddily gathering with people of all religions uh locked arm in arm praying for change in america uh there are many christians perhaps even the majority at least the ones that you hear in the media in the public arena uh who are conservative evangelicals who uh lament the day that there was that the day that the prayer ended in public school and they want that to return and i always say to myself well how on earth could a christian want prayer other than the the private right of an individual student to pray and have a bible club and all that kind of thing but to have a like a principle of a public school praying over the loudspeaker or whatever when the guy might be a mormon or he might be uh who knows what he might be he might be a member of a cult he might be in the uh church of christ scientist the the sign or a scientologist or anything uh that is not a christian religion and why would a christian want that and and do you are you as equally puzzled by that uh desire yeah i mean i'm i'm puzzled by the desire to uh to somehow provide chaplains even for you know the the government schools um in the same way that i don't think that we can endorse you know wickedness in the wider culture i don't think we can endorse uh that kind of wickedness that occurs in virtually every uh government -run school there are perhaps a few rogue schools out there but uh they they can uh be sure that they're going to face the hammer of the feds before uh too very long uh what what we ought to be doing is um churches ought to be sending you know emissaries into the schools where we can uh to minister to kids there you know we ought to be supportive of of movements like first priority which is a student -led uh prayer and discipleship movement in uh public schools but our own children we need to be discipling much more carefully and our own children need to be protected from uh all manner of wickedness and so we've simply gone far far down the road of compromise and we have christian in cumberland county pennsylvania who says i have seen uh heroes of the faith of mine who share so much in common theologically radically disagree on some of the points that you have brought up today there are men that i love to hear preach and teach who believe a minister of the gospel should never under any circumstances be actively involved with politics in a public forum and there are others that i know from theonomic and other backgrounds who mock that and say that a pastor just like anyone else should be free to run for office or be publicly involved in any political activity that anyone else would be where do you think the line should be drawn on this matter i'm not sure you can draw the line uh what i would say is the earth is the lord and everything in it the world and all who live in it for he founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters we do face a great conundrum right now in the sense that politics is quite perverse and quite wicked and therefore i think all of the things that we've been talking about everything that chris has said about not joining the parade gleefully is appropriate and i do think that need to be very circumspect about what they say and how they say it but at the same time we can't exempt certain aspects of life or culture from the call of the gospel jesus did not hesitate to speak directly to the magistrates of his day harrod u fox um you know he he was very clear woe to you pharisees the pharisees weren't just religious leaders they were members of the sanhedrin and the sanhedrin was a governing body we need to realize that that christ spoke into all arenas and so the gospel must there is not one square inch in the whole domain of human existence abraham kuyper said over which christ who is sovereign over all does not say mine so i would say everything is christ's but pastors do need to be very careful we we've got to be careful about not buying into worldly agendas not being partisan uh in uh in terms of political alignments because our trust is in the lord and not in some politician or some agenda or some platform or some party so i think that there is some balance i will say this um you're absolutely right we're we're living in a day of confusion and we're living in a day of revolution and therefore we've got godly men who take very different perspectives on this and we need to respect that we don't always agree uh and we can uh disagree uh in accord with the word of god but i think we need to respect the fact that in a time when everything is a mess there aren't simplistic straightforward answers to everything amen well thank you for the great question christian can you say that 10 times fast question yeah um the the uh the thing that i have uh never seen in my lifetime uh is christians uh to repeat the same phrase i've been bringing up christians not only in the same denomination or church but in the same pew who are vehemently opposed uh to uh their concept on this presidential election coming up or the response to it uh and i've never seen people so divided over a candidate like donald trump within conservative evangelical christianity uh i know that one of the things that you had brought up is to largely not get embroiled in these battles and to be silent in some areas when they come up well i wouldn't say i would i mean i've not been silent we've been talking about it for two hours i'm not i'm not suggesting that we be silent i'm suggesting that we not engage in fetal disease yes that's where when when people get just when they're frothing at the mouth what they want is for us to engage at that point and so my response is when when the conversation becomes irrational turn it off right well the thing that i was going to say in response to this is that isn't it amazing uh that especially when we see this erupt from our own brother brethren who are reformed and believing in the sovereign grace of god as if they have totally forgotten who's on the throne right uh they think that that we are going to cause the end of civilization as we know it if we do not vote for donald trump or however whatever side of this issue that you're on or if you do vote for donald trump you are causing an end to civilization as we know it right and uh it's it's amazing how often and i'm not saying i'm not guilty i every time i'm anxious about anything and i get anxious about a lot of things quite frequently unfortunately every time i'm anxious i am realizing that i'm forgetting at least momentarily the sovereignty of god or my life uh but how do you what is your word of of uh uh rebuke or edification