August 29, 2025 Show with John William Noble on “Advancing the Classical Christian School Movement in the U.K.”

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Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer

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George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend

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Jim Thorpe. It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in 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 chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse 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 two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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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.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 29th day of August 2025.

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I'm thrilled to have a first -time guest today to address a couple of issues, one of which we have addressed on the program several times in regard to classical

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Christian education. But today we have joining us for the first time

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John William Noble, pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Aberdeen, Scotland, a confessionally

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Reformed Baptist congregation, and he's also the director of the

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Doxa Theo Christian School, the first classical Christian school in Scotland.

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Today we're going to be addressing advancing the classical Christian school movement in the United Kingdom and the fight against pragmatic evangelicalism.

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It's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor John William Noble.

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Thanks for having me on, Chris. It's a pleasure to be here. It's a pleasure to have you on the program.

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Well, first of all, tell our listeners something more about Grace Baptist Church of Aberdeen, Scotland.

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So the church is a relatively new church in terms of it's existed for six and a half years, literally being planted from scratch.

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I began serving as a pastor over 10 years ago.

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And then a few years into my first pastorate, I became a member of a

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Reformed Baptist church in Edinburgh with a view to aiming to begin a church planting work in Aberdeen because there are very few confessionally

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Reformed Baptist churches anywhere in Scotland and there's nothing in the northeast of Scotland. And so in 2019,

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I was sent to begin a church with no building, no people, no money.

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So it was certainly quite an undertaking, especially given the spiritual apathy in our land.

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Something I'm sure we'll discuss more about later. And I started that with my wife coming with me and there was another brother and his wife that were a significant blessing.

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He's now my fellow elder, another man and another couple of people. So we had a kind of core group of seven people that began the work.

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We were aiming to be very evangelistic from the beginning, distributing gospel content, evangelising in the local area, preaching the gospel in the city centre.

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And in the Lord's Providence, the church has grown. It grew particularly off the back of how we challenged the

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COVID mandates. And since then, we've had a membership that has risen up to 50 members, which in Scotland has been quite encouraging.

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And we've been able to acquire two buildings, which also connects with what we've been able to do in the realm of Christian education.

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So it's been a very busy, intense, at many times challenging, but very fruitful six and a half years since Grace Baptist Church Aberdeen has begun.

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Well, 50 members is quite impressive, considering if you had 200 members in Reformed Baptist circles, you'd be a mega church.

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Yeah, certainly in Scotland. To what do you attribute the scarcity of Reformed Baptist churches in Scotland?

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I mean, Scotland has such a rich history of Reformed theology. It was at one time a bastion of Calvinism.

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Is the scarcity of Reformed Baptist churches because of the predominance of Presbyterianism or is it just the decline of Reformed theology altogether in Scotland?

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How long would you like me to spend answering that question? Take as long as you want.

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Yeah, okay. I'll try to be brief with the longer answer to that, because I am conscious that people, especially in America, will have some understanding of the history of the

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Scottish church scene, but maybe other aspects more recently are not so known. So people will certainly know that there's a rich heritage of Reformed orthodoxy within the church climate of Scotland, particularly

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Presbyterianism. But even once the particular Baptists began to form and the churches were being planted in England and so on, there was a kind of move for confessional

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Reformed Baptist churches following that. But I would say maybe in the 19th century, when there were an increasing number of Baptist churches at that point, there would have been quite an emphasis on the importance of Reformed doctrine, even confessionalism.

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But over the then hundred years taking us into the 20th century, not just in Baptist churches, but in Presbyterian churches and denominations across Scotland and throughout the

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United Kingdom, they increasingly liberalized, they apostatized in many regards.

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And what we're kind of dealing with now when it comes to the Reformed Baptist scene on the whole is sort of like the dying embers of a previous generation.

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Now, there are some really godly saints who are still responsible, some of which are still in positions of eldership in some confessionally

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Reformed Baptist churches in Scotland, but there would only be, I mean, roughly a dozen, if that, in Scotland now, and the numbers of people that would attend or be members would be anything from like 10 to 30.

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Now, as a general rule of thumb, and this is only a sweeping statement, if you imagine the average church size of maybe an

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American context, maybe if you remove a zero from that, that gives you a more of a like -for -like comparison in the

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Scottish church scene. So even though maybe people hearing of a church with only 10 or 15 people attending and a membership of 10, they might think, well, that church is about to close.

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Not necessarily. It could be depending on the age and other aspects of finances. But that would be the reality for a few of the remaining

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Reformed Baptist churches. I would say that when I was actually involved with another pastor to begin a

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Reformed Baptist publishing house called Parousia and we released a copy of the Baptist Confession, that was very popular in America and we had contact with many

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Reformed Baptist churches that part of the world. There was limited interest in the

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UK. I did contact the Baptist Union and they weren't being sarcastic or funny when they said this, but they told me that they would contact the history department within the

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Baptist Union about this book that was being released. I think that was quite symbolic of the attitude towards not just Reformed Baptist Confessions of Faith, but just generally in terms of Reformed doctrine nowadays.

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We deal with more sweeping, broad and vague statements of faith.

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There's not such a specificity of confessionalism across the board. It's quite a new thing, even though it's obviously an old and historical thing with such a rich heritage.

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Most people now don't really understand what that is, sadly. Well, if anybody wants to find out more information about Grace Baptist Church of Aberdeen, Scotland, go to graceaberdeen .org

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and you will find all the information that you need.

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We do have listeners in Scotland and in other parts of the UK and in Ireland and places all over the world.

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People do travel, so even if you're not from Scotland, you might wind up there on vacation or something in the future.

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That website is graceaberdeen .org. Well, now tell us about this exciting classical

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Christian school that you have founded, which is the first classical

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Christian school in all of Scotland. Yes, so this, again, would probably take me back to when we started our church, because the fight to advance

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Christian education in our country, in some ways, it won't be surprising to the listeners.

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In other ways, it may be somewhat surprising when I just give a bit of the details and context to get us to the point where we are today.

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So I do need to give a bit of background and context just to help people understand how we've got to this point.

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So again, in line with when we started the Reformed Baptist Church at that point, my wife and I, we've now got four children in the

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Lord's Providence. At that point, we had our two -year -old son and we were expecting the birth of our second child when the church began.

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And we were, on a personal level, talking about beginning the more structured home educating of our children.

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And then at that point, I started to, for the first time ever, think more widely about what are the

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Christian education provisions in Scotland? Historically, before we got to the 19th century and people started to reform education, and by reform we mean liberalize and turn it into something pagan, the church had responsibility over schools that existed.

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But then in the past couple of hundred years, they have become government controlled.

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And as governments have become more secular, more pagan, not only becoming more neutral in inverted commas regarding the things of God and the word of God, but even outright attacking it.

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The schools have obviously been one of the main things that have become an infiltration in the minds of young people.

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So with all that in mind, I was aware that the percentage of even

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Christian families home educating was very small, even though in Scotland, mercifully, it is legal to have a home educate your children.

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In addition to that, I was conscious that the subject of Christian education and even actual applications of parents raising their children in a biblical way was a significant contradiction, sadly, to the reality of what state education was offering.

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But I just was not hearing of churches and even groups of churches, if you like, being involved in looking to start up many schools anywhere, really.

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I mean, I knew of maybe, I think, three at that point, 2019, three Christian schools that I knew of that would have been within a

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Protestant bracket in Scotland, one in Glasgow, one in Edinburgh, and one in Stornoway in the Isle of Lewis.

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So certainly in Aberdeen, there was nothing. So that's when I began looking into the option of what it would look like to try to begin a school, because I was hoping that there might be an opportunity for a provision, not simply for if, for example, any family in my church were wanting to go down this route, but even more widely.

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So I spoke with one or two people who I knew were involved in organizations like,

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I mean, for UK listeners, the Christian Institute and Christian Concern. So these are organizations that look to support

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Christians who face any mild degree of persecution in workplace or because of their faith in another setting, just to get an idea of where they believe that the spiritual climate was and the need for Christian schools.

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And I remember one man saying to me, well, you need this school last year. He was saying it's becoming so urgent, especially with things like the woke ideologies on gender that was infiltrating the state schools in such a prominent way.

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So I went to the point of, OK, well, we need to try and get this done. But we were only a church of about 7 members.

