September 2, 2022 Show with Anthony Forsyth on “Caesar & the Church: A Biblical Study of Government & the Church”

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Introduction and Scripture Theme

Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century Gospel Minister George Norcross in downtown Carlyle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the Church and the world today.

Proverbs 27, verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have a view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this second day of September 2022.

Before I introduce to you my guest today, a first-time guest that I'm really excited to interview, I have another exciting update and announcement. Many of you heard me announce, both on this show and in social media, that we finally have a confirmation from two debaters that are going to be debating here in South Central Pennsylvania for the next edition of the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio debate series.

We have both confirmations from Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries and Dr. Peter Van Cleek. And they are going to be debating on a theme that involves confessional bibliology, which is also known as, especially amongst laymen and those outside of the circles of Reformed Baptists, it's more readily recognizable as Textus Receptus Only-ism.

These two men are going to be debating, Dr. White opposing the Textus Receptus Only position and Dr. Van Cleek affirming it under the name of confessional bibliology. And right now, the only thing that is holding up further publicity, flyers, commercials, etc., is that, as happens from time to time with these debates, the debaters cannot fully agree on how to word the debate thesis.

So we hope to give you an update very soon as to exactly how this debate will be worded as far as the debate question or thesis is concerned. It's going to be held Saturday, September 24th, starting at 4 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, which is in Perry County, Pennsylvania, which is the same location I will be having my next Iron Sharpens Iron radio Free Pastor's Luncheon that same week featuring Dr. James R. White as the keynote speaker.

If you haven't already registered for that free luncheon, if you are a man in ministry leadership, please send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put Pastor's Luncheon in the subject line. And when you register, please include the name and location of your church.

And it's a free event. Everything is free, the meal, the admission, and everyone attending is receiving a heavy sack or perhaps even two heavy sacks of free brand-new books donated by the publisher as they have been doing every year and now every two years, twice a year, I should say, that started out annually, now they're bi-annually happening twice a year.

But every time we have these events, all the men in attendance leave with heavy sacks of brand-new books I have selected from publishers which they donated. And that includes, and this may be news to my guest, Anthony Forsythe, this includes the book that he has written that we are discussing today.

Cress Biblical Resources has been generous enough to donate Caesar and the Church, a biblical study of government and the church to all the men in attendance at my Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pastor's Luncheon.

So I'm so thrilled about that. And so please, if you haven't registered yet, send in your email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put Pastor's Luncheon in the subject line. Everything is free of charge.

And now I would like to formally introduce my guest. His name is Anthony Forsythe and he is Pastor of Calvary Baptist Church of Burbank, California. And I haven't heard that city mentioned since the old days of Johnny Carson, since his studios were located in Burbank, California and was the subject, Burbank, that is, was the subject of many jokes from his stand-up monologues, usually involving how many senior citizens' homes there were around there.

But we are going to be discussing the aforementioned book, Caesar and the Church, A Biblical Study of Government and the Church, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Anthony Forsythe.

And I don't know, were you aware that Cress, they actually just gave me the good news, I believe it was yesterday, that they are donating Caesar and the Church, A Biblical Study of Government and the Church, to the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pastors Luncheon.

Did you just learn that now? Oh, praise God. Well, praise God, I am so thrilled about that. And I cannot wait to see the look on the pastors' faces when they receive that. And I also want to thank, personally, Rick Cress for being so generous to donate these.

First of all, since there may be a number of our listeners, since you have not been on this program before, who are unfamiliar with you and the church where you serve as an under-shepherd, why don't you tell us about this fine congregation that you pastor?

Around about that time, and we've been serving here, took over a very small Baptist church, have been without a pastor for a while. And as time's gone by, things have changed. Most of the original people who were with us when I arrived are no longer with us.

And right now, particularly post-COVID, we'll maybe talk about that more later, but it very much has a feel to it of a church plant. It's lots of people very excited to be kind of getting involved in a smaller church and excited for what the Lord might do.

So when I took over, it was originally a GARBC church, and we're looking over the next couple of months. We're hopefully shifting over to IFTA.

Praise God. And if anybody wants to find out more about Calvary Baptist Church of Burbank, California, you can go to their website, calvarybaptistburbank, and that's spelled B-U-R-B-A-N-K .org, calvarybaptistburbank .org.