uh to the body of christ as they listen to us especially those from among our own circles in reform theology or calvinism well we pray all the time our father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth just as it is in heaven and then we don't actually mean it that's a travesty if we really mean it we really mean that the gospel can change everything can change every life then we can enter into these days of difficulty with optimism and great soaring hope because jesus christ is lord and one day every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that he is lord to the glory of god if we believe that then that's going to enable us to engage in very difficult days where we have to slog through certain moments knowing that because christ is on the throne because the iron scepter is in his hand because the father has handed him the scroll because he has taken the golden censer and all of the prayers of the saints and brought it before the throne of the most high god we can have confidence we can have hope it's not triumphalism we still have to slog through this awful mess but it is incredible confidence and hope because our god is god and we are not and therefore we can uh just come to the place where we despair of our own competency and trust in his excellent excellent we do have cj and lyndon hurst long island new york cj writes i have always been a patriotic american citizen and for the first time in my life i'm finding it more and more difficult to be very expressive and vocal and joyful and publicly appreciative of our of my nation in the realm of patriotism and patriotic celebration uh i used to believe as did most of those who i highly respect that to be unpatriotic was a sin but now i am starting to wonder if that is necessarily the case especially when it comes in the form of american exceptionalism what is your response dr grant i certainly sympathize i understand the mindset what i would say is first of all god was sovereign in placing you where you are your history as an american is indeed glorious and exceptional um i would be shocked if anyone found uh dietrich bonhoeffer's love of germany even in the midst of nazism which he resisted to the point of death as somehow misguided it was not misguided he loved his homeland it was the place that god had called him placed him raised him it was the place that that was the locus of his his calling in his ministry when he had an opportunity to escape with his life he chose to stay and fight for his nation what i would say is that's the true essence of patriotism it's not the you know the the fourth of july razzle dazzle it's that that resolve that says god called me here in this time for this purpose to raise the name of christ and to make this nation blessed among all the other nations that name the name of christ amen and uh i do i have pointed uh to something interesting to some of my brethren who understandably are so disgusted with our nation or at least the leaders of it in this day and age that they don't feel very patriotic but i think that there needs to be some caution used because when i think about those brave and selfless and courageous and heroic black soldiers in our arms forces even if you will in the civil war some of whom actually fought on both sides some were confederate soldiers some were union soldiers but also in world war war two uh where they realized they were going home even in a victory to a nation where they were considered uh in some cases in the worst scenarios not even human but they were uh at the very um at the very best second class citizens uh and yet there was enough patriotism in the hearts of many of these these uh black heroes that they they did not look at the evils of the culture as a reason to totally give up hope what god could do for this country and that's that's what i've kind of done to remind my my brethren who are just filled with nothing but disgust over this country yeah and i think that maybe some of what might help us is to change the language that we use it's not just patriotism in in kind of that old 1950s or 1980s uh sense of patriotism uh rather it's uh it's the the truth that god has us rooted here and these are our people this is the homeland of our fathers and mothers and therefore we have a vested interest in the hope of the ages and the battle for freedom and therefore we ought to have deep satisfaction and a love for the food and the music and the and the life that is our inheritance and yet at the same time yearn for real transformation john knox at the beginning of the scottish reformation cried out oh god give me scotland or i die that ought to be the heart's cry of every single one of us oh god give me tennessee oh god give me pennsylvania oh god give me new york or i die amen well i would like you to in about two and a half minutes just summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today dr grant well i think that the most important thing that i can uh say is that the lord has in his good providence chosen us for such a time as this and therefore uh we should not despise the opportunity that he has given us thomas chalmers one of my great heroes uh said oh god may i number my days so as to apply my heart to wisdom grant me the guidance of thy spirit and the joys of thy salvation in these difficult days that i might uh fight for the truth of the gospel that i might find light and comfort in prayer that i might be settled in the principles of christ if that were the heart of american christians i would never fret again for the future of our nation the bible makes it plain that god will honor his very great and precious promises for a faithful people for a godly church so my prayer is going back to what we discussed at the very beginning of this two hours that we would find a way to pitch our tent between bethel and ai and do the hard work of reformation in this day of convulsive revolution to the glory of god and for the gospel of jesus christ amen amen and dr grant when we go off the air if you could hold on for just a minute because i would like to see if i could schedule you to return on the program i have my calendar here uh if you if you can do that and the website for dr grant's uh ministry or organization king's meadow study center is kingsmeadow .com

01:59:17

king's meadow king's meadow without the apostrophe s kingsmeadow .com and the parish presbyterian church of franklin tennessee can uh be uh found at parishpres .org

01:59:31

where information about it can be found there parishpres .org p -a -r -i -s -h p -r -e -s .org