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And I knew we as a church in and of ourselves were not in a position to be able to set up our own school.

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So I contacted any of the Reformed and even evangelical church leaders that I knew in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire, and I got no responses apart from one church leader in a

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Reformed Presbyterian church. So that already gives an indication I wasn't even getting dialogue with most.

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So I did meet with that minister and we ended up having discussions and started to put together the plan to set up a school.

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Now, I should say, this was not the setting up of Doxa Theo Christian School, because I've actually now set up two schools.

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So this was another school that we set up. There were many challenges in seeking to do so.

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One thing that I would say is that in my experience over the past few years, there are some people who are zealous to try to advance the cause of Christian education.

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But unfortunately, pretty much anybody in our nation, because of the fact that there's been such a secular and pagan education bracket for any professing

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Christian, this is now really a new thing. It's not something that's been taught about.

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It's not something that's been applied. So there's certainly been a lot of trial and error and mistakes that have been made.

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But even with all of the challenges that COVID brought and the delays and trying to get things started, we eventually managed to set up this first school.

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Now, at this point, I'll let you know, when we managed to set it up, which was in 2022 at the end, we had two pupils enrolled.

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Now, this is a city of over 200 ,000 people with over 100 churches.

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And there is Aberdeenshire, an area that's very vast with many churches and professing Christians.

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And the two pupils that were enrolled was my son and my fellow elder's daughter. We had a few other people who had expressed an interest in enrolling their children, but they didn't do it.

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So it's just to give an idea of the actual interest in doing this from the beginning.

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Now, in time, what we find is once something's established and some others have been able to see, okay, this is what that looks like, more people jump on board.

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But the fact that there was that little amount of interest in this starting out, because in my mind,

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I anticipated there would surely be a reasonable number of Christian families, even if it's just because they're so disillusioned with how bad state education has become.

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And during the 2010 to 2020 period, under the Scottish government, the education standards, as well as the liberalizing and the wicked ideologies that have come in, it's outright against biblical

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Christianity. That's the level of it. But even with all that stated, that's all we got.

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So that was significantly problematic. We had difficulties with staffing and on a board level, even eventually financially.

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And when we got to about maybe two years ago or just under two years ago, in the

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Lord's Providence as a church, we were in a position to put in a bid to buy a

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Church of Scotland parish building. So this was quite significant because we currently at that point owned a small but sizable church hall and a side hall, which we were using as our place of worship, which we were beginning to not outgrow, but we were certainly quite full in it.

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But the Church of Scotland parish building would have been a very big building for us to consider buying.

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But we decided to move forward and put a bid in for that building for a couple of reasons.

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Number one, because as many may already know, Church of Scotland as a denomination has become an outright apostate and often they'll happily sell their buildings to become nightclubs, pubs, turned into blocks of flats or apartments, as it would be called, all of these sorts of things.

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And we desperately wanted to see this building, which is so beautiful. It's got an organ, a pulpit, all of these things.

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We wanted to see that continuing to be used as a place where the Word of God would go forth. So we were able to put in a bid and eventually after some challenge, we were able to buy that building.

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And in line with that, another key reason for doing so was that the current building that we were worshipping in would become a building that we would set apart to set up our own school.

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Now, this is really significant to mention because, and I may be wrong about this, but certainly from my kind of wide research and discussions with people,

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I don't know of any other church in Scotland, and this may even apply to the

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UK, that has set up their own school. Now, that might seem quite shocking when we think of the size of the

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United Kingdom and the heritage in our nation, but this was what we thought we were now in a position to do given our church had grown so much.

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And another crucial thing, which there is such a distinct lack of across our nation, sadly, for me and then others increasingly in the church, we were repeatedly preaching about this subject, about how children are to be raised, about what it means for children to be educated in the ways of the

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Lord. And in time, what we saw happening is the culture in our church was shifting away from what was the mainstream position of children go to state school and you might get the odd home educator, which is the average situation within evangelicalism.

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But what was happening in our church is that more and more families were home educating, more and more couples who were yet to have children or had just had children being born were already very clear in their minds.

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When we have children that are primary school age, like that kind of age four or five to 10, 11, we would want our children to either be home educated or in a

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Christian school. This is really important to stress because sadly, this is not happening in our nation.

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It's why there's such an apathy towards this. But this has been crucial to steering even our church in a direction where we are fully behind this because there's been teaching on it and we have now families and Christians in our church that are discussing these points in a matter that is serious to their own families.

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So that's the developing culture that we had. And in line with that, we had a young man who went through the teacher training qualifications in Scotland, which

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I mean, being realistic, most of that, not all of it, but most of it's a complete waste of time because it's preparing you for a brand of educating and being an educator, which the state wants, which is contradicting the

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Bible. But we were still investing in him as a church. And even because we have a couple of people who are on our school board who have decades of teaching experience, that's been quite significant also in preparing for the beginning of the school.

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So quite a number of the pieces have come together where we were able to have our own building.

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We were able to have a board of people in our church. And so officially, this school has been a ministry of our church, which has been established.

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It started with classes being allowed by the

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Scottish government, giving the kind of, if you like, the legal green light back in January this year.

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We started with five pupils. And as of this academic term, beginning in August of 2025, we now have 12 pupils with more parents expressing interest.

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And this is, I mean, given what I mentioned three years ago about the two pupils in that other school that we started with, this has been greatly encouraging given the spiritual climate of this subject in our country.

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Yes. Well, if anybody wants more details about this Christian school,

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Doxa Theo Christian School in Aberdeen, Scotland, go to doxatheochristianschool .org.

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Doxatheochristianschool .org. Can you tell us what that means in Latin, Doxa Theo? Yeah, it's the glory of God.

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It's actually the Greek word for glory and God. We contemplated going for a

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Latin term, but we went for an original biblical language in terms of the title of the school.

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Great. Well, when we come back from our first commercial break, we're going to have you do what all of our first -time guests do.

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We're going to have you give a summary of your salvation testimony. That would include any kind of religious atmosphere in which you were raised and the kinds of providential circumstances our sovereign

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Lord raised up in your life that drew you to himself and saved you. And we'll look forward to hearing you do that momentarily.

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But right now, we are going to our commercial break. If you'd like to join us on the air, folks, with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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chrisarnson at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

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USA. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors. James White here of Alpha Omega Ministries announcing that this

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September, I'm heading out to Pennsylvania to speak at two events that my longtime friend

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Chris Arnson has lined up for me. On Thursday, September 18th at 11 a .m.,

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I'm speaking to men in ministry leadership at Chris's Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Free Pastors Luncheon at Church of the

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Living Christ in Loisville. Then, on Sunday, September 21st at 1 .30

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p .m., I'm speaking at Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle on the theme, Can We Trust the

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Bible is the Authentic and Inherent Word of God? I hope you can join Chris and me for both events.

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For more details on the Free Pastors Luncheon, visit ironsharpensironradio .com.

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That's ironsharpensironradio .com. For more details on Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle, visit trbccarlisle .org.

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That's trbccarlisle .org. God willing, I'll see you in September in Pennsylvania for these exciting events.

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I'm Simon O'Mahony, pastor of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Originally from Cork, Ireland, the

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Lord and his sovereign providence has called me to shepherd this new and growing congregation here in Cumberland County.

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At TRBC, we joyfully uphold the Second London Baptist Confession. We embrace congregational church government and we are committed to preaching the full counsel of God's word for the edification of believers, the salvation of the lost and the glory of our triune

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In our worship, we sing psalms and the great hymns of the faith and we gather around the Lord's table every

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Sunday. We would love for you to visit and worship with us. You can find our details at trbccarlisle .org.

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That's trbccarlisle .org. God willing, we'll see you soon.

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Well, folks, you may have heard me announce for the first time yesterday that our dear friends and faithful supporters for many years,

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Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com, is closing its doors permanently before the end of the year.

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It might even be even sooner than that. It is very regretfully that I make this announcement.

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And at this point, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service is selling only in stock books and they are discounted at 40 % off plus an extra 10 % off if you're buying them in the store.