Were you aware? I don't know how long you've been living here in the States, and nor do I know if Johnny Carson was known at all in the U .K. Were you aware of the jabs and jokes by Mr. Carson?

No.

He's only going to be a sort of one-off speaker. I didn't even know where... California for a couple of years before, and lost the accent. We do have a green card now.

Now, where in England are you from?

In Kent.

Yes, I have two very dear friends who are now in heaven, Barbara and Nigel Stone, and they lived in the States far longer, far more decades than they lived in England, and they actually made it a point to preserve their British accents.

Yeah.

I met Nigel's sister, and she lived in England as long as he did, and you could not detect a trace of an English accent, but Nigel perfectly preserved it and was an extremely humorous man, a dear friend, and I miss him greatly.

In fact, the Lord used him greatly to lead me to the doctrines of sovereign grace. When I was a brand-new Christian in a Reformed Baptist church where I was baptized, but still very hesitant and skeptical about the doctrines of Reformed theology, and Nigel approached me, and with his deep British accent said to me,.

Pardon me,.

But I've heard that you have difficulties understanding Calvinism. I think this may be of help, and he handed me George Whitfield's letter to John Wesley on election, and the rest is history. But we have a tradition here, Anthony, on Iron Troupe and Zion Radio.

Whenever we interview a first-time guest, we have that guest provide for us a summary of their salvation testimony which would include the kind of religious atmosphere, if any, in which you were raised and also the kind of providential circumstances our Sovereign Lord raised up in your life that drew you to himself and saved you.

So why don't you give us your story?

Salvation Testimony and Early Exposure to the Gospel

A lot like that, really, but without the magic. It sort of houses with names of... And I was there from the age of nine, which was quite a trying thing, but first came to faith, and it was through the faithful ministry by the name of Bob McKean.

And Bobber, as we used to call him, he was in the 1980s, and I don't think he'd ever kind of left the 1950s, quite honestly. He was certainly not the trendy teacher at school, but his testimony of faith to the kids in assemblies through different Christian groups was very, very consistent.

And I did think about these things. Like I said, about the age of maybe 11 or 12, I think I'd just turned 12, I came to the point where we had a class at school, and I think my wife might think even probably at this age, I'm not very good at sitting still and being quiet.

So I got myself quite a lot of detention. The way that you could not attend the reading class was that was the same time that the Christian group called Christian Way met. And so I kind of thought about going, you know, I was kind of a little bit interested.

But once I chalked up two or three detentions from reading class, it was like, OK, I'm going to go to the Christian group. And just gradually over a period of time, I can remember getting to the point where I realised, you know, I think I believe this stuff, you know.

I have a very vivid memory of walking out of the building where we'd met and walking across one of the greens of grass. I was walking away thinking how true that was, but me coming to faith gradually and gently, there was no dramatic moment so much as just a general creeping realisation as my eyes were opened.

Probably about another eight years later, I discovered expository preaching. And honestly, that really felt like being born again again. In the first eight years of my faith, I went to progressively ever more charismatic churches.

By the end of it, I was very much involved in what would today be called the New Apostolic Reforms Movement, though it didn't have that name back then. And then a friend of mine got me into listening to some teaching tapes from an expository teacher by the name of Arnold Fruchtenbaum, a Messianic Jew.

And it was probably about a year of listening to him that I started to realise that what I was listening to by myself and what I was hearing at church and what I had been involved in previously just did not add up.

Another year maybe after that, before I was fully away from that background. But expository preaching has been very much a...

Expository Preaching and the Call to Ministry

Now, how and when did God make it clear to you that he was placing a call on your life to enter into pastoral ministry?

Much, much younger. I went away to a couple of retreats as a young teenager, maybe like 15 years of age, something like that. And even at those groups, they were suggesting that a charismatic church, they would...

And I'd done some... I think for me that the realisation of what I was born to do came when I began listening to Dr. Fruchtenbaum teach through Scripture. Like I say, it was the first time I'd ever come across expository teaching.

And Arnold has a very deadpan way of teaching. He's not very dramatic. He's got an accent that's sort of a mixture of Yiddish and Russian. Hard for me as a young man in Britain to understand. So a one-hour teaching take took about three hours while I kind of play, rewind, play, pause, rewind, play, pause, rewind, trying to take notes down.