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There are thousands of Reformed books available, so check out the website of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service at cvbbs .com,

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cvbbs .com, or stop in if you live locally here in the

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania area or can travel there. And I am so sad to know this news because not only has this been an enormous financial support for Iron Trip and Zion Radio, but it's also been such an excellent resource for solidly

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Reformed Christian literature at reasonable prices. So, we are very sad to say goodbye to such a wonderful ministry owned over the decades by two different families.

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And they've been supporting us for many years, even before the most recent family, who is currently sponsoring the show, before they purchased it.

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But we hope that you will at least take advantage of the wonderful sales that they're having.

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One of those Romans 8, 28 situations where even though there was very sad news of cvbbs .com

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closing permanently, the good news is that you can get books less expensively than you've ever gotten them before.

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So, go to cvbbs .com and find out more about what discounts and what books are still available.

30:58

And we are now back with our guest today, John William Noble, who, as we said earlier, is the pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Aberdeen, Scotland, and the founder of Baxitheo Classical Christian School.

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If you have a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

31:36

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

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Well, as I said before the break, whenever we have a first -time guest, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony, and we'd love to hear your story.

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So, I grew up in a town north of Aberdeen. So, if you can picture the map of Scotland, there's the point right at the very top, which would be the

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Highlands. Not there, but there's another easterly point, an area north of Aberdeen called

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Peterhead. My parents were Bible -believing Christians, and my grandfather had actually been a minister of the

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Church of Scotland. He would have been very much evangelical and Reformed in his doctrine. So, I was very much blessed to be in that Christian home environment when

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I was growing up. I remember actually for a while when I was listening to the testimonies of people who had these dramatic conversion stories thinking, well, my conversion story is quite undramatic and a bit boring by comparison.

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But as the Lord has matured my thinking doctrinally over the years, I've come to cherish this more and more when

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I give my testimony, because to be in a home where my father and mother were teaching me, obviously encouraging me to be reading the

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Bible, to be studying it, that was an immense blessing because I was growing up with a worldview that was centered upon the existence of God and the gospel.

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So, I don't actually know the definitive point in which

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I became a born -again believer. I do remember a sermon in a

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Baptist church which had a bit of an Arminian undertone in terms of praying to ask

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Jesus into your heart. But I do remember a sense of real conviction about my sin and the importance of being saved by the blood of Christ.

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And in my early teenage years, it would have been when I was studying biblical doctrine, even systematic and reformed doctrine in more detail.

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Providentially, with my father being a teacher and then later becoming a head teacher, he was actually the person who was teaching the class

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I was part of when I was in my mid -teens, systematic theology. So, I learned systematic theology from my father in that kind of more official setting, if you like, as well as the

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Christian environment that I was growing up in. One thing that does even tie into me many years later beginning the church plant, the church situation was certainly a struggle.

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I was a member of a Church of Scotland church, which wasn't apostate, but yeah,

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I mean, they were certainly moving in a direction that was increasingly liberalising. And it became quite surprising to me beginning to study theology in more detail and then starting to be subjected to such things.

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When I went to Aberdeen University to study theology, when I was confronted with people who would have claimed to be

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Christian, some even saying they were going into pastoral ministry who were female, they were liberal, they denied even some of the basics of Christian doctrine.

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And in years to come, then meeting ministers who were even denying the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, calling that ghastly theology.

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It really was becoming an increasing eye -opener to the spiritual climate of the land in which once was called the land of the book.

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But I would say outwith my parents, who were a significant blessing in my upbringing, it was probably one or two people outwith my own church setting that were quite formative in shaping my theological understanding.

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I benefited from studying Louis Burkhoff's Systematic Theology when I was doing some detailed study in that.

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There were one or two lectures at university that were a blessing. Also, the one or two online preachers in my early twenties as I began to have opportunities to preach and to serve in that capacity.

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But one thing that I never had that now I guess I have quite a big responsibility in doing myself as the pastor of a

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Reformed Baptist church, I never had biblically grounded discipleship investment for me growing as a young man of God and as a preacher, and even in discerning a call for pastoral ministry.

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And that's something that I think is definitely a major concern across the board in our land.

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But I would say that one thing that has been formative for me in preparing me not just as a pastor, but even just as a man of God, is in my early adult life being subjected to difficult church situations.

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The Lord used that to break and to mold and to humble me because probably when

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I was maybe 20, 21 years old and I started to preach in one or two sizable churches,

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I was thinking, well, I'm quite a preacher, that kind of thing. And so as time went on, the

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Lord was certainly beginning to very much realign and humble the thinking in that regard and start to properly prepare me for what would be pastoral ministry in the future.

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So these have been quite significant moments. It's not the standard thing that you would want as a young man to be prepared and developed for ministry, but at the same time, it's still been a way where perhaps the

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Lord has prepared me for any pioneering type work given where we're at spiritually.

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But yeah, the blessing of being in a Christian home and having that grounding has certainly been formative to shaping me as a man of God.

37:48

Now, how was it that you came to discover and fall in love with and embrace the doctrines of sovereign grace?

37:57

Yeah, so that's an interesting one, actually, because I didn't actually read the London Baptist Confession of Faith until I was in my 20s.

38:05

I knew of the Westminster when I was younger, of course. I mean, not that I'm saying that I just thought

38:12

Reformed meant Presbyterian. I know that's quite a discussion, but that was certainly what I had studied of Reformed history, if you like.

38:21

I hadn't looked much into the particular Baptists and that stuff at that point, but because I went through,

38:28

I guess, the Bible in a systematic way and I studied the attributes of God, I looked at the doctrine of original sin without actually going through these are the five points of Calvinism and these things.

38:39

By reading the Bible and studying it, these were the kind of doctrinal convictions

38:44

I was coming to. So by the time I started to, at that more university age, look at, for example,

38:50

Calvin's Institutes and the like and start to look more in depth at the Reformed history, I was actually realizing that, well, these are actually things

38:58

I already believe. Similarly, when I started to read the London Baptist Confession of Faith, I wouldn't say that that was in any significant way shaping my theological convictions.

39:11

It was more just confirming, yeah, that's pretty much in line with what I believe. I'm not saying that one way is better or worse, but it was quite interesting just to think that just mainly through that study of the

39:22

Bible and certain doctrinal grounding, that was the way by which I came to believe in the doctrines of grace and have, yeah, basically a

39:33

Reformed biblical grounding of understanding. It's why anytime someone says, oh, how should

39:39

I go about studying the Bible and so on, as well as encouraging daily Bible study and reading certain books of the

39:46

Bible, I always emphasize the importance of having a systematic theology, understanding the doctrine of who

39:54

God is and his attributes, the God we worship, the one who has created us, and then understanding who we are as made in God's image and the fallen depraved nature of who and what we are.

40:06

That brings us to the picture of redemption that we have being built through the Old Testament and the desperate need we have of Christ and this glorious gospel, and that it is only by the

40:16

Spirit of God regenerating one who is spiritually dead that we can become spiritually alive, a new birth, a new creation in Christ Jesus.

40:26

It's that picture, that glorious, beautiful picture we have in Scripture, and that's something that I think is very important to have in view and certainly has been my testimony.

40:37

And when and how did you come to believe that God had placed a call upon your life to enter into pastoral ministry?

40:47

Yeah, that's within the framework of some of the things I've shared specifically. When I started studying theology at university,

40:57

I thought about pastoral ministry, but I'd considered law or teaching, these sorts of things.

41:05

So I wasn't thinking, okay, I'm going to become a preacher or a pastor, but it was something

41:10

I gave thought to. The reason I did that as my subject at university was just because it was actually the subject

41:17

I did best at when I was doing my hires, which are the qualifications you do to get to university.

41:25

So I was strong at that, and I thought, well, I should do quite well at that at university. As it turns out,

41:31

I did well at the stuff in the New Testament and certain other subjects that were more within, let's say,

41:38

Reformed theology. But the Aberdeen University theology department has some really liberal and, yeah, crackpot, if I can use that phrase, courses as well, that's got nothing to do with the

41:50

Bible. So it was a bit of a mixed bag. But towards the end of that, I started to think more seriously about what

41:58

I'm going to do in the future. And it was actually through… Initially, I started for a period of time listening to some sermons by John Piper on the

42:06

Desiring God website. I remember a couple of sermons he preached was making reference to Jonathan Edwards.

42:14

So I started looking into some of Edwards' teachings, and I remember looking at his character, and I remember reading something specifically about his attitude at the age

42:24

I was at. I think I was maybe a year younger, but it was basically a list of resolves that he had as a 21 -year -old man regarding seeking to do all that he can, maximizing all that he is for the glory of God.

42:39

And this really challenged me because I was thinking about disciplines that I was trying to bring in, even in terms of things like physical fitness and just how

42:48

I would manage my time, even with regards to the Scriptures. But this was a whole other level to me.

42:54

So this helped me to think, okay, well, I might be thinking and praying about being a mature godly man, but this is really where it's at.

43:02

Another thing that was quite significant then to think more specifically about pastoral ministry, I remember reading a sort of biographical account about the life and ministry of D.

43:14

L. Moody, and one particular area that this dealt with was thinking about the pastor's calling and what it means to be a man set apart from ministry.

43:24

And one of the things that was really emphasized was the kind of reality of the suffering and the difficulty you'll face in ministry.

43:32

And this was something that really struck me because I started to think more in line with what I saw of the apostles and early church leaders, that this isn't a glamorous affair where you're standing on a podium and everyone's giving you the applause and the kudos.

43:48

It's more the reality and the rigors of pastoral ministry. Now, one thing in my quite significant naivety at that point,

43:57

I remember thinking at that very moment that, well, yes, there will be suffering, there's bound to be difficulty in pastoral ministry, but we're living in a time that's a lot more peaceful.

44:08

The church scene in Scotland is nowhere near as difficult or as trying as the likes of obviously when the

44:15

Reformation began and John Knox came back to the country or even during the time of the Common Ancestors when people were literally spilling blood to maintain religious freedom, these sorts of things.

44:25

I was thinking that, well, now we're in the time where the blessing and the fruit of that is being experienced.

44:31

But as I've learned in years to come, though we are still benefiting greatly from the impact of that, most of that has now been attacked and even abandoned by much of the church.

44:41

So we are actually dealing more with a wartime than I had realized. But that was very formative.

44:47

I also remember at that point my father saying to me, well, you're articulating now the beginnings of a desire and maybe a sense of a calling to ministry, but this call needs to be tested.

45:00

And the way in which that was tested, as I adhered to earlier, wasn't specifically a local church that was investing in me and my ministry development, though I was a member of a church at that point.

45:11

It was more through, in the upcoming months and years, the Lord breaking and shaping and preparing me for what would be pastoral ministry.

45:20

And so by the time there was a church which was in Edinburgh that was calling me to pastoral ministry,

45:26

I actually remember being interviewed by that church. And they were asking me about things like my

45:31

Bachelor of Divinity and how important that was. And I was quite honest and said, formal theological training is a good and helpful thing, but it's not the main thing.

45:45

And so it's more in terms of what's happening in the context of the local church. And I've had a bit of a lack of that in some regards.

45:53

And I would hope and pray that there would be that emphasis in terms of pastoral ministry in that regard. So that was certainly the point when a church was recognizing and setting me apart.

46:03

And then when it came to the Reformed Baptist Church in Edinburgh, them setting me apart and recognizing my gifts as a preacher of God's word, as a pastor and church planter, that was where a local church was officially setting me apart and sending me to begin this church.

46:21

So that was like the kind of biblical confirmation in terms of bringing me to the point where now

46:27

I've been biblically sent to begin a church as a recognized pastor and minister of the gospel.

46:34

And as far as the classical Christian education passion of yours, can you be more specific and detailed about what sets classical

46:50

Christian education apart from not only secular education, which is more of a stark contrast, but even amongst other

47:02

Christian schools? Yeah. So this is something

47:07

I didn't go into much detail about previously. But so one thing that I thought about back in 2019 was having a

47:21

Christian education would be a good and an important thing. But I realized, and this was a limitation that I'm very understanding of at the stage we're at in Scotland, when

47:32

I saw most Christians being the very few that were doing anything of this nature, trying to think about establishing either

47:40

Christian schools or homeschool cooperatives, what I found was on an educational level, it was basically a similar sort of model that you would find in a state school, but with Christianity either sprinkled on top or changing bits to make it more

47:58

Christian. Now, that's better. Making something that's secular

48:04

Christian, there's obviously going to be good things to that. But in terms of thinking about the actual biblical grounds and ethos of education, one thing that I don't think many people nowadays actually realize is that historically, a lot of the, even the great

48:20

Christian writers of previous centuries, they would have been taught classically.

48:26

And it's more recent with these educational reforms that the style and nature of education has changed.

48:34

So just to be brief on this, because certainly I would recommend further deeper study, in the kind of early mid -stages of the last century, there was a sort of rediscovery of classical

48:47

Christian education in England to an extent, but then this kind of took off more in America as well, which is based on an understanding, a way of education called the

49:01

Trivium. So it's basically three stages of learning in the life and development of a child where in the sort of primary school age, ages maybe four to five to around about 10 to 11, that would be called the grammar stage where mainly you are giving the children the facts, the knowledge, the education.

49:24

And crucially, and I need to stress this, it's not just about being classical, it's about being

49:29

Christian. So as you're giving the knowledge, you're imparting the knowledge to the children, it's grounded on the scriptures, a worldview that's centered upon God and his word.

49:40

So constitutionally, we as a school here at Aberdeen are reformed in our doctrine.

49:47

Now that doesn't mean that we're giving Calvin's Institutes to four -year -olds. In terms of the initial stages, that's still the ethos that's driving this.

50:01

This is what we believe in terms of how we're actually educating the children. So that's important.

50:08

And therefore, any notion, because I've had people, I mean, I'm sure folks have heard this, the arguments that, well,

50:14

I mean, obviously you get those who say, oh, yeah, children are salt and light and they can be the missionaries in the state schools, that kind of thing.

50:20

Now, I mean, I could say plenty of things to counter that. But even more specifically, there's not a neutrality in education.

50:29

There's not a neutrality in life as if to say, well, there's some aspects of life which are Christian, some aspects of life which are not

50:36

Christian, and some aspects of life which are neutral and they can go either way. Now, somebody would maybe push back and say, well, hang on a second.

50:44

If you're dealing with maths, two plus two equals four, that can be the same thing in a state school as it is in a

50:50

Christian school. And I would say, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, there are certain things. So, for example, if you're fighting,

50:57

I mean, not that you often get this, but let's say there's two sides in a war and there's the good side and the bad side, and there are going to be practically certain things that the good side do that the bad side do.

51:08

Same thing, same practical manual things and so on. But in terms of the ethos, the direction, the grounds for one side to the other, it's completely different.

51:17

So everything in the life of a Christian school, especially when it's driven by biblical values, is driven to that end.

51:26

It is to inform the glory of God. And that's the grammar stage. That's the knowledge. That's where the worldview, the information is being driven.

51:35

So it's not just giving good or right information from a high educational standard, as important as that is.

51:41

It's from a biblically clear and rigorous standard. So that's something I would want to really stress as being crucial in these young stages of a child's life.

51:51

And this coincides with, for example, in our church, and this happens in our school as well, we would be catechizing the children.

51:59

Now, just in case there's any listeners who don't know what that means, in our church history, you would have creeds, you'd have confessions of faith, as we've talked about.

52:08

There's also catechisms, where you would be catechizing Christians with a series of questions and answers.

52:16

The questions and answers being of the teachings of the Bible. So, for example, there would be catechism questions about the doctrine of God, about sin, about the

52:26

Ten Commandments, about the gospel, salvation, justification, and so on. So you teach these to a young child.

52:32

They memorize these questions. So, for example, I ask my child, what is the

52:38

Third Commandment? My child would say, do not misuse the name of the Lord your God, that kind of thing. And so they have that in mind.

52:46

So then when it comes to beginning to apply that knowledge as they get older, we can make reference to, okay, what's the

52:53

Third Commandment? And here we see some blasphemy in this culture in Scotland or this culture here in Asia or wherever it may be.

53:01

So you begin to shape the ground, shape the worldview. Now, if we just stop and think for a moment, in a secular context, it's the exact opposite.

53:11

There's no neutrality there. What's the end goal? What's the end result here?

53:17

So with that, we've got that grammar stage. Now we come to what's called the logic. In fact, we're going to pick up on logic when we come back from our midway break.