And as he was going through it, I was absolutely just blown away by, this guy's just teaching the Bible. But I realised that all of my peers, all the people that I went to, I went to a local vineyard church at the time, and all the friends that I had from college that went there with me, that most of these guys would never listen to this.

They'd never get past the accent. They'd never get past the style of the delivery. And they'd never get these gems. And I just had this incredible urge from very, very early on that this is what I need to do.

I need to take this information and communicate it to my peers in ways that they would understand. I think initially I was thinking more about writing. The irony is it's taken 30 years to actually get any writing done.

But from that moment onwards, I knew that that was what I was here to do. I was here to take the Bible and communicate it to other people in a way that is simple, easy to understand and applicable. And as the years have gone by, I've become very determined that in making it accessible and simple to understand, that that doesn't necessarily mean that it needs to just be pure milk, that you can present solid food, that you can have meat, you can have good, in-depth teaching, and it can be presented in a way that is acceptable, understandable and manageable.

And we don't need to shy away from heavy teaching in that regard. So that's really, that was the turning point.

By the way, to clarify my memory, many years ago I thought, and I could be thinking of a different person that my friend Richie Saxon was referring to, but I have a friend, Richie Saxon, now retired from pastoral ministry, but he was a pastor in a messianic church on Long Island, New York, called Beth Yeshua House of Jesus in West Savell, Long Island, no longer there.

And Richie and I are still friends to this day, but this was, we initiated our friendship back in the 80s, and Arnold Fruchtenbaum was a great hero and mentor to Richie. And I thought that I heard him say that Arnold was, although in the messianic movement in some senses, he was a firm believer in the doctrines of sovereign grace, also nicknamed Calvinism.

Is that true?

I think Arnold is, that that is the approach that he takes.

And now I'm assuming when you say four-pointer, you're thinking of authentic Amarillianism and not...

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because there are, as you probably know, myriads of evangelicals who call themselves four-point Calvinists and when they explain to you what they mean by that, they redefine every one of those points.

Yeah, more 4 .8 or 4 .9, and I haven't read it for a few years yet.

Yes, and I think Arnold was also involved in Melville, Long Island, called the Little White Church in the Wildwood, and I could be corrected on that as well, and we'll have to find out from Richie if that was indeed the case.

Very sadly, a current Messianic congregation in that building that was there for decades, even before I was a Christian, they changed the sign out in front of that building, and that deeply saddened me because they had for decades a huge sign, white sign with bright blue letters, Jesus saves, and it so encouraged me when I became a Christian that the millions of drivers who were on the very busy road of Route 110 in Suffolk County, Long Island, every day were seeing that to and from work and wherever else they were going, and they took down that sign and put up a sign that gave the appearance that this was a non-Christian synagogue, and I'm not saying that they say that on the sign, but it just mentions the name of the synagogue with the Hebrew wording, and there's nothing about Jesus, nothing about Jesus saves, just really sad, really sad, and I hope I don't get hate mail from that congregation.

Government, the Church, and the Impact of COVID

But we're going to be going through our first break, and then when we return, we're going to be sinking our teeth into this very serious and important subject that we, as not only Christians, but the world faces, the authority of government, but of course, since your book is primarily directed to Christians, it is more of an important subject for we who are in the body of Christ, Caesar and the Church, a biblical study of government and the Church, we're going to be sinking our teeth into that during our discussion with Anthony Forsyth of Calvary Baptist Church of Burbank, California, after we return from our first break, and if you have a question, please send it to ChrisArnson at gmail .com.

ChrisArnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages.

James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries here, excited to announce that my longtime friend Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and I are heading to Washington, D .C. for the G3 Ministries Regional Conference on the theme Just Thinking About the Bible.

The conference will be held Thursday, September 15th, through Saturday, September 17th, and I'll be speaking along with Stephen Lawson, Josh Weiss, founder of G3 Ministries, and Daryl Bernard Harrison and Virgil Walker, co-hosts of the Just Thinking podcast.

To register, visit g3men .org, that's g3men .org, and click on Events. Your registration will include a ticket to the Museum of the Bible nearby the conference venue in Washington, D .C. So join me and Chris Arnson, September 15th through the 17th in Washington, D .C., for the G3 Ministries Regional Conference.

Register now before they run out of seats at g3men .org. That's g3men .org. Stop by the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Exhibitor booth and say hi to Chris Arnson while you're there.