53:26

We have to go to a commercial break. So don't go away, folks. We are going to be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

53:35

Hi, this is John Sampson, pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona. Taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnson and the

53:43

Iron Sharpens Iron podcast. I consider Chris a true friend and a man of high integrity. He's a skilled interviewer who's not afraid to ask the big penetrating questions while always defending the key doctrines of the

53:55

Christian faith. I've always been happy to point people to this podcast, knowing it's one of the very few safe places on the

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Internet where folk won't be led astray. I believe this podcast needs to be heard far and wide.

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This is a day of great spiritual compromise. And yet God has raised Chris up for just such a time.

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And knowing this, it's up to us as members of the body of Christ to stand with such a ministry in prayer and in finances.

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I'm pleased to do so and would like to ask you to prayerfully consider joining me in supporting

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I know it would be a huge encouragement to Chris if you would. All the details can be found at ironsharpensironradio .com

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where you can click support. That's ironsharpensironradio .com. Puritan Reformed is a

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Bible -believing, kingdom -building, devil -fighting church. We're devoted to upholding the apostolic doctrine and practice preserved in Scripture alone.

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Join us in the glorious cause of advancing Christ's crown and covenant over the kings of the earth.

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55:47

I'm Dr.

55:58

Joseph Piper, President Emeritus and Professor of Systematic and Applied Theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

56:07

Every Christian who's serious about the Deformed Faith and the Westminster Standards should have and use the eight -volume commentary on the

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Theology and Ethics of the Westminster Larger Catechism titled Authentic Christianity by Dr.

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Joseph Morecraft. 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.

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Dr. Morecraft 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.

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For details on the eight -volume commentary, go to westminstercommentary .com. westminstercommentary .com

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For details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit heritagepresbyterianchurch .com

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heritagepresbyterianchurch .com Please tell Dr. Morecraft and the saints at Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia that Dr.

57:10

Joseph Piper of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary sends you. Hello, my name is

57:23

Anthony Uvino, and I'm one of the pastors at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corum, New York, and also the host of the reformrookie .com

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website. I want you to know that if you enjoy listening to the Iron Sharpens Iron radio show like I do, you can now find it on the

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Just subscribe on the iTunes app and listen to the Iron Sharpens Iron radio show at any time, day or night.

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And finally, if you're looking to worship in a Reformed church that holds to the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, please join us at Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Corham, New York.

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Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Invinio, and thanks for listening. And the

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NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Rich Jensen of Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Corham, New York, and the

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Church in Friendship in Hockley, Texas, and the NASB is my Bible of choice.

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Truly grateful for many things that the

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Tell them Chris from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio sent you. I'm Dr.

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Tony Costa, professor of apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary. I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love,

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It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God, like the dear saints at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in His Holy Word, and to enthusiastically proclaim

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I hope you also have the privilege of discovering this precious congregation and receive the blessing of being showered by their love, as I have.

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01:05:01

I'm Bill Sousa, Grace Church at Franklin, here in the beautiful state of Tennessee.

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Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support Iron Sharpens Iron Radio financially.

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Grace Church at Franklin is an independent, autonomous body of believers which strives to clearly declare the whole counsel of God as revealed in Scripture through the person and work of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. And, of course, the end for which we strive is the glory of God.

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If you live near Franklin, Tennessee, and Franklin is just south of Nashville, maybe 10 minutes, or you are visiting this area, or you have friends and loved ones nearby, we hope you will join us some

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Our website is gracechurchatfranklin .org. That's gracechurchatfranklin .org.

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This is Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our

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Sovereign Lord, God, Savior, and King, Jesus Christ, today and always.

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Go to royaldiadem .com, mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Before I return to my conversation with John William Noble about not only the classical

01:10:14

Christian education movement in Scotland and the UK, but also the fight against Christian pragmatism, before we return to that conversation,

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01:12:49

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01:12:56

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01:13:08

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01:13:13

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01:13:22

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01:13:28

and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address to send in a question to our guest today,

01:13:36

John William Noble, chrisarnsironradio .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

01:13:44

And before the break, Pastor Noble, you were going through some of the unique aspects of classical

01:13:53

Christian education, and you had reached the point where you were going to explain the logic courses.

01:14:01

Yeah, so just very quickly to recap regarding the three stages of the

01:14:07

Trivium, I had been mentioning the importance of grammar, where there are the foundational teaching of facts and knowledge grounded upon the scriptures and mentioning things like catechizing children.

01:14:21

So on that basis, when we get to stages of logic and then rhetoric, this is where there's a more specific follow up and focus on the development of a child's ability to take the things that they've learned and are learning and start to reason and construct arguments and then eventually an ability to articulate those things.

01:14:49

Now, you just need to go on to, I mean, almost any social media platform when any subject involving religion, politics, or so on is being raised, and you can quickly find people, and I know it's worse than social media, but it is a representation of how increasingly we're seeing an inability of adults to do this very thing.

01:15:13

Instead of people being able to read what someone is writing and to process that information and to construct an argument, whether it's in support or a rebuttal of that, you often get responses that are filled with emotion -driven nothingness or something that is irrelevant to the original point, these sorts of things.

01:15:38

So this is a stage that's really important in the development of a young person's life in order to prepare and equip them to be ongoing learners and an ability to be students of what they learn.

01:15:54

Because one thing that classical Christian education would seek to do is to equip you with the tools to continue learning in adult life.

01:16:05

So as important as it is to give you the information on a subject, like you study a subject and you were able to do the psalm or you were able to know the information, being able to equip and train you to know how to learn, to know how to develop and think critically about things, this is an important thing for a child's development into teenage and then adult life.

01:16:30

And that's what this logic stage is dealing with, where there's this reasoning and ability to reason with information that's given.

01:16:39

And even when it comes to, as a parent, I would want my children to know and to believe the

01:16:45

Bible. But when we consider when a child is growing up, they're going to read things of the

01:16:52

Bible and they're going to start asking questions. Why does this say this in the

01:16:57

Bible? And it's not because they're driven by a desire to disprove the existence of God, though sometimes that can often be what some discussions look like with people.

01:17:06

It's more just to shape and to cultivate a deepening understanding of such things.

01:17:12

So that would be the stage of logic, which is round about that pre -teenage age bracket.

01:17:20

And then as you're getting through into the teenage years, there's then this final stage of rhetoric, which is focusing on an ability to then articulate.

01:17:29

As somebody, as a child, as a young adult, is beginning to take information and to start putting together arguments based on their reasoning, they're then developing a way to articulate the point and to be persuasive in that.

01:17:46

Now, one thing that I found really quite interesting, we actually had an article by a newspaper in our area, a secular newspaper, it's like the most recognized newspaper in the northeast of Scotland, about our school.

01:18:02

And one of the things of the many, many, many criticisms we had on social media for daring to set up a

01:18:07

Christian school and the brainwashing that it was, as many people said, one of the things that the people really took exception to was when

01:18:15

I mentioned trying to develop in the lives of young people an ability to reason and argue.

01:18:23

And people were saying, oh, how shocking it is that we would want somebody to argue. I think they were kind of getting this picture of the argumentative people who were being disruptive.

01:18:33

But one of the main criticisms that I would have of what we're seeing, not just in state education, but state manipulation within the media and other brackets, is it's almost like sheep on a conveyor belt and there's very much a sameness.

01:18:49

So we're actually indoctrinating people to think and act in quite a similar way. It's shaped in a worldview that obviously is contrary to Scripture, as I have mentioned.

01:18:59

So in training and equipping children to think, to reason, to argue, to articulate, this is all the more crucial if you're in a society where you're confronted with people who are not able to do this and they're following a verbatim way of thinking and doing things that is contrary to what is true, which is the

01:19:23

Bible. So this is becoming an even more pressing matter, even as a means of responding to where our culture is, both educationally and even morally.

01:19:32

So these are some important stages that are emphasized and central to a classical

01:19:40

Christian education. And I feel very thankful and blessed that we've been able to establish a school on this basis, because one of the difficulties, as I mentioned, even with the teacher of our school, is that there isn't a

01:19:56

Christian setting in the United Kingdom where someone can be trained and prepared to become a

01:20:03

Christian teacher, certainly not a classical Christian teacher. So I used to think years ago, if we ever tried to set up especially a classical

01:20:12

Christian school, we'd probably need to go to a place like America and see, because there's more grounds and there's more resources and people have been trained in a way that isn't happening in the

01:20:22

UK. But with this young man who'd been in our church for a while and he'd been discipled and trained on a doctrinal front, he had also been spending quite a significant amount of time, even before he was in our church, looking at the area of biblical family and patriarchy and even in terms of education, and he'd done some study and research into this.

01:20:45

Now that isn't training in the way that we would hope to see happen, but at least it gave us the grounds and the means by which we could try to work towards establishing such a school.

01:20:57

But everything has felt like hard work in the sense of we're starting from scratch in this regard.

01:21:04

So to be at the point where we've established this culturally in our church and being able to establish the classical

01:21:11

Christian school as a ministry of our church, we have been very thankful. But we are certainly in desperate need of people's prayers and if anyone's in a position to financially support as well, because we unfortunately don't get any support or interest from the churches in our city, sadly.

01:21:30

That's a shame. And we will repeat all the information that you want known by our listeners toward the end of the show, where they can donate to you.

01:21:43

We have a listener in Berwick, Pennsylvania, Cameron.

01:21:51

And Cameron wants to know, you mentioned earlier that the Church of Scotland is apostate.

01:21:57

How biblically sound is the Free Church of Scotland? Yeah, so for people who are aware of the history, the

01:22:12

Church of Scotland would have been the confessionally reformed

01:22:17

Presbyterian standard of church in Scotland centuries ago, where every community in a city or town or village would have a parish and there would be a church in a prominent place and that was the

01:22:31

Church of Scotland. Now, in more recent times, there was a breaking away from the Church of Scotland because of increasing liberalising of the

01:22:40

Church of Scotland, which was the Free Church of Scotland. And they certainly, even to this day, would be by and large still a denomination where the gospel would be preached.

01:22:51

But even within that, there has been a breakaway from that in more recent times called the

01:22:58

Free Church continuing over one or two discussions regarding the

01:23:03

Free Church wanting to not just sing exclusive psalmody, this kind of thing. So I would say that the

01:23:10

Free Church of Scotland is in that bracket where you would still find a church where the gospel is being preached.

01:23:17

But in terms of individual churches, there would be a bit of a mix depending on how biblically rigorous they would be.

01:23:26

I mean, I can give a couple of examples. One being, and this is the case for pretty much any, in an area like Christian education, we wouldn't get active support or investment from the

01:23:39

Free Church in Aberdeen on that basis. Another one is that there was an

01:23:44

MSP, so basically a government leader who was a member of a free church and his worldview was very much not in keeping with Christianity.

01:23:53

And so, yeah, I mean, there would be definitely increasing issues, but they certainly haven't liberalized or apostatized in a way that the

01:24:01

Church of Scotland has done. So, yeah, I would be encouraging enough to say that, yeah, you would find biblical churches in Scotland within the

01:24:11

Free Church denomination. Yeah, a former pastor of mine who is very biblically sound was educated in the

01:24:19

Free Church of Scotland, even though he was always a

01:24:24

Reformed Baptist during those years of school, but it was probably in a day when they were much more biblically strong and faithful and so on.

01:24:38

Yeah, one thing I would say on that, sorry to interrupt, just to mention that there would be a free church college in Edinburgh that would still do some training of men in ministry.

01:24:50

And even though it's certainly not ideal, particularly if you're dealing with somebody who's not within that denomination, it would still be one of the more biblically rigorous.

01:24:59

I mean, unfortunately, that's not saying much in terms of there's hardly anything of that in Scotland, generally speaking, but it would still be something where they would be handling books and subjects in the

01:25:11

Bible, even things like church history, in a way that would still be of some help, yeah.

01:25:17

Yeah, that's where one of my former pastors was educated, David Campbell.

01:25:23

By the way, he's pastoring now in Northern England at the North Preston Evangelical Church.

01:25:31

I don't know how far away that is from you, North Preston, England. The first time

01:25:38

I preached at the Scottish Reform Baptist Conference a few years ago, that was when

01:25:43

I met David, so I have spoken with him before, yeah. Well, if you do bump into him again, tell him that I miss him and send my regards.

01:25:53

And I'd love to get him back on the program. Will do.

01:26:00

Great. We have another listener with a question for you.

01:26:08

We have Tyler in Endicott, New York, and Tyler says, can you give us a summary of the theological and religious climate of Scotland as compared to the rest of the

01:26:28

United Kingdom and Europe? Yeah, that's a big question.

01:26:36

So, in some ways, it's the same. In some ways, there are differences.

01:26:42

Let me deal with some specific points regarding Scotland. I would say in the time that I've been an adult, up until our current

01:26:53

UK government, the Labour government under Kyle Starmer, previous to that, the

01:26:58

Scottish government have been more liberally progressive and wicked in comparison to the

01:27:04

UK government. Now, I would give the analogy, both governments are driving quite rapidly off the cliff, but the

01:27:13

SNP, the Scottish government, have usually been going at a much quicker pace. So they're going to bring destruction more quickly, that kind of thing.

01:27:22

So it's not to say that, well, the UK is very conservative, but Scotland is liberal. So we're all in that liberal bracket.

01:27:28

All of the political parties, for example, are moving in the same direction. They'll all vote the same way on issues like abortion and LGBT, that type of thing.

01:27:37

But especially when we had Alex Salmond and even more so Nicola Sturgeon in power, that was especially dangerous because there was even more overtly wicked attacks with legislation that was being proposed and coming in.

01:27:51

For example, in the mid -2000s, there was something called the Named Person Scheme, which was basically to create

01:27:58

Scotland into a nanny state where you would have to, as families, give an account to a specific designated government official for things you're doing in the family.

01:28:07

Frankly, that was rejected, but they found other ways to bring that about. They continue to try to find ways, especially the

01:28:14

Scottish Green Party, to limit, restrict, or control home education.

01:28:20

The LGBT narrative, obviously, that has progressed wildly. Just to say how bad it is, in the late 2010s, a few years ago, right about the time when we were thinking about beginning the

01:28:33

Christian school, you were already dealing with nursery age, so age 3 -4, where children were being asked about their gender, that kind of thing.

01:28:43

So this has been infiltrated in the curriculum, which is a curriculum for excellence, as they call it, from age 3 to 18, where every aspect of the curriculum needs to be adhering to the

01:28:54

LGBT subject. Also, when we consider the identity of what it means to be

01:29:00

Scottish and British now, as it is, the immigration thing has obviously been a big thing recently.

01:29:06

Scotland has been progressing against these points for years, which has basically been an attack on biblical

01:29:13

Christianity, if you boil it down. But recently, with the Labour government, they've introduced laws that have been even more progressive still.

01:29:22

And our current Scottish government, they've stalled a bit because they've made mistakes.

01:29:28

They've tried to push too hard on things like LGBT. So we've had the abortion law, so legally permitting the abortion of children up to birth and in your homes.

01:29:38

The assisted dying, so legalising, basically allowing to kill people based on mental health, let alone if they've got a progressive stage of cancer.

01:29:47

So really, really progressively wicked legislation, which is very much a culture of death.

01:29:52

And this is UK wide. This is being driven by what we have in the UK now. And also there is very much an ongoing attack on Christian education where they've introduced added

01:30:03

VAT prices. So one thing I should say which connects to Christian education is that we're the first classical

01:30:13

Christian school in Scotland, but there's a classical Christian school, the first one that was established in England, the first in the

01:30:20

UK. They've had to close now because one of the reasons being because of these VAT price fees that mean that parents have to pay even more money.

01:30:30

And it's just been too much and they've not been able to afford it. So it's been really very difficult and sad to see that happen.

01:30:37

I would say that just across the context of our continent, different countries have got differing levels of liberally progressive and wicked rules.

01:30:48

So for example, in Germany, home education is illegal. So that's definitely something that's even more oppressive.

01:30:56

But then there's other things that you could say about, for example, Scotland that would maybe be worse and difficult. But it's very much a spiritually barren wasteland and the church has had quite a big contributing element to that because when governments have sought to bring in such progressive legislation, the church hasn't stood against it.

01:31:17

And the church has increasingly tried to initially appease it and more and more churches now agreeing with it and helping to drive such things.