I'm Dr. Joseph Piper, President Emeritus and Professor of Systematic and Applied Theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Every Christian who's serious about the Deformed Faith and the Westminster Standards should have and use the eight-volume commentary on the Theology and Ethics of the Westminster Larger Catechism titled Authentic Christianity by Dr. Joseph Moorcraft.

It is much more than an exposition of the Larger Catechism. It is a thoroughly researched work that utilizes biblical exegesis as well as historical and systematic theology. Dr. Moorcraft is Pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, and I urge everyone looking for a biblically faithful church in that area to visit that fine congregation.

For details on the eight-volume commentary, go to westminstercommentary .com westminstercommentary .com. For details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit heritagepresbyterianchurch .com heritagepresbyterianchurch .com.

Please tell Dr. Moorcraft and the saints at Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia that Dr. Joseph Piper of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary sends you.

Have you noticed the gap that exists between the Sunday morning sermon and the Sunday school classroom or the small group study? So often we experience great preaching from the pulpit, but when it comes time to study God's Word in those smaller settings, well, let's be honest, it leaves a lot to be desired.

It seems like it is nearly impossible to find good curriculum out there today that is true to the Word of God and is built upon sound doctrine. Much less it's hard to find curriculum that will actually teach people how to study the Bible.

Hi there, my name is Jordan Too and I am the Executive Director of the Baptist Publishing House. Our ministry is dedicated to providing local churches with sound Bible study resources. Our quarterly curriculum is titled The Baptist Expositor, and for good reason.

We are Baptist and we exegete the scriptures. If you want to have a curriculum that teaches your people how to study the Word of God, I invite you to go to our website, download a free study, baptistpublishinghouse .com.

May God bless you.

Satan is the father of lies and spin, and the mother of those lies is a government who has rejected God. We have especially been lied to these last two years, and the COVID panic has been one of the central mechanisms that our government has used to lie to us and grab more power.

Because Christians have not been reading their Bibles, we are susceptible to lies and are weak in our ability to fight these lies. God has given us His Word to fight Satan and his lies, and we need to recover all of God's Word, its serrated edge and all.

Mark your calendars for October 6th through 8th as we fight, laugh, and feast to the glory of God in Knoxville, Tennessee. You will be enlightened, edified, encouraged, and challenged by 10 speakers on the theme, Lies, Propaganda, Storytelling, and the Serrated Edge, covering various topics that address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Speakers include Pastor Doug Wilson of Christ Church of Moscow, Idaho, and the whole gang at the Cross Politics Show and Podcast. For details, visit flfnetwork .com. That's F for fight, L for laugh, F for feast, network .com.

See you there October 6th through 8th in Knoxville, Tennessee.

When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the New American Standard Bible were among my very first sponsors. It gives me joy knowing that many scholars and pastors in the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio audience have been sticking with or switching to the NASB.

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Here's a great way for your church to help keep Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the air. Pastors, are your pew Bibles tattered and falling apart? Consider restocking your pews with the NASB, and tell the publishers you heard about them from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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That's why Truth, Love, Parent exists. We serve God by equipping dads and moms to be the ambassador parents God called and created them to be. We produce free parenting resources, train church leaders, and offer biblical counseling so that the next generation of dads and moms can use the scriptures to parent their children for life and godliness.

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If you love Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, one of the best ways you can help keep the show on the air is by supporting our advertisers. One such faithful advertiser who really believes in what Chris Arnton is doing is Daniel P. Patafuco, serious injury lawyer and Christian apologist.

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So please go to royaldiadem .com today. We are now back with our guest today, Anthony Forsyth and I'm excited that we are addressing such a vital topic.

That has.

Really consumed the minds of most of us in the church and this is really capsulized in his book Caesar and the Church A Biblical Study of Government and the Church. If you have a question send it to chrisarnson at gmail .com and give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence.

First of all other than the fact that we all witnessed how governments not only in states individually but in the United States as a whole and even overseas, everywhere as far as I know we witnessed the mishandling of what was being described as a pandemic and we witnessed governments flexing their muscles and individuals in governments flexing their muscles and what at first looked like understandable restrictions in the midst of an illness that involved great mystery soon became real evidences of a growing tyranny, at least in the minds of most Christians that I know and respect.

Other than that were there specific things that you were facing in your own life as a pastor or as a Christian that compelled you to say, I've got to put my voice into the conversation here about the church and the government or the government and the church?

The local week after we reopened, I mean literally within a few days and so for most of the next few months we're trying to fly under the radar as it were, we're trying to meet but meet in such a way that we're not really drawing attention to ourselves.

We just didn't have the otherwise that a larger church like MacArthur's does. So it was an interesting time but as to why I decided to put my name into the mix and write I didn't really, I mean we during the course of a year or so before a sermon on three occasions I think it was, I had done a sort of 15 minute, you know, this is where we stand with regards to this, this is what the Bible teaches on that, just as a way of clear on what we were, on why we were doing what we were doing and because it had come in bits and pieces and through conversations, when we finished a book of the Bible I often have a few with the next series and I decided to the view that we took and why we took it and what the Bible taught on this matter and and I the idea really, to be honest with you Chris, was just to draw a line under it I thought that, you know, I'm going to preach these sermons, that's where we stand, anybody got any questions we'll refer you back to the previous sermon.

That's it line in the sand and the irony is that now I'm still talking about it because the sermon's got so much traction that lots of people were saying you need to write this down, you need to write this down so I finally did and here I am.

Romans 13, Government Authority, and the Limits of Submission

Well, perhaps you could start with what you surmised were the errors or the areas of ignorance that evangelicals around you were demonstrating over how, when and how long and how much do we obey government mandates and things like this or even unawareness ignorance or error in your minds of your own congregation.

What were the initial things that made you say, wait a minute we may be getting something wrong here or wait a minute, seems like everybody's getting something wrong here.

Well I flee the same interpretation of Romans 13 with their church say church A that would say well Romans 13 says we have to submit to the governing authorities so when Governor Newsom says how high, you know, tells us how high to jump then we'll jump that high and maybe a little bit higher on top just to be safe, you know, that we will do exactly as we're told because that's what scripture commands us to do.

And then church B would say well we agree with that interpretation that we should submit to the governing authorities but the governing authority of the United States of America is the Constitution and therefore this governor or the president is overreaching and they shouldn't be doing this.

We have rights of freedom of worship and therefore we won't be closing our churches down or we will be reopening them and we will be having church when we're being told not to and that to me was just an incredible irony that you would have you would have people with exactly the same interpretation of exactly the same passage and they would come to completely opposite views of what should be done and doing the book as I addressed tonight, their premise is wrong and I don't think that anybody else said oh we've got the Constitution so we don't have to obey this particular command and yet they make this quo of this is what Romans 13 means nor other Christians in other nations under the bus, you know that Christians in the UK, Christians in Australia, Christians in Canada and South Africa and other nations that used to be regarded as free nations that these Christians are being basically told by implication you have no Constitution that's just tough on you basically and so what I think is so important is it deals with Romans 13 in a way that it's applicable to all.

Well, you obviously know as you've already stated that there not only have been differences of opinion by biblically learned Christians and even pastors and theologians and scholars and apologists. When we come back from our midway break which we are entering into momentarily what can you say is the conclusion that you have drawn in the midst of hearing polar opposite arguments from faithful Christ loving biblically literate Christians.

Perhaps you could give us a brief description of the polar opposite sides and where you fit into the equation and then after that brief description we'll get into more of the detail when we return from our midway break.

Delegated Authority and Rendering to Caesar

Authority over us, authority does the government have and that really is the whole premise of the book that if all authority belongs to God which it clearly does in Scripture then anybody who has any authority in any realm that that authority has been delegated to them by God and therefore the authority that they have delegated to them is limited in some way shape or form, they can't have all authority to or they would be God and therefore the authority is limited and so the issue of do we render unto Caesar, the issue is what has been delegated to Caesar that we should render it unto him and so the question becomes one of how much authority does the government have.

And without asking that question the whole issue of submission to government is really quite moot because if I were to tell you Chris what to do, if I were to say Chris you must do this, then if you go ahead and do it then that's because you've agreed with me, it's not because I have any authority over you, I don't where there is legitimate authority so really the book is dealing with what authority does the government have, he has God delegated.

Great, well we have to go to our midway break right now and as I've already said if you have questions and we already have a few people waiting to have their questions asked on air and answered. If you would like to get in line with those people already waiting send your questions to Chris Arnzen at gmail .com C-H-R-I-S A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.