01:31:27

So that's very much what we're now seeing. And I would say that even though there are some differences in Scotland, in terms of with the

01:31:35

UK and in Europe, it's all in a similar bracket and it's a very concerning picture.

01:31:43

We have Walter in, it's either Leiper's Fork or Leiper's Fork, I don't know how to pronounce it,

01:31:51

Tennessee. And Walter asks, Here in America, things are starting to get so nightmarishly bad with a minority of extreme leftists that even average secularists are beginning to see the lunacy of this and have started to protest against things like biological males participating in women's sports, etc.

01:32:23

Is there a similar phenomenon in Scotland where even non -believers are beginning to publicly reject the extremes of leftism?

01:32:37

In answer to that, yes. One thing just to re -emphasize is that,

01:32:43

I mean, it depends because I know in certain states in America it might look a little bit like Europe.

01:32:50

In other states, maybe it would be a little bit more conservative. So things are by and large a bit more liberally progressive in a country like Scotland.

01:33:00

So it's good to kind of factor that in here. When it comes to the Scottish government, for example, one of the tipping points for Nicola Sturgeon coming out of power was that they pushed too hard on the

01:33:13

LGBT thing. So it's not that we've had a big and obvious uprising.

01:33:18

It's just if they push too hard, then many people will speak up against it. But not in a way where we're seeing an outright opposition to the

01:33:29

LGBT agenda. It's still being promoted. And I would say that the majority of people, yeah,

01:33:35

I would still say the majority of people, although increasingly younger people are being educated in a way to think this is normal, but I would still say the majority of people see that this is ludicrous.

01:33:45

But unfortunately, most people are afraid to speak up. And I don't think that's unique to Scotland. But if, for example, you're somebody who knows what it means to be a man and a woman, you understand the biological, even the moral, ethical, spiritual, etc.

01:33:59

realities of that, but you're in a workplace which is promoting diversity, inclusivity, all these types of things, then you know you need to keep your lips sealed in order to keep a job.

01:34:10

So that's basically what we're dealing with here. So any degree of uprising or pushback against it is minimal.

01:34:16

And usually what we find is it's only when it gets extreme, it's a case of let's just dial it back.

01:34:22

That's probably where we are on some of these issues. And that's probably where the main distinction is.

01:34:28

I mean, unfortunately, there isn't a strong spiritual presence of the church in our land.

01:34:35

And that's why we've kind of got this picture on one level where things like abortion are just...

01:34:41

There's not even a debate amongst most people now. It's just commonly accepted that abortion is a morally right thing to do because it's a woman's right.

01:34:50

That would be the way most people think. And that's just an outright horror and evil. Equally, we see people coming from other cultural contexts bringing in false religions where they have a desire to have children.

01:35:03

And so we're in this mess where you've got false religions that are increasingly being present in our country.

01:35:11

The religion of Christianity is eroding because it's being attacked by even our government and much of the people.

01:35:17

So we were now in a cultural mess where, well, what's the response of the church going to look like?

01:35:24

Yes. And another thing that is very frustrating is that more and more people in conservative media, they may be wearing the facade of being the allies of Christians on many fronts.

01:35:51

But like Fox News, for instance, which is one of the primary sources for news and information of conservatives in general, and even perhaps even most evangelicals, they are saturated with people claiming to be conservative who are homosexual, who are pro -abortion.

01:36:17

And I noticed that there just recently has begun to be a change.

01:36:24

I don't know if it's with all of the hosts on that network. But there finally, at least some of the hosts are, if a biological male has some kind of so -called transgender alteration, either pharmaceutically or surgically to the opposite gender, they would, on Fox News, they would call that individual she or her, even though it's a biological male.

01:36:59

I've noticed that some of the hosts are not doing that anymore. But as far as you said, how mainstay the murder of the unborn is there, would that include a significant segment amongst professing evangelicals?

01:37:19

Yeah, that's such a pressing question, given what we've been doing as a church this year, because we're now in a position, and it should have happened sooner, but we're now in a position where we're trying to establish a more rigorous, grounded, tackling abortion ministry within our church.

01:37:40

And one of the things we found, because we had a Christian organization come to speak about this issue and just give some kind of training input for certain people in our church towards this, is that of the very few

01:37:55

Christians that are engaged in this issue, one of the most prominent ones is called a non -directive anti -abortion ministry.

01:38:05

So by non -directive, these are evangelicals whose objective is not to direct a woman who's thinking of aborting their child one way or the other.

01:38:17

So that's what we're dealing with, even with the ministries that are supposedly trying to tackle abortion, but most will just not tackle it.

01:38:25

Another thing that I would say is crucial to stress on these topical issues, because we desperately want to see children being saved from the womb and tackling the issues of LGBT and other matters.

01:38:39

This is why, even linking to that Fox News point that you made, it's absolutely imperative that as Christians, as churches, biblically grounded churches, the gospel is central in what we seek to do in our culture.

01:38:52

Now by that, I've made the point again and again when I've preached on these subjects, we're not trying to change our culture in order to tell them about Jesus.

01:39:00

We're actually going forth and we're proclaiming the gospel in areas like the subject of abortion.

01:39:06

And we pray that the Lord would providentially and graciously bring about change in a culture through souls being saved and even governments coming to repentance.

01:39:16

So for example, if we were dealing with a young woman who is thinking about having an abortion and she's talking to people in our church, then we could say, don't have an abortion.

01:39:27

It's not the conservative thing to do or whatever we may say. But then what's the moral grounds if we're saying, oh, it's because God and the sanctity of life is something we see in the

01:39:36

Bible. What we then need to be bringing to this woman and anyone else involved in this situation is the reason why we are in a culture that celebrates death and embraces these things is because man is totally depraved.

01:39:49

And we need Christ. We need the salvation that's in the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's what you need, young woman, if we're speaking to this woman.

01:39:56

And that's a crucial thing that needs to be stressed here because even in the UK, less so than in America, but even in the

01:40:03

UK, there is an increasing number of, particularly a demographic of younger men that are moving towards more conservative thinking in subjects.

01:40:12

And that's fine. That's good. There's certainly some positives to note about that. But if the gospel is not central to that, then where is that going to take people?

01:40:21

It could take them in the direction of some false religions in the name of Christianity, or it could take them to maybe some good moral applications.

01:40:28

But it's not actually going to be the means of saving souls and building the church and advancing Christ's kingdom.

01:40:34

So that's something that is absolutely crucial to everything that we would seek to do in Aberdeen. And I would exhort is crucial in the life of biblical churches.

01:40:43

Well, we're going to our final break. And if you'd like to join us with a question, I'd strongly advise that you submit your question immediately because we're rapidly running out of time.

01:40:53

ChrisArnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name, at least city and state of residence and country of residence.

01:41:01

We'll be right back. Please do not go away. When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

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01:43:21

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Going back to 2005, one of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is

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May the Lord bless you in the knowledge of himself. Chris White here of Alpha Omega Ministries, announcing that this

01:47:16

September, I'm heading out to Pennsylvania to speak at two events that my longtime friend

01:47:21

Chris Arnzen has lined up for me. On Thursday, September 18th, at 11 a .m.,

01:47:26

I'm speaking to men in ministry leadership at Chris's Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Free Pastors Luncheon at Church of the

01:47:34

Living Christ in Loisville. Then, on Sunday, September 21st, at 1 .30

01:47:40

p .m., I'm speaking at Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle on the theme, Can We Trust the

01:47:45

Bible is the Authentic and Inerrant Word of God? I hope you can join Chris and me for both events.

01:47:51

For more details on the Free Pastors Luncheon, visit ironsharpensironradio .com.

01:47:57

That's ironsharpensironradio .com. For more details on Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle, visit trbccarlisle .org.

01:48:08

That's trbccarlisle .org. God willing, I'll see you in September in Pennsylvania for these exciting events.

01:48:19

Puritan Reformed is a Bible -believing, kingdom -building, devil -fighting church. We are devoted to upholding the apostolic doctrine and practice preserved in Scripture alone.

01:48:31

Puritan Reformed teaches men to rule and lead as image -bearing prophets, priests, and kings.

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We teach families to worship together as families. Puritan is committed to teaching the whole counsel of God so that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.

01:48:51

We sing the Psalms, teach the law, proclaim the gospel, make disciples, maintain discipline, and exalt

01:48:57

Christ. This is Pastor David Reese of Puritan Reformed in Phoenix, Arizona.

01:49:03

Join us in the glorious cause of advancing Christ's crown and covenant over the kings of the earth.

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Puritan Reformed Church. Believe. Build. Fight. puritanphx .com

01:49:18

And don't forget, folks, this program is also paid for in part by the law firm of Botafuoco &

01:49:23

Associates. If you're the victim of a very serious personal injury or medical malpractice anywhere in the

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United States, call my very dear longtime friend and brother in Christ, Daniel T.

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1 -800 -NOW -HURT .com. Make sure you tell Daniel T. Botafuoco, attorney at law, that you heard about his law firm,

01:49:52

Botafuoco & Associates, from Chris Arnzen of Iron Trip and Zion Radio. We are now back with our guest today,

01:50:01

John William Noble, pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Aberdeen, Scotland, and we have a listener in Munster, Indiana, and that is

01:50:17

Toby in Munster, Indiana, asks, What are the primary theological enemies of the true gospel in Scotland?

01:50:31

So I guess the answer to that question depends on whether we're dealing with still the remaining existing church or the recognized church that has become apostate, because obviously apostasy has been, generally speaking, the big increasing danger, but within the evangelical church, it would certainly be pragmatism from what

01:50:57

I've seen in recent years. So just to explain what I mean by that, what I have found of even church leaders is that there's a willingness and a readiness to preach the gospel, which is good and essential.

01:51:13

Sometimes that's not even specifically Calvinistic in its consistency, but even with that, what

01:51:22

I find church leaders now seem to be in a habit of doing is assessing the climate of not just the culture that they're in, but even the church culture that they are overseeing.

01:51:34

So if you imagine Aaron in the time when Moses is up receiving the law in Exodus 32, and he is acting as though he is the one who is leading the people, but actually the people are leading him.

01:51:46

They're leading him to do some grave and wicked things, which go against the very commandments that Moses is receiving.

01:51:53

Now, thankfully, it's not often as explicitly wicked as that, but basically when it comes to areas like, for example,

01:52:01

Christian education, the reason why church leaders don't want to engage with this is because they know that that means they need to challenge their congregations.

01:52:11

Because if you start to promote Christian education, Christian schools, even home education, then you start to have members of your congregation who have got their children in state schools asking questions like, well, are you saying that I'm wrong?

01:52:24

And unfortunately, even in my earlier ministry development years, one of the most concerning pieces of feedback

01:52:33

I would get from one or two church leaders was when they were hearing me preach, they were thinking, have

01:52:38

I done something wrong? And the answer to that would be, well, yes.

01:52:44

That's the whole point in terms of how you would preach and how you'd address issues, because we do need to grow in the grace and knowledge of the

01:52:51

Lord Jesus Christ. And there's an unwillingness to actually tackle issues. So when it comes to the subject of evangelism, instead of going forth and preaching the gospel in the public square and going to people's doors and being very clear that, yes, you are a sinner in need of Christ, there's more of an emphasis on we need to make friends with people.

01:53:11

And then in time, we might start talking to them about Jesus. So this is the sort of approach that we're seeing.

01:53:16

And I suppose for me personally, it's been why it's been such a challenge to have,

01:53:22

I guess, invested Christian friendships with those in ministry, particularly in my own city, even country.

01:53:29

I mean, there's one church in another city in Dundee called Lochie Baptist Chapel, and they're a church that have been emphasizing some of these key issues like Christian education.

01:53:40

They have not a Christian school, but they have a homeschool co -op that's been going for a while, and that's been a great encouragement to us.

01:53:49

But unfortunately, there's been a distinct lack of that. And where even for us in Aberdeen, this year, we applied for funding from a

01:53:58

Christian organization to support us in the work we were doing in our church building and also in the school building that we've been refurbishing.

01:54:06

And initially, we were getting the commitment from this Christian organization that they would give us funding support because they've supported other churches for various ministry and building works.

01:54:16

But then they started to ask churches, not secular people, churches about us, and they got a similar report that we're quite a divisive presence in the city.

01:54:25

And when I pressed on that, it was on these subjects relating to what we've done on things like Christian education and how we were quite outspoken on the subject of COVID because we were meeting and worshipping in secret and these sorts of things.

01:54:39

So that's been, I guess, the challenge that I think, even for us as a church in Aberdeen, we faced greatest difficulty over.

01:54:48

So pragmatism would be my answer within the evangelical church. Well, I want to make sure that you highlight those things that are primarily burdening your heart, mind, and soul and that you want most etched on the hearts and minds of our listeners today before we go off the air.

01:55:09

And you've got about four minutes to do so. Okay. I would say, because I'm dealing explicitly with the situation in Scotland, it's not specifically unique in any given area, but there are maybe unique emphases that have possibly come out in what

01:55:28

I've shared over the past couple of hours. I think that in terms of the culture that we're in and how rapidly concerning the spiritual, the moral climate that we've found ourselves to be in, the church does not have a prophetic voice to this.

01:55:48

Now, by prophetic, I mean speaking the authority of God's word in a way that is bold and unwavering.

01:55:54

And that's something that I and our church have sought to do. And it's just led to quite significant opposition that we've faced from the church in our land.

01:56:03

And it's not that we see ourselves as victims. We certainly don't. We believe that even through that, the

01:56:09

Lord is testing, shaping and equipping us. But what we're preparing for as the years go on is further opposition and difficulty.

01:56:20

So we see ourselves as a spiritual fortress in what we've established, both as a church and also with the establishing of this school.

01:56:28

And we very much would appreciate, as I mentioned, people to be praying for the work that Grace Baptist Church Aberdeen and Doxotheo Christian School are doing in this context and praying that there would be more churches in Aberdeen and throughout

01:56:45

Scotland that would be bold and unwavering in speaking based on the authority of God's word on issues like how children are to be raised and the importance of things like family worship, not just accepting the status quo.

01:57:00

Because what's going to happen in the coming years in evangelical churches when a 12 -year -old boy is coming out as trans or a 13 -year -old girl has decided to have a secret abortion or the next

01:57:13

COVID comes along, can we trust our church leaders to deal with these issues and to be biblically rigorous and not just responding to them, but actually steering the church in a direction that is in accordance with God's word?

01:57:27

Because right now there's a distinct lack of that. And that's what we need. We need biblically strong men who are leading their churches and we need to see churches that are driven towards tackling areas like abortion and establishing

01:57:41

Christian schools. So please be in prayer that there would be more of this, that there would be a deepening of Christian fellowship and unity amongst biblical churches in this city and across our nation because we desperately need that.

01:57:56

We'll provide all of the contact information that you care to, perhaps even especially in regard to listeners that may want to donate financially.

01:58:08

That would be great. Thank you. Well, I was asking you to do that. Oh, sorry.

01:58:16

Yeah. So one specific thing that I would mention,

01:58:22

I do send out a monthly newsletter about our church and school updates.

01:58:27

So if people wanted to get in touch with that, they could contact the contact email on our

01:58:34

Grace Aberdeen website. On the Doxa Theo Christian School website, there's a web link under the title

01:58:41

Building Fund and there's an opportunity to give directly to that work. So if anyone wants to give financially, then please do consider giving any small or larger amount towards that.

01:58:51

We would greatly value that because, as I say, I mean, in terms of being able to employ staff, the building costs, it's a major undertaking because we look to subsidize the costs of the parents who are enrolling their children in the school and we want to continue to do that and not charge significantly high fees.

01:59:12

And so we would value prayerful support for that and any financial giving. So it's the doxatheochristianschool .org

01:59:19

and I think the forward slash, it's Building Fund. But you can go to the website and you can find Building Fund on there.

01:59:25

So that would be something that definitely would be a great blessing to us. And that's doxatheochristianschool .org.

01:59:35

Yes. Let me just... Yeah, I'm looking at it, so I know that's what it is. Yeah, it's forward slash

01:59:41

Building and then there's a hyphen, Project. If you want the direct link, doxatheochristianschool .org

01:59:47

forward slash Building hyphen Project. Well, I just want to thank you for being such a great guest.

01:59:54

We're out of time and I look forward to having you back on the program. I hope everybody listening has a safe, blessed, and Christ -centered weekend and Lord's Day.

02:00:05

And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater